S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (34 page)

“
Yes, sir.”

What treatment? What metamorphosis?

“
As this is our first try with the new batch of virus, we've got no baseline for how long it'll take for the infection to carry through to completion. Make sure the remaining contingencies are all in place. Oh, and I want a full live video and audio recording of the entire process. We'll send them to Hadley for analysis.”

“
I understand.”

I frown now, disturbed by what I'm hearing. Virus? Infection? Contingencies? What the hell are they planning to do to me?

“
Where are we on Miss Daniels? Still unconscious?”

Wait. They're talking about me now. Who were they talking about before? Ashley? Is the injection meant for her?

“
Yes, sir. She's been unresponsive to anything but pain stimulus since they brought her in from New York Medical. It's not a deep coma. Very active brainwaves.”

“
And the new implant? Still showing signs of rejection?”

“
Over thirty percent of the neural connections have degenerated. The decay rate is steady. We're losing between twelve and eighteen percent every twenty four hours.”

“
It's possible that it'll reverse; we've seen it happen.”

“
Yes, sir, but unless it does, the new implant will become completely detached in less than six days.”

“
Might be the new materials. Are we sure it's not a software glitch?”

“
Maybe. I can't get a handle on the new program. I tried adjusting one or two of the interface parameters, but the system hung on me. I had to reboot.”

“
No, don't mess with it anymore, Mabel. Too risky. If something happens while the system's down, we could completely lose her. Keep her stable; a shock to the system could trigger a total rejection. Then we'd be back to square one.”

“
But the coder's going to be out for at least another couple more days. Isn't there anyone else who can do the programming? I'm a bit lost here. I do better with people than machines.”

“
You're doing fine, Mabel. Just keep following the protocols until the coder's online again. Besides, it'd take us at least a week to get another engineer up to speed, and this is just too sensitive to give to anyone else. It's a risk, but I don't we should bring in another ArcWare engineer.”

ArcWare!

“
We'll know for sure for before then anyway, sir.”

“
Yes, either the new L.I.N.C. will fully anneal to her cerebral cortex or it won't. We can always go back to the old one.”

“
Without the failsafe in place? Is that wise?”

“
Like I said, that's why we have a backup, Mabel. I'm sure you can appreciate that fact more than anyone else right now. You checked her vitals this evening?”

“
Half an hour ago. She's stable. She was lucky. The blast could've done a lot more damage—”

Blast? What blast?

“—
in the water. There was only minor internal bleeding. The laparoscopic surgeon at NYMC repaired any leaks before your guys extracted her. Everything seems fine now—her fluid input and output, vitals—she just hasn't come out of the coma.”

“
She will when her body's ready. I don't want to rush it. Have we figured out why the kids were even there in the first place?”

“
The other girl, Miss Evans, said something about the tunnel before she clammed up.”

So Ashley is here! But what does she mean by tunnel?

“
She's refused to say anything more. Keeps insisting on seeing her parents. She's trouble, that one. I just know it. She filed a report a couple weeks ago on her grandmother's conscription.”

G-ma Junie?

The man chuckles. “She's smart is all. They all are. That's why we recruited them.”

“
She tried to escape last night, so I put her in restraints. But I had to sedate her when I found she'd gotten out of them this morning.”

“
That's fine.”

The alarm bells already jangling inside my head are now going crazy.
Ashley escape? Sedated? What the hell is going on?

My mind goes back to what she said about the tunnel. It niggles at me until I manage to coax an image from somewhere deep down inside of my head: a memory of swimming in darkness. More like a dream than anything real. Then, being attacked, needing to escape. Kelly's there, too. I'm choking.

What the hell did we do?

Reggie's voice echoes inside my head:
We should break into Gameland.

Did we?

“
No doubt they were trying to go back,” the man says, as if he'd somehow heard my thoughts. It confirms my fears: we did break in. The man makes a whooshing sound as he breathes. “And now that whole business in lower Manhattan. They must've figured they could to go back in through a different tunnel.”

And then it all comes back to me in a sudden rush: the maps and the preparation to go, the practice dive at the reservoir, the actual dive to LI through the Midtown tunnel, the narrow escape coming back. The blockage. I remember we had to leave Jake behind. And I remember Kelly telling me I was not to go back.

Kelly.

Except he did exactly that. He went back. Without me.

Did the rest of us try going back?

Finally the panic that my mind has been damming gushes forth. Kelly never did come back.

No!
He was trying to get out. We were going to meet him.

Whoever the man is standing out there in the hall, he's wrong. We weren't going back to LI, we were waiting for Kelly to return with Jake.

But something's still missing, some vital piece that my mind refuses to yield. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember. It doesn't come.

“
I thought the Harlem tunnel was cemented in years ago,” Mabel says.

The Harlem tunnel?

There's a bang as the man slaps the wall, making me jump. “It was! That's what angers me about it! The coder knew that! Those kids weren't supposed to be there! They were supposed to stay on the island the first time! Why else would our guys go down there and block the tunnel? But not only did they come back, but they also brought the whole god damn zombie horde with them!” He growls with frustration.

“
What's the latest on the outbreak?” Mabel asks, clearly eager to change the subject.

“
You know I can't say anything about that, Mabel.”

“
And you know I'm stuck here. Who am I going to blab to?”

