The Extinction Trials(16)

With the white haze still in the air, Maya asked a question that had been bothering her since the older man had disabled Bryce with the chair.

“Did you know? About Bryce?”

Through the fog, she could see Owen turning towards her, but she couldn’t make out his face. The flicker of red light from the hallway through the narrow window lit the fog intermittently.

“That he was an android? No. I had no idea. If I had, I would’ve bashed his plastic brains in myself.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“You could say that.”

“Care to share?”

“That story might be the reason I wound up here.”

“What do you mean?”

“As I said before, I’m a firefighter. Was. Or maybe still am—I don’t know, but I do know that for the last little while, my job hasn’t involved actually fighting any fires.”

“Then what do you do?”

“Lately, it was like a dress rehearsal. We suited up and mostly just went out on calls and talked people through safety stuff and managed the firebots.”

“Sounds safer that way.”

“It is. That’s true. But I guess I sort of signed up for a different job than I ended up doing. Not the worst thing in the world, but it was an adjustment. Anyway, on this last call, it was a mother and her daughter—maybe a little older than Blair. They lived on the eleventh floor of this apartment building, the Oasis Park Building.”

His words faded, and Maya felt her breath catch in her throat. A memory came to her then: of seeing her mother standing behind a kitchen island, talking to her and her sister. And of being in the hospital. Of being afraid. Of wanting to get to her mother and sister.

A loud pop punctured the silence as the other airlock opened into the room beyond.

Owen took a step forward and snapped his flashlight on and raked it across the space. “It’s some kind of command center. It’s empty.”

The haze of fog from the decontamination chamber was drifting into the darkened room. Owen followed it out of the airlock, his story forgotten.

Maya reached out and caught his arm. “Wait. The Oasis Park building—what unit was it? The call?”

“Uhh,” he shook his head. “Maybe…”

“1107?”

He turned to her. “Yes. How did you know?”

“My mother and sister live there. Lived there… What happened?”

Owen exhaled heavily. “They were both alive when we arrived. Your mother was unconscious. Your sister was too.” He swallowed. “It was a gas leak. It ignited.”

Maya felt her legs weaken. She reached out, grasping the wall to steady herself.

“I got your sister out.”

Maya looked up. “How?”

“We vented the apartment. Then… things got crazy. Fire alarms started going off all over the city. The other door went through the window. We were about to evac when one of the firebots attacked us. I was lucky. I got your sister out through that open window.”

“And then what happened?”

Owen shook his head. “I’m not sure. I passed out. I woke up in the hospital. I was pretty banged up.” He paused. “Which is the craziest thing about waking up here. Because I’m completely healed.”

“And you don’t know how you got here?”

“No. I was interviewed by some guy named Parrish who asked me a lot of questions about your mom and sister.”

Parrish—Maya knew that name. Yes, he had visited her too. The memory was there, just out of reach.

“My mother…”

Owen took a step towards her. “She was alive the last time I saw her, but things got pretty chaotic. I’m really sorry.”

“Thank you… for what you did.”

He shrugged. “I was just doing my job.”





Chapter Fourteen





The thing Owen hated the most about his job was giving people bad news. It was something he had never been very good at, mostly because reading their expressions was like a foreign language to him.

Telling Maya about her mother and sister had come unexpectedly—and it didn’t help one bit that she was someone he instinctively trusted for whatever reason. She had saved his life, and he didn’t want to hurt her. Most of all, he wished he could read her face right now. He wanted some clue of how she was processing the news about her mother and sister.

He also had to wonder if it was a coincidence that they were connected. Was he connected to the others as well?

“Do you want to go back to observation?” he asked her.

She looked up. “No. Let’s continue.”

She snapped on her flashlight, and they moved cautiously into the command center, sweeping the beams of light back and forth. The room was about the size of one of the pods they had each awoken in. The far wall was covered with screens, all dark. There were two rows of workstations, each with four desks that held screens and keyboards with a thin layer of dust on them.

“Looks like nobody’s used it in a while,” Owen said.

“Apparently,” Maya replied.

He moved along the rows of desks, looking for clues. There were no personal effects. It was as though the stations were interchangeable—unassigned and available to be used by anyone working in the facility.