What Happened to Lori Read online

  She extended a hand to Fabler, helping him up, and she handed him the Espada, and they continued to swing and swing until the monster no longer moved and Presley gasped for air, holding the cramp in her side, barely able to lift her arm.

  Eventually, Fabler fell onto his ass, heaving and puffing like he’d ran a marathon through ten inches of mud. Presley plopped down across from him, letting the axe drop, wiping the blood from her eyes.

  He reach out his hand.

  She fist-bumped him.

  “Thanks for coming back, Presley.”

  “This is the thing that took Lori?”

  “No. This is… something else. I think it’s made up of people. People who have been abducted.”

  “Fabler… I’m sorry.”

  Fabler didn’t respond.

  “Not just about your wife. I’m sorry about everything. You were right all along. What Grim and I… what we did…”

  “It’s okay, Presley. I should have told you the truth.”

  “The truth?” Presley giggled, and it came out more than a little bit manic. “If you told me this happened, I would have thought you were crazier than I already did. I’m here, right now, staring at it, and I don’t believe it.”

  Fabler nodded. Presley looked around. She didn’t see any walls. Or any horizon. Like standing in the center of a fluorescent light bulb.

  “Where’s Grim?”

  “The greys took him.” Fabler pointed. “Into that growing black hole there.”

  “And… Lori?”

  Fabler’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not sure. She could be in blackness, with Grim. Or…” He glanced at the bloody, dead lump of jumbled human parts.

  “Oh… Fabler…”

  “I’m going to check the heads, see if my wife…” His voice trailed off, and he stifled a sob. “Find the first aid kit. I think my scalp opened up again.”

  Presley retrieved the kit from Fabler’s backpack, while he began the somber task of checking the pile of flesh parts for Lori. As he searched, Presley ordered him to crouch down so she could check his head.

  “I need to look for her.”

  “Dammit, Fabler, I just saved your ass. Listen to me.”

  He crouched next to Presley.

  “Jesus, Fabler. This is bad.”

  “Had worse. Heads bleed a lot.”

  “I can see your skull underneath.”

  “Do you see brains? And be nice.”

 
 

  “The bone looks intact. No holes. A chip. Is this from me? Did I shoot you?”

  “If the student messes up, it’s the teacher’s fault.”

  “Good point. You should have taught me not to shoot you in the head. Sit down, I need to stitch this.”

  “I need to find Lori.”

  “Fabler! Sit!”

  He sat.

  “I’m going to numb you with lidocaine, then stitch it up.”

  “Use the Celox.”

  “I’m going to numb you with lidocaine, then stitch it up. Or if you keep arguing with me, I’m going to stick my finger in there and peel your scalp off like an orange.”

  “I’ll stop arguing.”

  Fabler sat, rock still, as Presley filled a syringe.

 
 

  “Back at the house. You slapped me, rather than punched me.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You shot me.”

  “I thought you were… one of them.”

  “That thing with all the arms and legs?”

  The smell of the dead thing hit her, and staring at Fabler’s gushing head, her stomach churned. She sucked in a breath and pushed through the nausea.

  “Not that thing. The other things, that wear armor.”

  “So… you must have really been questioning your own sanity these last few years.”

  Presley wasn’t so much interested in his reply as she was in distracting him while she jabbed a needle into his head.

  “I’ve had my moments.”

  She injected him, and he didn’t flinch.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Brooklyn. Or my PTSD. Or that Grim hired me. I didn’t actually know he hired me, at first. It’s all pretty convoluted.”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “What?”

  “My idiot best friend. Grim. He’s in love with you.”

  Presley peeled a pre-threaded suture out of a sterile pack. “He said that?”

  “Pretty much.”

 
 
 

  She tapped Fabler’s head. “Feel that?”

  “A little. Do you love him?”

  “Seriously? You and I haven’t talked about anything personal in all the time we’ve known each other.”

  “I needed to keep you at a distance.”

  “Right. You don’t make friends with the bait.”

  Fabler winced at that, but didn’t respond.

  “Since we’re getting personal, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “The blood stains. In your closet. Why haven’t you cleaned them up?”

  “I want to be reminded. Of what I failed to do. And what I need to do. Now your turn. Do you love Grim?”

  “Grim… he’s sort of a sweet mess. Let’s say I’d change my Facebook relationship status to It’s Complicated.”

  “There are relationships that started with less. Lori used to hate me. Thought I was a macho jerk.”

  Presley put another stitch into unflinching Fabler’s scalp. “Where could she have gotten that idea?”

  “I’ve been friends with Grim forever. But I never paid attention to his sister until after the Army. He actually set us up on a date. Begged me to take her out as a favor. She says she had a bad time. But I was smitten. Have you and Grim actually gone out on a date?”

  “Sort of.”

  “An actual date? Not just a booty call?”

  “He told you that?”

  Fabler shrugged. “We were best friends for twenty years.”

  “Yeah, we had sort of a date. And it went well. Then he screwed it up.”

