S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (49 page)

Jessie struggled to control her temper.

“But you? Do you know what it's like, to be able to see through someone else's eyes, hear them? Witness their pitiful life? I'd connect to you and all I'd see is you sitting around watching
Survivalist
! If I could've controlled you, I would've wrapped your hands around your mother's throat and—”

Jessie rose, screaming in rage, but Ashley pushed her back down again and yelled at her to shut up.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out Jessie's Link. “But now I know why I couldn't. It was your stupid grandfather and his stupid firewall.”

“You've already failed, Ash,” Jessie whispered. “You didn't kill my mother. My brother found her. She's in the hospital. You failed. All you've got is me.”

But Ashley just smiled. She tossed Jessie's Link over. It landed flat on her lap. “Kelly sent you a message while you were downstairs. You might want to check it.”

Jessie slowly flipped the Link to the front and woke it. Her heart stopped when she saw what it said:

<< YOUR MOM IS DEAD >>

‡ ‡ ‡

Kelly tapped on Doctor White's door. There was a faint rustle of movement from inside the office, then a thump and the door rattled in its frame as something heavy fell against it on the other side. He stepped back in alarm, the hairs on his arms and neck raised. “Doctor White?” he called. “It's Kelly Corben.”

The door rattled again, then there came a scraping noise as something soft slid across it. Kelly leaned his shoulder and ear to the wood, but the sound didn't repeat. “Docto—”

The door opened and he stumbled into the office, falling onto the desk. The smell of sickness filled his nose and spilled into his throat.

“I told you not to come,” Doctor White croaked. She shuffled back to her chair and sat heavily into it, letting out another foul exhale. She looked like she hadn't slept in days.

“What's wrong with you?” Kelly demanded. He pushed himself away from her and stared. The woman's face was as pale as the hospital bed sheets, except for the dark circles around her eyes. Her cheekbones stood out sharply, the pale, shiny skin drawn tight over them, accentuating the hollows of her jaw and her neck. “And why's it so hot in here?”

“It's this fever,” she said, her voice barely reaching his ears. The chattering of her teeth was louder. “S-strep throat.”

Strep throat my ass
, he thought.
She looks like death warmed over.

“You sh-shouldn't be here, Kelly.”

“I was already in the hospital.”

“You should've pinged.”

“I have. You haven't been responding.”

Doctor White lifted a trembling hand from the desk and gestured weakly at a chair.

“Reggie's awake,” he said. “The police are interrogating him now.”

“And Jessica? Any news?”

Kelly sat, leaning back. The heat and the smell were getting to him, making his stomach roil.

“We made contact at noon, but Eric disconnected.”

“Why?”

“Because of Ashley Evans. Jessie found her at the Jayne's Hill complex. Alive.”

“I thought sh-she was dead.”

“We all thought that. Apparently Eric now believes the hacker theory, except he thinks it's Ashley, not Micah.”

White barely moved her head, but it was enough to tell Kelly she was paying attention.

“He searched the Evanses's house, looking for some kind of proof. We'll need it to get Reggie off the hook.”
And me
, he thought. “And to bring Jessie home. But he didn't find anything.”

“You sound like you doubt Ashley's involvement.”

“I'm not convinced of anything right now.”

“Well, this feels personal,” White said. “It's not Arc or the Coalition.”

That's what scared Kelly. He looked away, sighing. In the past several weeks, Jessie had suffered betrayals of one form or another by nearly everyone she knew. He hated to think that the worst betrayal might be from her own best friend.

You need to step up, be the man she needs you to be.

The time for that was long overdue.

“I sent Jessie a text about her mother. I hope it gets through. At least it'll give her a reason to want to come home.” He paused. “Sooner.”

Doctor White's nod was barely perceptible. She leaned over and woke her Link on the desktop. “Well, at least I've got a bit of good news. I've been meaning to tell you.”

“What's that?”

“Kyle's blood test came back clean. He's no longer infected.”

“Does that mean you have a cure?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “It needs to be independently confirmed, of course. But, yes, I believe we finally do.”

