Redlisted (16 page)

For seconds he
doesn’t say anything.

“You’re
funny,” he eventually replies, but he doesn’t sound
amused.

He puts his wrist
in front of me, and I take it.

///

I’m back in
the SpiraCom headquarters in Atlanta. I’ve locked myself inside
a tiny, windowless closet of an office. I know that I’ve gotten
myself into some profoundly deep shit, but I can’t remember how
or why. And now I need to find something—a physical object—but
I can’t remember what it is. I rifle through the drawers of the
desk, hoping I’ll know it when I see it.

The phone on the
desk starts to ring. I look at the digital readout above the keypad,
hoping it’ll display caller ID, but all I see is a line of
asterisks. Not picking it up. It rings two, three, four, five times
before it stops. In the meantime I shuffle papers around, look
through file folders, search through piles of random memos.

I flip past a
newspaper clipping and it hits me: I’m looking for my passport.
That’s right. I’m looking for my passport so I can leave
the country. This is my desk, my office at work. I seem to remember
having squirreled it away in here somewhere. Where would I hide
something like that?

The phone rings
again. I pick up and hang up in a single movement.

I look inside some
jewel cases stacked under a pile of papers in a wire inbox to the
right of the computer screen. I look inside my Rolodex full of blank
cards, through my desk calendar, underneath the inbox—nothing.

What the hell did
I do with it? The only place I haven’t searched is my
computer—my ancient monolith of a desktop. I look under the
keyboard, under the base of the monitor, under the CPU—nothing.

The phone rings
again. I pull the cord out of the jack.

I look through a
desk drawer for the second time. Why’d I bring the passport to
work, anyway? Why not just leave it at home? It’s here, though,
somewhere. I know it is.

My cell phone
starts to ring, buzzing in the back pocket of my jeans. I pull it out
and look at the display: caller unknown, it informs me. I pull the
battery loose and throw both parts in the wastebasket. They can use
those things to track you. I’m better off without it.

I slump down in my
desk chair. At a loss, I look at the CPU once more. I peer inside the
floppy disk drive—it has a floppy disk drive?—but
nothing’s there. I feel like it’s in the terminal
somewhere. I dig my fingernails into the plastic siding of the case
and pull as hard as I can, dislodging it just enough to shove my hand
inside. I pull the power supply free, then start groping around
inside the box. My fingertips make contact with a little pamphlet.
It’s the perfect size, the cover just the right leatherette
texture; I even think I can make out the emblem embossed on the
front.

I laugh to myself,
feeling a surge of glee as I extract the passport from the shell of
the computer. I flip the cover open to make sure it’s mine.
Sure enough, there’s my face staring back at me—maybe the
least flattering rendering possible, but my face nevertheless—and
my name’s there, too.

My name, I note,
is Katherine Avery. Why couldn’t I remember that before?

I grab my backpack
from underneath the desk, unlock the door and peek my head out into
the dimly-lit cubicle farm outside. I dart out into the corridor
between the offices and the cubicles and begin tiptoeing toward the
end of the hallway. If I can get to the stairwell, I’ve made
it. There’s a door on the ground floor that leads right out to
the street. From there, I can run to the Marta station and I’ll
be at the airport in a matter of minutes.

I feel unbalanced.
I’m trying to be silent, but each of my steps land with a thud.
If anyone is hiding in the cubicles or a nearby office, they’ll
certainly know I’m here. I’m not usually this clumsy! I’m
just not thinking straight. In fact, I’m having trouble even
walking straight.

I make it to the
stairwell, throw open the door and start running down the stairs two
at a time. It’ll take me twenty flights to get down to the
ground floor, but I walk up and down them twice a day, so I’m
sure I’ll be fine—at least at first I’m sure, but
then vertigo sets in. I lose my balance after the first flight and
nearly hurl myself down the second. I grab onto the handrail to
steady myself at the last possible instant.

I shake my head,
trying to reset my inner ear. I continue my descent, this time taking
one stair at a time, holding the rail throughout. I walk like this
down flight after flight of stairs. Looking directly forward and
down, focusing all my attention on the stair in front of me, I can
manage to avoid the full force of the vertigo, keeping at a
manageable level of shaky nausea.

I realize I’ve
lost track of where I am or how many floors I’ve descended. I
feel like I should have gotten to the ground floor by now. Did I
overshoot and miss it? I can’t tell.

I keep going until
I make it to a landing. I glance at the door leading back into the
building; the placard next to it reads B3.

Shit.

I start climbing
back up the stairs. The dizziness is getting worse; my vision is
starting to double. What’s wrong with me? This isn’t like
being drunk, and I wouldn’t drink at a time like this anyway.
Have I been drugged? Rophenol, or something?

Just keep moving.
One stair at a time.

The next stair has
a pair of shoes on it. Polished red heels with pointed toes.

I look up to find
myself eye-to-chin with a thin, pretty woman with auburn hair. Her
lips curl into a mirthless smile.

“Are you
really trying to escape?” she asks. “That would truly be
amazing, although it’s a bit late at this juncture. You even
managed to find your old office, didn’t you? You’re quite
a tenacious little thing.”

