The Argus Deceit

by Chuck Grossart

  He’d lost a diver in that exact way just two months back; thinking he’d gained the target’s trust, he got a knife in the neck instead of the full cooperation he was expecting. The hold these places had on these targets—no, these people, he reminded himself—was sometimes too strong to overcome.

  There had been a rifle in this environment, and one of the previous divers had barely escaped getting shot. One bullet had passed right through his helmet, but luckily the integration process wasn’t fully complete, and the round passed clean through without doing any damage. It was the second shot, on the street, that had almost killed him. The tech had been on top of his game and pulled the diver out at the last possible instant before the bullet struck. Losing one man would be bad enough, but losing two would’ve been tremendously hard to bear.

  If the rifle was still here (he had to assume that it was and that the targets—the people—had it in their possession), then Lead had to be extremely careful. He was fully integrated into this environment, and a bullet fired from an outdated weapon from an equally outdated time would tear through his flesh.

  He couldn’t see any motion within the building, and the last update from the tech indicated that the targets were still stationary on the main floor of the warehouse. They could be moving around inside now, but unless he saw them, there was no way to tell. Diver tracking equipment had a difficult time even when the environment was stable, but now, with the turbulence getting worse by the second, tracking was damned near impossible.

  Lead inched closer, hugging the wall of the nearest building, cursing that they hadn’t designed their visors with some sort of night-vision capabilities. When the mission started, they weren’t sure they’d even need any divers, but over the last few months the divers had been getting quite a workout. Now there were just two left, and here he was, trying to finish their mission before the whole sickening mess was vaporized.

  No, he’d have to do this the old-fashioned way: look sharp in the dark, as his old instructor used to say, which he hoped wouldn’t end up with him on the ground, a rifle bullet through his skull.

  There was one entrance in front of him, which they would expect him to come through. He’d lived long enough to know that doing what your opponent expected was the surest way to get killed.

  He moved slowly and deliberately, crouching low, and headed for the rear of the building.

  Connie shifted her weight, her arms and legs stinging from holding them in one position for too long, and looked away from the sights. She could feel that the shadow man was near, but she was getting more and more fatigued. Maybe it was the cold. Brody had found an old blanket for her in the corner, which provided some warmth, but her fingers were a little numb, and she couldn’t feel her nose. Her hunger was growing worse, too, and her energy was slipping away, as if someone had opened a valve on her soul, and what was once a trickle was growing into a steady stream, her life draining out. She wouldn’t be able to run away now even if she wanted to, at least not very far.

  Brody was out there, waiting for the shadow man to appear, just as she was. If she didn’t take the shadow man down with the rifle, Brody would take him with the kitchen knife. That was their plan anyway, and she really couldn’t think of anything better.

  She wondered if Brody was feeling as rotten as she was, and if he also had the sinking feeling in his gut that their time here was growing short. Connie didn’t feel like she was going to go back to the darkness. This time was different. More final. Like she was dying.

  Connie thought about closing her eyes in this cold, abandoned warehouse and letting go. But then she thought about her parents, and about how the shadow man had slaughtered them right in front of her, a bullet to each of their heads, and how she’d vowed to avenge their deaths.

  No, she wouldn’t quit.

  “Come on, you bastard,” she whispered to herself. “We’re right here. Come and get us.” She rubbed her eyes, then settled back down into firing position, cheek on the stock, right eye fixed on the front door, the front sight post hovering within the rear peep sight.

  She swung the rifle slightly to the left as she sensed motion and dropped her finger to the trigger—and saw Brody emerging from the shadows, running at her, knife held high. Her mind began to race. Had he lost his mind? Was he coming at her? She tightened her pull on the trigger, then noticed his eyes.

  He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking behind her.

  Brody was feeling worse. He hadn’t felt the pain in the back of his head, the constant pounding and throbbing, for some time, and he supposed that was a good thing, but the rest of his body was so weak, he could barely stay awake. His stomach was growling so loudly that he was afraid it would echo in the darkened warehouse, but there was nothing he could do about it. Eating surely didn’t help, and he and Connie had finished off both boxes of donuts anyway.

  He’d been hiding in the dark to the right of the entry door for what felt like hours, though only twenty minutes or so must have passed. The cold was seeping into his joints, and he was fighting off the shivers. The shadow man was out there, close. Brody could feel him, but he hadn’t yet made his presence known.

  Why? Just come in through the door already.

  He’d been watching Connie move every so often. There was enough ambient light that Brody could see her, hopefully only because he knew where she was. If he walked through the front door, Brody didn’t think he would see her right away. If things went as planned, Connie would be pulling that trigger for all she was worth before the shadow man knew she was there.

  And if she missed somehow, he would approach the shadow man from the darkened corner, from behind, and take him with the knife.

  It would work.

  It had to.

  Brody was surprised that he and Connie had been in the same place, the same world, for so long this time. She hadn’t shown any signs of being dragged back to the darkness (at least not while he was still close to her, before they took their positions), and he hadn’t felt anything that would signal his time in this place would soon be coming to an end. In fact, he had a weird feeling that this was their last place.

