State of Decay (34 page)

“I can make her forget,” I said.

“I know you can,” he said.

The orange light went out, and with a loud snap, the blade disappeared. His hand went back together and he relaxed his fingers.

Before he could change his mind, I went over to Karen and dropped onto my knees next to her. With my remaining energy, I concentrated until the brightness came.

“What are you—”

“Sleep.”

Her eyelids got heavy, and she started to sink back down onto the floor.

“Zoe, no. . . .”

“Sleep.”

She rolled onto her back and went limp, her breathing becoming slow and easy.

“You didn’t hear anything tonight,” I told her. “I was never in trouble and you didn’t come up here to help me. You didn’t see anyone else here tonight.”

“Okay ...”

“As far as you will remember, no one was here.”

She nodded and I wiped my eyes, then leaned in closer so I could whisper in her ear.

“If I don’t see you again,” I said, “thank you, Karen.”

She murmured something in her dreamlike state, but I didn’t hear what it was as the big, cold hand came down and grabbed me by the back of my shirt. I was lifted up off the ground as everything went black, and all I could do was hope that whoever he was and whatever he wanted, he would just take me and go, because if he decided to kill her, there wasn’t anyone left who could stop him.

I woke up to the sound of something sputtering softly, then a single drop echoing as it splashed into a puddle somewhere below me. It was somewhere dark and cold.

“Hey.”

The voice came from out of the darkness. It was deep, but female.

There was a tingling in my face and my neck that ran all the way down my arms and legs to my hands, fingers, and toes. My head was resting on something hard, and my back hurt. Everything hurt.

“Hey.”

Something nudged me in the ribs. Something hard. Messages scrolled by behind my eyelids, and I cracked them open. The room was mostly dark, but the walls were flickering with a dim light. Turning my head slightly, I saw a young woman was standing over me. She wore black leather boots and skintight jeans. She looked down at me, muscular arms hanging by her sides. It was the girl, Calliope.

“Are you dead?” she asked.

“No.”

“You want me to call somebody?”

“No.”

My whole body felt like it had taken a beating, but everything still seemed to work. A deep pain dug into my chest when I tried to sit up, forcing me to roll over onto my hands and knees.

The box that had contained Faye’s body lay open, and the empty sac of fluid from inside was plastered to the floor like a giant piece of skin. I scanned around, but she was gone. All that was left was the padlock key from my pocket lying next to the discarded chain. I tried to check the chronometer to see how long I’d been out, but it looked like every system had reinitialized. I checked my cell phone instead. An hour had passed.

“Was anyone else here when you got here?”

“No, just you.”

“Did you pass anyone on the way in?”

“No.”

Great.

Wachalowski.
It was Noakes.

The words hovered there. I tried to think of a good response, but I was still reeling. A dark spot swam in front of my eyes that wouldn’t go away.

Squatting back on my heels, I ran a regimen of stims, painkillers, and anti-inflammatory serum, but the stims got overruled by the system because of drug conflict detection. Running down the list, it looked as though the emergency systems had delivered a massive dose of clotting agent to the wound site, along with a bunch of other stuff. No wonder I was dizzy.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

I believe it’s a former Heinlein employee named Samuel Fawkes. Look, someone who is helping me with the case appeared on that list. I’m heading there now, but I need some units over at her place right away.
I gave him Zoe’s name and address.

Peeling my shirt back, I could see there had been a lot of blood, at least initially. A dark crevice sat in the middle of my chest, hardened over with black.

Even as I said it, though, that dark blotch still floated there in front of my eyes. It was like a blind spot that even the implant couldn’t write to. If the implant sent a KIA beacon, then I was technically dead for at least ninety seconds.

Looking around, everything around the dark patch had a sharpness to it that seemed strange. Everything felt very clear and focused, but almost to the point where it felt like a drug trip. Was it a side effect of all the chemicals, or was it something worse?

The drugs coursed through my system, and the pain and stiffness retreated. Joints cracking, I managed to get to my feet and take a look around. The corner of the bedroll was stained through with blood where a pool of it had formed, and three footsteps in that same blood led from the spot toward the exit. It looked like she had stood up and immediately left, like she was moving with a purpose.

The connection closed. Calliope continued to watch me.

“What?”

“There’s this orange light,” she said, “behind your eyes.”

“It’s reflection from the internal display.”

“It’s cool.”

“Thanks.”

The results of my decisions were less cool. Faye was gone, Zoe was in trouble, and I was in it up to my neck. The only thing that might pull it out was the connection I monitored right before the remote override code came in. A quick check of my internal buffer showed the link was still there.

“How are you still standing?” Calliope asked.

