by Orton, D. L.
“After all this time, she must think you’re dead, mate. She’s gone on with her life, maybe even found a new man. I know that’s a hard one to swallow, but given your… situation, any contact now would only cause her more pain.”
I know he’s right, but it tears me up inside just thinking about it. “I want her to know that I didn’t abandon her, Matt, that I did everything in my power to get back to her.”
“Bloody hell.” He lets out a weary sigh. “Write a note, and I’ll do what I can to get it to her. What are they going to do, ground me?”
“Thanks, mae. I’d appreciate it.”
We sit in silence for a bit.
“There’s something else.” I take the shell out of my pocket and turn it over in my hands. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, so I’d be grateful if you kept it to yourself unless...”
“The shit hits the fan?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay, Shoot.”
“A bit over a year ago, I received a handwritten message, possibly from the same guy who sent the Einstein Sphere. I think that person is me. Well, me from another universe.”
“At this point,” he says, “I’d believe just about anything.”
“I left the original note at the cabin, but I have it memorized: Prepare for the worst. When things are darkest, give Isabel the shell and let her go. With Einstein’s help, you will meet again. Tell no one or risk losing everything!”
“Blimey. So you think the ball is the Einstein Sphere?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And ‘Einstein’s help’ must be the time machine.”
He considers my words. “So why are you telling me?”
“Because after tomorrow, I will have lost everything.”
“Christ, Diego, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, but I know it’s not your fault. In any case, the note appeared in the glove box of my car along with a seashell exactly like this one.” I toss it to him.
“Don’t tell me it was stuffed inside a dirty sock.” He turns the shell over in his hands.
“How’d you know that?”
“There was a sock in the sphere too.” He hands it back to me. “Where’d you get this one?”
“You know the clip the Peeping Tom guys showed us in the theatre, the one with the boys playing futbol on the tropical beach? I was in it. It happened twenty years ago. The same day I found this shell.”
“Crikey Moses. Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I recognized all the other guys too. I don’t know how or why, but I’m the one who connects all this together.”
“So that’s why you agreed to go?”
“I didn’t really have much choice, but yeah. The only problem is, ‘let her go’ could mean that Isabel is the one who needs to go, not me. The shell is for her to use.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner? Maybe we would have had more luck convincing the brass to bring her on board if they knew about this.”
“Because the note was very explicit about keeping quiet,” I say. “I didn’t know where the hell I was supposed to go, or how I could ever get back to her, but I didn’t want to mess it up.”
“I probably would have done the same thing.” He exhales. “Does she have the other shell?”
“It’s at the cabin. I left it inside a wooden puzzle box in the bottom drawer of the desk. The note is there too.”
“Did you tell Isabel about them?”
“No, you’re the only one who knows. Like I said, I took the keep it secret warning seriously. That and I didn’t want her to think I was crazy.”
“We’re all bleedin’ crazy now.”
I stand up and get a small silver bag out of my daypack. “I brought this to trade for the antibiotics, and I’ve been saving it for god knows what. It’s whole bean, so you’ll have to find some way to grind it.” I hand him the bag of Costa Rican coffee. “Think of me when you drink it, okay, mae?”
He stands up and gives me a hug. “Thanks, Diego. And I hope the part about getting back to Isabel comes true. And I hope to hell there’s someplace to come back to.”
∞
On the way to breakfast, I hear raised voices coming from down the hallway, but when I step into the cafeteria, the whole place turns into a morgue.
I grab a tray and load on hash browns and fake eggs, and then address the room. “So, who died?”
Sam, the redhead kid on the Peeping Tom team who drinks scotch, stands up. “For the past few nights, I’ve been running tests with the coffin.” He blushes bright red. “I mean the time portal. Anyway, I’ve managed to send a mouse back in time and locate it on the Peeper twice now.”
“I didn’t think we had that much control.” I walk over to the nearest empty table and sit down facing him. “Or that much power.”
“The power part was easy,” he continues. “I just ran the tests in the middle of the night. With all the crap that’s going on outside, it’ll take them months to trace it. And last week I came up with a new algorithm using a trick from cryptography that Cass suggested—she’s been helping me run the tests.”
He glances at Cassie, and she nods encouragement.
“We figured out a way to detect the ripple made in the space-time continuum. It’s still a crap shoot, but the odds are a bit more in our favor now.” He swipes his hand through the air. “But the important part is what happened to the mice.”
A murmur goes around the cafeteria.
“The first time,” he says, “we tried to send the mouse back a year. The targeting on the time machine is flaky—just like Cass has been telling everyone—but this time it did work, and we managed to pick up the mouse on the Peeper. It was dead the moment it arrived, all blood and guts. I thought the new decompression armor had failed, but Cass didn’t think so. She said it looked like a fetus, and she guessed that it had aged backwards, even past the point when it was born, and that killed it.”
“And the other mouse?” I ask him, struggling to keep my voice level.
“I had to look around for an older one, but I found a male in the genetics lab who was just over three.” The kid scans the room, his eyes coming to rest on Cassie, and she nods again.
