Jessie jerked away from the holo projector. The bulb was taking its time getting up to temperature. She dropped the goggles back into the pile.
The ringing in her ears seemed almost as loud as the sirens had been, and her head felt like a thousand bees had woken inside of it. She could even feel their stings all over her skin.
The television came on behind her, and she heard Kelly scan through the stations. Jessie looked for her Link, realized she’d left it in the kitchen, and went to go find it so she could ping Eric. There was a new message waiting for her:
<< STATUS UPDATE: MATCH REASSIGNED. AWAITING AUTHORIZATION. >>
“Nothing,” Kelly shouted, from the other room, his voice sounding hoarse.
Jessie shoved the Link in her pocket.
What the hell is happening? her mind shrieked. Why was Arc sending her these texts? What did they mean?
Someone’s screwing with you.
She hurried back into the other room. Kelly had already drawn back the heavy curtain and light flooded in. The streets were still empty, but, here and there, front doors were being cracked open and faces materialized out of the gloom. It was late afternoon, and the air had turned golden.
“It’s strange,” Kelly said. He spoke in a low voice, as if he feared the sound of it might get sucked out of the house. “Not a single word about an outbreak, nothing about a possible cause or location or even if it really is over.” He stopped flipping through streams. The emergency beacon on the local Media Stream was gone and in its place was a still image of the front of the Carcher Building in Hartford. “That’s helpful.”
“It has to be over,” Jessie said. She could hear her voice trembling. Her whole body was shaking. “They wouldn’t turn off the sirens if it wasn’t.”
“They might’ve been cut off.”
He stepped over next to her and peered up and down the street. “Nobody’s come out of their house yet. I think it’s best if— Jess?” He turned. “Hey, where are you going?”
“Outside.”
“Wait! Jess—”
But she was already across the front porch, her eyes set on the curb. She needed to move, to get away. But from what, and to what, she couldn’t say.
The street was totally empty in either direction. Silence hung over the neighborhood like a heavy mist.
“Jessie! Get in here!”
She turned and stared. Her Link pinged in her pocket and she almost cried out. But she drew it out and looked at the screen without registering at first that it was Eric.
“You guys okay?”
She nodded. “What’s going on? Why are the sirens off? We haven’t been able to find anything on the Streams.”
“Still working on that,” he said. “Arc hasn’t been very forthcoming.”
“So it’s an outbreak?”
“No, nothing that serious.”
She imagined the dead guy lying on the ground in front of the Corben house, a bullet in his head. Wonder whether he thinks it’s nothing serious.
“Are you coming home?”
“I’m wrapping up my investigation in the next ten minutes, once I hand over the reins. Leaving a couple of my officers to monitor the situation. But then there’s the follow up back in the office, reports to file, interviews. Plus, I’ve got a couple quick things to do on the way. I’ll try and swing by the house in about an hour, hour and a half.”
“Can you say what happened?”
He sighed. “A portion of the CU network grid went down over on Main Street. There was an underground work detail in the area.”
Jessie remembered the Arc team she’d passed in the cab on the way home last night and wondered if it was the same one. “Is that what triggered the early warning system?” she asked.
“If it was just that, no. But I just heard a Sys-Patch report from NYHP that someone plowed their car into an outdoor breakfast café just over the state line in Crawford. Six people dead on scene, another two en route to the hospital.”
“That’s horrible, but I don’t see—”
“The implant monitoring system registered that cluster of activations shortly after the control grid went down here. The outbreak detection system interpreted the separate events as an outbreak.” He paused, looked to the side, then back. “I have to go. Have you got the TV on? Arc is supposed to be transmitting some sort of announcement any minute now.”
“Yeah. Can we leave the house?”
He took a deep breath. “To be safe, you better stay inside until the all-clear is sounded.”
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 38
Kelly was standing in the living room when she came back in, the flickering light from the holo projector forming a halo around his silhouette. The door clicked closed behind her, sounding unexpectedly loud in the relative quiet.
He didn’t move, and for a moment she believed he wasn’t actually there, that someone else had taken over control of his body.
But he must’ve sensed her presence, because he turned. “It’s dead.”
“The holo projector?” she asked. She was confused, because she could see the glow.
He moved aside, and now she could see what he meant. She looked down at the base of the image— down, not up, because the Player was lying on the ground, rather than standing. Instead of its head towering over them, brushing the low ceiling of the room, it was nestled in the unkempt grass. Instead of staring up into the sky, its eyes were blinded by thick mats of flies, hungrily sucking up the first of the evening condensation which was beginning to pool in the sockets.
Jessie pushed her Link into the control console and connected.
Stand up.
Nothing.
Get on your feet!
Now she saw the husk of fresh decay as it spread across the shredded remains of its ashen cheeks. The body lacked tension — not in a way that could be seen with the eyes — but rather felt, as if whatever last traces of vitality the Player once held within its rotting core had been finally extracted from the body. Maggots, not a full day old, boiled over the brim of its rotting lips and poured from the vent on its cheek. An enamel ribbon of gore traced an unbroken path from a nostril and gathered in the bowl of a half-eaten ear.
