Quicksilver (Carolrhoda Ya)

PART THREE: Hunting



(The undesirable oscillation that occurs when a feedback control system is unable to reduce the error rate to zero)





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My legs felt shaky, and I gripped the corner of the bookshelf for support. I’d known Deckard might come to town looking for Sebastian, but I’d never dreamed his search would lead him so quickly to me.

“Niki?” asked Milo, faint and tinny. “You there?”

“How—” I cleared my throat. “How do you know it’s Deckard?”

“Because he showed me your picture and asked me if I recognized you,” said Milo. “Said you were a missing girl who’d been seen in the area, and there’d be a reward if I helped him find you.”

I leaned harder on the bookcase and closed my eyes. Milo went on, “I told him you worked at the Tim Horton’s on the corner. I thought if I could get him to leave, I could run around and tell Jon and the others he was a stalker. But when I came up to the front, he was by the manager’s office, looking at the staff board.”

Which had my picture on it, of course. With my name underneath, in large friendly letters. I groped along the sofa and sat down.

“I tried to sneak back to the stockroom, but he saw me,” Milo said. “Then he called me over and showed me another picture. A still from a security video, with the two of us together. From the night you stopped the bus.”

My throat felt like someone had soldered it shut. “Go on.”

“So I played the stalker card myself,” he said. “I said you’d told me you were hiding from a creepy ex-boyfriend and that I shouldn’t talk about you to anybody but the police. That seemed to work, because he backed off and let me go. But he’s still in the store. He’s talking to Jon right now.”

And not only did Jon Van Beek know exactly where I lived, he had my cell number. Friendly, trusting, farm-raised Jon, who would probably never guess this clean-cut, soft-spoken man would do me any harm. Especially if Deckard pulled out that medical emergency story he’d used on Alison, because Jon would love a chance to be my hero.

In short, I was doomed.

“So what are we going to do?” Milo asked, and his voice seemed to be coming from a billion miles away. I stared at the word clock on the wall, which said IT IS FIVE AFTER EIGHT, and tried to think.

I couldn’t go back to Value Foods, not now that Deckard knew I worked there. So there went my job. I couldn’t be seen with Milo, because Deckard would be watching him. So there went my best friend, quasi boyfriend, and partner in crime. I couldn’t even go home, because now that Deckard had my name, it wouldn’t take him long to hunt down my address. Nothing in my life was secure anymore, and nowhere was safe. The only thing to do was run.

But I couldn’t do that, either. Not before I’d finished this transceiver. Because what was the use of hiding from Deckard and Dr. Gervais, if Mathis got to me first?

“I don’t know,” I said to Milo. “I don’t know what to do.”

For five seconds Milo didn’t answer. Then he said in a decisive voice, “Stay where you are. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”





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By the time my phone rang again, I’d pulled myself together. I even had the beginnings of a plan. “Okay,” I told Milo, “so once Deckard leaves—”

“Wait,” said Milo. “Let me go first. I just got off the phone with your dad.”

“You what? He’s not even home tonight. How’d you get his cell number?”

“Emergency contact,” Milo said. “It was in your file. Anyway, I told him a guy you used to know came into the store looking for you, and you were scared, so you hid out in the back with me. And now you’re afraid to leave in case he follows you home.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. It wasn’t a bad story—it had the advantage of being simple and mostly true. It would also throw my parents into a panic, but I couldn’t see any alternative. It’d be worse if Deckard showed up at the door and caught them unprepared.

“But I told him not to worry,” said Milo, “because I’ve asked my grandparents to pick you up and take you to their house instead. You can even stay overnight with them, if you need to.”

“You mean your mother’s parents? Your mother, who’s not supposed to know anything about—”

“Never mind that,” he said. “I’ll explain later. How soon can you get to the 7-Eleven on Caledonia?”

This whole conversation was beginning to feel surreal. “Twenty minutes?”

“Good. I’ll tell my grandparents to pick you up there. And your dad said not to call him. He’ll call you in an hour or so. Gotta go.”

Click.

I lowered the phone and found Barry peering down at me from the top of the ramp. “Problems?” he asked.

“No,” I lied. “I just have to leave a bit earlier tonight.”





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From the outside Milo’s grandparents’ place didn’t look like much, just the right side of a two-story semi with dirty white siding and peeling shutters. The driveway was cracked in three places, and the front steps had an eight-degree tilt to the left. But inside the house was cozy and spotlessly clean, with tropical plants standing in pots and spilling over the tops of the bookcases and framed Bible verses hanging on the walls.

Most of the verses were in Korean, but the one directly across from me was in English: LET THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD OUR GOD BE UPON US. It was done in brush calligraphy and decorated with silk flowers that looked handmade. Maybe that was Mrs. Park’s hobby.

“I am sorry you’ve had such a frightening experience,” said Milo’s grandmother, pouring me a cup of herbal tea. Her voice was soft and lilting, every word precise. “This must be very hard for you.”

“Thank you,” I said, suppressing a shiver. It had been raining when I left the makerspace, but I’d only got slightly damp, so why did I feel so cold? As Mrs. Park poured more tea for her husband and herself, I clutched the mug to my chest, inhaling deep breaths of grassy-smelling steam. Relax, I told myself. You’re safe here.

Still, it was hard not to wonder why two near-total strangers would go out of their way to help me. Sure, they’d come to my register a few times, and I’d always smiled and tried to make conversation. But what had I done to earn their hospitality? Nothing, as far as I could see. So either they adored Milo so much that they’d do anything he wanted or they had some motive of their own…

Like suspecting their grandson was going out with me, for instance. It was the most natural explanation. But if they’d guessed that we were together, did they approve or disapprove? They’d treated me graciously so far, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. My parents were polite to everybody too, even people they despised.

Milo’s grandfather broke into my thoughts, asking whether I had talked to the police about the man who was threatening me. I was wondering how to explain that my “stalker” was an ex-cop who apparently had half the local force eating doughnuts out of his hand when the phone rang, and Mrs. Park answered it. She spoke a few words in Korean and handed the receiver to her husband, who rose and went into the study, shutting the door behind him.

“Someone from the church,” she said. “A pastor’s life is very busy.”

I knew there was a Korean church in town. I hadn’t realized Milo’s grandfather was the pastor. It should have been a relief to know that the Parks had taken me in as an act of Christian charity, but somehow it didn’t help much. Especially when I glanced toward the dining room and spotted a text reading THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. “Please excuse me,” I said to Mrs. Park, setting my cup down and getting up quickly from the sofa. “It’s my dad calling.”





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The conversation went better than I’d feared, at least to begin with. Dad had already guessed that the guy who’d come into the store must be Deckard, so he wasn’t surprised to hear it. He even agreed that I’d done the right thing by going to Milo’s grandparents instead of coming home. But the best plan he could come up with was for him and Mom to pack some suitcases, pick me up, and jump on the first plane to Calgary—and there was no way I could go along with that.

“Even if Deckard knows where we live, it’s not like he’s going to crash through the front door and hold us at gunpoint,” I argued as I paced across the Parks’ back patio and onto the lawn. It was too quiet inside for private conversation, so I’d gone outside to take the call. “This isn’t the USA, and he’s not a policeman anymore. Besides, it’s me he wants, not you or Mom, so if I’m obviously not at home—”

“Obviously? I can’t see how it’s going to be obvious unless we let him in to search the place. And then what are we supposed to tell him? That you ran away?”

I almost said yes, but that wouldn’t work, because then Deckard would have the perfect excuse to call out his cop buddies to search for me. “Not exactly,” I said. “Tell him I’ve left town, with your permission. And that you don’t know where I’ve gone or when I’ll be back.”

Dad spluttered. “Are you crazy? There’s no way we’d let you take off on your own without—”

“I said you should tell him that, not I’m actually planning to do it. I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want Deckard to leave you and Mom alone.”

“And you think he’ll give up that easily?” Dad asked. “I’m not afraid of Deckard: he can’t do anything to me. But your mother’s a different story. If he turns up at the front door looking for you, she’ll never feel safe in this town again.”

He lowered his voice on the last sentence, as though he’d only just realized how loudly he’d been talking. But I could tell there was more going on than that. “You mean you haven’t told Mom anything about what happened tonight?” I asked. “She doesn’t know about Deckard or—any of it?”

“Not yet.” He sighed. “She was in the washroom when Milo called me. He told me you were safe for now, and I … didn’t want to spoil her evening out.”

But that wouldn’t stop him from telling her the truth eventually, unless I gave him a reason not to. Somehow I had to convince him to let me stay here until I’d finished the transceiver … but how?

Then, in a white-lightning flash of intuition, I knew.

“Okay,” I said. “How about this? Don’t tell Mom anything yet. Take her out of town for the weekend—use that getaway package you got from work or something. I’ll stay with Milo’s grandparents, where Deckard can’t find me. If he comes to the house tonight or tomorrow, it’ll be empty and he can draw his own conclusions.”

“And what good’s that going to do? All he has to do is stake out the place and wait until we get back.”

“He won’t if he thinks we’re gone for good,” I said. “There’s a guy I know who’s brilliant with computers, and he owes me a favor. He can fake up some flight and hotel reservations, and make Deckard think we’ve gone to Newfoundland or something.” Assuming I could get hold of Sebastian on short notice, of course. But I suspected that if I really needed him, he’d be around.

“Then what?” Dad asked. “Seems to me we’re just delaying the inevitable. He’s going to figure out the truth eventually.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But isn’t it worth trying? We can’t keep moving and changing our names every six months. I’ve seen the bills, Dad. I know how hard you’ve been working. Next time we move we’re going to end up in a trailer park if we’re lucky, and after that we’ll be living on the streets. Do you really want that? Because I don’t.”

Dad was silent, and I knew I’d hurt him. He’d worked hard to protect his family, and I’d as good as told him that he’d failed. But he wasn’t arguing, either, and that meant he was close to giving in.

“Dad,” I said, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything you and Mom have done for me. You’ve given up so much…” My voice wobbled on the last word. I swallowed and tried again. “Look, if my plan to get rid of Deckard doesn’t work, then fine, we can run. But can we at least try my idea first? Please?”

Six seconds ticked by in silence. Then my dad said heavily, “All right. I’ll talk to your mother.”





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As soon as I got off the phone with Dad I texted Sebastian, and this time he answered right away. Once I’d explained the situation to him, he even seemed to relish the challenge.

–Leave Deckard to me. I’ll keep him busy.





–Good to know you haven’t lost your knack for messing with people’s heads. At least this time you can do it to somebody who deserves it.





Which was rude and possibly ill-advised, but I wasn’t worried about offending Sebastian. He needed this transceiver too badly to risk losing me, and he was hardly going to sell me out to Deckard because he didn’t like my attitude. In fact, he was probably smart enough to have guessed where my sniping remarks were coming from—because it was easier to blame him for Alison’s unhappiness than to admit that I was just as guilty.

And I was. Because I knew the truth about Meridian, about what had really happened last summer. I’d just been too much of a coward to talk about it, even to the one person who needed my honesty most.

“Niki?” Mrs. Park was leaning out the sliding door, looking around for me. I stepped back into the light.

“I’m here,” I said.

“It’s too dark outside,” she chided. “Come in now. I have your room ready.”

I took off my shoes and followed her up the stairs to where the spare bedroom waited for me, its double bed draped in white linens. There was a flowery nightgown laid out on the bed, faded but clean, with a set of towels and a new toothbrush—still in the package—beside it.

“You should sleep,” Milo’s grandmother said. “You have had a shock and you must be tired. You will feel better tomorrow.”

In fact it was barely ten o’clock, and I wasn’t tired at all. But though her voice was sweet there was steel in it, and I knew better than to protest. “You’ve been very kind,” I said. “Thank you for everything.”

Mrs. Park gave a satisfied nod and closed the door. I waited until her footsteps receded, then pulled out my laptop and phone. If I was stuck here, then at least I could get some work done.

I was halfway through a resignation letter to my manager when Milo texted me.

–Settled in all right? GPs taking good care of you?





–Very. What did you tell them???





–Same thing I told your dad. Only with bonus stuff about how you were a nice girl and this was totally not your fault. And how we were just friends (sorry about the “just”), but I couldn’t put you up at my place because my mom’s still on night shift, and What Would The Neighbors Think?





–Nice.





And I meant it. I’d been feeling guilty about making Milo lie to his grandparents, but that was essentially the truth, or at least as much of it as they needed to know.

–I’d come over, but my grandmother would give me the stank eye if I showed up at this hour. Still OK to get into the m-space tomorrow?





–Yeah, no problem. Shawn’s letting me in at 10. You coming?





–For a while. See you then.





I finished my letter of resignation and sent it off to my manager via phone, since the Parks didn’t have Wi-Fi. Then I undressed and climbed into bed. But no matter how many binary numbers I counted, sleep refused to come. I couldn’t stop thinking about Deckard and my parents and Sebastian … and now more than ever, Alison.

For the past week I’d allowed the urgency of building the transceiver to push her to the back of my mind, telling myself it wasn’t safe to reach out to her anyway. But Deckard wasn’t in Sudbury spying on Alison anymore. He was here in southern Ontario, looking for me. And what had happened tonight had made me realize just how selfish I’d been to ignore Alison’s letter.

The fear that had jolted through me when Milo told me Deckard was in the store, that sense of being vulnerable and horribly alone … that was nothing compared to what Alison must be going through. Because I wasn’t alone, not really: I had Milo, and I had my parents, and in a weird way I even had Sebastian. But Alison had nobody who understood what she’d been through or how she was feeling. Nobody who was willing to admit it, anyway.

I’d had enough of waiting for Sebastian to do the right thing. It was time to throw away my pride, my guilt, and all the fears that had been holding me back and tell Alison the truth.

I sat up quickly and switched on the bedside light. Then I picked up my phone and started typing.





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The next morning I ate an early, quiet breakfast with Milo’s grandparents, helped Mrs. Park wash the dishes, and thanked them profusely for their kindness. I told them I had plans for the day and wouldn’t impose on them any longer, but I’d always be grateful for their hospitality.

“Your parents,” said Pastor Park. “Are they coming to get you? Or would you like us to take you home?”

He spoke mildly, and the lines of his face were gentle. But there was something unnervingly shrewd in the way he looked at me, and I found myself stammering out the truth before I could even think to lie.

“My parents aren’t home right now. They’ve gone to Toronto for the weekend.”

Mrs. Park gave me a sharp look, and I could tell she didn’t think much of my parents. So I added quickly, “It’s not their fault. They wanted to take me away with them, but I told them I’d rather stay here. I have a lot of work to do on a—a school project, and I can’t afford to leave it.”

That struck the right note. Milo’s grandparents exchanged looks, and I could see they were impressed by my commitment to academics. “So, then,” Milo’s grandmother said, “you will stay here until your parents come back.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“Don’t argue with my wife,” Pastor Park told me with a half-smile. “She’s a very determined woman. Now, tell us where you need to go, and we’ll drive you there. Would you like to stop at your house first?”

So that was how I ended up in front of the makerspace at precisely ten o’clock, with clean clothes and a packed lunch in my bag, waving to Milo’s grandparents as they drove away. I was heading inside, still a little dazed by all this efficient care, when Dad texted me with an update.

He and Mom had packed up and left the house last night without any sign of Deckard. They’d left Crackers with our next-door neighbor, who adored him and would spoil him rotten. They were staying at a nice hotel in downtown Toronto, and Mom was going to call me in a few minutes to see how I was getting along.

