Dark Matter (13 page)

The bare lightbulb in the ceiling rains down a naked and flickering illumination on the tiny cell. I'm strapped to a steel-frame bed, ankles and wrists chained together with restraints and connected, via locking carabiners, to eyebolts in the concrete wall.

Three locks retract in the door, but I'm too sedated to even startle.

It swings open.

Leighton wears a tux.

Wire-rim glasses.

As he approaches, I catch a whiff of cologne, and then alcohol on his breath. Champagne? I wonder where he's just come from. A party? A benefit? There's a pink ribbon still pinned to the satin breast of his jacket.

Leighton eases down onto the edge of the paper-thin mattress.

He looks grave.

And unbelievably sad.

“I'm sure you have some things you want to say, Jason, but I hope you'll let me go first. I take a lot of blame for what happened. You came back, and we weren't prepared for you to be as…unwell as you were. As you are. We failed you, and I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. I just…I hate everything that's happened. Your return should have been a celebration.”

Even through the heavy sedation, I'm shaking with grief.

With rage.

“The man who came to Daniela's apartment—did
you
send him after me?” I ask.

“You left me no choice. Even the possibility you had told her about this place—”

“Did you tell him to kill her?”

“Jason—”

“Did you?”

He doesn't answer, but it is an answer.

I stare into Leighton's eyes, and all I can think about is ripping his face off down to his skull.

“You fucking…”

I break down.

Sobbing.

I cannot exile from my brain the image of blood running down Daniela's bare foot.

“I'm so sorry, brother.” Leighton reaches out, puts his hand on my arm, and I nearly dislocate my shoulder trying to pull away.

“Don't touch me!”

“You've been in this cell almost twenty-four hours. It gives me no pleasure to keep you restrained and sedated, but as long as you're a danger to yourself or others, this situation can't change. You need to eat and drink something. Are you willing to do that?”

I focus on a crack in the wall.

I imagine using Leighton's head to open another one.

Driving it into the concrete again and again and again until there's nothing left but red paste.

“Jason, it's either you let them feed you, or I run a G-tube into your stomach.”

I want to tell him that I'm going to kill him. Him and everyone in this lab. I can feel the words coming up my throat, but better judgment prevails—I'm completely at this man's mercy.

“I know what you saw in that apartment was horrible, and I'm sorry for that. I wish it had never happened, but sometimes, a situation is so far gone…Look, please know that I am so, so sorry you had to see that.”

Leighton rises, moves toward the door, pulls it open.

Standing in the threshold, he looks back at me, his face half in light, half in shadow.

He says, “Maybe you can't hear this right now, but this place wouldn't exist without you. None of us would be here, but for your work, your brilliance. I'm not going to let anyone forget that, most of all you.”

I calm down.

I
pretend
to calm down.

Because staying chained up in this tiny cell isn't accomplishing a goddamn thing.

From the bed, I stare up into the surveillance camera mounted over the door and ask for Leighton.

Five minutes later, he's unlocking my restraints and saying, “I think I'm probably as happy as you are to get you out of these things.”

He gives me a hand up.

My wrists have been rubbed raw from the leather bindings.

My mouth is dry.

I'm delirious with thirst.

He asks, “You feeling any better?”

It occurs to me that my first inclination when I woke up in this place was the right one. Be the man they think I am. The only way to pull that off is to pretend my memories and my identity have abandoned me. Let them fill in the blanks. Because if I'm not the man they think I am, then they have no use for me.

Then I never leave this lab alive.

I tell him, “I was scared. That's why I ran.”

“I totally get it.”

“I'm sorry I put you all through this, but you have to understand—I'm lost here. There's just this gaping hole where the last ten years should be.”

“And we're going to do everything in our power to help you recover those memories. To get you better. We're firing up the MRI. We're going to screen you for PTSD. Our psychiatrist, Amanda Lucas, will be speaking with you shortly. You have my word—no stone will be left unturned until we fix this. Until we have you fully back.”

“Thank you.”

“You'd do the same for me. Look, I have no idea what you've been through these last fourteen months, but the man I've known for eleven years, my colleague and friend who built this place with me? He's locked away somewhere in that head of yours, and there is nothing I won't do to find him.”

A terrifying thought—what if he's right?

I
think
I know who I am.

But there's a part of me that wonders…What if the recollection I have of my real life—husband, father, professor—isn't real?

What if it's a by-product of brain damage I received while working in this lab?

What if I'm actually the man who everyone in this world believes I am?

No.

I know who I am.

Leighton has been sitting on the edge of the mattress.

Now he props his feet up and leans back against the footboard.

“I have to ask,” he says. “What were you doing at that woman's apartment?”

Lie.

“I'm not entirely sure.”

“How did you know her?”

