HEAR (18 page)

“Oh my God, you're hurt!” I gasp.

Pankaj looks down. He puts two fingers through the slice in his shirt.

“Huh,” he replies with bizarre calm. I wonder if he's in shock. When he lifts up his shirt we see the laceration. Thankfully it seems to be a fairly small cut, but it's bleeding profusely. “Huh,” he says again, squeezing the wound and picking out a shard of whatever it was that hit him.

“Kass! Pankaj!” Alex is running toward us.

I sweep him into a hug.

“Are you guys okay?” he says breathlessly, stepping away. “The vision just came to me, and I ran here as fast as I could.”

“I'm all right.” I nod toward Pankaj. “But he's injured.”

“Oh no! Are you in pain?” Alex asks him. “Here, lean on me. We should get you to the hospital.”

Pankaj shakes his head. “No, it's not bad. Once I clean the blood off, it won't seem like anything.”

“I think you should go to the ER,” Alex insists, and I nod.

“No,” Pankaj replies with a slight edge in his voice. “I'm not going to the hospital.” When I give him a look, he adds softly, “Anyway, I'm okay. I promise. It's just a cut.” He glances back at the library. Its slate facade doesn't appear to have sustained too much damage, but a fire is raging inside; we can see the glow of flames through a dense curtain of thick black smoke. “I think the blast came from the Special Collections Room.” His voice is shaking. “Where we just were, Kass . . .”

My mouth drops open.

I feel sick, light-headed, and it has nothing to do with ESP. Before I can speak, I see a firefighter coming out of the library with a body draped across his back.

I catch a glimpse of brunette hair.

It's Erika. Her head lolls on her neck. “Is she—”

I look at Alex. His face is blank, frozen. It's as if his blood has stopped circulating; there's no life behind his eyes. “I don't think she could have survived that,” he says. Then, “She doesn't survive it.”

He turns away. I put my hand on his shoulder, but he's rigid, and he doesn't soften or relax at my touch.

You see scenes like this on the news. You play through them in video games. Schools run crisis-simulation drills for moments like these. But nothing can prepare you for this: the smoke, blood, panic, destruction, screams, fire, sirens, death.

Pankaj takes my hand and moves me away from Alex to give him space.

Alex wraps his arms around his chest as if trying to comfort himself. “I got this awful feeling a few minutes ago,” he finally says, still facing away from us. “But I thought it couldn't be true. I was so sure we were going to get back together. I
saw
us getting back together.”

“I'm sorry,” Pankaj says. “I'm so sorry . . .”

Blinking red and blue lights animate the images of the chaos surrounding us. Sirens continue to wail. I look to Pankaj. The expression on his face twists from sympathy to confusion, then to abject horror.

“Oh no,” he says. “No.” His left hand rises and slowly lands on the top of his head. “No, no, no, no, no.” He points toward the library entrance.

Alex and I whirl around. Another firefighter is carrying a second body out of the terrorized library—a body with a telltale mop of dark hair.

It's Dan.

Alex's eyes go wide. As if in a dream, I feel my legs start to pump as I race back toward the pandemonium. An ambulance screeches to a halt in front of us. The back door flies open and a gurney materializes. The firefighter gently lays Dan down. Time seems to slow, warping to a crawl as I approach. My head hovers above the bloody face and soot-covered, closed eyes.

“Dan! Dan!” I yell.

“I need you all to step back,” a paramedic says.

Alex and Pankaj follow the order, but I can't pull myself away. I squeeze Dan's hand.

“Dan, it's Kass.”

He struggles to unstick his eyelids. “Kass,” he manages. “I saw—”

“Dan, you're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay.”

He coughs and a trickle of blood streams from his lips. His eyelids flutter closed.

Panic electrifies my brain. “Stay with me, Dan. Stay strong. You can do it.”

“Danger.” Dan's voice is a feathery croak, almost inaudible. I lean in closer to his lips. “It's close.”

That's the last thing he says.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I'm not even through the front door when Uncle Brian pulls me into a hug. He looks tortured, his clothing disheveled. His unkempt white hair sticks up in every possible direction. “Kass! Thank God! Thank God, thank God you're okay.”

I'm not okay. I am numb. I am a zombie. It's disturbing, or it should be, because I should be feeling something,
anything
. But all I feel is hollow. “ You heard about the explosion,” I say.

“Of course I did. Everyone knows.” He steps back, gripping my shoulders and looking me in the eye. “I had the dreadful thought that you were there when it happened.”

I nod. “I was. We were.”

