Exit (13 page)

Would she and Tim somehow be viewed as a threat? There were people on the
other side
who had tried to prevent their narrow escape. Rayne wondered. Dare she think it? Would they, the oft-cited and legendary “they,” would
the
y come into this world and come after them? And if so, why?

Rayne recalled the events of the last 24 hours. Her thoughts circled back the theater where it all began. The Gateway.

Alex.

She pulled out her cell from her coat pocket and thumbed his number in the dark. Why? Nervous energy. Two rings. Zero hope. Recorded message.

"This is Alex. I can't come to the phone right now. Leave a message."

The two simple words
“right now”
carried a cruel load of false hope. Were she a bettor, would she bet that Alex Portland would answer the phone anytime soon?

She turned and glanced at the darkly poetic sign above the doors: EMERGENCY ENTRANCE. How appropriate. What a perfect metaphor for her life, and Tim’s. If she and Tim had gotten trapped and injured in the parallel world, what then? Forget about Mass General saving their lives. There was no healthcare coverage in a drone-infested alternate universe.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Her body was downshifting. She feared that she was unable to think clearly. Everything started with her ability to anticipate and think through all the possible scenarios. There was very little wiggle room for error, if any.

She blinked several times, took deep breaths of chilly autumn air. Off in the distance she could see the scattered night lights of Cambridge—a checkerboard of dark or lit windows at the Royal Sonesta Hotel across the Charles River; a stream of cars and headlights on the Longfellow Bridge connecting Cambridge and Boston. Beyond her sightline, a few miles away, the Gateway.

Were she and Tim home free? Or…

She sat and shuddered against the cold wind coming off the river. What possible interest would the Cantabrigians on the other side have over here? She considered the alternate Cambridge, the parallel Cambridge, and drew a blank. The tiny drone simply got caught in her purse during the frenzy of the cab ride, and was inadvertently carried to the flip side.

She still had to tell Tim about Alex’s disappearance. Later today, she’d return to the theater. Alex was the only loose end. What could possibly have happened to him? Then she pictured herself calling the police, telling them about the rear exit, and what lay on the other side. What a breathless phone call that would be.

“Officer, please be aware, if you step through the exit, you are in for an unusual afternoon.”

With each passing minute of reflection, her situation became more complicated. Complicated, indeed. Their state of affairs would be more accurately described as
clusterfuck
.

She turned her attention to Tim. He could remain inside the hospital for a few hours yet, getting multiple exams. She stood up and put her hands in her pockets.

Damn…it’s cold.

She went back inside, wondering if the tiny drone was still there. Maybe, she thought, the drone was released from the hospital after retina surgery and sent home to spy yet again. She drifted toward the waiting area; there was nowhere else to go.

The little girl saw Rayne, popped out of her chair beside her mother, still asleep. She walked over and asked, “You okay?” She sounded as if they were sharing a secret.

Rayne dropped to her knees. They were indeed sharing a secret that no one else in the hospital or all of Boston knew.

“Yes,” Rayne said. She looked at the pretty little girl with the bouncy brown hair. She held out her hand and smiled, “My name is Rayne.”

The little girl shook her hand. “I’m Wendy Darlington. Hi, Rain. I never heard that name. That like
rain
rain.”

“Sort of, depending on my mood. How are you doing tonight?”

“My dad,” she said, and her eyes flicked toward the door that led to the emergency room. “He walked into a tree.”

“The doctors here are the best in the world. He’ll be okay. He came to the best place on the planet.”

Wendy’s eyes lit up, until a thought clouded them and her eyelids fluttered. After a moment of silence, she whispered the key words, “That thing?”

Rayne leaned closer to her ear. She could almost feel the woman nearby in the glass booth staring at her back from the admissions desk. Rayne made her own admission. “Wendy, did you see it again?”

Wendy considered, then shook her head no.

