Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (18 page)

“I wish you could see that bowl. You’d see what I mean.
But you’ll never be able to.”
“Why? Because you think we’re not going to make it
 out of here?”
“No. Because my sister took the bowl and smashed it
 to get back at my mother for something. My mother didn’t
 speak to her for a month.”  
“Is this the sister you used to entertain with magic
 tricks?”
“Yeah. Lainey. Her name was Lainey.”
His face goes white and his eyes become vacant. I know
 it’s something to do with remembering her.
“Thomas, how did your sister die?”
He slumps down, his head missing the pillow. “I killed
 her.”
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CHAPTER 24
 ou should know who I really am. You should know
“Ywhat I did,” Thomas says.
“I know who you are. You’re the guy who gave me my
 identity back. And I’d already be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
“You think you know me, but you don’t. You need to
 hear this, Angel.”
“All right. Tell me.”
“My sister and I, we were close growing up. Lainey was
 smart and tough. I mean, here’s this rich girl with every-
 thing. You’d think she’d be all spoiled, but she wasn’t. I
 always thought that if she hadn’t been born into a rich fam-
 ily, she would’ve been okay. Money didn’t suit her. She
 wore grubby clothes, and her shoes had holes in them. It
 drove my parents crazy.”
He looks at me. I wish I could say I understand, but I
 really don’t.
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“I used to think it was funny in a way. Here I’m the
 adopted kid, and Lainey’s their biological child. I’m sup-
 posed to be the one with the issues, right? But no. She was
 a mess. I think she went into rehab for the first time when
 she was fifteen. But she was doing better. We all thought
 so. She’d been sober for a year when I took off.”
He stops and swallows like he’s choking down some-
 thing bitter.
“A couple weeks after I left with 8-Bit, she smashed her
 car into a Jersey barrier on the side of some highway.”
“How is that your fault?”
“Didn’t you hear me? She went looking for me,” he
 says. “Because I left with 8-Bit. Nobody knew where I’d
 gone or what happened. My parents filed a missing persons
 report. They thought something bad happened to me.”
“That’s why you said you just met your father?”
“8-Bit showed up out of the blue at my boarding school
 right after I’d just had this huge blowout with my adop-
 tive dad for the billionth time. I’d always known I was
 adopted, but the story he told me . . . I thought I’d hit the
 jackpot. My real father’s some infamous computer hacker?
He’s been living abroad for years, unable to return to the
U.S. because of several outstanding warrants for his arrest,
 and the first thing he does when he gets back on American
 soil is come looking for me?”
“Kind of made you feel special, I’ll bet.”
“I thought, well, hey, that explains my talent with writ-
 ing code. And rewriting other people’s code. He offered to
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teach me the ropes, and I jumped at the chance. I took off
 without saying a word to anyone. They didn’t know what
 happened to me. My adoptive dad can be a real idiot some-
 times, but my mom . . . I mean, she’s a superficial, rich lady
 who spends too much money on stupid stuff, but she loves
 me. Or she did. Until I killed my sister.”
“You didn’t kill your sister.”
“I might as well have.”
“How did you find out what happened?”
“I called them. I started feeling guilty about them wor-
 rying about me. Plus, you know, life with 8-Bit was a lot
 more complicated than I’d imagined.”
I tug on his dyed hair.
“Yeah. Exactly. Being on the run is a huge drag. And
8-Bit wasn’t really a dad, you know? I realized one night
 when we were playing video games and eating microwav-
 able burritos for the tenth day in a row that my adoptive
 dad, he yelled at me about grades and stuff like that because
 that’s just what dads do. That’s what they’re supposed to
 do. Not try to beat your high score in some first-person
 shooter game.”
“What did your parents say to you when you called
 home?”
“I’ll never forget my mom’s voice. I told her I couldn’t
 talk for long, but that I was okay. Then I asked about
Lainey and there was this cold silence on the other end of
 the phone. She told me that Lainey got it in her head that
 she was going to go out looking for me. Then my dad got
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on the phone and screamed at me, told me not to bother
 coming home ever again. He said, ‘You win, Thomas. You
 win. How does it feel?’ Then he hung up.”
“What does that mean, ‘You win’? Win what?”
“I guess he meant that I’d won our power struggle. Me
 and him, we were always butting heads because I kept get-
 ting tossed out of all the fancy private schools he put me in,
 mostly for hacking into the school computers and messing
 with them. He told me that the reason I hacked things was
 because I was a cheater at heart. He said I did it because I
 never wanted to lose, because I wasn’t man enough to lose.
He said it takes courage to learn to lose gracefully and that
 deep down, I had none.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It is horrible. And he was right. And that’s why my
 sister is dead.”
