Lexie, page 1
LEXIE
Book 2 of The Hidden
By F. Paul Wilson
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press digital edition 2024
Copyright © 2024 F. Paul Wilson
ISBN: ePub Digital Edition - 978-1-63789-116-2
ISBN: Trade Paperback - 978-1-63789-115-5
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LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
F. PAUL WILSON is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of eighty-plus books and nearly one hundred short stories spanning science fiction, horror, adventure, medical thrillers, and virtually everything between. The Tomb received the Porgie Award from The West Coast Review of Books; Wheels Within Wheels won the first Prometheus Award. His novella “Aftershock” won a Stoker Award. He was voted Grand Master by the World Horror Convention, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers of America, and the Thriller Lifetime Achievement Award from the editors of Romantic Times. He also received the prestigious Inkpot Award from San Diego ComiCon and is listed in the 50th anniversary edition of Who's Who in America.
In 1983 Paramount rendered his novel The Keep into a visually striking but otherwise incomprehensible movie with screenplay and direction by Michael Mann. The Tomb has spent 25 years in development hell at Beacon Films. Dario Argento adapted his story “Pelts” for Masters of Horror.
Over nine million copies of his books are in print in the US and his work has been translated into twenty-four languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media.
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Table of Contents
* * *
The Multiverse According to the Troika
WEDNESDAY
1
2
3
4
5
THURSDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
FRIDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
SATURDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
SUNDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
MONDAY
1
2
3
4
5
TUESDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
WEDNESDAY
1
2
3
4
THURSDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
FRIDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
AFTERMATH
1
The Secret History of the World
The Multiverse According to the Troika
Human existence can be summed up in two short sentences:
“We are not alone.”
and
“We are property.”
Sapient species are rare in the universe. Our analysis, using the Drake equation and the Great Filter theory, has led us to conclude that fewer than 100 sapient civilizations exist among the excess of one hundred billion planets circling the stars in our galaxy. Which explains why sapience attracts attention.
Attention from whom? From the vast, inexplicable, cosmic entities that roam the multiverse in search of sapient species. When one of them finds one, it lays claim and plays with it. We are one of those species. We have been claimed. We are property. We are an entity’s ant farm. But their fellow entities want to toy with the insects as well, and will do whatever they can to take over and shift ownership to one of themselves.
It’s all part of the Game. And the Game, like chess, like any game, has rules. The players can’t simply sweep the board clean and grab the king. They’ve got to make their moves according to the rules, and the rules of the Game say they must work behind the scenes. Interfere in the bugs’ lives only now and then, and use a deft touch, as in: Don’t reveal yourself when you meddle. So they use humans to do their dirty work.
Certain humans throughout history have become aware of these entities, calling them gods and giving them names. But they have no names. They simply are. Nowadays the two main players in our sphere have been designated the Ally and the Otherness. The Ally is the current Owner but isn’t a true ally. It loves to play games with humanity but is indifferent to our welfare. The Otherness is truly inimical, feeding on pain, fear, despair, depravity. Each has its human minions to do its bidding. The Ally has its Oculi and their yeniçeri muscle. The Otherness has the ancient Septimus order. Recently a third entity became involved, a rogue referred to as the Squatter, but the Ally absorbed it, taking out all of Atlantic City and one of the Catskill mountains along with it.
A variety of responses are available to humanity. The most common is denial. Other options are to go mad, or curl up into a whimpering ball in a corner somewhere, or simply end it all. There’s also the option to go about one’s life and simply endure the situation. And then there’s opposition. It is, of course, impossible to win in a head-to-head contest with these vast entities. But if one realizes that they have set rules for their Game—rules which they sometimes break, but mostly are forced to play by—then they can be opposed by learning those rules and using them to thwart the entities’ intrusions into human existence.
The Troika has opted for opposition.
WEDNESDAY
1
Special Agent Danielle Boudreau tapped on Chan’s bedroom door, just down the hall from hers. After a short wait with no response, she knocked again, harder.
“Who is it?” said a faint voice on the other side.
“Danni. I’m heading down to the meeting.”
