“It’s what we’ve been doing for months,” Emil said. “Just a little more rushed and a little less official.”
“We didn’t know she was evil beforehand, Emil,” Dax said, as though they were exercising great patience. “You sure you don’t know anybody else brilliant and crazy enough to work with you on this? Someone who, say, doesn’t have a history of imprisoning people and starving them?” They waggled their eyebrows, raising them so high they disappeared into fluffy red hair.
“I didn’t think you’d let me go alone,” Emil said quietly. And then with more force, “And I can’t let anyone go with me. It’s too risky.”
“Yeah,” Dax said. “I know. Just imagine we had this conversation already. I played the whole thing out in my head on the walk over here. I can’t stop you from going and you won’t let any of us come with you, but for fuck’s sake, at least let me be the one who doses you.”
That was unexpected. Still, Emil hesitated. “It’s not really your area of expertise.”
“Emil, it’s nobody’s area of expertise. No one has ever done this before. Lange walked into that breach and he hasn’t walked back out yet,” Dax said.
“Neither of you listened to me,” Heath interjected. “It’s not going to work. The prion only acts on matter that is folded in a certain way—a different way from the matter in our reality. If Emil had any such matter in him, the prion would already have worked.”
“That just means we need to find some way to get other matter into him,” Dax said.
“Sure,” Heath shot back. “Because there’s so much material from other realities just lying around.”
“Actually,” Emil said, thinking of the plastic bag he’d taken from Zin’s kitchen and the seaweed on the floor of his room. “There is. Do you think it would be enough to ingest it?”
Dax said yes at the same time that Heath said no, then they stared at each other. “Bone marrow or blood would be better,” Heath said.
“Yeah, we know you’re a vampire,” Dax said. “None of our runners are in good enough shape to give you blood right now, and we definitely don’t have time for a bone marrow transplant. Eating something from another reality is our best bet.”
“It’s a fucking bad bet,” Heath said.
“You just need to know that you can make it out of the Nowhere one time,” Dax continued, ignoring Heath. “Hopefully you’ll make it to wherever Kit is and then he can bring you back. If you don’t make it to where Kit is…”
“It’s a one-way trip,” Emil finished. He’d miss the team and Zora and his parents, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try. “I know. I thought about it. I’m still going.”
“I know,” Dax said. “I had this whole conversation in my head already, remember? But if anything bears repeating, it’s that.”
“So what else am I going to say?” Emil asked, smiling.
“It’s all going to be very noble and determined,” Dax said, taking his question seriously. “And if I try to argue with you that the life of a person you met a few days ago isn’t worth your own, you won’t listen.”
“I wouldn’t leave any of—”
“Us, I know,” Dax said. “But he’s not one of us. Not to me, not yet. But he means something to you, so I’m here, doing what I can to keep you alive.”
“Thank you,” Emil said.
“Put her back where you found her,” Dax said with a tilt of their head toward Heath, who looked disgruntled. “And stop trying to hide things from us. We’re smart. That’s why you picked us in the first place.”
“Right,” Emil said. He took Heath back to the supply closet. Miriam frowned at him in a way that promised future arguments, but she knew better than to start anything in front of their prisoners.
When he returned to Heath and Winslow’s lab, Dax was preparing a syringe. The liquid inside it was unremarkable, colorless, odorless, and clear.
“It looks so unassuming,” Emil said. Normal prions weren’t something any sane person wanted in their body. Something called a dimensional prion ought to inspire a similar reaction. But as Heath and Dax had already pointed out, Emil’s plan wasn’t anywhere near rational.
“It can be any kind of matter,” Dax reminded him. “Its most important property is something we can’t perceive.”
Emil had received so many injections over the course of the last few months that getting one more shot didn’t feel momentous. He exposed his arm.
“Let’s wait,” Dax said. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Heath, but what do you have from another reality that you’re planning to eat?”
