by Layton Green
“These people . . . did he find them?”
“I don’t know. But it was Jack who led me to the passages I showed you. He compiled them some years ago.” The proprietor tapped the counter. “I found these three after a long search. I gave it up after a while.”
“How could you give it up?”
He gave her a thin smile. “Do you think your ink drawings are the only inexplicable mystery I’ve uncovered in my work?”
Her eyes lowered, lost in the murky hues and spectral imagery of the drawings spread out on the counter. “What did your friend think? Did he have any theories?”
“Jack thought the shadow place was some kind of higher plane, or a different reality. He wouldn’t tell me anything about the people he was searching for, or even how he heard about them. To be honest, I assumed that part of the story was a flight of fancy.” He looked down at the drawings. “How did you come across them?”
“I found them in an estate sale. I was just curious.” Andie gathered the drawings and returned them to the backpack, trying to disguise how much the next question meant to her. “You don’t have any idea where Jack is now, do you? Is there a way I can contact him?”
“I’m afraid that after that night, I never saw him again.”
After leaving the bookstore, disturbed by what she had learned, Andie ducked into a café and logged in to Twitch. A message from Cal was waiting.
Beauty salon across from Sainsbury’s in Kingsland Shopping Centre. Go in the morning or before 10 tonight. Paid in full.
It was nine o’clock. A quick search on Google told her she could just make it to Sainsbury’s by ten on public transport. Slower by car.
Andie put a hand to her temple. She could be walking right into the lion’s den.
Conflicted, yet not wanting to wait until the morning, she tried the number for the private eye as she walked toward the underground. It surprised her when Adelaide answered.
“Glad you called. I finished a while ago.”
“You’re working late,” Andie said.
“I’m a PI, not a banker. I’m tailing a cheating husband around the West End tonight.”
“Did you find anything on Cal Miller?”
“I did. And I wouldn’t trust the wanker.”
Andie stopped walking, her stomach sinking. “Why not?”
“Yeah, his story checked out. Former reporter with the LA Times, the piece on prison reform, his dog’s name, the broken leg: it’s all kosher. I even found a credit card receipt with Breyers strawberry, a stack of DiGiornos, and Folgers coffee.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The guy’s broke as hell. His credit cards are almost maxed, and I can promise you he won’t get another anytime soon, because he keeps missing payments. It’s not just his cards either. Delinquent student loans, cable, phone bill. Did he tell you he was fired from the Times for falsifying a source? It was a big scandal. The guy hasn’t had a steady job in two years. I assume you’ve been together a little while, something smells fishy, and you’re trying to get a read on him?”
“Something like that.”
“Let me guess: he told you about the house in Hollywood, promised to move you in, described a future with rainbows and unicorns and dollar bills falling out of his arse. That about the size of it? He probably told you he’s still a full-time reporter, didn’t he?”
A grim smile crept to Andie’s lips. “I guess he’s a deadbeat after all,” she said. A deadbeat whose life was ruined by the Leap Year Society. “That’s too bad. He’s a rock star in bed.”
“Huh. Aren’t they all?”
After taking the Piccadilly line to Green Park, Andie changed to the Victoria line, rode five stops to Highbury & Islington, then switched to the London Overground. It was a relief to leave the claustrophobic subway for a cleaner, less crowded train. Two stops to the east, after passing a sea of bleak council housing punctuated by the odd granite steeple, she exited at Dalston Kingsland.
The city felt different here. Working-class and incredibly diverse. It was edgier than Central London, more alive with energy after dark. Bags of trash were piled on the curb for pickup. There were no tourist shops or world-class monuments in sight. Hip restaurants and cafés swarmed the streets around the station, but as she walked east on Ridley Road, the smell of shish kebabs and frying grease wrinkling her nose, she saw a good number of secondhand shops, sandwich wrappers and fruit rinds on the sidewalks, imitation goods piled on blankets, music from a dozen cultures blaring from the shops.
Soon she cut right, into an indoor shopping center. All the shops had closed except for the Sainsbury’s grocery at the far end. Just across the hall, she spied a shuttered hair-and-nail salon. One of the cashiers at Sainsbury’s seemed to have an eye on her, but no one else was around. With a shrug, Andie pressed the buzzer beside the door.
Long seconds passed. She buzzed again. Finally a tall, athletic, and very attractive black man walked through the darkened salon to let her in. He was wearing white designer jeans, leather sandals, and a Tottenham Hotspur track jacket with no shirt underneath. The top of the jacket was unzipped, exposing a slender silver chain resting atop a muscular torso.
“Yeah?” he said.
“I was told to come here.”
“By who?”
“Cal Miller.”
“What’s your name, dove?”
She hesitated. “Mercury.”
A broad smile revealed a set of perfect white teeth that gleamed in the darkness. “Yeah, you are. I’m Puck. Let’s go to the back.”
He locked up behind her, then led her through a door in the rear of the salon. Inside was a drab office that reeked of marijuana, with smocks and razors hanging on the wall, an aging computer atop a desk, brooms in a corner, and a pair of beige filing cabinets.
