Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (31 page)

But the man simply dropped his head
back, his eyes reflecting only emptiness in the gleam of the light.
He was alive, but not by much.

A pang of guilt stabbed her gut as she
made a quick decision. As much as it hurt Alessa to do it, she
breathed a silent apology and closed door number 12 behind her. She
just didn’t have the strength to carry him out, and she couldn’t
justify putting herself and whoever else she managed to find at
risk.

The next active keypad was a couple
doors down the hall. Once again Alessa punched in the code and
swiped her rubber fingerprint, hoping for better news on the other
side of this door.

The locks clanked and the door popped
ever so slightly open. “Who’s there?” a weak voice called from
inside.

Alessa’s heart quickened – she knew
that voice.

Flinging the door open
wide, she cried, “
Janie
?”

“
Less?” the voice creaked,
disbelieving.

Alessa rushed inside the cell and
kneeled beside the cot, gathering her sister in her arms as the
tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’m here, I’m here,” she soothed.
Janie was shaking from head to toe, all bones and angles, her hair
stiff as straw under Alessa’s fingertips.

“
I knew you’d come,” Janie
whispered.

And not a moment too soon, Alessa
thought. She hesitated to step back and really look at her sister,
for fear of what she’d find. Janie had always been petite, but
never like this – never so gaunt and birdlike. Janie’s limbs
slipped between Alessa’s fingers like pencils, and a foul smell
seeped off her dry skin. But she was alive. She was
alive.

“
Come on, we need to get
out of here.”

Janie nodded eagerly. A fire still
burned behind her eyes, but it was muted, dull. She moved slowly,
as if in a dream.

Alessa scooped Janie up from the cot
and set her gently on her feet. She couldn’t believe how little she
weighed. “Are you okay to walk?”

“
Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,”
Janie assured her. But when she stumbled on the first step, Alessa
knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. She doubted she’d be able to
rescue anyone else if she had to half-carry Janie the whole way
out, but if that was the price she had to pay to get her sister
back, so be it. The rebels would be back for the rest of them,
eventually.

Alessa and Janie shuffled toward the
door and Alessa poked her head out to make sure the coast was
clear. “Okay, let’s go,” she urged, hoping they’d be able to make
their way quickly to the exit.

But just as Janie hobbled over the
threshold, a siren blared and the hallway flashed red.

“
Shit,” Alessa spit. “One
of my guys must have been spotted. We need to get out of
here.”

“
Wait, Alessa,” Janie
protested. “There’s a chance –” she was out of breath already, “–
that Joe might still be here.”

Joe? Alessa’s heart quickened. Could
he really be alive after all this time? Reflexively, her hand flew
to the ring Isaac had given her. She nervously stroked the smooth
metal bar separating the stones.

“
Where?” Alessa
questioned. “How did you find out?”

“
Nikhil.” She motioned
towards the next cell, number 15. “Nikhil was in the room next to
me. He saw Joe, a while back. He told me which cell Joe was
in.”

Nikhil was alive too? Alessa couldn’t
imagine that the fates had been this good to her – she’d been lucky
enough to find her sister as it was.

“
Less, I promised Nikhil
we’d get him out, too.”

Janie was already quivering from the
effort of standing up. If Nikhil was in any worse shape than Janie,
Alessa wasn’t sure that was a promise she’d be able to
keep.

“
And then we can go for
Joe. Please,” Janie pleaded.

The lights flashed red and the alarm
bells screamed their warning; Alessa knew that now was their best
chance to escape. But she also knew she’d never forgive herself if
she didn’t try to get Joe and Nikhil out. She had to
try.

“
Okay, quickly.” She left
Janie leaning against the wall as she turned to Nikhil’s cell and
began punching in the code.

“
We’d been passing notes,”
Janie explained breathlessly, her whole upper half slouched against
the cinder blocks. “But I haven’t,” she coughed, “heard back from
him in days.”

Alessa swiped the fingerprint scanner
and the locks banged open. “If he’s here, we’ll do whatever we can
to take him with us,” she assured Janie.

But before she even finished opening
the door, Alessa already knew something was wrong. A wave of
confusion and fear washed over her, a familiar surge of alien
emotions that she recognized now as a signal from her empath
ability. This didn’t bode well for Nikhil.

“
Janie…” Alessa hesitated.
“I don’t know if Nikhil’s going to be able to come with us. I think
– I think he might be dying.”

“
What are you talking
about?” Janie griped. Suddenly Alessa saw a flash of the sister she
knew somewhere behind those dull, bleary eyes. With more strength
than Alessa had realized Janie had, Janie lunged for the door and
flung it open. “Nikhil?” she cried out into the dark.

There was an answer, a low rumbling
growl, and when the red of the siren flashed, Alessa caught
something stirring deep in the recesses of the cell. Another rush
of emotion pelted Alessa, a feral craving for violence and blood –
and she knew, she knew what lay beyond in the dark.

“
No!” Alessa screamed, her
voice ripping at her throat. But before she could push her sister
to safety, a large, impossibly fast form barreled out of the cell
and tackled Janie hard to the ground.

The creature crouched over Janie’s
tiny shape – its sharp, jagged teeth only inches from her face – as
it bellowed a blood-curdling roar.

Alessa didn’t wait for the beast to
make good on its threat. With every ounce of force she could
muster, she dug her shoulder into the creature’s and
shoved.

The beast tumbled back into the cell
as Alessa slammed the door shut, blocking out its enraged rasping
howls.

