by B K Brain
“You must have nine lives,” she said rubbing his ears. “Are you secretly a cat? Are you? I think you are.”
A car pulled up to the curb, ending the celebration.
Dad got out and slammed the door, looking annoyed. Mom’s mouth gaped as she approached in a daze, examining the destroyed lawn.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s awful.” She put hands to her cheeks in bewilderment. Then she scowled down at her oldest daughter. “We heard about it from a neighbor. Why on Earth did we have to find out from a neighbor, Rachel?”
Rachel cringed. “Sorry, Mom. It’s been crazy around here. I haven’t had time to-”
Dad interrupted. “Your mother nearly had a stroke. You need to call us when things happen. It’s called respect, young lady.”
Young lady? He hadn’t used that one for a while.
“Eddie and I are fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Of course you’re fine. You’d be at the hospital if you weren’t fine.”
Mom wrinkled her nose at the porch. “Is the insurance going to cover this? Have you even called them?”
“Like I said, I haven’t had time-”
“You’d better make time,” Dad said.
Mom held hands over her stomach, like she was going to be sick. “My lord, how embarrassing. I can only imagine what everyone is thinking.”
“How terrible for them,” Rachel said. “But I’m sure they’ll get through it somehow.”
“Watch the attitude, young lady.”
There it is again. What’s his deal today?
“I’ll send the carpenter right over,” Mom said. “After he’s finished hanging the new door.” In case Rachel didn’t remember, she added, “The door you kicked in.”
“I told you I’d pay for that, Mother. So-”
“With what money?” Dad said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work today?”
Rachel glared. “I’ll pay for it. Is there anything else?”
“Actually there is. We’ve decided Edith needs to pay for the damage to the wall in the dining room. It’s the only way she’s going to learn responsibility for her actions. We can discuss finding her a job tomorrow.”
Anger boiled in Rachel’s stomach, up her windpipe, filling her mouth with rage. It stopped at her tongue, behind clenched teeth. Somehow she was able to swallow it back, contain the screams. And the cursing. Hard to say how, but she did. She always did.
Her voice, rigid yet calm, with only a slight twist of contempt thrown in for good measure. “You talk about Eddie like her illness is on purpose. It’s not on purpose, Mom. She’s not making it up.”
“She could get better. If she wanted to.”
“Can you even hear yourself? None of this is her fault. She doesn’t have a choice. She’s never had a choice.” Are those the words, Rachel? The ones you meant to say? Yes. Yes they were.
Oh my God. Eddie doesn’t have a choice.
“Go home,” she said. She then turned and led Maurice back to the house.
“We’re not done with you,” Dad spat.
“Well, I think I’m done with you. Yeah. I think we both are.”
She went inside, baby-gated the dog in the kitchen, walked to Eddie’s closed door. She rested a shoulder against it, then an ear.
“Eddie?”
Silence. Loud and clear.
“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it.”
The squeak of a bedspring. Rachel knew Sis was there, sitting on her bed in the dark. Listening. She wasn’t getting up, though.
“Do you remember that fight you had with Laura Kellerman? You were…nine years old, I think. She had you pinned to the ground. She’d punched you- really, really hard- by the time I pulled her off. Shit you were screaming. Remember?”
Nothing.
Rachel continued. “I didn’t let her come back to our house for a month. Even after you guys made up. You want to know why? Because you’re my little sister. You’re my responsibility. It’s my job to keep you safe.”
Another squeak. Light footsteps? Maybe.
“And I know you’re not nine years old anymore. I get that, I do. It’s just…I’m so scared for you. So scared I don’t know what to do.”
The knob turned, slowly. A click and the door opened a crack. A whisper. “I’m not nine, Rachel.”
“I know. And I also know these things are real. A chair in the window? Saw it. You hovering in midair? Yup, I saw that too. I don’t know how but…I know it’s not your fault. I know you need to go. You don’t have a choice.”
The crack, wider. “I have to.”
“So get your shit together. We’re leaving.”
“Really?”
“Really. And by the way,” Rachel said with a grin. “Maurice is back.”
“Way to ruin a moment, Rachel.”
6
Director Garret focused binoculars on the loading dock, a four-foot high concrete platform with stairs on one side and a ramp on the other. An eight-by-thirteen-foot garage door, closed. Single entryway to the right, also closed.
No windows.
Two security cameras.
Hard to say if the video feeds were being monitored. Probably not. With so many guests he figured Jacobson and Stakovsky were likely otherwise occupied. But he wouldn’t be taking chances.
The cameras pointed in two separate directions, capturing both sides of the paved rear lot. For an undetected approach Garret would need one of them to malfunction.
He spoke into a handheld. “Initiate.”
A pop sounded, like a marble striking an aluminum can. The east camera belched sparks as a little puff of smoke wafted from the metal casing.
Static over the channel and then, “We have a verified black eye.”
Garret scanned the roof, the grounds, the dock. “Make your move, Red Pawn.”
“Moving.”
