by Hines
Properly dressed, he sat for a few moments, eerily calm for the first time in days, feeling he was on the verge of . . . being free. Maybe for the first time ever.
He decided to go down to Dandy Don’s for a farewell doughnut.
Yes, Viktor would be able to find him there. Yes, someone might recognize him. Yes, he might be caught by police. But did he care? No, he did not. None of it mattered now; he was beginning to feel more fatalistic than ever. If he were caught, what of it? He’d only be in custody a few hours before blowing up.
After getting a pastry and a cup of coffee and sitting at a table in the corner, he spun around the backpack, fished around inside, and brought out the photo of Noel and her kids. The photo still spoke to him, yes. All of the totems did. But he had an overwhelming need to look at this one in particular.
The photo was a moment of pure joy, unfettered happiness, never ending because it had been frozen on film.
He looked into the eyes of Noel and the kids, unable to control his own smile as he imagined the joke, the private moment, they must have been sharing.
As he looked, something shifted in the photo—something behind the young boy, on the left side of the photo.
Lucas blinked, glanced around, as if scared someone else had witnessed what he’d just seen. But he was alone with his pastry and his cup of coffee.
He looked back at the photo and, yes, something was moving behind the boy. Water. He’d not noticed before, but the family was standing in front of a pool of water.
Actually, they were standing on a stone path beside a pool of water.
And in the background, the movement he saw was a bubbling spring, gurgling air to the surface and hiding bright, twinkling lights deep in its depths.
The lights wavered inside the spring, and Lucas could hear it now: the gurgling spring, the call of birds in the distance, the soft sigh of a breeze in the leaves of the giant trees over them.
Why hadn’t he seen this before? It was in the photo all along. He reached out a finger, drawn by the surface of the spring, but as soon as his finger broke the plane of the photo, the sensory details disappeared. Instead of the birds and breeze, he heard the clinking of coffee cups and the murmur of people ordering. Instead of a bubbling, wavering spring, he saw a flat image of three smiling faces.
And yet, when he brought his finger away from the photo, he noticed something odd indeed: at the tip of his finger, a single drop of water formed, then suspended itself, frozen in time for a moment, before slowly dropping to the floor.
Without thinking, he placed his finger in his mouth, and the last traces of water were still there. He could taste the fresh spring, and all those sensory images returned for a fraction of a second. He closed his eyes, trying to hold on to that image—
(Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)
—then opened his eyes again, staring out at the small restaurant space.
Across from him, along the wall that hid the utility closet in front of the men’s bathroom, he saw an eye peeking out. His own viewing platform, the one he’d hastily put together in this very space.
And now someone was using it to spy on him.
He jumped to his feet and moved across the space toward the men’s restroom as fast as he could. The hole was still there, barely visible to anyone but him, but he knew the eye was gone before he’d even risen from the table.
And yet, he had to go to it. To see.
At the restroom, he threw open the door and rushed in, put his shoulder into the door of the utility closet when it wouldn’t open.
The closet was dark and empty. As he knew it would be. But as he stood and carefully surveyed every available inch of the closet, he felt a soft, barely there draft of air kiss his face.
He looked above him and saw one of the ceiling tiles pushed to the side.
He stepped up onto the slop sink, then quickly put his foot against the nearest wall and sprung off of it, propelling himself up and catching the lip of the hole in his hands. The frame for the acoustic tiles sagged and sank a bit, not designed to hold his weight, but then he grabbed the solid framing above and boosted himself into the tight space, listening.
Nothing.
He felt the breeze pushing steadily on his face. Several feet away, toward the back exterior wall, he saw the giant ductwork for the kitchen’s exhaust fan. He recognized it immediately; it was the very ductwork he’d used to access the utility closet a few days before, when he’d built his observation deck. Now someone else had used it. A panel in the ductwork was missing, creating a gaping maw. He made his way across the space, careful to avoid the wiring, and peeked into the duct.
Down the small tunnel of ducting, a hole opened onto the exterior of the building. He followed it. This was the source of the breeze. The vent he’d carefully removed and replaced a few days ago lay on the ground. Probably kicked away in a hurry.
Someone had followed him here. Someone had used his secret route into Dandy Don’s. Had hidden inside his observation deck in the utility closet. Had barely escaped by scrambling through the ceiling and kicking away the vent to the outside of the building.
And yet, none of this surprised him.
He pulled out his TracFone and checked it again. It was time for him to go to work.
He walked steadily down the alley, leaving behind Dandy Don’s Donuts forever, and began making his way to the first office.
05:22:07 REMAINING
In just two hours, Lucas had been to a dozen different office spaces. Today the occupants of those offices, those cubicles, those reception desks, would find items they thought were long lost. A family photo, a card from a friend, even, in one case, a favorite scarf.
Now Lucas stood at the reception desk of the office where Noel worked. He pulled an envelope out of his backpack, smiled at the receptionist. “Dropping off a package for Noel,” he said, hoping he looked the part of a bicycle messenger.
