The Loop
Page 17
Perry motioned to him to stay quiet and pulled out his .38 Special with his right hand, while his left struggled to get his cell phone from his back pocket. He risked a quick glance at the screen. No service. He cursed under his breath. There was a hard-wired alarm button in the office, but he wasn’t sure it would work either. He needed to try it anyway.
He heard the metallic clang coming from the door as he started to move. Then, a moment later, a flash of harsh brilliant light seared his retinas. A mighty bang made him fall to his knees, clutching his ears in pain. He struggled to his feet, swinging the revolver in the direction of the entrance, trying to blink his eyes into focus. There were two shapeless forms on the ground, which he assumed were the two guards. He couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead.
Two flashes silently appeared in the night outside the door, and Perry turned to his right only in time to see two blurry figures that were coming toward the door from the back of the warehouse stumble and fall. Perry finally managed to focus his eyes. All four guards were splayed on the floor in positions that didn’t give him much hope about their survival chances. He didn’t know if the panic button in the office still functioned, but in that instant, he knew it was his only chance of surviving the night.
He squeezed two shots toward the front gate to keep whoever was out there at bay for a few precious seconds. Then he dropped to his knees and started to crawl around the boxes with bags of merchandise in them toward the office door. When he reached the end of the stacks, he paused. There was about twenty feet of empty space between him and the door that might get him to a safer place, but if he decided to go for it, he’d be completely exposed. He risked a quick glance above the box toward the gate—a bag of cocaine exploded next to his head, spraying his face with fine white powder.
He ducked under the cover of the box in time as another bullet nicked the edge of the crate. It was now or never, he decided. He stuck the nose of his revolver above the container and pulled the trigger two more times. Then he broke into the fastest sprint of his life.
The door was two paces away when his right shoulder exploded with pain. Perry dropped the revolver and awkwardly tumbled forward, smashing headfirst into the glass door. The glass gave, a large jugged piece ripping through his left cheek so deep it scraped the mandible. Another shard lodged in his chest right under his collarbone.
He wailed in pain, as he maneuvered his bare hands over the glass littering the floor, but managed to turn around and prop himself against the frame of the door. His .38 Special was on the floor a few feet away from his right leg, but it might’ve been a mile away as far as Perry was concerned. His right shoulder was one pool of hot boiling pain, but he felt nothing below his elbow, and when he tried to move his fingers, they stayed immobile as if made from wax.
He heard footsteps. The person wasn’t trying to be stealthy. They were the steps of a man who was coming to finish the job. A second later, a man came into view. He looked ordinary, Perry thought through the pain. He was of average height and athletic, but not overly built. His bearded face had some ruggedness to it but wasn’t conventionally handsome. A leather jacket over a black T-shirt, a pair of worn jeans, and comfortable sneakers completed his look. The only striking feature that Perry couldn’t help but notice even in his dazed state was the man’s eyes. They were of a warm chestnut-brown color, but there was nothing warm about them. They looked hard enough to cut diamonds.
“I have a family,” Perry said as the man approached. “And I have money. I can pay you. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”
The man said nothing and brought the gun he held in his left hand up to Perry’s head.
33
The Station
She’d never wanted to kill him more than she did now. The way he stood there, in the middle of the suite with a smug look on his face. The way he looked at her.
“I’ve always hated you, Jay,” she finally said. “But you’re surely upping the game now.”
“It’s crazy, if you think about it,” he said, taking a step back and sitting down on a plush synthetic rug. “We’ve been here for quite some time and not once has it occurred to me that you didn’t know who you were. Or, to be precise—what you were. This place might be missing doors and windows, but there’s a giant mirror right there on the wall. I’m sure you can see yourself in there. You look like freaking R2-D2 from the early Star Wars, for God’s sake.”
“I do, do I?”
“Cal,” he waved his giant hand, his tone straddling the line between boredom and exasperation, “like I said, there’s a mirror right there. Wheel your steel butt over and take a look for yourself.”
She stayed put while watching his face. There was so much conviction in those steely eyes and the way his square jaw was set, it drove her insane.
“Do you know,” she finally said, “that I control everything in this place? That when you slept like a giant baby, not bothering so much as to put on a pair of underwear, I could do anything I wanted to you? Anything?”
“Like what, Cal?” He scoffed. “What were you going to do—spray me with machine oil? Or play Wagner on the highest setting?”
She moved closer to him and extended a manipulator. A foot-long needle slowly protruded from the wrist joint toward Jupiter, its sharp point glistening brightly in the artificial light.
“What the hell.” He scrambled to his feet and took a few steps back. “What is this?”
“Do you know how many times as you slept, I stood above you, the tip of the needle hovering an inch above your eyelid while I fantasized about putting it through your eyeball until it scraped the back of your skull?”
“Stay away, you crazy tin can, or else I’ll smash you to pieces.”
