by Peter Clines
Numbers stretched across the plaster, written in the same black paint. They pinched and tugged at the paint until they’d revealed a line of figures.
66–16–9—4—1—89
He glanced at her. “What do you think it means?”
“Maybe there’s a computer down in the basement,” she said, “and we need to keep punching the numbers in.”
“Very funny,” said Nate. “Is it math? Sixty-six minus sixteen minus...”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s not like yours.” Veek tilted her head, as if it would give her a different view of the numbers. “Those were equations, but I think this is some kind of code.”
“Maybe. You think it’s numbers for letters?”
“Not unless you know what the sixty-sixth letter of the alphabet is.” She pulled at another loose edge of paint and a section the size of her hand came away. There was nothing beneath it, or under the next piece she peeled off. “I think that’s all there is.”
Nate turned his head. “The wall behind your computer?”
Veek looked at the wide desk and her lips twisted up. Then she nodded. “Give me a minute to shut everything down and get it unplugged.”
Half an hour later her trash can overflowed with latex scraps and they were looking at another set of equations. This one was so complex they couldn’t even follow it. At the bottom, however, it broke down to something they could understand.
“So,” Nate said, “is zero good or bad?”
“No clue.”
“Any idea what that symbol means?”
“I’d look it up, but we unplugged the computer and the wireless server.”
He stared at the equation and tried to force his brain to understand it. There were too many symbols and even the numbers seemed huge and alien. It reminded him of old sci-fi movies, when the genius professor would have a chalkboard covered with some gigantic calculation. Just like when he watched those movies, he had no idea what the equations meant.
“We need to look at other apartments,” he said. “I bet there’s something in every one of them.”
She looked at the clock. “Yeah, but who else is going to be up at three in the morning?”
Xela answered the door almost immediately. She wore one of her paint-splattered tuxedo shirts and hid her blue hair under a backwards baseball cap. “Hey,” she said. “I was about to crash. What are you guys doing up this late?”
“We want to peel your walls,” said Nate.
“Never heard it called that before.” She looked at them and managed a tired smile. “Normally I’d say buy me a drink and you’re on, but—”
Veek whacked her on the arm. “There’s something written on the walls,” she said, “under the paint.”
Xela’s eyes got wide. “No way.”
“Yes way,” said Nate.
She led them into her apartment. A fresh painting stood on her easel in the center of the room. “Where do you want to start?”
It took close to an hour to strip all the pictures and photos from Xela’s walls. Half an hour later they’d flayed the inside of her apartment. The skin of paint came away even faster than it had up in Nate’s studio. They filled half a dozen plastic grocery bags with old latex.
Xela’s apartment wore complex math on two walls. “It’s one long problem,” said Veek. She pointed from the bottom of one wall to the top of the next. “It’s the same line of the equation here and there.”
Nate stared at the math. “What the hell is it? I mean, I took some science courses and I don’t ever remember anything this big up on the chalkboard.”
“Maybe it’s just thorough,” said Veek. “You know, when you do something with Einstein’s formulas, you assume everyone already knows what the individual letters are and how you reached them. Maybe this is covering everything.”
“It’s India ink,” said Xela. She had her head close to one of the lines of numbers. “Heavy stuff. It lasts forever.”
“So somebody wanted to make sure all of this was here for a long time,” said Nate.
Xela shrugged and bit back a yawn. “Or it’s just what they had handy. It’s not hard to come by.”
“Next room,” he said. He glanced at the Xela’s alarm clock. “It’s getting close to five. People are starting to wake up. Maybe Debbie and Clive?”
Veek shook her head. “They don’t have painted walls, remember? All wood.”
“Damn. I wonder if Tim’s up?”
“He might be,” said Xela. “He wakes up pretty early.”
Nate’s head twitched.
“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter,” she said. “I stayed up one night working on a painting and saw him go out running.”
“Roger, maybe?”
“Gah,” said Veek. “We’re idiots. I bet sixteen’s still unlocked.”
It was. The three of them stood in front of the broad wall between the pillars. The cold wall.
Nate looked at Veek. “You sure this is a good idea?”
“If Oskar finds it, he can’t prove it was us,” she said. “Besides, they never rent this place anyway.”
“I actually just meant cutting into this one.” He nodded at the cold wall. Xela kept touching it and pulling her hand away.
“You think it’s dangerous?”
Nate shrugged. “Not a clue. It’s one of the more...tangible things we’ve found.”
Xela slashed the wall with her matte knife. “Only one way to find out,” the blue-haired woman said.
It took a few minutes for the three of them to strip the wall down to the plaster. A large X was painted across the center of the wall. There were four words, one in each of the four triangles it made, each in foot-tall letters. The one on top looked like Russian. Nate thought the left one was French. He couldn’t even recognize the letters of the bottom one. The word on the right was in English.
DANGER
Xela coughed. “I don’t suppose ‘danger’ is German for ‘free beer’ or something?”
“Not as I recall,” said Nate.
“I don’t think we should do anything else in here,” said Veek.
