by Cubed, Magen
“What, are you timing me?”
“Are you supposed to be my babysitter?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like cigarettes.”
“Okay, well, that’s because I’ve been smoking cigarettes. I’ve had a long morning. You’re the one who slept in, so I don’t think you have any room to judge me right now.”
“I think I like Clara better.”
“Hey, what’s with the attitude?” Herding her to the living room, he brought the cereal to the coffee table and turned on the television. “You have food and you have television. I think we’re doing pretty good so far.”
“At least you got the cereal right.”
“See? Now eat. You keep giving me lip and I’ll tell you about my childhood, and you don’t want that.”
“Ew. You’re old.”
“Yes, I am. Now, go eat.”
His phone rang in his back pocket. Quickly, he returned to the kitchen to answer it out of Hannah’s earshot. He turned down the radio. When he saw Adam’s name on the caller ID, he felt just a little relieved.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“We hit a snag,” Adam said. “White was gone by the time we got to the apartment and we don’t know where he is.”
Bridger rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Shit. Okay, now what?”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. I need to ask a favor.”
“What do you need?”
“Kyle’s trying to head him off before he gets to Pharmasuite. I wanted to see if you could try to track him before he gets there.”
“What, like, GPS or something?”
“Look, I know it’s a long shot, but—”
“No, I got it. I just can’t promise you anything.”
“Can you look at your maps again? Like you did before when you were looking for him?”
Shuffling through the files on the table, he shrugged helplessly. “Look, I can try, but this thing is like scattershot. You know that.”
“You’ve been one step behind him this entire time, Bridger. I know you can do this.”
He found one of Kyle’s maps of the city marked with previous attacks and potential targets. He opened it across the table. “Walk me through it again.”
“We know he’s going to Camden. To get in from the Hull, you have to take the H Line from Franklin or you have to get on I-90. There are security checkpoints all along the highway now and every major subway station. Kyle thinks it’ll be slow-going, but he could be in the city within an hour.”
Relaxing his focus, Bridger scanned the map of East Brighton City. His vision softened to take in the full breadth of city blocks. He soaked in the echoes of human life to trace Damon White’s footsteps amid the static and noise. It filled his head like angry bees and flashed behind his eyes in quick bursts of asphalt and heat. He plummeted through the city’s layers of steel and stone and brick. The smell of blood filled his sinuses. He wiped the hot drip from his nostrils and coughed, trying to ignore the wave of pain that blossomed at his temples. On the other end, Adam spoke deliberately.
“Just tell me what you see, all right? Whatever it is. Anything you can find is a help to us.”
“I almost have it.”
“Remember to breathe, just like before. You can do this.”
“No, no, I see him.”
A blue pickup truck with a green door inched down a Camden street. White wore a black ball cap and a denim jacket. There was sunshine on his face coming through the cracked windshield.
“Are you still there?”
A catchy song played on the tinny, old radio. White tapped on the steering wheel. Bank signs and shop fronts reflected bulbously in the dirty side mirrors, reversing numbers and letters. Bridger’s skull pounded and his brain boiled.
“Bridger, are you all right? Look, you don’t have to—”
“He’s northbound on Jones,” he said. “Heading toward 31st. Look for him in District Heights, over in the financial district.”
“Thank you.” Adam exhaled. “Thank you so much.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call back as soon as I find something out, okay?”
“Just find him.”
Adam hung up. Bridger dropped his phone on the table. Before he could catch himself, he toppled over to the floor. He saw black long before his eyes closed.
V.
Morning traffic had slowed to a crawl on Jones Avenue. Trucks and cars moved like molasses down the crowded roadway. They were separated by intersections where people poured across the crosswalk between red lights. Damon White ignored the honking and sweating and swearing of drivers late for work or school. The windows of his old, blue pickup were rolled down and the morning sun was warm on his face. Underneath his shirt and inside his jacket were fifteen pounds of explosives wired to a trigger in his pocket. He felt no pain, no worry, and no sadness as the warmth of natural light danced across his face. There was no time for that now. There was only the final mission.
By 9:00—while the offices at Pharmasuite were buzzing with people just beginning their days—he would walk into the lobby. He would detonate his vest without a second thought in a moment dedicated to Rebecca’s short but meaningful life. The people on the first three levels would die in the blast; in the offices above, it would take a few more moments for the fire to rip through the walls and floors. Those who didn’t die in the initial explosion would cook alive or be crushed by debris. He took comfort in knowing that those people would die screaming. They owed him that much. The city owed him.
At the intersection of Blake and Whitmore, he shifted gears and pressed on the brake. People ambled past his truck in the ebb and flow of college students, office workers, mothers and young children. As the crowd parted, White saw Kyle Jeong standing in the middle of the crosswalk. Kyle stared him down through the cracked windshield. His gut dropped. Everything inside him told him to stomp on the gas and run Kyle down to stop him before he could interfere any more. The light turned green and Kyle didn’t move—didn’t blink. Drivers behind him began honking as cars dove into other lanes and peeled around Kyle in screeches of rubber. But there were too many witnesses and street cameras to catch him in the act, to call the police, and to slow him down.
