“I . . . I don’t understand.” I staggered back against the desk in shock, all my anger deflated into paralyzed confusion. “How? I-I thought Jamie—”
“She was desperate” Dr. O’Brian shrugged with a cruel indifference that was the mirror-opposite of the kind, motherly woman who had tended to my wounds time and time again. “Lansen came to me, drunk and in tears, begging for a way to save your life. I knew you wouldn’t last long in your condition, so I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”
My eyes drifted to Jamie’s unconscious face, and the realization settled in like a drizzling rain of details that I hadn’t pieced together until now. The only person with any kind of radio access to the outside world had been Dr. O’Brian, with her rebuilt surplus transmitter that no one ever thought to question. ELSAR used scientific terms stolen from our research department because she passed all our findings on to them. The soldiers hadn’t shelled New Wilderness into oblivion because she was on the ground, collecting data for their teams. The two Ark River guards who were killed for the beacon had been found with their throats cut in thin, clean slices . . . as if with a scalpel. The truth had been in front of me the entire time, and I’d been too blinded by my own personal vendettas to see it.
Trust no one. Carter was right all along, just wrong about the person. Chris is innocent . . . and so is Jamie.
Humiliation and resentment welled up inside me, and I shook my head at the doctor. “Why?”
The hurt in my voice seemed to find a weak spot in Dr. O’Brian, her face slipping somewhat into a weary, almost remorseful wince, before she pulled herself together with a hard frown. “We’ll have plenty of time to chat on our way north. The good captain outside our walls has a few small vehicles on standby for our trip to Black Oak. Now, put the cuffs on, and let’s go.”
I caught a glint of metal from under the collar of her uniform jacket, and chills ran down my back in recognition of the first launch key. She hadn’t seen the second, which hung from its cord under my shirt front, but if Dr. O’Brian had the key, then she’d either lied to me about not having it when I’d asked her after my surgery, or she’d taken it off Jamie. Either way, she obviously knew how valuable it was, and a woman as smart as her would easily figure out what it was for. More rockets exploded somewhere outside, their deep boom-booms ramming home the cold reality of my situation.
The siege . . . it wasn’t just about Tarren, was it? ELSAR set this up, they engineered this whole battle as a smokescreen to get their hands on the key. If I go with O’Brian, they’ll have access to the nukes, and New Wilderness won’t stand a chance.
I clutched my pistol tighter, knowing I couldn’t raise it in time to beat her shot, but too scared of returning to the Organ prison to drop it. “No. No way. You can kill me, but I’m not going back there.”
Her eyes drifted to Jamie, and Dr. O’Brian swiveled the muzzle of her gun to point at the girl’s chest. “And if I kill Lansen instead? She betrayed everyone she ever loved for you. Are you really going to make me shoot her, Hannah?”
For a fraction of a second, I considered it. In the back of my head, I could see Jamie’s lips pressed to Chris’s all over again, felt the pain, the heartbreak, the lonely aguish. How could I just forgive someone who had stabbed me in the back like that?
In the next moment, however, more memories surfaced, of Jamie’s generosity in sharing her room with me, how she’d taught me everything I needed to survive, how she gave me cool nicknames and made me feel like an equal to her no matter what. I remembered her shooting the Puppet that tried to bite me on the boat in the southlands, how she hugged me in Ark River when they discovered I was alive, and the way Jamie pushed me toward Chris at my birthday party, the knowledge evident in her emerald green eyes that she was giving me a clear shot at him. Jamie Lansen was many things, a traitor, a liar, a spy, all enough to get her hanged or shot by the fledgling government of this tiny community, but standing there in that smoky dark room, I couldn’t summon the will to hate her anymore.
The gun slid from my fingers and clattered to the floor.
Raising my hands, I glared hard at Dr. O’Brian, and jerked my head at Jamie. “I’m not leaving her in here.”
“So, carry her then.” She kicked the Colt into a dusty corner well out of my reach and glanced toward the lab door. “But you wear the irons. Let’s go, we’re running out of time here.”
