Fiction

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below.

28. Candace

She’d surprised herself with the detail she remembered: The back trail that ran from the old dump in a meandering line ending at The Sprawl, the little-known private road with the hefty gate that led very near to the old cabin, even the general layout of the trees around the structure. She had a moment of amazement that it had been years since she’d been there and longer since she’d actually partied there—for a short, intense period of her life everything had centered on The Sprawl, where every weekend and some weeknights there was a party, drama, and people.

She missed the people, she thought. Sometimes she missed the party. She didn’t miss the drama. And after this evening, she thought, she wouldn’t need any more drama, she’d gotten her fill.

She glanced at Mike, walking silently next to her, and wondered if they would have known each other if he’d gone to school here, lived her. Probably not, she thought. She liked him tremendously, now, but there hints that he’d been a terror as a teenager. The money, for one thing. Had he been a rich kid? She couldn’t quite remember and made a mental note to clarify that. But he had a preternatural confidence—she thought he was more comfortable in his own skin than anyone she’d ever seen before—and that meant he was probably one of those Golden Boys in High School, the kind, ironically, that she and Jimmy would have mocked.

She thought it was amazing, though. He’d walked into the place just hours before, but she felt completely comfortable with him, as if she’d known him for years. Part of it was the stress, the trial-by-fire aspect. Part of it was just his personality; she’d never met anyone so quietly confident yet so easy. He wasn’t a peacock, or a mansplainer (well, not much, which was itself a triumph).

Well, Dad, she thought. If the world ends tonight, apparently it’ll be my fault, and for a girl who never got off her ass to go to school, that’s got to be pretty goddamn impressive.

She had to swallow a laugh, thinking about how it might look on a resume: Candace Cuddyer, high school diploma, ten years waitressing experience, poor taste in men, destroyer of worlds.

Poor taste in men. The first time she’d been to The Sprawl, Jimmy had taken her. She’d been fifteen and she’d had to climb out of her bedroom window and climb down the trellis while wearing a skirt somewhat shorter than her father would have liked. She realized halfway down that she had planned badly: Not only was Jimmy standing almost directly below her and no doubt getting a good look up her skirt, but she was getting pretty filthy climbing down and her carefully prepared outfit and makeup and hair were being transformed into a mess. Plus, it occurred to her that dignity was hard to come by when you came climbing out of windows for a boy.

But she was committed. Climbing back up not only increased the odds that Dad would hear her and wake up from his usual late-evening nap in the easy chair to investigate, but would also constitute a retreat. An admittance of failure. Not to mention doubling Jimmy’s window of opportunity to see her underpants. She would have to emerge from the front door sheepish and admit that her plan to escape the house in stealth had been a bad one.

Sometimes you just have to put your head down, she heard her father say, and eat the meal you’ve prepared.

She managed to dismount with a modicum of grace while evading Jimmy’s probing hands, which had become insistent. She remembered that they hadn’t slept together yet; the Prom Night Massacree, as her father eventually called it, was a year off. At the time she wasn’t even sure she liked Jimmy Haggen, for all his swagger. He was sarcastic and liked to tease her and got into fights. But The Sprawl was too good to pass up.

It was legend to two generations. For the older folks, her Dad’s age and older, it was officially known as the Patterson Place. Originally a modest hunting lodge built by Cornelius Patterson during the oil boom, it had been inherited by Sally Prentice Patterson seventy years before. Sally wasn’t local; she’d been the bride of a Patterson boy brought to town, an unhappy, unhinged beauty who was famous for wandering into town and shoplifting small items from the stores, followed by men her husband had hired to pay for everything behind her back.

When her husband died, she inherited the sagging Patterson fortune, already quite diminished from poor business decisions, and proceeded to dispense with the remaining funds by adding onto, of all things, the nearly-forgotten cabin out in the country. For years she hired builders in waves, fired them, hired more, changed her mind, had brilliancies she sketched out on scraps of paper and demanded that contractors create for her. The small cabin began to sprawl into a complex of rooms that had little relation to each other. It had a plethora of doors leading to the outdoors or, in three cases, to walls. The sections of The Sprawl had little relation to each other in terms of design or materials. It was insanity, and had ceased to be useful on any level.

When Sally Patterson died, The Sprawl was abandoned, and forgotten, and, of course, rediscovered by teenagers. It became legend for the younger generations as a place to go drink beer, make noise, and be seen.

