Unbreakable (Unraveling) (15 page)

I also know the answer to the question I do ask. I’m hoping I’m wrong. “And where does it go?”

“I have to insert it underneath your skin.”

Not wrong at all.

I look at the microchip again. This little thing is how I’ll be able to time everything. How I’ll be able to keep track of things. This might be the difference between getting out alive and getting killed. Which I guess is why I can stand to let Barclay perform minor surgery and insert it under my skin.

“I’ve programmed it so it will beep once at the minute mark and the numbers will light up five seconds before the EMP is scheduled to go off,” Barclay continues. I swallow hard. The EMP—an electromagnetic pulse—will shut off the power, which will turn off all the security cameras and give me a good head start. “Then it’ll convert to a stopwatch. It’ll look like you have green glowing numbers under your skin.”

“That sounds awesome,” I say. I do need a way to keep track of time, but I don’t exactly want some microchip inserted under my skin. “And the EMP won’t affect it?”

“Nope. EMP-proof.”

I didn’t know that was possible, but Prima is obviously doing some pretty amazing things where technology is concerned. “Why does something like this even exist?”

“Back when IA first started, you couldn’t take metal through the portals. The hydrochloradneum shots hadn’t been perfected, and skin exposed to metal would have a bad reaction. But a watch was a must-have. No one had a quantum charger, and the portals were opened and closed through IA headquarters in New Prima. Anyone who went through had to be back at the extraction point by the deadline or they were assumed lost.”

It makes sense, then, why this is important, although I can’t imagine I’d be about to have it surgically put under my skin if it was just for the sake of adventuring into the unknown multiverse.

I tilt my head to the side until my neck cracks and I grit my teeth. I’m going to need all the help I can get. I look at Barclay and the metal instrument in his hand—it looks like a laser pen.

Somehow, I’m sure this is going to be pretty awful.

I conjure up an image of Cecily the time she dragged me out to Scripps Pier. I’d been in one of my “moods,” as she calls them—basically I was pissed off at the world and maybe even a little depressed. So she made me get up at sunrise and drove me to the beach to try to brainwash me with her positive thinking. She went on about the golden sky, the smell of salt water, the sound of the waves, and the magic in the air. The sunlight lit up her hair like some kind of strange white halo, and she screamed out into the ocean, yelling at the universe like it might change something. Then she made me do it too.

She was right in the way that only Cecily could be. Maybe the world was still the same after I screamed my problems away, but when we walked off the pier, I was slightly different—lighter, somehow.

And then I think of Ben. He sat next to me in those few weeks of APEL, close enough that sometimes our arms brushed against each other. Whenever I looked at his face, those dark eyes were glancing back at me from behind his brown curls, and he’d offer me a sly sort of half smile, like we were both in on a secret. And I suppose we were.

I need to save them.

And that’s what I hold on to when I brace myself and say to Barclay, “Do it.”

B
arclay makes me spend most of the evening reciting prison-break plans back to him. Every time I make a mistake, he has me start over.

It’s a little like when my dad quizzed me on spelling words when I was in third grade, only a lot more intense. Barclay would make a tyrannical parent.

When I finally get it all right, I’m dismissed for bed. Wearing a pair of Barclay’s sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt, I lie in his childhood bed and stare at the ceiling.

I try to sleep, but instead, my mind wanders and I think of Ben.

I think of how he walked into my AP English class, sat down next to me, and turned out to be a lot smarter than I thought he was.

“So your perfect proposal, what would it be?”

“I don’t know. It would just be the two of us, and I guess I’d want him to say something honest, not overly romantic, not something that would make a great story to tell his friends. I’d just want him to lean over . . .” As I say it, I lean slightly toward Ben, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his body radiating into the empty space between us, and drop the volume of my voice. “. . . and say, ‘Janelle Tenner, fucking marry me.’”

I wonder what he’s doing right at this moment—if he’s lying in bed and remembering APEL and Charles Dickens and me dropping the F-bomb in the middle of class. I wonder if he’s scared like I am.

