EIGHT

Zack Trillinger had earned enough screaming condemnation in his life to know that his wisecracks weren’t always appreciated. His mother had called it a “cheek problem.” He couldn’t help himself. Serious people brought out the Bugs Bunny in him, and no amount of blowback could get him to temper his snark. On a day like today, when taxis flew through the air and actresses moved at the speed of missiles, it seemed especially important to embrace the scathing absurdity of the universe, no matter who it bothered.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t prepared for the wrath of Amanda Given, a woman who was uptight even on good days, and who was still reeling from the white-specked lunacy on her skin. It took only twenty-nine seconds of mutual acquaintance for her hand problem to meet his cheek problem. She slapped him hard enough to turn his whole body.

“You shut your mouth,” she hissed, her voice wavering between fury and tears. “I don’t need that from you. You hear me?”

Shell-shocked, Zack held his red and stinging face. “Okay.”

“I don’t need that.”

“I understand.”

“Not today.”

“I know,” he said. “It was a bad joke. It was in poor taste. I’m sorry.”

The moment Erin and Beatrice left him alone with his three fellow refugees, Zack had finally revealed his name. He’d introduced himself to them one by one, signing each handshake with an appropriately stupid gag, a half witticism. Upon hearing David’s accent, he said. “G’day, mate.” To Mia, he proposed that OMGWTF?! should be their new default greeting.

With Amanda, his first impulse was to offer some wordplay bouquet about how she looked pretty intense and intensely pretty, but then bashfully nixed the idea. The moment he spotted her golden cross necklace, his comedy writers jumped to plan B.

“Where’s your messiah now?” he’d brayed, in a passable Edward G. Robinson impression.

Before either of them knew what was happening, her right hand sprung like a cobra and struck him. Amanda didn’t need to see the gaping horror on Mia’s face to know that she’d overreacted. Worse, she realized she might have infected Zack with whatever disease she now carried.

David rose from his chair and raised his palms in nervous diplomacy. “Okay, look, we’re all in a state of disarray right now . . .”

“South California,” Zack uttered.

“What?”

Zack resumed his stance in the doorway, hugging his sketchbook with vacant anguish. “We’re in the state of South California. It split in 1940 when the population got too big for Senate representation. They cut the line right below San Jose. I learned this downtown, in a bookstore called Scribbles.”

When Erin Salgado had traced the final signal to Zack, he’d been standing in the reference section, eliciting curious stares from his fellow browsers. It was odd enough to see a grown man gawk in stupor at the pages of a children’s atlas, but this man wore a gaping tear on his left shoulder and a woman’s handbag on his right. Both the bag and the tear were the personal effects of one Hannah Given.

“Zack!”

The shout came from the hallway. Zack turned around just in time to feel wet hair, soft flesh, and terry cloth pressed against him.

He awkwardly returned Hannah’s hug. “Hey, there you are. Speedy McLeave-a-Guy. You know, I’m used to women running away from me, but not at ninety miles an hour.”

She pulled away from him. “What are you talking about?”

Amanda blinked at them in bafflement. “Wait. How do you two know each other?”

“This is the guy I was telling you about. We met at the marina.” Hannah turned back to Zack. “What do you mean ninety miles an hour?”

“You don’t remember what happened?”

“I remember everything going all blue and super-slow.”

“No, you went all red and super-fast. You buzzed around the bench like a hornet on crack, talking so quickly I couldn’t understand you. You ripped my sleeve, then ran away. And I don’t mean Benny Hill speed. I mean you were a freaking blur.” He eyed her sling. “What happened? Did you break your arm?”

“No.” Hannah shook her head, dumbfounded. “That can’t be right. That’s not possible.”

“Yeah, that was the consensus at the marina.”

David matched Hannah’s befuddled look. “Forgive me, Zack, but even after everything that’s happened today, I have a hard time accepting what you’re saying.”

Zack shut the parlor door, then addressed the others in a furtive half whisper.

“I don’t want to upset anyone more than I already have, but I think there’s more than one kind of weirdness going on here. Beyond the flying cars and new state lines, I think something might be . . . different with us. Hannah’s not the only one doing strange stuff. Look.”

