S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (163 page)

“
I'm not guilty,” Micah replies.

“
Yes, yes, of course. Is there anything else? Anything a bit more…material you'd like to present as evidence?”

“
How can I present anything material when I've been locked up in a jail cell for a week?”

“
So, you have nothing to present in your defense?” Nonplussed. He probably hears the same arguments a dozen times a week.

“
Just my word. I am not some secret agent with the Southern States Coalition. I could never be. They're why I defected here in the first place!”

The judge lifts his eyes from his Link and says, “Let me remind you, young man, that you are under oath, son. The penalty for perjury is conscription.”

“
The penalty for jaywalking is conscription.”

The judge grunts. “We know that you blame New Merica for your parents' deaths.”

I gasp and the judge turns in our direction, his eyebrows raised. It's the most engaged in the proceedings he's been since making his grand entrance. I shrink in my seat.

“
Why would I blame New Merica for that?” Micah asks.

Judge Marino ignores him and instead inquires of us if we ever thought it strange that he had no parents.

Both Kelly and Reg look at me. “He always told us they were visiting family,” I finally answer, finding my voice after one or two stuttering attempts to speak.

He seems satisfied with the answer and turns back to Micah. “So you lied to your own friends.”

“
I didn't want to talk about what happened!” Micah cries. The judge warns him to lower his voice. “I didn't tell them because I didn't want anyone's pity. I just… I know it was an SSC soldier who shot and killed my parents, so why would I work for them?”

“
You lied to your own friends; you betrayed them, tricked them into helping you hack into national defense networks.”

“
I didn't trick them! I would never do that to my friends! I would never do that to…” He looks over at us, his eyes pleading. Our eyes lock for a moment before he lowers his face to his shackled hands. “I wouldn't do that.”

“
Speak up, young man. And sit up! I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation. This is your last opportunity to sway the court.”

“
The court has already decided my fate,” he mumbles.

“
That is not true. I am giving you every opportunity to defend yourself. Given the exigent circumstances of your family being dead, disregarding established court protocol, I allowed your closest friends to speak on your behalf.”

Once more he turns to us, this time to ask if we have anything to add.

We had talked it all over in the car on the way here, and we all agreed that what Micah did to us was wrong. None of us wants him to be conscripted, but how can we just ignore what happened to Ashley and Jake? Someone has to pay.

“
We have nothing to say, Your Honor,” Reggie says, and both Kelly and I nod in agreement.

“
No!” Micah shouts. He tries to stand, but the bailiff wrestles him back to his seat. “Please, guys.”

I let out a sob and the judge bangs his gavel and demands order.

“
Don't do this to me,” Micah pleads. “Don't let them do this to me! I'm innocent! No, please, no!”

“
Order! Sit down, Mister Sandervol! Sit down or I'll have you gagged.”

The bailiff slams him into the chair again and it creaks beneath him and tilts before rocking back onto all four legs.

“
Please, Kelly… Reggie.” He tries to look at us, but the bailiff forcefully turns his head back toward the front of the courtroom. “Jessie, please,” he yells, his words muffled.

“
This concludes the hearing phase of the trial,” the judge abruptly announces. He slams the gavel once into his block.

I expect him to retire to his chambers to consider the evidence—just like the judge in Seattle did—but he doesn't. He sets his Link on the bench in front of him and says, as if reciting, “Micah Raymond Sandervol, I find you guilty of all counts before you. I hereby sentence you to conscription, to be executed without delay. Upon death, you will be assigned to either military or civil service. As a formality, I am obligated to ask if you have a preference, although in good conscience I must also inform you that there is no guarantee whatsoever it will be considered.”

He pauses and stares down at Micah, who's leaning over his lap, as if his stomach is cramping. Reggie has his face buried in his hands and Kelly's face is blank and white. He stares at Micah, though I don't think he's seeing Micah anymore. He seems focused on something about a foot past him.

Panic flares up from deep inside of me. It builds and threatens to erupt. I try to squelch it. I know what it is: doubt, self-loathing. How could we just sit here and do this? Are we even doing the right thing?

Let the Undead bastard rot in some sewer somewhere.

No!

Another sob slips from my lips. The judge looks over, frowning. I turn away, ashamed, horrified.

This time, when he slaps his gavel on the block, I jump. “This court is now adjourned. Bailiff, please prepare the guilty party for execution. You three,” he says, glancing over at us, “are to remain seated until you are called to be witnesses for the execution.”

 

We don't have long to wait.
In fact, just about when we all get over our shock at the abruptness of the trial's conclusion, another guard comes in and tells us to follow him. We stand and file out of the jury box and exit through the same door Micah had just disappeared out of. Now we're in a sterile hallway, much like the one inside the Carcher Building in Hartford, totally bereft of color and detail. Even the shadows feel amorphous, shifting between eyeblinks. We follow along, one behind the other, our footsteps muffled despite the hardness of the floor. A faint tinge of antiseptic, overlaid with the musty smell of a damp mop permeates the air.

“
In here,” the guard says, unlocking an unmarked door and opening it up for us. “No speaking.”

Reggie steps in first, then me. Kelly's last. As soon as the door is closed, Kelly reaches over and tests the handle. “Locked,” he whispers.

There are two rows of metal chairs, four in each, all facing the left wall, which has only a large viewing window. The room on the other side is dark. We move to the back row, where the chairs are elevated, not for the view but because we want to get as far away as possible from that window.

“
Reminds me of the room in LaGuardia,” Reggie says. “The one next to the guillotine. That fucking place gave me the creeps, but this one—”

Kelly shushes him. It doesn't work. Reggie keeps jabbering away, saying everything that crosses his mind—how they're going to do it, whether they're going to strap Micah down on a table or a chair, how long it'll take, whether or not it'll be painful. He grows steadily louder until a voice comes over the loudspeaker: “Quiet, please!”

