“I don’t know,” he replied, mostly to himself as he came to a stop. Kristine opened her mouth to ask another dozen questions when he continued, closing the distance between them. “Before we go any further, you have to understand how dangerous this is. Every moment I’m not in the hospital, I’m being watched. In fact, the detail drops off while I’m work leads me to assume they’re using the internal CCTV to monitor me inside.”
“Fine. Good. I’m not afraid of that,” she lied. “It’s not like this is the first time I’ve uncovered something people would rather stay hidden,” she lied again.
The look he gave her said he didn’t believe a word of it, but chose to keep his doubts to himself. “Good.”
Kristine crept up the stairs and opened the front door as slowly as she could, hoping to find Christopher still asleep. In the growing light of dawn, it took her a moment to realize he was sitting up in bed, eyes focused on her as she came in.
“Hey,” she whispered.
“You have a good night?” he asked with an edge.
So much had happened, Kristine hadn’t thought about how her creeping in this early in the morning might look. They’d had a huge fight the last time they spoke, full of accusations about moving out and keeping secrets.
“You have to let me explain,” she started, knowing it was probably the worst way to start the conversation.
To his credit, Christopher sat quietly and listened to her whole night, from Sammy drunkenly hitting on her to chasing down Dr. Lal in the emergency ward. And to finish it all off, she brought up the video from the mall as further proof she was chasing a real story and not coming up with excuses to hide an affair.
“You can see why I’ve been kinda obsessed about this now, right?” Kristine said softly as she swiped away from the video. “I kinda felt like I needed to do whatever it took to get this out in the open.”
The color had drained from Christopher’s face. “Why isn’t this out? If stuff like that,” he said as if even the memory of the video tasted horrible. He exhaled sharply and continued, “If that’s happening all over the place, someone should be telling us how to stay safe.”
“Exactly!” Kristine crossed her legs as she turned to face him, the bed bouncing slightly beneath them. “You get it. If it’s a drug or some kind of new flash mob terrorism, I don’t care. People need to know.”
As Christopher nodded, she couldn’t help but wonder how she could love and hate the same person with such strength. One second she wanted to kick his lazy ass out on the street and the next couldn’t imagine her life without his support. Whatever story she was pursuing, the crazy hours it took for her to stay ahead, he never complained. The realization softened her further.
“I’m sorry about last night. I knew you were jealous of me going out with…”
“I wasn’t jealous,” he replied defensively. “I was… it’s not like…”
Kristine could tell he was struggling with this conversation and opted to let it go.
“Well, in any case, I have a solid source now, a doctor in the ER. I’m going over again there again when he calls. I can tell you more after I get a little sleep, if you want.” She hugged her knees to her chest and grinned. “He said he’s gonna take me to see some of the patients.”
Christopher stretched and covered a long yawn. “That’s really great. I’ll let you have the bed.”
She dove for his wrist. “No! I mean, you don’t have to go. It’d be nice to fall asleep with you next to me for once,” she smiled, realizing it sounded like a guilt trip more than an honest desire. “I’m going to queue up a nice dreamscape of a tropical island.”
His face tightened a touch but his voice was kind. “I’m done pretending to sleep for the night. I’ll be downstairs.” He bent and gave her a perfunctory kiss. He threw on clothes he plucked from the floor and left without a word.
She rolled over and curled into a tight ball, arms wrapped around her stomach. She wondered when she should tell him about the pregnancy, if she should wait for the twelve week mark, just in case. Almost like I’m hoping something will go wrong before then, she thought.
San Francisco, CA
May 29th
It was late, the last of the patients in the newest wave all settled in the ward for the night. Her body buzzed with an odd combination of fear, caffeine, and exhaustion. She and Cameron, along with a fully-stacked team of nurses worked through sixty-four admissions like a conveyor belt at a factory. A whole night of work done in near silence, nothing but the most necessary words uttered. The pressure of the growing numbers was unyielding, but it didn’t crack the frost that’d grown between her and Cameron.
Penelope typed and deleted the last three digits of her brother’s number. The night, the stress, it all left her feeling isolated.
It’d been so long since they’d talked. Before she had time to question her motives, she finished the number and hit send. The first few rings echoed dimly into the air before she heard a voice on the other end. She slammed the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me,” she breathed. “I didn’t wake you?”
“Pen, God,” her brother sighed. “No, you didn’t wake me. I was just making some coffee. What the hell time is it there?”
She had to look at the clock three times before the time full registered. “Uh, it’s almost two in the morning.”
“Is everything okay? Anna, Joey, everyone safe?”
She had a knee-jerk response. “Yeah, of course,” she scoffed dismissively. “I just wanted to call and see how you’re doing.”
A spoon dropped on his end of the call. It clattered into a metal sink and she thought she heard him sigh. “Pen, you never call and you definitely don’t call at the ass crack of dawn.”
Penelope leaned forward and caught her head in her hand, elbow balanced on the lip of her desk. “Ah, Gopher. I was worried about you, that’s all.”
