Blood dripped down Alicia's forearm and off her elbow but she kept her hands on the steering wheel. She had to concentrate as she maneuvered the van toward the freeway. She ignored the pain, the blood, the fear, and the screaming...
"My sister! We have to go back... We have to go back NOW!"
A line of police cars passed them going the other direction, toward the hospital, with their sirens blaring. She swerved into the left-turn lane to pass a car stopping at the light that had just turned red. She accelerated through the wide intersection and an angry horn sounded behind them. "Turn around!" Serena shouted. "I have to make sure she's okay!" Alicia got the van onto the freeway and pushed her speed up to 75. She took a breath. Now that the van was pointed in the right direction and they were a safe distance from the hospital, she could find out about the blood. Serena kept yelling as Alicia looked at her right hand.
A round had gone right through, just below her ring finger. Blood pumped out steadily. She had to put pressure on the wound, but she also had to drive. "Oh my god!" Serena shouted. "That's a lot of blood!" Alicia put the wounded hand under her thigh and leaned over so that most of her weight was on it.
"Are you hit?" She asked Serena.
"No, but my sister was!" Serena said. "We have to go back and help her!"
"She got it in the shoulder." Alicia said. "And she's at a hospital. What can we do?" In reality, Alicia wasn't so sure that it was the shoulder —Bea could've been hit somewhere closer to her collar-bone.
"I have to help her!"
"They're not going to stop." Alicia said. "They're after you and right now they don't know where you are. I want to keep it that way."
"I think a reporter got hit too." Serena said. "Where did that guy come from?"
"There's a whole division," Alicia said, trying to ignore the hot lance piercing her hand, "Exotic Assets. Practically all they do is create and manage lone nuts. We have to hide you."
Alicia passed Ben Scanlon in the hallway outside the supply depot at the Industry hub in Sarasota. He was tall and thin with light brown hair and blue eyes. She knew him from photos in a private file Smik had shared with her.
As Scanlon passed, he showed no sign that he recognized her. EA guys usually worked with blinders on, fulfilling this or that function without knowing the larger context. HR and Marketing agents had to know the topography, but a guy like Scanlon would only know the terrain. His presence confirmed her suspicion about the Industry's plans for the resurrected reporter. Her suspicion was further confirmed by the news she got when Dr. Rago called from the hospital.
"There's a movie crew trying to get footage of Serena." The doctor said. "Security ejected them from the building, but they're still outside. They must've come as soon as they heard."
"Okay, I'll look into it." Alicia said. "You should prepare the hospital staff for a media circus. Who else knows about the DNA test?"
"Just my PA Beth." Rago said. "What were the results?"
"It's her." Alicia said. "There's no doubt."
"So who got shot in New York?"
"I don't know. But if there's a film crew there already, that means the story's about to hit the national media. Serena's family will come and they'll have to request a DNA test to have her legally declared not-dead. As far as anyone knows, that should be the first DNA test."
"Okay," Dr. Rago said, "and just so you know, she's been trying to contact her friends and family. They're all hanging up on her."
"They were just at her funeral." Alicia said. "It's going to take awhile to convince people. Has she talked to a social worker?"
"Yes." Rago said. "And aside from claiming to be Serena Michaels, she shows no signs of mental illness."
"Will your PA keep her mouth shut about our DNA test?"
Dr. Rago promised that she would.
In the signals room, Alicia had the techie pull up hospital security footage of the film crew. It was only four people: camera, sound, director, and assistant. Facial recognition said the director was Maya Regis Kenovic, founder of MRK Pictures. A scan of their banking transactions showed that the current production was being financed with Occult-connected money.
They wanted to get the second murder on tape too. The Duane Reade security footage of the first murder had leaked onto YouTube the day after it happened. In order for a ritual murder to be effective, it had to be witnessed. This time, there would be multiple cameras rolling. A woman who claimed to be Serena Michaels was shot to death in Florida in an eerie parallel to the recent NY homicide. Only later would the DNA test prove that it actually was Serena. Everyone would rush to their computers to watch the footage.
But there had to be a public record that a DNA test had been done for the ritual murder to have the desired impact. That was Alicia's deadline. They wouldn't liquidate Serena until it was reported that the family wanted a DNA test.
The bleeding had slowed during the thirty-minute drive to the marina but it hadn't stopped completely. The pain made it difficult for Alicia to think clearly —it came in waves that brought her close to the edge of consciousness. The plan had been to park in the nearby shopping district and take a city bus to the marina, but she decided to go straight for the boat instead. It would make them easier to track, but she couldn't see getting on a bus with blood pumping out of her hand.
