by Jesse Karp
"I know him." Mal nodded at Brath, who was prostrate some five feet away. "And I've seen her." He pointed at Isabel as he came unsteadily to his own feet. "You?"
"Him," Remak said, indicating another figure. The still form was an adult, big and a little overweight. But as they turned their attention to him, Mal saw that he was not actually still at all. He looked as though, alone and unconscious, he was under attack.
He looked, in fact, as if his brain were being eaten by a dream. His eyeballs flicked madly back and forth beneath his lids, and his jaw worked and clenched as something seemingly alien in his head appeared to tear into his gray matter, feasting through the channels and on the electrical flashes of his synapses, threatening to gorge itself on his mind. The big body was becoming smaller, tightening into a fetal ball.
"What's wrong with him?" Mal said. "Is he having a seizure?"
"I don't think so," Remak replied.
Their voices appeared to have an effect. The mind within the struggling body seemed to grab hold of the voices and use it to pull himself free of the sucking maw inside his head. With a heavy, leaden resistance, the man's eyes opened.
Remak let the madness leave the man's eyes. Once he shook his head and sat up, Remak addressed him.
"Mr. Boothe," he said, his hyper-focused eyes studying the man through thin glasses."Are you all right?"
"Screw you, Remak. What the hell have you gotten us into?"
Remak looked at Mal, eyes half-hooded. He turned around and walked away.
The guy roused himself as if he were coming out of a bad hangover, rubbing his temples and working his jaw. He touched places on his body gently, and Mal recognized the aftereffects of a fight.
"Stay down until you're sure everything works okay," he advised the man, who scowled up at him as if he had had enough punk kids spouting off at him in his life.
Mal watched him find his cell and, as soon as he saw there was no signal, cram it back into his pocket and look around at where he was.
Mal looked about at the others still on the ground. Brath, his dangerous face odd to see in repose, wasn't stirring yet, but Mal could see he was breathing. There were two others, both girls and both roughly Mal's own age. Isabel had dark hair and a deep olive complexion, and even asleep, her face looked hard and defiant. He could see part of a tattoo creeping up her hip where her shirt was pulled up. The last one looked softer, as if there was some kind of peace for her in sleep. Her hair was jet black and in a ponytail that flopped out from under an old Mets cap. She was in jeans and a sweater, rumpled but clean, comfortably worn and not inexpensive. Mal's eyes were fixed on her, and even when he heard a soft moan from Isabel, Mal had a hard time pulling them away.
"She's waking up," Mal said, pointing at Isabel, whose eyes were beginning to flutter. Remak, returning from his investigation, came over.
"Take it slow," Remak said to her as her eyes opened. "My name is Jon Remak. We're trying to figure out where we are."
She came up on her elbows, made a face at Mal, and took in the world around her. Even confronted with this bizarre place, her eyes were more angry at the strange trees than scared of them.
"You were better off asleep, right?" the big guy said as her eyes passed him.
She pulled out her cell, checked it, and scowled.
Inside two or three minutes, Brath roused and Mal helped him to his feet. He stood up and started flexing his arms and legs, exchanging names with Remak.
Finally, the other girl woke with a start. Mal kept checking on her and so was the first to offer her a hand. She steadied herself against a tree and looked around, clearly confused and scared, but somehow managed to summon a soft smile for him. For some people, smiles were instinctive. Mal knew it but had a hard time believing it until now. Her eyes were vivid blue, almost like strobes, definitely the brightest thing in this place. Even now, they made her face, heavy with worry and confusion, somehow bright and hopeful.
"Whoa," the big guy said, pointing at Brath, who had pulled his gun from under the leather jacket and was checking the clip. He took his time to make sure it was done right before he snapped it home and looked up at the others looking at him. From the stoic expression on his face, there was no explanation forthcoming and no sense that he owed one.
"Is it fully loaded?" Remak asked after an instant of uncertain silence.
"No. Five rounds. Clip holds six, but I think I got one off, before"—Brath waved his hand at the place around them—"all this."
"That's hard to figure," Remak said.
"Yeah," Brath agreed. "Just our good luck."
"I'm not sure. I had a gun, too, but I don't have it now." The two looked at each other as if something was unsettled between them. "Look"—Remak's face was tight, not liking having to say it—"maybe you should let someone else hold your weapon."
"No chance."
"Why leave you with a gun and not me?"
"I suppose you want to hold it?"
"That's not necessary. Why don't you let your friend Mal hold it?"
"No. Sorry, Mal."
Mal shrugged.
"Who did you fire it at?" It was the other girl, not Isabel but the bright-eyed one, pushing away from the tree she'd been using for support and rubbing her upper arm as if she'd discovered an ache there.
"What?" Brath said.
"Who did you fire the one shot from the gun at before you ended up here? It wasn't Homeland Security agents, was it?"
"Homeland Security? No, nothing like that. No, it was"—he looked at Mal—"big. And fast."
"And strong," Mal said.
"How did you get here?" she asked.
"How did you get here?" Brath shot back.
"All right," Laura said. "It looks like none of us knows why or how we're here, but maybe we each know, like, a part of it. Why don't we go around and say who we are, how we got here?"