He opened his drawing pad, flipping through a series of crisp white pages. “Last night, I only had three blank sheets left in this thing. Now I have eight. My last five drawings disappeared like I never did them. And then there’s this one . . .”

He turned to a rough sketch of a nerdy couple, the two lead characters of his comic strip.

“This used to be finished. Now it’s not. I lost about a half hour of pencil work. That’s the kind of glitch that happens on computers, not paper.”

“What makes you think you caused it?” David asked.

“Because I watched it happen,” Zack said, with a delirious chuckle. “The drawing changed right in front of my eyes.”

Hannah shook her head in turmoil. Amanda nervously tugged her sleeve over her hand. “Look, I don’t think this is the best time to—”

“I’m hearing voices,” David blurted. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I didn’t mean to cut you off. I just had to get that out. Since this morning, I’ve been sporadically hearing people that I can’t see. People talking to each other, laughing, whatever. I only hope it’s related to this phenomenon you’re discussing, because otherwise I’ve lost my mind.”

“You’re not crazy,” Hannah assured him. “At least not more than the rest of us.”

Zack studied Mia’s dark and busy expression. “Got your own weirdness to share?”

She looked up at him. “Me?”

“Yeah. You’re a quiet one, but I noticed you got even quieter when we started talking about this. Is it something you can tell us?”

For a man who’d just been slapped, Zack was awfully perceptive. Mia had been thinking about her own incident—the glowing tube with the candles and the note, a special delivery that somehow managed to find her eight feet underground. She didn’t know how to bring it up without sounding insane.

“Not really.”

Zack eyed her skeptically. “You sure?”

“Leave her alone,” Amanda growled. “She’s been through enough.”

“We’ve all been through enough. But we’re all old enough and smart enough to speak for ourselves.”

Mia nodded at Amanda. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. We’re still traumatized. Still grieving over the people we lost. The last thing we need right now is to fill our heads with supernatural nonsense.”

Zack peered down at Amanda’s crucifix and swallowed his next slap-worthy zinger. “Look, I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

“And I’m telling you it’s too soon to try.”

“Too soon for you.”

“Too soon for all of us!”

Zack chuckled darkly. “Really? How interesting that you already know me better than I know myself. Is this a new psychic power or just an old trick you learned at Judgment Camp?”

As Amanda stood up, Hannah took a reflexive step back. Over the course of her life, she’d seen every dark facet of her older sister. Shoutmanda, Nagmanda, Reprimanda. Hannah knew, as both a summoner and a witness, that few things were less desirable than a visit from Madmanda.

“You unbelievable piece of shit. Are you such a sociopath that you need to mock people just hours after they’ve lost everything? Is that how you were raised?”

Now it was Zack’s turn to step back. His wide eyes froze on Amanda’s hand. “Uh . . .”

“I don’t judge! I don’t preach! I don’t condemn the people who don’t share my faith!”

Hannah leaned forward, blanching at the bewildering new change in her sister. “Amanda . . .”

“What I do condemn are people who disrespect my beliefs, especially when I’ve done nothing to provoke you but wear a tiny little symbol!”

“Amanda!”

She spun toward Hannah. “What?”

“Your hand!”

The widow peered down at her fingers and got a fresh new look at her weirdness.

The blight had returned in full force, coating her right arm in a sleek and shiny whiteness. Though the substance looked like plastic, it fit her as snugly as nylon.

David and Mia jumped up from their chairs. Hannah covered her gaping mouth.

“What the hell is that?!”

Bug-eyed, gasping, Amanda dropped to the recliner. The glistening sheath felt cool on her skin, like milk fresh out of the fridge. She could feel every bump and fold of the armrest as if she were still bare-handed.

“I don’t know. I don’t—”

The sisters both screamed as Amanda’s long white glove erupted in rocky protrusions. Her silver bracelet creaked in strain, then snapped into pieces.

By the time the jagged fragments fell to the floor, Amanda’s arm looked like it was covered in rock candy. The crags rose and fell in erratic rhythms, an ever-shifting terrain.

David looked to the door. “Uh, maybe I should get one of the—”

“No!” Zack and Amanda yelled in synch. “Just watch the hall,” Zack said. “If someone comes by, keep them out.”

