Out of Nowhere Page 6
Caleb had witnessed the aftermath of a lot of Aidan’s unintentional runs. No wonder he’d gone round-eyed. “How do I stop myself from landing in the wrong place?”
“You’ve done alright so far. You found your way back here. We’ll practice with something small, just in this room, from right in front of the door to that spot near the back wall. I’ll go with you so you don’t end up stranded somewhere alone.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea? You should be resting—”
“You’re gonna do all the work,” Aidan said. He stood up. “I’m just cargo. It’ll be fine.”
Caleb positioned himself in front of the door and stared at the other side of the room with determination. Aidan walked right up to him. Caleb jerked back, startled. That was strange. Caleb knew how running worked—you had to hold on tight to anything or anyone you planned to take with you. Maybe Aidan wasn’t the only one wondering if something had changed between them last night.
“Oh. Right,” Caleb said, glancing down at Aidan. Tentatively, he put his hands on Aidan’s shoulders. Even through two layers of clothing, his hands were hot. He must be nervous about jumping.
“You did it before,” Aidan said. “You can do it again.”
“Yeah,” he said, with a distracted laugh.
“Caleb. You have to hold on better than that.”
“Do you think—uh, do you think becoming a runner made you feel different? As a person?”
“No.” Although the pattern of Aidan’s adolescent accidents had revealed more about his attachment to Caleb than he’d wanted to share, those feelings had always been there. It was only natural, really. A lonely young gay kid developing a hopeless crush on the only person who was nice to him. A person who just happened to be extraordinarily beautiful. It wasn’t his fault, it didn’t mean anything, and it wasn’t going anywhere, so the only sensible thing to do about the crush was to keep a lid on it. And when that failed, Aidan kept his distance. He’d been managing one or the other for years. Caleb hadn’t noticed.
Nothing had happened last night. Aidan was imagining things. Caleb was just nervous about using his new ability.
“What are you waiting for?” Aidan asked. He put his arms around Caleb’s waist, since Caleb hadn’t moved. A moment later, Caleb’s hands drifted from his shoulders and came to settle on his back as Caleb returned the embrace. It wasn’t tight enough, as if he were afraid that Aidan was too fragile after what he’d endured. Aidan cinched his grip to make up for it. He wasn’t afraid for himself. The strange case of Dr. Lange aside, people couldn’t get stranded in the Nowhere. If Caleb did let go when he jumped, Aidan would most likely not move at all. But he didn’t want Caleb to end up alone.
“Uh, some instructions?”
What instructions? Stepping into the Nowhere was just something you did. You wanted it. It happened. You didn’t move your body to do it. You barely even moved your mind. You just felt it. Aidan had never needed anyone to explain it to him, and he wasn’t sure how to convey it to Caleb. “You can feel it, right? The Nowhere?”
“I think so?” Caleb shifted his weight from one foot to the other. They were so close that Aidan could feel every little adjustment he made.
“Focus on what you feel. It’s all around you. You don’t have to move to get into the Nowhere, but sometimes it helps to think about moving.”
“Okay.” Caleb’s ribs expanded against his as he took a deep breath. They stood in silence for a moment. Nothing happened.
“You know, the first times, I didn’t go anywhere. Just blinked into the Nowhere and back out. That’s all you have to do. Forget about the other side of the room.”
“Right.” Another breath. Another few moments of waiting in silence. Nothing changed.
Maybe whatever “treatment” Caleb had received had only been enough for one jump. But what use would that be? And his double had jumped here and back, so that couldn’t be right. “It’s okay,” Aidan said. “Take your time. My schedule’s clear.”
Caleb didn’t laugh. “Do you think I could… try it by myself?” His gaze was directed at the ceiling as he spoke. Was he blushing?
“You think it will make a difference? I’m worried about you stranding yourself alone.”
“I know. But I’ll be careful. And besides, so far I haven’t gone anywhere, so there’s not that much risk, right?”
Aidan frowned. “Okay.”