Which meant that somehow, Dad had convinced Mom that he’d been planning this trip for ages. He’d told her I’d arranged to stay with Milo’s family for the weekend, so she wouldn’t worry about leaving me alone. Then he’d whisked her straight from their Friday night date to a romantic getaway weekend without a hint that there was anything unusual, let alone dangerous, going on.

So when she called, I kept my voice bright and confident. I asked her what shows she and Dad would be seeing and told her to have a great time and promised that Milo and I wouldn’t throw any parties while the two of them were away, ha-ha. By the time I hung up, I felt thoroughly sick of myself.

When I walked into the makerspace, Barry was there, peering under the dust cover at my nearly completed transceiver. I braced myself for another barrage of questions, but when he saw me, he only mumbled a greeting and went back to work on his own project, a vintage radio he was converting to an MP3 player. So I wasn’t busted yet.

Still, the faster I got the transceiver finished and out of here, the better. And I was so close now—two or three hours of work at most. Test the power amplifier, finish up the relay circuit and cabling, and assemble it all in the enclosure. Then all I had to do was install the firmware Sebastian had sent me, and I’d be done. I switched on the soldering iron, dumped out the last of my components, and went to work with a vengeance.

My hands moved smoothly from one task to another, obeying my slightest thought without hesitation. My eyes stayed focused on the board, immune to all distractions, while my mind slipped into a heightened, almost dreamlike state. It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to sink this deep into a project, and the cautious part of me warned that I might regret it. But I didn’t care anymore. I loved this feeling too much.

Closer and closer. The enclosure took shape beneath my hands, back and sides slotting smoothly into the base. I mounted the transceiver board, slotted in the relay module, and hooked up the cables. Almost complete now—just a few more steps and I’d be ready to power on. I could feel my confidence soaring, the old thrill tingling inside me…

Behind me, Milo cleared his throat.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, blinking up at him. “How long have you been there?”

“Half an hour,” he said. “But don’t let me stop you. You look like you’re on a roll.”

“I’m almost finished,” I said. “Just give me a few more minutes.” I dived back into the enclosure, and the world vanished again.

A few in this case ended up being twenty-three, thanks to my perfectionist streak. Even once the transceiver was fully assembled, I couldn’t declare victory until I’d hooked it up to my laptop and installed Sebastian’s firmware. But when the green light glowed on the transceiver’s front panel, and I saw that the test sequence had run perfectly, I let out a whoop and punched the air. “Done it!”

Milo came over to inspect my handiwork, running his hands over the smooth top of the case. “Looks fantastic,” he said. “Like you bought it from some high-tech dealer. I can’t believe you put all those components together so fast.”

“Neither can I,” said Barry, swiveling to face us. “This is topnotch work, Niki. How do you know all this stuff at your age?”

“I’m highly motivated,” I said blithely. I knew I ought to be more cautious, but right then I was too busy savoring my triumph to care. Besides, the transceiver was finished, so what did it matter what Barry thought of it anymore?

Barry lumbered to his feet and came over. “So when are you planning to take it for a test drive?”

He was obviously eager to see the transceiver working, and I felt bad for not giving him the chance. But I suspected that when the time came to use it, Sebastian wasn’t going to want a lot of spectators.

“Not today,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure when it’s going to work out.”

“Oh, sure,” said Barry, sounding disappointed but not angry, and I thought I was off the hook. But when I pushed the transceiver back against the wall and started draping the dust cover over it, he spoke again. “But, uh, let’s be honest here. This isn’t really for your dad’s birthday, is it?”

Immediately my brain started shuffling through a pack of semi-plausible lies. But when I looked into Barry’s earnest brown eyes, I couldn’t do it. He loved electronics, and he knew radio, and even if I hadn’t really needed his technical advice, he’d been a big help in other ways.

So I looked straight at him and said, “No. It’s meant to beam a quantum-encoded data signal over a distance of 68.4 million kilometers, ordering a certain piece of scientific equipment to turn itself off. And if it doesn’t work, I’m in big trouble.”

Barry regarded me for a few seconds without expression. Then he said, “Thought it was something like that,” and went back to his work.

I was staring at the back of his head, unable to believe it could be that easy, when Milo nudged me.

“Hey, Girl Genius,” he said. “You’ve done an awesome job. Let’s go celebrate.”





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I’d thought Milo was joking about the celebration. But when we got outside and he started marching toward downtown, I realized that he meant it. “Wait,” I said. “I can’t. I need to text Sebastian—”

“You can do that when we get there,” he said. “The Cakery’s only a couple blocks away, and there’s a slice of chocolate banana pecan calling my name.”

So I gave in. Because, well, it was cake. While we waited for the waitress to bring our order, I wrote Sebastian to tell him the transceiver was finished. I expected he’d get back to me as promptly as he had last night, but by the time I cleaned my plate and drank two cups of coffee, he still hadn’t answered.

“He’s probably just busy,” said Milo. “Didn’t you say you’d asked him to lead Deckard on some kind of virtual wild-goose chase?”

“Yeah, but that shouldn’t stop him from answering a text. Especially from me.”

“So you think something happened to him?”

I considered the infinite set of possibilities, most of them unpleasant. He’d lost his phone or had it stolen. He’d been arrested; he’d been in an accident; he’d blown himself to atoms tinkering with the relay…

Or, more likely, he’d just pulled an all-nighter and fallen asleep on the keyboard. I forced a smile. “It’s probably nothing. I’m just impatient, I guess.”

Milo gave me a level look that reminded me of his grandfather. “No, you’re not. You’re worried about him, and you’re stressed out about Deckard, and you look like you’re about to fall over. I’m taking you home.”

Normally I would have resented being told how I felt and what I should do. But the exultation of finishing the transceiver had faded, and I didn’t have the energy to fight. “Fine, but which ‘home’ are we talking about? Because your grandparents seem to think I’m staying at their place until my parents get back. No arguments allowed.”

“Arguments are never allowed,” said Milo. “Not if you’re under the age of seventy, anyway. The last time I talked back to my halmunee, she made me stand in the corner and hold my arms above my head for twenty minutes.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I didn’t get supper, either.” He pulled a doleful face, then grinned at my expression. “Don’t worry, non-Koreans get a free pass. But if you really want to get on her good side, keep your eyes down, speak softly, and eat lots of kimchi.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.





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Milo was on evening shift that night, so he rode the bus with me as far as his grandparents’ neighborhood and jogged off to Value Foods from there. Once he was out of sight I checked my phone again, but there was still no word from Sebastian.

When I reached the Parks’ house, a car I didn’t recognize was sitting in the driveway. My heart skipped a beat—but then I noticed the Korean flag pasted into its back window. Not Deckard, then. I rang the doorbell and Mrs. Park answered, looking harried but relieved to see me. She scolded me for not calling for a ride, shepherded me into the living room, and hurried back to her kitchen, where something red and sweet-smelling was cooking.

Pastor Park was nowhere in sight. But muffled voices came from the study, a woman’s voice rising in impassioned Korean and a male voice barking out denials. Milo’s grandmother made a disapproving noise and went on stirring her pot.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“These young people,” she said. “So many of them come to us for advice, saying they want to save their marriage. But the women only want to hear that they are right and their husband is wrong, and the man is just the same. They don’t want to work or make sacrifices. They fight all the time, and soon they want a divorce.”

“Oh,” I said blankly. That was more information than I’d really wanted to know. “So … can I help you with anything?”

I ended up setting the table, while Mrs. Park prepared fried chicken with sauce, rice, and about five other side dishes without consulting a recipe book even once. After quizzing me about my parents’ marriage, my religious background, and my academic goals, she inquired with disarming sweetness whether I thought it was a good idea for young people to date before they finished university. But thanks to Milo I knew the right answer and could even tell her honestly that I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, which appeared to settle any doubts she’d had about me. By the time Pastor Park came out to show the sulky-looking couple to the door, she’d relaxed enough to tell me about her daughter’s early, failed marriage and how hard Milo’s mother had worked to finish her education and raise two fine, handsome, brilliant sons.

“Jeremy is in his second year of business school,” Mrs. Park announced with pride. “And Milo is going to be a doctor.”

“Oh?” I said faintly. If Milo still hadn’t worked up the courage to tell his family what he really wanted, I wasn’t going to do it for him. But the reverent way his grandmother said the word doctor, as though it were the embodiment of everything that made Milo great, made me feel sorry for both of them.

Meanwhile, Pastor Park came back and sat down in the living room with the Korean newspaper, but his eyes were weary and the lines around his mouth deeper than before. Being a minister seemed to take up a lot more time and energy than I’d realized. And judging by the Parks’ modest home, it didn’t pay all that well, either.

So maybe Milo’s family wasn’t quite as unanimous about wanting him to be wealthy and successful as he’d thought. Maybe his grandfather, at least, would understand. “What did your husband’s family think about him becoming a pastor?” I asked.

“They were not happy,” Mrs. Park said. “They told him he was throwing his life away. But he knew that what he was doing was right in God’s eyes.”

Which wasn’t going to help Milo much, as far as I could see. Not unless he could convince his family that God had enough pastors now and was looking for a few good gym teachers.

“So you think it’s important to do something you really believe in,” I said, “not just what your family expects?”

Mrs. Park gave me a narrow look, and I could see she suspected I was up to something. “I am saying,” she replied with dignity, “that if a person has to choose between God and family, then God must come first. But family is very important. Children should respect their parents and their elders, and listen to their advice. Because that is how God gives young people wisdom.” She picked up the platter of chicken, glistening in its red sauce. “We will eat now.”

I knew when I was beaten. I lowered my eyes meekly, took the bowl of rice off the countertop, and followed her.





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After dinner I checked my e-mail, but it was empty. I sent off another text to Sebastian, and a couple to my parents to reassure them that I was okay. Then I watched TV with Pastor Park, while Mrs. Park sewed more of her silk flowers. After all the frenzied effort I’d put into finishing the transceiver that morning, plus the suspense of wondering what Deckard was up to, whether Alison had got my letter, and why Sebastian hadn’t got back to me yet, the quietness felt so anticlimactic I wanted to scream.

Milo texted me that night after the Parks had gone to bed, but he hadn’t heard from Sebastian any more than I had. Though on a positive note, he’d seen no sign of Deckard either.

–I biked past your house on my way home, and there was nobody parked on the street. If Deckard’s staking out the place, I’d like to know how he’s doing it.





I could think of a few ways, but I doubted Deckard was that talented with electronics. I was about to reply when Milo continued:

–So how are you doing? Everything OK?





There was no easy answer to that question. What could I tell Milo that he didn’t already know, without getting into all the things I wasn’t ready to tell him? I shifted into a cross-legged position on the bed and picked the safest answer I could think of.

–I’m worried about Alison. She’s been going through a hard time lately. Especially since she found out Sebastian was back.





–Why? What’s the deal with her and Sebastian?





I’d forgotten. He didn’t know.

–She was in love with him.





–Ouch. So did he brush her off or let her down easy?





I couldn’t blame Milo for assuming it had been one-sided. Whatever Sebastian’s faults, he didn’t come across as the type who would take advantage of a seventeen-year-old girl, especially one who was going through a massive emotional and psychological crisis. He didn’t even seem like the kind of guy who’d be tempted. But somehow it had happened anyway, and it had taken him a surprisingly long time to clue in and do the right thing.

–Neither at first. But when he helped her and me escape from—





My stomach clenched. Not only could I not say the word Meridian, I couldn’t even bring myself to type it. Instead, I wrote:

–From the lab. He said he’d made a mistake. That she was too young, and it should never have happened. But he did it in this noble, sacrificial kind of way, so it wasn’t a breakup so much as a big romantic Hollywood moment.





–Seriously? Sebastian did that?





Yeah. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought it would make it easier on her, or— I stopped mid-sentence, a tiny spark of suspicion flaring to life. I cast my thoughts back over the past three weeks, finding nodes of memory and drawing connections between them. The dismay in Sebastian’s voice as he asked, Six months? Is that all? His reluctance to answer my questions, using Milo to keep me at arm’s length and then running off before I could pin him down. How he’d admitted to loving Alison once, but acted as though he had no intention of seeing her ever again…

And the one piece of information that made sense of everything.

Alison could taste when people were lying.

Sebastian had told her she needed time to decide who she was and what she wanted, and that if he came back to Sudbury with her, he’d only get in the way. Apparently he’d meant it. But how could he expect Alison to let go and move on unless she believed she’d never see him again? Or since that plan had gone down in Deckard-shaped flames, unless he could make her believe that he was no longer interested?

No wonder he’d been avoiding her. Not because he’d stopped caring, but because he hadn’t. And the moment he spoke to her—maybe even the moment he wrote to her—she’d know it.

I knew, then, that I’d misjudged Sebastian. Worse, I’d handled the situation so clumsily and made myself so obnoxious that I’d practically forced him into avoiding me. I might be able to fix things if I could get in touch with him again—but I had an unhappy feeling that I’d already blown my chance.

–Niki? You still there?





I’d just started to apologize and explain when the phone chimed. Sebastian! Maybe it wasn’t too late after all. Abandoning Milo mid-sentence, I picked it up and blurted “Hello?”

There was a two-second pause. Then a soft tenor voice said, “Hello, Tori.”

It wasn’t Sebastian. It was Deckard.

“Why did you run away? No one wants to hurt you, Tori. I only want to talk to you.”

He spoke gently, with a faint undertone of reproach. As though I should be ashamed of myself for making him go to the trouble of stalking me.

And that was his mistake. Because unlike Alison, I knew when I was being played. “Excuse me?” I said, blandly and a little more quietly than usual—I didn’t want to wake the Parks. “I think you have the wrong number.”

“I don’t think so,” said Deckard, unfazed. “I’m very thorough about these things. But a lot of good people are worried about you, Tori. You’re a sick girl, or you soon will be. Why don’t we meet for coffee somewhere—wherever you feel most comfortable—and talk about it?”

Tori. Tori. Tori. The sound of my old name was like a slow drip on the top of my skull. “I’m not sick,” I said tightly. “And I have nothing to say to you, or the people you work for.”

“There’s no need to be hostile,” Deckard replied. “I’m only trying to help. I’d hate to see you throw your life away over a misunderstanding.”

If this had been an old-fashioned landline, I’d have hung up before he could trace the call. But cell phones worked differently, and I’d taken every precaution to make mine secure. Now that he had my number, he might be able to check my recent phone records to see who I’d been talking to and what towers the calls were coming from, but not without a warrant and definitely not on a weekend. Besides, if he knew where to find me, he wouldn’t have bothered calling.

“You don’t care about me,” I told him. “All you want is to know what really happened to me last summer. And all GeneSystem wants is to put me under a microscope and figure out what’s wrong with my DNA. Well, I guess you’re both going to be disappointed. Because I’ve left town, and I’m not coming back until you’re gone. Maybe not even then.”

For two seconds Deckard was silent, and I thought I’d beaten him. But then he said, “So how are your parents doing, Tori? Are they having a good weekend in Toronto?”

He knew. He knew where they were. Fear knifed into me, and my blood went cold.

“You know,” Deckard went on, “I have to wonder what the police would think of some of the people your father dealt with when he set up your new identities. I also wonder what would happen if your dad’s employers knew he was living under an assumed name.”

