“Boy Scouts on the scene said the ground just started burning, followed by the trees. I know it sounds crazy, but—”
“Not at all,” Donati said, seeming to picture it in his mind. “A fissure or crack going deep down beneath the surface.”
“But the fire—”
“Caused by immeasurable heat originating at the Earth’s core, pushed upward by the pressure to vent.” His eyes seemed to catch fire. “Where’s this iPad?”
“I told you, it was stolen.”
“By who?”
“Some guy at the football game last night.”
“A student?”
“No, a guy. A man. I didn’t recognize him.”
But he smelled like tire rubber and motor oil, Sam had to stop herself from adding.
“Can you erase the iPad’s contents remotely?”
“I’m not—”
“There must be a way. Call Apple. Find out. Now. Immediately.”
“I haven’t finished yet. The thing is, these four incidents are—”
“Connected, Dixon?”
“I was going to say they occurred from a time standpoint in chronological order from west to east following in perfect synchronicity corresponding to—”
“The curvature of the Earth,” Donati completed in a hushed voice, his gaze so distant now it made Sam think he was staring through the wall and not just at it.
“How did you know that, Doctor?”
He fixed his gaze upon her, as if realizing Sam was before him for the first time. “Know what?”
“What you just said?”
“About what?”
“Following the curvature of the Earth.”
His eyes narrowed, taking on an intensity Sam had never seen in them before, along with something … else. “You didn’t hear me say that.”
“I didn’t?”
“None of it, Dixon, not a single word. In fact, you never uncovered these findings and we never had this conversation. In fact, you weren’t even here today.”
“I wasn’t?”
“I don’t even recognize you, know your name. Where’d you get that ID? Security, security!” Then Donati’s voice lowered. “You have your data backed up?”
“Well, I,” Sam started, embarrassed, “I thought I had backed it to the Cloud but I must’ve messed up.”
“Messed up?”
“When I tried to retrieve my research at home last night, it was gone. All of it.”
“Never mind,” Donati interjected. “I don’t want to hear it anyway, don’t want to know. We never had this conversation. In fact, you never came into work. Called in sick with a cold, right?”
Samantha feigned a sneeze.
“Thought so, Dixon. It’s going around. Home with you now, home with you right now. Like you were never here, because you weren’t. Be gone with you. Go!” Donati closed his eyes. “When I open them, you’ll be gone. Poof! Like magic.”
Sam backed up, angling for the exit.
“Dixon?” Donati said, eyes still squeezed shut. “I can’t see you, Dixon!”
She didn’t answer, almost to the door now.
“Dixon?”
She was through the door when she heard Donati’s voice again, realizing in that moment what else she’d seen in his eyes:
Fear.
19
EMERGENCY RESPONSE
DR. DONATI ENTERED HIS office and locked the door behind him. Then he braced a chair against the latch to further impede anyone from opening it. He visualized masked, dark-clad storm troopers bursting in with weapons fixed on him before he could complete the call he needed to make.
Among NASA’s various duties and responsibilities, both defined and undefined, was watchdog. Combing the reams of collected data to evaluate potential threats, hostile and otherwise, looming beyond this world. It was a nebulous duty with no clear chain of command or reporting procedure, with the exception of a single telephone exchange activated by pressing a three-number sequence followed by the star key.
Donati had been involved in the formation of such a procedure, at least peripherally, eighteen years before, but had never had reason to use it. It had been christened “Janus,” after the Greek god who presided over both war and peace, beginnings and ends, since any otherworldly discovery that could help the world could also destroy it, and visaversa.
But no such duality existed in the pattern of events Samantha Dixon had uncovered today, any more than it had in the similar pattern he’d uncovered eighteen years before.
How could I have missed it?
Perhaps because he wanted to, Donati thought, as he pressed out three numbers and touched the star key.
The line on the other end didn’t ring. There was a click, followed by dead air.
“Donati, Thomas W.,” he said, knowing the words were being processed for audio recognition to confirm his identity and thus the potential veracity of the warning he was about to issue. “NASA, Ames Research Center. Designation Peter-Victor-Charlie-seven-four-one-X-ray.”
Donati stopped, nothing but more dead air greeting him through the silence.
“I’m calling a Janus alert. Probability high.” Then, after taking a deep breath, “Threat level extreme,” he added.
Because it was happening again.
They were coming back.
FOUR
ASHES TO ASHES
No one can confidently say
that he will still be living tomorrow.
—EURIPIDES
20
PAYNE AND PAIN
DR. PAYNE STARED AT THE phone, willing it to ring. The results of the second CT scan on Alex Chin, which had ended with every circuit and chip in the machine being fried, were displayed on the computer screen before him. Identical in all respects to the first scan that had been done, with one exception.
The area, the spot in question, was even more pronounced, as if it were …
What?
