by Amy Cross
"Option one," he continues, as we stand next to Lydecker's body. "Someone found Gretchen's body and, for whatever reason, removed her haz-mat suit and put it on this guy."
"Impossible," I reply.
"Impossible?"
"Ludicrous," I add, correcting myself. "Why the hell would anyone do that? And who would do it?"
"Option two," Cooper continues, "Lydecker removed the suit himself. Maybe he found Gretchen and decided he wanted her suit. Then he got injured in the storm..."
"And just happened to get washed down here?" I ask, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Anyway, look at the condition of his body. He's been dead for hours." Leaning closer, I realize that the skin around his eyes and mouth seems a little unusual, as if it's partially sealed shut. "Do you think he could have died the same way that Gretchen died?" I ask after a moment. "There's no other obvious sign of injury, and it'd kind of make sense. As much as anything makes sense around here right now."
"It's possible," Cooper replies. "You're right, though. He's been dead for days. Look at the discoloration around his neck."
"It almost seemed worse earlier," I point out with a half smile. "Maybe he's not decomposing at all. Maybe his body's actually getting better?" Seeing the tense look on Cooper's face, I realize that maybe I went a little bit too far. "What's wrong?" I ask. "Losing your religion?"
He turns to me.
"Science," I continue. "I know you, Mike. You believe everything can be explained through science. When you come up against something you can't explain, you just assume that you haven't worked hard enough yet." Looking down at Jonathan A. Lydecker's body for a moment, I realize that we've finally come face to face with something so unusual and so strange, there's no way Cooper's ever going to be able to get to the bottom of it. "Who knows what happened?" I ask eventually. "Meanwhile, there's this biblical storm raging outside -"
"Seriously?" he asks, interrupting me. "Biblical? Is that the kind of terminology you're going to start using, Stef?" He pauses. "This kind of situation makes me believe in science and order more than ever. Just because natural systems are breaking down and conflicting with one another, it doesn't mean they don't exist. This whole mess is still completely explicable through science and rational thinking alone. The more the situation continues, the more certain I am that we'll eventually come up with a solution."
"Funny," I reply, enjoying winding him up. "It makes me think the opposite."
"I'm surprised by you," he says. "I thought you had a better mind. I thought you were immune to the kind of superstitious nonsense that plagued our ancestors. I hope you're not going to start talking about God next. This isn't the time to start getting into religion, Stef."
"Everyone has a religion," I reply. "Everyone believes in something, and if you drill down far enough, belief is always based on hope rather than pure logic."
He opens his mouth to swat my point aside, but at the last moment he seems to reconsider. Maybe he knows I'm right, or maybe he just can't be bothered to argue with my anymore. Either way, I feel as if I've won a small victory.
"Can a storm last forever?" Lacey asks, calling down to us from the entrance. "It's like this one is just building and building. What if it's got locked into some kind of cycle, and it can't break out? What if this is some kind of divine retribution for the sins of mankind?"
Cooper smiles at me. "Do you want to point out the many obvious flaws in her theory, or should I?" He waits for me to reply. "Or are you starting to agree with her? Do you think God has decided, in his infinite wisdom, that the human race has been far too naughty and needs to have its ass slapped?"
"I think a huge storm can be scary," I reply.
"Scary?" he says with a smirk. "Is that the most scientific term you can think of? Scary?" He pauses. "This storm is a lot of things. It's big. It's unusual. It's destructive. But scary? It's only scary if you abandon all sense of logic and start imagining that there's some kind of angry creator hiding behind the clouds, hell-bent on wreaking vengeance. That's when it becomes scary. Of course, by that point, your sense of reason and logic would have to be so completely warped, you've probably already lost your mind."
I open my mouth to argue with him, but suddenly it doesn't seem fun anymore. "I'm going to go and make sure she's okay," I tell him, before turning and wading through the water that's ankle-high in the ticket hall. Holding onto the rail, I make my way up the steps, past the consistent stream of water that's flowing down from the entrance. Finally, I reach Lacey and find that she's staring out at the street, which runs past the subway station like a wide gray river; in the distance, the trees of Battery Park are being subjected to the full force of the storm.
