She took the remaining handgun, shoved some bullets (hopefully they’d fit?) in her pocket, and ran out and back down the hall. She got to the bullpen at the same time the elevator let out a distant ding on arrival.
At least now I know which direction the elevator is in, she thought.
Not knowing where else to go, Erica sprinted back to the electronics junk room, closed and locked the door. It was, on the one hand, a good decision given this was one of the few rooms she knew of that didn’t have glass walls. On the other hand, she was cornered. But the woman in the ponytail didn’t know she was there, so…
Erica turned out the light, just to complete the illusion that this was an unoccupied service closet of some sort. All she managed to accomplish was to prove to herself that she wasn’t really thinking straight about all of this.
Bernard’s device was still blinking. She’d forgotten all about that, until the lights were out and the flashing lit up her hand.
She’s here for this, Erica thought. Of course she is.
But why? What made it important enough to storm the FBI to retrieve it?
Erica started loading the gun by the light of the cellphone she should have used to call Maggie with. She still could do that, but now she risked being overheard from the hallway, and so considered it a last-resort thing instead of the first thing on the list. Calling Maggie wouldn’t do a whole lot if the armed fixer was already there anyway, and besides, someone should be on the way. Erica liked to think one couldn’t shoot up a federal office and not have anyone notice pretty close to immediately.
Loading the gun kept her hands busy and her mind free to work the problem, which should have been getting away from the armed assassin alive, but ended up being the same one she was working on before the gunshot.
There was something about this little rectangular device that was making it possible to remote-view the future, and more importantly, to remote-alter the future. Those were two things, not one, and it did both.
No, it’s just one problem, she realized. It’s the same problem.
Then it all fell into place in her head, and she knew what she had to do.
Erica turned the lights back on, put the gun down, and started flipping the device around, looking for a spot for a plug. It had been jacked into the exoskeleton by a plug on one end and a clamp on the other, to keep it still. She took that to mean, when the apparatus was powered up, this thing drew from that power source. The tiny battery inside powered the blinking light (whatever that was for) but wasn’t powering the device itself.
What she needed, really, was Bernard’s apparatus. But there was a super-powered killer between her and the conference room.
Fortunately, she was standing in the middle of a truckload of discarded electronics.
She’d only just started searching when someone tried the handle to the door. That was followed by a light knock.
“Hello in there.”
Erica didn’t answer; she kept looking instead.
“Come on, I can hear you moving around,” the fixer said. “Look, I just want my doodad and I’ll be on my way.”
“I don’t believe you,” Erica said.
“I swear. I pinky-swear. If you could see me, you’d see my hand over my heart.”
“I don’t think so.”
The fixer tried the door again, more violently.
“Not that you’ve got a lot of options, honey, but what makes you think I care if you live or die? Just crack the door and throw it out and I’ll go home.”
“You went through too much to recover it,” Erica said.
“Nah, the office is practically empty. Low body count. What’s your name?”
“Erica.”
That’s it, keep talking, Erica thought. So far, she’d found five adapters; none fit in the plug.
“Erica, I’m Sheila. You know this door is wood, right? I can just shoot it open.”
“Did you empty the offices on purpose?”
“What’s that?” Sheila asked.
“I said, did you empty the offices on purpose? They’re all out because of the thing at the jail, which I assume was also you.”
“No, that was for something else. I’m tying up all loose ends today. One of those loose ends used to be in that jail; another other one’s in that room. Are you in the FBI, Erica?”
“I’m the cleaning lady.”
Sheila laughed.
“You sound too smart for that.”
“You’re underestimating the native intelligence of cleaning ladies, Sheila.”
Erica had nearly exhausted all of the possible options when she saw the calculator. It was an ancient thing, the kind that used to be on banker desks before computers were in wide use. It had a roll of ticker-tape paper in it and a printer to record every mathematical calculation. She remembered seeing the exact model on Professor Offey’s desk at MIT. He treated it like a prized artifact.
This one wasn’t prized by anybody; it was stuck at the edge of a counter in the Bureau’s room-sized junk drawer, but that wasn’t what was important. What was important was that the plug end that went into the back of the calculator also fit into the rectangular device. The other end of the cord was taken up by a big square plug that fit into the wall.
She connected everything together.
“Look,” Sheila said, “I’m being nice. I don’t have to be. But you know, the longer I stand out here, the more people I have to kill on my way out of the building. You’re putting a lot of badges at risk, Erica, and there’s no point. You must realize by now that nobody can stop me. Your only chance to live is to open the door.”
“You’re right.”
The device appeared to be powering up. There was no sound to it, or lights, or bells, but it vibrated gently in her hand. Quietly, she reached across the room and unlocked the door. Then she picked up the gun, stepped back behind a stack of retired computer monitors, and said a quiet prayer to all the available gods that she’d figured this out correctly.
“So are you gonna open the door?” Sheila asked.
“It’s open,” Erica said. “Come on in.”
