Linkage: The Narrows of Time (2 page)

The MP pulled the rifle back. Lucas turned
and overlapped his wrists behind his back. He heard the ratchets
closing around his wrists as the shackles were tightened against
his skin.

The white MP pushed past Lucas and went into
the apartment. Drew was confronted by the soldier the moment he
rolled into the room in his wheelchair.

“Hold it right there!” the MP shouted, aiming
his gun at Drew. “Hands up where I can see them.”

“Drew, just do as they say. These guys mean
business,” Lucas said.

Drew nodded and put his wrists together above
his lap and allowed the MP to handcuff them to the arm of the
wheelchair. The soldier stood behind Drew as if he were getting
ready to push the chair, but instead, opened a Velcro pocket along
the front of his equipment vest and pulled out a syringe. He jammed
the needle into Drew’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Lucas screamed,
struggling to wriggle free from his captor. The Hispanic MP grabbed
Lucas’ head and pushed it to one side. He felt a sharp pain on the
exposed side of his neck, followed by a warm sensation spreading
out under the skin. He was about to pass out when a black hood was
pulled down over his eyes.

Chapter
2

Friday, December 21

University of Arizona

Tucson, Arizona

FOUR DAYS EARLIER . . .

Dr. Green had called him a “reckless hack.”
Sure, Lucas’ paper on inter-dimensional travel stretched the
envelope a bit, but that was the whole point of his submission to
the popular online magazine,
Astrophysics Today
. Someone
needed to challenge mainstream science occasionally; otherwise,
breakthroughs would never happen.

He could accept that Simon Green hated his
theory on inter-dimensional travel, but the senior editor didn’t
need to blast him publicly. A traditional rejection letter would
have sufficed—Lucas would have saved it with all the others, using
it as motivation to push his research even further.

It was obvious the paper triggered something
in Green, otherwise, he wouldn’t have reacted with such fury. Even
so, the retired physicist crossed the line when he wrote in his
blog that Lucas was “Reckless. Undisciplined. Arrogant.” And
condemned his theory as “Pure speculation founded on nothing more
than adolescent fantasy.” To make matters worse, Green posted the
entire thesis, entitled “The Laws of Physics Are Merely a
Suggestion,” then highlighted and footnoted the sections that
amused him.

Lucas secretly liked the idea of becoming
famous, but certainly not this way. His humiliation was now
spreading across the Internet faster than a politician sidesteps
the truth, coursing through the veins of cyberspace and swallowing
his career. If he had to do it over, he never would’ve pressed that
damned SEND button.

He wondered if Green thought he was doing him
a favor by tearing him down in an effort to keep him grounded in
reality. That ploy might have worked with other wide-eyed
physicists, but not him. Truth was, he was a resilient,
twenty-one-year-old orphan who was hard-wired differently than
most. The more Green attacked his skills, the more it fueled his
fire.

He had dealt with his share of bullies over
the years, but never one that walked with a cane and wore
inch-thick glasses—Green was pushing eighty, but the renowned
scientist was still a formidable opponent. Green was one of those
self-righteous prima donnas who never had an original thought in
his life, but had made a name for himself in the scientific
community by berating the work of others.

Normally, Lucas would never back down from a
fight, but he decided it was best to let this one go. Responding
now would only fan the flames, sending his disgrace into orbit. If
he later changed his mind, he could always pen a follow-up paper,
which, of course, he would send to Green first.

“Probably short circuit the old geezer’s
pacemaker,” Lucas muttered, as a smile found the corner of his
mouth. “Too bad I can’t tell him about our anti-gravity project.
He’d blow a valve for sure.”

Deep down, Lucas knew he would survive this
mistake professionally, but what he couldn’t stomach was
embarrassing his boss, Professor Kleezebee. He just hoped his
mentor hadn’t caught wind of the paper. If he did, there would be
repercussions.

Lucas lay on his bed with the edge of the
covers just below his chin, trying to get back to sleep, when he
felt something crawl across his shin and down the inside of his
right calf. “Holy shit!” he screamed, tossing off the covers.

A brown scorpion the size of a hockey puck
sat on the sheet, with its venomous stinger arched high above its
back. It had crawled into his bed, searching for prey.

