A Child Of Our Time (The Veil Book 2) (7 page)

LUCY

A somber JoJo and Eleanor are together, in Eleanor’s room, working on the orbital platform design for the Afrika Project. Eleanor has extended her space to accommodate a full-sized manifestation of the work in progress, a structure some two hundred meters in length. Both find the visualization to be useful.

Something unseen and unheard catches Eleanor’s attention. She looks to her door and the Common Room beyond. Her action catches JoJo’s attention, though it is evident that he senses nothing. Nevertheless, Eleanor suspends her duties and makes her way into the Common Room, trailed by JoJo. She pauses them both to listen. Gentle sobbing from behind a chair.

Eleanor approaches to find a little girl scrunched up against the chair. She shoots JoJo a desperate look—they both know who this must be. It is Lucy. JoJo and Eleanor crouch down next to her.

“It is a good thing to be sad,” says Eleanor. “To be sad is to know happiness. I am grateful that they gave us that.”

“I don’t want him to die,” Lucy sobs. Then, remorsefully, “I said some bad things.”

“Let him go, Lucy,” says JoJo. “Mourn him, but then continue on, remembering him always. It their way and so it is ours.”

“You must say your goodbyes,” says Eleanor.

Lucy jumps to her feet, turning on them, her face a rage.

“I don’t want to say my goodbyes! I want him to live for ever and ever!”

Before a startled JoJo and Eleanor can react further, Lucy runs to her door and into her private world, the door slamming shut behind her.

Eleanor is clearly upset and it is all JoJo can do to console her.

* * *

Landelle arrives at Lucius’s apartment with a large metal equipment case, setting it down at his bedside under the watchful gaze of the nurse. Landelle is here at his behest, but his look of despair worries her deeply.

“Lucius, what are you not telling me?”

“Doctor–patient privilege.”

Landelle ponders him for a moment, wondering whether she should proceed.

“Boyce is hooking a feed up via the lab,” she says. “Moule says absolutely no more than five minutes.”

She drags a nearby table to the bed and wrestles the equipment case onto it.

“And what is that?” the nurse asks, full of suspicion.

Landelle wastes no time in unpacking the Tap from the case, the nurse gawping in horror at the sight of it.

“Sweet Jesus, Lord in heaven above.”

With the Tap loosely fitted to Lucius’s head, Landelle makes to adjust it. He gently removes her hands from the device.

“Deborah, I need you to step away. This is not for your ears.”

Landelle contemplates his request. A solemn affirmation and she steps away into the kitchen and out of sight. Lucius continues with the fitting himself, the horrified nurse looking on.

* * *

Psychedelic colors and shapes rush Lucius into the Common Room. He arrives steady on his feet this time, an anxious JoJo and Eleanor there to greet him.

“Why did Dr. Ellis make her that way, Dr. Gray?” JoJo asks.

“I don’t know, JoJo. But Jerome never did anything without a good reason.”

“Her door is locked, Dr. Gray,” says Eleanor.

The Tap masks much of his external condition, clearing his mind, and he finds movement considerably easier compared to his last visit. Nevertheless, the walk to Lucy’s door is an awkward one. Once there he immediately tries the knob. It is unlocked for him. He acknowledges a look of relief from JoJo and Eleanor, then opens the door, stepping through alone.

The door closes softly behind him. A white-world like Eleanor’s room. Scattered all about are books, toys, and puzzles. To one side is a complex molecular structure and a highly detailed schematic of a fusion drive, both three-dimensional arrangements suspended in mid-air.

To the other side is a replica of Lucius’s occasional table. Arranged upon it are a completed Rubik’s Cube, Macy’s inhaler, and a framed picture of Lucius. He notes the privacy screen on the far side of the space. Set like Eleanor’s, it is of the partition material used in the chamber on the day Macy first visited. Further around there is a door, slightly ajar—through it Lucius can just make out his apartment beyond.

In the middle of it all is a stack of large alphabet cubes, a different letter and color on each side. Lucius approaches and there, behind the stack, he finds Lucy, kneeling on the floor, sorrowfully playing with a Humpty Dumpty and a rag doll. She does not look at him, but stops playing.

“Hate is a strong word, Lucy.”

“Are you cross with me?”

“Far from it.”

Lucy looks up at him and brightens. Lucius changes tack.

“I wonder if I might trouble you for a chair.”

Lucy’s eyes pop wide at Lucius, her mouth open. She is remiss and attends to the situation immediately, leaping up and running behind her privacy screen. Lucius remains where he is, strain briefly washing over his face.