“Two different plants,” Emil said. “Some berries that I happened to bring back after the first trip Kit and I made. And some seaweed that Kit got tangled in when Lange pushed him into deep ocean water. The berries are… well, I won’t say safe, but they won’t kill me. Not sure about the seaweed.”
“Apparently I missed a lot. Also, gross.” Dax made a face. “How are you planning to eat it?”
“Uh, with my mouth?”
“No, I mean… are you going to eat it raw? Put it in a blender?” Dax asked. “Assuming we test it and it’s non-lethal.”
“Oh.” Emil hadn’t considered any of that. Lenny was the best cook among them, but he’d just been shot. Maybe Jake would have an idea. Emil vaguely remembered a story about Jake working in a diner as teenager. Then again, Emil didn’t care what it tasted like. He just needed enough of it in his body to get him out the other side of the Nowhere.
The next few hours were a blur. He documented as much as he could about the mysterious seaweed—and now that Dax had asked him how he planned to eat it, the dried, salt-encrusted ropes of it did look distinctly unappetizing—and the berries he’d brought back from the desert. At least he knew they didn’t taste bad, although their side effects were likely to be embarrassing. He’d handle it.
When he returned to the lab, Laila was sitting in a rolling chair with her feet up on the desk in front of her, chatting with Dax while Dax did something he couldn’t see at one of the lab benches. Emil almost didn’t recognize Laila—she’d curled her hair and put on a startling amount of makeup in asymmetrical, mismatched black blocks around her eyes. Where had she found makeup or a curler? Emil would guess that the grey t-shirt and sweatpants she was wearing had once belonged to Miriam, but they hadn’t fit Miriam like that.
“Hey,” Laila said. “I heard you’re going to get Kit.”
Emil braced for an argument. “Yeah.”
“I gave Dax some of my blood,” she said. “For you. They say we’re compatible.”
“You didn’t have to do that! You’re recovering—”
“I should be going to get him,” Laila interrupted. “If there was any way I could, I’d be gone already. But I had to stop to breathe on my walk over here and every time I stand up, I black out for a second. So the best I can do is help you. Let me.”
“Can you really afford to give blood right now?”
“I’m alive. I’ll make more,” Laila said. “Besides, Dax says you need to stuff yourself full of as many different foldings as possible. I’m a fucking pretzel. Have at it.” She gestured grandly at Dax, and now that Dax had turned, Emil could see they were handling a bag of blood.
“Thank you, Laila.”
“Find Kit,” she said.
Emil’s life was just a series of people demanding to help him. As he was accepting Laila’s blood transfusion, Miriam and Jake showed up. Jake was carrying a huge pack specifically for backpacking. Miriam had brought him an assortment of weapons, including a handgun, knives of varying sizes, and a very large can of pepper spray.
“Come back so I can yell at you about how stupid this was,” she said.
“Sounds great,” Emil said.
“I forbade Lenny from coming over here since he just got shot,” Miriam continued, impervious. “But he says he loves you.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, supremely uncomfortable at having been burdened with this
message.
“And he had very specific instructions about which flavors of protein bar to pack,” Jake added solemnly. “Chocolate Peanut Butter Power Blast, in case you were wondering.”
“Thank you,” Emil said, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
In the end, after determining that the seaweed was non-lethal, he put it in a blender. The resulting smoothie was both grassy and salty, and Miriam and Jake regarded him with silent horror as he downed it.
“You must really, really like him,” Dax said, awed.
“I’d do the same for any of you,” Emil said. He’d saved the berries for last, knowing the effect they were going to have, but once he’d eaten them, there was nothing left but to stuff Kit’s clothes into his pack and go to Lange’s lab.
Emil felt funny, to say the least. He couldn’t tell if it was the strange cocktail of medicine and food or if he really did have some new sense of what was wrong in Lange’s lab. Jake let him in, since no one had reprogrammed the lock yet, then waited in the hall. They’d agreed that he had the best chance of getting Lange’s attention, so he’d remain in the lab while Emil was traveling to give him a chance to cross without interference.