With no other course of action, White killed the engine and threw open the door to run down the street. Kyle followed after closely, navigating the human sea. White pushed his way through and knocked people out of his path to the Wallace Station. Descending the steps to the crowded platform below, Kyle never lost sight of him. With concrete above and beneath them, White reached for his trigger and opened his jacket. The action parted the crowd in panicked screams. People began racing back to the stairs for safety above ground.
Left alone with Kyle, White took a deep breath. “You won’t stop me,” he said. “I won’t let you. I’ve come too far.”
Kyle reached for his gun. “I don’t care.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I.
Pascal Bridge lay on the other side of East Brighton City. It was separated from the Hull by two boroughs and five miles of highway. Clara pictured it when she navigated the crooked side streets and dirty gutters. She had to be mindful of foot traffic, stoplights, crosswalks, school zones—anywhere that people served as obstacles in her path. She sped toward the bridge.
The entire city melted around her in broad fields of color and light, dissolving in her peripheral while the faint outline of the bridge appeared on the horizon. Closer and closer, the broad arms of Pascal’s support structure emerged. Its suspension cables thrummed gently with the vibration of moving cars. She took a breath and held it. She closed her eyes.
Kyle was counting on her. Adam and Norah, too. The whole city was counting on her to get there, to stop the bomb, to save lives. They were hers to save now: all those people on the bridge, inside little cars and trucks, seconds away from being swept up by fire or cast out to sea. She opened her eyes. She breat
hed out.
At the entrance of the bridge, she skidded to a barely-controlled stop in time to spot the police barricades, lights and sirens. Uniformed officers and fire trucks parked sideways across all three lanes halted traffic on either end of the bridge. Smoke billowed out from underneath the bridge’s legs in big black plumes. Fright gripped Clara in a moment’s panic, but there was no fire, no light, and no awful burning sound. There were just first responders setting up barricades and holding back the crowds who snapped eager pictures on their phones. A Channel 8 helicopter overhead pushed the lasting smoke out over the blue-gray sea. Clara filtered the fumes through the collar of her shirt, unsure of what to do now. Call Kyle? Call Adam?
A shimmer of white caught Clara’s attention. She looked over her shoulder to find Rebecca standing on the corner of Hadrian Street, her dress fluttering in the wind. Rebecca smiled softly and beckoned Clara closer with a small, fine-fingered hand. Clara didn’t know where Rebecca wanted to take her, but she knew to follow.
II.
Adam drove as quickly as he could through the congested streets of the EBC. His knuckles were white on the wheel and his foot was flat on the gas pedal. Norah sat in the passenger seat with her arm braced against the door. She told herself that she was ready for this the same way he did: under their respective breaths as they left Damon White’s apartment. Neither of them wanted to ask the obvious, nagging question. Instead, they would simply act, knowing what to do when they arrived at the bridge. Norah’s powers worked like that; they were like pieces of a puzzle falling into place whenever necessary. They would find a way to stop White and the bomb. Kyle was counting on them, after all. Everyone was counting on them.
A block away from Percy Bridge, Adam stomped on the brakes, screeching to a halt in the middle of the Jermaine Street intersection. Cars and trucks idled in messy rows. Ahead, the bridge was drawn. Police cars and fire trucks with flashing lights made a temporary blockade as uniformed officers directed traffic away.
Norah rolled down the window and climbed out to get a better look. “Shit.”
“What is it?”
“The bridge is shut down. There are cops everywhere.”
“Are we too late?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It doesn’t look like anything’s happened. Should we call Kyle?”
“Bridger didn’t say anything about the bridges,” Adam said. “He isn’t always one-hundred-percent, but it’s not like him to miss a detail that big.”
A knock on the driver side window made them both flinch. Amanda stood on the street between Adam’s car and a city truck. Adam rolled down the window.
“How did you two get here so fast?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer,” he offered sweetly.
Norah leaned over his shoulder. “Concerned citizens and all that crap.”
“Cute. I could still have you arrested again.”
“I think we’re past those pleasantries,” Norah reminded her. “Why are you here?”
“Kyle called me about a bomb threat at the bridges. I assume that’s why you’re here. Given your... condition,” Amanda said.
“What’s going on up there?”
“The bomb squad found a device strapped to the support structure in the center of the bridge, but it’s non-lethal.”
“Do you think it’s a dud?” asked Norah.
Amanda shrugged. “They’re going to examine it, but it looks like a decoy.”
“So, we were wrong,” said Adam.
“Or, this is a huge smokescreen and Kyle sent us all on a wild goose chase. I’m not sure which makes me feel better,” Amanda said. She rapped her knuckle against Adam’s door. “I got to get back to work. Stay out of trouble, or I will arrest you again. It’s been a shit day already and I don’t want to have to call Kyle to explain why his people are in lockup.”
