by L. E. DeLano
“But think about how you used to feel about Finn—before,” I quietly remind him. “You helped me save him, remember?”
“We didn’t save him,” he responds in a really cutting tone. “And this”—he points at Finn—“is what we’re dealing with in the aftermath.”
“But you knew he wouldn’t hurt me,” I press. “Think about it, Ben. If Finn wanted me dead, he’s had plenty of chances.”
“Too many!” he agrees. “And you’re not even seeing his part in it! We’re the only ones who get it!” He gestures at Rudy, who is eyeing us all shrewdly.
“The game is up, Rudy,” Mario says. “You know we can’t allow this to happen. What you’ve done to Eversor—and to Ben—is a blatant misuse of your powers.”
“I haven’t had much to work with,” Rudy scoffs. “Extreme measures were warranted. And you’re a fine one to talk about misusing power. Jessa has talent that could harness the universe without resorting to all these distractions. Yet you let it lie fallow.”
“I don’t believe in convergence,” I tell him. “There might be more reality streams than ever, but that just leaves the door open for more Travelers and more assignments. Ask us! Any one of us would be happy to sign up for more.”
“Unnecessary and wasteful,” Rudy says. “But it doesn’t surprise me that you would take that challenge, Jessa. You have the same thirst for adventure I found in Finn. But I realized early on that he was too headstrong for what needed to be done. I began grooming my other protégé, but she doesn’t have your talent.”
“Are we supposed to pity you your choices?” Finn asks in a scathing tone. “You’re a coward, hiding behind a weak woman.”
“Don’t talk to him like that,” Ben warns. “He’s right. He’s been right about everything.”
“You’re strong, Jessa,” Rudy says, stepping out from behind the table. “Just as your ancestor was strong. Did you never wonder why Viatrix was the only Traveler for so very long?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“It’s because this isn’t the first convergence,” Rudy says. “But I suppose Mario didn’t divulge that.”
“What?” I look to Mario for confirmation.
“It’s happened before,” Mario says quietly. “Viatrix started the convergence.”
“In her defense, it was unintentional.” Rudy shrugs.
“We tried to correct it, but it was too late. She was strong enough to reverse some of the damage and keep her reality intact—to preserve the origin,” Mario says. “It was decades before we had enough divergent reality streams to yield us more Travelers, and we’ve been very structured in our corrections ever since.”
“And you didn’t think I needed to know that?” I ask incredulously.
“Did he tell you? She was experimenting with her abilities.” Rudy waves his hand, and a montage of scenes light the picture frame behind him. There is Viatrix, struggling to keep from drowning in a stormy sea, dodging arrows and eventually getting hit in the leg, running through a burning alleyway. Finally, I see her in a shifting and tilting dreamscape, her body fading in and out as she desperately tries to keep focus and hold everything together.
“Mario was the one who encouraged all of that,” Rudy goes on. “When he discovered what she was and what she could do, he had her constantly pressing the boundaries. He sent her into the unknown, put her in reckless situations.… Does this sound familiar?”
My eyes are locked on Mario, because yes, this does sound familiar.
“Don’t listen to him, Jessa,” Mario says. “It’s not like that. What you and I have worked on—”
“Stop.” I put up a hand. “Just let me think for a minute.”
“He still bears the guilt of pushing Viatrix to do exactly what needed to be done. Now he doesn’t want the convergence because he doesn’t want to simplify,” Rudy says. “You accuse me of wanting power, when all I want is the safety of every Traveler. Mario wants to use you for his own entertainment.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Mario growls. “Corrections are chosen with the utmost care and study. I wrote the damn guidelines.”
“And still things get away, spin out of control. If we have fewer fires to tend, we can tend them with more care. More consideration.”
“At the cost of millions of lives,” Finn bites out. “What of them?”
“They don’t belong,” Rudy states flatly. “All of them created on the turn of a choice. On a whim. And like any creation, they can be remade to a better version of themselves.”
