The Fold: A Novel (12 page)

Mike’s first thought was that Bob had rolled his eyes up to show the whites. Students did it in the hall or in class as a joke, sometimes with groaning voices or zombie moans. It was hard to do for more than a few seconds.

He could see Bob’s irises because his eyes were wide open, not half-lidded. They were pale and lifeless. The pupil of the left eye was a cloudy blur. The right eye looked around the room. It stared at Mike and dilated wide open. He’d seen the same look from terrified animals.

Bob’s skin was yellow, the color of Post-it notes or old pencils. His mouth was a chapped, cracked gash. Half of his nose was gone, and the nostril left behind was a slit at the center of the face. A few patches of red stubble were all that remained of his hair.

Nothing was left of his clothes but rags. His left arm had been twisted into a knot of muscle and bruised flesh. It hung from the shoulder in an odd way. The hand at the end was blurred by a collection of scars. Glistening trails led up his yellow body to open sores.

His left side was soaked with blood. The ragged shirt and pants were almost stained black with it. The mutilated arm was pressed against his torso, covering a wound. Drops of blood splashed against the pathway or passed through the expanded steel to the concrete.

Bob let out a low moan. It stretched out and mixed with Arthur’s scream. Sasha yelled something on the other side of the Door. The ants ran it back in Mike’s mind three times before he combined the sounds with some basic lip-reading.

Not again!

“Call nine-one-one,” shouted Neil. “Somebody call nine-one-one!”

Bob wailed again. The awful sound echoed through the concrete room. He took a few strides down the ramp as he gazed around the chamber.

Mike kicked against the floor and pushed himself away from the scarred man.

Bob lumbered after him. Every step threw him off balance and almost toppled him. His good arm swung up as he staggered forward.

Alarms bleated. Mike looked over and saw Olaf’s hand pressed against the panic button. There was a deep thump, a shockwave that rippled through the air as the Door slammed shut and Sasha vanished from sight.

The thing that had been Bob turned its good eye to Mike. The bleached iris shrunk, tried to focus, and relaxed. His knees folded and the yellow man collapsed. He dropped down onto his knees, then tilted back. His skull cracked against the steel ramp. More blood poured out onto the floor.

Arthur stopped screaming. He stood with his hands at his mouth. His eyes went from Bob to the rings and back.

“First aid kit!” bellowed Olaf. He ran to Bob. Neil lunged for the white box mounted behind one of the workstations and ripped it from its bracket.

Bob twitched on the floor. His limbs thrashed, went still, and thrashed again. He took a few quick, rasping breaths. Mike and Olaf tried to hold him steady.

“Jesus, that’s a lot of blood,” Neil said.

“It’s a head wound,” said Mike. “Head wounds bleed a lot. It’s probably not that bad.”

Neil pulled a handful of gauze pads from the first aid kit, tore them open and shoved them at Olaf. They lifted Bob and placed the pads behind his head. They turned red. Olaf applied pressure. Bob opened his mouth wide and hissed.

Mike counted seven sockets where teeth had been just a minute ago.

Neil stared at Bob’s arm. “What happened to his skin?”

“It’s just the light,” said Olaf, glancing at his own tanned fingers.

Bob coughed and looked up at Olaf. He moaned again, and the moan became recognizable words. “No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

“What happened to him?” Neil’s question was tinged with desperation this time.

“It’s just the light!” snapped Olaf.

“We need an ambulance!
” boomed Jamie. “
There’s been an accident. We’re in the complex on the west side of—”
There was a rumble and a crash as she tossed her headset aside.

Four different first aid classes ran through Mike’s head. He wrapped his arms around Bob’s legs and lifted them off the floor. “Cover him,” he said. “Keep him warm.”

“Hang on,” said Olaf. “Just hang on.”

Bob’s gaze slid off Olaf and landed on Mike. His good arm twisted up to grab the other man’s sleeve. Their eyes met.

“He’s still bleeding,” said Neil. “He’s bleeding a lot.”

“You have to stop them,” Bob hissed at Mike. “Don’t let them…” He coughed on the words and freckles of blood appeared on his lips and remaining teeth.

Mike ignored the blood and leaned in. “Don’t let them what?”

Bob kicked again. His other arm yanked away from Neil. His knee slammed up into Mike’s armpit. Then his legs tensed up and went board straight. Short breaths whistled in and out of his mouth.

