Patrick Lee - The Breach

"Don't shoot anything I'm not already shooting at," she said, then added, "unless it shoots at you first."

The guy shrugged, not even trying to hide his disorientation.

She found herself staring at him a second longer. He wasn't bad-looking. Then she turned and crossed to the door, and with a steadying breath, pulled it open and stepped through.

People were running in the corridor, all of them Tangent personnel. They were confused, partly by the explosions but more so, Paige thought, by their own fractured memory. Only a few-those who belonged to the detachments-carried weapons, but even these were looking to others for direction, and finding no help.

If her guess-her guess with gaps-was right, every one of them had just skipped over three days of memory in an instant. Three days. The interval of the Jump Cut. How the hell had it affected the entire building?

And how had Pilgrim made that happen? Obviously, the raid was coming from his people. Pilgrim himself was probably with them.

The Jump Cut's effect should only last a few minutes. That was the upside. The downside: Pilgrim would know that. Would plan for that. Would seek to take control of Border Town in those few minutes.

Down the hall, smoke poured from the seams of the elevator doors. At that moment another explosion, from somewhere in the uppermost levels, set the walls vibrating. People nearby flinched, maybe expecting the ceiling to come down. Maybe it would. Paige noticed a few of them staring at her as if she were a ghost. On some level she understood the logic of that, but it was one more thing she couldn't afford to dwell on right now.

What would Pilgrim have to do, to get control right away?

That was easy. The nerve center of the building, Security Control, was right below Defense Control. With the Whisper-there was no question he had it with him-he would know the codes for every system in the building. Systems that could be used against them easily.

She turned to the nearest group of armed operators, meaning to call them to her and lead them to the stairs. They could reach Security Control in about sixty seconds. But before she could say anything, jets of white gas erupted from the ventilation system overhead. For a moment she thought the fire suppression system had kicked on and begun pumping halon through the vents. Then she got her first smell of it.

Not halon.

Of course. Of course Pilgrim would trigger this system. So fucking simple a move.

She spun, thinking to shepherd the others into her residence, already aware that it was a dead option: the vents in there were pumping the stuff out too. She met their eyes, one by one-some of them were already succumbing to the gas-and settled on the stranger's gaze for some reason. Confused as he must be, he had a tight leash on his fear. She wondered again who he was.

Then her knees gave, and just as her vision failed, she saw him step forward to catch her, and then everything was gone.

Travis woke to find his memory restored, the three lost days reinserted into his past. He woke to Paige looking like she'd been crying about something, and after a moment he thought he knew what it was. He woke to the coughing of five dozen other survivors of the attack, bound alongside the two of them in a large conference room.

And he woke to Aaron Pilgrim standing over him. Though Tangent had never shown him a photo of the man, he recognized him. He could not for the life of him say why.

Four men with rifles were watching the captives. Pilgrim got their attention with a look, then indicated Travis and Paige.

"These two."

Two of the gunmen slung their weapons and dragged Paige, then Travis, ten feet out from the wall along which the rest were arrayed.

Pilgrim pointed out eight others; they included Crawford as well as Dr. Fagan, the red-haired woman who'd sought to establish communication with the far side of the Breach. Pilgrim's men dragged the eight of them out onto the open floor, into a group with Travis and Paige.

Pilgrim considered the ten of them for a moment, nodded to himself, and said, "Kill the rest."

"No!" Paige screamed.

The shooting started before her scream had reverberated off the walls. Pilgrim's men went down the line in rapid succession, putting a single shot through the forehead of each bound victim. Travis felt Paige's body spasm against him with each rifle crack, each pleading cry from the condemned, each hopeless effort to squirm left or right in the last second. When it ended, she was shaking beside him with quiet sobs. Bound, Travis could offer no consolation but to lean closer to her. She responded, pressing against his shoulder as she cried.

Over her head, Travis saw a steel box sitting on the conference table, a cube about ten inches in each dimension. It was latched, and had a handle bolted to the top. A miniature of the giant version aboard Box Kite. This one was closed, and from the seam that ran around its midsection, a sheet of blue light projected outward, like the ring plane of some cube-shaped planet.

Pilgrim turned to face the chosen survivors. His eyes found Travis and stayed on him.

"You're a fucking puppet for that thing," Travis said.

"It may call the plays," Pilgrim said. "But it's my game."

Travis studied his expression when he said it. There was no bluff in his eyes. The man really believed what he'd just said. Believed the Whisper was serving his interests, and not the other way around.

"But who are you to talk about puppets?" Pilgrim said. By his tone, he seemed to think Travis should understand that statement in some deeper way. Then he smiled. "Right, right. You wouldn't remember meeting me, would you?"

Travis only stared. If that was a joke, he didn't get it. Wasn't sure he cared to, either.

"Whatever," Pilgrim said. "You're supposed to be here, so I guess everything's right on track. Good enough for me."

Pilgrim's cell rang. He answered. In the stretched silence of the room, Travis could make out the voice on the other end clearly.

"Everything we want is shut behind the blast doors," the caller said. "The locking computers are smashed. Can't override the codes."

"I know," Pilgrim said.

"Gonna take at least an hour to drill through those heavy doors into the Primary Lab."

"An hour and fifteen," Pilgrim said, not guessing. His eyes went calmly to the Whisper's box on the table. "Just get them working on it. Are the techs started on getting the defenses back up?"

"They're on it. Lotta problems. Blast took out a bunch of critical shit. They're re-threading the array by hand, so, half an hour, give or take."

Pilgrim ended the call and put the phone away.

"Good enough," he said again. He nodded to two of his four men and said, "Stay and watch them." Then he strode from the room without even a glance at the executed bodies. The other two gunmen followed close behind him. One, a guy built like a bouncer, six-three and probably three hundred pounds, hefted the Whisper's box and carried it along. Paige grew silent. Just breathing shallowly now, but no longer crying.

It'd been only a minute since Pilgrim had left. The bodies were still bleeding. Paige's backpack rested against one of the conference table's legs, where someone had thrown it. They hadn't opened it. Hadn't cared. It occurred to Travis that the Doubler was still inside it. So was the Medic-not that it mattered. The bodies along the wall were far beyond that entity's capacity to help.

Still, staring at the backpack, he saw a move he could make, if the opportunity came.

Travis watched the two guards without looking directly at them. They were overconfident. Not taking their job seriously. Ten prisoners, bound in a cluster in the middle of a wide-open floor. These men weren't even weighing the possibility of a captive doing anything stupid.