Linkage: The Narrows of Time (30 page)

Lucas looked up through a swirling column of
dust particles and gave Kleezebee a thumbs-up signal. “All clear,”
he shouted up to the professor. Soon he heard the motorized grind
of the bumper-mounted, electric winch hoisting the gear back to the
surface.

Now it was Drew’s turn. First, his folded
wheelchair was sent down to Lucas, then Drew made the trip,
carrying the professor’s crutches and yellow travel bag. Lucas gave
Kleezebee’s items to Billy Ray, before helping Drew into the
wheelchair.

After the harness made the steady climb to
the surface, Kleezebee slipped on the gear, then started his
descent. Lucas decided to take a step back to allow more room for
the professor to land, but his heel caught the edge of a cement
chunk behind him. He grabbed onto Drew’s shoulder to keep from
falling backward into the debris.

“Shit, that was close,” Lucas said, flexing
his ankle to check its condition. “They could’ve done a better job
with the cleanup down here.” He felt fortunate, though, not to have
been injured more seriously, just the slight tenderness, especially
since he’d have to carry Drew down the stairs to the 20th Sublevel.
His legs were still sore from carrying Drew up those same stairs,
and the last thing he needed was a bum ankle.

“How’s your leg doing?” Lucas asked Drew
after seeing a bloodstain on the floor. He assumed it was from the
gash in his leg that Drew got while sliding down the debris pile
during their escape.

“I don’t know. Can’t feel a thing.”

“That’s good . . . I guess,” Lucas said,
making a mental note to change Drew’s bandage when they returned to
the silo.

Lucas unclipped Kleezebee’s safety harness
once the professor’s feet were firmly planted on the stairwell’s
landing. Drew handed the crutches to Kleezebee, which the professor
promptly handed to Lucas. “You’ll need to carry these down for
me.”

More shit to carry? Lucas thought. What was
he, Superman? “Sure, Professor, not a problem.” He held them aside
while Drew climbed on his back, piggyback-style. Drew had the
knapsack strapped to his back, which contained several bottles of
water, plus the theory notebook and writing supplies.

Kleezebee picked up his yellow tote bag and
put his arms through the two straps, hoisting it across his back.
At least Lucas didn’t have to carry it, too. Any more weight and
he’d never make it down in once piece.

When Billy Ray started down the stairs
empty-handed, Lucas said, “Dude, a little help here?” Lucas pointed
to Drew’s wheelchair, which was leaning against the cement
wall.

“Oops, sorry about that,” Billy Ray
answered.

Lucas held the crutches in his right hand and
waited for Kleezebee, who was holding onto the handrail as he
hobbled his way down each step. Unless the professor was in better
shape than he looked, Lucas knew the journey was going to be slow
and painful—for everyone. He was right—it took just short of an
hour to reach Sublevel 20.

Kleezebee unhitched the yellow bag and sat
down on the bottom step.

Lucas’s lower back was screaming for a break,
so he leaned the crutches against the wall and bent down to let
Drew slide off. Drew sat on the step next to the professor until
Billy Ray unfolded the wheelchair and helped him into the seat.

“Where’s that water?” Lucas asked. Drew
opened his backpack and gave him a bottle. Lucas twisted off the
plastic cap and chugged it down, barely stopping to swallow. “Hand
me another,” he said, tossing the empty bottle into the corner.
Neither bottle was chilled, but he didn’t care. All that mattered
was that it contained something wet and soothing. He took his time
with the second bottle, savoring every sip while sweat continued to
trickle from his scalp. Ten minutes later, the bottle was almost
empty.

“You about ready?” Kleezebee asked after
standing up and sliding the crutches under his armpits.

Lucas tipped the bottom of the bottle above
his head to drain the last few drops into his mouth. He tapped the
end of the bottle twice, then answered, “Yep, I’m good.”

“Lead the way,” Kleezebee told Drew.

“It’s the fifth door on the right,” Drew
said, rolling his wheelchair forward. Kleezebee followed him, but
without his yellow bag, which was still sitting on the floor. Lucas
assumed the professor had left it behind on purpose, perhaps
because Kleezebee was pissed at him for making the group wait while
he enjoyed his water break. Lucas slung the bag over his shoulder
and followed behind the rest of the group. He kept turning around
to check behind him, feeling like he was forgetting something, but
he couldn’t figure out what. He figured it must have been his
imagination; it had already been a long day.