“You’re not a god,” I tell him.
“Aren’t we? Mario and I make decisions every day that begin and end lives. How is this different—other than being more efficient?”
“Wait—what do you mean, millions of lives?” Ben looks at me in confusion. “Jessa?”
I walk over to him. “He’s going to kill me,” I tell him. “The dancer you bought the french fries for. The girl who writes the bad poetry. And the girl who heard your voice for the first time.”
My words have struck home, and Ben’s face clearly shows it. I look at Rudy. “Mario may not always make it easy for me, but that’s life. There aren’t any guarantees. Isn’t that what you Dreamers always say? You can’t predict it perfectly. And that’s what makes it so damn interesting.”
“We can do great things, Jessa,” Rudy encourages. His crisp, urbane demeanor cracks, and I can see the madness in his eyes. “Think of it! With me at the helm and you influencing emerging new reality streams, we could be glorious!”
“She’s already glorious,” Finn says. “And you’re barking up the wrong tree. You’ve lost. Me. Her. All of it.”
Rudy tenses, and I see Mario take a step forward.
“Don’t try it. If you come with me peacefully—”
Mario’s invitation is promptly blown to hell by an exploding bookcase, raining Technicolor papers down all around us. Light suddenly bursts out of every crack in the shelves, and the ground beneath us shakes, rattling all the items on the walls, causing pictures to fall and glass cases to vibrate.
We run for cover, diving under the table.
“What’s going on?” I hear Ben ask as Rudy races by with Mario in close pursuit. I reach up, grabbing Ben’s hand and tugging him down under the table with us.
“I’ve called for reinforcements!” Mario shouts. “Brace yourselves!”
“Listen to me!” Rudy screams as he sees me. “You can’t stop this! Jessa, you cannot let this go too far! We have the chance to reset and reclaim!”
He dives behind what appears to be an old-fashioned plow as Mario pulls a wicked-looking spear from a wall display and lets it fly.
Rudy cowers behind a large display of military swords. He picks one up, waving it threateningly, and Mario wastes no time in grabbing a sword out of the scabbard on a standing suit of armor and starting forward.
“This is nuts!” I say, looking over at Finn.
“I suppose he has to work with what he’s got at hand,” Finn replies.
“The standard long sword will give him extended reach,” Ben tells us—and somehow he’s reached up and gotten his ice cream and spoon, which he uses to point—“but the Civil War saber is much lighter. His opponent will be faster for it. It’s going to come down to strategy and the potential appearance of reinforcements.”
Ben starts to move from where we’re crouching under the table, and I pull him back.
“Don’t go out there,” I tell him, just as we hear the clang of metal on metal.
“We’re not going to be able to see much under here,” he tells me, raising his voice to be heard over the clanging of steel, the grunts of exertion, and then a crash as Mario is thrown across the room into a bench. He picks himself up and rushes back at Rudy again, tossing him hard into a stand of bookcases nearby. Ben lets out a yelp and dives right for them, catching a book as it falls off the shelf.
“Are you crazy!” I admonish, dragging him back under the table. “Get back
here!”
“This is priceless!” he protests. “I’m not about to let these two loonies destroy my books.”
“It’s a dream!” I shout in exasperation. “The books aren’t real!”
“Then neither am I,” he counters.
“I’m not taking a chance on him permanently scrambling your brain,” I tell him.
Mario is on the offense now, with Rudy backed into a corner. Rudy is pulling anything he can get his hands on off the shelves and throwing it in an effort to slow Mario down—books, vases, even a large geode that smashes to the floor right in front of Finn, spraying us all with shards of rock.
“Hey! My dad gave that to me!” Ben protests, still holding his book to his chest to protect it.
“Are you okay?” I ask Finn as he dabs at a cut on his face.
“Nicked me,” he says. “They’re at a standoff. They’re both too strong to lose.”
I’m beginning to think he’s right. Mario and Rudy are grappling now, falling into tables and slamming into walls, but neither one has the upper hand.