"Okay," Brath said. "Him first."
"Fine. My name is Jon Remak."
"He works for the CIA," the big guy said.
"No, actually." He didn't even look over. "I don't work for the CIA. I work for a cooperative of interests. They study anomalies in group behavior, incidents of crime, suicide, things like that. I was sent to a school in a neighborhood undergoing a sudden, extreme rise in such incidents. I was trying to get a look at a door, which someone said had appeared but had never been there before."
"A door?" Mal said. The idea of doors made Mal's stomach hollow.
"Yes," Remak said. "Before we could find it again, a group of students attacked us. I mean, dozens of students, working together like a trained army. They worked toward a clear goal and didn't get in each other's way. We lost consciousness. Now I'm here."
"Who was with you?" Isabel asked. "When you said 'us,' I mean."
Remak looked at the big guy, and then so did everyone else.
"I'm not telling you people my name," he said.
"Why not?" Brath asked, his voice even, letting his eyes give the attitude.
"I don't know any of you. I'll tell you how I got here, that's all."
"Why don't you just tell us your first name?" the bright-eyed girl said, and just in asking it, she made it sound reasonable. "I'm Laura."
"Mal," said Mal, feeling an urge to show his support.
"Isabel." The three syllables conveyed an extreme sense of being unimpressed.
"Nikolai Brath." His accent showed on his first name, and he raised his sharp eyebrows at the big guy, who stared back with naked distaste. It was a personal thing now.
"Why don't you just make up a name?" Laura suggested. "Just so we have something to call you."
"I've already got something to call you," Brath mumbled quite loud enough to be heard.
"My name's Mike," he finally said, straight at Brath.
"How did you get here, Mike?" Laura asked him.
"I was delivering some books to the school basement—"
"You're a teacher?" Brath asked him, his disdain for the idea clear.
&n
bsp; "Yeah, I'm a teacher. I brought some books down. There was a door there that hadn't been there before. Never been there before, I swear to God." He clearly doubted it himself, even as he was saying it. "This guy found me"—he pointed at Remak—"and we went back to look for the door. It wasn't there anymore, and we couldn't find it. Bunch of students came along, and they beat the living shit out of us. They didn't seem like students, though, exactly. My students, they're loud and rude even when they're not trying to beat you up. These were quiet. Like Remak said, they marched toward us like robots or something."
The remote look of the students sounded uncomfortably familiar to Mal, like that of the kids in front of Tommy's place. But there was more than that.
"What about the door?" Mal said.
"What about it?"
"Did you open it? What did it look like?"
"It was metal, I guess; gray and metal. It had a shiny handle."
Mal nodded. "And when you opened it, you saw a white room with lots of other doors in it."
"And a guy in a suit, who saw me and started to come toward me before I slammed the door in his face."
"How did you know about the room behind the door?" Laura asked Mal.
"It was in a basement?" Mal went on with Mike, who nodded. "There was a boiler room down there, down a short hall?"
"Yeah," Mike said impatiently. Remak's eyes were intent on Mal.
"I saw that door. I think I was in that room," Mal said, having a hard time hiding his uneasiness. "My brother called me, sounded like he was in trouble. I found his girlfriend—" He stopped himself, his hand shot to his back pocket, searching for the photo of Tommy and Annie. It was there, thank God. It gave him some inexplicable measure of relief. At least they hadn't taken that away, hadn't cast this precious thing into doubt.
"Mal," Laura said gently.
"Um, right. His girlfriend told me he worked for this guy sometimes, and she showed me where they met. It was a big building in midtown. Midtown Manhattan, that is."
"Is that where you live?" Remak asked. "And your brother?"
"No, Brooklyn," Mal answered. "But they got me—me and Brath—in Manhattan. Is that where they got all of you?"
Isabel nodded.
"I was in Queens," Remak said.
"Queens," Mike grumbled. "I don't go into Manhattan since they put up that giant dome full of goddamned poison gases."
"Long Island," Laura said. "I live on Long Island. I was at home when..." She waved her hand as Brath had before at the impossibility around them.
"So I went to this building in midtown," Mal went on, "all mirror from bottom to top. Do you know the one?" He told them the cross streets.
"All the buildings up there look alike," Mike said. "Who looks up at them, anyway?"
"Yeah, I'd never really noticed this one myself. Anyhow, I went in." Mal described the place to Remak's obvious fascination, and told how he went up in the elevator to the thirty-second floor. "I opened one door, and it looked like it went into a hospital or something. The other one opened into a basement. There was a hallway, and it was humid in there. I lived in a basement near a boiler once, and it was humid like that."
"Did you close that door?" Remak asked.
"I..." Mal went over it in his head. "I think so. I threw it shut and ran out."
"But it might have bounced from the frame—it could have remained open," Remak said. "You didn't see it closed."
"No. I didn't." He tried, but couldn't make it not true.
"You dumb bastard." Mike scowled at him. "It's your fault I'm here. The door disappeared after I shut it. If you'd shut it, I wouldn't even be here. You dumb bastard."
Mal took it, wiping all expression from his face.
"Take it easy, Mike," Laura said.
