Supersymmetry (10 page)

Detective Messinger took Sandra for a drive in her cruiser. Liddle had been called away, probably to harass some other innocent person, and Sandra was just as glad he was gone. Messinger drove haphazardly for ten minutes, and then parked illegally in front of a Mexican restaurant.

“Like Mexican?” she asked.

Sandra suddenly realized how hungry she was. “Sure. Anything,” she said.

Inside, they settled into a corner booth and ordered a plate of quesadillas. “So now you claim your father died in the stadium disaster,” Messinger said.

Sandra nodded.

Messinger nodded back thoughtfully. “And yet, you testified earlier to having spoken to him after the explosion. That you shared Mr. Gutierrez's data with him, and that he provided you with the key to understanding the pattern of the blast and determining the source.”

“Also true,” Sandra said.

Messinger stopped nodding and waited.

“It's hard to explain,” Sandra said.

Messinger opened her hands wide, indicating the empty table on which their food had not yet been served. Plenty of time.

“In high school, you might have learned about something called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” Messinger said.

“My father always complains that they teach it wrong—that kids memorize it without a clue as to what it means. The gist is that subatomic particles—protons or electrons or photons—can't be entirely known. If you pinpoint where they are at a given moment, then you can't know how fast they're going. If you determine their velocity, you can't know where they are. And the weird thing is, it's not just a matter of our ignorance. The proton itself isn't in just one place. It's smeared out across a range of possible places, with a certain probability. It's called superposition. It really is in more than one place at one time.”

“So, your father . . .”

“One step at a time,” Sandra said. “The varcolac is a quantum creature. It carries with it a quantum probability wave that affects the things around it. It makes large things, like people and cars and houses, behave in the crazy way that subatomic particles can. The technology you saw my sister using is the same.”

“I didn't see the video,” Messinger said, her tone bitter. “Need-to-know classification, according to Mr. Black Suit. I'm just running this investigation. Why would I need to know?”

The quesadillas arrived, and Sandra paused to take a bite. It was delicious, piping hot, with lots of melted cheese. She wiped her mouth before responding. “An encounter with the varcolac can put a person in a state of superposition, like a subatomic particle, so that he exists as a set of possibilities rather than a single reality. It happened to my father fifteen years ago, and it happened to me.

“When I spoke to my father this morning, he said he had left the game early, in the eighth inning. I think the varcolac must have appeared there at that time, splitting my father into two possibilities—one of which left the game early, and the other of which stayed and died.”

Liddle had seemed to find her story farfetched, but Messinger listened attentively, and Sandra found she could explain herself better. It also occurred to her that perhaps Liddle and Messinger were working together more than they appeared to be, manipulating her with a classic good-cop, bad-cop routine, but she didn't care. She was glad to talk to a willing listener, and she didn't have anything to hide.

“So you're saying your father split into two versions of himself, before the explosion,” Messinger said, her tone a little skeptical, but not mocking. “The first version went home early. The second version stayed.”

“Yes.”

“So you think there are two versions of your father, one dead and one alive?”

“There were.”

“Not anymore?”

“I don't think so.” Sandra heard her voice wavering, and willed herself not to start crying. “Usually, probability waves don't stay unresolved for long. I think my father resolved back into only one version of himself, and the version he resolved to was the dead one.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because my living father is gone, apparently vanished into thin air without even a word to his wife, while his dead body is still very much here.”

She sent Messinger a link to the view of her father's body from Nathan's viewfeed. Messinger studied it, her face grave.

“Has the body been positively identified?” she asked.

“My father's wallet and keys were found in the pockets,” Sandra said. “I doubt DNA is back at this point, given the number of people to process.”

“Perhaps we can expedite that,” Messinger said.

CHAPTER 10

T
he whole facility was locked down. Alex had no idea how Oronzi was going to get her in the building. Even if he could hide her, what about himself? He had also fled from the crime scene before police arrived. They had probably been looking for him, would certainly want to question him. He wouldn't be able to get through security without attracting notice.

