by Steven James
“Why is time of the essence?”
“We’ll cover that in a minute.”
“Last December you told me your job was recruitment, but you never explained who you were looking for, who you were recruiting.”
“Those with the gift to see what most people miss.”
“You mean when we have blurs?”
“There’s a rare combination of factors that have come together in a fraction of a percent of the population. You’re one of the few we’ve been able to locate.”
The doors swish open and we step into a cramped, narrow elevator.
“So you want to study us?”
“Think of your blurs as a flashlight beam. Your subconscious is shining it through the darkness of all the distractions that are out there every day, all around you—all the untidy details of life—until it finds cohesion where there seems to be chaos, and then it draws your attention to it.”
On the elevator’s panel there’s an upper level that appears to require a key card to access it. We’re on B1. He presses B3, two levels down.
“So, like I said, you want to study us.”
The doors close.
We descend.
“The agency I work with wants to help you focus the beam.”
“I’ve read about the different aspects of schizophrenia. Is that what we have? Some sort of mental illness?”
“We’re still trying to understand it,” he says, which doesn’t quite reassure me. “But we’re going to have to put some of that on hold. A young woman is missing and we don’t have a lot of time to find her.”
“Who is she?”
“Senator Amundsen’s daughter. She’s like you. She has blurs. And we need to find her before nine o’clock tonight.”
“Or?”
“Or her abductors are going to kill her, Daniel. But if they get what they want in their ransom demands, the very foundation of our justice system could be left in ruins.”
I wonder if he might be exaggerating things, but the way he says it makes me believe him.
He doesn’t elaborate.
The elevator stops.
The doors part.
Another hallway.
We walk for a few minutes in silence and, although the layout of the halls on this level appears to be identical to B1, the equations represented are different.
Well, at least if you get lost, you’ll be able to tell what floor you’re on.
Also different: All the rooms on this level require a key card.
Finally, we come to an unremarkable door in the middle of an unremarkable hallway and Malcolm waves the card in front of the reader.
With a slight whisper that reminds me of someone exhaling, the door whisks open, and he gestures for me to go inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
10:00 A.M.
11 HOURS UNTIL THE DEADLINE
It’s a huge contrast to the austere room where I woke up.
One wall of the lush apartment is covered with a panoramic window. It looks like we’re on the ground floor of a building in a dense forest.
Another wall contains an array of screens that display the security footage from the cameras that were in the hallways I was walking through earlier.
An imposing guy—maybe Hawaiian or Polynesian—stands beside the window. Near him, a fair-skinned girl is seated on a large, L-shaped black leather couch. They both appear to be about my age and when Malcolm and I step into the room and the door slides shut behind us, both of them turn our way.
The boy has me by at least thirty pounds, and it’s all muscle. He looks street-tough and doesn’t seem too happy to be here.
The girl’s strawberry-blonde hair is trimmed into a neat pixie cut. She’s almost as slender as Mia. Dark sunglasses hide her eyes.
“Daniel,” Malcolm says, “I’d like you to meet Alysha and Tane. They’ve both agreed to help me.” He sets his key card between an elaborate lava lamp and a vase on a table pushed up against the wall.
“With what? Finding the senator’s daughter?”
“Petra. Yes. There’s a man who’s performing chronobiology tests on prisoners. You’ll remember him from last winter.”
“Dr. Waxford.”
“Right. My employer wants to stop him, and also wants to—let me back up for a second. As I told you upstairs, your subconscious is drawing meaning from the random data that passes by each of us all the time. It’s the same for Alysha and Tane. We need to find a template for your conscious minds to interact with—”
His phone rings softly, with a distinctive, chiming ringtone. He glances at the screen, and worry etches across his face. “I’m sorry. I need to take this. I’ll give you a few minutes to get to know each other, then we’ll have to get started. Please excuse me.”
Tane silently watches Malcolm leave. As soon as we’re alone, he strides toward me. I’m about to ask if he knows what exactly is going on, but before I can say a word, he cocks his fist back and sends it flying at me, connecting solidly with my jaw.
I can take a punch, but this guy has some serious heft to him and the force of the blow snaps my head around and almost sends me to the floor.
With my left arm out of commission, I don’t really want to fight him, but I figure I’ll do what I have to do.
Slowly, I turn and face him, wiping the blood off my lip.
I undo the Velcro strap on the sling and slough it off my arm, letting it drop to the floor beside me. “Hit me again and see how that goes for you.”
I’m partly bluffing.
Partly not.
Tane opens his mouth slightly as if he’s going to reply, but then closes it again.
He doesn’t take another swing at me.
We both stand our ground.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Alysha says in a soft, delicate voice. “We’re both a little on edge here.”
“How did Malcolm find you?” Tane asks me.
“Someone told him about me last winter. Why did you hit me?”
“Where are you from?”
“Wisconsin. I asked why you punched me.”
“To see what you’re made of. I’m from L.A.”
“And I’m from Montana,” Alysha inserts. “Do you see things that aren’t there?”
“Hang on.” I’m not satisfied with Tane’s answer. “You wanted to see what I’m made of? That’s not enough of a reason to walk up to someone you just met and slug him in the face.”
