When You and I Collide

by Kate Norris

  . . . or to her?

  “I understand,” Winnie said. She understood all too well. “Go on.”

  Scott continued. “Hawthorn has been experimenting with—basically, they’re a new type of battery. The idea is that they can be used to absorb energy from another reality to balance out the amount of matter we’re transporting, so the total ‘stuff’ in each system remains constant. But you’re saying there was no precaution like that during this—this accident?”

  Winnie shook her head.

  “We have to get you back home, Winnie. We have to get you back home as quickly as possible. I’m going to go get Professor Schulde. We have to take you to Hawthorn. However you got here, he’ll be able to help you get back.”

  “No!” Winnie said sharply.

  “Winnie—”

  “You’re saying Hawthorn has it all worked out? Really? He’s able to transport people?”

  Scott stared at his feet. He shifted his weight nervously, then looked back up at her. “No. Not yet. There have been some promising tests with inanimate objects. But the tests with living subjects . . . Hawthorn is still working out the kinks. They haven’t gone great.”

  Winnie immediately thought of James, and her blood ran cold.

  “Humans?”

  “No! No, just animal subjects.”

  Winnie gave a shiver of revulsion. Better than testing on people, but gruesome all the same.

  “I only met Hawthorn once,” she said. “He—frankly, he frightens me. But you obviously know him better. Tell me, if he knows I’m here, and that some awful scales have become unbalanced—what’s he going to do? Would he transport me the same way he’s been transporting inanimate objects, even if he thinks it’ll kill me? You know, to dispose of the extra ‘matter’?”

  Scott frowned. He bit his lip and looked away, considering.

  “Well?”

  He sighed. “I don’t think he’d try to transport you if it would kill you. Not right away—not unless he felt he had to for some reason. But—probably he would want to keep you for testing. Figure out why it worked for you. How you survived. See if there’s something different about you. And if there’s a way he could use it.”

  Oh, there was certainly something different about her. And Winnie doubted Hawthorn would ever let her go once he found out what it was.

  She had to convince Scott that going to Hawthorn was the wrong move.

  “Winnie is your girlfriend here, right?” Winnie asked. It made her blush to say it, but that was the least of her concerns now. “Is that something you’d want for her? Being experimented on by Hawthorn?” She looked at him and pressed. “Scott. Would you really hand me over to someone like that?”

  She paused a moment, letting the question sink in. The uncertainty on his face gave her hope.

  “We don’t need Hawthorn,” Winnie continued. “You know about his work; I know about the accident that brought me here. If we work together, we can figure this out ourselves. It will go much more smoothly with me as a collaborator than as a prisoner.”

  Scott’s expression softened. Had she convinced him?

  Before he could answer, they heard the front door open, then slam.

  “I’m home!”

  It was a voice Winnie recognized, but she couldn’t immediately place it. Not Brunhilde, certainly.

  Before she could think to hide, the girl entered the kitchen and saw her. Her jaw dropped, and her shocked expression was a perfect mirror of Winnie’s own.

  For a moment, Winnie couldn’t process what she was seeing. The girl was dressed in a smart gray wool skirt with kick pleats, an inch or so shy of Winnie’s school regulations, and a pearl-pink cardigan that made Winnie acutely aware of how grubby she must look from lying on the dirty laboratory floor. She wore her hair in a stylish, chin-grazing, gently curled bob.

  But there was no mistaking it: This girl was her doppelgänger, although they were hardly identical. Her double had rosy lips, artfully arched brows, sooty lashes—and in a sweater that snug, she actually had curves. Winnie had no idea this was waiting to be carved from the rough stone of her physique.

  I’m beautiful, she thought, for the first time in her life.

  Winnie would have savored the pleasure of this realization had it come at any other time, but as it was, she quickly moved past it to more pressing concerns.

  This girl was her. If Winnie had an ally in this frightening world, she was it.

  “You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” Winnie said, laughing a bit with relief.

  “Who is this?” her double asked Scott, sounding a bit possessive. Then she seemed to notice how alike they were and began to tremble. “Scott, what’s going on?”

  Her double took a few steps closer. She reached a shaky hand toward Winnie’s face, but stopped before she made contact.

  Winnie inhaled sharply. Looking into this face that both was and was not her own—reality had cracked open to show its strange bones. All she could compare it to was the surreal feeling of déjà vu, but that didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “Is this some kind of joke? It’s like—it’s like looking in a mirror,” this Split-Winnie said. She gave Winnie a doubtful once-over. “Well, almost. Who are you?” she demanded, voice shrill. Winnie recognized the ghost of her own German accent in the panicked tone.

  “Shh! Your father will hear,” Winnie said. “I’m your double. I came here from a different reality and—”

  “Project Nightingale sent you?”

  “No,” Winnie said firmly. “They have nothing to do with this.”

  Winnie watched her double close her eyes, retreat into herself, and take a deep breath. When she opened them, she seemed a bit calmer. “We need to go tell Father. This is—this is crazy. You shouldn’t be here.”

