Too Young to Die

by Michael Anderle

  He wouldn’t normally plunge his head into a swamp, but he did it this time without hesitation, bolstered by the memory that water couldn’t carry magic. Then, sure that his head was not on fire, he stood with a groan.

  “Okay, she—it…whatever—is dead. Very dead. Are you two…” His voice trailed off.

  Zaara and Lyle stood together close by, their weapons still raised, and around them and the entire shack, a pack of werewolves had gathered. The sun was setting and the moon was rising.

  A full moon, he realized in horror.

  “Shit,” Justin said. Thoughts tumbled through his head. Maybe the wolves had used them to kill the witch or maybe they were as bad as she’d said. Whatever the case, there was another battle to fight and unlike the last one, they didn’t exactly have a potion to make this one shake out in their favor.

  To his surprise, the wolf that padded toward him lowered its nose before it transformed into a human. Around the circle, fur melted away and men and women exchanged glances with one another.

  “You said she’s dead,” the bandit leader said to Justin. “Was that true?”

  “Well, she’s a puddle of goo,” he said. “And it wasn’t moving when I left. I’d say that counts as dead.” His arms ached where he held the sword. “So, let’s get this over with, then.”

  “If you want.” The man held out an amulet on a gold chain. “Take this with our thanks. You will always have a safe haven here.”

  He stopped and squinted at the item. “Wait, what?”

  The bandit leader did not smile. “I told you we could make a deal if you freed us, and you freed us.”

  “We also killed several of your band,” he pointed out.

  Lyle uttered a sound of disgust. “Ye’re not good at bargaining, are ye, lad?”

  The leader did smile at that. He met the dwarf’s gaze before he focused on Justin again. “Yes, you did. But you also left one of them alive in the tower when you could easily have killed him. You escaped rather than unleash your necromancer on us. And, perhaps most importantly, we would have all been dead in the end if the curse had taken hold—all of us and the forest as well. That monster was an abomination and you have freed us.”

  Justin took the amulet hesitantly. It looked almost like a clock and each ray out from the center was marked with a series of cross-hatches he could not interpret. “What is this?”

  “Do you see the way the middle shines?” At the very center of the amulet, a piece of gold seemed to catch the light in a strange way. “That means it’s charged. Anyone who wears this and dies will be returned to the last place the amulet was charged, alive and unharmed. It takes its power from old magic, the nodes between the ley lines.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked at it quizzically.

  “One use per charge,” the bandit leader said. “Use it wisely. If you appear in the middle of our temple, we’ll help you, but it won’t bring your friends and not all nodes are safe places.” He whistled and gestured to his team. “Goodbye, strangers. I’ll be interested to see what becomes of you.”

  When they were gone, Justin slipped the chain over his head. He looked at the other two. “And we still don’t know the story,” he said.

  Zaara laughed. “You’d better get used to that,” she said. “I have to say, though, your principle of only killing people who are already trying to kill you got us farther than I thought it would.”

  “Uh-huh.” He knew better than to look at Lyle, who clearly still disapproved of the tactic. “So what now?”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Mary put the last of the server cords into a large box and shook her head. Eight hours seemed to have vanished in the blink of an eye.

  As soon as the PIVOT members agreed with Tad’s proposal, logistics swung into motion. A fleet of trucks was being mobilized for the PIVOT equipment to bring it somewhere that was allegedly close but completely unspecified—and, she expected, classified.

  While the rest of the team packed—undoing days’ worth of careful setup in as little time as they could—Justin’s game wound onward. There had been a battle of some kind, she gathered, but DuBois had glanced at the monitor a few times and didn’t seem worried.

  “I think…” Amber looked around. “I think that’s it. None of the rest can be unplugged until we have the truck.”

  “Which was supposed to arrive an hour ago,” Jacob said quietly. He shook his head. “Did we do a stupid thing?”

  “No,” she said stoutly. “Jamie said there was nothing too sneaky hiding in those papers…well, nothing along the lines of them hanging us out to dry. But there’s a small chance Justin may now be classified as a banned weapon under the Geneva Convention.”

  “A small chance that what?” Mary asked.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said far too quickly.

  “And I didn’t hear anything,” Nick said. Both gave her identical, pasted-on smiles.

  Her quest for answers was interrupted by several men in suits. They strode into the room and stopped when they saw the smiles on everyone’s faces.

  “Why is this still running?” one of them asked and gestured to the pod.

  “Ohhhh,” Amber said. “You’re not…I mean, you’re from the FDA.”

  “Yes.” He fixed her with a suspicious look. “It’s been twenty-four hours. We’re here to shut this down—and, apparently, take Mr. Zachary into custody again, given that shutting the experiment down was one of the conditions of his bail.”

  “Correction,” the young woman replied calmly. She folded her arms and gave them a sweet smile. “It has been twenty-three hours and fifty-four minutes.”

  The agents stared at her and she returned it impassively.

  “You’ll make us sit here for six minutes?” the agent asked her finally.