Mike looked over at Arthur. “Chair,” he yelled, jerking his chin at one of the workstations. “Get me a chair for his legs.”

The project head kept looking from Bob to the rings and back.

“Arthur!”

His eyes locked onto Mike.

“Chair. Now.”

Arthur nodded and ran.

The speakers boomed and rattled. “
The ambulance is coming
,” said Jamie.

“We need a blanket,” yelled Mike. “Something to keep him warm.”

Bob’s dead eye stared between Mike and Neil. The good one flitted between each of the three men. When it reached Olaf, it opened wide again. He hissed out a sound. A last word. But it was too faint, too whispery, to be heard.

Then both his eyes rolled up and back.

“He died in the ambulance,” Mike said. “Dead on arrival at the hospital.”

Reggie’s face frowned on the tablet. It was propped up on the counter so he could look out at most of the trailer. He didn’t look like he’d been awake for twenty-two hours. “You heard a cause of death yet?”

Mike paced back and forth. “As of three hours ago, according to Arthur, they’re considering it an accident. Blood loss. They said he never regained consciousness, so he probably wasn’t in any pain. Any more pain, I guess.”

“How did they…” Reggie paused. “Did they have any thoughts about his condition?”

“I don’t think…” Mike stopped pacing, but didn’t turn to look at the tablet. “They don’t seem to understand that his condition was new. They think he always looked like this.”

“That won’t last,” said Reggie. “As soon as someone looks at his medical records they’ll realize something’s wrong.”

“Hell, as soon as they look at his driver’s license.”

“Have they called anyone?”

“Arthur said his family’s just up in Anaheim. I think the hospital’s already informed them. Or the police. Probably the police. That’s the procedure when a student gets hurt. I’m guessing they’ve got something similar.”

“I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” said Reggie.

Mike watched his friend think for a moment. “I guess…Should I just go book a flight or do you need to do it?”

Reggie’s brow furrowed. “A flight?”

“A flight home.”

Reggie stared at him through the tablet.

“I’m done here, right?”

“No, of course not. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

“So did I. Between this and Miles, I assumed funding goes away now for sure. At the very least, everything goes on hold for a while.”

“Well, you know what happens when you assume.”

“Really? You’re going to keep it going after all this?”

Reggie shook his head. “There’s too much at stake here to just shut it down. And even if they deny further funding, Arthur has enough to keep working for another few months.”

Mike sighed. “Great.”

“I want you to talk to the coroner. Or the medical examiner. Whoever does the autopsy.”

“I’d really rather not watch that.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Thank you.”

“But I might ask you to take a second look afterward.”

“It’s not my field of expertise.”

“I’m not one of the rubes. Everything’s your field of expertise.” Reggie rubbed his temples. “So what the hell happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Because I looked away for one and a half seconds.” He closed his eyes and replayed what he’d seen of the crosswalk for the eighty-seventh time. The only view was his own. He hadn’t been able to see any of the monitors from up on the pathway, playing catch with Bob. It still felt too soon to be asking the others for the video records.

“Was it because of how often he’s done it? Crosswalked? He’s done more than all the others, right?”

“Olaf’s next closest with thirty-one. But they’ve all been checked out. If it’s a cumulative thing, I have no idea what could be accumulating. Which would mean it’s a random thing that’s never happened before in over four hundred tests.”

A sigh echoed up from Washington, bounced off a satellite, down to a signal tower, and out of the tablet. “So can you tell me anything?”

Mike closed his eyes and replayed Bob’s jump again for the eighty-eighth time. “Not right now, no.”

“Well, let me ask the ugly question, then.”

He opened his eyes. “Was it an accident?”

“Yes.” Reggie’s eyes flitted to another screen. “ ‘You have to stop them. Don’t let them…’ ”

Mike paced back and forth again. “I considered it. Arthur gave Jamie some kind of changes just before they opened the Door. If it was something to kill Bob, they’re both idiots for talking about it right in front of me.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it was deliberate. As far as I know, everyone liked Bob, except Olaf, and even Olaf didn’t hate him.”

“But Bob was going to tell you something over dinner, and Olaf shut him up.”

“That isn’t how I’d put it, but yeah.”

“Did he ever get back to you about it?”

“No.”

