Decoherence

by Liana Brooks

  Landon shrugged. “I’ve seen bits and pieces, but rumor says it takes all day to walk across.”

  “Probably only if you walk slow. It’s, what, ten miles from here? Maybe a bit more?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Right, so unless it’s lopsided, or this area touches the base, it’s not that big. It might be a ­couple of city blocks wide.” But it wasn’t likely if this Birmingham was like hers. Alabama had a complex underground water system. The limestone sometimes gave way, creating sinkholes. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine a densely populated building digging down to access the water, but they couldn’t get far if they wanted to keep the building standing.

  A thought came to her. “What kind of security do they have?”

  “See the clouds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the security. If the wind doesn’t get you, the air will. Nothing travels far unless they use the tunnels.”

  “Which should mean the tunnels are heavily guarded.”

  “By who?” Landon laughed. “Central Command doesn’t think about tunnels. They don’t go below the top levels unless there’s an emergency. The ­people, they’re starving. Everyone’s on rations. Everyone’s scared.”

  She would be, too, if she were planning on staying in this hellscape. “How do you even function?”

  “Like ­people.”

  “This is . . . anarchy. There should be solutions.”

  “Yeah, the little door to another world,” Landon said. “If you’re one of the elite, you can leave anytime you want, do anything you want, and come back here.”

  Sam nodded. “Vacation in another reality. It’s not an original idea, but why not.” Somewhere in the murky depths of time, a young Emir must have been a very tortured individual. Only someone with an obsessive need for control would make a machine to change history. “All right, million-­dollar-­question time: Can you get me in?”

  “Sure can,” Landon said with a smile. “I even have a way for you to get to the top.”

  “Oh?”

  He pulled a chunky square computer from the satchel tied to his thigh. “Here.” He pushed a series of buttons, and Sam’s face appeared.

  It wasn’t exactly her face. The woman glaring at her was a good thirty pounds lighter, a bit paler, and had a thin white scar on her chin. “So she is here.”

  “Yup. Commander Samantha Rose of Central Command. She’s a bit of a celebrity,” Landon admitted. “When the program first went into effect five years ago, she was on all the news feeds. Convinced ­people to move to the big cities. Said everyone was safer if they packed themselves together and took action for a better future.”

  She could see a twisted version of herself saying that. Especially a young, idealistic version. “I’m just shooting from the hip here, but I’d guess she has government ties.”

  “Her father is a bigwig in the world government. Lead orator or something like that. Not a voting member of the Council, but he has influence.”

  “And he’s charismatic.” Was charismatic in her history—­right up until he decided to start abusing painkillers. An old twinge of guilt stabbed her like a rusty knife jabbing an old scar. He’d made his choices. She’d made hers. The first time she’d gone to his rescue. The second, she realized he would let her drown to save himself, and so she’d let go.

  Landon was watching her. “Problems?”

  “Memories.”

  “Nothing good?”

  “Plenty of good ones, but that one was bad.” She sighed. “What’s your plan for getting Commander Rose out of the way?”

  “Taser,” Landon said. “Ever heard of one?”

  “Yup, I even know how to use it.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Tase her and stuff her in a closet?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “That’s not going to give me much time.”

  He shrugged. “I’m going in with you. I can smuggle her out.”

  Jane Doe’s broken face rose up in Sam’s memory. “What would you do with her?”

  “Nothing worse than I did to you.” He frowned with a defensive curl of his lip. “I treated you just fine. You shouldn’t have any complaints. I fed you.”

  “True.”

  “Senturi was on Commander Rose’s team. If anyone can find him, she can.”

  “And then you get to escape to this happily-­ever-­after he promised you.”

  Landon had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I’m not saying it’s heaven, but it sounds a sight better than this. Sunshine. Fields with grass. You can’t tell me it’s better if I stay here.”

  “No I can’t,” she said. “When do we leave?”

  “Soon as the sun starts to set. It’s too hot during the day. But once it’s down, it’s just you, me, the dog, and lots of walking.”

