Unbreakable (Unraveling)

by Elizabeth Norris

  It’s something happening with Ben.

  “What is it?” I say as I lean into him, trying to hear.

  At first, I can’t make out anything. Barclay’s body is tense next to me, and I realize he’s holding his breath. I don’t know what he heard, but he’s coiled like he’s waiting for an attack, which means it’s bad.

  I wonder if the deputy director will still punish Ben for his involvement and if he’s not going to grant him immunity for his previous crimes, like working with the traffickers to snatch people from their worlds until he could save the other Janelle.

  And then I don’t have to speculate anymore.

  Because I hear something from Barclay’s earpiece.

  A gunshot.

  PART THREE

  But already my desire and my will

  were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,

  by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

  —Dante

  00:17:26:17

  Before I even have a chance to register what’s going on—or what I’m doing—I grab the earpiece and pull it from Barclay’s ear. He lets out some kind of yelp from surprise and pain, but I’m not paying attention.

  “Ben, are you okay?” I say, pressing the button. There are several more shots, and I can hear Cecily screaming, “No!” and “Don’t!” and “Ben!” Then there’s some kind of thud. Then nothing.

  “Ben?” I say again. I’m shaking my head, because this can’t be happening. Not after everything. He has to be okay.

  Barclay grabs my hand, pulling it off the button. “If they’re in trouble the last thing he needs is you talking to him in the middle of it.”

  I open my mouth to argue, to tell him that he doesn’t understand, but I don’t say anything. I know he’s right. Instead I take a deep breath and listen. If ears could strain, that’s what I’d be doing right now. I’m listening for anything that’s going to fill me in.

  It’s like time—or the world—slows down, and all that matters is what I’m hearing from the earpiece. My eyes are closed, and I wait to hear Ben’s voice again, for him to say something, anything. And every time my mind starts to conjure an image of him lying in a pool of blood with a bullet wound in his chest, I squeeze my eyes tighter and push it away.

  I want to shout that it’s not fair, that this should be over, that I shouldn’t have to lose him, too.

  I don’t register anything else until I realize my face is flushed, and the taste of blood is on my tongue. I let out the breath I’ve been holding and steady myself against the wall of the train as stars cloud my vision. Barclay reaches over and wipes the blood from where I’ve bitten deep into my lip.

  And still I try to listen.

  But I don’t hear anything except the echo of my pulse in my ears.

  Not a thing.

  Not the commotion that would result from fleeing the scene, not labored breathing from someone who’s injured, not screaming or shuffling around. There’s nothing.

  “Ben, are you there?” I ask, my voice cracking. There’s no response, which shouldn’t surprise me because deep down, I know he’s not. “Ben?”

  “Tenner, we’re approaching the next stop.” Barclay tugs on my arm, his voice an urgent whisper.

  The image of Ben is back. It’s all I can see. There’s blood everywhere, soaking through the front of his clothes, pooling underneath him, coating his dark brown curls. My chest constricts, and I can’t breathe. This was my plan. It’s my fault—I’m the one who sent him into IA.

  It’s like Alex all over again.

  Suddenly I’m so angry, I want to scream as loud as I can at the sheer unfairness of all this.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “Janelle.”

  I take a wheezing breath and turn on Barclay, pounding my fists into his chest and arms. “What happened? What happened to them?”

  At first he just takes it. He stands there and lets me hit him. He doesn’t do anything to stop me or to minimize the damage I want to do, and for some reason that just makes the anger worse. Because I’m so insignificant—I can’t change anything. Everything we’ve done has been as effective as throwing ourselves against a wall.

  But something in Barclay changes, and he reaches up, cupping my head in his hands while I hit him. His voice comes out, steady, even, and calm, but there’s a certain gravity to his tone as well. “Janelle, we need to get out of here.”

  It snaps me out of it, as I remember where we are.

  Our train is half full with commuters on their way to work. They’re all squeezed in next to one another at the other end of the car, pretending not to stare at us with masks of indifference, their body language saying, I don’t see anything, as if they’re trying to blend into the background. As it is, the waves of panic coming from that end of the train add a tangy scent to the air.

  “Let’s go,” I say, my voice raw.

  Barclay nods and pulls out his quantum charger.

  When the portal opens, I go through it first. I don’t even register how it feels or what I’m doing when I go through. It’s just another portal, and after everything else I feel numb to the fact that I’m slipping through a black hole and ending up in a different world.

  I’m waiting for Barclay, on my feet in his abandoned overgrown jungle of a world, when he comes through behind me.

  “Hey, you went through relaxed,” he says. “I knew you’d get it eventually.”

  I don’t care about that. “Tell me what happened,” I say. “I need to know everything.”

  “It might not be as bad as it sounded, Janelle,” Barclay says, but even I can tell that this is him playing hopeful and optimistic.

  He doesn’t believe what he’s saying.

  “Just tell me.”

  Barclay recounts what he heard. He starts at the beginning with the parts I already know, but I don’t stop him. I said I wanted everything, and I do.

