The Yellow Pill (12 page)

He
hadn’t eaten it… and why was that? Why had tiny black numbers stopped him from
satisfying his addiction?

“Why
didn’t I?” He asked, not knowing if he expected an answer or not.

The
old man had his smile still on his lips as he nodded up towards dome. “I think
we might finally see it for what it is…” Father Patrick let the pill roll in
his palm. “A
product
.” He leaned back and rested his head against the
wall. “All hell is going to break loose, and we would be fools not to prepare
for it…”

Jin
frowned. “Things can’t get much worse than they are, Father Patrick.”

Three
days later he was proven oh, so wrong.

“The
deserts dwellers have repositioned, and are now twelve miles to the west,” Luke
said. “Getting them into the city is also proving to be very hard.” He turned
his eyes to Jon. “How is Joy progressing?”

Jon
had his hands clapped behind his head. “Joy is working her
arse
off to try and crack the code. But seriously… it’s like nothing I have ever
seen before…”

“It
seems you need a code just to view the cell. I have never, in all my years of
research, heard protecting organic matter with this level of coding,” Li said,
rubbing the bridge of his nose with thumb and index finger. “To think that they
would go through the trouble is disturbing indeed.” He looked up at them and
Frey knew he ought to look tired from the lack of sleep, but the doctor looked
as healthy as ever. “I could write down the general ingredients of the pill.
It’s how I make my research on digital cell generating. It is no secret how it
is done. I can understand a certain economical reason for doing so, but this
coding
.”
He shook his head. “It makes no sense at all.”

“The
amount of money they must have put into this, and not to mention the amount of
work
to do so…”
Lallie
said.

“Whatever’s
inside, they clearly don’t want you seeing it,” Frey said, pushing down the
sick feeling in her stomach. There was a short pause that made her wonder if
the fact hadn’t even crossed their minds. She hoped that wasn’t the case. “You
think she’ll be able to crack the code?” Frey asked Jon, changing the subject.

“Harry
and
Lallie
are going down there later. If the three
of them can’t do it, then I seriously doubt there’s anyone who can.” He rubbed
his eyes with the heels of his hand.

“Have
some faith, man.” Harry said as his sister grinned.

“So
what do we do with the yellow pill?” Tina reminded them. “Stanly can’t do it,”
Tina placing one of those glass screens on the table. She leaned her chair back
until it clanked against the glass wall. Frey knew she wanted to put her feet
up on the table, but also knew how little Luke liked her doing so. So she
didn’t. Not when Luke was around, anyway. “He can’t smuggle one out. They are
keeping an iron tight guard on the people leaving Base.”

“How
come they haven’t noticed the printing yet, then?” Frey asked.

“They
are checking people, not the export. The product goes straight to Dome. No
human hands involved there.”

“I
mean inside Hole. Don’t they see what's happening? Can’t they see the barcode?”

“I’m
sure all they see is a huge mess right now, but if they had, we would have
noticed it by now,”
Lallie
said, sipping her coffee.

Frey
clutched her glass of water, not having taken a liking to the strange taste of
coffee. “So it’s impossible to get one of the Yellow Pills out,” she said, not
really expecting an answer.

“Well,
there was one who did once,” Tina said, her voice very soft. Frey thought she
heard something there, sadness maybe. “Security cranked up about a thousand
notches after that.”

“Where
is the person now?” Luke asked. This was apparently news for them all.

“He
disappeared.”

Frey
felt a shiver grip her spine.

“What
do you mean ‘disappeared’?” Luke asked, his brow low over his eyes.

“Stanly
said he was acting all weird the last days they worked together, and then he
stole inside information and ran away. They caught him a day later, and then he
was just gone.”

Jon
gestured towards where Dome lay. “You mean they tossed him into Hole?”

Tina
just shrugged her shoulders. “Probably.”

“And
because of that Stanly can’t get a sample out to us,” Jon muttered.