The receptionist, bored, looked at the envelope that held the camping photo of Noel and her kids, oblivious to the magical totem inside. “I’ll make sure she gets it,” she said.
He turned to leave the office. No need to hide in the ceilings and utility chases now. He could use the elevator. He could walk out as just another person who belonged here.
Yes, he could do this.
TWENTY-NINE
04:59:55 REMAINING
Exhausted from all his visits, Lucas returned to the only place he now felt safe. The church.
Inside his own skin, he felt cleansed. But outside was a whole different matter. He was down to just a few hours now, and he really had no choice: setting up a meeting between Viktor and Saul was the only thing he could do. And hope that somehow—and he wasn’t quite sure how—he could get the bomb off his leg before it exploded and killed him.
He’d worn down his reserves yet again, and his body screamed for sleep. But he couldn’t. Not now. Even though he felt somehow lighter, cleaner, the last few days had exacted their toll: his reserves were bottoming out, his whole body a raw, exposed nerve.
Without bothering to look at the Blackboard or anything else in the church, he found the door to the basement, flicking on a light switch that illuminated rickety wooden steps into the darkness below.
Lucas descended the steps, moving slowly until he reached the bottom. Here, the yellow bulb above the stairs did no good; it was darkness beyond, because the basement had no windows of any kind. He found his flashlight, thumbed it on, and swept the beam around the room.
Like the upstairs, it was a huge space, unencumbered by walls or partitions; he could tell where walls had once been, but they’d been ripped out at some point. Just a few supporting columns remained.
In essence, the basement was a giant space. The beam of his flashlight moved past stack after stack of boxes. Most of them were labeled with years and names, but nothing else. At first glance, Lucas estimated a couple thousand boxes, but as he kept finding more rows, he thought his estimate might be low.
&nb
sp; He wandered down rows, and finally stopped to look inside one of the boxes labeled 1998—Sculley. Inside, he found the box segregated into two separate compartments. The first compartment held files. Inside the files were several photos—people in restaurants, people in offices, people in homes, with many of the faces repeated. Surveillance photos. Various scribbled notes, dot matrix printouts, facsimiles, and other documents were stuffed here as well. But the printouts were scrambled—coded, as Snake had said.
The other compartment held objects. A couple of DVDs, each marked with the word Archived, followed by dates within the past few years. Video footage, he guessed. Here, also, was what looked like a toy gun, some tape, a length of rope, something that looked like an unlabeled prescription bottle, and a tube of lipstick. All of the items, with the exception of the DVDs, were sealed in plastic bags, as if they were valuable pieces of evidence that couldn’t be contaminated. He smiled. Yes, he recognized that tendency; his own mementos, his totems, had always been precious to him, and he wanted to keep them safe. That’s why he’d always arranged them in such a precise pattern, because . . . because they had to be. Because the Dark Vibration inside demanded it.
He opened another box nearby and found the same kind of twocompartment setup. Satisfied all of the boxes contained essentially the same thing, he felt oddly comforted.
He’d given up his own totems, locked the door on that part of himself this morning. But now he was surrounded by thousands of totems—more than he had ever seen before. Ironic, yes. But Lucas was too tired for irony.
He moved down the row to the far end of the basement and found a giant shelving unit built into the back wall. The shelves held several tools, including one that caught his eye right away.
A hacksaw.
After he converted his flashlight to an electric candle and set it on one of the shelves, he sank to the floor, the hacksaw in his hands.
A hacksaw was built to cut through metal, of course. The kind of metal that was wrapped around his leg right now. He pulled up his pant leg and looked at the manacle, a merry-go-round of red lights illuminating its surface. He could cut it off right now, and what would it really matter if the bomb exploded? This was a nice place to end it all, as nice a place as any, this church where he felt . . . comfortable.
He held the saw up in the dim light from his electric candle, ran his finger lightly along the teeth of the blade.
A hacksaw could also cut bone.
That was another option; just cut through the bone of his lower leg above his ankle. He’d need to get to a hospital eventually, yes, but he could stanch the bleeding with a makeshift tourniquet made from his belt. Then he could make a plan for using the hospital, put together an alias so he couldn’t be tracked.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but he would live.
Resolved, he took a deep breath, rolled up his pant leg to his calf. He set the blade of the hacksaw just an inch above the blinking manacle, closed his eyes for a second, drew the blade across the skin just a bit. A thin trail of blood followed the fresh cut.
Do it, do it, do it.
Another deep breath.
Doitdoitdoit.
Uncharacteristically, he felt tears welling in his eyes, and within seconds, he was sobbing, the tears flowing for the first time in years. For the first time since he’d been a young boy in the orphanage. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the hollow thunk of the hacksaw falling to the dirt floor.
Lucas pulled his legs toward his body, wrapped his arms around them, and pulled himself into a tight ball.
The tears came harder than ever.
04:27:04 REMAINING
While in the fetal ball, he turned everything inward and blocked the outside world. It was like his deep relaxation state, in some respects, but done in reverse. His observational state, which he had perfected after years of practice, heightened his senses, made him supremely aware of the world around him.
