Landfall (The Reach, Book 2)

by Mark R. Healy

  “No. You don’t belong here. You need to leave,” Dr. Sullivan said, unflinching.

  “Are you a doctor, or aren’t you?” Knile demanded. “Can you heal a dying boy? That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

  Dr. Sullivan glanced behind her, to where the man at reception was now on his feet.

  “Everything okay, Dr. Sullivan?” he asked.

  “No,” Sullivan said, beginning to walk back toward the desk. “Call–”

  She was interrupted by a gurgling sound, and she looked back to see blood trickling from Roman’s nose. It ran down his cheek and began to patter on the vinyl floor. Knile bent and whispered softly to the boy as he tried to stem the flow, then looked to the doctor, entreating.

  Sullivan directed her gaze back to Knile, then down at Roman. She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head, evidently struggling with the dilemma with which she’d been presented. She opened her eyes again, wavering indecisively, then strode back toward Knile and Roman. She took a gadget from her pocket and pressed it against Roman’s chest. After a moment she lifted it and checked the information that was scrolling across it.

  “Call Scott. Tell him to get a gurney out here,” she told the man at reception. “Right now.”

  Knile watched as Dr. Sullivan and an orderly gently took Roman from the gurney and placed him on the bed. The three of them were alone in a small private room, and as the orderly stepped back, he stood and watched Dr. Sullivan expectantly.

  “You can go, Scott,” she said without looking up from where she was busy gathering equipment in a cupboard behind the bed. “I’ve got it from here.”

  The orderly gave Knile a sidelong glance. “Are you sure, Doctor?”

  “Go. And shut the door behind you.”

  The orderly gave Knile a sour look but did as he was told, exiting quietly without another word. Knile stepped close to the bed and stood there uselessly as Dr. Sullivan fussed about.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he said.

  “Stay out of my way,” she said brusquely. Gripping a thin tube between her teeth, she unravelled one end and secured a needle to the opening, then inserted it into Roman’s arm with firm, deft movements of her fingers. She turned to the other end of the hose and flicked a vial of what appeared to be a cloudy beige fluid inside an appliance embedded into the wall.

  Knile brushed Roman’s dark locks back from his brow again. The boy looked so pale, his skin as white as bone, and he was clammy and alarmingly cold to the touch.

  “Hang in there, Roman,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “You’re going to make it.”

  “This process takes about thirty minutes,” Dr. Sullivan said, pressing the gadget she’d used earlier against Roman’s skin once more. “After it’s done, he’s going to need rest, but you can’t keep him here. They’ll find out he’s not supposed to be here and after they do, I can’t guarantee his safety.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Take a gurney and wheel him out of here. Find somewhere else to care for him while he convalesces.” She gave him a pointed look. “Somewhere you belong.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Doctor, I–”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said, clearly unimpressed. “I had no choice and you know it.” She checked the vial of serum as it began to drain. “When did this happen? When was he given the Brimstone?”

  Knile thought back to Rojas. “A few days ago. He was–”

  “That’s not likely. Brimstone kills much more quickly than that.”

  “I was told there was probably an inhibitor used, or some kind of slow-release mechanism.”

  “I’ve never heard of that,” Sullivan said doubtfully. “Who told you about this?”

  At that moment Knile’s holophone sounded and he glanced down to see a call from Talia incoming. She must have been worried sick, he realised. In the mad rush to find help for Roman, he’d forgotten to touch base with her again.

  Knile answered the call, but it wasn’t Talia who spoke.

  “Knile?”

  “Emil? Where’s Talia?”

  “She’s right here. Did you make it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, unable to conceal the unrestrained joy and relief in his voice. “I’m in the Infirmary and a doctor here has kindly offered to help us.”

  “That’s wonderful! Can I see?”

  Knile frowned. “See what?”

  “See what it looks like.”

  Knile shrugged and activated the camera on the holophone.

  “Sure. Here it is.”

