01:12:40:07
“That’s . . .” Ben takes a deep breath and stares at the computer screen. He swallows hard, like he’s trying to digest the information, trying to convince himself it’s somehow not that bad.
But this isn’t exactly the kind of data that you can spin.
A hundred and thirty-one thousand people is a city. There’s no upside here.
“It’s not your fault,” I say, because if I were him, that’s exactly what I would be thinking.
“I should have done something,” he says, his voice gritty with emotion.
“You did.” I don’t mention that he could have tried to do something sooner, because really I don’t think that’s true. If he had tried to do something sooner, maybe we wouldn’t have the information that we have now.
Ben doesn’t respond, and I can tell from the hard look on his face that he doesn’t believe me.
“I’m serious. Look how far back this goes.” I start scrolling back to the first records, which of course are only the first records that they wrote down in a computer. Who knows what they were doing before that?
In the ledger, 1995 was the first year that the trafficking ring recorded the Unwilling. Even though they referred to the people they took by number—took away their names and identities—they’ve listed the universe each person came from and where they were sent.
And I see a listing for my earth—Earth 19402. Someone was trafficked from my world to Earth 04032. And in the next column, where there are sometimes notes, it says, “Female, seventeen, blond.”
It makes me feel sick.
01:11:59:31
That’s when the plan comes to me.
I’m looking at an entry of a girl stolen from my world—and I realize we’ve been going about this all wrong.
Five and a half to six years ago, the human-trafficking operation more than doubled and became something much bigger than a crime organization—that’s when it started operating on a corporate scale.
Which means, that’s the point things changed, when they had more resources and fewer concerns about being caught.
That must be when Meridian started recruiting people in IA.
Whether he was paying them off to look the other way or involving them deeper—maybe getting old quantum chargers from them or something—either way, that’s when things really changed.
But we don’t need to know who in IA is involved. We don’t even need to know who’s not involved. We just need to get it in the hands of the right people at IA.
So why not just get it into the hands of everyone?
01:11:47:56
My plan is pretty simple—we’re all going to Prima.
We’ll copy the files from the ledger to a couple of zip drives—Barclay or Ben can portal somewhere and grab however many we’ll need. Then we’ll break into IA headquarters, upload the files to its intranet, and email them to everyone with an IA address.
Then everyone in IA will have the files. They’ll have proof of the operation. They can take down Meridian, search the processing center, find and bring back the Unwilling who are slaves, and root out their own conspiracy.
Even if we’re caught, someone is going to recognize this operation is bigger than IA has been letting on—and bigger than Ben. They’ll see what Barclay saw and what I see. That there are people in IA who are dirty.
“How are we going to get into IA headquarters?” Barclay asks after I lay out my idea.
“Being a dangerous criminal makes everything more difficult,” Elijah says, and Cecily laughs a little.
“Elijah and I can just portal right into an office,” Ben says. “We can even go tonight.”
Barclay shakes his head. “This is IA headquarters we’re talking about. You’ll never get through the hydrochloradneum shields.”
“I’ll go,” Cecily says. I shake my head, but she doesn’t let me talk over her. “You guys are all wanted by the government or whatever, but nobody knows anything about me. I’ll just go to Barclay’s office and use his computer.”
Suddenly Barclay smiles. “We’ll all go.” Then he looks at Elijah. “Not you, you’ll stay here.”
“Why the f*ck do you think I’d stay here?”
“If we don’t make it, we need someone who can portal the Unwilling back to their worlds,” Barclay says. He doesn’t say that Elijah’s leg is messed up or that he’s been shot, but he doesn’t need to. We all know that.
“We’ll go in as two teams. Janelle and I will approach IA from the front entrance,” Barclay says. “Ben and Cecily from the back. We’ll each have a route, and everyone will have to memorize a few passwords, but it gives us two solid chances. I can even set up a com link between us.”
Cecily must see the look on my face and know what I’m thinking. “Don’t even, Janelle. If you think I’m just going to sit here and wait for you to either pull this off or end up dead, you’re out of your effing mind.”
