“But . . . we’re you,” Red said. “We wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You’re me?” Five looked around the kitchen in disbelief. “You’re nothing like me. You’re soft, and scared, and you don’t know anything. Leave. Before you get your dumb selves hurt.”
“This can get you home,” Four blurted out.
Five stilled. “What?”
Four looked like a deer in headlights, like those were all the words she’d been able to come up with.
“If we defeat the trolls and, uh, ‘save the world,’” Red said, using air quotes, “the Powers That Be will send us all home.”
“Does that include me? I wasn’t sent here at the same time. Or for the same reason. I don’t know if I was sent for a reason at all.”
“I don’t know, either,” I admitted. “We’ll ask Neven. Please. We need your help.”
Five chewed the inside of her cheek, staring at the trolls. They seemed calmer. Maybe she could give us a few minutes more. “I’ve been following the news on Philadelphia,” she said finally, “and I’ve got a question.”
“Yeah?”
“Why the hell did that rift of yours just triple in size?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Five stayed in the kitchen while the rest of us filed into the living room with a handful of trolls on our heels.
Rainbow took the TV remote from the coffee table and upped the volume. A panicky bystander was being interviewed, her face red: “It just ripped open! The freaking sky! We were looking at that thing—that portal. It hovered right there.” She pointed at a park behind her. “Police pushed us back. They made us stop filming. After a couple minutes, it just—suddenly—out of nowhere—” She gestured wildly. “You could see the air move, you know? Like it was stretching. I can’t describe it. The portal tore open further. Two, three times the size. I had a tear in my tights the other day. Went exactly like that.”
The image switched to a newscaster. Her voice was steady as she showed footage of the rift before and after the change.
Five had asked why it happened; I could only think of one answer.
The walls are weakening.
One of the trolls drooped back to the kitchen, where Five was still working on her soup. It wasn’t all she’d been cooking. The living room held even more dirty dishes than the kitchen. Rainbow looked around, puzzled. I suspected the room normally looked perfectly nice: a huge curved TV, a tidy floor, neat bookshelves. The walls were decorated with crucifixes and family pictures and childlike drawings of animals and a photo collage with big letters spelling out SAN JUAN.
What distracted from all of that was the mess.
I counted five glasses and a handful of silverware. Two used dinner plates were haphazardly stacked on an arm of the couch, while a breakfast plate on the coffee table held an apple core and the remains of a sauce I couldn’t identify. It looked fresh enough that it had to be Five’s mess.
The knives I saw in several easy-to-reach places had to be Five’s doing, too. I imagined her sitting here surrounded by trolls and weapons as the news of the rift expansion broke.
“Dr. Torrance?” I nodded at the TV. “Did you know about this?”
“I got word half an hour ago,” she admitted. “I don’t know what caused it, though. I was never assigned to the rift itself. I worked with the trolls. It’s why I stayed behind—I can be more useful in Damford than Philadelphia.”
We needed to talk to Neven about what the expansion meant. I knew her answer, though: It’s not your problem.
“So you studied the trolls,” I said, “and you worked with that Hazel. Right?” Dr. Torrance had to know Five better than she knew me. It was an odd thought.
“Ever since she arrived. We’ve been looking for her since her escape this week, but the last thing I expected was to find her with the trolls. I’d thought she’d get as far away from them as possible.” Dr. Torrance sat down in an armchair, elbows on her knees. Her every movement was cautious. She kept glancing at the trolls and tugging nervously at a sleeve of her trench coat. Up close like this, she looked younger—thirties, maybe—than I’d have guessed in the garage. The glasses and nearly white hair must’ve thrown me off. “I’m sorry for not telling you about her,” she went on. “It’s, you know. Orders. I’m not exactly high up in the chain of command.”
I looked away. I believed she was sorry; I just wasn’t ready to hear it. Not after the MGA had lied about Neven and Five and let us drop from a balcony.
I’d put my life in the hands of this organization. This was what they offered in return.
