Chávez reached for his hand and squeezed.
He shook her off to grab one last tennis ball. The point of the marker made a vaguely letter-like zigzag on it. It didn’t matter how well he labeled the last one. Nothing would come of it.
Solomon hovered the ball into the air, but didn’t direct it anywhere.
A tennis ball sailed out of distortion W, clanged against the wall, and drifted into the air. Solomon held it still before it could float into another distortion and disappear.
“What was that?” Dax asked. They walked forward as if to retrieve it, and Solomon barred their passage with his arm. “Tennis balls don’t sound like that.”
“I know,” Solomon said. “Please don’t walk any closer.”
Solomon pulled the ball nearer. He could tell it was too heavy, but he didn’t understand why until it met his hand.
It was the one from distortion U. Opposite the letter, there was a screw stabbed into the green felt.
As good as a signature. A couple of tear globules rose into the air before Solomon could speak. “He’s alive.”
“Oh, thank God,” Chávez said, and there was a collective sigh of relief.
Lenny and Emil entered the lab then, and Lenny said, “Heads up, everyone, we fixed the generator and we’re gonna ramp up to normal gravity starting now. Should take about fifteen minutes. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“We found Jake,” Chávez said. She grinned at him. “Lange found Jake. And nice work on the generator.”
“Where is he?” Lenny asked, and Chávez pointed to the general area, which must look to her like a random empty space near the lab wall.
Jake had walked into distortion M in the hallway, and now he was trapped in a pocket of space on the opposite side of the lab. It was fascinating to consider how he might have arrived there, what unseen tunnels and whorls of space linked the two, but Solomon could only think of how to get Jake out.
Emil said, “That’s great that you found him. How do we save him? Is it safe for Kit to retrieve him?”
“The distortions have been collapsing,” Solomon said, which alarmed Emil. “So I think it’s preferable for me to pull Jake out, rather than sending Kit in.”
“Can you do that?” Emil asked with a slight, doubtful pause before the word do.
“Yes,” Solomon said, thinking again of the cracked heat shield. Of lifting Jake by accident on the morning they’d done all those experiments outside the cabin. Of helping Jake walk through the heavy gravity in the gym. He’d successfully manipulated heavier, more massive things than Jake, and despite how delicate and complex the human body was, he’d managed not to hurt Jake in the gym.
Solomon thought about picking up one last tennis ball and writing something on it, an instruction or a reassurance, but he didn’t. He couldn’t think of anything brief enough to fit, and he shouldn’t waste time. Jake knew what Solomon’s telekinesis felt like. He wouldn’t resist.
Solomon walked forward, grateful that distortions U and W were accessible from the untouched, safe part of the lab, so he didn’t have to crawl through what remained of the maze. He could simply stop at the edge where the air rippled and stare into it.
Staring revealed nothing, as expected. He couldn’t see inside. Distortion W had the footprint of a scalene triangle, but it was only one side that concerned him now. The side extended all the way to the ceiling, tall enough that Jake would be able to pass through it while standing, but the ragged bottom edge hovered just above Solomon’s head, about two meters from the floor. The drop wouldn’t matter in zero g, but it might be jarring in normal gravity—and it was impossible to say how things were oriented inside the distortion. “Up” and “down” were arbitrary in Facility 17 when the gravity was off; where Jake was, they might be meaningless.
The lack of sight was the real obstacle, but he hadn’t needed sight to hold the heat shield together. He’d sensed where it was. Certainly, he had understood the shape and structure of the pod better than he understood the partially invisible distortions, but he wasn’t without reference points. He could see where the distortions intersected with regular space, and better than that, he knew where the tennis ball had entered and exited.
Jake had thrown that tennis ball. Solomon thought of him fishing a screw out of his pocket and puncturing the felt with determination. He was resourceful. Thoughtful. He didn’t fidget or pace. Only when he had a solution in hand would he act. It had been brief, the span of time between the tennis ball leaving Solomon’s hand and finding Jake’s. Jake had worked quickly.
