14 (20 page)

1,528,326,500 ± 5000

Veek answered her door with a plaid robe wrapped over her sweatpants. Her glasses were on, but her eyes blinked away sleep behind them. “What do you want?”

“You have to come see this,” Nate told her.

“See what? It’s two in the morning.”

“You won’t believe me if I just tell you.”

She scowled. “Just tell me.”

He took a breath. “You know what you said about the power lines? How I just needed to see it for myself?”

Her face softened. A little. “Yeah.”

“You have to come see this.”

Nate had peeled the rest of the paint off his studio walls. He’d dragged his shelves into the center of the room to expose as much wall as possible. His trashcan stood near them, filled with scraps of old latex. In a few places the plaster had fallen away, too, to show wooden planks or bricks.

“Oh my God,” she said. Her voice was half amazement, half sadness. “What did you do?”

He set his hand on her shoulder and turned her to the wall of numbers. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she said again. The tone was different this time. “What is this?”

“It was under the paint,” he said. “Look over here.”

There was another equation on the wall above his desk. This one had more symbols in it and fewer numbers. Veek stared at it. “What does it mean?”

“Not a clue,” he said, “except I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to do with bricks or plumbing.”

She stepped closer and pointed at one symbol, an upside-down
y
. “I’ve seen that before, I think.” She tilted her head. “Damn, I wish I’d paid more attention in math class.”

“I don’t think this is math,” said Nate. “I mean, it’s math, yeah, but I think this is all physics or something. I’m just not sure what it is. I remember some basic stuff. Mass times velocity equals force, that kind of stuff.”

“It’s mass times acceleration.”

“Same thing, right?”

“Yeah, you’ve proved your point. This is way beyond us.” She frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked at the walls again, then looked at him. “What are the odds of this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, think about it. Isn’t it sort of stupid-convenient that Scooby’s looking for weird stuff about the building, peels the paint off his walls, and finds weird stuff?”

He blinked. “You think they’re fake?”

“No,” she said. “No, I believe you. Doesn’t it just strike you as a crazy coincidence, though? It’s like...it’s like reaching into a jar of marbles and pulling out the one blue one without even looking.”

“Ahhh. Yeah, I see what you’re getting at.” They studied the walls for a moment and Nate’s mouth opened. “Unless...”

“Unless what?”

He rolled his hand in front of him. “That’s assuming there’s only one blue marble,” he said. “If all the marbles are blue, then it’s not a coincidence at all.”

She looked at the walls. “You think?”

“Only one way to know for sure.”

A few minutes later they were in Veek’s apartment, attacking the wall across from her massive computer. Nate slit the paint across the wall with a kitchen knife. They worked the gash with their fingernails until the latex came up and they could pull it away. The paint was more brittle in her apartment because of the cool air, and they couldn’t peel off a piece larger than a paperback before it snapped off in their hands. Veek grabbed her kitchen trashcan and they started to fill it.

They tore at the wall’s skin for twenty minutes. More than half the paint was gone. There was nothing but bare plaster.

“Damn it,” said Veek.

“Hold on,” he said. “There was only stuff on two of my walls.”

“Yeah.” She looked at the wall by her door. “I guess I can kiss my security deposit goodbye.”

Nate carved a large X into the wall and they peeled the paint away. A circle of plaster grew. It was the size of her computer monitor when she gasped.

Numbers stretched across the plaster, written in the same black paint. They pinched and tugged at the paint until they’d revealed a line of figures.

66–16–9—4—1—89

He glanced at her. “What do you think it means?”

“Maybe there’s a computer down in the basement,” she said, “and we need to keep punching the numbers in.”

“Very funny,” said Nate. “Is it math? Sixty-six minus sixteen minus...”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s not like yours.” Veek tilted her head, as if it would give her a different view of the numbers. “Those were equations, but I think this is some kind of code.”

“Maybe. You think it’s numbers for letters?”

“Not unless you know what the sixty-sixth letter of the alphabet is.” She pulled at another loose edge of paint and a section the size of her hand came away. There was nothing beneath it, or under the next piece she peeled off. “I think that’s all there is.”

Nate turned his head. “The wall behind your computer?”

Veek looked at the wide desk and her lips twisted up. Then she nodded. “Give me a minute to shut everything down and get it unplugged.”

Half an hour later her trash can overflowed with latex scraps and they were looking at another set of equations. This one was so complex they couldn’t even follow it. At the bottom, however, it broke down to something they could understand.

“So,” Nate said, “is zero good or bad?”

“No clue.”

“Any idea what that symbol means?”

“I’d look it up, but we unplugged the computer and the wireless server.”

He stared at the equation and tried to force his brain to understand it. There were too many symbols and even the numbers seemed huge and alien. It reminded him of old sci-fi movies, when the genius professor would have a chalkboard covered with some gigantic calculation. Just like when he watched those movies, he had no idea what the equations meant.

“We need to look at other apartments,” he said. “I bet there’s something in every one of them.”

She looked at the clock. “Yeah, but who else is going to be up at three in the morning?”

