02:16:00:11
The other girl named Janelle Tenner was born and raised in Prima.
Instead of going to West Point, spending six years in the Army, and then joining the FBI, her father worked in Homeland Security, where he excelled through the ranks.
The creepy part is that he met his future wife the same way my parents met—at a group dinner party with mutual friends. She was a graduate student who thought she knew everything and had too much to drink. He thought she was obnoxious and jumped in to correct her when she made a broad generalization about international policy, which turned into a heated debate. She got his number and took him out for coffee the next day to apologize.
They had two children, Janelle and Jared, but any similarities other than our names seem to end pretty soon after that. Because her dad and mine made two very different crucial decisions when their wives got sick.
When “Janelle’s” mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, her father didn’t try to work it out on his own and then just let it go. He had her committed to a mental institution, and hired a nanny to take care of his children.
“Janelle” and “Jared” were raised by the nanny and the housekeeper until they were old enough to be sent to expensive boarding schools. “Janelle” hated school. She wasn’t into sports, and she wasn’t particularly into classes, and as a result, she felt sort of aimless—she didn’t know what to do with her life. At her first school, she fell in with a bad crowd, drank a lot, and ended up getting expelled for breaking too many rules.
At her next school, she tried to study and play the good student, but she met a guy, thought he loved her, and spent all of her time with him. Then she spiraled into a depression after he slept with her and moved on to someone else. She ended up failing too many classes and got kicked out again.
When she enrolled in her most recent school, she already had a reputation, and instead of feeling sorry for herself, she embraced it and decided she would drop out instead of waiting to be expelled. Only this time, when she slipped in with the wrong crowd and fell for the wrong guy, he was a lot worse than some prep-school jock.
And she had no one to save her.
Three years earlier, her father had remarried. He and his new wife had a baby. Then a year ago, while on a case, her father was killed and left everything to his new wife, who didn’t want anything to do with his nothing-but-trouble daughter.
So “Janelle” moved in with her boyfriend, who lived in the underground. She knew he was a bad drunk with anger issues, he was cheating on her, and he was involved with some pretty bad guys, but she didn’t know where else to go.
One night he asked her to take his car and drive to the docks to drop off a package—probably drugs—to a friend of his. She did. Only some idiot rear-ended her and was screaming about how it was her fault. It wasn’t, but she’d had a beer and she had a DUI last year, so when the cops came, she fled.
And accidentally left the package in the car.
Her boyfriend beat her up when he found out what happened—she thought he might kill her. But the next thing she knew, she’d been arrested and handed off to a couple of prison guards and taken to a solitary cell where she was being used as leverage for a guy she didn’t even know.
I don’t know how to feel about this—or, more accurately, I feel too many different things that don’t really mesh with one another, and I don’t know which one is right.
We have the same parents. We share the same DNA. This girl is supposed to be my double, but our lives have been so different. And it’s sad.
I don’t exactly think my life has been a cakewalk, but hers . . . hers has been a lot worse. She doesn’t even talk to her brother anymore and she never had anyone like Alex, who would listen to her no matter what, or someone like Cecily, who was determined to make her smile.
And she never had someone love her like Ben loves me.
It makes me wish my dad was still around—or that there was at least some way for me to apologize to him. I was so hard on him when he was alive. I felt like it was his responsibility to do something for Mom so that I didn’t have to take care of her. I felt like it wasn’t fair that I had to grow up so quickly.
A rush of guilt throbs in my chest. Not just because I spent so much time feeling mad at him and now he’s gone, but also for my mom. She’s been missing and presumed dead since the quakes, and the most prominent feeling that left me with was relief.
My parents deserved better from me, and now they’re gone and it’s too late for me to tell them I loved them or to thank them.
If they had made different choices I would have turned out a lot different.
And as crazy as it sounds—even though I’m burned and exhausted, even though I might be executed in three days—I’m glad I’m me.
02:16:00:10
Barclay is waiting for me when I come out of “Janelle’s” room. I repeat what she’s told me, but I keep my reflection to myself.
