Outbreak (21 page)

To my relief, Celdon answers the door right away when I buzz headquarters. I can tell he hasn’t left this room in hours. His eyes are tired from staring at his computer screen, and his blond hair is sticking up in odd directions from running his hands through it in frustration.

“Hey,” he says, taking me in with a furtive expression and glancing down the tunnel. There’s no one else around. The only people who live this close to headquarters are Systems retirees, and they’re all in for the night.

“Hey. Do you have a minute?”

He looks back over his shoulder and tries — unsuccessfully — to pat down his messy hair. “Sure, sure.”

Stepping into Systems headquarters, I get a familiar pang of envy. Station after station stretches before me in a honeycomb configuration, each one tricked out with the latest equipment. 

I run my hand over the back of a swivel chair, marveling at the butter-soft upholstery and trying to keep my tech lust in check. All the electronics give the stations a pleasant warmth, and it feels as though I’m stepping inside a living, breathing organism.

“I don’t think I’d ever get tired of this,” I whisper.

“Yeah, I know.”

Celdon’s voice sounds strange to me, but I’m not sure if that’s because he feels guilty about his Systems status or because his mind is elsewhere.

“You never showed me your new station,” I say, trying to buy myself some time before I have to deliver the bad news.

“Oh, well, uh . . .” Celdon trails off, running a hand nervously through his hair. “I would show you, except . . . it’s kind of a mess right now.”

I throw him a skeptical look. “Like you’ve ever cared about a mess. Come on! I want to see it.”

Celdon lets out a puff of air from between his teeth, looking genuinely agitated. “No, it’s like
really
bad at the moment. I don’t want anybody to see it.”

“I don’t care if you were watching porn in there,” I say, only half joking. “I just want to see your setup.”

He opens his mouth to retort, but no words come out.

Something isn’t right.

Before he can stop me, I make a beeline for his station — the only glass cube that’s lit up along the far back wall. 

As soon as I step inside, I know he was lying about the mess. There’s only one canteen takeout container lying next to the keyboard, and it hasn’t even begun to smell yet. He’s got three top-of-the-line monitors facing away from the bull pen, and they’re filled with square after square of Fringe footage.

“Oh my gosh,” I murmur.

Celdon steps into the cube behind me, looking very guilty. “Now, before you freak out, let me explain.”

“
O-kay
.” 

He holds up his hands and releases a quick burst of air. “Eli asked me to do this.”

“What?”

“He filled me in on everything that’s been going on and asked . . . asked if I could hack into Constance’s surveillance to keep a lookout for his brother.”

“He did
what
?” 

I could smack Eli for dragging Celdon into this. 

“Are you insane? Do you know how dangerous this is?”

“Chill, Riles. I’ll be fine. They won’t even know I’m here.”

“You can’t fool Constance!”

Celdon tilts his head sideways and cocks an eyebrow. “Actually, I can. Their security really sucks.”

But my panic has already reached a boiling point. I keep seeing Celdon as he was after Constance dragged him in to get to me: battered, broken, and afraid. 

“No! This is too dangerous! I don’t want you involved.”

“More involved than I already am?” he snaps. “Because if knowing Constance’s dirty little secret at 119 doesn’t make me involved —”

“That’s different. We got back here without anyone knowing, and we were lucky. What do you think would happen if they noticed someone hacked into their system? Huh?”

“Please. Those amateurs don’t even know I’m watching.”

“It doesn’t matter!” I cry. “I can’t let you do this.”

“I’m already doing it. And it’s not your choice. I’m a big boy, Riles.”

I want to shake him. I want to scream at him. I want to tell him that he
doesn’t understand how dangerous this is, but he does. Celdon knows better than anyone.

Celdon
was the one Constance tortured.
Celdon
is the one who continues to be threatened because of me. Who am I to tell him he can’t help?

“You’re right,” I sigh. “You’re right, okay? Just please,
please
be careful.”

