Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (20 page)

“I’ll bring dinner in there, then?”

“Please.”

“Very good,” Andrew said, and managed to convey, unequivocally, that this was
not
very good. That this was a terrible plan. He headed for the kitchen.

When Kevin got to the study
he sat and took out a pen and paper. He
opened the book
and held his pen
up
expectantly
,
as though preparing to take dictation from a notoriously fast-talking professor.

He felt good. His heart was beating normally, steady and strong. His breathing was regular.

Get ready
.

“I am, motherfucker,” he whispered to the empty room, and he leaned forward over the book. “Watch me.”

The room went gray around him, and in the last moment, Kevin Brooks realized he almost felt like laughing.

It was a bad book. Poorly written, and with explanations that were both needlessly complex and yet short on key details; the author skipped entire clusters of steps in most of the examples
.
A college student using this text would have been miserable.

It was
exactly what he needed
.

When Andrew came in with a tray of food, Kevin noted with satisfaction that he was only on page 58. Still on chapter 2.

“How long have I been in here?”

Andrew consulted his watch. “About half an hour.”

Two pages per minute. Down from sixty this afternoon.

“Fantastic
.
”

Andrew gave him a pained look, but he left the room without
responding.

Kevin ate quickly, then returned to his work. That sense of calm was still with him. In fact, he was feeling even better than when he had started. He was being productive – he was getting
ready
, whatever that meant – and yet time was passing at a rea
sonable pace. Not a normal pace
by any means
,
b
ut definitely better than before. At least he wasn’t standing still, treading chronological water.

There was something else, too. Something wonderful.

He was starting to feel
sleepy
.

It had to be the subject. The physics. The sheer density of this material was sucking up mental resources, and he could almost feel the energy draining out of his head.
He took a moment to
look over the mad scrawl of work he had produced so far, a tangled mess of homework exercises that covered page after page, filling every available inch of white paper with algebraic manipulations in thick black ink. He wondered if any professor would ever seriously consider using such a book as an official course text.

And by the way, I’m not in college. And I didn’t study physics. So when did I buy this thing?

Kevin shook his head. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. What was important was that this book was like a balm, it was like a glass of good wine for his supercharged mind, and he wanted to get back to it. Because after another hour
or two
of this wine, this calming tonic, he might actually be able to
use
that
queen-sized mattress in his bedroom.

Andrew came to get him an hour
and a half
later, though by then Kevin felt as if he had been working all night long.
“Time for a rest,”
the man
said, and there was a hint of authority in his voice. This was more than a suggestion, more than a friendly reminder. His employer was working too hard.

Kevin nodded his agreement, and he let himself lean back from the desk. He made an effort to do everything slowly, to let the sense of accomplishment, of
readiness
, stay nestled safely inside him. He go
t up and shuffled down the hall
toward the bedroom, and when he got there he paused only long enough to remove his shoes. Then he crawled into bed without taking off any other clothes.
Concepts of
electromagnetism – the last chapter he had been reading – swam through his head, and he tried to hold these visions close, tried to let them dissolve into nonsense, into a chaos of random associations that would lead to dreams, to sleep.

He waited. He kept his breathing slow and deep.

Almost at once, he felt his heart flutter briefly in his chest.
A
flutter of speed.

No. Come on
.

He wanted to give himself another minute, but he could already tell it was hopeless.
He
pressed his eyes shut with frustration, pressed them tighter and tighter until the black and purple blobs on the back of his lids began to distort and crackle like a television picture with bad reception and his face began to hurt.

Then he sighed and opened his eyes.

He emerged from his bedroom
dressed for exercise.
Andrew appeared from the
kitchen
, a dish rag in one hand
, and
h
is expression turned stern. Disapproving. “This is not the time for a run,” he said. “You should rest.”

Kevin nodded
his agreement
. The elevator arrived. He shrugged wordlessly, and then he gave Andrew a little wave. Andrew did not wave back.

He
started out even
faster this time. He was upset now,
and deeply worried.
Aside from the sheer weirdness of such total insomnia, being awake for this long seemed unhealthy. How long could a person go without sleep? Three days?

Do I have to start worrying about hallucinations? What if I start to go crazy?

He
shook his head and tried to
pick up his pace
. He was aware of a heaviness in his legs, an unfamiliar feeling of fatigue.

No sleep, remember? Recovering from a midnight run doesn’t happen by magic.

He kept running, but now his
breathing was growing labored.
The homeless man on the grassy expanse behind the Metropolitan Museum waved at him again
, and
Kevin waved back. They were two insomniacs tending to their respective businesses; companions of a sort.

He ran the 6-mile loop twice.

It was not a good run, and by the end he felt as though he might pass out. As he came out of the park and onto
F
ifth
A
venue, he stopped and sat down on one of the empty green wooden benches by the park wall.

It felt good to stop.

He sat waiting for his breathing to come back under control, and as he did so he watched the traffic go by.
The lights switched, and there was a moment of near-silence as
the late-night cabs and busses
came to a halt. There was no one crossing the street.

And here we go.

Kevin could feel the slowdown happening; he didn’t need a classroom clock in front of him to know the second hand would be sitting there frozen, stuck as if glued into place. He could examine everything in front of him now, could study every detail. Nothing moved. The world waited for him.

There was the sound of a pigeon calling to its mate from somewhere above him in the trees, and that broke it. The world shifted. He felt his breath moving in his chest again. The traffic light swung slowly in the midnight breeze.

Now, from one of the park entrances behind him, a man came shuffling across the sidewal
k
toward the street. He moved slowly, without purpose. Drunk to the point of stumbling, and probably homeless. Had he been in a bar? Where did he get his drinks? It didn’t matter. He was one man in a city of millions.

Except that Kevin could see a problem developing here.

The man did not seem to realize – or care – that he was walking into the street against the light, and he was
definitely
unaware that the stopped bus before him was creating a screen, a
blinder for the other cars on F
ifth
A
venue, the taxis and limos that were now approaching quickly from the north. There was a yellow cab coming this way at better than 30 miles per hour, and the driver didn’t see the homeless man crossing, he saw only a bus pulled over at the curb. The drunkard was going to step out from behind the bus at precisely the right moment –

Kevin was up and running before he had time to fully realize there was an emergency. The slowdown had helped him somehow. The world had not stopped – there was sound, there was movement – but there was still a sort of
patience
happening. Time was crawling, rather than marching. Kevin saw the problem, he jumped up and moved, and then all at once he was standing behind the homeless man,
then
yank
ing
him by the shoulder, and
then
the two of them went stumbling backward together, hands out, twisting and looking for balance. The taxi whispered past a moment later. The bus driver gave them an angry honk for getting in the way, and
then
the bus was gone too.

Now the two of them were alone on the sidewalk, both still standing.

Kevin pulled the man down onto the bench in front
of the park wall, and they
sat. The man gave him a look that was half confused, half annoyed. But an instant later these feelings seemed to slip away
;
his expression turned placid as he let himself enjoy the sensation of sitting. Wherever he had been trying to walk a moment ago, the bench now seemed preferable. “Pretty night,” the man said, in a voice that was surprisingly clear.

Kevin nodded silently.

No problem on the saving-your-life thing, by the way. Don’t mention it.

“I need to get to bed,” the man declared, leaning back on the bench and looking up at the night sky. “Not yet, though.”

Kevin stayed quiet, feeling suddenly jealous of someone who could so casually decide to postpone sleep. To know that it would come when called, like a faithful dog.