Harvest, page 47
“Where are my clothes?” she demanded, looking straight into his dark eyes, her chin lifted in a gesture anyone who knew her would have recognized as a warning sign.
He tilted his head, and she saw a set of pale blue scrubs thrown haphazardly across the open-sided immersion pod. Urged on by fear and anger, she was across the space before she even fully decided to move, and she staggered as she barely avoided crashing into the pod. What was going on?
Laughing harshly, the young man motioned toward the scrubs. “Don’t worry about that. You won’t have time to enjoy it. Just put the clothes on.”
Bree pulled the pants up under the towel, then tugged the shirt on and, in a single motion, snapped the towel out, faster than she’d ever moved before, aiming at the dark barrel pointing at her face. Even as she released the corner of cloth she’d been gripping, she dropped and spun, one leg out to sweep the stranger’s feet out from under him.
Impossibly fast, he jumped up and back, still holding the weapon in a rock-steady grip. He landed on his toes in perfect balance, one hand out to counter his shift in weight. “Bitch,” he said conversationally. “Try that again, and I’ll just shoot you now, and worry about how it looks later. You’re only incidental, after all.”
Bree gritted her teeth. How had he moved so quickly? For that matter, how had she moved so quickly? Her self-defense trainer had always chided her about needing to practice more to bring up her speed, but she was certain that the move she’d just completed was faster and more precise than any she’d ever done before, in spite of months of inactivity. Or maybe because of it? Bridget had had one of those ‘mouse with cheese’ grins when she’d assured Bree that she wouldn’t need physical therapy or support after coming out of immersion.
Bree came effortlessly to her feet, her muscles moving smooth and easy. Glancing down, she saw that instead of the familiar softness of her forearms, she had lean muscle. For a moment, she had a desperate urge to feel her stomach and see if the little cesarean pooch was finally gone, but a glimpse of the unwavering black tunnel of the gun barrel drove that thought from her mind.
“Go,” the stranger said, motioning toward the door in the far wall. “I’ve prepared a little reunion for you.”
Bree’s eyes widened, and her breath left her body. Oh, please, God, let him not mean Bridget. She practically ran across the room and tapped the door panel. The screen above it was flashing red, with the message MALFUNCTION scrolling constantly. It hissed open, and Bree looked into the vaguely familiar lab beyond.
Three people were on the floor, bound. The first one she saw was a tall, broad Black man, his face set in a fierce scowl and his hazelnut eyes fixed on the door. When it slid open, he grunted and propelled himself forward with a burst of strength from his powerful legs. She saw the moment he realized she was standing there instead of their abductor, and he twisted in mid-motion, crashing hard against a rolling table filled with instruments and sending him, the table, and its contents tumbling to the ground.
Chilling laughter came from behind her, and something cold and hard pressed against the back of her skull. “Oh, Motte. You’re just as protective in real life as in the game, and just as bad at it, aren’t you? Did you really think I’d risk coming in first? Plus, I’m controlling the security system right now, so the cameras in here showed me what you were up to, anyway.”
With a painful shove of the gun barrel against her skull, the man shoved Bree forward, and she stumbled forward three deliberate steps, putting her next to the prostrate form of the most precious person in the world. Bridget. Bree whirled, putting her body between the madman and her daughter, though another part of her desperately wanted to check on Motte, who hadn’t yet stirred or made a sound.
The man grinned, and something in his eyes finally triggered recognition. “Fantum… hat?”
His face lit up with glee. “That’s right! It’s about time one of you idiots figured it out!”
Bree shook her head, feeling her damp red curls swaying into the frizzy mass they always dried into without product and work. “But… This is real. Isn’t it?” She stared around, suddenly both terrified and hopeful that she was still in the pod. Still dreaming.
“Oh, this is as real as it gets, Ms. Bree Stephenson, social media star. You’re about to become the stepping stone I need to achieve the fame and fortune I deserve. The fortune that my selfish ass of a grandfather denied me just because I was illegitimate. A bastard. Just like your sweet little girl, there. But who cares now, anyway? Nobody except antiquated old men, that’s who!”
