S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (19 page)

Her eyes narrowed and flicked over his face. “What happened to your shirt?”

“Nothing. It's nothing.”

“It's not nothing. The collar is torn.”

He reached up and adjusted it. He hadn't noticed the soreness in his neck before, but now it was tender. “Avery Constable,” he muttered.

Something passed across her face. Was it anger? Sympathy? He couldn't tell.

“Don't worry about him,” Kelly said. “He's just being his normal Neanderthal self.”

Jessie nodded, turned, and started walking away.

“Hey, wait up! Listen, we need to talk.”

“Oh, really? Maybe I don't want to.”

Kelly wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead.

“Please, Jess. I think I know what's bothering you.”

She made a disgusted sound and started to walk away again.

“Then tell me where you're going.”

“Like it's any of your business.”

“I'm your husband!”

“To the hospital. Isn't that what you always say? Now leave me alone.”

“What for?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Just go back to school, Kel.”

“Is this about your implant?” he asked, and the way her face tightened told him he was right. “You can't—”

“It's just a blood test,” she told him. “Arc pinged and said I have to get it done. They even excused me from school for the day.”

“Arc? Why? What's it for?”

“Why? You're asking
me
why? Because, Kelly. Because they tried to fix my implant and they couldn't maybe! Because for some strange reason my devices don't communicate properly with the streams. Because
you
put something on my Link that's blocking it from properly aligning with the network. Any more questions? No? Now leave me alone. You want to talk? We'll talk when I get home.”

“But—”

“No. You do not get to speak to me right now, Kelly Corben.”

† † †

“This is all your fault,” Kelly said into his Link. “Jessie's on her way to the hospital. She's getting blood tests done. I think she's going to have her implant replaced.”

The woman in his screen raised her eyebrows. “I told you—”

“Nothing. You've told me nothing. I tried talking to her. It's useless. She knows about the file. She's angry. I should ping her brother.”

“No! Leave him out of this for now. He won't be able to do anything. Just go back to school before they miss you. I'll see what I can do from here.”

“If she gets her devices replaced—”

“She won't. Citizen Registration won't schedule anything for today, and tomorrow's Saturday, so we've got at least the weekend to figure this out.” She sighed. “You'll just have to bring up your timeline a bit. Whatever you do, hon, do not panic.”

Kelly's grip on his Link tightened. He was tired of other people telling him what to do. He was tired of always feeling like he owed others. He needed to start looking out for himself. “And what if I tell her everything I know? What if I, for example, tell Eric? Or the police?”

“Kelly, please, you really don't understand the scope of this, or how serious this is. If the wrong people—”

“But, see, that's the problem. I don't understand because no one will tell me. So why don't you start? Enlighten me.”

The woman sighed and shook her head. “Soon. We're close.”

“Close?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded. “Very. Just promise me you won't do anything rash. Give me the weekend.”

He closed his eyes and counted to ten before answering. “What will happen if she gets her implant replaced? At least answer that.”

The woman nodded gravely. “You already know what'll happen, Kelly. If they try to remove it, she will die.”

‡ ‡ ‡

The laboratory forms were blessedly brief. They asked for the standard identification information, followed by a few questions regarding her health. Jessie didn't know how to answer the question about medications, once more wondering whether she should mention her inhaler. The drug inside of it was illegal, meant to mask her immunity, but was she putting herself at greater risk by not informing them of it?

Or worse, putting someone else at risk?

A nurse, Sarah, came over and asked if she needed any help. She was young, probably still a student, her eyes bright with the newness of her responsibilities. Jessie couldn't imagine what it must be like, when the sum of one's life's calling was drawing blood and asking personal questions of complete strangers. Sarah had to be at least four or five years her senior, yet Jessie somehow felt so much older.

“Oh, and don't bother listing vitamins and supplements,” Sarah said, noticing Jessie's hesitation. She gave Jessie a wink which seemed to assume something, though Jessie had no idea what it might be. “We don't count those as medicines.”

Jessie typed in: N
ONE
.

Sarah nodded and grinned and made a note on her own tablet. The girl was just way too chipper.

“And are you sexually active?”

Jessie blushed and nodded, almost reflexively, but even this seemed like a lie.

“Single or multiple partners?”

“Single.”

Sarah's smile widened. “Have you ever been exposed to, or are you a carrier of, any communicable diseases?”

Jessie blinked uncertainly.

What if they screen for the Reanimation virus?

Why would they even bother? The disease was almost always fatal within twenty-four hours. And, as far as she knew, nobody out here in the real world knew about immunity or treatment, so it wasn't like people were walking around with the disease in her blood.

Except you.

Her immunity wouldn't prevent her from infecting others, would it? The thought nearly immobilized her. Maybe she shouldn't let them draw her blood. Maybe she should just forget the whole thing and leave.

You have to go ahead. You need to get this implant out of your head, get a new Link.

She shook her head and coughed lightly. “No, no diseases.”

“And have you been, either to visit or live, to any place where any of the following diseases is known to be endemic?”

She showed Jessie a list. Jessie was glad to see that Reanimation virus wasn't among them. This time she could answer honestly.

Sarah asked Jessie to roll up her sleeves and Jessie heard the sharp inhale of her breath when she saw the old cuts and the newer bruises. “I was in a car accident recently,” Jessie explained, which the young nurse seemed to accept without further consideration.

Two tubes of blood were drawn. Dark red and viscous, the fluid didn't look any different than anyone else's blood, or any different than it had on any of the numerous other occasions she'd had to come in at her grandfather's insistence for her ‘allergies.' Yet that blood held three terrible secrets: a virus which could kill everyone, a variant of the infective protein that neutralized it, and a masking agent.

