“Most disconcerting,” the box immediately beneath that one voiced. “What degree of certainty can you provide as to the validity of your conclusions?”
“One hundred percent.”
“No such thing,” the box on the lower right insisted.
“There is this time,” Donati told him, told all of them.
Janus had begun years before as an amorphous extension of the NEO, NASA’s Near-Earth Object office, located at the agency’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, which monitored asteroids and the algorithms of their potential trajectories with regards to Earth. Its mission statement was to function as a kind of extraterrestrial NSA or CIA, responsible for dealing with threats posed to the planet from outer space. Unlike the NEO, however, Janus trained its focus on hostile threats, specifically from other life forms. Since its existence had been covertly circulated among the various departments responsible for monitoring space, primarily the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, three alerts had been called, all of them ultimately deemed to be false alarms.
Janus hadn’t been around eighteen years ago, and Donati was all too aware that it owed its very existence in large part to what had taken place at the lab he’d been working at back then.
“Doctor,” the sharp voice of a woman began, from the top box on the right side of Donati’s screen, “the purpose of this call is not to rehash your unfounded conclusions from eighteen years ago. Indeed, none of your claims involving the incident at your former workplace were supported by the investigation that followed.”
“That investigation was sanitized, covered up, eighty-sixed, deep-sixed, shoved under the rug. Should I go on?”
“Stick to the present, Doctor,” from Lower Left.
“Precisely, completely, and inalterably my intention, sir, sir, sir, and madam. Except for the fact that the repeat of the same, or similar, pattern is impossible to ignore.”
“You’re speaking of this sequence of naturally occurring phenomena,” said Top Right, the lone woman again.
“That all depends on your definition of ‘naturally occurring.’”
“I wasn’t aware there was more than one, Doctor.”
“Semantics, ma’am. In both cases, today’s as well as eighteen years ago, such phenomena may have been natural, but they occurred as a direct result of outside stimulus.”
“Your report on the laboratory explosion from eighteen years ago made that clear,” noted Top Right.
“The odds of those particular phenomena following the precise curvature of the Earth were estimated at a million to one. The odds of these similar phenomena today following that same pattern are closer to ten million to one.”
Lower Right’s voice grid began dancing a beat ahead of the actual sound. “Which in and of itself does not suggest the kind of hostile action your alert specifies.”
“At least not directly.”
Donati heard the woman in the top right chuckle mirthlessly. “Direct threats, Doctor, were what Janus was created to deal with, not theoretical ones.”
“Unless a particular threat boasted as a harbinger geoplanetary disruption. I’m convinced that such seismic disruptions are due to slight alterations to the Earth’s rotation, as demonstrated by them occurring along a specific line of curvature in both instances, accompanied by drastic spikes in electromagnetic radiation. So small and minor, infinitesimal, really, as to be completely immeasurable.”
“And what,” asked Top Left in a flat tone, “would you say was to blame for such disruptions both then and now?”
“Alterations in the time-space continuum.”
“Not this again,” the woman sighed.
“If you’d read my complete report on the circumstances surrounding the explosion of eighteen years ago,” Donati retorted, trying to stay calm and keep his voice steady, “you wouldn’t take that attitude.”
“But I have read it, Doctor—twice, in fact.”
“No, ma’am, you haven’t. Because the report I wrote back then was never circulated. It was sent back to me with a request to reissue, redacting certain information not deemed appropriate or professional.”
“And what does that mean, exactly?” interjected Lower Right.
“From a ‘scientifically enforceable standpoint,’ I believe was the phrase that was used. I suppose one purpose was to avoid a panic. The other, more relevant intent was to avoid the shuttering of the division that gave birth to Janus in the first place.”
“Am I missing something here?” challenged Lower Right again. “What division are we talking about?”
“Laboratory Z,” Donati said, speaking the phrase for the first time in years.
“We’re well aware of the existence of Laboratory Z,” Top Left reminded him. “The explosion, after all, destroyed it.”
“Laboratory Z’s existence, yes, sir, sir, sir, and madam. But not its true purpose, what it was chartered in total secrecy to achieve.”
“Janus didn’t exist then,” the woman in the top right added. “But we do now. Please speak plainly, Doctor.”
“Suffice it to say,” said Donati, “that our experiments were figuratively based on leaving bumps in the night. Until something bumped back.”
41
LATE FOR PRACTICE
ALEX DREAMED OF SHOWING up at football practice late. In the dream he could see the field, but no matter how fast he ran he couldn’t reach it. Like the world beneath him had turned into a treadmill, making it impossible to get anywhere at all. He kept looking behind him as his legs chugged uselessly, certain each time someone would be there in pursuit, with him powerless to escape them. They’d get closer and closer until they were upon him.
Except there was never anyone there.
