“Heavens, it’s dark.” Romola peers through the front windows with both trepidation and curiosity. The metal and concrete buildings on either side of us loom overhead like cliffs, and our pathway is a valley. “Are you sure you’ll know when we’re reaching the ground?”
“The altitude sensor will show us.” I point to the gauge that I really, really hope is the altitude sensor.
By the time we reach the ground, the gloom is nearly complete. The only illumination besides our headlights comes from a few squats where the poorest of people live, where we see the glow of lanterns and the flicker of candles. We’re probably waking up everyone, which can’t be the greatest way to keep the resistance’s location secret. But without the headlights, I’ll crash this thing for sure.
As we move slowly along, about ten feet above the ground, Romola gapes at the makeshift shanties, the rubble that used to be sidewalks or soil, and the ramshackle gangways and rope bridges that connect the dwellings down here. “It looks like a refugee camp,” she whispers. “I suppose it is. Except people haven’t run away—they’ve run downward.”
“I guess.” By now the car is scanning for the location we input—my parents’ home address, from the Triad database—because as late as a couple of weeks ago, the resistance was headquartered not that far away (horizontally speaking, at least). No need for me to navigate: All I have to do is keep nudging the car forward and make sure I don’t hit any of the gangways. “So, tell me, what exactly is your deal?”
“I beg your pardon?” Romola’s tone turns frosty, and she raises an eyebrow. “My ‘deal’?”
“Why are you usually so loyal to Conley? Even when he’s normally a gigantic psychopath? I mean, I watched another version of you set up a dimension to be destroyed. You wouldn’t have done it on your own, but you did that for him.”
“I can’t answer for a Romola I haven’t met.” After a pause she adds, “However, were I to speculate, I’m always a very loyal person to anyone I care about. In my world, Wyatt Conley happens to be an extraordinarily inspiring employer and mentor. In a dimension like this—where money is all that matters, and where people think of their corporations as if they were churches—he must seem like a prophet.”
Although I’d like to scoff at that image, I can’t. In a world so coldly ambitious that it could turn my parents into killers, Conley would be the ultimate leader.
That doesn’t excuse what the other Romola has done. But it makes me capable of seeing this Romola as herself.
I steer over a drooping rope bridge. Its shadow slices through the beams from the car’s headlights, making the ragged, broken-down landscape around us look as if it has been torn in half. Romola frowns at one of the screens on the dash. “That shows our location, doesn’t it?”
One of her long fingernails taps against the blinking green beacon that says our mark is just ahead.
Parking the car turns out to be the easiest part: Hit the right button and it settles itself onto the ground with barely a thump. Romola reaches for her door handle until I lean across to stop her. “Don’t. If the resistance is here, they will have heard us coming. Make sure your Firebird is visible, okay?” I tug mine out over my collar so it will show front and center. “Wait until they come to investigate, then we come out with our hands up.”
“Oh! We came here to surrender, then. Jolly good.” She does what I told her to do with the Firebird, though.
Sure enough, they appear from the shadows one by one. Their figures are faceless in the darkness, but I can very clearly make out the silhouettes of their weapons. I hold up my hands, nudge for Romola to do the same, and then, after a long few seconds that gives them plenty of time to see, I get out of the car.
Even as I put my hands up again, one of them steps closer. Theo’s sneer is exactly as obnoxious as I remember from my last time in the Home Office. He wears the same monochromatic outfit in burnt orange, and his black hair radiates out in spikes that are a cross between the style of Ludwig von Beethoven and an anime character. And his strangely boxy weapon is once again pointed at my heart. “You want us to think you’re not from this dimension,” he says with a scowl. “So prove it.”
“How am I supposed to prove a negative?”
“I don’t know, but you’d better figure it out.”
“The last time I was here, you were acting like a total ass,” I retort.
Theo doesn’t flinch. “That doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“The car!” Romola says. When both of us turn to look at her, she points at the car. “You must’ve seen what a terrible driver this Marguerite is. Yours would know how to handle a flying car, wouldn’t she?”
After a moment, Theo says, “Could’ve faked it—but you didn’t.” He lowers the weapon, and I feel like I can breathe again as he adds, “Our Marguerite likes to show off too much. She wouldn’t let herself be caught dead doing anything that badly.”
“Where’s Paul?” I look past Theo into the silhouetted band of fighters that came out here with him. Although I could recognize Paul from his profile, maybe even from the way he stood, I can’t spot him. “Is he back in your headquarters? We need to talk.”
“I’m here.”
I wheel around to look behind me. Paul stands there, silhouetted from behind by lantern-light, almost ghostlike in his pale gray clothes. As he steps closer, I can make out the scar on his jawline, and once again I wonder what happened to Paul in this dimension. Who did that to him?
“What were you thinking, coming here?” His eyes burn with anger so fierce I can see it despite the darkness. “It’s dangerous, Marguerite.”
I could laugh. “Universes are collapsing all around us. There’s no safe place left.”
“You were safe in Moscow! If you had told us what you were planning—”
“Wait? Paul?” It’s my Paul. Despite my warning, he followed me here. “What are you doing here?”
He lifts his stubborn chin. “Protecting you.”
“You were supposed to be protecting the Moscowverse—”
“Sophia and Henry can handle it.”
“And what about Valentina?”
“She has her real parents back.”