Emma. Eric—his essence, that color—suddenly surged. We’re already free, because we can choose.
NO NO NO. The whisper-man’s panic was electric. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Emma. The cobalt edged with a glister of gold that was Eric shone so bright he could’ve been the deep waters of Superior at sunrise, a Now, the promise of a different world—and maybe he was all those and more: not only himself but what endures in memory and across times. Emma, no matter what …
NO, I WILL GIVE BACK THE BOY! PULL ME THROUGH AND I WILL—
Keep going, Emma. Find your Now. Find a way out.
No, Eric, she thought. We can’t. It will still—
Go where you can, where you have the best shot …
NO NO NO NO—
And don’t listen to it, Emma. We have the power to choose, and this is my choice. Eric was calm, his thoughts like a long drink of cool water on a desperately hot day. I choose for you.
Eric, don’t. In that last instant, she finally sensed what he meant to do. Wait!
Don’t look back, Emma—and then …
He let go.
EMMA
Where I Belong
NO! SHE MADE a grab, reaching out with her mind, her hand, her will—and missed.
That was enough to break them. Her hold on Rima slipped, and then they were all spinning away from one another in streamers of light, like falling stars. In response, the Dark Passages roiled, swelling as the darkness converged in a tidal surge over Rima, so faint, and the rainbow-swirl that was Eric locked in his fatal embrace with Casey and the whisper-man. The Dark Passages rolled over and swallowed them up, and then she just couldn’t see them anymore. The colors died and, with them, Eric’s voice. The whisper-man’s howls cut out, and then there was nothing: no Casey, no Rima. No Eric.
She tried to stop, slow down, but the cynosure wouldn’t let her. Lens and beacon, focus—and a path now, one she couldn’t leave. Later, she thought Eric himself gave her that one final push as he broke away, so she wouldn’t be able to stop even if she knew how. But she didn’t, and now these beings were swinging around. Sniffing her out. She could feel them noticing the beacon from the galaxy pendant, and knew she was almost out of time.
Got to get out. But how? Where could she go? If these really were doors to other Nows, then she—or a piece of her, another version—must exist in each. She belonged everywhere and nowhere. Would she, on her own, break a Now to pieces? What would happen if she met up with or even slipped into herself in another Now?
Can I do that? Maybe. She was different. The whisper-man said so; it had taken her while she was awake, dropping her into her many alters, because she was a creation with no set path.
Then put me where I belong, she thought fiercely. She felt the cynosure crackle with a new and vicious heat. Drop me into the Now where I’ll find them again: Eric and Casey and Rima and Bode and—
PART SIX
THE SIGN OF SURE
EMMA
Elizabeth
1
“ELIZABETH.” A SLIGHT buzz to the z. Whoever this man was, he had a lisp, so the name seemed to have been mouthed by a rattlesnake: Elisssabess. A pause. “Elizabeth?”
“Wh-what?” The word burred on her tongue, slow and hesitant. She sounded like a Little Mommy My Very Real Baby Doll with a faulty motherboard. Or HAL, from 2001, getting his memory banks yanked. “Whaaat?”
The same man said, “Elizabeth, is that you? Can you hear me?”
“H-hear?” She felt the sounds as much as she heard them, a kind of fading in and out, there and gone, as if her brain were an ancient radio and she had to feather the knob to get the scratchy broadcast bounced halfway around the world to gel. She realized, belatedly, that she was standing. Swaying, actually. Worn wool chafed her bare feet. A sheet, or maybe a very long nightgown, clung to her legs, chest, and back. Her skin, hot and damp, smelled sour, and her lank hair reeked of sweat and grime. Bad dream? Her chest, her stomach, the inside of her skull … felt very strange: flat and hollow, a limp glove of a girl—all skin, no innards. The last time she’d felt this wan and washed-out was when she was ten and coming out of anesthesia after the surgeons put in her plates. Then, her mind had slowly bled back into her body, the blood inching through to plump up arteries and veins and the pink sponge of her brain and guts, the way air leaked into the nooks and crannies of a deflated Macy’s Day Parade balloon. I’ve been sick? Where was she?
“Who’s Eliz … I’m …” She lost the thread of the question and her answer, the words unraveling on her tongue. Her head ached. Eyes watering with pain, she tried to bring the world into focus, but it was foggy and fuzzy, a chaotic blur seen through a broken kaleidoscope, the colored bits of glass refusing to arrange themselves into patterns. The only thing she recognized with any clarity was a yawning chasm, an inky hole at the center of her vision. The edges of the gap wavered, as if the world around it was only an uncertain outline and just now on the verge of becoming.
That must be the way I came in. She was in a new Now? The hard eye of her titanium skull plate burned. Wincing, she pressed the heel of her left hand to her forehead, then heard herself drag in a sickly gasp. No gash. She pressed harder, her fingers searching through muscle and skin. Wait a minute, where’s—
“Now, now, are you in pain?” A different voice, female, much clearer, the static starting to fade. The words were clipped, a little dry. “Another of your headaches?”
Oh God. Her heart iced. Was there an accent? No, you’re imagining things; this is House, up to its old tricks. With a fresh blast of panic, she pressed harder, using the fingers of her left hand and the heel of her right because she was … clutching something, a pen or stick or maybe a fork. She couldn’t tell, but for whatever reason, she didn’t relax her grip; felt as if that was the wrong thing to do. Where is it, where is it? It had to be there. She felt the plate burning in her mind. Give her a pen and she could ink its exact margins, every curve, even where the screws were. But under her fingers there was only skin and muscle and bone.
No plate. How can that be? I feel it. Gasping, she fought a rising tide of black horror as she ran her fingers over the rest of her scalp. No scars. But I had them just a few seconds ago.
“Elizabeth? You are there, yes?” The guy with the whisper-man lisp again, right in front, behind that hole in her vision. God, if she hadn’t just seen the thing die—with Eric and Casey and Rima, and Eric, oh Eric—she’d have sworn she pulled that monster through with her. “Come now, no need for a fuss. Let’s all be calm, shall we?”