After, Sloane went back to her room and flopped on her bed, her head throbbing. It was impossible to “stop thinking so much,” as Cyrielle had instructed her to do, when you were thinking about not ripping your friends to shreds with magic while simultaneously worrying that the Resurrectionist would suffocate you if you didn’t learn faster.
There was a knock on her door, and then Esther was leaning on the door frame, her arms crossed. She had adopted the thick eyeliner that people on Genetrix seemed to favor. Esther was nothing if not adaptable.
“All right, so,” Esther said. “You’re a selfish dick, and apparently you’ve killed people.”
Sloane stared. She wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“I just figured it would be better to get it all out in the open,” Esther went on. “While you were on your little stroll this morning and everyone else was fretting about where you were, I accepted your certain demise and went down to the library and looked up some names.”
“You accepted my demise pretty quickly.”
“I was pissed at you,” Esther said, picking at a cuticle. “Anyway, first I got the librarian to search for our names, just to make sure there weren’t parallel versions of us running around out there—thank God she didn’t find anything or I’d probably lose every last marble I had left.”
Sloane had been so busy processing the other aspects of occupying a parallel universe that she hadn’t spared a thought for AlternaSloane. Or her parallel parents. Paralleloparents, she thought, and it was a joke she might have made to Albie, who was remarkably patient with wordplay.
But Albie was dead.
Sloane sat up and pushed the thought firmly aside. “I think the universes may have diverged in 1969. Which means our parents would be alive here.”
“I tried that next, obviously,” Esther said. “Did you know the internet here is basically a glorified card catalog? Susan—the librarian—described it to me. Anyway, it would take a huge effort to figure out if my or Matt’s parents are alive and well, since they’re in different states.”
“What about my mom?”
Esther shrugged. “I kinda figured that was your business, whether you wanted to know about her or not. But I looked up Bert.”
Sloane hesitated between hope and scorn. Reading the letters Bert had sent to his superior about her had curdled her fondness for him like sour milk. But he had been a better parent to her than the ones she was born with, and his death, just a few months shy of the Dark One’s defeat, had been devastating.
“Parallel Bert lives in Chicago. Hyde Park. I remember our Bert saying he had an aunt there. Seems like he lives in her old house, if the public records are accurate.”
Sloane got to her feet. She hadn’t bothered to take her boots off before falling into bed. “So are we going to see him or what?”
Esther walked over to Sloane’s bedside table and picked up the book she had started reading, The Manifestation of Impossible Wants. The cover was plain white with a sketch of a wrist siphon on it in black. She flipped through it, too quickly to see any of the pages. “Matt thinks that’s a dumb idea.”
“Matt doesn’t have to come,” Sloane said, shrugging. “Don’t you want to know what he’s like?”
“Yeah, but . . .” Esther bit her lip. “I don’t know. He’s got nothing to do with our Bert except that he has the same combination of genes.”
“That’s not nothing.”
Esther put the book down. “We would have to be really clear on the fact that he’s a different person from the one we knew. No expectations. Do you think that’s even possible?”
“Sure it is,” Sloane said, even though she wasn’t sure at all. “Essy, if parallel selves are similar, that means the Resurrectionist could very well be a parallel version of the Dark One. Which means we already know more about him than anyone else does. So this is an important test case. More information is always better.”
“The older I get, the less I believe that.”
“But we’re going, right?”
Esther sighed. “Yeah, we’re going.”
TOP SECRET
PROJECT DELPHI, SUBPROJECT 17
SUBJECT: Transcript of Debriefing Session with Cordus Council Member [redacted], Code Name Merlin, Witness to Destructive Incident
OFFICER L: Can I get anything for you, sir? More water?
MERLIN: No . . . no, thank you, this is plenty.
OFFICER L: Can you state your name for the record?
[Silence.]
OFFICER L: Sir? Your name?
MERLIN: Oh, yes. My name is [redacted], but for our purposes I am known as Merlin.