Emil stood near the door for a moment, staring down the other side of the room. It was just a white wall framed by those two large, curved pieces of metal. It shouldn’t have been threatening.
But his brain alternated between perceiving it as thirty feet away and perceiving it as some impossibly long distance from where he stood. It was disorienting, as though everything kept shifting in and out of focus.
Someone touched his hand and it felt so good he almost melted.
“Whoa, they gave you the good stuff,” Chávez said. She wrapped her arms around his neck and Emil wanted to cling to her forever. “Don’t die.”
“I accidentally got Kit high when we met,” Emil confessed. He could feel it now, uncurling from nothing. Warmth coursed through him. He wanted her to touch him some more. She could make his brain light up. They could just stay here, hugging, and be happy forever.
“The same stuff you’re on now?”
He nodded. It was funny, now that he thought about it, that despite the drug, he wasn’t feeling particularly… lustful. Maybe it was just that he didn’t have sexual feelings about Chávez. Not that she wasn’t attractive, in a lanky, athletic kind of way. But he knew she’d never want him, and that had no appeal. Kit, on the other hand, had wanted him from the start. He wished Kit were here right now.
“That’s a hell of an introduction,” she said. She let go of him and he very much wished she hadn’t. As soon as she’d left, he could feel the room creeping up on him again. It was too big. “Is that why things went south between you two?”
He shook his head. He must look funny because Chávez was trying hard not to smile at him. “Quint’s a bigot,” Emil said. “Against runners. I knew and I worked for him anyway.”
“Ah,” Chávez said.
She hadn’t known Quint was a bigot. Emil had tried to put it out of his mind. He hadn’t told anyone. Was she angry? She should be. “Kit was upset. As he has every right to be.”
“Are you risking your life because you feel guilty, Emil?”
“No.” It came out with more force than he intended. “I can’t let him die.”
“Okay,” Chávez said, and she chewed her bottom lip like she was considering something. “Look, I don’t really know him, but… isn’t he basically a smuggler? Doesn’t he work for bad people all the time?”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t’ve.”
“Sure, of course. Forget it. Find him, save his life if you need to, apologize again. That should be enough.” She patted him on the shoulder.
He wanted another hug. He didn’t want to walk to the back of the room, miles from here, until the void sucked him in. The Nowhere was awful. He couldn’t do this.
“Emil.” Chávez had big brown eyes and she was biting her bottom lip in a funny little smile. This time, she put both hands on his shoulders. She was almost as tall as him. Lenny always called her a skyscraper. Emil would miss her if he died or got stuck on the other side—or worse, in between. Lenny and the others, too. “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to do this. Nobody will think less of you.”
He’d think less of himself.
“I know how much you hate the Nowhere,” Chávez said.
Emil didn’t want anyone to know that about him. His private cowardice. But Chávez could tell and she still liked him. And Kit had seen it and Kit still… well. Emil couldn’t say if Kit still liked him. Was Kit even still alive? He turned his attention to the back of the room. It was time to find out.
“I hate the thought of him stranded somewhere, dying,” Emil said. He was wasting time here. “I’m going.”
Chávez nodded. “Good luck.”
She slipped out of the room and Jake slipped in, giving Emil a silent nod of acknowledgement. He stood guard as Emil crossed toward the other side of the room. The space changed unpredictably, stretched out in some places and shrunken in others, so his progress was uneven.
He was uncomfortable, but his discomfort stemmed from the experiments he’d subjected himself to and the unfinished experiment unfolding—in a strange, literal sense—all around him. It wasn’t his usual, inside-out, upside-down and backwards discomfort with the Nowhere, although he was aware of the encroaching void. He couldn’t normally sense it until someone had pulled him in, and then it was a horror show of being pushed and pulled in all directions, cracked open and squeezed shut. But now it was simply a pressure all around him. The sensation was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, merely a sense he’d never possessed before, a consciousness of this membrane that slid between all worlds.
