Haunted (State v. Sefore) (4 page)

“Seriously?” The words exploded out of Maddison. “Did someone take it over this jerk’s head?”

Josh sighed. “Maddison, they don’t give care vouchers to anyone. Ever. The rest of us knew better than to ask.”

She paced. “Are you telling me something like this has happened before?”

Josh shook his head at her, as though she were a naïve little girl. His dark chocolate eyes held pity. “Class Sixers are expendable. Everyone knows that. There are always more of us to fill whatever positions need to be filled.”

“You’re not expendable.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “Thanks for thinking so.”

Taylor broke in before Maddison’s tirade could gain more steam. “She’s not the only one. And you came straight here after that?”

Josh gave her a nod. “The burning was worse, and by then I knew it was in my right eye too. I don’t know about the other guys. At least I knew I had someone to come to. I didn’t want to waste any more time.” He ran a hand through his coal black hair, wincing and jerking his hand away halfway through. “Is it … do you think it’s gone for good?”

Taylor moved toward the sink and filled Josh’s glass with water again. “Do you know what kind of pesticide they were spraying?”

“They don’t tell us that kind of stuff.”

“Well, then, let me examine you before I answer that question.”

Not a good sign.

Taylor went through the pain scale and symptoms list, took his vital signs, and examined his eye and eyelid for debris. Finally, she asked the question they’d all been dreading. “Cover your left eye. What do you see?”

“Shadows, maybe? There’s a blurry circle I think might be your face.”

Taylor grabbed her compad off the island. “Find Snellen Eye Chart.” A minute later, the top half of the chart appeared on her screen. She held it six feet away from Josh. “Can you see the screen?”

He growled. “No. Even your circle is hard to concentrate on now.”

She moved within a foot of his face. “How about now?”

“I see some squiggly black lines on a grey square.” He took his hand off his left eye. “What does that mean?”

“The fact that you can see shadows is good. It means your vision isn’t completely lost. But I’m going to be straight with you. Your eye was contaminated for over an hour and a half before we could flush it out. Your cornea may be permanently damaged, and without an eye doctor’s care, I think we’ll be lucky if you escape oncoming glaucoma.”

He’d never see again? Because of quotas? Because he was in Class Six?

A strangled sound erupted from Josh’s mouth. His jaw snapped shut.

This wasn’t okay. This couldn’t be okay. Somebody had to do something.

She had to do something.

Chapter Four

N
oah shot up
in bed. His lungs burned.
Breathe. Now. Again, you idiot.
His hands were sticky with blood. He rushed for the sink, twisted the hot water knob on full force, and plunged his hands into the water, scrubbing them raw. The nerves in his fingers screamed at the temperature. Clarity returned. No red stained the water or the skin on his hands.

Just a nightmare. He sank back against the wall and let his eyelids drift shut. Grief-stricken blue eyes appeared. He snapped to attention, finding his own reflection in the mirror before his mind moved to the next snapshot, but it didn’t matter. The image of Andrew Brady’s lifeless body needed no recall. It always floated on the edge of Noah’s consciousness, waiting for a vulnerable moment to accuse him.

He deserved the accusation.

The neon red numbers of the alarm clock read 4:30 a.m. He’d almost made it four hours tonight. Not enough. His body might be conditioned to perform with substantially less sleep, but averaging three to four hours a night degraded anyone. His arms and legs were full of lead, but he wouldn’t sleep again tonight, not without more nightmares. At least a run would reduce the churning in his stomach. Slipping on a t-shirt and some socks, he hunted around for his running shoes. There. Under the desk. He swiped his room key and vidcom, complete with its curfew exemption, off the desk.

Minutes later, his feet pounded the pavement. He concentrated on the steps—left, right, left, right, left—and pushed his muscles until they screamed. If he focused on ignoring the pain, he could avoid triggering the images’ return.

In the glow of the streetlights, the trees lining the road had begun to turn crimson and ochre. He’d missed fall in the South over the last several years. The vibrant colors and crisp air reminded him of football on Thursday nights, picking apples with his mom, and throwing passes in the backyard with Daniel.

Noah groaned. Evading thoughts of Daniel was like navigating a minefield without a map. Noah quickened his pace until his lungs burned. The door of a house opened. Light spilled out and illuminated the departing man. He compelled himself to pull back. Noah Seforé couldn’t run a mile in three and a half minutes—no normal person could. The respectable rhythm felt like a crawl as he crested the next hill on his new route. Under other circumstances, he would have increased his pace to avoid contact with the man. Leaving others in the dust qualified as one of the few perks.

Cursing under his breath, he turned and headed back to the hotel. If he couldn’t escape his occupation and the memories connected with it, he should call Kelly. The assistant regional liquidator owed him some answers. Noah didn’t have long to separate the guilty from the innocent, and withheld information would slow him down. It was only a matter of time before the Elite sent others in, liquidators who would accuse first and eliminate second. He pumped his legs harder. He wouldn’t be the cause of anyone else’s death.