Kelly reached over to flip the projector off.
“Wait!” Jessie yanked his hand back.
She circled the image, staring through the vertical shaft of light, orbiting twice before stopping and shaking her head. Kelly had moved back to give her space, and now he asked what she was doing.
“I saw someone.”
“Another Player?”
She shook her head. “On the other side of the fence.”
Kelly bent down and set the timer back four minutes. “Where did you see it?”
She came back around the front and stood where she’d first seen the shadow. “There.”
Kelly pushed the PLAY button, and together they leaned toward the holo projector, staring into the image. Half a minute into the replay, the shadow along one blurry edge of a building pinched itself off and began to move. The indistinct figure paused, then disappeared through one of the doors.
“What was that?” Kelly whispered.
“Micah,” Jessie replied. “I think it was Micah.”
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 39
They spent most of Sunday searching for Reggie in town. Eric dropped them off at Sisters of Mercy before heading off to work, insisting that he’d try to get free so he could help. “No promises, though.” And Jessie had gotten a sense that he wasn’t just telling her about a few little things, but that there was a whole lot of big things happening behind the scenes.
She and Kelly made their way from the hospital on foot and headed steadily in the direction of Micah’s house. Both were quiet, chatting occasionally and only about the likelihood of finding Reggie, never about why he was acting this way or what might’ve happened to him. And they avoided the subject of White’s manipulation of Kelly entirely, as if understanding that their relatio
nship was currently too fragile to withstand further scrutiny and criticism and doubt.
They stopped at every shop and alleyway to ask or search for any sign of their friend. But no one claimed to have seen him.
They split up after a quick lunch in the shade at the Yale Drive Bridge. Kelly headed out to Micah’s, while Jessie made her way down into the greenbelt again. She was still convinced she’d missed something there, despite yesterday morning’s utter failure. She wasn’t ready to reject her theory that Micah was alive and in Gameland, that he had somehow used the game stream to take control of Reggie’s mind and used him to abduct her mother. Without the theory, she was left with only one other possibility, that she was going crazy.
Maybe you are, to think of something that whacked out.
Was it so far-fetched? After all, Micah was brilliant. She had no doubt he could hack an implant if he wanted to. Managing to take control without killing Reggie was a bit more difficult. And she knew Micah’d found a way to use the game streams to track Links, despite the barriers Arc had put into place. If he could do all that, then, faking his own conscription wasn’t out of the question.
When she got to Reggie’s house, she stopped and knocked on the door. Missus Casey seemed startled to see her. “Bob’s out coordinating one of the search teams,” she said, staring at her hands. She wouldn’t look Jessie in the eye, and only reluctantly invited her in.
“Kelly and I are looking, too.”
“The police have submitted for a warrant to track his Link,” Missus Casey told her. “But they haven’t heard back from Arc yet to access the secure streams.” The look on her face soured, and she lapsed into an awkward silence.
“Missus Casey, I need to ask you something. Yesterday morning, when you called, you said Reggie didn’t say anything when he woke. Was that the truth?”
She flapped her hands. “I told you I was asleep.”
“So, you’re saying he might have? Did Reggie’s dad say if he spoke?”
The woman stood up so suddenly that she knocked the chair over behind her. She walked from the table and leaned against the counter. “My little Reggie would never hurt anyone,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Jessie asked. An image of her mother prostrate on the mossy ground flashed through her mind again. “What makes you think he might?”
Missus Casey whirled around, her face red with anger. “I just told you he wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all you!”
“M-me?”
“I told Bob he must’ve misheard. Reggie wouldn’t say such things. Oh, my poor baby,” she wailed. “I should never have let him get involved with you people!”
“What did he say, Missus Casey?” Jessie pushed. “Please, I need to know. Maybe it’ll help us find him.”
“You can’t find him! The police can’t even find him! Only Arc can, and they don’t even care.”
A tiny whimper escaped from her throat. She put a hand up to her mouth and looked away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I know it’s not your fault. Reggie always looked up to you kids, you and Kelly. It was that other girl, the one he fawned over, that I never liked. She treated Reggie like furniture.”
Jessie kept her mouth shut. She was sure Reggie had told his parents about what had happened to Ashley on the island. The girl may have had her faults, and maybe she did try a little too hard to come off as one of those bad girls, but deep down inside, she was—
Soft as marshmallow.
That’s how Micah had described her. Ashley had always presented a hard shell to the world, but inside she was as vulnerable as any of them.
“She didn’t deserve him,” Missus Casey added.
Jessie bit her tongue. It was hard for her to hear anyone speak ill of her friend.
“I know he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He has a big heart,” Jessie told her.
Missus Casey stood at the counter with her back to Jessie. She busied herself rearranging the objects there. “They sent a team down to search the creek,” she said. “Bob said they sent divers into Frye Lake.”
Jessie frowned. “I doubt he’d go that far.”
