Wired (27 page)

“Where's the pink vase?”

“In the sink with the fishbowl. Those old flowers were starting to stink. Are you okay?”

“Yeah . . . just tired. I'm going to nap here for a minute.”

“Sure.” She disappeared back into the kitchen.

Mason. What did you just do?
I knew better than to think that everything was fine or normal just because Kitty and her fish were still here. After all, he'd gotten Leonardo to shoot me, which was pretty shocking. What else was different remained to be seen.

I let my head fall heavily back on the couch. So much for my moment of self-empowerment. Stealing Mason's car and driving off had been just a new method of running away and hiding. I'd stood there and let Mason stick me again. And I'd stood there and let Leonardo shoot me. I'd just
stood
there. And here I was again with Kitty cleaning up after me in the kitchen while I was sitting on my ass freaking out.

Kitty came out of the kitchen with the fishbowl and stuck it on the counter. I watched Existential Angst swim in circles for a while, running time lines through my mind and trying to figure out where the guys were likely to be and what they were planning. Since there wasn't much wire left, they couldn't afford to mess around with more reversals and forwards.

Kitty returned with some fish food, which she tapped into the bowl. “I thought you said you were going to be done today.”

“Huh?”

“I thought you said you were going to be done with the Zapper.”

“The Zapper?”

Kitty raised an eyebrow. “You've been obsessing about it for months. You've been living it for months. You're sick of it. I'm sick of it. We were supposed to pull a cork and celebrate when you were done, and that was supposed to be today. So did you turn it in or what?”

I sat up. “What's the Zapper?”

She stared at me. “You're seriously asking me? I think you're more than just tired, Rox. Are you okay?”

It was not the time for being mothered to death. “I'm fine. Just . . . humor me, okay? Tell me what I told you about this Zapper thing.”

“All you said was that you got a project for this device thingy. It was months ago. Some sort of next-generation handheld. They asked you to write some code or some nonsense. You said it was a sort of GPS thing for an alpha model, and I told you I only spoke English. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, not remembering at all.

Kitty relaxed a little. “Yeah. So . . . well, you know, you always name your projects some random name, and this one we just called the Zapper. Remember?”

“Absolutely. That's a funny story. I totally remember!”
Sigh
. “So, I said that I was supposed to be done today?”

She cocked her head. “Don't even try to tell me you're so sick of this project you've developed amnesia. Of all your procrastination techniques, that's without a doubt the lamest. You said you were done and just needed to have me drop the documents off this afternoon, and then we . . .”

I was already halfway up the stairs. I dashed into
my office and poked furiously at the keyboard to wake up the computer. I went through the file hierarchy until I reached the folder called
AHOT
. Inside
AHOT
I scanned a series of project folders, ending with the last one, called simply
Z
. I clicked through, and sure enough there were a huge number of files with names all including
ZAPPER
in the title. I sorted the files and looked at when I'd last updated them. Most had been updated yesterday. I found the master document, a sort of template I'd developed for turning in projects to the agency, and just as Kitty said, I was done. I was done with the code and was turning it in to the agency today.

I headed back down to the sofa in a daze and plopped onto the cushions. My future, the future Leonardo wanted, was right here on this wire. It was here and he wanted possession of the code, which meant that he'd be along any minute, Mason on his heels. I could just make myself comfortable until the doorbell rang, and then we could all have a nice, polite discussion about who got what or . . .

“Screw that!”

Kitty's head popped through the kitchen door. “You talking to me?”

I leaped off the couch. “Yes, yes, I am. Screw that.” I ran upstairs to my office and started looking through the files, looking for something more about Kaysar Corporation or anything at all about Mason Merrick that might be on the machine from one reality splice or another. But no answers spontaneously appeared; they were stuck in a different time on a different wire. If I hadn't found answers before the
code, and I hadn't found answers now that I'd written the code, then they weren't in the present. Maybe the answers were in the future with Mason and Leonardo. . . .

I knew what I had to do. I downloaded the contents of z to a flash drive; then, with my finger twitching nervously over the keyboard, I finally dragged the z folder to the trash can and clicked delete. Grabbing an old manila folder, I dropped the drive inside and ran back downstairs to the kitchen.

Kitty was washing a small green apple in the sink. “You want half?” she asked.

“No. The thing is . . . I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Bye,” she said, totally focused on scraping the little oval sticker off the apple skin.

This was serious enough to worry about not coming back.
“Kitty.”

“Mmm?”

“If I don't come back, I want you to know you've been a great best friend. The best. You are a
sister
to me. I mean, you're my entire goddamn family. So, thanks.”

That got her attention. Her left eyebrow went up. With a chuckle she asked, “Where exactly are you going?”

Oh, hell
. “The future. It's basically”—my mind grasped for a way to frame my intentions that she could understand—“a mission of sorts.”

“A mission.” She took a huge bite of apple and with her mouth full asked, “Can I come?”

“Are you serious?”

“Well, yeah, I'm serious. I'm not doing anything.”

She believed me. More important, someone was on my side. Mason and Leo wanted something from me, but Kitty wasn't like that. She was an unbiased observer and she wanted to help me. I was really touched. Even if she didn't have a clue what I was talking about, I was really touched. This was who she was: a kind, generous person.

“You have no idea how much I'd like to have you come with me, but I don't want you to get hurt,” I said, suddenly sad. “This could be dangerous. In fact, it's very likely to be dangerous.”

She took a final bite of apple, then stepped down on the trash can pedal and tossed the core inside. “Don't be silly. I can hang with the best of them.” She leaned against the kitchen counter and grinned. “If it's that dangerous, if I kick the bucket, be sure to call my mom and dad.”

“Jesus. Let's be morbid, why don't we.” I threw up my arms in resignation.

