A Million Worlds With You

by Claudia Gray

  Mom seems to awaken from her stupor. She walks to a nearby console and pushes a couple of switches. A console door slides open, revealing a Firebird.

  Wait a second. As realization dawns, I whisper, “This is mine. The one Romola stole from me in the Romeverse.”

  “The least we can do is give it back,” Dad says with a sad, broken smile.

  I nod as I try to snap back into action mode. No time to cry for Paul. I can’t even let myself think about him, because I won’t be able to bear it. I must hold together long enough to complete the mission he died for.

  Then I can finally fall apart.

  “Okay, I’m ready.” I put the Firebird back on. That heavy chain around my neck has rarely felt so good. “Where should I go first? You can give me the data, can’t you?”

  My dad shakes his head. “It’s not that simple, Marguerite.”

  Mom gestures at the terminal in front of her. “Conley has plots within plots, plans within plans. The multiverse is infinite, and he has exploited its vulnerability to the fullest. Had I any idea he distrusted us so completely—but that’s irrelevant now. Suffice it to say that as long as Conley wants to pursue this path, and our daughter is willing to help him, we can’t stop him. Blocking an infinite number of pathways is, by definition, impossible.”

  “That’s it? He wins?” I sit down heavily. It sounds like the only way out would be to convince Conley to change his mind, but I don’t think I could do that. I doubt anyone could. At this point it’s not only about love for his lost Josie; it’s about making sure that nobody ever stops him from doing what he planned. Pride can be as strong as love, and a hell of a lot crueler.

  “No, that’s not it.” My mother straightens. “There’s another step we can take. Drastic, even radical. But once it’s done, Conley can never threaten another dimension again.”

  My first reaction is anger. “So why didn’t you do that in the first place, instead of doing the shutdown thing that tipped Conley off?”

  “Because the solution involves sealing this dimension off from all the others, permanently.” Dad puts his hand over Mom’s, an unexpectedly tender gesture. “We could turn this into a sort of pocket universe, its own tiny bubble.”

  “So . . . you wouldn’t ever be able to travel out of this universe again. Your Firebirds wouldn’t work.” I can see why they’d be reluctant to do that. However, the stark misery on my parents’ faces tells me this scenario has the potential to become far darker.

  “That’s the best-case scenario,” my mother says. “In the worst-case scenario, the bubble pops. This dimension collapses.”

  “No.” That’s a fate I couldn’t even wish on the Home Office. “That’s too much. All the billions of people who live here—”

  “Would be lost.” My father gazes into an unseen distance, maybe imagining the death of this world. “But that’s still fewer lives than we have already taken. And if Conley continues this, a mere fraction of the total death toll.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice yourselves.” For Conley, even for my parents, that would be fair. For all the countless other people who live and have lived in this dimension throughout history, it’s unspeakably cruel. Maybe you can say that it’s worth sacrificing one life to save a hundred, something like that—but once you’re talking about entire dimensions, the scale becomes too enormous for that kind of calculus. Billions of lives can’t be squeezed down into the X in the equation. “Are you really going to do this?”

  And Mom and Dad wouldn’t just die. They’d be obliterated, unmade until the end of time. . . .

  “Wait,” I say. “If your universe dies, doesn’t mine go with it? You’ve influenced us, changed us.”

  “But we didn’t create you. So no, your dimension won’t collapse.” My father looks thoughtful. “However, it will warp. Your actions back to the beginning of our intrusion into your universe will be erased, as will all our influence. Your reality will be reshaped.”

  “Don’t worry about confusion,” Mom adds. “You won’t remember a thing.”

  “And Paul—he died here—but he’d be alive again, wouldn’t he?” Something like hope stirs inside me.

  “If he hadn’t died in this universe, I’d say yes, certainly.” My father says this like any other theoretical. For him this is only a puzzle piece, not a human life hanging in the balance. “As it is, the question becomes far more complex.”

