Authors: Cam Rogers
“Which means she works in the Tower.”
“Works there, lives there, almost never leaves there. She’s one of their highest value assets.”
“What about this Dr. Kim?”
“Dead,” Beth said. “Car accident. So they say. Sofia is pretty much it. Every tech-head under her is working in compartmentalized divisions on a need-to-know.”
“What about the people working with Paul at the university?”
“There were a few people who had an operational understanding that we might have been able to exploit.”
“‘Were’?”
“I kept tabs on them in case they became useful, but three weeks ago they vanished. One from the university and three from the chronon division. Which leaves Sofia, and probably Paul, and it’s not like you can invite Paul over for beers.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “But he did invite me to the gala.”
“When? Before you tried to explode him to death?”
“Even then he seemed pretty certain he wanted me to come up and check the place out.”
“That’s as good as giving yourself up. If it’s just me I can—”
“Guys,” Nick interjected. “Listen, how about we relax tonight, okay? Wait until everyone’s good and hungover tomorrow morning, then we just pick her up when she ducks out for a post-bender hamburger. Yeah?”
Beth shook her head. “If I was Paul in this situation, what with the university and Jack on the loose and
knowing
Jack as well as I do? I’d keep her under lock and key, trot her out for tonight’s performance, and then make her vanish till I needed her again. If we don’t grab her tonight we may not get another chance.” This was going to be a hard sell. “My cover is still good. The only person who ID’d me at the farm was Gibson, and he was in the house when it blew. I can get inside Monarch Tower, get close to Sofia, and get her out.”
“You don’t have any kind of powers.”
“I can’t die. How’s that for power?”
Nick blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Sure,” Jack retorted, “but you can be
detained.
You can still fail. You can’t get her out of there alone.”
“Her offices are on the top level. Just off the top level is a helipad.”
“You can fly?”
“I was told I’d need it. Seriously, Jack, me alone is our best chance.”
He put his hands up, walked away. “Fine. Whatever, Zed. You’re the boss.”
Nick and Beth sat in awkward, simmering silence as Jack climbed out of the pool and left the building. The slam of the security door echoed through every chamber in the place.
“He still wants to save his brother,” she said. “Thought he could pass on some message in 2010 that might save Will’s life in 2016. He’s frustrated, but he’ll be okay. Science isn’t his thing, really.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, that’s gotta be hard for a guy.” Twiddled his fingers. “So,” Nick said. “You’re
Zed,
huh?”
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 7:58
P
.
M
. Floor 49, Monarch Tower. Paul Serene’s Quarters.
The glass wall afforded Paul an angel’s view of Riverport. The town was nothing special, but neither had Alamogordo been before Oppenheimer, or Sarajevo before Gavrilo Princip, or, for that matter, Bethlehem if he wanted to be grandiose.
On official blueprints his rooms were listed as office space. When Paul had reason to leave the building he came and went via private helicopter, his existence a company secret.
Paul had never wanted for anything material. Wise investments had furnished his parents with a pleasant home and their son with the freedom to pursue a life of his choosing. The world had always been open to Paul. But it was Riverport, Massachusetts—not the universities of Europe or the Machiavellian war zones of world finance—that had shaped him. This town, of all the places on Earth, had been his crucible. Riverport had birthed him, raised him, changed him. Compressed and bound by fate, it had all happened here.
Urban camouflage fatigues lay pressed and ready, draped across the chair beside him; props to lend authenticity to the press release he was soon to be filming. He had the chair commissioned, carved from a single piece of a
Fitzroya cupressoides
taken from the Chilean rain forest. The tree had been over thirty-six hundred years old when Paul had it felled and turned into something he might sit upon. It was older than the Americas, than Christianity, older even than mathematics.
It was Paul’s favorite chair.
Time would end. But, perhaps, by using every part of his wealth, talent, determination, and intellect, he might liberate humanity’s fate from the end he had written for it.
“You’re doing it again.”
If he had died today there would be no one to undo what was coming. He had risked it all to save Jack, for friendship. He could not be so irresponsible again.
