Singularity

by Joe Hart

  Now, it was Andrews’s turn to squint at him. The warden blinked a few times and then motioned to Mooring, who was still keenly training his weapon on Sullivan. “Did you say Henry Fairbend attacked you?” Andrews asked.

  Sullivan nodded. “Agent Stevens is missing and when I went to look for him, Fairbend hit me in the hallway.”

  The guards formed a circle around Andrews and Sullivan, and now they were exchanging glances, their hands hovering close to the weapons on their belts.

  “I’m sorry, Sullivan, but that’s really not possible. Henry Fairbend died late last night from an epileptic seizure. The doctor thinks it was brought on by his prior injuries.”

  The words were like a string that would not thread through the eye of a needle. As Sullivan tried to make sense of them, they slid away from him, the writhing mass in the prisoner’s mouth taking precedence until he pressed a palm to his left eye, which came away bloody. “Dead? Can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid so. Son, maybe you should sit down,” Andrews said and pointed toward a wooden bench against the nearest wall.

  Sullivan shook his head and licked his lips, realizing he still desperately needed to pee. “If he’s dead, then who’s lying in that hallway?”

  Andrews shared a look with Mooring, and then turned his gaze back at Sullivan. “Son, there’s no one in the hallway.”

  ==

  He didn’t remember brushing past the guards who tried to hold him back or scanning the key against the reader. The impossibly empty hallway became everything. He walked numbly to the spot where Fairbend attacked him. The red smear where his head had hit the wall was there, as well as two gleaming shell casings that lay a few feet apart. The smell of gunfire was still in the air too, a tangy scent that illuminated memories within him without effort, the cordite acting as an olfactory photo album. But none of this concerned Sullivan. What did concern him was the absence of the body he’d left lying in a gathering pool of blood.

  He stared at the area where Fairbend had fallen. There was some blood there, but not much. Not enough for a full-grown man to have lain there after being shot twice in the solar plexus. His mind convulsed as it coughed up images of the tendrils poking from Fairbend’s mouth. The way they’d whipped around and searched him out. He closed his eyes and nearly cried out when a hand came to rest on his shoulder. He turned and found Andrews looking at him, concern evident in the creases beside his mouth and the furrows in his brow.

  “I don’t know where he went. He was right here. He had something—”

  “Sir, don’t you think we need do something about this?” Mooring interrupted from over the warden’s shoulder.

  The older man stared at Sullivan as he spoke to the guard. “We will, Everett. Let’s get him to medical, he’s losing color. All of it’s on his shirt.”

  Sullivan blinked and touched his brow again, which was still alarmingly wet. He began to say that he was all right, but stopped when the floor tilted like the deck of a ship beneath his feet.

  “But sir, don’t you think he should be contained? Can’t we—”

  “Everett, we need to get him to Amanda. Grab his arm.” Despite Andrews’s frail appearance, the man had steel in his voice, and after a moment Mooring came to Sullivan’s side and slung the agent’s arm around his shoulders. Andrews gripped Sullivan’s left bicep, and they began to walk.

  The distance between the hallway and the infirmary became a blur.

  Sullivan sagged at times, and kept blinking as encouraging words filtered into his ear from the warden’s side. Then, he was being laid on a bed and the ceiling came into view. Amanda’s pretty face hovered over him and a flashlight glared into his eyes. The world dimmed a little and he felt a floating sensation, as if the bed beneath him was rolling across an oiled floor. The prick of a needle brought him racing back to himself, and for a moment he wondered if he was lying in the same bed Fairbend had been in earlier. The thought was enough to clear the rest of his senses, and he tried to sit up while nausea did a two-step in his stomach.

  “Whoa, big guy. Let’s just lie back for a minute, shall we?” Amanda put her hands onto his bare shoulders and pressed firmly. Sullivan looked around the room, his eyes wide, but he allowed himself to be pushed back onto a soft pillow. Amanda leaned over him, surgical gloves encasing her delicate hands.

  “Did I pass out?” Sullivan asked.

