A Million Worlds with You
Page 80
He’s dead. Paul is dead.
My first thought is to rush the guard again, to make him kill me, too. I want to be dead, to be with Paul, not to feel my heart ripping into a thousand pieces.
Memory takes me back to Russia, to a battlefield of snow and blood, to the side of a cot where Lieutenant Markov lay dying. I imagine his face as he whispered his final words: Every Marguerite.
Every Paul, I think as I get my hands under me and prepare to hurl myself at the guard. Every world gives us a chance. I wish I hadn’t blown ours. I wish we’d been able to create a world.
Then the wall caves in.
As the guard skitters backward from the tumbling plaster, I see the flying car that just smashed through the bricks. It’s dented and scratched, one window busted out, but it’s still operational—and behind the wheel is Theo. He shouts, “Get in!”
I hesitate for only one instant before the memory of my mission wins over my grief. Once I dash for the car, Theo swings open the door—and no sooner has my butt hit the seat than he guns it in reverse. Only grabbing the seat belt keeps me from tumbling out the still-open door to the ground that’s now rapidly getting much farther away.
“What happened to Paul?” Theo revs the motor as I tug the door shut, then banks hard, sending us zooming upward through a canyon of high-rise buildings.
I choke back a sob. “He’s dead.”
Theo swears under his breath. “Yours or mine?”
“Both, I think.” As badly as I want to think my Paul was able to use his Firebird and get away, I don’t see how he could’ve had the chance. Roughly I wipe at my cheeks, forcing away the tears. I don’t deserve the release. “I never should’ve come here.”
His voice shakes even as he tries to talk tough. “Triad was after us long before you showed up. We knew how it could go.” That’s as close to absolution as Theo can give me.
The resistance members weren’t the only ones I endangered. “Wait. Where’s Romola?”
“The Romola you showed up with?” Theo executes a hairpin turn that sends us careening through a narrow, crooked alleyway. “She went back to her home universe, which is exactly what she should’ve done. This world’s Romola? She’s back with the guards, probably bitching about how I stole her car. Let’s dent this sucker up, huh? Pay her back for what happened to Paul.”
The next five minutes are more like being trapped in some kind of video game than anything resembling real life. It would terrify me if I weren’t crushed by grief. Theo zigzags through the densely packed city as if it were a maze he’d run a thousand times before. Once he even steers the car almost completely vertical, vaulting into the air like a rocket blasting into orbit. But he can’t shake the guards pursuing us.
They’re going to catch us, and if they were willing to kill Paul, they’ll kill Theo, too. My hands can’t bear any more blood.
“I can’t let this happen.” I try to catch Theo’s eyes. “I can’t let you pay the price for this.”
Theo simply accelerates. “C’mon. You ought to know by now that I can handle a car in any dimension.”
I remember the wreckage after the fatal crash in Quito, the way it felt to shut Theo’s eyes for him. “That doesn’t mean you always make it out alive.”
He doesn’t reply, but he does slow down. Slightly. “I’ve got this, okay? Just hang on.”
We soar out into a broader traffic way. Now that it’s dawn, more people are out and about, which means other flying cars swoop and swerve around us. Theo swiftly steers us out of the main drag, just over a long building that’s several dozen stories shorter than average. How far are we above it? Not even ten feet. Probably that’s Theo’s idea of “lying low.”
I see it as an opportunity.
“Good luck, Theo,” I say, and I grab the door handle.
“Marguerite—no—”
His voice falls away as I leap from the car. For one split second, there’s nothing but rushing air, but I remember to tuck and roll. That doesn’t keep it from hurting like hell when I land on the roof, but as I tumble over and over, I remain conscious. Skin is scraped from my arms, and pain tells me where the bruises will be, but my bones don’t crack.
But I lie there, motionless, even as the guards’ vehicles hover around me to take me into custody. I’m too devastated even to cry. Instead I wonder why I’m not dead. Why our hearts don’t stop beating the moment they’re broken. It feels like my soul has already left me, and my body is just this weight I’ll have to carry forever.
Maybe he got away, I try to tell myself as I walk numbly through the corridors of Triad, my wrists held together with binders, a guard at either shoulder. Paul did reach for his Firebird. He could’ve jumped out. Maybe.
But I can’t make myself believe it.
I’m led into an area of Triad headquarters I haven’t seen before—their labs, I’m guessing. The narrow black-panel computer terminals I’ve glimpsed elsewhere are now enormous panels that nearly cover the walls; their calculations show in faint display of color that shine briefly, then fade, as they continue the long work of determining which dimensions have to die. This complex exceeds our power and sophistication by so great a degree that I can’t believe we ever thought we stood a chance. They haven’t even bothered taking away my Firebird. That’s how little a threat I’ve ever been to them.
Wyatt Conley isn’t anywhere around, which is a small mercy. But my parents wait here, standing near a long, glass-walled chamber in the very center of the lab, as if it were the altar in this cathedral of death. Their expressions remain sorrowful but fond—as if they were about to ground me.
“Sweetheart,” my mother says. “I’m sorry this has been so difficult.”
They still refuse to acknowledge the truth of what they’re doing. “You killed other versions of me. You killed an entire universe. That goes slightly beyond ‘difficult.’”
Dad shrugs. “Who said it would be easy to raise someone from the dead?”
“What makes you think you can?” Before they start in with their explanations, I gesture as best I can at my Firebird. “You tore my Paul into four pieces. You splintered his soul. And after that he had to fight as hard as he could to stay in control, maybe even just to stay sane.”
