S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (53 page)

“
Close. It's a start. That's why you need to eat.”

He's silent for a moment. “I remember computers in here. Or was I hallucinating?”

“
The room next door. We decided to move you. Less noisy.”

Over the next hour or so, I give him the basics. I dole out the information carefully, watching him to make sure it doesn't overwhelm him. I begin by telling him that we were all in an accident, but I don't tell him what kind. That sort of detail will come later. I assure him that everyone is all right, that we all survived. That we're nearly fully recovered.

“
You were the worst hurt.”

He frowns for a moment, concentrating. Then his face relaxes. “There was water, all around us. We were in a boat.”

I nod.

“
We we're in…East Harlem?”

Another nod.

“
Yeah, I remember now. Waiting for Kelly and Jake. Planes. I remember planes.” His eyes widen. “They bombed us.”

“
Yes.”

More concentrating. I wait, but the strain on his face intensifies until I worry he'll snap. I tell him he needs to rest.

“
I am tired,” he admits. He turns his head and closes his eyes.

I give him a sad smile. It's hard for me to see him looking so worn down, so broken and defeated. Is this the new norm? Not just for him, but for us all?

Each one of us seems to have adjusted differently. In the two days we've been here on our own, we've reached some new level of normalcy, even if it looks nothing at all like the old normal. And that's what scares me so much.

 

Someone's screaming bloody murder down the hall. I jump from the cot and race toward the noise that's coming from Micah's room.

Reggie's already in there, grabbing at Jake and pulling him of the bed. “Get off of Micah,” he shouts.

“
Get off of
me
,” Jake yells back, pushing Reggie away while Micah struggles underneath the pile.

Reggie takes a step back, then reaches forward and lifts Jake by the waist of his pants, like he's a sack of potatoes, and flings him to the floor. Unburdened, Micah jumps out of the bed, naked from the waist down. He continues to thrash, kicking and punching wildly at invisible assailants. Ash steps forward to try and calm him and gets an elbow to the side of her face. She crumples to the floor. Reggie roars with outrage, but she raises her hand and insists she's fine. Already I can see the bruise blooming on her face.

“
What the hell's going on?' I demand.

Jake scrambles to his feet, knocking into the bedside table. He pushes off of it and tackles Reggie. Together they crash into the wall, then the bed, knocking it a few feet to one side. Micah slips and falls on top of them. I hurry over to pull Ash out of the way.

“
Son of a bitch,” Reggie snarls.

“
It's not me. It's Micah,” Jake screams from underneath. “He just started freaking out!” He rolls Reggie off of him—not an easy task—and scrambles away. His face is red. Everything about him screams pent up anger.

Micah curls up on the floor and sits there rocking, his hands locked behind his head, his elbows together. He's moaning and crying. Reggie pulls back, panting. They all look at me.

“
What's going on?” I shout.

Jake points at Micah. “He just went ballistic!”

“
You were attacking him!” Reggie says. He gets up and reaches under Micah's arms and tries to pull him back onto the bed, but Micah's dead weight, contracted into a ball and acting like he doesn't even know any of us are here. Reggie manages to get him back up and tries to cover him with the sheet, but Micah suddenly goes stiff as a board. The sheet flies off.

“
Maybe you should let me handle this,” Reggie tells us evenly. He glares at Jake when he says this, but when he moves to shield Micah from our view, I know he means
all
of us.

Ashley pushes herself up the wall, trembling, her eyes jumping anxiously from Micah to Jake and back again. Reggie's concern for Ashley takes over and he gives up trying to shield Micah. He gently turns her face. I tear my eyes away from the bed, horrified by the way Micah's face is twisted, by the bruises on his body, his lack of awareness of what's real.

“
I'm fine, Reg,” Ashley says. But there's a broad cut on her cheek. It's still white, beginning to swell, not yet bleeding. It will soon.

“
You're not okay,” he replies.

She pushes his hands away, her eyes never leaving the floor in front of her feet. She won't look up.

By now Micah has curled back up into a fetal position. He's still whimpering, still rocking with his head wrapped in his arms. Jake stands there paralyzed, useless. I go over and cover Micah up. I tuck in the sheet, make sure it stays put this time.

“
What happened?” I ask for a third time.

“
I came in here when I heard Micah yelling,” Reggie explains. He touches Ashley's cheek and she winces. “All I saw was Jake on top of him. They were fighting.”

“
We weren't fighting,” Jake says. “I was trying to keep him from hurting himself!”

Reggie whirls around. “What are you even doing in here?” he shouts. “Aren't you supposed to be downstairs watching the tunnel?”

“
Guys, keep it down,” I say.

“
So, I'm not allowed to be in here?” Jake growls. “What the hell is it with you guys? Why are you treating me like I'm a pariah?”

“
A what?”

“
What'd I do to deserve this?”

“
First of all—!”

“
Reggie,” I hiss. “Enough!”

Reggie points his finger at Jake's face. His lips mouth what he's thinking, but he keeps quiet.

“
Look,” Jake says, “it wasn't my fault I got left behind back there in the Midtown tunnel. And I'm sorry you all had to come back, but it wasn't my fault. Someone—”

“
You think that's what this is about?” Reggie says, incredulously. “You think we blame you for this?”

“
Damn it, Reggie. I said enough. Both of you! Christ.”

Reggie and Jake glower at each other. I turn to Jake. “One at a time, now. Tell me what happened?”

Jake breaks his stare with Reggie. “I was walking past when I heard Micah call out. I came in here and found him standing by the bed, leaning against the wall. He was shaking. I thought he was cold, because he was…you know, naked.”

