“Thanks.” He turned and pushed the elevator button again. It had not left the floor yet, and the door opened immediately. He pushed the button for 14. The doors closed and the elevator was moving at once. It came to a halt moments later, and the doors opened.
Kevin took a single step out of the elevator, and then he stopped. He closed his eyes and took a breath, then opened his eyes again.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Most of it was all still here. The skeleton, anyway. The cubicles and the offices, as well as all the little blocked-off areas with the computers where he had taken the tests.
But there were no people.
No dentist office this time. Not even a temp agency or a jury-rigged internet start-up. Just emptiness. Empty desks, empty offices, and empty cubicles with nothing but a scattered constellation of pushpins to show that there had once been bills and meeting notes and family pictures tacked up on these walls.
It was an unsettling sight. Everything was in shades of white and gray, and the air was dead. It was completely silent. Kevin felt as though he had stumbled upon the aftermath of some deadly calamity, a plague or a fire or a reactor meltdown, and all at once he wanted to get out of this place. He didn’t dare look at his watch. He wanted to get back to where there were people, to where there was noise and warmth and movement, to –”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Kevin jumped, scared out of his wits for the second time that day. He spun around in a panic, half expecting to find a man in a big white hazmat suit wielding a Fahrenheit 451 flamethrower, a man patrolling the 14th floor, a man whose sole job it was to clean up loose ends. To eradicate loose ends.
But it was only a small man and woman in cleaning uniforms. They looked Dominican, or perhaps Guatemalan. The man was pushing a mop-bucket, and the woman had a supply cart. “Wrong floor, guy,” the man said. “We clean this place, huh? No tourists, okay?”
But then the woman’s face lit up. She smiled broadly, and she pointed at Kevin. She turned to her companion and began speaking very quickly in Spanish. The man nodded impatiently at her, putting a hand up for her to wait. He glanced at Kevin. “She say she know you,” he said, translating on the fly. He tried to get the woman to slow down, but she shook him off, growing more excited. “She say you the – ” He turned and gave the woman a questioning look. Then he shrugged. “She say you the number one guy. The winner, she say.”
The woman turned and nodded eagerly at Kevin, smiling and clasping her hands together like a proud mother. She uttered another burst of Spanish, and the man spoke for her. “You the one they were looking for.”
Kevin shook his head. Nothing the woman was saying made any sense. He wondered if her friend might be translating wrong. He looked at them both. “Have you worked on the 20th floor?”
The man shook his head, but then he relayed the question to the woman, who nodded again. She spoke quickly.
“She say yes, she used to. But then they take it all away. They don’t use that floor now.”
Kevin nodded. “Right, I know. But what did they take away? What was up there?”
The man spoke to his friend, who gave the answer. “All the doctor stuff,” he said. “They took it out. She don’t work up there now.”
Kevin frowned. “No, they put doctor stuff in.” That was a missed translation, clearly. The man’s English probably wasn’t as good as it seemed. “It’s a dentist’s office now. I saw it. But before, it would have been educational stuff, more offices like this.”
The woman shook her head. She spoke again to the man, more slowly this time. With emphasis.
“Doctor stuff, she say.” He put some of the woman’s strong tone into his own voice. A tone of authority. “Lots of doctor stuff. Big stuff. They take it down the service elevator. Make a big mess, dust and plaster everywhere. She have to clean it up.”
“Just her?”
“I’m new. She’s the only one from the old crew.”
“What?” Kevin was confused again. “Why? Where’s the rest of the old crew?”
“They switch it up a lot around here. Different companies for the cleaning, I don’t know.”
“How come they let her stay?”
“Well, she use a different – ” The woman punched him in the arm, her face suddenly stern. But the man waved her off. “She use different names, you know? She don’t want to move all the time.” He smiled at Kevin. “They lose track,” he said. “They think we all look the same, you know?”
The woman gave Kevin a little grin, and she shrugged. Then she pointed at Kevin again, and all at once she was back to being proud of him.
“Weenay!” she shouted, and let out a little laugh.
Kevin looked confused.
The man turned to her questioningly. She spoke to him, explaining.
“Winner,” the man said to Kevin.
“Weenay!” the woman shouted again, even louder this time. “You, weenay!”
“Okay, thanks,” Kevin said, trying to return her smile. He wondered what his first-place prize had been for being the big weenay. Maybe a session on the 20th floor, where they kept medical devices.
Huge medical devices, ones so large that they scraped the walls of the service elevator.
Kevin shuddered. He didn’t feel like a winner.