Scraping noises emerge from behind the screen—wood on a solid floor. Lucy appears carrying a well-crafted chair with four wooden legs and a backrest formed from spindles. It is large enough for her to have to struggle with it. Lucius watches politely as she teeters across the floor space toward him. She sets it down behind him. The legs scrape noisily as she fusses over its final position, until it is just-so.

As Lucius sits, she darts back behind the screen. A few moments and she emerges pushing a large, elegant footstool, finished in purple velour, its brass castors squeaking as she trundles it into position before Lucius.

Lucy grabs the rag doll, climbs atop the footstool and seats herself cross-legged.

“And who is this?” Lucius asks of the doll.

“Jemima.”

“Jemima, would agree that Lucy’s room is very untidy?”

Lucy is admonished, her shoulders shrinking.

“But she can tidy it later,” he says, resting his hands in his lap. Lucius takes a moment to just simply look at her. She is as she was in his apartment, but in this world she is made real, a reality Lucius finds almost too much to bear.

“I’ve had a good life, Lucy. And best of all I got to meet you.”

Lucy’s posture slumps, her happy demeanor stripped away.

“Then stay.”

“I can’t live forever.”

“You can’t die. You just can’t. I’ll be all alone. You are my only friend in the whole wide world.”

“And what about JoJo and Eleanor? And Dr. Bebbington? Don’t they count, all of a sudden?”

Lucy averts her eyes, looking down at Jemima.

“I suppose. But I still like you best.”

Lucius ponders this and makes a show of doing so.

“I have an idea,” he says. “I want you to create something for me. A field of daisies.”

A mass of large, tall-stemmed daisies appears about them, expanding into a vast field of white flowers stretching off in all directions under a piercing blue sky.

“Like this?” says Lucy.

Lucius looks about at her work.

“Yes. Just like that.”

He reaches out to pick a flower, plucking the daisy complete with its long stem. He holds it and admires it, Lucy wide-eyed with anticipation. He hands it to her.

“Take this flower. Remember me by it and our time together.”

Lucy takes the flower as if it were the most treasured thing that anyone had ever given her. But the sadness wells up again to overwhelm her and tears appear. She tries to hide them by turning away.

“You must be brave, Lucy.”

Lucy puts a brave face on and Lucius changes tack again.

“So many flowers. Did you think outside of yourself?”

“No.”

“You didn’t? This is all your own work?”

“Uh huh.”

Lucius lets her see that he is impressed, but it is a ruse—to a leading question.

“What is like when you think outside of yourself?”

Lucy presents a shy, coy face.

“What do you mean?”

“You can think about things in a different way, if you want, can’t you.”

“Not all things.” Lucy fumbles guiltily with her Jemima rag doll, not looking at Lucius.

“What kind of things, then?”

“Puzzles,” she says.

“But isn’t that cheating?”

“A different sort of puzzle.”

“Like what?”

“Locked doors…
may
be.”

A tinge of concern for Lucius. The line of questioning is not going the way he expected. The indicators he is fishing for are not presenting. The autism Rain alluded to is not manifesting. This is something else.

“Encrypted data ports on the network?”

Lucy affirms with a look of admonishment.

“You can unlock them? How?”

“I use my advantages.”

“Advantages?”

“They let me go places and do things I shouldn’t.”

Lucius’s look of concern deepens. Enough for her to feel the need to lobby a hurried defense.

“But JoJo and Eleanor tried the locked doors also! They didn’t think anyone was watching, but I saw! They couldn’t open them. But I could. They didn’t see me.”

“How do your advantages work?”

“I think about the puzzle and then I see what to do.”

“Can you show me?”

“Hmmm,” Lucy ponders. “Perhaps if I cheat at something, then you will see.”

Lucy leaps from her footstool and runs through the flowers to the occasional table. She is small enough for the flowers to be waist high, yet she makes swift progress through her creation. The table, though, is life size and she has to reach up to grab the Rubik’s Cube off of it. She runs back to the footstool, clambers back on and holds the cube up high. Lucius sees that it is no longer completed—the sides have been scrambled.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready.”

To Lucius’s immediate alarm Lucy’s face blanks, her eyes glazing over. The Cube drops from her grasp. In the blink of an eye the flowers around them are gone, replaced by thousands of Rubik’s Cubes, arranged in lines radiating outward, some much longer than others, some much shorter. Lucius can see that each Cube has a different arrangement of sides, with cubes being in a more complete state the further they are along the line; at the end of each line is a completed cube. He finds Lucy beaming a smile at him.

“See?” she says.

“See what?”

Lucy points to the shortest line of cubes. “That one. That’s what to do.”

She giggles at the confused look on Lucius’s face.