Candace remembered her first nigh at The Sprawl. She’d strutted in knowing her skirt was provocatively short. Hard rock and smoke in the air, she’d felt like she’d arrived, at the age of fifteen. She would make her mark. She was one of the Cool Kids, now. She proceeded to drink eight shots of something red and spent the majority of the night throwing up in the back woods while a sad, soggy boy wearing glasses and a dour expression nobly stood guard over her.

She realized with a wince of shame that she couldn’t remember the boy’s name. Or even what had happened to him. Jimmy Haggen, she remembered, and that was somehow wrong.

She hadn’t thought of The Sprawl for years. She’d gone back once when she’d been twenty-three, a six pack of beers and a strange feeling of sadness hanging on her, and she wandered around for fifteen minutes or so. The Sprawl was a dump. Somehow she’d missed that during all the old parties in high school. It was filled with rot and mold, the windows and roof leaked, critters lurked in all the shadows, and decades of teenage parties had left it carved up and battered.

After that, there’d been no reason to go back.

She blinked at the fading fireball as it rose up into the night sky, fading into smoke. She heard shouts from just up ahead, and then King was rushing back past them, skidding to a halt and leaning in to whisper urgently at Hammond.

“Your friend Mr. Haggen is pretty handy with IEDs,” Hammond growled as she stormed forward. Mike launched himself after her and Candace struggled to keep up. “We just lost a man.”

“Shit,” Mike whispered.

Candace felt a cold wave of shock wash over her. “An IED?” she whispered back.

“You can make one from a gas can, a battery, and a fucking clothespin,” Mike whispered. “If I know that, bets are good Jimmy knows that. And a lot more. We’re going to have to be careful.”

She shook her head even though he wasn’t looking at her. It wasn’t the IED itself. She totally believed Jimmy could build a bomb using just stuff he found in his car. He’d always been that way, the smartest idiot she knew, a guy who could fix your car and figure out what was wrong with your computer but who couldn’t hold a job. It wasn’t that—she found it hard to believe that Jimmy Haggen would risk killing people, would just casually make a bomb and sit back waiting for someone to step on it.

And it could have been her.

She didn’t think he could have made too many explosive traps, unless—and this was no longer as crazy as she would have expected—he had them pre-made in the bed of his truck. He’d known they would come this way, and to her mind that meant that he knew she would be the one leading everyone to The Sprawl. No one else—not Glen Eastman, even—knew the back ways and hidden trails the kids used the way she and Jimmy knew.

And that meant he’d set a bomb to go off even though she might have been the one to step on it.

The shock soured into anger and hurt. Jimmy Haggen had always been an asshole, she knew that. An unhappy asshole, too smart for everyone around him, too unstable for any sort of sensible life, too angry to admit he was the cause of many of his own problems. But he’d been her asshole. She’d had little patience for him, but she’d loved him in an obscure way, a primal way, the way you loved people who were fundamental parts of your life, even if you hated them on a higher level.

She’d gone to prom with him. And sure, that hadn’t gone well, but not many girls could say their prom dates had not only slept with another girl on prom night, but thirteen years later had tried to murder them with an improvised explosive device.

Hammond came stalking back towards them. Candace was impressed with how calm and stone-faced she was. “We keep going,” the Colonel said. “My bet is Haggen didn’t have the resources or time to plant more than a small number of these devices, so he likely spread them out along several possible approaches. Odds are this one is now clear.” She turned to look over her shoulder, then back at them.

“Haggen is obviously not going to go quietly,” she said. “I’ve ordered my team to use force. We won’t be trying any negotiation. This is now an assault on a known hostile. If either of you has an objection, this is the time to voice it.”

“You’re going to kill him?” she asked. She saw Mike turn to look at her out of the corner of her eye, and she willed him not to say anything.

Hammond pursed her lips slightly. “Not if we can help it. I want to have the new models finished before we make any crucial decisions. That means for the moment I am following the previously established protocols: You four should be kept alive and in place until tomorrow. I’ve pushed the Mission End Time to noon as discussed with Mr. Malloy, but I don’t want to change any other parameters until we have data. So if we can take Mr. Haggen alive, we will.” She looked at Candace. “If not … we won’t.”

Mike studied her. His stubble made him look shadowed. “You ready for that?”

