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Jake’s still unconscious when we return downstairs. He seems to be in less pain now. I don’t know if it’s because of the leaves or he’s simply exhausted himself. His inhales come in short, rapid gasps. The air leaves him in long, rattling exhales.
“You’ve stripped him down?” I ask.
“To keep his body temperature low as much as possible,” Brother Nicholas says.
The boys sprinkle water over his body. It’s already pretty cool down here with the air conditioning for the huge bank of computers. Just looking at him lying there in nothing but his underwear gives me goose bumps, and not the good kind.
Beneath the unforgiving glare of the old-fashioned fluorescent bulbs, his skin glistens with a pale green-gray hue. A new bandage covers his wound. It’s thick. I wonder if the leaves Brother Matthew collected are underneath. I can’t imagine Jake taking anything by mouth.
Kelly and Reggie are busy lashing a thick strap about his waist, presumably to keep him from thrashing around too much and falling off the table. His hands and feet are already bound to each of the table’s four corners. The image is familiar, and a sudden terrifying thought comes to mind that this is just a continuation of Arc’s sadistic script. Second verse, same as the first. We’ve now come full circle from being lashed to our beds in LaGuardia.
Heat rolls off his body. I can feel it from a foot away. Forty-eight hours now seems like far too optimistic a prognosis. I’ll be surprised if he makes it to nightfall.
The two men are standing off to one side, discussing something. Reggie joins them and is soon gesturing and making angry sounds. Brothers Nicholas and Matthew actually look a little frightened of him, like they think he might just haul off and knock their heads off. Kelly motions for me to meet him alone in a different corner of the room. As we go, he gives Micah a hard look. Micah hesitates a moment, then heads for Ashley, who’s sitting on the floor with her back against the wall.
This’ll be interesting, I think, before following Kelly.
“What the hell happened up there?” he demands.
“Micah happened. That idiot decided it might be fun to dig out the Player’s implant.”
“Why the hell for?”
“I’d like to know that, too. I can’t figure out if he’s genuinely that stupid or he was trying to destroy evidence.”
“Of what?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, Micah may be a lot of things, but he’s not dumb.”
“Yeah, that’s what’s got me worried. What’s the latest on Jake?”
“He’s stable for now. But you and I both know where this is going, right?”
I don’t want to think about. I refuse to accept that there’s nothing we can do for him. I have to believe that there’s a way to get rid of the disease, because if there isn’t, then Kelly’s screwed, too. Maybe Stephen lied about that, like he did so many other things. Or maybe he didn’t. Either way, I can’t take the chance. We need to get them both to Arc Headquarters within the next twenty-four hours.
“Do you have a plan for retrieving Ashley’s Link?”
He shakes his head. “We’ve tried a few things. Ashley wrapped some bandaging tape she found in a desk upstairs onto the end of a broom handle, but it wasn’t sticky enough.”
“It’s visible? You can see it?”
“Oh yeah.” He takes me over to look. I have to put my eye right down to the one-inch gap between the floor and the elevator car and squint. I can just make it out about three feet down.
“We need something stickier. Or something that can grab it.”
By the time I’m back on my feet, Reggie’s left the men and is sitting with Ash, trying to console her. Micah’s moved off. It infuriates me knowing what he’s hiding.
The two men are still standing where they were before, still whispering to each other. I can tell by the expressions on their faces that they’re arguing.
“So, what do you think about them?” I ask Kelly. “Are they some kind of religious cult? How’d they know you were here? And how can you trust them?”
Kelly shrugs. “They showed up while we were fighting off the Players — just appeared out of nowhere, lucky for us — and started taking them out. They’re extremely efficient. They just walk right up to them and—” He shivers.
“Cold blooded killers. Micah thought they might be Military.”
“No. I don’t think they enjoyed putting them down. In fact, they seem almost... I don’t. Compassionate?” He frowns. “Respectful might be a better word. It’s quiet, clean, and efficient, but they’re not ruthless.”
“It’s not very efficient if they leave some of them still alive,” I point out.
“Yeah, which is another reason why I don’t think they’re Marines.”
“Maybe they’re with Arc.”
“Arc? No way. I get the feeling they really don’t like Arc.”
“Anti-implant then? Off-the-gridders?”
“Both, but unintentionally. I think they’re really from the outbreak.”
“The men who took you and Jake to LaGuardia lied about who they were,” I remind him.
“Yeah, and I didn’t believe them for a second.”
“You could be wrong now.”
“True. I don’t trust them as far as I can throw Reggie, but I think we should take them at their word for now. Let’s see how this plays out.”
“Are you willing to let this thing with Micah play out, too?”
His face darkens.
“They haven’t threatened us or forced us do anything. Yet. All they’ve done is offer to help with Jake.”
“With herbal remedies, Kelly.”
“They seem to be working. Jake’s quieted down.”
I really don’t like that word, quiet. It’s the same one Jake himself used when talking about killing the infected.
“He might just be exhausted,” I say.
I take another glance about the room. Everyone’s still in the same positions. Ashley’s stopped crying. That’s the only difference. Micah’s talking to her, but she seems like she’s in a daze. I don’t know if she’s aware he’s there.
“You want to tell me what Ashley saw in the script that proves Micah’s with Arc? That’s a pretty damning accusation, especially coming from you, who just a few days ago admitted to working for them, too.”
