Beat (15 page)

“Of course not.” A genial smile spread across the Prime Administrator’s face. Beyond him, the image of Hope Park panned some more, revealing a group of people standing at the base of a tree. I tore my eyes away from the skreen. “We simply need to do some blood work. We need to run some preliminary tests.” His flat eyes met mine. “We will see where we go from there.”

I thought fast. Something was going on here, something strange. But I might be able to figure out a way to expose the complete truth. I had to be careful. And I had to be sure. “But if I’m immune, so are the Wanderers.”

“The Wanderers are simply a legend.”

“You already said that.”

Another strange moment of silence. “We must keep you here for now and find out why you were able to avoid infection. But we need your help, Mr. Granjer. We have no wish to harm you.”

If I stayed here, they could do whatever they wanted with me, especially since nobody who cared even knew where I was. The Prime Administrator knew I knew he was lying. He had to. And I’d seen him say the Wanderers were a myth or a legend on a skreen.Which I now knew was totally false.

How much more of this was just a big lie? This was bad. A knot of fear in my gut sent tentacles crawling up into my chest.

“Will you help us? Will you reassure the people of New Frisko that the knockout injection is their best defense against the Bug?” The man looked directly at me, his face set in a sincerely pleading expression. His eyes didn’t move from mine.

I had to stall. I needed more time to figure out what to do. What I’d just seen . . . I felt like it could help. I just needed time to come up with a plan. “Yes. I’ll help you.” I figured that if I appeared cooperative, they might not guard me as well as they would otherwise. That might give me more opportunity, too.

The Prime Administrator smiled. “What excellent news. I appreciate your willingness to be of assistance.” He stepped forward and extended his hand.

I grimaced inwardly, gritted my teeth, and took his hand, shaking it. His hand was surprisingly warm to the touch. Warm and dry.

I stared at him, wondering what was really going on behind the man’s dark eyes.

I would find out. I was going to find out
exactly
what was going on and then I was going to bring it all down. Because the Bug had to be gone. It had to be, no matter what had happened to Bren. The Wanderers were real and they were alive.

Something else had happened to Bren.

The Prime Administrator took two long steps to his desk and touched a spot near his chair. The door to his left slid open without a noise. One of the treadmill robots appeared with a metallic whir.

“Please follow my assistant to a room we have prepared for you. I’m sorry, but in the interests of our tests, we can’t have you eating or drinking for the next twelve hours.” He lifted a hand toward the robot. “Furthermore, we will replace your Personal Assistant after the tests. We don’t want the knockout injection to skew our tests in any way.”

I wondered what that meant, but doubted he would be forthcoming if I asked anything. “Okay.” I followed the robot, stealing another glance at the skreen that had caught my eye. The image had changed to a busy walkway.

As the door closed behind me, I looked back. The Prime Administrator was already settling back into his chair.

The robot hummed gently down the hallway, which looked exactly like the one I’d come though on the way to the Prime Administrator’s office. This hallway ended at elevator doors. When the doors closed, we descended for about ten seconds.

I stood still, studying the robot but also letting my thoughts race. What I’d seen on the skreen had sparked the beginnings of a plan. I would still have to find out the truth about the Bug and how Bren had died, but there was a simple way to prove to New Frisko that something was wrong about what the New Chapter’s leaders were telling them.

I followed the Prime Administrator’s robot assistant down another hallway, also totally blank of anything but pale gray. I guess if I liked gray, I would be in paradise.

The clip I’d seen. Apparently the skreens on the Prime Administrator’s wall looped footage from all over New Frisko, and from more than just the present. The group of people I’d seen standing under that tree had been the Pushers.

And I’d watched myself walk toward my cycle. The clip was of last night in Hope Park with my friends. I needed to reach them, contact Melisa, or Pol, or Koner. I needed to get my hands on it and show it to everybody.

But that was only part of the plan. I was going to find out why the New Chapter was lying to the people of New Frisko. And maybe the other cities, too.