He seems legitimately surprised that I caved so easily. “What’s going on with you?” he asks, sinking into his chair. “Why did you come here?”

“I just paid a visit to Shane.”

Celdon’s eyes bug out, and his mouth falls open. “No, you didn’t.”

“I know, I know. It was stupid and dangerous, but —”

“Are you serious? You come in here and start lecturing
me
for being reckless, yet you wander right into the den of a guy who tried to
kill
you?”

“I needed his help.”

“What could you possibly need Shane for?”

I hesitate. I want to tell Celdon everything, but that would mean confirming all his worst suspicions about the woman who gave birth to him. So instead I start by unloading everything Sawyer told me and Eli about our radiation resistance. 

As I talk, Celdon’s expression changes from disbelief to excitement. I leave out the suggestion that he might be resistant, too, but Celdon doesn’t miss a beat.

“Does that mean I’m a super mutant?”

“There’s no way to know,” I say. “You haven’t been exposed to radiation as an adult, so there’s no way to tell how your body would react.”

“So I
could
be a mutant.”

“I guess,” I say, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. “But that’s not what I came here to tell you.”

Celdon tilts his head to the side and gives me a look of dread. Any news bigger than super-mutant radiation resistance can’t be good.

I pause, debating for the hundredth time if I should tell him the truth. It certainly won’t put his mind at ease knowing his mom was paid off, but I know if it were me, I’d prefer closure — even misery — to a lifetime of uncertainty.

“Sawyer told me there was no record of my parents ever being admitted to the medical ward.”

“What?”

“They have my records from my exam and admittance, but there’s nothing on my parents.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know. They’d have to be examined before they were integrated into the compound. So I went to Shane. I knew if anyone here would know what really happened, it would be him.”

Celdon smacks a hand to his forehead to emphasize my stupidity but doesn’t argue. “And?”

I drag in another breath. This is it — my last chance to back out and spare him the awful truth. Maybe he would be better off not knowing, but he’d never forgive me if he learned I lied to spare his feelings.

“There’s no record of my parents being admitted to the medical ward because they never got that far,” I murmur. “They were probably killed as soon as they got to the compound.”

Celdon’s hand drops into his lap. “They killed your parents? Just invited them in, took you, and . . .
killed
them?”

I nod.

He sinks back against his chair to process that information and then looks up at me with a twinge of sadness in his eyes. “Do you think . . . do you think that’s what happened to my mom? Was the ‘finding me outside the compound’ thing just a story they made up?”

His hopeful tone breaks my heart in two. And despite my earlier resolution to tell Celdon the truth, I find myself waffling. 

I have the rare opportunity to tell a lie that could make his life better, not worse. I know he would probably prefer to think his mother was killed unjustly than think she handed him over for a little bit of cash. Plus, there’s no way to know for sure what happened to her.

“Most likely,” I choke.

“They just killed her?”

I nod slowly, feeling a rush of relief that drowns out the guilt. “They killed my parents to get to me.”

To my surprise, Celdon grabs the takeout container sitting on the desk and chucks it at the wall. It hits the glass with a dull
splat
,
and the green-and-yellow mush smears down the wall in slow motion.

“They can’t
do
this,” he growls, shaking with rage. 

“But they have.”

“Who the hell do they think they are?” he yells. 

I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen Celdon this angry, so I have no way of knowing how to calm him down.

“Is there any part of this compound that doesn’t run on a bunch of fucked-up shit? Everything they’ve ever told us is a lie!”

“I know.”

“We should just let the drifters bring down the compounds,” he snarls. “It would certainly even the score.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t! We shouldn’t even be here, Harper. This place only exists because the founders decided who deserved to live and said ‘screw everybody else.’ I can’t stay here! I can’t live here knowing that other people had to die so I could live the good life.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” I warn. 

“Why not?” he yells. “People deserve to know! This is bullshit. If people knew the truth, that would solve all our problems. Constance couldn’t just kill us to keep it quiet. There’d be no containing a story like this.”

