Authors: James van Pelt
“What are we doing?” Christy said, not out of breath at all. She seemed to have inherited her mother’s running stamina.
“I need to see what’s going on.”
“How?”
Peter pushed the plywood off the barbecue and retrieved the gun. He punched up the X-ray app. “I can see through walls with this.”
Inside his house, Dante and Dad sat side by side, their hands on their laps, in Peter’s bedroom. Blue-suit moved about quickly, searching the closet, and then his dresser.
“Let me see,” said Christy.
Peter handed her the gun. “They’ll be naked.”
“Yes?”
“Naked. This app erases everything except the ground and animals. Great if you’re hunting. No trees to block your view, but they won’t be wearing clothes. Thought I’d better warn you.”
Their faces were only inches apart, crouched behind the plywood so that anyone looking out Peter’s windows wouldn’t see them.
“You didn’t tell me about that app.”
“It didn’t occur to me.”
Christy shook her head before pointing the gun at Peter’s house.
Peter said, “Oh, I’ve seen you naked with the gun. It was an accident, I swear.” He held his breath. He hadn’t planned to tell her right then. The words sort of burst out.
“Big deal. I’ve seen you naked too. What’s Blue-suit going to do when he can’t find it?”
“Search the rest of the house, I’d guess, but Dante will tell him about my dad’s Fairlane, so they’ll come out here too. I’ve got an idea, though.” He took the gun back from her. Checking Blue-suit’s position, Peter left Christy’s backyard and entered his own. Moving fast, keeping his eye on the action on the screen, he stopped at his back door. “How could you see me naked? You’ve never had the gun.”
“What makes you think that?” Christy tried the doorknob. It twisted easily. “You should lock your doors, you know. Anyone can come from the alley to your house. Mom and Dad have two deadbolts on ours.”
“Sure. I’ll talk to Dad about it later. But you’ll notice the bad guy came through the front door, and Dad let him in. Locks wouldn’t have helped.” He checked where Blue-suit was one more time, then closed the X-ray app, brought up the menu, and pressed another icon. “The plan is, we go in and put Blue-suit to sleep.”
“Then what?”
“That’s as far as my planning has gone. We can talk about it while he’s unconscious.”
She nodded. “Your bedroom window faces mine.”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted to know when I’ve seen you naked. I didn’t need the gun. Your bedroom window faces mine. Most people wear a towel when they get out of the shower. You don’t. I suppose with just you and your dad, you don’t think about it.”
Flabbergasted, Peter said, “Your bedroom window is always draped!”
“That’s because yours never is. Are we going to do this, or what?”
He opened the door, grateful that Dad hated squeaks. The hinges of every door in the house were regularly lubricated. The kitchen and hallway floor, though, creaked if you didn’t know where to step. Not that it would have mattered. Blue-suit was shouting. “Where else would he have hidden it? I don’t have time to mess with you two. I get my property back now or life becomes ugly for you both.”
Peter took a deep breath, stepped into the doorway with the gun raised, and pulled the trigger. Blue-suit didn’t even have time to look surprised before he crumpled. Both Dante and Peter’s dad fell backwards onto the bed.
“Shoot. I didn’t think the focus would be so broad.”
Clothes and books lay on the floor everywhere. The closet had been cleaned out. Dresser drawers hung open.
“You only slept for a couple minutes, Peter. That’s the default. Let me try something.” She took the gun from him, and studied the menu screen for a moment. “Like any good app, these have adjustments. Ah!” She swept her finger up the screen. “Duration control.”
Before Peter could react, she pointed it at the sleepers and pulled the trigger.
“What if it’s a depth control? The lowest setting is a nap. The higher setting is a coma.”
Her expression became impatient. “I don’t think so. I’ve been working with the gun a bit. The apps’ controls are consistent. Distance, width, height, intensity, duration. There’s adjustments for all of them. I already knew about the X-ray app, by the way. It’s a Peeping Tom’s godsend.”
“How would you know how to work the gun?” Astonished, Peter reevaluated the device in her hand.
