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There’s a loud noise as something slams into the door at the side of the church, jarring my attention away from the ailing man at my feet.
I realize there are more voices now. Many more. It’s like being inside a concert hall inside my own head. And right in the middle of them is Micah asking What’s happening? He sounds just as agitated as his body is. I can hear it thrashing about.
But I can’t be distracted right now, not by him, and not by the undead gathering outside these walls, either.
“If you were so afraid I’d let the virus spread, why didn’t the Coalition just kill me when you had the chance back there at LaGuardia?” I demand.
“They would have,” Brother Walter admits. He’s out of breath. “If we had believed killing you would prevent something like this from happening, you’d be dead. But there was always the fear doing so would trigger the release of the virus anyway. We had to hold you until we could figure out a way to remove the implant without doing that. Now...”
I wait for him to continue, to get to the part where he tells me there’s a way to stop it. Meanwhile, the din grows, both within my head and outside the church. I try to ignore it, but the main focus of it seems to be shifting away from the side to closer to the street. It’s distracting, because I want to know what’s happening out there. At least Micah’s gone quiet. His body, on the other hand, is still thrashing about on the floor at the front of the church, jerking like there’s an electrical current running through it. I glance back down at Brother Walter. He just lies there on the floor, panting. He says nothing more.
The front door rattles. I can’t tell if it’s someone testing the knob trying to get inside or a dead body ramming into it for the same reason. Either way, I can no longer ignore it.
I grab my backpack. “There has to be a way to stop the infection,” I say. “Or the contingency, or whatever the hell is happening to the Stream.”
“There isn’t. It’s too late.” He coughs weakly.
Don’t give up, Jessie, Micah tells me. There has to be a way to fix this. You have to find it.
It’s strange, but he actually sounds breathless inside my head, even though he’s not physically speaking to me. He’s completely disconnected from his body. And even if he was still connected, that body no longer possesses the ability to breathe. Yet that’s the sense I get when I hear him inside my head. It’s the way your voice gets tighter when you’re panicking. You can hack into their codex, Jess. If I’ve done it, you can, too. But you have to hurry.
I hurry down the aisle to him. His body has gotten itself wedged underneath one of the pews and is stuck. With its movements restricted, the violent tremors have diminished. Oddly, so have the voices in my head. I wonder if they could somehow be linked.
“What if there is a way?”
“It would still be too late,” Brother Walter argues.
Don’t listen to him, Micah tells me. He either doesn’t know how, or he’s lying. You can stop this! There’s time!
I’d considered the possibility that Brother Walter is still trying to deceive me, but I’m hard pressed to understand what his motivation might be. After all we’ve been through together the past couple of days, after all he’s done to save me and then to accompany me back inside the arcade after the people hunting me — me, not him, I remind myself, which has, in all likelihood, gotten him killed anyway — what could he possibly gain by making me believe something that isn’t true, especially when it’s in all of our best interests for me to keep trying to stop it?
“When?” I demand spinning back around. Brother Walter’s slumped completely to the floor again. He’s flat out on his back and is struggling to breathe. I can tell he hasn’t got much longer. “How long before the contingency sends the order to activate our implants?”
“Can’t s-say exactly,” he murmurs, shivering. His voice is little more than a whisper. He coughs weakly and reaches over to take another drink from the bottle I’d given him. He knocks it over and it rolls away. But it’s already empty. A constant tremor has settled into his body, and it makes his arm shake uncontrollably. I think the infection from the gunshot wound in his side is spreading now. Or he’s lost too much blood. His words are starting to slur, too. I’m having a hard time understanding him. “Depends on... c-codex,” he gasps. “Could be soon.”
“I need a better answer than that!”
He winces as he tries to push himself upright again. The tendons on his neck stand out as he strains against gravity. He’s fighting it and death now, not just the fever. “S-soon...”
“You need help.”
“No... time.” A wet groan spills from his lips.
“How will I know when it’s starting?”
“You’ll d-develop a headache, vomiting. And then—”
“Fuck,” I whisper, recognizing the symptoms of my implant activating. I’ve been through them before. “Okay, I need to know how long it takes once it starts.”
“Might b-be a f-f-few hours.”
He’s lying, Jessie, Micah repeats. We can do it. We can stop this. You just need to get my tablet! Everything you need is on there.
I glance back over at him. Whatever had been agitating his body earlier is now completely gone. Was it the beginning of the activation sequence? Or was it something else? Whatever it was, it seems to be linked to the dead outside, too, because they’ve calmed down a lot as well.
“Okay,” I say, standing up from my crouch. “You’re right.”
“I am?” both Brother Walter and Micah say at the same time.
“I have to try and stop this. If there’s a way, I’ll figure it out. I have to, or else hundreds of millions of people are going to die. I need to get to the codex. I need to get back to the mainframe.”
