John Gone (29 page)

“I won’t argue your logic. We stay,” Kala
said, as if it were his decision.

Thutmose stood, then sat next to John’s body.
He remained there for the entirety of the night, guarding over John
as he had with his well, watching vigilantly for the agents the boy
had mentioned to arrive at his hut. They never did.

“Do you believe in God, Ronika?” John asked,
clinging to her waist from the back of his scooter. They were on
their way back to her apartment to pack some clothes and equipment
before leaving for Longboard Key. John had told Ronika of his
mother’s offer for her to stay with them until the ordeal was over,
and the news had made her overwhelmingly pleased.

Ronika was piloting the scooter again for
their ride home. John didn’t want to mention it, but lately he’d
been feeling less resolute against the watch. Jumps had been taxing
before, but the last two in particular had taken a real and
visceral toll on him.

“God?” Ronika called back to John over the
rushing wind. “Thinking about taking up an ancient Egyptian belief
system?”

John laughed. “No, no, I was just curious.
We’ve never talked about it before.”

Ronika thought for a few moments before
answering. “Einstein once said to imagine a child walking into a
big library filled with books written in different languages. The
kid can’t read or understand anything she sees there, but she knows
that somebody wrote them. She also doesn’t understand how the books
got there, but knows that somebody brought them, and that somebody
ordered them on the shelves.

“Einstein said that’s how humans are with the
concept of God. Yes, the library is there--you’re standing in
it--but no matter how long you sit there looking at it, you’ll
never have the brainpower to understand anything other than the
fact that’s it’s been organized by someone, even if we don’t get
exactly how. The lack of chaos proves the existence of something
greater than ourselves, but doesn’t bring us any closer to
understanding what it actually is. I guess that’s how I look at it,
too.”

“I would have also taken a simple yes or no,”
John said. They both laughed.

“Even science nerds don’t like yes or no
questions,” she replied.

“Why are people always quoting Einstein
anyway?” Kala asked.

“Something about E=mc2, I think,” Ronika
said.

“Which, incidentally, is wrong,” Kala
grumbled.

Ronika pulled the scooter up to her
apartment. As she dismounted, John slipped from its back, knocking
the scooter to the ground on top of him. Ronika ran to him and
offered her hand to help him up. Once safely back on his feet, she
carefully lifted the scooter back onto its wheels.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” John replied. “Just lost my
footing for a second. I’m fine.”

John brushed the dirt from his jeans and
walked toward Ronika’s door. She unlocked it for him and watched
him move straight past the entrance to her couch where he flopped
his body lifelessly upon its cushions.

“Tired?” she asked.

John leaned his head back and closed his
eyes. “Just worn out.”

“I’ll just be a second, okay?” she said. “Let
me grab some things and unhook my equipment. I can hook it up to
your machine once we get to your place, right?”

John muttered something into the pillow
beneath his head as Ronika disappeared back into her room.

“John,” Kala said.

“I know what you’re going to say,” John
replied, his eyes drooped closed. “I know, I know.”

“I understand your frustration at what’s
happening, but this is like a shot at the doctor. You can sit there
and squirm as much as you like, but you can’t leave the office
until you deal with the prick.”

“And you’re that prick, huh?”

“Actually no, my lab is the prick. I know you
don’t want to hear it, but it’s the only way to save us both.”

“I thought we agreed not to talk about this
anymore.”

“Your body is degrading, damn it!” Kala
yelled. “The next jump may kill you.”

“Yeah? And why do you care? Are you trying to
protect me or your own escape plan?”

“Both! Listen to me, even if you survive,
you’re in no condition to run from the Advocates. Think about how
hard it was back at full strength! Now you’re banged up, bruised
and broken, passing out three times a day uncontrollably.”

“I can manage.”

“Do you not think it odd that they never
showed up for you in the desert? Something is happening, John. It’s
getting dangerous ... and it was dangerous before.”

“Maybe they gave up.”

