She sent the code, put her deck in her backpack, and ran out of the restroom. She burst out of the door and into the hallway, drawing stares from a pair of women about to enter. Ignoring them, she ran to the stairwell. Going down the stairs, she felt like she couldn’t run fast enough. Kat called Jacob’s name again. Why wasn’t he answering? Something must have happened to him when he was linked. She didn’t know if she could, but she ran faster. The sound of her shoes hitting each stair reverberated throughout the stairwell. The virus packet should be open by now. She imagined the sound of her running keeping time to the virus cascading through the system. A sense of accomplishment welled up inside her and she smiled.
One floor away from her goal, she heard Jacob respond to Kat. She got to the door and reached for the handle. The alarms went off, filling the stairwell with a deafening wailing that echoed off the tile and cement in a nightmarish cacophony.
She pulled on the door. It resisted. She pulled harder. A cry of pain came from the other side. She pulled again and could see someone handcuffed to the door handle. It was a security guard. Then through the open door, she saw Jacob, pistol in hand and leveled at the door opening. He looked dazed. Whatever he dealt with during the link still had him reeling. When he saw her, he lowered the pistol and smiled.
“I’m glad to see you,” Sandy said.
Jacob nodded and said, “Same.”
“We need to get the hell out of here.”
Jacob hesitated.
“What’s wrong?”
“We need to do something about him,” he said, gesturing to the security guard.
“He won’t be able to identify us,” she said.
Jacob shook his head. “It’s Slade. He knows us. He knows you work at DeSoto’s.”
“Damn. Kat, what do you think?”
After a long moment, Kat said, “You have to kill him, or he’ll ID you.”
“Kill him?” Sandy said, shocked at the suggestion.
This got Slade’s attention. He looked up at them and said, “I’ve got a kid, please.”
“Fuck,” Jacob said.
“You’ll regret it if you don’t,” Kat said.
“I’ll regret it if I do,” Jacob said.
“You need to decide. We’ve got to get out of here,” Sandy said.
“I won’t say anything,” Slade said.
Jacob looked at Slade. At Sandy.
“You can’t trust him, Jacob,” Kat said.
Sandy knew Kat was right. The look in Jacob’s eyes told her he knew it too. “Make a decision,” she said.
Jacob raised his gun and fired, the sound mixing with the constant noise of the alarms. “Let’s go,” he said, not looking at her.
Chapter 56
Pain surged through Two-Step’s entire body. It was like his nerves were being pulled on by some outside force and then let go to snap back in place. He couldn’t stop his body from contorting, and when he tried, the pain only increased. Xia said it would hurt, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Then the pain went away. The second line of code she sent to him killed the pain, but he still had no control over his body.
“I’ve got an overload,” he heard Xia say.
Then, he started to produce a sound. He didn’t know why or where it came from, and like his body, he had no control over it. Xia and Granger stood over him speaking, but the sound he made drowned out their voices. It was an odd sensation. He could feel his body moving and hear the sounds he made, but neither felt like it was really him. The painkiller code gave him a sense of being in someone else’s body. He was just along for the ride. At least he could think clearly, as clearly as possible with that moaning sound he made.
He was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled out of the testing room, still contorting and moaning. Xia said this would last for a few minutes, and he needed to be ready when he came out of it. But he had no sense of time in this state. No way of telling how long this had been going on or would go on. No more than a minute? That sounded about right. Counting the seconds would give him something to focus on and help him with an idea of the time. He would count for two minutes. One hundred twenty seconds. And when he got to one hundred twenty, he could get ready.
At seventeen, the hallway outside the testing room passed by, his moaning bouncing off the sterile walls. At sixty-two, he was being wheeled into a closed-off section of the infirmary and placed on a bed. He could feel the spasms getting weaker and the moaning had stopped.
“He’s coming out of it,” he could hear someone behind him say.
A nurse tried to attach an electrode to his temple as he convulsed, missing several times before she got it right. Another nurse held his hand and placed a pulse oximeter on his finger. The spasms were almost gone, and he began to feel like he had some control over his body. With the sound of monitors beeping in the background, he came to a rest and rolled on his back.
One of the nurses came into his field of view. “Can you hear me?” he said.
Two-Step nodded.
“Can you talk?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
The word came raspy and undefined, but the nurse smiled. “Good. You’ll be fine. You just had a little overload. It happens during tests sometimes. Just rest a few minutes. I’ll be back to check on you.”
“Okay.” More of a croak than a word. That moaning must have taken a toll on his vocal cords. He was sure he would have a hell of a sore throat if it weren’t for Xia’s code. There was little doubt in his mind he would have one when the code wore off.
The nurse left, closing the curtains around the bed. He sat up and gathered his thoughts. The plan was simple. Xia would come to check on him and
