Middlegame

by Seanan McGuire

Dodger sits on the bench, resting much of her weight on her fingers, curled tight around the wood and keeping her rocked forward, again like someone much younger. Roger’s mind is racing, looking for words that can apply to the situation (and, once they are found, rejecting them and looking for something else, something better, something big enough). She, on the other hand, seems to be sliding back and forth along her own timeline, seeking the mental age where she’ll best be able to handle the reality of the situation.

  Finally, in a small voice, she says, “I was right.”

  “You were,” he agrees.

  “We’re related.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re not … right. We’re different. Something about us was made, not born.”

  “Yes,” he says again. Letting her be the one to fumble her way through the words seems exactly right. He would be too accurate, and right now, that could kill them both.

  “All this time … we were looking for each other, because they weren’t supposed to split us up. Whoever arranged our adoption wasn’t supposed to split us up.” A note of anger seeps into her voice. How dare they? How dare some long-ago bureaucrats decide making two families whole was more important than preserving a unit that already existed, something sealed in blood and bone and the water of the womb? Both of them loved—and will always love—their adoptive families, and she can no more imagine giving hers up than she could ask Roger to desert his, but just because a thing is loved, that doesn’t mean the thing should have been made. They wouldn’t have loved those people if they hadn’t been given to them. One of their families could have found another child to love and treasure and care for, and the two of them could have grown up together, the way they were meant to all along.

  “Probably not,” says Roger. He’s done his share of reading on adoption law and the psychology of adoption. He thinks it’s one of the most selfless things a parent can do, giving their children up for someone else to raise and care for. He’s never regretted not knowing his birth mother. She loved him enough to give him to people who’d love him even more. Right now, however, he wishes he could ask her a few questions. Like whether she’d been aware that she was having two babies, not just one.

  Like whether she’d approved of breaking up the set. Like whether it had been her idea, whether she’d thought “if I can’t have this family, neither can you” when she looked at two purple-faced, screaming newborns, and willingly signed the papers that would send them to opposite sides of a continent.

  He’s not sure he wants to hear the answers.

  “We’re really related.”

  “Yes.” He can tell Dodger will be circling this for a while: she’s like this sometimes, incapable of moving on until she’s cracked her latest obsession open to get to the soft parts hidden inside. This was her idea, this was her hope, and yet she’s the one who’s stunned when it proves to be true; she’s the one who couldn’t conceive of her math being as real as she always wants it to be.

  But maybe it’s not the relation that’s the shock. Maybe it’s the underlying strangeness, the confirmation that their quantum entanglement is somehow biological in nature. They’re twins, and they aren’t, and they’re something more. It should be terrifying. Maybe it will be, when the shock wears off.

  Roger sits on the bench next to her, his own weight shifted back, creating as much space between them as he can. He has a good view of her face from this angle. He can see the tension in her cheeks shifting upward a split second before her neutral bemusement turns into a smile, before her chin tilts down and her eyes slant up and everything is different.

  “I guess you can’t get rid of me now, huh?” she asks, and her tone is something like laughter and something like tears and something that isn’t either, something deep and primal and pure. He’s been waiting to hear that note in her voice for his entire life, even though five minutes ago he didn’t know it was possible, and five hours ago he didn’t know he needed her with him as badly as he does, and time is a concept invented by men who didn’t want everything to keep happening at once. Time is irrelevant.

  “Nope,” he says, and moves closer, eliminating the space between them. She puts her head against his shoulder, and nothing has ever fit there this perfectly; nothing has ever been this intended to happen.

  Everything is perfect.

  Everything is doomed.

  Consequences

  TIMELINE: 21:33 PST, DECEMBER 8, 2008 (THAT NIGHT).

  The rain has come. Berkeley is being washed clean of its sins, buried in a deluge of water so heavy it looks like a moving silver curtain, like fish should swim past the window at any moment, blissfully suspended in the storm. The storm has turned the ordinary world into something out of a children’s book, a silvery slice of the Up-and-Under.