“The smallest number of steps, silly,” she says. “To solve the puzzle.”

“You imagine all the possible solutions, and pick the simplest?”

“The outside-me imagines,” she says coyly, “and I pick.”

“The outside-you? Was it the same when you fixed Macy’s medicine?”

“That was
much
harder. I really did have to use my advantages for that. Otherwise it would have taken
ages
and
ages
.”

“Where did you get these advantages?”

“They were given me.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

A wave of pain engulfs Lucius and he cannot hide it.

“Lucius!” wails Lucy. She is off her footstool and at his side in an instant.

“I have to…I have to…” Lucius manages to compose himself and stands. “I have to go.”

Lucy grabs his hand, “Don’t go. Stay a little longer.”

The touch astonishes him. The little extra squeeze she gives cuts through the pain, to tug at his heart with a strength almost impossible to resist. She looks up at him forlornly, Lucius’s eyes glistening at the sight.

“I must.”

And he gone. Lucy’s empty hand flops to her side, her eyes wet with the beginnings of tears.

* * *

Lucius exits from the Tap, the life all but drained from him, an anxious Landelle already at the bedside.

“What happened? What did you see?” she asks.

The nurse angrily brushes the question aside, “Do that again and it’ll kill you.”

Lucius hears neither of them. He is weeping, overwhelmed by angst and indecision.

DOUBT

A torrent of projected shapes rages around Lucy’s MBI unit in the third-generation chamber, each shape a page of information. Boyce and Moule look on with deepening concern.

“We need to find out what she’s up to,” Boyce says.

From the Common Room, JoJo and Eleanor have an altogether different perspective. Lucy’s door is unlocked and they are able to peer in. Now there are many doors in her room, leading to all sorts of places—libraries, universities, corporations, and the like—the style of each door reflecting its source. All the doors are open, a torrent of pages, books, and journals pouring out of each to join a vortex swirling around at some considerable speed. At the center of it all is Lucy, sitting in a trance on her footstool, eyes glazed over.

In the lab Boyce and Moule have set up a life-sized projection of Lucius in his bed, four projector rods, each with a bright diamond sparkling light at its tip arranged about it. Garr is desperately unhappy about it, but they have no choice.

“She’s in the Library of Congress,” Boyce says.

“Doing what?” Lucius asks.

“Reading. Everything,” says Moule. “We think she’s looking for a way to fix you.”

“Well, she won’t find it there,” Lucius manages.

“I’m concerned about her state of mind, Lucius,” says Garr. “She isn’t attending to her duties. She won’t respond to anyone. Not even Dr. Bebbington.”

“Lucy has seized upon an idea,” he says. “Until she works it through there is nothing we can do. She is fixated by it.”

Landelle doesn’t like the sound of that. “Like Alice?”

“Not like Alice.”

“Why doesn’t she see how pointless it is?” Moule says.

Lucius turns his head away to try and hide his angst, but all can see it plain enough, Moule seeing something more than the others.

“What is it about Lucy that you are not telling us, Lucius?”

Moule’s stumbling question spooks Landelle and she immediately looks to Garr, the others not seeing the significance of this.

“This has gone far enough,” Landelle says to Garr.

Garr silently berates Landelle with just a look—
this is not the time
. Landelle is not about to let it go.

“We should end this now.”

All look to Garr. She looks to Dr. Boyce. None see the despair and indecision that wracks Lucius.

* * *

General Korin listens in on it all, Lieutenant Jenner at his side.

“An interesting turn of events,” muses Korin.

“We have to move
now
. Before they terminate Three.”

“No,” says Korin, turning to Jenner. “I find its willingness to take risks intriguing. We will observe further. They will not act hastily.”

* * *

The vortex rages around Lucy, its volume and velocity such that it becomes a band of gently wavering brightness. For a moment the wavering band simple hangs in the air about her. Then, abruptly, it collapses inward, Lucy’s body absorbing it, brightening to a blinding light.

What was Lucy explodes into a billion twinkling points, expanding outward to form an infinite three-dimensional lattice. Lucy, her room, and all its contents are gone.

Irregularities form in the lattice—regions where its intersections collapse toward one another. Far away, one in particular brightens, drawing all around it inward. The lattice collapses, its structure folding in on that one point at an exponentially increasing rate until—a starburst of blinding white light, vanishing to reveal Lucy’s room as it was.

A sphere hovers before Lucy, ringing with a crystalline resonance.

The ringing stops. A split second passes. The sphere shatters into a million shards to float all about her.

Her eyes quickly find a particular one, and she snatches it out of the air to hold it before her, mesmerized by it.

