Prison of Souls (Science Fiction Thriller) Page 7

  #

  I spent the day lurking outside the classrooms where Quentin Navarez taught, listening to his tepid voice describe the parietal lobe—a bundle of gray matter responsible for the perception of time and space, among other things. The walls were yellow cinderblock, reminiscent of my elementary school. Sitting beneath the florescent lights of Fullman Hall, it was almost possible to imagine I had been transported back to my grade school days—to the indifferent teachers who didn’t understand my learning disorder, to the torrent of bullies. I hated who I had been: the shy weakling with dirty shirts and messy hair who constantly struggled to focus. The doctors had never identified my learning disorder—this was before ADHD became a national phenomenon—but it had intensified shortly after McSorley had scanned my brain and then faded considerably after high school. I had done well in college, yet the ghost of third grade still occupied the quiet spaces of my mind.

  I could still smell my mother’s perfume, sharp and floral, as she leaned over me while I struggled to write my spelling words in cursive. Concentrate, Joshua! Keep trying! A boy your age should be able to do this! But I couldn’t, no matter how hard she pushed. That was my childhood—a string of academic failures bookended by my mother’s disappointment and the taunting of bullies.

  Even in college, I had never learned to feel comfortable around teachers. Sitting here, in this strange university corridor with grade school intimations, made me nervous in a way prison never had.

  At the top of the hour, students streamed from classrooms into the hallway, converting calm to cacophony. I buried my face in a folder—the last thing I needed was someone recognizing me—and waited for the hoard to dwindle.

  Navarez emerged last. He was slightly fatter than the picture on his license, a portly old man in khakis and a polo. I trailed him to the cafeteria and sat two tables away as he gobbled a burger and fries. I studied his narrow nose and fuzzy sideburns, the way his forehead wrinkled as he chewed. I had no idea how much detail I would need to impersonate him, but figured more was better.

  When Navarez finished eating, I trailed him outside past a fountain shaped like a fish and a stone planter brimming with lilies. I studied his slightly pigeon-toed gait, the way he swung his hands in stiff circles, the lump of fat where his neck met his back.

  Past a sitting area surrounded by ornamental grasses, he entered a breezeway lined with windows—the breezeway connected Powell Hall to a smaller building. I watched from outside as he walked toward the smaller building, swiped his ID badge, opened a windowless door, and disappeared into darkness, leaving the breezeway in sun-washed silence.

  #

  I met Crystal at the hotel.

  She dropped a bag of tacos onto the desk. “Eat something.”

  I reached into the bag and retrieved what appeared to be a deep fried taco dripping in hot sauce. “Really? El Tio Pepe?”

  Crystal grabbed three tacos and sat down on the bed. “I don’t know if you need nourishment—”

  "I don't know if this would qualify."

  She cuffed my shoulder. “But just in case, eat.”

  I unwrapped the taco and took a bite. Turns out, I chewed and swallowed like everyone else.

  Crystal squirted more hot sauce on her already smothered tacos. “The other professors spent most of the day behind a security door in a building near Powell Hall.”

  I nodded. “The door in the breezeway?”

  “Yes. Did Navarez go there too?”

  “After lunch.”

  “I missed that. We have to get past that door.”

  “How do you know anything’s there?”

  “I don’t.”

  “And how are we going to get the security badge?”

  She paused, a strand of lettuce hanging from her mouth. “You didn’t look inside that box?”

  She meant the box I had stolen from Slaven. “You’ll have to forgive me for not remembering the complete inventory of its contents.”

  She dusted the crumbs from her shirt and retrieved a badge from the box. “This one has Navarez’s name on it.”

  “Why would Slaven have Navarez’s badge?”

  “The same reason he had his license?” She raised her hands in a questioning gesture. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  She walked to the window and parted the curtains. Afternoon sunlight streamed over the bed. “I didn’t say I didn’t have theories.”

  “Well?”

  She looked me in the eyes, the curtain closing behind her. “You tell me, how would a corrections officer get involved in this?”

  The stolen IDs, combined with his possession of equipment no corrections officer needed for his job, suggested he was a spy or a thief. “Maybe he’s not a corrections officer at all.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  I remembered waking up in Slaven’s body. “He was in a Capgras.”

  “More specifically, he was in that Capgras.” Crystal leaned forward and tapped my chest. “When you woke up from your hallucination, you swapped bodies.”

  The layers of this riddle ran deep, each revealing confusion rather than clarity. “Are you saying my old body was… one of these?”

  “You didn’t grow up with an artificial body, if that’s what you’re asking. We would have seen your face melt. And it’s not like your physiological needs were on autopilot. You ate your parents out of house and home.”

  “I suppose.” As a teenager, I had consumed mass quantities. My mother had referred to me as her eater. Crystal had called me the human garbage disposal. “But if I was flesh and blood, how did Slaven get inside my body?”

  Crystal pursed her lips and looked down. “The point of McSorley’s testing was to create test subjects capable of swarming, which implies your brain cavity had been modified to accept…” She paused, searching for a word. “Traffic.”

  “Traffic?” An interesting word to describe possession.

