Vs Reality (12 page)

New York City
August 26, 2011
6:45 am, Eastern Daylight Time

Paige breezes into the kitchen with Jens at her side, flicking on an additional overhead light above their hostage.

Heinreich sags into a chair that appears ridiculously undersized beneath his enormous frame, like an adult sitting at a kindergartener’s desk. He’s still unconscious, still bleeding, and is now bound by a haphazard combination of handcuffs, rope, and what appears to be three entire rolls of duct tape. He’s not going anywhere.

Brodie is seated at the kitchen table, rifling through a small bag. It’s a brown leather case with scarred wooden handles; very retro, like she’d expect a doctor would tote to house calls in the 1950s. She’d heard that was a thing.

“How goes it?”

“Good,” he says cheerfully, still riffling. “Mister Heinreich here was coming around, so I had to give him a little sleepy-time remedy. My own personal concoction.”

“Which means?” Paige asks flatly.

“Thanks to my extensive collection of narcotics, he’s been injected with enough benzodiazepine to drop a charging T-rex. Plus a couple of extra ingredients. I don’t know if all this crap will keep him in place,” Brodie says, gesturing to the multicolored tape that’s mummifying their hostage, “but my cocktail sure will.”

Heinreich breathes out a painful wheeze, like a distant foghorn.

“He’s
still
not out?” Jens asks, regarding the giant with grave concern.

Paige circles the kitchen table and pulls a can of soda from the fridge, popping the tab.

“Meh, he’s in and out,” Brodie says, now prodding at a small vial of purple liquid he’d just pulled from his bag. “It’s hard to calculate the dosage for someone this big.”

“No more drugs for this guy
,
” Paige says. “I’m going to question him.”

“You know what,” Jens says, his hand outstretched. “I owe this bastard some payback for what he did to me back at Platinum.”

“You do?” Page asks, a line creasing between her eyebrows.

“Yup. And payback is gonna be a
bitch
.” Jens balls his tiny hands into fists and steps up to the sleeping hostage. “Mind if I take the first crack at him?”

“Oh, be my guest,” she says with a stately gesture. A broad, rarely-seen smile stretches across her lips. She’s actually amused.

Jens steps up to the giant, eyeing Brodie’s tape job. After a cursory examination (and when he’s relatively confident that Heinreich won’t be able to break loose) he glances back over his shoulder at Paige. She’s sitting on the kitchen table, legs crossed, nearly giddy with anticipation – or as giddy as Paige’s stoic face is capable of expressing. She raises her eyebrows and gives Brodie an affirmative ‘let’s get this show on the road’ nod.

Jens draws in a deep breath and reels back, slapping Mister Heinreich across the face. He barely moves, but his eyelids begin to flutter. A second slap revives him, eyes cracked open, darting around the room.

“Okay tough guy,” Jens says, now slightly affecting a Jersey accent for reasons even he doesn’t understand. “First of all, I want you to tell us
everything
you know about this Base Camp!”

“
Basement
,” Paige interjects dryly.

“Exactly!” Jens shouts, waving an accusing finger in Heinreich’s face. “And
then
you’re gonna tell us everything about your evil plans. If you don’t start talking I’m going to go medieval on your big German ass, understand?”

Heinreich is barely lucid, head pitching back and forth. His eyes open a little wider and he focuses on the tip of Jens’ finger, and follows it down towards the extremely large accessory that dangles from his bony wrist. “Is that…is that my watch?”

“Shut up! It doesn’t matter whose watch this is. What matters is where Cole and Daphne are!”

“
Dia
,” Paige adds, more annoyed than before.

“I don’t know,” Heinreich says weakly. “Goto must have initiated escape protocol and used emergency exit. Device can only be used once to make sure no one follows.” His words are coming slowly, but he’s exceedingly cooperative; in no small part due to the sodium pentothal that Brodie injected him with as they began tying him up.

“Exit? Emergency?” Jens shouts, growing more frustrated by the moment. “Who followed what through a
where
?”

“If your friends followed Goto,” Heinreich says, “that means they tried jumping to the Basement. Now they are probably lost somewhere in the Backyard.”