“I agree,” said Xela.
They pulled open the door and jumped.
Tim stood there in a t-shirt and running shorts, his hand posed to push the door open. He furrowed his brow. “What the hell are you doing?”
Nate let out the breath he’d sucked in. “How did you know we were here?”
Tim pointed up. “I live right there, remember? I got back from my run and you guys were making a hell of a racket.”
“Told you,” said Xela.
Nate guided the other man inside and closed the door. He gestured at the bare wall and Tim’s eyes widened. They gave him a quick summary of their night.
Tim touched the naked plaster above the French word and pulled his fingers away. “Every room you’ve checked so far, huh?”
Veek nodded. “All three of ours and in here.”
He looked at Nate. “Let me see.”
They went up to Nate’s apartment and Tim inspected the walls. Nate watched his expression. “Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing. I was hoping it was just random scribbles but...” Tim shook his head. “I’ve seen enough of this sort of thing to recognize heavy-duty math.”
“Yeah?”
Tim nodded. “One of the advantages of publishing a lot of technical books.”
Veek crossed her arms. “So now what?”
“Give me ten minutes to wash off my run and get changed,” said Tim. “Then we’ll do my place. Maybe you should change, too.” He dipped his head at Veek and Xela. Veek was still in her robe and sweats. Xela wore her flimsy tuxedo shirt.
“Yeah,” said Veek. “Ten minutes would be good.”
“I need some coffee if we’re going to keep at this,” said Xela.
“Get changed,” said Nate. “I’ll have coffee ready.”
By quarter of six they were drinking coffee and tearing the paint o
ff Tim’s walls. Nate was worried the multiple rooms in apartment 26 would mean any messages would’ve been destroyed when the extra walls were added. Instead, they were a treasure trove. Every wall was covered with elaborate patterns of lines and shapes.
They stared for a few minutes and then Veek snapped her fingers. “They’re wiring schematics.”
Nate looked from her back to the wall. “What?”
Veek nodded. “Some of the symbols are sort of archaic, but I’d bet big money that’s what they are.” She pointed at the diagram. “That’s a switch. I’m pretty sure that’s a fuse.” She tilted her head. Nate decided it was her thinking pose. She drew a circle around several items with her finger. “No idea what any of that stuff is,” she said.
Tim rubbed his chin. “I think you’re on to something.”
“But what’s it for?” said Xela. “What the heck does all this make?”
Nate looked at Veek. “What do you think?”
She stared at the walls.
“Veek?”
She blinked and glanced at him. “You know what this means?” She tapped the walls. “These were always here. Being set up like this is part of the original design.”
“Or at least as far back as all this was painted,” Tim pointed out. “They could—”
“What in God’s name haff you been doing?!”
Oskar stood in the doorway with his fists clenched.
Thirty
Oskar’s nostrils flared. “Haff you lost your minds?” he growled. “Apartment sixteen is ruined!”
Nate opened his mouth and glanced at Veek. She was already looking at him. He decided it was better to keep his mouth shut and pushed his lips together.
Oskar glared at Tim’s walls and clenched his fists even tighter. Then he took three slow, deliberate breaths. His jaw relaxed a bit and his hands opened up. “Haff you fandalized all your apartments?”
Nate kept his lips sealed and nodded.
Oskar focused on Veek. “I warned you about your crazy ideas, Miss Fishwanath.” He shook his head. “I am going to haff to call the painters in.”
“No!” said Veek. She gestured at the walls. “Look at this, Oskar. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what—”
Oskar dismissed her with a wave. “I do not,” he snapped. “You haff made things bad for everyone now. Do you haff any idea how much this is going to cost to repair? The owners will be furious. You will all be efficted.”
“No we won’t,” said Tim.
Oskar’s eyes locked onto Tim’s.
“We’ve redecorated,” Tim said. “What we’ve done in our own apartments is within our rights as outlined in the lease. It’s not specified what counts as ‘damage,’ so at the best you’ll be able to deduct the expense from our security deposits.”
“You think I cannot—”
“Try anything else and I’ll take you to court.”
The stout man sucked in a breath and held it.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the owners wouldn’t like the publicity of a court case,” Tim continued. “Even a minor one. So no matter how angry you are, I suggest you take a few moments to calm down.”
Oskar let out his breath. “Apartment sixteen—”
“—was my responsibility. No one else was there. First offense of a new tenant. I’m sure it can be excused, especially since I’m offering to pay for it.”
Oskar’s jaw moved back and forth. His eyes shifted off Tim to Nate, then to Xela, and settled on Veek again.
“I haff run out of patience,” he said. “This is the last warning for all of you.” He looked at the math-covered walls again. “I am going to call the painters. All your apartments will be painted.”
Nate glanced at the walls and bit his tongue.
Oskar gave them a last glare. “And it is coming out of your security deposits.” He turned and marched back into the hall. They heard him stomp down the hall and into the stairwell.
Veek let out a sigh of relief.
“You just saved our asses,” Xela said to Tim.