“Sounds
like they’re using heavy precautions to guard their product,” Frey said.

“It
does indeed.” Li said, sounding like he was somewhere else in thought.

“Shit!”
Harry swore, falling back on his backrest again. “We need that Yellow Pill!”

“Right
now that doesn’t seem very promising.”
Lallie
reminded him.

“No
shit,
Lallie
.”

“No
fighting.” Luke rumbled.

Jon
and Frey exchanged glances. She knew what he was thinking. They were at a
standstill.
They had managed to mark the pills and get them to
Hole, and to judge by the hysteric reports from Dome
,
it
seemed to be working
. Their Intel was letting them know there was full
on chaos in there. Dome had their hands full trying to manage it.

The
brief recordings from Frey had seen from Hole, had frightened her. Already
there was war in there.

What
if we get the walls down only to find a sea of corpses in
there…
Shaking the dark thought away, she turned her attention back to the
table.

“It’s
so frustrating!” Tina moaned at the roof. “We have our game pieces in place,
but we can’t use any of them! We can’t get into Dome, or get the pill out of
Base, cuss the security’s too high, we can’t get the desert dwellers into
Alya
, cuss the security’s too high and we can’t crack the
code, cuss security’s too bloody high!”

“Joy’s
doing her best she can down there,” Jon said, sounding defensive. “And we don’t
know how to approach Dome yet. We need a plan.”

“I
thought we had one,” Harry said. “Get in, shut the projection of the dome off,
lower the walls, riot comes out, and we stay out of the way, safe and sound.”

“Brilliant,
brother,”
Lallie
said.

“Always,
sister.”

“You
two stop it,” Luke warned again.

Li
sighed loudly and shook his head.

“If we
can get the walls down, then we can even out the odds in numbers against the
government patrols, right?” Frey asked.

“Yeah,
but Frey…” Tina said. “The people of Hole… they will be weak.”

Li was
the one who answered. “Not really. Desperate people can be very strong.” He
looked at them all and stopped at Frey. “That is why we need to act soon, so
they can use that strength outside before Dome goes in there and decide to put
an end to things. And they will.”

“If we
can create a diversion using the desert dwellers, we could force the government
to focus at the edges of the city. It would make it easier to get inside Dome,”
Frey said.

“But
the desert dwellers are outside. Can’t get them
inside,
remember?” Harry
said. Outlining the obvious.

Jon
turned to him. “We don’t need them to be inside. They can create a diversion
just outside the city.”

“That
would be enough to make the government come running. They hate when the desert
people come close.”
Lallie
said and elbowed her twin
with a grin. “Man, this is goanna be epic!”

Li
looked at
Lallie
and Harry. “You two go down and join
Joy. She will need all the help she can get right now. And Harry, see if you
can work on getting into their network again. We can’t stop trying.”

Lallie
and Harry didn’t have to be told twice. The two
‘foxes’ hurried out of the room and were gone.

Luke
shoved off the wall. “I will take the jute and go meet up with Home camp. I’m
taking the idea to them first before we plan anything else. See what they
think.” Luke clapped Jon on the shoulder before walking out.

Tina
put her feet on the table with a frown. “Hmm. We still need to figure out how
to get into Dome. I can get a map of the first four floors easy, all exits and
windows included. But inside Dome’s goanna be harder.” She looked at Li. “If we
could get a digital scanning of the building, we could pinpoint the control
room. Your fancy friends don’t happen to have any contacts, would they?”

Li
scratched his smooth chin. It had taken a while for Frey to get used to the
sigh of most men being clean-shaven.

She
glanced at Jon. “Digital scanning?” She asked.

“It’s
a model of the building. A very accurate holographic projection you can alter
the view of anyway you want.”

“It’s
not going to be easy to copy one, but I think I know where I might be able to
at least get a part of it. Do you know where the control room
might
be?
In that case, I could minimize the rendering time by far,” Li asked Tina.

