Resonance

  How is it that Dylan was teleported to New York without his knowledge? Wouldn’t his dad have—

  Holt, she remembers. Marcus Holt, the person she hates more than anyone else in the world happens to share the same blood as the boy she loves more than anyone else in the world?

  How is that even possible!?

  She stifles a bewildered laugh. It’s incredible how her questions from nearly four years ago—questions she’d long abandoned—are now so serendipitously being answered.

  That’s why Dylan was so reluctant to introduce Neve to his father. Why he rarely ever spoke of him. And why whenever he did, he sounded like he was talking about a complete stranger.

  But wait. Holt may have been a disengaged dad—and a worldclass douche—but what about Galen? As Dylan’s godfather and psychiatrist, wouldn’t he have been alarmed by Dylan’s sudden disappearance?

  Neve sinks into thought, trying to piece the puzzle together.

  It makes sense that Galen would keep the theories from Dylan to shield him from the sting of the truth. It’s likely that Dylan would’ve been even worse off if he knew his nightmares were actually happening.

  But that still doesn’t explain why Galen chose to confide in her.

  And how does Young play into all this? He claims he’s been watching them for their own good. But if not Synchrony, then who does he answer to?

  Neve starts to walk along the perimeter, scanning the walls for more clues. She steps on something thin and looks down, recognizing her sketchbook almost instantly.

  What is it doing here?

  Did Young steal it from her apartment?

  Bending down to grab it, she remembers her most recent drawing; her sketch of the mysterious specter that spawned at the head of Elli’s grave, and then vanished into thin air.

  Like Young.

  But why would the man who’s been plaguing her dreams want to make such a fleeting appearance?

  And at a cemetery, of all places?

  Neve thinks back to what Galen said about ghosts: that they are simply a glimpse of a living person in an alternate dimension—a glimpse you take through the eyes of your Proxy when you Resonate.

  The more she thinks about it, the likelier it seems that he was nothing more than a vision. But that still doesn’t tell her a thing about who he is, or why he’s begun to infest her life.

  “Everything okay?” Dylan’s voice from the back of the room interrupts her train of thought.

  Neve turns to him, but doesn’t say a word.

  Upon noticing the sketchbook in her hand, Dylan slowly rises.

  He makes his way over to Neve, each step smaller than the last, until they’re standing face to face.

  “What?” Neve asks off the dread registered on his pale face. “What is it?”

  “How do you know what he looks like?”

  Neve stares for a few moments. And suddenly, her thoughts are retracing the horror Dylan revealed to her back at her apartment:

  Strangled to death…

  Doused in gasoline, and set on fire…

  Blood jetting out a slit in his throat…

  And she realizes Dylan’s prophetic nighmares are not of freak accidents, but of murder.

  Murder at the hands of—

  Please say no. “Is this him?” she nearly whispers, terrified that her sketch is a rendition of not only her nightmares, but of his as well.

  Dylan doesn’t respond, but the terror in his eyes strikes to incinerate what little hope Neve had held onto. And suddenly, she’s standing across him inside a burning house as cinder rains from the ceiling. As wild flames claw at their skin.

  And they go up in smoke, with eyes wide open.

  “Jesus—” Romer’s reaction to the sketch pulls her out of her hellish nightmare.

  “How do you know what he looks like?” Dylan asks again, his vocal cords tightly-strung.

  Neve exhales a shaky breath. “He’s the man I saw at the cemetery. Right before I started to sink.”

  To Sync, she thinks.

  Resonance. Synchrony. Proxies.

  The boys shift out of focus as Neve’s gaze zigzags through the air.

  If every possible world exists, then there are as many realities in which Dylan is murdered, as ones in which he isn’t. So why assume that he’s destined to meet his end at the hands of this Grim Reaper?

  “Look—you’re not alone,” Romer places his hand on Dylan’s shoulder, but promptly removes it before his gesture is misread as pity. “And it’s not like Neve and I are completely useless.”

