He gave a light whistle. Not a cheap piece, the ode to sleeping beauty might be handed down from generations—a wealthy man’s gift. What it definitely felt like was an insight into Professor Brier’s mind. Sure it was a depiction of the familiar story, but not focused on the princess waking. The beautiful maiden was absent. No, the focal point was the briar hedge—the wall that barred anyone from reaching the maiden.
The professor had been trying to wake his wife, Alex had no doubts on that front. One “sleeping” woman who couldn’t wake married to a brilliant scientist, and with their being at the center of a town—disappearing from a town of newly comatose people—that might be explained a number of ways, he supposed. Yet, Crane’s last experiment had been transferring energy from one group to another. Once his wife fell into a coma, why wouldn’t he focus in on trying to fix her?
Alex knew in his gut this was all about waking Rose. The secret to that had to be discoverable by something here. Clearly nothing in sight, or the FBI would have found it in their run-through. If Crane hadn’t been keeping Rose in a hospital or the room upstairs, where was he keeping her? All signs pointed to this basement.
Maybe a room, hidden away. The wise thing was to get the original house plans and find missing square footage. But doing that entailed pulling Daryl back in, and Alex wanted to handle the professor alone.
The time it would take for the government to move on anything might be too long for some victims.
This was a delicate business, and with so many lives involved, the FBI would never see Professor Brier as anything but a villain. Someone to be stopped. But maybe—even if he was the cause—maybe he was the only one who could stop what was happening before more people had to suffer. Which left Alex playing lone hero trying to find the mystical “wizard.”
“Well,” he said to himself, “ask my wife any day, I’m no prince. How do I get past the briar wall?”
“For starters, that’s the wrong wall.”
The soft female voice emitted from behind him, which was a blessing as the speaker didn’t see Alex pale and grab at his chest or his hand slide down to the gun holstered over his hip. By the time he turned, his breathing was even.
The woman wore a flowered shift dress, which hung on her like a bag. She leaned in a door frame—a door that hadn’t existed moments before. Despite the wall’s support, she swayed from the effort of standing. Her skinny legs trembled. Even with the weight loss, and pale pallor. Rose Brier. Her blonde hair toppled in tangles over her shoulders, and her makeup looked as if it had seen her through a hard night of partying.
“Well,” he said, “check you out. It’s not every day I meet Sleeping Beauty.”
Rose sighed at the joke, knuckles going white as she clung to the door frame. “And you are? Given you’ve broken into my home, the least you can do is introduce yourself.”
“Alex, ma’am. I’ve been called in to investigate last night’s incident.”
“You’re a detective?”
“Something like. I take jobs the government can’t or won’t handle.”
She froze, studying his face until he wiped the corners of his mouth to make sure no trace of burrito lingered there.
“Come inside. You’ll want to see Crane’s machine.”
“Not a spindle, is it?” Alex couldn’t help but ask. Gina would have kicked him in the shin.
Rose glared and turned into the lab. By the time Alex reached the doorway, a halogen glow lit the room.
A giant mechanical contraption filled his vision. Dozens of displays flashed on the wall. Two tubs took central position with a glowing podium between them. A man’s body lay in one of them. Alex approached and looked in at a thin man. Asleep. “Shit.”
He peered at the other tub and reached out to touch the inch-thick layer of blue goo.
Cords trailed from it. From the state of Rose’s hair, he could tell she’d been in there, linked up. But why then wasn’t Professor Brier linked as well?
Alex checked carefully over the unmoving body and the surrounding space.
“What’ve you and your husband been tampering with down here, Rose?”
“Why are you here?” Rose’s hands balled at her sides. Her lips drew back, revealing perfect white teeth. “Do you know something about this machine?”
“You never came out of your coma, did you?” Alex asked. Not naturally, at least.
“No. Alex, was it? What are you doing here? I don’t appreciate my questions being ignored.”
