Winston felt Bernie resist answering, but the alien said,
The alien paused for a moment, then said,
If Winston had been able to feel his mouth, he was sure it would have dropped open. Two hundred and sixty times he had fought Bledsoe and lost his mom, and presumably Shade and Alyssa with her.
<2441.>
Bernie considered the term.
Bernie waited until Winston connected the dots.
Winston made sure to broadcast his indignation.
said Winston.
Winston couldn’t imagine how Bernie and everyone around him must have felt. Perhaps like trapped ghosts, Winston thought, stuck in a past they didn’t mean to inhabit.
Winston had no reply. The world was going to end, and if anyone interfered with Bledsoe, it was only going to end sooner. He had already won.
***
Suddenly, the world snapped back into its regular solidity as Bernie broke off their telepathic connection. Amanda stepped into the chamber and quickly closed the door behind her. Winston felt the weight and drag of his body return. Never before had he thought of himself as large or heavy, but in that moment he felt like he must weight a thousand pounds. As his mother approached, Winston clung to Bernie’s cage a bit longer, just to make sure his body could still support itself.
“Sorry,” said Amanda as she approached. “I came as quickly as I could.”
She reached into her pants pocket and drew out a small, folded brown bag. She handed it to Winston, the hesitation clear in her body language. Peering inside, Winston found three small vials of clear liquid, each with a black rubber stopper.
“No foam?” he asked. “Nothing to protect them?”
Amanda raised her hands and glanced down at her body. “I didn’t have a lot of room for bulk storage.”
Winston flinched at the rebuke. Of course, she had done her best.
“Sorry. Of course. Thank you.”
Winston refolded the bag and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket, not trusting it to survive getting banged about in his backpack.
Amanda glanced from Winston to Bernie and back, the doubt clear on her face. “I’m taking a massive risk giving this to you. Please tell me you’re going to do the right thing with it.”
He tried to choose his words carefully. “I’m going to try. There’s…a guy. In the future. He’s got some crazy idea about going back and starting a nuclear war with the Russians to make America great again, or some ridiculous thing.”
“America isn’t great in 2013?” Amanda asked.
“What? No, it’s fine. I honestly have no idea what the guy is babbling about. The point is, he only wants to be in charge and make America do whatever he wants.”
She drew a deep breath, considering. “And why do you need the QVs?”
“Because…” Winston felt a memory of Shade poking him in the chest and couldn’t help but smile. “Because I need help. I thought I could do this on my own, but I can’t. Which is also why Bernie is going to help me.”
Winston swallowed as his jaw tightened.
Winston couldn’t hide his outrage as he spun to face the alien.
“What?” Amanda asked as she saw the change come over Winston. “What is it?”
Winston felt backed into a corner with no acceptable options. He would not become Bledsoe’s lackey, and he would not give up his mother to an even worse fate under Bledsoe’s thumb. But if he tried to do anything other than what Bernie said, the Omega Mesh would simply reset everything — and the people he loved would remain dead.
“Nothing,” said Winston. “It’s fine.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply.
/> He was right. It was the drive to have that family that made him leave his mom in that motel room. All he would ever have was a ghost, and the knowledge drove a spike deep into his heart.
Winston’s imagination couldn’t find any alternative. All he could picture was himself falling through the sky as the plane exploded above him.
He nodded once.
Winston heard a faint tone as Bernie shifted them to a group frequency.
“We are,” she said solemnly. “After all, it’s not that big of a leap from top-secret serum theft to covertly detonating a nuclear bomb. My parents would be so proud.”
Winston grinned. That was the mom he knew. “Speaking of which, assuming everything goes as planned, can you maybe let me out a little more as I’m growing up?”
The question seemed to perplex Amanda. “I…have no idea. Should I?”
“Definitely.”
She gave a noncommittal “hm,” then said, “The key.”
Winston thought she was going to give him the key to getting let out more often. Instead, she crossed to the cage winch control and reached down, running a hand between the machine and the wall. Winston heard a metallic jingle, and her hand reappeared bearing a metal ring with two large keys. She held them up toward Bernie.
“Ready to be free?” she asked.
The alien cocked his head a bit to the side.
Amanda’s expression dimmed as she lowered the keys. “I suppose you’re right. Well…” She jangled the keys at Winston, then replaced them on their hidden hook. “You know where they are.”
“I understand,” she said.
“How will you do that?” Amanda asked, echoing Winston’s own thought.
said Bernie.