  Emil’s heavily scarred face suddenly filled the screen, and Knile panned quickly around to show him the room.

  “So you did make it. Good for you.”

  “Thanks.” Knile brought the camera back to his own face. “Can I speak to Talia for a moment?”

  “No,” Emil said, and the joy seemed to drain out of his face. “You’re going to talk to me. Or, more accurately, you’re going to listen.”

  The coldness in his voice was like an icy hand around Knile’s heart, and the fleeting moment of happiness that he’d felt moments before seemed a very distant memory.

  “Emil,” Knile said slowly. “What’s going on?”

  Emil gave him another of those awkward smiles, the ravaged skin on his cheeks tugging weirdly and making the gesture seem like a grotesque caricature.

  “You don’t remember me, do you, Knile?”

  “Remember you? I don’t–”

  “But why would you? Since you last saw me, I changed my name, my occupation…” He swept a hand across his visage. “Even my face.”

  “Emil, I don’t know what you–”

  “I told you about my wife, Sibylle, didn’t I? I told you of how she was once happy, and how she ended up throwing herself from the heights of the Reach. But I don’t think I told you why.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “There was a time when we had it all, her and I. I was a successful surgeon, Sibylle traded off-world finances. We lived in Lux. We were destined to leave the Earth behind.” He looked at Knile. “We’d even booked our passkeys, arranged it so that we would leave together, just the way it was always meant to be.”

  Knile felt that fist tighten around his heart. Now he could barely breathe.

  “Emil–”

  “But something happened,” Emil went on. “A dirty, despicable thief stole our passkeys from under our noses. Snatched away our futures in the blink of an eye. We were distraught. Who wouldn’t be? Our dream of a new life in the outer colonies had slipped away.” Emil glared at Knile malevolently. “But I wouldn’t give it up so easily. No. I tried to get them back. I made my way up to the Atrium, and I began to stop every single person who came past, pleading to them for help. Like a beggar.” His eyes became watery. “Like a fucking beggar, Knile!” he roared. “But it was no use. The thief had gotten away. And then…” He lifted a hand and gently touched his ruined face. “Then there was an explosion. Fire. Searing pain, the smell of burning flesh… my own burning flesh.

  “They dragged me out of there, more dead than alive, and no one thought I would survive the night, let alone to the next morning and beyond. Even with the best medical care, there was so much of me turned to ash that my chances of recovery were almost non-existent.

  “But as the days and weeks went by, I clung to life. Somehow I fought against the blackness that threatened to overwhelm me.” He seemed to consider something. “I think it was her. Sibylle. She was the reason I couldn’t die. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her alone in this godforsaken world. Every morning I ached for the moment that she would appear at my bedside with her smile, her soothing words. It was enough to keep me breathing, you see. Perhaps the only thing that could keep me breathing.”

  He sighed, deeply saddened. “Then came the day that she did not walk through the door. I knew something was wrong. I knew that…” He fought to keep his emotions under control as he looked back at Knile. “I pulled the tubes and the monitors and all the other shit from my body, pu
shed back the doctors who tried to restrain me, and I got out of that bed. I stumbled out the door, down the corridor, and out of that ward. I ran back to our apartment, fighting the immense pain every step of the way, wondering if the next one would be my last. But somehow I made it. Somehow I got there. And just as I did, I saw her on that balcony. Saw her standing on the edge of that precipice. I called out to her, and I think that as she fell she heard me, but…”

  Emil went quiet. Knile opened his mouth to say something, but words failed him.

  “I know why she did it, Knile. She thought I was never getting out of that bed. She thought it was over, and that she would never be able to go on without me. That beautiful spirit of hers was shattered beyond all hope.” He held a shaky hand to his forehead. “I often wonder what she felt as she dropped through the sky. It was such a long way to fall. She’d have had a long time to think about her decision from that height, you know? Did she have time to wish that she hadn’t jumped? Or was her mind so clogged by terror that–”

  “Emil, please, I didn’t know who owned those passkeys. I only knew that it was a married couple in Lux–”

  Emil ignored him, continuing on without even looking at him.

