The Traveler fr-1

by John Twelve Hawks

  “Don’t know.”

  “Be careful,” the third voice said. “She could be in one of the rooms.”

  Maya peered down through the hole in the ceiling and watched one, two, three Tabula mercs pass beneath her, carrying their handguns.

  “Prichett here,” said the third voice. It sounded like he was talking into a radio or a cell phone. “We saw her on the third floor, but she got away. Yes, sir. We’re checking each-”

  Holding on to the water pipe with her legs, Maya swung through the jagged hole. Now she was upside down, her black hair dangling above the floor. She saw the backs of the three Tabula and fired at the first man.

  The recoil from the shotgun snapped her backward and she somersaulted through the air, landing on her feet in the middle of the hallway. Water sprayed from the sprinkler head, but she ignored it and shot the second man as he was turning. The third man was still holding his cell phone as shotgun pellets punched through his chest. He hit the wall and slid to the floor.

  The sprinkler stopped spraying water and she stood alone looking down at the three bodies. It was too dangerous to remain in this building. They had to get back to the tunnels. Once again, she saw the shadows change on the wall and then an unarmed man appeared at the end of the hallway. Even without the family resemblance, Maya knew that it was the second Traveler. She lowered her shotgun.

  “Hello, Maya. I’m Michael Corrigan. Everyone around here is scared of you, but I’m not frightened. I know you’re here to protect me.”

  An office door opened behind her and Gabriel stepped into the hallway. The brothers faced each other and she was standing between them.

  “Come with us, Michael.” Gabriel forced a smile. “You’ll be safe. No one will order you around.”

  “I have a few questions for our Harlequin. It’s a strange situation, isn’t it? If I left with you two, it would be like sharing a girlfriend.”

  “It’s not that way,” Gabriel said. “Maya just wants to help us.”

  “But what if she has to make a choice?” Michael took a step forward. “Who are you going to save, Maya? Gabriel or me?”

  “Both of you.”

  “It’s a dangerous world. Maybe that’s not possible.”

  Maya glanced at Gabriel, but he gave no indication of what she should say. “I’ll protect whoever makes this world a better place.”

  “Then I’m the one.” Michael took another step forward. “Most people don’t know what they want. I mean, they want a big new house or a shiny new car. But they’re too frightened to decide the direction of their lives. So we’re going to do it for them.”

  “The Tabula told you that,” Gabriel said. “But it’s not true.”

  Michael shook his head. “You’re acting just like our father did-making a small life, hiding under a rock. I hated all that talk about the Grid when we were growing up. We’ve both been given this power, but you don’t want to use it.”

  “The power doesn’t come from us, Michael. Not really.”

  “We grew up like crazy people. No electricity. No telephone. Remember that first day at school? Remember how people pointed at our car when we drove into town? We don’t have to live that way, Gabe. We can be in charge of everything.”

  “People need to be in charge of their own lives.”

  “Why haven’t you figured it out, Gabe? It’s not difficult. You do what’s best for yourself and to hell with the rest of the world.”

  “That’s not going to make you happy.”

  Michael stared at Gabriel and shook his head. “You talk like you have all the answers, but one fact is clear.” Michael raised the palms of his hands as if he was blessing his brother. “There can be only one Traveler…”

  A man with short gray hair and steel eyeglasses stepped around the corner of the hallway and raised an automatic pistol. Gabriel looked as if he had lost his family forever. Betrayed.

  Maya shoved Gabriel down the next hallway as Boone fired. The bullet hit Maya’s right leg, slamming her against the wall, and she fell facedown on the floor. It felt as if all the air had been squeezed out of her body.

  Gabriel appeared and scooped her up in his arms. He ran a few feet and lunged into the elevator while Maya tried to pull away from him. Save yourself, she wanted to say, but her mouth couldn’t form the words. Gabriel kicked the wastebasket out of the doors and punched at the buttons. Gunshots. People shouting. The doors closed and they were moving to the ground floor.