“You left it in my barbecue. You don’t think I didn’t get curious? Dante gave me a copy of the apps you’ve used. I certainly didn’t want to try a new one! Did you know that burning down the tree was a fluke? Move the controls a bit, and you could have just drilled a hole as big as a quarter in it. Go the other way, you could have set that side of the glade on fire, or incinerated a single tree a hundred feet behind the rest of the forest. You can set where an effect will occur, even if your view is blocked.”
“You got curious? Sheesh!” Peter bent over Blue-suit, who was snoring. “That doesn’t sound like a coma. I’ve got the next step in the plan, now.”
“Call the police?”
“Yeah, but you and I will be gone when they get here. Too much to explain. Besides, I think they believe Blue-suit is FBI. We’d lose the gun to the cops, and the cops would give it to him. There’s no way they’ll listen to us.” While he talked, he typed on his computer, bringing up the Internet address from the flyers dropped from the helicopter the night before. In the comment box, he said, “I have the gun. Need to talk.” He typed in his own e-mail address. Almost immediately, a chat box opened. The message read, EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT THE GUN LOOKS LIKE. WHAT ELSE DID YOU FIND WITH IT?
Peter typed, A BLUE DUFFLE BAG
WE’RE ON THE MOVE
Peter gasped. “I knew they were tracing the Internet. Nobody’s privacy is secure anymore.”
Someone pounded on the front door.
“No way they’re that quick,” said Christy. “Is there?”
He looked at his Dad and Dante, snoozing on the bed, but he couldn’t think of a way to get them out of the house.
“Run,” he said.
As they went through the back door, the front door crashed open.
Behind the plywood-sheet screen in Christy’s carport, Peter flipped on the X-ray app again. Dante, Peter’s dad and Blue-suit were where he’d left them, but another man was in the room, his back to them. When he turned, Peter did a double take. The man looked exactly like Blue-suit. Same dark eyes and narrow eyebrows. They could be twins.
“We’re not safe here. There’s more than one Blue-suit, and we can’t depend on Dante not having told them about you. They could be in your house next.”
Christy pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll call the police now. They aren’t going to threaten my mom and dad.”
“Do it on the move. We can’t stay this close.”
They trotted down the alley, away from their houses. The bag weighed heavily in Peter’s hand, and being in the open in the daylight, carrying what everyone seemed to be looking for struck him as the height or foolishness.
Christy finished her call.
“We can go to Goodman’s Sporting Goods and wait it out there,” Peter said. “Watch out for the army guys with their little satellite dishes. Who knows what their deal is, or if they’re authentic or not.”
“It’s Friday. The rave gang might be at Goodman’s, setting up. We won’t be private.”
“All the better.” Peter wiped his brow. The clouds might be low and the breezes wintery, but he’d built up a sweat. “If there’s a crowd nearby, we could be safer.”
By the time they reached the building, sirens sounded in the distance in the direction of their houses.
“Hope that’s the police,” Christy said.
The entered the abandoned store through the broken window in the back that Peter had used earlier. Noise and laughter from the front of the building told him that Christy was right. The college kids were setting up for a rave.
The building’s back stairs took them to the second-story offices. Outside, evening had started to settle in, shrouding the rooms in shadow. Old desks stacked with broken boxes pushed against the wall leaned uneasily, and when he and Christy cleared off a spot on the floor to sit, a scratching behind the boxes reminded him that he’d seen rats in the building earlier.
He checked his e-mail from his phone. The latest message read, POLICE AND MILITARY AT YOUR HOUSE. EVERYONE SAFE. WHERE ARE YOU?
Peter thought that was interesting. They’d found his home address immediately from his e-mail, but they weren’t tracking his cell phone. They might not be as resourceful as he feared. MEET ME IN THE ALLEY BEHIND GOODMAN’S SPORTING GOODS. ONE PERSON ONLY, OR I WON’T BE THERE.
They replied. CONDITIONS ACCEPTABLE. FIVE MINUTES.
“Christy, you get the bag. If you stand to the side of the window, you should see me, but they won’t see you. If they take me, or anything looks hinky, get downstairs and mix in with the ravers.”
