Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (23 page)

“That right?”
“Yes. And that’s why I know you’re lying to me. You
 think it will somehow make me feel better, like it did for
 him.” He points to Elmer’s body. “Something terrible hap-
 pened to you.”
I look at Thomas. I am empty. The world is no place I
 want to be right now.
“Tell me,” he says. “Trust me.”  
“She killed her.”
“Wait, who killed who?”
“The woman I told you about, the one we heard on
 the radio. She’s the one who’s running this whole opera-
 tion. She killed my mother, ran her down like a dog in the
 street, and now she’s coming after me.”
“What?”
He puts his hand on my cheek, and I let my face fall into
 his palm, let my head rest against his hand. I feel his hand
 start to shake and I lift my head up, but I can’t quite bring
 myself to look at him. My nose starts to run. I wipe it on
 my sleeve and swallow the hot lump in my throat, trying
 to make words come out.
“She works for Erskine Claymore.”
“Claymore? But that’s . . . it doesn’t make any sense.
Why would he wipe out a project that he funded? And
 what’s it got to do with you?”
“I don’t know! Maybe he’s just angry because I made
 him look bad.” I look up and scream. “She killed my
 mother, Thomas!”
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“Oh, Angel. Oh . . . I just . . . I wish . . . ”
I hug my knees to my chest. I feel Thomas’s hand on my
 head, but then it falls away and I look up. He’s in bad shape.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “What can I do? What can I say?
I’ll do anything.”
“I know nothing can bring my mother back, but I hate
 that woman. And I hate her most of all for making me
 remember how much I loved my mother and how she died
 in the same exact moment.”
I don’t tell him about Claymore being my father. I
 think I don’t say anything because I don’t want to believe
 it. I don’t want to think that there’s any of him running
 through me. For some reason that helps me stand and pull
 myself together.
“You’re in pain,” I say.
“A bit. I guess that painkiller is wearing off.” He points
 to the cord I’ve dropped on the floor. “Did you find any
 power?”
“I did.”
I hand him the cord attached to the battery, and as he
 plugs it into the laptop, I tell him how many people died
 to bring that to him. Not to make him feel guilty. But he
 should know.
“You better have the best hacking day of your life.”
Hours pass. I don’t know how many. I nod off at one point
 and awaken to the clacking of fingers on a keyboard. I feel
 a hand stroke my cheek, and I drift back asleep. I dream
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that I’m still in my hospital bed, and the bed is sitting in a
field of white. Everything is white. The sky, the ground, all
 of it. I’m frightened by it. Terrified. How can there be such
 nothingness all around me? Suddenly Jori appears at my
 bedside. Her blond hair is long, and she’s wearing a red bow
 in it. I tell her she is beautiful, and she says, “Yes, I am.”
She’s holding a crayon in her hand. She sits on the ground
 and starts to draw. “It’s paper,” she says, looking around at
 the whiteness. “Blank paper. Come and draw with me.” I
 tell her I’m not a very good artist, but she says I can write
 a story instead. Any story I want. I tell her I don’t like this
 white world. It’s so empty. She smiles. “Not empty. Blank.
Full of possibility.” She holds the crayon up again and tells
 me, “I can fix your broken wing if you’d like.”
I tell her no. No one can fix my wings for me.
She puts her finger to my lips and sings, “Be true. Be
 true. Be true.”
It’s all crazy Jori talk.
When I wake, I don’t open my eyes for a long, blissful
 moment. I could be anywhere. I can tell I’ve slept a long
 time. My limbs are heavy.
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep. Those guys could be
 here any second.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve kept our mercenary friends busy for
 the last few hours, setting off alarms all over the building.”
I sit up and lean into him. He winces, and I pull back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I cross my arms over
 my chest. “It feels colder in here.”
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“Is it?”  
When I can focus my eyes again, I look at Thomas. He
 doesn’t look well. I lean over and put my hand to his fore-
 head; he pulls away.
“You’re burning up.”
“Yeah,” he says, still staring intently at the screen. “I’m
 sure that’s all kinds of bad.”  
He stops and looks up at me. I can’t read his expres-
 sion. He could say anything right now and nothing would
 surprise me.
“I love you.”  
I was wrong about that.
“I assume you’re trying to make me laugh. Which isn’t
 very funny.”
“No, I have a reason for saying it. A selfish one.”
“You have a selfish reason for saying that you love me?”
“I have a weird bucket list, and that one was right at the
 very top. I never said it to anyone before, and I wanted to
 say it to someone before I died.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Odds are not looking good.”