“Who’s the boyfriend?” Barclay asks. I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but the focus in his eyes and the concentration in the lines of his forehead tell me he’s got something that might be the beginnings of a plan. I can practically see the wheels turning in his head.
That he’s coming up with our next steps makes me breathe a little easier.
“Joe Tarancio?” I say. Obviously the name means nothing to me, but it might mean something to him.
Barclay smiles, and the tension in my shoulders starts to drain. His prison-break plan worked—against all odds it worked—so I’m willing to follow Barclay just about anywhere right now.
That thought almost makes me laugh.
Barclay must notice I’m losing it. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say with a shake of my head. “What do you know about the boyfriend?”
“She might be able to help us,” he says. “Tarancio is one of Meridian’s right-hand guys. Between whatever she knows and what Ben has told us about the operation and how it works, we should be able to get the proof we need to the right people at IA in order to get us all in the clear.”
“And we can get Cecily too, right?”
He rolls his eyes. “Relax, Tenner. I’m not going to go back on my promise.”
“In less than three days?” I ask, thinking of the deadline and the people I had to leave behind in that prison.
Barclay nods.
“So what’s the plan?” Elijah says. I turn around and see that he and Ben are down the hall. I can tell from here that Ben’s eyes are bloodshot, and there’s a pang of regret that moves through my chest. No matter how I’m feeling, I don’t like seeing him this way.
“We need food and sleep and a concrete plan of what we’re going to do,” Barclay says, scratching behind his head. “Not exactly in that order, though.”
“We can get food,” Ben offers, looking at me. “What do you feel like?”
“Hell yeah, food,” Elijah says. “Let’s get pizza. It’s been entirely too f*cking long since I’ve had melted cheese.”
“Is pizza okay with you?” Ben asks me. I nod. Pizza is fine.
“Good. Get food,” Barclay says. “I’m going to talk to Janelle’s double and get some more information. Then we’ll eat and talk about how the hell we’re going to pull this off.” He looks at me. “After that we’ll sleep and then we’ll go after Cecily.”
02:15:22:04
The radiation levels in the hospital are higher than those in your average nuclear-disaster-free city, and if we stayed here permanently we might die before our time. But according to the tests Barclay did with his quantum charger—yeah, those things can multitask—the next two and a half days aren’t going to hurt us.
And after that we’ll either be headed home or dead, so it’s not a problem.
The food is pepperoni pizza, my favorite kind, and I’m pretty sure Ben did that on purpose. It comes from a different world. I don’t ask how he and Elijah got it since it’s pretty obvious. We don’t exactly have a ton of money on us, and there isn’t a common currency in the multiverse. Two guys who can portal in and out of everywhere can steal what they need pretty easily.
The plan, however, is more complicated.
After he’s demolished two slices, Barclay opens his backpack and spreads the contents on the table. He’s apparently been carrying an armory around with him since we left Prima. I touch the gun I’ve had with me, and think of the prison guard and the way I could pinpoint the exact moment when his life slipped away.
I take a deep breath and try to tell myself that I didn’t have a choice.
“We’re going to be outmatched,” Barclay says. “I can’t be sure exactly how outmatched, but it will be bad. Our advantages are the element of surprise, their arrogance, and him.” He gestures to Ben, who’s sitting next to me. I look over at him, and our eyes meet for a second before I look away.
Then Barclay lays out his plan for taking down the biggest interversal criminal operation anyone’s ever seen.
We can’t go back to the Piston and get Ben’s family out. IA will expect us, and we’ll probably never be able to get out again. We just have to hope they can hold on another day or two and that we can get the proof we need to convince IA that Ben is innocent and his family shouldn’t be punished.
Step one is the Black Hole. We’ll portal into the processing center. Ben draws us a map of what he remembers—where the guys slept, where they portaled in, where they kept the slaves, and where the control room and surveillance are located. Lucky us, they don’t have any hydrochloradneum shields in place.
“We can go straight into the control room,” Ben says. “There will be a couple guys on duty, but we can surprise them and subdue them pretty easily. The computers are there, so we can copy the files we need. From there we’ll be able to open the cells and get any of the slaves in holding. There will probably be somewhere between twenty and thirty, and we can bring them back here with us.”