Caleb’s arms dropped to his sides instantly. Aidan was a little slower to let go, but as soon as he’d stepped back, Caleb vanished. Aidan hadn’t even had time to see if he really was blushing.
He blinked back into reality a second later in the same spot. He gasped for air and then sat right down on the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He crossed his legs and patted his face and then the floor and then his face again. “Holy shit.”
His cheeks were bright pink.
It made Aidan remember the exhilaration and embarrassment of his first jump into Caleb’s bedroom all those years ago. Maybe there was some emotional component to jumping after all. Caleb had no reason to be embarrassed. He’d known Aidan his whole life. They’d seen each other in all kinds of conditions—healthy and sick, clothed and naked—so having a little trouble mastering a new skill hardly seemed remarkable.
“Okay,” Aidan said, pushing those thoughts aside. “Security check. Tell me something only the real Caleb would know.”
Caleb took a steadying breath. “When Deborah’s first boyfriend cheated on her and I tracked him down and punched him, you and Deb were both fucking pissed at me—her because it was none of my business, and you because you thought Deb should throw her own punches. So you spent the next few weeks teaching my little sister to fight.”
Aidan smiled. Deb was as stormy as Caleb was sunny, and she’d been a good student of this particular subject. Did Deb know Caleb was up here? She must. Aidan could imagine her reaction that news, and it wouldn’t be a happy one.
“A couple years later when we were off at college and Deb called me to say she’d decked a guy at a party, you sent her a card that said ‘congratulations.’ You’ve never sent anybody else a card in your entire life.”
“I was proud of her,” Aidan said. “I’m proud of you too. You jumped. Now do it again.”
An afternoon of practice left Caleb physically drained, mentally prepared, and emotionally adrift. Aidan wanted this ability so badly, and Caleb would like nothing better than to give it to him. The sudden reversal in their positions explained why things were so weird between them. It had nothing to do with how many times they’d touched.
All that really mattered was completing this mission. Not just rescuing Lange, but finding Quint’s double and enacting Aidan’s plan. Caleb held that in his thoughts as Kit showed up in the kitchen, his face grim as he shouldered a backpack—its utilitarian black design was in contrast to the eye-searing pink-and-green checkered pattern of his t-shirt, which made Caleb suspect that the pack belonged to Emil. Kit couldn’t be blamed for his reservations about this mission. He glanced between the two of them and addressed Caleb. “You ready?”
Kit and Aidan hadn’t been actively hostile since Kit discovered Aidan in the cell. Still, that didn’t make them friends. Kit might not have meant his question as a deliberate insult—salt in the wound of not being able to access the Nowhere—but Aidan probably took it that way.
Caleb wished he could fix it. But if he said something, Kit might overhear and point out that Aidan had no business accompanying them in the first place, and that would make everything worse.
So Caleb nodded at Kit, grabbed Aidan, and jumped.
Caleb brought himself and Aidan inside the cell but on the opposite side of the glass wall from Lange. He let go of Aidan quickly, giving them both some space. The cell was exactly as it had been, stripped bare of anything movable, with Lange lying on the floor in the center and staring up at his clothes, which were jerking back and forth in the air several feet above him. He was silent.
Mission accomplished. They were supposed to see Kit and Lange safely home now, but instead Caleb grabbed Aidan and jumped him into the other Caleb’s room. A short jump, but necessary for escaping the cell.
This was the plan they hadn’t told Emil and Kit about, the one Caleb had talked his way into. He still wasn’t clear on all the details, but Aidan had said to come here and Caleb was trying his damnedest to be useful.
He breathed a sigh of relief when his double wasn’t in the room. That was one of the hardest parts of their plan accomplished, then; he wasn’t sure either of them could have taken out his double. Aidan had been right that all attention would be on Lange’s empty cell.