Clicking the frigid metal handcuffs around my wrists felt like swallowing poison, despair weighing down on my shoulders in a horrible episode of déjà vu. Dr. O’Brian watched me to be sure I tightened them enough, and she cut the tap holding Jamie with a surgical scalpel from her pocket so I could pull my limp friend off the chair. With Jamie’s arm draped over my shoulders, I half-dragged her out the door of the hidden lab into the foyer, where Dr. O’Brian steered me into the right-side corridor.
As I went, I made of show of struggling with Jamie’s body, which wasn’t hard considering how tired I was from the long march to New Wilderness, or the fact that the cuffs holding my wrists together made it very awkward to keep Jamie upright. Andrew had to be on his way with more fighters; at least, I hoped so. The gunfire outside hadn’t exactly slackened since my arrival, and if he’d been injured, or killed, then no one else would know to come find me. Either way, I needed to stall for time just like I had when Carter took me prisoner, but Dr. O’Brian shoved me down the hall to the main laboratory with a quick pace.
She’s not going to be fooled, she’s too smart for that. I have to appeal to her ego. If I can get her upset, offended even, maybe she’ll keep talking long enough for Andrew to show up.
“You know, for what it’s worth, I looked up to you.” I shuffled through the haze with a few muffled coughs, purposefully moving slower even though the smoke was getting thick above our heads. “My guess is the Researchers are going to fall apart with you turning traitor. No one’s going to want to be part of the faction that got on their knees for ELSAR.”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Hannah.” Dr. O’Brian narrowed her slate-gray irises at me and some of the cool patience began to fray in her voice as we passed into the abandoned lab. “Everyone with an ounce of sense knew this war was over before it started. If Randy, or Carter, or Hammond had just listened to me when things first went bad, we could have turned the park over to ELSAR, and this entire thing would have been avoided.”
“You seriously think they’re here to save us?” I hefted Jamie’s arm higher on my neck and grunted in exasperation at the doctor’s words. “Do you have any idea what they’ve done in Black Oak? What they did to me?”
“They saved your life.” She rolled her eyes at my allegations and pointed her gun toward a door at the back that led to some kind of secondary room. “And the violence in Black Oak isn’t exactly one-sided. If those people in the safe zone learned to follow simple rules, they’d be a lot safer, and the situation would be under control by now.”
I snagged my shoe on a table leg so that I had to hesitate for a moment and threw a bitter quip over my shoulder. “Yes, it’s the people’s fault for not letting the Organs brutalize their daughters.”
“What do you expect from corporate pigs?” Dr. O’Brian stuck her nose in the air, a little too proud of that sentiment, and something about her casual satisfaction in the matter set gears to grinding in my head.
Seriously? You’re just going to blame this on anyone but yourself? You’re making excuses for a literal tyrant.
Stopping in place, I glared at her, too angry to bother being scared of her handgun. “So, what, you’re ‘fighting capitalism’ by working for a mega-corporation to oppress people? How very revolutionary of you. Let me guess, the money they paid to get you on their side is somehow justified as well?”
Dr. O’Brian’s lips twisted downward, and she took a few steps toward me, halting herself as if she wanted to rig my neck with both hands. “Don’t you get it? This is our chance! Everything we’ve found here, the mutants, the data, you, all of it is a chance for mankind to take a different social direction.”
“Fancy words for slavery.” I bit back, praying that every second I bought from standing still could bring rescue that much closer. “Just admit it, you sold out. Koranti will never create some collectivist utopia, not when he has profits to make.”
Her frown morphed into a malicious grin, and Dr. O’Brian raised one golden-brown eyebrow. “Sometimes if you want to grab the devil by the balls, you have to sleep with him. If we expose the world to the power of the Breach, they’ll beg us to lead them into a new era. We can bioengineer everyone so that they never need healthcare, debunk millennia of theological misinformation, create a system where people are kept safe not only from the mutants, but greed, corruption, inequality. For the first time in history, we’ll have a truly united world, one ruled by reason, evidence, science.”
