Unbreakable (Unraveling)

by Elizabeth Norris

  And that’s my only excuse for doing possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  I walk straight to the door. I don’t hear a thing Ben tells me. I throw open the door and walk out into the floodlights, gun at my side.

  Because of the angle and the lights, I can’t see anything, but I hear people shouting for me to drop the gun and put my hands up. It’s so different from whatever I expected to happen that it’s like someone has thrown cold water on me.

  A silhouette moves toward me. Her arms are raised, her hands are empty, and she’s talking to me.

  I drop the gun and put my own arms up, as Hayley Walker’s discernible features come into view. I focus on her lips. At first all I can hear is the blood rushing through my ears, but then I realize she’s asking, “Janelle, are you okay?”

  I’m not okay.

  I’m not sure if I’ll ever be okay again. So I just say, “They’re all dead.” Because that pretty much sums it up.

  The questioning lasts for hours

  The questioning lasts for hours.

  The silence that follows is even longer.

  After Hayley and the IA cavalry descended upon the governor’s house and found us, they took everyone back to IA headquarters for medical attention and debriefing. I was separated from Ben, Elijah, and Renee immediately. The bullet wound in my arm was looked at, treated, and deemed superficial at worst, all on the drive in. Once my left hand was bandaged, they sat me down in a windowless room with a cup of coffee and demanded to know everything.

  So I told them.

  Then I told them again. And a third time.

  I even talked to a sketch artist about people like Chuckles and the guys I saw in the Black Hole.

  But somewhere between my fifth and sixth cup of coffee, when I’m not sure how many minutes, hours, or even days have gone by, I start to put together the missing pieces:

  I owe my life to Hayley Walker and her partner, Jimmy Mason.

  The director never made it to the briefing room at 0600 like he was supposed to. While Special Agent Robert Barnes briefed everyone else, Hayley knew something was wrong. She grabbed her partner and they drove to the director’s house. When they got there and saw both he and his wife were dead, Hayley called it in.

  Barnes already had an emergency task force raid the Black Hole, confiscate all the equipment, and arrest anyone who was there. So he put Hayley and Jimmy in charge of forming a task force to look for us.

  The director kept an organized calendar, even for his social plans. That the governor had been there for dinner with her husband and neither of them had bled out on the floor meant they were either part of it, or they’d been taken.

  Lucky for us, the first place Hayley and Jimmy looked was the governor’s house.

  According to Hayley and Jimmy

  According to Hayley and Jimmy, IA found and arrested the governor’s husband. He was the link between her and Meridian. He took his wife’s name when they were married, which apparently wasn’t that unusual on Prima. Macon Meridian became Macon Worth, and the governor found herself connected to Meridian by blood.

  As Prima’s longest-serving governor, she lied, cheated, paid people off, and used the Unwilling to stay in office. Renee Adams was the latest in a long line of computer hackers—the best in their respective worlds—that had been special ordered and delivered to the governor. She put them to work breaking into private accounts to spy on and destroy political rivals.

  Hours after I’ve told them everything

  Hours after I’ve told them everything, including the location of the Unwilling we saved from being processed, the door opens. I’ve been awake so long, the muscles in my right eye are twitching.

  Hayley comes in first. Her eyes are bloodshot. She’s probably been awake as long as I have, and now that exhaustion has set in, she can’t hide the sadness that’s weighing on her shoulders.

  I hope Barclay knew how much she loved him.

  Robert comes in behind her. He’s in good shape for a guy in his mid- to late forties, but his whole appearance is disheveled—tie loose, shirt untucked, hair sticking up in odd places. He yawns and tries to excuse himself, but his words are lost in a mishmash of syllables.

  “Sorry about that,” he says, sliding another cup of coffee across the table.

  I shake my head. “I think I’ve hit my limit.”

  “You sure?” he says. When I nod, he shrugs and takes a sip from it himself.

  “What else do you need to know?” I ask. There’s no point in asking when I can go home. They know I want to, and asking isn’t going to get me there any sooner. They’ll send me home when they’re good and done with me.

  “Not much,” Robert says, glancing at the door.

  “You’ve been amazing, Janelle,” Hayley says, offering me a genuine smile. “We’ll get you out of here soon.”

  “We’ve got all our computer specialists working on those files,” Robert adds. “We’ve also been working on finding their other facilities. We’re going to find all those people and get them back.”

  I can tell from the tone of his voice and the sincerity on his face that he’s not lying. It makes me breathe a little easier.

  Neither of them says anything else.

  I know a lot of strategies designed to make people talk. As soon as I turned thirteen and my dad realized I didn’t tell him everything anymore, he started using all of them on me.

  One is silence.

  They must be thinking there could be questions, questions they don’t even know they should be asking. If they’re silent, maybe I’ll just volunteer the information.

  Only there isn’t anything left to tell.

  Instead, I decide to ask them a question. The thing I don’t understand, the piece of the puzzle that’s still bothering me. “The deputy director,” I say, trying to choose my words. “What do you think . . . why did he do it?”