How long had it been? He was still walking, but the white walls of Lange’s lab faded into darkness. When he looked down, there was no floor, but a blackness that extended beyond his comprehension. He’d never conceived of the Nowhere like this. Before, its name had always seemed far too mundane to capture the sickening wrongness of it, but now he understood. For runners, it didn’t feel like that. It was just a place between. A nothing space. Nowhere.
Emil was in the Nowhere alone. He hadn’t, as far as he could tell, lost all sense of his human form and become whatever Solomon Lange was. He was just… floating. It was a miracle.
Unfortunately, one miracle wasn’t enough. He’d gotten into the Nowhere, but now he needed to get out. And it had to be wherever Kit was, or this would all have been a waste. A vision of coming out the other side with a backpack full of Kit’s ridiculous, brilliant wardrobe and no Kit went through him like a knife. He couldn’t let that happen.
Emil wasn’t sure how to get out, exactly, but he knew he couldn’t do it until he was certain Kit was on the other side of the darkness. He’d stay in the void until he was dead sure, even if all his energy withered to nothing. Let the Nowhere spit him out in some desert or ocean or tundra, whatever unknown otherworldly wilderness, as long as he could pull that red sweater out of his pack and hand it to Kit.
20
A Bad Deal
The beast—that was the only thing Kit could think to call it, since it wasn’t an animal he recognized—emerged from the darkness. It sauntered, moving in the casual way of a predator with nothing to fear. Kit, not feeling so confident, stayed very still.
It looked like a mammal, with striped light brown fur rippling all over its six-legged body. Like a wolf or a big cat, its eyes faced forward. Its snout was doglike, but it had pointed ears that angled back from its head. When it yawned, it revealed two terrifying rows of jagged teeth. Huge, the beast moved with a powerful grace, its long tail snapping behind it. Kit found it hard to connect this animal with the sound he’d heard—claws scratching loose rock—because its giant paws padded silently toward him.
Taking his eyes off the approaching beast was nearly impossible. Kit wasn’t sure how he managed. But somehow, he saw three tiny pairs of eyes glinting in the darkness behind
it.
Babies.
They’d been the ones making noise. Their mom knew better. So much for hoping she might just sniff him and decide he wasn’t a threat. She could probably smell the fear coursing through his blood from where she was. Kit had no way to defend himself. There weren’t even any rocks worth throwing—not that he wanted to take that risk.
Ten feet separated them. Kit had forgotten how to breathe. It would have been so much nicer to slip quietly into death rather than getting shredded. Maybe she’d rip his throat out and make it quick.
Emil appeared right next to him.
Kit must be fucking dreaming. This was some kind of end-of-life vision. Or maybe he’d already died? Emil couldn’t be here, especially not alone. He wasn’t a runner. And even if he was a runner, how would he have found Kit?
Kit’s fantasies had taken a turn for the nerdy, apparently, since this dream version of Emil came equipped with a huge backpack. Was there food in there? It wouldn’t matter to a dead version of himself, of course, but the thought made his heart leap. Emil brought me food and heaven is real, he thought, dazed to the point of laughing. This cave was a bargain-basement version of heaven, but he’d take what he could get.
There wouldn’t be a fanged monster in heaven, though. Shit.
Emil—who was probably not a dream after all—took in Kit and the animal and the cave in one instant, and in the next, he was pulling a spray can from a holster at his waist. “Close your eyes and hold your breath,” he said, and Kit did. He heard the hiss of something being sprayed into the cave, and then the beast roaring and kicking up gravel as it ran back into the darkness. Kit watched for a few long moments, but there were no more eyes glinting back there.
When Kit turned his attention to Emil, he’d holstered the spray. He gave Kit a slight smile, then swayed on his feet. His pupils, already large, dilated enormously and his expression went slack. He fainted.
He’d toppled face first and was now lying under his pack. Kit crawled over to him and tried to wake him. When Emil didn’t rouse immediately, Kit tried pulling the pack off his shoulders. His fingers were frozen stiff but he managed it.
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