The man sighs. “Ironic isn't it? This'll probably be the safest place to be once the outbreak takes hold. And it will. Fine. I guess you deserve to know. The New Merican Air Defense went in this afternoon and napalmed the shit out of everything. Media's still in blackout. Jackers are posting every kind of conspiracy theory they can come up with. We shut down the black streams as soon as we can find them, but new ones pop up somewhere else just as quickly. Ask me, the bombing of the tunnels was too public. It was completely mishandled. And it places our entire operation in jeopardy. I told Padraig he should've had better control of the operation from the beginning. Logistics is his bailiwick. He was supposed to be our mole in the government. He dropped the ball.”

The hand on the knob rises halfway up the door. A finger with a large ring on it taps the wood. I can almost see the man thinking. The crack shrinks to a finger's width, letting in less light.

“
Should I put her in restraints, just in case?” Mabel asks.

“
No, just keep the motion detectors on the floor around the bed. That should be enough to alert you if she wakes and tries to get up again. But keep a close watch. I don't want to lose another one.”

“
Maybe if I had some assistance—”

“
Soon, Mabel. Patience. Once I get the committee fully on board, I'll bring in some more help. Not everyone understands the delicacy of this situation, much less the importance, as you do. We don't get very many…volunteers, such as you.”

“
Thank you, sir.”

“
Okay. I'm going home. Been a long day. I'll be here in…twelve hours. Keep monitoring her. Miss Daniels is our best hope for success. And our biggest risk. I don't want to think about what will happen if she ends up being our biggest failure, too.”

“
We still have the other girl. Her new implant is a hundred percent annealed.”

“
Yeah, but her connection to the target is still unclear. And unless she's also related to the good father…” He chuckles. “Anyway, everyone's expendable. It'd be better to just terminate—”

A door slams closed further down the hall, followed by the sound of approaching footsteps.

“
Speaking of expendable, there's Padraig now. Why is he never on time?”

The fingers slip off the door. It clicks shut. Darkness and silence envelop the room.

 

Terminate what?
The project? Me? And who's the target? Or, for that matter, the good father? Is it Dad?

I reach my hand up to the back of my neck. There's a bandage there, stiff and crinkly. Why would they replace my implant? What's the new one for? What does it do?

And why is my body rejecting it?

An inch above the edge of the bandage, my hair has been shaved away. From the feel of the new bristles coming in, the surgery couldn't have been more than a couple days ago.

The questions flood into me, foremost among them: What is the alpha injection? Is it anything like the Zulu Process?

I shiver, dreading that it might be.

Back when reanimation was first discovered, living humans were turned into zombies to create an army of the Undead for national defense purposes. The process was code-named Zulu. Back then, only death-row prisoners were conscripted. The program was so successful that the murder rate dropped like a rock. Then, when the military started running out of suitable candidates, they began taking life-without-parole inmates. They said it solved two problems with one stroke: it beefed up our security forces—depleted after the Middle East conflicts of the first two decades of the century—and eased prison overcrowding.

Of course, Zuluization generated new problems for the country. Intended to stop global strife, the program only brought it home to us. The Southern States Coalition demanded that they have more say in which citizens could be turned into Zulus and how they were to be used. When the federal government refused, the SSC seceded. A civil war followed. The remaining thirty-six states became New Merica, isolating itself from the rest of the world.

After the Life Service Law passed eleven years ago, the government finally dropped the term Zulu and began formerly calling them conscriptees. There were the Omegamen, placed into the military to fight and protect against our enemies. Then there were all the rest, the Controlled Undead. CUs. These do the jobs nobody else wants. But no matter what they do, most people just call them what they are: zombies.

Then Arc properties entered the picture. They wanted access to CUs for a wholly new purpose—entertainment—and they were willing to pay well for them.

Is that what they're doing to us? Are we to become Players in
The Game?

I lower my hand and slip it back under the covers just as the lock clicks and the door opens. I shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep, but my heart is hammering inside my chest, threatening to give me away.

The nurse—Mabel, I remind myself—comes in and slips a cuff on my arm to check my blood pressure and pulse. As she works, she talks to herself. She says my name once or twice. I don't respond. I pretend to be unconscious. I try to lie still and impassive. I force myself to sink away into the deepest part of me.

But then she runs something hard along the sole of my foot. The sensation is almost too much to bear and I draw it away, curling my toes and nearly yelping with pain. I bite my tongue. She appears to be satisfied that this is a normal reflex, even for someone unconscious, as she doesn't make any remark.

She returns to the head of the bed and gently lifts my left eyelid open. I'm barely able to brace myself before she shines a harsh light into my eye. I try not to flinch or pull away. She repeats this with the other eye.

Finally, she draws the sheet completely off my body. The air is cool, but not cold. Still, I shiver and become aware of my nakedness. I stiffen. I sense her hesitate, as if she notices something's amiss. I sense her eyes on me, judging me, inspecting my every movement, from the flutter of my eyelids to the rise and fall of my chest.

“
Jessica?” she says, testing. “Miss Daniels?”

I don't answer.

“
Are you there? Can you hear me, honey? It's okay. I'm here to help you.”

I'm so tempted to respond, to plead with her to help me. But I don't.

She sighs and pulls on my right shoulder and leg, rolling me toward her. She checks the sheets beneath me. I'm so ashamed, so embarrassed for anyone to see me like this, that I want to tell her to stop. But I remind myself that I'm a prisoner here, a guinea pig, and that it's not just me. My friends are also in danger. Letting Nurse Mabel know I'm awake will undoubtedly only make things worse for all of us.

She rolls me back. I let my arm and leg flop back to the bed. The bone in my wrist hits the metal rail on the side of the bed and I wince. Thankfully, she's not looking at my face.