The Killing Jar (27 page)

TORONTO REGIONAL HOSPITAL, TORONTO, NORTH AMERICA

AUGUST 22, 2232

Mable woke in a bright room she’d never seen before. Her head hurt like she’d been kicked in the face, or run over, or both, so painful she didn’t dare move to investigate her injuries. She could only lay curled on the strange bed and wince. She didn’t dare cry. The pain would have been too much. She could only look around the empty, windowless room in short bursts before slamming her eyes shut once more.

She remembered a shuttle. Theo sitting beside her. She remembered Japan and cherry blossoms. Nothing made sense.

Mable wanted to get up, to get out, to find out what happened and where she was. But she was trapped by the pain in her head.

Once again, she was caught. Only this time she didn’t know where she was. Only this time no one would come to save her.

CPI-AO-301, NEW YORK

AUGUST 22, 2232

Silas shifted in his shuttle seat for the thousandth time, unable to quiet the racing of his pulse. He couldn’t help but replay the ecomm that arrived.

AGENT COMPROMISE. RECON4-MW.

The first part was the same, the message that was always sent when an unknown person attempted to access the tablet of one of the agents. This time, a Dr. Divya Prataban unknowingly tripped the tablet security. Whilst she found Maggie’s false identity, Silas was alerted.

Recon4-MW. Mable Wilkinson. Maggie.

He should have known it was coming. Maggie’s comms hadn’t come through for the last twenty minutes. Something was wrong.

So Silas waited, twenty long minutes, until the emergency ecomm came through. With the security triggered, he was sent her global coordinates in real time. Her tablet stayed at the pharmaceutical complex for two minutes before moving to the hospital six minutes away.

Eight minutes of agony.

No sooner had she arrived at the hospital than Silas grabbed his coat on the way out the door. He managed to quiet the shaking in his hands long enough to send Nick the info from the pod.

The shuttle was the usual affair, distracted passengers and abrupt Craftsmen serving drinks. Only Silas was different. Only Silas could hear his heartbeat hammer in his ears. His stomach lurched to think of what her condition might be.

On his tablet, he watched the cam feed. It was live, but as still as stone. Maggie was in a dim room with a tile floor and white walls. It wasn’t the furnishings that concerned him. He knew she was in the hospital.

It was the fact that she never moved. Not even a little.

Silas refused the brandy coded into his travel badge and resigned himself to prayer. Two decades into his career, Silas had learned to keep his relationship with God to himself. It wasn’t all that hard. They weren’t all that close. But given the circumstances, Silas held tight to his faith. He could only hope it would be enough.

How could this have happened?

Silas had worked long and hard to keep this very event from fruition, and here it was. A second Wilkinson taken down on his watch. He refused to think of the possibility of her death.

Nick had a pod waiting at ground transport when he arrived. The coordinates already received, the pod sped off toward the hospital as soon as he was seated inside.

His hands twitched. He was desperate to know, to see how bad it was for himself.

The pod let him out at the curb in front of the hospital. Silas dashed inside and found the Craftsman woman at the information desk.

“I’m here to see Mag—my niece Camille. Camille Cristophsen.”

The woman didn’t so much as look up from her tablet. “Please scan your hand below.” He got the impression she’d repeated that statement a few thousand times already today.

Silas found the scanner and pressed his palm to the digital panel. He’d already coded his palm print to allow him access. With clearance such as his, Silas could be anyone at any time.

When he pulled his hand away, the panel flashed OB9-532. Observation. Ninth floor.

Silas headed for the elevator.

The few minutes it took him to navigate the hospital felt like ages, like the Earth had suffered an ice age or two in the same time. He cursed every wrong turn and pushed more than one slow walker out of his way. At last, at long last, he found 532. But he didn’t go in right away.

He need a moment to prepare himself for what he might see. What kind of condition she might be in. He needed a moment to catch his breath and get his mind in the game. It wasn’t the first time this scene had played out. It was just the first time it nearly killed him.

Then Silas opened the door and saw his worst nightmare realized.

There she was, nothing more than a slip of a girl, curled into an impossibly small space on the bed. Her body was rigid, tense as only a person in pain could be. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she made not a single motion to indicate she knew he was there.

Silas felt the air lock in his chest. Tears sprang to his eyes to see her that way. Fragile and frail, no prickly exterior or callous insults, Maggie was the hurt girl he’d always known her to be.