“Cee—”
She shakes her head. “Don’t even try to placate me. I was minding my own business, and some a*shole with terrible breath grabbed me, stuck me with a needle, and pulled me through a black hole. A. Black. Hole. And then they put me in a cage. There are portals and other worlds, and an Interverse Agency, and all I want to do is go home.
“But I’m not going to feel safe there if I’m always worried about someone else grabbing me and abducting me into slavery!” She takes a deep and shaky breath, blowing the air up into the strands of hair that fall into her face. “I am a part of this whether you think it’s safe or not.”
I look at Barclay because he’s the one everyone is going to listen to—at least usually.
Our eyes meet briefly, then he looks at Cee. “I say she’s in. She’s right, but more than that, we need two teams. It’ll throw security off and give at least one of us a fighting chance. And Elijah should stay here.”
“She’s never used a gun,” I say.
“Neither had Ben or Elijah until recently,” he says. I open my mouth to say more—that she’s never run from the law or had to do something this dangerous—but Barclay cuts me off. “Look, I’d rather have three agents with tactical training and experience at my back, but I don’t. I have three people who have a lot to lose, and it might not be ideal, but it’s going to work.”
Now that he has a course of action and a purpose, his determination is back.
I look at Cecily and my eyes sting. This was never supposed to happen to her. She should be planning more movie nights, taking care of people in Qualcomm, bossing Marines around and making them fall in love with her.
But she’s here now, and I don’t have the right to take her choices away from her. She’s smart and she knows how dangerous this is going to be. The best thing I can do is make sure she’s prepared.
“All right,” I say, and I’m not sure who I’m saying it to or what I’m talking about. But it’s what everyone needs to hear.
Barclay takes a deep breath. “So here’s how we’re going to do this.”
He knows IA headquarters inside out. Now he just has to teach it to us.
Before time runs out.
01:02:38:27
We’re up the rest of the night, going over the specifics of the plan, anticipating how we’re going to deal with the various things that could go wrong, and memorizing the layout of IA headquarters.
When we break for a few hours of sleep, sunlight is peeking over the corners of the horizon. I wander the halls aimlessly. Time has been draining away, we’ve only got about a day left, and if things go wrong when we break into IA, I won’t make it out alive.
Maybe none of us will.
I’ve only made it about ten steps when I turn down a hallway and find myself face-to-face with a teenage girl about the same age as Jared, with long, wavy blond hair and big green eyes.
She’s startled at first, and she flinches away from me.
The sight of her—doe-eyed and flinching—makes me feel like I’ve just been punched.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I want to add something else, but I don’t know exactly what I’m apologizing for. For startling her, for not being able to get her home, for this happening to her in the first place—it’s all a blur.
I give up and move around her, still muddled in my own thoughts, and when she’s safely behind me, I hear her say, in a soft, tentative voice, “Thank you.”
I look over my shoulder to see if I heard right or to say “of course” or ask “what for” or something—I’m not sure what—and I realize her eyes are glassy and she’s smiling.
Her face is flushed, and she hugs her arms around her body. “I thought I was going to die in that place.”
She’s not, but she might end up dying here if we can’t figure out how to get her home.
As if she knows what I’m thinking, she adds, “No matter what happens, anything is better than that place. I’m glad you got us out.”
“Me too,” I say, and I mean it.
Looking into her face, I’m struck by how many more people like her are out there. It’s what I need. Energy manifests in the pit of my stomach with that realization and starts to spread throughout my body. I stand up a little straighter, I seem to lose some of the weight pressing down on me.
We have to succeed tomorrow. We don’t have a choice.
If we don’t shut Meridian down, thousands more people will become Unwilling.
01:02:30:27
I head up to the roof and watch the sunrise. The sky is a mix of orange, gray, blue, and black. The world is still and quiet, and even though it’s completely different, it reminds me how I felt when I would go to the beach and stare out at the ocean.
I tilt my face to the sky and close my eyes, feeling the wind brush past my face and through my hair. I think of my double and how she chose to run away rather than help us, and of my dad and Alex, who are gone.
I wonder what Jared is doing right now—if he’s still sleeping late and complaining about how we don’t have milk for cereal, still walking younger kids to school, still reading and playing board games each night. I try not to think about how mad he must be that I’m gone, and I hope he isn’t sulking and giving Struz the silent treatment.