  Maybe he wouldn’t ever see Culver again, or West Glenn. Or Joshua.

  Maybe Garland Trail would be where this whole farce ended. Once and for all.

  Brody heard Connie whisper something and looked in her direction. She was still hunched by the boxes, blanket over her shoulders and head, with the rifle pointing directly at the front door.

  But he saw something else, too. Just barely, but enough to cause his blood to run cold.

  The shadow man was behind her.

  He’d come in through the back of the building.

  In the moment before Brody sprang to his feet, he cursed himself for being so careless and not checking for any other entry points. A moment of stupidity, sure, maybe because he was cold, tired, and hungry. But his carelessness might have just gotten Connie killed.

  He drew the knife from his belt, stood, and ran, hoping Connie wouldn’t shoot him instead. He could yell at her, warn her, but that wouldn’t do any good.

  The shadow man was too close.

  Lead found exactly what he was looking for, another entry to the building that was far enough away from his targets that they wouldn’t hear him breaking in. Some boxes were piled in front of a broken door in the back alley, and he gained access in a few seconds.

  The warnings from the tech continued to pour in. The instability of the environment was getting worse, evidenced by the boundary walls he could see all around him. Swirling black shadows, stretching from the ground all the way to the sky. This place was contracting, positioned to collapse in on itself. The other three were almost gone, too.

  Time was tight, but he still had to be patient and move slowly.

  As he’d made his way around the side of the building, he’d risked peeking into a window; the darkness of the alley hid his movements. He thought if he crept slowly enough, they wouldn’t notice any motion in the
window. And he’d been right.

  From his vantage point, he spied the girl easily enough. She was hiding behind boxes, covered in a blanket, the rifle pointed directly at the front door. He had to give them credit. Had he come through the front door, he doubted he would’ve seen her right away, and would thus have given her all the time she needed to put a bullet right through his facemask.

  The man, however, was another story. Lead looked but couldn’t see him anywhere. Unless he was hiding at the back of the building, possibly covering a rear door—there. A puff of breath in the cold air, floating from the shadows into the ambient light. The man was off to the side of the front door, out of sight. They only had the one rifle, but there was no telling what the man might have armed himself with. He’d seen what he did to one of the other divers with a piece of glass from a broken window.

  Lead moved cautiously through the back room, carefully placing his steps in order to avoid any noises that would alert them to his approach. He’d go for the girl first, get the rifle away from her, then drag her into one of the boundary walls, take her away from the man, and break their connection.

  It was easier to refer to both of them as targets, but they were still real people, even now, after all this time, who had God-given names. The man was Brody Quail. And the woman was Constance Drake. Two people from different places and different times, shoved into this crazy world with no idea of what was going on.

  None of this was their fault. They were the innocents in all this, just like all the others.

  And they were also the last two.

  There. The doorway into the main warehouse. He stepped into the door, crouching low, knowing he was well hidden in the darkened space at the rear of the room. The girl, Constance, was directly to his front, maybe fifteen feet away, her back to him. He studied the lighting in the room. As soon as he moved toward her, there was a good chance that the man, Brody, would see him coming, if he happened to be looking in this direction. If he were concentrating on the front door, Lead might be able to get to Constance, disarm her, and drag her out of here before Brody could react.

  Lead wouldn’t use his weapon unless he absolutely had to, but it might be the only way he could break the connection between the two. Either he pulled Constance into one of the boundary walls, or he’d sever the connection the only other way he knew how.

  Another message scrolled across his visor:

  INSTABILITY AT CRITICAL LEVELS—ENVIRONMENT FAILING

  That was it. He had to move now.

  Lead bolted from the doorway and headed for Constance, stepping gently but quickly. She was moving a little, possibly shifting her weight. He had to get to the rifle, throw it away into the shadows, and buy himself enough time to get her away from Brody and end this.

  Ten feet, five. Almost there.

  Then he saw Brody bursting from the shadows with a knife held high above his head. He’d spotted him.

  INSTABILITY THRESHOLD EXCEEDED—ENVIRONMENT COLLAPSE IMMINENT

  Lead tried to ignore the flashing message and reached for the rifle—

  —just as the environment blinked away, and a pressure wave sent him flying.

  Chapter 35

  Brody saw it coming but had no time to react before it slammed into him.

  He saw the shadow man emerge from the darkened rear of the warehouse and head right toward Connie, and as he approached with the knife held high, the scene behind the shadow man changed. It was no longer dark and no longer the warehouse. A shimmering wall, a pulsing, sky-high picture of another place, rushed through the back wall of the warehouse and across the floor, like a tsunami. A distorted scene of another place, bright, with a blue sky, as if viewed through a wall of water. And soundless, except for a low hum that registered in the back of Brody’s head. What he was hearing wasn’t coming from the wall, but rather from his own skull.

  The shadow man pitched forward as the scene enveloped him, and Brody watched him disappear behind the distortion’s leading edge. Brody caught Connie’s eye right before the wall rolled over her. She had no idea what was coming, and Brody saw confusion in her eyes as he ran toward her with the knife in his hand.