It was a truism that princesses liked manners, though Alex resisted saying so.
“I’m here because last night every citizen in Able’s Hollow fell into a coma. And lo and behold, I find you with this sci-fi machine and a goo-filled bathtub . . . and you’re awake.”
Rose stared at him, eyes wide, then bit down on her lip. A muffled sound escaped her as she moved between him and Crane. “No, no, no. How could it have affected anyone else?”
“CDC will be here in the morning to determine if it’s contagious before air-lifting everyone out. There are a lot of unconscious people out there, and I’d like to find a way to help them.”
Rose’s fingers folded around her husband’s. She trembled, and Alex wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but his gut told him that was a lie. This wasn’t a fairy tale, and no happy ending awaited her.
“He never thought . . . It was just supposed to be him and me involved in this experiment.” Rose drew in a deep, ragged breath. She looked to the side at a timer, just a flick of the eyes then she turned away.
“It isn’t just the two of you.”
“But the rest will wake up.”
“How do you know that?” Alex pondered the timer and couldn’t get past the sinking feeling that with each number that ticked away all those folks had less and less hope. There wasn’t much time left. Certainly not enough to second-guess himself. Less than half an hour remained.
“I . . . Because it couldn’t take a whole town to wake one person. My husband planned for this to be a one-to-one ratio—me and him. Crane assumed he wouldn’t wake up. He told me so . . . but now maybe he will, since there were so many. Maybe all of them will wake up . . .”
Alex shook his head. “You don’t know that. Is your life worth nearly five thousand other lives?”
“I could see Crane again . . . I just want to see my husband.”
“We must turn the machine off before that timer stops. I can’t risk all those lives.”
Rose clung to her husband. “Turning it off could be more dangerous than just letting it time out. What if it kills them?”
“There are a lot of what-ifs right now. We don’t have time for them. Are you going to help me?” Alex set his hand on his holstered gun. Using it on Rose . . . well, that was something to avoid. She was part of a circuit, though, and cutting her out of it just might save everyone. Even a princess wasn’t worth sacrificing a whole town.
“Rose, are you going to help me?” Alex asked. So far she’d offered no resistance.
Her back was to him, and when she bent over, her long hair hung down into the tub and touched her husband. “I can figure what happens after that machine turns off. Either everyone dies and I go back into a coma or they wake up and I go back into a coma. After that, all the government types come to study Crane’s invention. If we’re lucky and Crane wakes up, he’ll spend the rest of his life in some sort of government detention.”
“This isn’t a choice.” Alex drew the gun but left it lowered. She didn’t need to see it yet. “There’s nothing wrong with those people out there, so they should wake up. But if we leave it on, we risk you taking in too much energy, and they’ll all stay comatose.”
“So you want me to sacrifice myself, not even knowing for sure if it will help anyone?”
“It sounds ugly, but yes. That’s what I’m asking. I’m sorry.”
“Do me one favor?” Rose asked.
Alex averted his eyes. “If I can.”
What if it wa
s Gina? He couldn’t refuse her anything reasonable. Not this woman, whom another man had been willing to sacrifice everything for. He had to honor the value of something beloved.
“This goes above my pay grade soon,” he added.
“Tell Crane it worked—before you do whatever you do with him. And that I regained consciousness. Tell him no one forced me . . . and tell him I heard him talking to me all those many years. I know how hard he tried to get me back—I know how much he loved me.”
Alex nodded. “I’ll give him the message.”
“He talked about this project, all the things I could do when it was complete. All the places I could go . . . as if I’d want to travel anywhere without him.”
“Back on point: as sorry as I am for you, thousands of people might die if we don’t solve this. Do you know how to turn this thing off?”
“You should be able to power it down from the control panel here.” Rose climbed into the tub where Crane lay, and Alex wished Gina was next to him. In that moment, he needed to hold her, to be sure she was still there. Rose snuggled in close beside Crane, positioning his arm around her. Did Alex have the strength to do what Rose was doing? To walk calmly into something that meant losing himself? A desire to apologize to Crane bubbled up inside him.