My first thought is to rush the guard again, to make him kill me, too. I want to be dead, to be with Paul, not to feel my heart ripping into a thousand pieces.
Memory takes me back to Russia, to a battlefield of snow and blood, to the side of a cot where Lieutenant Markov lay dying. I imagine his face as he whispered his final words: Every Marguerite.
Every Paul, I think as I get my hands under me and prepare to hurl myself at the guard. Every world gives us a chance. I wish I hadn’t blown ours. I wish we’d been able to create a world.
Then the wall caves in.
As the guard skitters backward from the tumbling plaster, I see the flying car that just smashed through the bricks. It’s dented and scratched, one window busted out, but it’s still operational—and behind the wheel is Theo. He shouts, “Get in!”
I hesitate for only one instant before the memory of my mission wins over my grief. Once I dash for the car, Theo swings open the door—and no sooner has my butt hit the seat than he guns it in reverse. Only grabbing the seat belt keeps me from tumbling out the still-open door to the ground that’s now rapidly getting much farther away.
“What happened to Paul?” Theo revs the motor as I tug the door shut, then banks hard, sending us zooming upward through a canyon of high-rise buildings.
I choke back a sob. “He’s dead.”
Theo swears under his breath. “Yours or mine?”
“Both, I think.” As badly as I want to think my Paul was able to use his Firebird and get away, I don’t see how he could’ve had the chance. Roughly I wipe at my cheeks, forcing away the tears. I don’t deserve the release. “I never should’ve come here.”
His voice shakes even as he tries to talk tough. “Triad was after us long before you showed up. We knew how it could go.” That’s as close to absolution as Theo can give me.
The resistance members weren’t the only ones I endangered. “Wait. Where’s Romola?”
“The Romola you showed up with?” Theo executes a hairpin turn that sends us careening through a narrow, crooked alleyway. “She went back to her home universe, which is exactly what she should’ve done. This world’s Romola? She’s back with the guards, probably bitching about how I stole her car. Let’s dent this sucker up, huh? Pay her back for what happened to Paul.”
The next five minutes are more like being trapped in some kind of video game than anything resembling real life. It would terrify me if I weren’t crushed by grief. Theo zigzags through the densely packed city as if it were a maze he’d run a thousand times before. Once he even steers the car almost completely vertical, vaulting into the air like a rocket blasting into orbit. But he can’t shake the guards pursuing us.
They’re going to catch us, and if they were willing to kill Paul, they’ll kill Theo, too. My hands can’t bear any more blood.
“I can’t let this happen.” I try to catch Theo’s eyes. “I can’t let you pay the price for this.”
Theo simply accelerates. “C’mon. You ought to know by now that I can handle a car in any dimension.”
I remember the wreckage after the fatal crash in Quito, the way it felt to shut Theo’s eyes for him. “That doesn’t mean you always make it out alive.”
He doesn’t reply, but he does slow down. Slightly. “I’ve got this, okay? Just hang on.”
We soar out into a broader traffic way. Now that it’s dawn, more people are out and about, which means other flying cars swoop and swerve around us. Theo swiftly steers us out of the main drag, just over a long building that’s several dozen stories shorter than average. How far are we above it? Not even ten feet. Probably that’s Theo’s idea of “lying low.”
I see it as an opportunity.
“Good luck, Theo,” I say, and I grab the door handle.
“Marguerite—no—”
His voice falls away as I leap from the car. For one split second, there’s nothing but rushing air, but I remember to tuck and roll. That doesn’t keep it from hurting like hell when I land on the roof, but as I tumble over and over, I remain conscious. Skin is scraped from my arms, and pain tells me where the bruises will be, but my bones don’t crack.
But I lie there, motionless, even as the guards’ vehicles hover around me to take me into custody. I’m too devastated even to cry. Instead I wonder why I’m not dead. Why our hearts don’t stop beating the moment they’re broken. It feels like my soul has already left me, and my body is just this weight I’ll have to carry forever.
Maybe he got away, I try to tell myself as I walk numbly through the corridors of Triad, my wrists held together with binders, a guard at either shoulder. Paul did reach for his Firebird. He could’ve jumped out. Maybe.
But I can’t make myself believe it.
I’m led into an area of Triad headquarters I haven’t seen before—their labs, I’m guessing. The narrow black-panel computer terminals I’ve glimpsed elsewhere are now enormous panels that nearly cover the walls; their calculations show in faint display of color that shine briefly, then fade, as they continue the long work of determining which dimensions have to die. This complex exceeds our power and sophistication by so great a degree that I can’t believe we ever thought we stood a chance. They haven’t even bothered taking away my Firebird. That’s how little a threat I’ve ever been to them.
Wyatt Conley isn’t anywhere around, which is a small mercy. But my parents wait here, standing near a long, glass-walled chamber in the very center of the lab, as if it were the altar in this cathedral of death. Their expressions remain sorrowful but fond—as if they were about to ground me.
“Sweetheart,” my mother says. “I’m sorry this has been so difficult.”
They still refuse to acknowledge the truth of what they’re doing. “You killed other versions of me. You killed an entire universe. That goes slightly beyond ‘difficult.’”
Dad shrugs. “Who said it would be easy to raise someone from the dead?”
“What makes you think you can?” Before they start in with their explanations, I gesture as best I can at my Firebird. “You tore my Paul into four pieces. You splintered his soul. And after that he had to fight as hard as he could to stay in control, maybe even just to stay sane.”
