The Almost Girl – ebook edition (13 page)

“Where does this lead?” I ask her, noticing another steel door that opens to a dark tunnel behind it.

She stares at me before answering and throwing me a ratty map. “Couple miles underground. This tunnel forks to the hospital and to an abandoned building near Horrow.” She jabs at the map I’ve opened. “See all the tunnels? There’s an entire web of them down here, most of them collapsed and unusable. Used to be a safe-house for an old underground military base back in the Forties,” June adds, noticing my expression as I peruse the piece of paper. “It’s why Shae chose it.” She moves over to check on Shae. “She’s looking better,” she murmurs more to herself than to me.

“It won’t last,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. I tuck the map into my back pocket. “She’s everted too much already. Her brain can’t take the pressure.”

“What pressure?” The low voice belongs to Caden. He’s sitting on the cot I was lying on earlier, pretending to sort through the gear in his fencing bag. “What does ‘everted’ mean?”

I pause for a beat before answering him. “Ever heard of the bends?”

“Decompression sickness? Like when you come up too fast from a deep depth and pressurized gases are released into the body too quickly?”

I have to fight the instant urge to eyeroll. Caden’s so technical even with the little things. “Exactly. Well, it’s like the bends, only it starts in the brain. Then it becomes physical because humans aren’t built to evert” – I spare a glance at Shae’s twitching form, knowing she can still hear me – “to jump between universes. Our bodies are too frail, and when they start to break down, they become susceptible to infection and disease.” June’s fists are clenched at her side, her eyes unreadable. “It’s why the Guardians were put in place. To stop any contamination.”

“That makes no sense. Guardians? Contamination?” Caden says, lurching to his feet, interrupting my quiet words. “Listen to yourself. People don’t
jump
between universes!”

I shake my head and amend my earlier thought. He may be good with the little things, but when it comes to the big picture, he can be pretty obtuse. “Where did you think those things came from, Caden? From the zoo? They’re from somewhere else, a world just like this one, only far, far worse.”

“No,” he says. “How is that even
possible
?”

“A lot of things are possible.” I glare at June. “Didn’t you tell him anything?”

“We didn’t have to,” June says. “Until you got here.”

I stiffen at her tone, but Caden moves to stand in front of me. “What are you talking about? What haven’t they told me, Riven?”

“Get out of my face, Caden. I mean it.” I can hear the desperation in his voice even in the face of his bravado, but there’s nothing I can say. Telling him anything at all means that I’d have to tell him why I’m there in the first place… that I’m as bad as the Vectors… that June is right about me. I push past him, pretending to study the crates of food along the wall. “I thought you were into all of this scifi stuff? All those DVDs in your room about stargates and whatnot? You’re the genius; you figure it out.”

“Those are movies.” Caden’s words are slow and deliberate. “They’re made up, you know. Science fiction?”

“More like science fact.”

The only sound in the room is the shallow hiss of Shae’s breathing. Caden is staring at me, disbelief, confusion, and anger written all over his face. I’m not surprised. When Cale first told me about the existence of this world, I thought he was been playing me. But in the end, I understood that technology and physics theory had made it not only plausible, but also possible. And the universe was far wider than any of us really knew. Cale speculated that hundreds of other universes existed, but ours was one of the few to come into parallel contact with another.

I throw my palms into the air and raise an eyebrow. Caden faces my challenge with narrowed eyes, and I can see his mind ticking through the probabilities. “Even if it were possible,” he says grudgingly, “are you saying that Shae – my
cousin
– is sick because she jumped from this world to another universe and back?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.” I gesture at myself. “She everted, just as I did. And just like June, once upon a time.” Caden rocks back onto his heels, his face as white as a sheet, staring from June back to me as if we’re ghosts. I know I’m being blunt, but I don’t have time to sugarcoat secrets that Shae and June had concealed from him. “And she’s not your cousin. She’s your warden. Your word, not mine.”

“Are you serious, right now? I was kidding when I said that.”

