We’re not lost! I want to protest. Okay, it’s broken, but you can probably fix it eventually, and everybody lived. That ought to be a victory.
Then I realize—Mom has to report that her own deeply unstable daughter sabotaged the station.
Numbly I work the screen as best I can. After only a blink, Conley appears on her screen. I push myself down the hallway, far enough that I don’t have to listen.
This world’s Marguerite is going to pay a terrible price for what has happened here. Will she be institutionalized? Medicated? Whatever treatment she’ll be given will be wrong, because there’s nothing the matter with her. She just had the bad luck to be hijacked by Wicked, and then by me. Of course, she’ll remember the truth, but after everything that’s happened, will anyone believe her if she starts talking about having been possessed by a traveler from another universe?
Maybe Paul will save her dimension. Maybe I saved her life in the literal sense. But in every other sense—everything else that makes up a good life, a reason to live—I may have destroyed her.
Within a few hours, gravity has been restored and more orderly evacuations have begun. People trudge past carrying duffel bags of their stuff as they prepare to return to Earth months or years before they ever wanted to. Some of them whisper to each other as they go: The commander’s daughter had some kind of breakdown. Makes no sense. She had her whole family in orbit with her. If that’s not enough to help you, what is?
Meanwhile I sit in a small room within the medical area that apparently doubles as a holding cell for the criminal and dangerous. I’m grateful for the return of gravity, not least because I’m so upset I might throw up, and the last thing I need is vomit floating around.
This room does have a window, which I force myself to look through. The view reveals the damage to the station; the area Wicked sabotaged is crumpled and asymmetrical, an ugly blight amid the silvery arcs of the rest of the Astraeus. It might as well have been crushed in the fist of an angry giant. Whatever incredibly critical thing it does for the space station—well, it’s not doing that anymore.
The door makes sounds that must mean it’s being unlocked. I stand up, ready for the space police or whoever it is who’s going to take me into custody. When I see Paul instead, hope bubbles up inside me.
Yet his expression remains as rigid as stone.
“I have to be quick.” He steps in with me, not quite closing the door behind him. The red-violet beginnings of a black eye have begun to draw semicircles around his eye. “Nobody told me I couldn’t be in here, but I would guess this is against the rules.”
“You’re okay.” I want to touch his arm and reassure myself that he’s still here—but do I even have the right to do that anymore? Are we together or not? I don’t know. It shouldn’t matter, maybe, what with everything else that’s happening. But it does. I close my eyes. “Was anyone killed?”
“No. But several were injured by a plasma leak in the solar power core. Some of them seriously.”
“You say that like that’s no big deal.” I bear some responsibility for those injuries. No, I wasn’t the saboteur, but I should’ve realized Wicked would have a backup plan. Traps within traps: That’s her game. Angry with myself for not seeing it, angry with Paul for being so cold and callous, I hug myself and refuse to meet his eyes.
Paul’s only reaction is to look away. His rejection stings until I realize he isn’t ignoring me, he’s working with Dr. Singh’s computer.
“She didn’t have time to sign out,” he mutters as he searches through the files. One sharp keypunch brings up a screen that looks like a seismograph reading—jagged lines up and down, packed densely together. The name at the bottom reads CAINE, MARGUERITE K. “This is your brainwave function?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What did she use to take these readings? Is there an MRI, or—”
“They keep it simpler here.” I realize, now, what Paul wants—and why, to him, this would be his top priority. Which drawer did Dr. Singh pull that headband-sensor from? When I find it, I hand the silvery semicircle over.
Connecting the sensor to the computer turns out to be as simple as connecting a Bluetooth headset and a phone. Paul settles back onto the medical bed, I hit the control, and—
Oh, my God.
My brain scan looked like up-and-down lines packed closely together, twice as dense as they should’ve been, apparently, but otherwise normal. Paul’s scan is chaos. Lines radiate in every direction at once, as though someone had smashed his fist into the center of the screen and shattered the glass. The borders of the screen turn red; a small box in one corner says CHECK INSTRUMENT FOR MALFUNCTION.
It’s not malfunctioning. This chaos is what’s happening inside Paul’s head. This is what his splintering has done to him.
Paul and I stare at the computer screen in silence for what feels like a very long time. Finally I venture, “Maybe it’s not forever.”
“Maybe it is.” He sits up, takes off the sensor, and places it carefully in the drawer where it belongs.
Paul gets to his feet and, for the first time in days, looks me steadily in the eyes. The desolation I see there is terrible. “Do you understand why I can’t be with you?”
No. No no no.
“I’m not fully in control of myself right now. I don’t know if I ever will be again. At any second, I could—break. Don’t you remember how I acted when I got to the Egyptverse? I was so close to hurting you, even without knowing for sure whether you were Wicked or yourself.” Paul’s voice wavers, but only for a moment. “Please, Marguerite. I have to live with the memories of my other selves hurting you. Don’t endanger yourself again. Let me go.”
I want to argue. But the cobweb pattern on the still-glowing medical screen tells me this isn’t only Paul’s fatalism at work. What happened to him, the consequences of it: This is very, very real.
One time, Josie told me something important: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” If a guy tells you, I have trouble trusting women, you don’t assume he’s just had bad experiences and you can fix things by being the nicest, best woman of all time. You go, Thanks for the warning. Good luck with that. Nice knowing you. Then you walk away without ever looking back. And if someone says they’re going to hurt you? Don’t stick around and wait for them to prove it.