"Easy? Who the hell are you to tell me that? You're a child. Do you see this place? We're never going to get out of here!"
"We're all scared and upset," Laura said, not fighting, but reasoning, making a plea. "Mal obviously didn't mean to bring you here. I think there's a lot more going on than just that door."
"If that's why you're here," Mal said, "then I'm sorry. I wouldn't have gotten anyone into this"—his eyes cut across to Brath—"if I'd known..." He shook his head.
"You got out of the building, Mal," Remak said, "and you got your friend Brath to come back with you."
"Pretty much." Mal glanced at Isabel, then quickly away from her. "I almost went to the police, but what was I going to tell them?"
"What about your brother's girlfriend?" Laura asked. "What happened to her?"
"She was gone when I came out." Another subject that put a pain in his gut, another life he was responsible for ruining now. "I guess I'm looking for her, too."
"Well done," Mike said.
"Hey," Brath said, pointing at him, "shut it."
"Bite me, you crime-lord wannabe."
"Please!" Laura shouted. "Please. Can't we just get through this? Nikolai, Mal came to you?"
"Right." Brath slid his eyes away from Mike. "He brought me back to the building. We met her on the way," he said, pointing a finger like a gun at Isabel. "We went into the place, rang for the elevator. Someone came off it, like I said: really big, really strong. That was it."
"So he kicked your ass?" Mike said.
"What about you, Isabel?" Laura cut in, before anything more could come of Mike's remark.
"I was making deliveries for a guy," Isabel said, then she stuck her chin across the circular group they'd formed, at Brath and Mal. "Batman and the Boy Wonder over here caught up with me. He pulls open the package, and there's nothing in it. So I followed them back and waited outside for a couple of minutes, and when they didn't come out, I went in anyway. My mistake. Guy in the suit was standing there in the sort-of lobby. I saw him, he saw me, now I'm here."
"What package?" Remak asked. "What do you mean there was nothing in it?"
"It was a small padded envelope." Brath intercepted the question. "Like nine by twelve. There was shredded paper in it, that's all."
"Shredded paper? Where were you taking it?"
"A playground," Isabel said. "I was supposed to leave it on a bench in a playground. The packages were always soft and mushy like that, so I knew they weren't, like, bombs or something. Bombs would have set off subway scanners anyway, right?"
"All the packages you delivered were like that one?"
"Same size, same shape, same weight. I never looked in one before."
"Where did you deliver them to?" Remak pressed relentlessly.
"A lot of places." She squinted one eye, compiling a list. "Schools, banks, hospitals, libraries, fast-food places."
"What about the man who gave them to you? Same man every time?"
"Yeah. Wore the same dull suit, kind of plain looking." She thought about it, searched for more detail, but couldn't seem to find any. "Really plain looking."
"Did his voice sound familiar to you?" Mal interjected, remembering the voice he'd heard in the lobby giving direction to another courier. "Did you recognize it at all?"
"I don't know. A little, maybe. He sounded like every adult who ever said they were trying to help me out." She chuckled at that idea, as if her life were filled with promises that had never been kept.
"How did he approach you for these jobs?" Remak pressed on.
"I'm part of a program where they find work for you, sort of tell you what you should be doing."
"It's called parole," Brath sneered.
"Yeah"—she glared at him—"well, as long as we're talking about it, my parole officer keeps throwing jobs at me where they treat me like shit or don't even pay me enough to keep my cat fed. It's, like, designed to push you back into what you were doing before and then, bang, you're back in jail. Well, fuck that. That's not me anymore. I'm not going back to jail, and I'm not letting this brilliant system put me there. I can do better. So I'm going around businesses in my neighborhood, seeing if they need any help, just cleaning up or making deliveries or whatever, and
one day, I'm sitting at a McDonald's and this guy in a suit comes up and offers me this delivery job. I took one job. He's not Mr. Personality, but he doesn't treat me like a slave. He won't tell me what's in the packages, but like I said, I can tell they're not bombs or drugs or anything. So I'm working for him for a while when this guy comes along and screws me up again."
Brath held her eyes briefly, then turned away, no apology on his lips or face.
"Whatever," Isabel said to the back of his head.
"And you'd never seen this man in the suit before?" Remak asked. "Can you describe him?"
"He was average height," she said. "He didn't have ... I mean, he looked ... he was just sort of plain looking."
"The color of his eyes?" Remak said. "His hair?"
"Jesus," Mike said. Mal had to admit, there was something about Remak's calm that gave the sense of a scientist looking at them through a microscope. "Are you done getting her life story, for Christ's sake? Do you ever run out of questions?"
"Actually," Laura spoke up, looking at Mike with a chagrined expression, "I was wondering why all of us ended up here but"—she turned to Mal—"your brother's girlfriend didn't, Mal. I mean, she was taken around the same time, right? Why isn't she here with us?"
"I figured," Mal said, dredging up some meager optimism, "that is, I was hoping, maybe, she got away."
"I wouldn't count on it." Remak shook his head, not seeming malicious, just coldly realistic. "And you, Laura? How did you wind up here?"
She looked up a little sourly, as though she'd hoped to be skipped over for that one.
"You're the last," Remak pressed.