Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

Liddie looked at her mother. The woman still had that look of righteous indignation on her face, but that was probably more from having her daughter threatened and her authority challenged. She probably didn’t care what happened to Edward as anything other than an experiment and theory she’d been trying to prove. But maybe that was enough. As long as she cared about Edward on some level, she wouldn’t want to destroy him.

Liddie made an almost imperceptible nod in Chella’s direction, but her mother caught it. Liddie hoped her mother realized what she was planning and wouldn’t try to stop it at the last second, but then her mother knew her better than anyone else. She had probably already realized that when or if this day came, Liddie wouldn’t let anything happen.

Liddie stood up, followed by her mother. “You don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said. “If you go through with this, you will…” She interrupted herself by punching Dr. Emmanuel in the balls.

He screeched and hunched over, putting him in the perfect position for Liddie to knee him in the chest. Liddie then grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him against the wall, although that was less to hurt him than to get both him and her out of the way of her mother and Dr. Chella. Dr. Chella stood there, too shocked to consider now might be a good time to defend herself, as Liddie’s mother ran up to her and punched her once more in the face. There was an audible crunching noise this time, and her mother screamed and pulled back her hand, but Chella didn’t say anything. Her eyes simply rolled back as her nose went from merely bleeding to completely smashed, and then she fell to the floor. She didn’t move, although she was at least still breathing. That was good. Liddie hated the woman with a fiery passion, but it would have made things so much worse if they had accidently killed her. As it was, Liddie suddenly realized, both she and her mother had just completely obliterated their careers and possibly gotten themselves a jail sentence for assault and battery.

Liddie wasn’t sure how her mother felt about it, but to Liddie it was worth it.

Edward had just been entering another of the disturbing red dreams when all the lights in his apartment came on at once and woke him up. His first reaction was relief, but that didn’t last long. No one ever interrupted him at this time of day. Something was up.

He heard the front door open, but he didn’t move from his bed until he heard Liddie speak. “Edward.”

He threw on some clothes quickly and went into the living room. Liddie stood in the open door. She looked disheveled like she had just been running or exerting herself in some way. She also had what looked like a laptop bag over her shoulder and a pile of clothes in her hand.

“Liddie, what’s going on?” Edward asked.

“You need to change into these clothes immediately,” she said. “It’s time for us to leave.”

“Leave? To where? Am I being moved?”

“No, leave as in leave permanently and never come back. Dr. Chella has been ordered by the president himself to terminate you.”

Edward blanched, but went to take the clothes. “Is she coming for me right now?”

“Um, no. I actually, uh, locked her and Dr. Emmanuel in a supply closet.”

He couldn’t help but smile at that, and despite the worried expression on her face only moments earlier Liddie smiled, too. He took the clothes and looked at them. They were janitor’s coveralls and a beat-up pair of shoes. They weren’t anywhere near the right size for him, but he supposed that was a minor problem at the moment.

“But how am I supposed to get out?” Edward asked. “They’re probably even watching this on the security cameras right now and calling in the guards.”

“My mother is working on that right this instant.”

“Your mother?”

“And it’s not going to be just you getting out. We both have to come with you. Considering all the laws we’ve already broken in the last fifteen minutes, I don’t think we can expect to get out of this with only slaps on our wrists.”

Edward put the coveralls on over his clothes. His heart was racing, yet he didn’t actually feel scared. He’d wanted to do this for as long as they’d been keeping him here, but he’d never really thought it would be possible. Any plans for escaping had been pure fantasy, although in the more recent ones he hadn’t been leaving alone. The fact that Liddie would really be coming along actually gave him butterflies in his stomach.

“Was it about what happened in that room?” Edward asked.

“Mostly,” Liddie said. “I’ll explain everything Chella said if we manage to get out of here. But there’s something else, too.” She gestured at the computer bag. “I didn’t even know about it until just now, but apparently it was all over the news tonight.”

“What was?”

“You, actually.”

Edward was too shocked to say anything to that, so he just finished putting on his shoes and went out into the hallway. He thought for a moment about going back in and grabbing his NASCAR video, since it was likely a rather rare find in the modern world, but he kind of doubted he would be able to watch it at any conceivable point in the future. It felt a little strange leaving the apartment knowing it would be the last time, but it wasn’t like it had ever been his home. He wasn’t sure that he would ever have a real home ever again.

Just as he was leaving the apartment, Danielle Gates jogged down the hall and met them. She looked even more out of sorts than Liddie, thanks mostly to her horribly swollen hand. He nodded at her and she nodded back, but he didn’t really have anything to say to her. In none of his escape fantasies had she ever been along for the ride. From the very beginning she had struck him as someone who put duty first, possibly even before her own daughter. But he had to be wrong about that. Liddie had to be the only reason she was helping. He certainly didn’t think she really cared one lick about him.

“I distracted the guard in this floor’s security station, then hit him and tied him up. No one should realize anything is wrong for at least an hour. I swear, I’ve physically attacked more people today than I previously have in my entire life.”

“So how are we actually going to do this?” Liddie asked.

“You can both go down in the elevator together without anyone getting suspicious,” Danielle said. “Or at least I hope so. But from there you’ll have to temporarily split up. It would look strange for one of the senior staff members of the CRS to be palling around with a janitor. Direct Edward toward one of the back exits. Probably by the canteen area. He shouldn’t look too strange there, just another low level employee trying to get lunch. You can then go to the motor pool and get one of the vans, but you have to remember what I showed you that one time about disabling the tracking device. Go around to the exit and pick Edward up, then get the hell out of Stanford. If you’re lucky you’ll get about an hour before anyone realizes something is wrong, and even longer before they realize he’s not anywhere in the building.”

Liddie stared at her for several seconds without speaking, then replied softly. “You’re not coming with us.”

“I can run interference for you here. Even if I can only get you a few extra minutes, that still may be enough for you to get Edward out.”

“But you’ll get arrested for this,” Liddie protested.

“Maybe,” Danielle said. “But maybe from here I can show people that Dr. Chella is a dangerous quack.”

“Why are you really helping me?” Edward asked.

“You are the proof of my life’s work,” Danielle said. “Others may think you’re dangerous. Even I’m not entirely sure you’re not, especially if there’s any truth to Dr. Chella’s theories. But I will not have everything I’ve worked for destroyed just because a clueless politician got paranoid.”