A Million Worlds With You

  But you’ll die too! If your world and ours both vanish, you’ll kill yourself along with the rest of us.

  “Fine. So long as I get the rest of you. You talked them into this. You dished it out. So take it.”

  “Marguerite?” my mother says through tears. “What are you—”

  Theo catches on and snarls, “Oh, hell no. Not now!”

  The ground trembles. Not that much, nothing out of the ordinary here on the edge of the San Andreas fault. My parents and Josie hardly even react. But I know the truth. It’s the beginning of the end.

  I want to call Wicked more names. I want to tell her she has the worst life of any Marguerite in the entire multiverse, not because her dimension sucks but because she’s chosen to lead the angriest, meanest, most vindictive existence possible. I want to taunt her with the horror of what awaits her, an eternity of parasitic possession where she will never, ever be able to call anything or anyone her own.

  But my fate is even worse. I will never have been born. My last moments will be spent knowing that everyone I have ever loved is about to be erased along with me. Wicked has doomed us all.

  The earth trembles again, stronger this time. Her hands tighten over the Firebird, and with a rush she’s gone.

  I stagger backward as Theo grabs my shoulders and shakes me. “Get out of her. Get out of her!”

  “She’s gone! It’s me!” I cry. “It’s collapsing. The universe is collapsing. Wicked used my Firebird and destroyed us—”

  “What?” Theo looks like he might faint. Understanding dawns on my parents’ faces, followed by horror.

  “Wicked jumped back inside me. She started the chain reaction. I couldn’t stop her.” A sob rises in my throat. My family, my friends, and my world are all about to die at my hand.

  “Damn!” Dad runs for the pile of equipment at the far end of the great room, Mom and Theo just behind him. “We can do this. How long do we have?”

  A couple of hours, I want to say. It took that long for the Romeverse to fall. But maybe our world is more fragile, because already the earthquake has returned, this time strong enough to rattle the dishes in the cupboard. The few remaining books on the shelves fall to the floor.

  Mom answers my father’s question. “Not long enough.”

  But they all throw themselves at it, grabbing material, trying to get the stabilizer device put together in no time. Josie, blank-eyed, starts taking more things off shelves, putting them on the floor so they won’t tumble down and get broken—sensible in an earthquake, irrational here. Not that I can blame her for being terrified to the point of shock. My entire body feels numb.

  Then I hear footsteps in the hallway behind me. Who else could be in our house?

  Only one person.

  I whirl around to see—“Paul!”

  Oh, God, he’s alive. He made it out after all—

  —only to come here and be killed along with the rest of us.

  I try to run for him, but the shaking earth nearly topples me. Only slumping against the wall keeps me from pitching onto the floor. Paul catches himself, bracing both hands against the sides of the hallway. As soon as it’s steady enough to move, he rushes forward. “What’s going on?”

  “The universe is collapsing,” Theo says. “Bad Marguerite possessed Good Marguerite just long enough to make it happen.”

  Paul turns to me just as I reach him. His arm is still bandaged along the scar she slashed in his skin. I fling myself into his embrace, as if his strength alone could hold me up while the rest of the world falls. The scent of his skin, the feel of his hands on my back, even the catch in his breath as he pulls me nearer—everything about him is more precious to me than ever before. It is the most beautiful and terrible moment of my life.

  Terrible, because I know Paul has been given back to me just in time for us to die together.

  Though pent-up sobs threaten to steal my voice, I manage to say, “Where were you? I thought you were gone.”

  “There was no time to figure out a new destination. I had to jump backward to the Moscowverse. Then I had to recharge the Firebird and—damn.” Paul swears again in Russian at the bleak irony of getting home just in time to die.

  Although I know the answer, I have to ask, “We can’t escape, can we?”

  He kisses my cheek, my forehead, and clutches me even tighter. “No way out. Not one we would ever take.”

