“Come on, I’m starving.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re not doing this.”
“Are you serious? Where else are we going to get food? You said it yourself; everything’s probably closed by now with the city in evacuation mode.”
Lucas shook his head and folded his arms across his chest, but he didn’t answer.
Drew threw up his hands. “Look around. This place is a ghost town. Who’s gonna know?”
“We will.”
“Look, I get the whole honesty thing, especially after what happened in the lab. But after all, the owners did leave the place open and the lights on. It’s not like we’d be trespassing.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
“I’m sure there’s a legal precedent somewhere about an unlocked, abandoned restaurant. It’s practically an invitation to just help yourself, right? A great big welcome sign.”
Lucas nodded. His brother had a point.
“Besides, we’d be doing them a favor,” Drew said, sounding like an attorney driving home a point.
“How do you figure?”
“Well, first of all, it’s our civic duty not to let all this ice cream go to waste. Someone’s got eat it. Why not us?”
Lucas laughed, but said nothing.
“And second, we should make sure nobody’s hurt inside and needs help. Then figure out a way to lock up the place. Maybe there’s some keys inside.”
“Okay, I like that idea. It’s the responsible thing to do.”
“Besides, who’s to say that helping ourselves wasn’t their intention when they left the place wide open like this? I’m pretty sure if they thought the energy fields would return and level the area, they wouldn’t care what happened to their store, right? Might as well feed a few people before it’s gone anyway.”
Lucas took a minute to consider his brother’s argument. Drew’s points made sense, though there were certainly plenty of other explanations that would fit the current situation.
However, he was tired and didn’t have the energy or the patience to debate anymore. Plus his belly was running on empty, too. He needed food. So did Drew. They’d both be able to think better with a full stomach, even if it was only ice cream and chocolate. “Okay, but make it quick,” he said, stepping aside and holding the door open as Drew rolled inside.
After making and eating their sugary treats, they walked the rest of the way to their apartment complex and pressed the call button for the elevator. It didn’t light up.
“The electricity must be out. Looks like I’m carrying you up more stairs,” Lucas told Drew.
He carried Drew up the third floor, then returned to the ground level to fetch the wheelchair. Once Drew was back in his chair, Lucas followed him to their apartment door, unlocked it, and they both went inside. Lucas opened all the blinds to let sunlight in so they could see what they were doing.
“You get started packing. I’ll grab the laptop and few of our books,” Lucas said, taking Drew’s knapsack off the back of the wheelchair. He unzipped the center pouch and put it on the study desk next to the computer. He slid the molded plastic chair out and sat down.
He ran his hands through his short-cropped hair, drawing in a long, slow breath, and then exhaled—it soothed him. He let his mind drift to thoughts of recent events as he brought his fingertips down to brush them across the smooth, wood-grain surface.
So much had happened—it was hard to process; his emotions were a tangled mess. He tried to remember life before the campus tragedies but couldn’t seem to recall it clearly in his mind. He felt like he was on the outside looking in, viewing the memories as if they belonged to someone else. Nothing felt as it should, not even his own skin.
Deep down he knew the visions were his, but now they seemed foreign, tainted in some way. Even his own heartbeat felt off—a strange sensation, to say the least. Certainly, his life wasn’t what he expected when he enrolled at the university as a wide-eyed teenager. No, this was something different. Something twisted and surreal.
He wondered what constituted a normal college life. Was it the endless beer bongs and hookups, or was it something more? If he had to do it over, would he join his classmates in the occasional alcohol-induced, three-day bender, or would he stick to the original plan? One path was about hangovers and unchecked venereal disease, and the other was about duty and responsibility.
It was easy to fantasize about a different life when currently treading in quicksand. A life filled with playful days of innocence and guilt-free Sunday mornings. Yet, he knew it was a hopeless illusion.
You are who you are, and there’s no going back in time and starting over.
Life is a series of endless decisions and mistakes—some critical and others, not so much. He’d certainly made his share along the way but hoped if someone dissected his life, they’d find he always tried to do right by Drew and his adoptive parents, even if things spun sideways.
He knew exactly who and what he was—a man with a bit of a temper who sometimes overreacted to situations. But in reality, everyone did that from time to time, especially when family was involved.
Was he really so different from everyone else? He’d certainly met people who were far more volatile than he was, some needing to just go away forever—and some had, like the Mohawk-wearing rugby player from the cafeteria.
Let’s face it, everyone struggles with their own personal demons, some are just better at hiding them than others. His inner demons rarely gave him any warning before they were about to erupt, and until recently, hadn’t gotten too far out of hand. Yet, given what he was dealing with right now, it was understandable why he was having issues with them, right?
He was a certainly a work in progress, trying to gain control over his life, his emotions, and his own actions, but everything normal seemed just out of reach, as if his grip on reality was slipping. He wondered if he sat perfectly still and listened hard enough, would he hear the malignant shadows closing in around him? He wasn’t sure why things always seemed to go haywire, but they did.
Maybe the universe was studying him closely and then picking the perfect time to torment him with sudden twists of fate. Almost like it was focusing on him for some reason. Of course, for that to be true, he’d have to be important enough for the universe to give a shit, which seemed unlikely.