FantumHat’s voice rose throughout this little exposition, and by the end, his black eyes were burning and he was waving the gun wildly. As soon as Bree’s muscles tensed, however, the weapon instantly honed back in on her, and he shook his head chidingly. “Now, now, don’t move. There were only two doses of sedative in the lab, so Bridget and smart, handsome, perfect Hank got them. After all, if Motte’s going to kill you all, he can’t have any drugs in his system, and you, well,” he shrugged, “I only need you because you’re famous, and you dying will draw the media vultures. Otherwise, I would have just let you wake up to find these three already dead.”
He saw the look of horror on her face and laughed. “Boo hoo, poor Bree. Maybe that would have been best, after all. You’re not as pretty in person, but watching someone break is always great fun, so I’m sure the news would still have been filled with pictures of your sobbing face. Oh well, too late now.”
She backed up a little more, feeling her rear bump into Bridget’s unconscious form. Only unconscious. There’s no blood, and he said she’s alive. Oh, God, please… “What,” she said, voice cracking desperately. “What’s the point of all this? Bridget said once we beat the quest, that was it. No matter what you do, you’ve still lost.” Talk to me, you megalomaniac. Come on, just keep talking. If you’re talking, you’re not shooting.
He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong.” He held up his free hand, fingers splayed. “There were five people in this little deal. Amy, Bridget, Joe, Hank, and Carl.” He lowered one finger with each name.
“With Amy dead,” he saw her flinch and grinned viciously. “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t know. Well, that one was an accident, but it was what finally helped me realize that all I needed to do was clear the field. No more competitors means no more competition, right? After tonight, the only ones left will be Joe and Carl, and they both want to sell the tech to the highest bidder. Well, Joe was getting a little wishy-washy, but once Amy and Bridget are gone, he won’t have any more little voice of conscience to bother him.”
Slowly, he stepped to the side, attempting to get a clear view of the prone forms behind Bree. She shifted, blocking him, and he scowled, then laughed. “Do whatever you want. It won’t change anything.” He paused with his back to the office door, and continued with his story. “You know, Georgie and I just wanted to talk to Amy. Honestly, it wasn’t my fault that the car slid and hit her. It was icy that night, you know? But then she was out of the picture, and with Hank in the game, suddenly poor old Carl had no children left. No one to share his grief. But there I was.”
He laughed. “Grandson of his best friend, and the boy who grew up with his own children. I knew all the stories, and we just started talking. Well,” he grimaced, “he talked, and I listened to his idiotic rambling about how he never knew what he had until it was gone. I was the one who convinced him to pull Amy from the hospital and take her home before Bridget managed to try out her Coma Protocols on her. Who knows, it might have worked. It’s just too bad that Amy never woke up, right?”
FantumHat started pacing, though the gun never drifted far from his victims. “So, when that impudent little brat got me killed in game, I knew I could win anyway. I just had to remove all the pieces, just like Amy, and leave only the King on the board.”
He looked toward where Motte lay, still motionless. “That idiot made it too easy. He’s been spending all his spare time with Bridget, and he has a long history of sticking up for you whenever someone called you an over-hyped idiot with a nice rack. He really should have kept his social media a little more private. Too late now, though.” He shrugged.
“I figure the story goes like this,” he pointed at Motte. “Good old Motte has worshiped the famous, fabulous Bree Stephenson for years. When he met her daughter,” the finger shifted to Bridget, “he figured she was close enough. They start a May-December romance while she’s bouncing back from being rejected by the eminently eligible Harkness Landon. Then, when Hank wakes up, ready to rekindle their love affair, Motte snaps, kills them both, along with you, because really,” he shrugged, “why not? Then he commits suicide in a fit of remorse. What do you think?”
From the corner of her eye, Bree saw Motte’s foot twitch, and dared to hope that he was conscious and listening to the crazy man expound. Her hands were still free. If she could reach Motte, maybe she could get him loose, and then they could take down FantumHat, or whatever his real name was.
