The greeting line seemed endless. Alex didn’t know how her mother and Sandra could stand it. Finally, everyone filed into the small chapel.
While the organ was playing something somber, a ping notified Alex of an incoming call. She ignored it at first, but it kept pinging over and over, evidence that whoever it was was calling over and over. She checked and saw that it was Ryan Oronzi. She rolled her eyes and answered it.
“Ever hear of just leaving a message?” she said.
“Alex? This is Ryan.”
“I know who it is. There’s this new invention—you might have heard of it. Instead of calling over and over, you can just send me a message, and I don’t have to interrupt my father’s funeral to answer you.”
“Listen to me. The varcolac… wait. Did you say funeral?”
“Yes. My dad’s funeral is going on as we speak.”
“At the Chelsey Funeral Home?”
“Yes.”
“In Media?”
“Yes! Did you just call to check the address? If you were planning to go, you’re a bit late.”
The organ music stopped, and the minister walked toward the front. His hair was long and gray, drawn back into a leather tie. He wore ecclesiastical black with a traditional white collar.
“They have to leave,” Ryan said. He sounded agitated.
“What are you talking about?”
“I found some data. It points to that funeral home. The varcolac is going to destroy it.”
“What? I thought you said the varcolac was contained!”
“It is contained. It sends particles back in time, remember? Sometime in the future, it’s going to break out and send a Higgs singlet back in time to this moment. Can you imagine the precision and understanding it takes to create the effect you want through the chain reaction of a single particle? It’s incredible.”
“I’m not interested in how incredible it is! Is there anything we can do?”
“We can… well. Never mind.”
“What?”
“There’s less than a minute left. Not much we can do, at this point.”
At the funeral, the minister turned to face the assembled guests. He had no eyes. Where his eyes should have been was just blank, featureless skin.
Alex leaped to her feet. “Sandra!” she shouted, just before her viewfeed went black.
She flicked the viewfeed aside, revealing her true surroundings: the front room of Sandra’s two-room apartment. She frantically tried to reconnect to Sandra’s vision, but she couldn’t. The varcolac’s presence must be interfering with the signal. The alternative—that the varcolac had already destroyed Sandra and her system with it—didn’t bear thinking. Alex had to get to that funeral home, and she needed to do it now.
She brought up the last image she had received from Sandra, the horrible, eyeless face of the minister staring out at the guests. She knew Sandra’s precise location as of seconds before, but she might have moved by now. If she teleported there, she might appear right in the middle of someone else’s body. Or she might arrive just as the building exploded.
It didn’t matter. Her sister was in danger. She had to do it, and she had to do it now.
Sandra stared into the eyeless face of the varcolac, at first too startled to react. It was happening again. She would be captured or killed, and all these people with her. She thought of her mother losing another loved one, or else dying herself. She was not going to let that happen.
The varcolac swiveled its head toward her, seeming to stare at her despite its lack of eyes. It opened the minister’s mouth and groaned.
It was an awful sound. It was as if someone had taken the mouth and throat of a corpse and played air through it with a bellows. It was the most terrifying sound Sandra had ever heard. The funeral director approached the minister, solicitous as always, but clearly disturbed by the varcolac’s face. “Sir, is everything all right? Do you need help? Should we call 911?”
The varcolac didn’t even look at him. It raised a hand, and the director cried out and clutched at his chest. He collapsed to the floor, shuddered once, and then lay still, his eyes staring out at nothing. The room erupted then, guests scrambling over one another and trying to push out the doors. Sandra stood, but she didn’t run. She was a police officer, sworn to protect the people of Pennsylvania. Besides, it couldn’t be a coincidence that it had shown up here, of all places. It had come for her.
She didn’t have her firearm—she was suspended, and besides, it hadn’t seemed appropriate for a funeral. She didn’t think it would do much good against the varcolac anyway. She had seen how Alex had fought in her demo, and knew she had some of those same capabilities available through the software Alex had copied for her, but by the time she figured any of them out, she could be dead.
Her mother still sat in her seat, staring frozen up at the varcolac. Claire was tugging at her arm, looking panicked. “Mom, you need to leave,” Sandra said. “Leave now.”
Suddenly Alex was there next to her. “Keep moving!” Alex said. “Don’t stay in one place.” She disappeared and reappeared across the room.
The varcolac advanced and raised its hand toward Sandra. No time. Sandra chose a spot on the other side of it and teleported. To her, it seemed as though the room had suddenly spun around. Across the room, where she had just been standing, a young woman that looked just like her clutched at her chest and fell to the floor.
“Alex!” Sandra screamed. But no, it wasn’t Alex. The woman was wearing the dark dress that she herself was wearing, and her hair was put up in the same style. The woman on the floor was her.
Disoriented, Sandra looked around and saw Alex, still very much alive. Then who had just died?
Suddenly, Sandra understood. The varcolac was a quantum creature, a probabilistic being. Like a quantum particle, it acted at more than one time and place at once, as part of a probability waveform. It had attacked her both before and after she teleported, and so just like her father, she had split. One version of her had teleported and appeared here. The other version had died.
Sandra flushed with horror and rage. She wanted to tear the varcolac to pieces, but she didn’t know what to do. How could such a creature even be harmed? It could kill every person here with a gesture.
For that matter, why was it even here? If it had the power to destroy a baseball stadium, why didn’t it just destroy the whole building, or the whole block? Why weren’t they already dead?
Nathan and Danielle, both in uniform, advanced on the varcolac, spreading out and drawing their sidearms. “Police!” Danielle shouted. “Hands on your head!”
“No!” Sandra yelled. “Get out of here! It’ll kill you!”
They either didn’t hear or didn’t listen. Danielle raised her weapon and fired three shots at the varcolac, center mass. It blurred, and the bullets passed through it, punching holes in the paneling at the back of the room. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.
The varcolac raised its hand toward Danielle, but suddenly Alex was there, standing between them. There was a brilliant flash of light. Alex fell back a step, but stayed on her feet. She pointed at the wall, and the varcolac flew toward it as if gravity had suddenly been turned on its side. The minister’s body hit the wall with an audible crunch. It fell to the floor, and for a moment, Sandra thought the fight was over, but the minister stood again. One of its arms was twisted at an angle, and it dragged one leg behind it, but it came at them, eyeless and terrifying.