by Orton, D. L.
We both nod and then gape at the empty landing pad: no blood, no mouse, no nothing.
Once the sprinklers shut off, we can hear the whine of the air exchanger as the giant fans spin back up. The water on the floor is a quarter-inch deep, and everyone in the room is soaked.
A creepy voice in the back of the room hisses: “Beware, I live.”
The stunned crowd parts as everyone looks for the source. Junior steps in front of the Sinistar game console and smiles weakly. The display behind him shorts out with a loud crack, and the smell of ozone fills the air again. He flips more control panel switches and the games go silent.
Matt walks back across the room and releases the seal on the GrillMaster. Everyone leans in to see. There are spatters of blood all over the inside of the metal capsule, but nothing else.
Cassie says what I’m thinking, “Explosive decompression. The poor thing was probably half-way between universes when the power failed.”
“Christ,” I say, looking up. “What poor fool are you planning to force into that deathtrap?”
Everyone is staring at me.
Chapter 25
Isabel: He’s Dead
I’m on the ladder clearing snow off the solar panels when I first catch sight of him.
Goddamn it! Why can’t he just leave me alone?
I crouch down behind the peak of the roof, my heart racing, and watch him skulking up the ravine next to the creek. He’s keeping to the shadows, stealing furtive glances at the cabin and outcropping of rocks. He’s still a hundred meters away but moving quickly toward the graves. I freeze, pushing down the panic in my chest, and then I pat the loaded gun in my jacket and climb down, taking care not to slip.
Once I make sure that Lucky is safely inside the cabin, I slip out the front door and turn the deadbolt, zipping the key into my coat. I pull the Wally out of my pocket, check that there are bullets in the cartridge, and that the safety is down.
I’ve only fired the gun a handful of times, but I’m no longer afraid of it. I know how to aim and shoot—and kill, if need be. I jog into the forest behind the cabin, the gun in my hand and adrenaline pumping through my veins.
It takes me a minute to circle around to the creek, staying hidden in the trees, and then I follow the stream down to where the rocks jut out over the rushing water.
I sneak up behind the largest boulder and peek around it.
A minute later, I see my attempted rapist take a huge bowie knife out of his backpack and then slink through the trees toward my hiding place, his eyes scanning the cabin. Something about how he’s dressed sets off an alarm in my head, but I ignore it.
Focus on the task at hand, Isabel. It’s you or him.
I lean against the boulder, my forearm resting on a small ledge. I calculate how far away my target needs to be for me to get off three or four shots—just in case the first two don’t take him down—and then I mark the spot in my head and wait.
Doubt pushes up bile in the back of my throat, but I swallow it and concentrate on the terror I felt when he cut off my dress.
Either I shoot him now, or I live in fear—and danger—for the rest of my life.
The choice is obvious, if brutal.
Still, I can’t bring myself to gun him down in cold blood.
Give him one chance to leave, and if he doesn’t, shoot to kill.
I glance at the scars on my wrists. “Drop the knife and get off my property!”
It takes him a moment to find me behind the rocks. “Hey there, beautiful. Got yourself a gun, did ya? I came back to see how your honeymoon was going.” He starts walking toward me. “Sorry about the dress. I got carried away, but you can’t really blame me, you being so provocative and all.”
I aim at his chest. “You take another step, and you’re dead.”
He stops and scans the woods. “Where’s that rabid monster of yours? If I put down my knife, I’ll be defenseless.”
“You have one minute to get the hell off my property. If I ever see you again, I’ll shoot you in the back.”
He raises his hands, one wrist bandaged. “Okay, okay. Just let me keep the knife, and I’ll skedaddle.”
And then I realize what set off my alarm: He’s wearing Diego’s clothes.
“Where did you get that shirt?”
“It belonged to your boyfriend, did it?” He starts walking toward me. “I thought so. But you didn’t know he was dead.” He takes off the pack and holds it out to me. “His things are still in here: razor, compass, maps, even a cute little photo of you. Maybe we could make a trade?”
I release the safety on the Wally, but he keeps coming toward me.
“Ah, come on now. You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
“Stop! Or I swear I’ll kill you!” Tears stream down my face.
He ignores me, and I fire a warning shot.
Bits of dirt jump up into the air and hit him in the chest and face.
He drops the pack and zigzags across the clearing, covering the space between us fast. I fire two more shots, aiming for his chest, but both of them miss. He hunches down, still moving quickly, but trips over the rocks on the grave and stumbles.
I pull the trigger three more times, and each shot finds its target.
The man falls forward, his momentum carrying his twitching body within an arm’s-length of my boots.
I stare down at the back of Diego’s torn and bloody shirt, and then I let out a wail of despair so deep that no comfort could possibly reach it.
Chapter 26
Diego: Tenpins With the Devil
I sit in my underground jail and peer out the fake window at the Great Pyramid. I still don’t understand why they plan to send me. Matt is a world-renowned physicist, and an expert on both black holes and material sciences. Cassie is some sort of mathematical super-genius, and Picasso is a mild-mannered Rambo who could single-handedly take down a small country.
