Recursion - Blake Crouch Page 0,103
Or at least something to try that doesn’t require another thirty-three years. The look on Slade’s face, glowing in the light of distant nuclear fires, was not the look of a lying man, but of one who had suddenly come to terms with what he’d done. With the pain he was causing.
Barry comes off the last step into the lab. Helena is nowhere to be seen, which means she’s already in the deprivation chamber. The terminal screens support this, one of them flashing the message in red: DMT RELEASE DETECTED.
He reaches the deprivation chamber, puts his hands on the hatch to pull it open—
The world grinds to a halt.
The lab bleeds of color.
He’s screaming on the inside, he has to stop this from happening, they have the answer.
But he can’t move, can’t speak.
Helena is gone, and so is this reality.
* * *
He becomes aware of lying on his side in total darkness.
Sitting up, Barry’s movement triggers a panel of light above him, dim at first, then slowly brightening, warming into existence a small, windowless room containing the bed, a dresser, and a nightstand.
He throws back the blankets and climbs out of bed, unsteady on his feet.
Goes to the door and steps out into a sterile hallway. After fifty feet, it emerges onto a main artery that accesses this corridor and three others while also opening on the other side to a living space one floor below.
He sees a full kitchen.
Table tennis and pool tables.
And a large television with a woman’s face paused on the screen. He has some vague recognition of her face, but he can’t conjure her name. The entire history of his life lurks just below the surface, but he can’t quite grasp it.
“Hello?”
His voice echoes through the structure.
No answer.
He heads down the main hallway, passing a placard affixed to the wall beside the opening to the next corridor.
Wing 2—Level 2—Lab
And another.
Wing 1—Level 2—Offices
Then down some stairs and onto the main level.
There’s a gently sloping vestibule straight ahead that grows colder with every step, ending finally at a door that looks complex enough to seal a spacecraft.
A digital readout on the wall beside it displays real-time conditions on the other side:
Wind: from the NE 56.2 mph; 90.45 kph
Temp: -51.9 °F; -46.6 °C
Wind Chill: -106.9°F; -77.2 °C
Humidity: 27%
His socked feet are freezing, and in here the wind carries the moaning quality of a deep-voiced ghost. He grasps the lever on the door, and following the visual instructions, forces it down and counterclockwise.
A series of locks release, the door free to swing on its hinges.
He pushes it open, and the coldest breath of air he has ever encountered blasts him in the face with a sensation beyond temperature. Like fingernails clawing away his skin. Instantly, he feels his nose hairs freezing, and when he draws breath, he chokes on the pain of it sliding down his esophagus.
Through the open hatch, he sees a walkway angling down from the station toward the icecap, the world cloaked in darkness and swirling with needles of snow that sting his face like shrapnel.
The visibility is less than a quarter mile, but by the light of the moon, he can just make out other structures in proximity. A series of large cylindrical tanks he suspects is a water-treatment plant. A swaying tower that’s either some sort of gantry or a drilling rig. A telescope, folded down against the storm. Vehicles of varying size on continuous tracks.
He can’t stand it anymore. He takes hold of the door with fingers already beginning to stiffen and forces it to close. The locks engage. The wind downshifts from a scream to that sustained and ghostly moan.
He walks out of the vestibule and under the lights of the pristine and seemingly empty station, his face burning as it reawakens from the slightest touch of frostbite.
In this moment, he is a man without memory, and the sense of being adrift in time is a crushing, existential horror. Like waking from a troubled sleep, when the lines between reality and dreams are still murky and you’re calling out to ghosts.
All he has is his first name, and an out-of-focus sense of himself.
At the seating area around the television, he sees an open DVD case and a remote control. He sits on one of the sofas, takes the controller, and presses Play.
On the screen, the woman is sitting exactly where he is, a blanket draped over her shoulders and a cup of tea steaming on the table in front