“Do you think Neven knows about the rift?” Red sat down on the couch. “Or about Five’s connection to the trolls?”
“Five? You mean—Oh, right,” Dr. Torrance said. “It’s not the only unusual thing about her, you know. Both the night she arrived and the night she escaped, the power went out.”
“You think I did that?” Five stepped into the living room and leaned against the doorpost. “Sorry to disappoint. I can’t control electricity with my mind.”
“Only trolls.” Rainbow was leaning against the row of bookshelves, mirroring Five’s pose.
“Were those outages a coincidence?” Dr. Torrance said. “It’s not often our main and backup generators fail.”
“How should I know? But it wasn’t me.”
The Powers That Be had probably engineered that recent power outage to give the trolls the opportunity to escape. No wonder the MGA had been on such high alert on my birthday, bringing in tanks and extra agents. I’d assumed it was because of the power outage, but it was because of what’d happened during. While I’d slept, Five and the trolls had broken out.
If there had been a similar outage on Five’s arrival two years ago, it could mean the Powers had wanted Five to escape immediately, or—
Wait. Two years ago. Power outage. Chaos on the grounds.
I turned to Dr. Torrance. “Was the night Five and the trolls arrived the same night that Carolyn tried to sneak into the rift barn?”
“Yeah. Facet worried she’d come close to seeing the new arrivals.”
“If she had . . .” I trailed off. We might’ve been someplace very different now.
“Who’s Carolyn?” Five asked.
“Our sister.” Rainbow blinked. “You don’t have a Carolyn?”
“All of you have . . .?” Five looked around the group. “No. No siblings.”
Something dawned on me. “Did Mom and Dad meet in your world?”
Five gestured at herself. “Obviously.”
“Not my bio dad. I mean Ethan Yeo. Dad.”
Her lips pressed together. “Never heard the name. Look, I’m happy you all have such normal lives in normal worlds that your moms have time for torrid romances, but—”
“Normal?” I echoed, looking back at the TV showing the umpteenth shaky video of the rift. Yelled commentary and panicky background screams blended into each other. “That thing spent sixteen years in my backyard. You think my life is normal?”
I regretted the words straightaway. I sounded so woe-is-me. Rift or no rift, I had a loving family and every luxury I could ask for. I’d never had to worry about crime or accidents, as there was always help nearby. I might be stuck in a tiny circle of the world, but that tiny circle was as comfortable and safe as it could be.
I knew my situation could be far worse.
I just also knew that none of it was normal.
“Normal enough.” I couldn’t tell whether Five already regretted her words, same as I did, or whether she simply didn’t care enough to defend her point.
If she thought my world was normal, what did that mean for hers? Five had no Dad, no Caro. She said she’d stayed on the move. That trolls had driven Tara’s family from their home. And Five was nothing like the rest of us.
When I put those pieces together, the result made my skin crawl.
“What’s your world like?” Four asked quietly.
“How long have you been in Damford?�
� she asked instead of answering.
“Since late afternoon,” I said.
“So imagine it with twice as many trolls, a third as many people, and fifteen to twenty years’ worth of destruction. Extend that to the entire continent.” She smiled thinly. “If you plan to freak out about every small difference like our parents’ love lives, we’ll be here awhile.”
There was nothing small about imagining a world where I didn’t have Carolyn, didn’t know Dad. That knee-jerk feeling was dwarfed by Five’s other words, though. “Your world—”
“—is a troll-infested hellhole, yes. Then, without explanation, I appear in another dimension alongside a handful of trolls. Over the next two years, I’m held captive and studied and I see what my world might’ve been like if not for them.” She gave the nearest troll a hard look. “Then, when the power goes out and I finally escape, some trolls slip out in the chaos. They follow me halfway across the state. I hitchhiked most of it, and they still managed to keep up. They probably thought I’d freed them on purpose. Heh. Girl escapes the threat of trolls in her wrecked world, sets them loose on another world, and becomes their unwilling alpha. Is that irony? I’m never sure.” She eyed Dr. Torrance, her face bitter or angry or wry. I couldn’t read her like I could the others. “I told you to kill the trolls while you could. You knew what they’d done to my world.”
