As soon as it was closed, I felt better. At least like I wasn’t going to fling myself through that wall toward whatever was beyond it.
“Let’s go,” he said, pointing us down the hallway. “We’ll deal with whatever the hell that was once we secure the prisoner.”
33
OLIVIA
“He’s a young CAMFer guard named Anthony,” Mike explained. He’d gathered us in the library for a debriefing, except for my mother and Reiny who were in the infirmary. Oh, and Pete and Lonan, who were tending to her kidnapper’s wounds. “And as far as we can tell,” Mike continued, “he was working alone.”
“But how did he get in?” Passion asked anxiously.
“We think he was unconscious and was never displaced,” Mike said. “Just like Pete.”
“You mean he’s been here the entire time we have?” Samantha asked, appalled.
“It appears so,” T-dog said. “If he’d come in one of the doors, it would have set off an alarm. And being a guard, he knew how to avoid the cameras. That’s why we never saw him on the CAMFer security feeds.”
“Yes, but how did he get into the Hold side?” Grant asked. “You changed the code to the dome door and we’ve kept it locked.”
Marcus and I exchanged a look, guilt flashing across his face.
“That would be my fault,” he admitted. “I accidentally left it open for a short time last night.”
“I’m as much to blame as he is,” I jumped in. “I couldn’t sleep, and I know it was stupid, but I went over there. He was just following me to make sure I was okay.”
“Yeah, but I should have closed and locked the door,” Marcus insisted.
I could feel the rest of them staring at us, hypothesizing about what Marcus and I had been doing over on the CAMFer side together in the middle of the night. But they couldn’t be more wrong. That was the last place either of us would go for a private make-out session or romantic rendezvous. Still, my face began to flush, betraying my innocence, and Marcus was looking anywhere but at me.
“Who’s at fault is immaterial,” Mike said. “Drawing him out was the best thing that could have happened, given the circumstances. We’ll put him in one of the CAMFer cells for now, and he’ll have to be guarded. But we’re going to have to decide what to do with him long term.”
Did Mike mean kill him? Even after everything Anthony had done to me, I wasn’t sure I could condone that.
“But the more pressing issue is what’s happening down in the morgue,” Mike said, just as a loud clunk emanated from the area of the present table, echoing through the dome. Everyone turned, startled. Mike reached for his gun, and Grant and Marcus bumped into each other trying to step in front of me and my sister.
I pushed between them and walked over to the table. The magic eight ball was on the floor. It had rolled off and landed on the tile below, its flattened answer window face down. Based on all the laws of gravity and physics I knew, it should have stayed right there. But it didn’t. Instead, it moved, tipping up on its rounded surface and rolling away across the floor.
“What the fuck?” I heard Chase murmur behind me.
I followed the eight ball. So did everyone else.
When it got to the threshold of the dome door leading to the CAMFer side, it rolled up against it. Then wobbled back, rolling to tap against it again. And again. And again.
It was eerie, like something out of a horror movie, making the skin crawl at the back of my neck.
It’s being pulled, like the knives were downstairs, Kaylee said.
“Olivia,” Mike said, staring at me and I followed his gaze, looking down, to see the dog tags hovering in the air just below my chin.
It hadn’t been the skin of my neck crawling. It had been the chain dragging against it as the tags lifted, straining toward the door.
I grasped them and stuffed them down inside my shirt. They stayed, but I could feel them trembling against my skin.
The tags are blurry too, Kaylee said.
“Do you have your father’s stone?” Mike asked me.
“Yeah,” I nodded, reaching into my pocket and pulling it out.
As soon as I did, it flew out of my hand and hit the door with a loud thunk, sticking mid-way up, as if magnetized.
“What the hell is going on?” Marcus asked.
I went up to the door and grabbed the rock, pulling it off, though it was like fighting a strong magnet. I held the rock out to Kaylee and she nodded. It was blurry too.
