“But you’re a runner.”
“Not anymore I’m not. They poisoned me. Now I can only get into the Nowhere if they give me their antidote, which they dole out in tiny doses so I can follow their orders. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’d done the same to Aidan and Laila.”
Travis was Heath and Winslow’s first experimental subject. Shit. Emil’s grip loosened.
“I don’t know where they keep it, of course,” Travis said. “But I know it’s around here. I can’t run unless you get me some. Of course, once you give me that shot, you won’t have any control over where I take you.” He obviously took pleasure in the thought. “I could leave you in the Nowhere.”
Emil didn’t let his revulsion show. That wasn’t possible. Emil was enough of a coward to know. When the experiment had started, he’d asked every scientifically minded person he knew, a number of whom were world-class experts on the Nowhere. If a runner lost hold of you, the Nowhere just spit you back out—usually, but not always, right where you’d started. That little bit of uncertainty was enough to keep most runners holding on tight, but it was just the randomness of the exit point that was a concern. You couldn’t get stuck in the Nowhere.
At least, that’s what Lange had said before he’d gotten trapped there.
“You’re right,” Emil said. “That’s a risk I’ll have to take.”
“Let go of me. I’m not going anywhere until you bring me the antidote.”
“The shot of adrenaline worked on Aidan and Laila,” Emil said. With reluctance, he dropped his grip on Travis. “If they went through the same treatment as you…”
“Sure, maybe it’ll work one time. But that’s not enough. You find me Heath and Winslow’s stash, you bring me all of it, or we’re not going anywhere.”
“What does it look like? Can you give me any other useful information?”
“It’s a clear liquid. Heath is always the one who gives me the injection.”
Emil stalked off. He convinced one of Heath’s lab techs, a young woman named Mei, to unlock the lab and every cabinet in it. She couldn’t or wouldn’t answer any of his questions about this alleged antidote. Emil couldn’t tell if Heath had really been so secretive, or if Mei was afraid of crossing her.
Emil decided to trust her when she huffed, tried to pull her hair into a ponytail, and then gave up halfway through, carding her fingers through it and knocking her glasses askew. “Of course I’m afraid! But she also kept secrets. This whole place is creepy as fuck. Look. I don’t want to believe anything you’ve told me about what Dr. Heath was up to, but something’s telling me it’s all true. I came here with you, right? I unlocked the door. I’ll do what I can. We’ll go through the lab together. If I know what it is, I’ll tell you.”
Mei could identify every clear liquid they found except one labelled DPR8. There wasn’t much of it, only a few syringes’ worth, but Travis would just have to deal. “Thank you, Mei.”
“I want out,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but I just want to get out and work in a normal lab. No more cutting-edge science for me. No more being caught between you and Quint Services. And no more ghosts!”
“Do the other lab techs want out too?”
“Can you imagine them wanting to stay?” Mei asked, which was a good point.
“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Emil said. He couldn’t make any promises since Travis might drop him in the ocean in the next thirty minutes, and he had no real negotiating power with Quint Services anyway, but he would try. “Lie low, okay?”
“As if I’d do anything else.”
Emil left Mei and brought the liquid to Travis. He complained, as predicted, about the small quantity, and he would have backed out of their deal if he’d known that Emil was holding back on him, but Emil administered that lie and the injection into Travis’s arm with calm authority.
“They’ll find me,” Travis said. “If I can’t run.”
“If you need a shot every time you jump, this leaves you with two jumps after you bring me back here. You’ll just have to choose wisely.” Emil almost added I know that’s not something you’re good at but he decided against further antagonizing Travis before they jumped.
Travis eyed him. “You should be more afraid of Quint Services than you are. But whatever. I’ll take you to the shitty bar where Kit’s weird old lesbian friends live.”
They’re his family, Emil wanted to say. But what did he know? He’d met Zin once. And Kit had told Emil not to look for him, and here Emil was, teaming up with the man who’d pointed a gun at Kit and started this whole mess.
