My mom won’t be keen on me leaving the house for a few weeks. Soda will make me promise to keep out of trouble until my senior thesis gets accepted and I can come visit her. And there’s the whole business of my cells and bones disintegrating into dust.
As I hail a pedi-cab, I know Price would go through that picture frame right now—and never come back—if it meant he could be with Cascade.
I exhale and relax into the back seat of the cab, pressing my eyes closed as a surge of emotion shoots up my throat.
I made it home.
Even when I thought I couldn’t, wouldn’t, I made it home.
My parents stare at me after I enter the house, the movie they’ve queued up on the flatpanel forgotten.
“Hey, Mom.”
She launches herself from the couch and into my arms. Her shoulders shake with sobs, and she keeps saying, “You’re back, you’re back.”
I feel like total tool holding her while my dad stands and stares at me like I’m a specter. I should’ve left a note. Chatted them. Something. I’ve been gone almost a week, and while the world is definitely different, I’m not sure how much has changed in my personal sphere—or my parents’.
Mom quiets and steps back. She gives me a glare and slaps my arm. “Mom, I’m sorry.”
“Not—sorry—enough.” She enunciates each word with another almost-punch to my upper body. “After Cooper, you think it’s okay to just take off without a word?”
“No, I—”
“Don’t talk.” She moves to the flatpanel and darkens it. “Into the kitchen. Sit.”
Where I’ll have to talk, I think, but don’t say. No need to further poke the bear. At least her behavior is consistent and predictable. I’d be more uncomfortable if I’d come back and one of them didn’t exist or we lived in a completely different house—like Price.
Mom places an onion on the chopping block and wields the largest knife we own. “Okay, Heath. Start talking.”
My words match the rhythm of her chopping, and the whole story pours out of me as she makes the best salsa in the four Verses.
We’re just finishing dinner when my chatline sounds with Soda’s ringtone. She can’t know I’m back, unless Price has told her. Which is a possibility. Once glance at my mom and I know I can’t answer the chat right now.
As it goes into the feed of unanswered chats, I realize it has the same timestamp as all of Soda’s other chats. It’s simply our scheduled session. I think of her waiting on the other end of the line, hoping I’ll answer, those long piano-playing fingers winding around each other as the chat rings and rings and rings.
I shove the ache to the back of my mind as Dad starts to tell me about his new employment contract. I tune in and contribute to the conversation, because Dad hasn’t had much luck keeping employment.
“Wait, wait.” I hold up my hands. “You work for Hyperion Labs?”
“Just started six months ago.”
So our timeline has changed too. “What do you do there?”
“Research and development. Basically, we test out the protocols and when they malfunction, we make notes about how to improve the design.”
“And you like it?” I never pictured my dad as a product tester, especially not for the biggest technology firm in the country.
Dad shrugs. “It’s okay. It’s paying the bills, and it’s not the worst thing I’ve done.” He gets up and puts his dishes in the sink. “It’s good to have you home, Heath.” He grins at me and heads back to the couch facing the flatpanel.
“Mom?” I slide her a glance.
“Oh, go on. I’m sure Soda’s dying to hear from you.”
A smile spreads my lips. “Thanks, Mom.” I give her a squeeze on my way out of the kitchen, already sending a chat request Soda’s way.
She doesn’t answer, which sets my nerves into a tiny frenzy. I tamp down the anxiety, imagining this to be the way Soda has felt for the past week. She was already a little on the jumpy side, and me disappearing surely didn’t help. I had chatted her, though, and I’d also let Cooper know to keep an eye on her. She hasn’t been as calm, as easy-going, as grounded since she and her mom moved.
She used to be the one who reasoned with me with my temper threatened to erupt. She was the one who made sure Price didn’t feel ostracized after Cooper went through the rift and Cascade never came back.
I hail her again, sure she’s still awake, even though it’s almost midnight in Florida. She doesn’t answer, and the snakes I’d feared erupting from the vases at Price’s place start to writhe in my stomach.
I let the chatline hang open, sure she’ll answer at any moment. The feed finally breaks, but it’s not Soda’s sweet voice on the other end of the line.
“Heath Stonesman,” a much more mature female says. “I’m Kelly Openshaw, and I’ve arrested Soda Harris.”
The name Openshaw gongs through my head loud enough to eradicate any coherent thought.
“What? Why?”
“Because, Heath.” Kelly’s voice sounds like frosted icicles breaking on glass. “You stole one of my father’s top researchers and the man he said she couldn’t have.”
I want to tell her she can have Greg and Iris back, but I know they won’t go. They’d been willing to risk everything to be able to get through that rift.
“What does Soda have to do with that?”
“She’s been chatting with a known and highly wanted fugitive,” Kelly says. “Those are the official charges.”
A pause comes through the feed, and my heart feels close to bursting while I wait for her to continue.
“I’m not a fugitive,” I say when she refuses to speak.
“Of course not.” Kelly’s laugh is anything but funny. “But corresponding with the Black Hat is serious business in your Verse. I’ve alerted the authorities there to his last known location.”
Fear seizes my stomach with a tight grip. I can’t breathe. I stare straight ahead, and see nothing.
