Dreams in the Tower Part 2 (7 page)

“Come on,” she called through the dizzy tunnel her head was squeezed into. “We have to move.” She pulled Adelson to his feet and started sprinting; a few seconds later she heard him panting behind her. When she got to the hallway where the battle still raged, she didn’t stop this time but ran on through the yawning emptiness. There were fewer gunshots now; the thunderous sounds had been replaced by desperate sobs and inhuman moans echoing out from the pitch black.

Death was all around her now, keeping by her side no matter how fast she ran. Why? Why was she in this monstrous sepulcher built of metal and concrete? She decided it didn’t matter. She would run and run and get out and not try to make any sense of the dying in her wake. So she ran. And Adelson ran and gasped and sobbed behind her. She saw the coming wall just in time to turn the corner without slowing down or smashing into the concrete face.

Seconds closed the gap between her and the pale light of the doorway.

The first taste of night air was a relief beyond thought, but Sabrina didn’t stop running. Her head swam so turbulently she thought she might lose consciousness at any moment, but still she did not stop running. Behind her Adelson didn’t sound like he was in any better shape. But they kept moving, because to stop now was to die.

Back through the narrow cut-through and the gate and there was the big black car, still ru
nning, now turned facing the street they had driven in on.  As she threw open the passenger door and began climbing up, she saw that the other side was empty; the whole car was empty. “
Skexka
?” she called into the night. Nothing. But there was no time to be surprised.

“You get in here,” she said to Adelson, who was just now catching up. “I’ll drive.” She raced around the protruding front grill, wrenched the door open, and got up into the driver seat.

As soon as the coughing, sweating Adelson was in, she pulled out onto the street and stamped down on the gas pedal. She had no idea where to go or even how to get back to the highway, but she knew she had to get away from the warehouse. If she could just find the highway she could get back downtown and meet up with Jason—but how would she find him? Nobody had told her where the safe location was; she had been relying on Skexka getting them there afterward. The thought of the tablet she had abandoned in the dark hallway made Sabrina want to cry, to release everything that had built up inside her over the last half hour.

But she had to stay calm. She was a GPA senior detective, and she couldn’t allow herself to break down like that. Adelson was pressed up against his seat, head on the headrest, eyes closed,
breathing deep and measured. She followed his example and forced herself to breathe out some of the tension, some of the fear that had congested her mind and forced her to depend on instinct to get her through those last few minutes. As she began to think more clearly, she saw a road sign saying the highway was dead ahead, so she put on an extra burst of speed until, finally, they reached it. She sped through two red lights to get to the onramp: pursuit was a very real possibility, even if there was no sign of the black GPA cars behind them.

She had to slow down to merge into a line of cars on the highway. Considering it was well after 3 a.m. and there should be no more than a handful of other cars out, the highway was e
xtremely busy. Something was very wrong about so many cars going towards the city when the riots were surely well underway by now. She wondered if all these people could be going to join in on the fighting. Reinforcements?

But she had no time to wonder about it: a distant rumble shook the inside of the car like a brief but rattling earthquake, and the brake lights in front of her became a ruby red snake craw
ling swiftly towards her. She had to slam her foot on the brake pedal to avoid crashing into the growing line of cars.

Adelson, who hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, smashed forward and yelled, “What the fuck?” All down the highway, people were getting out of their cars and looking towards dow
ntown, where a massive column of smoke was billowing up into the starry sky.

“I don’t know,” Sabrina said. “I—” She stopped abruptly when she felt something wet and slimy cover her face and fill up her mouth. She spit the salty, chunky stuff into her hand and saw among the red a fragment of white clinging to a gray blob. Horrified, she looked over at Adelson, now slumped against the dashboard, and what remained of his head—then she promptly turned away and vomited all over herself, the bile washing out the taste of blood and bone and brain. She hadn’t even heard the shot…

The driver side door opened swiftly and suddenly. “We got her,” said some deep, muffled voice. She didn’t see the pair of hands that pulled her from the car and threw her face down into the pavement. Nor did she see all the other hands that held her arms and legs and body. She screamed, she struggled, she fought; but when she felt the cold steel around her wrists and ankles she knew it was over.

