Flip

  “Sure. That path is bright and strong. It comes out just at the top of the wave and curves off to your left. It’s a smooth curve, no hairpin turns in it.”

  “I see it!” Aida concentrated on the bright, strong line, her focus racing forward, intent on finding this person and the next bit of data. Compared to the line that was the remnants of Bill’s life, this line was remarkable in terms of its vividness and weight. It continued in plain view, not ducking behind any hills, slicing out languid curves like those a snake might leave in the sand. The vivid line intercepted another; the two lines then crossed and ran parallel to each other for a short distance before separating. Aida ignored this second line, which was paler and thinner than the one she was tracking, and continued on her hunt. The curving trail had flattened out into a straight line.

  I must be getting close. This can’t go on much farther. She picked up the pace, but the line eventually disappeared behind the oily black waves of the background.

  “Max, I lost it just after it crossed over that other person’s line and ran perfectly straight. Can you see it?”

  He took a moment to respond. “No, I lost it as well. Wait…let me look again…no, I can’t follow it. That’s unusual.”

  “What’s unusual? Lines go behind hills all over the place here,” Aida said.

  “The way it disappeared is unusual,” he said, puzzled. “I’ll worry about this line going forward. You should trace it back to where it ran parallel with that other line, then go forward on the second one.”

  Aida traced backward and found the segment where the two lines ran parallel to each other. She then went forward, tracking the pale, thin path. It went straight for a little bit, turned at a sharp angle and continued along straight and true, as if the person had a specific destination in mind. Aida’s focus sprinted forward down the arrow-straight path and followed it behind a mound that would have blocked her view if she hadn’t been moving herself and at a different angle now. The path pulled up hard, and then the line shifted into the erratic pattern of the EKG of a fibrillating heart, then went straight again. What she saw shocked her. Where the line had gone erratic, it had crossed over what was now a ghost thread in the background. A thread that, when it emerged from behind the hill, turned into a tight corkscrew and ended, pointing to an almost imperceptible fold. It was Bill’s spiraling death thread.

  “Max! This person might have been involved with Bill’s death. They were definitely together right before he died.” Aida followed the pale, thin line past the scene of the death and caught up to the person’s pearl itself, interacting with others in a tight, tangled knot. Looking into the pearl, she glimpsed a man in a leather biker vest and jeans. “Max, I need you to come look at this,” she called. “This one’s a man in a biker vest, and he’s still here.”

  “Hang on. I found this guy’s thread again; he’s either very lucky or he’s getting help. I had a hard time finding him.”

  “How do know it’s a man?”

  “You’re right—I don’t know that it’s a man. Sorry…just a force of habit,” the monk responded, sounding slightly embarrassed. “I’m following the line, and it looks like the person headed toward where you’re looking, near Bill’s death…yep, there he is. I see him, and it’s definitely a him; he’s nearby.”

  “Where? Which one?” The single-minded scientist wasn’t about to let up. The cluster of pearls in Aida’s focus had become even more entangled, spinning and dancing around one another, their threads crisscrossing and crossing again until the entire thing looked like a densely packed cloud of fireflies, each trying to signal to one another at the same time.

  “Where are you looking?” Max asked.

  “At this tangle of people.”

  “No, he’s not in the middle of that. He’s on the periphery, observing the action but not getting too involved. Here, this is gonna feel a little funny. I’m going to help you focus your attention on him.”

  She felt, actually felt, her focus being physically moved, as if a hand were turning her head. The knot and the rest of the Wave World went slightly out of focus and left a single pearl in excruciating clarity.

  The monk’s voice was almost inside her head; that’s how close his presence was. “That’s your guy. He most likely is one of the major players in all these recent events. I mean, regarding what happened to you and your lab tech.”

  Aida had already reached this conclusion but wanted to hear Max’s thoughts as well. “I agree, but why do you think so?”

