The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(45)

“Do you know another word for life abundant?” the professor’s voice buzzed in my ear. “We did not build this place. We did not give her the ring.”

“We can go no further!” the suited man cried. “You must be this tall to ride! You must have a body, and we refuse! We are against having bodies!”

“Against having bodies,” I repeated as the world turned fluid and ran like wet paint at the edges. “Against bodies. You’re anti…”

I blinked.

“You’re antibodies.”

We stood in a laboratory, invisible and bodiless amid huge stainless-steel vats and racks of elaborate industrial tools. Nedry and Clark were there, though they both looked younger, like they’d come fresh out of college, and they were in a shouting match with a man I’d never seen before. He looked too laid-back for the room, with his gray hair tied back in a ponytail and his open lab coat draped over ragged jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt. Their words were muffled, impossible to make sense of, as if they were talking underwater.

I felt us slide in time, like squeezing through a tunnel of vinyl coated in warm grease. Green droplets dribbled from a palmed plastic tube, blending into a cup of coffee. We slid through time again, five minutes into the future-past, and the coffee came with us. I shouted for the ponytailed man not to drink it, but my words spilled out in the shape of soap bubbles and popped helplessly on the floor.

“Hey, buddy,” Clark said pleasantly, rubbing the man’s shoulders. “You okay? You look sick.”

The man frowned, three shades of color draining from his face in the space of a breath.

“I…do feel a little nauseous, yes. Must have been something I ate.”

“You should go home,” Clark said. “Nedry and I can handle the next round of trials. Go on. It’s okay.”

A train blasted through the laboratory wall, trailing streamers of light. In its wake we stood in a desolate subway station lined with dingy olive tiles. The crumpled front page of the New York Post blew past my shoes on a gust of cold wind. The ponytailed man checked his watch and walked into the men’s room. We followed.

He was alone, splashing water on his face from the grime-smeared sink under the buzzing glow of a flickering light sconce. He looked at himself in the long row of mirrors, touching his pallid cheeks with shaky fingers.

Nedry casually strolled into the bathroom, stood at the sink next to him, and started washing his hands.

“Hey, Bob,” he said.

“Nedry? What are you—”

The ponytailed man—Bob—froze. He looked from the reflection in the mirror to the actual sink on his right. Nobody was there.

Nedry’s reflection turned off his faucet and shook droplets of water from his hands. The droplets spattered against the inside of the mirror, like rain on a windshield.

“Bad news, Bob. Word from the top. We have to downsize the team. Looks like you’re the first casualty.”

Bob’s hands flew up, fingers hooked in a ritual gesture I knew well: the first step of a warding spell. He didn’t have time to finish.

The mirror exploded.

Shards of broken glass sliced across his face and chest. One jagged chunk impaled his arm down to the bone, and he tumbled to the filthy floor. The door to the restroom swung open, and a man in a hoodie and dark glasses speed-walked in. As he got close, I recognized Clark’s face. Clark dipped down, picked up a shard of glass from the ground—one with a long, sharp tip—and bent over Bob.

He drove the shard into Bob’s chest, again and again, as Nedry watched with glee from a ragged chunk of mirror at the edge of the buckled frame. Nedry’s head dipped out of sight, then reappeared again a second later.

“Security guard just walked past the mirror over the ticket gate,” he said. “You’ve got twenty seconds of clear space between here and the loading platform. Go!”

Clark dropped the shard and dug in his pockets, pulling on heavy winter gloves instead of taking time to wash the blood from his hands. He strode back out as briskly as he’d come in, as if nothing had happened.

The smoke-faced men hovered on either side of the fallen victim, their dangling feet an inch above the spreading pool of blood and shattered glass.

“Find our father,” they buzzed in unison.





Twenty-Two



“What, him?” I said, nodding down at the body. “You want me to find a dead man?”

“He is not dead,” the professor said. “Find his grave, and you will see.”

I lay in Jennifer’s bed. She handed me a slice of orange.

The orange burst between my teeth, and the juice rolled down my tongue like a first drink of water after a week in the desert. Jennifer’s hand left little trails of light in its wake, but they sparked and faded fast.

“You steady there, sugar?” she asked. “Think you’re coming out of it now. Eat up. Vitamin C makes for a smoother landing.”

I didn’t have to be told. The last traces of the psilocybin pumping through my veins turned the slice of orange into a symphony.

“You get what you needed?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I croaked, learning to use my voice again. “No. Sort of. I’m not sure. What time is it?”

She glanced at her wrist. “Little after three. You’ve been out for a few hours.”