Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones (10 page)

I wince. Definitely my fault.

“But the big, big news is this,” Ash goes on. She swipes the screen again and points. “See this bit of code here? And this one here? There are several hundred of these separate streams in here. They're quite distinct from either the tracking app code or
The Game
's codex. They're nearly identical: each made up of a sequence of roughly four million bits.”

“Four million. Is that all?”

Ash nods, not realizing I'm being sarcastic. Or ignoring it. “They all repeat every two and half milliseconds, like a beacon—well, several hundred nearly identical beacons.”

“A virus?”

“We think they're the tracking programs for all the Players inside
The Game
. All of them carry a unique identifier code.” She looks up. “And the strange thing is, a handful of them are streaming
outside
of the main game stream. They're not embedded. Guess which ones.”

“Ours.”

She nods. “We think the program they're embedded in is the failsafe.”

“Clever. So the program doesn't reside inside our implants, but in here. They must communicate to our L.I.N.C.s through Arc's towers.”

But as soon as I say this, I realize the deeper implications. We now have a way of defeating Arc's failsafe. Crack the program and we'll be free to leave. But then I have another thought. “What if we just shut the servers down? No beacon, no failsafe.”

“You read our minds.”

“There's a problem with doing that, though,” Reggie cautions. “Arc will know almost immediately what we're doing. They're probably not monitoring each individual sub-stream—I mean, how could they, right?—but they'd sure as hell know if all of them suddenly stopped transmitting. I don't think it'll make them very happy.”

“
And don't forget,” Ashley adds, “this is their connection to
The Game
. Without it, they can't stream
Survivalist
on Media. No Survivalist, no advertising. That's a lot of money they'll lose.”

Reggie nods. “That'll really piss them off.”

“After what we've done to their people—to their experiment—I doubt they're very happy as it is. So why haven't they come?”

It's been bugging me that no one has tried. We know of at least one person who was planning on coming through the tunnel and
he
never showed up. When the tram didn't arrive back on the Foxhurst side, they had to have figured something went wrong. But they never sent anyone to investigate. Why not?

As if reading my thoughts, Reggie says, “They're in no hurry. Remember, they can easily track us. They know we're here. As long as we don't try to leave, they're not going to panic. My bet is they're working on a plan right now to fix what we broke. But if we shut down the servers, that'll just force them to come get us that much sooner.”

“Sooner than what?”

He doesn't answer.

“Okay, so we just have to make sure we take them by surprise. As soon as we're ready, we slam all the servers down and go. That means Micah needs to be as strong as possible. Think Arc will wait one more day?”

They shrug.

“Keep working on that program. See what else you can find out about these servers. See if you can reconfigure those sub-streams so we won't have to shut everything down.”

“What are you going to do?”

“First, I'm going to check on Micah. Not sure if there's anything I can do to hasten his recovery, but I can try. The quicker we can get him ready, the sooner we'll be able to ditch this place.”

“And what about Stephen?” Reggie asks.

“Screw him. He had his chance. We leave him for Arc to deal with.”

 

 

“We should skedaddle tonight,”
Kelly says, after he finds me later that afternoon. “Even that might be waiting too long.”

“Not till Micah's strong enough to walk,” I tell him. “If someone has to push him around in a wheelchair, that's just going to slow us down. That's two less people available to fight.”

“I'd rather not fight. In fact, I'd rather just slip out and go home.”

“Unfortunately, with them tracking us, that's not possible.”

“And what about Tanya? Has she snapped out of it yet? Kind of a long time to be in shock.”

“I don't think it's shock.”

“Drugs? Brain damage?”

“Not drugs. Too much time has passed. Her system would've cleared anything by now. “I think Arc did something to her.”

“Well, I still think our best chance is to hightail it as soon as we can.”

“
Now I know you've been hanging around with Micah too long,” I say. “You're beginning to sound like him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Skedaddle, hightail.”

“You're changing the subject.”

I give the cardboard carton sitting on the floor a vicious kick. It flies into the corner and a couple dozen unwrapped granola bars spill out. They weren't any good to eat anyway. “Yes, I am changing the subject, Kelly, because I don't want to talk about it. I've made up my mind. We'll leave when Micah's ready. Not a moment sooner.”

“Okay.”

He digs a couple fingers into the Vlassic jar he brought in with him and fishes out a pickle and holds it up in front of him. It's gray-green and limp and probably tasteless, which will make it the perfect complement to the leathery Cool Ranch Doritos he brought with him from the stash in Tanya's room. Reggie found several cases of assorted snacks in one of the upstairs restaurants. The Cheetos were the first to go, naturally. They were the only things that still had some flavor and texture left to them after being expired nearly a dozen years.

“Nice dinner,” I remark.

Pickle juice runs down his arm. He gives it a sour look, then takes a bite.

We've been eating canned and bottled and processed packaged foods for only a day and already I'm starting to fantasize about fresh fruit and vegetables. This morning I woke up with the taste of Eric's meatloaf in my mouth. I even smelled fresh-baked bread and my stomach grumbled so loudly that I was sure someone else might've heard it. But then I realized what I was smelling wasn't meatloaf and bread but the coppery stench of the dried up blood out in the hallway. A week ago I probably would have puked at the thought, but today it just makes me shake my head.

Kelly cracks open a beer and swirls it. He holds the bottle up to the light and watches the floaties spin around in it before downing half of the bottle in one gulp. He lets out a long burp.

“Pig.”

“Better a pig than a sitting duck.”

“I get it. You've made your point.”

“I'm not the only one itching to leave. Jake was telling me this morning that he's getting a really bad feeling in his stomach. He thinks something big is going to happen soon.”

If he's only just now getting that feeling, he's days late.