“
What were you even doing down at this end of the hall?” Reggie asks.

Jakes eyes flick to the hallway, and his eyes narrow. “I was getting something to eat.”

I wave Reggie off. “Then what happened?”

“
Micah said he had to go to the bathroom. He looked really unsteady, so I told him I'd get some help. But then I saw that he'd already…”

“
What?”

“
I got him back in bed and cleaned up the floor. By then he was crying and shivering.” He lowers his voice. “He was embarrassed. I didn't know what else to do, so I stayed with him.”

“
So why were you attacking him?”

Jake shoots Reggie another angry glare. “I wasn't attacking him. We were talking. He seemed fine, but then, all of a sudden, he just started freaking out. I told you that!”

“
Jake! Not so loud.”

“
So, that's it?” Reggie asks. “Just out of the blue he freaks out?”

“
I told you we were talking. For quite a while, actually. Half an hour, maybe. He asked for something to drink. I gave it to him. He seemed to be totally okay. We were talking about what happened after we got separated, back in the Midtown tunnel. We talked about how we all ended up back here, about Arc and the failsafe inside our heads. We were talking, that's all.”

“
You told him about the failsafe?”

“
I, uh— What do you want me to say? Was I not supposed to?”

“
What else did you tell him?”

“
I don't know. About how you escaped and killed that nurse. And then finding Kelly. Trying to go back and everyone passing out. I told him we were planning on shutting down the servers to get out. He was just lying there, all quiet and listening. Then suddenly he just wigged.”

“
Christ,” I say, running my hand through my hair. It catches on a tangle. “I was afraid this was going to happen. You shouldn't have told him that stuff. It overloaded him.”

“
It's not my fault!”

“
Jake—”

But Jake storms out of the room, leaving the rest of us in silence. Even Micah has completely withdrawn into himself.

“
He's just a kid, Jess,” Ashley finally says. She presses her hand against her cheek. I can tell she's in a lot of pain. We don't even have ice to put on it.

“
We're all kids! God damn it. You're his age, for Christ sake, Ash, and yet I don't see you going around freaking everyone out! He should've known better. He just needs to do his job and let the rest of us do ours so we can get the hell out of this place and go home.”

I'm so close to tears I can feel them pressing against the backs of my eyes.

Reggie takes in a long shuddering breath and lets it out between his teeth. “Listen,” he quietly says, “maybe we should just shut all the damn servers down right now. Just cut off all the sub-streams and leave. Take Micah in the wheelchair and go. Right now.”

“
And what if it doesn't work?” I ask.

The question seems to take us all by surprise, including me. I'd been having doubts, but I'd suppressed them, hoping against hope that I was just being paranoid. Ashley seemed to have every confidence that the plan would work. That, I'd thought, was good enough for me. But it has been bugging me. Shutting off the servers just seems too easy, too convenient. If Arc chose us specifically for our coding skills, then they'd have to know we've got the tools to sabotage the very machines that hold us prisoner here.

“
It'll work, Jessie.”

But now, even Ashley is beginning to look doubtful. She winces at Reggie's assurance and says, “If we're wrong, Reg, it could kill us.”

“
What? You, too?” He huffs. “I'd rather die trying than to stay here another day.”

“
Don't say that.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “I just want us to go home, babe.”

“
We all do.”

I glance over at Micah. I don't know if I'm making the right decisions or not. Am I being overly cautious? But moving him now—especially after this manic episode—feels like the absolute wrong thing to do. He's too unstable to take that risk. “One more night, Reggie,” I tell him. “Just a few more hours.”

“
In a few more hours we could all be dead, Jessie!”

“
Damn it!” I shout. Micah's body jerks in the bed. I lower my voice. “We're winging it here, Reggie. Doing the best we can. We've got one shot at this, one shot only. I'm sure of it.”

“
Fine. One more night,” Reggie says, wagging his finger, as if to make his intent perfectly clear. “We go in the morning. Do or die.”

Ashley tentatively places her hand on my arm, like she's afraid I might lash out at her. “Micah will be ready.”

“
All right. Okay.”

“
I'll sit with him,” Reggie says, dismissing us. “I'll make sure he doesn't freak out again.” He moves to check Ashley's cheek one final time, but she turns away. Tough girl. The friction between them is nearly as palpable as it is between all the rest of us.

“
Come on,” I tell her, pulling her out by the arm. “We'll get that cleaned up and bandaged.”

As we leave, I pray Micah recovers quickly. We desperately need to this all behind us, before we tear each other apart.

 

When five o'clock arrives Monday morning,
the first thing I do is check on Micah. He's still asleep. Reggie's nowhere in sight, but Kelly's crashed in the chair next to the bed. Both he and Micah are snoring.

I leave them and hurry down the darkened hallway and out to the bathrooms. I end up sitting on the dry toilet pinching my nose from the smell. I sit like that for a good ten minutes. Wanting to pee, needing to cry. I can't do either.

On my return, I pass INTERVIEW 1. I've been avoiding Stephen, but now I go in.

He turns his eyes to me and the corner of his mouth curls up into an infuriating sneer.

“
Another visit, and so soon after last night?”

I frown. “I didn't come in here last night. You must've been dreaming.”

“
Whatever you say.”

“
We're leaving,” I tell him, not trying to mask the disdain in my voice. “We found the failsafe programs.”

His face remains impassive.

“
We're going to shut the servers down,” I tell him, watching for any reaction. I think I see a flicker in his eyes.

“
It won't work,” he tells me. I expect him to say just that, and yet his words still hit me like sheets of ice, shattering over me and leaving me shivering and bitterly cold.

“
It will.”