“Who are you, anyway?” she asked, drawing on years of smiling and flattering powerful interview subjects who she secretly disliked. “I can’t just keep calling you FantumHat. You’re obviously much more important than a mere lackey in real life.”
He snorted, but a faint, pleased flush rose on his pale cheeks. “Don’t suck up to me. It doesn’t matter what you call me, since you’re going to be dead in a minute anyway. I just have to get the timing right. After all, when the shots go off, I won’t have long to get out of here, though it’ll be easy enough to slip out through Veralt’s lab. I just have to make sure that the coroner’s report shows you all died in the right order, so… who’s first?”
The gun wavered between Bridget, whose head and chest were behind Bree, and Harkness, who was half-hidden by the desk. FantumHat made a face. “Why couldn’t they collapse in a more convenient way? Fine… Um, Bridget first, I think, but we’ll wait until Hank starts to come out of it. I’ll let him get a couple of swings in. That way it’ll look like he was trying to fight Motte off when Motte shot him. Then you, when you came in and saw what was going on. Then, of course, I have to get Motte’s hand on the gun so the residue will show that he fired the weapon.”
He looked stymied for a moment, and then his expression brightened. “Oh! I can just shoot him somewhere that’s not fatal, then put the gun in his hand once he’s weak, and use his own hand to shoot him in the face. I’ve been wanting to shoot that mouth off for a while now, anyway.” He laughed to himself, looking very pleased with his plan.
“Now, Bree, it isn’t really that important when you die. Move out of the way and you die third. Stay there, and die first.” FantumHat shrugged. “I honestly don’t care.”
A sharp knock came on the lab door behind them. “Dr. Anderson? Someone called and asked me to check on you and Dr. Williams. Could you open the door, please?”
FantumHat froze, dark eyes wild. With quick, light steps, he ran over and pressed the gun barrel hard against Bree’s forehead. “Tell him everything’s fine,” he hissed. “Now, or I kill you all and still get away through the back before he can break in here.” He dropped the barrel to point at the side of Bridget’s head. “Starting with her.”
Bree shook, unable to see anything but the deadly weapon aimed at her daughter’s skull. She cleared her throat, though her voice was rough and shaking when she said, “Yes. Um, everything’s… fine. Dr. Williams and I are just… indisposed.”
FantumHat snickered. “Indisposed. I like that.” He raised his own voice, deepening it as much as possible. “Uh, yeah, that’s right. We’re busy, you know what I mean?”
A long silence followed, and the man on the other side of the door sounded embarrassed when he said, “Sorry to bother you, then. I’ll let them know you’re fine.” Footsteps retreated down the hall, and when they faded completely, FantumHat looked back at Bree and grinned.
“Now, where were we?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ROUGE
Jackie Chan was an action hero. He disconnected the auto-drive on his car and wove through traffic like a stunt double in a police chase. There were almost no other cars on the road at 2:37 AM, but Jackie pulled off a Tokyo drift through a hot yellow light, around two cars, and turned the corner to pull up to a precise stop in the loading zone in front of Veritas HQ.
Zoey was out of the car a half second later, with Jackie and Max hot on her heels. When she burst through the doors into the lobby, a serious Sam was talking to a red-faced guard at the security desk. Nina had her hands clapped over her mouth, and her eyes were huge. It was the first time Zoey had ever seen her friend without a pair of her signature glasses, and Zoey barely recognized her.
“What’s going on?” She demanded, crossing the lobby in long steps that almost felt like flying.
Sam blinked a few times, shaking their head. “Dave says he was in the bathroom when I contacted him,” they cast a sidelong look at Dave, who flushed even redder. “So, he just got back from checking on Dr. Anderson and your dad.” They smiled reassuringly at Zoey. “Everything is fine. They’re just, ah… busy.”
Zoey shook her head, looking at Dave. “Did you see them? Did they look okay?”