  And he’s right. Whatever existence we would have after this would be stolen from other selves, other worlds. Would I rob Valentina of her real parents forever? Or force my Warverse self to give up her life so I could lead it instead? Do we decide whether to take one alternate self for good, or to steal weeks or months from others? Escaping this dimension without any hope of going home would turn us into parasites.

  I don’t want to die. But I refuse to live if the cost is betraying what I believe, and who I love.

  At least I got to see Paul one more time before the end.

  He turns to look at the frantic activity on the rainbow table. He makes no move to join them. That’s when I know. “Paul, can they build a stabilizer in time?”

  “No.”

  The real quake hits then. We all shriek or yell, and every one of us falls to the floor except Josie, who was already there. Shouts from outside make me wonder what’s happening to the sky, or whether the ground has split apart to reveal another moment of pure hell.

  Paul crawls closer, reaching out for me. This is it. We’re going to kiss each other goodbye and die in each other’s arms.

  Instead, he grabs my Firebird, and I remember our one chance.

  “Linking the Firebirds!” I shout over the din of falling plates and blaring car alarms outside. Back in the Moscowverse, he said this might work in an emergency. There’s never been a bigger emergency than this. “That’s going to save us, isn’t it?”

  “It might,” Paul says as he starts fitting them together.

  “Might?”

  “I give it a thirty-four percent chance of success.”

  Oh, God. “Do it.”

  “It’s going to hurt.” Paul doesn’t say this to give me a chance to back out. Already he’s readjusting my Firebird and his, working fast because we both know there’s no other choice.

  Our ceiling morphs and shimmers, then seems to melt, revealing a storm-cloud sky overhead. Josie begins to scream. And Paul brings our Firebirds together.

  It’s like a lightning strike. Pure pain boils through me, so anguishing I can’t even breathe. I’ve never felt pain like this—a reminder comes close, but a reminder’s over in a second and this goes on and on.

  Paul shudders in the same agony. But he pulls me into his arms, hanging on as if I could save him. Tears blur my vision. The whole house is falling apart, or maybe the dimension, and surely this is the end.

  “I love you.” I hold him even closer, grateful for the chance to say this just one more time.

  “I love you, too.” He folds me against his heart.

  If this is how we end, then let it come.

  At that moment, light surrounds us, blazing bright as a sun, and a tremendous shudder of energy passes through my body. It’s like the eye of a cyclone at the heart of me, winding tight and pulling me inward. The whirl of it hurts more than all the rest. I cling to Paul even more desperately, willing myself to stay in one piece. To stay with him. To stay alive.

  Then everything . . . stops.

  The pain vanishes. The shaking subsides. The ceiling’s just a ceiling again. For a few long seconds we all lie there, not trusting our own senses.

  Hope and despair and confusion collide, blurring my thoughts as I hang on to Paul. He looks as astonished as I do. But the silence endures, and the stillness, until I begin to think they might last forever.

  “We made it,” I whisper. “. . . Didn’t we?”

  Theo’s expression slowly shifts from bewilderment to a smile. “Either that or the afterlife is way more mundane than advertised.”

  Paul breathe
s out in relief. “We made it.”

  Josie and Dad both start to laugh with joy—they have the same crazy cackle. I should be laughing too, or cheering, or jumping up and down in crazed glee. But I’m still too stunned to feel anything but astonishment.

  Theo slides over to us, a grin on his face. “Little brother, what did you just do? Show me this mad sexy science.”

  Paul sits up, towing me with him. Now I can see that Mom has already pulled herself back to her feet and is busily working with her own Firebird. I try to sit up on my own, but I’m clumsy and slow; the Nightthief lingers in my system, and my muscles twitch in the aftermath of extreme pain. “Mom? What is it?”

  “The Home Office. We have to be sure they won’t try again.” Mom squints at the readouts.

  They wouldn’t. Wicked might. “They weren’t destroyed, were they? Because our history is the same.”

  “Exactly,” Dad says. “I think they’ve sealed themselves off. And it looks like your counterpart is sealed in there with them.”

