“Ohmygod!” came a female voice. The voice’s owner quickly followed and immediately set to work collecting the wayward papers. “I’m so sorry!”
Jonas stared at the woman, in her early thirties from the look of her, and he felt his life change. She wore flip-flops and shorts and a pale-blue T-shirt with the name of some band Jonas had never heard of (Ash Dispersal Pattern). Her brown hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, exposing her blue-gray eyes. Jonas saw a small tattoo on her inner right wrist: an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, curled into a sideways figure eight, the symbol for infinity.
“I’m horrendous,” she said as she retrieved the last sheet and returned the reconstituted stack to him. “I hope I didn’t ruin anything.”
Jonas was suddenly conscious of the gaping silence between them. He was at ease when talking to women, but flirting was an art as elusive to him as playing the piano. “It’s fine. Thanks.” He instantly chided himself. He had three PhDs, and that was the best he could do? One word per doctorate? Pathetic.
The Frisbee caught his eye. It rested on the grass and practically shined with potential. He stooped to pick it up and, returning it, managed to say, “I’m Jonas.” Five words. He was on a roll.
“Amanda.” She waved her chin toward his papers. “I’m sorry about mixing up your math papers there . . .”
“It’s quantum physics,” Jonas replied, instantly wishing he could reel the words—so stupid!—back in.
But for some reason—by some miracle—Amanda seemed to find Jonas’s unease charming. She flashed a smile that illuminated his entire world. He could spend the rest of his life basking in the warmth of that smile.
“Again, sorry.” She waved and began to move off.
Jonas watched her retreat. His brilliant mind was screaming at him not to let her get away. “What’s your field?” he managed to croak, desperate to say something, anything at all. Three more words, none of them particularly interesting or original, but at least he managed to keep the desperation from his voice, he hoped.
“Actually, I don’t go here.” Amanda gave the Frisbee a little wave. “Just playing with a friend.”
She started to turn away, and again Jonas’s mind grasped for a way to keep her engaged, to spend just another few seconds with her. “Could I call you sometime?” turned out to be the best he could come up with. He was instantly mortified by his lack of game, as his students liked to say, but in a world of dating apps and anonymous hookups and one-night stands, it came across as unexpectedly endearing.
“You could if you had my number,” Amanda replied, seeming genuinely interested.
“Yes. That was kind of my way of asking you for it,” Jonas confessed.
Whimsy passed over her face, and Jonas could have sworn he detected an actual twinkle in her eye. “I don’t need to give it to you,” she said. “You can figure it out on your own.”
“I don’t know your last name.”
“This is true.”
“And you said you don’t go to Columbia.”
“Also true.”
Jonas blinked. “Well,” he ventured, “there are one point six million people in Manhattan.”
“It’s kinda cute how you just happened to know that number from memory. Also, you don’t know if I live in one of the outer boroughs, or Long Island, or even”—she faked a horrified gasp—“New Jersey.”
“Exactly.”
“C’mon,” she said, “it shouldn’t be too hard for a rocket scientist.”
“Quantum physicist,” he corrected. He was smiling. Maybe flirting wasn’t so difficult after all. “My point being, detective work isn’t exactly my field of expertise.”
“Something tells me you won’t have a problem.”
Gripping the Frisbee, Amanda bounded off across the quad. Jonas watched her go, drinking in every detail of her form, her gait, the way her ponytail bounced with each exuberant step, its sheen catching the afternoon light. He carved each detail into his memory. It wasn’t every day that one’s life changed forever.
NOW
The room is an oppressive gray. Gray walls. Gray floor. Fluorescent lights hang from the gray ceiling, casting a sickly gloom. Even the sparse furniture, two steel chairs and a table bolted to the floor, are the color of gunmetal. The only exit is a single door—gray, of course—with a window cut into it. Thick panes of milky glass sandwich steel mesh between them.
He sits at the table as he has been instructed. The guard was kind enough to remove his handcuffs, but his wrists are still bruised and the skin still raw where the metal bracelets had been cinched tight. His head throbs where the rifle butt struck him. There’s no mirror or reflective surface of any kind in here to confirm his suspicion that his face is badly bruised.
He’s been relieved of his ring, the only object left on his person after he’d discarded the Glock. He imagines the French police had some questions about that when they accepted custody of him from the military. He had no wallet, no form of identification whatsoever. Just a ring and an unusual tattoo. The police took pictures of it when they processed him.
He thinks of Macon, the image of the mercenary’s head exploding. The way it jerked back sharply, as if in spasm. The blood flecking Jonas’s face. He still feels it on him, caked dry and itchy. He wonders if the entire team of mercenaries suffered a similar fate. If there are any survivors, he reasons, they’ll be interrogated before it’s his turn to be questioned.
He has no idea how long he’s been here. No clock on the wall. No watch on his wrist. He left his phone back in the hotel, with no expectation of returning. He cracks his knuckles, but the ritual doesn’t quell his disquiet. He doesn’t fear prosecution, or even imprisonment. The thought of either feels alien, unreal. The idea of being branded as a criminal is academic, an intellectual abstraction. Ironic, even. Of the multitude of ways his plan could have gone awry, he never considered his present circumstances as a possibility. He had forecasted any number of setbacks, curated a complete menagerie of failures. Most scenarios had involved his own death—being obliterated by the primordial energies he had unleashed or ending up underwater or fused to a solid object. It never occurred to him that his attempt simply wouldn’t work. The oversight now feels like an act of vanity, a blindness born of ego. Of all the forms of failure he had imagined, Jonas had never contemplated actual failure.
Now his life is over. He has nothing left to live for. And what life he has will be consigned to a room even smaller than the one he’s in right now.
After an eternity, there’s a jangle of keys, and the thick metal door creaks open. A young man in his thirties enters, navy blue uniform, gold badge on his chest, sidearm on his hip, file in his hand. Without preamble he sits down at the table opposite Jonas. “I am Inspector Gillard.”
“Jonas. Dr. Jonas Cullen.”
“I know who you are, Doctor.” The inspector lays the file open in front of him on the table. Despite his youth, he speaks with a calm reflective of long experience. “Of the four men you were with, three are dead.” He pauses for effect. “The fourth told me all about you.” Another pause. “He had some very interesting things to say.”
Jonas knows he only has one card to play here. He had decided it was the first thing he’d say if given the opportunity. “I want to speak with my embassy.”
“He said,” Gillard continues, as if Jonas had said nothing, “you paid them a quarter of a million euros so you could break into CERN to conduct—and this is his word—an ‘experiment.’” Gillard makes no effort to keep the incredulity from his voice.
Jonas remains stone faced, offering as little as possible.