She
shook her head, but then held up her finger. “Sure? No. But I think it might be
positioned at the top floor, on the south side.”

“What
makes you say that?” Jon asked her.

“Sun
comes up in west and down in the east, right? Well, the best view would be from
the South. The sun even travels from left to right, like reading a book.”

“Makes
sense.”

“Alright
then, top floor to the south,” Jon concluded. “It’s worth a try,” he added with
a little laugh.

“That
it is,” Li said as he gathered his papers.

“What
about the fifth level?” Frey asked, tapping her lower lip. “You’re saying there
are fingerprint key-cards there as well?”

“Well,
no. Not that our Intel know of. But Frey,” Tina said. “It’s
five
levels
up. It’s not goanna help us to get in.”

Frey
caught Jon looking at her. “You’re not thinking of climbing it, are you?” It
wasn’t just the way he looked… it was the way he talked, the way he moved, and
the things he said that made it seem all so unreal.

There
was something really strange going on here and she knew that sooner or later
she would have to tell them about it. Somehow it was all connected. She was
sure of it.

“That’s
crazy, Frey! The building’s made of glass. There are no handholds.” Tina pushed
off the table with her feet, her hand hitting the tabletop at the same time as
the feet of the chair did.

“There
are handholds,” Frey said. “Where the glass merge there’s about a two
centimeters gap between the sheets of glass. That’s enough with the proper
shoes.” Tina opened her mouth again. “
And
!” Frey interrupted. “I’ve
climbed buildings since I was just a little brat. Its how I survived in Hole
many times.”

Tina
broke the eye contact, scratching the back of her head. “Man. Sometimes it’s
hard to remember where you come from.”

“It’s
a glass building.” Jon reminded them. “It’s see-through…”

“And
Dome keeps their storage rooms on the east side. If we can somehow ditch the
cameras on the east side, and time the climbing to when they make their rounds,
then we can get her up to level five without being noticed. She wouldn’t even
have to use a glasscutter. There’s a balcony up there,” Tina reminded him right
back.

Frey
had a strange feeling that Jon wanted her to climb the building about as much
as Jin would have.

“How
come you know so much about the exterior of it?” Frey asked.

“Anyone
can access the global 3D mapping. With it, we can see the whole building from
the outside.”

Jon
tilted his coffee cup with one finger, balancing it on the edge. “So let’s say
you get up there, then what?” He wasn’t looking at her.

“I
sneak back to the lobby, and open the doors.” She gestured to the computer room
just outside their meeting room. “Whatever group is assigned to go with me will
wait close by.” She looked at Tina.

“Dressed
the same as the people in Dome,” Tina said.

Jon
let go of the cup and it clattered back on its base. He crossed his long arms,
not looking happy at all.

“Jon.
You have to admit it’s a good plan,” Tina said.

“It
is…” He said, scratching his chin with his thumb, not unhooking his arms. “I
just don’t… think it’s very safe.” He glanced at Frey when he said it.

“Nothing
is. This is all a big gamble, Jonas, and we’re gambling with so much more than
just our lives right now.”

“I
know that.” Again he looked at Frey. “We all do.”

She walked to the
black elevator to the right, prints under one arm. The equipment was far more
advanced down here, and Frey guessed they needed the extra security of depth to
make sure the machines stayed untraceable.

In the
middle was a half-moon shaped desk hovering in the air, above it a massive
glowing keyboard projection spread out over the surface.

Harry
and
Lallie’s
fingers sped over it. They both had
their eyes on one wall each, their heads turning this way and that to cover the
big space and the flickering images. White chairs stood to the sides, and Frey
saw that these too hovered in the air like the table. There was a soft blue
glow coming from under them.

Frey
clenched her teeth from keeping her mouth from opening, and carefully walked
into the room, her body tense, waiting for large cracks to appear under her
feet.

Damn
all this glass!

