Chapter 14

Cleo had been seeing Halvorsen all her life, of course, even before the visions. There was one clip that was replayed on every retrospective, in every documentary, even though it was burned into her brain and probably the brains of everybody else on Earth: a blinding flash, and then silence; the click-burst of cameras over the face of a man watching his world disintegrate; then a storm of voices, of "What just happened?"and "Dr. Halvorsen! Dr. Halvorsen!" and the clattering of the countdown microphone as it fell to the floor; then a "Leave, all of you," and a "NOW!" and a door slamming shut for the final time.

But here, in the bluish light of the cave, Cleo saw Halvorsen as he was now: old, twitchy from almost two decades in isolation, and looking deeply, self-righteously baffled that four strangers weren't just teaming up with him, no questions asked. And seeing that look on his face, even though he'd caused so much pain, even though they'd stopped him from getting the engine, even though Billie had died to stop him from getting the engine—

"Nobody's joining anybody," Cleo shot back at him, her voice trembling with rage. Not her best—she probably should have been able to come up with a better opening line in the space between two solar systems—but she was past caring. "This ends now."

Halvorsen sighed, and the echo of it around the cavern almost drowned out Cleo's heartbeat in her ears.

"Oh, Ms. McQueary," he said, shaking his head. "I must say, I'm disappointed. Despite it all, I really hoped that this delusional optimism you seem to have picked up from Billie wouldn't win the day."

Cleo felt the other two draw up closer behind her and Kaleisha, Ros humming with dark energy and Abe readying the rifle with a mechanical whine, and she felt—well, not safe. But not alone either.

"You're the deluded one," she said, trying to draw strength from the river of energy churning just under her awareness. "I know what you're trying to do, and it won't work. We've already foiled your stupid plan."

"I see we're speaking like comic book characters instead of scientists." When Halvorsen raised an eyebrow, the dissonant buzz coming from under his skin slid even more slimily down Cleo's spine. "Tell me, then: What exactly is it that you've foiled, Ms. McQueary?"

Cleo stepped forward, ignoring Kaleisha's sharp intake of breath. Just close enough to see the atrophy in Halvorsen's face, the wrinkles like fault lines and the skin threatening to flake away into dust. His eyes, cold and nearly colorless, haughty but also unfocused, as if he was half somewhere else, straining against something only he could feel. It was too much, Cleo thought, too much deterioration to attribute just to aging or to the weathering of the elements. Halvorsen looked like a husk. Which is what he'd have to be, she supposed, to want what he wanted.

"You want to destroy the boundary between our dimension and the Other Place," Cleo said. "That's been your plan since Launch Day. You tried, nineteen years ago, but your janky powers just dumped you on this planet, I guess, and now you need the dark matter engine to finally punch that hole in the boundary. That's how you're going to get your unlimited energy source."

Halvorsen stepped closer too, sending ripples through Cleo's awareness that felt like rot and burnt copper wires. "Very good."

And then lightning split open Cleo's mind again, and she saw an unfathomable flood of light, a tear in the fabric of reality pouring the contents of one universe into another—

When we break open the Conterminous Dimension, Ms. McQueary—

Stop calling it that. Also, there's no "we"—

—we will have everything we could ever want. Unlimited energy, unlimited potential. Environmental degradation will be a distant memory. Every human will gain abilities like yours and mine. We will be better, stronger, we will reach a new step in our evolution, and we will live in a universe of endless creation and innovation.

But Cleo was watching this so-called progress, and the merging of the two dimensions wasn't creating anything in the Other Place, just destroying, just draining, just pouring out the golden guts of a living, breathing universe until there was no time or life or light left—

You're so fucking stupid, Halvorsen. The Other Place is alive, and you're going to kill it.

Progress always comes at a price.

That's not your price to pay.

Halvorsen's grip on Cleo's mind tightened, and like a spitting hiss in her ear came the words I tried to come to them in peace—

That night in the engine bay? People generally don't call it "peace" when you threaten to take their life force against their will.

No. Nineteen years ago. On the anniversary.