"This is some pretty nasty weather," I say, hoping to break the ice as thunder rumbles above us.
"He doesn't like me, does he?" she replies, still staring out at the bands of heavy rain that are being blown past us.
"He doesn't like most people," I tell her. "Don't take it personally."
"He likes you," she points out.
"That's different. We go way back. We've got history." I pause for a moment. "Cooper and I worked in Africa together. We were part of various vaccine programs, and sometimes we ended up in some pretty dark situations. Africa's not exactly a continent that's known for its peace and calm. We saw..." I pause again as I realize that maybe there are some images I'd rather not re-live. "People can be cruel to one another," I say eventually.
"So do you think we're going to get out of here?" she asks.
"Sure."
"Really?"
I nod.
"Like... what are our chances of survival? If you had to put a number on it, what would you say?"
"It's not something you can put a number on," I tell her. "That's completely unscientific in this kind of situation."
"You should like Cooper," she says bitterly.
"No!" I reply, immediately realizing that maybe I've been a little too defensive. "I just don't think it'd help to pluck some arbitrary number out of the air."
"It'd help me," she says.
"Fine," I say with a sigh. "We've got at least a fifty-fifty chance, maybe even more."
"Fuck!" she says, her eyes immediately filling with tears. "Fifty-fifty? Are you serious? I thought you'd say that we're, like, ninety-nine per cent to get out of here alive. Fifty-fucking-fifty?"
"It was just a number," I tell her. "I'm sure we'll be fine."
"Fuck," she mutters, wiping her eyes. "I did not sign up to come and fucking die out here!"
"Why did you sign up?" I ask, hoping to change the subject onto something that doesn't upset her quite so much. "No offense, Lacey, but you don't strike me as the kind of woman who's got much experience with this kind of thing. You seem like a fish out of water. Why did the company send you?"
"I'm qualified," she says.
"Qualified for what?"
"To look after the company's interests." She pauses. "We've got a lot invested in our U.S. operations. Billions of dollars. We couldn't afford to wait for the fucking E.U. or the U.N. to decide what to do. That's why we decided to finance this small private mission. Of course, technically we're not really supposed to do it, so that's why we kept it small. The plan was to get in and get out fast, and to get some information about what's happening. The whole fucking global economy is on a knife-edge since the U.S. population vanished, and if we can get some advance information about what happened and why, we could stand to make trillions of dollars."
"So that's what this is about?" I ask. "Money?"
She shakes her head. "More than that. But some information is classified. You don't need to know." Above us, there's a loud splitting sound as a streak of lightning arcs down from the sky and strikes a tree in the park, immediately setting it on fire before the rain drenches the branches. "Are we going to be stuck in this fucking subway station for another night?" Lacey asks eventually, with clear tension and fear in her voice.
"It's possible," I reply.
"Fuck,"
she says.
For the next few minutes, we stand in silence, watching as the storm continues to batter the city. It's certainly tempting to think that this looks like the end of the world, and the storm - far from abating - looks as if it might actually be getting stronger and stronger. Rivers of water are flowing along the street, with some still pouring down the steps and into the subway station. I guess the tunnels must be filling up, but hopefully there's no danger of the entire station flooding. Not unless the storm last for another week.
"Fuck," Lacey says again, and to be honest, I have to agree with her.
Caroline Jones
Fifteen days ago
"Think about it," I whisper to Chloe, as we sit in the coffee house. "What did Lydecker say right before we left?"
"He told us not to come back," she replies, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Reed isn't back from the counter yet. "Do you think he'd actually use that gun?"
"I don't know," I reply, "but think about the exact words he used." I wait for her to put two and two together, but she seems lost. "He talked about the dandruff on his glasses," I continue. "He specifically used that as an example of us claiming to know him from before."
"So what?" she asks. "I said it earlier."
