Gina’s NPCs locked us inside some kind of holding cell. The chamber is so small that there’s barely room to move. Gorog’s body is radiating heat. I can see beads of sweat forming on Carole’s forehead, but for some reason I’m freezing cold.
“I can’t believe it! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” the ogre whines. Gorog’s having a hard time coping with the news that his trip to Otherworld could prove fatal.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I’m sorry.” I’d try to comfort him if there were anything I could say, but there’s no silver lining to the cloud hovering over us.
“Come on. Let’s focus on the present,” Carole says. “What are we going to do now?” She still seems pretty certain that we’ll find a way out of this mess. I wish I shared her confidence.
“I have no idea,” I admit. “I’m trying to come up with something.”
“Why are your teeth chattering?” Carole asks. “It’s a hundred degrees in here.”
I just shrug. I don’t know the answer to that question, either.
“Well, we’d better come up with something soon,” Carole says. “It’s almost suppertime.”
“Shut up!” Gorog bellows. Then his voice softens into a whine. “I don’t want to think about getting eaten. I got hit by nine arrows back in the canyon, and it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt before. Can you imagine what it’s going to feel like to get chopped up or roasted on a spit or—”
“Stop panicking!” I order. “We’re not going to…” I can’t finish the sentence. Something is happening to me. Something I’m helpless to stop. It’s like Gorog and Carole have been ripped away from me, and suddenly I’m surrounded by pitch dark. It’s incredibly cold and I feel a frigid breeze sweep across my skin. My heart is thumping and my arms instinctively shoot out in front of me and slice through the air, as if to fend off some invisible threat. But I know what’s happening. The Clay Man said he’d find a way to get me into the facility. Now he’s making good on his promise—and I wish I’d never asked. He’s just dragged me out of Otherworld at the worst moment possible. With the disk off, I’m safe, and that’s all he cares about. He doesn’t give a damn about Gorog and Carole. But I do, and I’m not going anywhere unless I can guarantee their safety.
Hazy and disoriented, I shove a hand into the pocket of my jeans. The phone I stole from my mother is still there. I pull it out, switch on the flashlight app, and aim the beam into every shadow around me. There’s no one there. But there was. That’s for sure. My visor and disk were placed at a safe distance so my thrashing wouldn’t destroy them. They’re sitting on top of a canvas bag I didn’t bring. Next to the bag is a package of Depends.
I could chase the person who left them, but I don’t. Remarkably, my mother hasn’t shut off the phone’s service, and I think I just figured out how to save my friends. So I type out a text to Elvis.
there’s someone in Everglades City FL playing Otherworld. can u pull the plug?
He’s writing. I’m dying.
you mean Gina?
The kid never ceases to amaze me.
HTF do you know?
her last Otherworld playthrough got 1.5MM views
can u get her out of the game?
can’t hack the app but can prob take down her Internet
how long?
5 min
you sure?
FO
text me when you’re done
ok maybe this time you’ll thank me?
FO
It suddenly occurs to me that I might actually owe Elvis a thank-you. Back at the Brockenhurst Country Club, I texted him and asked for a favor—to find the address of the facility where Kat’s body was taken. I scroll up through my text history and discover that he delivered.
can’t find name. 1250 Dandelion Drive Brockenhurst NJ
isn’t that your town?
I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess I figured the place would be somewhere in the state. But Dandelion Drive? I could walk there from my house.
A new text arrives from Elvis:
done. Gina out
that fast? how?
took down local power plant
WTF?
you said get her out of the game. now she won’t be back for a while
damn Elvis
careful what u wish for asshole
It’s worse than dealing with a robot sometimes. But with Gina—and probably a good chunk of southwest Florida—out of the game, at least I can be sure that Carole and Gorog are safe for a while. So I dig into the bag that’s been left for me on the factory floor. The first thing I find is a dark blue uniform. Beneath it are two temporary badges. One bears the name MIKE ARNOLD and the job title PATIENT TRANSPORT. The second is for JOHN DRISCOLL, MAINTENANCE. At the very bottom I find a piece of paper. Transport Order. Brockenhurst Hospital to 1250 Dandelion Drive. 8 a.m.