Sheila turned the knob, and pushed the door open.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m actually out of bullets or I would have shot my way through. I appreciate your help.”
“Good to know.”
Erica had the gun—which she really hoped she’d correctly loaded and enabled—pointed right at Sheila. Despite this, Sheila didn’t seem particularly concerned.
“I’m a trained killer, Erica,” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Put the gun down and hand that over. I mean it; I won’t hurt you.”
Erica shifted slightly, and Sheila blinked and shook her head. It was incredibly subtle, but not to someone looking for it.
“Let me ask you something first,” Erica said. “Can you see my future?”
She fired twice.
Of all the things to come out of this day, Erica never expected to wish she’d spent more time on the firing range, with the guy whose name she couldn’t recall. If she’d taken the opportunity that date provided, to fire a handgun for the first time in her life, she might have learned to expect that shooting it would pull her aim up and to the left. Also, the recoil was far worse than what she expected.
The first round hit Sheila around the collarbone near the right shoulder, even though Erica had been aiming for her heart from only fifteen feet away. The second shot missed everything but the ceiling.
Sheila fell backwards and out of the doorway, staggering in the direction of the bullpen.
Erica ran to the hallway, meaning—foolishly—to pursue. Her nerve lasted exactly as long as it took to determine that the cord powering the device wouldn’t let her get past the doorway.
A blood trail led across the bullpen, to parts unknown. The fire exit, probably, but Erica wasn’t going to follow the trail to find that out. Wounded or no, Sheila was a trained killer, and Erica Smalls was still just a physicist.
She
nearly stepped on the black box on the floor; it was the thing she saw Sheila using on the security camera. Erica picked it up, put it in her pocket, and stepped back inside the junk room. Then she locked the door, and called Maggie Trent.
15
We have unconfirmed reports of a second attack at the Government Center offices of the FBI. Chet, I think it’s clear right now that the city of Boston is under attack.
—on-the-scene news report, Channel 4 Local
There were bodies all over the first floor.
It probably only seemed that way; Maggie was clearing an office space she was intimately familiar with, a place that wasn’t by any stretch expected to be a risky location; just the opposite, considering the security involved in making it that far.
The people who worked in the FBI offices had no reason to expect that they would be caught in a shootout here. In the field, sure, although that was highly unusual as well.
She counted three dead before she found someone alive, but unconscious and wounded. She was pretty sure his name was Ken. There was nothing she could do for Ken, but ambulances were on the way. Hopefully, they would arrive after Maggie cleared the building of threats, and before Ken bled out.
This doesn’t happen, she thought.
One woman, with Corrigan’s gift but apparently missing his moral compass, had done all this. It seemed impossible, and that was without even taking everything that happened at the jail into consideration.
Maggie cleared the floor quickly, and made it to the fire stairs. She was about to head up, when the elevator doors dinged.
She wasn’t expecting Sheila to return to the crime scene by way of the elevator—or, at all—so Maggie didn’t have her gun up when the doors opened. The same could not be said of Justin Axelrod.
“It’s me! It’s me!” Maggie said, when Justin stepped off the lift, gun at the ready.
“Trent!” he exclaimed. “What happened here!”
“It’s been a busy day,” she said.
“No shit. I was with the mayor across the street when I got word something went down here. I thought it was a misreport, after the jail.”
“It wasn’t.”
Right after Maggie got off the phone with Erica, she called in the breach. Since nobody had ever done that before, as regards FBI headquarters, she really didn’t know what the procedure was supposed to be. She didn’t expect no response, though, which was essentially what she was seeing, to this point. Then again, a breach at the jail fell under the same rubric; a lot of people were dealing with impossible things at the same time.
Probably, everyone was just a little too busy.
“I’ve swept this floor,” Maggie said. “People are down, ambulances are coming. I’m heading up. I think we missed all the fun, though. Come on, I think I saw a blood trail on the stairs.”
She did indeed. There were drops of blood in both directions. From what Erica told her, this was probably Sheila, exiting the building.
“If we have any manpower left,” she said, “we need someone to figure out where these stairs exit, and throw up a cordon of the neighborhood.”
“Right now? That would take an act of God. Who did this, Maggie?”
“Same person who shot up the jail earlier today.”
“Person?” Justin asked. “One person? This was a team, right?”
Maggie briefly considered heading down, because Erica didn’t need to be rescued, according to Erica. There was time to enter into a pursuit. But it had been at least a half an hour since Maggie got the call; unless Sheila was lying unconscious in a pool of blood somewhere beneath them, she was long gone.
“There’s a couple of things you’re going to have to understand, Justin,” Maggie said, as they both headed up. “And I don’t think I have time to explain it to you yet.”
There was more blood on the landing to the top floor. Maggie swiped her badge and pulled the door open, being careful not to touch any of the blood, which would be useful if they ever wanted to ID Sheila.
“I’m not really satisfied with that response, agent,” her boss said.