"You said it the first time we spoke to him," I point out, "before we reset everything. There's no way he should have been able to remember that you brought it up, but he did. Either this whole amnesia thing is patchy and things can leak through, or John Lydecker was just pretending not to remember what had happened earlier."
"You think the whole thing was a set-up?" Chloe asks.
"Not the whole thing," I tell her. "You saw the woman and the kid. They didn't recognize Reed at all. It was totally genuine for them, but for Lydecker it was a performance. I think he remembered what had happened earlier, and if that's true, then maybe he remembers everything."
Chloe checks once again to make sure that there's no sign of Reed. "Okay," she says eventually, "so what do we do? Do we tell Reed?"
I shake my head. "He'll go ballistic. He almost overstepped the line as it is. If he thought Lydecker was lying, I don't think we'd be able to stop him. I don't blame him, though. He feels as if his own son has been torn away from him. And did you notice something else? Reed left because he didn't want to upset Tommy, but Lydecker seemed perfectly willing to let the kid see and hear everything. Does that sound to you like a caring, considerate father? Reed put his son first. Lydecker didn't."
"So Lydecker's a liar," Chloe replies, taking a swig from her bottle of water. "So what? What do we do now?" She waits for me to come up with something. "Are you saying that he's the only person who can remember us?"
"He's linked in to this whole thing," I point out. "He was part of the way we came together, the three of us, and it can't be a coincidence that he seems to..." I pause as I realize how insane this whole thing sounds. This time yesterday, I was a bored but normal woman who'd been sent to check up on a co-worker. I had a life, and money, and plans, and friends, and I was sort of, kind of, almost happy. Now, however, it's as if I'm being erased from the world. I keep expecting to wake up and find out that this whole thing has been a dream, except I can't shake the feeling that everything seems so real. Over the past few hours, I've occasionally pinched myself, just to see if I wake up, but nothing happens.
"We can't keep doing this," Chloe says after a moment. "Look at us. We're losing our minds. We're not getting anywhere. We don't know what's happening, and we can't stop it. We have to work out where to go for help, and we have to get moving." She pauses. "I know you said you tried to get a cop to help you and it didn't work out, but I think we should try again. If we work together, we can make sure he never leaves us alone, so he won't forget us. That way, we can keep pushing and hopefully we can make some progress. I mean, there's no way this is happening only to us. There must be other people. Somehow, the whole city or the whole world has to be affected."
Sighing, I realize that she's right. I'm exhausted, having not slept for twenty-four hours, and I'm all out of ideas. We need proper help, and for that we're going to have to make another attempt to contact the authorities.
"I tried my ATM card again," Reed says as he comes back over from the counter. "I knew it wouldn't work, but I was kind of hoping that somehow maybe everything had gone back to normal. I guess it'd take a miracle, huh?"
"We think we should go to the police," Chloe says. "This has gone on long enough."
He nods wearily.
"There has to be an explanation," I add. "Three normal people don't just slip out of the world like this."
"Watch who you're calling normal," Chloe says with a smile, before finishing her bottle of water. "Damn, I'm still thirsty. I'm just gonna go fill this up from the taps in the bathroom."
Once she's gone, I find myself sitting alone with Reed for a moment.
"You okay?" I ask eventually.
"I guess I'm about as okay as you are," he replies. "Do you think there was something I could have done differently. Back in the apartment, I mean. We spent so long talking to Lydecker, maybe I should have just gone straight to Emma and Tommy. If we wait until he's not around, I can make them see reason. They have to remember me."
"I don't think that's a good idea," I tell him. "We can't do this alone. We need to go and tell the police what's happening, and we need to make sure we don't let them forget us. I think it's doable, if we're smart about it. After that, someone has to start taking notice." I wait for him to reply, but he seems lost in thought. "We can't be the only people this is happening to. There's probably a load of experts and scientists already trying to work out what's happening. Give it a few days, and this whole thing is going to be sorted out."
"You really think so?" he asks.
I nod, although in truth I'm not convinced.
"I guess you're right," he replies. "Whatever this is, it's too big for us to deal with alone."
