Security(65)

Brian struggles to get his breathing under control. Tessa, only her limbs visible, bats weakly at his waist. When the sprinklers shut off and the arc lights dim to a soothing brightness level, Brian pops to standing with an obvious excess of adrenaline and hurls the gun. He barks a “Yiiiaaaah!” as he does it—guttural, primordial. The .45 crashes through a hedge an admirable distance away.

Tessa remains splayed on the Thinker, robbed of her wind. Brian asks if she’s okay, okay. Okay, okay? It’s evident as Tessa stands that she is not particularly okay. She’s limping now. Brian puts her good arm over his shoulder. She says, “I’m okay” in concert with Brian saying, “You okay?” The overlap comforts them as they try to determine which way is out.

I activate a program I’m especially proud of: an algorithm that senses motion above three feet of height, generates the most efficient path to the maze’s entrance, and illuminates footlights, guiding the lost. The footlights glow a pale, restful blue. They pulse on and off slowly, to slow a panicked heart rate. I theorized the footlights would be crucial in the event that security personnel were occupied by a hotel--wide emergency, and a guest was stranded in the maze, and no one was available to conduct a search or give verbal instructions. An earthquake, say, or a fire. Backup systems of backup systems are indispensable should fail--safes fail.

And my voice will fail me if I attempt to speak. Because of what she says as she speaks.

“We have to get to him,” says Tessa. She’s crying. Probably shock. Probably not outsized concern. “He’s hurt—he must be. He’d have killed them both if he wasn’t. We’ve gotta get up there.”

“We will,” Brian says. “Shh. Shh.”

“He’s unstoppable. He’s amazing, Bri. He’s a black belt in I don’t even know how many—there’s no way—if he saw me in danger, he’d—those guys would’ve been dead before they touched a hair on my head, so he must—he’s, he’s—” She’s getting hysterical. It’s like music to me.

Brian stops her and makes her look at him. Dripping wet and disheveled in the pulsing blue light, he cups Tessa’s face, contorted by grief—grief for me, and I’m alive; I’m here. I begin activating the speakers again, to tell her what I’ve tried to tell her at least a hundred times in words and deeds she refused to hear or see.

Until Brian says, “He saved you. He saved both our lives. Wherever he is, however he is, he has that. So he’s all right. It’s all right, Tess.”

My forehead isn’t paralyzed. It makes ripples like a pond with a pebble thrown in when I’m at a loss for thought. Or when the thought is a terrible thing. I exhale what feels like a weight I never knew how to hold up. Not strong enough, amazingly. I’m not all right. I’m not, but he’s right, I should be. Brian’s right.

Brian’s telling her, “He loves you, Tess. He forgives you. He understands.”

In my virtual override diagram, the maze is unoccupied. Every place is unoccupied. I’m standing where they’re standing, but they’re not here, and I’m not there. The pencil twiddles in my mouth. The counter under my head seems softer; it seems like a pillow. Randomly, I think of the creek by the house in Indiana. Watching my brother and sister play. I had no friends of my own, but that never bothered me. I preferred to watch them, make sure they were safe as they swam. My sister wore bright orange water wings. My brother liked to splash her, but I’d tell him to knock it off. Sometimes, I’d tip my face to the sun and close my eyes. I’d think about time, and about how I didn’t need to understand it. He who serves doesn’t always have to understand.

I reset the override system so that I’m standing in the driveway, and I look up at Manderley, its vacuous inner light. I pass through thirty emergency vehicles. Through the police, who call for Tessa and Brian to halt when they stagger into open space.

I walk alone through digitally spotless, of--course--unlocked front doors. Through a pristinely clean white foyer with plump sofas and an inviting fireplace, a gratuitous chandelier. Past a marble check--in counter. To an empty office full of steady silence. I enter the dull, beige secret elevator. And I close it behind me.

A minute and four seconds later, Tessa’s pounding on the office wall with the one arm that works. Brian’s beside her, pounding with her, but looking askance at her, worried. A duo of paramedics waits by Franklin’s desk with tackle boxes of stuff Tessa badly needs. She’s sheet white and can hardly stand. She screams my name at the top of her lungs. I mutter, “Brian, you idiot, get her out of here,” but the words come out mush, because I’m weeping.

“He must be unconscious!” Tessa says. “He might be bleeding out! Help! Help us! We have to help him!”

One of the paramedics loads a syringe, eyeing Tessa with concern. Brian gets Tessa in a bear hug from behind and sits on Franklin’s desk. The paramedic administers a sedative to Tessa’s neck. Brian speaks in Tessa’s ear. I can’t hear what he says, but I can hear Tessa’s arguments to what he says: “He’s alive. Help, help’m.”

Several dozen patrolmen crowd the foyer, their voices a wreck of echoes, discussing how vital it is that they don’t contaminate the crime scene while they tromp through blood, turn around, and request that the crime scene photographer take pictures of their shoeprints for evidence. A beefy cop slips on Delores’s liver like it’s a banana peel and falls on his butt by the mantel. It shouldn’t be hilarious, but I laugh. The pencil slips from my mouth, and I let it. I watch it roll down the counter and listen to its progress—it reminds me of the playing cards in my bicycle’s spokes when I was a boy. It nears the counter’s edge. I blink and it’s gone.