by Cam Rogers
The only one who did not turn was Shining Palm.
Sofia remained between Jack and Paul—as potential- and causality-dead as stone. Safe, invisible to the Shifters, and unable to be harmed.
The Shifters roared, fritzing and flashing, and Jack bailed, running hard, back the way he came. They were too close, there were too many, and he had nowhere to lose them.
Paul backed away. Shining Palm hesitated, head whipping from Paul to the pursuing horde and back. With a final glance at its sweating prey the Shining Palm turned and bounded after its hunting kin.
Paul remained, stunned into disbelief by his continued survival. The creature had him right there. Why had it chosen to…?
Run, you idiot.
Paul fled toward the security door, and into the Tower. The chronon research labs would have stutter generators. He would be safe there until the stutter broke. When it was over, when Jack was dead, he would return for Sofia.
* * *
Monarch Tower’s chronon response had kicked in, channeling particles to the elevators and keeping them active. Beth was grateful for that.
As she stepped out onto floor fifty, an overeager fusillade of automatic gunfire sparked and flashed off the time-locked glass wall opposite the elevator.
“Fight back, bitch!”
Gibson. He’d circled back and cut her off.
Another spray came her way, angled for the door frame. Beth threw her hands up, shielding her face from hot fragment sprays.
She didn’t think. Double-pumping her free hand she pushed off against the elevator’s wall, and leaped across the space between the elevator and the glass wall in front of her.
Christ, did the high-pitched vip of incoming rounds always have to sound so goddamn happy? None of them connected. In a single fluid move she hit the carpet, rolled, pressed her free hand to the glass, unlocking it into vulnerability, and put two rounds through it. The wall dropped in a single, sparkling sheet of cubed safety glass and Beth leaped inside, clear of Gibson’s line of sight.
Meeting room. Glass wall with door opposite her. Hallway outside—cube farm beyond another glass wall.
Horatio had walked her through this level. Helipad outside Hatch’s office. Office on opposite side of garden. Garden was … that way.
She double-pumped her hands, opened the door, and took off left down the hall.
At the four-way corridor junction fifty feet ahead, Gibson rounded the corner—assault rifle leveled at the hip.
“Hold up, punkin’ butter.”
One barking shot lanced across the space between them. Pain. Beth’s legs went out from under her.
She hit the floor, face-first, hard. The pain took her breath away.
“That’s more like it.”
A piece of her outer left thigh had been blown away. With one hand clamped to the wound she grabbed for her lost weapon.
Gibson opened up. Rounds sparked and fragged inches from her fingers. She whipped her hand back.
“Leave the hand there, darlin’.” Gibson walked forward. C-1 brought up the rear—all eight of them. “I’m gonna shoot that fucking thing right off.” He spat to the side. “For starters.”
“Boss,” Donny piped up.
“Not now, Donny.”
“Boss.”
“I said not…!” Gibson stopped.
Howls.
“Shit.”
Jack Joyce came sprinting around the corner, bringing a shrieking, tumbling wall of clawed, fractured madness with him.
“Shifters!”
Gibson, Donny, and Reeves saw them coming and split back the way they came, to the mezzanine. Irene and Voss jagged opposite, heading deeper into the warren of cubicles—toward the fortified chronon labs behind that.
Mully had been covering the curving wooden hall leading toward Hatch’s private garden—and had the most ground to cover to make an escape. Bristol watched as reactive thinking short-circuited Mully’s ability to adapt. He could have blasted the glass wall, as Beth had done, and sidestepped the tide. But he didn’t.
A paw, flickering and phasing and hooked, swept up and through Mully’s shoulder from behind. Without slowing, the Shifter lifted the screaming trooper over its shoulder, tossing him back into the pack. Bristol saw a roiling, fractal head rise from the back of the surge, along with two crackling arms, to pile drive Mully out of sight.
Bristol saw all of this—when he should have been running.
A prone Beth saw two Shifters do things to Bristol’s geometry as the screaming trooper was smashed underfoot—things that would stay in her head forever.