Lucas grabbed one of his foster brother’s
sneakers and smashed the creature with such force that he jammed
his right wrist, but the beast was still alive and coming his way.
“Die, you sucker,” he shouted, whacking the invader three more
times until its front claws, stinger, and eight legs stopped
moving. He hated the stealthy night crawlers almost as much as his
adoptive father did, and would’ve gladly used a bazooka to kill
it.

“Did he owe you money?” Drew asked from his
neighboring bed, rubbing a terrycloth towel across his hair, then
his chest and shoulders.

Lucas used the cardboard backing from one of
his notebooks to scoop the carcass off the bed and into a plastic
cup. “God, you’d think on the third floor we’d be safe.”

“Not with the way those things can climb.
They’re relentless.”

“I would give anything to have a few of Dad’s
sonic pads to spread around. Goddamn EPA.”

Lucas dumped the creature into the bottom of
the toilet and gave it a middle-finger salute. He saw a two-inch
black cockroach lying on its back next to the tub, with one set of
legs still kicking. It crunched louder than he expected when he
stepped on it with the heel of his left foot. He used a Kleenex to
pick it up and toss it into the toilet. He used the same sheet of
tissue to wipe the creature’s runny blood and guts from his
foot.

“We’re stuck living in this shit-hole because
of them,” he said loud enough for Drew to hear in the next
room.

“Still, you can’t beat the price.”

“Maybe so, but cheap rent doesn’t make up for
it.”

Lucas flushed the john, sending the pair of
mangled carcasses swirling around the bowl and into the sewer. He
flushed the toilet a second time for good measure before returning
to the bedroom. “A couple of yappy dogs died and the investors go
running for the hills. What a bunch of bleeding-heart pansies. All
Dad needed was a second chance.”

Drew nodded.

Lucas moved Drew’s wheelchair closer to the
bed, waiting for his brother to slide his frail legs over the edge
and onto the floor. “Need any help?” he asked, already knowing the
answer that his younger brother would give him.

“No. I got it. Just give me a minute.”

Drew used a handle bar hanging from the
ceiling to prop himself up against the side of his raised bed. He
could stand for short periods, but could not walk, at least not
without assistance. He turned around and sat in the wheelchair.

A shiver ran down Lucas’ spine and he wrapped
his arms around his nude body. He walked four steps to the end of
the room where the in-wall HVAC system was installed, and rubbed
his hands over the output vents. “Hardly anything coming out of
this piece of crap.”

“What’d you expect? That thing’s probably
older than Sputnik.”

“Even so, you’d think Kleezebee’s Super could
find a way to keep this thing working. We could hang meat in here.”
Lucas slipped on a pair of navy blue boxers and a faded,
long-sleeved red t-shirt.

Drew pulled out a neatly rolled pair of socks
from a custom-built dresser compartment under the bed and tossed it
to Lucas. They had raised their mattresses four feet off the ground
using 4x4 redwood posts and birch plywood from their dad’s
workshop.

Lucas walked to his desk to see what
yesterday’s mail had brought them. Three envelopes were sitting on
top of the last pile, face up, with fresh postmarks and
fingerprints. All three were from someone in the medical field.
“More bills for Mom? Are you kidding me?”

“They’re like cockroaches. They keep
multiplying.”

Lucas opened the first envelope and almost
puked. “Twenty-two grand for three days in urgent care?”

Drew rolled next to Lucas at the desk. “Good
thing you had them send the bills here. If Mom finds out, she’ll
have another heart attack.”

Lucas’ opened the second bill—it was even
more. He slammed it onto the pile, face down, along with the third
envelope, which he didn’t open. “You can bet if Mom knew the
insurance company was going to deny her claims, she would’ve just
told the docs to pull the plug. End it right then and there.”

“How are we going to pay for all this?”

Lucas sighed as he put his elbows on the
desk, resting his face in his hands. He didn’t know how much they
owed in total, but the number had to be staggering. He wished he
had told his foster brother and adoptive mother the truth—that he’d
forgotten to mail the check for his mother’s insurance premium,
which is why the claims department denied the coverage. But he
didn’t see the point of coming clean now—what would it accomplish?
He figured he could pay the bills off after he proved one of his
theories and sold the rights to a defense contractor or to NASA. “I
don’t know. We’ll think of something.”

