That’s what I’m thinking. What I say is, “Remember what it is that makes us the good guys.”
Barclay rolls his eyes, but he lets my decision stand, and Ben lowers his gun.
With all six guys subdued and restrained, Barclay and Ben move to the computers. I look out over the prison. In the underground facility, we’re six stories up, essentially in a glass cube. Surrounding us are four walls, each one with ten holding cells in a row and six floors high. It means there are 240 cells in this place.
“Shit,” Ben says, and I turn around.
“What’s wrong?”
Barclay shakes his head. “The flash drive doesn’t have enough space to hold all the files. We’ll have to copy them from the network to the computer and take the whole damn thing with us.”
“Elijah can do it,” I say. He’s got the ability to portal in and out, and he’s moving slower than the rest of us on that leg of his.
“You fucking do it,” Elijah says. “I’ve got vengeance to wreak.”
“What does that even mean?” I say.
Barclay ignores us both. “When the transfer is done, shut this down so it can travel,” he says to Ben. Then he looks at Elijah. “Take it back to the hospital. Portal straight in where we left and set it up in the room where we slept last night.” He leans in and says something else, then he looks at me. “Are you ready?”
I am. I know what we need to do next, and it’s not going to be easy.
Barclay opens the portal back to the hospital, and with a CPU under one arm and a monitor under the other, Elijah steps through and disappears, while Ben types into the keypad on the wall.
We’re officially one man short.
The holding cell doors open, the alarm goes off, and all hell breaks loose.
02:05:38:29
Ben opens another portal. We need to get to a different location in the prison to get people out. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to save them before any of the traffickers can pull their act together and stop us.
Barclay presses the intercom button and his voice travels through the prison, over the alarm. “This is IA. If you have been abducted from your world and put in a holding cell, do not panic. We’re here to save you. Exit to the end of your row and then head toward the tunnel exit.”
Barclay puts the intercom down and the elevator dings. He raises his gun toward it and looks at Ben. “Get all of the Unwilling out of here,” he says, and he pushes me through the portal.
Ben and I hit the ground hard in the northwest corner of the prison. I’m so off balance that my head snaps back and hits the pavement. Stars cloud my vision, but Ben is there, pulling me up. “Are you okay?” he’s asking.
He whispers my name, and for a second I forget where I am. I think I’m back on Highway 101 and seeing him for the first time. And then I wish it was true, because we’d have another chance, a chance to start over and fix whatever is broken between us.
The sound of gunshots and flashes coming from the processing center office above us snaps me out of it, though—that and the mob of people who are running toward us.
“I’m okay,” I say to Ben, even though it’s not true. I can sleep off my headache later.
“This way!” Ben yells to the mob of people, and he pulls me up the exit tunnel. According to Barclay, this long hallway will actually lead to the surface of the world, a place that we don’t want to go, since the atmosphere can make people sick. But we can’t just open a portal and expect people to follow us through it. That’s how they got here—someone grabbed them, stuck them with a needle, and pulled them through a black hole. Despite the logic of the situation, these people are traumatized, and logic will be overruled by their emotions and their aversion to going through another portal. And we don’t have time to convince them that we’re better than the people who brought them here.
So we decided before we got here that to do this fast, we would have to trick them.
Ben runs ahead of me as I wave and shout to the Unwilling. “This way! This leads to the surface!” I keep shouting it over and over again, and they come toward me.
I try to keep track, to count them somehow as they run past. But there are a lot, and the higher up we get into the corridor, the darker it gets.
At thirty-seven, I lose count.
Because I see Cecily.
02:05:32:49
She’s still in her pajama pants and her I ONLY DATE NINJAS T-shirt, and her milky-blond hair hangs loose down her back. In her arms is a little boy.
I’m about to run toward them when the woman a few paces behind Cecily grunts and collapses to the ground. The little boy hides his face in Cecily’s neck and she visibly picks up the pace. But about ten yards behind her is a guy in boxers and commando boots and he has a gun pointed at them.
Ben has a portal open up ahead in the darkness so that no one can see it—they’ll run right through it and end up in the hospital on the dead world—but with this guy shooting people, they’ll never make it.
“Drop your gun or I’ll shoot!” I scream, pointing my gun at him.
I know he shot that woman, and I don’t know if she’s stunned or dead, but she’s not moving, and I’m not about to let that happen to Cecily.
He swings his gun toward me.
I don’t think. I just pull the trigger.
But he does too.
I’m lucky that I’m farther into the darkness, because my aim is better. He goes down while something clips my shoulder, sending me reeling backward. My head runs into the wall of the corridor and again, all I can see is stars. I doubt I hit anything that hard, but my head has taken a beating in the last twenty-four hours.
“Janelle? Oh my God, what are you doing here?”
Cecily is next to me, using her free hand to try to pull me away from the wall. I see her blond hair and watery blue eyes, and focusing on her clears my vision.
“I’m okay, Cee,” I say, trying to ignore the way my shoulder is on fire. “We have to run, go!”