OFFICER L: Thank you. We are here today for an official account of what you saw on the night of July 2, 2006. Today is July 3, 2006, so let the record show that these recollections are recent and thus less likely to be subject to manipulation. We will be using a memory-sharing working, a technique with which Merlin is particularly adept. Sir, what frequency do you need from me?
MERLIN: 65.4 MHz.
OFFICER L: Before we begin, can you describe the technique you’ll be using?
MERLIN: Yes. This working is mental magic, involving a minor alteration of consciousness in which we temporarily share a so-called mind’s eye. I will supply our shared mind’s eye with the memory of the . . . incident. And you will describe, for the record, an account of what you see. You will form the connection at 65.4 MHz with your handheld whistle, and I will maintain it at 63.2 MHz as you describe the images, using a dental implant.
OFFICER L: Thank you. Shall I begin?
[Low tone.]
[Second low tone joins in.]
OFFICER L: I am in an office, looking out a window. It’s dark outside, but I recognize a couple of the buildings from their lights. City Hall—I know it from the pillars. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m in the Camel—er, in the Cordus Center for Advanced Magical Innovation and Learning—facing south. There’s a glass of whiskey on the table in front of me on top of a stack of old books. There’s a lot of books stacked everywhere, actually.
Somebody’s knocking. I turn around and whistle, flicking my fingers. The doors open, and the man runs in. He’s dressed in military sweats, the kind we sleep in. He’s out of breath, too out of breath to talk. He gestures for Merlin to follow him, and Merlin does. They go to the elevator and down to the fifth floor. Everybody at the Camel calls it the Chosen Floor, because that’s where the Chosen One lives and where his army trains. Almost nobody’s allowed on that floor, so I’ve never seen it before myself—this fellow has to scan his badge before the elevator will move.
[Low tone continues.]
Elevator opens to an empty hallway. Only it feels off, somehow. Sort of—stuffy, like the way the air feels when there’s way too many people in one place, except here there’s not a soul in sight.
“I’m on night patrols. I went up—heard something—” The soldier’s recovered enough of his breath to explain the situation. “Saw—didn’t know who else to call—”
“You did the right thing,” I say. Merlin says, I mean. “What’s happened?”
“The army’s gone,” he says. They reach the end of the hallway, where there’s two doors with crash bars on them. Above them is a sign that says training area. He lets Merlin open them. The floor is squishy, like a gymnasium. Rubbery, too, so it squeaks under his shoes. But it’s dark in there, only the emergency lights are on, so all I can see is dark shapes here and there, little bumps on the floor. It maybe looks like—looks like someone left a bunch of mats out, forgot to put them away. Merlin whistles, waves his siphon hand. All the lights go on at once. They’re so bright he shields his eyes for a second, and I . . .
[Low tone continues.]
. . . I wish he’d kept shielding them.
[Low tone continues.]
They’re all lying there in their training clothes. White shirts and gray pants. They all fell in different positions, some flat on their backs, some flat on their faces, some on their sides, the
ir arms under them, their legs twisted, like they were running and tripped before dying. Their eyes are open—nobody tells you that sometimes, people die with their eyes open. Somebody has to shut them, only no one has, here. So there are just these stares coming at me from all sides, empty stares. Slack mouths too, open, drooling. God. It’s—
There’s one alive. Coming to his feet right in the middle of the room. Not a military man—dressed in civvie clothes. Tall. Really tall. The kind of guy you wouldn’t start a fight with. He sees us, and I can’t get a good look at his face because his hair’s falling in front of it, and then he lifts his hand and there’s sound and light—it hurts, God, so loud I can’t help but stagger back and shield my head. It’s over in a second, though, and I blink hard to get my vision back, but it takes a minute for the splotches to disappear.
The soldier who brought me here is lying on the ground now, and I reach for him, shake his shoulder. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t move—he’s dead, and the tall man is gone, and I’m alone with the dead.
[Low tone ceases.]
OFFICER L: Who was he? Do you know?