“I appreciate that, sir. Do you remember the video of Corrigan sneaking out of the precinct?”
“I do, yes. Clear over here.”
They’d made it onto the floor. He was sweeping one side of the bullpen.
“Imagine someone with the same skills, but now put a gun in their hands.”
“Skills? All I saw was a lucky guy sneaking out of an almost-empty building,” Justin said.
“Yeah, I figured you’d say that. She’s connected to Borowitz and Ledo, anyway. We know this much. I’m expecting to get confirmation shortly that Bernard Jenks is dead. I’m pretty positive that was why she hit the jail.”
Maggie followed the trail of blood to the junk room door. She knocked.
“Erica, it’s Maggie. It’s clear, you want to open up?”
“Okay, hang on,” Erica said through the door.
“Who’s that?” Justin asked.
“Someone who can explain how only one person did all this,” Maggie said.
Erica opened the door. She looked like she was on the wrong side of an adrenaline rush.
“Hi,” she said. Then she hugged Maggie for a few seconds. “Sorry I…I borrowed someone’s gun, I probably wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“It’s fine. This is Justin Axelrod, he’s the Special Agent in…he’s my boss. Justin, this is Dr. Erica Smalls.”
“Oh hi,” she said.
“Hello, sorry, excuse me for a minute,” Justin said, holding up his cell phone.
Erica turned to Maggie, while Justin stepped away to take the call.
“I heard what you were saying. You’re right; she hit the jail to kill that Bernard person, she told me so. Then she came here for this.”
Erica held up a black rectangle.
“Is that part of his suit?” Maggie asked.
“Yep. I know why she wanted it, too.”
“What’s it do?”
“That’s complicated. But if we can figure out how to mimic it, we can stop her.”
“Okay, the paramedics are downstairs,” Justin said, hanging up. “And Jenks is dead. I just got confirmation. You said this person is connected to Borowitz, are you a hundred percent on that?”
“I am,” Maggie said.
“Okay. You’re leaving town, now. Go interview him.”
“We’ve already tried that,” Maggie said, “and I have too much to do here.”
“You didn’t try it. He’ll talk to you, we know this. We can cover things until you get back.”
“Justin, the whole city’s gone to hell. My place has to be here at least until the smoke clears.”
“I understand,” he said. “But believe it or not, we have other competent people working here. It’s two days, and it’s an order.”
She sighed.
“There’s a lot you don’t understand. The file. I’ll get you the file, ask…”
She caught herself, because the next thing out of her mouth was going to be ask Dave, and he was still missing.
“If you’re going to stop the person who did this,” Maggie said, “you are going to need an education on some things that you’ll have trouble believing, okay?”
“I’m sure,” he said. “But Dr. Smalls here can explain everything, right?”
“I’ll need a few hours,” Erica said.
“I’ll make time. It’ll be fine Maggie. We can run this without you for a couple of days, but I can’t get anything out of Nick Borowitz. You know it makes sense. And…I promise, as soon as Corrigan is awake, you’ll be the first to know.”
Maggie turned away for a second, because she didn’t want it to be about that. It was, but she didn’t want it to be. She probably could have left to talk to Nick before, but she didn’t like the idea of being out of town when Corrigan’s condition changed, in either direction.
“I’ll get my go-bag,” she said. All the clothes in her go-bag had been worn at least
twice, because she never seemed to find time to go home and get a change of clothes, but she was pretty sure nobody at the prison was going to mull over the cleanliness of her appearance.
“Sorry,” Justin said, before she was out of earshot. “I forgot. There was more news from the jail. Joe and David…you probably knew this already, but they didn’t make it.”
That felt like getting punched in the chest. In the past ninety minutes, Maggie had gone from being afraid that she’d accidentally put Corrigan’s life in danger, to nearly getting her civilian consultant killed. She had almost completely forgotten about Dave and Joe.
“That thing in your hand,” Maggie said, to Erica. “What’s it do?”
“I’ll need some time to explain,” she said.
“But we can kill her with it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. I’m looking forward to that.”
The entire world was fuzzy.
At first, it was something that really bothered Corrigan, but after a few…hours? Days? Weeks? He’d gotten used to it. Now, he hardly even questioned it anymore. It was just a fact: the world was fuzzy, and that was all.
What he questioned instead was the word now. To say that now, the world was fuzzy was to tacitly accept that the now he was currently experiencing aligned with the commonly held understanding of the term.
He ruminated on the word now a distressingly long time. Well over a decade, at least, back before the world became manifestly fuzzy, when time adhered to some basic commonly agreed-upon standard. Corrigan had a sliding now. Usually, his now hovered near the edge of everyone else’s, such that he could see the popular present from where he was.
He thought about that present—when he thought of it at all—as where he left his body, because stuff that happened to his body in that present was more or less irreversible, whereas all of his other nows could be altered. They weren’t chiseled in stone. They were imprecise. They were fuzzy.
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