Tomorrow's Cost (Final Update Book 3), page 9
“There we go,” Vaughn said. The man’s eyes were closed, and he no longer struggled against his restraints. Seconds later he opened his eyes.
“Hello,” said Vaughn.
“Hello,” came the answer slowly.
“I’m sure you are wondering where you are,” Vaughn said without hesitation. “It’s always the same. Amazing, how that is. We’re all told how unique and special we are, but when it comes to these kinds of experiences, everyone’s the same. The same questions. The same promises.”
With a confused look on his face, the man said, “I don’t know where I am,” as if he was embarrassed to admit it.
“Let’s see,” Vaughn said coming closer. Vaughn reached forward and grabbed the man’s dog tags and read them. “You are Lieutenant Colonel John McMillan, United States Air Force.”
“That’s right,” he said.
Vaughn turned back to the wall monitor. “Fortunately, the Navy has kept scrupulous records. And despite their efforts to keep things separate, it wasn’t so hard to access the Army’s database as well.” Vaughn punched a few buttons on the console nearby and said, “Ah, here you are.”
He struck a final key, and the screen on the wall changed. There was the man’s face; he was in uniform, and below his picture was an extensive readout of his rank and credentials.
“Says here you were stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Part of the 341st Missile Wing.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” the man answered. Then his expression changed. “Danny. And Suzanne. What about them? What happened to my—”
Vaughn exhaled slowly. “Always the same,” he whispered. “Okay. Here’s the deal,” Vaughn continued. “Here’s what you need to know. I’m going to give it to you. Then I’m going to expect you to give me what I want.”
The man’s expression didn’t change much as he seemed to continue recalling memories of who he had once been.
“I’m Doctor Vaughn Craig. I worked for the Navy and was stationed in a nuclear sub doing geological research. At least, when we weren’t playing G.I. Joe and conducting wargames. We were at the bottom of the Aegean Sea when the last DataMind update came through. I still can’t believe the Navy patched it through over an ELF transmission. What a waste.”
He paused, waiting for the inevitable. The man’s face changed as he remembered his last few hours before the update.
“So, you do remember,” Vaughn said.
The man nodded and then did his best tough-man impression as he held back tears.
“For most people, the thought of being on a sub for weeks at a time sounds like torture. And it’s true, some people can’t handle it.” He paused. “But that’s nothing compared to what I had to do. Have you ever been in solitary confinement?”
McMillan shook his head no.
“I have,” Vaughn said. “That’s what the update did to me. I had to shut down most sections of the sub to keep back you DataMind users. Of course, you know what that meant. Each section had only one sailor left standing. As crazy as it all was, I could have learned to go on. I could have just flooded all their compartments and been done with them. But there was just one problem. We were underwater, and I didn’t have access codes to the helm. I was locked out.”
Vaughn laughed. “I hadn’t paid attention before. I knew the captain had codes for nuclear missiles. That much made sense. But why oh why the Navy decided that the helm needed access codes—that’s beyond me and was the bane of my existence for a couple months as I tried to crack the codes on my own.”
“I had all I needed: air, water, food, and security from app users like you. But the clock was ticking. Without the ability to surface, I was as good as dead. But then it hit me; I didn’t need to crack the sub’s computer. It was too hard, too perfect. I just needed to crack the heads of those who had been given the codes. Fortunately, the sub captain was a survivor.”
Vaughn stepped back to the man and caressed the chip on the side of his head. “This little breakthrough took time. But it was time well spent.” He turned back, his arms behind him again, and stepped toward the wall monitor.
“Something occurred to me after I developed the chip. The thing is this: even if I could restore them, the users, it wasn’t clear that I should. Oh sure, I needed to do it. I needed the access codes to the sub. But the question remained: why should they get this free gift? What had they done to warrant restoration? They were the reason I had been trapped down there. They were the ones who brought this upon themselves and everyone else.”
“Still,” Vaughn continued as he turned back to face the man, “common decency seemed to suggest that I was in error, that surely the world was better off if I helped these poor creatures. But you know what happened?”