  “You could wait outside,” she suggested. Her sweetness didn’t waver.

  The man stepped forward. “There is no way this will be taken down within the next few minutes. It wouldn’t matter if it was six or thirty-six. You’re done. All of you.”

  “And you don’t have the right to shut it down until those six minutes are up,” she reminded him. There was steel under the sweetness now. She gestured to the kitchenette. “So why don’t you take a seat? We can make coffee if you’d like.”

  The older woman could only admire her resolve. Amber wasn’t a Southern girl, but she could certainly slay someone with kindness as if she were.

  The agents looked at one another. They looked at their young adversary, who smiled insincerely. Their attention shifted to DuBois, now perched on a desk and munching popcorn, and Mary, who had changed into a suit and pearls. The lead agent pulled his phone out and strode away as he dialed. Whoever he called, he launched into a furious, whispered tirade in the kitchenette.

  The other two agents remained in position and Amber pulled a chair out and sat.

  None of them broke eye contact. It started as a contest to see who would back down first but it had gone on so long that looking away would only be more awkward. Mary settled her shoulders, stared fixedly at one of the agents, and tried to think what Tad would say when he had to bail her out of jail.

  But where was he? She hadn’t heard so much as a word from him since the call. Papers had been sent by courier, looked over by a harried lawyer, and signed. She had given her consent as Justin’s guardian, and the papers had been taken away again.

  That had signaled the start of a seemingly endless wait.

  The lead agent’s argument ended in the kitchen and he stormed into the room to stare at them, his arms folded. He did not, however, touch a single piece of equipment. No matter how pissed he was, they were right about his jurisdiction.

  Mary finally looked at the clock. Two minutes remained and as she couldn’t see the seconds counting down, a minute seemed like an eternity. When they were, at last, within the final minute, she let her head slump forward—only to jerk it up when she heard footsteps in the hallway.

  The lead agent did
n’t seem to care. He stepped forward with a smile when Tad strode into the room with a blonde woman in an expensive suit.

  “Thank you for your service, Agent Hyde,” the woman said smoothly. She held out a folder as the agent swung to face her in disbelief. “Your agency has been relieved of duty in this particular case. You’ll find all of the details in here and your supervisor should call you—”

  Hyde’s pocket rang.

  “Now,” she finished. She handed the folder to him and moved to shake Mary’s hand. “Mrs. Williams. I’m Anna Price.” Quickly, she went around the room and correctly identified each of the people there—including, Mary noted, the two other FDA agents.

  When Hyde returned from this particular call, he was white with fury. “Do you care to explain this?” he asked Price in a clipped tone.

  She did not waste time in thought. “No,” she said simply. “I must ask the three of you to vacate the premises, please. This project is now under the aegis of a different agency in partnership with Diatek Industries and is classified.”

  The man looked as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “Classified?” He ground the word out.

  “As such, given that you lack the clearance or project authorization, I must ask you to leave.” Her voice held a warning now. She gestured to the door and waited.

  “Who authorized this?” he snapped.

  “That information is on a need to know basis,” she told him. “And you do not need to know. Mr. Hyde, if you do not leave, I will be required to call law enforcement at this juncture. Should anything be lacking in the authorization paperwork—and nothing is—I encourage your supervisor to take it up with the Department of Justice.”

  Hyde knew when he was beaten, at least. He jerked his head at the other two agents and the three of them left. They strode rapidly down the corridor and slammed the outer door behind them.

  “Excellent,” Price said. She looked around the laboratory. “It looks like you’ve packed up almost everything. That’s good. The truck will be along shortly to move Justin, and while it does have sufficient power to maintain the full operation of the pod, I would like you to keep the generator attached as a backup.”

  Jacob nodded.

  She looked at all of them and smiled slightly. “Do you have questions?” she asked.

  “Why are you helping us?” Nick asked immediately. Jacob gave him a furious look but he was intractable.

  “I am not certain what Senator Williams told you about my personal life,” she said. “Suffice it to say that I have first-hand experience with watching a loved one deal with traumatic brain injuries. Our understanding of what works and what does not is woefully incomplete, and much of the operating budget of Diatek each year is devoted to various areas under the umbrella of rehabilitation, sleep cycles, and the activity of comatose brains.”

  “Is that what your company does for the Department of Defense?” Nick pressed.

  “Nick.” Jacob held his face in his hands.

  “Your associate is right in the abstract,” Price told him. “He would normally have a right to know who he is doing business with. Unfortunately, Mr. Ryan, I cannot give you specifics of Diatek’s work with any other agencies. Those projects are classified.”

  Nick looked away.

  “If you look carefully,” the woman said, “you’ll notice that your contracts specifically state that you will not be required to do any work on projects other than this one. I do not ask for your approval of my company. I have made choices you might make and ones you might not. On this much, however, we can be clear. Funding for PIVOT is secured as long as I believe you have not knowingly and recklessly strayed into territory that would be more dangerous to patients than currently-approved therapies. Are we clear?”

  After a pause, Nick nodded.

