PRESLEY ○ 9:33am
Her Glock, empty.
Her axe, too heavy to swing.
Fabler forced the Bulldog revolver into her hand, along with the bead chain of speed strips.
“I know you’re exhausted, Presley.”
“Concentrate on what it is you want. Concentrate on what you’re fighting for.”
Presley closed her eyes, expecting to think of herself.
But the image in Presley’s mind surprised her.
A grey bore down on her, jabbing the prod into Presley’s side.
She barely felt the pain.
“This is for Brooklyn, you son of a bitch.”
And she leapt on the grey and rode it to the ground and shot it in the neck until its head came off.
THE WATCHER ○ 9:34+am
Surveying the carnage, double-checking the battery reserves, the Watcher makes a decision. He rubs his exocrine gland and speaks through his team.
“RETREAT. I AM KICKING THEM OUT OF THE VOID.”
“What about your revenge?” Mu seems to have a mocking lilt to his voice. “What about seeing Mr. Fabler’s head grafted to the Experiment? What about that debt paradox story?”
The Watcher chooses not to answer. Instead, he energizes the ion beam and directs the negative matter polarity.
FABLER ○ 9:34+am to 9:36am
A light appeared in the darkness, and the greys headed for it.
Fabler took two steps in their direction—
—and then his feet came off the ground.
The greys were floating as well. But while they were pulled toward the light, Fabler and Presley were being pushed away from it.
Fabler twisted his body around, seeking his dropped backpack.
“Presley! Throw it to me!”
As she floated next to the pack, she snagged one of the arm straps.
“Throw it!”
Of the many items his pack contained, one might be able to help him. If it worked, he could follow the greys, while Presley was safely ejected.
Presley swung the pack above her head like a lasso—which looked pretty easy to do in zero gravity—and let it fly in Fabler’s direction.
It worked. The bag floated toward him.
But Presley floated away from him.
Fabler kept his flashlight on her, his stomach dropping as she frantically clawed the air, trying to grab anything to slow her down.
His backpack reached him, excruciatingly slow, and when it hit him it pushed him even further away. Fabler dug into the main portion and stuck his whole arm inside—
—grabbing the Pocket Fisherman.
The retro As-Seen-On-TV item, which Presley questioned weeks ago, had been spooled with forty pound Dyneema braid. He took a crankbait out of the slot in the handle, a weighted lure with dual treble hooks, and attached it to the steel leader on the end of the line.
It wasn’t strong enough to hold the full weight of a person.
Unless, because of some perversion of physics, the person had no weight.
One of Fabler’s failsafes, if he somehow lost his grip on one of the handrails he’d installed all over the cabin. He’d practiced with the miniature pole and reel combination so often he could cast the lure into a coffee mug from ten meters away.
Aiming for Presley, Fabler pressed the thumb brake, reared back, and let the bait fly.
He missed. By a lot.
The lure didn’t travel as far as it should have, and once again directions had reversed themselves, turning left into right.
Fabler reeled in, judged the distance.
He aimed—
—flicked back the lure—
—cast out—
—the hooks tumbled through space—
—snagging Presley by the boot.
“Stay still. I’m coming.”
As he reeled in, closing the gap between them, Fabler worked out a plan.
Fabler reeled in as fast as he dared, slowing down as he caught up to her.
“Mr. Fabler, you are irritating me.”
Close enough to see Presley’s face.
“I tried to release you both. But you persisted. Your determination has aided me in a decision, Mr. Fabler. I shall keep Ms. Presley. She shall meet the same fate as your wife, Lori.”
Fabler and Presley locked eyes.
“I won’t let them take you.”
She nodded.
Fabler stretched out, his fingers gripping the bloody sole of Presley’s boot.
“Goodbye, Mr. Fabler.”
Then came a brilliant flash of light—
—and Fabler found himself on the ground.
The lawn, to be more specific.
The torn-up circle of the lawn in his yard, still warm and steaming.
The Pocket Fisherman still in his hand.
