Relentless Read Online Free Page B

him back to the present.
    The girl at the storefront—whoever she was . . . She had been right.
    He should have bolted when this all started.
    Too late now.
    He limped in the direction of the stairs leading up and out.
    He had to get out of here, find safety.
    If such a thing still existed.
    ‘‘It looks like you’re within twenty meters of the convergence,’’ Lisa said into Daniel’s earpiece.
    ‘‘Okay, I’ll take it from here,’’ he replied.
    She immediately went radio silent. Thankfully.
    He liked Lisa. Well, he tolerated her, anyway, as much as he tolerated anyone. But if she weren’t whip-smart and an astute lab tech, he never would have been able to abide her endless chatter. He hadn’t known her for very long before he realized that she lacked a filter between her brain and her mouth—she simply verbalized every thought that entered her mind.
    She was good, though—really good. She often caught things that he was too impatient to notice, and she had a way of pushing their research along avenues of thought that he might not otherwise have considered.
    But the constant conversation drove him batty, particularly in the mornings. He preferred the silence of his own thoughts.
    Daniel stood on the downtown sidewalk under the midday sun, which had finally broken through the clouds, holding his small device in his hand. It was a simple instrument he’d built from pieces of a Pocket PC and some other materials. Its panel lit up whenever a shimmer— or the residual energy given off by a recent shimmer—was nearby. The closer he got, the brighter it glowed. Lisa said it was essentially a high-tech version of the ‘‘you’re getting warmer’’ game.
    He marched forward another ten paces and glanced at the device. It was brighter here. He looked up. A bus stop faced him across the street.
    It had happened right around here, he was sure of it.
    But what was he expecting to find? It had taken much longer than he’d hoped for the lab’s past-generation systems to narrow down the shimmer’s position. As his rumbling stomach reminded him, it was nearing lunchtime. Whatever event had taken place here, it was long over.
    Daniel walked forward, crossing the street and nearing the bus stop, when a high-pitched squeal in his earpiece brought him up short.
    ‘‘Doct—! It hap—a—n!’’ Lisa was shouting.
    He reached up and massaged his ear. ‘‘Say again? Quietly ?’’
    ‘‘It happened again! Another shimmer! Just now!’’ she replied.
    He froze. Two in one day .
    One was unprecedented. Two was unimaginable.
    ‘‘How big?’’ he shouted, not caring about the people on the street who stopped to stare.
    ‘‘Hang on, it’s processing now . . .’’
    An impossibly long minute passed, and the light changed. A bicyclist squeaked his horn, so Daniel ran out of the street and under the empty glass bus shelter.
    ‘‘Well?’’ he asked impatiently.
    ‘‘Doctor Cossick, . . .’’ she whispered, ‘‘it was a seven-point-nine .’’
    He plopped down on the shelter’s plastic bench, aware of nothing around him save his heart pounding madly beneath his chest.
    ‘‘Where was it?’’ he finally said.
    ‘‘Can’t tell yet,’’ she mumbled. ‘‘It’s still triangulating. But two of them! Two shimmers! Can you believe this?’’
    ‘‘Feed me the data,’’ he replied, pulling out a touch-screen device smaller than a laptop. He tapped the screen and looked at the data Lisa was pouring into it by remote. He focused on the numbers and quickly did some preliminary math on the small computer.
    When he was finished, he sat back, dropping the pad to his knees.
    ‘‘I think it’s near the Library,’’ he said out loud.
    He pulled the smaller device back out of his pocket and turned it on.
    Even in the rising midday sun, it glowed ferociously.

4
    Grant walked as far as he could before the pain in his leg grew unbearable. It needed dressing, and he had to find someplace safe to hide,