14

by Peter Clines

  “Whipple?” chuckled Xela.

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t name ‘em like that anymore,” said Roger.

  “He traveled all over Europe in the 1870s and 1880s, so it’s not hard to guess he could’ve met Koturovic on one of his trips, heard all his theories, and gotten recruited to help save the world.” Debbie stopped to straighten her cards. “The ironic thing is their dam—the real dam—collapsed about ten years later, in 1904. It bankrupted the company. Phillips died at about the same time.”

  Tim straightened up. “So the...the company, whatever they were called, they don’t exist anymore.”

  “Nope.”

  “They didn’t change their name?”

  Debbie shook her head. “They changed it and reorganized a few times back then, but they were gone by 1910.”

  “So who the hell is Locke Management, then?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Veek. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses. “We’re idiots.”

  They all looked at her. She turned around and tapped the computer in Xela’s lap. “Pull up a picture of the cornerstone,” she said.

  Xela’s fingers swiped back and forth on the mousepad. She spun the computer around and the picture filled the screen. Everyone leaned in to see.

  “Right there,” Veek said. She pointed at the screen. “This was gnawing at me the other day and I couldn’t get it. It isn’t two monograms, it’s three sets of initials. There’s Aleksander Koturovic. There’s Whippy Phillips.”

  “So we’ve got the idea guy and the money guy,” said Nate. “So maybe NT is the guy who built it for them.”

  “What, like the foreman or something?”

  Nate shook his head. “He got big letters. Probably more like the architect. Koturovic had all the theories, the raw math, but he needed someone who knew how to put them into practice.” He looked at Debbie. “You said he was here in Los Angeles with his co-workers, right? Who were they?”

  Debbie flipped back through the cards. “Neville Orange and Adam Taylor.”

  “Makes sense,” muttered Roger.

  “Ummmm...” Xela looked at Nate. “This sounds silly but aren’t you NT?”

  “What?”

  “Nate Tucker,” she said. “NT is you.”

  They looked at him.

  “Bro,” said Roger. “You’re a time traveler.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Nate.

  “Not yet, but maybe in the future.”

  “It’s not me. You really think I built this place?”

  “What if you’re the one who tells him about the monsters?” suggested Xela, “That’s why they just come out of nowhere. He couldn’t tell anybody a time traveler from the future told him about them.”

  “Right,” said Tim, “because involving a time traveler makes the idea of giant monsters from another dimension seem foolish.”

  “I agree with Nathan,” said Mrs. Knight. “The initials probably just belong to someone else with a name like...” She rolled her cane on her knees for a moment. “...Norman Terry or Noah Truman or something.”

  “Nancy Truman,” said Veek. “Could be a woman.”

  “Nigel Tufnel,” said Roger with a bad English accent.

  “Nelson Tuntz,” added Xela.

  “Nicholas Ticklebee,” giggled Debbie. Then her jaw dropped. “Oh my God.”

  Nate looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Serbian scientists and Westinghouse generators,” she said. She pointed at the picture of the cornerstone. “It’s Nikola Tesla.”

  Fifty Five

  “No way,” said Xela.

  “Tesla’s the electricity guy, right?” asked Roger. “The one in The Prestige?”

  “Now this is just silly,” Mrs. Knight said.

  “No, it all makes sense,” said Debbie. Her eyes were huge. She bounced on her toes and squeezed the index cards. “Veek, you said Kavach was Indian, right?”

  “Marathi, yeah, but it’s—”

  Debbie bounced again. “Is that the same as Sanskrit? This was on the tip of my brain the other day. Tesla liked to give his projects Sanskrit names. What does it mean?”

  “Ummm...I think it means ‘armor,’ or maybe ‘shield.’ It depends on...context.” Her eyes went wide behind her glasses.

  “It’s silly,” said Mrs. Knight again. “Tesla’s a public figure. He couldn’t have just snuck off to work on a secret project no one ever knew about.”

