The kid flies backward. His head hits the wall hard, but the thud is muffled by his ski hat. He slides down into a sitting position as his computer bag spills onto the floor next to him.
He looks up at me, amazed and slightly offended, and then touches his bleeding nose. “What did you do that for?”
My head tips to the side; my lips part. I look at my fist because I’m pretty sure it’s never punched such a good-looking face before. I can’t dwell on this fact for very long, though, because for all I know, this boy could be helping those killers hunt me down.
I put my boot on his ankle and press down with all my weight.
“Hey! That hurts!”
“It’s supposed to,” I say. “Did you turn the lights out?”
I growl at him. “All you need to know right now is that I’m the girl with the gun.”
“That is not a gun.”
“A projectile is a projectile.”
“You got me there.”
I step back and he leans forward to rub his ankle. Then he starts to get up and actually holds out his hand for me to pull him to his feet.
“I didn’t say you could get up.”
“Just let me do what I was gonna do, all right?”
“Which is what?”
“Can’t tell you that, but if I don’t do it quick, a bunch of angry dudes with real guns are going to come rushing in here.”
I look around the room. The green glow of the emergency lights has leached into the air like weak tea, but it reveals nothing familiar. At least not to my eyes.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“It’s where they house the mainframe for this joint.”
He points toward the other side of the room. Now I can see the outline of a series of small, rectangular towers. They’re elevated off the floor behind a metal cage.
“Why would they have the computer so far from the main building?”
“This system needs to be kept super cool all the time, which is why this room is like a meat locker. And it needs to be kept safe. So it’s in a bunker with four-foot-thick walls. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”
“Please. I’m running out of time. What do you want? You want me to beg?” He gets on his knees. “Here. I’m begging. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.”
He reaches for his pocket suddenly, and I point the nailer at his face.
“It’s a headlamp, okay? As in, a lamp I wear on my head.”
“Let me see it,” I say, trying to sound menacing.
He takes the headlamp out, puts it on his head, and turns on the light. Then he throws his hands out to the sides. Ta-da.
I lower the nailer and kick his computer bag behind me. “I’ll hold on to this for insurance.”
“No, I need that for what I’m going to do.”
I wait a moment. He makes a motion with his hand, like gimme, and I push the bag toward him with my foot. He grabs it and crosses the room in three strides. He takes a pair of glasses with thick brown frames from his coat pocket and puts them on. The glasses easily cut his attractiveness by half. Possibly three quarters.
“Why would you … what are you putting those on for?”
“Because you knocked my contacts out when you punched me in the face, and now I can’t see.”
I gape at his glasses, wondering if this is what people wear these days in the outside world. I feel my forehead crinkling in dismay at the pure, incandescent ugliness of them.
“Look, I got them in Pyongyang, okay? This was the only set of frames they had, and we were kind of in a hurry. Now stop distracting me.”
At the door of the security cage, he punches in a code. Nothing happens. He tries again.
“Well, this is embarrassing. Thought I had that code cracked.”
Scanning the room, he zeroes in on one particular server. He pulls a tool from his bag and uses it to cut away part of the cage so he can reach through. Then he pulls out his laptop, connects a cable, and starts typing madly. A moment later, he looks relieved and quickly tucks something into his pocket.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“Took some stuff. Then I killed it.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what my boss told me to do.”
“Your boss?” Now I’m good and mad. I point the nailer at his throat. “I thought you said you were trying to get away from those guys—”
I want to add who are trying to kill me but don’t. Even I realize how crazy it would probably sound.
“My boss isn’t with those guys,” the boy says. “Well, actually, he is, but not in the way you think. It’s complicated.”
The boy takes his glasses off and puts them back in his inner coat pocket. Then he crouches down, packs away his laptop, and zips the bag shut. He looks up at me like he’s not sure why I’m still here. His eyes are so brown they look black, or maybe it’s just that his pupils are fully dilated in this dim light.
He starts for the door.
“Wait. What are you going to do now?” I ask.
“Leave.”
“Leave?”
“Yeah. I’m getting my butt back to the yurt.”
“What did you just say?”
“Yurt.”
“What is that word?”
“Yurt. You know? It’s like a tent. Or a hut.”
“Take me with you.”
“No.”
“Please!” I want to spit that word out of my mouth; it tastes so much like desperation.
“No.”
I try a different tack. “Look, I take rejection fairly well. My nailer? Not so much.”
He looks toward the door again and then glances at his watch. “You don’t seem to understand.…”
“No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand what’s going on at all. There are guys here with guns who just killed everyone I know!”
He winces. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Did you just say you’re sorry?”
“I meant I’m sorry for you. Not that I’m apologizing for what’s going on in there, because I had nothing to do with it. I’ve got my own problems, and I need to get out of here.”
“You’re complaining to me.” I pull off my cap.
He stares at my bald head a moment and then looks me in the eye like I’m … like he knows I’m a lost cause, but can’t quite bring himself to break the news to me.
“So you’re one of them.”
“One of who?”
“One of the lab rats here.”