He glanced at her and smirked. “Well, how could I let such a fine ass go to waste?”
“Okay,” said Nate, “we need to take photos. Get all of this documented before the painters get here.” He looked at Xela. “Your camera can do high-resolution pictures, right?”
“It can, yeah,” she said, “but I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me you’re chickening out.”
Xela shook her head. “No, I just...I’ve got class in two hours. I need to get showered and get over to campus.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”
Veek nodded. “I’ve got to get ready for work,” she said. She looked at Nate. “So do you, don’t you?”
He bit his lip and looked at the wall. “I could call in sick.”
Tim raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you just complaining your hours had been cut?”
“We can’t lose all this,” said Nate.
“We also can’t lose you,” said Veek. “If you can’t pay rent, this little investigation of ours is over.”
He looked at Tim. “What about you? Could you start taking pictures?”
“A couple, but I’ve got a meeting at ten in Santa Monica.” The older man shook his head. “Oskar probably can’t get painters here until tomorrow at best. We can meet up tonight and get everything photographed.”
Xela yawned and stretched. “But we are going to sleep at some point, right?”
“At some point,” said Nate with a nod.
* * *
It was the longest day of work in human history.
Once the excitement of discovery wore off and his regular life resumed, Nate was exhausted. He poured a cup of coffee and drank it in the break room. He took the second one back to his desk with him. The morning was an ongoing fight to stay awake. It was a relief when another mail crate arrived and he had to get up and walk around.
He ran timetables in his head while he stared at the addresses on his computer. When would Oskar call the painters? How many would there be? When would they get there? How long would it take them to paint an apartment? Would they scrape the walls first or just layer the paint on over the bare spots?
He skipped lunch and stretched out in his office chair. In one of the timetables he’d come up with all the walls had been painted by now. His head leaned back against the top of the chair and his eyes closed. The faint hum of his computer blended with the rattle of the air conditioner and the rumble of traffic out on the streets of Hollywood.
Then he was on the roof of the Kavach Building with Veek and Xela. Veek wore a baggy orange sweatshirt and her dark hair was cut in a retro bob. Xela was naked, because they’d come up there when she was sunbathing. She’d changed her hair from blue to bright green. He tried not to stare at the small patch of emerald fuzz between her legs. “I wash it with cockroaches,” she explained.
Veek nodded. “I would too, but I’ve got a bug thing.”
“It looks totally different under black light,” Xela said. “You should take a look.”
Roger stood by the oversized machine room. He shook the top padlock on the door and it made a noise like the decked-in-chains ghost from A Christmas Carol. “Waste of time,” Roger said. “Elevator’s in the basement.”
“All the cool stuff is in the basement,” agreed Veek.
Xela grabbed Nate by the shoulders and shook him hard. He turned and looked, but all he could see was her green hair. He tried to twist away, lost his balance, and almost fell out of his chair.
“Easy, tiger,” said Anne. She stood next to his desk. “Just thought you should wake up before Eddie makes his afternoon appearance.”
He blinked a couple of times and glanced around. “I slept through lunch?”
She smiled. “You were out cold. It’s almost two-thirty.”
“Shit.” In two of his timetables the equations were painted over by now. In one of them the workers were just getting started.
“You looked like you n
eeded it,” she said.
“Yeah, kind of. Nobody saw me?”
Anne shrugged. “New schedules, remember? It’s just you and me today. We could have wild cubicle sex and no one would know.”
He nodded and rubbed his eyes.
“Wow,” she said. “You really are tired, aren’t you?”
He looked up at her. “Sorry?”
“Never mind. You’ll be kicking yourself later, though.”
He blinked again. She patted him on the shoulder and walked back to her own cubicle.
Nate tossed one of the bundles of returned flyers into the bottom drawer of his desk. There was already one in there. Part of him acknowledged he was falling very far behind and needed to get caught up sometime soon. Most of him watched the clock and wondered how fast he could get home.
Eddie stopped by and lamented the amount of work getting done. Nate nodded, but didn’t bother to argue. He processed a few dozen more returns and then started packing his bag an hour early. Anne peeked in at him. “Somewhere to be?”
“Yeah,” he said. He tried to think of something more believable than the truth. “I’m trying to get home before my landlord goes into my apartment for some repairs.”
Her face twisted up. “Oh, I hate that,” she said. “People in your place with all your stuff.”
He nodded and paused. “Would you mind if I...?”
“Go,” she said. “I’ll cover for you. Again.”
“You rock.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Get some sleep,” she called after him.
Thirty One
Nate fought rush hour and skimmed through three yellow lights before he made himself slow down. It took him over half an hour to get home. He drove up to the Kavach Building and was stunned to find an empty parking space.Tim and Xela waited for him on the steps. “Calm down,” she said. “Nothing happened. They didn’t paint anything.”
Nate stopped. A wave of exhaustion made him sway for a moment. “You’re sure?’
“Oh yeah,” said Xela. She gestured at the building. “I’ve been home all afternoon and Oskar’s growled at me three times about it.”