… growing? No, Payne thought, that wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t growing so much as, well, spreading. His initial thought was some kind of lesion tied to the blow the boy had suffered on the football field. Or, perhaps, that blow had aggravated an existing flaw or hot spot that had been there since birth. He was no expert, no neurosurgeon, and, truth be told, he needed a true expert, a specialist not to be found on staff here at the California Pacific Medical Center. So he’d e-mailed the results of both scans to a former teacher of his who was an expert in the field of brain function and abnormality with a request to call him back as soon as he’d reviewed the findings.
The phone rang and Payne jerked the receiver from its hook, fumbling it to his ear.
* * *
Alex had been undergoing tests for hours now, a steady, nonstop stream of them ever since the CT scan machine seemed to blow a gasket. The experience clung to his mind, rattling him no end.
It was my fault. I did it.
Of course, that was ridiculous. Of course, it had no basis in fact. But that’s what Alex felt and it was a feeling he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried, any more than he could shake the memory of the tentacled machines wheeling themselves about the room even though they’d never been there at all.
Every test they did when he was first admitted following his exam in the emergency room was repeated, and now additional ones had been ordered.
His father wasn’t answering his phone; his mother wasn’t answering her phone.
He wanted to go home.
He wanted to play football again.
But, for the moment, anyway, neither was happening and Alex found himself filled with fear that Dr. Payne hadn’t reappeared because he had nothing good to say. He’d hinted as much earlier. Now the doctor’s suspicions must have been confirmed and he was waiting to reach Alex’s parents before delivering the news.
Maybe, though, he couldn’t reach them, either. Or maybe they weren’t answering Alex’s calls because they were trying to figure out how to tell him.
Whatever the ca
se, Alex could no longer just lie here and wait. The room didn’t even have a television, and he was pissed he’d missed a visit from Coach Blu and some of his Wildcat teammates who’d shown up just after he was taken to have the repeat scan done. So he’d go back to his own room and wait there for Payne to deliver the news.
Bad news, Alex found himself convinced.
I’m done with this place.
And with that he hopped off the gurney, bare feet touching down, already in motion for the door.
* * *
Alex was late. No surprise, since he was always late.
Samantha shifted the backpack containing the books she needed for tonight’s tutoring session from her right shoulder to her left and rang the bell again.
Still no answer.
Sam stepped back, took out her iPhone but saw, strangely, NO SIGNAL lit up in the upper left corner before she could try his number. Then she turned her gaze on the street, wondering if she should wait a bit longer. The fact that Alex was supposed to have been released from CPMC already, of course, didn’t mean it had actually worked out that way. But the night air was damp and chilly, and Sam didn’t want to linger out here for nothing.
Maybe the bell’s broken. Maybe they couldn’t hear me knocking because they’re in the kitchen.
Worth a try, Sam figured, and walked around to the rear of the Chin family’s cozy bungalow in Millbrae, a design better known as “California Craftsman” in this part of the state. A nice contrast to her family’s ramshackle, sort of modern Colonial in the hippie throwback town of Moss Beach, farther south on the peninsula. Perfect for her hippie-throwback parents but not always the right fit for Samantha, who felt better suited to a more staid community like Southern Hills.
She reached the back door to find it slightly ajar.
“Hello?” she called softly, eased it inward a few more inches. “Hello?”
Alex’s parents were wonderful. Friendly, sweet, open, and caring. They always made her feel at home, enough so that she felt comfortable opening the door all the way but stopped short of entering.
“Mrs. Chin?” she called to Alex’s mother, who always offered her tea.
There was no answer. But, as she stood there just inside the kitchen, Tabby, their indoor-outdoor cat, let out a squeal and burst past her, racing through the yard.
Sam reeled backward, clutching her chest. She nearly slipped down off the stairs and found herself back on the grass, heart hammering against her ribs.
Okay, I tried.…
Sam walked around the side of the house, readying her car keys. But then she heard voices coming through an open window on that side: muffled, harsh voices. Maybe Alex was inside watching a video or something. That’s what the voices reminded her of. No wonder he hadn’t heard her knocking!
Then one of the voices she’d thought sprang from a DVD demanded, “Where is he?”
She heard sobs, pressed herself closer to the drawn drapes.
“Not here!” she heard Alex’s mother plead. “He’s not here!”
An Chin should have been smiling and offering her tea, not sounding so scared and desperate.
Call the police!
Sam fumbled the phone from her jeans. She hit the HOME button to no effect. Pressed it again.
Nothing. Not even a NO SIGNAL warning.
Sam thought of fleeing, of getting somewhere to a phone that worked to call the police. But she couldn’t just leave the Chins alone like this, had to help them herself if she could.
And then she heard the crash.
21
WRITTEN IN BLOOD
“DR. TESTONI,” PAYNE GREETED, RECOGNIZING the area code in the caller ID, “thanks for getting back to me so quickly.… Yes, I quite agree. Most unusual, I’d say even unprecedented.… Of course.… No, we checked the machine thoroughly after the first scan and it was found to be in perfect working order.… The second scan?… Yes, that was precisely my impression too.… I considered that, but the spot appears to be too big.… What? No, I never—It’s impossible. The boy couldn’t possibly live with such a … Did you say for—”
A screech of static pierced Payne’s eardrum. The receiver with Dr. Testoni on the other end slipped from his grasp and rattled to the floor. Suddenly Payne’s head was pounding, as if in the throes of a terrible migraine that left him dizzy and nauseous, the room’s light suddenly seeming overly bright even though only the overhead fixture was switched on. He looked up, toward the doorway.
