by Peter Clines
“Everyone was freaked out and panicking,” said Mike. “They didn’t know what was going on. If they were acting, they’re all in the wrong line of work.”
“Maybe they didn’t expect it to be so…messy.”
“For someone who wants this project to go on, you’re finding a lot of reasons to shut it down.”
“I’m just asking the questions I know the board’s going to ask me,” Reggie said. “Washington One-Oh-One.”
“Maybe that’s what he was talking about,” said Mike with a shrug. “Stop the board. Don’t let them…shut us down?”
“Loyal to the very end?” Reggie rubbed his chin. “That’s good. I could work with that.”
“We don’t really know that’s what he meant.”
“We don’t know that it isn’t.”
“He said something else, too.”
Reggie’s brow went up. “That’s not in your report.”
“Because I’m not sure what he said. I didn’t want to guess.”
“Feel free to guess, as long as it improves our chances of funding.”
“I think he said ‘mobster.’ Maybe ‘mobsters,’ plural.”
“What?”
“That’s just it. I’m not sure. His lips were fluttering, he was losing consciousness.”
“But he said it to Olaf?”
“He was looking at Olaf,” said Mike, “but I’m not sure he was seeing anything at that point.”
“And you’re sure it was ‘mobster’?”
“No. That’s why it wasn’t in the report. I wasn’t sure. Maybe he was calling for his mother. Maybe he was calling Olaf a monster. I’m just not sure.”
Reggie rubbed his chin again. “You were right to keep it out of your report for now.”
“Thing is, from everything I understand about how the Door works, this shouldn’t’ve happened.”
“Are you sure? It sounds like he…what did they call it? Humpty Dumpty-ed.”
“That was the old project,” Mike said, “back when they were working on teleportation.”
“Are we sure they’re not working on it?”
“Wouldn’t make sense. Why declare on the record it can’t be done, then do it and claim it’s something else?”
“Modesty?”
“Have you listened to these people at all?”
“So he didn’t HD?”
Mike shook his head. “The Door doesn’t do anything to the traveler. That’s why the wound doesn’t make sense.”
“How so?”
“He had an actual wound. A puncture or a cut in his left side, just under the ribs. I never had a chance to look at it. I think that was a lot of the blood loss.”
“What caused it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because you weren’t looking.”
“Don’t be an ass. Partly that. But I have no idea what could’ve injured him. There weren’t any jagged edges around him. I was the closest person. Sasha was over on Site B with him, and she didn’t say anything. Arthur was next closest and he was five and a half feet from me.”
“Could there’ve been someone else over on Site B? Someone you didn’t see?”
“Just beyond the Door? Maybe. They’d have to be really fast to stab him and get out of the way. Not to mention timing it as I just happened to look back at Olaf.”
“Deliberate distraction?”
Mike shook his head. “It was just sheer chance I looked back. And that still wouldn’t explain everything else that happened to him.” He closed his eyes and watched again as his field of vision shifted around onto Bob. Watched the yellow man with pale eyes stumble forward. Heard him moan and collapse.
He opened his eyes and Reggie was staring at him.
“You okay?”
“It’s two in the morning and I’m exhausted,” said Mike. “And this isn’t what I signed up for. Not remotely.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know this is ruining my life on a bunch of levels, right?”
“I do.”
“It happened right in front of me. Six feet in front of me.” The crosswalk played again in his mind. Ninety-one times in just over six hours. Once every four minutes on average.
“I’m sorry,” Reggie said again. “I really am. But I need you on this.”
“Dammit,” said Mike. “I’m an idiot.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I missed something. We all did, we were so focused on Bob.”
“What’s up?”
“Let me check this out first. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
The face on the tablet blinked. “You need to double-check something?”
“I told you, I wasn’t looking at him when he went through.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I’m not sure,” Mike said. “But I think I might’ve just found a clue.”
TWENTY-TWO
The sun was peeking over the horizon when Mike went over to the main floor. He found half of the Albuquerque Door team there. Most of the panels had been pulled off the back ring. Neil and Sasha examined components and cables one by one. Neil’s eyes were puffy.
Olaf stood behind them and looked over their shoulders. He glanced over at Mike. “Do you need to be here?”
“Just doing my job,” said Mike. He looked up and saw Arthur speaking to someone just out of sight—Jamie—in the control booth. “I’m kind of surprised to see you all working.”
“We need to find out what went wrong,” said Sasha, “before those idiots in Washington decide to shut us down.”
“Then we’re all on the same page,” said Mike. He walked around the rings and studied the floor. There were still dark spots of blood on the pathway, caught in the corners of the expanded steel. There were thin swipes and trails in it where the puddle had been wiped up.
“Hey,” he said, “is it safe to get close?”
Neil looked up from the rings and nodded. “We’re powered down.” He pointed off to the side where five thick connectors had been pulled apart.
“Thanks.”
