The Fold: A Novel (20 page)

The sirens were louder in the hall. The emergency lights had switched on. They made bright patches in the already-lit hallway.

Arthur was at the front desk looking over Anne’s shoulder. There was a flashing icon on the screen. “It’s at Site B,” she told him. Her eyes were wide.

Olaf and Sasha ran past the desk and out the door.

Mike looked at Jamie. “What is?”

“Hazardous material leak,” she said. “Coolant, welding gas, radioactive material. Something bad’s happened and it’s warning us all to stay out of the area if we’re not in hazmat suits.”

They headed out the door and caught a glimpse of Sasha sprinting down the path toward the trailers and the golf carts. Mike and Jamie dashed after her. Olaf was already around the corner and out of sight. Some of the overgrown branches along the path reached for them, pushed out by the wind.

The sirens were sounding outside, too.

They ran around the corner and collided with Sasha. Jamie caught Mike before he fell. Mike grabbed Sasha. The older woman regained her balance and pointed across the gravel lot. “What the fuck?” she yelled over the building wind.

They followed her gaze and her finger.

Olaf had made it halfway across the lot before stopping. Past him Mike could see the bulk of Site B. It was shaking. The corrugated sheets that made up its roof rippled and buckled. One of the domed skylights shattered. The cinder-block walls trembled and cracked.

Sasha lunged back into action, running across the lot. Mike and Jamie followed. Their feet crunched in the gravel, then scuffed on the dusty supply road. They were five hundred feet from the building, then four fifty, and then four hundred.

This close, Mike could see even more fractures on the walls. What he’d thought were cracks at a distance were large breaks up close. Another one formed while he watched, crisp and clean even at this distance.

The black ants brought out a few memories, but the red ants overwhelmed them.

Olaf grabbed Sasha’s arm as she tried to pass him. “Wait,” he yelled. She yanked it away but now Mike was close enough to grab her. “Wait, goddammit,” Olaf snarled.

“Neil’s in there!” She waved her free arm at the bicycle parked by the door.

“Where’s the dust?” asked Mike.

She stopped, just for a second. The groan of the flexing metal roof echoed over the wind. “What?”

“There should be dust,” he said. “From all the breaking cinder blocks.”

Sasha gazed past him, and then her head tipped back and up. “Oh, fuck,” she said.

Mike and Olaf looked up. Clouds were gliding across the sky. Not rushing, but their movement was apparent. They were closing in from every direction, moving with the wind.

The wind was blowing toward Site B. All of it.

Arthur and Anne caught up with them just as the roof of Site B buckled again. One section sank low, as if an invisible weight was pushing it down. The bolts snapped with a gunshot noise and the section of roofing tumbled away inside the building. Two more panels broke free and vanished, then a third. The low roar of the wind became a howl.

“Is it a hurricane?” asked Jamie.

“We don’t get hurricanes in California,” said Anne.

A shriek of metal came from the building. They looked back in time to see Site B’s security door crumple inward and vanish. Clouds of loose sand and leaves raced after it through the door frame. A moment later two more roof panels tore loose and plunged inside.

“I think we should back up,” said Arthur, taking a few steps away and leaning on his cane.

“I agree,” said Mike.

“What about Neil?” asked Sasha.

Mike glanced at her and gave a small shake of his head.

“Half the building just collapsed,” Olaf said.

Mike took a few steps back. Jamie followed him and pulled close, calling into his ear over the tumult. “What is it?”

Mike opened his mouth and thunder rumbled above them. They all looked up. The clouds were building up, blocking the sun. Drops fell on their faces.

“What the fuck is going on?!” shouted Sasha.

“It’s raining,” said Olaf. It was more a general statement than a response. He sounded confused.

“I think it’s decompression,” said Mike.

“What?”

He raised his voice over the low howl. “The whole building’s getting sucked into the rings. Everything is. It’s creating a huge low pressure zone in the atmosphere.” He gestured up at the sky. “It’s changing the weather.”

The wind rippled their hair and clothes. Arthur stepped back again. Mike and Jamie did the same. Anne stumbled after them. Sasha and Olaf stood where they were, staring at Site B.

Then it stopped, like a fan being unplugged. The wind died down. The air grew still. The rain continued to patter down, slowly darkening the pavement.

What was left of Site B stopped shaking. Concrete dust and gravel poured from the cracks in the wall. A section the size of a small car slid free and crashed to the ground. It took half of the green letter “B” with it. One of the surviving roof panels squeaked as it swung back and forth on its last bolt.

They stared at the remains of the building for a moment. Then Sasha ran forward. “Neil,” she yelled. “Neil, are you okay?”

