by David Walton
My mind raced. I remembered how I had tunneled the flour canister into the decorative table in my house when we found the projector . . . and a wave of dizziness hit me. That had been my double, not me. Once again, I was remembering something that I, the Jacob in prison, had never done.
I remembered how the table had exploded. I could tunnel a bullet or even a paper clip into Jean’s brain, and she could do the same to me. I didn’t want to kill her, though. I wanted to get the projector away from her. The problem was, she might have no such reservations about killing me.
One of the possible Chances became clear, a new version with a beautiful face, slimmer, with clear, round eyes and a closed mouth. “There she is!” Jean cried, exultant, her eyes wet with tears. “There’s my child!”
CHAPTER 37
UP-SPIN
“Why doesn’t the varcolac have any eyes?” Elena asked.
“I have no idea.” It didn’t seem like a very pressing question. I was pacing again, angry, intent on finding a way to escape. “We barely understand who or what it is. It’s utterly alien—just not the kind from outer space. Though, for all I know, maybe it travels in space, too.”
“Is its body real? Can it be hurt or destroyed?” Elena asked.
I considered it. So far, we had seen no evidence of weakness, though the body seemed physical enough. I wasn’t sure that, even if we could destroy the body, it would have any effect on the creature itself. “It must have fabricated its body in imitation of humans. Maybe it just doesn’t realize that eyes are an important feature.”
“Or they were too difficult,” Alex said. Alex and Alessandra’s voices were so identical that I had to look to see which of them was speaking. Alex still cradled her broken arm. It filled me with fury to see her hurt and not be able to help her, so much so that it was a moment before I realized what she had said.
“Too difficult to make eyes?” I said. “A creature who can jump between universes and who plays with reality like clay?”
“Could be. He hasn’t mastered facial expressions, that’s clear. Eyes are expressive,” Alex said. She shrugged, which jostled her broken arm and she gave a little moan.
“You’re doing great,” I said. “Hang in there. We’ll get you out.”
The idea that there were things that were beyond the power of the varcolac to accomplish was encouraging. Of course, Alex might be wrong. The varcolac might wear no eyes because it found them redundant or repellent. But it was something to think about.
I began pacing again, tracing the limits of my cage, trying to find some chink in the armor. I had no tools, no weapons. I had a solid cinderblock wall on one side and an invisible electric fence on the others. It was a simple and effective prison.
“Please stop,” Elena said. “Sit down.”
I kept pacing. “There must be a way out,” I said.
“And you’ll find it if you sit and explain it to me,” she said.
She had always known me better than I knew myself. I sat.
“Now why is all this happening?” she asked.
I skipped over most of the details and jumped to the main point. “Brian Vanderhall and Jean Massey found a way to alter the Higgs field in our universe.”
“What’s the Higgs field?”
“It’s a background field that gives particles their properties,” I said. “It affects how much mass things have, what kinds of elements are possible, what their properties are—really, just about anything. Assuming you can control it, you can play God. Break the laws of time and space.”
“And what does the varcolac have to do with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said these creatures have always been here, in our universe, unseen but present. Why can we see them now? What changed?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I realized that I didn’t really know. It was possible that they could do it all along, but something tickled at my memory, something Brian had said . . . “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Elena asked.
“Brian said the varcolac was tied to the collider. That it feeds off of the exotic particles the collider produces, and draws from its power. And here it is, operating out of the collider’s central power hub. It’s not roaming the world, going wherever it wants to. It has to stay close to the collider, or at least it has to keep coming back again. The collider is what keeps it going, giving it the power to make these physical manifestations. There are hundreds of electromagnets here drawing thousands of volts every second.” I drove my fist into my other hand. “That’s got to be it.”
“What does it mean?” Marek asked. “What do we have to do?”
“We have to shut off the power to the collider,” I said.
“Can we do that from here?”
I shook my head. “We can’t even touch the wires, never mind reach the breaker boxes. Besides, they’re computer-controlled; I doubt it’s a matter of simply flipping some switches. There are probably passwords, or even physical keys. What we need to do is call the control floor, and get them to shut the power down.”
“How do we do that?” Elena asked. “Our phones don’t work down here.”
“No, we’re too deep. We need someone outside to do it for us,” I said.
“Which is impossible,” Marek said.
I closed my eyes. I saw a flash of Jean Massey, of her office at the NJSC, of Chance lying on her desk. The other Jacob might have his own troubles to deal with, but at least he was free to move around and use his phone. “Maybe not impossible,” I said.
CHAPTER 38
DOWN-SPIN
Jean’s hand hovered over the Higgs projector, just moments from erasing the life of her child. The original Chance was still there, in the flesh, but the physically perfect version was superimposed over her, like a second movie projected onto the same screen.
I flicked my eyes through the projector subroutines and chose StrongNuclearForce. A selector icon appeared in my vision, and I used it to select first Jean, and then the office wall. Jean and the wall were suddenly attracted to each other by a force far stronger than magnetism. She was hurled sideways and crashed hard into the paneling.