  “I don’t want you guys involved,” Dylan says.

  “Little late for that,” Romer chuckles.

  “You can still get out before it’s too late.”

  “Right,” Romer crosses his arms and tilts his head back. “And you can’t, because you’re destined to die a horrible death at the hands of some fucker you don’t even know,” he nods slowly with the corners of his lips curled down. “Well… that’s that,” he squares his shoulders. “Let’s just call it quits. That always works out for everyone,” he says casually, but every single word out of his mouth is loaded with subtext.

  And tainted with bitterness.

  Neve looks at Dylan who’s staring at Romer like a scolded child.

  “Look—” she tries to break the tension, “the Fray Theory isn’t about destiny. It’s about choice. We all start at birth, our origin, and carve our path through life, one decision at a time—”

  “The hell are you babbling about?” Romer frowns.

  “Free will,” Neve says and looks to Dylan. “What if your Proxies’ deaths were all sparked by something specific? And all you have to do is avoid that same trigger in this dimension?”

  “If the theories are true, Neve, that means there is no such thing as free will,” Dylan says.

  Her brows furrow. “Yes. There is. The existence of multiple dimensions means—”

  “That everything is predetermined,” Dylan cuts in. “I’m sorry, but free will and destiny can’t coexist.”

  Neve feels a twinge inside her chest cavity. “No,” she asserts, refusing to surrender to the same defeat. Refusing to accept the frightfully real possibility that soon, she will be burying him too.

  “It’s okay,” Dylan shrugs.

  “No… NO, don’t give me that defeatist bullshit!”

  “Neve—”

  “Just because everything that can happen does happen, doesn’t mean your fate is set in stone! It just means there are so many variations out there, that eventually every possibility will play out.”

  Dylan’s lips part slightly.

  “But your reality, in your dimension will always depend on your actions. And that’s free will.”

  Dylan stares, softening a bit.

  “In a universe, there’s only one you, and one path for you to take,” she continues with milder intensity. “Either it’s predetermined, or you choose it one step at a time. But we don’t live in a universe. We never have. And that means we’re not stuck with an either-or scenario.”

  “The existence of every reality is destiny,” Romer mutters to himself, “and which one gets to be your reality… that’s free will.”

  “And how do you know one of these realities isn’t already assigned to me?” Dylan challenges.

  “Because you’re choosing to stand here,” she says. “Choosing to argue with me over being powerless. Because you’re not a goddamn puppet on strings!”

  “Okay—alright,” he raises his hands.

  Romer turns away and walks to the corner of the room. Neve takes a few moments to calm her nerves, and then looks up at Dylan who’s staring soullessly at the sketchbook in her hand.

  “Dylan—” she drops it to the floor. “I’m not saying you have to agree with me,” she swallows the pill in her throat, “but I can’t fight your battle without you.”

  “Okay,” Dylan blinks a slow blink, and then nods with a somber smile.

  “Okay.”

  Cha
pter 32

  Inquiry

  Once Dylan and Romer have dragged the final body out of the way, Neve begins to carefully take off the content pasted onto the wall. Content she is unlikely to have time to read, but can’t bring herself to rip off—content containing information that could very well help them out of this mess.

  “Where are the handles?” Romer asks.

  Neve traces along the base of the doors until she finds the gap between them. She then starts to clear her way up to where the door’s handles would be.

  Dylan joins in, but it soon becomes evident that these doors don’t even have handles.

  “The hell?” Romer starts massaging his shoulder.

  “Hmm,” Dylan leans his weight onto the doors and pushes hard, but they just shudder in place. A couple of more forceful shoves, and he withdraws and kicks the unyielding barrier.

  “Probably locked from the other side,” Neve says.

  “Shit.” Romer rests his hands on his hips, licking his lower lip. “That fucker left us here to rot.”

  Neve looks to Dylan. “What do you think are the odds of Young coming back?”

