The Hazing Tower (10 page)

She dropped off her pants and shirt and pulled the covers over her. She felt safe again — warm and safe and without pain. She smiled as she drifted off to sleep.

• • •

“What?” He had no clue what she was talking about, plus he kept staring.

“The video processing. It’s done. OK, I snooped. Fire me. Oh, wait, I don’t get a paycheck!” she smiled, playfully. “But no matter. Working for the best at MIT is well worth it.” She smiled again.

“Oh! The video, I had almost forgot.”

“Josh, you’ve done some weird studies, but eight hours of a young girl sleeping? What the hell.”

He dropped his mug and it shattered on the floor.

“Josh, are you all right?”

He felt weak in the knees and sat down on the floor. “What did you say?”

“It’s weird, watching a girl sleep?”

“No, before that; did you say eight hours?”

“Yes, a bit over eight hours, I fast forwarded; it gets a bit boring after the first hour.”

“My God.”

“What’s wrong? Who is she anyway?”

“Jinny, I’m sorry. I will explain later, I need to look at something. And I swear, it’s not what you think, I mean the girl.”

“I know. I was kidding. You’re one of the nice guys, Josh. Hey, lunch later?”

“You bet.”

She realized he was clearly distracted. He didn’t even look up at her; that was a first. She really liked him. She thought he was also attracted to her, but he was so tied up in his work.
Why do I always fall for the smart guys? They never have time for romance,
she thought to herself.

She closed the door and he loaded up the video on the local computer.

He almost passed out. He could feel the blood leaving his brain. There was Nikki, the one-hour girl, now the eight-hour girl. His hands shook as he scrambled for his phone.

Hunter got there as fast as he could. He had worked with Joshua for years. He was one of the brightest at MIT, maybe the world. Anything science related and he would know the answer.

Josh’s hair looked like a bird’s nest, as usual, and Hunter could swear Josh was wearing the same shirt he had on when they last met. Of course, Josh’s brains far overcame any issues with his personal habits.

“Hunter! Come in, come in. Sorry about the mess. I haven’t slept in days, not after what happened.”

“Happened?”

“I’m not sure I can believe it myself.”

He walked over and pulled the blinds down and turned down the lights.

“OK, let’s get to the point, I know you like that.” He smiled, but was clearly nervous about something.

He started the video. Hunter had seen it so many times it was almost as though he had memorized every frame.

“Two years I looked at this, two years, and it wasn’t until I was doing a lecture on space-time that it hit me like a rock,” Josh recounted.

Hunter sat up straight in his chair, on the edge.

“OK, we know the frames seem to flicker, right? We knew that all along, as Nikki is sleeping, we can see the frames jump back and forth,” Josh continued.

Hunter nodded his head.

Josh’s hand started to shake.

“The frames are not skipping, Hunter, that’s the thing. My mind was stuck on the wrong puzzle the whole time. Hunter, the frames are not skipping, they are bumping, and actually, to be clear, the frames are not moving at all. It was her eyes, Hunter, her eyes were the answer.”

“What?”

“OK, think of it this way, you’re in a car and you drive over a speed bump. Even if you don’t slow down, when the car hits the speed bump, what happens? It slows, or, more correctly, the forward velocity slows down, and that energy, it goes somewhere else. It moves upward. Some of it goes to the shock absorbers, the tires, etc.”

“Speed bumps?”

“Right, it took me changing my tack to get it. I focused on Nikki’s eyes, her eyelids to be exact. She is in R.E.M sleep. The thing is, to make a long story short, her eye movements are continuous; they don’t skip like the video frames.

“Using my theory, I reconstructed the video,” he continued, while starting the video. It looked like a normal video of a person sleeping. She looked peaceful; no more frame flicker, a clear video.

“I will stop it now.”

“Why? What happens?”

“Nothing, that’s just it — it goes on for eight hours.”

Hunter couldn’t speak. His heart stopped. The original video had been less than one hour. She had been in a sleep study, never able to sleep more than an hour. Someone mailed the video and Nikki’s name to Hunter years back. No return address or name. It wasn’t until recently he figured out it might be related to the bigger mystery.

“You’re saying she stopped time?” he asked out loud, as insane as it sounded.

“She didn’t stop time. She altered it, or someone did, something,” Josh explained. “Time was slowed, altered in its path. Think of the speed bump again, but now imagine millions of tiny speed bumps and think of the car as time. Time is moving over those millions of speed bumps, that is what makes the video look like it does, distorted, flickering. And for whatever reason, Nikki wasn’t going over those speed bumps, she slept the full eight hours.

“Eight hours of her sleep was one hour of real time, our time. It’s fascinating, it’s exciting; I don’t know how to describe it. Nothing like this has ever happened, at least never documented.”

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

“No, no, I haven’t had time to even digest it myself. I have so much more to do to understand, to study. Hunter, do you know what this means? If this is real, it changes everything.”

“Joshua, you have to promise me, for now. You need to promise to keep this quiet. I am not the only one looking into Nikki. I think you could be in danger if this got out, real danger.”

He nodded. “I may be a geek, but you remember my love for history, I know all too well that people have killed for much less than this.”

“Yes they have, my friend.”

They both sat silently for a time.

“You told me Nikki is dead? That she had a terminal genetic condition?” Josh resumed.

“She’s supposed to be dead, but she’s not.”

“What? If the data you gave me on her condition was right, that wouldn’t be possible.”