Dave looked away sheepishly. The man looked barely old enough to be out of high school, much less packing a taser and working as a guard, and Zoey didn’t have a great feeling about his competency. “I, ah, heard them, you know, through the door. They sounded, um, out of breath, but Mr. Williams said they were, you know,” he raised his eyebrows meaningfully and made finger quotes, “busy.”
“No,” Zoey said. “No, no, no, no, no! They are not doing that! If my dad said that, like that, then something is wrong. I need to see them.”
Around her, the adults exchanged glances that clearly said, She’s just a kid, and she doesn’t understand adult stuff. Sam started to speak.
Zoey just glared, and took off.
If she went outside, she’d have to go in through the outer door to the research building. She didn’t have a key card, however, so she’d be stuck there unless she could convince one of them to let her in. No, the only way was up. With a single easy jump. she vaulted over the turnstile through which she’d walked so many times.
Glancing over her shoulder, she yelled, “Max, follow!” Then, knowing that Max’s sensitive nose could track her no matter where she went, and the others would follow the dog, she headed for the stairs.
The first few flights of stairs were actually used fairly often at Veritas. They encouraged physical fitness, and quite a few people used the corporate gym and swimming pool, as well as routinely taking the stairs instead of the elevator. After the seventh floor, however, the stairs were usually abandoned, and the doors required a keycard to open.
Fortunately, Zoey only needed to go to the fifth floor, and she ran up the stairs with the ease of an Olympic marathon runner. There, she found the skybridge between the main building and the lab building. Since she had lunch between her time in Design and Research, she’d always gone outside to the cafeteria or the benches, but she’d seen the skybridge a hundred times and thought that she should use it at least once.
Today, she used it. Running flat out with hyper-human speed, she was in the research building just a little over 2 minutes after leaving the front desk behind. She threw open the door to the stairs in the new building and leapt down two flights of stairs to the third floor. Around one corner. Two. There!
She tried the doorknob, but it just jiggled in her hand. She began pounding on the door, but remained silent, hoping that whoever was inside would think she was the security guard again and open up.
A voice that was obviously straining itself to seem deeper than it actually was, yelled out, “What? I told you we’re busy! Go away!”
Zoey just pounded harder. Come on, come on. Open up!
Finally, the door opened with a jerk, and, to her amazement, she found herself staring into the pale, strained face of Bree Stephenson. The woman was mostly hidden behind the door, which was only open a bare crack. Their eyes locked in abrupt, mutual recognition, and the brilliant woman said, “Oh, hello! I’m so sorry, but my daughter is still talking to Dr. Williams. You can go back to the front desk.”
As she finished speaking, her head jerked, and she winced in pain, but her lips formed three clear words. The other lab.
Zoey’s eyes widened, and she nodded in understanding. Bree said, “Thank you!” and shut the door in her face.
Turning, Zoey raced through the halls. It made sense that Philip would want to have a back way out prepared, and Zoey knew the two labs were connected through the hidden inner room. Unfortunately, she had actively avoided any area where she might accidentally meet Veralt or one of his people, so she didn’t know exactly where the door to his lab and office were.
She screeched to a halt, catching herself on a door frame. The door looked just like all of the others except for a large, shiny black plaque with graceful letters that spelled out ‘Dr. Veralt’. She tried the doorknob, and it opened easily. She peered inside cautiously, but the room looked empty of life. The layout was nearly identical to Dr. Joe’s area, so she quickly made her way across to the door that should lead to the test lab.
Bingo! It was open. Philip wouldn’t want anything to slow him down on his way out, and the complex unlocking procedure would definitely do that. She crept through, and as she did, she began to hear voices, though they were too low to be comprehensible. She slid around the walls just like she would when she was Rouge, sneaking into a guarded building, and peered through the opening in the wall that led to the two operational long-term immersion pods.
They were both empty. The lids were open, and the blue fluid had been sucked back into the reservoir to be cleaned. Zoey glanced into them, but they were clean, with bare, white beds ready and waiting. Zoey felt her heart slow a bit, and realized that she’d been half-expecting there to be signs of a struggle. Maybe even… blood?
