—giving Fabler a clear view of the cop.
Fabler clenched his jaw.
Fabler took his finger off the trigger and sprinted for the treeline.
A shot whirred over Fabler’s head, and a second hit him in the back, feeling like the whack of a hammer. He kept his balance and darted into the woods, zig-zagging, through scrub, dodging around a copse of sycamore, and then catching his foot on something and face-planting.
Fabler laid there for a moment, wondering what to do.
“Unless this is all in my head.”
Fabler closed his eyes.
“And God said, Let there be light.”
He opened his eyes.
There was no light.
He closed his eyes.
“Let there be light.”
He opened his eyes.
There was no light.
He closed his eyes.
“Let there be light.”
He opened his eyes.
There was no light.
He closed his eyes.
“Let there be light.
“Let there be light.
“Let there be light.”
He opened his eyes.
The light was blinding.
THE WATCHER ○ 1:48+pm
He flips the switch.
“Well played, Watcher. I have a feeling this will turn out well.”
JAKE ○ 1:48pm
As a child, Jake found it impossible to focus in a school setting, because of so much going on at once. The classroom might as well have been a torture chamber. All the children shuffling, adjusting in their seats, breathing, sighing, coughing, hiccupping, squeaky shoes and creaky desks, their pencils scratching at paper, the teacher’s monotone and squeal of chalk on the chalkboard; sensory overload. Like Superman first trying to use his X-ray vision and unable to control it, seeing through everything, making focus impossible. Or Professor X, trying to tune out the thoughts of every person around him, and around the world.
Jake had a vague awareness that this wasn’t a good time to freeze up and lapse into hyperfocus, but right there, on his lawn, less than forty meters away from him, a wormhole had opened up.
Too bright to look at directly, but Jake couldn’t turn away. He couldn’t move at all.
So absorbed by the spectacle in front of him, Jake hadn’t noticed his feet leaving the ground.
Something pushed Jake, twisting him around so he no longer faced the light. He tried to twist back, but he had nothing to touch. He spun like a satellite in zero gravity, vaguely aware of Detective Woo next to him, flailing and screaming and shooting into the wormhole.
Woo reached for Jake, and this time his expression was simple to read.
The light became larger and larger as they drifted into it, until it filled Jake’s vision.
Jake’s sister was a neurotypical. She didn’t possess Jake’s brilliance, or his shortcomings. But even more so than their parents, Holly had been essential in helping Jake adjust to being an Aspie. Her patience, her love, her understanding, had transformed a boy who hadn’t said a single world until he was four years old, and taught him how to become a high-functioning scientific genius.
And Jake knew she would be there, on the other side of this light.
She had to be.
The intelligence and technology and energy expenditure behind this mind-bending phenomenon had to have great purpose and intent.
Jake continued to slowly twirl, until he faced opposite the light. He quit trying to look over his shoulder, knowing momentum would keep rotating him.
But as he faced the woods, he saw a car come up the driveway.
THE WATCHER ○ 1:50+pm
The Watcher stares at the monitor bank, wordlessly, as the Jeep containing Mr. Fabler speeds into the portal.
“I thought you weren’t taking the risk?”
“Do I still have a greater than 97% chance to kill him?”
“I ran that calculation considering the weapons he had on him at the time. Now Fabler is in a vehicle, with many more weapons.”
“Just give me the odds, Mu.”
“He has a flamethrower. Your armor won’t protect against a flamethrower.”
“Odds!”
“No need to get testy. If the police officer you pulled in has some training and stops spazzing out, and if McKendrick can lend a hand… you have a 61.494941% chance of success. Rounding up, of course.”
The Watcher rubs his gland and shares a message.
“TEAMS 1-8, ARM YOURSELVES WITH ANTIMATTER PURSUADERS AND KILL THE NEW ARRIVALS.”
“Including the redhead? It took so much time and energy to bring him here.”
“IF POSSIBLE, SPARE THE REDHEAD.”
“How many are left, Watcher? Of your people?”
“With the recent losses, two hundred and thirty-three.”
“If you fail, you’re looking at the extinction of Homo provectus.”
“I am well aware of that, Mu.”
“Earlier, you pondered on why I chose this moment to resume communication. I’ll tell you. I awoke to watch you all die.”
> The Watcher moves to grab Mu, hanging on the wall, and wraps his fingers around his cage.
“I sense you are upset. If you free me, I can help.”
“What can you do?”
“I can stop his vehicle.”
“How?”
“Radio signals. His vehicle model is new. I can shut off his engine… if you remove the faraday cage.”
GRIM ○ 1:48+pm
After a few minutes of yelling, Grim’s voice began to lose power.
He walked the red light corridor, screaming that he escaped.
Then he began screaming old Iron Maiden songs.
Taking a breath while trying to think of the last verse to Number of the Beast, Grim hit the pause button, hearing something.
Voices. Muffled voices. Many of them.
Grim cupped his ear, holding it against the plastiform wall, barely making out the words.
“IF POSSIBLE, SPARE THE REDHEAD.”
Then the wall began to move, and Grim quickly stepped away—
—staring slack-jawed as more than a dozen wall portals stretched open.
From each doorway, in lockstep synchronicity, came a grey, fully armored and carrying what looked a lot like a futuristic firearm.
FABLER ○ 1:48pm to 1:48+pm
The moment he drove into the light, Fabler smashed the brakes, skidded backward, and threw the vehicle into reverse.
After he put on his hockey mask, it took him several seconds to figure out he needed to keep looking through the front windshield, not the rearview mirror, and another few seconds to differentiate between left and right. But he acclimated fast and took the Jeep in a wide arc, heading back to the assumed location of entrance/exit.