Barclay thinks it’s as good a plan as any.
Step two is Cecily. We’ll find out where she is and rescue her. Hopefully her location will be in the files we steal in step one.
Step three is dealing with IA. We’ll have proof about Meridian and his operation. If this was a normal case, Barclay would file the paperwork, put together a task force, and they would bust everything up. But it’s not. Which means we need to take the proof to someone high up, who we can trust isn’t involved.
And right now, that’s a really short list.
We need the files at the processing center to help us with that.
As Barclay goes over the minor details, we all lean toward him to make sure we get it right. A couple of times Elijah asks questions and makes Barclay repeat his idea in different words. Other times, he offers his own suggestions—like how we should break into IA and search through their files to find out who’s dirty, or go after Meridian ourselves, both of which get shot down.
After a while, I realize Ben is so close to me we’re almost touching. We’re barely an inch apart and every time he moves I’m sure he’s going to reach out and brush my arm or my thigh. The air in the space between us is electrified.
But no matter how many times my heart skips a beat, or lurches forward, he doesn’t touch me.
Worse, I don’t know if I want him to.
02:11:17:49
I’m on the roof of the building when Ben comes to see me.
We’ve hashed out the plan as much as we can. We’re leaving around three a.m. because the middle of the night will be our best chance of getting in and out alive.
Despite what I’ve said about my double and the fact that she’s unlikely to go anywhere else, Barclay doesn’t trust her enough to leave her alone. Not even while we’re sleeping. He’s promised he’ll figure out somewhere for her to go before we leave. But for now, he’s pulled three more beds into her room so that all five of us can lie down and sleep before we leave.
None of this is her fault, and I don’t blame her for whatever’s going on now between Ben and me—at least, logically I don’t. But I don’t exactly want to spend any more time in the same room with her than I absolutely have to. Not even an extra minute.
She makes me feel . . . crowded.
When I’m in that room with her, it’s like I can’t move without touching someone or bumping into them—it’s like everyone is in my personal space.
Her presence is stifling.
Instead of sitting there and pretending it’s normal, I wander around. But empty hospital beds, peeling paint, and the absence of anything alive is the last thing I need.
Then I find the roof.
I never realized there could be so many stars. The only other light is the full moon and some faint red lights off in the distance.
I’m sitting on the edge of the roof, my legs dangling over the side, when I hear the hinges of the door creak. “Don’t let it swing shut,” I call, assuming it’s Barclay. “It locks from the inside.”
“Got it.”
It’s Ben’s voice, and I freeze at the sound of it, my heart picking up speed, thumping harder against my chest, as if it’s straining to know whether he’s going to come over or just fade back inside.
I hold my breath as I wait.
And suddenly he’s beside me, sitting down next to me. We’re not quite touching, but I can feel the warmth of his body next to mine.
“I was wondering where you went,” he says.
“I just needed some air.”
He nods. I feel the movement next to me.
I don’t say anything, and Ben seems comfortable with the silence. I’m not sure how much time passes like that—the two of us, side by side, yet somehow so far away.
When he finally breaks the silence, he says, “Those red lights out there . . .”
“What about them?”
“They’re trees.”
“Trees?”
“I checked it out a few nights ago,” he says. “They’re really close to one of the nuclear power plants that got taken out. The fallout from that is actually probably what ended up destroying this whole area. The radiation there is still so bad, like three hundred thousand times what could kill a person, or more, that the trees glow in the dark because they’ve absorbed so much of it.”
I don’t ask why he knows that. I kind of like that he does, because it reminds me of the guy who sat next to me in AP English just a few months ago, the guy who crashed my AP Physics class because it would be a good place for us to hang out.
But this isn’t what I want him to say right now. It’s a start, but I just want something . . . more.
More real. More meaningful.
Just more.
But he doesn’t say anything, and again we lapse into silence. It’s not a comfortable one, not like we could have shared before all of this. It’s awkward, like two people who want something from each other but don’t know how to express it.
It’s like we’re broken, and I don’t know what we can do—if anything—to fix that.
“We’re going to make it,” Ben says, breaking the silence.