“I understand why you’d think that. I feel responsible
 for what’s happened to you, for you getting hurt like this.”
“It’s different. I wanted to come, remember? I rudely
 insisted on it, as I recall.”
“You forgive too easily. Everyone but yourself.” I
 squeeze his hand. “I’m so sorry about your sister.”
His eyes are wet. He shakes his head. “Don’t feel bad for
 me. I don’t deserve it. You should save your pity for your-
 self. Look what they do to angels in this place. I even feel
 bad for stupid Oscar.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t. I hate Oscar and I hope he
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spends the rest of his life behind bars getting rabid badgers
 stuffed up his butt.”
I look at the soldiers sitting around in a circle. “I wonder
 if I’m going to end up like one of these guys.”
“You won’t. Because we’re going to get you that last
 pill. And we’re going to find out why an entire squadron of
 elite soldiers is trying to take you out, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”  
“Good.”
There’s a sudden grunt from across the room. Oscar is
 rolling his head back and forth like he might be waking up.
“Oh no,” I say.
“A more apt nickname there has never been,” Thomas
 responds, wincing slightly as he shifts his position.
Elmer takes Oscar’s pulse and then raises his eyelids.
Oscar grabs him by the wrist and twists. Sam, Sylvester,
 and Jerry are on him within seconds, but it takes all three
 of them to subdue him. I rush over to help.
I try soothing him. “It’s all right. You passed out.
They’re trying to help you.”
Oscar opens his eyes but doesn’t seem to see any of us.
He begins thrashing around so violently I think he’s having
 a seizure.
After a few seconds Elmer shoots him up with a syringe
 full of something, and Oscar’s rigid body relaxes, but only
 slightly. Elmer looks at me, concerned. “I put enough seda-
 tive in him to knock out a rhino, but I don’t know how
 long it’ll be before he wakes up.”
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Oscar is twitching and rocking back and forth.
“Several of the cuts on his head have reopened,” Elmer
 says. “We may need to put more stitches in . . . .”
“No.” The last thing we need is a freaked-out Oscar
 waking up to some stranger knitting his head together.
“Angel,” Thomas says. I walk over quickly and lean in
 close.
He whispers, “You should take a couple of these guys
 with you. For backup.”
“I can’t do that!”
“They’re already at war, so what difference does it
 make?”
“They can’t get killed by their imaginations, whereas,
 you know, those guys with the guns are shooting real bul-
 lets.”
“You and I both know they have no future. Why not
 give them a chance to fight their way out?”
“It’s taking advantage of them.”
“Yes, it is. But it may be what you have to do if you
 want to get that pill in time.”
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CHAPTER 25
 homas and I argue so loudly that Sam overhears us.
T “We’ll do it,” Sam says.
Thomas shoots me a look. I’m about to speak, but he
 cuts me off.
“If you’re gonna go on this mission, you should know
 something first. You were . . . you were transferred to a
 new location.”
Sylvester is openly confused. “What? But how?”
“You were drugged and brought here,” Thomas says.
“They’ve been moving you around to different locations,
 to keep you disoriented and to keep people off the trail.
They know you’re valuable assets they can trade to get
 some of their own, uh, fighters back.”
Sylvester immediately starts nodding, but Sam is still
 skeptical. “How did you find us, then?”
“To be honest, we were on the run ourselves and just
 happened to get lucky when we stumbled in here.”
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Sam paces. After a few more thoughtful moments, he
 seems to accept what we’ve told them, and Thomas begins
 showing them the layout of the upper floors on the tablet.
“There are three walkways that connect this wing to
 the main hospital building: on the main level, the third
floor, and the sixth floor. It’s possible the basements are
 linked together, too. But it’s also possible they never fin-
 ished the tunnel linking them. Half this place is half built.”
Thomas shows them the most direct route to the medi-
 cine locker, though he doesn’t say that’s our “mission
 objective.” He tells them we are looking for a communica-
 tions center where we can charge the computer battery and
 that we’ve got only a few hours to do it.
He puts his finger on the map and looks at each of us
 in turn.
“I’m fairly sure—emphasis on ‘I could be totally
 wrong’—that you’ll find a working outlet in this area here,
 and it’s far enough from where the enemy’s camped out
 that you should have a better chance of not getting shot.”
Thomas hands me the battery and cord. “Plug it in, stay
 alive, and get back down here.”
I try to take the battery from his hand, but he doesn’t
 let go.
“Those second two things are more important than the
first,” he says as he stares into my eyes.
“Got it.” I yank the battery out of his grip, and after
 a quick glance at Thomas’s leg, I say to Elmer, “If I don’t
 make it back—”
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“Shut up,” Thomas says, looking right at me.