By the time the hood blacked out her world the last of her strength had left her.

17

The hotel they had put Dellia Thomas in was nothing like the musty, mass-produced places Jason and Sabrina had stayed at on their long journey from Los Angeles. The Magnolia Hotel in Houston was in a dusty old building that might have been from the turn of the 20
th
century or before: a little piece of history dwarfed by the dense city around it. But as Jason crossed the street from the lot where he had left Sabrina’s car, he saw through the windows that the interior was quite modern and surprisingly upscale. They obviously wanted Dellia to be comfortable; nothing else would justify putting her in a nice room in a risky and soon-to-be very dangerous part of downtown.

He entered and hurried through the lobby. Even at nearly 3 a.m. there was a sizable group of people standing or sitting around the bar area, probably kept awake by the excitement that was now only a few blocks away. But they were too intent on TVs and tablets to notice him, even though he probably looked a little too much like he didn’t belong in this place with these people. Making it to an empty elevator, he punched the ‘5’ button and rose to meet what would almost certainly become yet a
nother frantic flight away from pursuers who seemed to multiply every time he turned around.

Out of the elevator, he found his way and fast-walked down the hall. When he got to the solemn door to room 518 he paused, looked both ways down the barren hall, and knocked hu
rriedly. As if anticipating this, the door opened a crack, catching on the chain, and an unseen woman’s voice said, “Who are you?”

“
Joans,” he said softly near the crack in the door.

“And who are you with?”

That was a good question, and he wasn’t sure how to answer it. So much had changed in just a few short hours. He had to tell her the truth soon anyway, so he decided not to hide anything. “I was with the AC,” he said, “but not anymore. Now I’m with the—the people trying to keep the fight alive. The ones who
don’t
want to sell you to Silte Corp.” Would she believe that? He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“Good,” she said. “Get in here.”

She closed the door long enough to slide the chain off then opened it fully to let him inside. He made sure the door closed completely and followed her in. The room was small but ornate and colorful, and it looked like she had hardly touched anything in the time she had been here. “Izza said you were on our side even though Skexka and the others sent you here.” She led him to a soft armchair and gestured for him to sit. “That’s why I let you in.” She sat on the bed and crossed her arms and legs, facing him.

After studying him severely for some time, she said, “I’m
Dellia Thomas. But you know that already. Who are you? I mean, who are you really?”

“Jason Delaney.
From San Jose. I’m pretty much in the same situation as you, only maybe Silte doesn’t want me dead quite as bad.”

To his surprise, she chuckled. “Oh great,” she said. “They sent me someone to commise
rate with.”

“You’re not afraid?” Jason didn’t feel like this was an appropriate time for laug
hter.

“I was for a while,” she said, “but after a week or so of living on the streets you start to a
ppreciate what you have and stop worrying so much about what you might lose. And anyway this is sort of bigger than me now, isn’t it?”

“It’s true then, right? That you have a cure?” She only stared at him inquisitively, so he ad
ded, “I have a friend…”

Looking away toward the curtained window, she sighed then looked right at him with soft eyes as she said, “I’m
sorry, Jason, but I don’t have a cure. What I have is a vaccine. It won’t help if your friend is already sick. Nothing I know of will.”

A small part of whatever it was deep inside him that was keeping him sane died just then. It wasn’t all that surprising; he had begun thinking of Steph as dead as soon as Seito told him she was sick. Not a permanent death, though; more like a temporary death that he didn’t have to a
ccept because eventually it would be fixed. He realized, now, how stupid that sentiment had been. He didn’t know anything about this mind virus, but considering it was Silte’s work it probably wouldn’t be undone easily. Word of a cure had given him a small hope. That was gone now, just like Steph.