Cleo felt constricted, as if Halvorsen's mind was wrapped around hers like a python, and as she gasped for air there came flashes, bright and chaotic and unbidden, of memories that weren't hers: Halvorsen, swimming through the dark-golden honey of the boundary. Pulling himself straining and screaming into the Other Place. Breaking down the dry wooden wall of a house, coming face-to-face with something that looked like an all-wrong, eldritch Mr. Rogers and, before he could register the human faces behind it staring at him in horror—a terrible lightning strike through his mind and body, a tearing on the molecular level, a falling, a landing on the entirely wrong planet—

All that light, and they hide it away. All that power, and they only use it to play with us like toys.

Cleo swallowed down her nausea. Ah, got it, so you're really just pissed that they kicked your ass.

In the real world, Cleo was knocked off her real feet by a wave of white-hot energy ripping through her mind. She landed on her back, the moss not providing anywhere near as much cushioning as she would have hoped, and groaned as Kaleisha, Ros, and Abe closed in between her and Halvorsen.

"I would have brought the human race salvation!" he shouted, every crack in his voice reverberating around the dark corners of the cave. "And what did I get for my efforts?"

"What you deserved, I'd say," Kaleisha said, raising her hands into fighting position.

Halvorsen laughed again, lower and more unhinged. "Wrong, Ms. Reid. Because the Conterminous Dimension tried to kill me, and I survived. They tried to stop me, and they made me more powerful. They tried to tear me apart, atom by atom, and I still have not succumbed to their entropy."

Cleo's awareness briefly flickered into Halvorsen's body, where his bones and his blood were trembling with effort—oh,she thought, almost realizing—before she was slammed back again by the wall of Halvorsen's mind. She coughed, as if all the hurt could be dislodged from her body as easily as a wayward speck of dust, and hauled herself to her feet.

"I really don't want to hurt you, Ms. McQueary," Halvorsen rasped. "I want us to work together. Because another thing the Conterminous Dimension gave me was time to plan, time to see what must be done, and I need you to help me do it."

"Well, joke's on you." Cleo tried laughing, and almost managed to make it not sound sad. "The dark matter engine, the big key to your plan? It was destroyed along with the ship. Now there's no way you'll ever break into the Other Place."

Halvorsen smiled, slow and smug. Abe shivered and adjusted the rifle on his shoulder.

"You don't have it in you to kill me, Mr. Yang," Halvorsen said, barely glancing at him. "And, Ms. McQueary, I must say I am disappointed, though not surprised."

Cleo dug her nails into her palms. "What are you going on about now?"

"I have to say, letting Billie's contingency plan be destroyed was a maneuver I didn't anticipate from you."

"Yeah, because you're not as smart as you think you are—"

"That's not the case."

Cleo felt Halvorsen wrap himself around her mind again and tried to fight it. But he was too harsh, too probing, and his mind scalded her whenever she tried to push back.

I never needed the engine.

Cleo's veins went cold. What are you—

What I needed was something with a direct connection to the Conterminous Dimension. And that describes the engine, yes, but it also describes you, Ms. McQueary. And so I couldn't let you try and pull off your little coup. I needed you here, with me.

There was a storm building in Cleo's head, rage and fusion and solar wind gathering in her fingertips. You mean—

Yes. Your simulation of Billie sacrificed itself for nothing.

Don't—

I'm learning that you are, sadly, quite gullible. Despite your intelligence, you fall so easily—for an idea, for a pale imitation of a woman, for the notion that you and your friends can save the world like this is just a Saturday morning cartoon.

You're wrong—

Halvorsen's mind collapsed in on her own, and Cleo clenched her fists, reaching again for the Other Place, for the energy running just outside her reach, for anything but the knowledge that Billie—that she hadn't—

And there, there it was again, that tender something like a reassuring squeeze of her hand—

But in the end, Halvorsen echoed around her skull, breaking the feeling, I suppose it's for the best. Because if you won't join me by choice, I'll unfortunately have to force you.

"No!" Cleo shouted, and then all of the electron-spitting anger was flowing out of her, literally out of her hands, and an explosion of white-gold energy was blasting Halvorsen off his feet like a rag doll.

Then a crack, and Kaleisha was on Halvorsen, pinning him to the mossy floor. Abe and Ros quickly followed, ice dripping from Ros's fingers and Abe setting the rifle directly against Halvorsen's head.

Cleo strode forward, tendrils of light still snaking around her fingers. "Give it up, Doctor."