‡ ‡ ‡

Jessie stared at the message for several seconds. She'd lost complete awareness of everything else— the bindings on her feet, Ashley, the pistol pointed at her head. Her vision had tunneled and focused on that one last word: DEAD.
How could it be possible?

The fury which she had held inside of her, had suppressed and denied for so long, rose up again. But instead of impelling her to act, it began to forge something new inside of her. Any connection the two girls had once shared was incinerated from her mind.

She looked up and wasn't surprised to find Ashley studying her, a quizzical look on her face, as if she'd been expecting something else.

“Nothing?” she asked. “I guess I overestimated what your mother meant to you.”

“No, you overestimated your ability to hurt me,” Jessie lied. She slipped the Link into her pocket while keeping her eyes locked on Ashley's.

Ashley simply laughed. “As much as I'd love for you to have a reminder of what I did to your mom, I'm going to need that back. I'm not quite through with you. I still need you to get me Micah's other tablet. And after I've broken through the firewall on your Link and taken those files, then the real fun will begin.”

Jessie brought her hand up to her cheek and rubbed it. A murky image popped up in front of her, difficult to distinguish against the brightness of the fluorescent lights. She turned to the wall.

Tree bark. It's in the forest.

“The question,” Ashley continued, “is what to do with you now. It'd be so much easier if I could control you to begin with instead of making it the end game.”

Jessie pictured the gate, the control panel, her fingers typing in the code. She concentrated on sending the message. Or image. Or whatever the hell it was.

The package.

Now she wished she'd trained longer. She had no clue whether it would even work. If she could even get the Player to respond.

The double image shifted, one half sliding over the other. The Player was moving.

Coincidence.

She turned her attention back to Ashley. “You got what you wanted. So finish it. Put a bullet in my head.”

Ashley smiled. “That would be too easy. I want you to suffer.”

The superimposed image grew brighter. The Player had emerged from the woods.

She pictured the gate, the keypad, the numbers— not the code she'd tried before, but the one she'd watched Ashley input after closing the gate.

It hadn't registered then, but now it was clear: the blood on the wrong numbers, why she hadn't been able to turn the fence off herself before. Ashley had reprogrammed it. She almost laughed when it clicked in her mind that the new number was Jessie's Link identifier.

The gate was ahead. She could see it now, a ghostly apparition of a lone IU standing there, staring up at the sun.

Go to the panel.

“I'll hack it,” Ashley said. “You'll take me to the other tablet. It'll have my program on it, too, my nifty little heuristic algorithm.”

Jessie shook her head.

4 – 1 –

Ashley thrust the muzzle of the gun under Jessie's throat. “You've got no choice.”

6 – 3 – 1 –

“You're wrong,” Jessie said. “There's always a choice.”

9 – 6 – 4 – 6 – 6 – 3.

“Get up!”

Open the gate.

“Kind of hard to walk with my feet bound.”

Ashley stepped back. “Untie them, bitch. Then get up.”

Jessie reached over and began to work the knots. Her fingers did not feel fat and clumsy as they had when she'd tied the strap a half hour earlier. Now they felt as strong and focused as her mind. They knew what needed to be done. She was, mind and body and soul, of one intent.

Walk forward.

She was Operator and Player.

Turn around. Close the gate. Come.

She pictured the gray-green door, and watched it draw closer.

She rubbed the soreness from her ankles, then stood up. “You'll never be able to get to the others.”

“I don't have to. You will. You'll be my own personal Player.”

Ashley grabbed her arm and wrenched her around, thrusting her through the door of the room. Jessie's feet tangled and she stumbled, but she caught herself on the jamb. Out into the hallway.

Wait there.

“Move it!” A hand slammed into Jessie's back, launching her forward. Once more, she managed to keep her feet beneath her.

Wait.

“Stop. Turn around.”

Jessie slowly turned. Her heart skipped once, then settled back into that slow, calm, steady rhythm.

