Dead Matter

by Anton Strout

  I reached for Jane, only to be driven back as the white glow intensified into a blinding flash. Not to be deterred, I pushed toward her, but as quick as the flash had come, it was gone. And Jane with it.

  “Jane?”

  I felt around where Jane had just been, hoping that maybe it was some kind of optical illusion, but she was definitely gone. I stepped into the space and placed my hands on the touch screen, but it was as solid as when I had been using it before. My heart started to race as I felt my own panic setting in, and I spun around looking for her. My left foot slipped on something and I fought to keep my balance. I looked down to only see all of Jane’s clothes—her hip-huggers, the RESIDENT EVIL 4 shirt she had been wearing, and on top of the pile, the necklace I had just bought her.

  I scooped up the necklace, clutching it in my hands. There was no pillar of salt or pile of dust or blood. Jane simply was gone.

  “No, no, no,” I said, over and over, not sure what to do next when my cell phone went off. I pulled it out. I had a new text.

  WORST. TOUCHSCREEN. EVER!

  I typed back: WHERE THE HELL RU?

  I slipped her necklace in my coat pocket while I waited. A minute later, my phone went off again.

  NOT SUR THINK IM IN THE BUILDIN.

  WHERE? I typed back. I reached for the kiosk and brought up the mall area map on the touch screen while I waited.

  IN THE BUILDING ITSELF.

  Did she mean inside the actual building?

  RU OK?

  Waiting for an answer to this question had my heart in my throat.

  4 NAO. Then, HELP.

  If I was going to help her, I was going to need help myself, and there was only one person close enough to give it. Connor. I only hoped his recent bout of the crazies hadn’t put him out of commission.

  I started the long walk back through the maze of shops to get the hell out of the Gibson-Case Center. Panic started to set in and by the time I reached the revolving doors leading out to the streets of New York, I was running.

  11

  As I ran to Connor’s apartment farther west and two blocks down, I tried his number, but his phone went straight to voice mail. Given how close I was, I didn’t bother to leave a message.

  By the time I reached his apartment, I had calmed myself a little. The fact that Jane had been able to send me messages meant she was still alive, and that gave me hope.

  At Connor’s building, someone was just leaving as I arrived, and I grabbed the door before it could close behind him to let myself in. Outside Connor’s apartment upstairs, the sound of his movie sound system poured straight through the thickness of his wooden door. I hammered on it for several minutes, and when he didn’t answer I feared that maybe Jane and I had made a bad call leaving him to sleep it off the other night. Maybe whoever or whatever had scaled his wall had returned and taken care of him. I pounded harder.

  The door flew open and a wild-eyed Connor stood there wearing the same clothes I had found him in at the graveyard. He looked ready to fight. Despite his crazed appearance, it was nice to see that the swelling had gone down around his eyes. When he saw it was me, he relaxed a little.

  “Wow,” Connor said. He wandered away from the door back into his apartment. I caught it before it swung shut. “Two social calls in one week,” he said. “I’m touched.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call this social,” I said, walking in. Not much had changed in the apartment since yesterday, except up on his projection wall Fisherman Quint was being devoured by the powerful jaws of a giant great white shark. Other than that, there was maybe a fresh pizza box on top of one of the many stacks of pizza boxes . . . possibly a new odor or two.

  “I see you’ve been working on your funk some more since we dropped you off,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “Do I detect a hint of something that died?”

  “So glad you could drop by, kid,” Connor said. He plopped himself down in one of the movie-watching chairs. He went back to watching Jaws, but not before flipping up the top on one of the pizza boxes and pulling out a cold slice that I hoped was relatively new.

  “Like I said, this isn’t really a social call,” I said, pulling the plug on his projection system. The room went dead silent. I thought he was going to kill me so before he could say anything, I blurted it all out. I spent the next few minutes telling Connor about everything that had happened since last night—from discovering that he hadn’t dreaming about having a lurker all this time, chasing the intruder back to the Gibson-Case Center—everything up to Jane’s disappearance.

  “And then . . .” I said, hearing the catch in my own voice, but controlling it, “she just vanished into one of the information kiosks there, like she was being sucked into the Matrix.”

  Connor sat in his movie-watching chair in quiet contemplation. “So about the first part of your story . . . You didn’t think this would be worth bringing up to me, say, last night after you chased whoever away?”

  “After seeing the way you looked after we found you knocked down at Trinity Church? No.”

  “Why the hell not?” Although his words were sharp, there was more desperation than anger in his voice.

  “No offense, Connor, but you don’t really seem on your ‘A’ game right now,” I said.

  He laughed, but it was a dark sound. “And you thought now might be a good time to tell me?”

  “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t think there’s any good time to tell someone something as messed up as all this, but I guess you should know that you’re not having crazy dreams. Whatever is happening to you, it’s real.”

  “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” he said, giving an unhinged laugh and standing up. He walked over to me and poked me in the chest. “How do I know that you’re really here and really telling me all this?”

  “I could kick your ass, if it would help you think I’m real,” I said.