Adam and Norah looked at each other. In the rearview mirror appeared a pair of child’s eyes. They were small and dark with a sparse fan of lashes. Rebecca smiled.
III.
Bridger didn’t stop falling this time as he toppled to the kitchen floor. Down, down, down, into the deep and the black. He moved through the narrow sewers beneath East Essex into another place entirely. There was no oxygen to buoy him up as he plunged through space and time and metal and glass. Pieces of steel and stone enveloped him like water to press him further through the void. They got in his nostrils and between the fibers of his tired sweater and jeans. Down, down, down. When he landed on the other side, the impact rattled him all over.
He dragged himself to unsure feet. The sky above him was like a black-and-white television. Wiping the blood from his nose, he heard nothing but static. East Brighton City stretched out on the horizon in the jagged silhouettes of windswept skyscrapers and broken monoliths that poured rubble onto the streets below. Overturned cars and blown shop windows lined the avenue on either side of him. They flanked his every step down dirty alleys and empty streets where fires burned uninterrupted inside the shells of city trucks.
A salty wind nagged at him as he walked to the nearest landmark he recognized: the Waltham’s department store he and Caitlin used to frequent. She used to buy crystal there, because that’s what normal people did; they bought crystal and teacups and ornate coffee mugs with fluted handles. The discrete, black tower was now a shadow of what it was; its tall windows were demolished and shelves ransacked. But inside he heard voices, footsteps, the rattling of metal racks. He took careful steps over the broken glass. He was still finding his footing as his head swam. The sound of people talking beckoned him to the women’s changing room on the first floor. There was a strange, makeshift shelter crafted out of the empty stalls. The doors of each stall were locked with the walls between them torn out to make a single, long room. A battery-powered lamp on a crate lit the space. A mattress of stolen blankets from the housewares department rested on the floor as a bed.
Adam sat on the improvised bed. He looked dirty and tired as he cleaned a gun by lamplight. Adam, but not Adam. This was not his Adam, who was bright and smiled so sweetly. This Adam was worn under the eyes and around his knuckles, and gun oil rested under his chewed fingernails. Bridger moved in close, anticipating a reaction and receiving none as the other man silently reassembled his weapon. He sat beside Adam, but his weight never shifted the blankets. This other Adam stared through the wall but never noticed Bridger, not even as Bridger reached to trace the younger man’s angled jaw.
The sound of footsteps caught their attention as Adam dutifully loaded the clip, checked it, and tucked the gun into the back of his jeans. Bridger expected a confrontation or threat to come through the hidden entrance but saw himself instead. He was older, grubbier, and with more gray in his beard.
“Did you find Clara?” asked Adam, his voice still softer than his demeanor.
The him that wasn’t him slid off the coat and tossed it into the corner. “She’s with Charlie picking up medical supplies at the hospital and she’s got her Hoodies on a food run. You hear back from Norah yet?”
Adam shook his head. “She said she and Amanda were going to the precinct to raid the weapons cache, but that was four hours ago.”
“They’ll make it,” the other him said. “They know better than to be out after dark.”
With a sigh, his other self collapsed beside Adam on the mattress and began unlacing his boots. Adam’s hand came to rest at the small of his back and moved up and down his spine in soothing, intimate circles. The small, silver ring on Adam’s left hand matched the one worn by Bridger’s doppelganger. Bridger moved away from them, stepping back across their tiny living space as though he had been caught peeping. This was their bed, in the space that they shared. This was where another version of Adam lived with another version of himself, slept in the dark when the lamp burned out, and made love under stolen sheets.
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” said the other Bridger.
“Doing what?” Adam asked.
“You’re over there kicking yourself. I can practically hear the self-loathing.”
“You don’t know that.”
“This doesn’t fall on you.”
“But I have to keep everyone together,” Adam said. “Kyle said I have to keep them safe now.”
“We’ll bounce back. We always do.”
Adam sagged against the wall with another shake of his head. “We’re getting slaughtered out there every day. And with Amanda and Charlie, and now Idris, too? They’re not even like us. They don’t come back.”
“Hey.” The other Bridger put a hand on Adam’s neck and swept his thumb over Adam’s lips. “We’ll survive because we have to. Better men have tried to kill us and failed.”
After a moment, Adam started to smile. “You just say that because you’re psychic.”
“No, I say that because I’m always right. That’s why you married me.”
“You said you saw it in a dream.”
“And you didn’t say no when I asked, did you?”
“Did I have a choice?”
“No.” His other self leaned in and kissed Adam. He kissed Adam softly at first, and then firmly until Adam opened his mouth in a sigh. “That’s because I’m psychic.”
Opening his eyes on the kitchen floor, Bridger found himself once again in the boarding house on Chelsea Street. His own blood puddled on the tile floor as his senses came back to him through the haze. Sound and taste and sight trickled in from darkness. Blinking twice, he looked up Hannah’s braced legs to see her staring at him blankly.
“You okay?” she asked. Her empty cereal bowl was in one hand; a cup of apple juice was in the other. “Did you hit your head?”
