Echo 8 (15 page)

—Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

J
AKE FOLDED
himself into the passenger seat and closed the door, and Tess whipped out of the parking spot, tires wailing like a banshee.

“I shouldn't be driving,” she muttered.

“I'll second that,” he replied, grabbing the Oh Shit handle. “Just out of curiosity, why do you say so?”

“I'll explain later. Just be ready to catch the wheel.”

“Right. Terrific.”

Jake closed his eyes and pressed against the car door.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“This isn't as easy as it looks.” He desperately needed to feed, and he was sitting less than a foot away from her in her ridiculous little hybrid. He shivered as her warm honey washed over him in waves.

“Hang in there, Jake. We're going to ditch the car soon.”

He opened his eyes and focused his attention outside the window. “Well, fuck me.”

“What's wrong?”

“This is my neighborhood.” He craned his neck to glance back the way they'd come, and he let out a bark of laughter. “We were in my building the whole time.”

“Your building?”

“I live here. I mean on my Earth, I
lived
here. The building was a museum on the bottom, and affordable housing above.”

She shot him a questioning look before accelerating onto the ramp for I-90. “You're sure about that?”

“Looks exactly the same, except for the grounds.”

“It's hardly the first overlap we've found with your world, but wow. We thought …
Ross
thought you showed up here because I'm on the task force. Something seems to be drawing you to us.”

“I don't know about all that, but ‘drawn to you' is an understatement.”

Jake leaned against the headrest and sighed. Hard as it was to be in the car with her, he couldn't deny he felt happier—and more alive—than he remembered feeling in a very long time. And there was no small amount of satisfaction in the fact Tess had chosen him over Ross.

I really am a selfish bastard
.

The Fed was a protector by nature. He was good for Tess—even Jake could see it. Her childhood had been sadly devoid of protectors. But Ross didn't really understand her. Jake
did
. They'd both lost something so dear to them they walked around half-empty. And when Jake was with Tess—despite the insanity into which he'd materialized—he forgot about the emptiness.

“So we're running away together,” he said. “Very romantic. Where are we going?”

She cast him an anxious look. “I don't know. I have no money, no ID, a quarter charge left on the car, and we need someplace to stay where an occasionally psychic FBI agent won't find us.”

Jake grinned. “You're an epicenter for chaos, aren't you?”

A laugh burst from her lips, and she flashed him a smile—a smile made infinitely more interesting by the fact he could see tears in her eyes.

“Don't tell anyone, okay? I've got them all fooled into thinking I'm very studious and professional.”

“No, no, you should put it on your business cards. ‘Tess Caufield—Specialist in Dimensional Travelers, Epicenter for Chaos.'”

She laughed again, and a tear spilled onto her cheek. She flicked it away with her thumb.

Jake's smile faded. His mouth went dry. He felt a tug at his heart, and another at his groin. “I want to swallow you whole.”

“Maybe later. Now be quiet. I need to think.”

She thinks I'm joking
.

Tess had been flying down I-90, and now she veered right onto I-5 north, toward downtown Seattle. Another wave of warm honey blasted over him, and he dug his fingers into his leg. Jake knew his body would already be curled around hers, heedless of the car careening into the concrete divider, but for his subconscious compulsively chanting:
You'll kill her.

“This is a bad idea,” he groaned. “I can't be this close to you.”

“I'm sorry, Jake. I'm going to find someplace to park and then we'll take care of you.”

“Until then you better talk to me or something bad is going to happen.”

“Why don't you tell me something about your life? All I know about you is your profession—smartass moonlighting as a musician.”

“That's really essentially it.”

“Oh come on.”

He sat glaring through the windshield. The little silver car zipped alongside the downtown corridor. There was something strange about the buildings—they were all crowned with some kind of dark, lumpy matter, like they were wearing wigs. Jake took a closer look at one mass hovering close to the elevated highway and discovered the lumpiness was organic—a rooftop garden.

As they passed the Mercer Street exit Jake scanned for the city's most recognizable landmark. The morning was bright and clear, sunlight glinting across Lake Union, yet he couldn't find the six-hundred-foot structure.

“Where's the Space Needle?”

Tess's eyes darted to his face and then back to the road. “It was damaged in the Millennium explosion at Seattle Center, at the end of the New Year's Eve fireworks show. The city had to take it down. They salvaged the saucer section, though. You can see it there at the south end of the lake.” She nodded to the window. “They turned it into a museum and memorial, for the people who died. What about your Space Needle?”

“I guess it made it eighteen years longer than yours did.”

Jake closed his eyes, thinking. Trying not to think. He wondered about the “overlap” she'd referred to earlier.

“Doctor, how alike
are
our Earths? I mean, is there another Jake Parker around here somewhere?”

She shook her head. “We don't really know. From Echo interviews we do know our Earths were very similar. The geography, the political and social structures, the level of technological advancement—none of these were different enough that Echoes have found any difficulty blending in here. Both Earths had a United States, for example, and a European Union. But we have a different president. That's a significant difference, and we have to assume even small differences would have huge ripple effects. But as improbable as a high percentage of matchup may seem, several multiverse theories allow for a whole range of other Earths, from identical to unrecognizable.”

“Your city looks almost like mine. You live in the same building I do.”

She acknowledged this with a sideways nod. “Exactly. But like I said, there's a lot we don't know. One multiverse theory suggests a distinct universe exists for every possible outcome in a given situation. With an infinite number of variations, anything is possible. It could very well be that the close similarity between our worlds is allowing the dislocations from your Earth. And it's a safe bet this isn't the only other Earth where Echoes are popping up.”

The skin on the back of Jake's neck pricked, and a feather of hope tickled his stomach.

“Jake,” said Tess, hesitation in her voice. “Can I ask something about your death?”

