Vacant

by Alex Hughes

  I couldn’t bear to leave Tommy here, or to watch him die. Cherabino wouldn’t have a job tomorrow, maybe, but he’d said nothing about killing her if I played fair. I took a breath and said, as vulnerable as I was, “Kill me instead.” My voice shook. “I can’t watch this. He’s just a boy. Kill me instead. Leave them both and kill me instead.” I closed my eyes. “You get everything you want that way. You know that I signed up for it. You know that I destroyed myself. You even get to watch.”

  “No, you don’t get to be self-sacrificing today,” Fiske said to me over the phone, the receiver a heavy weight in my ear as I watched Sibley through the boy’s eyes. “I will make you suffer through the results of your actions. I will make you make a choice. Which is it, the boy or our deal?”

  “What if I choose Cherabino?” I asked, out of nowhere, not even sure where that question came from.

  “Ah, a moral dilemma. How sweet.”

  “Please, I need to think,” I said. He was putting me in an impossible decision, worse than the Guild had done just a few months ago, worse than when they’d threatened me with death—

  And that was it. My way out.

  “You have no more time, Mr. Ward.”

  I knew what I needed to do. I knew! But I needed time, and the only way to get it was to play along, to eat my pride. “I beg you, Fiske,” I said in the smallest, most pathetic voice I could. It burned to do this, but if it would save Tommy, I’d do it. “I beg you. Please don’t make me do this. The choice . . . I need more time. Please give me more time. Please. Please.”

  “Ah, how the mighty have fallen. I do so love to hear a grown man beg.” His voice was smug, self-satisfied. “You have twenty minutes, Mr. Ward. I am very serious. On the first second of the twenty-first minute, if I have not heard a satisfactory decision from you at this number, Sibley will strangle your adorable little charge to death. But of course, do take your time.”

  CHAPTER 23

  I heard a dial tone and I hung up the phone. Knees weak, I sat down—on the stone path of the park. In the distance, I could hear the sound of a fountain running, birds chirping. The old stately oaks waving overhead in the breeze.

  My hands shook. I wanted to throw up, to run, to fall off the face of the planet and get away from here. Anywhere but here.

  But I had twenty minutes, and I’d better make them count.

  I grabbed for the phone receiver.

  “Stone?” I said the instant he picked up. “If you’ve ever in your life wanted to be a hero, now’s your chance. I have a ten-year-old boy who is going to die in”—I looked at my watch—“eighteen minutes if we don’t do something fast.”

  Three heartbeats went by. Then Stone said, “What do you need?”

  I took a breath of deep relief. “Okay. I need you and a teleporter who can carry at least two additional people at least a hundred miles here as quickly as you humanly can. I’m in Savannah, so that’s at least two Jumps.”

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “You saved my bacon once already against this guy. It’s the strangler we faced last year. Bring guns,” I said. “And be prepared to deal with coercion.”

  Another few heartbeats and he said, “You’re lucky I have your number on a priority flag. I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”

  I closed my eyes. “Faster if you can do it.”

  “Already moving. We’ll talk about procedure later.” And he hung up the phone.

  * * *

  I found a small bench maybe ten feet away from the pay phone and sat, watching the seemingly peaceful park around me. Every second felt like one less second on a ticking time bomb. I pulled out the paper from the puzzle box and put it in my pocket. In my slacks pocket was another piece of paper, this one folded several times.

  I pulled it out. That’s right—Quentin had given me his number. I stood back up and dialed the number. I couldn’t just sit there.

  But the phone rang and rang, and no one picked up. I left an awkward message with no return number asking him to be on alert and close by to the phone, and sat back down.

  The next seven minutes were the longest of my life.

  Finally—finally—I felt Stone connect to the tag in my brain, and a wrench as he or someone else used it to triangulate for a Jump.

  The world turned upside down, and then the air popped out in a small explosion. Standing in front of me were two people, Edgar Stone and a smaller blond woman who looked very much like him. I could feel her effort; she sat on the ground without shame. Stone pulled out a thermos and handed it to her. A milk shake, his mind supplied. Highest-calorie thing one could drink quickly. And she did, gulping it down through the attached straw as quickly as possible.

