Unbreakable (Unraveling) (28 page)

“But you can’t!” I shout. “Look what happened today. I walked in on you with another version of me. I can’t even begin to explain how messed up that is.”

“I know, and I should have known,” he says. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll—”

I shake my head. “It’s not about that. It’s . . . If I needed a sign from the multiverse that we’re not supposed to be together, that was it.” I take a deep breath and ignore the way my eyes sting. “How we feel about each other doesn’t matter. We’re from two different worlds and being together has only hurt us—both of us.”

“You don’t really believe that,” he whispers.

“I do,” I say, my voice cracking. “My world is falling apart, and we’re both wanted criminals. You abducted people from their worlds, and you did it for
me
. And I broke out of a prison and became a fugitive and a murderer.”

I press the heel of my palm to the center of my chest to try to hold on to some semblance of self-control.

“I killed a man.”

Ben’s voice comes out quiet, calm, and even, everything that mine is not. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“I shoved a piece of glass into his neck and felt his life bleed out all over my hands,” I say, and hearing the words out loud makes them more true. And that makes my eyes burn and my throat constrict because those words shouldn’t belong to me.

I have to pause and catch my breath. “We’ve both ruined people’s lives in the name of being together.”

I turn around and head to the door. I don’t look back. This time, he doesn’t follow me, but as I’m pushing it open, he says something. It’s quiet, and I can’t quite make out the words so I’m not sure if he meant for me to hear them or not.

When I turn, I don’t ask him to repeat himself. But he does anyway. “So you think we’re doomed?”

“Aren’t we?” I whisper.

“How am I supposed to forget how I feel about you,” he says, and it’s not a question.

“I don’t know,” I say. It’s the truth. But I also don’t know how we can be together. So I say something stupid, something that I’ve heard other people say because they don’t get it. The wrongness of the words makes me stumble over them. “It won’t feel like the end of the world forever.”

And then I slip through the door, careful not to let it latch behind me.

I
’m not sure I’ve ever been so in need of coffee.

It’s three a.m. I tossed and turned through the couple of hours we had to sleep and I can’t be certain if I nodded off at one point or just lost track of time. I’m awake, dressed—not showered, but as ready as I’ll ever be.

I have Barclay’s 9mm HM USP Match and an extra magazine in case I run out.

We’re all here.

“Earth 49873 is going to be the safest place for you,” Barclay says. “It’s got civilization, unlike this place, but it’s one of the universes that barely has any IA presence.”

My double shifts on her feet. She’s wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and Ben’s hoodie—and even though I shouldn’t care about that, it bothers me. “Why can’t I just stay here?”

Barclay doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t want her to somehow lead people to us, that he wants to be able to come back here. Instead he says, “What if we don’t make it back? Who knows what effects the radiation could have on you if you’re here too long. You’d probably be dead or out of your mind within a week.”

She frowns. “All right, I guess I’m ready.”

“Just remember what I told you,” Barclay adds. “The industrial revolution never happened, so things will be really different. You need to learn the culture and assimilate—and quickly.”

“Sounds like a blast,” she says, the sarcasm dripping off her in waves.

Barclay’s nostrils flare a little in annoyance, and in another situation, I would want to smile. I like that she can push his buttons.

“I’m serious. If you stand out, they’ll notice you, and you’ll end up dead,” he says.

She doesn’t look at him when she says, “Yeah, I got it.”

The inherent sadness of what’s about to happen weighs down on me, and I take a deep breath to try to balance myself. Barclay is going to open a portal, and this girl who’s lost everything is going to walk into another universe where she won’t know a soul, and she has no idea what to expect—other than the fact that if IA finds her, she’s as good as dead.

I wonder what’s going through her mind, if there’s any interest, even a spark, at the idea of seeing not just another world, but one that’s practically a window into the past. If she’s scared. Looking at her, she just seems bitter.

“Let’s get this over with,” she says.

Barclay points the quantum charger at the ground, but as he’s about to open the portal, I give her a chance.

“Wait,” I say, reaching for her.

She flinches away.

“You don’t have to go,” I say, ignoring the way Barclay is looking at me. “You could come with us—help us.”

“Go . . . go with you?” She shakes her head. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because of what they did to you.” They beat her, made her pretend she was someone else, and then when she’d played her part, they left her to rot in a prison cell.

