Quantum Lens

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Agreed,” said Al Yad happily. “But don’t worry. There is nowhere in the entire world Craft can hide from this particular assassination attempt.”

  59

  After Al Yad’s brief call with Turco, he left Alyssa alone in the room. Alone with her fears. And her regrets.

  She sobbed quietly for fifteen minutes. She hadn’t cried in years before meeting Brennan Craft, save for during an occasional movie designed to evoke this reaction, but since this time she had shed tears more often than she had been forced unconscious.

  She was almost grateful for the leg irons and handcuffs. Otherwise, she might well have curled up into a fetal position, trying to shield herself from a too-harsh reality, and beginning to lose her grip on it.

  She lost track of time as she relived the events of the past few months, playing them over and over, looking for something she could have done differently.

  But there was nothing.

  Bren and Al Yad had both ruthlessly, and brilliantly, used her as a pawn to serve their own ends. Al Yad would win this particular game, but they both deserved to lose. If only there was a way to achieve this outcome. But there wasn’t. Al Yad’s connection to the zero point field would be severed for eight hours, and there was nothing she could do to restore it within the six hour period he would be vulnerable to the effects of the quantum mirror device.

  Finally, an eternity in hell later, Al Yad reentered the room, his sprits as high as hers were low. He quickly established a video connection with Adam Turco. The wheels of the plane Craft was in had just touched down in San Diego, and the screen facing Al Yad’s bed was now showing what Turco was seeing through his binoculars.

  The sleek white Gulfstream taxied for several minutes and then came to a stop on an expansive field of concrete, riddled with dozens of small, private aircraft that were parked there, an eclectic assortment of small jets and propeller planes.

  Brennan Craft appeared at the door of the jet as the stairs telescoped down to touch the concrete. Not that Craft needed stairs, any more than he had really needed a plane. His image was crystal clear in Turco’s binoculars.

  Al Yad beamed upon seeing him standing there, his absolute hatred of Craft fueling his euphoria now. He stared at the time on the bottom of the screen and said, “Mark two.”

  Once again the cult leader gasped, even louder than before. This time he fell to his knees as the subconscious tendrils he had planted deep within the zero point field were ripped from their moorings.

  “If you want the video of your hit-team’s handiwork,” said Turco. “They’d better strike in the next two minutes. Once Craft is inside the building he’ll be out of my view.”

  “Don’t worry,” replied Al Yad, rising weakly back to a standing position with a phone now in his hand. “The strike will occur in approximately one minute.”

  Al Yad carefully dialed the number Martin had texted to Alyssa, looking to be in a state of absolute ecstasy. He established a connection with Craft’s quantum mirror device, wherever it was hidden, and entered the final activation code, pausing before the last digit.

  “Allah Akbar,” he said softly. God is great. And then entered the last of the code.

  Alyssa watched Brennan Craft on the screen in horror, but couldn’t look away. According to Eben’s message, some sort of lethal matrix would soon be racing across the globe at incomprehensible speed. And the instant it crossed Bren’s path, the defensive mechanisms that had protected him so well would turn on him, destroying him utterly.

  “Any second now,” Al Yad assured Adam Turco as Craft stepped off the lowest stair and onto the concrete field.

  Alyssa gasped as a massive explosion filled the screen. It was so violent that even the transmitted video of the event was nearly deafening and seemed to shake the entire room.

  And Brennan Craft was at the very heart of it.

  The man Alyssa had once loved had erupted into a furious orange fireball before her very eyes.

  60

  The wall of flame shot a hundred feet into the cloudless San Diego sky, and a mini-mushroom cloud stretched even higher. Large pieces of the Gulfstream and small pieces of Craft’s body flew toward Turco’s binoculars, and if it had been filmed in 3-D, Alyssa might have ducked.