1250 Dandelion Drive. It’s the same address that Elvis sent me. The Clay Man really is sending me to the facility. That’s what I asked for, and that’s what I got. But somehow it feels like the decision wasn’t entirely mine. Whoever’s behind the Clay Man has been pulling my strings since he sent me the disk. He says he’s affiliated with the Company. So why is he helping me? I know I shouldn’t trust him. And I wouldn’t—if I had a choice.
It’s eight a.m. and there’s a van labeled PATIENT TRANSPORT parked outside the Brockenhurst Hospital ER doors. Aside from its dark-tinted windows, there’s nothing remarkable about it at all. Nor is there anything particularly interesting about the guy leaning against it slurping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He’s in his fifties, I’d guess, judging by his salt-and-pepper hair and the impressive paunch that’s hanging over his belt.
“You the guy filling in for my assistant?” he asks as I approach. You’d think the answer was obvious given the fact that I’m wearing a dark blue uniform that’s identical to his.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “Mike.”
“Don Dunlap. Thanks for making yourself available on short notice,” he says, sizing me up as he shakes my hand.
“My pleasure, sir,” I tell him.
“Recruiter said you got your EMS training in the army. The boss likes guys who’ve been in the service. Looks like you haven’t been out long enough to let your hair grow.”
“That is correct, sir,” I say, hoping he doesn’t ask for any details. The only things I know about the military I learned playing Metal Gear Solid.
“You know, if this ends up working out for both of us, there could be a steady job in it for you. We’ve had a lot of work lately. The new facility here is getting pretty popular. We’ve been picking up patients from all over the tristate area. Though it might get a little dull for you after a while. People we’ve been hauling are all stable. Not much chance of using the skills you picked up in the forces.”
“After what I’ve seen, dull is good, sir,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I bet it is,” Don says sympathetically.
If only he knew.
The doors of the hospital slide open and an orderly pushes a gurney outside. My new boss tosses his coffee cup in the garbage. “Here we go. You open up the back of the van. I’ll bring the patient around.”
I do as he asks and then help him push the gurney inside. The patient rolls by; I don’t get a good look at her. But it’s impossible to miss the fact that she’s wearing one of the Company’s visors.
“What’s that thing on her face?” I ask, wondering if he knows.
Don gives me a funny look. “If I was a doctor, you think I’d be hauling vegetables around at eight o’clock in the morning? It’s not our job to ask questions. Our job is to make pickups and deliveries and ensure that our packages get to their destination alive.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“You ride in the back with the patient,” he tells me. “Make sure the visor stays on and the IV stays in. We had an IV pop out about a week ago and the patient started shouting like he was being murdered or something. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen today. Got it?”
He’s waiting for my response, but I’m still stuck on what he just said. When the IV came out, the patient started shouting. Just like the night Kat cried out in the hospital. The nurse said Kat’s IV had run dry. That means there must be something in the IV. The patients are being given a drug that prevents them from moving or speaking.
“Got it, Mike?” Don repeats, and I snap to attention.
“Yes, sir,” I tell him. “I got it.”
It’s eerily quiet in the back of the van. The woman stretched out in front of me can’t be more than twenty-five years old. One of her arms is in a cast, but I can’t see any other signs of injury. Once the van is on the road, I look around for a chart, but I don’t see one of those, either. There’s no way of knowing who she is or where she came from.
I wonder where she is right now. Has she left the White City? Is she indulging in Imra—or fighting for her life in one of the realms? I’m suddenly struck by an overpowering wave of guilt. I’m alone with this woman in the back of a van. No one is watching. I could peel off her disk. Find some way to destroy it. Or I could remove her IV. But I can’t run the risk. If I help this one woman, I could lose the chance to help hundreds. But let’s be honest: I don’t give a damn about hundreds. Right now, all I care about is one. And it’s not this lady. No—taking her out of Otherworld would put too much at stake. I hope like hell she’s safe, but she’ll have to stay.
