Dispersion: Book Two of the Recursion Event Saga
Page 19
I fall down onto the floor of the van, feeling breathless.
“What’s happening?” I gasp.
Vic moves to a body lying on the floor of the van. I like down at it, remembering with surprise that it is me.
“I had to hack the neural hijacker,” he says. “I knew it would be a crappy connection. But I didn’t realize there was a timer on it as well.
I stare up at him. “Are you saying you haven’t done this before?”
Vic shakes his head. “Not for this long I haven't.” He gestures for me to come closer. “Come help me unlink you the right way.”
He guides the legs of the neural hijacker around my head. There’s the now familiar at the base of my skull.
My body spasms.
A blast of light
and more light
then darkness
then light
and then
dark
and I open my eyes—they are my eyes—to see Vic pushing Agent Moore’s body out of the side of the van.
“What about Carter?” I ask.
“He passed out just from the exertion of trying to jump into this van,” Vic says. “I gave him a little extra sedative. Same with this one.” He nods down at Moore and then pulls the van door shut.
“Oh, Jesus,” I whisper, holding my skull.
Vic leans down in front of me. “Don’t quit on me now,” he says. “We’re almost there. Just tell me where Jane is.
“She’s at the entrance to the room.” I sit up, pointing. “Over there.”
Vic nods, settling into the driver’s seat. “We’ll stick with the original plan. We’ve got the van. We’ve got… well, ourselves. We’ll take the freight elevator up to the top and get out of here.
I close my eyes, trying to sort through a maelstrom of thoughts. All around us, ISD agents and personnel still swarm up the ramps and through the gates. I sit up, surveying the room.
Six gates.
And they only seem to be using one of them.
“Vic,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“Are you still interested in getting Jane home?”
He glances at me. “It’s necessary. It’s what I’ve always told her. She’s the one that stopped believing it was possible. Too few gates, too far away. And I could bring her through without raising all sorts of questions. But…” he trails off, eyes landing on the six gates. And I can tell that he is seeing the same thing I am seeing. “But maybe there’s a way.”
I push through the crowd of soldiers and agents, still moving up the ramp toward the gate until I see Vance, Jane, Aleisha and Quincy.
“Vic?” Jane asks. She steps forward and looks up at his face.
“Ellis?” Quincy says in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t miss the party,” I say.
Vic moves toward Jane. His scarred face looks soft. Almost
“Jane, I’m sorry.”
Jane stares at Vic. There is sadness and anger and frustration and confusion all stored in that one look. She clenches her mouth she, shaking her head, and then steps forward, wrapping Vic in a hug.
“You big idiot,” she says. “I could’ve listened to you more.”
“Yeah, you really should,” says Vic. “I sure wouldn’t have gotten you into this mess.”
Jane breaks from the hug and turns back, looking across the room to the six gates. “Where do those tunnels go to?” She asks.
“Anywhere,” I say. “Anywhere and any time.”
Vic looks at me, his eyes narrowed.
She turns back to Vic. “I want to be with James.”
“Are you sure?” Vic asks.
“James is my family,” she says, looking at me when she says it. “James is home.”
“This way,” I say.
Jane and the others follow me through the crowd. We stop in front of a work station at the base of a smaller gate. Vic asked Mooring to set the gate for us. He hadn’t even blinked. Vic, after all, is ISD.
Jane looks at us with wide eyes.
“You didn’t,” she says.
Vic nods. “New York, 1985. You meet James at in 1995, but you work at a publishing house until then. One day you run into each other at a grocery store. It’s cute.”
Jane turns to the gate. Through the shimmering light, a subway tunnel is visible. A subway car streams past, eerily silent. She looks back at us, holding a hand up in a silent goodbye. Vance, Quincy, and Aleisha all wave back. I can only nod my thanks.
Another tremor shakes the building. She looks back at us one last time, and then the girl who fell through time steps through gate…
And falls through time once more.
“We’d better go,” Vic says.
We move across the large space between the gates until I find the one leading back to Jane’s shelter.
“Where does this one go?” Aleisha asks.
