Tainted (13 page)

I open the message:
That is so sweet <3 I know I sleep better by you. Tell me more!

Maybe this is a way to give Emma what she wanted, and win her heart from Daniel’s memory. I tap in the reply field and type:
The truth is, my imaginary friend’s name was Rasputin. He had green hair, and hated broccoli
.

Sullen quiet fills Paul’s office, punctuated only by the scratch of my pencil. An uncomfortable feeling of being watched settles on me like a prickly jacket. I scan the security cam feeds Paul has installed in a bank beside the desk. The screens are all void of life, except for the experimental animals in their sealed, locked cages in the wing separated by double locked doors.

I start when my message notification tone breaks the silence. I tap the screen and read Emma’s response:
LOL I never had an imaginary friend. Mom never allowed me enough room to squeeze one in. Tell me more!!

This feels normal. So much like the Emma before her accident, I can’t help but smile. Pencil down, pacing animals and lab ghosts forgotten, I type:
The truth is, I would love to chase tornadoes.

Motion on the edge of my vision catches my eye. I track the blinking light to the computer monitor, the email notification icon flashing in the task bar. I mouse over to the envelope image and left click. The machine processes the command, the subject line reads, Re: Video, then the message opens.

“Contain this problem.” Beyond curious, I click on the attachment, and the horrid video of Emma rolls on the screen in High Definition. Choking on shock, I shut down the media player. What the hell? Why would someone
respond
to that bloody recording?

Disbelief numbing me, I open the message details and find a digital trail from Paul’s computer to an unspecified recipient. No matter what trick I try, I can’t find the source. A search of the computer files turns up nothing, not even a copy of the video.

Has he been playing me from the start? Is Paul responsible for Emma’s flip?

I grab my cellphone, thumb through the contacts to Paul’s and push the little green phone.

“What the hell is going on Paul?” I snap the instant he answers.

“Whoa, son. What are you talking about?”

“Don’t call me ‘son’.” Keeping me close to get to Emma. Hell, keeping me close for observation. Paul’s been concerned about the lab from the start. “An email responding to that video of Emma just showed up in your inbox.”

“I haven’t seen the video, Alex.” His voice is level, too calm. “I have no idea how it got in my email. You have the computer there, go through it.”

“Already did. I found nothing.”

“Why would I hurt her?” He pauses, draws a breath. “Why would I put the lab in further jeopardy? Someone has to be setting me up.”

A logical answer. Given his tenuous control, and my demands undermining it, he wouldn’t do anything at all to make things worse. Logic is heavy and sharp. Trust, fragile and delicate and gone now.

“I’ll talk to you soon,” I say and disconnect the call.

He calls back, and I flick the icon to ignore the call. I can’t talk to him now. My head is spinning, a foul sinking feeling pulls in my chest. This is not the time for me to doubt the man I’ve been relying on. Doubt has sprung up, though, fissures in the bedrock of my trust. Now I’ll have to watch Paul, too.

I turn to the surveillance screens and my mood further deflates. A familiar silver Audi A4 passes the gates, headed toward the lab. If putting the building into lockdown wouldn’t alert the other scientists, I would flip the switch. Hailey has keys, and entrance codes. Nothing short of a Hazmat lockdown will keep her out of here.

My jaw muscles tighten as I track her progress. She parks and then steps from her car, the wind blowing her jet black hair over her face. It settles enough for me to see her calculating green eyes and her smug grin.

This is not going to end well.

My fingers hover over the lockdown button. Just one push…

Then the front doors open and it’s too late.

I scramble to cover the notebook under a pile of Paul’s collection of charts. I don’t even want to imagine what he has hidden in here, or what Hailey would do with the information on Emma. Hailey’s stride is light, graceful, almost catlike, matching her expression when she looks at the security camera like she knows I’m watching. “Got you,” her eyes say. I jerk my gaze to the mess of files on Paul’s desk and find one marked “H – Hailey Westmore”
on the floor, near the trash can. It’s empty, but I slide it to the top of the pile, rest my fingertips on it. Let her wonder, maybe it will show a chink in her armor.