The professor’s bag weighed about five pounds
and was end-weighted, making it awkward to carry. As Lucas walked,
something inside the bag, possibly metal, clanked with each step.
He was even more impressed with Kleezebee’s strength and agility
for having carried the tote bag down the stairs, broken ankle and
all.

Drew counted out the lab doors they passed.
“Three . . . four . . . five. This is it—the QED Lab.”

Drew pulled at the closed lab door, but it
didn’t open. There was a security keypad next to the door with a
horizontal card slot along the top of it.

Kleezebee stepped in front of Drew, then took
the tote bag from Lucas. He opened it and removed a handheld
electronic device with a credit-card-sized keycard tethered to it
by a ribbon-style communication cable. He inserted the card into
the slot and began entering commands into the device. The professor
tried multiple times to breach the door’s security system, but this
way wasn’t working.

Eventually, Lucas grew impatient with his
boss’s futility. “How about if I give it try, Professor?” Kleezebee
held out the device, but Lucas didn’t take it from him. “No,
thanks, I have a better idea. I need you to step back.” He took a
running leap with his feet aimed at the door just to the left of
its handle. His feet made contact, bending the metal frame inward
about an inch, but the door remained shut. When he hit the floor,
he landed on his right hip, sending shooting pains from his
waistline down to his ankles. “Fuck, that hurt,” he said, squirming
on the ground.

Billy Ray extended his hand to Lucas. “Need a
hand, Dr. Ramsay?” he said in a thick, Southern drawl.

Lucas gripped the tech’s hand, allowing Billy
Ray to pull him up off the floor.

“Maybe we should try it together?” Billy Ray
asked.

”Fine,” Lucas replied with discomfort in his
voice. He rubbed his hand over his sore hip before taking two steps
back from the door. “Go on three?”

“Sure. You count it out.”

Lucas counted to three and they coordinated
the assault on the door. A section of the metal doorframe broke
loose and flew across the lab as the door flung open, smashing its
handle into the wall on the far side.

“Sometimes, brute force is only way to fly,”
Lucas said with pride, walking into the QED Lab with a noticeable
limp.

Three free-standing grease boards were
stacked along the right wall. Their clear surfaces were covered in
mathematical equations written in both red and blue marker ink.

“Are those the equations you saw?” Kleezebee
asked.

“Yes,” Drew said, pushing his wheelchair
toward them.

“Looks like they’re out of sequence,” Lucas
said, bringing the mobile boards together, end to end. He stood
back to garner a better view of the mathematics.

“I think you should put the last one first
and then swap the middle one to the end,” Drew said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Lucas said, rearranging
the boards as his brother suggested.

“Definitely some form of energy extraction
from subspace,” Drew said.

“Looks to me like they’re incomplete,”
Kleezebee said, looking around the room.

“Not only that, their cascade variants are
all wrong,” Drew said, shaking his head. “I’m surprised this worked
at all."

“Just more of our hard-earned tax dollars
being flushed down the sinkhole,” Kleezebee said.

“They should have hired us to do it. We’re
probably a shitload cheaper than these guys,” Lucas said.

“And you would have gotten it done right,”
Kleezebee said, smiling at Drew. The professor placed his hand on
Drew’s shoulder, and said, “What do you think? Between the two of
us, we should be able to finish these equations.”

“Yeah, it might take a while, but it’s
doable,” Drew said, pulling out a yellow pad and pencil from his
backpack.

Kleezebee told Lucas and Billy Ray, “Why
don’t you two look around to see if there’s any paperwork or notes,
something that may shed some light on the missing
calculations.”

Lucas and Billy Ray began searching the lab,
starting with the tallest storage cabinets built into the wall to
the right of the entrance door. Lucas opened the double doors and
found five shelves crammed full of manila file folders. Each folder
had a date written on its index tab and the files were sorted in
chronological order, starting five years ago. He peeked inside a
few of them, but only found hand-scribbled notes on legal-sized
sheets of paper. He didn’t see any calculations. He tried to read
the notes, but the penmanship was horrible. “This guy must have
been an ER doc in a former life. And I thought my writing was bad.”
He checked a dozen more folders, but still didn’t find any
calculations. He moved on to the next cabinet.

