Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (20 page)

falling through some of the broken glass above the pool.
The wind has died down and the snow has changed. It’s no
 longer light and wispy; now, each flake is the size of a dime.
We run quickly to the other side of the room, through
 to the women’s locker room. It’s dark and chilly and smells
 of bleach. We push the swing door open between the
 locker room and outer hallway. I touch Sam lightly on the
 shoulder and point. A row of panicked eyes stare back at
 us. Six nurses are propped against the wall, gagged, their
 hands and feet bound.
“Hostages,” Jerry says.
I scan the group quickly, and right away I recognize
Nurse Jenner. I can’t tell if she’s relieved or worried. Cer-
 tainly, all of them seem bewildered by the sight of us.  
I kneel and remove the gag from Nurse Jenner’s mouth
 as Sam cuts the plastic tie binding her wrists with a knife
 he’s pulled from the backpack.
“How are you still alive?” she asks.
“I don’t honestly know.”
“Do you know what happened to the other patients on
 the floor? Oscar? William?”
William? Ah. The kid in the coma.
“William is dead. Oscar is alive, but he’s not—there’s
 something wrong with him.”
“Of course there is. You think we’re playing around
 here? These procedures are precise. Oscar needs to have
 his final injection of sealant. Soon. Sooner than now. Do
 you know what that boy is capable of?” She looks at me as
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if I’m being stupid on purpose, which I now realize is how
 she’s always looked at me.  
“I know where he is,” I say. “I could give him the injec-
 tion.”
I begin to unravel the thick tape that keeps her ankles
 bound together, but she pulls her feet away and finishes
 it herself. “We’ve got to get to the medicine locker at the
 nurses’ station on the third floor.”
Sam looks at me. One of those soldiers in the locker
 room said something about heading upstairs.
I start to undo the tape on another nurse’s ankles, but
Jenner stops me. “You’re better off leaving them where
 they are. They send someone by every fifteen minutes to
 check on us. If they see us all gone, they’ll just hunt us
 down and shoot us.”
“Where’s Dr. Ladner?” I ask.
“Ladner.” She says his name like it disgusts her. “This
 is his fault.”
“That’s not what I asked. I want to know where he is.”
She looks at me, startled. I’ve never actually said a defi-
 ant word to the woman until now.
“He barricaded himself in his office on the sixth floor
 before they rounded us all up. They seem to be focusing
 their efforts on getting at him. And someone else.”
I try to remain calm and not react to this statement. She
 must have missed the exciting announcement in the lobby
 about who they were looking for when they first burst in.
I doubt  she’d help  if she knew these guys were after me.
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Sam and Jerry run up ahead of us. Nurse Jenner is remark-
 ably nimble as she climbs up the stairs to the third floor,
 leaping over fallen concrete blocks as she goes. She’s about
 to open the door to the hallway when Sam steps forward.
“Jerry and I will go first to make sure it’s clear.”
Jenner is about to follow. “Wait. They’ll let us know
 when it’s okay.”
She doesn’t like having to listen to me, but she does.
“Is there some way to put out a distress call?” I ask her.
“Of course there is,” she snaps. “You can’t have a hospi-
 tal full of people like you and not have an evacuation plan.”
“So what is it?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light.
“There’s a panic button on the wall behind the security
 desk in the main lobby. If you hit it, there’s a Special Forces
 unit that’s supposed to come. Not that it’ll do us any good
 in this storm.”
I hear two knocks on the fire door. Sam’s signal.
“Quickly,” Sam says, crouching low next to the main desk.
Though the outer windows are riddled with bullet
 holes and some of the monitors have fallen onto the floor,
 the nurses’ station is still full of equipment that’s gone onto
 battery backup. Something is beeping urgently. We duck
 down and make our way along, staying hidden behind the
 desk. Jenner crawls to the  the medicine cabinet, punches in
 a code, and quickly prepares a syringe. “Give Oscar this.”
She reaches into the cabinet again and pulls out another
 syringe. “And if he gives you any trouble, pop him with
 this. Just touch it to his skin, press the button on the top,
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and the syringe will automatically inject the sedative.”
She hands both syringes to me and then suddenly stands
 up in plain view.  Her head swivels back and forth, her eyes
flicking nervously around the room and toward the ceiling.
“I also need something. It’s a clear gel capsule.”
She freezes,, then spins around.  “Who told you about
 those pills?”