  She went back. She heard what I said and went back, even knowing she might die. Wicked gets another chance she doesn’t deserve. But her ultimate fate is in her own hands. If her life is any good from now on, that’s because they found a way to get through to her. If her life’s a hell, it’s because she’s still venomous, bitter, and small. I’ll never know which, and honestly, I don’t much care. For me, it’s enough to know we’ll never see her again.

  Dad’s laptop lies open on the floor, dirt from a capsized fern scattered across its keyboard, but it still works, signaling us that someone is calling via Skype. Paul gets that icy look in his eyes as he staggers to his feet. “There’s only one person it could be.”

  My father grabs the laptop, brushes it off, and sets it on the rainbow table as we gather around. Still trembling, I brace myself against a chair. When he clicks Answer, Wyatt Conley’s face appears on the screen. His smug satisfaction has been wiped away, replaced by fear. “Listen—I know we’re not on the best terms, but if I’m interpreting these readings correctly, we just—”

  “—took care of it.” Mom folds her arms. “Our world is safe. Triad as you knew it is over. One of your counterparts is dead, and the other is trapped permanently in a sealed universe.”

  Dad cuts in. “As of now, Wyatt, you’re alone. You’re also outnumbered—because we now have several other worlds working with us, every one of which has been warned about you. So I suggest you drop the idea of meddling with interdimensional travel ever again.”

  Josie leans between our parents’ shoulders to show her face to the screen. “And also, just for the record? We are never going out.”

  It’s like Conley can’t take it in. Has he ever been defeated before, even once in his life? He’s succeeded over and over again, raking in the money and praise of the entire world, but now all he can do is stare. At last he says, “What happens now?”

  I step forward to speak to the screen. Hopefully this is the last time I ever have to look Wyatt Conley in the face. “I suggest you go back to cell phones. That’s what you’re good at.”

  With that, I hang up. The screen goes blank.

  Theo shakes his head. “If we could put that bastard in jail—expose him, make the world see what’s he’s done—”

  “We can’t.” Dad’s expression is rueful as he flops down on the sofa. “They haven’t any laws against this sort of thing yet, have they? We stopped him, Theo. Let that be enough.”

  “Besides, think of all the research awaiting us.” Even amid the wreckage of our house, a brush with death not even ten minutes in our past, Mom’s eyes are already starry with the thought of discoveries to come. “The links between the universes, the unlimited potential of the data we can share . . .”

  “Mad sexy science.” Theo manages to smile.

  Josie resumes rescuing the poor plants, putting them back in their pots, and Mom tries to sort the scattered piles of paper back in the order they were in to begin with. Dad and Theo head to the front door. This is supposedly to check on how bad the damage is outside in our neighborhood, but probably Theo also wants to be sure his car made it through okay.

  “Marguerite?” Paul’s voice is gentle.

  I look up at him, struck anew with the wonder of his survival. What’s even more beautiful is that he’s smiling back at me with just as much joy. Just as much hope.

  He takes my hand and says, “Let’s make a world.”

  EPILOGUE

  AS FAR AS THE NEWS IS CONCERNED, WHAT HAPPENED that day in San Francisco was an earthquake—one with a strange shock pattern, but not even all that serious. Aside from a couple of minor injuries from fender benders, nobody was even hurt.

  A few people on social media mention strange things they saw or thought during the quake, and some conspiracy-theory sites blame “chemtrails.” Mostly people write the weirdness off as fear and confusion. Hallucinations caused by panic, maybe. No one realizes just how close our world came to destruction. Already the quake has been almost forgotten. Life goes on.

  Josie invites me down to San Diego for a couple of weekends, and I go. She teaches me to surf, or tries to, anyway. I never manage to do much more than stand on the board for roughly thirty seconds before I tumble back into the ocean.

  It doesn’t matter. More important are the evenings we spend walking along the beach in our bikini bottoms and swim shirts, towels draped over our arms, an ice cream cone in each of our hands as we talk about everything and nothing.