She started to react, to be defiant. Who was he to worry about little old her? She thought furiously that she’d probably had a lot more experience with death than he ever had. She’d skinned enough animals, buried enough uncles—then she froze, remembering him saying she died and it was my fault in that soft, hopeless voice.

You really can be a hopeless bitch, she thought. He’s just being decent to you.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Really.”

He smiled, and she liked it. Unlike her father, who would have frowned in worry, or the boyfriends she’d had—including Jimmy Haggen—he wasn’t going to treat her like she might break.

They crept forward in a line, and she was aware of the tension, of the fact that they might encounter another IED despite Colonel Hammond’s conclusions. Any one of them might end up dead. She wondered why Hammond’s orders hadn’t included just shooting one of them—or all of them. If she, Jim, Mike, and Mr. Eastman were supposed to spark the end of the world, somehow, why not just kill them all?

Because Raslowski’s models said, if they did that, something even worse would happen.

The realization hit her and she stumbled a little. Of course—if she found out someone was going to end the world, her first thought would be to just eliminate them. The fact that instead of just sending someone with a gun to kill them all they’d sent a platoon and built a secret computer lab told her that killing them would only lead to something worse.

No wonder Hammond’s willing to go to all this trouble, she thought. The alternatives aren’t good.

She saw them running models—model after model, tweaking details, always coming back to the same conclusion: The only way out was to keep the four of them in the bar. Break whatever chain reaction had been quietly happening all their lives.

“Stop!”

She stumbled into Mike. Jimmy’s voice, booming out in the darkness. Except, she realized as she got her bearing, not quite darkness: She could see the eerie glow of a propane lantern. They were close.

“Don’t come any closer!” Jimmy shouted. “Or I’ll erase you all.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below

22. Candace

She turned to follow Mike and Raslowski out the front door. It felt strange to leave the bar, suddenly, like she was exposed. As they walked towards his car, she glanced back at the building, the blazing lights so familiar, still promising the sort of familiar, warm, safe space she wasn’t sure she’d ever experience again. They were heading into the unknown. She was with a man she’d met three hours before and a scientist who was only telling part of what he knew, and apparently the future of the world hung in the balance.

She wondered if she’d ever see the place again. Then she wondered if she had maybe hit her head earlier in the day. Slipped in the shower and was right now half-drowned in the mildewy horror that was the old clawfoot tub. It would explain a lot about her day.

Mike’s Land Rover was an older model, dented and beat up. “This is what transient millionaires drive?” she asked.

He smiled a little as he fished his car keys from his pocket. “New cars get more attention. Expensive new cars get stolen, vandalized, broken into. It’s like people don’t like rich folks.” He shrugged as he unlocked the doors. “Besides, it’s a rental.”

She snorted, grunting as she helped him load Raslowski into the back seat. The physicist cried out in pain several times when the bolt in his shoulder was jostled. When she opened the front door she found the passenger seat piled high with books, notebooks, a battered and abused tablet computer, old-school print maps that had been folded in some sort of mockery of the idea of folding maps, coffee cups, and fast food bags. The scale of the pile stunned her.

As Mike climbed into the driver’s seat he glanced over. “Ah, shit, sorry. Here.”

He leaned over and swept it all out the door and onto the pavement. She laughed a little and climbed in. Why not? she thought. World’s ending anyway, according to Raslowski. And we’re the Four Horsemen.

The fact that there were four of them was, she thought, surely a coincidence? And then she heard her father’s voice, saying it’s just a coinkydink. The old man had been fond of that sort of wordplay, and Candace could remember many times when she’d rolled her eyes at Mr. Cuddyer’s puns. Coinkydink had been one of the better ones.

The drive was quiet and dark, the only sound the engine and the only light his headlights dancing over the trees and the pavement. It was easy to imagine that they were the only people left alive, that the world had ended already, that they had it backwards: The doom was external, and was coming for them.

As they came up on the building, Raslowski sat forward, putting his head between them. He was breathing hard. “Don’t go in the main entrance. Go past and look for a service drive.”

The facility was a one-story building of yellow brick, with mean little windows spaced along the top. There were loading bays on one end, a huge parking lot of cracked blacktop in front, and a small two-story addition on the end with the glass doors of the main entrance. Floodlights had been set up, and still burned brightly, giving the whole place a fake daytime look that reminded her somehow of the Moon Landing photos: Everything looking brittle and overly-lit.

Mike drove past the front gate; it was just chain-link that had been secured with a length of metal chain.