Halvorsen coughed, and that weird, brittle energy in his veins pulsed in time with his stuttering heartbeat. Then he looked at Cleo, seeming barely to notice Abe on top of him or the flecks of snow whipping up all around, and narrowed his eyes.

"Fascinating," he croaked. "You're drawing power from the Conterminous Dimension. And from—"

Then Halvorsen smiled. Cleo was really starting to hate that smile.

"Oh," he said through a flash of teeth. "How sweet."

Halvorsen swiped at the air, and Abe, Ros, and Kaleisha were falling to their knees, clutching their heads in their hands. Cleo reached out to do something, catch them, cushion their falls, anything—but then Halvorsen's real hand was around her real throat, pressing just hard enough to cut off her scream at the source.

"You will join me willingly, after all," he hissed in her face.

It took every ounce of willpower Cleo had not to struggle against Halvorsen's grip. The other three had hit the ground hard, so instead she tried to listen for groans, for any sign that they were getting back up.

"You will help me open the Conterminous Dimension," Halvorsen continued, "because that is the only way you can be reunited with Billie."

"No," Cleo rasped, but it sounded half-hearted even to her ears. What if it was true? What if closing off the Other Place from Halvorsen meant never seeing Billie again? Not the one who had died to stop this, and not the one Cleo was terrified of meeting but more terrified of living without.

"Don't you want to use all that power for good?" Halvorsen squeezed tighter, and the edges of Cleo's vision went red. She sucked in a too-shallow breath and tried to fight it, the mild oxygen deprivation and the not-so-mild temptation to fight back. She tried to focus on something else, anything other than how badly she wanted to give up—and there was a snowflake drifting past Halvorsen's ear, how weird—

"Don't you want the pain to stop?" Halvorsen whispered.

And Cleo felt it again, that feeling like the fingers of someone who loved her on her cheek. She let her eyes flutter shut, just for a moment, and thought again of Billie, whose love had made her stronger, not weaker. Both Billies, one who was counting on her not to fuck up the multiverse and one whose death wasn't going to be in vain, goddamnit,not if Cleo had anything to say about it. Billie, who would be calling her an idiot right now for even considering—

Cleo opened her eyes.

"I'll take the pain," she said. "Bring it on."

And then Halvorsen was knocked aside by a piercing burst of ice, and Cleo stumbled and gasped cold air into her hungry lungs. And there was Ros,frost-twisted hair swirling in the snowy wind they'd whipped up around them, eyes gold and angry and oh, Cleo thought. There it is.

Because there Ros was, just like in Cleo's very first vision, not lost to mindless violence but glowing with righteous rage, firing swaths of the blizzard blowing around them at Halvorsen to drive him back from Cleo. They coated his arms and legs with it, the weight bringing him down to one knee as the freeze climbed up his face.

And then Halvorsen was gritting his teeth and Ros was crying out as he tore through their mind again, but with an echoing burst of thunder Kaleisha had crossed in front of him and socked him straight in the face—

And suddenly Kaleisha had Halvorsen in a headlock, and Abe had the gun in his face again, the threat of blowing his brain into dust deadly clear, and Ros was reaching into their coat pocket for—

NO.

It was almost a scream and almost a hole in the universe, tearing harshly and haphazardly through Cleo's awareness. She doubled over in pain, only vaguely aware of Kaleisha falling to her knees clutching her own head, of Abe and Ros doubling over too, of all their bodies going rigid.

Make your choice, Ms. McQueary. Help me, or find out what grief really is.

Cleo gritted her teeth against the dagger aimed at her mind. Never.

I cracked the Providence like an egg, Ms. McQueary. Do you really want to see what I'm capable of doing to your friends?

Cleo dragged her eyes open and saw Kaleisha, looking at her through tears and bulging veins. Don't hurt them. Please.

The air pulsed with dangerous energy. Your choice, Ms. McQueary.

Kaleisha's mouth was moving, just barely. Do it,she mouthed.

Cleo shook her head, or maybe she was just shaking. What did Kaleisha mean, what was she saying—

Kaleisha's eyes flicked over to Ros—Ros, who had the cure in their coat pocket—and then back to Cleo.

"Distract him."

Ah.

"Fine!" Cleo shouted hoarsely at Halvorsen. "Fine."

Halvorsen grinned, and Kaleisha, Ros, and Abe collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

"Very good."

