The equations are more complex than the Watcher can comprehend.
But one does not need to know how a rocket works in order to ride in one.
So he watches Redhead Number 63.
Watches and watches and rewatches and rewatches.
While waiting for the right time.
From the adjacent room, the Experiment groans.
“Patience, my beauty.
“Just a little longer.
“You will get your chance.
“Your chance to run free.”
The Watcher checks the computer.
The calculations use symbols he does not recognize.
A language he does not know.
The Watcher giggles. Thinks about the cage. Thinks about the past.
Some writer from long ago once wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Or from God.
“God is an equation that knows itself.”
Redhead Number 63 is going to learn that. As will 64, 65, and 66.
Just like Redhead Number 6 did. And 26. And 48. And the few others that have not died.
Taylor. Sasha. Sam. Holly. Bailey. Lori.
Learn, or die.
Or worse.
PRESLEY ○ August 13 ○ 2:25am
Something woke her up. A noise.
Presley peeked an eye open.
<What is that?
<It’s someone talking.
<Fabler?
<No. It’s a woman’s voice.
<Faint. Not a whisper. But coming from another room.
<Does Fabler have the TV on?>
Presley sat up in bed, staring at the closed door.
<Doesn’t sound like a TV. No music or background sounds.>
Presley couldn’t really make out any words.
<Something about a husband?>
She swung her feet over the side of the bed and crept to the door, pressing her ear to it.
<Silence.>
Presley considered calling for Fabler. There might be someone in the house. He needed to be alerted.
She drew a breath to say something, and then paused.
<Maybe it is Fabler. Talking in his dead wife’s voice. Like Norman Bates imitating his mother in Psycho.
<A ridiculous thought.
<But is it any more ridiculous than all of the other crazy things going on in this house?>
Presley heard a soft click, and then footsteps in the hall—
—stopping right outside her door.
She could sense the person’s mass, standing there.
She could hear breathing.
She could practically feel their heat, radiating through the wood.
<Fabler, doing something harmless?>
Or…
<Fabler, doing something psychotic?>
Or…
<Someone other than Fabler?>
The Xanax and Prazosin she’d taken at bedtime didn’t prevent Presley’s heartrate from climbing, until it beat so loud she feared the person on the other side of the door could hear it.
Presley glanced back at her bed. Hard to make out in the dark, but she knew where her weapons were. The KRISS. The Pitbull and Glock. The DoubleTap.
<So far away.
<I should have grabbed something before going to the door.
<I still can. Shouldn’t take more than two seconds to get there.>
Then the door moved.
Barely. Just a millimeter or two.
<Not the wind.
<Someone is touching it.>
Presley covered her mouth with both hands to avoid making a sound, and glanced down, at the opening where the doorknob should have been. For privacy, she’d stuffed a t-shirt into the hole—
—a shirt that wiggled, then began to slowly pull out.
Biting her lower lip, a scream building up in her belly, Presley reached down, afraid to touch the shirt, but more afraid to have it taken, to be exposed if someone peered through the hole.
Very slowly, Presley closed her sweaty palm around it. Clenching her fist tight.
She felt a tug—
—then the tugging stopped.
<What’s happening?
<Fabler never breaks his own rules.
<He promised to never come into my room without permission.
<But can I really trust the promises of a man I suspect killed his wife?>
The panic built, and built, until Presley began to hyperventilate and could no longer stay quiet.
<Footsteps.
<Walking away.
<Move. Move now.>
On shaky legs, Presley took three steps to the bed, dropping to her knees, scooping up the Pitbull.
She sucked in a breath and listened.
No sounds.
<If that was Fabler, he’d crossed a line.
<I have to check.
<I have to confront him.>
She cocked the hammer back but kept her finger on the outside of the trigger guard, walking back to the door, leading with the weapon.
<On three, I’m going to open the door.
<One…
<Two…
<Three!>
She placed her free hand on the t-shirt and gave it a quick tug, the door swinging inward, revealing—
<An empty hallway.>
Presley listened.
No voices. No sounds of movement.
She walked through the hallway, boards creaking underfoot, and passed Fabler’s door.
Closed.
<Should I peek through the door knob hole?>
Unlike Presley, Fabler didn’t stuff a shirt in it.
<I need to look.>
She began to crouch, then stopped herself.
<If I see him staring back at me, I’ll scream and probably shoot him.>
“Presley?”
She spun around, bringing up the gun, pointing it at the figure.
<Fabler. Holding a sandwich.>
“Didn’t mean to wake you up. I got hungry.”
<Hungry and talking in a woman’s voice?
<Or feeding a woman hidden somewhere in the house?>
“You want half?” He offered up a ham on rye. “Or are you going to shoot me?”
She lowered the gun, gently squeezing the trigger and uncocking the hammer.
<Say something? Or stay quiet?>
Fabler’s face lacked expression. As usual.
<I’ll keep this to myself.>
Presley turned and padded back to her bedroom. After closing the door, she stuck a fork in the jamb.