“Whatever it is,” Mike said, “it’s affecting all the artifacts. He turned to Kaylee. “The knife you had down in the morgue—where’d you get it?”
I stole it from Gordon, she said, giving me a worried look. But it came from a man named Major Tom.
Just hearing that name sent a shock wave through me.
“You stole it?” Marcus asked, surprised. “Why?”
It wasn’t safe for Gordon, Kaylee said. The artifacts— they only listen to Olivia and me.
“Well,” Mike said, “that explains why it stuck to the wall. Something is down there distorting and attracting the artifacts.”
“Then we need to know what it is,” I said, turning to Chase. “Can you pull up blueprint files for the dome and the compound? Maybe there’s a hidden room or passage we weren’t aware of.”
“Or it could be something that was here at Umatilla,” T-dog pointed out. “I can look up blueprints and layout images for the depot centering on this location.”
“Excellent,” Mike said. “And I think Kaylee and I should go back down and have a look.”
I don’t want to, Kaylee said, sounding terrified. It was pulling me too. It still is. But it’s not as strong up here as it was down there. It could be affecting our PSS. She glanced at my ghost hand. I think, maybe, Olivia’s hand is beginning to blur.
My hand looked fine to me but, obviously, Kaylee could see something I couldn’t.
“What about the rest of us?” Mike asked her. “Kaylee can see everyone’s PSS,” he explained. “External and internal.”
My sister’s list of talents never ceased. Was there anything PSS related she couldn’t do? I seriously doubted anyone in our group would bat an eye if Mike suddenly claimed Kaylee could spin PSS into gold and poop PSS rainbows. Fuck. Was I jealous of her? Maybe. My ghost hand had once been able to tell if someone had internal PSS. It used to want to reach into people and touch what was inside of them. But not anymore. Not after Anthony.
Everyone else looks normal, Kaylee said, after a quick inspection. And it’s too hard to see myself, but I feel it. It’s pulling me. And it may be doing something to the rest of you I can’t see.
“When you were all down there saving Mrs. Black,” Samantha said, “the sound in my ear changed again, almost like notes being added to an underlying chord. Maybe, if I got closer, I might be able to understand what I’m hearing.”
“I could go with her,” Grant said. “We know I don’t have PSS, so I should be fine.”
“Okay,” Mike agreed. “Grant, Samantha, and I will go down to the morgue. Kaylee, you keep an eye on any changes to Olivia’s PSS and the artifacts. And put them in a sealed container as far from the CAMFer side as possible. Maybe distance will reduce the impact.”
“I have a small faraday cage in the van,” Chase said. “I have no idea if it will block what’s happening, but we can put them in that and Kaylee will still be able to see them. And the van is on the far side of The Hold compound, so we’ll probably be safest over there anyway.”
“Excellent.” Mike stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his matchbook. “Put this in there too.” He tossed it to Chase. “Let’s go.” He gestured for Grant and Samantha to follow him, then turned back to his brother and added, “And do that blueprint search like Olivia suggested.”
It hadn’t been a suggestion. It had been an order.
Of course, now that Mike was here, he’d naturally take charge again.
Still, I had a good plan and I truly bel
ieved it could work. I would not give it up.
We should put the cubes in the cage too, Kaylee said, running to the table to get them, and I didn’t miss the worried look she cast at Marcus.
My sister had certainly dropped a bomb when she’d revealed that I’d somehow captured Marcus’s memories in the eight ball and the cubes could be used to restore them. But not now, not with all this going on, and probably not afterwards either.
I hadn’t missed the look on Marcus’s face.
He didn’t want his memories back.
34
MIKE PALMER
I’d been in the dome one day and things had already gone to shit. Anthony kidnapping Mrs. Black had only been the beginning. I’d been an idiot not to arm everyone the minute I’d entered the compound. If anything happened to Chase, our parents would never forgive me. Well, that was already true, but they would hate me even more.
