by Patrick Lee
“Grout’s different around this one,” Keene said.
Even in the resolution of the cell phone’s screen, Travis could see what he was talking about. Keene called for one of the others to bring the pry bar again. Its squared head worked well enough to gouge away the sanded grout around the slab. When the gap was deep enough for the tool to get a purchase, Keene wedged it in and pried. The stone resisted for only a second, then gave with a grind—and a hiss like a seal breaking. Hands reached into the frame and lifted it away to reveal a narrow shaft descending into darkness, with built-in rungs.
A minute later the team was inside the chamber below. It was larger than Travis had expected: forty by forty feet at least, extending far beneath the house itself. Steel beams as solid as bridge supports crisscrossed the ceiling, braced by upright columns every fifteen feet or so.
It looked like what he’d expected. It looked like a computer lab. Workstations. Wiring schematics spread out on desks. Swivel chairs everywhere. Some kind of makeshift conference table: a line of smaller tables shoved together, surrounded by more chairs.
But no quantum computer.
Nothing even close. There were laptops on some of the desks. The Tangent operators turned each one on and saw the familiar onscreen brand logos before the password prompts came up.
Otherwise, the place was empty of equipment.
Travis felt as lost as he had at any time since his hike in the Brooks Range had been interrupted. How could it not be there? Why had the Whisper killed all of those people if they didn’t have anything that could affect it?
Keene’s viewpoint made a last sweep of the room, as he turned to follow his men back up the ladder.
“Wait,” Travis said.
The viewpoint halted.
“What is it?” Keene said.
“On the wall above the conference table. What is that?”
Keene looked at it. Moved closer. It was a huge oil painting, abstract, scratches of dark green on a white surface.
“It’s nothing,” Keene said.
“It’s everything,” Travis said.
He looked at the phone’s onscreen menu buttons. One was labeled CAPTURE.
“Do me a favor,” Travis said. He directed Keene to go closer, until the painting more than filled the phone’s screen, and he captured freeze-frames of its four quadrants. At that resolution it became legible.
A message from the Whisper. Written in the scratch language. Travis switched back and forth through the screen captures, and read it:
HELLO, TRAVIS. RIGHT NOW YOU MUST BE SITTING NEAR THE OPEN ELEVATOR SHAFT ABOVE BORDER TOWN, ABOUT NINETY SECONDS BEFORE SUNRISE. I’VE SEEN TO IT THAT AARON PILGRIM DOES NOT REMEMBER PAINTING THIS PIECE, NOR DOES HE REMEMBER SELLING IT TO THE GALLERY THAT ELLIS COOK WOULD ONE DAY VISIT WHILE ON VACATION IN ZURICH WITH HIS DAUGHTER. I’M SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT THERE IS NO PLUS-TEN-QUBIT QUANTUM COMPUTER INSIDE THIS HOUSE, OR ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, IN JUNE OF 2009. THE ORDER OF THE QUBIT WAS NEVER EVEN CLOSE TO REACHING ITS GOAL. YOU MAY FIND IT GROSSLY INEFFICIENT TO MURDER THIRTY-SEVEN PEOPLE OVER A DECADE AND A HALF, JUST TO GIVE YOU A REASON TO KEEP THE PRESIDENT FROM NUKING BORDER TOWN TWENTY MINUTES AGO, BUT REALLY, IT WAS A PRETTY SIMPLE MOVE FROM MY POINT OF VIEW. AS OF THE MOMENT YOU REACH THE PERIOD AT THE END OF THIS SENTENCE, BORDER TOWN’S SURFACE-TO-AIR DEFENSES WILL COME BACK ONLINE, ELIMINATING THE NUCLEAR OPTION. YOU NOW HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO FOLLOW YOUR FIRST INSTINCT: PUT ON THE TRANSPARENCY SUIT AND MAKE YOUR MOVE AGAINST PILGRIM AND HIS PEOPLE. I’LL MAKE YOU A PROMISE: IF YOU DO IT (YOU WILL) THEN PAIGE CAMPBELL WILL SURVIVE. IN ALL OTHER POSSIBLE FUTURES, SHE DIES JUST OVER ELEVEN MINUTES FROM NOW. I’LL SEE YOU SOON, OLD FRIEND, AND WHEN I DO, YOU’LL FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL REALLY ABOUT. HAVE FUN.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Climbing down the shaft ladder with the suit on was tricky. There was a difficulty to grabbing rungs with hands he couldn’t see. He only had to go down two stories. From there he used an override switch to open the B2 elevator doors, and stepped out of the shaft into the hallway. He’d asked Keene for the locations of Defense Control, Security Control, and the Primary Lab. The places where Pilgrim and his men were clustered. Defense Control was on B4. He entered the stairwell and made his way down.