“Ha!” said Winston. “Welcome to the party, Mom.”
Bernie made use of his connection to the Omega Mesh to search the corridors nearest to his holding cell. When he was confident that Amanda would have a reasonable amount of time, he gave her the all clear and urged her to hurry. As they stood by the chamber door, Amanda paused to peer one last time into Winston’s eyes, as if searching for herself or Claude in them. She set one hand lightly on her belly, offered a slight smile, and gave Winston a quick kiss on the cheek.
“This is awkward,” she said.
“You’re telling me.”
“I’ll see you in…” She tried to puzzle it out, then laughed. “I have no idea when. But I will see you.”
He leaned forward and gave her a hug. “You will. Especially if you let me out to play more often.”
“Don’t be a brat.”
She hugged him back and, without another word, turned and slipped away.
Winston began to object, paused as he stared at Bernie, then leaned his head back and said dully, “Well, crap.”
Bernie held his hand toward Winston through the bars. Winston returned to him, and the alien rested his fingers atop Little e, allowing his fingertips to touch the back of Winston’s hand.
Winston took a deep breath and licked his lips as the Alpha Machine’s controls came alive and shifted in his vision. “And then?”
20
Countdown Crisis
Winston emerged from his hail of sparks and, for a moment, thought nothing had changed. Bernie’s cage remained before him. The alien appeared unchanged, save for that his hand was now withdrawn and at his side. He stood watching Winston intently.
Then Winston heard the alarm. And smelled the smoke. Just beyond the closed chamber door, Winston heard a man running and shouting, “Is anyone here?! Anyone left?!”
Winston couldn’t hide his shock at the idea that his parents would go on such a rampage.
“Why would—?”
The bomb. Of course.
“Now? Oh, my God, Bernie — the bomb thing is happening now?”
Winston practically dove to fetch the key from behind the winch console. “What about you? Wasn’t anyone going to move you in case of an emergency like this?”
Bernie gave a slight hunch of his shoulders.
Winston opened the lock and crossed to the door with Bernie.
“So, if Area X is evacuated, why do I still hear people?”
Winston had never stopped to consider that anyone’s life might be at risk other than his parents. He wondered how far away people would need to be in order to escape the blast. Most of it would be contained underground, but still. Innocent people would die, and there was nothing Winston could do to help them that wouldn’t trigger a reset.
Bernie opened the door without hesitation.
Bernie glanced at Winston, and while the alien’s facial expression remained neutral, the blue tones of his eyes seemed particularly large and fluid. Winston wondered if his species somehow conveyed emotion through their irises.
“It’s an energy field created by all living things,” Winston said in a vague approximation of an Obi-Wan Kenobi impression. “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
“It’s a Star Wars quotation, Bernie. Geeze.”
“What? No. That’s not what Obi-Wan said at all.”
Winston stopped dead in his tracks. “There’s an Episode VIII? And Luke’s in it?” He pointed his index finger in Bernie’s face. “Don’t you dare tell me more. I will reset this stupid iteration right now if you spoil anything.” He strode into the hall, heedless of the fact that he had pulled in front of Bernie. “Luke in Episode VIII,” he growled. “Oh, it’s on now. I’m totally getting that last Alpha Machine piece, just so I can see this.”
W
inston stopped suddenly and let Bernie catch up.
“Am I going the right way?”
The alien showed no sign of humor or chastisement. He only replied,
Winston resumed walking, this time more slowly. “Why did you get us so close to the bomb detonation? That seems crazy!”
A thin haze of smoke clung to the ceiling, and the piercing, repetitive buzz of the fire alarm grew more shrill as they approached a conical black speaker mounted high on the wall.
“What are you saying? Sometimes they don’t set off the bomb?”
“Which would make the Omega Mesh do a reset.”
“And so you need me to…what? Make sure they carry through with it? Talk to them?”
Winston powered up Little e and the Alpha Machine. Obviously, his first task was to keep one eye on the current time and space around himself. Alternating with this, he had to continually bounce several minutes back in time to see if their location would be open for an immediate jump in order to avoid being seen. Whichever layer he paid less attention to would desaturate and shift into the background. Even before they reached the end of the first hallway, the repetitive flipping between present and past started to give Winston a headache. He tried to imagine how he would have managed with having a complete Alpha Machine, also needing to scout through space all around his present location.
Winston Chase and the Omega Mesh Page 15