“And I’ve brought Soda here to my Verse so we can have a little chat, girl to girl.”
“No—” I start, but the chatline silences; the call ends; my newfound world collapses.
Soda’s gone.
It’s my fault Soda’s gone.
Cooper’s in trouble.
It’s my fault Cooper’s in trouble.
Price
I DON’T MOVE FROM THE COUCH AFTER Heath leaves. I never see the two people he brought with him exit the apartment. I don’t know how much time passes before Mom settles next to me.
“You okay, Price? It’s late.”
I swing my head toward her like I’m moving underwater. “Yeah, fine.”
I’m not fine. I feel like someone ripped my heart out of my chest and threw it into that energetic picture frame. It exists somewhere else, the same way Cascade does.
And she can’t come back.
“Well, it’s probably time for bed.” Mom pats my knee, gets up, and leaves me in the living room. Eventually, I follow her, realizing when I enter my bedroom that my Circuit has been off.
My Link station glows with a steady purple light, which means I have missed chats. I activate my Receiver and prompt the Link to send the messages to my cybernetics.
Heath’s hailed me a half dozen times. I read his chats, each one becoming more desperate. I’ve just finished the last message when another call comes in.
“Heath, sorry,” I say. “I had my Circuit deactivated.”
“Did you get my messages?”
“Yeah, I just finished reading them. Soda’s gone?”
“I got a call from Kelly Openshaw—I guess she’s Orville’s great-granddaughter. She runs the Global Verse in this time. She’s pissed I brought those two people with me, and she took Soda as a punishment.”
He takes a shaky breath. “We have to get her back.”
“We will,” I promise.
“How?”
I think of the fierceness in my father’s eyes when we spoke of the rift. We can’t us
e it. My mind seizes on the picture frame in the conference room downstairs. Maybe we just step through to the Global Verse. But my skin prickles at that too.
“I don’t know.” I glance toward my closed bedroom door. “My dad seems to be able to communicate with the other Verse. Maybe we could hail her?”
“Do you know how to do that?”
“You said she chatted you,” I say instead of admitting that I don’t have a clue how my dad communicates with his bosses. “Can’t hail her back?”
“It was a secured line, unknown.”
“I haven’t seen my dad since he took those people and disappeared into his office.” I get up and move to the bed. “Let’s meet in the morning and see what we can figure out. Brainstorm tonight?”
“Brainstorm tonight,” he confirms. “Best ideas in the morning.” He hangs up and I close my eyes. I will my mind to come up with something foolproof, something that will solve all the problems the rift has created. It seems like every time something is fixed, two more problems crop up.
“I need to talk to those people Heath brought with him,” I whisper to myself. But I was hardly paying attention when he introduced them. And I haven’t seen them since.
I chat Dad, hoping he’ll still be awake. It’s not even midnight yet, so he should be.
“Yes, Price?”
“Where is that couple?” I ask.
“Why?”
“I want to ask them some questions.” The hope of seeing them and asking even so much as their names is a near-impossibility.
“They’re gone,” he says. “And I wouldn’t let you ask them about their Verse even if they were still here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not your business to know anything about the Global Verse.”
“Dad, Cascade is there and she can’t leave.”
A heavy pause comes through the chat. Maybe my father does have a heart. I’ve seen glimpses of it over the past several months. I hold my breath, hoping, waiting.
“There’s nothing we can do,” he finally says. “I’m sorry.”
“Dad—”
“No, Price.” His voice cuts through the line like steel. “We don’t have as much power in this timeline as we have had previously. We cannot risk what we do have for a girl.”
“She’s not just any girl!” I can’t help the desperation from coloring my voice. I inhale in an attempt to box everything back together. “Can I just go there?”
Dad sighs. “You’d leave us?”
“You don’t need me here,” I say. “I don’t want to manage people for the rest of my life, following the dictates of someone from somewhere I’ve never been.” As I speak, strength enters my body.
“We’ll talk more in the morning,” he says, code for You’re not going anywhere.
The chat ends, and I sink into my pillows. I don’t need to go anywhere to talk to the woman in charge. I drift to sleep with only one idea in my head, but at least it’s my best idea.
“So we have to figure out how to talk to Kelly.” Heath perches on the windowsill in my bedroom, looking very uncomfortable.
“That’s all I’ve got.”
“But we don’t know how to do that.” Heath arrived at the crack of dawn, so I haven’t had time to explore the apartment yet.
“No, we don’t.” I glance toward my closed door. “Let’s lay low until my dad goes downstairs to work. Then we can see what he’s got up here.”
“You don’t know the layout of your own house?”
“I’ve been here for a few days,” I say, shooting him a glare. “My reality is a lot different than yours.”
“Everything’s not roses for me either, bro.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
His glare could melt holes in ice.
I look away, wishing I could give him the answers he wants. But I can’t.
“My only idea was to have Greg get that picture frame operational and we just disappear.” He makes an angry noise. “But I can’t do that. I can’t leave and never come back.”
“Because of your mom.”
“Because Cooper’s already done that,” he says. “And yeah, I can’t do that again to my mom.”