Jack skidded to a halt and hauled her up, the horde thirty feet behind. “Up up up!”
No hope. The Shifters were already on them.
Beth closed her eyes.
Howls.
Jack turned, shielding her, and—
One Shifter flew left, through the shattered office wall. Another was grabbed by the head and pulled backward to the ground. A third Shifter—the largest—drove a crackling foot into the creature’s chest, pinning it to the floor. Chronon flow arced off the flailing body, played off the walls.
Jack saw flashes of the same hallway, decorated and designed a dozen different ways as the slowly collapsing M-J field sliced the place up along different timelines. Sometimes it wasn’t decorated so much as destroyed. Alternate hallways, alternate outcomes, alternate presents.
With his own eyes Jack watched reality inch closer to falling apart completely.
The big Shifter threw its arms wide and screamscreamscreamed.
Eyes wide, hands wide. Shining Palm.
The pack held back behind it, cowed. The Shifter on the floor thrashed infinitely, simultaneously.
Jack stumbled backward.
Beth was on her feet, hauling him now, hobbling heavily on one good leg. “This way. Run.” Blood flowed thick between the fingers clamped to her wound.
“Beth, what’s happening?”
Without warning the stutter collapsed, every still bullet flew free, glass walls shattered and the Shifters abruptly … vanished.
“This won’t last. Run.”
* * *
Paul made it into the chronon research wing as causality kicked back in. Was it over? No … just another temporary cessation. He could feel this event was not yet spent.
This exertion was costing him. The lack of focus was taking hold again, the feeling of becoming unmoored from his body, from the world. The desire to surrender to care, to allow the release to course through his entire body and take him. The voice of his sickness, his chronon syndrome, was growing louder, more seductive, within the chamber of his mind. Taking up space once occupied by his own counsel.
Treatment. He required treatment. Sofia’s lab. He would administer a treatment to himself, within the safety of an artificial pylon-generated bubble of causality, and soothe this madness. Once the chaos had passed, there would be work to do. Damage to contain. Steps to take. The final steps.
He pushed through secondary lab spaces, past coldly lit glass infoboards and the warm hum of sterile machinery.
Sofia’s laboratory was at the far end of this array, from which she could oversee all of the work being done in her name, to her guidance. It was elevated above the broad glass boxes in which the labs were contained. Moving through the secondary labs, Sofia’s quarters were always visible through clear plexiglass ceilings.
Of modern design, Sofia’s quarters were configured for living as much as working—a flat oblong with a long observation window suspended above the glass-roofed lab-farm. It had been designed to her specifications, on Paul’s orders.
Moving at speed toward these quarters, and the relief they contained, Paul watched a wide tongue of flame shoot from the observation window, spitting glass.
Secondary explosions took the roof and walls off Sofia’s laboratory quarters completely. Heavy debris blew outward and upward to crash down through the glass ceilings of the secondary laboratories.
Pa
ul watched his only hope of forestalling the progress of his condition literally vanish in flames.
Overwhelmed, Paul blacked out.
When he came to, his hands were bloody and a nearby workstation was trashed, a desk snapped in half. His left arm was on fire, as was his chest. A coppery taste filled his mouth. His chest was alight with starlight and his mind full of howling.
Remembering himself was like struggling to remember a dream. Muscle memory took his hand to his chest, fingers closed around Aberfoyle’s bullet. He was Paul Serene. The future of humanity. And he must live.
Monitors above the workstation flashed meaningless information. He found a laptop, shakily entered his credentials and switched to secure feeds. Called up the feed for floor fifty. Scanned.
Found the corridors. Smashed walls, shattered glass, two members of Chronon-1 who had ended their lives horribly as complex stains on expensive carpet.
Scanned.
Jack and Beth, running for the garden. There she was: Beth. Hobbling on a wounded leg.
Closing on Sofia—who was now reanimated and discovering herself completely alone.
Paul fumbled for his earpiece, switched frequencies, contacted the helicopter pilot.
