Quantum Break

by Cam Rogers

  The life of Orrie “Trigger” Aberfoyle was taken in hand by a 9mm slug and together they leaped out a ragged window just above his right ear.

  Aberfoyle’s second-in-command, whose job security had just turned to shit, now profoundly miserable, dumped half a mag into Princess.

  In a flash of animal panic the third guy, who now thought he was caught in the middle of an elaborate house-cleaning operation, blew away Aberfoyle’s second-in-command.

  This last-goon-standing backed away, hyperventilating and wide-eyed, realizing the depth of shit he was in. He waved the gun across Zed, Jack, and Paul, feeling behind him for the car. Zed picked up Aberfoyle’s .38 and blatted off three shots in the goon’s general direction, making sure at least two silver slugs landed in the town car’s bodywork. The goon turned the key, hit the gas, and their immediate problems vanished in a slamming driver-side door and a long shriek of rubber as the town car fishtailed once and tore out of there. The three of them watched it disappear down the road.

  Paul’s legs lost their muscle, betrayed him, and he pitched back toward the waist-high rail.

  Jack was there, seizing him hard by the arms, keeping him from toppling. Paul wanted to say something funny in that moment, something Jack would have said, but all that came out was “Go Team Outland.”

  Zed appeared, calm hand on Paul’s shoulder as she waited for him to get his breathing under control. “Here.” She pressed a single silver bullet into Paul’s trembling hand. She gave one to Jack and kept one for herself. “That’s the future we stole back.”

  That .38 slug flashed brightly. “Business school,” Paul said, and closed his hand. “I’m going to business school.”

  Jack pocketed his. “I’m starting over. Somewhere else.” To Zed, “Come with me.”

  Zed looked at her own, softly smiled, and sent that .38 slug sailing into the sky and out over Bannerman’s Overlook.

  Into the Great Mystery.

  2

  Saturday, 8 October 2016. 3:33 A.M. Riverport, Massachusetts. Six years later.

  The For Sale sign lay on its back in the dewy grass, the house ragged since Zed occupied its rooms. The illuminated skyline behind the sagging roof was a changed thing: smart office blocks, gleaming high-rises, exclusive apartments.

  The monolith that was Monarch Tower dominated it all: a Titan’s spear tip of irregularly cut black crystal, lit bright with the burning sign of a geometric butterfly.

  Monarch Solutions: many-armed, known by all.

  A train rattled along an elevated line that curved around and then through the central business district.

  Jack Joyce had been away six years. Yet in that time Riverport had changed almost beyond recognition. The old city was breathing its last beneath all that shiny new weight.

  He had picked a cold, miserable night to come back. Thirty-six hours earlier he had been on the island of Ko Samet, about four hours from Bangkok. His boots had been wedged into a white-sand beach, with a chilled bottle of Tsingtao slotted into each one. There had been the silence of the ocean and nothing but the sting in his eyes and the salt in his mouth, as he tried not to think about … Riverport.

  Jack stepped away from the cab that had brought him here and shivered. Forty degrees was colder than he’d known for years, and eighteen months in Thailand had left him as tanned as the upholstery of the car he had been leaning against a short time ago. Every Monday for the last year he had told himself he’d leave the next week. But he stayed on. He’d still be in Chiang Mai if Paul hadn’t e-mailed.

  I honestly thought Will was out of the woods.

  Then came the erratic behavior, the outbursts, and then he threatened me. He’s in worse shape than when we were kids, Jack …

  At one point William Joyce had been a genius, Jack was sure of that. His peer-reviewed quantum physics articles had netted him fame, attention, and grants. UMass opened its doors to him. The future seemed incandescent.

  I drove by the house. I don’t think anyone’s been there for weeks. I’m concerned he’s living under a bridge.

  Has he contacted you?

  Will was a legal adult when their parents had died. On paper, custody of Jack had gone to Will. In practice, it had been the other way around: Jack spent his teenage years providing for Will, making sure his brother ate, bathed, and didn’t go off on a mental tangent and walk into traffic. Being Will’s brother was the hardest thing Jack had ever done.