  “He and Bill interacted right after your daughter had her run-in with Bill. We know that set Bill on a course to die. Then he talked to the biker, and the biker interacted with Bill, wherever they were, right before Bill died. Then this guy showed up again. What disturbs me the most is the way he disappeared before.” Now Max sounded troubled. “We use event lines and environmental waves to avoid being seen here in the Wave World by other observers. It takes an experienced practitioner to use all the waves and lines and hills and valleys to their advantage, and we know what it looks like when someone does it. This man disappeared at the conjunction of an event line and two background waves. It was very neatly done, so either he’s here observing us, or someone told him exactly where to be and when to be there in order to disappear from view. No matter how you look at it, he’s a danger to you and anyone who’s near you.”

  God help me find a way to protect Natalia and Greg. “So who is he?” I’ve got to see him.

  Anxiety made Aida cautious and warned her against diving in hard. This man—whoever he is—set up Bill’s death…murder…and he’s probably behind what Bill did to me and what that woman was going to do to me in the hospital room. With a feather-light touch, she narrowed in on his pearl. It grew larger until it was the only thing she could see.

  Resistance.

  She pushed a little harder and found the outer shell of his pearl was as hard as rock.

  “He’s been trained, Aida. He knows how to block someone who’s trying to look at him. Plus, he’s focused on the Particle World now; I doubt you could see him even if you knocked with a jackhammer.”

  That just infuriated her. This bastard’s behind everything that’s going on—I will see his face!

  Although Aida pushed hard, the wall didn’t yield. Maybe I need a running start. She backed off so the Wave World filled her view but kept his pearl as the bull’s-eye. She then steeled herself and, with single-minded purpose, drove at the shell of his pearl as fast and hard as she could. The impact was like a battering ram against the side of a mountain—it stunned her, but it dented the mountain too, and for the instant of the impact, she saw him. He was a tall, hulking man with short-cut, military-style red hair and a pallid complexion. He had ice-blue eyes set in a solid, round head and wore a police officer’s uniform. Beneath his feet, she saw blacktop and the white painted stripe of a parking lot.

  As she rebounded, her view snapped back to the Wave World.

  Gotcha, you son of a bitch!

  She kept watching his pearl, now that she was able to pick it out. What surprised her was that he didn’t seem that different from the others. His pearl vibrated like the others; his path didn’t show any of the crookedness Bill’s had, and she thought the pearl of someone who was a murderer, or who was at least behind all this, would be different.

  “I see him, Max. He seems so normal. I expected something different from someone like him. He’s done such horrible things,” Aida said, bewildered.

  Max replied without any judgment in his voice. “You’d think so, you know. But he doesn’t see that what he’s doing is wrong, and if someone doesn’t believe they’re doing harm, they don’t act like it. I guess they don’t really see themselves as being a bad person. He probably thinks he’s serving some higher purpose or he’s just doing his job. People justify their behavior in all sorts of ways.”

  “That’s just not right. There should be something different,” her insulted sense of fairness insisted.

  “There is
something that’s different, but it’s very subtle, and you might not be able to sense it yet. The background vibrations of the universe don’t resonate through this man. His vibrations are a lot like those of most people you meet. They’re so wrapped up in themselves and the day-to-day world that they don’t have a sense of larger realities and ultimate truths. You’ve seen so many of them that you start to think it’s normal and therefore right.”

  The cop’s pearl lurked around the tight swarm, only interacting where it had to. Aida wondered if he knew she was watching him. She hoped so; she wanted him to feel her anger and didn’t care that others were watching her.

  Soon the swarm of pearls began to break up, and the cop drifted farther out—any farther and he would be disengaged from the group. Aida relaxed her focus, letting it broaden. She wanted to see where this guy went if he took off.

  Another pearl was approaching him. Reaching out to touch it, Aida found it familiar. It was the medic. Resting her focus on him like a gentle hand on his shoulder, she listened. She got much more information from this encounter than from their prior one at the hospital. His name was John, and he was genuinely concerned about Bill and what Bill’s death might mean for Aida and her family. John’s pearl mingled with the cop’s, and though John was focused on the Particle World, she caught snippets of their conversation.