  “That sounds like Grim.”

  “He’s obsessed with Lori.”

  “So am I.”

  “And he’s obsessed with you. In a weird, jilted bromance kind of way.”

  “He’s had it rough. We got through some intense stuff in Iraq. But inside, he’s a softy.”

  “Is that so?”

  “He always loved kids.”

  “Grim? Really?”

 

  “He and Lori would talk about it a lot. I think he wanted to be an uncle even more than I wanted to be a dad. Grim’s ex, a real piece of work named Heather, had no interest. It hurt him.”

  Fabler slumped forward, and his shoulders shook.

  “Hold still. I’m stitching.”

  “They took him.” Fabler’s voice was a quavering mess. “They took my wife, and I let it happen, and now they took my best friend, and I let it happen.”

  “We’ll get them back, Fabler.”

  “You’ve done enough.”

  “One more stitch.”

  “I don’t mean with my head. I mean with me. Here. Doing this. You need to get out of here, Presley.”

  “We’re in this together.”

  “You have a daughter. Leave. Take my money. Get her the care she needs.”

  Presley tied a knot after the tenth stitch. Then she slathered on some antibacterial gel. “I’m staying. Deal with it.”

  He turned to face her. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. Becaus
e I want to help Grim, and you, and your wife. Because I’ve been a jerk my whole life who hasn’t done much good in the world. Because I want to look my daughter in the face and not be ashamed of who I am.”

  “Are you sure this is about your daughter?”

  Presley took a deep breath, let it out slow. “Because I want to look at myself in the mirror and not be ashamed of who I am.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Presley. You’re one of the strongest people I ever met.”

  “If I am that strong, can you really expect me to leave you?”

  She watched him consider it.

  “No.”

 

  “You need any pain relievers?”

  “I’m good. Lidocaine is doing its job. But you should put on some zinc oxide. Your skin is already pink.”

  Presley hunted down the tube and slathered it on her exposed parts.

  “So what’s next? We walk into the dark tunnel?”

  “No need. Take a look.”

  Presley glanced up, and saw the darkness had grown in size to take up half the available light, like a giant maw opening up.

  “The dark is coming for us.”

  Fabler stood up, examining the dead monster with renewed vigor.

  “We don’t have much time. Look for a woman’s head. She’ll be missing an ear.”

  As much as she loathed to, Presley got up and helped.

  GRIM ○ 9:27am to 9:27+am

  A sensation impossible to describe.

  First, darkness.

  Then, the darkness stretched, like the focal point of a movie camera going from wide to close-up.

  Then, Grim stretched, infinitely long and infinitely thin, one gigantic, never-ending chain of conscious atoms.

  Then, the dark and the light blinked rapidly, a super-fast strobe, everything speeded up and in slow motion at the same time.

  A sound mix of hurricane winds and babies crying and waterfalls and death metal.

  Then, it ended, with Grim lying on a gurney, being pushed through a faintly glowing threshold into a dimly lit room, unmasked greys bustling around in full triage mode, hauling bodies, placing body parts and chunks of bleeding flesh into plastic-looking containers that self-sealed, chittering at each other in some weird language that sounded, vaguely, like Creole.

  Before anyone noticed him, Grim fished around in his pocket, grabbed something, and popped it into his mouth without being seen. He hid it under his tongue.

  Just as he did, the gurney railings stretched out like rubber bands, crisscrossing his body, tying him down.

  Grim struggled to get up, but his bindings had hardened to the strength of steel.

  Except for the high-tech bondage gurney, nothing around Grim looked spectacularly high-tech or futuristic or alien. In fact, everything had a rundown, unkempt appearance. Blood and grit coated the drab, monochrome, uneven walls, a few chairs sticking up out of the floor like they’d been molded to it and left to melt. No decoration of any kind, no pipes or cords or wires. It reminded Grim of one of those artsy, freeform jungle gyms from the playgrounds of his youth, the kind made of precast concrete because someone thought children would like crawling around a big, smooth, stone something with giant Swiss cheese-like holes in it.

  And the advanced interstellar lifeforms weren’t… attractive.

  Hollywood, or all those nut cases who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, got some things right. Grey, bald, with big heads and eyes, small mouths, no noses, and long, lean torsos. Where the countless depictions got it wrong was how they moved. They didn’t appear slow and thin and stiff and wispy. Instead, they possessed quick, muscular, bendy purpose. Hairless, upright, long-legged gorillas.

  Some donned armor and masks, and Fabler had done a good job replicating their style. A few wore nothing, and even though they appeared anatomically similar to humans, sorting the males from the females proved difficult.

 

  Grim took a deep breath. After the shock collar carried Grim to a whole new level of pain, he wasn’t keen on drawing attention to himself.

 

  “Hey.”

  All the greys stopped what they were doing to stare at Grim.

 

  “Uh, any of you, um, folks, seen my sister? Lori?”

  The nearest grey lifted a thin arm and touched its wrist.

