Resonance (3 page)

“So let's bring him back,” I said, rising to my feet.

“It's not safe for him here. Not while the Consort exists.”

“Then I'll go to him.”

“And join the Free Walkers?”

Becoming a Free Walker meant living in Echoes, hiding
from the Consort, leaving behind my family and Eliot and the plans we'd made. If I joined the Free Walkers, I wouldn't just be a troublemaker. I'd be a criminal, and I'd spend the rest of my life running.

“You make it sound like it's all or nothing.”

“There's no middle ground here, Del. Either you're ours, or theirs.”

“Why don't you tell people about cauterization?” I asked. “The Consort's convinced you want to destroy the Key World because you won't cleave. If you explain—”

“You think they don't know? The Consort knows all about cauterization, and it's only made them more desperate to stop us.” Her gaze bored into me. “Tell me why the Consort cleaves.”

“To protect the Key World from Echoes,” I said automatically, a response drilled into me from my earliest days.

“Why else?”

I thought back to all the textbooks I'd skimmed. “To harvest their energy and bolster the Key World.”

“Exactly. They want to capture as much of the energy as they can, and they get it at the expense of the Echoes. Cauterization would cut off the supply.”

“Then why cauterize? If we need that energy, why wouldn't we continue cleavings?”

“Because the Echoes need it more. They need it to live.”

I looked at her blankly. “But they're not—”

“Echoes aren't merely copies of Originals. You know that better than anyone.”

I thought of Simon, of all the versions of him I'd met, each distinct and vivid and whole. “I know. They're real.”

“They're more than real. They're alive. The Consort knows it, just as they know cleaving—the great and sacred duty of the Walkers—is murder.”

C
HAPTER FOUR

S
OME SONGS YOU LOVE FROM
the instant you hear them. Six notes in, part of you rises up and says
yes
.
Before the melody's complete, before you've heard the lyrics or the bridge, something within you recognizes it as part of your soul, as if it's been waiting for you all this time.

Ms. Powell's words were like the chords to a song I'd always known but never heard. Still, the logical part of my brain resisted.

“Echoes aren't alive. They don't exist until their world has formed. They can't survive unless they're tethered to an Original. When we cleave, they don't even notice they're unraveling.”

“With cauterization, they
don't
unravel. Once the strings are knotted, the Echoes are as alive as you and me.”

“That doesn't make sense.” I didn't doubt Simon's Echoes were real. I'd watched one of them cleave, and the horror of the moment had stayed with me. But real and alive were
different
. Alive meant independent. It meant Simon's Echoes could survive without him.

It meant I hadn't just cleaved Simon's Echo in the park that day. I'd killed him.

“When we cleave, they unravel. When we cauterize, they
live. Even if their Original dies, a cauterized Echo can maintain their signal and live out a natural lifespan,” Ms. Powell said.

A horrible thought struck. “Is Simon dead? I can hear his Echoes, but if he was in Train World . . .”

“Simon's alive. We pulled him out of Train World before we cauterized it, I promise you.”

Relief washed over me, but only for an instant. “Wait. Are you saying the Consort's been slaughtering Echoes? For years and years? My parents? Addie? Me?”

Every Echo we'd cleaved. Billions of lives in each one, unravel­ing to nothingness. Billions dead, by our hands.

My own hands began trembling so badly, my fingers blurred. I was going to be sick.

I bolted for the girl's bathroom and barely made it in time. When I was done, I sank down on the tile floor, spent and shaking, my breath coming in desperate pants.

The door opened and Ms. Powell came in. “I'm sorry,” she said, crouching next to me. “I shouldn't have sprung it on you. There are better ways . . .”

“To say I killed a planet's worth of people? Next time try a greeting card.” My stomach heaved again, but there was nothing left to throw up.

“Come on,” she said, helping me to my feet. I hobbled to the sink and rinsed my mouth out, as if I could wash away the taste of what I'd done. Simon and Iggy, fading to nothingness as they played near the pond. A playground full of children. I'd killed them.

I scrubbed my hands over my face. “It's murder. It's genocide.”

“You didn't know,” she said, handing me a towel, calmer and more reasonable than anyone should be. Then again, it wasn't news to her. “Even most Cleavers haven't been told.”

I
had
known, deep down. From the minute I'd watched Park World Simon fade, I'd known cleavings were wrong.

And they were still happening. “Do my parents know?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Outside the Major and Minor Consorts, very few people know the truth.”

I gripped the edge of the sink. The girl who stared back from the mirror didn't look like me. She didn't look like a murderer, either, but it turned out she was both. “If it's such a secret, how did the Free Walkers find out?”

“A Consort physicist with a theory and a conscience. It was generations ago, well before I was born. The discovery created a schism within the Consort; in the end, those advocating cauterization were branded heretics. They fled to save their own lives. We've been considered traitors ever since.”