  On a brighter (?) note … honestly I can’t tell if this is shitty timing or kismet, but I’ve been hoping to persuade you to come home. I have something to show you—but it’s time sensitive. You need to be in Riverport this week. I’ve taken the liberty of booking you a first-class flight—open-ended—back here. Day after tomorrow.

  Over time Will’s quirky personality metastasized. He was a sleepwalking genius, convinced he was unearthing questions people hadn’t thought to ask—and none of it made sense to anyone. While Will had spent his days in the barn, tinkering on things that ate years and never worked, Jack had traded his teens for multiple jobs and failing grades.

  He still hated himself for having been stupid enough to buy into any of it.

  Two birds, one stone?

  What I have to show you will change your life. I shit you not.

  —Paul

  “Hey man.” It was the cab driver. “You okay?”

  His name was Nick. He stood about six feet in his high-tops and was friendly in a way that suggested no one had ever not been friendly back. Easygoing, broad-shouldered, with a haircut this side of Jailhouse Rock.

  Jack hugged himself tighter against the cold and nodded at the driver. “I’m good.”

  Sunday, July 4, 2010, had been a big day for Jack. After everything that had happened on the Overlook he had packed a bag, driven to his brother’s workshop, and punched Will square in the teeth. Then he had pointed his motorcycle west and left Riverport with no intention of ever coming back. Yet here he was.

  Six years on the road, staying in small towns until he felt people were getting used to him—and then moving on. On some level, he realized, he was doing what Will did: retreating from responsibility, hiding from what he couldn’t handle. He didn’t care. First Jack had lost his parents, and then he had lost his brother.

  And then he had lost Zed.

  “How does a house go six years and not sell?” the cabbie said. “The land alone must be worth something.”

  Nick had done Jack a solid and turned off the meter. His cab was a private operation, unmarked and almost certainly illegal. Jack had exited the airport, loaded his gear into the trunk and was clipping his seat belt shut when Nick had craftily hunched over the ignition to huff into a tube leading to the ignition: a Breathalyzer interlock. “All right,” Nick had said before Jack could second-guess. “Let’s hit that road!”

  Jack now checked the cab for dings. It looked in pretty good shape.

  “1968 Dodge Charger,” Nick said, noting Jack’s interest.

  “Expensive.”

  “Dad’s. Strictly a loaner.” Nick handed Jack a tiny enamel cup, hot. It even had a saucer. “Though it’s not like he’s gonna be driving it anytime soon. Diabetes got him in a wheelchair.”

  “The Christmas lights and espresso machine come standard?”

  “That’s all me. You ride with The Prez, you’re VP till you exit.”

  The Prez, right. Jack thought he recognized the face. Nick Marsters, aka The Prez, star player for the Riverport Raptors back in the day, headed for the big leagues. Why was he driving a cab?

  “This is where she lived?” The question short-circuited the thought.

  Jack downed the tiny cup, bitterness stinging behind his eyes, painting warmth through his innards. It had been a while since he’d had coffee without sweet condensed milk.

  “Yeah. Took us a couple hours to walk back here from the Overlook,” he said, thinking about that morning six years ago. What had started as Nick’s rundown on how the town had changed led to Jack reco
unting why he had left. Once started Jack found he hadn’t wanted to stop. Maybe it was the Catholic confessional urge … or maybe he just wanted to delay seeing his brother for as long as he could.

  “You know the cops put the Overlook shootings down to some dead man making a play inside Aberfoyle’s organization, right? Open-and-shut, cut-and-dried. Do you think your girl meant for it to play out like that?”

  Jack shook his head. “She saw most things as judo. Receive momentum, do what you want with it. I think she was just doing what came naturally.”

  “Maybe you should have married her.”

  Jack pointed to the corner of the block. “That morning we stood right there. She held on to my jacket … leaned in … and whispered … ‘I could kick you in the face from here.’”

  Nick snorted.

  “She went inside and I never saw her again.”

  Nick turned his dumbstruck expression to the dark house, to Jack, back to the house. “I find that to be a profoundly unsatisfying conclusion.”

  “I came round that afternoon and everything she owned was on fire in the back garden. She was gone. Five years I spent looking. Nothing. I thought I picked up a lead in Arizona, but it led nowhere.”