  “I think you flickered for a second,” Amanda said. A hint of a smile played at her lips as she rattled something on a steel tray to his left. “You lost quite a bit of blood. Your temporal artery was open, and I think your black shirt hid a lot of the blood.” Her hand came back into view, holding a pair of hemostat pliers, which in turn grasped a wickedly curved needle. A length of thread hung from the dull end of the needle, and as Amanda smiled, he realized he would be feeling a little more pain before the day truly dawned.

  The stitches didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared, and while Amanda cleaned up the mess of bandages and supplies beside his bed, he rubbed the area around the wound. It still felt numb and enormous, partly from the swelling, he supposed, and partly from whatever agent she had injected him with.

  “Thank you,” he said, dropping his hand onto the bed.

  Amanda smiled crookedly and continued putting away the unused instruments. “There’s some water on the table,” she said, motioning toward a plastic pitcher and stacked cups.

  Although Sullivan’s throat burned with thirst, his bladder was currently winning the battle for his attention. “I’m going to use the bathroom,” he said, sliding off the bed and onto his bare feet. Someone had removed his shoes and socks. He glanced around the room to make sure no other guards lingered nearby. His vision doubled, and then steadied while he paused, balancing as if he were standing on a narrow beam.

  “Let me help you,” Amanda said, stripping off her gloves.

  “I’m good. Just needed to get my bearings,” he said, and muscled himself toward the open bathroom door to the right. Slowly, his legs began to feel like his own and the slight nausea receded.

  After closing the door and releasing what felt like two gallons of blazing urine, he bent before the sink and splashed cold water onto his face. After drying off, he stared at his reflection in the harsh light of the single fluorescent. The cut on the left side of his skull was crisscrossed with fine black thread. The white scar just beneath it looked like a longer twin dressed in white. He fingered both wounds, one old, one new. What was the old comic he used to read when he was a kid? Spy vs. Spy? One long-faced bird-looking character dressed in black, and his counterpart in white. Now he had something akin to them on the side of his head. Scar vs. Scar.

  He laughed under his breath and walked back out into the room. Amanda had finished cleaning up and was at her desk against the far wall. He stopped next to the bed and watched her. He liked the way she leaned over her work and how she braced her forehead with her left hand while her right scratched down notes on a tablet. A length of hair had fallen free of her ponytail, and he had the sudden urge to cross the room and gently tuck it back behind her ear.

  Amanda paused her writing and glanced over at him. He averted his gaze to the brightening windows above her and had a sudden bout of self-consciousness as he realized he was still shirtless. Amanda must have read his mind, because she gestured toward a gray T-shirt hanging from a chair near the bed.

  “One of the guys brought you a clean shirt.”

  He nodded and moved to the chair. Had she noticed him looking at her? Had a smile been playing at her lips as she spoke? He unfolded the shirt, which looked a size too small. He confirmed the assumption as he struggled to pull it down over his head.

  “Fit okay?”

  Her words came from very close by. He finally won the battle with the shirt and managed to yank it down past his eyes. Amanda stood a few feet away, smiling openly at his efforts. He grinned as he smoothed out the taut material over his chest and stomach. “Yeah, just fine. Thanks.”

  “Let�
�s sit back down on the bed and check you out one more time,” Amanda said.

  Sullivan obeyed without complaint, looking at the flashlight she held up to dilate his pupils and following her finger while she dragged it back and forth across his field of vision.

  “I think you’re going to be just fine,” she said as she stepped to the side and leaned against the bed frame. “No signs of concussion and you seem to have all other cognitive functions.”

  “You’re giving me too much credit,” he replied.

  She laughed. “Feeling better?”

  “Yeah, still a little groggy, but better.” Sullivan brushed back the tide of unruly hair on top of his head and looked up at the doctor as if he had been struck with a whip. “Did they find Barry … Agent Stevens?” he asked.

  Amanda pursed her lips and barely shook her head. “Sorry. From what I understand, they’ve been searching the whole time you’ve been in here.”