“Anyway, I sent that mouse back to the same place and time, and just like Cass predicted, he got younger, and acted younger too, running around and humping everything.” His face reddens. “And then right before our eyes, he started to age. It was like watching a horror movie. His hair started falling out, and he started staggering and gasping for breath. In a matter of minutes, he collapsed and died.”
There is a collective taking-in of breath.
“If I had to guess, I’d say he died of old age, but Cassie thinks it’s radiation poisoning. Either way, time travel is lethal.”
The guy sits down, and whispers ripple around the room.
I release the fork I’ve been clutching for the last minute and address the kid. “Thanks for doing the research—and for letting me know.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Cassie sits down next to me, and necks crane around to watch us. She glances over at someone I recognize but have never spoken to and gives him a scathing look. The guy turns away.
“The bio team,” she says, “thinks that’s what the bionanos are for: to repair cellular damage caused by the side-effects of time travel, not some magic bullet to fight off Hemorrhagic Fever.”
“What? You mean it’s not a vaccine?”
“Why would someone send us instructions for a time machine if the vaccine was all we needed? Besides, Dick’s been ordering the guys in the lab to infect mice with various strains of Ebola and then inject them with the bionano. They all die in a matter of minutes.”
“Shit.” I pick at my breakfast while Cassie peels a black-market orange.
Picasso strolls in, grabs a cup of coffee, a bowl of applesa
uce, and some toast, and then sits down across from us. “You heard about the vaccine?”
I nod. “You heard about the mice?”
“Yeah. Field’s team thinks it’s crazy to use you as a guinea pig, and I’m leaning that way.” He sips his coffee. “And the test subject died last night.”
I drop the tasteless eggs I’ve been holding on my fork. “What test subject? You mean someone volunteered to test the bionanos?”
Cassie glares at Picasso, her eyes full of accusations. “Smith. He wasn’t playing video games last night.”
“Johnson coerced him into volunteering,” Picasso says, “and he had some sort of allergic reaction—”
“You killed him.” Cassie spits it out.
Picasso ignores her. “The tech lead was up all night running tests, and he thinks the bionanos are designed to work on a specific genotype, perhaps on a single individual.” He looks pointedly at me.
Cassie pushes back her chair. “Don’t listen to him, Diego. They don’t even know if all the data was recovered from the device, let alone that they synthesized it correctly. It’s a death sentence.”
“Or the key to staying alive.” Picasso doesn’t look up.
She grunts and gets up, knocking her chair over backwards. “You’re pretty fucking generous with other people’s lives, if you ask me, Mister GI Joe.” She storms out of the cafeteria.
“I’m leaving it up to you,” Picasso says. “Your name was in the artifact and your past is the key. The bionanos must be meant for you.” He picks up Cassie’s unused knife and lets it slide through his fingertips. It makes a sharp rap on the table each time it drops. “I can delay your trip for a day or two, give us some time to run more tests, and give you some time to think about—”
Cassie rushes back into the cafeteria, followed by Agent Dick and a gaggle of marines with rifles. “It’s started!”
Picasso stands up. “What’s started? What’s going on?”
“The pandemic, Colt. The virus mutated. Half the population of Los Angeles is dead.” She glances around the room. “Turn on the goddamn TV! The military is broadcasting some sort of emergency message.”
Someone switches on the monitor in the corner, and we stare up at a grim scene: bodies lying in the street, bodies slumped over steering wheels, bodies piled up in the back of trucks.
The room breaks out in panicked chatter.
Oh my god. Isabel is out there alone!
Dick slams his hands down on the table. “Everyone shut up!”
A hush falls as we strain to hear a male voice above the static. “…uncertain if Chicago and Philadelphia have been infected ... I repeat, if you live in or near a major metropolitan area, seek shelter immediately and remain indoors. All medical personnel are requested to … working around the clock…”
The power goes off, immersing the cafeteria in the eerie glow of the emergency lamps. A moment later the lights flicker on, but the TV remains silent.
I look at Picasso. “Let’s do it.”
Five minutes later, he uses his badge to open the door to the genetics lab, and Cassie and I follow him in.
Agent Dick rushes in behind us. “She’s not supposed to be in here, sergeant.”
Picasso doesn’t even glance at him. He rests his hand on my back. “Are you sure about this, Diego?”
“Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”
Picasso nods to the lab tech and then turns to Agent Dick. “Get out of here.”
Johnson takes a step back, his eyes wide, and then leaves. Picasso waits for the door to click shut. “Over there, Diego, and take your shirt off.”
I follow directions and then lie down on the exam table.
Picasso turns to Cassie. “If he has a reaction, it may get pretty ugly in here.”
She nods, looking pale.
The lab tech prepares a syringe and then brings it over. “It’s going to sting a bit.” She rubs alcohol on my arm, preps the needle, and glances at me. “Ready?”
Picasso rests his hand heavily on my shoulder, and Cassie puts both of hers on my thigh.