A
young woman was standing in front of the hovering table, swiping at images. She
stopped and turned as Frey’s footsteps made a faint echo.

She
was beautiful. Long blond hair fell straight down her back. It was gleaming as
if she had spent hours just brushing it. Her face was long with high
cheekbones, and her eyes were a clear blue. She was tall and very slim. There
didn’t seem to be much muscle on her at all, but Frey suspected men found her
very hard to resist. Her fair looks contrasted to Frey’s, and suddenly Frey
didn’t feel so clean anymore. The woman’s lips were full and she had two very
distinct dimples as she smiled.

She
did that now, but somehow Frey thought it didn’t look quite friendly. It was
more the way a cat might look at a mouse before it decided to play with it.

“Oh,
it’s the one from Hole.”

Frey
held out the papers to her, the other hand in her pocket to avoid shaking hands
with her. She avoided shaking hands with people she didn’t like. “Frey. Not
“the one”,” Frey said with a calm she certainly didn’t feel.

The
young woman just made a silly giggling sound, and clapped her hand to her cheek
as if she was talking to a child. “Oh, I’m sure you are. Well, thank you for
bringing me the papers.” Frey imagined breaking her wrist it with a snap of
hers. “My name is Joy. We need to concentrate, so if you want to stay you have
to be silent.”

Frey
again imagined doing some damage to that tall frame. She didn’t like that Joy
was bending her knees slightly as if calling a dog to her feet.

Frey
moved over to the back of the room, leaning against the wall and trying not to
let her anger boil her insides sore. The chairs were rowed next to her on both
sides, but she would rather not try her luck with them. Frey suspected she
would never truly get used to this.

Damn,
that I promised Jon I would wait for him here.
Frey crossed her
arms and watched the three moving and sorting the amount of text around them. A
few times they came together in the middle, standing around a certain part of
information and talking in low voices.

Jon
entered the room with Tina in tow, both carrying more papers.

Joy
turned her head towards the sound of approaching footsteps, and when she saw
Jon her smile was nothing like the one she would
given
Frey. This was an open-mouthed smile, showing all the teeth and on the border
to laughter. She crossed the space with long, graceful strides, her arms spread
wide. Her fingers then stroke his cheek as she hooked her arm with his. Tina
could have been invisible for all Joy seemed to see her. Tina just strolled
past, dropping the papers on the table next to
Lallie
and Harry before turning towards the exit again.

Jon
had walked right past Frey. Frey looked away, startled at the anger within her.

He’s
not
Jin!
She yelled at herself. But somehow, her mind wasn’t convinced of that…
 Frey turned towards the elevator as Tina came up to her.

“You
going up?” Tina asked as she glanced at Jon and Joy.

“All
the way to the top,” she said.

Tina followed
Frey up to the rooftop, saying she could use the fresh air. The sun was high in
the sky, and the sky was a clear blue, as always.

Frey
plunked down on the grass and fell back, her hands cradling her head. She
pulled in a deep breath and held it for a while.

Tina
sat down next to her.

“Hey
Tina,” Frey started. “You said there was someone from Base who was tossed into
Hole?”

“Yeah.”
There was a short pause before the big woman continued: “I can’t say for sure
that’s where he ended up, but he did vanish. It’s very hard to hide a body in
Alya
since all have their own id markings.” Frey pretended
she hadn’t heard that part. “There’s no prison in
Alya
.
The max sentence here is to get sent to Hole…” She looked at Frey. “Sorry.”

“Don’t.
It’s not your fault.” Frey sat up and folded her legs. “I think I’ve seen a few
of them in Slum- I mean Hole.” She had always found it strange there would be a
man or woman wondering around, a vacant expression on their faces as they
stumbled through the streets, looking so out of place. Their clothes had seemed
too clean, hair and skin like a beacon of light for everyone else. It made
sense now. “Just thought they were strange in the head or something. Still
didn’t explain the lack of scars and dirt. The clothes were worn, but nothing
like what you get when you live your life in Hole,” Frey said.