When he boiled it all down, he didn’t know where his future was headed. Would it end in death? Triumph? Something in between?
He pushed all those thoughts aside. They weren’t helping and he was getting off track. He knew whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to be easy. What he was facing right now was the certainly the hardest test he’d ever faced in his life, and he’d had his share growing up in the orphanage.
What was it that his old man used to say? Oh, yeah . . . “It’s how you handle the difficult moments in life that defines you.”
Lucas wasn’t afraid to face the facts, or their consequences. That’s what a scientist does. A scientist puts it all out there on the line, then waits to see the outcome after his theories are scrutinized and dissected by some of the greatest minds on the planet.
The same humiliating process of exposure and evaluation happens in life, too. Like when he stood in front of NASA and some of the most prominent scientists in the country and took responsibility for his actions. He was ready for whatever the powers that be—and the universe, for that matter—were going to throw at him.
He just hoped Kleezebee would let him join the fight to help to unravel the mess he’d made across the planet. He was ready to do whatever it took to make things right.
* * *
A few minutes later, Lucas stood up from his study desk and leaned forward with his thighs pressing hard against the center drawer. He thumbed through the physics material on the top shelf of the bookcase, looking for his quantum field theory book. He found the thick red six-hundred page book next to his reference notes on spatial anomalies and slid it out. He remembered the day he’d bought
it from the bookstore, feeling like he’d finally made it. He was finally someone important. Someone his adoptive parents could be proud of.
He opened the book and slips of yellow notepaper fell from between the pages, scattering like forgotten dreams across the river of unpaid medical bills on his desk. He gathered the notes, trying to put them back where they belonged, when he realized they no longer mattered. Neither did his anti-gravity research. Years of accelerated graduate study, plus eighteen months of tireless research, gone in a flash—literally.
He started thumbing through the pages, hoping for some facts or a theory to jump out at him. Something that might help stop the energy domes or lead him down a solution path. He’d just started going over the introduction on wave functions, where the author discussed the probability amplitude of position, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle.
He wasn’t three sentences into the text when someone started pounding furiously on the apartment’s front door. The abrupt noise made him jump, and the book slipped from his hands. It landed perfectly flat, making a loud bang ricochet through the room like a gunshot. His heart pounded at the walls of his chest, trying to break free from its cage.
“Dr. Ramsay, we need to speak with you. It’s urgent,” a man shouted from the other side of the door in a commanding voice.
Lucas walked to the door and looked through the peephole, but could only see a close-up of a man’s face—maybe Hispanic. Lucas didn’t recognize him.
“Dr. Ramsay, please open up,” the man insisted. “It’s urgent.”
Lucas hesitated, then decided to open the door, expecting it to be someone from the university. Immediately, a second man, a white guy with a dimpled chin, scrambled into view with a rifle pointed at Lucas’ face. Both men were wearing combat fatigues, tactical vests, and helmets with the letters MP stenciled on the front in white letters.
“Wait, don’t shoot!” Lucas said, raising his hands above his head.
“Are you Dr. Lucas Ramsay of the Astrophysics Department?” the Hispanic soldier asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Is your brother with you?”
Lucas moved a step closer to them with his hands touching both sides of the upper doorframe. He looked past the soldiers, down through the open railing bordering the catwalk outside his apartment, and saw two green Humvee trucks parked outside the manager’s office on the ground floor. To the west and south, massive fires burned as looters took to the streets. Thick plumes of black smoke rose to the sky from more locations than he could count.
Lucas took a deep breath to calm his nerves before he spoke to the MP, hoping to show strength. “He’s in the bedroom. What’s going on here?”
“We’re here to take you into custody by order of Major General Rafael Alvarez.”
“Who’s that? Why the guns? Custody? What the hell for?” Lucas asked.
“For the murder of one hundred and twenty-seven people on campus. Both of you need to come with us, immediately.”
“Look, you need to understand. It was an accident. I was running an experiment, and something went wrong. My brother had nothing to do with it.”
The lead MP opened a pair of handcuffs. “My orders are to detain both of you. Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
Lucas tightened his grip on the doorframe and braced his feet.
The other MP pressed the open end of the barrel against Lucas’ forehead.
Lucas stood firm. He didn’t believe the soldier would shoot.
The MP cocked the rifle and flared his eyes. His face burned a deep red color. “Just give me a reason, asshole.” He pressed the barrel hard against Lucas’ scalp.
“You really need to let me cuff you before my trigger-happy partner decides to redecorate your face,” the lead MP said. “Trust me. He wanted to just kick down the door and open fire. You’re lucky to be alive right now.”
Lucas didn’t respond. He needed a moment to think.
“You don’t have a choice here, Dr. Ramsay. You’re both coming with us—one way or the other. Doesn’t matter how.”
“Okay, okay. Just don’t hurt my brother,” Lucas said, taking a step back from the doorway with his hands high in the air.
The MP pulled the rifle back. Lucas turned and overlapped his wrists behind his back. He heard the ratchets click as the shackles were tightened around his wrists, tearing into his skin. He grunted, feeling a trickle of blood run down his hand.