“We could always ask Kleezebee.”

“Borrow money from my boss?”

“Why not? He’s loaded. Besides, he might just
give us the money.”

“No fucking way. We’re not gonna take
handouts. We’ll figure it out on our own.” Just then, his mind
played a vision of him walking into a crowded grocery store with a
ski mask, gun, and brown paper sack, only to be shot dead before he
reached the cash register by some weight-watcher flunky in a
wrinkled security guard uniform.

A short minute later, Lucas looked at the
clock. “Damn, it’s almost nine. We have to bust nuts if we’re going
to make breakfast with Trevor at nine-thirty.”

“Uh, yeah, it’s Friday. Trevor’s probably
already there, waiting for us.”

“I hope he fixed that computer glitch in his
code. I want to run a few more system checks tonight in the lab,
while we still can. Are you doing your workout today?”

Drew looked at the clock above the dresser.
“Not enough time. I’ll do my pushups tomorrow.”

Lucas stood in front of his brother’s closet.
“What shirt do you want?”

“It doesn’t matter. Something with long
sleeves as long as it’s—”

“Blue. I know, it’s Friday,” Lucas said,
retrieving a pullover shirt from a hanger. He removed it from the
red hanger and gave it to his brother. He was careful to put the
hanger back in the closet precisely where it was, exactly two
fingers away from the hangers on either side of it.

Drew slipped the shirt over his head and used
his fingers as a comb to control his wavy black hair.

Lucas handed his brother a wallet-sized
leather pouch that had been sitting on the nightstand next to the
bed. “Don’t want to forget this.”

“No. Never.” Drew opened the straps and put
them around his head and neck. He tucked the pouch inside the front
of the collared shirt.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower,” Lucas said.
“Let’s try to leave in ten minutes. I don’t want to be late
again.”

* * *

Lucas and Drew were headed east on one of
the sidewalks bordering the grassy Mall. The entrance to the
Student Union was only half a block away.

“You can always tell when Christmas break
hits. The minute finals are over, this place really empties out,”
Lucas said, missing the abundance of stunning eye-candy that
typically blanketed the mall. It was his favorite part of the
day.

“I like it this way,” Drew said. “I hate it
when I have to dodge everyone on the Mall. Those Frisbee football
players always find a way to hit me when I’m crossing.”

“That’s because you cut right across in the
middle of their game.”

“Well, that’s where the sidewalk runs, and I
don’t wanna have to go all the way around.”

Lucas stood behind Drew as his foster brother
effortlessly wheeled himself up the steep incline to the building’s
main entrance; Drew reached to open the glass entrance door, but a
tall, blond coed beat him to it. She was on the inside and held the
door open for him, giving Drew a rainbow smile as he rolled past
her.

Lucas couldn’t see her eyes through her
sunglasses, but the woman’s body language suggested she knew his
brother, or possibly, was attracted to him. It was common for women
to be intrigued by Drew’s boyishly handsome good looks. If it
weren’t for a car accident that mangled his legs, Drew surely
would’ve been a world-famous Italian underwear model instead of a
PhD candidate. Then again, if not for that accident, they never
would’ve met in the orphanage and been adopted together by the
Ramsay family.

Before she looked his way, Lucas checked that
his shirt was tucked in and that his fly was zipped. He rubbed his
tongue across the front of his teeth to make sure nothing foreign
was attached.

The girl finally glanced his way, but her
smile faded. Lucas wasn’t surprised. Women were often put off by
the jagged scars on his face, which obscured the dimples on his
cheeks. Years of living in state-run facilities had taken its toll,
leaving him looking more like a villain than a scientist. Despite
her reaction, Lucas thanked her for helping Drew with the door.

The cafeteria line extended outside the
entrance and past a pair of vending machines sitting in the hall.
Two dozen students were waiting in line before the buffet closed
its doors until lunchtime. Most were chatting with each other, but
a few were rocking on their heels, listening to headphones.