“Their alpha?” Dr. Torrance said at the same time as Rainbow and I said, “Kill them? How?”
Dr. Torrance glanced over. “Right now, steel only hurts the trolls. When we had them in captivity, steel could kill them. And they weren’t this strong, they didn’t recover this fast, they didn’t multiply at this pace, they didn’t have any sort of alpha that we knew of . . .”
“No shit. You’re surprised trolls act differently in captivity?” Hazel Five crossed her arms. A few trolls who’d lingered by her feet crept into the living room with jittery, agitated movements. “Trolls are a hive mind. The fewer the trolls, the weaker they are. You only had about a dozen, and you had them split up, besides. Groups that small don’t typically have alphas, which makes them vulnerable. And you kept them locked inside with—at a guess—several feet of metal between them and any fresh earth. That means they can’t multiply. Once they escaped, they could regroup and had access to fresh earth, which led to this mess. How many are there by now? A hundred? Two hundred?” Her crossed arms tightened. “They choose troll alphas normally, but sometimes weakened trolls latch on to humans or other animals as alphas. They can form a mental link to anyone helping them. Follow. Act protective. It never lasts long.”
“The past two years, you knew all this?” Dr. Torrance said.
“It’s common knowledge.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell us?” She sounded hurt. “We asked so many times what information you could give us.”
“I told you they were dangerous, and I told you to kill them.” Hazel Five—Hazel Alpha?—pushed herself away from the doorframe. “If you were stubborn enough to keep experimenting after that, it wouldn’t matter what I said. No way was I going to give you more information you might use for the wrong purposes. You wouldn’t be the first to try to use trolls for your own gain. It never works.”
“I—”
The nearest troll attacked.
It shot up Dr. Torrance’s leg. Its claws hooked into her slacks. A second later, it crouched in her lap. Instinctively, she tried to back away, but she only shoved herself deeper into the armchair.
The troll leaped.
I bolted toward Dr. Torrance, knife in hand.
Alpha reached her first. She grasped the back of the troll’s head and spun, yanking the troll away. She flung it toward the kitchen. It slid over the tiled floor, scrabbling for a foothold.
Alpha snatched a letter opener from a shelf near the armchair and pointed it at the troll. “Don’t.”
Grinding noises spread like whispers through the living room. All the trolls faced Alpha; some stepped closer, while others stayed at a wary distance. I clenched the knife. The trolls felt like elastic bands stretched to their breaking point. Any moment, one could snap.
“Emma.” Alpha’s voice remained steady. “You should go.”
“I want to stay.” She sat frozen in the chair. Blood welled up from scratches on her hand and face.
“I can’t hold them back much longer. And you’re their first target.”
“Because . . . Because they’re picking up on your thoughts?” Dr. Torrance reached up with a shaky hand to straighten her glasses. “And those thoughts tell them I’m not your favorite person.”
“Thoughts. Feelings. Who the hell knows.” The troll Alpha had flung into the kitchen scurried out through the window. She lowered the letter opener. “Go. I have nothing else to tell you, and you have nothing else to offer me.”
Slowly, Dr. Torrance stood. Her eyes flicked from troll to troll. “I’ll go.”
“You too.” Alpha turned to the rest of us. “It doesn’t matter whether I believe you. I can’t help you. And you’re not helping me. You’re stressing me out. I’ll—I’ll just cook some more.”
She walked stiffly into the kitchen. A couple trolls followed. Others watched us from their perches under the coffee table or atop the shelves. Slowly, they edged closer. Showed rotting-dirt teeth. Hissed.
“That looks like our final warning,” Rainbow said. “We need a different plan.”
“At least now we know it’s possible to kill them if they’re vulnerable enough,” Four said.