He nods and swallows. “I know. I was such an idiot. But now I’m wondering if they used me, not to spy on Micah, but to keep track of how close we were to learning his true identity.”
“His true identity?”
“He’s clearly not who he’s said he is.”
Micah sees us looking at him. He stands up and starts to wander over.
Kelly pulls me into the open elevator car. “You remember that day in Manhattan, down at the Midtown tunnel? Remember how I said Reggie pushed me over the railing?”
I nod.
“Well, that never sat right with me. Reggie’s a big galoot. He can be reckless, but he’s not mean-spirited. Not like that.”
“Pissing into your Red Bull would be mean-spirited,” I point out. “Pushing you into the water might be dangerous and stupid, but it isn’t necessarily mean-spirited.”
“I know. Reggie’s not stupid. It’s not his style, either. Not like hacking into my Zpocalypto account and changing all of my avatars to females. Ugly females.”
An involuntary snort of laughter bubbles out of me. “Sorry. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, ever since that day, I’ve had this bad feeling, like I was missing something. And then Jake joined the group, and I—”
You suspected him.”
“Yeah. That’s why I was so hard on him. And it’s the reason I didn’t want you going back for him, either. I wanted to keep you clean of all of this bullshit I’d gotten us all into.”
“Jake doesn’t know the first thing about coding. Or gaming. He doesn’t work for Arc.”
“Or so he says. But I think you’re right. He’s book smart, but not street smart. I don’t think anyone could fake that kind of dumb.”
“No,” I agree. “With Jake, what you see is what you get.”
“Same with Reggie. But not Micah.” He lets out a deep breath. “I never would’ve guessed it was him. That one really hurts.”
“Funny how that happens. He’s the one with the most secrets of all of us, and the one we least suspected.”
“He played a good game— poor kid and his parents, refuges from the SSC. Gets the sympathy vote.”
“And he’s always been vocal about his cynicism of Arc,” I add.
“To throw us off his scent.”
“Did Ashley actually show you proof he coded the failsafe for Stephen?”
“Parts of the script matched his tracker. Exactly.”
“But Arc had his scripts,” I remind him. “If they didn’t already have them, you gave them to Arc. It wouldn’t have been very difficult for anyone to copy them.”
“But to use the same syntax in two vastly different programs?”
“It’s not that hard to do. Anyone who’s studied his style could write a script that looks like he authored it.”
“She was already suspicious when we left the airport. So when she sent him her fix last night, it was a test. She didn’t tell anyone until she was sure, but she already knew it wouldn’t work.”
“She told you that?” I say, surprised.
“Yes. She was testing him. She said he should easily have figured out it wasn’t doable. But he never said a word about it.”
“Well, to be fair, he did tell me it wouldn’t work. He just couldn’t explain how he knew. He still hasn’t recovered all his memory.”
“I don’t think he ever lost it.”
I don’t have an answer for him.
“Okay, but that’s not what convinced me. What finally did was the light saber hack he wrote for Zpocalypto. Remember that? I never sent that to Arc. It was such a minor thing that I felt like it would be ridiculous for me to send it on. Well, it turns out the sequence of commands he used for that little bit of wizardry is exactly the same in part of the failsafe— not just the scripting, of course, but the goddamn architecture of the executable files.”
“I already told you that someone could easily—”
“He used the exact same registry codes, Jess. What’re the chances of that?”
I exhale. After all that, I can’t believe I’m still holding out hope they’re wrong about him.
“As Ashley says, at some point we have to take the blindfolds off and face what’s been staring at us the whole time.”
I bump his elbow. “Speaking of which, here she comes with Reggie.”
We step out of the elevator car to meet them.
“We’re going to try for Ashley’s Link again,” Reggie announces. “This time, we’re going in.”
“Inside the elevator shaft? How?”
“There’s a small access hatch in the ceiling of the car. I noticed it earlier and stuck my head through it to see what I could see. There’s a ladder on the wall on one side of the shaft. Thing is, I’m too big to fit through the opening, and Ashley’s too short to reach the ladder over the span. It’s a bit of a reach.”
“I could do it,” Ash protests. “I’m not that short.”
Reggie throws his arm around her shoulders and squeezes. “Short enough.”
“It’s my Link. No one else should have to do it.”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
“Not with that shoulder,” Kelly warns. “And your wrist.”
“Stop babying me.”
Reggie gives me a wry grin and agrees with Kelly. “You look like someone used you for a punching bag, Jess. Sit this one out.”
“Which leaves Micah and Kelly,” Ashley says.
We all look over at him. He seems to take this as his cue to join us. Reggie stiffens. There’s no way in hell he’s going to let Micah anywhere near Ashley’s Link. On the other hand, what’s to stop him from doing something to our Links remotely? He’s already done it at least once.
“I’ll do it,” Kelly says.
Reggie hands him a flashlight. “There might not be enough space beneath the floor of the car and the bottom of the shaft for you to crawl into, so once you’re on the ladder, I’ll ride the car up topside so it’s out of the way.”
“Take Micah with you,” I say.
“I’m good.”
“You need someone to watch your back.” I lower my voice and whisper, “I don’t want him anywhere near the mainframe.”
“Gotcha.”
“And have him check Shinji for me while you’re up there.”
“What’s a shinji?” Kelly asks.
I give him a sly wink. “My new boyfriend.”