“Highly unlikely,” Kala said. “Not giving up
is commandment one for them. This game is over. It’s time to end
this. You need to leave denial!”

“We just left
de Nile
,” John said
airily.

“Great, now you’re getting punchy,” Kala
grumbled. “Listen to me while you have the wits about you to
understand. This is the time for decisions, John, right here, right
now. It is beyond unwise to risk a final jump. There’s too much at
stake for you to senselessly try to enjoy a final twelve hours of
freedom. Do you want to see your mother and Ronika again? Waiting a
few years is better than never being with them again.”

John lifted his head and lightly slapped at
his cheeks with his hands. He shook his head side to side and
opened his eyes. “I’m feeling better,” he said.

“If you aren’t lying, it’s temporary,” Kala
replied.

John took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said.
“You’re right.”

“That was never in question,” Kala stated.
“The question is whether or not you’ll finally take my advice.”

“What if you’re lying to me?”

“Lying about what?”

“About me dying,” John replied. “What if on
the last jump, the watch would just teleport without me attached to
it, or something? Someone before me had to have gotten it off
somehow, and they didn’t have your special little tool.”

“True,” Kala said, “but assuming the person
before you was who I think it was, then that person is highly
intelligent and probably figured out an alternate solution. No
offence.”

“That still doesn’t address whether or not
you’re lying.”

“This is true,” Kala admitted. “All I can say
is that I’ve lied about nothing thus far, and other than an
admittedly strong motive, you have no reason to think that I’m
telling you anything but the truth. I’m not a ‘bad guy,’ John; I’m
just one more casualty of this awful situation. All I want is my
freedom. You don’t even have a concept of what thirty years is yet
at your age. I think I’ve been fair with you thus far.”

“You have,” John admitted. He dropped his
head to the cushion behind him. He dreaded what he knew he was
about to say. He’d been dreading it since pulling out the watch’s
knob for the first time. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

“Good. Finally,” Kala said. “Do you remember
the numbers to position the hands or do you need me to give you
them again?”

“I’ll need them again, but not yet. I want to
explain my choice and what’s going to happen to my mom and Ronika
at the same time. We’re heading over to my mom’s place now. I’ll
tell them, then I’ll get the numbers from you, and then I’ll set
the watch before the next jump. Alright?”

“Fair,” Kala said quietly. “I hope you can
see that this is a wise decision that you’ve made.”

Ronika came back into the room a moment later
and slid onto the couch next to John.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“So am I,” John replied.

John and Ronika pulled up to his short, blue
house by the sea half an hour later. Because Ronika had to drive,
John had been recruited to wear her large pink backpack, stuffed to
its seams with clothing and gadgetry. The backpack was taller than
John was, rising above his head at least fifteen inches. Its extra
height made the straps strain against his shoulders as the wind
pushed against it. He’d told Ronika that he felt like a poor
version of the Beverly Hillbillies. She hadn’t understood the
reference.

John dismounted the scooter and groaned as he
lifted the bag from his back to hand to Ronika.

She took the pack from him and easily whipped
it around onto her back. “Wimp,” she joked past a quick smile.

They made their way quietly across the
dew-dampened lawn to the front of his house, surprised to find its
door half open.

John looked back at the driveway and saw his
mother’s small sedan still parked there. “That’s weird,” he said
quietly to himself. “But I guess she’s still here.”

“Mom?” he said loudly, dropping a foot into
the house. There was no answer. “Hello?” he called again.

Ronika slid past him and was the first to
notice the living room. She stood still in the doorway as she
scanned the scene, her motionless body blocking the entryway.

“What is it?” John asked. He looked to Ronika
and followed her eyes to the room in front of them. He ran past
her.