I nod, even though I’m not sure I believe it. We’re one IA agent and three teenagers, and we’re up against some of the worst criminals in the multiverse.
“I love you,” he adds.
And I realize he’s not talking about whatever is going to happen at the processing center. He’s talking about us—about him and me. He thinks we’re going to make it. That we’re going to be okay.
It’s what I thought I wanted to hear. More than that, it’s what I’ve been waiting to hear from him since I first realized I was falling for him. Just a few hours ago, what I wanted more than anything was for him to tell me that what Elijah said was true, that he was planning to come back. That if IA hadn’t grabbed him, he was going to come back to my world and to me.
But now he’s saying that and I can’t help but think about the consequences. If he does come back with me, then what? Sure, it might be great for a little while, but in five years or in twenty? What if he regrets his decision, what if he decides to leave then? I feel like I can’t take that chance.
For four months I looked for Ben. For 120 days, I thought about him. Every time a door opened or I walked into a room, I looked for him. I was jumpy and on edge, and . . . waiting.
I’m just not willing to put myself through that again.
For a long time I don’t say anything. Then I feel Ben’s hand cover mine. His skin is rough and calloused like I remember it, and it takes everything I have to ignore the wave of sheer yearning that sweeps over me. I want so desperately to lean my head against his shoulder and pretend we’re just stargazing and not two people looking out into the end of the world.
“After all this, I’m going to come back with you,” he whispers. “I thought about you all the time.”
I squeeze his hand, because I’m not sure I can form words.
Ben turns toward me, and even in the dark, I can see the tragic beauty of his face, his deep-set eyes and hard jaw, the way his hair is too long, how it flops into his face and covers his eyes.
Flushed and breathless, I lean into him, our foreheads touching, our noses brushing against each other, his breath warm against my cheek.
And right when I think he’s going to kiss me, I say, “We can’t be together.”
02:11:06:14
He reels back and I see the surprise in his face and the hurt in those brown eyes, and somehow that makes it worse. It’s not that I want to hurt him. I just need to save myself from getting hurt again.
I push to my feet and start walking away.
“Wait,” Ben says, and I can hear him following me even though I don’t look back. “Why are you running away?”
I turn around, but keep walking backward. “You have a family and a life in your own world, and I have one in mine.”
“And I’m saying I want to be a part of yours.”
“But you can’t!” I shout. “Look what happened today. I walked in on you with another version of me. I can’t even begin to explain how messed up that is.”
“I know, and I should have known,” he says. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll—”
I shake my head. “It’s not about that. It’s . . . If I needed a sign from the multiverse that we’re not supposed to be together, that was it.” I take a deep breath and ignore the way my eyes sting. “How we feel about each other doesn’t matter. We’re from two different worlds and being together has only hurt us—both of us.”
“You don’t really believe that,” he whispers.
“I do,” I say, my voice cracking. “My world is falling apart, and we’re both wanted criminals. You abducted people from their worlds, and you did it for me. And I broke out of a prison and became a fugitive and a murderer.”
I press the heel of my palm to the center of my chest to try to hold on to some semblance of self-control.
“I killed a man.”
Ben’s voice comes out quiet, calm, and even, everything that mine is not. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“I shoved a piece of glass into his neck and felt his life bleed out all over my hands,” I say, and hearing the words out loud makes them more true. And that makes my eyes burn and my throat constrict because those words shouldn’t belong to me.
I have to pause and catch my breath. “We’ve both ruined people’s lives in the name of being together.”
I turn around and head to the door. I don’t look back. This time, he doesn’t follow me, but as I’m pushing it open, he says something. It’s quiet, and I can’t quite make out the words so I’m not sure if he meant for me to hear them or not.
When I turn, I don’t ask him to repeat himself. But he does anyway. “So you think we’re doomed?”
“Aren’t we?” I whisper.
“How am I supposed to forget how I feel about you,” he says, and it’s not a question.
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s the truth. But I also don’t know how we can be together. So I say something stupid, something that I’ve heard other people say because they don’t get it. The wrongness of the words makes me stumble over them. “It won’t feel like the end of the world forever.”
And then I slip through the door, careful not to let it latch behind me.