“This is your basic, ‘Stay back ma’m’ scenario. We both ought to meet them.”
“No, it’s just logic. The Blue-suits knew I found the gun, and these guys know it too, but they might not know about you. You’re the reason I can meet with them. If it was only me, I wouldn’t get within a mile of them. They could grab me and I’d be telling them where the gun is in ten seconds. I’m a wimp about pain. My dentist just has to say he’s going to fill a cavity, and I wish I had nationally sensitive information that I could trade with him instead.”
Christy laughed, but she looked worried. “Tell them up front you’ve hidden the gun. That way they won’t just conk you on the head.”
“That’s the plan.” He tried to look confident, but he was sure she could tell he was shaky. Going down the stairs to the back door, he thought of all the choices he had instead. He could decide to go back upstairs, convince Christy that this was a bad idea (which he didn’t think would take much convincing—it
was
a bad idea), or he could head to the front of the building and vanish into the college crowd. Whoever was coming probably knew what he looked like, but he’d be hard to find in the dark of a shoulder-to-shoulder rave.
He put his hand on the door and stepped through.
A security light at the building’s corners illuminated the alley, but it was a harsh brightness that created deep, black wells where it didn’t penetrate. Only a handful of yards beyond where he stood, Melville Park trees rose like solemn sentinels.
A figure came around the corner, walking briskly. Peter resisted the urge to look up to see if Christy was watching.
It was a woman wearing a long raincoat, belted across the middle, and an old-fashioned man’s hat. His dad had one. A fedora. She stopped ten feet away. The far light made her features sharp. He guessed she was in her mid-thirties. The way she walked and the way she held herself made him think she was athletic. There was a litheness to her movements.
“You’re Peter Van Meer, I assume,” she said, her voice clipped, authoritative.
“Who are you?” Peter checked behind him. If someone else appeared, he planned on dashing for the door.
“Case Officer Wheeler. I’m the commander of the delegation that’s come to retrieve the object I understand you claim to have.” Her hands were behind her back, which, among everything else, made Peter nervous. “It’s hazardous, son. You’ll be glad to be rid of it.”
“No, I mean what are you? You clearly aren’t the army, since you cleared out when the real army came. You’ve been out of sight for days, except for your stealthy helicopters. Who are you? Where did you come from? Who’d I zap unconscious at my house? And, most importantly, where did that gun come from? It does stuff I didn’t think was possible.”
She stepped toward him, her business-like demeanor cracking. “We know you activated it. We can tell when it’s turned on, and the tree you burned down in the glade showed where you were. You didn’t try it more, did you? It’s dangerous beyond your comprehension.”
“Where did it come from? Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter where I came from. What’s important is that I retrieve the bag.”
“I don’t even know if you’re the good guys. I’m not telling you anything unless you give me some answers. There’s more than one party after it, and there’s a reward offered too.”
Wheeler smiled grimly at that. “You wouldn’t like how they’d pay you, once they had it. I don’t know what you mean by good guys, but they’re definitely a bad crowd.”
Peter wrinkled his forehead. “Do you mean the two I left at my house? Two doesn’t make a crowd. How many are there?”
“You say there were two at your house?” She spoke very fast, but not to him, like she was on a phone that Peter couldn’t see. Three men burst from the trees of Melville Park, rushing toward them.
Peter turned to run, but they were already there as the world went black.
Christy looked down at Peter, concern written large on her expression. She held a damp cloth that she used to wipe his brow.
“Do I have a fever?” said Peter. He felt loggy and stupid. In the background, a heavy bass beat thrummed, while a red gauze shrouded the ceiling light, filling the room with a macabre light.
“I wasn’t sure what else to do,” she said. “You weren’t waking up. I’m not much of a nurse.”
“Where am I?” he said, struggling to sit up, which sent the room swirling, so he flopped back down. “Did you zap me?”