The room was as bare as the one Caleb had just moved into in Facility 17. He’d been planning to put up some art if his stay lasted, but his double apparently had no need for comfort or aesthetic pleasure. The bed was made. There was a tablet on the desk and a paper book with worn corners, face-down and splayed open to the last page read. It was A Tale of Two Cities, and Caleb couldn’t resist picking it up and leafing through it to the first sentence, just to see if it was the same. He couldn’t say why it mattered to him that his double had some sign of a personality outside his creepy job, but it did.
Outside the door, the whole facility was still blaring its warning. Through the tiny slit where the door wasn’t quite flush with the floor, the light of the alarm bathed the tile red with every other blink. This was their moment.
Aidan was rifling through other Caleb’s closet and desk drawers. The bottom one was locked, so he huffed and left it alone. He slapped a stack of cash on the desk and then touched the cover of the book. “Other you has fancy taste in literature, looks like,” he said, smiling to himself. Then he picked up the tablet and handed it to Caleb.
“Search for Quint,” Aidan instructed. The tablet was similar to the ones Caleb had used at home—an inert, rectangular slab of plastic and metal—but subtly different in design and branding. “I bet you can get other Caleb’s tech to work.”
Caleb held it up to his face and the machine scanned him and came alive, color rippling down its screen. “Can you find a person named Oswin Lewis Quint?” Caleb asked, feeling foolish.
“Did you mean Oswin ‘Oz’ Lewis, resident of Des Moines, Iowa?”
“Uh,” Caleb said. “Does he run a corporation called Quint Services?”
“No such corporation exists.”
Caleb couldn’t tell if that was a bad sign or a good one. Aidan was watching him, nodding eagerly, encouraging him to pursue the matter.
“What else do you know about Oz Lewis?”
“Thirty-eight years old, white, male, five feet nine inches tall, unemployed, lives at 3209 Raynard Road, Apartment 1E,” it answered. “Dental and medical records also available.”
“Jesus,” Aidan said. Their world had a lot of surveillance. This one had more. “Those details are about right, though. See what else you can find out.”
“No thanks, I don't need medical records,” Caleb said to the tablet. “Are there any photos?”
Oswin Lewis Quint had never had such a bad haircut, or such a shabby old t-shirt, and he must wear concealer in his fancy photoshoots, but that was his thin, long nose and those were his straight, symmetrical eyebrows. They’d found his double.
“Well then,” Aidan said. “Let’s go find him and have a chat.”
“Can we discuss a few details first? That man’s not Quint. I’m not okay with coercing him into anything.”
“Of course not,” Aidan said. He stuffed the stolen cash into a pocket and gestured for Caleb to keep the tablet. “All we need is for him to pretend to be Quint in public a few times. It’ll be easy and he’ll get rich. We’ll get justice. What could go wrong?”
“So many things,” Caleb said. He’d made Aidan agree to work with him and now his role in this scheme threatened to overwhelm him. “First of all, I don’t know how to jump to a place I’ve never been. I jumped here, but this place is just like Facility 17, so I had that to hold onto. I don’t know shit about Iowa.”
Aidan patted his pocket. “This will pay for transportation if we end up far from the destination.”
“It won’t save us from dying in the void of space if I miss,” Caleb said.
“You won’t. We’re not going to need the cash, either.”
Caleb didn’t believe that for a second.
“Your sense of where things are is different now. There’s this map-sense that comes with being able to get into the Nowhere. That’s how I think of it, anyway. All you need is a little bit of information about where to find something. Sometimes it’s an address, sometimes it’s coordinates, sometimes it’s just a feeling. That’s it. You can get there.”
“I don’t have any feelings about Des Moines.”
Aidan tapped the tablet, which was still displaying a photo of unlucky Oz Lewis. “He lives there. Find him for me.”
It was terrifying and a little bit intoxicating how strongly Aidan believed in him. Caleb wanted to make the jump, but as he grabbed Aidan, his body provided a sudden, violent inventory of aching joints and sore muscles.
They ended up in the hallway outside Lange’s empty prison cell. He’d meant to jump them to Des Moines, but he’d failed. The world went grey for a moment, and he stumbled against Aidan, who caught him.