I need to get back to them.
I don’t belong here on this lifeless world. The wrongness makes my bones feel heavy and sluggish. Something about the stillness has made me numb, like I’m now this unfeeling person who’s running around with a gun, but that’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be.
I want to go home and hug my brother and never leave.
But the thing is, I’m standing here, surrounded by what should be a waking world, and it hits me that this may be it. Shivering from the cold, I close my eyes.
I might not make it home.
On my way down, I find Ben.
There are a million and one things I could say to him right now. I could tell him I’m scared and restless about what we’re about to do, that I’m worried about losing more people I care about, that I’m afraid I won’t keep my promise to Struz. I could tell him that I’ve thought about him every day since he left, that I can’t picture the rest of my life without him, that I don’t want to be replaceable.
But I don’t say any of that. Instead I just reach for him.
My hand touches his shirt and I feel the heat of his body radiating underneath.
He pulls me to him and whispers, “Are you okay?” His breath is warm on my cheek.
I tilt my face to his, look up past the dark curls and long eyelashes, into those bottomless eyes. I almost tell him the truth—that I haven’t been okay since he left. But I can’t bring myself to speak.
Instead, I look at his lips and raise up on my toes so they’re only a millimeter from mine, then I lift my eyes to his.
His lips part. Under my hand his chest rises and falls faster than it should, and his heart pulses through his whole body and reverberates into me.
One of his hands slides behind my back, the other he lays over my fingers, and we stand there suspended in time, in the dark, with only the warmth of our bodies, and the sounds of our breaths.
“I’m sorry,” Ben says, and then his lips are on mine.
They’re soft, and he tastes minty, and the familiarity of it just feels so right. I kiss him back with everything I am, opening my lips, touching his tongue, remembering every inch of his mouth.
And everything that’s wrong seems to fall away. It’s like we’re somewhere else—like we’re back at Sunset Cliffs, kissing for the first time. My skin burns with his touch and my heart is slamming against my chest, and it’s like my whole body has just come alive.
The nervous energy we’re both holding inside morphs into something different, something more active, something a little dangerous. We grab at each other, a force behind our kisses that we can’t quite control. We’re not gentle or careful—we’re not thinking.
His arms pull me in tighter so there’s no room for anything between us. His hands slip under my shirt and are warm against my back, and a shudder moves through me.
“I love you,” Ben breathes between kisses. “Let’s never be apart again.”
I pull his lips back to mine and force him to kiss me. That’s all I want right now.
My thoughts are scrambled, my blood is tingling, and it feels like my skin is on fire. We’re just lips, tongues, hands, and skin—two people who have everything and nothing to lose at the same time.
I’m tired of the never-ending fear I can’t shake.
I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want to be numb. And I don’t want to die.
But somehow in Ben’s arms, when he kisses me, none of that matters.
Because I’m not alone.
00:18:20:05
“If it’s not tight, it will be hard for you to move fast,” Barclay says. I’m wearing jeans, sneakers, my bra, and a bulletproof vest that Barclay is helping me tighten. It’s lighter and thinner than anything my dad ever wore, and instead of having Velcro, it laces like some kind of crazy weapon-resistant corset.
But he’s right. Once the laces are tight and it’s fitted against my body, it moves with me, like it’s a part of me rather than something that will get in the way. I don’t tell him that, though. He’s got enough of an ego.
I do understand why I’m wearing it. The likelihood we’re going to get shot at while we break into IA is . . . well, it’s more of a certainty. Barclay grabbed both these vests—his and Hayley’s—from his mom’s house, along with the zip drives he used to copy the files. Wearing them, if we get hit, we’ll be bruised and achy, but we won’t be bleeding or dead.
I suppose that reduces the risk a little. I can pretend it’s like playing paintball and less like running from the law.
Unless, of course, someone shoots us in the head.
Someone clears his throat, and I look up to see Ben in the doorway. He isn’t looking at me, though. He’s looking at Barclay.
Barclay hands me my shirt and takes a step back. “See you in a few minutes,” he says, and he can’t fully suppress the smile.
“Did you get your earpiece?” I ask Ben as I pull my shirt over the vest.
“Yeah, Barclay showed me how it works,” he says.