  “But he did,” said Nate. “Didn’t he move out to Colorado because Thomas Edison burned down his lab or something?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Edison,” said Tim. “It might’ve been the Family trying to get him. He went to Colorado to get away from them.”

  “Getting away from Edison was just a bonus,” grinned Xela.

  “So now we know the names on the cornerstone,” said Veek. “And we know what the machine’s supposed to do.”

  “More or less,” said Tim.

  “So,” Nate said, “I guess that just leaves one last thing.”

  * * *

  “Excuse me, Mr. Rommell?”

  Oskar turned from the gate. “Yes, Mrs. Knight. What can I do for you?”

  She stood at the top of the stairs. She wore a bright red cardigan despite the summer heat and leaned on her cane. Her eyes were hidden from the afternoon light by a wide pair of sunglasses. “Are you heading to the store?”

  “I am,” he said. “May I pick something up for you?”

  Mrs. Knight nodded. “I was wondering if you could get some white tea for me? I’d go myself but my hip is killing me today.” She held up a ten dollar bill and a small box, folded flat. “This is the brand I like.”

  Oskar took the box and his brows shifted. “They haff this at the corner store?”

  Mrs. Knight’s face dropped. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you were going to the real store. The Vons over on Vermont.”

  “I had not planned to,” he said.

  “Ahhhh,” said Mrs. Knight. She held out her hand for the box. “Well, never mind, then. I’m sure I’ll be fine tomorrow and—”

  Oskar shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “It is a nice day for a walk, and the Vons will haff better prices. Besides,” he winked and patted his broad stomach, “I can always use the exercise.”

  “You’re too kind,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  “You are very welcome,” he said. “I will be back in an hour or so with your tea.” He gave her a little bow of his head and headed out the gate.

  Mrs. Knight headed inside. Nate, Veek, and Debbie watched from the second floor window as Oskar headed down the street. “He’s such a gentleman,” said Debbie. “I feel kind of bad tricking him like this.”

  “He’s the one keeping secrets,” said Veek.

  “Y’know,” said Nate, “I’m not even sure he knows.”

  Debbie looked over her shoulder at him. “Really?”

  Nate shrugged. “Think about it. He’s a middle-management guy. He’s just doing the job he was hired to do. They tell him to keep people from snooping around and causing problems. It doesn’t mean he knows why. Like a security guard at CIA headquarters or something.”

  “I don’t know,” Veek said. “He always seems like he’s hiding a lot to me.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Knight from the stairwell. “He hasn’t told us our building is an earthquake-causing-apocalypse-prevention machine. That definitely makes him the bad guy.”

  Nate and Veek headed down the hall to join everyone else at apartment 14. Tim looked up from the padlocks. “I can have them all off in five minutes,” he said. “The older ones are a different system. Haven’t tried something like that in years.”

  Veek tilted her head. “The old ones are going to take longer than the new ones?”

  He slid out his picks. “They will if you don’t want it obvious they were opened.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Nate. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  “Just waiting on you, boss,” said Tim. A few
quick movements and the top lock popped off.

  “You’d think the modern ones would be harder,” Nate said.

  “Nah.” Tim hooked the open loop of the lock through his belt. “The core of most modern padlocks are pretty much all the same even though they dress them up with big steel casings.” His tools slid into the bottom lock and the pick did its dance. The second lock snapped open and he hung it on the opposite hip.

  Xela marched down the hall with a gallon bucket hanging from her hand. A paint-streaked backpack was slung over her other shoulder. “We lucked out,” she said. “This one’s almost full.”

  Clive pushed open his door so she could hide her supplies inside his apartment. He looked at the bucket. “You’re sure you can fix all this when we’re done?”

  “It’s just paint,” Xela said. “Paint’s my thing. A little bit of texturing and I can make it pass. Thirty minutes, tops. Maybe a little less if we run some extension cords and I get a hair dryer or two on it.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Veek.

