“Jason.”
Just a few hours ago I was home, cooking dinner.
I am not the man they think I am. What happens when they figure that out?
“Leighton, could you come down, please?”
Nothing good.
I need to not be in this room anymore.
I need to get away from these people.
I need to think.
“Amanda.” I drag myself back into the moment, try to drive the questions and the fear out of my mind, but it’s like shoring up a failing levee. It won’t last. It won’t hold. “This is embarrassing,” I say. “I’m just so exhausted, and to be honest, decontamination was no fun.”
“Do you want to break for a minute?”
“Would that be okay? I just need a moment to clear my head.” I point at the laptop. “I also want to sound mildly intelligent for this thing.”
“Of course.” She types something. “We’re off the record now.”
I get up.
She says, “I can show you to a private room—”
“Not necessary.”
I open the door and step out into the corridor.
Leighton Vance is waiting.
“Jason, I’d like you to lie down. Your vitals are headed in the wrong direction.”
I rip the device off my arm and hand it to the doctor.
“Appreciate the concern, but what I really need is a bathroom stall.”
“Oh. Of course. I’ll take you.”
We head down the corridor.
Digging his shoulder into the heavy glass door, he leads me back into the stairwell, which at the moment is empty. No sound but the ventilation system pumping heated air through a nearby vent. I grasp the railing and lean out over the core of open space.
Two flights to the bottom, two to the top.
What did Amanda say at the start of the interview? That we’re on sublevel two? Does that mean this is all underground?
“Jason? You coming?”
I follow Leighton, climbing, fighting through the weakness in my legs, the pain in my head.
At the top of the stairwell, a sign beside a reinforced-steel door reads GROUND. Leighton swipes a keycard, punches in a code, and holds the door open.
The words VELOCITY LABORATORIES are affixed in block letters across the wall straight ahead.
Left: a bank of elevators.
Right: a security checkpoint, with a hard-looking guard standing between the metal detector and the turnstile, the exit just beyond.
It seems like the security here is outward facing, focused more on preventing people from getting in than getting out.
Leighton directs me past the elevators and down a hallway to a pair of double doors at the far end, which he opens with his keycard.
As we enter, he hits the lights, revealing a well-appointed office, the walls adorned in aviation photographs of commercial airliners and military supersonic jets and the engines that power them.
A framed photo on the desk draws my focus—an older man holding a boy in his arms that looks very much like Leighton. They’re standing in a hangar in front of a massive turbofan in the midst of assembly.
“I thought you’d be more comfortable in my private bathroom.” Leighton points toward a door in the far corner. “I’ll be right here,” he says, sitting down on the edge of his desk and pulling a phone out of his pocket. “Shout if you need anything.”
The bathroom is cold and immaculate.
There’s a toilet, a urinal, a walk-in shower, and a small window halfway up the back wall.
I take a seat on the toilet.
My chest feels so tight I can barely breathe.
They’ve been waiting for me to return for fourteen months. There’s no way they’re letting me walk out of this building. Not tonight. Maybe not for a long time considering I’m not the man they think they’re talking to.
Unless this is all some elaborate test or game.
Leighton’s voice pushes through the door: “Everything all right in there?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what you saw inside that thing, but I want you to know I’m here for you, brother. If you’re freaking out, you got to tell me, so I can help you.”
I rise.
He continues, “I was watching you from the theater, and I have to say, you looked out of it.”
If I were to walk back into the lobby with him, could I break away, make a dash through security? I picture that massive guard standing by the metal detector. Probably not.
“Physically, I think you’re going to be fine, but I worry about your psychological state.”
I have to step onto the lip of the porcelain urinal to reach the window. The glass appears to be locked shut by means of a lever on each side.
It’s only two feet by two feet, and I’m not sure if I can fit through.
Leighton’s voice echoes through the bathroom, and as I creep back toward the sink, his words become clear again.
“…worst thing you can do is try to manage this on your own. Let’s be honest. You’re the kind of guy who thinks he’s strong enough to push through anything.”
I approach the door.
There’s a deadbolt.
With trembling fingers, I slowly turn the lock cylinder.
“But no matter what you’re feeling,” his voice close now, inches away, “I want you to share it with me, and if we need to push this debriefing until tomorrow or the next—”
He goes silent as the bolt shoots home with a soft click.
For a moment, nothing happens.
I take a careful step back.
The door moves imperceptibly, and then rattles ferociously inside its frame.
Leighton says, “Jason. Jason!” And then: “I need a security team to my office right now. Dessen has locked himself inside the bathroom.”
The door shudders as Leighton crashes into it, but the lock holds.
I rush for the window, climb up onto the urinal, and flip the levers on either side of the glass.
Leighton is shouting at someone, and although I can’t make out the words, I think I hear approaching footsteps.
The window opens.
Night air funnels in.
Even standing on the urinal, I’m not sure if I can make it up there.
Leaping off the edge, I hurl myself toward the open frame, but only manage to get one arm through.
