Laila worked with Kit sometimes, which meant she was a smuggler. Sometimes smuggled goods were innocuous—just a result of people trying to get around state laws and tariffs. More often, smuggled goods were guns and drugs. Emil didn’t say anything about that. “I’m sorry about what Quint Services did to you. If you need to stay here to recover for a few days, we’ll take care of you.”
“I’m worried about Kit. You don’t know that kid. He gets in trouble, like, well, this.” Laila gestured broadly at Emil and the Facility 17 kitchen with her left hand, keeping the juice carton to her mouth with her right.
“I’m worried about him, too,” Emil said, smiling privately about how much Kit would hate Laila referring to him as that kid.
“Oh, so you’ve met.” A pause. “How did you meet, anyway?”
Laila might as well have said is this your fault? and Emil couldn’t tell her it wasn’t. “Quint Services hired him to bring me back here. I had to go down to the surface for questioning. We got knocked into another reality on our way back. Maybe you’ve seen the thing in the Nowhere?”
She shook her head. “Kit told us about it, but I didn’t see it when we jumped. That’s what makes me worried—he jumped first, so maybe it followed him.”
Emil’s heart sank. It was a good guess.
“Anyway,” he said, whisking milk into the eggs. “I guess you know most of the story by now. Things got complicated.”
He poured the eggs into the skillet and began to scramble them. They were almost finished by the time he realized how quiet Laila had been.
“Emil,” she said. “That’s your name, right?”
“Yes.”
“Emil.” A pause. “Is ‘things got complicated’ a euphemism for ‘I had sex with Kit’?”
“What,” he blurted, whipping around to look at her. How could she possibly have guessed? “I—”
“It’s okay,” she said, laughing. She waved a hand at the skillet. “Don’t let those burn, I really need them.” He turned around and focused on finishing. Laila kept talking. “Don’t worry, nobody on your team said a word. But I’ve known Kit a long time. And Lenny seemed very concerned about how to tell you he wasn’t with us. Also, you said ‘things got complicated’ in this kind of forlorn way and then turned around to brood into the eggs. You’re not that hard to read.”
Emil served Laila a giant plate of scrambled eggs and sat down across from her. “When you say you’ve known him a long time…”
“I don’t mean that he would have fallen into bed with anybody who looked at him right,” Laila said. “You’ve met him. You could’ve guessed that. He’s guarded. As far as I know, it’s only ever been Travis, and they don’t actually… well, they’ve both tried hard to keep it from becoming a relationship. I guess that turned out to be for the best.”
Emil made a noncommittal sound. Nothing involving Travis was for the best.
“I meant that Kit wouldn’t have stuck around with you unless he wanted to,” Laila said.
“He didn’t,” Emil said softly, “want to.”
“Uh huh,” Laila said. She didn’t seem to believe him, which was absurd because Emil had heard Kit say the words don’t look for me. Laila hadn’t been there. And Emil couldn’t tell her why Kit was so angry with him, because she’d be angry, too—and she had every right to be.
Chávez came into the kitchen and dropped into the seat next to Emil. The tired slump of her shoulders matched the downward cast of her eyes.
“Did you want something to eat?” he asked her.
“What? Oh, no. I came in here to check on you.”
“I’m okay,” he lied. “Are you?”
Chávez ignored him in favor of saying “hi” to Laila, who mumbled a greeting in between bites.
“I’m Chávez.”
“I know,” Laila said. “I heard that doctor screaming at you.”
“Oh.”
“She was very businesslike when she examined me,” Laila continued. “I’m glad to know she can scream. My name is Laila.”
“I know,” Chávez said, almost smiling. That uplifted corner of her mouth made Emil realize he’d rarely seen Chávez go so long without smiling. He felt a pang of sorrow. It had been a hard day for her, too. At least Laila’s ruthless, satisfied I’m glad to know she can scream remark seemed to have cheered her up a little. Or maybe it was Laila’s face.
“I get that a lot,” Laila said. She eyed Chávez’s narrow frame. “I guess you don’t have any clothes that would fit me. I’d be better off asking him.”
“We’ll find you something,” Emil said. Miriam’s clothes might fit, since she was shorter and thicker than Chávez, although not nearly as curvy as Laila. But this conversation was uncomfortable enough without him interjecting commentary on the bodies of the women he worked with, so he kept his mouth shut.
“And a bed,” Laila said.
“We can find one of those, too,” Chávez said.
If she were feeling more herself, Chávez would have said that flirtatiously. Offered up her own with a wink. It would have been inappropriate, but Emil had no doubt the Franklin Station Bank robber could handle herself. Instead, the exchange was flat, a testament to the fatigue and uncertainty that gripped all of them.
“I’ll clean up here,” Emil said. “Go get some rest.”
“You wouldn’t think I’d need it,” Laila said. “I’ve been in bed for days. And yet somehow I’m tired.” She gave Emil a curious, interested look. “Not too tired to talk more about you and Kit, though.”
“I’m too tired for that,” Emil said firmly.
“He’s a lost cause,” Chávez told Laila on their way out. “But good for you for trying.”