“Ruled by you, you mean.” I sneered in disgust and seized the opportunity to ease Jamie down into a nearby empty wheelchair that had been left behind in the panicked flight of the researchers. “You’re no better than Koranti. You’d kill millions of people by setting the Breach loose on them, just to scare them all into following you.”
“And in the process, I’d save billions.” She snarled back, but Dr. O’Brian seemed to forget about leaving, her cheeks tinged red as her fervor reached a higher tempo. “You think the modern world can last forever? How long until the oil is gone, the coal, the gas? Deserts are spreading, forests are burning, and everyone pretends it’s normal because they’re too cowardly to think about what comes next. What happens when wars start over clean water, untainted land, or harvestable timber? Our species could be wiped out by our own selfishness, and no one has the stomach to do what it takes to fix things.”
You’re fired up. That’s good. Let’s see if we can get you to make a mistake.
“You know what I think?” I tossed my hair in the way I’d seen the rich, snobby girls do back in high school. “I think all this saving mankind stuff is just an act, a front. You’re a washed-up nobody, a grade-school-level scientist from some backwater facility who never did any real research, so now you’re trying to become some kind of righteous savior so no one will realize how boring you actually—”
Whack.
Pain blazed through my head as she slapped me across the face, hard enough that I stumbled backward over a table leg.
Down I went on my backside and looked up from the floor in surprise as the doctor loomed over me, the revolver shaking in her hand from how tight Dr. O’Brian held it.
Fire seethed in her fog-colored irises, a burning hatred that could have melted the cement beneath the clinic, and her words dripped with venomous angst. “Don’t you dare talk like that to me you ugly, rotten, spoiled little brat! I built this faction from nothing, I kept this fort alive, and I’m putting an end to this moronic war because none of the men in charge have the balls to do it. You’re nothing like me; you aren’t special, you aren’t smart, you’re just some idiot with a camera who doesn’t know when to walk away.”
Before I could retort, her gaze flashed to my neckline, and I realized in horror that the second key had drifted out of my shirt during the fall and lay cross the skin of my throat.
Dr. O’Brian’s boot crushed down on my sternum, as she pinned me with her weight to bend over and rip the second key from its cord. “Oh, I see now. Lansen was only part of your little quest, wasn’t she? My, my, what a shame she didn’t get to see this moment.”
Her expression turned deadly, and Dr. O’Brian raised the revolver to point it at the back of Jamie’s blonde head. “Tell me where you got the second one, or I’ll shoot.”
Puzzled, I saw the first key dangle from her neck, similarly exposed thanks to her leaning over, and noted the crusty black stains on the paper label that Carter had made. She didn’t know where to find the second key for the same reason ELSAR hadn’t beaten us to the missile silo; the black goo from my infection had stained the coordinates beyond recognition. Jamie had obviously not given Dr. O’Brian the map we’d stolen, which meant that ELSAR was still in the dark as to where the super-weapon was.
Grinding her boot heel into my chest with all her fury, Dr. O’Brian shook the second launch key in my face, her own red as a stop sign. “You’ve got to the count of three. One . . .”
“I-I don’t know.” I gasped, and tried to push her boot off my ribs so I could breathe, desperate to find a way to stop her from pulling the trigger. “You have to believe me, I don’t know where it leads. We never found any—”
“Two . . .” Dr. O’Brian pressed the stubby barrel of the handgun to my friend’s motionless skull and panicked fluttered in my heart.
“Left side clear.”
From out on the main corridor, a man’s voice echoed above the roaring flames of the second story, more shoes crunching over broken glass, and lights flickered in the smoky halls.
Dr. O’Brian’s head jerked up in alarm, and I wound my right leg up from the floor to lash out in a hard, swift kick.
The sole of my shoe impacted just under her extended arm near the elbow, and I pushed up with everything I had to get the revolver barrel clear of Jamie’s head.
