by James Sperl
Inferno tucked the picture back into his pocket. He faced forward and met the driving wind. On the near horizon, beyond the reach of the Humvee's headlights, New Framingham glowed. In moments, he would arrive.
And he would claim his possession.
CHAPTER 67
Clarissa didn't know which she became aware of first: the low-frequency buzz or the searing pain in her head. She opened her eyes and found herself squinting against a fluorescent tube.
She was lying down. The muscles along her shoulders ached, and her left arm had that pins-and-needles sensation from having fallen asleep. She was restrained. Resistance from scratchy straps met any attempt to move her arms, her feet as well immobilized by something restrictive. She would have lifted her throbbing head to investigate, but the restraint encircling her neck prevented it.
Clarissa glimpsed what she could of the room where she was held. There were no windows, and though it looked as if it had served as an office at one point, it was noticeably lacking furniture. Except for stained industrial carpet, the heart monitor, and the IV, the room was otherwise empty.
Her heart plummeted off a cliff. Why was there a heart monitor and an IV bag? She craned her neck to get a look at the arm nearest the machine. Tubing snaked away from the back of her hand into the IV. No sooner did she discover this than she became acutely aware of something taped to her chest (electrodes?). Wires skittered across her clothing and dipped off the bed (gurney?) before they climbed into the machine.
Shit.
“Help!” she screamed in her mind, but the sound that left her lips came out more as an aggressive whisper. She cleared her sand-blasted throat and tried again. “Help!” she yelled to greater success, then once again: “Help! Anyone! Can you hear me?”
Her head felt like it was going to crack open lengthwise. She had never felt such pain, even on her worst headache day. Whatever they had tranquilized her with at the daycare wreaked havoc on her brain.
The daycare. Yes, that was right. The events from earlier came back in a rush as if they had been stored in a closet to overflowing and the door suddenly opened. Two men and two women. They had come in pretending to be parents. Then Dustin was on the ground, with her not far behind. Someone came in, she remembered, right before she lost consciousness. But not just any someone.
A door clicked from somewhere beyond her feet. Footsteps padded mutely over the thin carpet until that very someone stood at Clarissa's bedside.
Donna.
“You're lucky I'm restrained,” Clarissa said to her. The dopamine rush from rage began to inoculate her against the pain in her head.
“I don't doubt it,” Donna said. “You must have a thousand questions.”
Clarissa glanced from Donna to the four silent observers who had stepped into the room with her. Two wore lab coats.
“You could say that.” Clarissa fixed her gaze on her nemesis. “But for now, let's start with this one: What the hell am I doing here?”
“I would think that's obvious at this point.”
“I guess I'm a slow learner.”
Donna pressed her lips together in a phony gesture of pleasantness. “Well, then let me spell it out for you in no uncertain terms: you've been selected.”
“Selected? For what?”
“What else?” Donna said, the answer apparent. “To save the world.” Clarissa frowned in confusion before sobering realization set in: Donna's going to use me to try to stop the Sound.
Clarissa jerked on her restraints then let her head come to rest against the table. She let out a chuckle that was both victory dance and terrified captive.
“You are with Rosenstein.”
“Of course,” Donna said. “But you seem to have more knowledge of us than most. I wonder, though, if you truly understand what it is we're trying to do here.”
“You're trying to fix your mistake. The one you created. The one that's opened up our world to another dimension or galaxy, but something happened that you didn't foresee.” Clarissa grinned unsatisfactorily. “You're trying to close the bridge. But you can't.”
Donna pinned on a smile that appeared wholly forced. “I'm impressed.” She turned to the other people in the room—two brutish-looking men (security?), and the man and woman wearing white lab coats—and gave them a self-congratulatory smirk. “I knew she would make a good candidate for selection.”
Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. The only reason I'm here is because you want to shut me up.”
“It's true that panic and mistrust have no place in an already skeptical society, especially when so much rides on having the residents of said society be at our disposal for selection purposes.”
“Don't you mean to abduct and sentence to death?” Clarissa sneered.
Donna glanced down then looked up immediately. “If I told people what I wanted from them, how many do you think would volunteer?”
“Hard to say.” Clarissa felt herself shrug even though she could barely move her shoulders. “But you might be surprised by the answer if you actually tried honesty and told people what needed to be done. Whatever that is.”
“You still don't know?” Donna appeared genuinely bewildered. “To save all of humankind.”
Clarissa felt tendrils of dread creep along her body. It may have been her imagination, but the restraints suddenly felt tighter.
“And, uh...how exactly does one of these alleged 'volunteers' do that?”
Donna scrunched her face, as if she had just smelled something curious. “If we knew, we would have done it already.” She let her expression ease into a half smile. “That's where selectees come in. Whose job it is to find anything that can lead to a solution to this conundrum. People who will either search for an answer or die trying. People like you.”
Clarissa felt weightless. Her vision was reduced only to what was directly in front of her, everything in her periphery becoming a wash of chalky white.
“You're going to send me in there, aren't you?” she said, her voice low-keyed like that of a funeral director. “To that place with the monsters.”
