Ray smiled as the transparent capsule glided soundlessly past the landscape at nearly four thousand miles per hour. This was exactly what he’d imagined decades before. It had taken him a while to become accustomed to the landscape passing across his field of vision so quickly and so close at hand. The perception of speed with air travel was blunted considerably by the distance between the aircraft and the ground. Ray found tube transport, in contrast, dizzying until his body accommodated to the sense of speed. What he found most remarkable was that the feeling of being in a speeding vehicle came almost entirely from the visual realm. After he closed his eyes for a
few seconds, it felt as if he were motionless, so smooth was the course of the capsule and so constant the speed.
With a whoosh, the cylinder came to a stop without even a quiver. The hatch opened automatically and Ray stepped onto the underground platform. The whole trip had taken less than an hour, a fraction of the time it took to fly cross country in his youth. He navigated the underground walkways until he reached a pod that said “Powell” and got in. The pod whisked him silently to the station.
When he emerged onto the street, he headed for the corner of Powell and Sacramento and the building where he and Lena had lived for more than a decade. Once inside, he stepped within the force field of the unwalled elevator and was on the twentieth floor within seconds.
In front of the entrance to his condo stood a black clad woman with dark glasses, armed with an ultrasonic sidearm. She performed a retinal screen as he approached and stood aside to let him pass. Ray stood in front of the body scanner and the door slid open. He stepped inside and heard it latch behind him.
“Lena,” Ray called as he moved through the front hall to the great room in the center of the unit. There was no response. He entered the huge central room with the twin support pillars. Still no Lena. He went next to the bedroom, but there was no sign of her. He began running from room to room. She was nowhere to be found. He ran back to the front door to find the guard, but the door was locked from the outside. He beat on it with his fists to get the guard’s attention and tried over and over to open it, but it was sealed shut. He moved back to the great room and, standing in the middle, tried to think.
Then he heard a faint hiss, turned and spotted the end of the canister peeking from behind the sofa just beyond its
edge. His heart pumped double time and sweat poured down his forehead, clouding his vision. His thoughts became too scrambled to find an escape, even with all the knowledge available to him through his MELD chip.
He ran to the periphery of the building as far from the canister as he could get. The outer walls were floor to ceiling glass, but there were no windows that opened and the glass was designed to withstand earthquakes and high winds. It was virtually unbreakable. He grabbed a marble sculpture and flung it against a window with all his strength. It just bounced off.
He lay on the floor, pressing up against the glass, and pulled his shirt up over his face, breathing as shallowly as possible. The dizziness swept over him all at once. His vision dimmed like a shade coming down over his eyes. A faint scent of almonds wafted past his nose at the same time he heard a high pitched whine. Calm set in just before the last lights went out.
28
“THERE WAS SO
much smoke,” began Photina, “I could barely see the man who saved Corinne.”
“Think hard, Photina. What did you notice?”
“He wasn’t as tall as you. Heavier around the middle, and a good bit older.”
“What else?”
“I couldn’t see his face, but there was something very familiar about him.” She closed her eyes to visualize the data streams.
“Familiar? How? You mean you’ve seen him before?”
“Yes...and no,” she replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen his body. But the way he moved. That was what was familiar. I know I’ve seen someone move the same way.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. My memory traces are contaminated. There was an anomaly as a result of the explosion.”
“Anything else?” asked Marcus.
“Yes. One other thing. The way he moved through the house. It was like he’d been here before. He knew the house. That’s how he was able to get to Corinne so quickly.”
Marcus considered the implications of what she’d told him. A stranger had rescued Corinne from the fire, someone who’d been in the house before, but whom no one had seen there. Photina had somehow encountered someone with a matching kinetic pattern, but it wasn’t the same man. Why would he have been there in the first place? And why would he risk his life to save Corinne’s?
“Where did they put Corinne’s clothes?” he asked next.
“I don’t know. They were pretty badly burned. They might have disposed of them.”