What can I say to her that will make sense? That will
 make her help me without asking why?
I stand up straight and look her in the eye. “Dr. Buckley.”
“You’re lying. Buckley isn’t even on site, and even if he
 were, he doesn’t interact with patients as a rule.”
She looks at the clothes I’m wearing. At my boots. Like
 she’s trying to piece things together. “Someone helped you
 get out. Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
I see her jaw working as she thinks. “It was Ladner,
 wasn’t it? Yes, it had to be. I knew there was something
 funny about that power outage. This place has backup sys-
 tems for its backup systems. And just when that consultant
 was here to make sure your procedure went as planned.”
Jenner moves closer to me. Her blue surgical scrubs are
filthy and torn. She looks like she wants to put her hands
 around my neck and break it. I have no doubt she could.
I sigh loudly, rub my eyes, and sit down in the desk
 chair even as she towers over me. I’m getting tired of peo-
 ple wanting to kill me. I really am.
She grabs the chair and spins it so that I’m facing her.  
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“It makes sense now. All the delays. You were supposed to
 be done months ago, but every time you were scheduled
 for surgery, something would come up. Twice, Dr. Buck-
 ley just didn’t show up to conduct your procedure.”
“Maybe he was busy building toys for all the good girls
 and boys.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“They were doing something different to you. And
 they didn’t want anyone to find out.”
“What was it? What did they do to me?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed near your surgery. They
 told me I didn’t have high enough security clearance. Non-
 sense. I’ve assisted with dozens of memory modifications.
I know where all the bodies are buried around here. And
 then you come along, and suddenly I can’t be trusted?”
She’s inches from me, her eyes blazing and locked onto
 me like I’m a target.  
“No one could observe. You were some big break-
 through. I heard them say it once, and I didn’t understand
 at the time. I didn’t get why Dr. Buckley and Ladner gave
 you special treatment. Why would that be?”
I have no idea. I really don’t, but what’s the point of
 telling her that?
“I don’t think there’s anything special about you at all.
I think you’re just a girl with a violent past, a bad attitude,
 and no future. Just like the rest of them.”
The door swings open behind Nurse Jenner. I see the
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outline of a soldier, and then I hear a scuffle followed
 by grunts and a crack. When I look again, a dark form
 lays crumpled on the floor. Sam and Jerry enter, stepping
 over the mercenary’s body. Sam crouches down and picks
 through the soldier’s utility belts and pockets. He takes the
 mercenary’s gun and slings the guy’s backpack over his
 shoulder, a model of cool professionalism.
Jenner looks at Sam and Jerry and shakes her head. “And
 now, as if things weren’t bad enough, you’ve gone and
 opened Pandora’s box.”
“No, they’re okay,” I say. “A bit messed up in terms of
 geography at the moment, but they’re still the same good
 men they were before.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. They put
 those men here so they could gather every last bit of infor-
 mation about them before they died. Maybe learn from
 their mistakes. Those men are nothing but failed medical
 experiments with the capacity to . . . ”
“To what?”
She stares at me, her face steely and hateful, her coral
 lipstick smeared up into the lines around her mouth. She
 no longer has to care for me or pretend to be civil, and we
 both know it.
She pours a bottle of capsules onto the floor and then
 throws the bottle down. “If you want to know what you
 really are, by all means, take these pills. But be prepared.”
“I’m not afraid of finding out who I am. Not anymore.”
“You should be. The fourth floor was where they put
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the worst cases, and these soldiers upstairs who are after
 you, whoever they are—let me just tell you, they wouldn’t
 be after you if you didn’t deserve it.”
Jenner grabs the microphone on the nurses’ desk and
 blows into it. “Testing. Can you hear me?” I hear her voice
 amplified over the PA system. “This is Pamela Jenner. I have
 level 2A clearance. I’m at the third-floor nurses’ station. She’s
 here. The girl you’re looking for is here. Sarah Ramos.”
My whole body sags. Not because she’s hurt my feelings
 or betrayed my trust—let’s face it, I hate the woman and
 she hates me—but because I know what’s going to happen.  
“They’re not going to reward you for turning me in, if
 that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’d rather take my chances with them than with you.
Or them,” she says, nodding toward Sam and Jerry.
“Nurse Jenner, Pam, whatever your name is, I don’t
 know how much they’re paying you to do this job, but it’s
 not nearly enough, considering what’s about to happen to
 you.”
