EP02: Failsafe Codex: A Post-Apocalyptic Cyberpunk Title from the World of Gameland (Zpocalypto: A World of GAMELAND series)
Author: Saul Tanpepper
Date: 2021-05-17 16:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Cyberpunk; Horror; Thriller; Suspense; zombie; Post-Apocalypse; Dystopian; Science Fiction; hi-tech; conspiracy
Description: No one ever truly escapes the arcade The thrilling saga continues in the second deadly installment of the best-selling post-apocalyptic cyberpunk series by Saul Tanpepper! - They survived hacking themselves into the script. - They leveled up without losing a single life. - They even managed to get back out. - That is, they thought they did. - But no one ever truly escapes the arcade. Welcome back to GAMELAND. Are you ready to level up? A note about ZPOCALYPTO from series creator Saul Tanpepper Gameland is the post-apocalyptic dystopian world I first created in 2011 with the publication of the
Publisher: Brinestone Press

⁍ CONTENTS ⁌

EPISODE 02

FAILSAFE CODEX

« Part One »

CHAPTERS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

« Part Two »

CHAPTERS

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

‡ ‡ ‡

For more about the series, visit:

Tanpepperwrites.com/gameland

‡ ‡ ‡

For updates and exclusive perks, join:

Club Tanpepper

‡ ‡ ‡

Copyright

Acknowledgments

About the Author

†   †   †

Brinestone Press

(rv.210426)

Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Failsafe Codex (ZPOCALYPTO, #2)

Episode 02

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part Two

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

CONGRATULATIONS!

READY TO LEVEL UP?

CAN’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT ZPOCALYPTO EPISODE TO DROP?

WANT MORE APOCALYPSE THRILLS?

WORLD OF GAMELAND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sign up for Saul Tanpepper's Mailing List

⁍ THE ZPOCALYPTO SERIES ⁌

EP01: Hacked Into the Game

EP02: Failsafe Codex

EP03: Deadman’s Gambit

EP04: Sunder the Hollowmen

(includes the prequel “Golgotha”)

EP05: Prometheus Mode

(includes the companion title “Velveteen”)

EP06: Every Dead Player

EP07: Cheat Protocol

EP08: Jacker’s Exploit

EP09: Live Another Play

EP10: Return To The Arcade

(includes supplemental material “Infected” pt 1)

EP11: Augmented Zeality

EP12: Reckoning The Dead

EP13: Glitch In The Script

EP14: Open-World Spawn

(includes supplemental material “Infected” pt 2)

Episode 02

FAILSAFE CODEX

Part One

There Are No Guarantees in Life.

Chapter 1

“No!”

I can’t believe it’s the actual first word out of Kelly’s mouth, the moment he breaks the surface on the Manhattan side of the tunnel.

He sucks in another choking gasp of air. “I know what you’re thinking, Jess. The answer is no.”

And so, just like that, he’s decided that none of us is going back.

Here I am, half-dead, my brain and body starving for oxygen for at least the last ten minutes. My muscles are so weak I can barely stay afloat. My heart’s racing and my head’s pounding. My eyes and throat burn. I’m clutching to a tiny crease in the concrete wall of the overpass with just my fingertips, trying not to sink back down into that suffocating water.

And his very first instinct is to sentence Jake to death.

He could already be dead. I know this. Every minute we spend here increases those chances. We left him behind, yet before any of us can even catch our breath, he uses his very first to tell me — to tell us all, but me specifically — to just forget about him. Write him off, like he doesn’t matter.

How could he be so cruel?

I know we barely escaped with our own lives. I know going back puts them at risk again. But it could’ve been any one of us trapped on the other side of that wall of debris in the middle of the tunnel. What if it had been me? Would he be telling the others not to go back then? I seriously don’t think so.

I certainly hope not.

And if it had been him? Would he expect me not to try?

No.

So what’s the difference? Just because it’s Jake, he thinks we can just dismiss him out of hand? How dare he?

How dare he say we should just walk away? We’re all equally culpable for what happened back there. But he wants to play judge, jury, and executioner all by himself. What gives him the right?

“It’s too dangerous, Jess,” he gasps. He can see it on my face, the urge to argue with him. “You know it. We all do.”

I don’t respond. No one does. I won’t. I can’t.

My muscles are rubber, and we’re still not safe. I don’t know if I have the strength to pull myself out onto solid ground, much less put up a fight. The water clutches at me like the hard, bony hands of the undead. It wants to drag me down into itself, make me a part of it. I’m terrified of dying.

Which is exactly why he’s saying no, Jessie. He knows you.

And it’s exactly why I have to do it, because I know how Jake must feeling right now.

If he’s not already dead.

Damn it! How dare he tell me no? The last thing I need is for someone — anyone — to tell me what I can or can’t do right now. Or how I should feel! Like we can just get on with our lives as if nothing happened.

He sucks in a huge, rattling breath, and I know he’s suffering as much as the rest of us. The inhale sounds so much like his brother Kyle during one of his fevers— wet and drowning, rattling around in his chest like Death throwing his dice. He looks at me and shakes his head. He can see the truth in my eyes. He’s always been able to read me. “Think about it, Jess.”

I still haven’t spoken a word. Maybe that’s the idea, to stop me from doing so. I know he’s just trying to protect me. I know he’s just saying out loud what the rest of us are already afraid to think. What are Jake’s chances, really? Almost zero. There’s practically no way he could’ve made it out, not alone. Not on a used rebreather cartridge. Not past a deadfall of the zombies waiting for him at the other end of the tunnel. It’s not worth putting ourselves back in danger on such a miniscule chance. It’s not. It just isn’t.

And even if Jake did, somehow, miraculously, make it out, he’s still not safe. Long Island is swarming with them. The moment he surfaces, they’d be on him.

And let’s say he manages to get past them, gets out of the water. How long can he survive on his own out there? Nothing to eat or drink. Outnumbered a thousand to one by bloodthirsty killers that just will not stop. Or die. No way to protect himself.

He’s dead, Jessie. Kelly’s right, you can’t go back.

Yet despite all this, despite those odds, I have to believe he will survive. We can’t just give up. He has to be alive. He will make it long enough for us to go back and rescue him. Because if he doesn’t, then his death will be on every single one of us.

We owe him that much. We owe ourselves, otherwise we are nothing.

I slowly make my way along the wall to a place where I might be able to climb out. We should’ve thought of this before leaving this morning. We should’ve planned how we’d climb out. We didn’t expect to be this tired. We thought we were so smart, yet we anticipated exactly none of this.

That last fifty or hundred feet of the tunnel, the opening tantalizingly near, yet impossibly out of reach, had been the hardest thing I’d ever encountered in my whole entire life. Down to a single cartridge between the five of us. And then it, too, had failed. No more purge air to cheat death for one final breath. We’d let go of each other by then, each now alone, pushing through to that distant square of light without regard for the rest of us. Nothing we could do for each other anymore.

I was aware that Kelly had fallen back. Then Ash fell behind, too. Reggie let her go and kept pushing forward. We were all dying. Arms, legs, like lead weights. Chests bursting. Heads pounding. Death’s shroud squeezing in ever tighter with each flutter of our legs and each weakening pull with our hands. Bodies wanting so bad to just breathe in, even if it was water.

Pulling so desperately hard it became everything. Racing in slow motion to get to the light, to the surface. To that lifesaving air.

Praying like we’d never prayed before. Just... one... more... push. Please, God... Just... one.

Every cell of our bodies focused on that precious, precious air. So close. So close. So close.

So elusively far.

Then finally bursting through, and nothing but gasping, clawing, trying not to drown. Tears of relief, of disbelief. Safe and alive. Grateful. Regretful. Angry.

Thankful.

Thinking of nothing else for those first few moments other than we’d somehow actually made it.

Except for Kelly. Even dying, he worries about me. Worries about what I might be planning to do, even before I’ve had any chance to contemplate anything beyond my next breath. Before I can even raise the question.

We were seconds away from drowning, and that’s why he’s telling me now that we can’t go back. He knows how lucky we got. We won’t get so lucky again. If we try, we will die.

And now I wonder, would they have dragged our bodies out with a pole like they do the occasional Infected Undead drifting through from LI? Would they have unceremoniously separated our heads from our bodies — the only guaranteed way to stop them — thinking we were one of them, too? Would they have then wrapped us up in plastic sheeting and sent us to the incinerator?

“It’s out of our hands now,” Kelly pants, appearing beside me. He’s treading water. How does he have the strength?

I know why he’s doing it. But I can’t accept it. I tell myself I won’t. I’m alive. We’re Jake’s best chance of getting out of this alive, too.

“I won’t leave him behind,” I pant. “I can’t let him die.”

To become one of the undead.

He might already be.

“No, Jess.”

“We have to, Kel. While there’s still time.”

I hear sobs to my left. Ashley’s crying. She doesn’t even try to hide it like she usually would. I wish I could cry, too, but I can’t. Maybe it’s the shock, maybe disbelief. Maybe it’s because I’m too relieved to be alive. Maybe because I’m so angry right now.

Kelly’s nearly caught his breath, although he’s fighting to stay afloat. I can see the strain on his face. He turns to the others and tells them the same thing. Reggie’s on his back, resting and doesn’t respond. His eyes are glassy, his face slack. He stares open mouthed at the clouds, like he’s a little bird trying to eat all the air mother sky has to feed him.

And Micah is... He just looks...

I can’t really tell. He’s the most calm of us all. Floating stoically. Observing us. Measuring his next move.

Ashley snoggers, coughs, spits. She makes a nervous, choking, chirp of a giggle. It’s so unexpected that it shocks us back to reality.

“We need to get the hell out of the water,” Micah abruptly says. “Out of here. That cop could be showing up at any moment. If he catches us, it won’t matter what we decide to do later. The only place any of us will be going is straight to a Life Service hearing.”

And he’s right, damn it. The cop who patrols this area would know we’d lied to him the last time he caught us here. He’d know we weren’t working on some lame school project or senior year community service thing. He’d guess that Kelly hadn’t really just accidentally fallen in. Not that he’d believed any of what we’d told him. You could see it in his eyes. We were just a rowdy bunch of hormone-crazed teenagers. One glance at our wetsuits and gear, and he’d know the truth of what we’d done.

How many years would they add to our Life Service Commitment for breaking into a Forbidden Zone? Five years? Ten? How many more would they tack on once they figured out we’d not only gone for a pleasure dive, but that we’d broken into LI and unleashed a horde of them? Would they even bother with a hearing once it came out that we’d left someone behind?

Thirty years off the top of our life expectancies, if we’re lucky. That makes us middle aged already.

“This way,” Reggie says, flopping back onto his stomach and leading us to the nearest accessible exit point.

The moment Ashley’s on solid ground, she starts swiping the water off her body, like it’s contaminated. “Have to dry it,” she mutters. “Have to hide it, hide the water. Can’t let it touch.” She’s shaking, babbling. The shock is starting to settle in.

“We can’t worry about that right now,” Micah quietly tells her. He gently urges her up the walkway toward the garage where our cars are parked. He turns to Kelly and says, “We’ll talk about it once we’re back home and we’ve had a chance to clear our heads a little. No sooner.”

But Kelly doesn’t accept this. As soon as we’re out of sight of the overpass, he turns back to me. “I know what you’re thinking, Jess. You know we can’t. We have to leave it to the officials.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” I growl. But of course he does. He knows everything about me.

“Kel’s right,” Reggie chimes in. He starts peeling off his wetsuit. His muscles shake from the effort. He’s a mountain of quivering flesh, so completely drained that he doesn’t think to help Ashley first, like he usually would.

It surprises me to hear him agree with Kelly. They so rarely agree on anything. And even when they do, Reggie tends to argue the other side, just for the sake of being difficult. But not this time.

Kelly eyes him warily, waiting for the punch line, the caveat. I know he blames Reggie for everything that’s happened, for peddling such a reckless idea in the first place, for relying on the most basic of plans, and for discounting the risks, especially after seeing NCD pull a body from the water just minutes before we left. But most of all, for pushing him over the railing to get the information we needed. He sees in Reg someone willing to betray us all for a little fun.

In truth, Reggie’s acts tell a different story. He’s terrified we’re falling apart, and he’s done all this to try and keep us together. It was a terrible idea, terrible in its conception, planning, and execution. But his intentions were good. He’s just a big kid who never grew up.

I think maybe he finally has.

I make my way over to Ashley. She’s still sitting with her back against the wall, catatonic. I reach over and grab her Link out of her hand and wake the screen. Jake’s last message is still there. I hold it up for the others to see, even though they already know what it says.

“He was still alive after the passage collapsed,” I tell them. “He said he was going back. I have to believe he made it.”

“You don’t know,” Reggie says.

“That’s right. That’s why we have to go back.”

“Jessie...,” he pleads. Terror fills his eyes. “You know he didn’t make it out. There’s no way.”

“We don’t know anything,” Micah says.

“That’s why we have to go back.”

Micah holds up his hand. “I’m on your side, Jess.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you even remember what we left behind?” Kelly demands. He swipes angrily at his wet hair, getting it out of his eyes. “Or did you already forget? That place is swarming with undead. And, okay, let’s assume Jake’s cartridge lasted him the whole way back — you and I both know that’s not likely, but let’s just say it did — he’ll just freeze up when he gets to the other end. Just like he did before.”

But I refuse to believe any of it. That last hundred feet, I would’ve swum through a wall of the undead if I had to. Jake would, too. He’d find a way to get past his fear.

“He’ll find a way,” I grunt. I know I’m grasping at straws, though. “If any of us could to it, it’s him. He’s got survival training.”

Kelly slaps the side of the van in frustration. “Lotta good that did us! He was totally useless to us when it mattered! He couldn’t even get his wetsuit on right!”

Micah tries to calm him down, but Kelly pushes him away.

“Why are you all so willing to risk your lives for this guy?”

“Why are you not? We owe him that!” Micah says.

“I don’t owe him anything. This is as much his fault as any one of us. Maybe more.”

“I can’t accept that, Kel.”

“Why?” he demands, spinning on me. “Is there something you want to tell me? What the hell happened to you two back there?”

“Really? That’s what you think? That the moment we’re left alone, we’re jumping each other’s bones? He’s just a friend.”

“Is it worth risking your life again for ‘just a friend,’ Jessie?” Reggie quietly asks. “Our lives? Dude grabs a live wire, you don’t grab it, too. Jake grabbed the wire.”

“We all did.”

“And we let go!”

“If we had real proof he’s alive, then... maybe,” Kelly says. “But we don’t. We’ve got nothing.”

“You want proof? The only way to get it is to go back.”

He doesn’t take the bait. Nor does Reg. They know it’s a classic catch-22 and an argument they’ll never win.

“You’d do it for Ashley,” I press Reggie. “Even without proof.”

He purses his lips and doesn’t deny it, even though I can see he wants to. He knows it’ll make him look like a selfish, uncaring hypocrite. He knows he’d do it in a heartbeat for Ash. He’d probably even do it any of the rest of us, even Kelly.

But not for Jake. Because Jake’s not one of us.

“Please,” Ashley whispers. She’s still trembling and in shock, although she looks like she’s starting to come out of it. “I know we got Jake into this mess, and... and we owe him... something. I don’t know. But for right now, can we just drop it? I just can’t think about anything else right now. We almost died back there. I just want to go home. Please.”

Micah nods. “We can’t do anything about it right now, anyway. Going back in our condition would be pure suicide. We need a better plan.”

He finds where Jake hid the key to his uncle’s van and opens it up so we can dry ourselves off and change back into our street clothes.

“What do you think his family’s going to do when he doesn’t show up at home tonight?” I wonder aloud. “They’ll report him missing. The van, too. If the cops find it here, it’s just a matter of time before they trace it all back to us. The checkpoints have a record of us coming here. That’s why we need to go back, sooner rather than later. The longer we wait, the harder it’ll be to explain.”

“There’s no family,” Ashley says. “It’s just him and his uncle. And Mister Esposito’s going to be in Albany at least until late tomorrow. Maybe the day after.”

“That gives us a little breathing room,” Micah says. “I can buy us some more time with him, if that’s what it comes to. And we’ll take the van back with us now.”

“Buy time how?” Kelly asks, suspiciously.

He shrugs. “I’ll figure something out. The checkpoint records, too,” he adds. He doesn’t elaborate and nobody asks. None of us wants to know what he’s capable of doing. We don’t want to believe we’d be okay with him sweeping evidence of our crime under the rug. We want everything fixed, ideally legitimately. But if that won’t work, none of us would refuse the alternative. Not when our own lives depend on it.

“There’s also the problem with my lost Link,” I say. “How’re we going to get through the checkpoints without it?”

“They only scanned us coming in the last time we were here,” Reggie reminds us. “They won’t check us going back.” He knows it’s no assurance that the guards will act the same this time. Different people, different days.

“And if they do?”

“We’ll deal with it then, Jessie.”

I reach into the back of the van and pull one of the plastic packing crates toward me. It holds a dozen more of the disposable rebreather cartridges, still unused. More than enough to get us to LI and back again.

“We could be home — all of us, with Jake and my Link — by morning,” I say. “Then there won’t have to be any fixing by anyone.”

Kelly takes the cartridge from my hand and tosses it back into the crate. He pushes everything out of reach. “We’re going home now, Jess.”

Micah nods. “Not tonight, Jessie. Even if we were up for it, and none of us is, the tunnel’s blocked.”

“There’s the other bore.”

Kelly puts his hand on my elbow. “You’re exhausted. We all are. Let’s go home. We’ll revisit this first thing in the morning. I promise, Jessie. I won’t say no then. We’ll come up with a better plan.”

I glance around at the rest of them. “There’s nothing to talk about. With or without you, I’m coming back. Jake would do the same for us.”

Micah nods. “I know. But not tonight.”

“Not tonight,” Kelly repeats.

“And you won’t say no?”

“No.”

I lean into him. When I rest my head against his chest, I can hear his heart. I want to know what it’s true intention. I want to believe he knows I’m right, and that he’s just trying very hard to protect me from making a rash decision. But I worry he’ll sing a different tune tomorrow. He knows that once we leave the zone, my chances of coming back drop to nil without my Link. And it’ll be weeks before I can get a replacement. By then, it’ll be too late.

But that won’t stop me. I’ll find a way to get back here tomorrow morning. Even if Micah has to hack into every goddamn Link and Stream to do it.

Even if I have to walk here on my own.

Chapter 2

The ride back home is thick with tension. I sit and stare out the passenger window of Jake’s van as Kelly drives, and neither of us says a word. Reggie and Ash ride with Micah in his car. I wonder if they’re being just as quiet.

The abandoned skyscrapers of lower Manhattan soon give way to the derelict, but still used, skyscrapers of central Manhattan and New Wall Street. We cross the Hudson and work our way north along the eastern fringe of New Jersey. Neither of us points out the old football stadium this time. Or the ghost town of the Teterboro Airport. Or anything. None of it seems amusing anymore. Nothing does, when you’re in the middle of a nightmare.

As Reggie had predicted, we breeze through all of the checkpoints. None of the guards scans us. They do, however, search both vehicles and repeat warnings about the curfew before letting us through. It’s exactly the same as last time. Like nothing has changed.

And yet everything has.

At one of the checkpoints, I overhear Reggie asking the guard what they’re looking for, but the man doesn’t say. He’s all business. They all are. I wonder what there could possibly be in the abandoned flooded buildings in Manhattan that anyone would want to smuggle out. Old paper copies of Playboy Magazine?

Kelly pulls up to the curb at my house. He sits for a moment, staring at his Link and almost certainly wondering whether he should ask if I saw the picture he’d send to me on the island. At the time, I couldn’t wait to get back to him again, to tell him... I don’t know. Now, I wish he’d never sent it. Can he sense how much I want to avoid speaking to him right now?

He leans over me to kiss me goodbye.

I turn away before he can get to me. I step out of the van and walk up the sidewalk to our front door and go inside the house. I never once look back at him sitting there at the curb. I’m so filled with raw emotion, with guilt and anger and betrayal and hopelessness, that I’m practically incapable of feeling anything. I don’t even stop when Mom passes me in the hallway. I barely register that she’s sober, that she isn’t tripping over her own feet and looking like a used up dish rag. When she speaks to me, it doesn’t strike me that her words are clear, coherent, not clumsy. I hear her, but my mind is unable to take any meaning from them, much less formulate an appropriate reply. I just go straight up to my room. I fall into my bed and pull the covers up past my eyes.

Sometime later, Eric calls me down for dinner. I don’t move. He knocks on my door. He tells me to come and eat. I don’t have the energy to fight him. I know he won’t give up, so I go down. I manage to get through dinner, but I have no memory of eating it, or even of what it was. I go back upstairs, ignoring him this time when he asks for help with the dishes. I feel like I’m in a dream, except I’m not even a part of it, neither participant nor minor character. I’m just watching me watching it a thousand times removed, like those funhouse mirror illusions. I lie down and squeeze my eyes shut. I just want to sleep forever and forget.

But I can’t. I keep picturing Jake.

Hours pass. Darkness falls. I wait and wait for sunrise, but night lasts forever. I look at the time. It’s not even midnight. Finally, I get up. I’m still dressed. My hair still smells of seawater. I pace the room, step out, wander down the hallway, down the stairs. The house is completely dark and totally silent. I don’t even hear Eric’s usual snores.

In the living room now. The curtains are drawn over the window. Smell of old furniture, old cushions, musty and dusty and cheap, alcohol-infused, hints of childhood vomit and alcohol vomit and too many unwashed feet.

Mom’s Link is on the kitchen table. I don’t know how long I’m staring at it before I realize it’s in my hand, the soft jingle of the ping connecting. I blink, confused, when Kelly appears on the screen.

“Jess?” He’s bleary-eyed. Even in the dim light I can tell he’s been crying. “Is everything all right, babe?”

I don’t answer. I don’t have one for him.

“Why’d you ping me? I saw that it was your mom’s Link ID and thought something bad happened. What is it?”

What am I doing?

“Are you home?” he asks.

“Kelly?” I hear myself speak, and that same sense of disconnect flushes through me. Like I’m listening to someone else, not me, someone using my voice.

“You okay?”

“Can you come over? Now? We need to talk.”

He hesitates, then nods. “I just put Kyle to bed a half hour ago. He’s feeling a little better than he was this morning.” He squints through the Link at me, studying my face. I know he’s searching for something, guilt or relief, realization. Resignation. What does he see? I don’t even know how I feel. “Okay, I’ll be over in a few.”

There’s a gentle rap on the front door. I’m still sitting at the kitchen table, and I see from the call log that we disconnected less than ten minutes ago. The knock comes again, a little louder. I wait for my mother to get it before I remember I’m the only one awake. If Mom’s even home, she’ll be unconscious in one form or another. I sense, however, that she’s gone out. At this hour, she’d usually be crashed out on the couch with the TV tuned to Survivalist.

I glance at her Link and frown. She’s forgotten to take it with her again. She does that a lot.

Then I wonder if Grandpa’s gone out, too. He comes and goes as he pleases, sometimes at odd hours. He never tells us where he’s going. For an old retired guy six years past his life-expectancy he keeps a busy schedule. But no matter what, he’s always here for dinner, always reminding me to eat right and take my medicine. I reach into my pocket and extract the little plastic device. I squeeze it and suck in the bitter mist. It’s my first dose since that morning.

“Grandpa?” I call down the hall, quiet enough not to wake Eric upstairs, but loud enough that if he’s awake, he’ll answer.

The house remains silent.

As soon as I open the door, Kelly steps in and wraps his arms around me. I close my eyes and inhale his scent. He’s showered, so it’s mostly just the piquant scent of his soap. But he’s in there, too, underneath, his own unique smell, faint, familiar, comforting. I hold him tight. Then we’re upstairs and in bed. Not a single word has passed between us. He holds me, and my skin feels two sizes too small, and I don’t know what to do about it. He’s in me, and yet I feel empty. All I want is to lose myself in him, in the moment. In the memory of moments like this, better moments from better times. I want to forget everything — my anger at the world, this feeling of helplessness I’ve carried around inside of me for as long as I can remember — and only keep what it felt like the first time we made love.

When it’s over, he lies beside me. There’s no demarcation of before and after, no heavy breathing or sense of feeling drained. It’s all part of the same movement— pinging him, meeting him at the door, the sex. And now this. He combs my hair away from my face, breathing with me, his exhales flowing over me like water. I drown in my own suffocation.

“I love you so much, Jess,” he tells me. I know he means it. It has nothing to do with this. If anything, it’s the other way around.

“I know,” I whisper.

“I don’t ever want to lose you.”

“I know.”

“It terrifies me.”

I close my eyes. “You won’t lose me. I promise.”

He takes in a deep breath and holds it. The word has always held so much meaning for him. It’s an affirmation. But right now it has so many more meanings that I know he’s wondering exactly which one I intend. He lets the breath out. It caresses my cheek. My skin tingles. It’s the first thing I feel, really feel.

“A promise isn’t a guarantee,” he says. It sounds like a line from a song. I almost chuckle. He’s not one to quote lyrics.

“There are no guarantees,” I say, “not in this life, anyway.” As soon as it’s out, I regret even thinking it. I want to pull it back inside of me again.

“I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me, Jessie,” he says. “How much you mean to all of us.”

I pull my head away to look at him more clearly. He cups my cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb across my chin. He looks deep into my eyes. At first I just see myself reflected in his, my sun-bleached hair, my narrow face. Then I feel myself slipping into their muddy depths, losing myself in him.

“You don’t realize it, Jess, but you’re our rock.”

He laughs a little when he sees the look on my face. “What I mean to say is, you’re so well-grounded, so... so solid.”

“Me? You’re the one who’s going to become someone someday. You’ll go to college and make lots of money and—”

“And marry you.”

I sigh and turn my head away, but he gently guides it back. He needs me to look at him.

“You care about us all, Jess. Even people you barely know. That’s why I love you, why I’ll always love you.”

I shake my head. “Look at everything you do for Kyle. I could never have the patience for that.”

He tenses up against me. The line of his jaw hardens to high relief in the moonlight. His Adam’s apple bobs several times. He doesn’t meet my eyes for a moment. His brother has always been a difficult subject for him to talk about. He’s convinced that if his family just had a little money they could fix his problems. He might be right, but it’s a moot point. That’s why he pushes himself so hard, so he can go to college, so he can have money, make a better life. That’s why his parents push him, too.

“I love Kyle,” he whispers. “But he’s my brother. I’m supposed to.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s not enough!”

I place a finger on his lips, and his eyes widen. It’s usually the other way around, him placating me. He knows about my temper, always has. He knows that it’s one reason why I practice hapkido. It’s cheaper than counseling, anyway, and probably a hell of a lot more effective. He’s not used to me being the sensible one, which makes what’s he’s saying all the more ironic. And worrisome.

“I feel like I’ve barely kept things together lately,” he confesses. “If it wasn’t for you, I probably would’ve given up a long time ago.”

“Don’t say that, Kel.”

“It’s true. I mean, we’re all graduating this year and you’re so sure of yourself, going to work for ArcWare—”

“What other choice do I have?” I say, bitterly.

“You’re smart. You can do anything you want.”

“With my grades? No way we could afford college. Not sure I’d want to anyway.”

“Your grades don’t reflect what you’re capable of. You’re not stuck. There’s more out there for you than just Arc.”

“Arc owns everything. And they serve the people.” I say sarcastically. “That’s not me being sure of anything, Kel. That’s me facing the harsh reality. College isn’t for me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about it being for me, either.”

“I know you don’t mean that. If anyone can do it, you can. Certainly not Reggie.”

Kelly laughs and shakes his head. “Reggie. I look at him and, I’m sorry, but all I see is a little kid walking around in a man’s skin. He wants everyone to like him, to accept him. He wants to be the one in charge, but he’s too scared of actually taking responsibility. You’re not. You don’t care about power or leadership or responsibility. That’s why we follow you. You do what you think is right. You’re fearless.”

“I’m not fearless, Kel. I’m lost and wandering. No one should follow me.”

“No, you’re not. You know exactly what’s right and wrong. You know your destiny, even if you haven’t realized it yet.”

I shake my head.

“The way you dealt with everything today...”

“I’d rather not talk about that. I don’t even want to think about it. Not right now.”

“Ash is a lot like Reg,” he continues. “I thought for sure she was going to crumble to pieces. Literally. And she nearly did a couple times. She wants so bad to be grown up, and yet she runs away from it like it’s a death sentence. She’s actually got a lot of growing up to do.”

“Growing up’s overrated.”

And growing old is a death sentence.

He nods and gently rubs my lips with his thumb, sending waves of sensation rippling through my body. Desire for him overwhelms me. I can’t believe just an hour ago I was so tired that all I wanted to do was just pass out, so brittle with emotion I thought I’d crumble to pieces. I can’t believe just a few hours before we were fighting for our very lives.

Jake’s face floats before me, a ghost in the darkness. I wonder if Kelly sees him, too. I wonder if he haunts him like he haunts me.

“And then there’s Micah.” Kelly sighs. “I mean, no one can deny he’s got it going on. But what exactly it is he’s got, I haven’t a clue. If you know, please tell me.”

Another shake of the head.

“He actually scares me sometimes,” he confesses. “He’s so damn smart and capable that I often wonder what the hell he’s doing with his life, sitting in a dark, dank basement playing video games. Getting high and drunk. Hacking government computers, or at least trying to. He’s self-destructive. I spend half the time worried he’ll end up dragging us all down with him, the other half wishing I could just tap into whatever mojo he’s got. But this path he’s on, it’s self-destructive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets conscripted by the time he’s forty. Probably a lot sooner.”

As soon as he’d said the part about being scared of Micah, I’d nodded. I didn’t think anyone else felt the same way about him as I do.

“But you,” Kelly says, “you’re there in the midst of all this chaos, a pocket of stability. Like you’re the only thing that’s real and the rest of us are holograms. You hold it all together. You hold us together, keep us honest. Me with a path I never chose. Ash and Reg without a path at all. And Micah on his own pathway straight to hell. You give us all a sense of clarity, I think, a sense of perspective and purpose. Just by staying your own course, you never let the rest of us pull you off it.”

“I’m stubborn. That’s what you mean.”

“No, you know what I mean. You’re our nucleus. We all rely on you to stay in orbit.”

“Enough with the clichés.”

He chuckles.

“Where’s all this coming from?”

“I just wanted you to know. It’s why I did what I did in LI. For you.”

I turn away from him. Not now, I silently beg. Please, not now. I don’t want to go there.

“You’re why I do what I do every day. And why I’ll continue doing it, so I won’t lose the people I love. I’d rather die first.”

“You won’t lose me.”

“I know.” He chuckles quietly. “I know because you promised.”

We make love again. This time it’s awkward and hesitant and perfect. Maybe that’s what matters in the end, accepting that it doesn’t always have to be flawless to be right. Maybe that’s how he knows for sure, because he accepts me with all my imperfections.

Afterward, when our hearts have once more settled back into their comfortable, quiet rhythms, only then am I able to finally yield to exhaustion.

“I love you, Jessica Anne Daniels,” I hear him whisper into my ear, even as the welcome darkness of sleep flows over me. “If I were to lose you, it would kill me. That’s why I said no. It’s also why I have to let you go.”

Yes, I think. That’s why you have to let me go.

Somewhere in my dreamland, I tell him Jake needs me, too. He needs all of us. But my lips are anaesthetized by sleep. He keeps talking, and his words and my dreams melt into each other. So it’s not until the next morning, when this peace is shattered by Ashley’s frantic banging on my door, that I realize just how wrong I was.

Chapter 3

“He’s gone,” she says.

“Jake’s dead? How do you know?”

She pulls me outside, wary of anyone who might be home to overhear us. “Kelly,” she whispers. “He took Jake’s van. He’s gone back to Long Island. Alone.”

She sounds frantic. And yet I sense that underneath this façade, she’s actually relieved. She wants this to be true, because it gets her off the hook.

But I don’t believe it.

“It can’t be,” I sputter. My mind’s running in a hundred different directions at a million miles an hour. He wouldn’t go, not like this. “You’re wrong.”

“You must’ve said something to him last night to change his mind.”

“Last night?” I blink, confused that she would know he spent it with me. “What do you mean?”

“On the way home,” she says.

“I didn’t say anything! Kelly wouldn’t do something like this. He told me— He said he was going to let me go. That’s what he said.”

But even as the words leave my mouth, I know that’s not what he meant. He was releasing me. And he was doing it by going back to LI himself.

“Let you?” she spits. And suddenly the old Ash is back, defiant and indignant, fiercely self-reliant, champion of feminism, yet hopelessly dependent on men like Reggie to constantly reaffirm her worth. “Since when do you need his permission?”

“I don’t, damn it!” I rub my face, willing the blood to flow again. I feel frozen. “Son of a bitch,” I mutter. “I’m going to kill him!”

“You? Right! You have a hard time killing bugs.”

“I’m serious! I have to stop him. When did he leave?”

“It’s too late.”

“It’s not too late!”

“Jessie, stop!”

“I won’t stop!” I slam my fist into the screen door. Somewhere, in the back of the house, I hear a chair squeak. I sense Grandpa leaning forward at his desk, tilting his head and listening. Fine, I think. Let him hear. I don’t care!

Ashley glances nervously through the window into the house. “You’re not alone?”

“It’s just Grandpa.”

“Come on,” she says, and tries to pull me down the steps. I start to follow her before remembering I’m still in my robe.

I bring her upstairs and into my bedroom. She sits down and pats the bed next to her. I’m too anxious. I need to stop Kelly. I need to know this isn’t just wishful thinking on her part.

“How do you know he’s gone?” I ask her. “Did you actually talk with him?”

“I stopped by his house on my way over this morning. He wasn’t there, and his mother asked if I knew whose van was he driving. What could I say? I said it was a friend’s he was helping out. I think she knew something was up. She was acting all nosy and kept asking me questions. She asked about you, whether you knew anything. I got away as soon as I could and pinged Micah, but he wasn’t answering, either. Do you think they went together?”

“I’m not even convinced Kelly did. It’s not like him to do something this stupid!”

“I know! Yesterday, he was like no way.”

“What about Reggie?” I ask, although I doubt Kelly would’ve confided in him, much less ask him to go, too.

“He pinged when I was talking to Mrs Corben. Kelly pinged him from the road and told him to keep an eye on you, so you wouldn’t... you know.”

“Goddamn it. He actually told Reggie he was going back for Jake?”

“I don’t think so, not in so many words anyway. He did say he’d be back sometime this afternoon.”

“So, he might’ve just been dropping the van back off at Eppy’s.”

“Then why would he tell Reggie it was all going to be alright soon, and to just sit tight?”

I’m still skeptical. Why would Kelly entrust Reggie to keep me from going, especially since he didn’t trust Reggie to do much else?

“Reggie should’ve pinged me immediately!” I snarl.

“He would’ve if he could’ve.”

“Screw that! We’re all friends. We don’t keep secrets like that from each other.”

“No, he couldn’t because of your Link.”

I wince. Without my Link, I’m cut off from the world.

“The house Link,” I say, even though I know he’d avoid any possibility of getting my grandfather on the connection. “Or he could’ve come right over here and told me himself!”

Ash gives me that look. I can see it in her eyes, the acknowledgment that Reggie’s a coward at heart. He avoided coming to my house for the same reason he avoided pinging the house Link.

But a part of me suspects the true reason he said nothing was because he would’ve done the same calculation Ashley did. As long as Kelly is willing to take all the risk himself, then so much the better for the rest of us. At least Ash had the guts to face me in person.

“You can’t blame Kelly,” she says. “He’s only trying to take care of the people he cares for.”

This just makes me even angrier. “The people he cares for? He doesn’t care about Jake any more than you or Reggie do.”

“I care for Jake! I hate that we left him behind.”

“You were the first person to turn your back on him. Down there in the tunnel!”

She turns away in shame.

I collapse onto the edge of the bed next to her and thrust my knuckles against my eye sockets. I don’t want to believe what’s happening. Tiny little micro supernovas explode behind my eyelids. I start imagining what would happen if I pressed as hard as I could, piercing my skull. What would it feel like? Would it hurt? Would I die?

“Jessie?”

I drop my hands and the white stars in my vision slowly spiral away.

“Give me your Link.”

“He won’t take your ping. Reggie already tried and—”

“Give it to me.”

As I scroll through her contacts list, I see Kwanjangnim Rupert’s face streak by again. I’m dying to know why he’s there. How does she know him? But I can’t think about that right now. I ping Kelly, but I get sent straight to his messaging script. I tell him to ping me back as soon as he gets the chance.

On a whim, I try pinging my own Link. I immediately get the following message:

<< CLIENT DOES NOT EXIST ON THIS STREAM >>

I show Ash the message. She shrugs and says, “Your Link’s on the other side of the EM barrier, outside the Stream. At least we know they won’t be able to trace it there.”

