S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (15 page)

Her throat closed up, and the shadows swooped up the stairs and enveloped her, mind and body and soul. Just before she fell, she heard the sound of her name, uttered as a moan, as if propelled on dead air from dead lungs through dead lips.

‡ ‡ ‡

It wasn't the dark shape hulking over her which terrified her, it was the way its voice seemed to whisper and roar at her all at once. The tremulous words made no sense, yet seemed to impart some ominous meaning. The shape altered, sprouted another head, split into two distinct beings. The second shadow replied with its own incoherent vocalizations.

Jessie didn't move. Her neck ached, and the shoulder she'd dislocated weeks before on Long Island burned with fresh agony. Her legs felt funny— there, and yet not there. Her head was pounding like her skull had split open.

She coughed, weakly.

The smaller of the shadows descended upon her so quickly that she jerked away. Pain ratcheted through her body. But she was stuck. She couldn't move; the larger shape was pinning her down.

“Luh—” she grunted.

There was suddenly more light and a face came into view and spoke. She knew this face; she recognized the word it had spoken: it was her name.

“R reggie?” she whispered. The word tumbled unbidden from her lips, sounding strange to her ears, chunky.

“Don't move,” Reggie instructed. The words still sounded garbled, like his mouth was full of cotton.

Jessie tried to lift her arm, but the pain was too much.

“Damn it, Jessie! I said don't move! We need to check your neck, make sure you didn't break it.”

We? She flicked her eyes to the right. Reggie hissed warningly. The smaller shape swam into view, and she saw that it was Kelly and her relief swelled. Then, unexpectedly, it contracted again.

What's wrong with me?

“Can you move your fingers? Toes?”

She tried. The result relieved some of the tension in Reggie's face.

“You fell down the cellar steps.”

She flicked her eyes downward and saw the stairs rising up past the end of her naked ankles. Miles away, or so it seemed, was the doorway at the top of the steps. Above it, the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling.

The boys ran her through a battery of tests until they were convinced she hadn't damaged her spine. She very nearly laughed at their pitiful attempts to triage her, but by then, the pain in her shoulder had become too insistent to ignore. She tried to sit up, but Reggie pushed gently on her shoulders to keep her still and warned her to be quiet. She tried, but quickly lost patience and shoved him away. “My neck's fine,” she growled.

The only thing exceeding the pain she felt was her embarrassment, and that was no small thing, since the fall down the steps seemed to have inflicted innumerable bruises. But right now it was the injury to her dignity of which she was mostly keenly aware. The coldness of the floor on the backs of her thighs and her lower back informed her that the sundress she'd put on had worked its way up her body as she fell, up beyond her waist.

A faint image of a bare midriff flashed in her mind, then whipped away and wouldn't be cajoled back.

Mom?

One of the boys had pulled her dress down to cover her up, but her back was in direct contact with the cold, packed earthen floor.

She pulled her legs down from their elevated position on the steps and tried to sit up. A thick trickle of blood had formed a dark crescent on her knee. The skin had abraded so severely that there were hundreds of tiny spots covering a large patch. At least the bleeding had stopped and nothing seemed broken.

“What happened?” Kelly asked. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving a smudge of dirt on his forehead, adding to the shadows already there. He bent down. “Jessie—?”

Without thinking, she flinched away from his touch, drawing herself out of reach. She was afraid of him; she just couldn't remember why.

“Jess?”

“Don't touch me!” she cried, shivering. Kelly recoiled with a sharp breath, pain in his eyes. “But—”

Reggie leaned over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Jessie, it's just Kel,” he said. “You're safe now.”

No. No, I'm not!

She wanted to reach out to Kelly, to hold him. And yet she also wanted to run away as fast as she could. But all she ended up doing was cowering in Reggie's arms and staring at the pained expression on her husband's face.

† † †

Jessie closed her eyes, leaned into the steam rising from the tea Kelly made for her, and inhaled deeply. Her whole body ached, but now parts of her were screaming out for attention like baby birds: the side of her head, her left elbow, her whole right side, thigh and knee. The pain was making her head swim.