“Happen to me? You should worry about yourself.”
“Oh, I do. Believe me. Nonstop.”
Almost instantly soldiers pour into the room. They fire
 at the desk and hit the bank of monitors behind us. Sam
 looks at the approaching soldiers; his eyes narrow like he’s
 got crosshairs built into his pupils.
Nurse Jenner lunges at me and grabs me by my wrist,
 but trying to hold on to me is her big mistake. As I peel
Jenner’s fingers off my arm one by one, Jerry moves toward
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her with such grace I can’t resist watching. He raises the
 handgun he removed from the downed soldier’s body and
 squeezes off two quick rounds. Jenner hits the desk, her
 cheek knocking the phone out of its cradle as she collapses
 to the floor. He turns and pulls the trigger three more
 times, leaving three more soldiers dead.
I drop and try to find one of the clear capsules among
 the scattered, glittering bits of broken glass.
Another wave of soldiers arrives. Jerry fires at them so
 that Sam and I can retreat, but I don’t want to leave without
 that pill. I keep sweeping my hands back and forth, hoping
I’ll get lucky and find it, but Sam pulls me by the arm back
 toward the stairwell.  
I break free of his grip. A pill is lying inches from Jen-
 ner’s face, right in front of her nose. I scramble for it on my
 hands and knees. Sam grabs my ankle just as I’m about to
 reach the pill.
“Noooooo!”
He drags me along the ground, firing at the same time.
I watch as Jerry is hit in the neck by a bullet. He goes
 down onto one knee, still firing, his hand over the pulsing
 wound. The last thing he does before he slips to the floor
 is shoot the surveillance camera in the corner of the room.
Sam and I spill into the stairwell, and I leap to my feet.
We hear soldiers bearing down on us, their boots beating
 like drums. The sound is coming from above and below.
We’re trapped. Sam pulls another gun from the pack he’s
 carrying and hands it to me along with the simple com-
 mand, “Point and shoot.”
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Then he takes something from the bag, just as calm as
 can be. I know what he’s planning to do. “You want to go
 up or down?” he asks.
“Down.”
He twists one of the disks in his hand and tosses it up.
The disk zooms toward the metal fire door and sticks.
The mine explodes just as we make it to the landing.
I’m so startled by the noise I drop the gun as I try to cover
 my ears. We spill out of the stairwell into the main lobby
 near the elevator bank.
It’s probably the worst place we could have ended up.
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CHAPTER 29
 e are going to die. Right here. Right now. This is
Wwhere all those angry red dots are concentrated like
 a bull’s-eye.
Sam keeps his gun drawn, and pushes me behind him,
 putting himself between me and whatever may be coming
 from the direction of the lobby. We press ourselves into the
 elevator alcove, against the closed doors. We expect sol-
 diers to come around the corner and start shooting at any
 moment, but nothing happens.
“We should try to get to the basement. See if the tunnel
 connecting the buildings is really there,” he says.
Of course it might not be. But we don’t have any alter-
 native.
Sam presses the elevator button, and I watch as the car
 sinks down, down, down toward the main floor. The mer-
 cenaries must see us on the security cameras by now.
I remember what Jenner said about the panic
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button—about how it would take hours for help to arrive.
I wonder if we’ll last that long. It’s still worth a try.
I look toward the desk. The open space between these
 elevators and that panic button might as well be miles long.
Should I try to get there? I could have easily gotten to the
 guard’s desk and back in the time I’ve wasted thinking
 about it.  
“I’m going to try to get to the panic button to call for
 help. Wait here.”
“No, I’ll come with you to give you cover if you need
 it.”
The wind groans through the windows. I take a step
 toward the desk. I expect to hear gunfire, but there’s noth-
 ing. No one is around. Sam and I quickly cross the ten
 yards. The panic button is mounted on the wall, plain as
 day—yellow, big as the palm of my hand, with a plastic
 cover over it. I’m about to make my move when two sol-
 diers walk into the lobby.
Damn.
Then Hodges.
Damn, damn, damn.
Sam and I drop to the floor. We hear a ding as the eleva-
 tor car finally arrives. The soldiers rush toward it, guns
 drawn. The doors open; they see that no one is inside and
 lower their weapons.
Hodges is so close I can hear the jangle of her bracelets.
I can see the tips of her ivory shoes under the desk. Now
 she’s wearing a long coat with a fur trim.
The elevator doors close again, and she makes a noise
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