Part 27 (1/2)

Floyd's joint was sitting idle between my fingertips. I took a deep drag before I handed it back.

Taylor answered her door on the second knock. She looked tired, as if she hadn't slept at all that night.

”Yeah, Dean, I'll come,” she said coldly, when I told her what we were planning to do. ”I'll help Charlie any way I can.”

I stared at her for a while, taking in her pinched lips and wrinkled forehead, the clenched and jutting muscles of her jaw. Who is this person? I wondered. At times like this, I couldn't figure her out. She was wearing a mask-a cold facade that she hid behind whenever she came under a.s.sault-and I had absolutely no idea how to peel it back.

”What's wrong, Taylor?” I finally pleaded. ”What did you find in that drawer back at the Homestead? What can I do to help?”

For a moment, her expression relaxed and her jaw unclenched. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head, raising a hand to cover her dark and weary eyelids.

”There's nothing for you to do, Dean,” she said, speaking from behind the sanctuary of her fingers. ”But don't worry about it. It's not you; it's not your fault. I just need time, okay? I need time to figure things out. Priorities, you know?”

After she finished speaking, she lowered her hand. Her eyes were red-bloodshot-but there were no tears. She tried to force a smile, but it came across as a horrible grimace, a melange of fake, stillborn emotion.

”But you can count on me,” she said. ”I'll do everything I can ... for you, for Charlie, for my friends.” After the word friends, her voice trailed off, and I barely caught her final sentence: ”I'd never let you down.”

Next I went to check on Sabine. She was smiling when she opened her bedroom door, practically beaming. Her forehead was dotted with beads of sweat and smeared with graphite. I looked over her shoulder and saw large sheets of drawing paper scattered across the floor. They were dark with pencil and charcoal.

”What are you doing?” I asked, surprised at her att.i.tude and her energy. She'd been hiding from everyone for the last couple of days; ever since she'd met with the Poet, she'd been locked away in what I had a.s.sumed was a depressive funk.

”It's a surprise,” she said, flas.h.i.+ng me a sly smile. ”It's a project I'm working on. And it's absolutely brilliant. Just brilliant!”

She saw me staring over her shoulder and reached up to block my view with her palms. ”No, no! It's a secret,” she said. ”It's not done yet, and I can't sacrifice the impact of that first viewing. It's got to hit! It's got to hit hard, like a kick to the b.a.l.l.s.” She pulled back her leg as if she were going to demonstrate the impact on my b.a.l.l.s. I stepped back in surprise, and she laughed. Then she closed the door to just a crack and peeked out at me through the narrow gap.

”Are you okay, Sabine?” I asked. ”You're acting strange.”

Her face settled for a moment. ”I'm just excited, Dean. That's all. It's my process. It's how I work. But I'm fine, really. In fact, I'm better than I've been in a long time now. I've got a plan, a purpose.” She nodded toward the art on her floor. ”But I've got to get back to work. The muse-she's moving, and I don't want to fall behind.”

Then she closed the door in my face. I heard a playful little laugh come from inside the room as I turned and headed back toward the stairs.

The manic swings here were dizzying. At the moment, Charlie, Floyd, and Sabine were up-way up-and Taylor was down. But I got the sense that it could change at any moment. We were all fragile here, fragile and out of control.

Give the city a moment, I knew, and everything would change.

This house needs some serious therapy, I thought as I clambered down the stairs, cinching my camera bag tight against my back. I met Charlie, Floyd, and Taylor at the front door.

The research park was deserted. And it wasn't really much of a park. It was just a square of squat gray buildings with a gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce in the middle.

Charlie knew just where he was going. He led us down a path between two of the buildings and out into the central courtyard. There was a cherry tree here in one corner, and a stagnant fountain in another. Sometime in the last couple of months, the cherry tree had toppled over, pulling up a huge knot of roots. Its bent trunk stretched across the path, ending, leafless, in a crown of broken branches. There were eight buildings in the square-two on each side-and empty windows looked down on us from every direction. One of the buildings had a broken window up on the third floor, and an office chair lay in the courtyard below, surrounded by gla.s.s and shattered computer parts. It was perfectly still inside the courtyard. There wasn't even a hint of wind inside this secluded s.p.a.ce.

Charlie smiled widely and gestured for us to follow, breaking into an excited trot as he crossed to the far side of the square. He led us around the base of one of the buildings-the one with the broken window-and back out onto the street. The planter from Charlie's photograph was right there, at the building's entrance.

”You've been here before, haven't you?” Taylor asked. ”You didn't hesitate, didn't take a wrong turn.”

Charlie shook his head. ”I walked by weeks ago, looking for my parents. I just remembered it, that's all. I've got a good memory for this type of thing. Places. Directions.”

Taylor responded with a skeptical grunt.

”C'mon,” Floyd said. ”Let's see if this f.u.c.ker's home.” He crossed to the front door and pulled at the handle. It rattled in its frame but didn't open. ”f.u.c.k. What now? Should I knock?”