  Smita gives the weather little attention; it’s bigger than she is and doesn’t care what she does, and besides, she’s indoors. She’s alone in the lab. She likes it that way; likes the silence, the hollow echo of her own footsteps, the comfort of knowing no one is watching her. She can leave her research spread out across the counters without concern that someone will see it—not another student, maybe, but an eager professor or greedy researcher—and claim it as their own. It’s never happened to her. That doesn’t change the stories that circulate through the department, tales of stolen effort and unreceived credit. Smita plans to change the world someday. She can’t do that if the foundations she’s been building wind up given to someone else.

  There’s a sound behind her, soft, like a candle being lit. It’s an odd image, not like her at all, but the thought is foremost in her mind as she turns. Then she freezes, thought fading.

  The woman behind her holds a novelty candle, one of those tasteless Halloween souvenirs. It’s shaped like a severed hand, and whoever designed the wax injections did a fabulous job; Smita would swear it’s the real thing, if not for the ridiculousness of the idea. Who would use a human hand like that? The wicks protrude from the tips of the slightly curled fingers, each burning with a greenish flame. That, more than anything, convinces her this is some sort of prank, probably orchestrated by the chemistry department. Fire doesn’t burn like that unless you’ve done something to make it.

  The woman looks vaguely familiar, someone Smita has seen in passing, in the time between classes maybe, or elsewhere in the building. She’s neither friend nor foe, and that makes her a problem to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. Smita folds her arms, shifting her weight onto one hip, and glares.

  “What are you doing here?” she demands. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  The woman says nothing.

  “I’m going to call security. They’ll be happy to explain why trespassing is not allowed.”

  The woman says nothing.

  Something about her flat, affectless stare is beginning to make the hair on the back of Smita’s neck stand on end. For the first time, she finds herself wishing she were more social; that other students were here to back her up.

  “You need to leave,” Smita says. “Take your creepy prop and get out.”

  The woman speaks for the first time. “This isn’t a creepy prop,” she says. “This is a real Hand of Glory. They’re not easy to make, and they’re not pleasant to use, but you shouldn’t call it a ‘prop.’ Someone died to assure this item of its provenance.”

  “Erin?” breathes Smita. Familiarity and recognition rush in with the other woman’s voice, making her presence even more of a betrayal. Why hadn’t she recognized her? The urge to take a step back, away from Erin and her “Hand of Glory,” whatever that is, is almost unbearable. “What are you talking about? Why are you here? I very much want you to go.”

  “To make a Hand of Glory, you need the hand of someone who’s been murdered,” says the woman—says Erin. “Lots of people seem like they’ve been murdered, but the alchemy is specific. It doesn’t work nearly as well with a victim of manslaughter, for example. The intent is embedded in the flesh. Murder-suicide is also a c
omplicating factor. Someone who wanted to die creates an inferior light. You need a genuine victim of intentional and intended murder, the more brutal, the better. Violence also seems to embed itself in the flesh. It’s funny, the homeopathic ingredients required to violate the laws of nature.”

  Smita’s lips draw back from her teeth in an involuntary expression of disgust. “That’s horrible. Why would you even say such a thing?”

  “I didn’t just say it. I killed this man. He was a guitar player. You might remember him. Used to sit down by Amoeba Records, playing bad acoustic covers of pop songs. I said I’d cook him dinner, and then I took him apart. I’m not much of an alchemist, but I’m an excellent killer.” Erin sets her burning hand primly on the edge of the nearest table. The flame doesn’t so much as flicker. “It doesn’t matter that I’m not that good at alchemy, because this is one of the simpler recipes. If you’re willing to commit a murder, that is. And if you’re willing to work with the rest of the ingredients required. Some people get a little squirrelly when you ask them to play with rendered baby fat. I know there’s been research dedicated to updating the recipe, but they haven’t found anything yet. Sadly, some things are just inescapable.”