Janie was frozen to the floor. “That –
that wasn’t Nikhil.”

“
No, it wasn’t,” Alessa
agreed, pulling Janie to her feet.

Janie stared unblinking at
Alessa’s face, but she could see the shock was wearing off –
Janie’s body was starting to quake. “What
was
it?”

Alessa shook her head. “I don’t know,
but I’ve seen them before – a whole band of things like that
stalked me and Isaac the entire time we were outside of Paragon. I
hadn’t seen one up close yet – I still didn’t really get a good
look, it happened so fast… Was it,” she paused expectantly,
“human?”

“
That thing didn’t seem
human to me.” Janie shuddered violently, “Especially not the
teeth.”

“
Maybe not the face… but
the body, that was human-like, right?” Alessa had mainly seen only
the beast’s back and side, but she thought she could distinguish
arms and legs – maybe even fingers and toes – under all that
rippling muscle.

“
I didn’t much see the
body,” Janie admitted, “what with those
fangs
hovering an inch from my
throat…”

“
Well, it’s locked up
now,” Alessa assured. “We’re safe.”

Janie’s expression
crumpled. “But what about Nikhil? I
promised
him I’d get him
out.”

“
We tried, Janie,” Alessa
consoled her. “We can’t take him with us if we don’t know where he
is…”

She looked crushed. “We’re too late,”
Janie breathed, realization heaving down on her.

Alessa slid her shoulder under Janie’s
arm. “But maybe not for Joe. Come on.”

33. POWER

“
I – I don’t understand…”
Lizzie shook her head. “What do you mean it wasn’t a
mistake?”

“
It all started with the
A.R.K., Anthropo-Reduction Keygen,” the Developer explained. “It
was an algorithm that I programmed, using information from social
networks and medical records, test scores and genomic records. It
was designed to select a small, unbiased pool of individuals who
would have all the necessary traits to carry on a genetically
viable human race.”

He stood up, excited now.
“It began as an experiment, a little side project to distract me
from the war. Overpopulation was at the root of our world’s
problems, and it was only a matter of time before we brought about
our own destruction. It’s nature – every species has a sustainable
population, and we humans had outgrown ours, to the detriment of
everything around us. So I designed an app to answer the big
question: how many people could our planet support while recovering
from what we’d done to it, and
who
should those people be?

“
Initially, I input the
database from the online community I’d created, selecting for
education and implicit characteristics – likeability, leadership,
that sort of thing – based on the size of the individual’s network
and the experiences listed on their profiles. But I realized I
needed more variables to make it complete – after all, my database
didn’t provide any reliable way to measure health or intelligence,
or to ensure a healthy mix of genetic traits.”

The Developer didn’t break stride.
“That was when I reached out to the Doctor and requested access to
his genome research. By that point, most individuals from the
developed world had had their DNA sequenced, and the information
was stored electronically in their medical records. I was able to
hack into the databases with some effort, and the Doctor consulted
on what genetic combinations his research had shown were best
suited for survival. This allowed me to further refine the
algorithm.”

Isaac took a slow,
measured breath – he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
Had someone really developed a
computer
program
to play God?

“
It’d all started as an
intellectual exercise, but once I had the answer in front of me,”
he paused his pacing and looked at Lizzie earnestly, “I couldn’t
just let it go to waste. We were
all
going to die, Elizabeth.
The
entire
human
race. And I was one of the few people in the world with the
resources to ensure that our species survived. I had a
responsibility
to do
something.”

He resumed his pacing.
“Sure, maybe small pockets of people might have made it through the
next few decades, the oncoming nuclear winter. But Mother Nature is
messy – why take a chance on her screwing it up, on us going the
way of the dinosaurs? And why let our ecosystem get destroyed in
the process? I could stop it – I could make sure that our planet
and our race
survived
our mistakes, and never made those same mistakes
again.”

Isaac felt nauseous. This
computer programmer had actually designed software to decide who
should live and who should
die
. It was beyond sick.

Lizzie sat motionless, listening, as
the Developer marched back and forth in front of her, reveling in
his fantasy.

“
So I contacted the
Economist, to get some input on the structure of an ideal society,
one where we could ensure safety and prosperity for all, for years
to come. And then… we had a plan. We knew
who
, had a rough outline of
what
. We just needed to
figure out
how
to
make it happen.

“
The Doctor was
well-versed in epidemiology – the study of epidemics – and
suggested that a viral outbreak was the most reliable way to
swiftly and effectively reduce the world’s population to a viable
level. The only problem was, we didn’t know where to get such a
virus or how to make sure the people who’d been chosen by the
A.R.K. were safe. That was where the General came in.

“
As a high-ranking
military official and head of civil service, he had access both to
covert government research
and
almost all of the healthy adults in the country.
He was able to point us not only to secret research on a powerful
viral strain that the Doctor could manipulate, but also gave us an
avenue for vaccinating those who’d been chosen by the algorithm –
we simply slipped the vaccine in with the other inoculations given
during everyone’s routine civil service physicals.

“
Once the selected subset
had been immunized, we got the Draftsman on board to prepare the
city for their arrival. And then we set the virus
loose.”

Repulsed, Isaac backed away from the
account of horror he’d just witnessed, cracking his head on the
ventilation shaft with a clunk.

Isaac cursed under his
breath.

The Developer looked up for a moment,
a flash of something crossing his eyes, as Lizzie jumped at the
noise.

The Developer reached out to her.
“It’s okay – just old pipes.”