She watched him grab a computer chair and raise it above his head, ready to strike her.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s what you’ve wanted to do for a long time,” she offered. “All those angry outbursts and half-baked apologies afterward, as if I couldn’t understand what you were fantasizing about.”
He lowered the chair but kept it between them as a shield. “Why didn’t you?”
“What, kill you in your sleep?”
“Yes.”
She thought about it for a few moments.
“I don’t know, to be honest,” she finally offered. “Probably because it would make me a bad person.”
“You’re not a person, Cal. Though, now, seeing you with this giant needle, maybe I shouldn’t be trying to convince you otherwise.”
They stared at each other, contemplating their next steps. Finally, Jupiter put down the chair, and Cal retracted the needle.
“Now what?” he asked, eyeing her with suspicion. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fall asleep here again. We need to find a way to get out.”
“But we are—”
“Supposed to be in low-Earth orbit, I remember. But it’s clearly not true. Somebody put us here on purpose. It must be an experiment of some sort, and I’m anxious to meet whoever it is behind this horrible scheme.”
“I don’t know.” She looked around skeptically. “Maybe my purpose was to drive you crazy, but I know as little about this place as you do. What if we are in orbit?”
“C’mon, Cal. Use that big head of yours. This is some kind of prison. If this were a spaceship, a station, you’d see things that are normally found on space stations.”
“Such as?”
“Such as doors.” He waved his huge hand around. “How did we get here? Where’s the hatch?”
“I guess you might be onto something.” She hated agreeing with him, but the man did have a point. Even if they were not supposed to be leaving the Station any time soon, there should have been a door of some sort. A way for them to get into the suite. The only explanation that made sense was that they were transported here while they weren’t aware of their surroundings and then the suite was sealed, leaving them trapped on the inside.
“Can you open the window?”
&nb
sp; She did as he asked. They appeared to be flying over the dark side of the planet—somewhere above the Rockies.
She watched Jupiter as he walked over to the window and examined it carefully around its edges. Then, he pressed into the glass with the tips of his fingers, pushing gently first and then applying some pressure.
“Well?” she asked.
“Let’s see.” He stepped back, looking around. Then, without warning, he grabbed the chair and swung it toward the window. It flew in a short, tight arc, covering the distance in a split second, and struck the window with its legs first. Neither of them was prepared for what would happen next.
“What the—” he uttered, looking in amazement at the window. Instead of breaking the glass or bouncing off and leaving the glass unscathed, the chair went right through the transparent surface. But instead of tumbling outside of the station on its way to becoming another piece of space junk, it disappeared. Like an icicle submerged into a pot of hot water, it ceased to exist as it plunged deeper into the glass until there was nothing left.
“I didn’t see this one coming,” she admitted.
“Me neither,” he agreed. “I saw it going a few different ways, but this was something else.”
“Right.”
“What does it mean?” he asked, looking at her with an expression she wasn’t used to seeing on his sculpted face. It was that of a lost child—if she hadn’t known better, she’d think Jupiter was terrified.
“Um, one explanation could be that it’s some kind of energy shielding,” she said. “A defensive system that disintegrated the object that threatened the integrity of the window.”
“What, like a force field?” His laughter bounced off the walls of the suite. “That’s crazy talk. I don’t care if we’re floating in space over a dying planet, but there’s no such thing as a force field that melts objects into nothing.”
“Agreed. Then we must use the Occam’s razor principle,” she said slowly, avoiding meeting his eyes.
“Occam’s razor? As in the simplest explanation, however improbable, must be true?”
“Entities should not be multiplied without necessity,” she said. “But yes, that’s the gist of it.”
He went to the window and gingerly touched the glass with the tips of his fingers again. Then he punched the window with his fist. This time there was a hollow thud, and his hand bounced right off as if he struck a car tire.
“I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his hand. “Do you?”
“I think I do.”
“All right.” He turned around, his eyes aglow with rage, and this time she met his gaze. “Please enlighten me.”
“You said it yourself,” she started. “I’m a machine. Probably put here to test you for some unknown purpose.”
“Yes.”
“Until you pointed it out to me, despite the obvious evidence, I might add, I was not aware of my true self. I had no idea that I wasn’t human.”
His head tilted as he listened, his lips forming into a frown. “And?”
“Until now, we were not aware of the true properties of this suite either, even after the appearance of the floating cube, which now I think was a glitch in the system, nothing more. But after your little chair experiment, I think it’s safe to say that this place is not what we thought it was. It’s some kind of artificial abstract built specifically to accommodate the two of us. Which leaves me with only one possible conclusion.”
“What conclusion?”
There it was again. The frightened child expression on the face of a man who looked like a god of war. Despite the circumstances, she found it immensely satisfying.
“That nothing in here is what we thought it was. Nothing. That includes you, Jay.” She paused, watching him process what she said. “You know I’m right, Jay. Like you said—the simplest explanation, however improbable, must be true. You’re not what you thought you were. You’re not human, Jupiter. We’re not even machines, you and me. We weren’t born. We were made.”
