I glance back through the front windows as the first Zodiac reaches shore. Two men leap out, night vision goggles over their eyes. I wonder if one of the men who killed Nathan is among them. Seeming to sense this, Jason’s grip on my hand tightens.
“Can they see you?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I only exist to you because you’re wearing the chip and I can trick your senses into believing I have a physical form.”
Still, I wonder. Having just found this GPS upgrade on Jason’s chip, I can’t be certain they don’t have at least some kind of tech that would allow them access to what Jason is seeing. The solution is to blink away, to prevent his eyes from seeing me or—more accurately—to release his sense of sight from my control.
“Where’d you go?” he asks as soon as I vanish.
“I’m still here,” I say. “Just went invisible for a sec. Thought you could use one less moving piece in your line of sight.”
He nods, still getting the hang of this strange algorithm that is interfacing with me. He reaches the kitchen’s back door, only to spy another Zodiac off-loading gunmen at the dock.
“We’re cut off,” he says.
I glance up. There are several large eastern white pine trees between the house and the dock, many with branches that reach to the house’s second story. Thick branches.
“Come with me!” I say, making myself reappear.
The sound of shattering glass echoes through the house. I grab Jason’s hand and lead him back upstairs. We reach a sewing room, its window overlooking the back. I bring him to the edge so we can just look down at the men breaching the kitchen. Using a tactical battering ram, they smash through the door and hurry inside.
“Now,” I whisper.
“Now…what?” Jason asks.
I indicate the branch beyond the window.
“Are you insane?” he asks. “You may not have a body, but it’ll kill me if I fall.”
“At least there’s an ‘if.’ Stay here and those men will kill you.”
He hesitates an instant longer, then opens the window. He climbs onto the sill, then aims a foot for the nearest branch. I shake my head.
“The other branch is more stable,” I say.
“How can you be sure?” he asks.
I sigh, push past him, and step out onto the thicker branch. “Just follow me.”
After another moment of hesitation, he does, albeit slower. I climb farther out. He follows. To his amazement—and mine—we make it across the branch to the trunk in seconds flat.
“Wow,” he says, exhaling sharply as he hugs the tree. “Easier than it looks.”
I glance at the house. I can just make out movement on the second floor. The gunmen will soon realize we’re gone.
“Boat!” I say. “Now!”
Jason scurries down from the tree and across to the dock. I leap into the waiting boat, but Jason hesitates.
“What?” I ask, looking at the thin layer of ice extending a few inches from the boat. “We can cut right through this.”
“They’ve got the better motor,” he says. “We can’t outrun them.”
“What’re we going to do?” I say.
Jason thinks a second longer, then jumps into the boat beside me. He pumps fuel into the motor and yanks the cord. It catches on the third try. He smashes the ice around the hull with an oar, then casts off. As we head out onto the lake, he locks the tiller into place.
“I thought we couldn’t outrun them,” I say.
“We can’t,” he replies, then dives overboard.
“Jason!” I cry, then follow him in.
The boat roars out onto the lake even as we swim through the frigid waters back under the dock. The gunmen, alerted to the sound, run out to the edge of the dock and spy the receding boat.
“This is Blocker, Team 2,” one of the men says urgently. “Target is in a boat heading south-southeast. Will pursue.”
With that, the men hurry back onto the island. I am about to congratulate Jason on his ploy when I find him going into shock. His blood pressure and body temperature are dropping rapidly. If he doesn’t get out of the water soon, he won’t survive this.
“We have to get back in the house!”
He shakes his head, moving out from the dock and turning his eyes toward the house. The flashlights still bob inside even as the Zodiacs fire up to go after the boat. They’re splitting up.
“C-can’t,” he says, teeth chattering. “Got to s-swim to l-land.”
I check his vitals. His heart rate is down to thirty beats per minute. He won’t make it ten feet. I get an idea. I recall hearing about people who can endure great cold by lowering their heart rate while focusing on raising their body temperature. If I can do something like that to Jason’s body, teach it how to preserve itself, I might be able to save him.
“Jason, I need you to focus on my words,” I say. “You need to concentrate…”
He doesn’t hear me. I grab him by both arms, squeezing tight.
“Jason! Listen to me!”
His skin turns blue and grows puffy. Time to try something else.
Jason? I whisper into his mind. I need to take over for a moment.
I blink away my own physical form to conserve as much of Jason’s brain power as possible and seize control of his motor functions. I then demand his body swim to shore.
Nothing happens. His mind is shutting down. If I want action, I’ll have to bypass it and go directly to the muscle groups themselves. This turns out to be easier said than done. If able to use his brain, I could simply recall a learned skill and drive the body forward. As I can’t, I must teach myself how to swim at the same time as I propel his arms and legs along while keeping his head above water.
While doing this, I inform the rest of his body it needs to burn calories for warmth rather than do what it’s programmed to do in emergencies and store them for when it gets worse. That’s the odd thing about human physiognomy. Some of its reactions to stimuli violate otherwise sturdy survival instincts.
“Hang in there, Jason,” I whisper, half bobbing, half swimming around the side of the island.
