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Strangelets

Page 21

by Michelle Gagnon


  “No!” his father yelled.

  “Again,” Yosh said in a low voice.

  The animal on the other side of him struck so swiftly that Nico registered the movement at the same time something sliced into the back of his right leg. His knees buckled, and he dropped to the floor. A spreading pool of red encircled him. That’s my blood, he tried to say, but his tongue seemed to have stopped working.

  “Stop!” his father begged. He reached for Nico, but two of the creatures restrained him. “I’ll do anything you want. Just stop hurting him!”

  Yosh gazed down at him coldly.

  “You’re killing me,” he managed to say.

  “You can still be saved,” she said. “If your father helps us.”

  “Vater,” he said faintly.

  “Nico, son, just hang in there. It’ll be okay, I promise.” His dad’s face was twisted with anguish; Nico wondered if this was how he’d looked while he lay in a coma. Shame that I’m only seeing it now, he thought in a small, faraway part of his brain. Maybe things could have been different between them, if his father hadn’t always come across as so cold and unfeeling.

  The room was starting to waver. He closed his eyes against the pain, and Anat’s face flashed across his mind. What would she do? She’d be brave. She wouldn’t let them win.

  “Don’t do it,” Nico managed to say. “Whatever they’re trying to make you do …” He choked on something coppery and swiped a hand across his mouth—it came away bloody. He struggled to get the words out, gasping, “Don’t help them.”

  “Nico …” His father spun toward Yosh. “Fix this and I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “There’s only one way to fix it.”

  They sounded distant now, like they were drifting away from him. Nico tried to focus, but his eyes refused to listen to the orders his brain was sending. They flickered like bulbs going dim.

  “Nico!” his dad called out. But the voice was faint and rapidly receding.

  Darkness came swimming up to meet him, and he smiled.

  So this is what they were all talking about, Nico thought as he let it guide him away.

  Sophie crouched down on the floor beside Declan, with Anat hunched over her shoulder. The three of them were hidden behind one of the large computer towers on the catwalk above the main floor. She could see a circle of thrinaxes in the center of the room but couldn’t tell what they were doing.

  “Well, this isn’t good,” Declan murmured.

  “We have to find another way out,” Anat said in a low voice.

  “We already tried that. All the hallways led here,” Sophie whispered. They’d spent the past quarter hour investigating every corner of the building. Luckily, they hadn’t run into any more of those thrinaxes, or cynogs, or whatever the hell they were. Not so luckily, there appeared to be no way out except through the huge room below. There were a couple dozen people ensconced in the shadows along the walls, with even more of the creatures with them. Sophie had stopped counting at thirty. And the only weapon they’d managed to come up with was the mop from the closet where they’d found Zain.

  She shuddered. Poor Zain. He’d never had a chance. The worst part was that there was so little left of him. The bones had been picked clean, as scoured of flesh as the ones they’d seen hanging from trees yesterday. At the thought, a wave of bile rose in her throat.

  “Maybe they’ll leave in a bit,” Declan said. “We can just wait them out.”

  His face was still pale, speech slightly slurred from the concussion. A faint sheen of sweat covered his forehead. She brushed the hair back from his eyes and forced a smile as she said, “Maybe. How do you feel?”

  “Oh, just grand,” he said. “Aside from the worst feckin’ headache of my life. How about you?”

  “Terrified,” she confessed.

  “Have a bit of faith. Got you this far, didn’t I?”

  “Pretty sure this is where we started,” she said wryly. “More or less.”

  “But look at all the lovely new people you’ve had a chance to meet.” Declan nodded toward the dark shapes that lurked in the shadows. “How many girls get up close and personal with real live dinosaurs, eh?”

  “We need to create a distraction,” Anat interjected, scanning the room. “Something to draw them away from the door.”

  “Brilliant,” Declan said. “What’re you thinking? Pipe bomb? Or perhaps we announce that there’s free cake in the infirmary, first come, first serve?”

  “This is not the time for jokes,” Anat scowled.

