Linkage: The Narrows of Time (21 page)

“Dr. Ramsay, we need to speak with you. It’s
urgent,” a man shouted from the other side of the door.

Lucas walked to the door and looked through
the peephole, but could only see a close-up of a man’s face—maybe a
Hispanic—Lucas did not recognize him.

“Dr. Ramsay, please open up,” the man
insisted. “It’s urgent.”

Lucas hesitated, then decided to open the
door, expecting it to be someone from the university. Immediately,
a second man, a white guy with a dimpled chin, scrambled into view
with a rifle pointed at Lucas’ face. Both men were wearing combat
fatigues, and equipment packs, and helmets with
MP
stenciled
on the front.

“Wait, don’t shoot!” Lucas said, raising his
hands above his head.

“Are you Dr. Lucas Ramsay of the Astrophysics
Department?” the Hispanic soldier asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“Is your brother with you?”

Lucas moved a step closer to them with his
hands touching both sides of the upper doorframe. He looked past
the soldiers, down through the open railing bordering the catwalk
outside his apartment, and saw two green Humvee trucks parked
outside the manager’s office on the ground floor. To the west and
south, massive fires burned as looters took to the streets.

“He’s in the bedroom. What’s going on
here?”

“We’re here to take you into custody by order
of Major General Rafael Alvarez.”

“What the hell for?” Lucas asked, knowing
that martial law had been declared within the Tucson city limits a
few days ago.

“For the murder of one hundred and
twenty-seven people on campus. Both of you need to come with us,
immediately.”

“Look, you need to understand. It was an
accident. My brother had nothing to do with it.”

The lead MP opened a pair of handcuffs. “My
orders are to detain both of you. Turn around and place your hands
behind your back.”

Lucas tightened his grip on the doorframe and
braced his feet.

The other MP pressed the open end of the
barrel against Lucas’ forehead. Lucas stood firm. He didn’t believe
the soldier would shoot.

The MP cocked the rifle and flared his eyes.
His face burned a deep red color. “Just give me a reason, asshole.”
He pressed the barrel hard against Lucas’ scalp, pushing Lucas’
head back until it hurt.

“You really need to let me cuff you before my
trigger-happy partner decides to redecorate your face,” the lead MP
said. “Trust me. He’s usually not this patient.”

Lucas didn’t respond. He needed a moment to
think.

“You don’t have a choice here, Dr. Ramsay.
You’re both coming with us—one way or the other. Doesn’t matter
how.”

“Okay, okay. Just don’t hurt my brother,”
Lucas said, throwing up his hands. The MP pulled the rifle back.
Lucas turned and overlapped his wrists behind his back. He heard
the ratchets closing around his wrists as the shackles were
tightened against his skin.

The white MP pushed past Lucas and went into
the apartment. Drew was confronted by the soldier the moment he
rolled into the room in his wheelchair.

“Hold it right there!” the MP shouted, aiming
his gun at Drew. “Hands up where I can see them.”

“Drew, just do as they say. These guys mean
business,” Lucas said.

Drew nodded and put his wrists together above
his lap and allowed the MP to handcuff them to the arm of the
wheelchair. The soldier stood behind Drew as if he were getting
ready to push the chair, but instead, opened a Velcro pocket along
the front of his equipment vest and pulled out a syringe. He jammed
the needle into Drew’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Lucas screamed,
struggling to wriggle free from his captor. The Hispanic MP grabbed
Lucas’ head and pushed it to one side. He felt a sharp pain on the
exposed side of his neck, followed by a warm sensation spreading
out under the skin. He was about to pass out when a black hood was
pulled down over his eyes.

* * *

Sometime later, Lucas felt someone splash a
cold liquid on his face. He thought it was water—not a lot, maybe a
cup full. It hit him right between his eyes, which were closed,
then trickled down his cheeks and pooled beneath the side of his
head.

“Time to wake up, Ramsay,” a male voice
said.

Lucas opened his eyes. Two sets of car
headlights were lit maybe twenty feet in front of him, burning his
retinas before his pupils could adjust. His right cheek was lying
in loose dirt and his hands were restrained behind his back. He
could see frosted breath each time he exhaled.

