Stasis: A Will Vullerman Anthology (9 page)

“Like I said...he always leaves a message.” Mr. Torrey ran a hand through his hair. “I don't know how he does it.”

Will frowned. "May I listen to it? I mean, if it's all right with May in here."

"It's nothing she hasn't heard before. Play it." Will could hear fear in his voice, but as he glanced back at Mr. Torrey, he caught something else, too, in his severe eyebrows and set jaw.

Fortitude. Good for them.

Will pressed the
call
button.

The voice that vibrated from the speaker was low, scratchy, and unmistakably male. A slightly hysterical note rang in the words, as if the man was high-strung and emotional.

"I'll find you. Oh, I'll find you, and I'll dance in your blood. I'll get you. You'll get it, and you can't escape, not ever, because I'll always find you. I'll finish what I started. You can't hide. Because I'm coming."

The phone beeped. Then, silence.

Will glared at the receiver. If this was a joke, then the person on the other line was a good actor and had a morbid sense of humor. And something about that voice bothered him. He couldn't place it, but something felt wrong about it, almost maniacal. And yet...vaguely familiar.

"What do you think?"

Will met Mr. Torrey's brown eyes. There was fear there, still, but anger as well, anger that reflected Will's.

"I'm going to find whatever sick person made this call and make sure they can't do anything to you.” Will tossed the phone onto the side table. "Be sure of it, you and your family are safe with me."

Protect the weak, uphold justice.
The vow he had taken the day he had become an ASP operative. Now it was time to fulfill his vow...and make up for the times he had failed. But he couldn't think about that failure. Shouldn't.

"Thank you.” Mr. Torrey let out a long breath. "Thank you."

There was a moment of silence, and then Mrs. Torrey changed the subject. "Do you need anything, Mr. Vullerman? I have food ready, if you're hungry. There's extra, since May decided she didn't like meatballs and voted on leftovers instead. If not, I made up the bed in the guest room."

Will shook his head. "I need some time to think, if that's all right. I ate supper on my way here."

Mrs. Torrey nodded. "Of course. Follow me."

************

Will left his room several hours later, his mind clear and refreshed. He had taken a short nap, and now he had a plan worked out.

The house's lamps cast a warm, yellowish light as Will walked down the hallway. Much better than the energy-saving fluorescent that Will had gotten used to.

Will found Mr. Torrey sitting in the living room, working on a touchpad. He glanced up. "You need something?"

"I'd like to work on your phone, if that's okay." Will gestured toward the phone. "I might have to tear it apart, but I've got some stuff I'd like to try on it."

“It's all yours. I thought about tearing it apart myself—not to look at it, just to disable calls altogether—but we got a new number several days ago, and...” His voice trailed off. “It called the new number, too.” He glanced up at the clock and changed the subject. “It's a bit late. I figured you went to bed.”

Will sat on the tile and crossed his legs. "I took a short nap to clear my head. It shouldn't keep me from sleeping, though, since I'm still getting over jet lag."

Will reached up and grabbed the phone off the table. He balanced it on his knee and took off the back panel. He then removed the battery and took off another panel, revealing wires and hardware. He set his comm on the table as he worked, saving it for later. Now, if he could find a way to connect the computing power of his comm to the phone itself...

He heard soft steps behind him. "What you doing, Mister Vullerman?"

Will looked up to see May dressed in pink pajamas, her hair still wet from her shower. "I'm working on your phone, Miss May." Will showed her the phone.

She stared down at it with a frown. "It looks like you're destroying it."

Will laughed. "No, I'm just trying to find a way to connect it to my comm."

"Daddy wanted a comm, but they're too much money." May sat down beside him and peered at the phone. "Why do you need to connect it to your comm?"

Will showed her his comm. "You see, when this guy calls, it shows no number and leaves nothing but a message, which means you can't call him back. But in order to call you at all, his comm has to have a signal. If I can find a way to reverse the signal, I can call him back. Then I can tell him to stop." Actually, Will planned on saying a lot more than that.

“Sounds smart,” Mr. Torrey said, setting aside his touchpad. “But how do you reverse the signal?”

“That's the tricky part.” Will held up a wire. “Once I connect the comm to the phone's hardware, I have to program a command that allows me to use both systems to essentially 'grab' a signal and follow it back to the source.”

Mr. Torrey shrugged. “It's all Greek to me. My degree's in Agriculture. But do you think it'll work?”

“It works in theory. We'll see if I can get it to work in practice.”

May frowned. "Are you a hacker, Mister Vullerman?"

"Well..." Will stopped for a moment. How could he answer this question discreetly? "My job requires me to be good with technical stuff. I'm not one of those people who can hack into everything, though."

The answer seemed to satisfy her. For a while, she said nothing, and Will continued working on the phone, trying to find the wire he needed to connect his comm. No good. His fingers were too thick. He dug in his pocket and came out with a pair of tweezers, using it to part the wires and look through the more delicate ones deeper in the phone.

"Do you have a family, Mister Vullerman?"

Will paused his work. Children could afford to be blunt, he supposed. "No. I had my grandparents, but they're...gone."

"Oh."

There was another moment of silence, and then she spoke again. "Didn't you have a mommy?"

Will set the phone in his lap. "My mom left a long time ago." He didn't elaborate. Will's mother had left him with his grandparents after his dad had died. He barely remembered her now. But May didn't need to know that. The world was a hard place, but not to a girl of May's age.

If only he could be as innocent as she was. People like her gave him hope. They were what the world hadn't screwed up yet.

He picked up the phone again and poked through the wires with his tweezers.

"Well," May said, breaking her thoughtful silence, "
We
can be your family, then."

"Thank you, May." Will swallowed back the lump in his throat. He didn't have time to dwell on May's statement, however, as he found the wire he needed. "All right, there we go!"

