by M. G. Herron
Soon they were moving uphill, taking five-minute breaks every twenty minutes to rest on the steep incline. The damp soil clung to her boots. Eliana didn’t say anything out loud but thought more than once how improbable it was that Talia hadn’t realized this was clearly the wrong direction. But she was a smart girl. Perhaps she knew it was the wrong direction and had hiked bullishly ahead just to annoy her brother or force him to walk uphill for a while. When they walked uphill, his constant chatter ground to a halt.
Eliana had sweated through her clothes by the time the ground leveled out. Her shirt and shorts clung to her skin. And, unlike Lakshmi, she had dozens of bug bites on her legs below her shorts. She forced herself not to scratch, knowing that would only make it worse.
“Here we are,” Lakshmi said. The twins set down their packs and took long drinks of water. Talia passed her bottle to Eliana, who shot a spout of water into her mouth. After the exertion of that hike in the heat, it seemed like the best water she’d ever tasted.
Ahead of her, Ross grunted as he hacked at a wall of leaves with a machete.
Eliana glanced around, looking for any sign of the gray limestone used by the Mayan people to construct their temples and pyramids. She let out a soft, “Ahhh,” when she realized that the wall of leaves that Ross was hacking at was the stone monolith. Like the photos they’d sent her, it was so grown over with green lichen and pressed back into the foliage that only a trained eye would have picked it out as stone.
“Good eye, Talia,” Eliana said, handing her back the water bottle. “How did you spot it?”
“Truth be told, Turner was the one who noticed it was a stone. I just forced his whiney ass to hike up here and look around.”
Turner squinted at his sister, but the smirk on his face betrayed the good nature of his expression. They shared smiles among each other, each of them giddy with the excitement of the discovery.
A moment later, Ross finished hacking away the vines and leaves that had folded over the stone in the two nights since they found it.
Lakshmi stepped up to examine the stone and with a small knife peeled back a bit of lichen to expose the carving.
Eliana reached out and brushed her fingers across the distinctive outline of two overlapping circles.
The photos hadn’t done it justice. It was clearer in person, as the noonday sun cast shallow lines into relief. A small circle overlapped a larger circle. An irregular chunk had been cut out of the upper left quadrant of the larger circle.
Could this be a coincidence? Would the others see it, too?
To Eliana, the carving looked like a perfect representation of the two moons that hung in the night sky over that other planet she had visited—the moons the Kakuli natives called Ky and Kal.
6
Strange Sightings
“You knew this man, Mr. Fisk?” the stocky, blonde FBI agent said over her shoulder as she squatted beside Montoya’s body.
The badge she showed Amon when she arrived said her name was Agent Monica Wiley. Amon was suspicious of anyone with a badge, based purely on past experience, but she seemed legit.
Agent Wiley wore her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail so tight it seemed to stretch the skin of her forehead taut. Her blazer was tailored so that it wouldn’t hinder her movements, and she wore light boots that were well broken-in but still polished. She acted professional and seemed very confident.
Her partner, an equally serious man she called Agent Moreno, was interviewing the security guards in the hallway outside Audrey’s meteorite research lab. Audrey herself sat in a wheeled office chair nearby, holding an icepack to her cheekbone. A greenish-brown bruise had begun to form where Montoya had struck her. Audrey observed Amon’s conversation with Agent Wiley with pursed lips. She fidgeted but stayed put so as not to get in the way of the crime scene investigators as they bustled about, snapping photos of the bodies and making notes on tablets.
“I did,” Amon said. “He was one of the Hawkwood mercenaries who impersonated FBI agents after Eliana disappeared. That was over a year ago.”
Amon watched a brief twinge of disgust flash across the woman’s impassive face at the mention of the impersonators. She turned away and knelt over the body. Her expressions were more contained with dead bodies—she barely showed any emotion as she prodded at the kneecap in Montoya’s chest with her finger. She tapped on her tablet, then stood again.
“How do you think he got in here? Do you have any theories?”
Amon glanced at Montoya’s body and let out a sigh. That question could be answered many ways. The mechanism through which Montoya had arrived was obvious. But how was it even possible? Amon had been racking his brain since he’d gunned the man down, and the only answers he could come up with were highly unsettling.
“I’m not sure,” he said at last. It was the most honest thing he could think of.
“Humor me,” Agent Wiley said. “I already told you, we’re not interested in charging you with anything. It was clearly self-defense. The most you’ll have to do is a little paperwork.”
It was best, to be honest with her. That’s what Eliana would have encouraged him to do.
“He translocated in here,” Amon said. “That’s the only way he would have gotten in, behind the guards. You saw the camera feeds of the lobby and the security checkpoint. He didn’t come through there.”
She nodded, and a worried expression clouded her stoic face.
Amon shook his head. “What kind of maniac would use a Translocator without a stabilization platform?” But in the back of his mind, he knew. He didn’t understand why. But who else could it be?
“Maybe he thought it was worth the risk,” Agent Wiley said.
“As far as I know—and believe me, I would be the first to know—the Translocator in this building is the only one in existence. And clearly, I didn’t send him in here.”