Someone grabbed the back of his shirt,
forcing him to sit upright. He couldn’t see anything beyond the
vehicle headlamps except the indistinct silhouette of a
three-fingered saguaro cactus rising up to block a portion of the
star-clustered sky. Two desert bushes were in view, one between the
two vehicles in front of him, and another just to his left.

Drew was sitting on the ground to his right,
ten feet away. Lucas made eye contact with Drew, who tried to
speak, but couldn’t with a gag in his mouth. Behind Drew was a
rectangular hole about six feet in length. Next to it was a pile of
brown dirt with a long-handled shovel sticking out of the top of
it.

A slender silhouette of a person approached
Lucas, possibly a man judging by the size, interrupting the
high-beam glare as he moved from right to left.

“Who are you?” Lucas asked, squinting to
catch a glimpse of the man’s face.

“I’m Major General Rafael Alvarez, commander
of the Arizona National Guard,” the man said as if Lucas should
know who he was.

Lucas thought about Larson’s cryptic phone
call in NASA’s conference room just before the science lab was
leveled. He flashed back to Larson talking to someone named Rafael
and wondered if this Rafael was the same person. “Larson’s
Rafael?”

“He’s my brother-in-law,” Alvarez said with a
slight Spanish accent.

“What do you want?”

“Payback.”

“For what?”

“Jasmine Lynn Alvarez.”

“Who?”

“My daughter.”

“Sorry, but I don’t know who the fuck you’re
talking about.”

Alvarez grabbed the underside of Lucas’ chin
and lifted it up with force. “You killed my sweet innocent girl,
you son of a bitch. The least you could do is acknowledged that you
knew her.”

“But I don’t, I swear.”

“You two were on a date the night she was
killed, were you not?”

Lucas finally realized who the general was
referring to and replied, “Jasmine? The stripper?”

He got whacked on the left side of his mouth,
sending him crashing into the dirt. He spat out blood and dirt
before someone pulled him back up into a sitting position. His head
was ringing, and his jaw was stiff with pain—he hoped it wasn’t
broken. He tried to loosen it up with several open-mouth jaw
extensions.

“She was a bartender, you asshole,” Alvarez
said, shaking his right fist in Lucas’ face.

“Okay. Okay. We were on a date, but it was a
blind date. I never actually met her.”

“I doubt that. Her personal journal mentioned
you by name and included explicit details of your
relationship.”

Jasmine must have been as nuts as her old
man, or else she was stalking him. Maybe Abby and Jasmine were both
stalking them, setting up him and his brother for whatever was
going on. “I don’t know what she wrote, but it was obviously made
up. I didn’t even know her name until that day.”

“Stand him up,” the general said to one of
the two soldiers with him.

Lucas looked over his shoulder and realized
that the man holding his arm was the same soldier who’d drugged
Drew earlier in the apartment. Just behind the soldier’s feet was
another six-foot hole in the ground.

“Wait a minute,” Lucas said, trying in vain
to pull away from the guard. “You’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t
kill your daughter. It was an accident, we—”

“I know all about your supposed
lab
accident.
Randol filled me in on all your lies,” Alvarez said,
pulling his sidearm from its holster. He checked its ammo clip,
then cocked it. “Gag him, Thompson.”

“Wait, you don’t have to do—” Lucas replied,
but he couldn’t get any more words out before Thompson stuffed a
thick cloth into his mouth.

The general walked to where Drew was sitting
and pressed his weapon against Drew’s left temple. Alvarez told
Lucas, “You took my precious little girl away from me, and now I’m
going to return the favor.”

Before Lucas could even blink, the general
pulled the trigger, and the weapon recoiled as the gunshot echoed
across the barren landscape. The far side of Drew’s skull blew
apart, sending his limp body tumbling sideways into the unmarked
grave. Lucas dropped to his knees. His heart wanted to weep for his
brother, but his brain and mouth had other plans.

“Mother
fucker
, I’ll kill you!” Lucas
screamed into the gag, but his words were dulled to an
indecipherable level. He tried again to shake free from Thompson,
but again failed. Alvarez fired two more shots into the hole where
Drew’s body landed.

Alvarez turned to Lucas, pointing the weapon
at his forehead. “Now you know what it feels like to have a loved
one ripped from your life. Before I kill you, too, you’re going to
watch us piss on your brother’s body and then smother him with
dirt.”

