Chapter 4
Another Interrogation
Agent MacGregor sat close to the hospital bed, bleary-eyed, his partner’s limp hand clutched in his. A clean, white bandage covered the peculiar burn on her wrist. For the last hour, he stared into Connie’s expressionless, sallow face, a woman deep in a coma. This was the critical care ward. A heart rate monitor beeped slowly, hesitatingly, its cadence punctuated by the sound of the respirator forcing pure oxygen into the comatose woman’s body through a clear plastic tube taped to her face and stuck down her throat. Attached to her head was a net of wires attached to an EEG at the bedside. For the most part, it was flat lines all the way across. It looked very bad for Agent Connie Bain.
The footsteps in the hall grew louder as they approached.
A stone-faced agent shoved Professor Layton ahead of him through the wide door and into the hospital room. “Move it,” he said brusquely.
“Take your hands off me, you thug!” Professor Layton said, straightening his jacket.
“Glad you could make it, Professor Layton,” Agent MacGregor said slowly, his eyes not leaving Connie’s face.
“I didn’t have a choice. Your escort here didn’t give me the option of refusing,” he said, referring to the large, smartly dressed black man who shoved him into the room. “How is she?”
“The same,” MacGregor said.
“You have my condolences for Agent Bain.”
“I sure you feel awful, don’t you, Professor?”
“And what about my Alyndia? You’re not taking into consideration my loss.”
McGregor didn’t respond. His gaze remained fixed on Connie.
“Why did you bring me here? I have some grieving to do of my own. At least Agent Bain is still alive. She might still recover. I can’t say the same about Alyndia, or my wife, for that matter.”
MacGregor placed Connie’s hand gently down on the hospital bed, then violently spun around to confront the professor. “No, Professor. She isn’t going to recover. Do you see that?” He pointed to the flat line display on the EEG. “The doctors say she’s brain dead. That respirator is the only thing that keeps her alive. Without that, she’d be dead in two minutes. I want to know what happened to her. I want answers.”
“I already told you what I know.”
On hearing that, the big black agent looked out into the hall, then gently closed the door and leaned against it. The professor watched him with an uncertain look.
Agent MacGregor got to his feet. “Putting on a bracelet does not kill anyone, Professor Layton. I don’t care what sort of so-called magical powers it has.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
MacGregor smiled. “What do I want you to tell me? I’ll tell you what I want you to tell me.”
With the quickness of a man half his size, Agent MacGregor grabbed Professor Layton by the scruff of his shirt and threw him hard against the hospital wall. Professor Layton fell to the floor. MacGregor picked him up and, grabbing him by the collar of his coat, hustled him over to Connie’s bed, where he shoved Professor Layton’s face within inches of Connie’s.
“Look at her, Professor Layton,” MacGregor said, his voice filled with scarcely controlled rage. “Do you see my partner? I’ve known her for years. Many years. We went through CIA training together. We’ve been all over the world. We’ve lived in countries whose names you cannot even pronounce. We have a little cottage in Switzerland that we rent out for a few weeks in the summer. And on alternate days, we’d go to the athletic club.”
Agent MacGregor thrust Professor Layton’s face closer to Connie’s. The professor smelled fresh rubbing alcohol on her skin and the strawberry-scented shampoo she used in her hair.
“Twenty-four hours ago, this was a woman in her prime of life. She was in such good shape that she could bicycle twenty miles up a twisty, Swiss mountain road at 15,000 feet without losing her breath. Whatever happened to her was so bad that she went into cardiac arrest. They had to do CPR on her to get it started again. There has to be a logical explanation as to what happened, and I think you know what it is.”
MacGregor pulled the professor’s face away from Connie’s and shoved him to the polished, white floor of the hospital room.
“I should mention that we did a chemical analysis on what was left of the bracelet. We didn’t find any traces of a chemical agent on it. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.”
“I have my ideas on what happened,” the professor said, looking up at him disheveled from the tile floor.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“I think when Agent Bain put on the bracelet, Alyndia thought it was the vacant body of my wife. She tried to occupy Agent Bain’s body and somehow ended up forcing Agent Bain out of it.”
“Not this story again,” MacGregor said with a pained expression. “Sal,” he addressed the big guy at the door. “Do you have any aspirin?”