  In a split second, Brody saw her confusion replaced by fear, as she realized the shadow man was behind her. Then the wall hit her, and she disappeared behind the distortion, her body tumbling forward and the rifle falling from her hands.

  In the last moment before the wall hit him, too, Brody could see both of them through the pulsing distortion, fuzzy figures on the ground, one dressed in black, the other covered in a blanket.

  Brody couldn’t help but take a quick breath and hold it as the wave hit him. He closed his eyes and—

  The pain.

  A quick, brutal shock assaulting every cell in his body, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, causing his body to convulse, seemingly every muscle contracting at once.

  Brody screamed, but there was no sound.

  He was in the darkness again, floating alone in the expanse.

  Then there was sunlight, warmth on his face, and asphalt under his feet.

  The wave had passed, and with one quick look at his surroundings, Brody knew he was back in West Glenn again. He was sixteen, in the intersection where he and Joan had been T-boned by a truck (over and over again). There were cars on the street and people standing around, but nothing was moving, as if he’d dropped onto a stage set with cardboard cars and wax figures.

  Connie was facedown on the ground by the sidewalk, the rifle sitting in the gutter a few feet away. She was moving but not much. The blanket had slid off, and Brody saw that she had changed again, too.

  She was the teenage Connie, the one he had always seen in this place. He watched as she looked at her hands and her body, the realization sinking in.

  But there was someone else here, too, and he was already up and moving. Brody tried to stand, but his legs failed him. He was so incredibly weak, so weak that when he screamed at Connie to warn her, the words came out more as a sigh. “Connie, behind you!” The wave hadn’t affected the shadow man in the same way it had affected him and Connie, Brody noticed.

  Connie looked over her shoulder and saw the shadow man walking toward her, but instead of trying to stand, she began to crawl on all fours. Toward the rifle.

  Brody crawled, too, hoping one of them could get to the rifle before the shadow man did, but he quickly realized the effort was pointless.

  The shadow man stood over Connie, looking down at her as she clawed her way to the rifle. Brody watched, helpless, as the shadow man picked up the rifle and threw it away. The weapon clanged to the sidewalk on the far side of the street, which might as well be miles away, as there was no way either he or Connie could get to the gun now.

  It can’t end this way, no, please no. “Leave her alone!” Brody sighed, dropping to his chest, the strength in his arms fading away.

  The shadow man looked away from Connie, no longer worried about her being a threat, and stared directly at Brody. Then he spoke. His voice hissed through the speaker at the front of his helmet. “You—eed to le—her go.” The words were broken, flushed with static, but Brody knew what he’d said.

  Brody shook his head. “No, I won’t let her go. Don’t you touch her.” He was so powerless, watching Connie try to crawl away, the sheer terror in her eyes breaking his heart as the shadow man reached for her and grabbed her by the arm.

  She tried to fight back, slapping at his arm, but was too weak to resist. Brody reached toward her desperately as the shadow man easily lifted her off the ground and turned toward the east to what was approaching.

  Another wave was coming, rolling toward them fast, a huge wall of distortion passing through the houses and streets of West Glenn, soundlessly devouring them and leaving an entirely different scene in its wake.

  Brody looked into Connie’s eyes and saw acceptance there, a realization that this was the way it was going to end. He saw Connie mouth the words it’s okay, and then the wave hit them
again.

  The pain wasn’t as severe, nor did it last as long as before. In a flash, Brody found himself inside the house in Joshua, with Connie, dressed as Reba, hanging from the shadow man’s arm at the end of the hallway.

  “Please,” Brody said, “let her go. Take me instead.”

  The shadow man shook his head and raised what looked like a pistol from a holster strapped to his leg.

  Another wave hit suddenly and flashed past, leaving all of them in a grassy field, a school close by. Culver, and both Brody and Connie were little kids again. This time, the shadow man seemed to stumble as the wave washed over him, and Brody decided he had to act, no matter how weak he was.

  With his remaining strength, Brody crawled toward Connie and the shadow man, just as he took his pistol and aimed.

  He was going to shoot her.

  Another wave.

  They were in the warehouse. In their twenties. He was going to kill her, just as he’d killed her family.

  Another wave.

  They were back on the street in West Glenn. Brody continued to scrape his way closer to Connie, keeping his eyes locked on hers. She was smiling at him, knowing what was about to happen.

  The waves were coming fast now, the scene before his eyes changing from West Glenn, to Culver, to Joshua, to Garland Trail, again and again and again, four places where Brody had lived his life as different versions of himself. False versions. Cruel fakeries created by the man who was going to shoot the only person he’d ever known who was real.

  Brody cried out as the shadow man brought his pistol to Connie’s head.

  She was ten. A teenager. A twentysomething. A middle-aged woman. Her body changed and changed again, her appearance flashing away with each wave. But one thing about her didn’t change.

  Her eyes. So deep, so green, and so full of life.

  Brody’s outstretched hand changed—young to old and back again—with each wave. The pain was constant now, and Brody screamed, his voice changing in timbre as each wave relentlessly rolled over him.