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“You can,” he said. “Look, they’re carrying grenades. Did you see those on the belts of the soldiers? One will get smart, toss one of those down the stairwell, and Monica’s gone. Dead. ”
If I let them keep the camera—that kind of power, in the hands of men like this . . .
Monica yelled.
“She’s hit!” Ivy called.
I scrambled out from behind the crates and ran for the fallen soldier at the center of the room. He’d dropped a handgun. Salic noticed me as I grabbed the weapon and raised it. My hands shook, quivering.
This is never going to work. I can’t do this. It’s impossible.
I’m going to die.
“Don’t worry, kid,” J. C. said, taking my wrist in his own. “I’ve got this. ”
He pulled my arm to the side and I fired, barely looking, then he moved the gun in a series of motions, pausing just briefly for me to pull the trigger each time. It was over in moments.
Each of the armed men dropped. The room went completely still. J. C. released my wrist, and my arm fell leaden at my side.
“Did we do that?” I asked, looking at the fallen men.
“Damn,” Ivy said, unplugging her ears. “I knew there was a reason we kept you around, J. C. ”
“Language, Ivy,” he said, grinning.
I dropped the pistol—probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but then again, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. I hurried to Razon’s side. He had no pulse. I closed his eyes, but left the smile on his lips.
This was what he’d wanted. He’d wanted them to kill him so that he couldn’t be forced to give up his secrets. I sighed. Then, checking a theory, I shoved my hand into his pocket.
Something pricked my fingers, and I brought them out bloodied. “What . . . ?”
I hadn’t expected that.
“Leeds?” Monica’s voice said.
I looked up. She was standing in the doorway to the room, holding her shoulder, which was bloodied. “Did you do this?”
“J. C. did it,” I said.
“Your hallucination? Shot these men?”
“Yes. No. I . . . ” I wasn’t sure. I stood up and walked over to Salic, who had been hit square in the forehead. I leaned down and picked up the camera, then twisted one piece of it, my back to Monica.
“Uh . . . Mister Steve?” Kalyani said, pointing. “I do not think that one is dead. Oh my. ”
I looked. One of the guards I’d shot was turning over. He held something in a bloodied hand.
A grenade.
“Out!” I yelled at Monica, grabbing her by the arm as I charged out of the room.
The detonation hit me from behind like a crashing wave.
Exactly one month later, I sat in my mansion, drinking a cup of lemonade. My back ached, but the shrapnel wounds were healing. It hadn’t been that bad.
Monica did not give the cast on her arm much notice. She held her own cup, seated in the room where I’d first met her.
Her offer today had not been unexpected.
“I’m afraid,” I said, “you’ve come to the wrong person. I must refuse. ”
“I see,” Monica said.
“She’s been working on her scowl,” J. C. said appreciatively from where he leaned against the wall. “It’s getting better. ”
“If you would look at the camera . . . ” Monica said.
“When I saw it last, it was in at least sixteen pieces,” I said. “There’s just not anything to work with. ”
She narrowed her eyes at me. She still suspected I’d dropped it on purpose as the explosion hit. It didn’t help that Razon’s body had been burned to near unrecognizability in the subsequent explosions and fire that had consumed the building. Any items he’d had on him—secrets that explained how the camera really worked—had been destroyed.
“I’ll admit,” I said, leaning forward, “that I’m not terribly sorry to discover you can’t fix the thing. I’m not certain the world is prepared for the information it could provide. ” Or, at least, I’m not certain the world is prepared for people like you controlling that information.
“But—”
“Monica, I don’t know what I could do that your engineers haven’t. We’re simply going to have to accept the fact that this technology died with Razon. If what he did was anything other than a hoax. To be honest, I’m increasingly certain it was one. Razon was tortured beyond what a simple scientist could have endured, yet did not give the terrorists what they wanted. It was because he couldn’t. It was all a sham. ”
She sighed and stood up. “You are passing up on greatness, Mister Leeds. ”
“My dear,” I said, standing, “you should know by now that I’ve already had greatness. I traded it for mediocrity and some measure of sanity. ”
“You should ask for a refund,” she said. “Because I’m not certain I have found either in you. ” She took something from her pocket and dropped it on the table. A large envelope.
“And this is?” I asked, taking it.
