CHAPTER 18
~T-minus 57:02~
There was something bent about the flow of time in Patmos, or at least that was Will's perception. The afternoon advanced at half-speed, and even slower with his constant glances over the horizon for the swarm of guards he was expecting, but in another sense it was marching at an accelerated pace, and he simply couldn't work quickly enough to beat the setting sun. The capsule was in the ground, not as deep as he would have liked but at least it was done and he could put it behind him. Ahead of him was a short drive home, which felt like a voyage into dangerous territory. Icaria Street was abandoned, the protesters driven away by security or otherwise defeated due to some combination of fear, exhaustion and despair. There were still police, though, roaming the streets in large numbers, cleaning up the damage from the riot and prodding into alleys and businesses for potential agitators. There were too many officers to be local - these men had been called in from the state, and Will could even spot the occasional lab security guard working with them. The town was theirs, officially under lockdown. Will drove at exactly the speed limit, knowing that his newly discovered local fame would do him no favors.
Home was a welcome sight after the rigors and trials of the day, a refuge from the growing madness. It was not yet 3:00 - the house would likely be empty for a time at least, exactly what Will needed. As he pushed open the front door, he spotted a cluster of tiny blisters on his forearm - the product of Aaron's military toy. "Great. Harmless, my ass." His first goal was relief for the irritation, which was already starting to burn and itch. As he passed Sam's room, he heard the faint sounds of movement coming from behind the closed door. "Sam? You home?" He knocked on the door. "Sam?"
"Yeah."
"What are you doing? School isn't even out yet, is it?"
"Ended early."
"Ended early? Why?"
"Don't know."
"Okay, this is stupid. I'm coming in." Pulling the door open, Will spotted Sam sitting on his bed next to a pile of ragged old notebooks, selecting them one by one and mechanically ripping the pages from the binding, leaving the shreds in a growing pile that ringed the bed. "Whoa, what the hell is this? Hey!" He grabbed Sam by the wrist. "What are you doing? These are your old stories. Have you even typed these up?"
"Not gonna." Sam wrenched free from Will. "Leave me alone."
"Yeah, that's not gonna happen." Will took a seat on the edge of the bed. "Okay, first things first. Why are you home."
"Classes canceled."
"Now why would they do that?"
"No students."
"Would you knock it off with these little bulletins? Talk to me like we're brothers and not like I'm some pest of a salesman, will ya?" Will picked through the torn pages. "Man, look at how old these are. 'Sam Scarborough, age 6.' Yeah, I forgot all about this. Do you remember this? Eh, of course you do, you remember everything."
"I guess."
"You remember how you got started on this? That counselor...oh, what was her name? Uh...doesn't matter. You know, though, the lady they had us talk to after dad died? She said it would help to write our thoughts. Of course, there was never much in my head. Man, I bet you've got the first one you ever wrote. Remember that?"
Sam's eyes sullenly moved to Will's arm. "What's wrong with your skin?"
"Oh, this?" Will twisted his forearm, studying the blisters. "Battle scar. Ended up at a protest against my will, got cooked by some kind of sci-fi weapon. As much as it hurt, I'm surprised it wasn't a lot worse than this. I'm shocked I have any skin left, to be honest."
"Protest?" Sam looked down at his hands. "At the lab?'
"You heard about that, huh? It was nuts." Will slapped his hands on his knees. "All right, we're off topic. Why did they cancel your classes?"
"Everyone left," said Sam. "Every period, there were fewer and fewer students. By the end of the day, they were calling off classes. The building was empty. It was like something took us away, and everyone else was gone forever."
"All right, that answers one question," said Will. "Now, why are you destroying all these notebooks?"
"Does it matter? They'll all be gone soon anyway." Sam looked up at Will. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't..." Will pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "...I didn't know what to say."
"Bullshit!" shrieked Sam. "You talked to everyone! Everyone in town knows!"
"That was different!" Will caught himself and lowered his voice. "You know, I've never had to deal with this big stuff before. There's always been someone else to do that for me."
Sam studied the remnants of the notebook in his hands. "It doesn't matter. It's all over, isn't it? It's all going to burn up and I've been wasting my time on these stupid things."
"Okay, I never want to hear you talk like that," said Will. "You haven't been wasting your time. I've wasted more time than anyone on earth, so I think I'd know. You have a skill, and some day that skill's really going to pay off."
"You don't believe that." Sam tossed the ruined notebook to the floor.
