Quantum Break (8 page)

“The world froze, but I didn’t. Then I grabbed you and—”

Will’s eyes were scanning again, not seeing Jack. “Your proximity to the pulse altered your relationship to the chronon field. My reanimation must … there must have been chronon-transference from you to me. Meaning a non-affected person can act as a kind of causality battery, of sorts. Chargeable, yes, by someone who is a causality source, even in a state in which causality has ceased to self-generate.”

“Will! What’s…?”

“Time go bad! Get it? Causality, the flow of time, of cause and effect, is a lake. The lake contains an ecosystem. We live in that ecosystem. The lake itself is held in place by a dam. That dam is now leaking, thanks to you and Paul activating that machine. Now the cracks are going to widen, and then—”

“The dam breaks.”

“No more causality—
stasis.
A forever now. An eternally frozen present moment. Monarch knew this was going to happen.
Banked
on it, I think. The machine was calibrated incorrectly. Monarch blocked my case against activation at each step, refused my evidence. They
wanted
this to happen, Jack.”

“Why? If the world goes down, it takes all of us, Monarch included.”

“I have a contact inside the company. Horatio. A nice enough person. Boutique muffins, outrageous moustache, you know the type.…”

“Will.”

“He tells me Monarch’s been incubating something, an initiative directly related to the work at the university time lab. Project Lifeboat. Very few know about it. Nobody except the CEO Martin Hatch, a handful of experts inside the company, an unnamed contractor, a single lobbyist in D.C., and a lone recruiter in Europe.”

Then it clicked. “Those guys in the masks are Monarch.”

“Monarch doesn’t need to steal the machine, Jack: they
own
it.”

“I told you something was off about this.” Jack took Will’s arm. Tried to look him in the eye, but it was so dark in there he may have been staring at Will’s navel for all he knew. “Where’s your car?”

“In the parking lot, of course.”

“And the parking lot is
where?
” Just like old times.

“Three hundred feet from the rear of this building.”

“All right, let’s—”

A pattern of high-frequency noise penetrated the tunnel, from outside the building. It started as a series of three triple-claps, and then became applause.

Panic cut back into Will’s voice. “Is that gunfire? From outside?”

Jack moved past Will, feeling his way along the wall.

“Are they shooting on campus?” Will’s voice was rising. “Who are they shooting at?”

“It’s an announcement. They want people to know this is going down.”

Will was breathing harder than Jack, about to hyperventilate. Jack ran his free hand over the 9mm, made sure the safety was off. “Three hundred feet to the parking lot, right?”

“Yes.”

In Jack’s current condition a flailing or unconscious Will would have been more than he could handle. A lifetime with his brother had provided a number of ways to get Will’s shit under control.

“Hey Will, what’s the capital of Nebraska?” Feeling along walls of warm steel. A light ahead.

“Lincoln.”

“Hey Will, what’s the temperature on Mercury?” Okay, that was definitely a door in front of him.

“That’s not my field. I know what you’re doing. Around five hundred degrees Fahrenheit as an average.” Will’s breathing was calming down.

“Hey Will, what’s a big word for someone who uses too many big words?”

“Sesquipedalianist.” He didn’t even have to take a breath in the middle of that one.

The corridor ended. “Hey Will, where’s this door lead?”

“That’d be the server room on the fifth floor,” Will said, taking a deep breath. “We’re below the time lab. The corridor beyond that has an elevator approximately a hundred and fifty feet to the right. That will take us to the ground floor.”

The elevator was dangerous. If anyone was watching the bays they’d notice the elevator moving. The doors could open and they could walk out into a half-dozen guns. But with Jack half-blind and unable to make out anything farther than thirty feet away would the stairs be any safer?

“Will, I’m gonna need you to keep your eyes open. Tell me everything you see. Quietly.”

They stepped out of the tunnel into a cold, dark room humming with quiet purpose.

“No one’s here,” Will whispered. It was just them and sequential racks of fat vertical servers: midnight-blue twilight speckled with thousands of yellow and green LEDs. There was only one door, manual, domestic looking, and opened from their side.

“Hey, Will?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“When Paul went through, I caught a look at the readout. It said ‘destination error.’ What does that mean?”

Will thought about it. “Oh, dear.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Because Paul did not appear prior to his own departure he must have traveled forward. I would assume the error indicates he traveled to a point where a date becomes redundant. It’s likely Paul sent himself far enough ahead to witness the inevitable collapse of the Meyer-Joyce field.”

“The end of time?”

“When Paul emerges from the machine he will be stepping into a moment that is infinitely self-dividing. He will freeze, and there will be no coming back from that. I’m afraid he’s gone, Jack. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe … maybe I can use the machine and get him.”

“Let’s get out of here alive first. If Paul is at the end of time, he won’t be going anywhere.”

Jack listened at the door, couldn’t hear anything, and Will risked opening it, gently. The sounds of war outside, still muffled, grew louder.

“I don’t see anything,” Will said.

The corridor was dark, lit by illuminated exit signs and a light coming through a wall window at the far end of the corridor.

“What is that?” Jack said.

“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.

Jack shouldered Will out the window, then tumbled after, gracelessly, followed by a stream of reanimated bullets. Falling five feet he hit the laminated glass, hard, and then the grenade on the trooper’s belt detonated.

Screams erupted from inside the building.

Will was in his face, terrified. “Are you okay?”

“Just glad the glass didn’t break.”

“It’s reinforced. How do we get down from here? They’re going to kill us!”