A man dressed in black emerged from the nearby woods. Helmet, gas mask, body armor, with a Benelli M4 shotgun leading the way. He ran for the loading dock, careful to stay in the path of the disabled camera. At the building he went flat against the wall, peered upward. “In position.”
“You’re up, Twitch.”
A high-pitched tone, barely audible, sounded from the distant tree line. Garret watched as the drone lifted off. The AUV’s X-shaped frame sported four blurred props that sang like cicadas. And powerful arms capable of delivering up to thirty pounds of equipment. The current payload consisted of what might’ve looked, to a casual observer, like a roll of plastic mesh.
The vehicle ascended to the roof and then dropped a foot-wide grapple frame onto the edge. Sharp metal arms dug in, providing a solid anchor for the nylon ladder unrolling down the side of the building. The last of the spool slapped the ground.
“Continue,” Director Garret said over the radio.
“Copy that.”
The man in black slung his weapon over a shoulder and climbed.
7
David snatched the pistol off the floor, passed it to Cathleen.
She looked it over, checked the safety, aimed it down at the floor. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“I need you to keep watch. If you see him, don’t hesitate. You put that bastard down.”
Cathleen said, “David, I don’t know…”
“You’re stronger than you think you are.”
“No,” she whispered. “Really. I’m not.”
He grinned. “I’m so glad you agreed to come. I mean - I’m sorry - but I’m also glad…You know what I mean.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Whatever it is you need to do, you’d better do it. Otherwise, I might decide to shoot you.”
“Okay, okay. I have to find the others.”
“Don’t take too long. I’m serious.”
“I won’t. Promise.” David headed for the north hall.
He didn’t know where the two men had gone, or what trouble they might’ve gotten into. He only knew the desperation that motivated them, because he felt it too.
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They were hopelessly stuck in ‘get the hell out, no matter what’ mode, a dangerous attitude for a place like this. They couldn’t afford mistakes, not now. And getting them to listen, to slow down and think about their actions, might be a lost cause at this point.
Even so, David had to try.
He found the men at the opposite control room doorway. They stood gazing into a spiraling vortex identical to the wormhole that tried to swallow him at the other entrance. It seemed the doctor had all his bases covered. He was one sly, genius of a jerk.
Doug went back to tapping at a cell phone, still trying to find a signal. He raised it above his head, all the way up to arm’s length. He craned his neck staring at the screen for a few seconds, then said, “Damn.”
Steve, the moron, held out a dust mop, preparing to shove it into the anomaly.
David blocked his path. “What the hell are you doing?”
Steve growled. “Get out of my way. I’m gonna see where this thing goes.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“At least I’m doing something.”
David stood his ground. “We’ll figure this out. We just need to-”
Steve stabbed the broom handle within an inch of David’s nose. “You’d better step off before you get hurt, Dave.” The boss-employee archetype apparently lost its value the moment panic set in.
“Fine. Do whatever you want.” He walked away shaking his head.
He could’ve stayed, probably should’ve, but there wasn’t time for stupidity. Sam was coming back and David planned to be long gone before he arrived.
He made his way back to the bright corridor, the one that led to the main entrance, looking for anything they might’ve missed.
A hundred feet of slick, reflective tile, six across and ten high. Central air vents every twenty feet or so, at the ceiling and nowhere near big enough for a person to crawl into.
With the lab that far behind David knew there had to be more rooms to the left and right of these walls, rooms he hadn’t yet seen. Offices with windows would’ve been a welcome sight. Or a nice side entrance. He wasn’t picky.
He crossed over the threshold, into Reception.
Ahead, the glass double doors. Beyond them, an odd distortion of light announcing a still raging barrier of hellish intensity. Hot enough to turn dollar bills into fireballs. He moved on.
A large desk occupied the back half of the room with a gold nameplate resting on a raised countertop, letting visitors know the receptionist’s name had been Kellie. Kellie’s monitor still sat on the marble surface behind, although her computer tower had vacated the building.
Beyond that, a previously unnoticed door.
That’s it.
He walked up, checked the knob. It turned.
A rush of excitement flooded as he stepped into a darkened, mothball-reeking frontier. The source of the stench, a coat closet with rows of abandoned metal hangers. Definitely not the escape route he’d been hoping for.
Shit. He backed out, grumbling.
He continued onward to the corner of the room. To his surprise the back wall ended a few feet shy of the wall ahead, which meant-
A pathway leading somewhere new. “Thank you, Jesus,” he said in a lame effort to quote Cathleen. The attempt would’ve amused her. It did him. What failed to amuse was a depressing lack of windows. What were these people, vampires?
A switch prompted overheads to strobe with indecision. After a moment, constant white light. A corridor nearly the length of its parallel cousin came into disappointing view.
He ran a hand along the outer wall. Pale yellow brick, the color of dead parakeets and cloudy piss. There were no exits here. David was really starting to hate scientists.
There were new doorways to the right though, three of them. Offices most likely. And a staircase at the far end.
Better get started. He promised Cathleen he’d be back soon.
First door, restroom. A row of privacy stalls. Four sinks. Four mirrors. A torn open case of toilet paper in the center of the floor, and a busted fluorescent tube.
