Chapter 16 #2
I let him drag me forward. He held a boxy black object with a pistol grip handle in his left hand.
Around us, at least a dozen people lay prone on the grass, twitching and shuddering.
I smelled urine and saw dark wetness spreading from the crotches of several of them.
People not on the ground still yelled and pushed at one another, but now they were trying to get away, frightened faces turning back in our direction.
“What did you—” I gasped.
“Stunner,” Lyle said. “Police issue, illegal for civilians, but damn effective. Now come on, Dad, before we’re arrested and they throw me in prison.
” He pulled me through the crowd. Some of the suits moved toward us, faces grim.
Lyle raised the stunner, enough to indicate his willingness to use it again, and the suits stepped back, a few of them raising their hands, palms out.
Then we were out of the press of bodies, running across the grassy quad toward a futuristic-looking building of smooth lines and glass, glistening in the early-morning sunlight.
“Our faces are going to be plastered all over the news,” Lyle said. “Damnit. I’m sorry, Dad. This got messed up.”
I didn’t have the breath to respond. We kept running, Lyle gripping my hand as though afraid I’d vanish if he let me go.
He took us up the steps of the glass building and shouldered his way inside.
The exterior glass was a two-way mirror.
No one could see in, but students could see out.
Lyle dropped my hand and we slowed to a walk, passing empty classrooms illuminated by the soft light of the sunrise coming through the glass walls.
“Where are we going?” My heart pounded in my chest. I worked my jaw a few times, hearing it click. I was nauseous from the punch and my ribs and back ached from where I’d been kicked. I’d never taken blows like that before. I was surprised how long the sick feeling lingered.
Lyle glanced at me. He pulled a white handkerchief from a pocket. The stunner had disappeared, tucked away somewhere. “Here, wipe that off. How badly are you hurt?”
I took the handkerchief and wiped my chin and cheek. “It’s not my blood.”
“Good. Come on, we need to keep moving if we’re going to lose the crazies and the reporters.”
“Who were those people?” Our footsteps reverberated on the floor.
“Crazies and reporters.”
“I gathered that much. The people in the suits…?”
“Reporters. At least some of them. Others were probably university officials. A couple others were government.”
“I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t see any cameras, or anything.”
Lyle glanced back at me. I saw with shock how old he looked. He was well over a decade older than me, now. My son. “Well, you wouldn’t. See them, I mean.” There was a heartbeat pause.
“Wait … government?”
“Interested parties. Advanced research. Maybe military. Since my papers, they’ve never entirely lost interest, although I think they’ve finally realized there’s no way to weaponize you.
Come on.” He opened a door and led me inside.
Beyond was a darkened stairway. He started down the steps, which were also made of glass.
“Lyle.” I stopped at the top of the stairs. “This is … Where are we going? What’s going on?”
Lyle, four or five steps down, halted and looked up at me. “I’ll fill you in. On everything. I promise. But right now, we need to get somewhere safe.”
I hesitated a moment longer, looking at his face, shrouded in shadow, his eyes as expressive as ever behind his glasses. Glasses. He was wearing glasses again. The lenses were thinner than those he’d had as a child. “Why are you wearing glasses?”
He blinked. “I liked them better than contacts, and I’m not a good candidate for eye surgery.”
“What? I mean … eye surgery, it must be, by now—I mean, advanced…” I trailed off. I was babbling.
Lyle’s look was intense. “Dad. Please. We need to go.”
I nodded and followed my son into the darkness.
We went down a service tunnel. Lyle told me the tunnels ran throughout campus, designed for maintenance workers to travel without fuss from one side of the university to the other, especially during periodic superstorms that would otherwise shut down the school.
“Superstorms?” I asked.
“Superstorms.”
We walked for what felt like miles, Lyle following first one passageway then another. He led us up a set of stairs. We exited into the basement of a different building. This one had stone floors, marble columns, and wooden walls with the musty odor of an old, well-used building.
“We’re on the other side of campus,” Lyle said as he led me up more stairs and out of the basement. We emerged into a narrow, empty hallway. “It helps it’s so early. No one’s here for work yet.”
