The Final Trade (8 page)

11

The hallways fly by and then she is in the NOA storage room.

It is nearly full of people. Everyone is there except Ian who, Rita tells her, is watching the room containing the prisoners.

Lyle sits at the desk, haggard but with a sense of giddiness about him. He looks younger than the day before, fewer lines around his eyes and mouth. Everyone turns to Zoey as she makes her way through the room, a taut expectance hanging in the air as if a wire has been drawn to the breaking point above their heads. She stops a pace from the desk and glances from the screen to Lyle.

“You did it,” she says.

“I did it. It took almost ten straight hours, but I did it. Their operating system was complex, but nothing I’d never seen before. I used an old trick of overloading the system so that it dumped the memory and gave me a chance to insert a code. The code allowed me to rename a main administrator.” Lyle smiles. “Which of course was me.”

“I really don’t understand most of what you just said, but it sounds like it worked.”

He laughs. “It did. I gained access to their information logs a few minutes ago. Their file system is enormous, since it encompassed something like a hundred thousand individuals during the Dearth.”

“That’s how many women they were testing on?” Rita asks.

“Something like that,” Lyle says. “But who knows how many women and families weren’t coded or notated.”

“So you’re saying what we’re looking for may not be in here?”

“I can’t guarantee it, no. But on the bright side I can narrow our search to pinpoint exactly what we’re trying to find. That is, as long as you know your birth dates.”

The thought of the numerous calendars in the ARC makes Zoey glance at Rita and Sherell, and all three burst out laughing. “Yeah. We know our birth dates.”

Lyle frowns but nods and turns to the computer screen. “Okay. Whenever you’re ready.”

Zoey motions to Sherell. “You go first. You’re the youngest.”

“You should go. You’re the reason we’re all standing here,” she replies.

“No. I’ll go last.”

Sherell studies her for a beat before saying, “December 12, 2021.”

Lyle’s fingers rattle the keyboard. “Okay. Narrowing it by that date, we have ten. How do you spell your name?” She tells him. “And there we are.” He taps a key and a screen comes up layered with information. “Would you like some privacy to read it?”

Sherell steadies herself on the back of Lyle’s chair and Zoey sees that she’s shaking.

“No. Go ahead.”

He clears his throat. “Sherell Ali Davis. Mother: Tanya Alice Davis. Father: Tyson Germaine Davis.”

Sherell’s eyes shimmer and she brings her hands up to her mouth. Zoey steps forward and puts an arm around the other woman’s waist. “That’s a beautiful name,” she says quietly.

Sherell takes a deep breath in and smiles, tears leaking from both eyes. “Yes. It is.”

“Do you want me to keep going?” Lyle asks. “There’s a lot of technical jargon, but there’s also some background on you and your parents. I can transcribe it on paper for you if you want.”

“Yes, that’s fine. It’s Rita’s turn.”

Sherell steps aside and Chelsea hugs her tightly, the others smiling and murmuring their congratulations. Rita moves forward, steady and resolved, her expression that of granite.

“October 10, 2021. R-I-T-A.”

Lyle taps away. A new screen appears. “Rita Marie Carroll. Mother: Nell Marie Carroll. Father: Unknown.”

The room is hushed, a spring-loaded silence.

Rita stares at the screen for a long time, eyes boring into and through it. Zoey reaches out and touches her lightly on the arm and the other woman seems to come back from somewhere distant.

“I remember now,” Rita says. “I remember one of my mother’s friends saying her name.”

Her jaw tightens and she glances at Zoey. It appears as if she’s about to say something, but then she lowers her eyes and moves through the throng of people to the door and out into the hallway.

All eyes fall on Zoey.

She’s trembling, her hands two twitching things at the ends of her arms. She moves a step closer to Lyle. “March 17, 2021. Z-O-E-Y.” Heart booming like gunfire in her chest, she watches him type.

The screen flashes, computer humming.

Everyone stares.

She wavers, suddenly terrified of what will happen next.

This is the moment she’s been waiting for, dreading, craving, hating.

A single line of text appears on the screen.

Lyle leans forward, brow furrowing. “What the hell?”

“What is it?” Zoey asks.

“No matches.”

“What do you mean, no matches?”