“Exactly.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because, I didn’t get this message when I tried Kelly. He hasn’t left yet. If we leave now, maybe we can catch up with him before he does.”

She pulls away from me. I can see the alarm in her eyes. This isn’t what she’d expected me to do. Maybe she figured I’d collapse into a quivering ball of jelly. Or that maybe I’d get really angry, but that I’d also have to accept I couldn’t stop him. Or maybe she’d thought I’d be relieved, like her and Reggie.

She never expected me to take action.

“Jess, it’s too late.”

“You need to stop thinking about yourself,” I hiss. I grab some underwear and fresh clothes out of my drawer. “Maybe start thinking about how scared Jake is.”

I hear Mom’s voice downstairs. She’s talking to someone. Another disposable overnight boyfriend, no doubt. But when there’s no response, I realize she must be on her Link. I dismiss her from my mind. A moment later she’s knocking at my door and saying that there’s a ping for me on the house Link and that I need to take it.

I lock eyes with Ash. Could it be Kelly?

I pull the door open. She sees Ashley sitting on my bed and mumbles a quick hello before handing me the Link and slipping away. I guess I should be happy that she still has enough self-respect to be aware of how terrible she must look to my friends.

“Kel?” I say, without first checking the identification code.

“Put it on speaker,” Ashley urges.

“This is a message for... Jessica... Anne... Daniels,” a mechanical recording states. “Is this... Jessica... Anne... Daniels? To confirm, reply ‘Yes.’ If not—”

“Yes.”

There’s a moment of silence, then the recording asks me to verify my home address, which I do.

“This is Connecticut Citizen Registration. You have filed a missing personal Link communication device report. An appointment to interview you and to formalize your application process for a replacement has been set for nine-thirty this morning in our main office in Hartford. You may take the free transit bus, number seventeen, departing from your town’s administration hub at seven forty-five. You should expect to be with us until approximately three o’clock in the afternoon. If you are identified as being in need of a latent individualized neural connection, you will be required to sign a surgical release. If you are a minor under sixteen, a parent or legal guardian must accompany you. You will be required to remain for the implantation procedure and follow-up observation for twenty-four hours. This appointment cannot be rescheduled. Reply ‘Repeat,’ if you’d like this information repeated.”

I disconnect without saying a word. My head is buzzing, and I’ve already forgotten the relevant details. A moment later, the house Link pings, and there they are anyway: address and time, room number, penalties for missing the appointment and falsifying information. And now I’m furious— at the government for doing this to me at the worst possible moment, at myself for losing my Link. And at Kelly.

Anger explodes inside of me until it feels like a living thing trying to claw its way out. Ash says nothing until I’ve finished swearing up a blue streak and throwing stuff around my room.

“Ugh,” she says, as if she thinks her fake sympathy helps. “The CR office in Hartford is the worst. It’s in that big, ugly, stupid looking skyscraper. The inside is absolutely dreadful.”

“Thanks,” I manage to mutter through clenched teeth. “That makes me feel so much better.”

“Yeah, a whole day of sitting in a hot, stuffy Citizen Registration office answering the same hundred questions being asked ten different ways.”

“Still not helping, Ash.”

“But why did you report it? You should’ve waited. Kelly and Jake might still bring it back.”

“I didn’t!”

“Then how’d they know?”

“It was Kelly! He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be able to stop him! He probably figured I’d be on my way to Hartford before any of you got to me this morning.” I clench my fists in rage. I want so badly to scream right now. “Sonofabitch!”

Ashley chews on this for a moment. “He really didn’t want you to go.”

“Goddamn it. I’m so fucking mad right now! He has no right to tell me what I can and can’t do, especially when he goes off and does it himself!” I’m stomping the floor from one end of the room to the other, too angry to care what anyone downstairs might think. It’s exactly what my brother does when he gets agitated, and it always used to aggravate me.

Ash pings Reggie and tells him the latest. She has the volume turned down and is talking low and close into the Link. I can barely hear her whispers. I can’t hear Reggie’s replies. From what I gather as I stalk the confines of my room, he doesn’t sound too pleased with any of it, either.

She disconnects. “He says you have to go and get your replacement Link.”

“Like I need another man to tell me what to do! Screw Citizen Registration!”

“No, you can’t. You’ll get in worse trouble. We all will.”

“So this is about saving your own skin?”

“No, Jess. But it won’t help making things worse. We’ll figure out what to do with Kelly.”

“And Jake. Kelly and Jake.”

“Right.” She checks the time. “You better hurry if you’re going to catch the transit.”

“No. I’m not going. I have to stop Kelly.”

“Jess, we’re already in a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t care!”

“Okay, look. I promise. We’ll drive straight down. Reggie’ll drive. I’ll ping him back right now. I swear it, Jess. We’ll try to stop him.”

I know she’s right about my appointment. If I blow off the interview, things will be a lot worse a lot sooner for all of us. So I quickly, resentfully, get dressed. My dirty clothes from yesterday stink of sweat and river water. I know I smell like that, too, but I don’t have time to wash up. Anyway, where I’m going, no one will care.

Ash walks with me out of the room and down the hall, pinging Reg a message. I dump the dirty clothes into the hamper, and we head downstairs.

“You’re not going to fix your hair?” she asks.

I notice for the first time how hers is perfectly brushed, shampooed and shiny bright. Just like always.

“At least brush it. You’ve got this—”

“Screw it. I don’t care.”

I’ve still got the house Link, so I scroll through the menu until I find the account page. I thumb the hotlink for Citizen Registration and wait for the automated voice to walk me through the options. I know the recording said the appointment couldn’t be rescheduled, but it’s worth a try.

No such luck.

I grab a water pouch and head for the door. Ash trails after me. She says she’ll walk as far as the transit stop, but I remind her of the promise she made. “You have to hurry.”

“Reggie’s on his way.”

Before I turn to go downtown, I tell her one last thing: “If you see Micah, remind him to erase our implant codes from the script.”

Ash frowns, then nods her understanding. If there’s an investigation into my missing Link, they might want to check their Links, too.

“We’ll stop him,” she reiterates.

“You better,” I say. But something tells me they won’t.

Chapter 4

I arrive at the Citizen Registration offices over on Fifth Avenue in downtown Hartford a few minutes before the building opens for business, so I sit in the dwindling shade beneath a struggling maple tree and try to stay cool. I watch as the people who work there pass through the doors beneath the stone archway fronting Carcher Plaza. The fountain is dry, and a sign says it’s under repair, but it’s been like that since at least the last time I was here, five years ago.

The workers thread their way through the security screening area in the glassed-in lobby, then disappear into the gloom deeper inside.

Ashley was right about the building being about as big and ugly as you can find anywhere in Hartford. It’s actually three separate and architecturally distinct structures stitched together by metal and concrete. Glass covers it all, form-fit like skin stretched tight over tendons. The central tower, directly in front of me, is a monolithic structure of yellow-gray stone with an uninspired and unchanging grid of small windows extending from the second story all to the way to the top. The placard next to me says the building was named in honor of Edwin Carcher, a real estate developer from around the turn of the century. The picture of him both amuses and disgusts me, with his plastic-looking hair and artificial tan. Two young, blonde, artificially enhanced beauties flank him. The building in the photo dazzles. It’s not the real thing, but a massive artist’s rendition on a billboard. The actual building is a perfect replica, yet it looks run down and neglected in real life. Just like everything else these days.

The story that goes along with the picture says Carcher made billions selling coastal property at the start of the millennium. He got out of the market just before the first floods hit nearly thirty years ago. But then, after the waters receded, he reentered the market and bought all the property back at rock bottom prices. He redeveloped it and sold it to the next generation of buyers at a steep markup. Those prices kept rising for a while, so everyone was happy. Happy, that is, until the earthquake hit Europe and sent a tsunami barreling across the Atlantic, which swamped everything out again. This time, half of the decimated areas remained underwater for good.

The writer of the story seemed to think that Edwin Carcher was some sort of real estate prophet with the divine gift of foresight. That he was able to get into and out of the market so perfectly, he must’ve known what was coming. But anyone with any common sense would’ve known what he did. He didn’t know when the disasters would strike, but he could guess. He was just very savvy. He saw the signs. Anyone should’ve been able to, if they’d just looked.

Of course, it’s easy to make such judgments now, with the gift of hindsight. It was easier back then for a lot of folks to just deny the risks inherent in rising sea levels.

In the few minutes before the Carcher Building opens to the public, a large crowd quickly gathers beneath the archway to get inside. They appear out of nowhere, off transits from other parts of the state, out of private vehicles. It’s unsettlingly reminiscent of the way the zombies abruptly appeared on LI.

When I think this, nervousness thrums through my body. It feels strange to be standing here with this secret knowledge, to know where I was less than twenty-four hours before. To have seen what I saw, experienced what happened. Nobody else here has any clue what it’s like. They’re all wandering around with blinders on, clueless, in denial. Maybe the people who were actually there on the island during the outbreak might know, but they’ve all fled to other parts of the country. Or to other countries altogether. The rest died or are undead.

At long last, the doors finally open. Like cattle to the slaughterhouse, we squeeze through the bottleneck into the lobby. Then there’s the next holdup of the security checkpoint. There’s only the one station, and we all have to pass through it. When I finally get to the front, the guard scans my implant and asks for my Link.

“I’m here to report it missing.”

Several people glance over at me, looks of surprise and concern on their faces. Nobody loses a Link these days. It’s too much of a hassle to get a new one. Plus, it’s hard to imagine life without it. Our Links connect us to the world, or at least the parts of it the government decides are acceptable. Without the Streams, doing anything, getting anywhere, is so much harder. Not to mention, losing a Link places you under intense scrutiny for weeks afterward, as I should expect will happen.

The guard leers at me before shaking his head, as if I’ve personally offended him. “Lost or stolen?” he drawls.

I choose an answer that hints at both and neither at the same time. “I was at the park and it was in my pocket. It might’ve fallen out. When I went back to find it, it was gone.”

“No one would pick up someone else’s Link,” a little old woman standing behind me declares. She looks like she could be eighty, but I know that’s not possible. Everyone gets conscripted at sixty-five. Well, everyone except those with waivers, like Grandpa. I wonder who she is that she might have gotten one. By her attitude, I think she must be one of those rich snooty types. But then again, rich folks don’t usually find themselves rubbing elbows with the common folk while waiting in line at Citizen Registration.

“Did you try sending a trace ping, honey?” she asks, and suddenly she’s like everyone’s grandmother. “That’s how I always find mine, when I can’t remember where I put it.”

“Yes. But it wasn’t traceable.”

“Oh. Oh dear, then. That doesn’t sound right.”

“Sixth floor,” the guard impatiently tells me. “Room eighteen. Off the elevator and to the right. Now move along.” He gives me a sour look as I pass through the screener. It beeps once, signifying that it has detected my implant and registered it. Behind me, I hear the guard ask the old woman what she’s here for.

“To get my implant,” she answers.

“Age?”

“Sixty-five next week.”

“Cutting it close, aren’t you, mother?”

I don’t hear her reply, but I do hear him ask for her Link. “Twenty-third floor,” he says. “And, mother? Thank you for your service.” The scanner makes a different sound than it had with me, denoting her lack of implant.

I hang back so I can ride the elevator up with her, but she cuts into the restroom. I don’t know who’s in worse shape, she or I. She’s got about a week to live. As for me, depending on what happens with Kelly and Jake, it’s possible I could have even less than that. Unlikely, I hope, but possible.

I wait for the elevator and no one gives me a second look until I push the button for the sixth floor. Then they all seem to pull away from me a little bit, as if whatever disease I’ve caught to be sent to that floor might be contagious. Maybe it’s instinctive, but it makes me worry what they might know.

When the doors open for my floor, I step stiffly forward. The elevator crowd separates for me, letting me pass through them without making physical contact. I find myself dumped out onto a little lobby area, conscious of all the stares on my back. No one else follows me out. It’s just me. The doors close with a whoosh and the elevator moves on.

The hallway is empty, undecorated, the carpet stiff and in some nondescript shade of gray that may not have started out this way. The overhead lights flicker to full power. They’re so bright that the carpet takes on a bluish tint. The walls are painted a warm cream color, probably to offset the glare. There’s only one other door in the entire hallway, so it’s not like I have to think about where to go, although it makes me wonder why it even needs a number, especially one in the teens.

As I step toward it, I notice the small, black, inverted dome of a security camera in the corner of the ceiling. I wonder who might be watching me.

It’s very quiet. Nothing moves. Even the air feels stuck in place. It carries neither sound, nor scent.

The door is shut. It’s just a plain metal slab, painted cobalt blue and lacking windows. A large white plastic 6-18 is glued to the outside. At some point, someone had gone over it with a roller while repainting the door. Afterward, they’d taken some sort of scraping tool and uncovered the numbers again.

I have no further instructions to follow, and none are printed anywhere outside the room. There’s no button to push, no intercom to speak into. I consider knocking. Instead, I try the doorknob. It turns.

The room is initially dark, but a light clicks on. It’s small, barely eight feet on a side. The walls are as bare as the ones in the hallway. They’re dingy. There are no other doors, no windows. All the room holds is a single desk with a retractable screen set in the middle of it and a chair. I move to see the screen better and it lights up, revealing only the familiar ArcWare logo floating in a sea of blue. Their full catchphrase scrolls underneath: We serve the people. People serve the future.

“Have a seat, please.”

The genderless voice comes out of some hidden speaker somewhere, neither loud, nor soft. A chime sounds, presumably confirmation of my identity by some other hidden scanning device.

“Jessica... Anne... Daniels... The interview will proceed momentarily.”

I sit at the desk and stare at the screen. The screen stares back.

There’s a beep. Then, “You are here for a personal Link communications device loss and replacement. Please provide appointment code.”

I recite the code I was given this morning: “Gamma four alpha dash alpha thirteen.”

I wait. Nothing happens for a moment. Then:

“Please state your full name for the record.”

“But you already—”

“Incorrect response. Please state your full name for the record.”

I say it. The voice begins asking me for my vital statistics— age, date of birth, parents, L.I.N.C. implant number. Then it stops again.

“This is your second replacement for a lost personal Link communications device.”

I don’t say anything. I’m not sure if it’s a question or a statement.

My first Link was stolen when I was thirteen. I’d barely had it a month by then. Eric had just been discharged from the Marines and wanted to take me to Seattle. He didn’t explain why until later, but I sort of guessed he wanted to get us as far away from the East Coast as he could, as far away from the undead as the government would allow him while remaining in the country.

Away from the outbreaks.

The South was out of the question, since we were, and have been, in a state of conflict with the SSC since the Twelve Days War. The Midwest has become one enormous dustbowl. Everyone said Seattle was still a nice place to live, a lot like it had been back before Reanimation was invented. Before global warming and the Wastes.

But when we got there, it became obvious very quickly that Seattle wasn’t going to be any better than New York or DC. The rising oceans had already wiped out significant portions of the city, and a lot that remained was rapidly decaying from neglect as well. Soon, it would be more than half wasteland. It certainly didn’t help that it was dreary and the rain nearly incessant.

A few days was all it took to convince Eric that we would be just as bad off moving there as we would be staying in Greenwich. At least here, we had the infrastructure in place from having previously survived an outbreak.

He confessed this to me at dinner the night we were scheduled to come back, thinking I’d be upset that we weren’t relocating. In truth, I would’ve been upset if we had stayed. When we got back to the hotel, I realized I didn’t have my Link. I thought I’d been careless and had left it on the table at the restaurant. Well, we obviously couldn’t leave Seattle without it.

We went straight to the police that night and reported it missing. The process to get a new permanent one at Olympia Citizen Registration was much more streamlined back then. Even so, it still took three days, despite the fact that we reported the loss almost immediately and the police were able to track it within an hour.

They caught the offender, who admitted to picking it out of my pocket as we stood in line at the restaurant. His public defender claimed he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from the War, but the judge gave him two months of LSC anyway, which was as much as they could. He’d already racked up so much time from previous offenses that it put him at his life expectancy. He was immediately executed and resurrected, his implant activated, and his LSC fate decided. We were formally invited to watch the process, although we weren’t allowed to refuse. It was a requirement of the sentencing, to discourage us from emulating his crimes.

“Given his relative youth,” the judge confided in us just before the lethal injection was given, “I’m recommending he be sent to the Olympia Power Plant. They had another near meltdown last week, and the mop-up is decimating their CU crew.”

We weren’t really supposed to be told any of this, but the judge had learned that Eric had served in the Omegaman Corps.

After we were released, Eric took me straight back to the hotel, where we packed up and came straight home. We got out just before the outbreak there started. We still don’t know what caused it.

“Your Link cannot be located in the Stream,” the mechanical voice says, somehow managing to sound as offended as the security guard downstairs.

“I don’t know what happened to it,” I say to the room, hoping they don’t have biometric capabilities. They’d know in a rapid heartbeat that I’m lying. I’m starting to sweat, and my throat is dry. “Whoever stole it must’ve destroyed it.”

“Destruction of a personal Link communication device is a class seven misdemeanor,” the voice informs me.

“I don’t know what that means.” Am I being accused of destroying it myself?

“Willful destruction of a personal Link communication device requires a replacement fee of three hundred and forty-six dollars, which will be levied in the next cycle. If you cannot pay this amount within ninety days of receiving notice, three hundred and forty-six hours will be added to your Life Service Commitment.”

One hour for every dollar. I quickly do the math: almost fifteen days.

I consider not telling Eric. Fifteen days wouldn’t normally be such a big deal, except who knows how much more might be added to it if they ever find out what we did. Eric will be unhappy about it, of course, but he’ll pay.

“The interrogation will proceed shortly. Please direct your attention to the screen in front of you. You are allowed only one break every three hours, during which time you are not permitted to leave this room.”

Not leave? What if I have to pee?

“You must complete the entire examination, answering each question as thoroughly as you are able to in the allotted time. Failure to do so will add hours to your LSC. This interrogation will take approximately six hours and twelve minutes, after which you will be free to return to your home. If the examination requirements are satisfied, you will be assigned a temporary Link upon departure. This device will provide you access only to the Media and Government Streams. You must return here in seven days to exchange it for your permanent replacement Link device and for recoding of your L.I.N.C identification.”

“How do I—”

“The examination begins now.”

Chapter 5

I still feel naked, even with the temporary replacement Link they’ve given me. Naked and unconnected.

And completely wiped out.

The examination was grueling. I don’t know if it was a whole thousand questions like everyone says it is, but it sure felt like it was. The questions were both on-screen as well as verbal, asked by that faceless, nameless, sexless voice. The same questions over and over again. Backwards and forwards, twisted around, reworded, all trying to catch me in an inconsistency.

I can only assume I didn’t contradict myself. I don’t think I triggered any warnings. All I got at the end was, “This interview is now concluded. You may pick up your temporary Link device in the lobby. Your code is tau one sigma. You have five minutes to exit the building. Loitering is not permitted.”

I need to pee badly, but I don’t stop. I get to the lobby and tell the clerk my code. She hands over the Link and scans my implant. “Return in a week for your permanent device,” she says. She sounds tired. Her eyes don’t even seem to focus on me, but rather at some invisible object floating somewhere over my left shoulder. I doubt she’d even be able to describe me the moment I’ve walked out the door.

The first thing I do after hopping onto the bus back to Greenwich is try to ping Ash with the new Link, but it’s just as I’d been told. The interpersonal communication script is disabled. I can’t send or receive messages. I can only connect to two Streams: Media and Government.

I flip to Media. Nobody ever connects to Government.

The Survivalist live feed of The Game is playing. It’s supposedly coming straight out of Gameland unfiltered, but everyone knows the footage is both edited and doctored to make it more exciting. All in the name of entertainment and profit, I guess. For example, there have been times when the video shows rain when there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and sunshine when it’s pouring down. You’d think Arc Entertainment would do a better job of syncing something as obvious as the weather.

Despite the show’s popularity, I’m not a big fan. Why would I want to sit in front of a screen passively watching someone else play a game when I could be the one at the controls? Even if the games we can actually afford are just poorly rendered versions with limited strategic possibilities, and not real-time interactive proxies with endless outcomes, at least I’ve got something personally invested in them. With Survivalist, it’s all passive, vicarious, so I honestly couldn’t care less.

The bus is full for the hour-long ride back to Greenwich, and the empty seat next to me is immediately filled by a young woman who looks to be in her mid-twenties. She tells me her name, and I promptly forget it.

“Ooh,” she says, glancing over my shoulder. “Is that Survivalist? I’m hopelessly addicted to that show, but I promised myself I wouldn’t watch it at all this week. If I can make it through to Friday, then I’ll give myself a reward.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I get hooked into it so easily that I forget the time and the next thing I know I’ve burned dinner. Or it’s way past my bedtime. Or I’m late for work. My boss has already put me on notice twice. He likes me, though.” She bats her eyelashes at me. “So I doubt he’ll fire me.”

I lower the Link and give her a half-smile. “I was just browsing anyway.” But she looks disappointed that I won’t let her cheat on her video diet. She turns away, huffing slightly.

Incredible. She thinks watching Survivalist on someone else’s Link doesn’t count?

I shove the device into my pocket and lean my head against the window and pretend to fall asleep. But the roads are too bumpy and the glass rattles against the frame. The constant banging is bruising my forehead, so I sit up and stare at the back of the man’s head in the seat directly in front of me. He has a pair of moles on his neck, just to the right of his implant scar. They’re shaped like an exclamation mark, as if proud of finding themselves in such proximity to it.

My thoughts drift and I think about Kelly. I wonder if they managed to stop him. I doubt it. Ash didn’t seem all that eager, despite her promise. I pray he’s safe. I hope if he did go, he took Micah with him, and that they’re on their way back with Jake.

“I’ve been watching that new Player,” the woman beside me says. “Have you seen him? Oh, my god, talk about a hunk. I bet he was a total hottie when he was still alive.”

I look over at her in dismay and realize my original assessment of her age was too generous. She’s not in her mid-twenties. More like early twenties, if that. Maybe even fresh out of high school.

“Have you seen him?” She’s very expressive, which makes me think of Reggie and his eyebrows.

“No.”

I’ve heard of people getting attached to Players in The Game, but never like that. It’s kind of gross. But maybe that’s the latest thing. People get really obsessed with the show. They forget that the Players are dead real people and not made-up characters. They’re reanimated and wired to be remotely controlled.

It’s morbid. I can’t help but wonder, what does it take to turn that part of your mind off to get to where she is?

“He just started last week and already people are saying he’s going to outlast any Player that ever played The Game before.” She leans into me and gushes confidentially, “It’s almost supernatural. He’s already taken out over forty other Players.” She snaps her fingers. “Like that.”

“That’s... a lot,” I say. Forty in a week is almost unheard of. I’m sure she’s exaggerating.

“Yup. They say when he was alive, he was one of the world’s best Operators himself. It’s like he can still remember all the ins and outs of Gameland, all the little tricks they learn. Like, he’s able to take over controlling himself.”

“That’s not possible,” I say, sniffing. “It’s just an urban legend. There’s no brain activity.”

She gives me a pained look, as if I’ve just insulted her. A couple people sitting close by look over at me. I feel my face grow hot.

“I mean, it’s probably just that he died young and was physically fit,” I say. “And because he’s freshly conscripted, his muscles’ll be more limber. Nerves, too, so quicker response time. CUs are basically just machines, like robots. And every machine only functions as well as their parts have been maintained.”

Her face pinches. I can sense her wishing she’d picked another seat to sit in, and it makes me happy.

“In fact,” I continue, now wanting to end this discussion once and for all, “if it weren’t for his implant, that Player would be going around looking for people to eat instead of acting out what their Operators make them do in The Game. I don’t think that’s particularly hot.”

“You sure know how to take the fun out of it,” she gripes. “It’s just make-believe, a game.”

“With real dead people in it.”

“But that’s what makes it so entertaining, don’t you see, when you know they were once alive? It’s just extra nice when they’re actually easy to look at, too. I mean, who really wants to cheer on some old, wrinkled, half-decayed and falling apart zombie all the time?”

Someone across the aisle nods in agreement. The young woman leans in closer to me and whispers. “There’s a rumor at work he was a Volunteer.”

She means a person who voluntarily sacrifices himself to get into The Game in exchange for money. It’s illegal, of course, but I can’t recall ever hearing about anyone actually getting busted for it. The rich always have ways to skirt the laws. They believe that when the poor make sacrifices for financial gain it only improves society, so by creating such opportunities, they’re doing their part to benefit society as well. Of course the poor, having been fed this lie since forever, believe it.

But she raises an interesting point. I now I find myself wondering how much of the buy-in and the proceeds from The Game will actually make it to the Player’s family. Even a small percentage would seem like a fortune to some families, like mine. But, then again, if he was such a good Operator, as she says he was, then he’d already be well off. Why would someone with enough money to pay for an invite into The Game sacrifice his life like that?

Ego.

“I bet he really did volunteer,” she whispers, “just for the fun of it. For the reputation. And I bet his Operator paid at least thirty million for him.” She leans away again and resumes speaking in a normal tone of voice. “But don’t take my word for it. You should check him out yourself. I think he’s scheduled to Stream this afternoon.”

I nod slowly, but only because I don’t know what else to do. It’s disturbing to know that there are people out in the world like her, people romanticizing violence and sexualizing the undead. She otherwise seems completely normal.

After a few minutes of blissful silence, she turns to me again. “I really hate this ride sometimes. It gets so depressing after a while. Do you commute, too? I haven’t seen you before.”

I shake my head, grateful for the change in subject. I’d prefer to be left alone, but if that’s not going to happen, then at least banal small talk is much better than fawning over some dead guy. “I just had to go into the capital for... to do something.” I quickly follow this by turning the focus back on her, asking her what she does in the city.

“I live in New York, but work in Hartford. Two hours one way, every day, six days a week. Hate it.” She brightens up. “But it’s totally worth it. I love my job.”

“And that is?”

She blushes. “Well, not my actual job job, which is a recording clerk at one of ArcWare’s satellite offices. I’m talking about my other job. I’m an actress. Well, okay, I’m trying to be an actress. ArcWare’s just my foot into the door of Arc Entertainment. And it seems to be working. I have an audition next week!” she squeals, and throws her hands up excitedly. I hate when people do that. “My boss arranged it.”

Sure he did, I think. I can imagine how he expected her to repay him.

“And what do you do?” she asks.

Me? Oh, nothing, actually. Just break into Forbidden Zones as a hobby. Kill real zombies.

“I’m still in school.”

“High school? Seriously? Girl, you look like you’re too old for that business. I thought you were, like, twenty or something. Like, you and I could be twinsies or something. Friends, you know? Hell, we could still be friends anyway.”

I’m pretty sure we never will.

“My name’s Tanya,” she says, offering her hand. “I told you that already, didn’t I? I didn’t catch your name.”

“It’s Jessica,” I reply. “Jessie.” I’m beginning to think this ride will never end.

“Jessica, aren’t you just the prettiest thing? You could be a model.” She gasps. “Or an actress! No, I’m serious. And I would know.”

The conversation, if you can call it that, since it’s mostly her rambling on, continues like this for another twenty minutes. Her persistence finally wears me down. She actually grows on me. There’s something endearing about her. She seems so carefree. I wonder if maybe I’m just too pessimistic for my own good.

I feel comfortable enough with her to ask if I can borrow her Link.

She gives me a strange look, so I explain that mine’s on the blink. “I think it needs an upgrade.” It’s the same excuse Micah told the guard at the checkpoint when it didn’t sync properly with his implant. Two days and a lifetime ago now. “The comms script doesn’t work anymore. And I can only connect to Media and Government. That’s actually why I went to Hartford today.”

The woman smiles and nods sympathetically. “Ugh, Government. So boring. They make us watch it at work. Like anyone with a choice would ever watch that Stream if they didn’t have to. It’s just a waste of bandwidth, if you ask me.” She hands over her Link.

“I had a defective device a few years ago,” she says, “back when I was still living with my parents. It kept sending me messages meant for someone else. I complained to Citizen Registration for weeks, but they kept telling me that the person whose messages I was getting didn’t actually exist.” She laughs. “Turns out he did, but he was conscripted. He’d died about a month earlier and was assigned to clean sewers. That’s how I found out he’d gotten stuck in a section of pipe directly underneath my parents’ house, and the communications got crossed in some kind of weird glitchy way. Took Public Works a while to get him out. I guess he was no worse for the wear. Anyway, the messages stopped after that, which is what matters.”

All I can do is stare at her.

She shudders and nods. “I know, right? So weird. I laugh about it now, but when I first found out about this dead person living under us the whole time, I practically freaked out. I even threatened my parents that I’d move out right then, but of course I couldn’t. I still had a few more months of school left.”

“That’s... quite the... story,” I say.

“Isn’t it, though?”

She watches me while I key in Kelly’s Link identification. I wait for it to connect. The screen goes blank, then returns with:

<< CLIENT DOES NOT EXIST ON THIS STREAM >>

My blood freezes. It’s as bad as I’d feared. They didn’t stop him. Kelly really did go, and he’s still there.

“Hey! That’s the exact same message I kept getting,” Tanya exclaims, “when I tried pinging that mysterious person’s ID back! I remember it now!” She snatches her Link back and bangs it against her palm. “I hope it isn’t happening again. Those new rules they put into place for getting a replacement are such a pain in the ass. I hate them. A whole day wasted answering stupid questions.”

I force an encouraging smile onto my face, but it feels weak and strained. “Actually, I think I just put in the wrong ID.”

She looks instantly relieved. “Oh, well that makes sense.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “For a moment I thought maybe there might be a CU stuck to the bottom of our bus.” She laughs again, louder.

I wince.

“You want to try again?”

I shake my head. “It’s just my boyfriend. He can wait till I get home.”

She nudges me like we’re old pals. “Good for you. He can wait. That’s the only way he’ll appreciate you. Make the poor bastard suffer for once.”

I cough uncomfortably and am relieved to see my stop coming up.

“Make sure you get your Link updated,” she tells me as I get up and squeeze past her. “Oh, and check out that Player on Survivalist. You’ll see what I mean!” She winks. “He’s totally hot.”

Chapter 6

After getting off the bus, I head straight over to Ash’s place. Her house is the closest one to downtown. But no one answers the door.

Micah’s place is next. I pray that when I get there, they’ll all be waiting for me. Jake’s van will be parked on the curb, and Kelly will be inside playing Zpocalypto, like nothing’s changed. The message I’d gotten when I tried to ping him really was a glitch.

There’s a car sitting in Micah’s driveway isn’t his, and it’s not the van either. I don’t recognize it. I assume it must belong to his parents.

I’ve actually never met Mr or Mrs Sandervol, despite having known Micah for more than a year now. They’re always out of town, whether on business or visiting family. I wouldn’t mind meeting them, just to see what they’re like. The way Micah talks about his father, you’d think he’s some kind of monster. But after the day I’ve had, the last thing I feel like doing is getting tangled up in the whole ‘meet my folks’ circus and them asking me about school and future plans and all that crap. I’m not up for acting normal right now, so I just hurry on past without stopping.

I really just want to know about Kel, so I head to his place next.

I see the police car when I’m still a block and a half away. Two officers are just coming out the front door of the Corben house and Kelly’s mom is standing there with her hands bunched up under her chin. She’s clearly upset, and the officers are making consoling gestures.

I duck behind a tree until the cops leave, then I take the next side street. I can feel the well of panic inside of me starting to overflow. Strange car at Micah’s, police at Kelly’s. Something bad has happened, and there’s only two possibilities. Either Kelly tried and failed to make it to LI and back, or they know what we did yesterday. My face grows numb, and I can’t catch my breath. I start to run, but do I really want to go home? I can’t ping Ash or any of the others, so I can’t find out what’s going on.

Eric’s the only one at the house, and he lays into me the moment I walk through the front door.

“Jessie!”

He gets up from the couch and tries to stop me. It’s exactly the opposite of what I need right now. I brush past him without saying anything and head up the stairs to my room. I just want to hide from the world.

“Where have you been all day? I’ve been trying— Jessie! What’s the matter with your Link? I tried pinging you all afternoon, but all I got was this strange mess— Hey, I’m talking to you!”

He chases after me and twists me around on the steps. I shake his hand off. I could flip him down to the landing without even breaking a sweat, but what good would that do? It would just make me feel like shit and humiliate him. It won’t make things right. It won’t fix all the things we’ve broken.

“Jessie, please. What happened to you today? Where were you?”

“Someone stole my Link,” I say. “Okay, Eric? Can I go now?”

“What? Again?” He exhales and shakes his head disapprovingly.

“I’m tired, Eric. I just spent the whole day in Hartford registering for a new one and answering their stupid questions. And then I had to share a seat on the transit with some crazy woman with a sick obsession with a zombie. But what would you know about that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I just want to go lie down.” I turn and start climbing the steps again. “Oh,” I add, without stopping, “we’ll be getting a bill for three hundred and forty-six dollars in the next cycle.”

Eric chokes on the amount. I take the opportunity to escape without further harassment.

But just seconds after I’ve shut my door, he’s pounding on it. “Jessie?”

“Don’t worry,” I shout out at him. “I’ll pay the stupid bill. I’ll figure out a way to get the money.”

“I— I don’t care about that, Jess. Just... Why didn’t you tell anyone here about your Link? Why did you just go off to the capitol without telling anyone where you were going? There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed, Eric, I’m tired. Now go away.” I flop onto my bed, wondering if it’s possible to sneak the house Link so I can talk to someone who might sympathize. Someone who knows what I’m going through.

“I would’ve taken the day off and driven you, you know. You didn’t have to take the transit.”

“And sit around waiting for me for six hours? It was fine.”

“Damn it, Jess, I didn’t know what had happened to you. I was worried. We all were. All Mom knew was that you got some sort of official ping this morning on the house Link. But then you just disappeared. And when we couldn’t get a hold of you, I back-traced the ping to the capital. I had no idea what they wanted with you.”

“You traced the ping? Are you crazy?”

He sighs. “Mom was worried you’d gotten into some kind of trouble or something. She had no way of reaching you. She tried Kelly, of course. But she said she couldn’t reach him, either. Jessie, she was frantic.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“She was.” He sounds hurt, like it’s a personal failing of his she’s always so screwed up. It’s not. And I don’t know why he continues to defend her after all these years, after how crappy she’s been to us both. It just blows me away. Maybe if I understood better how our father and his death all fit into the picture, I might be more sympathetic. But he keeps those things bottled up tight inside of himself. “She just has trouble showing it, Jessie. You know that.”

“Yeah, sounds familiar. Like you with Dad.”

But he doesn’t bite. “Was Kelly with you?”

I turn over on my side, my back to the door, and wish he’d just go away. I squeeze my eyes shut real tight and focus on making him disappear.

“Jessie?”

“No.”

“Did you two break up or something?”

“No. Mind your own business!”

“Do you want me to ping—”

“No. I said leave me alone.”

“Come on, Jessie. Let’s not do this.”

“You’re the one doing this, Eric! What part of leave me alone do you not understand?”

“Mrs Corben has been pinging my Link all day. She’s been asking about you and Kelly. She said the Stream couldn’t find his Link. And when we tried your Link, we got the same message. How does that even happen? Did he lose his Link, too?”

And there it is. He wasn’t really worried about me. It’s all about that mysterious message. Damn cops, always thinking everything’s a puzzle they have to solve, regardless of whether or not they need to be. Regardless of the people involved and their personal struggles, which they can’t possibly ever understand.

“She pinged Mom, too,” he continues. “I don’t know if she tried Grandpa. I haven’t spoken with him yet. He’s been out all day.”

I highly doubt Mrs Corben would’ve pinged Grandpa. She’s afraid of him. Most people who meet him, or have even heard of him, are.

“She mentioned that Kelly left early this morning in a strange van,” he continues. “Said she hasn’t seen him since. He didn’t go with you to Hartford?”

“I told you I was on the transit, sitting with some whacko crazy lady.”

“Okay, then. So you don’t know where Kelly is?”

“You really are thick today, you know that? I already told you.”

“I thought you might want to know he’s missing. His mother was going to call the police. I talked her out of it for now. I said he probably just lost track of time. But that was when I thought he was with you.”

“I told you I wasn’t with him!”

“So maybe you should ping her.”

I get up and walk over to the door and open it.

“Fine. But the Link they gave me won’t connect to anything but Media and Government.” I hold out my hand.

Eric exhales, like he’s been holding his breath. He’s three inches taller than me, and yet he seems smaller, shrunken. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his Link. I wait for him to leave, but he just stands there.

“I need to ping Ash and Micah first,” I tell him. “They might know where he is.”