“Paul.”
Sofia had entered, dressed for the evening in something tight, floor-length, and Italian. Tablet in hand, mind forever on the project.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Grinding your teeth,” Sofia said.
Paul felt something stir in the waters of his body, a pulse of nausea behind his eyes. He braced.
“I could hear them popping in the hallway. You’ll need a dentist more than you need me if you don’t learn to relaaaaaaaaaaa…”
Sofia slowed and froze as time hesitated, foreshadowing an incoming stutter. They were becoming more frequent now, that was undeniable. Paul kept his composure, waited for the elongated moment to play out, and snap.
“… aaaaax. The ground-floor atrium looks beautiful, and the demonstration space is perfect. Now, there was something you wanted to show me?”
“You are about to woo the world with the wonder of chronon technology, and all of our efforts are about to conjoin. Lifeboat has a fighting chance. You’re here with me. That’s all I need.” She had noticed nothing. That brief stutter was more severe than the last instance. A sizeable one was due.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“Not at all.” She moved closer to him. “Once the world sees with their own eyes what we have achieved, how foolish our critics will seem. The reputations of Doctors Joyce and Kim will be restored, the value of Monarch stock will ascend toward Heaven, and I will finally have you to myself. Even if we have to live in the shadows for the rest of our days.”
The timing was right. God had nodded his head.
He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a slender sheaf of fire-damaged paper. “But if you could find the time to give an opinion on this, I’d be grateful.”
She gave him a curious look, lay her tablet on his ancient chair and took the filthy collection of papers with both hands. Her eyes grew wide. “The Regulator.”
“Take your time,” he said. “They’re only partial, but perhaps you…”
“Dr. Kim’s notes. Are there more?”
He wanted to tell her:
Kim was a fraud. William Joyce created the Regulator.
But that would be a mistake. If she knew that then she would question other truths, and force herself to analyze William’s fractured reasonings and paranoid convictions … and he needed her focused; on tonight, and on the research. If anyone could learn something new about the device at the heart of the Tower, it was Sofia. There was no one else.
She fixed him with an expression of such need. “Paul, are there more papers like these?”
He shook his head. “William Joyce stole them during his time with us. Kept them at his house. Those were all I could save.”
She seemed to forget him almost immediately, returning to the printouts and diagrams. “I … I will need some time.” Then she surprised him by grasping his hand, fixing him again. “I love you. Do you accept that?”
He laid his hand atop hers. “I do.”
His heart hurt for her, for his Sofia.
She didn’t know, couldn’t know, that once the endgame began, she would never see him again.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 7:58
P
.
M
. Riverport Swimming Hall.
The acoustics in the swimming hall were fantastic.
“Beth! You need to see this!”
Nick was in the dry pool, in one of the castor chairs. The portable TV was on. She came in from a back room, sleeves rolled up. She’d been running maintenance on her gear while she had a moment.
As Beth climbed down the three-step ladder and dropped to the bottom near the deep end, Nick turned up the volume.
“… details again: The state’s most wanted man, Jack Joyce, was apprehended here, on the sidewalk outside Sullivan’s Deli, about a half hour ago. According to witnesses Joyce, age twenty-eight, approached a uniformed patrolman, hands raised. What happened next remains unclear. Shots were fired, and evidence at the scene suggests Joyce was wounded. However we’re told he was soon after wrestled to the ground and handcuffed. WSRP-TV understands he was taken to Riverport Police Department where…”
“Turn it off.”
Nick clicked the remote.
“I thought he was upstairs.”
“He was! He said he was gonna catch a few hours’ sleep. I don’t get it.”
“The cops’ll hand him over to Monarch. The idiot thinks once he’s inside the building he’ll be able to bust out and save the day.”
“Too many of them?” Nick asked.
“That and he’s not that good, is completely unprepared, has no security clearance, no clue what Sofia Amaral looks like, and no idea what the layout of the building is.”
“Ah.”