He didn’t wait for the man to guess. “I restored the captain. He was sitting in a chair much like this one. And before I cut him loose and started working on the others, you know what he did? He started giving me orders. Me. Can you believe it? Not a thank you. No remorse over the mistake he’d made using DataMind. No, he wasted no time. He simply wanted to reassert himself, put himself back in charge of me and everyone else he could dominate.”
“And that’s when it hit me,” Vaughn said half-sitting on the table next to him. “He didn’t deserve to be in charge. He never had. So, I learned a valuable lesson there: don’t reward stupidity in the name of helping someone. Then, the dear captain went on to teach me another valuable lesson. I asked him for the codes. As you might expect, he didn’t want to give them to me, so I had to find a way to motivate him.”
Vaughn jumped down from the table, as if new energy had propelled him. “Do you know what motivates people, more than anything else?” Vaughn asked.
This time he waited for the answer, his eyes ablaze.
McMillan looked down, searching, then back up and said sheepishly, “Love?”
Vaughn erupted in laughter. “Amazing! Always the same. It never fails.” Vaughn calmed himself and bent over again in McMillan’s face, placing his hands on his knees like he was a kindergarten teacher addressing a class of five-year old’s. “It’s so much simpler than that. P-A-I-N,” he spelled. “That four letter word makes the world go round. People will do anything to avoid pain. It’s the universal constant. Now, they’re not always smart about it. They use drugs. They procrastinate. They use mindfulness apps. But underneath all the stupidity lies the same impulse: pain avoidance.”
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” McMillan offered. “Just let me go.”
“Oh, you will tell me what I want to know,” Vaughn said confidently. “That’s not in question. But see, you’re not walking out of here alive. I’m sorry to say, you’re dead.”
A new outburst from McMillan, this one an unintelligible mixture of sobs and chatter.
Vaughn suppressed the man’s response with a wave of his hand. “You were dead when I found you,” Vaughn said. “I gave you life. And I will take it away when I’m through with you. And you will suffer. None of that’s up to you. What is up to you is how soon you get to die. And trust me, you’ll want to. Some things are worse than death. So, let’s begin,” Vaughn said, giving the drone at the control box a nod.
McMillan let out a blood curdling scream after the drone punched buttons, releasing the first dose of digital pain. Vaughn waved his hand in a horizontal motion, and the scream subsided.
McMillan breathed hard, his face covered in sweat.
“First question,” Vaughn said, “what are the launch codes for the Minuteman missile silos?”
CHAPTER 16
“BRING FOOD AND water,” Nick told Robert who immediately set off toward the daylight, the mine’s entrance.
“Just relax,” Lusa said, crouched down, consoling the awakened woman.
“How am I supposed to relax? Where am I? No one is answering my questions.”
Lusa placed a soft hand on the woman’s bent knee.
“Don’t touch me. I don’t know you,” she responded.
Nick frowned, staring at the chip’s glowing blue light on the side of the woman’s face. He didn’t know what was happening exactly. The woman appeared to have regained her former consciousness. And that seemed like a good thing, but it gave Nick a sick feeling in his stomach.
“I’m Nick. And this is Lusa,” he offered. “Can you tell me who you are?”
The woman looked down. “I’m…Erin.” She said the name like it was unfamiliar, distant. Like she’d had to search far and wide to recover it, and Nick imagined that was exactly what had happened.
Nick heard running footsteps and put out a cautionary hand. Robert slowed his approach. Then Nick took the canteen from the drone and offered it to Erin, saying, “Here you are. Drink this.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Just water.”
Slowly, Erin reached forth, her hand trembling—Nick didn’t know if it was from fear or fatigue—and took the canteen. Then, her hesitation gone, she turned it up and began guzzling it.
“Guess you were thirsty,” Lusa said.
Erin finished off the quart jug and wiped her mouth with her arm. “Thanks,” she said softly, returning the canteen.
