Chapter 31
Alice...
The single word was enough to wake
her, to send energy coursing through her body.
She sat up, her heart beating, her cot creaking. Around her she could hear the fitful sounds
of a dozen sleeping strangers. Beyond
that, the sounds of a refugee camp at night.
Hushed conversations, muffled vehicles driving about, raucous laughter
from somewhere farther off.
She shivered; it all sounded too
much like the riot nights she had spent in Cohen & Associates, listening to
the voices outside drift in. The sounds
of looting, fighting, killing—
No.
Can't think of that. That was
behind her, she was in a better place now.
She was directly defending the Defenders, after all.
We did it... But something more important has
happened... We need you in the tower...
The voice seemed familiar, a
presence she knew well, but there was something odd about it, something she
couldn't quite square with her initial reaction. Something foreign...
John. It had to be John. He had never spoken into her mind like this
before, connected on this personal a level.
That's why she couldn't recognize this voice as one of the other EHUDs. But his innate self, his John-ness that she
knew so well, that had come across. It
was just as Cyd had explained: the non-verbal persona of the individual was
communicated into her mind...
She slipped on her boots—she hadn't
dared undress any further—and slipped out of the tent. Lights bobbed here and there in the distance,
but most of what could be seen was Sky Crest and the mall. They both glowed with inward light, as well
as by spots pointing at them. Making
them easier to see for aircraft? What
aircraft?
The lights at least made it easier
for her to find her way to the building.
As she walked into the lobby she silently wondered, What floor?
Penthouse... The door will be open...
She could get used to this.
The elevator opened, she rose, the
elevator opened, she got out. As she
stepped into the penthouse foyer, the double-doors opposite her opened on a
thin man in his sixties, ruffled white hair topping a ruffled white sweat suit.
“Hey, Alice. Glad you could make it.”
It was unnerving. The inflection, the cadence, it was all
John. But the timbre, the slight raspiness,
it was so wrong. She stared into the
face of Robert Mistlethwakey, trying to look past the eyes to her friend
within. She couldn't see him.
“Catch me up.”
“Right.” He strode back into Mistlethwakey's
apartment, his body moving not as if he owned this place, but as if there were
urgent business to attend to. That was
comforting. She followed him.
“A couple years ago we took over
the world's nuclear arsenal. Never
really thought about it; it was just a mission and we were a little...
preoccupied.”
As he said the last word, a sudden
image of Cyd flashed through her mind.
That explained some things...
“Turns out he's been planning on
wiping out our technological civilization.
We'd be left to pick up the pieces.”
“Shit. It's a good thing you got him when you did.”
John stopped and rounded on
her. “We didn't. He's—we've—implanted subconscious
instructions in high-level political targets, plus code in the actual launch
computers. He's set everything to launch
in just over three hours.”
“Oh, fuck.” This was not the news she wanted after just
waking up. John's words kept replaying
in her head, and one phrase stood out: our technological civilization. She had lived in the ruins of that technological
civilization for three days; it had been bad.
She could barely imagine what living through a nuclear wipe-out of that
civilization would be like. Scratch
that—she could imagine it all too well.
She had seen movies, played video games.
She didn't want to imagine it.
But in the back of her mind a
little voice said, You know you could survive it. You've already proven you can survive it...
“What are we going to do?”
John didn't answer; his eyes were
unfocused. He must be having an
important conversation. She took this
chance to look around the much-vaunted General's home. She knew the floor-plan well enough, had even
put in some work on a remodel a few years back, but being here in person was
different. For one thing, here there was
furniture. And other people. Scattered across the main living area and up
onto the loft were several armored Defenders, moving so little they resembled
decorative flourishes more than actual people.
Some were staring out the curved windows that made up the outer walls,
some were looking down at the ground, some were focused on a small glowing
tablet...
“I'm sorry, did you say something?”
“Yeah, what are we going to do?”
John gestured to the group
clustered around the tablet. “Vince is
trying to cut through the General's firewalls, but the security is unlike
anything he's ever seen. Even if he got
though, he wouldn't be able to shut down anyone's launch mechanisms; footballs
rarely connect to remote networks. Our
best current bet is to warn everybody, then try to create a barrier to protect
the tower, maybe the mall.”
Alice was already shaking her
head. “You and I both know this isn't
build to withstand atomic bombing. And
besides that, there's no way we could make something that would in, what, six
hours? Maybe the mall—”
“I don't mean a physical barrier.”
