The Fold: A Novel (30 page)

“No fucking way,” the Sasha next to Mike said.

Forty-two seconds.

“Go,” he said. “Must go now.” He tugged at the bandaged Sasha. She dropped her rifle, pulled his arm across her shoulders, and dragged him across the room. The fishhooks in his side tore down, their barbs scratching against his bones.

Jamie ran ahead, and he heard the magnetic locks
thump
open on the big door.

Other Sasha with the bloodshot eye gave a quick nod and pulled his other arm over her shoulder. He yelped as the bones stretched apart and the hooks sank in even deeper.

They ran across the room, and Mike glanced back at the patchwork man. It raised one clawlike hand and rolled over on the ramp. It glared across the room at him.

They ran down the hall toward the front entrance. “Where are we going?” yelled Jamie.

“Outside,” he said. The air in the hall felt warm and humid, but it filled his lungs. “Bottom of the stairs.”

She ran ahead again and pushed open one of the glass doors. The Sashas half carried Mike past Anne’s desk, through the door, and down the concrete steps. They started across the parking lot.

“No,” he shouted. He twisted around and pointed at the walkway down to the trailers. “There.”

“We’ve got to get away,” said bandaged Sasha. “There’s too much—”

Mike shrugged loose, ignored the knives in his side and staggered a yard or so down the path. He stopped in front of the landing and dropped to his knees. “Here.”

Jamie ran to join him. The Sashas did too. “Are you sure?” asked Jamie, crouching down.

He reached out and smacked his hand against the wall next to them. “Between this and the foundation, there’s almost seventy feet of concrete between us and the—”

The ground rumbled.

The glass doors and windows were carried out on a wave of fire and hurricane winds. Something slammed into the railing above them and parts of the front desk were hurled out into the overgrowth. The air burned their eyes and lips and lungs and then the air was gone altogether and they were gasping for breath. Black clouds whirled around them and took away the world, and they screamed and the flames blasted over their heads and around the sides of the staircase.

A trio of cinder blocks crashed into the walkway near Jamie. A piece of rebar plunged into the ground next to Mike. What looked like an I beam flew out across the overgrowth and decapitated half a dozen trees before hitting the ground hard enough to shake it. Dust and gravel rained down on them. An oversized silver hex nut slapped into the ground next to one of the Sashas.

The overwhelming white noise became thunder and screaming and car alarms. A crack split the wall next to them. The railing tipped over and fell as one piece. It slid down the wall and landed across them.

The noise and clouds settled. Mike tried to shake his head and slammed it against one of the uprights on the railing.

“Oh, yeah,” muttered the Sasha with the bloodshot eye, “you’re a genius.” She had dust and bits of grit in her hair. A sleeve had ripped free on her T-shirt and slipped down her arm. A wide scratch bled across the front of her shoulder.

“Everyone okay?” he asked, rubbing his temple.

“I think so,” said Jamie. Her face was streaked with soot. Her hair was singed at the tips.

“My leg’s pinned under the railing,” said Sasha—the bandaged Sasha. “I think it might be sprained. It’s throbbing.”

Mike inched out from under the railing. The hooks and pins and blades in his torso wiggled and twisted as he did. They felt wet again. Jamie and bloodshot Sasha were already clear of the wreckage and helped him up.

They shifted the railing enough for bandaged Sasha to get her leg out. Her ankle had caught a lot of the weight. It was already swelling. Bloodshot Sasha stepped in to help herself up, but their eyes met and they both froze. She went to help Mike instead. Jamie moved in to give bandaged Sasha a shoulder to lean on. They hobbled away from the stairs, then turned to get a better look.

A blackened steel framework stood where there’d been concrete walls. The upper floor of the building was gone. It wasn’t clear if it had collapsed onto the first floor or been blown clear off. A haze of dust and ash stretched out into the parking lot and past the guard shack. The guard shack, Mike noticed, had lost all its windows.

