I wasn’t prepared to face this, another version of me with the guy I love.
I tear my eyes away from her and look at Ben.
The whole world feels like it’s just vanished. My eyes are glassy, my face is too hot, and my hands won’t stop shaking. My throat feels so thick it hurts, and it’s a good thing I don’t have anything to say because I’m one word away from losing it.
While we’re standing there staring at each other, the girl who looks just like me—I don’t even know what to call her—reaches up and puts her hand on Ben’s arm. It’s a casual, careless gesture. Her eyes are still closed. She hasn’t seen me. It’s the kind of gesture that suggests familiarity. Probably something she does all the time.
The sight of her touching him like that—like I should be touching him—makes me physically ill. I have to clutch my stomach with one hand and cover my mouth to keep myself from gagging.
I didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t believe in love and romance and swooning. My default setting was bitch.
Then Ben came along and changed that. He made me believe. And I thought love was black-and-white. That I loved Ben, that I belonged with him, that somehow that would always be enough. Despite everything stacked up against us, I believed we would overcome it—maybe not today or tomorrow, but at some point in our future, we’d end up together.
I thought we were special, that what we felt for each other would be powerful enough to take down human traffickers, save the world, span universes.
I thought we had the kind of love that could do anything.
I can feel the tears threatening me in the burn behind my eyes and the tightness in my throat.
Because right now, looking at that girl—the one who looks just like me—with her hand on his arm, I suddenly don’t know who I am or how I fit with anything in this world. I’ve seen too much. I was supposed to be a normal high-school junior dealing with mean girls like Brooke Haslen and cocky guys like Kevin Collins. Instead I’ve dealt with death and the fate of the world on my shoulders. I’ve seen worlds that shouldn’t exist.
And it’s finally just Too Much.
I turn around and head for the door. I don’t look at Barclay or Elijah on my way out. I push past them and walk into the hallway.
No “I missed you.”
No “I love you.”
Nothing.
I ran this moment—seeing Ben again for the first time—over and over again in my mind. I imagined a thousand different scenarios. But not one of them was like this.
Not one of them was silent.
02:21:55:32
After I leave the room, I just walk past Elijah and Barclay. I don’t particularly know where I’m going, but I know that I need to get away. My legs move like they’re on automatic, and I end up down the hallway, in a hospital room not much different from theirs. White plaster walls, two twin beds, a curtain between them. I sit on the bed farthest from the door and pick up a discarded stuffed animal on the floor. It’s a bunny.
I look out the window at the ghost town below and let myself just fall apart.
From this angle, the city looks quiet, sleepy almost, as if all the people are tucked away inside.
I’m in over my head, up against people more organized, more connected, and more dangerous. I’m beat up, bruised, worn out, and exhausted, and we’re quickly running short on time. I’m in a strange and abandoned world, and I feel like someone has reached into my chest and ripped my heart to pieces.
Right now in this moment, I don’t know who I am anymore.
All I know is that I should.
The door opens and my heart lurches. I stand and turn, expecting Ben, but it’s just Barclay.
I wipe my eyes. “Great. What do you want?”
He shuts the door softly behind him and doesn’t bother to look insulted. “You shouldn’t be this upset.”
I can’t keep in the snort that is my response. “Why, because it’s no big deal?” I almost warn him that if he comes any closer I might punch him. But I don’t because it might feel good to hit something.
“No, because you’re better than this,” Barclay says, as he moves toward me.
“Oh, that’s so original.” I roll my eyes. “Do yourself a favor and don’t try to do comforting and supportive. It’s not your forte.”
Barclay chuckles, a smile breaking over his face. “No, I guess it’s not. But be serious. Why are you upset?”
I realize my tears have actually stopped. Typically, Barclay had managed to piss me off quickly enough to make me stop crying. But now, thinking about Ben and the way he looked, leaning over and caring for someone else, my eyes sting and I feel the pinch in my chest all over again.
Barclay takes another step closer and reaches out, putting a hand on my arm. He’s not tentative, he’s not afraid I might hit him like someone else would be. I’ve hit him enough that he should be, but he’s not. He’s just here. And Barclay as a normal, caring human being is what makes the dam break.
“The way he was looking at her.” My voice sounds foreign, too high pitched, like it belongs to someone else, some other girl stupid enough to get her heart broken.
“She looks just like you,” he says, pulling me into him. His arms are strong behind my back. “You have to be able to see how this could have happened. IA grabbed another version of you, maybe she was even already in custody. They put her in front of Ben, said she was you, and threatened her if he didn’t help them.”
“I never would have wanted him to help them in order to save me. I would rather have died.”
“Tenner, come on. You think that matters?” Barclay whispers, his hand rubbing my back. “He wasn’t thinking about what you wanted. He was just thinking about you—about the fact that he thought you were being hurt, and it was his fault.”
“And now?” I say. “Why didn’t he save Elijah, and his parents—his brother?”