  “In the weeks that followed, the Enforcers came around asking questions about the explosion in the Atrium. They wanted to know about my movements. Who I’d spoken to, who I’d met with on the day. They told me they’d figured out who had stolen our passkeys, and asked if I knew who he was. Showed me his photograph. I said I’d never seen or heard of him before, this man named Knile Oberend.”

  “Emil, I’m sorry–”

  “No!” Emil screamed. He slammed his fist on the console, enraged. “You don’t get to say that. Not now! It’s too fucking late.”

  Knile saw Talia appear on the screen, moving toward Emil in an attempt to appease him, but the scarred man flung out a hand and gripped a handful of her hair, then slammed her head down on the console hard enough to make the image shake. She cried out in pain and surprise.

  “Hey!” Knile exclaimed, outraged, but when he saw that Emil had pressed a gun against Talia’s temple he promptly went quiet again. He knew that there was nothing he could do from the other end of the video call.

  “So now you know why I’ve been scouring the Consortium manifests for your name, you fuck!” Emil spat, glaring into the camera as he held Talia down. His voice had taken on a maniacal, hysterical tone. “It isn’t because I wanted to recruit you into Skybreach. It was so I could bring you close enough to slip my hands around your neck and squeeze the fucking life out of you! You and everyone dear to you.”

  “Emil, stop this madness!” Knile pleaded. “You can’t understand how sorry I am for what I did to you, but this is wrong. What you’re doing is wrong. I’ll accept any punishment you want to give me, just please let Talia–”

  “Oh, no,” Emil gloated. “Talia’s fate is part of your punishment. I’m going to blow her brains right across this console. Right here. Do you know why? Because you destroyed my entire world, Knile, and now you’re going to watch while I destroy yours.”

  Knile saw Talia’s eyes staring up at him across the desk, and the look of terror on her face was enough to rip his very soul apart. He tried to rack his brain to find an argument that would convince Emil to let her go, but he could think of nothing to say. He had no collateral with which to bargain.

  “But not to worry, Knile. She won’t die alone,” Emil said. He turned to speak to someone beside him. “Aksel. Patch into the Consortium security interface. Send out a Code One alert for the Infirmary. That should bring the Redmen running.”

  At the mention of the Redmen, Knile felt as though he had been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer.

  “Make sure they’re ordered to kill on sight, and that both targets are clearly identified – Knile Oberend and the boy Roman. And make sure they’re told that the targets may be disguised as patients.”

  “Emil, you sick bastard! You’re going to kill an innocent boy!”

  Emil made a tortured, inhuman sound. “My wife was innocent, you bastard! Maybe this will make us even.”

  “You were the one who poisoned him, weren’t you?” Knile said. “When you extracted his blood, you slipped the Brimstone into his bloodstream.”

  “Yes, it was me. I needed you in the Infirmary, as it turns out.”

  “Why not just kill me while you had the chance? Why this whole charade?”

  “Well, you see, Knile, there were multiple benefits to sending you there to the Infirmary. The first is the most alluring, I have to admit – to watch you die a painful, excruciating death at the hands of those brutal Redmen. But there’s another reason why you’re there. I’ve been considering using the Infirmary as an integral part in Skybreach’s plan to take control of the Wire. I know that when a security alert is raised in the Infirmary, the Redmen are dispatched from the roof to investigate. That means their protection of the Wire is lessened, perhaps enough to allow Skybreach to take it by force. I just don’t know how many Redmen are sent, or how long they take to get to the Infirmary. I’ve been trying to find some poor expendable soul to feed to the lions as an experiment, because if Aksel here sets off an alert and there are no real intruders, the Consortium will look into how the alert was triggered. That could expose us. So when you and Roman and Talia turned up, I realised that you were the perfect candidates for my little test run. A nudge of Brimstone was all it took to send you running. And besides that, Silvestri has been telling me all this time that he could get someone into the Infirmary. I wanted to call his bluff, see if he could really do it, and how. And now I know.”