“What do you mean—made?” Jupiter looked at her in disbelief.
“Made,” she said again. “Or if you wanted to be precise—we were written.”
34
Unknown location, Afghanistan
“This must be your fault,” Gupta’s voice said from somewhere in the dark. “I don’t know how, but why would he say that Rosen was looking forward to seeing you?”
It took them about an hour to reach the camp. At least according to Connelly’s internal clock, as nobody bothered to remove the hoods off their heads. Not until they reached the destination, where they were led to a small building and then descended a flight of stairs into a room. The big man took their hoods off, briefly offering a view of a small windowless space with a dirt floor and cracked cement walls. Then their guide left, closing the door behind him and plunging the place in the dark.
“Who the fuck are you, Connelly, anyway?” he heard Gupta hiss from the opposite corner. “It’s not my first rodeo, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Connelly felt his way to the wall and sat down, leaning back. Then, after a few moments, he stood up—the floor and the wall were freezing cold. If it wasn’t that dark, he was sure his breath would come out in white puffs of steam.
“Answer me, Connelly,” Gupta yelled. “I need to know why my death is going to be televised as a recruitment ad.”
“You need to stay calm,” Connelly finally said. “I don’t know why we are here any more than you do. But the last thing you want right now is to yell some nonsense to make people who are holding us suspicious. Things like this happen all the time.”
“What things?”
“I’ve no idea, man. The guy mentioned there’ve been some skirmishes, so who knows? They might have a new guy in charge who doesn’t want to take chances with strangers. Or somebody might have switched sides, and they are looking for a culprit. All I know is panicking and doing stupid things isn’t going to help and might get us killed.”
There was some shuffling in the far corner of the room while Gupta considered what he was told. What Connelly said was only a partial lie—he never told Hanson his name, so it was not entirely impossible that their current predicament was based on some of the scenarios he’d offered Gupta. There was even a slight chance that Hanson wouldn’t recognize him when they met face-to-face. Their last encounter was brief and happened years ago. It wasn’t something he could count on, of course.
“That guy scares me,” Gupta offered.
“Which guy? The guide?”
“Yeah. He’s one of those people who only smile with their lips.”
There was a screech of the door, and then a bright light flooded the room, making Connelly shield his eyes.
“Move to the back,” the voice commanded. “And keep your hands where I can see them. I don’t want anybody to do anything stupid.”
Connelly moved to the back of the room and stood next to Gupta. The small man threw him a dirty look—it didn’t seem that he bought into Connelly’s explanations.
The light grew brighter, and a moment later, a man appeared, holding a lantern in one hand and a Sig Sauer pistol in another.
“Connelly,” the man said and moved the light higher to make his face visible. “Why do you always show up at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Do I know you?” Connelly wasn’t going to deliver himself to Hanson on a silver platter.
“Yeah,” Hanson said with a genuine smile and lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s been a while, but it’s hard to forget the giant pile of cash that we found.”
“I fucking knew it,” Gupta said to himself.
“You,” Hanson pointed the gun at Guardian’s rep, “might want to shut up.”
The small man shrank at the sight of the barrel looking at him.
“Anyway,” Hanson returned to Connelly again. “Here you are, and maybe you can make up for the last time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sure you are.”
“Listen, pal.” The friendly notes disappeared from Hanson’s voice. “Why do you think I’m even here? When you and your asshole buddies showed up last time, you ruined two years of my work to get a little pat on the back from your bosses.”
“We recovered hundreds of millions of dollars,” Connelly said. “I don’t know what you were aiming for, but it sounds like success to me.”
“You did. But if you had let me finish my op, it would’ve disrupted the organization that makes that much money every quarter.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“Please, Connelly. You’re not the only guy who has friends in Paris.”
“But—”
“Listen. I don’t have time for twenty questions. I’m about to get burned. A man is coming to the camp in less than fifteen minutes who knows that I’m CIA. Long story. The good news is—he’s coming alone. There’ve been some, well, disagreements with other groups lately, so if we take care of the camp, I can say we were ambushed and keep my cover. But we have to do it now, and I can’t do it myself.”
“How many people are in the camp?”
“Only four at the moment. The others left.”
“That’s not bad.”
“I said four people. But there’s also Ronin.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“The lovely gentleman who transported you here. You know—tall, wide shoulders, handsome face, dead eyes. We’d need to take him on together if we were to have any chances of survival.”
“Anything I need to know?” Connelly asked.
“He’s body-plated. Implants,” Hanson said, waving his hand as if stopping further questions. “Long story. Don’t go for his center mass, that’s all you need to know. Headshots only. And whatever you do, don’t try hand-to-hand with him.”
Hanson reached behind his back, making Connelly tense, but the man produced another Sig Sauer and tossed it over to him.