Through the window in the door he saw four men, all in their twenties, watching a bank of high-definition monitors as if each were showing the last play of the Super Bowl. In fact they were showing the empty desert around the facility. It appeared to be a single large room. No internal hallways leading off out of sight. No blind corners. There was a bathroom, but its door hung open and Travis could see that it was empty. No one else in the room except the head-shot bodies of its original occupants: the woman Travis had heard over the speakerphone earlier, and five men.
Along the wall opposite the monitors, the drywall had been blown out by an explosion, and even the structural steel columns were warped and charred. Between two of the uprights, a spiderweb of delicate wiring and various computer cables—hundreds of each kind—had been attached to the damaged wiring with clamps and adapters. This was the half hour’s work that’d brought Border Town’s defenses back online.
Travis had the rifle slung on his shoulder. The only visible thing about him. He could go in and shoot these four guys in a matter of seconds, even without the suit; not one of them had a weapon within reach. But directly below this room was Security Control, where more of Pilgrim’s people were probably stationed. The sound of shooting would carry at least that far, so these four kills would have to be quiet. Pretty quiet, anyway.
He unslung the rifle and leaned it against the wall next to the door. Then, keeping his eyes on the men through the glass, he turned the knob slowly and eased the door open. A moment later he eased it shut again, from the inside. All heads were still aimed at the monitors.
How to do this? There were options. Strewn across the floor below the repaired wiring were various tools, some with blades on them, though not especially large ones. There were screwdrivers that might serve as decent stabbing weapons, including an eight-inch Phillips head. Last, but not even close to least, was a tool that appealed to Travis’s lack of subtlety. A two-foot-long crowbar. Travis picked it up with both hands, to prevent it from scraping on the tile and giving him away. He turned to the four men, their backs to him, and gripped the weapon like a baseball bat. He looked at the executed bodies on the floor, their open eyes still registering the panic in which they’d died.
He didn’t feel at all bad for what he was about to do.
The four men were seated only feet apart from one another. A nice easy row of targets. Travis decided to start on the right end and work his way left, to give his swing plenty of room.
The first impact sounded like a wet branch breaking. Travis caught the man just above the ear and crushed the sidewall of his skull inward by at least an inch. The body pitched sideways into the second man, who turned his head just in time to take his own hit straight to the forehead. His eyes snapped shut and he fell from his chair also. The third man had another second to react. He had no idea what the hell was happening, but his arms had enough sense to cross in front of his face as he screamed. Not a useful strategy. Travis stepped toward him and brought the crowbar down on top of his scalp the way he would sink an axe into a log. The result was much the same.
Only the fourth man fully grasped what was happening. He threw himself from his chair, landed on his ass and skittered backward, ending up with his back in the corner and his arms up defensively. He watched the crowbar bob toward him.
“Wait, wait!” the guy said. He looked about twenty-five. Still had some acne left over from his teens. Had to be wondering who the fuck was wearing his boss’s old transparency suit. He seemed to be working out what he might say, here and now, to save his ass. In a way, it was fun to watch. Because nothing in the English language would suffice.
“You can just tie me up,” he said at last.
Travis thought that sounded like an especially lame eff
ort. He kept the crowbar up high, commanding the guy’s attention, and kicked him just below the ribs as hard as he could. The guy’s lungs collapsed from the blow and he caved into a sitting fetal position, crying. Travis brought the crowbar down on the back of his head, full force, and the crying stopped.