When they entered, a blond woman with a wide-boned Slavic face was buttoning her jeans. She had a flushed look, her lipstick was smeared, and a lacy bra exposed the nipples of her flat chest. A matrix of faint scars covered her forearms.
Puck grabbed a shirt off the desk and threw it at the woman. “Hurry up,” he said. The woman caught the shirt and scurried into the corner. Puck leaned against the desk, crossed his ankles, and smirked at Andie. “Came for a trip bip, huh?”
Andie was stunned, and seething, at his treatment of the woman. “What?”
“A passport.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Where you going?”
“That’s my business.”
He spread his hands and gave the hijab a long look. “If you’re running from something, why not stay with me awhile? I can protect you. Put you to work.”
“I’ll have to decline that gracious offer.”
“I treat my girls well.”
“I can tell.”
He tapped a hand against the top of his chest, his smirk widening. “Bang-up benefits, yeah?”
She grimaced. “The passport?”
With a chuckle, Puck opened a drawer and took out a camera. “Let’s see those pearly whites. And the scarf has to go.” Andie removed the hijab and faced the camera. After taking a few photos, he asked, “Are you a Lucy or a Sloane?”
“I’m not a Lucy.”
“I figured,” he said, then told her to wait and disappeared through a different door.
As she waited, Andie replaced the hijab, set her backpack on the floor, and crossed her arms against her chest. The woman in the corner had sunk to a squat, hands crossed over her knees.
The pungent smell and the stress of the situation made Andie feel a little nauseated, and her head began to spin. She closed her eyes, trying to regain her equilibrium, but when she opened them again she was inside the shadow world of her visions. The dark and spectral gloaming of her new environment throbbed with silence, oppression, and the familiar sense of drifting in a void, of being watched by unseen eyes.
Only this time it was different. Instead of disappearing in a flash, the vision remained in place, and Andie fou
nd herself able to move. Stunned, she took a tentative step forward, though the sensation felt more like drifting through low gravity than walking. The outline of her clothes was barely distinguishable from the penumbra of her shadow limbs, as if her jeans and jacket had merged with her corporeal form. When she put her hand to her face, it passed slowly into her head, which horrified her and made her feel like some sort of apparition. She looked around and, with a start, realized that someone else was inside the vision with her.
In the very same room.
After a moment of terror swept through her, she recognized the blond woman huddled in the corner. Or at least she thought it was her. It was hard to see clearly in the gloom, but the figure had the same build as the woman and was squatting in the same position.
This had never happened before. No one from the real world had ever appeared in a vision. Drawing a sharp breath, forcing her terror aside and wondering how long it would last—what if she was stuck in here forever?—Andie walked toward the woman and tried to speak. She opened her mouth, but no one words came out, at least not that she could hear. When Andie reached out with a hand, the woman finally looked up, exposing two flat silver-gray disks instead of eyes, floating in the opaque darkness of her face. As Andie stared in horror, the blackness began to twist and writhe where the woman’s mouth should be, as if something inside were trying to break free. A silvery mouth formed and opened, releasing a scream that pulsated like an echolocation, reverberating inside Andie’s head, stabbing into her temples, driving her downward—
And then it all disappeared and she was back in the real world, slumped in Puck’s strong arms, inhaling his musky but not unpleasant odor. Andie took a long shuddering breath, feeling even more nauseated than before, disoriented by the scream still fading inside her head. She jerked her head toward the corner. The blond woman was leaning against the wall with a disinterested expression, as if nothing had happened.
Puck set Andie on her feet and held her by the arms, far too comfortably for her liking. “You okay, dove?”
As the urge to vomit passed, Andie’s right leg tensed, readying for a snap kick to the groin. She wanted very much to give Puck a lesson on how to treat women, and to get as far away from him as possible.
Instead she pulled away, swallowing to control her nausea. “Just a dizzy spell.”
Puck regarded her in silence, then handed her a crisp new United States passport. She inspected it, though she had no way of knowing how authentic it was. It looked as good as any. Beneath the photo of Andie was the name Sloane Beatrice Reynolds, and a birthdate within two years of her own.
“You’re all good,” he said.
“How much did Cal pay you?” she asked. “I’d like to pay him back.”
“Not a pound. I owed him.”
“For what?”
Puck looked taken aback by the question, shrugged, and said, “My sister lives in LA and got into a bit of a jam. Cal and I, we did business once. Information. He knew a copper who went easy on her.”
Still unsteady from her vision, reeling from the questions it raised, Andie pocketed the passport and retrieved her backpack.
Puck spread his hands. “Anything else you need? Endo? Bills? A shoota? Puck’s got you covered.”
As eager as she was to get out of there, Andie realized she would need far more cash than she had to buy a ticket to Egypt, unless she wanted to use a credit card. And that seemed like a really bad idea.
“I could use some cash. But I don’t have anything to sell.”
His wide smile flashed again. “You sure about that?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“You bring your old passport?”
The thought of selling her identity, especially to Puck, revolted her. Still, he was right. At the moment, she didn’t need it, and staying alive had to take precedence. “How much?”
“Valid US?”
“That’s right.”
“Three grand.”
That sounded low to Andie. “Make it five.”
“Four and—”
“Five.”