"All right, first thing, let's stop destroying these." Will scooped up the remnants of the notebook and all the others and gathered them on the bed, the stacks of pages falling over and sliding away from him as he struggled to organize them. "You know what happens when you tear up a page from a story? You kill the people on that page. No, really! They aren't just words on a page, they're people, and when you destroy the page, they die. I really believe that."
"Sure."
"Sure, nothing, I do believe it, and I also believe that you're going to make a mark one of these days. And why are you believing me all of a sudden? I'm the crazy, flaky one, right?" Will rose to his feet and lifted his voice in an epic crescendo. "Will Scarborough, always flying off the handle with some nutty scheme? All of a sudden, these people decide I know what I'm talking about. You know how it is, the press loves this shit. Bloggers are probably having a field day."
"Whatever."
"Know what? I have an idea." Will paced around the room, hands folded before his chin. "Know what this town has? A bomb shelter. You know that? Back in the day, they actually got government money to build a shelter in case this place got nuked. I don't know, maybe they figured the Russians had bad aim or something. But it's still there, underneath the post office. I bet they'd let you spend Sunday in there. Hell, I'll break in there if I have to. You can spend Sunday evening down there, rough it a little bit, and then on Monday we'll get lunch and have a big ol' laugh over this. Hell, we'll make it the whole day. We can come up with some excuse to get you out of class."
"In fact..." Will snapped his fingers. "Tomorrow. We'll spend tomorrow together. I've got no errands or anything like that, so we'll just make it a day. Watch the sun rise out on Kiyama, then get a bite on Amos Street. I always wanted to know what those lab guys ate, and now I have an excuse to find out."
Sam slowly turned his head to Will. "You mean that?"
"Damn straight I mean that! Hey, I'm a lot of things, but I'm no promise breaker, am I?" Will knelt down in front of Sam. "Now, I still gotta go to work tonight, but as of Saturday I've got nothing but time. And if you want to do something else, just name it. I'm flexible."
A tiny smile crossed Sam's face. "...Thanks."
"No problem," said Will. "Oh, and please don't destroy any more notebooks. Favor to me, okay?"
Will returned to his own room - their guest room, minimally decorated in Mrs. Scarborough's preferred rustic aesthetic - closed the door behind him and collapsed onto the bed. He had contributed little to the room since returning, only a few well-worn articles of clothing and his gear for the coming party. The remaining fliers rested on the dresser, alongside a roll of masking tape, a staple gun and a map with the town's busiest areas marked in red. The plan was to covertly hang the fliers after his shift at the Orientale, but this was before the chaos of the day, the controversy, the protests, the crackdown. Even possessing those fliers was dangerous, and there was no way to tell just how close a normal man could get to the lab with security out in force. There was a real possibility that the party had just been canceled.
Bzzzzz. Will's quiet moment was interrupted by the insistent vibration from his phone. Fumbling for the device, he caught sight of a new text message. It came from an unfamiliar number and was strange and terse: Front porch. Thoughts raced through his head as he searched for a possible identity. Sara? No, she wouldn't try to make contact like that. Someone who saw a flier and wanted to know more? Maybe someone from the news who saw him at the protest? He'd certainly given his contact information to enough people, it wouldn't be that hard to find his number. It could even be a trap laid by some Jameson assassin or a lab employee out for messy revenge. Will's curiosity was always going to overwhelm his survival instinct, but all the same he armed himself with a claw hammer - a relic from a phase of his life in which he envisioned himself a carpenter - before going to the door.
There was no mob waiting outside the door, no armed killer - or at least none was visible through the front window. Will nudged the door open, keeping the hammer low behind his back. The lack of gunfire or angry voices was already a good sign. There was one person waiting on the porch, a vaguely familiar face. She was very much the girl-next-door type, the kind of girl Will would have pined after when he was younger - unassuming but attractive, long and unkempt brown hair, a look of casual whimsy on her fair face. Her disheveled look seemed more a choice than anything, the look of someone confident enough that she had no need to put on airs for the public.
"Will Scarborough?" The woman sized him up with a skeptical smirk. "Yeah, there's no mistaking you."
"Thanks."
"I never said it was a compliment." The woman glanced at Will's hand. "What, did I catch you in the middle of home repairs?"
"What? Oh…" Remembering his makeshift armament, Will cast the hammer to the ground. "Yeah, I was in the middle of…it's not a big deal."