Silence in the room. These four were definitely dead. Travis gave each man another two solid bashes to be sure. Then he took a pair of wire cutters from the floor, pocketed them, and returned to the corridor.
He took the rifle from where he’d leaned it, but kept the crowbar. Went to the stairwell and descended one floor to B5. Security Control. Pilgrim’s nearest people, after this floor, should be five levels down in the conference room, watching Paige and the others. Still too close to risk gunshots. Sound might carry that far through the vents.
Security Control had the same kind of door as Defense Control. Same room layout too. But only one of Pilgrim’s men was on duty.
Travis went in and beat him to death.
In a way, the past half hour had been worse than the time Paige had spent under torture in Alaska. If not physically, then in every other sense.
All that she had devoted her life to was about to end. Worse: it would be inverted to its malicious opposite. What Tangent had watched over and shepherded with the best interests of the world in mind, Pilgrim would sic on humanity to serve himself. Or if the Whisper’s own plan really did take precedence, maybe something worse was coming. Something beyond the limits of what she could dread.
She’d spent these thirty minutes thinking of the most dangerous things locked up in the steel catacombs below her, and the harm they could sow.
Then there was Travis’s corpse. Still lying right in front of her. She’d woken up naked in his arms forty-five minutes ago, about as happy as she’d ever been since restricting her life to Border Town. Now he was gone. Because of what she’d asked him to do. It didn’t help to remind herself there’d been no other option. Nothing helped.
She looked at the guards. Three of them now. All of them watching, not even glancing away. No chance to make any move. Except to make them kill her.
Which wasn’t entirely crazy.
She knew what it felt like to wish for death as an escape. Whatever the hell Pilgrim was keeping her and the others alive for, it was likely to put her back in those straits. Very likely.
Fuck it, then.
The nearest guard was five feet away from her. Offering no warning about her intentions, she pitched her body forward into a somersault—tricky with her hands bound behind her—and came upright again with her right leg drawn against her chest, a foot away from the man. He drew back reflexively, one leg going back, the other staying in place, the knee locking straight. Beautiful.
Paige pistoned her foot into his knee as hard as she could. Heard it crack. Saw the leg bend exactly backward from the way nature had designed it to. He screamed and collapsed, keeping hold of his rifle, and centering it on her face now.
She closed her eyes, and a second later the room exploded with automatic rifle fire.
Whatever dying was supposed to feel like, this wasn’t it. She heard bodies falling. Wondered how the hell she was capable of hearing anything. Or even thinking, given that her head should have been shattered by now.
The shooting stopped.
She opened her eyes.
The three guards were dead. And there was a rifle floating in the air.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Travis couldn’t tell if there was more happiness or anger in her embrace. Either one might account for the fierceness of it. Over her shoulder, he saw the others passing the wire cutters along one by one, each freed person flexing circulation back into near-dead hands.
On the table beside him lay the backpack, which he’d worn under the suit, and the top half of the suit itself, which he’d taken off a moment earlier.
At last Paige let go of him and met his eyes. She had only a little difficulty finding her voice. “It’s against the rules to double human bodies, you know.”
“I’m new here,” he said. “Gimme a break.”
He glanced at his corpse on the floor. Christ, it was a sight.
Behind Paige, the last of the survivors had been freed. Some were looking at Travis, but most were watching the doorway warily.
Travis turned to the backpack, unzipped it, and took out the Doubler. “You guys can make enough weapons to protect yourselves, if anyone else shows up here. But I think all the rest are working on the blast doors on B42.”
He picked up the top half of the transparency suit again. “I’ll go take care of them now.”
He saw Paige’s eyes after he said that. Saw that she wanted to go with him, her instinct compelling her to put herself in harm’s way before others, or at least share the danger. But the obvious didn’t need stating: the suit’s advantage only worked if he went alone.
So instead she only nodded. “They’ll be on a maintenance rig suspended in the elevator shaft from the floor above. It’s the only way to access those doors.”
He nodded, kissed her, then pulled on the suit top.
It was strange, watching her eyes lose him. She was still looking at where his face had been.