And then Cleo was nowhere, and everywhere, and Halvorsen was dragging her through the viscous boundary between dimensions. She could feel the fractures in it, the threadbare bits where dark-gold light threatened to leak through, and she hated how fragile it all felt, how close the dam was to breaching.

You feel it? How simple the procedure will be?

Yeah, I feel it. Fuck you.

You need only push, Ms. McQueary. They will let you in.

It was so easy, too easy, to let herself fly forward into the light. The boundary was so thin. So easy.

But there was something else—too easy—something pulling Cleo along so firmly she didn't even have to try. That same hand over her heart, that same swelling, that pounding, that feeling, what was it—

It wrapped her up, drew her in, and it felt like home, felt like fitting into a slot that was made for her, felt like—

Almost like—

***

I'm going to tell you something, Cleo, and I'm going to choose my words carefully. Because, when you're psychically screaming something across the interdimensional void, it's important to get the phrasing right. And because—because I don't know if you're going to believe me. So I'm going to put it as plainly as I can.

I lost myself a long time ago, even before all of us got lost in a more literal sense. Neil taught me how to be a person, and when he was gone I forgot again. For years, I didn't have anything in me but grief and work, numbers and missions, keeping Elijah safe and lying on television. I had nothing I actually cared about. Nothing but the memories.

So when we were taken here it was so easy, too easy, to let those memories go too. I spent these twenty years—or two thousand years, or ten seconds, or whatever—doing what I'd been trying to do ever since Neil died: forget.

And because I forgot myself, and because the rules of the multiverse are weirder than we'll probably ever be able to fathom, I drifted. I drifted out of my body and into the world again, from that space above and between. And eventually, I drifted into you.

And you—you brought me back to myself, with your mouth and your mind and that foolhardy way you have of caring for people until they can't help but care back. You helped me remember my name, and how to want something other than oblivion, and that I'm allowed to love ideas and stars and people who smile bigger than the space between solar systems. And I do, Cleo, I love you. It's stupid how much I love you. Except it's not stupid at all, because loving the light in the darkness is the only thing in this universe that makes any goddamn sense.

And I'm not just saying that because the fate of another universe depends on it. I mean, I am. But it's also true. I hope you can feel that. You've gotten so much better at feeling.

So feel it. Reach out for it. Reach out for me, Cleo, you're so close.

***

Cleo's eyes flew open, the light from two dimensions colliding only burning her retinas a little.

—almost like Billie.

And it wasn't, couldn't be, she refused to let herself believe it was. But she knew what love felt like, because love felt like Billie, and someone, somewhere, was radiating so much love through the barrier that Cleo could follow the trail, right up to the gap she knew she had to widen just so—

And suddenly, Cleo saw the way.

A universe away, some part of her made eye contact with Ros, where they were playing dead on the ground behind Halvorsen. Cleo sent out those curling feelers of dark energy, and Ros felt it even through the space between them—they didn't have to be touching after all, Cleo realized, because of that golden web connecting everything—and the river poured through her into Ros.

Can you hold it?they mouthed.

And with the only energy left in her bones, Cleo nodded, and mouthed back:

Three.

From the deepest pocket of their coat, Ros drew a tiny syringe. Cleo stretched out in her mind for Kaleisha, for the energy coursing through her, and felt an acknowledgment. Cleo reached for Abe, linking up with him to complete their circle. She gave herself a split second to marvel at the feeling of holding hands with her friends across space and time, at the feeling of raw power and electricity and love coursing through them, at the sense that they could hear her thoughts and she theirs, so when she envisioned what they had to do, she knew that each of them saw it too.

Two.

Cleo reached out, back into the pulsing boundary, with some other part of herself. And wherever she was, there was another hand reaching through the door. Could it really be a hand? Could it really be—

Cleo grabbed on to it, but it couldn't really be Billie because it wasn't, even though that was exactly what she'd always imagined how Billie's fingers would feel wrapped around her own—

One.

And Kaleisha bent the fabric of the world, only this time she creased past the edge of what was and gathered up what was beyond in her hands, a wave of pure spacetime bursting out of her, enough to hold the dimensions apart and in place, for now—

And Cleo felt herself and Ros flowing up and into the Other Place, and where there had always only been strands of dark matter there was now an entire, endless tapestry—

And then, with a blinding flash of light, it opened.