S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (36 page)

“I'm been biting my tongue out of respect for you, but I can't keep quiet any longer. After what he did to you? How can you continue to defend him?”

“Because, he loves me and I love him!”

Eric stared at her. “Love isn't good enough.”

“Love is all we have.”

“Help me to understand,” Eric begged her. “Why do you believe they're not responsible?”

Jessie stood up and went over to the window. There were bars on the outside, and the glass was filthy enough to turn the clear afternoon into a foggy day. The room overlooked the roof of the adjacent building. Steam rose from a vent and quickly dissipated in the hot, dry air.

“When we were first abducted,” she said, speaking to the glass, “after the Coalition took us from New York Medical to LaGuardia, there was a girl with us. Her name was Tanya.”

Eric nodded. “The actress. She died, right?”

“She was actually a filing clerk for Arc. She was trying to become an actress. Anyway, she was in this strange trance for a few days. Then, suddenly, she just snapped out of it. We suspected the SSC had somehow taken control of her implant and were using her to listen in and watch us. Maybe they were even controlling her, I don't know. It wasn't obvious if they were, and we never really found out for sure. But regardless, until she suddenly snapped out of it, she wasn't really there.”

“Are you saying the Coalition is involved? That they've taken control of Kelly's and Reggie's implants? I don't think—”

Jessie shook her head. “This is different. I only bring up Tanya because it proves it's possible.”

“It proves nothing, Jessie. If anything, it makes me doubt it even more. You said this girl worked for Arc. Maybe she really was acting.”

“It wasn't an act.”

“Jessie, the government mandated that Arc design the implants with internal safeties to prevent anyone from taking control while a person is still alive. Activation of the device would render the individual incapacitated and—”

“Resulting in death if left long enough,” Jessie finished. “I know, Eric. I experienced it myself. Remember? But you're wrong about one thing: they're not hardwired. The safety is actually a program— Stephen told me as much. He was working on a program to hack into the implants without fully activating them.”

Eric frowned.

“I think whoever's been doing it got access through the gaming gear. All of Reggie's blackouts, for instance, occurred while he was in
The Game
.”

“But Reggie wasn't connected when I apprehended him.”

Jessie shrugged. “I can't explain that.”

“And what about Kelly? Has he said anything to you about blackouts?”

“No,” Jessie conceded.

Eric stood up and went over to her. “Nobody is hacking implants, Jessie.”

“Okay, maybe I'm wrong about the gaming gear. Maybe they have to be connected to a certain stream is all. That would explain my own episodes.”

“Episodes,
plural
? What haven't you been telling me?”

She leaned her head against the glass and exhaled. A ghost of her breath formed and quickly disappeared. “Hartford wasn't the first time it happened. There were at least two other times. The first was the day before the marriage filing. My Link was in the media console. I was watching
Survivalist
, except the vision I had was someone walking along the creek carrying a body. I couldn't see who, but I was certain that body belonged to Mom. That's why I wanted to search the trail for Reggie.”

“Why didn't you tell me about this before?”

“What, that I daydreamed someone kidnapped Mom? You were so adamant that she was just taking a little vacation from me! Anyway, what would you have told me if I said I was in someone else's mind?”

He frowned at her for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Okay.”

“That vision stopped the moment you pinged me. I think it interrupted the hack when it switched streams. I think the firewall is blocking them, which is why my visions are different from Reggie's.”

“What about what happened in Hartford? You weren't connected then.”

“Yes, I was. They were trying to shut down the self-destruct mechanism.”

Eric considered this for a moment. He still looked skeptical.

“The second time was that day on the bus,” Jessie said. “I saw Mom in a dark room.” She frowned suddenly and turned her face to her brother. “There was carpet! Was she lying on a piece of green carpet?”

Eric's eyes widened in surprise. “It was a blanket. And, yes, it was green.”

‡ ‡ ‡

Kelly burst through the front doors of the hospital and hurried toward the elevator. An advertisement for
The Game
was playing on the television in the crowded lobby, and people were standing about, buzzing over it, pointing at the screen. Nobody knew for sure what the new twist might be that Arc had been touting for the past few days, though there seemed no end to the speculation. Kelly rolled his eyes as he passed, wondering how Arc could possibly think devoting so much of its attention to entertainment at a time like this was a good thing.

He checked his Link. Jessie's ping had arrived just as he'd sat down to play a board game with Kyle at home. She'd spoken to him in a monotone, as if she were in shock. And when she told him to meet her up in the intensive care unit of the hospital, he'd asked if it was Reggie.

She just blinked a few times, until he was forced to ask her again.

“Is that your ripped shirt?” she asked.

He hadn't understood the question at first, then realized she was staring at his collar. He pulled it away from his neck and nodded. “The one Avery tore, yeah. Why?”

He saw Eric's face come into view, his brows knitted intensely. “Are you missing a button?”

Jessie had pushed Eric impatiently away and told him to hurry. Then she'd disconnected.

Maybe it was some sort of psychic Doppler effect, the echo of his love speeding away from him, but that ping had scared the shit out of him for some reason. And Kyle had sensed it, too. “Don't go,” he'd pleaded.

“I have to go see Aunt Jessie.”

“I'm scared.”

“Don't be. Everything's going to be alright.”

But Kelly was terrified. Something bad had happened. He didn't know what, but he felt certain that he was somehow to blame. The cliff which he'd imagined Jessie standing atop, the one which he'd been helpless to draw her away from, loomed large in his mind. She was falling.

You drove her to it. You pushed her over.

As he jostled his way to the elevator, panting from the exertion, a few people glanced over in his direction. But their eyes alit upon him for only a brief moment before turning away. It was as if they couldn't see him at all, or didn't want to see him. All his life he'd been invisible, and the only person who'd ever really seen him was fading away before his very eyes.