Oronzi drove past the front gate without turning. “So much for that plan,” Alex said. “I can't believe I trusted you. Now get us out of here before somebody notices us.”

Oronzi didn't answer. His eyes darted around, and she realized he was accessing his viewfeed. Without warning, the view through the windshield changed abruptly, and Alex was thrown violently forward against her seatbelt. A moment before, they had been moving slowly along the road outside the facility; in the next moment, they were parked in a secluded parking spot between two of the buildings.

Alex drew in her breath sharply, breathing hard. “What did you . . . ?” But she knew. It was the same trick the American marine in the demo had done with the grenade and the stone wall. She didn't know it was possible to do with an entire car—while riding inside it—but apparently it was.

“Quickly, now.” Oronzi heaved himself out of the driver's seat and out of the car. He beckoned to her. “Hurry, before we're seen.”

She ran around the car to him. He grabbed her shoulder, flicked his eyes, and just as abruptly, they were inside, in a large room Alex had never seen before. Instead of a normal door, there was a thick metal slab on huge hinges, like a bank vault. The room had no windows. There were rows of computers and workspaces on one side of the room, and a large clear space with charts and graphics on the wall on the other. In the center, flashing colors like a Times Square advertisement, was a spectacle of light points and shifting beams, spinning gracefully around a vertical axis.

“This is your lab,” she said. “On the eighth floor.”

Oronzi nodded.

“Ryan!” said a shocked voice. A pretty Asian woman in a short black skirt and jacket strode toward them. Her hair was pinned up, but a strand had fallen loose around one ear. Alex recognized her from the demo as Nicole Wu, Dr. Oronzi's chief lab assistant.

“What are you doing here?” Nicole asked. “Don't you know everyone is looking for you?”

“That's exactly why we're here. So that no one will find us.”

Nicole's eyes widened when she recognized Alex. “So you
are
together, just like everyone is saying. Ryan, what happened down there?”

“You were there,” he said gruffly.

“Yeah, I was there.” She pointed a finger at Alex. “I saw her shoot Secretary Falk.”

“And did you see how he didn't have any eyes? How he was killing his own security agents?” Alex said. “Did you see the part where I saved the lives of everyone else there, yours included?”

Nicole waved a hand in dismissal. She looked at Oronzi. “You'd better get down there and tell your side of the story, if you don't want to be a suspect. Right now, it looks like you're harboring a criminal, maybe even conspiring with her to commit murder.”

“And what about me?” Alex asked.

“You can do what you like,” Nicole said. “Just leave Ryan out of it.”

“We need her, Nicole,” Oronzi said. “She knows about the intelligence. She's seen it before.”

Nicole raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

“I'm going to go down there and be seen,” Oronzi said. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I'll tell them I've just been up here in the lab, working. You need to keep her safe, Nicole.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because if you don't, I'll tell them all who you really are.”

Nicole glared. “You know that's not in your best interest.”

“Nicole, it's important. She's not guilty, and we both know it. Now make sure she stays safe while I go put in an appearance.”

Nicole looked mutinous, but didn't object. Alex was seriously regretting coming here. She should have gone to her uncle's friend. She wouldn't last an hour in this place.

A panel above the door buzzed and flashed red. “Too late,” Oronzi said. “Somebody's here.” He turned to Alex. “Hold still,” he said. “Don't move, don't speak. Don't even breathe.”

Alex opened her mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes silenced her. The bank vault door swung slowly open. Five men came into the room, all of them wearing dark suits.

“Dr. Oronzi,” one of the men said, a quiet menace in his voice. “We've been looking for you for some time.”

“I'm a busy man,” Oronzi said.

“I'd like to talk to you about that.”

“And you are?”

The man gave a thin smile. “Agent Clark, FBI.”

“This is my colleague, Dr. Wu,” Oronzi said, indicating Nicole.

“We've met,” Clark said.

