by Ramsey Isler
One of the men chuckled, then they were both silent. Then I heard footsteps coming towards me, then around to my back. I started to think my mouth had gotten me into more trouble.
“The MI6 crew says you were missing for a while,” Voice #2 said as he started to take off my handcuffs. “They’ll be happy to have you back.”
MI6? The British intelligence agency? What did the Brits have to do with this?
“Sorry for all the mess,” Voice #1 said, “we’ll get you back to Liverpool after we clear some stuff up.”
I would’ve asked him what the hell they were talking about, but they left before I could say another word. With my hands free now, I removed the blindfold and saw that I was in a plain room with smooth concrete floors and walls. The ceiling was about twenty feet up and a single overhead lamp fed bright light into the chamber. Besides my chair, the only other furniture was a translucent inflatable bed in the corner. It was the same kind of plastic furnishing I’d seen in Madison’s cell.
I thought about escaping. The setup here wasn’t as elaborate as the cell Madison was in. I could probably break out if I put my mind to it. But the cavalier behavior of my captors and their odd politeness made me feel like I was safer here than anywhere else right now.
So I spent two more days in that place. They fed me once a day and let me have a couple of trips to a basic bathroom with two men in black masks as my escorts. The blindfold and gag stayed off, but my mysterious captors made it very clear that I was not to speak a word. The guys were relatively nice, and I got the sense that they felt like they were doing me a favor, so I didn’t fight it. The important thing was that I was still alive. Given the circumstances, that was quite an accomplishment.
Late on the last day of my captivity, I was sleeping on that stupid inflatable bed with my head facing away from the door. I dreamed about taking a walk in Central Park, with the grass between my toes. It felt like an eternity since I’d had a chance to feel grass. The sound of the door opening woke me from slumber. I turned, and looked up.
Dominique was there . . . staring at me.
I blinked, and rubbed my eyes. I wasn’t quite sure if I was still dreaming. Dominique said, “Your vacation is over. Time to get back to work.” Then I knew I was very much awake.
* * *
“What the hell was all this MI6 bullshit about?” I yelled.
“We had to be sure you were clean,” Dominique said. “We have no way of knowing what kind of tricks the nightcrafters can pull, so we set up a decoy operation. The operatives were fed a fake story about England’s secret service, which they then passed to you after creating the diversion with the bomb threat. If something oddly drastic and coincidental had happened to the Brits after your capture, we would’ve known you were bugged.”
“So this was all just more misdirection,” I said.
Dominique nodded. “We’re in the spy game, Kal. The first rule of our profession is to get your target to show all their cards, while showing none of your own.”
“And what if they were monitoring me?” I said. “Your little story could have screwed the British government.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Dominique said. “We have some intelligence that suggests there might actually be a nightcrafter in their ranks. That fake story we used to cover your extraction would’ve also been a good way to smoke them out. But, as it turns out, you were clean and apparently so are our friends in MI6. So we pick up where we left off and proceed.”
“Well I’m glad this shit is over now,” I said. “What’s next?”
“I’m taking you out of here,” Dominique said. “There’s a mobile command vehicle outside. We have work to do on the way back to headquarters and there’s no time to lose.”
She turned and walked out the door. I followed closely and got my first look at the place I’d been in. It was just a typical office building. Nothing special about it. We walked along some service corridors until we reached a door and exited the building. We were now in an alley behind the structure. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. It was the first time I’d laid eyes on daylight in nearly a week, and I almost cried.
The command vehicle was in the alley, freshly waxed and glistening in the sunlight. It was a re-purposed Mercedes-Benz utility van with a cargo area tall enough for me to stand up straight. I’d seen this type of van before, and it was usually reconfigured as a mini party bus designed for prom nights and other events for people with poor taste and a little bit of disposable income. It was perfect camouflage. We jumped in, and found Newton sitting in front of an array of computer screens that were bolted to the big van’s walls. There were no windows in here, much to my dismay, but the vehicle had ample artificial light.
“Newton will fill you in on the updates while we move,” Dominique said. There was a slim metal door that connected the rear of the van to the driver’s area. She banged the door three times and the vehicle started moving.
“Ah yes, Newton,” I said. “The master of disguise.”
Newton smiled. “Cool make-up, wasn’t it? Itched like hell though.”
“Was all that really necessary?” I asked.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“You sure about that?” I asked. “If you hadn’t been so busy putting your Halloween costume on, you might have been able to figure out more about what really happened out there. There had to be a bunch of nightcrafters out there watching me and we didn’t nab a single one of them.”
Newton frowned comically and put a hand on his heart. “I’m hurt. You think I was just having fun out there while you were cold, scared, and out on the streets?”
“Weren’t you?”
Newton smiled. “Well, yeah. I was. But that’s not all I was doing. I did quite a lot of work, you ungrateful bastard. You’re going to be apologizing to me in a few minutes.”
Newton turned to his keyboard and typed in a few commands. The screens in front of me came alive with a varied display of video, graphs, and animations.