“Okay.”

I shut the door on his face. He shuffles around outside it for another minute or so before telling me that dinner will be in less than an hour.

I try Ash first. While I’m waiting for her to connect, I squeeze my eyes closed again and focus on my breathing. It takes everything I’ve got not to scream Kelly’s name out the window.

“Jess?” Ash asks, when she sees it’s me. Her face is tiny on the screen, but the distress in it is clear.

Seeing her like this, my first instinct is to disconnect. If I don’t let her say anything, then nothing bad has yet happened.

“Jessie? You’re back. You okay?”

“Are you... Any word from the boys?”

She shakes her head. “We were too late to stop him. We tried, I promise. We got halfway to Manhattan before we lost his signal. I’m... sorry.”

“Okay.”

“So, Kel’s mom has been pinging all day. Well, pinging Reggie. She didn’t try me.”

She’s convinced Mrs Corben doesn’t like her.

“Your reputation for corrupting Greenwich’s impressionable boys gets around,” I say. The teasing is automatic. I’m running on muscle memory.

“She’s overprotective. It’s you she should be worried about corrupting her little boy.”

I force a smile. “She thinks I’m an angel.”

Her face twists. “Keep telling yourself that, but you’re just as bad— Hold on a sec.” She turns away, disappearing from view. I can’t see what she’s looking at, only the sky, which tells me she’s outside. When she returns, she leans into the Link and whispers. “Did she call the police?”

“Yeah. They were at his house earlier. And unless Kelly shows up on the Stream again soon, I have a feeling we’re all going to be getting visits, too.”

She looks worried. “I tried pinging Kelly and Jake just a few minutes ago. I’m still just getting that same message.”

“What about Micah?”

“Oh, Kelly didn’t take him.”

“He went alone?”

“Yeah.” She pauses, then asks how my appointment went.

“Sucked. It’s like being stripped naked, slapped silly with a rubber hose, and verbally abused by a nun with no sense of humor for six straight hours. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom.”

She turns again. “...really sucks...”

“What do you keep looking at?”

“Micah’s house.”

“What’s going on?”

“He’s got visitors.”

“His parents? I thought I saw a strange car in his driveway coming home.”

I hear another voice in the background. Ash turns to listen. “That’s not their car. We don’t know whose it is.”

“We? Is Micah with you?”

“Yeah. We were at his house earlier, working on the codex hack, but I got—”

“Hacking?” I ask, incredulously. “You let Kelly go and you guys are hacking?”

“We didn’t let him go! I told you, we couldn’t stop him. It was too late. Look, Jess, we’re just as worried as you are. What do you want me to say?”

I shake my head.

“We’re not just going to sit around and wait,” she whines. “Anyway, I got hungry, so we left to get some Golden Dragon to bring back.”

She rotates the Link so I can see that they’re at the park up the street from Micah’s place. I catch a glimpse of him before the view stops spinning. Now I’m looking toward his house, a couple blocks away. It’s tiny on the screen, but I can make out enough detail to know that a second car has joined the first. This one is from Greenwich’s finest, and their lights are flashing.

“That’s not good,” I mutter.

Ash comes back into view. “It’s fine, if it’s just about Kelly being missing. They don’t know anything. But if it’s about something else...”

She could be talking about any of a dozen different crimes, including last week, when we broke into the government computers on LI to look for maps of the tunnels. I think it’s the closest they’ve ever come to getting caught.

“So, we’re just going to hang out here in the park and eat and wait for them to leave.”

“They’ll probably be coming around to your place soon, Jess,” I hear Micah say in the background. “You might want to consider making yourself scarce for a while.”

“I need to know if it’s about Kelly. If they’re just fishing, then we’re still in the clear. I won’t tell them anything.”

Ash nods. “I think it’s best if we can avoid them till morning— tomorrow afternoon at the latest. There’s still daylight, so it’s possible they could be back before curfew. Otherwise, it’s going to be a very long night, for all of us.”

“And if they do ask about the hack?” I say.

“School project?” Ashley jokes, but I can see how anxious she is.

“Hacking the LI computers for summer school? Right,” I say. But I know she’s right. Once Kelly and Jake are safe, then we can deal with all the other stuff as it comes up.

“What about Jake’s uncle?” I ask. “And the van? Did Micah say something to Mister Esposito?”

Micah leans in so I can see him. “Hey, Jess,” he says, winking. Same old Micah. He’s cool and collected, even when the cops are pounding down his door. “I fixed it so Mister E will be staying in Albany for a couple more days.” He laughs. “So we’re good there, at least.”

“I don’t even want to know how you managed that.”

“Good girl. It’s better that way.”

“What if he tries to call Jake?”

“He’ll be too busy. I sent him a few... presents. Of the female persuasion. Very persuasive females, that is. They’ll keep him occupied.”

“Prostitutes,” Ash says, rolling her eyes.

“I said don’t tell me.” But of course, now I need to know. “Where’d you get the money to pay for them?”

“Yeah... About that.” He shrugs, but doesn’t elaborate.

I shake my head. “And if he doesn’t fall for it?”

“I routed the payment so that it looks like it came from one of the bigger military supply houses in China. You know, as a thanks for doing business with them. Turning them down would be considered a breach of etiquette.”

“Jesus, Micah.”

“Look, right now he’s the least of our problems.” He glances back down the street. “Looks like they’re leaving, Ash. As soon as they’re gone, we should get back in there and clean up. Next time they return, pretty sure they’re going to want to see more than just the front door.”

“Ping me if you hear anything,” I say. Then, realizing I still can’t receive on my temporary Link, I tell them that I’ll get a hold of them instead. “I need to talk to Mrs Corben.”

“What are you going to tell her?”

“Got any ideas?”

They don’t.

“I figure maybe I’ll just tell her Kelly was planning a surprise for me and that I’m pretty sure his being gone has something to do with it.”

It’s all true. I won’t be lying. And hopefully it’ll calm her down. At least until nightfall. Then... I don’t know. We’re all winging it here.

I just pray Kelly gets back before then. With Jake.

But when I get off the Link with Ash and Micah, I don’t ping her. I just lie there on my bed not moving. I can’t face speaking with Kelly’s mom yet.

When Eric calls me down for dinner forty-five minutes later, I consider not going, but that would just make my problems worse. Besides, I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. I need food. Two days in a row of barely eating anything, and I’m really starting to feel the effects. And tomorrow’s a sparring day, my internal hall monitor reminds me. You don’t want your ass handed to you.

How can I even think of hapkido now? How can I think of anything like that ever again?

Micah’s last words return to me: Act normal. We’ll get through this, you’ll see. Just act normal.

Easier said than done. I just wish everything would go back to the way it was. Maybe it wasn’t exactly normal, but at least it wasn’t... this.

I sigh and get up. Grandpa’s already at the table, waiting. So is Mom, which surprises me. She gives me a weak smile when she sees me. It’s better than her usual self-pitying look of woe. At least she’s trying, but she looks uncomfortable doing it, awkward. She even did her hair up, and her clothes are clean. More surprises on a day when I don’t need them.

“Everything all right?” I ask. I hand Eric his Link back.

“Just have a seat, young lady,” Grandpa says. “We’re going to have a nice dinner with all of us present for once.” He looks over at my mom, holds her gaze for a moment. It’s a neutral stare— he’s a master at hiding his emotions.

“I hear you lost your Link again,” he says, after we’ve started eating. I don’t think it’s meant as an accusation, though it sort of feels like one. “You need to learn to be more responsible.”

Nope, I was wrong. It’s definitely an accusation.

Mom puts her hand on his arm and says, “Ulysses.” She’s the only one who ever calls him that. She’s the only one who can get away with it. To me and Eric, he’s Grandpa. To everyone else, he’s simply “Colonel.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, just a fraction of an inch.

After the food is plated out and we’re eating, Grandpa turns to me. “So, where did you lose it, young lady?”

“Who says I lost it? Maybe it was stolen.”

The eyebrow raises another fraction of an inch.

“If that’s true, then they’ll catch whoever has it. I assume they put a trace on it already. They’ll find it, just like they did in Seattle.” He stares at me for a moment. “I’m sure no matter where it is, they’ll find it.”

My face freezes. My skin feels brittle, like if I move a muscle, it’ll shatter and the pieces will crumble away, and everything I’m trying to hide will be there for everyone to see.

I turn to Eric. He’s just sitting there, watching me, watching the both of us, but mostly studying me reaction. Why is he acting like this? Why is Grandpa? I want to know what they’re thinking. They both sense that something’s not right. He saw that message after trying to ping me. He knows the Link’s somewhere the Stream can’t reach. So, either it’s not within our communications network, or it’s been deactivated somehow. And nobody steals Links these days, not if they’re just going to destroy them. Which leaves only the other possibility. And how does that happen?

Speaking carefully, he says, “It looks like her Link’s been disabled, Grandpa. So, no, I don’t think they will find it.”

“Strange indeed,” Grandpa says in reply, though he’s still looking at me.

He holds my gaze. I want to look away, but I can’t. And from somewhere far away, I hear Mom asking, “Why is that strange, Ulysses?” But Grandpa just sits there, boring into me with his eyes, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Thankfully, Eric’s Link buzzes right then, breaking the trance. I blink and take the opportunity to look away.

“My bad,” he says. “Thought I’d turned the sound off.” He looks at his screen and frowns. “Damn it. Got to go. Sorry, Mom. It’s work.” He jumps to his feet, then bends over to kiss her on the cheek.

She smiles tenderly at him, and I think I can see a trace of the mother she once might’ve been still inside of her. “It’s all right, dear.”

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“It’s my boss. He needs me to come in.”

“Why, dear?” Mom asks. Worry flickers across her face. It’s amazing the emotions she can suddenly express when she’s not numbed from alcohol or drugs.

“There’s a... problem,” is all he says. He shoves another bite of meatloaf into his mouth, even as he scrolls his screen, reading. “Something’s going on down in New York. Been going on half the day. They’re now calling in all NCD within a hundred mile radius.”

“A problem?” I squeak. “What kind of problem?”

“I can’t really say.”

Mom’s hand flies to her mouth. “Another outbreak?”

He shakes his head, but I can’t tell if the brave face is for her benefit, so she won’t worry. He’s sure sending out signals that something’s very wrong.

“I need to go.” He bends down and kisses her cheek a second time, clearly forgetting that he already did it. “Stay home, Ma, please. You, too, Jess.”

“Be careful, honey.”

“I will. And, please, not a word about this to anyone. It’s not made Media yet.” He swipes his jacket off the hook on the wall and puts it on.

“How can we tell anyone something if we don’t know what it is?” I ask him.

I glance back to the people seated at the table and I catch Grandpa still staring at me. In spite of all the excitement, his face remains a blank slate. Well, almost a blank slate. Over the years I’ve learned to read the few clues he gives unconsciously. The slight tilt of his head, for example, like he’s doing right now. I know what that means: he’s intrigued. I know he won’t ask Eric for information. As soon as we’re done with dinner, he’ll go off to ping his contacts.

“I hate when you run off like this,” Mom mutters. “I wish you’d tell us what is happening.”

“I would if I could, Mom.”

Grandpa’s eyes never leave mine, but his reply is meant for Mom: “Well now, Lana, we know it has something to do with Zulus, don’t we? Otherwise, why would they call him in?”

Mom winces. She hates that old term, Zulus. Hates it even more than zombie and undead. She hates any reference to them, in fact, but the worst for her is Zulu. It was the term in vogue when Dad died.

Eric squeezes Mom’s shoulder, then straightens and clips his EM pistol to his belt. “Sorry, Ma,” he says. “I just hate ruining your birthday dinner like this.”

Chapter 7

I seriously cannot believe I forgot my mother’s birthday. After all the criticizing I’ve done about my brother being a jerk, at least he remembered.

“It’s all right, dear,” she says after I apologize. “I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately.” She leans over and plants a dry, scratchy kiss on my cheek, then leaves the dinner table. The food on her plate is mostly untouched. There’s no cake. No presents.

I’m a horrible daughter.

And that’s not even the worst of it. Now this thing with the entire NCD force heading down to New York, Eric included. I know I’m responsible for that, too.

A few minutes later I hear Mom speaking to someone in her room. Grandpa and I finish our dinners in silence. If I can just not look at him, maybe I can keep from giving it all away. The carefully constructed mask I’ve kept plastered on my face since yesterday evening threatens to slip.

While I’m washing the dinner plates — an excuse to hide my shaking hands — I hear a car pull up outside at the curb. I glance out the window and breathe a sigh of relief when I see it’s not the police. The front door to the house opens, and I see my mother going to out whoever it is waiting for her at the curb. And I suddenly find myself thinking it would’ve been better if it was the cops. At least then she’d stay home.

Grandpa goes off and leaves me alone, which comes as no surprise and a huge relief. He’s gone to his private office, where he’ll ping his few remaining friends in the government, the ones who’ll still talk to him after his rather messy public fall from grace. One or two calls and he’ll know everything he needs to know about what’s happening in New York. I fear he’ll also find out that we were involved. He probably already suspects something.

I finish the dishes and dry my hands, then sit at the table and wake the house Link. I tune it to Media and search the sub-Streams for news. There’s nothing about an outbreak, nothing about Infecteds in lower Manhattan. Nothing at all.

I half expect to see a reference to a couple of boys getting caught coming out of the water near the Midtown tunnel. But I don’t see any mention of that, either.

Now I’m really getting worried. Dusk is falling. Kelly should’ve been back by now. I consider pinging him. My shaking’s become so bad that I’m barely able to tap his ID in. I cancel before it has a chance to tell me what I already know. He’s still not back. I know this because he’d ping me the first chance he got.

I find a small mention on the financial pages about the stock market getting shut down an hour early this afternoon and the building being evacuated due to an unspecified threat. I don’t know if it’s related to anything. It barely even made a blip on Media.

We get these sorts of threats all the time— terrorists, protestors, random crazies. New Merica made itself a target by isolating itself after the War. It certainly didn’t help that it created this highly controversial technology, then deployed it as a weapon against our enemies. And then again against the states that threatened to secede from the Union. So, this latest incident at the Stock Exchange might be totally unrelated to what I think it is.

But I know better.

I watch the video again. There’s an officer manning a blockade. He holds his hand up to keep the reporter from getting closer. But what I notice is that the weapon on his hip isn’t the standard forty-five caliber police issue ballistic pistol, but EM. Only NCD officials carry them. And NCD officers investigate crimes by and against the undead.

I think Ash and Micah and Reg should know this. I push away from the table and stand up.

“Best you stay home tonight,” Grandpa says, startling me. I hadn’t noticed him standing just inside the doorway. I wonder how long he’s been there, watching me. Now he’s blocking my way out of the kitchen.

“Stay home? Why? Eric said—”

“Those friends of yours are trouble. I’ve kept my opinions about them to myself in the past, but I think it’s time to say what’s on my mind.”

“What friends do you mean?”

He stares at me.

“They’re not trouble, Grandpa.”

“They’re a bad influence on you, young lady.”

“You don’t even know them.”

He holds something up. It’s my inhaler. “You’re not being responsible. Losing your Link, forgetting to take your medicine like you’re supposed to. Three times a day. How many doses have you missed in the past couple of days?”

I grab it from his hand. “So I forgot. It’s not like I actually really need it that much.”

“Six missed doses in four days,” he says, shaking his head.

“You downloaded my dosing record?” I shout. “You have no right!”

I almost expect him to get angry, but he doesn’t. I’ve never actually seen him lose his temper, not to the point of losing control. Just once I wish he would. Instead, he reminds me of the usual crap about the medicine being an immunity booster. And then, when he finishes, he surprises me by adding, “You’re special, Jessie. You need that medicine so you won’t get sick.”

“How am I special?”

But he backs away into the darkness of the hall, fading like a bad cliché and leaving the way clear for me to go, should I choose. “Someday you’ll see,” he says, as he recedes further into the house. “Just stay in tonight, Jessie. It’s not a good night for you to be going out.”

Chapter 8

I’m sitting in the darkened living room, when Eric comes in several hours later. I know it’s him and not Mom, despite there being just the light from the street filtering in through the curtains, because I’d recognized the sound of his Jeep pulling into the driveway. Kelly keeps telling him he’s got bad brushes in the motor, which gives it a sort of characteristic chuffing sound when it runs. Like Kelly even knows what brushes are.

Eric quietly closes the door and locks it.

I clear my throat.

“Jessie?” he says, startled. “Why are you still up?” He walks over. The light from the streetlamp passes momentarily over his face. It’s smudged and dirty.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

He takes another step into the room, stops, then lays his jacket and holster carefully onto the arm of the chair. He moves through the gloom like a phantom before settling heavily on the couch next to me.

“There’s...” He exhales and shakes his head, as if trying to decide what to say. “It’s...”

But then he changes his mind and says instead, “I was thinking about Dad today, what with it being Mom’s birthday.”

I say nothing.

“What do you remember about his death? Or been told?”

I blink into the darkness for a few seconds, trying to process what he’s asking. And why. It’s so out of left field that I don’t know how to respond.

He sighs. “You were right. I have been avoiding the subject.”

“What do I remember? Nothing,” I say. It’s true. I have absolutely no recollection of that day. I was two, so any memories I might have of the man himself are most likely to be planted. I can’t even remember anything about the house we used to live in. “What have I been told? A lot.”

Just not by anyone in the family. They don’t talk about that day. But all through grade school I was constantly tormented by kids who claimed they knew what had happened. They spared no effort to taunt me with what their parents told them. I’d always just assumed it was payback for all the bad feelings directed against my family for its role in Reanimation. And the Long Island outbreak. But most of that took place years after Dad died.

Eric had gotten the worst of it. He was older, and so were his tormentors. The animosities were fresher. The beatings were far more serious, and they never let up, not even when he graduated from high school a couple years later. There were even death threats to him when he was in the Marines. All because of what Dad and Grandpa had made. And had made happen.

Everything that has followed since then — the Zulus and Omegamen, the Life Service laws, other outbreaks and the War, Arc Properties and Gameland — all of it traces back to them and that project. Grandpa insists he actually had very little to do with it all. He says he’d already left the military by the time the real decisions had been made and set into motion, but he was still a key advisor to the President. He’s never been hired by Arc, not as far as I know, except maybe as a sometimes-consultant. So while he may only claim to have planted the seed early on, he was clearly instrumental in its early outgrowth. He could try to disavow the rotten fruit the tree bore, but none of it would’ve happened without him.

“Some people say he was shot by an intruder,” I answer. “Some say he committed suicide. And others say he was killed by an Infected who was—”

“He wasn’t killed by an Infected.”

“Well, all I know is he never came back because most of his brain was gone.”

Eric’s reaction is so visceral, so intense, that I actually feel the couch shift. I don’t harbor such deep emotions as him, although I know I should. I should be more emotionally invested in the whole thing because of who we’re talking about, but I can’t feel anything. It’s like we’re discussing a complete stranger. He gave me life, and yet I feel no connection to the guy.

Eric was thirteen when Dad died, so he has distinct, clear memories of that day. For him, Dad’s death isn’t hypothetical. Or rhetorical. It’s a part of him. For him, there will always be a before and after.

“I don’t know many of the actual details, either,” he confesses. “So much of it was classified and Grandpa was... Well, you know I can’t talk to him about some things. That’s one of them. We’re like oil and water. That’s what my flunky shrink says anyway.”

I smile in the darkness. I know he’s just characterizing her that way for my benefit. He knows what I think about psychiatrists.

“And what I remember...” He coughs. “Like you, I’ve heard a lot about what happened over the years, from people who think they know. Rumors and conspiracies, worth about as much as a dead man’s promise.”

“Yeah,” I mumble. It feels strange to be talking with Eric like this, to be, I don’t know, bonding. It happens so rarely.

He jumps up, ruining the moment. Maybe he felt it, too, and couldn’t bear the notion. “Go to bed, Jess. Forget I ever brought it up. It was stupid of me to dig up the past.”

“Is it the past?” I ask. And when he doesn’t answer, I say, “Does this have anything to do with what happened down in Manhattan tonight?”

He gives me a strange look. “How did you know it was Manhattan?”

“That’s what you said before you left.”

“I said New York.”

I’m glad it’s dark in the room, otherwise I’m sure he’d see my face flush. “New York, Manhattan,” I quickly say. “It’s all the same to me.”

He grunts, but instead of answering, he turns and gathers up his EM pistol and jacket. He’s about to leave when he reconsiders. He comes back over and hovers in front of me, a dark, featureless presence. I only know he’s there because there’s a void when his body blocks the light coming in through the curtains.

“I suppose what I can tell you is what I think’ll be on the Stream in the morning: A bunch of IUs showed up in Manhattan; they think they might’ve gotten past the EM barrier surrounding Long Island. They’re trying to find the breach now.”

“I thought there weren’t any IUs left there, just the ones in Gameland.”

He shrugs. “My team is there to provide support only. NY-NCD is spearheading the investigation. New Jersey and Connecticut are assisting. The military’s been brought in to help carry out the defensive sweeps and to sterilize the area.”

“Sterilize?”

“The area’s been deemed a contamination zone. All living have been evacuated. It’s shoot-to-kill.”

He must hear my startled gasp, because he adds, “Don’t worry. They won’t break containment. Beside, they’re pretty much harmless. A few dozen thirteen-year-old Infecteds are about as dangerous as bunny rabbits.”

“Rabid bunny rabbits,” I mumble.

“Yeah... Anyway, they’re pretty sure they’ve got the situation under control.”

“Any theories how they got through the Wall?”

“That’s what they’ll be figuring out, after the sweep.”

His EM pistol glints in the darkness. It’s probably just my imagination, but I can smell ozone coming off it, like something’s burning. I wonder how many times he had to fire it tonight. I wonder if maybe he used it on anyone still living. I’m afraid to ask.

He folds his jacket over the pistol and says, “We didn’t use these tonight. They don’t work on IUs.”

But he rubs his shoulder and winces. I realize it’s not ozone I smell, but cordite.

“They issued us shotguns instead,” he explains.

“You hate guns.”

“Still have to do my job. They told us to blast anything that moves and isn’t wearing a reflective vest.”

“How many did you see?”

He sighs. “I’m going to get a quick shower, get this stink off of me. You better get to bed, too.”

I stand up. His words careen through my skull like boulders: Blast anything that moves.

I hope to God that didn’t include Kelly and Jake.

Chapter 9

The next morning, there’s still no word from the boys. My nerves are completely shot.

After last night, I’m scared to death of what might’ve happened to them. And every time a car drives down the street, I keep expecting it to be the cops.

I didn’t get any sleep. I kept praying they’d come home, safe and sound. Kelly’d ping me — well, the house Link — or he’d show up at the door. Now, the best I can hope for is that they weren’t caught up in the sweep last night. Or, if they were, they weren’t shot.

If they decided not to risk swimming back until today, then they’re definitely going to get caught.

It’s shoot-to-kill.

Things just keep going from bad to worse.

“Just act normally,” Ashley keeps saying. “Don’t give the cops any details if they question you. Keep it simple and vague.”

It kind of makes sense, but I have to wonder how many times she’s personally been in this sort of situation herself. She can give the appearance of being tough and streetwise, but I doubt she has any actual experience dealing with the cops. Not this kind, anyway. None of us has.

How the hell am I supposed to act normally? How can I not answer the cops when they ask their questions? I decide it’s best to avoid them altogether, and the best way to do that is to not be here.

I grab my gear bag, intending to spend the next couple hours at the dojang. It’s my usual training session anyway. I know I’ll be useless during my forms, and getting my ass kicked in sparring is still better than sitting around at home waiting around with nothing better to do than imagine worst case scenarios.

What I’d give to show up and find Jake at the studio geared up and ready to spar.

The police drive up just as I head down the front steps, almost as if they’d been waiting for me to step outside. Two officers get out of the car. The first is younger, blond and trim. The other is older, graying and sloppy in his appearance.

The contrast between the two seems almost cliché. I can tell just by looking at them that the younger one is going to be all business as he tries to impress his more seasoned partner, who probably couldn’t give a crap. Meanwhile, the older guy is going to stand back and let his partners harass me for a while before he finally intervenes. He’ll offer some half-assed apology for his partner’s bad manners, which he think will endear himself to me. Good cop, bad cop.

But I get it all wrong. It’s the older guy who’s the dick.

“Jessica Daniels?”

“Yes?”

“How about we go inside?” he asks, like he’s not really expecting me to say no. But just in case I try to say no, he pulls his collar away from his neck to let in some air. “It’s a tad warm out here for a talk.”

“What’s this about?”

He tilts his head toward the house.

“I’m going to be late for my class.”

“And I’m just doing my job. Anyway, this won’t take but a few minutes. Or you could ride with us to the station.”

We go back inside. I’d offer them coffee, but that would only drag this out longer, and I’m not sure my nerves can handle it. Besides, it’s a hundred degrees outside. Nobody wants coffee.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any java, would you?” he asks, smacking his lips. “Doesn’t have to be fresh. I’ll drink anything, as long as it’s black.”

I give him an incredulous look. “No.”

“Ah, right.” He sighs deeply, like it’s a great imposition. Like here we go again with the sad, sorry, typical life of a beat cop, underappreciated, never rewarded with even the simplest gesture of kindness. By denying him, I’m the jerk, not him.

I stand fast in the entryway, not inviting them any farther inside. I don’t want them to get comfortable. “I really can’t be late.”

“Mother or father home?”

“No.”

“Anyone?”

“My father’s dead.”

He doesn’t seem surprised. He probably isn’t. In fact, he probably asked that very question knowing my family history already and believed it would unnerve me. It didn’t.

He holds up his department-issued Link. “We’ll be recording this.” Another non-request.

“Is that legal?”

“You got any reason to worry about what you might say?” he asks. When I hesitate, he quickly adds, “It’s just a few questions about your friend Kelly Corben. He is your friend, right?”

I nod.

“And not just a friend, though. Am I correct?” he makes a move toward the living room, but I don’t yield. He reluctantly steps back.

“We’re seeing each other. What’s this about?”

They ask when I saw him last. Or talked with him. Or heard from him. They don’t mention Micah or Ash. They don’t say anything about the hacking. It’s all about Kel.

At least it is initially.

I give them the vaguest answers I can think of. I say I saw Kelly a few days before, on Saturday, when he said something about planning a surprise for me. No, I don’t have any idea what kind of a surprise, but that was the last I’d heard from him. We were planning to get together afterward. No, I don’t know when that might be. No, we don’t see each other every day.

“When my son was your age,” Old Cop says, “he and his girlfriend were inseparable, connected at the hip, you might say. As frequently as possible.” He snorts and winks at his partner, who still hasn’t said a single word. It surprises me when I see a flash of red color the younger guy’s cheeks. He’s the one who actually looks embarrassed.

“Well, that’s not us,” I explain. “Kelly keeps busy with his things. He studies a lot. His brother’s sick, so he spends a lot of time at home helping out. I try to give him the space he needs.”

“Except he’s not home helping out, is he?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t he?”

“And you don’t help out with any of that stuff?”

“It’s family matters. I don’t get involved. Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t let me. They’re very private people.”

“So, you don’t want to help?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He nods, as if I’ve just told him something important.

“I don’t just sit around waiting for him to ping, if that’s what you think,” I go on. “I’m busy, too, with my own things.”

“Such as?”

“My training, which I’m going to be late for. I have sparring two days a week, plus classes two more.” I make a point of glancing at the time on my temporary Link, then adjusting my bag on my shoulder.

“You might as well put that down, get comfortable.”

“I thought you said it would only take a few minutes.”

“Have you spoken with Kelly Corben more recently?”

“No.”

I consider telling him my Link doesn’t connect to the Communications Stream, but I figure that would be in the category of Too Much Information and Topics For Further Investigation.

“So, the last time you spoke with him was... Friday?”

“Saturday. I already told you that. What’s going on? Is he all right?” I try to appear concerned. I mention trying to ping him but getting a strange message. I figure it’s information they already have from his mother. “I’ve never seen a message like that before. I thought was a glitch in the Stream. And no, he doesn’t usually go off like this and not tell his parents where he’s going. Or me. Especially me. But then again, I kind of got the feeling he was planning something big for us, him and me. I think he was planning on asking me to marry him.”

“I thought you were just seeing each other. This relationship sounds a lot more serious.”

“I didn’t say I’d say yes.”

“So, you’re not interested in marrying him?”

He seems to accept my hesitation as sufficient enough of an answer, and he moves on before I can correct him.

“We have checkpoint records that show you and young Mr Corben and a couple other teenagers traveling to and from Manhattan last week.” He flips through his Link, as if double-checking the dates and times and names. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”

I shrug. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to answer this. I’ve already said too much. And I don’t know if they’ve already spoken with Ash and Micah and Reggie. What would they have said?

“I was just along for the ride. It was a nice day, and we wanted to get out of town for a few hours.”

“Where exactly did you go in Manhattan?”

I shrug. “As far as we could before the checkpoint guards stopped us. We parked in some empty garage and got out. We just walked around for a while, then came back. The guards gave us a hassle, but it wasn’t like we were doing anything wrong. We were just hanging out.”

“And you enjoyed it so much you went back again on Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“You went back to the exact same location twice in two days because... you were bored?”

“I didn’t say we were bored.”

“So, there was a reason?” He grunts, but doesn’t push it. “Your brother is Eric Daniels?” I nod. “The NCD team leader?”

“Yes,” I answer, somewhat warily. I’m aware of how poorly regarded NCD officers are by the other people on the force. They’re considered a bunch of misfits and undead-obsessed freaks. You’d have to be a little crazy to make zombies the entire focus of your career. I can’t really argue with any of that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as accurate an assessment as any other.

“So, you’re aware of what happened last night down in Manhattan?”

This is where things get tricky. I don’t know if Eric was supposed to keep it hush-hush. He said it was going to be on Media this morning, but all I could find doing a quick browse at breakfast was that travel to lower Manhattan today was going to continue to be restricted due to a toxic spill of some sort, and that it would remain restricted for an indeterminate amount of time. No mention of zombies. Typical Media spin. I figured they wanted to prevent a panic while figuring out how they were going to publicize what actually happened. If ever.

“I know he was called down to help out with some incident. He didn’t say it was department related, though. I read this morning that it was a spill of some kind, so maybe they had CUs helping to keep it up and his team was there to monitor. I mean, it’s Media, so it’s got to be true, right?”

Old Grumpy just grunts.

“He got back home very late, after my bedtime, and left early this morning before I woke up. I didn’t really get a chance to talk with him.”

The older cop rubs his Link on his cheek and regards me for a few seconds. “It was zombies. And not the controlled kind, neither.” He studies me carefully to gauge my reaction. I act surprised. “Doesn’t it seem strange that there’d suddenly be this trouble with Infected Undead in the exact same place you kids were messing around just a few days before? And now one of you has gone missing.”

He looks over at his partner. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that, not only is he missing, but he seems to have completely vanished off the face of the Stream?” He shrugs. “Me? I think that’s strange. What about you, Hank? You think it’s strange?”

The younger cop shrugs. “Sure, it’s strange, but I don’t see what—”

Mister Old Fat Smartypants Cop leans over to me until his face is just inches from mine. He obviously doesn’t understand personal space. “You know, I’ve been on this job for forty years. Joined after 9/11. Yeah, you probably don’t know about that. Damn government—”

His partner clears his throat.

“Right. Anyway, in all that time, I have seen my share of fucked up shit, young lady. More importantly, I’ve caught a shit-load of criminals. Broke a hell of a lot of them myself, too. I can tell you that, where I’m standing right now, shit don’t smell right. In fact, it stinks to high hell.”

If I weren’t so scared, I’d laugh in his face and tell him shit usually does stink. Plus, he talks like the cops from those old TV shows Micah has bootleg copies of in his basement.

I raise my hands in a gesture of defeat. “I don’t know where Kelly is. I wish I did. I’m worried, too.”

“You don’t look very worried.”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“I think it’s the other way around, young lady. In fact, I think—”

“Al,” the younger cop interrupts.

The older cop inhales slowly. He stops leaning into me and straightens up. He blinks a few times, then walks over to the window in the kitchen and looks out. Finally, he turns back to me and says, “We’re pulling yesterday’s checkpoint records. I hope I don’t find that you all went back down to Manhattan yesterday morning, when it all started.”

“I was on a transit to Hartford,” I say. “And you’re wrong about me not being worried. Just because I don’t show it doesn’t mean I’m not. In fact, I’m worried sick about Kelly, no thanks to you.”

The older cop glances down at his Link while I’m talking, like I’m boring him. He shows the screen to Al, then abruptly announces they’re finished. I wish I knew what newsflash he just received.

As I corral them to the door, the younger cop tries to make nice. “So, you take karate?”

“Hapkido. Eric, my brother, got me into it years ago. For self-defense.”

Big Old Shithead snorts. “You want my advice, young lady? Teach yourself to fire a gun. That’s the only kind of self-defense you’ll ever need.” He pats the forty-five on his hip and leers, like it’s his own dick he’s fondling. The asshole probably sleeps with the damn thing in his hand. “That fancy shmancy Chuck Norris crap won’t do you any good, not against someone who really wants to hurt you. Or some thing. You know, like the undead.” He chuckles. “Not that you’d ever have any need to use it on them, right?”

He does a clumsy imitation of a karate chop and says, “Pa-pow!”

I stare back at him with my best blank look, and not because I don’t know who Chuck Norris is — I actually do, once again thanks again to Reggie’s and Micah’s old film archives — but to let him know I’m completely unimpressed. Mentioning someone from, like, sixty years ago to someone my age just shows how much of a dick he really is.

“Thanks for the tip,” I say. “I guess you get all kinds of experience fighting zombies down at the local coffee shop.”

We stare at each other for a few seconds, then I look away first, not because I’m intimidated, but because I really am going to be late. I bend down and pick up my bag. When I rise again, I glance pointedly down at his bulging stomach. “I guess zombies aren’t the only ones who like to eat, too.”

“I’ve got a hell of a lot more experience than you do, young lady. You with your silly games. I was there during the outbreak twelve years ago, when you were probably still in your diapers. I hope and pray you never have to meet one of the bastards. Dirty, stinking, mouthy, fuckers.”

I don’t reply.

“Tell your brother we stopped by, would you? Little professional courtesy, you know. Not that Team Necrophilia ever returns the favor.”

He barks out a laugh and claps his partner on the shoulder, who now looks about as uncomfortable as anyone could. “Ain’t that right, Hank? Damn zombie lovers think they’re better’n the rest of us.”

I glare as I wrench the door open. “Is that all?”

“For now.”

“Thank you for your time, Miss Daniels,” the other cop mumbles. “Sorry to bother you.” He taps my temporary Link with his to transfer his contact info. “Ping us if you hear anything.”

I don’t bother telling him I can’t.

Halfway down the steps he stops and turns. “We may have a few more questions for you, Miss. Will you be around later this afternoon?”

I shrug, which they take as a yes. As they walk down the sidewalk, they tilt their heads together, conspiring no doubt about their next move. Young cop and old cop. Good cop and bad. Both bad, as far as I’m concerned.

I close the door and lean my head against it.

“You didn’t handle that very well.”

Grandpa’s voice startles me. I spin around to find him standing right behind me. I wonder how much of the interview he overheard. Probably the whole thing, which makes me wonder why he didn’t come out while the cops were still here. I sure could’ve used a little help.

“Antagonizing the police is not a good look.”

“You heard what he said about Eric.”

I open the door again. I need air. And I certainly don’t need Grandpa giving me his smug assessments of how I performed after the fact.

“Where are you off to?”

I glare at him. He knows. He can see my equipment bag.

“Don’t forget your inhaler.”

* * *

WHEN I ARRIVE AT THE dojang ten minutes later, it’s all abuzz about something big happening down in Manhattan. I pretend I’m not interested, although I listen carefully to what they’re saying. The theories are all over the place. A few, however, come uncomfortably close to the truth.

Halfway through one of my sparring sessions, Master Rupert walks past. He catches my eye, distracting me for a split second. My sparring partner takes immediate advantage. The next thing I know, I’m down on the mat with my arm wrenched behind me. The scorekeepers grant him the point and win.

I pick myself up off the floor and hurry away without the traditional bow of respect and thanks. My shoulder’s sore and my arm feels like it’s been pulled from its socket.

“Kwanjangnim Rupert,” I call.

He stops and waits for me, smiling in his usual easygoing way. “Sunbae Jessie. How good to see you. We missed you on Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“Class?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was... out of town.”

He nods and waits.

“How’s your back?” I ask. I suddenly feel unsure of myself. How am I supposed to broach the subject of how he knows Ashley Evans without seeming nosy?

He furrows his brow for a moment, confused, then laughs. “Ah, all better. Thank you for asking. Pain killers and muscle relaxants.”