Xela answered the door almost immediately. She wore one of her paint-splattered tuxedo shirts and hid her blue hair under a backwards baseball cap. “Hey,” she said. “I was about to crash. What are you guys doing up this late?”

“We want to peel your walls,” said Nate.

“Never heard it called that before.” She looked at them and managed a tired smile. “Normally I’d say buy me a drink and you’re on, but—”

Veek whacked her on the arm. “There’s something written on the walls,” she said, “under the paint.”

Xela’s eyes got wide. “No way.”

“Yes way,” said Nate.

She led them into her apartment. A fresh painting stood on her easel in the center of the room. “Where do you want to start?”

It took close to an hour to strip all the pictures and photos from Xela’s walls. Half an hour later they’d flayed the inside of her apartment. The skin of paint came away even faster than it had up in Nate’s studio. They filled half a dozen plastic grocery bags with old latex.

Xela’s apartment wore complex math on two walls. “It’s one long problem,” said Veek. She pointed from the bottom of one wall to the top of the next. “It’s the same line of the equation here and there.”

Nate stared at the math. “What the hell is it? I mean, I took some science courses and I don’t ever remember anything this big up on the chalkboard.”

“Maybe it’s just thorough,” said Veek. “You know, when you do something with Einstein’s formulas, you assume everyone already knows what the individual letters are and how you reached them. Maybe this is covering everything.”

“It’s India ink,” said Xela. She had her head close to one of the lines of numbers. “Heavy stuff. It lasts forever.”

“So somebody wanted to make sure all of this was here for a long time,” said Nate.

Xela shrugged and bit back a yawn. “Or it’s just what they had handy. It’s not hard to come by.”

“Next room,” he said. He glanced at the Xela’s alarm clock. “It’s getting close to five. People are starting to wake up. Maybe Debbie and Clive?”

Veek shook her head. “They don’t have painted walls, remember? All wood.”

“Damn. I wonder if Tim’s up?”

“He might be,” said Xela. “He wakes up pretty early.”

Nate’s head twitched.

“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter,” she said. “I stayed up one night working on a painting and saw him go out running.”

“Roger, maybe?”

“Gah,” said Veek. “We’re idiots. I bet sixteen’s still unlocked.”

It was. The three of them stood in front of the broad wall between the pillars. The cold wall.

Nate looked at Veek. “You sure this is a good idea?”

“If Oskar finds it, he can’t prove it was us,” she said. “Besides, they never rent this place anyway.”

“I actually just meant cutting into this one.” He nodded at the cold wall. Xela kept touching it and pulling her hand away.

“You think it’s dangerous?”

Nate shrugged. “Not a clue. It’s one of the more...tangible things we’ve found.”

Xela slashed the wall with her matte knife. “Only one way to find out,” the blue-haired woman said.

It took a few minutes for the three of them to strip the wall down to the plaster. A large
X
was painted across the center of the wall. There were four words, one in each of the four triangles it made, each in foot-tall letters. The one on top looked like Russian. Nate thought the left one was French. He couldn’t even recognize the letters of the bottom one. The word on the right was in English.

DANGER

Xela coughed. “I don’t suppose ‘danger’ is German for ‘free beer’ or something?”

“Not as I recall,” said Nate.

“I don’t think we should do anything else in here,” said Veek.

“I agree,” said Xela.

They pulled open the door and jumped.

Tim stood there in a t-shirt and running shorts, his hand posed to push the door open. He furrowed his brow. “What the hell are you doing?”

Nate let out the breath he’d sucked in. “How did you know we were here?”

Tim pointed up. “I live right there, remember? I got back from my run and you guys were making a hell of a racket.”

“Told you,” said Xela.

Nate guided the other man inside and closed the door. He gestured at the bare wall and Tim’s eyes widened. They gave him a quick summary of their night.

Tim touched the naked plaster above the French word and pulled his fingers away. “Every room you’ve checked so far, huh?”

Veek nodded. “All three of ours and in here.”

He looked at Nate. “Let me see.”

They went up to Nate’s apartment and Tim inspected the walls. Nate watched his expression. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing. I was hoping it was just random scribbles but...” Tim shook his head. “I’ve seen enough of this sort of thing to recognize heavy-duty math.”

“Yeah?”

Tim nodded. “One of the advantages of publishing a lot of technical books.”

Veek crossed her arms. “So now what?”

“Give me ten minutes to wash off my run and get changed,” said Tim. “Then we’ll do my place. Maybe you should change, too.” He dipped his head at Veek and Xela. Veek was still in her robe and sweats. Xela wore her flimsy tuxedo shirt.

“Yeah,” said Veek. “Ten minutes would be good.”

“I need some coffee if we’re going to keep at this,” said Xela.

“Get changed,” said Nate. “I’ll have coffee ready.”

By quarter of six they were drinking coffee and tearing the paint off Tim’s walls. Nate was worried the multiple rooms in apartment 26 would mean any messages would’ve been destroyed when the extra walls were added. Instead, they were a treasure trove. Every wall was covered with elaborate patterns of lines and shapes.