“You’re okay,” Aidan said. “Breathe. Can you walk? Let’s take a walk.”
Caleb couldn’t organize his thoughts into sentences. It was too much effort to put one foot in front of the other. He felt weighed down and electrified at the same time, too tired to move and yet panicked.
Aidan guided him down the hallway for a few steps, and then Caleb came back to himself enough to say, “We can’t stay here.”
“Shh,” Aidan said. “You’re in no state to jump.”
“Where are we going?”
“Let’s just slip into one of the exam rooms,” Aidan said. “You can take a second. Do you need food?”
Caleb was as hungry as if he hadn’t eaten in days, but he didn’t want Aidan sneaking off alone into other parts of the facility. Aidan couldn’t run. If they got separated, Aidan would be trapped here. So Caleb said nothing.
The exam room was unlocked and Caleb dropped into a chair, letting his head loll back against the wall. Aidan sorted through all of the gauze and tissues and latex glove dispensers on the counter, then pulled open all the drawers. Occasionally he stopped to pick up an object and examine it. Caleb was too wrecked to put together what he was doing. There wasn’t any food in the room. This was pointless.
Caleb’s stomach growled. Aidan paused, reached into his pocket, and tossed Caleb a protein bar. Why put on such a show of searching the room if he’d had that the whole time? Caleb unwrapped the bar and took a bite.
Aidan began to go through the cabinets. He wasn’t looking for food.
“The injection,” Caleb said, after swallowing the last of the bar. He was still desperately hungry, but he could string a few thoughts together now. With the sudden clarity of anger, he added, “That’s why you brought me in here. So you could steal it.”
Even now that they were supposedly working together, Aidan was keeping things from him. That stung.
If Aidan became a runner again, he wouldn’t need Caleb at all.
The cabinet clicked shut. “I’m trying to get us out of here,” Aidan said, keeping his voice low and his words clipped.
Because Caleb had failed. He wasn’t reliable. He’d fucked up and forced Aidan to resort to other methods.
“Hey.”
When Caleb looked up, Aidan was standing right in front of him, his search abandoned.
“You did great, okay? Three jumps in a day is a lot for anyone. I shouldn’t have put you on the s
pot like that. This is my fault, not yours.”
These words, and the concern pinching Aidan’s dark brows together, salved Caleb’s despair and frustration. None of that made him any less hungry, exhausted, or trapped, but at least he could draw a line linking the physical crash and the emotional one. “Okay. What’s your back-up plan?”
“Like you said, finding the injection. Heath’s double gave it to you in here, right? There must be more somewhere.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Caleb said. “Heath’s double said something about how she couldn’t give me too many more. It must have cumulative side effects.”
“It’s a better idea than getting caught,” Aidan said, then froze at the sound of the door sliding open behind him.
6
Your Body Already Knows How
Before Aidan could turn around to see who was at the door, Caleb grabbed him by the hips and pulled him in between his spread thighs. One of Caleb’s hands wrapped around the back of his neck and jerked him down into a kiss, and the other slid under his shirt to touch the bare skin of his belly, and Aidan’s brain seized up and ceased functioning. It was pure animal instinct that he parted his lips for Caleb’s tongue, that his hands rose from where they hung at his sides and found their way to cupping Caleb’s face and threading into his hair, that his body adjusted from an awkward bend at the waist into the more comfortable position of lifting one knee into Caleb’s lap. None of those were decisions. He reacted.
Biting Caleb’s bottom lip might have been a decision. It was premeditated, since Aidan had been longing to do it for years. Aidan had mostly learned to ignore the urge it sparked when Caleb chewed his lip in thought. Mostly. When Caleb’s mouth was pressed up against his, and his sweet, plump bottom lip was right there, the impulse was more powerful than any worries or doubts.
Aidan wanted to move his other leg so he could straddle Caleb’s lap, but before he could, a woman said, “I knew you were kinky, Feldman, but really, leave my exam rooms out of your hookups.”