  If these are the last moments of Ben’s life, I want to be able to picture it all. I want to commit it to memory.

  Ben and Cecily went into IA headquarters on cue—they headed up the back stairwell to the second floor and waited for everyone to leave after Barclay pulled the fire alarm. They didn’t make it to their computer, but as soon as Barclay told them he’d gotten the email off, it didn’t matter. They kept their heads down and walked out with the crowd, allowing the people around them to dictate how fast they moved and where they went.

  Only they ran into Deputy Director Ryan Struzinski. He seemed surprised but not alarmed when he recognized them. Of course, both Cee and Ben recognized him, too, so they went into his office and he promised to listen to them.

  Cecily told him everything. She started with her abduction and didn’t leave anything out. And then Ben filled in what he knew.

  The deputy director was impressed but skeptical. He asked to see the drive with the evidence from the processing center. He put it in his computer and looked shocked at what he saw. He praised Ben and Cecily for everything they’d done, and Ben sighed in relief and said he was so glad he could trust Struz.

  Silence followed.

  Then the deputy director asked if they had been worried about who to give the information to. Cecily said, “You have no idea,” with a laugh, and all three of them chuckled.

  Then the deputy director asked, “So you mean you haven’t shown this to anyone else?”

  That’s when Barclay stopped. Because he knew that wasn’t right—that shouldn’t be the next question.

  Ben didn’t say anything, but Cecily started to answer.

  Barclay isn’t exactly sure what happened, but it was clear to him that Ben had the same sudden realization that he did. The deputy director wasn’t on our side. “You know the rest,” Barclay says. “The next thing I heard was the gunshot, you ripped the com out of my ear, and now no one is on the other end.”

  My body feels heavy, like it’s already dead and is just waiting for me to notice. I can’t keep fighting—keep movin
g forward, keep trying to win against something like IA, not after everything. Barclay never should have come to me for help. We’re up against something that’s too big, too powerful.

  Now both Cecily and Ben are gone.

  00:16:51:44

  I think of Cecily on the back soccer field, standing with her hands on her hips, her hair lit up with the sun, as she looked at Ben, as serious as a heart attack, and said, Who’s your favorite superhero?

  Ben stepped back like he’d been wounded, and laughed. That’s it? That’s all you got? That’s easy.

  And then he looked at me. His eyes dark, his lips curled into a slight half smile as he said, Wonder Woman.

  Cecily threw a grin in my direction before grilling him on his choice, and Alex offered his two cents about the wonderfulness of her costume, and I just felt light-headed—in the best possible way.

  It feels like it could have been yesterday. I remember it all so clearly.

  How did we get so far away from that moment?

  00:16:51:43

  Now they’re gone. All of them.

  And it’s my fault. My stupid plan. We should have left them at the hospital with the Unwilling. Barclay and I should have just gone in ourselves. I should have fought harder to keep Cecily out of it—I should have fought harder to keep them alive.

  More tears spill over my eyes. I can’t hold it together anymore.

  “We don’t know what happened,” Barclay says again.

  “What, you think they got out of IA headquarters, away from a guy with a gun who was shooting at them? You and I both know that office layout, tell me how that’s a possibility.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I hold a hand over my eyes and try to will the tears to stop, but they seem to have a mind of their own.

  “This isn’t over,” Barclay says, grabbing my shoulders.

  I don’t say anything. I have nothing to say.

  “Look at me,” Barclay says, giving my shoulders a jerk that shakes my whole body.

  I look at him.

  “Pull yourself together. We don’t know what happened.”

  I shake my head because I can’t get the words out.

  “Those shots could have been fired at the air,” Barclay says. “Even if they’re hit, it might not be fatal. I’m not going to sit around waiting for IA to find me, and neither are you. We have a limited amount of time before they start doing a multiverse sweep or someone realizes that the best place to hide is in a world where no one is looking.”

  “We don’t have anything left,” I say, because wasn’t this our Hail Mary play? How can we win if the conspiracy goes as high as the deputy director of IA?

  “There’s always something left.”

  00:16:48:09

  “This is just a setback,” Barclay says.

  “A setback?” I could punch him. “Ben and Cecily could be dead, and if the deputy director is involved, couldn’t he be making an announcement to IA that you’re crazy or something? Can’t he bury this?”

  Barclay shakes his head and starts pacing. “I mean, he could try, sure, but the order to disregard an investigation would have to come from the director.”

  Suddenly his eyes widen and he turns around, grabbing me by the shoulders. “I know what we need to do.”

  I wince and remember that I have at least two bullets lodged in my vest. Even though they didn’t do the damage they could have, they’re still a throbbing pressure against my skin.

  “We’ll go straight to the director’s house and talk to him,” Barclay says, letting go of me.

  “How do we know he’s not involved?” I’m starting to feel like the whole multiverse is against us.

  “Don’t you see, I knew someone high up had to be involved because of the way that paperwork got erased or rewritten. But Director Franklin is older. He’s about to retire. He’s been giving a lot of his responsibilities up to Struzinski.”