Fifteen-year-old Andrew with his shaggy hair hanging in his eyes wasn’t the only one etched in Noah’s mind. Every night, he relived their last moments, saw their dead bodies at his feet. He’d awaken, like this morning, swearing their blood stained his hands. Though he’d never spilled an actual drop.

Breaking someone’s neck didn’t require bloodshed, but their panicked eyes and last gasps still embedded like shrapnel inside him.

He sucked down a long breath and willed the thoughts away as he slowed to a walk nearing the hotel entrance. The night clerk looked up to greet Noah but stopped short when he saw him. Breaking eye contact, Noah headed for the stairwell. He must look deranged coming in from a run at a quarter after five.

Taking the steps two at a time, Noah reached the third floor and made the right toward his room. He closed the door behind him as his real vidcom vibrated on the desk. He read the caller ID.

Daniel.

Noah hit ignore and opted for a shower instead.

Nothing good could come from a conversation with his brother at this time of the morning. Daniel would be either drunk and sullen or racing along some twisted stretch of highway on his way home from an activity Noah would not approve of. Daniel had mastered the art of distracting himself from the truth Noah accepted—they were on a quick, downward spiral to hell.

Well, Noah wanted off the track. He’d done what he could in the last year and a half to carry out justice. Maybe one day it would feel like enough. Enough to clear his record. His conscience made it all too plain that God kept score.

After dressing for the day, he grabbed the vidcom and pulled the desk chair out. He had to stay one step ahead. Waking up his compad, he connected it to the vidwall, opting to display the case information on a larger scale. Ignoring the message notification, he initialized a call to ARL Kelly.

“Is there a reason you’re calling me before six in the morning, Seforé?” Kelly’s disheveled appearance confirmed Noah woke him.

Noah scowled at the use of his real last name by a member of the Elite. “I don’t have all the information I need to conduct this investigation. Something tells me McCray and, therefore, you know more than I do about this resistance movement.”

Kelly’s eyes narrowed, and he stood up, carrying the vidcom with him. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking. Hacks aside, the stationary liquidators in the area haven’t logged any unusual reports. Why do you suspect a group and not an individual?”

Kelly didn’t respond, and again, Noah pulled up the reports he had clearance to view. Looking at the average number of liquidations offered no insight. The number matched most of the other regions. The nuclear plants reported no trouble. No evidence of radioactive indicators in the last eighteen months either.

By the sounds in the background, Noah guessed that Kelly had booted up his own compad. “I assume you’re aware of the medical inventory discrepancies.”

Noah opened the assistant minister of medicine’s report about shifting inventories at the hospitals in the area. First aid supplies seemed to be the main items missing. “Why does the Council think the hospital thefts are connected to the hacks? You don’t need alcohol and gauze to bypass a computer’s mainframe.”

Kelly sat up straighter. A sneer marred his face. “Stolen government property of any kind is a serious issue, Mr. Seforé.”

“I agree, but you don’t need an undercover liquidator stationed in a hospital to solve that problem. McCray could send over a couple mercenary-types to find the thief.”

“It’s not your job to question your superiors. It’s your job to find the resistance responsible for both the hacks and the thefts. They are connected. You don’t need to know why.”

Why couldn’t the man have a conversation without condescension? “I can’t complete my assignment unless I know exactly what triggered this threat. You and McCray have told me the potentate wants this situation taken care of without alerting the public. I need to know what has the Council worried.”

Kelly quirked an eyebrow. “I see Harrow didn’t overstate your attention to detail.”

Noah fought a grimace. “Then I’m sure he also mentioned my success rate.”

Kelly gave an exaggerated sigh, typing on his compad as he spoke. “Fine, Seforé, you win, but if the information I’m releasing to you gets out, it’ll be your head.”

Noah didn’t need any reminders of that, but he nodded his consent anyway. A moment later, a folder appeared in the corner of his compad, and he tapped it open. The file contained an incident log that included arson and sabotage. “They’re violent.”

“Within five minutes of every hack, while our attention was diverted, another site was targeted. They’re escalating, faster than we like. We’ve been able to keep everything contained so far, but it’s only a matter of time before the public hears. I don’t need to remind you how dangerous that could be.”

“I understand.”

“Good, then if you don’t have any more demands to make, I’ll be returning to bed.” The ARL disconnected the call as soon as he stopped speaking.

Noah took his time looking over the incident log and witness statements. When the first hack took place at a public information booth in MA-6, someone started a fire at the local news office. No one was hurt, but some of the physical archives were destroyed. He opened another file—all of the food transfer trucks in MA-3 had been sabotaged the same afternoon as the grocery store mainframe hack. The hack at the mall in MA-2 coincided with a fire at the regional director of business and technology’s house. The family was injured but not fatally. The final hack took place in MA-5 at a computer in the Regional Classification Office. While three programmers worked to override it, a homemade bomb detonated in the office, killing them and injuring fifteen others.

