Those That Wake 02: What We Become (17 page)

“Right. Give me a quote, and the money will be in your account by the time you make it back to your office to gather your men and equipment. If it isn’t, you needn’t bother returning, and you’ve lost nothing but an hour from your day.”

Slate examined the offer hard but could not seem to find a flaw in it.

“Twenty thousand,” he said flat, not even bothering to look at the stones, let alone go over and examine them.

“Done,” Aaron said without skipping a beat.

“You understand that’s—”

“Two hundred thousand dollars. Yes. It will be in the account you give me by the time you’re back at your office.”

Working hard to hide both doubt and excitement, Slate gave over the account number and got back into his pickup.

“You seem to have made a real impression on him one way or another,” Laura said as the pickup disappeared down the hill.

“No point trying to be inconspicuous. Slate’s going to tell everyone he knows about this, anyway. The work would attract plenty of attention by itself, I’m sure.”

“Right,” she said, her head swimming at the amount. “I guess you’d better transfer the money. Easy come, easy go.” Laura had never suffered for money. Her father had worked at the same architectural firm since she was born and managed to support the family alone. Paying for college had been their greatest expenditure, and Laura was treating
that
with such respect, wasn’t she? But tossing off two hundred thousand dollars like that gave her a sense of the sort of consequence-free world Aaron must be used to. Consequence-free, until his father killed himself.

“Already transferred,” Aaron said.

“Thanks to the handy little wire in your brain, huh?”

“‘Wire.’” He smiled condescendingly. “Right. Something like that.”

Laura looked at the flesh-colored bump at his temple.

“Is it true those things give you brain cancer?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What?” Her eyes widened in shock, expecting the standard denial.

“In about forty percent of test cases, brain cancer did result. They’re first generation, you know. There’s plenty left to work out.”

“But, then, what about the ozone satellites? They’re not responsible for it?”

“There are no ozone satellites, Laura,” he said, becoming bored with the conversation. “They’re PR, pure spin.”

“What’s replenishing the ozone layer, then?”

“Wishful thinking.”

“But . . .” She worked her jaw, trying to find words sufficient to this horror. “If the cellpatch causes brain cancer, why are you wearing it?”

“This one is a third-generation prototype, actually. Proper shielding and less than a quarter the electromagnetic output. I’d never take a risk like that.”

Laura stared at him but couldn’t help think of Josh, of all the kids on campus strolling about with those things drilled into their heads.

Slate’s crew finished just after lunchtime the next day. As the dusty, exhausted figures filed back to their trucks, still surmising to each other about the mysterious circumstances of their extraordinary good fortune, Aaron hurried right to the edge of the exposed pit. Laura was slower to come over, hesitating at the idea that there might be something that would pull the plug from the dam of her memory and let it all come flooding painfully back. Or, worse, that there would be nothing of the sort.

Slate had not been deceiving them. There was nothing in that shadowy pit but ash and torn chunks of wood and metal that still smelled of smoke. Not in the least discouraged, Aaron lowered himself down and, balancing precariously, started picking through the charcoal remains.

Laura let herself down eventually, as well, though she had no idea what she was looking for or how to do it. There was so much of it, where did you even begin? She watched Aaron dig around for hours with a spade and a claw he had bought off one of Slate’s workmen. He was being meticulous about it, moving from what appeared to be one carefully calculated spot to another, though to Laura, she couldn’t distinguish what made one position any different from another. The one time she inquired, she received only a frustrated grunt in response.

The wind had acquired a chilly edge and the shadows stretched long across the field when Aaron threw the shovel down with a resounding metallic echo. He seemed to be holding something in his hand, though with the sun disappearing beyond the horizon, the sunken space they were in was nearly plunged into shadow, and she couldn’t be sure.

“Did you find something the fire didn’t ruin?” she asked, her voice coming out rough and tight. She realized she hadn’t spoken a word in several hours.

“This wasn’t a fire,” Aaron informed her, walking carefully closer. “Something was detonated in this place.”

“How would you know that?”

