Fabler hated to ask. “What is it?”
“They look like giant saber-toothed crocodiles with long legs.”
“Well we got at least six codons trotting down the east hall, coming this way.”
Fabler plotted it out. Jake, somewhere nearby freeing prisoners, had the gland, the sculptor, and Mu.
Fabler reached for Lori, Presley threw her arm around Grim, and the four of them charged down the corridor, Sinatra bringing up the rear.
“Orange! Storage room had an orange light! Follow the yellow until it gets orange!”
Fabler had point, and he had no idea if Grim’s order was informed, or simply alerting the codons where they were. Mu had told Fabler the storage area was southwest, but that had been from the lab, and Fabler had no compass, and the twisty-turny hallways, lack of sky, and inability to open up walls, meant he had no idea where to lead everyone.
Gripping Lori’s hand, Fabler came to a fork in the corridor and tried to decide which light seemed oranger. He chose left, feeling it more than seeing it.
“Codons on our six! Gaining!”
Fabler wondered how Sinatra could keep up, as sloths weren’t known for their sprinting ability.
Facing those alligator things without guns would be suicidal. Fabler had seen them take down a few of the guards. Not only were they fast and vicious, but those bastards were smart. They worked in a pack, flanking and pinning, one distracting the target, others coming up behind.
The surrounding lighting became bright orange.
Fabler almost passed the doorway, and stopped so fast he almost pulled Lori off her feet.
Time seemed to stretch and slow down as Fabler saw a guard, sitting alone in the middle of the storeroom in front of Fabler’s Jeep, holding an M16 and pretending to shoot it while making a TATATATATATA sound.
The guard glanced up, locking eyes with Fabler.
Fabler pushed Lori out of the way and sprinted into the room.
The guard brought the M16 to bear and Fabler slapped his palm against the barrel, pushing it aside as he grabbed it, then jutting out his elbow and connecting with the grey’s nasal slits.
As the guard fell backward, Fabler kept a grip on the rifle, pulling it free, connecting the butt of the weapon with the guard’s oversized forehead once, twice, three times.
He checked the weapon, slapping the mag back in, charging the bolt, then calling for his wife.
Lori came in, and Fabler covered the door, index finger on the trigger guard, waiting for Grim and company, barking out Grim’s name, watching peripherally as Lori went to the unconscious grey and put a knee on his back.
“Back of my Jeep. Backpack. Paracord. Get his arms behind him, and his feet. Grim! Presley!”
Lori opened the tailgate and rummaged through the gear. “Oh my god. Chocolate energy bars. You know what it’s like to be pregnant without chocolate?”
“Tie him up first. Knife in the pocket.”
As Lori hogtied the guard, Fabler eased toward the doorway.
GRIM ○ 47 MINUTES
They’d been moving slower than Fabler and Lori, both because Presley had to hop and Sinatra trotted on his front knuckles, never exceeding the speed of a brisk walk. Grim lost sight of his sister and his friend around a turn, and when the corridor straightened out, they’d vanished.
“We’re losing Sinatra.”
Grim checked, saw his giant sloth BFF had fallen ten meters back.
But looking back, Grim noticed the light difference. Rather than get deeper orange, the all-around glow had drifted into reddish.
“We need to double-back.”
“I think you have a crush on the sloth.”
“We took the wrong turn.”
They reversed, catching up to Sinatra next to the fork in the hall. Grim couldn’t see past his furry friend, but he could hear the codons hissing and grunting at each other.
“Grim! Presley!”
“Jump on my back. I’ll carry you.”
“You talking to me. Or Sinatra?”
But Presley hopped on, piggybacking Grim, who jogged as fast as he could.
“Ahead!”
Grim saw the doorway. “Fabler! Coming in hot!”
He hurried inside the storage room, saw Fabler with an M16, Lori with a KRISS and a chocolate bar in her mouth. Tied-up grey on the floor.
“Another M16 in the Jeep, the other KRISS on the back shelf with all our clothes.”
“I’m setting you down.” Grim released Presley and went for the M16. “Sinatra’s behind us. Don’t shoot yet.”
Fabler kept aiming at the door while he spoke. “Presley, I think you have some competition for Grim’s affection.”
“Enough with the sloth-shaming.” Grim found the rifle, checked the mag, set to full auto, and readied the weapon.
Everyone waited.
Silence stretched.
Time crawled.
Grim counted heartbeats, getting to seventeen before the creature filled the doorway, scaring him so much he almost squeezed the trigger.
