Convergence - The Last Science #2.1 - In Plain Sight

B2: Chapter 14 - Finding Family - II

  Hailey picked up the iced coffees and brought them to a table, where Jessica was waiting patiently. She was examining the painting above their table with interest. Hailey gestured at it quizzically.

  Jessica shrugged. She mimed drawing something on the table, then looked at her invisible pencil with forlorn eyes, opening and closing her hand as if she'd lost it.

  Hailey nodded, pulling out her wallet from her bag and tapping it a few times. They'd go by the store on the way back and buy some more art supplies. Jessica had been practicing drawing things in an attempt to help make her actual illusions more realistic. At the present without a good model, they resembled children's artwork at best, since Jessica had never been much for art.

  Hailey leaned back and started reading a book on her phone while sipping her coffee, while Jessica kept looking around the store, but a snatch of conversation nearby caught her ears. More specifically, her own name.

  "You really think it was faked?"

  "Of course it was. Hailey Winscombe's dead like the rest of them."

  "So what d'you think happened to that poor town?"

  Hailey leaned forward surreptitiously, turning off her phone and tilting the screen to get a look at the trio of voices. No one she recognized, just a few college-aged kids with laptops and textbooks. She propped up her phone against the fixture on the table, so that she could keep an eye on them.

  "Beats me."

  "I think she's gotta still be alive."

  "So why not show her face?"

  "Well she's in hiding, right? From whatever blew up the town."

  "Yeah, us."

  "Us as in—"

  "America, duh."

  "Come on, why the hell would we blow up a place like that?"

  "Think about it. Everyone's saying how weird Rallsburg was in the first place. Why was a college ever built there anyway?"

  "Because the land was cheap and it already had trains running through?"

  "Lots of places have that. It was a glorified logging camp."

  "I dunno, I kinda wanted to go there."

  "For what?"

  "The business and economics programs was supposed to be really good." Hailey smiled to herself. That was the reason she'd gone there, after all. Or at least, the way she'd justified going there. Even this far removed from town, she still felt a twinge of protective loyalty toward her school... not that she could leap up and defend it without causing quite a lot of chaos.

  "Oh come on, that was just because they had a big name professor."

  "Better than some of the places I've looked at."

  "What's your point? That the school was so bad it had to be what—a front for something?"

  "Yeah, exactly. Secret corporate projects."

  "Not secret government projects?"

  "From our government?"

  "Fair point."

  "What kind of projects?"

  "Weapons, probably. Or something else crazy. Hey, maybe this is how the zombie plague starts."