“We found film in the camera,” she said. “Only one image was recoverable. ”
I hesitated, then slipped the picture out. It was in black and white, like the others. It depicted a man, bearded and robed, sitting—though on what, I couldn’t see. His face was striking. Not because of its shape, but because it was looking directly at the camera. A camera that wouldn’t be there for two thousand years.
“We think it comes from the Triumphal Entry,” she said. “The background, at least, looks to be the Beautiful Gate. It’s hard to tell. ”
“My God,” Ivy whispered, stepping up beside me.
Those eyes . . . I stared at the photo. Those eyes.
“Hey, I thought we weren’t supposed to swear around you,” J. C. called to Ivy.
“It wasn’t a curse,” she said, resting her fingers reverently on the photo. “It was an identification. ”
“It’s meaningless, unfortunately,” Monica said. “There’s no way to prove who that is. Even if we could, it wouldn’t do anything toward proving or disproving Christianity. This was before the man was killed. Of all the shots for Razon to get . . . ” She shook her head.
“It doesn’t change my mind,” I said, slipping the photo back into the envelope.
“I didn’t think it would,” Monica said. “Consider it as payment. ”
“I didn’t end up accomplishing much for you. ”
“Nor we for you,” she said, walking from the room. “Good evening, Mister Leeds. ”
I rubbed my finger on the envelope, listening as Wilson showed Monica to the door, then shut it. I left Ivy and J. C. having a conversation about his cursing, then walked into the entryway and up the stairs. I wound around them, hand on the banister, before reaching the upper hallway.
My study was at the end. The room was lit by a single lamp on the desk, the shades drawn against the night. I walked to my desk and sat down. Tobias sat in one of the two other chairs beside it.
I picked up a book—the last in what had been a huge stack—and began leafing through. The picture of Sandra, the one recovered from the train station, hung tacked to the wall beside me.
“Have they figured it out?” Tobias asked.
“No,” I said. “Have you?”
“It was never the camera, was it?”
I smiled, turning a page. “I searched his pockets right after he died. Something cut my fingers. Broken glass. ”
Tobias frowned. Then, after a moment’s thought, he smiled. “Shattered lightbulbs?”
I nodded. “It wasn’t the camera, it was the flash. When Razon took pictures at the church, he used the flash even outside in the sunlight. Even when his subject was well lit, even when he was trying to capture something that happened during the day, such as Jesus’ appearance outside the tomb following his resurrection. That’s a mistake a good photographer wouldn’t make. And he was a good photographer, judging by the pictures hung in his apartment. He had
a good eye for lighting. ”
I turned a page, then reached into my pocket and took something out, setting it on the table. A detachable flash, the one I’d taken off the camera just before the explosion. “I’m not sure if it’s something about the flash mechanism or the bulbs, but I do know he was swapping out the bulbs in order to stop the thing from working when he didn’t want it to. ”
“Beautiful,” Tobias said.
“We’ll see,” I replied. “This flash doesn’t work; I’ve tried. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. You know how the cameras would work for Monica’s people for a while? Well, many camera flashes have multiple bulbs like this one. I suspect that only one of these had anything to do with the temporal effects. The special bulbs burned out quickly, after maybe ten shots. ”
I turned a few pages.
“You’re changing, Stephen,” Tobias finally said. “You noticed this without Ivy. Without any of us. How long before you don’t need us any longer?”
“I hope that never happens,” I said. “I don’t want to be that man. ”
“And yet you chase her. ”
“And yet I do,” I whispered.
One step closer. I knew what train Sandra had taken. A ticket peeked out of her coat pocket. I could make out the numbers, just barely.
She’d gone to New York. For ten years, I’d been hunting this answer—which was only a tiny fraction of a much larger hunt. The trail was a decade old, but it was something.
For the first time in years, I was making progress. I closed the book and sat back, looking up at Sandra’s picture. She was beautiful. So very beautiful.
Something rustled in the dark room. Neither Tobias nor I stirred as a short, balding man sat down at the desk’s empty chair. “My name is Arnaud,” he said. “I’m a physicist specializing in temporal mechanics, causality, and quantum theories. I believe you have a job for me?”
I set the final book on the stack of those I’d read during the last month. “Yes, Arnaud,” I said. “I do. ”
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