“That’s just for show,” Raslowski said as if reading his mind. “This place is hardened, trust me.”

The service entrance led to the loading docks and was blocked by a similar chain link fence. “Smash it,” Raslowski instructed, and Mike pushed the pedal down and sent the rental crashing through. The noise was a lot louder than she’d expected. If anyone was alive in there, she thought, they knew someone was coming.

“Go past the loading docks and around the back,” Raslowski said. They slipped past the eerie, empty loading bays and turning into the unlit area behind the building. The weeds hadn’t been trimmed back, and it was like driving into a sudden jungle, making the whole installation feel like it existed in a different world, someplace wild and ancient.

“Stop.”

Candace helped Raslowski out of the car while Mike stood guard with the gun.

“Over there,” the scientist said, gesturing with his bound hands. “The door.”

Concrete steps led up to a security door, steel painted green. Candace could see it had a magnetic locking system. A keypad had been installed in the wall next to it. She led Raslowski to the steps and up to the keypad, Mike trailing behind. The silence was almost perfect; aside from the breeze in the overgrown weeds, there were just their own sounds: Their steps on the dry twigs and grass, the soft noise of their clothes. She thought it was oddly peaceful after the violence at the bar.

On the landing just outside the green door, she saw that the keypad had no markings: Just sixteen buttons, four by four, without any indication of their purpose.

“A little help?” Raslowski said, gesturing.

Candace looked at him. She was suddenly conscious of the risks being taken. They’d come out here alone, assuming they knew what the situation was—abandoned facility, one slightly off-balance scientist running around. What if they were wrong? What if it was a trap? She was certain she was the stupidest woman in the world. Of course there would be another squad of soldiers here, probably already on their way to arrest them.

There was nothing for it but to go forward, though. She put her hand on the keypad.

“Top left,” Raslowski said. “Bottom row, second from right.”

She keyed in the buttons as Raslowski called them. There was no indication that anything at all was happening, aside from the plasticky sound of the buttons as she pressed them. Raslowski kept issuing instructions in what appeared to be an endless code that had no numbers or letters, just memorized button positions. After what seemed like the hundredth of them, there was a soft click and the green door sagged inward. Candace stepped aside.

“After you,” she said to Raslowski, and Mike smiled.

They followed him into a dark corridor, pitch black. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her phone; the screen showed no signal, but she thumbed on the flashlight and directed it ahead of them, the battery at 33%. The hallway was empty, and led directly to another door that looked a lot less secure.

The green door slid shut behind them, and the sense of being in an enclosed, dark space was overwhelming.

Raslowski reached for the door’s handle, and Mike stepped forward quickly and grabbed his arm.

“No rushing through and locking it behind you,” he said. He turned to look at Candace. “Who knows what dark maze of unfamiliar rooms and corridors is in there.”

She nodded. Carefully, they edged through the door more or less as a group. Candace felt gritty and gross. She wanted a shower and a fresh pair of jeans. She’d settle for some dry shampoo and clean socks.

They were in a small room that was obviously a security office. Four large flat screens were mounted to the wall, and a bank of computers lined two walls to their right as they walked in. Four empty chairs lay chaotically on the floor, as if knocked over in a hurry. Raslowski, with Mike still holding his arm, walked over to the door across the room, paying no attention to the screens. He opened the door and she followed them through, thinking that the place felt empty, if nothing else, and no one had come to shove an AR-15 in her face.

She found herself in a huge room, in boiling heat, buffeted by an incredible humming noise.

The whole building was one massive space, the size of a football field. And it hummed.

“Servers,” a voice said, making her look over her shoulder in surprise. “Possibly the largest cloud of computers in the world, though of course we can’t know for sure because it’s all top secret.”

The new voice belonged to a woman, a young girl in a white lab coat Candace couldn’t possibly believe was worn by any actual scientists. She was tall, wearing a sensible skirt and pink blouse, her bright red hair tied back in a no-nonsense bun that she was instantly jealous of, her own brunette curls always resisting any sort of sensible arrangement. Candace thought she was absolutely gorgeous, albeit the most pale woman she’d ever laid eyes on. She thought that if Legs here turned out to have an advanced degree of some sort she would hate her for life.

“Myra,” Raslowski said, sounding weak and tired, his voice thin and whiny, “they don’t have clearance.”