  “That doesn’t make him innocent,” I say. I don’t want to rain on Barclay’s plan, but I can’t help myself. We’re in a colossal mess right now. “If the deputy director is involved, who says the director isn’t? All of IA could be involved!”

  “They’re not,” Barclay says through gritted teeth. He’s clearly trying to keep from getting emotional, and I’m impressed with his willpower. “We just need to get to the director and he’ll help us.”

  I can’t listen anymore. “How can you possibly think that!” I yell.

  “Because I don’t know who else to trust!” Barclay screams back. He turns his back on me and walks a few paces away. “This isn’t just happening to you, you know.”

  “I know,” I say, my voice thick. I haven’t really been thinking about what he’s going through—if he’s scared for his family or if he’s worried he’ll never be able to go home.

  “We’ll go to the director’s house, we’ll get a task force set up—”

  “How can you still have faith in them?” I ask.

  He turns and looks at me, his eyes glassy. “I have to,” he says. “I’m still good. Nothing would make me sell out. Eric was still good.”

  I don’t remind him that Eric’s dead, that they killed him.

  “This was my dream, as a kid, to be IA and to make a difference.” His voice cracks slightly, and he takes a deep breath. “There have to be people left who are like me.”

  “What if there’s not?” I say. It’s callous, but I have to say it. We can’t walk into a trap because Barclay is feeling sentimental.

  “Janelle, there are terrible people out there, in every world,” he says. “Trust me, I know that just as well as you do, but for every one of those people, there are people like you and me.”

  I wish I believed him.

  But right now I can’t. The two of us running around playing heroes can’t last much longer.

  “I can go alone,” Barclay says. “If you don’t trust me.”

  I kick the dirt. “You can’t go alone.” I have faith in Barclay. And I do trust him, whatever his misguided and romanticized feelings about IA are. “I don’t have any better ideas, anyway.”

  We have to go to the director’s house. We’ll need to try to convince him of what we’ve seen. We know enough of the operation on the processing center and we have witnesses. That should get an IA task force into the Black Hole and working on the files. That should get the Unwilling back to their homes.

  “How do we get into the director’s house?” I ask.

  00:15:40:37

  We portal into the director’s backyard and end up hiding out behind a hydrangea bush.

  This is by far Barclay’s least complicated plan, and part of me is glad for it.

  Anyone who’s anyone in IA has hydrochloradneum shields around their house, which means the director most likely has a really good security system. There’s no way we’d be able to break in, and we don’t want to seem like a threat anyway. The plan is to just go up and knock on the front door.

  So that’s exactly what we do.

  My fingertips tingle with anticipation as we approach the house. The sun is beginning its descent, and the lights inside the house, set against the graying sky, make it look a little like it’s glowing.

  An older woman opens the door. She’s probably in her sixties, but I can tell she was classically beautiful in her day, with thick blond hair that falls to her shoulders and washed-out blue eyes. She’s wearing a long-sleeved black dress and high heels.

  This is clearly the director’s wife. “Can I help you?” she asks. Her tone says she’s confused as to why two bruised and beat-up people in dirty clothes are standing on her doorstep, but she doesn’t look alarmed.

  Some of the tension coiled inside me gives a little and my shoulders relax slightly.

  “Mrs. Franklin,” Barclay says. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m an agent with IA, and I have something urgent I need to discuss with your husband.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m just along for the ride.

  She
opens the door wider, her confusion turning to a knowing smile. The director is apparently the kind of guy who brings work home. More tension uncoils—I know a few guys like that.

  “Of course,” she says. “Let me just . . .” She turns, and I see a man approaching the door. He’s in his sixties as well, with distinguished gray hair and lines etched into his face, but he’s built like someone who is still in the kind of shape he was in when he was thirty. “Keith, one of your agents—”

  She doesn’t get a chance to finish, because that’s when Keith Franklin, director of the Interverse Agency, recognizes us.

  00:15:32:19

  He’s got his phone out of his pocket and to his ear so fast that there’s no time to tiptoe around the issue or make apologies. The door’s wide open so I cross the threshold.

  “You don’t want to do that,” I say. My voice shakes a little despite my conviction. This has just all been too much.

  It’s not what he’s expecting. A bad guy would go for the phone or pull a gun on the innocent wife. Plus Barclay is the one everyone thinks is running this operation. I’m just some girl from another universe who’s caught up in it.

  The director’s gaze shifts from Barclay to me, though not for long. He’s not stupid—he knows who he needs to be watching out for.

  “Look, I know what you’ve heard. That Barclay’s a traitor, that I escaped from prison, and that Ben—” My voice cracks. “That Ben Michaels is operating a human-trafficking ring. The truth is that’s all a lie. It’s a cover-up, because there’s something a lot bigger going on.”

  “Director Franklin, sir,” Barclay says. “Please just hear us out. Let me explain everything that’s happened. If you still think we’re guilty, we’ll willingly go into custody.”

  I don’t look at Barclay. I don’t want to give away the fact that I know that’s not at all the plan. We have an escape route he’s mapped in case the director is involved or doesn’t believe us.