“And what about the Players? Who’s controlling them?”
“The Deceivers?”
I nod.
She frowns at me for a moment. I can tell she doesn’t like them. The feeling of antipathy for them is strong. “Help me turn your friend,” she says, gesturing to Kelly.
“Is it Father Heall?” I ask. “Is he controlling them?”
She shakes her head.
“Is Father Heall all right?”
“He was fine when we left this morning.”
“Does Micah know where he is, where he’s going?”
She lifts her eyes to mine, even as she finishes wrapping clean cloth around Kelly’s middle. I can see this is making her uncomfortable. She gives her head a quick shake. “Father Heall is somewhere he can’t be found.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
She ties a knot in the bandage. “I think it’s only fair that you know, young lady, I don’t trust you either. That photo wasn’t the only thing I found in your pants back there.”
Reggie watches us, a scowl on his face. His arms are crossed across his chest and a smoldering rage burns in his eyes. I’m still waiting for him to start flipping out about Ashley. I think he’s in denial. He’s just dealing with it by refusing to talk about it or think about it.
Sister Jane pulls another bandage from her pack. I watch her in silence as she cleans another of Kelly’s wounds, then applies the poultice and covers it. She works quickly and efficiently. She repeats the process until he’s covered with bandages. When she’s finished, she places the unused supplies back into her pack and stands up.
“We should move everyone upstairs as soon as we can.
“Someone will have to carry Kelly.”
She nods. “There’ll be more men here for that soon enough.”
“What do you mean?” Reggie asks. “Who’s coming? More brothers?
“Not Father Heall’s brothers,” Sister Jane says. She turns to me. “Just one. Yours.”
Chapter 23
“Eric’s coming?” I ask. “He’s coming here? When? How?”
Sister Jane shakes her head. “I don’t know all the details. It was that boy, Micah, who arranged it. Another reason I don’t trust him. Or you. You know how we feel about the Deceivers. I—”
But Micah comes in right then and we all look up. He stops and stares at us suspiciously.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demand. I pull myself to my feet despite the abrupt pain and nausea that wells up inside of me. I step over to him. “Why didn’t—”
He flinches and tries to tell me to be quiet. “Those Players out there are—”
“Fuck them. Fuck you, too! Why didn’t you tell me Eric was on his way here?”
I lift my arm to point my finger in his face, but the movement causes my bandage to pull and I double over in agony as new pain rips through my side.
Reggie grabs my arm and supports me while I wait for it to pass. “You need to take it easy, Jess,” he tells me. “Slow down.”
“No,” I pant. Sweat and tears pour off my face and my nose decides right then that now is a good time to start running like a faucet. I feel like I’m leaking from every pore of my body. “I…have to…go.” I try to straighten up, but another spasm hits me.
“I’ll help her,” Sister Jane quietly tells them. “You two see about getting the other one upstairs.”
“The others won’t be here for awhile,” Micah says. “They’re waiting for clearance.”
“Then you can carry him.”
Reggie glares at Micah for a moment, then goes over to Kelly. He’s still limping slightly, but he tries to hide it. He doesn’t want Micah to see he’s hurt. He bends down and lifts Kelly to his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
“Let me help,” Micah says. “Come on, man.”
But Reggie ignores him. “You don’t get to touch him, traitor.”
Micah looks over at me, gawping. “I’m not—”
“Just shut the fuck up and open that door, Texas boy.”
Micah stands his ground. “You can’t just go running out there, Reg. Those Players, they may be under Arc control, but they will still attack you if you’re not careful. You have to walk slowly. Don’t make too much noise.”
“Arc?” I say. “I don’t understand. Why are they helping you?”
Sister Jane tries to lift my arm over her shoulder so she can help carry me, but this sends another spasm through me and I have to catch my breath.
“Because I asked them to.”
I catch and hold Micah’s eyes, studying them, looking for some sort of clue to what he’s hiding. Why would he ask Arc to help us if he’s with the SSC? Why would Arc agree?