I nod. “Makes sense to me.” Silence descends, and I end up pulling up a game on the Link to pass the time. Things between me and Heath have never felt so awkward, and I’m not sure how to alleviate the tension in the room.
An hour later, I stand. “I’ll go check and see if my parents are still here.”
Heath barely makes eye contact, and I wonder what he’s been surfing through on his cybernetics. The kitchen sits empty, as does the living room, dining room, and formal den. I stand in the hallway and glance toward my dad’s office. The door is closed, but when I step to it and twist the knob, it opens easily.
That alone should set my nerves on edge. Dad never leaves his sensitive areas unlocked. I remind myself that he’s not conducting illegal business from our home anymore. He doesn’t need to. He has an entire floor dedicated to creating alternate identities for people from alternate dimensions.
As I enter his mundane office with it’s executive desk and walls full of panels, it occurs to me that we should be sneaking around the offices downstairs. The ones where I had a desk right next to my dad’s.
I reason that he’s not always downstairs working when Kelly contacts him. She may have sent him messages he didn’t answer, may have her signature anywhere on any of his flatpanels.
I leave the door open and turn toward my parents’ bedroom. It’s empty, as is the lounge attached to it. Their bathroom and mine and the guest one are all empty. The balcony off my parent’s lounge is vacant. The air is still.
No one’s here.
I chat Heath to meet me in my dad’s office, and we start poking around for information about the other Verses, or the Openshaws.
“Hey, here’s something,” I say as my eye catches on something in Dad’s chatlog. “A message from K.O.” I glance over my shoulder where Heath’s been swiping on the wallscreen. “K.O. Kelly Openshaw?”
“Can you open the log?”
I tap on it, but a password prompt comes up. My heart drops to the floor. “My dad has dozens of passwords.”
Heath bends over my shoulder. “A password? We can hack that, can’t we?”
“I, uh, haven’t actually hacked anything for a while.” I lean away from the built-in panel on my dad’s desk. “And I can’t create a new identity. My dad watches all the known identities.” I scrub my hands through my hair, frustration filling my lungs.
“Well, he’s not watching me.” Heath nudges me. “Move it, bro. I’ll get past that prompt.”
I’ve barely stood before Heath’s Receiver glows red. As his rogue persona, he taps open a new square and navigates to one of our regular jamming haunts. Well, not so regular for me anymore. He has a cheat bot downloaded and sent before I blink.
Man, I love jamming, even if I’m only a spectator.
“Nice one, bro,” I say when the password types itself into the prompt box and the chatlog opens. Heath leans back and we high-five. Finally, the last of the awkwardness between us disappears.
“I’m forwarding this to both of us.” Heath swipes, taps, and Kelly’s contact info lands in my feed.
Three beeps draw my attention to a flatpanel that pops to life. It’s a vid surveillance of who’s walking through the front door.
“My dad,” I hiss. “Shut it all down.” I spin and tap down the panel Heath was working on. When I turn, he’s disappearing through the doorway, the flatpanel on the desk already dark. I follow him at a sprint, barely making it across the hall and into the kitchen before my dad rounds the corner.
“Price!” he calls, and I can’t tell if he’s upset or just wondering if I’m out of bed yet.
“In the kitchen.” I poke my head around the corner and hook my thumb over my shoulder. “Heath’s here.”
I don’t let my eyes settle on Dad’s features long enough to judge
his mood. He doesn’t normally monitor what I eat or when Heath can visit. He only watches my online activity and monitors my senior project to make sure it’s advancing toward approval.
Heath slides me a bowl of cereal moments before Dad joins us. My heart beat pulses in my neck and I angle away from him as I take my first bite.
“Morning, boys.” He opens the fridge and selects a protein shake. “What are you up to today?”
Heath chokes on his cereal, but I manage to maintain my composure. “Not sure.”
“You could come down to the office.” He leans against the counter. “I could show you where I sent Greg and Iris.”
Heath perks up at this, and I can tell he wants to go downstairs and see my dad’s operation.
“Sure.” I put my bowl in the sink and head for the front door. “Did you hook Greg and Iris up to the Circuit?”
“Of course,” Dad says as the elevator doors open.
I exchange a glance with Heath as we take a position behind my dad. I eye the conference room—which boasts a closed door—as we move down the hall. Dad’s probably already removed the frame and print-locked the door.
Heath and I suffer through a day of boring observations, sending chats to our cross-overs, and pretending like we did a lot more than that. I look up Greg and Iris, who got new names and new non-scientific jobs in Fargo, and forward all their information to Heath and myself.
“Hey, I gotta go, bro.” Heath stands like he’s going to leave. We haven’t had a chance to make a plan, or talk about what we need to do next.
“Dad—”
He holds up his hand as he cocks his head to the side. “Hang on, Kelly.” He strides away from us, toward the back of the office—in the opposite direction of the conference room.
Heath doesn’t need any prompting. We head for the exit, pausing at the conference room to try the doorknob.
Locked.
I look at Heath, who’s watching the hallway over my shoulder. “Tonight,” he says. “Eleven. Can you get a print from your dad’s desk?”
“Definitely.” A thrill runs from the top of my skull to the soles of my feet. “I’ll meet you here.”