“Why don't you tell people? Every day you keep quiet, we cleave more Echoes. More people die. The Consort might be evil, but most Walkers are decent people. They'd stop if they knew the truth.” My parents would never allow it. God knows Addie wouldn't.

“Do you think we haven't tried? We can't force people to believe.”

“You won't have to force them. Just explain, like you did with me.”

“You had the benefit of growing up with a Free Walker. Your entire childhood, Monty was counteracting the Consort's influence. Haven't you ever wondered why you and your sister turned out so differently?”

Addie had been four when we moved in with my grand­father. She'd started school soon after, leaving Monty and me alone.

“Monty wasn't raising me as a Free Walker, he was manipulating me into finding Rose.” I clutched my pendant so hard the tines bit into my palm.

She looked away. “He was also teaching you to value lives instead of taking them. He gave you tools that most Walker children never learn.”

I thought back to the Walks we'd taken when I was little, the songs he sang, the tricks and shortcuts he'd shown me. All because I was his best, brightest girl.

Or so I'd thought.

“Hum a tune both deft and kind,” I murmured. “Monty wouldn't let me cleave. He taught me how to tune instead.”

“Cauterization's not the only thing we do. Often, tuning a world is enough to protect it from the Cleavers, and it takes far less time.”

“Why not cauterize every Echo? Set them free?”

“Because the drop in energy to the Key World would leave it too vulnerable. Protecting the Key World
and
the Echoes is a balancing act. Until we convince the Walkers to stop cleaving, the best we can do is to head off as many cleavings as possible.”

Addie's project, I realized. Lattimer had asked her to help
find the Free Walkers, and now I knew why. They were interfering with his cleavings.

Gently she said, “It's an imperfect solution, but we do the best we can. We cauterize the most unstable Echoes before the Consort can cleave them, and tune the ones we can save.”

I leaned my forehead against the cool tile wall. “But if the Consort knows the truth, why are they still cleaving?”

“Their only concern is protecting the Key World. If that comes at the expense of every other branch in the multiverse, so be it.”

“Obedience, diligence, sacrifice,” I recited. The Consort's watchwords.

“The Consort views untethered Echoes as an abomination—people without souls.” Her mouth twisted. “As such, the idea of entire branches filled with them doesn't appeal. It's not only the physics they object to; it's the ethics.”

“So you want to take them down.”

“Sometimes a world has to be torn down in order to make way for a new one. Remember, a Consort member usually holds his or her seat for life, and they choose their own successors. We'd hoped, years ago, that your grandfather would be named to the Consort. He was well-regarded by the woman who held the seat; he had the support of his colleagues. Nobody knew he was a Free Walker. Everything was falling into place.”

Which was usually the time things fell apart, in my experience. “What went wrong?”

“Lattimer,” she said. “We'd been so focused on Montrose
getting the Consort seat, we forgot about the other two members—­but Lattimer hadn't. He'd convinced them he was the man for the job, and promised to put an end to the Free Walkers as proof. On his orders, the Consort launched a massive, coordinated attack against us. They caught Gil, your grandmother went on the run, and Monty's chance at the Consort seat disappeared along with her. Countless Free Walkers were captured and interrogated, which led to more arrests and more cleavings. It's taken us years to recover, and we've learned our lesson. Caution takes time.”

“And haste leads to unexpected consequences,” I said. Another proverb.

“Exactly. Your textbook got that right, at least. Now you understand why we can't rush off and see Simon.”

The mention of his name sent me reeling again. I'd killed his Echo when I cleaved Park World. Every time my father and Addie cleaved, they killed people. My mom planned their Walks to help them kill with maximum efficiency. Eliot, my classmates, and I were all training to do the same. Our lives were built on murder.

“You can't blame yourself,” she said, as if she could hear my thoughts.

I could, actually. I did. “Were you born a Free Walker?”

“Yes. My parents left the Consort before I was born. I've never known anything else.”

She'd never cleaved a world. Never killed anyone. Her sympathy was theoretical, and she had no idea what it felt like to carry that kind of weight.

“All those people . . . ,” I said softly.

“You had no way of knowing. Now you do, and you have the power to change it. You can help us.”

“It's not enough.” Nothing I did would make up for how casually, how thoughtlessly I'd ended lives.

She shook her head. “The past is a hungry creature. If all you feed it is regret, it will consume you. Let it fuel you instead.”

She steered me out of the bathroom and back to the pivot. As soon as we returned to the Key World, my phone started buzzing with texts from Eliot.

“I have to tell him.” I needed to hear that the wrong I'd done wasn't the entirety of who I was.

“Not yet. It's not safe.”

“He's as trustworthy as I am. More, actually.”

“You're an Armstrong.”

“That's Monty,” I said. “I'm a Sullivan.”

