Road Less Traveled (13 page)

Allison gulped. Behind her, Carter tensed. She clearly couldn't bring herself to ask, so he did it for her. “Why should she know that?”

The question was uttered so softly, the second Russell frowned at first. Then she nodded. “You should know,” she explained slowly, “because you're the one who married him.”

That did it—Carter caught Allison as she stumbled, and helped her to one of the chairs set up in front of the computer. She just stared, tears in her eyes, and clutched his hands when he offered them.

He couldn't even imagine what she was going through. She had loved Stark, and given him up, then found him again, and then lost him.

But apparently in that other Eureka, he had never died. They had found a different way to solve the problem. Nathan Stark had survived, and she had remarried him.

There was another question, and Allison forced herself to ask it. “Jenna?” she whispered, and the second Russell indicated that she hadn't heard the question clearly. “What about Jenna?”

“Your little girl?” The other Russell beamed at her. “She's beautiful! I saw her just a few weeks ago, at the company picnic. She's absolutely adorable, and she clearly has the director wrapped around her little finger.”

Allison nodded once. Then she rose and walked out of the room without another word and without looking back. Carter let her go. He could see the effort she was exerting, trying not to cry in front of him or the two Russells. He had to respect that. He wanted to run after her, to comfort her, but knew she'd let him know if she wanted his support. Right now, she needed privacy to process what she'd just heard.

“Is she okay?” the second Russell asked the first, who glanced at Carter helplessly.

“She'll be fine,” he replied slowly. He was almost sure of it. Allison was one of the strongest people he knew. “She's just had a major shock.” He took a deep breath. “Our Nathan Stark died almost a year ago. He gave his life to save us all. Allison is the director now. And Stark never met his daughter.”

He turned and walked out, not quite sure where he was going. But he had a feeling they had just let something loose, something that could stagger them all. Something, in its own way, even bigger than the discovery of another reality.

They'd just unleashed the endless possibility of what might have been.

He hoped the town was strong enough to handle it.

Zane sighed. “I'm beefing up the security systems.”

Carter rolled his eyes. He was standing in classic cop position, legs slightly apart, hands at his sides, ready for action, scanning the area for any potential trouble. “That much I got. How, exactly?”

“It's complicated.”

“Well, uncomplicate it.” Carter leaned in so that he was blocking the light as Zane bent over the security console. “I need to know what to watch out for when trying to catch whoever's trying to break in.”

“Fine. I'm rewriting the security protocol algorithms on the fly,” Zane explained. “Before, it was a simple set of yes/no questions: ‘Is he carrying a gun?' ‘Does she have radioactive material on her person?' ‘Is his head on fire?' Things like that.” He frowned. “Obviously, that wasn't enough.” Allison had brought him up to speed on the Thunderbird situation, and asked him to lend a hand.

Carter was nodding. “As long as you knew what questions it would ask, and what clues it would look for, you could work around it.”

“Exactly.” Zane glanced up at him, and got a grin in return. He sometimes had to stop and remind himself that Carter was by no means stupid. He was actually a damn good cop—he'd caught Zane, after all, and that was something most of the law enforcement in the company had failed at, more than once. Just because Carter wasn't a genius was no reason to underestimate him.

“So, what, you're setting it up with something like S.A.R.A.H., so it can ask its own questions and change them depending on the situation?”

“Good god, no.” Zane shuddered. “Can you imagine tying S.A.R.A.H. to GD's security system?” Now Carter shuddered with him. They were both remembering the times Carter's experimental artificial-intelligence house had gone haywire and threatened both the people inside and anyone nearby. “We don't need a real AI here, and I wouldn't want to risk it. But I'm programming a wider range of questions and setting them to cascade. That way it's not just yes/no. Even if you manage to trick the system about one thing, it could still notice something else that would trigger a whole new set of questions.”

Carter considered that. “Is this going to be one of those things that comes back to bite us on the butt?” he asked after a minute. “Are we going to be getting calls about regular GD researchers who got detained, or cuffed, or zapped, or sprayed in goo, because they had watches or pens or a penny stuck in the sole of their shoe?”

“I hope not.” Zane shrugged. “No guarantees, though.”

“Great.” Carter rubbed at his face with one hand. “Just the kind of reassurance I was hoping for.”

“It should work,” Zane assured him. “You've got to meet several criteria before you get flagged by the system, or trip a major one like carrying a gun. And I've set it to moderate its response based on the perceived threat level, so it can do everything from magnetizing your ID to the wall to hitting you with enough electricity to stun you unconscious before you can blink.” He grinned. “I'd try to avoid that one, if I were you.”

“Is it still set to recognize Jo and me as authorized to carry weapons on-premises?” It was an important question to ask.

“Absolutely. The two of you are the only ones who can carry guns in GD without Allison's direct approval.” Zane double-checked, though, just to be sure. The last thing he wanted was for his new security upgrades to try taking out JoJo. She'd never let him hear the end of it.

“What about setting it to pick up traces of the Thunderbird itself?” Carter asked.

“I'd love to, but I don't have much to go on.” Zane scratched his chin and yawned. Man, when was the last time he'd had coffee? It had to have been hours. “The Thunderbird lab was fried, so I don't have any clear readings there. And whoever did this killed the security cameras in the lab and along the hall first, so all we have are readings from before all this happened, when the eggs were still nice and quiet in their containment fields.” He stood up and stretched. “I do have it programmed to watch for any major electromagnetic anomalies, and that would include a hatched Thunderbird. But short of the thing flying through the security gates, there isn't much I can tell you.”

