World of Trouble

Wednesday, August 22

I’ve got Abigail calmed down now, I’ve got a conversation going, I’ve got lucidity flickering in and out of her eyes.

I showed her my badge and my gun, explained that I am a retired Concord police officer working on a case, not an alien trailing a veil of cosmic dust, not someone from NASA here to inject her with antimatter. We’re at a small, rickety table in the back of the store, in the same back room where I once sat behind Jordan and watched him access the Internet, access the NCIC database, subjected myself to his taunting contempt to gain his help on my case.

We’re sitting at the table and Abigail is telling me haltingly, tiredly, that Jordan is not here and she does not know where he is.

“He is supposed to be here. We were supposed to be here together. Those were our instructions.”

“Instructions from who?”

She shrugs. Her body movements are jerky, pained. “Jordan talked to them.”

“To who?”

She shrugs again. She is staring at the table, pushing a torn corner of a piece of paper around with her finger, first this way and then another, like she is moving it on an invisible game board.

“What were the instructions?”

“Stay—stay here.”

“In Concord?”

“Yeah. Here. Resolution had been found. At a base. Gary, Indiana.”

“Resolution. That’s the scientist? Hans-Michael Parry.”

“Yeah. And the others were going to find him, go to the last phase, but we were to stay.” She looks up, sticks out her bottom lip. “Me and him. But then Jordan went away. Gone, gone. I was alone. And then the dust started to float in.” She stammers. “It—it—it just floated in.”

It’s like she reminds herself of it, of her invisible torment—she starts looking this way and then that, scowling into the corners of the room, rubbing at her skin where it’s coated with the cosmic dust.

“And when was this? Abigail? When did he leave?”

“Not that long. A week ago? Two weeks? It’s hard because then the dust started coming. Coming on in.”

“I know it’s hard,” I say, and I’m thinking, stay with me, sister, just a bit further. We’re almost there. “So the group, when they left, they were traveling to Gary, Indiana?”

She scowls, bites at her lower lip. “No, no. That’s where they found Resolution. But the recon spot was in Ohio. A police station in Ohio.”

Ohio. Ohio. As soon as she says it I know that’s where I’m going, as soon as she says the word—that is the target. The last known location of the missing individual. Nico is in Ohio.

I move forward in my seat, nearly toppling the table with my eagerness.

“Where in Ohio? What town?”

I wait for her to answer, holding my breath, teetering on the edge of discovery, like a drop of water on the side of a glass.

“Abigail?”

“I can feel the planet spinning. That’s also happening. It makes me dizzy and nauseous. But I can’t stop feeling it. Can you—do you understand that?”

“Abigail, what is the name of the town in Ohio?”

“First you have to help me,” she says, and reaches out her hands in their latex gloves and covers my hands. “I can’t do it. I’m too scared to do it.”

“Do what?” I say, but I already know, I can feel it pouring out of her eyes. She pushes one of her semiautomatics across the table to me.

“I know the name of the town. I have a map. But then you do it and do it fast.”