So they’d killed now. The numbers would only climb higher on both sides. Which must be why they needed the first aid supplies. Some of their members must’ve been injured setting the fires or building bombs. McCray was right. They had to be stopped. He needed to stop them. Without liquidating anyone. That was possible, right? Of course it was. Somehow. He just needed to think on it more.

*

“Have you taken a break yet?” Nurse Walker looked at the clock above their heads.

“Hadn’t thought about it.” Noah’s stomach growled.

“Evidently you should.” A hint of a smile crept onto her face. “You’ve been on duty for six hours already. Take thirty minutes. Everything’s quiet here.” She consulted a chart, already walking away. “You can take your other break after the apprentices arrive.”

Apprentices meant Maddison, and the opportunity to continue earning her trust, which was especially important now that he’d researched her background. Whether he liked it or not, her parents’ liquidation in combination with her remark from the other day skyrocketed her up his persons of interest list. She didn’t seem the type to start gasoline fires or slash tires, but she might be the key to finding out who was. In the meantime, he headed down to the cafeteria. This would be a prime opportunity to get to know some of the other staff. If the uprising included hospital employees, he’d find out soon enough. The noise of thirty conversations hit him with a shock when he entered the cafeteria, but within a second he adjusted and headed to the line.

He grabbed a tray and then a bowl of chicken potpie, a serving of green beans, and some chocolate cake. As he filled a glass with sweet tea, a man behind him asked, “You new here?”

Noah turned, nodding. “Started Sunday on med/surg.”

“That’s one of my floors. I janitor two through five. Name’s Ben Yancey.” The man held out his tray. “Can’t shake your hand, but why don’t you sit with me?”

“Thanks. I’m Noah, Noah Seforé.”

Ben spoke to the cashier, their familiarity obvious. Noah took the opportunity to size up Ben—5’8”, middle-aged, black curly hair, green eyes, slim but not muscular. His demeanor fit the textbook definition of non-threatening. Noah paid for his lunch and followed the older man through the maze of tables. Ben dug into his meal, and Noah followed suit. He forked a mouthful of chicken potpie, his mouth twisting as he swallowed. The metallic taste lingered. Sometimes enhanced senses were a real pain. He pulled the chocolate cake closer and ventured conversation. “So, how long have you worked here?”

Ben leaned back in his chair. “About as long as you’ve been alive, if I figure right.”

“Well if it’s been twenty years, you’re right.”

“Near enough.” The skin around his eyes crinkled. “I grew up around here, and most of my family’s an hour west. No reason to move anywhere else. I don’t imagine the same is true for you though.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No accent. Which must mean your family is from somewhere west of the Mississippi.” Ben’s tone held no suspicion or judgment, but Noah reassessed him.

“I don’t have much family, just an older brother, and he hasn’t settled down yet.” Noah let his next words trickle out as slow as honey. “And I am from the South, Metro Area Sixteen to be exact. Guess the accent fades once you’ve been gone a while.”

Ben chuckled. “I reckon so. What brings you here?”

“I missed it, the South, I mean. A CNA position opened here, and I took it.”

“So you don’t know anyone?”

Noah shrugged. “Not really. Except for Nurse Walker and an apprentice or two, but give me some time. I’ve only been here four days.”

“Fair enough.” Ben sipped his sweet tea. “Still, it’d be downright rude of me not to invite you to dinner. I’ll check with Ethel, that’s my wife, about a night next week. You’re on the seven-to-seven Pitman shift, right?”

Noah nodded, acknowledging he had the traditional two days on, two days off, three days on schedule. Every now and then the universe did him small favors—Ben’s invitation certainly counted as one. Conversation lulled for several minutes, and Noah glanced down at his watch. He had three minutes to get back upstairs. Shooting to his feet, he grabbed his tray off the table. “I’d better go. Thanks for the company. I’ll see you around, I guess.”

“I’m sure you will.” The unemotional tone of Ben’s reply made Noah turn back toward the table. Ben stared at an older, sandy-haired man, sitting in the far right corner of the cafeteria.

The man reminded Noah of a grizzly bear—scruffy, mean, and easy to rile. With the man’s unblinking glare fixed on him and Ben, Noah’s instinct told him to step in between Ben and the stranger. He couldn’t, however, afford to complicate his cover. So, he walked toward the tray return and risked only one look back in Ben’s direction. Grizzly had taken Noah’s seat, and Ben’s body language matched the other man’s aggressive stance. Interesting.

As he walked toward the elevator, Noah considered the stranger again.
Now that’s the kind of man who builds bombs in his basement.