Rayne wondered what that meant—did it exit the building, or…

“How can there be bugs…
in November?”
Wendy did a shimmy-shimmy shake of her shoulders, which suggested a dance-move specially choreographed for a hospital waiting area.

Rayne simply smiled and shrugged, feeling an unexpected sense of relief. This little girl was the sole bright spot in the past 24 hours. This was the first sane conversation she’d had all day.

“Bugs,” Rayne echoed. Yes, bugs. Slang for surveillance devices. Speaking of which…

Peeking upward, she tried to spot the dragonfly. She stood, held up a finger to Wendy in a gesture of
just a minute
. She could hear the TV newscast as she advanced. A pre-recorded interview was being televised. A female reporter was speaking to a businessman. Rayne heard her say the word
“president,”
then something about
“the FAA…restrictions being lifted.”
The male interviewee said
“drone.”
Rayne’s head snapped in the direction of the TV. Pictured was a man in a pinstripe suit, standing outdoors, his raised hands gesturing at the sky. At the bottom of the screen, she read:

Major DeZasta, President of EyeSoar Unlimited

She froze on her feet momentarily, sensing a dark blast wave pulsing from the TV set, shaking the waiting area of Mass Eye and Ear. Then the sound of her phone snapped her out of it. She reached into her pocket, picked it up, tempted to throw it like a rock at the TV screen, and heard:

“Rain Angel, where are you?” Tim derived the nickname from her full name, Rayne Angela Moore.

She paused to consider her answer. “The waiting area. I’m sitting among the traumatized and watching TV.”

By the way, a drone has joined us in the waiting room. And you’ll never guess who’s on TV.

She looked at the pinstriped executive on the TV screen. How she’d like to do to him what she had done to Captain BankAmerica at the ATM machine.

Then she asked, “And you?”

“I’m sitting in a chair in a small room that resembles a dentist’s office, but with sexy, low lights,” Tim said. “There’s a computer with two monitors, a steel sink, a plastic eye the size of a softball, and an electronic eye-test chart built into the wall. I’m waiting for the senior ophthalmology resident. I think ‘ophthalmology’ is a swear word.”

“Mmm,” Rayne said. It was hard to concentrate while seeing Major DeZasta from the corner of her eye.

“Each time I come here I get tested and read eye charts. The technician reduces the line of horizontal letters to the point where I can’t make them out. I may as well be reading Swahili. I told him tonight, ‘I have no idea what those letters are.’ He said, ‘Go ahead, try.’ I thought, what the hell, so I looked at six blurry letters and said, ‘D…R…O…N…E…1.’”

“You didn’t.”

“Did. He said, ‘Good, good.’ Then he tapped the computer keyboard, and another line of six letters flashed on the screen. They looked like ants on an ant trail. I said, ‘E…Y…E…S...O…R.’ At that point, the tech heard enough. He didn’t pull up another line of letters. I’m surprised he didn’t follow-up with a field sobriety test.”

Her attention was divided, but Tim’s voice was soothing. “EyeSoar,” she echoed. Her own voice sounded disembodied. No, she heard anxiety and fatigue and who knew what else. The whole day had been unreal. She felt as if she were levitating, floating in the air…like a drone.

She shook off the thought. Concentrated.

“You all right?”

“Yes,” she lied. “Take your time. I can nod off here until you’re ready.”

“You sound…”

“Tired. ‘Tis been a rambunctious day, Mr. Crowe, no?”

“Rain Angel, you’re the best. Listen...”

Rayne heard a voice in the background, someone speaking to Tim.

“Gotta go,” Tim said. “The doc’s here.”

Rayne returned the phone to her pocket. She looked at the TV screen across the floor. The interview ended, the newscaster reappeared with a weather update.

“Wendy,” she said, grasping the girl’s shoulder and feeling the quilted nylon. “I have to go upstairs. Stay here, you’ll be okay.”

“Okay, Rain.”

