by Dario Solera
Sarah went back into the corridor. Léa and Gagnier were still waiting in the hallway. She turned to the last door, which also was her last chance. It had to be the bedroom. The handle rotated with a slight creak, and pushing the door, she felt like an intruder.
Inside, the air smelled stale in her nostrils. The shutters were closed, and only a few blades of light made it through the cracks. In the darkness the bed looked unmade, but she couldn’t tell for certain. She felt for the switch near the door and flipped it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I’ll leave immediately,” she said to the man lying on the bed, on top of the covers. She began closing the door, but then her eyes caught a glimpse of the details.
Trying not to make noise, she went back in, already knowing that the man wasn’t sleeping. His face was too pale, and the smell in the air wasn’t just staleness.
On the bedside table, near a black-and-white photograph of a young man in uniform, were a pair of thick glasses and an empty glass.
Tears flowed down her cheeks as she reached the side of the bed and looked at the man. On his ghost-white face he had a wrinkled, painful expression, and his eyes stared at the ceiling. Blood had collected on the back of his head and neck, which were now of a sickening dark brown.
A couple of teardrops fell on the bed, merging into the cover’s fabric.
The man—Jacques, her father—had something in his hands, which she hadn’t noticed before. It was just a corner of a slip of paper sticking out from his fingers. More tears fell on the bed and Jacques’s grey pullover as she gently pulled it away, fighting the morbid feeling that induced in her. It was a photograph of an elderly couple, a man and a woman, sitting on a couch, with Sarah between them. They all were smiling.
Léa peeked in from the doorframe. She spotted the corpse and covered her mouth, then she walked over to Sarah and took her by the hand, dragging her away and into the living room.
Gagnier was trying to close the apartment door.
She sat on the sofa, staring at the picture in her hands, weeping. “They’re dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Léa whispered with wet eyes.
Everything felt like waking up from a dream where someone she loved had died. Those moments before being fully awake, on the border between sleep and consciousness, when death still seemed palpable. These were not her real parents. They were copies, parallel entities. She ought not to be sad—yet she was. “Is it because I killed myself?”
“I don’t know, Sarah. They were fine the last time I met them…” Léa’s words trailed off.
Noises came from the corridor, and Gagnier said a few curse words.
“I know why I did it.” She paused for a long moment, watching the photograph. “I didn’t want to be responsible for my own life anymore. For my decisions.”
Léa embraced her on the couch, squeezing her between her arms.
“I was tempted. I was so close to it, so many times.”
“When?” Léa asked in a whisper.
“All my life.”
Sarah heard Léa swallowing and taking a deep breath. “In this world you found them, but it didn’t change anything. The problem in you—what you feel, constantly, because I know what it is—it’s not about your real parents. It’s not about you finding them.”
Their eyes met for an instant.
“Your lifelong search is a diversion.”
“What?” she mouthed.
“Don’t you understand? It’s an excuse, a way for you to dump your loneliness somewhere else. To blame someone else.” Now Léa was also crying.
It was true. So clear, so obvious, that it had taken Léa to spell it aloud in her face, or Sarah would have never seen it. They were dead in this world, and they might be dead in hers as well—so what? What would change in her life? She was who she was, and that was it, plain and simple.
“You don’t need them. You don’t need them for living your own life.”
Without uttering a word, she blankly looked at Léa with wet, swollen eyes.
“Can you see that?”
“I guess I should,” she said with a feeble voice.
Gagnier knocked on the living room’s doorframe. “Sorry. I managed to close the door, but we can’t stay here forever.”
Sarah studied him for a moment and then nodded.
***
She was on the sofa, again watching the picture and trying to excavate deep within herself to understand if meeting them would do any good to her. So close to one another on the photograph, she could see parts of them in her own traits. Her father’s slightly pointy nose, and her mother’s eyes. But physical details didn’t matter, she knew they were her biological parents, and a strange, powerful, and unexpected conflict was building up inside her. Did this change her love for her adoptive family? She had asked herself the same question, over and over, for two decades. She didn’t know the answer, but something had changed today.
“Hey,” Léa said, emerging from the dark hallway. She handed Sarah an envelope.
“What is it?” she asked, taking it with uncertain hands.
“Don’t open it. That’s the address of your parents in France. I found an old bank statement.”
The thick, white envelope had a scribble on it in Léa’s curly writing. “Do not open,” it read, and it was underlined two times. Sarah’s lips moved.
“You’ll thank me later,” Léa said with a thin, petite smile.
Sarah nodded, looking down at the paper between her fingers.
Gagnier arrived in the living room. “I checked the windows. There’s still no one around, so if we want to move—and I think we should—then it’s time to go.”
“Where to?” Léa asked. Her puzzled look spoke more than her question.
“You should go to the camp in Lausanne. I can drive you there. Then I’ll have to make contact with command. I have yet to rescue my men.”
“Your men? And all the other people?” she asked, then she turned toward Sarah.