It wasn’t enough. I ran toward her, hoping to grab her projector, but before I could reach her, I was thrown backward against the wall. I got up, ready to retaliate, just in time to see a swivel chair come crashing down on top of me. The metal base struck the side of my head, and I saw sparks. She was too fast for me, too accustomed to the interface and familiar with the subroutines.
Chance started to cry. Her face turned red, and she clenched her tiny fists while her wails filled the room. Jean rushed back to her, put a hand on her chest, and made soothing noises.
I tried to get up again, but my vision swam. I saw Elena in an underground room, and in that moment, I heard a voice saying, Turn off the power. I didn’t have time to think about what it meant. I scrambled to my feet and fumbled with the StrongNuclearForce pointers again.
“This is none of your business!” Jean screamed at me. “Just leave me alone.”
My pocket burst into flame. I threw myself back onto the floor and rolled to put out the fire on my pants. It worked, but the projector was burned beyond recognition. The message “Signal lost” flashed briefly in my vision. Just that quickly, Jean had won.
Nick tried to run for the desk and grab Chance while Jean was distracted, but she threw him aside like a rag doll.
“I was a friend to you,” Jean said to me. “I didn’t have to help you with the trial. I could have just left you to take the fall, but I didn’t.”
“You helped me because you thought I might lead you to the projector,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m finished with you. I’m going to do what I think is right, and nothing you do will stop me.”
“It’s another murder,” I said. “You’re planning to kill your own daughter.”
Jean stroked Chance’s hair and ran her finger along one cheek. “To cure her
,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
An explosion echoed through the room, unexpected and deafening. Jean cried out, and Officer Richard Peyton stepped into the room, his gun raised. “Hands in the air!” he shouted. Behind him were half a dozen more police with weapons and body armor.
Jean raised her hands. Chance started screaming again, frightened by the noise. “I just need to pick up my baby,” Jean said.
“Don’t let her do it,” I said.
“Stop where you are,” Peyton warned her, taking a step forward. “Don’t move.”
“She’s the real murderer,” I said. “She’s trying to kill that child.”
One of the other policemen was training his gun on me. “All of you, hands on your head. Lie down on the floor,” he barked.
“Watch out,” I said. “She can—”
Jean attacked. Peyton’s gun flew out of his hand and his uniform burst into flame. Behind him, the other policemen were burning, too, but they were well trained. They didn’t know where the attack was coming from, but they didn’t panic or run away. They charged into the room, trying to control the apparent aggressors. Jean reached for Chance, and I knew if she touched her, she would teleport them both away and we would never find them. I reached for her, but it was ultimately Nick who took her down. He snatched a lab coat off a hook on the wall and rushed her, holding it high, blocking her vision. He wrapped the coat around her head, knocking her to the ground, preventing her from using the visual interface that controlled the Higgs projector. I reached her a moment later and tore the projector out of her hands.
Without it, Jean was just a person. She lay still under the lab coat, crying bitterly. I synched my lenses to her projector and saw immediately that it had a much improved interface, with more subroutines available and a more natural way of selecting and executing them. She must have been the intellect behind the software, not Brian, and she must have kept writing code even after he died. I imagined how furious she must have been when she killed him, only to find that he didn’t have the projector on him, and she couldn’t find it among his things.
I heard the voice in my head again: Turn off all the power.
Was my double actually communicating with me directly? The power to what? I thought.
To the whole collider, came the reply. All of it. Hurry.
I felt a sudden rush of panic, and then I could see everything my double was seeing as if I were there. I saw my family and Marek and the concrete sub-basement and the crisscrossing wires. Then I saw the reason for my double’s panic: the varcolac had appeared next to Claire.
She screamed in utter panic and scrambled backward away from it. My double shouted and waved his hands and cursed at the thing, and I shouted and waved and cursed along with him. The varcolac lifted her with one hand and held her over the wires, where she flailed and screamed and smoked in the jagged lightning arcs.
The vision disappeared. Nick was shaking me. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
I blinked and shook my head. “I have to go,” I said. “Claire’s in trouble.”
“I don’t think so,” Peyton said. “I think you’re innocent in all this, but I’m still going to have to take you in.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I’m sorry. I really have to go.”
I flicked my eyes, executing the Teleport subroutine from Jean’s projector, and disappeared.
In theory, shutting down the power to the NJSC wouldn’t be all that difficult. There was an elaborate safety code that included the means to cut off power to any local region, or to the entire accelerator at once. An electrical fire in the wrong place could have devastating consequences. There were radioactive materials on site, flammables, and coolants that, if they outgassed, could kill anyone who didn’t get out in time. There were blast doors and corridors designed intentionally as labyrinths to put as many walls as possible between people and potential accidents.
I materialized in the accelerator tunnel at a mile marker, right in front of a green-painted call station. I lifted the phone and punched the red button intended for emergencies. It was answered immediately by a professional-sounding female voice. “Fire in the tunnels!” I shouted, trying to sound out of breath. “It’s spreading fast. Shut down the particle beams; shut down everything. This is a full-site shutdown emergency. Repeat, a full-site shutdown.”
The voice on the other end acknowledged me, her voice raised in intensity but still calm. “I have you at mile marker twenty,” she said. “We see no fire alarm indicators; are you certain?”