Donna's eyes widened. She moved even closer. “Yes, you mentioned this before. So, you've seen them then? You've been there?”
Clarissa debated whether to answer truthfully, but she couldn't see an upside to lying. “Yes,” she said. “On a couple of occasions.”
The lab coats looked at one another in subdued elation and mumbled something unintelligible. Donna inhaled an encouraged breath.
“I had a feeling about you.”
“It's there that everything happens, isn't it?” Clarissa said, trying and failing to lift her head. “That place is where people go before they vanish.”
Donna leveled her eyes. “We think so, yes.”
“What is it?”
“We still don't know. I and the others in the project have never seen it for ourselves.”
Clarissa coughed then laughed sarcastically. “Figures.”
“But based on the testimony of the few—the very few—who've made it back from there, we feel it's as you say. The place is a staging ground or a...an astro-planal transition area, if you will. Someplace where the dream consciousness can transcend its limitations and adopt physical form.” Donna drifted, awestruck. “The technology is light years ahead of anything we could have ever hoped to discover.”
“Too bad no one knew what the fuck they were doing. And now here we are.”
Donna's expression was almost pleading. “But that's the thing. We knew exactly what we were doing. Once we discovered how to manipulate non-linear, inter-spatial planes of existence to interact with one another on a linear level—using the power of the mind, no less—we knew we had the breakthrough we had been working toward. From there it was just a matter of scaling our technological discovery to something on a much grander scale. In this case, however, things...got away from us.”
“Got away from you?” Clarissa shook her head. “You were m
essing with something you clearly didn't understand.”
Now it was Donna's turn to snicker. “But that's how science works. That's how discoveries are made. We push boundaries, we...we imagine impossible scenarios and try to realize them within our known laws of physics. It's the very essence of raw science. Of progress. To delve into murky waters and hope to clear them for the benefit of all.”
“I think anyone on the receiving end of this new technology would fail to see the 'benefit' of your discovery.”
Donna was quick with her response. “As would anyone who opposes evolution. Do you even know what we were trying to accomplish? Is your small mind capable of comprehending the broad scope of what would have been one of the most groundbreaking discoveries in the history of man?”
Clarissa recalled what Kaplinsky told her and the others about the experimental programs Rosenstein endeavored to realize. Ideas that seemed so far-fetched and unbelievable as to be impossible. They didn't seem so now.
“I know you were working on some sort of mental projection project,” Clarissa began. “Something to do with infiltrating the mind of an enemy but remotely. Gaining access into his thoughts, his dreams, his nightmares, and turning them on him. Is that where Project Tunnel originated?”
Donna would not begrudge Clarissa a measurable reaction at the mention of Project Tunnel. Having knowledge of it had delivered a visible ping to Donna's ego. It was supposed to be top secret—i.e., something only Donna should know. Conceding its existence would undermine her position of authority. She chose to respond as if Clarissa had said nothing.
“Gone would have been the days of the need for ammunition and clunky machines,” said Donna. “Had we the opportunity to explore the application of our discovery fully, soldiers would have never had to go physically into battle again. Primitive modern warfare would have been made obsolete.”
“And now, thanks to your carelessness, the human race might become obsolete.” Donna straightened, as if doing so shielded her against Clarissa's words. “So...what happens to the people who disappear? Where do they go?”
Donna shared a look with the lab coats. “That's one mystery, I'm afraid, we can't answer. But perhaps you'll find out soon enough yourself, though, from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely hope you don't.”
“Gee, your compassion is heartbreaking.”
Donna fixed a look on Clarissa that almost appeared pained. “I know you may not agree, but I'm not the enemy in this.”
“You're right, I don't,” said Clarissa. “And I'm pretty sure you'll have a hard time convincing anyone else you abduct that you're not either.”
“It's not an enviable position to be in, I assure you. But someone has to take the reins on a solution. Someone has to make the hard decisions to do what's best for all of us. If that means I become the poster child for blame and accountability then so be it. I'll accept it if it means the preservation of our species.”
Clarissa gave the woman credit. She didn't shy away from her assumed role as world savior and all that came with it. To some degree, she was right. They couldn't just sit on their hands and hope things fixed themselves. Someone needed to be proactive. Someone needed to step up and make calls, give directives. When—or if—things ever got back to normal, a suitable punishment could be meted out to all those involved with the world's undoing. In the meantime, Clarissa supposed it was up to people like Donna to do her wily best to keep the ship afloat and off the rocks. It didn't make her any less of a cold, heartless bitch.
Donna nodded to the two lab coats, both of whom proceeded to walk around the end of the gurney and approach the IV bag. One of them produced a syringe filled with a translucent pink liquid.
“Whoa! What the hell is that?” Clarissa exclaimed at the sight of the needle. She flailed against her restraints. The two guards divided and conquered, one moving to her shoulders, the other to her legs. Each pressed down upon her with his full weight.
Donna leaned into Clarissa's limited line of sight.
“I think you know precisely what that is.”
