The ripe scent of flowers, underlaid with cut grass and muddy puddles, struck Caleb as they exited the Nowhere. The air was humid and thick with birdsong. A park.
He dropped to the ground, not caring how wet it was, and then snapped his head back up. He was so relieved not to have killed both of them that he hadn’t checked where they’d landed. “Is this Des Moines?”
With some reluctance, Aidan turned his attention away from Caleb and toward the tablet he’d stolen from Caleb’s double. The dappled sunlight of the park painted vivid reddish purple shadows on his bare forearms as he tapped at the screen. With his black hair and pale skin stark against the rich autumn color, Aidan might have been cut out of some other image and collaged against the background. Staring up at him made the whole thing even more dreamlike.
It had been a long time since either of them had been outside.
Caleb was glad to be spared the sight of himself. His brain felt like sludge. He could lie down on the squishy, lumpy ground and fall asleep right now, and it probably showed.
Aidan was nodding at the screen. “We’re not far. Nice work.”
“I was supposed to land us at his door.”
“Close enough. Let’s find you something to eat before you pass out.”
Aidan didn’t ask him what he wanted, which was just as well because Caleb wouldn’t have known what to say. Caleb grasped Aidan’s extended hand and stood up. His vision only blacked out for a second, and he stayed upright. Not bad. His jeans were muddy, but that was his own damn fault.
The walk dragged on for ages, at least in his mind. Concrete sidewalks, manicured lawns, brick buildings, blue skies, and finally a dim, wood-paneled basement. They could be in the real Des Moines, for all he knew. The plastic-covered menu in his hands was printed in English and the prices of the diner fare were listed in dollars.
A server with her hair coming loose from a plastic clip and a black apron around her waist approached their booth. Caleb ordered a burger and fries, too tired to examine the menu beyond that. It was only after the server left that Caleb realized she’d said good morning. They’d changed time zones; the sun had been such a shock that he hadn’t thought about whether it was morning or evening. This place must have just opened for the day, since none of the other tables were occupied.
She probably thought he had a hangover. Close enough to the truth.
While the server was gone, Aidan discreetly shuffled through the cash he’d stolen, linen paper tinged with familiar green. Caleb hoped it was the right currency for wherever they were.
“We’re good for it,” Aidan said, shoving the cash out of sight.
“You’re sure? There’s a chance this is the wrong Des Moines.”
“I’m sure,” Aidan said, tilting his head at something behind Caleb.
The server came back to pour coffee for both of them. Aidan must have ordered it. Caleb was only absorbing fifty percent of what was happening around him. The coffee was bitter but welcome. When the server left, Caleb twisted in his seat, the cracked vinyl scratching against his jeans.
A collection of framed photos and posters covered the wood paneling, some catching the glare from the bar’s haphazardly hung red and yellow lights. Aidan was studying the largest, most central poster, one of a young woman smiling and standing behind a podium with a microphone. She was wearing a short-sleeved blue dress, a garment intended for an upscale office rather than a gala. Her black hair was pinned back neatly. The photo was bordered in white and had the air of a historic image, something that might once have accompanied a news article. The caption read Li Xiuying arrives in New York, Tuesday, July 26, 2039 at 17:35:04.
Caleb needed more coffee, because that didn’t make any sense. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”
Aidan’s eyes lit up and he shook his head.
Oh. It was a historic image. Just not their history.
The revelation didn’t have the same punch as seeing his own face. The strangeness crept up on him. It was one thing to live and work in a clandestine facility in space, and then to encounter a funhouse mirror version of that place. Facility 17 was supposed to be weird. But that park, those streets, this shabby little diner—all of it belonged to another reality.
Caleb took another gulp of coffee. It didn’t help.
“I know, right?” Aidan said.
“I thought I needed to lie down before,” Caleb said.
“I can’t tell if I wish it were weirder and more obvious, or if that’s the wrong thing to wish for,” Aidan mused. He trained his gaze on the poster again. “More importantly, can you think of a lot of historical events that get dated down to the second?”