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Barclay says. “But you’d better believe we’re going to ask him. We’ll figure this out.”
The words fall out of my mouth—the ones I’ve been keeping inside since we got here. “He didn’t say anything. When he saw me . . . nothing.”
Barclay doesn’t tell me I’m crazy. He doesn’t make excuses for Ben, and he doesn’t agree with me either. He doesn’t even point out the most likely truth—that Ben was in shock and confused. He just lets me be upset.
I don’t know how long we stand there like that, but after a while, Barclay clears his throat. “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
I’m too exhausted to do anything but slump a little in his arms.
“Here, sit back down,” he says, lowering me back onto the bed. “And get rid of this stupid rabbit. Who knows what kind of radiation it’s got.”
I let him take the stuffed animal from me and toss it back onto the floor, but I notice he’s not wearing the scarf around his face anymore. As if he knows what I’m thinking, he says, “I used the charger to check the radiation levels, and we should be pretty safe if we’re only here a few days, but try not to touch everything.”
I nod. “What do you need to tell me?”
Barclay takes a deep breath. “Weeks ago, Hayley told me she’d heard someone say they had you in custody,” he says. “It was hearsay, and I couldn’t get the clearance to get into the prison and find out whether it was actually true.”
I think of the way Hayley looked at me when we were at Barclay’s mother’s house—like she recognized me. “You knew this might be a possibility?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I hacked into the database and there was no arrest record, which meant she had to have heard it wrong.”
“And it would just be in the file?” Bad guys don’t always keep records of all the bad stuff they’re doing. Or at least the smart ones don’t. What better way to get caught than to have all your secrets on a server?
“After Eric died, I went to your world, I looked around, and I saw you passing out
bottles of water and bags of food with a couple of poor excuses for soldiers. You were there, doing whatever it is you were doing, which meant you couldn’t possibly be in an IA prison.”
I nod, but I don’t know what else to say. Sure, I can be pissed Barclay didn’t know that this is what we might find when we found Ben, but it isn’t his fault. He checked the files and then he checked in on me and saw I was fine. Why would he think IA would grab someone else and pretend it was me?
Well, they’re certainly shitty like that, but for some stupid reason Barclay hasn’t quite grasped that yet.
And really, what hurts the most isn’t that my doppelgänger is involved. It’s that Ben didn’t recognize her for what she was.
It’s the realization that I’m replaceable.
Barclay must know that, because he sits next to me and pulls me into another hug.
The odds are stacked against us, and we don’t have enough time. I don’t know how things managed to get so colossally messed up or confusing, and now, I don’t know what this means for me and Ben, if we manage to live through the next three days.
I thought we would find a way to be together, but how do we come back from this?
02:19:41:29
It’s when I feel Barclay’s heart thumping under his shirt that I realize I’ve stopped crying again. I push away from him, feeling strangely better and numb to everything—Ben, human trafficking, another version of me in the other room.
“Good,” Barclay says, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve spoken out loud. “We have something important we’re going to have to address.”
“You mean other than taking down a human-trafficking ring?” My voice is hoarse from too much emotion, and I realize I’m exhausted.
“That girl in there, we don’t know who she is,” Barclay says.
I want to laugh. “Actually, we do. She’s me.”
He shakes his head. “Just because she has the same face doesn’t mean she’s you. Remember she wasn’t in the database. There was no arrest record. She could be a victim, she could be someone who just got dragged into this, or she could be some kind of IA plant. No matter what, we can’t trust her.”
“If IA beat her, I doubt she’s working for them.” The last thing I need is another reason to not be able to look at her.
“The question is, did IA beat her?” he says. “We still need to talk to Ben. But we also need to know exactly what happened in that prison and what he saw.”
He’s right about that, at least. If we trust the wrong person, we’re going to end up dead. “Okay, let’s talk to Ben without her, then we can talk to her, see if we can put all the pieces together.”
Barclay smiles. “Good plan, and no matter what happens, remember who you are, Tenner.”
“What do you mean by that?” I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be offended.
“After I graduated from North Point and went through IA training, one of the first things they drilled into us was to always remember who we were,” he says, and I realize why it’s important even before he keeps going. “There’s always the chance you’re going to run into another version of yourself. It doesn’t happen that often, but it does happen.”
“Have you ever seen another version of you?” I ask, repressing a shudder. Barclay is annoying enough and there’s only one of him.
He shakes his head. “But this girl isn’t you. She’s had different experiences, she’s grown up in a different world.”
So I have to remember who I am—and that she’s not me. “So who am I?”
Barclay smiles. “You’re Janelle Tenner, the only chick I’ve ever asked for help.”
I can’t help but smile at that, even though we both know he didn’t really have a choice.
He keeps going. “I mean it. You’re tough. Whatever happens, tonight, tomorrow, even the rest of your life, remember who you are and why you’re still alive.”
He squeezes my arms. “Think about everything you’ve already been through. Remember what you’ve done and use that. This is just another day at the office.”