  “Whatever you call it.” Crystal shrugged.

  “But what made us swarm?” A vague memory surfaced in my mind, something Crystal had said in the car. “Bring Pyxis’ document over here.”

  Crystal picked up the manuscript and plopped onto the bed, springs squeaking beneath her.

  I pointed to the pages. “Back at the farm you read something about swarming. Can you find that passage?”

  “I think I remember.” She flipped to the middle of the manuscript, examined four pages in detail, and finally put her finger on a line of text. “‘When presented with a host such as a Capgras, an immortality grid, or an artificial reality grid, the consciousness disincorporates and swarms as billions of individual synthetic cells toward the host.’”

  “An artificial reality grid.” My voice sounded distant. “When I woke up in Slaven’s body, my doppelganger said I wasn’t supposed to leave the simulation. He said it shouldn’t have been possible. Those were his exact words.”

  “You think your hallucination was some type of simulation?” Crystal arched one eyebrow. “Hell, add it to the list.”

  “The prison was deserted, except for a handful of horrors, and I remember thinking it was too real, and lasted too long, to be a seizure. So yeah, maybe it was a simulation. But what’s the purpose of all this technology? We’ve got shape-shifting bodies and artificial reality and who knows what else?” The only corrections purpose I could imagine for artificial reality involved psychotherapy, but if Slaven wasn’t actually a corrections officer, there was no telling the purpose. I remembered his face, burning like a wick. “Slaven was in the sim with me. We switched bodies when we woke up, and later he transferred his consciousness to another Capgras.”

  “It makes sense.” Crystal shook her head. “I mean, it’s logically consistent. None of it makes sense.”

  “No kidding.” I flipped through the pages. “Pyxis is big on incomplete information.”

  “All the more reason to find him.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I f
ound myself lying in a hospital bed in a dimly lit medical bay. The little girl in the next bed reached out for me, her blonde curls framing her oval face, her cheeks flush. When I took her hand, I saw my own—small and pale—and realized I was a child too.

  “The doctor says the experiment didn’t work on them.” The little girl squeezed my hand and pointed at a row of sleeping children on hospital beds, partially covered with crisp sheets. “They’re sick.”

  “Sick how?”

  “He didn’t copy their brains the right way, so now they don’t think right.” She ran her free hand through her hair. “You and me are special, but you’re too special.”

  “I don’t feel special.”

  “But you are.” She smiled, lifting my hand triumphantly. “The doctor says your brain connected to the pivot.”

  “What’s the pivot?” It sounded mechanical.

  “Whatever it is, when you connected to it you scared the doctor. He can’t use you like he wanted.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “So he can study you.” She slumped back into her pillow. “He calls you his little lab animal.”

  “I don’t want to be studied.”

  “It could be worse.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He perfected his process on me and says he’ll use me as the template. Would you rather be the template?”

  “What’s a template?” I was still watching the sleeping children, wondering what terrible fate awaited them.

  She closed her eyes instead of answering. “Where is your mom?”

  “I don’t know.” I hadn’t seen her in days.

  “Why do you think they left us here?”

  I thought maybe they didn’t want us, but dared not say so.

  She let go of my hand and sat forward, grabbing the bed rail. “Sometimes I can see my mother when the doctor puts me on the machine.”

  “They let her stay in the room?”

  “No. She hasn’t been up here in three weeks, but I can see her in the living room at home. I try to reach her but she’s always gone. The doctor calls it a window. He says for me it passes real quick, but you’re different—you can hold the window open. You can pull people through.”

  “I don’t remember any window.”

  “You think he’s lying?” She waved off any answer. “You’re probably right. He lies all the time. Every day he promises my mom will visit.”

  I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Sometimes when they put me on the machine there’s a bubble floating above me and I can see something beating in there like a heart.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t lying about the window,” she whispered.

  “What does it do?”

  “The doctor says it makes you magic.”

  “If I had magic, I’d go home.” I looked again at the row of beds, the unmoving children. “I don’t want to be here.”

  “Can you keep a secret?” She placed her forefinger against her lips.

  I nodded. “I won’t tell.”

  “I had a dream we never leave.”

  “That’s a terrible thought.” I shook my head. Fear trembled in the pit of my stomach. “It was just a dream.”

  “Sometimes dreams come true.”

  “Not usually. Besides, I have magic.”

  This seemed to please her. “Do you really? Or is that just another one of his stories?”

  I shrugged. “I’m just a kid. But maybe if I concentrate really hard, I can push him into the bubble.”

  “Make him go away?”

  “Forever.”

  “You’d better do something soon or he’s going to hurt us.”

  “The same way he hurt them.” I pointed toward the sleeping children.

  “Or worse.” She shivered.

  My eyes opened in the darkness of the hotel room, and I realized it had all been a dream. But not just a dream—a memory of something that had happened at Walt U thirty years ago. I had no idea who the little girl had been, but if she was like the others, McSorley had killed her. Why was I remembering this now? And why with such clarity?

  I considered waking my wife, but she looked too peaceful, lying on the hotel bed in a swathe of blue moonlight. And what would be the point? Nothing I'd remembered got us any closer to a real answer.