Amanda flinched at Mia’s approach. “No, stay back! I don’t want to hurt you.”

Zack inched toward her, fingers extended. “Look, you just need to calm down.”

“Calm down?”

Mia nodded tensely. “He’s right. This whole thing started when he got you angry.” She moved behind Amanda’s chair and stroked her shoulders. “You’re going to be okay. Just breathe, Amanda. Breathe.”

Hannah cringed with guilt as she watched Mia soothe her sister. I should be doing that. Why didn’t I think to do that?

David peeked through a crack in the door. “Someone’s coming.”

A four-inch spike erupted from the back of Amanda’s hand. Her other arm erupted in a rash of tiny white dots. Zack jumped back.

“Jesus. All right. It’s definitely stress related. If you just relax—”

“How do you expect me to relax right now?!”

“It’s Dr. Czerny,” David announced. “And an extremely well-dressed midget.”

Amanda squinted her eyes shut. Oh God. Please. Please . . .

“Hannah, maybe you should run distraction,” Zack said.

“What should I say?”

“Anything. I don’t know. You’re the actress. Improvise.”

Amanda forced her mind into calming memories—the nature hikes she took with her father, her honeymoon cabin on the French Riviera, all the young patients who cried happy tears when they learned they were in remission.

Soon the milky crags and dots began to melt away. Mia squeezed her shoulder. “It’s working. You’re doing it.”

Amanda opened her eyes and peered down, just as the last of the whiteness retracted into her skin.

“They’re almost here . . .” David cautioned.

“It’s all right,” said Mia. “It’s gone.”

Zack wasn’t relieved. He scooped up the remnants of Amanda’s bracelet, then threw a quick glance around the room.

“Look, I don’t know who these people are, but I don’t trust them. Until we learn more, we need to keep this to ourselves. We’ll talk about the big weirdness. We won’t talk about the other stuff. Agreed?”

Hannah, David, and Mia accepted his premise with shaky nods. Amanda had the least trouble with Zack’s proposal. On this matter, she couldn’t have agreed with him more.

Two hazy shapes appeared in the smoky glass. David opened the door to Czerny and a diminutive companion. They studied their five skittish guests with leery caution.

“Is everything all right in here?” Czerny asked. “We heard noises.”

Zack hurried across the room to greet him. “The strangest thing just happened, actually. Amanda bumped her arm against the pool table and her bracelet broke apart.”

Czerny furrowed his brow at the warped silver fragments in Zack’s hand. “Huh. That is strange.” He looked to Amanda. “Are you all right?”

“She’ll be fine. I’m Zack, by the way. You Sterling Quint?”

“That would be me,” said the other man, in a stately baritone.

The guests all took a moment to study him. He was indeed a little person, as David implied, but he carried himself with the regal airs of a maharaja. He wore a lavish three-piece suit with a red silk ascot, and his feathered gray coif was flawless to a hair. Zack figured his jeweled rings alone could fund a man’s food, clothing, and shelter habit for nearly a year.

“So you’re the answer man.”

Quint nodded. “As it stands.”

“Good,” Zack replied, with an anxious breath. “Because as it stands, we have questions.”

—

The conference room was a perfect oval of hardwood and gray marble. In lieu of overhead lightbulbs, the entire ceiling glowed with milky iridescence. Mia noticed a pair of multitiered switches on the wall—one to control the ceiling’s brightness, the other to change its color.

Quint sat at the head of a long oak table, shining a sunny smile at each guest as Czerny introduced them. For five people who’d made such a remarkable journey, none of them seemed particularly remarkable themselves. Why them, Azral? Of all the souls to sweep across existence, why these?

“Thank you for being patient with us,” Czerny began. “I know we haven’t revealed a lot—”

Hannah waved a shaky palm. “Wait. Hold it. Sorry.”

Mia’s eyes narrowed to frigid slits. She didn’t want to dislike anyone, especially on a day like today, but from the moment Hannah stumbled into the lobby with her tight clothes and ditzy airs, she struck a sour chord. She was every living Barbie doll who’d broken her brothers’ hearts, every gum-chewing mallrat who’d mocked Mia mercilessly.

“Before we get to the big stuff, I just want to know how Theo’s doing.”

