by Pintip Dunn
He lets out a long breath. “If he wins, of course he’ll take Callie. Which will leave Preston able to bring his wife, Phoebe, and his entire family will be intact.
“As for me…as for me…” Mikey’s face crumples, and the tears stream out now, fast and unstoppable. “My world is made up of Angela, Ryder, and Remi. And I have to leave someone behind, no matter what I do.”
“Oh, Mikey.” Acting on pure instinct, I pull him into an embrace. I’m terrible at comforting people. At times over the past couple weeks, he might have even hated me. But none of that matters right now. All that matters is that my heart is cracking, right along with his.
“I’d give up my spot altogether, you know,” he says quietly. “But that’s not allowed. If I don’t go, none of my family goes. So I have to make a decision.”
He pulls back, attempts to wipe his face, but succeeds merely in smearing the tears. “There’s only one decision that makes sense, really. The International Council says if a child can be carried, she can walk through with her mother. Since it won’t take any extra time, she doesn’t count as an additional person. Which means, if I choose Angela, then she and Remi can both go.”
I swallow hard. I agree. It’s the only decision that makes sense. But…but… “Does Ryder know?”
“He insisted,” Mikey says, his lower lip trembling. “Even before he knew about the loophole, he took himself out of the running. To him, it was a foregone conclusion that I would pick Remi, and if not Remi, then Angela. He’s always felt second-best in our hearts, even though it’s not true. Has never been true. But I have to wonder what I’ve done to make him feel that way.” He looks away, as though he can’t bear to see himself reflected in my eyes.
“No. Stop.” I resort to patting his back helplessly. The more ineffectual I feel, the faster I pat. “He doesn’t think that at all. He told me himself he was blessed to have the best parents in the world.”
He shakes his head. “But don’t you see? That’s just like Ryder. He thinks he needs to feel grateful for any crumbs of our affection, because we adopted him. Because his biological parents foolishly abandoned him. When the truth is, I’m the one who’s been blessed with the honor of being his father.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ve wished all my life that he could see that. That his biological parents choosing his brother and leaving him behind was their shortcoming, and not his. That he is the most wonderful, generous, lovable boy in the world. But now, he’ll die believing the opposite, and I won’t even blame him. Because I’m making the same decision his other parents did. To take Angela and Remi. And leave him behind.”
He breaks down completely then, and it’s all I can do to pat-pat-pat. And then pat some more, until my hand feels like the wings of a hummingbird.
My throat locks up, barricading an avalanche of tears, and my chest aches like there’s a pump filling it with more and more pressure. There’s nothing right about this situation. Nothing right or redeemable or fair. The world is ending, and we’re all being forced to make decisions we abhor. I feel every emotion that ever existed in any pathway in the world—but more than anything else, I just feel sorry for us all.
38
The corridor is dark and still. Little wonder. It’s the middle of the night, and everyone in the scientific residences appears to be asleep.
My shoes squeak against the floor, and the only illumination comes from the light of the emergency exit. I probably should’ve come in the morning. That would’ve been the wise thing to do, the sensible thing. But I couldn’t sleep. And ever since Mikey told me Ryder will die believing he’s second best…well, I just don’t feel like being wise or sensible anymore.
I scan my biometrics and tiptoe into my living unit. There weren’t enough units for all the fugitives, so Jessa offered Ryder my room, since I wasn’t staying there anyway.
At least her family seems to have forgiven her, even if they didn’t automatically resume their previous relationships. A six-month rift is much too large for that. But day by day, they’re slowly rebuilding the bonds.
I pad to my sleeping area and push the door open. It creaks, and I stop breathing, waiting to see if the noise woke anyone, but the night remains still. I ease inside.
Moonlight spills through the window, and Ryder’s lying on the floor, hands folded on his chest. No pillow, no blanket—although there’s a perfectly good bed beside him.
