David Walton - Superposition

They took us five at a time, three guards pushing us in the right direction, while a fourth checked our names off a clipboard. One by one, we were unshackled, led into a tiny, one-person cell barely larger than a bathroom stall, and locked in. The guard with the clipboard yanked on each to make sure it was secure.

Once I was locked into my cell, I waited until several more groups of five had come and gone, to make sure I had the rhythm down.

Elena .

I blinked, suddenly distracted, certain I had seen her. Was I going mad? There was no one here, just me and, outside my cell, the guards and the other prisoners. The sensation had been strong, not so much a visual cue, as if I had actually seen her in the flesh, but a mental one, as if I knew I had seen her. I shook it off. I couldn’t be distracted by such things right now. When the guards left the next time to get another group of prisoners, I popped the lock on my cell, slipped through, walked out the back of the modular prison… and nearly collided with a guard.

They had placed one of the guards on the back door. I liked the man, too; his name was Jerry, and he had a steady, calming manner with the prisoners instead of keeping control with curses and insults. I didn’t have time to do anything with the Higgs projector, so I took care of the problem the old-fashioned way. In the half-second of surprise before he could reach for his gun, I punched Jerry in the face as hard as I could. He dropped without a sound. I took his gun from his holster and kept running.

I wondered how long it would take them to notice. If not for Jerry, they probably wouldn’t have detected my absence until they had all the other prisoners secured, and possibly not even then. Hopefully, no one would try to call Jerry soon. I still had a lot of other problems—my orange prison jumpsuit, for one—but for the moment, I was free.

I broke into a run, since no one seeing me walking would mistake me for anything but a prisoner anyway. I was nearly off the prison grounds when the electric shock knocked me off my feet.

It came straight out of nowhere. As my head cleared, I saw my daughter Alessandra crying out in pain, and then just as quickly the vision was gone. I thought I had run afoul of some new prison security measure, but no prison guards came running. They were still focused on the prisoner transfer, and seemed unaware—so far—of my escape.

I got up again, wary now, but no new shock came. I was outside the prison walls, but not off the grounds. A razor-wire fence circled the prison and the visitor parking lots, with a vehicle check center. There was a maintenance pickup truck in sight that I could conceivably steal, but I didn’t know how to hotwire a vehicle, and even assuming I could find some clothes to replace my jumpsuit, I didn’t know the protocol at the gate. That meant I had to go over the fence.

It wasn’t electrified, and I reached the top easily. It was a barrier meant more for keeping the public out than keeping prisoners in. I was in the shadow of a large maple tree, mostly blocked from sight from the prison itself, but I still had to hurry. I didn’t know how much time I had before my absence was discovered.

I had often looked at the tops of such fences and wondered how hard it really was to avoid the sharp parts. Now I found out. This was the kind with large loops of steel, cut to create many sharp points, rather than twisted wire. I found it was a lot more difficult than it looked, and by the time I made my way down the other side, my arms were bleeding from a dozen places, I had several cuts on my legs, and there was one deep gash along my ribs.

The cuts burned, and I was starting to wonder if this had been a good idea. I didn’t think I was bleeding enough to worry about, but I had certainly left some blood on the fence, which meant they would know exactly which way I’d gone once they realized I was missing. I had to get a vehicle, and I had to get some clothes, and I had to do it fast.

As I ran down the hill leading away from the prison, I heard the sirens begin to blare.

I didn’t know if she was real; I didn’t know if she was my Elena or some other version; I didn’t know if this were some quantum heaven or hell where we were already dead, but it didn’t matter. I had spent so long missing her, wishing for this moment, and fearing it would never come. I had imagined it a hundred times, how we would run together and collide in an embrace. I jumped to my feet and ran toward her.

I made it about two steps before I remembered how the wires in the bunker had become electrified when the power was on and we saw the varcolac for the first time. I stopped, windmilling my arms, as the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

“You can’t cross the wires,” a voice said from behind me. “They’re electrified.”

I turned to see Jean, in her own space, only she was awake and interacting with the Higgs projector in her lap.

“Are they all asleep?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Jean said, not looking up from what she was doing. “I just brought you out of it, and I’m working on the others. He has each of you in a kind of bubble where time stops, or at least slows way, way down.”

“I was like that, too?”

“Yes. As I said, I brought you out of it. I’ll have the others out soon.”

I looked around in astonishment. “It’s as if the varcolac is putting us on ice for later experimentation.” I remembered how the varcolac had assimilated Brian after killing him, incorporating his knowledge into its own. “Or for something worse,” I added.

Marek stirred and opened his eyes. I warned him about the wires and filled him in on where we were. The others woke one by one, and I told them the same thing. I greeted Elena, Claire, and Sean with tears in my eyes.

“You’re alive!” I said. “I can hardly believe it. I’ve been so worried for you.”

“Where are we?” Elena asked. “Do you know what this place is?” I could see she was rattled, but she kept her voice steady.

“I think we’re in some part of the accelerator’s electrical backbone, where the electrical system connects with the grid,” I said. “It’s way out along the circle, miles away from the Feynman center.”

“How long have we been here?”

“It’s March,” I said. “You’ve been down here for four months.”

Elena got to her feet, angry, astonished. “What are you talking about?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.

“I remember walking toward Brian’s office to find you. We asked a girl from the front desk, and she was leading us to the right spot. Halfway there, this man arrived. He just appeared out of nowhere.”

“He’s not a man, really. It’s hard to explain,” I said.

“And you’re saying it’s been months? We’ve just been asleep down here all that time?”

“Not exactly.” Jean spoke up for the first time. “You were in a kind of slow time bubble. You weren’t asleep; you’ve barely aged at all.”

“I was falsely accused of murdering Brian,” I said. “There was a trial. We’ve been looking for you all this time.”

Silence. It was already too much information, and I’d only begun to scratch the surface. Claire and Alessandra and Sean were still sitting on the floor, looking stunned. Elena’s eyes darted from place to place.

“Are we trapped?” she asked.

“We’re prisoners of that man who kidnapped you,” I said. I looked from one frightened face to another, seeing their panic rise. I wasn’t doing this right. I was scaring them instead of reassuring them. I took a deep breath and stood up.

For the moment, convincing them that several months had passed wasn’t important. In fact, considering the alternative—spending several months awake in a varcolac prison—the fact that they had somehow lost the time seemed like a blessing.