“Obviously, someone else has a Translocator.”
“Even if someone did manage to build another one,” Amon went on, “where would they get a particle accelerator to power it? There are only a handful in existence. One here in Austin, one in Switzerland, another in Japan. And they’re almost exclusively used for particle physics research—never as a power source, except for ours, which was built specifically for that purpose. If someone were using another one as a power source, people would know. That’s not the kind of thing that can be kept hidden for long.”
Amon shook his head. It didn’t add up. What would he want with his own Translocator?
“What was the man looking for in the lab?”
Amon felt his face pull into a deep frown. “The carbonado.”
“That’s the meteorite that was responsible for the incident with your wife, wasn’t it?”
“What? No.”
“I read the file.”
He stared at her. The details of that incident were kept strictly confidential. It wasn’t safe for the public to know why the Translocator had malfunctioned. Amon and Audrey had both continued to study the meteorite in the year since Eliana’s return, but they still didn’t understand the material or how it worked. Amon glanced at Audrey, who shrugged and continued to pick at her nails.
Agent Wiley was silent for a beat. She seemed to struggle for a moment, and then reached some kind of decision. “We were going to tell you eventually, but until now you were a suspect. I don’t think it was you.”
“What do you mean I was a suspect?” Amon snapped. “What’s going on here?” He clenched his teeth so tight a twinge of pain shot into his cheek.
Audrey came to her feet beside him.
Agent Wiley held up one finger and waved to get her partner’s attention through the doorway. When Agent Moreno arrived, Agent Wiley took a deep breath and began again.
“We’ve been investigating strange sightings across the United States,” she said. “Interpol has reported another few in Europe as well. There may be others, but inter-agency communication isn’t always effective or transparent.�
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“What sightings?”
Agent Moreno made a placating gesture with an open hand. “Mr. Fisk, I understand you’re upset, but we didn’t have any idea what it could be until recently. Let her explain.”
“We thought we were chasing a serial killer for the first several months,” Agent Wiley said, “until Agent Moreno rewatched the speech you gave last year at the unveiling of the Translocator. Right before your wife disappeared.”
Amon’s eyes widened. Most of the world had seen that speech by now, but he didn’t know the FBI had been mining it for clues to some sort of serial killer mystery. He glanced from Agent Wiley to Agent Moreno and back again.
“Some of the most gruesome crime scenes I’ve ever seen,” Agent Moreno said. “The first few victims had their limbs scattered through the woods or across the roofs of buildings—blood everywhere, disfigured limbs, several body parts. Horrible stuff. But then we started finding the body parts closer together, and then grotesque but mostly whole. That’s when we first suspected a serial killer. Didn’t know how he was doing it, but his methods had a sort of pattern that we began to recognize.”
Agent Wiley leaned close and lowered her voice. “But not like a hand had been removed and reattached. Not sewn together like Frankenstein. It looked like they were grown that way. We found one guy with some of his digestive organs outside of his body. He died in horrible agony. Our CSIs were completely baffled.”
It felt like the breath had been sucked out of Amon’s chest with a vacuum. He knew exactly where this was going. They all saw him working his mouth, and waited.
“My speech,” he finally managed to say. “Where I was talking about the work the ESA did after the Nazi fringe science documents were first declassified.”
“Yes!” Agent Wiley said, excited now. “You mentioned the lab mice being reassembled with missing limbs and the animal activists that got the project shut down. Well, I found old photos of that project that the activists posted online back in the day. It’s almost exactly the same thing as what we’ve been chasing. So, our first suspect was you.”
Audrey licked her lips and glanced at Amon. Amon looked away. One of his worst nightmares was coming true, but it was someone else doing it. His work had fallen into the wrong hands.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why not come talk to me?”
“We were watching you but…you’re a hard man to watch.”
He grunted. He supposed that made a certain kind of sense.
“Apart from your speech, Mr. Fisk, over time the bodies that we were sent to investigate were less and less disfigured. Two weeks ago, a woman arrived, and according to witnesses, walked about two miles to a nearby farmhouse before she died.”
“Really,” Amon said. That was actually kind of impressive. Amon’s research with the Translocator was based on the stabilization platform he had developed to mitigate this issue with the molecular reassembly. Proving that worked on a small scale was what got his foot in the door at the LTA.
“So when we got the call about a security incident at Fisk Industries and heard the description of the body, Moreno and I came to see for ourselves.”
They stopped talking. The sounds of investigators moving around the lab, clicking their cameras and typing on their phones, came back into focus. Someone coughed in the hallway outside.
Amon put a hand to his forehead. A migraine thudded dully on the inside of his skull. He needed time alone to think about the implications. “Are we done here?”
“One more question,” Agent Wiley said. “I don’t understand why he wanted the carbonado. If I’m going to find who’s behind this, I need to understand that part of it.”
Should he tell them? Amon supposed it was the best thing. They were on his side, and he had been taken off their suspect list. He should help them. It was the right thing to do. He glanced at Audrey, who nodded eagerly.
“We don’t know exactly how it works yet,” Amon said. “But the meteorite he was looking for is some kind of…superconductor.”