I’m a nobody. If some asshole hadn’t put my name in that sphere, I would be home in bed, curled up around Iz.
I take out the photo that Picasso gave me and stare at Isabel’s face. She’s sitting on the rocks overlooking the twins’ grave and gazing out into the distance, almost like she’s searching for me. The breeze is blowing wisps of her shoulder-length hair across her cheek and lips, and she’s wearing one of my sweaters, the soft curve of her breasts visible beneath it. I close my eyes, blinking back tears, and imagine putting my arms around her—
There’s a knock on my door.
It takes me a moment to get my emotions back under control. “Come.”
Matt peeks around the door. “Hey, mate. The computers are all down for a security update, so I thought I’d see if you wanted to chat for a bit? Maybe play a round of tenpin?”
I hesitate.
“You and I got off to a rough start, and I was hoping you’d give me a chance to apologize.” The guy’s wearing flip-flops and lounge pants that are too long for him.
“Yeah, sure, Matt. No worries. I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass. I know you’re not responsible for the fact that I’m here, but I’m having a rough time of it, knowing that Isabel is out there all alone.”
“And rightfully so. Come on. Let’s grab a bevvy first.”
We stop off at the Y and get a couple of beers.
“Do you have any idea why they plan to send me, Matt?”
“You mean other than because your name was in the sphere? No. I think they were hoping you could tell us.”
We walk over to the bowling alley next door.
“Why won’t they let me contact Isabel?” I ask. “She thinks I abandoned her.”
“I’ll ask Picasso if something can be arranged. I don’t think they’ll let you out, but maybe you can send her a letter.”
“That would be awesome, Matt.” I set the beers on a sma
ll table and pick out a bowling ball. “I’d be very grateful.”
He lifts a sparkly green ball off the rack and swings it up to his chin. “Yeah, well, save the gratitude until after he says yes.” He grunts and sets the ball back down and picks up another one.
“Do you have any idea what they want to change, Matt?” I watch him swing a kid-sized purple and yellow ball.
“I don’t know any more than you do, mate, but I do know that we can’t go mucking around in our own past. Quantum physics forbids it.” He wrenches his fingers out of the tiny holes. “Bollocks!”
“So why build a time machine?”
“Good question. My best guess is that it would allow us to go to a different universe and attempt to change something there. But that’s pure speculation.”
“What good would that do us?”
He swings another ball and puts it back down. “I think they’re hoping it’ll have some sort of domino effect: we change another universe’s past; it breaks off into new branches; one of those new branches changes our world.”
He sets a blue and red ball down on the ball return, and then looks at me. “Aren’t you going to play?”
I nod at the plain black ball next to his. “Just waiting for you, mae.”
“Sorry. I’m not very good at this. By the way, what does ‘my-ee’ mean? Is it Spanish?”
“No, Costa Rican slang. Sort of the same thing as ‘mate’ in England.”
“Ah.”
I open the beer bottles. “So, do you know what they’re hoping to change? In the other universe, I mean?”
He glances at a surveillance camera, and then turns away and lowers his voice. “No, but the event would have to be something very subtle, or things would rapidly spiral out of control.”
I give him an uncomprehending look. “What do you mean?”
“Say, for example, we send someone back to prevent Lincoln’s assassination. That would cause huge changes in the target universe, and there would be almost no possibility the modified universe would be anything like ours: no Magic Kingdom, no time machine, maybe even no United States—which means that Lincoln’s universe won’t even know we exist, and there’s no way they could help us.” He takes a sip of his beer, wipes his hands on his pants, and picks up the ball. “So it would change things in their universe, but not in ours.”
I sit down in a chipped plastic chair. “So what sort of change could we make?”
Without preamble, he swings the ball back and tosses it hard onto the ancient wooden bowling alley. We watch it bump down the lane, clip a single beat-up pin on the left, and disappear.
“Well, if we make some sort of subtle change in the universe that sent us the sphere,” he says, “maybe we end up saving them from the apocalypse, and in return, they do something to help us. And yeah, I know it’s a bleedin’ long shot, but what other options are there?”
“How could anyone figure that out?”
“Beats me, but I’m betting that whoever sent the sphere knows a lot more than we do.” He holds his fingers over the hand dryer.
The bowling ball rolls up from the underground shoot and circles around.
“Except their targeting is off, assuming they didn’t intend to torch five square miles of downtown Denver.”
“Let’s nitpick once we manage to get something working, okay?” He picks up the ball for his second try. “Did you hear they made progress on the Hot Button?”
“I heard rumors.”
“Turns out, it’s some sort of 3-D display device. iFlick they’re calling it. Some guy figured out how to fix the battery, and the rest was easy. It projects a hologram of a woman, clear as day, just like she’s in the room with you.”
“Don’t tell me she said ‘Help me, Obi-Wan’?”
He chuckles. “No, she says the button contains instructions for building a ‘bionano,’ sort of a mechanical cell.” He tosses the ball down the lane, and it wobbles a bit, threatening to fall into the gutter. “There was more on the device, but it got melted by the fire.”
