John Gone (37 page)

Karen finally shifted her attention from
Felix and looked to Dr. Castler.

“One moment,” Castler said. “Gentlemen, if
you’ll please put these on.” Castler leaned down to a black duffle
bag by his feet and removed four masks. Each covered the eyes and
ears of its wearer.

Castler answered Felix’s question before he
could ask it. “Something I failed to mention about the build of the
device we gave you. Upon its use, the watch will emit a frequency
that incapacitates nearby observers. These will neutralize its
effect on us.”

Thanks for the head’s up
, Felix
thought.
I was wondering why there had even more energy required
than there should have been.

Castler was the last to don the mask and
nodded to Karen once it was in place around his head. Nervously,
she placed her thumb flat against the watch’s glass. Five seconds
later, a bright light shot from the face of the device. Karen
looked briefly to Felix. He smirked and raised his hand shortly
upward as a goodbye. It was difficult to see past the dark black
tint of his mask and bright blue light surrounding her, but Felix
thought he saw Karen smile. She disappeared.

It was now 8:00 P.M., and Felix knew that the
video feed in the hub had been cut fifteen minutes prior.

This is it
, he thought.
This is
when it happens.

Amy had left just moments ago, and Felix was
busy saying his goodbyes to Calendar.

“Be good,” he said. “They’re probably going
to stick you with some other scientist fresh from the surface.” He
looked at the black tally marks he’d scrawled across the shell.
“Then again, perhaps not. You do look a bit like a prison brick
now,” he said, laughing.

The laugh had started at his comment, but
continued on and on, amplifying and varying as it continued. Felix
crouched and rolled onto his back amidst the fit. Calendar began to
lick his face, which only made Felix’s laugh louder and stronger.
It was the moment it had finally hit him: At any time now, he would
be free.

Sure, it wouldn’t be the happiest of endings.
He didn’t get the girl, his pet would have to stay, he didn’t get
the money he’d signed up for, and there was no one up there waiting
for him, but after everything he’d been through, four long terrible
years in a bunker beneath the Earth, perhaps just one minute under
the sun would be enough.

“No, I didn’t get the girl,” he said to
Calendar, his laughter finally abating. “But at least I found her.”
He drummed lightly on Calendar’s shell. “Okay, pal, let’s get
ready.”

Felix stood and walked to the food storage
where he’d hidden the device amidst the thousands of foiled food
packages.

Third shelf, four rows back
, Felix
recited to himself as he reached back for the bag that contained
the rogue device. He found it immediately, as he had every night
for the past two years. He lifted it to his face and kissed it.

He walked back to his living area and plopped
himself down in the large blue chair. Calendar walked in front of
him and lay down, allowing Felix to use him as a footstool. Felix
eagerly complied and stretched out his long legs atop the
tortoise’s shell.

“Yes, there will be small things I miss. But
not many,” Felix said. He closed his eyes. A minute later, his
footstool suddenly moved, causing the back of Felix’s feet to crash
down to the concrete below. Calendar was running toward the
door.

“What is it?” Felix asked, following closely
behind. “Is it happening?” He dashed to the large metal door at the
lab’s entrance and bent down to peer through the port glass.
Someone in the distance was running toward his lab. Felix squinted
and strained to make out the figure, but the dim light of the
hallway was making it difficult.

As the figure got closer, Felix could see one
of its arms waving. The other was holding something. He thought he
heard noise penetrating the glass. Was the person yelling? Felix
turned his head and placed his ear flat against the door’s window.
At first the sound was muddled, but moments later, as the person
drew near, he was able to hear the voice. It was faint, but he
could make out every word.

“Felix! Felix!” a woman’s voice yelled. “We
have to get out of here! They’re coming, Felix! They’re coming! We
have to get out!”

Felix recognized the voice immediately. He
quickly turned his eyes back to the glass. He could see her easily
now. It was Karen, running frantically toward his lab.