She heard rushed footsteps and then the door opened to reveal an unshaven, bleary-eyed Chan Liao looking like a hungover Bruce Lee in boxer shorts and a white T-shirt.
“Meeting? What time is it?”
Figuring there were two ways to take that question, she checked her phone and answered both. “The time now is eight forty-two. The meeting’s at nine.”
“Shit. Forgot to set my alarm. The Troika loves meetings, don’t they. What’s this one about? I forget.”
“Something about the kids.”
“Okay. Don’t want to miss that. I need a shower and stuff. Meet you down there.”
“I’ll make excuses if you’re late.”
He blew her a kiss and closed the door. She headed for the great room on the first floor.
This building was originally a barn converted to a B&B with two floors of bedrooms and shared bathrooms. The great room was one of the common areas on the first floor. She’d arrived here in the Catskills four days ago on a Saturday afternoon, planning to spend one night. Plans had changed. Now she had no idea when she’d be getting out of here. She’d found the place charming at first. Now she was sick of it and wanted to move on.
Anyone else but Chan might have made a remark about her heading so early for a meeting that was no more than a hundred feet away. But after their four years together at the University of Pennsylvania, he was well acquainted with her habit of always being the first on the scene. As she entered the great room, however, she realized Ilya had beat her today.
Mid-thirties—about ten years older than Danni—Ilya Medved was a big, bearded fellow who dressed like a lumberjack and made up one-third of the so-called Troika. Wearing his uniform of plaid flannel shirt—the colors changed but the plaid and the flannel remained a constant—and jeans, he grinned at her from behind the table where he was settling a giant French press filled with fresh coffee between a selection of cups and a plate piled with rolls.
“Aren’t you the happy homemaker,” she said.
He gave her a sidelong look. “Well, the owner and chef is somewhat indisposed, I’m told.”
Danni rolled with the dig. She was the reason Ian Carroll wasn’t fixing breakfast for the guests. And never would again.
“More than somewhat, it would seem.”
Three hollow point rounds from her Glock to his center of mass had seen to that. The agents from the NYC office had investigated the fatality. Ian’s big Webley, covered with his prints, on the floor next to him, along with the contents of his room and Chan’s corroborating statement led to the conclusion—inescapable, as far as she was concerned—that it was a good shooting in justified self-defense.
“Where’d you get the rolls?” she said.
“Down at the general store. Fresh made, I’m told.” He held up a tabloid newspaper. “Looks like the Event has an official name.”
The Daily News headline read, THE CATSKILL CATACLYSM.
“Is that what they’re calling it?”
For want of a better name, everyone on the scene had been calling it the Event.
“An irresistible alliteration, don’t you think?”
“Definitely. Where’d you get the paper?”
With her stay here indefinitely extended, she’d been dying for something to read.
“Snagged it from one of your fellow Feebs who brought it with him this morning.”
Danni hated that nickname, and normally she might have bristled, but Ilya was such an easygoing, affable guy, she found it impossible to take offence. The Troika was NSA’s presence on the site, along with members of the FBI—mostly from the NYC Regional Office—DHS, the New York National Guard, the Greene County Sheriff’s Office, and even the CIA.
The freshly christened Catskill Cataclysm was a big deal, and rightly so.
Three days ago, on a sunny Sunday morning, storm clouds had descended on a mountain here in Alberta, New York, engulfing it. Less than an hour later, the clouds had disappeared. Along with the mountain. The millions of tons of dirt and rock and vegetation that had loomed over Route 23 in Greene County had vanished without a trace, along with all the wildlife and any humans who happened to be present at the time. Danni and Chan had been up there when the storm hit but managed to get away in time, along with three vans full of the mothers and children who had been calling the mountain their home. Not everyone made it into the vans. Anyone who stayed behind had to be presumed dead. Because nothing but scoured, gravely dirt remained. Danni and Chan were still here in Alberta. No one knew where the vans had driven off to.
Something similar had happened to Atlantic City a little over two months before, leaving nothing but hard-packed gravel where thriving hotels, casinos, and houses had stood. The death toll on the mountain was unknown, but 25,000 people were missing from the wasteland that had once been AC. Chan and Danni had been on the scene there too, and had again managed to escape the carnage.