“It may even be a power source of its own,” Audrey added. “If we can just figure out—”
“Like I said, we don’t know yet,” Amon interrupted her. He was fine with cooperating, but there was no reason to tell them everything. “We’re still trying to work it out. What I can tell you is this: if you use the Translocator to move matter over a distance—in other words, disassemble at one end, and reassemble in another location—you need a stabilization platform to control the reassembly. It takes a lot of power, and that power has to come from somewhere. Inorganic matter is less complicated—it doesn’t move and live and breathe. Even a leaf has a fairly simple organic structure and can tolerate some…flux. But living beings, with a heart that beats and blood that flows? That is more complex. We have a very small margin for error. What the meteorite Audrey is studying enables us to do is short-circuit some of that complexity. Like I said, we don’t fully understand it yet, but it enables us to send matter over greater distances with less power and more precision. Essentially, our theory is that by using the carbonado we may not even need the stabilization platform at the receiving end.”
In fact, I’d bet Eliana’s life on it. She and Amon had both translocated that way. Amon and Audrey had both been trying to understand why that had worked ever since.
Agent Moreno let out a heavy breath filled with discontent. “So whoever is translocating those maimed bodies around the country is doing experiments? Trying to get around this limitation?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing they didn’t get that rock.”
“Do you have any idea who could be behind this?” Agent Wiley said. “Montoya isn’t the first one they’ve killed, and he won’t be the last.”
Amon glanced at his feet. Should he tell them? He had to go talk to Reuben and tell him what had happened. They would have to upgrade the security protocols on the Hopper. He hated the idea of more guards and more guns, but that was probably a good idea, too.
Amon sighed. They had the best chance of catching the bastard. “Lucas Lamotte,” Amon said. “It has to be him.”
The two FBI agents nodded. “He was on the top of our list, too,” Agent Wiley said. “Do you have any idea where we might be able to find him?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Is it possible that he had access to the Translocator designs?”
“He ran the company in my absence last year, while I was searching for Eliana. He had access to everything.”
The two agents exchanged a look.
“I hate to do it, but I’m going to have to increase security. Can the FBI pitch in if this is an important case?” Amon said.
Agent Moreno nodded. “I’ll call it in, see what they say.”
“Great,” Amon said, already moving away. “That will help. I have to go now.”
Without waiting for a response, Amon was out the door and walking down to the Translocator lab, using the four flights of stairs this time. It was quiet down there when he arrived. Blessed quiet, for a change.
But people were still there. When Amon passed by the security guards, he spotted his scientists. They were all crowded in a group around the holodeck. Was something wrong with the Hopper?
Amon was about to call out when the crowd parted and he saw Reuben’s tear-streaked face lift from where he had been sobbing into Jeanine’s shoulder.
Amon caught Reuben’s gaze. There was a deep well of pain in his friend’s watery eyes.
“Oh, no,” Amon said, realizing what had happened.
“He’s gone, Amon,” Reuben said in a cracked voice. “Charlie passed away this afternoon.”
“Oh, Reuben, I’m so sorry.” The crowd parted and he embraced his friend.
Amon felt a terrible sorrow, and also a knot of worry in his stomach that had nothing to do with his friend’s sudden and terrible loss.
As he held Reuben, who grieved for his dead partner, he thought
of Eliana. When he lost her in the Translocator, it felt like being torn apart. Surely that’s how Reuben felt now. Shredded. Ripped. Flayed open.
Amon had come down here to tell Reuben about Lucas, but now he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to burden his friend.
“I’m sorry, Reuben. I’m so, so sorry.”
7
The Cave Dweller
The cave dweller will know what to do.
That thought ran through Rakulo’s head as he retreated through the leaf-strewn forest. He startled a wild turkey, and it squawked as it flapped its fat, feathered body out of his path. The creatures weren’t very good at flying, but they lifted into the air briefly when they were caught by surprise before powering into the woods on scrawny legs.
The cave dweller will know what to do.
A bruise on his chest where he’d come down on Maatiaak’s knee hurt when he breathed, but Rakulo ignored it like he did most physical pains. It would pass in its own time. There were many things he resented his father for, but he was thankful for how Chief Dambu had taught him to bear the pain.
The furious storm of anger and shame battering his brain, however, hurt more than any physical pain he’d ever experienced. How had he been such a fool? Maatiaak must have known Rakulo would confront him—maybe he had even counted on it. Had Maatiaak known that his mother had been spying on him as he spent time with Ekel? Had Maatiaak orchestrated the whole thing simply to shame him?
Rakulo should have seen it coming. Now, if Citlali didn’t hate him, the rest of his warriors would certainly think less of him. He couldn’t even beat an old man in a fight. The older warriors never trusted Rakulo’s plan—they had seen too much, watched too many of their kin die at Xucha’s hand, struck down by sickness or taken in the night.
His foolish mistake would render useless a year of hard work. Rakulo couldn’t face Xucha alone. He needed the whole village to be behind him, united as a people. They would have been, once he’d finally found a way around or through the wall. That would have convinced the ones who remained skeptical. But now, even if he did find a way around the wall, Maatiaak and those that took his side would never support him.
