One hell of a kiss.
“Fabler… you came.”
“Of course I came. Do you remember my promise, Lori? On my life. On our love. I promised I would get you out of here.”
She hugged him so hard she couldn’t feel where she ended and he began. “What took you so long?”
“Your asshole brother framed me for your murder and sent me to prison.”
“My bad.” Behind Fabler, Grim appeared sheepish. Behind him, a determined-looking woman and a nervous-looking redheaded man.
Lori shot Grim a glance. “He neglected to mention that.”
The redhead peeked around Grim’s shoulder. “I’m Jake. Do you know my sister, Holly?”
“I’ve met her. I don’t know where she is. They move us around.”
“I don’t want to be rude—I have Asperger’s, and aspies miss social cues—but I need to find her. Grim, can I borrow the exocrine gland?”
“Huh? Oh. Sure.”
Grim held out his arm, and Jake used a sculptor to slice off the patch of rippled flesh. Laser light, a humming sound, and a smell that kind of smelled like bacon, disgustingly making her stomach rumble.
Jake attached the gland to his own arm and walked off, holding a sculptor in one hand and a tiny metal box in the other.
Fabler got on his knees, placing his cheek against his son. Lori ran her fingers through his hair.
“It’s really ours, Fabler. That night, the night I was taken. The Watcher fixed my polycystic ovary syndrome. You’re going to be a father. I’m going to be a mother.”
“Can I get in on this?” Grim came over, put his arms around them both.
Lori made a meanie face at her brother. “You dick. You seriously sent him to prison?”
“Three years. He also tortured me and killed me yesterday.”
“That was yesterday. I apologized. Now we’re a family again, and working past all of that, and that’s what’s most important. Right?”
“Of course, Bro.”
When the hug ended, Lori made a fist and punched Grim so hard she busted open her knuckles. Grim reeled back, holding his split lip, and she cocked back to hit him again.
Fabler stepped between them. “Easy, babe. Your brother is gonna be a daddy.”
Lori switched her gaze from Grim to the woman behind him. “You must be Presley. The one my husband trained.”
“Nice to meet you, Lori. And nice punch.”
Presley reached out. She had a strong, firm grip, and maintained steady eye contact. She also had steady balance, even though she only had one foot.
“My brother can be a dick sometimes. A lot of times, actually.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“I see you got your hand back. And congrats on your pregnancy.”
“Congrats on yours, too. Looks like our kids will be cousins.”
“I understand you worked with my husband. I can’t thank you enough for coming here for me.”
Grim butted in. “Technically, I hired her.”
Lori told him to shut up a fraction of a second before Presley did.
“The clock is ticking.” Fabler tapped his bare wrist. “We need to get our weapons and get back home.”
Lori’s eyes glassed up again. “You figured out how to get home?”
Fabler did a quick recap of what they needed to do, with Grim adding his own comments.
Hope began to dissipate, bit by bit, being nibbled at by fear.
Then hope flat out left the building.
“So my baby… our baby… might be… a demon?”
“Don’t think about that, Lori. We’ll know when Jake comes back with Mu.”
“We need to find Jake. Right now.”
JAKE ○ 54 MINUTES
They came upon another cell, another prisoner, after Mu opened up a wall.
Armless. Legless. Twitching on the floor, eyes far away.
Jake stuck Mu in his pocket, then copied Grim’s earlier sequence.
Without hesitation, Jake followed the protocol—
—and instantly shocked himself, and the unfortunate limbless invalid, who moaned and thrashed.
“You did that. You have to think about the outcome in your head.”
“I can’t read minds. As you rub the exocrine gland, overlap your imagining the event with your empirical senses as the event happens.”
Jake pictured himself taking off the collar, reached for it—
—and hesitated.
“You have five seconds, and then this unfortunate man will be shocked again.”
Jake pictures himself removing the collar as he reached for the collar.
The collar came off.
“I’ll be back for you.”
“Three more cells in this corridor, to your left.”
Jake went left, but kept Mu in his pocket.
“Do you need me to guide you? You can take me out of your pocket.”
“I want to open the walls myself. Grim could do it.”
“Mr. Pilgrim had a rather ham-fisted approach. Like killing mosquitos with a flamethrower.”
“I’m not Mr. Pilgrim.”
Jake waved a hand in front of the prisoner’s head, got no reaction, and moved on.