“Leave!”
“Sir?”
“Get that bird away from this building, pilot, or I’ll kill you myself. Go!”
* * *
Jack approached Sofia quickly, hands up and open. She was not receptive.
“No! Not again!” She was close to hyperventilating. “The … the mind is … not meant to take such shocks! Where is Paul? Paul was here. Where is…?”
Beth grabbed Sofia’s hand in her own bloody one.
Sofia recoiled “Oh my God, you’re hurt!”
“Hurt,” Beth said. “Short on time and low on patience so, please, rediscover the ol’ internal monologue.” Beth hobbled toward the stone steps leading up to Martin’s office, dragging Sofia with her.
The stairs led to a Roman-style atrium, floored in red-and-white check: a place for Martin to sit and look out across the greenery, or to meet with fellow businesspeople. His office was on the far side of this atrium, locked and sealed. Fortunately, an L-shaped gantry led from the right, straight to a square helipad that hung off the side of the building.
Their ride was already cycling its blades, building to a muted turbine shriek. The pilot glanced between them and his overheads, willing the machine to get airborne.
“Jack! That chopper’s leaving without us!”
Jack zipped down the gantry, banked left around the curve, headed for the pad—just as the helicopter lifted off the pad.
The pilot caught sight of Jack and went defensive, banking hard and low over the side of the building.
“Jack!” Beth could see what he was doing. “Don’t be stupid!”
Beth needed a medic, and that chopper was their only way out of here.
Jack threw himself toward the lip, throwing his arms forward in an attempt to localize a stutter around the chopper.
He ended facedown on the pad, two feet from a fifty-story drop. He came to as Beth grabbed him by the collar, hauling him to his feet, and laughed out loud: the helicopter floated below the platform, angled slightly, blades immobile, hanging in space. Sofia gasped at the sight of it.
Jack smiled, satisfied with himself. “If it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid. Right?”
“Eurocopter Airbus AS365,” Beth muttered. “Just like she ordered.”
The bubble wasn’t large enough to have trapped the entire bird, just the midsection and blades. Jack could see the pilot, still animated, frantically strangling the controls but going nowhere.
“Can you make the jump on that leg?”
“We got a bigger problem.” Beth pointed back the way they came. Chronon-1 had stormed the garden, moving at speed toward the helipad.
“They lost two of their guys,” Jack said. “They’re pissed.”
“Keep Sofia safe, I’ll—”
Jack took Sofia’s hand. “Trust me.”
And Jack shoved Sofia Amaral off the edge of Monarch Tower.
The doctor fell without a sound, shocked into silence that her life could end so suddenly. She fell toward the helicopter, but wide of it, connecting with the stutter bubble Jack had thrown around the chopper.
Sofia Amaral froze, suspended in space, five feet from the open passenger door of the trapped helicopter.
“Woo!”
Beth’s look was either confusion or murderous intent.
Jack gestured, success self-evident. “What?”
“Your balls,” she said. “On a stump.” Beth backed up, and took a running leap toward the edge as Chronon-1 started blasting. She bounded off the lip, the pain of it forcing a cry from her throat, launching herself into space. She aimed her still-cycling boots for the chopper’s open side door and hoped for the best.
She fell feetfirst through the bubble, through the door and hit the carpeted floor inside, slamming into the closed starboard-side passenger door. White pain flooded from leg to brain and Beth skimmed right across the surface of a total blackout. Back in the game, Wilder; back in the game. “Get the doctor!”
Jack dumped a chronon burst as Chronon-1 hit Hatch’s Romanesque atrium, catching the incoming fire. He took the lip of the platform at a run, leaping across the space—“Sorry, Doctor”—landing boots-first onto the chest of Dr. Sofia Amaral. She didn’t move a micron and Jack’s feet went out from under him. His back connected with her sternum and he bounced off. One flailing hand seized onto Sofia’s outstretched forearm, leaving Jack’s feet flailing fifty stories above Riverport’s streets.