They headed for the building. Anne stayed where she was, staring at the ruin. She had the blissful but vacant look of soldiers after surviving an artillery barrage.

Sasha paused at the doorway and then headed inside. The others
stopped to look at the damage. Mike touched what was left of the hinges. Two of them had torn free of the door and swung loose. The third was twisted and snapped at the pin.

Jamie stepped inside. “All the wiring’s gone,” she said. “The conduits are stripped right off the walls.”

Olaf’s head craned back. “The lights are gone, too. Hell, almost everything’s gone.”

“Neil,” shouted Sasha. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space. “Neil, where the fuck are you?”

Arthur walked forward and looked at a fallen piece of machinery. It was one of the huge resistors. He tapped it twice with the end of his cane. There was a path of scratches in the concrete behind it.

They walked deeper in. Only the heaviest and most solid items had made it through the incident. Anything small or loose was gone.

The rings stood in the center of the barren space. Patches of frost covered the steel ramp. It let off puffs of steam as raindrops hit it through the open roof. All but one of the carapace sections had been stripped away, exposing endless loops of copper wire. A few cables hung loose. The connecting hoses were gone.

“I don’t see anything,” said Arthur. He pointed at the rings. “On the other side of the Door, I mean. I don’t think it’s working anymore.”

Mike looked. The view through the rings was the side wall of the ruined building. He took a few steps and checked from a different angle. The view stayed the same.

Sasha finished her circuit of the room and joined them. “I can’t find him,” she said. She gazed at the dead rings.

“Let’s not give up yet,” said Jamie. She looked at Mike. “Do you think he’s still here somewhere?”

“I hope so,” Mike said. “I don’t want to think about where else he might be.”

They didn’t find Neil.

Arthur reported the building collapse to DARPA. He said nothing about Neil’s disappearance. Then Mike talked to Reggie and tried to get him as caught up as possible.

“So Ben’s not crazy?”

“No,” Mike said, “he isn’t. But Becky isn’t an impostor, either. It’s a point-of-view issue.” He settled back in his chair. He’d propped the tablet up on the table so most of the trailer would be visible behind him.

“Which means what?”

“Going through the Albuquerque Door changed him,” said Mike. “Just not in the way we’ve been thinking.”

“So he’s changed, but not crazy?”

“Yeah. This Ben had slightly different memories and experiences.”

“
This
Ben?” Reggie looked at him for a moment. “I take it there are a few things you’re not telling me.”

“For the moment, lots of stuff,” Mike said. “There’ve been some…developments.”

“Are they cloning people or something?”

“No.”

“Seriously, is everything okay out there?”

Mike didn’t look at the screen. “It’s what you were worried about.”

“I was worried about a couple of different things.”

“There are some complications with the Albuquerque Door. With the Door itself.”

“What kind of complications?”

“I’d rather not say at the moment. We’re still trying to figure them out.”

“We?”

“Yeah. Me, Arthur, the rest of the team.”

On the tablet, Reggie leaned in close. “You haven’t gone all Stockholm Syndrome on me out there, have you?”

“Cute.”

“Answer the question.”

“No, I have not.”

“You’re okay? No stress? No pressure?”

“No more than you’d expect in this situation, I guess.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I don’t think I can really explain it like this.”

A scowl washed across Reggie’s face and was gone. “Why not?”

“Because it’s complicated and because I know you,” said Mike, “and I know how you react to things. Charging in with a lot of people and micromanaging isn’t going to help anything right now.”

“And you think that’s what I’d do.” It wasn’t really a question.

“I know that’s what you’d do.”

“So why shouldn’t I? You’re telling me a building’s collapsed, a bunch of very expensive equipment’s been destroyed, one of my assistant directors isn’t crazy, but he’s been changed into a different person somehow. And that charging in would be my normal reaction at this point.”

“Because you told me to take care of things out here,” Mike said. “I’m taking care of it, and then I’m going to tell you everything. Just like we talked about when you hired me.”

They stared at each other through the screen.

“I need you to find a way to salvage this,” said Reggie.

“I’m not sure that’s possible, at this point.”

“You’ve got until the end of the week.”

“Okay,” Mike said. “Thanks.”

“And you’d better have a ton of answers by then. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

Reggie didn’t smile. “Or else.” He reached out and the screen went dark.

In the kitchen area, Jamie sighed. “That could’ve gone better.”

Mike flipped the tablet down on its face. “Better than I thought it might.”

“Yeah?”

He dipped his head at the tablet. “Worst case, I could’ve seen him taking control, ordering us all off campus, and launching a full investigation.”

“He can’t do that.”

