by Peter Clines
“If you ignore it, he’ll think something’s wrong,” Olaf said.
“Something is wrong.”
“Just ask him if Jamie’s with the doctor,” said Mike. “And then get up to the control room. See what everything says there.”
She nodded and walked away, head bent to her phone. Mike noticed she typed with her thumbs. The door hissed open and thumped shut.
“Neil,” said Olaf.
“Yeah?” Neil raised his head up and peered through the rings.
“I want you to count with me, just to make sure this isn’t some kind of residual image on either side. Count to five, one Mississippi between each number, starting right now.”
“One,” they said in unison. “Two. Three. Four. Five.”
“Damn,” Olaf said.
Mike looked at him. “Any other ideas?”
“A few,” said Olaf. His mouth was a flat line below his eyes. They flitted from the Door to his screen and back again. “We’re going to need to run all our basic tests again. Baseball. Maybe even animals.”
“Once we hear back about Jamie,” said Mike. “Once we know it’s safe.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Well,” said Arthur. “This is quite interesting.”
He crouched at the top of the ramp in Site B and looked through the three rings at Mike and Olaf. He’d insisted on checking all the readings himself, in the control room and at each Door. Neil sat at one of the stations behind him. The one with Jamie’s sweatshirt on it.
On the floor by Neil were the ends of the power cables. He’d disconnected all five in each building and dragged the ends away. The bulky connectors looked like soup cans with spikes sticking out of the center. The Door hadn’t even flickered.
“You never thought something like this could happen?” asked Mike.
Arthur traded a quick look with Olaf. “Never.”
Mike closed his eyes and sighed.
“Sorry,” said Arthur. “It’s just force of habit. Anything that touches on our core research.”
“I think it’s time to forget about keeping secrets.”
“I’m not sure I agree.”
“In the past week, you’ve had one person die, one person risk her life, and I think it’s safe to say you’ve now messed with the structure of reality,” said Mike. “No more secrets.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” Arthur said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“He does have a point,” said Olaf. “Maybe it’s time we come—”
Arthur glared at him and raised a finger. “No.”
Mike looked between them. “Come…clean? About what?”
“A poor choice of words on Olaf’s part, I’m sure,” Arthur said.
Olaf pressed his lips together and nodded. He turned and walked back to his station.
Mike looked through the rings at Arthur. “So how do you want to do this? Olaf suggested going all the way back to basics, but I thought we should wait until we had more news about Ja—”
Arthur reached out and plucked the quarter from the walkway.
“Jesus,” said Mike.
“Is there a problem?” asked Arthur.
“Seriously, do you have any concept of safety at all?”
“It’s just a quarter.” He straightened up and held the coin between his finger and thumb. George Washington’s profile gleamed in the light. It was one of the old ones, before they were state themed.
“Which could be radioactive, for all you know.”
“Unlikely.”
“Not according to Bob’s autopsy.”
Arthur gave Mike a look. The Look. Mike used it as a teacher, but Arthur wielded it at professor-strength levels. He tossed the coin in his hand. “No burns,” he said. “No heat at all. It’s a bit cool, in fact.”
“We should still examine it.”
“We will.” Arthur glanced up. “How many other coins did you toss, Sasha?”
Her voice thundered down from the control room. “I think there’s three or four more. Two dimes, a nickel, two or three pennies. Plus Mike threw one, too.”
“Another quarter,” said Mike, rubbing his temple. “It should be against the far wall.”
“We’ll collect them all and check them for…well, everything. Olaf,” he called out, “we still have a Geiger counter somewhere, don’t we?”
“I think so.”
“I’ve got it,” Neil said. He pointed at the rings. “It’s in the supply closet back on the main floor. We were using it to check for leaks in the shielding after Bob’s…after the incident.”
Arthur nodded.
Mike looked around the platform. “Maybe we should establish a safe distance from the rings.”
“We’ve done that,” said Arthur. He closed his hand around the quarter and gestured at the white lines.
“Maybe we should establish a new safe distance,” Mike said, “while we figure out how this is happening.”
Arthur’s eyes flitted from the lines up to the rings and back. “You may be right,” he said.
“Thank you.” Mike turned to look at Olaf. “Do you think you could map a new safe zone?”
Olaf nodded without looking up from his station. “I’ll figure something out.”
Arthur traced the rings with his eyes. “Fantastic.”
Mike looked at him. “Sorry?”
Their eyes met across ten feet and half a mile. “Don’t misunderstand me,” said Arthur. “This is a crisis, and we need to understand what happened. And how. But at the same time…it is a fantastic sight. A stable gateway across space-time.”
“We don’t know that it’s stable.”
“We don’t know that it isn’t. Our power limitations meant we were able to keep the Door open for ninety-three seconds. This has been open for over two hours now.”
Mike took a breath and counted to three.
Arthur looked down at the white line again. “I wonder how safe it would be to examine the components. It’d be interesting to see if they’re still active, despite what the instruments say.”