But mostly, I wonder where he is.

I know that’s not going to get me anywhere except feeling sorry for myself, so I shut my eyes and will myself to fall asleep. It’s dark, cool, comfortable, and quiet, the noise from the streets below blocked out by the thrum of the fan. And I’m exhausted. Even my hips hurt.

But the minutes just tick by and I can’t make myself lose consciousness.

When I can’t stand it anymore, I get out of bed and head to the living room. From the doorway, I can see Barclay on the couch, wrapped up in a comforter, his eyes on the TV.

“What are you watching?” I ask.

He flinches and there’s a harsh intake of breath. Apparently, I surprised him.

“What’s wrong?” Barclay asks, sitting up. His blanket slips and reveals his bare chest. I can see the curve of each of his muscles. It makes me think of when I was pressed against him, and heat floods my face.

“Nothing,” I say, looking away. I’m not sure why I’m so embarrassed. “I just feel restless.”

He nods and leans back. “I always get that way before a big mission.”

“Really?” It’s not easy for me to see him as nervous or sleepless.

“How about some tea?” he asks, turning off the TV. “That always helps me.”

“Sure,” I say, even though it’s hard to imagine Barclay drinking tea. He seems more like the sports drink kind of guy.

But he heads into the kitchen like hot tea is a normal thing.

For the millionth time I wonder what I’m doing here and how so much has managed to change in my life since that day I died on Highway 101 next to Torrey Pines Beach. How did I go from being just an average teenager with messed-up parents, scheduling issues, and a mean-girl problem to who I am now? I’m someone else now—someone who’s traveled through portals, watched people disappear, seen worlds that aren’t my own—someone who has four days to break open a human-trafficking ring that spans multiple universes, or die trying.

It doesn’t feel like it should be possible.

“Did I ever tell you about my first assignment with IA?” Barclay asks when he comes out of the kitchen with two mugs. He hands me one and I can smell the cinnamon from the tea. It’s amazing.

“I was just a newbie,” Barclay says. “I’d just graduated top of my class from North Point—which is like your West Point. My assignment was supposed to essentially just be research.”

Barclay takes a sip of his tea. I take a sip of mine. It’s like drinking warm liquid cinnamon. I smile at him.

“This assignment, my first mission,” Barclay says. “It was essentially a test. I had to research an area that had reported interversal disturbances—”

“English, please?” My tone comes out a little sharper than I intended. So I add, “You know, since I don’t know a lot of this stuff.”

“You know a lot more than you give yourself credit for,” he says, but he explains anyway. “Basically it’s a natural phenomenon that could be caused by instability in another universe. I had to research events that had been reported, find one I wanted to take on, go in and investigate what was happening, decide what might be causing it, and then write up a report proposing the action that needed to be taken. If I did well, I’d be given a mentor and be inducted into the IA training program. If I sucked, then they’d tell me to go find a different career path. Everyone who falls in the middle gets stuck with desk duty and paper pushing.

“I wasn’t about to blow my chance in IA or end up as a paper pusher.”

“Shocking,” I say. Clearly anyone who’s ever met Barclay knows he’s an ambitious guy.

He smirks. “Right, so when I was researching, I found that on Earth 16942 there were rips in the fabric of the universe—”

“Rips?” I don’t ask about Earth 16942, because that will just open up a million other questions I have about how many earths there are and how Barclay seems to know so much about each of them. I’ll never sleep if we get on that topic.

Barclay adjusts his position. “Okay, so with this,” he says as he picks up his quantum charger, “I can program a destination and open a portal. Portals are like wormholes that allow people or objects to pass through from one world to another. It doesn’t matter how far apart the universes are, people can move through a portal easily.”

I think of Ben and how
not
easy it was for him to get home.

“Some universes have soft spots like the one in San Diego,” he explains. “But other universes have what we call pressure points, which are areas where the veil between two worlds is so thin that sometimes it overlaps. Which can cause disturbances.”

