The Ebony Finches: A Transition Magic Thriller Read online

  The Ebony Finches

  Transition, Book 3

  J. E. Hopkins

  Unseen Worlds Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  2015

  1. Meyrin, Switzerland

  2. Geneva, Switzerland

  3. Birir Valley, Pakistan

  4. Washington, DC

  5. New Boston, Texas

  6. Ticonderoga, New York

  7. New Boston, Texas

  8. Ticonderoga, New York

  9. Washington, DC

  1946

  10. Near Prague, Czechoslovakia

  2015

  11. Ticonderoga, New York

  12. Pecos, Texas

  1946

  13. Near Prague, Czechoslovakia

  2015

  14. Ticonderoga, New York

  15. Pecos, Texas

  16. Washington, DC

  17. Pecos, Texas

  18. Ticonderoga, New York

  19. Pecos, Texas

  20. Denton, TX

  21. Birir Valley, Pakistan

  22. Washington, DC

  23. In Transit to Toledo, Ohio

  24. Toledo, Ohio

  25. Toledo, Ohio

  26. Toledo, Ohio

  27. Toledo, Ohio

  28. Birir Valley, Pakistan

  29. Toledo, Ohio

  30. Toledo, Ohio

  31. Blissfield, Michigan

  1842

  32. Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming

  2015

  33. Toledo, Ohio

  34. Murree, Pakistan

  35. Youngstown, Ohio

  1842

  36. Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming

  2015

  37. Le détroit du Lac Érie

  38. In Route to Washington, DC

  39. Mount Vernon, Virginia

  40. Islamabad, Pakistan

  41. Islamabad, Pakistan

  42. Mount Vernon, Virginia

  43. Islamabad, Pakistan

  44. Mount Vernon, Virginia

  45. Mount Vernon, Virginia

  46. Islamabad, Pakistan

  47. Mount Vernon, Virginia

  Chapter 48

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by J. E. Hopkins

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Unseen Worlds Publishing

  Milford, OH

  www.jhopkinsbooks.com

  First Edition: 2012

  Second Edition: 2015

  Third Edition: 2016

  ISBN: 978-0-9899079-4-1

  For Jamie

  2015

  1

  Meyrin, Switzerland

  The room was quiet, as it had been all evening, the mesmerizing click of keyboards the only sound. In the blink of an eye, shrieking alarms shattered that tranquility; pulsating ruby lights painted the walls in blood. Dr. Julie Angst’s heart seized, then surged so violently that she feared she might drop dead of a stroke. The alerts weren’t small “check this when you have a minute” chirps, but the full-throated blare that proclaimed the end of the world.

  She leaped from her seat in front of a cluster of computer displays and shot a look across the darkened room to her assistant. He’d stepped back from a console and was scrubbing his face with his hands, like he’d been abruptly wakened from a deep sleep.

  She glanced at her watch: 3:15 a.m. The control room techs at CERN habitually shut the overhead lights off at midnight, happy to work by the glow of the hundreds of displays monitoring the health of their high-tech babies. A pulsing crimson glare had invaded their cozy environment.

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” Julie’s yell was swallowed by the still trumpeting whoops of the alarms tied to the ten-billion dollar machine, which, until a moment ago, had been quietly helping her find a new quantum particle. The alarms and lights were pulsing in the same repeating rhythm: one long, two short, another long.

  What the hell does that mean?

  The noise ceased with no more warning than its advent, but the flashing lights continued their visual assault. A tech in a far corner rose from his console and turned toward her. “Apparent radiation leak. Need time to know more." His soft voiced carried across the room as if he were standing next to her.

  “So why isn't everyone evacuating the building?” she asked.

  The CERN complex sprawled outside the small town of Meyrin, Switzerland and was the home of the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator on earth. Three hundred feet below where she stood, a twelve-foot diameter tube, filled with super-conducting magnets, formed a seventeen-mile ring under the pastoral countryside. The accelerator was underground so the dirt and rock above would shield the instrument's sensitive detectors from natural radiation.

  And to protect us puny humans while we fiddle with the building blocks of existence.

  “No point in leaving now,” the tech said. “The accelerator shut itself down as soon as the anomaly occurred. We’ve had a nuclear bath already if there was a leak.”

  Julie grinned. “I don't suppose I could outrun radiation anyway. Anything from the dosimeters?”

  “Not seeing anything, but I'm still working through the logs,” the tech answered. “We're probably fine.”

  “Forgive me for not being reassured,” Julie said. “All hell wouldn't break loose for a minor problem.”

  The full implications of the shutdown penetrated Julie’s alarm-addled brain. The LHC would be out of commission for at least several days while the keepers of the place investigated the source of the alarms. “Shit.”

  “What?” the tech asked.

  “I waited a year for this test and your system just sent me home empty-handed.”

  No response.

  Nothing he can say, because it’s true.

  Researchers were assigned time slots. If anything happened that made the systems unavailable at the assigned time, CERN’s policy was to move on to the next project in the queue. The investigator working when the system hiccuped moved to the back of the line. A flood of disappointment and exhaustion overwhelmed her.