  This wasn’t the response she’d hoped for from her double, but the girl was right. Not about Father—the girl’s impulse to go to him was completely foreign to Winnie!—but that her being there was wrong.

  Winnie had already realized that, but standing face-to-face with her double really drove it home. There was already a Winnie here. And from the look of things, Winnie thought with a pang, a better one. There was no place for her there. Not just in a cosmic, first law of thermodynamics way, like Scott insisted—but right there, in that house. Winnie was an interloper, and she was not welcome.

  This girl had Scott. She had a life that didn’t seem to be as unpleasantly tangled up in her father’s work. She even had nicer sweaters! The two of them must also have some things in common, but Winnie couldn’t guess what. At least when she was jealous of a girl at school, she could tell herself, Oh, but she can’t do X. Or, Everyone has different strengths.

  But this girl—what if she was Winnie, but just better?

  She tried to push the thought out of her head.

  “Yes, I need to go home,” Winnie said. “As quickly as possible. But I’m keeping your father—and Hawthorn—out of it.”

  Winnie’s double glanced back and forth between her and Scott in disbelief. “What? Why? Please tell me I’m dreaming, because this is all absurd. I’m getting Father. It isn’t up to you!”

  “No, Winnie,” Scott said, putting a quelling hand on her double’s forearm. “She’s right. We have to help her. She’s you.”

  For a moment, Winnie could hardly believe it. Her own double didn’t want to help her, but Scott did. She felt a rush of gratitude toward him. He’d taken her side over his own Winnie! She’d never forget his kindness.

  Winnie glanced at the dark expression on her double’s face.

  She wouldn’t forget either.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Scott?” Professor Schulde called from the basement. “If Winnie’s all right, there is a bit of a mess to clean down here.”

  Her own father never called her Winnie.

 
This Father sounded nothing like the out-of-control man he’d been in her world minutes earlier, but Winnie’s heart still pounded at the sound of his voice. Was this fear an animal instinct to be trusted? Or was she merely experiencing a conditioned response, like one of Pavlov’s dogs?

  Winnie didn’t intend to find out. She needed to get back.

  “Scott?” this world’s Father called again.

  She locked eyes with her double, the girl who looked so like—and so unlike—herself. How strange that she had no idea what this girl was thinking!

  “Don’t tell him I’m here,” Winnie whispered urgently. “Please.”

  Her head began to pound painfully. She looked back and forth between her double and Scott. “If the two of you could just get him out of the lab somehow, I can go check it out, gather some evidence . . .” Winnie trailed off.

  She had to see the laboratory before any sign of what had happened was tidied away.

  Her double flinched and rubbed at her own temples. Yes, it was all too much to process.

  Finally, Winnie’s double nodded. “Fine. I’ll help you.” She sighed and shook her head. “I mean, of course I’ll help you.” She looked at Scott. “How are we going to get Father to come upstairs?”

  Scott smiled. “Play along, okay?” Then he called down to Father, “Winnie’s eyes are irritated by all the smoke. I’m going to take her upstairs to the bathroom to rinse them out. Could you come take a look?”

  “Thank you!” Winnie whispered urgently.

  Scott nodded in acknowledgment.

  “Hide in the dining room,” he said. “Once he comes upstairs you can go down to the lab, but you’ll only have a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” Winnie said again, but although she was grateful that Scott’s double was so willing to help her, she couldn’t help but feel a bit betrayed by her own double’s hesitation before. Of course, blind trust was hardly one of her own characteristics, so perhaps it made sense that she didn’t find it in her double either.

  “I won’t say anything to Professor Schulde until we’ve discussed things further,” Scott added, “but I have so many questions! I hope that at some point, you’ll have answers.”

  Winnie didn’t know what kind of answers she could give him, but she’d worry about that later. For now, she was focused on enduring the present moment, then the next one, and the next . . .

  The future was a terrifying blank, and the past—well, she didn’t dare think about the past at all.

  Something that had happened in the lab back home had led to her being transported here. If she could figure out what it was and how to re-create it, maybe that would be enough to transport herself back again. Not that there was anything so wonderful waiting for her there . . .

  “Good luck,” Scott said, pressing her hand in encouragement.

  Winnie’s fingers tingled at his touch.

  Then Scott turned to retreat upstairs, bringing Winnie’s doppelgänger with him.

  He was just doing what she’d asked, but Winnie hated seeing him walk away. She wished he could go down to the lab with her.

  Because even though the site of Scott’s accident was a world away, Winnie still felt like she was walking into a tomb.

  * * *

  • • •

  Winnie needed to examine the damage she’d done to the lab when she arrived, but first, she wanted to check out this Professor Schulde’s notes. Even though Scott worked with Hawthorn too and would be familiar with Nightingale’s work, Father was sure to have his own insights.

  She headed over to Dr. Schulde’s desk to see what she could find.

  There was a small, leather-bound notebook lying open facedown on his desk. It looked identical to the one Father jotted his own thoughts in while they worked. Winnie picked it up, flipped to the first page, then began to skim his notes.