The dream then dissolved into a replay of the brutal battle in his house, only his parents were still alive in the end because he had saved them. Then he was explaining to his coach that he was late for practice because he had to fight android-like beings who smelled of burned metal. Only it wasn’t the coach he was talking to; it was a life-size version of Meng Po.
Then he woke up and it was all gone, except for Meng Po, still grasped so tight in his hand that the statue’s impression was forged into his palm. His mother’s keepsake, symbol of luck.
Apparently it hadn’t worked very well. His parents were dead. And it was his fault. Somehow.
In other times when stress got to him, Alex focused on football plays. On reading defenses and calling an audible at the line of scrimmage. He reviewed hot reads in his head, being on the same page as his receivers when a blitz was coming. Recognizing a man-to-man defense so the middle would be open and, as quarterback, he’d be free to roam unhindered through the secondary. There was something incredibly fulfilling and cathartic about the sensation of his shoes pounding turf as the thuds of oncoming tacklers sounded in the narrowing distance. Those moments when the field was clear and all his life crystallized into a base simplicity where everything was perfect and nothing could go wrong.
As it had now. Badly. For real. A dream from which he wasn’t going to wake up.
“Alex,” a voice called at the edge of his consciousness. “Alex.”
A soft voice, soothing. Female. His mother maybe, not dead at all, all of that no more than a nightmare sprung from his getting his head rattled. He was probably still at the hospital, about to wake up in his room there.
“Alex!”
Louder this time, loud enough to rouse him. But he wasn’t in bed. He was standing in the shadow of a window covered by a flimsy blind that let the flashing letters of a motel marquee slip through.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked him, eyes moving to the wall crusted with peeling paint. “What did you do?”
Alex saw the drawings on the wall before him of monstrous machines rolling this way and that like a scene out of War of the Worlds. Like a giant page from the sketchbook still hidden in his bedroom.
42
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
ALEX LOO
KED DOWN AND saw the motel pen in his hand, ink splattered across his palm and fingertips.
Sam couldn’t believe what she was looking at. “I didn’t know you could draw.”
“I … can’t.”
“But, then…” She let her own thought dangle, unsure how to complete it until: “This is what you were talking about in the hospital, when you asked me about not remembering doing something.”
Alex dropped the pen, as if it were suddenly hot. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed, grimacing.
“Your head?”
“It’s killing me again.”
Sam sat down next to him, close enough so their legs were touching. “You don’t remember drawing all that?”
“I remember dreaming about football.”
She looked toward the wall. “That’s not football. And this has happened before, hasn’t it?”
Alex followed her gaze. “Not this big, but, yeah.”
The flickering lights from the motel sign framed Sam’s face in a way he’d never seen it before. Like a posed picture with just the right amount of shadows to make her features glow beneath the colors reflecting off her glasses.
“We need to figure this out,” she said.
“Figure what out?”
“All of this. Why it’s happening. How it may be connected.”
Alex’s gaze cheated toward the wall again. “To that?”
“You know what I always tell you about math.”
“To reason the problem out, to approach it logically.”
“Let’s try that,” Sam told him. She shifted slightly, bracing her hand against the bedcovers and inadvertently running her fingers across his thigh. “Where should we start?”
“You tell me.”
“No, you’re the quarterback.”
Alex frowned, making himself hold his stare on the wall. Sam realized he hadn’t slid sideways to put some distance between them, any more than he’d stiffened or recoiled at her touch.
“Okay,” he said, focus still locked on his drawings, “what does that remind you of?”
Sam followed his gaze. “The things we saw tonight, the drone things dressed as cops. Machines like nothing that are supposed to exist today. That must be where these sketches come from too. Somehow.”
“Except I’ve got a sketchbook at home I filled with the same kind of drawings before tonight.”
“Oh” was all Sam could think to say.
“And then there’s the ash man.”
“Ash man?”
“That’s what the guy I cut in half back home looked like to me. Like he was coated in ash.”
“How’d he show up the way he did?” Sam interjected. “Where’d he come from?”
“And how could he still talk when he should’ve been dead?” Alex added.
“But he didn’t bleed,” Sam remembered. “He didn’t even seem to be in any pain. And then he disappeared. Poof!”
“Like magic,” Alex picked up.
“Maybe exactly like magic.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was never there, not really. Like an illusion.”
“You can’t cut an illusion in half.”
“I said like an illusion. Like those fake cops were like robots.”
“Androids.”
“Huh?”
“What you call a combination man and robot,” Alex explained. “An android. Or a cyborg, like in Terminator.”
“What’s that?”
“A movie.”
“Oh, yeah. Never saw it. So the ash man wasn’t just a projection. He had mass of some kind.”
“You’re doing it again,” Alex said, rolling his eyes as he canted his body to face her.
“What?”
“Saying things in a way I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand mass?”
