A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
Some weeks later, she still had the lighter tucked in her pocket when, during the morning of October the twelfth, the laboratory computers began to issue conclusive evidence that corroborated the success of the King Acid Project for the first time in years. The entourage of UN bureaucrats flew in just before midday, having traveled by sonic jet from the East Coast to California as soon as an insider source formalized the news. She still remembered Skyler, the man who would be remembered as the revolutionary genius who had made it possible, the new worldwide hero, granting himself a self-absorbed half smile as a victory among the gaggle of scientific staff, a transnational, cross-cultural, multi-ethnic array of the most talented people on the globe, who had been brought, lured, or escorted into the West, milled around and celebrated by uncorking champagne or rose water, depending on their faith or lack thereof, and writing messages of congratulations in capital letters on the boards full of formulas. As he exchanged some scarce and formal words with the G-Men, Skyler turned to Light and beckoned for her. She broke off from his colleagues, Tom Vojtech and Niv Salvador, and walked in the shortest possible straight line, wading her way through Kashi Peeters, Kyouko Woolf, Enid Fabian, Gail Dragisa, Lyov Jarmil, Felix Nour, Frej Petro, Izak Trajan, Morgan Wawrzyniec, and Vladan Diederik, to reach Skyler. As she neared him, she thought she recognized an agent, the man who stood at the head of the group as a spokesperson and wore aviator sunglasses and a dark trench coat, but she soon dismissed that thought.
"Yes?"
"Tell everyone to leave. I want to show these guys the nuclear furnace."
Light nodded, turning to her colleague friends Sue Raskopf and Elsa Terzic to help her invite everybody to a move out into the hall. She then repeated that invitation to whoever came close to her as she circled the room, starting with Eelis Agner, Taj Emanuel, Zack Aanakwad, Ilias Stephan, Lionel Vangelis, Florian Abderrahim, Kasim Ignace, Hyeong-jeong Cao, Irma Talbot, Tatiana Valerio, Vinicius Goes, Karim Kroos, Luka Thibaut, Santi Florentino, and ending with Joe, from maintenance.
She was the last one out. Just as she closed the door, she glanced at Skyler's face in profile once more. She never imagined the next time she'd see him would be on a pier along a secret coast in West Africa, and that it would be under completely new and irreversible circumstances.
"Someone hungry?" asked Kegan Breisacher.
"Thought no one would bring it up," replied Yves Guillermo. "Anyone coming?"
Ericka followed them, along with part of the crew, to the cafeteria on the other side of the wing. Bernt Tennfjord ordered three beer bottles and performed a brief circus-worthy display of how a human could drink from three longnecks at the same time, one of the few moments in his life in which he found his playful alcoholism to be celebrated and not talked about.
"At least now you'll have a good reason to keep your fridge door open all the time," observed Reza Battaglia jokingly as she ate a bagel.
Ericka got herself an iced coffee with a lemon slice. She stood staring at it as the sugar deliquesced between the ice and the simmering coffee in a quiet thermal whirlpool. She took a sip of it as if it were a shamanic beverage, a ritualistic initiation for the beginning of the rest of her life. Damn right she was. A sudden thud rumbled throughout the corridor all the way to the cafeteria, leaving in its wake a quaking echo below their shoes and blinking lights over their heads.
"What the hell was that?" asked Naima Grant.
The whirlpool was now nothing but a jumbled assortment of curved and straight lines, but Light never noticed it, nor did she notice dropping her glass when she darted towards the laboratory with the rest of her colleagues.
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