  “I doubt we’ll be able to draw them all away,” Sophie said doubtfully. “Don’t you think they’ll leave a few to guard the door?” She eyed the thrinaxes. The thought of confronting just one of them was terrifying enough. They’d never have a shot against this many.

  “You prefer to stay here and die?”

  “No,” Sophie retorted. “But I’d rather come up with a plan where dying wasn’t guaranteed.”

  “What’s that they’re standing around?” Declan asked.

  Sophie chanced another glance around the machine. The thrinaxes had moved back; now she could see that they’d been encircling Yosh and Bruder. The two of them were standing over something lying in a puddle.

  Anat leaned farther over her shoulder to see. Suddenly she stiffened and swore under her breath.

  “What?” Sophie asked.

  “It’s Nico,” Anat said bluntly. “They’ve killed him.”

  Sophie stared in horror at the figure on the floor. He wasn’t moving. The liquid surrounding him was dark, and still spreading. She sucked in a breath. “Oh my God.”

  “Well, that settles it.” Declan’s voice hardened. “I’m not waiting around to be next.”

  Anat yanked him down as he started to shift back the way they came. “They’re coming!”

  Sophie risked another glance; Anat was right. Yosh was walking purposefully in their direction. Bruder followed her, his shoulders slumped. He looked utterly defeated. They all ducked behind the computer tower.

  “… your only chance to save him,” Yosh said, her voice carrying clearly to where they were huddled.

  Bruder’s response was muted. The group started to ascend the catwalk.

  “Quickly!” Declan whispered urgently in her ear. “This way!”

  Anat was already racing down the hallway to the utility closet. Sophie followed, keeping her eyes averted from what was left of Zain as they settled inside, breathing heavily.

  “Bollocks,” Declan spat. “Those bloody bastards.”

  Sophie blinked back tears. Poor Nico; poor Zain. They were all going to die here. At the thought, she felt a familiar wave of hopelessness. It was the same emotion she’d experienced as they’d wheeled her into the hospice. When the doors swung shut behind her, blocking out the trees surrounding the parking lot, she’d been hit by the realization that she’d never be outside again.

  Only this was worse. At least then, she didn’t have to worry about getting eaten.

  “We have to do something,” Anat growled, pacing the room like a caged cat.

  “Let’s offer to help them.”

  “What?” Sophie turned to Declan, startled.

  He shrugged. “No other way out of here, yeah? Maybe Bruder can convince them that he needs us to start the machine.”

  “But he said it wouldn’t work,” Sophie said faintly.

  “Maybe not, but could anywhere be more god-awful than where we are right now?” He gestured to the pile of bones on the floor.

  “Bruder seemed to think so,” Sophie countered.

  “Yeah, but that was back when he had his son with him.” His brow furrowed. “This morning you were the one trying to convince me, remember?”

  Sophie’s heart clenched in her chest as they stared at each other. He was right, she had been in favor of restarting the Collider just a few hours ago. But that was before she’d seen Declan dangling from that monster’s back, looking dead. Now, the thought of trying to carve out some
sort of a life in this new world didn’t seem as frightening—not as long as he was doing it with her.

  But if it worked … then Declan would be back home with his mom and Katie. And Anat might end up with her fiancé. She was the only one who wouldn’t benefit. Sophie took in Declan’s square jaw, the cowlick on his forehead. She was being selfish, putting her own newfound happiness above everything else.

  And what did she care, really? She’d be dead either way. At least this would give the others a chance.

  Sophie turned away so Declan couldn’t read her face. “You’re right,” she said in a low voice. “We should offer to help them.”

  “Grand,” he said, although his voice lacked its usual bravado. “So how do you propose we do it? I mean, without getting killed?”

  “They kept us alive this long,” Anat said. “They must want something from us.”

  “We do,” a voice chimed in.

  Sophie slowly turned.

  Yosh was standing in the doorway, framed by a pair of thrinaxes.

  Anat lunged forward and demanded, “Why did you kill Nico?”

