G
abriella sighed the name over the phone. “I can't believe someone on our team betrayed us and sold Reese Clawson our experimental protocol.”
“And records,” Charlie added. He stood by the window of his Santa Barbara hotel room. The bedside clock read three minutes after eight. Charlie could hear the television playing softly in Elizabeth's room next door. He also heard a shower running. “At least we now know what Reese is doing with her group. But it still doesn't answer what role Trent and Shane play in all this.”
Gabriella pondered silently, then asked, “This woman who approached you in the restaurant did not specifically name Brett as the spy, did she?”
“Her name is Elene Belote. No, she did not hear who was behind the theft.” Charlie recalled standing before the maelstrom while guilt and remorse snagged every wrong memory, pulling him toward the swirling dread. “But I know it was Brett.”
He expected Gabriella to argue with him. But instead she said, “Belote sounds like a French name.”
“She's from south Louisiana. Very quiet. But precise. A typical intel senior analyst. Able to sift through junk and find facts. I'm convinced she's telling us the truth. Elene Belote has ascended. Or transited, as they call it. Many times. And she did it according to the system you worked out.”
“If you are convinced, Charlie, that is good enough for me.” But her compliment was robbed of potency by her tone, which was utterly detached. “What do you think Clawson and her team are after?”
“First, infiltration and secrets. Belote told us that much. So far they've focused on transit points they themselves controlled. But their goal is to penetrate enemy territory and escape unseen.” Charlie hesitated, then added, “We need to keep in mind what Massimo told you, how observers were returning to attack us. That sounds like Clawson and her team. It's the way they think.”
“You know this for a fact, do you? How they think?”
“I know what I know.”
Gabriella hesitated, then asked, “Will you tell me what is wrong?”
Charlie leaned against the side wall. The wallpaper was fabric with a rough weave. He could sense Elizabeth's feelings for him. They pulsed through the wall separating his room from hers. He could feel his own answering desire, woven into the wallpaper's design.
“Charlie?”
He dropped his hand. “You haven't asked the critical question yet. How did Elene know to come meet us? The answer is, she transited. And broke ranks. And asked her own question. Can you think what that question might be?”
Gabriella's silence was an admonition against his tone. Charlie knew he was being overly harsh. And he could not stop it. He went on, “Belote asked how she could help the others trapped like she almost was. The coma patients filling the ward they've set up. Elene Belote has seen for herself the horror they faced. There are nine of
them, Gabriella. Nine more people trapped in comatose states. Just like Brett.”
She moaned softly, “What have we done?”
“We didn't do this, Gabriella. Don't make things worse by taking on guilt you don't deserve. Belote knew that Reese Clawson might give lip service to keeping their casualties at a minimum. But if push came to shove, she would sacrifice them all to her goals. And I'm convinced her ultimate aim is to attack us. On our terms.”
Gabriella grew subdued now. Thoughtful. “I don't understand.”
“Elene Belote transited or ascended or whatever you want to call it. And she asked who would save her teammates from the same cauldron that almost swallowed her. And she was shown me and Elizabeth seated in that restaurant by the sea. Waiting for her. Only when she was close to us did Belote realize I was the one who had saved her.” When Gabriella remained silent, Charlie spelled it out. “It could only mean one thing. I go and I bring her back. And then I try to save the others.”
“No, Charlie. You yourself said how dangerousâ”
“This isn't a Q&A. We're not talking options. This
already happened
.” Charlie could hear the longing and frustration in his own voice, laced together with fear. “I have to do this, Gabriella.”
“But not alone.”
“That's how I always am. Even when I'm in Switzerland. Isn't that right? Out on the rim. With the other disposables.”
He knew he was being unfair. He knew and could do nothing about it.
Gabriella, however, said merely, “You are our guardian. And when we move, you will become our island chieftain.”
Charlie knew he should thank her. But all that came to mind was,
It's not enough.
Gabriella went on, “You cannot risk our future on what this woman has told you. Promise me you will not do this alone.”
Charlie returned his hand to the wall. “I have to go.”
“Charlie. Please. Let me do this with you.”
She was right, of course. Even in his state of ultimate frustration, he could see that much. “All right. We'll set it up by phone.”
“You promise me?”
“Yes.”
Even her sigh carried a musical quality. “Come back as soon as you can, Charlie. I miss you. We all do.”
He hung up the phone and stood touching the wall. Wondering if there had ever been a life where things looked simple, and all choices did not seemingly lead to loss.
U
nless I get answers I like, I'm walking.” Murray Feinne's face was tightly cavernous in the glow from the car dash. “I don't care what kind of pressure you think you can lay on me. Managing partners, clients, whatever. I'm done being played with.”