“Erin,” Nick started. When she looked at him, her baby blue eyes struck him, and he paused for a moment as he no longer saw her as a crazy, or emergent, or a drone. She was human. Damaged but human. “We’re in an abandoned mine. Lusa and I were here to…make sure it was safe to use again.”
Erin appeared to accept his partial explanation, then looked at Robert.
“He’s on our team,” Lusa said. “There’s more outside like him.”
Erin reached up to her temple and felt the chip.
“He’s not like you,” Nick said. “Not exactly, anyway.” They stayed there, silent, exchanging glances in the half-dark for several seconds. “Erin, can you tell us what you remember?” Nick asked.
She looked down again and squinted her eyes. “North Pole,” she said in a whisper.
To anyone not from Alaska, it would have sounded insane. But Nick knew the small city well. It was just a twenty- minute drive from Fairbanks. “That’s where you’re from?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. My family and I were…” Her eyes got big as she turned and gave a horrific expression. “My family!”
Erin started to get up as if they were in imminent danger, but Lusa put her hands on her shoulders, keeping her down. “Hold on,” Lusa said. “It’s okay. Everything’s alright.”
Nick knew that was a lie, but it sounded good.
“Just relax and tell us what happened,” Lusa said softy, as she stroked Erin’s dirty strawberry blonde hair.
“I used to carry mail in North Pole,” Erin said. “And it was like any other day. Lots of driving, only a few pieces of mail. And I stopped for the DataMind update. And then…”
Fresh tears came to her eyes, and Nick realized that she not only remembered her old life but also seemed to remember the update.
“Do you remember anything after the update?” he asked.
She looked up again, and those same piercing blue eyes, wet with tears, cut away all of Nick’s cynicism. “Yes,” she said with a trembling lip. “I…remember it all.” Then she collapsed, her head in her hands, bent down against her knees.
Nick and Lusa looked at each other, and he knew they were thinking the same things, the same questions. But neither of them dared speak them in front of Erin.
“My kids,” Erin said suddenly. “I’ve got to reach them. I’ve got to…” She scrambled onto her feet. Lusa tried to slow her down again, but this time her attempts to calm Erin only seemed to throw fuel on the fire.
Erin tried to push past Lusa, like she was making a break for it. Nick stepped in front of her, blocking her with his body.
“Erin, there’s nothing you can—” Nick stopped himself, but it was too late. The message had been loud and clear, and Erin was full-tilt mad now: screaming and clawing her way through Nick and Lusa. Erin couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds dripping wet, but it was all Lusa and Nick could do to hold her back.
Finally, when it became clear she wouldn’t calm down, Nick looked to his father and said, “Robert, tranquilize her.”
He didn’t know if a second dart would be effective, and he saw a flash of fresh concern come over Lusa’s face. She didn’t like the idea, he figured. But then she withdrew, seeming complacent to help restrain Erin.
A soft whoof was heard in the darkness, and two seconds later Erin collapsed into Nick and Lusa’s arms.
“Come on, Robert,” Nick said. “Help us carry her out.”
CHAPTER 17
IT WAS LUNCH time, but nobody was hungry. Not now. Not after what they’d seen. Not after the weathered, cut, and bruised woman who lay before them in the dirt. Out in the light of day, Erin looked more like a cancer patient in hospice, or a battered woman, or a holocaust survivor—Nick couldn’t decide which. She’d mentioned her kids, and Nick figured she had to be at least thirty, but between the damage and the dirt, her age was hard to guess.
“What are we going to do now?” Lusa asked without looking up.
“Feed and water the horses,” Nick said, turning aside. “Thunder, break for lunch.” The drones broke formation from around the perimeter and trotted back to their supplies. Robert went with them. Lusa gave the same command to her team, and then it was just the three of them.
“I guess we should call this in,” Lusa said.
Nick stared at her for moment, not knowing what to say but knowing there was no easy answer. They both distrusted Vaughn, but at the same time, he was the brains of the operation. This was important, and he should probably know.
“We don’t have to,” Nick said. “We can just take her in. It’ll be easier to explain in person.”