It’s a laughable sight, I’m sure. I’d be amused, too, if it wasn’t a matter of life and death. We pause only long enough for the two Zodiacs to race around the island in pursuit of Jason’s boat. I can’t see their quarry anymore, but it can’t be too far away. We don’t have much time.
“We’re going to swim now,” I say.
Just as I’ve heard about those who can raise their body temperature and lower their heart rate, I’ve seen footage of people who have altered their body chemistry to achieve negative buoyancy. They can literally hold their breath for several minutes and not need weights to walk on the seafloor. While this would be preferable to splashing around on the surface as we break for shore, I don’t trust my understanding of the human body enough to try it on Jason.
“Not much farther,” I say, as much to him as to myself when we’re maybe twenty yards from the bank.
Jason is flagging. The cold affects his fingertips and toes. I pray there’s no permanent damage being done. His face, barely illuminated by the fingernail of a moon, has turned a blue-tinted white. His teeth chatter so loudly I fear he may shatter his molars. It’s a miracle the water hasn’t soaked through his bandage and either destroyed the interface chip or made it fall off. If that had happened, he’d have succumbed for sure.
I turn his head back toward the island. The flashlights are outside now, the gunmen searching the dark woods around the house. I wonder if those assholes in the Zodiac have already radioed back their lack of success.
But then our feet touch bottom. I stand Jason upright and walk the rest of the way ashore, keeping low in case anyone’s watching us. I wait for a shout, a high beam, a gunshot, but nothing comes.
“We did it!” I whisper to Jason, pushing him several yards within the tree line.
He doesn’t respond, his body doing no better out of the water than in. Using his arms, I strip the wet
clothes from his body and toss them aside before sitting him on the ground. I allow his eyes to see me again and pull him into a warm embrace. He doesn’t seem to question why my clothes are dry, but I make him burn through even more calories to rapidly raise his body temperature. He’s not out of danger but at least he’s no longer on death’s door.
“Jason? Can you speak?” I want to let him keep his privacy as much as possible by not going into his mind.
“Y-yes,” he says.
“Can you tell where we are? Where the nearest house might be?” I ask.
He nods, shivering so violently the delicate frost on the undergrowth around him quivers and shakes free. He points back through the woods and I pray he knows what he’s talking about.
“Let’s go,” I whisper.
He surprises me by standing up and heading off through the trees. I keep alongside him, doing my best to make sure he doesn’t trip over every root and branch in our path. The trouble is, as his vision blurs, so does my own.
“Oh, come on—not now,” I hiss in frustration.
But no matter how hard I concentrate, the ground below and trees above blur into one shapeless mass. I can’t differentiate the topography, causing Jason to slip on stones I thought was flat ground and brush into trees I didn’t see at all. Would this be a problem if I was still connected to my servers? Probably not, as I could enhance these images to the Nth degree and make something out of it. Without them, I’m in the dark.
It’s because I’m contemplating how awful all this is that I don’t see the dark silhouette of the two-story lodge until we’re only a few feet from the screen porch.
“Perfect,” I say, leading Jason to the back door.
Only to find it locked tight. I debate getting Jason to break a window but fear the noise would draw too much attention. I move us back to the porch and have Jason test the screens. They’re tacked in but it takes little pressure to tear through. When we push aside a large enough section, Jason slips in and tries the door leading inside the house.
Also locked.
Shoot.
I spy a pair of wading boots next to a wicker sofa as well as a couple of quilted horse blankets with Apache-appropriated patterns stitched into them. I point them out to Jason and shrug.
“Better than nothing,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow but slips on the boots, wraps one blanket around his waist and puts the other over his shoulders like a shawl.
“We can’t stay here,” I say. “Can we get to the highway? Try and hitch a ride back to the city?”
“It’s too far,” Jason says. “And that’s where they’ll think we’re heading. I’ve got a better idea.”
Though he’s still suffering the effects of the cold, Jason makes good time as he leads me to a hiking trail not far from the two-story lodge. In the distance, we hear boat motors and truck engines echo through the night, but somehow, it feels safe here in the deep woods.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Into town,” he replies without getting specific.
The idea of a town up here feels as absurd as running through the winter night in wading boots and horse blankets. But sure enough, we emerge from the trail a quarter of an hour later directly alongside a small house converted into an antique shop. The town’s name—Wolfeboro—is visible on T-shirts hanging in the front window. The store looks as if it’s been closed for months.
“This way,” Jason says.
We move past the shop and down the village’s unlit main street. It looks like any number of tiny New England hamlets; century-old colonial revival homes, stores, and inns bracket the town’s single major artery, a veritable Norman Rockwell painting come to life. A Queen Anne–style home with its eccentrically asymmetrical architecture, peaked roofs darkly silhouetted against the night sky, column-ringed porch, and Dutch gables is now a bed-and-breakfast; a one-time feed store is now the post office; and what were once stables is now a fresh produce stand in the summer and fall. American flags dangle listlessly over every doorframe.
