Tell Her Everything (56%)

Elliot shook his head once. "Listen, I know you've got important studying to do. But I have something here I think you should see. Got a minute?"

"A minute," she repeated, holding the notebook up in one hand. She squinted down at the writing on the front page. "Dr. Zalenka, huh? Didn't know you by that name."

Elliot snatched the notebook out of her fingers, twisting around her to lean against the wall. "Before you look, you need to know how I got it. Then maybe you can make more sense of what's in there than I can."

He would have to contain his guilt about disrupting her studying--but there would always be more time for that later. For all they knew, he'd just witnessed some world-redefining horror, and would soon be at the center of it. She would thank him later, hopefully.

He told her everything--the strange visitor, their odd conversation, the roll of cash he'd tried to pay with. Then the officers, and the team with their strange uniforms who showed up to round up the visitor.

He didn't get one word further before Ruby reacted, jerking alert from the seat and staring at the notebook he was holding. It wasn't the mention of the military that seemed to bother her, but the way they were dressed.

"They cleared you to walk away though, right? You were honest about how much you touched him?"

Elliot nodded. "Told them the truth. Weirdo didn't shake my hand, and it wasn't like I cleaned his table or anything. I did touch the notebook, obviously. But I washed my hands after. Showered real good after I got back here too."

Ruby winced, rubbing her temples with both fingers. "You're lucky you're so cute, Elliot. Because you are an idiot." She glanced nervously over the bedroom. "I've got gloves and masks in a box down the hall. You're going to put them on with me, while we figure out everything you've touched since then."

Elliot nodded. "I guess... whatever you think we should do, Ruby. You think there was something that dangerous? Could there be, like... smallpox on his notebook?"

She backed away, digging a brown box out of the nearby closet and dumping it onto the floor. She dug out a large container of hand sanitizer, and went about squeezing some all over both of them. Gloves came next, then the masks. "Probably not," she said, as soon as they were both ready. "But if they thought it was a big enough deal that they needed to wear PPE, it's enough to have me worried. Not enough to run away and firebomb the apartment, but... we can still be smart about it."

The next few minutes involved the rather unpleasant task of finding everything in the apartment that Elliot had touched since coming inside, and tossing it into a garbage bag, then layering that inside another one. Anything too big to bag, like furniture, got an ample spray of disinfectant, enough that the whole apartment soon stank of it.

That meant the sheets on their bed, several plates and forks and shampoo bottles and towels and several items of clothing.

They showered when they finished, even more intense than what Elliot had done when he first got back. There was nothing the least bit stimulating about that particular shower with his girlfriend. By the end, his skin was red and irritated, albeit not actually bleeding.

The notebook and cash hadn't been trash-bagged, though they'd tossed both in a set of gallon-sized ziplock bags.

It took about an hour after Ruby came in before they were finally sitting back in front of the notebook again, no longer wearing masks or gloves. Though with all the disinfectant in the air, Elliot could barely even breathe, so hopefully anything unsafe in the air would have an even harder time.

"Now that you didn't lead with the most important part," Ruby said, tapping the notebook against the table in front of her. "You're going to tell me what that thing is."

"Wish I could." He stood just behind her, where he could look over her shoulder at whatever she was doing to the object inside the bag. They'd stuck a few pencils in too, to give them something to hold through the plastic to manipulate the notebook within. "Flip through to the last few pages. There's a... photograph. Or maybe it's AI? Maybe I was just on one of those candid camera shows, and I didn't realize it."

Flipping through the notebook was now much more difficult, for obvious reasons. Ruby eventually managed, relying on him to hold one half of the book down while she read over the same pages he had.

She squinted down at the plastic, then pressed it flat so she could take a picture with her phone. She looked at that instead, zooming it up and peering at different parts of the image.

"I think you'd know a fake picture better than I would. You were the one who wanted to go into computers."

Wanted to. Those two words cut as deeply as any physical blow. It didn't even matter that Ruby didn't mean it that way. It was almost worse. Just wanting to master something did not mean it was actually possible. Elliot just hadn't been smart enough.

"It doesn't seem fake to me," Elliot said. "I would need the file to be sure. But that doesn't mean it isn't a prop, or a costume, or a model or whatever. But the real question would be why? Why go to all this trouble to freak out a bored nightshift waiter? It's not like they got a lot of publicity, there weren't even any other diners in the restaurant when the military guys came in."

Ruby raised one hand. "Stop talking for a second and let me read. If I don't get to study, I will figure out what the hell is going on here. Let's see if this Dr. Zalenka wrote anything else interesting."

Apparently he had, because Ruby spent at least an hour going through the last sections of the notebook. She grabbed a little notebook of her own, and started scribbling down information onto a few scraps of printer paper next to her. She filled one page with random disconnected sentences, all obviously very important to her judging on the face she made when she wrote them.

Mostly Elliot stayed out of her way until she finished. Occasionally he glanced out the window, in case there might be flashing blue and red lights closing in on the apartment. But he saw none, or any sign that they'd been found.