  Smita finally gives in to instinct and takes a step backward. Erin stops, cocks her head, and smiles. There’s sorrow in her expression, like she doesn’t want to be here, saying these things, doing whatever it is she’s come to do. Smita finds she doesn’t care. Dimly, with horror, she realizes her surprise and anger have transmuted into fear.

  Smita is terrified. Erin is supposed to be her friend, they ate Thanksgiving dinner together, and she’s terrified.

  “Why are you here?” she asks. Her voice is a thread, thin and tight and easily snapped.

  The look of sorrow on Erin’s face deepens. “Because you opened a book that wasn’t meant for you, and you read what was written inside,” she says. “Please believe me, I’d avoid this if I could—and I think I have, at least once. There are scars in the air around this moment. But they need to know what they are to one another if I’m ever going to be able to bring them back together, and that means your part is already written. It’s funny. They think they understand finally, and they don’t understand anything at all.”

  No one has ever accused Smita Mehta of being slow. She’s been at the top of every class she’s ever deigned to join, all the way back to her elementary school years, when the other students made fun of her for everything they could find. The way her parents talked; the way her lunches smelled; even the way she braided her hair. They mocked her from kindergarten all the way to her senior year of high school, and she’s never wavered, not once, from the prize of academic excellence. She was going to show them. She was going to show them all.

  But now she’s alone in her lab, and Erin is looking at her with such deep and abiding pity in her eyes, and Smita is afraid.

  “Please leave,” she whispers. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

  “I know.” Erin takes a step toward her. “I kind of wish you had. Like, if you’d pushed me in the hall or insulted my shoes, I might feel better about this. I wish there were another way. There’s not. That book you opened, it belongs to people who really don’t like sharing their secrets. Baker already gave too much away. So right now, I need you to tell me: where are the DNA test results for Dodger Cheswich and Roger Middleton? How many copies have you made? Who has seen your research?”

  Smita stares at her. Erin calmly returns her gaze: she’s holding nothing back. She’s making no effort to conceal her intent, or hide her face. And Smita knows she’s going to die.

  It’s a simple realization, quiet and resigned and oddly anticlimactic. She’s always expected the awareness of her onrushing death to be a violent thing, ripping and tearing, leaving panic in its wake. Instead, it walks to the center of her mind and stops, expanding to fill all the available space. She, Smita Mehta, is going to die; when the morning comes, she will no longer exist. Depending on the actual endurance of the human soul, she may leave nothing behind but her work. She hasn’t been alive long enough. She hasn’t created a wide enough record.

  “Why should I tell you?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t shake. She’s proud of that.

  “Because I’m not the one who decided this had to happen, but I’m the one who gets to decide how it happens,” says Erin. “I’m very good at what I do. I can make this as easy or as hard as you want it to be. I can chase you through this building all night long, I can give you your own personal horror movie, and I can cut you down with your hand on the doorknob and freedom only inches away. I can take you apart one centimeter at a time. Or I can pierce your heart so fast and so clean that you barely feel it when you stop. It’s your choice. If you tell me what I need to know, then you’re choosing wisely.”

  Smita’s phone is only a few feet away, on top of the binder that holds most of her research. Her eyes dart toward it despite her efforts to remain outwardly calm.

  Erin follows Smita’s gaze and shakes her head. “You still don’t get it,” she says. “I guess that’s okay. It’s not like I’m saying things plainly. That’s how you know I don’t want to do this. I can order a hamburger in eight seconds, but it takes me an hour to decide I’m going to make mashed cauliflower. If you want your phone, you can have it.”

  Smita looks at her suspiciously. Erin nods.

  “Please,” she says. “I can tell you don’t understand the situation. This will help. Get your phone.”