But Missus Casey was beyond listening to anything Jessie had to say. She lifted her hand to her cheek and Jessie could see she was shaking. She raised the other and placed it to her face and stood there for a long time. She was crying, silently, her shoulders twitching. Jessie tried to reach out to her, but the woman pulled away.
“I think you should go.”
Jessie’s Link pinged. She silenced it. “I want to help.”
“Please,” Missus Casey said. She pointed to the door. “Just leave me alone.”
“I’m not going until you tell me what he said.”
She took a long, juddering breath. “I don’t know why he would say such a terrible thing,” she finally whispered.
Jessie waited.
Missus Casey turned and looked at her, her eyes red and her cheeks streaked with tears. “He asked for you.”
Me? What’s so bad about that?
“I don’t understand. Why is that—?”
“No! That wasn’t all.” Missus Casey shook her head, then shoved her fist into her mouth, as if to stop herself from saying anything more.
Jessie’s Link pinged again, a text this time:
<< WHERE ARE YOU? MEET ME AT MICAH’S ASAP. >>
She frowned at the message, then thumbed the connect button and waited for him to answer. “Kelly? Did you find him?”
Missus Casey looked over, new hope on her tear-streaked face.
“No. And you’d better get over here.”
“Why?”
“Just get over here.”
Jessie disconnected.
“What is it?” Missus Casey asked.
Jessie shook her head. “I have to go.” She asked one last time what Reggie had said when he first woke in the hospital room.
Missus Casey’s face hardened. Her eyes grew dark. And when she spoke, her voice was without inflection. “He said, ‘Kill the bitch.’ He kept saying it, over and over again, and he was fighting with Bob until the nurse finally had to come in and give him a shot to quiet him down.”
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 40
Sunday night arrived and darkness came, entrenching itself so thoroughly into the fabric of the world that it was as if light itself had been banished. Jessie was alone in the living room. The boys were upstairs. She could hear their soft snores, Kelly in her bed, Eric in his own.
She had tried to sleep, but had given up a little past midnight and drifted down the stairs, feeling like an intruder in her own house. She sat on the couch and stared out the window at the silvery, silent, forsaken world. Nothing moved. No cars passed on the street.
Usually, there would be a light on somewhere, the windows of a house or two on every street blazing, even at this late hour. So many people had shifted their routines to take advantage of the relative coolness of the night. Two decades of rising temperatures, and humans were becoming night owls.
But not this night. Tonight, no one wanted to draw attention to themselves. It was as if they didn’t trust that the alarm had been false.
A spokesperson for Arc had finally come on the local Media Stream late that afternoon and apologized for the disruption caused by the previous day’s emergency outbreak alert. He blamed the incident on human error, on an overzealous state bureaucracy attempting to rein in Arc’s success and popularity. When asked about the senseless murder of an innocent victim by patrol officers, the man deflected attention away from the tragedy by stating that law enforcement agencies were being badly mismanaged by state oversight boards. The announcement incensed both Eric and Kelly, although for differing reasons.
“The important thing to know,” the man added, “is that the incident will not affect our planned announcement of upgrades and advancements later this week. I know that was a concern for many of our customers.” He concluded by saying, “Once again, we appreciate the public’s patience and patronage. Pl
ease save any questions for our mid-week media conference.”
As the night dragged on, clouds gathered and covered the moon. Darkness deepened. Moths began to dance around the glow of the street lamp. Every so often, a small dark shape would swoop out of the shadows and scatter the bugs, but they would always return. Mesmerized by the swarm’s fluid movements, Jessie eventually drifted off to sleep.
Her dreams were soon visited by the hulking figure of a Player, not alive, not dead, stuck in some in-between state. In her dream, she gasped when she saw that it was Reggie. He spoke to her, told her he was going to kill her, going to ‘kill the bitch.’ Except it wasn’t his voice but Micah’s that spewed from his lips. He began to chase her. And she ran, her legs like lead and the air thick as tar. She ran until the walls of her mind trapped her. And there, written in her own blood, were the same words Kelly had found that afternoon on the walls of Micah’s cellar:
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 41
The streetlamps were still lit when Jessie was shaken gently awake hours later. The moths were gone, and the approaching dawn painted the sky in crimson. “Go to school,” Eric told her, bending down.
She stared at him, confused and disbelieving. How could he possibly think she’d leave the house after all this?
“What time is it?”
“A little after six.” He was already dressed in his uniform.
“You’re going in?” she asked, incredulous.
“Actually just getting back.” He didn’t elaborate. “Listen, I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to get some rest. We’ll talk later.”
“How can you expect me to go to school?” she protested, suddenly wide awake.
“You don’t know who wrote those words, or when, or what they mean, Jess. For all we know, Micah could’ve written them there before he was conscripted. The blood wasn’t fresh.”
“They were the exact same words Reggie said when he woke up.”
“And isn’t it possible he saw them when he was there the other night? He probably just didn’t remember seeing them.”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 25