Red took a backward step toward the garage. “We could focus on the steel. Prime, didn’t Tara mention more steel coming into town soon?”
Dr. Torrance nodded. “A truck bearing supplies is arriving any moment. It’s supposed to, anyway. Communication has been difficult.”
One troll scurried toward Red. Within moments, all of us were backing to the garage. We carefully checked the SUV’s interior for hidden trolls, then started filing inside.
“I’ll take you to the library,” Dr. Torrance said. “We can help each other.”
I entered the car last. I’d already stuck my head inside, my hand on the door for stability.
Then I let go. I stepped back.
“You guys go,” I said. “I’m staying.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“We want to help you figure this out.”
It was just me, Alpha, and half a dozen trolls in the kitchen—me in the doorway, Alpha clumsily washing dishes, and the trolls hovering around our feet or perched atop the fridge. I stood as still as possible. I didn’t want to give them any reason to attack. Making my way from the garage to the kitchen had been nerve-racking enough.
Alpha turned. She didn’t look surprised to see I’d stayed behind. “Figure out what? The dishes?”
“Um, no. Although that looks like a dishwasher.” I pointed.
“Right.” Alpha dropped the sponge. It hit the countertop with a wet flop. She looked less combative now. More defeated. “Those exist.”
In her world, working dishwashers were probably a rarity. And though she’d been in this dimension for years, I doubted she’d done much in the terms of chores while being held by the MGA. In a way, she knew even less of the world than I did.
“I told you to leave,” she said.
“Because you’re worried for our safety. Right? Well, we’re . . . We’re worried for a lot of people’s safety.”
“You can’t help.”
“Let us try.”
“Us? I only see you.”
I’d figured staying here by myself might freak her out less. Maybe the key to this mystery wasn’t more Hazels, like the Powers That Be seemed to think, but fewer. “Dr. Torrance is driving the others to the library.”
“Dr. Torrance,” she echoed. “Wow. You sure are polite.”
I bit my lip. Instinctively, I wanted to defend the MGA, but I couldn’t do that to Alpha, of all people. “Is she really that bad?”
Two trolls by Alpha’s feet slinked closer
to me. “She’s one of the best people in that organization.” She scoffed. “Doesn’t matter. She’s still with them.”
I nodded silently. That made sense.
“Why did you stay?” she asked warily.
“I want to know to what extent you can control the trolls.” I tugged my head at the ceiling. “Just you, me, and a troll. We can sit in Tara’s room. Or anywhere you’re comfortable. Forget about the Chosen One thing. Forget about the Powers That Be. I just don’t want trolls to ravage this world like they did yours.”
“Don’t expect me to stop that. All I can do is delay it.”
“I just expect you to try.”
Alpha was silent for a moment. Then: “Do you like tomato soup?”
I watched the troll intently.
Its claws pierced the bedsheet, where it sat with its spine arched and its head dangling from its thin neck. It was skittish, twitching at every movement of Alpha’s and mine. It bared teeth that reminded me of shards of bark.
What the troll didn’t do was leap off the bed and stand upright, like we were hoping it would.
“Told you,” Alpha said. “It’s not gonna move.” She sat ramrod straight on Tara’s bed, a few feet between her and the troll. Green sheets were bunched up by her side. She peered at the closed bedroom door every couple of seconds.
Skkrtch skrrrtch.
The other trolls weren’t happy being locked out.
I couldn’t tell whether Alpha was genuinely trying to make the troll move. She didn’t seem to be focusing.
I spun Tara’s chair around so I could lean over her desk for another spoonful of soup. The bowl was surrounded by notebooks, a big sketchbook covered in stickers, and several pens in various shades of green. A couple of anime-style drawings hung on the wall.
I felt like an intruder. Being in Aunt Lina’s bedroom had been wild, but being in a stranger’s room was worse. Especially a stranger who was my girlfriend in another world. (A bra lay on one corner of Tara’s desk. Charcoal. Silver accents. I tried not to look.)
The Art of Saving the World Page 16