Scatter, p.31
Scatter, page 31
Wenling’s upper lip snarled silently, and I saw Jonquist, at the end of the table, blanch and reach for his crotch.
“Cute.” Bent waved a hand and spoke to Things One and Two. “Handcuff Dr. Traine then cut him free. Handcuff Ms. Zhou and the Colonel as well. Prepare for resistance when we leave the room should their forces exceed ours.”
While Wenling sat in icy stillness, Things One and Two came for me, pulled my hands further back behind me on the chair, slapped cuffs around my wrists, then began cutting through the rope they’d tied me with.
“What are doing?” I finally blurted, my tongue feeling strange and swollen.
Bent turned to me. “We’re taking you all back to one of our labs. We’ll eventually let Ms. Zhou and the Colonel depart, maybe after a brief meeting with her brother. You, however, will be with us for an extended stay.”
Wenling still hadn’t moved, I thought. Then I saw the vague glint of something black and dark down by her hands in her lap, and I finally understood what she was about to do.
As Thing One pulled my chair back from the table so I could stand, I pleaded with Bent as I rose. “You don’t want to do this. Really.”
“Actually, Dr. Traine, I really—”
Wenling’s left hand grabbed the table to give her more force as she whipped her right hand in a slightly rising arc that drove her black-bladed knife deep into my gut.
Even expecting it, I yelled out in pain and staggered back over my falling chair and a confused Thing One. Then I was on the ground and Wenling was on top of me, with Thing Two on top of her, wrestling with her as the weight of both women drove the knife in so deep it felt like it was stabbing my spine, slicing my flesh and internal organs as the struggling weight of women ground it back and forth and all around.
Through my terror at the pain and wave of blackness, I smelled Wenling’s flowers and citrus and dank rage as she screamed into my face, “DO YOUR JUMP NOW!“
I complied.
36
Panic never helps
I was in the chair.
I was tied to the chair.
Was it a chair?
The ceiling above raced with color. The sounds around me blobbed and globbed through my ears and nose and mouth. I. Tasted. Burnt plastic!
My mind. I couldn’t hold onto my mind. My thoughts.
I couldn’t hang on. I was losing my mind. Losing my MIND!
Dissociate! Do it!
Now…
I was on my feet in a hallway. Gray. Concrete over brick. Sliding over brick like thick molasses.
Where? What?
Stomach queasy.
I tasted molasses.
A being of bones and pink flesh had my arm. “Come on, Dr. Traine. Let’s keep walking.”
Except her words were all slurred.
My walk was slurred.
My thoughts were slurred.
Oh God, I can’t focus. Can’t…
I’VE BEEN DRUGGED!
Help me!
HELP ME…
Colonel Jian’s hard old face was close to mine as he nodded like he’d just agreed to something.
The air shook with the terrifying sound of a massive electrical current dropping into a deep hole.
My heart seized.
I grabbed at it, scrabbling through my shirt and tie like I could rip them open and save myself. Because I also couldn’t breathe. My blood had all rushed to my head making my vision red. My muscles started jumping and spasming all over my body and I crashed to the floor.
“I…can’t…”
The stone under my cheek was gritty and hard and cold as I swept back and forth over it, unable to control my spasms, unable to speak anymore through the pain and frothing in my mouth.
But I fought to hold onto my consciousness. Last year I’d managed to survive three jumps in a row long enough to text Lena. And later, four jumps in a row, with short breaks in between them to adapt a bit.
I could survive this.
I could…somehow.
Then arms were under me, lifting me. Which had to be Colonel Jian, though how such an old man had the strength, I didn’t know.
Not that I could know much of anything at that point. Couldn’t see. Could barely think.
The blackness closed in.
I woke up wearing a surgical mask in some emergency ward.
“The Kaiser Permanente Capitol Hill Medical Center,” said a similarly masked woman with a British accent. She sat in a chair by my holding bed.
