Winston considered speaking a reply, but the idea of trying to force words along the tedious path from mind to lungs to vocal cords and through the various contortions of his tongue…
he gushed.
Winston felt Bernie smile reassuringly, which was a very strange mental interpretation, because the alien’s face didn’t move at all.
As Winston watched, golden light poured around Amanda, seeming to bend about her like flowing water around a stone. She moved with utter slowness. One hand brushed across her pants, and Winston watched the ripple of its impact form a wave in the fabric. Her eyebrows crept upward at a glacial pace as she remained in that moment of first recognition, and her lips ever so slowly started to separate, preparing to speak at some distant time. Winston hoped he could remember how she looked in this instant — bright-eyed, intense, and purposeful — for the rest of his life.
An edge of sternness seeped into Bernie’s tone.
The idea that Bledsoe might play a part in stopping global annihilation rather than causing it seemed far-fetched.
Winston felt an electric shock of embarrassment. And to think he’d been worried about cameras in his room.
That thought led to another realization as he studied his mother.
Well, that was encouraging. That meant even if all Winston’s actions weren’t new, at least he was on the outer edge of being predictable. For some reason, the Omega Mesh, and thus Bernie with it, wanted him to play things safe and not do anything different. That just didn’t make sense.
The thought of repeatedly going through the past week of his life, with all its insanity and loss, made Winston’s mind reel. How could that possibly be?
Winston forced himself to ask the next question, although he feared the answer, knowing that it ultimately ended with him being here right now in a different iteration.
Winston felt Bernie resist answering, but the alien said,
The alien paused for a moment, then said,
If Winston had been able to feel his mouth, he was sure it would have dropped open. Two hundred and sixty times he had fought Bledsoe and lost his mom, and presumably Shade and Alyssa with her.
<2441.>
Bernie considered the term.
Bernie waited until Winston connected the dots.
Winston made sure to broadcast his indignation.
said Winston.
Winston couldn’t imagine how Bernie and everyone around him must have felt. Perhaps like trapped ghosts, Winston thought, stuck in a past they didn’t mean to inhabit.
Winston had no reply. The world was going to end, and if anyone interfered with Bledsoe, it was only going to end sooner. He had already won.
***
Suddenly, the world snapped back into its regular solidity as Bernie broke off their telepathic connection. Amanda stepped into the chamber and quickly closed the door behind her. Winston felt the weight and drag of his body return. Never before had he thought of himself as large or heavy, but in that moment he felt like he must weight a thousand pounds. As his mother approached, Winston clung to Bernie’s cage a bit longer, just to make sure his body could still support itself.
“Sorry,” said Amanda as she approached. “I came as quickly as I could.”
She reached into her pants pocket and drew out a small, folded brown bag. She handed it to Winston, the hesitation clear in her body language. Peering inside, Winston found three small vials of clear liquid, each with a black rubber stopper.
“No foam?” he asked. “Nothing to protect them?”
Amanda raised her hands and glanced down at her body. “I didn’t have a lot of room for bulk storage.”
Winston flinched at the rebuke. Of course, she had done her best.
“Sorry. Of course. Thank you.”
Winston refolded the bag and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket, not trusting it to survive getting banged about in his backpack.
Amanda glanced from Winston to Bernie and back, the doubt clear on her face. “I’m taking a massive risk giving this to you. Please tell me you’re going to do the right thing with it.”
He tried to choose his words carefully. “I’m going to try. There’s…a guy. In the future. He’s got some crazy idea about going back and starting a nuclear war with the Russians to make America great again, or some ridiculous thing.”
“America isn’t great in 2013?” Amanda asked.
“What? No, it’s fine. I honestly have no idea what the guy is babbling about. The point is, he only wants to be in charge and make America do whatever he wants.”
She drew a deep breath, considering. “And why do you need the QVs?”
“Because…” Winston felt a memory of Shade poking him in the chest and couldn’t help but smile. “Because I need help. I thought I could do this on my own, but I can’t. Which is also why Bernie is going to help me.”