Almost every part of the complex that could burn was on fire. It hurt to look at it too long. It sent a pillar of black smoke into the air, letting every fire department within a few miles know they would be needed. “Well,” Mike said. “That was disturbing.”

The Sasha with Jamie raised her eyebrows at him. “What part?”

He shrugged again. “Most of it.”

“Most?” Jamie said.

“Fuck me,” said both Sashas at once. They glanced at each other and smirked.

Then the one with Jamie straightened up. “Arthur!”

He was sprawled by a car with broken windows. Grit and dust had turned him into a monochrome ghost. He didn’t move when they called his name again.

The Sasha with Mike—bloodshot Sasha—left him and ran. Jamie glanced at her Sasha who nodded, and then she sprinted across the parking lot, too. The wounded balanced against each other.

“He’s breathing,” the bloodshot Sasha called back to them. “He must’ve been on the edge of the blast.”

“Try not to move him,” said Mike. “If he’s breathing and his pulse feels good, leave him alone for now.”

“We need to call an ambulance,” said Jamie.

He glanced at the burning building and the column of smoke. It was a good two hundred feet tall now, at least. “I think they’re on the way,” he said.

A smaller fire caught his eye. He led the bandaged and limping Sasha over to it. She balanced on one leg while he crouched. He winced and bit back a yell. His ribs felt like gravel under his arm, grinding nerves between them whenever he moved. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up.

It looked like the canvas grocery bag had smothered most of the flames. Three of the antique books had been knocked free by the blast, and they made a line of small fires leading back to the bag. Mike knocked the closest one away and pulled the bag close.

“What is it?” asked Jamie.

“His books.” He lifted the top one out of the bag, watching for an ember that might make it burst into flame with more air. The canvas smoked a bit, but the other volumes seemed fine.

The third book down was leather-bound and odd-shaped. A little too tall and narrow compared to a modern book. The spine was wrapped in cloth.
A.K.
had been printed on it in black ink that had faded into the material.

Arthur coughed. Bloodshot Sasha knelt and whispered to him. He muttered something, coughed again, and went quiet. “He can talk,” she said. “That’s good, right?”

“I think so,” said Mike. “What did he say?”

“Told me to watch out for debris.”

“A little late,” said the bandaged Sasha. “Shouldn’t we cover him with a blanket or something?”

“I was just going to say that,” bloodshot Sasha said.

Mike looked at the wrecked cars in the parking lot. “Does anyone have something in their car? Maybe a blanket or a towel? Even a spare coat?”

“I’ve got a beach blanket,” said Jamie. “I haven’t used it in ages, but it should be okay.”

“There probably isn’t a beach blanket in this Jamie’s car,” said Mike.

“Ahhh,” she said. “Good point.”

“I think I might have a sweatshirt,” said both Sashas.

“This is going to get old fast,” said Jamie.

“Fuck you,” they echoed. They glanced at each other and smirked again. The one by Arthur walked into the lot and found a car with three windows smashed.

Mike tried to lift the bag, but his ribs were too far gone. “You need help?” asked Jamie.

He shook his head. “Stay with Arthur.” He rewrapped Koturovic’s treatise in the canvas, then pushed himself up off the stack of books with a wince. Sasha hopped over, and they counterbalanced each other enough for him to straighten up. “I hear sirens,” he said.

Sasha lifted her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”

A breeze swept across the lot and carried some of the smoke away with it. It smelled clean and alive. Mike watched the clouds around the building twist away. There were piles of rubble, but it was easy enough to reconstruct where the main floor had…

“Goddamn it,” he said.

Bandaged Sasha hopped around. “Oh, fuck me hard.”

“What?” Jamie craned to see from where she crouched with Arthur. Then the breeze took away the last of the smoke, and her eyes went wide.

Standing in the middle of the rubble, surrounded by flames and smoke, were the rings of the Albuquerque Door.

Bandaged Sasha let out a string of
fucks.

“How?” said Jamie. “How can it still be in one piece?”

Bloodshot Sasha returned from the car with a dark blue hoodie. She spread it over Arthur’s chest and arms. Then she saw what they were staring at and let out her own list of swears.