No, no, no
, he thought.
Why now?
Not now!

Felix waved his hands in front of the port
glass in an X and yelled, “No, Karen. Go back! Get out of
here!”

Either not hearing him or simply ignoring his
warnings, Karen continued her run for the door. Behind her, Felix
saw the distant silhouettes of two men at the other end of the
tunnel.

“No! No!” he yelled, pounding his fists upon
the metal. He looked quickly down at Calendar, now spinning around
on the floor, frantically barking at the frightening commotion.

Suddenly, the deep rumble of an explosion
shook the doorway. It wasn’t long before the entire room was
shaking. Felix lost his footing and landed awkwardly on Calendar’s
dome-shaped back. Quickly, he stood back to his feet and looked
through the port glass for Karen. His face shook in horror as he
watched the cavern collapsing behind her. Gigantic rocks avalanched
through the pathway, crushing down around her with the weight of
miles of Earth above them.

As Karen approached the door, its mechanism
engaged. But before it could slide open completely, a massive grey
stone crashed down in front of it, scaring Felix back from the
glass and knocking him off balance. He regained his footing and
stumbled back to the door. It had opened a few inches from the
floor before becoming broken by the stone’s impact.

He dropped to the ground and hurriedly peered
out from underneath the bent metal into the collapsing cavern
beyond it. There he saw Karen, just a few feet away, both of her
feet caught beneath fallen rock.

“Karen!” he yelled. “What were you
thinking?”

“Felix,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

“You have to get out of there. This whole
cave is coming down!” he yelled.

Another rock crashed on top of the rocks
pinning Karen’s feet. She winced from the pain.

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I came to
warn you.”

“You didn’t have to,” Felix said. “I knew. I
had a plan!”

Karen looked up at the cracked ceiling above
her. The stone was splitting.

“You knew?” She paused. “It doesn’t matter. I
don’t have long now. The ceiling is about to fall,” she said
calmly. “I’m sorry for everything. All of this is my fault. The
only thing I did was run away from it. I never did anything to stop
it. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t save anyone.”

Felix looked in horror to Karen’s eyes,
drenched with fear, encased by the knowledge that death stood
before her. He remembered the time they’d first met in the desert,
how she’d dealt with his sarcasm and laughed at his jokes. In that
one moment, he remembered every word she’d spoken, each smile she’d
worn, each cold shoulder she’d given, and each warm remark she’d
made. He looked behind him to the painting of the airport and back
again to her. He couldn’t watch her die.

“It’s not your fault,” Felix called to her.
“You never had the chance to save anyone. But I do.”

Felix thrust his arm beneath the door and
slid the watch he’d spent two years building through the thin
opening beneath it. It sailed easily to her grasp. “Put it on!” he
yelled. She quickly latched the band to her wrist and looked up at
the crumbling ceiling, full collapse imminent. She trembled.

“Maybe someday,” she cried, “when we both get
out of here, we’ll meet on the surface and things can be different.
You said that to me once.”

“Put your thumb on the glass!” Felix
yelled.

Hands shaking, she lifted her thumb and
placed it on the watch.

“You’re almost out!” Felix yelled. “Hang in
there. Just five seconds more!”

One, two
, she counted. Karen looked up
at the ceiling and watched it finally break apart. Large sections
of stone began tearing down to the ground below. She was shaking
with fear, but did her best to keep her mind calm.
Three, four
...

Suddenly, a huge piece of stone crashed down
between Felix and Karen. He rolled back from the impact and away
from the door. The force of the collapse shot the file that had
been under Karen’s arm open, and a flurry of papers floated beneath
the lab’s door. Another rock crashed against the entry immediately
after, causing its mechanism to break and the door to fall
permanently closed.

Felix rushed to his feet and looked through
the window of the door. He saw nothing but stone piled against the
glass. It was impossible to know if she’d made it out.