  ***

  MAYA BLACKED OUT and when she opened her eyes they were in the tunnel. Gabriel was on one knee, still holding her tightly. She heard someone talking and realized that Hollis was there. He was stacking up bottles of chemicals that he had taken from the genetic research building.

  “I can still remember the little red warning signs in my high-school lab. All this stuff is dangerous if it gets near a flame.” Hollis turned the nozzle on a green canister. “Pure oxygen.” He picked up a glass bottle and poured a clear liquid onto the floor. “And this is liquid ether.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s all we need. Let’s get far away from here.”

  Gabriel carried Maya to the fire door at the end of the tunnel. Hollis lit the propane blowtorch, adjusted the hissing blue flame, and then tossed it behind him. They entered a second tunnel. A few seconds later, there was a loud popping noise and the expanding air pressure slammed the fire door open.

  When Maya opened her eyes again, they were climbing down the emergency staircase. There was a much louder explosion, as if a massive bomb had just hit the building. The power went out and they huddled in the darkness until Hollis switched on the flashlight. Maya tried to stay conscious, but she glided in and out of a dream. She remembered Gabriel’s voice and a rope lashed around her shoulders as she was pulled up through the ventilation duct. Then she was lying on her back in the wet grass, staring at the stars. She could hear more explosions and the wail of a police siren, but none of that mattered. Maya knew that she was bleeding to death; it felt as if all the life within her body was being absorbed by the cold ground.

  “Can you hear me?” Gabriel said. “Maya?”

  She wanted to speak to him-say one last thing-but someone had stolen her voice. A black liquid gathered around the edge of her vision and then it began to spread and darken like a drop of ink in a glass of clear water.

  60

  Around six o’clock in the morning, Nathan Boone glanced up at the sky over the research facility and saw a hazy patch of sunlight. His skin and clothing were covered with soot. The fire in the tunnels was supposedly under control, but black smoke with a harsh chemical odor continued to pour out of the vents. It looked as if the earth was burning.

  Fire trucks and police cars were scattered around the quadrangle. At night, their flashing red lights had seemed bright and demanding. In the early morning, the lights blinked feebly. Canvas fire hoses snaked from the pumper trucks to the vents. Some of the hoses were still spraying water below while firefighters with blackened faces drank coffee from cardboard cups.

  Boone had made a general assessment two hours ago. The explosion in the tunnels and the resulting power failure had caused damage in every building. Apparently the quantum computer had shut down and part of the mechanism had been destroyed. A young computer technician estimated that it would take nine months to a year for everything to get running again. The basements were flooded. All laboratories and offices were blackened with smoke. A computerized refrigerator in the genetic research laboratory had stopped working and several splicer experiments were ruined.

  Boone didn’t care about the destruction. As far as he was concerned, every building in the compound could have collapsed into rubble. The real disaster was that a Harlequin and a known Traveler had been allowed to escape.

  His ability to start an immediate search had been undermined by a minimum-wage security guard sitting in the gatehouse at the entrance to the facility. When the explosions started, the young man had panicked an
d called the police and fire department. The Brethren had influence throughout the world, but Boone couldn’t control a team of local firefighters determined to do their job. While the firefighters set up a command post and sprayed water into the tunnels, he helped General Nash and Michael Corrigan leave the quadrangle in a guarded convoy. Boone spent the rest of the night making sure that no one found Shepherd’s body or the three dead men in the administration center.

  “Mr. Boone? Excuse me, Mr. Boone…”

  He glanced over his shoulder as a fire captain named Vernon McGee approached him. The stocky little captain had been in the quadrangle since midnight, but he still appeared to be full of energy-almost cheerful. Boone decided that suburban firefighters were bored with checking hydrants and retrieving cats from trees.