  Bosco wagged his tail with joy.

  CHAPTER 38

  “As decoherence approaches, the future becomes a sharp point, the sword upon which dreams die.”

  ~ excerpt from the writings of the rebel poet Loi Liling I1—­2069

  Saturday March 22, 2070

  Florida District 8

  Commonwealth of North America

  Iteration 2

  Ivy pulled her car to the side of the road and leaned her head against the steering wheel. One hastily heated portion of the spaghetti pulled from the freezer. and a shot of an Extra Energy Lime drink did not make up for having been awake for nearly twenty hours.

  “Patroller?” the dispatcher’s voice floated through the car like a ghost.

  “This is Officer Clemens. I’m in the armpit of nowhere following lead 391. Sending GPS coordinates now.”

  “GPS coordinates received, Officer,” the dispatcher said. “Check-­in scheduled for twenty minutes from now.”

  “Check-­in scheduled,” Ivy agreed. “Exiting the car now.” She slammed the door shut on the dispatcher’s response. Missing person’s cases were the worst. She didn’t know if Devon Bradet was trying to get attention, or if he’d just snapped in the wake of Hurricane Troom’s life, but this was ridiculous. She was in the ball sack of nowhere, and Bradet was probably sleeping off his tantrum at a friend’s house.

  Ivy pulled her windbreaker over the thin body armor she’d been issued and looked out over the palmettos framed by moonlight and stars. There was worse weather for a manhunt than 60 percent humidity and low seventies with a sea breeze.

  Stretching and yawning, she rubbed her eyes. There was no way someone cruising along A1A at fifty miles an hour had seen anything specific enough to send a real officer out here. Purple shirt, maybe maroon? Right. At best, the driver had seen a white guy walking along and called it in hoping to get some of the reward money. What she was probably going to find was a guy planning to do some fishing in Ponce Inlet who looked nothing like Bradet and didn’t want her around.

  Which meant she was going to go wander through Mosquito Central with a flashlight for the next twenty minutes, like it or not. Flicking her flashlight on, she started humming Top 40 songs in a desperate bid to stay awake.

  She was mumbling the high note of the chorus “Clone It If You Want to Keep It” when she reached the mile marker where the tipster said they’d seen Bradet. Sure enough, it was dead center in the bridge. Exactly where a fisherman would stop to drop a line before dawn.

  Kicking some gravel aside, she tried to see anything that would convince dispatch the lead had found them a fisherman. A faded candy wrapper, a torn flip-­flop, but nothing that indicated someone had set down a bucket or gutted a fish here. Maybe the driver had seen a drunk.

  Or nothing at all.

  Yawning again, she shined her flashlight down the far side of the bridge. It arced across the water and caught on the squared lines of a man-­made building. She checked her watch: seventeen minutes to check-­in.

  No one
with half a brain would sleep under the bridge with the fire ants and rotting fish, but a pickled drunk might. And the old road leading off into the mangroves would be her first pick if she wanted to hide a body out here. Under the bridge, the crabs and ants would pick a body clean in days.

  She walked down the slope of the bridge. Dropping over the side into the soft sand, she was swarmed by midges and the smell of rotting bycatch. Pulling her jacket over her nose, she shined her light around the sand. There was nothing but some sea grass marking the high-­tide line and ghost crabs scuttling away from her intrusive presence.

  With a glance at her watch, she looked up toward the old road. It curved west behind a copse of fiddlewood shrubs to a broken wooden sign where the faded words SPRUCE CREEK were still legible. Back in, what—­’64? ’65? Something like that—­there’d been rumors of the Spruce Creek Cannibal. Ol’ Crazy Ivan, a Shadow who had gone mad, run off to the swamps to live off fish guts, and ate tourists.

  Nine minutes to check-­in.

  Crazy Ivan versus Crazy Ivy . . . she touched the phone in her pocket and wished Miss MacKenzie were around. It would be nice to have a partner right about now. She looked up the gravel hillside to the bridge. It was less than a half-­mile sprint back to the car. A scraped knee was a risk, but she ran every day, and if she couldn’t get away from an imaginary, aging, homeless clone, she didn’t deserve her badge.