Winston swallowed as his jaw tightened.
Winston couldn’t hide his outrage as he spun to face the alien.
“What?” Amanda asked as she saw the change come over Winston. “What is it?”
Winston felt backed into a corner with no acceptable options. He would not become Bledsoe’s lackey, and he would not give up his mother to an even worse fate under Bledsoe’s thumb. But if he tried to do anything other than what Bernie said, the Omega Mesh would simply reset everything — and the people he loved would remain dead.
“Nothing,” said Winston. “It’s fine.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply.
He was right. It was the drive to have that family that made him leave his mom in that motel room. All he would ever have was a ghost, and the knowledge drove a spike deep into his heart.
Winston’s imagination couldn’t find any alternative. All he could picture was himself falling through the sky as the plane exploded above him.
He nodded once.
Winston heard a faint tone as Bernie shifted them to a group frequency.
“We are,” she said solemnly. “After all, it’s not that big of a leap from top-secret serum theft to covertly detonating a nuclear bomb. My parents would be so proud.”
Winston grinned. That was the mom he knew. “Speaking of which, assuming everything goes as planned, can you maybe let me out a little more as I’m growing up?”
The question seemed to perplex Amanda. “I…have no idea. Should I?”
“Definitely.”
She gave a noncommittal “hm,” then said, “The key.”
Winston thought she was going to give him the key to getting let out more often. Instead, she crossed to the cage winch control and reached down, running a hand between the machine and the wall. Winston heard a metallic jingle, and her hand reappeared bearing a metal ring with two large keys. She held them up toward Bernie.
“Ready to be free?” she asked.
The alien cocked his head a bit to the side.
Amanda’s expression dimmed as she lowered the keys. “I suppose you’re right. Well…” She jangled the keys at Winston, then replaced them on their hidden hook. “You know where they are.”
“I understand,” she said.
“How will you do that?” Amanda asked, echoing Winston’s own thought.
said Bernie.
“Ha!” said Winston. “Welcome to the party, Mom.”
Bernie made use of his connection to the Omega Mesh to search the corridors nearest to his holding cell. When he was confident that Amanda would have a reasonable amount of time, he gave her the all clear and urged her to hurry. As they stood by the chamber door, Amanda paused to peer one last time into Winston’s eyes, as if searching for herself or Claude in them. She set one hand lightly on her belly, offered a slight smile, and gave Winston a quick kiss on the cheek.
“This is awkward,” she said.
“You’re telling me.”
“I’ll see you in…” She tried to puzzle it out, then laughed. “I have no idea when. But I will see you.”
He leaned forward and gave her a hug. “You will. Especially if you let me out to play more often.”
“Don’t be a brat.”
She hugged him back and, without another word, turned and slipped away.
Winston began to object, paused as he stared at Bernie, then leaned his head back and said dully, “Well, crap.”
Bernie held his hand toward Winston through the bars. Winston returned to him, and
the alien rested his fingers atop Little e, allowing his fingertips to touch the back of Winston’s hand.
Winston took a deep breath and licked his lips as the Alpha Machine’s controls came alive and shifted in his vision. “And then?”
20
Countdown Crisis
Winston emerged from his hail of sparks and, for a moment, thought nothing had changed. Bernie’s cage remained before him. The alien appeared unchanged, save for that his hand was now withdrawn and at his side. He stood watching Winston intently.
Then Winston heard the alarm. And smelled the smoke. Just beyond the closed chamber door, Winston heard a man running and shouting, “Is anyone here?! Anyone left?!”
Winston couldn’t hide his shock at the idea that his parents would go on such a rampage.
“Why would—?”
The bomb. Of course.
“Now? Oh, my God, Bernie — the bomb thing is happening now?”
Winston practically dove to fetch the key from behind the winch console. “What about you? Wasn’t anyone going to move you in case of an emergency like this?”
Bernie gave a slight hunch of his shoulders.
Winston opened the lock and crossed to the door with Bernie.
“So, if Area X is evacuated, why do I still hear people?”
Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy Page 77