“You can tell a lot about a person by how he reacts when you punch him.”
“Really? And what could you tell about me?”
He leans over, picks up my sling, and hands it to me. “That I wouldn’t want to fight you. Unless I had to.”
The feeling is mutual, but I don’t say that. I just put the sling back on.
The shoulder hurts, but I hold back from wincing as I strap the sling in place.
“So, do you see things?” Alysha presses me.
“You mean hallucinations?”
“Visions, revelations, whatever you want to call them.”
“Yes. I do.”
“When did it start for you?”
“Last fall. At a funeral. Do you see them too?”
“Well, not exactly.” She removes her sunglasses and, although she’s facing me, her gaze tips past me, her eyes cloudy and unfocused.
“You’re blind?”
“Visually impaired,” Tane corrects me.
“Let’s just stick with ‘blind,’” she says. “I hate all that stupid politically correct stuff. But to answer your question, Daniel, no, I don’t see things. I hear them. And sometimes I feel them touch me.”
“I see them. And I hear them too,” Tane adds. “It’s almost like other people are talking to me, right inside my head, even when there’s no way I should be able to know what they’re saying.”
He seems more forthcoming than I would’ve expected.
Alysha is still turned toward me. “Do you have headaches first?”
“I used to, but then, in time, they stopped, and I just started having the blurs without any warning. Look, how long have you two been here?”
“Blurs?”
“That’s what I call them. When reality blurs along the edges and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.”
“Blurs.” She nods reflectively. “Yeah, that makes sense. We’ll go with that. Do you know what causes them? Your blurs?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. So—how long were you saying you’ve been here?”
“Malcolm picked me up Saturday night,” Tane tells me.
“And I’ve been here since last week,” Alysha explains. “He told my parents that I was going to some sort of student leadership conference or something. I’m not sure. He’s had me busy listening to 911 calls from missing persons cases.”
“Why?”
“To see if I can notice things other people miss.”
That was pretty much the same phrase Malcolm had used just a few minutes ago when he was explaining things to me.
Tane retrieves the key card that Malcolm left next to the lava lamp and studies it as if it might reveal clues about our situation. Then, once again he opens up more than I think he will. “I live with my mom. Dad’s out of the picture. Well, he was never really in it. I don’t know what Malcolm told her, but she was probably just glad to not have to worry about taking care of me for a while. She’s not exactly a finalist for Mother of the Year. What about you?”
“My mom?”
“No. Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“I . . . well . . . I’m not sure.”
I realize that if they haven’t already, my friends and my parents will be missing me soon.
Though my memory of what happened last night is still murky, I don’t recall leaving any sort of note behind. It wouldn’t have helped anything though, since I don’t know where I am or how long I’ll be here.
“Do you know why we’re here?” Tane asks.
“Malcolm mentioned finding the senator’s daughter.”
“Petra.”
“Yes. That’s about all I know.”
“You mentioned that someone told Malcolm about you,” Alysha says. “That’s how he found you?”
“Yes.”
“Was he tracking your online activity?”
“Yes, actually he was.”
“It’s the same for both of us.”
Tane is distractedly flipping the key card through his fingers. “He’s looking for a convergence.”
“A convergence?”
“Of knowledge and desire, of curiosity and ability. At least that’s what he told me. Through algorithms and analyzing metadata, searches, interests, posts, and profiles. They look for people with certain, well, gifts.”
I wondered if that might be connected somehow to the equations represented in the hallways.
Someone with the gift for solving equations just like me might have created them.
Tane glances at the window, then back at me. “Do you know what floor we’re on?”
“The ground floor, I guess.” A bird lands on one of the branches, chirps lightly, then starts to strut back and forth.
“Keep an eye on the bird,” Alysha says. “Two more chirps and it’ll fly away. Give it ten seconds or so.”
I watch the bird and wait.
Within a few seconds it chirps once, then after a short pause, it does so again before lifting softly into flight.
Astonished, I turn to her. “How did you know that?”
“Every hour and five minutes it lands there. It’s on a loop.”
“A loop?” I walk to the window and put my hand against the glass. “This is just a video screen?”
“Yes.”
“It’s amazing. It’s so realistic.”
“So, do you have any idea where we are?” Tane asks. “The last I heard, Malcolm was going to bring me to Atlanta, but I’m not sure if that’s where we ended up.”
I’m still intrigued by Alysha’s observation about the bird. “How did you realize the video is on a loop? I mean, I could see if it happened over the span of a few minutes, but you’re saying it’s over an hour?”
Tane gestures toward the monitors on the wall. “There’s a time marker on the security cameras.”
“But still.”
“I heard it,” she tells me.
“And you remembered it?”
She shrugs. “I just tend to remember things pretty well. That’s all.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Everyone’s a virtuoso at something. It’s just that some people haven’t discovered their instrument yet. Mine is listening.”
Everyone’s a virtuoso at something.
Huh, I like it.
What about you?
Math?
I guess that would be my instrument.