The lights in the other room snap on, while the lights in ours dim. There's a stainless steel table situated square in the center of the room, orange straps attached at each corner and a pair coming through a central opening about a quarter of the way from the end to our right. The lights buzz so loudly that we can actually hear them. A door opens and a woman enters rolling a strange-looking machine on a cart, all stainless steel and lights and buttons and a small, dark screen. Every sound she makes is amplified and sent in to us through speakers over our heads. We can even hear her breathing.

“
Wonder if she can hear us,” Reggie asks. But if she can, she doesn't acknowledge it.

She positions the machine at the right end of the table and adjusts the middle straps, splaying them open. The machine is plugged in and appears to run through some sort of diagnostic startup procedure. The lights blink on then off, one by one, or turn from red to orange to green. She ignores all this and instead reaches into a drawer and pulls out a syringe and fills it from a vial she removes from the pocket of her paisley vest. With a start, I see that the fluid has the same fluorescent green appearance as the fluid Stephen injected into Kelly, the stuff that was supposed to turn him into a living, breathing zombie in a week. It's been over two weeks since that happened, so either it's not the same, or it is and Kelly's injection didn't work, or Halliwell's blood somehow countered it. Only time will tell.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Kelly give a start of recognition. He turns to see my reaction, but I don't meet his gaze. I just can't seem to tear my eyes away from the scene in front of us.

The woman finishes adding fluid to the syringe, flicks the air out, then snaps it into a bracket in the machine. She then begins to prepare a second syringe, this one with a thin, clear fluid. When she's finished, it goes into its own bracket in the machine.

“
Ready in the Procedure Room,” she says into the intercom.

“
Give us a minute,” comes a canned-sounding male voice. “We're having trouble with the scan.”

She hesitates a moment, uncertain, before asking, “What's the matter?”

We all wait. The reply is long in coming: “Nobody checked for an implant. Scanners aren't picking one up.”

“
We can't proceed if—”

“
Hold on. We're getting an x-ray.”

Reggie turns to me, frowning. “Micah doesn't have an implant?”

“
Of course he has an implant,” Kelly hisses.

“
I don't think he does,” I say. “Do you remember when we were driving down to Manhattan to check out the tunnel opening? The guard at one of the checkpoints had trouble scanning it.”

They both shake their heads.

“
He was checking our Links, pulling our implant identifiers off them and he kept trying with Micah's, but it wasn't working. Then Micah asked for the Link back. He did something to it. I can't believe you don't remember. He said something about getting his Link upgraded, but the strange thing was, his was one of the newer models.”

“
I know for sure he's got an implant,” Kelly says, “because I went with him to Hartford last October when he had his procedure to put it in. It was right before Halloween and he joked about maybe going as a zombie. I mean, we didn't really know the guy that well back then, but I kind of felt sorry for him, that his parents didn't care enough themselves to take him for his implantation. I guess now we know why.”

The intercom crackles and the male voice says: “We got it, Audrey. The scanner wasn't finding it, but it's there.”

The woman inside the room steps over and asks, “Rejected?”

“
There's no encapsulation.”

“
Then it must be one of the faulty ones. We can't proceed until—”

“
I said there's no sign of encapsulation, Aud. It's functional. Something's interfering with the scanner's ability to query it. Sit tight. We're bringing in one of Arc's engineers.”

“
One hour,” she says. “I've already prepared the virus and it's unstable. If it takes longer than that, then we'll have to scrap the set-up and start fresh.”

“
Just sit tight,” the man repeats for the third time. He sounds impatient, like this is more of an inconvenience for him. Like maybe he has a date or something and doesn't want to be late for it.

The woman, Audrey, stares at the intercom for a moment, then gives it the finger.

Reggie snorts.

Kelly looks over at me and asks if I know what encapsulation is. I shake my head.

“
It's when the body forms a sac around the implant,” Audrey says, turning to the window. “Because of rejection.”

Shit
, Reggie mouths, hiding his face with his hand.
She can hear us.

That's when I notice the camera in the corner of the ceiling, similar to the one I shot out in the mainframe room underneath Jayne's Hill. I point it out to them.

So they've been watching and listening to everything we've done and said. Probably recording it, including what Reggie said about the guillotine and LaGuardia. Kelly leans over, pressing his hands between his knees. He stares at the floor without moving. We're afraid to do anything now, afraid of speaking or even gesturing.

Audrey shakes her head and returns to the head of the table and fidgets some more with the machine.

A couple minutes later, the door opens and two orderlies guide Micah into the room. He's dressed only in a paper medical gown and it's obvious he's been drugged. His head lolls slightly with each toe-dragging step and his eyes don't focus on anything. But he's speaking—or trying to. Most of his words are slurred, incomprehensible. I don't have to understand them to know he's asking them to stop.

Kelly stands up and makes his way to the aisle. Reggie tries to grab his arm. Kelly shrugs it off. “They can put us in here,” he says in a loud voice, “but they can't force us to look.” He leans against the wall, his back to the window, and slowly slides down it until he's kneeling. He cups his eyes in his hand and breathes through his mouth, looking like he's trying not to be sick.

“
He did this to himself, brah,” Reggie says. “He did this, not us.”

“
No talking in there!” Audrey barks.

A third man follows the orderlies, carrying a plastic case. After Micah is situated on the table and strapped in, still struggling weakly, the man removes a small black rectangular object from the case. It resembles a Link, but has wires extending out of it, which he connects to leads stuck to the back of Micah's head.