I’d let her go to where this contraption was lurking in the depths of the schist waiting for someone like her to come along.
Burning with sudden fury I picked up one of the rocks and charged back into the chamber. With a wordless cry of insensate rage I began hammering the side of the generator, screaming at it.
Hands pulled me away and pried the rock from my fingers as sympathetic voices tried to soothe me—the voices of Hari and Hill. Ellie stood silently by, watching with the eyes of a stranger, as impassive as the generator itself, which I hadn’t even scratched.
I got a grip on myself and tried to explain.
“This…this thing,” I said, pointing, “stole my daughter.”
“I’m still here, Mother.”
I stared at her. “Are you?”
Ellie didn’t answer. Instead she turned and stared at the infernal machine, saying, “The generator will transmit its last signal tonight and then destroy itself.”
“I wish it had done that a year ago.”
“The time wasn’t right then. Now it is. It has begun in the Heavens and it will end in the Earth.”
“When tonight?” Hill said.
“After dark, for certain, but the exact time will be for someone else to decide.” Ellie moved toward the door. “I’ve seen what I came to see. We can go now.”
“Well, thanks for the permission,” Hari muttered.
But she followed Ellie.
Hill moved to my side. “Not much point in staying. I made a circuit of the thing while you stepped out and found no writing or sign of controls or power source. Right now it’s just a big dull inert device.”
I nodded and led him out. We found Hari waiting for us in the passageway.
“I’ve still got a lot of questions about these signals,” she said. “Like where do they come from?”
Hill waved an arm. “Out there.”
“Oh, well, that clears up everything,” she said with a sour expression. “Can we be just a smidgen more specific?”
I could have relayed what Ellie had told me about vast cosmic entities toying with us but I didn’t understand it and wasn’t sure I believed it myself, so how could I explain?
But even if I’d wanted to give it a try, I would have been interrupted by the banging sound that echoed through the passage.
“It’s coming from over there,” Hill said, pointing to one of the mysterious doors embedded in the right sidewall. He started moving that way.
Hari said, “Oh, you can’t seriously be thinking of opening one of those.”
I agreed with her, but Hill paid us no mind.
Placing an ear against one of the doors, he said, “There’s someone in there. He’s pleading to get out.” He starting flipping through his key ring.
“Think about this!” Hari cried. “It might not even be human—just pretending!”
Which struck me as another odd thing to say. But only for a heartbeat. After what I’d seen in the past few days, it made perfect sense.
But what had she seen?
“I’m not leaving someone locked up down here,” Hill said. He nodded toward the symbol on the door. “One of these keys has to match that.”
He apparently found the key he sought, for he stuck it in the lock and turned. The door slammed open and a bedraggled man staggered out, holding a sheaf of papers clutched against his chest.
“People!” he cried. “Oh, thank god, people! I thought I’d never see another human being again!”
HARI
1
He said his name was Winslow—P. Frank Winslow—and he was a novelist. Hari had never heard of him, but she imagined a million writers were out there she’d never heard of.
She and the others led him to the stairwell and back up the insane stairway—Barbara crawled while they walked—then into the elevator and up to the lobby. All along the way he rattled on about a hole in the floor of his apartment and how it opened into a totally deserted city in another reality on another world and how he’d followed a seemingly endless serpentine path that eventually led him to the door Hill had opened.
Hari figured she could beat that story—she wished her alternate world had been deserted—and was only half listening until she heard him mention a familiar name.
“Wait-wait,” she said, grabbing his sleeve. “What did you say?”
“I said I have to be careful not to run into Belgiovene once I’m back.”
“Belgiovene?” Hadn’t Donny mentioned that name? “You’re sure that’s his name?”
“Well, I overheard him call himself that when he was on a phone call. You know him?”
“Only heard the name. Could be someone totally other. Why would you want to avoid him?”
“He was sent to kill me.”
Hari felt a chill. Donny said he was sure a guy named Belgiovene had killed his brother.
“How do you know he was sent and why would someone want to kill you?”
“The Septimus Order sent him—because I know too much.”
Déjà vu body-slammed her: exactly the case with Donny’s brother.
“Gotta go,” she said and hurried toward the entrance without good-byes or an explanation. She had to check this out.
When she reached the door, Simón said, “Can I get you a cab?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
She stood under the canopy and dialed Donny’s number while Simón waved and whistled from the curb. The call went straight to voicemail so she left a message to call her ASAP. Then she took the cab down to the Flatiron District. She called Donny three more times along the way with the same result. Seemed like he’d turned off his phone.
Back in her office, she settled before her computer and found a strange icon blinking on her monitor: Donny’s grinning face in a glowing circle. She laughed and clicked it. The screen flickered and a video of Donny began to play. He was standing by the damaged hood of their rented Tahoe. Initially she warmed at the sight of him, but then she noticed how stressed he looked.
“Hey, Hari, I’m pretty sure this transmission will work. I’m beaming it straight to your hard drive. I hope you enjoyed our time together
