by Patrick Lee
They were six flights down when they heard the concrete fragment snap high above them. They turned in time to see the massive slab, desk and all, plunge through the channel of space defined by the girders. It blasted through the intact pad on level twelve without slowing, and the entire mass fell a hundred feet further to the foundation pit. The impact kicked up a halo of ash and dead leaves.
They stared for less than a second, then continued down the stairs as fast as they could move.
Chapter Fifteen
Three minutes later they were on top of the pile of girders at the southwest corner of the Ritz-Carlton. The rope hung from the iris above, exactly as they’d left it. Bethany went up first, and Travis followed a few feet below. By the time he’d climbed through the iris she was standing at the window with her phone in hand, already going to work.
Travis stared south at the green-tinted highrise while Bethany worked on the name. He looked at the top floor and visualized the desk there in the present, bolted to the concrete through some expensive carpeting or hardwood. Maybe Eldred Warren was sitting there right now, with the same pen in his drawer that Travis now had in his pocket. Literally the same pen. That was a hard concept to get a grasp on.
“He’s not in the federal tax records,” Bethany said. “Not too surprising, someone way up in a company like that. We already know they’re big on secrecy. I’ll try corporate registration in the Caymans.”
Thirty seconds later she came up empty there, too.
“There are lots of other tax shelters to try,” she said, “but before I start on those I’ll pull his social security file. That’ll give us at least some basic info on the guy.”
She navigated for twenty seconds. She pressed a last button and waited for something. She smiled.
Then she frowned.
“What?” Travis said.
“Got it. Only one Eldred Warren with a social security number in the United States.”
“Must be our man, then.”
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me a minute.”
It turned out to be ninety seconds. She spent them navigating to some other information on her phone, and reading it. Her frown deepened as she did.
“It’s the right guy,” she said, “but he’s not going to be any help to us.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t work in that building yet. I’m looking at his blog right now. He graduated number two in his class from Harvard Law School… three months ago. He hasn’t taken a job anywhere yet.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Travis said. “Wouldn’t someone like that have offers waiting for him before he bought his cap and gown?”
“Tons of them, but a guy like that knows he can pick and choose. It’s not unthinkable that he’d take his time. I had a dozen offers myself, and spent two months making up my mind. And this guy’s degree is more versatile than mine was. He’ll have everyone from movie studios to lobbying firms filling up his voice mail these days.”
“All right, so maybe he doesn’t work for this company yet,” Travis said. “But he’s probably in talks with them. We could go have a chat with him, shove a gun in his face if we have to.”
“Not anytime soon, we can’t. According to his last blog post, a few hours ago, he’s on vacation in Japan with his girlfriend.”
Travis sat on the couch and leaned back. He pressed his hands to his eyes. He was tired as hell.
They were at square zero. They had nothing at all to work with. The barrier of open space around the oubliette was as vast as it’d been when they’d first spoken of it.
He looked at his watch. Nine thirty in the morning. Paige had been captive for just shy of ten hours.
Bethany was pacing now. Holding her phone but unable to think of anything to do with it.
Travis closed his eyes again.
Paige wanted them to move on. Wanted them to leave her behind and finish what she’d meant to do herself. She’d said it in almost those words, in her phone call to Bethany. And she’d meant it. That was the way she thought. She had the ability to see the big picture. Six and a half billion lives versus her own. She was lying in that room down the street right now hoping like hell that they wouldn’t risk trying to save her. Hoping they would forget about her and just get to work. And they could do that. They could climb back down the rope right now, into the ruined D.C. They could walk back down Vermont, ignore the remains of the highrise and go another mile to the White House. They could spend days digging in the wreckage there for some kind of clue. And if that search turned up nothing, they could go across the river to the Pentagon and spend weeks. And after a while they wouldn’t have to think about Paige lying in that room, because by then she’d be long gone. She’d be gone by tonight.
The people who’d hit the motorcade had taken her alive because it made sense at the time. They’d been acting on a snap decision, operating with more questions than answers. But that was probably no longer the case. Ten hours was plenty of time to take stock. Plenty of time for them to realize they didn’t need her.
No doubt Paige was thinking the same thing right now. Lying bound, waiting for her captors to settle on the decision. Waiting for it to happen. When it did, she would try not to cry about it. She’d still be holding on to the logic of it all, telling herself that her life was just part of what it cost to get the job done. She would be thinking that very thing when she felt the silencer touch her temple.
“You love her.”
Travis opened his eyes.
Bethany had stopped pacing. She was looking at him.
“You love her,” she said again. “Paige.”
“I knew her for less than a week.”
“That’s long enough.”
“Why do you think I love her?”
“Because you stayed on that concrete pad. Stepping onto it was one thing. But staying on it, after what happened… that was another thing entirely. To do something that insane, you have to care about someone more than you care about your own life. A lot more.”