  Stretching a knot out of her neck, she walked toward the old bait shack. The roof was missing and so was one wall, but the words BAIT AND CHIPS were still visible on the broken sign. Spiderwebs made a maze of the dried winter stalks of grass and decaying wooden poles that were probably meant to define the original parking lot.

  An abandoned airboat listed at the edge of the water, rusted, but it looked like it still had an engine. It was worth checking out.

  With one last sweep of her flashlight, she climbed back up the hill for check-­in. She was climbing over the bridge rail when she heard something in the distance. Maybe just an echo or a frog jumping onto the old boat.

  Frowning at the darkness, she waited.

  A flock of roosting birds took off a half mile north along the old road.

  She ran to the car as the dispatch line lit up.

  “Patroller?”

  “This is Officer Clemens,” Ivy said. “I’ve checked under the bridge.”

  “Nothing there?” dispatch asked.

  “Nothing but bycatch.” She hesitated. “There’s an old shack around the bend. A bait shop. I’m going to walk down the road a bit to see if there are signs that anyone was here.”

  “Check-­in in twenty,” dispatch said.

  “Check-­in in twenty,” Ivy agreed. “But it shouldn’t take that long.” Back in her air-­conditioned apartment, there was a soft blanket and a firm mattress waiting for her. Reaching into the car’s open window, she grabbed her water bottle and took a swig.

  The night was unnaturally silent. The cicadas had fallen still, and even the bats had fled.

  Ivy tightened her grip on the flashlight. One of her first instructors had said a good flashlight was a solid investment. Solid was the key word. Hers weighed over two pounds. Right now, it was the only protection she had from whatever was out there.

  Dry grass, yellowed by drought and made brittle under the winter sun, crackled under her feet. Every step sounded like a cacophonous march.

  Something thudded. At the very edge of hearing, she got the cadence of a human voice.

  She shined the light into the carcass of the bait shack but saw nothing except the bones of a memory. Turning quietly, she surveyed the rest of the wreckage. Dilapidated wooden parking columns, a weed-­choked path to the landing, and the boat. It wasn’t nearly as old as the rest of these ruins.

  “Hello?” Ivy said to the darkness, furious with herself that her voice wavered. She squared her shoulders. “This is Officer Clemens of the New Smyrna PD. If you’re out there, show yourself.” A cricket chirped. “Please?”

  A muffled thud, and in the silver spill of moonlight, the airboat rocked ever so slightly.

  Skidding across the loose gravel of the old parking lot, she ran to the boat. “Hello?”

  A thump this time, as if someone was kicking.

  “Hold on,” Ivy ordered the mysterious occupant. Procedure said one officer should stay to help a trapped or injured person, the other should call it in. But she didn’t have a partner.

  She gritted her teeth and swallowed her curse. Raging against the department’s policy of using her like a robot rather than a person wouldn’t do any good. She clipped her flashlight to her belt, pulled out the phone Miss MacKenzie had given her, and with it pressed between her ear and shoulder, she climbed onto the unstable vessel.

  “If this is an emergency,” a recorded voice told her, “please dial 911.”

  Ivy rolled her eyes and slid one cautious foot across the warped floorboards of the boat. It looked deeper than it should have. Almost as if . . . her foot sank between rotting boards and caught in a hidden compartment.

  Lucky her, she’d found a smuggler’s old boat. They’d built the floor up to hide contraband from the Coast Guard.

  “If this is a medical emergency,” the synthesized voice said, “please press two.”

  She took the phone from her ear, hit two, and let it ring.

  The gear box at the far end of the boat rattled. If there was a cat trapped in there, she’d never hear the end of it. Or a gator . . . a momma gator wouldn’t climb up on a boat to nest, would it? She was pretty sure she wouldn’t.