“Well, I’m not. Look, I don’t care if you believe me, or think we’re on the USS
Enterprise
, or think you’re dreaming. More of those things are going to come, and I need to think for a second without having to explain the nuts and bolts of quantum physics theory to you. Think about it for half a second and you’ll see that it’s not as improbable as it seems.” I open the duffel bag and lay out all of the devices I took off the Vectors. I’m so rattled that I can’t help myself when I pick up one of the golf balls and thrust it into Caden’s face. “Does this look like any technology you’ve ever seen? No? It’s not from here. None of us are, except for June.” I stare him in the eyes, my words like bullets.

“What are you saying? That
I’m
not?”

I turn to June, who’s staring at me with a clenched jaw. “Tell him.”

June sighs but doesn’t shy away from the task. “She’s right, Caden. What she says is true.”

“No. No, that’s impossible.”

“It’s true, Caden,” June says. “Shae would tell you the same.”

“So you lied to me? All this time?” Caden hisses to her before spinning to walk away and then twisting back around in the same step. “Were you ever going to tell me?” June doesn’t answer, but her expression clearly says that they haven’t planned to. “I don’t believe this,” Caden mutters. “This is insane.”

“Believe it,” I say flatly just as Shae turns heavily on the bed to face us, gasping. June was right. She’s looking better after the injector, but she’s clearly still in a lot of pain.

“I’m sorry, Cade,” she wheezes, “…my fault.”

Caden turns toward me, with a measured glance at Shae’s tortured expression. His eyes are gentle. “Still, it doesn’t make sense. Even if I believed you, then why would Shae endanger herself, knowing the risks of doing it over and over? That she’d… die?”

I can’t help the twist of my lips nor the snarl that slips from them. “To protect you.”

June is already on her feet at my tone, her body bridling and ready to defend Caden. I unclench my jaw and try to breathe the spiraling rage out of my body. June feels no such self-control and she’s in my face before I take two breaths.

“It’s not his fault! That was Shae’s cho–”

The explosion takes us by surprise, even though I was the one who’d left the gas stove burning in the kitchen, and we’re all slammed to the ground in different directions. Pain rockets through my head and along my sides as I thump against the steel door I’ve been standing next to. Despite the intense throbbing in my head, I jump to shaky feet. Years of training force me to do an automatic check of myself for injuries.

The Vectors are back.

They’d be the only things that could have triggered the gas. Everting generates minute pockets of electricity, but for some reason when the Vectors do it, the electrical fields are bigger… big enough to ignite a gas-filled room. The golf balls would have done the rest, and no doubt there won’t be much left of the bodies, or anything else above ground, for that matter.

A hazy memory drifts through my head – now I remember why the golf balls are called cleaners. Hot enough to incinerate bones and liquefy metal, such that anything in their path would be completely vaporized. The heat from the fire diffuses through the heavy trapdoor despite its thickness.

“What the hell was that?” Caden grunts, following my lead to stand on shaky legs.

“A cleaner. One of those silver balls.” I dust the grit from my clothes and blink the soreness from my eyes. A glance in Shae’s direction confirms that she’s unhurt; I can hear her labored breathing over the ringing in my ears. “We need to move. It won’t be long before they find that door. And they will. Murek won’t stop now.”

“Who’s Murek?” Caden says.

“A dictator.” I toss a pack toward him, hard. “Get this on. Take only what you need.”

“Where are we going? We can’t leave. What about school?” The inane question throws me for a second and I stare at him. He reddens and adds, “Shae said–”

“School’s out, Caden. And I’m in charge, not Shae.”

I know he’s confused, but school is probably a comforting constant. I bring myself back to the task at hand, a part of my brain belatedly realizing that June hasn’t gotten up.

“June, you OK?” In the seconds that it takes to turn around, the quiet sense of knowing is already like a shiver across my neck. Shae, for her part, is sitting up and staring at June’s inert body a few feet from where she’s now sitting. The antidote injector has done its job – despite her bloody clothing and the unexpected force of the explosion, she looks nearly back to normal.

“June’s dead,” she says.

Her voice breaks the silence and my sudden inability to move. Within seconds, I am at June’s side with Caden not far behind me, and I gently pull her inert body toward me. She’s been thrown against something sharp and her death was instant. The gash on her head is bloody, her sightless eyes wide open and looking right through me. Questioning… judging even in death. Hastily, I close them and turn to Shae with a deep breath.