Travis didn’t reply. He stared ahead at nothing. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t leave her in there.”
“I don’t want to leave her, either. I just don’t know what the next move is.”
Neither of them spoke for the next minute. Travis’s eyes fixed on a spot on the carpet. He stared at it and hardly blinked. He let the edges of his vision blur.
Then he turned and looked at Bethany.
“What was the last thing Paige said to you in that phone call?”
“That you can go through and come back,” she said. “She was just saying it’s safe to go through the opening.”
Travis thought about it. “No, that’s not what she said. Not exactly what she said anyway. Play the recording again.”
Chapter Sixteen
She played it. They listened. They heard the frantic rush of Paige’s voice telling Bethany to go to her residence, to get the entity and get out of Border Town. To use it. To go public with whatever she learned. To get Travis Chase’s help if necessary. Then she said, “Shit, what else… ?” and went silent for a few seconds. Travis caught the sound he remembered from the first time he’d heard the recording: running footsteps, men coming to get her. That sound was all he’d heard on the first listen, at that part of the clip. This time he focused on the other sound, right there beside it in the audio. The more important sound, by far. Paige’s breathing in the absence of her voice. Two breaths, deep and fast. They didn’t shudder on the way out. They seethed. Travis got the sense that however scared Paige was, she was frustrated even more. She was struggling to remember something critical, some detail she needed to tell Bethany in the few seconds she had left. Which was strange, in retrospect: if all Paige needed to say was that a person could step through the projected opening, would that have been hard to remember? Would it have even been necessary? Wouldn’t Paige expect them to figure that out for themselves?
&n
bsp; A second later they heard Bethany’s voice on the recording: “What’s happening? Where are you?”
Paige’s voice came back in, louder and more intense than before. “You can take it through and still come back! You can take it through!”
Then it was over.
In the silence Travis looked at Bethany.
They both looked at the black cylinder, still lying in the armchair, still switched on. The iris stood open to the forest and the overcast sky above it. The manila rope lay in tangles on the carpet where they’d left it after pulling it up.
“Take it through,” Bethany said, turning the phrase over like a found artifact. “Does she mean the cylinder? Take the cylinder through the iris?”
Travis stared at the thing. It was hard to imagine what else Paige could have meant.
“It would be easy to do,” he said. “Switch it off with the delay, and then carry the cylinder through the iris during the minute and a half it stays open.”
“You’d have to be out of your mind,” Bethany said. “What happens when the iris shuts behind you? Now you’re stuck seventy years in the future, with a machine that can only take you seventy years further into the future. You’d never get home.”
“What if it doesn’t work like that? What if turning it on in the future just opens the iris back to the present time? Like a toggle. Back and forth.”
“How would it know to do that?” Bethany said. “How would it know it was in the future?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s something simple. Maybe it senses when it’s taken through the iris, and switches itself into reverse. We’ll never know how it works, but think of what we just heard. Paige said you can take it through and come back. She knew a lot more about this thing than we do.”
He watched Bethany mull it over. Watched her warm to it.
“The logic adds up,” she said. “Someone built this thing for a purpose. I can’t see the use of something that just leapfrogs you further and further ahead in time, and never lets you come back. Forward and back makes more sense.”
“It also explains why the cylinders came as a pair,” Travis said. “Think about it. Who knows what this kind of machine was meant for, but we can imagine any number of things. It could be some military scouting tool. Use it to survey the aftermath of a war you haven’t even fought yet. Hell, it could be farm equipment. Say there’s some high-value crop that takes seven decades to mature. Sow the seeds, step through the iris and reap the rewards right away. But whatever the use, its makers had a reason to allow the delayed shutoff. That way you can take the cylinder with you when you go through the iris. Not hard to imagine why they’d want to. Leaving it behind, switched on, is a major vulnerability. Look at the precautions we had to take, setting it up so nothing could get at it from the other side. But here’s the thing: taking it with you would be risky too. Extremely risky, in fact. Picture yourself putting this thing to casual use. Like it’s a socket wrench or a screwdriver. You’re using it all day long, going back and forth between two points in time, hauling food supplies or weapons or whatever. Can you think of the mistake you might make? It would be the easiest thing to do, and if you did it you’d be in a world of trouble.”
Bethany’s eyes narrowed. She thought about it. “You could accidentally leave the cylinder behind. Leave it on the other side of the iris when it closed.”
Travis nodded. “It would happen one of two ways. Either you leave it in the future, in which case there’s no way to retrieve it except to sit on your ass and wait several decades, or else you leave it in the past and trap yourself in the future, in which case you’re absolutely screwed.”
Bethany walked over to the armchair. Stared down at the cylinder.
“You’d want a backup copy,” she said.