As we wait for Malcolm to return, the conversation shifts from the gift of noticing what other people miss to how that affects the dreams we have.
Alysha starts talking about her nightmares, and I’m especially interested in what she has to say since she doesn’t have visual dreams.
No images.
No colors.
“I was born blind so I’ve never seen anything, but I hear things and feel pressure in my dreams. Like, for example, I’m terrified of wasps. So I sometimes have a nightmare where I hear them circling around my head and I can feel them crawling on my face and my neck, but, obviously, I can’t see where they are so I can’t stop them or swat them away.”
Then she asks us to tell her about our nightmares.
I go first, starting with that dream of the boy and the bats.
Kyle left the field house.
Nothing.
He’d even snuck into the locker rooms and wandered into the reception area of the office, where a bearded guy in his mid-twenties was filing the basketball camp registration forms.
He looked up at Kyle and asked somewhat brusquely if he needed anything.
“No. I’m just looking for someone.”
“Well, no one’s come through here.”
“You’ve been here all morning?”
“I’m the receptionist. So. Yes.”
“Right.”
Although it was possible that the coaches would have noticed Daniel’s absence, with so many basketball players, it would be easy for someone to slip through the cracks without drawing too much attention.
On his way to the fountain to meet the girls, Kyle texted them: Nada. You?
Mia responded first: No.
Then, Nicole: He’s not in the cafeteria.
Nicole was waiting for him at the fountain and a minute or so later Mia walked up and asked, “What should we do now?”
“I guess we go to campus security after all,” Kyle replied. “I’m not sure where else to look.”
Using his phone, he pulled up a map of the university, located the security office on the far side of campus, and the three of them headed toward it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
11:00 A.M.
10 HOURS UNTIL THE DEADLINE
Malcolm still hasn’t returned.
“He said he was only going to be gone for a couple minutes, right?” Alysha’s concern is clear in her voice. “Where do you think he is?”
I study the bank of security footage monitors on the wall. “Tane, do you still have that key card?”
“Yeah.”
I head to the monitors. “Swipe it on this reader to open up the files.”
He does, unlocking the screen and allowing us to review the footage.
“I saw you earlier on here,” he says, “when you were wandering the halls.”
“I wasn’t wandering.”
“What were you doing?”
“Memorizing.”
The interface is pretty user-friendly, so it’s not too tough to pick up how to navigate through the current feeds, especially since the monitors all have touch screens.
I scroll through
the various cameras, but don’t see Malcolm.
As I review the hallways, I take a moment to explain to Tane and Alysha what I discovered about the equations represented by the arrangement of the tiles on the floor.
Before I can finish, however, Tane, who’s swiping through files on the screen next to mine, cuts in. “What is this?” There’s a mixture of anger and shock in his voice. “They’ve got archives here with our names on ’em. Some of these go back months.”
“Months?” Alysha says. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, I know, long before we ever got here. He has footage that was taken from, I don’t even know . . . um—” He taps the icon for a file of his from Saturday night. “That’s when I was still in L.A.”
Footage comes up of him in a rundown apartment. By the angle, the video was evidently being shot from a phone that he’s holding at his side: A woman is shouting at him threateningly, waving a half-empty bottle of whisky. He plucks a pack of cigarettes off the counter and clomps out of the room as she yells for him to bring back her smokes now!
“He hacked into my phone and turned on the camera,” Tane mutters. “Maybe that’s how he found me on that street corner. But I know I had my cell off when I got there . . . At least I thought I did.”
There are both audio and video files of all three of us.
Although I’m curious to find out what conversations of mine Malcolm has been listening in on, I’m more interested in the video records of a boy named Liam and a girl named Jess.
“Did Malcolm ever mention any other kids to you?” I ask.
Both Alysha and Tane tell me no.
All of the footage appears to have been taken here at this facility.
I play the first one of Jess.
April 18, 7:17 p.m.
She’s a dark-haired girl who looks a little younger than us. The video begins with her sitting on the couch, here in the apartment. Malcolm is standing beside her.
By their conversation it’s obvious that she only recently arrived and he’s trying to put her at ease.
“You have a gift that is very rare.”
“I don’t know anything about it being a gift. I’d call it more of a curse.”
“Have you heard the story about the Chinese farmer’s son?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, there was a Chinese farmer whose stallion ran away one day across the border to where a group of nomads lived. When the people from the farmer’s village tell him that he must be cursed, he says, ‘Who’s to say it’s not a blessing?’ So then, about a month later the stallion returns with a mare beside it. All of his friends comment on his good fortune that he now has two horses rather than just one, but he says, ‘Who’s to say it’s not a curse?’ Well, his son goes riding all the time on that new mare, and one day he falls and breaks his leg so badly that he can’t walk anymore without a cane. Then when the people try to sympathize with the farmer, he says, ‘Who’s to say it’s not a blessing?’ So time goes by and war breaks out with the people from beyond the border, and all the men from the farmer’s village who’re able to fight go into battle, but since the boy has this disability he can’t go. Most of the men die in that war but the boy survives and is able to care for his father even into his old age. And so, curses and blessings—who’s to say which is which?”