Carter nodded. “Okay, thanks.” It wasn't Zane's fault he couldn't do more. It wasn't anybody's fault, really—not even Fargo's, or at least not entirely—but he was still frustrated. So far he'd found absolutely nothing to help them track down the missing egg or its thief. And the longer they ran around chasing their own tails, the more likely it was that the thief would manage to sneak the egg out of town. Or lose control of it, in which case they'd have a crazed sentient storm on the loose. They needed to figure this out. But how?

 

Jo and Fargo were having the exact same problem.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Jo rasped, slamming her palm down on the hood of her car. They'd just spoken to Sheila Menninger, a Eureka resident who supposedly had access to black-market sources for equipment, chemicals, and other supplies. But Sheila had claimed she didn't know anything about the egg, and wouldn't know what to do with it if it did come to her. “I buy stuff people can't get approved to purchase through official channels,” she'd explained when they'd confronted her. “But it's all legal, and I don't sell things from here. I could go to prison for that!” Which was true—all of Eureka, and especially anything related to GD, was under military security, and the penalties for violating that were severe. “Besides, I don't deal in animals,” Sheila had continued. “Too messy. I'll keep my ear out, but really I doubt anybody would try bringing something like that to me.”

“Then who would they bring it to?” Jo had demanded in her best tough-cop voice. It had made the other woman shrink back from her, despite having a good six or seven inches and thirty pounds on Jo, and her voice had quavered a bit when she'd answered. Not that it helped.

“I don't know. I swear! Like I said, I don't deal with animals. Nobody's ever asked me to get them anything alive, and nobody's ever asked me to sell anything for them, either.”

“All right, all right.” Jo had stepped back, and watched, secretly pleased, as Sheila had sighed in relief. It was all about the attitude. That, and the fact that she could have broken the larger woman into pieces in seconds without working up a sweat, and they both knew it. “Just let us know if you do hear anything.”

“Absolutely.” Jo was pretty sure she meant it, too.

But that didn't help them much right now.

“Another dead end,” Fargo complained as he climbed back into Jo's car. “So much for ‘crack detective work.'” He even made little air quotes with his fingers.

“Yeah, because you're doing so much better on your end,” Jo snapped at him, slamming her door and twisting the key in the ignition until the car's engine roared to life. “You're supposed to be our science adviser, so advise already! Give me something I can use!”

“I'd love to!” His voice came out in a whine, and in his head he cursed himself for it. He sounded like a petulant child. “I don't have much to go on, here.”

“Well, neither do I,” she retorted. “But there has to be something! There's a thief out there, and every minute we waste following dead ends lets him get farther away.” She slammed the car into gear and hit the gas so hard the acceleration flung Fargo back in his seat.

It wasn't fair. He really was trying; he'd been wracking his brain ever since the theft, trying to come up with some way to detect the egg or track the thief or both. But so far nothing had burst into his head.

He admitted privately that he'd been hoping—even fantasizing a bit—that they'd crack the case together, thanks to some clever insight on his part. And then Jo would see that he was really the man for her, not that arrogant bad-boy pretty-boy Zane. She'd fall for Fargo, for his charm and sophistication and intellect, and then—

“I said, do you have any idea who else might bring in—or take out—restricted tech?” Jo demanded. Fargo rubbed his shoulder where she'd punched him.

“No,” he replied, trying to keep his voice from going shrill again. “The only person I know who ever did anything like that was Victor Arlan.”

Jo slammed on the brakes, sending Fargo flying into the dash despite his seat belt. At least the airbags didn't activate.

“Arlan,” she muttered. “Of course!” She grinned and slapped Fargo on the back. “See, you can be useful when you put your mind to it!” Then they were racing down the street again.

Fargo wasn't sure which hurt worse—his shoulder, his chest, or his back. Still, Jo had complimented him, so at least his pride was intact. Right now it might be the only part of him without a bruise.

“I just saw Dr. Carlson!” Steve Whiticus insisted. “He
walked right by me, then stopped to ask why I was wearing these!” Steve indicated the strange glasses that completely covered his eyes. “What exactly is going on here?”

“Don't worry,” Allison assured him. “Everything is under control. You should go back home before you strain yourself.” Whiticus was a meteorology expert and one of the few GD researchers to work from home. He'd suffered an eye injury a few years back, and it had damaged his retinas to the point where even weak light hurt like a migraine. He had special filters built into his glasses to help shield his eyes, but even with those she could see him wincing.

“But it was Dr. Carlson,” Whiticus insisted. “I'm sure of it! We used to be neighbors!” Carl Carlson had been another GD researcher, a mild-mannered, friendly, slightly awkward little man who worked on cellular regeneration and mostly kept to himself. That is, until an experiment with the strange object known only as the Artifact had somehow rendered him invulnerable to harm. He had disappeared right before their eyes after warning them that they weren't ready to understand how the Artifact worked or what it could do. There was no way he was back, she thought. But she doubted Whiticus would lie about a thing like this.

“I know.” Allison kept her tone calm and soothing. “There have been a lot of strange sightings lately. Don't worry about it. I promise you, everything is fine.”

Whiticus finally left, shaking his head, and Allison sighed and dropped back into her office chair.

It was getting worse.

More and more people were calling her or stopping by to say they'd seen an old friend and colleague who had moved away, or quit, or been fired (and, in most of those cases, imprisoned)—or who had died.

Clearly they were seeing people from the other Eureka. That was why there were subtle differences—Carl Carlson hadn't known about Steve Whiticus's special glasses because in that world Whiticus must not have been injured.

But where were these strange sightings coming from? She'd seen people on Dr. Russell's monitor, of course, but that was in the extradimensional visualization lab. Now she had employees saying they'd sighted people from that other reality out in the halls.

People like Nathan.

She pushed that thought away again. She didn't have time to deal with it, or the emotions it caused, right now. Running GD came first. It had to.