“Somewhere familiar,” I say.
“Good luck,” Vic says.
“You’re not coming?”
Vic shakes his head. “He looks around the room. I’ve got some questions that need answering.
Vance, Aleisha, and Quincy step through the gate. I take one last look back as well. Another tremor shakes the building with earth shattering force. I hear what sounds like large blocks breaking away from the ceiling and tumbling toward me. It sounds bad. Real bad. But I’m sure as hell not going to stick around long enough to witness it.
I step through the gate.
One
February 22
I unzip my duffle bag and remove the can of gasoline. Aleisha and Longdale would likely kill me for this, if I ever see them again, but it’s what has to be done. I lift out the can and set it on the ground. Straightening, I turn back to look at the cabinet.
It’s an old thing, dented and rusted. The door hangs a little loosely off its hinges and the handle is stuck at an odd angle. I open the door, noticing the padlock bolted to the inside of the cabinet. Of course, it’s not locked now. Jane would only ever lock it when going in alone. And she wouldn’t be doing that ever again.
After Jane left us, we had gone through the tunnel they had used to spy on Jane’s shelter. Vance had been furious, but Aleisha wasn’t surprised. We found our tunnel and returned to Camton, early that Monday morning.
The news that morning was nothing short of disturbing. The Cedar Springs dam had burst and the resulting flood waters had destroyed over two hundred homes. Connie’s lake house was flooded, along with half of the neighborhood. The loss of life was still being determined.
Was it worth it?
The ISD Station must be gone now, destroyed by the Recursion Event and flooded by the burst dam. I can only speculate as to what caused the dam to burst, but the falling ceiling blocks could not have been good for those gates. And that one particular gate that Mooring had shown me. The moon gate. Mooring had said that it electro-magnetic fields kept the vacuum at bay. I can only wonder.
Is any of it worth it?
Jim, Connie and Longdale had survived the flood. They were at the police station reporting a fire when it had happened. They thought we had fled the house after the fire had started. They were convinced we had all died in the flood, those morbid bastards. When we showed up at Longdale’s house he practically shit his pants. We told them we hitched home, and the explanation seemed to satisfy them.
But is it all worth it?
That question isn’t for me to answer. There are others who will have to carry that guilt.
I finally turn to peer at the back of the cabinet. The shadows there are deeper than normal. An unnatural shade of black. I reach out my hand, feeling an almost magnetic pull.
Maybe one last visit? I had promised Jane a night in living structure. That wouldn’t be happening now, but I could jus take a quick stroll through the place.
A door opens behind me. I turn and find myself staring at none other than Tracy the undead mafia goon. There’s a bandage wrapped around his should
er and he holds his arm tenderly.
“What are you doing here, Tracy?” I ask. “I’ve got no issues with Mr. Carr anymore.”
The man takes a shaky step forward. “But I still have an issue with you.”
“Well then, we have an issue with each other.”
With all that has happened in the last week. All the revelations, the near death experiences. All the horror. I open the cabinet door and step inside. But before shutting the door, I lean out of it.
I close the cabinet door, stepping through the tunnel.
The warm humidity blasts at me. I step behind a tree and wait for Tracy to follow me through. His shouts of surprise are more than worth it. Tracy soon disappears into the jungle, and I move back to tunnel. I think I hear Big Bird, tromping through the woods after him. I’d love to stay and see the gruesome end of Tracy the mafia goon, but I can’t.
Because I have a date tonight.
Also by Brian J. Walton
About the Author
Brian J. Walton is a Los Angeles based screenwriter and author. In 2008, Brian joined New Renaissance, a production company that, in the follow 5 years, created over one hundred episodes of narrative content for the web for platforms like Youtube, Hulu, and Netflix which have been seen by millions. Brian has since expanded into writing novels. He is currently writing his first novel, RECURSION, a serialized time-travel thriller released in 2017.
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Copyright © 2016 by Brian J. Walton
All rights reserved.
First Edition – June 29, 2017
Edited by Sarah Yoon
Proofread by Grace Hansen
Camton House Publishing
Created with Vellum