Monica Muldrow was explaining how the high temperature on Sunday would be the same as the high temperature on Monday but slightly lower than Tuesday. The lows would be consistently in the sixties. The highs would never reach above eighty degrees. Turner chuckled to himself.
From behind him he heard the heavy panting of a man running, out of breath. It was Tank Melton. He was already dialed into the newscast with an earpiece in place.
“Hey, Lane,” he said breathlessly. “Good game, right?”
“Sure thing, Tank,” said Lane. “Fantastic.”
Lane and Tank had worked together for the better part of a decade. They were cordial to each other, though neither ever spent time with the other off the set. Lane took a second lavalier mic from the producer, whose name he still couldn’t recall, and handed it to Tank.
“Thanks,” said the sports director, gathering himself for their imminent live report.
“Sure thing,” Turner repeated. “Hey, you interested in grabbing some dinner tonight? I’ve got a list of places the Internet insists we try.”
Tank smiled and shook his head. “Thanks, Lane, I appreciate it. I’m probably going to take a rain check, so to speak. I’ve got a lot to do tonight and I’m pretty tired. I’ll grab something from room service.”
“Suit yourself,” said Lane, listening to Monica wrap up the weather and Courtney Leigh read a tease for their upcoming report.
The producer gave them an updated time. “Three minutes,” she said. “Right after the next commercial break.”
Turner adjusted his tie. The temperature was dropping. The rain, which was steady, was blowing at an angle now. He cursed the weather, hoping it wouldn’t force him to resort to room service like the others.
CHAPTER 5
April 4, 2026
Los Angeles, California
Perspiration stung Danny Correa’s eyes. He tasted it. It was in his ears, dripping down his back, lathering his chest. Even the palms of his hands were sweaty.
His thighs burned from the pressure of having partially squatted on them for more than a minute now.
“Ich,” he said, throwing a punch forward.
“Ni,” said the instructor, moving his arm into a blocking position.
Danny mirrored the movement with the rest of the class. “Ni,” he said and blew a drop of sweat from his face.
“San,” said the instructor, throwing another punch, this one with his left hand.
“San,” said the class collectively and threw punches with their right hands.
Danny eyed the clock above the mirrored wall in front of him. Class was nearly over, and he was exhausted. Though the dojo’s sensei had insisted the air-conditioning remain off to induce muscle flexibility and strengthen endurance, Danny was convinced it was a cost-saving measure. Electricity costs in California had skyrocketed as an unusually warm spring had strained the grid.
Another bead of briny sweat dripped into the corner of one eye, blinding him momentarily as he continued through the progression of prescribed moves from memory. He pulled his fisted hands to his sides and kicked his right leg into the air, then planted that foot firmly on the dojo’s spring-loaded, padded floor before pivoting on the balls of his feet ninety degrees.
He’d been coming to the dojo for a month after having taken a decade-long hiatus from the martial arts. There was something in his gut that told him he’d need the skills that had rusted in his muscle memory. It was an overwhelming sense that he’d have to defend himself against a coming attack.
It wasn’t anything concrete and he didn’t tell anyone about it. It was merely something that nagged at his psyche and had him looking over his shoulder whenever he left his modest apartment. He had recently installed three slide-bar locks on its front door and a metal bar that prevented the back slider from opening.
“Hachi,” said the instructor.
Danny imitated the eighth move back toward the mirrored wall. The nape of his neck was soaked. Only two more moves and class would mercifully end. He wasn’t in the shape most of the other students had attained. He was the newbie and there were no exceptions for him.
“Juu,” said the instructor.
Ten.
Danny completed the final move, held his position, bowed to the instructor, and bent over at his waist, the cool streams of sweat trickling along the sides of his face, and he held himself upright, his hands on his knees.
He stayed there for several moments, the droplets of sweat splashing onto the floor, painting an abstract picture of the effort he’d put forth for the past hour. A strong, viselike hand touched his shoulder, gripping the stiff cotton fabric of his gi, the white karate uniform all of the students and instructors wore inside the dojo. Danny lifted his head to see his instructor standing in front of him.
“You did well today, Mr. Danny,” he said. “You are improving.”
Danny stood up and planted his hands on his hips. “Arigato.”
A polite smile spread across the instructor’s chiseled face, revealing his dimples. He nodded. “Leie,” he said. “Not at all. You need not thank me for noticing your effort.”
Danny wiped his brow with the back of his arm. He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled. Then he stepped back deferentially. “As soon as I change, I’ll be back to clean.”
“Of course,” said the instructor. “We don’t doubt you’ll earn your lessons both through labor of many kinds.”
Danny thanked him again, this time in English, and backed away. He moved toward the far wall, the one opposite the mirrored one, and found his belongings: a black duffel bag so worn it appeared almost pink, a pair of scuffed athletic shoes, keys to a high-mileage Volkswagen, and his cell phone. He was out of data and hadn’t made it a point to reload his prepaid plan.
He slung the duffel, heavier than it was before class, onto one arm, tossed the keys into the shoes and picked them up, palming his phone. There were message notifications on the screen: one missed call, one voicemail, and several text messages, all from the same number.