If I’d ever been tempted to doubt that Deckard was dangerous, that ended it. My first impulse was to shout at him and tell him to leave my dad alone—but then the analytical part of me kicked in. Some of the people, he’d said. His employers. No names, no specifics. And even if he’d tricked the neighbor into telling him where my parents had gone, Toronto was a big city. Big enough to disappear in, if it came to that.

“Good questions,” I told him, forcing myself to sound calm and even slightly amused. As though he hadn’t shaken me at all. “But if you’re so sure you know where my parents are, why don’t you go and ask them? Maybe if you buy them a few drinks, they’ll tell you where to find me.”

“I doubt that,” said Deckard. “But I suppose I could always try Alison again. I’ll probably get more out of her this time, now that it’s obvious that the two of you are back in touch.”

Which made me wonder how it was obvious, but I doubted he’d been reading her e-mail. Because if he had, he’d already know everything she could tell him about last summer—and everything I had to say about it too.

Still, I couldn’t bear the thought of him harassing her again. Especially now.

“Alison Jeffries is mentally ill,” I snapped, though it sickened me to say it. “She’s got a head full of psych meds and sci-fi novels, and she can barely keep her feet on the ground. You know what she’ll say, if you push her hard enough? She’ll tell you we were abducted by aliens. Is that the kind of answer you want?”

Deckard let out a short laugh. “I really don’t think—”

“Fine. Try it, then. But when she ends up back in the hospital and her family sues you for mental cruelty, how about you give me another call? Just so I can say I told you so.”

“There’s always Sebastian Faraday,” said Deckard, recovering quickly. “Now that he’s back in the country.”

I couldn’t see any point in pretending I didn’t know. Especially since the ATM where he’d been spotted was only a few blocks from my place. “Sure,” I said. “If you can find him. But I don’t think you will, because right now I can’t even find him myself.”

The pause that followed told me that I’d surprised Deckard, but it didn’t keep him from trying again. “Look,” he said. “There’s no reason this has to be so complicated. What do you want? I’m sure we can come to some kind of agreement.”

Until now I’d been holding myself together by acting like my mother—not imitating her voice this time but imagining how she’d behave if she were in my place. Pretending to be someone older, someone who was Deckard’s equal, so I wouldn’t have to think about how much he scared me. But I couldn’t do it anymore.

“I want you to stop chasing me,” I said thickly. “I want you to stop threatening the people I love. I want to live my life in peace, without always having to fight and hide and run away. I’m not hurting anybody. Why can’t you leave me alone?”

Then I hung up, blocked Deckard’s number, and burst into hot, humiliating tears.

Sebastian was missing, and without him, the transceiver I’d built was useless. I had no way to protect myself from Mathis if he came after me and no guarantee that I’d be safe even if he didn’t. If Deckard was willing to threaten innocent people like my parents and Alison just to try and get me talking, what would he do when he got his hands on me? And how long would it be before he did?

I rubbed the wetness from my eyes, hating myself for letting Deckard get under my skin and Jon for being stupid enough to give him my number. Though in a way that was my fault too, because I’d let Jon go on thinking he still had a chance with me, instead of telling him honestly to forget it…

–Niki? You still there?





Milo’s last text still glowed on my screen. I gulped a breath and typed my reply:

–Deckard just called. I’m a mess. Sorry.





I half expected Milo had given up on me by now, but it took him less than ten seconds to answer.

–Want me to come over?





I could think of at least three good reasons to tell him no. It was late, it was dangerous, and there was nothing he could do to fix the problem anyway. And what if his grandparents woke up and caught us? But I was past reasoning now. All I wanted was comfort.

–Yes. Please.





Then I sneaked downstairs and sat on the front steps, shivering and hugging my knees until the light of Milo’s bicycle came flashing around the corner. He leaped the curb, dropped the bike onto the lawn, and started toward me, and I leaped up and ran to him, and if he’d been Brendan, he would have tried to kiss me and ruined everything, but he wasn’t, and he didn’t. He just stood there and held me until I stopped shaking and could breathe again.





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When Mrs. Park knocked on my door the next morning and told me it was time for breakfast, I was so tired I could barely open my eyes. Milo had been a comfort while he stayed, but he hadn’t stayed long, and after he left, my mental gears had been too busy whirring and grinding with anxiety to let me sleep.

But as soon as I checked my phone, I was instantly awake. Sebastian had texted back at last.

–Sent Deckard to Montreal. Sorry to keep you waiting, I wanted to make sure he took the bait. Excellent news about the transceiver. How soon can I pick it up?





Montreal was 635 kilometers away. Not nearly as much distance as I’d like to put between myself and Deckard, but if he thought that was where I was hiding, it would keep him out of my way for the next few days at least. The relief was so enormous I felt like I could sleep for a week.

“Breakfast!” called Mrs. Park again, impatient now. I’d better get moving, though why she felt the need to get me up this early on a Sunday was beyond me…

Oh. Oh no.

I threw on a T-shirt and jeans, ran my fingers through my hair, and galloped down the stairs. Maybe when they saw me with dirty, wrinkled clothes and no makeup, they’d realize I couldn’t possibly go to church with them.

As soon as I reached the dining room, though, I knew I was in trouble. The Parks were seated at either end of the table, dressed in their Sunday best, while between them sat a platter full of plump golden pancakes … and Milo.

“Hey,” he said, waving me to a chair. “Sit down, quick. Harabuji needs to pray before the hoddeok gets cold.”

His tone was so casual, you’d think we barely knew each other. There was no sign of the boy who’d raced ten kilometers to hold me last night. I sat and bowed my head while Pastor Park said a blessing in Korean, and then we all dug in to the pancakes, which were frankly the most amazing thing I had ever tasted in my life. There was no need for butter or syrup, because they had this incredibly sweet, nutty filling inside. By the time I’d eaten two of them I felt ready to slide into a sugar coma, and Milo was grinning at me across the table.

“I should send friends to stay with my grandparents more often,” he said. “I haven’t had hoddeok in forever.”

“You should come to see us more often!” said Mrs. Park reproachfully, but she was smiling. She offered Milo the platter, and he helped himself to another pancake.

Once we’d finished and Mrs. Park was washing the plates, I leaned over to Milo and whispered, “Am I supposed to go to church with them?”

“Well, I am,” he said. “I’ve been bribed with pancakes. But if you really don’t want to go, they won’t force you.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I just got a text from Sebastian, and he’s on his way.” I glanced at Pastor Park, seated quietly on the sofa with his Bible open in front of him. “We’re going to meet at the makerspace in three hours.”

“And then what?” Milo asked. “You hand over the transceiver and he takes off again?”

“No,” I said. “This time, I’m going with him.”





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As expected, Milo didn’t like my plan at all, but it didn’t take him long to soften up and come around. Ever since the moment he’d seen Sebastian come through the relay he’d been irresistibly hooked on this adventure, and he’d never be able to rest until he’d seen how it all turned out.

Besides, if last night hadn’t been proof enough, he really liked me. Even after seeing me first thing in the morning with messy hair and no makeup, apparently—or at least that was how I interpreted the way his gaze lingered on me before he followed his grandfather outside. It was a good thing Mrs. Park’s back was turned, because if she’d seen that look, there would have been some serious Korean drama.

“Thanks again,” I said to Milo’s grandmother, shouldering my overnight bag. “The food was amazing. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to church with you, but maybe another time.”

“You are welcome,” she said. “And we were glad to help. To show you the love of Jesus.” She reached into the living room cabinet and took out a wrapped present, presenting it to me formally in both hands. “This is for you.”

Even covered in stripes of red and gold, that flat rectangle looked uncomfortably familiar. I had a feeling I was about to inherit a pointed Bible message about honoring my parents or honesty being the best policy or some other platitude I really couldn’t stomach right now. “Oh, I couldn’t—you’ve already been so kind—”

“I insist,” she said firmly. So I gave in, and the two of us went out to the car.

I’d assured the Parks that it was safe for me to go home now, because my stalker had left town and my parents would be back in a few hours. And it was the truth—for certain values of “safe” and “few”, anyway. As they let me off in front of my house, Milo signed at me through the rear window: I’ll text you later. I nodded and waved as they drove away.

It felt strange being home after two days’ absence and even stranger not to see Crackers toddling down the hallway to welcome me. I shut the front door and locked it, then headed off to dump my overnight bag and throw my dirty clothes in the laundry.

I’d unearthed my old duffel bag from the closet and was stuffing clothes into it when I realized I hadn’t opened Mrs. Park’s gift. Feeling guilty for my lack of enthusiasm, I picked it up and tore off the wrapping.

As expected, it was one of her handmade texts. It wasn’t in English, though. It was in Korean, and I couldn’t read a single character except for the reference at the bottom: ISAIAH 41:10.

She must have given me the wrong package, but I wasn’t sorry. The calligraphy was beautiful, as were the flowers and leaves that surrounded it, and now I wouldn’t have to wonder what not-so-subtle message she’d been sending me.

Still, I could at least look up the translation. I opened the browser on my phone and tapped the reference in.



“Fear not, for I am with you;

Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you,

Yes, I will help you,

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”





That wasn’t anything like I’d expected. It was kind of a nice thought, actually.

I only wished I could make myself believe it.





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When I got to the makerspace, Sebastian was leaning against the door with his hands in his pockets, waiting for me. He looked thinner than the last time I’d seen him, with shadows circling his eyes and dragging at the corners of his mouth, and I could tell I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been getting much sleep. But when he saw me, he broke into a smile that made him look ten years younger, and he came bounding down the steps to meet me.

“Let me get that for you,” he said, tugging the backpack off my shoulder. “I’ll put it in the truck.”

So it didn’t surprise him that I’d figured out his next move and come prepared. I followed him around the corner to the old black Silverado he’d parked in the factory’s loading zone and studied its rust-eaten wheel wells and sagging exhaust with misgiving. “If you paid more than two grand for that thing,” I said, “you got robbed.”

“Ah. Well, never mind.” He opened the door and tossed my pack into the back seat. “I didn’t. Much.”

So much for the small talk. I took a deep breath. “Sebastian? I owe you an apology.”

For a moment Sebastian didn’t move. Then, quietly, he shut the door and turned to me. “What for?”

“Well, I’ve been pretty hard on you about the Alison thing,” I said. “Especially since I should have talked to her myself, before things got so bad. But I kept telling myself it was too risky, and once you came back, it was easier to put the blame on you. Even though you didn’t deserve it.”

“You don’t think I’m to blame for the way I’ve treated her?” His voice sounded rough. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, it took me a while to figure out what you were doing,” I said. “But now I get it, and I understand.”

“Do you? “

“Sure,” I said. “I know you want what’s best for her. Even if it’s hard for her to see it that way.”

Was he buying it? I couldn’t be sure. Sebastian’s poker face was even better than mine. But when he cleared his throat and said, “Well, then. Apology accepted,” I knew I was still in the game. I was breathing a mental sigh when Sebastian looked around and said, “Where’s Milo?”

“At church with his grandparents,” I said. “Why?”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed, and I could practically hear him thinking. Then he took out his phone, tapped a quick message, and put it back in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go and take a look at your transceiver.”

So we went inside and knocked at the makerspace’s door. Shawn opened it, looking startled to see Sebastian behind me instead of Milo. But when I told him we’d come to pick up the transceiver, his face cleared. “Oh, you’re done already? Awesome. Your dad’s gonna love it. Hey, need a hand trolley? I can get you one.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian warmly. “That would be very helpful.”

Shawn darted through the vinyl-strip curtain into the woodshop and started banging around in one of the cupboards. I led Sebastian up the ramp to the clean room and unveiled the transceiver.

“It’s been tested and calibrated,” I said. “It should be good to go.”

Sebastian stooped to inspect it, examining the enclosure from all sides. “Niki, it looks superb. You’ve outdone yourself.”

Once the compliment would have made me glow. Now it just made me feel queasy. Not because I doubted Sebastian’s sincerity but because I knew how much faith he was putting in my abilities. If the transceiver didn’t work, after all this…

“Wait,” Sebastian said. “Where does the relay fit?”

That, at least, I deserved credit for. I tapped the barely visible square panel on the cabinet’s side, then popped it open to show him the slot I’d custom-built for the purpose. “Here are the connectors,” I said, pointing out the plug at the bottom and the thin metal probe dangling above. “All we have to do is hook it up and close the panel, and nobody will even know it’s there.”

“Excellent!” Sebastian straightened up. “You’ve thought of everything.” He glanced around the room, taking in the darkened computer terminals along the back wall, the shelves crowded with small tools and parts, and the assortment of half-finished projects waiting for their makers’ return. “This is quite a place,” he said, as Shawn came up with the trolley. “You’ve obviously put a lot of work into it.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got some great plans for expansion too,” said Shawn. “You should—whoa, you okay with that?”

“I’m fine,” I said, lowering the transceiver onto the foot of the trolley. I stepped back and Sebastian took over, wheeling it down the ramp toward the door.

“You guys have been great,” I told Shawn. “Thanks for helping me out.”

“Hey, no problem,” said Shawn. “Come back any time. When you hit eighteen, maybe we’ll even give you a key.” He flashed me a grin and went back to his laptop.

I smiled too but wistfully. Between running from Deckard and hiding from Mathis, I’d probably never see this place again. I gazed around the clean room one last time, letting myself imagine all the things I might have built here, the friends I could have made, if my life had been different. Then quietly I collected my tool kit and my box of spare parts from the locker and slipped out.





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The inside of Sebastian’s truck smelled like diesel, grease, and old leather, with an afternote of cheap pine freshener. I couldn’t help wondering what colors and shapes those smells would have for Alison—but I knew better than to say that out loud.

“So,” I said briskly as I buckled myself in, “where are we going?”

Sebastian turned the key in the ignition, which caused the truck to cough and give a full-body shudder. He slung his arm across the top of the seat, watching out the back window as he reversed. “To get Milo,” he said.

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. Sebastian seemed to like having Milo around—probably because it kept me from asking too many questions. “And then where? Because my parents are coming home tonight, and I need to know what to tell them.”

“You mean you haven’t guessed?” asked Sebastian. “We need a large antenna to transmit that signal. We’re not going to find anything of that size here.”

I drew a sharp breath. The biggest radio antennas I knew of were down in the States—a long way down. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

“Is it that bad? I thought it would be an adventure, myself.” He patted the dashboard. “And this seemed like just the vehicle for the purpose.”

“You want to drive all the way to New Mexico?”

Sebastian made a spluttering noise, and then he started to laugh. The truck swerved, and I grabbed the steering wheel and straightened us out just in time—hello, déjà vu.

“All right, fine!” I snapped. “I don’t have any idea where you’re talking about. Does that make you feel superior enough? Because you seem to enjoy that.”

That sobered him. He sat back, curling his long fingers about the wheel. “I apologize,” he said. “No, we’re not going to Arecibo. We’re not even leaving the province. Have you ever visited Algonquin Park?”

It was the largest wilderness preserve in Ontario, a massive seven thousand square kilometers filled with pine trees, rocky lakes, and bears. Camps and cottages dotted the outskirts, but the interior was infamously remote. Lara had gone on a Girl Guide canoe trip to Algonquin two years ago, and when she got back, she couldn’t stop talking about it. She’d described the haunting calls of the loons that glided by their campsite in the morning, the bull moose they’d nearly bumped into while navigating a swamp, and I’d envied her every moment of it, even the mosquito bites. Because back then I’d still had that stupid chip in my arm and I couldn’t go anywhere.