  It’s like something has snapped, some dark compulsion that was forbidding her to move or defend herself. Smita lunges for the plastic rectangle of her phone, feeling relief wash through her as she snatches it off the counter. This is safety. This is rescue. This is—

  This is the sudden, crushing realization that she has no service. But that can’t be right. She always has service in the lab; has joked with the chemistry majors, who work two floors down, that they should have gone into genetics to be closer to the cell tower. This is where other students come when they want to make a phone call. And still she has no service; still the little bars that should be gleaming solid and strong are hollow lines, forbidding her contact with the outside world.

  “The Hand of Glory has a lot of different uses. Funny thing: which one you’ll get is determined by how the Hand was made, and what order you light the candles. Some people use them for invisibility, or to open all barriers before them. Others use them to lock the doors. You could smash the window and scream so loud you hurt yourself, and no one would hear you. You’re a ghost, Smita. As far as the world outside this room is concerned, you may as well already be dead.” Erin moves her hand, and there’s a knife, long and sharp and matte black, the kind of blade that has no purpose in this world past killing.

  Smita looks at the knife and cannot breathe. The air stops in her throat; her lungs are cold weights in her chest. This is her end, right in front of her, swallowing the light.

  “This is where you start deciding how you’ll die,” says Erin. “Where’s the research?”

  There’s still a chance. Erin—who was supposed to be her friend, not the instrument of her destruction—has a knife, but this is Smita’s lab, and it’s Smita’s life on the line. The phone may be dead, but she is not. Not yet. So she flings her phone at Erin as hard as she can, not looking to see if it hits its mark before she turns on her heel and sprints for the door, running as fast as terror and adrenaline will carry her.

  The phone bounces harmlessly off Erin’s shoulder, falling to the floor. She sighs as she watches Smita go.

  “I hoped this would be easier,” she says. Knife still in her dominant hand, she picks up the Hand of Glory and pursues.

  * * *

  Smita has never been much for horror movies. They’ve always seemed like a waste of both time and fear: in the end, the monster will be defeated, the survivors will walk into the sunrise, and the only catharsis will be the knowledge of the inevitable sequel. Here and now, she finds herself wishing she’d p
aid more attention to that endless stream of virginal heroines and rubber monsters. Horror movies are not a substitute for experience, but at least they might have told her where she could be safe.

  The elevator at the end of the hall is a tempting trap. Once inside, she’d have no chance of getting away: all Erin would need to do is descend to the next floor and wait. The stairs are safer; the stairs will let her see what’s coming. So she hits the door to the stairwell without slowing, slamming it open and stumbling on the first step. She almost falls before catching herself on the rail and beginning to descend, as fast as she can, down into the building.

  It’s late enough that the floor below her should be empty, but the chemistry students are always here: the chemistry students would live in the Annex if they could. They have a shower in their lab, which almost makes up for the lack of cellphone service, and they’re experts when it comes to cooking hot food in sterile glassware without poisoning themselves. (They keep a separate set of beakers and dishes for culinary purposes, and regularly upset visitors by eating out of them.) She should be able to find at least one person there who can help her.

  As she runs, she hears footsteps behind her. They aren’t hurried; they don’t need to be.

  The stairwell door is always unlocked this late at night. She bursts out into a hall identical to the one she just left, still running. There’s a lab door ahead of her. It’s open, and she can hear voices coming from inside. Smita finds speed where she would have sworn none existed, racing down the hall and grabbing the doorframe of the lab, hanging there, shuddering and panting, taking a moment to catch her breath and remember how to form words.

  There are three chemistry students inside. Two of them are seated, eating pizza out of the box; the third is making margaritas in one of the lab blenders. None of them turns to look at her.

  Smita pulls in a vast, sucking breath, and wheezes, “Please help me.”

  Not one of them stops what they are doing to turn around. The pizza-eaters keep eating, one laughing as the other draws a line of melted cheese from her lip all the way to the box. The margarita-maker continues to mix, calling something unintelligible to the others.