This sleeping beauty walked to her spindle with full knowledge. She’d never get her Prince Charming. If only Gina had been there to tease him for getting sentimental . . . but she wasn’t, and he swore that when he got home, he’d make sure he didn’t miss any of those precious moments. Moments Rose and Crane would have died for. Alex would find a way to be home more, to see Anna’s first steps.
For the first time, he understood why Gina had wanted that office job. Living, real living, was coming home to the ones you loved every day—being with them. His work, that wasn’t life; it was his version of a coma and he wanted to be awake.
Rose
CRANE’S ARM FELL OVER HER, loose and unresponsive, but she could pretend he was holding her. If he’d been able to, she knew he would have. As it was, it would have to be enough having his warm breath against her neck. She would savor that sensation in her mind.
“If this works . . .” Alex said.
“If this works, I’ll be back where I was before. I’ll die without ever waking up again.” Rose pulled Crane’s arm tighter around her but even so, the trembling of her voice signaled the mounting fear that commanded her to run, run far, far away. “Crane used to talk about relative worth—how the worth of any object depends on the viewer. I know what I was worth to him . . . but I can’t believe he would have sacrificed a whole town for me. I certainly won’t make that sacrifice. To my view, I wouldn’t be worth much if I was willing to risk all those lives. And I know he was worth more than trying to steal them for me.”
Alex nodded. His eyes glistened, and he wiped at them. “I’ve never killed someone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Alex moved up to the control panel.
“Eight-five-two-six-two is the passcode to get you in,” Rose said flatly.
She snuggled Crane but found the position unsatisfying. If she could never see him again, she wanted to gaze into his face now. Memorize every line, and keep it with her until her mind went blank. She turned over on her other side and tucked her face against Crane’s neck.
The panel beeped with each number Alex pressed.
“You ready?” Alex asked.
“Yes.”
Rose snuggled closer against Crane and wrapped her arms around him.
“Nothing happened. It won’t take the passcode,” Alex said.
“What else could it be?”
“The numbers that correspond to Rose B, maybe?”
The keypad let off little beeps again, and once more nothing happened. Rose struggled for another guess at a passcode. Her eyes flicked to the timer. Not much time left now, less than a minute.
“Screw this, cover your ears, Princess,” Alex said.
Rose opened her mouth to ask why when she saw the gun lift. Was he going to shoot the console? Would that work? No time to ask.
She covered her ears.
A shower of sparks erupted, accompanied by a resounding boom that echoed in the metal room, and Rose’s eyes squeezed closed. Her ears rang. But even without her hearing she could feel the vibration. The rhythmic tick of a countdown commenced.
Beep.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Beep.
Rose bit her lip.
Beep.
“Please go on, whatever happens. Live your life.”
Beep.
She brushed her lips over Crane’s—one last moment of warmth to take with her. The sound of the machine faded. With the outer hum dimming, a familiar inner fog swelled to greet her.
Darkness swarmed over her, but for just an instant, she could feel Crane’s warmth against her skin. Feel his arm tighten around her. His mouth pressed to hers.
Suddenly she knew what the passcode was.
AWAKE.
It came to Rose as the deep sleep overcame her, and she fell back into the nothingness.
Truth Be Told
danielle banas
I TOLD MY FIRST LIE when I was five years old. It was a silly thing. I’d pulled the last pint of chocolate fudge ice cream from the freezer and stuffed my face. When my mother asked where it disappeared to, I opened my sticky, fudge-covered lips and told her I didn’t know.
The lie felt like a living thing as it spilled from my mouth, a friend that arrived at the perfect moment to save me from trouble. And, like all living things, my lies tended to grow as the years progressed.