Thankfully, Anthony hadn’t taken Chase. He’d taken Olivia’s mother, probably because she’d been alone and injured, and he was a coward. That boy hadn’t learned a thing since I’d goaded him into getting his hand cut off. Some people never learned.
And when Kaylee had rushed through the wall of the dome after him, unarmed, I’d feared the worst. She didn’t have the skills or guts to face an opponent like that. Or so I’d thought. Imagine my surprise when we’d arrived at the morgue door to find she’d pinned the bastard to the wall.
Unfortunately, it was no ordinary wall.
So, now, here we were. Grant and I had guns, but Samantha had refused to take one. I’d let that slide since she wasn’t a great shot anyway. Besides, whatever was happening to the artifacts and Olivia’s PSS, I doubted firepower was going to be the solution. Still, having a gun in my hand always made me feel better.
I opened the door and stepped into the morgue. Samantha and Grant followed me.
The wall was a crumbled mess, stones and mortar piled on the floor in front of a gaping hole about the size of a small window. It was at chest level, and there was no sign of Major Tom’s knife or the Fineman’s PSS-severing device, though a pulsing, blue glow was pouring through that hole.
Samantha stepped toward it and I held out my hand to stop her. “Listen first,” I said. “What do you hear?”
She tilted her PSS ear toward the wall. “An underlying hum,” she said. “That’s the constant, almost like the bass. There’s something faint and high-pitched on top of that. And then two more tones, more mid-range. By the acoustics, I’d say there’s a room behind that wall, and something inside is the source of what I’ve been hearing.”
“Grant, go take a look.” I motioned the boy forward.
Grant crossed the room and stuck his head through the hole.
“It’s hard to see,” he said, leaning further in, his shoulders brushing the edges. “There are a bunch of pipes here, just inside, and some kind of big tank directly to the right. That’s where the glow is coming from. The room is large and circular. I think we could squeeze through if we opened this wall up a bit more.”
“Any sign of the artifacts?” I asked.
“Not that I can see,” he said, pulling his head out.
“Okay.” I slipped my gun into its holster and crossed to Grant. “Samantha, you watch the top of the wall near the ceiling. If you see any sagging, let us know. I don’t think this is a supporting wall, but better safe than sorry.” I grabbed a cement block and pulled, and Grant quickly joined me. In about ten minutes, we had the opening big enough for us to pass through one at a time.
“I’ll go first,” I told them. “Samantha, you come second. Grant will take up the rear.”
I pulled out my weapon and climbed through the hole, immediately confronted by a series of large pipes. To my right was the curved wall of the tank glowing with PSS, and I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that my day had just gotten a whole lot shittier.
I climbed over and under pipes, and Samantha and Grant followed. Some of the gaps were a tight squeeze but eventually we were all through, standing in a large round room, empty except for the three dead bodies lying on the floor.
“Oh my God,” Samantha whispered. “Are they dead?”
“Yes,” I answered, scanning the room, assessing quickly that there was only one door. I crossed to it, and slowly pulled it open, looking down the long tunnel-like corridor it led to. I didn’t hear or see evidence of hostiles, but the tunnel verified what I’d suspected as soon as we’d climbed through the wall. This wasn’t a hidden room of the compound. The architecture was different and the tunnel too expansive. This was old Umatilla infrastructure and the compound had landed on top of it. I closed the door. Unfortunately, the locking mechanism was broken, but we should hear someone coming down that tunnel from a fair distance.
“Who are they?” Grant asked, he and Samantha keeping their distance.
“These two are military.” I pointed at the bodies closest to us, stepping carefully over the nearest one, my boot squishing in what was undoubtedly brain matter. “They were each shot in the head from behind at close range.” I was glad it was dark, so Grant and Samantha couldn’t see the gory mess that had made. I walked over to the third body, a woman. She was lying face down in a pool of blood near some kind of machine built next to the tank. She’d been shot in the chest, instead of the head.