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
She injects the needle. A burning sensation spreads out from the insertion site, and I can feel my heart racing. She withdraws the syringe and covers the spot with a cotton ball. “Done.”
Cassie rubs her hands over my thigh. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just stings, as advertised.”
Picasso watches the clock, keeping his hand on my shoulder. “Smith was in anaphylactic shock in less than a minute.” He turns back to me. “Feel anything?”
I shake my head. “Are you sure you used the right needle?”
The tech picks up the empty syringe, reads the label. “Yes. The bionanos are inside you and probably breeding like rabbits.” She blushes. “So to speak.”
Picasso and Cassie exchange a look, but neither comments.
I sit up and put my shirt back on, feeling a bit light-headed but otherwise normal.
We give it fifteen minutes, and then head over to the time portal lab.
The new time machine is inside the gutted bowling alley, and the place is crammed with people, including a few I’ve never seen before. A hush falls over the crowd when we walk in.
Matt gives me a once-over. “You doing okay, mate?”
“Yeah, fine,” I say. “A bit embarrassed by all the attention, actually.”
He pats me on the back and then holds up a thin cotton towel. “As you know, every ounce counts, so you’re going to have to strip down.”
“Yeah.” I stand behind them and take off my pants and boxers, leaving my shirt on for now, and then wrap the small towel tightly around my waist and tuck it in. I grab the shell out of my pants and amble over to the coffin.
Cassie opens the cover of the decompression armor for me. “You don’t have to do this, Diego. You could wait a few days to make sure you’re okay—and insist that they test the machine with something bigger than a mouse.”
Picasso steps up behind her. “Cassie’s right, but in another day or two, we won’t have the power necessary to run the time machine. I know it’s risky, but I think this is our last chance.”
I take off my shirt, still holding the seashell, and hand it to Cassie.
“You’re a brave man, Diego.”
I force a smile and settle back into the coffin. “It doesn’t count as bravery if it’s the only option left.” The armor is cold, and I shiver and tighten my grip around the shell.
“Yes it does. Safe travels.” She taps her finger on the red circle directly above my chin. “Remember: One good bang right here should open it.” She straightens the towel around my hips and then pulls her hand away, looking embarrassed.
“Got it. Thanks, Cass. So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
She leans in and kisses me. “For luck.” She gives me a shaky smile and closes the lid.
I can see shapes moving around outside the translucent sarcophagus and then the cover of the metal portal comes down, and I’m plunged into perfect blackness.
I lie in the dark, my senses on overdrive. I can hear muffled voices calling out the final system checks and a computer-generated voice calling out the countdown. “Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…”
I force down panic and bring up an image of Isabel asleep in my arms, her soft breath on my cheek.
“Six, five, four…”
Goodbye, Iz. I love you. I have always loved—
Outside, an alarm goes off, the pulsing whoop of the siren alternating with the calm countdown of the computer.
I hear Cassie’s frightened voice, high-pitched and panicky, shouting above the melee. “Wait! There’s something wrong. The targeting is off! Shut it down, goddamn it! Shut it down or we’re going to lose him!”
And then it’s perfectly silent.
&
nbsp; Before I can breathe a sigh of relief, the coffin becomes icy cold and a crushing weight presses down on my chest, forcing the air out of my lungs. I try to yell, to pound my fists against the frozen lid, but my arms are too heavy, my body crushed by the terrible forces of a black hole.
And then, mercifully, the monster slams me down into dark oblivion.
Chapter 30
Matt: If I’m Wrong
Right after we lose Diego, Cassie locks herself in her room, insisting that it’s her fault he’s dead. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and we all tell her so, but she won’t listen to reason. Picasso says to give her some time, but I can tell that it’s tearing him up inside. Last night, he tried to use the master key to get in, but she had bolted the door. Seems she had the hardware smuggled in and installed it on her own. I don’t think anyone was too surprised.
Picasso’s been trying to talk sense into her all morning, and things out in the hall were pretty tense an hour ago, but I think Cassie got tired of yelling “bastard.”
That woman is a force to be reckoned with. I hope Picasso can handle it.
It’s been months since I had a day off, and now that the time machine project is stalled, I don’t know what to do with myself. Phil has been busy with the Peeper, so I’ve been spending most of my time trying to stay out of his way, and that’s been tough.
I stare out the fake window at the Eiffel Tower, wondering how bad things have gotten in Paris.
Probably not as bad as Los Angeles.
Half of California is under water from the nuke-induced tsunami, and the epidemic is spreading like wildfire there, although Picasso says it’s just a bad Ebola strain, and it’s not killing anything except humans—as if that’s a good thing.
And yeah, we rushed to send Diego back on a false alarm.
In any case, the Peeping Tom guys are leaving, and they’re taking their equipment with them.
And I imagine Phil’s leaving with them.
I lie on the bed, gazing up into the half-light, feeling miserable. I guess I should go find out how long I have until he leaves.
When I walk out, I spy Picasso sitting outside Cassie’s door with his head in his hands. “You okay, mate?”