“With his connections? Sure he can. I bet he could arrange some kind of ‘security drill’ that would drop a hundred Marines from Camp Pendleton here in the next half hour or so. And then we’ll never find out what’s happening here.”

Jamie scowled.

“So,” Mike said, “we’ve got until the end of the week. We should get back to work.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You want to have sex?”

He looked at her. “Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because it was a lot of fun the first few times,” she said, “no matter who you turned out to be. And it means we can put off watching the security footage for a while longer.”

“We need to.”

“I have needs, too.”

“And I’ll gladly try to satisfy them, if that’s what you want,” he said. “Believe me. But we need to do this.”

THE SECURITY FOOTAGE
was custom-encrypted. It would only play in the control room. Jamie was pretty sure she could write up a patch that would let it play in the conference room, but they all agreed it wasn’t worth the time. If the control room was dangerous, the conference room was, too.

Arthur leaned on his cane behind her chair. Mike noted that it had gone from mild affectation to an actual support for the man.

“Fuck,” Sasha said, staring down at the main floor. “We’ve got a serious roach problem.”

“They get brave when there’s no one around,” said Mike. “Didn’t take them long.”

Olaf looked down through the window. “Must be a hundred of them down there.”

Mike stood next to Sasha and peered down through the window. Dozens and dozens of tiny spots moved across the floor like drifting motes of dust. “Probably more that we can’t see. My mom used to say there were ninety-nine cowards hiding for every brave one that came out in the light.”

She shook her head and stepped away from the window. “Little fuckers.”

“How do we want to do this?” Jamie glanced up at them from her chair. “Work backward? Start at the top?” There were three gray squares, each on its own screen. The security cameras inside Site B had stopped filming at some point. Two of them had died almost simultaneously, the other had lasted fifteen seconds longer.

Sasha rested her hands on the back of the chair. “Do we know when ‘the top’ was?”

“Let’s start thirty seconds before the alarms went off,” Arthur said.

Jamie set her hand on the track ball, shifted it, right-clicked, shifted, and clicked again. Her fingers came back to the keyboard and danced on the number pad. The three squares filled with images. Site B from different angles. “Okay,” she said. “Everyone ready?”

Mike stepped back and found a sweet spot that let him see all three screens. “Good.”

Arthur nodded. Olaf crossed his arms. Sasha just bit her lip.

Jamie tapped the mouse. The images came to life, although the only real movement was the constant sweep of the red warning light. The time code spun away in the corner.

Camera two looked straight at the rings. They could see through to the main floor and its own flashing light. Mike remembered the angle from the first time he watched Olaf crosswalk.

Nothing happened. From three different angles.

“The alarms should go off any second now,” said Arthur.

On camera one, a shaft of light appeared.

“The Door,” said Mike. “Neil’s checking things out before he locks it up.”

Sasha’s eyes went wide and she put her hand over her mouth.

Jamie reached out and tapped the mouse. All three images froze. “Do we really want to watch this?”

Sasha closed her eyes and whispered into her hand. It sounded like “Fuff Vee.”

“We owe it to him,” Arthur said. “He worked on this project almost as long as you. He wouldn’t want us to get weak over this.”

“I think what he’d want is to be standing here with us,” said Olaf.

Mike set a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. She reached up and squeezed it. The ants pulled out the image of the last time they were in this configuration. Him. Her. Arthur. His hand on her shoulder. Her shouting at him.

He set the ants to new tasks. Cataloging. Filing.

Jamie reached for the mouse.

The images came to life and camera two went black. White lines of static flickered across it.

Arthur leaned forward. “What happened?”

Jamie’s fingers danced between the keyboard and the mouse. The images rewound, then began to crawl forward at quarter speed. There was no sound. She tapped something and the image from camera two expanded to fill its screen.

“There,” said Olaf. He reached out and almost touched the screen. “Do you see it?”

“Move your hand,” said Sasha.

The air was rippling. It was the familiar summer-heat haze that meant the Albuquerque Door was about to open. But the blurry air spilled out around the rings by at least five or six feet. It almost covered the screen.

The air shifted and the screen went black.

“Dammit,” said Jamie.

She reached for the controls again but Mike stopped her. He moved his hand to point at the bottom of the screen. The concrete floor was there, complete with painted lines. His finger slid up and circled the base of the ramp, just visible through the batch of blackness. A little higher and he traced the dim outline of the rings. “It’s all still there,” he said.

Sasha reached out her own hand. “Are those stars?”

There were over a hundred of them, at least. Crisp and clear, like
photos from the Hubble. They were brightest toward the center of the rings.