“No,” I said shortly. “I haven’t.”

“Well, about sixty years ago the National Research Council set up a radio observatory in the middle of the park, including a forty-six-meter antenna on an equatorial mount. The antenna broke down in the mid-eighties, and the government abandoned the site rather than spend the money to repair it. But a few years ago a small space communications company leased the property and fixed the antenna, and now it’s a private venture. So I’ve made arrangements for us to stay at the observatory for a couple of days and use their antenna for our little experiment.”

If calling the experiment little was an understatement, made arrangements was an even bigger one. It wasn’t hard to guess why Sebastian looked so tired—he must have spent days faking some academic credentials and writing a bunch of articles about his so-called research before he called the observatory and introduced himself. Then he’d had to work out all the equations to figure out the technical requirements for the transceiver, write the specs so I could get started building it, and design a complicated piece of software to get the antenna, the transceiver, and the relay to talk to each other. And just when he was as busy as he’d ever been in his life, I’d texted and asked him to get Deckard off my tail.

No wonder he hadn’t replied right away when I told him the transceiver was ready. By then he must have been practically in a coma.

“I had no idea,” I said, and I wasn’t just talking about the antenna. “So how are you paying for all this? You must be scraping the bottom of your bank account by now, and if Deckard and his police buddies used it to find you once—”

“That was carelessness on my part,” said Sebastian. “I should have known my main account was being watched. But I had a couple of other, better guarded accounts as backup. And I always made sure to keep a decent amount in each one of them, since I knew I might have to change my identity at any moment.”

Even so, I suspected that a decent amount wasn’t more than a few thousand dollars all together, or Sebastian wouldn’t have needed me to build him a transceiver from scratch. Not to mention that when Alison met him, he’d been working as a janitor and living in a tiny little basement apartment—hardly the lifestyle of a secret millionaire.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“No,” said Sebastian mildly, “I didn’t. It’s being looked after, Tori. That’s all you need to know.”

And there he went playing big brother again. “It’s Niki,” I said. “Like Nikola Tesla, Mr. Faraday, and you really need to get out of that habit. Or I’m going to start calling you by your real name, and we’ll see how much you like it.”

Sebastian was silent, his eyes on the road. Then he said, “You know, at times it’s difficult to imagine how you became the most popular girl in your high school.”

“You know exactly how I did it,” I said. “I watched people and did whatever it took to make them like me, or trust me, or feel like they owed me a favor. So they had to stop seeing me as an outsider, and accept me as one of their own. And don’t tell me that you don’t do the same thing, for exactly the same reasons.” I folded my arms. “The only difference between us is that you think you can manipulate me the same way.”

“So there’s no such thing as kindness, only manipulation?” Sebastian shook his head. “That’s quite a cynical outlook, Niki.”

“Oh, please. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Do I? I don’t think you know me half as well as you seem to believe.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine,” I said. “Far be it from me to violate your impenetrable air of mystery.”

Sebastian gave me a sideways glance, and I could see I’d surprised him. “That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“Your vocabulary and diction just jumped several grade levels. That’s deliberate too, isn’t it? You keep your language simple so people won’t be threatened by your intelligence.”

“Well, you see,” I said, “my mother taught me that it’s rude to make other people feel inferior.”

Which was catty, and I knew I’d probably regret it. But Sebastian only looked thoughtful. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Your parents have obviously had a powerful influence on your life. Do you ever resent that? Have you ever tried to rebel?”

“Are we playing Twenty Really Personal Questions now?” I asked. “Because I’d rather stick to Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Sorry,” said Sebastian. “I was only curious. I hardly remember my own parents at all.”

Well, that was awkward. I looked away quickly, counting the telephone poles flashing by the window, and we drove in silence all the rest of the way to Milo’s house.





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Milo was waiting at the end of his driveway, casually dressed and with a sports bag slung over his shoulder. “This trip had better be educational,” he said as he climbed in behind me. “Because not only do I have to write an essay about it, but there is zero legroom back here.”

“What did you tell your mom?” I asked.

Milo slid to the middle of the seat and leaned between us. “The truth, more or less,” he said. “Left her a note saying I knew this guy who was a scientist, and he’d invited me and another student to help him out with an experiment for a couple of days. Told her I’d cleared it with my physics teacher, which I actually did because Mr. Vanacek is on Facebook all the freakin’ time. So I’m sure Mom’ll be fine with it. Whenever she wakes up.”

“Your mother’s still working nights, then?” asked Sebastian. “Where?”

“Hospital,” said Milo. “She’s a trauma nurse. She wanted to be a surgeon, but, uh … that didn’t really work out.”

We made a fuel stop before we hit the highway, and Milo followed Sebastian into the store to get some snacks. While they were gone, I threw our luggage into the truck bed next to the transceiver, then climbed into the back seat so Milo could have the front. He tried to argue with me about it, but I told him to shut up because I wasn’t being noble, I just wanted to go to sleep. Then I lay down and pulled Sebastian’s car blanket over my shoulders, in case anyone was tempted to doubt it.

As I was drifting off, it occurred to me that Sebastian was even more tired than I was and probably shouldn’t be tackling an eight-hour drive at the moment, Sunday traffic or not. I was wondering fuzzily if I should say something to Milo about it when I fell asleep.





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When I woke up, my mouth tasted thick and furry and my face was stuck to the seat. I rolled over, wincing, and rubbed my eyes. How long had I been sleeping? Longer than I’d planned, for sure. The sun was halfway to the horizon, and my left contact lens felt like it had been put in with superglue. Worse, the right one didn’t feel like it was there at all. I was lifting a tentative finger to check when I spotted the thin circle of grey stuck to the edge of my hand.

Great. How was I going to put it back in now? My lens kit was in the bed of the truck.

“… Literally, it means ‘joined sensation.’” Sebastian’s voice rose over the sound of the engine. “When two or more of the five senses are interconnected, so that when one is stimulated, the other responds at the same time. When I met Alison, I discovered that she not only had multiple forms of synesthesia—seeing sounds, tasting words, and so on—but that her perceptions were extraordinarily acute.”

I’d propped myself up on both elbows, ready to ask Sebastian to pull over. But if Milo had got him talking about Alison, there was no way I was going to interrupt now. Carefully I lay back down and listened.

“So there was no real reason for her to be in the psych hospital?” asked Milo. “They just put her there because they didn’t know what was wrong with her?”

“Well, they had legitimate reason for concern,” Sebastian said. “There was a family history of schizophrenia, for one thing. Alison’s insistence that she’d seen Tori—sorry, Niki—disintegrate didn’t help either. And at times her reactions could be … violent.”

“Whoa,” said Milo. “How violent?”

“No weapons were involved, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Sebastian dryly. “Even in her worst moments, Alison never hurt anyone on purpose. But being exposed to the relay had a powerful effect on her synesthesia. After Niki disappeared, Allison’s senses were so raw that even the slightest touch felt like an assault, and when it became too much for her, she panicked and lashed out. So you can see why the police, and even her own family, made the mistake they did.”

“And you’re sure it was the relay that did it?” asked Milo. “Because Niki and I were standing right there when you came through, and it didn’t do anything to us.”

“No, but neither of you are synesthetes, let alone as sensitive as Alison. I admit I was skeptical myself at first, but once I’d seen the relay’s effect on her firsthand, there was no doubt.”

And that was another good reason for Sebastian to keep his distance from Alison, now that I thought about it. Especially since he was still carrying the relay around with him, and there was no way—yet—to be sure it wouldn’t go off again.

I played possum for another five minutes, hoping Sebastian would let something slip that I didn’t already know. But soon the conversation shifted to more casual topics, and by the time they’d started talking about the best places to eat in Sudbury, I’d had enough. I sat up, yawning, and asked, “What time is it?”

“Four twenty,” said Milo. “That was a pretty impressive nap you took there. Want some Doritos?”

With the taste of sleep lingering in my mouth, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less. “Ugh, no,” I said. “Can we stop at a Timmy’s somewhere? I need coffee.”

“We left civilization behind an hour ago,” Milo said, tipping his head at the windscreen. Rocky outcroppings and stands of evergreen trees lined both sides of the highway, with a glimpse of blue lake around the next curve. “I don’t think there’s anything for…” He trailed off as our eyes met.

“What?” I asked, and then I remembered my missing contact. Which was really missing now, because while I was pretending to be asleep, it had dried up and fallen onto the floor. So now I had one grey-blue eye and one turquoise. “Oh. Yeah, I know. I lost a lens somewhere.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” asked Milo. “When I had contacts, I couldn’t stand to—” He frowned. “Wait. Who gets tinted contacts to make their eyes look less blue?”

“People who are trying not to get recognized, that’s who,” I said. “You had contacts?”

“For a couple years. But they bugged me and I kept getting eye infections, so finally I gave up and went back to glasses.” He studied me, still looking troubled. “But yours … they’re just for show, aren’t they? You don’t have any prescription at all.”

I sighed and swiped the remaining lens out of my eye, rolling it between my fingers and let it fall. It wasn’t like my disguise had protected me from Deckard, and I was tired of wearing contacts anyway. “Yeah,” I said. “And for the record, I also dye my hair.”

“Sure,” said Milo. “Makes sense.” But his voice was subdued, and I could guess why. He’d thought we were close, but he was starting to realize how little he knew about me. How many other secrets had I been keeping from him all this time?

Too many. But even now, I was afraid of telling him the truth. I still wasn’t sure how he’d react.

“I dye my hair too,” announced Sebastian. “Premature grey is so unflattering. Oh, look—is that a porcupine?”

As distractions went, it was a brave attempt, or at least the parody of one. But since the porcupine in question was lying half-smashed at the side of the highway with one paw stuck pathetically in the air, it didn’t help much.

“No,” I said wearily, “it’s a metaphor for this conversation. Can we switch seats now?”





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We stopped for coffee and supper at a roadside diner north of the park. I’d eaten as much of my burger as I could stomach, and Sebastian and Milo were polishing off their slices of pie, when I remembered I still hadn’t texted my parents.

Well, no point in putting it off any longer. I pulled out my phone.

–On road trip with Milo and friend (responsible adult—no worries). Back in a couple of days.





I sent that one to my mother, then added a line about Deckard being safely out of the picture for the time being, and sent it again to my dad. Of course my phone clanked and lit up in seconds with Mom demanding to know where I was going and why I hadn’t asked permission first. But when I explained that the trip to the observatory had come up at the last minute and that Milo had cleared it with his mom and teachers before we went, she calmed down.

Dad’s response was shorter.

–Stay safe and keep in touch. We’ll talk when you get home.





Which would have sounded positive, except that I knew “we’ll talk” was Dad Code for “You’re in big trouble, young lady.” But the important thing was, my parents knew I was alive and well—which was a lot more reassurance than I’d given them the last time I disappeared.

I just hoped this plan of Sebastian’s would work. Or else the next time I went missing, it really would be the last.

Sebastian paid the waitress—in cash—and we headed back out to the truck. The sun was low in the sky now, casting long shadows through the trees and streaking the rocks with gold. The air smelled crisp and earthy. I breathed in slowly, savoring the wildness of it, and was surprised by a stab of homesickness—not for the south where I lived now, but for the north I’d left behind. I hadn’t thought I’d feel that way, after being trapped in one place so long. Maybe it hadn’t been quite so easy to pull up my roots as I’d thought.

Or maybe it was just the untamed beauty of the landscape that made me hurt inside, because it reminded me of what I’d always wanted and was afraid I’d never have—a life that was simple and honest and free.

Milo offered me the front seat again, and I took it without argument. According to the directions, we only had an hour and a half left to drive anyway. But when Sebastian returned from the back of the truck with a handheld CB radio, gave it to me, and said, “Channel 23. Once we get into the park, you’ll need to call out our direction and location every kilometer so the logging trucks don’t run over us,” I realized that we were heading into some seriously remote territory. Places where only loggers and hard-core wilderness trippers ever went, and if we broke down, there’d be no handy tow truck or passing Good Samaritan to help us out.

In fact, once we turned off the highway, it quickly became clear that there would be no passing anything, period. The road was gravel and dirt, deeply rutted, and not much wider than the truck. We bumped along in silence for several kilometers, until we reached a closed gate with a warning sign beside it reading NO ENTRY. ROAD CLOSED TO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES.

“Now what?” asked Milo, but Sebastian merely shifted into park and jumped out to open the gate. He climbed up into the truck bed to check on the transceiver, making sure the straps that anchored it were holding and that the padding was still in place. Then he got back in and we started off again.

“Now would be a good time to start calling out our location,” Sebastian told me, so I picked up the CB and spoke. “Black Chevy Silverado heading east at the two-kilometer mark. Over.”

“This is amazing,” breathed Milo, draping his elbows over the back of the seat and resting his chin on his wrist. “I bet we see moose. Maybe even a bear.”

“Moose are good eating,” I said. “Bears are just a nuisance. Move to Sudbury, and in a few weeks, you’ll be sick of them.”

“You have no soul,” said Milo reproachfully, but I could see he’d recovered his good humor. Either the meal had lifted his spirits, or he’d finally got over the shock of finding that his pretend girlfriend was even more pretend than he’d thought. “So what’s the deal with building a giant antenna in the middle of nowhere? Was it some kind of secret military project or what?”

“Nothing so exciting,” said Sebastian. “They just wanted to avoid radio interference. Niki, you’ve missed another mark.”

This was getting tedious. I raised the CB to my mouth and called out our location again, this time in my chirpiest shopping-channel voice, which made Milo snicker. At the next mark I did it in broad Cockney and the one after that in a southern drawl—I figured if the loggers had to listen to me babble the same message thirty-eight times, the least I could do was give them some variety. By the time I’d worked my way through Bored Hipster Girl, Scottish Lassie, and Indian Telemarketer, Milo was wheezing with laughter. But Sebastian didn’t even crack a smile. His shoulders were hunched, hands tight on the wheel.

Nervous driver? He hadn’t seemed that way before, but I suppose this part of the trip would be a challenge for anyone. With each passing kilometer the trees grew thicker and the swamps and lakes rose higher, so close to the road in places that a single rainstorm could have washed it out. And when I glimpsed a clear-cut patch in the bush and saw an enormous logging truck rumbling toward us, I realized just how vital that radio really was. If the driver had started off any earlier or been moving any faster, he’d have smashed us to bits.

Suddenly playing with the CB didn’t seem like a game anymore. I called out our location one last time and handed it off to Milo.

The shadows deepened as we drove on, clouds flocking in from the east to darken the sky ahead. Sebastian switched on the headlights, but with so many sharp corners in the road, even high beams made little difference. Then a pair of luminous eyes shone out from the underbrush—and something galloped right in front of us. Milo yelled and Sebastian slammed on the brakes, but too late. The wheels went over it with a soft, sickening thump, and we nearly skidded off the road before Sebastian wrenched the truck back on course.

“What was that?” I gasped, twisting to look behind us. But the darkness in our wake was too thick.

“Raccoon, I think,” said Milo, sounding equally shaken. “What is it with those guys, anyway? I thought they were supposed to be clever.”

Sebastian didn’t reply. His expression was bleak, his eyes narrow, and his mouth a thin line. “You okay?” I asked him.

“Fine,” he said shortly, but I didn’t have to be Alison to know that was a lie. I watched him, my uneasiness growing. Sebastian had been driving for seven and a half hours, and I was willing to bet he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in the last seventy-two. How much longer could he go on before he collapsed?

