The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(33)

“Of course, sir. Clever thinking.”

It had been remarked by people crueler than Czerny that Sterling Quint kept mice to make himself feel larger. A quirk from his father’s genes had left him with achondroplasia, which stopped his growth at four-foot-five. While he struggled with his stature as a child, he’d made peace with it in his adult years. Now, at the distinguished age of fifty-five, he took comfort in the fact that “little” languished at the bottom of his list of pertinent adjectives.

“That doesn’t solve the problem of our unfortunate guest,” said Czerny. “I fear his condition exceeds my expertise.”

“Maranan won’t die,” Quint assured him. “I have a specialist coming tonight.”

Czerny knew better than to press his boss for details, or to inquire how he knew the Filipino’s name. He glanced at the three-by-three bank of monitors on the wall. Seven of the screens showed empty rooms. He saw Amanda, Zack, and the teenagers on one. On another, he caught Hannah running a towel over her wet, naked skin.

Blushing, he forced his gaze back onto Quint. “Uh, I suppose you already know that our sixth guest has arrived.”

“Sixth and last,” Quint responded. “That’s all of them.”

This was news to Czerny, especially since there had been nine signals from the start. One led to a corpse. He was eager to learn what Quint knew about the other two.

“Okay. I’ll inform the team. I take it you’ll be introducing yourself soon?”

“Yes. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Czerny sniffed his tissue again. “Excellent. I’ll let you prepare.”

“Constantin . . .”

He turned around at the door. Quint leaned back in his leather chair, shining flawless white teeth.

“It’s okay to smile. This is exciting stuff.”

Czerny laughed. “You have a gift for understatement, sir.”

Alone again, Quint held the free-roaming mouse and petted her with euphoria. There were six new people in his building today, six people who didn’t exist on this world yesterday. As far as science was concerned, this was a game changer. A game winner. Now all he had to do was follow the wisdom that Azral had texted him twenty minutes ago.

Keep them safe. Keep them content.

Quint wasn’t worried. It was easy to keep them safe when no one else knew they existed. Keeping them content was harder, given their state of mind. It was also less important. When these six people lost their world, they lost their options. In the end, they had nowhere else to go.





EIGHT




Zack Trillinger had earned enough screaming condemnation in his life to know that his wisecracks weren’t always appreciated. His mother had called it a “cheek problem.” He couldn’t help himself. Serious people brought out the Bugs Bunny in him, and no amount of blowback could get him to temper his snark. On a day like today, when taxis flew through the air and actresses moved at the speed of missiles, it seemed especially important to embrace the scathing absurdity of the universe, no matter who it bothered.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t prepared for the wrath of Amanda Given, a woman who was uptight even on good days, and who was still reeling from the white-specked lunacy on her skin. It took only twenty-nine seconds of mutual acquaintance for her hand problem to meet his cheek problem. She slapped him hard enough to turn his whole body.

“You shut your mouth,” she hissed, her voice wavering between fury and tears. “I don’t need that from you. You hear me?”

Shell-shocked, Zack held his red and stinging face. “Okay.”

“I don’t need that.”

“I understand.”

“Not today.”

“I know,” he said. “It was a bad joke. It was in poor taste. I’m sorry.”

The moment Erin and Beatrice left him alone with his three fellow refugees, Zack had finally revealed his name. He’d introduced himself to them one by one, signing each handshake with an appropriately stupid gag, a half witticism. Upon hearing David’s accent, he said. “G’day, mate.” To Mia, he proposed that OMGWTF?! should be their new default greeting.

With Amanda, his first impulse was to offer some wordplay bouquet about how she looked pretty intense and intensely pretty, but then bashfully nixed the idea. The moment he spotted her golden cross necklace, his comedy writers jumped to plan B.

“Where’s your messiah now?” he’d brayed, in a passable Edward G. Robinson impression.

Before either of them knew what was happening, her right hand sprung like a cobra and struck him. Amanda didn’t need to see the gaping horror on Mia’s face to know that she’d overreacted. Worse, she realized she might have infected Zack with whatever disease she now carried.

David rose from his chair and raised his palms in nervous diplomacy. “Okay, look, we’re all in a state of disarray right now . . .”

“South California,” Zack uttered.

“What?”

Zack resumed his stance in the doorway, hugging his sketchbook with vacant anguish. “We’re in the state of South California. It split in 1940 when the population got too big for Senate representation. They cut the line right below San Jose. I learned this downtown, in a bookstore called Scribbles.”

When Erin Salgado had traced the final signal to Zack, he’d been standing in the reference section, eliciting curious stares from his fellow browsers. It was odd enough to see a grown man gawk in stupor at the pages of a children’s atlas, but this man wore a gaping tear on his left shoulder and a woman’s handbag on his right. Both the bag and the tear were the personal effects of one Hannah Given.