“I’m glad.”

The smile lingers and he raises his eyebrows in expectation.

“I was just wondering, sir. There’s this girl I know. Her name’s Ashley Evans. Do you... You wouldn’t happen to know her, would you?”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. Should I? Is she interested in taking lessons?”

I’m not certain, but I think I see a flicker of surprise cross his face. Or maybe wariness. “Not exactly,” I say. “It’s just that I saw that she had your contact info on her Link.”

He shrugs and looks away, thinking. “Could be for any number of reasons. Perhaps you should ask her.”

I nod.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for the juniors class.”

He turns and leaves me standing there, which isn’t like Rupert. He always has time for his students. In fact, the next class doesn’t start for another ten minutes. Is he hiding something? I hate feeling that way about a man I’ve known half my life and have always deeply respected for telling it like it is.

As I ponder what this all could mean, he goes into his office and shuts the door behind him. I watch through the glass as he pulls out his Link and thumbs the screen for a moment before lifting it to his ear. I can see him talking, though I can’t hear a word he says. His back is to me at first, but then he turns and sees me, and his brow furrows.

It’s this last bit that troubles me the most.

Chapter 10

I spot Micah’s car parked in his driveway when I pass his house going home. It’s so conspicuous that it seems almost like a dare. Given all that’s happening with the police right now, I’d think he’d want to keep a low profile. At the very least, he’d want to discourage them from knocking on his door.

Which is what I intend to do now.

I hope everything’s all right. I can just imagine him being dragged away in the back seat of a police cruiser, the ringleader of our jacker gang. They’ll be coming for the rest of us next.

Then my thoughts shift, and I imagine that he’s parked out here because he’s no longer worried about the cops. Kelly and Jake have returned, and everything’s back to normal again.

I’ve barely raised my hand to knock when the door opens and I’m yanked inside. Micah takes a quick glance up and down the street before closing it behind us.

“You weren’t followed were you?” he asks.

“Um, yeah,” I say, more startled than alarmed. His house is dark, the curtains drawn. “I think I picked up a tail at Vinny’s pool hall. But I took evasive action. Shook them at the roundabout.”

“Huh? Vinnie’s what? What roundabout?”

I sigh. “You’re high, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on? I thought you were going to keep a low profile. Your car’s in the driveway practically screaming that you’re home and waiting to be questioned.”

“Waiting for Ash and Reggie.” He starts pacing the room. I’ve never seen him this agitated before. It’s not an anxious agitation. In fact, there’s an excited gleam in his blue eyes. That is, I think it’s excitement. Who knows what he might’ve taken to put him in this weird mood.

“Ash and Reg?”

“I thought about going by your place,” he says. “Decided against it. Thought they might be watching it.”

“They were. Got me walking out this morning as I was—”

He nods. “Reggie says there’s a car parked outside his house. Somebody’s watching him, too.” He runs his hands through his hair, and lets out a deep breath. “He had to sneak out.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

I can guess he’s hyped up on caffeine, because his breath stinks of stale coffee. He tousles his hair, then combs it back again. If I did all that, my hair would end up in a tangled mess of knots, but his just falls right back into place, looking exactly the way it was before. Kelly’s hair does the same thing. And I bet Reggie’s would, too, if it weren’t so short. It’s just not fair that guys can have nicer hair than me. They probably don’t even know what bed-head is.

“I guess this means you haven’t heard from Kel?” I ask.

“Kelly? No, but that’s why I’m glad you’re here. Are you free for the rest of the day?”

“Yeah, I guess. Not like I’ve got anywhere to go.”

“Actually, we do. We’re leaving as soon as Reg picks up Ash.” He checks his Link and shakes his head. “I wish they’d hurry.”

I move in front of him so he has to stop pacing. “Hold on a sec. Leaving?” I have visions of us skipping town, becoming fugitives. The whole idea seems so ridiculous that I laugh. “What are you talking about? Where?”

“New York.”

“Oh no. Why the hell—”

“We’re going to get them, Jess. Kelly and Jake.”

“Slow down. Get them... how?”

“They’re on their way back.”

My head starts to spin. I have to lean against the wall not to fall over. They’re coming back. But they can’t come back now! They’ll get caught. And if we go down there, we will, too.

“You okay, Jess?”

I drop down onto the couch; the springs barely resist, although they complain loudly. In fact, everything’s suddenly too loud. The air conditioner rattles away. The room still feels too hot, too close. I think I might be sick. “It’s not safe.”

“Sure it is,” he says. “But they’re going to need a ride.”

“I don’t understand. From... where? And how do you know this? You just said you haven’t heard from them.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then, what...? Do you even know what’s happening right now?” I say. “We can’t go anywhere near there.”

“Of course we can. I checked. Your temporary Link is good for checkpoints.”

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about, Micah. Manhattan’s swarming with NCD and military.”

Micah frowns. “Wait, Manhattan? What’s going on there?”

I tell him about the call Eric got last night and how he was gone till late dealing with IUs. “He said lower Manhattan’s been invaded. Well, he didn’t say invaded, but they activated the tri-state NCD. They don’t know yet where they’re coming from, but they’re eventually going to find out.”

“I haven’t seen anything on Media.”

“They’re spinning something about a toxic spill.”

Micah looks shocked for a moment. “Shit. We did this, didn’t we?”

I nod.

“Christ,” he whispers. “But... Did the zombies come out alive? I mean... you know. Undead?”

“Eric said they had to use shotguns, not EM guns. So, yes, it sounds like they came out active.”

He exhales heavily. “Jesus.”

“It’s probably fine. I don’t think anyone got bit. Eric says they were slow and harmless. Maybe he was just saying that so I wouldn’t panic. You know how protective he is of me. But that’s why we can’t go. And if Kelly and Jake try coming through now, they’ll end up coming out right in the middle of it.”

He laughs and does a little dance, and I think he’s finally lost it. Whatever drug he took this morning finally went and broke something inside his brain.

“It’s all good,” he says.

“How can any of this be good?” I cry.

“Okay. Okay, let me backup. Remember the hack Ashley and I were working on? Well, she finished it. She built an algorithm that could actually parse ArcWare’s codex. It ran all day yesterday without a hitch. That’s why we didn’t dare come back when the cops came knocking.”

“Ran doing what?”

He waves his hand. “You know, that learning and adapting shit she’s always going on about.”

“Heuristic—”

“Right. Whatever. The point is, she actually got it to work, Jess. Late last night, it finally got us through the firewall. You know what that means?”

I don’t know if it’s lack of sleep or food or the overdosing on stress on my part, or lack of sleep or drugs or overdosing on caffeine on his part, but it feels like we’re two different trains on separate tracks right now. We’re not having the same conversation. “You’re talking about Gameland? I’m talking about Kelly!”

“We’re talking about both!”

“What does hacking Gameland have to do with Kelly and Jake?”

“Because it does! That’s what I’m telling you!”

“But actually you’re not.”

He jumps to his feet and starts pacing again. He waves his hands wildly about, almost hitting me in the face on one pass. “The hack lets us see everything in there, Jess. Players... and Kelly and Jake!”

He stops, as if suddenly realizing how crazy he looks and sounds. “Okay, I know I’m spewing. I haven’t slept in... I need coffee. Except I don’t have any. I know, I’ll make some! No, takes too long.”

He hurries into the kitchen and pulls a Red Bull out of the case on the counter and chugs the whole thing warm.

“Okay, let me try again. What I’ve been trying to say is we can see everything inside the wall. Well, almost everything. It’s not a video feed, obviously, but we can track. From out here!”

“Okay...”

“And I found them. I found Kelly and Jake. I tracked them with this!” He reaches into his pocket for his Link, before remembering it’s in his other hand. “The location script tells me exactly where they are on Long Island.”

Now I’m starting to understand. “You’re sure? They’re alive, both of them?”

“Both of them.”

My heart starts racing again. Last night I’d dreamed they showed up at my door, safe and sound, only to turn into zombies. In a different nightmare, I was sent down to the morgue to identify their remains, only to find that their bodies were missing and the only clue to what happened to them being a trail of death and resurrection.

“And they’re together?”

“Yes, they’re alive and they’re together and they’re getting ready to come back. That’s why we have to go, to be there to meet them.”

“Then you have to tell them to wait!”

He frowns. “Why? No, never mind. I can’t. It’s just a tracking script. It doesn’t work like that. We can’t talk to them and they have no idea we can see them.”

“But that’s what I’m saying, Micah! If they try coming back through the tunnel now, they’ll be caught the moment they come out. Eric’s down there with NCD right now. I’m pretty sure it’s a shoot first, ask questions later situation.”

Micah nods. “Okay, I see why you’re so excited. That must also explain why they decided not take the Midtown tunnel.”

“What do you mean? How else would they come back?”

“A different way. All I know is that when I last checked this morning, they were heading northeast. Away from there.”

“Were they being chased?”

“They were hauling ass,” he muses. “In fact, they’d covered nearly four miles in under two hours.”

A scary thought crosses my mind. “What if they’ve been infected?”

“They’re sticking together. In fact, they’ve stuck together the whole time. As far as I know, the undead don’t buddy up.”

“But they do swarm together.”

“They’re not infected, Jess. They’re heading for another tunnel. Which means they won’t get caught.”

“Okay, but there’s no way Kelly would know not to take the Midtown tunnel. He would’ve left yesterday morning before they locked Manhattan down. They didn’t discover the IUs until after around noon.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he saw them. He would’ve passed a bunch in the tunnel. Maybe he decided Jake would freeze if they came back that way. Or maybe he got there using a different tunnel altogether. I don’t know. All I know is they’re not coming back through the Midtown.”

I close my eyes and picture the map Ash had gotten for us before our trip. We’d taken the Queens-Midtown on Saturday. But the Brooklyn-Battery was further south and west, not northeast.

When I point this out, Micah shakes his head. “Not the Battery. There’s a third tunnel— and a fourth, actually. They’re a bit farther north, exactly in the direction they were headed.”

“I didn’t know there were other tunnels.”

“Jake told us about them when Ash and Reggie and I met with him that first day, when we discussed borrowing dive equipment from his uncle’s shop. His uncle used to work at the old LaGuardia Airport and there was a service tunnel the staff would use. We never brought the other tunnels up with you guys because we knew they weren’t very good options. But Jake must’ve mentioned them to Kelly at some point. Or maybe Reggie or Ash did.”

“Are they far?”

“Five or six miles from the Midtown tunnel. The next closest one passes under what used to be Randall’s Island and comes out into the old East Harlem neighborhood.”

“Which is all swampland now, Micah. Nobody lives down that way anymore. And nobody goes there except to fish, like old men about to be conscripted and poor families with no other choice.” I shudder at the thought of the mutant creatures that must live in those polluted waters these days.

“I think that’s why they decided to take it— not that it’s polluted, but that it’s remote. The Brooklyn-Battery’s tricky. It comes out right next to the old UN building. That area’s still heavily trafficked. This other tunnel comes out in the middle of nowhere. It’s underwater. No one will see them come out. Only us, when we meet them.”

“Okay, fine, but how’re we going to get to the opening? Swim?

“No. I still need to figure that out. A raft or something. I don’t know how far from the road it’s going to be.”

I frown. “You said there were two tunnels. Where’s the other one?”

“Further north and east, about another mile and half or so. According to Jake, very few people know about it, and it’s not on any of the maps we dug up. But they won’t take that one. Even if they knew where it is, it’s a long five miles through the dark. The Harlem tunnel’s only half that.”

“Assuming it’s open.”

“yeah.”

I whistle. Two and a half miles underwater is still long, more than twice as far as the Midtown. Even freshly rested and with the current behind them, it would take almost three hours to swim, the maximum range of the rebreather cartridges. I’m sure Kelly took a lot of extras from Jake’s van just to avoid what we went through. But still, the longer the tunnel, the greater the chances of something going wrong.

Micah checks the time on his Link. “At the rate they’re moving, they’ll have reached the opening by now. I was just about to check on them again when you showed up at the door.”

A map of Long Island appears on his Link screen. He reverse pinches it to expand one section.

I expect to see a pair of tiny red blips, the signals from their implants, but there’s nothing, just a schematic of the island and roads that haven’t been used in thirteen years. He points. “The Long Island opening’s right about here, right next to the wall.”

“I don’t see anything. Where are their signals?”

“Gone. That’s good news. It means they’re already inside the tunnel. They’re probably directly underneath the wall by now.”

He hands me the Link. While I stare at it, he goes over to the fridge. “This means we’ve got less than two hours to get there, find some way to float out to where the opening is, and retrieve them when they surface.”

He hands me a couple water pouches.

For the first time since arriving, I notice the circles under his eyes, and I realize he’s probably been working night and day on this, both the ArcWare hack and a plan to rescue them. That’s why he’s so wired. All this time I’d thought he only cared about The Game, but he’s been just as worried about the boys as I have. I feel guilty for doubting him. And for doing nothing about it.

“Once they’re back...” he says, exhaling heavily, as if the weight of it all is finally too much for him to bear. He sits, then raises his hands to clasp mine. He gives me a weak smile. “After we’ve got them back, everything will be okay.”

I smile, too, and pray he’s not being overly optimistic. I know things won’t all be okay. After that cop this morning, I sense that even when Kelly and Jake show up again, we’ll still have to answer their questions. Old Fat Bastard isn’t the kind to back off. He’s like an old bulldog with a bone. He knows we’re connected somehow with the IU invasion in lower Manhattan. Unfortunately, he won’t have to dig very far to prove it.

But first things first: Kelly and Jake.

“Come on,” Micah says suddenly. He jumps up again, as if he’s found another reserve of energy to burn. He pulls me off the couch. “We can’t sit and wait for Ash and Reg to ping. We need to move.”

“Just the two of us?”

“If we have to. But we’ll drive around for a bit to see if we can find them.”

I bend down to retrieve my sparring bag.

“Leave it.”

He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the door. “It’ll be fine here. We’ll be back before dinnertime.”

The heat outside hits me like a baseball bat. Even Micah winces a bit at the glare. His forehead begins to glisten.

I head for the passenger seat before turning around again. “I forgot my inhaler. It’s in my bag.”

He gives me an impatient look, but taps his Link to unlock the front door to the house. “Grab a few more waters on your way out.” Then he gets in the car and starts it up to run the air conditioner. “I think we’re going to need them.”

I get the waters, then grab my inhaler out of my sparring bag and slip it into my pocket. As I turn to leave, my hip knocks against the side table. It tips and crashes to the floor, dumping the contents of a drawer.

I reach down to gather everything up. There’s a tacky paperweight from the Alamo, one of the few things I’ve ever seen in Micah’s house with any direct connection to his former life as a citizen of the Southern States Confederacy. His family defected from the Republic of Texas a couple years back. He still has the old twang in his voice. We always used to pick on him about it.

There are a few other trinkets, the usual odds and ends that people accumulate over time, before losing them again in the forgotten nooks and crannies of their lives: an antique yellow and black smiley faced pin, an old digital music player with a silver apple icon, the electronic guts of some other unknown device.

The last thing I pick up is a card of some sort. I turn it over and see that it’s an old fashioned college ID badge, printed on paper and laminated in plastic. Curious, I check out the image of the man on the front. His face is vaguely familiar, but he doesn’t resemble anyone I’ve seen in any of the family photos scattered about Micah’s place. I freeze when I see the name underneath: Eugene Halliwell.

For a brief moment I can’t tell if I’m actually reading it correctly. But when I blink and check again, it’s still there.

Eugene Halliwell, Professor of Immunology, Royce State College.

Micah honks.

I get up shakily and slip the badge into my back pocket.

I need to know how Micah knows the man who supposedly murdered my father.

Chapter 11

We spot Ashley and Reg standing at the corner of Amherst and Fourth, which tells me they’re coming from my house. Micah honks and they see us and hurry across the intersection, relieved looks on their faces.

“Your grandfather said you weren’t home yet from karate,” Reggie says, getting in behind me. “You know that guy scares the crap out of me, right? Sorry, but it’s true. He said we could hang out at your place, but...”

“Yeah, I know. And no need to apologize. He can be a bit...” I want to say hypocritical, especially after what he said about them last night.

“Overbearing?”

“Yeah, that too.”

I let Reggie’s karate reference go without correction. I’ve told him a million times that it’s hapkido. They’re very different martial arts. Karate emphasizes strength, meeting force with force; hapkido teaches using an opponent’s force against him. The misunderstanding probably bugs me more than it should, like when Kelly calls the dojang a dojo. I guess if they haven’t figured it out by now, then it’s unlikely they ever will. I know they don’t really mean anything by it.

“So, Micah filled you in on the deets?” Ash asks.

I turn to her and nod. For a moment I’m tempted to ask her about Rupert’s contact info on her Link, but like the coincidence of my father’s alleged assassin’s college ID being in Micah’s house, it’s not the most important thing right now. “I can’t believe you actually finished the hack on the codex,” I say. “Especially with everything going on.”

“That’s why we finished it.”

“Well, you can all believe it, suckers,” Reggie croons. Now that he’s off the street, he’s in a better mood, and it shows. “I can’t wait to score me a Player!”

“You can have your pick of the lot,” Micah says.

“Not so fast,” Ashley interjects. “This is just the first step. You both know that. All we’ve managed to do is get past the firewall. We still need to translate and assemble all the different game commands into a control device, which Micah will have to build from scratch. And speaking of Micah, he helped a lot. He’s the one who suggested we go back and run a cladistic analysis of the programming structure that ArcWare’s been using for their various versions of their games over the years. This allowed me to extrapolate to the most recent iteration.”

She shakes her head and laughs at herself. “I can’t believe that’s what finally opened it up for us. Once we had that, and using the backdoor to the codex Micah wrote while we were on LI, it was just a matter of configuring the translator until the primary and mature syntaxes fully aligned.”

“You lost me at cladistic analysis,” Reggie says.

“I’m lost, too, and I’m the one who suggested it.”

Ash leans forward and scratches Micah’s head. “All this time I thought I was the guru of hidden Markov modeling. Turns out Micah’s pretty good at solving optimal nonlinear filtering problems himself.”

“Stop!” I yell. “You’re making my ears bleed.”

“My brain’s bleeding.”

“Ash did all the heavy programming,” Micah says, ignoring us. “I just made a few suggestions. She took them and ran.”

“Yeah, and we all know who’s the expert on gaming architecture, Micah. It’s only natural you’d want to look at the programming structure.”

“Jeez, enough with the circle jerk already,” Reggie complains. “Let’s talk how we’re going to get Kelly and Jake.”

“Poor Reg. He hates it when we use multi-syllabic words,” Ashley teases.

“Boring has two syllables.”

“I think it’s because he’s not the center of attention,” I chime in.

“It’s that overinflated ego of his.”

“I got your overinflated right here.” Reggie says, and farts.

“Not in my car!” Micah cries. “Damn.”

Everyone laughs. We’re all giddy with relief knowing that Kelly and Jake are going to be okay, and that they’re on their way back. All the stress we’ve been holding inside finally has an outlet. As we head off the side streets of Greenwich and onto the main roads, the mood grows even more celebratory. We joke and tease each other like it’s old times again.

“Too bad we can’t use Reggie’s inflated ego as a raft to float us out over the Harlem swamps,” Ashley teases.

“I have a plan,” Micah replies, soberly.

“Care to share?”

“I’m working on it.”

“You always say that: ‘I’m working on it.’ ”

“Have I ever disappointed?”

“Well... yes. All the time, in fact.”

“That’s cold, Ash.”

“But it’s true.”

And she’s right. Micah hasn’t always been the most reliable one in the bunch. That would be Kelly. Micah’s made commitments before, then abandoned them. He’s overpromised and under delivered as often as not. Take, for example, the tracking script on LI. He couldn’t get it to work properly despite promising it would. We could’ve used it then. And there have been other times. We’ve just sort of gotten used to it.

“Ouch, harsh,” Reggie whispers.

It ends up killing the mood. We all grow quiet after that. Along with the silence comes some much needed reflection of the sober reality of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

There’s also the realization that so much can still go wrong.

* * *

IT’S THE FIRST TIME I’ve been on the Old New England Thruway in many years. Apparently, very few people ever use it anymore. Micah says most folks nowadays take the Bronx River Parkway, since it rests on higher ground and is less prone to washouts.

The inland scenery quickly gives way to the rainforest-like view now lining the coast. It’s technically not considered a rainforest, since we get too little actual precipitation, and it’s concentrated on too few days to deserve that designation. But with the constant high humidity and all the moss hanging from the trees, it might as well be. My brother Eric says that back when he was a kid, the temperature rarely reached a hundred in Connecticut during the summers. Now it hovers above ninety for five straight months out of the year and the number of hundred-plus degree days has grown steadily from one year to the next. We get nearly a month of them now.

Both sides of the highway are lined with these curtains of moss, which hide the Atlantic on our left and the inland swamps on the right. We can still feel them both pressing up tight against us, though. It’s like driving through a tunnel on the edge of the world.

We cross into New York at the Port Chester outpost, where the guard seems both surprised and pleased to see us. He’s very chatty. So much so, in fact, that I begin to think he might never let us through. “Going fishing?” he asks. “There’s a great rental shack off Locust Point. I take my sister’s kids there all the time. They love drifting among the ruins. Just don’t eat the fish. Catch and release only, I always tell people. Unless you wanna get your stomach pumped, that is. And if you happen to hook any two-headers, take a picture and post them on the Stream.”

“Can you rent rowboats there?”

“Sure. Rowboats, canoes. Nothing with a motor, of course. You know about the mines right? They’re sound and vibration sensitive. And mind the buoys. Stay this side of them.”

We nod.

“Do all that and you’ll be fine.”

He finally lifts the gate arm and waves us through. “Use the bloodworms,” he shouts, smiling cheerily as we drive past. “A hundred for a buck. Catfish go nuts for them!”

“We should’ve come this way before,” Reggie grumbles. “He didn’t even bother to check our Links or scan our implants.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Ash says. “He looks so lonely all the way out here.”

“We still would’ve had to go through the other checkpoints,” Micah points out. “The ones further south. And it would’ve taken us twice as long.”

“No, I meant we should’ve gone through the Harlem tunnel instead of the Midtown.”

I shudder. We shouldn’t have gone in the first place.

“It’s more than twice as long, Reg,” Ashley reminds him.

Reggie shrugs and rotates his shoulders, as if a five-mile dive — there and back — is all in a day’s work. Now that there’s no chance of it happening, he’s all Mister I-Can-Do-Anything again. He’s obviously forgotten how hard it was just a couple days before, when the distance was just a mile and we very nearly drowned.

Remembering this makes me start worrying about Kelly and Jake again. I hope they carry a lot of extra cartridges on their belts. And knives. And I hope there aren’t any tunnel blockages or undead.

We continue south. The land grows even swampier. The road is badly in need of repair. Micah doesn’t dare go any faster than thirty. “Don’t want to blow an axle or throw a tie rod,” he says. I think he talks just so we don’t have to think about anything else.

The road rises and dips like a kiddy rollercoaster, and more times than not, a shallow stream of gray water flows over the low parts. Some parts of the road are covered in mud or silt. We leave fresh tire tracks on it. I worry irrationally that someone might follow them and find out what we’re doing.

The empty buildings this close to the river are even more desolate and decrepit than the abandoned ones we saw on Long Island, perhaps because of the repeated flooding and subsequent retreat of waters they’ve been exposed to. Dried moss and seaweed dangles from the eaves and street signs. The water-worn husks of ancient tree trunks, stripped of bark and sun-bleached to silver, stand like silent sentinels. The place makes me think of dead things— not the undead, but of ancient civilizations and long lost cities and ghosts and haunted places. It’s just a different type of extinction process than the one we’re used to. This one gets inside your soul and eats at you from the inside. The one we know consumes you from without.

We come to a place where a beaten and faded sign points south. It announces the way to Locust Point. A hand-painted sign is tacked to it announcing cheap rentals. But there’s nothing there to see. The road ends abruptly and the trees clear. The Atlantic Ocean opens out in front of us where once was land and East River. In the distance, a small rocky island breaches the surface of the water, like a dead whale. The stark gray walls of Long Island rise up beyond it, looking like a hundred-mile-long battleship from some ancient giant race of people.

“Now what?” Reggie asks. “It’s high tide. We can’t get out there to rent a boat.”

Micah doesn’t answer. He steers the car to the right and follows the road as it heads west through these quasi-wastelands.

“Wrong way, brah.”

“There used to be a bridge back there,” he says. “The Throng Neck. Two bridges, actually. I remember them from the map.”

The three of us strain to look back, but of course we don’t see anything. All the bridges were bombed out after the outbreak — at least the ones to Long Island — after the military went in and evacuated and shut it down. I don’t know why he thinks it’s important. And no one asks why he’s committed their names to memory. It’s not like he has any kind of personal connection to the area. They would’ve been gone long before he arrived here from Texas.

But that’s Micah, I remind myself. His brain works in ways that are mysterious to the rest of us.

We hit the remnants of the Cross-Bronx Highway. If we were heading for lower Manhattan, we would go inland from here, crossing the Hudson into New Jersey before turning south again. Today, however, we remain tight against the coast. We pass signs for the old towns of Trinity and Castle Hill; Hunts Point-Longwood, where, according to Micah, the fourth tunnel is supposed to come out; Foxhurst and Melrose. All of these neighborhoods were wiped out by the floods. They’re now reefs for the strange fish that have learned to survive with the poisonous chemicals leeching out of the ground.

Finally, a sign tells us we are about to cross the Harlem River. It’s impossible to tell where the swamp ends and the river begins. The highway veers right and disappears into the distance, the opposite direction from where we need to go.

The bridge over the Harlem River is gone. A shallow ribbon of gray leads out to where it used to stand, an old road that’s barely even there anymore. Our way is blocked by concrete barriers. The surface is too unstable, too broken down to permit vehicles. It seems that only weekend fisherman and checkpoint guards with their nieces and nephews come down here now.

“I guess we get out and walk the rest of the way,” Micah says. He turns the car off. “That, or swim.”

Chapter 12

“My shoes are ruined,” Ashley complains, as she high-steps over the muddy parts in a vain attempt to minimize the damage.

I look down at her feet and notice for the first time that she’s wearing a new pair of Nike sneakers. I want to ask her how her family can afford them — not to mention the two-hundred dollar Ronnie Marx bikini she wore last Friday for the practice dive — but Micah interrupts the thought.

“There’s another rental shack.” He points off to the right, past the wrecked husked of some kind of concrete structure. “Looks like they’ve got two-man kayaks.”

“Or two-woman kayaks,” Ashley says.

We head over to it. I’ve only got a few dollars in my pocket, so I wonder how we’re going to pay. Maybe Ash can sell her shoes.

“I’ll talk to the owner,” Micah says. He looks at Reg when he says this. Everyone knows Reggie doesn’t do tact. He’s not the subtlest guy in the world. Or the most charming. “I’ll see what I can negotiate. Just wait here.”

We watch as he walks over. He has to take a winding course, since there are puddles everywhere and muddy sinkholes that could swallow him up in an instant. The shack stands at the edge of an unbroken expanse of water. Several hundred feet off to our left, another line of crumbling buildings rise, the tops of second-floor windows peeking out a few feet above the water and one foot below the high-water mark. Micah disappears around the corner of the shack.

“Freaking hot out here,” Reggie grumbles. He turns and wipes away a bead of sweat on his face and adds that he wishes he’d worn a hat. He rests a hand on Ashley’s shoulder for a moment before dropping it. His thumb catches on where her knotted-up tee shirt bunches up at the middle of her back. Her skin is bronze, the few wisps of hair at the base of her spine as blond as mine, rather than coppery red. Her hand twitches reflexively at the touch. She curls her pinky around his for just a moment.

Careless gestures, completely natural and completely unnoticed by either of them. I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy. They’ve grown so comfortable around each other, even as Kelly and I are struggling not to push one another apart.

It wasn’t always like this with them. The first few years I knew Reggie and Ash they were constantly clashing with each other. Two insecure kids rushing headlong into adolescence. Both were woefully unprepared for the new and unfamiliar feelings that would soon overtake them. Both eventually realizing that they were hopelessly attracted to the other, yet neither wanting for the longest time to admit it. Doing so would’ve been a sign of weakness. They were like magnets dangling on the ends of strings, bumping into one another, repelling and spinning, spinning and repelling. Until, finally, a chance alignment slammed them together.

At some point — sometime within the past few weeks — it became more than simple animal attraction. I guess it was inevitable, two people as lost as they are. They were bound to end up together.

Ashley grabs Reggie’s elbow and points past the line of buildings. “What’s that?”

He shields his eyes against the glare of the sun off the water. I squint to see what they’re looking at. There’s a tiny spot in the air, way off in the distance, a glint of something shiny hovering over the edge of the wall surrounding Long Island.

“Is that an airplane?”

“Can’t be. That’s supposed to be a no-fly zone.”

But as we watch, the dot slowly moves, and it becomes apparent that it is, in fact, a plane. It’s circling. At some point we realize it’s not actually out over Long Island, but over southern Manhattan. Or maybe as far away as New Jersey. Across all this open expanse, distances are tricky to judge properly.

Micah returns with a pair of old wooden oars. The paint has long since worn off of them and the wood appears weak with age and dry rot. “I got us a rowboat,” he announces. “It’s not the greatest, but it’ll get us out to where we need to go. Told you I’d think of something. Although, we might have to bail water.”

Nobody answers. He turns and follows the direction of our gazes. “What are you looking at?”

“Plane,” Reggie says.

Micah finally spots it. “Strange. That’s a no-fly zone.”

“Might be over lower Manhattan,” Ashley says. She turns toward me. Micah and Reggie follow suit, all of them waiting, as if I’ve got the answer.

“Might be a surveillance plane,” I hazard, thinking of the police and military activity down there today.

“Think it has something to do with the zombies?” Ashley asks.

“Hey!” Micah hisses, shushing us. “Keep it quiet. Our voices carry out here!”

She winces.

“Let’s just get that rowboat and head over to where we’re supposed to be.”

Reggie drops his hand from his forehead. “Let’s do this,” he says. His interest in the airplane is completely forgotten. “Just paddles? No fishing gear, brah? I was so looking forward to trying out those bloodworms.”

Ashley laughs and slaps his arm. “That’s my Reggie, always thinking about his stomach.”

He smiles and nods, then frowns. “Hey!”

We all laugh as we pass the shack. I notice it’s mounted on plastic pontoons, presumably so it’ll rise during high tides. It’s attached to the cement by a long thick chain, which is crusted with dried moss and muck. I glance back, but there’s not much to see. The door’s closed and the dark glass in the window is shuttered against the heat and glare. But I sense that whoever’s inside is watching us. I wonder if he heard Ashley.

We reach the bridge abutment and find the promised boat tied up to it with a frayed piece of twine. It leans against a cement block. Reggie tries to untie it, but the rope is hard and stiff. It refuses to come undone. Finally, he just grabs the ends and snaps it apart. He tilts the boat over into the water, where it settles onto its bottom, rocking. We watch it for a few minutes to make sure it doesn’t sink.

“Well, if there’s a leak, it’s not a bad one,” Micah finally decides. He hands the oars over to Reggie — it’s already understood that he’s going to row — then climbs in and positions himself at the front.

I notice a bronze placard embedded in the cement next to us. It reads, “Willis Avenue Bridge, Opened 2010.” Of course the bridge is no longer there. I don’t know if it’s a victim of the floods or the bombing campaign. It doesn’t go anywhere near Long Island.

The rowboat is barely large enough to hold the four of us, and it makes me wonder how on earth it’ll ever fit all six, once we’ve collected Kelly and Jake. Micah assures us that it will, so Ash and I clamber aboard while Reggie holds it steady with his hand. He’s the last one in and he seats himself in the middle. Ash shoves us off.

“This must be for bailing,” she says, pulling a squared-off scoop made from an old milk jug from a cubby under the seat. I look down and see a thin line of water run like mercury across the bottom of the boat. The leak appears to be coming from the front.

Micah’s not concerned though. He pulls the old computer tablet out of his pack and turns it on so he can more accurately locate our end of the Harlem tunnel. “Just head in that direction,” he says after a minute passes. He points without looking up. Reggie angles us toward the indicated direction.

Micah then swings his arm south like a compass, past the stumps of several buildings, out toward a line of red buoys to where a small spit of land rises in the distance. “That’s Randall Island.”

“What’s left of it, anyway,” Reggie notes. “Not much above water these days.”

Only birds now inhabit its brick and concrete ruins.

“Just keep us away from there,” Micah says. “It’s probably mined.”

Reggie has to strain to keep us on course, as the current here is strong. He believes we’re passing over the old Harlem River channel, which once connected the East and Hudson rivers. He points the boat toward the shell of the tallest building a few hundred feet away. It looks like someone took a giant sledgehammer and chipped away at the corners. Thousands of holes pock its concrete surface.

“Welcome to East Harlem,” he says. “Keep your eyes open for street signs.”

“Can you see the guys yet?” I ask.

Ash looks up from where she’s playing with the ribbon of water below her feet. Micah’s got his face down near the screen of the tablet, trying to block out the glare. He reaches absently into his pocket and extracts his Link and hands it over. Reggie passes it back to me. I start scrolling through it to find the tracking script. Ash watches over my shoulder.

“Okay,” Micah says, turning around. “According to this, we’re about a thousand feet from the tunnel opening. Take that passageway between those buildings there, Reg.”

Reggie puffs from the exertion and the heat. I reach into my pack and grab one of the waters from Micah’s house and hand it over to Ash so she can help him drink. Then I turn my attention back to the Link. He’s got it all set up weird, and I can’t seem to find the right script.

A shadow overtakes us as we pass between buildings, blocking out the sun. The air is still hot, but I can’t help shivering a little as the blank, dark windows of the decaying structure drift by just out of arm’s reach. Reggie keeps us close to take advantage of the shade, yet far enough away that the oars don’t hit. He’s already dripping with sweat.

The buildings act like a wind funnel, tugging us in random directions and making Reggie’s job that much harder.

“Did you hear that?” he suddenly asks. He stops rowing for a moment, docking the oars. We all listen, but no sound reaches our ears save the wind, the dripping of water from our paddles, and the cries of gulls.

“I didn’t hear any—”

But then we do hear it: a low rumble, like thunder. Actually, we feel it rather than hear it.

“What the hell is that?” Reggie says. “A storm?” He looks up at the drab, gray, cloudless sky.

“Sounded more like an explosion,” I say. “But it was far away.”

“A mine on the river? They sometimes go off, if there’s a school of fish or a shark or something.”

“There’s no sharks here.”

“Are so,” Ashley says. “My cousin said he saw—”

There’s another low rumble, this one more distinct. Ashley looks up in alarm. The noise gives me the creeps. I’d once read in a banned book — Tom Sawyer, I believe it was — that they used to bomb the Mississippi River to bring up the bodies of people who had drowned. I always wondered if it really worked.

“Let’s just keep going,” Micah murmurs. He turns his attention back to the tablet. I try and turn mine back to his Link, but my mind keeps drifting back to that old book.

I finally give up after cycling through all the various scripts. “This thing’s a disaster, Micah. I can’t find it.”

I tap Reggie on the knee to hand it forward, but Ash asks to give it a try. She trades me the bailing scoop. There’s barely a quarter inch of water in the bottom of the boat. Not enough to be concerned about just yet.

“Looks like the opening comes out on East One Twentieth Street,” Micah announces. We all look up. “Where are we?”

“Looks like One Twenty-Fifth. Have we passed it?”

Micah shakes his head. “The numbers go down in this direction. Keep going the way we’re going. Head left the first chance you get. The tunnel opening is about three blocks inland.”

Reggie snorts. “Inland from what?” He lets go of the oars and shakes the strain out of his hands.

Micah grins. “If you see a sign for First Avenue, take a hard right.”

“Your right or the boat’s?”

“The boat’s.”

“It’s called starboard,” Reggie says.

“Just go right.”

“Should I use my blinker?”

Ash and I laugh. Micah’s driving habits are more compulsive than my road instructor’s were last summer. He not only follows all the rules, but with a wide margin of safety to boot.

We pass a massive storage tank of some sort. It was once painted white but is now mostly rust-red with black streaks. Beyond it, several cross-shaped buildings break the surface of the water.

“First Ave,” Reggie announces.

We pass among the buildings. They remind me of the pictures of old cemeteries that Ash’s G-ma Junie once showed us. “We used to bury our dead,” she’d explained.

“Buried? In the ground?” Ash and I had both cried. “Eew! That’s just creepy.”

Incineration is so much more tidy. And it guarantees that the dead will never come back.

