Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (reading list txt) 📗

been a fault in the air supply. I closed the alert and opened up a diagnostic schematic. There was only one section of the shelter that was affected.

The field hospital.

“Oh God.” I hadn’t been the only one who was curious about the sudden departure of nearly a dozen people. A small group had gathered around me. When they saw that the air had evacuated from the field hospital, they bolted towards the shelter entrance. I dropped the tablet and bolted after them, using my body as a barrier to block the door. “Stop! You can’t go in!”

“Fuck you Alvaro, my wife is down there!” One of the men yelled. He rushed at me and I grabbed him around the waist, tackling him to the ground.

“Get out of our way Jacob!” A woman shouted. “We have families down there!” I scrambled up and tried to

“So do I!” I bellowed, “You think I don’t want to run down there too? If you go down there, you could die right along with them!”

That stopped them. “You’ll suffocate,” I pleaded with them. “Please. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t go down there and die in vain.” The woman who had tried to bolt past me before shoved her way past me and ran down the staircase to the shelter below. I didn’t try to stop her this time. No one else moved. “Please. We have to let the medical team do their jobs. They’re doing the best they can and they’ve accepted the risks. The only things we can do is get in their way.”

Several people fell to their knees and a couple started crying. I turned to the shelter’s entrance and waited, bouncing on the balls of my feet, instincts warring with the impulse to save my family. The minutes stretched on. Just as I started to fear that the worst had happened, a breathless Phoebe appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Fiona?” I asked.

“She’s fine.”

“What the hell is going on?” Another woman asked.

“The oxygen was evacuated from the field hospital.” She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Someone hid a program in the system’s vital functions to suffocate the sickest patients on a precise day and time.”

“Gabriel.” One last act of defiance, planned to take effect whether or not he was still there to see it.

Phoebe ignored me. “We managed to save anyone who wasn’t yet in critical condition. They were without air for two or three minutes but we have them hooked up to supplemental oxygen now.”

“My wife? Please, tell me if she’s all right.” The man asked. A chorus of questions joined his. My heart ached for them. Things had been improving. Now their lives had been upended yet again.

“I’ll have to check in with each of you to give you a proper answer. All I can tell you is that we lost some but the majority of the patients should recover. I’m so sorry to do this but I have to return to my team. One of the systems experts has taken a closer look at the programming. There does not appear to be further interference with the air supply, but we are equipping every person in the shelter with supplementary oxygen masks that will provide you with enough air to make it back outside should we experience another problem.”

Very reassuring. The group glanced at me. “It’s not my decision,” I told the group. “Go if you’d like to go. I certainly have no more reason to stop you.”

They rushed back into the shelter, tasks abandoned. I went to Phoebe and saw that she was shaking. “I’m not cut out for this shit Jacob.” Her voice was shaky too, like she could burst into tears at any moment. “I just ran into a room where I knew people were suffocating and only afterwards does it occur to me that I could have died.”

I held out my arms in a question and she let me embrace her. “I know. We’ll be done soon, and then all of this will be an unpleasant memory.” We separated and she looked at me. “You and your team have gone above and beyond, and I personally owe you my life. I won’t forget that.”

She barked a laugh. “What, you’re going to make sure I never have to work another day in my life?”

“No, but I can make sure that you get a well deserved vacation.”

She nodded. “I’ll go attend to the rest of the group and send them back out as soon as I can. You going to be okay out here in the mean time?”

“Sure.” I opened my arms wide. “This is my kingdom now.”

A quick smile and Dr. Rickman disappeared into the tunnel.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The colony was humming along. New infrastructure was put up every day and things were starting to feel real. After Gabriel’s horrific stunt, more and more people were volunteering to live outdoors full time. Soon we had a proper encampment spanning nearly a mile in all directions around the shelter. It was strange to see everyone outside. Shelter life was always cramped but you never saw more than a hundred or so people at any given time. Out here you could see everyone at once. It was like living in a city without the anonymity.

We lost quite a few people in Gabriel’s final act of murder. A little more than half of the extremely sick. It was needless. A cruel fate thrust upon innocents that disgusted me to my very core. I don’t remember how many bodies we burned in those ensuing days, only that they worked dawn to dusk to finish the job. Those who had lost loved ones were allowed an appropriate amount of time to grieve their dead. It was simple human decency.

With the news that Gabriel had been responsible for the killings came a surprising forgiveness for his murder. It had been so long since there had been a killing that the violence still shocked everyone. The memory of George’s blood