They got out of the van and Alicia noticed that Serena still had the bag her sister had packed for her. "Any electronics in there?" Alicia asked. "Laptop, tablet, cell phone, anything?"
"No," Serena said, "just some clothes and a toothbrush. Your hand is fucked up bad. You need a doctor."
Alicia used her left hand to clamp down on both the entrance and exit wounds on her right hand. "You'll have to sign us in at the gate. The boat is called the Little Nemo, slip 22."
She didn't want to use Industry cash to buy the boat, but she didn't have any choice. She figured it wouldn't take long for them to track it —the serial numbers would give her away. They'd see the deposit and know that Alicia was on the boat that the depositor had just sold. But if she could get the cash into an elaborate money-laundering operation, she might buy herself a day or two. Luckily, the Tampa area had plenty of money-laundering operations to choose from.
Alicia drove to the hospital with the cash and a black-op bag in the trunk of her rental car. She found Dr. Rago in her office on the fifth floor. "You're here." The doctor said, surprised.
"Sorry to show up unannounced," Serena said, "I was hoping for a favor..."
"You want to see Serena?"
"Yes, but that's not the favor I was talking about." Alicia said. "I need access to a computer that's not connected to me. I figured I could use one here at the hospital."
"Every computer here is monitored..."
"I'm aware of that." Alicia said. "I won't be doing anything that would get anyone in trouble. I happen to be in the midst of a minor power struggle at work and I'm pretty sure they're watching everything I do on my laptop."
"Hm." Dr. Rago stood up. "I guess you could use mine... I have some patients to attend to."
"Thanks." Alicia said.
She got onto Craigslist and found four boats for sale that looked like they could get to Jamaica fast enough. If she'd been on her Industry laptop, she could've figured out which of the sellers were crooks in under a minute, but on the pedestrian internet she only had their names as clues. Two of the sellers seemed to be criminals based on their social media posts and public court records. She picked the one whose ad said 'cash offers preferred.'
The man said she could come and look at the Little Nemo right away. By the early afternoon, the deal was done. She'd paid $24,000 cash and had just finished the paperwork when Dr. Rago called. "Her family is here." She said.
"Her mother?"
"Her mother, her sister, and the poet, Mary Jimenez. There's been a lot of crying and they haven't left Serena's room. When I was in there, Serena's sister was arguing with her mother about what it all meant."
"Have they mentioned a DNA test?" Alicia asked.
"Not yet." The doctor said. "They know it's her."
"Right, but legally they'll need that DNA test.' Alicia said. "When they ask for it, call me."
Alicia stayed back a few feet from the desk as Serena signed them in under fake names. The security camera looked like it had been state-of-the-art in the early nineties. They'd probably upgraded the system so that it recorded onto a hard-drive sometime in the early 2000s, but it certainly wasn't connected to the internet. An agent would have to physically connect to the system to see any images —which might buy them some time. Every minute their pursuers were delayed helped.
Serena held the mesh metal door for Alicia, who was still trying to staunch the flow of blood from her wounded right hand. The man behind the desk noticed the blood, but it was Florida —he'd seen weirder. Alicia felt light as she went down the wooden steps to the boat slips. Her feet had turned into water balloons and she had to trust that muscle memory would keep her walking.
"Wait." Serena said. "Slip 22 right? This is it here."
Alicia stopped and tried to force herself to turn around and then felt an arm around her waist. She was being held upright by Serena.
"Jesus." Serena said. "You must've lost a lot of blood. Come on, we're getting on the boat now —little jump here." Alicia felt Serena lifting her, but she never felt the landing.
Pain woke her up. She was on the deck of the boat and Serena was wrapping a bandage around her hand. "South." Alicia said. "Jamaica."
"This is bad." Serena said. "I think we should get you to a hospital."
"South." Alicia said. "The keys are in my pocket."
"Okay." Serena said. "I guess you're still running the show."
When she felt Serena's hand in her pocket, she let herself relax. She surrendered and fell into a deep darkness under the blue sky.
Alicia opened a channel to Bea Corvelli's cell phone mic and played the sound as she drove back to the hospital from the marina. "Sometimes the safest thing to do is to leave it in the hands of the Goddess." A voice that Alicia assumed was Mary Jimenez was saying.