  He had to have everything anyone could ask for. He had almost unchecked power within the IA. He could travel to any world. I’m sure he made a high salary. Why get involved with a human-trafficking ring, and then shoot yourself when it goes south? It doesn’t make any sense.

  Robert runs a hand through his already mussed-up hair and slides into the chair across from me. “Ryan was an incredible agent,” he says. “Fifteen years younger than me, and he was my boss. The governor took notice of him. He was promising, smart, and ambitious. At the time, people thought she saw that in him, and supported him because of what he could do for IA.”

  But it turns out she supported him because she saw something in him she could use.

  “We looked into his bank records and talked to his wife,” Robert says with a sigh. “It looks like he might have caught on to Meridian about five years ago. Based on some of the correspondence on his personal computer at home, we think he may have stumbled onto the human-trafficking ring when it was smaller, and that the governor convinced him to cut a deal and look the other way, and then ultimately to support the operation.”

  I shake my head. “But why?”

  “He has two children. They’re eight and six,” Robert says, and I think of their pictures—smiling faces with blue eyes and curly blond hair. “Both of them have variant genetic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”

  “What is that?” I ask. It’s nothing I’ve heard of.

  “It’s a degenerative neurological disorder,” Robert says. “Prima has medicines that can prolong their lives, of course, but at significant cost—and a lot of them are experimental. They can have side effects that severely damage quality of life.”

  I’m cold all over, and I can’t suppress a shiver. I don’t even need to know the rest.

  Because I know the lengths my Struz would go to keep Jared and me safe, to keep us alive.

  “We have records of some of the travel he did. He was trying to meet with the best doctors in the most advanced worlds, but not many of them were open to interverse travel. They wanted him to bring his kids to them. But as you can imag
ine, that’s dangerous for a sick kid. It looks like he may have brought in some of the specialized doctors, and then maybe even some kids.”

  I let my breath leave my body in a sigh. I don’t want him to say any more—I don’t want to think anyone is capable of what he’s about to say.

  “The kids may have been human test subjects for a new experimental procedure,” he says, and I lean forward to feel the cool metal of the table against my skin. Anything to keep me grounded in this reality.

  I wrap my arms around myself to fight off the chills. I know exactly why he shot himself. Each step he took would have been small—maybe he abducted a doctor because the doctor could help his kids, maybe he intended to send the guy back. The thing is, once a desperate man takes one small step, he’ll take another and another, until he’s nowhere close to his starting point.

  I don’t have time to ask anything else

  I don’t have time to ask anything else. The door opens and two impeccably dressed people come in. Robert stands and introduces them.

  Charles Swanson and Ella Manderlay are both probably in their late thirties, maybe early forties, and they’re two of the highest-ranking officials in Prima’s aristocratic government.

  “You must be exhausted,” Ella says. “Director Barnes tells us you’ve been here almost forty hours.”

  Putting a number to my time here seems to add weight to my limbs. I glance at Robert. He must be the acting director right now.

  “We wanted to personally thank you,” she continues. “For everything you’ve uncovered. The risks you took were extreme, and we can’t thank you enough.”

  Charles clears his throat. “But we’d like to try. What can we do to thank you for your service?”

  This is not exactly the line of questioning I was expecting.

  In fact, it’s so far off base that I don’t know what to say.

  And then I remember something.

  “Taylor Barclay,” I say, and my voice cracks on his name. “We never would have uncovered anything if it wasn’t for him. He’s the one you should be thanking, but he gave his life for this. You should put up some kind of monument for him.”

  Ella nods. “That can absolutely be arranged.”

  “And I want something else,” I say, an idea coming to me. “IA has the ability to help the people in other worlds who need it. My universe was stricken with disaster when it almost collapsed. We need supplies and disaster relief.”

  “Janelle, there may be some things that we can’t do,” Robert says.

  But Ella holds up her hand. “I’m sure something can be arranged.”

  Charles nods. “We’ll have a team put together in order to offer aid.”

  “And I just want to go home,” I say. I might as well ask now, if they’re offering to give me whatever I want.

  “Of course,” Robert says. “But before you do, I’d like to offer you an opportunity. We don’t do this often—hardly ever really—but we’d like to offer you a job with IA.”

  I snort. “No thanks.”

  All of them look shocked. So much so that I feel the need to explain myself.

  “IA is corrupt. What kind of agency that’s sworn to protect imprisons and threatens to execute the innocent?” I ask. “I mean, has Ben’s family even been released from prison yet?”

  “They have,” Ella says.

  “Look,” Robert says. “A lot is going to change. There are some extreme ideas in place that I don’t agree with.”

  Charles and Ella both nod, echoing his thoughts.

  “The corruption is wider spread than just IA,” Charles says. “We have people working on tracing where the Unwilling have gone, and several members of the government have been implicated.”

