The Rising(42)

“But I have read it, Doctor—twice, in fact.”

“No, ma’am, you haven’t. Because the report I wrote back then was never circulated. It was sent back to me with a request to reissue, redacting certain information not deemed appropriate or professional.”

“And what does that mean, exactly?” interjected Lower Right.

“From a ‘scientifically enforceable standpoint,’ I believe was the phrase that was used. I suppose one purpose was to avoid a panic. The other, more relevant intent was to avoid the shuttering of the division that gave birth to Janus in the first place.”

“Am I missing something here?” challenged Lower Right again. “What division are we talking about?”

“Laboratory Z,” Donati said, speaking the phrase for the first time in years.

“We’re well aware of the existence of Laboratory Z,” Top Left reminded him. “The explosion, after all, destroyed it.”

“Laboratory Z’s existence, yes, sir, sir, sir, and madam. But not its true purpose, what it was chartered in total secrecy to achieve.”

“Janus didn’t exist then,” the woman in the top right added. “But we do now. Please speak plainly, Doctor.”

“Suffice it to say,” said Donati, “that our experiments were figuratively based on leaving bumps in the night. Until something bumped back.”





41

LATE FOR PRACTICE

ALEX DREAMED OF SHOWING up at football practice late. In the dream he could see the field, but no matter how fast he ran he couldn’t reach it. Like the world beneath him had turned into a treadmill, making it impossible to get anywhere at all. He kept looking behind him as his legs chugged uselessly, certain each time someone would be there in pursuit, with him powerless to escape them. They’d get closer and closer until they were upon him.

Except there was never anyone there.

The dream then dissolved into a replay of the brutal battle in his house, only his parents were still alive in the end because he had saved them. Then he was explaining to his coach that he was late for practice because he had to fight android-like beings who smelled of burned metal. Only it wasn’t the coach he was talking to; it was a life-size version of Meng Po.

Then he woke up and it was all gone, except for Meng Po, still grasped so tight in his hand that the statue’s impression was forged into his palm. His mother’s keepsake, symbol of luck.

Apparently it hadn’t worked very well. His parents were dead. And it was his fault. Somehow.

In other times when stress got to him, Alex focused on football plays. On reading defenses and calling an audible at the line of scrimmage. He reviewed hot reads in his head, being on the same page as his receivers when a blitz was coming. Recognizing a man-to-man defense so the middle would be open and, as quarterback, he’d be free to roam unhindered through the secondary. There was something incredibly fulfilling and cathartic about the sensation of his shoes pounding turf as the thuds of oncoming tacklers sounded in the narrowing distance. Those moments when the field was clear and all his life crystallized into a base simplicity where everything was perfect and nothing could go wrong.

As it had now. Badly. For real. A dream from which he wasn’t going to wake up.

“Alex,” a voice called at the edge of his consciousness. “Alex.”

A soft voice, soothing. Female. His mother maybe, not dead at all, all of that no more than a nightmare sprung from his getting his head rattled. He was probably still at the hospital, about to wake up in his room there.

“Alex!”

Louder this time, loud enough to rouse him. But he wasn’t in bed. He was standing in the shadow of a window covered by a flimsy blind that let the flashing letters of a motel marquee slip through.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked him, eyes moving to the wall crusted with peeling paint. “What did you do?”

Alex saw the drawings on the wall before him of monstrous machines rolling this way and that like a scene out of War of the Worlds. Like a giant page from the sketchbook still hidden in his bedroom.





42

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

ALEX LOOKED DOWN AND saw the motel pen in his hand, ink splattered across his palm and fingertips.

Sam couldn’t believe what she was looking at. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

“I … can’t.”

“But, then…” She let her own thought dangle, unsure how to complete it until: “This is what you were talking about in the hospital, when you asked me about not remembering doing something.”

Alex dropped the pen, as if it were suddenly hot. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed, grimacing.

“Your head?”

“It’s killing me again.”

Sam sat down next to him, close enough so their legs were touching. “You don’t remember drawing all that?”

“I remember dreaming about football.”

She looked toward the wall. “That’s not football. And this has happened before, hasn’t it?”

Alex followed her gaze. “Not this big, but, yeah.”

The flickering lights from the motel sign framed Sam’s face in a way he’d never seen it before. Like a posed picture with just the right amount of shadows to make her features glow beneath the colors reflecting off her glasses.