Then I was going to bring the whole thing down.

The pale door slid quietly closed behind me. Immediately I felt as if I was being squeezed, not hard or anything, but by the pressure of an enclosed space. The room was about the size of my room at home, with much of the same arrangement: a bed, a small table next to the bed, a bathroom through an open doorway, and what looked like a Klothes-Jeni. I wondered if, in the morning, I would find the same outfit I’d always found in my own Jeni at home every day. I’d grown up wondering how it worked, but soon after starting work in the Enjineering Dome, had learned that it wasn’t all that complex.

Bots, very similar to the maintenance bots that ran throughout the city, visited each house and accessed the Klothes-Jeni, switching out dirty shirts and such for cleaned ones. Since everybody wore pretty much the same thing every day, and many people wore the same thing as each other, it was impossible to know if you were getting your own things back. And, really, it didn’t matter.

What mattered now was finding a way to get out of this room. Then I needed to figure out where in Prime One they stored the archival footage from the surveillance cameras. If I could find that—well that would be a good start. Later, I’d have to find a way to show everybody in New Frisko, or even all over the New Chapter, the clip. Then everyone would know something strange was going on. Maybe then I could bring the Wanderers in to show that I wasn’t alone in not dying from the Bug.

I had to find out the truth of the Bug. And I had to tell everyone.
Everyone
. 

I wandered the room, finally settling on the bed and lying back on the soft, cool blanket. “Don’t fall asleep.” I kept my voice quiet, but then realized that there was another similarity between this and my room at home. No cameras. I sat up, the new piece of knowledge coming as a surprise. In fact, I hadn’t seen any surveillance cameras anywhere in Prime One.

I puzzled over it for a moment, but the answer was pretty obvious: the cameras were there to keep people under control and catch people breaking rules. No one would break rules in Prime One. The Prime Administrator might even live in that office, or in an apartment through that other door.

Yet another thing that didn’t matter. I got up and wandered toward the door. For a brief second, I thought it might actually just open when the sensor in the ceiling saw me. Nope. I examined the door.

It was just like doors in all of the other domes. A two-meter tall, one-meter wide panel of plasteel. The recycled polymer was everywhere and was always touted as a sign that the New Chapter was far better than the world before the Infektion. The panel moved on runners that were set into the floor, and I imagined that there were runners on the top part of the doorframe too. When the door opened, it slid into an opening in the wall that was fabricated so perfectly that when the door was all the way open, the door frame seemed almost unbroken by seams or cracks.

How was I supposed to get out of here? No magnetic locks to fool, and no way I could damage the door itself. In fact, I had no idea how this kind of door locked. I doubted I could break it open, especially with one arm in a cast.

That meant I needed to find a way to get someone else to open it. Or I had to wait until someone, or some robot, came to get me tomorrow. Or whenever.

They would come tomorrow. They had to. If they were telling the truth about wanting me to help reassure the people of New Frisko, they’d want me to talk to them soon.

As soon as I did, my parents would see me on the skreens. I wondered whether Enforsers had already been talking to them, telling them where I was, or if they would come looking for me once they saw me on the Speeker skreens. I needed to talk to my friends
and
my parents, somehow tell them the truth. At least about the Wanderers and how they were proof that the New Chapter was lying.

I coasted through the bathroom, noting the shower and toilet and seeing that there was no cup for drinking. Which made sense, since they didn’t want me to eat or drink before they took blood. I wondered how the knockout would skew the tests. It had to be a matter of just removing the sedative chemicals from the blood in order to test my blood. A thought tickled my brain for a moment and I stopped, dead in the center of the bathroom, for a minute, trying to catch it. Something about the knockout.

Nothing. Shaking my head, I headed back into the bedroom. All things considered, I could use some sleep. I lay back on the bed, staring at the big vent above me, unsurprised at its presence. This room had to be over a hundred feet underground; they would have to pipe air down.