"What?" She glanced down at the dissected phone.

Will gently pulled out the wire and cut it. "Here's the wire I needed to connect the phone to my comm." He took a wire from his comm and touched it to the one in the phone. A jolt went through his fingers, and the wire sparked. Will dropped the electronics with a grimace. "Ouch! Must have been the wrong one." He shook his hand, his fingers tingling and going numb.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing, Mister Vullerman?"

Will rubbed his fingers. "I guess not.”

Mrs. Torrey swept into the room and pulled May to her feet. "Time for bed, May. Don't bother Mr. Vullerman, okay? He has to work."

"He shocked himself, Mommy."

Mrs. Torrey raised an eyebrow at Will. "Is that so, May?"

"Uh huh."

"Is that true, Mr. Vullerman?"

Will grinned ruefully. "I'm afraid so. I think I'm done for the night, anyway. I'll continue working on it in the morning." He stood, thanked Mr. and Mrs. Torrey, and went to bed.

But Will didn't sleep very well. Not that the bed was the problem. Much of the night, he laid awake and stared at the ceiling, the raspy voice echoing through his thoughts.

I'll finish what I started. You can't hide. Because I'm coming.

Sleepless nights had a way of dredging up the worst in him. His soul wrestled with the problem facing him and came up with nothing. And late that night, his conscience dug up something he had tried to forget. A family with an innocent little girl, and his mission to protect them.

The one mission he had failed.

************

Will punched a few buttons on his comm's keypad. "Error" flashed on the screen, and he sighed. Another failure.

Will was familiar with modern-day technology, but wedding his comm with this dinosaur of a phone was proving to be a headache. Will had managed to connect the comm to the phone, but programming the comm to reverse the phone's incoming signal was the problem. He had been working on it for two days now, and all he had to show for it was a long list of what
not
to do.

To make matters worse, Brownbarr had instructed him to keep things unofficial, so Will couldn't consult any of the ASP's resident tech geniuses.

And in the meantime, the calls continued. Will glanced at the clock—it read ten minutes till six. In about an hour, then, the phone would ring. No way he would have this hack figured out before then.

Will set down the comm for a moment and gazed out the window. A taxi sputtered past, leaving a trail of exhaust fumes behind.

He heard footsteps behind him. Will turned and found Mrs. Torrey standing in the doorway to the living room. She gestured over her shoulder. "I've got everything but the potatoes on the table, if you'd like to join us for supper.”

Will shrugged. "Sure, I'd—"

Will's words were cut off by the loud ring of the phone.

Beeeeeeeeeep.

He picked it up, and the familiar "unknown caller" scrolled across the screen. What in the world—?

The phone abruptly stopped ringing, and "new voice message" blinked on and off on the screen. An hour early—but why? He pushed the call button, and the message played, the same one that always played. With a beep, it ended.

“What—what does it mean?” Mrs. Torrey's face was pale. “It always calls at seven. Always. It's never called earlier before.” She covered her mouth with her hand and tore her gaze from the phone, looking up at Will.

Will set the phone on the table and frowned. “I don't know. I don't know what it means, but now we can't count on predictability. Once I get this comm connected to the phone, we need to be ready to answer it 24/7."

Mrs. Torrey nodded. "I'll tell my husband." She turned and fled down the hallway.

Will glanced at the phone again. Whatever it meant, he had to work, and fast. He felt, rather than knew, that things were progressing. Whoever was calling would make a move soon, and Will had to be ready.

************

Will woke in the dark.

For a moment, he blinked and stared at the ceiling. He started to roll over and closed his eyes, but then they shot open again.

What had woken him up?

The faint smell of smoke drifted into his nostrils. He sat up in bed like a gunshot, rubbing his eyes. What was burning?

He inhaled deeply through his nose, and he caught it again, a smoky, sulfuric scent. It smelled like a match had been struck, nothing more. Mr. or Mrs. Torrey had probably lit a candle or something.

But nevertheless, he glanced out the window. Nothing. It seemed like a quiet night. And late, too, a little too late to be lighting candles.

And then he saw it. A dim, concentrated glow, barely visible, ten or fifteen meters away. Will stood up and leaned forward to get a better look, but as soon as he did so, the glow disappeared.

Strange. He'd better check on things, just to be safe.

Will dressed quietly and checked the clock. It was a little after two in the morning.

He slipped out into the hallway and halted when he saw a soft light in the living room. He padded down the hallway and peered in; Mr. Torrey was on the couch, his head bowed and his blank touchpad in his lap, as if he had fallen asleep reading.

He was about to slip back to his bedroom again when Mr. Torrey stirred. He stretched a little and looked up, blinking. He nodded to Will. “Mr. Vullerman. Is the light keeping you up?”

Will shook his head. “No, no, you're fine. I thought I smelled smoke and got up to take a look around.”

“I haven't smelled anything,” Mr. Torrey said. “If you're awake for a little while, feel free to have a seat.”

Will sat down in a chair opposite to Mr. Torrey, gesturing to the touchpad. “Did you fall asleep reading?”

“What?” Mr. Torrey glanced down at the touchpad. “Oh, right. Must have gone off. No, I was praying.” He leaned back on the couch, adjusting his glasses. “You a religious guy, Will?”

Will shrugged. An odd question. “Yes, for the most part. My grandparents were Conservative Baptists. After they died, I slacked off on my church attendance somewhat. I've been trying to go more often.”

Mr. Torrey nodded. “Will—you mind if I call you that?—I'll be honest with you. I'm at the end of my rope. There's nowhere else I can go. It's not just these phone calls—it's this house. The relocation program for American survivors is a generous international gesture, but I still have to pay fifty per cent for the house and all the bills. I still don't have a job, and we're several thousand short on this month's payment.”