Mike stared at the rings. The breeze cleared the smoke, but the rings were deep enough into the rubble that there was always more. It took almost a full minute for him to see enough.

“They’re dead,” said Mike. “Shut off. It’s done.”

“What?” The bandaged Sasha hobbled around to look at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he said. He stretched out his arm—his left arm—and sketched the outline of the rings. “There are just two rings. Nothing on the other side. It’s just like the one over on Site B. We did enough damage to shut it down.”

“But they can’t be standing,” said bloodshot Sasha. “That explosion should’ve torn them to fucking pieces.”

Mike pursed his lips. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe because it was open, some of the blast went through to the desert. Enough that it didn’t annihilate everything here.”

“Including us,” said Jamie. She glanced over her shoulder at the approaching sirens. “Fire department’s here. Police, too.”

“And ambulances,” said Mike. He raised his good arm and pointed at Arthur on the ground.

THE PARAMEDIC HAD
a shaved-bald head with five o’clock shadow across his scalp. Mike had been staring at it for ten minutes while the man taped up the gash in his side. He winced as the bandages tugged and made the gravel and fishhooks between his ribs shift.

The paramedic glanced up. “That hurt?”

“Still, yeah.”

“A piece of rebar did this?”

“Pretty sure that was it, yeah.”

“What about these gashes on your stomach?”

“They’re nothing,” said Mike. “Got in a fight with a dog this morning.”

“You report it?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Mike gasped as the bandages rolled across his ribs again.

The paramedic shook his head. “You’ve had a shitty day.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You really need to go get this done right. You need stitches. X-rays to make sure you don’t have a flail chest.”

“A what?”

“It means you broke a rib in two places, so there’s a spear of bone floating around in your chest waiting to puncture a lung or something.”

“Great. Can you just tape the ribs for now?”

“Nobody does that anymore,” said the man. “Too big a risk of pneumonia from restricted breathing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I just need to make sure everything’s safe here. Promise, I’ll be in a hospital before the end of the day.”

A few yards away, they closed the doors on Arthur’s ambulance, and the sirens started up. He had a concussion, a broken arm, dozens of scrapes and cuts from flying debris, but the other paramedics seemed pretty sure he’d live. The ambulance rolled out of the gate and swerved between the police barricade.

Mike’s paramedic patted him on the arm. “That’s all I can do,” he said. “Hold off on aspirin if you can—you’ve had some blood loss. Drink a lot of fluids. No alcohol. Take it easy until you get X-rayed.”

Mike nodded, scooped up his shirt, and shuffled over to Jamie and
bloodshot Sasha. They were watching the firemen hose down the building. Jamie had the canvas-wrapped bundle of books under her arm. “Everyone still good?”

“Pretty good,” said Jamie. She looked at his bandages. “How about you?”

“I’ll live.” He nodded at the building. “Anything?”

Jamie shook her head. “Nothing. Not a peep.”

“Have they…they found anything?”

“Frankenstein?” Bloodshot Sasha smirked. Her torn sleeve was gone, and a piece of gauze was taped over her shoulder. “The body was right next to a few hundred pounds of C4.”

“It was also right next to the rings,” said Mike, “and they’re still standing.”

“There’s not even a stain left,” she said.

“No sign of Olaf or any of the Marines,” said Jamie. “But one of the firemen told me it was still too hot to search properly. They’ll have to look for…remains when the fires are out. It might take awhile.”

Bandaged Sasha limped up with a flash of white around her ankle. “Light sprain,” she said. “The medic said I was being a wuss for complaining about it.”

Jamie looked back and forth between the Sashas, then made sure no one was nearby. “Did anyone ask about…you?”

“I told them we were twins,” said bloodshot Sasha.

“So did I,” the other Sasha said.

“Twins with the same name?” asked Mike.

The Sashas glanced at each other. “I thought you’d give a fake name,” said bloodshot Sasha.

“Why would I? I thought you would.”