Jens is now irate – or is at least pretending to be – bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet with his fists clenched, bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter. “I have
no
idea what you’re talking about, but you’ve just run out of time, son. And now, here comes the pain train.” He starts shadow boxing, throwing his fists in the air in a failed attempt at intimidation. “It’s coming at you, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop it. I hope you’re ready, because here it comes!”

Jens reels back and throws a wild, looping punch, slamming his fist into Heinreich’s face.

There’s a crack. A painfully loud crack. And it isn’t Heinreich’s jaw.

The German doesn’t budge but Jens reels in agony, holding his outstretched hand. “Holy shit,” he howls, leaping from one foot to the other as if he’s dancing barefoot across hot coals. “That hurt a
lot!
Wow, so
that’s
what it feels like when you punch someone?”

Paige places her can on the counter, cracks her neck and flexes her fingers behind her. “Well that was mildly amusing, but we’re not getting anywhere. Brodie, give me some Muse. I’m going to dive in and see if I can pull out something useful.”

Brodie pats himself down and then scours the kitchen table, pushing aside dishes and magazines and plates of week-old spaghetti. “I think I took the rest of them.”

As he rummages around Paige spots a bright blue pill rolling from beneath a plate, stopping at the edge of the marble countertop before it falls to the floor. She scoops it into her mouth and washes it down with a single gulp of soda.

A heartbeat later she begins to manifest. Her eyes spark with electricity; tiny storms encased in spheres made of glass, fingers of lightning lashing from the clouds.

“What are you going to do now?” Jens asks, gingerly massaging the back of his fractured hand.

“Now that Heinreich is awake I’m doing the only thing we
can
do: I’m going to pop inside his head and take a look around. It should only take a minute or two.” Paige steeples her fingertips and they begin to glow. She pulls them apart and bolts of energy stretch between them, pulsing and rippling.

Jens leaps back a step. “Whoa, is that safe?”

“For me or for Heinreich?” she says with a faint smile. “It’s no big deal, really. I’ll just make a quick connection with his mind so I can retrieve a few details. Besides a nasty hangover he should be all right tomorrow morning. It kills a couple brain cells every time I do it, but so does drinking tequila.”

“So you can read someone’s mind?” Jens asks. “Jump inside their head? I thought you were more into, you know…melting stuff?”

“Some people are just lucky, I guess,” she says dryly. “I have two superpowers.”

“Whoa. And one of them is mind-reading, Professor X style?”

“In a way, yes…but it’s a little more complicated than that. I see pictures, hear sounds; sometimes I’m taking their place in a dream or a recent event. I can’t always tell
exactly
what they’re thinking, but I can sort of feel what they were feeling. A lot of the time it actually works out better that way.”

“What are you gonna do with him when you’re done?” Jens asks.

“Yeah,” Brodie chimes in. “We can’t let the Collectors know where the secret hideout is. How are we gonna make the trade for Dia and Cole?”

“If we need him for the trade, we wait,” Paige says, rubbing her hands together in small circles. The electricity she’s generating creates a low-pitched hum, like a generator spooling up. “If they’re willing to do a prisoner swap then we’ll just have to improvise. But if he gives us enough to go on – like a back door out of The Basement – I can wipe his memory and we can dump him in Central Park.”

“Sweet,” Brodie says.

“Then when he goes back to his evil lair, he won’t have any information about us or our location. I might even be able to drop a couple new thoughts into his head to throw them off our trail.”

Jens’ eyes widen with fascination, locked on Paige’s glowing hands. “So you can actually
change
someone’s memories?”

Page shrugs. “It depends on how much time I spend with them. If I keep working on someone I can pretty much wipe their entire hard drive and upload anything I want. But for a one-stop solution I can destroy some recent neural connections, but not much else. At the very least I can extract the key events from today.” Her hands vibrate, fingertips moving so quickly they’re buzzing like electrified metal. When she moves a faint phosphorescent trail streaks behind, lingering in the air.

Paige takes a few steps towards Heinreich, hands just inches from his forehead. The glow of purple electricity is reflecting in the whites of his eyes, which are growing wide and panicked. “All right,” she says with a hint of forced enthusiasm, “Here we go. Let’s tear back the curtain and see who’s pulling the levers.”

She presses her fingertips into the giant’s temples. Her pupils dilate, then vanish. Her eyes fade to milky-white opals, staring blankly into nothingness.