Fortunately, it was only three more marks before we spotted the yellow light pulsing out from the trees ahead, and our beams flashed over a sign reading MAGNUS LAKE RADIO OBSERVATORY. The crossroads offered us a choice of two gates, one chained shut and one angled half-open.

“It’s too late to go to the antenna tonight,” said Sebastian, before I could ask. “It’ll take at least a couple of hours to set up our transceiver and connect it to the existing hardware, and we can’t send the signal until tomorrow in any case.” He steered the truck through the open gate, onto the paved laneway beyond. “We’d better check in at the bunkhouse. Dr. Newman’s waiting for us.”





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Dr. Hal Newman, the director of the observatory, was a stout, grey-haired man with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes—in fact, if he hadn’t been clean-shaven, he would have made a fantastic Santa Claus. He seemed delighted to see us, especially Sebastian, and lost no time introducing us to his staff (Liz the site manager, Brian the engineer, and graduate student Jacques) and showing us around. The wood-panel walls and burnt orange carpeting hadn’t been updated since the disco era, but otherwise, the place was as clean and well equipped as any reasonable person could expect. I’d even scored a queen-size bed and a room all to myself, so I wouldn’t have to listen to Sebastian and Milo snore.

“We’re all very interested in your research,” Dr. Newman enthused as we sat together in the lounge and dining area, where a row of windows looked out across the darkened lake. “If you’re right about the nature of this anomaly, Dr. Ashton, it would be a tremendous discovery. My staff and I will be glad to help you in any way we can.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian. “And please, call me Stephen.”

Milo gave me a look that said, “Seriously?” I leaned against his shoulder and whispered, “You can have an alias too if it makes you feel better. How about ‘Fred’?”

“It’s too late to set up tonight,” Dr. Newman continued, oblivious to Milo’s snort, “and there’s a storm moving in. Why don’t we start first thing tomorrow?”

“That would be fine,” said Sebastian. “But we should get the transceiver safely under cover, especially if it’s going to rain.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” He gestured to his assistant. “If you want to drive over to the antenna now, Jacques here can open up the control building and help you unload.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian. He pulled out his truck keys and tossed them to Milo, then looked meaningfully at me: Go with them. Make sure nothing gets damaged.

He didn’t need to tell me. I nodded and followed Milo out.





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Night had settled over the observatory site, and it was too black to see more than the dim silhouette of the antenna, with its inverted-flowerpot base and its great dish angled up toward the sky. Still, even in the darkness it was impressive.

“Wow,” murmured Milo, leaning over the steering wheel. “That’s … big.”

The control building was an A-shaped building of brick and glass, built in classic mid-sixties style, and the banks of old equipment inside looked more like an exhibit from a space history museum than anything useful. But there were newer devices and computer terminals scattered around the room as well—enough to reassure me that I’d have something to work with when the time came.

I held the door open for Milo and Jacques as they carried the transceiver inside and set it down. A quick once-over reassured me that the wrappings were secure and that it had survived the bumpy ride intact. I’d give it a more thorough inspection tomorrow.

Raindrops pattered on the windshield as we drove away, turning quickly to a hammering downpour. We sprinted to the bunkhouse with our coats over our heads and reached the porch as the first fork of lightning split the sky.

“All settled?” asked Dr. Newman, as the two of us came in. He’d tucked his laptop under his arm and was heading for the east wing of the house.

“Looks to be,” I said, shaking rain from my hair. “Where’s, uh, Dr. Ashton?”

“In the library,” he said. “We’re going over the link budget calculations for tomorrow. Care to join us?”

I glanced at Milo, who was giving me a please-don’t look that I understood completely. I liked math, but not at the end of a day like this. “That’s okay,” I said. “I think we’ll take it easy.”

“Of course. Make yourself at home—and stay up as late as you want. We’re all grown-ups here!” He winked at me as though sharing a private joke and went off down the corridor whistling.

I turned accusingly to Milo. “I thought you said I looked older than my age.”

“Well, with makeup and those grey lenses, you did. But right now, you look about fifteen.”

I sighed. “Great. Now nobody’s going to take me seriously.”

“Did you want them to? I thought you were trying not to get noticed.”

“Only to hide from Deckard and the people he’s working for,” I said. “And you know how well that went.”

Milo gave me a sharp look. “He’s working for somebody? Who?”

Crap. I’d grown so comfortable with Milo, I’d forgotten how little of my history he actually knew. “It’s just a guess,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“It matters to me,” said Milo. “I like to know what’s going on.”

The reproach in his voice warned me that this was about a lot more than Deckard. “Milo, I wish I knew what to tell you. It’s just so complicated—”

“Yeah.” He spoke flatly. “You said that before. Look, I’m pretty tired, so…” He jerked a thumb toward the room he shared with Sebastian. “I’m going to call it a night.”

Unless you give me a reason not to, he didn’t say. But he might as well have.

“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile. “Go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow.”





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As soon as I’d finished unpacking I checked my e-mail on the observatory’s Wi-Fi, but Alison still hadn’t replied to the message I’d sent her. Maybe she needed more time to think about it, but I had a bad feeling my honesty had only made things worse.

I brushed aside the curtain and gazed out into the darkness—just in time to be dazzled by an enormous flash of lightning that silhouetted the pine trees and lit up the whole surface of the lake. The crash that followed was so loud it rattled the window. I grabbed my wash kit and retreated to the bathroom.

By the time I got back, the rain was pattering more softly and the thunder had subsided to an old man’s grumble in the distance. I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed, pulling the covers around me. But I wasn’t tired enough to sleep, and I couldn’t relax. My brain was too busy thinking about Alison and feeling guilty about lying to Milo and worrying about what would happen tomorrow.

I stretched and flopped in all directions, trying to get comfortable, until finally I couldn’t stand to lie in bed one second longer. I got up, pulled on a zippered sweatshirt, and walked out.

The dining room and kitchen were dark. But from the lounge beyond came the dim flicker of the TV, and the music and laughter of some late-night show. Wrapping the sweatshirt around me, I padded over—and there on the sofa, with long legs stretched out and the remote in hand, lay Sebastian.

“Hey, Dr. Ashton,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Did I wake you?” He swung his legs around, muting the volume as the show went to commercials. “Or are you regretting that afternoon nap?”

“Neither,” I said. “I’m tormented by a guilty conscience. So I thought I’d come and join the club.”

For six seconds Sebastian didn’t say anything. Then he replied in a neutral tone, “I see.”

I climbed into the armchair, pulling my knees up to my chest. “Tell me something,” I said. “When you sent Alison and me back home, were you planning to wait a few hours and then come through the relay after her? Was that why you stayed behind, to take advantage of the time difference?”

“I had no opportunity to take advantage of anything,” he replied, turning the remote over in his hands. “I knew time was moving faster for you than it was for us, but Mathis didn’t give me the chance to calculate how long it had been before he let me go. I think he enjoyed the thought of keeping me in suspense—a petty revenge, perhaps, but more to his taste than murder.”

I studied Sebastian’s averted face. He was a good liar, but he still had a few tells if you knew where to look. Right now, though, he just looked tired.

“So what are you going to do if the transceiver works?” I asked.

“You mean if it doesn’t work?”

“I mean what I said. Once the relay shuts down and you don’t have to worry about it driving Alison crazy, are you going to talk to her? Or are you going to go on pretending you don’t care?”

Sebastian switched off the TV and laid the remote gently on the table. “After all she’s suffered because of me, don’t you think she deserves better? Even if it was safe to go back to Sudbury, even if I could satisfy Deckard and settle the charges against me, it wouldn’t be right to take advantage of Alison that way. I should never have let myself get so close to her in the first place.”

Privately I agreed, but that horse had left the stable a long time ago and there was no calling it back now. “So you’re going to do what you think is best for her, whether she likes it or not?” I shook my head. “Sorry, but you’re not nearly old enough to be Alison’s dad. And if you say one more time that she’s too young and fragile to make her own decisions, I swear I will punch you in the face.”

“Why?” Sebastian asked. “You saw that e-mail. You know the state she’s in, and you know who’s to blame—”

“I’m as guilty as you are,” I interrupted. “Or more so. Because you’ve been out of her life for six months, but I could have been there for her, and I wasn’t. I told myself it would be easier to lie to everyone else if I didn’t keep reminding myself of the truth and that Alison needed to deal with things in her own way. So I shut her down, and then I abandoned her. Just like you did.”

“If that’s supposed to make me feel better,” began Sebastian, but I cut him off.

“This isn’t about you. The point is that Alison had every reason to doubt her own sanity, after what we put her through. But until Deckard came around and messed with her head and until she saw that ridiculous website about Meridian, she was doing okay. She’s been through a lot worse than this and survived, so…” I shifted myself into a cross-legged position, tucking my cold feet beneath my thighs. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t go and talk to her, once all this is over. Unless you’re afraid she’ll never forgive you.”

“I’m not afraid of that.”

No, he wasn’t. He was expecting it. I puffed out a frustrated breath. “Fine. Do what you want. But you still owe her an explanation, when all this is over.”

Sebastian raked a hand through his hair, silvery roots glimmering in the semidarkness. For several seconds he was quiet. Then he said, “Has she written back to you yet?”

He was trying to catch me off-guard, startle me into giving something away. But I was used to Sebastian’s party tricks, and I wasn’t surprised. “Not yet.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What do you think?” I asked. “I told her the truth. I told her she wasn’t crazy. I told her she was right about all of it, and Meridian was just a fairy tale you made up for Milo.” I paused to let that sink in, then went on more briskly, “Speaking of which, have you taken that website down yet? Because I know you didn’t expect Alison to find it, but I think it’s done enough damage already.”

“I deleted it as soon as I saw her e-mail,” said Sebastian. “I’d forgotten about Sanjay and his obsession with alien conspiracies. If I’d known he was still in touch … Anyway. It’s gone now.”

“Good.”

“But if we’re talking about the truth…” Sebastian leaned forward on his elbows, lacing his fingers together. “Have you told your parents yet? And what about Milo?”

The question was mild, but it set my teeth on edge. “My parents know as much as they need to know,” I said. “They know I’m not normal, and I never was. They know I had a chip in my arm when they adopted me, and they know I was abducted and experimented on at least once. You think I need to add anything to that? How would it help them to know that I’m—”

The word caught in my throat. I tried to force it out, but it wouldn’t budge. I shook my head and looked away.

“But they must have guessed at least some of the truth already,” said Sebastian. “The technology that went into making that chip—into making you—is beyond anything this world has to offer, top secret experimental laboratories or not. Your doctor would have told them that the first time he examined you.”

“Yes, of course,” I snapped. “But there’s a difference between ‘Your baby was abducted by aliens’ and ‘Your baby is an alien.’”

There, I’d said it. The thing I’d known, or at least dreaded, as long as I could remember—until last summer, when my suspicions had been horribly confirmed. The secret Dr. Gervais had come close to finding out, even if she didn’t realize it yet; the truth I couldn’t confess to anybody, even the people who loved me most.

Alison knew, but only because she’d put the pieces together on her own. If she’d waited for me to tell her without prompting … well, she’d still be waiting.

“I don’t know about that,” said Sebastian calmly. “Some people are quite fond of aliens, at least in theory. Dr. Newman, for instance.” He crossed his ankle up onto his left thigh and draped his arm over the back of the sofa, relaxed now that I was the one on the hot seat. “When I told him I’d spotted an anomalous object inside our solar system that might be an artificial wormhole and asked if he’d help me transmit a radio signal to those coordinates, he was positively delighted. He’s been an active member of SETI for years.”

That explained the warm welcome for “Dr. Ashton” and his two student assistants. “And let me guess,” I said, remembering the well-worn equipment I’d seen in the control building. “You offered to give him the transceiver as payment.”

“Well, one way or another, we’re not going to need it after tomorrow. So it may as well be put to good use, don’t you think?”

I rubbed my hands over my face, weariness creeping up on me. “I wonder if he’d be so eager to help,” I said, “if he knew we were trying to close the wormhole and make sure nothing comes through it ever again.”

“Yes. Well. Let’s not find out, shall we?”

To anybody else, those words would have been a warning. But there was no need to remind me to be cautious of people in authority, no matter how friendly and well-intentioned they might seem. Mathis, Deckard, Dr. Gervais … they all had their reasons for wanting to get their hands on me, their own excuses for ignoring every attempt I made to resist them. Because when it came down to it, they all believed their lives, their goals, and their opinions were more important than mine. Why should Dr. Newman be any different?

“When you took that chip out of my arm,” I said, rubbing the small scar above my elbow, “I thought I was safe. But I’m not, am I? Mathis could still send the relay after me if he knew where to look. And he still needs me back, if he’s going to finish his experiment.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Sebastian. “Which was why I had to leave you, once I’d made sure Milo wasn’t going to cause any problems. I wanted to keep the relay as far away from both you and Alison as possible, until I found a way to destroy it.”

No wonder he’d looked so appalled when he’d realized I’d been keeping the relay in my bedroom. “So how much time do we still have, in theory?” I asked. “Shouldn’t Mathis have made a move by now?”

“The problem is the time difference,” said Sebastian. “Remember what I told you and Alison before I sent you home—the wormhole is temporally unstable. Mathis could have started programming the relay to search for you the instant I was out of the way, but on this end of the portal it could be days or weeks before the command gets through.”

“Or hours,” I said flatly. “And here we are at the butt end of nowhere, and you’ve got the relay in your luggage. I sure hope this plan of yours works.”

Sebastian’s mouth curled wryly. “So do I.” He pushed himself to his feet and took a few steps, then paused and half turned. “Niki?”

I looked at him.

“I think you should tell Milo. Just in case.”

“In case of what?” I asked, but Sebastian was already gone.





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Tap-tap.

I lifted my head groggily from the pillow, willing my bleary eyes to focus. The clock read 5:07 n.M., and I let out a groan. “This had better be good.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Sebastian through the crack in the door, “but I’d say it’s at least necessary. I’ve got the key to the control building. And I think it’s time we installed that last component.”

Meaning the relay, of course. And much as I resented being woken up after only three hours’ sleep, I had to agree it was better to do the job when Dr. Newman and his staff weren’t around to ask questions.

“Okay, okay,” I mumbled. “I’m coming.”

I dragged on some clothes and ran a comb through my hair, and by the time I’d finished I was more alert, if not exactly thrilled about it. It felt unreal to be getting up while the sky was dark, especially this late in the spring. But as I followed Sebastian down the steps to the parking lot, an enthusiastic chorus of birdsong assured me that dawn wasn’t far away.

Milo was waiting by the truck, which shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. He was the only one of us who’d had a decent night’s sleep, for one thing, and he was used to getting up early. Though I still had to wonder why he’d made the effort … but maybe Sebastian had decided to bring him just for the look of the thing. Milo was supposed to be his assistant, after all.

So we piled in and drove to the antenna, and Sebastian opened up the control building. It was dark inside, but it didn’t take long to find the lights, and soon I’d unwrapped the transceiver and popped open the hidden slot for the relay.

Now for the scary part. I hadn’t touched the relay device in over three weeks—I hadn’t even got close. What if it recognized me and beamed me straight back to Mathis?