A mixture of sadness and regret rises inside me. Why is he sleeping on the floor? Is he still so angry that he doesn’t want to touch my things? Or does he just not want to impose? Either reason is ridiculous. I doubt I’ll ever sleep in that bed again, and the world is ending in exactly eight days—if not for everyone else, then at least for me. He should spend his last days here in comfort.
For a fleeting moment, I want to wake him and whisk him away from here. That’s what Jessa told me Logan did for Callie all those years ago, when she was running from her future. But there’s nowhere for us to go. No safe haven in the middle of the wilderness, no Harmony to welcome us and keep us safe. No matter how far we run, no matter how deeply we hide, we won’t be able to escape this evil.
I approach his sleeping form. Now what? Somehow, I hadn’t gotten this far in my planning, and Ryder’s pathways are blurry to me now. Should I make more noise? Nah. Don’t want to wake Jessa in the next room. Instead, I kneel by him and shake his shoulders.
His hands shoot out, grab me, and yank me forward. I fall against his chest.
“Olivia?” he asks, his eyes wide, his breathing hard. He looks wildly around the room, as if trying to place where we are. “What are you doing here?”
“I, um…wanted to talk.” His heart thunders against my fingertips, and his lips are inches from mine. His familiar scent of evergreens assaults me, and it’s been too long since I’ve experienced that smell. I can’t think. I need to move away. Put some distance between us.
Come on, Olivia. You can do it. On the count of three. One…two…
I start to draw back, but he sits up with me, his hands locking behind me. Surprised, I stop pulling.
With a groan, he tugs me into the best hug I’ve ever had. His chest is warm; his arms are firm. He envelops me completely, his body around my torso, his presence around my heart. I feel a shield building in front of us, one that even Fate and Time can’t penetrate. I close my eyes and sink into his embrace. If this feeling means I’m drowning, then I never want to be saved.
And then, the hug ends. Ryder shifts away, running a hand over his head. Cool, unsatisfying air rushes in to take his place.
“Sorry about that,” he says, his voice low and gravelly. “I guess I needed a hug after the recent news.”
“Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?” I ask, studying my fingers even though I can hardly see them in the dim light.
On top of everything else, that question has been tormenting me over the last few days. He shielded me from the crowd. He fought by my side. He caught me before I fell down the ladder well. And yet, I still don’t know how he feels about me.
“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “It’s difficult for me to recover from a betrayal. I haven’t had much practice with it. But I’ve been thinking about what Jessa said—a lot. And in light of everything that’s going down in the world, it seems silly to hold a grudge. It’s just…can you promise me that you’ll never betray me again?”
“I don’t think you’ll have much chance to test me,” I choke out. “The world’s ending in a matter of days.”
“I know that.” He looks down, and all I can see is his Adam’s apple moving. “But you’ve broken my trust twice now. I just need some assurance that you won’t do it a third time. Otherwise, I…I don’t know what I’ll do. It’ll make me feel like the biggest fool in the world. Like I haven’t learned anything from my parents’ betrayal. Like I’m still that little boy, skipping through life, without a clue that his parents never loved him.”
I swallow hard. I didn’t think my heart could crack any mor
e, but his matter-of-fact tone splits it right open.
He lifts his head. “If another situation comes up, just talk to me first, okay? That’s what you didn’t do. That’s what Jessa never did. I promise you, I’m a reasonable guy. If there really is a good reason, I’ll see it. But if you don’t consult me at all…” He lifts his shoulders. “Then I guess I was never very important.”
“You have my word, Ryder.”
Tentatively, he picks up my hand and brings it to his lips. “Thank you.”
“You, uh, should sleep in my bed,” I say. “You’d be more comfortable that way.”
He regards me steadily. “Is that why you came here in the middle of the night? To assess my level of comfort?”
“No.” I rack my brain, trying to think of an excuse I can give him. A message from Mikey, an order from the chairwoman. Anything. But the only thing I can think of is the truth, because that’s all there is left. “I wanted to see you.”