A ghostly calmness takes hold of Heinreich, stiffening his body yet simultaneously relaxing his features; the tightness disappears from his strained face and his eyelids are once again heavy with sedation. He’s almost welcoming Paige to extract pictures and sound from the deepest realms of his consciousness.

A few moments pass with her fingers locked on Heinreich’s temples, flecks of violet light entwining her fingers, buzzing gently in the silence of the apartment.

Brodie and Jens exchange curious glances.

Nothing yet.

Then she inhales; lungs in spasm, mouth agape, a painful scream lodged in the back of her throat. Paige stumbles and topples backwards. Kitchen chairs tumble and her laptop crashes to the floor and she gropes for something to break her fall, the monitor shattering across the tiles. She crawls into the corner of the room and hugs her legs to her chest like a terrified child, quaking uncontrollably, face buried in her knees.

Brodie drops at her side and reaches out to comfort her, but yanks his hands back as if she’s a hot burner.

“Well do
something,
” Jens shouts wildly.

“Um, Paige…?” Brodie snaps his fingers by her ears and eyes, trying to spark a reaction.

Her head lolls back against the wall with a hollow thump, reddened eyes like saucers. She can’t hear the snapping. Brodie and Jens are now mouthing words, faces panicked, but whatever they’re saying is lost. They’re not producing any sound. The audio track that’s playing at full blast inside her throbbing head is the one she’d just hijacked from Heinreich’s brain. Screaming…
so
much
screaming, and sobbing and begging. The horror is consuming her.

New York City
August 26, 2011
7:17 am, Eastern Daylight Time

With a flash of electricity Dia and Cole appear on her rooftop, stepping through the torn fabric of the universe; a far less dramatic entrance than their two previous journeys. Without the fear of being killed it’s much easier for her to focus and pinpoint a destination for re-entry.

Rays of burnt orange sunlight are lancing through the early morning clouds, bathing the rooftop patio in a retina-stinging glow. Dia staggers and wobbles, reaching out to grasp a chair for balance. She’s not accustomed to manifesting this many times over such a short time-span, and she can feel a deep exhaustion setting in, aching her muscles and sapping her resolve. Her head spins, inner ear whirling like a carousel. Usually the vertigo, lightheadedness and rubbery legs are reserved for her travel companions and not herself.

Cole tears a swath of fabric from his tank top. He tightens the black cloth around her bleeding forearm, securing the tourniquet with a quick jerk. The gash she opened in order to tear apart this last gateway was deep and violent, almost down to her artery, by the looks of it.

They enter the rooftop doors and circle their way down the staircase, intercepted by Brodie the moment they step into the corridor.

“D!” he calls out. “Am I glad to see you.” His eyes are manic. Dia’s alarm bells begin to go off.

“Brodie, what’s going on?” she asks quickly.

Cole glances over his shoulder and down the hall into the brightly-lit kitchen. An enormous semi-conscious German is bound and taped to a chair, his bald head sagging to the side. “Is that Heinreich? Why the hell did you bring him
here
?”

“It’s a long story,” Brodie says, “but there’s something else going on. You guys want the bad news or the
really
bad news?”

Dia sags into the wall. “Oh god…give me the bad news first, I suppose.”

Brodie digs into his pocket and produces a bulky gold-plated timepiece. “I got a closer look at Heinreich’s watch after Jens took it off of him. It’s not
just
a watch…turns out there was a micro-tracer inside. I smashed the chip, but—”

“
Shit
.” It doesn’t matter. They could already be on their way. Dia’s eyes snap open and she spins around. She begins to rummage through the contents in her hallway table. “Grab Paige, gather as much Muse as possible and let’s jump,” she orders him with a military-like cadence. “No screwing around Brodie, I want you ready in five.”

“Well, that’s sort of the
really
bad news,” he replies, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know what happened, but, well…Paige tried to read Heinreich. An interrogation to see if we could find you two. She got inside his head for just a second or two...”

Dia can’t wait a second longer. She shoves Brodie aside and bolts down the corridor, her boots slick on the marble tiles. She slides into the kitchen and rounds  the corner, and that’s when she sees her: Paige, slumped and broken like a discarded rag doll, propped into the corner of the room. Her eyes are vacant.

“We tried everything we could,” she hears Brodie whisper from behind her. “But…she’s gone.”