  “You don’t even know?” That brief hope shatters like porcelain. Maybe Paul will return to life—or maybe we’ll be thrown back to where we started, with no idea that we ever knew a Paul Markov, or at least no idea what happened to him. He won’t only be dead—he won’t even be remembered.

  All I have left of Paul are memories. I can’t let them go.

  And if the Home Office’s influence on us is erased, so is our influence on other dimensions. If we didn’t go to the Russiaverse, the grand duchess would never have had her baby, even though Lieutenant Markov would probably have died in battle no matter what. She would be trapped in that life she hated and forced to marry a stranger, with no child from her great love.

  Mafiaverse Theo wouldn’t be shot, and Londonverse would still be alive. But my mother in the Josieverse would still be lost to near-suicidal depression, and the Warverse wouldn’t have leaped forward to the technology it needs to defeat its enemy. The cracks in the multiverse would spread wider and wider, beyond any possible judgment of what is better or worse. No one person could ever understand the full ramifications of this act.

  In the end, I find myself thinking of the grand duchess, remembering the way her hand stole across her belly. When I stole her night with Lieutenant Markov, I took something precious away from her. I won’t take her baby, too.

  Paul would say the exact same thing if he were here, even knowing the cost would be his own life.

  My actions have consequences. Everyone else has had to live with the repercussions of the choices I made—now it’s my turn.

  “Don’t do it,” I say. “We have to figure something else out. You can start by getting your daughter under control.”

  “No other way offers a guarantee of success.” My mother shrugs. “And there is at least a forty percent probability we will survive.”

  Forty percent doesn’t sound like such great odds to me. “Please, you can’t do this. If you won’t think about your own world, think about mine! You’d be rewriting history. It’s like—like destroying yet another dimension, in a way.”

  “But it will be over.” My father’s blue eyes, usually so warm, have become remote, and as pale as a pond icing over. “Finally, truly over.”

  That’s when I realize Mom and Dad aren’t valiantly sacrificing themselves for the rest of us. They don’t care whether they live or die. Josie’s gone. They’ve lost their purpose. Back when they thought they could do some good by stopping Conley, that sustained them. Now they’d rather die than keep on enduring their grief.

  My parents only want to be with Josie again.

  Dad quietly says, “You should go home immediately. And—that communication you’ve set up between the dimensions—very clever, by the by, we only picked up on that yesterday, congratulate the other us for us—”

  “Henry.” Mom pats his shoulder, her usual hint that he is beginning to run on. Even at this moment of mortal despair, they remain connected.

  Dad sighs. “If you could use that system to get a message to our daughter, please, tell her to come home.”

  “What happens to her if she’s not here when this universe gets sealed off? Does she die?” I look from Mom to Dad and back again. “Would she be, like, pulled back automatically?”

  “She would become . . .” Mom thinks this over. “A spirit without a body. Possibly she would be free to travel from dimension to dimension, but only within other Marguerites. She could never return here. I suspect that would be the same fate she’d face if our universe collapses, though she might prefer being a ghost to simply perishing with the re
st of us.”

  “But ask her. Please. If you can.” Dad’s voice cracks. “And tell Josie we love her. Right away. Before you don’t remember us any longer.”

  Only a few minutes ago, I thought I could finally see my parents in these people. Now they terrify me more than they ever have before.

  I think of all the others out there who deserve to be protected. The grand duchess and her baby. Vladimir, the tsarevich of all the Russias. Josie talking to me in the middle of her Scottish rafting holiday, alive with enthusiasm. Valentina with her little stubborn chin. New York’s version of Romola, with her boundless loyalty. Theo in the Warverse, who has already spent so much of his life fighting to stay alive, and who is so helplessly, completely in love.

  My father as tutor to the Russian royal family, hiding the secret that one of the children is his. My mother in a world where she’s already lost my father and sister, and where the mere sight of a Firebird gave her the hope to go on.