“Hold fire! It’s Sinatra!”
Sinatra seemed about as freaked-out as a giant ground sloth could get, and he squeezed through the door and hid behind the Jeep.
Grim began to count heartbeats again, noting his heartrate had gone up.
Grim hadn’t told anyone what he’d seen back at Lori’s cell, when he checked on that strange grunt that his sister blamed on the sloth.
The codons had been pulling apart a grey. And by pulling; literally pulling. One bit the shoulder, another the legs, and they yanked him in half, intestines stretching out like a slinky.
The grey had been alive. The sound we all heard; him screaming as his insides came outside.
Thirty heartbeats.
Still no codons.
Hot, fetid air washed over the back of Grim’s neck, like a blinky, sour blow-dryer on low.
“Easy, Sinatra. We’ll be okay.”
Cold followed, Sinatra pressing his wet nose against the back of Grim’s neck.
“We’re all getting through this, buddy.”
“Jesus, Grim. You two need to get a room.”
Grim considered a response to the ball-busting, but he’d already killed his friend the day before, so he kept quiet.
Eighty heartbeats.
Lori began to fidget. She knew guns; both he and Fabler had taken her shooting a gazillion times, right until she decided to try for a baby and made her husband get rid of all his guns. Fabler told Grim it had been his idea to sell them all, probably because he didn’t want to admit how whipped he’d become. But Grim knew his sister had been behind it.
Lori could shoot well, but she didn’t have the training the rest of them had. Fabler and Grim had been on missions where they had contests for who could stay still the longest. They’d gone an hour and fort
y-six minutes, standing up, without either of them even shifting their weight.
A hundred heartbeats.
“Maybe they got lost.”
Grim shushed his sister.
At a hundred and twenty-one heartbeats, the first codon stuck its snout through the doorway.
Fabler’s voice oozed calm. “Steady. On my mark.”
The codon made a snorting sound, then flicked out a surprisingly delicate tongue, tasting the air. It stared directly at Grim.
Another codon stuck its head in, zeroed in on Presley by the shelves, and shoved his more cautious buddy aside to run at her.
“Light them up!”
Grim limited his fire to controlled, one-second bursts.
Despite the noise, the takedown of Presley’s assailant was surgical, almost instant. One moment, charging lizard. The next moment, bleeding lizardburger.
The codon leader also attacked, flanked by two more, and Grim slapped in a new mag and aimed for the leader’s open mouth.
The two flanking the leader were shredded before Grim had a chance to fire at them, and he sighted on the next two, scrambling over the bodies of the dead to get inside the room.
Grim had gone temporarily deaf from the gunfire, so when he emptied his mag he glanced at Fabler while replacing it, watching for hand signals.
Fabler held his M16 in front of him like a sword.
A codon, injured but pressing, scurried up to Fabler, who tried to keep it at bay with the butt of his rifle.
Grim sprinted over, coming up on the creature’s side so he didn’t shoot Fabler, stitching it with gunfire.
It opened its mouth to eat Fabler.
Grim, completely deaf and fired up with adrenaline and combat rage, rushed the monster and leapt up onto its back, mounting it like a horse. He screamed something mutely as the lizard lifted his head, then jammed the M16 into its eye socket and let it rip.
The NATO rounds ricocheted around inside the overgrown croc’s skull like pinballs, scrambling its brain, and Grim stayed on top as it ate the floor, dismounting by swinging his leg over the head and facing the doorway, drilled the last codon in the open mouth as it lunged.
It dropped dead at his feet, bathing Grim with its last, rancid breath.
“And that’s how it’s done, son.”
No one heard Grim, including himself.
He checked the doorway, peeking out fast, giving his team the hand signal for clear. Then he turned to check on them.
Presley, fine.
Lori, fine.
Fabler, on the floor, but fine.
The guard, still unconscious on the floor.
Sinatra—
Sinatra had somehow crawled halfway under the Jeep, lifting the back tires up a meter and a half.
Grim snapped his head back to Fabler, watching him get up. Fabler said something that Grim couldn’t hear, but read his lips.
“Not bad.”
Fabler turned and shouted something, which Grim could barely hear over the clanging in his ears, and then held up four fingers.
Grim noticed Presley at the shelves, putting on clothes.
Grim joined her, and his hearing slowly came back as he geared up. He found the pants he was abducted in, his cell phone still in his pocket. He powered it up.
“Shit. No signal.”