“Are you OK? OK to go?” I ask her, not hiding the urgency in my voice. We don’t have a lot of time.

She nods, distracted, and I can see that her attention is on Caden. The broken look in his eyes reminds me of someone with little experience with death, but my words fade before I can speak them. In my world, death is an expected companion – whether in our brutal history or a foray gone wrong outside the city wall – and I’ve seen more than my fair share of it. Instead, my fingers find Caden’s and I squeeze them, suddenly conscious of Shae’s stare that is fluttering like a moth between our hands and my face. I wrench my hand away as if his fingers are on fire.

“We need to go,” I growl, removing June’s map from my pocket and opening it next to Shae on a small crate beside the bed. “Have you been down all of these?”

Shae ignores me with a glare to pull the blanket off her bed and tuck it carefully over June. I watch as she and Caden lift the body up to place it gently on the bed. Apart from the blood, June looks like she could be sleeping. Caden stands next to the cot as if he’s in some kind of trance, and doesn’t move until Shae grasps his shoulders with both hands, turning him to face her and shaking him.

“Caden, remember what I taught you – we take them with us in our hearts. Let her go, OK? There’s nothing you could have done; it was just her time.” Her voice is thready but grows stronger by the second as she pulls him into a tight hug. “We will always carry her with us.”

The pressure behind my nose and eyes is sudden, like a blow to the head at the sound of Shae’s words, so achingly familiar. She told me the same thing when our mother died. The emotion flooding my body is hot and eviscerating. I swallow past the solid lump in my throat and meet Caden’s wet eyes. He’s staring at me over Shae’s shoulder, and the moment is unending, the mirrored empathy in them acting like a salve on my ridiculous emotions. It is all I can do to tear myself away, grateful for the moment when Shae moves to break the silent and unexpected raw connection stretching between us.

I compose myself, digging my nails into clammy palms so hard that it stings. “Moving on,” I repeat stonily. “The tunnels?”

“Haven’t changed a bit, have you, Riv? Still as cold as ice.”

“Occupational hazard,” I toss back, smoothing the map on the crate. I’m clenching my teeth so tightly, it feels like they will shatter at any moment. I can’t look at Caden even though I know he, unlike Shae, is looking at me and seeing right through my bluster. Thankfully, he says nothing.

Shae kneels beside me and jabs at a spot on the map. “We’re here.” She traces her finger along a faded brown line. “We need to get to here. It’s a long way, about twenty miles.”

“That’s not too bad,” I say. On foot and injured, that distance would take about six hours, give or take some rest time for Shae. On my own, it’d be a couple hours max, but I’ve trained hard, running large distances across unfriendly terrain for years. Shae’s still hurt, despite her brave rallying, and Caden… well, there’s no way he can maintain my speed without any training.

Shae disrupts my thought process. “That’s just the exit point of the tunnel. We still need to get to the Denver airport, which is at least another forty miles away. That’s the closest eversion point. Above ground, I mean,” she adds. “There’s a bus station not too far from where we get out. It’s straightforward.” I stare at her with narrowed eyes. It’s the closest she’s come to admitting that she’ll trust me with Caden. She shrugs, understanding my skeptical glance, and jerks her head down toward her body, still wrapped in bloodstained bandages.

She doesn’t have much choice. Without her, Caden only has me. And without me, he would be a sure thing for the Vectors. I can see the question in her eyes – whether I’ll protect him – and there’s only one answer I can give. I nod.

“Why can’t we… evert from here?” Caden says, interrupting our wordless exchange. “I mean, those things, the Vectors did, like Riven said…”

“They’re dead, remember?” Shae answers. “They’re designed to evert when and where as necessary. We’re not. It doesn’t hurt them because their cells are already dead. We have to find certain areas where there’s a zero point gravitational field so we can pass through with the least amount of physical and mental aftereffects.”

“But what about you? You’re sick already. Won’t that be bad? I won’t leave you, Shae. I can’t. Not after…” Caden trails off to stare at June’s body.