“
We?
” This part he doesn't know. This part I have to tell him.

That's when the tears start. I nod, sniffling, feeling a dam break inside me. “Pankaj and me and Alex and . . .”

“And they're all okay too? Is everyone . . .” He doesn't finish the sentence because he can see this isn't the case. “Who?”

“Dan.” It isn't until I say his name aloud that I am certain it's true. He's dead.

When the EMTs pushed us aside and loaded him into the ambulance, they shut the door and then sped away, sirens howling—racing to save him. In my shock, I allowed myself to think of Dan as “gone,” but my brain will no longer tolerate the euphemism. This isn't temporary. Dan is gone forever. I can “see” his absence now as well as feel it in the pit of my stomach.

“Dear lord.” Brian puts his hand to his heart. “Where is Dan now?”

“I don't know. I don't know where they took him. I don't know where the ambulance takes you. Maybe . . .” I can't say it—
the morgue
.
I feel gutted. Dan was innocent. He was blameless. And he didn't go looking for trouble the way the rest of us seemed to. There is no way to explain or make sense of this.

There is only that vision. The blurry chronicle of a death foretold.

Again, I think of that uncertain, unformed vision Pankaj and I shared. Three of the four survivors will band together. But what it means for the fourth—and who the fourth will be, and why she, he,
or
I will be left out—is even less clear than the vision itself . . .

Uncle Brian reaches out for me, pulling me once more into an embrace. “That poor child,” he murmurs as his body rocks back and forth. “This is terrible. Awful. How does something like this happen?”

I shake my head. My body trembles with silent sobs.

“I have to contact his mother. She needs to hear this from me. I need to find his home phone number. He didn't give it to you by any chance, did he?”

I pat my pockets for my phone, and I realize for the first time that though I salvaged the microfilm, I left my bag and phone in the library. “Pretty sure my phone got blown to bits in there,” I tell him, my voice hollow. I think about that room, and the fact that it's no longer there. My knees nearly give out. I cling to my uncle's arm for support. I wipe my eyes and meet his troubled stare. “Pankaj and I saw it.”

“Saw what? What do you mean?”

“We
foresaw
it. We knew something was about to go down. We called the fire department so they'd be there when it happened.”

He takes a step away from me. “ You
both
had visions about the fire?”

I nod. “But neither one of us knew where it would be or exactly what would happen.”

“Did the visions come simultaneously, or did one of you have it and then communicate it to the other?” There's a slight shift in Brian's tone. He sounds less like a concerned relative than a curious investigator.

“Same time, I guess.” My jaw tightens. “Dan's mom?” I remind him. “Aren't you going to call her?”

“ Yes, yes, of course, in a minute.” He pauses. “Kass, I have to ask you: Were you and Pankaj being intimate at the time?”

“What? No!” I shake my head and back away—right into the front door. I'm so thrown by this question that I feel ill. “No. I mean, why would you even
ask
?”

“But you two are in love, yes?”

“No, I am not in love with Pankaj. I mean, I like him, but I am not in love with him! Why would you even ask me this now?” My fists clench at my sides.

“My mistake,” he says, sounding unconvinced. “It's just that from my research I know the brain changes when we have strong feelings for someone. There's a chemical release in the caudate nucleus, which gives a person focus, stamina, and vigor. And it also makes them highly receptive to suggestion.”

Hearing this mini-lecture now, this confirmation of Pankaj's suspicion, stirs even more anger and grief in my heart. It feels like my body temperature has risen by ten degrees in the last five seconds. “Can we talk about why the Special Collections Room was bombed? And who did it? Because I know at least two of the people who were blown up, and I'm thinking it has something to do with you and your archive.”

The expression on Uncle Brian's face now, the horror in his eyes and ghastly paleness of his complexion, reminds me of what Pankaj said about Oppenheimer. Perhaps this is what Oppenheimer looked like when he saw the mushroom cloud:
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
“ You're sure it was the Army Research Institute archive?” he asks. “And it was a bomb? Not a gas leak of some sort—”

A loud old-fashioned telephone ringtone cuts him off. Uncle Brian fishes his cell phone out of his breast pocket and frowns at the screen. “ Your father,” he mutters.

“Dad?” I say, the word coming out as a sob. “Can I—”

“Hello, William,” Brian answers, holding up a finger for silence. He turns his back on me, striding toward the living room. “She's fine. Yes, I can imagine how terrifying it must have been to hear the news . . . She was in the library when the fire began, but thankfully the fire department was already on the scene and they evacuated people very rapidly . . . How did you—Ah, a Google Alert. Yes, that makes sense . . . William, let me ask you: Did you have any other inkling?”