Signs of struggle were obvious. The small
wooden coffee table in the center of the room had been knocked onto
its side and the TV Guide magazines that had been stacked on top of
it were now strewn across the floor, looking as though they’d been
stepped upon. The large couch behind the table was standing firmly
in place, but a large, damp, brown stain, probably tea, was
splattered across its left cushion next to where John’s mother
usually sat. The television across the room was unbroken, but
turned to the side and moved to the edge of its stand as if someone
had hastily slammed into it. Three small blots of blood were
settling into the carpet beneath it.

“Mom?” John yelled, growing more panicked
than before. Ronika’s eyes welled with tears as she looked around
the room, hearing the fear in John’s cry.

“They took her!” he yelled, turning back to
Ronika, his chest huffing in and out. “Those assholes must have
taken her. Why would they do that? How did they find her? She has
nothing to do with this!”

“Kala!” he yelled at the watch. “Where is
she? Where is this company you were telling us about? We have to go
after her. They can’t have gotten far.” He began to pace back and
forth, taking only one step each way before turning again. He
repeated the motion over and over, fuming anger and fear from his
body with each heavy step. The sudden, jerky movements made him
dizzy and the quick, sharp breaths churning in and out of his lungs
made it worse.

“I don’t know, John,” Kala said in quiet
shock. “I don’t know why they would take her anywhere, let alone
where they would take her. I could understand them questioning her
about you, maybe--if they could even find this place--but
kidnapping her? I just wouldn’t know what the point was.”

“To get to
me
, to find
me
. To
make me come to
them
,” John said sharply.

“If they knew you were coming, then why
wouldn’t they just wait for you here? Why try something so
theatrical and risky?” Kala replied.

“I don’t know!” John yelled. “Stop being so
damn logical!”

“John,” Ronika said softly and slowly, “I
don’t think they took her anywhere.”

“Of course they--” It was then that he saw
one part of one side of a foot resting by a chair in his mother’s
bedroom down the hall. The rest was hidden from his view behind the
corner of the doorway.

John stopped pacing and closed his mouth. He
leaned slowly to his side toward the hallway, revealing a wider
view of the foot he’d seen and the leg to which it was attached. He
saw the glint of what seemed to be a thin metal wire around the
leg’s ankle, binding it to the chair leg. Everything in his narrow
view was painted in blood, and nothing was moving. The foot, he
knew, belonged to his mother.

John closed his eyes and brought his hand up
to his mouth. Ronika and Kala remained ghostly quiet as John slowly
inhaled. He released the first breath quickly, making room for
another.

At first, the air he breathed quivered him,
as if a cold snap had rushed suddenly through the front door behind
them. He could hear nothing but the rhythmic sound of air entering
and exiting his body; it was the noise of raking leaves. With each
breath he took, John’s breathing shook him less and less until
finally not shaking him at all. With the quaking ended, he opened
his eyes and dropped his hand back down near his waist and walked
slowly toward the bedroom.

Ronika watched the scene from behind John’s
couch, adhered in place, frightened to move. As John advanced
toward his mother down the hallway, time slowed. The room melted
and changed, morphing and reforming into scenes from her
memory.

She was suddenly sitting alone on a small
metal chair in a hospital waiting room. She was in her apartment’s
galley kitchen, halving her favorite recipe to cook for one. She
was lying in bed, watching the digital clock on her nightstand for
hours as the seconds and minutes changed.

She never saw her father’s death, only those
moments after when she’d first noticed the solitude it had brought
her. She witnessed only those moments that had haunted her, and
haunted her still, reminding her of the gaping hole that tore
across her days.

John reached his mother’s bedroom and closed
the door behind him. The sound of the door against its frame
shattered Ronika’s visions and brought the space back to John’s
living room.

Ronika washed over the back of the couch like
putty and ended prone across its cushions, her head in her arms and
crying. She cried for her own loss, but mostly for John’s, and
those moments of remembrance that were sure to follow him every
single day after this one.

She wept for ten minutes more until John came
back to the room, wet-faced and quiet. She did her best to wipe the
fluid from her eyes, sit straight, and be strong for her friend.
The charade was transparent, even to Ronika, but she knew that
someone had to try.