“Not to us,” she replied. “Will you help, now that you know the truth?”

Truth is as fluid as water, as faceted as diamonds, as flawed as memory.
That's what Monty always said. And my truth was, I would have helped them anyway, to save Simon. But now I would do it to save myself.

“Yes.”

She sagged with relief. “I'll work on setting up the meeting with Simon. I know you must have more questions—”

“I have a million questions,” I said. “So does Bree Carlson. She's not going to quit looking for Simon.”

She tapped the desk, skeptical and impatient. “Do you really think she's a threat?”

“I don't think so. But . . . can't you guys do something to get her off my case? She's come after me twice today.”

“I'll see what I can do.” Ms. Powell took my hands in hers. “Are you sure you're all right? Finding out about the cleavings is a shock.”

My stomach twisted. Shock didn't begin to describe it.

My phone buzzed again. “Eliot,” I said, suddenly desperate to escape. “I should go.”

“We'll talk soon,” she said. “But in the meantime, you cannot tell anyone, Eliot included.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued. “Please don't make us regret trusting you. It could ruin your chance to see Simon again.”

I swallowed, nodded, and stumbled from the room.

I couldn't tell Eliot, but the knowledge of what I'd done burned in my veins like poison. I needed to get it out, to confess.

Who did you confess to, if you had to keep a secret from the world?

Someone from another world.

CH
APTER FIVE

D
USK WAS FALLING WHEN I
reached the cemetery, despite the fact it was only late afternoon. The streetlights flickered on one by one, too weak to pierce the gloom on the other side of the wrought-iron fence.

My breath hung in smoky puffs. I hunched my shoulders against the cold and peered through the bars, looking for a familiar shape. But the graveyard was deserted.

The massive, rusting gate stood open a few inches. I tugged on it, wincing at the shriek of metal. I'd forgotten how loud it was, or maybe the shadows and silence only made it seem that way.

The cemetery wasn't large—tucked beside a neighborhood church and boxy older homes, bordered by a stone half wall and a row of trees at the back. Many of the gravestones scattered throughout were crumbling, or worn smooth by time and grief. Only a few were still legible, including a small marble rectangle set into the ground. Someone had swept away the old leaves, unlike many of the other headstones, revealing the crisp engraving.

AMELIA LANE

BELOVED MOTHER

I knelt and traced the letters, listening to the pitch of this world, where Simon's mother hadn't escaped the cancer ravaging her body, and grieved all over again. This Amelia had been as real as the one I visited each day, and her son felt her absence as painfully as my Amelia did her Simon.

“I'm so sorry,” I whispered. “Nobody told me the truth, and I was too stupid to see it for myself, and now . . . I don't know what to do.”

I wondered how much this Amelia had known, how much of the truth she carried with her. Echoes held the memories of the lives they'd led before the choice that formed their world, so she would have remembered Simon's father and her involvement with the Free Walkers. Would she have known that she was an Echo? Would she have felt second best?

“I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me what to do next. I wish I'd known sooner, and I wish I could have saved you.” My breath hitched, and I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I wish I could have saved all of them.”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” came a familiar voice behind me, and I jolted.

Simon—an Echo of my Simon, dark hair jaggedly cut, dressed head to toe in black, carrying a sketchbook and the weight of this world. He'd told me once that he came here every day to sketch. I'd hoped to catch him, but after everything I'd heard today, the sight of him was a shock.

“What does that even mean?” I asked after I recovered.

“It means . . . I don't know, honestly.” His mouth curved as he
helped me up, his dissonance rocking me back on my heels. “My mom used to say it whenever I wanted something I couldn't have. I think it's about how wishing is easy. Making it happen is harder.”

I brushed at my muddy knees. “No kidding.”

“What are you doing here, Del?”

I looked at him then, the line of his jaw, the scar at the corner of his mouth, and longing and guilt clamped like a vise on my heart. Real. Not just real.
Alive.

“You remember me.”

He patted the sketchbook under his arm. “I never forget a face.”

I hadn't told him my name, on my last visit here. He'd known it nevertheless, seen me before we touched, and I'd missed both signs completely. It had alarmed me then, but now I took it as a good sign. I searched his face for any indication that the message I'd sent through Doughnut World Simon had worked.

But the light was dim, and my heart was heavy, and all I could see in his gaze was sympathy.

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked.

“I was drawing.” He hefted the sketchbook. “I lost the light, so I left. Came back when I heard the gate. What's wrong?”

“Who said anything was wrong?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “People don't hang out in cemeteries unless something's wrong.”

“You do.”

“My mom's here. Can't get much more wrong. Who are
you
grieving, Delancey Sullivan?”

My head snapped up, and I wondered if one of my wishes had been granted. “Whole worlds.”

