David Walton - Supersymmetry

Oronzi drove past the front gate without turning. “So much for that plan,” Alex said. “I can’t believe I trusted you. Now get us out of here before somebody notices us.”

Oronzi didn’t answer. His eyes darted around, and she realized he was accessing his viewfeed. Without warning, the view through the windshield changed abruptly, and Alex was thrown violently forward against her seatbelt. A moment before, they had been moving slowly along the road outside the facility; in the next moment, they were parked in a secluded parking spot between two of the buildings.

Alex drew in her breath sharply, breathing hard. “What did you… ?” But she knew. It was the same trick the American marine in the demo had done with the grenade and the stone wall. She didn’t know it was possible to do with an entire car—while riding inside it—but apparently it was.

“Quickly, now.” Oronzi heaved himself out of the driver’s seat and out of the car. He beckoned to her. “Hurry, before we’re seen.”

She ran around the car to him. He grabbed her shoulder, flicked his eyes, and just as abruptly, they were inside, in a large room Alex had never seen before. Instead of a normal door, there was a thick metal slab on huge hinges, like a bank vault. The room had no windows. There were rows of computers and workspaces on one side of the room, and a large clear space with charts and graphics on the wall on the other. In the center, flashing colors like a Times Square advertisement, was a spectacle of light points and shifting beams, spinning gracefully around a vertical axis.

“This is your lab,” she said. “On the eighth floor.”

Oronzi nodded.

“Ryan!” said a shocked voice. A pretty Asian woman in a short black skirt and jacket strode toward them. Her hair was pinned up, but a strand had fallen loose around one ear. Alex recognized her from the demo as Nicole Wu, Dr. Oronzi’s chief lab assistant.

“What are you doing here?” Nicole asked. “Don’t you know everyone is looking for you?”

“That’s exactly why we’re here. So that no one will find us.”

Nicole’s eyes widened when she recognized Alex. “So you are together, just like everyone is saying. Ryan, what happened down there?”

“You were there,” he said gruffly.

“Yeah, I was there.” She pointed a finger at Alex. “I saw her shoot Secretary Falk.”

“And did you see how he didn’t have any eyes? How he was killing his own security agents?” Alex said. “Did you see the part where I saved the lives of everyone else there, yours included?”

Nicole waved a hand in dismissal. She looked at Oronzi. “You’d better get down there and tell your side of the story, if you don’t want to be a suspect. Right now, it looks like you’re harboring a criminal, maybe even conspiring with her to commit murder.”

“And what about me?” Alex asked.

“You can do what you like,” Nicole said. “Just leave Ryan out of it.”

“We need her, Nicole,” Oronzi said. “She knows about the intelligence. She’s seen it before.”

Nicole raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

“I’m going to go down there and be seen,” Oronzi said. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I’ll tell them I’ve just been up here in the lab, working. You need to keep her safe, Nicole.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell them all who you really are.”

Nicole glared. “You know that’s not in your best interest.”

“Nicole, it’s important. She’s not guilty, and we both know it. Now make sure she stays safe while I go put in an appearance.”

Nicole looked mutinous, but didn’t object. Alex was seriously regretting coming here. She should have gone to her uncle’s friend. She wouldn’t last an hour in this place.

A panel above the door buzzed and flashed red. “Too late,” Oronzi said. “Somebody’s here.” He turned to Alex. “Hold still,” he said. “Don’t move, don’t speak. Don’t even breathe.”

Alex opened her mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes silenced her. The bank vault door swung slowly open. Five men came into the room, all of them wearing dark suits.

“Dr. Oronzi,” one of the men said, a quiet menace in his voice. “We’ve been looking for you for some time.”

“I’m a busy man,” Oronzi said.

“I’d like to talk to you about that.”

“And you are?”

The man gave a thin smile. “Agent Clark, FBI.”

“This is my colleague, Dr. Wu,” Oronzi said, indicating Nicole.

“We’ve met,” Clark said.

To Alex’s astonishment, no one looked at her or seemed to notice her at all. She obeyed Oronzi’s instructions, standing as still as possible. Clark asked Oronzi to accompany him downstairs. Oronzi went out with him, leaving Alex alone with Nicole.

Nicole smirked at her. “Not as eye-catching as you thought, are you?”

“He made me invisible,” Alex breathed, hardly believing it. “He teleported me up eight stories, through solid walls, and then made me invisible.”

Nicole shrugged. “If you say so.”

“How many more tricks are you hiding up here?”

“You’re not cleared for that.”

“Don’t play games with me. I shot someone today, and that might not have happened if you weren’t keeping so many secrets. I think I’ve earned the right to a few answers.”

“You’ve put our whole operation in jeopardy, and now you’ve gotten Ryan tangled up in it,” Nicole said. “You haven’t earned the right to anything.”

“How long have you known about the varcolac? The intelligence, I mean?”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “That’s Ryan’s crazy theory. I never put much stock in it, and neither should you. Complex phenomena do not require malicious intelligent aliens to explain them. If you ask me, the best thing you can do is turn yourself in.”

“And if you ask me,” Alex said, “the best thing you can do is stop lying to yourself to protect your precious lab, or your career, or whatever it is you’re afraid of losing if you admit the truth to yourself. This creature is real, and it isn’t going to stop here. Your boss might be a bit crazy, but he’s right about this.”

As she spoke, Alex brought up her eyejack display. She queried the available local networks, and found only one. Of course—the lab was a Faraday cage, so no signals were getting in any more than they were getting out. It was an entirely isolated network, closed to the outside world. Which meant that the security from inside the lab was minimal—all the efforts had been expended toward keeping people out. The network followed the same interface that her team at Lockheed had designed, and her eyejack system connected to it without objection.

“I’m just helping you for Ryan’s sake,” Nicole said. “It doesn’t mean I have to listen to your little rants.”

“Little rants?” Alex said, pretending to be offended, though she was mostly paying attention to what she was doing. She still had the Higgs projector from the demo in her pocket. The lab’s network had the software that ran it, but it was a different version than she had. A later version. How was that possible? She initiated the software upgrade service. A spinning icon appeared in the upper right corner of her vision, indicating that the latest software from the lab’s server was being downloaded to her system.

“In fact,” Nicole said, “I’m not sure I’m up for conspiracy to commit murder. If Ryan’s not back here soon, I’m going to call the feds, and you can tell them it was the aliens that did it.”

The download completed. Alex flicked through the new icons that had appeared on her display. As familiar as she was with this interface, it was easy to identify the right one. The same glowing arrow with adjustable length and direction appeared in her vision, only this time it was annotated with a few numeric parameters and a drop-down list of locations. Alex chose “parking lot” and saw the numeric parameters change.