Chapter 29
Philadelphia was a ghost town. Smoking husks of buildings lined the streets,
windows smashed, furniture and electronics and clothes and anything else people
couldn't carry strewn across the street.
Alice edged around obstacles in the road, trying not to destroy her
car's tires. She drove slowly, taking in
the desolation. A shape jutting out of
an alley caught her attention; it looked like a pair of legs. She swallowed, tried not to think of the men
laying on the floor of the Cohen and Associates building. She had managed to avoid their faces for the
past week, managed to not see their accusing eyes as she slept. But coming back... it was stirring memories
best left forgotten.
The streets became more congested
as she drove, abandoned cars lining the road, doors wrenched off, trunks
open. Up ahead she saw a green sedan,
the hood crumpled, the frame twisting away in small ripples. That was where her life had changed.
Beyond the line of cars was the
barricade, now abandoned, lined with garbage and covered with graffiti. She pulled through a gap, felt metal scrape
on metal as she squeezed past a utility vehicle that had been left here.
Once through she drove for another
quarter mile, pulled over, and got out.
Over the line of buildings ahead she could see the shining cylinder of
Sky Crest. With the tower as a beacon,
she trudged off through the snow.
Down the street, turn, another
street, and—
Her path was cut off by a high
chain-link fence stretched across the road, backed with planks of blue plastic,
making it impossible to see inside.
Here, there were signs of life—children's shouts, vehicles moving, the
clatter of a city living just beyond the fence.
Here, there were people. Four National Guard troops in armor, standing
by a closed gate, wide-barreled rifles aimed at the ground but ready to be
leveled at her.
“Freeze!” one of them shouted. “You are approaching a protected area. Leave immediately, or stand by for search!”
She raised her arms, waited as they
approached her, patted her, unzipped her jacket, felt inside. A week ago, this would have been a a gross
defilement of her rights as an American citizen. Now, this was routine. Now, they had a good reason to search her,
though they couldn't know it: she was a spy.
“Identification,” the nearest
barked.
She carefully reached inside her
jacket, came back with a drivers license and Social Security card.
“Suzanne Brin?”
She nodded.
“Aren't you a little late getting
here?”
She took a deep breath, let a
little of her fear show through; Cyd had said that would make her more
believable. “I live in West
Philadelphia. It was... It was really
bad out that way. I only felt safe
enough to leave today, and, and I can't go to my sister's in New Jersey—” She took another deep breath and let it out
slowly, haltingly, turning the end into a sob.
She didn't need to be a Defender to
see the story develop in their minds: a single woman, mid-thirties, trapped all
by herself in the worst part of town, waiting through the three days of open
fighting, waiting until there was no chance that it would start again, walking
all day to cross the city and get to the one safe place left.
The soldier nearest her
straightened and reeled off a string of legal jargon about the camp beyond the
fence. “Do you understand?”
Alice swallowed, allowed herself a
moment to appear to consider, then nodded.
“Further, in conjuncture with U.S.
Military forces stationed inside and for the continued safety and security of
all residents of this compound, you are prohibited from leaving this compound
under any circumstances until such a time as the current state of emergency is
lifted. Do you understand?”
This time she gave herself a longer
pause, allowed herself a longing look behind her at the dead city, then faced
her interrogator and nodded. The soldier
returned the nod, then escorted her through a small door set into the gate.
And she was in. It took everything she had not to smile. Ever since she had jumped into the 'Defend
the Defenders' movement, she had felt that what she was doing for their cause
wasn't enough. Now, she was doing their
dirty work, infiltrating their target, communicating with their inside man, all
under the super-powered nose of General Robert Mistlethwakey. It wasn't exactly fun, but that was
the best word she could think of for it.
It was certainly more fulfilling than what she had been forced to do to
those men...
The soldier dropped her off at a
small trailer just inside the fence. She
was processed, assigned a tent and work
rotation, given a meal card, then escorted out to the clinic in the main
tower.