"Where was the Goddess in New York?" Bea asked.
"New York was an illusion staged by the patriarchal death cult who think they run the world." Jimenez said. "They want to show death. But look what we've got to show: LIFE! Our magic is more powerful."
"Save it," Bea said, "this is my sister we're talking about."
"I'm sure Mary is just as concerned about Sarah's well-being as you are." Minnie Corvelli said.
"She's talking about magic." Bea said. "I love and trust the Goddess, but I don't remember her ever stopping bullets..."
"Please don't fight." Serena said. "If you think I should have security then let's do that. Maybe it will help."
Bea got on the phone with the head of a local Kibele chapter, who agreed to send someone from their enforcement cadre. Alicia parked in the short term parking lot of the hospital and kept the rental car running with the air conditioner on. She connected her Industry laptop to the hospital security cameras and waited.
The bodyguard arrived at quarter to nine PM. Facial recognition identified the woman as an Afghan war veteran named Kelli Perry. After she got there, Minnie and Mary said that they were going back to the hotel and would return first thing in the morning. Bea insisted on staying the night with her sister. "With Kelli guarding the door and me in here, Sarah will be safe." She said.
Once Minnie and Mary were gone, Alicia entered the hospital and went up the stairs. She stopped on Serena's floor and waited on the landing. She had the security camera in the hallway streaming to her Industry phone and she watched the bodyguard and waited some more.
At 11:43, the woman finally went to the bathroom and Alicia moved quickly down the hall and entered the room. Serena had been asleep for over an hour and Bea was in the reclining armchair looking up at the television. She looked over and sat up when she saw that Alicia wasn't a nurse. "I have to talk to you about your sister." Alicia said.
"Now?" Bea asked. "I guess you're not from the billing department."
"No." Alicia said. "I work for the Industry —ever heard of us? We direct public attention and monitor people and we aren't subject to any laws or oversight. It's a worldwide organization."
Bea looked almost amused. "We were just talking about you." She said. "My godmother calls you the patriarchal death cult."
"There is a religious contingent in it, but people on my end don't have much cause to interact with them." Alicia said. "I'm an Asymmetrical Marketing agent."
"Of course you are."
"I understand it might be hard to believe." She said. "But what happened to your sister wasn't just a random occurrence."
"I never thought it was." Bea said. "So what can you tell me?"
"She's going to be killed again." Alicia said. "Probably as soon as you prove who she is."
"You know this for a fact?"
"I do."
"Killed by who? How?"
"That I don't know." Alicia said. "But the world is full of young men on the brink of violence. All they have to do is pick one and point him at your sister. That's what they did the first time and that's what they'll probably do this time."
"If you came in here with the goal of freaking me out, it worked. Congratulations." Bea said. "Whoever it is will have to get through me. And we have Kelli out there..."
"That's not going to stop them." Alicia said. "Your sister has to disappear."
Bea looked at Alicia for a moment. "How?" She asked.
"If you know what you're doing, it's possible." Alicia said. "I need you to understand that people in my organization have been killed for doing a lot less than what I'm doing now. I've spent my whole life building up equity and now I'm ready to cash it in to save your sister."
"Am I supposed to thank you?"
"No, you're supposed to listen to me." Alicia said. "I'm here to help you."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure myself." Alicia said.
Bea looked skeptical. "So what are you offering exactly? You'll tell us how to dodge your employers?"
"More than that." Alicia said. "It's going to require improvisation in the field. You can't do it without me, I know all their tricks. We can take her far away, and when we get somewhere safe, we can contact one of your Kibele security teams. From there, your sister can tell the world about the Industry and how they tried to turn her into a martyr."
"I just met you five minutes ago." Bea said. "And you want me and my sister to run away with you? How do I know it's not a trap?"
"To do what? Kill her? I could've walked in here and shot her in the head —or sent someone to do it. If you go without me, you won't succeed. I have an escape plan lined up. It won't be easy or comfortable but your sister will live. Maybe after a significant amount of time has passed, she can come back with a small army of security. The Industry might let her live out the rest of her life. Or they might loudly denounce her as a fake..."
"That sounds awful." Serena said. She'd woken up and had been listening for awhile.
"Worse than death?" Alicia asked.
"Why are they doing this?" Serena asked. "Why me?"
"It's nothing personal." Alicia said. "They want to use your image to shape the future. Your actual physical presence can only hurt their plans."