“Not like it’s hard for me,” Travis continued, looking extra smug and suggestive. “I’ve been there enough times.”
“Take me to the front door,” Emil said sharply. “Not Kit’s bedroom.”
And that was how he ended up in front of Zinnia Jackson’s bar with Kit’s ex-fuck-buddy. He knocked and she called out “We’re closed!” in an irritated voice.
“It’s Emil,” he said, knocking again. “We met… Saturday morning.” The days were running together. “I was with Kit.”
The door swung open. Zin held a broom menacingly. Her red curls were flattened underneath a bandana and she’d been crying. Her expression went from stormy to surprised and back again as she took stock of the two men at her door. “If you’re gonna tell me Kit’s dead, do it now and get out of my bar.”
They weren’t technically in her bar, but Emil knew better than to point that out. “So you haven’t seen him?” he asked, his heart falling.
“Not for days,” Zin snapped.
“He disappeared yesterday afternoon,” Emil said. He tried to put on his reassuring-figure-of-authority voice and it didn’t work. He sounded faint. “He was… with me, more or less, before that. I was hoping I’d find him here.”
Zin’s whole demeanor changed. “Oh, baby,” she said, and passed the broom to Travis so she could hug Emil. “I know.”
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed him into the soft bulk of her body. Emil didn’t deserve this comfort. Kit had told him not to come here. He took it anyway, letting Zin squeeze him and murmur “you’ll find him, I know you’ll find him” in his ear.
She let go eventually. Travis shoved the broom back at her, furious about the whole exchange, and she accepted it without really looking at him. “Do you want to come in for some coffee? Tea?”
Emil had all the information he needed. Kit wasn’t here. He needed to go plan another rescue, one he had no idea how to carry out.
But Zinnia Jackson had hugged him and invited him in and for the first time since he’d arrived, there was the faintest ray of hope in her eyes. “You can go through his things if you need to,” she said. “For clues.”
Emil didn’t think there would be any clues. This wasn’t a normal missing persons case. “Yes. Tea would be lovely.”
He could almost feel Travis roll his eyes.
“You too,” Zin said, addressing Travis for the first time. “I know you’ve never liked me, but you meant something to Kit, and you’re helping Emil, so you might as well come in.”
Travis didn’t protest any part of that assessment, but he did follow Emil into the bar. Zin was already in the tiny kitchen in the back, pulling things out of cabinets. “Go ahead upstairs,” she called. “You know the way.”
It was awkward, going into Kit’s bedroom while Travis hovered in the doorway. Travis had spent a lot more time here than Emil, but he leaned against the doorjamb in silence while Emil knelt on Kit’s mattress and sorted methodically through piles of clothes. His wardrobe was a rainbow of color and texture arrayed around Emil. There were a few items that Emil didn’t fully understand, and it made him wish he’d known Kit longer and seen more of his style. But there was nothing to indicate where he might be, or if he was even alive. It was beautiful and utterly useless.
Emil folded things and began to put them back as neatly as he could. He paused with a sweater in his hands. It was red with a wild
, zigzagging black pattern, it looked far too big for Kit, and Emil suspected the slashes in it were purposeful. There was nothing at all practical about it, and yet Emil held onto it. Kit might be anywhere, in any climate, and if he was found—when he was found—he’d need clothes. He’d worn Emil’s t-shirt and shorts into the secret room. As far as Emil could remember, he’d been barefoot when he’d made the run. His boots were still on Emil’s floor, tangled in seaweed.
Emil selected an assortment of clothes for every type of weather he could imagine and he plucked another pair of boots from Kit’s floor. Then he got up.
Travis raised his eyebrows at Emil holding an armful of Kit’s clothes. “Thieving? Didn’t think you were the type.”
Emil had done plenty of shoplifting in his misspent youth, but Travis was correct. “I’m going to find him,” he said, pushing past Travis and heading downstairs. “Now come on. Award-winning vocal legend and pop icon Zinnia Jackson invited us to tea.”