Mike crouched down to look under the ramp. Then he crawled forward. He reached out and swept his hand back and forth in the dim space under the walkway.
“Looking for something?” asked Olaf.
“Maybe,” said Mike. He straightened up and dusted his hands on his jeans. “Did you pick up in here at all?”
“What?”
“Did you move anything? Clean up anything?”
Sasha’s eyes dropped to the dark spots. “What are you looking for?”
He told them. Neil and Sasha traded a confused glance and both shook their heads. Olaf rolled his eyes. “Is that important?” asked Neil. He reached up to wipe his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“No,” muttered Olaf.
“I’m not sure yet,” Mike replied. “Has anyone else been down here since…well, since it happened?”
“Arthur and Jamie were both down here for a while,” said Sasha. “Did they move anything?”
“I don’t think so,” Neil said.
“No,” snapped Olaf.
Mike counted to four. “Do you have any idea what happened to Bob?”
Olaf flapped his lips for a moment. He tensed, and Mike was sure the other man was going to swing at him. Then his shoulders dropped—not quite a slump—and he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It…it makes no sense. It shouldn’t’ve happened.”
“He HD’d,” Neil said. “It’s the only answer. He got scrambled somehow. Just like Tramp.”
“You can’t HD in the Door,” said Olaf. “There’s no point when the traveler is broken down, so it can’t be a reintegration issue.”
“What about the magnetic field?” asked Mike. He tugged open a workstation drawer and peered inside. “Neil’s told me it can be pretty dangerous.”
Sasha nodded, but Olaf shook his head again. “Everything was balanced. There was no flux. And he never crossed the lines.”
“Besides, it wouldn’t mess him up like that,” said Sasha.
“What about his clothes?”
Olaf bit back another snide remark. “We don’t know,” he said. “Like I said, none of this should’ve happened.” He waved a hand back at the rings. “The levels were all good, power was steady, nothing’s misaligned. Everything checks out. It couldn’t’ve happened.”
“But it did,” said Mike. “So how?”
“It had to be a programming issue.” He jerked his chin toward the control booth. “The computer messed up one of the variables.”
“And that would…” Mike glanced at the Door.
“I don’t know!” Olaf threw his hands in the air. “All I know is we can’t find anything wrong with the tech.” He turned and half-stomped back up the ramp to loom over the two engineers.
Mike took a last look around the floor, then headed for the control room.
Jamie was hunched over a monitor, scrolling through lines of code. Arthur stood a few feet behind her, both hands on his cane. His eyes were red.
“Hey,” said Mike.
“How are you doing?” asked Arthur. “This whole thing must’ve been a shock for you.”
“I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”
Arthur looked at him for a moment. “Is there something we can do for you?”
Mike nodded at the screens. “Any idea yet what happened?”
“Hardware problem,” said Jamie. Her eyes never left the screen. More lines of code scrolled by.
“Olaf seems pretty sure it’s a computer problem,” said Mike.
She spun. Her eyes weren’t as red as Arthur’s, but they weren’t far from tears. “Did you just come up here to stir things up?”
“No,” he said. “Sorry. I was just trying to—”
“It’s hardware,” she said. “It has to be.”
“If it was the program or the equations,” said Arthur, “the Door couldn’t’ve opened.”
“Are you sure?” said Mike. “There’s no way it could’ve opened…wrong?”
Jamie made a noise that sounded like a snort cut off before it could get free. The corners of Arthur’s mouth trembled, as if his lips were fighting to form either a faint smile or frown and were too evenly matched. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“That doesn’t sound too certain.”
Jamie tapped a key, freezing the scroll. She looked up over her shoulder at Arthur.
“I…this is why I told Magnus we need more testing,” he said. “There are still a lot of things we don’t know.” Arthur hooked his cane on his pocket, pulled off his glasses, and pinched his nose. He took a few deep breaths. A few more moments passed before he pushed the eyeglasses back onto his face.
A moment passed.
“The day after I arrived,” said Mike, “Bob asked me if you’d been talking about him.”
Arthur blinked. “Me?”
“Yeah.”
“Talked about him how?”
Mike counted to three and then raised his shoulders in a casual shrug. “I don’t know. We were out having dinner, Olaf showed up, and he changed the subject.”
Arthur and Jamie traded a look. “To be honest,” he said, “we’d all noticed that Bob had been acting a little odd lately.”
“Odd how?”
“Just not like himself,” said Jamie. “Kind of…well, paranoid.”
Mike counted to three again. “Like Ben Miles?”
Arthur shook his head. “Nothing like that. He just seemed like he was hiding something.”
“Any idea what?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Another moment passed.
“Could the accident have anything to do with that flash drive you gave Jamie just before Bob went through?”
Arthur set his cane back down on the floor. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything,” said Mike. “I’m asking a question. You introduced a new element and something went wrong. I’m wondering if there’s a connection.”
“We didn’t introduce anything,” said Jamie. She reached across the desk and picked up the flash drive. “I haven’t even plugged it in yet.”