“Oh?”
A wicker rocking chair in her
peripheral vision rose from the floor.
“We create an energy field around
the buildings, angle it to deflect the blast.
Some of us are already working through it. Maybe you could help them with the shaping.”
“I'd need to know where the
explosion's coming from, magnitude—”
John was nodding. “He knew we were coming, probably expected us
to do this. He left a very detailed map
of thousands of targets, along with details of which missiles where going
where.”
“Shit...” Alice was having a hard time standing, the
situation was so surreal. Hearing the
voice of Robert Mistlethwakey referring to himself as a separate entity,
hearing the voice of her most down-to-earth colleague discussing the creation
of a psychic energy shield to deflect a nuclear blast... Was this how John felt when Merv had first
made himself known?
Then, guilt. “He knew you were coming. He had too many details of the plan, he must
have read my mind, or—”
The leathery hand on her shoulder
quieted her. “He couldn't have known you
were coming... Hell, for all we know, he could have programmed this plan into us
before he ever released us...”
“Why would he do that?”
John shrugged. “Who knows?
But we don't have time to think about that right now. Right now, we have to survive.” He gestured up to the loft. “Talk to Vince. He'll give you the details you need to get
started. Right now, I have to make sure
the people of Philadelphia survive this shit-storm.”
He squeezed her shoulder, then
walked off in the direction of the private rooms. Alice had no idea why.
Hey, you coming up, or you want
to talk from there?
She looked up to see Vince putting
the tablet down on a desk, bending forward to get a closer look. He didn't acknowledge her in any way, but she
was able to recognize his presence.
Yeah, I'm coming up, she thought.
Heavy knocks on the door pulled her
from sleep. She blinked, levered herself
up so she could see the clock over Ethan's shoulder, took in the time: 3
AM. Amanda sighed and closed her eyes,
trying to decide whether it was worth getting up just to tell whoever was
pounding on her door to go away. Then
she remembered who she was staying with, and realized that if the General was
waking her in the middle of the night, he must have a good reason.
Grumbling, she rolled out of bed,
put on a robe, and opened the door a crack.
“Yes?”
Lights were on beyond the door,
leaving the knocker in shadow, but the silhouette looked like Bob. “Mrs. Latterndale?”
Sounded like Bob, but he knew who
she was. “Yes?” She glanced back to where Ethan was sleeping,
tried to think of what she could do if this person turned out to be a threat.
“Ma'am, I'm sorry to wake you, but
we have a very serious problem.”
Dark forms were moving beyond
Bob. They were clearly soldiers in EHUDs
with helmets off, but their faces looked strange, skeletal... Another person walked by, a weathered looking
woman in baggy clothes with bright-red hair.
Amanda gasped as she recognized Cyd.
She slammed the door, rushed back
to Ethan, shook him, hissed, “Get, up, we have to go, get up!” She knew this was a useless gesture; there
was no where she could go with her son.
There was only one way out of the room...
The door creaked open, and
Mistlethwakey stepped inside. “We don't
have time for this. The world's about to
end, and we need to get everyone inside.”
Amanda froze. The hyperbolic phrase carried some weight
when spoken by the National Security Adviser.
“Mom, what's going on?”
All she could see where Ethan's
eyes, afraid, staring up into hers. What
could she say? The truth? “I don't know honey... But the Defenders are here.”
Ethan's eyes widened, and his
throat jerked as he tried to swallow.
“Dad said they were on our side, right?
He was going to talk to John?”
There were shuffling footsteps
behind her. “Why doesn't the boy go with
nurse Donalson here?” The door creaked
again, and when Amanda looked back she saw the familiar face of Reggie
Donalson, the grieving brother. Why was
he here?
“We need to talk. Privately,” Bob stressed.
Amanda nodded, then bent back down
and whispered in Ethan's ear, “Go with the nurse. Whatever you do, stay away from the
Defenders. I don't care what your father
said, I don't trust them.”
She sat on the edge of the bed as
Ethan slipped onto the floor, pulled on a tee-shirt, and followed Reggie from
the room. When the door closed, she was
able to breathe again.
“What do you want, Bob?”
“Look, I know you don't trust them
out there, but they are trying to
help you. I know some of them have
been... rather extreme in their actions, but Ed trusted them, and maybe you
should, too.” Good; he was starting to
sound more like the Mistlethwakey she knew.