He bent and removed another leaf that had scudded across Amelia's grave, then took my hand and led me to the stone wall. “Tell me.”

I boosted myself onto the rough-hewn ledge, pleased when he sat close enough that our sides pressed together, shoulder to knee. He touched the scratch on my cheek, his artist's fingers featherlight, eyebrows drawing together.

“It doesn't hurt,” I assured him.

“What does?”

“I did something horrible.” As small talk went, it sucked. But his mother's death had stripped this Simon clean of small talk. He didn't waste time on insignificance, or false consolation.

“Can you undo it?”

I had a fleeting, fanciful image of reweaving the threads I'd cut, but Walking wasn't time travel. The world I'd cleaved was gone, as impossible to recover as a tear in the sea. “I'm too late. I thought it was the right thing, but it wasn't. And now I have all this blood on my hands, and no clue how to live with it.”

He smiled, a wry, tired hitch along one side of his mouth. “You're not going to tell me what you did?”

“You wouldn't believe me.”

“Figures.” He looked out over the graveyard, the deepening twilight turning the headstones blue-black, the lights at the entrance casting ineffective circles on the ground. “I guess if you can't make it right, you make it so it can't happen again.”

Which is what the Free Walkers were doing. But Ms. Powell had said cauterizations held back energy that strengthened the Key World. The cut site was left weaker. Without the Key World, the entire multiverse would destabilize, strings disrupting each other until there was nothing left. Were the Free Walkers—with the best of intentions—destroying the very thing I was sworn to protect?

But who protected the Echoes? Walkers believed in obedience, diligence, and sacrifice—but how much sacrifice was too much? “Do you believe in necessary evils?”

He squinted. “Fooling people into thinking evil is necessary seems pretty evil. Not sure about the necessary part.”

“What about the greater good?”

“Depends on whose version of good we're talking about. Everyone's the hero of their own story, aren't they?”

“Not me.”

He slipped an arm around my shoulders. “You didn't know what you were doing.”

“Oh, I knew.” My fingers on threads that split and sheared and unmade a world. “But I didn't know what it meant.”

“Why not?”

“Because that's what I was told!” I chose the words with care. “The people I . . . work for. They told us we were doing a service, we were helping people. And instead . . . it was exactly the opposite. They've been lying to me my whole life.”

Fury broke through my shock and horror. No wonder the Consort wanted to eradicate the Free Walkers. The Consort held
sway over the Walkers by telling us we were heroes, telling us what we wanted to believe. If we thought otherwise, they'd lose control of us, and of the multiverse. An unwelcome truth is the most effective weapon of all.

“You can't give a kid a box of matches and not expect them to burn down the house,” he said. He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, hand lingering along my jaw. I closed my eyes and savored the sensation, though it wasn't my Simon. His fingers smelled of turpentine and pencil lead, but the touch was so familiar, even if the sound was wrong. I pressed my cheek into his palm and drew strength from it, the first bit I'd had in days.

“I have to make it right.”

I hadn't known, but now I did. If I sat by and let the cleavings continue, I was as evil as the Consort.

“We'll fix it,” he murmured, fingers weaving through my hair. “And then we'll be good.”

We'll fix this, and we'll be good.
My message to Doughnut Simon, echoing back across the multiverse to me.

My eyes flew open and I bolted upright. “Simon?”

“I'm right here,” he said, like I was a child waking from a nightmare. Maybe I was.

“Can I ask you a strange question?”

“You've cornered the market on strange questions,” he said. “One more won't hurt.”

“Do you dream about me?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, not meeting my eyes. “Not as much lately. Sometimes I think about what I'd say if I saw you
again. Thought about giving you back this—” He fished in his pocket, and I knew instinctively what he was going to draw out.

When he stretched out his hand, the pale yellow star I'd folded for him rested in his palm. The breadcrumb I'd needed. I reached for it, but his fingers curled protectively around it.

“—But I'm keeping it. It reminds me of you.”

“What else did you want to tell me?” I choked out. If I could send Simon a message through his Echoes, maybe he could send one to me.

He ducked his head. “That I've missed you. That I'll wait as long as you need. That you should go ahead and kiss me.”

I laughed despite myself. “I'm closer every day.”

He tucked the star away again, the Key World frequency chiming as he did, counteracting the dizziness that was starting to encroach on me. “You should be closer
now
.”

He slid a hand around the nape of my neck, and I leaned in, pouring as much promise into the kiss as I could, the faintest hint of rosemary on his lips. Then I broke away, and he studied me again.

“I won't see you again, will I?”

I shook my head. One kiss—a kiss he asked for, whether it was a request from my Simon or from his heart—felt right. Any more would be using him.

I slid off the wall. “Not here.”

“Del,” he said, grabbing my wrist, the warmth in his voice transformed to worry. “Be careful. Of everyone.”