“Two minutes after your call came in,” Newton said, “we pinpointed your location and started prepping a field team. We’d been working on some things based on the data we got back from that operation in Long Branch, so we were much better prepared. We saturated the place with equipment to get a full view of what was going on before we approached you. That’s why it took so long to pick you up.”
I crossed my arms and said, “Go on.”
“At first,” Newton continued, “the instruments didn’t pick up anything special, and we really weren’t sure if you were even being watched at all. But then you went to the McDonald’s, and something interesting happened.”
Newton clicked a few things on his computer and a screen to my left displayed a scene with roughly human-shaped blobs moving about inside various buildings in Times Square. The blobs were all orange, red, and blue.
“Look here,” Newton said as he pointed to an area on the screen. A few seconds later, a pair of red and orange blobs disappeared from the image.
“This is data from our infrared sensors,” Newton said. “I figured it would be useful to get as much info as possible, so we were reading heat signatures in addition to everything else. And these two people just disappeared when you moved a couple of blocks south from where they dropped you off. Then, about five seconds after they vanished, we got this.” Newton pulled up another infrared camera feed from a different location, and it looked just about the same as the previous one, until two blue blobs appeared and rapidly shifted to orange again.
“Those two guys appear out of nowhere,” Newton said. He switched the screen to regular video view, and the windows of the building in question were dark. Newton toggled back to the infrared view and the blobs reappeared. “The building they were in had no lights on. The heat readings from these guys show that their surface temps start out really cold when they first appear, then they gradually heat back up. That by itself is odd, but it could be explained away. Maybe they stepped in front of
an air conditioning flow or something. The truly weird thing here is that the heat signatures are disappearing and reappearing for some reason. At first it seemed like the sensors just stopped recording data, or those people had stepped in front of something that blocked the heat. But further investigation showed that neither hypothesis was true. The equipment was fine, and there were no obstructions. We even scouted the rooms later to make sure. The heat signatures just disappeared, then shortly reappeared someplace else. And every time they reappeared they were closer to your position. These people were following you, without following you.”
“And what does that mean?” I asked.
“I have a theory,” Newton said. “This theory also explains why that group of nightcrafters back in Europe just disappeared. I think the nightcrafters figured out a way to go—”
“Into the Rift,” I said.
The excited expression on Newton’s face melted away. “How did you know?”
“Because I was there,” I said. “They put me over to the other side. Kept me there for days.”
Dominique and Newton exchanged awed looks, then Dominique said, “We really need to have a proper debriefing.”
“Later,” I said. “Newton’s little video is interesting. These nightcrafters are crossing big distances pretty fast.”
“Yeah,” Newton said. “My hypothesis is that these guys are phasing.”
“Phasing?” I asked.
“Yes. Phasing between two different . . . well . . . let’s just call them dimensions for lack of a better word. They’re creating a phase shift in various electromagnetic and gravitational waves to—“
“Give me the dummy version,” I said.
Newton shrugged. “These nightcrafters slip into a different dimension, travel, and then slip back into ours.”
“And what dimension would they be phasing into?” I asked.
“The Rift, of course.”
“So now you’re calling the Rift a different dimension?”
“That’s the best way I can think of it,” Newton said. “The math supports the theory, and so does the observable evidence. Think about it this way. Imagine you lived in a two-dimensional world. You can only see what’s in front of you, behind you, and to your sides. You can’t look up or down, and you can’t move up or down either. If that were how the universe worked, adding that third dimension, up and down, would change everything.
“A person who could go up and down in a side-to-side world would be able to do things totally outside the comprehension of everyone else. Somebody who could enter the third dimension would, from your perspective, just disappear. But that person could travel in ways that were unencumbered by the things you would experience in your 2D world. It’s just like how helicopter travel is faster because it can skip right over all the cars and buildings and trees and everything else that gets in our way on the ground. There’s nothing in the Rift that slows these nightcrafters down. They can move freely through empty space over there, then come back here exactly where they need to be. It’s magic to the untrained eye, but in reality it’s just some next-level science.”
“I get it,” I said. “But the nightcrafters couldn’t do this before. That’s what confuses me. Everybody who ever tried to transport themselves over to the Rift ended up dead. It just wasn’t possible.”
“Correction,” Newton said with a finger pointed at me. “It wasn’t possible back when you were Kellar’s student. But I imagine that the practice of nightcrafting isn’t static. It must evolve and advance just like our technology, and it would seem that someone has made a breakthrough roughly equivalent to manned flight. Once humankind figured out how to build airplanes, everything changed. We mastered a whole new dimension.”
I paused for a moment and reflected on what Newton was saying. It all made sense. As usual, Newton managed to find a way to make advanced topics seems like child’s play, but in this case he was describing a major advancement that could put the nightcrafters even further ahead in the game. “If what you’re saying is true,” I said, “we’ve got a massive problem on our hands.”
