by Thomas Locke
Charlie nodded acceptance. “Soon as the ladies return, I’ll count you both up.”
Lena and Robin and Marjorie went off shopping. Three minivan taxis, three different lists. Lena found an outdoor sports-supply house that was open late and bought nine sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses and two portable camp tables and chairs. She deposited her wares in the taxi and went next door for shampoo and conditioner and makeup remover and other such vital items as Oreos and, for those who were not dedicated chocoholics, Fig Newtons.
When Lena returned to the warehouse, she helped Brett and Bishop set up pallets in a rear bedroom that would serve as their ascending station. She then sat in a camp chair and watched as Bishop took Brett through the questioning process, then did the same for Charlie, who interrupted his own calibration to take three phone calls.
Lena found a soft pleasure in the inactivity. She heard the others return but did not feel any need to go join them. Lena smelled the odors of takeout being unpacked and knew a keen sense of hunger. Still she did not move. There was a need to assimilate the day and see it from the perspective of what would probably happen tomorrow. As far as she was concerned, it all came down to this. From the very first contact with her temporal self, Lena had been moving toward this point in time and space. Seated in a canvas camp chair, watching a professional warrior and a California scientist and a Savannah surgeon prepare for an incoming assault.
While they shared a subdued meal, Charlie related how he had reached out to a few friends and they would be arriving soon. Marjorie took another phone call and stepped from the room. When she returned, she slipped into the chair beside Lena and said, “Roger had to attend a dinner with the board. He’s on his way over. He wants me to come home with him.”
“Maybe he’s right.” Charlie said, then told Lena, “It’s almost eleven. I know you’re tired. But we need to do a recce.”
“I’m ready,” Lena said. Her calm felt generated by something outside herself. A by-product of all the events swirling and tightening and focusing. On her. Here and now.
“Brett?”
“I’m good to go.”
“I’ll count you up,” Charlie said. “Bernie, I need you to ready Brett for an ascent using one of your neural nets. When they ascend, I need you beside me to ensure I get the technical sequencing correct.”
“Of course.”
Charlie focused on Lena. “Your aim is simple. Your ascent needs to stay tight and on target. You are to determine three things: What form the first assault will take. Will there be a psychic element to this first attack. And when will they strike. Is that clear?”
Lena had the impression he was not speaking just to her and Brett. He spoke so that everyone could hear and understand. Building them into a squad. Readying them all.
She said, “Perfectly clear.”
“The risk is that they are already here. So before you ascend, I’m going to instruct you to form a shield. We haven’t done this before. But I want to try it.”
Brett sounded as calm as she felt. “Understood.”
Charlie finished his mug, set it on the counter, and said, “We ascend in five.”
52
Just after sunset, Reese’s voyagers came back with solid gold.
As far as her team was concerned, locating Bernard Bishop was less important than the sheer pleasure of being freed from the midnight crew and staying protected. They constantly interrupted Reese’s debriefing with laughter, tag teams, impromptu dances, basically letting off steam. Time and again Reese needed to check her desire to scream at them to focus.
When she finally had all she needed, Reese dismissed them and walked as calmly as she could down the corridor and through the reception area. Then she sprinted across the parking lot and punched the glass entry and bolted up the stairs. But Kevin was not in his office or in the assembly area, and the foreman had no idea where he was. His cell phone went straight to voice mail. She thought maybe he was sacked out, so she raced back, flying through the clutch of voyagers and up yet more stairs. She pounded on his door until one of the guards came up behind her and said, “What’s going on?”
Only then did Reese hear her own breathing, a teakettle hiss one degree off a soft scream. “What a time for him to go off grid.”
“He left while you were getting ready for that last voyage.”
Reese punctuated each word with a fist to his door. “I need him now.”
“Can’t help you.” The guard pulled the chain that connected the passkey to her belt, pushed it into the slot, and opened the door. “See for yourself.”
Reese glanced inside but did not enter. “Gone where?”
“He didn’t say. Which for Kevin is kinda strange.” She watched as Reese leaned her forehead on the doorjamb. “What’s going on?”
“The team did their job.” There was a somber quality to accepting the fact that she had to handle this on her own. Because she was certain there was no way this could wait. The guard followed her back down the stairs. A lot of worried faces watched her come into view. Reese told them to eat and get some rest while they could, because they would be going out again before dawn.
Reese tried to hold it together as she recrossed the parking lot. A faint evening breeze whispered threats of what would happen if she got this wrong. She entered the glass cube and climbed the stairs and walked into Kevin’s office. She seated herself in Kevin’s chair so her back was to the window and the dusk. She was terrified of losing what was probably the only chance they had left. But the clock kept banging in her head, counting down the seconds. So she coded in the scrambler and dialed the number. Each ring was a drill puncturing her future.
When Vera finally answered, Reese said, “I want five million dollars.”
Vera’s voice caught momentarily. “You . . .”
“You heard me.”
