Mara Lantern: Broken Realms Part 14

After a moment, she opened an eye and then the other. She straightened and turned in a circle with her mouth gaping, looking to the periphery of the bubble that encased her. She could see the shop opaquely beyond the frontier of the ovoid, though it seemed distant and somewhat off-kilter, not quite aligned with where Mara thought she stood, as if she were half a foot below where the floor should be, looking up into a ghostly sky dropped into the shop. The effect disoriented her. Though different from the rotating double vision she had experienced on the airplane, it brought back the same sense of being out of sync with the world around her.

"Abort, abort! How do you reboot this thing?"

She shook the ball of light. Blue and black strobes like those on the flight strafed the shop walls. The bubble blurred, reminding Mara of static on an old television screen.

"Bad idea. Don't shake the light. Okay, nice and steady now."

She held her hand level, still grasping it. The bubble cleared up.

Looking above, Mara noticed lines forming along the edge of the translucent bubble, running into spherical nodes that appeared from nowhere, and splitting into more lines, like a three-dimensional genealogical diagram. Only one line went into any node, but many led out of it. She noticed some nodes had no lines emerging from them. Lines went in; none came out.

The entire bubble surface filled with lines, and they turned toward Mara, filling the s.p.a.ce between the periphery and the spot where she stood. The bubble was not hollow; the interior was part of the display.

A node appeared directly between Mara's eyes about three inches from her nose. She crossed her eyes to see it.

As the lines continued to be drawn, many bore down on her, heading directly for her nose and the node floating before it. She felt an urge to duck, and, when she did, the node followed her, maintaining its position relative to her face. As she s.h.i.+fted her field of vision beyond the stalking node, the entire diagram s.h.i.+fted with her.

"What in the world?" Mara asked, again cross-eyed as hundreds of lines converged on the node, creating a fan pointing directly at her head. "That looks wrong. And I don't like how it's pointing at me."

Once all the lines were drawn, Mara stood in a translucent web suspended in the s.p.a.ce of the shop. "If this is supposed to be a GPS, its interface leaves a lot to be desired," she said.

Unsure of herself, she raised the hand holding the Chronicle. "Okay, I'm done now."

Nothing. The bubble and its web of lines persisted.

A sound interrupted the thought. A m.u.f.fled whisper. Mara turned to the front door. No one there.

The sound again, definitely a voice. She turned her head back. It was to her left. She strained to hear it.

"Bring..." it said, the rest of the sentence too low to discern.

Mara focused on a node floating to her left, two feet from the one in front of her.

"Bring it to the altar..."

"Definitely coming from that one," she said, reaching out to the node. "Say it again. What altar?"

She felt silly.

She touched the node, and it glowed. The bubble diagram s.h.i.+fted, placing the glowing node directly in front of her and s.h.i.+fting the one with the many lines to the right. The node spun, imploded in a flash of light, replaced by a black tear in the fabric of the bubble.

The rip widened and pulled Mara toward it.

Papers on the counter fluttered into the air, flew into the blackness and disappeared. Her tweezers skittered across the counter and flew in. It grew stronger, sucked in currents of air that whipped around the shop. It gobbled up her stapler and a screwdriver. Her s.h.i.+rt and hair fluttered forward, streaming in the vacuum. She grabbed the counter and leaned against the pull.

"Bring it to the Altar of Hyas Tyee." The voice rang out over the growing din of wind and appliances flying off shelves.

"Oh, my G.o.d, no, no, no," Mara screamed as the gaping dark hole grew, covering the back of the shop. Her grip on the counter slipped, and she slid forward. In a panic, she let go of the Chronicle, but it stayed in the air. Mara risked letting go of the counter, reached up and poked the node originally in front of her.

The web of lines s.h.i.+fted back. The black tear collapsed, replaced by a node.

Mara flopped down across the counter and said, "Enough."

The bubble collapsed.

The ball of light winked out, and the copper disk fell to the floor, rolled on its edge emitting a reverberating ring and dropped onto its side with a soft clank.

CHAPTER 23.

PING SAT SURROUNDED by nine empty chairs, staring to his right at a painting of three horizontal bars in differing hues of green hanging on the beige wall at the end of the conference table where he waited to be interviewed by the accident investigators. The picture provided the only color in the room located at an office park near the Portland airport. Opposite the picture, to his left, at the other end of the conference table was a blank wall with a black tube mounted horizontally near the ceiling, a retractable projection screen. Behind him stood a bank of windows that ran the length of the room, covered by beige plastic venetian blinds. Directly in front of him, across the conference table was the only door to the room.

Detective Bohannon opened it and stepped inside, followed by Special Agent Suter.

"Mr. Ping, we appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to us," Suter said as he sat down. He did not offer to shake hands, even though Bohannon reached across the table.

"Sorry I could not meet you at my place of business, but we are remodeling, and it can get too noisy to carry on a conversation with all the construction going on," Ping said.

"No problem. As I said on the phone, we're talking to some of the pa.s.sengers to see if we can figure out what may have caused the accident on Flight 559."

"Whatever I can do to help."

"Can you tell us if you observed anything out of the ordinary before the flight took off?" Suter asked.

"Before we left the ground? No, I can't say that I saw anything unusual."

"After takeoff?"

"A few minutes after we left the ground, I saw a strange light in the pa.s.senger cabin. A swirling blue light that appeared to be able to pa.s.s through people and objects. It was very strange and disorienting."

"What do you mean, it could 'pa.s.s through people and objects'?"