“So Jake's a fortuneteller now?” I grumble. “He can predict the future? Christ! Reggie and Ash are working as hard as they can on figuring out how to beat the failsafe and Jake's making decisions based on…
feelings
?”

“We all are, Jess. Even you. Admit it.”

He puts his hand on my arm. It's meant to be warm and reassuring. I want so badly for it to be. I want him to wrap me up. I just want to sink into his being. But I don't feel any of that.

“The sooner we leave, the better,” he tells me. Then he stands up and stretches and yawns. His hands are red, his palms blistered. He'd spent all morning mopping the floors after I mentioned my meatloaf dream to him. And when I told him he didn't need to clean, that he should get some rest instead, he'd answered, “I'll rest when I'm dead.”

“If that's supposed to be funny, it's not.”

“I wasn't joking.”

He leaves. A few minutes later I hear him out in the hallway. It sounds like he's washing the walls now.

I get up from the cot and go out. Kelly's dunking a mop into the bucket of water and bleach, using the water from the cistern.

“Missed a spot,” I tease, hoping for a smile. The rinse water is already dark. He raises the mop and swipes at the wall until it stops bleeding and turns a rusty brown.

He sighs unhappily and turns back to the gruesome mural on the wall.

 

 

 

I find Reggie
sitting in Micah's room, fighting to stay awake. When he sees me, he rubs the fatigue from his face.

“What're you doing in here?” I ask.

“Ash is being a total bitch.”

“Dude, that's my best friend you're talking about.”

His face practically glows red. “She's in with Tanya.”

“Oh, because Tanya's better company than you?”

He chuckles. “At least she doesn't talk back. I should just learn to keep my damn mouth shut.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. How is she?”

“Still a space case.”

“No, I mean Ash.”

“Oh.” His face reddens even more. “Okay. Depressed. We all are.”

“How come nobody's working on the servers?”

“What's there to do? Besides, you can only look at that shit for so long before your eyes go buggy.”

I grunt, not happy at his snappishness. “Has Micah woken up at all?”

“Once. Asked for some juice. Otherwise, brah's been out the whole time. About an hour or so. Been snoring like a log.”

“Logs don't snore. I think the saying is snoring like a dog. Or sawing logs. Something like that, anyway.”

He steps to the door before turning. “I was thinking I'd go up and see if I can break into that Safari World upstairs. I think I saw some rifles hung up on the back wall.”

I shake my head and roll my eyes.

“They won't have any guns, Reg. This is an airport. That'd be like expecting to find a condom dispenser in the bathroom at St. Andrews Cathedral.”

He laughs. “Then maybe one of those long fishing knives with the serrated edges. Or a compound bow. They're cool, right? I mean, chicks dig bows, right?” He pretends to draw an arrow and notch it. When he lets it go, I realize I must be even more tired than I'd realized because I actually watch to see where the imaginary arrow hits.

I shake my head drowsily, chuckling inwardly. “We're leaving soon, Reg. You know you can't bring that stuff back with you. They catch you with it at one of the checkpoints, it'll be a year off your LSC, maybe two. Just see if they have any
non
-contraband clothes.”

He looks at my old filthy jeans. I'd put them back on after my “bath” yesterday, discarding the blood and gore-soaked overalls. He'd brought me down a new shirt from one of the airport shops upstairs, since my other one was torn and muddy, but the new one is white and not very practical. Not around here, anyway. It's already got red streaks on it just from walking through the hallway.

“Will do,” he says.

“And see if they've got any better shoes than these, too,” I add, showing him the rubber clogs he'd also gotten in the airport shop. They're so dry-rotted that they're already falling apart. “Size eights, this time.”

He whistles. “Wow. Bigfoot. I just figured since Ash is a size six an all.”

“Yeah, because all girls have the same size feet, Reg. I'm surprised you even know a detail like Ashley's shoe size. Most normal guys don't have a clue about that kind of stuff.”

“I'm not normal.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Yeah, well, I actually
didn't
know Ashley's shoes size until we broke into the ‘Hello Kitty' shop this morning and Ash found a bunch of those obnoxious sneakers to replace her Nikes. But wouldn't you know it? Not a size six in the house.”

“You hid them?”

“Not saying that, sister.”

“Well, I wouldn't blame you,” I tell him. “Zombies won't give you no respect if they see you wearing ‘Hello Kitty' shoes.”

“For that matter, neither will Arc's people,” he adds, soberly. “Which is why I need to find myself a nine-inch gutting knife.”

“Not even then, Reg.”

He shrugs. “I'll see what I can find. No promises, though. Not unless they've got a monster-feet shoe store.”

“Hey!”

He scurries out the doorway, but then leans back in. “We're going to get out of this, Jess.”

I give him a strained smile. My chest tightens and I want to cry. But I can't. Not even when I think about my family—my stupid, psychotic brother Eric and my stupid, alcoholic mother and my stupid, overbearing grandfather. I want nothing more right now than to be with them. “I know, Reg.”

He hesitates, then nods. “Okay.”

I watch the empty doorway, wondering again for the millionth time how I was chosen to lead this group. I never asked for it. I didn't want it. It's either me or Jake, and he's likely to get us killed.

Who's to say you won't?

I go and sit down in the chair next to Micah's bed. There's a pile of paperback books on the floor next it, rescued from the bookstore upstairs. Real paper with printed words, not the kind where the pages flip on their own and the words zip by and are hot-linked to word definitions or videos on the Government Stream, or Arc ads like the ones on Media.

I reach down and pull the book off the top of the stack. It's an Emma Pattingsley thriller,
Cutting Ties
. Seems strangely appropriate.

I open it and read the first line:

Nothing stoked Chicago Special Crimes Detective Norma Galveston's fire more than a good old fashioned murder. Nothing, that is, save a man with slow hands.