I rolled the stiffened body over and Muriel Peretti’s pale dead eyes stared back at me.
I hadn’t seen her for over thirty years, and her face was bloated and purple with lividity, but it was definitely her. Muriel had briefed me on Umatilla and what to expect right before I’d gone into the facility with Gordon’s NAM group. She hadn’t been FBI. She’d worked for the government as head of some department at the depot. I didn’t remember much of what she’d told me, but I was sure she’d neglected to mention the possibility of temporal displaced to Norway and the global contamination of human DNA.
If Muriel had come here with military backing, that did not bode well for us. Then again, it hadn’t boded well for her either. Whatever she’d been trying to do, someone hadn’t liked it. At least now I knew the military had arrived, and it looked like they were trying to be covert, which could play to our advantage. If I had to guess, I’d say they’d come down here to get rid of this tank and cover their tracks.
“Do you know her?” Samantha asked. She’d walked over and was staring down at Muriel.
“No.” I stood up, turning to the blinking machine next to the tank. “But whoever she was, I think she was working with this when she got shot.”
“It looks like it’s on,” Grant said, joining us. “Maybe that’s what started the change Sam heard last night.”
“The timing for the bodies is about right,” I said. “I’d say they’ve been dead about twelve hours.”
“I don’t see an off button,” Sam said, stepping up to the machine. “Just a bunch of meters and sliders, almost like a soundboard.”
“Is that what the hum is coming from?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s coming from the tank. The extra notes too. But this machine has something to do with it.” She reached out a tentative hand for one of the sliders.
“Don’t touch it yet,” I said. “Let’s have a closer look at the tank first.”
“Yeah, okay.” she nodded, putting her hand on the tank and walking along its smooth curve. “It’s vibrating,” she noted.
Although the tank appeared to be metal, the PSS glow from within somehow permeated it, giving the impression of a translucent tank full of swirling gasses. Whatever this tank had originally been made of, it had been changed by the contents inside of it. And I was pretty sure I knew what those contents were. The question was what was being done to them? And could we, or should we, stop it?
Yes, this was shaping up to be a shitty, shitty day.
“Hey, I found something,” Samantha called from the other side of the tank, back near the pipes and the hole in the wall. “It looks like it has been damag
ed over here.”
Grant and I both walked over.
“It’s hard to see in the dark, but put your hand here and feel.” She pointed to a lower portion of the tank hidden in shadow.
I reached for it first, my fingers easily finding the small divot in the tank.
“It feels like a bullet hole,” I said, pulling my fingers away and letting Grant have a turn. But that didn’t make sense. If a stray bullet had struck the tank when Muriel and her men had been killed, it would have ruptured the tank or ricocheted off, not left a perfect, bullet-shaped indentation.
“And it’s not the only one,” Samantha said, reaching higher up and to her left. “Feel here.”
I reached up and felt a strange outline, long and thick on one end, with a ridge in the middle, then tapering to a fine point on the other end.
“It’s shaped like a knife,” Samantha said.
“Yes, it is.” I pulled my hand away, moving to give Grant room.
“There’s one more,” she said, pointing further to my left. That indentation was bathed in enough light that I could clearly see the strange outline of the PSS-severing knife Fineman had created out of Passion’s blades.
“Hey, guys,” Grant said, staring at the portion of the tank in front of his face. “I think I just saw something floating around in there.”
“Where?” I asked, and Samantha looked too, both of us scanning the swirling blue vapors.
And then I saw it. Major Tom’s knife. It floated toward me, spinning end over end and then disappeared again, fading away as quickly as it had appeared.
“Did you see that?” Samantha asked. “How did it get in there?”
“It phased through the tank just like Kaylee phases through walls,” I said. “I think both the knives did. Whatever’s in there sucked them in.”
And the bullet shape? It could have just been a manufacturing glitch in the forging of the tank, an anomaly having nothing to do with what was happening now, but I knew it wasn’t.
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