“No. There’s no reason to record that,” Caleb said, and then it dawned on him, “unless she came from somewhere far away only a few seconds before that.”
“Yeah. And the caption says arrives, like that’s noteworthy in and of itself. She has to be a runner. I can’t think of a lot of establishments in our world that would put up celebratory posters of runners.”
“If you can’t think of them, they don’t exist.”
“Yeah,” Aidan said. “In our reality, Quint was desperate to develop a suppressant that could disable runners. In this reality, they figured out how to give the ability to people who weren’t born with it.”
“Different priorities,” Caleb said. “Though Quint would probably love to do that, too.”
“He wants it for himself,” Aidan said. “Not for anyone else. Not unless he could control it and profit from it.”
“He’d find a way.”
“He won’t,” Aidan said.
Their food arrived, briefly interrupting their conversation while Caleb demolished his whole burger without really tasting it. He was still hungry when he finished. When he looked up, Aidan was sipping coffee and staring at—no, not the poster. Aidan smiled ruefully at Caleb and pushed his plate across the table. The burger was untouched. He hadn’t even eaten a fry.
This reality was backwards and upside-down in more than one way. Usually it was Caleb sitting in silence, waiting for Aidan to finish the frozen burrito or whatever he’d pulled out of Caleb’s freezer in the middle of the night. Caleb kept his freezer stocked. He kept clean sheets and extra pillows on hand, too. Ice packs, bandages, pain pills. Aidan showed up erratically, and more often than not, he showed up in need.
In his more resentful moments, woken up in the middle of the night by the ding of his microwave, Caleb had grumbled to himself that Aidan would never return the favor. Aidan didn’t have a place of his own, and even if he did, Caleb couldn’t teleport into it at odd hours. The give-and-take of their relationship would always be Caleb giving and Aidan taking.
But this marked the third time Aidan had given him food without being asked. Caleb thought of Aidan offering him a hand up in the park, and of the hours of patience he’d demonstrated while teaching Caleb to get in and out of the Nowhere on command. He was a good teacher.
A good kisser, too.
Fuck. A good friend, that was what Caleb should be thinking. That kiss hadn’t been real for either of them, no matter how clearly he could remember the warmth of Aidan’s mouth.
The food, though, that was real. It was as solid a proof of friendship as anyone could ask for, and Caleb hadn’t had to ask for it at all. This friendship they’d had their whole lives was precious, and not worth risking for the sake of one kiss.
“Thanks,” Caleb said, picking up Aidan’s burger and trying hard not to want anything else.
Oz Lewis lived in a long, low, uninspiring strip of an apartment building surrounded by an ocean of parking lot. The four-lane road outside was dotted with similar buildings, one of which was a motel. Caleb fell asleep on the bus ride there and Aidan had to shake him awake when they arrived.
“Wait, this is where he lives?” Caleb asked as they descended to the buckled sidewalk, stepping between puddles. The motel’s molded plastic sign had almost no color left in its painted lettering. “Or are we stopping here? Because normally I’d object, but I considered taking a nap on the ground earlier, so if it’s reasonably clean, then it’s fine.”
“Unless you have the energy to jump us into a five-star hotel, this is what our cash gets us,” Aidan said. “But coincidentally, yeah, Oz lives a few buildings down from this one.”
Caleb cast a glance around, taking in the dented cars in the parking lot and the cinderblock apartment complexes across the road.
“It’s not what I expected either,” Aidan said as they walked to the reception desk. “But the tablet said Quint Services doesn’t exist here, so he’s not rich. That’s good for us. It means he’ll be more interested in our offer. But that can wait—you should rest.”
Caleb needed to be able to jump them away from Oz just in case he turned out to be hostile. Aidan didn’t mention that. It wasn’t a restful thought.
“It’s not check-in yet,” said the woman at the desk without looking at them. Her voice creaked like she hadn’t spoken in a while. A tablet on her desk was playing media of some kind. They must have interrupted her.
“Is there anything available right now?” Aidan asked.