Czerny had to wait for Quint’s nod of approval before answering Hannah’s question.

“Fortunately, he’s okay. Still unconscious, but stable. We expect he’ll pull through just fine.”

Amanda sat rigidly in her seat, her hands hidden deep inside her sleeves. “What happened?”

“I regret to say it’s our fault,” Czerny admitted. “Our security men gave him apacistene, a dermal sedative more commonly known as a baby spot.”

Hannah averted her gaze from the giant neon TOLD YOU SO that sat in place of her sister.

“It’s not a harmful drug by itself,” Czerny explained, “but it can be particularly strong on first-time users. The problem in this case is that Mr. Maranan had a high amount of alcohol in his bloodstream. The combination caused a toxic reaction and . . . well, you saw the results.”

“When can we see him?” Hannah asked.

“Not for a while,” Quint replied. “Once he’s sufficiently detoxified, he’ll be sure to join you.”

Zack glanced around uneasily. “I’m late to the party. I take it Theo’s another one of us.”

Hannah nodded. “Yeah. I met him right after you.”

“Wow. You do move fast.”

No one appreciated the joke, least of all the sisters. As he cooked in the heat of their smoldering glares, his inner Libby shook her head at him. You never learn.

David wound his finger impatiently. “I’m glad Theo’s okay, but can we please get to the main topic at hand?”

Once again, Czerny deferred to his superior. Quint took an expansive breath.

“I know Dr. Czerny has told some of you about our organization, but for those who came in late, let me explain again. The Pelletier Group is a privately funded collective of physicists, all specialized in the study of temporal phenomena. We’re not beholden to any college or corporation. Our only mission is to follow the science, no matter where it takes us. It was through keen observation and a little dumb luck that science took us right to you.

“There’s a unique subatomic entity called a wavion that’s been fascinating physicists for decades. It moves differently, spins differently, clusters differently than any particle known to man. Though we still have much to learn about it, we know for a fact that wavions, when positively charged, move backward in time.”

David opened his mouth to speak. Quint cut him off with a curt finger.

“Thanks to their atypical nature, wavion clusters are easy to detect with the right technology. In fact, one of our first discoveries, four years back, was a fist-size concentration in a San Diego parking lot. Soon we discovered a handful of others, all scattered within a ten-mile radius. They were all the same size, all expanding at the same slow rate. After thirty months, the clusters had each grown into the same specific form.”

“An egg,” David mused.

Quint grinned at him. “Yes. Each eighty-one inches tall and fifty-five inches wide, all invisible to the human eye but very perceptible to our scanners. The images became even more interesting, one year ago, when we began to notice a distinct hollowness inside each formation. To our amazement, every gap took the frozen shape of a human being. Although we’re seeing you today for the first time, we’ve been familiar with your silhouettes for nearly a year.”

The room fell into addled silence. David shook his head. “That’s insane. You’re saying you’ve been observing us for months when it all just happened a few hours ago.”

“Like I said, charged wavions move backward in—”

“He gets the concept,” Zack said. “We all do. We’re just having a hard time stapling it to reality.”

David nodded at Zack. “Exactly. Yes. Just the notion of anything traveling back in time. I mean the logistics, the paradoxes . . .”

The physicists exchanged a brief glance, filled with quizzical interest and—in Czerny’s case—deep astonishment. They’re surprised, Mia noted. Surprised at our surprise.

Quint stroked his chin in careful contemplation. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past five decades, it’s that time is more . . . flexible than we ever imagined. That’s the gentlest explanation I can offer at the moment. You seem like a smart young man, Mr. Dormer, and I’ll be happy to discuss it more in the days to come. But for now, in the interests of keeping things manageable—”

Zack cut him off with a bleak chuckle. “Oh, I think that ship has sailed and sunk, Doctor. But here’s something you can answer. You say you spent four years watching us from a distance, waiting for our eggs to hatch. I wasn’t anywhere near mine when your security goons got me.”

“Me neither,” Amanda added. “I was at least two miles away. How did you find us?”

“You’re still teeming in wavions,” Czerny replied. “They’re emanating from the silver bracelets you share. It’s nothing to fear. The particles are harmless. But they did make you easy to track.”

Zack curtly shrugged. “Okay, fine. But none of this explains how we got here.”