“Let’s find out. If we can recover the clothes, there would be DNA traces on them from the stranger. You’d be able to analyze them. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. That is among the capabilities in my programming. I’ll ask about the clothes.” She left the room.
One possible solution to the mystery crossed Marcus’s mind, but it seemed too outlandish to be true. He shook his head. Corinne was beginning to stir. He turned his attention to her, touching her cheek with his hand. She moaned. Her eyes opened. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no words came out. Instead, she began coughing and choking.
“Shh,” he said, raising a straw with some water to her lips. “Take a few breaths. Then have a sip.” The coughing stopped. She breathed deeply, then sipped on the straw.
“Thank God you’re OK,” he said, reaching down to kiss her forehead. For the first time, he noticed the signs of aging that had gradually crept over her face, the deepening folds around her mouth and the tiny lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes. She’d also recently begun wearing reading glasses to enjoy her books. They’d been hard to come by since the digital media most people used automatically corrected for vision. He liked seeing her in them, peering at him from above
the half lenses. He wondered if she’d noticed, too, and if she’d noticed she was starting to leave him behind.
“Thank God you’re OK,” she mouthed silently and smiled. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes.
The doctor appeared in the doorway to the cubicle. “I see we’re awake,” he said cheerfully.
“She just woke up,” answered Marcus. “She still seems to be suffering the effects of the smoke.”
“That’s to be expected,” said the doctor, turning to Corinne. “It may be a while before you can speak. Just be patient. Don’t strain your vocal cords. You’ll be talking soon enough.”
Corinne moved her hand in the air as though she was writing on a tablet and looked at the doctor.
“Sure,” he said, understanding her gesture, “I can get you a pad and a pen. Better yet, how about a keyboard?”
She shook her head and repeated the writing gesture. Corinne liked things simple and leaned toward low tech whenever possible. A nurse arrived shortly with the requested implements.
“I love you,” was the first thing she wrote.
“I know,” Marcus replied. “I love you, too.”
“Natasha?” she wrote next.
“Safe where we left her.” Corinne smiled and paused a few moments before she wrote again.
“Our house?”
“Gone. Burned to the ground.” He shook his head.
“My books? Gone, too?” She already knew the answer. Tears filled her eyes, dripping onto the paper as she wrote, smearing the ink. She looked away for a moment to pull herself together.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she wrote next. “I saw the man who saved me before I passed out.”
“And...?”
“He was a stranger,” she wrote. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“So what’s the crazy part?”
“When he touched me, just before he picked me up, it was like I knew him. His touch felt so familiar.” Her mouth and eyes crinkled in a silent laugh. “I told you you’d think I was crazy.”
“Not at all,” Marcus said. He was looking straight at her, but his thoughts were now a million miles away. It was crazy, but the pieces were starting to fit together. And he had no idea how he felt about what they meant. Just months ago, a stranger was in his body, in his bed, making passionate love to his wife while he was fighting for his life. And as improbable as it seemed, he’d come back, this time in his own body, for who knows what reason. And he’d arrived just in time to pull Corinne from the fire. Marcus felt grateful to the man for saving the woman he loved, but at the same time was enraged at his intrusion into their lives and into their bed. And if he were there to see Corinne again...if he now loved her, too, then he’d crossed another line.
Photina was back. “They had the clothes in a plastic bag. They were about to incinerate them, but I got there just in time. There was DNA residue that wasn’t Corinne’s. I got a sample. I’ll have the genome read in an hour and compare it with the Universal Data Base.”
“Thanks, Photina. We owe you a lot for what you’ve done for us today.”
Photina looked into his eyes and looked as though she had something else to say. She held back.
“Photina,” Marcus coaxed, “Was there something else?”
“Mr. Marcus,” she said, looking flustered, “the man I saw who moved like the stranger. I think it was you.”
29
THE EXPLODING CHARGE
of the drone as it struck the corner of the window shattered it into millions of beads that sprayed across Ray’s inert body. Fresh air rushed into the room and filled his lungs. On the other side of the condo, Terra’s confederates stormed the door and raced to his side. They zipped him into the hyperbaric suit and loaded him onto the copter that now hovered by the opening.
