Mbaye opens the door and I take it from him, close it, and get the match into the slot. The lock doesn’t click.
I watch from the window as Mbaye crosses to Allyn and says something to him. They talk for a few moments, and Mbaye keeps glancing back at me. C’mon, man. Allyn looks annoyed, not so much that he thinks something is up, but he definitely can’t be bothered with whatever this bullshit is. Finally Mbaye’s shoulders slump and he heads for the door.
Great. So I have to hope Allyn leaves and the office is cleared out before someone comes back in here to check on me.
The smell of the stew draws me away. My stomach is an empty void; I haven’t eaten since I don’t precisely know when. And as I shovel the stew into my mouth, dipping in the bread, savoring the nose-watering spice Mbaye added because he knows I like it face-blasting hot, I play through what I know.
I’m chasing a ghost. This ghost successfully killed one person and tried to kill several other people. It knows about my condition, considered me a threat, and tried to sideline me. It’s getting desperate, too. The attempt on Kolten was subtle and could have been written off as an accident. Letting out the dinosaurs was a bold move.
So does the ghost want to stop the summit, or no? If they wanted to stop it, they could have just started slitting throats, mine included, and it’d be done. What would any of us have been able to do to stop it?
But I have more data now, and data is good. It seems like the thing I saw—whatever it was—was going after Teller. Another escalation.
But now that means attempts have been made on all four bidders.
So far I’ve been a step ahead of it. Changing things that were maybe supposed to happen. Or maybe just could have happened and now they didn’t. Except space-time is supposed to be a four-dimensional block that doesn’t change, we just move through it and witness the moments.
Moments like dots of paint.
Like on that painting that Mena showed me.
I finish the stew and down the small bottle of water it came with, then check the window again. Danbridge is puttering around, talking to some TEA agents. I cross the room and it takes twelve steps, and I swear on the next time across it’s eleven. Then ten. I count it again and it goes from ten to eleven. My mind playing tricks. I walk heel to toe, trying to get an accurate count of the square footage of the room, because it’s something for me to obsess over, something to push away the realization that I murdered someone.
Is it murder if it’s self-defense? I don’t know.
I looked, and I touched.
Worse than that, I didn’t end suffering. I created it.
Before I can get too lost in my hole of self-reflection, there’s commotion from outside. I make it to the window in time to see Allyn rushing out of the office. As soon as the door closes behind him I pull the cell door toward me, the match falling to the floor, and move across the room.
Then I think better.
I run back toward the main console and find Ruby, still asleep. I turn it on and it winks to life and hovers up to my eye level.
“I need you,” I say. “Please. If you can work around whatever locks are in place, work around them.”
“Say something nice,” it says.
“Are you serious right now?”
“I’ll know if you mean it.”
“Fine. I miss talking to you. And I felt really sad when the dinosaur killed you…”
Ruby hovers up and moves a little closer to my face, probably tracking my pulse and facial tics. Finally it says, “I will accept this.
“…But only because I don’t have any more googly eyes.”
Ruby floats back down to the desk.
“Fine,” I say. “The reason humans process pain by inflicting it on others is because it’s a really shitty and childish way of asking for help.” I drop my head. “They want to be seen, but at the same time, they’re terrified of what it is people are going to see.”
“Thank you,” Ruby says, floating up to my shoulder.
I take a breath, center myself. “C’mon, we have work to do.”
I throw the door open and find the lobby under construction.
The place is gutted. No carpet, just hard concrete floors. There are men wandering around in construction hats and my eye is immediately drawn to a woman standing on a ladder, fiddling with a lighting fixture.
Fairbanks, highlights of gold catching in her brown hair. She looks around the vastness of the lobby—empty, without its clock, without the desks, without anything. And she gives a little smile, like she can see the entire thing laid out before her. I follow her line of sight across the room, which lands on a Black woman with a shaved head, in a white blouse and navy pencil skirt.
Simms, coming out of the Atwood hallway.
And she returns Fairbanks’s little smile, like it’s a fragile object passing between them. A tender moment, which stands in pretty strong contrast to the guests and employees from now, who are freaking the fuck out.
But I can’t stop looking at Simms and Fairbanks.
Because, holy shit.
They weren’t colleagues. They weren’t even friends.
They were more than that.
It’s the blue. The carpet. That one horrible design choice made by someone who should have known better. It matches the paint I saw on the wall of Simms’s home, when I was talking to her husband.
Fairbanks made that choice for her.
The past people—Simms, Fairbanks, the construction crew—can’t see us, but we can see them, and no one is handling it well. Allyn is standing in front of a construction worker who is wiring something in the floor, waving his hands in front of the man’s face, getting no response. Before he can look up and clock me, I duck behind a pillar.
“You seeing this, Rubes?” I ask.
“I’m not sure exactly what it is I’m seeing.”
“Everything’s slipping, the way I do,” I tell it. “Whatever the problem is, it’s getting bigger.”
“January?”
I step out from behind the pillar. Everything is back to normal, except for the clear disorientation of everyone in the room. Mostly people are just wandering in circles, checking to make sure everything around them is real. A few people seem to be clutching their noses, sporting nosebleeds. That’s not good. I actually feel pretty okay. Not like my usual slips. No spark in my brain. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.
Allyn is yelling into his watch, “Get over here now.” I stay where I am, out of view, and after a few moments, Popa appears.
“Ruby, amplify.”
The drone gives a little whir and then their hushed conversation is buzzing out of its speakers.
Allyn asks, “Have you finally managed to do what I asked?”
Popa says, “Well, they’re not handheld devices. Do you know how hard it was to get one of the sensors over here from Einstein?”
“What did you find?”
“She was right. Radiation levels in here are off the charts.”
Allyn asks, “How the hell are you just realizing that now?”
Even from here I can smell Popa’s flop sweat. “The only radiation should be coming from the timeport. There’s no logical reason that something in here would be generating it.”