And he was close.
Not close enough to touch or to see, but Solomon could sense him. His thoughts caught on the shape of him, of that body he hadn’t had nearly enough time to explore, and the feel of him, not just the solid warmth, but the steadiness, the curiosity, the patience.
This was nothing like holding onto the heat shield. There was no headache, no clenched jaw, no nosebleed. Solomon had pulled on Jake in the cabin kitchen without trying. It was easy to let it happen again, to stop resisting, to fall back into his natural state. Of course he wanted to pull Jake closer. That was what he wanted all the time.
The shimmer in the air darkened, a violet-grey silhouette wavered under its surface, and Jake emerged.
Jake was upright and whole, and the sight of him left Solomon too frantic to discern more. Solomon no longer felt like he was pulling on Jake, but like a tether between them had snapped taut. He stepped closer.
Someone grabbed him from behind to keep him from danger. That startled Solomon into yanking Jake downward. They collided, Solomon stumbled, and the newly normal gravity dragged them down.
Jake was on top of him, his full weight pinning Solomon to the floor, breathing hard, smelling like sweat and ozone. Knocked flat on his back on the lab floor, all Sol could think was that there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
19
Communication
Jake blacked out for a second. His brain refused to process the transition back into the real world from the awful melting, shrinking, not-a-place place where he’d been trapped. Just a brief, total shutdown of function. No sight, no sound.
After all the panicked sprinting he’d been doing, trying not to get stuck in a disappearing space, fainting was a huge relief.
When he blinked awake, Sol was underneath him. They were lying on the floor. Jake’s vision swam. He must have fallen on top of Sol. Nothing to be done about it. He closed his eyes again and laid his head on Sol’s shoulder. His body felt liquid and unresponsive, like the oozy quicksilver thing they’d seen in the exam room, except he had no plans to flow anywhere. Life as a puddle sounded fine. Someone else could scrape him up off the floor.
Sol stroked a hand through his hair and down his back, then wrapped both arms around him, reminding Jake that he did, in fact, have a solid corporeal form, one that was likely crushing Sol.
Somebody had fixed the gravity generator, then. Shit, he was back in Facility 17 with all its problems.
“Uh,” he said. He should get up. He fumbled for the words, which felt as distant as the action. How did getting up work? It probably involved arms. His were busy trembling.
Sol kissed his temple. “You’re okay.”
“Uh,” Jake said again. The relief of his escape wore off, leaving fatigue in his bones and buzzing in his nerves. Sol’s arms were tight around him, at least. That was good. Sol smelled like sweat and skin and soap and Jake buried his nose in Sol’s neck. It was so real and comforting, he almost burst into tears.
“Okay,” Sol repeated, soothing. “You’re okay.”
Slowly, Jake collected himself and sat up. It was a complicated, exhausting process. Standing was beyond him. Being upright did allow him to glance around the lab, which contained a lot more people than he’d previously noticed. The walls seemed to be staying place. It was hard to grasp that it wouldn’t all warp and disappear in a second.
None of the people in the room looked any different. It
was the same day. Jake had been gone for a matter of hours, but it felt much longer.
Sol stood and offered Jake a hand.
Jake considered ignoring it and just staying on the floor. Sol bent down, took his hand, and pulled him to his feet. Standing was easier than it should have been. Sol had lifted him.
Jake wobbled on his feet, but didn’t fall. His eyes met Sol’s, and then Sol laid a hand on his cheek.
“You should rest.”
Jake had no argument with that. Sol’s eyes were huge with worry. Lying down sounded alright, but the idea of walking out of the lab—into the very same hallway that had nearly killed him—nope. The possibility scared him to full alertness and he shook his head vehemently.
“You don’t want to?” Sol asked.
“Yeah, I’m good. I’ll, uh, stick around.”