“You said it was a hologram of a woman?”
“It wasn’t Princess Leia,” he says, “and it wasn’t Isabel.” We watch the ball knock down the pin on the other side. “The spooks have face-recognition software working on it right now, but so far, no matches.”
I nod, more disappointed than I’m willing to let on. “Do they know what the bionano is supposed to do?”
“That’s the million dollar question.” He turns and picks up his beer. “But they do have the woman’s first name.” He scrunches up his nose. “Blast, I can’t remember. Something French, I think. I’m sure Picasso will ask you about it.”
“It’s not… Soleil, is it?”
“Yeah, that’s it! How’d you know?”
I see those beautiful green eyes in the lifeless face and feel an icy hand grip my throat.
“You okay, mate?”
“Yeah.” I set my beer down in a pocket of the cracked Formica counter-top. “One of the stillborn twins was named Soleil. Painful coincidence, I’m sure.”
He watches me pull the damp label off the bottle. “You know, Diego, one of the reasons they won’t bring Isabel on board is because they need her as leverage—just in case you misbehave.”
I look up at him, unsure what to make of his revelation.
He turns his back to the surveillance camera again. “Agent Dick flew off the handle when you initially refused to join the project. He thinks you’re a loose cannon. And you have dual citizenship, so that makes you suspect. If you ask me, it’s all a crock of shit, but nobody cares about my bloody opinion.”
“A loose cannon?” Anger explodes in me. “Why the hell did they kidnap me?”
“Easy, mate. They’re probably watching us now.” He takes a slow drink of his beer. “They had to bring you in because your name’s on that sodding note, although they can’t decide if you’re supposed to save the world—or destroy it. Dick wanted you placed under guard, but Picasso overruled him.”
“Christ.”
Matt sets the bottle down and rubs his hand across his mouth. “If I were you, I wouldn’t talk too much about Isabel. You might end up regretting it.”
We look over at some guys from the Peeping Tom team. They haven’t sent any balls down in a while and seem to be in a heated conversation, their voices getting steadily louder. One of them sees us looking over and motions with his head for us to join them.
Matt nods. “Let’s go see what’s up.”
Here in the Magic Kingdom there’s a two-caste system: government slash military personnel, and private citizens who have been conscripted to work on the project. Most of the latter were brought in under false pretenses, and we take every opportunity to ignore the “no talking about the projects” directive. What are they going to do, fire us?
We drag a couple of chairs over and shake hands all around.
The forty-something guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt over a Stanford T-shirt—Phil, I think his name is—lets out a heavy sigh. “You guys hear the latest about the Peeping Tom?”
Matt looks at me, and we both shake our heads. “No, what’s up?”
The red-haired kid with a freckled face answers. “I figured out how to peer forward in time.”
“Wow,” Matt says. “No shit?”
“It’s not as earth-shattering as you might think—time is just another dimension like width and height.”
“But still. Peeking into the future. How far can you see?”
“Somewhere around five hundred days, and I had to view universes pretty far away to do it, so there’s no telling if things will play out the same way here.”
The balding guy in a JHU sweatshirt looks down at his hands. “Tell them the rest, Sam.”
The kid glances up at the camera and then nervously around our circle.
“It’s okay,” Phil says. “Mr. Johnson, or whatever-the-hell his real name is, can’t do anything more than impound the bowling balls.” He puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “They need us. Otherwise, they’ll never figure out what causes it. And if there’s any way to stop it.”
“Stop what?” Matt scoots his chair in. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Doomsday. Mass extinction. The end of the world.” The young guy stares at a bowling ball that comes out of the return shoot. “We’ve got somewhere between twelve to eighteen months before everything on the evolutionary tree above a cockroach bites it.”
I look at Matt, asking with my eyes if he knows anything about this.
“How do you know it’s going to happen here?” he asks. “You just said you couldn’t see our future.”
Sam jerks his head around, his eyes slits. “It happens in every universe I’ve seen, every single one, and I’ve checked out hundreds of them so far. We haven’t been able to find any that escape. You want to bet against it? Go ahead, man. Me, I’m going to figure out how to get out of this hellhole and spend the time I got left drinking fifty-year-old scotch and bedding equally-expensive women.”
He stands up and kicks the leg of his 1960s-era chair, sending it skidding across the floor.
The JHU guy gets up and retrieves the errant chair. “Take it easy, Sam. We knew something like this was coming—that’s why they put this project together. Your job is to figure out what triggers it, so we can figure out how to stop it.”
“You think it’s some sort of super virus?” I ask.
“Possibly,” Phil says, “but more likely some sort of man-made vaccine that goes rogue.”
“And it kills more than one kind of animal?” Matt asks, his voice soft but with an edge. “Most viruses are species-specific.”
“It’s not too fucking difficult to see all the dead bodies,” the kid says. “Everywhere you look. And it’s not just humans feeding the vultures, it’s everything with fur: dogs, cats, horses, rats, you name it.”