  We always got along, but it doesn’t have to be anger that drives people apart. Time and inattention can separate us just as surely. How far apart might Josie and I have drifted if I hadn’t had a chance to see how desolate my life could be without my big sister? If we hadn’t consciously decided to carve out more time for each other?

  I’m glad we’ll never know.

  The collaboration between the dimensions continues. Now we’re much more likely to simply talk than to visit, and journeys are always checked out in advance. I travel less often than the others now, because the trips are de facto scientific conferences. But I’ve visited along with my parents or Paul just to see how things are going.

  In the Warverse, “our side” of the conflict seems to be turning the tide. While none of us are thrilled that they’ve used their new knowledge to design weaponry, it’s their choice to make, not ours. Their Marguerite writes, and receives, long love letters from Theo at least twice a week. If the Paul from that world is ever going to have a chance, Theo will have to seriously screw up.

  The Mafiaverse is making significant strides forward. My parents try to visit on weekends when Josie and Wyatt aren’t around. Their version of Wyatt Conley continues to be devoted to my sister, so there’s no point in tearing him down. Maybe his Mafiaverse self is his best self—the person he could’ve been here, if his ego hadn’t gotten in the way. Their Theo did lose one leg below the knee, which is terrible. But he’s learning to deal with a prosthetic, and his anger is directed at the mobster who shot him. The prospect of discovery engages Theo more than any bitterness about the past.

  As for the Russian mob version of Paul, well, he’s stopped trying to contact that Marguerite. (Our Paul, of course, never visits that dimension.) The police never found him. He’s somewhere in that world leading a very sad life. I hope he finds a way out of it before the poison sinks in too deep and turns him into another version of his father.

  The Triadverse went completely silent for a while, until the other versions of my parents finally reached out. Without Conley around, or any interference from the Home Office, they’ve been able to take control of the Firebird project again. That Paul returned to the US from Ecuador with the other me at his side, both of them relieved to be back home.

  The Oceanverse continues to believe we should pay for that submarine. Apparently they’re superlitigious over there—that’s something I didn’t pick up on during my visit. We’ve told them to take it up with the Triadverse, since it was technically that T
heo’s fault. But his death leaves them still searching for someone to blame. Thank goodness you can’t sue someone in another dimension. Not yet, anyway.

  In the Cambridgeverse, my parents have forgiven their version of Paul, at least enough to work with him again on the new discoveries. Apparently my other self forgave him too; they haven’t gotten back together, but they’re . . . doing better. And she got into film school at USC, which is amazing. She dreams big, too—she’s even left out some fashion magazines for me when I’ve visited, complete with jokey Post-It notes asking me which gown would make the best Oscar dress. I’ve returned to this dimension more than most of the others, although I admit that’s mostly to play with Ringo the pug.

  Some worlds I’ll never see again. The Spaceverse understands that it wasn’t exactly me who sabotaged the Astraeus, but I doubt I’d receive a very warm welcome. The Moscowverse doesn’t have the technology to join in or the desire to play along. In a police state, inexplicable movements and memory lapses are exponentially more dangerous. They were glad to help us in the end, but just as glad to see us go. And of course any world in which a Marguerite died is cut off from me forever. That futuristic London is lost; so is the chance to explore the tombs in Egypt.

  But I’ve visited the world where Dad and Josie died in the carjacking, to spend more time with that Mom. She doesn’t want to come here and see them because she says it would set her back. Still, I’ve been able to share some of their scientific data with her, and she enjoys just hearing about the others—imagining the lives her husband and older daughter would have led.

  I might see the Russiaverse again, someday. The grand duchess sent a message for me with Theo, saying that she appreciated my promise not to return, but that I’m welcome to come back one more time, after September, if I want to see the baby. What she really wants is for me to be able to tell Paul about this child that is partly his, partly mine, and entirely hers. That trip will be difficult, not to mention mind-blowing, but I’ll go. It would be worth it just to visit Vladimir, Katya, and Peter again.