  “I want to change IA,” Robert says. “And I’m offering you the chance to help me. There are a lot of people who may have been involved in this conspiracy—or others—and I need good people to seek them out. I’m offering you the chance to finish what you’ve started.

  “You would report directly to me. You’d work with Hayley and Jimmy and a few other people I’ve hand-selected for the team. After everyone has been jailed or cleared for their involvement—or lack thereof—you can attend North Point and become a full-fledged IA agent.”

  For a second I think about it. I believe what he’s saying. I believe that he wants to make a difference. I admire him for wanting to try, and I’m flattered he thinks I can help.

  But I just want to go home. Be with my family. Curl up and cry about everything that’s happened these past few days.

  Maybe not worry about dying.

  “Thank you for the offer,” I say. “But my own universe needs me.”

  Robert nods, but Ella reaches out and touches my arm. “Please think about it,” she says. “We need more people like you.”

  I look at Robert, then at Hayley, who says, “Taylor saw something in you, something he didn’t see in most people.”

  My eyes water and I look away. I can’t imagine I’ll change my mind, but I owe it to Barclay to at least consider it. “I’ll think about it.”

  A few hours later

  A few hours later, when I’m released, Hayley nods toward two agents who have just portaled in with a woman. “We’ve already started to retrieve some of the Unwilling,” she says.

  The woman is older, probably in her thirties or even forties. She’s thin with dull blond hair and eyes that look a little sunken, and she walks with her head down and her shoulders turned inward.

  “She’s one of the older ones,” Hayley says. “From your world, actually. She was abducted back in the nineties.”

  “And she’s still alive?” About 80 percent of people abducted for human trafficking are dead within a few years, be it from violence, drugs, or despair—they just don’t usually make it.

  “She might look meek and timid now, but she must have been strong when they grabbed her to have made it this long.” Hayley bumps my shoulder. “She probably never thought she’d make it home.” She doesn’t have to say because of us; it’s implied in her mannerism. Despite how broken up she feels over Barclay, she’s proud of what we’ve accomplished.

  I guess I should be too.

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  Hayley pulls out her charger and scrolls through it. “Bauer, I think. Emily Bauer.”

  My breath catches in my throat. The girl from my father’s case. Warmth spreads through my body and I feel my lips curve into a slight smile. My dad would be proud.

  Because of me, Emily Bauer is finally coming home.

  Because of me

  Because of me—and because of Ben.

  I see him. He’s in different clothes—clean and fresh—and he’s got bandages on his neck and one of his arms. His face is serious and closed off, his eyes hidden behind the waves of his hair. It’s like the air flees my lungs when I see him. I love him so much that it physically hurts.

  He’s not alone. Standing next to him is his double. And I mean that in the traditional sense, a guy who looks a lot like him—almost identical but not quite. This guy is an inch or so taller, he’s a little thinner, and his hair looks a little shorter. But they’re clearly brothers.

  Derek Michaels sees me first. His nose has been broken, and the skin around his eyes looks almost black with the bruising, but he’s cleaned up. And he’s alive.

  He takes a step toward me. He’s slow; the movement is a little jerky, and I know there may be some long-term damage under his clothes. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he says. And something about his voice has weight to it.

  “You too,” I say, and I turn my eyes to Ben’s. I want to memorize every line of his face so that I can conjure up his image months from now.

  Next to me, Hayley smiles. “We should give you two a minute.”

  “Go on,” Derek says with a laugh.

  We’re just outside IA headquarters in a closed-off area where people can portal in and out. The sun is peeking through the clouds, bathing us in light
, and there’s a frenzied energy, an unbridled excitement around us—it’s the feeling of knowing you’ve just broken a big case.

  This is just the beginning, though. Who knows what the energy will be like when they start cleaning house?

  I feel more than see Ben move beside me. “Did you take the job?” he asks.

  I laugh. “They offered to put you in IA too? After everything?”

  He shrugs. “I think they want to keep a close eye on me.”

  “I just want to go home,” I say.

  “Me too,” he says, and I hear it in his voice. No matter how much he might miss me—no matter how much he might think he wants to come back to me—he can’t come. Not now—not when Derek is here and his parents have been sent to a hospital in his home world.

  And if I’m honest with myself, maybe not ever.

  It’s not that he isn’t going to choose me. It’s that there might always be something that says he needs to stay.

  He must read the thoughts off my face, because he reaches out and squeezes my hand. “I believe in us,” he says, his voice thick. “I do.”

  My throat is tight, and I can’t speak, so I don’t.

  “From the moment I portaled into your world, you’ve been the best thing to ever happen to me,” he says. “I love you more than anything. But my family: They’ve just been released from prison, and they were there because of me. I need to make sure they’re okay. I need to—”

  “I know,” I say quietly. I look back at the IA agent who’s lingering with a quantum charger behind us. “Open his portal,” I say.

  A split second later, he does.

  Looking across the chasm

  Looking across the chasm into the nothingness of the portal, I can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu. The air around me, charged with the energy of the portal and the weight of my emotions, is cold against the warmth of my flushed skin.