I couldn’t believe it had really been less than 24 hours since this had all started. I ran over the timeline: meeting the Pushers, the cycle ride, Bren, the Enjineering Dome.

I don’t know how long I slept, but the light had shut off on its own, leaving the room pitch black. I sat up and the light came on. Nothing in the room had changed. I stepped to the door, entertaining the idea that it might have somehow come unlocked.

No luck. My Papa said that it was just after 01:00. If I could find a way out of the room, this seemed like it would be the perfect time to snoop around Prime One.

But what was that smell?

I looked around, back at the bed, then toward the bathroom.

Understanding dawned. It was me. I’d been running, bleeding, and crawling through dirt for hours. I hit the button next to the Klothes-Jeni, hoping . . . .

Yes. A full set of clothes sat folded in the space that opened up. Down to underwear and socks. There was even a new zip hanging from a hook. I grabbed everything with my left arm and made my way to the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, I emerged, using my teeth to help me tie my Papa back onto my left wrist. The cast had gotten wet and I’d felt water sliding down inside it, but that was unavoidable. I felt clean. Refreshed. The rumbling in my stomach wouldn’t go away, but there was nothing I could do for that. For now, I was just glad I couldn’t smell myself anymore.

I tried the door again, laughing at the stupid hope that flared each time. Again, of course, no luck.

I pulled the spoke out of my old, shredded zip and poked at the edges of the door with it. There was a slight gap between the bottom of the door and the threshold. Maybe I could somehow pop the door off its runners and maybe even knock it down.

Worth a try. I yanked my sleeve over my left hand and gripped the spoke tightly, jabbing it hard at the gap. It stopped before it went even one centimeter. I kept up the pressure and slid it the length of the tiny space, hoping there was some place it would slide deeper.

Nothing. The door was perfectly made and built. I got up and wandered the room, thinking about the Jeni. I grabbed my old clothes and made for the Jeni, opening it. I tossed my clothes in, but kept it open by reaching up into it with my left hand and gauging the space.

I couldn’t fit even half of me in there.

I dropped onto the bed. “Bug me.” Maybe there was no way out of here, especially if I had to escape from one of those guard robots. They had to have all kinds of weapons hidden away in those complicated mechanisms. I didn’t want to mess with them, at least, not if I could avoid it.

Fingering the spoke, I lay back on the bed.

I needed to get out of here. I was done being confused. Done wondering what had happened to Bren. I was going to find out what was going on. And if someone—some
person
—was responsible for Bren’s death—

Cold anger coursed down my spine. If someone had done that to him, had murdered Bren, I was going to find that person.

I ran my left index finger up and down the spoke.

I looked closer at the vent above the bed. It was maybe half a meter long by a quarter meter wide. I felt the spoke again. If I could reach the vent—

I rolled off the bed to my feet, then got back on, stretching as high as I could. I could just barely place my palm on the vent. Perfect. I immediately set to poking at the vent’s edges, my stiff right arm out slightly to give me better balance on the soft bed. I slid the tip of the spoke along the seam between the vent and the ceiling, but couldn’t find a gap at all. Then I tried jabbing the spoke at the seam to see if I could work a space open.

No good. I felt like if I could just get a good grip on the vent somehow, I should be able to pull it out, since I couldn’t see any kind of fastening clips on this side of the thing. It must have basic tabs that slid into receptacles built into the air shaft. I’d seen plenty of hardware like that in the Enjineering Dome, so I was pretty certain that I just needed to give the vent cover a good pull and it would come free.

But I couldn’t get the spoke under the vent’s edge. If I had a thin clamp, I could probably grab one of the slats on the vent and just tug.

I examined the spoke, then the gap between the narrow slats on the vent. That was it. I bent the top of the spoke down, basically forming a hook. Then I slid the hooked end of the spoke through a gap, turned it slightly, and brought the hook back through another gap, hooking a slat in the process. I gave it an experimental tug and felt a slight movement from the vent cover. I stopped, listened carefully and, hearing nothing, grabbed the spoke tightly and pulled as hard as I could.