“Is this possible?” Hunter pointed to the video.

“Point taken,” Josh acknowledged, nodding his head.

“Let’s walk outside for a while,” he made a swirling motion with his hand, Josh got the hint.

They went out into the courtyard. The air was already changing.
It wouldn’t be long before winter took hold,
Josh thought to himself.

“Josh, back to Nikki; we know that a cab dropped her off in an abandoned part of town,” Hunter recounted.

“Did anyone see her leave?” Josh asked.

“All the cameras went out for miles, every street cam. We have no idea where she is now. But I’m sure of one thing. She is alive. Josh, we have her making a phone call almost a year later.”

Josh’s eyes flew open.

“Hunter, if she is out there, if she is alive, you have to bring her to me. And, like you said, she isn’t safe out there. If someone else knows about this, and she is alive, I can’t imagine what would happen. She has unbelievable power, and I doubt she has a clue.”

Hunter pulled his stuff together to leave. “Be careful, Joshua. I don’t have the same pull I used to have with the agency, I can’t protect you like before. I brought you into this; I’m to blame.”

“Are you joking? This is the most exciting thing that I could ever dream of; my life was meant for this. Something like this, it never comes without danger, history has taught me that. Danger and discovery always go together.”

• • •

The training was ingrained in him. Without thinking, he pulled the now rolling car into a ditch by the side of the road. He jumped out and popped the trunk. He always had his automatic weapon with him. He pulled out the machine gun, strapped it to his back and ran for cover.

He found a good vantage point and focused on the incoming vehicle. It had slowed and was approaching his position. Using the night scope fitted to the weapon, he saw what appeared to be two people. He focused in on the driver. Slowly, he locked on, then took the shot. The driver went down and the car slowly stopped in the middle of the road.

Just as Hunter started to stand up, the passenger’s head exploded.

Whoever was after him had just taken out their own man. This was bad, very bad. He pulled out his cell as he scrambled up the hill. He had to get to that shooter.

“
Music for Your Life,
customer service. How can I help you tonight?”

“Oscar Bravo 3-5-6. Lock it down. I repeat, lock it down. Taking fire, need backup, mobile locale.”

“Lockdown protocol. Tracking your cell now; backup is on the way.”

He hit the second number. “Hunter? Is that you? It’s 3 a.m.”

“Joshua! Now! Like we talked. Now!”

“Yes, right.” Josh’s voice was shaking.

“Josh, take nothing. Now!”

“Hunter, Jinny watched the tape. She saw it. She has been helping me with all of it.”

“Who? Then get her! Find her! She’s not safe.”

Hunter ended the call. He had to find that shooter and he had to get him alive. The terrain was rough. He was well trained but he wasn’t young anymore. In his youth, he would have already been on the guy, but he did have skills that come with experience. Some things trump youth.

He pulled out his pistol and covered his right ear. He shot it into the ground.

Stopping, he scanned the area with this night scope. There he was: the shooter jumped up from cover and took off running down the hill. Hunter could see lights below, coming from a small town in the valley, close to the agency site. He had been there a couple of times; agents tried not to show themselves much — rumors travel fast.

He took off running as fast as he could. He could see the man or woman now, and was starting to gain ground.

He was almost on the shooter when they both reached the unseen cliff in the dark and fell. They flew down and rolled; he lost count of how many times. He tried to tuck up like his training had taught him, over and over. They reached the bottom together, both up and running without any pause. This person was clearly trained, in no way a novice. Hunter saw the shooter closely as they got back up: a man, maybe in this twenties.

Hunter’s leg shot with pain, but he had no time for that now. It was slowing him down as he chased the shooter to a local grocery store, a place Hunter recalled from his few visits to the town. He closed in. The man turned to fire — and Hunter ran into him with full force. Run at them like they are not there. If you think they’re in front of you, the brain instinctively will slow you down for impact. You have to imagine as hard as you can that you are running through a ghost.

The store’s window glass shattered like a thunderstorm as the two men crashed through the huge window. Hunter stumbled back up, noticing he was covered in blood. He wasn’t sure and didn’t care if it was his. He fell back down again on the glass and tried to focus. He grabbed his leg pistol and prepared to shoot.

“Stop!” I’ll kill her! You know I will, Hunter.”

Hunter stood up and quickly took in the situation. The shooter had a hostage, probably a cashier from what she was wearing. The shooter’s gun was at the woman’s head.

“You know that is not going to happen,” Hunter warned the shooter. “You know my name; that means you know what I do for a living. I’m not going to lower my weapon.”

The scene went quiet, except for the soft crying of the hostage. She was in shock, her face white as snow.

“Hey,” Hunter shouted, “Your own men killed your buddy back there, in the car. You really want to work for someone like that?”

POP. The shooter’s head was gone. The woman survived only because she was shorter than him. Hunter recognized what had happened. Another sniper had taken the guy out. Was it CIA? He didn’t think so. They don’t operate like that. That wasn’t their protocol.

Everyone in the store now was screaming, crying, running.

“Get the hell down! Everyone down!” Hunter shouted.

He took cover behind some rice bags and thought about it. He had no choice. He ran back out through the now open glass, weaving back and forth while scanning the area.
POP!
POP!
Shells from another sniper hit around him. He dropped down behind a car. Hunter’s hearing had mostly returned now, but there was no sound, meaning the sniper was probably very far off; even with a silencer he should have heard something.