And yet if I didn’t take that risk, we’d never get anywhere. The transmitter part of the unit had more than enough power to send Sebastian’s message through the wormhole, but no receiver on Earth could detect what was happening on the other side. Monitoring the relay was our only way to tell if the plan had worked. If the relay powered down completely and its automatic defense systems went offline—then we’d know its communications link to the space station had been severed, and Mathis could no longer find us. But without that, we’d never know if we’d succeeded in closing the wormhole or not.

Time to stop waffling, then, and get the job done. I pulled out a pair of rubber gloves from my tool kit, snapped them on, and held out my hand to Sebastian.

“It’s been offline all this time,” Sebastian said, as he took the dull metal sphere out of its case and passed it to me. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

“Well,” I said as I eased the relay into its custom-built socket, “let’s hope you’re right.” Gingerly I pulled out the metal probe, poised it above the top aperture, and began pushing it inside—

Tick.

“What was that?” asked Milo. He sounded alarmed. I couldn’t blame him.

“It’s not going in,” I said distractedly, wiggling the probe around. It ought to reach right into the relay’s quicksilver core; it was certainly long enough. But something was blocking its path.

A defense mechanism, to prevent unauthorized tampering? But I’d tinkered with the relay before with no difficulties, so what had changed now? I pulled out the probe, gripped the top half of the device, and tried twisting it open. It wouldn’t budge.

Sebastian cleared his throat. “It wouldn’t let me open it either,” he said. “I suspect it’ll only respond to a technician.”

Milo looked surprised. “You don’t know? I thought you helped design this thing.”

“Before my time,” said Sebastian. “I know how to use it, but that’s all.”

I looked down at my gloved right hand. Did I dare? My pulse was beating fast in my throat, but I reminded myself that I’d touched the device bare-handed before. I peeled off the glove and lowered my fingertips tentatively to the relay’s surface. It warmed to my touch, as though in greeting.

Once again, I slid the probe through the top half of the casing, touched it to the core—and felt the faint tingle of connection. I’d done it. “Okay, Sebastian,” I said, backing off and wiping my damp palms on my jeans, “we’re good to go. Do you want to start up the transceiver and run some diagnostics now?”

“I can do that perfectly well on my own,” said Sebastian, swinging his laptop bag off his shoulder, “so there’s no reason to keep you. Why don’t you and Milo walk back to the bunkhouse, and I’ll see you at breakfast?”

I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was setting me up, probably hoping I’d take the advice he’d given me last night. Well, maybe it was for the best. Maybe it was time for me to stop keeping Milo at arm’s length, and let him in.





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By the time Milo and I reached the bunkhouse the sky had lightened to the pale grey-blue of Alison’s eyes, with a few white streaks of cloud along the horizon. The air was cool, and mist hung over the nearby lake.

“Too early for breakfast,” said Milo. “Let’s check out the beach.” He jogged down the trail to the weed-dotted sand, scooped up a flat pebble, and flicked it out across the shallows. It skipped—once, twice, three times—and sank with a soft bloop beneath the surface.

There was a pair of Muskoka chairs by the shore, their cracked and flaking seats beaded with rain. I wiped one dry with my sleeve and lowered myself into it.

“Tough night?” Milo asked, picking up another handful of stones.

“Could have been better,” I said. The morning was eerily quiet, our voices echoing in the stillness. From the other side of the lake came the lonely, warbling cry of a loon. “You?”

Milo sank three more pebbles one after another, then crunched up the beach and sat beside me. “Look,” he said. “Can we skip the small talk? I’m not blind, Niki. I can see how worried you are. Whatever we’re doing here, it’s a lot more serious than you’ve been letting on.”

My fingers tightened on the arms of the chair. I still wasn’t ready for this conversation. But it had to happen sometime, and I couldn’t put it off forever. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “It is.”

“I know there’s some weird connection between you and the relay,” Milo persisted, “and you didn’t build the transceiver just because Sebastian needed it. This is more about you than him, isn’t it? You’re the one that Deckard and the people at Meridian really want. They only chased Sebastian because they thought he could lead them to you.”

The treetops were glowing now, the mist over the lake swirling and lifting in tendrils as the sunlight burned it away. I nodded, not yet ready to speak.

“And I heard what you said to Barry about the transceiver—68 million kilometers.” He was watching me closely now, unsmiling and intent. “This computer you’re trying to shut down, the one that controls the relay—it isn’t in some underground laboratory, is it? It’s in space.”

I nodded again.

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?” Milo’s voice rose. “Did you think I wouldn’t help you? Did you think I’d be too scared to get involved if I knew how powerful Meridian really was?”

That was my cue to say it: There is no Meridian. To tell him about Dr. Gervais and Deckard on one hand and the wormhole and Mathis on the other, and to admit that everything I’d allowed him to believe about me was a lie.

But I couldn’t do it. Because the first and most important lesson my parents had drilled into me was that I should never tell anyone about the chip in my arm or my weird blood type or any of the other things that made me abnormal. I could talk to Sebastian and Alison about it, because they already knew—but when I opened my mouth to tell Milo, the words froze on my tongue. Especially that word, the one I couldn’t speak even to my parents.

Alien.

“No,” I blurted, hating the quaver in my voice and the way my eyes prickled when I said it. “Milo, you’ve been amazing, and I trust you as much as I trust anybody. I just didn’t—I wasn’t sure how to explain.” And once Sebastian had started spinning his fairy tale about Meridian, I couldn’t bring myself to contradict him. Especially once I’d seen how willing Milo was to believe it. “I figured that since you already knew I was in danger, the details weren’t important. Just that you knew there was a risk, and you were still willing to help.”

“Oh, yeah.” His tone was bitter. “I’ve been a super big help on this trip.” He smacked the arm of the chair and shoved himself back to his feet. “What am I doing here, anyway? Why did Sebastian ask me to come when it’s obvious I can’t make the slightest difference?”

It was a good question. At first I’d thought it was because Sebastian didn’t like the idea of being cooped up in a truck with me for eight hours while I nagged him about Alison. But I’d already apologized for that before we left, yet he’d texted Milo and asked him to join us anyway. “Because it would look weird if he showed up with only one assistant?” I guessed. “Especially if that assistant is female?”

“Great, so I’m here to keep Dr. Ashton from looking like a perv. Nice to know.” Milo scooped up a stick and flung it savagely into the lake. “But you’ve got to know there’s more to it than that.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he’s been pushing the two of us together since the beginning, that’s why. You should have seen the text messages he sent me the night after he ditched us at the café—about sticking close to you and making sure you had whatever you needed, and how he’d make it worth my while—”

“Are you trying to shock me?” I asked. “Am I supposed to feel horribly betrayed? Because if so, it’s not working. I’m not surprised Sebastian made you that offer. But I also know that’s not why you did it.”

“Are you sure?” His voice was flat, his face turned to the lake. “I told you I needed money for university. And I’m going to need it even more once my mom finds out I’m going to Laurentian, because I’m pretty sure she’s not going to pay for me to do the opposite of what she wants. You think you know all about me. But you’re not the only one who can pretend, Nicola.”

It was possible that there was something deeply twisted in my psyche, because the roughness in his voice and the shake in his clenched fists turned my insides to caramel. Except I wouldn’t have felt that way if I’d thought, even for a second, that Milo meant it. He wasn’t trying to hurt me; he didn’t think I cared enough about him to be hurt. He was trying to protect himself.

“I don’t know everything,” I said, “but I know this much. You didn’t hang around me for the money. You did it because you liked me and because you felt sorry for me and because you were curious about what was going on. And because you’re a fundamentally decent and honorable guy, even if you are pretty frustrated with me and Sebastian right now.”

“No kidding,” he said, but the acid had gone out of his tone. “All I want is a straight answer, and neither one of you seems to know what that is.”

I got up from the chair with difficulty—the seat was deep, and it hadn’t been built for short people. I walked behind Milo and slid my arms under his, hooking my hands up around his shoulders. Then I leaned my cheek against the warmth of his back and said quietly, “I’m sorry. You deserve a better pretend girlfriend than me.”

“I didn’t know we were still pretend-dating,” he said, trying to sound offhand. But I could feel his heartbeat quicken, and I knew I’d startled him.

“I don’t know how to be anything but pretend,” I replied, and it ached in me how true that really was. “But if I could be real, I’d be real for you.”

He turned slowly, looking down into my face. He didn’t kiss me, but I knew he wanted to. All I had to do was tilt my head up, raise my eyes to his, and it would happen. Mouth to mouth, skin on skin, an intimacy I might not even mind too much as long as he didn’t slobber like Brendan. It would make Milo feel good and me less like a failure. If I couldn’t give him the truth he deserved, at least I could give him this.

But I was tired of dishonesty, and kissing Milo now would be just another kind of manipulation. There was only one truth I could offer him right now, and I wasn’t even sure he’d appreciate it. I bowed my head against his chest and drew a shuddering breath.

“I’m so scared, Milo,” I whispered. “If the transceiver doesn’t work—”

“It’s okay,” he said, his arms tightening protectively around me. “I’m here. I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”

As if he could stop the relay from beaming me back to Mathis, if it came to that. How could anyone stop a device that could turn itself invisible, move under its own power, and disintegrate anything that got in its way?

But Milo meant well. And it felt good to have someone solid and normal and uncomplicated to lean on, if only for a little while. So I closed my eyes and let him hold me, and I didn’t say anything at all.





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We ate breakfast with Sebastian, Dr. Newman, and his staff—although Jacques was looking a little bleary and didn’t say much, probably because he was nursing a cold. There was a lot of talk about gravitational microlensing and radar ranging and what it would take to prove that Sebastian’s “anomalous object” was a wormhole, which made me glance uneasily at Milo. But he only looked blank for a moment before shrugging and reaching for another piece of toast.

“I knew Sebastian had talked them into helping him somehow,” he said, when I caught up with him in the corridor afterward. “If they’re happy to believe all that sci-fi stuff, I’m not going to argue with them. I could tell that guy Brian was skeptical, though.”

“Skeptical is fine,” I said. “I’m more worried about suspicious.”

“I don’t know why,” said Milo. “It’s not like you’re beaming a death ray into Siberia. You’re just sending a radio signal to switch off a computer on some satellite they probably don’t even know exists.”

Because it doesn’t, I thought. But there was no point trying to say so after my failed attempt at honesty this morning. So I just smiled and headed for my room.

As I opened up my laptop to check my e-mail, it struck me that that incident by the lake wasn’t the first time I’d been unable to go against my parents’ orders. I’d thought I was stronger than that—no, I knew I was stronger. Sure, I respected Mom and Dad, but that shouldn’t have stopped me from making my own decisions.

So what had stopped me in the hallway of the makerspace and kept me from confessing to Milo? It hadn’t felt like fear or even guilt: it was more like a mental block. As though outright disobedience to the rules I’d been raised with simply didn’t compute…

Then I spotted Alison’s message in my inbox, and the thought vanished from my mind. Did she hate me for leaving her at Deckard’s mercy? Was she angry that I’d known Sebastian was back and hadn’t told her? Holding my breath, I clicked the e-mail open. Thank you, it read. I can go on now. And yes, I forgive you.





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The rest of the morning and the afternoon that followed passed both quickly and not nearly fast enough. First, Dr. Newman gave us a tour of the radio antenna—including a chance to walk right out onto its uptilted dish, which made me feel like a mosquito in a birdbath. Then we went back to the control building, where Brian, Jacques, and I started hooking up the new transceiver.

Strictly speaking, it wouldn’t be my device that was sending the signal: that would be handled by the transmitter in the focus cabin of the antenna. Given a few extra hours, they could have winched the new transceiver up to replace it, but that would make it difficult or impossible for Sebastian to retrieve the relay on short notice. So he’d decided to route the signal through our unit to the observatory’s unit instead, which caused a bit of head-scratching once Dr. Newman and his staff realized what we were doing.

Jacques was too stuffed up and semiconscious to care about anything but getting the job done, but there was a brief clash of wills between me and Brian, who was just as possessive about his equipment as I was about mine. We argued for a while about cabling and signal loss, but once Brian realized I’d built the new transceiver myself and knew what I was talking about, we came to a grudging agreement.

Meanwhile, Sebastian and Dr. Newman murmured to each other about azimuth and elevation and all the other calculations involved in directing the antenna. Milo sat in the corner with his laptop looking studious, but he had one earbud in, and when I sneaked a glance over his shoulder, he was reading up on the NBA playoffs.

We’d packed lunches before we left the bunkhouse, and since it was a beautiful day everybody went outside to eat them. But I could barely swallow a single bite. I went back to the control building, opened up the transceiver, and double-checked every circuit board, every wire. I ran my own set of diagnostics, including the incoming and outgoing feeds from the relay—something I hadn’t dared to do when Brian was looking over my shoulder. Only when I was convinced that everything was in order did I back off and close it up again.

I’d dropped into a desk chair and was breathing into my hands, trying to get my nerves under control, when the others returned. Jacques wasn’t with them—they’d taken pity on his wretched state, Sebastian said, and sent him back to the bunkhouse. But there wasn’t much work left to do now anyway. Forty-five minutes later the radio telescope was in the correct position, the transceiver was online, and Sebastian’s so-called experiment was ready to go.

“One minute fifty seconds and counting,” he said, watching his computer screen. His fingers flashed over the keyboard, tapping out commands too quickly for me to read them. “Everyone ready?”

I got to my feet, moving closer to the console for a better view. I wanted to keep an eye on the spectrum analyzer, which would display our signal as it went out.

“One minute,” Sebastian announced. I rubbed my goose-pimpled arms and tried not to shiver. Milo came up behind me and put a hand on my back, reassuring.

I wanted this to work. I needed it to work. Not that my troubles would be over if it did—I still had Deckard and GeneSystem to deal with. But it would be a colossal weight off my mind not to have to worry about Mathis anymore. To know that I still had a chance of making a life for myself in this world, instead of being snatched away to another one.

“Thirty seconds.”

Milo’s arm circled my waist, drawing me against him. I covered his hand with mine as I mouthed the countdown, watching the seconds tick past one by one.

“Ten,” said Sebastian. “Nine. Eight. Seven.”

I could tell the drama was a little much for Brian, who glanced sourly at Sebastian as if to say, Are you kidding me? We’re not launching a spaceship here. But Dr. Newman looked delighted as a boy on Christmas morning, and his voice joined Sebastian’s on the final count:

“Three! Two! One … Mark!”

The spectrum analyzer spiked into peaks, and Brian yelped and snatched off his headset—this wasn’t the signal he’d been prepared for. A noisy burst of what sounded like static but was actually Sebastian’s quantum-encrypted transmission, rippling through the atmosphere and shooting out into the black emptiness of space. It softened to a hum, then faded away.

“You were expecting whale song?” asked Sebastian, as Brian shot him a glare. “My apologies.”

“Now what?” said Milo.

“We wait,” I told him and turned to Dr. Newman. “How long before the signal reaches the—uh—anomaly?”

“Just under five minutes,” he said. He was frowning at the readings, obviously puzzled by the signal Sebastian had sent. “Of course, it’ll take at least that much time again before we receive any kind of confirmation…”

Which made sense, because even the most powerful radio signal couldn’t travel faster than the speed of light. But the relay’s internal communication system was of a different order, and it shouldn’t take nearly that long to find out if our plan had worked or not…

Except that the wormhole, as Sebastian had reminded me, was temporally unstable. So there was no telling how long it would be before we got a response. Feeling queasy, I detached myself from Milo and went to the window, staring up at the antenna as though I could see the radio waves bouncing off its parabolic reflector. Probably Alison could. I wished she were here.