"The shit you got us into, Elliot," Ruby called, sliding her wooden chair away from the notebook. "Absolutely mental."

He hesitated in the kitchen long enough to bring her a fresh bottle of her favorite green tea, and a can of Diet Coke for himself. He brought over the stool, then sat down next to her, pushing the drink over.

Ruby watched him come, settling her glasses back onto the table between them.

"For what it's worth, I'm the one who's caught up in this, not you." He cracked the can open, then took a weak sip. "You weren't in that restaurant. I can take all this stuff, burn it, and you had nothing to do with it."

Ruby shook her head once. "Good news is, they didn't think that anything dry could be a vector. There's no secret military nanobots in that bag, or mega-ebola, or something even worse. I don't see any cuts on your hands..." She gestured, making him hold them out in front of her. Elliot obeyed, letting her inspect both sides.

She nodded a second later, pushing them back over the table. "I'm not seeing anything. Assuming you cleaned up really well, you should be safe. Hopefully." She pushed her chair back, leaning it up against the wall. "You think there's any way those military guys might find their way back here? Maybe... poking around for it?"

"If they think something went missing, they could find their way back here for sure. But it doesn't feel like giving us this thing could be a... mistake." He nudged the plastic bag with his knuckles, as though that might somehow keep whatever was inside from escaping and poisoning him.

"Maybe more... disgruntled employee? What was in there, anyway?"

Ruby shuddered, then cracked open the plastic bottle of sweet tea. She spun it through her fingers, without taking a sip. "Most of it is beyond me. Like--way beyond me, and probably most of my professors too. You probably need to be in your fifties to have enough degrees to understand everything in there." She took another long sip, draining half the bottle this time.

"What about the... part at the end? You think they were experimenting on a human subject?"

She shook her head. "Their subjects were all researchers on... whatever they were doing. Doesn't say how they got exposed, but apparently those who worked most closely with their apparatus started showing symptoms. That was what Dr. Zalenka was recording."

"If it's real," Elliot said. "Could be... fake? You think maybe it might not be real? Some kind of joke, or prank, or something? Please say yes."

Ruby pushed the notebook away. "Almost certainly not. It would probably cost like--more than your car, to get a fake like this made. You would need to consult real scientists for the whole thing. A whole team of fake soldiers to plant it, actors..." she slid her chair closer to him.

Elliot wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and held on. He said nothing, just holding her firmly. As strange as the whole nightmare situation appeared, they wouldn't be facing it alone.

"I could still throw it away," Elliot said. "Pretend we never saw anything. Delete that photo you took, and play dumb. We don't owe Dr. Zalenka anything for dumping this on us."

Ruby looked up at him. She reached over the table, then held up the little bundle of cash, in its own plastic bag. "Maybe he did. That's, what?"

"1k, ish," he answered. "Guess we would have to ditch that too. No trace that we had anything to do with it."

Ruby sat silent for a long time, one hand tracing idly over his chest. Eventually she stood, glaring down at the evidence now sitting on her desk. "I think you have to decide. You chose not to get those military guys involved. What happens next is up to you."

Elliot could hear the message under her words loud and clear. Ruby didn't deserve to get dragged down into whatever legal mess happened as a result. That seemed fine by Elliot--they were his choices, and he would have to live with them. "How will we know I got infected?"

His girlfriend glanced briefly down at the notebook again. "Should be pretty dramatic when it happens. Subject Zeta went from human sized to that... thing... in a week. Was already down 10 kilos in the first day. I imagine that's quite an unpleasant process. So if you're screaming in agony by this time tomorrow, we'll know."

He already knew what had to happen next. "Can't ditch the cash. Traceable or not, we might need it if something terrible starts happening to me. Is there anything we can do to make sure it's not contaminated before we deposit it? I'm thinking... buy some gold around town, pawn shops. Then pawn the gold at a few different shops to turn it back into cash. Lossy, but harder to follow."

Ruby grinned weakly at him. "Sneaky. But... kinda? We can spray it with antiseptic, wash it out with something that won't ruin the ink. Baking would be ideal, but I don't want to put something potentially contaminated into the oven we eat from. Maybe we could use the toaster oven? A tragic sacrifice in the line of duty. What about the notebook?"

Elliot didn't need very long to consider his answer. He had already been thinking it over.

1. Lose it, carefully. If the army needs this thing to reverse-engineer a cure to some deadly plague, you'll still know where it's hidden. Otherwise, it can be gone from your lives. Remove any trace it was ever in the apartment.

2. Information Must be Free. You've got a friend with a chip on his shoulder you met while in school for CS. Let him find a way to get the notebook uploaded, without tracing it back to you.

3. Hide it carefully, but keep it close. You have a bad feeling you might need what it contains. Maybe Sam can help you stash it inside a part of your car people don't usually open.

Author's Note

Vote in this week's poll here: https://poll.horse/aSFmq4Z7

Well I say this week, but I haven't settled on an update schedule for the story yet. Got to strike the balance between enough that it can move at a reasonable pace, but not so fast that no one has time to vote. I'll list a formal update schedule when I come up with one.