One Step Ahead
Kevin took his time walking back, hoping the cool September air would help him think. But there were too many unknowns, and after two miles of walking he had made no progress.
By the time he made it back to his apartment, it was almost nine o’clock, and there was a different man on duty in the lobby now. Kevin stopped and looked at the man as he held the door for him. “How long have you worked here?”
The doorman was immediately on the defensive. “Sorry, I’m really still figuring out – ”
Kevin shook his head. “I’m just asking how long you’ve worked in this building.”
“Oh.” The man breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry to freak out. Job market’s pretty tight. They only hired me three days ago.”
“Three days,” Kevin said slowly. “So I guess you wouldn’t have seen me move in here.”
“No, I don’t… wait, what?” Now the man was genuinely confused.
“Never mind.” Kevin walked away, toward the elevator.
Somebody’s one step ahead of me, he thought bitterly. Everyone who might be able to tell me anything has been taken away. The 14th floor, the 20th floor, my doormen. Even the whole cleaning crew in that building, with the exception of that one Guatemalan lady.
He came slowly into his apartment, glad that he had somehow remembered to leave the lights on. He was about to sit down on one of the huge white couches in his living room when he realized that he could smell something cooking.
“Welcome home.”
Kevin jumped again. “Jesus, Andrew. You’ve got to stop doing that.” He had completely forgotten about the personal assistant.
“Dinner’s ready, if you’re hungry.”
“Where’s my kitchen?”
Andrew nodded past the living room. “The food is waiting for you in the dining room. Just through there.”
Rather than protesting, Kevin simply walked over, sat down at the table, and went to work.
It was a feast.
When he was done, he leaned back – with agreeable difficulty – and patted his full stomach. “Best meal I’ve had in years,” Kevin called out.
From somewhere in back came the distant, gentle reply: “Thank you.”
In another moment Andrew was there, picking up plates and glasses. He moved quickly, yet without seeming to rush. He glided. Kevin might have felt uncomfortable being waited on, but he reminded himself that he had paid this man in advance. Just watching him glide around, sweeping up plates and crumbs and silverware as if he were on skates, was itself a pleasure. Andrew was unarguably good at his job. Kevin felt himself sliding down deeper into his seat as the meal both warmed and lulled him, and all at
once he realized he was exhausted. It was nearly ten at night; he had been on-edge since first thing this morning.
“Can you point me toward my bedroom?”
“Right through there, then a left, all the way down. I’ll be up for a while, so do call if you need anything.”
Kevin made his way down the long hallway, barely noticing the paintings and wallpaper and furniture as he passed. He found that he no longer cared where these things had come from, or what they had cost him. He could always go back to working in hedge funds if he needed the money. The panicky voice had not bothered him for several hours now, and he suspected that Andrew’s excellent meal would help keep it quiet for a while longer. He would forget, at least for a few blissful hours, about the cleaning lady at the testing center. He would stop worrying about what had been on the 20th floor, or why someone would go to the trouble of replacing all the doormen in his building.
He would not think about what dreaded thing he was supposed to be getting ready for.
Those things would all come up again in the morning, but right now he was going to sleep. Long and deeply. So that he could start fresh tomorrow.
Except that he was wrong about this. He would not sleep.
Not even a little bit.
Second Note on New Techniques
Daedalus Hilton, Scrubbing R&D for Agents, July 20, 2010.
Reprinted with permission.
Dept. of Homeland Security, U.S.A.
Sleep, on the other hand, makes no sense. After fifty years of research and study, the only thing we can say with certainty is that it happens when we grow tired. We still don’t understand it. There are animals who never sleep at all; they ‘power down’ discrete sections of their brain, but never the whole thing at once. The term for this is unihemispheric sleep. It is conceivable that such a state could be induced in agents using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, but this procedure would likely have significant side effects, not the least of which would be severe neurosis. Adaptation would be extremely challenging, and in any case, people like to sleep. We can’t help it. We sleep away a third – a third! – of our lives. It is a deeply, inexorably pleasurable activity. It calls to us.
The First Big Problem
As with the other rooms he had seen so far in the apartment, Kevin’s bedroom was flawless. There was a queen-size bed on a huge beige rug, another built-in bookshelf, and a large brown cabinet that probably concealed a television. There were little wooden end-tables on either side of the bed, and next to the entrance to the master bath was a large dresser.
He stripped to his underwear, folded himself into the bed, closed his eyes, and allowed his mind to drift.
A quick self-assessment, now. A general survey of the grand scheme of things.