She lifted her eyes from the picture that rested on top of the envelope in her hands. “Sorry,” she began with a feeble voice, before clearing her throat. “I’m not going back. I still have a job to do, and I’ll need your help.”
Thirty-two
The TV sent white noise on all channels, so Gagnier switched it off. The radio had the same problem. “I don’t like it. We don’t know what’s happening out there. We do know there was combat at the labs.” He paced up and down and repeated, “I really don’t like it.”
“We’re not armed, we don’t wear uniforms.”
“We have an army jeep, though.”
“We’ll walk the last few hundred meters. I don’t know—we can wave white flags.”
He studied Sarah for a moment, then he sent a quick glance at Léa.
“I have to go there. I caused all of this, I have to at least try fixing this mess. I’m probably the only one who can.”
Gagnier sighed and then nodded thoughtfully. “OK. We’ll go to the Institute.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said with a smile.
“On one condition.” He had his right index finger risen in front of him.
Sarah’s smile faded.
“I saw that your father was in the army—maybe in World War II. He looked like a radio operator.”
She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to get to the point.
“Perhaps he had a shortwave radio in the house.”
He had already broken the door, and now he was asking to sack her father’s home.
“And it’s likely in the bedroom.”
“How do you know?” she challenged.
Gagnier hesitated a moment as Léa looked away. “Because I already checked elsewhere. If there’s a radio, it must be there.”
The instinct to protect her father’s body caught her off guard. She hadn’t suspected it to be so powerful. Even though it was just biomass, decaying into simple compounds, it was still her father. It had nothing to do with soul or God, but inst
ead she could call it, very simply, respect.
“We must know what to expect. The radio would be a chance.”
Léa grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“OK.” The two letters left Sarah’s lips in a thin, whispered voice.
“Thanks. I won’t be long.”
He disappeared into the hallway, and for the whole time Sarah listened for sounds coming from the bedroom. Gagnier was being very quiet, and in her mind, she thanked him for that.
***
Something hissed from the radio before it fell back to noise once again. The device wasn’t from the forties and wasn’t military equipment, but it seemed a relic from a now-defunct modern analog era. A Japanese-sounding brand was embossed on the brushed aluminum front of the radio.
Lieutenant Gagnier dialed the tuner back, and the speaker erupted in unintelligible sounds. He played with another dial until voices spoke clearly.
“…burned down,” a voice said.
“We’ve been hiding in the basement. I’m not sure about the house, but I think it’s fine,” someone else said after a short moment of static.
“They’re not military,” Sarah noted.
“Of course not. The army uses digital encrypted comms.”
“Then who are they?”
Gagnier put his index finger on his mouth.
“What about the Germans?” one of the interlocutors asked.
“I heard they tried to gain control of that thing to shut it down. They kept saying the aliens came through it.”
“That’s crazy. Can you believe it? And where the hell are they now?”
“I have no idea. But as for the Germans, we responded and repelled all the attacks. Now I heard that all forces are busy protecting the camps.”
“Hmm. From here I can see the anomaly area. There’s a lot of movement there.”
“The Germans?”
“No, I think it’s us.”
“Nice to know. Look, I’ve got to go now. I have to check the generator for the night.”
“Yeah. Good luck. Same channel tomorrow morning at ten, OK?”
“OK. Take care.”
“You too.”
Again the radio went back to its normal condition of static noise. Gagnier tried other channels, but nothing else came up.
“Who were they?” Léa asked.
“Civilians,” he answered. “Maybe hidden somewhere around Geneva.”
“I thought everyone was evacuated.”
“Yeah, but if someone does not want to be found…”
Léa nodded.
“Anyway, this was very useful. We have a little bit more information, and we know what happened with the Germans.”
“Do you believe it?”
Gagnier shrugged. “There’s not much else to believe. It makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “Try to see it this way. This giant thing pops out of nowhere, connecting two worlds. We might ask ourselves how the Germans know what it is, and what is on the other side, but that’s another story. So there’s this thing, and there are alien aircrafts. One and one make two.”
“But you don’t have aliens in your world,” Léa said.
“Yes, but they don’t know that. Their conclusion is reasonable, although their reaction was absurd. Now, the question is, why haven’t the aliens invaded my world, and what do they want?” Léa and Gagnier had puzzled looks. From their faces, she guessed they were waiting for an answer from her. “So, the Germans got it right. I don’t believe in coincidences. These aliens must be here for the anomaly.”
“How do you know?” Léa asked.
“Call it a logical deduction—or gut feeling.”
“Right,” Gagnier interrupted. “It’s four in the afternoon and it’s going to be dark soon. As counterintuitive as it might seem, we’re less visible in daylight. We better move now.”
Sarah’s jaws clenched.
“I know, Sarah,” he said with a softer voice. “Time to tell him good-bye.”
Léa touched her on her arm. “You want me to go with you?”
“No. Thank you.”
Thirty-three
“Move! They’re coming!” Gagnier yelled from the corridor.
