Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (41 page)

“Emil, stop this madness!” Knile pleaded.  “You can’t understand how sorry I am for what I did to you, but this is wrong.  What you’re doing is wrong.  I’ll accept any punishment you want to give me, just please let Talia–”

“Oh, no,”
Emil gloated. 
“Talia’s fate is part of your punishment.  I’m going to blow her brains right across this console.  Right here.  Do you know why?  Because you destroyed my entire world, Knile, and now you’re going to watch while I destroy yours.”

Knile saw Talia’s eyes staring up at him across the desk, and the look of terror on her face was enough to rip his
very soul apart.  He tried to rack his brain to find an argument that would convince Emil to let her go, but he could think of nothing to say.  He had no collateral with which to bargain.

“But not to worry, Knile.  She won’t die alone,”
Emil said.  He turned to speak to someone beside him. 
“Aksel.  Patch into the Consortium security interface.  Send out a Code One alert for the Infirmary.  That should bring the Redmen running.”

At the mention of the Redmen, Knile felt as though he had been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer.

“Make sure they’re ordered to kill on sight, and that both targets are clearly identified
–
Knile Oberend and the boy Roman.  And make sure they’re told that the targets may be disguised as patients.”

“Emil, you sick bastard!  You’re going to kill an innocent boy!”

Emil made a tortured, inhuman sound.
“My wife was innocent, you bastard!  Maybe this will make us even.”

“You were the one who poisoned him, weren’t you?” Knile said.  “When you extracted his blood
, you slipped the Brimstone into his bloodstream.”

“Yes, it was me.  I needed you in the Infirmary, as it turns out.”

“Why not just kill me while you had the chance?  Why this whole charade?”

“Well, you see,
Knile, there were multiple benefits to sending you there to the Infirmary.  The first is the most alluring, I have to admit – to watch you die a painful, excruciating death at the hands of those brutal Redmen.  But there’s another reason why you’re there.  I’ve been considering using the Infirmary as an integral part in Skybreach’s plan
to
take control of the Wire.  I know that when a security alert is raised in the Infirmary, the Redmen are dispatched from the roof to investigate.  That means their protection of the Wire is lessened, perhaps enough to allow Skybreach to take it by force.  I just don’t know how many Redmen are sent, or how long they take to get to the Infirmary.  I’ve been trying to find some poor expendable soul to feed to the lions as an experiment, because if Aksel here sets off an alert and there are no real intruders, the Consortium will look into how the alert was triggered.  That could expose us.  So when you and Roman and Talia turned up, I realised that you were the perfect candidates for my little test run.  A nudge of Brimstone was all it took to send you running.  And besides that, Silvestri has been telling me all this time that he could get someone into the Infirmary.  I wanted to call his bluff, see if he could really do it, and how.  And now I know.”

Knile glanced at Roman, then at the door, wondering if he could possibly take the boy and leave the Infirmary, but Dr. Sullivan shook her head at him.

“If you’re thinking of moving him, don’t,” she advised.  “If he doesn’t receive the full treatment, he dies, and the machine that he’s hooked up to isn’t mobile.  He has to stay here.”

Emil continued to rant on the other end of the phone. 
“You are going to give me the information I require about the Redmen, Knile.  We’ll see how long they take to kill you, and how Skybreach might be able to use that knowledge to its advantage.”
  He smiled mockingly. 
“In a way it’s ironic, isn’t it?  You were the true creator of Skybreach.  You’re the one who set things in motion.  After Sibylle died I decided to dedicate my life to changing the system, so that no one else need ever suffer the way I did.”
  He sighed, tears glistening in those dark slits for eyes. 
“But you had to destroy me and my family to do it.”
  He looked back at the screen. 
“Now it’s time for retribution.”

Knile heard Aksel’s voice interject from off camera.

“It’s done,”
he said. 
“The alert has been raised.”

At that moment the soft ambient light around Knile winked out and a heartbeat later the room was bathed in glowing red.  An alarm began to sound out in the corridor.

Emil smiled cruelly at the camera once again.

“Good.  Let’s sit back and watch the show.”

41

“This is a security advisement from Consortium Control.  Please remain where you are.  Members of the Crimson Shield have been dispatched to investigate this situation.”

As the automated warning droned on, Knile muted his phone and put it down on the bench as he moved over to Roman.  He slid an arm gently under his back and started to lift him.  Dr. Sullivan acted quickly, leaning over from the other side of the bed and shoving him away.

“Didn’t you hear what I told you?” she snapped.  “You move this boy and he dies.”

Knile looked about helplessly.  “But the Redmen…”

“Yes, they’re on their way.”

“And they’ll kill him.”

“Yes.  They’ll do what they’ve been ordered to do.”

Knile’s mind was racing.  “If I leave the Infirmary and Roman stays here under your care, you can protect him.  I could come back for him later–”

“You’re not listening,” Sullivan said, her eyes flashing angrily.  “This boy has been marked as a dangerous intruder.  He’s not registered with the Consortium as an employee.  That’s all the information they need to kill on sight, even if he just appears to be lying helpless in a bed.  They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.  That’s what they’re trained to do.”

