Then, in the midst of the cyclone, Porter appears at my side, orange cap and all. He seizes my wrist. We vanish from Eremus.
CHAPTER 25
TRUTH
We land face down in my garden. Porter’s hand still clutches my wrist. The fountain he built me gurgles in the background. I don’t even realize I’m crying until he gathers me up into his arms, his weathered hands smoothing my hair from my forehead.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he says, rocking me. Sincere guilt coats his words. They tremble on his cigar breath. “I am so sorry. I had no idea Gesh would retaliate so soon. I knew he would send a Descender to derail us at some point, but not this soon. Not after only one mission.”
I breathe in the faint cigar smoke on his collar, and it calms me. I’m safe now, in my garden, hidden away where the other Descenders can’t find me. Why hadn’t I thought to leave Eremus and step below? What if Porter hadn’t been there?
He keeps rocking me. I cling to him like a child.
When I’ve calmed down enough to form words, I ask, “Why did their souls look like smoke?”
He rests his cheek against my forehead. His stubble stings my skin. “Souls can take on many forms in Limbo. They can trick you into perceiving them as all sorts of things. The smoke is just one of a Descender’s more formidable forms. Very difficult to fight against smoke. But you did so well. I felt the surge of energy across Limbo and knew right away what happened. I’m sorry I left you alone. I should’ve been with you, protecting you.”
He holds me there, our breathing in unison.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he says after a while, mostly to himself. “It should’ve taken several missions for Gesh to figure out you were traveling again.” He pauses, his eyes squinting at some unseen thing in the horizonless, black distance. “He can’t have known we were behind the Raphael discovery. He would’ve suspected, yes, but he would’ve waited until he saw a pattern. Until he had proof. He wouldn’t have sent a Descender after the first time. He wouldn’t have burned up a soulmark on a hunch. Not unless...”
There’s a sharp inhale of breath through his nose, and I feel his shoulders stiffen.
I lift my chin to look at him. “What?”
His eyes flick to mine. “Not unless someone told him you were traveling.”
“But no one else knows. You and I are the only ones who…” The words crumble to dust in my mouth. All the breath seeps from my body, leaving my gut feeling like a yawning, sickening pit.
Blue.
Blue knew I was near the Raphael in 1961. Blue knew I was with the Carters in 1876.
“My God,” I say, pushing away from Porter’s arms. “It’s Nick. Jack. Heath. Whatever his name is. He’s a reincarnated Transcender like me, isn’t he?”
Porter’s lips part. Fear slants across his brow. “You saw him again?”
“Answer my question.”
He rubs his pinky knuckle with his thumb. “Alex, listen to me. He wasn’t supposed to be there. In all my research, not one record says he went with the Carters that night–”
I scramble to my feet. “You son of a bitch,” I say, shaking my head, glowering at him. Porter winces, the words piercing his chest like bullets. “How could you not tell me?”
He pushes himself up, his hands palm-out like he’s trying to calm an unruly colt. “There are several reasons why I kept it from you. Several very worthy reasons–”
“You told me I was the only one. The only soul Flemming reincarnated. Why would you lie about that?” My voice skips a few octaves. “You said you weren’t a liar.”
“I didn’t think you would run into him. At least not–”
“How many are there?” I demand. “How many souls did Flemming reincarnate?”
“Only two.” When I scowl at him again, he quickly adds, “It’s the truth. When Flemming intercepted your soul in Polestar, he intercepted this other one as well. Your soulmarks were born at the same time. Flemming set you up as a team. He placed your Newlives in the same eras, the same vicinities. He wove your timelines together.” Porter sighs and drops his hands. “You used to be partners at AIDA. You worked on the same missions.”
My brow is drawn down tight. “Is that why it felt like I knew him when we first met in Chicago? When I sat with him in the alley, and it felt like I recognized him? I knew his face. His eyes. I had the same feeling when I first saw you in the cafe.”
“Yes, most likely. But there’s more.” Porter frowns, looking apologetic. “Your connection to him is stronger than your connection to me. When Flemming reincarnated you at the same time, it fused your souls together. I can’t explain why or how, but when you descend, he descends, and vice versa. It’s why your travels have always seemed so random in the past. At times, you were descending because you experienced déjà vu. The cat. The Ferris wheel. What you didn’t realize was that you were also pulling him along with you. You just didn’t see him. You didn’t know he was there. The other times you descended, when there seemed to be no explanation at all, those were times when he experienced déjà vu. He took you with him to the ship crossing the Atlantic. To Jamestown. Your souls are universally linked across time. When you die, he dies. When he is reborn, you are reborn. He is your soul mate in the very literal sense of the word. That is why you felt so connected to him in 1927, and that is why I tried to keep you from meeting him.”
Angry tears form in my eyes as I try to make sense of it all. Why would Porter betray me like this? “Why didn’t you tell me this when I came back from Chicago?”
“I didn’t know the boy you met was him.”
“But you saw him. You were inside my head. You saw what he looked like.”
“Alex, you have to understand. When I knew him at AIDA, he looked very different. As far as I was concerned, the boy you met in 1927 could have been any boy. I sent you back to erase your impact on that random boy’s life. Had I known that boy was your partner, a Transcender from Base Life, I wouldn’t have bothered. Your impact on him wouldn’t have mattered. Had I known it was him, I wouldn’t have made you redo it. I wouldn’t have put you through all that pain.”
“But you knew it was him when I came back from 1961,” I say. “You knew then. You told me it was just my imagination. That I was grieving. You made me feel like I was going crazy.”
“I didn’t want you to get too attached. Don’t you see? By that time it was too late. You’d already formed an attachment to him. I had to make you believe ‘Nick’ from 1927 was just a regular boy from the past. That he was gone. That way you wouldn’t be obsessed with finding him each time you descended. You would focus on your missions. You wouldn’t be distracted.”
“But I was distracted.” This time I scream the words. Full volume. There isn’t an echo. “By not telling me, it made me even more distracted.”
“You wouldn’t have been if things had gone my way. You weren’t supposed to break down on that road in 1961. He wasn’t supposed to be with the Carters during that robbery. I picked those missions specifically. I didn’t want you running into him again.”
I let out a short, dry laugh. “Well, you didn’t do a very good job, did you?”
He wipes the corners of his mouth with shaking fingers. “No, I didn’t. I underestimated Gesh.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “What do you mean?”
He sighs. He looks haggard. “Your partner has defects, just like you. When you descend into a host body, you can only remember your Base Life and your mission, right? You retain some residuals and muscle memory, but you can’t remember the particulars of that past life. You can’t remember your parents, your friends, your likes, dislikes. Your partner is the exact opposite. When he descends, he can’t remember his Base Life. He can’t remember his mission. He can only remember his past life. Which made him even less valuable to Gesh than you were. What good is a Descender who can’t remember his mission?”