Lockdown (The Fringe #4) Read online

  Even through the thick suit, I can tell it’s colder in here than it is in the rest of the medical ward. The air smells slightly stale, but I can’t tell if that’s the negative-pressure room or just the new filter on my mask.

  As I navigate around the bed in the tight space and close the awkwardly large door, Xavier’s smirk widens.

  “How is everything?” I ask. My voice sounds canned and crackly coming through the shitty mic, and my warm breath fogs up the face shield.

  “About as pleasant as can be expected.” He looks over to the far wall with a blank stare as if he’s looking out of a nonexistent window. “They won’t let me get a haircut. I suppose they think I might grab the scissors and try to off myself.”

  “They probably just don’t want the liability of letting an EnComm barber in here,” I say, feeling a tiny pang of sympathy for the guy.

  “Right. Can’t have normal people being poisoned by the crazy fuckers.”

  “Nobody thinks you’re crazy,” I lie.

  “Sure you do,” says Xavier, still not looking at me. “You’d be crazy if you didn’t.”

  I don’t really know how to respond to that, so I focus on Xavier’s physical appearance to see if there’s anything out of the ordinary. He’s still light pink from his horrendous sunburn, but the skin visible beneath the collar of his gown seems pale and sickly by comparison.

  “Tell me, Miss Lyang. Everyone has their own theory on what Kimber and I may have been up to out there on the Fringe . . .”

  I hold my breath.

  “What do you think we were doing all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, clearing my throat. “Do you . . . feel like talking about it?”

  “What’s the point?” he asks with a shrug, finally swiveling his neck around to look at me. “Everyone will know the truth soon enough.”

  “The truth?”

  He nods and beckons me closer. Leaning over his bed, I’m unprepared for him to throw out his hand and grab me by the wrist.

  I let out a little yelp and try to twist out of his grip, but the admonishing look in his eyes makes me go still.

  “I don’t envy you, Sawyer. Can I call you Sawyer?”

  “Let go of me.”

  “I don’t envy you one little bit.”

  He releases me, and I take an automatic step back.

  “I mean, sure . . . you have a nice compartment. You have a larger stipend as a first-year med intern than I can hope to make as a lieutenant . . .” He raises an eyebrow and points to his temple. “But you can’t put a price on knowledge.”

  I back away slowly, shaken but still unable to take my eyes off him.

  “There are some things outside this compound that would blow your little overachieving mind. And once you know them, well . . . you can’t unknow them. Once you understand how things really work . . .” He shakes his head. “Suddenly, your perfect little world gets a lot more complicated.”

  I just stare at him, unsure what to say. I want to tell him to shut the fuck up, but I need to keep him talking. I feel as though he’s on the verge of telling me where he and Kimber have been all this time — information I’m not sure he’s given anybody else.

  “Tell me, Sawyer . . .” He lowers his voice. “How much do you know about the Fringe?”

  Suddenly the uneasy feeling in my gut intensifies. He’s going to tell me about the drifters.

  “Enough,” I murmur.

  He lets out a harsh burst of air from between his teeth and cracks a sad smile. “That’s how I know you’re still buying into all their lies. Once you know the truth, it’s never ‘enough.’ It’s too much right away, but you feel as though you’ll never have the full story.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His smile grows sinister. “Don’t worry. Soon you’ll have more than you can handle, too. Just be patient, little overachiever. Enjoy all this . . . while you can.”

  A self-satisfied sneer spreads across his face, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.

  I wait for him to say more, but he just lies back on his pillows, folds his spidery hands over his stomach, and closes his eyes. “I’m tired now. Please leave.”

  The air deflates from my lungs, and I don’t know whether to feel angry, apprehensive, or disappointed.

  But when I back out of the room and close the door behind me, my hands are trembling so badly that I can barely unzip my hazmat suit.

  I practically trip over my own feet getting out of the thing, and by the time I extricate my legs from the clingy rubber material, I’m sweating and shaking all over. I shove the suit into the plastic hazmat bin for decontamination and stumble out into the support zone.

  I brace my trembling hands on either side of the door and take ten long deep breaths.

  I don’t know if Xavier was trying to scare me, but he did. I know I should go back in there and wake Kimber to ask her some questions, but I desperately need a moment alone to regroup.

  Just then, I hear someone punching in a code behind me. There’s a loud beep, and the door swings open. This area is much more cramped than the middle corridor, so I have to flatten myself against the wall to keep the door from banging into my shoulder.

  Watson sticks his head inside. “Lyang!”

  “Sorry, sir,” I say, stepping back from the door and running my hands up and down my arms to make the goosebumps go away. “You scared me.”

  “Where’s the morning report on the isolated patients?”

  “I have it here, sir,” I say, gesturing to my interface. “Sorry. I was just getting ready to enter my observations.”

  Watson lets out an impatient huff. My report isn’t late, but Watson often demands to see my work an hour or more before it’s due.

  “Lyang . . . since you seem incapable of submitting a routine report on time, why don’t you save us both the trouble and just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Vitals look great,” I say, shaking off the sting of the reprimand. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Good. I was planning on releasing him this afternoon.”

