Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (14 page)

like an imaginary crowd is cheering him on. He jogs off
 into the night. I get up but don’t bother to chase him down.
“Not to make excuses,” I say, “but I’m not sure how in
 touch with reality he is. I mean, he clearly doesn’t realize
 how much this all sucks.”
Thomas crawls a few feet, like he doesn’t want to get up
 off the ground. I know the feeling. The front of his jacket
 is torn, and the downy fill is spilling out. In his hand is a
 black rectangle with two wrist straps attached to it. He
 holds the small computer up, victorious.
“At least I got this.”
“But what is it?”
“Probably about a hundred million dollars in research
 and development. Let’s go find out what it does.”
We retreat to the trailer. Thomas’s new toy has him
 occupied, so he tells me to go ahead and use his laptop. The
 trailer is once again freezing, and there’s not enough power
 left to run the space heater. I can see my breath as I hunch
 over and begin to read hungrily, wanting to know, afraid to
 know. I go through page after page of reports and memos
 on the Tabula Rasa project. The weirdest stuff is about
 the side effects. This whole treatment is nothing but side
 effects—and they’re all over the map. Every patient seemed
 to display a different set of post-op behaviors—“extreme
 lethargy and suicidal impulses” to “hyperaggressive dis-
 plays paired with loss of impulse control and empathy.”
I know that this could be my fate if I don’t get that last
 pill, but I don’t want to know any more about this clinical
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stuff. I switch over to a file labeled “Grants and Funding,”
 thinking it might be fairly harmless. I find a series of emails
 between Dr. Buckley and some guy at the National Insti-
 tutes of Health. The first line of the first message I read
 says, “Effective immediately . . . ”
“The government canceled the project!”
Thomas hardly responds. “Project canceled. Hold that
 thought. I’ve just figured out that this tablet is connected
 to their mainframe.”
“I thought you said you killed the mainframe.”
“I killed the hospital’s mainframe. But this awesome
 little thing”—he shakes the tablet—“connects to these sol-
 diers’ portable mainframe. This is the highest of high-end
 stuff. Their portable mainframe can override every system
 in this place.”
“How?”
“This thing blots out one signal and replaces it with a
 stronger one. It can even override hardwired connections.
So these guys can basically come in and turn that sucker
 on, and what was once your mainframe now becomes their
 mainframe. But more importantly, what was once your
 security system now becomes their security system.”
I get up and look over his shoulder. He points at a series
 of red dots on the screen. All of which are moving.
“Look what we have here.”  
“What are those?”
“This is a map of the compound, both inside and out.
Each dot is a soldier.”
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He scrolls through some pages, and I can see that some
 of the dots are inside the building, and some are roaming
 around outside. He brings up each floor of the hospital in
 turn.
“Uggh,” he says.
“What?”
“I count thirteen armed dots.”
My heart sinks. “That’s a lot of armed dots.”
“Yeah, but this tells us something important. Wait. Look
 at this.” Again he taps the screen, and this time I see the
 wreckage in the main lobby. Snow has blown in through
 the windows and collected in a drift near the front doors.
They’ve stacked a pile of bodies near the potted palms.
“You have access to the security cameras?”
“Indeed. Now let’s get back to finding those pills. I had
 no luck figuring out where the med locker is. It’s not on the
 map, anyway. Where do you think they’d keep something
 super secret like that? I mean, do you remember someplace
 inside that was off-limits?”
“Pretty much everywhere was off-limits.”
“But I mean, do you remember the staff ever talking
 about certain floors of the building being special for any
 reason?”
“The sixth floor,” I say automatically. “That’s where
Larry’s office was. I think that’s where all the doctors’
 offices were. I once heard some of the nurses talking about
 how you had to have special clearance to get in and out of
 there.”  
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“The sixth floor,” he repeats. “Okay. We’ll start there.
But first we’ve got to get back inside.”
“Wait. What does the fact that there are thirteen dots
 tell us?”
“What?”
“You said that the number of guys they’ve brought tells
 us something.”
“Oh, right. Well, one assumes these guys know what
 they’re doing, and since 8-Bit helped case the joint elec-
 tronically for them, they must have decided that all they
 needed to raid this huge hospital was thirteen guys.”
“Fourteen,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. Right. They’re down a man thanks to Oscar.