“Your information isn’t pulling up anything. No birth dates that correlate with your name.”

She’s afraid that she’ll scream. Terrified that it will simply leak out of her in one long anguished howl. “Are you sure? Check again.”

Lyle rattles the keys. Nothing changes. “No entries found.” He glances at her, cold light reflecting on his glasses obscuring his eyes. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

She feels her chin quiver. Clenches her jaw.

A hand grasps her arm but she pulls away. The air in the room is too close, stifling to the point that she feels like she’s swimming. She strides into the hallway, ignoring calls of her name. Her feet hit the stairs and she climbs quickly, two treads at a time, rushing away from the awful knowledge trying to catch up to her.

Nothing. You’re no one. You have no heritage except what you’ve created for yourself. And that is only death.

She doesn’t stop at the main level but turns and rushes up the second flight of stairs. The dark emptiness inside her pulses like a cancerous heartbeat.

Growing, thickening, smothering.

She stops outside Halie’s room, panting, out of breath, but not from the exertion of jogging up the stairs. She leans against the wall. The urge to scream rises again and she bites it off, swallows it down. Her head is two sizes too large, ungainly, swarming with thoughts. Why? Why is there nothing for her? It’s all she’s ever wanted. Dreamed of. And now, just when she’s nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, it winks out.

Zoey spins and slams her fist into the wall. It dents, puffs of dust leaking from the cracks. She hits it again.

And again.

And again, until her fist blasts through the drywall, the hole’s edges red with blood from her torn knuckles. She lets her aching hand fall to her side.

Her vision is smeared, eyes wet with tears of rage. She swipes at them and the sight of the small, inconsequential hole in the wall angers her so much she winds her arm back to strike it again, but freezes.

Through the open doorway and across the room Halie’s eyelids flicker.

All the anger drains from her and she hurries to the bed, dropping down to a crouch.

“Halie? Can you hear me?” The woman’s eyelids continue to flutter, only the whites behind them visible. One of her arms twitches and tries to rise beneath the blanket and Zoey peels it back, grasping the clenching hand in her own.

Slowly Halie calms, taut muscles relaxing until she is still once again. Her mouth opens and closes silently.

“Halie? I’m right here. You’re okay.”

Halie’s eyes open halfway. Her left pupil is huge while the right is shrunken to a pinpoint.

“Halie?”

The woman bolts upright to a sitting position, head thrown back, mouth open in a silent scream. Her eyes skitter around the room like a tormented animal searching for a way out. A keening sound, inhuman and chilling, comes from deep in her chest and it raises goose bumps along Zoey’s arms.

“Halie, you’re okay. Lie back. Lie back.” Zoey tries easing her down to the bed but she stays locked in place. A shudder runs through her entire body and her frantic gaze finally finds Zoey.

It is filled with complete terror.

The amount of fear in her eyes is so overwhelming Zoey nearly recoils. It is as if they are two pools of torment, everything Halie’s endured collected there, displayed in naked and raw horror.

After a drawn second that lasts an eternity, Halie stiffens and falls to her back, her spine flexing, bowing up from the bed. Zoey still holds her hand, the other woman’s fingers like bands of iron over her own. In the distant confines of her mind she knows she has to get Chelsea here, get her to stop what’s happening before it’s too late. But another part of her, the cold void that tells only truth, is already beginning to speak.

“No,” Zoey says.

Halie twitches, mouth opening wide.

“Please.”

She shivers, feet drumming beneath the blanket.

“Stop.”

The other woman’s grip releases, breaking the hold as if all the tendons in her arm have been cut. Halie draws in a long, ragged breath.

And doesn’t exhale.

Zoey stares, waiting for something more, some new spasm or violent tremor, but there is nothing.

“No.” She leans forward, putting her ear against Halie’s mouth.

Stillness. “No. Halie? Halie?” Zoey gets an arm beneath the other woman’s shoulders and cradles her. Halie’s body is warm and limp, lolling against her.

Body. Because that is all that’s left.

Zoey chokes out a sob, holding her friend close. She rocks slowly back and forth, unaware of everything beyond Halie’s skin, growing cooler by the second.