She gave me a wink. “So, when's this going down? And what kind of costumes?”

“Costumes? Okay, look, Kitty. I totally appreciate your . . . your interest. But I've got to get going.”

She followed me upstairs, then peeled off and went into her own bedroom. I found my messenger bag, and stuffed in the manila folder and the punch, the gun, the reader, and a handful of paper clips and ponytail holders that I included for no reason other than that they were the sort of items that in a movie were always useful in a pinch.

I ran down the stairs, and Kitty followed right on
my heels wearing some sort of ridiculous hat that had springy antennae with stars bobbing on the ends. “I'm ready,” she said, sticking her fist out in a go-get-it manner. “Let's go to the future!”

I shook my head, bemused. I headed for the door, then stopped and gave Kitty a big hug, then went for the doorknob. “Hopefully, I'll see you very soon,” I said.

“Roxanne!”

The completely freaked-out tone of her voice stopped me in my tracks. I turned and looked at her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm going outside.”

Her jaw dropped.

I stuck my hand on the doorknob and felt the most incredible force of panic well up inside me. “Oh, God,” I said as my head nearly exploded from the rush. I was still agoraphobic. No wonder she'd seemed like she was just playing with a child.

I swayed backward, and Kitty was there in a second, wheeling me around and marching me over to the couch. She sat next to me, staring at me with huge eyes. “Were you actually going to open that door?”

All I could do was nod. My heart pounded so hard I felt like I could feel the beat in every part of my body. I'd never felt such panic before . . . except . . . except for maybe . . . It was the kind of panic I'd been talking myself out of on the way to the 7-Eleven that night at two in the morning.
Say it isn't still so
.

“Why didn't you go through the steps of your routine the second you felt it welling up?”

“My routine? What? No, I-I just . . . It happened so fast. And I really need to get going.”

“You were really planning on just going out there—just opening the door and wandering out for a stroll?”

“This isn't a stroll. This is an emergency.”

“Well, that's all well and good, but you've got a serious problem.”

She didn't have to say any more. I knew what was happening. I was agoraphobic. This was the original version of reality. Kitty
had
existed then. Well, she'd existed the night I'd left my house on a mission to cure myself through a strategically planned set of visits to the 7-Eleven. This was the wire I'd been on when I'd left the apartment that night. But then reality had spliced—roughly, as Mason pointed out—and when I opened the door to Mason's car and spilled out onto the pavement, I'd already been on a different wire—one in which Kitty did not exist.

“If the game is outside, I'm going to have to go with you,” she said. “And I'm really not sure how far we're going to get. I mean, we always go straight to the 7-Eleven, so maybe if we go that—”

“But that's where I'm going,” I yelped in relief. The 7-Eleven represented a sort of portal. That was where the guys had taken me for their reset, so I figured that if the
where
mattered when it came to planning a leap to the future, then the intersection by the convenience store was my best bet.

“Okaaay . . .” Kitty said. “I'm willing if you're willing.”

Ten minutes later, I wasn't quite as willing. I'd been literally leaning on Kitty the entire way over. I'd thought I might throw up at least three separate times, and it was like a giant, persistent panic attack the whole way.
This is what I'm really like
, I found myself realizing.
This is what my life was really like. This is who I was
.

But this is not how I plan to end up. If there's even one length of wire left from this botched reset, I'm going to use it, because there is no way I'm going to end like this
.

It was unusually cold out, one of those sunny days that looked warm from the inside of your place. As I stopped at the intersection of my reality, at the very spot where this crazy situation began, I was struck not by melancholy but by the realization of all that I'd become in my best moments on the wires where I didn't have prior knowledge of this version of myself. There was a future yet to be won.

“Did you want to keep going?” Kitty asked, gesturing to the 7-Eleven.

Naveed
. “Yeah, let's just stop in for a second.” It was hard to be around people on the sidewalk, and it was hard to stand at the door of the 7-Eleven and want to go in. It took a couple of tries, and a lot of patient coaxing from Kitty, but I finally thought about Mason's admonition not to let myself be what I didn't have to be.

As we entered the store, Naveed looked at me with wide eyes. I knew his first instinct was to make reference to my condition. Instead, he just said, “Good day, Katherine. Good day, Roxanne.”

“Hey, Naveed. How's the family?” I asked.

Naveed beamed as he always did. “I told you my wife was having another child?” he asked.

I just smiled, ignored the roar picking up steam in my head, and plucked some spearmint gum from the impulse-buy section, placing it on the counter with a grungy dollar bill from my pocket. He swapped the bill for my change and leaned forward over the counter.

“Twins!”

“Is one of them a girl?” I asked.

He cocked his head to one side as if to say,
So be it
. “Yes. But I think she will be very smart. As smart as her brothers.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, grabbing his hand and pumping it up and down in congratulations. “That's unbelievable. I mean, fantastic . . . and terrific. I am so happy for you.” I scooped up my change and the gum. “A genius,” I called out as I walked to the door and the bell chimed. “I think she will be a genius.”

He smiled proudly. “I will see you soon.”

I waved back at him.
Thanks, Mason
. I just knew he'd worked that.

Kitty and I walked back outside, and I stopped at the intersection. “This is where we say good-bye,” I said, my voice clogging a bit with tears. This was where it got real. The last wire I ended up with might not include her.

Kitty crossed her arms over her chest. “I'm not going anywhere,” she said.

“I am,” I explained, pulling the punch and smartie from my bag. I set the reader, praying I was doing it right. I let the punch's chamber fill.

Kitty was talking a blue streak, arguing. “Roxanne,” she said, “don't you dare go out without me.”

I should have ignored her. I should have just punched myself. But in the end, I didn't want to go alone. I punched us both, hoping we could fix things together.