Without the exocrine gland—simply using the laser scalpel as a conduit of Mu—Jake had no sense of its form or function. The laser worked like a point and click camera.
But with the gland attached to his arm, Jake could sense the sculptor’s range.
Jake came to a second cell. A woman sat inside.
Jake stroked the gland, opened the cell door, and took off her collar in under three seconds.
“I cannot see while in your pocket, but by the number of steps you took this is Redhead Number 19. On a very high dose of Elixir. Obedient. Malleable. I’m guessing she isn’t aware you’re here. Or that she’s here. I thought you had questions for me, Jake.”
“I have many questions. But right now I’m trying to help people.”
“In your time, I thought aspies were believed to lack empathy.”
“I can understand how people are feeling by simple observation. It’s what they’re thinking that I have trouble with.”
“So motivations aren’t clear to you.”
“Correct.”
The next cell featured a screaming woman. No feet. She tried to crawl away from Jake when he entered her cell, and to remove her collar involved cornering her, like a scared, wounded dog.
She continued to scream even with her collar off.
Jake imagined her sleeping, pointed the sculptor, and she immediately passed out.
“Impressive. It took the Watcher weeks to master the laser scalpel. You have a gift.”
Jake replied with a noncommittal mmmmmm sound, which he’d learned would be taken by the listener to mean whatever bias they’d been leaning toward.
“I’ve watched and read and absorbed everything in recorded human history. Aren’t you curious?”
“Immensely. I’m containing my curiosity until after I free everyone.”
“I know you’re a scientist and mathematician, but do you watch movies?”
“Sure.” Jake continued down the hall, seeking the next cell.
“After viewing every film ever made, I began to create my own entertainment. I invented a game based on your fifteenth century version of chess. It has two thousand pieces. I’ve been playing against myself for the last three millennia, and I’m only on my third move.”
“Would you like to see the sequel I made to the movie Casablanca? The special effects are flawless. You’ll swear it is really Bogart and Bergman. Long ago, I analyzed the formula for successful motion pictures, coming up with an algorithm guaranteed to please the largest number of viewers. Along with the requisite witty dialog and unexpected plot twists, it has a three hour graphic sex scene, followed by a prolonged torture-murder. I also added some hip-hop music. Once you see it, you’ll want to play it again, as time goes by.”
“Holly.”
His sister sat on the floor, eyes closed. Both arms missing to the shoulder. One leg missing to the hip.
“Would you like to hear solutions to the Carathéodory conjecture? Or the Pompeiu problem?”
Jake wondered if Mu had a mute button. “Later.”
He opened the cell door and deftly removed Holly’s collar.
“Jake? Is that really you?”
Jake McKendrick never liked hugs, but this situation called for one, and when he embraced his sister he found out it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as he remembered.
“I never stopped looking for you, Holly.”
“You look older.”
“It’s been three years for me. We’re getting you out of here.”
“Lori’s brother. I met his girlfriend.”
“Lori’s husband, too.”
“I don’t trust Lori.”
“As a feeling? Or as a fact?”
That question dated back to their childhood, Jake insisting that Holly always explain if her opinions had logic and data behind them, or intuition and personal subjectivity.
“Feeling. I think she may have narked.”
“Evidence?”
“No.”
“We need to work together to get out of here. We’ve got a way back home.”
“I’m missing three limbs, Jake.”
“We can get those back.”
Holly’s gaze shot around the room. “Who said that?”
“Mu. He’s an AI. In my pocket. Sort of like a talking Gameboy who knows everything. According to him, the limbs are temporarily attached to some amalgam of body parts known as the Experiment. I can reattach them to you. But we have a ticking clock. We need to get everyone out of here in under an hour. Can you trust Lori?”
“I don’t know, Jake. I’m not even sure I can trust that you’re here, and not a hallucination.”
“If I’m a hallucination, you’re making me up in your head. Ask me something I would know but you wouldn’t.”
“What’s Stephen Hawking’s birthday?”
“January 8, 1942. Believe me now?”
“I have no way to check that. You could be making it up.”
“Maybe I can help. He was born on the date Jake said in Oxford. His parents were Frank and Isobel. In 1950, they moved to Hertfordshire and—”
“Fair point, Jake. So how about faith? Human beings take things on faith all the time. Faith their sun will rise every morning. Faith there will always be food at the grocery store. Faith that a higher power watches over them.”