Then she put on her DoubleTap ankle holster before climbing back into bed.
GRIM ○ 9:06am
<All out of booze.>
Grim considered going through some of the garbage piling up around the apartment. Maybe he could find a few sips left in some of the empties.
<Pathetic.
<Too pathetic, even for me.
<But what’s the alternative? Sobriety?>
“Sobriety sucks.”
He said it to no one. But maybe, in the bathroom, the Osmonds heard and were sympathetic.
<So, now what?
Heather liked grass, but Grim never got into it. The Department would have frowned on that kind of thing, and drug testing always loomed over him.
<Do I have any codeine left?>
Grim had been prescribed opiates for various injuries over the years. But they weren’t in the medicine cabinet.
<Heather took those too.>
But the cabinet did contain a full bottle of mouthwash. And half a bottle of nighttime cough syrup.
“I’m not that desperate.”
An hour later, Grim got that desperate.
Two hours after that, he vomited everything he drank.
But, on the bright side, he did manage to cop a buzz.
And his puke was minty fresh.
FABLER ○ 10:23am
After a four kilometer hump through the woods, Fabler found a good
spot with plenty of trees.
“Take off the backpack.”
“At ease?”
“Negative. Close your eyes, take out the Espada and the Winkler.”
Presley didn’t respond.
<I should ask her why she got up last night. Ask her what she heard.
<But she hasn’t mentioned anything.
<If she really heard it, she would have said something.
<Or run away.
<I need to be more careful. No more night visits to the secret room.
<Wait until Presley’s gone to town before I visit Lori again.>
“You copy that, Presley?”
“Lima Charlie.”
<Loud and clear.>
“So what’s the hold up?”
“The Espada is the folding machete. I forgot what the Winkler is.”
<Jeez. When will she learn this?> “The combat axe.”
“Roger that.”
Presley closed her eyes and Fabler watched as she found both weapons in short order.
“Now watch me.”
Fabler then closed his eyes and did the same, showing Presley that it could be done double-time.
He opened up the Espada, extending it to the full seventeen inches. Then Fabler gripped it in his right hand, and the hatchet in his left, and approached a medium spruce.
Fabler pulled out a stopwatch, clicked it to begin, let out a grunt, and then hacked away, limbs falling and wood splitting as fast as he could swing the steel. The axe worked better on the thicker boughs, and the knife cut through the thinner twigs like they weren’t even there.
<It would do a real number on fingers.>
After forty or so seconds, the once proud spruce had been reduced to a barren stick. Fabler took a few more whacks at the trunk, and felled it on the eighth chop.
Blowing out a breath, he turned to Presley, who appeared somewhat disturbed.
“Did that tree piss you off or something?”
“Don’t think of it as a tree. Think of it as a monster with twenty arms.”
“You want me to hack it down?”
“My time was sixty-eight seconds. If you can beat it, you get the rest of the day off.”
“Hooah.”
Fabler started the stopwatch.
Presley did great on the limbs, swinging the weapons with authoritative grace, and actually was ahead on time when she began to attack the trunk. But she made the mistake of alternating blows with the Espada and the Winkler. When she finally dropped the tree, Fabler stopped the clock at eighty seconds.
“Can I try again?”
That pleased Fabler.
Presley butchered three more trees, but couldn’t best his time.
Exhausted, sweating and heaving, her knuckles bloody from scrapes against the branches, Presley admitted defeat.
“I’m cashed. I can’t beat you. I tried my best.”
“Trying is for grade school kids who get a trophy for just showing up. You failed.”
“Sometimes people fail. Fabler. That’s life.”
<She’s right. But sometimes failure isn’t an option.>
“Have you ever fought for your life, Presley?”
“I’ve seen combat. I’ve been in life or death situations.”
“But have you ever been in a situation, where if you failed, you’d lose everything? Where your life depended on it?”
“What do you suggest, Fabler? Holding a gun to my head and shooting me if I don’t do this faster?”
“I’m not the one you have to worry about.”
“Well, what do I have to worry about, Fabler? Being attacked by trees?”
“How about you let me decide that for myself?”
Fabler shouldered his pack. “I’ll meet you back at the cabin. Try to keep up. I don’t want to have to go hunting through the woods for you.”
PRESLEY ○ August 14 ○ 1:51pm
Presley laid in bed, exhausted. The cabin didn’t have a scale, but she could tell by the way her clothing fit that she’d lost at least ten pounds since coming to Kansas. Presley hadn’t had arm definition like this since her military days, and when she flexed her stomach she saw the faint outline of a six pack.
It made sense. Every single day Presley had been here, Fabler had exercised her for hours. Sometimes circuit training; flipping tractor tires, pushing a sled, beating on a tree stump with a sledgehammer, and similar pointless activities. But other times, there seemed to be some obscure purpose to her work out. Like listening to an iPod with white noise playing at full volume while Presley did shooting drills. Or, while wearing sweatpants, pulling herself through the house while sliding on her knees, using the handrails Fabler had attached to every single wall.