"Right."
"So…" Will scratched his head. "…Did I miss something? How the hell do you know me?"
"You know how it is - your picture hits the internet, and an hour later everyone knows who you are." The woman brushed her hair aside. "You don't remember me, do you? We've met."
"I don't think so," said Will. "I've got a pretty good head for faces."
"You don't have a good head for much."
"So what, you came by and send me a weirdo text just to insult me?"
"Sorry, I guess we got off to a bad start. Diana." She sighed at Will's blank expression. "My cousin was in the state Scholar's Bowl? You were there screaming like a drunk at a football game?"
"Oh, yeah," said Will. "The one who was with the boy wonder. Um...Liston, right?"
"It's Jameson, now."
"Oh." Will slapped himself in the forehead. "...Oh! Jameson! So you're married to, uh..."
"That's the one, right." Diana chuckled to herself. "You know, you'd think I'd be used to dealing with slow people by now."
"The big man's kid, huh?" said Will. "Wow, it must be really something having that kind of connection."
"Same one you have," said Diana. "You met him. He was in your restaurant two days ago. Tipped you off to that Opp-Leak guy who was gathering intel."
"That was Ben Jameson?" Will leaned against the door frame, trying to look casual. "Hey, what do you know."
"Look, we're all sorry about the cloak-and-dagger stuff-"
"We?"
"Yeah, we. As in more than one of us. I didn't know who was home, and I don't know what your family knows, and it's probably better if they don't know too much."
"That's...odd." Will's eyes darted from Diana to the street behind her and back, sweeping the area for a threat he was now sure must be present. "...So what's going on?"
"Listen, you know what's going on, better than anyone else. I'm just here to deliver a warning. Ben would have come himself, but he's trying to keep a low profile. He's been estranged from the old man for years, and their last meeting wasn't exactly pleasant." Diana pushed a small object into Will's hand. "Here. It's a gift."
Will couldn't make heads or tails of the "gift" - a plain plastic box roughly the size of a small cell phone, featureless save for a single protruding button, a crudely assembled circuit board peeking through the gaps in the case. "What on Earth is this thing?"
"A homemade life saver," said Diana. "We don't know what's going to go down and a phone number is too risky, so I had a friend make this. If you get in serious trouble, just press the magic button. We'll all get a text and a bead on your location. Someone will show up in five minutes. Hopefully that will be fast enough."
"Trouble?" said Will. "What kind of trouble?"
"In light of what's been going on, we're not putting anything past these guys," said Diana. "Joshua Jameson doesn't normally go for the rough stuff, but this project is a lot more important than anything he's done before. At this level, nothing's off the table. Having a Jameson show up on your behalf might be the only thing that saves you."
"...Thanks." Will pocketed the device. "I really can't imagine needing this, though. The Jameson boys have beaten me up enough."
"So you might think. You have any plans for tomorrow?"
"Yeah, I'm spending the day with my little brother."
"That's sweet, but watch your back. Jameson himself is going to be in town, and that means more security." Diana turned to leave. "I gotta get back, check on Becky, make sure everything's fine. Just keep your head down, all right?"
"Wait!" said Will as loudly as he dared. "How did you get my number?"
"Common contacts," said Diana.
Will nodded, less in understanding than out of a desire to move the conversation forward. "Uh...do you know Sara Mills?"
"Everyone involved with the Jamesons knows Sara Mills."
"Right." Will rolled his tongue around in his mouth, quietly practicing his inquiries. "Then you know...Roderick Butler?"
"Yeah, I've met him." Diana bit her lip, suppressing a laugh. "You really are clueless, aren't you?"
"No...Well, maybe about certain things."
"Well, stay clueless about those things, you'll have a longer life." Diana gave a flick of her hair as she walked away. "If it's dangerous to ask questions about Jameson, then it's suicide to ask questions about Zhang."
Will backed into the house, closing and locking the door behind him with as much speed and grace as he bulky hands could manage. Sensing movement behind him, he spun to the hall, spotting only Sam standing just outside of his room. "Shit, Sam, don't sneak up on someone like that?"
"I wasn't trying to," said Said. "Was someone there?"
"Nah, just...getting some air."
"So we're still going out tomorrow?"
"Yeah, of course. The hill, and then the new part of town."
"And the lab?"
Will wagged a finger at Sam. "Better stay away from that place, Sam. Seriously, you take your life in your hands going there."