What little energy Danny had left in his body left him as if osmosis had sucked into him, taking his energy away from him and sliding into the ether. The call and messages were from Derek.
Derek.
Danny gritted his teeth while moving toward the locker room. He shouldered open the door with force, pretending it was Derek, and wound his way to an empty spot on a varnished wooden bench surrounded by lockers.
He dropped his belongings onto the bench, not paying attention to the conversations playing out around him, while leaning against a locker to read the texts. His blood pressure was rising, the tension in his shoulders hardening, and the acid in his gut was beginning to leak its way up into his throat.
Derek.
He held the phone up to his face to unlock it, then thumbed the screen to reveal the string of text messages. He wanted to puke. There were four messages, each of them sent only minutes apart.
DANNY, I NEED 2 TALK WITH U. CALL ME PLZ.
DANNY, LEFT A MSG 4 U. IMPORTANT.
DUDE, R U IGORING ME? SRIUSLY.
PLZ CALL ME. ASAP. URGENT.
He was reading the last of the messages when the phone buzzed and the screen changed to reveal an incoming call.
Derek.
Danny’s thumb hovered over the icon that would allow him to ignore the call, but he answered it instead. Might as well get it over with, he thought to himself. He hadn’t even said hello when Derek started his staccato soliloquy.
“Danny,” he said breathlessly. “Sheesh. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for an hour. You haven’t answered. Are you ignoring me? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got you on the phone now, so it’s all good. You’re there, right? You can hear me? Danny?”
Danny puffed his cheeks and sighed, exhaling all of the air stored in his lungs. “I’m here,” he said with all of the excitement of a man about to undergo a digital exam.
“Okay,” said Derek. “Great. I mean not great. But we n
eed to talk. It’s critically important.”
Danny remained silent, waiting for Derek to keep talking.
“You there? Danny?”
“We’re talking,” said Danny. “What do you want, Derek? You’re not supposed to call me unless it’s an absolute emer—”
“It is an emergency, Danny. Are you somewhere private?”
“I’m in a locker room.”
“By yourself?”
Danny surveyed the others in the room. They were in various states of undress and topics of conversation. “Yes.”
“You know I work in tech,” Derek said, “and I dabble in VC. So I—”
“VC?”
“Venture capital,” Derek said, speaking as if he were on the clock and running out of time. “I invest some of the money I’ve made into other start-ups, other companies that I think show promise. Some win, some lose. But that’s beside the point. The point is, there is this one company I’ve been spending a lot of time advising the team. They’ve got some incredibly unique and forward-thinking applications that transcend anything else that’s happening in Silicon Valley right now.”
“Uh-huh,” Danny said, resisting the urge to scream at Derek for ruining his life, for sending him into a spiral that had him out of data on his phone and trading Shotokan karate classes for janitorial duties.
“The company is called Interllayar,” said Derek. “They’ve hit upon some things that haven’t done quite what we expected. That is to say, the underlying application is solid. The execution needs work.”
“Interlayer?” asked Danny.
“Yes. But it’s spelled i-n-t-e-r-l-l-a-y-a-r.”
“So what does this have to do with me?” asked Danny. He lowered the phone without awaiting the answer and shrugged his shoulder onto his sweaty ear to dry it.
“—of it,” Derek was saying when he put the phone back to his ear. “Really, I just need to ask you some questions. But they’re critical.”
“Derek, I’m not interested,” he said. “And let’s be honest. I don’t owe you anything. Good luck with your venture capitalizing, or whatever it is you do.”
Danny disconnected the call and then turned off the phone. Of all the people on the face of the planet, Derek was one of two he’d gladly watch die a painful death.
That wasn’t entirely true. As much as he’d like to think of himself as heartlessly vengeful, Danny wasn’t the kind of person to let anyone else suffer.
As he aggressively showered and then angrily dressed himself, he couldn’t shake Derek from his head. The jerk had ruined what had been, up until his desperate plea for help, a decent day. Danny didn’t have a lot of those. The wounds were raw. His sleep was sporadic, his bank account was near empty, and his ex had had the audacity to give his cell phone number to Derek.
Unpleasant, X-rated memories flashed like a taunting slideshow as he forcefully tugged on clean socks. Derek. In his bed. With his woman.
His stomach lurched and he swallowed the urge to vomit. He squeezed his eyes closed as he sat on the varnished bench, alone now, merely trying to push the images from his mind. Those images were burned there on the backs of his eyelids.
The more he thought about Derek’s phone call, the more his jaw tightened. He stuffed his soiled gi into his duffel bag, zipped it up, and stomped from the locker room, entering the dojo. His instructor was standing in the center of the room, performing a gracefully effortless kata.
Danny stood and watched him, admiring the sweeping movements that glided from one to the next. It calmed him. His pulse slowed. His shoulders slacked.
When the instructor was finished, Danny moved toward the far end of the large space with a storage closet. Inside it, he found his mop and bucket. He dropped his belongings to the floor and picked up then carried the empty bucket to a wall-mounted tub.