”No,” Charlie said. ”Look.” He pointed toward the planter. On the wall, behind the concrete bowl, I saw a red light blinking steadily.

We made our way over, and Floyd leaned down into the narrow s.p.a.ce between the planter and the wall. ”It's a keypad,” he said, surprise and confusion in his slow, mildly stoned voice. ”It's still got power. Battery, do you think?”

The keypad was set about a foot off the ground, completely hidden in that dark crevice-even more so if the planter had been in bloom, if the flowers hadn't already wilted into mulch. A secret keypad, I thought. n.o.body would have noticed it-not in a million years-if he or she didn't already know it was there.

”Let me try,” Charlie said, and Floyd stepped back, letting Charlie take his place. The seventeen-year-old punched in a string of numbers, and the light on the keypad turned green. The lock on the front door ratcheted back audibly. ”5869,” he said. ”It was in the email.” He met our eyes one by one, then added quietly: ”It's my parents' birth years: 1958, 1969.”

”Did they set this up?” I asked.

”Maybe. I don't know.” Charlie reached out and touched the keypad gently, as if it were something precious and fragile. ”I think they're leading me here. I think they want me to find them.”

I let this sink in. Then, after a moment of silence, I repeated a question that I'd already asked him once, a question that he hadn't been able-or hadn't been willing-to answer: ”What does your father do, Charlie? And what does it have to do with the city?”

”He's a scientist. They're both scientists-theoretical physicists. And ... I don't know, they might have been working here, on the phenomena. Before it got bad, before the evacuation.”

”What do you mean, they might have been working here? You don't know where your parents were or what they were doing?”

”We lost contact. It's hard to explain.” He looked genuinely confused. ”Just ... they had to be away, okay, and they couldn't tell me-they weren't allowed to tell me-where they were or what they were doing. But I knew-I suspected, at least-that they were here. It made sense timewise; this was right when the government started calling in all the experts. I had to stay with my grandparents in Portland for a while.”

”And you think they were in Spokane and never made it out?” Taylor asked. ”You think your parents got stuck here, inside?”

Charlie shrugged, and his brow wrinkled in pain. ”I don't know. I don't know what happened.” He paused for a moment, and then, suddenly, he got angry. He shot an intense, venomous look at Taylor. ”But that's what I'm trying to figure out, okay? They stopped calling, and I needed to know what happened. So I came here. And now I'm getting all of these emails, and, and ...” He trailed off, turning his eyes toward me. I knew what he was thinking; he didn't want to tell her about the radio, about his father's distant voice reaching out from the static, taking orders from Devon.

Confused, Taylor looked back and forth between the two of us. Then she nodded, and after a moment, she gestured toward the front door.

There was a blinding flash of light as soon as the door closed behind us. It was a vibrant, electric blue, brilliant and seemingly without source or direction. It dazzled my eyes, and as I stood there-blind-a loud, mechanical hum filled the lobby. The air around me grew pregnant with electricity; it felt like every molecule in the room was vibrating against my skin. Something was happening inside my body; I didn't know what, but the hair on my arms was standing up straight.

Then it stopped.

”What the f.u.c.k was that?” Floyd asked as we exchanged confused glances, our eyesight slowly returning. ”Was that some type of scanner? Were we just f.u.c.king scanned?”

”Scanned?” Taylor repeated, a gruff, mocking tone to her voice. ”What does that even mean, Floyd? f.u.c.king scanned?”

”I don't know. X-rays? MRI? Something like that?”

The thought gave me a jolt, and I shrugged out of my backpack to check on my camera. I scrolled through the last couple of images on my memory card, making sure that they hadn't been erased by some strong magnetic field. They were still there. Pictures of the Poet's latest work: ”Above me, there is a face/Funny.” I didn't remember taking these pictures, but they were there on the card, and they seemed completely unharmed.

When I once again raised my eyes, I found Floyd nervously downing pills from his oxycodone stash. For a moment, I felt a reflexive itch to follow his lead-I still had an almost full bottle of Vicodin in my pocket-but I suppressed the urge. I was trying to be strong here, I reminded myself. I hung my camera around my neck and shrugged into my backpack.

”Look,” Charlie said, pointing up into the corner of the room. There was a surveillance camera up there, and as I watched, it slowly swiveled my way. It paused for a moment, freezing with me in the center of its gla.s.s-eyed view, and then it continued on its circuit, turning to sweep back toward the other side of the room. ”There's still power! It's still active!” I was surprised at the excitement in Charlie's voice. I myself felt nothing but fear.

What's going on here? What have we found?

”Is it some type of secret government installation?” Floyd asked, voicing my very next thought.

Charlie just shrugged. He flashed us an indecipherable smile, then turned and headed toward a door on the far side of the room.

The door opened up onto a long carpeted hallway. Charlie paused just inside the door and ran his fingers over the nearest wall. After a couple of seconds, the overhead fluorescents flickered on. The hallway was disconcertingly normal. It could have been any corridor in any office building in any city around the world-just minutes after closing time, maybe, with the workers all gone for the day. The heater kicked on as we were standing there, warm air blowing down from the overhead vents.