  Teleportation took a hell of a lot of energy, and to make the four-hour groundcar drive to Savannah in less than ten minutes—at least two to three Jumps—was impressive by itself, much less with another human in tow. If Kara had done that, she’d have lost pounds of body fat and days of function. I’d seen it happen. Adding calories to the mix just seemed wise.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said.

  Stone straightened. “You’d better not be exaggerating. This is my twin sister, Margaret. She can tow me anywhere, but you’re going to be another issue.”

  Margaret waved a hand at me from the ground.

  “That’s how you’ve been disappearing all over the place!” I said. “She Jumped you out. That’s kind of impossible, you know.”

  “We know,” Margaret said from the floor, taking a break from the milk shake.

  “How long left?” Stone asked. “What’s the timeline?” He knocked on my brain. If he was really going to do more for me, he needed to know the truth.

  “We have eight minutes before the call,” I said, and dropped all my shields. He took the information off the surface of my mind but didn’t push deeper.

  “How the hell did you get in this situation in the first place?” he asked me.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said. “You know I’m telling the truth. That’s what matters. You have a gun?”

  “Yes,” Stone said. He sent some kind of mental communication to Margaret.

  “Well, then. Let’s save the boy. Give me forty seconds,” Margaret said, setting the now-empty cup on the ground. She breathed in, deep calming ritual breaths. “You have a location?”

  “It’s a very fragile partial mind-link,” I said. “But he’s in a wide-open area, so anything in the vicinity should be safe.”

  Margaret shook her head. “That’s going to be tricky. Your timeline is ridiculous.”

  “We have to try,” I said. “I have to try.” And if I failed, I’d call Fiske back and agree, and deal with the consequences later.

  “Okay,” Margaret said, and stood. “I’m pretty mind-deaf, so Edgar’s going to need to do the heavy lifting on the Link. If you can get me to the location mentally, I can Jump there. We’ve done this in drills plenty of times. Oh, and be aware. This many Jumps this quickly, I’m probably out of it when we arrive. If I’m sleeping, let me sleep, okay?”

  I nodded and held out hands. Stone grabbed one, Margaret the other, and they held each other’s remaining hand, a triangle made of people. I’d do anything—anything—to save Tommy if I could, so I dropped every shield I had.

  Stone walked into my mind, focused, and I showed him the Link. A lighter, more feminine presence drifted behind him, caught up in his mental wake. Margaret. A sense of intense focus from her, and exhaustion, and pressure—a sense of bottled pressure, waiting for me.

  Now was the time when it would all either work or not work. I tried to connect with Tommy. I tried. . . . And failed.

  One more breath. Try again. Two heartbeats, and then it worked, along that fragile thin cord that connected us. We were there. A fuzzy image of that barn and Tommy, looking at Sibley with a thin cord in his hands. We were there
.

  I latched onto Tommy’s mind, that foyer we’d built so carefully, and threw my whole mental weight into the connection.

  Stone grabbed onto that Link, bringing his sister with him, and the pressure burst. The world stopped.

  I turned inside out like an Escher painting, folding in space until nothing connected, until it was all impossible. Until it all hurt, wrenching horrible pain. The connection in the back of my head fell apart, and I thought for one terrible moment we would be lost in the between.

  Then the universe righted itself, and I felt hard-packed dirt under my shoes. Margaret fell back to the floor, shaking, her hands falling out of mine. I felt her mind go under, into unconsciousness. Stone brought out his gun. And I looked up.

  We stood in an old stable, rotting hay and dust smells incredibly strong. I sneezed. Sunlight beams came down like in the vision, and old horse stalls lined both walls to the right and left. A huge barn door, currently closed, stood twenty feet ahead.

  Tommy was bound to a chair about five feet in front of me, and Sibley farther on, near a large post on which was hung horse tack of some kind. A low table held a phone on its cradle, its cord trailing away, and a small sphere. Crap. He had the device.