Over Arthur’s shoulder, Mike saw Neil’s eyebrows go up. “We’d need to do a lot of tests before I’d be willing to risk that,” said the engineer.
“Same here,” said Sasha.
Arthur glanced back and up. “When did you become timid?”
Neil shook his head. “Since this all started going wrong.”
“What’s gone wrong?”
“Bob,” said Mike.
“That was a freak accident,” Arthur said. “I think we’ve proven that at this point.”
“Arthur, this isn’t right,” said Neil. “Even if you ignore what happened to Bob, there’s no way this should be happening. It can’t be happening.”
“It’s a new science,” said Arthur.
“Yes,” Olaf stated, “it is. And we shouldn’t assume we understand it.”
A few moments of silence stretched out. Arthur’s phone beeped. “It’s Jamie,” he said, skimming the text. “Her first round of tests all came back with no problems. Physical, X-rays, CT scan. She looks fine. They should have basic blood work in the morning.”
“Good,” Mike said.
“Olaf,” said Arthur, “if you could join me in my office, we’ll start working on a testing routine. We can go over the originals, and between us I’m sure we can come up with an accelerated schedule.”
He waited to see if anyone else had a comment, then continued.
“For now, we should keep it under direct observation, even when we’re not testing it. We can work in, say, six-hour shifts. Mike, if you’re still willing to pitch in that would help.”
Mike nodded. “Of course. Someone on each side?”
“While the Door’s open, it’s effectively one room. We can probably make do with just one side. And Sasha?”
“Yes?”
“You’re closest to a hard line. See if Anne can order us a late lunch. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I haven’t eaten in about seven or eight hours
at this point.”
Neil’s shoulders relaxed in the background. “Probably dinner, too. It’ll be a long night.”
Arthur turned his back to Mike and walked down the ramp, away from the rings.
TWENTY-NINE
The morning pastries were still sealed in their box. Neil used his finger to break the tape and freed his banana-nut muffin. Mike glanced at the box. “Is it too soon for me to take Bob’s donut?”
“Probably,” said Neil, “but it’s not here anyway. I think Anne might’ve canceled it. She’s good about stuff like that.”
Mike bit back a sigh and nodded. “I thought Arthur didn’t have you on watch duty until tonight.”
“He doesn’t, but I still need to do my job. You taking a shift?”
“He paired me up with Jamie. Half because I don’t know enough about the project to be left alone, half so she can assure me she’s fine.”
“You don’t want the jelly donut?”
“Not really, no.”
“What about this chocolate thing?”
“What?”
Neil pulled on the back flap and tilted the box up.
Mike took two steps to the box and eyed the mixture of dark chocolate and flaky pastry. “I love chocolate croissants,” he said. “Does it belong to someone?”
“New to me,” said Neil. “I think it’s yours. I’ll back you up if anyone complains.” He sliced the top off his muffin and scooped up a blob of butter with the knife.
Anne walked in and headed for the coffee. “You,” said Mike, “are my new favorite person.”
“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “Why?”
He held up the croissant. “How’d you know I liked these?”
Anne shook her head. “Wasn’t me.”
“No?”
She shook her head again and filled her mug.
Neil let his knife clatter in the sink. “Could be a thank-you from Arthur for not saying anything to DARPA.”
“It’s not much of a thank-you. Plus, he and I talked to Reggie yesterday afternoon.”
“How’d that go?”
“He was right,” said Mike. “Not even a slap on the wrist for letting Jamie crosswalk.”
“Stop taking my name in vain,” said Jamie. She swung past them and around Anne to land in front of the coffee. Neil leaned out of the way as she reached back to grab her cruller and snatch up her oversized mug.
“Do you know anything about the croissant?” he asked.
“Chocolate croissant.” She glanced back in the box. “Yeah, it’s Mike’s. I added it to the order.”
“You did?”
“Told you it wasn’t me,” said Anne as she walked out the door.
Mike looked from the pastry to Jamie. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “Magnus called about a report the other day and I asked him. He said it was all you ate for breakfast in college.”
“It was.”
“You added it to the order,” repeated Neil.
She nodded and ducked back out the door. Mike stared after her. “Is it just me,” he said, “or is she a lot more pleasant since her visit to the doctor?”
The engineer took in a slow breath. “Maybe they gave her a bunch of great painkillers.”
“For what? She didn’t have anything wrong with her.”
“You have a better idea?”
“Maybe she’s starting to like me.”
Neil bit back most of his laugh and pulled a cup out of the cabinet.
“It sounded better than suggesting brain damage.”
“Arthur said her CT scan was normal.”
“It was normal in the general, quick check sense,” said Mike. “The brain’s a very sensitive thing. One little tweak here or there, a few pathways realigned, and you get a different person.”
Neil reached for the coffee. “That’s not what the Door does, though.”
“Isn’t it?”
The other man glanced away from the coffee and furrowed his brow.
“No screwing around,” said Mike. “What are you all hiding? Did you all make a deal with the devil, and it runs on the blood of orphans or something like that?”