To Alex's astonishment, no one looked at her or seemed to notice her at all. She obeyed Oronzi's instructions, standing as still as possible. Clark asked Oronzi to accompany him downstairs. Oronzi went out with him, leaving Alex alone with Nicole.

Nicole smirked at her. “Not as eye-catching as you thought, are you?”

“He made me invisible,” Alex breathed, hardly believing it. “He teleported me up eight stories, through solid walls, and then made me invisible.”

Nicole shrugged. “If you say so.”

“How many more tricks are you hiding up here?”

“You're not cleared for that.”

“Don't play games with me. I shot someone today, and that might not have happened if you weren't keeping so many secrets. I think I've earned the right to a few answers.”

“You've put our whole operation in jeopardy, and now you've gotten Ryan tangled up in it,” Nicole said. “You haven't earned the right to anything.”

“How long have you known about the varcolac? The intelligence, I mean?”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “That's Ryan's crazy theory. I never put much stock in it, and neither should you. Complex phenomena do not require malicious intelligent aliens to explain them. If you ask me, the best thing you can do is turn yourself in.”

“And if you ask me,” Alex said, “the best thing you can do is stop lying to yourself to protect your precious lab, or your career, or whatever it is you're afraid of losing if you admit the truth to yourself. This creature is real, and it isn't going to stop here. Your boss might be a bit crazy, but he's right about this.”

As she spoke, Alex brought up her eyejack display. She queried the available local networks, and found only one. Of course—the lab was a Faraday cage, so no signals were getting in any more than they were getting out. It was an entirely isolated network, closed to the outside world. Which meant that the security from inside the lab was minimal—all the efforts had been expended toward keeping people out. The network followed the same interface that her team at Lockheed had designed, and her eyejack system connected to it without objection.

“I'm just helping you for Ryan's sake,” Nicole said. “It doesn't mean I have to listen to your little rants.”

“Little rants?” Alex said, pretending to be offended, though she was mostly paying attention to what she was doing. She still had the Higgs projector from the demo in her pocket. The lab's network had the software that ran it, but it was a different version than she had. A later version. How was that possible? She initiated the software upgrade service. A spinning icon appeared in the upper right corner of her vision, indicating that the latest software from the lab's server was being downloaded to her system.

“In fact,” Nicole said, “I'm not sure I'm up for conspiracy to commit murder. If Ryan's not back here soon, I'm going to call the feds, and you can tell them it was the aliens that did it.”

The download completed. Alex flicked through the new icons that had appeared on her display. As familiar as she was with this interface, it was easy to identify the right one. The same glowing arrow with adjustable length and direction appeared in her vision, only this time it was annotated with a few numeric parameters and a drop-down list of locations. Alex chose “parking lot” and saw the numeric parameters change.

“Don't worry,” Alex said. “I'm not going to wait around that long.” She didn't have time to experiment. She flicked her eyes, and the lab disappeared.

Without any transition, she was back in the parking lot. She stumbled and fell headlong into Oronzi's car, disoriented and feeling sick. This would take some getting used to, but oh, was it glorious. She didn't know whether Nicole would sound an alarm or not, but she didn't want to wait around to find out. Examining her reflection in the window, she initiated the invisibility module, and was gratified to see her reflection disappear.

She knew she had to get away from the NJSC grounds as quickly as possible, but she didn't want to risk another teleport before she knew what she was doing. The possibility of ending up underground, or inside a wall, or thirty feet above pavement, was just too great.

She sat down on the hood of Oronzi's car, trusting that no one would be able to see her, and brought up the teleportation interface. There were a few preset locations, but the arrow could be oriented in any direction, and the numbers set arbitrarily. With a little experimentation, Alex realized that the numbers were in ECEF coordinates, making the arrow a vector from the center of the Earth to a precise point. Not only that, but the program had been hooked up to a map locator with terrain and altitude data, allowing her to determine what vector would actually put her on the Earth's surface, instead of over or under it.