When I focused on the glass, I could see Dr. Newman’s faint reflection behind my left shoulder. He’d joined Brian by the spectrum analyzer, and the two of them were talking rapidly in low voices—no doubt trying to figure out what Sebastian was really up to. I was starting to have my doubts about whether we’d get away with this when Milo said quietly in my ear, “Look at Sebastian.”

I turned around slowly, so as not to attract attention, and looked. He was sitting with his back to us, the screen of his laptop gripped in both hands. Lines of data were scrolling down the left side of the screen, and the waveform in the right—the one that monitored the relay—was oscillating wildly. Yet I’d never seen Sebastian so rigid or so utterly still. And when he slapped the laptop closed, yanked out the network cable and stood up, the face behind his smile was white as a dead man’s.

“Excellent!” he said, too brightly. “I believe that’s all we need for the moment. Thanks so much for your help.” He seized Dr. Newman’s hand and pumped it, then dragged me and Milo forward to do likewise. “Niki, would you have a look around and make sure we haven’t left anything behind? Must dash—please excuse me—” And with that, he swung his laptop case over his shoulder and hurried out the door.

Milo and I looked at each other, and I could see my own apprehension mirrored in his face. Whatever Sebastian had just found out, it couldn’t be good. But there was no way to explain that to the observatory team. As far as their own readings were concerned, we couldn’t know yet whether the experiment had succeeded or failed.

I could have murdered Sebastian for running out on us like this, but I couldn’t afford to show it. Dr. Newman and Brian were suspicious enough already. All Milo and I could do was grab the relay and get out fast—and hope they didn’t stop us and demand an explanation.

“Dr. Ashton’s a little eccentric, you might have noticed,” I said to the two scientists with an apologetic smile. “And I think, uh, there might also be a little bladder issue when he gets excited. Please don’t take it personally.”

Milo made a strangled noise, but I pinched his arm and he turned it into a cough. He pulled out his earbuds and started packing up his laptop. As soon as the others were distracted, I dropped to a crouch next to the transceiver and popped the hidden panel open. I thrust the relay into the pocket of my sweatshirt, resisting the instinct to fling it away from me and run. Then I picked up my tool kit and stood up again with all the professional calm I could muster.

“Thank you again,” I said to Dr. Newman. “It’s been very educational. I hope the new transceiver will be an asset to your work.”

“Wait.” The older man started forward. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry!” I grabbed Milo’s arm. “Can’t explain now. Got to go. We’ll call you.”

Then I sprinted out the door and went after Sebastian.





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When Milo and I burst into the parking lot, Sebastian was in the truck with the engine running, and a look of furious concentration on his face. “Hey!” I shouted. “Wait!” But he wrenched the wheel around and sped off without looking back.

I stopped and stared after the truck’s plume of exhaust, unable to believe Sebastian had just ditched us. Then, angrily, I hefted my tool kit and started off in pursuit—but Milo stopped me.

“I know it’s not too heavy for you,” he said, reaching for the case. “But if I stuff it in my knapsack, we can run faster.”

Fair enough. I let him have the kit and we started off again, pelting down the road in Sebastian’s wake. Every now and then I glanced over my shoulder for signs of pursuit, but there were none. Probably Dr. Newman and Brian were too busy analyzing our data, trying to figure out what we knew that they didn’t.

Ten minutes later, breathless and sweaty, Milo and I reached the bunkhouse. Sebastian had stopped the truck by the edge of the parking lot, but he hadn’t gotten out. He’d shifted into the passenger seat and was hammering away at his laptop.

I slammed my fist against the window and yelled through the glass, “WHAT IS GOING ON?”

Sebastian flinched and set the computer aside. His eyes closed, as though he were praying for patience. Then he rolled down the window and said heavily, “I’m sorry, Niki. It didn’t work.”

Ice needled my stomach. “How do you know?” I demanded. “You got a signal through the relay? What was it?”

“Call it an error message,” he said. “Or a fail-safe. Either way, we’ve been locked out.”

I blew out my breath, slowly. Then I braced my arm along the top of the door and rested my forehead on it. “Does Mathis know?” I asked him.

Sebastian didn’t reply.

“He does, doesn’t he? You tried to hack into his system. He’s going to trace that signal back to the relay, and when he does, he’ll know—” Bile rose in my throat. I shoved myself away from the truck and whirled to run, but Milo flung out an arm and caught me.

“Hey,” he said, gripping my shoulders. “I told you, we’ll get through this together. There’s got to be another way to stop him from finding you.”

“You can’t stop him,” I said miserably. Even if the chip in my arm was gone, the relay still had my biodata on file. Eventually it would track me down, no matter how fast I ran or what obstacles I threw in its path. “Nobody can. We’ve lost, Milo.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Milo. Then he grabbed the front pocket of my sweatshirt and shook it, and the relay dropped out into his hand. I tried to snatch it back, but he held me off with one arm, raising the silver sphere high with the other.

“What are you—” Sebastian began and then in rising alarm, “No! Don’t—”

But Milo had already pushed me away and sprinted to the edge of the trees, where the blue lake glimmered between the branches. He leaned back with one leg raised, putting all his weight into it, and pitched the relay straight out over the water.

“There,” he said, as he came panting back to join us. “If this Mathis guy wants to dive for it, he can go ahead.”

I wanted to grab him and shake him until his bones rattled, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was my fault Milo didn’t understand what kind of technology he was dealing with. And he’d turned away too soon to notice what I had—the flashing silver dot arcing toward the surface of the lake, then stopping abruptly in midair and winking out. The relay had gone invisible, and there would be no finding it now.

Not until it found me.

“You fool,” said Sebastian in a low voice that was all the more terrifying for being so quiet. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”

“Really?” retorted Milo. “Then maybe you should explain it to me. Because as far as I could tell, the only good use for that relay was to help you send the signal to Mathis’s computer or satellite or whatever. And you just told us that didn’t work. So what’s the point of carrying the thing around anymore, when all it can do is hurt Niki?”

Sebastian started to argue, but I cut him off. “Let it go,” I said. “It’s done now. If it comes after me, then it comes.”

“But without being able to monitor it, we’ll have no way of knowing—”

“I said, leave it,” I snapped. “Who appointed you my Lord Protector, anyway? Because you’ve done a pretty crappy job of it so far. And I’m tired of being lectured and jerked around like this is all about you, when I’m the one with everything to lose.” I nudged Milo, none too gently. “Come on, let’s pack up. We’re going home.”





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As I stuffed clothes into my bag, I had an uneasy feeling that I’d pushed Sebastian too far. That when Milo and I got back outside, the truck would be gone. But when I came out of my room, Sebastian was waiting, his pack slung over his shoulder. He didn’t speak or look at me, just stood there with his eyes on his battered loafers until Milo rejoined us. Then we all headed out to the truck.

I took the back seat, not feeling up to sharing my personal space with anyone at the moment. Sebastian gave Milo a hard look as he got in, but all he did was push the CB toward him and say, “Same as last night. Channel 23, every kilo-meter,” before we drove off. As we sped toward the crossroads, I watched anxiously for the entrance gate, half expecting to find it shut and padlocked, and Dr. Newman waiting for us with folded arms. But the gate was wide open, and there were no other vehicles in sight.

The logging road was muddy from last night’s rain, ruts slick and potholes brimming. We wallowed and bumped along with what seemed to me agonizing slowness, until the observatory sign and its yellow flashing beacon were lost to view. Soon after that, a narrow metal-grille bridge carried us over a set of churning rapids, but memory warned me that it was the last solid piece of construction we’d be seeing for a long time.

Overnight the swamps had risen even closer to the road, in places even washing right over it. I could hear water hissing through our wheel wells as Sebastian drove, and a muddy trickle crept along the floor beneath my seat. Milo sounded hoarser every time he picked up the CB, and Sebastian was muttering words under his breath that I didn’t care to interpret. But nobody talked otherwise: we were all too focused on the road. It felt like decades in purgatory before we reached the gate out of the park and another six months until we left the gravel road behind and lurched onto paved highway again.

“Made it,” I breathed, as the truck’s laboring engine settled back into a steady roar. I hadn’t thought either of the boys in the front seat would hear me, but Milo turned to look at me, his mouth set.

“All right,” he said. “Explain to me what’s going on with the relay,” and then in true Canadian fashion he added, “Please.”

“I … I don’t know how,” I said. “Sebastian—”

“Pull yourself together, Niki,” said Sebastian, not taking his eyes off the road. “He’s your boyfriend, not mine. Time to tell the truth for a change and see where it gets you.”

As though I hadn’t tried this morning to do exactly that, and failed. I had never hated Sebastian more than I did at that moment. But I sat up straighter and forced myself to try again.

“You were wrong about the wormhole,” I said stiffly to Milo, wondering how much of the story I’d be able to get through before my tongue seized up on me. “It’s real. Artificially generated and kept open by a steady influx of exotic matter from a machine on the other side. That’s why we needed the transceiver to send a signal to those coordinates. To shut off the wormhole stabilizer.”

“And we needed to do this,” prompted Sebastian, “because…?”

“If the wormhole closes,” I stammered, “the relay won’t be able to beam anything to or from Mathis’s lab anymore. Because its sister relay and the computer that controls them both will be too far apart to communicate. And Sebastian, you’re going to have to tell him the rest, because I can’t.”

Sebastian slanted a look at me in the rearview mirror, and I could see he was skeptical. But he said, “If you insist. What else do you want to know, Milo?”

“So if the wormhole is the shortcut from Point A to Point B,” said Milo slowly, “then how far away is Point B?”

“There’s no way to be certain,” said Sebastian. “But at the best estimate, I’d say the two ends of the wormhole are at least a hundred light-years apart.”

“Light-years—” Milo spluttered. “You can’t be serious. How is that even—” He waved his hands in a vague, incoherent gesture. “You said the relay came from Meridian! I thought they were the ones who wanted Niki! Are you trying to tell me—”

“There is no Meridian!”

I hadn’t meant to say it so loudly, much less yell it. But I couldn’t bear to let this charade go on. I put my hands over my face and went on hollowly, “Sebastian made them up. And I went along with it. I lied to you. I’m sorry.”

“Then…” Milo looked angry and more than a little nauseated. He turned on Sebastian. “That article on the website. You wrote that?”

Ahead of us the road sloped into a long descending curve, with a towering rock face on one side and a sheer ten-meter drop on the other. A lake lay at the bottom, dark blue and apparently inviting, but there were no boats on its surface, no cottages on its shores. No signs of life at all.

Just like Sebastian’s eyes, watching mine in the mirror. Did he want me to hate him? I was beginning to wonder.

“Yes,” I said. “He did. He created the whole website, just for you.”

“Why?” asked Milo, hushed, and Sebastian answered, “Because Niki needed someone to look out for her, and I needed to give you a story you could believe. At least until you were ready to hear the truth.”

“What truth?” Milo spun around to me. “Niki, what is going on?”

If I didn’t get the words out now, I never would. “I’m not—” I croaked. “I’m—” In desperation I tried to say adopted, but that was just as impossible. “I’m an—”

“Tell him,” said Sebastian, low and firm. As though he had the right to give me an order. Or maybe he just wanted to make me so furious that I’d blurt out the truth without thinking about it at all.

Either way, it worked. “Alien!” I spat out and slumped back into my seat.

Milo froze. “What?”

“She is,” said Sebastian, “as I am, a visitor from the other side of that wormhole.” He paused, then added more briskly, “Though I came here the first time of my own free will, being young and stupid enough to think beaming myself to an unknown planet was a splendid idea. Whereas Niki was sent here as a baby by my old lab partner Mathis, who considered himself well rid of me and wanted someone more cooperative to experiment on. Does that answer your question?”

Milo took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he gave a crackling laugh. “Well. That explains a lot.”

“I’m sorry,” I began, but he cut me off.

“Don’t.” He closed his eyes briefly, as though I’d given him a headache. Then he slid his glasses back on and looked at me. “Do you know what Deckard told me, when I accused him of being your stalker?”

I shook my head.

“He told me you were a pathological liar. He told me your parents were con artists who had made their money by manipulating people and that your family had Mafia connections. He told me you were good at making people like me feel sorry for you but that everything about you was fake. And he said I shouldn’t get too attached to you, because you were the kind of person who’d abandon her friends in a second to save her own skin.”

It was like looking at the truth through warped glass. But maybe that was how Deckard saw it. Maybe that was how Lara and Brendan and the others I’d left behind saw it too. I wanted to tell Milo that it wasn’t like that, but why should he believe me? Why should he believe anything I said to him now?

“There’s another thing you should know,” Milo went on. “You know when Deckard got your cell number from Jon? It wasn’t when he came into the store on Friday night and questioned everybody. He got it the next day, when Jon called him. Because Jon’s aunt owns the Cakery, and he was working in the back when you and I came in together. So that was when he realized you’d been using him all along. Just like Deckard said.”

The words wouldn’t have stung so much if they hadn’t been true. “How do you know that?” I asked. “Why would Jon tell you about—”

“He didn’t. But when I got into work on Saturday, he grabbed me and said, ‘Tell your girlfriend I hope she had fun making a fool out of me.’ Once I remembered who his aunt was, it wasn’t hard to do the math.”

Sebastian was so quiet that he might have been invisible. This wasn’t about him anymore, if it ever had been. This was between Milo and me.

“Alien, you say.” Milo let out another humorless laugh. “I guess that explains the asexual thing? Don’t want to get too close to the humans. Might get some kind of disease.”

Sebastian’s brows went up, and his eyes flicked questioningly to mine. Asexual?

“No,” I said. “It has nothing to do with that. Milo—”

“Don’t,” he told me again. “I don’t want to hear any more of what you think is the truth. I don’t want to hear it even if it is the truth.” He turned away and added quietly, “I just can’t believe you’ve been lying to me all this time. I thought you were better than that.”

Anger surged inside me. “Oh, yeah? Well, I guess it’s easy for you to judge, seeing as you’re such an expert on being honest with the people you care about. When were you planning to tell your mom your plans for September again?”

I waited, but Milo didn’t speak. He just sat there with his back to me, shoulders stiff and his head unnaturally straight. Then he screwed his earbuds in and turned up his music so loud I could make out the lyrics from the back seat.

I knew, then, that I’d lost him.





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By the time we reached the gas station half an hour later, the silence had become toxic. Sebastian pulled up in front of the pumps and got out without saying a word. Milo disappeared around the side of the building, presumably looking for the washroom. I climbed the wooden steps to the convenience store and looked for something to fill the aching hole inside me, but the thought of putting anything sugary, salty, or chemically enhanced in my mouth made me sick. I wandered through the aisles, staring blindly at one shelf after another, until Sebastian came up behind me and said, “Never mind. We’ll get something to eat in North Bay.”

He pulled two water bottles from the fridge and went off to pay the cashier. I took out my phone and looked at it. There was reception here, so I could call my parents if I wanted. But I didn’t have the heart to talk to them right now. I felt as though a single word of rebuke or kindness would break me.

So I texted:

–Heading home. See you around 11. Love you.





Then I shut off the phone.

When I followed Sebastian outside, the truck was parked by the edge of the road, with the tank filled and the cab empty. The tarp that had covered our baggage was loose, one corner flapping in the breeze, and Milo’s pack was gone.