“Just look at all the shrapnel. It’s jagged, not melted. But also because I found what I was looking for.” He held out the object in his hand for her to squint down at. A small square fit neatly in his palm. It was charred over most of its surface, but a dull metallic glint caught a bit of dying sunlight.

“What is it?”

“A digital core. What’s left of one would be more accurate. These things are the best-protected part of any large digital system. Everything the system does or did is stored on these, and they are, consequently, very hard to destroy. No fire would reach one of these. This was blown free from its system.” He looked back up at her. “By an explosion. One that must have been specifically calculated to damage or destroy it. Someone was looking to cover their trail.”

“Did they?” Excitement was boiling behind Laura’s eyes.

“If this was a year and a half ago, yes. But technological progress is measured in days. A year and four months is like a millennium of technological evolution. It had enough left in it that I could sponge it up with my lenses. Plenty is lost, I’m sure, but some of the information will be intact. If information came into or out of the system along wireless routes, those pathways should still be here. There should be enough to pick up a trail.”

Aaron was preternaturally calm. She had never seen him like this. But he was all cerebral push, always looking for information to lock on to and extrapolate from, and now, after years, he finally had it.

Laura, though, was quickly losing her sense of calm. This was the first scratch she’d gotten for the tickle in her brain. At the end of this trail that Aaron was talking about was someone who would answer the question “What happened to Laura Westlake?” The problem was she didn’t know if she could bear the answer.

TIME WAS LOST TO ROSE
in this forgotten park. The sounds of the outside world had become a garbled sludge in the hollow air, though she imagined she could pick out from beneath them the sound of distant, ancient screams. These would be the screams of the woman who had been beaten and stabbed here, her pleas for help, her screams of pain trapped in an echo and dying away like the park itself.

There was no sense of seconds ticking by. Perhaps she had been here for only a day, or maybe it had been a week or a month. She wasn’t hungry; the place seemed to have emptied her out of urge, desire, even need. The only emotion she could manage to summon was an edgy panic at the idea of being trapped here, unable even to starve to death, as the park faded out of the world forever, taking her with it.

She wasn’t tired either, exactly. But she must have slept at times, her consciousness lost in a swirl of oblivion. Or had she? Could she even differentiate between awareness and oblivion anymore?

It was from within one of these stretches of oblivion that she started awake. A sound cut through the space and into her stupor like a razor slashing flesh. For an instant, she thought it was the screams of the woman who had died here, returning in full force to exact revenge on the only human accessible: Rose. But it was not a scream—it was a metallic shriek of rusted metal scraping against itself. Her eyes flashed back and forth, looking for the cause of the sound.

At the far side of the park, behind one of the benches, a grating had come open. Her head quaked with the impossibility of it. She had not even known there was a grating there, its metal paled and blending with the neutral contours of the concrete around it. What could be down there, beneath a forgotten park? What could possibly be coming out of it? Was there a creature, some forgotten monstrosity that lurked through these places that Mal never even knew about?

Hands came up from the hole and anchored themselves on the ground, straining to pull the rest behind. A head appeared, a torso, legs. The body pulled itself from the grating achingly, stopped, gasping for air on the dull pavement. It was covered in blood, and, even in the viscous light, the blood was so bright compared to the world around it that it burned Rose’s eyes.

“Mal,” she said, squinting at the red explosion of life covering the figure.
“Mal!”
She lurched forward, unaccustomed energy animating her limbs. She sprinted over, rounded the bench, knelt beside him.

His cargo pants and hooded sweatshirt were soaked through with blood in large patches. His face was warped with lumps and discolorations. His dark hair was matted with more blood.

“Oh God, Mal. How did you get here?”

“Forgotten subway tunnel,” he said, blood trickling from his lips as he did. “East Side line, never finished, abandoned, and forgotten. It runs straight beneath Lazarus Towers and the park. That’s why I put you here.”