He fidgeted in his seat, repositioning his long legs in the short space. “Maybe.”

“We know that at least three of the other Echoes died just prior to impact. Two killed themselves over fear of the impending catastrophe, and one was likely killed in an unrelated accident. I think there may be some connection between you ending your life and ending up here. Possibly the asteroid impact temporarily interfered with a process for reintegrating your energy into your own universe.”

“The irony is cloying, isn't it?” He turned to stare out the passenger window at the University of Washington campus as it flew by, too fast to compare to the image in his memory.

“You killed yourself for some other reason, though, didn't you?” she asked quietly. “You didn't actually know about the asteroid.”

Jake pressed his forehead against the cool glass and closed his eyes. The window bounced the moist warmth of his breath back into his face. “Do you have Ballard here, Tess?”

A few beats of silence passed, and she said, “Sure, we have Ballard.”

The Ballard neighborhood that Jake knew had been a very desirable area. The original, unincorporated town was built by immigrant Scandinavians right on Puget Sound. But over the last several years, rising sea levels and intensifying weather had resulted in frequent flooding. Abandoned by the wealthy and overrun by rats, it had devolved into slum housing.

“I want to go to Ballard. Is that possible?”

She didn't answer, and he took it for a no. He suspected she intended to drive straight out of Seattle. But she guided her car off the highway at the next exit.

“Okay, Jake. Your question about the Space Needle gave me an idea, and Ballard is not much out of the way. Plus there are newer cash machines there than in my neighborhood, with finger-scan access. It'll point them right to us, but we'll do our best to disappear after that.”

A cash machine in Ballard? He doubted it. But he didn't want her to change her mind so he kept his mouth shut.

*   *   *

Tess parked the car on Market Street, and Jake gaped at a neon cupcake sign in the window of a café—a café identical to one he remembered from the pre-flood Ballard. There was no sign of flooding here. No rats or stray dogs. No condemned buildings. No ragged children digging through the garbage.

Coming here had been a waste of time. Even if Emily existed on this Earth, she wouldn't live here. She couldn't afford an area like this. He settled back against the seat, muttering, “I'm such an idiot.”

“What's wrong?” asked Tess.

“Long story.”

She studied him a moment and then held her hand out to him. “Let's do the transfer and get out of here.”

He flinched against the car door. “Watch yourself, Espresso Chunk.”

“Come on, Jake. We have to do it.”

He picked up his hand and looked through it. He balled it into a fist and pressed it under his leg. He looked at Tess and swallowed. Her proximity was a fire in his throat. A fever in his head. A hunger, petulant from denial, gnawing its way out of his belly. His whole body quaked from the effort of maintaining the seven or eight inches of space between them.

He wiped his sweating palms on his jeans and let out the breath he'd been holding.

“One thing before we start,” said Tess.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I'm not so keen on the word ‘chunk.' Maybe I could be Strawberry Swirl.”

He laughed and rolled his head on the seat. “You can be
dead
if you don't start doing a better job picking your friends.”

“Lean back and relax. Rest your hand on the console between us, and try to think about something else.”

He gave another bark of laughter but did as she asked. “I really don't get why you're doing this. I've already killed myself once, and even if my Earth hadn't been destroyed, there'd be no one to care—I'm pretty much a waste of oxygen. Why wreck your life for this?”

Warm honey seeped in through his hand. He sensed how close she was—no more than a couple inches away—and gripped the console.

“
I
care,” she replied. “I don't believe you're a waste of oxygen. I don't believe you deserve to die. None of you deserve to die.”

“You can't save us all. You can't even save me.” He looked at her, noting the little upside-down “v” of irritation over the bridge of her nose. “Sweetheart, I know I talk a lot of shit, but I'm not screwing around now. Let me out here, and go back to Tall-Dark-and-Angsty. Go back to your job and your life. You deserve to be happy.”

“It's more complicated than that, Jake.”

“Is it?” But he knew what she meant, or thought he did. Better than anybody. Maybe even better than Tess. “All of this is really about your mother, isn't it?” The pain in her face should have been enough to stop him. “Because you couldn't save her.”

“You've been talking to Ross. The pair of you think you've got me figured out.”

He scowled. “I have not.” Then he closed his eyes. “Okay, yeah. I have. But that's not the point. I get it, Doc. Trust me, I get it.”

He felt her hand inch closer, and his breath stopped. Every nerve ending strained toward the source of the energy that trickled into him, maddeningly slowly, like the last dregs in a bottle of syrup. He fought the urge to reach for her. To take more, faster. It was torture and ecstasy together.

Blood surged in Jake's ears, and he couldn't take it anymore. He opened his eyes and turned in the seat, holding out his other hand. Understanding what he wanted, Tess reached out slowly with her other hand, and the current doubled in strength.

Jake groaned and dug his shoulder into the seat.

“Do we need to stop?” she asked.

“Uh…” Energy surged to a crest, expanding in his chest. The bones of his fingers itched, and he wiggled them toward hers. He opened his eyes and looked at her—relaxed and focused, lips parted, oblivious to the threat swelling an inch away from her.

Then she saw it in his eyes and dropped her hands, flattening her body against the car door. “Snap out of it, Jake.”

Even as he leaned closer, his hand reached for the door handle. He shoved it open and flung himself out onto the sidewalk.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, panting against the curb. But staring down at his knuckles he noted he was solid again, and with a few feet of distance between him and Tess, the spike of need began to flatten.

“Jake?” A woman's voice, but not Tess. Someone outside the car. He rolled over, blinking up at a feminine silhouette. The sun was directly behind her.

“Are you okay? What are you doing here?”

Sweet Jesus.
“Emily?”

The woman laughed. “You're high, right? It's too early to be drunk, even for you. You better not have had a gig in my neighborhood last night and not even told me.”