  “Releasing him?”

  “He’s been here more than seventy-two hours without showing any signs of a virus. He had some mild radiation sickness, but nothing alarming. And as far as I can tell, he’s not a danger to himself or to others, so —”

  “You can’t release him,” I splutter.

  Watson pauses, thrown off at having his decision questioned. “And why the hell not?”

  “He’s —” I hesitate, wondering how much of my unease was triggered by Xavier’s repellant personality rather than a genuine medical concern. I want to tell Watson that Xavier seems unhinged — dangerous even — but I need something more than a gut feeling to convince him.

  “Well spit it out, Lyang!” Watson snaps. “I haven’t got all day!”

  “The man — Xavier . . . He seems a little . . . off to me.”

  Watson lets out an exasperated sigh. “Your vague feelings thrill me to no end, Lyang. In fact, I can’t think of anything better than having one of my med interns making decisions based on hunches. But, in the interest of avoiding a lawsuit, why don’t you give me a legitimate reason for your recommendation?”

  “He seems . . . unstable,” I finish. “He’s not ready to go back to Recon the way he is now. I think we should keep him under observation.”

  Watson expels another breath of annoyance. Since he hasn’t shut me down yet, I’m guessing Caleb had similar reservations about releasing Xavier.

  “Fine,” he says. “But the best I can do is move him to psychiatric holding and recommend he undergo evaluation. I’m going to get an earful about this from Commander Pierce.”

  “Right.”

  Watson delivers one last eye roll and then strides out of the room. But as soon as I let out a breath of relief, my interface starts beeping frantically.

  One of the other physicians is asking for a blood test. I hurry down the tunnel to collect the sample. It tak
es longer than I anticipated, and by the time I drop it off at the lab, I see the older nurse who was assigned to the isolation zone round the corner with Kimber in tow.

  Kimber is dressed in gray fatigues and looks much more awake than she did a half hour ago. She’s wearing her choppy auburn hair in a low bun, and her brown eyes are cool and alert.

  I move to the right to let them pass, following Kimber’s boots with my eyes.

  When I look up, she turns her head abruptly and fixes me with an aggressive stare. Her eyes are completely emotionless, but her dramatic brows are arched in a warning look.

  As I watch, she clenches her jaw and jerks her head upward in . . . a taunt?

  My mouth falls open, and her full lips curl into a cunning smile. Then she turns her head back down the tunnel and looks straight ahead as though she never saw me.

  A chill rolls down my spine, followed by a wave of confusion. If the drifters did send Kimber and Xavier back to introduce a virus to the compound, something must have gone wrong. Neither one of them showed any signs of being infected, but I still get the feeling that they’re planning something.

  I may have been able to chalk my suspicions about Xavier up to paranoia, but I definitely didn’t imagine the look Kimber just gave me.

  Thinking there may have been something unusual in Caleb’s notes from the night before, I head for Watson’s office and begin crafting an excuse for why I need to look into Kimber’s file.

  His office is located at the end of the tunnel, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the patient rooms. It’s the only door that’s always cracked a few inches — as if he’s using that small gap to keep an eye on his subordinates at all times.

  When I’m just a few feet away, I hear his voice drifting through the crack. He’s talking to someone on his interface, and I can almost picture him sitting there with his feet up on his desk and his neck resting in his hands.

  I turn to leave so he doesn’t think I’m eavesdropping, but something in his tone gives me pause. It’s the same cold, smooth voice he uses to cut down interns and make nurses cry, but it’s low and calculating.

  “I wouldn’t worry just yet,” he says to the person on the other end.

  “We’ll get him . . .

  “Of course I’m not losing my touch . . .”

  I know I should back away and act as though I never heard anything, but my curiosity leaves me rooted to the spot.

  “Well, if you have your doubts, maybe you should ask Ozias who’s better suited for the job: you or me.”

  Watson lets out a condescending little laugh, and I chance a look around the door.

  He’s sitting with his back to me, watching a video feed on his interface. His head is blocking most of the image, but the flesh-colored ripple of a man’s bare chest is unmistakable.

  The man is sitting in a chair with his hands bound behind him. When Watson moves his head, I see the side of the guy’s face and what looks like a shock collar around his neck.

  Something flickers on the edge of the frame, and the man grits his teeth as though someone delivered another painful shock.

  Suddenly, the cold feeling I got from Kimber is gone, replaced by a fresh pang of horror.

  Watson is no ordinary attending physician who oversees med interns. He’s part of Constance . . . and he’s overseeing Eli’s torture.

  eight

  Eli

  Constance has a guy for everything. They have hacker guys and gangster guys — even a union guy who collects intel on dissent brewing in ExCon. They have a handful of doctors from Health and Rehab, including one who’s dedicated to developing new “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

  They call him the Answer Man.

  He’s only visited me once since I’ve been with Constance, but I know I’ve seen him around the medical ward. He has a cruelly handsome face that’s much too tan and the trim physique of a runner.

  He watched me through the bars of my holding cell when I first arrived and advised Jayden on a few of his favorite torture methods. Whipping, waterboarding, and electric shock are Constance’s bread and butter, but they weren’t enough to break me.