Fabler slowed down, and soon realized he’d been off by a lot, seeing Jake and the cop materialize in his right side window.
He jerked the wheel, went the wrong way, adjusted, and headed for the duo.
Fabler pulled alongside them and parked, as they flopped around on the glowing floor, trying to relearn how to move. He pushed the Jeep door open by pulling on it, then stepped down
He gave the cop a pair of polarized sunglasses, figuring they were better than nothing.
“Have either of you fired an M16 or a shotgun?”
Jake seemed preoccupied with waving his hands in front of his face, and didn’t seem to hear Fabler.
The cop appeared ready to shit himself.
“Guys! Everything is opposite. Forward is backward, left is right. You’ll get used to it. Pay attention to me.”
Neither paid attention. Fabler removed the Wilson CBG from the back of the Jeep, and fired a shotgun round into the light. That got their attention.
“Jake, have you fired a gun before?”
“This is amazing. We’re behaving like negative mass.”
“Be amazed later. We have to defend ourselves. See the greys?” Fabler pointing to the squads marching toward them. At least a hundred. “They aren’t friendly.”
“How do you know? Do you know the tremendous amount of energy it takes to open a wormhole? One this large? For this long? It’s unlikely they did it to harm us.”
“Take the shotgun.” Fabler held it out.
Jake folded his arms. “I refuse to take the shotgun.”
Above the hum, a zapping sound, followed by a flash of light.
Fabler looked. A black dot, growing to the size of a basketball, closed in on them at jogging speed—
—and after a few long seconds, the sphere connected with the hysterical cop.
The cop exploded, leaving behind a small pile of viscera and a fine mist of blood droplets.
“I’ll take the shotgun.”
Fabler handed it to Jake, helped him up, and half-led/half-dragged him into the passenger seat.
“How does this thing work?”
“You’re a man of science. Figure it out. And don’t make me regret bringing you along.”
“Detective Woo exploded. I think it’s some kind of antimatter weapon.”
“They’re slow. We can dodge them.”
“All of them?” Jake pointed through the windshield, and Fabler stared at over a hundred black dots coming at them.
THE WATCHER ○ 1:50+pm
“This is how you spare the redhead? Your teams just fired one hundred and thirty-three shots at them.”
The Watcher is about to respond to Mu, but other words form in his mouth; a pheromone takeover of his cerebral cortex.
“REDHEAD NUMBER 63 HAS ESCAPED. HE HAS MANAGED TO REMOVE HIS COLLAR.”
The Watcher sees Mr. Pilgrim through the pair of eyes that sent the message. He is surrounded with nowhere to run, but the Watcher rubs his exocrine gland and responds with the obvious order.
“CATCH HIM!”
“I wonder how he got out.”
The Watcher shoots a glance at Mu.
GRIM ○ 1:50+pm
“CATCH HIM!”
When Grim turned nine years old, he became tall enough for the biggest rides at a shady carnival that popped up annually at FallFest in a Wichita suburb. The scariest attraction, called The Zipper, involved being strapped into a seat that spun around on a hinge, attached to a track that spun around an oval, that attached to a pivot that spun like a psychotic Ferris wheel on steroids.
Within ten seconds of being strapped into the rickety, unsafe horrorshow, young Grim had shit himself. He blamed it on a bad food booth chilidog, and while that might have been a contributing factor, the true reason for filling his shorts had been sheer terror.
When he’d gotten older, still scarred and ashamed at his cowardice, he’d done some research and learned that soiling one’s pants had a link to the animal kingdom. A lot of creatures shit when confronted by predators, because it lightened their body weight for increased fight-or-flight response.
Still, it remained a humiliating mark on his formative years.
Grim had encountered true terror many times since that childhood disaster. In combat. In the Watcher’s lab. In the Breeding Program room.
But none had reached the pants-crapping heights of seeing two dozen armed greys step into the hall all at once, surrounding him.
So it was with great personal triumph that Grim didn’t soil himself when the greys closed in.
The hallway, no more than two meters wide, didn’t allow enough room for Grim to dart through his attackers who flanked both sides, or even weave through like a wide-receiver.
Plowing through, linebacker-style, would only work for two or three. The greys stoo
d a dozen deep to his left, twenty deep to his right.
As if they could read his mind, half the guards raised their weapons, business ends pointed at Grim.
His sphincter clenched, but held it in.
No one pulled the trigger or got any closer.
Having hesitated long enough, Grim took advantage of the situation, rushing toward the nearest grey, darting sideways as it backpedaled and fired its weapon—
—which spit out a glowing black globe about the size and speed of a dodgeball—
—which Grim dodged.
Shrieks, behind him, as greys scrambled to duck and cover, and the black ball connected with one who got caught in the stampede.
It hit like a flashbang grenade times a thousand, but lasted a thousand times shorter.
It only left a mist of blood droplets, a scattering of mangled limbs, bones, and organs, and a hole in the walls that looked like a giant took a big ice cream scoop out of both sides at once.
Greys on both ends sprinted away, and Grim raced to a fallen weapon which seemed to be cracked in the middle.
Not relishing the idea of walking the corridor unarmed with all the greys running around, Grim decided to give it a shot. He placed his hand where the guard had, aimed in the direction some of the guards had retreated, and squeezed a squooshy thing that seemed like it might be the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He began to nudge through the carnage with his toe, looking for an arm. When some of the slop proved unidentifiable, Grim crouched down and went full hands-on.
What Happened To Lori - The Complete Epic (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective Book 9) Page 50