  “We must have struck an artery accidentally,” Yosh said dismissively. She reached out and stroked the nearest thrinax on the snout. It closed its eyes like a cat; Sophie could practically hear it purring. “It was unfortunate, but Dr. Bruder is being much more cooperative now.”

  “After you killed his son? Why?” Declan asked.

  “The only way to save Nico now is to do what we want.”

  “You want the Collider restarted,” Sophie stated. “To send us back. Then Nico will be alive again.”

  “Yes.” Yosh smiled slightly. “So you are smarter than I gave you credit for.”

  Sophie shuddered as the cynog Yosh had been petting suddenly snapped its eyes open and stared at her. It emitted a high pitched clicking noise, and Yosh tapped it playfully. “You’ll eat soon enough. Of course, if it takes a long time to get the equipment ready, I might have to reconsider.”

  “What makes you think it’ll bloody work?” Declan asked. “I’ve seen Dr. Who. What if you end up shooting us into the center of the sun or something?”

  “Then we all die,” Yosh said flatly.

  “Brilliant.” Declan ran a hand through his hair. “Until then?”

  “Until then, you can help him.” Yosh stepped aside and motioned for them to go ahead of her.

  Sophie stepped warily past her into the hallway, doing her best to avoid the creatures, which wasn’t easy since they pretty much filled the small space. She walked back toward the main room.

  Bruder was on the catwalk staring blankly at a computer monitor. The decades seemed to have abruptly caught up with him. He’d transformed into a broken, stooped shell of a human being.

  “Are you all right?” Sophie asked hesitantly. She was halftempted to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder but still found him too frightening to touch.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He was muttering to himself as he played with the array of buttons and dials. “Fairly simple, really. Throw the switch, and the linear particle accelerator feeds into the proton synchotron booster. But the calculations, how am I supposed to—”

  “So we’re meant to lend a hand, yeah?” Declan interrupted. “Anything we can do that doesn’t involve actual science?”

  “What?” Bruder looked up at them and blinked. His eyes were red-rimmed and shot through with burst blood vessels. Sophie bit her lip. The expression on his face was nearly identical to the one her parents wore that final afternoon by her deathbed.

  “We’re so sorry about Nico,” she said gently.

  “Nico …” Bruder stared past them. “They killed him. After all that, he died anyway.”

  “I know. It’s awful.” Sophie bit her lip. The words seemed horribly insufficient. “Is there something we can do to help?”

  “You know, I never wanted children.” His rheumy gaze softened. “But that all changed when he was born.”

  That seemed like an odd thing to say in light of the circumstances, but maybe he was in shock. “He knew that you loved him,” Sophie offered.

  “No, he didn’t,” Bruder scoffed, the old insolence back in his voice. “He thought I looked down on him. I told him he was a fool, that he’d never make his mark on the scientific community. I never got a chance to fully explain what I’d done for him.” Bruder turned his palms upward and examined them helplessly. “If it wasn’t for my selfishness, none of you would be here.”

  “What do you mean, selfishness?” Anat asked, her eyes narrowing. “What did you do?”

  “I always end up making things worse for you, Nico,” Bruder continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Your mother claimed that I put my work first, that I was never there. Don’t you see?” He stared past Sophie at Declan. “That was why I did it. This time, I put you above everyone else, above an entire world. More than one world, although that part wasn’t intentional. Surely that counts for something.”

  Sophie took a step back. Bruder had fixated on Declan in a way that seriously spooked her. He’d seemed unbalanced before, but he was rapidly veering off into scary crazy.

  Bruder’s voice rose as he continued, “All this. The cataclysm. That was me, trying to save you.”

  Declan held up both hands and said, “Easy there, mate. Let’s just take a moment—”

  “You were in a coma.” Bruder strode forward and grabbed Declan’s shoulders. “For months. Your condition wasn’t improving. And your mother,” he spat, “was about to terminate life support. She claimed that since there was no activity in your cerebral cortex it was cruel to keep you alive any longer. She said you were already gone.”