“I didn’t see any point in running if things got ‘hinky,’ as you said. I had the gun. Turns out that it has a good range. We’re in a college dorm. I got a couple boys from the rave to carry you out. I told them you’d had too much to drink. They’d had too much to drink too, so they didn’t ask why we were carting you off but leaving the other people in the alley. One of them actually said, ‘I’ll never be so drunk that I’d pass out on the street, man. You’ve got to be responsible about it,’ and then he drove us here. Except when those guys came out of the trees, that’s the most scared I’ve been in my life. Don’t ever drink and drive. He was so worried about a DUI that he stopped for
green
lights.”
The second effort to sit up worked much better. The room hardly swam at all. He discovered they were on the floor between two single beds in a space wide enough for two small study desks to fit side by side. Hooters girl posters covered the cinderblock walls, and it took a minute before Peter recognized that the lump on each bed was a sleeping college guy.
“Did you zap them too?”
“Nope. They’ve been out since we got here. I think that one,” she waved at the guy whose arm hung out far enough that his knuckles brushed the floor, “spent some quality time praying to the porcelain god before he zonked. The other one was our driver. He’s surprisingly strong. Carried you two floors up. Oh, you might have a bump or two on your head. He cornered well but didn’t compensate for the wider load.”
The bass beat in the background faded, grew stronger, and then sounded like it was outside the door, before fading again.
“What’s going on with the music?”
Christy got up, put the washcloth on the back of a chair, before gathering both of their coats. “They have a sound system and a keg in the elevator that they’re taking floor to floor. Doors open, you get a beer. I thought the college had rules about drinking in the dorms, which is what I asked our driver when we got here, but he said the student resident advisors are manning the keg. That’s why we took the stairs. They don’t mind dorm kids drinking, I guess, but outsiders are verboten. I met one of the advisors. He’s too drunk to even be in charge of an elevator. We should take the stairs too.”
“Do you have a plan for where we’re going?” Peter took his coat. “If we stay here, at least no one will know where to find us.”
“I’m planless, but this room stinks and I don’t think much of their posters.”
They shut the door behind them. Many of the other doors were open. The elevator wasn’t the only source of music. How anybody could study under these conditions was beyond him. He understood why his teachers said that in college you spent many of your study hours in the library. The dorms, clearly, didn’t lend themselves to contemplation.
“You might have shot too soon, not that I’m sorry you did, but I think I surprised the woman from the helicopter squad—her name is Wheeler, by the way—when I told her that more than one Blue-suit was at my house. It sounded to me like one of them wasn’t there when they got there. The folks you zapped might have been coming to help, not that you would know that. I didn’t find out anything else, other than she’s very worried we might mess with the gun. She said it was ‘dangerous beyond comprehension.’ That doesn’t sound good.”
“How did Wheeler explain herself to the police and the army?”
They exited the dorms. Peter led them toward the Student Union, holding his collar tight against the wind that pushed the trees shadows into waving arms in front of the campus’s sidewalk lights. “Didn’t get that from her. If Blue-suit has everyone convinced that he’s FBI, she probably can sell herself as CIA or NSA or something. Interpol, for all I know. They’re definitely operating under different rules than we are.”
At the Student Union in the expansive cafeteria, Peter bought hot chocolate for both of them from a bored coed who never looked up from her Econ book while manning the cash register. They took a table in the corner. About half the tables had students sitting at them, studying, most with jackets and backpacks. After experiencing the dorm, he understood why students weren’t hitting the books in their rooms.
His phone buzzed, letting him know he had an e-mail. SORRY FOR THE MISUNDERSTANDING. WE MUST MEET AGAIN. YOUR RULES. YOUR TIME AND PLACE.
Peter typed back, I WANT ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS. NO MINIONS.
AGREED.
COLLEGE STUDENT UNION, NOW.
Peter showed Christy the exchange. “Same plan as before. Scoot to the other side of the cafeteria, cover the bag. Act like a college student. If things go south, slip out the back door.”
Christy looked doubtful. “If I shoot from there, a hundred people are going down.”
“I don’t think it will happen that way again. She didn’t give me the same vibe as Blue-suit.”
“If we’re depending on vibes, then I know we’re desperate.” Christy took the bag and her coat to an empty table.