"I'll just go to the bathroom," I tell him, "and then we can go to the nearest precinct. Or maybe we should just go straight to the F.B.I. or something like that. I mean, this is a big thing, right?" Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes, I realize that 's he's struggling to remain optimistic. "At least we've got each other for now," I continue. "I mean, this would've been much worse if it was just one of us."
"Sure," he says weakly.
"Back in a moment," I reply, patting him on the shoulder before getting up and walking through to the bathroom. It feels good to at least have a plan, and I can only hope that we're able to persuade someone to help us. I guess it shouldn't be too hard; we just have to prove that we've been forgotten, and demonstrate the situation to someone else, and hopefully we'll be back on the right path. As I push the bathroom door open, I figure that -
As soon as I see Chloe, I freeze.
She's on her knees, leaning over the sink as the tap runs, and although I can only see the back of her head, I can tell immediately that something's wrong by the way she seems to be desperately trying to drink. She's making a vague gasping noise, as if she can barely breathe, and she's gripping the sink with such force, it's almost as if she might pull it away from the wall at any moment.
"Chloe?" I ask, letting the door swing shut as I walk toward her. "Are you okay?"
She turns to me, and I instantly see that the skin over her eyes, nose and mouth seems to have started to seal up. There's a small gap over her eyes, and I can see her pupils staring at me, but her mouth has closed up to such an extent that she only has a small hole, about the size of a penny, to breathe and speak through.
"What's happening to me?" she gasps, her voice barely audible. She gets up off her knees and stumbles toward me, desperately trying to catch her breath, but as she grabs my shoulders, she starts to drop back down to the floor. I try to hold her up, but she's shivering too much and finally I'm forced to lower her to the floor.
"I'm going to call for help!" I tell her, but as she turns her head I see that her ears also seem to have clos
ed up. She turns back to look at me, but her eyes are sealed now, along with her nose and almost all of her mouth. I watch in horror as the last gap between her lips starts to fuse, and finally she's sealed shut. She starts clawing at her face, but she clearly can't breathe and soon she's desperately reaching out for help.
For a few seconds, I'm frozen in place, with no idea how I can help her. Suddenly, I reach into my purse and try to find something, anything, that might help. Eventually I locate a nail-file, and as I look down at Chloe's face, I realize that this is the only hope. An ambulance would take too long to get here, even if they even remembered that we'd called.
"I'm going to cut it open," I tell her, before realizing that there's no way she can hear me.
Reaching down, I try to take her head in my hands, but she's frantically moving around and I'm forced to put one arm around her neck in order to hold her in place. She struggles, but I manage to keep her still while I place the tip of the nail-file against one corner of the skin where her mouth used to be. My hands are trembling, but I know I don't have any choice. She's going to suffocate in her own skin if I don't do this.
"Please," I whisper. "Please, please, please..."
Closing my eyes, I dig down with the nail-file. At first, I feel strong resistance, but finally I feel the tip starting to pierce the skin over her mouth. As I open my eyes, I see that blood is pouring from the wound, but I know I have to keep going. I start sawing through the skin, cutting a thin slit from one corner of her mouth to the other, and finally she starts to take a series of deep breaths, even though blood is still dribbling down her chin and onto her neck.
"Okay," I say, "I'm going to -"
Before I can finish, I see that one side of her mouth has already started to seal shut again.
"No!" I shout, using the nail-file to push the skin open again. It feels like a losing battle, since the skin seems to be sealing faster than I can cut it.
"Reed!" I scream, hoping he can hear me. "Help!"
Dropping the nail-file to the ground, I decide I need to take more drastic action, so I reach into Chloe's mouth and take hold of her teeth, forcing her jaw open in the hope that this should prevent her lips from sealing shut. She continues to gasp for air, and for a moment I feel as if the plan is working, but suddenly I notice something moving down at the back of her throat, and to my horror I realize that her air-pipe is starting to seal shut, while the skin of her lips is starting to grow between my fingers as it attempts to fuse back together.