“Disturbances?” I ask. I’m assuming the distance between universes is based on the fact that they started as parallel and separated when people in the different universes made different decisions. A “close” universe would be one that was really similar.

“It could be anything like weird weather or earthquakes, or there have even been cases where someone or something accidentally slipped through the veil and ended up in another universe,” Barclay says.

“Like some poor guy could be driving his car and suddenly be in a completely other universe and not know it?” I can’t imagine how scary that would be. At least Ben knew he went through a portal.

“Like some poor guy could drive home for dinner, show up at his house, and he’s got two sons instead of three daughters, and another version of himself is sitting at the table.”

I raise my eyebrows, and Barclay nods. “It was a case I read about at North Point. The veil had gotten so thin that there was a very small point where it actually intersected and sometimes people would just slip right through.

“Anyway, in my case, the disturbances were bad electrical storms, and witnesses had reported that the storms had a magnetic pull. Like this one woman was washing dishes when the storm rolled in. She had her kitchen window open, and the magnetic pull was so strong that all of her metal silverware was yanked from the sink, through the window, and up into the storm.”

“Creepy.” I have a talent for understatement, but it makes Barclay smile.

As he talks about the intricacies of electrical storms and a lot of science that goes over my head, I drink my tea and study the way his face has changed. He’s still smiling, and his eyes are alive with the excitement of the story. This is the first conversation we’ve ever had where I haven’t wanted to punch him and he hasn’t been arguing with me about something.

“So what was causing the storms?” I ask when I can get a word in.

“Well, that’s just the thing. The magnetism was being caused by field distortions between universes, which always means some powerful science at work.”

I don’t exactly grasp what Barclay is talking about. I probably won’t ever grasp it. His understanding of the natural world is just way different than mine. But I get the important thing—this was a man-made event, not something that was just happening on its own.

“So who was the bad guy?” I ask. Because isn’t it always about a bad guy?

“I did some research and a lot of math to trace the magnetism back to this man who was essentially a reclusive mad scientist working out of his garage,” Barclay says. “He was trying to contact his doubles in all the other universes. We think he had some kind of plan for them all to work on together, but he never got that far.”

I can’t help laughing at the image of Barclay apprehending this guy without a gun or credentials. “What did IA say? I mean, they essentially let you take on a real case rather than just some research assignment.”

He nods. “That’s how I am where I am, baby.”

Oh yeah, the smugness is back and it’s bad. “Seriously, what did they do?”

The smile falls a little. “They gave me Eric as a mentor and let me tag along on all his assignments. With him I was in the middle of all the biggest cases.”

“He was a big agent?” I ask, trying—and failing—not to think about the fact that he had a lot more experience than we do, that he’d been trained to handle people like human traffickers and I’m not. And now he’s dead and we might be next.

“The biggest,” Barclay says, running a hand through his hair. “He was a legend, the kind of guy who gets a monument named after him for all the shit he’s accomplished.”

“So IA has high hopes for you then?” I’m trying to get him in a better mood. Smug Barclay is slightly better than depressed Barclay.

But he doesn’t bite. “They might have had at one point. I doubt now.”

I roll my eyes. “I didn’t realize this was a pity party.” Please, like I’m not in a worse position than he is. I’m the one on the hit list.

Barclay is quiet for a second. He sets his empty mug on the coffee table, and while he’s looking down, he says in a quiet voice, “There’s a monument built for Clyde Tolson. He’s the guy who founded IA. It’s near here. I used to walk by it every day on my way to school when I was a little kid.

“He accomplished so much, Tenner. For the world, not just Prima. I mean, the whole multiverse is different because of what he discovered and because of the legacy he left behind. Eric was on track for that. He’d made an impact.”

“I get it,” I say. And I do. I don’t exactly have dreams like Barclay—I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. But I want to have an impact, and I get
that
.

I reach for Barclay’s hand and give it a squeeze. “You’re doing the right thing
right now
. It’s hard, and it sucks—it’s even dangerous—but you’re doing it anyway. That counts for something. Remember that.”