“Or where ‘here’ is,” Hannah added.

“Or what these things are,” said David, brandishing his bracelet.

Quint nodded at them with forced patience. “Yes. These are all pertinent questions. Mr. Trillinger, we don’t have an answer for you. Not yet. We can’t even offer a working theory until we speak with all of you in detail and get a better sense of the events leading up to your arrival. Mr. Dormer, we don’t have an answer for you either. Not yet. Now that we have the broken pieces of Ms. Given’s bracelet, we’re very eager to study them.”

Hannah didn’t learn until Czerny’s introductions that Amanda had dropped her married name. She’d thrown her sister a baffled look, only to get a vague and heavy expression in reply.

Now Quint turned to Hannah. “In answer to your question, I can only tell you what you already suspected. You’re on Earth, but a far different version than the one you knew.”

Hearing it out loud, delivered so bluntly, was enough to make several stomachs churn with stress.

“We’ve made tremendous advances in the field of temporal science,” Quint continued. “But for all our progress, our understanding of alternate timelines has never advanced beyond hypotheticals. I’ve devoted my career to these theories, but it’s not until today that I’ve been graced with proof. Actual living proof. Trust me when I say that your arrival is unprecedented. There’s nothing on record that’s even remotely similar to what we’re seeing now.”

Zack threw his hands up in frustration. Quint pursed his lips.

“You still seem to have a problem, Mr. Trillinger.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Look, don’t get me wrong. You’re excited and I’m happy for you. But at the moment, you have five people—sorry, six—who couldn’t give a crap about the advancement of temporal science. We’re confused and scared as hell. If you don’t have answers to the big questions, then at least tell us what you plan to do with us. And before you say we’re not prisoners here, you can drop the whole Mister/Miss thing. It’s not helping my tummy ache.”

Quint leaned back in his chair and eyed the cartoonist for a long, cool moment. “As you correctly guessed, Zack, we’re not holding you here. You can leave anytime you want. But you seem like a clever man, so I probably don’t need to tell you that you’re not equipped to venture out on your own. You have no contacts, no valid identity, no legal currency, and little to no information about your new environment. You’re not just foreigners here. You’re aliens. It would be in your best interest to stay with us, at least in the short term.”

“As it stands, I agree with you, Sterling. But I’m thinking ahead. And I believe I speak for the others when I say we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives as specimens.”

“Understandable, but—”

“Good. Now surely a smart man such as yourself realizes that without options, we are prisoners here. So I suggest a deal, a Quint pro quo if it tickles you. We tell you everything we know about our world, you tell us everything you know about yours. We give you our time, our testimony, our spit samples, whatever. In exchange, you give us money. A thousand dollars a week for each of us. You can keep it all in a safe until we choose to leave. I don’t care. The important thing is that when we do leave, we won’t be as helpless as you so eloquently described.”

All eyes turned back to Quint. He studied Zack through a face of stone.

“That all sounds perfectly reasonable.”

“Good. See? We’re connecting now. But before we shake on it, I’m adding a rider. No invasive medical tests without our consent. You tell us what you’re doing before you do it, and if we don’t like it, you stop. That’s a deal breaker.”

Quint narrowed his eyes in umbrage. “You seem to have a sinister notion about our methods.”

“I don’t know crap about your methods. I’m just covering all bases. As you said, we’re aliens here. Should we happen to do alien things, like sprout a third eye or levitate, I just want to make sure there are limits to your scientific curiosity. If you were in our shoes, you’d want the same comfort.”

Amanda suddenly realized, with dizzying inertia, what a good thing it was to have Zack around.

“That’s easy to agree to,” said Quint, “as we’re not in the habit of vivisection. Anything else?”

“Actually, yes. Not a rider. A question.” Zack launched a cursory glance around the room, studying every corner of the ceiling. “Got any hidden cameras in the building?”

In the all-too-telling silence, Mia felt a hot rush of blood behind her face. Oh God . . .

“It’s not a big deal,” Zack said. “You’ve known for a year that those eggs would hatch people. I assume you prepared for us. You know, cameras, beds, a medical lab. Makes sense. I just want to know.”

David saw Czerny’s knuckles curl tightly around his pen. Quint remained stoic.