Beth checked her watch. A few hours until the gala kicked off. Guests would be arriving soon.
“Plus they’ve got the means to suppress chronon levels, which will almost certainly impact his ability to recover from whatever horrible shit they’re about to do to him. You need to drive me to Monarch Tower. Right now.”
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 8:10
P
.
M
. Floor 49, Monarch Tower. Paul Serene’s Quarters.
The axe was about to fall on the only life Paul had known for almost two decades. Gone would be his protection from the unknown. In twenty minutes he would record a statement. When the time was right that statement would be released.
From that moment the world would change forever.
Every day was déjà vu. The closer he got to the end, the more rapidly the unknown gave way to memories of a future he had not yet lived. He expected that, in the days before his death, he would be a man walking through nothing but memory until he found himself enacting the recollection of his own death.
And then there would be nothing.
He glanced behind himself. Sofia, at his desk, the singed remains of William Joyce’s research spread across the black glass, going over each page one at a time, dictating notes into her phone in a low murmur.
Footsteps in the hall. The urgency of their beat told Paul there would be no knock at the door.
The door opened. Martin Hatch entered, one hand resting on the brass knob.
“Jack’s here,” Paul said.
Martin stopped. “He’s been transferred from holding, to this building.”
“Sofia.” Paul took her hand. “I have to go. Would you meet me after? For a toast.”
She smiled, nodded assent.
“I’ll see you then.” He released her hand, swept his uniform from the lacquered arm of thirty-six hundred years of history, and went to meet his future.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 8:15
P
.
M
. Outside Monarch Tower.
Nick pulled the cab up three blocks from Monarch Tower. Spotlights were on early, panning across the midnight surface. The lights of the forecourt and lobby could be seen from here: limousines and armored town cars, a Monarch Security detail in two-piece formal wear opening doors while scanning sidewalks and streets. Camera flash, camera flash.
“They’re bringing him here tonight?” he asked Beth.
“They’ll want to get Jack inside a dampening field as fast as possible, before he realizes he’s made a mistake and makes a move. This is the best and only location. Okay listen up: Serene will evacuate Dr. Amaral as soon as she makes her presentation. So I’m going to have to get her out of there via helicopter before she takes the stage. What I need you to do is park close and keep your phone handy. If something goes wrong, you’re our backup escape. Got it?”
“I’m going to trust you’ve at least sketched this plan on a napkin.”
“Go Team Outland.”
“What?”
Beth got out, shutting the door behind.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 8:17
P
.
M
. Floor 35, Monarch Tower.
The elevator carriage lowered toward the thirty-fifth floor.
“The studio is set up for you on forty-nine,” Martin said. “Adjacent to your quarters. They’re ready to go, once we’re done with Joyce.”
“And the Peace Movement teams?”
“In place, as per your visions. They know what to do, once the stutter hits.”
“Good.”
“Paul,” Martin said. “You and I have worked toward this for half our lives. We’re at ten minutes to midnight, and even so I have to ask: is there no alternative to your sacrificing yourself in this way?”
“None,” Paul said. “Everything is at risk. Just promise me Sofia will be cared for, after I’m gone. Helicopter and pilot are on standby. Have her out of here and secured off-site as soon as the formalities have ended.”
“If you feel it’s necessary. We have Joyce.”
“And he may at some point use a time machine. Infinite variables. Secure her off-site.”
“As you say.”
They walked into a plain hallway, glass-walled on one side, strip lighting along floor and ceiling. Armed guards flanked a door on the right at the far end. “I’m doomed, Martin. Always have been. From the moment I stepped into that machine.” Paul stopped, glanced at his compatriot. “The stutter’s close. Have the Peace teams activate their rigs now. I’ll feel better. No mistakes.”
Martin’s face was somber, almost mournful. “That’s it, then.”
Paul clasped Martin’s arm. “Knowing my fate has been a gift. It has allowed me to make decisions that made Monarch the force for salvation that it is. But that will count for nothing if the company does not emerge heroically from the coming chaos. For that to happen, we must have a villain.”