She and Arthur shot dark looks at Mike.
“So what’s on it?” he asked.
“Suggestions for an algorithm update,” Arthur said.
“What kind of update?”
“I’m afraid that falls under things we don’t have to share with you.”
“And it’s moot,” said Jamie, waving the drive, “because I never did anything with them.” She tossed it back onto the desk. It clattered against some equipment and fell to the floor. She didn’t move to pick it up.
Arthur tapped his fingers on the head of his cane. “Did you need anything else, Mike?”
Jamie looked back and forth between them.
He let a few moments of his own pass. “Yeah,” he said. “I was wondering if either of you took anything from the main floor.”
Her eyes focused on him. “What do you mean?”
“After Bob…after he came through the Door, did either of you pick up anything?”
Arthur peered over his glasses. “Like what?”
“The baseball.”
Jamie blinked. “The baseball?”
“The one Bob and I were tossing back and forth.”
“Yeah, I figured that’s the one,” said Jamie. “What about it?”
“It’s gone. Vanished.”
Arthur frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Neil or Sasha probably picked it up,” said Jamie. She turned back to her screens and the text scrolled. “They probably don’t even remember doing it.”
“I asked,” said Mike. “Unless they picked it up and put it somewhere else altogether, it’s not down there.”
“You were right there,” said Arthur. “Didn’t you see where it went?”
“I wasn’t looking when he stepped through.”
Another moment passed.
“So?” asked Jamie.
“So,” said Mike, “maybe it’s a clue. Maybe if we can find it, it’ll help us figure out what happened.”
Arthur hooked his hands in his pockets again. “We already have a lot to do, Mike,” he said. “We’re stripping the Door down to the wires and going over every line of code.”
“It’ll just take a minute to look at the video, though.”
The older man cleared his throat. “We don’t have the time.”
“You don’t have the time to find out what went wrong?”
“We have an established method for hunting down problems. I’ll consider your idea and add it to the schedule.”
“So just let me look at the video. I won’t get in the way.”
“I’d rather you not look at something that may give away insights into the workings of the Albuquerque Door.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course. That’s one of the conditions of your being here.”
“I was standing right there watching it,” Mike said, gesturing down at the main floor, “but you won’t let me watch the recordings?”
Arthur said nothing.
“It’d go ten times faster if you let me help.”
Jamie stabbed at her keyboard and stopped the scroll again. She glared at Mike. “You think you can go through this faster than me?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just meant—”
“No, please,” she said. She rolled her chair back a foot and opened a path to the monitors. “Tell me what I’m missing. Tell me how I screwed this up.”
“No one thinks you screwed up,” said Arthur.
“If he can do it so much faster, let him,” she said. “I’m halfway through, but God knows I don’t want to be doing this right now.”
Mike waited a moment, then stepped forward and bent to the screens. He set one hand on the back of Jamie’s chair. His fingertips brushed her shoulder and he felt her tense up.
&
nbsp; Jamie twisted out of the chair and sucked a breath between her teeth. Her eyes flashed as she spat the air back at him. “Don’t!”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t you FUCKING TOUCH ME!” she roared, stalking past him and out of the control room.
The room settled and Arthur cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t think Jamie’s personal space issues have come up before, have they?”
TWENTY-THREE
The bartender, a thick-armed woman with a dyed-black topknot and red lips, glanced up as light from the parking lot followed Mike inside. As promised, the place was narrow, with the actual bar itself running half the length. The stools were free standing, not bolted to the floor, and some of them formed small clusters and knots. A pool table and jukebox filled the back third, and a dart board was set up where it would be far too dangerous to use.
Two men watched ESPN with the volume at a murmur. An older woman drank at the bar with one hand up, holding the memory of a cigarette. A man in a business suit studied a whiskey. Jamie sat at the far end of the bar nursing a beer. Mike hesitated, three steps into the bar, still close to the door. Then she held up the beer bottle and gestured him closer with it.
He walked over but didn’t sit down. “How goes it?”
“Carly,” she called to the bartender, “give the government jerk a drink. On me.”
“You’re too kind,” he said.
“It’s a bar,” said Jamie. “People come here to drink, not to talk.”
“What’ll it be?” asked Carly.
“Rum and Coke.” He sat down next to Jamie. The stools had a good distance between them. “Can we talk at all,” he asked, “or do I have to have a drink in my hand?”
She killed her beer and let the bottle clunk on the bar. “Will the drink make you more bearable?”
“The first one won’t, but probably the second one.”
“Well,” she said, “that answers that, then.”
The topknotted bartender set down a large glass for Mike and another bottle for Jamie. She lifted the beer and held it out without looking at him. He tapped his drink against hers. She took three long swallows before setting the bottle back on the bar.
“Thanks for telling me about the wireless yesterday,” she said. “Stupid mistake. I should’ve done that a year ago.”