The van comes to a stop, and I hear Don chatting with another man. I peek out the window and realize we’ve stopped at the gates of 1250 Dandelion Drive. The rear doors open and a security guard pokes his head inside. He glances at the patient and then at me. Once he’s satisfied that we’re not smuggling whatever qualifies as contraband here, he slams the doors. “You’re good to go,” I hear him tell Don. A few seconds later, the van starts up again.
I watch from the window as we drive through a park that’s filled with ornamental trees and dotted with man-made lily ponds. I catch a deer bolting for cover just before we swing past the facility’s main entrance, which looks like it belongs to an upscale spa.
The front of the building is entirely glass. The statement it’s making is impossible to miss. The business inside has nothing to hide. It’s still early in the morning, but there appear to be a few family members visiting. I bet they’re grateful for tasteful scenery. The facility’s lobby is bright and airy. It looks nothing like the hellish, fluorescent-lit waiting room of your typical New Jersey hospital.
Our van takes a sharp turn and drives along the side of the building. I realize it’s much bigger than it first appeared. The facility is long enough to park a dozen 747s inside and still have room left over for a few games of professional football. And unlike in the welcoming lobby, the windows in this part of the building are few and far between. The only ones I see are small and made of mirrored glass.
Don stops near a metal garage about halfway down the side of the facility. He throws the van into reverse, and when the door rises, he backs all the way into the building. The van shuts off and Don comes around to the rear. He opens the doors.
“What’s the name of this place?” I ask. “I didn’t see any signs on the way in.”
“Dunno. All I know is they pay my boss and he pays me,” he says. He doesn’t sound terribly curious.
“You really don’t know?” I probe.
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Don grabs the end of the gurney and rolls the patient out of the van. “Okay. Let’s haul ’er in,” he says.
I’m not going to argue, but I’m kind of surprised we’re the ones taking the body inside. You’d think a place this big would have a thousand workers, but I don’t see anyone around. I help push the gurney from the loading dock into a featureless hallway that ends in what looks at first like an office. There’s a desk, but no one’s sitting behind it. I count three sliding steel doors on the wall in front of us.
“Hey there, Don,” someone says. The voice is coming from a screen mounted on the wall. An attractive middle-aged woman with big blue eyes and bright pink lips is peering out at us. Judging by the love-struck look on Don’s face, the lady on the screen is his fantasy girl.
“Morning, Angela,” Don says dreamily, proving me right. “You’re looking lovely for someone who’s probably been up since the crack of dawn.”
“Well, aren’t you a charmer,” Angela flirts back. “Who’s your friend?”
Don looks over his shoulder at me as if he totally forgot I’m there. “Oh, right—name’s Mike Arnold. Phil called in sick again, so the recruiting agency sent me a sub. But if Phil keeps getting sick after playoff games, Mike here might just become permanent.”
“Welcome, Mike,” Angela says. “May I scan your badge? Just go ahead and hold it up to the screen.”
I do as commanded. I hope she doesn’t notice that my hand is shaking. There’s no telling whether the badge will actually work. She bends forward for a look. “Wonderful. That all checks out,” she says, though I didn’t see her check a computer screen. It was like she scanned the badge with her eyes. “Welcome back from Afghanistan, Mike. I hope we get to see you more often!”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I say. There’s something about the woman that isn’t quite right. How did she access my information? She appears to be sitting in a room that looks exactly like this office. Why isn’t she here in the flesh?
Then it hits me. She’s not a real person. The woman who stars in Don’s wet dreams is a robot. She’s not quite Otherworld-level, but she’s at least as advanced as the NPCs in the White City. That means there’s a single place that Angela could have come from. Only the Company is capable of producing artificial intelligence this impressive.
“So which door would you like this young lady to go through?” Don asks Angela, referring to the patient between us. He clearly has no idea that his dream girl isn’t human.
