Outcome

by Edward W. Robertson

  She pulled into the open space in a red zone along the curb. The car inched along, idling toward a parked Ford. She pulled the ebrake, jarring to a soft stop, put the car in park, then killed the engine and the headlights.

  Mason was very dead. Very bloody. Ellie shuddered. It was the third time she'd shot a man and the first time it had been fatal. Shame and horror pulled her down with predatory strength. If she was wrong, she'd just murdered a man. She had no rein here. Not over a fellow operative. A fellow reader. She could run, but they would find her. There would be no escape from Rawlings, or the knowledge of what she had done.

  But if she was right, then it didn't matter. None of it. Laws, morality, they were all obsolete. All that mattered was her safety. Chip's. Mason would have been dead within a week anyway. Among the coming death of billions, her crime would register with no more magnitude than her body's ongoing genocide of the bacteria in her bloodstream.

  Despite what the movies showed, some quirk of design—maybe the grid system, maybe a general lack of space—meant Manhattan had virtually no alleys whatsoever. She wrestled Mason from the driver's seat and shoved him in back. His blood soaked the seat. She waited for a pair of headlights to pass, then popped the trunk, finding a brushed steel briefcase. To avoid soaking her pants in blood, she set the case on the driver's seat, which she adjusted before turning on the car and pulling into the back lot of a tall brown housing structure. She opened the back door, turned Mason face down, and pulled his coat over his face. It was a sloppy job that wouldn't escape notice past the morning. She wouldn't need that long.

  She took the gun and locked the door and walked toward her own car, chucking Mason's keys down a corner drain that smelled of old water and faded flatulence. At her car, she unbuttoned her shirt—blood dotted the cuff of her left sleeve—and wadded it up along with her gloves and mask. She got a pair of black wool socks from her carry-on and used them to sop up the blood on the sleeve of her coat. Couldn't get it all, but the coat was black, too. She could probably pass.

  Ellie donned a new pair of latex gloves, pinched another mask over the bridge of her nose, and crossed the street to the hospital.

  The two plainclothes officers out front blocked her way and informed her the hospital was restricted. She showed them her badge. The younger guard glanced at the middle-aged one, who took a long time inspecting the words and numbers on her ID.

  "Department of Advance Analysis?" He handed back her badge. "Never heard of it."

  She wasn't surprised. It wasn't an office that got press. Rawlings didn't want it, and the very nature of the organization didn't lend itself to headlines and high drama. If she were ever to describe her job at a dinner party—a pure hypothetical; she would no less delve into the details of her job than she would ever be invited to a party—she might call it the nerd's version of the CIA. She and her small cadre of colleagues performed only the most specialized field work. Frontline analysis. Certain environments changed too fast to rely on conventional data collection. By the time the numbers came in, the situation would have already shifted its shape, rendering those numbers useless. That's where she and her fellow readers came in. Dispatched to these unique environments, they were tasked with making snap judgments of real-time information and recommending courses of action to immediately push those environments into more favorable circumstances.

  In other words, it was largely behind the scenes, and that, combined with the fact the DAA had been shuffled through three different higher-level departments in the last five years, meant that Ellie was more than used to her org being treated as fictionally as Mulder and Scully.

  Headlights washed over the lot. Behind her, an unmarked white van pulled up to the front of the hospital. The back opened. A woman in a compact gas mask opened the back door and led a confused-looking man into the night.

  "Let me guess," Ellie said to the two guards. "You're taking the sick here. Pulling them from subways. Museums. Stadiums. Quarantining them until they reach their outcomes."

  The middle-aged officer frowned. "Where you hear that?"

  "In the office in Boise where I floated this protocol," Ellie said. "You've taken in a man named Chester 'Chip' Billips. I need him. His daughter Deanna may be here as well."

  The man eyed her surgical mask. "What was your name again?"

  "Eleanor Colson."

  "You wait right here, Ms. Colson."