“I’m not talking about this anymore.”
“Okay.”
“What happened while I was asleep? Did you find any-
 thing useful?”
“Have a look.”
He turns the laptop toward me, and suddenly I realize
 that he’s leaning on me to keep from tipping over. “Maybe
 you should lie down.”
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“Okay.”
He lets me lay him on the floor. I hover over him and
 stuff the blood-streaked pillow under his head. He looks
 sleepy now, like he’s having trouble staying with me.
“So how did it feel?” I ask.
“How did what feel?”
“Saying ‘I love you.’”
“Oh. It was fine. I mean, awkward, but it wasn’t as scary
 as I thought it would be. Here, I’ll say it again.” He looks
 me in the eye and says softly, “I love you.”
I look away. “Okay, now you’re just showing off.”
He smiles at me, but I know he’s faking. He’s in pain
 and it’s getting harder and harder for him to cover it up. I
 reposition the pillow just as a way to divert attention from
 my own embarrassment.
“Well, I’m glad you said it,” I say.
“Yeah? How come?”
“For a selfish reason. Because I doubt I’m going to hear
 anybody tell me that ever. Whether we die here or not.”
“You really are brain-damaged, aren’t you?”
“Hey!”
He sucks in a breath between his teeth and licks his lips
 before saying softly, “Let me explain something to you,
Angel. There are two kinds of girls in this world: the kind
 that guys find it easy to say ‘I love you’ to and the kind guys
find it nearly impossible to tell. You’re the second kind of
 girl.”
“I think I already knew that.”
“You don’t understand. See, when a guy is afraid to tell
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a girl he loves her, it’s because what he feels scares the crap
 out of him. Some girls inspire fear; others don’t.”
“I’m scary. Well, that’s nice to hear.”
“Angel, you’re not getting what I’m saying . . . .”
I feel stung. I don’t want to have this conversation any-
 more. When I look down at my arm for the tablet, I realize
 that Thomas must have removed it while I was sleeping. It’s
 lying on the floor, and the screen is black.
He sees me searching for the tablet and shakes his head.
“It’s useless to us now. But that’s okay, because I just
 discovered something about portable mainframes. They
 are easier to hack than you might think. Hacking into a
 system designed to hack into other systems—that’s like a
 double negative. Anyway, we’ll still be able to see them on
 the security cameras now.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes. But as you are no doubt aware by now, good news
 usually comes with bad news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“There’s only one place you’re going to get another
 pill.”
I close my eyes. “Of course.”
“Getting up to the sixth floor is not going to be easy,”
 he says.
I let out an unhappy little chuckle. The idea of carrying
 on against these odds is completely laughable. Getting up
 three floors took four lives and almost cost me mine. Now
I’m going to go twice as far? By myself?
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“Thomas. Come on. It’s over, and we both know it. I’m
 not going to get that pill in time. And even if I did, I’m
 probably not going to get out of here alive.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you! You are going to
 get what you need. I’m going to help you. I don’t care if
 you want to give up. You can tell yourself you’re doing this
 for me now. Whatever it takes. Listen. There are seventy-
 two security cameras in this building. I’m going to scroll
 through all of them. You’ll see four angles per screen. Tell
 me when you see something interesting; I’m going to have
 a little rest.” He closes his eyes and lets his head tip back
 against the wall.  
I watch as the images go by. Some cameras show static;
 some only display black. After twenty or so, I see the main
 lobby appear in the upper corner. My eyes pass over it for a
 moment, but then I think I catch sight of something mov-
 ing on the floor.
“Wait.”
Thomas takes his hand away from the keyboard.
“It’s Steve!”
“Who?”
I’m still trying to get over being pissed that he tried
 to hand me over to the soldiers, but when I see what he’s
 doing, it makes it a little easier to let that go. He’s pulling
 his huge body across the floor, inch by inch, leaving a trail
 of blood; he’s moving toward the security guard’s desk.
“I think I know where he’s going. There! See. On the
 wall. That’s the panic button.”
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Thomas does a weak, sleepy cheer and replies, “Can’t
 get here soon enough. I hope they bring balloons and lots
 of painkillers.”
In another shot I see more movement. There are four
 soldiers, rifles in hand, making their way toward a stairwell.
The next camera angle shows them walking downstairs.
They’re one floor above the main lobby. I watch as they
 continue to descend.
“No,” I say. “No, no, no.”
“What?”