A spasm wracks Brother Walter’s body. His face twists into a painful grimace. I know he’s dying and there’s nothing I can do about that now, but I just can’t seem to accept that. I feel like I still need him. “You’re coming with me,” I tell him. “Both of you are.”
“No,” Brother Walter whispers.
You’re crazy, Jess. We’ll only slow you down!
“Let me die here,” Brother Walter insists. “I’ll only be a burden to you.”
I step back away from him, hating that they’re finally agreeing on something. I hurry back up the aisle. “Micah will carry you.”
I will?
“No, Jessica.”
“Stop calling me Jessi—”
I jerk when the front doors suddenly rattle. I cast a quick look over my shoulder, waiting for it to repeat. Holding my breath and waiting.
Nothing.
The doors stand in silent defiance, taunting me.
I hear something brush up against them. They creak beneath the weight of something pushing on them. They hold. They’re holding for now. But for how much longer?
And then:
You’re alive? someone whispers inside my head. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman, I just know it’s not Micah. They seem surprised. You’re not infected? But what—
And then the voice is suddenly gone, leaving an emptiness I can almost feel, like a physical vacuum. It’s the same sort of absence I’d felt when I killed Grant the second time.
Alive? Not infected?
Someone’s out there! Someone... else.
I can sense them. Something’s wrong. I know that now. Something’s been wrong for a while now. Each of the whispers that had been filling my head hadn’t just faded away as gradually as they had arrived, but abruptly. I’d been too preoccupied to notice. Someone’s out there killing CUs.
Jessie?
“Shh!” I hiss. “Someone’s here.”
I hurry over to the closest window and peer out through one of the tiny missing pieces. I can see only a narrow swatch of ground. It’s littered with bodies. Some are missing their heads.
What’s happening?
Something rams the front door. I spin around. The sound comes again, and this time the doors fly open and slam against the walls, the board I’d wedged through the push bars splintering. The evening sun blinds me for a moment. I raise my arm.
Jessie? What’s happening?
But I can’t speak. I can only gawp in disbelief as a figure strides in. It steps to the side, out of the light, and I can see that it’s Jo Vail. She’s covered in blood from head to toe, my abandoned sword now whistling through the air at her side. She grunts with satisfaction when she sees me, then raises her pistol in the other hand. Before I can move, she aims it at my head.
A second figure hurries in, at first a silhouette. Then I see that it’s Rosie Haycock, Grant’s former partner.
Jessie? Please tell me.
I say nothing.
“Jo!” Rosie snaps. Her voice is a low, mean growl, meant to cut through whatever madness is driving Jo Vail on her murderous rampage. “We agreed how this was going to go down. Let’s do this the proper way.”
“The proper way would’ve been ending this days ago when we first had the chance,” Jo growls. She starts marching down the aisle, heading straight for me. The whole time, the pistol doesn’t waver once. I can almost feel where it’s pointed at my forehead. “I’m dealing with this bitch right. The fuck. Now.”
Brother Walter struggles to sit up. Without breaking stride, Jo swings her shooting arm down and puts a bullet into his head. His body jerks, then crumples back to the floor. A new puddle of blood begins to form underneath him.
Was that a gunshot? Jessie?
The pistol is already retrained on my head, and suddenly the barrel looks very big and very black. A tendril of smoke drifts lazily out, like a forked serpent’s tongue licking the air.
“Game the fuck over,” Jo says with smug satisfaction. “Looks like the girls win. Well, two out of three girls anyway.”
My arm’s still raised, as if to ward off the inevitable bullet. Every other instance I’ve had a gun pointed at me over the past two months flashes through my mind. It all feels like they’ve been leading to this very moment. I suddenly know for certain she’s going to shoot me. This is where I’m going to die.
Jessie? Who’s that? Who’s here?
I sense everything with absolute clarity now. I see her finger tense on the trigger. I hear Micah move beneath the pew behind me. I detect Jo’s flicker of confusion and doubt as she becomes aware that there are more people inside the church than me and Brother Walter. She stops halfway up the aisle and tilts her head. She unconsciously backs up a step. Then she strides forward, passing me, all the while keeping the gun trained on me. She stops once she sees Micah’s body.
“What the fuck?” she exclaims. She takes a moment to work out what she’s seeing. Then she holsters the gun and switches the sword into her dominant hand.
“Don’t,” I say.
She looks over at me. “Terrible waste of good tape,” she mutters, straightening up and lifting her arm.
“No!” I scream. I step closer, but I’m not quick enough to stop her.
The sword streaks through the air as she stabs downward.
Jessi—?
With a sickening crunch, the last whisper of Micah’s voice in my head flutters away into silence.