  “If you won, then I’d know this was all a hallucination,” he said. He shook his head, still crazy-eyed. “In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Figment of my Imagination, I’m still off the company clock. I’m not running on Departmental time and . . .”

  “Excuse me?” I said. “Listen, Connor, trust me . . . This is going to override your precious vacation time. Help me find Jane.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. Connor already looked distracted and headed back to the comfort of his chair again. “I’ve got to think about this visitor of mine . . .”

  Something in me let go and I lunged for him. Connor had more fighting experience than I did, but with his mind off in its own little world, I grappled him around the shoulders with ease. Up close, the stink coming off of him was the kind you found only on the homeless in New York, but I was too pissed to back off.

  “Let go of me, kid,” Connor said, struggling. “Don’t make me write you up for insubordination.”

  “Oh, but you’re not on Departmental time, remember?” I said, tightening my grip. “You’re off the company clock.” I clamped down around Connor’s shoulders, slipping my arms up around his neck in a modified sleeper hold. “So technically I’m not strangling my work partner; I’m just strangling a friend.”

  “Some friend,” Connor choked out and pushed the two of us across the room until I hit his sofa and sat down hard. Connor used the momentum and leveraged himself into a standing position, but I didn’t let go and stood up with him.

  “Jane’s missing because we were trying to help you,” I said, trying to reason with him.

  “I didn’t ask you for that,” Connor said, all accusatory. “I didn’t ask anyone to put themselves at risk for me.” Connor shrugged, despite my grip on him. “If Jane had been following Departmental protocol, she wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  “What the hell has gotten into you?” I said. My arms were burning from keeping up the pressure on him. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on. “There are things out there more important than our day job!”

  “Like family?” Connor said, hi
s teeth grinding.

  “Look, I’m sorry we never found your brother,” I said, pushing him away from me. I fell back on the couch and Connor rolled across the floor until he hit the back of one of his movie chairs. I stood up. “But Jane is practically my family. She’s all I have, the only truly good thing to come out of having this ‘gift’ of mine. Aidan’s in the past, the long past. We can’t do anything about him now, but we can help Jane. I’m not asking you as your partner in Other Division; I’m asking you as a friend.”

  Connor stood, taking his time to rise. I hated beating on him in this condition, but nothing else seemed to be getting through to him. He rolled his shoulders back, giving off an audible popping sound.

  “Jesus, kid, I take a little time off and you go and grow a pair . . .” He rubbed his jaw, pausing his hand as if he really felt the scruff of his beard for the first time. Favoring his right leg and limping with his left, Connor crossed to a mirror hanging on the wall and stared into it for a good long time as if he didn’t recognize the man looking back at him. When he finally turned away from it, he lowered his eyes and said, “All right. Let’s go.”

  He turned and headed for his front door.

  “Dude,” I said, stopping him with a single word.

  Connor looked back at me. “What?”

  “You can’t go out like that,” I said. “You stink. You’re covered in bits of grass and mud from the graveyard, and there’s still dried blood caked in your hair and beard. I think you might want to clean yourself up a bit before we attempt to infiltrate the Gibson-Case Center.”

  Connor went back to the mirror and looked again. “Heh,” he said. “You know, I was so surprised to see the beard I didn’t really notice anything else.”

  “Feel free to take a quick shower,” I said. “I don’t want us getting kicked out because they think you’re there begging for change.”

  Connor nodded and headed off to his bathroom in a slow shuffle. I hated seeing him this disheveled. I needed him as sheveled as possible.

  While he showered, I fought the urge to pace nervously by busying myself cleaning up his apartment a little. I was glad I had my gloves on, not to keep my powers from triggering but to keep whatever new life-forms that were growing in here from harming me. Most of the pizza boxes had odds and ends of pizza left in them, some of which I dubbed former pizza, as it seemed to have developed into a new phase of life. The contents of just that filled two giant trash bags and I left them tied off by Connor’s front door, next to one singular floor-to-ceiling tower of now-empty pizza boxes. After a nose-centric hunt around the theater area, I discovered several bowls of milk that looked well on their way to being cottage cheese and brought them into his kitchen. I gave them a quick rinse as I breathed through my sleeve in an attempt not to gag, and then loaded them into the dishwasher.

  I was throwing two of his windows open to air the place out when he came back down his hall. I turned to him. Connor looked much better than he had. For one thing, his sandy blond hair was neat, his beard gone, and he was dressed.

  “You look almost human,” I said, “and you shaved.”

  Connor rubbed his chin again. “Feels weird now,” he said, “but I have to say, I feel strangely liberated.”

  “You look good. With your face shaved and no more blood in your hair, there’s only the slight swelling around the eyes that make you look a little Stay Puft.”

  Connor spied his trench coat where I had hung it neatly over the back of one of the chairs. His eyes looked up from it and took in the rest of the room. He whistled.

  “Jesus, kid. I feel like I should tip you or something.”

  “Yeah, well, I left my biohazard suit at home or I would have done more,” I said, motioning toward the front door. Connor headed for it, much more prepared for the outside world than before. “You want to give me a real tip? Help me figure out what happened to Jane.”