  “Listen,” Declan said, his voice tinged with desperation. He looked helplessly at Sophie, but she was frozen. Her legs seemed to have turned to jelly. “Just take a few breaths—”

  Bruder’s words tumbled out in a rush, as if Declan hadn’t spoken at all. “We were hiking, and your foot slipped. You fell into a gully—not a deep one, but you hit your head on a rock. Your mother kept saying it was my fault, that the trail was wet and slippery, that I wasn’t close enough to catch you. I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe she was right. But she was the one who was going to kill you, Nico. Not me. I couldn’t let her do it.”

  Sophie suddenly realized what he was saying. “You started the Collider by yourself. It wasn’t an official test.”

  “A previous experiment had produced some astonishing results,” Bruder said. “Proof that we’d shifted time. By just a few seconds, but I calculated that if I recalibrated the machine and increased the strength, I just might be able to take us back far enough.”

  “To before the accident,” Sophie said softly.

  “But instead …” Bruder looked around. “All this. I couldn’t stop the reaction. There was a power surge, and it rapidly started feeding on itself. I finally managed to shut it down, but by then it was too late.”

  “Bloody hell,” Declan muttered. “You destroyed the world? You, alone?”

  “I was trying to save you!” Bruder shouted. “I knew we didn’t have much time. Once you were dead, it wouldn’t work. And I took every precaution. I tried to calibrate the Collider to only detect you, Nico.”

  “How?” Sophie asked.

  Bruder turned to her. She thought she caught a glimmer of sanity in his eyes, the faintest flicker of recognition. But all too quickly his pupils darted away again, refocusing on some inner stretch of memory. Still, she had to try. It was the only question left that mattered.

  “How did you set it to only detect Nico?” she pressed.

  “Oh.” He rubbed both hands through his hair, shaping it into ragged tufts. “Once I removed you from the machines, it was only a matter of time before … well, before …”

  “Before Nico died,” Sophie said softly.

  “Yes, yes, before that happened. There was a special set of calculations, I spent weeks on them …” Bruder gazed blankly down
at the desk he’d been sitting at. “Special … so that I’d know at precisely which moment to activate the machine.”

  He fell silent, still glowering at the desk.

  “So you set it to detect someone who was about to die,” Sophie said slowly, working through the implications in her mind.

  “It’s hardly that simple,” Bruder growled. “And of course I didn’t want to affect everyone who was about to expire. That would have been senseless, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, possibly even more. But a very distinct energy signature appears right at the moment of death, and it’s particularly pronounced with late adolescents …”

  His voice trailed off and he stared at her. Sophie saw that he suddenly understood, too.

  “That’s why we came through,” she said in a low voice. “Not just Nico. Declan was right. It’s because we’re all around the same age. And we were all about to die.”

  “That would explain it.” Bruder’s voice dropped to a cracked whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

  Declan pushed past her and shoved Bruder hard, making him fall back into the chair. He shouted, “What of my mum, eh? And my girlfriend? What about everyone else on the planet?”

  Behind them, Sophie could hear the crowd shifting. “Declan,” she warned. “Don’t let Yosh hear this.”

  “What, she doesn’t have a right to know?” he said wildly. “Is that why they got sucked in, too? Were her parents about to croak? What about all these lovely dinosaurs?”

  “I don’t know,” Bruder muttered. “None of this could have been predicted. I can’t explain why it all went wrong. Believe me, I’ve tried. For decades, I’ve worked on unraveling what happened, but it … it’s beyond me.” He dropped his head into his hands.

  The thrinaxes started shifting and clacking their claws together in an unsettling way. Sophie glanced back and saw that they’d been joined on the platform by Yosh, flanked by two of the creatures.

  “What’s going on?” Yosh demanded suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” Sophie said. “Mr. Bruder is just a little upset—”

  “And a lot feckin’ insane,” Declan said. “Plus, it’s his fault we’re all here in the first place. So there’s that.”

 

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