  “Turned out to be Dr. Aida Doxiphus, the director of the lab, and this guy’s her lab tech,” John said.

  “Did he say what he was afraid of?’ Another voice she assumed to be the cop’s, with a slight New England accent, replied.

  John again. “No, he didn’t say…”—muffled noise—“…more going on, ––more muffled noise––whole situation”

  Though she was only catching snippets, Aida started to get concerned.

  What’s he telling the cop? She drew closer, and the next bit of the conversation came through clearly.

  “It just didn’t make sense,” John said. “The way we found Dr. Doxiphus, with her arms and legs straight and at her sides, like she had just lain down. And the timing of his story didn’t add up. He said he called 911 at 8:15, but we didn’t get toned out till 8:25, and 911 never takes more than a minute to roll a medic unit.”

  Cop: “So you think he was involved somehow?”

  John: “I don’t see how.”

  Cop: “Have you told anyone else this?”

  “John, no! Stop!” Aida cried out, scared at what the medic might give away. His revelations were putting both her family and him in greater danger.

  John: “Yeah, I did, at the end of my shift yesterday. I was at University Hospital, and I needed to report this to the doctors and the family.”

  This was too much for Aida; John wasn’t listening to her. She had to do something now to warn off the medic. Willing herself into the scene, she imagined standing there with them, feeling the solid ground beneath her feet, smelling the evening air, and hearing the summer cicadas’ scratching chitter rise and fall, but it didn’t work; there was no one there who was open to seeing her. She changed her focus, which had been resting lightly on John, to a sharp point, trying to bore a hole into the medic’s shoulder to make him understand.

  John: “What the…? Felt like someone pinched me. Must be some damn big mosquito.”

  The cop’s pearl ceased vibrating for a moment, its eggshell color turning to slate gray. Aida touched it; at least she thought she did, because though it was visible, she felt nothing.

  “He’s on guard now, Aida. He definitely has received some training,” Max said, “C’mon now. Let go. You’re not helping matters.”

  “But we’ve got him now. We can watch him and see where he goes.” She wasn’t going to give him up.

  “He’s not gonna go anywhere, not while you’re in contact with him, so we can’t learn anything. Besides, you’re showing yourself. They can see you!”

  “What?”

  “There are observers watching him. You’re in contact with him, so they can see you too! And me as well!” Without warning, Max wrenched Aida’s focus away from the cop’s pearl.

  She was livid. “Damn it, Max!”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to protect us.”

  “Well, I have to protect my family and myself by getting this guy. Think about it, Max. If we can stop him, won’t you and I be better protected too?”

  ***

  Aida watched the cop’s pearl. She had won that part of the argument after agreeing not to contact him any further. Max had flipped back to the Particle World; he said he had to discuss this turn of events with the other monks.

  The cop was interacting with another pearl. He came back to John, and then the two broke off their conversation. The longer Aida focused on the medic, the better she could sense his emotional state. She knew John had been disturbed by his encounter with the cop and Bill, and he was concerned for her and her family, especially Nat.

  I’ll keep an eye on you, John, she promised as she watched him leave.

  That left her with the cop. She kept her distance but never let him out of her sight. Within what felt like moments after John had left the scene, the cop departed as well. Tracing out a slightly different path than John had, the officer slid along the environment waves like a sailboat on a rolling sea. It looked to Aida like he was using the waves to help him move, allowing them to push him along. He paused in a trough between two waves, just sitting there while an event line in a wave came up behind him. He then accelerated and was pacing the wave; it rose up, lifting him along with it. He rode down the far side like an expert surfer, and then he was gone. Aida searched the spot where she thought he would emerge. Max had said the cop had disappeared before, like a slippery eel into its darkened hole. It appeared he had done so again.