“I’m really sorry,”
Dellia said, obviously uncomfortable in the somber silence. “If I had had more time…” She lapsed into silence for a moment then said, “So do you know the plan? For tonight?”

“Nobody told me anything. The only orders I got were the ones the AC people gave me. My friend told me not to follow those orders and to get away from them and go with you to the CDC instead.”

“Go with me?” Her eyebrows rose bewilderedly. “We’ll see,” she said. “Anyway, you’ll take me at least as far as the dock. I can get us there. Once we’re down there we’ll meet up with a certain freighter ship captain, and he will get me secured aboard his ship. Hopefully I’ll reach the CDC in a week or two.”

“When should we go?”

“Now is good,” she said. “Let me just—
fuck
.”

The bone-shaking blast that must have come from just outside the window sent both of them diving to the floor. For several seconds they sat on hands and knees, hunched up and sta
ring at each other, inches apart; Jason smelled the soap of a recent shower on her skin and saw the dim lamp’s light reflected in her eyes, which he didn’t seem to be able to look away from. Moments went on for hours in the tense silence. Outside of that room the world might be burning away and neither of them could move or speak or do anything to stop it.

When it finally became clear they weren’t going to die at that moment, Jason got up and went to the window, pulling back the curtain slightly. The opposite sidewalk was littered with broken glass; all around there were people running, shouting, screa
ming. About three blocks away towards the city center there was a column of thick, dark smoke rising slowly, eerie in the pale neon lights it passed over. Even as he watched, the glass faces of towers began reflecting yellow and orange all across downtown. The sirens began, slow and distant at first, but then they were everywhere. He turned away and looked gravely at Dellia.

“We should go now,” he said.

“Yeah.” Dellia didn’t seem scared, like Jason was. She looked ready. “Just give me a minute,” she said, and then she got up and hurried into the bathroom. He heard her rummaging around for a while before she bustled back into sight holding a bulging backpack, which she dropped a handful of hotel toiletries into. She went about the room with the bag, gathering up everything she could: pens, notepads, cups; she even took two pillowcases and the entire contents of the minibar.

“This probably looks nuts,” she said, zipping up the backpack. “But you have no idea how nice it would have been to have this stuff back on the streets, when I was still too afraid to buy anything. It’s only going to be worse this time; I really won’t be able to go into stores now that the whole AC is looking for me along with
Silte and Guardian.”

“Good thinking,” he said, a little amused despite
himself.

“Thanks. Now let’s go. You drive, I’ll navigate.”

*  *  *

After an all-too-short ride from the hotel, the wait in the car, parked under the shadow of an old refinery that had been repurposed as a shipping warehouse, felt like hours—though only about fifteen minutes had passed since
Dellia disappeared inside the warehouse. The anxiety was almost too much for Jason to handle as he thought of everything that could be happening to her beyond that rusted metal door in that archaic building, that monument to a more primitive time. If something happened to her, he had most of the vaccine here in the car with him; after much deliberation, she had taken three vials and an old flash drive and left everything else in the car.

But would he even be capable of finishing her job, if it came to that?

His hands were shaking as he picked up his tablet to send Sabrina yet another message: this would make three since Dellia left the car. One of the last things he had done before they got to Houston was make a copy of the non-E com app and upload it to Sabrina’s tablet. He had decided against telling her about Seito’s message and the fact that he might soon be abandoning her; Seito had said not to tell her and he had decided to trust his friend. But that became a much harder thing to do when the guilt of leaving Sabrina in the dark began to gradually eat at him on the drive to the bayou. In the silence left behind when Dellia left the car, he broke down and wrote Sabrina a message saying only that he was with Dellia Thomas and plans were changing. A few minutes later he elaborated, telling Sabrina about the message from Seito that the AC could no longer be trusted, that he was fleeing with Dellia, that she should get away from those people as soon as she could. He only hoped she got it and heeded his warning before it was too late.