“Door number one, as usual,” says Angela. It slides open soundlessly, revealing a metal interior that looks like the world’s least interesting elevator. Don feeds the gurney into the opening and the patient vanishes behind the sliding door. Just like that, she’s gone.
“Anything else I can do for you today?” Don asks Angela.
“As a matter of fact, there is. We have a delivery that needs to be made to the Bosworth Funeral Home in Hoboken. Can you fit it into your schedule this morning?”
“Sure!” says Don as though nothing could make him happier.
“Wonderful,” Angela says. “You’ll find the delivery behind door number three.”
The door slides open. There’s another gurney inside. On top of it is a long object encased in a dark blue plastic bag. I try my best to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. It’s a body. A dead body.
“They know it’s coming?” Don asks so casually that you’d think he was talking about a floral arrangement.
“Yes, they’re expecting it,” says Angela. “The delivery data has been sent to your phone. Make sure you check it before you depart. And thanks again for your help!”
“It’s always a pleasure,” Don says. “See you next time?”
“Absolutely,” Angela replies cheerfully. “I’m always here.”
I have to stifle a laugh.
The screen goes black. Don gestures for me to follow him to the third door; then we wheel the body toward the van.
“Isn’t she something?” he marvels once we’re in the hall and out of earshot.
“Angela?” I ask, and he nods. “You ever seen her in person?”
“Nope,” he tells me. “But one of these days I’m going to work up the nerve to ask her out.”
“That should be interesting,” I say. I’d love to hear her response. How does a robot weasel out of a date? I wonder.
“Tell me about it.” Don’s practically drooling at the thought. We’re at the van and the doors are open. “You good to ride into Hoboken? Traffic this time of day can be brutal. Might take a few hours. Some people get a bit uncomfortable sitting in the back of a van with a corpse for that long.”
“Not me. I’ll be fine,” I assure him.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Don says. “It’s protocol to confirm that we have the right package before we fire up the engines. Gotta check the info Angela sent.” He pulls out his phone and opens a file. I see a picture of a kid. It must be an old photo, because the boy in it can’t be more than fifteen. Then Don unzips the bag and I almost gasp. The picture is up-to-date and the body inside the bag is so young that it’s hard to believe its owner could be dead. How did it happen? Did he die of injuries he sustained in the real world—or was it the disk that killed him?
Then I notice there’s something wrong with the top of his head. There’s an incision just above his hairline—it runs from one side of his head to another. I’m trying to figure out what might have caused it when the truth hits me so hard that I almost double over. The kid’s been autopsied and his brain has been examined. I feel my knees soften and my head starts to spin while my mind repeats the same sentence over and over and over again.
Oh my God, this could be Kat.
“Yup, same guy,” Don confirms, then zips the bag back up. “Let’s hit the road.”
I push the gurney with the dead kid’s body into the van. Then Don heads for the driver’s seat. I make a show of climbing into the back with the body, but when I slam the door, I’m not inside. The van heads out of the loading dock, and I hitch a ride on the back bumper. Just before we drive past the front entrance, I hop off again. I need to get into the main part of the building, and I figure there’s no way Angela is going to let me pass. My only hope is going in through the front door.
There was a second ID badge in the package the Clay Man left at Elmer’s. JOHN DRISCOLL, MAINTENANCE, it reads. There’s some kind of code beneath that. It’s a long shot, but I’m hoping John is my ticket inside. I take the second badge out of my pocket and fix it to the pocket of my blue uniform. This adventure’s risk level keeps rising. Right now it’s hovering between “you’ve got to be shitting me” and “good luck with your death wish.” But I’ve seen what happens to the patients here, and at this moment, I couldn’t care less about the danger.
I’m barely through the front doors when a guy steps in front of me, blocking my way. I assume he’s a flesh-and-blood human being. If not, he’s an excellent replica of one. He’s dressed in a blue polo shirt, dark jeans and white sneakers. He has a casual, friendly face to match the casual, friendly environment.