Rayne walked out of the waiting area, past the admissions booth, and along a short corridor. Maybe the drone was nearby; maybe it wasn’t. For now, she needed to be alone with her thoughts. She stopped at the bank of elevators, pressed the button, waited. No one else was nearby. Soon a door opened and she entered, quickly turned around, hit the first-floor button. She saw nothing fly in. The door closed. Over the next ten seconds, she scanned the interior of the brightly lit elevator. Nothing.

The door opened.

First floor. Rayne had been here before, remembered the layout. She headed for the small restroom nearby, entered, turned the lock from within. A sink, a toilet, a trash basket, and a drop-down diaper-changing table. Not exactly a room at the Sheraton. But in a storm, any port will do.

And a storm was brewing. What kind of storm? A Major DeZasta.

She and Tim were still in danger. Tim, she thought. She glanced up at the restroom’s ceiling. She wondered if he was upstairs somewhere, or still on the ground floor. Whatever, she was beat. She had to hand it to the hospital’s cleaning staff. The restrooms here were uncommonly clean. Thank God for small favors, she thought.

Rayne snapped off several long strips of absorbent paper from the dispenser by the sink, and laid them flat on the floor. Once she had her rectangular
bed sheet
in place, she removed her tunic and balled it up for a pillow. Then she lay down on the paper. Her
mattress
was the tile floor. She was too tired to care. Same for the overhead lights. Too tired to give a damn.

Her eyes snapped shut within seconds. She drifted off, thinking of the TV interview. Thinking of EyeSoar. How could their lives head south, this fast? How could…?

Sleep came quickly. A blessing. The first good thing in what seemed like forever.

Sometime later in the night she was stirred awake by a sound. A metallic sound. After several foggy seconds, she realized where she was.
Click, click
. The door handle jiggled.

Someone was on the other side of the door.

Please…go away.

Rayne remained motionless on the paper towels so they wouldn’t crinkle, controlling her breathing.

Can’t a girl get her beauty rest on a public bathroom floor?

Whoever stood on the other side didn’t say a word.

Rayne pictured a tiny drone landing on the exterior door handle, making it jiggle, similar to a bee hovering over a dandelion, legs dropping, touching down on the yellow flower. Her imagination took the next step. She stared at the locked door lit by the fluorescent light overhead, and easily imagined a dark silhouette on the other side. Major DeZasta. Or, what was his name? C.C. Seymour. She had an unshakeable feeling—she hadn’t seen the last of him.

The handle was tugged again.

Rayne waited, frozen on the floor. Nothing happened. Two minutes of dead silence. Three minutes. Her eyelids started to close. She lay on her side, her head buried into her tunic, and soon nodded off. Hers was a restless sleep, darkly dreaming of another Cambridge, a claustrophobic world that closed in on her from all sides. A world as cold and hard as the tile floor pressing against her hip and shoulder. A nightmare featuring endless drones clogging the sky, drifting over a city, watching. Always watching.

Maybe it was a dream. Or a warning. Rayne, alone, raced down a dark alley. Tim was nowhere in sight, possibly dead. The unseen thing behind her gained ground, catching up. She heard a buzzing sound growing louder. She kept running, breathless, and then glanced up at the sky. The full moon was piercingly bright to her eye, like a white ceiling light in a restroom. She focused, fully woke on the floor, and reached toward the sound. Her cell phone.

“Where are you?” Tim asked. He sounded anxious. “I’m back in the waiting area.”

“Nearby.”

She could hear him inhale, pause. She pictured him with one hand on the side of his head, interpreting her one word response.

“What’s going on?”

“This is gonna be quick.”

“You’re speaking in a hushed tone. What’s up, Rayne?”

She rolled past his inquiry. “Have you been released or staying overnight?”

“Let’s just say I chose to be released.”

“Listen carefully. I’ll meet you outside the entrance. Grab a cab if you can. I’ll be right there.” She ended the call before he continued with questions. Now wasn’t the time.