Cameron grabbed Alex’s wrist and pulled her along. “Run. Stop at nothing!”
The two ran through the class, hoping that they could just barrel their way out the door before anyone was the wiser.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” Wannsik yelled.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Bill, the varsity quarterback, repeated, getting in his way. Half of the school’s varsity athletes followed suit and blocked their path to the exit.
No other choice now. Angle left. Do not let Alex out of your sight. Do not get surrounded. Try not to hurt anyone. Go!
Cameron let go of Alex and attacked, flowing through the motions, sliding in between students, using an open hand to grapple and body-check those in his way. He knew all the kids here, and most weren’t bullies like some of the guys on the football team. However, they were blocking his way, so he had to take them down.
Hands grabbed at him, pulling at his shirt and arms. Someone smacked him in the face. Cameron spun and dodged, slicing between people, sweeping out with his feet and tripping them when he could, knocking others off-balance with his arms when he had to. He felt graceful and in-control. These kids stood little chance as he spun a guy around and pushed him into two others. He sidestepped a tackle and tripped another. Before he knew it, he had worked his way through a dozen bodies, half of which were now groaning on the floor. He also was pretty sure he hadn’t seriously injured anyone.
Well done.
Cameron looked for Alex and gasped. Tabs obviously had not given her the same instruction about not hurting any of his classmates. Alex was laying waste to the soccer team. He saw three students on the ground unconscious and at least two puddles of blood. He watched, fascinated and horrified as she shattered Bill’s nose with her fist, exploding bright blood all over the floor.
In a second, she moved in on the starting third baseman and broke his wrist when he grabbed for her. Then, before any of the now-terrified kids could run away, she actually pounced on one of the football linesmen and elbowed him on the back of the head. He collapsed like a ton of rocks onto the floor.
Get her out of here before she kills someone.
Cameron ran and grabbed her before she could cause any more damage. She almost seemed to be in a feral trance as he pulled her back. “We need to go.” He wrapped his arms around her waist as she struggled against him.
Right as they stepped out the door, she became perfectly calm again. “Let’s go,” she said, and took off, leaving Cameron dumbfounded with nothing left to do but follow her.
29 Hospital Visit
Timestamp: 3133
The next few years were a blur. Small town Appalachia gave way to small town Midwest to small town Rockies. We even did a stint in Canada. Way too cold. By then, we had learned how to avoid the IXTF. The Genjix were dealing with their own consolidation and had largely forgotten about us, and the Prophus network was too much in tatters to mount any sort of steady operation. It was actually a nice time in our lives.
That all changed when the Keeper made a personal visit to our home.
Roen wasn’t a big fan of hospitals. He usually visited them as a patient and was there for gunshot wounds, broken limbs, or some form of blunt force trauma. That kind of stuff he was fine with. He recognized that he would have been dead a dozen times over if it weren’t for hospitals. That wasn’t what bugged him about them. He just didn’t like the smell.
There was something about that sterile smell that drove him nuts. Roen guessed it would be better than the stink of death, but every time he was in a hospital, it brought him back to that fateful day when he had to bust Edward’s brother, Gregory, out of the long-term care facility. He ended up killing his first person that day, and then euthanizing Gregory that evening in order to free Yol. No matter how many times Roen had killed since, that day haunted him, and every time he stepped foot into a hospital and smelled the sterile hospital smell, he relived those moments.
Stepping into Saint Alphonsus was no different, though this time he was actually breaking into the building, as opposed to being a patient. His plan was simple. Find an exterior door in a less-traveled area without a surveillance camera. Once someone passes through, jump out of a hiding place and follow inside. In a small-town facility like Oregon, it should be a cakewalk.
Unfortunately, Roen picked too quiet a spot. He found a door near the far end of the loading dock that had a small garden for patients to sit in. It was a foggy morning, so finding a good hiding spot around the corner behind a thick bush proved relatively easy. He planted himself there and waited. And waited. And waited some more.
It was twenty minutes before someone used that door. Unfortunately for Roen, his attention had wandered by then, and he was a second too late in grabbing for the door before it closed. It was another fifteen minutes before someone else came out for a smoke. This time, he was ready and leaped to the handle before the door closed all the way. Once he got through the front outer door, all he had to do was act like someone who was supposed to be there.
Helen’s scrubs had looked like a skin suit on him when he had tried them on. Instead, for the first time since the desk job Tao had found him in, he wore a shirt and tie, and sported a pair of khakis. These he had picked up from the local department store down the street. Selections were pretty limited, so he was relegated to a baby-blue short-sleeve button down and a decidedly non-matching tie. He could imagine what Tao would say right now if he saw Roen.
Short sleeve button-downs are an abomination.
“Six bucks a shirt, man. Six bucks.”
Marco and Helen had a field day poking fun at him when he tried them on. He wasn’t sure that’s what doctors were supposed to wear, but it seemed about right. The tie also wasn’t hanging quite straight; the double-Windsor was one of those skills he had never gotten around to mastering, and he was too embarrassed to ask Marco for help. Jill was the one who usually took care of that for him.
It only took Roen a few minutes to sneak into the main hallway and blend in with his fake badge. That was the one nice thing about small towns; security was usually pretty lax. Now, all Roen had to do was act liked he belonged. That was really half the battle when it came to infiltrating any place. It was admittedly one of his weaker skillsets, but it wasn’t like he was busting into Fort Knox here.
A few of the nurses and doctors threw looks his way, but most ignored him after he gave them a friendly smile and pretended to be busy. It took a little sleuthing and some flirting with some of the nurses – he really wasn’t as incompetent as Jill and Marco made him out to be – before he found his way to the third floor recovery rooms.
No sooner had he rounded the corner, than he saw two men guarding one of the doors in the middle of the hallway. Roen palmed the listening bug in his hand and pretended to ignore them as he tried to pass by the room.
Predictably, the two men stood up and one of them blocked his path. “Sorry, sir, this is a restricted area.”
Roen acted confused. “I’m just trying to get across.” He caught a glimpse inside the room. Prie was awake and propped up on the bed, talking to someone to his left. The commotion in the hallway must have caught his attention, because he turned to face Roen, and their eyes met. Pri must have told him something, because Roen received a slight nod.
Security was too tight. There was no way he could step foot into the room to plant the bug. Perhaps if he broke in at night, but Roen was willing to bet there were guards here around the clock. He had to be careful not to spook the IXTF folks, or they might just move Prie prematurely.