Patrick Lee - Ghost Country

"Not anytime soon, we can't. According to his last blog post, a few hours ago, he's on vacation in Japan with his girlfriend." T ravis sat on the couch and leaned back. He pressed his hands to his eyes. He was tired as hell.

They were at square zero. They had nothing at all to work with. The barrier of open space around the oubliette was as vast as it'd been when they'd first spoken of it.

He looked at his watch. Nine thirty in the morning. Paige had been captive for just shy of ten hours.

Bethany was pacing now. Holding her phone but unable to think of anything to do with it.

Travis closed his eyes again.

Paige wanted them to move on. Wanted them to leave her behind and finish what she'd meant to do herself. She'd said it in almost those words, in her phone call to Bethany. And she'd meant it. That was the way she thought. She had the ability to see the big picture. Six and a half billion lives versus her own. She was lying in that room down the street right now hoping like hell that they wouldn't risk trying to save her. Hoping they would forget about her and just get to work. And they could do that. They could climb back down the rope right now, into the ruined D.C. They could walk back down Vermont, ignore the remains of the high-rise and go another mile to the White House. They could spend days digging in the wreckage there for some kind of clue. And if that search turned up nothing, they could go across the river to the Pentagon and spend weeks. And after a while they wouldn't have to think about Paige lying in that room, because by then she'd be long gone. She'd be gone by tonight.

The people who'd hit the motorcade had taken her alive because it made sense at the time. They'd been acting on a snap decision, operating with more questions than answers. But that was probably no longer the case. Ten hours was plenty of time to take stock. Plenty of time for them to realize they didn't need her.

No doubt Paige was thinking the same thing right now. Lying bound, waiting for her captors to settle on the decision. Waiting for it to happen. When it did, she would try not to cry about it. She'd still be holding on to the logic of it all, telling herself that her life was just part of what it cost to get the job done. She would be thinking that very thing when she felt the silencer touch her temple.

"You love her."

Travis opened his eyes.

Bethany had stopped pacing. She was looking at him.

"You love her," she said again. "Paige."

"I knew her for less than a week."

"That's long enough."

"Why do you think I love her?"

"Because you stayed on that concrete pad. Stepping onto it was one thing. But staying on it, after what happened… that was another thing entirely. To do something that insane, you have to care about someone more than you care about your own life. A lot more."

Travis didn't reply. He stared ahead at nothing. "I can't do it," he said. "I can't leave her in there."

"I don't want to leave her, either. I just don't know what the next move is."

Neither of them spoke for the next minute. Travis's eyes fixed on a spot on the carpet. He stared at it and hardly blinked. He let the edges of his vision blur.

Then he turned and looked at Bethany.

"What was the last thing Paige said to you in that phone call?"

"That you can go through and come back," she said. "She was just saying it's safe to go through the opening."

Travis thought about it. "No, that's not what she said. Not exactly what she said anyway. Play the recording again."

She played it. They listened. They heard the frantic rush of Paige's voice telling Bethany to go to her residence, to get the entity and get out of Border Town. To use it. To go public with whatever she learned. To get Travis Chase's help if necessary. Then she said, " Shit, what else…? " and went silent for a few seconds. Travis caught the sound he remembered from the first time he'd heard the recording: running footsteps, men coming to get her. That sound was all he'd heard on the first listen, at that part of the clip. This time he focused on the other sound, right there beside it in the audio. The more important sound, by far. Paige's breathing in the absence of her voice. Two breaths, deep and fast. They didn't shudder on the way out. They seethed. Travis got the sense that however scared Paige was, she was frustrated even more. She was struggling to remember something critical, some detail she needed to tell Bethany in the few seconds she had left. Which was strange, in retrospect: if all Paige needed to say was that a person could step through the projected opening, would that have been hard to remember? Would it have even been necessary? Wouldn't Paige expect them to figure that out for themselves?

A second later they heard Bethany's voice on the recording: " What's happening? Where are you? "

Paige's voice came back in, louder and more intense than before. " You can take it through and still come back! You can take it through! "

Then it was over.

In the silence Travis looked at Bethany.

They both looked at the black cylinder, still lying in the armchair, still switched on. The iris stood open to the forest and the overcast sky above it. The manila rope lay in tangles on the carpet where they'd left it after pulling it up.

"Take it through," Bethany said, turning the phrase over like a found artifact. "Does she mean the cylinder? Take the cylinder through the iris?"

Travis stared at the thing. It was hard to imagine what else Paige could have meant.

"It would be easy to do," he said. "Switch it off with the delay, and then carry the cylinder through the iris during the minute and a half it stays open."

"You'd have to be out of your mind," Bethany said. "What happens when the iris shuts behind you? Now you're stuck seventy years in the future, with a machine that can only take you seventy years further into the future. You'd never get home."

"What if it doesn't work like that? What if turning it on in the future just opens the iris back to the present time? Like a toggle. Back and forth."

"How would it know to do that?" Bethany said. "How would it know it was in the future?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's something simple. Maybe it senses when it's taken through the iris, and switches itself into reverse. We'll never know how it works, but think of what we just heard. Paige said you can take it through and come back. She knew a lot more about this thing than we do."

He watched Bethany mull it over. Watched her warm to it.

"The logic adds up," she said. "Someone built this thing for a purpose. I can't see the use of something that just leapfrogs you further and further ahead in time, and never lets you come back. Forward and back makes more sense."

"It also explains why the cylinders came as a pair," Travis said. "Think about it. Who knows what this kind of machine was meant for, but we can imagine any number of things. It could be some military scouting tool. Use it to survey the aftermath of a war you haven't even fought yet. Hell, it could be farm equipment. Say there's some high-value crop that takes seven decades to mature. Sow the seeds, step through the iris and reap the rewards right away. But whatever the use, its makers had a reason to allow the delayed shutoff. That way you can take the cylinder with you when you go through the iris. Not hard to imagine why they'd want to. Leaving it behind, switched on, is a major vulnerability. Look at the precautions we had to take, setting it up so nothing could get at it from the other side. But here's the thing: taking it with you would be risky too. Extremely risky, in fact. Picture yourself putting this thing to casual use. Like it's a socket wrench or a screwdriver. You're using it all day long, going back and forth between two points in time, hauling food supplies or weapons or whatever. Can you think of the mistake you might make? It would be the easiest thing to do, and if you did it you'd be in a world of trouble."