“Good morning,” he says. “I’m Nathaniel. May I help you?”
“I’m John from maintenance,” I say, pointing to my badge and hoping that’s enough.
Nathaniel scans my badge with a handheld device while I stare over his shoulder. There are a few miserable-looking people in the reception area who must be family members. A man is standing at the main desk, speaking with the woman behind it. I can’t hear the conversation, but it looks tense. When I recognize the voice, my entire body goes rigid. It belongs to Wayne Gibson—Kat’s stepdad. He’s here for a visit.
“Come with me,” Nathaniel says. I’m almost trembling with nervousness when he leads me past security. I keep my head turned away from Wayne as we pass. “There’s a clogged toilet in visiting room number three. Someone must have tried to flush something fairly big. We’d love to have it fixed as soon as possible. We have a limited number of visiting rooms, and as you can tell, we have quite a few family members with us this morning.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I promise. This place must be filled with some of the most advanced technology ever developed, and yet no one here is able to unclog a toilet. Typical.
I follow Nathaniel out of the lobby and into a hall with a half-dozen doors. He chooses one and places his palm against a black glass scanner on the wall beside it. The door opens and we step inside a room that looks more like a high-end hotel suite than something you’d find in a facility that tends to the nutritional and waste-removal needs of lost causes. The television is large, the furniture is well designed, and the floor is a tasteful hardwood. I wish the chair I slept in at the hospital had been half as plush as the one they have here. I walk up to the bed and rub the sheets between my fingers. Even my mother would approve of the thread count.
“The toilet’s in there,” Nathaniel says, helpfully pointing at the bathroom. “The door will lock behind me when I leave. Just press the button on the wall as soon as you’re finished and I’ll come get you.”
Nathaniel doesn’t seem to have noticed that I have no tools with me. It’s highly unlikely that anything in this room’s getting fixed. When he leaves, I realize I’m stuck. There are two metal doors—the one I just entered and another on the opposite side of the room. But I’m not getting out of either one. Instead of knobs, they both have biometric scanners embedded in the walls beside them. I cross the room to the second door to examine its scanner. I’m bending over for a closer look when the door slides open and I jump back in surprise. A doctor in a white lab coat jumps too when he sees me. His eyes dart to the empty hospital bed and then narrow as they return to me.
“Who are you?” the doctor asks warily, as if I could be anyone from a Russian spy to a hired killer.
“Maintenance,” I tell him, tapping my badge. “Toilet’s clogged.”
His attitude instantly shifts from fear to annoyance. “Still? I’m supposed to be meeting here with a family in…” He checks the device strapped to his wrist. I can tell it’s a smart watch, but I’ve never seen one like it before. I’d bet anything it’s a Company design. “…two minutes.”
“I guess you’re going to have to find another room,” I say.
“I have a better idea,” he says snippily. “Instead of standing around making small talk, why don’t you do your job so that I can do mine?”
I’m about to suggest I use his face as a plunger when three quick beeps issue from the device on his wrist and his expression changes. He knows what the signal means without having to look down at the watch. “That just bought you some time,” he says. “Fix the damn toilet before I get back.”
The doctor presses his palm against the scanner and the door slides open again. He rushes away down another featureless hall without realizing that I’ve slipped through the door behind him.
The door slides shut, and the doctor’s footsteps grow fainter. I’m clearly in a part of the building that’s off-limits to visitors. I expect security guards to show up at any moment and haul me away, but no one does. I scan the ceiling and walls, but I can’t spot a single camera, which seems highly unusual. Slowly, placing one foot after the other carefully, I head in the direction where the doctor just disappeared. Identical metal doors line the wall on my left. I suspect they lead to other visiting rooms, but there are only six of them. Where are the patients? Martin and Todd said there were three hundred people participating in the beta test. A lot of them must be here at the facility by now. But where are they keeping them all?
I turn a corner and realize I’ve left the hall. In front of me is a metal balustrade. There are stairs to my left leading down. I walk to the railing. Below me lies a space the size of an airplane hangar.