I'm not sure why I'm surprised Uncle Brian is taking this opportunity to probe Dad about his ESP, but it annoys me.
Hello?
My father is calling to find out
about me
, not to participate in a telephone survey. I race after Uncle Brian, grab his shoulder, and spin him around, holding out my free hand so he can give me the phone.

“I see,” Brian says to my dad, staring at me. “Interesting.”

I begin tapping my foot, arm still extended. “Can I talk?” I bark.

“William,” Brian says, “Kass would like to speak with you, but I think it's best if I just convey her message to you. She wants to tell you that she's fine and she loves you and Lucinda very much.”

My eyes bulge. “No, that's not what I—”

“Of course. I'll let her know.” Brian pushes the
end
button. “He says he's very glad you're okay and that he and your mother love you very much too.”

I shake my head furiously. “What the hell? You know I wanted to speak to him!”

“Kass, we made a deal when you got here—”

“ You don't think this counts as extenuating circumstances? Two of my friends are dead!”

“But
you're
fine.” He looks me up and down. “Not a scratch on you.”

“That's not the point!” I yell, feeling hot tears filling my eyes. “And I am not fine. I am far from fine.”

“It's important that your parents learned you're not injured. It's important that you know that they heard about the explosion and they're sending you their love. But beyond that there's nothing to say.”

I gape at him, flabbergasted. “Love isn't always about big romantic gestures, you know,” I hiss. “It's also about just hearing someone else's voice.”

“I know that, Kass. And
that's
the reason I didn't want you communicating with your father.”

I run my hand through my bangs, enraged. “What are you talking about?”

“Because he loves you, and if he hears your voice, he'll know.”

“Know what?”

“That he's no longer the only man in your heart, even if you won't acknowledge it yet.” In my moment of stunned silence, Brian adds: “ You're welcome.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

You forget how noisy everyday life is until everything stops. Background conversation, laughter, a bike passing, shoes shuffling . . . these are the sounds you take for granted until they're absent. And today, the morning after “the incident”—the day after Dan died and life for the rest of us changed forever—it's devastatingly quiet. It was like this after Professor Pinberg was shot too.

The rapid accumulation of these hushed days, of violent tragedies at Henley, is more than alarming. Many students are starting to pack up and leave, cutting short their summer terms. I can't blame them. Our lives keep getting punctured by catastrophe, then official comment, then silence: a roller coaster of shock, solemnity, and mourning that is beginning to feel like a devastating new normal.

I am staying at Henley, of course—at least if Brian's funding holds through the summer—but the reality and horror of what's happened are somehow drowned in my own feeling of failure.

I knew there would be a fire, yet I couldn't save Dan's life.

I pick up the local paper on the way to the lab.
The
fi
re left two dead, Erika Fellner, 21, a rising senior at Henley University from London, and a young man, 17, whom police have declined to identify until his family can be reached.
It also quotes the firefighters on the scene. According to them, the explosion in the library's Special Collections Room was likely the result of a natural gas leak. Leaving it at that feels like shoddy reporting to me.

Most departments have called in their faculty to discuss how best to handle student concerns. Uncle Brian, however, has been called to the university president's office. I don't know whether it's to discuss the HEAR funding issue or the fact that he lost a student. But I know that the lab is the one place he won't be this morning.

That's why I texted the others to meet me here.

It's time for us to put our proverbial cards on the table. It's time to lay bare what each one of us knows, what each one of us really thinks about my great-uncle, and how we're going to move forward.

Pankaj and Alex arrive
at the same time. Alex glances at the newspaper I've brought before he sits. He gives himself a spin on the lab stool then looks at Pankaj. “How are you feeling? How's the wound?”

“I've had better days,” Pankaj answers grimly, cringing as he eases down. “ You?”

“That sounds about right.” Alex shakes his head. “It's weird. I've never felt like this. I mean . . . it's like a hole. I don't think I've ever been this sad. Or this numb.”

Mara shuffles in. Her face is blotchy from crying; there's no need to ask how she's feeling.

“Gas leak,” Mara spits as she sits down, with a disdainful nod toward the paper. “Who do you think planted that story?”

“Probably the terrorist who planted the bomb,” Pankaj replies. He winces, lightly rubbing his fingers across his black T-shirt on the spot over his wound. “And I'm willing to bet it's the same terrorist who shot Professor Pinberg at the mall.”