“Maybe someone wanted to make sure Bob didn’t talk to you. Would kind of fit with him saying, ‘You have to stop them.’ ”

“Maybe. Olaf’s got a stick up his butt, but I don’t get the sense he’s a killer. Plus, there were three other people monitoring the experiment.”

“Assuming they weren’t all in on it.”

Mike replayed the scene again. He started with the last toss of the baseball. Looking away at Olaf, seeing his eyes go wide and his jaw drop. In his peripheral vision, Arthur’s eyebrows and hands going up. Hearing the reactions. Swinging his head around and seeing the pale yellow skin and the eyes. Sasha in the background leaping out of her chair.

“Everyone was freaked out and panicking,” said Mike. “They didn’t know what was going on. If they were acting, they’re all in the wrong line of work.”

“Maybe they didn’t expect it to be so…messy.”

“For someone who wants this project to go on, you’re finding a lot of reasons to shut it down.”

“I’m just asking the questions I know the board’s going to ask me,” Reggie said. “Washington One-Oh-One.”

“Maybe that’s what he was talking about,” said Mike with a shrug. “Stop the board. Don’t let them…shut us down?”

“Loyal to the very end?” Reggie rubbed his chin. “That’s good. I could work with that.”

“We don’t really know that’s what he meant.”

“We don’t know that it isn’t.”

“He said something else, too.”

Reggie’s brow went up. “That’s not in your report.”

“Because I’m not sure what he said. I didn’t want to guess.”

“Feel free to guess, as long as it improves our chances of funding.”

“I think he said ‘mobster.’ Maybe ‘mobsters,’ plural.”

“What?”

“That’s just it. I’m not sure. His lips were fluttering, he was losing consciousness.”

“But he said it to Olaf?”

“He was looking at Olaf,” said Mike, “but I’m not sure he was seeing anything at that point.”

“And you’re sure it was ‘mobster’?”

“No. That’s why it wasn’t in the report. I wasn’t sure. Maybe he was calling for his mother. Maybe he was calling Olaf a monster. I’m just not sure.”

Reggie rubbed his chin again. “You were right to keep it out of your report for now.”

“Thing is, from everything I understand about how the Door works, this shouldn’t’ve happened.”

“Are you sure? It sounds like he…what did they call it? Humpty Dumpty-ed.”

“That was the old project,” Mike said, “back when they were working on teleportation.”

“Are we sure they’re not working on it?”

“Wouldn’t make sense. Why declare on the record it can’t be done, then do it and claim it’s something else?”

“Modesty?”

“Have you listened to these people at all?”

“So he didn’t HD?”

Mike shook his head. “The Door doesn’t do anything to the traveler. That’s why the wound doesn’t make sense.”

“How so?”

“He had an actual wound. A puncture or a cut in his left side, just under the ribs. I never had a chance to look at it. I think that was a lot of the blood loss.”

“What caused it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because you weren’t looking.”

“Don’t be an ass. Partly that. But I have no idea what could’ve injured him. There weren’t any jagged edges around him. I was the closest person. Sasha was over on Site B with him, and she didn’t say anything. Arthur was next closest and he was five and a half feet from me.”

“Could there’ve been someone else over on Site B? Someone you didn’t see?”

“Just beyond the Door? Maybe. They’d have to be really fast to stab him and get out of the way. Not to mention timing it as I just happened to look back at Olaf.”

“Deliberate distraction?”

Mike shook his head. “It was just sheer chance I looked back. And that still wouldn’t explain everything else that happened to him.” He closed his eyes and watched again as his field of vision shifted around onto Bob. Watched the yellow man with pale eyes stumble forward. Heard him moan and collapse.

He opened his eyes and Reggie was staring at him.

“You okay?”

“It’s two in the morning and I’m exhausted,” said Mike. “And this isn’t what I signed up for. Not remotely.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know this is ruining my life on a bunch of levels, right?”

“I do.”

“It happened right in front of me. Six feet in front of me.” The crosswalk played again in his mind. Ninety-one times in just over six hours. Once every four minutes on average.

“I’m sorry,” Reggie said again. “I really am. But I need you on this.”

“Dammit,” said Mike. “I’m an idiot.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I missed something. We all did, we were so focused on Bob.”

“What’s up?”

“Let me check this out first. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

The face on the tablet blinked. “
You
need to double-check something?”

“I told you, I wasn’t looking at him when he went through.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Mike said. “But I think I might’ve just found a clue.”