I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing. There’s obviously a mammoth building project under way. Most of the space remains under construction, but a small section appears to be already in use. Inside the finished area, corridors cut paths through massive metal walls that must be at least twenty feet deep and eight feet high. Three rows of glowing hexagonal windows are set into the walls. From where I’m standing, it looks like a high-tech beehive.
I spot the doctor below me. He stops at one of the windows and punches in a code. The window opens, and he pulls out a sliding shelf with a body resting on top. It’s a man, and he’s naked aside from an aluminum foil Speedo and the black visor on his face. Clear plastic tubes sprout from his mouth, forearm and groin, while thin black wires tether him to the inside of the capsule. I realize I must be looking at some sort of giant life-support machine, with rows of individual capsules stacked three high like shipping crates. Each capsule contains a human being who’s being kept alive. The fancy visiting rooms are just to make the families happy. This is where the patients are actually stored.
In Otherworld, the guy on the shelf is probably battling to survive. But here in this world, he’s nothing but a bag of flesh with a beating heart. Nourishment is pumped directly into his veins while his liquid waste is removed via a tube that’s been inserted into his bladder. I’m sure the shiny diaper he’s wearing takes care of the rest, but I’d rather not know how.
My entire nervous system is buzzing with anxiety. Kat is down there somewhere, locked inside one of those capsules. Carole and Gorog are too. The horror of it almost makes me retch. I cannot—I will not—abandon them here. There’s no time to think it through. I have to act. While the doctor is examining his patient, I dart down the stairs and up to the first capsule. Behind the window, a middle-aged African American woman is lying on a steel shelf, her bare feet only inches from the glass. At the back of the capsule, her head is raised slightly. I can see her face clearly, and it’s not one I recognize. I step back and, one by one, I work my way down the row of windows, looking for Kat. I have no idea what Carole and Gorog look like IRL, but I keep hoping I’ll recognize them, too, somehow. Maybe, like me, they’ll resemble their avatars.
I crouch to look into the capsules on the lowest row and jump for a view into the ones on top. The capsules are all the same. Stainless steel interior, blinking green monitors, wires and tubes. The bodies inside the capsules couldn’t be more different. They come in every size, age and color, and they’re all mostly naked. Each is bathed in a strange orange light that must play some role in keeping them healthy. Every single one of the patients is wearing a black visor.
This is the proof I’ve been looking for, I realize. I pull out my mom’s phone and start snapping pictures. There’s something big going on, and the Company is at the center of it. Helpless people are being falsely diagnosed with locked-in syndrome, and their families are being tricked into accepting the Company’s virtual reality therapy. Then the patients are brought here. The Company is using people’s bodies to beta test the disk and work out the bugs. And as hard as it is to believe, that douchebag Milo Yolkin must be behind all of it. Everyone knows he’s a control freak. Nothing ever happens at the Company without his direct….
A piercing sound nearly shatters my skull. Just around the corner from me, an alarm is going off and red lights are flashing overhead. I hear a door open somewhere and footsteps rushing to the scene. I freeze and back up against one of the capsules, doing my best to disappear. I have no idea what would happen if I got caught, but I do know what would happen to my friends. Nothing. They would stay here. Eventually it would be their bodies in the transport van to the funeral home.
I can hear multiple people running down a nearby corridor. Then they come to a sudden stop. Someone is barking commands. There’s a loud thump, followed by a monotonous beeping, and then a second thump.
I tiptoe toward the action and sneak a peek around the corner. A few dozen yards down an identical corridor, a second doctor and a team of nurses have gathered around the male patient I saw being examined. One of the nurses steps away from the patient’s side and I finally get a good look at him. I’d guess he’s in his early thirties, and aside from all the tubes coming out of him—and the fact that a doctor is using a defibrillator to restart his heart—he appears to be an excellent physical specimen. From what I can tell, there are no visible injuries to his body, so it’s strange to witness the flurry of activity around him.