Her footsteps pause at the open door to Paul’s office. Hailey, all overpriced clothes and flashy jewelry, raps her knuckles on the doorjamb, then drapes herself against it. She toys with the end of her ponytail.

“Looking good, Alex,” she says. “The throne suits you.”

Of course she would go there. My father wanted me to run Ascension if he died, he wanted me at the helm of all the great discoveries he had steered it toward. And he’d chosen Hailey as my companion right after Mom died. Seeing me in the head office, at the desk, is a visual tease of what he promised us both.

“What the hell do you want?” I pour as much annoyance as I can into the question. “Did you come to survey the damage your little argument caused?” I hate to think of how she would act if she knew Emma ended up on the receiving end of death.

Her laughter has a silky, poisonous feel. “Oh, Alex, please.” Hailey drifts from the door to the wingback armchair, and perches on the arm. “That was just for fun. Trent and I had a good laugh about it at Papa’s Pizza afterward. You remember Papa’s? You remember our old haunts, right? The Sadony gang used to hang there every weekend.”

“Don’t patronize me. Of course I remember.” The corner booth is where I asked her out. That’s one memory I wish I had lost. But she stressed “our old haunts” like it means something.

“Honestly?” she says and leans forward, exposing most of what little cleavage she has. “Your girl is lucky I don’t press charges for assault. Everyone saw her drag me around by my scarf.”

“Oh, drop it already. We both know pressing charges on a girl in high school is beneath you.”

“Well,” she simpers, “there is that…”

“So, what do you want?” I stress every word.

Her line of sight zeros in on the folder with “H – Hailey Westmore”
written on it. Her green irises widen slightly. Then she sighs, crooks one corner of her lips into a smirk and leans back.

“I want what I’ve always wanted. You. The half of Ascension your father promised me, too.”

“Then get used to disappointment.”

“You know you loved being with me. Do I need to remind you?” She holds up her cell phone with plenty of damning pictures stored away in it. I’m tempted to smack it out of her hand and destroy it, but I’m sure she has backups somewhere. “You know I could expose everything your father did. I have the files.”

“And then Ascension goes belly up, and you lose your cushy position and access to the meds and processes you need.” Paul said Hailey was the experiment here. I’ve looked for something to hold over her, but all her personal files are locked. I’m digging now, looking for an angle, a foothold of any kind against her. She can’t expose Ascension – if it goes we all go, two of us to death. At least I haven’t damned Emma to the hell I’m sure I’m going to.

“True,” she admits, “It would hurt us both, and I really don’t want that.”

“You’re not getting what you want, Hailey. So, what will you settle for?”

“Silly boy. You know I never settle.”

“Then,” I stand and incline my head toward the door, “we’ve reached the ‘rock and hard place’ part of the conversation.”

Hailey slides off the chair arm, and slithers up next to me. She hooks the fingers of one hand in my hair, and drags a fingernail down the front of my shirt and snags it on my belt.

“I prefer unstoppable force and immovable object.” Her fingers tighten to a fist at my scalp, and her fingernail hits the top of my fly. “Think about all the kinetic energy to burn up.”

“If you don’t leave, I will kick you out. And if you don’t leave me the fuck alone,” I spin under her arm, yank it behind her back and pin her to the doorjamb, “I will have you banned from the premises.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easy,” she says, voice calm despite her cheek being pressed to the wood trim. “You have two choices: come back to me, or give me half of the company.”

“Or what?” I pull her wrist higher along her spine, and smile when she winces.

“Or I will make Ascension into a cross, crucify you on it, and laugh when your girl abandons you to burn.”

“That will never happen.” I nudge her knee with mine, taking out her center of balance, and then shove her down the hall. “Emma loves me.”

Hailey’s laugh makes me wish my mother hadn’t raised me right. I’m angry enough to smack her. “Sweet little Emma?” She jerks out of my hold at the doors. “That girl has a temper problem. Look what she did to me at the party.”

“Premeditated on your part, I’m sure.”

“Hardly,” she sniffs. “That girl’s not worth my time.”

I hit the button to trigger the door release, and push Hailey through the opening.

“Get out. And get out of my life.”