  John had performed no such vanishing act. He was plainly visible and moving toward Aida, Greg, and Nat.

  He’s a good man, Aida thought. I’m glad he’s with us. I wish he hadn’t been pulled into this mess.

  After a quick check on Greg and Nat, she returned her attention to John. His pearl was perched on the crest of a wave, looking out over a trough. As the wave beneath him moved on, he began to drop into the valley that lay before the next wave.

  Aida’s gaze froze in shock. At the bottom of the hill John was sliding down was a deep fold, a death fold, and he was heading straight for it. Aida called, “Max! Someone help!” But no one answered. John was right on top of the death fold.

  I’m not going to let this happen to him! She reached out to John and easily touched his mind, which allowed her to engage her senses in his reality and—

  Blinding headlights clawed at her eyes from the darkness as she inhaled cool night air tinged with the smell of diesel exhaust. The buzzing drone of a streetlight came from above her to the right, its light bathing the vehicle and the intersection in an amber glow. John sat in the cab of the ambulance, not twelve feet in front of her. They saw each other. She had known what to expect. John, on the other hand, wore a stunned expression. On the driver’s side of the ambulance, a figure casually walked to the window and raised its right arm; the gun it held was silhouetted black against the streetlight.

  “John, get down!” When Aida motioned down and to the left with both arms, John got the message. He threw himself onto the passenger seat just as the figure fired a shot that shattered the driver’s-side window.

  “Go!” she shouted.

  Two more staccato pops split the night air as the muzzle flash burst into the cabin. A fraction of a second later, John slammed his foot on the gas. Medic 82 jumped toward her as the engine roared. As it covered the distance between them, her mind did a quick calculation, and she knew she couldn’t get clear in time. She spun and was leaning away as the ambulance struck her right hip and leg and passed cleanly through her. She stood there, on both legs, the brick cobblestones scraping underneath her feet, shocked that she was still in one piece. The last things she saw were the brake lights of the ambulance as it screeched to a halt.

&
nbsp; Aida’s focus snapped back to the Wave World. John’s pearl had turned at a sharp angle and now was heading straight up, away from the fold.

  Yes! He’s safe!

  She watched John for a little while longer. He had turned again and was heading straight for her. Aida was elated to have simultaneously saved his life and ruined what she thought was the cop’s plan. Though she was unable to prove it, she was sure the cop had orchestrated this incident. And if she was able to stop this one, she could stop others as well. Her determination grew, feeding on this new realization.

  Where is he now? she wondered, scanning the surrounding area for him, wishing Max were here to help.

  Not finding the cop, she turned back to Greg and Natalia and found her relief short-lived. They were traveling in tight circles around her, their paths weaving a protective mesh. On the other side of the web, the slate-gray pearl of the cop maneuvered up to them. She easily touched her husband’s mind; he already was half-asleep.

  Alarmed, Aida called out, “Greg!” Her husband became fully alert, so she had to work harder to keep in contact with him. As before with John, she fine-tuned her contact with her husband and was able to hear what was going on. The cop was in the room, and Greg was on the phone talking to John.

  John: “Good. Do it. Someone just tried to kill me, so it stands to reason that the three of you are in danger too.”

  Greg: “Yes, I see…I think you’re right. Thank you. Hang on.”

  Greg hesitated, trying to process what the medic had just told him. He was a brilliant man who would do anything to protect his family, but he wasn’t always the best in confrontational situations like this. Aida had to help him and Nat.

  Cop: “What’s going on here, Doctor?” His New England accent was laced with cold suspicion.

  Aida touched Natalia as well and inserted her focus into the hospital room.

  As she stood in semidarkness, her view of the room was framed by what had to be the open bathroom door. The cop’s back was to her. Greg was working his poker face as best as he could when Nat drew in a sharp breath of surprise. Greg looked between the hospital bed and past the cop to her in the bathroom.