  And Paul. The one who learned sign language as a boy so he could talk to the girl he liked. The one who had been rejected, then betrayed, but who still dashed into a collapsing universe to save me. Lieutenant Markov—who is dead, lost forever, but still remembered in a world where his child will someday be born. My Paul, who may be only a memory but who thought and felt and loved, who deserves to have been.

  All our fates hang in the balance. All our histories. And there is nothing I can do but run.

  28

  THE MOMENT I APPEAR IN MY OWN DIMENSION, I KNOW IT’S already gone wrong.

  Normally returning to your own body is smooth and soft, like easing into a warm bath. This feels like doing a belly flop into icewater. Pain echoes through my body, every nerve crackles, and at first neither my thoughts nor my eyes will focus.

  When I can see again, my hand is clutching a piece of paper that reads: YOU SNEAKED INTO MY HOUSE, SO I SNEAKED INTO YOURS.

  My hand drops the paper without my volition, and I know then that I really am back home—but Wicked got here before me.

  Nightthief. She’s already dosed my body with Nightthief. I’m trapped.

  As if she can hear my thoughts, Wicked looks up—into the mirror over my bedroom dresser—and smiles in triumph.

  “Let me out of here!” Josie screams from the hall closet. She’s beating on the door so hard that it sounds like she’s trying to punch her way through. “Give me back my sister!”

  Fresh scratches and bruises ache along my arms and torso. Josie would’ve fought hard, and she’s stronger than I am; Wicked only won because of the element of surprise. But the closet door is thick. For now, Josie’s stuck.

  Wicked walks from the bedroom into the great room, hardly even glancing at the door where Josie’s hammering so desperately. The cozy atmosphere has vanished—no, been destroyed. Houseplants have been knocked over, their roots crinkling feebly around the cylindrical mounds of soil on the floor. Books lie scattered around, and the equations have been erased from the chalkboard wall, replaced by obscene drawings and rude commentary on the relative size of Paul’s and Theo’s . . . of Paul and Theo.

  Far more troubling is the sight of Theo, arms belted behind him, bleeding from the corner of his mouth.

  “That Nightthief isn’t going to last forever,” he shouts, and from the hoarse timbre of his voice, I can tell he’s been yelling for a while. “You’ve used it up, and soon it’s going to wear off, and then you’re screwed!”

  “I don’t need forever. I’m done here.” Wicked lifts her Firebird, leaving mine hanging around my neck. She turns to the same mirror where she braided my hair, triumph gleaming in her eyes. “Next time you take over my body in my dimension when I’m not around? Someone you love dies.”

  A jolt—and then I slump against the nearest wall. The aching in my beat-up body sharpens, but I don’t care. I’m alone in my own head again.

  “Theo? It’s me now.” I hurry over to the chair and loosen the belt that binds his hands behind his back and to the leg. “Oh, God, what did she do?”

  “Thrashed me, basically. For the record, she wouldn’t have been able to do that if I weren’t still recovering.” Theo flexes his shoulders, rubs at the reddish dents the leather carved into his skin as he gets to his feet. “Or if Josie had been here at the time. If Wicked hadn’t gotten the jump on her, Josie could’ve taken her out.”

  I hug Theo quickly. “Is there any way to save the Home Office?”

  He gives me a double-take. “Whoa. Why are we trying to save the Home Office? And what from?”

  “They’re trying to seal themselves off so Wicked can never get out again, but there’s a chance that whole dimension will collapse, and if it does our history gets rewritten, completely. That can’t happen. Besides—if we can save a dimension, we should. Even if it’s the Home Office.” My parents and Wyatt Conley are only three people among billions. That world’s Theo deserves to survive, him and all the other countless people in that world. “I think they’ve already started the process. Can we stop it?”

  Theo takes that in for a second, then shakes his head. “If I had a month to work on this, maybe I could figure out exactly how they’re doing that and how to prevent a collapse. But not even I’m genius enough to do it in a few minutes.”

  What’s about to happen to all of us? Is the reality I know about to be erased? There’s no way for me to know, no way for me to control anything. “So we’re just . . . stuck here? Waiting to find out if our memories are about to be rewritten?”