She did glance up then, and she studied the two of them for a moment. Caleb’s attention—what was left of it—was on the peeling grey-and-green wallpaper and he didn’t notice. He slouched, his hands in his pockets. To Aidan, he looked pale and tired, but to a stranger, he must look disheveled and distracted, maybe high.
Beautiful, regardless.
The clerk smirked at Aidan.
She thought they were here to fuck.
It was a logical assumption on her part. Aidan was desperate for a motel room in the middle of the day, and he wasn’t alone. An affair made a lot more sense than the truth.
Caleb had kissed him to fool Heath. This was minor in comparison, and lying in the service of a goal had never bothered him before.
He wished it wasn’t a lie.
Aidan leaned forward, sliding another bill across the counter. “Please,” he said, and found his mouth had gone dry. It came out quiet and conspiratorial. “We can’t wait.”
“Yeah, I bet you can’t,” she said. She slipped the extra bill into her pocket and tossed a heavy key ring at him. “Room 202. Keep it down.”
“Uh,” Aidan said, before coming to the blessed realization that he didn’t have to say anything in response. He spun on his heel and reached for Caleb. He intended to tap him to get his attention but switched, at the last minute, to draping his arm over Caleb’s shoulders.
The move was awkward and unconvincing—please let the clerk be watching her show instead of us—until Caleb leaned into him, not startled, but content.
“Did she say ‘keep it down’?” Caleb asked as Aidan pushed open the glass door.
“Yeah,” Aidan said, scorched with guilt everywhere they were touching. Caleb had told him to forget their kiss and here he was maneuvering them into another act.
Caleb twisted, caught her eye—she was watching them, shit—and winked. Then he grabbed Aidan around the waist and hustled them out the door and up the exterior stairs to the balcony before Aidan could respond.
Aidan jammed the key into the lock and gave the knob a violent turn. The room was dark inside, a vertical slit in the blinds on the opposite wall the only source of light. Aidan flipped the lightswitch to reveal faded orange carpet and pink walls. There was a similarly garish painting of a sunset bolted to the wall above the bed. The room was small and drab, and the remainder of its dented, sagging furnishings fit right in: two night stands, an armchair in the corner and a screen on the wall. Ugly as it was, the room was orderly, and when Aidan pulled the covers on the bed back, the sheets were scratchy but they smelled like detergent. Caleb had said cleanliness was his only requirement.
Caleb stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind himself, keeping his hands behind his back. “Hey, you’re not mad, right? It was just a dumb impulse. A joke.”
“Ha, ha,” Aidan said. Hilarious, the idea of the two of them sleeping together. “And the kiss was a joke, too.”
“No! The kiss was the only thing I could think of at the time. And it worked.”
“You said you wanted to forget it, which is hard to do if you keep acting this way.”
“But you were willing to let that clerk think we were—” Caleb paused, swallowed, and if the room weren’t so goddamn dim and pink, Aidan would be able to tell if he was blushing.
“I don’t see how it’s different,” Caleb finished. After a hesitation, he crossed the room to sit on the bed next to Aidan.
“It’s one thing to distract people or cover our tracks when we have to. It’s another thing entirely to make a game out of it,” Aidan said. It was a bullshit distinction, but he couldn’t say every time you flirt with me as a joke, I die a little. That would lead them into the minefield of his feelings, a place he preferred never to tread.
“Okay,” Caleb said. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
Winning the argument felt a whole lot like losing the argument. Aidan wanted to blurt no you should definitely do it again, but that would be charging right into the minefield. So instead he said, “It’s fine. You should rest.”
“What are you gonna do?” Caleb asked, like he’d forgotten that Aidan wasn’t tired. He gave the dull confines of the motel room a bewildered glance. There wasn’t anything to do here except sleep or fuck, and they’d already firmly established that Aidan wouldn’t be doing either.
Aidan lifted the stolen tablet. “Find out whatever I can about Oz.”
“That’s a good idea,” Caleb said, yawning.