“It’s no more about what you want than the last time.”
Reese hoped the jerky quality to Vera’s response was not just her imagination. She hoped the uncertainty was real. She hoped . . .
Vera demanded, “Did you hear me?”
Reese took a long breath. “Actually, I want two million. But this way you can say you beat me down.”
Vera was silent.
“I have it all,” Reese said. “Bishop’s location now. Where he will be tomorrow. And the danger you’re going to face when you go after him.”
“Tell me.”
“No problem. Soon as the money is in Kevin’s account.”
“You will tell me this instant.”
“The clock is ticking,” Reese replied.
“You took the words out of my mouth,” Vera said. “You have no idea how close you are—”
“No threats!” Reese shouted with fourteen months of pent-up rage. She panted through the comedown, then went on, “You will reward my team. On my terms.”
Reese cut the connection. She sat there, her hands compressed between her thighs, her entire body curled with the effort of holding it together. Then her cell phone jangled in her pocket.
When she answered, the guard said, “We’ve located Kevin.”
Reese found Kevin exactly where he said he’d be. The café was across a six-lane intersection from the world’s largest waterslide, a behemoth that took up a full city block. The café had a long canvas overhang girded by steel supports. The metal pillars glinted in the streetlights. The canvas was tight as a beige sail and fluttered in the night breeze.
Kevin was at a table toward the back, the only man seated there alone, the only guy in a tie. He was studiously ignored by the teens and families laughing over the safe adventures they’d enjoyed across the street. He had a draft beer in front of him. It had been sitting there long enough for the foam to settle and the bubbles to fade. He had torn strips from the coaster and formed tiny sodden balls that littered the table.
He watched Reese approach and asked, “You want anything?”
Reese felt utterly drained from handling Vera on her own.
The drive here had taken over an hour. The traffic had been awful. But the distance and the time alone had helped. She was no longer angry with Kevin. There was no time for recriminations. Things were going to enter a critical phase. All nonessentials had to wait.
Reese was not hungry, but she had skipped lunch and knew she had to eat. She ordered a burger and Coke from a passing waitress, then asked Kevin, “Why did you go off grid?”
“I needed some space, is all.”
Across the street, a trio of teen girls reached the top of the waterslide’s highest ladder. They stared down the glistening plastic tube and played at screams. A boy and girl with toffee curls pointed from the next table and laughed at their antics. She saw it and yet none of it touched her. On the drive over she had feared Kevin was going to walk away. But now she knew the man had nowhere to go.
Kevin watched the shrieking girls take the slide hand in hand. “Do you remember the last time you were happy?”
Reese waited while the young woman in the candy-stripe uniform deposited her Coke on the table. She kept her voice calm as she replied, “That’s not the question we need to be dealing with.”
He tore off another strip and rolled it between thumb and forefinger.
“The question is, what do we need to do in order to have a chance at happiness tomorrow.”
He stared across the traffic at the slide, seeing nothing. “Always before I could excuse the limits I’d set on my world. No home life to speak of. Wife and kids were strangers long before they left me. It was all for the agency. Or the country. Something worth the sacrifice.”
Reese studied him with the objectivity of a scientist inspecting an amoeba. This was her friend coming undone. Explaining why he was relinquishing the lead. Handing control over to his number two.
Kevin went on, “Now I’m working for the enemy. There aren’t any excuses I can hide behind. Now it’s just . . .”
Reese waited to make sure he was done, then finished for him, “Now it’s about survival.”
The waitress returned with her burger. Reese ate without tasting. Holding back, wanting to see if Kevin could draw the world into focus. Because the truth was, she needed him desperately. She wasn’t sure she could do everything that was required without him.
Kevin neither spoke nor looked her way. When she finished her meal, she asked, “What are we doing here?”
“The biggest dealership in Florida for campers and stuff is just down the road. I got a bus, one big enough to handle all of us. I assume you didn’t want to separate us.”
Reese heard the resumed clarity to his voice and sighed away a great lump of tension. “You got that right.”
He lifted his glass, stared into the contents, and set it down again. “So what now?”
Reese laid out what the voyagers had discovered, and how she had confronted Vera. Her words were punctuated by more screams from across the street.
Kevin nodded slowly as she laid out what she had in mind, then asked, “Is the money in place?”
“Two million dollars. I checked before I came out here.”
“Your plan succeeded.”
“So far.”
“You worked out this idea before you called Vera?”
“Most of the framework,” she replied. “The details I put together on the drive here.”
“Good strategy often comes down to the details,” Kevin said.
“Is this good?”
He shrugged. “We’ll know when the bullets start flying.”
53
When Lena and Brett settled onto the pallets and fitted on their neural nets, the others did not ask if they could observe and Charlie did not caution them that there was nothing to see. Lena could sense them coalescing into a functioning unit.
Robin settled down by the wall next to Lena’s pallet and watched her fit on the neural net. “You’ll help me ascend?”
