Tegan sat on her bed in the tiny hospital room, sick to her stomach. She tried not to look down, but even that was beyond her ability. The stump at the end of her right leg was a sight even more unbearable than her ravaged foot had been.
Her foot had been damaged so badly by the gunshot that repairing it would have been impossible. When the doctors had told her, she had not quite believed them. Couldn't modern medicine fix everything? Nevertheless, she had accepted what might as well have been the end of her life as she knew it, at least until she could get a prosthetic.
The door swung open, startling her. "Roman?"
"Hey, Tegan." A smile illuminated his face. "They said I could come visit."
"What about your dad? Did he say you could come see me?" she asked.
"He drove me here," said Roman. "And not only because he works here." He sat down in the chair next to her bed. "Does this mean we aren't doing school today?"
She chuckled. Tegan had been his homeschool tutor for the past few years, and unlike most teenagers, Roman treasured his school time. "On what Saturday have we ever done school?" she asked.
"This one," he suggested.
"Yeah, not today." She did her best to smile through the pain. "Anything happened that I should know about?"
"I don't know if you know already, but Fiver killed the man who shot you. It actually happened before you guys came back to the den. They gave him an injection of...what's it called? Fennel?"
"Fentanyl," she corrected. "Fennel is a vegetable, not a drug."
"Oh." Roman laughed a little at his mistake. "What does it do, anyway?"
"It's an opioid pain reliever. A hundred times stronger than morphine," she told him. "Dangerous stuff. And to think, they get that illegal prescription filled right upstairs in the pharmacy. Speaking of the pharmacy, how's Linda doing?" Linda was the elderly woman who ran the drugstore that served as their cover-up.
"Good as ever." He smiled uneasily. "Still sharp as a tool."
Tegan stared down at her stump again. "It'll be a while until I can get a prosthesis," she admitted. "Until then, it'll be crutches. I won't be very useful for a while."
"You'll be stronger up here than all of us." Roman flexed his scrawny arms. "And in here." He pointed to his chest.
"You know, Roman." Tegan set her hand on his shoulder. "You're the sweetest kid ever."
The boy smiled a little wider, even though she could tell his nerves were getting to him. "Thanks."
.........
After his visit with Tegan, Roman left the hospital on foot. He didn't know where his father was, much less where he had left the car keys, so he'd left a message saying where he would be and set out for a walk. The day was overcast and brisk, but not too cold. The sights, sounds, and smells of the city's underbelly greeted him like an old neighbor. Cars and buses grumbled along the narrow streets, occasionally flashing brights or honking at one another. People were everywhere, doing all manner of things.
Roman set off down the cracked sidewalk. Being a Saturday morning, there were far more other young people out than usual. No school, after all. None that he knew, though, and none that paid any attention to him. A boy and a girl, probably a year or two younger than he was, passed by him, holding hands and laughing. In an alley he passed, some kids were tossing a ball and shouting to each other. He smiled a little and pressed on.
He walked another block before someone stopped him. "Hey, kid."
He whirled around. Sitting on the steps of an old apartment building was a group of boys around his age, and in the middle of them was a six-pack of beers. "H-hello..." Roman stammered. Who were they, and what did they want with him?
"Got any cash?" asked the one who'd greeted him. "If you've got any, we'll let you have a drink."
Roman shuddered. Have a drink. Were they out of their minds? His mother had been hopelessly addicted to alcohol, even while pregnant with him. He lived every day with the repercussions of her habit, even though she herself was long gone. "I...I don't have any cash..."
"He's lying," said another boy. "Do you hear him? He can't even spit it out." He took a swig of beer and laughed. "Whatever. More for us."
Roman snapped. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
"Having fun," one insisted. "What's your problem, kid?
Without saying anything, he snatched the bottle from the boy's hand and pitched it onto the concrete, smashing it. The evil-looking brown liquid spilled across the sidewalk. All of them got up and started screaming obscenities at him. The tallest of them, a thug with arms so muscular they seemed to burst through his sleeves, took a swing at his head.
Roman ducked and sprinted away as fast as he could. The brute ran after him, caught up to him, and kicked his feet out from under him. Roman sprawled on the concrete, skinning his knees and the heels of his hands. He scrambled to get back up, but a fist collided with the back of his head. Stars flickered in his vision. With a little gasp of pain, he sank back to the ground.
"You're gonna pay, you little shit," the kid growled. He grabbed Roman by the arm and dragged him into an alley where his friends were already waiting. The boys grinned. Roman tried and failed to not cry. They pinned him up against a wall by the back door of a corner pharmacy. "You're gonna pay!"
The door swung open. "What're yous guys doin'?" an old woman barked. Roman looked up and saw Linda hobble out the door with her cane. His assailant laughed maniacally. WHAM! Though her cane missed the boy's head and hit the wall instead, it sent them all fleeing. "Imbeciles," she scoffed. "Everyone's goin' to love this story."
Despite his pain and terror, Roman couldn't help but laugh along with her. He followed Linda inside, chuckling as he passed the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. He wondered what Fiver would have done. Either decked their faces in black and blue, or invited them to join the team.
.........
"Come on, Coda. You can do it!" Jim called.
The whale bellowed in frustration. Jim clutched his headphones, jarred by the sheer volume and force of Coda's sound.