Pearl earrings and choker, black jacket over a white blouse. Wenling, of course, but for a second my heart had jumped, thinking it was Lena. That I’d been stupid enough to jump three times in a row, almost kill myself, and Lena had come for me. We’d discuss what happened. I’d share my theory that it was the amount of trauma I couldn’t integrate with three jumps, not the time. We’d reset our relationship.
“They canceled the meeting,” Wenling said, eyes cold.
“I’m fine now. Thanks for asking.”
“The doctor was in five minutes before you woke up. He said all your signs were normal and you have no indications of damage. Did you fake the heart attack?”
“No. Lena never told you about these?”
Wenling frowned. “She did not.”
“I guess you weren’t as close as you thought.”
Inside, the fact Lena had kept at least this just between us made me absurdly happy, but I squelched it to deal with more pressing matters. Seeing the thinness of the cloth privacy screen that separated us from the view of staff and other patients, I lowered my voice. “We don’t want to meet Bent in a SCIF. Or anywhere no one else can see us.”
“Because…” She stopped and her angry eyes open wider in understanding. She lowered her voice, too. “Who is ‘Bent?’”
“The guy in charge of SCATTER that you’ve been talking to. Dr. Uwe Bent.” I spelled Uwe for her.
She nodded. “What happened?”
“Which time?”
“How many times?”
“Three so far.”
“You are resetting it each time?”
I shook my head. “Your brother. Something bad happens and I jump. I escape. He finds me because Bent has as many people watching us in the Capitol as you do. Xiaobo hits reset and we go through it again.”
Wenling was listening intently. “Why did you not tell me before we went to the Capitol?”
“It doesn’t work like that. I only ‘remember’ the earlier timelines once I hit something that’s different. Xiaobo jumps and when he lands in the past, it causes ripples of change with everything he does because it’s all different, a new timeline. But if he stays far away from me, those ripples don’t affect me and I don’t realize I’ve lived a different timeline. You were right about that.
“At least, I think that’s what happens. Anyway, when I hit something where the ripples hit me, I remember the previous timelines.”
She gave a single nod, understanding immediately something that had totally blown my mind and that I still had a hard time working through. It had to be all those years dealing with her brother’s jumps. She couldn’t be that much smarter than me.
Then she hit me with the question I thought I’d danced past. “What bad things happened?”
You sold me out, I wanted to say bluntly. And you knifed me. Again.
But I wasn’t in a position where I could separate myself from her and still access Bent. And as much as I never wanted to see that monster again, he was the way to Kenny and Kansas. So instead, I said, “Bent has no plans to negotiate. He just wants me. That’s what all his backup force in the Capitol building is about. The last timeline, I never even got to the SCIF before they drugged and abducted me.”
She looked at me closely, probably wondering how much of her own “negotiating” position I’d seen. Deciding I wasn’t planning to run, regardless, she reached down beside her chair, pulled up a plastic bag, and plopped it onto my mid-section.
I reached inside and found both my little Nokia phone and my holstered Sig. The phone, thankfully, still had a charge.
“I need to make a private call,” I told Wenling.
“Lena?” she asked.
“No.”
Wenling waited a moment for me to tell her who I was calling. Maybe she was also trying to find a reason I should not, or why she should be privy to the call.
When she came up empty, she gave a huff and stormed away from my bed, throwing the privacy curtain recklessly aside as she left the ward.
I looked at the time and saw it was later than I’d called Jude in the last timeline, but I didn’t know if that meant he’d be farther or closer to where I was now. When I reached him, it turned out it was about the same. When I mentioned I was trying to avoid another meeting with Dr. Uwe Bent, he sounded like he’d just shat himself. He obviously knew the name of the “genius psychiatrist” who’d run the SCATTER. There was no video chat to actually see that happen, but I could almost smell it.
He said he’d be by to pick me up in twenty minutes. I told him to wait by the front or circle the block because I had to shake someone first.