Aidan removed himself to the armchair in the corner so Caleb could stretch out. He typed “Oz Lewis” into the tablet’s search engine and then rested it in his lap. The results fuzzed out of focus while he wondered, for a moment, if he’d been too harsh on Caleb.
Caleb had kissed him, and seized the opportunity to embrace him in front of the clerk, and gotten flustered several times when sex came up, or when they had to touch. They knew for sure that his double was attracted to men. Maybe Caleb was curious.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Caleb kissed him again, even as a joke or an experiment. Sure, it would break his heart later, but it would feel good in the moment. There was precious little of that in his life now and the future didn’t hold much promise. He’d have to disappear after taking down Quint. Even if they succeeded, Aidan was still a hated public figure, and Caleb would never be safe while he was around.
If he was planning to blow up his life anyway, why not take a little stroll through that minefield? What was he afraid of? It wasn’t concern for Caleb stopping him. Caleb had made clear that he didn’t have any real feelings for Aidan. Besides, he’d never had any trouble picking up the pieces after his girlfriends left. He’d be fine. He always was.
Aidan wouldn’t be, but that didn’t matter. Next time Caleb showed any inclination to kiss him, Aidan would volunteer for that experiment.
Oz Lewis didn’t answer when they buzzed the main door of his apartment complex, but since it was six in the evening, two of his neighbors were coming home from work and Aidan and Caleb were able to slip inside. They found the door to 1E quickly, but had to knock four times before someone yelled “What?” from inside.
“Oz Lewis?” Aidan asked.
“Who’s asking?”
“You don’t know us, but I’m Aidan and my friend’s name is Caleb,” Aidan said to the door. He’d been less on guard against cameras in this reality, but he assumed there was one. There was always a camera somewhere. “We were hoping to talk to you.”
Oz cracked the door open and peered out. “About what?”
“We have a proposal. We need your help.”
Oz squinted, skeptical, and then opened the door all the way. He walked back into his apartment without inviting them in.
Caleb touched Aidan’s hand, an unspoken question in his expression, and Aidan shrugged. It wasn’t the ideal welcome, but they didn’t need Oz to be nice.
He stepped into the apartment, a studio that was hard to see because all the blinds were drawn and the only light came from the screen of the wall display and the tablet in Oz’s lap. He’d dropped into a slouch in the apartment’s only chair, and in the blue light from the screen, he was even schlubbier in person than in his photo. He clearly hadn't shaved or showered in a few days, since he had the beginnings of a wispy blond beard and his long bangs were clumped into greasy ropes.
The room was stifling and stale, the overripe kitchen trash pervading the air. Once Aidan’s eyes adjusted, he could see that there were empty beer cans and old food wrappers littering the kitchenette’s counters, and Oz’s armchair was surrounded as well. Other than the trash, the apartment was stark, with nothing on the walls and very little furniture. Oz didn’t have a bed, only a mattress on the floor. It was bare except for a wrinkled top sheet and a black-and-white plaid blanket piled in the middle. Wadded-up tissues dotted the grey carpet around the mattress. Aidan shouldn’t judge, since he mostly wandered from friend’s couch to friend’s couch, but still.
The drama playing on the wall display was the same one the motel clerk had been watching that morning. Funny that daytime soap operas were recognizable even in alternate realities.
“What do you want?” Oz asked. He didn’t pause the drama or look up from the tablet in his lap.
Shit, this was already going badly. Aidan should have made Caleb do this part. Caleb could have used his superpower of figuring out what people wanted. He was charismatic and warm. People were happy to do what he said just to please him. Without him, Aidan couldn’t have persuaded terrified, hunted runners to band together into a union to protect themselves—even when it was obviously the sanest, most logical course of action.
If Aidan were going to stick around after they were done with Quint, which he wasn’t, he might try to get Caleb to come back to the Union.
How would Caleb persuade Oz? He’d use his beautiful face, the fucking cheat. Aidan couldn’t do that, but he tried to give a friendly smile.
“Like I said, we need your help.” He spread his hands. He felt awkward standing in the middle of Oz’s apartment, but there was no other furniture, and given the state of things, he wouldn’t have wanted to sit down. “It’s going to sound strange, what I’m about to say next.”