02:06:00:00
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so in need of coffee.
It’s three a.m. I tossed and turned through the couple of hours we had to sleep and I can’t be certain if I nodded off at one point or just lost track of time. I’m awake, dressed—not showered, but as ready as I’ll ever be.
I have Barclay’s 9mm HM USP Match and an extra magazine in case I run out.
We’re all here.
“Earth 49873 is going to be the safest place for you,” Barclay says. “It’s got civilization, unlike this place, but it’s one of the universes that barely has any IA presence.”
My double shifts on her feet. She’s wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and Ben’s hoodie—and even though I shouldn’t care about that, it bothers me. “Why can’t I just stay here?”
Barclay doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t want her to somehow lead people to us, that he wants to be able to come back here. Instead he says, “What if we don’t make it back? Who knows what effects the radiation could have on you if you’re here too long. You’d probably be dead or out of your mind within a week.”
She frowns. “All right, I guess I’m ready.”
“Just remember what I told you,” Barclay adds. “The industrial revolution never happened, so things will be really different. You need to learn the culture and assimilate—and quickly.”
“Sounds like a blast,” she says, the sarcasm dripping off her in waves.
Barclay’s nostrils flare a little in annoyance, and in another situation, I would want to smile. I like that she can push his buttons.
“I’m serious. If you stand out, they’ll notice you, and you’ll end up dead,” he says.
She doesn’t look at him when she says, “Yeah, I got it.”
The inherent sadness of what’s about to happen weighs down on me, and I take a deep breath to try to balance myself. Barclay is going to open a portal, and this girl who’s lost everything is going to walk into another universe where she won’t know a soul, and she has no idea what to expect—other than the fact that if IA finds her, she’s as good as dead.
I wonder what’s going through her mind, if there’s any interest, even a spark, at the idea of seeing not just another world, but one that’s practically a window into the past. If she’s scared. Looking at her, she just seems bitter.
“Let’s get this over with,” she says.
Barclay points the quantum charger at the ground, but as he’s about to open the portal, I give her a chance.
“Wait,” I say, reaching for her.
She flinches away.
“You don’t have to go,” I say, ignoring the way Barclay is looking at me. “You could come with us—help us.”
“Go . . . go with you?” She shakes her head. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because of what they did to you.” They beat her, made her pretend she was someone else, and then when she’d played her part, they left her to rot in a prison cell.
She either doesn’t remember or she doesn’t care. She just stares at me with a doe-eyed expression I can’t imagine on my own face.
“You can help take them down, make right the things they’ve done, help get them put away.”
Her lips turn into a sad smile. “Or I could end up in the same place I was in six months ago—or worse. Better to run now. Maybe I’ll luck out and they’ll think I’m dead.”
Maybe she doesn’t get it. I’m not sure why I can’t drop it—why I can’t just let it go. But I can’t. She’s got as much stake in this as any of us—maybe more. “But if you run, you might not ever be able to go home.”
Her laugh is harsh. “What home? Prima? I don’t have anything waiting for me back there.” I open my mouth, but she doesn’t let me say anything else. “Look, I’m not willing to die yet. I’ll do what I have to—you do the same.”
And with that she turns to Ben. “Thanks for getting me out.”
His eyes flick to me, but I look away.
She doesn’t look at any of us as she closes her eyes and steps into the portal, but I can’t take my eyes off her as she disappears through it.
“Glad that’s f*cking over with.” Elijah looks at me, his lips turned up in a smirk. “Also glad you’re the version we got. Someone should have gotten their money back for that one.”
I smile, but I don’t feel it.
02:05:44:22
When we portal in, we’ll walk right into the main office of the processing center.
Before Barclay opens the portal, he grabs my arm. “Don’t hold your breath.”
I nod and shift my grip on the USP Match. I think of the guard I killed. Then I remind myself that there’s no other way, that in two days and five hours we could all be dead. The portal opens and Barclay goes through. I follow immediately behind him, gun raised and trying to breathe normally.
Freezing-cold air whips into my lungs, then it turns warm—too warm, and I feel like I’m breathing fire, but I refuse to let myself tense up.
