“And since you crashed the Snake,” Mac added, “we ain’t got no ride.”
A muscle twitched on the side of Eagle’s face. “I lost all power. I had no choice.”
“We know,” Moms said, shooting Mac a shut-the-frak-up look. “We all did the best we could.”
Nada tapped on the door, then swung it open. “Sit in front of the desk. Don’t get out of the chair until dismissed. Then you come back out here. Violate these instructions and I’ll kill you.”
Ivar nodded. After shooting at Harvey, nothing much was surprising him and he had no doubt Nada meant it. Everyone in the Den looked like they had a lot of experience killing, except for Doc.
Ivar walked in and sat in a hard plastic seat facing a large desk. There were several papers scattered on the surface. On the far side was a large, wing-backed chair, set in the shadows cast by large lights pointing directly at Ivar. He squinted, trying to see who was in the chair.
As far as he could tell, no one.
He heard a door squeak and then a man appeared, carrying someone in his arms. He was a tall, well-built man with silver hair. He ignored Ivar as he deposited an old woman in the chair, where she disappeared into the dark shadow. He went back to the door, then returned, rolling two IV drips. He reached into the darkness with the lines from the drips and did something.
Then he straightened. He turned to Ivar, shooting him a withering look, as if blaming him for this trouble.
“Do you want me to stay, Ms. Jones?” he asked. He had a slight accent, which Ivar guessed was Russian or Eastern European. When Ms. Jones replied, there was no doubt hers was Russian.
“You may, Pitr.”
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest, glaring at Ivar, who had no idea what he’d done to earn the man’s enmity.
“And,” Ms. Jones said, “I’d like the rest of the team in here.”
Pitr was obviously startled. “It is the tradition that—”
“Please,” Ms. Jones cut him off.
Pitr spoke in a louder voice, through the door, to the team room. “Moms. Nada. Please bring the team in.”
The door swung open and the Nightstalkers trooped in, spreading out along the rear wall, Moms and Nada in the center. They all looked like they’d rather be facing a firing squad.
Ms. Jones said, “Pitr, please turn off the spotlights.”
Pitr’s mouth flopped open, ready to protest, but he’d known Ms. Jones too long. He reached behind him and hit a switch. The lights behind the chair went off, leaving only dim recessed lighting around the edge of the room. It took a few moments for everyone’s eyes to adjust.
Ms. Jones looked somewhere between eighty and a hundred, give a decade or take a day. A withered old woman, skin lashed with red sores and old scars. She wore a thick gray smock, almost a sackcloth. Shunts went into her chest and one arm, the IVs feeding in whatever was keeping her alive. She had no hair, her skull crisscrossed with scars from surgeries.
“Yes, I am real,” Ms. Jones told them. “Although, Mister Doc has been right. There are occasions I was projected into here as a hologram, during some of my more difficult times.”
If this was a “good” time, no one wanted to see what she looked like during a “difficult” time.
“Since you all hear everything anyway, you might as well be present. I’m not sure how much longer I will be occupying this chair, and I think it’s time to stop some of the”—she paused, searching for the correct words, finally settling on—“pretense and mystery. We have”—she gestured with the claw of a hand at Ivar—“to give our latest member the option of joining our merry band and, if he decides yes, a name. Then there are some things I have to tell you, some of which will not please you.”
She shifted her gaze to Ivar, ignoring the others for the moment. Ms. Jones spoke so low, Ivar had to lean forward to hear her. “You do know, of course, that someone has to guard the walls around our civilization in the middle of the night? The walls between all those innocents out there who go to bed every evening, troubled by thoughts of such things as mortgages or the garbage that needs to be taken out tomorrow, or the car that is going to need new tires? The normal things most people worry about. There are even those who have grave, serious worries, such as divorce or illness or a loss of faith. But the things we in the Nightstalkers worry about, they are far graver than any of those worries.
“You know some of this because you were part of the event in North Carolina,” Ms. Jones continued. “You were there when these Nightstalkers behind you closed the Rift you helped make in the lab there.”
There was no accusation in the tone, but Ivar stiffened anyway and shifted uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair.
“Tell me,” Ms. Jones said, “what do you think Rifts are?”
“Ms. Jones, I’ve been in training—” Ivar began, but Ms. Jones cut him off.
“Do not try to obfuscate the truth,” Ms. Jones said. “I have neither the time nor inclination for it. Any spare moment you had from training, you were on the Internet, researching Rifts. And you are the only person we know of who actually opened a Rift and is still with us. Everyone else either is dead or disappeared, where we know not. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a reality and the reason why I’ve had you pulled out of training early.”
“Why now?” Ivar asked, and Nada half stepped forward to smack him on the back of his head for his impertinence to dare interrupt Ms. Jones. Ivar pressed on. “Colonel Orlando said there were security issues. Is that why?”
Ms. Jones shook her head. “Things have occurred, but we are not under threat here. There is a situation, but it does not appear urgent.”
Moms and Nada exchanged a what-the-frak? glance.
Ms. Jones paused and they could hear her struggle for oxygen for a moment. Then she spoke again: “What do you think a Rift is?”
“A gate,” Ivar said.
“To where?”
“Three possibilities,” Ivar said without hesitation. “Either distinct or combined. First, it could be a shift in space. So, that would mean to another place or even planet. If whatever is on the other side is even on a planet. It could be some other”—Ivar paused, then gestured a circle with his hands—“space. Second, a shift in time. The Rift could be punching through to the future. And, if time travel is invented in the future, that means they’re here now. Perhaps the past, but not likely. Third, the Rift could be to a parallel universe. When you start considering it might be a combination of two or all three, it becomes a bit overwhelming.”
Doc made some sort of noise but not enough to earn a rebuke from Ms. Jones, who was still focused on Ivar.
“What do they want?” Ms. Jones asked.
“They?”
Ms. Jones sighed and Ivar quickly spoke. “I don’t know. There were times in the lab when other Ivars materialized. I couldn’t quite figure out if I was real or one of them.” He rubbed his forehead. “I definitely sensed intelligence behind it all.”
“Did you sense a threat?” Ms. Jones asked, which caused Pitr to glance down at her in surprise and the Nightstalkers to fidget.
Ivar grimaced, obviously reluctant to answer. “There was so much going on — the Russians, the Nightstalkers coming, the other Ivars.”
Ms. Jones made a noise; what it meant, Ivar had little clue, but he was picking up the hints.
“Not particularly,” Ivar said. “Not in the lab. But there were no Fireflies there, like the team faced in Senator’s Club.” He gestured at the people behind him. “On the other side, whatever was there and trying to come through, I didn’t have a good feeling about.”
“‘Good feeling,’” Mac muttered with a snort.
“At ease,” Nada said in a low voice.