Barclay only had two of them, so he and Ben will wear them. It will let us communicate with each other in case the plan changes or things start to go wrong.
Ben grabs me and pulls me into a hug, crushing me against his chest. “You don’t have to do this,” he says. “It could just be me and Barclay.”
Shivers run up my spine, and my legs feel too weak to support me. Here, in Ben’s arms, with the smell of mint and soap in my nose and the beat of his heart underneath my face, my resolve falters slightly. The thought of running away flickers through my mind. We could be together, on the move, living an adventure most people don’t dream of. But it’s nothing more than a momentary hesitation, an image conjured up by the fear that’s taken root in my mind. I don’t mean it.
Because no matter how scared I am, I do have to do this.
It’s the best plan we have.
Because we’ve got less than a day left.
“We can do this,” I say to Ben. Because I have to believe it. Because it’s our only option.
“I love you,” he whispers, and my heart flutters.
Knowing it deep down and hearing it out loud are still two very different things.
“If we make it through this . . .”
I shake my head against his chest. “When we make it through this, we’ll talk about it then.”
“But—”
I look up, my nose brushing against his cheek. “Remember when the world was ending?” I whisper.
He nods.
“We didn’t say good-bye or make promises then, and we’re not going to now.” It’s not that saying good-bye will be like admitting we might die. I know the odds we’re up against. I know we might not make it out of this. It’s more complicated than that. “I need something to look forward to.”
He doesn’t say anything, so I push back in his arms and look at his face. His eyes are glassy.
“Don’t worry about me. I have a lot to live for,” I say, and I mean it. Right now, it’s the truest statement I can make.
He nods, and I lead him, our hands intertwined, to the roof of the building.
Barclay is waiting for us. Cecily is there too. She’s showered and pulled her hair back. The circles under her eyes aren’t quite as dark, and I’m relieved that even though she was angry with me, she was at least able to get some sleep. She smiles at me. “Let’s get this party started.”
I give her a sideways glance. She’s a little too excited for someone wearing a bulletproof vest.
“Oh c’mon, J,” she says. “We are going to nail these guys.”
“Yeah, just try not to end up dead,” Elijah says as he comes in.
“Didn’t you see the sign?” Cecily says. “This room is positive-thinking only.”
Elijah just snorts.
“Enough of the bickering. Are we ready?” Barclay asks. I look at him—he’s wearing a small smile and cracking his knuckles, his body weight shifting on his feet. He can barely stay still from the adrenaline, and even though I can’t exactly describe what it is that he’s feeling, it’s contagious.
It starts as a nervous fluttering in the pit of my stomach, and it spreads through my body, becoming a restlessness in my limbs.
I take a deep breath and squeeze Ben’s hand.
“Ready,” I say, stepping to Barclay’s side. He nods and holds his quantum charger in front of him, pressing a button. That brief, high-pitched electronic sound hits my ears, and then the cool, empty air of the portal is in front of me.
My heart beats a little faster. This is it.
In an hour, this could be all over.
Or we could be dead.
00:17:59:55
It’s just Barclay and me now. Cecily and Ben are in a different position, planning to enter the building from a back entrance. They’re the backup plan. They have a zip drive with the files and if Barclay and I fail, they have to get the files into IA’s system.
I push my worry for them to the back of my mind. I can’t let that distract me.
Barclay and I have the more dangerous position. We’re standing in front of the only entrance into IA headquarters—for the second time. Now, the dozen concrete steps loom in front of us, and the oily glass skyscraper seems more sinister than it did only a few days ago.
“You agreed you’d take orders from me—you’ll remember that, right?”
I turn to Barclay. I don’t like that he’s bringing this up now. “I did agree to that, why?”
He looks at the doors, where there are no less than six armed guards who at worst could have a shoot on sight order for both of us. Our only hope is they’re caught by surprise, that no one expects us to walk in the front door. “If it looks like we’re going down, I want you to run.”
“You want me to leave you?” I don’t worry about how incredulous I sound.
“If I’m caught, they won’t execute me, at least not right away.”
I’m not sure either of us believes what he’s saying. He’s worse than me, after all. He’s the guy who was on their side, and is now committing treason with the enemy.
