Quantum Break (31 page)

“This won’t last.
Run
.”

*   *   *

Paul made it into the chronon research wing as causality kicked back in. Was it over? No … just another temporary cessation. He could feel this event was not yet spent.

This exertion was costing him. The lack of focus was taking hold again, the feeling of becoming unmoored from his body, from the world. The desire to surrender to care, to allow the release to course through his entire body and take him. The voice of his sickness, his chronon syndrome, was growing louder, more seductive, within the chamber of his mind. Taking up space once occupied by his own counsel.

Treatment. He required treatment. Sofia’s lab. He would administer a treatment to himself, within the safety of an artificial pylon-generated bubble of causality, and soothe this madness. Once the chaos had passed, there would be work to do. Damage to contain. Steps to take. The final steps.

He pushed through secondary lab spaces, past coldly lit glass infoboards and the warm hum of sterile machinery.

Sofia’s laboratory was at the far end of this array, from which she could oversee all of the work being done in her name, to her guidance. It was elevated above the broad glass boxes in which the labs were contained. Moving through the secondary labs, Sofia’s quarters were always visible through clear plexiglass ceilings.

Of modern design, Sofia’s quarters were configured for living as much as working—a flat oblong with a long observation window suspended above the glass-roofed lab-farm. It had been designed to her specifications, on Paul’s orders.

Moving at speed toward these quarters, and the relief they contained, Paul watched a wide tongue of flame shoot from the observation window, spitting glass.

Secondary explosions took the roof and walls off Sofia’s laboratory quarters completely. Heavy debris blew outward and upward to crash down through the glass ceilings of the secondary laboratories.

Paul watched his only hope of forestalling the progress of his condition literally vanish in flames.

Overwhelmed, Paul blacked out.

When he came to, his hands were bloody and a nearby workstation was trashed, a desk snapped in half. His left arm was on fire, as was his chest. A coppery taste filled his mouth. His chest was alight with starlight and his mind full of
howling.

Remembering himself was like struggling to remember a dream. Muscle memory took his hand to his chest, fingers closed around Aberfoyle’s bullet. He was Paul Serene. The future of humanity. And he must live.

Monitors above the workstation flashed meaningless information. He found a laptop, shakily entered his credentials and switched to secure feeds. Called up the feed for floor fifty. Scanned.

Found the corridors. Smashed walls, shattered glass, two members of Chronon-1 who had ended their lives horribly as complex stains on expensive carpet.

Scanned.

Jack and Beth, running for the garden. There she was: Beth. Hobbling on a wounded leg.

Closing on Sofia—who was now reanimated and discovering herself completely alone.

Paul fumbled for his earpiece, switched frequencies, contacted the helicopter pilot.

“Leave!”

“Sir?”

“Get that bird away from this building, pilot, or I’ll kill you myself.
Go
!”

*   *   *

Jack approached Sofia quickly, hands up and open. She was not receptive.

“No! Not again!” She was close to hyperventilating. “The … the mind is … not meant to take such shocks! Where is Paul? Paul was here. Where is…?”

Beth grabbed Sofia’s hand in her own bloody one.

Sofia recoiled “Oh my God, you’re hurt!”

“Hurt,” Beth said. “Short on time and low on patience so, please, rediscover the ol’ internal monologue.” Beth hobbled toward the stone steps leading up to Martin’s office, dragging Sofia with her.

The stairs led to a Roman-style atrium, floored in red-and-white check: a place for Martin to sit and look out across the greenery, or to meet with fellow businesspeople. His office was on the far side of this atrium, locked and sealed. Fortunately, an L-shaped gantry led from the right, straight to a square helipad that hung off the side of the building.

Their ride was already cycling its blades, building to a muted turbine shriek. The pilot glanced between them and his overheads, willing the machine to get airborne.

“Jack! That chopper’s leaving without us!”

Jack zipped down the gantry, banked left around the curve, headed for the pad—just as the helicopter lifted off the pad.

The pilot caught sight of Jack and went defensive, banking hard and low over the side of the building.