I ignore him and keep speaking to Elmer. “There’s a
 garage on the lower level, on the other side of the main
 building. A small tractor is parked inside. If you can put
Thomas in a wheelchair to move him—”  
“Shut up,” Thomas says again.
I spin around and glare at him. “Are you sure you want
 those to be the last words you speak to me?”
“Yes. I’m sure. Shut up. Sir.”
He smiles lazily, and I try to return it. Or I think I do.
I suspect my expression looks like I’m baring my teeth, and
 trying not to throw up. Which is pretty much what I feel
 like doing when I think about Thomas dying here.
I strap the computer on my arm just like the soldier who
Oscar pushed into the pit had worn it. Sam is taking things
 out of the backpack, distributing some to Jerry and Sylves-
 ter and stuffing the rest into his waistband and pockets.
“Here. Take a few of these,” he says to me.
I look at what he’s given me. They are shiny circles
 the color of pencil lead, maybe two inches across. Sylvester
 laughs like I’ve just produced his childhood teddy bear.
“Mines,” Jerry says. He takes one from my hand and
 throws it carelessly against the door.
I duck, but other than a loud snap as it hits the door,
 nothing happens. Sam is smiling.
“Magnetic,” he says. “You twist them, throw them at
 something metal, and they stick. Ten seconds later, boom.
You turn them a little, you get a smaller explosion. Dial
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them all the way to max and they can punch a man-size
 hole in the side of an armored vehicle. Very effective.”
He puts the backpack down and kneels. “You also have
 a few other items in here: lots of bullets, a walkie-talkie,
 a knife . . . oh, and these.” He shows me something that
 looks like a dark gray piece of chewing gum. “C4 explosive
 strips. They won’t be of any use without blast caps, but you
 do have these.” It’s a packet with two circles of what looks
 like clay. One circle is black and one is white. “Commingle
 these two by kneading them together, put them on any
 surface, and they bore an inch-wide hole through it, no
 matter how thick the material is.”
“How’s she going to crawl through an inch-wide hole?”
Thomas asks.
“She’s not. But if she puts it on, say, a lock . . . ”  
All these gadgets and things cheer Jerry up immensely.
They seem to confirm what Sylvester has been saying: that
Thomas and I are some kind of unorthodox special ops
 team.
“We’re ready, sir,” Sam says to me as he picks up his ax
 handle.
Thomas looks at me, his face full of pride. “Looks like
 you’ve gotten a battlefield promotion.”
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CHAPTER 26
 or people trapped in a nightmare fantasy, these three
Fsoldiers are all I could hope for as a security detail.
Sam, Jerry, and Sylvester lead the way through the pas-
 sage that Thomas had indicated. Sam had told the guys
 to commit the layout to memory, and they had, almost
 instantly. Unfortunately, I had not, and after the first three
 turns I am completely lost.
Then we hit our first problem.
The stairwell we were intending to use is blocked off by
 fallen debris. A strong draft of air and wisps of snow blow
 down from above. Sylvester puts his hand up and catches a
 snowflake in his palm, a look of wonder on his face.
“We must be up in the mountains,” he says. “I heard
 they had snow here, even in the desert.”
Rather than see this roadblock as an indication that we
 should turn back, Sam merely waves us toward another
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hallway. After about twenty feet, we come to a possible
 way up: a ragged hole in the upper floor. A huge beam has
 fallen, creating a steep ramp.
Sam jumps onto the beam and tests it, bouncing up
 and down to make sure it’s secure. One by one we go up,
 crouching low and pulling against the I beam with our
 hands. It reminds me of crawling up a playground slide.
Halfway up I remember that I’ve actually done this before,
 many times. But now I’m terrified, even though I’m only
 eight feet off the floor. Maybe when they pulled out the
 memory of climbing half-built skyscrapers, they pulled out
 my courage, too. How could I have ever gone into the sky
 so high?
We reenter the stairwell above where it’s been blocked
 off, and climb up another level. A vertical sliver of light
 shines at the end of the hallway. Maybe it’s the edge of a
 doorway. If Thomas got it right, we should be approaching
 the first walkway linking the third floor of this wing and
 the main building, and there should be no door here at all.
I look down at the screen and give Sam the thumbs-up.
No soldiers up ahead. Sam runs up the hallway, keeping
 low. He stops just outside the door and tries the knob, but
 it’s locked. After quickly kneading the pieces of black and
 white putty together, he slaps it against the lock.
“Don’t look directly at it,” he says, and it’s a good thing
 he does, because I would have watched.
The fire or chemical reaction or whatever burns an
 intensely bright white for about half a minute and then
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