  “In the nineties that’d be romantic. These days it’s practically a felony.” Then: “Missing persons report?”

  “No file, no paper trail, no name.”

  “Maybe Aberfoyle’s guys got to her?”

  “They’d have gone for me and Will first. Zed was an unknown, and the only guy who walked away from the Overlook that morning was found in the river a week later. Basically we were never there.” Being there, in that moment, with this stranger, looking at a house that hadn’t known Zed and him for more than half a decade … “Maybe she just wanted out. Maybe I was just being a creep, trying to find her. Jesus.”

  “No place like home.”

  “If I’m lucky.” He felt self-conscious, confessing like a chump and hungover from it. “Family business. Once that’s done I’m on the first flight … out of…”

  Jack never finished the thought. A shape crept to the opposite crossroads, one-inch steel plate doing nothing to mute the low-and-slow chug of 300 horsepower.

  “Whoa.”

  Seventeen thousand pounds of intimidation rounded the corner on fat, bullet-resistant tires, passenger-side spotlight snapping on like an accusation. The bright eye surveyed them as the armored vehicle took its sweet time rolling past. A Monarch Security logo leaped out through the glare—a segmented, geometric butterfly—hi-vis on matte black ballistic surfacing. Nick straightened, smiled, and nodded.

  After a moment of consideration the light clicked off and the BearCat picked up volume, rounding the corner and melting back into the ’burbs.

  “What the fuck,” Jack said, “was that? Are we at war?”

  “Monarch,” Nick replied, taking Jack’s cup and saucer, depositing it through the passenger window onto the espresso machine’s top-mounted rack. “They moved in about the time you moved out. Shipping: dead. Farming: dead. Construction: dead. Monarch comes in, builds a bunch of stuff, employs a bunch of people. Riverport’s got a pulse again. I like ’em, and their uniforms are frickin’ bangin’.”

  “In Chiang Mai cops roll on tires with Monarch branding.”

  “Monarch Industrial, probably. That BearCat was Monarch Security. My sister’s kid’s daycare is Monarch Child. My dad’s meds are Monarch Pharmaceuticals. Monarch’s got this loyalty program, lets you rack up points all over the place, whoever you use. Dad’s meds paid for that coffee you’re drinking. It’s a good deal.” Nick backhanded Jack’s arm, friendly. “Hey, you know Monarch’s hosting a huge gala tomorrow night? A shitload of famous people are gonna be there. I could take you up to the parking garage across the way, give you a great view of the red carpet.”

  Jack’s phone vibrated in his jacket. Caller ID came up as Paul Serene. “Uh … I think I fly out before then. Just one second.” He thumbed the call button.

  “Hey buddy.” The voice was as familiar as his own. “Six years away and the first thing you do is go and pine outside her house?”

  Jack glanced toward the disappeared armored vehicle. “The BearCat.”

  Paul laughed. “I requested an alert on your arrival. The BearCat scanned the plate of the museum piece you’re leaning against. Monarch Security network cross-referenced with the RPD database, checked the photobank of the driver-cam that takes a shot each time Nick needs to blow-start the engine. Facial recog grabbed you in the backseat, the entry was logged into Monarch’s system, Monarch’s system texted me, I called you.”

  “Cause and effect.” All of a sudden Jack wanted to be on a plane, headed to someplace even he didn’t know. Someplace that didn’t have loyalty programs. He thought of Zed and her zero footprint.

  “Perks of working for Monarch.”

  “Which Monarch would that be?”

  “Monarch Innovations. Subsidiary of Developments.”

  “It’s like you’re here with me, buddy.”

  “The info stays on Monarch servers, but we make it available to law enforcement upon request. Part of our community policing initiative. Some reservations from rights activists, but mostly the town’s on board.”

  Yeah. Leaving. First chance he got. Maybe never coming back.

  “You’re still meeting me on campus, correct?”

  “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Jack? Thank you for making it. This is important to me. You’ll be glad you came, I promise.” The call disconnected.

  “You said something about a Monarch gala?”

  “The buzz is they’re revealing a new product line. They say it’ll ‘reinvent life as we live it.’ Probably just another game console. You want another espresso?” Nick asked.