  I thought my resistance might unnerve the Answer Man, but he has plenty of tricks up his sleeve. Yesterday he had them move me to another room with black walls, a black floor, and no lights.

  They cranked up the heat and made me sweat until I passed out from dehydration. Then they gave me just enough fluids to revive me, stripped me down to my shorts, and dropped the temperature in my chamber to induce hypothermia.

  The hellish combination of severe cold and dehydration should have been enough to send my body into shock, but I’m not deteriorating fast enough for their liking.

  Jayden is growing impatient.

  To break me down faster, the Answer Man added sleep deprivation and sensory overload to the mix. He’s been blasting the same Swedish techno rap song for ages and rigged a strobe light to flash in time with the song.

  It makes me feel constantly nauseated, and whenever I try to sleep, the flashing white light leaks through my eyelids. My body is so sore from the constant shivering that the rattle of the bass feels like a beating.

  At first I tried to count the number of song repetitions to keep track of time, but holding on to that information required too much energy.

  I have no idea how long I’ve been here. Humans can live without food for up to three weeks, and they haven’t fed me a scrap since I arrived. I’d literally kill for a bowl of sweet potatoes smothered in brown sugar, and I’m starting to hallucinate.

  But every time I feel myself drifting off, I mentally yank myself back to the present to remember where I am and why I’m there. It’s the only way to keep Constance from breaking me mentally.

  They want me to go insane. They’re trying to make me weak so that I’ll tell them everything they want to know.

  In truth, I don’t know anything that could help them locate Owen. I’m sure he’s long gone by now. The only way to satisfy Jayden is to feed her some bullshit intel, but I’m holding out as long as I can.

  Jayden knows I won’t give up my brother without a fight, so I have to play my last card carefully. I plan to use it to save Harper, which is the only thing keeping me going.

  I know she’s still alive — if for no other reason than the fact that Jayden needs her to use as leverage.

  As soon as the Answer Man runs out of creative torture methods, they’re going to bring in Harper to make me talk. When that time comes, I’ll trade a confession for Harper’s freedom. I’ll spin the most elaborate lie I can think up and sell it shamelessly.

  If I’m lucky, they’ll let me see her one last time before Jayden has me killed. Until then, I’m trapped in a prison of my own misery, waiting for the noise and lights to stop.

  Then, miraculously, they do.

  The silence is so abrupt that it’s jarring. The room goes pitch black, but the harsh light is still imprinted on the backs of my eyelids.

  Without the deafening wail of music, the silence takes on an odd ringing quality. Then I hear something else: my own shaky intake of breath as I shiver and the mechanical click of the lock.

  A wedge of light squeezes its way into the room, and a tall figure steps inside. I brace myself for a fresh wave of suffering, but it isn’t the Answer Man standing in the doorway.

  My visitor is dressed all in white, and the light from the tunnel illuminates a mop of messy golden waves. “Eli?”

  Maybe I’m dead, I think. Maybe I’m about to meet my maker.

  But surely God wouldn’t have a black eye and a fat lip. That’s when I realize my visitor is Celdon.

  “Hey,” he says cautiously, flipping a switch outside the door and illuminating my chamber with soft recessed lighting.

  “Wh-what are y-you . . . d-d-doing here?” I stutter. I mean for the question to sound threatening, but my chattering teeth dampen the effect.

  “I brought you this,” he says, holding up a small blanket.


  I’m giving him the most menacing glare I can manage, but when he shakes out the blanket and moves to drape it over my bare shoulders, I don’t resist.

  After hours of freezing half-naked in the dark, it feels as though it’s made out of angel wings and clouds. I wrap it tightly around my shoulders and savor the tiny amount of heat my body is still managing to produce.

  “Wh-why are you — h-here?” I stammer, glowering at Celdon.

  “I thought it was obvious,” he says, as though by “here” I meant the chamber. “You were in the most dangerous stage of hypothermia. A few more minutes and you’d actually start to feel hot. Then you’d fall asleep and die.”

  “Is that what they teach you in the Constance Torture Academy?” I ask bitterly.

  “No,” says Celdon in a defensive tone. “I learned that in science class.”

  I’m still glaring at him with all the contempt I can manage, so he clears his throat awkwardly and keeps babbling. “The temperature control runs on a timer, but I turned it off. It should warm up in here soon.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble?”

  He shrugs. “I know they want to keep you alive, so they should really thank me. And anyway, it’s the middle of the night. Even Jayden has to kill the bitch switch and power down for a few hours now and then.”

  He watches me for a moment as if he’s hoping that his clear disdain for Jayden will get me to relax. When it doesn’t, he ducks out of the room and reemerges with a white takeout container in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

  “Almost forgot.”

  He moves to bring the food over but stops short and slides the container across the floor instead.

  “I knew you’d be hungry,” he says in an apologetic voice.

  I check the box with my foot and reach down to get it, not taking my eyes off Celdon for a second. I’m not sure what this “good cop” routine is all about, but the container is still hot on the bottom, and I just can’t fucking resist.