“Can we discuss this upstairs?” Reggie asks. He’s already straining under Kelly’s weight. I don’t know how he’s going to make it all the way up the stairs carrying him like that.
Micah purses his lips, then turns and pushes out through the door. “They’ve cleared most of the Players out again, to outside the fence, but there are still a few around down here. The best thing to do is be quiet.”
As we enter the main room, I catch sight of two standing against the far wall. They sense us and begin to moan. One takes a step toward us before it stops and backtracks. I keep my eyes on it as we go. I can almost imagine the struggle going on inside its head, the battle between its own internal urges and the overriding control exerted by some Operator pushing buttons and flipping switches somewhere.
“Are they sending this to the Stream?” I quietly ask. “Is everyone watching this?”
“Arc’s Streams have been down for days,” Micah replies, surprising me.
Reggie reaches the hallway with the stairs first, followed by Sister Jane and me, then Micah in the rear. The door has been sheared off its hinges and now lies propped against the wall. We step carefully around the bodies of the IUs that the players killed. Micah slips past us and tries to clear a path, but Reggie trips over a body and nearly dumps Kelly. He regains his footing, hissing from the strain.
“Reggie, your hip.”
“I’m fine.”
“Let me help, man,” Micah pleads.
“I don’t want you touching me,” Reggie growls. He mounts the stairs like he plans to run all the way up them, but his pace quickly slows.
“Let him help,” I tell him, partially because I don’t want him to drop Kelly, but also because I’m starting to wonder if maybe we were wrong about Micah. I still don’t trust him, but something tells me there’s more to the story than we know. It’s not as simple as him being an SSC agent. Still…
But Reggie plows on ahead and Micah shrugs.
I take the stairs one slow step at a time. Each time I lift my left leg, another flare of white hot pain burns through me. It feels like forever just getting to the first landing. After that, I pretty much go on autopilot. We reach another landing, then another. I lose count and instead focus on my breathing. In…out…in again. I tell myself that I need to thank Master Rupert when we finally get back home. If it wasn’t for him and all his training, I’m sure I would’ve given up a long time ago.
“It feels like your fever’s breaking already,” Sister Jane tells me, pulling me out of my reverie. “That was quick.”
I blink and look about me. Reggie is two or three flights above us, panting heavily. Micah hangs back, concern in his eyes. I try not to look at him. “We’re halfway there,” he informs me. I don’t answer.
“I don’t know how you can say it’s quick,” I tell Sister Jane. “I’m still sweating buckets.”
“You are, but that’s mostly from pain and exertion. You’re a strong girl, stronger than I was when I was first bitten. I cried like a baby, and not because I believed I was about to die.”
I think about Julia. I wonder if she’s a strong girl. She’ll have to be, now that her father is dead. My vision goes blurry as I think about this. A tear leaks from my eye and seems to take forever falling to the floor. I watch it, mesmerized. It
hits the dusty step and splatters. Another one joins it. And then they fall from me in a cascade, and I find myself sobbing openly, unable to see anything.
“I’m so s-s-sorry,” my voice hitches. “They’re all dead. Brother Matthew and Malcolm, Brother Nicholas. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry imsosorry…”
Sister Jane gently lowers me to the step and sits me down. I sense Micah linger a moment before leaving us. I feel like a huge weight has settled over me, covering me. Sister Jane patiently sits with me, rocking, holding me. She doesn’t speak. She lets me cry.
And when I’m done, she helps me get back to my feet, and she carries me the rest of the way up the stairs.
Chapter 24
The late afternoon sun feels so good on my face.
I sniff and wipe the wetness from my cheeks and Sister Jane lets me go so I can walk now on my own. Her hand remains on my elbow, and it’s a comfort.