Emil cleaned up the kitchen and then planned how to clean up the mess they’d made. He wanted to talk to his team, but they were all recovering or occupied by something important. Should he get in contact with someone higher up at Quint Services? Should he call station security at Franklin? They wouldn’t be able to hold Travis Alvey any better than his team did. They wouldn’t know how to save Lange or fix the breach in the Nowhere.
And none of them would know where Kit was.
He found all six lab techs and had a talk with each of them. The news he delivered distressed them, but they believed him, at least. He pulled together a schedule so that someone was always watching Heath and Winslow and someone else was always watching Travis. He left boxes of packaged food and some extra folded clothes outside the rooms where Laila and Aidan were staying. They’d have to feed Heath and Winslow at some point, too, but having seen their captives, Emil wasn’t feeling too charitable about that.
He went into the greenhouse to think. Usually, the feel of earth in his hands soothed him and made it easier to come to the right conclusions. But Emil worked for hours and nothing came to him. And when he finally went back to his room to shower and change for bed, he admitted to himself that he hadn’t really been thinking. He’d been waiting for Kit.
17
Alone
Evening light streamed through the forest, painting the snow gold and peach and striping it with the long purple shadows of the trees. Kit was fucking freezing.
He hugged himself, Emil’s t-shirt soaked from where he’d fallen into the snow, and tried to stop his teeth from chattering. He took one more wet, bare step into the snow, the cold of it stinging. He had no idea where he was, if it was Earth or some other world, if there were people around, but he knew he was going to die. He didn’t have the energy to make another run, and even if he had, Lange would be waiting in the Nowhere. He’d freeze to death before he found enough food to win his energy back. Maybe he should just lay down in the snow right now and let it happen.
He trudged through the snow instead. Maybe there was a drier, less snowy place to die. Kit knew that didn’t really make sense, but he was miserable and exhausted and he couldn’t hold himself to that kind of standard anymore. Making sense was for people who hadn’t been shoved into other worlds. People w
ith shoes, even.
His whole life, he’d believed that no one was looking out for him. Now it was true.
Zin and Louann weren’t runners. They couldn’t look for him. Laila and Aidan couldn’t possibly come for him in time. Travis wouldn’t. It looked like Lenny had been shot just before Kit had jumped. Those were all the runners who knew he’d left. And Kit had told the one non-runner who might have the dedication to find him don’t look for me. He was well and truly fucked, and it was his own doing.
He wished he’d said goodbye to Zin and Louann. It had been days and he hadn’t even messaged them.
It had been years and he’d never once told them how he really felt. He insisted on paying rent. They needed the money, but it was more than that. It was to keep up one last barrier—if he paid rent, he could tell himself he was their tenant, not their kid. He was nobody’s kid. Never had been. His biological parents had fucked off to who knows where, the Home hadn’t ever lived up to its name, and his foster family had been a joke. Every time he’d wanted to trust someone, to make himself comfortable, he’d been burned. With Zin and Louann, it had been years, and he was still scared that some day they’d lose interest. They’d want his apartment back. They’d ask him to leave and they wouldn’t miss him.
Barefoot in the snow, with his body temperature dropping, he realized he’d been scared of the wrong thing. Zin and Louann were his family. They were home. Here, some unknowable, unbridgeable distance from them, with no way to get back and his death looming, he knew he should have told them so. There was a thing to be scared of: they were never going to know.
He didn’t know how long he’d been walking. It felt like years. The forest all looked the same to him. Pines and more pines. Emil probably could have looked at the trees and learned something from them, like whether this was Earth, but Emil wasn’t here. Kit knew fuck-all about trees.
The forest ran in front of him and behind him as far as he could see, but mountains rose to the left and the right. As the altitude climbed, the trees thinned and the snow thickened. There were a few bald patches, cliff faces too steep to hold snow. Kit looked to either side, searching for anywhere that looked dry and sheltered. A dark spot in the ridge to his right might be a shadow from overhanging rock. It might be a cave.
He turned toward it, hoping he’d have enough energy to get there. More snow had begun to fall while he was walking. It was melting in his hair and trickling down the back of his neck.
Unlike Emil, Kit wasn’t usually more prepared for survival situations. There’d been a backpack full of packaged food and medical supplies on the floor of the secret room and he hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab it before jumping. He should’ve known Lange would be waiting for him. How many times had it happened? Why hadn’t he thought of carrying something with him until he’d seen Caleb and Lenny show up with preparations? Why had he rushed headlong into rescuing Laila and Aidan, not even bothering to put on shoes?
He’d been in such a hurry to get away from Emil. It seemed stupid now. Not his anger—that was justified. But he shouldn’t have let it push him into danger. He should have taken the time to think through the possible consequences.
Kit wasn’t accustomed to living like that. He wasn’t a goddamn soldier. Life was exciting, but rarely dangerous. Until a few days ago, he’d never had any trouble jumping to exactly where he wanted to be. He made money, not plans. Consequences were for other people.
He wanted to silence the voice in his head that reminded him that if he hadn’t pushed Emil away right before jumping, some of this could have been prevented. I had a right to be angry. But Emil would have respected Kit’s anger while still offering calm, distant, professional advice on how to survive, if Kit had let him. He was infuriatingly mature like that, even when he was wrong.