MERLIN: Sibyl said there would be another. A Dark One who could end the world, just as the Chosen One could save it. I think we have finally met him.
TOP SECRET
22
AN HOUR LATER, Esther and Sloane stuffed themselves into a taxi with Kyros and a fellow soldier, a buxom woman named Edda. Sloane looked through the raindrops at the Merchandise Mart, wide and squat, lit from beneath. She almost, in the moments before she remembered where she was, felt like she was at home—in the car with Matt, on their way to a restaurant where they would sit in the back, in a booth, so no one could see their faces. They would have a steak, a glass of wine. Tell each other stories they had both lived through already. That time they went to an old farmhouse where they thought the Dark One was staying and found only an old lady with rollers in her hair and a shotgun on her hip. That time they pranked Bert with sugar in the saltshaker, and he pretended he liked the taste so he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. That time—
“Matt’s gonna be pissed,” Esther said.
“We left a note,” Sloane replied.
“Yeah, I’m sure that will make it all better.”
“Just blame it on me. He already hates me.”
“Yeah.” Esther sighed and leaned back. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?”
The cab was the size of a small boat, boxy, with a hood ornament in the shape of a discus. It looked like a flying saucer to Sloane, but Kyros had struck up a conversation about college shot-put front-runners with the driver as soon as he sat down. Genetrix had, apparently, experienced a resurgence of interest in track and field in the last ten years. It had eclipsed baseball.
“So there’s only one baseball team here?” Sloane couldn’t get over it. “What do they call them, the Cubsox?”
“Chicago Cornhuskers,” Edda said.
“Cornhuskers?” Sloane couldn’t imagine the city without a crosstown rivalry, let alone the city rallying behind the cornhusker as a mascot.
“Sloane, you don’t even like baseball,” Esther said.
“Living in Chicago means liking baseball by proxy,” Sloane said.
“We need to come up with a plan.” Esther sounded impatient. “We can’t just show up on the guy’s doorstep and tell him we’re from . . .” She lowered her voice, checking the rearview mirror to make sure the driver was still talking discus with Kyros. “A parallel dimension.”
They coasted down Lake Shore Drive. Lake Michigan was the color of steel, and restless, crashing hard against the wall that held it back from the road. Esther drummed her fingers on her knee. Her fingernails had been manicured at Albie’s funeral, but the paint was flaking off now.
“We could call it a military thing,” Sloane said, glancing at the badge of the Army of Flickering on Edda’s jacket. “Say it’s top secret or something?”
Esther rolled her eyes. “Sure, that doesn’t sound at all absurd.”
“Don’t you know this man?” Edda chimed in. “Make your reason personal rather than official.”
“We know him, and we don’t,” Sloane said. “But I guess we could try to use information we have about him from before the likely point of divergence between universes. So—before 1969.”
“He got married when he was eighteen,” Esther said. “Had an older brother who drowned when he was sixteen. Born in Idaho . . .”
They went over everything they could remember from Bert’s early life as the taxi passed the Museum of Science and Industry, green dome and stately columns standing on pristine grounds, the same as it was on Earth. Beyond it were sprawling red-brick buildings with cracked sidewalks in front of them; long, low municipal buildings with glass-block windows; trees with bare branches that twisted among the power lines, all familiar sights. But every so often they passed something she would never have seen at home: a picket line outside a siphon retailer with people carrying signs that said MAGIC FOR ALL and ABRAXAS: ENEMY OF THE POOR and even MY MOM SOLD A KIDNEY TO GET AN ABRAXAS SIPHON; a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through that appeared to be a Howard Johnson’s, long defunct in her world; a high school called the Timuel Black School for Magic Theory and Practice.
They turned off 57th Street onto a side street packed with houses, and the taxi pulled up next to an old Craftsman home with the numbers 5730 painted above the front door. Esther and Sloane both stared at it while Kyros paid the driver with what appeared to be two twenty-dollar coins. Sloane had noticed people jingling as they walked or wearing little pouches hanging from their belts, but she hadn’t connected them to currency before.