“Nope. Don’t carry it.” Sal answered in a deep, baritone voice.
“Can you go out to the nurses station and get me some? My head is killing me. And I have a feeling it’s going to take a long time with the professor here.”
Sal opened the door to leave.
“And don’t bring back any of that ibuprofen crap. Tell them I want aspirin.”
“Aspirin. You’ve got it.”
MacGregor waited until Sal had left the room before addressing Professor Layton again, this time in a somewhat softer tone of voice. “Our lab analyzed the bracelet fragments we found on the floor of the hospital room. Along with iridium as its prime constituent, the bracelet contains a high content of chlorine salts. This suggests the bracelet was smelted in an environment high in chlorine, with traces of fluorine, methane, nitrogen, and oxygen. Of course, this is not an earthlike atmosphere. The analysis also revealed large amounts of rare earth elements and some other compounds we haven’t yet been able to identify. The evidence of chlorine in the bracelet corroborates what you said about the bracelet being made in a world where people breathe chlorine.”
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“Remember what I told you? Now do you believe I’m telling the truth?”
“Not so fast. You did have a large quantity of chlorine on your premises.”
“But I don’t have the smelting equipment. The melting point of iridium is 4800 °C. I don’t have anything that I can melt iridium with, much less forge a bracelet like that one you saw.”
“You didn’t have to make the bracelet. And I still think you put some kind of unknown poisonous substance on it. You had the right chemicals to cook up something.”
“All right, Agent MacGregor. If you’re so sure I poisoned her, go ahead and try to find the substance on my premises. I’ve already told you the nature of my experiment, and it doesn’t involve creating poisons. By the way, how are your other people who handled the bracelet doing besides Agent Bain?”
“Only she was affected.”
“Of course. You should also consider the fact that I wasn’t expecting you the first time you showed up. Think about it: Why would I leave a poisoned bracelet lying on a table in my lab, just for someone to come by and pick it up? And what other purpose would I have for a poisoned bracelet?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out.”
MacGregor returned his attention to Connie. His eyes followed the I.V. tubes to their packages of saline solution. The rhythm on the heart rate monitor stumbled momentarily, then picked up again, seemingly slower than before.
“You know, Professor, part of me wants to believe you, but a stronger, more rational part of me says there’s another explanation. That is, a rational explanation that does not include mysticism. For lack of a better lead, I’m almost willing to hear you out.”
“Even Alyndia was unsure of her powers.”
MacGregor put down Connie’s hand. “What was that?”
“I said that even Alyndia was worried about her powers. She said she would be casting a celestial spell to guide her spirit through the Wild to Elise’s body. She said she was not well-versed in celestial magic and that the spell was not without risks.”
“What do you mean, celestial magic? And what is the ‘Wild’?”
Professor Layton got to his feet. “I’m not sure. She mentioned that her magic dealt mainly with the elements. And whereas her spells were powered by some sort of essence found in nature, celestial spells were powered by the energy of the stars. From a scientific standpoint, I think she meant that the spells work by harnessing cosmic energy—I don’t know. I intended to do some research on it when she arrived. Anyway, Alyndia said that celestial magic was the most powerful magic on Cerinya. It can do wondrous things but is also extremely dangerous if something goes wrong in the casting. Few Cerinyans practice celestial magic because it is so hard to control. She stated that she was only a novice at how it worked, but she would learn how to cast it better if it allowed us to coexist in the same world. As for the Wild? I think that’s their name for what we refer to as the Astral Plane.”
Agent MacGregor walked slowly over to the window and pulled open the vertical blinds. It was dark outside. The window radiated cold. He surveyed the expanse of the front lawn of the hospital below. A light coat of winter snow had fallen since he had rushed to the hospital the day before. It glinted in the streetlight.
“So where is the spirit of your Alyndia, Professor?” he asked from the window, his breath fogging the window pane as he spoke.
“I have no idea where she is. And after what happened to your partner here, I don’t feel optimistic. Alyndia could be dead, lost in the Wild, or Lord knows what else.”
“Couldn’t we call her on the aperture you said you created?”
“The aperture is driven by sunlight.”
“You’re not telling me she lives in the sun, are you?”