  With a quick tug, she pulled her leg free. She looked over the side and considered climbing back out, but the gear box hung over water, and she was not going wading in the swamps in the dark. That’s how tourists went missing.

  “This is New Smyrna medical dispatch,” a familiar voice said. “My name is Jill, can I have yours?”

  “Jill, it’s Officer Clemens. I’m away from my car but at my last check-­in location.” More or less. “I may have found a body.”

  “May have?” Jill sounded unimpressed.

  “I haven’t gotten the box open yet.”

  Jill sighed. “Look, you’re wasting time. Is there a medical emergency?”

  Ivy took the last slippery step and threw the box open. An unpleasant cocktail of smells of urine and sweat overpowered the stench of rotting fish. Ivy grabbed her flashlight, switched it back on, and shined the beam into the wide eyes of a bedraggled man wearing a torn T-­shirt. “Yes! Oh, son of clone, yes. Get an ambulance to my location, stat.” She choked on bile. No one should look that dead while still alive.

  “O-­officer Clemens?” Jill stuttered.

  Ivy put the phone on speaker and looked at the mangled person in front of her. “Devon Bradet?” The left side of his face was swollen, lips cracked and bleeding, and his arm broken in at least two places.

  He managed to nod.

  She reached down and pulled the duct tape off his mouth. “Jill, I’ve found Devon Bradet. I need an ambulance and a backup unit to my location ASAP. Tell them to put their lights on and not stop for donuts.”

  “Understood. Units dispatched to your location. They should be there in ten minutes.”

  Right, and the Statue of Liberty was in Cancun. “Acknowledged.” She shut off her phone and leaned down to pull Bradet out of his makeshift coffin.

  Bradet struggled to keep his balance. He weighed more than she, but she was able to prop him up like a crutch.

  “Help is on the way, Mr. Bradet. Just . . .” The old boat tipped under their combined weight. “We’re just going to ease off. Okay. Can you sit on the side and swing your legs over? I’ll help you get down.”

  His good hand squeezed her shoulder as he swung a leg over to straddle the boat edge. “They’re near.” It was a grunt.

  “Near? Who’s near?” Fear c
lutched her like a nightmare monster, squeezing her heart and freezing her lungs. “Help is near,” she said, forcing every ounce of confidence into the words.

  He wasn’t unconscious, and she’d check his pulse when they got off this death trap, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t lost too much blood. Bradet had gone missing the previous evening, so at most he’d gone all day without food or water. It had been nearly seventy degrees all day, but he was conscious, which meant he hadn’t been in the locked box the whole time.

  His grip tightened, and he swayed. “Kill me. Near. They’ll kill me.” The words slipped through his blood-­cracked lips with a lisp.

  “The ­people who did this to you are near? Who were they? Can you identify them?”

  His head fell to his chest in a nod, but he said nothing.

  “Okay, well, we don’t need to worry about that right now,” she lied. “I’m a police officer.” An unarmed one. Even her Hello Kitty pocketknife was at home. She had the flashlight, the steel-­toed boots she’d started wearing on patrol last year, and the self-­defense moves she’d picked up at a YMCA class.

  We are going to die.

  She climbed over the side of the slowly collapsing boat and held up her hands for Bradet. “Go ahead and drop. I’ll catch you.”

  If he’d been more alert, he would have realized he outweighed her by too much for her to catch him with ease. He didn’t, and when he landed, Ivy fell back, twisting her leg enough to make her wince.

  “Okay. Good. Can you stand up?” She pushed him back on his knees and took the chance to check his pulse. It was high but strong enough. There was probably internal bleeding.

  Ivy pushed to her feet, dragging Bradet with her. “We are going to take ten steps to that old bench there.”

  In the shadows away from her flashlight, someone chuckled. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  “We’re going to die,” Bradet whispered. “They told me. They want Henry, but I can’t find Henry. We’re going to die.”

  Ivy patted his arm. Her hand came away sticky with blood. “Just . . . just be calm. Help is on the way.” If the backup unit got here, and she was dead, she was going to haunt them.