She hardly resembled the bright seven year old he’d known in Atlanta so many years ago. Then, she’d had blonde hair, spun into an intricate braid and pinned up at the back of her head. Her ice-blue eyes were eager to learn more about him, to figure out why he took such keen interest in her brother, though she made a good effort to stay out of the way, at her parents’ insistence of course.

Back then, she wanted to learn more about the program, the prestigious assignment her brother would receive if he passed the tests. She’d even asked to be given the tests herself, though she was eight years too early in her classes. Silas had done his best, indulged her questions, given her a test so she’d feel included. She’d done pretty well, considering.

Now, there was so little left of that happy child. Silas knew he had a part to play in that.

“Maggie?” He walked to her bedside and, at the sight of her, slammed a hand over his mouth. It ripped his guts out.

From close up, Silas saw the wide gash across the side of her head, at least five inches long and already stitched up. It was a horrific wound, fresh and angry. He wondered what kind of lasting effect such an injury would have on her, what kind of brain trauma she had suffered.

Maggie’s eyes flashed open and stared for a brief moment, settling on his face, locking gaze with his, before they slammed shut again.

It was enough. Silas breathed out his relief. “I’m here to take you back. As soon as you feel ready, we can get out of here.”

She didn’t move, but he knew she understood.

Silas sat in the only chair and tried to get control of himself. She was alive. She was safe. She would recover. No matter how long it took, Silas would make sure she had everything she needed.

“You’re the uncle?”

Silas looked up and saw a woman in a doctor’s coat, the same outfit they’d been wearing for centuries. She had a pinched face and bright red hair that fell in corkscrews around her face.

He nodded and stood, eager to hear the prognosis.

“I’m Dr. Madison Trevalli. Your niece had quite the fall. She was found in a pharmaceutical facility.” Her eyes stayed on the tablet as she read facts from Maggie’s admission. “If they’d waited much longer to get her here, she might have been too far gone. We’ve given her some mild pain killers and some Timperol to limit the swelling of the brain.”

Silas knew doctors were the most misunderstood section of society. They had the knowledge and background of Scholars with none of the prestige or pay. They did it because they wanted to help people.

But in that moment, Silas felt none of that. This doctor rattled off facts about Maggie as if she were nothing but a frog for dissection. It made his blood boil.

“When can I take her home?” He put his hands on his hips and glared.

“I’d say by tomorrow morning. The swelling should be down by then. She’ll need plenty of rest for a few weeks, but she can rest at home. I’ll put her discharge instructions in the system. Let me know if you need anything.” Hospital protocols be damned, he would take Maggie to CPI where she could be properly cared for.

The red-head doctor hadn’t been gone for more than a few minutes when the door opened again. This time, it was Theo that entered. He looked at Silas a moment before his eyes locked on Maggie curled in bed.

Before Theo could say a word, Silas reached out and grabbed a handful of his shirt, forcing the teenager out into the hall. Then Silas slammed him hard against the wall and pinned him there.

“What the hell happened? You better have a damn good excuse.” Silas knew it was wrong to blame Theo, but he’d done nothing to help the situation. He hadn’t even gone to the pharmaceutical complex when he realized she was injured. He didn’t do anything.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. The comms—” Theo’s eyes were wide with fear but Silas didn’t care.

“You expect me to believe that? She has a gash in her head so wide you could put your hand through it. Why? You fucking tell me why!” Silas was close to Theo’s face, screaming his frustrations and fears all at once.

“It was my fault. I let her go in alone.” Those words disarmed him completely. He hadn’t expected anything so rational and selfless. Silas dropped him.

“I turned off the comms,” Theo explained.

His hands became fists as he fought back his anger. He wanted to hear it from the source. “Why?”

“I didn’t want her as my partner. I wanted someone else. I thought if she messed up—”

Silas let out an angry scream as he slammed his palm against the wall. He paced the width of the hallway several times before turning back to Theo. “What if she’s infected, Kaufman? Did you think about that? What if she’s got a bug in her brain?”

Theo looked like a kid who’d just watched his dog get run over. His shoulders slumped and his features fell in an instant. “Get the hell out of here. Don’t come back.”

Silas never wanted to see him again.

“But, I—”

“I said
get out
.”

Theo’s jaw tightened as he turned and walked back down the hallway.

Silas returned to Maggie’s room and sank into the chair. He would never fail her again.