  “Adam!” Tommy yelled.

  “Hang in there,” I said.

  Sibley darted back, to the table, and Stone was already moving forward, gun pulled up. I had seconds to make a decision.

  And I made it.

  I took three steps to the right, away from Margaret’s unconscious body, so I wouldn’t trip on her. “A1, B5, B7 through 9, A13x, and C4 closed,” I muttered to myself as I squinted, looking internally, deep. Repeated the chant, made the adjustments one by one, fast. “HL7 spun up . . .” I pushed that part of my mind as tension, as tight and up as possible. Then, foolishly, threw a mental blanket over Processor 4, with all my strength.

  The world went dark. Not the darkness of the inside of a cave, but the darkness of a man who has never known light. I literally could not think, no matter how much I tried, of what things might look like. I was blind, totally blind, inside my skull.

  But I could still hear. Two gunshots in quick succession, then a crash.

  Sibley’s voice, ahead and to the right. “Put the gun down.”

  A clatter and a misfire, bullet screaming too close to my ear. But it hadn’t hit me. I felt oddly calm, focused, like time was moving far more slowly than it ought.

  “Sit down,” Sibley said, but his words didn’t have that weight of command, not to me. I could do this.

  I could still feel an echo of Mindspace, though it felt empty, cold, far away. There was Tommy, afraid, on the left. A shadow that must be Sibley ahead and to the right. I moved forward, one step, two. Careful not to step on Margaret. Then faster, once I was sure I was past her.

  Another shadow—Stone?—struggling but unable to move.

  The phone starting ringing, a loud piercing ring.

  Footsteps moving toward me now. It took the human brain minutes to run out of oxygen, and at least twenty seconds to run out of blood even if your throat was cut, your vessels laid open. He’d be coming for me; I could hear the footsteps. I turned up the collar of my coat, buttoned the button to protect my throat.

  The phone kept ringing.

  “Sit down,” Sibley repeated, closer to me specifically.

  “No,” I said. “No,” with all the force of all the months I’d been afraid of him. “No!”

  “Watch out!” Tommy yelled. “He’s coming for you!”

  My left hand went up and over the front of my throat, firm, to protect the blood vessels. My right arm down, ready. Then I moved toward Sibley, everything in me ready for the push, the risk, the roll of the die that would save me or damn me, no questions asked.

  He hit me like a ton of bricks, hard across the face. I went to my knees, stars blooming in my head despite the blindness. I let him, bracing for another hit.

  Instead he had a cord up and over my entire neck with punishing speed. The cord made it partially under the coat, starting cutting with that specially serrated edge. It got the back of my hand—bad. Very bad. A bright line of pain there, and a feeling of damage. I let it go.

  With all of my focus, all of my will, I forced my right arm up to grab his wrist, slipped, got the grab. He let me, squeezing down on the cord. More pain. More blood, and a feeling of incredible pressure on my neck as the cord pulled tight around the coat, around my neck, around my hand. I had to . . . I had to . . .

  My hand hit his skin, and I opened all of the blocks I could in one rush, relaxing my mind. His thoughts moved in—and, between the space of one and the next, I had found the back of his mind, the right spot.

  I pressed it.

  He collapsed, the cord pulling tight with a snap that almost pushed me over. But he’d fallen, to the ground, asleep. I was still standing. Still alive somehow.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  Now that the blocks were gone, the emotion rushed in too. I stood there, and shook. And shook. My hand was bleeding. The back of my neck was bleeding. I felt the neck with my right hand all the way around, shallow cuts, it felt like. The coat collar was sliced, but it had protected me somewhat. The cuts in the back were deeper, but not much. I rotated my head, and it worked, but it hurt. Crap.

  And my left hand . . . I couldn’t move some of the fingers. It hurt, bad. I carefully felt along its back. There was a deep cut on the back of the hand, leaking blood. I could feel the bone. I shuddered.

  “Are you okay?” Tommy asked.