“Yes. We have cameras.”

The sisters cracked the same frosty scowl.

“I wish someone had told me that before I showered,” Hannah griped.

“I wish someone had told us in general,” Amanda said. “This isn’t the way to get our trust.”

Quint shook his head. “I apologize. It wasn’t our intent to deceive you. Ever since the six of you appeared, we’ve been scrambling to catch up. Rest assured you’re only being monitored for your own well-being. Furthermore, in the privacy of your rooms, you’re only being watched by someone of your own gender. This I swear.”

“And of course you swear not to release any footage of us without our consent,” Zack said.

“Yes,” Quint replied, with all the warmth of a glacier. “Of course.”

Sensing the end of his employer’s affability, Czerny stood up.

“Look, you’ve all been through an unprecedented trauma, and you’re all coping with remarkable bravery. It won’t seem like it now, but you’re very fortunate. Fortunate to be alive. Fortunate to be together. And fortunate to be here with us. No one knows more about parallel world theory than Dr. Quint. If anyone can solve this puzzle, he can. In the meantime, have patience and have faith. You’re going to be okay.”

The guests sat in anxious silence, their muddled thoughts bubbling with a thousand and one concerns. Despite all of Quint’s rosy promises, Zack knew there was no way on Earth—any Earth—these scientists would let such prize discoveries walk away. To truly leave, they’d have to run. It wasn’t a plan right now—it was an option. Zack needed one, as much as the fair and fiery redhead needed a benevolent God.

As his head throbbed and his inner self screamed with childlike hysterics, the cartoonist leaned back in his seat and forced a cheery grin.

“Well, that was a fine presentation, gentlemen. I’m sold. When’s lunch?”

—

They spent the afternoon in an aggregate daze, more like ghosts than guests. They gazed out windows without truly looking, flipped through books without really reading, and wandered the hallways with no clear purpose or direction.

As the sky turned to dusk, a pair of scientists arrived with bags of store-bought clothing—a generic assortment of T-shirts and sweatpants, plus the most basic cotton socks and undies. Soon the refugees stopped looking like day spa clients and now resembled an intramural volleyball team. Mia noticed, with silent distaste, that Hannah had seized the snuggest tank top in the collection. Yes. We get it. You’re blessed.

An hour later, their evening meal arrived by physicist. Whereas lunch had been a casual buffet set on the pool table, Czerny had opened up the dining room for supper. In its hotel days, it was known as Chancer’s, an upscale bar and bistro that hosted gospel brunches on Sundays. The scientists had briefly used it as a cafeteria before shyly settling back to desk dining.

The guests served themselves from steaming tins. Amanda and Zack were the first to sit down, each with a grilled chicken breast and a scoop of pasta salad.

“They’re sure leaving us to ourselves a lot,” Amanda observed.

“They’re probably giving us a day or two to adjust. I figure come Monday . . .”

Zack trailed off as Amanda lowered her head and closed her eyes in prayer. Hannah wasn’t sure if the blessing was real or just a showy middle finger to Zack. She didn’t know how anyone could thank God after everything that happened today.

The actress sat down with a plate full of greens, the only thing her ailing stomach could handle. “Okay, here’s a stupid question. If we’re on an alternate Earth, does that mean there are alternate versions of us walking around somewhere?”

“No,” said David, from the serving table.

“Doubtful,” Zack added.

“Why not?”

Zack lazily motioned to David. The boy sighed and turned around to Hannah. “Okay, obviously our two worlds have a shared timeline. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t be speaking English here. They might not even be humans as we know them. So clearly our histories split at some point. From what Dr. Czerny told me, they still have Abraham Lincoln on their pennies. But from what Zack discovered, they separated California in 1940. That suggests the point of divergence occurred sometime between the American Civil War and the start of World War Two.”

Mia stood behind David, eyeing him with rapt fascination as he expounded.

“Now, even if it’s the latter end of that spectrum, the butterfly effect can change a lot in seven or eight decades. Our grandparents may have still existed as children, but the odds of them meeting and breeding as adults, then the odds of their own children meeting and breeding as adults . . . it’s just astronomically small. And that’s not even factoring the biology. The same sperm, the same gestational factors, the same hereditary toss-ups. At the most, you’d have a genetic relative walking around. But as you and Amanda prove, even genetic siblings can look quite different from each other. So, long answer short, no. Don’t expect to find a twin out there.”