Still, that’s not  much fire power for a compound this big.”
“Maybe they knew that people would be clearing out
 for the storm.”
“They didn’t. They knew a storm was coming, but I
 don’t think anybody expected it to be this bad.”
“So that pretty much proves that there weren’t many of
 us left in here.”
“Yeah, something strange is going on. This hospital is
 pretty swank, considering it was about to become a ghost
 town.”
He gets up and walks over to the little space heater. “No
 point in conserving energy now.”
He turns it on full blast, and I let the warmth bathe me.
“What else was in the bag?” I ask.
“Lots of goodies. I don’t know what they all do, but
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I’m sure some of them blow things up.” He rubs his hands
 together quickly, then says, “I’m going to do something
 now. Trust me?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
He hits a button, and I see on the screen that the alarm
 system goes off in an area on the first floor. We watch on
 the soldier’s computer as a bunch of red dots start moving
 toward that area.
Thomas turns the alarm off.
Then he turns it back on.
He waits about thirty seconds and does it all again. We
 wait another five minutes and suddenly the whole wing
 goes dark.
“What just happened?” I ask.
He raises his finger and points at the soldier’s computer.
Slowly, the red dots begin moving back toward the main
 lobby again.
“You made them think the system was glitching on and
 off,” I say.
“Yep.”
“So they shut all the power off in that section because
 the alarm  was so annoying. Genius.”
“‘Annoying Genius.’ That should be my slogan from
 now on.” He points at the screen. “We should head toward
 this door. I think it’ll be open now, so we don’t have to
 use a passcard to get in. Plus, if we trip any alarms, they’ll
 assume it’s another problem with the security system.”
We start to pack up our things, but I pause. “Oscar.
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What should we do about him?”
“That nut-job is on his own as far as I’m concerned,
 especially after that hilarious attempt to drop me to my
 death.”
“He didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You’re defending him? He almost got you killed, too.”
“I know, but I was reading some of the other staff
 reports about treatment effects. Oscar isn’t sure what’s real
 and what’s just in his head.”
“Yeah. Well, I hope he gets over that sometime soon or
 he’s gonna fantasize us all into a bloody pulp.”
The rumble of an engine makes us both turn toward
 the door. “Maybe those snowcats are back,” Thomas says.
The sound gets louder and louder until it sounds like
 it’s coming from right outside the trailer. Because it is. The
 whole trailer is trembling. Headlights come on directly
 outside the window, and we both freeze like deer waiting
 to be shot.
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CHAPTER 18
 homas grabs my hand and the tablet and dashes for
Tthe door, but we don’t make it more than a few steps
 before the whole trailer starts rocking. We land on the
floor and slide toward one wall and then back again. The
 furniture slides with us, including the heavy oak desk and
 the pictures dangling from their wall hooks. I hear glass
 cracking and metal twisting and a crunching sound that
I think is coming from the roof. Thomas manages to get
 a hand on the laptop to keep it from sliding off the desk
 just as the desk smacks into the wall, and I barely escape
 being pinned by the leather sofa.
“Maybe my little security system trick didn’t work so
 well after all,” he says, dodging the desk chair as it flies by.
The trailer tips upright again and remains still for a
 moment. I crawl toward the window, expecting to see a
 snowcat, but what I see instead is only slightly less troubling.
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Oscar is behind the controls of an excavator. He’s using the
 digging arm to push the trailer, like he’s trying to knock it
 off the blocks or whatever the whole thing is propped up
 on.
I watch as he swings the arm as far as it will go to the
 left. I have just enough time to scramble backward before
 he uses the claw to rip the end of the trailer off like he’s
 opening a cereal box.
“Come on!” I grab Thomas’s arm and pull him toward
 the trailer door. “It’s Oscar!”
Just then, something crashes through the roof of the
 trailer, smashing the desk to splinters. The computer flies
 off the desk, and when it hits the floor, the screen snaps off.  
“What does he think he’s doing?”
We roll into the opposite wall as the trailer tips so far
 to the left I’m sure it’s going to fall onto its side. At least
 we’d be falling toward solid ground. I guess this is not what
Oscar wants though, because he lets the trailer slam flat
 upright again. I realize that he’s trying to push the whole
 thing over and send it tumbling into that big hole in the
 ground.