  I stood, careful not to rouse her. I parted the curtains further and looked at the campus, wondering what else had gone on there and how much I would remember before this was over.

  Chapter Twenty

  I arrived at Quentin Navarez’s office before noon.

  He was hunched over his desk eating a sandwich, his eyes floating behind thick glasses. He looked vaguely apprehensive, but when he saw me, there was no recognition on his face.

  I shook his hand. “You teach the course on nanotechnology?”

  “I do.” He dusted crumbs from his chest and put the sandwich down.

  “Can you answer a quick question about the class?” I donned my best magnanimous grin. “It won’t take a moment.”

  “Sure.” He popped his knuckles nervously.

  The sound grated my nerves, but I kept smiling and tried to remember my cover story. “Let's say I know a wayward adolescent with too much time on his hands. If you could tell me one thing about your class that might convince him to give up his job at the carwash and go back to college, what would it be?”

  Quentin laughed, rocking forward onto his knees. His chair rattled. “That’s a new one. You say this wayward adolescent is interested in nanotech?”

  “He is.” I couldn’t tell if he thought I was blowing smoke.

  Quentin nodded. “Tell him I teach the only course in the state, and I know more about the subject than anyone.”

  “What kind of stuff do scientists in the field work on?” I had taken two semesters of nanotechnology while pursuing my graduate degree, but I needed to keep him talking. The whole point of coming here was to examine his features and mannerisms.

  “We’re developing nanomaterials for use in solar panels and for detecting chemical and biological hazards.” He popped another knuckle. “Most nanites won’t be robots like people think; they’ll be artificial cells. In my textbook, there’s a chapter on the future of nanotech that would show this wayward adolescent what’s possible.”

  I glanced around his office, trying to absorb any extraneous detail. There was a book on his desk titled The Science of Small, and another balanced on his monitor called Astronomy for Amateurs. Copies of Science Digest and Home Theater Builder were stacked in the corner by the door. A glass orb paperweight sat on his desk, engraved with a snake consuming its tail.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Quentin asked.

  I wondered how long I had been standing there, staring at the paperweight. “Thank you for your time.”

  #

  Back in the courtyard, Crystal pulled me into a secluded nook on the side of Redman Hall, behind a row of rose bushes. “Concentrate on his face.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured the sunlight glinting on Navarez’s bald spot and the way his forehead wrinkled when he spoke. My face contorted, and then my body actually stretched. There was no pain—merely a moment of shock—and then it was done.

  “Holy shit.” Crystal stepped back, bumping into a bush.

  “I can feel it.” My voice was Navarez’s.

  “You could be his twin.” Crystal pulled an ID card from her pocket and slipped it around my neck. “But you’re too big for your shirt now.”

  I looked down at the shirt, its buttons askew, its pinstripes stretched around my gut. I had gained fifty pounds in two seconds. “Should I get something else to wear?”

  “We don’t have time.” She touched my shoulder. “If anyone asks, tell them you washed the shirt in hot water.”

  “Nice.”

  She swatted me on the butt. “Get in there and find something.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-one

  I entered the breezeway I had watched Navarez enter the previous day. At the end o
f the window-lined hallway stood a security door.

  The camera above the door watched with its lidless eye—I took calming breaths, reminding myself it saw Quentin Navarez. Depending upon how much the men behind this door knew, they might surmise I had used a Capgras if they reviewed the footage. I hoped they wouldn't be able to identify me personally, but anyone who could build a Capgras could probably build a device to detect it.

  I swiped the card. Students passed on the sidewalk beyond the window-wall. Then the reader flashed green and the door opened. I stepped into an entry hall, and the door latched behind me.

  I walked past closed office doors, sneakers squeaking. In the distance, I heard the buzz of a microwave and the low hum of voices.

  At the end of the hallway stood a glass wall fronting a stark white room, the room containing hundreds of glowing cubes arranged in rows like book cases.

  I was on the right track. I glanced around, swiped my card through the reader, and entered the room.

  It was twenty degrees colder and a low hum permeated the air. I cased an aisle, running a finger along the cubes. They were cold and smooth.

  A computer terminal sat on a podium at the back of the room, its monitor displaying options:

  1) Ready Host

  2) Run Simulation

  3) View POV

  4) Purge

  5) End Simulation

  This menu, these options, seemed familiar. You’ve been here before, in the dream place. I felt a strange compulsion to press Purge.

  “Hello Quentin.”

  I started.

  A man in a gray suit stood on the other side of the room, near the entrance. “Zacharai is asking for you.”

  A hollow pit formed in my stomach. The name Zacharai meant nothing to me. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” He propped the glass door open with his foot. “He’s down by your office. Everything’s been a mess since McSorley vanished with all that gear. The Nexus guys have been crawling through everyone’s office, inventorying everything. They spent fifteen minutes grilling me about one missing scanner and an anesthetic orb. And Christ, the fuss they’re making about the missing quantum computers, like they’re going to kill somebody. They’ve already talked to most of us, but they seem especially interested in you. Every ten minutes they’re down at your door. I know you’ve been trying to avoid these guys. Want to sneak out?”