Shuttered Sky

Haas?”

“It’s true, sir,” she told him, borrowing some of that semi-gloss that Tessic so smoothly painted on the situation. “Mr. Tessic wanted to know if there were any specific videos Dillon would like added to his library.”

“I asked for some Bond flicks,” Dillon added. “The Connery ones.”

Bussard judged the response, and accepted it with the same reluc­tance with which he accepted any unverified information. “I see. Lieu­tenant Haas, I’ll have to ask you to cut your meal short today. Elon, I need your help with a technical problem.”

Tessic was more than happy to comply. “Your problem is my problem, Dr. No.” He turned to Maddy. “Lieutenant, it’s been a pleas­ure, and Dillon, I look forward to our next encounter.”

As they made their way across the floor of the containment dome, Maddy considered what Tessic had said. To keep the information to herself would be an offense worthy of a court martial, or worse.

The sound of the slamming vault door peeled around the dome with the finality of a tomb. Having become so accustomed to Dillon’s presence, she could feel the absence of his powerful aura the moment the vault sealed. It was only a moment of void until her senses adjusted to a world without Dillon—but she found that void harder and harder to live with.

12. Dream lightning

The open clamshell of Dillon’s chair sat in the corner of his room. He always pushed it there after the vault door had closed, and the chair released him. Sometimes he threw a blanket over the chair, so that he didn’t have to look at it, but now he left it unveiled. He wanted to see it now, so that if his nerve began to fail him, he could look upon the chair’s waiting clamps, and know that death was a better alternative than lingering in this purgatory for one more day.

The TV played an old Bond film, delivered a week after it was requested. Goldfinger was being sucked through the shattered window of his private jet. Not a bad way to go, all else considered. Dillon watched the TV but was only passing time. It was midnight. Hesperia, Michigan had just rotated its way into Sunday, and in less than two hours, American time would hiccup itself back one hour. An end to daylight saving; the early tidings of winter.

Dillon lay on his bed, trying to focus his thoughts. He was no stranger to slim chances and narrow escapes, but now he had a sense that everything hinged on his actions over the next few hours. Not just his life, but the lives and futures of far more souls than he could ever hope to count. The many psychiatrists who had analyzed him would call him delusional, to think that his escape from this place was the fulcrum on which the world hinged. And he would agree with them; after all, a generic label of insanity made perfect logical sense. Except for the fact that it was wrong.

He tried to put his mind through a regimen of drills and contin­gencies for his escape. He was at a disadvantage, because he did not know the layout of the plant. All he knew was his cell, the cooling tower, and the corridors in between—none of which led to the out­side. Even what he did know was limited by the tunnel vision imposed on him by his chair’s unyielding face-plate.

He wondered if Elon Tessic truly believed he would escape, or was just curious. Perhaps the rich industrialist was taking wagers on Dillon’s escape.

As his thoughts often did in moments of stress, Dillon’s mind drifted to Deanna. She was the first of the other Shards he had met. They had been a duo, before they became part of a sextet.

Time had not made her death easier, and his love for her had not diminished in the two years since she died. He could still see her expressive Asian eyes. He could still see the sheen of her long black hair. Moonlight on water. He could still feel her dying in his arms. He had no pictures of her beyond these images he held in his mind.

They were fifteen, then—both too young and too damned screwed up to do anything but cling to one another, Dillon thriving on her intense fear of the world, and Deanna thriving on his anger and need for absolution. In the end she had purged herself of her serpent of terror, and had discovered her gift, even before Dillon discovered his.

Her gift had been faith. Nothing so tangible as Dillon’s gift of creation, or Lourdes’ gift of control. Nothing so utilitarian as Winston’s gift of growth, Tory’s cleansing aura or Michael’s control of nature. Deanna’s gift of faith was a simple bridge over fear, but she had died before she could cross that bridge and explore the ramifications.

“Lend me an ounce of your faith, Deanna,” Dillon would pray when fear and futility teamed to overwhelm him. “Just one ounce to get me through this.” He would pray with the intensity with which he had once prayed to God, before his fall from grace. And he prayed now that somehow he would find the faith to bridge the gap between his cell and the outside world.

The film ended. The TV timed itself off, and he was left in the dark to knit the seconds into the minutes for more than an hour, until 2:00 a.m. was finally upon him.

When his digital clock hit the hour, nothing seemed to change. The clock, of course, wouldn’t. Like most other clocks, it would need to be reset by hand. He reset the alarm clock back to 1:00, stalling. He listened, but there was nothing beyond the usual soundproofed silence of his cell, where any sound made was made by him. 1:02. He stood, flicked on the light by his bed, and stepped into the dead-end alcove, firmly plugged by the titanium vault door.

Hadn’t he broken into a vault once? One of many things he had done early on, when his powers of order and cohesion had first begun to emerge. It had been a game back then. But breaking into a vault was much different from breaking out of one—especially one as so­phisticated as this.

Tessic had said the combination changed three times a second, and with all of Dillon’s powers there was no hope of cracking a code that was in constant flux. But if Tessic was right, and the combination was now stuck in one place for a full hour, it leveled the playing field. Still, how could he access the locking mechanism from the inside?

He ran his fingers along the brushed metallic inside surface of the door. It was cold to the touch. He tapped on it with his fingers like a physician palpating a patient’s lungs. There was no echo at all, no resonance. This door was too solid to give anything back to him. He pressed his fingertips against the line of the door jamb that was so well sealed, there was barely a line at all. 1:16.

Damn it! What was he expecting himself to do? This wasn’t the physics of Hoover Dam, where he could zero in on a resonant fre­quency, and use it to rattle the thing apart. This alloy was too well tempered for that. By design it had no resonant frequency that could destabilize it.

Will this door be foiled by virtue of what I am . . . or by what I do?

He had an understanding of his power now—as much as a human mind could understand such things. His power was a dance between being and doing. His mere presence had a profound effect on the world around him, but he could also use his power like a tool, actually mold­ ing it to his will. Opening a lock was a little bit of both. He could actively push his mind into the mechanism, and feel the pattern of movements that would open it, but more often than not, the lock would pop open even before he was finished, his presence greasing the mechanism into alignment. The military didn’t care about the things Dillon actively willed. His will was a variable. But his passive presence was a constant.

Combinations. Codes. Random numbers. A series of symbols.

Who knew how many numbers were in the combination? Even if he could focus his mind and divine each number in its proper order, what good would it do him on the inside?

1:28. He kicked the door in frustration, and succeeded only in stubbing his toe. He rubbed his toe through his sock, feeling the minutes tick away. In another half hour the combination would start changing again. Then what? More unconscious trips to the tower. More stilted, scrutinized meals with Maddy. He had seen in Maddy’s eyes that she wanted him to escape, even if she didn’t dare speak it. He didn’t want to see her eyes in the morning if he failed. He would be humiliated that he had not risen to Tessic’s challenge.

Random numbers . . . a string of random numbers . . .

But they weren’t really numbers at all, were they? Combination locks were mere mechanical devices; casters and bearings rolling within a preordained mechanical maze. The eye saw the numbers on the dial, but the lock saw