I stare at him, caught off guard. This is new, this theory. I can't help but wonder if his injury made him more sensitive in some way. But whether it increased his ability to see connections or merely his desire to draw conclusions, I can't tell.

“What makes you say terrorist?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Acts of terrorism aren't all that hard to commit. I don't want to say any idiot can pull one off, but lots of idiots have. Look in the right places, and you can find bomb-making recipes to cook up in an Easy-Bake Oven.”

“He's right,” Alex agrees, rubbing his swollen eyes. “Back in the Boy Scouts, we used to blow stuff up in the woods all the time. Any one of us could do it, probably with our eyes closed.”

“Right, but why an act of terror?” Mara presses. “I'm not saying I disagree with you; I'm just wondering why you don't think it's the enemies of Professor Black.”

“I'm not saying it
isn't
them,” Pankaj says tiredly. “I mean . . . the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize people. You scare them enough so they stop what they're doing. Professor Black is working on something that's threatening or considered threatening by a lot of people. Maybe someone is trying to tell him to stop. That's why they killed his friend at the mall. And when that didn't work, they upped the ante.”

Alex's mouth drops open. “ You really think that's what's going on?”

“What else could it be?” Pankaj asks with another shrug.

“I don't know . . . I think you're partly right,” Alex says, staring off into space. “But I think the mall shooting was totally unrelated. I mean, this is America. Shootings in malls and office parks happen all the time. Give people easy access to guns, and that's what you get: a personal vendetta becomes a bloodbath,” he says with disdain. “But bombing a college library is a different story. A college library is a symbolic target. You take out a nation's best and brightest, you're a hero to whatever screwed-up group with a screwed-up agenda you're trying to impress.”

I have to admit I'm as surprised by Alex's idea as he was by Pankaj's. “ You think the library has
nothing
to do with my uncle?” I ask him.

“Random and reasonless except in the mind of the angry zealot behind it.”

Chaos theory
,
I think.

“There's tons of online chatter about it.” Alex quickly types something into his laptop then turns it around for us to see. We slide off our stools and gather around him.

At the top of the Poison Control homepage is the image of an X-rayed fish. In the fish's belly is a man, swallowed whole, who appears to be struggling to get free. Beneath the picture is the site's slogan: “ Your Antidote to the Mainstream Media.” Tabs to news on 9/11, Osama bin Laden's “burial,” the Boston Marathon bombing, and vaccines are on the left side of the screen.

Mara leans in first, her eyes darting across the screen. “What is this?”

“It's a conspiracy website,” Alex replies. “I couldn't sleep last night, so I started doing some poking around online. Here.” He scrolls down the home page until we see an image of Amory Gate with the caption
Henley University Library Bombing: Information Warfare
. “Whoever writes for Poison Control specifically blames the ‘New World Order' for planting the bomb.”

“What's the New World Order?” I ask. “This is some sort of joke, right?”

Alex shakes his head. “Apparently it's a repressive group of elites that seeks to rule the world.” He opens another window and pulls up Reddit. On that site, theories abound about which terror organization did it and why. “I almost feel bad for the National Counterterrorism Center,” Alex says, “because they have to look at all this stuff and then sort out claims of responsibility.”

“ You think there will be
multiple
claims of responsibility?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, of course.” He nods. “When a bomb goes off, loads of groups come forward so they can get the glory.”

“That's sick.”

Alex tries to smile but can't. “‘Sick' is a euphemism for what it is.”

“So how do they figure out who really did it?” Mara asks.

“Well, they start by examining the signature of the explosive device—determining if it contains dynamite, C-4, fertilizer, or other high-grade explosives—and then based on the signature, they compare it to the group's previous activities.”

“ You know a lot about this,” Pankaj remarks.

“Like I told you, I was a Boy Scout,” Alex says. “I got merit badges in chemistry and crime prevention.” Mustering a grin, he adds, “Also Indian lore and wood carving, which is why I'm never without my trusty knife.” He flashes the three-finger Boy Scout salute. “Be prepared!” He sighs, and the grin fades.

As I stare at the conspiracy site and think about Alex's words, it occurs to me that if perpetrators leave evidence behind at the crime scene, fingerprints are probably on their advance work as well. I reach into my pocket and retrieve the box of microfilm I've been carrying with me since I was last in the library. “I took this because I thought it would show that my uncle was trying to help people with his work. But now I'm thinking it might give us clues about who his enemies might be.”

“Interesting,” Alex says, sliding off his stool. “ Yeah, let's go find out.”

“I bet you they have microfilm readers in the Elliot Center,” Mara adds. “That's where the Film Department is.”