  He disappeared inside the hospital. The younger guard beckoned her to the side, allowing the woman in the gas mask to guide the confused man inside the sliding doors.

  "Who were you with again?" the young man said.

  "DAA," Ellie said.

  "Never heard. What d'you do over there?"

  "Compare numbers, mostly."

  "Oh."

  The white van drove back into the streets. A siren howled from far away. The middle-aged officer returned with another man who walked with a gait Ellie found especially annoying—spine straight, chest puffed, arms angled from his sides, as if his lats were simply too large and powerful for his arms to hang straight.

  "Don't be insulted when I don't offer to shake your hand," he smiled ironically. "I'm Major Martz. You can come with me."

  She stepped inside the hospital. It smelled of the sharp tang of disinfectant showers. The paint on the walls was grayed with age. Coughing rattled down the halls. Martz took her to an elevator, waiting to speak until the doors sealed them in.

  "Henderson says this whole place was your idea," he said.

  "You guys move fast," she said.

  "You're here for one of our patients? What's this about?"

  Ellie tried to look regretful. "That information is sensitive."

  "And so's my ass if I were to let one of our patients go without express orders." Martz gave her another dose of his ironic smile. "I can let you see him—Billips?—but unless you've got papers for me to sign off on, this is one of those 'Look, don't touch' situations."

  Ellie mirrored his smile. "My office isn't in the habit of providing documentation."

  The elevator lurched up. "I'm a gentleman. Under normal circumstances, I'd take your word. Right now, circumstances don't feel too normal."

  "That's one way to put it," she said. "Let's make sure I've got the right man. Then I'll see who I can raise for you."

  He grinned. The elevator pulled to a stop and he led her down the hall to a numbered door which he opened with a key held to his belt by a lanyard. The room was uncluttered, a computer terminal set beside an observation window. In the room the window faced, Chip lay on a hospital bed, his mouth slack, drool gleaming from the corner of his mouth.

  "That's him," Ellie said. "Is he sick?"

  Martz shrugged. "Up in the air. We pulled him off a train when we spotted him coughing, but tests have been inconclusive."

  "Listen. My department's all over the place right now. Whether or not I raise my boss, I have to walk out of here with that man."

  Martz rolled his lips together. "Here's my position, ma'am. You walk in, I don't know you from Adam. I didn't even know your group is a group until I made a call upstairs. I'd love to hand over Sleeping Beauty, but I need something for my records."

  Ellie nodded. "Do you have a phone?"

  "Right over here."

  Martz turned toward a phone set into the far wall. Ellie drew her pistol and hammered the back of his head. He dropped to one knee and she hit him again. He fell flat. The butt of her gun had mashed his hair and blood spilled from a gash in his scalp. She knew scalp wounds bled out of all proportion to the actual damage inflicted, and that in all likelihood his skull and the brain inside it were just fine, but she also knew it was much harder to knock a person out than Hollywood would have you believe. It was a thin line between unconsciousness and death.

  Again, it didn't matter. She stripped his shoelaces and tied his hands tight to the desk, then took his key, went into the hall, and opened Chip's door, closing it behind her. He didn't stir.

  "Chip?"

>   Still nothing. Was he already infected? For a long moment, she thought about leaving, about walking straight out, stealing a car that wasn't tainted with Rawlings' GPS monitors, and driving through the night until she got upstate. That would be the safe thing to do. The smart thing to do.

  She stepped beside the bed and shook Chip's shoulder. His head and arms swayed limply. She shook again. His eyes fluttered, gummy, bloodshot, and mad. He saw her and sat up.

  "Ellie?" he said dreamily. "What are you doing here?"

  "I need you to come with me," she said.

  "Wait. You're here. Why? Did you put me here?"

  "No, I didn't put you here," she said, though in a manner of speaking, she very much had. "I'm here to get you out."

  He shook his head like a stung dog. "I'm here. You're here. That's coincidence?"

  "What are you, drugged?"