Stuff like that didn’t qualify as normal exercise. It was specific training for some purpose.
<Maybe some insane, warped plan, as Fabler kept insinuating.
<Like going to Colombia and overthrowing a drug cartel. Or heading to Vietnam and liberating geriatric POWs.
<Or maybe gear up and go off into the woods, where we’ll hunt one another.>
Other times, Presley believed Fabler had no plan in mind, and this was all some delusional, schizophrenic projection of how much he missed his wife.
<Lori.
<What happened to Lori?>
Fabler kept silent on the topic. The few times Presley tried to coax anything out of him, he stopped talking completely, once for the rest of the day.
<Could he have killed her?
<Or worse?>
For all the time she’d spent with Fabler, Presley had no idea.
<But I’m 100% sure of one thing; that guy has some serious issues.>
Presley rolled onto her side, staring at her toes. The delicately painted pink nails looked out-of-place on her calloused and blistered feet. A pale reminder of femininity while training for some strange, secret war.
She held her breath and listened.
Silence answered.
Fabler had taken to disappearing for extended periods of time. Usually at dawn. Sometimes twice a day. His excursions ranged from fifteen minutes, to over an hour.
He always left the Jeep.
<Disconcerting, him running off, not saying where he was going, or when he’d be back.
<But it gives me time to snoop.>
Presley hadn’t gone back to Fabler’s computer; she’d cut it too close last time. But she did toss every room in the house more carefully, looking for safes and hidey-holes and hidden panels.
<Everybody has secrets.
<Everybody hides things.>
While curiosity played a part—Presley still had no idea what Fabler actually hired her to do—she also snooped for Grim. He paid her three times as much as Fabler, and for some weird reason she wanted to do a good job for him.
<Which is messed up. Some sort of codependent crap, trying to impress the creep who lied to me.>
And yet, every time she stepped in front of one of Grim’s cameras, she got a small, exhibitionistic thrill.
<He wants me. He can’t have me. All he can do is watch, and pay handsomely for the privilege.
<He’s the co-dependent one. Not me.>
Presley still hadn’t forgiven Grim, and remained annoyed with him. Not full-blown angry, like she’d been before. But irritated. Like lovers who’d had a spat.
<Except we aren’t lovers.
<He’s a huge jerk.
<A huge jerk who is probably watching me, right now.>
Without wanting to, Presley recalled that night with Grim. There were two ways to predict if a man was good in bed; how he kisses, and how he dances.
Grim was a pretty good dancer, and a very good kisser.
For half a second, she considered indulging in some harmless exhibitionism.
<What if I walked into the kitchen, completely naked?
<That would blow Grim’s mind.>
There was no way she’d e
ver do that, of course. Especially in this house, where the doors had no locks. When Presley showered, she shoved a shirt in the doorknob hole and shoved a fork in the doorjamb, wedged tight so nutzoid Fabler couldn’t come sneaking in while she shampooed.
<It’s been a real trip living with that guy.>
So instead of provoking Grim with nudity, entertaining as that might be, Presley got up to search the one place in the house she hadn’t given enough attention.
<Fabler’s bedroom.>
First, she peeked through various windows to make sure Fabler wasn’t on the grounds, digging up his lawn again. After verifying his absence, she padded to his bedroom, the floor creaking under her bare feet.
Presley started her search under the bed, which had been made up to military specs.
<I haven’t made my bed once since moving in here. I’m starting to feel like a slob.>
Under the bedframe she found a plastic shoe bag covered in dust, containing nine pairs of women’s heels.
The nightstand revealed a Boker folding knife, some old tabloid magazines of the I Married Bigfoot variety, a dog-eared Whitley Strieber paperback, a flashlight, SPF 100 sunscreen, a jumbo box of lubed condoms, a large tube of KY jelly, and a pair of handcuffs.
<Intriguing, but a huge yuck factor.>
The trunk contained army fatigues, a dress uniform in a plastic dry cleaner bag, and a box containing medals and decorations. Presley’s eyes immediately locked onto the Infantry Blue Cord and Combat Infantry Badge. There was also an EIB, a MUC, a bronze star, and one she didn’t recognize; a star and laurel above a dagger with wings.
Beneath the decorations, at the bottom of the box, a well-worn photograph. A younger Fabler, looking not quite so psychotic, with a younger and surprisingly handsome Grim, arms around each other’s shoulders. They wore jump outfits, had parachutes on their backs, and were in the bay of a C-130, the open ramp behind them exposing the skies of the wild blue yonder.
<Obviously, the dagger medal is a freefall badge.>
Presley put everything back and checked the dresser. Male clothes in three drawers, female in the other three, socks and underwear and sweats and sleepwear and old t-shirts. She picked up one of Lori’s bras. Fabler’s wife had a C cup, thirty-six inches. Presley also found a bikini she wouldn’t be caught dead in.
<Not because of body shame, but because butt floss isn’t my thing.>
Beneath the swimsuit, a cardboard box. Pregnancy tests, a bulk pack of five.