He was sifting through the disorganized stack
of equipment stored in the next cabinet when he heard footsteps
coming from outside the lab’s open door. “Shhhh,” he told Billy
Ray, who was humming an old country tune. Lucas pointed at his
right ear, then at the open door. Billy Ray nodded.

Lucas was a good twenty feet from Kleezebee
and Drew, who were working together in front of the grease boards.
Kleezebee was closest to him standing to Drew’s left, sucking on
one of his unlit cigars. Lucas used a short, low-pitched whistle to
get their attention. Kleezebee turned first, then Drew. Lucas
pointed at the door then held up a finger to his lips. Both men
nodded.

Lucas initially thought the footsteps might
belong to Kleezebee’s security guard on the surface, but dismissed
that idea when he heard the distant sound of a gun being cocked.
When he heard a couple of door handles being jiggled, he realized
the person in the hall was still a few doors away. He figured he
had enough time to close and lock the lab door before the stranger
arrived.

Lucas inched the entrance door closed, trying
not to make a sound. Before it closed, he turned the handle to
retract the latch, hoping it would quietly slide back into place
when he released pressure on the mechanism. He was able to silently
close the door and let go of the handle, but the door latch
wouldn’t engage because of the damage caused during the
break-in.

Lucas backed away from the door and crouched
down with his back against the storage cabinet. He opened the left
cabinet door for additional cover and leaned in, using one eye to
peer through the gap in the doorjamb. Next to the lab door was a
fire extinguisher, which he intended to use as a blunt-force weapon
once the stranger entered the room and had moved past him. He just
needed to time his attack properly.

Billy Ray wrapped his callused fingers around
Lucas’ left bicep, and then suddenly, the two of them were inside a
pitch-black space.

“Damn it, take me back!” Lucas yelled into
the darkness.

“Sorry, can’t do that until it’s safe to
return,” Billy Ray said.

“When the hell will that be?”

“When my proximity sensor tells us the coast
is clear,” Billy Ray answered, holding his glowing watch face out
in front of Lucas where he could see it. The watch face contained a
wire frame floor plan of the QED Lab with a pair of red blips in
the top left corner and two more blips in the middle. A slow-moving
single dot was approaching from the right.

“Look, there’s only one. I can still take
him,” Lucas said, pointing to the moving blip.

“Sorry, we’re not going back until its
safe.”

“Fuck that,” Lucas said, trying to tear the
watch from Billy Ray’s wrist. He failed.

“I’m the only one who can operate it,” Billy
Ray said, keeping the watch out of Lucas’ reach. “If you remove it
from my wrist, the subspace rift will collapse, killing us
both.”

* * *

Kleezebee looked around for his yellow bag,
and saw it sitting on the floor next to the wall, too far away to
be of any use. When the lab door opened, Randol Larson from the
Advisory Committee walked in with a revolver pointed at him.
Kleezebee, still leaning on crutches, raised his hands partway
above his head—any higher and he would fall over.

Drew quickly followed suit.

“You really should have stationed more than
one guard by your winch,” Larson said, pointing the gun initially
at Kleezebee’s chest, then at Drew. “I was told you were dead.”

Drew shrugged, pushing his hands even higher
over his head.

“What do you want, Larson?” Kleezebee
asked.

“Where’s the other one?”

“Who?”

“Don’t try to play me. Unlike my idiot
brother-in-law, I didn’t buy that whole campus escape to Green
Valley, not for one goddamn second. I’m sure you switched cars in
the tunnel.” Larson pointed the gun back at Kleezebee. “Tell me
where he is, or so help me God, I’ll put a bullet in you.”

“He’s not here,” Drew replied before
Kleezebee could stop him from answering.

“Bullshit.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“I doubt that. You two never go anywhere
alone.”

“Go ahead and search if you like, you’ll
never find him,” Drew said.

“We’ll see about that,” Larson said, pulling
out his cell phone.