Trent sounded surprisingly calm to his own ears. “Who is pressuring you, Murray?”
“Oh, like you don't have a clue what I'm talking about.” The attorney's laugh was brassy with strain. “I should never have gotten involved with you two.”
Shane said, “Is that your answer?”
“I'm not in the answer business. Not tonight. Now tell me what's happening.”
Trent was in the rear seat. It was his normal position when connecting with strangers. Stay low, stay out of range. Only now he leaned forward and told Shane, “I think we should tell him.”
The leather seat rustled as Shane turned around. “You mean, everything?”
“Yes.” Trent asked the attorney, “What we say is confidential, right?”
“Everything you tell me is covered by attorney-client privilege unless I learn that you have committed a felony. I cannot be party to covering up a serious crime. Have you broken any laws?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Then I would lose my license and possibly face jail time for divulging the contents of our discussion.”
“Shane?”
Her voice went very small. “If you're sure.”
“I am.” Trent settled his elbows on his knees and launched in.
When he was done, the lawyer powered down the windows and turned off the car. The night breeze felt refreshingly cool. He spoke to the night beyond the front windscreen. “To recap, you dreamed you were seated in a classroom in the physics building, where an older version of Trent Major offered you access to new algorithms.”
“These experiences are more than a normal dream state,” Trent said. “The difference is unmistakable and instantaneous. And I have no idea if this character I meet is actually me.”
“Have you asked him?”
“I've tried.” The attorney had shifted to what Trent assumed was his courtroom persona. Crisp and incisive and tightly focused upon the facts. Which resulted in a heightened ability on Trent's own part to see and assess. “But I am not in control of either the experience or the conversation. I am too involved. The encounter is simply too intense.”
“You're certain this could not simply be your unconscious self projecting your current state of work forward to the next level?”
“You are forgetting how I met Shane,” Trent replied. “And then there is how we knew to come meet you at the sports club.”
“You had never seen Shane before that day?”
“I did not know she existed.”
“Ms. Schearer, do you concur?”
“With everything he has said.”
Murray tapped the steering wheel, frowning intensely. “Then this woman, whose name you do not know, and whom you insist you have never seen before, accosted you in the Starbucks on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara. She deposited a duplicate of a handbag that Ms. Schearer was in the process of purchasing. In it was an apparatus containing a software package we can only assume is not something generally available to all iPod users. Ms. Schearerâ”
“I think it's time you called me Shane.”
He looked at her for the first time. “You elected to follow this unknown woman's instructions. Which resulted in your own dream state.”
“It was not a dream. It was an ascent.”
“I have as much trouble with the name as I do the supposed process. Whatever actually happenedâ”
“It happened, Murray. I ascended. I hovered above my own body. I traveled. I returned.”
“âyou received a message asserting that you must journey to London.”
“The trip is vital,” Shane replied. “So is the timing.”
“So you can meet this strange woman who accosted your partner.”
“Vital,” Shane repeated. “Just remembering the experience fills me with that same intense pressure. I have to do this.”
Trent added, “Don't forget how the woman warned me before leaving Starbucks.”
Shane said, “And the threat was confirmed this afternoon.”
Murray asked, “You are certain it was Kevin Hanley you saw inside the Goleta State Bank?”
“Absolutely positive,” Shane said.
“And we were being followed,” Trent added.
Murray did not so much sigh as huff a hard breath. “I've got to tell you. Under different circumstances, I would call this the perfect time to cut my losses.”
“But you believe us,” Trent said. “Don't you.”
“Ever since we met, I've been facing a torrent of incoming fire. And for reasons I don't understand. My managing partner is furious. Not with me. I'm just the whipping boy. He's scared. I've never seen him scared before. He won't even tell me who's pulling his strings. Which means it has to be so far up the food chain he is afraid to even spell the name.”
Shane asked, “Does that mean you'll help me?”
Murray looked at her. “Where were you born?”
“Sacramento.”
“You will spend tonight in my guest room. I will make an urgent request for the hospital to supply us with a copy of your birth certificate. Tomorrow morning you and I will hand-carry it to the regional office of the State Department. I will explain that you have lost your passport and the nature of your trip is so urgent I am postponing a hearing in federal court to walk you through this process. Which I am.”
“Thank you, Murray,” Shane said solemnly. “Very, very much.”
He turned to face Trent. “You're not traveling with her?”
“I can't.”
“Do you have somewhere safe to stay?”
“I haven't thought that far ahead. I was mostly concerned with getting Shane off safely.” There were several hotels around the school that were lax when it came to ID's. “I'll find somewhere.”
“Do you have any money?”
“Some.”