As something bangs into the bathroom door, my shoes scrape across the smooth, vertical surface of the wall. There’s no traction or purchase to be had.
I drop to the floor, climb back up onto the urinal.
Leighton screams at someone, “Come on!”
I jump again, and this time, I manage to land both arms across the windowsill. It isn’t much of a hold, but it’s just enough to keep me from falling.
I wriggle through as the bathroom door breaks down behind me.
Leighton yells my name.
I tumble for a half second through darkness.
Crash face-first into pavement.
Up on my feet, stunned, dazed, ears ringing, blood running down the side of my face.
I’m outside, in a dark alley between two buildings.
Leighton appears in the open window frame above me.
“Jason, don’t do this. Let me help you.”
I turn and run, no idea where I’m going, just blazing toward the opening at the end of the alley.
I reach it.
Launch down a set of brick steps.
I’m in an office park.
Bland, low-rise buildings cluster around a sad little pond with a lighted fountain in the middle.
Considering the hour, it’s no surprise there’s no one out.
I fly past benches, trimmed shrubbery, a gazebo, a sign with an arrow under the words TO WALKING PATH.
A quick glance over my shoulder: the building I just escaped is a five-story, nondescript, utterly forgettable piece of architectural mediocrity, and people are streaming out of the entra
nce like a kicked hornet’s nest.
At the end of the pond, I leave the sidewalk and follow a gravel footpath.
Sweat stings my eyes, my lungs are on fire, but I keep pumping my arms and throwing one foot in front of the other.
With each stride, the lights from the office park fall farther and farther away.
Straight ahead, there’s nothing but welcoming darkness, and I’m moving toward it, into it, like my life depends upon it.
A strong, reviving wind slams into my face, and I’m starting to wonder where I’m going because shouldn’t there be some light in the distance? Like even a speck of it? But I’m running into an immense chasm of black.
I hear waves.
I arrive on a beach.
There’s no moon, but the stars are vivid enough to suggest the roiling surface of Lake Michigan.
I look inland toward the office park, catch incoming, wind-cut voices, and glimpse several flashlight beams slashing through the dark.
Turning north, I begin to run, my shoes crunching wave-polished rocks. Miles up the shoreline, I can see the indistinct, nighttime glow of downtown, where the skyscrapers edge up against the water.
I look back, see some lights heading south, away from me, others heading north.
Gaining on me.
I veer away from the water’s edge, cross a bike path, and aim for a row of bushes.
The voices are closer.
I wonder if it’s dark enough for me to stay unseen.
A three-foot seawall stands in my path, and I scale the concrete, barking my shins on the way over and staying on all fours as I crawl through the hedgerow, branches grabbing my shirt and face, clawing at my eyes.
Out of the bushes, I stumble into the middle of a road that parallels the lakeshore.
From the direction of the office park, I hear an engine revving.
High beams blind me.
I cross the road, hop a chain-link fence, and suddenly I’m running through someone’s yard, dodging overturned bicycles and skateboards, then darting alongside the house while a dog goes apoplectic inside, lights popping on as I hit the backyard, jump the fence again, and find myself sprinting across an empty baseball outfield, wondering how much longer I can keep this up.
The answer comes with remarkable speed.
On the edge of the infield, I collapse, sweat pouring off my body, every muscle in agony.
That dog is still barking in the distance, but looking back toward the lake, I see no flashlights, hear no voices.
I lie there I don’t know how long, and it seems as if hours pass before I can take a breath without gasping.
I finally manage to sit up.
The night is cool, and the breeze coming off the lake pushes through the surrounding trees, sending a storm of autumn leaves down on the diamond.
I struggle to my feet, thirsty and tired and trying to process the last four hours of my life, but I don’t have the mental bandwidth at the moment.
I trek out of the baseball field, into a working-class South Side neighborhood.
The streets are empty.
It’s block after block of peaceful, quiet homes.
I walk a mile, maybe more, and then I’m standing at the empty intersection of a business district, watching the traffic lights above me cycle at an accelerated, late-night pace.
The main drag runs two blocks, and there’s no sign of life except the shithole bar across the street with three mass-produced beer signs glowing in the windows. As patrons stagger out in a cloud of smoke and overloud conversations, headlights from the first car I’ve seen in twenty minutes appear in the distance.
A cab with the Off-Duty light illuminated.
I step out into the intersection and stand under the traffic light, waving my arms. The taxi slows down on approach and tries to swerve around me, but I sidestep, keeping its bumper on a collision course, forcing it to stop.
The driver lowers his window, angry.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I need a ride.”
The cabbie is Somali, his razor-thin face splotched with patches of a beard, and he’s staring at me through a pair of giant, thick-lensed glasses.
He says, “It’s two in the morning. I’m done tonight. No more work.”
“Please.”
“Can you read? Look at the sign.” He slaps the top of his car.
“I need to get home.”
The window begins to rise.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the plastic bag containing my personal effects, rip it open, show him the money clip.