In contrast, the long minutes in the basement deadened all his senses, putting him into a coma of sorts.
In spite of it all, the crying and the coma were somehow cathartic; in an odd way, he felt refreshed. Unafraid, even. More like his normal self, which hadn’t experienced true emotions for so very long.
Maybe returning all his totems had been better for him than he’d realized.
He made his way back to the steps. Even his backpack felt lighter. How long had he been down there? Only twenty minutes or so by the clock, but it felt more like twenty hours.
At the top of the steps, he turned off the light switch and opened the door to the main floor of the church. Closing the door behind him, he paused in the morning haze and listened for several minutes. Even though the sun was shining outside, large swaths of the church, including the Blackboard on the front wall, remained shrouded in darkness. As if the building knew it had deep secrets to hide.
He was sure he was alone, but it was best to take a moment to listen anyway. While he was in his semi-catatonic state, he hadn’t been aware of his surroundings; he’d been drawn completely inside himself.
Satisfied no one was in the building with him at the moment, he started to move toward the main doors, his mind already chewing on possible sites for the meeting.
But something stopped him. Just a few hours ago in this church, he’d stepped up to the Blackboard and prayed for some kind of deliverance. Well, perhaps not exactly prayed, but he had stopped for a moment of silence, had let his fear and frustration and fury come rolling out of him in one long moment. Had uncaged everything fearsome inside him, letting it all out into the light for the first time.
And then, when he’d opened his eyes, he had seen a shaft of light and a bird, breaking away from the confines of this space. Something had happened in that moment, something he didn’t quite understand. And yet, he didn’t need to understand it to be part of it.
Perhaps. Perhaps he should spend another moment in silence. Focus his thoughts.
If there was ever a day he needed focus, it was today.
Lucas moved to the front of the church, flicked on the lights to illuminate the giant Blackboard, and dropped to the floor, closing his eyes. He centered his thoughts, breathed deeply a few times, opened his eyes.
Immediately, he felt as if he’d been slammed in the stomach with a sledgehammer; if he hadn’t been kneeling, the sight on the Blackboard would have brought him to his knees.
He gasped a few times, trying to get his breath, and felt himself starting to tremble. This was a new fear, something he’d not felt before, and it had been awakened in him in a fraction of a second.
The Blackboard had been changed sometime within the last several hours. The photos of the roughly two dozen Creeps were still on the board, attached to nails. And the strings that attached the Creeps to their current projects were still there. But now, all those strings had been rearranged, and all of them were attached to a single nail, holding a single photo.
A photo of Sarea, his one and only friend from the Blue Bell Café. The new project of every person in the Creep Club.
04:15:36 REMAINING
Lucas scrambled to find the TracFone in his backpack and paused to remember the number Sarea had given him; in a few seconds, he saw the numbers flashing in his mind, and he dialed them. No answer, her phone flipping to voice mail after just a few rings.
At the beep, he spoke. “Sarea, this is Lucas,” he said. “I need you to call me as soon as you get this. It’s an emergency. The phone number should be on your caller ID right now.”
After hanging up, he retrieved the number for the Blue Bell Café from memory and dialed it. After five rings, a voice he didn’t recognize answered. He asked if Sarea was working and was told it was her day off.
He hung up, unsure whether to feel relieved or concerned that Sarea wasn’t working. That meant he would have to go to her apartment. He’d been there before, without Sarea’s knowledge; the selfadmission caused his cheeks to burn as he thought of it, but at least he knew where to go. He hadn’
t been inside, of course; that was back in the days so long ago when he had his strict code of ethics that said he didn’t break into people’s homes. Since then he’d been in at least three private homes. So much for ethics.
He sprinted out the front door of the church, momentarily blinded by the bright sun—already hot—in the morning sky. And here he was, still wearing a stocking cap.
Yes, today was going to be a hot day. Unbearably hot. He scratched at the bandage attached to his cheek, as if there really were a wound underneath, itching and healing.
He started walking toward the Metro stop, then broke into a run after just a few steps. He had to hurry, had to get to Sarea. This was— what day? His brain was scrambled, misfiring, making his body feel foreign as he tried to run in it. Putting himself in danger, well, that was something he could handle. But to go after Sarea, the one and only person who had befriended him . . . that awakened a rage inside he was already having a hard time controlling.
At the station, he raced past a newspaper box displaying today’s edition, and the large headline slowed him for a few seconds: FUGITIVE SOUGHT. Another story on him, no doubt. He wanted to buy a copy of the paper and read the story, but he didn’t have time. All the same, he looked around suspiciously, scanning the people swirling around him for signs of recognition. No one seemed to be paying attention.
At least he had that going for him: everyone looked, but no one saw.
Lucas stripped off his jacket, going down to just a T-shirt, and put the jacket in his backpack.
He continued down the block, then into the construction zone blocking a portion of the street. He grabbed a hard hat off the folding table at the fence perimeter, put it on his head, and moved inside the fence as if he knew exactly where he was going.