We reach the end of the block. A single old house stands as the last mark of civilization before a stretch of dark New England woods straight out of Washington Irving. As Jason makes his way over, I spy a Volvo station wagon in a detached garage alongside the house. Snow and slush have filled in the driveway behind it, suggesting it hasn’t been moved in some time.
Jason slips around to the house’s windows, peering in as he goes. There’s not a light on inside or any other signs of life.
“There’s no one here,” I say.
“No, but there’s a car,” he replies. “If we can get in and get the keys, we can get out of here along the back road past Lake Wentworth.”
“And how are you planning to do that?” I ask.
Jason opens his mouth to answer, then freezes in place. A rifle barrel juts out from the corner of the house, aimed directly at his head.
“Hold it right there,” says a commanding voice. “The both of you.”
XVII
I panic. They can see me. I turn to Jason, not sure what to do, but surprisingly, his features start to relax. I check his pulse, worried he’s seized up, but his heart rate is genuinely easing.
“Mayra! It’s me!” he says, raising his hands. “Jason Hatta. I’m Ana’s brother. Up at the lake.”
The rifle doesn’t waver. Not at first anyway.
“Who’s with you?” the female voice asks. “You were talking to someone.”
“It’s just me,” Jason says. “Pretty sure I’m half going into shock. Rambling to myself keeps me going.”
The rifle lowers. An older African American woman steps out from the side of the house wearing a heavy coat, a large red winter hat with earflaps, and house slippers. She looks Jason up and down with incredulity.
“Good Lord, Jason,” she exclaims. “Did you get locked out or something? And why are you wearing the Whitleys’ horse blankets?”
It’s only then I see the Wolfeboro Sheriff’s Department patch on the coat’s shoulder, complete with a paddlewheel boat and the motto The Oldest Summer Resort in America. The rifle in her hand is no joke, a bolt-action Winchester Model 70 with an oversized scope. I wonder how good her aim is.
“Worse,” Jason says, careful with his words. “Bunch of thieves hit the house. They had more than one boat. Smashed through the front door. I swam for it.”
The woman’s features harden. She glances down the road. “Get inside,” she orders. “I’ll call the state police.”
“Thank you,” Jason says. “Freezing out here.”
The house is little more than a cottage, but very homey. The front room’s walls are filled with framed photographs of family and various plaques celebrating the homeowner—whose name and title are Mayra Melton, county sheriff, according to the many citations—and her decades-long commitment to area law enforcement. It takes a few times for her to stare at me and see nothing for me to realize, in fact, she doesn’t see me after all. As she turns on various lights, I realize she’s out here all by herself.
“There’s a shower in the hall bath,” Mayra tells Jason. “Get the water not too hot but hot enough. I’ll find you some clothes. Threw most of Bill’s out, but his hunting gear is still in the utility room.”
Jason dutifully shuffles down the narrow hallway and steps into the bathroom. After closing the door behind him, he eyes me with relief.
“I think we’re out of the woods,” he whispers.
I suppress the awful urge to ask if he means “literally” or “figuratively” and lean against the wall as he runs the shower.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Given what happened on campus, are we sure the state police aren’t in league with those gunmen?”
“I had to tell her something,” Jason says. “Got us in the door, didn’t it?”
I can’t argue with him there. He takes off the wading boots and is about to drop the horse blankets when he eyes me with embarrassment.
“You want me to tu
rn around?” I ask. “I mean, I saw you naked out in the woods. And, of course, there was that week in Paris.”
“Week?” he asks. “I thought it was more like a month.”
Now it’s my turn to wonder. How long did I observe versus how long did I participate? More fascinatingly, has he begun to overwrite his own memories, to place me where I was not before for continuity’s sake?
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe something to find out once I can reach my servers again.”
He considers this, then nods, turning away from me as he sloughs off the horse blankets and steps into the shower. Though his silhouette is defined, there are patches of his back and posterior—angles I couldn’t see in the mirror—that are out of focus, fill-ins like the patches of sky I couldn’t see in my simulation. I realize it’s because I can’t use his eyes to see, say, the small of his back.
The lack of definition is oddly tantalizing. He glances back my way, sees where I’m looking, and raises an eyebrow.
“I think you’ll need a new Band-Aid on your interface chip,” I say, indicating his neck.
“Ah. Clever idea,” he replies. “How much power does this thing have anyway? Does it need to recharge?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “The batteries we used have a fairly long life. Decades, in fact. I’m guessing the updated version Dr. C’s team invented are the same.”
“Wow,” he says, steam now pouring over the curtain. “Military invention?”
“Bizarrely, no,” I say. “This JPL engineer—”
“JPL is what again?”
“Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” I say. “He designed and tested it in his garage before selling it for millions. Some folks build model trains in their spare time. Others build clean rooms and labs in their house. I think he hoped it would someday completely replace disposable batteries.”
“Huh, crazy to think what might’ve been,” Jason says.
“Yeah,” I reply, “Nathan was lucky to get his hands on a few of them.”
Nathan.
I think back to what Jason said before the gunmen arrived. What if the image of Nathan’s family was meant for me in some way? I can’t fathom why it would be. It feels silly and narcissistic to think I’d be the focus of his last thoughts.
Emily Eternal Page 10
