The Breach

VERSE VI
A MAY AFTERNOON IN 2001

The cell measures nine feet by seven. There are no bars. Instead there are four concrete walls painted the ugliest possible shade of blue, and a steel door with a two-inch vertical strip of security glass set into it. It is the only window in the cell. Encased in the ceiling is a fluorescent light, which is never turned off. Since last December it has been flickering in a way that gives Travis headaches right behind his eyes. For more than eight years he has spent twenty-three and a half hours of each day inside this room.

There is a letter taped to the wall above the bed. It arrived three months ago to inform him that his parents had been killed, shot while waiting at a stoplight in Minneapolis. Two detectives came to ask for his input on the matter. Travis enjoyed their undisguised apathy over Mr. and Mrs. Chase's deaths.

The only other letters he's received are from his brother, Jeff. These are not on the wall, but folded neatly beneath the bed, where he doesn't have to look at them, or think about the survivor's guilt that saturates the space between every line. Jeff is convinced that Travis's actions, on that night in 1992, are the only reason he himself was spared being drawn into the family business.

Travis is lying on the bed now, eyes closed to take the edge off the flickering. It barely helps. Sometimes he manages to simply forget about the flickering, even while it's happening, and sometimes that helps. Letting things slip from his mind is a skill he's perfected in this place. Days. Months. Years. The time behind him. The time ahead of him. Letting it all slip away is how he keeps from going crazy.

He stands from the bed and paces the room. He is hardly aware of the decision to do this; it is an automatic action that he makes several dozen times a day. His pacing follows the same path as always: door to toilet, toilet to door, door to toilet.

At that moment the lock on his cell door disengages with a heavy click, and the guard pushes it in.

"Visitor," the guard says, and Travis senses that the guard is nervous. Which is strange.

Then a man strides into the cell, dressed in an expensive suit, and the guard closes the door behind him. The man's hair is graying at the temples, and he wears sunglasses even in this windowless room. He grimaces at the flickering light, and says, "Hello, Travis. My name is Aaron Pilgrim."

He reaches for Travis as if to shake his hand, but instead Travis sees that he's holding something out to him. It is a bright blue sphere, the size of a softball. The radiance of the thing swims. It is hypnotic, and Travis takes it into his own hand without even considering to refuse.

The moment it touches his skin, a voice speaks in his head. A voice he thought he would never hear again.

"Travis," it says, and the strength departs his legs. He sits hard onto the bed.

Emily.

Beyond the blue light-beyond everything that matters to him now-he is vaguely aware that the visitor, Pilgrim, is smiling about something. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.

Travis says her name. The light flutters in response, then settles into the rhythm of his pulse.

"We won't be talking for long," Emily says. "Not this time. Not next time, either, years and years from now, when we meet again over that muddy hole in Alaska. But the third time… oh sweetie. The third time will most certainly be the charm."

"Why can't you stay with me now?" Travis says. He hears the longing and pain in his own voice. Missing her already, before she's even gone.

"I have work to do," Emily says. "Complicated work. I could never explain it to you, I'm afraid. Not here and now. Someday, I will. If it helps, just know this: you're more important to me than anyone in the world. More than the grinning jackass standing in this cell with you. Out of six billion people, you're the one whose involvement I need the most. You're the irreplaceable component of my plan."

Travis feels something wonderful swell in his chest, at her words. He matters to her. She has chosen him. In this moment, it is all he can do not to cry.

"Why me?" he whispers.

She giggles softly. "You'll find out." The light continues in step with his heartbeat for another few seconds. Then it changes. Darkens, in a way. "Now I'm going to give you what I came here to give you," Emily says. "It's not much. Think of it as a nudge. A preference for where you'd like to live, when you leave this place."

The moment she finishes saying that, Travis feels something inside his head. A tingling. It lasts perhaps a second, then vanishes.

"There," Emily sighs. "You're exactly on course now, my love. On course to meet me again."

Against his will, tears sting the edges of his eyes. She's going to leave now. He'll be alone here again. Alone with the miserable fluorescent light, and the headaches, and the ugly blue walls. And nothing else. For years, and years, and years.

"Shhh," she says. "It'll all be fine. Someday we'll laugh at this, I promise."

But he's so very far from laughing right now. This moment is wonderful beyond anything he's ever known. It is also horrible, to the same degree, because it is ending.

"Hand me back to the grinning jackass now, Travis."

He knows he cannot disobey her. Feels his body shifting forward already, as if of its own volition. Feels his leg muscles contracting to stand, and his arm stretching out to give her back.

"Please," Travis whispers, as if he could possibly change her mind.

"Soon," she says.

He wonders if he'll think of anything but her, in all the years to come, and she pulses in his hand one last time.

"By tonight, you won't think of me at all," she says.

Then the man with the graying hair at his temples comes forward and closes his fingers over her. All that stops Travis from killing this man is Emily's insistence. The man pulls her away. Travis's breath rushes out. If he were holding a knife right now, he'd cut his own throat with it.

The man named Pilgrim raps on the door. It opens, and like that, he's gone, and the wonderful blue light with him, and Travis falls onto his bed, and there is no stopping the tears now. Still wishing for a knife, or a nice.38, he considers the sharp metal corner of his bedframe instead. It won't be anywhere near as quick and clean as a blade. But when the job is done, it will be just as done.

He lies there, considering it. Minutes pass. At some point it occurs to him that he's let the blue sphere slip from his mind for a few seconds. Maybe as many as ten. How is that possible? How could he have forgotten it-her, forgotten her-for even that long?

He realizes he's staring right into that fucking fluorescent light now, and rolls over onto his stomach, face into the pillow. He is very tired. Very worn by the jagged emotions. He finds his awareness drifting down toward sleep.

He wakes. His mouth is dry, like he's been eating cotton balls. He must have slept for hours. He stands, goes to the sink, splashes water on his face and drinks with his mouth to the spigot.

Something is troubling him. Some memory he can't quite get to. Something he dreamed, maybe. He tries to picture it, and for a moment he draws the image of a pulsing blue light, and for some reason he feels very good about it. Maybe it was a nice dream. But even as he dwells on it, it slides down into the darkness, out of his reach. Gone.

He straightens up, shuts off the faucet. Returns to the bed, but doesn't feel like lying down again, or even sitting. Without really deciding to do so, he begins to pace the room: door to toilet, toilet to door, door to toilet.