  Chip held his thumb and index finger two inches apart, peering at them drunkenly. "A little drugged."

  "Can you walk?"

  He swung his legs off the bed and lowered his feet to the floor. "Yes."

  She turned to the door. "Then come on."

  "No."

  "What do you mean, no?"

  "You put me in here. I'm not going anywhere with you."

  Ellie stepped back to the bed. "Chip! I'm not why you're here. You're here because there's a very dangerous flu going around. They think you have it. I don't know if you do. I do know that if you stay, you'll die."

  He stared at her, eyes hooded with sedatives and suspicion. "What do you care?"

  "Because I don't want you to die. I'm a humanitarian like that. Now wipe the sleep off your face and follow me out the door."

  "This is serious?"

  "Chip. Would I be here if it weren't?"

  He nodded, eyes slitted with cunning. "Then we're not leaving without Dee."

  Ellie's patience entered a rolling boil. "Where is she?"

  "I don't know."

  "Here's the situation. I just KO'd a major. I might have killed him. I definitely killed one of my coworkers. I don't think he'll be found until morning, but within a few minutes, the major is going to wake up or someone will find his body. Then we'll be stuck here. And we'll die of the plague with everyone else." She took a breath and raised her brows. "So do us both a favor: believe me."

  Chip blinked, swiping some of the fog from his eyes. He shook his head. "That's just it, Ellie. I do believe you. I'm not sure about what, exactly, but you're here, and that means it's pretty bad."

  He took a step toward her, eyes as sharp and bright as splintered obsidian. "That's why I'm not leaving without Dee. And if you try to take me, I'm going to scream and scream and scream."

  6

  It was worth it for the look on her face. Not that he didn't mean every word he said. Still, to see her Ellie-standard expression, an expression some type of men would label that of a bitch—Chip wasn't that sort of man, he thought the word carried too much hateful weight, although if he were to apply it to anyone, it would be her—well, to see her scrunched-up little face blossom with surprise? That tasted as sharp and sweet as morning orange juice.

  "I don't have time to argue," she said.

  "I'm not arguing," he said. The drugs still sat heavy on his being, but he'd regained his center, his boundless, offensive patience. "This is my child. I'm telling you: we leave with Dee, or I yell until they arrest you."

  Ellie's face clamped back down on itself. "Or I knock you out and drag you out the door."

  "If the idea is to get tackled and incarcerated, that sounds like a great plan."

  "Then what do you propose?"

  "You find out where she is. We get her out. Then you tell me what the hell this is all about."

  She rolled her eyes up, blinking. He'd seen that look a thousand times before. Her thinking face.

  "I'll talk to someone up front," she said. "When I come back, I'll have her or I won't. Either way, we walk out that door."

  He studied her face. "I'll know if you're lying."

  "Good for you." She left and closed the door behind her.

  When she'd woken him, the sight of her face had brought a surge of adrenaline knifing through the drug-fog, unleashing a flood of memories—the fights, the silence, the bewildering and dizzying breakup. The anger that had come with these memories had sustained him through their conversation here in the hospital room, but as the clock ticked around its ceaseless circle, the same panic Chip had felt with the doctor seeped back through his nerves. And fear, too. Not of Ellie herself, but what her presence meant. Even back when it had become a part of every fight, he'd never quite been sure what it was she did, but he knew she was clued in, tapped in, privy to news and knowledge that was rarely good. She looked stressed, ragged. Visibly so. That part wasn't new. But she normally hid it much better.

  She was back within five minutes. His heart sank. That was much too soon.

  "She's not here," Ellie said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I asked."

  "That route didn't take me too far."

  "You asked as a civilian," she said. "I asked as an agent of the DAA." She closed to within a couple feet. She had a white surgical mask perched over her nose and face. "Look at me. Am I lying?"

  He glanced at the clock. "Maybe you're better than you used to be."

  "I'll be brief. There's a plague. In two or three days, most of the city will be infected."

  "What?"