Saw the dark shape of a man standing there, so tall his head stretched to the top of the frame.
“Hang up the phone, Doctor.”
* * *
Alex passed no one on the trek back to his room, not a single, solitary soul. Sure, it was getting late, but this was a hospital and a busy one at that. Didn’t patients need to be checked? Weren’t doctors and nurses always about patrolling, the way they did on TV?
Apparently not, judging by the two abandoned nurses’ stations and three empty hallways later, including the one on his room’s floor. The hall lighting seemed dim, as if the hospital were trying to save money by turning the power down after a certain hour. But as Alex turned the corner for his own room, the dim lighting from a single lamp allowed him to see flickers of shadowy movement inside. Something, someone, was shifting about, the lamp’s bulb enough to splash a glimpse of its shadow across the hallway floor.
Alex froze, then ducked back behind the bend in the corridor. If a nurse or orderly emerged, he’d know he was suffering from paranoia at the hands of something no more monstrous than a malfunctioning CT scanner. But no one emerged. The flickering shadow disappeared, no nurse, orderly, or anyone else following it out.
Paranoid or not, he knew now that someone was in there, waiting for him. Not just a shadow this time.
So what now? Where to go?
Not where—to whom: Dr. Payne, he of the absolute worst name for a physician. That morning his parents had told Alex they’d just come downstairs from seeing him, which placed Payne’s office on the fourth floor, the one floor in the hospital above this one.
Alex started back toward the elevators, then changed his mind and headed for the stairs instead.
* * *
The crash sounded like something hitting the floor hard, and froze her hand on the doorknob. Then Sam heard the front door open and slam.
Someone spoke. At least, it sounded like speech. But, eerie, as if …
… they were speaking through some kind of tube.
“We wait.”
“How long for?” another voice answered.
“Until we get what we came for,” said a third voice.
How many of them are there?
Sam wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if the voices were coming from the front, outside the house. She padded softly across the grass toward the back door, eased it open, and tiptoed inside through the kitchen, into the murky darkness of the foyer and then the living room.
Stopping cold in her tracks when she saw what awaited her there.
* * *
It took a few minutes, but Alex found Dr. Payne’s office located along a row of others that were all exactly the same shape and size taking up both sides of the hall. It smelled different up here, less antiseptic and more like stale aftershave and deodorant that had lost its bite hours before. The door was closed, so Alex knocked, first softly and then loudly when the former produced no result.
“Dr. Payne?” he called, when the same held true for the latter. “It’s Alex Chin, Dr. Payne. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
He knocked on the door again, trying to be patient. It was late, sure, but wouldn’t Payne hang around to immediately gauge the results of the myriad of tests he’d ordered? Then again, maybe he had a girlfriend as hot as Samantha.
Whoa, did I think that? I meant Cara.…
Alex moved his hand to the knob, surprised when it turned in his grasp, unlocked. He eased the door open, the hallway light spilling inside.
And capturi
ng Dr. Payne facedown on his desk.
“Oh, God…”
Alex realized he’d said that out loud when he was halfway across the office. He reached Payne’s desk and gently attempted to rouse the doctor to see if he’d simply dozed off. Alex jostled Payne a bit harder when he failed to stir, then maneuvered him upright when he remained utterly stiff and still.
Dr. Payne rocked backward, his skull smacking the headrest with enough force to tip the desk chair nearly over. It jerked back forward and Alex stilled it with his hands jammed against its arms. Saw Payne’s eyes were locked open and sightless. A hole the diameter of a thick pen point—from which a trickle of blood had rolled all the way down his face—appeared to have been drilled into the center of his forehead.
Alex lurched away with a jolt, needing to remind himself to breathe.
My doctor’s been killed.
There’s someone waiting in my room downstairs.
And then Alex heard the thud of heavy footsteps coming his way.
* * *
Sam had taken extra-credit medical emergency classes for which she’d done several ride-alongs with local EMT rescue teams. Some of the scenes they were dispatched to were worse than she could possibly have imagined.
But not as bad as this.
The blood; oh, God, the blood.
Mr. Chin … Mrs. Chin …
Sam moved closer to see the way that An Chin was sprawled over the floor, her tiny frame so broken in the pool of blood beneath her. And Mr. Chin …
He was on the floor too.
His back was all she could see.
Then she noticed that An Chin’s arm was stretched out oddly. Her fingers were pointed toward something. Sam moved her gaze forward.
More blood. And something else.
An Chin had tried to scrawl something in her own blood, just a few words drying in splotchy fashion on the dark wood floor. Sam crouched to better read them.
ALEX
The bottom of the l and x had dripped downward, touching the top of a second word:
RUN
The second word was more scratchy than the first, the letters running close to the Oriental carpet on which the room’s furniture was set.