“East One Twentieth,” Ash calls out. She points to where a moss-covered streetlamp pokes out of the water and reaches an arm out a few feet higher. The green street sign hanging from it dips through the surface.

“This should be it, then. Reggie, let’s tie up to the sign. Ash, let me have my Link back, please.”

“Fine, I couldn’t find it either. This thing’s as messed up as your house is.”

Micah grins mischievously. He leans over the side and splashes us with water.

“Hey!” she squeals. “Yuck!”

But she retaliates. Pretty soon the three of us are splashing each other while Reggie yells at us to stop. “I’m trying to row here!” We ignore him and keep it up until the front of the rowboat bumps into the light post. Micah ties what’s left of the rope to it and we rest for a moment drinking water from our packets. Out here, there’s no escape from the glaring sun.

“What’d you do to this thing?” Micah complains after a moment. He looks up from his Link.

“I didn’t do anything,” I say.

“I might’ve moved a few things around,” Ashley confesses.

Micah makes a sour face. “I can’t find anything now.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t find anything before.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Hey, guys,” Reggie interrupts. He gestures south. “I don’t think those are surveillance planes.”

The tiny dot circling over lower Manhattan has now split into three distinct dots. We watch as one dives down past the edge of a building in our way. A moment later, it reappears around the side and begins rising up again. Below it, a silver spike rises halfway into the sky.

“What the fuck is that?”

A second plane drops down like the first. Seconds later, the dull sound of another explosion reaches us.

“Holy shit,” Reggie exclaims, laughing in astonishment. “They’re bombing the goddamn city!”

“Not the city,” Micah says after a moment. The sound of a third explosion rolls past us. We expect the plane that dropped this last bomb to follow its companions, but it doesn’t. Instead, it starts heading up along the Long Island coast. The other two planes line up behind it. “I think they’re bombing the river now.”

“Raise the dead,” I murmur.

They all turn and give me a strange look. I shrug and shake my head grimly.

“They must be taking out the tunnel. That’s what I’d do.”

“Holy shit,” Reggie whispers. “It’s a goddamn good thing Kelly and Jake decided not to come back that way, then.”

There’s another low rumble. Then several minutes of silence. We wait, but there are no more detonations. Micah goes back to trying to fix his Link. Reggie pours water from his bottle over his head. I lean back and wait.

“Um, guys?” Ash says. “What are they doing now?”

“Who, Kelly and Jake? I’m still trying to fix this damn—”

“No, the planes.” Her eyes grow large. “Are they getting closer? I think they’re heading this way!”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Reggie says. “They’re probably finished and going back home.”

We watch them, fascinated. Only Ashley seems concerned. As the dots grow larger, they appear to be on a line that will take them straight over us.

“Should we hide?”

“We’re just a bunch of people out for a little fishing trip.”

“Yeah, but we’re not fishing.”

“It’s euphemism. Nobody actually fishes for real. Just act natural,” Micah advises us. “They can’t even see us from all the way up there. And anyway, we’re not doing anything illegal.”

Still, we watch the approaching airplanes in wary silence. Ashley’s apprehension has rubbed off onto the rest of us. In the back of my mind I’m aware that my toes are wet inside my shoes, and I remember that I should check the leak. Even Ash says something about the water. But it doesn’t seem all that important right now.

It’s only when the first plane descends and heads straight for us that we start to panic. Micah reaches around to untie us from the sign, but we know it’s already too late to escape.

The plane will be over us in seconds. We stare as a door in its belly opens. Then we hear the whistle as the bomb begins to fall.

Part Two

This Is Why We Have Contingencies.

Chapter 13

I slam so violently into consciousness that it’s like I’ve been yanked out of a deep sleep and dropped onto the cold, hard floor.

I’m in bed. I know this without opening my eyes. I’m on my back, a pillow beneath my head, but I don’t feel rested. I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all. I’m bone tired. My heart’s racing. And I can’t seem to catch my breath. I hurt all over.

A dry heat bakes my face. Light throbs against my eyelids. A delicate red scrim is all that separates reality and the terrible dream I’d been having. I fear what’s real may be even worse.

So I lie here without opening my eyes. The heat and pain are intense. And yet, for some reason, I’m freezing cold.

I think I’m naked.

I try to move... a finger at first. Not so bad. Next, a hand, and— oh god, it hurts so much! Everything about me is in pain. My shoulders scream out in agony. In place of my spine, there’s a steel rod colder than ice. My ribs are rolls of barbed wire wrapped around me. My ears ring. My eyes burn beneath their lids.

I don’t know what happened or where I am. Or how I got here. It doesn’t fit with the last thing I remember.

What’s happening?

Hours pass. That’s my best guess. Time is fluid, outside of me. I am suspended in it, fixed, immobile, within its stream. Any movement, even the slightest twitch, will trigger an avalanche of torment.

So I fall back into the darkness, until I’m swept away once more. I let myself drift away...

* * *

I THINK I’VE SLEPT, for real this time, because the second awakening is less of a jolt than a surfacing, less like slamming into something than emerging from it.

The blood red veil remains. Still very bright. The heat continues to pound on my face. My skin is still cold.

And the pain... I know it’s still there, lurking, although it feels more distant somehow.

A finger twitch and the pain stirs in its slumber. I dare not attempt anymore for fear of rousing it again.

At least my heart has stopped pounding like a jackhammer, and my ears no longer roar from its clamor.

* * *

THIRD TIME’S A CHARM. That’s what I tell myself, the next time I come to.

I manage to crack open an eyelid this time. The light is blinding. It sears my retina. Where am I? Why is it so bright? I squeeze my eyes shut again.

I wait.

I don’t fall away this time. I expect sleep to happen, but it doesn’t come.

Hours later, I try again. Slowly. One eye, just a slit. Then a little more.

It’s not sunlight, although it’s as bright as the sun.

A hospital lamp slowly resolves out of the haze. For now, it’s the only thing I see. Even thinking about trying to turn my head makes me nauseous. A new pain shoots through my neck, pierces my skull. It arcs like lightning down my back and wraps its iron fingers around my lungs in a vise.

Heart’s pounding again. Breathing labored, painful, growing more constricted until I wish I would die. If only I could stop hurting.

I wait some more.

Death doesn’t come. Pain slowly retreats.

I keep on breathing, and the hurt slips away, slips away, slips away. I lie still and stare at the light. And when that becomes too much to bear, I close my eyes again and return to seeing only red.

After a while, the agony is no longer all of me, or even the largest part of me.

I lift a finger. Bend my wrist. It doesn’t make me want to give up, cry out, curdle. I raise my arm. I see my hand, my fingers.

I hear a sound. It’s...

Curious.

I don’t know how long it’s been there. It seems like it’s always been there, just below my consciousness. A buzzing. A million mosquitoes waiting. I try to turn away from it, and the sheet covering me slips off my body. It tears mercilessly at my skin, peeling it off layer by layer, shredding it. The sheet drains like hot oil to the floor. The mosquitoes become tiny angry wasps. They sting me. They’re merciless. I want to cry out.

I wait, trembling.

Eventually, the wasps settle down. The pain subsides.

Later, I move a leg. The wasps buzz and sting me some more. Fewer this time. The pain isn’t so bad.

Kwanjangnim Rupert’s words come to me: Don’t fight your enemy’s strength; use it. Flow with it; yield to it or it will break you.

Pain is my enemy right now.

So I yield to its assaults, rather than fight it. I close my eyes and focus on breathing.

I slowly inch myself toward the edge of the bed, allowing the pain to flow through me and over me. I learn to use the pain, to move with it, to let it propel me like a current. My feet drop over the side and the pain roars for a moment like a crashing tidal wave. It threatens to overwhelm me, to flood me. I will it to flow out of me, past me and onto the floor. It’s an endless, corrosive current of agony bearing me from unknown seas to unknown shores. But I do not resist. And finally it passes.

I’m in a hospital room.

It makes sense, although the realization still comes as a surprise.

How did I get here?

What happened?

Medical instruments stand vigil beside the bed, bearing witness to my recovery from... what? Bare walls. Bare ceiling. No clock or TV. Barred window. The glass is frosted. A groggy suggestion of sunlight passes through it. I must be in one of the public hospitals.

Why am I here? What happened?

Something ropy caresses my thigh. I struggle to look down at it, and I nearly cry out seeing the snake in my bed. I’m too weak. I can barely push and exhale out of my lungs, much less use it to power a scream. Only a whisper escapes my lips. I reach down and grab the snake and try to hurl it away, but it’s latched onto me. It’s attached to my— no, it’s inside of me! I feel it tug at my belly. It won’t let go!

Its skin is smooth, cool, without texture, pliant and without internal structure. I lift it. A bag is attached to its tail. It’s filled with amber fluid. I let it drop and walk my fingers back up to where it enters me.

I scream out another anguished huff of air.

Panic rushes in. I tumble out of the bed and silently scream, and I can’t stop until the pain utterly overwhelms me, and I curl up as I try to flee from the hoard of angry wasps.

But they are within me. I cannot escape. They flow with the tide of pain.

They are pain.

They sting me.

They sting me.

They are killing me.

* * *

THE SECOND BRUTAL JOLT awake is accompanied not by light, but darkness.

I remember falling, but I’m somehow back in bed, covered again. Underneath, I’m still naked. The wasps are gone. The silence is bliss. The cold and heat are gone. And nearly all of the pain.

The rubber snake still penetrates me. I pull on it, sobbing dryly, but it refuses to let go. Somewhere, a part of me knows what it is. It makes sense; I’ve been unconscious. It makes no sense at all.

Everything’s so quiet that I can almost believe I’m totally alone in the world, the last person alive. I peer at the gloom above me. Details emerge, shadows, the dim glow of instrument lights around me reflecting off a sprinkler head above me. Rows and columns of ceiling tiles resolve out of the gloom. It’s a different room than before. The walls are bare, save an ancient poster for Fiji, torn on one corner. Someone had taken a marker and written “goals” over it. There’s no window in the room. The hospital light is gone.

Where am I? What happened? Why am I here?

The pain stirs deep inside of me, then retreats. I’m still alive. I think I am. I haven’t died. I haven’t reanimated.

At least, I think I haven’t.

Zombies don’t require urinary catheters.

And they’re not self-aware.

I lift my arms and stare at them. They’re smudged all over with dirt, but when I rub at the marks, the smudges stay. They’re bruises, days old. And half-healed scrapes.

Why can’t I remember?

I groan as I rotate my head all the way to the left. There’s an IV machine, blinking away, dripping liquid into a tube that snakes its way beneath the sheet, to me.

But not into my arms.

I reach up and find its fang sunk deep into my neck. I want to rip it out, but as my fingers dance carefully over the tape that binds it to me, something inside warns me to wait.

Not yet.

I call out.

My throat is dry and it comes out as an indistinct croak.

“Can someone... help me?”

Nobody answers. Nothing moves.

The instruments beep and patiently keep watch over me.

I try again.

I give up.

I slip back into the darkness.

I sleep.

Chapter 14

I wake to the sound of a woman’s voice outside the door to my room. At first, it washes over me, then two words in particular snag my attention:

updated implant

I concentrate, and soon pick up more phrases:

...stable and fully functional...

...ready... treatments... vital signs are good...

Slowly, I drag myself to the surface of the black pit of unconsciousness where I’ve been floating for who-knows how long. I still can’t remember what happened to bring me here. I don’t recall a thing beyond sitting in Micah’s basement and the boys playing Zpocalypto.

The boys.

Alarm bells start ringing inside my head.

Kelly?

I open my eyes. The room is still dark, but the door is slightly ajar. Light spills in through the opening. I lift my head and I see a hand resting on the knob.

Kelly?

I almost call out his name.

“I’m still not sure I understand how she’s connected,” the woman says.

Who, me? They want to know how I’m connected to... what?

“Forensics went through the Stream records,” a male voice responds. The hand shifts on the knob. A finger taps patiently. It’s not Kelly. “She attempted to communicate with the Corben boy.”

Corben?

They’re talking about Kelly. And me. They’re talking about us.

“That’s all they found?”

“We’re digging into it, but we have to be discreet, given the sensitivity of the issue.”

“But why keep her?”

“We promised the Abaliba group five. Obviously, this isn’t what we had planned. It’s not ideal, but when a gift horse drops in your lap, you don’t check its teeth.”

“But is she a suitable replacement?”

“She commits at least twenty hours a week to the product. And she’s a proficient gamer in her own right. Not the best we’ve seen, but... adequate. She’ll do. The one of the five we lost wasn’t the best of the bunch, either.”

Lost? Replacement?

“I suppose it helps that she’s young and fit.”

“Yes, and that she’s also physically attractive. The numbers from our test run are extremely positive, accounting for a nearly eleven percent boost in viewership in the past month. So, what she lacks in ability and reputation, she’ll more than make up for with the male, fifteen-to-forty-five demographic. Whether or not she makes a decent player will have to be seen. But by then, the deal will be done.”

Player? With a capital or small p? I wonder. I wish I knew what they were talking about.

“So it’s vital the new implant takes,” he says. “I want hourly checks tonight, to make sure she’s stabilizing from the latest treatment. I’m hoping by morning we won’t have to resort to more extreme measures.”

“Yes, sir.”

Latest treatment?

“What are the current numbers?”

“Unfortunately, still progressing toward cortical rejection. The treatment’s slowed it down somewhat, but another seven percent of neural connections have degenerated since the re-annealing. If it remains steady, we’ll lose another three to four percent over the next twenty-four hours. At the current rate, we’ll reach catastrophic severability in less than eleven days.”

“I don’t believe it’ll get to that. Her blood work suggests it’s not the new materials. And it’s still early, so my gut feeling is that it’ll stabilize. It’s happened before. But tonight’s critical. You’ll have to keep a close watch.”

“Could it be the software?”

“With the new codex, anything’s possible. I know they’re still working out some of the bugs, but they are more on the controller side, not interface issues.”

“I tried fine-tuning a number of the interface parameters — voltage and wave amplitude, primarily — but the system hung on me. I don’t think the servers are up for the increased data load. I’ve had to reboot twice.”

“No, don’t mess with that anymore, Mabel. We’ll bring in a specialist to oversee it. If something happens to her while the system’s down, we risk a total system failure and will lose her for good. Keep her calm. A shock to her system now could accelerate the rejection. If she goes catastrophic, we’ll be back to square one, except she’ll be brain dead and we’ll be down another body.”

“I do better with people than machines anyway.”

“You’re doing fine, Mabel. Just stay in your lane and follow the provided protocols. The coder’ll be on-stream soon enough.”

“She might not last that long.”

“It’d take us at least a month to vet another engineer. It’s a risk, but bringing on another ArcWare coder at this juncture is just not practical.”

ArcWare?

“Either the upgrade will finish annealing to her cerebral cortex or it won’t.”

“It’s a shame. She’s so young.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mabel. We have backup plans, even for our backup plans. I’m sure you can appreciate that fact more than anyone else right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The tech and prep nurse will be leaving on the shuttle at six-thirty tomorrow morning, so they’ll be arriving here by seven. There’s no rush getting the girl installed into the device for the alpha. Assuming we’re still on track, let’s schedule the first injection for ten o’clock.”

“That late?”

“I want to be present to see how well each of them responds to the transition.”

They? Who else is here with me? Kelly? And what transition? What are they going to do to us?

“Unfortunately, it’s the earliest I can make it here. Mister Qi insisted we meet for breakfast in the city before he heads back home, so it’s my last chance to talk to him in person. I don’t expect to be any later than nine-thirty. Also, Mister Harrison will be in attendance, so make sure observation one is tidied up, understood? All that gear they dumped in there needs to be moved out. We want to make a good impression.”

“Where should I put it?”

“Put it in the comm’s room. They won’t be going into there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As this is our first try with the new variant, we’ve got no baseline for how long it’ll take for the virus to fully activate once transition is confirmed. I need you to work with the team to make sure all safeguards and contingencies are in place and fully operational. We can’t afford any more setbacks or embarrassments. Oh, and we’ll be recording the entire process. Hadley’s starting to put together the sales pitch. He could use a few clips.”

“I understand, sir.”

I frown now, alarmed by everything I’m hearing. Virus? Infection? Contingencies? What sales pitch? Who the hell are these people? And what the hell are they planning to do?

“Any guess as to when Miss Daniels might wake up?”

“I expect it will be soon, sir. She’s been increasingly responsive to pain stimuli. Her last EEG showed very active brainwaves, so it’s not a deep coma.”

“Well, her body needs time to recover. She’ll wake when she’s ready.”

“She’s shown remarkable improvement since we brought her in from New York Medical.”

“Thanks to your fine care.”

New York Medical? The other hospital room. So, where am I now?

“Should I put her in restraints?”

“If you think they’re necessary, but I think the motion detectors should be enough for now. It’s not like she’ll wander off.”

“I’d like to move her to an every-four-hour schedule like the others, if you don’t mind. She’s stable, has good vitals. She was lucky. The blast could’ve done a lot more damage—”

Blast? What blast?

“Yes, but she nearly drowned.”

Drowned?”

“Vitals on her will remain hourly for now, okay?”

“Have you figured out why the kids were even there in the first place?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“The other girl, Miss Evans, said something about the tunnel before she clammed up.”

So Ashley is here! But what does she mean by tunnel?

“What else did she say?”

“I had to sedate her. She tried to escape last night.”

Escape? The alarm bells inside my head are jangling like crazy. Ashley’s sedated? What the hell is going on?

“She thinks she’s so smart. She’s just a little—”

“Don’t underestimate her. They’re all smart. Why else would we have actively recruited them? Smart, intelligent, and game capable. And attractive. They’re the full package. Once Jacque receives the finished prospectus, he won’t be able to say no. And the boys? Are they talking?”

Boys?

“No.”

“Restrained?”

“Yes. Although I’m only worried about the big one, the mouthy one.”

Reggie?

“He’s more bluff than anything, I suspect. But do what you think is necessary to keep them all under control. And quiet. I don’t want them causing a ruckus before we conduct the transitions tomorrow.”

My mind goes back to what the woman said about a tunnel. The word has niggled at me like a worm until I’ve finally managed to coax an image buried somewhere deep down inside my head: I’m swimming through darkness, walls all around. I try to see around me and I catch flashes of other people: Kelly, Reg, Ash. Micah. And... some other boy, a stranger. Are these memories? It feels more like a dream than anything real. I don’t think we’d be in a tunnel anywhere, especially underwater. Would we?

Then an irrational fear washes over me. I feel like I’m in danger. Death feels... imminent. Something wants to grab me, pull me down. I’m suffocating, can’t breathe!

Drowning?

That’s what the nurse said earlier.

Reggie’s voice echoes inside my head: Gameland.

What about it?

What did we do?

And then it all comes back to me in a sudden flood of images. I remember! I remember the maps and our preparation, the practice dive at the reservoir, the tunnel to Long Island, the undead and the narrow escape coming back. The blockage. And...

And the other boy, Jake. We left him behind.

Kelly went back for him.

Alone.

The police visiting Mrs Corben. Interrogating me. Eric rushing off the Manhattan.

He never came back. Kelly never returned!

Were we trying to go back for him?

Wait. No. I remember. He was trying to get out. He had Jake with him. Micah telling me they were going through a different tunnel. We were going to meet them where they were trying to come out.

But there’s still a blank spot. Something’s missing, some vital piece of information that my mind refuses to give up. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember. It doesn’t come.

“I’d feel better if I had some more help, sir. It’s just me right now and—”

“Patience, Mabel. If all goes well tomorrow, I’ll be able to get the committee’s full buy-in. Until then, we have to keep our footprint as small as possible. I know how hard you’re working. Your service and sacrifice are greatly appreciated. You’ve really committed yourself.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s my honor to volunteer.”

He laughs. “Well, I suppose it helps knowing you’ll be well compensated. As long as you keep your promises, we’ll keep ours. We absolutely cannot afford to lose one more of them. We promised five gamers, and that’s what we’re going to deliver, by god. This will all be over soon.”

Five. Ashley and Reg, Me and Micah, and Kelly. We’re all here.

The hand on the knob rises halfway up the door. A finger with a large ring on it taps the wood. I can almost see the man thinking. The crack shrinks to a finger’s width, letting in less light.

“If there’s nothing else, Mabel, I’m going to head out. It’s been a long day, and I need to be fresh for my meeting. Keep up the hourly checks for now. I’m counting on you. I don’t want to think about what will happen if we fail.”

The fingers slip off the knob, and the door slides shut with a soft click. Darkness and silence fill the room.

And terror fills me.

Chapter 15

I reach up and slip my hand behind my neck. There’s a bandage there, stiff and crinkly. The area is tender.

Why would they replace my implant? What’s the new one for? What does it do?

And why is my body trying to reject it? What happens if it does?

You’ll be brain dead.

An inch above the edge of the bandage, my hair has been shaved away. Based on the feel of the new bristles growing in, the surgery couldn’t have been more than a couple days ago.

A raft of questions comes to mind. Foremost among them is, what is an alpha injection? Is it anything like the Zuluization Process?

I shiver, dreading that it might be.

Back when Reanimation was first developed, living humans were turned into zombies solely to create an army of the undead for national defense purposes. The process was code-named Zulu. Back then, only death-row prisoners were conscripted. The program was not just successful as a national defense strategy, but also, unexpectedly, as a domestic deterrent against capital crimes. The murder rate plummeted, and Death Rows became ghost towns. When the military started running out of suitable candidates, the government quietly changed the law to include life-without-parole inmates. They rationalized it as solving two problems at once: it refilled our security forces — depleted after the Middle East and Asian conflicts of the first quarter of the century — and eased prison overcrowding.

Of course, Zuluization eventually created new problems for the country. While it suppressed violence internationally, it raised unrest here at home. A loose coalition of states called the SSC, which originally comprised of twelve members, demanded that they have more say in which citizens could be turned into Zulus and how they were to be used. When the federal government refused to grant states greater participation in the process, the Southern States Coalition threatened secession. A civil war followed. It lasted all of twelve days but killed millions. The vast majority of casualties were on the side of the SSC and came at the hands of Zulus. The war ended in a stalemate when Texas threatened to unleash the technology back on the rest of the country. DC capitulated to their demands. Of the original fifty-two states, thirty-six re-ratified the Constitution and became New Merica. In the weeks that followed, several more states asked to rejoin, leaving the SSC with just three permanent members. Currently, a half dozen other states have yet to commit to returning or leaving permanently, and a state of war continues to exist with the SSC.

The global community condemned what happened. New Merica merely shrugged it off. Our isolation continues to grow each year.

After the Life Service Law passed eleven years ago, the government formally dropped the term Zulu and began calling them conscripts. Military conscripts were called Omegamen. CU is Arc’s brand-friendly shorthand for Civilian Undead, although it became more broadly understood as Controlled or Conscripted Undead, without distinction to military conscripts and civilians. CUs do the jobs nobody else wants. But regardless of who controls them, the government or Arc, and no matter their designated function, they’re all the same thing. People that were once alive before they were infected with the same Reanimation virus. They all run the same tech. They’re all slaves.

And they all share the same instinct to kill as a zombie without the implant.

A decade or so ago, Arc began to explore other uses for CUs. They lobbied the government to expand the ambit beyond labor and defense functions to include entertainment. There was, quite naturally, a lot of pushback. Grandpa was the one who eventually negotiated the agreement which would grant Arc exclusive rights for entertainment purposes. The license would be renewed yearly into perpetuity as long as Arc’s revenue covered the government’s entire budget. The deal was struck, and so Arc Entertainment was born.

No longer constrained by tax revenues from its citizens, the government’s budget unsurprisingly ballooned. Arc had to find innovative ways to keep up, some of which push legal and ethical boundaries. And the government is complicit.

I can’t help wondering now, is that what’s being done to us? Are we to become a new breed of Player in The Game to bring in more money? Are we being “volunteered”?

I slip my hand back underneath the covers just as the lock on the door releases and it opens. I shut my eyes and pretend to be unconscious, but my heart is hammering inside my chest, threatening to give me away.

The nurse — Mabel, I remind myself — comes in and slips a cuff on my upper arm to check my blood pressure and pulse. As she works, she talks to herself. She calls my name a couple times. I don’t respond. I pretend to be unconscious. I try to lie still and remain fully compliant. I force myself to sink away into the deepest part of me.

But then she runs something hard and sharp along the sole of my foot. The sensation is almost too much to bear and I pull away, nearly yelping with pain. She appears to be satisfied that this is a normal reflex, even for someone unconscious, because she doesn’t try and rouse me.

She returns to the head of the bed and gently pries my left eyelid open. I’m barely able to brace myself before she shines a light into my eye. I try not to flinch or turn the other away. She repeats this with the other eye.

Finally, she draws the sheet completely off my body. The air is cool, but no longer as cold as it was before. I stiffen, aware of my nakedness. I sense her hesitate, as if she notices something’s amiss. I sense her eyes sweeping over me, raking invisibly over my every edge and curve, assessing me, judging. I feel like she’s recording every single muscle twitch, every micro flutter of my eyelids, the measured rise and fall of my chest.

“Jessica?” she says. “Miss Daniels?”

I don’t answer.

“Are you there? Can you hear me, honey? It’s okay. I’m here to help you.”

I’m so tempted to respond, to plead with her to get me out of here. But I don’t. She’s not my friend. She’s with them.

She sighs and grabs my right shoulder and leg and rolls me toward her. She checks the sheets beneath me. I’m so embarrassed for anyone to see me like this that I want to tell her to stop. But I remind myself that I’m a prisoner here, a guinea pig. And it’s not just me. Ashley and the others are trapped, too. We’re all in danger, and I think I might be the only one who can get us out. If I wake now, I give up the only advantage I have.

She rolls me away again, letting my arm and leg flop back to the bed. My wrist hits the metal rail on the side of the bed and I wince. Thankfully, she doesn’t notice.

“Changing your catheter, honey,” she murmurs. “This won’t hurt a bit.” She apparently talks just to hear herself speak. She must be lonely. I almost feel sorry for her.

She doesn’t deserve your sympathy.

I crack open an eyelid and watch as she pulls a syringe out of her smock pocket. She turns her back so I can’t see what she’s doing. I feel her reach down and draw my knees apart. I feel the tube wiggle against my skin. It makes my skin crawl.

When she straightens up again a moment later I can see that the syringe is full of some kind of liquid, presumably withdrawn from inside of me. It’s clear, though, so I know it’s not urine.

Know why it smells like urine here? Reggie whispers.

She sets the syringe onto the tray beside her. I then feel her tug on the tube. After some initial resistance, it slips easily out of me. The sensation makes me want to pee so badly that I almost whimper.

She reaches over and slips a new catheter out of a sterile plastic sleeve and lets it unfurl like a dead snake.

“Okay, young lady, this might hurt a little going in,” she says. Her voice is as smooth as the lubricant she slathers on it, and as just as chilling.

When she’s finished, she stands there for a minute. I can feel her staring at me, as if she’s trying to decide what to do next. I hear her fiddling with something beside my head. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I don’t dare open my eyes.

“Just in case, my dear,” she murmurs. “Don’t want you falling out of bed again.”

She takes my hand and lifts it toward my head. Something soft encircles my wrist. It draws tight.

She’s tying me up! Stop! Don’t let her!

She moves quickly to the foot of the bed and repeats the process with my left ankle. “Can’t have you hurting yourself before the big day,” she says.

Stop her!

But how?

Talk to her!

She won’t listen.

You can’t let her do this!

I open my eyes. I take in a breath. I open my mouth to plead with her to stop. She’s at the foot of the bed, half turned away and staring down at her Link. She utters a curse, and before I can say anything, she hurries out of the room.

Chapter 16

If I had any doubts before, they’re gone. I have to get the hell out of here. I have to do it now. And I can’t expect any sympathy from Nurse Mabel.

I still have no clue where I am, or what they’re doing to us. I don’t even know who my captors are. I assume they’re Arc, but I can’t be certain. All I know is that they have plans for us, and they don’t sound good.

I hope the others are close by.

I hope they’re all still alive. I’m worried, because the man said they lost one of us already. What did he mean by that? Did whatever they’re trying to do fail? Did one of us die?

Please, God, don’t let it be Kelly.

I wish I could remember more about what happened. I wish I knew what they meant by the blast.

But waiting around trying to remember is a luxury that I just can’t afford right now. I don’t need to know what happened or how I got here to know I have to escape. I only need to know that this is my only chance.

I wait until the door shuts behind her. Then I silently count off the seconds, just in case she’s forgotten something and decides to come back in.

Move! my mind screams. I don’t know how much time I’ve got.

But my body refuses to obey. I know the longer I wait, the more likely it is that she’ll return, but I’m suddenly paralyzed with fear. I want to cry. I want to break down and give up. I want to crawl into a corner and roll up into a ball. Let someone else take care of me for once.

But there isn’t anyone here to do that for me.

So why aren’t I moving? Why do I just lie here, frozen, choking on sobs my body doesn’t seem to remember how to let go?

Let the fear move past you, Sunbai.

Just when I’ve managed to push it far enough away that I can move, the door opens again and Mabel comes in. The suffocating terror I’ve so desperately freed myself from rushes back in again.

“Don’t know why I have to do this every hour,” she mutters grumpily to herself.

I can’t believe I wasted the opportunity.

She starts to carry out the same routine as before, all the while talking to herself. She checks my blood pressure and eyes, stimulates my foot, takes my temperature. It’s easier this time to keep still, now that I know what to expect.

Hit her! Use your free arm! Choke her!

I watch her carefully between the tiny seam between my eyelids. She bends down out of sight. She talks to the urine bag as she measures and empties it. She moves to the head of the bed and does something to my IV. I hear the rustle of her clothes, smell the soap on her skin and the slight rancid tang of body odor and sweat. Then she goes and stands at the foot of the bed and records her results on the medical Link. She clicks it back to the bed frame when she’s done.

“Be back in another hour, honey,” she says.

Did she forget the other two restraints?

With a dry chuckle, she adds: “Don’t go anywhere.”

And she leaves.

Don’t go anywhere?

I hate her. I absolutely hate her.

I try to remember Kwanjangnim Rupert’s wise advice. Patience and pliability. Strength comes from waiting for just the right moment to act. A skilled hapkido expert will always bend to adapt to his or her situation.

Screw that. It’s time to get out of here.

I note the time on the digital readout on one of the instruments beside me. Less than five minutes have passed since she left.

Ever so slowly, I rise until I’m sitting up. The restraints on my left arm and ankle are simple leather cuffs, padded to prevent my skin from abrading. The straps are secured through simple metal loops and kept from coming loose with Velcro fasteners. Easy enough to undo.

After releasing my foot, I grab the medical Link and turn the screen to me. It tells me it’s Friday, eleven twenty-three in the evening. The time doesn’t match what’s on the vitals machine. Doesn’t matter. It’s the date I’m interested in. It looks like nearly a week has passed since we first broke into Long Island. I was released from NYMC two days ago, Wednesday, after being there for two days.

Eric must be frantic by now. That’s assuming he doesn’t know what happened to me. My instincts tell me he doesn’t.

My instincts are less certain about my Grandpa.

And on the subject of my mother, my feelings are far more ambivalent.

Cut her some slack. Of course she’s worried.

I shouldn’t be so judgmental. I want to apologize to her for being such a crap child. I want to tell her she’s not as bad of a mother as I always believed. It’s me who’s bad.

Stop wasting time again!

I scroll through the Link, blinking away the stinging in my eyes, and find the initial admittance report from NYMC. The basic information is there: my name and age, height and weight, blood type, viral infection status (negative), implant status (version 4a, intact, latent), and current legal life expectancy. At last I find what I’m looking for, the triage nurse’s report at the emergency room:

<< 1: 17Y/O ♀ ADMITTED POST TRAUMA (EXPLOSION) >>

<< 2: SECONDARY DIAGNOSIS: DROWNING >>

<< 3: PRESENTED UNCONC >>

<< H2O INHAL ASPHYXIA W/RESUSC BY EMS ENROUTE >>

<< PER EMS: BLEEDING FR L EAR, NOSE, MULT ABRXNS TO LIMBS, TRUNK, HEAD. ABD SWELLING >>

<< NML EKG. BAGGED W/100% O2, SALINE DRIP >>

<< CXR, ABD/NECK/HD CT SCANS, EEG, IV RINGERS. CBC, TYPE & CROSS 3 UNITS STDBY. >>

Most of this is incomprehensible to me, just a bunch of medical mumbo jumbo, but I get the basic gist of it. There was an explosion, just as the man and nurse said there was. The cuts and bruises all over my body are proof enough of that. And I drowned and was resuscitated.

Why can’t I remember any of it?

I look, but there’s no mention of any of my friends.

No mention of Kelly.

And... Jake. I remember him now, the other member of our group.

That’s six of us, not five.

Lost one of them.

Which one?

I remember the swim through the tunnel.

We were going to meet up with them, Jake and Kelly. The four of us were in a boat. They were coming back a different way, through different tunnel. I can’t remember why. Reggie was rowing. Ash and Micah were splashing water and...

The rumble of the airplane engines.

Flying low over us. Dropping...

A bomb.

A sob escapes from my throat. Kelly and Jake would’ve been in the tunnel when the bomb fell.

We’ve already lost one of them.

Was it Kelly? Jake?

No! Stop! You don’t know!

One of us. Not two, one. One of the five of us.

Jake wasn’t one of us.

Promised them five.

Not Jake. He wasn’t a gamer. He doesn’t count.

Stop wasting time!

I glance over the side rails toward the floor, searching for the motion sensors the man had mentioned. I see them in the gloom: four small pods attached to the four corners of the bed, red eyes in the shadows staring at each other. They’re directly in line with where a person getting up would set their feet. Easy enough to avoid, now that I know they’re there.

First, though, I need to take care of these damn tubes in my body.

The IV turns out to be harder than I thought. I waste precious minutes trying to loosen a corner of the tape holding the needle in my neck. I finally manage to peel a little away. It sticks like glue and feels like I’m ripping ten layers of skin off. I give it a hard yank and the needle comes out. Blood leaks out of the hole and drips down my neck. I feel it pool into the hollow of my collar before spilling over and running down my chest. I dab at it with the sheet. I can’t bother with bandaging it up right now. It’ll have to clot on its own.

Blood all over the bed now. Bad decision. No way I can hide it. No turning back now.

Another ten minutes have passed. Nurse Mabel will be returning in another twenty. I need to hurry.

I lift the sheet off my legs and stare at the urinary catheter between them. Just the sight of it makes me tremble with rage. My hands shake as I give it a tug. It doesn’t move. A crazy thought enters my head: maybe it’s sewn in. But then I remember Mabel and her syringe, before she took the other one out.

About a foot past the point where the yellow tube comes out of me, there’s a Y. One arm connects to a clear rubber tubing that snakes off the side of the bed. I watch that line for a moment, fascinated as several teaspoons of pale yellow urine leak out of me and run down the tube. I’m peeing without even consciously doing it. I guess that’s the point.

The other arm of the tubing ends in some kind of adapter. There’s a flange on the tip that looks like it would fit a syringe. After inspecting it more closely, I guess that it has to be where the nurse extracted the liquid earlier. There must be some kind of balloon inside of me that anchors the catheter in my bladder. But without a syringe to empty it, how am I supposed to get it out? I can’t very well escape dragging a bag of pee around with me.

I check the time. Fifteen minutes before she’s back.

I could disconnect the catheter from the bag. It looks like it’d just pull apart. But then what? I’d still have the tube inside of me and I’d leak pee all over the place.

Pop the balloon.

How the hell am I supposed to do that? It’s inside my goddamn body! Minutes tick by and panic rises up inside of me.

Finally, I bend down as far as I can and stretch the tubing until it reaches my face. I stick the flange end between my teeth and try to bite through it between the adapter and the junction. My stomach clenches. I grind my teeth on the soft rubber until they pierce through it. A warm gush of liquid spurts into my mouth. I immediately gag and spit it out onto the bed before realizing it’s just water. I give the balloon an experimental tub, but it still won’t budge.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

Down to ten minutes.

I bend over one more time. This time, I try to suck out the remaining solution. My mouth fills. I spit that out, too. Finally, the tube slides out of me.

Five minutes.

I make my way to the foot of the bed, then slowly and carefully crawl over it. My head swims and the room spins, but I blink and force myself to focus. I’d puke, but there’s nothing in my stomach. I haven’t eaten in days and my body shakes from weakness. I don’t know how I’m ever going to overpower anyone, much less free Ashley and any of the others so we can escape.

I could slip out when she comes in.

Except she’ll just come after me.

Two minutes.

I’m completely naked, but I don’t feel the cold. Blood drips down my chest, splattering onto the floor. My vision blurs. I can’t even stand upright. How am I going to overpower her?

I can’t.

One minute.

Time’s up.