“Where are we?”
“Humanities.”
I followed him down a series of confusingly arranged hallways and back into the chilly morning air outside. There were only a few other people in sight, all ignoring us. No fanatics throwing punches, no watchful suits.
“You hungry?” Lyle asked.
“Maybe. Not really. We just—I mean…” I blew out my cheeks. “We just ate.”
“Right. That’s right. It’s okay. Let’s just get coffee.” He cocked his head, his eyes focusing on something ahead of him. “We’re on time, even with all that madness. I’ll take you to the café. You can get cleaned up in the bathroom.”
“Café?”
“Yes.” Lyle stopped in his tracks. He turned and drew in a breath. He took my shoulders. His hands were strong, but he held me gently, like I might shatter in his grip. “Dad. Mom’s coming.”
I blinked. The world tilted around us. “What?”
“She’s meeting us at the café. I was against it. But she insisted on seeing you again. I couldn’t say no. It might be…”
I let out a shuddering breath, hearing the implications.
Amy.
“We’re…” I stopped. Cleared my throat. Blinked away the film of tears blurring my vision. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine.” He hesitated, his eyes moving back and forth between my own.
“She’s old, Dad. She’s eighty-two years old.
You … she’s fine. She’s healthy, she’s strong, but you need to steel yourself.
She traveled down from Portland just to be here for today.
I wouldn’t let her come to the quad, and I was right not to. But I couldn’t keep her away entirely.”
“Okay. Okay.” I let out a long breath, my emotions, already cracked, shattering around me. I didn’t even know where to start picking up the pieces. I could only nod, numb. “Um. Lead the way.”
We walked off campus. I stuck close to Lyle and thought of Amy.
What she might look like. What it would feel like to see her again.
The last time I’d seen her in person she had wanted me to sign the divorce papers.
We’d left things so badly. I wished so desperately that we hadn’t, and I wondered if that was how Amy felt, if that’s why she had insisted on coming to see me now, on this jump.
I tried to distract myself by looking at what was different.
Cars had evolved again. They were sleeker, whisper quiet, and tiny, barely able to hold two full-grown people.
They whisked back and forth along the roads, and I realized after a moment none of the people inside were driving.
In fact, I didn’t see a steering wheel at all.
“Oh, yeah. Automated,” Lyle said. “Pretty much the only way to do it nowadays. Safer, more efficient, all that.”
The buildings were similarly strange, cut from the same architectural cloth as the glass classroom we’d entered from the quad: lots of mirrored glass and sweeping, curved lines. Ultramodern, for the most part, flanked here and there by older brick and stone buildings more familiar to me.
We stopped at one of the brick-and-mortar buildings. Lyle led me into the warmth and smells and chatter of a coffeehouse. It was comforting, a place that could have been lifted straight out of my time and deposited here unchanged. No doubt the reason Lyle selected it.
My time.
“She’s still on her way,” Lyle said. “Be here in a few.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
He noticed my look, tilted his head, and his expression softened. “Oh, of course, sorry.” He reached up and tapped on his glasses. “HUD. Feeds from my link. A lot of younger people just get implants or feeds through e-tattoos, but I don’t trust either of those. These work fine for me.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll get us some coffee and muffins or something. Get cleaned up?” He picked a table for us and pointed me toward the back restrooms.
I bobbed my head and walked to the back of the café, ignoring the expression of the barista when she glanced my way and saw the dried blood on my face.
The bathroom was familiar and clean. I locked the door. Let out a shaky breath.
Amy was coming. She was on her way.
Eighty-two years old.
I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible.
All I’d managed to do with Lyle’s handkerchief was smear the blood around, leaving red streaks across my face.
I had dark bags under bloodshot eyes. My hair was tangled and messy, longer than I usually let it grow.
I’d been about to get a haircut before this all started.
Could I handle seeing her?
She’d remarried. Lived an entire life with another man.
My stomach rolled. A life I’d been a part of at first. Then there was a clean break.
Almost clean. And afterward, a life without me in it, a life I’d meant to share with her, but I had unwillingly abdicated.
Now she’d had more years without me than she’d had with me. Many more.