Hailey recovers instantly, as sure-footed as if she intended me to shove her outside. She turns, a delicate move like a ballerina, and waves with a coy smile on her face. Then she pulls her cell phone from her purse and types something in. My phone buzzes in my pocket. Hailey’s eyebrows arch, and I can hear her saying, “Well, read it.” Hell with that. I won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me do what she wants.

I lock the doors, and turn away. Even the ghosts in this place have drawn back from me now. Ascension Labs feels vacant, more tomb than place of science trying to beat death. In Paul’s office, I drop into his chair and grab the folder with Hailey’s name on it. Still empty as the lab, but the edges are worn soft, the creases at the bottom speak of constant use. Hailey knows we are looking for a way to get her out of Ascension. She must’ve emptied out the folder and left it here, just one more way to prove her superior intelligence.

Groaning, I lean back in the chair. One step ahead of us again.

The notebook feels lighter when I pull it from the pile, mocking me with how inadequate I am to the situation I’ve created. Especially now that doubt over Paul has crept in. Emma is in danger, and I put her there. The ridiculous urge to see her, to touch her, hear her voice burns through me. I scoop up the phone to call her and see the message light blinking.

One message is from Hailey. Might as well walk through hell first. I tap the screen, and read:
The files aren’t my only ammunition. Come back to me and make it easier on yourself, easier on us.

There is no us. I’m not going to dignify her threat with a response. If Mom was alive, she would be proud of me. I’ve followed two of her lessons tonight. First, don’t hit girls. And second, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Emma’s message holds so much more promise. I click on the thread and read:
A tornado couldn’t keep us apart. I meant it when I said I feel better with you, and I’m sorry I never said thank you. I really do love you, Alex
.

I want her to love me. I want those words to be real, not the cry in the lab. After tapping in the reply field, I type:
Please don’t thank me for something so selfish. I love you too.

After another Hailey confrontation, I need to run, box, beat something the hell up. And I feel like I have less than a week to solve the puzzle of Emma’s mood flip and memory loss. What if we give her the same dose, and charge, and she flips again? What if it’s worse this time? We might not get her back.

What if it’s Paul’s fault?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Late Monday morning of Christmas break, Emma and I have a couple days of near normalcy before the formula and energy spike degrade. Despite a nagging feeling deep in my gut, Em and I have let our guards down a little – she hasn’t had another episode of memory loss or bizarre behavior. Maybe Paul was right, someone was trying to set him up, and Emma’s emotional break was a symptom of her “rebooting”. I can’t quite believe it’s over, but I hope it is.

The winter weather has turned to raging winds, frigid temps, and dumping snow in inches per hour. If this keeps up, we’ll have another “Winter of 1978” as Grandpa calls it, with three feet of snow in three days. Newscasters are predicting ice jams and floods, too. Michigan winters are not for the wimpy.

Sitting in my bedroom, I mull over everything that’s happened, for the hundredth time. So many pieces just don’t fit in this puzzle. Why Hailey showed up at Bree’s, who hurt Emma, why she flipped out. And the damn video in Paul’s email. I pull on a sweatshirt, and knock my phone from the nightstand.

It comes to life on the floor, notifying me of a phone call. The screen throws a familiar name at me:

Trent Landry
.

What does he want?

Tapping the phone icon, I answer, “Hello?”

“Hey, Alex.” His voice sounds odd, a fuzzy edge to it. “I wanted to call and apologize for the other day at the gym. I was being an ass.”

“Ya think?”

“Sure, rub it in,” he says. “There’s still time to change your mind and come to the Reindeer Games with Hailey and me.”

“I’m not changing my mind, Trent. And speaking of your dastardly duo, Hailey said you two met up after she made a special appearance at my friend’s party. How was pizza on Christmas Eve?”

“Greasy,” he answers, no hesitation in his response. “It always is there. And better than being home alone while my parents are at the country club party. You should’ve come with. It would’ve been like old times.”

“The old times are old for a reason,” I say. “I’m not the Sadony sap I used to be.”

“So I’ve noticed. You should bring your girl and show her off to your old friends.”

“For the last time, man. The Reindeer Games isn’t going to happen.”