  Knile glanced at Roman, then at the door, wondering if he could possibly take the boy and leave the Infirmary, but Dr. Sullivan shook her head at him.

  “If you’re thinking of moving him, don’t,” she advised. “If he doesn’t receive the full treatment, he dies, and the machine that he’s hooked up to isn’t mobile. He has to stay here.”

  Emil continued to rant on the other end of the phone. “You are going to give me the information I require about the Redmen, Knile. We’ll see how long they take to kill you, and how Skybreach might be able to use that knowledge to its advantage.” He smiled mockingly. “In a way it’s ironic, isn’t it? You were the true creator of Skybreach. You’re the one who set things in motion. After Sibylle died I decided to dedicate my life to changing the system, so that no one else need ever suffer the way I did.” He sighed, tears glistening in those dark slits for eyes. “But you had to destroy me and my family to do it.” He looked back at the screen. “Now it’s time for retribution.”

  Knile heard Aksel’s voice interject from off camera.

  “It’s done,” he said. “The alert has been raised.”

  At that moment the soft ambient light around Knile winked out and a heartbeat later the room was bathed in glowing red. An alarm began to sound out in the corridor.

  Emil smiled cruelly at the camera once again.

  “Good. Let’s sit back and watch the show.”

  41

  “This is a security advisement from Consortium Control. Please remain where you are. Members of the Crimson Shield have been dispatched to investigate this situation.”

  As the automated warning droned on, Knile muted his phone and put it down on the bench as he moved over to Roman. He slid an arm gently under his back and started to lift him. Dr. Sullivan acted quickly, leaning over from the other side of the bed and shoving him away.

  “Didn’t you hear what I told you?” she snapped. “You move this boy and he dies.”

  Knile looked about helplessly. “But the Redmen…”

  “Yes, they’re on their way.”

  “And they’ll kill him.”

  “Yes. They’ll do what they’ve been ordered to do.”

  Knile’s mind was racing. “If I leave the Infirmary and Roman stays here under your care, you can protect him. I could come back for him later–”

  “You’re not li
stening,” Sullivan said, her eyes flashing angrily. “This boy has been marked as a dangerous intruder. He’s not registered with the Consortium as an employee. That’s all the information they need to kill on sight, even if he just appears to be lying helpless in a bed. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later. That’s what they’re trained to do.”

  “You’re a doctor. You must have some authority here.”

  “I don’t control those gorillas. They answer to a higher authority than me.”

  “There has to be something I can do.”

  “Not if those ‘friends’ of yours somehow created a Code One in the system.”

  As Knile glanced about, looking for ideas, his eyes fell upon the tablet in the doctor’s hand. An idea suddenly came to him as he mulled over Sullivan’s words.

  Those friends of yours somehow created a Code One.

  He reached out and snatched the tablet from the unsuspecting doctor.

  “Hey!” she exclaimed, indignant.

  “I’m sorry, but I need this.” He held it up. “This tablet connects directly to the Consortium network, right?”

  “Yes, so what?”

  “So now that I’m within the network it means I have a chance of hacking the system and cancelling the alert. Marking it as a false alarm or something. The Redmen would turn around.”

  Dr. Sullivan crossed her arms and glared at him. “Maybe. But can you do it within the next three minutes?”

  “I have no idea. Why?”

  “Because that’s how long the Redmen took to get here the last time we had a drill.”

  “Shit.” He began to manipulate the tablet, but the operating system and the user interface were somewhat unfamiliar to him. He’d only used a Consortium device once before, and that was in Jon Hanker’s office, when he’d uncovered the information about the Stormgate glitch.

  Three minutes was not going to be long enough. “I need more time.”

  “You won’t get it,” Sullivan said adamantly.

  “Is there somewhere Roman and I can hide? Maybe for ten or fifteen minutes?”