“You’re a doctor.  You must have some authority here.”

“I don’t control those gorillas.  They answer to a higher authority than me.”

“There has to be something I can do.”

“Not if those ‘friends’ of yours somehow created a Code One in the system.”

As Knile glanced about, looking for ideas, his eyes fell upon the tablet in the doctor’s hand.  An idea suddenly came to him as he mulled over Sullivan’s words.

Those friends of yours somehow created a Code One.

He reached out and snatched the tablet from the unsuspecting doctor.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, indignant.

“I’m sorry, but I need this.”  He held it up.  “This tablet connects directly to the Consortium network, right?”

“Yes, so what?”

“So now that I’m within the network it means I have a chance of hacking the system and cancelling the alert.  Marking it as a false alarm or something.  The Redmen would turn around.”

Dr. Sullivan crossed her arms and glared at him.  “Maybe.  But can you do it within the next three minutes?”

“I have no idea.  Why?”

“Because that’s how long the Redmen took to get here the last time we had a drill.”

“Shit.”  He began to manipulate the tablet, but the operating system and the user interface were somewhat unfamiliar to him.  He’d only used a Consortium device once before, and that was in Jon Hanker’s office
, when he’d uncovered the information about the Stormgate glitch.

Three minutes was not going to be long enough.  “I need more time.”

“You won’t get it,” Sullivan said adamantly.

“Is there somewhere Roman and I can hide?  Maybe for ten or fifteen minutes?”

“Roman can’t move.  I told you that before.”  She frowned to herself, considering something.  “There might be somewhere you can go, though.”

“Where?”

“Out by the elevators there’s an entrance that leads into the eastern wing of the Infirmary.  It’s a construction zone, has been for years.  They started renovating it a long time ago but it was never finished.”  She shrugged.  “It’s dark, and you might find somewhere to bunker down for a few minutes.  As long as they follow you in there, they might not come looking for Roman until they’ve found you.  I’d say it’s your only chance.”

Knile considered that for a moment.  “Seems like it.  Thank you.”

“But let me tell you this, asshole.”  She pointed a finger at him.  “If you endanger one of my patients or any of the staff here, you can forget about asking for my help again.  In fact, I’ll just take one of the Redmen’s guns and shoot you myself.”

“It won’t come to that, Dr. Sullivan.”

“It better not.”

Knile leaned forward and kissed Roman on the forehead.  It might have been his imagination, but he thought that there was perhaps some warmth and colour returning to the boy’s face already.  It was a small thing, but enough to give him hope.

“Back in a minute, little buddy,” he whispered.

Knile plucked his phone from the bench to check on Talia, but the connection had gone dead.

Strange
,
he thought. 
Surely Emil would have wanted to stick around to see me chopped up by the Redmen.

He decided that the most likely explanation was that the Consortium had locked down outside network access in response to the alert.  In any case, there was no time to dwell on it.  He got moving out the door and down the corridor, back out toward the elevators again.  As he passed the reception area he noted that the desk had been sealed by a thick perspex security screen.  The man was still there, looking out fearfully at Knile with bug eyes.

“Hey!” Knile called.  He pointed at the entrance to the construction area.  “I’m going in there.  Tell the Redmen to come find me!”

The man just stared blankly at him, too fearful to even nod, and then Knile turned and bounded past the construction barricades and forced his way through the plastic covering, then fled away into the darkness.

“Good,” Emil said.  “Let’s sit back and watch the show.”

Talia felt the muzzle of the gun push more firmly against her temple and she squeezed her eyes shut, fearing that the moment had come.  When she opened them, Knile’s face still filled the terminal screen in front of her, pale and wild-eyed.  He looked shocked, uncertain, and that in turn made Talia’s spirits fall.

If Knile couldn’t figure a way out of this, who could?

The light around Knile suddenly turned red, and then he placed the holophone down and disappeared from view.

Talia gritted her teeth, tried to gather her courage.

No.  Don’t go out like that.  Don’t cower before this Emil bastard.

“Knile!” Emil called.  “Pick up the phone again.  I want to watch you squirm.  Hold it up or Talia dies!”

She strained her eyes to see past the edges of the console, where other members of Skybreach had gathered around to watch the spectacle.  One look at the expressions on their faces told her that they didn’t like what they were seeing.  Not one of them was looking at her – it was Emil, their leader, who commanded their gaze.  Talia saw an older woman with a hand over her mouth, horrified, and beside her was a man with spectacles and a large, round face, who watched Emil with open-mouthed amazement.

This brutal, vengeful man with a gun pressed to Talia’s head was obviously someone they had never seen before.  This was not the Emil that they had vowed to follow, the man in whom they had placed their trust and respect.

This man was a stranger.

Talia heard Iris’ voice behind her.  “Emil, this is wrong.  I understand your hatred for this guy, but the boy and Talia, they’re innocent–”

“Don’t question me, Iris,” Emil said.  “Don’t ever do that.”

“Or what?  You’ll put a gun to my head?”

“You don’t know what this means to me!” Emil thundered.  “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this vengeance!”  He glared around at them defiantly.  “None of you could ever understand what I’ve been through, the price I’ve had to pay for what he did–”