A traitor is always the worst thing someone can be.
But we don’t have time to argue about it now. I’ve made a lot of promises to people I care about. This one is no different. “I’ll follow your orders.”
“Good,” he says with a nod.
And we climb the stairs.
00:17:58:52
We go through the center glass doors side by side. This time I don’t pause to take note of the marble floors and the corporate business decor of the lobby. I don’t linger on the airport security–style body scans.
My eyes find the armed guards.
Of the six guards, four are focused on the people coming into the building, operating body scans and giving directions. One is about fifteen feet in front of us, in the direction we want to go—he’s standing by the elevators. The other is standing off to the side—the same guy we approached just a few days ago.
And lucky him, he has to deal with us today, too.
We’re just a few feet from him when he takes notice. His face is all business, like he’s about to regurgitate the company line, tell us we can’t enter this way, and go through the motions. Then his face changes. His lips part, and his eyes widen slightly, shifting from Barclay’s face to mine. The recognition is clear.
Everyone is looking for us.
When he reaches for his radio, I relax a little. The orders aren’t shoot on sight. They clearly still want to bring us in alive.
Everything happens so fast—it’s over in a split second—but I’m ready for it. I know what Barclay is going to do. I know what I have to do.
The guard has time to press the button on his radio, but no sound comes out because with one swift move, Barclay knocks him out with an elbow to the face. Before he hits the ground, we’ve both disarmed him. Barclay has the machine gun, and I’m pulling the sidearm from the guard’s hip.
Barclay turns the machine gun on the armed guards at the body scanners, and I raise the sidearm, pointing the barrel at the face of the guard by the elevator.
“Drop your weapon!” I yell, advancing on him. My grip is tight on the gun, and my arms burn from the tension. “Drop it or I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.” I won’t actually do it, because I’m too tense and too far to be that good a shot, but also because we don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m bluffing—and I’m bluffing big because I’m outgunned, and if he thinks too long about it, he’ll realize that.
His surprise and my threats outweigh any inclination to try to be a hero, and he lays his machine gun on the ground. My heartbeat kicks into overdrive, and I kick the gun farther away so he can’t make a lunge for it. “Hands up, behind your head.”
Behind me, I have a vague sense of Barclay going through the same motions. But more because I know the plan and less because I’m paying attention to him. I’ve put my trust in him and his ability to guard my back, but I know he’s yelling and making threats, telling the guards—and the people in line—to get rid of their weapons and lie flat on the ground.
With his hands over his head, the guard in front of me drops to his knees, and I relieve him of the sidearm and the backup gun at his ankle. I take both of them for my own and keep my gun trained on him the entire time.
“Facedown on the ground,” I say, taking a step back to give him room.
He does what I say, and I turn to Barclay. The room is remarkably quiet—no sobs, groans, or even gasps. It’s a creepy sort of silence, the kind that comes before a storm, and I hope that we’re ready for it.
Barclay has everyone on the ground, and he’s stripping the last two guards of their weapons, dismantling them easily, breaking the pieces apart, buying us just a little more time.
When he’s finished, he starts toward me. He still has the machine gun pointed at the guards and the crowd, and he reminds them, “Stay on the ground. Don’t make me shoot you!”
He continues backing up.
Someone from the crowd calls out right as Barclay is about to reach me. I can’t see who because he stays down. He says, “You don’t have to do this, Taylor. Whatever’s going on, there are people you can turn to.”
Barclay’s expression is stone-faced when he answers. “Tell that to Eric.”
00:17:54:51
When Barclay reaches me, I run for the door to the stairs and pull it open. We need to get to the fifth floor, and taking the elevator is too dangerous. Barclay follows me.
But before he does, he pulls the fire alarm.
It blares around us as we run up the steps. It’s so loud that it drowns out the pounding of my heart and most of my thoughts. I’m on automatic, pushing myself up the stairs, following Barclay as closely as I can. We pass the second floor, then the third. People who think this is a drill start to flood the stairwells and pass us on their way down to the lobby. A lot of them are analysts or administrative staff and a lot of them either don’t know—or know of—Barclay or me. They’re too wrapped up in their own jobs or they don’t expect anyone to be crazy enough to break into IA headquarters.