I raise my phone and hit Record. To their credit, the doctors seem to be making a valiant effort to save the guy’s life. But only a few minutes after they begin, it’s all over. The doctors pull off their gloves and disappear into the maze. A nurse rolls the defibrillator cart away and two of his colleagues follow behind him. Eventually only a single nurse is left with the lifeless body. As I put my phone down, I hear doors open and shut somewhere in the distance, and it suddenly occurs to me that I’m trapped. The nurse is probably my only way out, and I doubt she’ll want to help me. I’d rather not force her, but I may not have a choice. I have footage on the camera that can free my friends and take the Company down. But only if I can manage to get out of here alive. Right now, that’s a really big if.
I wait as the nurse unhooks the man from the various tubes and wires that were connecting him to the life-support machine and shifts his lifeless body onto a waiting gurney. Then I approach her. I don’t tiptoe this time. I want her to hear me coming, and she does. She glances at me without a trace of fear. Up close she’s unusually pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes. The corpse on the gurney in front of her looks a hell of a lot healthier.
“Hi,” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “I’m John from maintenance. I’m afraid I got lost down here. Think you can show me the way out?”
“Nobody gets lost,” the nurse says, still staring at me. She knows I’m not supposed to be here, but she doesn’t seem worried. If anything, she appears completely resigned. If I pulled out a machete and threatened to hack her to pieces, I doubt she’d so much as flinch.
“Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything,” I tell her.
“What do you want?” she asks, getting down to business. “Tell me now before someone else comes.”
I realize this is my chance. “I’m trying to stop this,” I say. “But first I need to get out of here.”
I wait on edge. This could go one of two ways. One of them ends with me punching out a female nurse. I’ll just have to make peace with that when and if the time comes.
“Then climb under,” she says, pointing to the gurney. There’s a long metal shelf between the mattress and the wheels.
I look all around. “Are there cameras watching?”
“Surveillance systems can be hacked. They don’t want cameras down here. They’d rather track us instead.” The nurse taps the smart watch on her wrist. “This thing doesn’t come off. They know everything I do. I can’t get away. My movements are monitored twenty-four seven.”
I bet they are. The Company wouldn’t want news of their body farm getting out.
“What happens if you do something you’re not supposed to?” I ask. Like help an intruder escape.
“I don’t know.” Her voice trembles a little. Once again, she points at the shelf underneath the dead patient. “Get on. Quickly. Before one of the doctors walks by.”
I cram my giant body onto the shelf, lying on my side with my legs tucked up under my knees. The nurse spreads a sheet over the corpse above me. The ends of the fabric are just long enough to hide me. My brain bounces around in my skull as the wheels of the gurney roll across the concrete floor. I hope like hell I know what I’m doing.
The journey lasts less than three minutes and ends in a room that’s freezing cold. The nurse whips the sheet off the corpse.
“You can come out,” she says. “There are no cameras here, either.”
I slip out of my hiding place and I can see why. We’re in an autopsy room. There are three bodies of various sizes laid out on metal tables. Thankfully the cadavers are all covered with sheets. On my left is a wall of metal drawers. On my right is a giant refrigerator with glass doors. Its shelves are lined with jars filled with floating human brains.
I take out my phone and start snapping more pictures. My eyes pass over the brains and focus on one of the covered bodies that are waiting to be autopsied. A dirty-blond dreadlock is sticking past the edge of the sheet. West, the druggie Kat used to hang with, had hair just like that. I don’t need to see his face to know it’s him. He survived the collapse at the factory just to end up here. I never liked him, but I would never have wished this upon him.
“Holy shit.” I look over at the nurse. “What are you doing to these people?”
“The patients die in the capsules. The pathologists are trying to figure out what killed them,” the nurse says. “That’s all I know.”
She seems so small and frail standing there next to the gurney, but I know that what she’s doing requires incredible strength. “Why are you helping me?”
The nurse shakes her head helplessly. “I can’t escape.” She taps the device on her wrist. “But you can. End this.”