“Not the way you said it. We need to make a new rule. Whenever you do that, I’m going to say ‘time-out.’ Do this with my hands,” Alex continued, making a T with his right fingers stuck into his left palm, turned downward.
“‘Mass’ meaning there was something physical about him, even though he wasn’t really there. And something was there, on the floor when he disappeared, remember?”
“Like a shadow.” Alex nodded.
“Maybe that’s what he was, a shadow. Maybe he was a projection, but a projection with some type of gaseous mass, some type of substance included in the mix.”
“But the androids weren’t shadows or projections at all. They had real mass.”
“Until you tore them apart.”
“I did,” Alex nodded, “didn’t I?”
“What was it the ash man said about them?”
“He called them drones.”
“That’s right,” Sam followed. “And something about them being hastily assembled.”
“Because whatever brought them to my house must have happened fast, must have been unexpected. Sudden.”
“Even though the ash man said something about looking for you for a long time, even since you were born. So what changed? Why tonight?”
Alex shuddered, the memories striking him like an electric shock. “The hospital,” he muttered.
“Huh?
“CPMC. My doctor getting murdered in his office. Somebody waiting in my room.”
“That doesn’t tell us what changed,” Sam said, repeating her original point. “How the ash man found you all of a sudden.”
“Maybe it does,” Alex told her.
43
BY THE NUMBERS
“THE CAT SCAN,” ALEX continued, shifting his leg now so it rubbed against Sam’s. “Payne ordered a second one, remember? He told me the first one showed a shadow, said not to worry. Know what happens when someone tells you not to worry?”
“You worry.”
“Of course. Guess I should have figured.”
“Figured what?” Sam asked, liking the feeling of their knees pressed against each other.
“That something was wrong. Because of the headaches … the ones I was having before the game last night But I was afraid, afraid of somebody telling me I couldn’t play football again.”
“Like the headache you had when I came to the hospital.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Just normal shit from playing football.”
“You mean, like a concussion?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s football.”
“You said that already. But concussions are serious, Alex. Nobody ever examined you?”
“With the play-offs coming, I wasn’t about to let them.”
“So you didn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m telling you.”
“I meant before.”
“‘Before’ doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
Sam watched the lights of the motel sign flickering through the flimsy blind. She thought she saw an elongated dark shape projected against it, but she blinked and it was gone.
“That shadow could mean the results of the first scan were just inconclusive,” Sam said. “Something wrong with the dye or the machine itself, something like that.”
“What if it was something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Sam. All I know is that’s when all this started, with the second CAT scan.” Alex swallowed hard, fighting to cling to whatever composure he had left. But thinking it out, working the problem, took his mind off what had happened just a few hours before. At home, to his parents.
“Occam’s razor…”
Alex formed his hands into the time-out signal. “Occam’s what?”
“Razor. A principle postulating that the simplest answer is often, even usually, correct. That’s what you’re suggesting about the CT scan.”
“Why couldn’t you just say it that way?”
“I thought I did.”
“What time is it?”
Sam checked the watch her mother had given her a few months back for her eighteenth birthday. “Almost one.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Well, today, actually.”
“Sam,” Alex snapped.
“All right, tomorrow.”
“I’ve never wanted a day to end more.” Alex’s gaze turned downward, his bare feet kicking at the worn carpet, faded and stained in as many places as it wasn’t. He rested a hand on her knee that had rubbed up against his. “And I need new clothes. I feel like I’m wearing a dead man’s.”
“You are, but it’s not like your doctor was killed in them. Was he?” Sam asked, stiffening so much at the thought that Alex pulled his hand from her knee. She missed the feel of it immediately.
“No, but it still feels weird. I don’t know why, but it does.”
“We’ll get clothes tomorrow.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” Sam answered, trying not to sound as scared as she was feeling again.
“You need to call your parents,” Alex said suddenly. “They must be worried sick.”
“I know, but I’m scared.”
“Those men, the fake cops, came to my house looking for me. Any others, if there are any others, would have no reason to come looking for you.”
“I can’t risk a phone call giving away our location.”
Alex looked at her, swallowing so hard it looked as if the air had lodged in his throat. “You should go home.”
“Don’t go there again.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said, looking down once more. “I can’t ask you to stay with me.”
“You didn’t ask me. I volunteered and I’m not leaving you now.”
“On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“We figure out a way for you to call your parents. Tomorrow,” Alex said and ground his feet into the worn carpeting.
Sam found herself doing the same, the two of them finding a strange rhythm to the motion, seeming to work in concert.
“And I’ve got to get new sneakers. Dr. Payne’s are killing me.”
“You should try high heels,” Sam told him.
“I never saw you wear high heels, never saw you, you know, dressed up.”
Sam held his gaze. “Maybe you weren’t looking.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “Okay, so maybe I haven’t been to a lot of the dressy stuff.”