“I’d agree,” Dominique said. “If the nightcrafters can go into the Rift, and take other people with them, that makes them an exponentially more dangerous threat than we thought. We will need to expedite our plans to close the Rift.”
“Have you guys figured out how you’re going to do that?” I asked.
Dominique shook her head. “Still working on it.”
“Let’s put that at the top of our priority list,” I said. “But right now I need to get some sleep. I spent a few days in a different dimension apparently, and I need to get my head right. Preferably while in someplace comfortable.”
“You can’t go back to your apartment,” Dominique said. “The nightcrafters will obviously be looking for you there.”
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “Maybe I can go someplace else safe. Like my . . .” I stopped in mid-sentence. A chilling thought occurred to me. “My parents,” I said in nearly a whisper. “The nightcrafters know who I am. Kellar knows everything about my past. They can get to my mom and dad.”
“Calm down,” Dominique said with a firm hand on my shoulder. “I’ve already had them placed under protective custody.”
A wave of relief washed over me. For a second, I was terrified that Kellar might have gotten to my family. “Thank you. How are they?”
“They’re safe and comfortable,” she said. “I sent a field team to pose as FBI agents to go get them, and we fabricated a convincing cover story about a former business partner of your mother being a confirmed serial killer and we had reason to believe she might be next on his list. We made it clear that it was in their best interests to lie low for their own safety. They’re being kept in a secure and secret location.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Did you miss the part where I said secret?”
The relief I’d felt was quickly replaced with a prickly suspicion. “They’re my parents,” I said. “I have a right to know where the hell they are.”
“It’s best for their safety to keep that information strictly secret,” Dominique said. “I have quite a bit more experience in this kind of thing than you do, so it’s in your best interests to let me handle this.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “So when did you give the order to have my folks rounded up?”
“Early enough to ensure the nightcrafters didn’t get to them first.”
“But you didn’t know it was the nightcrafters that took me.”
“It wasn’t hard to guess,” Dominique said.
“So you just went and grabbed my mom and dad as soon as I disappeared?”
“It wasn’t immediately after, but I did act quickly. Do you have a point you’re driving at?”
“You didn’t grab my parents to protect them from the nightcrafters,” I said. “You did it to cover your ass in case I switched sides.”
She paused for a long moment, and stared at me with cold eyes. “We have an operation to protect,” she said.
“I don’t give a damn about your operation,” I said. “This is my family we’re talking about.”
“We all have families,” Dominique said. “This isn’t about you, me, or any individual here. Listen closely to what I’m about to say, because I cannot stress it enough. If anybody outside of our team learns about our involvement with you, it’s over. The nightcrafters have their hooks into everything. Police, government, corporations . . . it’s all compromised. Once they know it was this department that interfered with them, they’ll shut us down, and a few weeks later we’ll all suffer some unfortunate accidents or mysterious disappearances. We’ve all got skin in this game, Kal. We’re all dead if any of us makes a mistake.”
“I know that better than anybody,” I said.
“Then grow up and realize this isn’t about you and your feelings,” Dominique said. “When you turned up missing I damn near had a heart attack. Getting your parents to a safe and controlled location
was the only option I had. If the nightcrafters hadn’t freed you when they did, I don’t know what else we would have been forced to do.”
Dominique didn’t give me a chance to respond. She stood up, opened the slender door that led to the driver’s cabin, and slammed it behind her. Conversation over.
Newton reached over and gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It will all be okay,” he said, his voice sweet and genuine. “When this is over, your parents will be returned to their home safe and sound.”
I put my head in my hands and said, “You assume this will ever be over.”
CHAPTER 10
I ended up sleeping in my office for a while. It was the only safe place we could think of. Newton found a pretty comfortable cot and a few fluffy pillows to make things easier. There was a shower set up in his chemistry lab, and I used that to keep myself clean. The shower was meant for washing off dangerous chemicals in emergencies, but it worked just as well for washing off a day’s worth of sweat and frustration.
On the third day, I started to go a little crazy. I hadn’t been home, I hadn’t gotten decent sleep in forever, and I hadn’t even dipped into the Rift for fear of attracting attention. I was lost in a limbo worse than the world beyond the Rift. At least there I felt powerful. Here, in this bland captivity, I felt powerless.
To ease my nerves, I started taking long walks around the complex during peak hours. In the morning I woke up around eight and blended in with the hordes of government workers showing up for yet another day of the old grind. In the evening I fed off the eagerness of those same people quickly heading home to familiarity and family. I lost track of how long I did this. I was getting pretty used to the routine, until one day Newton rushed up to me with a very concerned look on his face.
“Have you been nightcrafting in the west wing?” he asked.
“No. I haven’t even been to that part of the building in about a week. Why?”
“I’ve been running the scanners in various parts of the building to test their range,” Newton said. “I’m pretty sure the effective range of these scanners is fifty yards, but I’ve been getting a strong, moving signal at the Rift frequency far away from you.”