And then we’re there.
I relax my knees and let them give a little to keep myself from stumbling. True to Ben’s description, there are six guys hanging out in front of the computer monitors in the processing center, which is a large circular office with glass walls that overlooks the six lower levels of the prison. They’re all startled and fumbling for weapons.
“Arms behind your head,” Barclay is screaming. “Get down on the ground!”
I train my gun on the guy who looks like he’s in charge, a big bulky brute of a guy in a T-shirt and cargo pants, as Ben and Elijah come through the portal behind me, guns raised and spreading out with their backs to the window—just like Barclay instructed.
My grip on the gun is relaxed, my arms slightly bent at the elbows. The safety is already off, and my finger is on the trigger. The pounding of my heart echoes against my eardrums. I tune out the sounds around us, as if I’m at the shooting range—as if the men in front of me are targets. I know from experience that if I fire off ten shots, all ten of them will be fatal.
They’re not outnumbered, but they are out-gunned, and apparently that makes up for it. All six guys reluctantly raise their arms, some of them more hesitantly than others. Barclay moves to the first one, and I flank him just in case the guy tries to do something stupid.
But he doesn’t. He lets Barclay restrain his hands behind his back and lower him facedown on the ground, something Barclay repeats with every guy in here. I follow him, keeping my gun aimed at their heads. I speak evenly and tell each one that if he makes the wrong move, I’ll put a bullet between his eyes.
My voice is so cold, I barely recognize myself.
When we get to the last guy, I see his eyes dart around, as if he’s looking for a way out. His hand twitches and I nod toward the gun at his hip. “You’ll be dead before you get your hand on it.”
Barclay smirks and grabs the guy’s left arm, folding it behind his back. “Better not try her, Basil. She almost shot me once.”
Basil doesn’t find that as funny as Barclay apparently does, but he stays still and lets Barclay restrain him. Then he looks behind me at Ben, with nothing but pure hatred on his face.
“You drink my beer and tell me about your girlfriend and your dog, and how much you miss them, and you listen to me tell you about my family, and now you come back here and point a gun in my face?” he says. “I kept you safe here. I thought we were comrades.”
I risk a glance at Ben. His face is flushed. His gun raised, his hand quivers as he points it at this supposed comrade. “You rape the Unwilling and put out your cigarettes on their skin,” Ben says.
“Don’t,” I say, moving toward him. I don’t care what this guy has done, how awful he is. We’re here to save the slaves and get the proof we need. I think of the guard I killed and the way his eye looked when he was gone, how his blood spilled warm over my skin when he died. I’ll defend my own life and the lives of everyone here, but we need to get through this without killing anyone else if we can.
That’s what I’m thinking. What I say is, “Remember what it is that makes us the good guys.”
Barclay rolls his eyes, but he lets my decision stand, and Ben lowers his gun.
With all six guys subdued and restrained, Barclay and Ben move to the computers. I look out over the prison. In the underground facility, we’re six stories up, essentially in a glass cube. Surrounding us are four walls, each one with ten holding cells in a row and six floors high. It means there are 240 cells in this place.
“Shit,” Ben says, and I turn around.
“What’s wrong?”
Barclay shakes his head. “The flash drive doesn’t have enough space to hold all the files. We’ll have to copy them from the network to the computer and take the whole damn thing with us.”
“Elijah can do it,” I say. He’s got the ability to portal in and out, and he’s moving slower than the rest of us on that leg of his.
“You f*cking do it,” Elijah says. “I’ve got vengeance to wreak.”
“What does that even mean?” I say.
Barclay ignores us both. “When the transfer is done, shut this down so it can travel,” he says to Ben. Then he looks at Elijah. “Take it back to the hospital. Portal straight in where we left and set it up in the room where we slept last night.” He leans in and says something else, then he looks at me. “Are you ready?”
I am. I know what we need to do next, and it’s not going to be easy.
Barclay opens the portal back to the hospital, and with a CPU under one arm and a monitor under the other, Elijah steps through and disappears, while Ben types into the keypad on the wall.
We’re officially one man short.
The holding cell doors open, the alarm goes off, and all hell breaks loose.