He cranked on the hot water and began filling the bucket, which he’d placed inside the tub and filled with a thin layer of liquid soap. Danny didn’t hear the instructor until the man rapped his thick knuckles on the open door.
Danny swung around, knocking over the mop he’d rested against the corner of the tub. His face flushed. He bowed his head. “Sensei,” he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“No apology needed,” answered the blocky instructor. As fluid as his movements were, his physique was made of stone. He stepped into the closet and reached down to pick up the mop by its handle.
“I won’t be long,” said Danny. “I’m happy to lock up if you need to leave. I got delayed in the locker room.”
The instructor handed him the mop. “Phone call?”
Danny bowed his head, eyeing his feet. He nodded. “You heard me?”
“No,” said the instructor. “I did see the expression on your face when you checked your phone after class. Is everything okay? I know you don’t have much money. Is it—?”
“No,” said Danny, shaking his head vigorously. “It’s not that. You’re right. My cash flow is poor, and that’s on a good day. But no, the phone call wasn’t about money.”
“Still,” said the instructor, “I sense trouble.”
Danny turned off the running water. The suds bloomed and popped, crackling in the silence between him and his instructor.
The instructor took a step into the closet. “May I offer some advice?”
Danny nodded. “Of course.”
“Whatever it is,” said the instructor. “Whatever the source of your trouble, you should confront it. Don’t avoid it, Danny. I assure you that the source loses no sleep while you lie awake restless.”
“Thank you,” said Danny, considering what amounted to a Ruism. The instructor was right. He was positive that his ex and Derek lost absolutely no sleep over what they’d done to him. Though he did wonder if, because of the urgency and desperation in Derek’s voice, the bane of his existence was struggling in some way.
The instructor left Danny to his work, crossing the dojo to an office and reception area at the front of the building. The dojo held a corner spot in a strip mall off South Hewitt. It was in an area of the city called Little Tokyo, northeast of downtown. He could have spent as much time cleaning the outside of the building as its interior, but thankfully the chores were limited to mopping and disinfecting the dojo floor and the locker rooms. That alone took him more than an hour and a half. But it was worth it for the free lessons.
At least he kept telling himself that.
***
Danny stepped onto the Gold Line Metro Bus and slid his card through the payment kiosk next to the driver. The driver didn’t look up from her phone, sliding her fingers across the data-rich device, trolling a social media site he didn’t recognize. It might have been a dating app; she was swiping past a parade of smiling faces. She must have sensed Danny watching her while he awaited the green light from the payment kiosk.
“You need something?” she asked with one eyebrow arched higher than the other.
Danny shook his head, spotted the green light, and shuffled toward a window seat at the back of the bus. He had a ten-minute ride to Union Station, where he’d switch to the Purple Line then take that to Santa Monica. His job there was a two-minute walk from the bus stop.
Despite having the Volkswagen, Danny rarely used it. He might take it to the beach to play with his dog, Maggie, or a road trip up the coast. Otherwise he took the bus. It saved on the extravagance of gasoline and prevented him from having to pay for regular maintenance more frequently than he did.
He plopped into his seat and leaned his head against the window. The exhaustion hit him instantly. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but he had a six-hour shift he’d picked up as an extra at the diner, so he’d muddle through. What else did he have to do anyhow? He had nowhere else to be.
The bus rumbled while pulling into traffic. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, turned it on, and waited while the display cycled to the home screen. He had another series of messages, a combination of voicemails and texts.
Again, they were all from Derek.
Whatever the source of your trouble, confront it.
Danny ignored the messages but returned Derek’s call. It rang once before Derek answered.
“You hung up on me,” he said. “Why would you—”
“Look, Derek,” Danny interrupted, keeping his voice low so as not to include the half-dozen other bus riders in his conversation, “I’m not interested in anything you have to tell me. You stole my wife. You pretty much ruined my life. So you could tell me a huge asteroid is about to slam into the Earth and I’m not sure I’d care, given that you’re the one telling me.”
Danny felt at once invigorated and nervous as he spoke. He was short of breath, his pulse beating faster and faster. He was light-headed. But it was good.
“I really want you to stop calling me,” he said. “I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t care what she’s doing. Have a great life, but leave me out of it.”
“I get that,” said Derek quickly, as if he’d been waiting for his moment to counter, his sentences running together as if his speech were rolling downhill and gathering momentum. “I’m not proud of it. She’s not proud of it. It is what it is. I can’t go back. Not where that’s concerned. I can’t fix that. And trust me, it’s not as though I’m particularly interested in relying on you, of all people, for help.”
“Of all people?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Derek. “You know what I meant.”
The bus lurched to a stop with a squeal and a hiss of its brakes. A couple of people got up from their seats and exited; a few more climbed aboard. One of the arrivals, a heavyset man wearing a bright yellow Lakers jersey and denim jeans, sat in the aisle seat next to Danny despite the countless other empty seats on the bus.
The Alt Apocalypse {Book 3): Torrent Page 4