Felix turned and faced the empty laboratory.
The shaking had stopped and the rocks had finally settled in the
hallway. The room had become eerily silent. He looked down at the
scattered papers on the floor. They’d come from Karen’s file. She
had to have brought them with her for a reason.

As he leaned down to collect the papers, he
noticed an odd transparent plastic sheet between them. He pulled it
from the stack to reveal a carefully preserved, pressed yellow
tulip contained within.

He walked back to his workstation and set the
stack of papers on its top before sliding the pressed flower safely
into the top drawer.

Felix thumbed through the papers that had
made it through the door. Most were parts of incomplete files, and
all were out of order. Looking through them, a few key words caught
his attention: something called the cycle, a program labeled
“Advocate training,” a detailed description of something called the
“indentured scientist program,” and a name: Paul Gourd.

Felix dropped the papers onto his desk. He
had time for that later, all the time he could ever need to go
through them, gleaning whatever pointless knowledge he could from
their contents. He walked to the wall behind him and leaned against
its side as he crumpled slowly to the floor. With his head rested
against open hands, he began to cry.

He thought about the final words Karen had
said to him and repeated them over and over in his mind. It was
more than thirty years before he was spoken to again.

Ronika eased open the door to her bedroom and
peered through the crack at John, asleep upside-down with his head
at the foot of her bed. It had been painful for both of them, but
they’d agreed that allowing him a few hours of sleep before his
departure would reduce the risk of John jumping while unconscious a
second time.

The trip to Kala’s laboratory was risky
enough under the best of conditions, and even the doctor had seemed
worried about John’s ability to jump again after the “misfire” that
had happened that afternoon. Though the sudden teleport had allowed
for his escape, no one felt comfortable with the Diaspora acting
even more erratically than normal.

Ronika looked on as her friend slept on top
of her bed, his body spread out wide atop her sheets as if
attempting a snow angel in the bedding. His breathing had calmed
since she’d seen him sleep last, and the soothing pattern of his
chest’s rise and fall mollified her, though only slightly.

How can he be so calm?
she asked
herself.

The fight’s left him
, she thought
angrily.

Ronika tilted her head to one side and looked
at his face. She took note of each contour and freckle, trying to
register a fully defined image of him to her memory. She knew that
this moment they shared would be one of their last.

Ronika deftly slid through the crack in the
door and entered the bedroom. The soft blue strands of carpeting
that blanketed the floor crept up between her toes and quieted her
steps. She continued left to the oak panel dresser standing on the
side of her room and softly opened its top drawer. She removed a
thin, plastic photo album and opened it under the dim light of the
pink and purple butterfly lamp on the dresser.

The first page of the cheaply-made album held
two photographs locked in place by a glue stick, protected solely
by a thin cover of translucent plastic sheeting. The first photo
was a picture of Ronika as a child, smiling widely and looking
straight up at the center of the camera’s lens. The photograph held
below it was the only picture she had of her father, taken at the
worst of angles when he wasn’t expecting the shot. She’d always
hated that there’d been no one to take a picture of the two of them
together, and for that reason had kept the two photos sharing a
page, together always.

Ronika turned the first page over and flipped
through the tens of empty album pages behind it. There was room for
148 more pictures, a number Ronika knew by heart. The day her
father died she’d promised herself to fill the album to its end
with pictures of friends and loves. She’d told herself that she’d
go to school, meet all sorts of weird and interesting people and
document their adventures in photograph, joining her father and her
eternally in the small grey album she kept in a drawer.

Nothing had worked out, she allowed herself
to realize. She’d accomplished nothing that she’d assured her late
father that she would. Ronika closed the album shut and squeezed
the plastic book against her chest as she looked back to her bed
and the boy on top of it.

He’s the closest I’ve come,
she
thought.
And now he’s leaving me too.

Her eyes tearing, Ronika put the album back
into the drawer and slid it closed. She leaned down onto the
dresser and put her head into her arms on its top.