“When opponents in battle are evenly matched, sometimes the element of surprise can make all the difference,” Ben says matter-of-factly. “For instance…”
He crawls out a few feet to grab a fallen telescope, and then he squints a bit, judging the distance to Mario and Rudy before he gives it a strong push. It rolls end over end toward them, coming to rest right behind Rudy. Mario gives a mighty heave, throwing Rudy backward so that he hits the telescope, tripping and stumbling over it on his way to a full-out sprawl on the floor. Finn dives over the top of him, and Mario grabs Finn by the back of his shirt, hauling him off.
“Get back!” he shouts, and with a deafening roar, the red door on the wall bursts open.
We’re thrown backward as hundreds of figures pour into the room, backlit by a brilliant light blazing through the doorway, surrounding Rudy in a circle that begins to tighten, pressing in.
“Listen to me!” he screams. “It has to be done! You know it! We all know it! We cannot contin—”
His voice breaks off as the circle begins to move, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until they’re nothing but a blur, then a beam of light that gets brighter and more intense with every pass until we can barely look at it. A second red door appears in the wall across from us, glowing like it’s lit up in neon, and with an enormous bang, it opens. Papers and books, glass and small objects fly toward the door like a vacuum explosion in a spacecraft, pulling hard and stealing the breath from our lungs.
I hear Rudy’s voice like it’s coming from a mountaintop somewhere, and he gives a long, sustained “Nooooooooo!” until he’s sucked through, and the door slams with ear-popping force behind him before it vanishes.
“Well,” Ben says. “That was intense. I guess we’re done here.” He crawls out from under the table, sits down in a chair, opens up a book, and goes about his business as though two godlike creatures didn’t just have a war in his brain.
Mario is panting with effort but manages to let out a chuckle.
“Is he gone?” I ask, taking Finn’s hand as he pulls me out from under the table. “Where did he go?”
“He’s imprisoned,” Mario replies. “He won’t get out—not with the power of all of us keeping him in.” He turns to Finn. “And what did you think you were doing? I asked you to stay out of the way.”
“He’s not too great at that,” I say dryly.
Finn shrugs. “You needed the help.”
“I had the situation in hand,” Mario says sternly.
“You were getting pummeled,” Finn replies. “I must say, I like to see you flustered. Makes you a bit more … human.”
“Finn.” The last thing I want is Finn pissing off a Dreamer again with his smart mouth.
“What? I’m only saying it’ll do him good to lose a little omnipotence, that’s all,” Finn says.
Mario gives him an eye roll, then turns back to me.
“Well…,” he says, dusting off his hands. “That was fun. I’ve wanted to do that for eons. Rudy has always been such a prig.”
I lean back on the table. “It’s over. He’s gone.” I exhale, long and loud.
“It’s not over yet, love,” Finn cautions. “Eversor is still out there.”
“She won’t have his direction,” Mario says. “Or his interference. She’ll be tasked another Dreamer since Rudy is gone, and we’ll see that she gets someone gentle. She won’t be allowed on assignments anymore, either.” He claps a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll give you the rest of the night off.”
“You’re all heart,” I say.
“And now I’ll bid you adieu. I have some reports to make and some reality streams to see to,” Mario says. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Do we go with you? To get out, I mean?” I ask him.
“I’ll set the door once I leave. The two of you can wake Ben by coming back through.”
He walks over to the red door, and with a nod, he’s through. The door closes behind him, and we turn as we hear Ben call my name.
“Hey, St. Clair!” He’s got a black ball—like a basketball—in his hands and he’s leaning against the side of a semi-demolished bookshelf. “This ball belonged to Teddy Roosevelt,” he tells us. “Did you know he had asthma? He still led an active and full life, though.”
“How utterly fascinating,” Finn says blandly.
“All righty, then…,” I say, giving Finn a pointed look. “Ben, it’s time to wake up now.”