Clarissa was on the verge of hyperventilation. “Look, I don't know what you think I'll be able to do, but I'm telling you, I can't fix this!”
“We'll see soon enough.”
The woman lab tech held up the injection port of the IV tubing for her male colleague, who removed the cap from the syringe.
“Wait!” Clarissa shouted. “Just wait! Please! Don't send me back in there. I barely made it out last time.”
“Yes,” Donna said dispassionately. “But you did make it out. The same cannot be said for almost ninety-eight percent of the other selectees.”
Clarissa struggled uselessly against the formidable guards.
“But you don't know what's in that place!” she implored. “You haven't been there! You haven't seen it! You said so yourself. There are things in there, monsters or whatever you want to call them. It's like they're waiting for us. I watched one take a woman from directly in front of me for fuck's sake!”
Donna held up a hand to the lab techs: wait. She leaned even further into Clarissa's view.
“Are you saying you made contact...with another person?”
Clarissa's eyes flitted uncertainly to the people who now gaped at her in wide-eyed astonishment. She got the sickening feeling she had just revealed information that would more hurt than help her.
“Yes,” she confessed. “She was scared, terrified. She was the only person I saw. We tried to talk to each other but—”
“Hold on,” Donna said, struggling to suppress the thrill of fresh discovery, “you spoke to her.”
“As I was saying, we tried to talk. But it was like we were in a vacuum or something. No sound left our mouths, even though we were able to breathe.”
Donna drew back and gazed into space. Clarissa could almost see gears of deduction grinding behind her soulless eyes.
“Does that mean something?”
It took a trio of seconds, but Donna looked at Clarissa sharply as if having been jarred from a daydream. “I don't...” Then she forced herself to stand poker straight, her seemingly challenged composure regained. “It means something only insofar as it supports our theory: that place is both a conduit and a corral.”
Clarissa didn't need Donna to explain what she meant. What she had seen in the Nothing Place fit that description to a T. The sheer, black vastness of that hellish world could certainly accommodate more than a few lost, wandering souls. If the light she had seen was the gateway through to...wherever, then Donna's theory—as well as her own—was spot on. But what about the creatures that prowled the shadows? What was their purpose? Based on how they reacted to the woman, Clarissa wondered if they could be horrifying, inter-dimensional fetchers, beings whose job it was to steer new consciousnesses toward the light when they arrived in the Nothing Place. Even if she were right, it was of little solace. Comprehending their function did nothing to still her nerves.
“You're stronger than you think,” Donna said. “Smarter too, I suspect. You've managed more in your singular visit than anyone else I've interviewed.”
“Don't you mean interrogated?” Clarissa scoffed.
Donna was no longer amused. “I hope for your sake you are smart. Because you'll need every bit of your wits to accomplish what you need to do.”
Dread enveloped Clarissa. She shot a look to the two lab techs, particularly the one who had been holding the syringe, which had moments ago contained some ominous fluid. It was now empty. Clarissa whirled on Donna in a rage.
“What the fuck did you put in me!?” she hissed.
“Something to help you,” came Donna's calm response.
Clarissa jerked and pulled and flailed, but the guards and the restraints were far too successful against her efforts.
Donna backed toward the door. “I wouldn't tire yourself out if I were you. You're going to need your strength.”
“What was that shit?” Clarissa railed.
“One part mild sedative an
d one part proprietary compound, the latter of which was designed to permit a subject absolute control in an active dream state. You know that pill you got from Dustin?” Clarissa's eyes swelled with shock. “Oh, don't look so surprised. Whether you stole it or he gave it to you, it's the only way you could have entered that world and made contact let alone lived to talk about it. What's pumping through your blood right now is like that, only much more potent. We're quite proud of it.”
Whether from the fast-acting drug or the paralyzing truth of what lay in store, the world around Clarissa began to see-saw. Her heart raced to an exceedingly high level, and her skin tingled. Sweat oozed from seemingly every pore. It was the first time in a very long time she felt like crying.
“I'm sorry to have to do this to you, Clarissa,” Donna said. “I truly am. But someone needs to put a stop to this, and your experiences have propelled you to the top of a very short list of qualified candidates. I believe you can do this.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Clarissa said, though it came out sounding like Guh fug yusef. The sedative was already working its magic.
“Something you should know,” Donna continued, as she moved into the open doorway, “like the medication Dustin was given, this sedative will not allow you to wake yourself. At the current dosage level, you will be rendered unconscious for fifteen minutes or thereabouts, and will, therefore, be unable to escape your dream state until the drug has worn off. It's a little security measure we added so selectees couldn't abort prematurely.”
Clarissa could barely keep her eyes open. “You're...a mon...ster:” Yoh ah mohnstuh.
“I'm not the monster,” Donna said, as she streamed back up to Clarissa's bedside. She jabbed a finger toward the blackened windows. “The army of psychopaths streaming toward New Framingham, all of whom will be here within the half hour mind you, they are the monster. They are the real enemy. I'm trying to save us. All of us. What will this band of criminals do?” She leaned back, the answer self-evident. “This may be our last chance to do something.”