In the resulting silence, David surveyed his stunned audience. He raised a cautious brow at Zack. “Was that, uh . . . was my answer somewhat in line with yours?”

The cartoonist chuckled grimly. “I was just going to say it’s cliché. Jesus. I’m glad you went first.”

“How the hell did you put that all together?” Hannah asked David.

“The only thing my dad loved as much as science was science fiction. We read a lot of books together. Guess I picked up a thing or two.”

Amanda bit her lip as she thought back to her own reading nights with her father. “I bet he was so proud of you.”

David rolled his shoulders in a dismal shrug. “I guess so. He wasn’t the type to say.”

As Mia sat down, Zack shined a contemplative gaze at Amanda and Hannah. “David has a point. You two don’t look a thing alike. You’re not half sisters or adopted, right?”

“Full sisters,” Hannah replied. “It’s a little more obvious without our dye jobs.”

“And you both got bracelets,” Zack pondered. “That can’t be coincidence.”

David nodded. “That’s what I said.”

Amanda kept silent as she sliced into her chicken. Zack could see she was agitated by the subject. He didn’t care. He was just a stiff breeze away from a fierce and unseemly breakdown. He needed this distraction.

“Yeah, that’s a hint right there. The question is why would, uh . . .”

His attention was seized by David, who sat down at the table with a teeming plate of green peas. The boy sprinkled heaping dashes of salt onto his pile, then looked up at his four confounded friends.

“Quite an interesting diet there,” Zack said.

“Just fussy,” David replied. “She did mention something about our potential.”

“Who?”

“The woman who gave me my bracelet. Esis.”

“Ee-sis?” asked Hannah.

“Yeah. Tall and lovely woman. She told us—me and my dad—that I was very important. She said that I was part of something larger now, and that I had the potential to help bring about a great and wonderful change to all humanity. That’s not verbatim, of course, but—”

“She’s insane.”

The others looked to Amanda. She aimed her dark gaze down at her plate.

“I’m sorry, David. If we’re talking about the same person, then I wouldn’t trust a single thing she said. She was completely out of her mind.”

From his frigid expression, David clearly didn’t enjoy her analysis. “I had a hunch you met her too. What did she say to you?”

“I don’t remember the specifics. I just know her behavior was completely erratic. One second she was complimenting me, the next she was grabbing my hair. She . . .”

Thinking about her sister, Amanda decided to censor the part where Esis launched across the alley with blurring speed. That part struck a little too close to home now.

“She was just crazy.”

David shrugged. “Well, the Esis I met seemed intelligent and kind. Not even remotely crazy. In either case, you and I would be dead without her intervention.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful? For all we know, they’re the ones behind all this.”

“Oh, come on. You have no evidence to support that.”

Zack raised his palms. “Okay, hold it. Wait. David, I agree we’re getting ahead of ourselves—”

“I don’t even know why we’re talking about this at all,” Amanda snapped. “Can’t we have one night to recover?”

“Hey, I was about to throw you a bone. As it stands, I’m deep on your side of the crazy issue. I didn’t meet this Esis, but I have nothing nice to say about the guy who gave me my bracelet.”

David raised an eyebrow at Zack. “Do tell.”

“There’s not much to tell. He wore a mask. All I could see were his eyes. But he looked like he was having the time of his life while people were burning to death all around us. That alone makes him someone I’d very much like to unmeet and hopefully never come across again.”

“That’s how I feel about Azral,” Hannah added. “The white-haired man. I mean I know he saved my life twice, but he still scares the living—”

“What do you mean twice?” Zack asked.

Hannah could see her sister tense up across the table. She figured any mention of their childhood incident would send Amanda to tears.

She lowered her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Frustrated, Zack glanced over to Mia, the lone holdout in the conversation. She stabbed at her food with a dismal expression.

“She didn’t see anyone,” David replied on her behalf. “She was asleep when she got her bracelet.”

Zack scratched his neck in edgy thought. “So from the looks of it, we’re dealing with two, possibly three different people.”