“Don’t call me that,” he hissed.
She winced. “Sorry, sorry. It’s a force of habit. I really didn’t mean to…”
“Why are you worried about me? Did you have a bad dream? Mom used to do that, remember?”
Penelope chuckled at the memory. “She’d come running in in the middle of the night crying her eyes out. Scared me half to death every time she did it.”
He snickered as well. “I remember she came in once when I was, hell, five or six, begging me to stay away from cobwebs. She dreamed we’d all been kidnapped by a giant spider and rolled into its web.”
They laughed at the absurdity of it, hearts aching at her memory. “It’s good to talk about her,” Penelope sighed. “But no, I didn’t have a bad dream.” She wiped her face and looked to the ceiling. “I had a hard night, is all. A patient came in that reminded me of you,” she lied.
“Ah, I thought it might’ve had to do with…” he trailed off, obviously starting a sentence he didn’t know how to finish.
“You saw it?”
“I think everyone has,” he sighed. “I figured something like that would end up in front of you before long.”
Penelope nodded, not knowing what to say. She’d always believed in the confidentiality she held for her patients, but never before had she wanted to unload so much for her own comfort.
Maybe I should book in some time with Dr. Rye. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him…
“Pen?”
“I’m here. Sorry. Must be more tired than I thought.”
“Well, I’m doing okay, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
“Good, good.” Although she and Christopher were the furthest in age, they were the closest. Even so, it was sometimes difficult talking to a family member who felt more like a stranger than relation. “Are you working? Think about going back to school for anything?”
“Nope, to both fronts. I’m keeping busy, though,” he said, leaving no room for further discussion.
“Have you heard from Julian?”
C
hristopher snorted, the sound echoing in what Penelope assumed was his coffee cup. “Are you kidding? He hasn’t reached out to me years. Last he told me, he was thinking about joining the Army.”
“Here or England?”
“Does it matter?” he replied flatly.
Penelope bit her lip and tried to make the next question as casual as she could. “Have you, uh, spoken to Jamie recently?”
The pause she’d feared stretched over a few agonizing seconds. When her brother spoke, she released a long breath. “No, not recently. Got a card from him at Christmas but I’m pretty sure his secretary signed it for him. Why?”
Penelope shrugged to the empty room. “Just curious.”
“Uh-huh,” he replied in a voice that said he didn’t believe a word of what she was saying.
“What? Despite everything, he’s still my brother. I’m allowed to worry about him.”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “‘Course.”
“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a current number for him or anything? I could look it up, but thought I’d ask you first.” She tensed, waiting for the accusations to fly.
Another pause and Christopher coughed. “No, sorry, Pen. Can’t help you. Like I said, I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”
A deep chord of intuition told her he wasn’t being completely honest, but didn’t know of any reason he’d lie. If she and Christopher were the closest of all their siblings, he and James were the least. At least, that’s what she always thought.
“Of course, okay, thanks anyway.” She sighed, exhaustion leached deep into her bones. “I should get home.”
“Okay, Pen. Thanks for calling. It was good to hear from you,” he said, a smile touching his voice.
“I’m glad I called. At the risk of sounding like a nag, you take care of yourself. Things are a little scary right now and…”
“I always do, sis. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
Penelope stared at the black screen of her phone. She missed her family, scattered to the corners of the Earth by lies and deceit, some of which was her own doing. Deep down, she knew she was missing a family that never really existed. And the one she did have fell apart when their mom died.
The world shuddered when Dad died but it barely caused a ripple in what was left of our family, she thought.
She’d hoped reaching out to her little brother might provide a connection, but she felt even more sequestered than ever. She couldn’t talk to him or Joey about work, couldn’t talk to Cameron about her family, couldn’t talk to anyone about the chaos in her own mind. Everyone in her life was squared away in their own little boxes and never allowed to mingle.
When she started to fall asleep at the desk, she forced herself to get into the car and go home.
New York City, NY
May 30th
Christopher took another sip of his coffee and stared at his phone. Penelope sounded stressed, worried, and totally not like herself. She was always the one who kept it together, even in the hardest of times. If she was worried, there was something to worry about.
He traced the edge of the phone with his finger, mulling the events of the last day over in his head, sipping his coffee and enjoying the silence of the empty kitchen.
By the time he was ready for the second cup, he knew what he wanted to do. He swiftly scrolled through his call log and pressed send. His brother picked up on the second ring.
“You already have the job, you don’t have to harass me,” he joked.
Christopher politely chuckled. “Yeah, it’s not that. I thought you should know…” His throat clicked as he swallowed, feeling like he was betraying so much more than Penelope’s trust.
“And you can’t quit. You haven’t even started yet.”
“James, Pen just called me.”
The air between them pulsed with silent implication. Although his voice sounded no different, he could tell James’ face had turned to stone. “You don’t say.”
A prickly sweat broke out across Christopher’s brow. For the first time, he was planting his flag on one side of the family. “She was asking about you. Nothing specifically, just if we’d talked recently.”