  One second Al Yad’s monitor was showing a living Brennan Craft, and the next, nothing but charred fragments of his body, a gaping hole in the concrete on which he had been standing, and a Gulfstream jet that had been obliterated. Five planes parked nearby had also burst into flames. As expected, the energy from the zero point field had traveled along Craft’s mental connection, bypassing his shield, which had done nothing to protect him.

  “Allah Akbar,” whispered Al Yad again, closing his eyes and basking in the glory of this moment. No man had ever looked more blissful, or at peace.

  “Holy shit!” screamed the voice of Adam Turco, and the screen went blank as he turned off the binoculars. “Too much heat,” he said, and his breathing suggested he was running from the proximity of the blast. “What the fuck did you use on him? Napalm?”

  “Your remaining fee will be wired to you shortly,” said Al Yad, ignoring him. “This concludes our business.”

  Al Yad ended the connection and turned to Alyssa, who was hunkered down as low on the chair as it would allow, her eyes sunken and lifeless. She had passed her threshold. She was now broken, her will to live extinguished.

  “Praise be to Allah,” he said. “And now you see his true greatness. He caused a filthy Jew whore to be the instrument I needed to defeat my nemesis, the personification of Satan on Earth. Allah was testing me. To learn if I would do what needed to be done, make use of the likes of you, as distasteful as this was, to achieve my goal.”

  He paused. “Now the only question I have is what to do with you? I can keep you alive so you can witness the world become cleansed and purified. No part of the globe shall be spared. But I will begin with two countries, in particular, that I shall destroy entirely. Would you care to guess?”

  Alyssa didn’t respond. She had become numb, walling her mind off from horrors that she could no longer bear. His words barely registered.

  “No? Then I’ll tell you. America and Israel. I shall destroy them both. Wipe them off the face of the earth. Literally. I’m aware there are some pious Muslims in these countries, but this can’t be helped. They have sinned by living in a cesspool of iniquity. By living among filthy infidels. And they shall pay the price.”

  He paused. “It is tempting to keep you alive, so you can see what you helped bring about. But I also have two other options. I can kill you now. Or I can have my men rape you and tear you to pieces.”

  Alyssa’s eyes were rolled up in her head and they were no longer in focus as her mind desperately retreated from reality. She was aware of a sound coming from behind her, of the door opening, but she was far too numb to turn.

  She vaguely caught a horrified expression come over Al Yad’s face. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

  But while her addled mind was still processing this strange sight, Al Yad collapsed to the floor, screaming, his skull crushed like a cracked walnut, trailing blood and brain matter behind it.

  What the hell?

  Alyssa couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. She had believed in Al Yad’s invulnerability for so long, his collapse refused to fully register.

  What kind of cruel joke was this? Had she finally gone mad?

  Then a man rushed to her side, his eyes roving over her body frantically, assessing her condition. His expression morphed from one of panic to relief as he concluded that she had not been injured.

  Alyssa Aronson had become Alice in Wonderland, finally completing her full immersion in the impossible world found through the looking glass.

  Because the man was Brennan Craft.

  And he was wearing the uniform of a Colonel in the US Air Force.

  61

  Craft leaned in to try to hold and comfort the shell-shocked women that Alyssa A
ronson had become, but she shrank away in horror. He looked hurt and deeply saddened, but not surprised.

  He walked the few yards to where Al Yad had collapsed on the floor and checked for a pulse. He knelt beside his vanquished enemy, and his face bloomed into the same display of ecstasy and relief Alyssa had seen on Al Yad’s face only minutes earlier.

  “We did it,” he said triumphantly. “We ended this threat that I created. You’ve ended it, Alyssa. I’ve turned his brain to liquid, so there will be no coming back.”

  Alyssa’s expression was totally blank. She might have been a zombie for all the emotion she displayed.

  Craft removed the keys to her cuffs and leg irons from Al Yad’s robe and gently freed her. She didn’t protest as he escorted her to the white couch and helped her seat herself.

  “I can explain,” said Craft, backing away from the couch but still facing her. “I owe you that much.” He shook his head. “ I owe you everything. And if afterwards, you never want to talk to me again, I promise to leave you alone.”