“They’re going to the lobby,” I say. “They’re heading
 straight for him.”
We watch Steve’s progress across the floor. He’s using his
 elbows to move his big frame across the marble, brushing
 aside glass pellets as he goes. It’s excruciating, like watching
 some inhumane sport.
I keep looking and then looking away. Steve’s got sec-
 onds before the soldiers come through the door. Slowly,
 slowly, he inches along, his hands trembling each time he
 pulls himself forward. He collapses after each effort and
 then somehow finds a way to keep going.
He just needs a little more time.
“Where’s that radio?” I ask.
“What radio?”
“The one we took off the soldier who fell into the exca-
 vation pit.”
“I don’t know. It’s still in the pack, I think.”
I find it and turn it on.
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“Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
The soldiers on the screen stop and look around.
“Seems you got their attention.”
Steve is still three feet away from the button, and it
 looks like his strength is giving out.  
“Angel,” a voice coos over the radio. “I thought we
 agreed we weren’t going to do long, drawn-out good-byes.
It’s uncomfortable for everyone. I’m still hoping we can
 just shoot you and be on our way.”
“I remember,” I say to her.
“Do you? Tut, tut, tut. That’s got to be very hard on
 you.”
As I take my thumb off the radio button, Thomas says,
“Tell her you know what they did to you.”
“What?”
“Tell her you know what Buckley did.”
I look at the monitor. Steve’s reached the guard’s desk.
He’s stretching toward the wall, flailing blindly for the but-
 ton. He pulls himself up, falls, pulls himself up again. The
 four soldiers are running down the stairs toward the lobby.
“Come on, come on,” I say to the computer screen, try-
 ing to egg Steve on.
“Keep talking,” Thomas says. His skin has gone gray,
 and his eyes are glassy. “Tell her you have what she wants.”
“What do I have that she wants?”
“The data. Tell her you have all the research on the
Velocius project. By now they’ve probably figured out that
 it’s gone.”
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I press the radio button. “I have what you want.”
I hear a hiss and a beep. Then Hodges’s voice.
“I’m sure you don’t have what I want, not unless you’ve
 got some size-six-and-a-half Jimmy Choos with you. No,
 be assured that the only thing I want right now is you,
 dead, preferably killed in a violent manner.”  
Thomas shakes his head. He’s in agony. “Go on. Tell
 her you have the data 8-Bit took. About the Velocius proj-
 ect. Say it.”
I echo Thomas even though I don’t understand. There’s
 no response for a long time. I wonder if the radio has cut
 out. After a minute, I repeat what I said. Suddenly we hear
 a humming sound, and all the lights come on. The bright-
 ness stings my eyes. I’ve never been so unhappy to see light.
I feel like a hole has formed in my chest and the rest of me
 is falling into it.
“Guess they figured out where we are,” Thomas says.
I look at the computer screen. Steve has collapsed onto
 the floor, his arm still extended toward the desk, inches
 from the button. A soldier with a smoking rifle is standing
 over him.  
“That’s really, really freaking discouraging,” Thomas
 says.
I turn my radio off and take the computer from his lap.
“I’m going after her.”
“No, you’re not. Not yet, anyway. Not until you get
 that last pill. Then you can kill her all you want. Please,
Angel. Please don’t leave me right now. I mean . . . let’s see
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what else we can find out first.”
Thomas slumps down and takes his glasses off. They fall
 from his hand onto the floor. “I need to rest my eyes for a
 minute. You look.”
I continue pressing the “enter” key, trawling through
 the camera angles for something helpful. After a few
 screens, I see a man tied to a desk chair.
“Thomas.”
He doesn’t respond. I slap his cheeks lightly and he looks
 up, momentarily alert. I point to the man on the screen.
“8-Bit,” he says, leaning forward, his eyes unfocused.
“Can we hear what they’re saying?”
“No, I checked. The surveillance cameras are just
 images, no sound. Including that external feed I found ear-
 lier.”
On the screen we see that 8-Bit’s head is hanging limply
 to the side, and at first I think he’s dead, but then he moves
 and starts to speak.
“Where is he?” I ask.
He reads the location of the security camera. “Director’s
 office, first floor.”
Suddenly Hodges comes into view. My whole body
 tenses up. We watch as she slowly approaches 8-Bit, saun-
 tering toward him with her fists on her hips. 8-Bit smiles
 at her.
She tucks her hair behind her ear and then backhands
 him across the face.
He looks up and smiles at her again. Like he finds her
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