Just as I reach the door, Thomas pulls away from my
 grasp. He stretches to retrieve the computer from where
 it’s landed next to the mini-fridge. Through the opening
 in the roof, I see Oscar winding up again to punch straight
 down through the top of the trailer.  
“Thomas, no!”
“I need the flash drive!”
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He flattens his body completely, just able to reach the
 drive with his fingertips. With the other hand he grabs
 the strap of the soldier’s backpack and pulls it toward him.
Oscar brings the arm of the excavator down. Inside my
 mind, I’m screaming at Thomas to get back, but there’s
 not even time for my lips to form the words. He’s trying
 to get up but can’t get off his knees because the trailer has
 collapsed and fallen off its supports. He’s sliding toward the
 end that Oscar ripped away. Thomas isn’t going to make it
 out. The digger claw is going to snap him in two.
I reach through the door and grab him by his jacket just
 as the claw smashes what’s left of the ceiling. He screams in
 pain, and at first I think he’s been crushed, but then I see
 what’s happened. The claw missed Thomas, but pinched a
 piece of metal from the roof against his lower leg. I have to
 wait for Oscar to lift the digger claw up again before I can
 try to get Thomas out.
Oscar struggles with the excavator’s control levers. A
 moment later the arm swings upward, and I’m able to peel
 back the piece of debris and pull Thomas out through the
 door. We both land hard on the frozen ground and Thomas
 howls. His boot has been slashed all the way through. The
 cut runs from kneecap to ankle in almost a straight line
 along his shinbone.    
Oscar looks directly at me; his eyes are innocent. He
 could be playing in a sandbox with a toy. He swings the
 excavator’s arm up and brings it down again onto a porta-
 john, smashing it flat. He laughs as the putrid slush in the
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porta-potty gushes onto the ground and runs downhill
 toward the excavation pit.
I need a way to get Thomas out of here, because he
 won’t be able to walk. I grab a plastic section of the porta-
 potty and retrieve the rope we used earlier. After threading
 it through the air vent at the top, I roll Thomas onto this
 makeshift sled and pull him out of range of the claw. Every
 bump makes him shriek in agony.
The storm is ferocious, and the wind slashes at my bare
 head. In the scramble to get out of the trailer, I’ve lost my
 hat, my gloves. We’ve lost Thomas’s backpack, though he
 managed to hold on to the soldier’s pack. He’s clutching
 the flash drive in his hand so tightly I think he might be
 crushing it.
I’ve completely lost my bearings. I look up at the hos-
 pital. It’s just a broad expanse of wall and rows of windows
 too high to reach. We might as well be trying to break into
 a prison.
“Thomas, where do we go?”
He points at a huge pile of dirt next to the construction
 site.
“Other side of that?”
He nods.
Of course. There’s no way I’m going to get him up and
 over this mound of dirt, but I start to climb anyway. Each
 step I take, I use up all my strength, decide it’s pointless,
 and then try one more time. I keep my eyes closed so I
 don’t have to keep looking at how far I still have to go.
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After struggling up the hill for what seems like an hour,
I feel a blast of wind hit me full in the face. Opening my
 eyes, I’m shocked to find that I’m at the top.
I pull as hard as I can, but I can’t get the sled up the
final few feet. “You’re going to have to climb the last bit,
Thomas. I’m sorry. Can you do it?”
He lifts his body just enough to let the sled beneath him
 slide away. It quickly shoots to the bottom. I lie flat and he
 uses my body like a ladder, pulling himself up until we’re
 both sitting at the top. He bites down on his lip to keep
 from screaming.
I look down toward the door and realize getting down
 won’t be so easy. The dirt pile is right up against the build-
 ing, and the angle of the incline is steeper than on the side
I just dragged Thomas up. I’m going to have to take him
 down inch by inch, and if I lose my grip on him, he could
 slide out of control, right into the wall.
We need to hurry. We’re in open view, and snowcat
 headlights are now moving toward the trailer. Oscar seems
 oblivious. He begins working the excavator’s arm up and
 down, up and down. The claw plunges repeatedly into the
 ground, right in the same spot, but the ground is so hard
 he’s not making any progress. What is he doing?
Then I understand.
“I think he found Jori’s body, and he’s digging her a
 grave,” I say.
Thomas raises his head and says, “I don’t care what that
 nut-job is doing.”
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