I lean on the bed frame, shaking. Nurse Mabel will walk in and find me like this. She’ll tie me up. But I can’t think of what to do. My knees feel like rubber. My hands burn. My head spins. A part of me doesn’t care anymore. I want to crawl back into bed.

Another minute passes and the door remains closed. I draw in a deep breath. Then another. It clears my head. I feel a little stronger.

Slowly, my knees stop shaking. It feels good to stand, to feel the solid ground beneath my feet. I bend down carefully, wobblingly, then straighten back up again. Every muscle sings out. My stomach grumbles. She’s now five minutes late.

What happened to her?

“Little Miss Mabel must have fallen asleep,” I whisper.

I make my way over to the IV and yank the tubing free from the bag and wrap one end around my fist. I can use it to bind her if I have to. The bag drips the rest of its contents to the tile floor.

“Let’s get things moving,” I whisper, and I kick at one of the motion detectors. Nothing happens. There’s no alarm, no flashing light.

But within seconds I hear a distant door slam, followed by footsteps hurrying toward the room. My heart pounds in my ears and my skin tingles. I position myself. Now I’m ready.

The lock disengages with a click.

I step behind her as she rushes into the room.

“—always happens when I’m on the toilet,” she says. She’s halfway across the room before it registers I’m not in bed. She spots the bloodstains on the sheets and gasps. “What the—“

“Looking for me?”

She spins around, but I’m ready for her. I grab her arm and yank as she turns. She’s off-balance, completely unprepared. I’d expected that. The motion jolts her off her feet and she slams headfirst to the floor and cries out. Her elbow hits next. I hear it crack, and I’m on her in an instant. I yank her good arm up her back, past the point of resistance. She screams.

“Shut up!” I tell her, growling to keep my voice from shaking.

She keeps right on screaming. I yank even harder, then realize she’s in agony. I yield slightly. The volume of her cries diminishes.

“You need to shut the fuck up,” I breathe into her ear. “Do you understand? Scream again, and I’ll rip your arm out of your socket.”

She snaps her mouth shut but continues to resist. Tears fall from her eyes. It just pisses me off all the more seeing them.

“Who else is here?”

She doesn’t answer. I twist her arm and she yelps.

“Who else is here?”

“The guards.”

“Don’t you fucking lie to me, you little shit!”

“I’m not. I’m— Oh! Okay, okay. It’s... it’s just me.”

“That’s better.”

I place my knee on her arm and lean all my weight onto it. She grunts but I won’t let up. I unwind the plastic IV tubing from my fist and grab her other hand and pull it behind her and up until it joins the other.

“My arm’s broken!” she wails. “You’re hurting me!”

“I told you to shut up.”

Once I’ve got her wrists tied, I loop the loose end around her neck and draw it tight so she can’t pull her hands down over her feet. Then, standing up with my weight on her neck, I reach over and grab the catheter off the bed.

“I should shove this down your throat, you sick bitch.” Instead, I tie up her feet with it. It stretches even more than the IV line, but it’s stronger. It won’t break. My fingers slip over the lubricant she used to insert it into me. I wipe them off on her smock.

She’s stopped struggling and now just lies on the floor with her cheek pressed against the linoleum. Her eyes follow me as I search under the bed and in a small table for my clothes. They’re not there.

“Where’s the alarm for the motion detectors?” I demand.

She doesn’t answer.

I take a step toward her and she flinches.

“Where?”

“In my pocket. It’s in my pocket!”

I reach under her and find her Link. The screen is already awake, still flashing the alert. I thumb it off. I bend down and place my lips up next to her ear.

“Now, where are my clothes?”

“They’re burnt, torn. You can’t—”

“Where can I get some?”

“I don’t— Ow! In the supply closet, I think. Maybe. I don’t know.” Then she half-laughs, half-coughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

Blood trickles from a cut on her scalp. I reach up and pull the sheet from the bed and use the corner of it to dab it away. She winces.

“Just a cut. It’s not deep. You’ll live. Now, tell me where we are. What is this place?”

“You’re choking me.”

“You can breathe just fine. Where are we? Answer my questions if you want to live.”

“You can’t kill—”

“I don’t think you want to find out what I’m capable of. Now, one last time, then I really am going to hurt you. Where the fuck am I?”

“Someplace you’ll never escape from.”

I grab a handful of her hair and yank up. She inhales sharply.

“You’ll never get out of here alive,” she says. “You or your friends.”

“So, they’re here?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Are they all here? Ashley? I heard you talking about her to that man earlier.”

“I knew you were awake, you little slut.”

“Then you should’ve finished putting the restraints on me.”

“I should have.”

“Shut the fuck up. What about Reggie? Micah?”

Nothing.

“Kelly?”

“Dead. Your boyfriend’s dead. They’re all dead. You’re dead!”

I wrench he head up. “Don’t you fucking lie to me!”

“Okay, okay! They’re all here.”

“All of them?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Okay, here’s an easy one. Answer it honestly and I might let you live. Who’s being transitioned tomorrow?”

She sucks in a sharp breath, but still refuses to answer.

“I know what you plan on doing to us. I know about the new implants and the injections. The new virus, this alpha?”

She twitches beneath me.

“What is it? What does it do?”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re planning on making us Volunteers, aren’t you?”

“You’re already dead.”

“Brave words coming from someone who should be begging for her life,” I spit.

“You’re just a child. You won’t hurt me. You can’t. You need me.”

“Don’t test me.”

“Kill me then. I don’t care.”

“How did you get caught up in all this? What’d we ever do to you?”

“You’ll never get away—”

“Answer me!”

She laughs.

My resolve begins to crack. Doubt finds its way back in. Just that one laugh, and she’s got me questioning myself.

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she says, panting. “Or what.”

“I know exactly who I’m dealing with: Arc.”

She laughs again. “This is a lot bigger than just Arc.”

“Nothing’s bigger than them, except maybe the government.”

“Arc is the government, child. Has been for a long time.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“Maybe you should ask your grandfather.”

This stuns me for a moment. I shake it off. “People have been warning me about him my entire life, bitch. There’s nothing he or anyone can say that I haven’t already heard before. Tell me where we are.”

“You can’t save them. You can’t save yourself. It’s too late for all of you.” She’s wheezing now from the weight of my body on her back. She cough-laughs. “All of you, bought and paid for—”

Something happens to me then. Rage fills me. I don’t know where it comes from, but when it does, it utterly consumes me.

I jerk her head up again. “I told you that you didn’t want to find out what I’m capable of.”

I lean forward and thrust my arm out again, shoving her head at the floor. It hits with a loud, sickening crack! I can feel the jolt all the way up into my shoulder. She gurgles once, then her chest collapses beneath me.

I wait for it to rise again.

I wait and wait.

Until I realize that I could wait forever and it never will.

Chapter 17

I don’t know how long I sit on Nurse Mabel, my mind in complete shutdown mode, before I notice something dripping down my arm. It’s warm. Slowly, I lower my gaze. I don’t see anything there at first, but then there’s the faintest glistening on my skin. I’m crying. I’m actually crying.

I reach up and touch my cheeks. They’re dry.

The tears splatter on her white uniform. They splatter on the floor. Dark asterisks. They’re not tears. They’re too red.

I reel backwards until I collide with the bed. It rolls easily away from me, and I fall to the floor. I stay there for several more minutes staring at what I’ve just done.

I’ve killed someone.

But how can that be? I’m not a killer.

More wetness on my arm. I’m still leaking from my neck.

I should be happy. She said I was already dead, but the dead don’t bleed.

I start to shake. I tell myself it’s the shock. But the truth is, I’ve already gotten past the idea of being a killer. It was self-defense. She deserved it. This isn’t panic. It’s not remorse. It’s relief.

I just killed someone and a part of me actually thrilled at the idea of it. What the hell kind of monster have I become?

Not become, my mind whispers. It’s what you’ve always been.

Eric knew what I was capable of. That’s why he sent me to take hapkido. He knew I had a violent streak inside of me. He knew about the pain and the fury I’ve always kept bottled up. It needed an outlet.

Maybe yoga would have been a better choice. Or meditation.

I drop my head into my hands. “This is not me,” I moan. “I’m not like this. I’m not evil.”

But the proof is lying in a pool of blood in front of me. I let my rage get the better of me, and now a woman lies dead on the floor. I can’t stop staring at her. But neither can I bring myself to wish her back to life. I wanted her dead. I still do. I wanted her to pay for what she’s done to me and my friends.

And now she has.

I can’t look at her anymore. I bury my head in my arms. I focus on my breathing exercises. I need to put this past me. I need to find the others.

But I don’t move. I know I should. The time on the nurse’s Link tells me it’s long past two in the morning. Only a few more hours before dawn, when more Arc people will arrive.

This is bigger than just Arc.

I don’t care. It’s semantics. Whoever these people are, no matter what company they work for, Arc is at the center of it. Arc is everything.

I look up. I can’t stop staring at her. Her head rests in a puddle of congealing blood. Her eyes stare glassily, accusingly. They’re filming over.

We stare at each other. I’m alive, she’s dead.

Her jaw twitches.

It startles me. I lean forward and stare harder at her face. Was it just my imagination? Maybe I didn’t kill her.

Nothing.

Wishful thinking. She really is gone. It was all just my imagination. Or her muscles relaxing, tension in her face releasing. She’s dead. I accept that. I know what I’ve done.

I get up and nudge her with my toe. For the first time, I’m fully aware of my nakedness. She can’t see me, yet I’m suddenly feeling self-conscious. But I need to take care of her first. Then I’ll find clothes. I remove the IV tubing from her hands. I use her scissors to snip off the rubber catheter from her feet. I can’t stand seeing her like this, her body bound and drawn into itself, in some unnatural pantomime of agony. I hate that the IV tubing has sliced into her chubby wrists and left purple ligature marks that will never heal. My own bruises will, in time, but not hers. The chunks of severed catheter remind me of amputated fingers. I flash on the zombie that grabbed me in the Midtown tunnel, its hand floating in the water. I scatter the rubber bits across the room.

My neck itches where the puncture from my IV has finally clotted shut and the blood is starting to dry. The whole side of my face feels hot and sore. I scrape the crusty blood off with my fingernail and glance at the door. I’m terrified of what I’ll find on the other side of it.

And who I won’t.

I step over Mabel’s body and reach down to grab the sheet off the floor. It’s splotchy with blood, some mine, some hers, and I wrap it around me. The feel of the chilled, partially stiffened, fabric makes my skin crawl, but I try not to think about it. Instead, I tuck the corner in under my arm, then tie the IV line around my waist and cinch it snug.

I freeze when the whisper of a sound comes from behind me, a wet, sticky noise that sounds like rubber tires rolling on hot pavement. I spin around.

Nurse Mabel is on her knees, her head dangling between her arms. Blood and saliva drip from her face. She wobbles a moment, her arms shaking. At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. Relief courses through me because she’s not dead. I didn’t kill her. Then comes anger. Why won’t she stay down? If she comes after me again, will I be able to finish it?

You won’t have to kill her. Just tie her up again. Just keep her out of your way.

If she’d only stayed down, I wouldn’t feel this way. If she’d only died. But she’s not dead. She’s alive, and now she’s suffering. She probably has a bad concussion. She needs medical attention. She could have brain damage. What if she starts having a seizure?

She stops trying to get up, just remains there on the floor on her hands and knees, looking like she’s trying not to puke.

“Damn it,” I mutter, and take a step closer.

Her head snaps up. There’s nothing in her eyes, not a shred of light or life. They’re as black as night and as soulless as a grave. One side of her head is flattened and slick with gore. Her mouth gapes open and her tongue lolls out. She hisses.

That’s why we have contingencies. I’m sure you can appreciate that more than anyone else, Mabel.

“Oh, god,” I whisper. “Please, no. It can’t be.”

She moans her inaugural death moan, and I know that there’s no other way to interpret what I’m seeing. It’s a sound I’ll never forget from Long Island, the sound of death and hunger and desire. Cold fingers sweep up my spine and curl around my neck. I feel the air freezing in my lungs.

“You’re not supposed to come back,” I tell her, as if speaking one fact will somehow negate another. The dead do not come back on their own. They either have to be infected by another zombie, or they have to be reanimated by injection with the government’s virus. They don’t just happen.

That’s why we have contingencies.

We don’t get very many volunteers.

I want to see the transitions.

The new virus, it doesn’t cause death. It must remain dormant until death.

She moans again and lurches unsteadily to her feet. Her body lists to one side, and she crashes into the blood pressure machine. They both slam into the wall. It topples over; she doesn’t. She recovers somehow, too quickly, terrifyingly so, and begins to move toward me.

I manage to step to the side just as her hands reach into the space I’d just occupied. She oversteps and crashes to the floor. She lies there without moving for several seconds.

Get out of here! my mind screams, but all I do is stand there like an idiot and stare, letting precious seconds go to waste.

She moans again and her body begins to contract. Her arms and legs draw up underneath her. She looks like a spider dying.

Excepts she’s not dying. She’s already dead.

She’s quicker to rise this time. It seems impossible, but it’s like her body is readjusting to its new life-in-death state. Before I have a chance to react, she’s on her knees, one foot under her. She wrenches her head toward me and makes ready to leap.

I spin around and grab the closest thing to me, which happens to be the IV stand. I lift it above my head. I try to swing it down on her, but one of the feet in the base gets caught in the ceiling. I lose my balance and slip on the wet floor. Only my grip on the pole keeps me from falling. I hold on for dear life.

She gets her other foot beneath her.

My grip slips, and I land on my side against the wall.

Nurse Mabel — or whatever she’s become — advances. I scramble away. My back hits the door. Her head lists unnaturally to one side. That side of her face droops, like she’s suffered a massive stroke. I guess she has. She reaches out again, hissing. She lunges.

I slide to my left. Her fingers snag in my hair. I kick out with my foot, connecting with her knees, but it only pushes her legs out from under her. She topples like a tree. Our limbs tangle. She drags me down with her. She opens her mouth, and her teeth barely miss sinking into my knee. Her chin slams into my kneecap. Pain explodes up my leg. I hear a crack. She rolls off me, her neck broken. She immediately begins to move forward again.

I kick out again, aiming for her shoulder. I manage to knock her away. I scramble to my feet and immediately crumple as my injured knee collapses beneath me. The door’s out of reach. I slide over, my hands pushing against the wall. I try to stand. I find the handle. I watch her as she lumbers back to her feet.

Just as she charges, I crank the knob and yank the door.

My fingers slip off the unyielding knob. The door remains shut. I lose my balance and crash to the floor.

The cardkey! You need the cardkey!

But it’s on her belt!

She slams into the door, and just as gracelessly turns to locate me. I scramble over to the far side of the tiny room, positioning the bed between us. It’s the only thing I can use to protect myself.

It gains me a few seconds. I look frantically for something to use as a weapon, anything that’ll help me get that cardkey off her belt. But there’s nothing on this side of the room to use.

Mabel steps to the head of the bed. I slide over to the foot, making sure to keep the bed between us. She keeps moving. I wait until she’s square in the center before I shove with all my strength and weight into the bed frame. She crashes into the wall. One elbow sinks into the soft drywall, and when she pulls it free, I see a metal stud behind it. She reaches forward over the mattress and moans.

Still pressing against the bed, I find the wheel lock and push it down. Then, ever so carefully, I back away. The bed stays put. It rocks against Mabel’s efforts, but she’s pinned.

I move quickly now. The bed won’t hold her for long. I reach up and yank the IV pole out of the ceiling. Bits of tile and insulation shower down on me. I hold the pole to one side, like a baseball bat, and take aim at Mabel’s neck, making sure that one of the pole’s feet faces forward. Then, with a grunt I swing it at her. She doesn’t try to move out of the way. Zombies don’t duck.

The foot of the IV stand sinks deep into the wall two feet past her head. I position the pole over her neck and shove the top end into the wall on the other side until the bag holder pierces the drywall. She thrashes against it, but the pole remains locked into place. She can’t bend down.

Now I circle around the bed one last time. She watches me with those dead black eyes. She reaches out. She hisses and writhes. I reach beneath her flailing arms and snatch the lanyard off her belt. The IV pole springs out of the wall just as the lanyard snaps free. Mabel lunges. She gets a handful of my sheet, but I yank it out of her clutches.

I hear the bed move. I’m already at the door. The wheels screech and she pushes harder.

She slips out of her snare. But she’s too late. I’ve inserted the key into the slot.

But the lock doesn’t release.

She steps toward me. Her shoes make sticky sounds on the tacky blood.

I reinsert the plastic card.

Still nothing.

“What the fu—”

I hear fabric tear. I glance back and see that her smock has caught on the bed. She takes another step. The fabric tears some more.

I try the card key a third time. The air behind me shifts. Something brushes my hair. My skin prickles. I duck and kick blindly. She crashes backward and flips over the bed.

I spin the key around and jam it once more into the slot. The tiny red light on the locking mechanism turns green.

I yank the handle just as Mabel’s fingers snag a loop of the IV tubing around my waist.

I lean into the door and thrust out with my foot. My heel connects just below her ribcage. A dead exhale escapes her defunct lungs. Stale air washes over me. She stumbles back once more. I yank the door open and dive through the opening, reaching back to pull it shut behind me. The door’s safety hinges resist me.

I slip and stumble across the hall. The door clicks shut with the two of us on opposite sides of it.

I can hear her in there, moaning, scratching. Can she hear me out here?

I’m safe, and she can’t get out.

Now I have to find and free the others.

Chapter 18

I’m in a short hallway. It’s dimly lit. The floor tiles are industrial grade, old and worn and stained. There are several doors, all closed except one. I can smell coffee.

I turn back to the door I just came through. The words on the sign make no sense to me at first:

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

PRIVATE SCREENING ROOM 3

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

I’m in an airport. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

The Teterboro?

The lights in the hallway flicker, jolting me back to reality. I step away from the room that was my cell and over to the next door. The sign there says the same thing, except that it’s numbered 2. I skip this and proceed to the open door.

The room is sparsely furnished. The light comes on when I step inside. There’s a simple metal cot along one wall made up with white sheets and a green blanket. It looks recently slept in. I assume it belongs — belonged — to Nurse Mabel. Well, she won’t be sleeping ever again.

Against the opposite wall is a red medical cart. I sift through a few of the dozens of drawers. They’re filled with needles and syringes and ampoules of drugs with names I don’t recognize.

There’s also a small desk. A few items sit on top: a lamp, a personal Link, a coffee mug, a cold half-eaten Arc Foods Insta-Meal. A folding metal chair sits behind the desk.

A backpack leans against the wall in the corner. I search through it and find two changes of clothes. The pants won’t fit me, but I manage to score a pair of panties and socks. I don’t bother with the bra; I’d need more than the remaining pair of socks to fill it out. I finish with a new tee-shirt that advertises the TV program Survivalist. There’s another just like it. She probably gets these for free.

I personally never got into the show. I much preferred to play Zpocalypto rather than sitting passively by and watching what happens in the Gameland arcade as other people play The Game. Besides, Eric always gives me grief whenever the guys come over to watch it. They get too loud and rowdy.

Thinking about Eric makes me angry again, and that gets me moving.

Beyond this room, the hallway ends at another security door, an unlit EXIT sign over it. I place my ear against the surface for several seconds. When I’m convinced no one is on the other side, I try the cardkey. I half expect nothing to happen, but the red light turns green.

Slowly, carefully, I turn the handle and push the door open. It’s dark. The air smells stale. In the distance, I hear the low grind of a motor running somewhere. The sound wavers and the lights on my side of the door flicker. We’re running off a generator.

I let the door swing shut and turn around. I need to find pants. Then my friends.

As I pass each of the other closed doors, I pause and listen. I hear nothing through any of them, no indication that anyone else is here with me. I begin to worry that the others might be kept somewhere else.

The supply closet turns out to be the sixth door down the hall, and the only one without a security lock. I open it, and the light blinks on. Mouse droppings litter the floor. Leaning against a wall is a petrified mop. Next to it, a bucket on wheels.

I move the mop and something small and brown scurries out from under the bucket and disappears into a back corner beneath a shelf. There was a time when mice terrified me. This one barely even registers. I just killed someone. And then that dead someone tried to eat me. A little mouse is nothing.

The shelves lining the back wall are stocked with rolls of toilet paper, most of them shredded, and ancient bottles of cleaning supplies. In some, the fluids have separated and turned brown. There’s a half-eaten bar of soap and some dry-rotted rubber gloves. No clothes though.

As I pull the door shut, I hear something brush against the other side. I glance around the corner and spot a pair of blue overalls hanging on a hook. They’re rank with mouse piss and poop, but they appear okay. They’ll do for now. I slip them off the hook and shimmy my way into them, kicking the bed sheet into the closet. The zipper catches halfway up. I give it a tug and the old stitching tears a little before the zipper reaches my chin. They’re not overly long in the legs and arms, though they are baggy. I use the IV tubing once more to fashion a belt around my waist.

I guess it was too much to hope for shoes. Nurse Mabel’s got a nice pair on her feet, but she can keep them. She’ll be spending a lot of time on her feet from now on.

Before shutting the door again, I grab the mop. The head adheres to the floor, crackling stiffly. I snap it off. It’ll make a fair weapon, not as good as a bo staff, but enough to do some damage. With it in one hand and the cardkey in the other, I make my way back up the hall.

I stop and listen at the door to my room. Mabel has settled down now. I wonder what she’s doing. I picture her standing on the other side, staring at the door with those sightless eyes. If she stops moving for a while, the lights will shut off. How long will she remain there in the dark like that, waiting, motionless? Weeks? Years? The zoms on LI have been there for over a decade.

Not all of them. Some were fresher.

Other Arc experiments, I’d wager.

I hear Mabel hiss. Can she sense me standing out here? If no one ever comes back, will she just stay there on the other side until the end of time? Until she runs out of energy and simply cannot move again? Like the fossilized zombie Jake first spotted the day we arrived on Long Island?

I wonder what the end of the world will look like. I have a feeling I’ve gotten glimpses of it other people never have.

I tap gently on the door, suddenly certain she’s no longer even in there anymore. Maybe she got out when I wasn’t looking.

A faint scratching comes to me. Then a low moan. She’s there.

I stop at a room marked INTERVIEW 1. Once more I listen for signs of anything — living or otherwise — but there’s not a sound. After unlocking the door, I wait a few seconds. Then I turn the handle as quietly as I can and ease it open. The lights come on.

A large stainless steel table occupies the middle of the room. It looks like an autopsy platform except for the pair of heavy nylon straps dangling on either side. Medical-looking equipment are arranged on trays pushed against the far wall. A hospital light hangs overhead. I step inside and see a strange looking contraption attached to the far end of the table. It looks like a doorway. A metal blade hangs from the top half.

I realize with a jolt that it’s a guillotine.

Is this where they do their infection experiments? Is this their contingency, in case something goes wrong?

I check for blood splatter, but I don’t see any.

The wall beyond the blade is glass. I can’t see through it. When I open the next door down the hall, OBSERVATION 1, I see the same glass on the adjoining wall. This room is empty, except for a pair of chairs facing the window. I can see the guillotine.

I want to be present to see how well each of them responds to the transition.

“Too bad,” I say to the empty room, and close the door behind me. “There won’t be a show today.”

It’s behind PRIVATE SCREENING ROOM 1 that I find Ashley.

Chapter 19

I rush over, calling her name. She doesn’t wake. I repeat it, louder the second time.

Nothing. She just lies there, lifeless, her skin pale and waxy. The mound of her body under the sheet seems too small, like she’s shrunk. Her trademark auburn hair — always her pride and her spirit, and on the most humid days, her nemesis — is a flat, drab, tangled mess. It cascades over her pillow like the crumbling embers of a dying fire. Her skin is splotchy, bruised in places, ashen in others. One eye is puffy and has a halo of black and purple. Her cheek is scraped. The scab looks several days old.

“Ashley?”

I reach out and shake her shoulder, but there’s no response. Her eyes remain closed. Her head lolls to the side. Her skin is cold.

I press the back of my hand to her cheek and find heat. I bend down and listen. The soft whisper of her breaths reaches my ears, caresses my face. She’s alive.

“Ashley, can you hear me?”

I pinch the skin on her neck. She moans and turns slightly, but doesn’t wake.

I call her name again, louder this time. I pull the hair away from her face, and her eyes move beneath the lids, like she’s dreaming. She gives off a faint smell— sweat, blood, and something else, something... chemical. A bandage covers the left side of her neck and reaches around to the back. An IV line drips through a tube that passes beneath the sheet and into her arm.

I decide to try doing the foot thing that Nurse Mabel did to me. I move to the end of the bed and lift the sheet.

That’s when I find the restraints around her ankles. I check her wrists and find them there, too.

Mabel’s voice again: ... tried to escape... sedated.

I clench my fists. How could she do this? How could Arc?

I find the point where the IV enters her arm and peel off the tape. I pull the needle free and press a thumb against the hole for a few seconds. The IV drips to the floor. I clamp the tubing, just in case I later need the sedative. I wonder if it would work on a zombie.

I think you already know the answer to that.

Next, her restraints. They’re similar to mine: padded leather cuffs. I free her limbs, then peek even further under the sheet to see if she has a catheter. She doesn’t, but she’s just as naked as I was.

“I have a feeling Nurse Mabel’s clothes will fit you better than me,” I tell her. They have similar body types. Ash just carries her weight better.

I hurry over to the other room and gather a full outfit from the bitch’s backpack. I do my best to get Ashley dressed. Urgency forces me to hurry; modesty holds me back. She doesn’t wake, and yet I still feel embarrassed for her.

It’s not an easy task getting someone dressed without their assistance. It eats up a lot of time. When I next check the clock, I want to scream out in frustration. I know I can be quicker. I’ve got the experience. How many times have I had to get my mother out of her clothes and into bed after a night of drinking? How many times have I helped change her puke-soaked outfits before school so she doesn’t go into work and embarrass herself? It’s physically draining.

And emotionally devastating.

When I’m done, I notice I’ve put the Survivalist shirt on Ashley inside out. I don’t bother fixing it. I’m shaking with hunger. I really need to eat.

The combination of jostling and the removal of the IV sedative appears to be having the desired effect. Ash is mumbling and starting to move her arms. She still won’t respond when I call her name. I pray she recovers soon. I need her awake, if we’re going to get out of here. I need her help.

It’s already a quarter past three.

I prop the door open with the IV stand, but leave Ash in bed with the side rails up in case she wakes and tries to get up. I need to find the others. I pray they haven’t been sedated, too.

And if they’re naked, then... Well, I guess I’ll just have to do what needs to be done, and they’re just going to have to deal with it.

I smirk to myself, imagining Reggie’s reaction if he were to wake and discover he’s wearing Mabel’s bra. That alone would be worth the price of admission.

That’s assuming he’s here. And alive.

And not the one of us they lost.

No, he is isn’t.  Nurse Mabel had mentioned that one of the boys was mouthy. It had to be him.

I’m shaking so badly now from low blood sugar that I have to stop for a few minutes. I finish Mabel’s half-eaten Insta-Meal, choking it down with a fresh water packet. The meal is bland, and it barely takes the edge off my hunger. I also find a package of cookies, which I wolf down. They’re dry and just as tasteless. After a few minutes of alternating between looking for something else to eat and wanting to puke it all up again, I head back out into the hallway again.

Ashley’s still unconscious.

I swipe the cardkey at the next door. The release clicks and I quickly enter without bothering to check inside first. I know I’m being reckless, but the urgency to move faster is getting the better of me. It’s approaching four o’clock already. I feel like I’m moving in slow motion.

The light flickers on, catching me by surprise for a moment. A privacy curtain confronts me. Beneath the bottom fringe I see the wheels of another bed. Reggie or Micah? Kelly or Jake? Which one is it?

“Jesus fuck, lady. Not again.”

I grin. Reggie. It’s too bad he’s awake, and I won’t get the chance to embarrass him.

“I really really just want to sleep more than few fucking minutes at a time. Is that so much to ask?” He groans. “This waking me up every few hours fucking sucks.”

“I’ll come back later then, brah,” I say.

The bed creaks. “Jessie? Is that you?”

I pull the curtain back before remembering he might be naked. Thankfully, he’s covered up with a sheet. He’s sitting upright, his head propped by a couple pillows. His face is just as swollen and bruised as Ashley’s, but he’s clearly not sedated. One arm is cradled in a sling.

“Jesus Christ, am I glad to see you,” he exclaims. Then his face clouds. “Please tell me you’re not with them.”

“Them who?”

He frowns. “Why are you dressed like that?”

I look down and realize it’s not a janitor’s outfit at all but a jumpsuit. A patch on the arm says Security.

He sees the cardkey in my hand. “Shit. You are.” He lets his head sink back onto the pillow and shuts his eyes.

“I’m not with anyone, Reg. It’s just me. I escaped.”

He looks over at me again, still frowning. I can see the struggle on his face, the wanting to believe me, the doubt. Another wave of hatred for Arc flushes through me. I hate what they’ve done to us, made us all suspicious of each other.

I flash the cardkey at him so he can see that it’s Mabel’s picture on it and not mine.

“That bitch,” he snarls. “If I get my hands on her, I’ll—”

“It’s cool, Reg.” I remember man saying he wasn’t much of a threat. Poor Reg. I’m sure the bad arm didn’t help. “I took care of her. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t hear the fight.”

“Fight? Naw. I was probably asleep, since she keeps waking me up every fucking—”

“I know, Reg.”

“Well, I hope you knocked some sense into her. You know what she made me do?” He sputters something about having to use a bedpan. “I hope to fucking hell you kicked her ass. I really hate that bitch.”

“Yeah, I kicked her ass alright. She won’t be bothering us anymore.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t...? Did you?”

I wince. “Well...”

“Well, what? You killed her? She’s dead?”

“Um, not... exactly.”

“She’s lucky then. If it was me—”

“Yes, I killed her.”

He stares at me for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “You... killed her, but she’s not dead? You’ve lost me.”

“Look, there’s no time to explain. I found Ashley. She’s been drugged, but I cut her off. Hopefully, she’ll wake soon.” I check the time on the medical Link at the end of his bed. It’s a quarter past four. Less than three hours to figure out where we are and get the hell away from here. And we still need to find—

“Micah?” he asks. He looks worried.

“I’ve still got a few more rooms to check.”

I don’t mention that he could be dead. One of us is. It’s either him or Jake, because it can’t be Kelly. It won’t be. I won’t let it be.

“Just get your lazy, fat ass out of that bed and come help me.”

“I would, except...” He lifts his good arm. The sheet slips off and I see that he’s handcuffed to the rail. Not soft restraints this time, but actual real handcuffs. “It’s always been this fantasy of mine to be tied up in bed,” he jokes.

“Oh, no,” I cry, stopping him before he can get any further. “Don’t even.”

He laughs. “Yeah, that bitch pretty much cured me of that.”

“How am I supposed to unlock these?”

“The key’s on that lanyard.”

I’d earlier thought the little metal object was some kind of trinket. It fits perfectly into the slot on the cuffs. When I twist, they spring open.

“Feet, too,” he says.

“Okay, but only on one condition. You promise never to mention your secret fantasies to me again.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

I wait.

“Fine, but I’m dying a little inside.”

I roll my eyes. It’s good to see him again, and in such spirits. It means he’s okay. I needed him to be okay, and he is.

I unlock his ankles. He tries to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and immediately yelps in pain.

“It’s my arm.”

“Is it broken?”

“Dislocated.” He rotates it and another flicker of pain crosses his face. “I can feel it clicking or something inside.” He waves my hand away. “I’ll deal. Where’s Ash?”

“Next door.”

“You said she was drugged. Tell me the truth, is she...” There’s that look of trepidation in his eyes. “Is it bad? That bomb hit pretty damn close, and I saw Micah—”

“Probably better off than either of us. She tried to escape, which is why they had to sedate her.”

“That’s my girl.”

I check the time. It’s now past four-thirty.

He starts to stand up, then abruptly sits back down again. “Would you mind turning around?”

“Jesus. Really? Two seconds ago you were sharing your fantasies, and now you’re suddenly Mr Modest?”

“What can I say? I’m a complicated man.”

“You’re psycho. Just wrap a sheet around yourself and come on. I need to find Micah. And hopefully some clothes for you. We won’t make it very far in bed sheets before someone spots us and calls the cops.”

I drop his pillow between the door and the jamb to keep it from shutting all the way and locking, then I leave him to figure out how to manage the sheet on his own.

“Chop chop, Reg,” I yell, as I approach the next room.

A faint voice calls out from inside: “Hello?”

Reggie sticks his head out of his room. “That’s got to be him.”

Yeah, but him who?

“Jessie, is that you?” the voice asks.

My throat constricts, and my heart begins to race, because the voice coming from the other side of the door doesn’t belong to Micah.

Chapter 20

“Hello?” I say, pushing through the unlocked door.

I hear an exhale of relief. “It’s me, Jessie. It’s Jake.” Something clangs, the sound of metal on metal. Another handcuff, I immediately guess. “Sorry, if I don’t get up, but I’m a little—”

“Yeah, I know. Handcuffs.”

I don’t wait for him to finish. I immediately spin around and step back into the hallway. Only one room left, and I’m down to a fifty-fifty chance it holds Kelly.

Don’t get your hopes up, girl.

“Hey!” Jake cries. “Where are you go—”

The door shuts on its own behind me, cutting him off.

I don’t know how it’s possible, not after everything that’s happened. That bomb should’ve collapsed the tunnel Jake and Kelly were in. They should both be dead. But Jake’s alive, which means Kelly might be, too.

I’m sorry, Micah.

I stand in front of the last room. The door is marked CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS. It’s a wider door than the others, and it’s painted a different color. I hold the cardkey in my fingers, unwilling and unable to slip it into the slot. As long as I don’t open it, there’s an equal chance Kelly and Micah are still alive. And dead. It’s like some sick perverted twist on the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox. The moment I open the door, one of them dies.

If I open it and find Micah...

I lower my hand. I can’t do this.

Breathe.

I don’t want to think about either scenario. I don’t want either of them to be dead. I want us all to be alive and safe and back home.

But I know that can’t be.

We’ve already lost one of them.

Maybe the man lied. Maybe he knew I was listening and was taunting me.

Why would he do something like that?

They’re both in there. They’re both alive.

No, not both.

Don’t open it.

They’re both dead.

Stop it!

Kelly’s dead.

No!

I squeeze my eyes shut, and the last pieces of that day fall back into place. I’d been repressing them, wishing I could just erase it all, wipe the slate clean. I can almost feel the wind of the airplane passing over us, the force of the bomb as it hit the water. Then the soft WUMP of it exploding moments later. I feel myself tilting, the floor lifting, just as the boat had done when the water bulged upward. Then comes the full force of the impact as we’re thrown into the air. Sky and earth, water and air shatter into a billion glittering prisms.

Bodies flying. Mud. And blood.

Like it’s all a movie playing in slow motion.

The last thing I saw before hitting the water was Micah. The last thing I heard was the sickening crunch as his body folded around the signpost we’d been tied up to. No one is meant to bend like that. No one could’ve survived such trauma.

Then wetness and the suffocating darkness. The sinking. Sounds muffled.

And blackness.

Micah’s dead. He’s the one of us they lost.

I can’t do this anymore, torture myself like this. I slip the cardkey into the slot. Off to the side, I see Reggie coming out of his room. He’s got the sheet wrapped sloppily around his body toga-style. He’s using his good hand to keep it closed, and he’s not doing a very good job of it. I get a flash of skin I’d rather not have. His ass is hairier than I would’ve imagined.

“Did I hear you say Jake?” he asks, puzzled that I’m standing at a different room from a moment before.

“In there,” I say, gesturing at the other door.

“He’s here, too?” His eyes widen. “I didn’t think he or Kelly—”

“This is the last room. They’ve got to be in here, Micah and Kel.”

They. Not he.

Even though all the other rooms held only one person.

A thump comes from across the hall. Reggie turns and takes a step toward it.

“No! Don’t go in there!” I yell, startling him. I realize almost immediately that I don’t have to shout. Nobody can open that door without the cardkey. “She’s in there.”

“Nurse Bitch?” he says, guessing correctly from the only two possibilities.

She scratches at the other side of the door, as if she knows we’re talking about her. Then there’s a low, eerie moan, nearly inaudible, barely on the edge of the lowest registers of human hearing. I feel it in my body, my bones. The hair on my scalp rises. Reggie steps back in alarm. He looks to me for explanation.

“I told you it was complicated.”

He hurries over, his mouth working overtime to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. I can see in his eyes the questions piling up inside his head. Foremost among them is how?

Contingencies, I want to tell him. Mabel volunteered.

That’s what the man had said, and now I understand. A person doesn’t reanimate unless they’ve been infected, and that requires a bite. But it looks like they’ve invented a virus that stays dormant inside of you and activates only after you die.