Tina
had her muscular arms crossed over her leather top. “Are they still there, you
think?”

Frey
just shook her head.

Tina
sat silently for some time. The sun moved over the sky and the small wispy
clouds floated above like puffs of cotton. The glass buildings reflected the
sunlight in an eye watering display of light, and Frey was again thankful to be
so far up that they avoided the worst glare. She had stopped trying to figure
out how the projections could stay visible in the glaring reflections.

“You
think the people who got banished found something they shouldn’t have?” Frey
asked.

“What
makes you say that?”

She
shrugged. “They all seemed gone in the head. Why would the government make them
forget? Wouldn’t they want people to remember what they had lost?” Frey pulled
a stray strand of hair from her eyes.

“So
everyone who was sent to Hole learned something they shouldn’t have…”

“Like
Stanly’s work partner,” Frey said. “But how do we know that really happened?”

“I do,
since I was there together with Stanly. I was still working at Base then, but
after that incident, the government started relying on machines to do all the
work. He was with us one minute and gone the next…” Her eyes almost closed. She
looked away. He voice sounded raw and throaty.

Frey
reached out and touched her arm. “He was your man.”

She
could almost see Tina’s iron wall crumble. “No one knows,” she said, her voice
a husky whisper. “And I knew that if anyone would connect the two of us
together, they would take me as well. They would never have allowed us to be
together. They would have killed one of us and thrown the other in Hole!” Big
tears ran down her cheeks. Tina shook as Frey stroke her head, holding her
tight all the while.

They
sat like that for a long time as the sun warmed them in the quiet and calm
clearing. Frey was glad there was no one around. She knew what it was like to
hold your emotions pent up inside, to pretend nothing was wrong and to put on a
brave face for everyone else to see. She thought that if anyone from the
outside would manage in Hole, it would be Tina.

Tina’s
sobbing eased after a while, and eventually she rubbed her red eyes. “No one
can know, Frey.”

“Won’t
tell a soul,” she promised.

Tina
took a huge gulp of air and let it out in one shaky breath. “Thank you,” she
smiled at Frey, her eyes red and swollen. But the smile was genuine and Frey
gave her a small smile back.

“I’m
so sorry, Tina.”

“Then
both are apologizing for things that aren’t our fault,” Tina laughed.

The
image came up in her mind on
its own
. Whatever could
have prompted the memory to come back then and there, she had no idea.

Frey’s
hand went up to her neck where her bandana was. A wild hammering was pushing at
her chest. Her heart beat hard and fast and she felt dizzy at the speed of
which the blood was pumped into her head. “Tina…” She said, staring into the
distance.

Something
in her voice must have alerted the woman, for Tina moved closer, putting a hand
on Frey’s shoulder, frowning. “What is it?”

Frey
remembered holding the man, listening to his rambling, feeling his warmth
disappeared. “Did your man happen to own a blue shirt, tiny white vertical
stripes, even on the collar? Grey eyes?” Tina grabbed Frey’s shoulders, this
time pulling her close. It was on the boarder to painful, but Frey didn’t
resist.

“You
saw him
?!
You saw him in Hole
?!
”
There was hope in her eyes. But the hope faded as Frey slowly shook her head.

“He’s
gone Tina… I held him when he died. He fell from a height that broke his back.
There was nothing I could do for him.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Tina
let her go. She sunk down, her back sagging as she hung her head. “I gave him
that shirt…”

Frey
again put her hand on Tina’s. “Tina. That’s not all.” Frey reached up to untie
her bandana. “I think he was trying to get this to you somehow…” She said as
she dropped the small white capsule in Tina’s hand. “It was hidden inside the
collar.”

Tina
was staring at the white thing in her palm. Her hand shook as she reached out
to press her thumb against its side. There was a small click and the white
capsule opened with a tiny hiss.