“But, you—” she says.
I push off the wall and start running with her. “I have a gun, you don’t. Keep running.”
She does what I tell her, but she turns to look back at me.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I lie.
I turn around and raise my gun, moving backward up the corridor on the lookout for a threat. The last few trafficked slaves limp past me. “Go!” I say. “You’re almost there.”
Below me, in the light, I see another guy with a weapon.
And he’s not alone.
02:05:30:06
There are a little more than half a dozen of them.
I turn and start running up the corridor, because I can’t fight all these guys off. I don’t even have that many bullets.
I spray a few shots behind me and hope that will slow them down, maybe make them a little more careful since they’re headed into the darkness. But I know the only real solution is for us to move faster.
I run to the slowest of the slaves. She’s limping, trying not to put any weight on her right foot. I grab her arm and throw it over my shoulder. “They’re coming,” I say and she gets the message.
In front of us is only blackness. I can’t actually see the portal, but I can smell the salt and open air from it so I know we can’t be that far off.
I hear gunfire behind me, and I point my own gun back without looking and fire. It’s not like in a movie, where it’s easy. I’m shooting with one hand, while trying to run forward, and I’m already off balance to begin with. The kickback from firing doesn’t help. In fact, it’s slowing us down.
“Janelle!” It’s Ben’s voice, and it’s strained. I don’t know how long he’s been holding open the portal, but it’s probably too long. We need to get there before he runs out of energy, or we won’t have a chance.
“We’re coming!”
And suddenly we’re in the light.
The girl I’m supporting gasps and falls to the ground.
White floor, white
walls all around us. People are everywhere. They’re crying, consoling one another, looking around for someone to explain something. And then Ben crashes into me, and I tumble to the ground with him on top of me.
I have a moment to see his face, flushed and covered with a thin layer of sweat. Then the portal closes behind him, and he lays a warm hand against my cheek. I lean into it a little and the world goes fuzzy.
In my pain-induced sedation I dream about the night Renee Adams went missing—about the look on Cecily’s face when she asked me, “Where are they all going?”
I dream about Ben, about how he was the first thing I saw when I came back from the dead, silhouetted against the sun and hovering over me with his hand over my heart. Except this time, Barclay is there too.
Can’t you do something to fix her?
I’ve tried, but I can’t. I held that portal open too long. I’ve got nothing right now.
Barclay throws his hands up. What good are you? And then he’s gone.
Ben leans closer, his hair tickling my face.
I’m sorry, he whispers. I’m so sorry. I should have known she wasn’t you.
And I dream about Alex and my brother. It’s before the world fell apart, and we’re in the driveway of my old house. We’re playing the basketball review game Alex made up to trick Jared into studying. Jared runs toward the basket and Alex fires a question at him. If he answers right, Alex will throw him the ball and he’ll shoot. Once he gets ten baskets in a row, they trade places.
It’s kind of a lame and unoriginal game, but when Jared was in middle school and preoccupied by his “basketball is life” philosophy and failing English, it was brilliant.
Only instead of vocabulary words, Alex keeps asking questions about the case. He asks things Jared couldn’t possibly know—where Meridian is, how many people still need to be rescued, who in IA is involved.
Jared just stands in front of the basket, confused and frustrated with bloodshot eyes and a scowl on his face. It makes me think about what a terrible sister I am.
Then Alex asks, “What if Janelle doesn’t come back?”
Jared surprises me. He looks up and turns to where I’m watching them, and he says, “She’s so tough, it’s frightening. That girl will outlive us all.”
01:13:27:41
When I come to, the sun is already setting, and the room I’m in is dark.
I shoot upright—who knows how much time we’ve lost while I was unconscious—and I can’t help letting out a startled screech at the pain that shoots through my shoulder and head. Stars move through my vision, and I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
When he shifts, I realize someone is next to me.
Ben sits up, his eyes bleary, his hair pointing every which way. For a split second, he’s just confused, and then he sees me looking at him and a wide smile overtakes his face. He reaches for me, his warm, calloused hands coming to rest on each side of my face, and he whispers, “Janelle.”
I glance around the room. It’s empty and we’re alone, but next to my bed is a bowl full of some kind of strange berries. They’re a bright, almost electric blue, and they look like a cross between blackberries and raspberries.
Ben clears his throat. “Barclay banned me from the room earlier. He thought I was hovering, and I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I portaled out and picked up some of these. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re sweet, and the first time I had them a few weeks ago I knew you’d like them—”
“You brought me berries?” I say. In the middle of a crisis, he ran out and got fruit. It doesn’t make sense.
He blushes and shrugs his shoulders. “I thought about getting flowers but they’re generic, and what would you do with them here, but I messed up and you were hurt and I didn’t know what to do. I thought we could eat these together . . .” To make his point, he grabs a berry and tosses it into his mouth.
I suppose it’s not like he could go to Roberto’s and grab me a burrito and a grape soda.