Three, the sisters thought in synch.

David scooped another forkful of peas. “We don’t have enough information about them to form any theories.”

“I think we do,” Zack replied. “The fact that Amanda and Hannah are here right now is a big fat clue that these people chose us for genetic reasons. Why else would they give bracelets to two biological—”

With a choked sob, Mia pushed her chair back from the table and fled the room. Amanda rose from her seat, shooting a harsh green glare at Zack before trailing out the door.

The cartoonist sighed at Hannah. “Your sister’s not the most relaxed of women.”

“She just lost her husband.”

“I know. I just . . .” Zack frowned with self-rebuke, then flicked a somber hand. David listlessly poked a fork at his peas.

“We lost people too,” he told Hannah. “We’re just trying to figure out why they died. And why we didn’t.”

Hannah could finally see a hint of strain behind the boy’s handsome face. She figured she could live to be a hundred and still not understand the way men handled their emotions.

Amanda and Mia returned eight minutes later, their faces raw from crying. Mia brushed her bangs over her puffy eyes and stared down at her half-eaten dinner.

“I have four brothers,” she announced, with matter-of-fact aloofness. “I know for a fact that they’re my biological siblings and I’m all but sure they didn’t get bracelets.”

The room fell into bleak silence. Zack placed a hand on Mia’s wrist.

“I have an older brother back in New York. Josh. We’re about as different as two siblings can be, but we get along.” He gestured at Amanda and Hannah. “When I found out these two were sisters, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest because it made me think that maybe he got a bracelet too. Who knows? With all the crazy things that happened today, maybe we both have a brother out there.”

Mia raised her head to look at him. “I don’t know. I hope you’re right.”

By the time Czerny came back to check on them, the clock on the wall had reached 8 P.M. The food had grown cold and the conversation had settled back to mundane mutterings, increasingly hindered by gaping yawns.

Czerny suggested, with droll understatement, that perhaps it was time to call it a day.

—

In a sleepy drove, the group—which Zack took great pleasure in calling the Sterling Quintet—climbed the stairs to the third floor. Zack and David disappeared into their chosen suites without so much as a good-night. Never had a sentiment seemed so pointless.

Amanda urged Mia to share a room with her and Hannah, just for warmth and company. Though tempted, Mia politely declined. She expected to do a lot more crying between now and dawn. She didn’t want to muffle herself out of some misguided sense of courtesy.

After three restless hours, she regretted her decision. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get comfortable in her room. When the lights were off, the darkness pulled her straight back to her morning grave. She could feel the dirt in her hair again, the creepy-crawly bugs on her skin. When the lamp was on, she couldn’t stop thinking about the scientists who watched her every move.

Just as her eyelids finally fluttered on the cusp of sleep, a soft and tiny glow seized her attention. It hovered directly above her, like a distant moon or a penlight. The radiant circle spit a small object onto her nose, then disappeared in a blink.

Baffled, Mia sat up in bed and retrieved the item from her pillow. It was a small scrap of paper, tightly rolled into a stick. She turned on the lamp and unfurled the note.

You just survived the worst day of your life. I won’t say it’s all candy and roses from here, but it does get better. Hang in there. Put your faith in Amanda, Zack, and the others. They’re your family now.

The note was punctuated with a U-shaped arrow, a symbol Mia herself often used to indicate more content. She flipped the note over.

Yeah, that includes Hannah. Cut her some slack. She’s a really good person. She even saves your life.

Mia read the words over and over, her heart thumping with agitation. She remembered the curvy feminine letters of her first note, the one that had encouraged her to keep digging for air. Not only did the penmanship on this message match her memory of the original, it triggered a new and disturbing sense of familiarity.

She climbed out of bed and flipped on the desk lamp, transcribing a snippet of her note onto a blank sheet of stationery.

After comparing the two handwriting samples side by side, Mia choked back a gasp. She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or cry at the true scope of her weirdness. She wasn’t speeding or blanching. She wasn’t hearing voices or losing artwork. She was simply getting notes. Notes of prescient knowledge. Notes in her very own pen.

Mia lay awake for hours in furious bother. By the time her eyes finally closed, the darkness had given way to pink morning light. Her second day on Earth had already begun.