Tea would have been lovely if Travis hadn’t sat there glowering the whole time. Zin smiled when she saw the pile of clothes in Emil’s arms. “You know,” she said, leaning on the bar across from him. “The first time I ever took him shopping, that was when I knew.”
“When you knew?” Emil asked.
“Oh, I liked him before that,” Zin said. “Even loved him. He’d been with us for a few weeks by then—we found him in the back alley, looking at Louann’s bike. No idea where he’d come from. But he looked hungry, and we had food, so we invited him in. We spent a long time searching for any family members, or foster family, any kind of caretaker, but he didn’t want to talk about it and nobody seemed to be missing him. It broke my heart and I thought, well, I want to keep him safe, even if nobody else does. So we let him stay. But when I set that boy loose in a store and told him I’d buy him whatever he wanted to wear, he came back with an absolute mess of textures and colors—you would not believe what he’d managed to find—that was when I knew he was my child.”
“Ah,” Emil said, thinking back on Zinnia Jackson’s pop career, filled with feathers and sequins and leather and mesh. She’d never shied away from any color or pattern. “A family resemblance.”
“He didn’t know it then,” Zin said. “Maybe he still doesn’t. But I knew. And I saw the look on Louann’s face in that store. She’s a hard woman to read, unless you’re me and you’ve been crazy in love with her for decades. She just kinda smiled and said ‘Guess he’s staying.’ And I knew that was Louann speak for ‘every time I look at either of you I want to explode with love, I am so wild about both of you I can hardly contain it,’ and sometimes I like to prove to her that I can speak her language, so all I said was, ‘Guess he is.’”
Emil smiled at that story. “Kit seems a little bit like her, too.”
“Oh, no, not really,” Zin said. “Louann’s quiet and understated by nature, but she expresses herself all the time. You just have to know how to listen. It’s different with Kit. He’s afraid.”
Their conversation suddenly felt even more intrusive than going through Kit’s things. And Emil had no doubt that wherever Kit had ended up, he was afraid. “I should go,” Emil said. “If we’re going to look for him, there’s no time to waste.”
19
Nobody's Area of Expertise
Travis deposited Emil in his room at Facility 17, eager to get away from Zin’s bar. “You’re not gonna reneg, right? I’m free to go?”
“Yeah,” Emil said, tired. He had more important things to do than keep Travis Alvey locked up, and he was puzzled when Travis kept staring at him instead of simply vanishing, like Emil wanted him to.
“You know I can’t make another jump today—not without a little help.”
“Mm.” Emil had forced him to jump to and from Earth, not long after he’d jumped out of the secret room. He had to concede the point. “What do you want?”
“Your bed—without you in it, don’t get any ideas,” Travis said. “And something to eat. I’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
“No ‘but where am I supposed to sleep tonight?’ protests?” Travis asked with a lascivious smile. “You’re closer to your team than I thought.”
Emil didn’t dignify that with a response. He wasn’t going to be here tonight, if things went to plan—although calling what he had a plan was a gross overstatement. “I need you to leave the door unlocked while I’m here. You’ve been stealing from the kitchen for months, so you can feed yourself,” he said and then turned and left.
His shift with Travis would be over in two hours, which meant he had two hours before someone discovered that Travis wasn’t sedated in Lange’s bed and started asking questions. It made Emil ache to deceive his team, but it would hurt more to invite them on an unplanned mission that had a high probability of killing him.
Miriam was in the supply closet watching Heath and Winslow. That was good. She’d do what he asked, even if she questioned his motives in private. When Emil walked in, she straightened her already straight spine and looked him in the eye.
“I’d like to talk to Heath alone,” he said. “Travis is unsupervised for the moment, but he’s unconscious. I’ll take Heath back to Lange’s room with me so we can have our conversation there.”
Miriam handed him the key to the handcuffs without a word. He uncuffed one of Heath’s hands so the cuffs were no longer wrapped around the metal shelves, then he led her out into the hallway and shut the door behind him. When he turned to enter her lab, Heath raised her eyebrows. She waited until they were inside with the door closed to say, “You’re lying to your team.”