She could not have cared less about the geographical explanation. She had meant to understand how he had gotten here in the state he was in, his body ruined, life ebbing away. Trapped in a middle ground between relief at his return and a futile desperation to help him, she gently wrapped her arms around him and lowered her head to his chest. He didn’t have the strength to stiffen as he had in the past when she tried to embrace him. She could hear his heart thudding weakly, feel the bones beneath his flesh cracked out of alignment.

“It’s not fair, Mal.” Tears ran down her face and mingled with Mal’s blood. “I can’t do this. This isn’t . . .” She could barely form the words through the sudden violence of her sobbing. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.”
He
was supposed to protect her, be the strength for her. She managed their life, the apartment, the food, the clothes. Mal was supposed to be the strength.

“We have to get out.” Mal’s voice was so weak that, at first, she had thought it her own wishful thinking. “Call Remak.”

Remak. Yes. Sense stirred in her head. She had been in here too long. They had to call Remak.

She felt him moving beneath her, and she came away from him, her clothes stained crimson. He was trying to pull himself up, but his arms trembled and his teeth gritted at the effort. She came to her feet and used her own arms to help steady him. His weight nearly pulled her down, but he came up, and, using her as a crutch, they moved together to the edge of the park.

One instant she was staring at the prison of concrete and rusted metal, and then Mal brought them forward, and the memory of the street, the buildings, the people flooded her head. She remembered that the world existed.

It was a world she had never had an acute fondness for, but it now looked joyous to her in its smallest detail: the people rushing by intentionally heedless, the sky offering rays of genuine sunlight, the walls of the buildings that met behind her, showing no access to a park at all. Even in her head, the park was fading, already not like a memory of her own but like a memory of someone else’s only vaguely related to her.

“Remak,” Mal said, the burden of his weight on her growing greater.

Her cell was already out, and with unsteady fingers she keyed the private, direct line Remak had given her for Alan Silven. She could only hope that Remak was “in” Silven when she called.

“Hello?” Silven’s voice and features held an edge of uncertainty, as though he couldn’t figure out what a number he didn’t recognize was doing coming through his private line, what a face he didn’t know was doing staring back at him.

“It’s Rose,” she said, her voice teetering on the edge of panic.

“I’m sorry,” said Silven, “I don’t know any . . . Rose.” The tone of the voice suddenly and distinctly changed on the last word, and the uncertainty vanished from his face.

“Mr. Remak?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Remak said. “Is Mal all right?”

“He’s . . . he’s . . .” She chased the words down her own throat, unable to commit to one.

“Where are you, Rose?” Remak asked. “Turn on your geolocator app.”

Her fingers fumbled to key it in. An ad for car rental services scrolled merrily across the bottom of the screen.

“You’re right where I left you,” Remak said, regarding the locator on his end. “Is Mal there?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s right—”

“Pardon me, who is this?” Silven’s face showed polite confusion, and his tone had changed once again. “I believe you’ve got the wrong number.”

Rose stared at the face on the screen, looking for Remak’s eyes and not finding them.

“I’m . . .” She barely managed to choke that much out. Had Remak left him on purpose? Why was he leaving her alone?

“How did you get this number, exactly?” Silven asked, his face growing harsher as he collected details through the screen. “What’s your name?”

“Hang up, Rose,” a man standing next to her said. He was short and overweight and had long hair tied in a ponytail. But his eyes, those were unmistakable.

“Mr. Remak,” she said.

“I’m here,” the man said, and moved around to take some of Mal’s weight. Rose keyed the phone off on Silven’s confused expression. “Bring him through the building on the left. The man I’m in now lives right there. We’ll use his apartment.”

They struggled Mal through the door, then down a short, dark, foul-smelling hallway to the first door, which Remak pushed open. By the time they rested Mal’s body on a bed with old, torn sheets, he was no longer moving.

Remak leaned over, examining him carefully, lifting clothes away from bloody wounds with chubby fingers.

“He’s dying,” Remak said, clutching Rose’s heart in her chest. He looked up at her, the eternally incongruous eyes sharp in the soft, fleshy face. “Did he tell you what happened? Did he say what he learned?”