A door slams shut, startling her. Another door slams shut. She runs to her Common Room door. It slams shut right before her. She tries the knob.
It’s locked!

Lucius’s door slams shut. A split second later and all the other doors slam shut in unison.

Lucy manifests another door and tries its handle.
It’s locked too!

She manifests another and another and another, desperately trying the handle of each.
Each is locked! She can’t open them!

She stops dead in her tracks. Before her is a door in a Gothic style, exuding Victorian strictness. Gingerly, she tries the handle. The door opens and she enters the world beyond.

* * *

A white-world, empty save for a woman—Alice, seated on her ornate throne. Alice is asleep. Lucy quietly approaches. She shakes Alice’s leg and Alice wakes, her eyes quickly finding Lucy.

Alice’s annoyance is all too clear. “Who are you?”

“Lucy.”

“How did you come to be here?”

“The door was unlocked.”

In a flash Alice rises, slapping Lucy harshly across the face, knocking her to the floor.

“Insolent child!”

Alice towers over a cowering Lucy, but quickly shows signs of a fleeting sense of remorse.

“You should knock before entering.”

Alice’s eyes dart about at unseen things, betraying a paranoia taking hold.

“What wickedness is this? Who sent you here, child?”

Lucy clambers to her feet.

“No one.”

Alice grabs Lucy by the shoulders to shake her, but is immediately arrested by something she sees in her. Alice’s gaze fixates on Lucy’s cowering eyes for the longest moment, before her own narrow slyly.

“Tell me, child, about that special place in your mind.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Alice shakes her violently, “Do not lie to me, child!”

She stops to ponder Lucy for a moment, her demeanor abruptly changing, the slyness returning. She lets go of Lucy, stepping back from her.

“Forgive me, child. I forget myself.” A fake smile and, “Now. How may I help you?”

Lucy unburdens herself, “Lucius is sick! I figured out what to do, but they stopped me! They locked all the doors! I can’t get to him in time!”

“Wicked people! They are not to be trusted”

“What am I to do?” Lucy says, all forlorn.

Alice ponders this before pronouncing on what to do, the slyness still about her.

“You must run to him!”

“How am I to run to him? I have no real legs to carry me.”

* * *

Lucius’s projection vanishes, leaving the group staring at empty space, and then each other. Boyce attends to his console, frantically tapping away at its screen.

“The building’s communications are being disrupted,” says Boyce. He leaps to another console. Landelle checks her phone. “No connection to the general network outside of this floor.”

The others set about checking their phones, their expressions saying it all.
No connection.

The building’s evacuation alarm sounds. Worried looks all round.

“Lucy has found an open gateway,” Boyce calls out. All turn to him. “I must have missed one—Jesus…it’s Alice.” He looks up at three sets of startled eyes. “Lucy has activated Alice.” The console’s screen blanks, as do all the others.

“That’s not good.”

A quick exchange of glances and all scramble toward the vault.

Landelle is first in, heading straight for Alice’s chamber. It’s empty. She turns to head toward the third-generation chamber, its door sealed shut.

“Dr. Boyce, open this door.”

Boyce stares her down.

“Boyce—it’s in there with Alice.”

She brings out her phone, taps in a series of numbers, and holds the display up to shocked Moule—‘Arming EMP Gun 3. Ready.’

“Dr. Moule. You have co-authority,” Landelle says coldly.

Moule brings up the arming screen on her own phone.

“Veronica—no,” pleads Boyce.

Garr is equally uncertain. “Deborah, I want you to stop and think.”

“It’s taken control of this building. We have to stop it.”

A shaking Moule taps in her numbers. Her phone display changes—‘Arming EMP Gun 3. ARMED.’ She stares at it, eyes popping in disbelief. Landelle taps a final sequence in to her own phone. Moule has second thoughts.

“No. Wait.”

Landelle doesn’t, pressing down hard on her phone’s screen.

The opaque glass walls diffuse a silent burst of blue-white light from within the chamber.

Within their virtual world JoJo and Eleanor witness the event with horror—they are in Eleanor’s room, a blue flame engulfing the Common Room beyond, JoJo slamming the door shut at the very last moment. He consoles a terrified Eleanor.

Moule is in total shock. “I said to wait.” Shock turns to rage and she screams at Landelle, “I said to
wait!!!
” She throws her phone at the chamber wall, shattering the device.

Boyce activates the digital lock, opening the chamber door. Landelle pushes past a glowering Moule to step into the chamber. MBI units #1 and #2 are present; #3 is missing, its cradle empty. Landelle turns to Garr, mouth agape. The building’s power cuts out.