Recursion - Blake Crouch Page 0,92

Helena, corkscrewing down the stairs in the meager light of her phone’s sustained camera flash.

The lab is strangely silent.

No humming of the fans that cool the servers.

Or the heat pump that keeps the water in the deprivation tank at the steady temperature of human skin.

The phone light sweeps across the walls as they move toward the end of the server rack, where a power bank of lithium ion batteries is the only thing glowing in the lab.

Barry goes to a panel of switches on the wall that transfers power from the electrical grid to the batteries. He faces another moment of pure terror, because if the blast damaged the batteries or connectors to any of the equipment, this is all futile.

“Barry?” Helena says. “What are you waiting for?”

He flips the switches.

Overhead lights flicker on.

The servers begin to hum.

Helena is already easing down into the chair at the terminal, which has begun its boot-up sequence.

“The batteries will only give us thirty minutes of power,” she says.

“We have generators and plenty of gas.”

“Yeah, but it’ll take ages to reroute the power.”

He sheds his fire-burned parka and snow pants and takes the chair beside Helena, who’s already typing on the keypad as quickly as her scorched fingertips will let her, blood running out of the corners of her mouth and eyes.

As she begins to strip out of her winter clothes, Barry goes to the cabinet and takes the only remaining skullcap that has a full charge. He powers it on and places it carefully on top of his wife’s head, which is blistering over.

The second-degree burns on his face are entering the arena of excruciating. There’s morphine in the medical cabinet, calling to him, but there’s also no time.

“I’ll finish positioning the skullcap,” she says. “Just get the injection port.”

He grabs a port and turns it on, making sure the Bluetooth connection with the terminal is online.

In sharp contrast to her nuclear-sunburned hands, Helena’s forearms are creamy and smooth, protected from the initial flash by her parka and several layers of shirts and thermal underwear. It takes him several tries with his ruined fingers to thread the IV into her vein. He finally straps the port to her forearm and heads for the deprivation tank. The water is a degree and a half cooler than the ideal 98.6, but it will have to do.

He lifts the hatch and turns to face Helena, who’s stumbling toward him like a broken angel.

He knows he looks no prettier.

“I wish I could do this next part for you,” he says.

“It’s only going to hurt a little while longer,” she says, tears running down her face. “Besides, I deserve this.”

“That isn’t true.”

“You don’t have to walk this road with me again,” she says.

“I’ll walk it as many times as it takes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Completely.”

She grips the side of the tank and swings her leg over.

When her hands touch the water, she cries out.

“What is it?” Barry asks.

“The salt. Oh my God…”

“I’ll get the morphine.”

“No, it might fuck up the memory reactivation. Just hurry please.”

“OK. I’ll see you soon.”

He closes the hatch on his wife, floating in agony in the saltwater.

Rushing back to the terminal, he initiates the injection sequence. As the paralytic drug fires, he tries to sit down, but the pain is so all-encompassing he can’t stay still.

He heads through the lab and up the spiral staircase, through the office and the fire-bombed remnants of his and Helena’s home.

Back outside on the steps of the firehouse, it’s as dark as night and raining flecks of fire from the sky.

Barry descends the steps and walks out into the middle of the street.

A burning newspaper blows across the pavement.

On the other side of the road, a blackened figure lies in the fetal position, curled against the curb in its final resting place.

There is the whisper of hot wind.

Distant screaming and groans.

And nothing else.

It seems impossible that less than an hour ago, he was sitting in a snowy glade at ten thousand feet, overlooking Denver on a perfect spring afternoon.

We have made it far too easy to destroy ourselves.

He can barely stand anymore.

His knees buckle; he collapses.

Sitting now in the middle of the street in front of the firehouse, watching the world burn and trying not to let the pain overwhelm him.

It’s been several minutes since he left the lab.

Helena is dying in the tank.

He’s dying out here.

He lies back on the pavement and stares up into the black sky at the fire raining down on him.

A bright rod