Dutch’s face twisted up like she wanted to spit. ‘I swear to God I should leave the pair of you assholes here to rot.’
‘We got you out of jail,’ Nat pointed out. ‘If you turn up at that finishing line without me and Wu even suspects you abandoned me, he’ll throw you straight back in that Russian jail, and you know it.’
‘And if I talked? Told everyone the truth, about the real reason I’m in this race?’
‘There are easier ways to commit suicide.’
‘Listen to me, Dutch,’ said Elektron, his face stiff with pain. ‘He’s still keeping things back from you, like what the Rift actually is.’
‘Are you going to listen to any more of this bullshit?’ asked Nat.
‘Shut up,’ said Dutch. She nodded to Elektron. ‘How about you tell me what you think it is?’
‘It’s the one question everybody wants the answer to,’ said Elektron, biting the words out. ‘See, back when the Rift first formed, everyone got to running around in a panic thinking the North Koreans had nuked Teijouan. Except then the first Kaiju appeared, and they realised something else had happened.’
‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.’
‘Yeah, but then a rumour went around that maybe the Americans had been developing some kind of weapon in league with the Teijouan authorities.’
‘I’ve heard that bullshit rumour before,’ she said. ‘Don’t try to test me.’
‘No, Dutch, it’s true. Except it wasn’t a weapon—it was an experiment.’ He gulped rapid breaths as he spoke, his skin slick and pale and his voice halting. ‘See, they built a secret facility up in the mountains where they could use death-row prisoners as guinea pigs. Wired them up to computers and fed them full of drugs.’ A peculiar fervour came into Elektron’s voice. ‘They were trying to hack the underlying code that controls reality itself, but they did it too well. They opened a door they couldn’t close.’
‘Where did you get this crap from?’ she demanded.
‘Wu knows the truth,’ Elektron insisted, jerking his chin towards Nat. ‘So does Strugatsky. That’s why they don’t let anyone but us onto the island, not even scientists, except for their own people—it’s all a cover-up.’
‘You’re saying they had something to do with it?’ Dutch demanded, curious now despite herself. ‘Strugatsky and Wu?’
‘Sure,’ said Elektron, his voice stiff with pain. ‘The two of them were partners once, everybody knows that. They had the contract to run the experimental program back when they were still partners. I saw it all, along with the data about the map.’ He stared wild-eyed at Nat. ‘He’ll confirm it all. Just ask him!’
‘You said something about a door,’ said Dutch.
‘Not like a regular door,’ said Elektron. ‘The Rift is more like a…a singularity, a point where different parallel realities merge. Like a crossroads, except it doesn’t have four paths—it has millions.’ The crazed gleam in his eyes intensified. ‘The Kaiju come through that door from some other place. But we can go through the other way, Dutch. And not just to where the Kaiju come from—to anywhere we want.’
She shook her head, feeling something almost akin to admiration. ‘You must be one crazy motherfucker to come up with a story like that, Elektron.’
‘Listen to me!’ Elektron rasped. ‘Ask Nat. He knows!’
‘Sounds like the d-field fried his brain,’ suggested Nat.
‘Why would Nat want to keep all this back from me, even assuming one dumbass word of it isn’t some random shit you made up?’ she asked Elektron.
‘Because the d-field is getting bigger. The blockade’s been measuring its fluctuations for years, and before long it’ll spread beyond the island. Ten, twenty, a hundred years from now it could end up swallowing the whole damn world.’
‘Let’s pretend I believe one word of this,’ said Dutch. ‘Then how could anyone know there’s a way through the Rift without actually going through it?’
‘Some of those scientists Strugatsky sent survived long enough to do exactly that—crossed over, according to that one guy who didn’t go with them.’
‘The one who got rescued but died?’
Elektron nodded.
‘He knows the more you let him talk, the longer he lives,’ said Nat. ‘We’re wasting time.’
‘Take me with you,’ Elektron pleaded, all but ignoring Nat now. ‘You’ll see it’s true. I’ll go through the Rift and never come back, I swear. That’s been my plan all along—I could give a rat’s ass about Muto or the money!’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ said Dutch, slugging Elektron in the head with the butt of the gun. He slumped back against the crash-barrier, his eyes rolling up in his skull. Dutch crumpled up the death notice and threw it down beside him.
‘We should check the Coupé,’ said Nat. ‘See if she still runs.’
Dutch pointed the Beretta at him. ‘You can stay where the hell you are until I decide whether you get to ride with me or not.’
He had the good sense not to say anything more as she stalked back over to the Coupé. The right rear panel was crushed, and the window on that same side cracked and starred. The tyres still looked good, though. She raised the hood and looked inside.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Dutch to work out that a coolant hose had cracked. Given how much worse things could have been, they’d been lucky—very, very lucky.
At first she thought she could trim off the cracked part of the hose and stretch what remained to fit the gasket. It soon became clear that wasn’t going to work. She went hunting through some of the nearby wrecks until she found one that fit. Before long she had everything back in place and checked the engine by letting it run for a while. The Coupé looked like she’d been through a war, but as long as the engine ran, little else mattered.
‘We’re going,’ she announced over her shoulder, closing the hood.
Nat came over and stood by the passenger door as if waiting for permission. ‘So are we…?’
‘Get in,’ she said. ‘But don’t expect me to trust you.’
‘Right.’ He glanced at Elektron, now stirring