  Alyssa nodded. So Craft had won after all. A surprise checkmate in the eleventh hour. But it didn’t matter. The results would be largely the same, no matter who was the victor between the two.

  But as Alyssa looked into his eyes, she saw the old Brennan Craft. The kind, gentle, compassionate man. Fully rational. It was this, more than anything else, that revived her sprit, thawed out her faculties so that she could be coherent, could think and feel once again.

  “First,” said Craft. “You should know that Eben Martin is alive and well.”

  Could it be? thought Alyssa hopefully.

  Why not? She had traveled so far down the rabbit hole at this point, anything was possible.

  “And I’ve misled you about some important things from the beginning. But I felt it was necessary.”

  “Like the existence of your quantum mirror device?” she said accusingly, finally coming back to life.

  “There is no quantum mirror device,” said Craft.

  “Why are you still lying to me?”

  “I’m not,” insisted Craft, shaking his head vigorously. “The device was a bluff. The story I told you about the emergence of Omar Haddad to near omnipotence was accurate. He did kill everyone I was working with. And he was seconds away from killing me. And prior to this, when it became clear to me he was a runaway train, I did try to invent a quantum mirror device to stop him.”

  Craft paused, remembering. “But I failed,” he continued. “Not only failed, but actually proved mathematically that such a device could never be built. But with only seconds left before Omar broke through my shield, I had the inspiration to use this as a bluff. I had worked on it enough to be very convincing about it.”

  Alyssa just stared at him, unblinking. Too much had happened for her to possibly digest it all.

  “Let me go back to the beginning and work forward,” said Craft. “I realized just before he was about to beat me that this would be the perfect bluff. I could keep him from killing me, and threaten to kill him if he became a one-man weapon of mass destruction. If I had a device that could kill him, he knew I would use it. He had just slaughtered my entire group. But this fictional quantum mirror device I described to him gave me a lethal weapon to threaten him with, and at the same time a credible reason why I would only use it as a last resort. Because it would cause my death as well.

  “But I didn’t know how long this bluff would hold. And with my feeble abilities, I was vulnerable, as you know. Who knew when he would call my bluff? Or just destroy a country or two because he couldn’t help himself? So my original plan was as I described it to you. Recruit you to help me get to his level. So I would be a better deterrent, and even possibly kill him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? About the device, and about it being a bluff?”

  “I had planned to tell you about the device initially. To help you understand what was holding Al Yad in check. But I had already decided I could never tell you it wasn’t real. If you were ever caught and questioned, I couldn’t risk Al Yad learning it was a bluff.”

  “So what changed?”

  “After we left the hospital together, I listened to the recording of your interrogation. And I heard about your nocebo work. Work that I wasn’t familiar with. It blew me away. I almost fell off my seat when I heard you describe it.”

  Alyssa remembered being in the car while he listened to the recording through earbuds, and seeing him light up like a neon sign at one point.

  “When I learned of this, my mind began to work overtime. I soon realized two things. One, I couldn’t tell you the mythical tale of the quantum mirror device, after all. If I did, you would realize the potential of your therapy to temporarily suspend my connection to the zero point field. You’d add two and two very quickly, and be the first to suggest a way I could use the device, while remaining immune. End of problem. Al Yad is dead. And I’m still standing. But we couldn’t use this strategy because the device didn’t really exist. So I would be forced to tell you it was a bluff.”

  “Which you already decided you couldn’t do, for fear Al Yad would get wind of it.” Alyssa’s faculties had returned in full. Craft’s logic was a bit tortured, but also sound.

  “Exactly. The second thing I realized was that your nocebo advance dovetailed perfectly with my bluff. Because Al Yad would no doubt hear a recording of your interrogation as well, and learn of this work. If it occurred to me that this would provide a means to become temporarily protected from the quantum mirror device—which he was convinced was real—it would also occur to him. And then I had my epiphany.”

