Recursion(58)

“I know what you did to me in San Francisco,” Helena says. “In the original timeline.” Slade stares back at her, unblinking. “When you told me about accidentally discovering what the chair could do, you left out the part where you murdered me.”

“And yet here you are. Death no longer has any hold over us. This is your life’s work, Helena. Embrace it.”

She says, “You can’t possibly think humanity can be trusted with the memory chair.”

“Think of the good it could do. I know you wanted to use this technology to help people. To help your mom. You could go back and be with her before she died, before her mind destroyed itself. You could save her memories. We can undo the killings of Jee-woon and Sergei. It’d be like none of this happened.” His smile is filled with pain. “Can’t you see how beautiful a world that would be?”

She takes a step toward him. “You might be right. Maybe there is a world where the chair makes all our lives better. But that’s not the point. The point is, you might be wrong too. The point is, we don’t know what people would do with this knowledge. All we know is that once enough people know about the chair, or how to build it, there’s no going back. We’ll never escape the loop of universal knowledge of the chair. It will live on in every subsequent timeline. We’ll have doomed humanity forever. I’d rather take the chance at passing up something glorious than risk everything on one roll of the dice.”

Slade smiles that I-know-more-than-you-realize smile that takes her back to her years with him on the oil platform.

He says, “You’re still being blinded by your limitations. Still not seeing the whole picture. And maybe you never will, unless you can travel the way I’ve traveled….”

“What does that mean?”

He shakes his head.

“What are you talking about, Marcus? What do you mean, ‘the way I’ve traveled’?”

Slade just stares at her, bleeding, and then the hum of the quantum processors fades away, the room suddenly silent.

One by one, the monitors in the terminal go dark, and as Barry looks quizzically at Helena, all of the lights flicker out.





BARRY





November 7, 2018

He sees the afterimages of Helena, Slade, and the chair.

Then nothing.

The lab stands pitch-black.

No sound but the thrumming of his heart.

Straight ahead, where Slade sat just seconds ago, Barry hears the noise of someone scrambling across the floor.

A shotgun blast illuminates the room for a deafening splinter of a second—enough time for Barry to see Slade disappear through the doorway.

Barry takes a tentative step forward, his retinas still reeling from the muzzle flash of Helena’s gun, the darkness tinged with orange. The doorway materializes into view as lights from the surrounding buildings slink in through the windows of the hallway.

His hearing has recovered just enough from the gunshot to register the sound of quick footsteps rushing away down the corridor. Barry doesn’t think Slade had time, in those few seconds of darkness, to get his hands on the revolver, but he can’t be certain. More likely—Slade’s making a mad dash for one of the stairwells.

Helena’s voice emerges from the doorway, a whisper: “You see him?”

“No. Hang back until I figure out what’s going on.”

He jogs past the windows that peer out into a rainy, Manhattan night. From somewhere on the floor comes a rat-a-tat like a snare drum being played.

He turns the next corner into pure darkness, and as he approaches the main corridor, his foot strikes something on the floor.

Bending down, he touches the bloodied cloth of Slade’s tank top. He still can’t see a thing, but he recognizes the high-pitched wheezing of a punctured lung failing to fully inflate, and the softer gurgles of Slade drowning in his own blood.

A cold terror engulfs him. Running his hand along the wall, he reaches the junction of corridors.

For a moment, the only sound is Slade dying right behind him.

Something whips past the tip of his nose and thunks into the wall behind him.

Suppressed gunshots and muzzle fire reveal a half dozen officers by the bank of elevators, all in full tactical helmets and body armor, assault weapons shouldered.

Barry pulls back around the corner, shouts, “Detective Sutton, NYPD! Twenty-fourth precinct!”

“Barry?”

He knows that voice.

“Gwen?”

“What the fuck is going on, Barry?” Then to those around her: “I know him, I know him!”

“What are you doing here?” Barry asks.

“We had a report of shots fired in this building. What are you doing here?”

“Gwen, you have to get your team out of here and let me—”

“It’s not my team.”

“Whose is it?”

A male voice booms down the hall, “Our drone is showing a heat signature in one of the rooms behind you.”

“They aren’t a threat,” Barry says.

“Barry, you need to let these guys do their job,” Gwen says.

“Who are they?” Barry asks.

“Why don’t you step out and talk to us? I’ll make the introductions. You’re making everyone very nervous.”