“Jack!” Beth could see what he was doing. “Don’t be stupid!”

Beth needed a medic, and that chopper was their only way out of here.

Jack threw himself toward the lip, throwing his arms forward in an attempt to localize a stutter around the chopper.

He ended facedown on the pad, two feet from a fifty-story drop. He came to as Beth grabbed him by the collar, hauling him to his feet, and laughed out loud: the helicopter floated below the platform, angled slightly, blades immobile, hanging in space. Sofia gasped at the sight of it.

Jack smiled, satisfied with himself. “If it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid. Right?”

“Eurocopter Airbus AS365,” Beth muttered. “Just like she ordered.”

The bubble wasn’t large enough to have trapped the entire bird, just the midsection and blades. Jack could see the pilot, still animated, frantically strangling the controls but going nowhere.

“Can you make the jump on that leg?”

“We got a bigger problem.” Beth pointed back the way they came. Chronon-1 had stormed the garden, moving at speed toward the helipad.

“They lost two of their guys,” Jack said. “They’re pissed.”

“Keep Sofia safe, I’ll—”

Jack took Sofia’s hand. “Trust me.”

And Jack shoved Sofia Amaral off the edge of Monarch Tower.

The doctor fell without a sound, shocked into silence that her life could end so suddenly. She fell toward the helicopter, but wide of it, connecting with the stutter bubble Jack had thrown around the chopper.

Sofia Amaral froze, suspended in space, five feet from the open passenger door of the trapped helicopter.

“Woo!”

Beth’s look was either confusion or murderous intent.

Jack gestured, success self-evident. “What?”

“Your balls,” she said. “On a stump.” Beth backed up, and took a running leap toward the edge as Chronon-1 started blasting. She bounded off the lip, the pain of it forcing a cry from her throat, launching herself into space. She aimed her still-cycling boots for the chopper’s open side door and hoped for the best.

She fell feetfirst through the bubble, through the door and hit the carpeted floor inside, slamming into the closed starboard-side passenger door. White pain flooded from leg to brain and Beth skimmed right across the surface of a total blackout.
Back in the game, Wilder; back in the game.
“Get the doctor!”

Jack dumped a chronon burst as Chronon-1 hit Hatch’s Romanesque atrium, catching the incoming fire. He took the lip of the platform at a run, leaping across the space—“Sorry, Doctor”—landing boots-first onto the chest of Dr. Sofia Amaral. She didn’t move a micron and Jack’s feet went out from under him. His back connected with her sternum and he bounced off. One flailing hand seized onto Sofia’s outstretched forearm, leaving Jack’s feet flailing fifty stories above Riverport’s streets.

Beth had already scrambled halfway over the cream-colored calf leather passenger seats, dealing with the inconvenience of having to do so with a gun taking up one hand while screaming at the pilot.

Dangling, Jack reached out for the upper rim of the helicopter door, grabbed it, and began to will Sofia loose from the hold of the stutter bubble. As her stasis softened he pulled in farther, one foot finding purchase inside the door. He drew her forward, grabbing on to a more secure safety loop bolted into the ceiling.

Sofia found her voice—a sound that went from silence to bass-syrup to a human scream—and suddenly she was so much deadweight, falling straight down.

Jack held her hand in a tight monkey-grip, shoulder wrenching as he caught her full weight. From the helipad Gibson was shouting for blood. Chronon-1 was almost to the edge of the pad.

Beth glanced back over her shoulder. “Get her inside!”

Jack hauled her up, Sofia clawing at the carpet, panicking as her sheer evening gown kept her leg from swinging up and in to the chopper. Someone started shooting, slugs
vip-vip
-ing into the shield. Donny, red faced and furious, glared down at them, then vanished from the edge of the pad.

Beth buckled herself in one-handed. To the pilot: “All right, asshole. Sit tight and you’ll be home in time for Kimmel.” She put her gun away and took the second stick.

Jack heard Gibson call Donny’s name, just as he hauled Sofia inside the chopper. Sofia fumbled her way into a jump seat, wrestling with the safety belt.

“Beth! Take the stick!”