Mike raised his hand. “We need to get it straight. Now. Before there are questions we’re not ready to answer.”

Jamie pointed at the Sasha with bloodshot eye. “You’re Dasha now,” she said. “D for being in the desert with me.”

“Dasha?” echoed the Sashas.

“Just for now,” said Mike.

“I sound like a porn star,” said Dasha.

“I sound like twin porn stars,” said Sasha.

“Why do I need to change my name?” Dasha asked.

“Seriously?” Mike gave them the Look. “Just for now. Deal with it. Pretend it’s a
Star Trek
plot or something.”

A faint smile flickered across both of their faces. “Oh, fuck me,” said Dasha. “I’m Thomas Riker.”

“You are,” said Sasha. “You totally are.”

“But before he went all Maquis.”

“Maybe.”

“No, not maybe.”

“Speaking of awkward questions,” said Jamie, “I think your boss is here.”

They turned to the gate. Two people in dark suits, a man and a woman, stood by a gleaming black sports car that had slipped in through the same opening the ambulance had driven out. They ignored the police and firemen and spoke to each other.

The man was tall with broad shoulders. His hair was neat and slicked back, but on the long side. He had dark glasses more suited to the beach than a suit. His shoulders shifted twice, and he reached up to tug at his collar. Mike was pretty sure the man didn’t even realize he was doing it. He looked more like a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy.

The woman was Arab, or maybe Indian. Her hair was short and black, and her hawkish nose was on par with Mike’s own. She wore a sleek pair of silver-rimmed glasses that could’ve been a matched set with Arthur’s. Even if the broad-shouldered man hadn’t been next to her, she would’ve looked small. Her tie was knotted in a loose half-Windsor.

The man pulled a bright green phone from his pocket and took a few steps toward the building, relaying information to someone.

“Since when do the feds drive Teslas?” asked Sasha.

“Our tax dollars at work,” Dasha smirked.

“I don’t think they’re with DARPA,” said Mike.

“Who are they, then?”

He studied the two newcomers. “I’m not sure yet.”

One of the policemen approached Jamie with a notebook. She gave Mike a nod, and they stepped apart. The woman in the suit straightened up and walked toward him. Two police officers inside the fence line glanced at the smoldering building, gave her a quick look, and one muttered something that Mike lip-read as
eff bee eye bitch.

He took a few steps toward her. “Hello,” he said as she stopped in front of him.

The woman pointed past him to the building. “Were you in there before it blew?”

He nodded.

“What was going on in there?”

“I don’t think I’m allowed to say,” he told her. “Not without checking some clearances. Are you part of the Department of Defense?”

The woman shook her head. Behind her, the man circled around the barricades to get closer to the building. He continued to talk into his phone.

Mike remembered Dr. Forrester, the medical examiner obsessed with people getting black-bagged. “Homeland Security?”

“No. We’re with a group based out of Los Angeles. For the past few months we’ve been getting some low-level interference that’s been affecting our equipment.” She tipped her head toward the remains of the building. “It’s been getting worse, and we finally traced it down here.”

“That’s not possible,” Mike said. “We weren’t putting out any signals that could register in Los Angeles.”

“We’ve got some pretty specialized equipment,” she said.

“It’s almost a hundred and thirty miles,” said Mike. “From that far out, San Diego can barely affect Palomar with light pollution.”

She smiled.

Mike looked at her again. At the lines of their suits. The buttons. The stitching. The ants carried out a series of images. Both the man and the woman were wearing off-the-rack suits, not tailored at all. He’d seen the man’s jacket before, two weeks ago at Target with Bob. They’d walked past menswear on the way to pick up a mini-fridge, and there’d been a rack of suit separates next to the aisle.

“Which agency did you say you were with?”

The woman crossed her arms and smiled. It wasn’t an entirely friendly expression. “I never said we were with the government.”

“Nice job,” said the man, walking up behind Mike. He held up a bright green phone for the woman to see. “Just heard. Everything’s going back to zero.”

