Broken Pixels (Broken Realms, #4)

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4For a second Mara froze. Blankly she looked at Ping, who remained in the doorway of the concrete-walled storage room next to Sam. Still standing behind the gurney, she extended her arm over the body and held out the phone, so they could see the screen.

“Is that a text message from Cam?” Ping asked.

Mara nodded. “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in a hurry. Get him out of here? Repair him? He hasn’t called, and he’s got no head to talk to this time.”

Sam pointed to the body and said, “Hit Reply and ask him.”

“Duh.” Mara rolled her eyes and typed on the screen What do you need me to do? I will do my best to hurry. She hit Send.

She stared at the headless body on the gurney and hefted the phone in her hand as if the motion would speed a response. After a moment the phone vibrated again. On the screen the message read Return to Repository 97210. Hurry. She read it aloud, then glanced at Ping and asked, “Repository?”

Ping shook his head. “Some manner of storage facility? Since he is asking to be returned to it, he’s not referencing this storage room.” Glancing at the phone, he said, “Ask him.”

Mara typed on her phone Repository?

After another short wait, the phone vibrated again. Mara read the response. Cameron Lee, Receptacle 7531-12-7250. Return to Repository 97210. Hurry. She frowned and said, “That’s not very much help.”

She typed on her phone What repository are you referring to? and hit Send.

Ping was about to say something when the phone vibrated again. She looked at the screen and said, “It’s the same message again, repeated verbatim. It looks like it could be some kind of automated error message. Maybe Cam set it up to ping my Wi-Fi signal, and, when I got close enough, my phone received it.”

“Why didn’t he just call again?” Sam asked.

“Maybe he couldn’t. Before his head was taken, he was concerned about the weakness of the signal between his head and torso. He said it would eventually degrade to the point that he would have the personality of a toaster. It looks like he might be there, if all he can do is send the same message over and over. Maybe I can do something to help him, make some repair to his body that will enable him to give us a little more information. Where are my tools?”

Sam held up the book bag. “Your pack mule, at your service.”

As she reached for the bag, her phone rang. Her heart jumped, thinking that Cam might have found a way to communicate, but, when she glanced at the tiny screen, it read Bohannon. She held up a finger, then used it to tap the screen.

“Hello, detective,” she said.

Concern in his voice, Bohannon said, “Where are you right now?”

“We’re in the storage room at the hospital. As soon as I got into the room, Cam sent me a—”

“You’ve got to get out of there. I just found out that Pirelli and his folks are at the hospital right now, meeting with some of the administrators. They will probably show up down there any minute.”

“Hold on,” Mara said. She looked at Ping and Sam and said, “Come in here and close the door.”

In the distance, a muffled pinging sound bounced off the concrete walls in the cavernous parking garage. Sam leaned out the door, looked over his shoulder and said, “Someone is coming in the elevator.”

“Shut the door,” Mara said. She pointed to the locking mechanism in Sam’s hand and said, “Hold that up for a minute.” Mara narrowed her eyes at it, and it disappeared in a flash of light. A moment later, light shot through the hole in the door, and the mechanism appeared, mounted properly where it belonged. Sam pushed the door closed until it clicked.

“Presumably someone with the access code will be escorting Pirelli here,” Ping said.

A look of panic swept over Mara’s face, but it was quickly replaced by determination. She held out her hand, and a bolt of lightning shot from her palm, striking the doorknob next to Sam’s hip.

He jumped and yelled, “Hey! Watch it with that!”

Mara nodded toward the door and said to him, “Check to see if it’s jammed, just to make sure.”

Sam looked at the smoking doorknob and said, “I’m not touching that. It’s melted metal. We’ll just have to take our chances.”

Bohannon shouted through the phone, “What’s going on?”

Mara put the phone to her ear. “We’re not sure. Someone came down in the elevator, and we’re locked in the storage room with Cam’s body. It’s probably just an employee getting to their car in the garage.”

“You guys need to leave. If Pirelli sees one of you near that robot, he’ll probably hold you for questioning or maybe for a whole lot more than that. There won’t be any lenient judges or technicalities to bail you out this time.”

“Okay,” Mara said. “I’ll call you later when we’re not in hiding.”

“Just don’t let him see you with the robot,” Bohannon said, as Mara tapped the End icon on the phone.

She walked around the gurney and toward the door, where Sam and Ping stood with their ears to it. Sidling up to them, she listened as footfalls echoed in the garage. The noise seemed to move from the elevator, past the storage room door and fade away in some distant corner of the garage. All three of them exhaled and straightened. Mara walked back to the gurney.

“Let’s just roll him to my car. Maybe we can take him to Ping’s warehouse. That way, I can work on him, and we can figure out how to better communicate without having to worry about the feds. You guys think that will work?”