  “I think we’re ready to start the inspection now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The fire is knocked down, but it will take a few hours until we can go into the maintenance tunnels. Right now I need to enter each building and check for structural damage.”

  “That’s impossible. As I told you last night, the staff here is involved with top-secret research for the government. Just about every room requires a security clearance.”

  Captain McGee rocked back slightly on the heels of his boots. “I don’t give a damn about that. I’m fire captain and this is my district. I have the right to enter any of these buildings for reasons of public safety. Feel free to give me an escort if you want.”

  Boone tried to conceal his anger as McGee swaggered back to his men. Perhaps the firefighters could do an inspection. It was possible. The bodies had already been wrapped in plastic and dumped in a van. Later that day, they would be shipped down to Brooklyn, where a cooperative mortician would cremate them and throw the ashes into the sea.

  Boone decided to check out the administration center before McGee started nosing around. Two security men were supposed to be in the third-floor hallway, ripping up the blood-stained carpet. Although the surveillance cameras were dead, Boone always assumed that someone was watching him. He marched confidently across the quadrangle as if everything was under control. His cell phone rang and, when he answered it, he heard Kennard Nash’s booming voice.

  “What’s the situation?”

  “The fire department is going to make a safety inspection.”

  Nash swore loudly. “Who should I call? The governor’s office? Could the governor stop this?”

  “There’s no reason to stop anything. We’ve cleaned up the significant problems.”

  “They’re going to find out that someone started the fire.”

  “That’s exactly want I want them to do. Right now, I have a team at Lawrence Takawa’s apartment. They’ll place a half-made explosive device on his kitchen table and write a revenge letter on his personal computer. When the arson investigators show up, I’ll tell them about our angry employee-”

  “And they’ll start looking for a man who has already disappeared.” Nash laughed softly. “Good work, Mr. Boone. I’ll talk to you this evening.”

  General Nash ended the phone call without saying goodbye and Boone stood alone near the entrance to the administration center. If he reviewed his actions during the last few weeks, he had to acknowledge some mistakes. He had underestimated Maya’s effectiveness and ignored his own suspicions about Lawrence Takawa. He had given in to anger on several occasions, and that had influenced his choices.

  As the fire died down, the smoke changed color from black to dirty gray. It looked like car exhaust-just ordinary pollution-as it came out of the vents, drifted up into the air, and disappeared. Maybe the Brethren had suffered a temporary setback, but victory was inevitable. Politicians could talk about freedom, their words thrown into the air like confetti. It meant nothing; the traditional idea of freedom was fading away. For the first time that morning, Boone pressed the button on his wristwatch and was pleased to see that his pulse rate was normal. He stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and entered the building.

  61

  Once again, Maya was held captive by the dream. Standing alone in the dark tunnel, she attacked the three football thugs and escaped down the staircase. Men were fighting on the platform, trying to smash the train windows, as Thorn grabbed her with his right hand and pulled her into the car.

  She had thought about that incident so many times that it had become a permanent section of her brain. Wake up, she told herself. Enough. But this time she lingered in the memory. The train lurched forward and she pressed her face against her father’s wool overcoat. Her eyes were closed as she bit her lip and tasted blood in her mouth.

  Maya’s anger was strong and loud, but another voice was whispering to her in the darkness. And then she knew that a secret was about to be revealed. Thorn had always been strong and brave and sure of himself. He had betrayed her that afternoon in North London, but something else had happened.

  The Underground train lurched forward, leaving the station, and she looked up at her father and saw that he was crying. At the time, it seemed impossible that Thorn could ever show weakness. But now she knew it was true. A single tear on a Harlequin’s cheek was a rare and precious thing. Forgive me. Was that what he was thinking? Forgive me for what I have done to you.

  ***

  SHE OPENED HER eyes and saw that Vicki was looking down at her. For a few seconds Maya lingered in a shadow land between her dream and the waking world; she could still see Thorn’s face while her hand touched the edge of a blanket. Breathe out. And her father disappeared.