Jacques was on the bed, with his eyes now closed. Resisting tears, Sarah wondered who was coming. She studied every wrinkle in his face, trying to make sense of her feelings. A heart attack, Léa had said. Maybe the fright of the bombs or of the imminent evacuation. She could not help but think that, in this dimension, events had wiped her biological family away. Herself, her mother, and then her father. She was a ghost from another world.
A knock on the door. “Sarah?”
She turned and saw Léa.
“We must go. They’re everywhere.”
“Who?” she asked with a frown.
***
Dodging occasional debris and abandoned bags and suitcases, the jeep sped on the smooth tarmac. Gagnier held the steering wheel firmly, knuckles white and eyes locked on the road ahead.
Droves of black objects swam in the sky, slow and silky.
“I didn’t think there were so many. There could be thousands! What do they want?” Léa asked with a worried voice from the passenger seat. “Why don’t they attack?”
“They’re flying in a formation,” Gagnier said. “See how they are moving? They must be a hundred meters high. Maybe less.”
Sarah looked outside the window from the backseat. The show was mesmerizing: countless objects flew in a narrow pack that stretched to the distance, bending at the horizon. “It seems a circle.”
“Around what?” Léa asked.
“The anomaly,” Sarah answered.
“Yeah. Looks like it to me. The next question is, why?”
“They are interested in it, that’s for sure. The worst thing that could happen is that they decide to pass through.”
Léa shot a glance back at her from the passenger seat. “What are they waiting for?”
The diesel engine roared as Gagnier exited a corner and went full throttle. There still wasn’t a soul around, either civilian or military. The sun, low on the horizon, was beginning its journey on the other side of earth.
Indeed, the alien aircrafts looked like they were awaiting something, just idling until the moment came.
“One of them went through,” Sarah said. “It dropped a bomb and destroyed the accelerator. Then it returned here.”
“Yes, we saw that,” Gagnier said. “Any ideas?”
“It was too accurate, too precise.”
“Too precise?”
“I believe they wanted the particle accelerator on our side disabled.”
“Why?” Gagnier’s voice signaled the urge to get an answer. “And anyway, you can rebuild it.”
“It will take years. There must be something going on that we don’t know.”
“That was obvious.”
Sarah ignored his sarcastic remark. “Something imminent that requires the certainty of success. Hence the need to kill the cyclotron. It might be the key to close the anomaly.”
“Do you know how to do that?” Gagnier asked.
“No.”
The car ran around a burned crater.
“Of course!” Sarah said in a loud voice.
“What?”
“You mentioned that they were dropping bombs at random places, without hitting critical targets.”
“Yes. So?”
“Look at these craters. They’re much smaller than that on my side.”
“I don’t follow you,” Gagnier said.
Léa sat half turned toward her, sporting a puzzled expression.
“These bombs were for mapping the accelerator’s structure. Think of seismic surveys. Underground structures deflect seismic waves so you can map what’s there.”
“But why would they need that?”
“To destroy the accelerator. It’s seventy meters deep underground, so they needed to know where to focus their fire.”
Gagnier drove for a
moment without talking, then he nodded. “Yeah. Makes sense.”
“And the sightings in the rest of the world were for studying us. They were scouts.”
Raising her eyebrows, Léa looked back at the sky, as if to verify Sarah’s assumptions just by looking at the alien ships flying above.
Sarah’s own explanation baffled her. Its implication were so vast that she almost hoped she was wrong. “So,” she continued, “the real question is, what do they need the anomaly for? They already know what’s on the other side, and it’s nothing particular. I mean, it’s the same as this side.”
Léa still looked outside, one hand grabbing the handrail on the roof above the jeep’s window.
“Two kilometers to the Institute. We’ll stop in a minute as planned and walk from there.”
***
“Stay where you are!” a voice came from behind a stack of sandbags with a machine gun mounted on top. The MG operator removed the safety with a click.
They froze as instructed, and Sarah raised her hands without knowing why. It just seemed appropriate, and even if she didn’t feel an immediate threat, she regretted having ditched the bulletproof jacket.
The Institute campus had been transformed into a military camp with tents, vehicles, and guarding posts all around the perimeter.
“They’re Swiss,” Gagnier noted, and then he added in a loud voice, “Lieutenant Gagnier, 2nd Infantry Brigade.”
“Come closer; hands on your head!” the man yelled, while his companion kept the machine gun trained at them.
Doing as instructed, they reached the post at the gate of the Institute’s campus.
“Who are you?” the guard asked.
“I’m Dr. Sarah Davinson. I’m a physicist and I work for the Institute.”
“You?”
“Léa Bosshart. I’m a doctor.”
“What are you doing here? You should have evacuated.”
Sarah started speaking but Gagnier cut her short.
“I ended up stranded on the other side. My men are still there,” he said, waiting a couple of seconds to let the meaning of his words sink in the soldier’s mind. “I need to talk to command.”