After years that are only minutes, she gently lays Halie back down, placing her arms at her sides, and covers her with the blanket. She puts two fingers over Halie’s eyelids and draws them closed. When she stands, she rocks back on her heels, sure that she will faint, but her head is clear, crystalline and calm. Halie appears as if she’s sleeping and Zoey studies her for a long moment before turning away and walking out of the room.

She meets Ian on the stairs, his face lighting up when he sees her.

“Good morning. I heard that Lyle had some success.”

She nods.

“And what did you find?”

“Everything I needed.”

“That’s wonderful, Zoey!” He sweeps her into a soft hug. “I always knew you would.” He holds her at arm’s length, face darkening. “Are you all right?”

She opens her mouth to tell him about Halie, to let the pain spill out, because in that second all she wants is to be held, to have someone make it go away.

A shout from below cuts her words off.

Ian’s eyes widen and he turns, hurrying down the stairway. She follows, hand already finding the grip of her pistol.

Eli, Chelsea, and Merrill stand outside the prisoners’ door, forms rigid, weapons out.

“What happened?” Ian says.

“One of them got loose somehow,” Merrill says. “Rita was on watch. They have her.”

“No,” Zoey says. “No, no, no.” She moves toward the door but Merrill steps in her way.

“Stop. We have to think for a second. I saw them grab her from down the hall. She must have opened the door to check on them. She did manage to toss her gun out but she still had a knife on her, so now they have a weapon.”

“Offer to let them go if they give her to us,” Chelsea says.

Merrill steps to the side, one hand on his forehead. “We’ll ask them what they want.”

Zoey waits, vision becoming a red haze around the edges, fingers squeezing her handgun so hard a knuckle cracks.

She sees Halie spasming on the bed, the horror engraved in her features, feels her go limp, the coolness of her skin.

And then she’s moving.

In the split second it takes Merrill to register what she’s doing, she yanks the door open and steps through.

Two of the men are still seated on the ground, hands bound behind them. Benny kneels beside one of them, working on his restraints. The other four, including Ken, stand at the far end of the room in a half circle around Rita.

All eyes shift to Zoey.

There is a dead beat of silence. Then frenetic movement.

Ken lunges toward Rita, the flash of a knife in his fist.

Zoey fires.

The round clips him in the side and he collapses against the wall. Benny rises and rushes her, a steel receptacle cover in one hand that he must’ve unscrewed from the wall and sawed through his bonds with.

She shoots him in the forehead, spattering the seated men with a spray of crimson.

When she brings her aim back around, the other three men are there, sprinting forward, snarling.

Zoey fires three times, the reports so close together they nearly coalesce into one sound. The men stumble and fall, one grasping her arm as he careens past. His skull explodes as another shot rings out from the door where Merrill stands.

A hand grasps her pant leg and yanks, the man who Benny was freeing trying to climb to his feet. She fires a round into his throat as he comes level with her, a feeble punch glancing off her temple.

The last seated man is the sniper from the tower. He stares her in the eyes through the gathering smoke and cordite of the room and tries to throw a kick at her legs.

Zoey steps over it and presses the muzzle against his forehead.

She pulls the trigger.

When she looks up, Rita is limping past, eyes wide with terror, but there is utter relief there as well. She falls into Merrill’s arms as she reaches the door and he guides her out, throwing a look at Zoey over one shoulder.

She moves through the room, stepping past twitching bodies, avoiding puddles of expanding blood, until she stands before Ken.

He lies half upright against the wall, one hand covering the wound in his side. The knife lies several feet away in the corner.

She trains the pistol on him.

He smiles, suddenly diving toward the knife and slashing it at her legs. She leaps back, letting the strike go wide before pinning him with her gaze over the pistol sights. He scoots back into place, breathing hard.

The air is clouded with acrid gun smoke and the sharp odor of blood.

Shouts come from the corridor, but there is nothing except the man before her, eyes hard and unforgiving.

“Well, I suppose—” Ken rasps.

Zoey shoots him in the stomach. The bullet splashes crimson in a short arc that lands near her feet and Ken screams, tipping sideways. She fires again, hitting him in the upper arm, bone shattering in torn muscle. She pulls the trigger over and over, blowing pieces off his body until the gun clicks empty and then she is standing over him, gripping the pistol by the barrel, bringing the gun down like a hammer to his skull.