  I've got to get out of here before I start crying.

  “Any reason I can't go pee while you folks do whatever it is you're doing?” she asked.

  The tech laughed. “No, but if your pee glows, come tell me. We might have the start of a decent sci-fi movie.”

  All but office personnel at CERN wore personal radiation sensors, model DIS-2 from the Norwegian Rads Corporation. On her way out of the control room, Julie unclipped the sensor from her chest and slipped it into the scan port of a reader mounted on the wall near the exit.

  Never hurts to check.

  The reader’s white LED turned green—idiot-light speak for “all is well.” Feeling like a relieved hypochondriac, she strode out of the control room and down the hall to the bathroom.

  She shuffled from the bathroom stall to the sink, washed her hands, and bent to splash water on her face.

  God, I'm so tired.

  She grabbed a soft towel from the stack next to the sink—the Swiss were so civilized— and stared at her reflection while drying her face. Tired eyes, underlined by dark smudges, stared back at her.

  She needed to call her boss and let him know what was going on. “You recall the months of preparation and thousands of dollars I talked you into carving from already tight budgets? Well, I’ve got some exciting news. It was all a waste, because the particl
e accelerator had a brain fart. Hilarious, huh?”

  Maybe I need to wait a bit before I call.

  Tears slid down her cheeks. She swiped her face with the back of her hands, angry that her own body was betraying her.

  If these guys spot me crying it’ll validate every one of their fucking stereotypes about—What the hell?

  Blood-red spots were blooming in the outside corners of her eyes, accompanied by a tracery of dark red veins.

  Did I pop a couple of vessels when the alarms went off? No pain, but I look like hell. And why the delayed reaction?

  She dried her face with one of the towels. The tears had lessened but both eyes looked now like they might start weeping blood.

  Perfect end to a perfect trip. Shit. I need coffee.

  She left the bathroom, strode back to the control room, and stuck her head inside the door. The operations crew remained buried in their displays. Her assistant, deep into a conversation with the tech who'd told her to report any glowing pee, glanced over.

  “I’ll be in the break room,” Julie said. “Give me a yell if—when—you figure something out.”

  He waved her off without interrupting his conversation.

  She followed the maze of narrow corridors leading to the cafeteria. The walls were painted drywall, the same eggshell white of cheap apartments worldwide. A random pattern of grey and yellow vinyl tile squares covered the floor and the ubiquitous fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead.

  The technology impresses at CERN, not the working and living environment.

  Her eyes were still tearing. She swiped the wetness from her face with her sleeve and pushed through the double glass doors into a room with a dozen Formica-covered tables of various sizes. A row of vending machines that dispensed candy bars and old egg salad sandwiches lined one wall. Unlike the food, coffee was considered a priority at CERN. On a counter opposite the vending machines squatted a cappuccino machine that would have made a steampunk novel blush with inadequacy. On the left were two of the latest Keurig single-cup coffee makers and a library of coffee choices. Tea drinkers were offered a spigot of hot water—bring your own leaves.

  She’d just brewed a cup of high-test Ethiopian arabica when she heard a grunt behind her. She turned to see a middle-aged Hispanic woman lifting a new five-gallon bottle of water into place on the water cooler. Julie watched the woman drop the plastic jug into place, step back, sneeze, and wipe her nose on the sleeve of her navy shirt.

  “Mierda, those suckers are heavy,” the woman muttered. She laughed and glanced around the room, checking to see if she'd been overheard. An embroidered patch bearing a solitary, dark-green pine tree was sewn onto the front of her shirt. Under the tree in flowing white script was Evian Belle Eau and, under that, the name Sofia.

  Sofia noticed Julie and stared at her eyes, frowning. She asked, “Perdóname, are you okay?”

  Julie wondered for a moment why the woman was asking.

  My goddamned eyes.

  She smiled and wiped her cheeks. The weeping seemed to have stopped. “I’m fine. Just a bit tired.”

  Sofia filled a paper cone with cold water and held it out to Julie. Sofia's hand was shaking and she appeared somewhat embarrassed. “I’ve lifted so many of these bottles this morning that I shake like una vieja.”

  Julie nodded and steadied the woman's hands with her own. “Gracias.”

  “Boss?”

  Julie turned toward the door. Her assistant was standing halfway into the room, leaning on the handle.

  “Got a minute?”

  Julie thanked Sofia a second time, drank the cup of water, and strode over to find out what the guy wanted to tell her that he didn't think he could say publicly. He was usually easy to read, but his face was pale and impenetrable.

  He led Julie away from the doors, turned, and stood so close she could smell stale coffee on his breath. “Your experiment may have worked.”

  Julie backed against the corridor wall for support. “What're you talking about?”

  “The recordings show the track of an unknown particle. Or, at least unknown as far as they've been able to tell. We still have a ton of analysis to do that will take weeks or—”

  “That’s fantastic! So why do you have the complexion of a corpse?”