Now he took a deep breath and hastily typed out a final message: “At docks.
Leaving on ship with Dellia. Heading for CDC. So sorry. Car is near Trans Gulf Shipping warehouse. Sorry. Please contact me ASAP.” He read through what he had written and sent it on.
Please don’t be mad at me.

By now, the early morning rescue at the Houston Warehouse had probably already begun. Perhaps at this very moment, less than half a mile down the bayou, Sabrina was creeping through the secret
Silte detention facility, searching for some stranger in the dark. Maybe this Adelson really was a vital tool in fighting Silte. Maybe it was good that he had let Sabrina go through with it—unless things went bad, that is. But thinking like that would only make him feel worse.

Just as he considered sending Sabrina a fourth message, this time asking her to come with him,
Dellia burst out of the crusty door to the warehouse, followed closely by a man in oily brown coveralls and heavy boots. They both hurried to the car’s driver side door and Dellia beckoned for him to get out. He did so, glancing at the surly-looking man as he stood beside Dellia.

“This is Captain Redding,” she said to Jason.

“Nice to meet you,” Redding said in a swampy accent, extending his hand for Jason to shake. “Captain of the
MV Wyles
cargo vessel. Call me Captain—or Lester if you like. Once had a boy called me Juju-man, if you can believe it. Didn’t bother me none.” He crossed his arms and looked toward the water. “Look, if you don’t mind, ya’ll better hurry and follow me. We got early departure and ten days to reach your port, with stops in New Orleans, Mobile and Freeport.”

“Right,”
Dellia said. She bent into the open car and pulled out her backpack. Jason grabbed his own bag he kept loaded with the essentials out of the back, which prompted Dellia to say, “You know, I’ve been thinking, Jason. Maybe you should stay here.”

“What?”

“Well, I just don’t really need you from this point. You might…get in the way.” She looked at his surprised expression and sighed in exaggerated fashion. “Look,” she said, “all you are, really, is a way for those ex-AC guys or whoever they are to insure I do what they want. They’re using you to try to control me. They don’t want me doing this on my own terms. Don’t you see that?”

“No.” And yet…maybe she was right. This whole time one person or another had been tr
ying to manipulate him to achieve whatever end they had in mind. It hadn’t been Seito who told him to go with Dellia; it had been whoever was giving Seito orders. There was always some faceless, nameless person above whoever was talking to him at that moment, pulling his strings while carefully hiding any grand scheme or purpose. He was tired of it.

“I mean, I get what you’re saying,” he said. “But I can’t stay here. I’ve crossed the wrong people by coming this far. There’s nothing for me here but to run and hide, just like you.” S
abrina may still have a part to play with the AC, but he was now an enemy, another rat for them to hunt down and sell—or chase into the arms of another hunter.

“We need to get going,” Captain Redding said. He began walking towards the waterfront without hesitating or slowing down to see if they would follow.

Dellia began following him immediately and Jason followed her. “I won’t stop you,” she said as he strode up beside her. “If you want to be stubborn, fine. In fact, a companion might actually be nice. But you should know that as bad as hiding out here sounds, things will get a lot worse when we hit the East Coast. When we get to Savannah you’re going to be completely useless.”

“We’ll see about that,” Jason said, tenacious. “They didn’t recruit me into the AC for not
hing.”

“We will see. Just don’t forget that I warned you.”

They both lapsed into silence, tailing the briny captain through the dark. They eventually came to the edge of a well-lit area where dock workers were using cranes to load a sizable ship with containers from a nearby stack. Redding stopped in the shadows of the stack and did something unseen in the dark. With a low
creak
the door to the nearest container opened, nearly blinding Jason when a bright light inside turned on. The rear half of the container was full of crates held precariously in place by a single layer of thin netting. In the front were two sleeping bags, an ice chest and the light attached to the ceiling with a makeshift electronic component jutting out to the side.