  “No. Actually, yeah. Can I get it rolling?”

  “You’re the VP.” Nick opened the door for him. “I’ll have to take a less-short way around. Big protest at the university today. Thought it’d be over by now or I’d have mentioned it. Students pissed off about the city tearing down some old library. You know how it is.”

  Jack checked his phone, giving Nick a little privacy to huff-start the car. “Says here Monarch’s the one tearing it down, not the city.”

  The engine kicked over, purring like it had been put together yesterday. “Same thing,” Nick said.

  * * *

  Jack stared out the window of the Charger as it pulled up outside the main walk of Riverport University. “It’s all gone.”

  Gone were the few square blocks of lawn dotted with Colonial Revival–style wood buildings, interstitial spaces crowded with maple and birch. This was a modern, high-tech campus. Founders’ Walk remained in place, a token gesture to tradition, next to which a slab of locally quarried marble bore, in gold Sabon font: Riverport University—Innovations Campus. Someone had slapped a HISTORY NOT PROFITS! sticker on it. A sticker slapped over that one read: NINJAS ARE COOL!

  A small black-and-gold plaque announced that the Quantum Research Laboratory was the winner of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The manicured lawn behind that—a perfect green flattop through which Founders’ Walk cut—was strewn with traveler cups, sodden flyers, beer cans, and the occasional abandoned sign requesting those participating in the sit-in to not litter the area. A tent city was in place, forming a frail protective barrier between the old library—a bright-red Gothic Revival anachronism amid a herd of glass and steel—and the outside world. Jack flashed back to an incident on the New York subway a few years back: a group of thirteen-year-old girls shielding an old lady from some crazy dude with a screwdriver.

  He opened the car door, got out. “What the hell happened?”

  Nick stepped out of the driver’s door and sprawled his arms across the car’s roof, pleased at Jack’s reaction. “Impressive, huh?”

  “It’s like a moon base designed by French aliens. All this in six years?”

  “We live in an age of great c
hange.” Nick had the tone of cartoon millionaire. “Something I heard on a podcast.”

  Jack peeled a wet flyer off the sidewalk. The date of the library’s execution was set for tomorrow. Right now the tent city was mostly quiet, some of the residents laid out where they’d passed out. He thought about the BearCat, all those frickin’ bangin’ uniforms Nick liked so much, the tower overlooking the entire city, the 2013 Pritzker Prize—and he didn’t like the old lady’s chances.

  “Where are you meeting your friend?”

  Jack pointed to the plaque. “Quantum Research Lab.”

  “Your brother … that all gonna be cool? I have some experience with wards. If you need me to place a call—”

  Jack waved the offer away. “Nah, whatever it is it won’t be anything I haven’t dealt with a dozen times before.”

  Nick thought about that. “Listen, I’m gonna take a break and hang around for a while. Here’s my card; you need an escape, call me.”

  Nick had an actual business card, the central feature being the presidential seal, with the eagle holding two hockey sticks.

  “Will do. What are your hours?”

  Jack’s phone rumbled in his jacket pocket: Will. He wasn’t ready for a brotherly reunion just yet. Best to get a coherent answer from Paul first. He let it ring out. A text message flashed up:

  I’m at our house. Where are you?

  “Between meds and errands and where’s-the-remote, Dad keeps me going all hours,” Nick said. “That espresso machine isn’t just for the customers.”

  Jack watched Nick pull away, then turned his attention to the university. He hoped Paul had answers.

  3

  Saturday, 8 October 2016. 3:45 A.M. Monarch Tower, Riverport, Massachusetts.

  On the twenty-ninth floor of Monarch Tower Beth Wilder watched a two-year-old girl take a short staggering run and head butt the palm of her father’s hand. Full of beans and still on Kyoto time. Her mother looked like she needed a drink, but happy to be in America and reunited with her husband.

  Lorelei Gibson was the unofficial mascot of Chronon-1, Monarch Special Project’s pride and joy. The 1 percent. The nine operatives out of 112 candidates who had the experience, adaptability, and mental fortitude to get through basic and advanced chronon training without losing their shit and washing out.