“Of course Ed trusted them; he's
one of them.”
She glanced up to see what kind of
reaction this would illicit. Bob was
half-smiling, his expression looking almost wistful. “Knew it would happen sooner or later...”
Now she was standing, towering over
the little General, flailing at him.
“You knew? You knew he would do
this, knew he was part of this—”
His hands gripped her wrists, far
stronger than their age and frailty would suggest. She gasped, then fell quiet.
“There is no time for this right
now,” he hissed. “The EHUDs are here for
a very specific purpose: They have intel that there's about to be a nuclear
assault on the U.S.. It's been a
possibility for the past two months, a strong probability since last week. Now we have confirmation that someone is
gunning for us. They're going to take
out the Defenders before the Defenders or some other faction gets their hands
on our nuclear arsenal.”
That stopped Amanda, held her in
place. Nuclear war... always such a remote possibility, something
she knew no one would ever try... but always the worst-case scenario, the great
fiery cloud she couldn't protect Ethan from, no matter how hard she tried. She found herself slipping backwards; Bob
released her, letting her fall back on the bed.
“Who... who's firing at us?”
He ignored her. “Right now I need you to focus, Mandy.”
Mandy. No one called her that except Edgar. She was focused now.
“The Defenders think they can make
an energy barrier to keep us safe, but they're relying on the structure of this
building to give them a guide. That
means that we need everyone outside--all the refugees, all the soldiers, all
the supplies--moved into the tower or the mall.
We have about five hours, so we have to do it now.”
She pushed herself up, walked to
the closet, dug around until she found a pair of loose khakis and some
comfortable shoes. “What do you want me
to do?”
Mistlethwakey nodded in
approval. “You're the CFO of one of the
country's largest non-profits, you're the only public face we've had for the
presidency during the worst domestic dispute since the Civil War, and you're
the one who got all of us here.” He
gestured expansively to the room, the building, the unseen refugee camp down
below. “I want you to make sure every
one's inside and safe by the time the nukes start falling.”
The shoes made a tremendous
thumping sound as they hit the floor.
“Do you really think I can do it?”
The General smiled his sweet,
sinister, grandfatherly smile. “Why do
you think I came to you first?”
Edgar sat on the edge of his bed,
staring down at the blue sheath that bulged from the end of his robe. He flexed his leg, watched as the hunk of
plastic and plaster moved, felt his thigh straining at the extra weight. It was getting better...
He dipped down into his leg, found
the last place where bone was still held together be metal. Ideally, he would get the pin out first, then
seal the bone. But that would take too
long, require another surgery. For now,
he'd seal the bone, build his strength back up.
Then, when Donalson made good on his strike against Bob, he could help
him remove the metal. God, it would be
good to be able to do that, to control every aspect of his body. Never to be hurt again...
Faint music pulled him from his
thoughts. He listened for a moment,
recognized the jaunty tune of “Home Means Nevada.” Mandy.
He lunged from the bed, stumbling and grumbling as he found his balance,
then clumped across to the dresser where his mobile lay twitching.
Click. “Mandy.”
There was a moment before she
spoke. In that moment were a multitude
of other voices, of heavy machines groaning, of a city in a great hurry. “Ed.
I'm sorry I didn't call earlier.
I've just been so busy, and I knew you would be too, but—”
“I, I haven't been...” He cleared his throat. “I haven't been too busy—”
“I'll keep this short. I know we didn't part on the best of terms,
and I still don't completely trust you, but Ethan misses you, and I see now how
important it is for him to have you, so,” her voice became thicker, “if we
survive this, I want him to come visit you.
We need to be together.”
“If you—Mandy, what the hell are
you talking about?”
She sniffed. “I know, stay positive. You trust them—hell, you're one of them—and
you showed what they're capable of with Maria.
Yeah, we'll get through this.”
“Mandy, I—” Pain shot through his leg and he scuttled
back to the bed, falling back just as he reached it. “Fuck!
Mandy, what are you talking about, what's going on?”
“Bob hasn't told you?”
“I haven't talked to Bob since he
needed approval for the LCR strike.”
There was another moment of
silence, another moment of the world around Amanda operating in a flurry of
activity. Then: “Shit. The bastard was lying.”