As the craft veered around and headed over the bay, Ray began to regain consciousness and wondered whose body he was in. As his mind cleared, he was able to identify the body as his own and felt grateful he’d survived. He was still struggling to breathe, though, and the anxiety was returning.
“Odd,” he thought, “how powerful the drive to survive is.” Even knowing his fail safe mode of escaping annihilation, he’d still panicked and had desperately wanted to continue living his own life a while longer. And he had unfinished business: to find Lena. He prayed that she was alive and that he’d have another chance to make up for lost time.
Within minutes, the aircraft was far out to sea with no land in sight. Then it stopped all forward motion and began to descend rapidly and apparently randomly toward the water.
Just before impact, the water beneath it began to swirl, creating a void in the center that swallowed them up. They descended into the funnel as Ray watched the spot of light from the sky getting smaller and smaller, finally slowing to a soft landing on solid ground. With a whirring sound, something slid across the opening overhead and they were in total darkness. The copter’s motor silenced.
Suddenly the space around them was flooded with light. They were in an underwater chamber the size of an airplane hangar. He was quickly removed from the aircraft and placed inside a clear enclosure. Once the hatch of the container was sealed tight, it began filling with gas. Ray felt pressure surrounding his body. As the pressure increased it became easier and easier for him to breathe. The hyperbaric chamber was providing oxygen to flush the remaining poison from his system. The panic that had overtaken him as he suffocated in his apartment and had returned as he regained consciousness now began to recede and was replaced by calm.
Through the canopy of the enclosure Ray saw a flash of fire red hair, then a familiar face peering down at him. A brief crackling sound and he could hear sound from around the enclosure coming through a speaker.
“Hello again, Ray.” Terra’s voice echoed in the space around him. “We’ve definitely got to stop meeting like this.” Her face was somber despite the humor in her words.
“Where the hell are we this time, Terra?”
“It doesn’t really matter, Ray. Your antics have created an enormous mess for us. You’re turning into quite a liability.”
“I’ve created a mess for you? What about me? I paid you a hell of a lot of money and look what I have to show for it. We had a deal.”
“Our deal didn’t include babysitting you for the rest of your life and rescuing you over and over from your impulsive
blunders. Your violations of our contract are sufficient to void it. Make no mistake, Ray. You’re expendable. Don’t expect another rescue.” The distortion of Terra’s amplified voice within the hyperbaric chamber underscored her threat with an ominous tone.
“Lena!” Ray exclaimed. “What happened to Lena?”
“They took her. We don’t know where.” replied Terra. “She’s gone dark.”
“Who took her? Is she alive?”
“The Tribe of 23. I told you they’d come after you. We don’t know whether Lena’s alive, but I’d guess she is. They’re likely to use her to get to you.”
“What do they want?”
“They want you dead. And they still want Marcus and Corinne dead, too. So your insurance policy is also in jeopardy.”
“What happens now?”
“Now we wait,” said Terra. “Our people on the outside will watch for signs of Lena’s whereabouts and wait for any communication from The Tribe. I expect that we’ll hear from them soon.”
The canopy of the hyperbaric chamber began to open. His treatment was complete. Ray was surprised at how well he felt. He had more energy than usual. His blood was still supersaturated with oxygen and all the poison was gone. He stepped out of the chamber and looked around the space.
The helicopter took up half the room. The other half was buzzing with activity. There were around a dozen people beside him and Terra. Most were at workstations staring intently at the blank spaces in front of them. They were watching encrypted holographic images visible only to them.
“What are they monitoring?” asked Ray.
“You don’t need to know. This station wasn’t put here just for your convenience.”
One of the people who wasn’t watching a monitor approached him. She passed an instrument over his body from head to toe while looking at the space just above her eye level.
“He checks out,” she said. “The body scan is normal. He’s in pretty good shape for a man his age.”