Donny vaulted off the edge of the helipad, his trajectory taking him straight for the open passenger door, handgun pointed square at Jack’s face.

Jack threw his arms wide and nullified the field.

The helicopter sprang to sudden life and Jack was flipped off his feet as the blades threw Donny in two directions at once.

Gibson saw it all, his face a disfigured mess, contorted by an obliterating rage at the loss of his best friend and second-in-command. His weapon unloaded right at them, without a second thought.

The stick had bucked suddenly in Beth’s hand as the helicopter kicked back to life, but she wasn’t letting it win. Jack scuttled back from the open door as the chopper’s frame swerved and tilted, grabbing hard onto a jumpseat support as Beth sent the bird into a dive.

Beth had a death grip on the stick. Keeping the bird low, she swung it out over the Mystic River. Once their flight was stable and level Beth thumbed a contact on her phone, piped it to her earpiece.

“Horatio. You in the Tower? I need a favor.”

*   *   *

Inside Monarch Tower, on the thirty-fifth-floor mezzanine, Nick watched a gathering of the world’s wealthiest and brightest freak the hell out.

Everything needed a security card, and he didn’t have one. He was trapped.

“Hey. You.”

A man marched toward Nick along the curve of the mezzanine.

Handlebar moustache, loud bowling shirt under which was something about theater sports.

“Horatio,” he said. “Friend of Beth’s. Looks like today’s my last day. Let’s get out of here.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Nick said.

“One stop first. Super important. Floor fifty.”

15

News reports started coming in less than thirty minutes after the stutter broke.

Simultaneously, at locations across the globe, impossibilities occurred. All of them were captured on video. Intentionally.

9:12:42
P
.
M
. Pier 14, San Francisco.

Civilian witnesses filmed two police officers closing in on a suspect, their Tasers drawn. The suspect, a man in his thirties of African descent, offers no resistance.

In the space of a single frame the entire scene changes: two strangers have materialized. They are dressed head to toe in black, save for Smiley masks. The white letters on their shirts read
PEACE
. They wave, friendly.

The strangers, somehow, are suddenly in possession of the police officers’ Tasers. The officers’ faces are painted with clown makeup, their belts have been loosened, their pants are around their ankles. Still moving forward at a brisk pace the cops trip and crash to the pavement.

The suspect shouts, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” repeatedly.

The strangers mime laughter, then Taser the two cops.

In the space of a frame, they are gone.

The incident was filmed by three separate witnesses.

9:12:42
P
.
M
. Outside Melisse Restaurant, Santa Monica.

Security footage captured a celebrity socialite exiting the restaurant with a male companion. Their gunmetal Infiniti Q60 pulls up. The valet exits the car, holding the passenger-side door open for the socialite, as her companion walks around the rear of the vehicle to enter the driver side.

In the span of a single frame the vehicle, and the socialite, are gone. Footage shows the male companion accosting the valet. Footage ends.

9:12:42
P
.
M
. The Viper Room, West Hollywood. Eight miles from Melisse Restaurant.

The venue was playing host to a well-known heavy metal act.

Security footage and handheld recordings uploaded by a dozen attendees at the concert show the headline act onstage, mid-performance. In the span of a single frame the disappearing socialite appears onstage—flanked by two black-clad figures in
PEACE
shirts and Smiley masks. The cartoonish figures wave animatedly at the crowd. After a moment the socialite collapses in high distress.

The band, now realizing what is occurring, summons security. The two masked suspects run to the edge of the stage, leap toward the crowd … and vanish in midair.

7:12:42
A
.
M
. Al-Salamiyah, Syria.

Footage from a single stationary camera.

Twenty bound men kneel, facing away from ten hooded men carrying automatic weapons. One hooded man delivers a short, curt speech to the camera. The ten men then level their weapons at the back of their captives’ heads.

A figure appears mid-frame, wearing the now-distinctive
PEACE
garb. She waves happily at the camera. Within a second she is gone. The captors are given a second to react to this intrusion, before, in the space of a single frame, the weapons they were holding vanish from their hands.