“I’ll take that after you’re done, if you don’t mind.”
He folded the paper and stretched it toward her. “You can have it now. Be my guest.”
“You beat me here,” she said as she tucked it under her arm and poured herself a cup from the press, then dropped into one of the easy chairs.
The great room had a high ceiling and a dozen or so comfy chairs scattered about. A huge stone fireplace occupied the outer wall. No doubt a delight in the winter but sitting cold and dark now in early September.
“I know you like to arrive early, and I thought we might grab some face time before the others arrive.”
“Oh?”
Where was this going?
Ilya was a member of R3A, a little-known branch of NSA’s Research Directorate that specialized in investigating unexplained phenomena. The Catskill Cataclysm certainly fell under their purview, and so R3A had taken over Cliff House where she and Chan had been staying before the mountain disappeared.
At this point, R3A consisted of three people—Ilya and his twin cousins, Zina and Luka Borisov, all three of Russian descent but American born, and collectively known as “the Troika.” Their branch had been formed under questionable circumstances, their mission to investigate “unexplained phenomena” dismissed and belittled by the rest of NSA, with the Troika mercilessly ridiculed as conspiracy nuts. And then Atlantic City disappeared. Suddenly they were the go-to department and their funding skyrocketed.
The Catskill Cataclysm had sent all the country’s—make that all the world’s—law enforcement and intelligence agencies scrambling to staff their own departments in the R3A mold. But R3A was already established and as such had first dibs on the two people who had survived both catastrophes. Since Sunday afternoon, they’d subjected Danni and Chan to a barrage of debriefings.
“You impress me,” he said, holding her gaze. “I’ve gotten to know you over these past few days, and you’ve got smarts, but more importantly, you’ve got analytical acumen. Plus, you’re gutsy to boot.” He smiled through his beard. “I find that combo very attractive.”
Wait a minute, wait a minute…this was not headed for a good place. She needed to derail it immediately, but gently.
“Thank you for those compliments. They’re very nice to hear. Are you suggesting we get more personal?”
What she could make out of his face through the beard reddened. “Damn, I’m so bad at this. I was always a nerd among nerds. If I’ve offended—”
“No-no. Not in the least. I’m flattered, really I am, but I don’t think that’s going to work.”
He blinked. “You mean…you and Chan? Since you’re staying in separate rooms, I assumed—”
“No, not Chan. We’ve been buddies for a long time, but there’s never been any romance there. And there never will be. My problem with him is the same as with you.”
“Too nerdy?”
“Not at all. I like nerds, as a matter of fact.” How to put this? “Let me ask you: Are you attracted to females?”
“Well, yeah, sure, obviously.”
“So am I.”
She let him stare at her as that sunk in.
“You mean you’re…”
She nodded. “Yes. Very.”
“What a dumbass I am. I had no idea.”
“No worry. You’re not the first.”
And Ilya wouldn’t be the last. She didn’t ping straights’ gaydar, and that had caused occasional workplace awkwardness—during her Quantico training, and in the Newark FBI office where she’d been stationed until the Atlantic City Upwelling had completely disrupted her life. No big deal. Everything tended to get straightened out eventually.
She’d always been a girly girl. Loved dresses and makeup, dated boys in high school. Then she met Monica in chemistry class and something sparked. They began hanging out. They began studying together—starting with their textbooks, then moving onto each other’s bodies. That was it for Danni. She never looked back.
“But I’m glad we can have a little face time anyway,” she said, looking to shift the subject away from her. “I gather you’re the conspiracy theory guy, right?”
“Some of them aren’t theories—they’re genuine conspiracies. So it’s part of my job to keep up on what’s going on in Conspiracyland. It helps to remember this: Every conspiracy theory contains a dot of truth—often more than one. It’s simply how you connect those dots that makes the difference. Connect them one way and it leads you toward the truth. Connect them another way and you find yourself further and further away from it.”
“What’s Luka’s area?”
“He’s our science head. He keeps up on the latest in physics and astronomy and genetics and the like. All sorts of weirdness can develop from those disciplines.”