At the word “film,” I remember something else: we need to get back to the CVS to pick up the pictures my new friend Zander was developing.

“The Elliot Center,” Pankaj repeats, touching his midsection. “There's a CVS near there, right? I need to stop in there to get some more Band-Aids.”

I don't need to hear his voice in my head to know we're on the same page. “I'll go with you . . . I need tampons,” I add, to quash any suspicion.

“Okay,” Mara says impatiently, heading toward the door. “Alex and I will head over and try to find one of the microfilm machines.”

“Great, we'll meet you in the Elliot Center in twenty minutes,” I say.

Before I enter my
PIN into the CVS ATM, I scan my surroundings even more carefully than usual. But the pall over Henley has been cast over the entire town, and it's quiet here in the store too. There are very few other customers.

The machine spits out cash, and Pankaj and I head toward the photo center. Zander sees us approaching, nods slyly, and reaches under the counter.

“Didn't know if you guys were going to come with all the crazy stuff going on,” he says.

“ Yeah, well.” I shrug, not wanting to get into it.

“Pretty disturbing stuff.” He slides the envelope of pictures across the counter. “Fifty.”

“Let's ring these up,” I say, placing Pankaj's box of adhesive bandages on the counter. “I'll pay for the whole thing in cash.”

“Good call.” He rings up the bandages on the cash register and then places everything in a white plastic bag. “So that comes to $7.89 with tax.”

I hand him three twenties. “Keep the change.”

We head straight for
the Elliot Center, occasionally glancing around to see if anyone's following us. But it isn't until we arrive at the building that we're stopped. Two guards sit behind a white folding table just beyond the door.

“Open your bag,” one tells me after he pats me down.

I glance at Pankaj, who gives a slight nod; we have nothing to fear from the rent-a-cops. They're only here to make sure we're not terrorists ourselves. So I open the plastic CVS bag, and the guard peers inside before letting us pass.

Pankaj points to the end of the hallway.

“Right here in the open,” he suggests when we get there, sliding down the wall to sit directly below the eye of the building's security cameras.

Once I'm seated next to him, I take the pictures out of the bag. The first photo is of a motel sign:
the manor inn welcomes you!
The next is a shot of the motel itself: one of those prefab, cookie-cutter buildings, the kind that look like the person who designed them had the artistic skills of a second grader.

“Did I just pay fifty bucks to have my uncle's vacation pictures developed?”

“I don't think so,” Pankaj replies, pointing to the next photo.

My breath catches in my throat. It's a picture of a dead girl—a child, maybe five years old. There's a hideous gash on the side of her head and neck. Her lips are violet blue. “Oh my God,” I whisper. “ You don't think this is real, do you? I mean . . .” I don't even know what I mean.

Pankaj takes the picture out of my hands and scrutinizes it. “It doesn't look fake.”

I shake my head and start shuffling through the rest of the photos. None of them are in a motel; most are in a classroom of some sort, but it's not a warm and welcoming school. There are no construction-paper letters or inspirational posters taped to the walls, no displays of student artwork. It's clinical, antiseptic . . . like our lab. The rest of the photos are mostly candid shots. Almost all feature a naughty-looking blond boy, smiling from ear to ear as he punches, pushes, or trips other children.

“Damn,” Pankaj says, “what is up with that kid? He looks like he's possessed.”

“What about her?” The very last photo is of a little South Asian girl wearing a frilly pink dress. She stands apart from the other children, who seem spooked. “Looks like a tough little cookie.”

Pankaj gives a short laugh. “She reminds me of my older sister at that age. That I managed to survive Nisha's reign of terror is a minor miracle. You know it's funny, this girl even looks like her—or maybe it's just the crazy in the eyes.”

That's when it hits me. The answer's so clear. “Pankaj, this is Figg's camp for the kids with behavioral issues . . . That
is
your sister.”

“What?” Pankaj seizes the photo. “No, it can't—”

“ You both spent time here, right?” I interrupt.

“Uh,
no
.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “I was not a camper in a program for screwed-up kids.”

I wag my finger. “ You weren't in the group for the ‘behaviorally challenged' children. But you
were
a camper here. You were in the group with Mara and me.”

“Kass, I
think
I would remember being in a camp with you and Mara.”

“I don't remember you being there either. But Uncle Brian told me you were.”

Pankaj's head shakes in disbelief as he continues to stare at the picture. “I mean, yeah, this does look a lot like Nisha. I
guess
it's possible she was here. But why would I have no memory of
me
being here?” He turns to me again, and his amber eyes reveal his vulnerability.