  She stopped when she came across a particularly interesting passage:

  There are two essential questions when it comes to traveling between alt-verses. The first: whether or not it is physically possible for matter to cross these barriers. We’ve answered that. Yes, it is. The second question—and in my opinion, the far more interesting and less certain one—is this: Could a person survive this transition? So far, animal subjects who make the trip seem physically unharmed, but suffer a mental deterioration that quickly proves fatal. Human beings have a consciousness that organizes and analyzes their experiences. Would this help a person’s consciousness “manage” this transition? Or make the dissonance between worlds even worse? Hawthorn theorizes that certain individuals might have a kind of immunity to these ill effects, but it’s unclear to me why or how this might be the case. As always, he is extremely guarded about his own reasoning and research.

  So that was what Scott meant when he said interdimensional travel “didn’t go well” for living subjects! The stress of the trip—what? Drove them mad? Winnie’s mouth went dry. This was more frightening somehow than if they were just being killed directly.

  Could that still happen to her? Or did she have Hawthorn’s theoretical “immunity”?

  Of course, maybe there was no immunity, and it was Hawthorn’s method of transportation that caused that little side effect.

  Still . . . Winnie doubted it was just a coincidence that she saw alternate realties and had now traveled to one. It seemed likely that whatever it was that allowed her to see splinters was also what had enabled her to travel between worlds.

  Winnie wondered again if James was able to see splinters too. If he could, and Hawthorn knew about it—was that something that informed Hawthorn’s cryptic theories about immunity?

  Impossible to say. But Professor Schulde’s notes confirmed that Winnie would be of particular interest to Project Nightingale. She was “special” somehow, although considering her situation, that word seemed comically inaccurate. “Uniquely cursed,” perhaps.

  What she couldn’t understand was why her double’s Father didn’t seem to be experimenting on his Winnie, especially since he was working for Nightingale. Oh well—that would have to remain a mystery for another time. She had more than enough to worry about at the moment.

  Winnie continued to scan the rest of Professor Schulde’s notes. She didn’t have time for a thorough study, but she learned that an ambient electric charge was crucial for interdimensional travel. It seemed that atmospheric electricity sort of “cracked the door” between worlds.

  This made sense to her, particularly in light of the accident that had brought her here. Scott had been electrocuted because the Faraday cage’s grounding wire was damaged. The lab would have been full of ambient electric charge.

  After Winnie spent several minutes reading over the notebook, she reluctantly realized she needed to set it aside and begin her examination of the lab itself before Professor Schulde came back. She found the place where she’d “landed,” for lack of a better word. The earthen floor didn’t seem harmed in any way there, but she noticed the dirt seemed scuffed about ten feet from that spot—around the place where Scott had been electrocuted in her world.

  She bent down to take a closer look. When she brushed her hand across the packed dirt, she was unsettled to find something hard there.

  Bone? Winnie thought with a flash of revulsion, but no, of course not. She was letting her imagination get the best of her.

  After a few minutes of careful excavation, she had the thing unearthed. It was a branching tube of jagged glass. It looked like—like frozen electricity.

  Winnie pulled the name for it from some corner of her memory; it was a Lichtenberg figure. She’d seen illustrations in books, but this was her first time seeing one in person. A strong current had left its fingerprint there by melting something in the soil—silicon most likely.

  Had the electric charge that shocked Scott in her own world left its mark in this one? How?

  And
if the current that struck Scott was powerful enough to turn dirt into this, Winnie thought, what had it done to Scott’s body?

  She knew the answer. She didn’t want to face it, but she knew.

  Scott was dead.

  And it was her fault. Hers and Father’s. Just like Mama’s death had been.

  Scott had wanted them to leave the lab together, but she’d insisted on staying. So he’d stayed too.

  He’d stayed for her. He’d stayed for her, and now he was dead.

  That was what was waiting for her back home. The lifeless body of a boy who’d had the misfortune of being loved by her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Winnie continued poking around the lab listlessly. It was hard to focus. It was hard to care. She just felt . . . helpless.

  Then she heard it—footsteps on the basement stairs.

  She’d taken too long. Professor Schulde was coming back.

  Winnie’s eyes darted around the laboratory. There was no way out; she had to hide. But where?

  She took a few steps toward the lab bench, but no, that was too open. Under Father’s desk? At least there was a chair she could hide behind there, unless he pulled it out and sat down . . .

  The footfalls kept coming, ever closer, but she could not decide.

  She’d seen scared rabbits freeze like this, out in the countryside. Darting back and forth but going nowhere. She always wanted to shout, Just pick a direction and run!

  Now she realized what they must have felt in those moments: sometimes, there is simply no escape.

  “Winnie?” a voice called.

  Oh, thank god—it was Scott. He rounded the corner of the basement stairs and came into view.

  “You scared me half to death—I thought you were Professor Schulde!”

  “Don’t worry. He’s still upstairs. He sent me down for the saline from the eyewash station. We’ve rinsed Winnie’s eyes with water, but I’ll be darned if they aren’t still irritated,” he said, grinning slyly.