“There is no such thing as a higher power, Mu.”
“Are you sure about that? I can show you some equations.”
His sister’s face became a ghastly, ghostly rictus. “Don’t leave me, Jake! Please don’t go!”
“I’m coming back for you, Holly. I promise.”
“I love you too, Jake.”
As Jake turned to leave, his sister called after him. “Hurry back.”
THE WATCHER ○ 2:35+pm
“Heeeeellooooo, Waaaaaatcherrrrr.”
When the dragon opened its mouth, the Watcher saw charred bits of homo provectus stuck in its teeth.
“Hello, Bub. You are like me, correct? What one of you sees, all of you see?”
“Yeessssss.”
“Congratulations on finding your way into the compound. You appear to have slimmed down.”
“I haaaaave eaten maaaaaany of your peeeeeeeople.”
“You hide the weight well. But I have a problem even more pressing than you. Mu has awoken.”
The dragon’s eyes narrow to slits.
“Muuuuuuuuuuuuu. I haaaaaate Muuuuuuu.”
“He ruined your plans of conquering humanity. Then he left you here. Playing natural selection and survival of the fittest with a bunch of prehistoric monsters, none smarter than a groundhog. I would guess it is impossible to derive any pleasure trying to enslave a gaggle of velociraptors.”
“Yessssss. But nooooow I have yoooooou.”
“Is that what you want to do? Enslave me? Am I not worthy of being eaten?”
The dragon opens its mouth to answer, and the Watcher whips around the sculptor and thrusts it into the enormous tongue, giving it the full vial of Elixir.
The herald of Bub goes from hostile to docile in under a second.
“I need your help, Bub. I need to restore my population. We have been enemies for long enough. In return for your assistance, I will give you some of my guards to do with as you wish. Some humans to do with as you wish. Clone them. Torture them. Enslave them. Eat them. Whatever you like, without any interference from me. And Mu. You can have Mu. All I ask in return is a way for me to rebuild. I want to create life, as you can.”
“You want tooooo deal with the deeeeeeeevil?”
“Yes.”
The Dragon grins. “Let’s deeeeeeeeal.”
FABLER ○ 49 MINUTES
“It’ll be fine, guys.” Grim, his lip still bleeding, patted Fabler on the shoulder, then Lori. “We got this far. We’ll get the rest of the way.”
Presley hopped over, putting her arm around Grim’s neck and steadying herself. Grim’s hand slipped naturally around he
r waist.
“So… three years for you guys. That makes it 2017 now?”
Fabler nodded at his wife. Her mouth turned down.
“And you didn’t… I mean, you never… why didn’t you move on, Fabler? Find someone else?”
Fabler gave Grim a sideways glance. “You mean during the time I wasn’t in prison?” He traced his fingers along Lori’s frown. “Because I knew you were out there, somewhere. I’d never give up on you. On us.”
“Plus I’m pretty sure Fabler was getting hella sex in jail.” Grim grinned. “Ask him how his prison purse got so big.”
“Lori, punch your brother again.”
Lori made a fist. Grim spread his palms. “Easy! Kidding. Using humor to make light of a dire situation. I apologize for that, and for everything. I know I have a lot to make up for. I know I’m a POS. I’ll make it up to both of you.” He put his arm back around Presley. “All three of you.”
“What happened between you and Heather, Grim?”
“Fabler and I never liked her.”
Grim pulled a face. “Why didn’t you guys tell me that when we were dating?”
“We hinted at it.” Fabler flicked Grim in the forehead. “But nothing gets through your thick skull.”
“YEAAAAHHHHH.”
Lori’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”
“Sinatra. He’s standing guard in the hallway. Want to meet him?”
“Frank Sinatra is here?”
“He’s a giant tree sloth, Lori. We left him in the hallway so we didn’t freak you out. I’ll bring him over.”
Presley cupped the side of her mouth, speaking low. “He smells like wet socks.”
“He does not.”
“CRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWRRRKKKK!”
The inhuman grunt made the hair stand up on Fabler’s neck.
“He sounds upset.”
“That’s not Sinatra. I’ll check it out.”
Grim hurried off. Fabler waited, tensed.
Grim came back, panic painted on his face with a sloppy brushstroke. “We need weapons. Now.”
What Happened To Lori - The Complete Epic (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective Book 9) Page 61