...just aren’t that many willing volunteers with your mindset...

How could she agree to do something like that? How could anyone?

Her family. Well compensated, I’m sure.

Did they do that us, too?

All questions I need answers to, just not right now.

I pull the key from the slot, turn the handle, and lean my shoulder into the door. It doesn’t budge. I try the key again the other way around. The little light stays red.

“What the hell?” I mutter.

“Backwards?” Reggie suggests.

I flip it around again and retry the lock. Still nothing.

“Damn it!” I cry, slapping the door in frustration. Three more attempts yield the same result. Now I’m positive Kelly’s on the other side of that door. I can almost sense him in there. He’s there and I can’t get to him. It’s karma getting back at me for killing Mabel. “Goddamn it!”

“Hey, hey. Come on.” Reggie gently pulls me away. “Let me try.” He stands there for a moment, staring at the cardkey, then the locking mechanism. He frowns, then reaches over to a panel beside the door. I hadn’t noticed it before. He pulls the recessed tab and swings it open. Inside is a numbered keypad. “Extra security?”

I curse.

“I take it that means you don’t know the code. Yeah, didn’t think so.” He glances over at my door, as if considering whether Mabel might spill. “We could try hacking it. But Micah’s the best for this sort of thing, and I bet you he’s inside.”

Not him, Reggie. Kelly.

He studies the pad. “It’s old tech. Ashley might be able to crack it.”

“She won’t be hacking anything for a while. She’s too out of it. Besides, we don’t have any equipment.”

He sighs, then gives the door an experimental ram with his good shoulder. The pained look on his face tells me he won’t try that again. He gives it a weak kick instead. The door rattles in the frame. “Pretty solid.”

I tell him to stop. The noise is agitating Undead Mabel. She’s working herself into a lather, slapping and clawing at the door, trying to push her way through it. The moans are louder, too.

“God, that’s creepy,” Reggie says. He gives her door a worried look before returning his attention to the one separating us from the last member of our group. “At least we know if I can’t bust this door down, she ain’t gonna be coming through hers.”

“It’s not her I’m afraid of getting to us, Reg. It’s Arc. They’re coming soon on a shuttle. Seven o’clock. We’ve got less than three hours to gather up and clear out.”

“Arc did all this? Christ, if that’s true, then we’re screwed. They’ve got their fingers in everything.”

I slip down the wall and sit with my back against it. I rest my head in my hands and try to think how I’m going to get inside. Reggie hesitates, then turns and enters Ashley’s room. He comes back a minute later.

“You’re right. She’s blotto. Got her to open her eyes, but only for a few seconds.”

“That’s still an improvement.”

He takes the key and goes into Jake’s room.

“Kelly,” I moan. “Kelly.” How am I supposed to open this damn door?

Across the hall, Mabel calms down again.

Reggie and Jake come out a few minutes later. Jake’s sheet is wrapped tightly around his own waist. Unlike Reggie’s, his looks pretty secure.

Standing side by side, Jake somehow manages to look fitter and stronger than Reggie does. Both their faces are a little leaner than they were almost a week ago, but Jake started off heavier than the rest of us, and so he doesn’t look quite so haggard.

It’s the bruises, I realize. Jake doesn’t have any.

Which means the tunnel didn’t collapse on them.

Kelly’s fine.

“What do you want to do, Jess?” Jake quietly asks. He kneels down, rubbing the cuff marks on his wrists. As far as I can tell, they’re the only injuries on him.

“We’re running out of time.”

Reggie drops the cardkey into my lap. “It’s after five, Jess. We need to get that door open.”

“Five o’clock? Shit. Go help Ash. Get her ready.”

I stand up. I’ve got an idea. It’s not totally original, but it worked before.

“Fire extinguisher,” I tell Jake, setting my jaw. I head down the hall past Ashley’s room to where the emergency sign hangs from the ceiling.

“You’re going to burn the door down?”

“I believe I said extinguisher, not starter. If we’re lucky, there’s an axe.”

“You can’t break the door down!” Jake exclaims. “This is federal property! Homeland Security!”

“Give me a break.”

He gawps for a moment. “You and your axes,” he finally says.

But there’s no axe, just the extinguisher. I yank it out of its little glass home and turn. It’s got a nice heft to it, but will it work? It’ll have to. Jake watches me with wary eyes. For a second, I wonder if he’s going to try and stop me. He steps aside.

I try hitting the door first, but the wood is too hard and the tank just bounces off. In fact, the door doesn’t even splinter. It dents.

“It’s some sort of plastic resin,” he says.

“Damn fake wood.”

Mabel starts going ape shit. Jake flinches, but he doesn’t act surprised. “Reggie told me what you did.”

“I didn’t infect her.”

He shrugs.

It’s strange how easily he accepts this, first that I actually killed a real person in real life, which makes me a murderer, and second, that she turned, despite not being bitten. I don’t know if it’s because our whole situation is just so screwed up to begin with, or we’re all in a state of shock. Very little surprises us anymore.

Reggie sticks his head out of Ashley’s room to see what the noise is about. “Try the handle,” he suggests. “Not down, but straight at it,” he adds, before going back inside.

“Not down?” Jake echoes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I lift the tank over my shoulder, both hands on the neck like I’m strangling it. I hope and pray the thing doesn’t break open and explode on me on impact. Jake must have the same fear, because he raises his hand to protect his face and suggests I might want to empty it first.

“Good idea,” I reply, sarcastically. “Because then it won’t be so heavy. Or effective.”

I bring it down onto the door handle with all my strength.

The tank pings off, and nearly slams into my shin. The handle rattles and bends a little, but it doesn’t break.

“That was effective.”

I scowl at him.

“I said straight in!” Reggie says, reappearing in the doorway. “You’ll just break the handle off without disengaging the latch assembly. Straight into the door. Knock that sucker into the room.”

I try again, aiming from directly in front of the handle. I can’t get as much leverage this way, but the impact thrusts the door handle flush into the fake wood. I hear something ping off the floor inside the room.

I push against the door. It still doesn’t open.

“Well, that worked like a charm, didn’t it?”

“Too bad it’s not glass,” Jake says, gesturing for the extinguisher.

“Shut up.”

He motions for me to step back, then he puts all of his weight into slamming the bottom edge of the tank straight into the center of the door. He hits it so hard that his sheet nearly falls off. He drops the extinguisher to grab it, and gives me a sheepish grin. He takes a moment to adjust himself. “Sorry. I just—”

Mabel smashes into her door, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. “Cripes!”

“Don’t worry about her.”

He lifts the tank and slams the door again. This time a crack appears in the tough resin. He does this twice more, and the crack widens and chips of faux wood begin to fly.

“Kelly!” I shout, mostly so I don’t have to listen to that fucked-up moaning behind us. “It’s us. We’re coming in.”

There’s no answer from the inside the room.

“He might not be in there,” Jake says.

“What do you mean?”

“It might be Micah.”

“Why do you say that?”

He sucks in a breath and purses his lips. I wait for him to answer, but he turns back to the door and resumes battering it.

“Jake? What’d you mean by that?”

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. Why don’t you think Kelly’s in there?” I grab his arm to stop him. I need to know.

He sets the extinguisher down and turns to me. “How’d you guys end up in here with us?”

“We had to go back for you.”

He looks away guiltily. “Had to? You left me.”

“We had no choice. And Kelly did go back. We all would’ve, but he took it upon himself.”

He still doesn’t look at me. “I was all alone in that stupid tunnel.”

“We’re lucky any of us got through. Anyway, you’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Barely. I just made it back before my cartridge failed.”

“Yeah, and same with us.” I don’t go into how we had to share a single cartridge between the five of us. “It’s not our fault. Anyway, we all made it out alive.”

“I just don’t want you to blame me for this.”

“You’re the one trying to lay blame. None of us wanted any of this to happen.”

He sighs.

“Tell me why you don’t think it’s Kelly inside this room.”

He starts hitting the door again.

“You did see Kelly, didn’t you? When he came back?”

“The next—”

[BAM!]

“—morning, yes. I had to spend the night locked inside a car blocks away from the overpass. It was still—”

[BAM!]

“—swarming. Kelly was already there when I got back.”

“So, why don’t you think he’s here?”

[BAM!]

“Jake! Why don’t you think it’s Kelly?”

“Because he’s dead.”

My blood freezes.

“How do you know? Did you see him die?”

He shakes his head.

“Give me that extinguisher,” I growl.

He refuses. He keeps ramming it into the door. He quickly tires himself out, and yet he still won’t quit. He’s using it as an excuse not to face me.

Reggie comes out with Ash under his arm his good arm. He’s half-carrying her, half-dragging. Her feet make sloppy stepping motions, and she struggles to keep her head upright. I notice he’s abandoned the sling.

He lets her down gently halfway at the other end of the hall and props her up in the corner. She opens her eyes, blinks a few times, and mumbles his name. Then she drops her head to her chest.

“Slowly but surely,” Reggie says. He beckons for the extinguisher and asks for a try.

“I got this.”

“Give me the damn thing, Jake, and get out of my way.”

“Your shoulder, Reg,” I remind him.

“I’m fine.”

He starts off using only the one arm, his beefy palm encircling the tank’s neck, so he’s wielding the extinguisher like a mallet. Even like that, he still manages to do more damage than either of us. And yet the door remains stubbornly intact.

I go to Ash. I feel numb. Jake joins me, and it’s everything I can do not to scream at him to go away. “Too bad we don’t have smelling salts,” he says. “That’d snap her right out of it.”

I stare at him, then jump up.

“Hey!”

I run down the hallway to Nurse Mabel’s room and start flinging drawers open. I finally find a box of ammonia inhalants about halfway down. I extract one ampoule and hurry back, squeezing it between my fingers. The delicate glass inside shatters. A cool liquid soaks the cotton wrapper, and I immediately feel the urge to sneeze as the hard, sharp smell of ammonia reaches my nose.

I shove it right up to Ashley’s face and wait. At first she does nothing, then her head snaps back. It lolls to one side. I push the ampoule closer to her nose.

“Whuh?”

“Ashley, wakey wakey.”

She lifts a hand and swipes weakly at her face. “Stahhhp!”

“You’re going to burn her nose hairs off,” Jake warns.

“You’re worried about nose hairs? She’ll grow them back.” I practically shove the thing into her nostril on the next try.

“No!” Ashley raises both hands now and pushes. She blinks, her eyes watering. “Whathafug?” she mumbles. “Jeh?” Her head turns and she sees Jake.

Reggie stops his assault on the door and comes over. “Hey, babe, it’s me.”

“Reggggsh? Whazgoingon?”

“What’s going on is we’re getting out of here.” He smiles and nods at me. “Good thinking.”

“The smelling salts were my idea,” Jake says.

Reggie returns to the other door and starts battering it with renewed vigor. He grunts from the effort and pain. He’s now using both arms, despite his shoulder injury. Ashley flinches each time the extinguisher crashes into the door, and she tries to push us away. She looks drunk, but it’s a definite improvement from where she was just a few minutes earlier.

Finally, there’s a splintering sound. Reggie doesn’t stop. In fact, he lays into it even harder. Every few strikes, he glances over at us. At Ashley. My heart skips a beat seeing the determination on his face. I can’t help feeling a little jealous. She’s the reason he’s doing this. She’s why he’s fighting through the pain.

He pries a piece off the bottom corner off with his bare hands, then begins working on another. Jake gets up and helps. They get another wedge off, and Jake bends down and peers through.

“I can see a bed,” he announces.

“Get out of the way,” Reggie pants. “Let me finish.”

“No, wait a sec. There’s another. There’s two beds in there! I can’t tell if anyone’s in them, though.”

I hurry over, but Reggie resumes tearing the door apart. He hammers some more, pulls some more, and even tries kicking. Finally, another wedge begins to bend. He wrenches it back and forth until it snaps off. The hole’s still too small for either of them, but I might be able to squeeze through.

“Careful,” Jake warns. “You’ll get splinters.”

Reggie snickers. “She just got blown up. I think she can handle a few splinters.”

“She didn’t get blown up.”

“While she was trying to save your ass she did, so how about showing a little respect?”

“I didn’t disrespect—”

“Just get out of the way,” I say, and begin to shimmy my way through.

The boys continue their back-and-forth. I know Reggie’s just needling Jake, and poor Jake’s falling for it. I don’t bother telling them to knock it off. It’s actually good to hear.

I stand up inside the room.

While I was on the floor, I’d seen wheels for both beds, but I couldn’t see any higher because, just like in Jake’s room, a privacy curtain blocked my view.

On the floor against the wall next to the door is a pile of stuff. I recognize our backpacks and some of our clothes. It’s all unwashed, still muddy and stained. To my left is a bank of computer servers on metal racks. Old tech, which would be consistent with the sign outside and the extra secure door. It doesn’t explain why they’re still on, though, unless they’re the servers Mabel had mentioned, then one they’re connecting the new implants through. They hum softly away, lights blinking green and yellow.

“It’s like a refrigerator in there,” Jake says, poking his head through the opening.

Reggie pulls him out of the way. “Is it them, Jess? Micah and Kelly? Are they okay?”

I pull the curtain open and find Micah lying in the first bed. He looks like he’s been through hell and back. His face is badly swollen and bruised. His eyes flutter open. He whispers my name.

“S’all noise about? Thaw were bean bomb again.”

“It’s just us. We’re getting you out of here.”

“Jess?” Reggie calls.

“It’s Micah,” I say. “He’s...” There are a lot of bandages around his head and his arms. But no slings or splints. And no casts. I reach down and pinch his toe, and his foot curls. The way he’d hit that sign, I was sure he’d broken his back. He doesn’t seem paralyzed, anyway. “He’ll live.”

“And Kelly?”

I turn toward the other bed. The person lying in it is as still as death.

And a cry of utter despair escapes my mouth.

Chapter 21

“Jessie?” Reggie calls in through the opening. “Hey, it’s Kelly, right? Is he okay? Jess?”

No.

“Jess?”

...lost one of them.

Why did it have to be him?

I don’t know what to do. I’m frozen. I’m melting. I sink to the floor.

I hear them quietly murmuring to each other outside the room, trying to decide whether to continue or to wait. A few seconds pass, then they resume tearing the door apart. I barely notice the noise. I hardly notice when they remove the last piece and step inside. It only registers when Reggie touches my arm. And even then, I’m too numb to respond.

He steps past me to the other bed. “What the...?” he whispers. Then, “Fuck.”

I bury my head in my hands. After a moment, he comes back and crouches down. “I’m sorry, Jess. I know you wanted...”

“Don’t touch me!” I yell.

“But—”

“Please, just go away.”

He doesn’t. He stays in his crouch for several more seconds, then reminds me that we can’t stop now. “It’s coming up on six o’clock, Jess. We’ve got just over an hour to get out of here.”

“Leave me alone.”

He stands up again and joins Jake. They exchange a few words, then I hear them sorting through our clothes and backpacks. How can they do this, keep moving forward? How can I? I hear Reg quietly ask Jake if he knows what happened to Kelly, but Jake hems and haws like he did before. He knows something, but he’s not talking.

“Then answer me this,” Reggie says. He extracts a shirt from the piles on the floor and holds it up. The fabric’s stiff from dried mud and blood. It’s torn, even burnt in places. Even so, I can tell it was Micah’s. “How the hell did you manage to survive the bomb blast? You don’t have a single mark on you. Did the tunnel not collapse?”

“What tunnel? What are you talking about?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Reggie whispers. “What the hell happened to you guys? To Kelly?” He grabs Jake. “Tell me!”

“Okay! Okay. Stop!”

“Now.”

“First of all, there was no tunnel.”

“That’s not possible.” He finds Micah’s old tablet computer and holds it up. “We know you made it there. We saw your signals. They were—”

“Signals? What signals?”

“Micah’s tracking script. He and Ash got it to work. We could see inside the wall. You were moving away from the Midtown tunnel, northward. We figured you were heading for the Harlem tunnel. The signals disappeared right about where the tunnel begins.”

“Harlem? No. That’s not why we went north. Why would we take that tunnel? It’s nearly three miles long.”

“So, you weren’t in the tunnel when it was bombed?”

Jake frowns at him for a moment, puzzled. “You keep mentioning bombs. What bombs?”

“Because of what we’d done, Jake. We drew those goddamn undead into the water, and within a day they were showing up on the Manhattan side.”

“You think they came through the tunnel? But that’s impossible. They can’t swim.”

“No, but the currents must’ve dragged them there.”

“Overnight? Through the blockage?”

“There’s the other bore.”

Jake exhales. “You tracked us and thought we were trying to come back the Harlem tunnel? The Brooklyn-Battery would’ve made more sense.”

“Except the other end’s in a busy part of the city. The Harlem’s more remote.”

“And you waited for us at the other end,” he says, finally beginning to understand.

“Until they started bombing—”

“To stop anymore zombies from coming through. That makes sense.”

“Well, we’d seen the planes earlier, but we didn’t realize that’s what they were doing. We thought they were just trying to sanitize lower Manhattan. Then we thought they’d just focus on the two tunnels, the Midtown and Battery. By the time they hit us, it was already too late to get away.”

“Holy cow.”

“That’s what we’ve been telling you, Jake. And now you’re going to tell us what happened to you and Kelly.”

“Why? It doesn’t change anything!”

“It matters!”

“We need to get out of here,” Jake cries. “That’s what matters right now!”

Reggie takes a deep breath. He glances over at me. “Fine. Get your ass dressed.” He hands Jake a set of shorts and tee shirt, the same ones he’d worn last Saturday, the day we swam to Long Island. “But you’re going to tell us.”

He throws another set of clothes over to me, as if he expects me to change into them. But they’re filthy and burned. The pants look like they were cut off of my body. “Jess, we really need to move.”

He does a quick visual check on Micah, before kneeling down in front of me again. “He’s not doing so good, Jess. I’m worried if we move him, we could do more harm.”

I don’t know why he expects me to have the answer. I did my job. I escaped. I killed Mabel. I rescued them.

But I couldn’t rescue Kelly. I couldn’t stop him from going back. I should’ve been the one to do it, not him. I might as well have killed him myself.

He doesn’t deserve this. I do.

I lean my head back against the wall and stare at nothing. I don’t want the responsibility anymore. I’m done.

“Jessie? Come on, I need you.”

I hear Kelly’s ghost telling me the exact same thing.

“Jessie?”

“Go away.”

“You got us—”

“Into this?”

“No. I was going to say you got us free from that bitch. You must have a plan for what to do next. I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, I don’t. Just leave me alone.”

“You can’t give up now. If you do...” He doesn’t finish.

You’re our rock.

Well, Kelly was my rock, and now he’s gone.

“He’s right, Jessie,” Jake says, stepping over. “We really do have to move. All our clothes, our stuff, it’s all here. We need to get out of here.”

He kneels down.

“You,” I snarl at him. “It’s all your fault. You’re the reason we had to go back. If you hadn’t hesitated back there, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. You’re why Kelly’s gone. You need to tell me right now what happened to him! I’m not moving until you do!”

Jake’s face blanches.

“Now!” I scream.

“You better start talking,” Reggie warns.

“Okay. Okay.”

“And make it quick!”

“Okay. Yes, it was my fault. I was a coward. Is that what you want to hear? If I hadn’t choked, or panicked, or— If I’d just gone back to the tunnel the next day, we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess. But if what you guys say is true about the bombs, then if I had been there when Kelly arrived, we’d have been in the tunnels when they bombed them. So, that would’ve been worse, right?”

“Stop trying to find excuses, Jake,” Reggie says. “What the hell happened to Kelly?”

“By the time Kelly found me, it was late afternoon, almost evening.”

“Where the hell were you?”

“After getting back, I had to hide. The plaza was still full of them, the undead. I finally found this car. It was about a quarter mile away, parked in an alleyway. I spent the whole night in there. I couldn’t sleep. The next day, I was sick and exhausted. And scared.”

“You stayed in the car?”

He gulps. “Even when the sun was directly overhead and the inside of the car was almost too hot, I couldn’t make myself leave. I should’ve gone back then. But then the sun passed over the next building. I must’ve fallen asleep. The next thing I knew, Kelly’d found me.”

“When was that?”

“Late afternoon. Kelly said we needed to head back. He said there was still time. But I hadn’t eaten in teo days. I didn’t think I would make it. So, we spent the second night in the car, and then went back to the tunnel the next morning. The IUs were gone by then. Kelly said we should gather up the bags that were still there in the water, but...”

“But you couldn’t do it.”

“No.”

“You knew you’d have to get in at some point.”

“We fought about it. I told him he should just leave me and go.”

“You little shit,” Reggie growls. “You knew he wouldn’t do that. You just needed to man up.”

“I know. But I kept making excuses. I told him the tides were wrong.”

“Yeah, that tide theory of yours was totally wrong. It was wrong straight from the beginning.”

“That’s what Kelly said, too. He figured the currents must be affected by how the tides interacted with the rivers and islands, making them unpredictable.”

“Is that when you suggested taking the Harlem tunnel instead?”

“I never mentioned the other tunnel.”

“Then how’d you end up there?”

“These two guys found us.”

“What two guys? IUs?”

“No. Warm bloods.”

“Sorry?”

Jake winces. “That’s what they called us, these guys. And themselves. Anyone who hasn’t transitioned.”

“Transitioned?” I ask, snapping my head up.

“Resurrected. We’re warm bloods. IUs and CUs are cold bloods.”

“And who were these two guys?”

“They said they were Arc employees. They were surveying, hoping to expand the arcade to cover the whole island.”

“But they weren’t?”

“Well, it seemed plausible. They had all this survival gear with them, EM guns, real shotguns, machetes, body armor. They told us we should go with them, or else we’d end up like one of them, the undead.”

“That doesn’t sound like surveyors,” I say.

“And EM doesn’t work on IUs,” Reggie points out.

“Maybe they’d been inside Gameland, too. I don’t know.”

“What’d Kelly think about them?”

Jake shrugs. “He was suspicious from the very start. He didn’t want us to go with them. I should’ve been more skeptical, but you can’t imagine how glad I was to see people who actually looked like they knew what they were doing.”

“You didn’t think Kelly knew what he was doing? He went back by himself to rescue your sorry ass!”

Jake shrugs.

“So, you disregarded him and threw in your lot with these total strangers.”

“It’s not like we had any choice,” he whines. “These guys were really well armed, and they promised to get us off the island. Kelly told them we already had a way off, but they said that whatever it was, theirs was foolproof and safe.”

“They’re the ones who brought you to the Harlem tunnel?”

“I keep telling you, that wasn’t our destination.”

“But that’s as far as we tracked your signals before they disappeared.”

“I think it’s because we’re so close to the wall. You can feel it, can’t you, that slight buzzing inside your head? I think it might mess up the signals.”

“Did you at least try to get away?”

“Kelly argued with them for a bit. He didn’t like the fact that their plan meant traveling farther away from our two tunnels. But they made it very clear we weren’t going anywhere without them. They told us that we should be glad they found us, in fact, and not NCD or anyone else, because otherwise we’d be in serious trouble. They promised to get us off the island without anyone knowing we were ever there, if we told them how we got here in the first place.”

“How did you travel?” I ask. “On foot?”

“Yes.”

“The whole way, for five miles?”

“Oh, it was a lot longer than that. In fact, they made us run. Kelly asked why they didn’t have vehicles. They said it was too dangerous. After the first survey teams were attacked years back, Arc banned their people on the island from using anything with a motor. Apparently, loud noises, even vibrations, can attract the undead.”

“Go figure.”

“I’m surprised they were so eager to help you. Weren’t they even a little concerned about you being there?” I ask. “Why would they offer to help you get out?”

“I thought it was because we’re so young. But no, they didn’t seem as surprised or concerned as you’d think. Not until we told them we’d come through the tunnels. One of them got on his Link. He was pretty agitated. Kelly overheard him tell his partner that the tunnels were being shut down.”

“Who’d he ping?” I ask. “The EM barrier would’ve blocked anyone from connecting from the outside.”

“I don’t know. I never got a chance to find out, because after that, they pretty much kept us running. There wasn’t much of an opportunity to talk. And the further away we got, the more we realized they weren’t looking to get us out. During one of our very brief water breaks, Kelly told me to be prepared.”

“For what?”

“He didn’t say. There wasn’t time. Soon after that, we arrived here at the terminal.”

“Here?”

Reggie and I exchange glances as the truth settles in. We’re back on Long Island, not on the mainland, as we’d presumed.

Jake nods. “They brought us inside and told us to rest while they scouted ahead for cold bloods. All of a sudden, Kelly punches one of the guys in the face and shouts at me to run.”

“Did you?”

“I wasn’t... No,” he replies, shamefully. “Before I knew was happening, the other guy tackled me. He must’ve been ex-military or something, because I didn’t stand a chance.”

“Yeah,” I grumble. “That must be it.”

“He had moves. He jumped me.”

“So, it wasn’t a fair fight.”

He winces.

“What happened to Kelly?” Reggie asks. “Did he run?”

“He tried to. I could hear the other man chase after him. There was a gunshot. I was already on the ground when I heard it. That was the last time I saw him. I’m sorry, Jessie.”

“You choked,” I growled. “You choked, and it delayed your coming back through the tunnel. You choked and—”

“If I hadn’t, we’d have been bombed.”

“Kelly warned you to be ready, and you froze, just like you always do.”

“I screwed up, I know. Twice.”

“Not twice. Every time. And now Kelly’s dead.”

“We don’t know that,” Reggie says, stiffly. “Jake heard a gunshot. Doesn’t mean anything.”

The man’s words echo even louder inside my head: We lost one of them. Well, the rest of the gang’s here, alive, and he’s the only one unaccounted for.

“It means everything,” I whisper. “I heard them say one of us died.”

“Who said that?”

“The man that was here last night. I overheard him talking with Mabel. He said they lost one of us. There were supposed to be five of us, but they lost one. They had to find a replacement.”

“Lost doesn’t mean dead. Lost could be missing.”

He stands up and goes over to the woman in the second bed.

“In fact, I’m willing to bet that whoever this is, they probably know something. Because it’s obvious Jake doesn’t know shit.”

Chapter 22

Lost.

I let the word bob around in my head, like a beach ball in a swimming pool. It’s suddenly three dimensional, no longer singular in meaning. I inspect its different facets from different angles, and it suddenly takes on so many other meanings.

Lost. Gone. Not necessarily dead.

All this time I’d assumed they’d meant one of us had died, not that we’d gotten away. A flicker of hope rises in my belly, but I push it back down again. I want to believe that Reggie’s right, that Kelly somehow escaped and is still alive out there, somewhere. But what if he’s wrong and lost really does mean what I’d thought?

I heard a gunshot.

And he’s not here. Either he escaped, or he was killed.

I can’t bear going through this all over again.

“Jess?” Reggie says to me, as if he expects me to suddenly take charge, now that the possibility of Kelly being alive is back on the table. How can I have a plan when I’m still processing this new information?

“We should try to wake her up.”

When I don’t move, he shakes his head in frustration. He picks up several of our backpacks and tosses them out into the hallway, then follows them out. I know he’s frustrated with me. Well, screw him.

He returns minutes later. “Ashley’s on her feet. She might be able to walk on her own.” He glances at Micah. “If we weren’t back on this fucking island again...”

“Do you know which airport we’re in?” I ask.

“The old LaGuardia,” Jake replies.

I can see Reggie’s jaw throb. He’s also doing the calculations. The problem has suddenly grown a magnitude more complicated than I’d thought it was just a few minutes before. Besides having to figuring out how to get Micah out of here with him being as seriously hurt as he is, now we have to find a completely new way off the island.

I push myself back to my feet. I do, in fact, feel like I’ve been released from the paralyzing grief and indecision that held me moments before. I still refuse to hope for the best outcome, but as long as there’s a possibility Kelly’s still alive, I can function. “What happened after Kelly took off?” I ask Jake. “Did either man say anything about him?”

“No,” Jake replies. “The first guy came back pretty quickly. Like, within seconds of the...” He purses his lips. “After I heard the gunshot. I asked him what happened, but he wouldn’t answer. They got me up and then injected me with something. The next thing I knew, I was waking up handcuffed to a bed, and there’s this bandage on the back of my neck.”

“They messed with all of our implants,” Reggie says.

“Did they remove them?”

“No,” I say, “but I’m starting to think we’ll wish they had.”

“What do you mean?” Reggie asks.

I quickly explain what I’d overheard Nurse Mabel and the mysterious man talking about. “I think they’ve replaced them with something experimental. I don’t know exactly, but I have a bad feeling about it.”

“Why the hell would they do that?”

“I wish I knew. The only thing I overheard them say was that they’re using new materials, and that they consider it a kind of upgrade.” I stop short of telling tell them that I think it’s all part of some unsanctioned experiment, and that we’ve probably been volunteered. Nor do I mention that if my body continues to reject my implant, I’ll be brain dead in a matter of weeks. We’ve already got too much on our minds. I need them to focus, because it’s the only way they’re going to get out of here.

I go over to the strange woman in the second bed and shake her. It doesn’t surprise me that she doesn’t respond at all. Her face is puffy with bruises, just like Micah’s, but there are no scrapes or cuts. I don’t think she’ll be giving us any information anytime soon.

“Okay,” I say, “there’s three of us who can function clearly. Four, if Ashley recovers in time. We can handle the other two.”

“We’re not taking her!” Jake says, pointing to the other bed. “We don’t even know who she is.”

“You’re right, we don’t. But she’s obviously in the same boat as we are. And I think Reggie’s also right that she might know something about Kelly. We just need to give her time to wake up.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“She’s going to slow us down.”

“No more than Micah will. We need wheelchairs. This is an airport, so there’s got to be some here.”

“Okay. And where do we go?” Reggie asks. “We’re still going to be on the island. The tunnels are closed, and—”

“The shuttle,” I say. “It’s the only way.”

“You think they’re just going to let us walk on?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

“I’m working on it.”

“And what about Kelly?” Reggie asks.

I can feel his eyes boring into me. He probably already suspects what I’m planning.

“First things first,” I say. “Right now, our top priority is getting everyone up and out of these rooms. If we’re still here when they show up, we lose our advantage.”

I go over and unlock the girl’s handcuff and jiggle her shoulders. Surprisingly, her eyes flutter open. But there’s nothing there, no emotion or surprise or even a sense of self-awareness. I ask her if she can get up. She offers no response. Reggie hands me the extra set of clothes he and Jake found amongst our bags. They’re the only ones besides Jake’s that weren’t filthy and bloody, so they’re clearly hers. “We’re going to get you out of here,” I say.

But she just lies there.

I lean down to check the back of her head. She’s got a bandage on her neck, just like the rest of us. And it’s when I’m close to her that I realize I know her. I don’t know if it’s the faint smell of whatever perfume or lotion she used. Maybe it’s that I now see beneath the puffiness in her face, her swollen eyelids, her total lack of expression.

I back quickly away, gasping her name.

“What?” Reggie asks. “You know her?”

I’m too shocked to answer right away. It can’t be a coincidence that she’s here, too. But how?

“Jess?” Reggie says. He takes my elbow and tries to turn me to him. “Jessie, who’s Tanya?”

Chapter 23

“We met a few days ago,” I whisper. “On the bus from Hartford.”

“The day after we got back?”

“Yes. I was coming back from my interview for the lost Link. We shared a seat.”

“Okay, that’s... That can’t be a coincidence.”

“It’s not.”

“Okay, so... who is she?”

“Honestly? I don’t really know. She said she worked for Arc as a recording clerk, but that’s all I know about her.”

“Another Arc connection.”

“But why would they do something like this to one of their own?” Jake asks. “Did she volunteer?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “And I don’t think it has anything to do with her job. I think it has to do with what happened that day on that bus.”

“Did you tell her what we did?”

“No! Of course not. In fact, she did most of the talking. All I did was—”

I gasp again, and cover my mouth. Suddenly a lot more that was said between Mabel and the man suddenly becomes clear.

We had forensics go through the Stream records. She popped up because she tried pinging the Corben boy.

“What?” Reggie asks.

“We were talking. I wanted to check on Kelly, to see if he was back yet. But the Link they gave me at Citizen Registration was— I couldn’t ping, so I asked to use her Link.”

“You think she’s here because you tried to ping Kelly with her Link? That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“I think they brought her in solely because of that connection. There were supposed to five of us, but when they lost Kelly, they needed to replace him.”

“Five of us for what?” Reggie asks.

“I don’t know. We’re part of some... package.”

“But there are five of us already without her,” Jake says.

“Five gamers. You’re not a gamer.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

She’s a good candidate for the treatment...

Young... strong... invested in the game.

She’ll make an excellent player.

They were planning on turning us all into CUs and selling us to the highest bidder. I’m sure of it now. That must be why they gave us all updated implants.

But I don’t have time to explain it to them.

“Wait, are you saying I’m not supposed to be here?” Jake cries. “Why would they replace my implant then?”

“Calm down. They couldn’t just let you go.”

“But I’m not supposed to be here!”

I toss him the cardkey. “See if you can find us some wheelchairs out there. Be careful. And don’t wander off too far.”

He hurries off without another word.

Reggie waits until he leaves before asking me, “If we’re supposed to be some kind of package, does that mean they knew we were here? Did they know we were coming?”

“I don’t know, Reg.”

“How could they—” He gasps. “Do you think Jake’s in on it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But right now, we’ve got to get the hell away from here. We don’t have much time. Just... watch yourself around Jake, okay?”

“Okay. Right. What do you want me to do?”

“Get me an ammonia inhalant from the med cart in Nurse Mabel’s room.”

“What do you need that for?”

“To wake Tanya up. She might know something.”

“There isn’t time, Jess.”

“I just want to see. Hurry, before Jake comes back.”

He returns a minute later with the entire box, along with my Link from Citizen Registration. “Found it in the bottom drawer of the medicine cart, along with your inhaler.”

I pocket the Link and take a blast of my medicine. He watches me warily. I know he’s convinced I don’t really need whatever medicine it holds. None of them do. In fact, they’re always teasing me about it. If I’m honest about it, I’m not so sure it’s necessary either. But I do feel better knowing I’ve got it back.

“Ashley’s able to stand up and on her own now,” he informs me. “Pretty sure she’ll be able to run, if it comes to that.”

“Good.”

I extract one of the ampoules and crush the delicate glass capsule, letting the pink liquid soak into the cotton sleeve. But when I wave it under Tanya’s nose, it doesn’t work as I’d hoped. She wakes up alright, even reacting as violently as Ashley had. But her movements are incoherent, and she doesn’t respond to my questions.

“Give her a few minutes,” I say, but I’m starting to worry about what they did to her. She wasn’t with us when the bomb dropped, so why is she all puffy and bruised?

Reggie notices that she isn’t responding the same way, either. “There’s something’s off about her.”

“It took Ash a while to come out of it.”

“Yeah, but they sedated her. This one’s got no IV.”

“They might’ve given her something by mouth.”

“Or maybe she’s... it’s like she’s damaged somehow. Like there’s connections not being made inside her head.”

I think about what the man and Mabel said about an implant being rejected. I wish I could go back to that conversation and hear it again. Could they have been talking about Tanya and not me?

“She’s not damaged,” I declare. “She’ll wake.”

“Yeah, well, either way, I don’t think it’s going to happen soon enough.”

I know he’s right. I’m putting all my hope in finding answers on this one girl, and there’s no guarantee she even knows anything.

I give the used smelling salts to Reg and ask him to see if it’ll rouse Micah. Most of the ammonia has already evaporated off, but there should be enough to wake him. Unless he’s too out of it, too.

He comes to almost immediately, although he’s disoriented. He pushes Reggie’s hand away and says his name. I talk to him in a quiet voice, and he soon calms down. “Jess?” he whispers.

And now it’s clear that whatever has happened to Tanya, it’s far worse than what Micah and Ashley experienced.

Reggie seems to understand this, too. He glances over at her, then at Micah. He gives me a worried look and shakes his head.

“We’re still bringing her with us,” I tell him.

“Jessie, listen to me. We’re already in over our heads. Micah’s a mess. And this girl... Jake was right. She’ll just slow us down.”

“We’re not leaving her here. You know they’ll kill her if we leave her behind.”

“How do you know they haven’t already? If she dies, and then—”

“Don’t say that!”

“I’m just saying what you’re already thinking. Dragging her away from—”

I spin around and slap him hard across the face. “I’ve already dragged Tanya into this! Can’t you see that? It’s my fault she’s here!”