“I meant nothing of the sort.”
“I hope, not.”
MacGregor turned away from the window and was surprised to see Professor Layton standing over Connie, gazing into her face. He joined the professor at the bedside. The two men stood in silent contemplation for almost a minute before Professor Layton spoke.
“Did the CIA notify her family?”
“We’re still trying to contact them,” MacGregor replied. “Either we don’t have accurate information on their whereabouts, or they’re not returning our calls. She wasn’t very close to them.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t heard from my son in years. I hope he’s all right wherever he is.”
MacGregor scrutinized Professor Layton’s expression in an effort to gauge the verity of his statements, then let go of the thought for now. The importance of this matter with Connie had superseded the investigation of the professor’s son, at least in his book.
Professor Layton continued. “From what Alyndia’s told me of her world, I realize her planet is a temperate place much like ours, with ice caps at either pole.”
“So what does the sun have to do with anything?”
“The sun is merely a medium of transmission. My guess is that our sun, or at least some rays from our sun, also touch her world, which, for all practical purposes, seems to exist in a parallel time with ours. Perhaps her world is superimposed upon ours, or maybe she lives in a distant solar system proximal to ours through a wormhole. We have not yet determined where our worlds lie in relation to each other. Alyndia and I have found a way to modulate this common energy through the source and communicate with each other. I do this through technology. She does by means of magical power.”
The door to the hospital room opened. Sal entered, holding a small white packet and a paper cup of water for Agent MacGregor. “You’d think this being a hospital they’d have aspirin on hand,” Sal said with a grin. “All they had was Tylenol. I thought I was gonna have to drive down to the corner drugstore to get some aspirin for ya’.”
MacGregor took the packet from Sal, ripped it open, and quickly downed the two tablets it contained. Sal and Professor Layton didn’t speak while MacGregor emptied the cup of water. He crushed the cup into a tight ball and tossed it into a plastic-lined wastepaper basket by the bed.
MacGregor addressed Sal, “Professor Layton was telling me about how the aperture works. Professor, tell Sal how this aperture works.”
“Gladly. Imagine, if you will, a beam of light, let’s say from a flashlight, shining in a straight line through a vacuum where almost none is lost through diffusion. Suppose we took a polarized parabolic mirror that only reflected green light and directed 100 percent of that green light back to its source. What would happen? The level of green within the beam would double. Right?”
As the professor spoke, MacGregor watched Sal, whose face betrayed a complete lack of comprehension. The professor paused.
“Do you both understand?”
“Go on, professor,” MacGregor said.
“Okay, suppose you could measure this doubling of green wavelength from another angle. And if you could somehow vibrate the mirror at the sound of your voice, you could modulate this green light at this frequency. Correct? So, anyone measuring the green wavelength would also hear your voice. This narrow aperture of light is the aperture. The source of the light is the sun.”
“Then you are only able to communicate with her strictly during daylight hours,” MacGregor clarified.
“Correct.”
“Then we should try to contact her at sunrise.”
“Not possible, Agent MacGregor. Thanks to the efforts of your fellow agents, my precise calibrations are lost. It will take me months to regain them, and Alyndia will have to be looking for me exactly at the time I’m searching for her. I may never be able to contact her again.”
“How convenient. Don’t you think so, Sal? Explain to us, Professor: How did she send you the bracelet that zapped Connie. Was it green light?”
“No, some sort of molecular exchange is my theory. You’ll have to ask Alyndia how she accomplished this perchance you are ever lucky enough to meet her,” the professor said.
Sal broke in, “Sounds like this guy talks a lot of bullshit, Will. Let me have a moment with him. After what he did to Connie, I’ll make sure he’s singing a different tune by the time I’m done.”
The professor’s wide eyes shifted between MacGregor and Sal, his face white with fear.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Sal,” Agent MacGregor said, as he affectionately brushed Connie’s pallid cheek with his large hand. “For now, we’ll let the good professor here stick to his story. But don’t you leave town, Professor Layton,” he said without looking away from Connie. “You’ll never know when we might make a call on you.”
“What if she dies?” Sal asked.
MacGregor glanced over at the professor, his hard, blue eyes filled with contempt alloyed with sorrow. “If she dies, not even the truth will save him, Sal.”