"The fact remains," Bea said, "we don't know you. You could just be some crazy woman who wandered in off the street."
"Who's this?" Kelli asked. She'd come into the room with her hand on the gun in her open-carry holster.
"I'm a social worker." Alicia said.
"It's okay Kelli." Bea said. "She's not a threat."
Kelli looked at Alicia with suspicion. "I'll be right outside if you need me." She said to Bea.
After the door shut, Alicia turned to Bea and Serena. "I can prove my credentials." She said. "Do you have a banking app on your phone where you can see your balance?"
"Yeah." Bea said.
"Okay, check it." Alicia got her Industry phone out and typed in Bea Corvelli Mann's name. She found Bea's file and changed the number in her checking account from $2,372 to 237,000. "Refresh it." She said.
"What the fuck?" Bea said. She showed the number on her phone to Serena. "That's impressive."
"Unfortunately if I left it like that, you'd be investigated by our auditors." Alicia said as she changed the number back.
"I did a report on hackers once." Serena said. "I've seen some digital magic tricks like that before."
Alicia thought for a moment then looked up at the TV. "Put on NBC." She said. Bea took the remote from her sister's bed and changed the channel. Jimmy Fallon was interviewing a reality show housewife. "Name a song you like." Alicia said.
"Any song?" Bea asked.
"Yes."
"9 to 5, Dolly Parton." Serena said.
Alicia sent a text message to her contact at NBC. "Now turn up the volume." She said. The three women watched the end of the interview in silence. When Fallon threw to commercial, the Roots began playing the Dolly Parton hit.
"That's insane." Serena said. "How'd you do that?"
"We control the media ecosystem." Alicia said.
"This must be a rerun." Bea said. "You knew what they were going to play ahead of time..."
"But I chose the song." Serena said.
"And this isn't a rerun." Alicia said. "Choose another."
"Let me do it this time." Bea said. "Run Like an Antelope by Phish."
"You want to hear the Roots play a Phish song?" Alicia shook her head and sent a text. "Think of the most insane, paranoid-sounding conspiracy theory." She said. "The Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove— we're actually way beyond any of that. You're guests at a theme park and I'm a staff member, that's all. You're at Disneyland but instead of convincing you it's the happiest place on earth, we've convinced you that you live in a free and open society where events unfold according to random chance and the forces of capitalism."
"I know a little about it." Serena said. "Brian Williams told me that there's a group that controls everything he's allowed to say on the air. He was drunk at Les Moonves' Christmas party."
Alicia looked at her. "You don't know me." She said. "But I realized when you got shot in New York that I was done working for them. I'm at a dead-end and you are too. Now that you've made the correct impression on the world, they'll just throw you away like a piece of trash. They're going to kill you."
Bea looked up at the TV. The commercials were over and the Roots were playing Run Like an Antelope. "I'm officially losing my mind." Bea said. "Alright... If we went along with your plan, how would it work?"
"Get her transferred to a hospital somewhere in New York." Alicia said. "When it's time to go to the airport, I'll pick the two of you up and we'll disappear."
"Maybe Mamma J can get us some emergency cash from one of the local cadres." Serena said.
"That's not a good idea." Alicia said.
"Why?" Bea demanded. "You think she's in on it?"
"I don't know." Alicia said. "But their plan involves three competing texts which will all be attributed to your sister. Mary Jimenez wrote one of them. That doesn't mean she'd necessarily want to see Serena murdered, but at the very least, she's willing to benefit from it."
Silence filled the hospital room and Alicia thought she should say something to soften the blow, but her throat was too dry to speak. The sun was cooking her and there was something heavy on her right hand —she couldn't move it. She looked up at a little cloud in the sky that sat all alone in a field of blue. She turned her head and saw Serena up above the cabin at the helm of the boat. "What time is it?" She asked.
Serena looked down at Alicia, surprised. "It's after four... I thought you were dead."
"Not yet." Alicia said as she sat up. The pain in her right hand came into sharp focus. It had bled through the bandage and there was dried blood all down her arm and on the deck of the boat. She took a deep breath and tried to stand. The world shuddered and twisted for a moment, but she managed to stay on her feet. She staggered to the cabin door and went down the steps gingerly. She got a bottle of water from the mini fridge and managed to get the cap off using only her left hand. She drank the whole thing, then went back up the stairs to the deck of the boat. "Where are we?" She asked Serena.
"A couple of miles south of the Keys." Serena said.