Murray reached for his wallet. “Here's six hundred bucks. This is going on your account. And I'm billing you for these hours.”
Trent didn't like accepting the man's money but knew he had little choice. “Thanks. A lot.”
“When you get settled, phone my private line. Leave your address. Don't give your name. Do I need to tell you to avoid ATMs, credit cards, cell phones, all that?”
“No.” Trent folded the money and slipped it into his pocket. “You don't.”
“Why can't you accompany your partner to London?”
“Yeah, Trent,” Shane said. “Why not?”
“I have no idea.”
The attorney nodded slowly. “Given the circumstances, that almost makes sense.”
T
he mattress beneath Trent was lumpy and smelled of old sweat and spilled beer. The bare pillow stank of cigarette ashes. Radiohead thumped through the wall to his left. Shadows flickered across the slit of light below his door. His chest ached from Shane's absence. Now that he was alone, his reasons for staying behind felt empty as the room.
When he had arrived back at campus, Trent had been afraid to approach one of the cheap motels adjacent to the university. Courage was much easier to find when Shane was around.
He had decided to avoid the physics building for fear of reconnecting with the trackers. Using a coffee shop computer, Trent had hacked into the university residence files and identified a vacant room in the freshman dorm, the university's largest. He had slipped into the dorm as students had bounded out on a midnight snack run. Entering the room had been a snatch, as virtually none of the door-locks worked. All had been so repeatedly jammed with screwdrivers they were little more than decoration.
Trent showered in the stalls down the hall and dried off with his T-shirt, ignored by everybody. He returned to the room, lay on his bed, and rested. He did not expect to sleep. The noise bothered him, and the room was crowded with memories from his own freshman year, which had been awful. He had arrived at university at the age of fifteen and a half, the youngest in his dorm by over two years. He had been shunned. He had not known such loneliness since the first year of foster care. Now he lay on his back and missed Shane with a longing that wrenched him over to his side. He would move tomorrow. Where to, or for how long, he had no idea. He needed to rest and figure things out.
Finally he began to slide into sleep. The day's events and the long nighttime cycle ride left him able to push aside the din and the light streaming under the door and even his own uncertainties. He drifted away.
Trent had no idea how long he had been asleep when it happened.
There was no preliminary nightmare. His sleep state simply shifted, he focused with the now-familiar crystal clarity, and Trent found himself in the classroom.
Standing by the scarred front desk, Trent had the sudden impression that the nightmare's recurrence had served to separate him both from his normal dream state and from his external reality. Now the nightmare was no longer necessary. Some transition had been made. Trent sensed that the nightmare would not come back, at least not in preparation for another dream session.
He stared at his older self and saw a sense of approval, as though commending him for this newfound awareness. But all his older self said was, “You must have questions.”
“You could say that.”
“Remember that any scientific investigation is only as good as the initial inquiry. If you start with a bad question, your result is bad data.”
“You're saying my questions don't go far enough.” He watched his older self smile. “But that doesn't mean my questions don't have merit.”
“I wish you could hear yourself. This isn't the time for defensiveness. This is your chance to focus on the big picture. Which you can't see.”
“Without you.”
“That's right.”
“And just exactly who are you? Or should I say,
when
are you?”
The mirror image shook his head, the gesture carrying a sense of sorrow. “So little time together, and you insist on these tiny glimpses into a shattered reflection.”
“So what is it I
should
be asking?”
The mirror image smiled. “Now you're talking.”
When the three-dimensional image maker floated into the space between them, Trent protested, “I'm not done.”
He heard his own voice respond, “You can say that again.”
The images carried the same explosive force as before. But they had nothing whatsoever to do with new mathematical discoveries. This time, they were awful.
Trent watched in mounting horror as two scientists in some faceless corporate lab analyzed the data from the hard drives containing his doctoral thesis. Kevin Hanley watched approvingly from the background, accompanied by two truly bizarre-looking women. One was an ice goddess with eyes of burning wrath. The other was a stunted scarecrow who wore about her a shadow shaped like a specter. Kevin Hanley and the women listened as the two scientists described gleefully what they had discovered in Trent's research.
The next image showed the same two scientists working with a team of technicians, reshaping the prion molecule to fit Trent's design.
The next, and the redesigned prion molecule ate through the supposedly impenetrable isolation tank. The glass wall simply dissolved. As did the rubber seals around the door. And the wire leads bonded to the metal walls. And the filtration system. All gone.
The redesigned prion escaped into the lab. And killed everyone inside.
It moved into the building outside, replicating at an exponential rate. It remained an invisible gas unseen by anyone except Trent. It moved into the outside environment. It engulfed the university. And the city. And kept going.
It killed.
And killed.