Edgar felt a twist deep in his
stomach. The General was doing something
again. How long since he had told Bob to
leave his family out of it, to stop manipulating him? Seemed kicking him upstairs hadn't kept him
from meddling. “What exactly did Bob
tell you?”
She relayed the General's words,
telling him of the Defender's involvement, of the fiery death that loomed in
about two hour's time. As she spoke a
persistent nausea took root in the pit of his stomach.
Once again, the General seemed to
have the EHUDs marching to his tune, despite what he had done to them in the
past. Just like Ashleigh, sent to drive
Edgar to Bob. Just like Merv, sent to
catapult Edgar into the public consciousness, to open the floodgates on the
reality of the Defenders. Just like
Maria...
He swallowed. It was so obvious in retrospect. He had sent her to push him here, to cut him off from Amanda and
Ethan. The General had never stopped
manipulating him, had never left his family alone; he was still playing some
deranged game.
Edgar was about to speak, to tell
Mandy everything--how Mistlethwakey had been using him to empower the Defenders,
tempting him with the Oval Office--when the doors to the bedroom burst open,
splinters of wood flying out from around the deadbolts. Four armored guards rushed in, followed a
moment later by Ashby and her intern, Rachel.
Each woman was carrying a stack of mobiles.
“Mandy, I love you. I'll try to call you back.”
“Ed? What's going—” Click.
Edgar dropped his mobile and sat up
to face the intruders. “What the fuck
are—”
“India, Pakistan, France, and
Russia just launched nuclear weapons,” Ashby said, her voice higher than
usual.
“And Iran and Korea,” Rachel added.
Edgar whimpered. It looked like the General hadn't been lying
after all; he just understated how many missiles would be in the air.
A mobile buzzed, and Rachel
swallowed. “Israel.”
He pushed himself up, stood,
stumbled towards Ashby. “How long ago?”
“France was first. Four minutes.”
“We have trajectories?”
“So far it looks like only European
and Asian capitals are being targeted.
NORAD's still trying to work out exactly what's going on.”
“Um, and the Russian premiere and
Iranian president both called,” Rachel said.
“They said missiles were fired without orders, and all attempts at
aborting aren't working.” She was
shivering, twitching with nervous energy; this wasn't what she signed up for.
“Right. Call NORAD, tell them to have planes in the
air and anti-missile precautions prepped.
They've probably already done that, but I am taking no chances. Next, get the
conference room prepped. I want to be on
with every world leader in five minutes.”
Ashby nodded. “Rachel, conference room. There's a corporal on duty who knows how to
work everything. Put out a general
call.” They both turned and left.
And suddenly, Edgar was alone, the
world collapsing around him. Before the
call from Amanda, this would have been a horrible tragedy, a moment of intense
stupidity that would doom all mankind.
But after that conversation... this was the action of one man, operating
on a plan of far greater immensity than Edgar had ever suspected...
Rachel stood on the sidelines of
the end of the world. The president, flanked
by two military advisors, sat facing a curved
wall screen filled with hundreds of windows.
In each window a terrified face peered out: a president, a premiere, a
prime minister, a general, even one or two monarchs. Each had their turn to mumble out a weak
apology for what their arsenal was doing, then provide an even weaker excuse
that, whatever was happening, it wasn't their fault.
In the middle of the screen was a
map, lit up with a little red light for each calculated target. Rachel watched in horror as the little red
dots multiplied and spread, plague-like, over the world. A sparse sprinkling in central Asia, growing
thicker towards the edges of the landmass, flaring brightly in India, eastern
China, Japan. Sub-Saharan Africa glowed,
topped by a void of tan, then more red, then Europe, badly infected.
At his table, Edgar was getting
angrier and angrier, his shoulders raising higher and his head dipping lower as
the meeting stretched for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Then a voice, dripping with a Midwestern
drawl, said, “Sir, ours are off, too. I
don't know how, sir. There was zero
electronic traffic, sir.” And then it
was Edgar's turn to mumble a weak apology, to say it wasn't his fault.
On the map, the infection jumped
the Pacific and Atlantic, striking the new world from both fronts. South America was aglow with sores, a green
swath of rain-forest being its only safe zone.
North America glowed brightly along its coasts, around its inland
seas. Then, for no apparent reason other
than dividing the world, a deep red sore appeared across the Panamanian
isthmus.