The general’s cell phone buzzed and then rang
twice. Alvarez looked at the phone’s display and promptly answered
it. “Alvarez here.” A minute later, he climbed up on the roof of
his Humvee and looked off in the distance. “Yes, I see it.” Ten
seconds later, he ended his call with, “Yes, ma’am, right away.”
The nimble general jumped down from the vehicle, before telling the
second soldier, “Rodriquez, you’re with me.”

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“That was the governor. Another energy field
is heading toward the capitol building. She wants us there
ASAP.”

“Sir, what do you want me to do with this
one?” Thompson asked, still holding on to Lucas’ arm.

“Finish it, and then bury them both,” Alvarez
said before sliding into the front passenger seat of the
Humvee.

“Gladly, sir.”

Rodriquez sat behind the wheel and started
the truck. He shifted it into reverse and spun the tires hard,
sending a hail of rocks and dust at Thompson and Lucas. The Humvee
made a one-eighty, before darting off in the same direction as the
general had been looking when he was perched on top of his
vehicle.

Blue-white rage battled with screaming grief
and coursed through Lucas, making it difficult for him to think
straight. He stood up and tried to turn around to attack Thompson,
but the soldier punched him in the left kidney before he could
complete his spin. Lucas gasped and fell to his knees.

Thompson leaned in close, forehead to
forehead and, pressing the razor-thin edge of a long-handled knife
to Lucas’ throat, and said, “Britney and Carl, Junior,” he said
with fury in his words.

“What?” Lucas replied with half breath,
trying not to scrape his throat muscles across the man’s blade.

"My wife and unborn son. Two of the people
you killed on campus,” Thompson said.

Lucas’ mind filled with a vision of the
pregnant woman and her friend being swallowed up by the energy
field eating its way across the grassy mall.

Thompson pushed in close to Lucas’s face.
“I’m going to enjoy bleeding you, slow.”

Lucas rammed his forehead into the soldier’s
nose, making Thompson stumble backward and land flat on the ground,
face up. Lucas sprang to his feet and hustled to Thompson’s
position. He jumped high into the air, aiming both of his knees at
the man’s face. He heard a crackling snap when they made
impact.

Lucas rolled off the soldier, dodging a
steady stream of blood jetting out of the man’s nose. Thompson’s
eyes were closed and his limbs weren’t moving, but Lucas could see
the soldier’s breath puffing into the night air. Thompson’s knife
was a few feet beyond his head, thrown clear by the man’s
tumble.

His heart howled for revenge, demanding that
he finish Thompson off for his part in Drew’s death. An eye for an
eye, his heart screamed. Go ahead and do it; do it now. No one will
blame you. This man, along with Alvarez and Rodriquez, deserved to
die.

Lucas agreed and was eager to play the role
of the Reaper. He raised his right foot until his thigh was level
with his waist, ready to crush Thompson’s face. The instant before
he unleashed his wrath, sanity broke through the cyclone of rage
consuming his thoughts. He stared at Thompson’s bloody face, seeing
him not as a guilty soldier, but as a young husband, not much older
than Lucas was. He thought about Thompson’s pregnant wife and
unborn son who were killed by the rampaging dome. If they had been
his family, wouldn’t he have responded the same way? In fact,
wasn’t he about to do the very same thing—wield the sword of
vengeance for a loved one? If he took Thompson’s life, he would be
no better than those who just murdered his brother. He wasn’t a
killer; he was a scientist. If he snuffed out this man’s life, how
could he live with himself?

Lucas lowered his leg slowly and backed away.
No longer consumed with exacting revenge, his heart swelled with an
overwhelming desire to hold his little brother in his arms—he
needed to say goodbye. Then he intended to take Drew’s body back
home for a proper burial.

He knelt down next to Thompson to search the
man’s pockets. Lucas’ hands were still cuffed behind his back,
making it difficult to see what he was doing. He found an aluminum
key in a third pocket; he hoped it was the right one. He fumbled
with the key, trying to insert it blindly into the handcuff’s
keyhole. It took several attempts, but he finally managed to unlock
the restraints and free himself.

He removed the gag from his mouth and ran to
Drew’s grave. When he looked into the hole, his brother’s body
wasn’t there; only a muddy pool of red liquid remained along the
bottom.