Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

“Hospital?”

Hugh handed his tablet to Adelle — then lunged forward and, before the reporter could lift a protective arm an inch, Hugh delivered a palm-open blow to Klein’s nose. The reporter barked a scream. Hugh then pointed to the man’s mouth as he glanced at one of the Assistance Unit men, who stepped behind him and wrapped his hand over Klein’s lips. Hugh moved closer, gripped the reporter’s left wrist, and twisted — Shaw, a champion wrestler in college, knew what was coming. He didn’t hear the sound as the shoulder popped from the socket; dislocations are loud internally but not to the world. Klein’s second scream was higher pitched, though muffled from the slab of a palm pressed against his face. He sagged.

Hugh gestured and his man lowered his hand, withdrew a tissue and wiped Klein’s blood from his fingers. Hugh adjusted his stance, centered himself briefly and, lightning fast, drove a fist into the reporter’s cheek. This time Shaw could hear the bone break.

Klein went out for a moment. The Assistance Unit men kept him upright.

Hugh leaned forward. “Can you hear me, Mr. Klein?”

“Wh... why?” He spit blood. He was crying. “No more. Please, please...”

“Can you hear me?”

The reporter started to lift his arm and wipe the blood that streamed from his nose and mouth but screamed again; he’d used the arm with the dislocated shoulder.

Hugh grimaced, apparently irritated at the sound. “You understand what I said?”

“No stories.”

“And no police. Other than to tell them about your accident. Because if you say anything more” — he gestured at Klein’s shattered face — “there’ll be consequences.”

“No, no, please.” Sniffing. “I’ll do anything.”

Hugh nodded to the others.

The men guided the staggering reporter into the forest behind the Administration building. Shaw could see that they turned left toward the parking lot. Apparently there was a path there that ran north and south, hidden by foliage. Via this route they could get to the lot and not be seen by anyone in the camp. Shaw backed away through the bushes and returned to the front of the Administration building.

This changed everything.

Hugh and the other three might be the isolated negatives the deprogrammer had told him about. After all, Hugh seemed to take the reporter’s incursion like a personal violation, and his sadistic response was absurdly out of proportion. Everyone else in the camp could be helpful professionals. Still, the fact that anyone here would resort to violence like that, when they could easily have called the police to report a trespasser, told Shaw that this was no place for anyone vulnerable and suicidal.

He’d stumbled when it came to protecting Adam Harper. He needed to find out how much danger the other members here were in.

Of course, there was a problem.

Facial recognition...

The initial application to the Osiris Foundation required a picture; it made sense to match that against the applicant who arrived in person. But they were using recognition software that prowled through public — and likely private — databases to weed out undesirables and catch intruders, like reporters and spies from competitors.

If the FR system failed to identify him, he’d stick with the original plan: participate in the Process himself and see what this place was all about — find out if Adam had been bullied enough that he found suicide a better alternative to dealing with the police.

Of course, if the recognition came back labeling him as Colter Shaw, he supposed he could just sprint for the gate, make a camp in the surrounding woods and reassess from there.

Forget the luggage. He’d lose his computer but he’d lost computers before.

Never put inanimate objects before your hide.

So, leave the truck, sprint to the parking lot and vault the chain link, take to the forest. Follow Harbinger Road back to Snoqualmie Gap. Call Mack, have money wired. Then buy what he needed and trek back here, setting up a base nearby, and start his surveillance.

That is, if he weren’t beaten so badly that would not be an option.

The front door opened. It was the Intake receptionist. She seemed to take note that he was standing, not sitting on the bench. “Please come in, Mr. Skye.”

He was glancing toward the path that would take him back to the parking lot. He saw three tunicked Assistance Unit guards standing in a circle in front of their building. How many were there in total? And how many subscribed to their boss’s bare-knuckle approach to security?

“You all right, Mr. Skye?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Please follow me.”

She led him to the third desk. He sat in the chair previously occupied, he assumed, by the now-severely-injured investigative reporter. It took a few seconds to spot the pinhole cameras. The one recording him was in the letter M of TOMORROW on the wall behind the third desk.

The back door opened and in walked the blond woman he’d seen outside.

She sat down, placed her tablet in the stand and touched it to life. Her lips smiled. Her eyes remained concentrated dark circles, like gun muzzles.

“Mr. Skye, I’m Journeyman Adelle. Let’s get started, shall we?”

Handing over the application form he’d downloaded and filled out, Shaw noted a trilogy of blood spots on the side of Adelle’s blue blouse, just below her right armpit. Hugh’s blow to Klein’s nose had been powerful, the spatter significant.

The Intake receptionist got a call. She said to the other women, “The gate’ll be closed for a half hour.”

Adelle said, “I know.”

Shaw asked bluntly, “The gate? Everything all right?”

Her glance contained a hint of cautious curiosity. Why would he ask? “Everything is fine.” She corralled a smile and continued to keyboard on her tablet.

Well, he figured, play your part for now. So far, his joints and cheekbones were intact and Adelle was smiling, even if that smile had no more substance than her makeup.

The woman spread his application in front of her and began transcribing information from it into the tablet.

There’d been an initial online process, in which Carter Skye had sent the picture of himself and a brief memo about why he sought admission to the three-week-long Initial Training Period at the Osiris Foundation.

He based Skye’s life on both the San Francisco journalist’s killer, Harvey Edwards, and Adam Harper. Skye’s history was one of depression and anger. He’d had run-ins with the authorities, drug offenses, occasional fights. He was “on the spectrum” somewhere: OCD, attention deficit, Asperger’s, anger issues. His romantic relationships had all ended quickly and presently he doubted that he and the woman he was seeing would be together for much longer. (This portion of the play was inspired by someone else, Margot, and was largely nonfiction.) Skye’s job — like Shaw’s after college — was working in the forestry business, surveying. Both Shaw and his alter ego liked the solitary nature of the work. He was a drifter, working temporary assignments. He didn’t do well with bosses.

The next day he’d received an email from the admissions director reporting that if he wanted to attend the session beginning the following Monday, he should complete the attached and bring it to the camp, along with a nonrefundable application fee of $1,000 and, if he chose to sign up for the course, the full fee would be $7,500.

Adelle posed a few questions, which he answered quickly — he’d memorized Skye’s bio, backward and forward.

The camera in the letter M was minuscule but to Shaw it was like a sniper scope aimed his way. He kept his head down at first but then gave up on the suspicious posture. It didn’t matter. He was sure the lens was of the highest resolution and already had recorded a dozen perfect, rich-pixel images of him. They were being carried by clever software through databases. Perhaps a digital eyebrow was presently being raised regarding a curious lookalike, one Mr. Colter Shaw.