Whatever it is, they don’t give us a second glance as we pass them.
But they still put me on edge. My legs quiver with each step, the burn spreading throughout my body from my hamstrings to my chest.
Barclay passes the fourth floor a few steps ahead of me, and in between us the door opens. I know the second I see his face that this guy coming through isn’t like the rest of them. He knows something is up, and when he sees me running toward him, his eyes narrow in recognition.
The air seems to freeze in front of me, and I can’t get a breath, but instead of going for me, he looks up the stairs at Barclay.
It takes me even less time to see what’s in his right hand.
“Gun!” The scream is automatic, and thankfully Barclay hears me over the fire alarm and reverses direction, heading straight for the guy.
But he’s going to be too late.
I do the only thing I can. It doesn’t take any thought. I just react. I throw myself up the remaining stairs and against this guy I don’t know, effectively ramming him into the wall.
His right arm is pinned momentarily before he gets over the surprise and knocks me off him.
The distraction is enough, though. Barclay is there, and the heel of his palm comes up directly into the guy’s nose. Blood rushes from his face, and Barclay brings down his gun on the back of the guy’s head, knocking him out.
I knew Barclay was good with hand-to-hand combat—he’d have to be. But even I’m impressed.
People are staring at us now. This whole incident, only seconds long, has managed to attract a lot of attention. Barclay grabs a passing guy—he’s skinny, his tie is crooked, and he looks young, little more than a kid. “Get him out of here,” he says, pointing to the unconscious body. The authority in his voice is unmistakable. This is a command, delivered with urgency, the kind people don’t question, not when there’s a fire alarm blasting in their ears. “When you’re outside, get him in restraints and have him detained.”
Skinny Kid nods, and as I head up the stairs after Barclay, a couple of people are helping him lift the unconscious guy up.
We keep going, to the fifth floor. Barclay grabs the door and holds it open for me.
The fifth floor is empty. Everyone has either cleared out or they haven’t reported in to the office yet to begin with. I follow Barclay as he makes his way through the floor, past the cubicles to the empty corner office. I don’t ask where he’s going. I know the plan.
The corner office belongs to Special Agent Ian Bachman, who is clearly someone important. And someone who works the night shift, so he’s not here right now. He’s also the guy with the gruff voice who broke into Barclay’s apartment. Or at least Barclay seems sure that it’s him.
We’re going to email the proof to everyone from Bachman’s computer.
I slide open his desk drawers, pulling out their contents, scattering his papers on the floor. I’m sure there’s nothing he’d keep here to imply that he’s in on the conspiracy, that he’s working for Meridian, and even if he did, we wouldn’t have the time to go through it all without getting caught, but we want to make him—and anyone else who’s involved—think we’re on to them. If they’re scared, they’ll be more likely to make mistakes.
While I’m destroying his desk, the zip drive is in the computer, uploading the files, and Barclay is prepping for our escape, with the one step that I don’t want to think about—despite how necessary it is.
He’s using a small, handheld heat laser to cut through the glass of the corner window.
There are only two exits in this building—the one we came through and the one Ben and Cecily used—and there’s no way we can get out of either now. Which means we have to make our own.
Breaking the window is something Barclay has assured me will register on IA’s building security system. It will bring security running to this floor—this office. Which should let Ben and Cecily get out easier the way they came.
Only it requires that we slide down a rope for five stories.
The cool air from the broken window flows through the room, rustling the papers I’ve littered across the floor.
Because, of course, a five-story drop from IA headquarters is actually a lot more than that. It’s five stories to the platformed walkways, then a hundred feet to the street of the underground. Which means we’re a lot farther off the ground than I’m comfortable with.
Barclay ties the rope to the desk. A desk he’s assured me is bolted in place.
I look at the computer. “It’s almost done,” I say.
Barclay pulls up the email program and addresses it to the “All IA” mailing list. He types a short note.
Eric Brandt was murdered. Because he uncovered this.
And then he attaches the files.
While we wait, he says into the com link, “We’re uploading now. Abort and get out of the building.”
I breathe a little easier, knowing Ben and Cecily will be able to follow the crowd of people evacuating the building because of the fire alarm.
From the hallway, I hear the elevators ding.