You can't tell anyone. They will come after you. They will put you in a laboratory somewhere and they will kill you.

Wonderful terrible secrets. Her mother had told her not to share them with anyone, but she hadn't listened. She'd told the one person she thought she could trust the most. And now that one person was the one person she most feared.

“You're all set,” Sarah told her. “Everything looks fine. We'll send these results right over to Arc.”

“Results already?”

Sarah nodded. “White blood count is normal. Normal platelets. You may be slightly anemic and your electrolytes are at the high end of the range, but nothing to worry about. This should just about complete your application.”

“What about CR?”

“Citizen Registration?”

“I was hoping to get my implant replaced.”

Sarah stared for a moment, looking confused.

“My implant is faulty.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Well, if you'd like, I can ping them and see if they have an opening. No promises. And you'll need to get yourself up to Hartford—”

“That's not a problem. Just check. Please.”

“Okay, honey.”

She glanced back once with a curious frown on her face, then went to check.

† † †

Jessie pinged Eric as soon as the appointment was confirmed.

“They have a four-thirty opening. I'm going to get my devices replaced.”

“Today?” he asked. She could see the surprise on her brother's face.

“I'll grab the bus. There's still enough time.”

“Don't be silly. I'll drive you. I mean it this time.”

“It's okay, Eric. Really.”

“I said I'll drive you,” he repeated. “No arguing. Just  Just let me ping my boss.” He turned away for a moment before returning. “You should ping Kelly, let him know so he won't worry.”

“He won't worry.”

Eric gave her a strange look.

“Never mind. I'll send a text.”

To Reggie.

She hadn't seen him in school today and hoped he was okay. The cut on his arm was bad, but not bad enough that he'd pass out.

You should've made sure you tossed those Zoners.

It took Eric nearly forty minutes to arrive, but there was still more than ample time to get up to Hartford before the appointment.

The ride up proceeded in stony silence, neither of them speaking very much. Jessie commented on how little traffic there was, though her mind was elsewhere. Even for off-rush-hour, the scarcity of automobiles seemed a little odd to her. But Eric just shrugged. His mind also seemed elsewhere.

They had to pull over once, just south of the city limits, to allow a long line of emergency vehicles to pass. Their lights flashed and their sirens blared, and Eric watched them with a look of alarm in his eyes. Two of the vehicles had the NCD logo on the side, and one of the vans was from the county coroner's office. But when Jessie asked what was wrong, he turned to her and said, “Probably nothing.” He kept glancing at his police Link mounted in the center console, as if expecting it to ping at any moment. But it didn't.

He pulled away from the shoulder and merged into an opening in the traffic.

“I heard there's a problem with the network in St. Louis,” Jessie said. “And Philly.”

Eric gave her a sharp look.

“Do you think—?”

“It's nothing, Jess,” he snapped. The muscles in his jaw rippled as he chewed the inside of his cheek. “Everything's fine. Just . . . . Just stop it, okay?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop asking questions. Everything's under control.”

“Fine. Sheesh.”

They checked in at Citizen Registration and were directed to the surgical suite, where Jessie was instructed to change into a gown and lie down. Eric waited with her until the prep nurse arrived.

“I'll be waiting for you just over here,” Eric told Jessie, giving her hand a squeeze. “I'm not going anywhere.”

The nurse gave him a patient smile, though it didn't seem to reach her eyes. “You'll have to wait outside,” she told him, and she ushered him to the door against his protests.

Jessie saw him nod encouragingly just before the door shut behind him with a solid click. The first soft flutter of anxiety rose in her belly. She'd been so eager to get her devices replaced that she hadn't really given much thought to the actual procedure. The device at the base of her skull was fully entwined with her brain stem. How would they possibly disentangle it?

“You'll be fine, dear,” the nurse said, probably more out of habit than from correctly interpreting Jessie's body language. She barely even seemed to see her.

“Do you do many replacements?”

“In the six years I've been here, I've only seen two others. But don't worry. Replacements are a lot faster and easier than initial implantations.”

“Why is that?”

The nurse blinked and looked at her, as if the question surprised her. “The device comes in two parts,” she explained, locking her fingers together to illustrate. “First, there's the hybrid biosynth adapter. It's the part that grows and becomes rooted into your brain; it acts as an interface for the actual device. We leave the adapter in. The second part is the processor, which is what we'll be exchanging. It's all plug-and-play. Just like swapping out the power cell in a Link.”

Except that doesn't require anesthesia or cutting
, Jessie thought.

The nurse wheeled over a cart with a machine on it very much like the one Jessie had seen on her previous visit.

“To modulate device activity,” she explained. She busied herself with the instrument.

Although she didn't elaborate, Jessie could guess what the nurse meant. The implants were designed to prevent anyone from tampering with them. Or reverse engineering them. It made sense that Arc would have a way to override the autodestruct mechanism.

The memory of Micah prying the implant from the neck of a dead Player in Gameland came to her. He'd dug into the corpse's neck with the tip of a knife and tried to lever the tiny device out. It immediately started to whine, as if he'd angered a nest of wasps, and then it had exploded. It wasn't much of a blast— just large enough to splatter them with bits of rotting zombie flesh and gore. But it had left a ragged, gaping, smoking hole in the Player's neck.

“Link please.”

Jessie handed it over and the nurse inserted it into the machine.

“In thirty minutes,” she said, “you'll be as good as new. You'll have a whole new implant and the absolute latest in Link device technology.”

She raised her hand and Jessie saw that she was holding a syringe filled with a clear liquid. “Anesthesia,” she said. She pushed the air out, finishing with a tiny squirt that spit a little on Jessie's cheek. “Sorry, honey.” And she wiped it away with a tissue. “Now, roll over onto your side.”