The vent cover popped off with a grating noise, hitting my shoulder before landing on the bed under my feet.

My spoke was magical. What couldn’t I do with this thing? I kissed my skinny metal savior and shoved it into my zip pocket, then reached for the shaft that the vent cover had been hiding. The shaft went straight up for about a half meter, then looked like it ended at a T, with another shaft heading in the direction of the bathroom and the other arm of the T going toward my room’s wall.

I peered at the shaft, estimating its size. I was pretty sure I’d be able to move around in there, even with my arm in a cast. If only I could get up into it. My arm wasn’t long enough to reach where the shaft made a T; I needed more height. I jumped half-heartedly. The bed absorbed most of my force and I didn’t come anywhere close. Which was probably for the best, since my left arm was nowhere near strong enough to pull me up into the shaft.

I needed more height. At least a half-meter. Still standing on the bed, I looked around the room. My eyes settled on the table.
Please don’t let it be bolted down.
It wasn’t. I set it on the bed and carefully eased one foot, then another atop it. It wobbled crazily. I jumped onto the bed before the unsteady table dropped me. I looked at it for a minute. There was no way I could stand on it and work my way into the shaft without falling.

Or was there?

I grinned at the revelation and flipped the table upside down. The table was made of plasteel, and its four legs were connected to each other by strong cross bars. If I could stand on the cross bars—

This way worked much better. The table didn’t wobble at all as I eased myself onto the cross bars. I’d gained nearly a meter in height. I eased my head and shoulders into the shaft. My head reached past the junction of the T and I had no trouble seeing both directions. I wanted to get back into the Prime Administrator’s office, via the elevator, so that meant I needed to follow the shaft that passed through the bathroom ceiling. I hoped this shaft opened up in the elevator shaft.

I snaked my good arm up and reached as far as I could down the shaft, then pushed off the table and tried to get a grip on the smooth plasteel surface of the vent.

I slid back down and only just hooked my feet on the crossbars of the table before I almost fell all the way back onto the bed. I needed some leverage. I also needed even more height. With my left hand still in the shaft, I scanned the furniture in the room and bathroom. Nothing left that would be able to move. This was all the height I was going to get.

I reached again, but this time propped my hand against the top of the shaft I was aiming for and squeezed the top of my back against the shaft. Feeling like I had a little support, I eased my body up, trying to expand my torso to fill the shaft and keep me up.

I moved maybe three centimeters. It was progress.

I sucked in a big breath and expanded myself as much as I could, tightening my neck to press my head against the shaft wall, then worked my back muscles and shoulder to squeeze a little higher. A few more centimeters. If I could just get my butt into the shaft, I’d have a lot more flexibility to work with.

I repeated the process of flexing different muscles, pain flaring in my left shoulder and neck. The pain grew faster than I was moving. I couldn’t keep this up.

But I couldn’t stop. It had to be near 02:00; probably the best time to snoop around Prime One. I couldn’t let them hold me here and do whatever they wanted to me. Something was definitely going on here, something to do with the Bug. And the Prime Administrator.

Pain jabbed sharp and hot in my right arm as I angled it up and pushed it past my head into the shaft. I gritted my teeth against the pain and spread my arms out, pinning the cast and my left hand against the walls of the shaft. I immediately felt stronger, like I could move better.

I wiggled, snaked, and flexed, trying to keep my grunts to a minimum. I didn’t want bots thinking some woodland creature had made it into the vents and was dying up here. They’d be sure to come investigate.

There! I felt the corner of the shaft dig into my lower abdomen and the pressure on my neck, head, and shoulders decreased. With a little more wiggling and kicking, I was completely in the shaft. I had a passing thought that I maybe should have tried to replace the vent cover, but that was drek. They would know I was gone once they opened the door to my room.