  Connor nodded. “I’ve got a few things I’d like to figure out as well.”

  12

  We hurried back to the Gibson-Case Center, entering the atrium by the same main doors that Jane and I had used. I started across the lobby, but stopped when I noticed Connor was not at my side. I turned to find him standing near the glass doors leading into the place, leaning against one of the panes next to them. I walked back to him. His skin had a slick sheen of sweat to it and his complexion was sickly.

  “You okay?”

  Connor nodded between heavy breaths. “It’s amazing how the body atrophies when you’re out of the game for a month, kid.”

  “Funny,” I said. “I thought it might have been the beating you took in the graveyard.”

  Connor laughed out loud, a nervous, unsteady sound coming from him. He may have been cleaned up, but there was still something manic and off with him that I found disturbing. “Did that really happen? I thought I dreamt all that.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. Right now wasn’t the best time to test his mental stability. I needed him focused.

  “Let’s take it easy, then,” I said, although every bit of my being was screaming to go find Jane and help her as quickly as I could. I put my shoulder under his right arm and helped him across the crowded garden and shopping area of the atrium until I found the kiosk where Jane had disappeared.

  “This the spot?” he asked, circling it in long, slow steps.

  I nodded.

  Connor looked at the directory menu on the display. He rapped his knuckles on the glass. Bending over, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted into the touchscreen area. “Hello? Anybody in there?”

  I watched him with a creeping sense of horror coming over me. Maybe he wasn’t in the best state of mind to help me with this.

  “I don’t think she can hear you,” I said, looking around. A few of the people passing by were staring at us.

  “You sure about that, kid?” He stood up, his face serious and looking a bit more like the Connor I knew.

  “Well, no,” I said. My face turned red, the blood rushing to it. I felt like an idiot. “I’m not sure about anything right now.”

  Connor shrugged and stuffed his hands into his trench coat pockets. “Then as far as I’m concerned, anything goes.” He studied the directory. “Doesn’t seem like there’s a store called Jane.”

  “I noticed that, too,” I said, humoring him. Exasperated, I pulled out my phone and flipped it open. “Let’s just call this in to the Department. Wesker’ll be pissed I lost one of his Greater and Lesser Arcana people, but at least he might have a way of dealing with this. He had been working with Jane on her technomancy, after all.”

  Connor grabbed my hands and closed my phone. All humor fell away from his face. “Do not call Wesker, kid. You want to fill out all the paperwork explaining this? Having him stop you from investigating because he doesn’t like you being on his turf? Remember, I’m still technically on my vacation, so you’ll be pulling double duty filling it out for leading Jane into this and involving me.”

  “Fair point,” I said.

  “You said she texted you before?” Connor asked. I nodded.

  “Let me try it again,” I said and typed in: JANE?

  After waiting several minutes of nothing, I shook my head at Connor, took my phone, and slid it back into my jacket pocket.

  “Now, then,” Connor said, cracking his fingers by bridging them, “let’s take a look at our options.”

  He typed away at the directory, looking a bit like Jack Nicholson when he was all crazed and writing in The Shining . “Looks like there’s an assload of shops in this place, but there also seems to be a fairly residential contingent as well.”

  “So it’s basically a mall/hotel,” I said.

  “Pretty much,” he said, pointing to the screen, “but look. This isn’t really a hotel setup. This looks like it’s mostly residences, as in, people live here permanently.”

  “Let me try something,” I said. I stripped off my gloves and entered the residential directory.
I typed in: CLAYTON-FORRESTER.

  “Kid, I doubt Jane’s been apartment hunting here,” Connor said.

  “She may not be apartment hunting,” I said, my stomach clenching in anticipation, “but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been taking up residence one way or another.”

  I hit “enter.”

  A long list of names scrolled by, starting with the A’s.

  When the directory got into the C territory, it slowed as it came to one name, like the Wheel of Fortune coming to a stop.

  Clayton-Forrester, Jane

  “There’s no apartment number listed for her,” I said, looking over the entry. I pointed at the screen where there should have been more information. “The rest of these have tower names and apartment numbers, but hers is blank.”

  I pressed my psychometric power into the machine, hoping for a result of some kind. My mind’s eye opened and I flashed on Connor from a minute earlier when he had been messing with the directory. I went to push myself further back in time, but was met with a strange sensation I had never felt before. Some other power was tugging at me, as if it wanted to pull me into it. Fearing Jane’s fate, I pushed myself back into the present, which snapped me out of my vision with an instant case of disorientation.

  “You okay?” Connor asked.

  I started to respond but he had already turned from me and was staring down at the directory again, his eyes widening. I looked down. The machine was going nuts. Bright flashes of color and countless screens flashed by before our eyes.

  “I think we might have found Jane, kid.”

  The machine’s screen blinked with pop-up window after pop-up window. Images for various store listings filled up the screen. I tried to follow them, hoping to notice some sort of pattern in it all, but it was no use. It was all moving beyond my ability to follow it.

  “What the hell’s she doing?” Connor asked.