Even in the moonlight, I can see his eyes flash. “What about staying away from each other?” he asks. “What about it being unbearable when the inevitable comes?”
I lick my lips. I’ve never done this before: live for the present without any thought to the future. “It’s unbearable now,” I whisper. “I want to be with you today. And I don’t care what tomorrow brings.”
He closes the distance between us, sweeping me into his arms. “For the record?” he murmurs. “I’m not in your bed because it smells just like you. Like the grass after a heavy rain. It was damn distracting, and I couldn’t sleep.”
He lowers his lips to mine. If his embrace a few minutes ago was the best hug ever, then this is the best kiss. Because there’s no longer any pretense between us, no longer any artifice. There’s just him and me. Ryder and Olivia. And that’s it. That’s enough.
But the kiss doesn’t turn passionate, as I half expect. Instead, he presses his face into my neck, and my hair next to his eyes turns inexplicably wet.
“Ryder?” I ask questioningly.
He holds me tighter. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not here, not now.”
“Is it Mikey?” I didn’t ask before, but if not now, then when? It’s not like we have copious amounts of time left. “I talked to him, you know. He told me about…the decision he has to make.”
“Yeah.” Ryder’s voice is thick with emotion. “It really tore him up. I wish it wouldn’t. He shouldn’t feel guilty. I would’ve made the same decision.”
“He loves you.”
“He loves them more.”
“Damn the Fates, it’s not about that. It’s—”
“Hey.” He lifts his head and traces his finger over my cheeks, my lips, my jaw. “It’s okay. You don’t have to comfort me. Not when I have two parents who love me. And you don’t have any.”
My throat moves. With all the futures I’ve ever seen, I never would’ve predicted this turn in our conversation. “My mother…is a unique person. That’s for sure.”
“She’s a monster,” he says heatedly. “No one would argue with that. I’ve got a thousand reasons to hate her, but the one that stands out most is the way she treats you, Olivia. For most of your life, you’ve done nothing but help her, and she doesn’t value you the way she should—” He cuts off abruptly.
I straighten. This isn’t idle raving. He has something specific in mind, I can tell. “What do you mean by that?”
“It’s nothing.” He drops his head.
I lift his chin. “It’s something. You wouldn’t look away from me if it were nothing.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Olivia.” His eyes blaze trails across my soul. “I wouldn’t have even known myself, but Mikey let the information slip.”
“What is it? Trust me, there’s not much you can say that will shock me.” I attempt to laugh, but it dies in my throat. “I’ve seen it all. Literally.”
“I’m not walking through the window of the realm machine,” he says slowly. “But you’re not, either.”
I stare. “Yes, I know. I told you, I’m going to die before then.”
“That’s debatable. And that’s not what I’m talking about. You’re not walking through the window because you’re not on the prequalified list.”
“So?” My voice rises. I’m probably waking Jessa, but I can’t seem to lower it. “The chairwoman is. And she might be the worst mother in this timeline, but she’s not going to bring someone else as her ‘plus one.’ I’m her only daughter. She doesn’t even have a spouse. Even if she doesn’t love me, she’d still choose me, in order to save face.”
He weaves both his hands through mine, in what I’m beginning to think of as his signature move. Last time, it made me feel like a flame was burning inside me. But not now.
I brace myself. The gesture can mean only one thing. He’s trying to soften the blow of his words.
“Olivia, she’s waiving her option of a ‘plus one’ altogether. So you’re right. She’s not taking someone in place of you. She’s not taking anybody at all.”
39
A few hours later, I stalk down a hallway toward a tucked-away lab in a tucked-away wing in the half of the building that belongs to TechRA. I don’t think my shoulders have ever been so stiff. I don’t think my spine has ever been so straight. In the last few hours, shock has turned to anger, and I’ve never been more ready to confront my mother. I would’ve gone to her sleeping unit hours ago, but she sleeps in a chamber with the tightest security, one that doesn’t allow unannounced visitors. Not even me.