“The smoke is filling up the tunnel pretty fast here,” I shouted. “I have to go. We’re going to need some EMTs down here.”
“How many people are with you?” I could hear the frown in her voice; she probably knew there shouldn’t be any people in that part of the line.
“Just me and Frank,” I said. “He’s hurt pretty bad. Shut it down, will you? Follow the protocol!”
The safety rules didn’t give her a choice. Anyone on site had the authority to call for a shutdown, and they couldn’t decide at the control center to ignore it. It wasn’t something that had ever been abused in the past.
“Hang tight,” she said. “Power shutdown is in effect. Help is on its way.”
CHAPTER 39
UP-SPIN
The lights went out. One moment, the varcolac was holding Claire over the wires; the next, the room was plunged into complete darkness. Jacob had done it!
“Run!” I shouted. I didn’t know if the varcolac was still there, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out. I raced toward where I thought Claire had been and nearly tripped over her where she lay, slumped on the floor. I threw her over my shoulder and groped blindly toward the exit, hoping that everyone else was headed the same way. A second later, an arc of electricity stabbed through the darkness into my body, and once again I was thrown back onto the floor.
The lights came back on, more feebly this time, but enough to see that no one had made it out.
“It must control the backup generators,” Marek said. He, too, was lying on the floor, and I assumed he’d found out that our electric cages were operational again in much the same way I had. I sat up and cradled Claire in my arms.
The varcolac cocked its head, sniffed the air, and then vanished. I closed my eyes and could see where the other Jacob was in the tunnel.
Get out of there, I thought. I think it’s coming for you.
Claire moaned and opened her eyes. I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. I could see places where her skin was burned in lightning fork patterns.
Alex was crying softly. “This is all my fault,” she said.
“No,” Elena said. “No, it’s not.”
“I ran,” Alex said. “At the house. I was a coward; I just ran away and left you and Claire and Sean to die. If I’d stayed, if I’d fought . . .”
“If you’d stayed, you would have been killed with the rest,” I said. “You couldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t have done anything if I’d been there, either.” The words prompted a pang in my own conscience, however. If I had been there with my family instead of off on a wild goose chase to find Brian, what might have been different?
“I could have warned them. Maybe they could have gotten away, too,” Alex said.
“Look around you. They’re here. They’re alive.” At least for the moment, I didn’t say.
“I don’t want to be a coward,” Alex said.
“You found Lily Lin. You found the viewfeed that proved that Mom and Claire and Sean and Alessandra were still alive,” I said.
“That was skill with a network, not courage,” Alex said. “Next time, I don’t want to be the one who runs away.”
“Listen, if you get a chance, you run,” I said. “Don’t sacrifice yourself out of some stupid idea of heroism. You’re no good to anyone dead.”
I wanted to say more, but I was interrupted by the reappearance of the varcolac. In one of its hands, held as easily
as if he weighed nothing, was Jacob, limp and unconscious. In its other hand was the only remaining Higgs projector.
It dropped Jacob on the floor. The projector—the last copy of it available on Earth, as far as I knew—flared with light and disintegrated. The varcolac stepped across the wires without effect and stopped in Sean’s square. Sean looked up at it in silent horror.
Dread gripped my throat. Why was it doing this? Was it malicious or just curious? Did it know it was hurting them? Did it care? Sean was fragile; he always had been. I didn’t know if he could withstand a prolonged electric shock. If I couldn’t stop this now, there was a very good chance that Sean would die.
The varcolac grabbed him by the collar, ignoring his struggles, and rotated like a steel crane toward the wires. The lightning arced into Sean’s body, and he screamed and danced and jerked.
I stood paralyzed, overcome with terror and panic. Claire and Alessandra were crying; Elena was shouting Sean’s name. Marek had his hands balled in fists, as helpless as I was. Alex was yanking again on the drain cover in her square.
There was no time for cleverness, no way to climb up or around, no way to distract the varcolac from its task. I had heard that a dog could ram its way through an invisible fence if it was determined enough. I knew it was a bad analogy—a dog’s electric fence was intended to keep him out by small shocks of pain, not throw him back by sheer voltage. Even so, it was the only chance I had. If I killed myself trying, we could hardly be any worse off.
Starting from the far side of my square, I ran at the fence, head down, barreling forward with all the speed and strength I could muster. I shouted an animal cry of determination and rage and plowed into the barrier with every intention of running straight through it and tackling Sean away from the wires and the varcolac.
I didn’t make it. By sheer inertia, I pushed a few inches farther than I had before, but I was still hurled back into my square, the shock snapping my head back with skull-cracking force against the concrete. Pain flooded my mind, I saw the galaxies of lights again, and suddenly my vision split and I was two people at once. My memories flashed through my mind. I lashed out with a two-punch combination to the policeman’s face at the same time that I peacefully accepted the handcuffs. I saw the back of the police car and the questioning at the station and my first night in jail; at the same time, I drove into Philadelphia to find Colin with Marek and Alex and slept in Colin’s safe house. It was finally happening. The probability wave was collapsing. Jacob and I were merging back together.