“And you told her…”
“That we hadn’t, of course,” he added hastily.
James breathed again, perhaps for the first time in a minute. “Good, that’s good.”
When he didn’t add anything further, Christopher felt the need to fill the silence with an explanation. “I got the feeling she might get in contact with you somehow, maybe call the company directly or something. I thought you should know.”
“You were right to call, thanks Gop—Christopher,” he quickly corrected.
They exchanged a quick back and forth of pleasantries before saying goodbye. Christopher was left with a prickly sense of shame, not unlike how he’d felt when he was little and he’d tattle to his mom about one of his siblings. He gritted his teeth, loathing the sensation.
If you’re gonna start getting your shit together, you have to start by protecting the company. After what she did, it’s obvious she still can’t be completely trusted.
Rochester, NY
June 2nd
With final exams looming, Neil forced himself to put his obsession with the site on hold. He was starting to agree with Maggie. He was using the mystery of the site to distract himself from the slow-moving disaster ahead. Despite his best intentions, ignoring it entirely proved impossible.
Wills had no such self-imposed restriction and didn’t care about Neil’s. The more effort Wills put into it, the hungrier he got. He’d send notes and links at all hours of the day and night with little attached messages.
“Check this out!” “What do you think of this one?” “Maybe this is relevant!”
Even after weeks of trying, neither of them could crack the code. Neil had all but given up on ever finding out if it meant anything when the answer was handed to him in the strangest of ways.
The TA he had for Comp. Sci. Through History was a bit out there. Quirky, unique, smart, but always had her head in the clouds. Neil skipped most of their sessions not only because he was comfortable with the coursework, but because she got on his nerves. He went to the lab to prove to himself he was getting his act together. Strange how it turned out to be the last class he’d ever attend.
The small class of thirty settled into their desks. Neil sat at the back, slouched in his chair. The TA, Maria, bounced in wearing two jackets sown together to make one.
“I have a really fun party trick for you all to learn. Might help with the ladies,” she chirped. “With your pens, I want you to write on your right hand finger tips in this order.”
Neil was far enough in the back he could get away with not participating, but he still paid attention as he doodled on his notebook. The rest of the class dutifully humored her as she walked them through her instructions. She had them write the number one on their thumb, two on the index, four on the middle, eight on the ring, and sixteen on their pinkie fingers.
“And now we count in binary!”
Neil peered around as the class counted. Thumb and index equals three. Middle and thumb equals five, all the way up until all five fingers were extended making thirty-one.
Maria clapped like an over-enthusiastic cheerleader. “Yay! So now you know how to count in Base 16.” The class murmured and settled, waiting for her to start teaching. As she gathered her materials, she continued to talk. “We don’t think about it much, but our way of counting isn’t the only way.”
Neil stopped himself just short of audibly groaning. I fucking hate when she goes off on these pointless tangents.
Like she was imparting some incredible wisdom, Maria raised her hands high like she was praising a deity above. “We have ten fingers, so base 10 makes sense.” She rattled off the numbers as she raised each finger. “But a few cultures operate on a base 12 system. The way they count is like this.” Ignoring her thumb, she counted up to t
welve pointing at the three small bones in each finger. “Of course it doesn’t make sense until you’ve figured out the code, but after that,” she giggled, “it’s simple!”
It wasn’t a light bulb moment. Neil didn’t sprint from the classroom shouting, “Eureka!” But it did plant a seed that would later spark a response to one of Wills daily messages.
“This is driving me crazy! I knocked together something that created every possible combination of what we have so far and no search came back.”
Neil was impressed by his determination, but felt like the trail was beginning to cool. “We need the key to crack the code,” Neil replied without thinking. But the sentence cycled through his mind a few times, each time coming closer and closer to the…
“Holy shit,” he whispered in the silence of his room. He lunged for his tablet and after a quick search, brought up the chart he remembered seeing at the beginning of the semester.
Neil cursed under his breath as he read, stopping only to send Wills another message.
“You have to get over here. Now.”
By the time Wills got to Neil’s room twenty minutes later, he had managed to decode the numbers they are ready had. With a pen and a simple piece of paper, he had scrawled out a bunch of letters.
Wills entered without knocking, his expression more animated than Neil had ever seen it. “What’s going on?”
Neil thrust the piece of paper up in the air like a trophy, waiting for a response. Wills snatched it and sat on his bed, his heavy breathing slowing as his heart rate came down. He silently stared at the piece of paper for a minute before looking up.
“What the fuck is this?”
“I broke the code!”
Wills looked at him as if he lost his mind. He turned the piece of paper around so Neil could see his own writing and read from memory. “I see four A’s, to T’s, you haven’t solved anything.” Neil’s heart sank by a fraction until he noticed a grin curling Will’s mouth. “But you do have something.”
Neil grabbed the paper. “No, this is it. We just need to figure out what it says.”
Stasis (Book 1.2): Beta Page 6
