Michelle Maddox - Countdown

"Now, now, I have something you might be interested in."

"What is it?" I asked, my voice strained.

He produced a trifold flyer printed on light blue paper. "Have you been wanting to get away? Want to figure out how to finagle a seat on the Offworld shuttle while you're on a working-class budget? Well, I have just the thing for you right here."

"Not interested," Rogan said. "Get yourself and your scam away from us."

"Scam? Not even slightly. In my course I will give you the top ten ways to get to Offworld and away from it all. There are always other options, other solutions. Just picture it: sun, sand, green grass for miles around. A perfect place for a perfect life, Offworld is. And you can get there with my help."

"It's a course?" I asked, feeling oddly disappointed.

"Yes. It's called Ten Weeks to Paradise. Five hundred dollars and you, too, can realize your dreams." He thrust the flyer at me.

"Not interested." Rogan's hand tightened at my waist. "Get out of our way. I'm asking you for the last time."

The man cleared his throat and withdrew another flyer from his inner jacket pocket. "Not interested, I can understand that. Perhaps a vacation a little closer to home? I can provide you with a steady supply of Kerometh to make every day a holiday-"

Rogan pushed him out of our way and we started walking again.

"Scumbags," Rogan said under his breath. "I almost forgot they're found outside of prison as well as inside."

I looked wistfully back at the man. How many people had he conned into taking his course that gave no promises? He just preyed on the dreams of the people stuck here. People like me.

Not that I ever would have had five hundred bucks to spend on a course.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head as we closed the distance between us and our destination. The numbers 358 were carved out of gold, very large above the door.

"What is this place?" Rogan asked.

I tried the door and was surprised when it swung open at my touch. We slipped inside and closed it behind us. The noise from the street outside vanished. We were now in an unadorned hallway lit only by the small window on the outer door. I felt Rogan's hand close around my own and squeeze reassuringly, and we began to move along the passageway.

"This is supposed to be a safe house," I whispered. "Someone … someone reliable told me about it."

"Reliable? Who?"

"I'll explain more in a minute. Come on."

Every time I'd mentioned Gareth I'd been overheard and stopped. I knew that the cameras were long gone- otherwise we wouldn't have made it this far-but I wasn't prepared to risk it. Not yet.

The passage went along straight for about twenty feet and then turned sharply to the right. It was as if the front of the house that faced Paragon Avenue were just a facade.

Finally, ahead of us, there was a modest amount of light. Luckily we hadn't been walking in complete darkness, because I wouldn't have been able to function as well as I was in this half-light.

"Sorry my hands are sweating," I whispered.

"So are mine. Mostly because you won't tell me what the hell's going on."

"If I knew for sure, I'd tell you."

"Yeah, that's reassuring."

Ahead of us was another door. It was red and it had a doorbell next to it. On the door were the numbers 358 again. I assumed this was the true front of the safe house. At least, I sincerely hoped so.

"Now what?" Rogan asked.

I bit my bottom lip so hard I thought I'd draw blood. Then I raised my hand and pressed the bell. The sound of a buzzer was deafening.

I half expected the door to swing inward into darkness and some monster to appear, grabbing us and dragging us inside.

But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.

We waited in silence for five full minutes.

"Okay," Rogan said then. "So how long should we wait here? And what exactly are we waiting for? I'm trying to be patient, Kira, really I am. But you'll excuse me if I'm not feeling all that calm at the moment."

I turned to face him and put a hand on his chest. I could feel his heart beating rapidly beneath my fingers.

And I told him. Everything I could about his brother. Everything I'd learned from my flex that slid down into the part of Gareth that still existed past the virus that had taken him over. How he'd slipped this address into my mind at the last moment. How nothing he'd done was his fault, but the fault of the artificial intelligence computer program that had been screwed up by a virus and had taken over his implant.

Rogan listened to me in silence, his expression like stone. When I was finished I waited for his reaction.

It took a moment.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" he asked quietly.

"I tried to… on the roof after Mac and Kurtis … just a little while ago before the room split. They were listening. They didn't want me to tell you, so they wouldn't let me."

He nodded solemnly. "I see."

"So your brother didn't really sell you out. He didn't abandon you. He's not in control of what he's doing."

His forehead creased into a deep frown. "It must have happened when I tried to destroy the computers four years ago. The power outage… it must have sparked something in Gareth's prototype implant… and if there was a virus in the AI programming at the time …"

I watched the different emotions play on Rogan's face: disbelief to anger to the slow, steady realization that this was what had truly happened. That everything began to make sense in his terrible past.

"You know, all this time I thought I'd wasted all that money in artificial intelligence research. I only did it for the game in the first place." He laughed, and it was a hollow sound. "Shit. Be careful what you wish for, right? I'm the one who invented the thing that killed my brother and ruined my life."

I shook my head. "But Gareth's not dead. He's still in there somewhere. He's the one who told me to come here. He wants you to be safe."

His eyes shifted back and forth as he tried to process all of this information. "Jonathan must have known. Of course. He was the main researcher in the AI programming. Maybe he was the one who added the virus to the mix. I don't know. He is Gareth's right-hand man now. And he didn't raise a finger to help me when I was in prison."

I touched his face and made him look at me. "But he gave you the antidote for the poison in your shoulder."

He frowned. "Yeah, that he did. If he hadn't I would have been dead by now; I have no doubt about that. Gareth wants me out of the way, but he wanted to play with me a bit first." He laughed that hopeless laugh again. "Guess he was afraid I might try to pull the plug on him again."

"I read Jonathan and I felt only honesty from him. If he's doing what Gareth wants, then it's against his will."

"I have faith in your abilities, Kira, but there might be a way for him to fool you. I'm … I'm just worried that you may have read Gareth wrong, too. Maybe this is a trap."

I swallowed. "Don't say that."

He looked at the door again, at the buzzer I'd pressed almost ten minutes ago. "We need to get out of here right now. There are other places we can hide." He reached around to the back of his head. "Shit. I wish we didn't have these implants. It won't be long before they'll be able to pinpoint our location down to the square foot. They must have some precautions set up in case competitors manage to escape-some sort of alternate plan. We can't stay in one place for too long."

I looked at the door again, and my high hopes for something miraculous to happen began to wane. "Dammit. Maybe you're right."

He reached down and took my hand in his. "There's only one person I'm going to trust, Kira, and it's you. I hope you feel the same way about me."

I nodded, and he leaned forward to kiss me lightly on my lips. The warmth of his mouth burned through the chill I was feeling.