“To Genevieve,” Quincy says.
“To Genevieve,” Vance and Aleisha echo.
“Oh, wasn’t Jenny that girl you were dating? I thought there was just a bad breakup, and that’s why I never saw again.” I pause. “She’s the one you guys keep talking about that died in there?”
“Well, she disappeared,” Vance says. “She went in and never came out. I looked for her for days. But, sometimes, you just got to call it.”
“Jesus,” I say. “What did you guys tell people?”
“The truth,” Aleisha says. “That she disappeared, and we hadn’t heard from her.”
Jane stands suddenly, knocking the coffee table with her legs and sending our beers rattling across its surface.
“I can’t do this,” she says. “I never should have brought any of you into this. Shit, I’m sorry,” she backs away, her eyes wide her face pale. “I—I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Go where?” Vance says, standing.
“Don’t follow me,” she says, continuing toward the door.
“Jane,” I say. “We’re in this together. You hear me? I’m all in, and so is Quincy and Vance and Aleisha. We’re here for you,” I glance up at Vance, then turn back to Jane. She’s stopped, her back turned to us. “This is your plan, your mission, and you get to call the shots. So just tell us what needs to happen and we’ll make it happen.”
Slowly she turns back around. “Okay, here’s the plan.”
At 6 PM, after a dinner of grilled burgers and salad, Longdale and Constance had gone off for a walk and Jim left to wander around Arrowhead Village. Shortly afterward, the others loaded themselves into the bus. I drove them to a point two miles from the Silverwood Reservoir and dropped them off. When the others return, I’ll say that Vance and his grad student buddies left for a walk while I stayed behind to rest.
Our group of Elementalists will then troop down to the front door of the LA Station. Jane says that the entrance is a mile south of the Reservoir, down a small unmarked gravel road which ends in an unassuming single story concrete building at the base of the Cedar Springs Dam. A tunnel there gives vehicles access to the underground structures built as part of the Hydroelectric Dam. Below that is the ISD's Los Angeles Station.
How does she know this? Her dreams are getting stronger, she said. In her dreams, she remembers arriving at the dam, driving into the tunnel access, gaining access to a hidden elevator that can go further down than the number of floors it claims to have access to, and entering into a control room that looks like something out of the movie Dr. Strangelove.
“What’s Dr. Strangelove?” I asked.
“A Stanley Kubrick movie,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “I’ve seen them all a hundred times.”
“Well, I watched it with my father when I was a little girl,” she said. “It did exist.Forget it,” she said. “After that, Molly—is told that they brought in a group of college students who know way more than they should about the Station. She goes down to a lower level where they have holding cells rigged up with cameras. Real creepy-like. Then I see us, on the screens, each in a different cell. And he is inside one of those. I am certain that it’s him. I can sense him, even in my dream.”
“And that’s when this Recursion Event starts?” Vance asked.
“That’s right,” Jane said.
“Did you see what happened… after?” Quincy asked.
“No,” Jane responded. “That’s when it ends.
After dropping them off, I turned around and drove back to the cabin. Every fiber in my being told me to say fuck it all, to turn back around and follow them on their insane plan.
But I drew the wrong card. I promised to stay back. If necessary, to tell their stories.
I’m a writer, after all.
The ceiling fan spins lazily above me. My bottle of whiskey—or Longdale's bottle pilfered by Jim and now pilfered by yours truly—is sitting on the coffee table next to me.
I stare at the bottle. How easy it would be to drink away my sorrows; an anesthetic for a painful procedure. Would this Recursion Event even be painful? Would I even be aware of anything happening?
I doubt it.
But the waiting and the wondering. That’s what hurts.
I settle back into the couch. Tonight, I face the what comes with a sober mind and eyes wide open.
Nearby, a floorboard creaks.
My heart lurches and I sit straight up on the couch. I see visions of government spooks and mafia goons peering around the corner. But they wouldn’t follow me all the way up here.
Would they?
“Hello?” I ask.
Another creak. “Skipping town, kid?”
The high-pitched, wheezy voice is unmistakable. I whip around and see Carl, standing in the hallway. His massive bulk fills the frame. He has a large bandage above left eye and his right hand in his a cast. Vic made short work of him.
“I’m not skipping town.”
Carl takes a step forward. “You fail to deliver, and that night you pack up a van with your buddies and leave. What am I supposed to make of that?”
I swallow. “Can’t a guy take a vacation?”
“Not when he has a debt to pay.”
I take a step back. My legs hit the couch. “Talk to Ray Brenner. He said he’d buy what I owe off Carr. He’s going to take care of the whole thing.”
Carl shakes his head. “Oh, it’s more than the money. You see, you embarrassed Mr. Carr. Because of you, he has to push back the picture. And since you embarrassed Mr. Carr, he’s interested in making it hard for you to work for a very long time.”
I hear someone come up behind me. I try to leap out of the way, but it's too late. A hand wraps around my wrist in a vice-like grip as a pillow is pushed against my face.
I squirm, trying to see who my new attacker is, and I get a glimpse of Tracy’s skull-like face.