I fight to hide the tears and rage.

“I dated her a long time ago.”

“Let's go back to the beginning. After you escaped through the bathroom window three nights ago, how did you get to your home in Logan Square?”

“A cab.”

“Did you tell the driver anything about where you'd just come from?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay, and after you managed to elude us at your house, then where'd you go?”

Lie.

“I wandered around all night. I was disoriented, afraid. The next day I saw this poster for Daniela's art show. That's how I found her.”

“Did you talk to anyone else besides Daniela?”

Ryan.

“No.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Yes. I went back to her apartment, and it was just the two of us until…”

“You have to understand—we've dedicated everything to this place. To your work. We're all in. Any one of us would lay down our lives to protect it. Including you.”

The gunshot.

The black hole between her eyes.

“It breaks my heart to see you like this, Jason.”

He says this with genuine bitterness and regret.

I can see it in his eyes.

“We were friends?” I ask.

He nods, his jaw tight, as if he's holding back a wave of emotion.

I say, “I'm just having a hard time understanding how murdering someone to protect this lab would be acceptable to you or any of these people.”

“The Jason Dessen I knew wouldn't have given a second thought to what happened to Daniela Vargas. I'm not saying he would've been happy about it. None of us are. It makes me sick. But he would've been willing.”

I shake my head.

He says, “You've forgotten what we built together.”

“So show me.”

They clean me up, give me new clothes, and feed me.

After lunch, Leighton and I ride a service elevator down to sublevel four.

Last time I walked this corridor, it was lined with plastic, and I had no idea where I was.

I haven't been threatened.

Haven't been told specifically that I can't leave.

But I've already noticed that Leighton and I are rarely alone. Two men who carry themselves like cops are always on the periphery. I remember these guards from my first night here.

“It's basically four levels,” Leighton says. “Gym, rec room, mess hall, and a few dormitories on one. Labs, cleanrooms, conference rooms on two. Sublevel three is dedicated to fabrication. Four is the infirmary and mission control.”

We're moving toward a pair of vaultlike doors that look formidable enough to secure national secrets.

Leighton stops at a touchscreen mounted to the wall beside them.

He pulls a keycard from his pocket and holds it under the scanner.

A computerized female voice says,
Name, please.

He leans in close. “Leighton Vance.”

Passcode.

“One-one-eight-seven.”

Voice recognition confirmed. Welcome, Dr. Vance.

The sound of a buzzer startles me, its echo fading down the corridor behind us.

The doors open slowly.

I step into a hangar.

From the rafters high above, lights blaze down, illuminating a twelve-foot cube the color of gunmetal.

My pulse rate kicks up.

I can't believe what I'm looking at.

Leighton must sense my awe, because he says, “Beautiful, isn't it?”

It is exquisitely beautiful.

At first, I think the hum inside the hangar is coming from the lights, but it can't be. It's so deep I can feel it at the base of my spine, like the ultralow-frequency vibration of a massive engine.

I drift toward the box, mesmerized.

I never fathomed I would see it in the flesh at this scale.

Up close, it isn't smooth but an irregular surface that reflects the light in such a way as to make it seem multifaceted, almost translucent.

Leighton gestures to the pristine concrete floor gleaming under the lights. “We found you unconscious right over there.”

We walk slowly alongside the box.

I reach out, let my fingers graze the surface.

It's cold to the touch.

Leighton says, “Eleven years ago, after you won the Pavia, we came to you and said we had five billion dollars. We could've built a spaceship, but we gave it all to you. To see what you could accomplish with unlimited resources.”

I ask, “Is my work here? My notes?”

“Of course.”

We reach the far side of the box.

He leads me around the next corner.

On this side, a door has been cut into the cube.

“What's inside?” I ask.

“See for yourself.”

The base of the door frame sits about a foot off the surface of the hangar.

I lower the handle, push it open, start to step inside.

Leighton puts a hand on my shoulder.

“No further,” he says. “For your own safety.”

“It's dangerous?”

“You were the third person to go inside. Two more went in after you. So far, you're the only one to return.”

“What happened to them?”

“We don't know. Recording devices can't be used inside. The only report we can hope for at this point has to come from someone who manages to make it back. Like you did.”

The inside of the box is empty, unadorned, and dark.

Walls, floor, and ceiling made of the same material as the exterior.

Leighton says, “It's soundproof, radiation-proof, airtight, and, as you might have guessed, puts out a strong magnetic field.”

As I close the door, a deadbolt thunks into place on the other side.

Staring at the box is like seeing a failed dream raised from the dead.

My work in my late twenties involved a box much like this one. Only it was a
one-inch
cube designed to put a macroscopic object into superposition.

Into what we physicists sometimes call, in what passes for humor among scientists, cat state.