“Lena?” Jude asked.
“Why in hell would I want to shake Lena?”
“Self-sabotaging behavior.”
“Have you not heard a word I said about us breaking up?”
Jude scoffed. “I listen with my heart, padawan.”
“Well, get here in less than twelve parsecs, okay?”
“Cutting corners?”
“Dude!” I hissed. “The enemies’ gate is down!”
“Leeeeeroyyyy Jenkins!”
I laughed, hung up and called to a passing nurse, asking where I could get my clothes and check out. She said my clothes were in a bag under my bed, and she’d send the doctor around.
Two minutes later, I was dressed and debating whether to wait for the doctor or just walk out now before Wenling came back to check on me.
That choice died when a figure in running shoes and scrubs, wearing a mask and cap like he’d just come out of surgery, walked up to my bed and pulled the privacy curtain around us.
He sat on the bed beside me, pulled off his mask, and I saw it was Xiaobo, scowling at me.
“Details, yo.”
I dropped my head. “Shit. Of what?”
“How my sister’s negotiating to yank me back.”
“For me. Yeah. Sure.” I closed my eyes for a second, though that was only for show. I never had to reach for memories when I knew the where and when I was remembering. When I opened them, I nodded and whispered, “Here’s what your sister said in Timeline One, the SCIF, before I jumped back in time twice and you jumped me outside the northeast entrance. Exact words: ‘This is why we showed you what Dr. Traine can do. This is why you agreed to meet.’”
“That don’t mean shit,” Xiaobo whispered back, which I assumed meant he wanted to hear more.
“Your boss, Dr. Bent, replied, ‘Why would I want to give up one of my most eager travelers for someone who doesn’t want to work with me?’
“Your sister said, ‘Because Xiaobo is inconsistent, isn’t he? He gets tired and doesn’t want to jump back when you tell him to? And sometimes he does not understand what it is you are asking him to do. He has little education. He has learned his numbers but does not know how to handle people. He has few manners. People do not like him. But Dr. Traine is very smart, educated and polished in his manners. He can fit in anywhere. Talk with anyone. And he has the Traine memory so he can tell when things have changed.’
“And Dr. Bent replied, ‘All true.’” I stopped and looked Xiaobo straight in the eyes. “It was at that point that I jumped back in time twice to escape.”
There was a long silence as I watched Xiaobo. He looked emotionally collapsed, but then he raised his head and laughed nastily in my face. “He’s playing you, homie. Gonna take you and keep me, yo.”
Before I had a chance to respond, he grabbed my arm and…
37
The sales pitch
All those state flags flashing by on the Dirkson subway wall. Colors and shapes. They distracted me from the annoying sight of Senator Jonquist’s head in the lead car ahead of us on this little trip.
I was vaguely aware of Wenling’s floral and citrus scent from beside me and Colonel Jian’s stolid expression from his seat across from us, as the automatic train started to slow with a scraping, screeching, electric whine.
And all of a sudden, I saw myself getting ready to stand up, and myself leaning forward to speak with Colonel Jian, and myself stuck stiffly in place trying to process everything. All of the previous three timelines were suddenly present, all so clear that I wanted to scream with the sense of multiple-reality disorder. Which I didn’t get to control. It was being done to me. It was a totally other kind of trauma on top of everything else and I’d had enough. Screw social anxiety, social propriety, PTSD, and even basic survival instincts.
I jumped up from my seat even before Wenling and was out the door the second it opened and I ran up beside Jonquist, mirroring his shaggy, former quarterback walk, until he looked at me in annoyance. I yanked off my mask and shoved it into my pants pocket.
“When did you give up your soul?” I asked.
“What?”