Caught off guard, Dr. O’Brian recoiled with a pained yelp, and squeezed the trigger of her .38.
Bang.
Lead sang into the buckled ceiling, and I twisted out from under her boot, wrapping my chained arms around Dr. O’Brian’s opposite knee to bring her crashing to the floor.
She lost her grip on the revolver, which sailed under a table across the room, and the doctor landed a parting blow to my head with her black rubber heel.
“Contact, lab hallway!” One of the distant men called, and boots thundered on the tile toward us.
Dr. O’Brian lunged to her feet and raced for the pistol.
I can’t let her reach that gun.
Rolling onto all fours, I threw myself to my feet after the doctor, tackling her to the tilework a few feet away from the discarded weapon.
White-hot pain sliced through my right arm, and I cried out as sticky blood ran down my elbow, the stainless-steel scalpel lodged in the flesh where she had jammed it.
Dr. O’Brian shoved me off, and crawled to the gun, jumping upright with her cheeks flushed in victory.
Wham.
The doors to the lab flung open, and Andrew rushed in, his Armalite rifle at the ready. “Freeze!”
Bang, bang, bang.
Dr. O’Brian ducked low and let off three rounds in his direction as she sprinted to the doorway of the secondary room.
Yanking the surgical blade out of my forearm, I dashed after her, the others hot on my heels as bullets flew back and forth.
The secondary room turned out to be a small storage closet, filled with plastic totes and spare medical supplies. A door at the back hung open, and I could smell the fresh, sweet air of the outside beyond it. She had to be running for the gap in our defenses, which meant our window to stop Dr. O’Brian was rapidly closing. I couldn’t take this moment to be cautious now, not when the fate of the entire county rested on it.
With Andrew right behind me, I flung the door aside, and ran out into the dark.
“Get down!” He dove from the cover of the doorframe, and I was thrown to the ground as another shot rang out.
Bang.
Hot flecks spattered across my face, and I looked up from the grass in horror to see Andrew clutch at his throat, dark red streams bubbling out around his fingers. I’d been a fool to run head-first out that door, especially without a weapon. In my panicked desire to retrieve the keys, I’d forgotten everything Jamie had taught me about combat . . . and once again, someone else had paid for my mistakes.
A shadow darted across the grass, and I caught sight of Dr. O’Brian fleeing toward Carnivore Cove.
Cold metal nudged my hands, and I looked down to see Andrew’s trembling fingers push his own handgun from the holster on his belt into my grasp.
He stared at me without words, pale face etched with pain, and all at once, Andrew Hoppman went limp.
Oh Hannah, what have you done?
Snatching the pistol, I ignored the calls from the others to stop, and sped off into the night, eyes swimming in hot, angry tears. This was all my fault. If I’d told Sean about the key, or Chris, we could have kept it out of Dr. O’Brian’s hands. If I hadn’t tried to play counter-espionage mastermind, hadn’t lied to everyone, hadn’t been so hung up on my own problems, maybe Andrew would be alive right now. He’d died for me, just like Tex, and their faces rose in my mind like accusatory spirits, demanding compensation.
Carnivore Cove loomed out of the darkness, and I saw a figure mount the edge of the nearest parapet, her dark uniformed body almost invisible with the sky. In another second or two, she’d be over and gone.
The pistol sights floated up in my vision, and I exhaled, focusing on my grip, my stance, and the way my finger squeezed down on the polymer trigger.
Bam.
It bucked in my hands, and in the distance, the shadow tumbled backward off the wall with a shriek of pain.
Yes.
A strange rush of exhilaration coursed through me, and I jogged around the side of the square building to the base of the palisade wall.
Dr. Alecia O’Brian lay on her stomach, the bag full of papers, folders, and hard drives burst over the wet greenery next to her like an overripe fruit. Her hair had come undone from its ponytail, and the revolver lay a few yards away from her outstretched hands. She dragged herself along, the woman’s legs no longer working, and I could see a dark stain of blood on her lower back from where my bullet had caught her spinal cord. She groaned in pain as she moved, each twitch excruciating, and a small twinge of pity tried to set root in my chest.