He tucks the ball under his arm and looks at me curiously. “Oh, am I still dreaming?”
“Do you live in a museum?” I ask.
“Today I do,” he says matter-of-factly. “And we have ice cream. Which is awesome.”
“Very,” I agree as Ben opens the door and we all step through.
I open my eyes and it’s dead silent in my bedroom. That is, until my phone chirps with a text from Ben:
I throw the phone down and Finn and I erupt in laughter and more than a little relief.
26
Aftermath
I’m just finishing loading our breakfast dishes into the dishwasher when I hear the doorbell. It’s Wednesday, and the first day of Christmas break. Mom and Danny are at work, leaving the day wide open for me. And Finn.
“That’s Ben,” I say nervously, and for a moment I wonder if I can ignore the doorbell. It’s cowardly, I know, but I was just running around in his subconscious, and worse, I brought friends. He’s not going to be happy about that.
“Chin up, love,” Finn says. “At least he’ll be speaking his own thoughts now.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I straighten my T-shirt—I don’t know why—and I walk to the door, taking a deep breath before I open it.
“Ben.” I step aside so he can come in. He looks better. Sort of. “Did you get some sleep?”
“You mean before or after you were blowing up bookcases in my dreams?” he asks warily. “Please tell me you know what I’m talking about.”
“We do.” Finn comes in from the kitchen and Ben bristles instantly.
I give Finn a look—why didn’t he stay in the kitchen? Then I sigh and close the door before I take Ben by the hand and lead him over to the couch.
“I can’t believe what Rudy was putting you through,” I say, sitting down on the couch and pulling him down next to me. “I’m so sorry, Ben. If it weren’t for me, you would never have gotten tangled up in all this.”
“Seriously…,” Ben says. “I can’t believe you were in my mind. That’s messed up.”
“It was the only way,” Finn says. “Rudy wasn’t coming out without a fight.”
“That was an experience,” I say. “Leave it to you to have a museum for a brain.”
Ben rolls his head from side to side. “Man, does it feel good to have him gone. He was like a horcrux or something.”
“A what?” Finn asks, sitting in the chair across from us.
“Later,�
�� I say, turning back to Ben. “You really feel okay? No lingering effects?”
“All my memories are intact,” he assures me. “Including the time you fell in the mud behind the gym and you still had mud in your ear the next day.”
I open my mouth, then close it again. “Nice. And I was going to offer you some breakfast.”
“I already ate.” He stretches back on the couch. “And now that my head is clear, I can remember what I really went to Wickley’s for yesterday. The museum called my dad—the mirrors are in and we can pick them up.”
“Why would we need to?” I ask. “Rudy’s gone. And Eversor’s cut off.”
“Cut off, yes,” Finn says. “But no less dangerous for it. She may not yet realize that Rudy’s out of the picture.”
“So she may be sticking to the game plan?”
“Precisely. Until she’s been made to see the light, I think we need to stick to our game plan as well.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Ben says. “I can have them returned.”
“But I want to see them,” I tell him.
“Then let Ben hold them for a time,” Finn says. “At least until we know that Eversor’s gotten the message.”
“He’s probably right,” Ben says. “Better safe than sorry.”
“What’s this?” I ask in an exaggerated tone. “Civil conversation?”
“He’s much more agreeable without a godlike creature meddling about in his mind,” Finn says. “Have you noticed?”
“And that gives me unfettered access to my near-encyclopedic knowledge of medieval and twentieth-century weaponry,” Ben says, giving Finn a forced smile.
I guess I spoke too soon. Obviously, they’re not ready to join hands and sing “Kumbaya” yet. And I can’t delay what I need to do any longer.
“Finn, don’t you have someplace to be?”
He looks at me quizzically. “What?”
“You were going to walk down to Mugsy’s for coffee, weren’t you?”
“I drink tea,” he reminds me. I give him a glare because he’s not getting the point.
“I know that. Go get some.” My eyes dart to Ben, then back to Finn. “Please.”