Mike smirked and raised the gun. “I hate to disagree with you, Doc,” he said. Then he looked at Myra, and Candace hated herself for studying him for any signs of being instantly in love with this tall, skinny girl in cat’s-eye glasses who looked like she knew how to dance—like, really knew. “Myra, is it? Doctor Myra?”

Myra adjusted her glasses. “Well … no. No doctorate for me.”

Good, Candace thought, and felt ashamed.

“Myra is my computer liaison,” Raslowski said. “She speaks machine language and Assembly.”

“Just her here?” Mike said, looking around. They were all sweating. Candace noted the perspiration stains on Myra’s coat with a note of sour triumph. “In this whole big place?”

Raslowski made a face. “We are a need-to-know group,” he said, breathing hard. “Small and efficient was the way to go. And no one knew we were here, Mr. Malloy.”

“Wait,” Myra suddenly said, putting a hand up to her neck and fiddling with a simple gold chain that hung there, “you’re Mike Malloy?” She turned to look at Candace. “And that means you’re … Candace Cuddyer?”

Candace glanced over at Mike and he met her gaze, smiling slightly in a way that felt private and personal and for her and she felt some of her tension drain away. And then she felt like an idiot. She wasn’t going steady with the man. They’d just met, and she was a grown-ass woman, and if Myra had the best-looking legs she’d ever seen and was smart enough to the computer geek on a top secret government project, so what? Candace thought her shoes were ugly, and that was good enough for the moment.

“Well, yes,” Mike said, looking back at her. “Why?”

“You don’t understand,” Myra said, smiling nervously. “The whole project was moved here because of you and Mr. Eastman and Mr. Haggen. We’ve been tracing your threads for months now. You’re, like, the closest thing we have to superstars in here.” The look on her round, pretty face froze and soured. “You know, because—”

“Because we’re supposed to end the world,” Mike said, turning and winking at Candace. “We heard. We don’t believe it, but we heard.”

Candace thought it was interesting, the difference in the story: Raslowski made it sound like they’d moved the operation here because of the location’s simplicity, the lack of variables. Legs had just siad they’d come specifically for them. She wondered if Mike had noticed it.

“Oh, it’s true,” Myra said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and sounding to Candace’s ears completely and totally sincere. “The model is very clear. The four of you, if you were allowed to go about your business tonight—well, we’re not sure, because the apocalypse is a data dump beyond anything we’ve ever modeled before, frankly. All we know is that you four, in that bar tonight, were the key. Beyond that we couldn’t tell.”

“Myra,” Raslowski hissed.

She looked at him, blinking blankly. Candace thought she must have some sort of spectrum thing going on, as pretty as she was. “Oh, right. I just assumed, since you brought them here, that it was okay.”

“To be fair,” Mike said, holding the gun up. “He didn’t have a choice.”

Myra suddenly seemed to understand what was going on. She looked at Raslowski and frowned. “Are you hurt, Emory?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, but … it’s a casualty of war. Look, Myra—there have been some developments that have enriched the data set. I’ve agreed to re-run the model to see whether the outcomes have changed.”

“Oh,” Myra said, nodding. Then her eyes widened. “Oh! As in, no end of the world. All right, come on.”

Not as smart as she looks, Candace thought with mean, petty satisfaction.

Myra started walking briskly into the server farm. They followed, slower, Raslowski leaning on Mike and moving at little better than a shuffle. Myra led them through what felt like a maze of humming machines. To Candace they were just black boxes; there were no screens or wires. The heat was incredible, even though she could see the central air ducts every few feet, and could feel the rush of fan-pushed air.

Towards the rear of the building was a metal security door, another unmarked keypad set into the wall next to it. A bright red and yellow sign proclaimed that ONLY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. Myra punched in the lengthy code and stepped aside gracefully, following them in to a dimly lit, constrictive tunnel. It sloped downward, and Candace became aware of the weight of the world above them and around them. They walked far longer than she thought possible, the downward slope steady. At first the tunnel had been cooler than the server room, but as they sank it grew warm again.

She turned to glance back at Mike. He smiled slightly, gun in hand but pointed at the floor, his index finger alongside the barrel. She tried to decide if it was feminist to admit she liked having him watch her back.

The tunnel ended at another security door, which led to a blindingly white room. It wasn’t terribly large, but it was lit with what felt like several thousand white fluorescent bulbs. The temperature dropped suddenly, and she found herself shivering as they squeezed in. There was a vibration under her feet. The only furniture was a single metal desk with a keyboard and mouse and a chair. A huge screen filled the entire wall across from the desk.