Suddenly, I wish I hadn’t said anything. Celdon deserved to know the truth, but I hadn’t expected him to react like this.

“Stop! Stop!
Listen
to yourself. Are you out of your mind? Of course they would kill us!”

“Not if it’s all out in the open!”

“Even if we got the story out there, they’d just lock us up and pretend we were insane,” I say. “Constance controls Information. We’d never get the story out on the feeds. Telling people isn’t even an option.”

“How can you be so calm about this?” Celdon huffs. “Doesn’t it bother you that they murdered your parents? Or are you so deep in this that you don’t feel anything anymore?”

“Of
course
it bothers me!” I yell. “I never even got to know them! I could have had a family, and now I have
no one
.”

A look of hurt flashes across his face, so I try to rein in my furious tone. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Celdon just stares at me, breathing hard, and I look away so I don’t burst into hot, angry tears.

For several minutes, I just stare at the monitors, watching the scenes of the Fringe change one by one.

Every once in a while, I see a building that seems familiar, but then I realize it’s just another abandoned town that looks remarkably similar to the one Eli and I visited.

Then the screen flickers, and a new scene starts to unfold.

A lone figure is striding purposefully down the sidewalk toward the pawn shop, wearing a faded gray baseball cap. He has a pronounced five o’clock shadow that obscures most of his features, but there’s something familiar about his confident stride.

He stops at the door to pull his hat down lower, and I catch a glimpse of his face.

It’s Owen.

eighteen

Eli

There’s no getting that orange dust out of your clothes. It clings to your boots and your pants and your hair — even in a dream. 

I’ve left a trail of the stuff across the shiny black tile floor all the way through the tunnel and into this room.

Everything in Information is painted tuxedo black. The walls and ceiling of my ten-by-ten chamber are as dark as it gets, and the only source of light is emanating from the sharp lines of the crown molding. 

It’s barely bright enough for me to see the outline of a door directly across from the one I came through. Every nerve in my body is tingling — screaming at me to turn around and leave.

Someone from Constance must be nearby, but a muffled cry from beyond the door captures my attention.

My hand closes on the smooth handle, and I yank the door open before I have a chance to change my mind.

I’m instantly blinded by the harsh light of a single florescent lamp hanging from the ceiling. I have to blink several times before my eyes adjust, and when they do, horror flares through me.

I’m standing in another chamber about the same size as the one I came through, but I’m not alone. Harper is seated in the very center of the room with her hands bound behind her back. She’s got a piece of tape covering her mouth, but I can read the terror in her quivering gray eyes.

I move toward her automatically, and the door slams shut.

Before I can even utter Harper’s name, Jayden materializes from the corner to my right.

“Nice of you to join us, Parker.”

“What the hell is this?” I growl, bending down to check on Harper.

“You left your partner here . . . remember?”

“To give you what you wanted,” I say, tugging on the tape to free Harper’s wrists.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why the he —” 

A slight shock zings up my arm, but Harper’s muffled whimper means it must have been
much
worse for her. My heart starts pounding from the adrenaline, and my palms break out in a cold sweat. 

I tilt my head to examine Harper’s neck and see that she’s wearing some kind of shock collar.
Bastards.

I reach out automatically to remove it, but Jayden’s harsh
tsk
stops me.

“Careful . . .” she croons, holding up a tiny plastic fob.

“What is
wrong
with you?” I snap. “I did everything you asked. I killed them, and I stayed away until the job was done.”

Jayden bats her long eyelashes once in what I can only interpret as a “Gotcha!” gesture. 

“Yes, you did,” she says slowly. “You were a good boy — a good lieutenant. But you left your partner here . . . after all you’ve been
through together. What does that say about you? Huh? How much could you really care for Cadet Riley if you just abandoned her at the first sign of trouble?”

I make a grab for the fob in Jayden’s hand, but she’s too fast. She whips her arm out of reach and hits the button again.