  “If someone stops and studies it, yeah, it might not hold up.” Xela said. “But for anything else it’ll be fine. And once they slap another coat over it it’ll be perfect.”

  Tim switched to a different tool, a thick wire he pushed into the first of the pirate padlocks. He pushed down on the handle, shifted it, and pushed again. He bit his upper lip, tweaked his grip, and applied pressure a third time. The riveted padlock swung open with a heavy clunk. He hung it on a belt loop and bent to the last one, just beneath the doorknob. A minute later it was on his waist. He’d hung them in order, left to right along his belt.

  Nate used a screwdriver to pry the over-painted hasps off the door and fold them back. He took hold of the knob and twisted. Decades of paint stretched and twisted. Something shifted and he held a ragged latex pouch wrapped around the glass knob. He pulled it off and twisted the knob again. It was resistant, as if the inside latch was carrying a lot of weight.

  The door didn’t budge.

  “Paint in the cracks,” said Veek. “It’s pretty much glued shut.”

  Nate studied the seams. “Don’t suppose anyone’s got a knife on them?”

  A matte knife slapped into his hand. “Don’t mess up the blade,” said Xela. “It’s my last one and I need it to trim off all the loose edges you’re leaving.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Got a bigger one in my place if you need it,” said Roger.

  Xela beamed at him. “Are you arguing size with me now, sweetiekins?”

  “Don’t even,” he said, shaking his head.

  Nate crouched, flicked open the blade, and plunged it into the blobs of paint between the door and the frame. It was like working through half-dried gum. The knife slit some sections, stretched out others. He worked his way down the seam. He was reminded of an autopsy video, and the long incision down the torso. The paint came apart like cold flesh.

  He paused to rest his hand and looked over his shoulder. Veek, Tim, Xela, and Roger leaned against the wall and watched him. Clive stood in the doorway of his apartment. “Don’t everybody help all at once,” Nate said.

  “You’re the one with the knife, Shaggy,” said Veek. She held up her phone and snapped a picture of him. “For our exploration album.”

  “I’ve got another matte knife,” Clive said. “Give me a minute.”

  Nate shook out his fingers and attacked the paint again. He’d finished the long edge from floor to ceiling by the time Clive came back. He started on the top seam. He wasn’t halfway across the width of the door when his shoulders started to ache.

  Clive crouched on the floor with a bright green knife. He sank the blade into the paint at the base of the door and dragged it toward the hinged edge. The paint opened up and some of it broke off in ragged clumps.

  It took another few minutes for them to do the whole outline of the door. Nate handed his matte knife back to Xela. She eyed the blade and gave him a playful scowl. “This is why we can’t have nice things,” she said.

  He smirked and looked at Veek. “How are we for time?”

  “Oskar’s probably halfway to the store,” she said. “We’ve got maybe forty-five minutes, tops. Say fifteen minutes before Xela needs to start cleaning up after us.”

  Xela saluted.

  Nate set his hand on the knob. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s call it ten minutes to see what’s in here, get as many photos as we can, and get out. No matter how cool, no matter how weird, we’re out in ten minutes. Agreed?”

  Xela held up her camera. Veek held up her phone. A scattering of confirmations came back to him.

  He turned the knob. Again, it dragged, as if someone was holding the knob on the other side and resisting. Then he felt a click as the latch passed the locking plate.

  The door yanked open.

  Nate’s fingers were so tight on the knob it tugged him forward. Then he lost his balance and his grip got even tighter as he tried to stop his fall. The door swung all the way into apartment 14.

  Someone—something—shoved him from behind. His feet left the ground and it took a moment to realize they weren’t coming back down. Nate spun around in the air and his only constant was the doorknob. He threw his other hand up and managed to grab the knob on the other side—the inside—of the door.

  The air conditioner was on full blast. The air in the dark apartment was frigid to the point it nipped at his skin and bit at his eyes. It rushed and howled around him.

  Xela was next to him. She wrapped her arms around him and screamed. She slid down to his waist and a naughty thought stood out amongst all the chaos. Then he realized she was being dragged away from him.