He turned toward the three guards he’d killed a moment before. Two of them wore holstered pistols in addition to the rifles they’d carried. The advantage of a pistol, small enough to conceal beneath the transparency suit, was obvious. Travis had seen that advantage annihilate a team of heavily armed men in Alaska, and had come within a second or two of falling prey to it himself. It didn’t escape him that the tables were now precisely turned. He was the one in the suit this time, going up against the Whisper. If he made the slightest mistake, and allowed Pilgrim time to take it out of its box, the suit would be of no help at all. It hadn’t been for its last owner.
But he didn’t think it would happen that way. It would be nothing so simple. Not after all this. Not after reading the message on Ellis Cook’s painting.
He was resigned now to whatever fate the Whisper had mapped out for him, and for the world. There was simply no avoiding it. There was only hitting it head-on and finding out what the hell it was.
He took the nearest guard’s pistol—a .45—and the two spare clips in the man’s pocket, and started for the door.
Then he stopped. And though no one could see it, he smiled.
“The elevator is three stories below us,” he said. “The cables are broken, so its brakes against the shaft wall must’ve stopped it.”
“Yeah,” Paige said, looking toward the sound of his voice.
“Anyone know how to override them?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Pilgrim stood at the wedged-open shaft doors and stared down into the semi-darkness. Ten feet below, his fat-ass second in command, Jackley, with the help of three others, was making good progress on the blast doors. It was tedious work. The hanging platform—its suspension cables came up through the open doors to anchor blocks bolted into the corridor floor—made a terrible base from which to drill. The harder Jackley pushed the carbide bit against the steel, the more the platform itself moved. To cope with this long-foreseen problem, the others on the platform had two-by-fours that they propped against the shaft wall, opposite the drilling focus. The nearer end of each two-by-four had a flat board tacked onto it, and Jackley braced his back against these as he drilled. It was a tricky solution that required a lot of hands and attention, but it did the job.
Pilgrim wasn’t stressed about it. In truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt stress of any kind. How could he, with the Whisper in his service, leading him all these years to the goal he’d demanded of it?
Control of Border Town.
Control of all the powerful things that lay inside the Primary Lab, just beyond the blast doors below. So many of the wonders in there, Tangent had never fully understood. Entities that were obviously built for great and terrible purposes, but which the researchers had never learned how to
operate. How to even switch on, in some cases.
The Whisper would know, though. Once he was in there, he’d have everything he needed.
Over the years, he’d learned not to question the snaking course it had charted for him. It was a great big thing that he’d asked of it. A thing he’d have never accomplished on his own. So of course the plan would be puzzling to him. Of course it would be elaborate and confusing. That was part of its power. And now it’d worked. He was here because he’d trusted the Whisper and followed its plotted track exactly.
Even keeping the survivors alive upstairs. Including Chase. Chase, whose importance the Whisper had emphasized above all others. Pilgrim had only vaguely wondered why. Maybe the guy would turn out to be an exceptionally useful subordinate for him, given time enough, and pressure. Who knew? Who cared? If the Whisper wanted him here, that was enough.
Below, Jackley was using the carbide bit as more of a blade than a drill, cutting a manhole-sized circle into the foot-thick blast door. Now he hooted excitedly, because he’d come back around to where he’d started. The drill bit met the beginning of its own circular track, and the excised plug of steel dropped an inch, settling on the bottom of the widened opening with a heavy thud.
“Magnet,” Jackley said.
The man behind him lifted the battery-powered workhorse magnet from the platform and handed it to him. Jackley held the magnet’s base against the steel plug, and switched it on. With a bass hum, it drew itself against the metal hard enough to pull Jackley off balance. Now each man on the platform took hold of the magnet’s broad handle and leaned back, drawing on it.
“Careful now,” Jackley said. “Closer she gets, the softer we pull.”
The plug slid outward, two inches, then four, then six. At eight inches it began to tilt, and Jackley stopped the others with a gesture.
“Pull us away,” he said.
The others gripped the beams on the shaft wall and pulled the hanging platform back from the blast door, allowing the plug plenty of room to fall without landing on the platform itself. Jackley leaned forward carefully, his stomach braced against the platform’s safety rail, and gave the magnet one last tug.