“There’s a piece of armor plating behind my breastbone.”

“What the hell for?”

“In case something like this ever happened. I had it installed during my tour. The blade went through the bone but never reached my heart.”

That didn’t stop it from impacting it, though. The plate itself got pushed back and shocked my heart so hard it had stopped. If the emergency system hadn’t jolted it, it would have stopped for good.

“Come on,” I said. “I have to move. Someone’s in trouble.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“I’ll take you there.”

“I’ve got a vehicle.”

“I’ve got a bike,” she said, “and I know how to ride it. How fast you want to get there?”

My chest was still aching despite the drugs. Dragging her into this would probably be a mistake, but the streets would be jammed with patrols and people trying to beat the curfew; a motorcycle would skirt around a lot of it. Zoe needed help now, not later. I could commandeer the bike, but honestly, with the wound in my chest, I didn’t think I’d be able to control it.

I checked for my gun and found that Faye had left it behind. Breaking out the magazine, I saw it was still fully loaded. I never even got off a shot.

Experimentation . . . Whatever that meant, I didn’t like the sound of it. I was the one who brought her into the whole mess. There wasn’t time to argue.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Can you hear me?”

A voice was whispering loudly somewhere nearby, but I could barely hear it over the constant hum that filled the air. I was lying on my back on the floor. Was I still in my apartment?

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

I opened my eyes and looked around. It was dark, but I could see a little bit. Wherever I was, it wasn’t my apartment; there was metal scaffolding somewhere off in front of me, and I could see a ton of spastic little blinking lights.

“Hello?” It sounded like a woman’s voice.

“I can hear you,” I said.

“Get up. You’re in trouble,” she hissed.

My body was so stiff I could barely move. I rolled over and got up on one elbow, just managing to raise my forehead a few inches off the ground. My body was shaking all over.

“You’ll be all right,” the woman said. My hair trailed on the floor as I lifted my head and let it bob there, looking for her. There was some kind of glass wall or window in front of me. I reached out and touched it, streaking fingerprints. It was hard plastic that looked clear, but there was cardboard taped to the outside so I couldn’t see through.

It started to sink in that I was in a box, a clear plastic box. It was no bigger than my bathroom. I went to brush my hair out of my face and felt some threads there, a whole bunch of them, but when I pulled at one, it tugged at my forehead like it was stuck there.

“Here.”

A fingernail tapped on the plastic nearby and I looked over where a piece of the cardboard was torn. A pair of eyes looked at me through the little gap.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“Look here,” the woman said, and moved her face away from the gap. I crawled across the floor and put my forehead to the wall so I could see through.

Through the hole I could see another plastic box that looked just like the one I was in. They were right next to each other with the cardboard in between them. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a black woman wearing a plain white shirt and pants, and she looked even sicker than I usually did. Her hair had grown into a thicket of kinks that hung around her face, and underneath I saw a bunch of electrodes stuck to her forehead that trailed thin white wires.

Pulling some of the threads out of my hair, I held them up to my face. They were the same thin white wires. My heart was beating faster. Was this another dream? I hoped it was another dream.

“Calm down,” the woman said. “Don’t try to pull off the electrodes; you’ll get shocked if you do.”

“Who are you?” I asked. Skin was flaking off her lips, and her eye sockets were dark and hollow.

“Anna,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Zoe.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“No, where?” I said, and she looked like she might cry.

“I was asking you.”

I rubbed my eyes and found that my face was all sweaty and my hands were shaking really badly. The side of my neck itched, and as I scratched at it, I remembered the needle poking me there.

“Are you sick?” she asked.

I hated that question. Even in the situation I was in, I hated it. People always looked at me like I was a hobo or a cancer patient or something, always with this look like they were either grossed out by me or felt sorry for me. Asking someone who wasn’t sick if they were sick was such an insult.

“Zoe?”

When I tried to swallow, though, my throat was totally dry and my stomach turned over. Maybe this time I really was.

Either way, I needed time to think. Peeking through the hole in the cardboard, I focused on the woman in the cage next to mine until the lights got bright and the glow appeared around her head. After a second I could see it rippling with deep shades of blue, with small flares of red licking out. The patterns were all of sadness and depression and despair, worse than I’d ever seen before. I meant to push and try to make her feel a little better, when I noticed something else: a thin white band, like a little halo circling her head.

“Hey, my next-door neighbor had one of those,” I said without thinking. It was faint, like the ring of a planet, and when I concentrated on it, I felt a kind of resistance. It pushed me back gently, not allowing me to get any closer and not letting me change the other colors.

The woman wiped her eyes.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?” I asked, guilty.

“What you just did. They’re watching.”