  The air wasn’t rushing out of 14. It was rushing in.

  He looked down at Xela. She had his legs in a death grip, digging into his thighs with her fingernails. He could see she was still screaming, but he couldn’t hear her over the roar of air washing past them. Her legs flailed behind her. One of her sneakers flipped off her foot and spun away.

  In the distance past Xela’s feet he could see a brilliant shape of light, a fiery basketball with a swollen blister on it. It hurt to look at it.

  Apartment 14 had no walls. It went on forever in every direction. Pinpricks of color, like distant Christmas lights, studded the expanse of darkness.

  They were in space.

  EAVES

  Fifty Six

  When the door swung open, Tim lunged forward. Nate plunged through the doorway and Xela stumbled after him. Tim caught himself on the frame and threw out a hand to grab his friends. It made his head spin. His balance was off.

  A fierce wind picked up in the hallway. It was like the gusts in Chicago in the winter, the ones that blasted between skyscrapers and roared down streets so hard they were almost visible. Those winds had gotten inside the building and were racing past him into apartment 14.

  Tim’s foot slipped, the air tore at his shirt, and he realized the wind was dragging him into 14, too. And even as the words depressurize and vacuum raced across his mind and were torn away by the relentless wind, he looked through the door and saw the distant stars and the double solar discs hanging in front of him. Nate and Xela flailed in deep space, tethered to the world by a glass doorknob.

  His mind rebelled for a moment, but Tim was too well-trained to let the impossible shake him for long.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Clive was braced in the doorway to his apartment, clutching the frame. Veek had sunk low against the wall and scrabbled on the hardwood floor, fighting the relentless winds. Roger had ended up on the opposite side of 14’s door across from Tim.

  “Help me!” he yelled.

  The sound of a dozen busboys dropping their trays filled the air as all four picture windows shattered in Debbie and Clive’s apartment. A kaleidoscope spun behind Clive, and the younger man winced as the glass slashed at him. It skimmed across the floor and toward 14’s door.

  “Close your eyes,” Tim shouted at Nate and Xela. “
Close your eyes and look away!”

  He wasn’t sure if they heard him or just reacted to the endless wind, but they clenched their eyes shut. The shards whipped through the doorway and became a sparkling hail that flew out into space. One piece traced a line of red across Nate’s shoulder as it whizzed by. Another gashed his forehead. Xela screamed as they cut the back of her hand and sliced her calves. She slipped a few more inches down Nate’s legs. Her arms were below his knees now.

  Another crash came from behind Tim, toward the front of the building. The hallway window sprayed more glass down the hallway. Debbie and Mrs. Knight shrieked. Clive looked that way and howled something.

  Nate’s knuckles were white on the doorknob. His desperate grip wouldn’t hold much longer. Neither would Xela’s.

  Tim kicked his leg up and swung it around the door frame. He felt gravity shift as he let his other leg come up to fall into 14. His stomach settled on the edge. It felt like hanging off the edge of a cliff, but his body was three feet above the floor of the hallway. He slipped and caught himself on his elbows.

  He looked over—up—at Clive. The other man looked dazed. Papers were whipping around him as they were sucked out of his apartment and across the hall. Blood crept around his shoulders and soaked through his shirt. “Clive,” he hollered over the roar. “Anchor me!”

  Clive shook his head, and for a moment Tim thought he was refusing. Then he realized Clive was clearing his head. The younger man pushed out of the doorway and slammed into the opposite wall. He threw himself flat and grabbed Tim’s forearms. They twisted their hands and seized each other’s wrists.

  Something clunked and Tim saw Xela’s can of paint sliding across the floor. Halfway across the hall it flew into the air and vanished through the impossible doorway. A paperback book flew after it.

  “Go lower,” screamed Veek. She was still braced across the hall, but her angle let her see through the doorway. Tim glanced over his shoulder just in time to see her glasses slip down her nose and vanish into deep space.