“As soon as we return,” Lena said.
“Tomorrow is better,” Brett said, laying back. “When you’re fresh. It will heighten your chances of success.”
“Leaving my body,” Robin said. “Success.”
“We’ll do it whenever you want,” Lena said.
Charlie interrupted with, “Time to take aim.”
The net’s earphones flapped down like a hunter’s hood. Lena fitted them in place, found a comfortable position, and closed her eyes. The rushing sound was oddly familiar. Her heart rate rose to meet the anticipated thrill.
Charlie said, “Brett, you’ve done this a hundred times before. The past few months are an interruption, nothing more. Lena, Brett is here to help secure you throughout the ascent. I will count you up, and you will remain in ascent only so long as you are in complete control and absolute safety. Before the first risk arrives, you will have returned. Given those parameters, you have three targets: What form the first assault will take. Will there be a psychic element to this first attack. And when will they strike.” He gave that a brief moment, then said, “I am beginning the count now.”
The simple rush of sound was followed by a distinct sense of invitation. The urge to rise beyond the familiar was not a demand, not a command.
Charlie repeated, “You are in complete control.”
Lena already knew this, just as she knew she could use the lancing fear as a means of withdrawing from the experience. She wanted to do just that—retreat from the sense of final disconnect. And yet her desire to move forward was stronger.
“. . . Nine. Ten. Now open your other eyes.”
She floated just above her body. She made a slow circuit. It probably lasted only a few moments, but the time was less important here. As though the restraint of counting seconds no longer held her. She saw Robin, sensed her trusting nature, her desire to accept Lena’s quest. Then she looked at Marjorie and noticed for the first time how she held one hand upon her stomach, sheltering the new life within. Then Bishop, the spark of hope rising now, a piercing note she could almost hear. Then Charlie Hazard, the denseness of his being, the ready ability to do whatever it took.
Then she saw Brett.
Lena actually seemed to inspect herself first. As though clarity about the observer was vital to understanding the event. And that was how it seemed. A moment with the magnified intensity of an event that would change her world. Permanently.
She saw how her passion for risk analysis reflected her deepest nature. She held all life, all people, at arm’s length. Especially men. She wanted to calculate the risk of every relationship, compute the hazards to every new beginning. And since she couldn’t, she failed every relationship before it started.
Until now. When the outcome was foreordained. This man would break her heart and leave her destitute. But it did not matter. Not now that she had seen him.
Brett was as captivated as her. Lena understood that partly it was due to his joy over ascending again. His body breathed a long, pure breath, the lone physical expression of having realized a yearning he thought would never be his again. She did not merely understand. She experienced.
But that was not what held her.
She moved forward slowly. Or so it seemed. There was no reluctance, but rather a need to gradually give in to what they were doing. Moving together and experiencing the melding of two spirits.
Her every jagged edge, her every perceived flaw, her yearnings and her hopes, they all merged smoothly into his own. They were intended to do this. Join with such force that time literally stopped. Lena had no ability to turn her focus anywhere else, and yet she sensed that Charlie’s lips moved, a fraction at a time, forming the words that would pry them apart. But not even the demands of coming peril could faze this event, drawn as it was from a universe never touched by the chains of time or risk.
She flowed to him. The unanswered need to love and be loved, the hunger she quashed because it hurt too much to inspect—all of this empowered her. And even this was shared. He flowed to her, and into her.
They breathed as one.
She kne
w the words were arriving, vibratory patterns in the air between them and Charlie. Lena did not want anyone else to sever this bond. And Brett was literally blinded by the act of joining. So she did it for them. Gently, firmly, lovingly, she pried herself loose, until one tendril of connection remained. The hand that had no physical presence reached out. And touched his formless face.
Then time retook hold upon them both, and Charlie said, “You will begin scouting now.”
54
Reese directed her words to the encryption phone at the center of Kevin’s conference table. “The target is no longer your primary problem.”
“Is Kevin there?”
His chair was turned so that Reese saw his right side in silhouette. Like he wanted to remain disassociated. “Right here.”
Vera demanded, “Why am I listening to your associate and not you?”
He swiveled around, the movement reluctant. “Reese and her team made the discovery. They are responsible for the intel. It is her report.”
Reese waited through a pair of tight breaths, then Vera said, “So report.”
“Dr. Bernard Bishop has sold a majority interest of his company. He is—”
“Hold it right there. Bishop’s company is defunct.”
“Not anymore.”
“His reputation was destroyed. He has nothing left.”
“If that is the case,” Reese countered, “why did you order us to drop everything and hunt him down?”
Vera’s breathing was audible over the scrambled line. “You stay right there. The both of you. Don’t move.”
When the line clicked, Kevin asked, “What just happened?”
The answer seemed obvious to Reese. “Vera was tasked with obliterating this guy. Having Bishop rise from the ashes threatens her position.”
The streetlights painted his face in shadows. “So you think Vera was involved in murdering five innocent patients.”