  “Any other questions? No?” She walked toward the pod. “Good, because I have several of my own. What did you use for the converters here?”

  Mary watched the team walk away and turned to launch herself into Tad’s arms. They held each other for a long time without speaking, neither needing any help to know what the other was thinking.

  “I knew you would do it,” she said. “I was afraid you would throw yourself under the bus sometimes, but I knew under the fear that you would do it.”

  “You know me far too well.” He set her down. “And I take it you helped persuade them on this end?”

  “I told them you wouldn’t give them a deal with the devil,” she explained. “Don’t prove me wrong.”

  “I don’t think I will—although I have to admit I empathize with Nick.” He shook his head. “It’s always worrisome when someone has such an ironclad moral code that includes shady things.”

  “Yes. Then again, you never know where help will come from.” Mary raised her shoulders. “You’re fighting for people like her to not have to make those choices, right?”

  “Right.” Tad put his arm around her while she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I want to see Tina,” she said finally.

  She surprised him with that. He looked at her, his blue eyes quizzical. “Tina…who Justin was on a date with? That Tina?”

  “That Tina.” She nodded. “Don’t worry, I won’t yell at her. She’s…emailed me and wants to know how Justin is. I couldn’t bring myself to reply but I think I need to.”

  “It would be good if she were to come here,” DuBois said. He stood nearby and he gave them an apologetic smile when they looked at him. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but I heard the name. I’d like to meet her.”

  “Why?” Tad asked him. He sounded deeply dubious.

  The doctor cleared his throat and looked awkward now. “Well, ah…since you ask…Justin isn’t responding quite how I’d like to having Mary in the game.”

  “I’ve hurt his progress?” She was horrified.

  “No. No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have let you go in if you were hurting him.”

  “Why did you let me go in at all?”

  “Well, it was a good idea in theory, and the first time produced a significant spike of brain activity that seems to have settled into a higher cognitive level.” DuBois pointed at a graph, remembered neither of them could read it, and cleared his throat again. “I realized the second time that your presence was…it’s difficult to quantify. Please understand that this is a sample size of only one patient and there are many factors in play.”

  “Yes.” Tad had his senator smile on. “I completely understand your reservations, doctor, and we won’t hold you to any guarantees so give us your hunch.”

  “My guess is that Mary’s presence forces a false dichotomy on Justin’s mind,” DuBois explained. “Young adults go through a phase where they have the power to begin reshaping the world. They see it differently from their parents’ generation and they, in many senses, operate in a world that does not yet exist, while their parents operate in a world that no longer exists.”

  Mary’s brain hurt. She squinted and tried to make sense of what he’d told them.

  “Under normal circumstances, this would not create any kind of break with reality,” the doctor continued. “Social turmoil, of course, if both generations were aligned enough with one another, but that’s not at play here. My hunch, however, is that in this case, he now perceives this world as Mary’s world—his parents’ world—and the game as his world. Her dropping into it only serves to drive him into viewing it as a world where he can make a difference.”

  “Oh.” She understood that, at least. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Again,” he said carefully, “I would not have let you go in if I thought it was actively harmful. I think there’s much to be said for encouraging his interactions with real minds instead of only the AI. That said, I would like to see his response to someone his age and especially, given the circumstances, I think Tina might be the right person for this.”

  She looked at Tad and they exchanged minuscule nods before they focused on the man.


  “All right,” she said.

  “We’ll have to clear it with Ms. Price, of course,” the senator added. “But we’ve seen tremendous progress so far. If you tell us this is something Justin needs, we’ll try to make it happen.”

  DuBois wandered off, probably to interrupt Price’s conversation and ask immediately, and Tad looked at Mary.

  “So, you went into the game again?” He sounded wistful. “I wish he hadn’t said that about it being bad for Justin. I wanted to go in.”

  “No, you don’t.” She shuddered. “There are giant spiders. Like, the size of a small horse. Oh, it was terrible. It was good to see Justin, but…spiders.”

  He laughed. “I missed you,” he said. “Also, please tell me there’s video of you and the spiders. Did you scream?”

  “I might have had law enforcement called,” she said with great dignity.

  Tad buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook with mirth. “Oh, God. This, I have to see.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  It should have been a miserable night. After all, Justin and the others had nothing to do while they waited for fire to consume the shack and reduce it to ashes. They were tired, they were injured, and a swamp wasn’t a great area to try to sleep.

  He wasn’t sure what genius had come up with the idea of a virtual reality that included mosquitos, but he was increasingly determined that when he got out of there, he would kick some ass.

  However, the mosquitos heralded a change that happened slowly over the course of the night and was more than visible by morning. The swamp and forest had begun to return to life. Green shoots of grass showed in the patches of dry, brown vegetation, buds pushed through on the various bushes, and birds building nests busily in the trees—which, he had to say, did not look quite so dead as they had the night before.

  The area didn’t smell quite as awful, either. There had been a stale smell before, somehow even worse than rot, and there was now a bright smell he could only describe as green.