  She nodded simply. Her face held no lie. "Here's the truth. It's simple and it's hard. If we leave right now, we live. Or we stay and we die."

  The clock ticked through two seconds. A dull ache pulsed behind Chip's left ear. "You still don't listen to anything I say. She's my daughter."

  "I'm just offering you the choice."

  "To leave her to die?" He laughed out loud. "Without her, there is no me."

  "Chip." She snapped her fingers. Doglike, he turned to her. She raised her brows. "Fine. You won't leave her. But if you stay here, you'll never see her again anyway. The world will collapse and she'll be lost in the rubble. I'm your window out of this. I know people. I'm the only person you know who can find her."

  "I can't trust you," he said.

  "You don't have a choice."

  It was madness. Pure and simple madness. And if it had come from anyone else, he would have laughed in their face.

  "If this is a trick, I'll crash the car," he said.

  "No tricks," she said. "Grab your shoes."

  He shrugged, stirring his hospital gown. "Took my clothes."

  "You don't need clothes. You do need shoes." She made a face. "Be right back."

  She left the door. Movement flickered behind the observation window. Ellie bent out of sight. She reemerged a minute later and returned to his room with a pair of laceless black shoes dangling from her hand.

  "See if these fit," she said. "They just have to get you outside."

  He frowned. "Where did you get these?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Did you steal these from a dead man?"

  "He's not dead." Ellie gestured at his feet. "Which means he could wake up any minute. You want to find your daughter? Sometimes you got to wear stolen shoes."

  He sighed. Not because of the shoes, but at Ellie's display of toughness. She waved it around like a damn baseball bat. He knelt and slipped on the shoes. Without the laces, they weren't at all tight, but he could walk without getting too ducky.

  "What's the plan?" he said.

  She reached into her coat. "Walk out the front door."

  "That's your big plan? Some training you got."

  "You can stay here and cough to death if you prefer." She turned the knob and held the door open, waiting. A big part of Chip wanted to plop back down on the bed and tell her to go to hell, but a deeper part—the part of him that grabbed tight to the bad truths the rest of him rejected—that part made him step into the well-lit hall.

  They took the elevator to the lobby.
Chip had visions of angry questions from behind the counter, of Ellie engaging in a running gunfight followed by a car chase down Manhattan streets. He laughed lowly. A receptionist glanced up from the desk. Ellie was a pencil-pusher, not some lady Jason Bourne, a Jane Blonde. She walked swiftly across the linoleum, a cell phone held to her ear, repeating "uh huh" every couple seconds.

  Past the front doors, a young soldier-looking kid opened his mouth as if to ask her a question, but Ellie strode on past. Chip followed a half step behind her, hands tucked behind his back to keep his gown closed and minimize the cold breeze blowing across his ass.

  "Is that it?" he said.

  "Quiet." Ellie led him across the street to a sedan. She clicked open the locks and tossed him the keys.

  He snatched them mid-flight. "What's this?"

  "Drive home," she said. "I've got to make some calls."

  He got in behind the wheel, glancing at the unfamiliar arrangement of knobs and levers. "I don't even know where we are."

  "Harlem. Drive." She punched numbers into her cell. "Stop if you see a car rental."

  He turned the key. "What's wrong with this one?"

  "It's bugged. By the people whose agent I just shot."

  Chip stared across the car at her. She had the blank, impatient look of someone waiting on a ringing phone. He eased out into the road, gave a last look at the hospital, and headed to the expressway fringing the east rim of the island. Ellie swore and redialed. Chip merged into the flow of headlights. The car was your average-looking sedan, but the engine goosed with the slightest pressure on the gas. He drove two miles under the speed limit. Ellie made two more calls, neither of which were answered.

  "What's up?" he said.

  "Dereliction of duties," she said. "My fault. I told him to get out."

  "Told who? The guy who was gonna tell you where Dee is?"

  "Quit swerving," Ellie said through her teeth. "It doesn't matter. Let me try someone else."