“A glass wall that overlooks the campus. Ordinarily it’s quite lovely.” The applause from outside had become sporadic. “But I’m not sure I want to take a look, just now.”
“Can… could I go forward and pull him back in? Like I did with you? Would that work?”
“You’re talking hypotheticals.”
Low frequencies from the outside didn’t make it through the glass outer shell and brick walls. Higher frequencies fared better: Pops. Screams.
If Paul really was dead, it didn’t feel real. He had to get Will to safety before it did begin to feel real, and he fell apart. “Anyone…” Breathe. “Anyone likely to be working late on this floor?”
“No.”
“Okay. Let’s go. Quietly.”
One step at a time, gun in one hand and the other on Will’s shoulder, they moved toward the light at the end of the hall. Jack coughed up something watery and acrid for the thirtieth time, unable to contain it.
“Hey,” he rasped. “What’s that?” He pointed toward a dark, man-sized prism against the wall with one illuminated face.
“Vending machine,” Will said.
Jack spluttered again. “Does it…” Coughed. “Does it sell…?”
“No!”
There was no explanation for what happened next: Will threw himself backward into Jack, Jack stumbled, and then shots rang out from the end of the hall. The shooter ducked behind the corner as Jack and Will sheltered behind the machine.
Jack’s heart sank. The vending machine wasn’t going to stop bullets. “Will. Slide down. Get small. When I-”
The shooter popped back, squeezed off four shots. Three went wide, punching through a corkboard, blowing out clouds of particulates. One hit the machine, knocked a hole in the Perspex, exploded three cans of soda, and exited two feet above Will’s head. Jack responded by whipping out and firing blind, three shots. The shooter responded and Jack slammed back against the wall, air pressure pulsing with each passing slug. Jack’s best guess was that his pistol had maybe four rounds left. Maybe.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Is there some other way we can do this?”
The shooter opened up; Jack got low and fired twice. The shooting stopped-nothing but the ringing in his ears.
“Did…,” Will said. “Did you?”
“Hey,” Jack called out. He got to his feet, iron sights trained on what he was pretty sure was the right place: just to the left of the open doorway to the elevator bay. “Hey, man. Are you okay?”
The shooter popped out, fired. Reflexively Jack shielded his face and fired twice before his pistol clicked out.
They were both done.
The shooter stood there, a silhouette a little darker than the shadow in which he stood. The shooter’s gun hit the floor. Eyeshine blinked off, then on, and he toppled back against the wall. Gravity did the rest.
“Hey,” Jack said, moving toward the man. The shooter slid down to a sitting position, despondent, like someone getting bad news. “Hey, brother. Are you…?” It was dark, and he was half-blind, but the truth of the situation was clear.
Will said, “Oh dear.”
“Will,” Jack asked, “why isn’t he wearing black like the others? Where’s his mask?”
Will’s voice was reluctant, deeply sad. “Oh Jack… I’m afraid you’ve crossed a most unfortunate Rubicon.”
The shooter was wearing a buttoned beige shirt. Jack could make that out. There was an insignia on the short sleeve.
“Wait here,” his brother said. Jack heard something tumble heavily to the bottom of the vending machine. A seal crackled as it was broken, and he felt Will’s hand rest on his forehead. “Water. Open your eyes.” Will gently tilted his brother’s head back. Coolness was palmed onto his burning face. “Does it hurt?”
Jack didn’t say anything.
His vision improved. Details were clearer, edges sharper. The dead man came into focus. Jack let out a breath.
Quietly: “He was shooting at us, Jack.”
“He was just confused,” Jack stated. “Hiding, probably.” The badge on the man’s sleeve belonged to Monarch Protective Services. Not Monarch Security. Not a soldier. Just a rent-a-cop. Just a guy with an Xbox and a crappy car and a half-eaten pizza in the fridge. “I saw him outside. He knew me. From school.” If Jack hadn’t divorced himself from Will and Riverport six years ago he would have needed a job as badly as this guy, and he would have been wearing the same uniform.
5
Jack removed the man’s gun and two spare magazines from his belt. He stood, walked through the open doorway, past the elevators, and looked out the wall window. Will followed.
The geodesic undulations of the Quantum Physics Building’s laminated glass shell, lit from within, illuminated the surrounding grounds. Jack could see masked “Peace” troops down the length of Founders’ Walk. At the end of the path: the ramshackle outline of the protest camp. There, too, idiot-faced men, working, searching, carrying away limp forms in teams of two. Occasionally, single gunshots.
“What the fuck is going on?” He turned to his brother, his face an accusation. “Paul told me Monarch Innovations was funding the research. Why attack the building? The protestors? Where are the cops? The media?”
Will struggled to find words. The elevator beat him to it.
Ding.
Smiley-faced troopers flowed into the hallway with practiced precision-implacable, unfeeling-the first three dropping to one knee so the three behind them could also take aim.
PEACE.
This is what it felt like for Jack, meeting his death. Colors were richer, smells stronger, time slowed, each moment a meal. Some clown had posted a Far Side cartoon to the corkboard; the spalling around one hole in the vending machine shone like chrome. A moment returned from ten years ago, now clear as day: he had bought a beer for the man he killed.
Ten years. The Tavern. Jack had finished a late shift delivering pizza. He had met Paul at the end of the bar, a spot that smelled equally of hoppy microbrew and acrid wafts from the nearby men’s room. He and Paul had a few, and this guy had appeared and let them in on a secret: the Tavern was named for the owner’s love of Dungeons & Dragons. Jack had bought a round. They’d burned maybe a half hour and another round, and went their separate ways.
He remembered the moment, but he couldn’t remember the guy’s name.
Jack turned his attention to the present.
Behind their masks each of these six men with French-made weapons was still human. None of them questioned what they were about to do. Their armor looked so heavy and clean and important. Kevlar-gloved fingers squeezed.
Jack said, “Stop.”
They did.
Jack opened his eyes, his fingers splayed at the end of his outstretched arm. Beyond his fingers, the men, frozen in mid-action. Around the men a dome shimmered, like water. Like the distortion field that had sheathed the time machine.
“Is it weird that I’m getting comfortable with miracles?”
Will took a careful step forward, risked a closer look. “Do you know what you’ve done? You have deformed a very localized pocket of the Meyer-Joyce field.” Will extended a hand toward the shimmering bubble.
“Don’t touch it! What if it bursts?”
Will stopped. “We have to replicate this. Can you do it again?”
“Not if these guys wake up, no. We have to…” The bubble began to flicker, shimmer. “It’s breaking.”
Jack turned, snapped three shots into the window. Will yelped, and Jack kicked the panel out of its frame. It clattered and skidded off the dome outside. “Out the window.”
Will hesitated. Jack grabbed Will, reached into the bubble-it didn’t break-and yanked something from the nearest belt.
“Go!” He shoved Will toward the window. Jack’s brother, Will, braced against the frame. Behind them the ministutter failed.