  “Wouldn’t count on it,” he says. “He’s not exactly stable.”

  Romer scoffs. “Yeah, no shit.”

  Dylan looks to Young’s blood spatter on the wall. “And he’s been shot. I highly doubt we’re his priority right now.” He sits down and rests his back against the wall, sinking into thought.

  And silence befalls them once again.

  After mulling it over, “Yeah we are,” Romer nods to himself. “I mean, would you look at this place? You don’t put this much effort into something and then just drop it on a whim.”

  “He’s been shot,” Dylan repeats.

  “In the arm,” Romer says. “It’s not exactly fatal.”

  Neve thinks back to the night of her exhibition. To when she bumped into Young, having no idea this seemingly harmless stranger would wind up playing such a monumental role in not only her life, but in Dylan’s and Romer’s as well.

  “What exactly did you mean when you said Young is not stable?” Neve sits down also, facing Dylan.

  Romer walks over and leans against the adjacent wall, completing the triangle.

  “He’s just—unstable, you know? One moment he is all smiles, joking around like he’s your big brother. Next thing you know, you’re on the ground, praying to God he won’t beat the shit out of you if you can’t give him the fiftieth push-up.”

  “How was he not fired?” Neve frowns.

  “Well, two weeks into my transfer the guy before him just upped and quit out of nowhere. They hired Young like—the next day. Which was really lucky for me because—” he pauses, looking like someone who almost just drove off a cliff. “It was good timing,” he drops his head and licks his lips. “We uh—we needed someone like him to whip us into shape.”

  “Even if he is a bipolar psycho?” Romer asks.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, we all hated his guts. His drills were impossible.”

  “But?” Neve asks off the light in Dylan’s eyes, who puffs his cheeks as he exhales through a tight smirk.

  “He really was something else, though. Built like a rock, and easily twice as strong as the next guy. And twice as fast. He’s like a viper when he attacks you.”

  “Okay, explain something to me,” Neve starts, “if Young was hired after you started at the academy, how did he already know who you are?”

  Dylan’s brows sink, his enthusiasm waning.

  Is it because he’s been pondering the same thing?

  “I mean, how did he teleport you from Vancouver to New York without you even noticing? I almost had a heart attack when he brought me here.”

  Dylan lowers his gaze, and his eyes shift ever so slightly to his right. Towards Romer, who looks away just as Neve makes eye-contact with him.

  And she now feels even more confused.

  “What?” she asks, looking back and forth between the two boys.

  Romer runs a hand through his hair. “Look, we’ve got way bigger things to worry about right now.”

  Neve returns her focus to Dylan, who’s looking at Romer with a ghost of a smile.

  “Look—” she levels, “I’m just trying to understand how your sergeant plays into all of this.”

  “I obviously don’t know, Neve.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” she frowns. “You said: I never flew to New York, did I? And Young said, no, you didn’t. So my question is: how has this never come up before? One day you just woke up in New York and didn’t think twice about it?”

  Dylan rubs his stubble out of frustration, exhaling into his hand.

  “I’m not trying to interrogate you…” she says with less sting in her voice. “I’m just trying to understand what happened.”

  “I was obviously dealing with a lot of shit,” Dylan meets Neve’s gaze with a deep frown. “And my dad thought military school would fix everything. So then Alex—” he pauses, staring into space as though he’s forgotten what he was about to say.

  Neve leans in, watching as his thoughts unfold.

  “Alex said he enrolled me on my behalf,” he says.

  “What does that mean?” A baffled frown contorts her face. “I’m talking about the jump from Vancouver to New York.”

  When Dylan doesn’t respond, she takes to Romer only to find him glaring at her.

  ‘Drop it,’ he mouths.

  Chapter 33

  Trigger

  It feels like forever since anyone uttered a word. And although Neve believes pressing Dylan for answers was perfectly justified, the memory of Romer’s steely glare keeps cutting her afresh. It’s just not fair. They can’t keep covering up the line, and then snapping at her for stepping over it. And no matter what Neve says or does, she can’t seem to get through to either of them.