“But I'm healthy,” she
protested.
“Sorry, ma'am,” her bored sounding
case-worker replied, “but everyone has to be screened. We haven't had any outbreaks yet, and we want
to keep it that way.”
Alice could appreciate that. As they trudged through the endless rows of
blue tents that filled the plaza around the mall, she could see the disease
potential as an almost physical miasma hanging over the compound. People milled about, looking worn and dirty,
half-a-city's worth of frightened women and children pressed into maybe two
square miles of space.
They arrived at Sky Crest proper,
and she felt a thrill as she entered the stone-floored lobby she had seen so
often in the computer at work. Up the
elevator, out into an open-plan floor divided by fabric walls into a maze of
wards and examining rooms. Her guide
left her sitting on a stool in a cot-filled room, disappearing with a
perfunctory, “I've got some other work to see to,” tossed over her shoulder.
Two other patients were with her in
the room. She nervously waved to them,
they nodded back.
Two hours of waiting, then a
harried-looking man in grubby scrubs bustled in, his face buried in a
tablet. “Suzanne Brin?”
Alice raised a hand.
“Right. Fill this out.” He thrust a clip-board into her hands, then
turned his attention to a man sitting at the edge of a cot.
“Excuse me.”
The doctor—nurse—orderly—whatever
he was—looked up.
“Um, I'm looking for someone. Do you know a Reggie Donalson? He's a nurse here—”
“You know him?” He was back into the other man's hair.
“We went to college together—”
“Reggie!” The yell cut through the background noise
that permeated the space, and a moment later there was an answering “Yo!”
followed by another man walking into the room.
Alice swallowed. It could have been John. Hair, that was different, thick and wavy, and
the man was bulkier, thicker in the face, but he was unmistakable. She felt a momentary pang of loss. This was the man who should have been her
coworker, the man who she had graduated with, worked with for fifteen years,
not the shriveled pink thing that lay in the bed, twitching and muttering as
his burned flesh melted and reformed, each time a little less red, a little
less blistered.
“This lady's looking for you.”
Reggie glanced at her, blinked,
looked momentarily panicked. “Yes,
uh...”
She began to mouth her name.
“Suzanne, yeah, we went to college
together.”
She sighed in relief; he had
remembered the cover story. Not that it
was strictly necessary, but John had been in full super-spy mode when he had
prepped them.
Reggie was nodding now. “Yeah, after you finish up that paperwork, we
should meet and catch up. Just shout
when you're done and I'll take you down to the mess. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
Reggie gave a final nod then left.
The man who had given her the
clip-board—she went ahead and decided he was a nurse—was glancing at her now.
“What?”
“You, uh...” The nurse let go of the hair he was looking
through and cleared his throat. “You
ever meet Reggie's brother?”
“Once or twice.”
“Before, or—”
“Before.”
“Oh.”
He returned to his task, and Alice
returned to the paperwork. She spent
maybe ten minutes filling in her medical history, then handed the clip-board
off to the nurse.
“Great, thanks. I'll go find someone who can give you an exam.”
“That's okay, Reggie can handle
it.”
His eyes widened. “It's a full physical.”
“We went to college together; it's
nothing he hasn't seen.”
The eyes were even wider now,
looking like they would pop from his skull.
“Reggie!”
Reggie came and escorted Alice to a
small personal booth with an examination table inside. She sat on it as he closed the curtain behind
them, giving them the semblance of privacy.
“Can we talk here, or do you think
we're being monitored?”
Reggie shrugged. “Here's a good a place as any, I guess. Be a big lawsuit if they were recording in
here.”
Alice nodded, then dug into her
pocket and retrieved her mobile. She
pulled the battery out, then gestured to Reggie's pocket, expecting him to do
the same.
“God, you're paranoid,” he
complained, even as he complied.