- How do I get you in focus? –
"Just take a picture. It doesn't have to be a good one. We'll work on that later," Jim told him. "I need you to show me that you can use the camera. If you can't, we need to modify it a little more."
Coda-9994 clicked out his commands. Zoom in. No flash. Snap! A horribly blurry photograph of Jim appeared on the clear screen in front of his left eye, then disappeared.
- Did it! You look positively flattering. –
Jim chuckled. "I'll work on fixing the focus."
Coda raised his head above the water. Jim detached the camera from his headgear and gave him a pat. Their gazes connected for a moment before the whale spoke again.
- Your turn, Jim. –
"Yeah, not today," he laughed. "There's no way I'd be able to use this. I don't speak whale. Maybe I'll pick it up after I go report to Dr. Resting Bitchface." He closed the CCIT application and waved goodbye. Coda-9994 wiggled one flipper, as if attempting to wave, then plunged back below the surface, hitting his flukes on the water as he descended and splashing Jim so hard he nearly fell over.
He staggered out the door, drenched in cold saltwater. In a facility that housed aquatic mammals, it was not a rare sight for people to walk around dripping wet, but it was embarassing nonetheless. Jim always kept a spare set of dry clothes in his office, so he headed down there from the top deck of Coda's pool. On his way, he nearly ran into a red-haired man in a suit. "Pardon me," he muttered, racing past him to get to his office.
"What's the matter, Jim? Whale get you wet?" Harrison Mather called after him.
Jim said nothing and kept walking.
Harry appeared beside him, seemingly out of nowhere. "Do you know where Amy's office is?"
"Room A1," he said. "Now let me get to my office so I can grab my dry clothes."
"If you're headed there after getting changed, I might stick with you," Harry told him.
Jim rolled his eyes a little. When he reached his office, he went in, changed his clothes as fast as he could, dropped an algae tablet in for the shrimp, and burst back out. When he saw that Harry was still there, he tried to hide his disdain.
"Truth be told, I'm still a little shaken up from last night. Those WOHLF folks had better not come near us again," said Harry.
Jim nodded uneasily. "Me too."
"My niece is with them, you know," Harry told him. "Tegan Mather. She's the one Officer Pitt shot last night, and quite honestly, I'm glad he did. Tegan had to learn her lesson somehow."
"Wait..." Jim swallowed hard. "You mean you're glad your niece got half her foot blasted off with an assault rifle? Pardon me, Harry, but I wouldn't wish bad on my relatives no matter what they did."
Harry chuckled. "You've probably never had a relative betray you like Tegan betrayed my family. There's a reason her name hasn't been on the news, you know. I've been doing all that I can to make sure her name doesn't sully mine."
"Then why are you telling me?" Jim demanded.
"You were there last night," he replied. "You saw what happened. You can sympathize with me."
Jim nodded. "Indeed, I saw what I saw." And what I saw was Officer Pitt firing on an unarmed woman for no other reason than suspicion. He kept the thought to himself.
"I'm going to Pitt's funeral tomorrow," he said. "Are you?"
"I would," said Jim, "but I've learned not to trust anyone else with Coda-9994 when I can help it."
Harry nodded. "Understandable."
They walked the rest of the way to Amy's office in silence. The whole time, Jim could not shake the feeling that Harrison Mather was onto him. He supposed it was only a matter of time before Amy got onto him too, if she wasn't already.
.........
Amelia Sullman was utterly burned out by the time Jim and Harry arrived to talk to her. "Come in," she groaned, lifting her head off the desk. She took another sip of her coffee. The door opened, and they stepped in. She tried her best to smile. "Morning, Jim. How's Coda's camera working?"
"He can't get it to focus," said Jim. "Probably my error, not his."
She nodded. "Harry, how's your side of the project coming along?"
"We've got all the trajectory calculations completed and verified, but we might need to do them again, just in case," he said. "Vessel is almost finished. The last test failed due to..."
"When do you think it'll be finished?" she interrupted.
"Before next year," he replied. "I swear."
Amy spun around in her chair. "It's quite overwhelming, honestly," she told them. "Overseeing this project, plus all the other smaller ones. But do you know what keeps me going?"
"What?" Harry asked.
"The ICA is going places. Twenty years ago, this was all a mere fantasy. Look at us now. We have facilities around the globe, and the whole world has gone forward." She twisted the chain of her necklace around her index finger. The whale-fluke pendant glinted. "Even if we still have a lot of progress to make, I believe we have a great deal to be proud of."
Jim nodded. She knew she was preaching to the choir, but it still felt good to voice positivity in light of so much stress. She took another swig of her coffee. "Jim, you can go fix Coda's camera."
He left the office without even saying goodbye. She chuckled a little. Harry tried to smile, but she could tell something was grating on him too. "About last night," he started. "Why were you really on the news if you were sick?"
"I felt far from fine on the news," she said.
"What were you sick with, anyway?" he asked.
"Not fever chills, if that's what you're asking." A sly smile crept across her lips. "Just a bug. I think Jim gave it to me. It's called knowing that WOHLF was going to show up at the conference."
"So he told you?" Harry sounded bewildered.
"Why would I tell you if he had?" she asked, somewhat patronizingly. "Nevertheless, WOHLF really has no business trusting him now, do they?"
Harry smiled uneasily. "Not at all."