“Obviously.”
He starts to speak, stops, then starts again. “I’m probably the last person who could help you. Believe me when I tell you that those guys inside are going to be very cranky when they realize what I just did. I wouldn’t be doing you any favors if I let you come with me.”
He’s putting his gloves on now. I guess he assumes I’m going to just let him walk out the door.
“Tell me something,” I say, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.
“Can’t.”
“Anything! I need something useful, now, or I will nail your feet to the floor!”
So much for containing my anger.
“I doubt you even know how that thing works.”
I point the nailer at his computer bag. This gets his attention.
“Take it easy, okay? Just take it easy.”
“Tell me one thing. That’s all.”
“Okay. One thing.”
“How are you involved, but not involved?”
“My boss is the preeminent hacker in the entire world. He does jobs for people. People with a lot of money. He got paid to come here and remove some information.”
“And shoot everyone in sight?”
“We didn’t know they were going to do that. I swear. Why do you think I’m getting out of here?”
“I don’t believe you. Why would somebody need help hacking a hospital computer?”
“Hospital? Is that where you think you are?”
I almost blurt out yes, but I know now that this answer is laughable.
“This ain’t no hospital, sunshine,” he says. “Or maybe I should say, it’s a lot more than a hospital. This place is seriously state-of-the-art.”
“Why?”
“You know what? No offense, but there’s not much point in explaining this to someone who’s brain-damaged.”
“I am not brain-damaged.”
“You are, and you’ve got the drill holes to prove it.”
I shoot his computer with my nailer.
He starts howling, jumping, swearing, asking me if I realize what I’ve just done. I stare at him, unmoved. Nobody calls me brain-damaged. Even if, technically, I suppose I am.
Suddenly a voice comes over his radio. A woman’s voice. “Who’s there? Is there someone on the other end? Answer me.”
The kid looks alarmed and holds the walkie-talkie away from his body like whoever it is can see him through the speaker.
“I take it that’s not your boss,” I say.
He shakes his head and puts the radio back in his pocket.
Of course it’s Hodges. Her voice is a razor blade covered in nectar. I know this, but I don’t want to tell him. I won’t be saying anything more to this kid until he’s willing to trade more information with me.
“Why does she have your boss’s radio?”
“I don’t know, but I have to go. Now.”
Like that hadn’t occurred to me.
“How about you just tell me where I am,” I say. “Tell me where the nearest highway is and point me in the right direction. That’s all I need.”
He snorts once. “That’s all you need? One, you’re assuming I even know that. Which I don’t. If I didn’t have this thing”—he pulls out a small, handheld GPS and shakes it in front of my face—“I couldn’t find my own zipper. Two, even if you did know where you were going and had the right clothing and a snowmobile—which obviously you don’t—you’re not going to get anywhere in this freak of a storm.”
“How did you get here?”
“How I got here is not relevant. Look, time is short. I really can’t help you. I’m not even sure I can help myself. I’m sorry.”
“Where is this yurt thing you were talking about? Can I just follow you there? Just for a little while? You don’t have to help me after that. I need to get away from here … from them.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Look, those military guys inside are after someone. Some personal vendetta or something. I can’t believe 8-Bit got involved with this. I don’t care if it was a personal favor. I’m telling you, if you just lie low, they’ll clear out eventually. They’re not interested in you.”
“No? Then why are they trying to kill me?”
“They’re trying to kill you? You?” He looks me up and down, and for a moment, his eyes settle on my bare head.
“Yes.”
He presses his lips together and says nothing for a few seconds. Then he points at my head. “You’ve got some dried blood. There. Above your left eye. And on your neck.”
I lick my thumb and wipe the blood off my forehead. I’m not sure who this blood belongs to. I think of the woman who’s probably still lying in the lobby right now. She’s gone from being a person to being a thing. So have Steve and the coma kid. The horror of it, the unrealness of it, hits me like a wave of nausea. For all I know, Larry is also dead.
And Jori.
My face burns white-hot when I think about the way I ran out on her. The way I completely forgot about her.
I wipe my nose and eyes with the back of my hand. I don’t even realize I’ve let go of the nailer until I hear it hit the floor.
“I don’t know what to do or where to go.”
I’m half convinced that I’ve only said this to myself, but then I realize he heard me, because when I raise my head, I catch him looking at me. I can’t tell if his expression shows pity or something far deeper. Something more like empathy.
His shoulders drop in resignation.
“Okay, fine. You can come with me for now. Maybe wait the storm out. But after that you’re on your own. And we might not even make it. We might end up frozen in the woods.”
I pick up the nailer and stick it in the inside pocket of my coat. “I’d rather freeze to death than get shot.”
“That’s the spirit,” he says as he checks his watch again. After a minute, he closes his eyes and says quietly, “Where are you, man?”
“Are you waiting for someone?”
“I was. But now I’ve got to leave without him.”
“Who?”
The kid kicks the mutilated body of his laptop across the floor and says, “Somebody who’s going to be very annoyed when he finds out what you did to his twenty-thousand-dollar computer.”