I’m terribly stiff, horribly achy, so I take it slowly. It’s been at least an hour and a half since I was bitten, a half hour since the injection, and I’m not spiking a fever or turning into a quivering puddle, so I guess the treatment must be working. My headache and backache are bad, but compared with what I’ve experienced in the past two weeks, they’re bearable. I almost laugh, thinking this. I never thought I could be so tough. Ashley was always the tough one, at least on the outside.
I take in a deep breath, inhaling the freshness of the air like I’m gorging myself on it, like I’m starving to death and I can’t get enough of it. I hear the buzz of the cicadas in the trees and the soft hush of the wind over the tall grass and through the leaves and they heal me. I feel the springy earth beneath my feet. I just want to lie down in it. I want to close my eyes and go to sleep.
I want to see Eric.
“When can I talk to my brother?”
“He’s supposed to call.”
Ping, I think, though I don’t say it.
Reggie has let Kelly down in the shade over between buildings and is kneeling beside him. I look around for Micah and find him over with Brother Walter, who’s talking to someone on a Link.
“I thought you guys didn’t have Links,” I say to Sister Jane. “Brother Matthew said you didn’t like them because they could be tracked.”
“We don’t have any. He must be using that boy’s.”
“Who is he talking to?”
“The Arc people, I guess. The ones who control the Deceivers.”
“What’s going on with Arc?” I ask. “I’ve heard things, but nothing specific.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know much, just what I overheard this morning after you left and before we did. There was an attack in Manhattan a couple days ago, somebody bombed their main headquarters. There’s something wrong with their network here. Communications between here and their headquarters has been down.”
I remember the conversation I’d had on the road with Ben this morning. He’d said, Arc’s got bigger fish to fry right now. It sounds like the SSC has been busy.
When I’d asked him what he’d meant by that, all he’d managed to get out was “Manhattan” before becoming distracted by the IU standing off the side of the road. Had I known then that he was planning to get it to bite Casey so that he could prove the treatment worked, would I have stopped him? How ironic that that his “proof” wasn’t really in the end, but he’d convinced himself it was and so he injected Father Heall’s blood into his own body. He’ll think he’s protected if he gets bitten, but he won’t be. And eventually the prion will eat away at him and turn him into a walking, thinking Undead.
I can’t think of a more appropriate end for him.
“If the network is down, how are they controlling the Players?”
“They brought in a bunch of people and are using remote control stations.”
“It was the Southern States Coalition. They bombed Arc’s headquarters,” I say. I look up into the sky, expecting to see the strange, dark cloud that had streaked across it yesterday, but it’s gone now. The sky is a patchwork of deep blue and towering white clouds. “Micah works for them. So why would he ask Arc for help?”
“I can’t answer that,” Sister Jane says. “You’re brother may be able to.”
“Does Father Heall know?”
She turns to me, her face grim. “Father Heall is a good man. But when he sent that boy to fetch back his son, I think he made a mistake. That’s just my opinion. I guess I’m just not as trusting as he is.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her hand move over her pouch, and almost instinctively I know that it doesn’t just hold bandages. I had felt the weight inside of it bumping me on the walk up the stairs. She’s got a gun.
† † †
I’m sitting with Kelly, brushing his hair and waiting for him to regain consciousness, waiting for Eric to ping me. Reggie is sitting on the other side, his back against the wall and his head in his hands. I’m about to say something to him when I notice his shoulders jerking, so I leave him alone. As quietly as I can, I get up. I don’t like seeing him cry.
The pain in my side feels smaller now, less insistent. It’s incredible how quickly it has passed. The wound hurts, but the infection part is leaving. It almost scares me. It feels like it’s fleeing from me like water through a sieve.
I finger the Link in my pocket, tempted to just ping Eric, but I’d been warned not to. “He’s very busy coordinating your rescue,” Brother Walter had told me. For such a short man, he has a big presence. So I heed the warning and wait. It’s not so hard. I stand in the sunlight and let the warmth soak through me. I can almost feel my body repairing itself—my soul, too— so that when my Link finally does ping, I’m ready. I feel like I can finally have a real conversation with my brother.