  “And how long has that been?”

  Amanda shrugged, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Probably an hour and a half, give or take.”

  Sullivan felt his stomach drop and tighten. Barry was officially missing. There was no reasonable explanation. He hadn’t gotten turned around on a midnight stroll through the facility or gone to follow up on an idea for the case. If Barry knew that Sullivan had been involved in a shooting this morning, he would be standing a few feet away, the concerned look Sullivan had seen a hundred times before wrinkling his face.

  “I need to call my SAIC,” Sullivan said as he began to slide off the bed. Amanda put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back to a seated position.

  “You need to relax. You might still be dizzy, and I don’t want you running off down the hallway only to fall and reopen the hard work I just did. How about some water?” Amanda crossed to the pitcher beside the bed and poured a stream of icy water into one of the cups.

  Sullivan stopped her with a hand on her arm before she turned to hand him the glass. “Do you have any orange juice? I think that would give me a boost.”

  Amanda paused, giving him a strange look, and then nodded. “Sure, I’ve got a bottle in the fridge.”

  She moved to the small refrigerator beside her desk and retrieved a bottle of Tropicana from within. After opening it, Sullivan guzzled the contents almost without stopping, the tangy bite of the juice sluicing through the accumulated spit and phlegm in his throat. He repressed a massive belch as he finished and glanced at Amanda.

  “Sorry,” he said, setting the drained bottle onto the bedside table.

  “No, that’s good. It should help with the blood loss, actually,” she replied.

  A silence fell between them, and when he looked up to say that he thought he could make it to the warden’s office under his own power, he noticed she was studying the side of his head. He assumed she was inspecting her work, making sure all the threads in his stitches were holding.

  Amanda reached out and touched not the most recent cut but the one below it. The one he had carried for years, its presence holding so much more than the irritating droop of his eyebrow.

  “How did this happen?” she asked, brushing the puckered skin with a touch that sent goose bumps trailing down his arms. Sullivan bowed his head, and Amanda pulled her hand back and leaned toward him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, stopping her apology. “It’s just not a nice memory.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, stepping back and giving him polite space. But as she did, he realized he didn’t want her to move farther away.

  “I was a cop in Minneapolis before I became an agent,” he said, looking up at her. “I was off-duty one night and I ran to a grocery store to get a few things. On my way, a guy stepped out from an alley and pulled a knife.” A broken wineglass, not a knife, the voice in his head intoned from somewhere far away. The lie was so accustomed and polished that it flowed off his tongue like it had actually happened. “I just reacted instead of listening to what he had to say,” he continued. She was so angry that night. You remember how she’d screamed at you, how disjointed and erratic her mind had become. You remember. He blinked and paused, forcing the voice to stop, to relent for just a moment so he could finish. “He went for my face and I got lucky. The knife went in and slid along my skull but didn’t cut any major arteries. Now, it’s just irritating, because if I don’t do strengthening exercises, my eyebrow droops because of how the tissue was cut there.” You remember how she lunged at you, the hatred on her face so deep and penetrating that it hurt more to look at her than the actual cut did. He breathed out and silenced the voice. This was why he avoided telling people about the scar. It was the wounds inside that flared up and hurt like they’d just been opened that caused the real pain.

  Amanda stared at him, her eyes running over every inch of his face, and he wondered if she suspected he hadn’t told her the truth.

  Finally, she tilted her head to the side, a smile playing across her lips. “Scars are our closest memories, my dad used to say. Sometimes they’re good and sometimes not, but they remind us of who we are.”

  Sullivan nodded and returned her smile the best he could. At times, he thought, it was better to forget.

