I don’t have a plan, just abject panic, so I charge at Lionel, but I don’t get near him. He makes another gesture in the air and suddenly I’m pressed against the cold concrete floor. I can’t move. I can barely breathe.
“Localized gravity field,” Lionel says. “Similar to the system in my leg braces. I walk in three-quarters Earth gravity. What you’re feeling is quadruple Earth gravity. Don’t bother trying to move. At these gravitational levels, blood won’t flow properly to your muscles and brain. Even if you get some leverage, your ligaments can’t handle it. Your limbs will shear right off and that gets very messy.”
I try to talk but my tongue is a dumbbell in my mouth. All I manage is to drool.
The floating screen repositions itself into my field of view, down at floor level. Two more screens appear, also showing greenish shots of bedrooms, one of my parents asleep together, the other of Greta asleep alone. The cameras sit on stationary objects, three masked and goggled women next to each bed, two holding axes, one holding a canister, just like at Penny’s.
The intruder with the canister in Greta’s room turns the spigot and some sort of gas leaks out. I can tell because the cloud of molecules causes distortion in the night vision, so it sparkles like a pixie sprinkling magic dust on a sleeping child. Except these pixies wear gimp masks and carry lumberjack axes. The same thing happens in my parents’ room, glittery gas floating over their bed.
“It’s a tranquilizing agent,” Lionel says. “No cognitive damage at these doses but they won’t wake up until they’re here in Hong Kong.”
But something’s not going according to plan in Penny’s bedroom. The gas canister isn’t operating properly and the woman struggles to crank open the spigot. There’s no audio with the image, so I can’t hear what it is that wakes Penny.
The three intruders look at her in unison. Judging by her open mouth, it’s because she’s screaming. I feel a surge of pride as Penny lunges into action like a goddamn champion. She’s up and out of bed, grabs a lamp, and launches it at the intruders. But the lamp is plugged into the wall, so it rebounds back without hitting anyone. They flinch, though, and that gives Penny a second to hurl herself at the wall, her shoulder smacking into the light switch. If that was her actual plan and not dumb luck, it’s a good one because they’re wearing night-vision goggles and the abrupt burst of light blinds them. The greenish image tweaks into full color as Penny stares wide-eyed at the three crazily masked figures in her bedroom.
She makes the shocking, ballsy decision not to run, which I assure you is what I would do in this situation. Instead, she yanks the heavy-framed antique mirror off the wall and smashes it across the head of the closest axe-woman. She goes down in a spray of jagged silver as the other two pull off their goggles. The one with the canister fumbles with the spigot, trying to stick to the plan. The other axe-woman is between Penny and the door, but she’s caught behind the one Penny hit, who flails around with broken shards lacerating her skin.
The second axe-woman must assume Penny’s going to go for the door, so she responds slowly when instead Penny dives for the bedside table. She swings her axe. Penny ducks and the axe blade pierces the wall, snagging in the drywall, which is I guess why people generally don’t fight with axes.
While the axe-woman tries to yank her axe from the wall, Penny rears back and punches her in the stomach as hard as she can. The woman doubles over, retching as she throws up. She struggles to pull off the mask so she doesn’t choke on her own vomit.
The first axe-woman sheds the mirror frame, her skin raked bloody, and comes at Penny with her axe.
But Penny’s already pulled a pistol out of the bedside table drawer.
I’ve been in that drawer many times, fumbling around for condoms and once or twice borrowing a pair of her too-small socks, so I know there was never a gun in there. I guess until she met John.
Penny pulls the trigger. It’s hard to miss at such close range and the first axe-woman’s shoulder erupts in a flood of gore. She pitches forward, smacks her head on the sharp corner of the bedside table, and collapses at Penny’s feet, deadweight.
Even without sound, watching on the floating screen, it’s clear the gunfire changes the tenor of the room. Penny fires at the axe-woman who puked into her mask and her kneecap just kind of explodes. She drops like a marionette with its strings cut.
The third woman stops screwing with the spigot and throws the heavy metal tube at Penny. She blocks it with her arm, but it clearly hurts like hell and, more devastating, it distracts her for the moment it takes the woman to lunge across the room and punch Penny in the face.
Dazed, Penny tries to aim the pistol, but the third woman twists her arm until she drops the gun. She slams Penny to the floor, knee jammed into her back to pin her down.
I can’t imagine anything worse than watching the woman I love soundlessly scream for help that I can’t give her because even if I could move I’m 7,800 miles away. But I’m about to find out exactly what’s worse.
The woman with the shattered knee stands, balanced on her good leg, the ruined one dragging behind her. She hefts up her axe and heaves it, blunt edge down, onto Penny’s head.
The lights go out in Penny’s eyes. She goes limp.
There’s no sound, but the silent impact of solid steel meeting hair and skin and bone is like a cloud of razors whirling through my arteries and veins. I try to scream but all I manage is a raspy, guttural moan. I am fear and hate. I am violence and revenge.
The woman lifts the axe for another blow, but the other woman says something that stops her. They both look at the camera on the dresser. She checks Penny’s pulse and gives the camera a thumbs-up. The other woman turns it off.
The screen goes wispy and pixilated. The other two screens show my mom and dad and sister, unconscious, being hauled out of their beds and carried away. I can feel tears well in my eyes but the intense gravity screws with their internal structure. They inflate weirdly until they burst from my eyes like water balloons on pavement.
“I apologize for that,” Lionel says. “No one was supposed to get hurt. These operatives are from a rather peculiar Japanese apocalypse cult, and while they’re eager to please, they can be hard to control. Something a bit too fatalistic in their essential worldview to be truly successful employees. Fortunately, everyone is alive. They’ll be on a private jet to Hong Kong within the hour.”
Clarity rinses out my mind. The fear is gone. The hate is gone. I have no violence, no revenge, no goals, no plans, no hope. It’s almost a relief, knowing that I don’t have to make any more decisions—I just have to do whatever Lionel says.
121
Gravity returns to normal but I can’t seem to peel myself off the floor. Lionel fires up his time machine, gesturing emphatically like the crackpot conductor of an invisible orchestra. He doesn’t seem at all concerned that I might leap up and beat him to death. And he’s right. My whole body is numb, and even if it wasn’t, I won’t do anything to further endanger my mom and dad and sister and the woman I love.
“This is what’s going to happen,” Lionel says. “You’re going to go back to July 11, 1965, so you can stop yourself from sabotaging my experiment. The timeline will return to its proper track. All of this, the last fifty years, will be set right.”
He looks down at me, baffled that I’m still lying on the ground.
“I dialed your gravity back to normal,” he says. “You can stand now.”