Rachel absorbed all this in a kind
of detached horror, not hearing any of the words, only watching as the world
was split apart by the engineers tracking the missile's trajectories. Everything seemed remote until she saw
southern California and New England erupt, and then she silently cried, knowing
that in less than an hour her parents, her friends, the father of her child,
would all be dead.
Then there were words, a slight
glimmer of hope. They were in French,
but quickly translated : “We have birds on a missile. We are engaging.” Then the hope died. “Automatic surface-to-air defenses have
targeted the birds. We have lost
communication. Repeat, we have lost
communication with the birds.”
And then, one by one, the windows
went dark. With some, there was a
definite sign-off, a sad farewell to their colleagues. With others, the screen merely went dark
mid-sentence.
Wheels rumbled on hardwood as the
president pushed away from the table. He
awkwardly stood, stumbled over to Rachel, stared down into her eyes as he
rested his weight on her shoulder. “Your
family should be fine. The Defenders
have thrown in with Mistlethwakey and are making some kind of energy
shield. You're free to make any calls
you need to.”
He straightened and hobbled from
the room.
Rachel was alone know, staring at
the screen, the red Earth glaring out at her from the center. She stroked her belly, then looked down to
her hands. Two weeks ago they had scooped up a handful of slush, formed a ball,
threw it at Tisha. They had scooped up a
city filled with nervous energy, formed a riot, threw it at the country. These hands had killed one of her friends,
had started a war that had killed thousands and left tens of thousands of
others injured. All that blood was on
her hands... And now it would be washed
away with fire, by the deaths of billions, utterly forgotten in the apocalypse
that was about to begin. She
shuddered. She had wanted to wash the
blood away, to absolve herself for what she had done... it seemed impossible to
believe that she would now give anything for the guilt to remain.
It was tempting to let Eli handle
this... He had more experience speaking,
had spent more time face-to-face with the American public. But in an hour he'd be dead, and the public
needed to see someone a little more lasting, someone a little more interested
in their lives.
So it was that Edgar sat in front
of a green screen, facing a camera wired in to who knew what. He had returned to his wheelchair, sitting
erect, his suit jacket crisp and his hair slicked back. Eli, via video chat, had urged him to shave,
at least trim his beard, but Rachel insisted that the longer beard was evocative
of the earlier presidents--the “better” presidents--and would help to put
people's minds at rest.
It was with beard full and flowing that
Edgar waited as Ashby's pet tech corporal counted him down, signaled him to
begin speaking.
“My fellow Americans... By now you have heard rumors of what has been
happening the world over, heard news out of Europe and Africa and Asia that a
massive nuclear assault has occurred. It
is my sad duty to inform you that those rumors are entirely true. By the time this message is broadcast, all of
the major population and power centers on this planet's main landmass have been
destroyed. Millions have died, and
hundreds of millions more will surely join them in the coming weeks. There is no way to mount a rescue effort;
infrastructure and manufacturing hubs have also been targeted. Furthermore, in the coming hours, the western
hemisphere will fall victim to the same rain of fire. Most of the bombs that fall on us will be our
own.
“The question I am sure that you
all want answered is, 'Why'? Why has
this tragedy occurred, who has caused it?"
He paused, looked away from the
camera, brushed at his eye. On camera,
it was endearing, a man weeping for his world.
Below camera, his plastic-clad leg was twitching.
"I don't believe we'll ever
know.
“The question we should ask is,
'What can be done'? The answer:
survive. The years ahead will be the
hardest mankind has faced for the last twenty-thousand years. Civilization as we know it will be gone. Our technology, our industry, everything we
have counted on in our lives will be taken from us. What we are left with is each other. What we are left with is human relying on
human, the race coming together as we have not done in millennia. Perhaps in the coming years, we can reflect
on the Defenders, on what they could have offered us. A world of peace, a world where no man need
fear another. A world where all shared
equally: ideals, possessions, self.
Perhaps this is the world we will make in the coming years, the world we
will pass down to our children and our children's children, a world whose very
existence is a sign saying, 'Do not go this way. Do not embrace war, do not shun the outsider. Listen to those wanting to help, defend those
who cannot defend themselves.'
“And if I live through this, if I
can see a new and different world with tomorrow's sunrise, that is the world I
will try to build. And if you hear this,
and if you, too, see tomorrow's sunrise, I ask that you join me in building
this.”