Tracy, standing behind me on the couch, pulls me back to the edge of the couch. He yanks my arm down and slams my hand against the coffee table. Carl lumbers forward. He pulls a gun from his shoulder holster and aims his gun at my palm.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s just one hand. You’ll still be able to type.” He holds up his own injured hand and wiggles his fingers, smiling cruelly as he does so. “Just not as quickly.”
The pressure on the pillow increases. I thrash, desperate for air.
I reach, finding Tracy’s pinky, and give it a solid wrench. The weight on the pillow lightens and I pull it away. Tracy yanks back, trying to pull the pillow from my grasp.
I hold on and am nearly pulled off the couch. He yanks the pillow left and right while the thin spook tries to grab me from behind. I kick out until I connect with what feels like a sturdy jaw. There’s an oof, and a crash as he stumbles backward.
The pillow falls to the floor and Tracy clambers on top of me. For a skinny creep he’s surprisingly heavy. His weight crushes down my chest. His hand goes to my mouth, stifling my shout. With his other hand, he grabs my wrist and pushes it to the floor. I hear Carl stepping forward.
With my free hand I claw at the Tracy’s face. My finger hooks his nostril and yank hard on it. He groans and relaxes his grip. I roll away and grab the edge of a full length mirror. I yank, pulling it down on both of us.
There’s a crash as the mirror shatters. Tracy scrambles out from under it, hands scraping across shards of glass and bloodying the hardwood floor.
Tracy rises with a growl, advancing on me. I grab the lamp off the side table and thrust it at him like a sword. He swipes with one fist. I block with the lamp. Swipe again. Block.
Yellow light dances across Tracy’s face, illuminating the peaks and valleys of the acne scars that cover his face.
He pushes me back and I pivot, swinging him around. The flickering light dances on the floor and walls.
Tracy grabs the lamp and rips it out of my grasp. He throws it to the ground. The light flickers and goes out.
I
stumble backward in the dark as Carl lumbers toward me. He grabs my arm, lifts me like I’m nothing, and throws me against the wall. I try to slide down the wall toward the door, but he spins me around and throws me again, this time face-first against the wall, pinning my arm back in a submission hold.
Carl leans in closer, his breath is hot against my face.
“You’re starting to piss me off, kid. I think I’m going to have to tell Mr. Carr that there was an unfortunate accident.”
There's a click of a bullet being loaded into a chamber. The steel of the gun barrel presses against the back of my scalp.
Jane, I think. Any time you want to change the past, feel free.
I hold my breath, waiting for the gunshot and wondering if I’ll even hear the pop before the bullet enters my brain.
When the pop finally comes, I can feel the blood and brain-matter covering my face. The sound of the gunshot was distant, like it happened to someone else. And no pain follows it.
So is this death?
Does the soul detach so quickly from the body?
I feel myself moving upward, ascending out of Carl’s grasp.
And then there’s a thump.
Is it my body, dead and lifeless, falling to the floor?
I finally open my eyes to find that I am still pressed against the wall. I blink, seeing a large form below me.
Carl lies still on the floor, a puddle of blood slowly pooling around his head.
Glass crunches as Tracy stands. He is covered in blood and large pieces of glass protrude from his arms. He stares at me, his face sneering. He opens his mouth slightly, as if about to speak.
Then his eyes shift to something behind me and he turns, firing off multiple shots. I turn to see a third figure running across the room from the open patio door. He’s a thin man wearing a black turtleneck and black jeans, with a narrow face and short brown hair, parted on the side.
Where have I seen him before?
Glass and wood explode behind the man and he fires back, sending a spray of bullets in Tracy’s direction. Tracy scrambles to the staircase, throwing himself on them. The railings splinter and explode as Tracy crawls on his hands and knees up the stairs.
Tracy disappears at the top of the stairs and there is a moment of quiet.
I slump against the wall, sliding down to the floor, and kick Carl’s body away from me. His corpse leaves a trail of blood and brain matter in its wake.
I lean over to see around the couch, but the spooks are gone.
But wasn’t there two of them?
The sound of gunshots shatters the silence. The wall across from the second floor landing explodes into splinters. A moment later, Tracy appears on the landing, running at full speed. He smashes through the railing, falling in a slow arc through the air, and crashes onto the kitchen table. It buckles under his weight, collapsing on the floor.
The second spook runs to the banister at the top of the landing. The first spook straightens from his position behind the couch.
They both turn and look at me.
“Ellis Claymore?” The first spook asks.
I open my mouth and close it again.
He takes a step forward. “You’re going to have to come with us.”
The second spook appears at the bottom of the stairs. He grabs a bottle of alcohol from the counter and begins dumping it out around the room.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
The second spook doesn't respond. The first one takes another step closer. “I said, you’re going to have to come with us.”
The second spook opens the oven door. He turns on the gas and continues to light the burners.
“You’re burning this place down?”I ask.
The first spook, the only one that’s spoken, takes another step closer to me. “Do you want someone to find the place like this? We’re doing your friends a favor. And you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you—”
“Come with you guys?” I say. “Yeah, yeah. I get the picture”
“We have your friends,” the first spook says.