“Okay, dove, okay. You’re the boss.”
She hesitated. “Can I pawn it to you? Give me a month to return for it?”
He mulled over the question. “For Cal, I’ll make it happen. One month, and a grand for my trouble either way.”
“Fair enough.”
After he took her old passport and disappeared again, Andie tried to engage the woman by asking her if she knew anything about the vision, or had experienced it herself. The only reply she got was an annoyed, disbelieving stare. When Andie asked if she needed help in any way, the woman glared at her and said nothing.
When Puck returned, Andie abandoned her attempts to talk to the woman. She was unable to believe someone could have a similar experience and remain so disaffected.
But why had the woman been in the vision? Why had it lasted longer than the others? Why had Andie been able to move and hear the scream? Was her condition getting worse?
Despite what she had learned at the bookstore, as always, the fear remained that it was all a projection of Andie’s broken mind. Had her spirit rebelled at seeing this poor woman living in such wretched conditions? Had Andie internalized that pain in her vision?
With a snarl of frustration, she stuck the bag of cash in her backpack and walked out, relieved to be out of sight of that vile man, more determined than ever to find out what the hell was wrong with her.
The area around Dalston Kingsland station came alive at night, filled with a startling array of languages and skin tones and fashion styles, everyone dressed to the nines as they mingled on the street or headed toward the bars, clubs, and late-night restaurants. As she debated her next move, Andie holed up in a shisha bar with beaded curtains, rife with apple-spiced incense. She ordered a coffee and a hummus plate and then searched for flights to Egypt.
To her surprise, she found an affordable flight that left the next morning from London City Airport. A quick search told her the airport was in East London, not far from where she was, a quick trip on the Overground. She might have to pay double by not buying the ticket online, but if she wanted to avoid using a credit card, there was no alternative.
After hurrying through her meal, she took the Overground to the airport and bought a jacked-up ticket with three layovers just before the counter closed. She was relieved beyond measure when her new passport went through without a hitch.
Score one for trusting strange people on the internet.
She took her boarding passes and found a secluded corner of the airport, away from any cameras, to stretch out. She had slept in worse places. If the current trend continued, London City Airport might be a palace compared to her next destination.
Lying on her back on the cold floor, surrounded by fluorescent lighting and the hum of a generator, Andie felt an aching need for a human connection. Running on her own was taking its toll. Yet even if she could take the risk to contact a friend, what would she say? How’s it going? Oh, me? I’m running for my life and sleeping on an airport floor. It’s cool, though. How’s the weather?
The only person who might commiserate—who might be in the same insane predicament as she—was Cal Miller. He was quickly earning her trust, and she wanted to contact him again. She started to reach for her burner phone, which she planned to ditch before the flight—then decided against it.
Not yet.
No one knew where she was headed, and she was going to keep it that way. If she reached Egypt unharmed—if the false passport held up—then maybe she would reach out to him again.
With a sigh, using her backpack as a pillow, she closed her eyes and did her best to get some rest. Some time later, a beeping noise woke her, akin to the chirp a fire alarm makes when the battery is dying. She realized it was coming from her pocket.
Thinking it was the burner phone, she was surprised to find the sound emanating from the Star Phone. It had never made a noise before. She was even more stu
nned when she took it out of her pocket and found the image of the scroll and the cipher had disappeared, replaced by a message slowly typing itself across the face of the device.
HELP. THIS IS JGC. THEY HAVE ME IN A
All of a sudden, the beeping stopped and the Star Phone flashed and went blank. Before she could react, the image of the scroll and the geohash code reappeared, as if nothing had ever happened. Stunned, Andie sat upright and tried to send a return message. As always, whenever she reached the end of the nine cursor spaces, the message would disappear and the cursor spaces would go blank.
Nothing else she attempted had any impact on the device. Whatever anomaly had occurred was finished.
Andie felt blood rushing to her head. Ohmygod. JGC—James Gerald Corwin—Dr. Corwin’s full name—was it possible?
Had her mentor just tried to contact her through the Star Phone from some remote location? If so, how? Far more important: Was he still alive?
Of course, she had no way of knowing who was on the other end of that message. But why would someone impersonate Dr. Corwin in such a bizarre manner? If entrapment was the purpose, why not say more? Try to draw her out somehow?
She was more confused than ever, unsure whether to grieve or hope. Dwelling on why the message on the Star Phone had cut off so abruptly felt like trying to breathe through a wet cloth. If Dr. Corwin had sent that message—and she felt in her gut that he had—then what sort of terrible danger was he in? Who had cut him off? Were they torturing him right that very second?
Shaking with adrenaline, the prospect of sleep as remote as another galaxy, Andie spent one of the longest nights in her life in London City Airport, pacing and thinking and agonizing, checking the digital clock on the flight board every five minutes, willing the sun to breach the horizon.
PART THREE
London
17
As a drizzle of rain moistened the brick walkway at his feet, Omer worked hard to keep his emotions in check. He was standing outside the entrance to the safe house, trying for the third time to fit his key into the dead-bolt lock of the outer door. Was he that distracted by the escape of the target? Had he used the wrong key or failed to fully insert it?