“Okay.” Alice closed her eyes and ran her hands
through her hair, then repeated, in a whisper, “Okay. Look, first, thank you for everything you've
done so far—”
“Save it. He's my brother, I'll look out for him. I'm glad he's not dead, and I'm glad he's
trusted me enough to bring me in on this.
Let's focus.”
Alice opened her eyes. “Alright.
They're planning on infiltrating the compound. They'll be a group of soldiers coming in from
New Jersey, brining in a truckload of supplies.
Then they're going to rig a bunch of scramblers to the tower to
disorient the landlord. From there, it's
into his apartment and elimination.”
The sounds of a busy clinic invaded
their little space as Reggie mulled over her words. “Three question. One, where did they get scramblers? I thought those were top-secret. Two, why do they need them on Bob? Three, what the hell does any of this have to
do with me?”
She frowned and nodded; they were
fair questions. “One, I don't know for
certain, but I assume they made their own.
It's basically a vibrator and an amplifier, and they're capable of
reading minds. Two, I have no idea; they
don't tell me everything. Three, you've
had access to the penthouse and we need your key.”
And there it was, his face changing
from curious to stone-wall stubborn; she had seen it on John throughout their
collaborations.
“No. I'm willing to feed you intel. The fact that the first lady personally
consoled me on behalf of the President—that I owed to John. If she had had her way, it would have been him
she was talking to. The fact they
set me to working on that agent, that I owed, too. John was concerned for him. But this?
I'm not going to sneak a bunch of dangerous fanatics into someone's
house to kill him.”
“I thought you said you'd look out
for him?”
“This goes a little beyond looking
out for him. We're talking about killing
someone; I won't be a part of that.”
Alice couldn't believe Reggie would
betray his brother like this. “They're
going to kill the man that imprisoned them for ten years!” It was hard to keep herself from yelling it.
“Everyone keeps saying that, keeps
reminding us the Defenders were the victims.
But you know what? That doesn't
justify what they're doing. They want
restitution? Fine, they ask for it. They want justice? They find an impartial judge and see that it
gets done. They want revenge? Don't come to me for help. Ever since he came out of that coma, I've
been watching John, taking care of him.
Even when I suspected that he was one of those terrorists—”
Alice gasped.
“Yes, terrorists who were
out on their rampage of revenge, I still looked out for him. He needed me.
But now he's back on his feet and proven that he's able to take care of
himself. You know how many times he told
me that Rachel was growing up, that I should just accept it? Well, now I'm saying it to him. He can find another way in to kill the
landlord; I won't be a part of this.”
He picked up a form he had gotten
from the other nurse, scribbled his name on it, and thrust it at her. “Here, clean bill of health. Now, you tell John that we're done. He's gotten my daughter into this, but he's
not going to get me.” And with that he
pushed through the curtain and disappeared into the labyrinth of dividers.
Alice closed her eyes and gritted
her teeth, tried to hold in a scream.
Couldn't he see that this was just, that the Defenders were
protecting themselves, making themselves safe so they could protect the
world? All they needed was his key-card,
or him to escort them, or something to get them past the General's
security. Now what were they going to
do?
She continued to think over the
problem as she made her way back to the first room, passed off Reggie's
signature to the nurse, and left the building to stand in the cold November
wind, shivering more from the smell that permeated the compound than from the
cold.
She was just dialing the number Cyd
had given her when the solution to their problem came to her: the Central
Maintenance Core. They already had to go
down to the basement to attach the scramblers to the building's super-structure. It wasn't any more of a stretch to take the
utility elevator up to the General's backdoor.
There was a click, an overly cheery
“Wassup?”
“I wanted you to know that I made
it into the camp. Just as soon they let
us out I'll be down in New Jersey to see you.”
“Were you able to meet with the
nurse?” Cyd's voice was business
neutral. It was still difficult for
Alice to correlate the hardened soldier to the incessantly perky bag lady.
“I spoke to the nurse about my
current medical issue. Unfortunately, he
wasn't able to get me in to see the doctor.
But as I was leaving, I thought of an alternative treatment...”
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