“We're going to need food and water.” Ashley stepped back and gestured to the open doorway with the pistol. “Empty out the duffle and fill it. You're carrying the supplies.”

Jessie returned to the room. Her eyes quickly scanned it, came to rest on the metal chair pushed to the side of the door. Ashley gave her another shove in the back, expelling the air from her lungs.

“Don't even think about it.”

She did as Ashley instructed, filling the bag with the water first, then throwing the cans and packaged food in after. Her back strained when she lifted it, but she smiled inwardly, knowing she wouldn't be carrying it for long. She slung it over her back, looping a strap over each shoulder, and grunted when the edge of a can hit her spine. But the pain was a distant thing and it soon faded away from her.

They returned to the hallway, once more with Jessie in the lead.

Into the lobby.

Wait.

To the door.

Almost there.

“I hope you're ready for a long walk,” Ashley said. “It'll be hot. And I set a mean pace. But don't worry. After we get to the end, you won't have to worry about anything anymore.”

“Yeah, I'm ready,” Jessie said, and stepped out into the bright sunlight.

‡ ‡ ‡

“Well, the good news,” Eric said as he removed a glass from the cupboard and poured himself some water from the tap, “is that Arc wants us to hold onto Reggie until they can run a diagnostic on his implant. Hopefully that'll buy us enough time to come up with some proof of the hack.”

A bead of sweat trickled from the hairline on his forehead and curled around his eyebrow. He thumbed it away. “It's hot out there today.”

“It's hot every day,” Kelly noted. “I'll be glad when it's winter and the thermometer maxes out at seventy.”

Eric refilled the glass. “They're going to make an announcement this afternoon, Arc is. It's a good sign. It means they'll finally acknowledge the problems.”

“Do you think they'll suspend
The Game
?” Kelly asked, surprised.

“I don't see how they can't, not after what my boss and I told them.”

“She believed you then? Everything?”

Eric nodded. “I was a bit surprised at how easily she accepted it, but it corroborated a lot of what Reggie had already told her. Convincing Arc, though. That's another story.”

He wiped his lips on the back of his sleeve.

“Harrick told me that when she finally managed to connect to someone in charge over at Arc Headquarters, they demanded proof.”

“If there is proof, it's on their servers,” Kelly said.

“Exactly. And they know it. She managed to get them to agree to take a look. They had her on hold for twenty minutes, and when they finally got back to her, all they promised was that they'd make an announcement at the start of the four o'clock showing of
Survivalist
.”

Kelly grunted.

“Cheer up, Kel. This bodes well for everyone involved.” He checked his Link. “I'm going to head back over to the hospital to be with Mom.”

“I texted her. Jessie, I mean. I told her she was out of her coma, but I don't know if she got it.”

“Texted?”

“Sent it through the gaming console, so I'm not even sure if it worked.

Eric set the empty glass in the sink and rubbed his chin. “I wish you hadn't.”

“Jessie's smart enough to figure it out about Ashley, Eric. I just wanted to give her some good news.”

Eric stepped over and placed his hand on Kelly's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I know you mean well.” He dropped his hand and headed for the door.

“Four o'clock is the announcement?”

“Yes.”

Kelly let out a heavy breath. “Doctor White told me something today. Good news.”

“What is it?”

“The cure she was working on? It looks like it's real. Kyle's last blood test came back negative. He's completely free of the virus.”

Eric raised his eyebrows. “I'm still getting used to the idea that he's been infected all these years and that Jessie's blood has been keeping him alive and none of us knew. Well, me and Jessie, anyway. Maybe Mom did. But a cure, that's fantastic, Kelly!”

Kelly nodded and tried to smile. He was glad for his brother, of course, but it bothered him what she'd said about getting independent verification. How was she going to do that?

‡ ‡ ‡

NOW!

Jessie dove to the cement beside the walkway and rolled to her right, even as she pictured her hands going to Ashley's throat. The bag on her back threw off her balance and she landed hard on her shoulder, scraping both her elbow and her forehead. For a moment, she saw stars, losing her grip on the image at the front of her mind.