“Does this dress look nice?” Of course. “Did you throw a baseball through the garage window?” Maybe, but I’ll tell you otherwise. “Why is your homework late?” Well, you see, my house caught fire last night . . .
I tried to stop; I really did. Like when my classmates laughed upon discovering I liked Maddie Johnson from sixth-grade English. Instead of denying it, I shrugged and said Maddie had a lisp that made her spit in your eye every time she talked—which was true, though cruel of me to say. When I found out I’d made Maddie cry, I felt so horrible that I avoided her for the rest of middle school. My tactic progressed to bored indifference after that.
“Hey, Leo, do you like so-and-so?” Ehh . . . I don’t know. “Do you want to watch that new superhero flick?” Maybe. “What major are you picking in college?” Not sure.
I wished I could say I wanted to be a photographer, but my mother didn’t think that was a viable career choice. She liked marketing managers. Likely because she was one. She was so overbearing that I wouldn’t put it past her to hide out in some bushes on campus, armed with binoculars and a thermos of green tea, spying on me to ensure I made it to class on time.
“Leo! I ironed your socks for you!”
And there she was. Mom. Shouting from her home office, where she multitasked every minute of every day. She folded clothes while negotiating client contracts with the same vibrant enthusiasm that normal people exuded when winning the lottery.
“Thanks, Ma.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that no sane person scrubbed footwear with an iron.
“And put some pants on, Leonard.”
“Ma!” I hated when she used my full name. I gestured to my legs, which were covered in my favorite pair of plaid boxer shorts. “I’m decent.”
“Hardly. I told Mia you’d drive her to the library. She needs something for a homework assignment.” Mom picked up her desk phone, balancing the receiver between her shoulder and her ear.
“Steven,” she barked. “Pull up the Wisenhower contract. They’re complaining about clause four again.” She turned her attention back to me. “Oh, and honey? Put on a coat. It’s a bit nippy outside.”
“Whatever.” I grabbed the car keys and dug through the laundry basket in search of jeans and a sweater.
“And Leo? Don’t let Mia pick out a vampire book. Last time she read one,
she asked a boy in her class to bite her.”
I grunted—my usual noncommittal response whenever Mom went off on a tirade.
“And I’m making your favorite pot roast for dinner, so don’t be late.” She rolled her eyes at her phone. “No, Steven, no pot roast for you. No! Clause four, you loon!” Her gaze swiveled to me again. I felt like I was watching a tennis match. “I’ll make sure to cut up your potatoes just the way you like.” I’d been capable of cutting my own food since I was four, but try telling her that. Feigning indifference was easiest. It got me out of the house, no questions asked.
Shutting Mom’s door softly behind me, I went searching for my sister. She was usually relatively easy to find. At thirteen years old, Mia Clark’s hobbies consisted mainly of screaming over the latest “dreamy” teen actors and screaming even louder over the latest “dreamy” teen boy bands.
“Mia’s in the car,” Dad said. He was kneeling in the living room, up to his elbows in couch cushions. I paused in the doorway, watching his forehead glisten with sweat as he huffed and puffed and practically tore the house apart. “Your mother hid my remote again.” He tossed a cushion across the room, where it landed in the fireplace. “Baseball starts in ten”—a second cushion followed the first—“minutes!” Two pillows brought up the rear.
“Well . . .” I shrugged. “That sucks.”
“Would it kill you, Leo, to care about your old man’s problems for once? Pittsburgh’s making it to the World Series this year, mark my words.”
I reached for the front door. “Consider them marked, Dad.”
“Want to watch the game when you get back?”
“Ehh . . .” I could see the hope in his eyes. (Or maybe that was just joy over finally locating the remote, lodged inside a potted plant.) “I’ll pass. See you later.”
As soon as I got in the car, Mia was all over me. She gripped my elbow as I backed out of the driveway, causing me to swerve and almost mow down the neighbor’s cat. “Leo! Leo, we’re going to the library, right?”
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