“Working with a psychopath like Bent. You know what he’s doing, right? Killing people? Regime change? And using kids to do it against their will. Brothers and sisters. Old people. Refugees. He doesn’t give a shit. Do you give a shit?”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, you fucking politician! Is it votes? Money? Power? Or are you just an ideologically twisted, dumbfuck extremist who’s going to ‘do what’s right’ no matter how much it hurts the cannon fodder you throw into it?”
“Listen you little punk…”
“Go ahead, call over a Capitol Police officer. I’ll lead them to the SCIF. Sound good?”
Jonquist blanched as badly as he had in the last timeline when Wenling got angry. Probably made worse by the fact Wenling and Colonel Jian had finally caught up to us. We were standing at the bottom of the escalator, impeding the way of busy politicians and staffers who pushed by us, muttering.
Jonquist turned on Wenling. “How the hell do you know we’re going to a SCIF? I just set that up this morning.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement from up the far-left flight of stairs. A sweet-face woman in a dark-blue suit and her big-boned partner were moving against the crowd around them to cut to the down elevator just to our left.
I turned and pointed to them, calling over the crowd. “Over here, darling! Make sure you bring enough ketamine for everyone!”
The two paused, looked at each other, and kept coming.
Wenling leaned in close to me. “What is this about? Have you been here before?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How many times?”
“This is number four.”
“Should we turn back?”
“Definitely not! I’m all in on this. We’re going to make it work this time!”
Know your commander and what they want from you.
Check!
Know what you want.
Save my siblings.
Know what you are able to do.
Still figuring that out.
Know what you are willing to do.
Gonna find out.
A Capitol Police Officer was coming down the steps toward us as well, but Jonquist waved him off. “It’s under control.”
The officer stopped uncertainly and walked to one side of the steps. He tried to be discrete as he pulled up his walkie and spoke into it.
I grinned. “Figure we got about four minutes before this place is swarming with Capitol Police, Senator. Shall we proceed to the SCIF? I’ll lead.”
So saying, I started up the escalator without looking back. I did have a chuckle at the ketamine duo who were halfway down the neighboring escalator by then. “See you up there,” I whispered loudly at them and pointed at the top.
Then I was turning into the first of the long, dank concrete-over-brick tunnels that led to the SCIF where Dr. Uwe Bent was waiting. I hesitated just long enough to turn and confirm that Jonquist, Wenling, Colonel Jian, and the ketamine duo were following behind me. I suspected the Capitol Hill officer was, too, just a little further back. Probably wondering what strange form of insanity was brewing in the Capitol basement among this most unlikely gaggle of suited politicos.
Because I kept up a blistering pace compare to the times Jonquist had been leading, we reached the sealed SCIF door in what seemed like minutes. Jonquist came puffing up to the front and talked with the Capitol Security officer posted there. The guard stepped aside and Jonquist entered the code, spun the dial, and pulled open the thick door.
In we went.
I walked straight up to Bent and stuck out my hand.
A little uncertainly, he took it and we shook.
“Dr. Bent, I’m Dr. Jackson Traine. But you know that already, don’t you? You already had my office and apartment trashed, looking to get as much information about me as you could. Maybe shake me up a bit. Make me think you were connected to the CIA. Which you were at one point, until they figured out you were a psychopath.”
Bent nodded, amused. “In a manner of speaking.”
“DSM-V speaking. Yes. Explains why you and Zhou Wenling get along so well.”
The others had filed in behind me by this time. Except for the ketamine twins. I had the feeling they were lower on the SCATTER pecking order, possibly even just muscle for hire on this day in the same way Wenling had hired various Capitol staffers to follow, watch, and protect us. I wondered if they managed the bump they’d one in the last timelines where they’d handed her the knife and whatever else.
“Jackson…,” Wenling began in her low voice of command.
I looked at her. “No. Shut up. You had your chance multiple times to do the right thing and you failed. I am not yours to offer to anyone. And Xiaobo doesn’t want to leave SCATTER and go home with you. No judgement here on that, but again, see the DSM-V about narcissistic personality disorders to get a clue why.”