The ants swarmed in Mike’s head, bringing out hundreds of images until they had the right one. “That’s the Northern Hemisphere,” he said.

Olaf glanced at him. “Are you sure?”

Mike tapped the side of his head. “I’ve looked up at night a couple of times.”

“So now the Door’s going out into space?” said Jamie.

“No,” said Olaf. He ran his finger across the screen. “See it?”

Mike peered at the screen and saw the gray line Olaf had caught. It was hidden in the fuzziness at the end of the void. A barren horizon of gray soil marked by a few low hills and rocks.

“It’s the Moon,” said Sasha.

“It can’t be,” said Olaf. “The Door opens here. Right here.” He pointed at the floor.

Jamie shook her head. “Not this time.”

Something fluttered at the edge of the screen. At quarter speed, the lines of static were visible as pieces of paper from the workstations. They zoomed into the rings—into the area where the rings should’ve been—and vanished. A moment later, something red whipped out from under camera two and disappeared into space.

Jamie blinked. “Was that…”

“Fire extinguisher,” said Olaf. He pointed at camera three’s screen. “The one from the main support.”

The shaft of light vanished from all the images.

“The door,” said Sasha. “It was closed when we got there.”

“Probably slammed shut by the air pressure,” Mike said.

On the screen the fire extinguisher bounced and tumbled across the barren landscape and came to rest a few yards from the Door. Mike frowned. The ants scurried in his mind.

The lights in the room shifted again. “There’s the alarm,” Arthur said. “Emergency systems are reading this as a hazardous materials leak.”

The images continued to crawl forward. Another fire extinguisher flew into the rings. One of the chairs worked its way around the workstation and rolled to the base of the ramp. It tipped over and flipped up into the starry void. Fluorescent tubes dropped from the ceiling to shatter on the ramp or the platform. Their shards vanished into space.

A white line shot across all three monitors, coming from somewhere behind camera two. It wobbled like a sound wave. “What is that?” Arthur leaned in close. “Is that some kind of static?”

“Might be a digital artifact,” said Jamie. “The magnetic fields may be affecting the cameras.”

A single laugh slipped past Mike’s lips. Barely a chuckle.

Jamie glanced at him. “What?”

“It’s toilet paper.”

The white line wavered again.

“It’s from the bathroom in the back of Site B,” he said. He pointed at the camera two footage, where the white line extended off into deep space. “We’re watching a hundred feet of toilet paper unwind in slow motion.”

The line twisted and wobbled some more. A few seconds later it was gone, a dim thread in space. A few more scraps of paper and loose items flitted across the screen and disappeared. A cable slithered across the floor like a black snake and into the rings.

A tiny movement caught his eye. He focused his attention on it. “There,” he said.

He pointed at camera three. Just visible in the dark corner was the shadowy figure of a man. He seemed to be pushing on the wall next to the door.

“He’s hanging on to the conduits,” said Sasha. “Why doesn’t he just grab the door handle and get out?”

“The wind might be too strong,” Mike said. “He could just be too scared to let go.”

“Like when drowning swimmers take the lifeguard down with them,” said Jamie.

“Something like that, yeah.”

The workstations were moving now, scraping across the floor. Their assorted cables lifted off the floor and grew tighter and tighter. The other chair rolled free and shot across the open space into the Door. It tumbled across the gray soil and kicked up clouds of dust.

The ants seethed. Mike felt his brow furrow.

Olaf noticed it. “What?”

“It should’ve gone farther,” said Mike. “With that amount of momentum, it should’ve gone a lot farther.”

“How is this happening?” asked Jamie. “Explosive decompression
doesn’t just go on and on like in sci-fi movies. That’s why it’s explosive. It just happens all at once, like a balloon bursting.”

“Normally, yeah,” agreed Mike, “but this isn’t normal. We had a hole in space. A doorway into outer space right here, deep down in the atmosphere.”

Olaf nodded. “Every ounce of air on Earth is pushing those things into the rings. This isn’t breaking a water balloon, it’s turning on a fire hose.”

Light spilled across all three screens. Something big dropped from the ceiling and blocked camera one for a moment. It bounced off the concrete, slid across the floor, and spun up into the rings. It wheeled through the lunar sand and fell over.

“The roof panel,” said Sasha.

On camera three, Neil was moving. He stayed low to the ground, but moved toward the lens. His feet entered the frame on camera one.

Camera one flickered to black, then white, and then went dead.

A nitrogen tank rolled across the floor on its side. A dozen feet of hose whipped at the end, twisting in the air to point at the rings. The tank was too wide to go through the rings, but it rolled into the rift and bounced once before coming to rest on the dusty ground on the other side.