Four distinct beeps came through the wall next to the door, followed by a rattle of the doorknob. Sam and Ping jumped, then slinked over to stand next to Mara, who was frozen with a painful grimace on her face as she eyed the doorknob. It didn’t turn. After another rattle, three pounding knocks reverberated from the door and bounced off the concrete walls of the storage room.

Mara held her breath and listened.

Muffled, outside the door, a man’s voice said, “The code she gave me doesn’t work. Let’s go back and get her to come down here with us.”

The footsteps faded away, followed by the ping of the elevator doors.

“We need to hurry,” Mara said. She grabbed one end of the gurney and swung it around so the other end faced the door.

Ping raised a hand. “Perhaps there’s another option that would be more efficient and effective in this circumstance.”

“What?” Mara asked.

“I was going to discuss this possibility after we left here, but, given the circumstances, you might want to consider it immediately.”

“What? What?!” Mara said. “We don’t have time for a strategy session.”

Ping pointed to the gurney and said, “I’m thinking this repository that Cam referenced is likely to be in his own realm, perhaps where he needs us to take him in order to save him. Certainly there is no such place in this realm.”

Mara looked suspicious but said, “That makes sense, I guess. Go on.”

“Instead of taking the chance of getting caught pushing a headless body on a gurney through the garage and then deciding we need to take him to his home, why don’t we just return him to his realm now, from here? You said you have the Chronicle in the book bag.”

Sam lifted the bag and unzipped it.

Mara shook her head. “Jeez, Ping. I don’t know. One minute you are telling me to take some time to think things through, and now you are saying pop into another realm on a whim.”

“It’s not a whim, Mara. Remember the haiku, Continuity now travels through other realms. Therefore, so must you. You wondered the other night to which realm should you book a ticket. Here’s your answer. You said the Aphotis may have used Cam’s head as a guide to his realm. Circumstances and Cam’s body are pointing us in that direction. It seems logical to use the Chronicle and go there.”

“Okay, okay, stop piling on with the facts. The least I can do is take Cam home, considering how much he helped us when we needed it. But that doesn’t mean you and Sam need to go. I can do this alone,” she said.

Four beeps emitted from the wall next to the door again, followed by a shake of the doorknob.

“You’re not just going to jump into your bubble and leave us to deal with the feds,” Sam whispered. “We’re going.”

“Mom would have a cow if she knew I took you into another realm. Remember how mad she was when I crossed over to Prado’s realm?”

From outside the door, a woman’s voice said, “It appears to be jammed. I’ll call maintenance. Wait here. Be right back.”

Sam said, “She would have never known if you hadn’t told her.”

Ping interjected, “Sam is correct. The last time you used the Chronicle, you were only gone for a few minutes, even though, to you, it seemed much longer. It’s possible that only a few minutes will pass while we are gone.”

Mara locked gazes with Ping. “Are you sure you want to do this? I could send you guys to the warehouse instead of taking you with me.”

“I think it would be wise for you to take me. The haiku says you must travel through realms—plural. That means there may be more than one leg on this journey, and I suspect that is not something you will want to do alone.”

A loud scraping sound came from the door. Through the crack between the door and the frame, some tool was wedged in from the opposite side. Three loud pounding noises shook the door and sent dust cascading down the concrete walls.

Mara cringed. “More than one leg on this journey? What does that mean?”

The pounding intensified, and loud metallic groans came from the door frame.

Ping glanced at the door and back to Mara. “We don’t have time to discuss it. You must decide.”

Sam held out the book bag. Mara reached inside and pulled out the Chronicle.

“Okay, let’s gather around the gurney and see if I can make this work,” she said.

Sam and Ping stood with their backs to the door, facing the gurney. Mara walked around to the other side. She extended her hand with the copper medallion sitting on her upraised palm. With an almost imperceptible squint, Mara concentrated, and the Chronicle floated in the air and spun. After a moment it gyrated both vertically and horizontally, increasing in speed until it became a blue blur. A bright blue light burst from it, and the blur melted into an undulating ball of glowing mercury. Mara twisted her wrist, and a sphere blossomed from the light, passing through them and filling the room.

Hammering continued from the door while the transparent blue bubble filled with lines and nodes along its periphery. Sam’s head craned in an arc as he watched the progression. When a node appeared above the center of Cam’s torso, Mara nodded at it and said, “There it is. Are you guys sure?”

Ping and Sam nodded.

“Put a hand on my shoulder,” she said.

As they complied, she placed her left hand on the gurney, reached out with her right and grabbed the node that levitated above it.

Electricity shot through Mara’s body, and, as if in slow motion, she saw the edge of the translucent bubble peel away from the lines and nodes, turning itself inside out and engulfing them. It collapsed on them in a burst of blue light. She felt herself in a free fall, her stomach turning, her chest compressed so that she could not breathe. She felt movement, velocity, but no wind. There was no sound either, as if she tumbled through the vacuum of Space. All she could see was blinding blue light, and all she could feel was the node in her hand and the hands on her shoulders.