“Jessie? Thank God!” he says, his relief evidence, even in the tiny Link screen. But his relief turns to concern. “What happened to your eye?”
I reach up and touch it. It’s still puffy and sore, but I’d almost forgotten about it in all the chaos. “Nothing. Just a little accident.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t ping you earlier. I mean, I did, but I kept getting this message telling me you were off stream.
“I was underground with Arc’s mainframe. I couldn’t connect to a Stream.”
He nods, distractedly. “Christ, it’s a madhouse here.”
“Where are you?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll explain in a moment. First, how are you? Are you okay?”
I consider telling him I’ve been bitten but that I’ve gotten Father Heall’s blood, but I don’t. He either already knows or he doesn’t, and if he doesn’t he’ll know soon enough. “I’m okay,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry about everything, Eric.”
Another shake of the head. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Listen, I don’t have much time. I’m at the old LaGuardia Airport. We found SSC’s operation here.” And then that hard exterior of his crumbles. “You scared me half to death, Jessie!”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen, Eric. I— We didn’t want to come here, just to the island and—”
And just like that, his marine training kicks in and his emotions disappear from his face. “I know. I know. I’m sorry, it’s just that… Listen, I have to talk fast. We’re waiting on flyover clearance. They’re sending in a chopper with support.”
“A helicopter? How long will that take?”
He shakes his head. If I’d known it was going to take this long, I’d’ve hoofed it out there already on my own two feet. We know there’s access hatches in the wall around Gameland, and we’ve got keys to get in.”
“The wall’s been shut down.”
“We know. Found out this morning when everything else went to hell. Luckily we were already on the island.”
“How did you know we were here?”
“We searched Micah’s house. There were enough clues there to lead us to LI, maps, notes. We got lucky with LaGuardia. Followed someone we’d been watching for a while. But then it took us three
days just to get clearance to get on the island—damn red tape—but after Arc was bombed, everything suddenly became very, very easy. They decided to fully cooperate, gave us full access in exchange for keeping them in the loop. We located the tunnel to the terminal, found where you’d been held, the medical Links, everything. No names, of course, but it was easy to guess that it was you guys that had been taken.” He shakes his head. “I thought we’d lost you. The scene there…” He frowns and asks again if I’m okay. I nod.
“It wasn’t Arc, though,” I tell him. “Or at least not entirely. It was the SSC.”
“Yeah, we figured that out, too. Arc’s scrambling to absolve themselves as much as they can. But they’ve got other problems now. Bigger problems.”
“Micah’s with them, the SSC.”
Eric’s face clouds over for a moment. “Listen, it’s going to be complicated getting you off the island. Manhattan’s under quarantine. All the checkpoints are on lockdown. There’s an outbreak there right now. They’re containing it, but barely. Arc’s control systems are limping along, but… But they may not for long.”
I open my mouth to confess that we started the outbreak, but Eric speaks before I can: “It looks like SSC breached Arc’s security network. Their engineers are working around the clock to shore it up, erecting firewalls and blocking attacks, but the virus that was used is tricky. It’s replicating itself, spreading, evolving. It’s like a living thing, and it’s learning faster than Arc can immunize themselves against it.”
I feel my face go ice cold, and the coldness spreads through the rest of me. This virus sounds a lot like Ashley’s program.
Eric looks to the side. Now I hear rhythmic wup-wup-wup sound of the helicopter coming through my Link. He turns back. “They’re here. Looks like we got clearance, finally. Should take us only about twenty minutes to get there.”
“Us who?”
“I’ve got a team of NCD officers and the Marines—my former unit—is supplying a squad of Omegas. For me personally, this is a rescue and extraction operation. That’s all I care about. But for Arc and the government, it’s a containment operation. This means we’ll need to tread carefully.”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 101