I pick up one of the unknown berries and turn it over between my fingers. It’s soft and smells amazing so I go ahead and eat it. And Ben is right, it’s sweet and sugary with a little bit of tang, and I do really like it.
“Thank you,” I say, and I can’t help but smile. It’s not exactly the I’m sorry gift I imagined getting from a guy, but nothing happening right now is in line with anything I would have imagined.
Suddenly he says, “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I roll my eyes, not because I don’t like hearing that, but because he’s clearly still asleep and we have a lot we should be doing right now. I try to move, but he holds me in place.
“I’m serious,” he says. “I’ve thought of you every single day since I left, about the way you look up and pinch the bridge of your nose when you’re thinking really hard, the way your lips curl into this tiny smile when you’ve figured something out, even the way you roll your eyes. I remembered every moment we spent together. I replayed them over and over in my mind. Every morning when I woke up, I would forget that we weren’t together, that you were a world away.”
He takes one hand and slides it down my arm until he has my fingers, and then he presses them against the center of his chest. I can feel his heartbeat underneath the rough thermal material of his shirt. “Even though I wasn’t there, you were always with me. Always.”
His face is so earnest, and his eyes are so dark. If I look at him like this for another second, I’m going to cry again. I lean into him, pressing my forehead against his, and I close my eyes.
“And now here you are, and I didn’t do you justice. You’re even better than I remembered.” One of his hands moves through my hair, and the other massages the back of my neck. “You’re beautiful and strong and fearless, and I’m so afraid for you. Not because this is bigger than you, or too dangerous for you. I know you can handle anything, but I . . .” His voice cracks. “If anything happens to you, because of me . . . I can’t handle that.”
I clench my fist around his shirt, holding him next to me. I can’t speak. There’s a lump in my throat that won’t let my voice out, but I don’t want him to go anywhere.
“When you walked into the hospital room with your jacket tied around your face, I knew. I knew I had screwed up.”
“It’s okay,” I say, my voice thick and raw with forgiveness. It hurts, it makes my body ache, that he didn’t know who I was—or who I wasn’t—but I still love him. More than anything.
But I feel him shake his head. “I should have known,” he whispers, his breath warm against my cheek. “You don’t need anyone to save you. You’re the one who does the saving.”
I want to protest and tell him that’s silly, but I think not just of Ben, but of Elijah and Cecily, and all the people we just portaled out of the processing center, who must be around here somewhere, and hot tears spill over my eyes and run down my cheeks.
Once upon a time, I would have said that I could save myself.
But I open my eyes and see Ben’s long, dark eyelashes and the perfect curve of his mouth, and I say, “We save each other.”
And then I disregard everything I thought just a few hours ago—all my intentions of staying away from him get tossed out the window, and I press my lips against his and savor the way we seem to melt into each other.
01:13:19:21
Cecily looks like death.
She comes in when I’m in the middle of changing my shirt to something that isn’t bloody and sweat stained. Her skin is pale, her hair in disarray, and I can see the circles under her eyes from here.
“How’re you feeling?” Her voice is tentative.
I feel like crap. My head is pounding, my arm aches, and my whole body is sore whenever I move. But it doesn’t matter. I would gladly feel worse if it meant getting her out of there. “Probably about as bad as you look,” I say. “You would think you’d been kidnapped or something.”
She rushes toward me and throws her arms
around me. “You came to save me,” she says, so I know someone, probably Ben or Elijah, has filled her in.
And then she bursts into tears.
I hold on to her as she cries it out. For all that we’re different, Cecily is a lot like me. It’s why we’re friends. She’s tough—she lost both her parents a couple of years ago and got uprooted to San Diego to live with her aunt, and she didn’t go emo or become withdrawn. She joined the cheerleading squad, won the annual Physics Day challenge, and befriended everyone she met.
She’s like me, just nicer and peppier—and better at science too.
When she’s finished, we sit on the bed and I tell her everything that happened before the quakes—the day I died, Ben healing me, my dad’s case and the UIED, the portals, the multiverse, and Barclay. Then I tell her about what led us here.
When I tell her there are different universes, she snorts. “I’ve kind of figured that one out.”
“Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She shrugs and wipes her eyes before changing the subject. “Eli told me all about how you broke him out. I hadn’t realized you were so badass.”
“Lame. I thought you knew me.”
Cecily smiles. It’s small and a little sad, but it’s enough. She’s not actually mad at me. I relax a little. “What about you?” I ask. “Are you doing okay?” I don’t need to add that she’s been through a lot.
“I’m not sleeping well and I don’t like to be alone,” she says with a shrug. “I’ll probably have to be in therapy the rest of my life, but I’m not dead and it could have been worse. It was only a few days. It felt longer, trust me, but this whole thing was only a few days.”
I wait to see if she’ll tell me more. I saw a few of those specials on 60 Minutes about human trafficking and how girls are drugged, beat up, and worse until they’re broken.
She senses what my silence is about. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it when we’re home.”