David Walton - Supersymmetry

“Are you a physicist?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “I work for Lockheed Martin, but I’m assigned to a project that runs in the NJSC’s High Energy Lab.”

Jean sniffed, an ambiguous expression that could have been grudging respect, but was probably disdain. “In that case, you already know more than I do. I’ve been out of the field for fifteen years. I spend my time washing laundry and scrubbing floors now.”

Alex leaned close to the table. “Are they treating you well? Where in the prison do they have you, right now?” She assumed their meeting would be monitored, but it seemed an innocent enough question.

Jean smirked, the first actual facial expression Alex had seen her make. “You didn’t come here just to ask questions. You came here to break me out.”

Alex jerked up. “What are you talking about?”

“If the creature is back, that means there’s a Higgs projector. You knew you might need to barter for my help. You mean to offer me my freedom.”

Alex was disconcerted by the woman’s perceptiveness. Surely there would be someone listening to their conversation? Or did they just record them for later review?

“So where is he?” Jean asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The real physicist. You didn’t create the projector.”

Alex was astonished. “How could you know that?”

“You’re too young and stupid to have invented it yourself. Bring him, and maybe we’ll talk.”

“Excuse me,” Alex said. “I’m not the one who’s in prison.”

Jean raised her hands mockingly. “Well then, get me out of here, if you can. What are you waiting for?”

Alex glanced at the door, which remained closed. Were they just letting her talk, to see if she would incriminate herself? Or was there truly no one listening? They could hardly imagine the technology she had available, so perhaps they were just biding their time.

The network that was feeding her the image of Jean was simple enough, just a standard web protocol. Alex could trace it, and get a location for Jean. She could teleport to her, and then all she would have to do was touch Jean’s arm and teleport away again.

Her presence—as Sandra—would be on all the surveillance tapes, and so would her disappearance. It would make Sandra a felon, and place her squarely in the conspiracy in the minds of law enforcement. It would be the end of her police career. But she wouldn’t have much of a police career if she died. It was the best option Alex had.

The door opened, and instead of the friendly warden, a tall, official-looking man came through, followed by four armed guards with pistols drawn. “Sandra Kelley?” the official said.

Alex sat alert, ready to teleport away at any moment. “That’s me.”

“We have been instructed to detain you for questioning. Please come with us quietly. The checkpoints you entered through are locked. There’s nowhere to go.”

Alex was surprised to feel a small smile form unbidden on her face. She hadn’t wanted to stain Sandra’s reputation; now she wouldn’t have to. “Actually, my name’s Alex,” she said. “Sandra had nothing to do with this.” She teleported. Jean’s room was identical to hers, so from her point-of-view, the five men disappeared, and Jean solidified into a real woman instead of a computer image. “Come on,” Alex said. “We’re getting out of here.” She flicked her eyes to choose the coordinates for the peak of Hawk Mountain, seized Jean’s arm, and teleported.

Only she didn’t. Nothing happened. She was still in the prison.

Jean laughed. “I told you. Stupid as dirt.”

Alex couldn’t understand it. “It worked the first time. Why won’t it work now?”

“You can’t get any signals out of here,” Jean said. “You think they want their inmates making calls on contraband cell phones? The whole place is shielded.”

“But the projector doesn’t work on—”

The door crashed open, and three guards rushed in. Two of them trained their weapons on her, while the third advanced.

“On any electromagnetic bandwidth?” Jean said. “Of course not. It’s extra-dimensional quantum tunneling on a large scale. You can’t stop that with a bit of copper shielding.”

The third guard turned Alex around and yanked one arm up painfully behind her.

“But,” Jean continued, “I’m willing to bet the software driving it assumes the presence of a network connection, or at least GPS, for accurate targeting,” Jean continued. “But of course, you didn’t write it. So you don’t know.”

Alex didn’t answer. She wasn’t worried about getting Jean out anymore. She just wanted to get away herself. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might not be able to teleport out. She cursed herself for not reviewing the code, or at least for not interrogating Ryan about its limitations. She had no doubt that, given an hour with the source code, she could have modified it to allow teleportation to known locations, even without external network connectivity. But it was too late for that now.

She could still teleport line-of-sight, though. And she still had other tricks up her sleeve.

Through the open door, she could see a corridor. She focused on the place she wanted to be, and the eyejack automatically measured the distance. She initiated the teleportation module, and in a moment she was there. She heard sounds of consternation and shock from the guards, but she didn’t dare pause to look. She initiated the invisibility module and disappeared.

At the end of the corridor, she saw a light and teleported toward it. This was not the way she had come in, so she had no idea what direction to move or how far she was from an exit. She found herself in a central room, from which a series of cells branched like the spokes of a wheel. The arrangement allowed a guard to see every inch of the cells from a single vantage point. The cells were full, two women to a room.

It was a dead end. She jumped back the way she had come. Which way was out? She didn’t know how thoroughly they could lock down the facility, or to what lengths they could go to capture her. Her main advantages at this point were that she couldn’t be seen and that she could move faster than the guards, but they would have procedures to completely lock down sections of the prison in case of escape attempts or riots. She had to get out fast, if she was going to get out at all.

A few more jumps, and she reached a guard station separating two sections. The guard sat behind a pane of glass, and controlled another gate of interlocking steel bars. She could see through to the other side, which meant the bars were no barrier. In an instant, she was through. A klaxon blared suddenly, hurting her ears. She wondered if the station had sensors that had detected her, or if someone had manually sounded the alarm from elsewhere in the prison.

She teleported again, halting when the corridor ended in solid metal doors topped with flashing red lights. She threw herself against them, but they wouldn’t open. Her heart hammered, and she felt cold, trapped. Of course, she could estimate the distance and jump to the other side of the doors, but she didn’t know what was there. If there was another set of doors, or a person, or just a stairway, she would kill herself by jumping into it.

Teleportation, however, was not her only trick. They couldn’t do this to her, not with the power at her disposal. She spotted a trashcan, a large metal one, against the wall. It would do. She backed away and teleported the trashcan into the center of the metal doors. The doors tore apart with an explosion of rending metal, and she jumped through to the other side.

A guard blocked her path, aiming a pistol at her and shouting for her to stand down. He could see her! She realized he must have an infrared sensor, possibly on his gun, probably synched to his eyejack lenses. He was certainly communicating with the other guards, so now they would all know how to see her, too.