  Chapter 8

  Filtered sunlight coated the lobby as Sullivan strode across it. It seemed the storm had moved on, its overbearing presence having forged ahead to soak other places out of sight and earshot. A smudge of gray clouds still besmirched the otherwise pleasant-looking day, and as Sullivan knocked on the brass-plated door, he wondered if the improving weather was an omen of better things to come. While he waited for an answer, his eyes stole to the doorway at the far end of the large room and his thoughts slid back to the morning and what he’d seen come out of Fairbend’s mouth. He shuddered as he imagined the darting tendrils reaching for him, and examined the possibility that his sanity was slipping. Fairbend had died the night before. Amanda confirmed this before he left the infirmary. She said she’d been unable to do a thing as the man convulsed in the throes of a seizure so powerful he had hemorrhaged internally. So who, or what, had he shot in the hallway? And more importantly, where was it now?

  The door opened, startling him, and Andrews’s kind face appeared in the opening, wrinkled with a smile. “Agent Shale, come in, come in.”

  The warden ushered him inside and closed the door behind them. The office looked more distinguished in the brighter sunlight, and Sullivan felt the strain of the past day’s uncertainties weigh upon him in the neat and orderly room.

  “Please sit,” Andrews said, motioning to the same chair Sullivan sat in the day before. The other was blaringly empty.

  Sullivan cleared his throat while the warden busied himself with two cups of coffee. “Agent Stevens hasn’t been located yet?”

  Andrews glanced over his shoulder and shook his head before he turned and brought Sullivan a steaming cup, then made his way behind the large desk. “I’m afraid not,” the older man said, and Sullivan heard a pained grunt as he settled into his chair. “My officers have been scouring the prison ever since this morning, and there’s been no sign of him.”

  Sullivan set the coffee down and scooted forward in his seat. “Sir, I need to call my senior agent in charge and notify him of what happened. My cell phone is …” Sullivan paused. “… not working correctly.”

  Andrews sighed and sat forward as he leaned his elbows upon his desk. Deep hollows were carved beneath each of the man’s eyes, and after a moment of inspection, Sullivan came to the conclusion that the warden also hadn’t slept much the night before. “That’s where we’re in a bit of a pickle, Sullivan. Can I call you Sullivan?” Sullivan nodded. “We lost our landlines late last night, about the time Henry died, I’m suspecting. It’s this damn rain. I just heard on the weather radio that there’s more coming, this is just a lull. They’re saying we’ll be getting another three to five inches by this afternoon. Hopefully our power will hold, and if it doesn’t we have our backup generators, b
ut I’m afraid we’ll have to start planning for an eventual evacuation to New Haven.” The warden turned in his chair and stared out of one of the high windows. The deep lines on his face became canyons in the harsher light, and Sullivan wondered again if he’d been wrong presuming the man’s age. “I think some of the main junction boxes must have washed out in the night, and now there’s nothing,” Andrews said, gesturing toward the impassive phone on his desk.

  “How about cell phones? I could borrow yours or someone else’s—” Sullivan broke off as he watched Andrews bow his head and shake it again.

  “Cells are out too. All I can figure is the surrounding towers must’ve either toppled with the softened ground combined with the wind or we had one hell of a lightning strike.” Andrew dug in his pocket, and then slid a small flip phone across the desk. When Sullivan opened the device, he saw that the other man told the truth. A “No Service” message blinked at the top of the square screen and no matter which direction he turned, no bars appeared. Sullivan snapped the phone shut in anger and pushed it back to the warden.

  “Do you have a shortwave radio?” Sullivan asked.

  “No, I’m sorry. Before this bout of storms, we never saw a need to have an emergency backup.”

  “How about the hospital? Do they have separate lines or better service?”

  Again, the warden had a pained look on his face. “No, I checked with them this morning.”

  A revelation struck him that was so simple, Sullivan barely restrained himself from smacking his forehead. “The boat. We can use the boat now that the storm’s passed.” Sullivan heard the hope in the pitch of his own voice, and then felt the creeping sense of disquiet when Andrews bit his lower lip and wrinkled his brow. The older man’s eyes looked right at him, through him, pinning him to the chair.

  “That’s something else I wanted to speak to you about,” Andrews finally said. “There’s been a development that I haven’t made you aware of, and I knew you’d be upset by it, so I wanted to tell you in private.”