The Rising(91)

Sam breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted Payne’s laptop sitting slightly askew of its faded outline atop his blotter. She had to hope Alex’s patient ID number would be enough to access his records and started toward Payne’s desk, catching a glimpse of her reflection in his bare office window. The sight startled her not just from the simple shock, but because the reflection didn’t look like, well, her. It seemed she had changed, and not just because of the hospital scrubs. Everything about her looked different, although she couldn’t say how, exactly, and reached the desk before thinking about it any further.

Hoping she could bypass trying the laptop altogether, Sam ruffled a hand through all the desktop clutter, unsure of what she was looking for now. Payne wasn’t exactly a study in organization, not based on the clumps of papers and sprawl of files atop his desk. She wondered if he was working on a paper or something, and the unkempt clutter made up the sum total of his research or, perhaps, the result of a fruitless search by police officials investigating his murder. But these files were all labeled with names.

The fire alarm was still blaring when she started thumbing through the folders and random pages containing test results. No idea really of what she was looking for until she found a folder closer to the edge of Payne’s desk labeled ALEX CHIN.

He must’ve been studying its contents just before he was killed. That thought chilled Sam, but the file was hers now so she flipped it open.

And found it empty.





91

OUTER LIMITS

ALEX STIFFENED JUST SHORT of the doorway. “Get out of my way.”

“I just wanted to finish our conversation,” the ash man said in a voice that sounded like a car radio station fading in and out.

“We finished it when I cut you in half.”

Maybe it was his imagination, or the darkness of the hallway beyond, but it looked to Alex as if a solid black line ran up the center of the spectral figure, tracing the blow he’d struck that had cut the ash man in two.

But he wasn’t speaking out of both sides of his mouth anymore. Not too long ago, a couple summers, maybe, Alex had come across the old Outer Limits television series, in black-and-white, of all things, and streamed a whole bunch of episodes that all opened with a narrator saying, “There is nothing wrong with your television set,” over a jumbled screen. Looking at the ash man’s vague grayish shape that kept fading in and out, some kind of astral projection as opposed to a physical being, made him think of the chintzy special effects that dominated The Outer Limits.

“There is no reason for all this, Alex. We mean you no harm.”

“You meant my parents plenty of harm, though, didn’t you?”

“They weren’t your parents.”

“I’m tired of hearing that. I’ve got a better idea of what’s going on than the last time we talked and it just makes me want to cut you in half again even more.”

The ash man seemed to be weighing a response. Then Alex realized from the tightening of his grainy features that there was a slight delay in his words reaching the form, maybe because there were more of them in this exchange. And when the ash man next opened his mouth, no words emerged right away, the lag very slight but present.

“The Chins had no place in your life, Alex.”

“What kind of shit are you slinging here?”

“This isn’t your world. Your world is with us.”

“Who’s us?”

No response this time, but Alex thought he saw the grainy image swallow hard.

“I think you’re scared of me,” Alex continued.

He waited for the ash man’s response, figured the lag was behind the lack of one, until he stayed silent.

“And I realize now you’ve got reason to be scared of me,” Alex resumed, the spectral shape looming before him suddenly no different than any opponent on the football field.

“This is not your fight, Alex,” the ash man said suddenly.

“Yes, it is. I’m going to make it my fight. I know I was smuggled here to stop you. That’s why you’re scared of me. And know what? I used to be scared of you too, but not anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be scared of anything again, thanks to what you did to my parents. And, yeah, they were my parents. They are my parents, always will be my parents. You get that? Maybe you should’ve killed me too but you couldn’t, could you? Because then you’d never know what it is I know and who else knows about it back where you come from.”

“It’s where you’re from too.”

“Home is where the heart is, bro. And how’s this for another quote: to know your enemy, you must become your enemy. Sun Tzu said that. And know what? You’re right. I already am you. We come from the same place. That’s why you’re really scared of me, isn’t it?”

“You read Sun Tzu?”

“My tutor does.”

“That would be the girl I remember seeing.”

Alex stiffened. “Leave her out of this.”

“It’s too late. She’s already a part of it, just like your parents.”

“You should’ve left them out of this too. You made a really bad mistake when you killed them.”

“What if they’re not dead, Alex?”





92