Patrick Lee: Ghost Country

"You're wasting your time thinking about it," Finn said. "I'm not giving this to you. Not now that I've seen this place." The man took another step back. "I'm sorry," he repeated.

"So am I," Travis said, and pulled the trigger the rest of the way.

Nothing happened.

The MP7 didn't even click. It wasn't empty-Travis had loaded it himself and chambered the first round. When he applied the last two ounces to the trigger, the mechanism simply froze.

He squeezed harder. Nothing.

His eyes dropped from Finn and focused on the MP7's action. There was a stress ripple in the metal, where the weapon had hit the paver blocks earlier.

He looked back up at Finn.

The man knew. Even without a click, Travis's body language had said everything.

Finn advanced two steps, his eyes narrowing. The.38 trembled a little in his hand, but he held it tightly.

"Put it down," Finn said. "Then turn around and get on your knees."

Travis exhaled, the breath almost a laugh. "Why the hell would I do any of that? If you're gonna shoot me, just do it."

Finn made no move to come closer, but he took a breath and the gun went still in his hand.

"I hope you don't feel it," Finn said, and Travis saw his forearm tense for the pull.

Then Finn's head came apart, the sides of his skull blowing out like a shaped charge had gone off inside it. A split-second later the flat crack of a high-powered rifle broke across the plaza, and Travis flinched against his will and turned toward the sound.

Thirty yards away, a figure dressed in white rose from concealment behind another planter box.

In his peripheral vision, Travis saw Finn crumple to the ground. The.38 hit with a soft clink and didn't fire. The cylinder rolled out of his other hand and settled gently onto his abdomen, as if his body's last impulse had been to protect the thing.

Travis dropped the MP7 and raised his arms at his sides, and kept his eyes on the shooter.

The newcomer held the rifle at ready without aiming it, and for a moment simply stared, assessing the situation. Travis could make out no detail of the face: the body was covered in white from top to bottom, including a loose hood with some kind of mesh screen at the front. The outfit seemed designed to reflect away sunlight while letting in the breeze. Probably a necessity in this place.

The figure stared a moment longer, then slung the rifle on a strap and stepped out from behind the concrete box. It strode across the plaza toward Travis, its movements measured, unhurried.

Travis could only stare. He felt too numb to even be afraid.

The figure came on, twenty yards away now. Ten. It stopped just out of handshake range and stared at him. Through the glare of light off the mesh fabric, Travis could just get a hint of the face. But he'd stared at it for only a second when something else drew his gaze: a bright red disc on the back of the newcomer's hand, just visible past the edge of the sleeve. The disc was the size of a quarter, and stuck to the skin somehow. Travis looked closer and saw what he already knew would be there: near-microscopic tendrils, binding the disc to the hand.

He looked at the face again, and recognized it through the mesh half a second before the figure lifted the hood.

The eyes were the same as he'd always known them-huge, brown, intense-but everything else had aged a bit, to somewhere between fifty and sixty years.

"Travis," the newcomer said.

Travis swallowed and found his voice. "Paige."

For the next five seconds they said nothing. Travis heard the sound of waves breaking, the soft crashes echoing through the high-rise canyons.

Then a voice crackled over a radio, somewhere on Paige's body, the words inaudible. She reached to her waist and drew the device from a fold of her cloak.

She keyed the talk button. "I missed that. Say again."

A man spoke, his tone all but lost to static. "I asked what you're shooting at."

"I'll explain when I see you," Paige said. "I'm safe."

"Did you find out what the smoke came from?"

"Not exactly. Let me get back to you."

"Be careful."

The man clicked off, and Paige stowed the radio. By then, Travis realized he'd recognized the voice, even without discerning its tone. Its rhythm and cadence had been more than familiar. Much more. He felt his balance falter.

Paige stepped closer to him. She raised a hand and touched his face, gently. Her thumb traced his cheekbone, feeling the texture of his skin.

He saw the obvious confusion in her eyes, mixed with some fragile understanding, and thought he knew what it was. Paige-the other Paige-had described it to him last night in Garner's living room. Getting it without getting it. The Breach had taught her to do that.

Still, there had to be a thousand questions. He thought he saw those in her eyes too, along with a reflection of the thousand he wanted to ask.

How the hell had she gotten here? Not on board one of the flights from Yuma. No way would she have taken part in any of that, ELF effects or not. She couldn't have left all those people behind to die.

She must've come here later on, long after Bleak December had gone. If anyone in the world could've survived Umbra without going to Yuma, it would've been Tangent personnel at Border Town, with all their exotic resources. And no doubt Bethany had been right: Paige had found him before the world had ended. Had found him and kept him alive.

Those thoughts echoed in his head for maybe three seconds, and then they were gone-drowned out by the only thing he could afford to think about now.

The cylinder.

The line of blue lights.

And time-draining away like blood from a nicked artery.

Every minute he stayed here might be the one that doomed Paige and Bethany in New York.

The thumb-shaking now-retraced its path across his cheek. He raised his hand and closed it softly around hers.

"I have to leave," he said. "I have to leave right now. I'm sorry I can't explain any of this."

She shook her head, dismissing the apology, and took her hand away from his face. "Go."

He held her gaze another second, in spite of his urgency, then turned and crossed to Finn's body in two running steps. He lifted the cylinder and aimed it to put the iris just shy of the fallen shell casings where he'd come through before-where the smoke from the burning plane would hide his arrival in the present.

He put his finger to the on button.

"Wait."

He turned. Paige was just behind him. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"I can't wait," he said. "I might not have enough time as it is-"

"There's something you need to hear. It's more important than whatever you're on your way to do."

"If I'm thirty seconds late, people are going to die. One of them is you."

If that news affected her, she didn't show it.

"That's a necessary risk," she said. "Listen to me. It'll take more than thirty seconds, but I'll go as fast as I can."

Her eyes were as serious as he'd ever seen them. Scared, too.

He withdrew his finger from the button, and faced her.

"I know about the message I sent back through the Breach," Paige said. "And I know you created and sent the Whisper."

Travis felt his grip on the cylinder weaken. He pushed it against his side.

"You told me everything," Paige said. "The other you told me. The one I just talked to on the radio. You explained it the same day we sealed the Breach."

Travis stared. He'd never imagined a scenario like this, in which he could learn exactly how Paige would react to the news he'd been keeping from her.

She seemed to read the question in his eyes.

"I took it better than you expected," she said.