His pause felt obvious, even ridiculous, to him. Jake had no idea what any of them intended to do next, or even what time it was. All he knew was that he couldn’t go anywhere alone. The thought made him want to throw up.
Sol was watching him.
Please, please don’t tell me to go to bed.
“I think,” Sol said after a pause where he interlaced his fingers with Jake’s, “that given how volatile the distortions have become, it is not safe for any of us as long as they still exist. So I move that we stay in this room and work to close them right now.”
“How do we do that?” Emil asked.
“With the alien’s help,” Chávez said.
Sol must have nodded at her or something to get her to explain. Jake had missed it because Sol had started walking, tugging him along. She was still talking, but Jake didn’t follow. The few, slow steps made him a little seasick, and he kept having to check that the walls and the floor were still where he’d thought they’d be.
There was still a single table in the room, one Sol had pulled in days ago, the first day Jake had painted the floor. It had a laptop and some papers on it—the map Jake had made, a copy with colorful lines all over it, a few blank sheets—and two of Facility 17’s standard grey rolling chairs behind it. Dax was sitting in one and they pulled out the other and gestured for Jake to sit down.
Oh. Sol and Dax were managing him. Normally Jake would object, but as long as they weren’t going to make him leave, nothing else mattered. If they knew how tired and freaked out he really was, they’d try to send him somewhere with a real bed, and he couldn’t do that. Couldn’t walk down the hallway. Couldn’t be alone. Couldn’t close his eyes.
They didn’t know that yet and he didn’t plan to let them. So—desk chair. In the same room as everyone else, with a clear view of the walls that were not melting. Acceptable.
Better than acceptable. He really, really wanted to sit down.
Sol’s hands settled on his shoulders and didn’t move. That was good. Jake was strongly in favor of nothing moving ever again.
He’d missed a huge chunk of the conversation, but nobody seemed to require his input. If they’d asked him anything, he’d failed to answer. Someone had scooped out the inside of his head and filled it with cotton. He didn’t feel present enough to sit up straight, let alone contribute an idea.
Jake had carefully avoided looking too hard at the other side of the lab, the part of the room with the breach and all the discrete distortions he couldn’t see. All those lines he’d had Eliza paint on the floor that hadn’t helped him at all.
With Sol touching him, the near part of the room didn’t feel so daunting. Dax had stood up and they were plugging a homemade-looking device—a new sensor to measure the breach, he thought—into the laptop, adjusting it, talking quietly to Miriam as she read aloud whatever was on the screen.
Lenny and Chávez were sitting on the floor. Chávez had Sol’s guitar in her lap and was plucking at it and explaining something. Emil had picked up the paper maps from the table and was standing a short distance away examining them with Kit. They were all working as a team. No insults or arguments or anything. Jake had seen it before, but never with Sol participating.
Sol offered him a metal water bottle, the top already unscrewed. It might as well have been an alien artifact. Where had it come from? Sol had been standing behind him the whole time.
“It’s water,” Sol said, something unfamiliar in his voice. “Do you think you could drink some?”
Jake accepted it and took a sip, more for Sol than for himself. It was sweet and cold in his throat. He took another sip.
“Good. Could you eat?” Sol asked him softly. He trailed a hand down Jake’s arm as he crouched down. “Soon we’re all going to need dinner, but I could get you something now.”
Jake shook his head. “Maybe later.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to lie down?”
Jake was sure he did. With Sol giving him a searching look, he managed to say, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Sol squeezed his knee. “You don’t have to. I can go get—”
“No, don’t.”
“I can see the distortions, so there is very little risk for me.”
Jake didn’t say anything.
“I’ll stay, then.” Sol rose from his crouch and put his hands back on Jake’s shoulders. “I can’t promise not to let anything happen to you. Something already did. But we will solve this problem. Do you believe that?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. He wanted to explain that he could know something in his mind—a fact like Sol knows how to close the distortions or I got out—and the knowledge couldn’t stop the twitchy sense that maybe the room was shrinking and he needed to run. But he was too out of it to string all those words together.