“I guess. But won’t he ask why we didn’t radio it in?”
“He never said we had to radio things in,” Nick said. “He hasn’t been transparent. Why should we be?”
They looked at each other for a long moment, and Nick believed they were making a silent promise: to trust each other over Vaughn.
“This just doesn’t make sense,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought maybe Vaughn could explain it better.”
Nick huffed. “Vaughn’s the one that said the chip wouldn’t work on emergents. Remember?”
“But how do we know she’s an emergent?” Lusa asked.
“What else could she be? You weren’t there when I first went inside the mine. She didn’t attack me right away. She sat there and did that weird cannibal sound, like she was trying to talk.”
“So, she’s not a crazy,” Lusa said. “But she doesn’t seem like an emergent either. First off, she’s from North Pole. And Vaughn said all the emergents came from down south where the reactors were, right?”
“Yeah. That’s what he said.”
“And second, where’re all her friends,” Lusa asked, stretching out her hands palms up and twisting her waist left and right.
“I get your point,” Nick said. “We’re used to crazies whittling down to a lone survivor, but not the cannibals.”
“Right,” she said. “It just doesn’t add up.”
“One of two things are true,” Nick said. “Either Vaughn is wrong about emergents, where they come from, and whether the chip works on them—”
“Or he’s lying,” she finished.
“Exactly. And that’s why we’ll bring Erin back and show her to Vaughn and Jimmy. At least that way it will be out in the open. Who knows? Maybe he is just wrong. But if he’s lying, Jimmy needs to see this too.”
Lusa nodded in agreement. Nick looked at her for the longest time until she smiled and said, “What?”
“Nothing,” he smiled back. Between all the fighting, fear, and frustration, he’d forgotten how pretty she was. He wished he could say it. Now wasn’t the time. “So, to Fairbanks then,” he pronounced.
Then the pleasant expression on Lusa’s face shifted.
“What is it?” he asked.
She pursed her lips together, as if she knew he wouldn’t like what she had to say and he would have to pry it out of her. Finally, she said, “There’s a village on the way. I want to stop and warn them.”
Nick bit his tongue. He wanted to lash out, and he was shocked at his own ability to leap from one emotional extreme to another. He told himself they were just tired and stressed out. He exhaled and asked as patiently as he could muster, “Where is it?”
She raised her command display and pointed to a waypoint on the map. “I was going to stop here myself, before you came. And since Vaughn suggested this route, it’s actually on the way.”
That wasn’t exactly true; the village was slightly off to the southeast of their trajectory, but it wasn’t far out of the way. And Nick didn’t want more conflict. He glanced over at the drones who had no trouble filling their stomachs with the prepackaged years-old food. They were the work animals, and they would do all the heavy lifting, Nick knew—including carrying Erin.
“Alright. We can stop and warn them,” he agreed. “But you realize, we don’t even know where the emergents are right now. We’re having to go by what Vaughn tells us. Lusa, we can’t promise them anything.”
She nodded, and he knew she understood that Vaughn, who would have left her to die if it hadn’t been for Nick, would undoubtedly sacrifice her people if saving them wasn’t expedient.
“We won’t stay long,” she promised.
CHAPTER 18
WHEN LUSA TOLD Nick they were getting close to the village, he was surprised. He didn’t see any mountains nearby, and he wondered if the natives had built here by choice, or if all the mountain tops had been spoken for and this was the cheap real estate. His tired mind even started to mention this to Lusa, as if she’d find it humorous, but he kept his mouth shut. And soon he would be glad he did.
The walk had been monotonous. Long walks always were, but when the scenery was the same old dull, flat grassland for as far as the eye could see, it seemed endless. Though the sun wouldn’t set for some time, Nick’s growling stomach told him it was nearly suppertime. He hoped the natives were cooking when they arrived. He hoped it was something similar to what Lusa’s people had served him and Jimmy over one year ago when they’d first been taken to Pete’s village. He could still smell the bread and meat. He remembered thinking it was the best tasting food he’d ever eaten.