“Where is he?” I asked, whirling to look for him—but Sebastian put a hand on my shoulder.

“He’s not coming with us,” he said.

“But—”

“I know. But he can find his own way home from here, and maybe it’s for the best.” Sebastian sighed. “Though I’d hoped this would turn out differently.”

So had I. I’d hoped that Milo would understand why I’d lied to him, that he’d give me a second chance. But he’d reacted just the way I feared my parents would, if I ever told them. Shock, disappointment and, finally, rejection. I pressed my fingertips against my eyes, warding off the sting of tears. Then I opened the door to the truck’s front seat and climbed in.

“All right then,” I said in a cool, brittle voice that hardly seemed my own. “Alien road trip it is. Let’s go.”





1 1 1 1 1 0



We stopped only once after that, for coffee and sandwiches. Sebastian drove fast and decisively, as though he were as impatient to get home as I was—except, I reminded myself, he didn’t really have a home. And the closest thing he had to a family, on this planet anyway, was me.

Not that we were blood relatives, or at least I hoped not. We certainly looked nothing alike. But then, I had no idea who my biological parents were, except that one of them had been a technician. Or so Faraday thought. But what did that mean?

“Just what it sounds like,” said Sebastian, when I asked him. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the eighteen-wheeler lumbering up behind us wasn’t too close, and merged into the fast lane. We were on the 400 now, heading south toward Toronto, and the traffic was flowing smoothly: with luck I’d be home in under two hours. “Technicians are bred to excel at building and repairing equipment. When a scientist or some other senior member of the Meritocracy requires a particular piece of machinery, the engineers design it and the technicians make it to their specifications.”

Like I’d done for Sebastian, with the transceiver. “What if they decide to build it differently?” I asked. “Or get their own ideas about how to make it run better?”

“That doesn’t happen,” said Sebastian. “Or if it ever has, the Meritocracy made sure to quash the story—and probably the technicians involved—before anyone else found out. Technicians aren’t bred for initiative. They’re bred for dedication, endurance, and doglike obedience to their superiors. When there’s a crisis, you can always tell who the technicians are, because they’re the ones running toward the danger instead of away from it.”

That description wasn’t entirely me, thank God. But even so, parts of it hit uncomfortably close to home. “Doglike obedience,” I echoed, making a face. “What a lovely way to describe it. Is that how my birth mother ended up pregnant? Because some engineer slapped his thigh and whistled, and she came running?”

“Possibly,” said Sebastian. “But it could have been your mother who was the engineer, and it’s also possible that your biological parents’ affair was mutual. I don’t mean that technicians have no will or initiative of their own. Only that they find it difficult to disobey a direct order.”

One simple phrase, so casually spoken—and yet it hit me with the force of a bullet. No wonder I’d worked so hard to please my parents and do whatever they told me. No wonder I’d needed Milo to carry me into the makerspace that first time and choked up when I’d tried to tell him my secret. I had enough engineer in me to disagree with my parents and even argue with them at times, but when it came down to it I was still a good little technician inside.

And Sebastian was a scientist, which meant he outranked me. Was that why I’d gone along with his plan so readily? I’d grumbled at him and acted like I was doing him a favor, all the while telling myself I was building the transceiver for my own sake rather than his. But deep down I’d suspected—no, I’d known—that his idea wasn’t going to work. Yet I hadn’t tried to come up with an alternative.

Was any part of myself my own? Or was I just dancing to the tune of my manipulated DNA , and all the so-called choices I’d made in my life were an illusion?

“Tori?” said Sebastian. “Are you all right?”

As though he cared. As though it mattered, now. I thought about Milo, hitchhiking home from the middle of nowhere because he couldn’t stand to be with me one minute longer. I thought about my parents, waiting anxiously for a daughter who was so much more than they’d expected and so much less than they deserved. And when I thought of telling them about the relay, I wanted to fling the door open and hurl myself into the oncoming traffic.

But I had to tell them something. Rightly or wrongly, they cared about me. And if I vanished again without warning or explanation, it would kill them.

“The relay,” I said to Sebastian. “Do you think it followed us, after we left the observatory? Could it catch up to us now?”

Sebastian shifted restlessly, flexing his back and shoulders. “Well, it doesn’t have to follow the road, so it can move faster and more directly than we can. But its scanning range isn’t great enough to detect you at more than twenty kilometers’ distance, which could slow it down considerably.” He checked the rearview mirror and changed lanes again. “On the other hand, it did go into stealth mode after Milo threw it away. So it could be hiding anywhere right now. The back of the truck, for instance.”

The idea made me shudder, but it only took me a second to dismiss it. Mathis wanted to locate me and beam me back to his lab as soon as possible. So if the relay was following me that closely, I’d be gone already…

But I wasn’t.

Hope kindled inside me. Without a quicksilver chip in my arm telling the relay where to find me, it would have to scan in every direction to pick up my trail—and that would take time. Enough time, perhaps, that I could come up with a new and better way to protect myself. My own plan and no one else’s, a plan that would actually work. I took a sip of my tepid coffee and felt the knot in my stomach loosen a little.

Sebastian hadn’t relaxed, though. If anything he seemed to be getting more uptight with every kilometer. His hands were knotted around the steering wheel, and he kept hunching his shoulders as though they hurt him.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked.

“You have your license?”

“Not yet, but I know what I’m doing. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Sebastian’s mouth twitched. “Thank you. But I’ll be fine.”

And now he looked even more unhappy than before. Was it the shame of having his plan to stop Mathis fall to pieces? The disappointment of losing Milo? Fear for Alison’s safety, now that the relay was out of his control?

Or was there something else on his mind that I didn’t know about?

“Come on, Faraday,” I said. “I know we’re not exactly best friends, but I’m willing to call a truce if you are. What’s going on?”

I made my voice gentle, even put a hand on his shoulder, but it didn’t help. Sebastian flinched away from my touch as though I’d stung him. “Stop that.”

So my charms were as wasted on him as his were on me. Well, nobody could say I hadn’t tried. I sat back, folding my arms, and we drove the rest of the way home in cold silence.





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I’d thought Sebastian was going to drop me off at my house. But when we reached the corner of Ross Street he turned the opposite way, into the graveyard. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I think it’ll be better to let you off here. For discretion’s sake.” He drove slowly up the cemetery lane and braked under a spreading maple, then jumped out, leaving the engine running. I was opening the passenger door to get out when he came around the back of the truck to meet me, carrying my bag.

I took it, ignoring the hand he offered, and climbed down onto the pavement. My legs felt weak from sitting so long, and I flexed them to get the circulation working. “It’s been a trip,” I said dryly. “Thanks.”

Sebastian stood still, looking down at me. In the moonlight his face looked grey, and his eyes were tired and sad. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never wanted it to end this way.” And he held his hand out for me to shake.

I sighed. Swinging the duffel bag to my left hand, I reached out with my right—

And Sebastian’s fingers clamped around my wrist like a manacle. Before I could even cry out, he whipped his left hand out of his pocket and slapped something onto the inside of my forearm.

There was no pain. Only a millisecond of cold numbness, and the electric buzz of terror as I realized what it meant. I yanked my hand from Sebastian’s and turned it over—to see the last shining drop of quicksilver, tiny as a pinhead, vanish under the surface of my skin.

I screamed, clawing at my arm in a desperate attempt to dig the stuff out. But my nails were too short, and it was too late. I could feel the liquid metal squirming into its preprogrammed shape, tendrils branching off in every direction as it tapped into nerves and muscles, arteries and veins. Learning my body’s secrets, so it could transmit that information back to the relay—and to Mathis.

My knees buckled, and I crashed to the pavement. I hunched beneath the maple, sobbing and clutching my right hand to my chest. There was a chip inside me and the relay knew where I was and there was nothing I could do to protect myself now, nowhere in the world where I would be safe—

“I don’t know how much time you have left,” said Sebastian, so quietly I could barely hear him. “I hope it’s enough. Good-bye, Tori.”

Then he climbed back into his truck and drove away.





INTERLUDE: Deterministic Jitter



(A slight movement of a transmission signal in time or phase that can cause errors and loss of synchronization, and is reproducible under controlled conditions )





(3.1)



“So that’s it?” I asked in disbelief, as Sebastian turned off the quantum impulse generator, and its low throb of power died down. “We’re just giving up?”

We were standing in the main control room of the spacelab, where Sebastian, Alison, and I had first met Mathis nearly five hours ago. Only it was just Sebastian and me at the moment, because Alison was resting in another room, and we’d locked Mathis up in his quarters so he couldn’t interfere with our attempt to escape.

An attempt which had, apparently, failed.

Sebastian braced his hands on the console and bowed his head as though it was too heavy for him. “You built that generator perfectly, Tori,” he said. “Thanks to you, we can open a wormhole again. The problem is, there’s no way to tell whether it’s the right wormhole to get you home. I thought I could compensate for the loss of the long-range sensors, but…” His shoulders slumped. “It’s not going to work. I’m sorry.”

A laugh broke out of me, so sharp it hurt my throat. “Sorry? You think that’s going to make me feel better about being stuck here for the rest of my life?”

“No.” Sebastian’s long face was sober. “But right now, it’s the only thing I can give you.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore. Swiping angrily at my eyes, I spun around and walked to the center of the room. Above me the domed viewscreen displayed a dazzling view of the stars, clearer and brighter than I’d ever seen them on Earth, but all the constellations were unfamiliar. Maybe I’d get used to that eventually, but I didn’t want to.

I wanted to go home.

“I should talk to Alison,” Sebastian murmured, sounding almost as lost as I felt. Then he walked out.

I sank onto one of the benches, numb to the core. I knew Sebastian was right about the long-range sensors, but part of me still couldn’t believe it was over. I’d worked so hard to build that wormhole generator, reaching deep into myself to draw on instincts I’d barely known I had, and when it was done, I’d felt like a technological goddess. But it had all been for nothing in the end.

I stared at the floor for a few seconds, and then I got up again. I’d already had more than my share of emotional outbursts today, and I didn’t have enough energy left for another one. I walked back to the console where Sebastian had been working, and looked at the cluster of touch panels and windows he’d left behind.

Most of the readouts were impossible for me to decipher, since they were in whatever language people spoke here. But in the top left-hand corner were a couple of tiny, colorful rectangles with moving shapes inside them. I touched the closest one and dragged it, and it expanded to show me a view of the room where Alison had been resting. She wasn’t lying down now, though. She was sitting up, leaning against Sebastian as he sat on the bed beside her and told her the bad news.

I touched the window again and gave it a flick upward, splashing it onto the viewscreen in front of me. It expanded to fill the whole panel. Now the two of them looked almost as big as I was, the picture so clear and lifelike that I felt like I could have reached right into it and tapped Sebastian’s shoulder or brushed back the tangled strands of Alison’s hair. But if they knew I was watching, they gave no sign of it.

“… Even if we could rig up a replacement,” Sebastian was saying, his arm around Alison’s waist, “it would take days to calibrate. Days we don’t have. I’m sorry.”

Alison didn’t say anything. She just gazed at the wall until Sebastian said again, “I’m sorry,” and then she turned to him and hid her face against his chest.

Well, at least Sebastian had been straight with her, painful as the news must have been for her to hear. But then, she had told me that he’d never lied to her yet—though how he’d managed to pull that one off I couldn’t imagine…

And now he was kissing Alison, and she was kissing him back. Not a gentle let-me-comfort-you kiss, either. It was the kind of kiss that looked like it was going to end up horizontal, and Sebastian didn’t seem to have any reservations about going there.

So obviously my apathy toward sex wasn’t an Alien Thing, any more than it had been a Chip-in-the-Arm thing. It was just me.

Well, if making out made Sebastian and Alison feel better, I wasn’t going to interrupt. But the idea of watching it happen was a definite Do Not Want. I swiped the image back down onto the console and squeezed it as small as it would go. Then I pulled the second window on top of it and opened that one up instead.

Mathis was sitting on the sofa in his quarters, dabbing dried blood from his nose. He looked disheveled and slightly dazed, as though the sedative had only just worn off. “Serves you right,” I said aloud, knowing he couldn’t hear—

But as I spoke, he looked around. Apparently he could. And when he touched something on the arm of the sofa and his eyes focused on mine, I realized he could see me too.

My heart rate jumped twenty beats a minute, but I told myself it didn’t matter. Mathis and I had changed places: now he was the prisoner, while I was the one in control. “Sleep well?” I asked tartly.

Mathis stood up, smoothing back his brassy hair and tugging his crumpled tunic back into place. “Astin. Where is he?”

“He’s busy,” I said. “And even if he wasn’t, I don’t think he has anything to say to you at the moment. I, on the other hand, have plenty.” I leaned closer, hoping to intimidate him. “What were you planning to do with me, before Sebastian stopped you?”

“If you thought he’d really stopped me, little girl,” said Mathis, walking forward until his head and shoulders filled the screen, “you wouldn’t need to ask.”

Little girl. That was a laugh, coming from someone who looked a lot closer to my age than he did to Sebastian’s. Just a junior scientist with big ambitions, so desperate to make a name for himself that he’d been willing to torture a baby and beam her through a wormhole to get the results he wanted. And so scared of competition, apparently, that he’d faked a relay malfunction and left Sebastian stranded on Earth for fifteen years.

“I’m asking,” I told him, “because we outnumber you three to one. And if I were you, I’d be rethinking my original plans and trying to negotiate.”

Mathis twitched a half-smile. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Because if you were me, you’d remember that before long the military will be arriving to take over this station. And if I’m not there to greet their commander and speak up for you and Astin and the Earth girl, you’ll be identified as rebel intruders and shot on sight.”

With sinking dread, I realized he had a point. I hadn’t thought of that. But I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“Sebastian can speak for himself,” I said. “If he was such a brilliant student, I’m sure at least some of your fellow scientists remember his name. And after what you did to him, maybe you should be more worried about whether he’ll speak up for you.”

Mathis laughed. “You’re a clever one,” he said, but in the same superior tone as a trainer might say good dog. I clenched my fists behind my back, resisting the urge to reach through the screen and throttle him.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said.

“That’s because I don’t know all the details myself. My intent was to keep you in isolation until the shuttle arrived, then take you back to the planet and turn you over to the senior scientists. What happens to you after that…” He tipped his head to one side in a shrug-like gesture. “They may decide to question you and keep you for further study. They may want to do their own experiments on you—to see how you react to certain bacteria and toxins unique to our world, for instance.”

I had a sudden, vivid image of being trapped in a glass cylinder, choking and clawing at my throat as green fumes swirled around me. Of being naked and bound to a table, writhing as red welts and blisters erupted all over my skin. And as I screamed for mercy, men and women in neat grey uniforms watched me from a professional distance and took notes.

“At the least,” Mathis went on blithely, “they’ll take blood and tissue samples for further study. Likely they’ll do a full brain probe and some stimulus tests as well.”

I’d thought talking to Mathis might make him reconsider his attitude toward me, especially now that he’d had a literal taste of his own medicine. I’d hoped that my first impression of him had been wrong and that somewhere behind that smug facade he still had some sense of compassion, or at least shame.

But nothing had changed. In Mathis’s eyes, I was only a worthless half-breed slave, a piece of biological rubbish he’d picked up cheap and had every right to use as he pleased. And now I realized, with sick certainty, that his fellow scientists felt the same way.

“And after that?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Oh,” said Mathis, “if you’re still alive by then, we’ll probably terminate you.”