First: he was financially solvent, as far as he knew. Assuming he had not made some sort of disastrous deal on this apartment. Even if he had, there were other sources. He had saved his money very carefully during his time at Tanner and Trevor, and the funds he had told Ron Clemson about didn’t make up the whole pot.
As far as money went, he knew he would be fine.
Second: his parents were both gone, having died one right after the other just a year after he had graduated from UNH. His father from a heart attack, and his mother only four months later. Of pure sadness, it had seemed; she had lost her partner in life. He had no siblings. He did keep in touch occasionally with a few college friends – all of whom lived up in Boston – and it occurred to him that he should give one or all of them a call. Maybe he had talked to one of them during the last three months.
Maybe one of them could help him figure out a few things.
Third: he had a job. Not exactly the job he had been looking for, but still, a teaching job. And though he had no memory of any training for the position itself, he clearly had the necessary subject expertise, and he had apparently written up a few lesson plans for himself ahead of time.
He was ready enough.
Get ready.
Kevin’s eyes popped open, and he cursed silently.
You’re forgetting something.
“I’m forgetting all kinds of stuff,” he whispered to the empty room. “Three months’ worth.”
You’re forgetting something important. Something you’re supposed to do.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to change the subject in his head. To a song, something repetitive, something that could drown out everything else. But the feeling of anxiety was too strong, and now he could feel his heart starting to beat faster. That pleasant fog in his head, the one that had been so deliciously created by Andrew’s dinner and salad and dessert, was leaving him.
Sleep was receding into the ether. Getting away.
He took a breath and allowed his eyes to open again. It was all right. It was still early, probably only 10:15 or 10:30. He would wait it out. Dim light peaked through his curtains from the city streets below, and he counted the ridges in the finely detailed crown moldings that ran along the ceiling and around the doors. The panic voice continued pestering him, but it had been reduced to a background drone. He lay there for an hour.
Then two.
He stayed nearly motionless, waiting in that bed. The silence was complete.
Finally he lifted his head. He climbed out of bed and walked back down the hall leading to the living room. He would find his own kitchen – about time, he thought – and make himself a small snack. His stomach still felt strangely full, but that was probably just the stress. He’d have some toast and butter, and then he’d be –
“Did you need something else?”
Andrew was there in the living room. All the lights were still on. He didn’t look as though he’d gone to bed yet. In fact, he still seemed to be cleaning up. He had a paper towel in one hand and a small plastic bottle of wood polish in the other.
Kevin was at a loss. “What… don’t you ever sleep? What are still doing up?”
Andrew turned to face him slowly, a strange expression on his face. A cautious expression. “Are you all right?”
Kevin looked at him silently. He closed his eyes and put a hand to his head.
Get ready.
“Shut up.”
“Sir?”
“Not you,” Kevin said quickly, waving a hand. He opened his eyes and looked at Andrew again. When he next spoke, his voice was halting. “Andrew,” he said carefully, as though the name were difficult to say. Then he waited a full beat. “What time is it?”
“A bit past ten.”
That’s impossible.
Kevin lowered his head. “Andrew,” he said again.
“Sir?”
“I’m only going to ask you this once.”
Andrew waited silently, impassively, and Kevin took an extra breath before speaking. “Are you fucking with me?”
Andrew’s eyes may have grown slightly larger, but he allowed himself no other reaction. “Absolutely not.” He waited a moment, and then added, in a voice just as gentle as always, “I never fuck around, Sir.”
Kevin nodded. He made his hands into fists, tightened them, and let them relax. Then he turned on his heels and went walking back toward his bedroom. In another minute he had reappeared. Dressed again. “I’m going out,” he announced.
“Excellent,” Andrew said, visibly pleased that he had passed whatever strange test of credibility his employer had just administered. He seemed eager to return to his wood-polishing labors. “Should I expect you?”
“In about eight minutes,” Kevin said. He headed out the door without another word.
It Was Incredible
He was walking with purpose as he left the building. He broke into a jog as he headed for Lexington, and he was pleased, somewhere in the back of his mind, at how spry he felt.
Going crazy, but still quick on my feet. Small favors.
When he reached Lexington he saw exactly what he was looking for: a little delicatessen with a wide yellow awning. There were large boxes of fruit and vegetables on display o
utside the window, and all the lights were on outside. It was the kind of deli that would be open at nine at night or three in the morning. Sundays, holidays, it didn’t matter. Kevin knew that he could come to this place at 5 AM on Christmas looking for a bottle of milk, and there would be a shopkeeper there, reading a paper and having a cup of coffee as if it were a Tuesday afternoon. He walked into the store and began scanning the items on the wall behind the counter.
Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) Page 6