Her face keeps
shifting in and out of focus. I blink several times, to no avail. It
doesn’t matter. I know who she is.

“If you’re
trying to escape, you must remember that you’re in trouble,”
she says. “With me.”

I swallow and
clench the handrail.

“Do you
remember what you did to me?”

I don’t. I
kind of wish I did. I shake my head no.

She laughs, shakes
her head, then, suddenly and without warning, she grabs the lapel of
my jacket and hurls me down the stairs.

My skull hits the
concrete floor of the B3 landing and I pass out.

///

I come back to the
living room to find myself hyperventilating, one hand gripping the
armrest, the other gripping Adam’s thigh. I release both, fan
out my fingers and dig my fingernails into my scalp.

Think
,
I tell myself.
Think
hard. What did I do to her?

“We’ll
figure that out in time,” he says softly.

It’s in
my head somewhere. If I just think about it hard enough—

Adam stands up and
kneels down in front of me, putting his eyes at the level of mine.
“The memories are locked. There’s no getting at them
without help.”

Don’t
tell me what I can and can’t do!

He smiles a
little. “I’m starting to see why she had so much trouble
with you.”

Fuck you, Adam.

“I meant
that as a compliment, Katherine.”

Hearing my own
name and recognizing it as mine brings tears to my eyes. I cover my
face and put my head between my knees. Adam puts a hand on my
shoulder. I flinch, but then I force myself to relax. I can feel the
sting behind the tears start to fade.

I’m
surprised to realize that, despite all the weirdness, I’ve come
to think of him as something. My friend, I guess. The only one I
have.

“Revenge,”
he says. “She chose you because she wanted revenge. Not like
the others—not because you were weak or gullible or stupid. You
made her irrational. I think that’s something to be proud of.”

I nod.

“She
underestimated you,” he says, “but I don’t.”

I don’t know
what to say to that.

“Katherine,”
he says, looking upward. “So what do you want me to call you?
Kate? Katie?”

Ugh, no, not
Katie. Kate is fine.

“All right,
Kate.” He stands up. “Do you want to go see what’s
going on downstairs?”

Sure.

I follow Adam to
the basement door. A steep, spiraling metal staircase with perforated
steps leads down into the ground. We climb down to the basement, a
small, square room with walls of bare earth and a floor scattered
with candles.

Across from us, on
a bunk carved into the wall, lies the corpse of a blonde woman. She
might have been quite beautiful in the past, but now she’s
wretched—her thin, pale limbs are riddled with countless gashes
and puncture wounds, all bloodless, and at least one of her legs
seems to be broken. Her skin is a sickly shade of grey; her lips are
blue. Vincent is lying on the floor beside her bunk, still as a
stone.

“Vincent?”
Adam says.

The woman turns
her head in our direction. At first I think I’ve imagined it,
but then, slowly and with tremendous effort, she sits up. She leans
against the wall as if unable to support any of her own weight, then
opens her eyes.

“Welcome to
my home,” she says in a barely-audible whisper. “It’s
good to see you again, Dr. Radcliffe.”

Adam stares at her
wide-eyed.

“Don’t
be upset,” she says, her voice creaking. “We all have our
burdens to bear, and I’ve long since accepted mine.” She
looks me in the eye. “Is that really Mirabel?”

I shake my head
no.

“That’s
for the best,” she whispers with a weak smile.

“Vincent—is
he...?”

“He is
unconscious. All but withered. All to bring me back, I suppose,”
she breathes. “I assume it has something to do with your
companion?”

“Her name is
Katherine,” Adam says. “We liberated her from the
SpiraCom facility in Atlanta.”

I give Adam a
sidelong look.
That’s
one way of putting it...

“As you can
see, she’s a perfect double,” he says. “Or she was
on her way to becoming one, before we got her out. We want her to
testify in front of the Watchers, but her voice is gone. She’s
taken a lot of my blood at this point, but it’s not getting any
better, so I thought she might be cursed...”

Tara nods. “And
you want me to release her.”

“Yes.”

Tara closes her
eyes and leans her head against the wall. “I’m not
capable of anything in my current condition, Dr. Radcliffe. I will
need more blood.”

“All right,
well... I’ll go into town. I’ve been bleeding myself to
heal Katherine, but if I—“

“Please
spare me the details,” she says.

Adam nods. “What
about Vincent?”

“He will
come around on his own.”

“Right.
Well. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“Dr.
Radcliffe?”

“Yes?”

“Do not let
Gabriel see her.”

///

Adam and I climb
back up the stairs and lock ourselves in the living room.

What now?

“We wait for
nightfall. Then we go in to Lexington and I’ll have to find
about five people—“

Five?!

“About that
many, yeah. If we want any of them to wake up tomorrow morning.”

I make a face.

“I don’t
like it either.”

Let’s
talk about something else,
I
suggest.
What’s
the deal with SpiraCom?

“SpiraCom.”
Adam takes a breath. “The full name of the company is Spira
Communications. It’s a media conglomerate, an umbrella company.
They own a bunch of different wire services, television and movie
studios, magazines, newspapers—that kind of thing. And they own
majorities in a bunch of other publicly-traded companies in the
industry.”