Oz looked up at last, blinking at them. He had startlingly blue eyes. There was an Oswin Lewis Quint double under there somewhere.
Oz gestured around the dark apartment, with its piles of dirty dishes and its rats’ nest of trash. “How could you possibly need my help with anything? Are you looking to get yourselves deeper in debt?”
“Do you know about the Nowhere?” Aidan asked.
“Yeah, obviously.”
“And do you know it can be used to travel to other realities? Worlds like this one, but not quite?”
“Get the fuck out,” Oz said, and Aidan couldn't tell if he was expressing shock or a genuine demand.
“I’m serious.”
“Did I not get enough sleep last night? Is this a prank?”
Aidan, having already expressed his seriousness, said nothing.
“It’s not a joke,” Caleb said. “And the reason we need your help is because you look just like someone in our world who's very powerful. A trillionaire named Oswin Lewis Quint.”
“Ugh,” Oz said. “I stopped using that asshole’s last name the minute he left my mom and took all our money.”
Aidan glanced at Caleb, wondering if he knew anything about Quint’s family life, but Caleb was at a loss. He nodded sympathetically and said, “You’re different people with different lives. I met my own double and it was disconcerting.”
Aidan wondered if Caleb was extending the sympathy in his voice to himself. Was he reassuring himself with that “you’re different people” line?
Oz picked up a bowl of instant noodles from the floor by his chair, a half-congealed dish Aidan had assumed was abandoned, and poked at it with a plastic fork. “Yeah, whatever. I don’t believe you yet, but I don’t have a whole lot else going on. Keep talking. Tell me your amazing plan.”
Caleb continued gamely. “Like I said, you’re not the same person. But you look the same, and that’s what we need. Your double has, unfortunately, done a lot of unethical things. We’re hoping you can help us by posing as him.”
Aidan stepped in. “The police haven’t moved to arrest Quint, despite significant evidence exposed in the press. We need to do something that will get their attention. If you could publicly confess to and apologize for what your double did, we think it could force the police to arrest him. As soon as he’s sentenced, we’ll switch you with him. He’ll go to prison and you’ll be free.”
“Where’s he gonna be, while I’m posing as him?”
“We’ll take care of that,” Aidan said quickly, and Caleb’s composure slipped. He paled. Aidan continued, “Not with murder or anything, don't worry. We’re just going to keep him somewhere safe for a while.”
“You honestly think this scam will work?”
“I think it’s worth a try,” Aidan said. “This guy’s rich and powerful. It's not going to be easy to take him down. But we might be able to catch him by surprise. Most people in our world don’t know this world exists.”
“What did he do? This guy who looks like me?”
Caleb stayed quiet just long enough for Aidan to realize that he had to be the one to answer this question. He didn’t want to play up his victimhood, so he described his imprisonment and torture as briefly and clinically as possible. He imagined reading a bulleted list: abduction, starvation, cell in space, unauthorized experiments, violation of bodily integrity.
“Wait, people don’t respect runners where you come from?” Oz asked.
“They do here?” Aidan asked, equally puzzled.
“Yeah, of course. They’re heroes. Do you know how much better they’ve made the world? Can you even imagine life without them?”
Aidan exchanged a glance with Caleb. “You don’t think of them as untrustworthy criminals? People who can’t be made to obey the law?”
“What? No! We wouldn’t even have space elevators or life in orbit without runners. They save lives all the time. What the fuck is wrong with wherever you come from?”
“I wish I’d grown up somewhere like this,” Aidan said.
“So this amazing plan,” Oz said. “The one part we haven’t covered is what’s in it for me.”
“Because righting a wrong isn’t enticing enough,” Caleb said dryly.
“We can pay you,” Aidan said. “Whatever’s left of Quint’s fortune when we’re done, which will be significant. Our currency’s different from yours but I assume rare metals like gold still have value here. That kind of payment can be arranged.”
“Well,” Oz said, putting aside his bowl of noodles and standing up. “You should have led with that.”