The front desk wouldn’t just give out my room number.
I’d have to pretend to know that I was staying here.
I would call the hotel and ask to be connected to Jess McCrae’s room.
When I heard my voice pick up on the other end of the line, I would know I was here and hang up right away.
Then I would call back thirty seconds later and say to the clerk, “Sorry to bother you again, but I just called a second ago and was accidentally disconnected. Could you please reconnect me to…Oh shit, what room number was that?”
And if I got lucky, and the front-desk clerk was an absentminded idiot, there’d be a decent chance he would just blurt out my room number before reconnecting me.
Thus the first call to confirm it was me who answered.
Thus the second, where the caller hung up right after learning which room I’m staying in.
I rise from the bed.
The thought is absurd, but I can’t ignore it.
Am I coming up here right now to kill me?
I slide my arms into the sleeves of my wool coat and head for the door.
I feel dizzy with fear, even as I second-guess myself, thinking maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m rushing to some outlandish explanation of a mundane thing—the phone ringing twice in my room.
Perhaps.
But after that chat room, nothing would surprise me.
What if I’m right and don’t listen to my gut?
Go.
Right now.
I slowly open the door.
Step out into the hall.
It’s empty.
Silent save for the low-register hum of the fluorescent lights above me.
Stairs or elevator?
At the far end of the hallway, the elevator dings.
I hear the doors begin to part, and then a man in a wet jacket steps out of the elevator car.
For a moment, I can’t move.
Can’t tear my eyes away.
It’s me walking toward me.
Our eyes meet.
He isn’t smiling.
Wears no emotion on his face but a chilling intensity.
He raises a gun, and I’m suddenly running in the opposite direction, sprinting down the hallway toward the door at the far end that I’m praying isn’t locked.
I crash through under the glowing Exit sign, glancing back as I enter the stairwell.
My doppelg?nger runs toward me.
Down the steps, my hand sliding along the guardrail to steady my balance, thinking, Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.
As I reach the third-floor landing, I hear the door bang open above me, the echo of his footsteps filling the stairwell.
I keep descending.
Hit the second floor.
Then the first, where one door with a window in the center leads into the lobby and another without a window leads elsewhere.
I choose elsewhere, smashing through…
Into a wall of freezing, snow-filled air.
I stumble down some steps into several inches of fresh powder, my shoes slipping on the frosted pavement.
Just as I right myself, a figure emerges out of the shadows of the alley between two Dumpsters.
Wearing a coat like mine.
His hair dusted with snow.
It’s me.
The blade in his hand throws a glint of light from the nearby streetlamp, and he advances on me, a knife spearing toward my abdomen—the knife that came standard-issue with the Velocity Laboratories backpack.
I sidestep at the last conceivable moment, grabbing his arm and slinging him with all my power into the steps that lead up to the hotel.
He crashes into the stairs as the door busts open above us, and two seconds before I run for my life, I commit the most impossible image to memory: one version of myself stepping out of the stairwell with a gun, the other version picking himself up off the stairs, his hands frantically searching for his knife, which has disappeared in the snow.
Are they a pair?
Working together to murder every Jason they can find?
I race between the buildings, snow plastering my face, my lungs burning.
Turning out onto the sidewalk of the next street, I look back down the alley, see two shadows moving toward me.
I head through the blowing snow.
No one out.
The streets empty.
Several doors down, I hear an explosion of noise—people cheering.
I rush toward it, pushing through a scuffed, wooden door into a dive bar with standing room only, everyone turned facing the row of flatscreens above the bar, where the Bulls are locked in a fourth-quarter death match with the visiting team.
I force my way into the crowd, letting it swallow me.
There’s nowhere to sit, barely anyplace to stand, but I finally carve out a cramped square foot of legroom underneath a dartboard.
Everyone is glued to the game, but I’m watching the door.
The Bulls’ point guard drains a three-point shot, and the room erupts in a roar of pure joy, strangers high-fiving and embracing.
The door to the bar swings open.
I see myself standing in the threshold, covered in snow.
He takes a step inside.
I lose him for a moment, then see him again as the crowd undulates.
What has this version of Jason Dessen experienced? What worlds did he see? What hell did he fight through to arrive back in this Chicago?
He scans the crowd.