  Theo groans. “Looks like it.”

  “Marguerite, is that you?” Josie calls from the closet, then pounds on the door. “Let me out!” I hurry to free her, which right now feels like the only useful thing I can do.

  “What’s that?” My dad pokes his head out of my parents’ bedroom. I realize they’ve just jumped back too.

  I open the closet door to see Josie tucked between our winter coats. She has the beginnings of a black eye and a fist cocked just in case I’ve been lying about being the real me. But she relaxes when I let her walk past me into the hallway, where Mom, Dad, and Theo have all gathered.

  As I explain the plans to seal off the Home Office in its own bubble and its potential collapse, the physicists in the room become agitated in the way they do when thoughts are flying fast. They know our history could be erased without my having to explain it. Impossible as it is, they’re still trying to figure out how to preserve the Home Office in time. Theo even grabs a piece of chalk to jot down some rough equations, though he pauses a moment to grimace at what Wicked wrote on the wall. “Really?” he mutters as he erases the words with his bare forearm. “C’mon. Give a guy some credit.”

  As the math starts to fly, Mom says, “Where’s Paul? He left the Moscowverse to follow you to the Home Office. Did you find each other there?”

  Words desert me. How can I bear to tell the others that Paul is dead? I have to—I know this—but it seems as if speaking the words will make them true. As if my silence makes it possible that he might return home to us, safe and sound, like this is all one bad dream.

  “Good news,” Theo announces, saving me from having to answer.

  Josie pauses from repotting the poor houseplants. “What?”

  “If we’re using the tracking technology from the Warverse correctly, and I think we are, Wicked went right back home, as in the Home Office itself. So that mean’s she’s done, right? They’re going to seal off that world—or destroy it—but either way, she’s not coming back. Yes?”

  “Yes.” Her parents don’t need me to deliver the message anymore. The Home Office is about to be sealed off forever. No more dimensions are in danger. It’s really all about to be over. My throat tightens with unshed tears, both of relief and the sorrow I can hold back no longer.

  “Sweetheart?” Dad steps closer to me, the concern in his blue eyes changing to fear. “Did you say whether you found Paul? Did you see him?”

  Theo gets this seasick look on his face. He’s seen the truth in my f
ace. “No,” he whispers. “No, it can’t be—”

  Nausea sweeps through me, followed by a rush of dizziness. My shoulder slumps against the wall. My hands brace me to keep me from falling. My mother cries out, thinking that I’m collapsing from grief, and by now the others have realized why I’m grieving—why I can’t say what happened to Paul.

  But another horror overtakes me, seizing my muscles, my voice, and my will. Once again I am imprisoned in my own body. And two Firebirds hang around my neck.

  Wicked’s back.

  “Did you—did you think . . .” She’s having trouble talking. The Nightthief is wearing off. She won’t control me much longer. “That I—would let them—kill me?”

  She found out about the bubble. She found out about the chance of destruction. And she escaped here.

  “Marguerite?” Josie says. She’s the only one not freaking out about Paul, at least not so much that she can’t tell I’m acting weird. Wicked turns away and covers my face with my hands.

  You might live! There’s a chance! But the words won’t come out of my mouth.

  Yet it doesn’t matter, because Wicked hears me and answers in a raspy whisper. “I don’t—like—the odds.”

  In this strange twilight of the drug, my consciousness can communicate with hers. Surely I’ll get control back any second.

  But not soon enough, because Wicked takes her Firebird in hand and begins to turn the controls in a way I’ve never seen before. I know it, though, even before I recognize a little twist of the thumb I recall from Romola Harrington’s trick in the Romeverse.

  Wicked’s setting up a collapse. She’s going to destroy my universe.

  No. It’s impossible. We can protect ourselves. Can’t we? We’ve done this for so many other worlds—

  “You didn’t—save yourselves—first. Stupid.” She laughs once, a bitter sound I can hardly recognize as coming from my own throat. “Always—look out—for number one.”