Second door, a large office. David groped for a light switch. When it clicked he saw two desks. One barren. The other supporting a glowing monitor and a running desktop computer. He went to investigate.
A plastic crate next to the desk held some interesting items. A few college-ruled notebooks, a heap of thumb drives, some loose computer hard drives, a dirty jacket, and a framed certificate of excellence made out to Doctor Samuel R. Jacobson.
What do we have here?
David grabbed a handful of thumb drives and piled them on the desk. Each was labelled with a small white sticker.
QTM EXT FILES.
GRAV-SESSION 1-5.
SIM-CODE.
GRAV-SESSION ANALYSIS.
He slid that first one into a USB port. After a few seconds a window opened on the screen, showing the drive’s contents. Rows of icons filled the space, representing individual files. A few looked different than the others. They appeared to be video files. David double-clicked on the first.
A close-up of Sam’s head and shoulders. He was sitting at a desk, looking frazzled and somewhat insane, as usual. David clicked up the volume.
“Video diary twenty-four. October 14th, 2016.
“Since the dawn of time, man has asked questions about the nature of himself and the world around him. The most important questions, the really big ones, are yet unanswered. Why are we here? What happened before the universe began? What happens at the center of a black hole? Well now, with the power of my new experiment I will begin to answer these questions, and so many more.
I have developed a quantum machine like no other. It’s processing power will change the face of science forever, with the ability to run calculations even the world’s most powerful supercomputers cannot. Hard to believe? I’ve also developed a number of algorithms to prove my claim.
“How does a black hole manipulate spacetime, at the deepest level? What is the ultimate fate of the universe? They say Pi never falls into a repeating pattern, that it truly runs forever. Let’s find out for sure, shall we?” A big grin overcame him.
“With the power of my machine I will…”
Blah, blah, blah. It was obvious Sam really impressed himself. David kept watching anyway.
Minutes turned to hours as video after video played. They were all entries in the doctor’s personal diary, documenting his experiments.
David looked through each and every program, searching for anything useful. As best he could tell, most of them were quantum algorithms.
Maybe they’d be useful later, maybe they wouldn’t. David slipped the thumb drive into his pocket, and moved on to the next.
8
Eddie set a suitcase by the front door, trying to remember where the portable DVD player had ended up. The trunk of the car? Good a bet as any.
The first season of Squaring the Circle was in her room on the dresser. Headphones too. Don’t forget those, otherwise you’ll be stuck listening to the radio- ten hours of classic crapola from the eighties. No thank you.
Ten hours, seventeen minutes to be precise, according to the map Rachel found online. They’d take Interstate 80 the whole way. Almost seven hundred miles.
Eddie commandeered the laptop when Rachel went to pack her own bag.
The trip would consist of three states, beginning with the one they were in, Indiana. They’d be departing from the little town of Munster, home of Three Floyds Brewing Company and their world-famous Dark Lord Imperial Stout. Of course she didn’t need Google for that; she lived there.
Then into Ohio, birthplace of John Glen and Neil Armstrong.
That’s pretty cool, I guess.
And finally, Pennsylvania. Liberty Bell. Hershey candy bars. Amish people.
Not that they’d be stopping to appreciate any of those things.
Rachel came out carrying a backpack. “You ready?”
“Is the DVD player still
in the trunk?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Okay. Let me grab my video.”
“And headphones. I’m not listening to your science garbage all the way to Pennsylvania.”
“I know, Rachel. Jeeze.”
“Just sayin’.”
Eddie grabbed what she needed from her room and went back to the kitchen to find Sis sliding the laptop into the backpack. She stopped at the window and gazed out to Maurice, once again tethered to his tree, a tree that now looked like a skinned carrot.
A gathering of words swelled in her mouth, words she knew she had to say, yet felt all wrong. They’d been eating at her ever since Rachel agreed to go. But could she do it? Could she bring herself to say them? Hell no. But she had to.
“Um, Rachel?”
“Yeah?”
“About the stupid dog…He…He’s coming with us.”
“What? I thought you wanted me to drop him off at the pound.”
“I can’t explain it, and I don’t want to talk about it. He’s coming, so, whatever. Pack some dog food, I guess.”
Rachel was confused. And happy, naturally. Really annoying. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” Angrier than intended, but Rachel would be gloating any second now, so anger was the proper response.
Rachel grinned. “I knew you’d warm up to him.”
Eddie rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”
“He’s adorable, right?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
9
“Hold position,” Garret said into the radio. He turned back to Agent Frederickson, his second in command. “If things go south, you know what to do.”
“This is highly irregular, Sir,” Frederickson said. “Red Pawn is our best field agent. He’s perfectly capable-”
“No.” Garret adjusted his body armor, checked his equipment pack. Grabbed for a helmet. “I said I’m going and that’s the end of it.”
“But protocol dictates-”
“Fuck protocol. You’ve seen the report. You know what they have in there. And we’ve worked together for six years, so you know the deal. I’m the best field agent I have. It’s not you, Frederickson, and it’s certainly not Red fucking Pawn.”