He checked the lights over the door and saw that the car was on the second floor, heading up, so he turned around and elbowed his way out again. And again the people spared him only the most cursory of glances.

He slammed into the stairwell and ran up all three flights, taking the stairs two and three at a time.

Now he was soaking wet and his clothes were sticking to him. Sweat poured down his face. The stitch in his left side matched the burn of the still unhealed bite on his right.

He found Eric at the reception desk, who quickly grabbed an arm and directed him to one of the rooms.

“What happened?” he asked, horror dawning on his face when he saw who was in the bed. This was the event he'd been fearing. Their mother had suffered some terrible tragedy. And all he could feel was relief knowing he'd had nothing to do with it.

“I found her over at the Evans place,” Eric said. There was a strange hardness in his eyes. He studied Kelly's face, waiting for a response.

“Ashley Evans?”

“Her organs are in crisis,” Eric continued, reciting in the same sort of disconnected monotone that Jessie had used earlier.

He's in shock.

So why did he feel as if he was being scrutinized?

“She's dehydrated,” Eric continued, still speaking in a clinically detached voice. “The doctors think she hasn't had anything to drink in over a week.”

Kelly bowed his head and squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. “Jesus. How did this happen? Why was she over there?”

He could see the struggle in Eric's eyes then. Slowly, his brother-in-law moved away from him to stand on the opposite side of the bed. He took a few breaths, then began to explain how he'd found her.

“Reggie?” Kelly exclaimed. “I can't believe he'd do this. Not to your mom. Not to anyone. I just can't see why he would.”

“Jessie believes he was being . . . manipulated.”

Kelly frowned. He knew what it felt like to have his back up against the wall, to have little choice but to do what someone told him to do. But nothing would make him do something this horrible. And the same went for Reggie, too. “No,” he said again, shaking his head. “Not Reggie.”

Eric tossed something small onto the bed, where it tumbled between his mother's knees. Kelly squinted, then reached over and picked it up.

“I found it inside the Evanses's house. It's a match to the one you're missing on that shirt.”

An image flashed through Kelly's mind: Jessie reaching up and tugging at his collar the day he'd followed her from school into town.

“I  I don't know how it got there.”

Eric stared at him for a long time before going over to the door. He looked out of the room, then shut them in. “I need to know something, Kelly.”

Kelly's heart was racing.

“That gear you got, did you ever experience anything . . . strange, while using it?”

“Strange in what way?” Kelly asked. “What do you mean?”

“Anything like what happened to Reggie. The blackouts. Have you had anything like that happen to you?”

Kelly blinked in shock. He stumbled back a step, feeling his knees go weak. “Yes.”

A change came over Eric then. His eyes widened and the hardness seemed to dissolve away like sugar in hot tea. “Shit,” he whispered. “I can't believe this is happening.”

† † †

Kelly felt an iron band encircle his heart.
Please, god, tell me I had nothing to do with this.
He collapsed into the chair. “I don't remember anything.”

“The last words out of my mother's mouth was that someone else brought her to the Evanses's.”

Kelly lowered his face to his hands.

“And you don't remember what you did or where you were either of the two times it happened?”

“No,” Kelly sobbed.

Eric began to pace, muttering to himself. “It's just not possible. Micah's dead.”

“Micah?”

“Jessie thinks he's involved. She thinks he faked his conscription.”

“But you don't believe it,” Kelly said.

“Do you?”

Kelly pursed his lips and didn't answer right away. “I'm worried about Jessie,” he said. “I think she may not be thinking straight.”

Eric nodded in agreement. “You realize it's the only theory that absolves you, don't you?”

Kelly nodded. “But there has to be another explanation.” He stood up and checked his Link. “Where did you say she went?”

“Bathroom.” A look of worry crossed Eric's face. “But that was over half an hour ago. Is it possible she went to see this doctor of yours, the one who gave you the gaming gear in the first place?”

Is she somehow wrapped up in this?
Kelly wondered. If Jessie had gone down to see her, then he needed to be there with her.

“I'm pinging her,” Eric announced.

The connection went through almost immediately, and when Jessie answered, he asked where she was. “Kelly's here. The button's his.”

“Did you ask him about the gaming gear?”

Eric nodded. “He said it happened twice. The second time was the afternoon you guys filed for your marriage documents.”

“I knew it. See, Eric? It's not their fault.”

“What are you doing outside?” Kelly asked, glancing over Eric's shoulder at the screen. “Where are you going?”

“Just stay there with Mom. Both of you. I have something to do.”

“Jessie, where are you going?” Eric demanded.

She ignored him. “Let me talk with Kelly. I need to ask him about Micah.”

“He's dead!” Eric snapped. “You won't find anything else at his place.”

“Give me to Kelly I said.”

“He couldn't have done this.”

“Damn it, Eric. Will you just listen to me for once? I'm not going to argue with you.”

Eric reluctantly handed the Link over.

“He's not dead, Kel,” she said. “I know it for a fact.”

Kelly sighed. “We both watched him get conscripted.”

“Yeah, the three of us did. The same three that are getting screwed around with now. And no, Kelly, we may have watched something that
looked
like a conscription, but I'm telling you it was all a farce.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. It was too— I don't know. There was definitely something weird about it.”

“Based on what, Jess? A gut feeling? Wishful thinking?”

“It wasn't my first time, Eric. We watched a conscription when we were in Seattle. Remember?”

Eric nodded. “The guy who stole your Link.”

“There were a lot of similarities in the procedure, but a couple things were off. I didn't realize it at the time.”

“Off how?”

“Do you remember, Kelly, right before the injection, the nurse had to leave the room?”

Kelly shook his head, an embarrassed flush rising in his cheeks. “I'd stopped watching by then.”