“You’d need a backup copy. Like a skydiver needs a reserve chute. Because some mistakes you can’t afford to make even once. You’d have a duplicate cylinder, and you’d strap it to your back and never take it off, at least not while you were using the first one.”
Bethany met his eyes. “It makes sense that Paige and the others would’ve figured this out. In the desert they had both cylinders. They could have tested this idea without any risk of getting stranded. Just leave one of them switched on, and use the other one to find out whether or not the iris brings you back to the present time.”
Travis nodded. It all added up.
A silence drew out.
“We could be wrong about this,” Bethany said.
“We could be very wrong.”
“Just plain old wrong would be bad enough. If we try this and it doesn’t work, we’re stuck over there.”
“If we try it and it does work,” Travis said, “then we can take the cylinder into the future, carry it up to the ninth floor of that ruin on M Street, and step back into the present time right inside the room where they’re holding Paige.”
The idea seemed to wash over Bethany like a breeze on a spring day.
“Nice,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
They repositioned the cylinder so that it projected the iris to a different part of the hotel room—closer to the building’s interior, and away from the part that’d collapsed in the future. They found a spot that would allow them to step through onto a solid girder in the ruins. There was a sturdy oak limb hanging over it, which would offer easy transit to the ground.
Travis stepped through onto the beam. Bethany stood in the room, next to the cylinder. She put her finger over the third button and looked at him.
“Say when,” she said.
Travis looked at his watch. The second hand was ten clicks from the top of the dial. When it was three clicks shy he said, “Now.”
Bethany pressed the button. The cone of light flared and then died. The iris stayed open. Bethany lifted the cylinder and carried it to the opening. She passed it through to Travis and he cradled it tightly against himself.
Then Bethany reached through, grabbed the oak branch, and pulled herself onto the girder.
“What are you doing?” Travis said.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to be over here too. We don’t both have to risk this. If we’re wrong, and there’s no way back, you might as well be in the present.”
“Why?” she said. “I’d be stuck there without the cylinder. What would I do?”
“Live the life of Renee Turner. Party like hell. Anything you want.”
“Yeah. For four months. Knowing the whole time that the world’s going to end.”
“It’s probably longer than we’d make it on this side.” He looked at his watch. Sixty seconds left. “This is stupid. You should wait in the room.”
“It’s the broken concrete all over again.”
“Yeah, it is, and you don’t have to be on it.”
She turned to face him, leaning on the branch between them. The overcast had thinned, and in the brighter light he saw her eyes more clearly than he had before now. He’d thought they were brown. Really they were green, but so dark they were almost black.
“You’re willing to risk being left alone in the whole world, for the sake of someone you care about,” she said. “And I think someone willing to do that shouldn’t have to. If we get stuck here, we’ll find ways to pass the time.”
He held her gaze. It occurred to him that what she was doing was about as kind a gesture as a human could make to another. For a long moment he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Then he said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He glanced at his watch. “Thirty seconds.”
She nodded. Swallowed hard.
They both turned and stared through the iris. Through the windows on the far side of the hotel room they could see the city in the present day. The orderly buildings and the gleam of sunlight on glass. The traffic flowing smoothly through the circle down the block. People on the sidewalks in shorts and T-shirts. Parents walking with kids in the light of
a summer morning.
“For all that’s wrong with the world,” Travis said, “it really is something.”
In the corner of his eye he saw Bethany nod.
And then the iris slipped shut in front of them, and left them staring at precisely the same angle on the ruined city. A perfect superimposition from one image to the other. From solid buildings to their leaning skeletons. From the bustling street to the decaying one. The effect was more powerful than Travis had expected. He heard Bethany exhale softly beside him and knew it’d been the same for her.
Travis moved ten feet along a girder that T-boned into the one they’d first stepped onto. He found a position from which the cylinder would project the iris to more or less the same spot it’d just vanished from. Bethany, on the first girder, stood clear.
Travis wondered what it would look like if they were wrong, and the iris opened onto a Washington, D.C. seven decades even further on. The frames of the buildings would be long gone. The roads, too. It might be hard to tell there’d been a city there at all.
He leveled the cylinder like a weapon.
He pressed the on button.
The light cone flared.
The iris appeared.
Bethany didn’t look through it. She looked at him instead.
“Tell me,” she said.
Part II - Umbra
Chapter Eighteen
Paige lay bound, waiting for it to happen.
Waiting for the end.
Every few minutes she heard footsteps approach in the corridor, only to pass by and fade away. She waited for the footsteps that would approach but not fade, and the click of the latch that would tell her it was all over with.
She rolled onto her side and faced the windows. She could see up Vermont Avenue. Lots of people out. She saw a red convertible pull into the Ritz-Carlton. Saw a young couple get out. Impossible to see their expressions at this distance, but they had to be smiling. They left the car to a valet and disappeared into the building.