David Walton - Superposition

I heard the voice in my head again: Turn off all the power.

Was my double actually communicating with me directly? The power to what? I thought.

To the whole collider , came the reply. All of it. Hurry.

I felt a sudden rush of panic, and then I could see everything my double was seeing as if I were there. I saw my family and Marek and the concrete sub-basement and the crisscrossing wires. Then I saw the reason for my double’s panic: the varcolac had appeared next to Claire.

She screamed in utter panic and scrambled backward away from it. My double shouted and waved his hands and cursed at the thing, and I shouted and waved and cursed along with him. The varcolac lifted her with one hand and held her over the wires, where she flailed and screamed and smoked in the jagged lightning arcs.

The vision disappeared. Nick was shaking me. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

I blinked and shook my head. “I have to go,” I said. “Claire’s in trouble.”

“I don’t think so,” Peyton said. “I think you’re innocent in all this, but I’m still going to have to take you in.”

“I understand,” I said. “But I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

I flicked my eyes, executing the Teleport subroutine from Jean’s projector, and disappeared.

In theory, shutting down the power to the NJSC wouldn’t be all that difficult. There was an elaborate safety code that included the means to cut off power to any local region, or to the entire accelerator at once. An electrical fire in the wrong place could have devastating consequences. There were radioactive materials on site, flammables, and coolants that, if they outgassed, could kill anyone who didn’t get out in time. There were blast doors and corridors designed intentionally as labyrinths to put as many walls as possible between people and potential accidents.

I materialized in the accelerator tunnel at a mile marker, right in front of a green-painted call station. I lifted the phone and punched the red button intended for emergencies. It was answered immediately by a professional-sounding female voice. “Fire in the tunnels!” I shouted, trying to sound out of breath. “It’s spreading fast. Shut down the particle beams; shut down everything. This is a full-site shutdown emergency. Repeat, a full-site shutdown.”

The voice on the other end acknowledged me, her voice raised in intensity but still calm. “I have you at mile marker twenty,” she said. “We see no fire alarm indicators; are you certain?”

“The smoke is filling up the tunnel pretty fast here,” I shouted. “I have to go. We’re going to need some EMTs down here.”

“How many people are with you?” I could hear the frown in her voice; she probably knew there shouldn’t be any people in that part of the line.

“Just me and Frank,” I said. “He’s hurt pretty bad. Shut it down, will you? Follow the protocol!”

The safety rules didn’t give her a choice. Anyone on site had the authority to call for a shutdown, and they couldn’t decide at the control center to ignore it. It wasn’t something that had ever been abused in the past.

“Hang tight,” she said. “Power shutdown is in effect. Help is on its way.”

The lights went out. One moment, the varcolac was holding Claire over the wires; the next, the room was plunged into complete darkness. Jacob had done it!

“Run!” I shouted. I didn’t know if the varcolac was still there, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out. I raced toward where I thought Claire had been and nearly tripped over her where she lay, slumped on the floor. I threw her over my shoulder and groped blindly toward the exit, hoping that everyone else was headed the same way. A second later, an arc of electricity stabbed through the darkness into my body, and once again I was thrown back onto the floor.

The lights came back on, more feebly this time, but enough to see that no one had made it out.

“It must control the backup generators,” Marek said. He, too, was lying on the floor, and I assumed he’d found out that our electric cages were operational again in much the same way I had. I sat up and cradled Claire in my arms.

The varcolac cocked its head, sniffed the air, and then vanished. I closed my eyes and could see where the other Jacob was in the tunnel.

Get out of there , I thought. I think it’s coming for you.

Claire moaned and opened her eyes. I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. I could see places where her skin was burned in lightning fork patterns.

Alex was crying softly. “This is all my fault,” she said.

“No,” Elena said. “No, it’s not.”

“I ran,” Alex said. “At the house. I was a coward; I just ran away and left you and Claire and Sean to die. If I’d stayed, if I’d fought…”

“If you’d stayed, you would have been killed with the rest,” I said. “You couldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t have done anything if I’d been there, either.” The words prompted a pang in my own conscience, however. If I had been there with my family instead of off on a wild goose chase to find Brian, what might have been different?

“I could have warned them. Maybe they could have gotten away, too,” Alex said.

“Look around you. They’re here. They’re alive.” At least for the moment, I didn’t say.

“I don’t want to be a coward,” Alex said.

“You found Lily Lin. You found the viewfeed that proved that Mom and Claire and Sean and Alessandra were still alive,” I said.

“That was skill with a network, not courage,” Alex said. “Next time, I don’t want to be the one who runs away.”

“Listen, if you get a chance, you run,” I said. “Don’t sacrifice yourself out of some stupid idea of heroism. You’re no good to anyone dead.”

I wanted to say more, but I was interrupted by the reappearance of the varcolac. In one of its hands, held as easily as if he weighed nothing, was Jacob, limp and unconscious. In its other hand was the only remaining Higgs projector.

It dropped Jacob on the floor. The projector—the last copy of it available on Earth, as far as I knew—flared with light and disintegrated. The varcolac stepped across the wires without effect and stopped in Sean’s square. Sean looked up at it in silent horror.

Dread gripped my throat. Why was it doing this? Was it malicious or just curious? Did it know it was hurting them? Did it care? Sean was fragile; he always had been. I didn’t know if he could withstand a prolonged electric shock. If I couldn’t stop this now, there was a very good chance that Sean would die.

The varcolac grabbed him by the collar, ignoring his struggles, and rotated like a steel crane toward the wires. The lightning arced into Sean’s body, and he screamed and danced and jerked.

I stood paralyzed, overcome with terror and panic. Claire and Alessandra were crying; Elena was shouting Sean’s name. Marek had his hands balled in fists, as helpless as I was. Alex was yanking again on the drain cover in her square.

There was no time for cleverness, no way to climb up or around, no way to distract the varcolac from its task. I had heard that a dog could ram its way through an invisible fence if it was determined enough. I knew it was a bad analogy—a dog’s electric fence was intended to keep him out by small shocks of pain, not throw him back by sheer voltage. Even so, it was the only chance I had. If I killed myself trying, we could hardly be any worse off.

Starting from the far side of my square, I ran at the fence, head down, barreling forward with all the speed and strength I could muster. I shouted an animal cry of determination and rage and plowed into the barrier with every intention of running straight through it and tackling Sean away from the wires and the varcolac.