No time for that now.
Ice slithered through my veins, and I walked over to the revolver, bringing my shoe down on her spidery fingers just as they wrapped over the gun. Not for a second did I let up until she withdrew her grasp, and I tossed the gun away with contempt.
She rolled onto her back in surrender, and Dr. O’Brian glared up at me with blood running out of the corner of her mouth, her breathing ragged and fluid filled. “Go ahead. Shoot. It won’t make a difference now.”
Crouching down, I sneered at her in the firelight from the burning clinic down the pathway and pried the two launch keys from her neck and palm. “We’ll see about that.”
“You won’t see anything.” She spat back with a vicious laugh and the doctor’s face began to go gray with blood loss. “You have no idea what’s coming for you. Clean Sweep will go forward, with or without your secret.”
“Clean Sweep?” I raised an eyebrow, content with the fact that she could no longer fight back, but still curious at her last-minute attempts to undermine my morale.
She grinned with an eerie, blood-soaked smile that looked startingly close to a Puppet for the emptiness in it. “Did you really think the beacon was for destroying our lights, radios, and trucks? They’re going to close the Breach, Hannah. When they do, there won’t be a Barron Count anymore.”
My smirk fell, and as I studied her ashen face in the dark, a sinking feeling trickled through me from head to toe.
Dr. O’Brian was completely serious.
“That’s impossible.” I shook my head and pointed my gun at her like a giant steel finger. “You’re lying, they wouldn’t work so hard just to blow this place up. They want the nukes, that’s why ELSAR is here.”
“Is that what those are?” She eyed the keys, and coughed up a greasy red clot as death drew nearer. “Clean Sweep isn’t going to blow everything up, you stupid fool; it’s going to make it all disappear. Once the beacons are switched on, they’ll reverse the electromagnetic fields of the Breach, and everything in Barron County is going to be dragged down with it, including your new toys. Koranti just wanted to keep you from firing on him as his forces evacuate.”
As much as I wanted to punch her, to empty the Glock’s magazine into her head, deep in my heart, I knew Dr. O’Brian was telling the truth. Koranti had hinted as much in his revelations to me at ELSAR headquarters, about liminal spaces, parallel dimensions, and Breach activity around the world. He’d portrayed his organization as one seeking to protect mankind from chaos, and in a horrible round-about way, he was. If the Breach was closed, there would be no mutant horde spreading from Barron County to the rest of the US . . . which meant his men could go back to their barracks, rest, refit, and plan to contain the next cosmic disturbance. We would be sent into the ether of the unknown, zapped into another timeline, another Ohio, perhaps the same one that had sent Silo 48 through to us. The bizarre ring of secrets around this forgotten part of America would be complete; no one in our world would remember Barron County had ever existed, and since we would no longer be there to prove it, the lie would become truth.
This entire operation wasn’t about winning or losing; it was about erasing the truth.
It always had been.
“You could have helped us, you know.” The death rattle in Dr. O’Brian’s voice neared completion, and she no longer looked at me but upward toward the sky, as her movements began to still. “We could have built a better world together, but you . . . you threw it all away. Billions will die, and it’s all your fault.”
I stood as the life left her body, my brain in a tumult of emotion. Everything I’d thought I knew about this place had just been turned upside-down. I had no clue what direction we needed to take, which way we could go that would ensure our survival, not when the entire county was at risk of being scrubbed from earth by the mere push of a button. Why ELSAR hadn’t done it yet was beyond me, but I doubted they would wait much longer. With October almost over, this ordeal had been going on for nine months, and sooner or later, someone would spill the beans to the outside world. They didn’t need to drive tanks through our wall and gun us all down. All they had to do was activate the beacon system, and we would simply vanish like ghosts in the wind.
Existential dread filtered through me, and I turned to stride toward the onrush of fighters that ran around the corner of Carnivore Cove, the launch keys in my hand.
We’ve got to get out of here.