Peter didn’t see Wheeler coming before she slid into the empty chair.
“Where’s your partner?” she asked.
“Far away from here. You’ve had time to get answers from that guy who forced his way into my house. What’s his deal?”
Wheeler shook her head. “I’m afraid we haven’t had much luck with him. He’s . . . uncooperative. High motivation. He has unforgiving coworkers. And here’s a problem, as I found out before your partner fired on us. One of them got away. It’s certain he’s tracking our moves. We can’t stay here.”
Across the room, Christy’s head was down, pretending to look at her phone. Peter didn’t see anyone else who seemed out of place. If Wheeler had brought help again, they hid themselves well.
“You better talk fast, then. I know you’re not from around here. Tell me a story.”
Wheeler sighed. In the better light of the cafeteria, she didn’t seem as harsh, and she was older than Peter had thought at first. “If I’m tracked, and I know I am, then you’ve just been spotted. We have to come to an agreement, or as soon as I leave, you’re exposed.”
Peter scanned the cafeteria again. Nothing unusual he could see inside, but the walls were floor to ceiling windows on two sides, and the night hid whatever watched.
He took a deep breath while thinking it through. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have the duffle bag. If a Blue-suit gets me, the bag gets away. So you might as well tell me what’s going on.”
“Blue-suit?”
“It’s what we’ve called them. One of them tried to get to the school records. He was wearing a robin-egg blue suit.”
“Robin-egg blue is an unusual color for a suit?”
“Yes, of course. He stood out. Don’t switch the subject. You promised me answers.”
“You won’t understand most of it, and knowing it won’t do you any good. What you do know is that a lot of people are interested in what you have, and they won’t stop until they get it. You’re not safe. Your family is not safe, nor are your friends. It’s entirely possible your existence is not safe. The stakes are high, Peter.”
“Tell me what you can. What I don’t understand could hurt me, so I want to know what we’re involved in. The gun, it’s not a government project is it? You aren’t an American agent. Are you a human one?”
The woman flinched. She reappraised him. “Interesting guess. Closer than you might think. Yes, I’m human, sort of, a neighbor to human. Probably nothing you could detect short of a DNA test, and maybe not even then. We could be exactly the same. Do you know about parallel universes?”
Peter smiled. Oddly enough, this felt like familiar ground. “Of course. Who doesn’t? The gun kind of gave us a hint the concept was possible.” He could picture the air folding back on the orange world and its monstrosity.
“That’s our technological advancement. In almost everything else, we’re similar to you, but we made a discovery that opened doors for us. Many bad ones. We’ve been paying for it ever since. Your gun and the contents of the duffle bag are the result of that mistake. A group, the ‘Blue-suits,’ took advantage of the technology to find more technology.”
“Like having three wishes from a genie, and making your last wish a wish for more wishes?”
“Yes, exactly. While the people I work for have now limited the opening of doors, the Blue-suits have broken laws to gather the most powerful discoveries from all the versions of the universe they’ve visited. They’ve made a supertool. Your gun is a crude version of it. A one-of-a-kind experiment, and you’ve got it.” She tapped her fingers on the table, struggling for words. “It’s like just one person had a nuclear weapon. We don’t want anyone else to get it. Everyone could be destroyed. Not just us, either. They could use our door-opening capacity to move to other universes. They could spread the destruction everywhere. We’ve locked some doors. They can’t get again what they have now. If we eliminate the bag here, it’s over.”
It’s a good story, Peter thought. She’s right about the nuclear bomb analogy, but how could he know she’s not the one who would destroy worlds?
Wheeler said, “Do you have a way of communicating with your partner? If we can’t settle things here, you don’t want her to contact you again. You and I leave together, they’ll follow us, assuming we’re going to the bag. It’s the only way to protect the package. We’re being watched. I don’t have enough men to make this meeting secure. We don’t know what they look like.”
“Are you kidding? They’re clones. They all look like the guy you got at my house. How many of them are there, anyway?”
Wheeler furrowed her brow. “We think there are just three. Clones? What are you talking about?”