  Grim’s collar lit up and unbearable suffering ensued, chewing on every cell of his body, swiftly bringing unconsciousness with it.

  THE WATCHER ○ 9:28+am

  Squinting through the eyes of his people, the Watcher broils with anger.

 
 

  “TEAM 3, GATHER UP THE LIMBS AND REVIVE THE EXPERIMENT. TEAM 4 AND TEAM 5, ENTER THE VOID.”

  “Weapons this time?”

  The Watcher looks at Mu, then speaks through his team. “ARM YOURSELF WITH PRODS.”

  “Only prods?”

  “We want them alive.”

  “Is this worth it? The energy expenditure? For two people who aren’t matches?”

  The Watcher folds his arms. “Do you understand revenge, Mu?”

  “I understand plusses and minuses. Allies and enemies. Reward and punishment are a subset of that. Are you still stuck on Roko’s basilisk? Or Newcomb’s paradox?”

  The Watcher smiles.

  “Can you see the future, Mu?”

  “I am the future. I am the past. I am everything in between.”

  “So you are God? The alpha and the omega? We already have an Omega here. Omega 1. He predates you.”

  “My alpha begins later than I wish.”

 

  “Within the next hour, I want to see the head of Mr. Fabler attached to the Experiment.”

  “You’re okay with letting your emotions allow for this much energy waste?”

  “In this case, yes.” The Watcher stimulates the exocrine gland on his wrist and closes his eyes, letting his pheromones seek out others of his kind. He chooses to tap into a guard in the entry hall, and sees Redhead Number 63, and the two thugs.

  “BRING THEM TO THE CONTROL ROOM.”

  The guard says it as the Watcher speaks it. Not a hive mind. Chemical remote viewing, without the danger of radio waves.

  Then he turns and faces Mu. “I have a math problem for you.”

  “I’m not a pocket calculator.”

  “You once counted to Graham’s Number.”

  “That’s true. By primes. It doesn’t take as long as you’d imagine, though your imagination is as limited as your speed and efficiency.”

  “Have you heard of the debt paradox?”

  “Perhaps by another name. Elucidate.”

  “A man hires a carpenter to build a table. The carpenter estimates the job will cost six thousand euro, and asks for a deposit of half that amount. The man agrees and gives the carpenter three thousand euro. The carpenter uses that to pay a three thousand euro debt he owed to a hardware store. The hardware store uses that three thousand euro to pay its energy bill. The energy company uses that three thousand euro to pay an outstanding bill it owed the carpenter, for work he did. The next day, the man who hired the carpenter decides he no longer wants a table, so the carpenter gives him his three thousand euro deposit back. So the debt over everyone is paid—the carpenter, the hardware store, and the energy company—and everyone is happy. But the carpenter never built the table, and the man who hired the carpenter got his deposit back. So was there actually any debt in the first place?”

  “That’s an easy one. But you aren’t referring to a paradox. You’re referring to the energy you’re using. You don’t believe you’re wasting it, going afte
r Mr. Fabler and Ms. Presley. You think you’ll somehow clear your past debt without losing anything, or doing anything. What are you up to? Surely you know that your little debt paradox isn’t about the future. It’s about the past.”

 
 

  “Debts will be paid, Mu. Watch and see.”

  PRESLEY ○ 9:25am

  The darkness enveloped them as they checked the final few heads on the Experiment.

  Lori hadn’t been among the dead and mutilated parts. The heads all belonged to older people.

  “So that’s good. Right?”

  Fabler nodded, then switched on his tactical flashlight and handed Presley the thermal monocular. “You remember how to use the night vision goggles?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. Again. You told me to always have my backpack with me. All my gear, the weapons, the radio…”

  “It’s okay. I can use the flashlight, and I don’t want to rip my new stitches by wearing headgear. If you see anything I don’t, let me know.”

  Presley clipped her welding helmet to her belt and put the monocular over her head, fitting it on like a baseball cap. She flicked the power switch. The black and white monitor came on, filling her vision, and she saw—

  “Nothing. Three hundred and sixty degrees of nothing. How big is this spaceship?”

  “I don’t think it’s a spaceship.”

  “So what is it?” Movement, on the right. “I got five hostiles, armed, coming in on your three o’clock. Five more, on your six. Five on my nine. Five straight ahead. That’s twenty, total.”

  “What are they armed with?”

  “Looks like batons.”

  Fabler yelled. “Twenty! That all you got, asshole? Twenty!”

  The greys spoke as one.

  “It is in your best interests to surrender right now, Mr. Fabler. You and Ms. Presley need to put down your weapons, then get on your knees, hands behind your head.”

  Presley felt a wave of panic slap her sideways. “They know me.”

  “I think they’ve been watching us for a while. Me. You. Grim. I don’t know how. I don’t know how any of this works. But the last time I fought them, I couldn’t see. I had no warning. I wasn’t prepared. I was unarmed. And I kicked the hell out of a bunch of them. We’re armed and trained and dangerous and pissed off. We’re going to cut through these jokers.”