Paul Melko: The Walls of the Universe

She glanced down at the gun next to her. Then she took it in her hands.

“Can I have this?” she said.

“I have another one,” John said. Corrundrum’s gun was in his other pocket. “Do you know how to shoot?”

“I’m a city girl,” she said. “All I can do is dial nine-one-one. But I’m willing to try it today.”

“Be careful, but if it isn’t one of us, then shoot,” John said. “And John Prime is in the building too.” He made sure Corrundrum’s gun was loaded.

“John Prime? You went back to get John Prime?”

“Yes. I needed help.” Grace’s face was pale. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry.” She knelt down to turn over the corpse of the second technician. She spat on his face.

John saw her ferocity. He knew that she was a competitor, that she could be angry and fierce. But not till then did he recognize the stamina that bolstered her, and it made him fear for any Visigoths they came across.

“Grace, I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

She stood and said, “Not as sorry as these fuckers are going to be.”

He helped her across the room, and while Grace rested against the wall John listened at the door that she had indicated. He heard nothing. There was no window to look through.

“Out of the way of the doorway,” he said, motioning to the left side. He turned the knob and flung it open. Nothing.

John slipped into the corridor. It went about ten meters before a right turn. Three doors lined the right wall.

“That one’s mine,” she said. Grace pointed to the middle cell. John tried the door on the left, but it was locked. He pounded on the door.

“Henry?”

Nothing.

He tried the one on the right, but there was no response there either.

“They’ve taken him away,” John said. “Let’s go.”

John led Grace down the hall. The right turn was into a short hallway ending in double doors. John listened, then kicked the doors open. Beyond was another lab.

Visgrath stood in the middle of it with Henry in front of him, a gun pointed at his temple. Henry’s lip was crusted with dry blood. His eye was black-and-blue. He looked tired, as if Visgrath was holding him upright. Prime, his hands cuffed behind him, lay at Visgrath’s feet.

“Nobody move,” Visgrath yelled. “I want the transfer machine,” he said simply. “If I don’t get it, this man dies. And then this other one dies. It’s your choice.”

The man was five meters away and the path between them was clear. He was dressed in a lab coat and dark trousers.

John said, “Calm down. I have the device here and I’m willing to trade.” John pointed the handgun away from him.

“I am exceedingly calm. Now put your gun down.”

John slowly lowered the gun to the ground. He saw the man visibly relax. The gun lowered a centimeter from Henry’s temple.

“You have chosen wisely. Now hand me the device.”

Grace took three strides and was face-to-face with him, her own gun muzzle touching his nose. John realized that the man had paid no attention to Grace, had not even regarded her being armed as a concern.

“Put the gun down,” the man said. “Or I shoot your lover.”

Grace smiled. “The choice is no longer mine. If you shoot Henry, I will shoot you. If you let him go, I will not shoot you. The choice is now yours.”

John picked his gun back up, unsure of what would happen. Grace had raised the stakes with her brave move.

“Grace?” Henry said weakly, but she ignored him.

“You’d risk your lover’s life?” the man said, but his face had paled.

“No, I’m not risking anyone’s life. You’re risking your own.” She pushed the muzzle against the man’s nose. “If you don’t lower the gun, you will die. It’s that simple.”

“And him with me.”

“No. I think that as this bullet passes through your brain, you’ll have no inclination to pull the trigger on your own gun. In fact, as this bullet cracks your nasal facial bone and shatters your ethmoid bone into a hundred razor-sharp shards that explode through your brain, into your frontal lobe, which controls your abstract thinking, aggression, and sexual behavior, into your medulla, which controls your heart, into your hypothalamus, which controls your breathing, in that fraction of a second while your brain is disintegrating I am betting that you will not contract your finger. I’m betting you will simply wet your crotch and shit your drawers, because your body will be dealing with more important matters. Your last thought as your personality implodes, as your occipital lobe erupts out the back of your head, will be ‘I’m a little teapot’ and ‘I want my mommy’ and nothing-not one blessed thought-will be about shooting your gun.” Her finger whitened on the trigger. “So, what do you choose to do?”

The man’s eyes were locked on hers, and John could see the sweat shining on his forehead.

Slowly he brought the gun away from Henry’s head.

“We have a draw.”

As Henry turned and backed away, Grace smiled coldly and said, “You have chosen poorly,” and fired into the man’s forehead.

“Grace!” John yelled, but it was too late. Visgrath’s face was pulped, a mess of red, as he tumbled, stumbled into a lab table and over it.

John’s heart hammered.

“Grace,” John said. She seemed focused on the corpse.

Henry gently spun her around and placed his handcuffed arms around her neck. John helped Prime to his feet.

“How are you guys doing?” John asked.

“I’ve been better,” Henry said. “I think that corpse has the keys.”

John rifled through Visgrath’s lab coat pockets and found a set of keys. He unlocked Henry’s cuffs, and then helped Prime.

John said, “We have to get out of here now.”

Prime handed Henry Visgrath’s handgun. Henry looked at it oddly, then put it in his pocket with a shrug.

“Are you all right?” John asked Henry. “Did they…?”

Henry looked away. “I’ll be fine. What’s the plan? I mean, there’s more to this plan than just rescue Henry and Grace, right?”

The ironic smile caused John to choke back a laugh. “We need to leave here,” he said simply.

“Obviously,” Grace said. “We can’t stay in the bad guy’s lair.”

“If we have to, we can leave this universe,” John said.

Grace looked at Prime, her eyes going wide. “John, you built a device! You had to or else you couldn’t have gone back for him.”

“I did.”

She hugged him. “I knew you could do it.”

“Come on, guys,” Prime said. “Let’s put some distance between us and this place.”

John picked a door out of the lab at random, and he kicked it open into an empty hallway. Slowly, they worked their way down it, checking the doors they passed, most of which were locked or led into small laboratories: dead ends. One opened into a greenhouse that had a door to the outside.

“Here.”

They ran through the rows of plants. John stopped and looked suddenly at the fruit-covered vines. “What fruit is this?”

He grabbed one off the vine. It was red at the top and blue at the bottom, fading between the two colors in the middle. It was about the diameter of an apple but had indentations around the outside, giving it a six-pointed star-like shape. John pocketed it and ran on.

The door from the greenhouse opened onto a larger garden. John said, “This way,” leading them to the northeast. He figured they’d circle around to the parking lot and try to steal a car.

“Ow!” Grace said, and he realized she had no shoes. Henry helped her, taking an arm to lead her over the ground.

To the west, about fifty meters away, was a loading dock where a tractor trailer sat. To the east, the building curved into the darkness.