Presley snorted. “Who were you gonna call? Doc Brown? Hey Fabler, you spent all that time showing me alien movies, we should have been watching Back to the Future.”
“Live and learn.” Fabler gave Lori some beef jerky and an energy drink, then sidled up to Grim. “Your boyfriend is gun shy.”
Grim glanced at Sinatra, still trying to hide under the vehicle. Then his eyes shifted to the guard. “And yours is awake.”
They went to the grey, and Fabler rolled him onto his side.
For a moment, Grim thought it was the Watcher.
Fabler pulled a SEAL knife and cut the paracord around the grey’s legs.
“How many guards are there?”
The grey didn’t answer.
For half a second, Grim thought Fabler was going to cut him. Grim tensed.
But Fabler kept his cool. He got the grey under the arm and helped him to his feet.
“Moving out. Grim, grab your cuddle buddy.”
“Gimme one of your energy bars.”
Fabler took one from his pocket, and Grim unwrapped it and held the chocolate under Sinatra’s snout, trying to lure him out from under the vehicle.
Sinatra sniffed the snack, and his weird skinny tongue shot out and snatched it, slobbering all over Grim’s hand.
He ate it so fast he couldn’t have tasted anything. But his sloth smile came back.
“Want another one?”
“YEAAAAHHH.”
“Fabler? Got anymore?”
“Gave the last one to Lori.”
Lori’s cheeks were puffy as a squirrel’s and half an energy bar stuck out from her lips.
“Lori, can I have that half?”
Lori shook her head no.
“C’mon, Sis.”
Presley nudged her. “Do it for his cuddle buddy.”
She handed over the half a bar, trailing a long string of saliva from her mouth.
Grim managed to lure Sinatra out from under the Jeep, and Fabler crawled inside to grab something.
“That is a goddamn flamethrower.”
“Can I use it?”
“No. Make sure we have the rest of the weapons and ammo. We’re leaving in forty seconds.”
JAKE ○ 42 MINUTES
He removed the supplication collar from a woman missing both arms. Like the others, she refused to leave her cell, instead cowering in a corner.
“Stop thinking linear. Open your mind.”
“You just told me time is linear, Mu. You said going back in time is like a cyclist on a track turning around. That’s linear.”
“Time is a line, but not a line in two dimensions, which is what you’re limited by.”
“That’s not a line, then. It’s a plane, or a cube.”
“Time is a twelve dimensional line. You can’t subjectively view more than three dimensions, which is why you perceive the universe to be a hologram. There is a whole lot you cannot perceive. Everything that has ever happened and ever will happen exists as a subjective point of view from every perspective and observable standpoint. That results in a closed, infinite set of information. Quarks are no different than bits and bytes, but quantum. Qubits. You can travel along a twelve dimensional line to any point in the closed set.
”
“So I can go back in time and kill my own grandfather and that won’t effect anything.”
“All moments already exist simultaneously. There are infinite points in timespace when you killed your own grandfather and turned out just fine. No paradox. Just closed loops. The math checks out.”
“How many prisoners left?”
“That was the last one. But I sense a Smilodon nearby.”
That pronouncement snapped Jake out of his hyperfocus.
“Which species?”
“S. populator.”
“How nearby?”
“Forty meters, west. It’s eating one of the prisoners.”
Jake felt his pulse spike. “This sculptor… what’s the best way to weaponize it?”
“Point it at the Smilodon’s chest. When it gets close, you can make its heart explode.”
“Sounds good.”
“But there are two problems.”
“Sounds bad. Elucidate.”
“First, stopping its heart might not kill the creature immediately. It could still finish a bite or two.”
“Thick skull. Would take 3.2890111829292 seconds longer for the sculptor to penetrate the skull rather than the chest. Rounding up, of course.”
“Stop telling me you round up. I know you round up. What’s the second problem?”
“We’re low on Reformant. We have barely enough to harvest limbs from the Experiment and reattach them to the prisoners. If you waste more than three hundred microliters on the Smilodon, someone won’t be getting their feet back.”
“Two hundred and eighty nine microliters. Don’t miss.”
“My hands are shaking.”
“Wait for it to get close.”
That made Jake’s hand shake even harder.
“Were you bullied as a child, Mr. McKendrick?”
“Yes. Of course. I’m different. Children have an unusual ability to sense those who are different. In third grade I had my head shoved in the toilet seventeen times.”
“Did that break you? Or make you stronger?”
What Happened to Lori Page 62