  “Can you hear me?” Vicki asked.

  “Yes. I’m awake.”

  “How do you feel?”

  Maya reached beneath the bedsheet and felt the bandage that covered her injured leg. If she moved her body quickly, there was a sharp pain, like being jabbed with the point of a knife. If she remained stationary, it felt like someone had burned her skin with a branding iron. Thorn had taught her that you couldn’t ignore pain; you tried to reduce it to a specific point that was isolated from the rest of your body.

  She looked around the room and remembered being placed in the bed. They were in a beach house on the coast of Cape Cod, the curving Massachusetts peninsula that jutted into the Atlantic Ocean. Vicki, Gabriel, and Hollis had driven her there after spending several hours at a private clinic run by a doctor in Boston. The doctor was a member of Vicki’s church who used the house as a summer retreat.

  “Do you want another pill?”

  “No pills. Where’s Gabriel?”

  “He’s walking on the beach. Don’t worry. Hollis is guarding him.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “About eight or nine hours.”

  “Find Gabriel and Hollis,” Maya said. “Pack everything up. We have to keep moving.”

  “That’s not necessary. We’re safe here-at least for a few days. Nobody knows we’re at the house except Dr. Lewis and he believes in Debt Not Paid. He’d never betray a Harlequin.”

  “The Tabula are looking for us.”

  “No one’s walking on the beach because it’s too cold. The house next door is empty for the winter. Most of the stores in the village are closed and we haven’t seen any surveillance cameras.”

  Vicki looked strong and sure of herself, and Maya found herself remembering the timid church girl she approached in the Los Angeles airport just a few weeks ago. Everything had changed, moved forward, because of the Traveler.

  “I need to see Gabriel.”

  “He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Help me up, Vicki. I don’t want to be in bed.”

  Maya used her elbows to push her body up. The pain came again, but she was able to control the expression on her face. Standing on her good leg, she threw one arm around Vicki’s shoulder and the two women moved slowly out of the bedroom and down a hallway.

  With each halting step, Vicki gave Maya more information. After they had fled the Evergreen Foundation Research Center, Dr. Rich
ardson had kept her from dying as Hollis drove to Boston. At this moment, Richardson was traveling to Canada to stay with an old college friend who owned a dairy farm in Newfoundland. Hollis had parked his truck in a poor neighborhood and left the keys in the ignition. Now they were using a delivery van owned by another member of Vicki’s church.

  The beach house had a thick Berber carpet; the wood and leather furniture was clean and simple. A sliding glass door led to a deck and Maya got Vicki to take her outside. When Maya lay down on a chaise longue she realized how much effort it had taken to walk thirty feet. Sweat covered her face and her body began to shiver.

  Vicki went back into the house and returned with a blanket. She wrapped it tightly around Maya’s lower body and the Harlequin began to feel comfortable. The house was built next to sand dunes dotted with wild rose and beach grass and dark green heather. There was enough wind to push the dry blades of grass back and forth and Maya could smell the ocean. A solitary tern circled above the women as if searching for a resting place.

  Wooden steps led from the deck to the beach. The tide was out and Gabriel stood about five hundred feet away from her at the edge of the sea. Hollis sat on the sand, halfway between the house and the Traveler. He had something on his lap, wrapped in a bright beach towel, and Maya assumed it was her shotgun. There was no need for a Harlequin at this peaceful, isolated house. Vicki and Hollis had arranged everything without her. She was supposed to protect Gabriel, but he was the one who had risked his life to carry her out of the tunnels.

  The overcast sky and the gray-green water merged into each other; it was difficult to see the horizon. Each wave collapsed with a hushing sound, the water flowing across the packed sand and then returning to the sea. Gabriel wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt; it seemed that if he took just one more step he would be absorbed by the grayness and vanish from this world.

  The Traveler turned away from the water and looked back at the house. “He sees us,” Vicki said.