A whimper comes from Tanya’s bed. It’s the first sound she’s made since I found her here, and I take it as an encouraging sign. Maybe Reggie’s wrong about her being damaged. Maybe I’m wrong about her implant failing. Maybe they did sedate her with pills.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

“Look, Reg, you wanted me to take charge, so I am. Now either help me or get out of my way.” I head over to her bed. “Can you walk, Tanya? Look, I’m not going to hurt you. Do you understand what I’m saying? Tanya?”

“She’s not going to be able to—”

“Girrrl,” she mumbles. “Frommm... bussss.”

“Yes,” I say, greatly relieved. I shoot Reggie a look. “We’re going to get you out of here, Tanya. Understand? Can you stand up?”

She blinks several times, then starts trying to get out of bed. The sheet falls off her. Reggie looks away, embarrassed.

“Good. That’s good, Tanya. Now, do you think you can get yourself dressed?”

Another languid nod.

I look her straight in the eye so she knows exactly how serious this is. “If we don’t get the hell out of here quickly, we’re all dead. Nod again if you understand.”

Several long seconds pass before she mumbles yes.

I hand her her underwear. Then I tell Reg to go make sure Ashley’s ready. “We’re leaving as soon as Jake gets back with the wheelchairs.”

I step back over to Micah’s bed to assess his situation. He’s got an IV dripping into his arm, a urinary catheter coming from, well, underneath the blanket. I don’t need to look to know where it’s coming from. And he’s got oxygen piped into his nose from a green tank under the bed. I don’t know how much of this equipment is necessary. I try to rouse him, but he’s listless again and doesn’t respond to just simple shaking. It’ll take something stronger, like another dose of the smelling salts. I decide it’s better just to let him sleep. Like the man who was talking to Mabel said earlier: the body’s going to do what it needs to do to recover. And he’s got a lot more he needs to recover from.

I turn away, but he suddenly reaches out and grabs me by the arm. I could easily get away. He’s too weak to hold on. “Go...” he whispers.

“We are.”

“Leave... me.”

“Not going to happen, Micah.”

He coughs weakly. “Won’t get... far.”

“Christ, you’re as bad as Reggie.”

“Too many... injuries.”

“Told you,” Reggie says, reappearing by my side. “If we try to move him too soon, we could kill him.”

“I thought I asked you to get Ashley ready.”

“She’s good. Could do with a jolt of Red Bull, though.”

I sigh. “We’re taking everyone. They’ll kill anyone we leave behind.”

“You don’t know that.”

“These people,” I say, rounding on him. “They don’t play by the rules. Why do you think we’re here and not in a real hospital?”

“No,” Micah whispers again. “Please.”

“You’re upsetting him, Jess.”

Micah starts coughing, and it quickly becomes uncontrollable. After several minutes, the fit subsides, and he leans over and spits. I expect to see blood in his sputum, but there isn’t any.

“Leave me,” he whispers.

“He’s obviously delirious,” I say. “He doesn’t understand how serious the situation is. And we don’t have time to explain it to him.”

Reggie shakes his head. “Okay, what do you want me to do? Should I go find Jake? He’s taking a long time.”

“No, just help Tanya get dressed.”

Reggie gives me a horrified look.

“I can’t do everything!” I shout, as I head for the hallway.

“Okay, but— Hey, where are you going?”

“Just get her dressed!”

I pass Ashley. She looks like she’s close, maybe seventy-five percent. She tracks me with her eyes, but her face is slack. I have to do a double take when I see the line of drool dripping from her bottom lip. It reminds me of my mother. She mumbles my name and steps forward. I hurry past her and into her room.

By the time I’ve got what I came for, Jake’s returned with a wheelchair and is asking if we need another. I tell him to wait. Then I return to Micah’s room.

Reggie’s already got Tanya dressed. Thank God for small favors and whatever he had to do to help her. She’s still just standing there, though, glassy eyed, without any expression on her face. Ashley’s there, too, sitting by Micah’s bed.

“Reg, what’s she doing in here?”

She’s clutching Micah’s hand and crying, begging him to come with us.

“What did you tell her, Reggie?”

“Nothing.”

I pull her away, because she’s only making things worse.

“Micah told her we all need to stay,”

“Don’t listen to him,” I tell them. “He’s delirious.”

Ashley tries to go back to him. She’s maybe eighty-five percent now, although clearly in some sort of emotional trough. I ask Reggie to take her out of the room.

He returns just as I’m finished switching the bag on Micah’s IV. He demands to know what I’m doing.

“It’s the sedative they were giving Ash.”

“You’re knocking him out?”

“He can’t walk. And I can’t have him fighting us.”

Micah tries weakly to stop me. I open the drip all the way. Within moments, he’s asleep.

“You’re seriously going to kill him,” Reggie says.

“We don’t have time for this shit. We need to go.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

I turn the drip rate down, but I don’t apologize or change my mind. I’m getting everyone out of here, even if that means keeping Micah unconscious to do it.

I pull the wheelchair Jake found to the side of the bed and instruct the boys to help me get Micah into it.

When we’re done and the IV and catheter are transferred, I check the time on Mabel’s Link. It’s almost six-thirty.

“Are you sure about this, Jess?” Reggie asks one last time.

“No choice. You got a better plan?”

He doesn’t answer.

“They’re going to be here in half an hour. The time to discuss our options is over. Jake, take Micah. Reg, you got Ash. I’ll grab Tanya.”

“But where are we going?”

“I told you, the shuttle.”

“Yeah, but where is it coming?”

“They’ll probably want to land as close as possible to avoid getting caught out in the open. We just need to find the nearest exit leading to the runways.”

“You think they’re flying in? Nothing comes over the wall, you know that.”

“They’re Arc. Who’s going to shoot them out of the sky? The government? Arc owns them.”

“It could land anywhere. What about the roof?”

“There’s no landing pad up there. The tarmac’s the most likely place.”

“I’m not so sure about this, Jess.”

“That shuttle’s your ticket off the island. I’m punching it.”

“Hold up,” Jake says. “Our ticket? You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”

I shake my head. “I’m not leaving until I find Kelly.”

He and Reg exchange glances. “You’ll die, here, Jess.”

I don’t tell them he’s probably right. But then again, if it’s my implant being rejected, then I’m probably already halfway there.

Chapter 24

The whine of the generator is the first thing to hit us when we push through the door. Then the faint but distinct smell of rot.

We enter first into another hallway. Following the exit signs, we emerge into a larger space that looks like some kind of staging area. There are large metal cabinets on wheels lined up against the walls. We pause to allow our eyes time to adjust to the gloom. Every muscle is tensed; all ears are pricked. The darkness presses in, and we wait for the inevitable attack that doesn’t come, neither from the living nor the dead.

I spot the next darkened exit sign and head straight for it. I hope I’m leading us in the right direction.

We soon find ourselves in the international terminal. The names of long defunct foreign airlines adorn the abandoned kiosks and stainless steel counters. Silent conveyor belts sit patiently waiting, awash in the dim light of dawn filtering in from the high glass windows across the lobby. The glass is so dirty that the view outside gives the feeling of being submerged in murky water. My throat constricts, and I taste the East River again. I suddenly can’t catch my breath.

“You okay, Jess?” Reggie asks.

I swallow and nod.

Ash shuffles over to me. She’s close to a hundred percent now and over her emotional breakdown. “You can’t stay behind, Jess.”

“Kelly’s still here somewhere. I can’t leave until I find him.”

“Then we’ll all stay. We’ll help.”

“No. You need to take Micah and Tanya back and tell Eric what Arc’s doing here. They’ll have to send someone in to find us.”

“They can send someone in to find Kelly. You don’t have to stay.”

“It’s not up for discussion.” I step past her and over to Jake. “Anything look familiar to you?”

He shakes his head. “I remember seeing the control tower as we ran up.” He points through the dirty windows. “This isn’t where they brought us in.”

“Well, we’re here now, and the airfield’s behind us. That’s where we have to go.”

“Are you sure?”

No.

“Everyone keeps asking me that, but no one’s coming up with a better idea.”

He keeps quiet.

“Look, we know they’re not driving in, since there aren’t any bridges. Boats are out of the question. So that leaves the air. We need to head toward the gates. They’ll take us to the tarmac. Look for signs.”

We reach an escalator. It’s not moving, of course, so Reggie and Jake lift Micah up it a step at a time. I use the light from my Link to illuminate the darkness as we ascend. The glow penetrates only a few feet, leaving far too much hidden from view. I’m beginning to have serious doubts about my plan.

Using her own Link, Ash takes the opportunity to scout ahead for food and water, leaving me to attend to Tanya. She’s easier to handle than I’d expected. Once she starts moving, she keeps right on going, like some kind of automaton. All I have to do is physically point her in the right direction. She seems able to understand simple voice commands, but complex instructions confound her. She’d probably keep walking until I told her to stop.

I begin to worry that this is the best I can expect out of her. She’s clearly not improving like Ashley did.

What did they do to you, Tanya? I wonder.

Ashley reappears with a handful of candy bars. She offers Jake a Snickers.

“Junk food,” he says, making a face. “Twelve-year-old junk food.”

“Still better than those damn Insta-Meals they’ve been serving us.”

“Is it even edible?”

She takes it back. “Well, if you’re going to be so picky, then go find your own. But I’m warning you, some of the other stuff I found at that food cart was much worse. Petrified muffins and brownies. Salads and sandwiches in plastic containers that looked like they grew entire ecosystems.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t eat it,” Jake gripes.

She takes a bite and gives him the rest. But she makes a face and struggles to chew the dry, hardened candy before spitting it out.

“Couldn’t find any Red Bulls, huh?” I joke.

“How much time we got?” Reggie asks, lighting up his and Micah’s Links and directing them into the darkness.

I check the time. “It’s a quarter to seven.”

“Fifteen minutes before that shuttle’s due to arrive,” Jake says, unhelpfully. I want so badly to tell him to shut up.

“You’ll never reach it going in that direction,” a voice calls out from the gloom.

We spin around— all except Micah, of course. Reggie immediately extinguishes the Links in his hands. Ash and I quickly follow suit.

Jake steps forward, sweeping his Link around. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

I hiss at him to shut up.

Another Link lights up behind a coffee cart, and a figure materializes. Cobwebs tent the ancient urns and tea displays around him.

“If you want the shuttle, you’re going the wrong way.”

I drop the backpack I’m carrying, then break into a run. Kelly steps out from behind the cart and throws his arms wide to catch me. Reggie and Ash shout his name.

He gives his full attention to me first, before bothering to respond to any of the questions the others pelt him with. He tells us he’s been hiding out up here in the darkness for days, watching and waiting.

“You got away? I thought they shot you,” Jake says.

“Missed. And they gave up searching for me pretty quickly.”

“Why?”

“I assume because the entire terminal is crawling with undead. Open the wrong door and you’re history. I think they either figured my getting away was a problem that’d solve itself, or it wasn’t worth the risk right then. They did try searching a few times later.”

“We haven’t seen any undead.”

“Where you were headed, through those doors there? Hundreds of them.”

I can feel Jake’s eyes drilling into me accusingly. Like he knew any better.

“This is actually great news,” I say. “Now we can all get on that shuttle and get out of here.”

“It’s ten till,” Jake says, “and we still don’t know where it’ll be.”

“But I do,” Kelly says.

“Where?” I ask.

“Baggage claim, two levels down.”

“Down?”

“It’s a tram, comes through a tunnel under the river.”

“They bombed the tunnels.”

“Yeah, I heard. But not this one.”

“How do you know all this?” Jake demands.

“I’ve been watching them, listening. They bring meals and supplies every morning, same time each day.”

“Take us there.”

“And then what, Jess? Fight them? It’s better if we wait for them to leave from the shuttle and go up to where they were holding you.”

“If we wait, they’ll sound the alarm.”

He thinks about this. “Okay. But it’s not going to be as simple as you think.”

“How many people will there be?” I ask. “Can we take them?”

“Maybe. It’s usually only two, three people at any given time. This is a minimal operation here. So, yes, I think we can.”

He sees Tanya, and I can see the questions in his eyes.

“She’s not a part of this,” I say. “But I’m responsible for her, and she needs our help. So does Micah. I think he needs a hospital.”

“They’re going to keep coming after us, Jess. Even if we manage to get back home.”

“Better there than here. We have to get off their turf. At least at home we’ll have Eric and the police and Grandpa.”

He finally relents. He leads us quickly through the darkened terminal, down the escalator and deep into the bowels of the airport.

“I told you to run,” Kelly hisses at Jake. “Why didn’t you run?”

Jake doesn’t reply.

“Maybe next time you’ll listen.”

“I’m curious,” Jake says. “How did you find us? It’s not the same terminal.”

“I followed them. Wasn’t hard. One of them had to carry you. They used some kind of key to get inside this terminal. It took me a while to figure out how to get inside myself. Finally got in through one of the baggage carousels. Had to take out a few IUs along the way.”

“All this practice,” Reggie says. “Pretty soon, you’re going to be a better gamer than the rest of us.”

Kelly grunts. I can see from the look in his eye that what he’d had to endure was no game.

“My only thought was to rescue Jake and get the hell out of here, head back to the tunnels, grab our gear and get off the island. All the locked doors prevented me from getting close. And then I saw them bring the rest of you in a couple days later. That’s when I learned what had happened and about the tunnels getting bombed. I’ve been trying to come up with a plan ever since.”

“You could’ve gone back and gotten help.”

“The shuttle? They would’ve known and moved you. Besides, I wasn’t going to leave you.”

“They’ve been experimenting with a new virus and new implants,” I tell him.

I hear Ashley gasp, but Kelly doesn’t seem surprised at all. “I overheard that, too. There’s this one guy, Harrison, Padraig Harrison. I think he’s the one in charge. He was talking to this other guy about experimental treatments.”

“They’re all Arc,” I tell him. “I think they’ve been planning to turn us all into Volunteers.”

Kelly’s jaw clenches. “I didn’t want to believe that’s what it was. Goddamn liars.”

I frown at him. “What do you mean? What did they lie about?”

He sputters angrily for a moment, then says, “They claim to serve the people. My ass. They serve themselves. They’ve been lying to us since day one. They’re just out to make a buck. They don’t care who they screw over to do it!”

“Not all of them. Tanya works for Arc,” I whisper.

“Then why are you trying to save her?”

I quickly tell him about my bus ride to Hartford to get the replacement Link. When he hears this, he remembers something and reaches into his pocket. “I believe this is yours,” he says, and hands my original Link over. “I recovered it the day I returned.”

I thought I’d be glad to see it, but it suddenly feels dangerous, like a ticking time bomb in my hands. It’s no longer a part of me, but rather a part of this place. I cradle it, expecting it to suddenly bite me or something, but it just sits there.

He reaches over and taps the screen awake. The picture he’d sent me just moments before the zombies attacked us at the fueling station is still loaded up.

I quickly close it.

“I meant it, Jessie. I still do. Will you marry me?”

Everyone stops and stares at us. I continue marching forward. I can’t do this right now. It’s seven o’clock, and we’ve reached the baggage claim carousels and I have to admit that I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few minutes. How can I possibly plan a future that now seems far more uncertain than ever before?

A door stands open across the room. Faint light spills out, so I head toward it.

“Jessie, please.”

I stop and slowly turn. “One thing at a time, okay?”

He catches up with me and takes my arm.

I sigh and look around at the others. They all look back, except for Micah and Tanya. He looks like a corpse, and she looks like a lobotomy victim. Do the rest of them actually expect me to answer that question now? We’re in the middle of an abandoned airport in the middle of the Forbidden Zones on Long Island with an undead nurse upstairs, whom I killed, and any second now people are going to show up, people who wouldn’t blink twice to see us dead.

And all my friends can think about is whether or not I’m ready to tie the knot?

Well, I’m not.

“Kelly, I—”

But then there’s a heavy clang from the other side of the open door and a hiss of iron wheels on steel tracks. There’s a squeal and another release of compressed air. We all look at each other. Then we hear the voices.

“Hide!” I whisper.

But we realize too late that the baggage claim’s wide open space provides no such opportunity.

Chapter 25

Reggie doesn’t hesitate. He runs straight toward the door, grabbing Jake and Kelly as he goes. Jake nearly trips over his own feet. The scuffling sounds are like alarm bells in my ears and I can’t believe no one on the other side of that door doesn’t hear it. But the voices — a man’s and a woman’s — carry on without a hint of concern.

I hurry over to Micah’s wheelchair and gesture to Ash to grab Tanya and pull her out of the direct line of sight. We move quickly to one side. Other than the cloak of darkness, there’s nothing to conceal us. But from the posture Reggie and Kelly take, crouched against the wall to either side of the door, hiding isn’t their intention. I hope Jake takes their cue.

We wait, but our captors don’t come through right away. Snatches of conversation reach our ears:

[Female voice, fractured]: “—surance the coder will be ready in time? CUs are dangerous enough... three times as potent.”

[Male voice, louder, clearer]: “Potency’s not the issue, Miss Novak. We’ve been through this. It’s the ability to retain more than just primitive core functions. This is the breakthrough the boss has been aiming for since the first Zulu.”

[Female voice]: “I’m worried about transmissibility once activated.”

[Male voice]: “...worry too much.”

“What are they talking about?” Ashley whispers to me.

I gesture for her to be quiet. My guess is they’re talking about the alpha treatment. Tanya stands with her back against the wall, her eyes staring out into the gloom. She has no expression whatsoever on her face. It’s like she’s really not there at all.

“Hurry up with that cart!” the male voice suddenly shouts. A second male voice responds from deeper inside the room.

Kelly gestures excitedly at Jake to get ready.

A shadow falls across the doorway and a moment later a woman marches through. She’s completely absorbed on her Link. A man carrying a small, black case immediately follows. Jake and Reggie attack them before they know what’s happening. Kelly slips into the room to get to the other man. I hear him shout: “Get your hands up where I can see them. I said up, asshole!”

A moment later, a young man stumbles out through the doorway, tripping over his own feet. He lands on the floor before Kelly steps through, and he’s holding a pistol directed at the man’s head. It appears to be the same gun I’d found inside the fueling station in Long Island City. I’m actually glad to see it again. But unless he’s found more ammunition for it, it’s empty.

They don’t that that, though.

Reggie has the woman’s arm wrenched behind her back. He’s holding her up against a column. I can see from the look on her face that she’s not accustomed to this sort of treatment. There’s no fire at all in her eyes, no fight. She gives up too easily.

The older man, however, struggles with Jake. He manages to slip from his grip and spins around, swinging the case. The sound of it hitting Jake’s head reverberates across the empty room. Jake staggers backward several steps and trips over the edge of the luggage carousel.

He recovers surprisingly quickly, though, and lunges at the man. But the man’s ready and steps away. Jake stumbles past, looking like an amateur instead of the green belt he really is.

“How did you boys get out of your rooms?” the man demands. He grabs an empty luggage cart and thrusts it at Jake, who clumsily deflects it. He’s puffing, whereas the man looks like he’s barely exerting himself. “Ah, Mister Corben,” he says, spotting Kelly. “There you are. We thought we’d lost you.”

“Shut up!”

“Why the hell were we being kept prisoner?” Reggie demands. He shoves the woman hard against the column. She grunts in pain.

“Prisoner?” The man laughs and jockeys himself around a set of chairs. He still hasn’t seen the rest of us huddled in the shadows. “You’re not prisoners. You’re pioneers, the lucky chosen ones in a grand new world order. Imagine if Gameland went global. Your faces will be plastered everywhere, the vanguard of a new breed of player in a new type of arcade.” His laughter crackles against the walls and makes my ears hurt.

“I don’t remember volunteering for anything, asshole,” Reggie growls. “And I’ve already seen the new world order. It’s no better than the old one. In fact, I think it stinks.”

“Well, then this is your chance to make a difference then, Mister Casey. Once you see what we have in store for you, you’ll understand. And you and your friends will all be heroes. Your faces will be on all the Streams. You’ll be famous.”

Kelly’s now kneeling on the other guy’s back. I get a good look at his face before he sees me and we lock eyes. He doesn’t appear to be much older than the rest of us. Tanya’s age, maybe. He actually looks terrified.

I edge my way around behind the first man. I know Jake can see me, because he jockeys to keep the man’s back turned toward me.

“What do you know about heroes, you old prick?” Reggie spits.

“I know a lot actually, son. I’ve created enough of them.”

“I’m not your son.”

“Listen to me, boys. I think maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. Let’s start—”

“Shut the hell up!” Jake suddenly screams.

The man lunges, as if he’d been waiting for just this moment. He moves so quickly that I barely have a chance to react. I kick out with my foot just as the young man beneath Kelly shouts a warning. My toe just manages to catch the other man’s ankle, but it’s enough to throw him off balance. He barks out a surprised cry and crashes to the floor. I’m on him in a flash. Jake steps in and begins whaling on the man, kicking him in the side and face. I can feel his foot thudding soft flesh and hard bone beneath me. I can hear the man’s grunts of pain keeping time with Jake’s grunts of effort.

“How’s — huhn — this — huhn — for a — HUHN  — misunderstanding, asshole?”

“Stop it!” I scream. I glare at him in shock. Where did this violent streak come from? “Stop, Jake! You’re going to kill him!”

He stops, blinks, then staggers away.

“You’ve got it all wrong, son,” the man weakly coughs. He’s clearly in pain but trying not to show it. He turns his head around as far as he can, and when he sees me he tries to grin. “Looks like the whole gang’s here. Nice to see you again, Miss Daniels. And you, Miss Evans. I trust you’ve been keeping well since the last time we spoke.”

The boys look at me, then at Ashley, shock and suspicion on their faces.

“What does he mean, Jess?” Kelly asks. “Ash? Do either of you know his guy?”

I yank the man’s head up by the hair, the same way I’d done to Nurse Mabel. I’m totally ready to slam his head into the floor.

But I stop myself. I won’t help create another monster.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole,” I growl. “I’ve never met you before in my life. I’ve never spoken to you.”

“Me, either,” Ashley squeaks.

He laugh-coughs, but doesn’t push it. Instead he asks about my grandfather. “I hope he’s doing well in his old age. One of the unlucky few who’ll never know what it’s like to become immortal.”

“The dead aren’t lucky,” I say, “or immortal. But I guess you’ll soon find out for yourself. You look like you might be about conscription age.”

“Not as close as you.” He wheezes out another dry laugh.

“Ignore him,” Kelly says.

Jake appears with some wire. The rubber coating is so rotten that it rubs off on his skin. He binds the man’s wrists, and not very gently either. It cuts into the man’s flesh.

I look over and see the young man kneeling now, his hands clasped behind his head. Kelly’s standing behind him, the gun still trained on his temple. Reggie’s still got the woman shoved up against the column.

“What should we do with them?” Jake asks.

“Tie her up next,” I tell Reggie. “We’ll leave them here.”

“We should take them back with us.”

“Actually,” Jake says, “we should kill them. That’ll teach them a lesson.”

“No!” I say. I gesture to the young man. “We’ll take him. For insurance. We’ll leave the other two here for the authorities to find.”

“You can’t leave,” the man says.

“Shut up,” Jake tells him. “Or I’ll kick your sorry, puny, wimp ass again. And this time I won’t stop until you’re bleeding from every existing orifice, plus a few new ones. Do you understand me?”

I stare at Jake. This side of him is actually a little scary.

Back when I first met him at the dojang — god, was it only a week ago? — he’d confessed that his previous trainer emphasized brutality and aggression. It was the reason he left his studio for Rupert’s. It looks like that former training is kicking in again. Or maybe it goes even further back, to his days as a bully on the schoolyard. Either way, it’s frightening.

“Listen to him,” the woman says. “It’ll only make things worse for you if you try to leave.”

“Nothing could be worse than this, lady.”

Reggie’s still holding her arm behind her back. He looks uncomfortable, like he no longer wants to hurt her. I want to warn him to pay attention.

“Maybe he won’t kick your ass up through your neck,” Jake says, spinning on her, “but I won’t think twice about doing it myself.”

“That’s enough!” I cry. “Jake, calm down!”

“You can’t leave,” the woman echoes, as if she’s trying to antagonize Jake.

He looks at me uncertainly. I can tell he hadn’t expected me to stop him. Or her to defy him. I shake my head warningly. He grunts once and turns away.

I step over to her so she can see me. “You’re not going to stop us,” I say, emphasizing each word carefully so that there’s no chance of misunderstanding. She doesn’t even flinch. “You can’t. We’re going home. If you behave, maybe you’ll be able to go home, too.”

“You’ll regret this,” she tells me. “All of it.”

“We could have you all killed, and no one would be the wiser.”

She laughs in my face. It infuriates me, and for the first time, I almost wish Jake would lose control.

“Tell us how the shuttle works,” Kelly demands. He presses the pistol against the young man’s head. “Tell us and we won’t hurt you.”

“It’s a simple switch,” he answers. His eyes flick over to the older man, but neither he nor the woman urges him to be quiet. “The tram rides a track through a tunnel deep below the East River. Push the lever one way and the tram moves in that direction; push it the other and it goes in the opposite direction. Leave it in the middle, it stops. But—”

“It’s not flooded?”

“No.”

“What’s on the other end?”

“It comes out inside a warehouse once owned by the transportation authority. In Hunts Point. It’s abandoned now, of course.”

“Is it guarded?”

“I don’t know.”

“You, is it guarded?” Reggie asks the woman.

“No.”

“Don’t you fucking lie to me.”

“It’s not.”

I walk over to Kelly and ask for the gun. I walk over to her and point it at her head. When she doesn’t flinch, I realize what I’d mistaken for fright is really just composure. She doesn’t believe we’ll do any of this. She believes, despite the evidence to the contrary, that they’re in complete control.

I swing it back over to the young man. “Is that it?”

“Y-yes,” he answers. “Honestly! Please, don’t shoot me. I don’t want to die. You don’t know what’ll happen—”

“We won’t come after you,” the other man promises.

“Yeah, like I believe a single word you say,” I tell him. “You’re done, all of you. We’re going home, and then we’re going to the police. My brother’s NCD. I’m sure he’ll be real interested to hear what you’re doing here.”

“We can’t just leave them here, Jessie,” Jake pleads.

The older man stares at me. He actually looks slightly amused.

“Tie her up, too,” I tell Jake.

“You’re making a big mistake,” the man says.

I bend down. I can smell the coffee on his breath. “Shut. Your. Mouth.”

This time, he keeps quiet.

“Are we ready?” I ask everyone. Jake nods grimly. So do Kelly and Reg.

“For god’s sake,” the woman says, as Reggie binds her to the column. “For the last time, you can’t—”

“That’s enough, Miss Novak,” the man grunts. He chuckles. “Let them go. It’s not the end of the world for us. We always have the backup plan.”

“What does he mean by that?” Jake asks. “What the heck do you mean backup plan?”

“Nothing, Jake. He’s just screwing with your head.”

I go over and kick the man in the kidney. Then I lean down one more time. “I’m sure you’re wondering what happened to Nurse Mabel. I locked her up in Room Three.” I pause, thinking. “She was not happy about that.”

Reggie gawps at me. He knows what I’ve just done. I’ve sent them to their deaths.

Chapter 26

“Tie up his hands, but not his feet,” I tell Kelly. “Let’s get out of this hellhole.”

Kelly bends down and grabs the young man’s arm and yanks him upright. The guy starts to protest, but Jake glares at him and he quickly quiets down.

I march through the doorway into the dimly lit room beyond. It must’ve been an old transportation link for airport employees coming from the other side of the East River. Railcars sit on tracks that lead into several different tunnels. A colorful map on the wall shows lines connecting the various concourses and terminals. I wonder if they all still work.

“What’s your name?” I demand.

“S-stephen,” the man replies.

“Well, Stephen, which car gets us out of here?”

He gestures at a two-car tram along the far wall. The door to the engineer’s compartment stands open. I walk over and look inside. The controls are lit up with a faint green glow.

“Can someone call this remotely from the other end?”

He shakes his head.

“How about from this end?”

Another shake.

“Good.”

I instruct Jake to grab the cart that Stephen was pushing in when we ambushed them. The smell of Insta-Meals rises from inside of it and my stomach grumbles. My knees shake from sudden hunger, but I ignore them. We need to get on the train car and get moving first. I’ll think about my own personal needs once we’re on our way.

A black satchel sits on top of the cart. A stethoscope dangles out. The bag probably holds the alpha injections Miss Novak had been planning to give us. We’ll take it to the police as evidence. Hopefully, with Stephen’s confession, it’ll be enough to put Arc permanently out of business.

I watch Jake roll the cart toward the tram, and I’m almost tempted to give the injection to one of the three of them instead. But who knows what horror that would unleash.

Reggie comes through the door pushing Micah. Tanya follows behind him like a drone, blinking and shuffling. She should’ve recovered a bit more by now, but she’s exactly the same as she was a half hour ago. I worry the bubbly woman I briefly met on the bus might be gone for good.

“I’m driving,” Reggie volunteers. He’s back to his old self, that’s for sure.

I shrug, and no one argues with him. They all make their way toward the open car. Everyone just wants to get back home.

I take Micah’s wheelchair from Reggie and jockey it into a space that’s not going to be in the way. Jake brings the cart in and positions it next to Micah. Then he settles himself down in the adjacent seat. I wait until Ashley brings Tanya in. They sit down across the aisle from the boys. Jake watches them both for a moment, rubbing the bandage on the back of his neck. He suddenly looks completely depleted. They all do, especially Kelly.

Stephen stumbles in last, Kelly’s gun jabbing him in the back. “Sit down and don’t move!” he snarls. But even I can tell it’s more bark than bite. I can see it in Kelly’s eyes that he has no desire to shoot this poor kid.

Stephen just lowers his head into his hands and tries to curl up as small as he possibly can. He looks like a man condemned to early conscription. A bubble of sympathy rises in me before I remember what he’s a party to. I’m probably going to end up getting sentenced to immediate conscription for his role in Arc’s crimes, but I don’t care. Even if he’s not fully complicit, he’s guilty of enough just by being here.

I join Reggie in the engineer’s compartment and tell him we’re ready to go. I watch him as he turns a key. Dials spring to life. A half dozen gauges do their brief jiggity electrical dances before steadying. We have power and brake pressure and who knows what else. It’s old tech and I don’t really understand much of it. It reminds me a lot of Micah’s old Ford, more mechanical than digital. The fact that this thing still works means somebody’s been maintaining it all this time.

A low hum vibrates the air.

“I guess that means everything’s good,” Reggie says. “No red flashing lights or alarm bells. No sirens. No explosions.” He gives me little shrug and grins.

The word sets me on edge again. I don’t want to think about things blowing up. “Let’s go then,” I say, rather impatiently.

I know it’s just nerves, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m forgetting something. It’s been troubling me ever since I broke out of my room. Maybe I’m just being extra paranoid, but ever since finding out that our ‘impromptu’ plan to break into LI was somehow part of a larger scheme involving Arc, I’ve been second guessing everything, every decision, every move.

And it’s not just my own judgment I no longer trust. What about the others? Someone had to have been helping them. Was it Jake, as Reggie and I had earlier suspected? And what about Micah?

Or Tanya?

I remember the ArcWare logo I’d seen on Kelly’s phone. He’s come through all this completely unscathed. Do I really believe he could be capable of getting involved in something this heinous? It’s just not his character. What would be his motivation?

Kyle, my mind whispers. He said he’d do anything for his little brother.

No. More likely it wasn’t any one of us here. It had to be someone else.

Grandpa?

Would he sell out his own granddaughter?

I dwell on him the longest.

It could be anyone. It could be no one. The only people I know for sure deserve the blame is ourselves. God, we thought we were being clever and secretive, a bunch of juvenile geniuses getting away with crap that we really had no business messing around in. And the one part of our excursion that might truly have been our own was when we came back. And we screwed that up royally.

Who can I trust?

Reggie?

It was his suggestion to come here in the first place.

Ash? Maybe unintentionally. Her and Micah’s earlier attempt to hack The Game could’ve been some kind of trigger that set us on this path.

Everyone is guilty in some way. And everything that happened now looks suspect: my faulty rebreather in the tunnel, the broken goggle strap, the sudden appearance of the IUs in Long Island City.

Meeting Tanya on the bus.

Far too many coincidences.

Reggie curls his fingers over a control lever and slowly pulls it down. The external doors close. A bell chimes and a female voice announces that we’ll be moving soon. There’s a chuff of air as the brakes release. I brace myself, but we don’t move.

“What’s going on? Why aren’t we going?”

He shakes his head and studies the control panel. Then he reaches over and pushes a fat red button with the palm of his hand. The train car lurches, and I nearly fall. We begin to move.

“Seems our friend was holding out on us. It’s not just a lever. It’s a lever and a button.”

“Well, take us home, Reg.”

“No need to ask me twice.”

“And no more surprises.”

“You can count on it, sister.”

Something tells me I really shouldn’t.

‡   ‡

CONGRATULATIONS!

You’ve survived EP02: Failsafe Codex

Please leave a review

READY TO LEVEL UP?

Get EP03: Deadman’s Gambit here

‡   ‡

CAN’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT ZPOCALYPTO EPISODE TO DROP?

How did the Flense begin?

One man wants to destroy the world. One woman is racing to save it.

Angelique de l’Enfantine is an investigative medical journalist riding high after a critically-acclaimed piece wins her Pulitzer-kudos and worldwide attention. But publicity isn’t always a good thing. The wrong kind can be fatal.

After she’s hired by an apocalypse prepper group to investigate a series of grisly global incidents, she finds herself hot on the heels of an elusive mysterious man in black. Is he responsible for the deadly outbreaks? Or, as she is beginning to suspect, her new employer?

The closer she gets to the truth, the more dangerous her task becomes. Bodies are falling everywhere she goes. And it’s too late to back out now, because something is coming, something big, something deadly...

And if she can’t stop it, all of humanity might be next.

Check out the companion series to BUNKER 12

THE FLENSE begins here

‡   ‡

WANT MORE APOCALYPSE THRILLS?

Check out this story from Saul Tanpepper’s

WORLD OF GAMELAND

Before he was cop in the Necrotics Crimes Division, Eric Daniels was a marine in the elite Zulu Strike Force, a select group of soldiers skilled in precision insertion, infiltration, and execution tactics. Their weapon of choice? The undead.

Not all kills are clean.

Driven out of spite to prove his militant grandfather wrong about the kind of person he is, Eric enlists into the marines and applies for a spot on the controversial Zulu Strike Force team. His girlfriend has repeatedly failed the rigorous psychological assessments, so when he’s accepted into the elite program and she isn’t, well, let’s just say she doesn’t really take it very well.

You can currently find “The Perfect Kill” in the  multi-author collection “The Gamer Chronicles,” part of Samuel Peralta’s Future Chronicles anthology series. The story sets the stage for a new World of Gameland series focusing on Eric’s entry into the marines and the missions he participates in.

"A great collection of stories."

~Deb Robbins, Amazon reviewer

Find “Perfect Kill” here

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My undying thanks to the devoted people of Brinestone Press for their keen eye and gentle but firm touch in helping me bring this story to life, for believing every step of the way that I could raise the dead.

To my devoted fans and followers on Twitter (http://twitter.com/saultanpepper), especially the zombie apocalypse junkies. Everything’s better with the #zombie hashtag.

My deepest gratitude goes to my family for their unflagging support. Without them, I would not be able to create worlds with such richness to them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Saul Tanpepper is the speculative fiction pen name of Kenneth James Howe. A former combat medic and molecular biologist originally from Upstate New York, he now calls Northern California home.

If you are enjoying his ZPOCALYPTO series, then make sure to check out his other titles, including the post-apocalyptic series BUNKER 12 and the international thriller companion series THE FLENSE. All are available in digital and print form.

For more information about the author and his writings, please check out his website: http://www.tanpepperwrites.com and Facebook page at http://facebook.com/SWTanpepper.

Failsafe Codex

Episode 02 of ZPOCALYPTO
by Saul Tanpepper

Copyright © 2012, 2021 by Saul Tanpepper

All rights reserved.

Previous edition published Jun 1, 2012 as

Failsafe

Episode 2 of S.W. Tanpepper’s GAMELAND
by Brinestone Press, San Martin, CA 95046

Cover: Deranged Doctor Design

Copyright © 2021

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THIS BOOK IS A WORK of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LICENSE NOTES

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

http://www.brinestonepress.com

Tanpepper, Saul (2021-05-18). Failsafe Codex (Episode 2 of the Zpocalypto series)

Tanpepper, Saul (2012-06-01). Failsafe (Episode 2 of S.W. Tanpepper’s Gameland series)

Brinestone Press Digital Edition

(rv210509)

For more information about this and other titles by this author:

authorsaultanpepper@gmail.com

Don't miss out!

Click the button below and you can sign up to receive emails whenever Saul Tanpepper publishes a new book. There's no charge and no obligation.

https://books2read.com/r/B-A-PF-USDOB

Connecting independent readers to independent writers.