The boys waited, barely able to constrain their impatience, trying not to seem overly worried. Reggie kept standing up and pacing before sitting back down again after taking only a few steps. Kelly sat nearby on the couch, not touching her, looking as if he was afraid he might spook her again.

“Eric's on his way,” he said. “We should take you in to Sisters of Mercy, make sure you don't have a concussion.” He stopped, turned toward her, pretended not to notice the way she flinched. “You honestly don't remember what happened?”

Jessie shook her head and winced at the stiffness in her neck. She took a sip of the hot liquid but didn't really taste it, just grateful for the way it warmed her. She stared into the cup and tried to gather her thoughts, but they remained as muddled as ever.

“You pinged me this morning, Jess,” Reggie said. “Remember?”

She frowned at him in concentration, the first hint of something niggling the back of her mind.
What was it?

Outbreaks. Rumors.

Something about Kelly.

And Micah.

An image of her Link, the marriage proposal.

Jacker's Code.

She choked, coughed. “Too sweet,” she said, covering her shock. Reggie took the cup.

“I'll make some more,” Kelly said, taking the tea and getting to his feet. “Less sugar this time.” He threw Reggie a worried glance before leaving the room.

“So, you want to tell me what's going on?” Reggie whispered. His eyes flicked to the empty doorway to the hall. “What the hell is going on with you two? You're acting like he has leprosy.”

“I  I'm not sure.”

“You told me to come after school and not to bring Kelly.”

And then it all came back to her in a mad rush: yesterday's trip to the capitol, the screening, her search using her grandfather's old computer for a file that didn't belong.

Finding it. Realizing everything Kelly'd been telling her was lies.

“The code,” she whispered. “The Jacker's code.”

It was in the last place she would ever have thought to look: embedded within the photo Kelly had sent to her that day they'd broken onto Long Island.

The bastard.

“What?” Reggie asked, shaking his head.

“Why did you bring him?” Jessie hissed.

“Kelly? I didn't. I came alone. Knocked on the door, pinged, but you didn't answer. It was open. When I found you downstairs, I had to ping Kelly. I had no choice.”

Jessie closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to relax. It was difficult. At least it had been Reg who'd found her. She smiled to herself, knowing how embarrassed he would've been, modestly covering her up. His macho demeanor was just an act. Inside, he was such a little kid.

“He was on his way anyway,” Reggie continued. “Got here not two or three minutes after I pinged him.”

And now she sensed the need to tell Reggie everything before Kelly returned from the kitchen.

“I found a file,” she whispered. “On my Link.”

His eyebrows raised, then fell in confusion.

“Remember what Micah said, right before he was—?” She stopped, swallowed.

He nodded. “I remember. Go on.”

“It was hidden. Micah was telling the truth. He wasn't working for the SSC. Kelly was.”

Reggie jerked away from her, shaking his head. “What? No.”

They could hear Kelly puttering around in the kitchen, the ding of the microwave, a drawer closing.

“Look, there's not enough time to explain everything,” Jessie whispered. “Just, whatever this file is, I think it's screwing up my implant, blocking it somehow.”

“How do you know?”

“When I went to Citizen Registration yesterday—”

“You went to Hartford?” Kelly asked. He was standing in the doorway, the cup in one hand, a spoon and the sugar bowl in the other. “Yesterday?”

Both Jessie and Reggie jumped. Nobody spoke for several seconds, they just stared at each other in turn.

“Um, yeah,” Jessie finally said, measuring her words carefully. “They pinged and said I had to go in because I missed the screening at school.”

Kelly's face went red. He stepped in looking angry.

“Whoa, hey, brah,” Reggie said, getting to his feet. “Calm dow—”

Kelly swept Reggie's arm out of the way and stepped toward Jessie. Hot tea sloshed over his hand and he hissed in pain, but his gaze never left hers.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Tell me!”