“So what’s that mean?” asked Mike. “ ‘Everything’s going back to zero’?”

The big man thumped him on the shoulder. It made his ribs throb. “Means you just saved the world, dude,” he said. “Cool feeling, huh?” He gave the woman a nod and then walked back toward the building, snapping pictures with his phone.

Mike and the woman stared at each other for a moment.

“I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “That all of you had to go through it and get hurt.”

“People died,” he said. “Nineteen people. Dead.” The ants swarmed out of their faces. Sixteen Marines, including Black, Weaver, and his former student Duncan. Olaf. Neil. Bob.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“So who are you?” he asked.

“I doubt you’ve heard of us,” she said. “But we’re government subsidized. Sort of. Did you see anything?”

“Sorry?”

“You were doing some kind of dimensional experiments here, right? Based off the work of a Victorian mad scientist?”

He furrowed his brow. “How’d you know that?”

“I’ve seen this a few times before. That’s pretty much always how it goes.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“I wish. What did you see before you blew the place up?”

He tried to read her expression. “I’m not sure you’d believe me.”

“You’d be surprised.” She looked over at the building. “Let me ask you this, then. Did you have a roach problem?”

His brows went up. “Yeah.”

“Green roaches?” she added. “Kind of strange ones with an extra leg?”

“You’ve seen them before.”

The woman nodded. “Them, and what comes after them.” She looked past him to the building. “Again…I’m really sorry.”

Another moment passed.

“Who are you?”

“I had a long drive to read personnel files,” she said, ignoring him. She nodded her chin toward Sasha and Dasha. “I know all about you, Leland Erikson, prefers Mike, but I didn’t know they had twins working here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, they do.”

The woman pressed her lips together and nodded. “That’s new,” she said after a minute. “You’re sure she’s not an evil twin or anything?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“I think I can help clear that up, then,” she said. “That they’re just twins. Who’ve always worked here.”

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem. At least we can help a little.”

The spray of water from the fire hoses loosened a pair of cinder blocks. They plunged off what was left of their wall and shattered against the concrete floor. According to Mike’s internal diagram, they hit right where the collection of tool chests had been.

“So,” he said, “what was all this about?”

She nodded after the big man. “Like Roger said. Saving the world.”

“You do this for a living? Stop alien invasions from other dimensions.”

“Now and then. Most of the time, my job’s more about historical research. And some hacking.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“You have no idea.”

A fireman walked up and talked to Jamie and the twins for a moment. Sasha and Dasha relaxed. Jamie smiled. She glanced over at Mike, judged the conversation he was having with the Indian woman, and gestured at the path down to the trailers. He nodded. She nodded back and walked off with the two identical women.

“So,” the Indian woman said as Jamie walked away. “You’re not an English teacher anymore. They started advertising for a replacement a few days ago. Are you going to work for your friend at DARPA?”

“Doubtful.”

“No job. Sounds like no place to live, either.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?”

She tilted her head to one side and stared at him for a moment. Then she pulled a bright green phone from her pocket. Her fingers swooshed back and forth across the phone’s screen. “We’ve got a vacancy. Two, if you want to bring your girlfriend. We can always use somebody else with computer skills, because I’m sick of doing everything.”

“Vacancy?”

“Yeah.”

“Which means…?”

“I can’t tell you that. Not yet. But you know what I can tell you?” She turned and headed back toward the Tesla.

He took a quick step to keep up with her and his ribs ached. “What?”

“This is going to keep you up at night,” she said. “It’s going to gnaw at you. Because that’s what happened to me. And Roger. And some other people. We found clues. We saw things. And we wanted to know more. We
needed
to know more. Just like
you
need to know more.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. Now that you’ve seen what’s out there, your only two options are deep denial or finding the rest of the answers. It sucks, I know, but that’s it.”

He felt the corners of his mouth twitch. “I’m not really built for denial.”

“Exactly.” She held out the phone. “There’s one number in it. Think about it and give us a call. You’ve got a week.”

Mike took it from her. “And then what happens?”