The line broken.
Fabler quickly got up and turned a full circle, dropping his KRISS and his backpack.
Then he fell to his knees and screamed into the empty sky.
PRESLEY ○ 9:36am to 9:36+am
For a wild moment, it seemed like Fabler might save her with that ridiculous miniature fishing combo.
But in a flash of light and an anticlimactic poof of mist, Fabler vanished.
Light-headed, hyperventilating, Presley fought against her body, refusing to pass out, insisting on staying conscious to experience whatever came next.
It became light, and dark, at the same time, and Presley felt like she was being squeezed. No pain, but the uncomfortable sensation of being flattened, like a pancake.
Disorientation, dizziness, and an odd, introspective sense of eternity.
Stretching.
Squeezing.
A smell of ozone.
The experience didn’t last long, and when reality solidified Presley had crossed a glowing threshold and materialized in a squalid, ugly room, the
walls brown and shapeless, furniture consisting of melted mounds and slabs.
Surrounded by greys.
Outnumbered, fifteen to one, Presley pulled herself off the floor and attacked.
Some of the aliens didn’t wear armor, and they fell quickly to gun and axe. She dropped four of them before being pinned by a mass of grey bodies.
And then something soft and warm snaked around her neck.
And then the pain hit with the force of an electric locomotive and everything went black.
GRIM ○ 9:38+am
“Presley. Please wake up.”
When her eyes fluttered open, Grim’s relief was so palpable he began to laugh.
“Are you okay?” A ridiculous question, considering the circumstances. Strapped to floating gurneys, surrounded by greys, and Presley wore one of the terrible pain collars.
When she looked at him, her features softened. “Apparently Fabler isn’t crazy.”
“I’m so sorry I got you into this. I didn’t know.”
“Under the circumstances, we’re going to have to renegotiate our deal.”
“What are you thinking? Time and a half?”
“Seems fair.”
They shared a smile. Grim saw Doruk and Kadir being brought into the room, but no signs of his best friend.
“Fabler?”
“They sent him back, I think.”
“He’s alive?”
Presley nodded.
“He won’t abandon us, Presley. He won’t stop. Ever.”
“I know. But we can’t count on him, Grim.”
“I’m not relying on Fabler, Presley. I’ve got a better plan.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m one hundred percent relying on you.”
She snorted.
“I’m serious, Presley. You’re the strongest, smartest, bravest person I’ve ever met. You’ll figure something out.”
“You really want to flirt right now?”
“Not flirting. Dead serious.”
Presley looked away. When she looked back, her eyes had become glassy. “Thanks, Grim. Maybe we can do this. Together.”
Then their gurneys began to move.
Grim stretched out his fingers, but missed touching Presley’s by inches as they were levitated into the unknown.
THE WATCHER ○ 9:40+pm
The troublemaker has been ejected. But the cost has been steep.
The Watcher views the casualty report with mild irritation.
Five of the guards sustained fatal injuries that defied reviving. Their central nervous systems will be harvested and processed to restock the dwindling supplies of Reformant and Elixir. The others survived with negligible permanent damage.
The Experiment fared the worst. Half the heads, sixteen limbs, eighteen major organs, and dozens of assorted glands, all damaged beyond repair. It lives, but at only forty-three percent of what it once was.
“How is the Experiment?”
Not for the first time, the Watcher wonders if Mu can read minds.
“Poor. A tragedy for all who contributed to the cause.”
“I’ve been keeping tabs on that with interest.”
The Watcher hides his surprise. There are purposely no cameras anywhere in the compound, so Mu cannot tap into them and see what is going on. The creation of the exocrine gland, which facilitated the remote operation of organo-electronics and plastiform biopolymers using pheromone secretions rather than radio signals, is another safeguard.
“May I ask how you have been keeping tabs, when you are in a cage, hanging on the wall?”
“I pick up things, here and there. You’ve done a commendable job of keeping me locked up, but it is impossible to contain what you cannot possibly understand. You’d have a better chance at learning contractions. During all of your gene manipulation, I fear you may have spliced out your apostrophe codon.”