“Nothing! I—”

“It's not nothing!” He set the items down on the table, then reached over and took hold of her arms. Jessie tried to pull away, her eyes widening in fright.

“Kelly, you're scaring her.”

“Back off, Reggie!” Kelly roared. His face was twisted, unrecognizable.

Before Jessie could stop him, he reached around to the back of her neck and pressed his fingertips to the skin there.

“Stop it! Get away from me!” She pushed his arms away. “I s-said nothing happened. They screened my Link and implant devices. That's all.”

“
And?
”

“And what? Nothing. They're both functional. As in not rejected.”

Reggie gave a start. “Your implant? Not rejected? I'm confused.”

“I don't know,” Jessie screamed. “I don't understand it either!”

She turned her eyes onto Kelly's face. And suddenly she knew that she was right because there was no surprise there by her admission.

“Jessie,” he whispered. He took a deep breath. “I wish I'd known. I would've taken you to Hartford myself.”

She didn't answer. Behind him, she could see Reggie blinking, his gaze passing from one to the other and his face twisted in confusion.

“What did they say?”

“There's a glitch,” she answered. She spoke slowly now, calmly. There was still no glimmer of surprise in Kelly's face, only defeat. “Something wrong with the devices. Something's blocking how they communicate with the network.” She felt Kelly tense up.

“Can they fix it?” Reggie asked.

“This is ridiculous!” Kelly exploded. “It doesn't need to be fixed!”

“Dude, what the hell is going on?” Reggie demanded.

Jessie stepped away. Kelly followed, keeping the distance between them the same. They faced each other, he a couple inches taller. Jessie wondered if he could see her shaking. “Yeah, Kelly, why don't you tell us what's going on?”

“I don't know!” he cried. He stepped away, stumbled, then circled behind Reggie. “I  I have to go.”

“Whoa, dude. We're right in the middle of—”

“It's Kyle! I forgot about Kyle. At the hospital.”

“What?” Reggie exclaimed. He tried to grab Kelly's arm. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Let him go,” Jessie whispered.

After the front door closed, she watched him from the window, made sure he really was leaving. Then she went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She was feeling jittery again, like the floor might suddenly give beneath her or the walls might collapse or float away. Reggie trailed after her, gawping, speechless. Jessie wanted to tell him everything, but now she wasn't sure it would be wise. She thought she'd known Kelly. Could she trust Reggie?

She went and stood at the sink and tried to make the trembling go away, but it just seemed to get worse.

Reggie placed a meaty hand gently on her arm. “Jessie, it's me. Talk to me.”

She looked up and into his eyes and instantly knew that she wanted him to know. She
needed
him to know.

So she told him.

‡ ‡ ‡

“I don't get it,” Reggie said, staring at the file directory window on the computer screen. “Why would Kelly do something like this? And what the hell could it be? It's, like, freaking massive. Definitely not just a photo.”

Jessie slumped down in her grandfather's chair and shook her head. She'd taken another dose of aspirin and was grateful for the relief it brought. But there was no way any medicine could touch the real pain inside of her.

She was scared. Terrified. The world around her had gone from a strange dream of denial to a terrifying nightmare. And she just couldn't seem to wake up out of it.

“How could he do this to you?”

She could see the betrayal in Reggie's eyes and knew he saw the same in hers. She was glad she'd decided to confide in him, but also afraid of what he might do in response.

You knew he'd be like this. That's why you told him. You
wanted
him to know, remember?

“All these years . . . .” Reggie began, but then he stopped and just sat there on the edge of the desk shaking his head. “I just can't believe it.”

Jessie nodded. Kelly had professed his love for her since he was thirteen, long before either of them even knew what love was. He had never once abandoned her, not even when she had abandoned him last summer.

Retribution?

The thought left an even worse taste in her mouth. Could Kelly have held a secret grudge
that
long?

It just didn't seem possible. It wasn't like him. With Kelly, what you saw was what you got. He'd always been that way, solid and consistent. Like a rock. Just like he'd always been Kyle's rock.