Candace looked around. “What is this place?”

Raslowski sat down in the chair, sweat shining on his forehead. “This,” he said slowly, “is where we change reality.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

11. Candace

When Mike re-entered the bar area, trailed by a short, angry-looking female soldier, Candace was startled at how beat-up he looked. His demeanor was grim, and her relief at seeing him look relatively whole and healthy gave way to sudden apprehension. She looked at Glen, who was leaning against the bar with her, and then at Jack, who stood behind it, and exchanged worried looks with each.

“You look like a man could stand a whiskey,” Jack said, keeping his deep, rumbling voice low.

Mike nodded. “Jesus, yes,” he said, sitting—or, more accurately she thought, dropping into one of the stools unsteadily.

“Jimmy?”

A complex wave of emotions ran over his face as Jack slid a slopping shot glass over to him. “In the back. He … he was a hero back there. You left the monitor on—”

She gasped.

“—and he distracted them so I could turn it off. Your Mr. Haggen’s a hero.”

Wow, she thought. Not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that, son?” Jack asked. “You had moves.”

Mike looked at Candace. “I picked up a few things in my travels. I spent some time training with a bunch of mixed martial arts fighters. Just to learn.” He rubbed his jaw. “Jimmy gave as good as he got, though.”

Mike picked up the shot glass and looked around. He leaned in close. “Did you find out anything?”

Glen cleared his throat. “In fact, she did. She found out that Dr. Raslowski there is a world-famous physicist.”

“Who left his swanky job under mysterious circumstances last year,” Candace added.

Mike frowned. “A goddamn physicist?”

Glen assumed a pose Candace recalled well: Teacher at lecture. Even in gym class, Mr. Eastman had been fond of offering tidbits of history and other subjects, often telling them that just because gym class was for their bodies didn’t mean they couldn’t also expand their minds. She also recalled the whole class groaning dramatically whenever he launched into one of his lectures.

She had no urge to groan now. She looked around to make sure the soldiers weren’t near them, listening in.

“He worked at the Holzman Institute,” Eastman said. “Which I’ve heard of.” He looked down at the floor suddenly. “Not, mind you, that I really understand what they do there. out of my league, definitely. It’s wild stuff. You heard of String Theory?”

No one reacted. After a moment, Mike sighed. “I have, sure.”

Eastman nodded, looking up with an expression that Candace thought she would classify as excited. “String Theory’s the simple stuff compared to what they were doing at the Holzman. We’re talking fundamentals of the universe here. Like, the basic building blocks of reality, that kind of stuff.” He looked down again. “Like I said, I don’t claim to really understand it all. But that means our Dr. Raslowski is one of the most brilliant men in the world. Who got fired for ethics violations.”

Mike blinked, every part of his body seeming to ache and burn. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit is right,” Eastman said, nodding. “I think we know something else, too. That old factory up the road? You said was blazing with light, crowded with people? Someone’s been cooking up something in there, and they lost control.”

“Lost control of what?” Candace asked.

Eastman shrugged. “Who the fuck knows? Like I said, I don’t claim to understand the man’s work.”

Mike sighed. “You put the words fundamental forces of the universe and lost control together, and—”

“—we’re fucked,” Jack finished, sounding, Candace thought, cheerful.

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense, though. Why us? Why come here? If they lost control of … something—I don’t know, say they got Godzilla up there and he snapped his chain—then why in fuck would they think they were safer here? Or better able to run things from here?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mike downed his whiskey and coughed. “Mr. Eastman?”

Eastman rubbed his chin. “I’m no expert, but if I had to have a theory I’d say you have to apply the old Occam’s Razor. What’s the simpliest explanation for needing to be here?”

After a moment, Mike nodded. “Us.”

Eastman nodded. “Us. We’re the only thing here that can’t be replicated, that can’t be found anywhere else. It could be. It’s possible. I know it sounds nuts, but it’s logical. Therefore it’s possible.”

Candace frowned. She felt like she was running on an ice rink, trying to keep up without falling on her ass. “So what does that mean? Why would they need us?”

Mike gestured at Eastman, who shrugged. “I don’t know. They don’t seem to want anything from us. They seem content to just sit on us.”