Emil would have apologized, if Kit had let him. He would have done everything in his power to make it right.
Isn’t that exactly what he was doing when he helped you rescue Aidan and Laila?
It didn’t matter. Kit was never going to see Emil again. He stumbled, hardly able to feel his feet. Now that he was closer, he could see the dark spot he’d thought might be a shadow was definitely an opening in the cliff face. Kit walked up to it, feeling the burn in his calves at the slight incline, and then had to get down on hands and knees to see inside. It was a cave. The mouth was smaller than the interior, which was mercifully dry. It was a few degrees warmer inside, out of the wind and the snow, as good a place to die as he was going to find. Kit crawled inside and collapsed.
When he awoke, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It took him a moment to recall his circumstances. His body ached and he didn’t fully understand how he was still alive. The cave was impenetrably dark to his right, but to his left, light streamed through the entrance at a different angle. Had he slept all night? Had he woken because it was morning? No. Something else had changed. The scrabbling of animal claws against the loose sediment floor of the cave echoed in the darkness.
Kit wasn’t alone.
18
Tea
Emil waited twenty-four hours for Kit to come back. He did other things in that span of time, but they were never in the front of his mind. He checked on Lenny, who was cheerful despite having a bandaged wound on his arm, and Aidan and Laila, both still weak but improving. He saved Laila for last, since she was the one most likely to know if Kit had come back.
He hadn’t.
If Emil was honest with himself, he’d scheduled himself as Travis’s guard this afternoon on purpose. But since he’d just stolen a syringe and a dose of adrenaline from Caleb’s stockpile before going to the room where Travis was being held unconscious, he wasn’t feeling particularly honest.
Emil didn’t like to intimidate people. He didn’t feel intimidating on the inside, since most of what he wanted in life these days was to tend his garden or go for a walk in the woods. He remembered a time when the world had responded to him differently, when he’d been a chubby little kid that people wanted to pat on the head. Now when he passed among people he didn’t know, they were more likely to surreptitiously straighten their posture. Over the years since he’d become so physically imposing, he’d adjusted his behavior accordingly, and now he spent a lot of time smiling, being polite, making himself non-threatening.
When he walked into the room with Travis Alvey, he shed every last one of those mannerisms.
He woke Travis up roughly, dragged him upright, and kept a grip on his arm.
It was easy, even satisfying, to loom over Travis. He was taller that Kit, but he wasn’t a large man. Fashionably slender, he didn’t look like he spent much time in the weight room. Emil invaded his space and forced him to back up into the wall.
“You feel good about yourself? Feel big and strong?” Travis said. He was probably aiming for defiant, but his voice quavered at the end. He was, as Emil had suspected, not in shape to make a run. Not without help.
Emil smiled, glad Travis had gotten the point. “You’re going to help me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Pick a reason,” Emil said. “You threatened some people I care about, you’re powerless and I’ve got a hold on you, anyone who might have been your ally in this facility is chained up in a closet, and I think maybe, just maybe, you care if Kit lives or dies.”
“I pointed a gun at him,” Travis said. “So I don’t know why you’d think that.”
“You didn’t kill him.” Emil tried hard not to make it a question.
“Of course not. He jumped. It’s hard to shoot a runner.” Travis didn’t say that defensively so much as offensively, like he was daring Emil to try.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Emil said, channeling Miriam. As angry as he was with Travis, he didn’t actually want to kill anyone.
Travis scoffed. “You wanted to feel scary a second ago, but you don’t have the guts to kill me. You’d make your little attack dog do it.”
Emil shrugged. “Or I
could hand you over to the two people whose imprisonment and starvation you facilitated. It’ll take them a while to get back on their feet, but once Laila and Aidan can access the Nowhere again, it’ll be pretty hard for you to get away from them. I’m sure they have a few things to express.”
Travis had done a valiant job of keeping a disdainful expression on his face, but his eyes got a touch bigger at that. It almost made Emil wonder if he felt guilty. Then he plastered on his smugness again and it was like it had never happened. “Fine. What do you want?”
“Kit hasn’t come back here,” Emil said. “Not even for Laila. If he had any control over where he was, he’d be here or at Zinnia Jackson’s. I need to know if he’s alive. You can get me there.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“You get me there and back, I’ll forget to sedate you, and then you’ll be free,” Emil said. It was distasteful, letting Travis go unpunished after he’d shot Lenny, but it also solved the problem of holding him prisoner. Emil couldn’t plan a rescue mission and a mutiny based on Heath and Winslow’s unconscionable mistreatment of Laila and Aidan and then turn around and starve his own captive.
He didn’t know Travis well, but given that he was in Kit’s circle of acquaintances, he probably lived on the fringes of society, taking payments in cash for being a supernatural courier. Work for Quint Services, steady and high-paying, had probably seemed like a dream to him. And if he’d developed some objections along the way, it would have been too late. Heath and Winslow would have threatened him and anyone he cared about.
Travis let out a humorless bark of laughter. “I’ll never be free. You don’t understand what they did to me. Heath and Winslow made me their little captive pet.”
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