Beth had already scrambled halfway over the cream-colored calf leather passenger seats, dealing with the inconvenience of having to do so with a gun taking up one hand while screaming at the pilot.
Dangling, Jack reached out for the upper rim of the helicopter door, grabbed it, and began to will Sofia loose from the hold of the stutter bubble. As her stasis softened he pulled in farther, one foot finding purchase inside the door. He drew her forward, grabbing on to a more secure safety loop bolted into the ceiling.
Sofia found her voice—a sound that went from silence to bass-syrup to a human scream—and suddenly she was so much deadweight, falling straight down.
Jack held her hand in a tight monkey-grip, shoulder wrenching as he caught her full weight. From the helipad Gibson was shouting for blood. Chronon-1 was almost to the edge of the pad.
Beth glanced back over her shoulder. “Get her inside!”
Jack hauled her up, Sofia clawing at the carpet, panicking as her sheer evening gown kept her leg from swinging up and in to the chopper. Someone started shooting, slugs vip-vip-ing into the shield. Donny, red faced and furious, glared down at them, then vanished from the edge of the pad.
Beth buckled herself in one-handed. To the pilot: “All right, asshole. Sit tight and you’ll be home in time for Kimmel.” She put her gun away and took the second stick.
Jack heard Gibson call Donny’s name, just as he hauled Sofia inside the chopper. Sofia fumbled her way into a jump seat, wrestling with the safety belt.
“Beth! Take the stick!”
Donny vaulted off the edge of the helipad, his trajectory taking him straight for the open passenger door, handgun pointed square at Jack’s face.
Jack threw his arms wide and nullified the field.
The helicopter sprang to sudden life and Jack was flipped off his feet as the blades threw Donny in two directions at once.
Gibson saw it all, his face a disfigured mess, contorted by an obliterating rage at the loss of his best friend and second-in-command. His weapon unloaded right at them, without a second thought.
The stick had bucked suddenly in Beth’s hand as the helicopter kicked back to life, but she wasn’t letting it win. Jack scuttled back from the open door as the chopper’s frame swerved and tilted, grabbing hard onto a jumpseat support as Beth sent the bird into a dive.
&nb
sp; Beth had a death grip on the stick. Keeping the bird low, she swung it out over the Mystic River. Once their flight was stable and level Beth thumbed a contact on her phone, piped it to her earpiece.
“Horatio. You in the Tower? I need a favor.”
* * *
Inside Monarch Tower, on the thirty-fifth-floor mezzanine, Nick watched a gathering of the world’s wealthiest and brightest freak the hell out.
Everything needed a security card, and he didn’t have one. He was trapped.
“Hey. You.”
A man marched toward Nick along the curve of the mezzanine.
Handlebar moustache, loud bowling shirt under which was something about theater sports.
“Horatio,” he said. “Friend of Beth’s. Looks like today’s my last day. Let’s get out of here.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Nick said.
“One stop first. Super important. Floor fifty.”
15
News reports started coming in less than thirty minutes after the stutter broke.
Simultaneously, at locations across the globe, impossibilities occurred. All of them were captured on video. Intentionally.
9:12:42 P.M. Pier 14, San Francisco.
Civilian witnesses filmed two police officers closing in on a suspect, their Tasers drawn. The suspect, a man in his thirties of African descent, offers no resistance.
In the space of a single frame the entire scene changes: two strangers have materialized. They are dressed head to toe in black, save for Smiley masks. The white letters on their shirts read PEACE. They wave, friendly.
The strangers, somehow, are suddenly in possession of the police officers’ Tasers. The officers’ faces are painted with clown makeup, their belts have been loosened, their pants are around their ankles. Still moving forward at a brisk pace the cops trip and crash to the pavement.
The suspect shouts, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” repeatedly.
The strangers mime laughter, then Taser the two cops.
In the space of a frame, they are gone.
The incident was filmed by three separate witnesses.
9:12:42 P.M. Outside Melisse Restaurant, Santa Monica.