Chris Mooney - World Without End

The phone was ringing.

Conway opened his eyes. The bedroom was dark. The bright neon number on the clock read 1:30 A.M. He had fallen asleep. He propped himself up on one elbow, reached over to the nightstand, and grabbed the cordless phone. The caller had already hung up.

His head felt groggy, his mouth pasty with a cottony film. He sucked the stale, bad taste out of his mouth and swallowed. He heard the sound of running water. The shower. Right, he had left the shower running in the guest bathroom. He swung his feet over the side of the bed. Drain his kidneys, get some water and some aspirin, and then head back to bed.

Downstairs, a glass shattered against the floor.

Someone was inside the condo.

And then he remembered: You left the screen door open.

Move, it's going down.

The Clock was in the guest bathroom. Wide awake and wearing only his boxers, Conway moved down the hall in his bare feet. Inside the bathroom now, he reached inside the backpack, removed the Clock and headed toward the stairs. He stopped when he reached the landing. Soft candlelight glowed across the foyer tiles. The front door, he noticed, was shut.

Conway moved down the stairs as alert as the lingering alcohol would allow. He stepped onto the cold tile, turned the corner, and looked down the gunsight into the kitchen.

The beer bottle that he had left on the corner of the counter near the opened patio door was now shattered on the floor. Someone had knocked it over. That same person had also gone inside one of the kitchen cabinets, removed the small red and gold candles and had arranged them in a circle around the table. The wicks were lit, the walls dancing with flames. Lying in the center of the table was a small box wrapped in red gift paper printed with the words "Get Well Soon."

Walking around the broken glass, Conway shut the sliding door, locked it, and then began the tedious process of checking all the rooms. The intruder was gone. Conway walked back into the kitchen and picked up the package. It felt light, almost weightless.

A bomb? No. Too light. Besides, the intruder wouldn't go through all this elaborate preparation to hand deliver a bomb. Still holding the gun, he tore the paper off and then lifted up the box top.

A shiny compact disc lay on top of white tissue paper. Then he noticed what looked like dried flecks of blood on the tissue paper. A closer inspection revealed another item hidden behind the CD.

A cold sweat broke along his hairline.

The phone rang again.

The package still in his hands, he reached for the cordless phone mounted against the wall. The receiver felt loose and wet in his palm when he brought it up against his ear.

"Hello, Stephen."

It was like staring at a cemetery plot and hearing the voice of the dead screaming out to you. It took a moment to get the word out.

"Pasha."

"Come to Delburn," Pasha Romanov said.

"And make sure you're alone. You're being watched."

The elevator door opened and Conway stepped into the quiet, dim lobby.

The glass door was open, held in place by a rubber wedge. The world beyond the glass door was dark, lit only by the dim sources of light bleeding from downtown Austin.

Delburn Systems was one long rectangular cube of open space crowded with desks stacked with phones and computer equipment. Large, empty shipping boxes littered the floor; days old empty Starbucks coffee cups, doughnut and pizza boxes and fast-food containers were piled inside overflowing trash cans. The floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the perimeter of the building looked out at the black night sky without stars. The downtown nightlife of the campus was about to come to a close at the ungodly hour of 2:00 A.M.

Conway walked across the carpet with the box held firmly in his right hand and searched for Pasha. The big room buzzed with the kind of uneasy silence he associated with funeral homes. The cool air was stale and filled with disuse, as if the place had been closed for days.

And then a familiar odor behind it: wet copper. Blood. He stopped walking.

Nobody answered the phone because nobody was here, Conway thought, and his mind tumbled back to his gruesome discovery inside the skydiving school's attic.

He didn't like stumbling through the darkness. The Clock was wedged in his back waistband. He stopped walking and reached across the desk, about to turn on one of the banker's lamps.

"Leave the lights off," Pasha said.

Conway turned and saw Pasha emerge from the conference room. She stepped in to the soft, translucent light coming from the outside window. The skin above her left eyebrow was stitched in several places, and her forehead was marred with crusted scrape marks. A bandage covered most of her left cheek, and her eyes were puffy, the skin bruised yellow and purple. The dark blue suit she wore was sleek and angular.

For a brief moment, he forgot what was in the box, what had happened inside the lab and whatever went down here. All he could do was stare, breathless. Seeing her like this, in the flesh alive it felt like a dream. Like a gift from God.

"Stephen." Her voice was dry and hoarse. Weak.

Conway placed the box on top of the desk, walked over to her, and gently placed his hands on her shoulders, about to bring her close to him when he saw her wince. It was then that he noticed that her blond hair was tied behind her head, exposing the disfigured ear something she went to great lengths to hide, even from him.

Pasha caught him looking.

"It happened when I was fifteen. When I was living with my father," she said.

"My mother died giving birth to me."

Sharing was very unlike Pasha. Conway moved away from her, sat on the edge of the desk and waited.

"We were living in Donetsk," Pasha said. She placed her hands behind her back and then leaned her back against the wall, only a couple of feet away from him.

"My father owned a very successful jewelry store. We lived well not by American standards, mind you. I'm saying we always had fresh fruit and fresh meat. I didn't know my father was dealing in black-market items.

It was the only way to survive. I didn't know that then. Now, in Russia, everyone deals with the black market. But you already know such things, having studied the language and country while you were in college."

Conway found himself listening intently, not sure where she was going with this, not wanting to interrupt the flow of this rare, private moment.

"A very powerful head of the Mafiya, a vor z zakonye, came to my father's shop and told him to sell the business for some cheap sum of money. My father refused. The vor sent two of his henchmen to the house. A fat, smelly animal named Misha raped me on the kitchen table while my father sat in a chair with a gun pointed at his head.

My father never once tried to move, never cried out for it to stop."

Her voice was devoid of any feeling, as if this story was about some fictional character.

"I didn't blame him for it, or when he looked at me, disgusted. I actually forgave him. That may sound bizarre to you, but this man was my world. I depended on him for my survival."

Pasha's eyes were impossible to read.

"My father still refused to sell the business. Pride," she said, shaking her head.

"The next time Misha came, not only did he fuck me again in front of my father, when he was done, he placed my head on the wood stove and burnt my ear off." The final words came out dry, matter-of-factly.

"That's when I saw it in my father's eyes, that sense of relief," Pasha said.

"He was secretly hoping that they would kill me. I always sensed he blamed me for my mother's death, that he was angry that he had to support me. When I told him I was pregnant, he threw me out of the house. Standing out in the cold, I realized that I was totally alone, that I would have to take care of myself. It is what you would call a defining moment."