At least I had more time in Ryder’s arms. The boiling in my blood recedes as I think of last night. After he told me the truth, we lay on my bed, with my head on his chest and his fingers in my hair. After a minute or ten, he started telling me about his childhood in the wilderness. The first time he caught a fish. The day he and Jessa spent an entire afternoon in the trees, pretending they were monkeys. How he would watch the clouds move in the sky and wonder if somehow, somewhere, his brother was watching the same clouds.
For two hours, we whispered to each other, his heart a rhythmic beat against my chin. We didn’t talk about my mom or the future or both of our looming deaths. I think, for a moment, we both just wanted something normal.
Seven more days. I’m not sure why or how, but in seven more days, this same boy will stick a needle into my chest and kill me.
I burst into a bustling lab stuffed with com terminals. Everywhere I look, techs are spinning in their chairs, running from one keyball to another, gesturing excitedly at holo-docs projected in the air.
I stumble on the threshold. This…this isn’t what I expected. When Jessa accessed the geo-locator on the chairwoman’s wrist com, and a glowing dot appeared in a hardly used wing of TechRA, I assumed my mother was meeting with a solitary scientist. I had no idea she’d be in this hub of activity.
But there she is, her navy suit as crisp as ever, pulling a helmetlike contraption off her head and handing it to a nameless tech. “I can see the seams in this one,” she says. “The memory jerks as you transition from one image to the next. Fix it.”
She moves to the next terminal, slipping on another helmet for a few seconds before removing it again. “Sharpen the color,” she snaps. “The blues and greens are completely washed out. Come on, people!” She swivels on her heels, so that she’s addressing the lab at large. “No one’s going to be fooled by this fike. I feel like I’m looking at a pre-Boom television! This needed to be fixed yesterday.”
She shakes her head in disgust and looks up—right into my eyes. She opens her mouth—to do what? Stop me in my tracks? Try to explain the unexplainable?—but it’s too late. I dive to the closest terminal and shove a helmet on my head.
“Hey,” the tech protests. “I’m working here.”
But I’m already sinking into the memory.
…
I’m standing on a slick gymnasium floor, gleaming with varnish. The crowd in the bleachers stamps and cheers, the noise rattling the rafters and vi
brating my teeth. A line of sweat drips down the forehead of my opponent, a large man with hands like mitts. In what feels like slow motion, I palm a basketball and jump into the air. The image jerks. When it resettles, I’m still jumping, two feet, three feet, and then I swing my arm and dunk the ball right into the hoop.
…
I claw at the helmet, throwing it off my head. The pure athletic prowess in the memory reminds me of Ryder, but that’s not why a cold sweat springs out on my neck. Dear Fate. My mother’s done it. She’s figured out how to manufacture a memory. She took a regular memory of someone jumping—and added a couple feet of air. Sure, there’s still that jerk in the image—that seam she was complaining about—but she’s nearly there.
My stomach rocks back and forth, and nausea climbs my throat. I can’t stop my fingers from shaking, and yet, I grab the helmet from the next terminal and put it on my head. I have to see. I have to be sure.
…
I’m balancing a violin under my chin, one hand cradling the neck of the instrument, the other moving a bow with strong, controlled strokes. Silk whispers against my thighs, and the violin emits notes that are high, beautiful, and heart-wrenching.
But I’m doing more than just playing. The perspective zooms out. A few pauses and jumps later, I’m standing on a hoverboard, flying around the track even as I produce stunning music.
…
Shakily, I open my eyes. Again, I think of Ryder and his skills on the hoverboard. And again, it’s a spliced-together memory. Jessa warned me. She told me about Callie’s ability to manipulate images, about my mom’s keen interest in this power. But nothing ever came of it, and we were so occupied by the prospect of genocide I’d mostly forgotten about her preoccupation.