She either doesn’t remember or she doesn’t care. She just stares at me with a doe-eyed expression I can’t imagine on my own face.

“You can help take them down, make right the things they’ve done, help get them put away.”

Her lips turn into a sad smile. “Or I could end up in the same place I was in six months ago—or worse. Better to run now. Maybe I’ll luck out and they’ll think I’m dead.”

Maybe she doesn’t get it. I’m not sure why I can’t drop it—why I can’t just let it go. But I can’t. She’s got as much stake in this as any of us—maybe more. “But if you run, you might not ever be able to go home.”

Her laugh is harsh. “What home? Prima? I don’t have anything waiting for me back there.” I open my mouth, but she doesn’t let me say anything else. “Look, I’m not willing to die yet. I’ll do what I have to—you do the same.”

And with that she turns to Ben. “Thanks for getting me out.”

His eyes flick to me, but I look away.

She doesn’t look at any of us as she closes her eyes and steps into the portal, but I can’t take my eyes off her as she disappears through it.

“Glad that’s fucking over with.” Elijah looks at me, his lips turned up in a smirk. “Also glad you’re the version we got. Someone should have gotten their money back for that one.”

I smile, but I don’t feel it.

W
hen we portal in, we’ll walk right into the main office of the processing center.

Before Barclay opens the portal, he grabs my arm. “Don’t hold your breath.”

I nod and shift my grip on the USP Match. I think of the guard I killed. Then I remind myself that there’s no other way, that in two days and five hours we could all be dead. The portal opens and Barclay goes through. I follow immediately behind him, gun raised and trying to breathe normally.

Freezing-cold air whips into my lungs, then it turns warm—too warm, and I feel like I’m breathing fire, but I refuse to let myself tense up.

And then we’re there.

I relax my knees and let them give a little to keep myself from stumbling. True to Ben’s description, there are six guys hanging out in front of the computer monitors in the processing center, which is a large circular office with glass walls that overlooks the six lower levels of the prison. They’re all startled and fumbling for weapons.

“Arms behind your head,” Barclay is screaming. “Get down on the ground!”

I train my gun on the guy who looks like he’s in charge, a big bulky brute of a guy in a T-shirt and cargo pants, as Ben and Elijah come through the portal behind me, guns raised and spreading out with their backs to the window—just like Barclay instructed.

My grip on the gun is relaxed, my arms slightly bent at the elbows. The safety is already off, and my finger is on the trigger. The pounding of my heart echoes against my eardrums. I tune out the sounds around us, as if I’m at the shooting range—as if the men in front of me are targets. I know from experience that if I fire off ten shots, all ten of them will be fatal.

They’re not outnumbered, but they are out-gunned, and apparently that makes up for it. All six guys reluctantly raise their arms, some of them more hesitantly than others. Barclay moves to the first one, and I flank him just in case the guy tries to do something stupid.

But he doesn’t. He lets Barclay restrain his hands behind his back and lower him facedown on the ground, something Barclay repeats with every guy in here. I follow him, keeping my gun aimed at their heads. I speak evenly and tell each one that if he makes the wrong move, I’ll put a bullet between his eyes.

My voice is so cold, I barely recognize myself.

When we get to the last guy, I see his eyes dart around, as if he’s looking for a way out. His hand twitches and I nod toward the gun at his hip. “You’ll be dead before you get your hand on it.”

Barclay smirks and grabs the guy’s left arm, folding it behind his back. “Better not try her, Basil. She almost shot me once.”

Basil doesn’t find that as funny as Barclay apparently does, but he stays still and lets Barclay restrain him. Then he looks behind me at Ben, with nothing but pure hatred on his face.

“You drink my beer and tell me about your girlfriend and your dog, and how much you miss them, and you listen to me tell you about my family, and now you come back here and point a gun in my face?” he says. “I kept you safe here. I thought we were comrades.”

I risk a glance at Ben. His face is flushed. His gun raised, his hand quivers as he points it at this supposed
comrade
. “You rape the Unwilling and put out your cigarettes on their skin,” Ben says.

“Don’t,” I say, moving toward him. I don’t care what this guy has done, how awful he is. We’re here to save the slaves and get the proof we need. I think of the guard I killed and the way his eye looked when he was gone, how his blood spilled warm over my skin when he died. I’ll defend my own life and the lives of everyone here, but we need to get through this without killing anyone else if we can.

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.

B
en 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.