My voice comes like a growl. “You murdered a woman I love, because she talked to me. You’ve beaten my friend. You’re holding me here against my will. And you want me to answer your questions? Fuck you.” I stare through the glass. “Fuck all of you.”
Leighton says, “Maybe you’re not the Jason I know and love. Maybe you’re just a shadow of that man with a fraction of his ambition and intellect, but certainly you can grasp this question: What if the box works? That means we’re sitting on the greatest scientific breakthrough of all time, with applications we can’t even begin to fathom, and you’re quibbling that we go to extremes to protect it?”
“I want to leave.”
“You want to leave. Huh. Keep in mind everything I just said, and now consider that you’re the only person who’s successfully flown that thing. You’re in possession of critical knowledge that we’ve spent billions and a decade of our lives trying to acquire. I’m not saying this to scare you, only to appeal to your logical reasoning—do you think there’s anything we won’t do to extract that information from you?”
He lets the question hang.
In the brutal silence, I glance across the theater.
I look at Ryan.
I look at Amanda. She won’t make eye contact. Tears glisten in her eyes, but her jaw is tense and rigid, like she’s fighting with everything she has to hold herself together.
“I want you to listen very closely,” Leighton says. “Right here, right now, in this room—this is as easy as it’s ever going to be for you. I want you to try very hard to make the most of this moment. Now, look at me.”
I look at him.
“Did you build the box?”
I say nothing.
“Did you build the box?”
Still nothing.
“Where did you come from?”
My thoughts run rampant, playing out all possible scenarios—tell them everything I know, tell them nothing, tell them something. But if something, what specifically?
“Is this your world, Jason?”
The dynamics of my situation haven’t materially changed. My safety still depends on my usefulness. As long as they want something from me, I have leverage. The moment I tell them everything I know, all my power goes away.
I look up from the table and meet Leighton’s eyes.
I say, “I’m not going to talk to you right now.”
He lets out a sigh.
Cracks his neck.
Then says to no one in particular, “I guess we’re done here.”
The door behind me opens.
I turn, but before I can see who’s there, I’m lifted out of my chair and slammed against the floor.
Someone sits on my back, their knees driving into my spine.
They hold my head in place as a needle slides into my neck.
—
I regain consciousness on a hard, thin mattress that feels depressingly familiar.
Whatever drug they injected me with kicks out a nasty hangover—feels like a rift has opened down the center of my skull.
A voice is whispering into my ear.
I start to sit up, but the slightest movement takes the pounding in my head to a whole new level of agony.
“Jason?”
I know this voice.
“Ryan.”
“Hey.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“They carried you in here a little while ago.”
I force my eyes to open.
I’m back in that cell on the steel-frame cot, and Ryan is kneeling beside me.
Up close, he looks even worse.
“Jason, I’m so sorry.”
“None of this is your fault.”
“No, what Leighton said is true. After I left you and Daniela that night, I called him. Told him I’d seen you. Told him where.” Ryan closes his one functional eye, his face breaking as he says, “I had no idea they would hurt her.”
“How’d you end up in the lab?”
“I guess you weren’t giving them the information they wanted, so they came for me in the middle of the night. Were you with her when she died?”
“Happened right in front of me. A man just broke into her apartment and shot her between the eyes.”
“Oh God.”
Climbing onto the cot, he sits beside me, both of us leaning back against the concrete wall.
He says, “I thought if I told them what you said to me and Daniela, that maybe they’d finally bring me in on the research. Reward me somehow. Instead, they just beat me. Accused me of not telling them everything.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You kept me in the dark. I never even knew what this place was. I did all that work for you and Leighton, but you—”
“I didn’t keep you in the dark about anything, Ryan. That wasn’t me.”
He looks over at me, as if trying to process the magnitude of that statement.
“So the stuff you said at Daniela’s—that was all true?”
Leaning in close, I whisper, “Every word. Keep your voice low. They’re probably listening.”
“How did you get here?” Ryan whispers. “Into this world?”
“Right outside this cell, there’s a hangar, and in that hangar, a metal box, which another version of me built.”
“And this box does what exactly?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s a gateway to the multiverse.”