A Million Worlds With You

by Claudia Gray

  “The resistance will know what we can do. I managed to find Paul and Theo last time, and maybe I can again.” I take a deep breath. “Any idea how I can reach public transit?”

  Romola clucks her tongue. “Oh, I can do better than that! I’ve got access to a company car. That was an unexpected benefit. Triad haven’t safeguarded anything against me.”

  “Because they never saw you coming.” Finally it hits me that we’ve managed to turn one of the Home Office’s trickiest weapons to our advantage. I begin to smile. “Thank you for doing this.”

  “Oh, it was nothing.” Romola gives me a PR agent smile, then pauses as it fades. “Actually, given that you’re trying to keep my universe from potentially being demolished, it really is the least I can do.”

  She punches the elevator panel, canceling her last floor request and redirecting us toward the garage. We’re this close to escaping into the wider world of the Home Office, finding the resistance, and shutting this down once and for all.

  Just one problem.

  “What do you mean, it flies?” Romola stands outside her silvery car, which bobs a few inches off its platform on some kind of magnetic field. Dozens more hover all around us, shimmering in the garage bay like Christmas ornaments hung from spindly branches. “It’s a flying car?”

  “Did you not see them outside the windows?”

  “Of course I did! But I never thought those were the only kind of automobiles this dimension had.”

  “Well, they are. The city’s been built up so high that almost nobody goes down to ground level anymore.” I bite my lower lip, wishing for some way out of this, but there isn’t one. “You’ll just have to try it.”

  “Me?” Romola’s eyes grow wider. “Why me?”

  “I don’t even have a driver’s license for a regular car yet. Just a permit.”

  This argument isn’t as convincing as I expected. Romola says, “I haven’t one either.”

  “What? You’re, like, four or five years older than me.”

  “I grew up in London and never left until I moved to lower Manhattan! When would I ever have had occasion to drive a bloody car?”

  Dad, you really should have let me borrow the car more often. I take a deep breath. “Okay, let’s try this thing.”

  If you think driving in two dimensions can be tricky, you have no idea how terrible it is in three. Disengaging from the magnetic “parking spot” is easy, but everything after that is an exercise in horror.

  “Oh, my God.” Romola clutches at her seat belt as though it could hold her up on its own as the hovercar wobbles out of the garage, and we see just how many hundreds of feet we are from the ground. “We’re going to die.”

  “Way to think positive, Romola.” But when I try to turn, and the car bobs even more precariously, I add, “Keep one hand on your Firebird.”

  Come on, come on, you can do this, I tell myself. You haven’t come this far just to get taken out by a stupid flying car!

  If only the ground weren’t so far beneath us . . .

  I take the controls and nudge the car downward. The slope makes me shift forward until my safety belt is all that’s holding me in my seat, and Romola whimpers. But I take it slow, edging us down a bit at a time. When I stop thinking of it as a car in flight, and instead remember it as the submarine from the Oceanverse, steering in three dimensions gets a little easier.

  “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.”

  Our argument is interrupted by Theo, who steps between us. “Wait. Little brother—that’s not you?”

  “It is, Theo. Just a different me.” Paul gives Theo a flinty smile, one without any pretense of happiness. But it’s honest, and hard, and so obviously, completely my own Paul that I take comfort in it despite his simmering anger.

  Theo scowls and leans against the flying car. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Ah, just to be clear—” Romola raises her hand. “This is the Berkeleyverse Paul with us now, yes?”

  I nod. “Even though the Home Office Paul could probably help us more at the moment.” As much as I love Paul, his protectiveness couldn’t have kicked into overdrive at a worse time. “Will you please just let me do this?”

  Paul folds his arms in front of his chest. “Not without me.”

  “We’re not alone,” Theo announces.

  Romola sighs. “How true. We all have other selves, so even in our own individual person, we can no longer be said to be solitary—”

  “No, I mean we’re not alone right now.” Theo points upward at flickering lights in motion overhead. More flying cars, which doesn’t seem like a big deal, until the pink-and-red lights begin to flash and a siren’s wail begins to echo in this urban canyon.

  My gut drops as if I were on a roller coaster. “The police?”

  “Triad security,” Theo says, as if it’s the same thing. His grin is more vicious than his scowl ever was. “Thanks for dropping by. Looks like you led them straight to us.”

  Paul and I exchange a stricken look. “And now?” he says.

  “We fight for our lives. Or we die. Maybe both.” Theo checks his gun’s charge and points it upward. “Probably both.”

  27

  CABLES SNAKE DOWN THROUGH THE DARKNESS TO DANGLE all around us. Triad’s guards begin sliding toward the ground, flashlight beams streaming from their headsets, their weapons shadowed against the night—black on black.

  “Run!” Theo shouts, and the rest of the resistance scatters. Although some of them are armed, more of them were caught by surprise. None of them were ready for this fight.

  Because you set them up, I tell myself savagely as I dash for one of the nearby buildings.

  The nearest building stretches up so high overhead that I can’t imagine where it ends. Its lower stories, however, must have been abandoned for a decade or more. The windows are shattered, or simply blank holes covered by ragged cloths. One of them is open to the air, and I vault through it as fast as I can. My leap is more acrobatic than my landing, which sends me sprawling onto the floor of a room empty except for a few broken-up crates.