  “We have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “Immediately after the particle trace appeared, radiation was picked up by an area sensor located a dozen feet from your workstation. The sensor has a narrow range, so the exposure was confined to your corner of the control room.”

  “Not possible,” Julie said. “The collider’s shielding and three hundred feet of dirt protect everyone working here from dangerous radiation. Hell, people flying in jets get a bigger zap from cosmic neutrinos than anything we’re exposed to here.” She tapped the DIS-2 on her chest. “Besides, I scanned my dosimeter. It was clean.”

  “Still, the room sensor was triggered and it’s in perfect working order,” her assistant said. “The techs are still digging, but the dose may have been lower than the detection limits of the personal sensors. Doesn’t mean it was zero.”

  “Well, then. I guess we’re lucky I was the only one working in that area.”

  2

  Geneva, Switzerland

  Bert Commons was pissed. “Half our commission next year will depend on us selling premium drives? Do you believe that shit?” He was standing in line at a Mr. Gyro’s for a mid-afternoon lunch in the Geneva airport. His new friend and fellow electric motor drive salesman, Wyatt Stankey, stood in front of him. Bert was talking to Wyatt's back.

  The two had been in Geneva for a week attending their company’s international trade show. The just-ended meeting had been held at the luxury Mövenpick Hotel and both men were exhausted from a night of drinking and craps in the hotel's casino. They were catching flights home—Bert to call on a Global Industries paper mill in Ticonderoga, New York; Wyatt to Los Angeles for a series of sales calls and then home to Pecos, Texas.

  “Goddammit, you're not listening to me,” Bert said. Wyatt ignored him. “I tell you we're screwed. No way our customers are going to switch to premium motors. The damn things cost too much and don't save enough energy to offset the cost.”

  Without turning around, Wyatt said, “She's going to drop that bottle.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Wyatt nodded across the food court, where a short, heavy-set woman with an embroidered pine tree on her shirt was changing a five-gallon bottle of water in a cooler and muttering to herself in Spanish.

  Bert shook his head. “I think the damn Mexicans are taking over the damn world. Part of the damn United Nations plan to merge everyone together in preparation for a fucking world government.”

  “You're a paranoid bigot, my friend,” Wyatt said. He bolted out of the line, dodged around tables, and approached the woman, speaking Spanish. She seemed startled at first, but quickly relaxed and let Wyatt take the bottle and drop it into place. They talked for a few minutes before Wyatt shook her hand and returned to the line.

  “She's from Lubbock,” Wyatt said. “Damn near a suburb of Pecos. Name is Sofia. She moved here to be near her kids."

  “You got all that in a couple of minutes? You are a sales guy. Where the hell is Pecos? Near Dallas?” Bert squinted and scrunched his face, as if conjuring a map of Texas. “I can’t place it. Or Lubbock.”

  “Pecos and Lubbock are a couple hundred miles apart, west of Dallas.”

  “You said suburb.”

  “Two-hundred miles is a Texas suburb.” Wyatt sighed. “I wish I were headed home instead of California.”

  “How long is your California trip?”

  “A month.”

  “Suck it up, big boy,” Bert said. “You shouldn’t have gotten into sales if you don’t like travel.”

  “Don't think she was feeling well.” Wyatt nodded in the direction of the water cooler. “She had the damnedest blood-shot eyes I've ever seen.”

 
; They ate in the food court, shook hands after promising to stay in touch, and headed to their respective departure gates on opposite ends of the terminal.

  Later that day both men suffered from bloodshot eyes overflowing with tears. Too little sleep and too much booze the night before, they thought. No worries.

  3

  Birir Valley, Pakistan

  The nightmare jolted the boy awake. He leaped from his bed and stood in the dark room, his heart pounding. He was drenched in sweat, but shivered as if he'd been bathing in a mountain stream choked with ice.

  He felt his way to the open window and gazed at the silver moon dropping below the mountain ridge across the valley.

  He thought about his dream, if that’s what it was. It had seemed as real as life. First had come confused images of computers and people in white coats, then vivid images of children his age. Boys and girls, all in Transition, a human rainbow of skin colors. Their eyes terrified him. Lifeless eyes, their color marked not by the lavender of Transition but with a blackness defiled by glowing specks of blood.

  Then came the voice. A horrible voice, rough and low, as if the mountains around him were speaking.

  “HEAR ME, CHILD WHO DARED TO CONFRONT TRANSITION’S POWER. A PLAGUE OF CORRUPTED MAGIC HAS BEEN AWAKENED FROM AN ANCIENT SLEEP. A MAGIC SO FOUL IT WILL DESTROY THE WORLD’S CHILDREN AND SHATTER YOUR REALITY.”

  Then the final command.

  “YOUR ROLE IS UNFINISHED, TAREEF KAHN, SON OF ABDUL KHAN. WILL YOU GIVE YOUR LIFE FOR OTHERS? PREPARE.”

  A hot trail of urine ran down his leg and puddled on the floor.