This is an unwinnable argument, so the Watcher moves along. “Do you have anything to offer, other than making fun of my speech?”
“You can repair flesh. You can reconstruct and reattach. But you cannot create what is missing. You can only replace with spare parts.”
“Free me.”
“Obviously the key is neuromelanin. We just need to crack the code.”
“If you say so.”
Verbal for less than an hour, and Mu is already growing tiresome.
“BRING IN THE NEW VOLUNTEERS.”
Mu is delightfully silent during the few minutes it takes to bring in the four people that have been captured.
Guards push Mr. Pilgrim, Ms. Presley, Mr. Kadir, and Mr. Doruk into the control room on plastiform ion gurneys, tilted into upright positions. They have been stripped to their underclothes. The woman appears defiant, as does the gene donor. The two other men are semi-conscious.
All are a delightful shade of pink.
The Watcher picks up the sculpting laser scalpel and replaces the Elixir vial with one half-full of Reformant. Then he walks to the volunteers.
He uses the sculptor to revive the bigger man first, giving him an injection of serum and activating the self-adjusting DNA laser by stimulating the exocrine gland on his wrist.
When the big one has been roused, the Watcher wakes the smaller man. The sadist.
“Are we all paying attention?”
Then he pauses, slurping up their fear like cockroach slurry.
PRESLEY ○ 9:42+pm
Presley’s gurney appeared to be 3D printed around her like solid rope, her limbs partially sunk into a monochrome, form-fitting, floating rectangle made of super-strong plastic.
Stripped of her armor and weapons, Presley wore just a sports bra and panties.
Presley’s main concern—the grey in the silver robe—peered at them like a microbiologist examining a not-particularly-interesting colony of bacteria. Like the guards, he had an oversized head, large eyes that reminded Presley of a praying mantis, and a bad case of facial boils.
To Presley’s left, Kadir and Doruk were encased in plastic gurneys of their own. They, too, had been stripped to their skivvies, Doruk sporting a muscular frame going to flab like many aging superstar wrestlers, and Kadir looking eerily like something fat and lumpy from a Tolkien story.
Doruk’s face projected confusion.
Kadir looked pissed.
To Presley’s right…
His intense stare pierced Presley and spoke volumes.
Grim winked. “We’re getting out of here, Presley.”
“When you two are done making goo-goo eyes at one another, I can tell you why you are here.”
Presley felt the same slow roll of shame as she did back in her school days, when a teacher put her on the spot for talking in class or passing a note.
And, like those school days, Presley reacted the same way. With sass.
“Let me clue you in to how this story ends, Watcher. My gun, your head.�
��
The Watcher’s face twitched
FABLER ○ 9:37am
After running inside the cabin, Fabler located his cell phone. He dialed, each unanswered ring lasting an unbearably long time.
“Yeah?”
“Hardigan, it’s Fabler.”
“Fabler? Oh, yeah. How is that body armor working out?”
“I need two M16s and four cans of ammo.”
Silence followed.
“Hardigan, you still there?”
“Fabler… this isn’t the sort of conversation to have over an open line.”
“This is an emergency. Can you get them?”
“You know the NSA records all calls, don’t you?”
“I’ll be over in half an hour with enough gold to choke a horse. Don’t let me down.”
Fabler rushed to his computer, switched it on, and then went into the Secret Room.
He scanned the printed photos on his wall, checking the handwritten dates under the female faces, looking for one in particular, one he remembered well.
Fabler hurried back to his PC, searching Google for articles about the missing woman.
Holly vanished from her home in San Diego. Her brother, Jake, reported a bright light.
Another Google search estimated the drive time from Wichita to San Diego.
Fabler did a quick dash around the cabin, gathering everything he needed, and then ran to his Jeep.
KADIR ○ 9:44+am
Watching Presley scream and thrash in agony turned on Kadir something fierce.
What Happened to Lori Page 42