“I’m protecting my team,” he said. Mei had closed all the cabinets so their earlier ransacking wasn’t so obvious. Emil was grateful she’d covered their tracks and gotten herself out of sight. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“What did you bring me here for?”
“Your work with the dimensional prions,” Emil said. “I need to get through the Nowhere and back out again. I think you’re repulsively amoral, but you’re the person I know who’s best qualified to do this. Make me a runner.”
“Assuming that’s even possible—three months of experiments haven’t had much success—why would I do that? You’ve been keeping me in a closet.”
“You help me, I lie to Quint Services and put the blame for everything on Winslow,” Emil said. “Your reputation will survive intact and you can get another job somewhere else.”
“Uh huh.” Jennifer Heath hadn’t gotten this far in life by being a fool, and she looked suitably skeptical. It was a crazy plan, after all. “This is insane and it’s not going to work. And I can’t believe I’m even bothering to point this out, but if you think I’m repulsively amoral, why would you let me inject you with something you barely understand?”
“Oh, that,” Emil said. “Because you’re going to inject yourself first.”
Rage chased shock across her features. “This isn’t going to work,” she repeated, her voice low and her jaw tight.
“The way I see it, we know how to get someone into the Nowhere—the door in Lange’s lab,” Emil said. “That’ll unfold me—and you, since you’ll be testing this on yourself—just fine. The problem is refolding. So it’s only half the work you had to do before, when you thought you needed to make your test subjects unfold and refold.”
“Why me and not Winslow?” Heath asked. “Couldn’t you just as easily have made him the same deal? Did you think I’d be easier because I’m a girl?”
“I thought you’d be easier because Chávez saw something in you worth getting to know,” Emil said. It was the truth. That and he’d been through her whole lab with Mei, so he had a reasonable idea of its contents. “And I know you wanted me to persuade Kit to stay in this facility. My methods are a little different from what you suggested, that’s all. But think, Jen—he’s the first runner we know of to cross into other realities. Multiple times now. You don’t want him to be lost to science forever, do you?”
/> “If it means I have to walk into the back of Lange’s lab, sure I do,” Heath said. “If you wanted pure scientific fervor, you picked the wrong co-author.”
“Sorry. I think you misunderstood. This isn’t a negotiation. We’re walking into the breach together regardless, so either you inject us with something that gives us a fighting chance of ever getting out, or we both end up like Lange.” He had to convince her. There was no time to let doubt creep into his tone or his expression.
“Emil. This isn’t you. You don’t want to do this to me. You care about following the rules and doing the right thing.”
“But you don’t.”
“Jesus, you are not who I thought you were,” she muttered.
“You confined and tortured two innocent people,” Emil snapped. And she and Winslow had poisoned Travis, though Emil was less willing to think of him as innocent. “I’ve been making small talk and eating breakfast across the table from you for months. Don’t talk to me about you are not who I thought you were.”
Heath gave him a stony stare. Neither she nor Winslow had expressed anything resembling regret or apology since their unofficial arrest. Maybe they intended to deny their involvement. Could they slip away unpunished? The thought turned his stomach.
He didn’t actually intend to drag Jennifer Heath into the breach. He didn’t want to lead his life in that eye-for-an-eye, torture-for-torture way. But she had to believe she was going with him. He couldn’t trust her otherwise.
The door opened.
Fuck. Emil could have sworn he’d locked it.
Dax slipped into the room. The door clicked shut softly behind them. “This is a stupid plan.”
Emil supposed now wasn’t the time to quibble about saying hello or how are you. “It’s the only plan,” he said. He should probably ask how Dax figured it out, and if they’d told anyone else.
“Really? Her?” Dax asked, eyeing Heath. “You’re gonna let her inject you with something risky before you go bounding off to the un-making of all your matter?”
Edge of Nowhere Page 20