  This is Elliot all over again.

  “They’re trying to turn us into weapons,” Dylan breaks the silence. “We can bend the rules. Do what normal people can’t.”

  “I think you’re reaching,” says Romer.

  Dylan tilts his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. “I thought it was pity,” he mutters.

  “What do you mean?” Neve asks.

  “Young,” he clarifies. “He took special interest in me—train me outside regular hours, teach me things he wouldn’t teach the other cadets…” He scoffs at his own naiveté. “I think you might be right,” he tilts his head towards Neve. “He must’ve known about me before we even met.”

  “How would he?” she asks.

  Dylan tightens his lips, then lowers his head back down. “I only told Ro and Alex about my dreams.”

  Romer raises his brows and flattens his lips.

  “So that just leaves Alex,” Dylan turns to Neve.

  “But why would he share something like that with a random military sergeant?” Neve asks.

  “Why would he share it with a girl he’s just met?” Dylan squares his shoulders.

  And suddenly it feels like Neve is sitting under an interrogation lamp. But Dylan is right. She wondered the exact same thing about Galen’s intentions.

  “Just to be clear, Dylan, he only told me about the theories,” Neve finds herself defending Galen. “I even tried bringing up your nightmares, but he wouldn’t have it.”

  “Young can teleport, right?” Romer cuts in. “Even if Galen had everything locked up in a room, who’s to say Young didn’t just teleport through the wall and grab whatever he needs?”

  Neve and Dylan consider it. That would certainly explain how Neve’s sketchbook wound up here.

  “I obviously don’t know Galen as well as you do,” Romer says to Dylan, “but I really doubt he sold you out. I mean—you should have seen his place. It was totally ransacked.”

  “Who do you think Young is doing all of this for?” Neve looks about the room. “This is way too big to be a one-man operation. He must answer to somebody.”

  “Americ
an military?” Romer suggests.

  Dylan mulls it over, then squares his shoulders. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Even more questions with no answers.

  “What do you guys think about Synchrony?” Neve asks.

  Romer scoffs and crosses his arms. “I think they rake the streets for people like us, grab them when no one’s watching, and then erase all traces of them.”

  “Do you think they want us dead?” Neve asks. “Or do you think it’s like a bidding war?”

  Romer squints. “Like two rival organizations that are trying to weaponize people like us?”

  “Young admitted to infiltrating Synchrony,” Dylan says. “Maybe it wasn’t to jeopardize their operations. Maybe he was trying to take advantage of their intel in order to get to us first.”

  “So, you don’t believe they want us dead?” Romer asks of Dylan. “Is it because they were shooting at us with darts, not bullets?”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Dylan says. “It may have just been to avoid spilling blood where it’s hard to clean up.”

  “But why kill us?” she asks. “Based on everything Galen said, Resonance is just the next stage in human evolution.”

  “Makes sense if you think about it,” Dylan says. “If everyone could teleport into banks, or kill someone and disappear into thin air, there’d be anarchy. The whole system would collapse.”

  σ

  Neve sits on an inverted crate in the corner of the room, watching Romer and Dylan repeatedly thrust themselves against the doors.

  Bang, after bang, after bang, with nothing to show for but the echo of their defeat.

  Bang! “It’s not working!” Neve snaps. “You’re just wearing yourselves out!”

  Dylan takes a few steps back and wipes the sweat from his brow. “We’re not hitting you,” he pants.

  “It will WORK, come ON!” she springs to her feet. “What are you waiting for? For us to run out of air?”

  “We’re not hitting you, Neve,” Dylan presses. “Just keep looking.”

  “These are all observational data,” Neve says, “not superpower instruction manuals.”

  “Read that report again,” Dylan suggests, “the one I showed you about Merging.”