The white MP pushed past Lucas and went into the apartment. Drew was confronted by the soldier the moment he rolled into the room in his wheelchair.
“Hold it right there!” the MP shouted, aiming his gun at Drew. “Hands up where I can see them.”
“Drew, just do as they say. These guys mean business,” Lucas said.
Drew nodded and put his wrists together above his lap and allowed the MP to handcuff them to the arm of the wheelchair. The soldier stood behind Drew as if he were getting ready to push the chair, but instead, he opened a Velcro pocket along the front of his equipment vest and pulled out a syringe. He jammed the needle into Drew’s neck.
“What are you doing?” Lucas screamed, struggling to wriggle free from his captor. The Hispanic MP grabbed Lucas’ head and pushed it to one side.
A second later, Lucas felt a sharp pain on the exposed side of his neck, followed by a warm sensation spreading out under the skin. He was about to pass out when a black hood was pulled down over his eyes.
* * *
Sometime later, Lucas felt a blast of cold liquid splash into his face. He thought it was water—not a lot, maybe a cup full. It hit him right between his eyes, then trickled down his cheek. If it wasn’t water, he didn’t want it causing any damage so he kept his eyes closed.
“Time to wake up, Ramsay,” a male voice said. Someone kicked him in the ribs twice, hard. “Eyes open, punk. You’re gonna watch this.”
Lucas did as he was told and opened his eyes while gasping for air. Two sets of car headlights were trained on him, piercing the darkness about twenty feet away. The light burned at his retinas, making him look away for a few seconds until his pupils adjusted.
Once his brain caught up to his vision, he realized he was lying on his side with his right cheek buried in loose dirt. His hands were restrained behind his back and he could see frosty breath billowing out into the cool night air each time he exhaled.
For some reason, his whole body ached and his thoughts were agonizingly slow. Then he remembered why: the sharp pain in his neck from the MP’s needle, and the warm sensation that followed.
Shit, he’d been drugged, then hauled here in the dead of night. Wherever here was.
Someone grabbed the back of his shirt, forcing him to sit upright. He couldn’t see anything beyond the vehicle headlamps except the silhouette of a three-fingered saguaro cactus rising up to block a portion of the star-clustered sky. Two desert bushes were in view, one between the two vehicles in front of him, and another just to his left. His wrists hurt where the handcuffs dug into his skin, and his ribs were aching from the kicks to the gut he’d just received.
Then his eyes found Drew. His brother was sitting on the ground to the right, about ten feet away, with a gag in his mouth. Streaks of dirt were smeared across his face and the collar of his shirt had been torn. Someone had roughed him up, sending Lucas’ blood pressure skyrocketing.
When they made eye contact, Drew’s face went wild with fright. His brother tried to yell something at him, but only muffled groans escaped through the cloth clamping down against his tongue.
A heartbeat later, Lucas knew what his brother was trying to tell him when he noticed a rectangular hole about six feet in length sitting behind Drew. A pile of brown dirt was next to it, with a long-handled shovel sticking out of the top.
A series of flashes hit the video player in the back of his mind—all of them bloody and none of them good. He knew what a hole like that was dug for, but he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it. Not w
ith his little brother sitting helplessly in front of it.
A heavy shadow of a person approached Lucas, possibly a man judging by the size, interrupting the high-beam glare as he moved from right to left.
“Who are you? What do you want with us?” Lucas asked, squinting to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. He hoped he could reason with these men and talk his way out of whatever this was.
“I’m Major General Rafael Alvarez, commander of the Arizona National Guard,” the man said with a haughty, self-important air, as if Lucas should recognize his name.
Lucas thought about Larson’s cryptic phone call in NASA’s conference room just before that area of campus was leveled. He flashed back to Larson talking to someone named Rafael and wondered if this Rafael was the same person. “Larson’s Rafael?”
“My sister’s husband,” Alvarez said with a slight Spanish accent, sounding like he wasn’t proud of the fact.
“What do you want?” Lucas asked the burly man, wondering why he didn’t just call Larson his brother-in-law.
“Payback.”
“Payback for what?”
“Jasmine Lynn Alvarez.”
“Who?”
“My daughter.”
“Sorry, but I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Alvarez grabbed the underside of Lucas’ chin and pulled it up with force. “You killed my sweet innocent girl, you son of a bitch. The least you could do is acknowledge that you knew her.”
“But I don’t, I swear. You’ve got the wrong person.”
“Bullshit. You two were on a date the night she was killed. Don’t lie to me.”
Lucas finally realized who the general was referring to and replied, “Jasmine? You mean Abby’s roommate, the stripper?”
Alvarez punched him on the left side of the mouth, sending him crashing into the dirt. Lucas spat out blood before someone pulled him back up into a sitting position. His head was ringing, and his jaw was stiff with pain, but he didn’t think it was broken since he was able to loosen it up with several open-mouth jaw extensions.
“She was a bartender, you asshole,” Alvarez said, shaking his right fist in Lucas’ face.
Linkage (The Narrows of Time Series Book 1) Page 21