They got out of the car, and the taxi pulled away from the curb. Sloane stared up at the old house, which was gray with white trim, the paint peeling, the lawn dull green and dusted with frost.
“You guys had better stay out here,” Esther said to Kyros and Edda.
Kyros looked dubious.
“If something bad happens, I’ll let out a bloodcurdling scream and you can come running. How’s that?” Sloane said.
“He’s just an old guy,” Esther said, more reassuringly.
“Fine,” Kyros said.
A shiver coursed through Sloane, and she forced herself to follow Esther down the front walk. A small collection of lawn gnomes stood around one of the stone planters, each of them wearing a red hat.
“So you’re his niece through his wife’s sister,” Esther said. “I’m ninety percent sure her name was Shauna.”
“That or something Polish neither of us can pronounce,” Sloane replied, and they were at the door.
I have a niece your age, Bert had said to her once. Haven’t seen her in years.
She had a clear memory of Bert getting out of his Honda Accord outside her house wearing an ill-fitting suit. Gray slacks, black shoes, a blue tie. His hair short but not too short, neither blond nor brown exactly, his eyes some middling shade of hazel. He had been so regular-looking that she could barely describe him after he left. The only thing that had been distinct about him was that one of his eyes watered, and he had dabbed at it with a folded handkerchief every few minutes.
Evan Kowalczyk of Genetrix had a handkerchief pressed to his eye when he opened his door.
“Can I help you?” he said, and Sloane’s throat tightened. She couldn’t speak. His voice was the same, just a little monotone.
“Sorry to bother you,” Esther said, jabbing Sloane hard in the side with her elbow.
“Oh! Yeah.” Sloane cleared her throat. “I’m . . . your wife’s sister’s daughter. Uh—your niece. Shauna.”
“Shauna.” He scratched behind one ear with one hand while stuffing his handkerchief in his pocket with the other. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since you were maybe eleven.”
“Twelve, I think,” Sloane said, because it felt natural. “I was just visiting the city. Looking at schools. Grad schools. Esther is helping me decide. And I remembered that you lived he
re. So—”
“So we’re just stopping by for a visit,” Esther said. “If you’re not busy.”
Evan was quiet for a moment, then said, “I have time for a cup of coffee, if you’d like.”
“Perfect!” Esther smiled.
“Yes,” Sloane said. “Coffee. Sounds good.”
Esther gave her a look that said, as clearly as if she’d spoken the words out loud, Why are you acting like a robot?
He stepped away from the door, letting them inside. The foyer was cramped, only large enough to accommodate all three of them if they huddled together. They followed the creak of Bert’s—no, Evan’s—footsteps across the dark wood floor and into the living room. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and a record spun on a nearby turntable: the strumming guitar and the high, tight voice of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.”
Sloane remembered getting into Bert’s beige Honda Accord, the kind with the headlights that popped up out of the hood of the car when you turned them on, so he could drive her to the training facility to meet the other Chosen Ones. She had asked about music, and he had directed her to the glove compartment, where three Neil Young CDs, two Neil Diamonds, and a Phil Collins awaited her. Could you be a more boring white dude? she had asked him.
She looked at Esther, whose face had gone slack, staring at the turning record.
“Not sure where you got your height,” Evan said to her, frowning.
“Neither are we,” Sloane said. She was straining to remember something, anything, about Bert’s sister-in-law, her supposed mother. “Some have suggested a milkman’s-baby situation, but . . .”
“But you’ve got your dad’s eyes,” Evan supplied. “I’ll get the coffee.”
Sloane had never been more grateful for having blue eyes in her entire life. She suppressed a hysterical giggle and turned toward the bookcase that stood next to the fireplace. The top shelf was packed with old novels: Moby Dick, White Fang, The Sound and the Fury, Catcher in the Rye. Like the entire syllabus for an Intro to American Literature class. Next to them was For the Living to the Dead with Lee on the spine. When she slipped it out to see the cover, she read the name Harper Lee.
Chosen Ones Page 20