"It looked somewhat like a flas.h.i.+ng X-ray. I know that sounds strange. It not only spun around the cabin, but it seemed to pa.s.s through everything. It made me dizzy. Given the reactions of the other pa.s.sengers, I'm certain it had the same effect on some of them as well."

"What was the source of this light?"

"I did not see where it came from. I had the impression that the source might have been moving around inside the plane."

"Did you see anyone carrying an object that could have emitted this light?"

"No, I was in a window seat, so it was hard to see very much, especially after people became panicked. There was a great deal of crying and yelling."

"What caused the panicking among the pa.s.sengers?"

"In the beginning, I think some pa.s.sengers were concerned about the light, but after that, when the plane began its descent, I'm sure that was the motivation for most of the fear and noise."

A knock came from the door.

"Come in," Suter said over his shoulder.

A jowly man in a pin-striped dress s.h.i.+rt and tie stepped into the room. When he locked eyes with Ping, all the color drained from his face.

"Mr. Pirelli, this is Mr. Ping, one of the pa.s.sengers from Flight 559," Suter said.

"Ah," Pirelli nodded and looked away quickly. "Of course, pa.s.senger interviews."

"Have we met before?" Ping asked.

"Oh, no. No, I don't think so. I'm not even from Portland," Pirelli said.

"What can we help you with?" Bohannon asked Pirelli.

"I needed to talk to the two of you out here in the hallway for a few minutes. Mr. Ping, can you excuse us for a couple minutes?" Pirelli asked.

"Actually if you can point me to the restroom, I'll excuse myself, and you can talk here."

"Just go to the end of the hallway and take a left," Bohannon said.

Ping got up and walked around the table. Pirelli stepped out into the hallway to let Ping exit the room. As Ping got to the end of the hallway and turned left, he looked back down the hall. Pirelli stared after him but quickly turned away.

"Man, I'm sorry. I was not ready for that," Pirelli said as he closed the door.

"Ready for what?" Suter asked.

"I saw his dead body just a few days ago. It is hard to believe there's another copy of him running around alive out here. Coming face-to-face with it is almost too much to deal with," Pirelli said. He wiped his brow with his bare hand. "Sheesh, that was weird."

"There are so many bodies, I can't see how you would remember anyone well enough to recognize them," Bohannon said.

"I think he might have been the only Asian on the flight. That's why I remembered him."

"Strange stuff, no doubt about that," Suter said without a hint of commiseration. "So what did you want to talk to us about?"

"I need some guidance on whether we are going to need resources to interview pa.s.sengers outside of Portland. We've got people all over the country, some even outside the US."

"We have not uncovered any information that links to a pa.s.senger outside of Portland. The only lead we have points to this Mara Lantern girl, the one we don't have a dead body for," Suter said. "I don't think we need to talk to people outside of Portland."

Bohannon nodded.

"Okay, let me know immediately if anything changes," Pirelli said, turning to the door. "Sorry about that thing earlier. I'll need to figure out a way of keeping a poker face the next time I encounter one of our dead pa.s.sengers."

Pirelli opened the door and nodded at Ping in the hall.

"Just a few more questions, and we should be able to wrap this up, Mr. Ping," Suter said after they took their places around the table. "So you did not see where this light was coming from during the flight. Did you see a red-headed boy running in the aisle or a young woman chasing him?"

"No, like I said, I was in a window seat."

"Do you know a young lady named Mara Lantern?"

"Yes. She works at a repair shop next door to my business."

"What a coincidence. Were the two of you traveling together on the flight?"

"No, we are just acquaintances. It was happenstance we took the same flight to San Francisco."

"Did you see her get up, leave her seat during the flight?"

"No. I'm not even sure where she was seated. I think she may have been farther back in the plane than me."

"Did you see or hear an explosion prior to the plane going down?"

"No, no explosion."

"I think that does it for now, Mr. Ping. If we have any further questions, we'll be in touch," Suter said.

CHAPTER 24.

"ACCORDING TO THE newspaper, the investigators have reconstructed the airplane from our flight in that hangar," Ping said, pointing across the dark road. He and Sam had pulled into a s.h.i.+pping company's unlit parking lot across the street. "Now, you stay right here and keep watch. Do not leave the car."

"Okay, I'm not going anywhere. I'll do exactly what you told me," Sam said.

"Right, if you see someone pull into the lot across the street, you send me a text message. Nothing else. Don't get out and do anything else, got it?"

"I got it. I won't get out of the car."

"If I get caught or tied up in there, I'll text you. If that happens, there's a motel about a mile that way. Go there and get a cab back to my house."

Sam nodded. Ping reached for the door, hesitated, then locked eyes with Sam. "You promise?"

"Just go. Don't worry." Sam rolled his eyes, slouched back in his seat.

Ping got out, jogged across the street and turned before getting to the hangar parking lot. He had driven past the building several times and identified the door he planned to enter. The guards had regular twenty-minute rounds and stopped every three rounds to smoke in the parking lot. They were just about due for a break and would not see him if things worked out.

The door featured a vertical pane of wired gla.s.s just above the handle, which he chipped away at with a chisel and hammer. He covered the end of the chisel with an old sweats.h.i.+rt to m.u.f.fle the sound. Five minutes later he had a hole in the window large enough to reach through. He pressed the door release bar.

Entering the midpoint of the building, Ping found himself directly behind the partially reconstructed plane. He paused at the sight of the gutted airliner, pondered how lucky he was to be alive. Silently he stood in the darkness, thinking about his new life in this new reality and hoped he would be able to stay.