After the Golden Age

She looked into the cavernous heart of the building. The ceiling reached up three stories, and the tile floor stretched fifty yards across. Most of the space was empty. All activity congregated in the middle, in an area that could have fit in any of the rooms she’d passed. She expected dust, the stale smell of air that had been locked behind walls. But the air was fresh—the hum of fans and filters edged the background noise. Floodlights blazed down on a clean room, spotless lab benches, cabinets, tables, monitoring equipment. In the center of it all stood a device mounted on a wheeled pedestal. A hundred wires looped from point to point, from a box underneath that might have been a battery or a power relay, to bolts protruding from steel rings looped around a cylinder that made up its bulk. The thing looked like a cannon, tapered at one end, where a series of glass or crystal nodes reached out, aimable and threatening. Toward the back, coils of copper wire glowed, like the interior of a toaster grown too hot.

A half-dozen people worked, some of them studying equipment, making adjustments and scribbling observations onto clipboards. Another half-dozen, burly men wearing dark clothing and brooding expressions, stood at the periphery, armed with machine guns. She recognized Paulson’s ubiquitous aides and bodyguards among them. More pardoned convicts? Loyal henchmen?

She found nothing unexpected here. Nothing particularly impressive. Nothing she hadn’t seen before. Like father like son. This might as well have been the Destructor’s Psychostasis room.

Or this might have been a scene from fifty years ago. She could almost see it, in the black and white of newsreel footage. Her imperious, bearded grandfather standing to the side, cane in hand, observing; a young Simon Sito bustling around the equipment, perhaps rubbing his hands together in anticipation; and a dozen scientists and techs, innocent, just doing their jobs—George Denton, Anna Riley, Emily Newman, Janet Travers. Young faces from personnel files, come to life in Celia’s imagination. History changed here, and none of them ever knew it.

She didn’t see Mark.

“Ah, at last. Ms. West, I’ve been expecting you.” His voice echoed, a rich tenor used to giving speeches to filled auditoriums. Anthony Paulson emerged from behind a bank of computer servers and strolled toward Celia. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up, the collar undone, tie missing. A couple of the lab people glanced up, frowning.

Celia blinked, stunned, a deer staring down the barrel of a hunter’s rifle. She’d been quiet, she’d stayed hidden, she hadn’t made a sound—Paulson must have been watching the door. He’d left that loading dock door open just for her, and made sure she found her way down exactly that hallway.

She turned to run. Behind her, two gunmen stepped out of formerly shut rooms, barring her escape. They moved toward her, threatening with their weapons, herding her through the door and into the warehouse, into the glaring lights.

Flanked by her captors, she approached Paulson.

Mark told him he’d called her. Mark told him she was coming, that was the only way he could have known to look for her. Still, she said, cautiously, “How?” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Paulson raised his hand, showing her the mini digital player he held. He touched a button, and Mark’s voice played back at her:

“Celia? It’s Mark. I don’t know who else to go to. You’re in the middle of this as much as I am. You seem to know more about it than I do … This is all a distraction, isn’t it? Like the kidnapping plots…”

Goddamn it! She fell for that stupid, idiotic trick again. She stamped her foot and growled, rolling her eyes to the ceiling and mentally beating herself up.

Paulson said, “I’ve been recording Mark’s phone calls for some time now. He made this one to Chief Appleton an hour or so ago. I had my people doctor it up a little for you. Fortunately—for me—the good chief has his hands full with other business right now and can’t spare anyone to send over here.”

Celia shut down her emotions and recalled the bitter teenager who would have sought out this situation. People like Paulson, like Sito, expected people like her to be cowed by their power and intelligence. They expected that a bright-eyed young woman would want everything they had to give—or that she could be frightened into putting herself in their control.

They expected her to care.

That was the trick: be blasé enough that nothing they did affected her. She crossed her arms, turned her back to the gunmen, and faced Paulson. She locked a careless smirk on her face and raised an eyebrow. She watched him like this was all some silly joke. Stayed quiet, because she couldn’t think of anything witty to say.