“I can pay you more than—”
“Get out of the road.”
“I’ll double your rate.”
The window stops six inches from the top of the door.
“Cash.”
“Cash.”
I thumb quickly through the wad of bills. It’s probably a $75 fare to the North Side neighborhoods, and I’ve got to cover double that.
“Get in if we go!” he yells.
Some of the bar patrons have noticed the cab stopped in the intersection, and presumably needing rides, they are drifting over, shouting for me to hold the car.
I finish counting my funds—$332 and three expired credit cards.
I climb into the backseat and tell him I’m going to Logan Square.
“That’s twenty-five miles!”
“And I’m paying you double.”
He glares at me in the rearview mirror.
“Where’s the money?”
I peel off $100 and hand it into the front seat. “The rest when we get there.”
He snatches the money and accelerates through the intersection, past the drunks.
I examine the money clip. Under the cash and the credit cards, there’s an Illinois driver’s license with a headshot that’s me but that I’ve never seen, an ID for a gym I’ve never been to, and a health insurance card from a carrier I’ve never used.
The cabbie sneaks glances at me in the rearview mirror.
“You have bad night,” he says.
“Looks that way, huh?”
“I thought you are drunk, but no. Your clothes are torn. Face bloody.”
I probably wouldn’t have wanted to pick me up either, standing in the middle of an intersection at two in the morning, looking homeless and deranged.
“You’re in trouble,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“I take you to hospital.”
“No. I want to go home.”
We cruise north toward the city on the vacant interstate, the skyline creeping closer and closer. With each passing mile, I feel some semblance of my sanity returning, if for no other reason than I’ll be home soon.
Daniela will help me make sense of whatever’s happening.
The cabbie parks across from my brownstone and I pay him the rest of his fare.
I hurry across the street and up the steps, pulling keys out of my pocket that aren’t my keys. As I try to find the one that fits the lock, I realize this isn’t my door. Well, it is my door. It’s my street. My number on the mailbox. But the handle isn’t right, the wood is too elegant, and the hinges are these iron, gothic-looking things more suited to a medieval tavern.
I turn the deadbolt.
The door swings inward.
Something is wrong.
Very, very wrong.
I step across the threshold, into the dining room.
This doesn’t smell like my house. Doesn’t smell like anything but the faintest odor of dust. Like no one has lived here in quite some time. The lights are out, and not just some of them. Every last one.
I close the door and fumble in the darkness until my hand grazes a dimmer switch. A chandelier made of antlers warms the room above a minimalist glass table that isn’t mine and chairs that aren’t mine.
I call out, “Hello?”
The house is so quiet.
Revoltingly quiet.
In my home on the mantel behind the dining-room table there’s a large, candid photograph of Daniela, Charlie, and me standing at Inspiration Point in Yellowstone National Park.
In this house, there’s a deep-contrast black-and-white photograph of the same canyon. More artfully done, but with no one in it.
I move on to the kitchen, and at my entrance, a sensor triggers the recessed lighting.
It’s gorgeous.
Expensive.
And lifeless.
In my house, there’s a Charlie first-grade creation (macaroni art) held by magnets to our white refrigerator. It makes me smile every time I see it. In this kitchen, there’s not even a blemish on the steel façade of the Gaggenau refrigerator.
“Daniela!”
Even the resonance of my voice is different here.
“Charlie!”
There’s less stuff, more echo.
As I walk through the living room, I spot my old turntable sitting next to a state-of-the-art sound system, my library of jazz vinyl lovingly stowed and alphabetized on custom, built-in shelves.
I head up the stairs to the second floor.
The hallway is dark and the light switch isn’t where it should be, but it doesn’t matter. Much of the lighting system runs on motion sensors, and more recessed bulbs wink on above me.
This isn’t my hardwood floor. It’s nicer, the planks wider, a little rougher.
Between the hall bath and the guest room, the triptych of my family at the Wisconsin Dells has been replaced with a sketch of Navy Pier. Charcoal on butcher paper. The artist’s signature in the bottom right-hand corner catches my eye—Daniela Vargas.
I step into the next room on the left.
My son’s room.
Except it’s not. There’s none of his surrealist artwork. No bed, no manga posters, no desk with homework strewn across it, no lava lamps, no backpack, no clothes scattered all over the floor.
Instead, just a monitor sitting on an expansive desk that’s covered in books and loose paper.
I walk in shock to the end of the hallway. Sliding a frosted pocket door into the wall, I enter a master bedroom that is luxurious, cold, and, like everything else in this brownstone, not mine.
The walls are adorned with more charcoal/butcher paper sketches in the style of the one in the hall, but the centerpiece of the room is a glass display case built into an acacia wood stand. Light from the base shines up dramatically to illuminate a certificate in a padded leather folder that leans against a plush velvet pillar. Hanging from a thin chain on the pillar is a gold coin with Julian Pavia’s likeness imprinted in the metal.