“I’m going to try.” That’s all I can promise. I shove my mother’s phone back into my pocket. “But first I have to get out of here.”
“This is the only way out,” the nurse says, holding up a long black bag.
My gurney enters an elevator. I hear the doors shut. I can’t feel the car rising, and I can’t tell when it’s come to a stop. But I hear the doors open and Angela’s voice in the background. She seems to be flirting with yet another driver from another patient transport company. I try to stay perfectly still as the guy takes control of my gurney and pushes it down the hall. At some point, he’ll open my body bag and check to make sure he’s got the right package. The nurse figured she might know a way around that, but she also made sure to warn me that nothing was certain.
I hear the bag unzip. “Sir, they got a sheet covering this one’s face,” says a young man. “Should I remove it?”
If they do, I’ll have to bust out and make a run for it. My face won’t match the picture on their patient file.
An older man grunts. “Only if you got a strong stomach,” he says. “They do that to the ones who haven’t made it out looking pretty. I took the sheet off once, and I swear I’ll never do it again.”
“Then I think I’ll pass, if that’s okay, sir,” says the young guy. I can tell from his quavering voice that he lacks the balls for this kind of work.
“Are we sure the cadaver’s male?”
“Yes, sir. It’s way too big for a female.”
“Then it’s okay with me if you pass on the inspection.”
The zipper goes up again. I’m rolled inside the van and I hear the young guy clamber in behind the gurney. Suddenly I pity the kid. He’s going to be sitting right beside me when the corpse he was too squeamish to look at decides to rise from the dead.
I feel the van turn right onto Dandelion Drive, and I mentally chart the course it’s likely to take. If we continue in a straight path, there will be a patch of woods on the left side of the road soon. If I reach them, I can disappear. With my finger positioned on the body bag’s zipper, I wait until the van rolls to a stop at a streetlight. Then, with one quick sweep, I open the bag. The shrieking begins the second I sit up and slip the plastic away from my torso. By the time I break free, my escort is already cringing in a corner of the van, his body tucked into a tight little ball and his hands over his face.
“Sammy! Sammy! What the hell is going on back there?” the man in the driver’s seat shouts. The kid answers with a piercing scream that doesn’t seem likely to end.
I throw open the back doors of the vehicle. There’s a car right behind us at the red light, and I watch its driver react as I emerge, naked from the waist up. The dickhead lifts his camera to snap a photo right before I make a break for the trees at the side of the woods. Unless he’s a virtuoso at action shots, it’s unlikely he caught me. I’m deep in the forest in a matter of seconds.
Unfortunately, I quickly realize, I’m miles from Elmer’s. Fueled by a mixture of panic and rage, I start hiking toward my destination. Branches are slapping at my sides, and every bug in New Jersey seems drawn by the scent of my exposed flesh. I trudge through the forest and sprint across the countless roads that cut through it. I’m covered with scratches and speckled with bites, and I still have a few miles to go when I take my mom’s phone out to check my location on the map. The caller ID for my home phone flashes up on the screen. I let it go to voice mail. When I check, there are a dozen missed calls from the same number. Five have come in the last ten minutes. I play back the most recent voice mail.
“What have you done?” she whispers angrily into the microphone. It immediately catches my attention. Irene Eaton doesn’t whisper. “The police are here searching your room. They say you were seen trespassing at some kind of medical facility. And they think you may be in possession of stolen goods. Simon, you have to turn yourself in right away. If they catch you, you could end up going to jail for years. And they will catch you. When they find out you have my phone, all they have to do is trace it.”
I don’t listen to the rest of the message. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a feeling my mother just saved my ass. I think she knew someone might be listening. She was trying to tell me to destroy the phone. I’ll do it in a second, but I need to send the photos and videos I took at the facility to my own email account for safekeeping. I open the photo folder. I’m selecting images to send. Then suddenly they’re gone—they’ve just disappeared. The Company’s already hacked the phone. I drop the useless device and grind it into the ground with the heel of my shoe.