“Like they’re waiting for something,” Mike said, looking around. “If there was an accident, maybe they don’t know if it’s a chain reaction or something.” He nodded to himself, warming to a concept. “Think about it: If we assume they’re up there at the facility tearing open the fabric of reality or something, and there’s an accident, the first step might be containment, right?”

Eastman nodded, so everyone else nodded.

“So, what’s the containment area? How far does the problem extend, whatever it is? Maybe they know, maybe they don’t. Maybe this bar lies inside some sort of Red Zone, or maybe they’re just being careful. Either way, maybe Dr. Raslowski runs the numbers and says, okay, if nothing happens in the next ten hours, we’re golden. So they might decide to sit on us and see what happens.”

“So then why not just observe?” Candace said. “Why shoot poor Mr. Simms? Why keep everyone in here?”

“Someone panicked,” McCoy said.

“Or maybe our actions have something to do with it,” Mike offered. “I don’t claim to understand the fundamental forces of the universe either. Maybe they need us to stay put, and the only way to guarantee it is to hold us by force.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just glad the man’s not a Structural Biologist and we’re not going to die of some alien virus.”

“None of this changes anything for us,” Eastman said. “It’s exactly the same situation. We’re trapped in here with armed soldiers who have demonstrated they’ll kill us. The only difference is that now we have to worry about wormholes or something.”

They all stood in silence for a moment. Candace found herself taking a physical poll, checking herself for injuries. She couldn’t believe in the chaos she’d escaped without a scratch.

“So what’s the point, then?” McCoy asked, pouring Mike another shot of whiskey and then taking a sip straight from the bottle. “We just sit here for the next nine hours, asking permission to take a piss and hoping we don’t accidentally piss off a jumpy kid who’ll shoot us dead?”

“There’s another problem,” Mike said, picking up the second shot and staring at it. “These soldiers. You notice they don’t have any identification? No nametags, no patches, no insignia. They’re not in communication with anyone that we’ve seen.” He looked around. “They’re off-book. They’re unacknowledged. Or, you know, private, someone’s private army. Officially, they’re not here, right? Which means none of this is happening, officially. That’s their fallback—if everything went according to plan, there would be a cover story. Some explanation. Or we’d just be warned that no one would believe us. They’d just deny anything ever happened.”

“So?” McCoy asked, taking another slug from the bottle.

“So, they killed a man,” Mike said. “Now they have a mess, and they have a bunch of witnesses who might make it a point to seek justice or revenge or whatever.” He slammed back the shot and put the glass back on the bar. “And we know some names. I will bet you Hammond or Raslowski or some of the grunts are thinking, right now, that maybe the cleanest thing to do is kill us all.”

Another round of silence met this. Finally, McCoy shook his head. “Naw. Simms was an accident. A mistake.”

Mike nodded. “And when the nine hours is up and they all breathe a sigh of relief because their little problem didn’t happen again? They’re going to allow us to just go our merry way, to call police and journalists, to hire investigators to look into Simms’ death—and the facility down the road?” He shook his head. “I know people with money and resources. Rich people. When you have money and resources, you start to think you can make any problem go away, and it makes you cruel and it makes you do things you shouldn’t do. And no one has more money and resources than the U.S. government.”

“If it is the government,” Candace mused.

“Oh, it’s the goddamn government all right,” Glen Eastman said dourly, “but let’s not forget all of this is conjecture,” Eastman said. “We’re still operating with a real deficit of actual information. We could be way off.”

Mike nodded. Candace thought about it. “But Mr. Simms is dead,” she said. “And we know who killed him.”

McCoy looked at her. She held his gaze. She’d known Jack McCoy pretty much her whole life, and he knew she wasn’t one for panic or hysteria.

“And since we don’t know why they’re so terrified of any of us getting out of this bar,” Eastman said, “we can’t in good conscience leave, can we?”

McCoy raised one bushy eyebrow. “What’s that?”

Mike nodded, and Candace knew what he was going to say. “I agree. We shouldn’t try to get away. We don’t know what’s happening. If there’s something that could endanger other people, we have to stay here. Until we know exactly what’s happening, I think we have to do everything except escape.”

“Then what do we do?” McCoy asked slowly, as if still processing this suggestion.

Again, Candace knew what Mike was going to say, and she felt a thrill when the words were spoken out loud. “We can’t run away. But we can’t wait to find out if they just liquidate us. We have to turn the tables. We have to take over.”

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