  Mere seconds later, Paul slides through the window after me, though it’s harder for him to get his large frame through. The only illumination comes from the brightening spotlights outside. I duck behind one of the larger, more intact crates, and motion for Paul to join me.

  As he kneels by my side, he studies the odd, box-like gun he has in this dimension. “The firing mechanism seems obvious,” he mutters. “I’m not as sure about targeting.”

  “You’re not shooting anyone! We didn’t come here for that—”

  “We didn’t come here to get captured, either.” Paul takes a deep breath. I see him struggling. This is the splintering at work once more, threatening to shred his self-control at the moment he can least afford to snap. But he’s not angry with me, and I realize now that I wasn’t really the person he was angry with even before the guards. It’s just the unending tension of this chase, and the fear that we’re fighting a war we can never win.

  “You should go back to the Moscowverse or move on,” I whisper as shouting begins outside. “This world’s Paul knows how to handle the gun, and he knows where to hide. He’d help me.”

  Paul looks at me in total incomprehension. “I can’t leave you like this.”

  “You can and you should.”

  But it’s too late. A door I hadn’t seen before swings open, and a Triad guard runs in. His weapon is in his hands, and he’s aiming it straight at me.

  Paul moves so fast he’s a blur, launching himself at my attacker. They go down together, but Paul winds up on top. The lights attached to the guard’s uniform shine in bright rays straight up toward the ceiling, as though the two of them were fighting in a cage of light. Paul doesn’t even bother trying to shoot the guard. Instead he uses his weapon as a bludgeon, smashing the guard’s face with it.

  “No,” I whisper as droplets of blood spatter through the thin beams of light. Paul looks like he’s going beat this guy to a pulp—or to death. “Paul, no.”

  But Paul doesn’t hear me. Instead he lifts the gun up, preparing for a more savage or even fatal blow. He’s lost to the fever pitch of violence. Truly lost.

  Or so I think, until Paul freezes, hand with his bloody gun still over his head.

  I watch, wide-eyed, as Paul stares down at his defeated opponent. He’s breathing hard, trembling from the sheer rush of adrenaline, but in the faint light I can see his face shifting from a grimace of rage back into the Paul I know. After a long moment, he lowers his hand, then tosses the gun aside.

  He did it. Paul took control again. He did it! This isn’t like last time, where he spared Romola mostly because he thought she could still fire. He beat the splintering, and he knows he beat it. Despite everything going to hell all around us, I start to smile. Maybe now he can begin to hope again, and that hope can save us both.

  Movement flickers at the corner of my eye. My mind supplies only one word: gun.

  The next guard is firing even as he runs into the room. Paul looks up in the split second before he’s hit. His body jerks backward, blood spraying from his chest in a halo of red, and he falls.

  My screams seem to belong to someone else. This horrible, agonized sound can’t be coming out of my throat; it has to be the whole world shrieking at once. No no no not Paul that’s going to kill them both, this world’s Paul and mine unless he can get to the Firebird, or I can—

  I lunge forward, but the guard marching toward Paul shoves me back so hard that I tumble to the ground. Looking over my shoulder through the blur of tears, I see Paul lying on his back, one leg bent under him at an unnatural angle. His hand gropes blindly at his chest—for the Firebird? For the wound? I can’t tell. But then the guard fires again, and Paul’s body jumps once more before lying still.

  He’s dead. Paul is de
ad.

  My first thought is to rush the guard again, to make him kill me, too. I want to be dead, to be with Paul, not to feel my heart ripping into a thousand pieces.

  Memory takes me back to Russia, to a battlefield of snow and blood, to the side of a cot where Lieutenant Markov lay dying. I imagine his face as he whispered his final words: Every Marguerite.

  Every Paul, I think as I get my hands under me and prepare to hurl myself at the guard. Every world gives us a chance. I wish I hadn’t blown ours. I wish we’d been able to create a world.

  Then the wall caves in.

  As the guard skitters backward from the tumbling plaster, I see the flying car that just smashed through the bricks. It’s dented and scratched, one window busted out, but it’s still operational—and behind the wheel is Theo. He shouts, “Get in!”

  I hesitate for only one instant before the memory of my mission wins over my grief. Once I dash for the car, Theo swings open the door—and no sooner has my butt hit the seat than he guns it in reverse. Only grabbing the seat belt keeps me from tumbling out the still-open door to the ground that’s now rapidly getting much farther away.

  “What happened to Paul?” Theo revs the motor as I tug the door shut, then banks hard, sending us zooming upward through a canyon of high-rise buildings.

  I choke back a sob. “He’s dead.”

  Theo swears under his breath. “Yours or mine?”

  “Both, I think.” As badly as I want to think my Paul was able to use his Firebird and get away, I don’t see how he could’ve had the chance. Roughly I wipe at my cheeks, forcing away the tears. I don’t deserve the release. “I never should’ve come here.”

  His voice shakes even as he tries to talk tough. “Triad was after us long before you showed up. We knew how it could go.” That’s as close to absolution as Theo can give me.

  The resistance members weren’t the only ones I endangered. “Wait. Where’s Romola?”

  “The Romola you showed up with?” Theo executes a hairpin turn that sends us careening through a narrow, crooked alleyway. “She went back to her home universe, which is exactly what she should’ve done. This world’s Romola? She’s back with the guards, probably bitching about how I stole her car. Let’s dent this sucker up, huh? Pay her back for what happened to Paul.”