“I wish you could see what I see. The room looks different. Our latest paint job is out of date. Several of the distortions have closed.”
“I know.” Closed was such a soothing, civilized word. Slammed shut was more like it. Imploded, maybe. He confined his unfocused gaze to the table, his lap, anything but the other side of the room.
“Jake.” One of Sol’s hands slid down Jake’s chest to press against his heart. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Jake put his hand over Sol’s and craned his neck to look up at him. “And don’t argue with me, I’m too tired for that.”
“Can I not express a wish that you hadn’t suffered?”
“Sure, if that’s what you meant.”
Sol grimaced, but it was gone from his face as quickly as it had come. “You don’t need anything else?”
“I need to feel like the walls aren’t about to close in,” Jake said and shuddered.
“I will do my best.” When Sol spoke again, it was disarmingly earnest. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad I’m here, too,” Jake said. His chest went tight. He couldn’t begin to explain the terror and the relief of it all. “I’m glad you’re here. But don’t let me keep you. Go fix space.”
Sol didn’t move. Didn’t say anything, either. He was humming softly to himself, not a song, just one droning sound. It didn’t mean anything to Jake, but he picked it up, pressing his lips together and letting his hum blend with Sol’s. It was meditative. Something to concentrate on.
Sol remained behind Jake, hands resting lightly on his shoulders, for long enough that Jake gave in to the temptation to follow his gaze and figure out what he was so intent on.
He gasped and jerked back against the chair when he saw it. Sol tightened his grip, and that was the only thing that kept Jake from bolting out of the chair.
The lab should have been a familiar view: white walls, dull grey flooring, a tangle of painted lines, and the two curved parentheses of the machine, now rusty everywhere it wasn’t ridged with clusters of the coral-like organism. Jake could see all of that, but there was a film over it, like a rumpled sheet of plastic wrap catching the light. Here and there, it glowed like a tablet screen at night, cool and flickering.
None of it was still.
This was what Sol could see. These were the distortions. Three-d
imensional shapes—at least, according to his brain, that’s how many dimensions they had—carved into the air and left hollows, or stretched it out until it was bulbous and twisted. Narrow corridors of normal space ran between them, though sometimes the distortions snaked together or blended into each other.
He’d crawled through the room and carried Sol, taking it on faith that all of this was there. Today he’d fallen in and been pulled back out. And now he could see it.
Christ, it was weird.
Their oil-in-water motion unsettled him, and he was already seasick, but if he could grit his teeth and ignore that… they were almost beautiful. A fucked-up, deadly aurora.
In the distant left corner of the room, one winked out of existence. No more shimmer.
Above him, Sol stopped humming and spoke. “Strike distortion A from the map.”
There was a scramble in front of Jake and a rustle of pages, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the rest of the room. That was what it had looked like from the outside—whatever that meant—when that spreading whiteness had almost swallowed him alive. From normal space, the erasure was quick and noiseless, but just as final.
Or at least, it was noiseless as far as Jake could tell. Maybe Sol could hear something. He’d been humming. He could hear the alien and the breach, and Jake hadn’t detected either.
“Got it,” Miriam said. Her pencil scratched the paper.
Sol hummed again. Another flicker cut out, this one in two places at once. It hadn’t looked connected, but it had been.
Sol said, “Strike distortions B and G from the map.”
“Sol, are you—” Jake stopped when Sol minutely tightened his grip again, a wordless plea not to interrupt his concentration. More humming.
It was answer enough. Of course he was the one doing it. He was closing the distortions with telekinesis.
The room was silent except for Sol humming, working his way through the alphabet, and the tiny scrape of Miriam’s pencil. Jake had lettered that map himself, and there had originally been 23, but he knew from experience that some were already gone. And B and G had disappeared in tandem.
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