“They are exactly the same. The one you didn’t get is a copy of the one you did.”
The agent pushed herself away from the table. “Contact your partner. We know the one we caught. You saw his twin brother. No clones where I come from.”
“They were brothers?” Peter, feeling like an idiot, decided to take a chance, then texted Christy. WE’RE LEAVING. DON’T FOLLOW. DON’T RUSH OUT. DON’T GO HOME.
“Can they intercept my cell phone?”
“We couldn’t,” said Wheeler. “Give us another couple days and we’ll have it. I admire your instincts, though. You have a remarkable sense of self preservation. Come on. It’s time to go.”
“Oh,” said Peter, “let me see your hands.”
“What?” Wheeler looked around the cafeteria. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Indulge me,” said Peter.
Wheeler put her hands on the table. The nails were neatly trimmed, and she had twelve fingers.
“Ah,” said Peter. “That answers that question.”
“Are we done?” asked Wheeler.
Peter didn’t try to catch Christy’s eye as he followed Wheeler out.
They crossed the courtyard in front of the Student Union, into the empty parking lot. Peter pirouetted, trying to see beyond the parking lot lights in all directions. He bumped into Wheeler, who had stopped. “We need a pickup,” she said.
“Are we carrying something heavy? I can’t even drive a car yet.”
“Not that kind. I wasn’t talking to you.”
A heavy whoosh from overhead stirred paper scraps on the asphalt into action. A stealth copter landed ten yards away.
Inside, a thinly padded bench was all for him to sit on. He searched for a seatbelt as the craft lifted. He couldn’t hear any more that a white-noise hush from the propellers with the doors closed. Wheeler studied him from the opposite bench. Peter said, “Um, the real army is looking for you, I think. They’ve set trucks up all over town.”
“Your radar can’t detect this craft.”
“It didn’t look like radar. I think they were listening posts.”
A blinding light shone through the helicopter’s window, and Peter pitched hard against the door. His stomach felt like it was trying to leave as the craft turned hard and lost altitude. The pilot yelled back, “We’re spotted. Hang on.”
“Listening posts? That’s cunning.” She turned to the pilot. “Get us away from town. They’re picking up your prop wash.”
“Ground control says they’ve launched something, coming our way. Might be a jet. We can’t outrun a jet.”
“The jet won’t find us unless we stay where they can keep a spotlight on us. Get us out of town where they can’t hear us and can’t light us up.”
Christy texted, LOTS OF COMMOTION. ARMY TRUCKS IN THE PARKING LOT. SOLDIERS EVERYWHERE. CAFETERIA IN LOCKDOWN. WE’RE SITTING ON THE FLOOR UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE THEY SAID. PACKAGE HIDDEN. ARE YOU OKAY?
He didn’t like it. In the confusion, the Blue-suits might go after Christy. They’d talked to Dante, and if Dante mentioned her, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds and a good Internet search to find her. She had a lively social media presence, and if they couldn’t find her there, she’d been pictured in both the print and online version of the newspaper several times. They’d know what she looked like.
BLUE-SUITS MAY KNOW ABOUT YOU. MAY KNOW YOUR FACE IF DANTE TOLD THEM. LAY LOW. TRUST NO ONE.
The spotlight lost them, leaving them dimly illuminated by the cabin’s low, green light. He wondered if that helped to preserve night vision.
“Get the copters down,” said Wheeler, talking to the air again. “Ground transportation only. What’s happening at the college?” She cocked her head to the side and cupped her ear. She said to Peter, “Explosion at your high school, and the lights are out on the campus. The explosion has to be a distraction. Is the duffle bag safe? I have men nearby, but there’s . . . confusion.”
Streetlights and houses flowed beneath them. There couldn’t be fifty feet between the copter and the tallest trees. Peter imagined Christy in the dark cafeteria, Blue-suits pursuing her. No one to turn to for help. He texted to Christy, WHAT IS HAPPENING? Then he made a decision. “Christy Sanders is my partner. She was in the cafeteria. Can your crew get her out?”