My laugh doesn’t sound as bitter as I’d expected. “Just another day fighting crime and saving the world?”
“Exactly.” He smiles. “Tenner, you’re the girl who saved your world. Now you’re going to help me save mine.”
“Does that mean I get a piece of your monument?” I ask.
Barclay pauses for a second before letting out a dramatic sigh. “I suppose I could be persuaded to share it with you. But you’ll have to earn it.”
I take a deep breath and wipe my face with the ends of my sleeves. I wish I could go back somehow, go back and restore my own innocence, go back and un-know the secrets that I’ve been carrying with me every day since I uncovered the truth about the multiverse. But short of getting a lobotomy—which really isn’t in my plans—there’s nothing I can do except forge on. Cecily is out there, scared and alone, and she still needs me.
We’ve only got three days left and so far we haven’t actually uncovered anything all that useful.
“We better get to work then,” I say, because really, what else can I say at this point? I need to refocus. Now that we’ve found Ben, we need to figure out what we’re going to do next.
Barclay smiles and opens the door. I look at him, really take him in, the hair that’s too long, the cocky grin, the striking eyes and the angular jaw, the stance that says he knows just how badass he is. He’s a guy in his early twenties with the world at his feet—or I guess, really, the fate of the world on his shoulders. He’s a real-life superhero.
For the first time I wonder if Barclay is what my dad was like in his twenties—or Struz when he first started with the Bureau. I wonder if this is what Alex would have been like in five years if he hadn’t died.
I press the heel of my palm to my chest, pushing back against the pain on the inside.
I’ve lost enough people in my life. I refuse to lose more.
I have to see this through. I have to get Cecily back and go home. For my dad, for Alex, for Jared and Struz—for me.
02:19:32:16
Barclay convenes a meeting on the seventh and highest floor of the hospital in what looks like an old staff lounge. My doppelgänger is the only one not invited. When Ben comes in, he heads straight for me.
“Janelle,” he whispers, and I’m reminded of the day I died. It’s the way he says my name—I don’t know how he manages to put so much feeling into one word, but it makes me shiver.
I don’t respond. I don’t know what to say, but I glance his way. His eyes are soft, the lines on his face tell me he’s worried, but when he reaches for me, I flinch away.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Ben asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to look at him as little as possible.
We sit at a round table, drinking stale Pepsi Elijah stashed here before IA grabbed him. “We need to know everything,” Barclay says.
Ben looks at me like he wants to say something, but instead turns to Barclay. “Half the things I thought I had figured out an hour ago have just been turned on their head.”
Because he’s anything but subtle, Elijah says, “Who’s the girl?”
Ben kicks one of the legs of the table, and the whole thing jerks.
“It’s as good a place to start as any,” I force myself to say.
Ben pushes a hand through his hair and I see his eyes. They’re bloodshot, like he’s trying to keep from crying. “We’ve been here almost five days,” he says with an audible swallow. “I brought her here because we’d be safe. She was in really bad shape, bruised, beaten up, all that. I’ve been taking care of her.”
“So you don’t fucking know who she is,” Elijah says, leaning back in his chair.
Ben shakes his head and looks down. “I thought she was Janelle,” he whispers.
I look at the ceiling to keep from tearing up again.
“She is Janelle,” Barclay begins. “But another version of her.”
Ben do
esn’t say anything.
“That can’t be a bad thing, right?” Elijah says before looking at me. “Don’t let that go to your head. It’s not that I think you’re that great or anything, but you’re not half bad for a chick.”
“You’re not exactly a party either,” I say, because trading insults with Elijah is something I can handle. He must feel the same because he flashes me a grin.
Barclay shakes his head. “Look, it’s important for all of us to go into this with our eyes wide open. In IA, we call ourselves ‘originals,’ and the other versions of us are ‘doubles.’ There are cases of doubles so similar they were practically identical to their original—and cases where the only similarity was physical appearance. Right now we need to get up to speed, and then we need to talk to her, figure out exactly who she is, how she got into this, whether we can trust her—and if she can help us.”
“I think she’s suffered some head trauma,” Ben says. “Or I thought she had because she . . . she doesn’t remember me. But I guess she shouldn’t.”
I think of Ben’s double, the guy I saw at the yard sale with Cecily. I knew almost immediately he wasn’t mine.
It might be unfair, it might be a demand I have no right to hold against Ben. But I do.
He should have known she wasn’t me.
02:18:29:54
Seeing a break in the conversation, Elijah jumps in. “I told them about everything I could. How we got back and it wasn’t the same, how I went world hopping and you were being followed—”
“Come on, Eli,” Ben says. “Can’t you see now that I wasn’t paranoid? They’re trying to use me as a scapegoat and execute me.”
“They’re trying to execute all of us, asshole,” Elijah says. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
I cut in. “We still need to know what happened to you,” I say, looking at Ben. “They picked you up, brought you into IA custody, threw you in prison, and then what?”
Unbreakable (Unraveling) Page 19