It took a moment for the specificity of the answer to sink in. Alicia climbed up to the helm and turned off the GPS navigation system.
"How are we supposed to find Jamaica?" Serena asked. "Are we following the stars?"
"It's a big island." Alicia said. "We'll reach Cuba tonight and if we keep the coastline on our left, the compass will tell us when we've gotten to the other side of it. From there we just head west-southwest and we should hit Jamaica. If we wind up in Haiti, we'll have to turn around and come back."
"Why not just get off in Cuba?" Serena asked.
"Too many eyeballs." Alicia said. "And Jamaica's full of tourists, so we'll blend in. Plus there's a booming stolen-passport trade there." Alicia looked at Serena's face. "What's wrong?"
Serena wiped her cheek. "My sister." She said. "That guy shot my sister."
"In the shoulder." Alicia said. "She's probably laid up in the hospital right now, worried about you. Here, let me take over... I put some stuff to make sandwiches down in the kitchenette. Go get something to eat."
"Okay." Serena said. "Do you want one?"
"Yeah." Alicia said.
The morning news shows reported it: A strange new development in the Serena Michaels story, as her family travels to Florida to visit a woman who claims she is the slain reporter. They played video of Minnie Corvelli and Mary Jimenez going into the hospital in the early morning while it was still dark out. A reporter shouted, "Ms. Corvelli! Is that your daughter in there?"
Minnie tossed the answer over her shoulder. "It's her." She said.
The newscasters, perplexed, conceded that Serena's mother couldn't be fooled by an imposter —so the Duane Reade video must've shown someone other than Serena getting their brains splattered across the party supply aisle. Some trickery had occurred. The implication was that it was a ploy for attention, an elaborate publicity stunt.
Bea demanded that her sister immediately be transferred to the Neurotrauma Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She booked two first-class tickets and Alicia got Dr. Rago to expedite the discharge. Their flight boarded at 12:35 PM, so Alicia arrived in her rented van at 10:00 AM. The press mob had grown. Local and national news crews all wanted to film the resurrected Serena Michaels as she left the hospital. Alicia parked in the loading zone —just across from the hospital doors— and explained to the security guard who she was picking up.
Alicia scanned the crowd as she waited. She didn't see any clear threat, but she knew it was there somewhere. Before she'd left her hotel room, she'd gone through the news sites and there it was, in the second to last paragraph of the Times article: Michaels' family has requested that a DNA test be done immediately. They hadn't, but the fact that it was there in print meant that Serena could be liquidated at any time.
They were visible through the sliding glass doors as they got off the elevator. A nurse pushed Serena Michaels in a wheelchair, and Bea, Minnie, Mary, and Kelli Perry the bodyguard flanked them. When they got to the front of the hospital, Serena got up and went through the sliding glass doors with Bea beside her and their mother, the bodyguard, and the famous poet behind them. Alicia opened the back of the van as the reporters shouted questions at them. The documentary crew had the best position and a hospital security guard had to push their camera operator back as the quintet made their way toward the van.
They were less than ten feet away when Alicia saw him —an overweight white man with a shaved head, running toward them from the short-term parking lot. He had an AR-15. Alicia moved fast to get between him and his intended target. The guy was pointing his weapon and Alicia pushed the muzzle up. The rifle sounded, and Alicia got both hands on the hot barrel, head-butted the man, and then tried to rip the weapon out of his hands. He wasn't letting go and he managed to discharge five more rounds as they struggled. Three went into the concrete, one went into the crowd, and the fifth went into the person who had followed Alicia toward the gunman.
When she finally got control of the AR-15, Alicia saw that it was Bea who'd been hit. Alicia yanked the shoulder strap off the guy and hit him in the head with the butt of the rifle. He stumbled back and fell. Kelli was on top of him immediately with her handgun pointed at his head. Two men came up behind Alicia —the hospital security guards— and one of them took the AR-15. Alicia pushed past a news crew that was crowding in. She saw Minnie Corvelli tending to Bea, who was on the ground clutching at her right shoulder, in near her sternum.
Alicia found Serena Michaels by the van with a dazed look on her face. "Get in!" Alicia shouted. "Now!"
Serena got in the back of the van as Alicia got behind the wheel. Half of the cameras were pointed at the crowd around the shooter and the other half were pointed at the van as it screeched out of the loading zone and swerved into traffic. Blood dripped down Alicia's forearm and off her elbow but she kept her hands on the steering wheel.