“Oh yeah?” I say.
He nods. “And now we've come to clean up the loose ends.”
In the kitchen, the second spook stumbles suddenly and then falls, crashing into the wreckage of the kitchen table.
The first spook spins around on his heel. There’s a small popping sound, and he stumbles backward, one hand going to his chest.
A tranquilizer dart.
“Come on,” Vic says, emerging from the shadows in the hallway. “We don’t have much time.”
I lean back against the kitchen island, feeling my heart thud against my chest. “Time for what?”
Vic shoots me a look that says don’t ask questions. He moves to the fallen body of the first spook and grabs the man under the arms, nodding for me to do the same. I take the man’s legs and we lift. He’s heavier than he looks, and I grunt under the weight.
We carry the body through he wrecked kitchen. Tracy’s body is sprawled out on the floor near the back door, blood oozing out of him.
Vic pushes open the porch door and we exit into the night. The cool mountain air cuts into my skin and lungs making me shiver.
“Where are we going?” I ask as we descend the porch steps. I have visions of the two of us carrying the bodies to the dock, bundling them into sacks weight with bricks and dropping them into the lake.
“Over there,” Vic says, nodding to a van parked back against the trees.
We drop the spook by the van. The man turns his head and moans when he hits the ground.
“How long does that stuff last?” I ask.
Vic slides open the van door. “Long enough.” And we stuff the first spook in. It takes a few minutes to get the other unconscious spook to the van and loaded inside. I glance back at the house and smoke filling the kitchen.
“What are we going to do about the other bodies?” I ask.
Vic pulls the van door shut. “The fire will take care of them.”
Won’t police have questions?
Vic laughs and shakes his head. “If anyone searches that place well enough after the fire’s done with it to figure out the difference between a jawbone and a burnt spatula… hell, I’ll owe you a beer. Come on, kid. Get in the van.”
Vic pulls the van over a few miles down the road. The inside of the van is stripped of seats, other than the driver and passenger seat, and is packed with crates, gun racks, and gear I don’t even recognize. I think of Jim and Longdale and Constance, and of the horror show they’ll discover when they return home. Vic climbs into the back, laying the two tranquilized spooks out on the floor of the van. He opens a case, pulling an odd looking contraption out. It’s metallic and looks a bit like a spider with an array of wires spilling from it. He takes the spider legs and arranges them around the first spooks head.
“What is that?” I ask.
“This,”says Vic. “Is courtesy of the future. Not just your future, mine as well.”
He presses a button on the device. There’s a soft clicking noise and the spook’s body jerks up, as if it had been shocked.
“I just injected a few thousand little robots into his body, smaller than blood cells. They’re going swim their way through his brain, finding out all the little neural pathways that make this guy tick.” Vic takes out another case, removing a second spider-shaped device, and shifts over to the other spook, repeating the process. The first spook continues to twitch.
I crouch beside Vic, staring in fascination. “That’s what gave Jane those memories, isn’t it?”
Vic nods. “The Order calls it a neural hijacker. I like to call it an evil little bastard.” He taps the side of the device. “If you have those little robots in your own blood stream, then this thing allows you to forcibly take over another person’s body.”
“What, you control their bodies like a robot?”
Vic shakes his head. “It’s more like making a copy of your programing and having it overwrite the other person
’s programming. As far as I can tell, the real them stays safely hidden away, probably in some kind of extended animation.”
My jaw slackens and I turn to Vic, wide-eyed. “Like, being frozen?”
“Something like that,” Vic says. “But what we’re going to do is a lot riskier.”
He removes the device from the second spook’s head and turns to me.
“Want to join the ISD?” he asks.
It takes me a moment to put two and two together. “You—you want me to—to take over his body?”
Vic nods. “You get door number one, I get door number two. It’s the only way we’re getting in there undetected.”
I slump against the side of the van. “Oh my god, my god, my god.” I turn to Vic. “Why do you even need me? You could have left me to burn in that house with the other dead bodies. I’ll be one of them soon enough, anyway.”
The second spook is now twitching as well, joining the first in an unnerving dance.
“It’s complicated,” Vic says.
“I’m sick of people telling me that,” I say. “You want my help? Then spill.”
“It’s you, it’s Jane, it’s your roommate.”
“What about my roommate?”
Vic narrows his eyes. “You have figured it out yet?”
I shake my head.
“Jane hasn’t figured it out yet?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Your roommate is Jane’s husband.”
I let out a cough. “Jim?”
“They’re not supposed to meet for another twenty years, so the timing’s all wrong. But Jane is this force. She’s pulling people toward herself. I think that’s why she found you as well. The only other guy in the city with a connection to the ISD.”
“Jim and—and Jane?” I say.
“Jim and Molly,” Vic says. “At least, that’s how he will eventually know her.”
I slap my hand against my forehead. “And I suggested he come up here as well.
Vic leans forward. “He’s here? Now?”
I nod. “Jim, Longdale, and Constance. They all came as well. Longdale and Constance are out on a walk and Jim went into the village for dinner.”
Dispersion: Book Two of the Recursion Event Saga Page 15