  Craft caused one of the room’s white chairs to glide through the air and land behind him. He sat down, still facing Alyssa, and continued. “I realized I might be able to find some way to fool Al Yad to strip himself of his abilities. Turn the invulnerable into something I could kill. But he’d only do this if he was convinced he could kill me by doing so. But as you so eloquently pointed out, these hypnotic triggers only work if the subject wants them to. I didn’t have a plan at the time, but I felt sure I could come up with some way to orchestrate circumstances so he would feel in total control, and willingly give up his power.”

  Although the details were still fuzzy and she knew there was far more to it than this, Alyssa was finally able to glimpse the shadow of the Rubik’s Cube Bren had managed to twist fully into place. She didn’t know how he had managed it, but given Al Yad’s lifeless body on the floor, she knew that he had.

  She made a mental note never to play chess with Brennan Craft.

  His face twisted into a picture of self-disgust. “But Al Yad acted before I had even begun to arrive at a plan. I never expected him to be so bold and decisive as to make a play for you that same day in the cornfield,” he said bitterly. “But I should have. With all humility, I’ve made some good moves, but I was brain-dead on this one. Of course he wouldn’t wait for me to orchestrate events. He knew he had to have you. He feared you would allow me to become temporarily immune from the quantum mirror, and he realized you could do the same for him. You were the key in the battle between us. I still can’t believe I missed this.”

  “But at least you took precautions through Eben to make sure we weren’t being followed. And because of this, his attempt to get me failed.”

  “Even so, I’ll never forgive myself for not anticipating this move,” he said with a deep frown.

  Craft blew out a long breath. “But to continue,” he said, trying to get himself past this mistake, “when we first met up with Eben after the ambush, I was still a long way from arriving at a plan. So I told him about the quantum mirror. But I didn’t tell him it was a bluff. Which is the strategy I had planned to use with you.”

  Alyssa thought about this for a moment and nodded. “Because he didn’t know anything about my success with the nocebo effect. Unlike you and Al Yad, he didn’t hear the interrogation. So he wouldn’t know there was a possible means to nullify the effects of this device. You know,
if it were real. So you could tell him, without having to admit it was a bluff.”

  “Exactly. And the story I told you to explain what kept Al Yad in check was pretty feeble. You questioned it right away, and continued to question it. Eben would have also.”

  Alyssa nodded.

  “At least Al Yad’s play for you in Indiana made it clear that he had gotten the point. That the hook was baited. So I began to think about what would need to happen for Al Yad to make himself vulnerable.”

  Craft looked miserable once again. “But try as I might, the only viable plan I could come up with was a nightmare. I would have to play you, and use you, and send you to what could well be your death at the hands of a psychotic mass murderer. Without your knowledge or consent.” He turned away and shook his head in disgust and disbelief. “And if this wasn’t bad enough, I was already in love with you at the time.”

  There was a long silence in the room as this statement hung in the air.

  “If you end up hating me for the rest of your life for what I put you through,” he continued finally, “I couldn’t blame you. I hate myself.”

  “But why?” said Alyssa. “Why couldn’t you have just told me the truth? Told me your plan?”

  “It was necessary. And it was your only hope of surviving. Your ignorance of the plan was the only protection I could give you against Al Yad. It freed you up to tell the truth, as you knew it, and avoid torture and failed polygraph tests.” Craft curled his upper lip in self-disgust once again. “But it required that I make you fear me. Make you hate me. It was a horrible, despicable plan.”

  Alyssa stared deeply into his eyes and believed the pain she found there was real. “Tell me the details,” she said.

  “It was insidiously complex. An elaborate stage play. Al Yad had to think he intercepted you on his own, and that this was the last thing I wanted. But he was sure to be suspicious. And I’ve never met anyone more cautious. He would interrogate you thoroughly enough to find the tinniest hint of deceit. If you knew the plan was to strip him of his ability so I could kill him, you would never get through his interrogation without this coming out.”