  “No,” I said, voice still shaking a bit.

  I had survived. That had been the most foolish thing I’d done in my life, but I had survived.

  I pulled off my coat, shaking. It wrenched my hand and I almost screamed. I hissed in breath through my teeth. Finally it was off, and I asked the dark room, “Stone, you there?”

  “Yes. Can’t move,” he said from maybe three feet to the left of me.

  “It’ll wear off in a few minutes,” I said, in pain. Maybe I could find the device and use it to cancel whatever it was, but I didn’t know what it would do to him to cancel it early, and I knew it would wear off in time. Plus, I was busy.

  I unbuttoned my dress shirt with my right hand, bracing the shirt with the heel of my left. Crap, that hurt. One button, two, more.

  “Is Margaret okay?” I asked.

  “Is Margaret the woman on the floor?” Tommy asked me. “I’m okay too, by the way.”

  I closed my unseeing eyes in relief. Opened them, which was worse since I couldn’t see. “I’m glad, Tommy, really I am. Is she breathing?”

  “She feels okay to me,” Stone said. “Just exhausted. We got enough calories in her, I think, to let her recover on her own in an hour.”

  I struggled with the next button and the next. Finally finished, and pulled the shirt off my right arm carefully. Pulled the left sleeve over that hand, slowly, slowly, and used the main body of the shirt to wrap the hand, hard. The neck was shallower, I thought, since I’d shielded most of the serious area. Mostly bruises, maybe, and shallow cuts. The hand needed the bandage more. I wrapped it tight, cursing at the pain.

  The warm blood dripped from my neck down my chest, one drop, two.

  “How bad am I hurt?” I asked Stone.

  “You’re vertical and you’re talking, so that’s good.” His voice was from a higher elevation now. Oh, good, he’d gotten to his feet. I felt . . . distant again. Blood loss or just a brush with death?

  “Um . . . ,” Stone said, from right next to me.

  I started, moving back a step. Then took a step. “Sorry. I can’t see.”

  “Why can’t you see?” Tommy asked, still from the same spot. That’s right—he’d been tied up.

  “Minor mind Structure mishap,” I said to Stone. “You have to pay for immunity somehow,
apparently. I’m going to need somebody to unkink my brain when this is over.”

  “Understood,” Stone said. “I take it it’s not something I can do?”

  “Have you got any deconstruction training?” I asked.

  “Not for years.”

  “I’ll wait for the specialist. Thanks.” I could talk him through it, but some of the Structures were fragile. He could end up doing me worse damage than I’d done to myself.

  After a moment he said, “The cuts on your throat don’t look serious to me. They’re already starting to clot.”

  “Good to know,” I said. “Could you untie Tommy for me please?”

  “Yes, somebody untie me!” Tommy said.

  And we’ll need to use the rope to tie Sibley, I added to Stone, mind-to-mind.

  He acknowledged.

  While all of that was happening, I took one small, careful step at a time toward the table I remembered being there. We’d need the phone.

  I ran into it with my knee, hitting it with a small bang. Pain, but not serious. I felt around the table for the phone, found the receiver. Picked it up, set it on my shoulder, and dialed 911 by feel with my good hand.

  Tommy’s mind got brighter all of a sudden, and he started moving my way.

  The dispatcher for the local county picked up. “Hi,” I said. “We need an ambulance. And probably a prison transport. And the FBI.”

  “Where are you?” the dispatcher asked.

  Where was I? Tommy grabbed me in a hug.

  The Happy Go Lucky Stables, he told me. I saw the sign on the way in.

  I told the dispatcher, asked her to contact Special Agent Jarrod of the FBI with the information, and gave her his number before hanging up. “Ten minutes,” I told the other two. “Sooner if they call Jarrod on time. I think he has a helicopter available.”

  I could hear Stone ahead with the rustling of cloth. Tying up Sibley, most likely. We’d throw him back in jail, but I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten out in the first place. I’d ask Paulsen how to make it permanent, if it could be done, later. I hoped it could be done.