Neil laughed. “No,” he said. “No, of course not.”
“That wasn’t a very sincere laugh.”
“Well, I’m the one who has to kill all the orphans. It’s not a funny business.” He poured a quick shot of milk into his coffee. “Look,” he said, “have you ever kept a secret?”
“Yeah, of course.”
The engineer waved his free hand in front of him, trying to sweep the right words out of the air. “You know how, after a while, it just hits the point that you have to keep the secret? That you’ve been hiding it for so long the reason you were hiding it doesn’t matter anymore?”
The ants lunged at one another. It was a furious war of red versus black, thought and memory. The roar of noise in his head almost made him wince.
And when they were done, he was left with the image of a mousy, flat-chested girl with wire-rimmed glasses.
Cheryl Woodley. Class of 2012. Just a hair off being salutatorian. Mike had her in his class from 2010 to 2011, when college applications went out and came back. She’d been accepted to every school she tried for and offered enough financial aid to afford most of them. The PTA had her earmarked for their annual scholarship, too.
But as graduation came closer and closer, she’d become more and more skittish. In the teacher’s lounge there was talk of drugs or a bad home life. Possibly an abusive boyfriend. It was more common in high school than most people liked to think.
The Friday before Easter weekend, she’d come to Mike after school, close to a breakdown, and confessed. She’d screwed up. She was going to lose everything. Someone would trace her achievements back to a paper she’d written in sophomore year.
At least, one she said she’d written.
“Is this your work?” asked Mike.
“The coffee?”
“The Albuquerque Door. Did you…Did Arthur get this from someone else?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Am I? Being ridiculous?”
“Have you heard of anyone else ever working on a project like this?”
“No, but no one’s heard of this project, either.”
“It’s Arthur’s idea,” said Neil. “Arthur and Olaf.”
Mike studied the other man’s face. The ants were seething. “You said ‘ever.’ So it’s not something current.”
Neil shook his head. He made a point of staring into his mug while he stirred his coffee.
“Are you building off Nazi science or something? Something no one’s supposed to use?” The ants rushed past his eyes with memories of Arthur’s bookshelf, Jamie’s old electronics book, Olaf and Physics in the Nineteenth Century. “Is it something Arthur discovered for his book, something that no one uses anymore?”
Neil’s coffee spoon clattered in the sink. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t look Mike in the eye. “You’re starting to sound like one of those conspiracy theorists.”
He walked out and Mike was left alone with his ants.
THIRTY
Mike leaned forward in his chair. “I had an interesting talk with Neil.”
“Yeah,” Jamie said, “I know.”
“You do?”
“Neil went right to Arthur. He was worried your nonsense about Nazis and Arthur’s book was some clever ruse, that you’d tricked him into saying something important.”
“I think I did.”
“So we’re all secretly Nazis?”
“I never said that.”
“Hail Hydra.”
“You seem pretty eager to turn it into a joke.”
“Or,” she said, “it is a joke and you’re the biggest part of it.” She flexed her fingers. The ones on her left hand crackled and popped.
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“I swear to God, if you ask me that one more time, I’m going to slap you.”<
br />
Mike shrugged and settled back in his chair. “I just want to be sure you—”
“I might slap you anyway, just as a preventive measure.” She stepped over the bundle of power cables and walked past his station to check the liquid nitrogen tanks. She’d checked them twice already, and they’d been checked yesterday.
He looked down at his tablet and flipped through the next ten pages of The History of What We Know. It walked the tightrope between informative and entertaining, and made that walk look easy. He was halfway through the book and hadn’t seen a single thing that looked potentially Door-inspiring. It was doubtful Arthur would be so blatant about something he’d copied, but sometimes people did dumb things.
Jamie marched back to her workstation. She kicked one of the power connectors on the way and swore at it. She checked the monitor.
“Tanks the same?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “This makes no sense.”
“Yeah,” Mike said, “that’s what we all said yesterday while you were being checked out.”
Jamie walked past her station to his, elbowed him out of the way, and leaned over the terminal to double-check something. Her shirt drooped open to reveal a wide swath of cleavage. Mike was suddenly aware of how few buttons were done on her shirt.
She met his eyes and followed his glance down to her chest. “Don’t get any ideas.”
“What?”
“We’re not here for a nooner.”
He coughed. “I beg your pardon?”
She pulled the sides of the shirt together and fastened a button one-handed. “Don’t lie. You were thinking it.”
“I couldn’t’ve been. You told me the other night how unattractive you are.”
She gave him a thin smile. “All that brainpower and you can’t figure out when a girl’s playing hard to get?”
“No, usually I can. I can also tell when she’s close to demanding a restraining order. That’s more what I was leaning toward.”
She laughed.
“Since you brought it up, though,” he said. “About the other night. You mentioned something at the bar.”
“Ahhh,” she said. She walked back to the other station and dropped into her chair. “I was wondering when that was going to come up again.”