He tilted his head back, looking
down his nose at the camera. He held the
solemn pose for a moment, then thrust himself forward. “Ethan, if you see this, I'm sorry. This isn't the world I wanted to leave to
you. I can only hope you do a better job
with this new world than I did with the old.”
Returning to his previous pose, he
flicked his fingers at the corporal, until the corporal sighed and said, “We're
cut.”
Edgar mirrored the sigh, then
slumped down into the chair.
“It's uploading, but broadcast will
be slim. There's a fuck-ton of
electromagnetic interference, and all Eastern-Hemi servers are offline.”
Edgar nodded. “Doesn't matter. Not much this would do for people anyway,
maybe distract them for a few minutes.”
He prodded at the chair's joystick, rocked back and forth, then looked
up at Ashby, standing next to the light kit.
“It looks like I'm about to be president of a much more local
country. Call up all National Guard in
the state, get them started this way.
NORAD thinks we'll be pretty untouched in the Midwest, at least until
the fallout starts up. I want supplies
stockpiled, police put on alert, prisons on maximum security. The next forty-eight hours are going to be
absolute hell... we better be ready.”
She nodded, tapped something into
her tablet, then turned to go. Just
before she reached the door she stopped and turned back, raising the tablet and
shaking it. “I'll get some pens and
paper and have them distributed to the staff.”
Edgar bowed his head in
acknowledgement, then followed her out of the room.
With one hand he was controlling
the chair, with the other he was continually dialing Amanda's mobile. He couldn't get through; too much
electromagnetic interference.
He was so distracted he didn't
notice the person standing in the middle of the hallway until his knees
collided with something and his chair stopped moving. He looked up into the face of Dr. Frease.
“Now isn't the time, doc. You can check on me after I've called
my dead wife.”
Frease snatched the mobile and
tossed it aside.
“Hey!”
“I watched your little
speech.” The doctor knelt so he was face
to face with the president. “And you
know what I kept thinking of the whole time you talked about the end of the
world?”
Edgar tried to motor in reverse; he
had to say goodbye to Amanda. She might
survive, but he wasn't trusting the General's magic with that. Frease grabbed the wheels, holding the chair
in place.
“I kept going over a conversation I
had with Mistlethwakey, back when he was busy pulling favors to get me set up as
your uncle's doctor. Funny thing was, I
had no memory of the conversation until just know.”
The joystick snapped back upright,
the motor died. Edgar was paying
attention.
“He was telling me all about this
place, about all the little goodies he had stuffed in the basement. And somehow you came up in that
conversation... how if anything
catastrophic should happen, I should show you what's in the basement...” As he spoke, his voice rose in pitch, until
it was almost a whine at the end. “You
won't believe what's down, there... But
you really need to see it.” He looked
frightened.
Edgar ran through possibilities,
couldn't think of anything more frightening than what was going to happen in
just a few minutes. Frease seemed like a
sane man, aside from his guilt over the Defenders. If whatever was in the basement was worse
than what was going on around him, it had to be important...
But so was his family. Every time Edgar thought of the imminent
apocalypse, he remembered his family: Mandy's striking smile, her indomitable
will, Ethan's half-toothed grin, his naïve loyalty...
“My wife and son are about to die,
Todd, and I need to say goodbye. I was
the one who told them to go to Philadelphia, I was the one who didn't
force them to come here with me. I
killed them, Todd. For once in my life,
I'm putting off work to talk to them, to tell them I love them, alright?”
Frease shook his head, stood,
stumbled away.
Edgar motored over to his dropped
mobile, glanced around, made sure no one was watching. The mobile twitched, jumped up onto his
foot-rest, jumped again up into his lap.
He dialed her number, waited, heard the disinterested female voice,
“We're sorry, but service is unavailable in your area.”
And in that moment he realized it
was too late. He had them for so many
years, took them for granted, ignored them for the promise of power. He couldn't just pick them up now that he saw
all his ambition disappear in a wave of fire.
All he could do was pray that he had made the right choice in sending
them with Bob, hope that the preternatural General would keep them safe. It was little solace, but it was solace all
the same.
The mobile slipped back down to the
floor. Edgar turned and glared up at
Frease, who had appeared behind him.
“Alright. Show me what Bob left
in the basement.”
Frease chuckled, the sound belying
the panic in his eyes, the terror exuding in waves from his mind. “This way...”
He turned, and Edgar followed.
“So, uh...” Frease cleared his
throat. “You remember all those blood
samples I took after your episode?”
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