PAUL SITS IN MY FAMILY’S LIVING ROOM, ON THE MOST uncomfortable chair. He took off his uniform hat when he walked inside, but otherwise he could have stepped right off a recruiting poster. The navy-blue jacket frames his broad shoulders; his trousers are sharply creased. Even his shoes shine. His posture is so rigidly straight I wonder if his back hurts.
I want to run to him, use the reminder and capture this second splinter of Paul’s soul—halfway there! Almost done!—but I can’t. In this dimension, he and my parents know what Firebirds are; they’d understand what I was doing, and that I was from another universe. In other words, I’d be busted.
The warm rapport I’m used to between Mom, Dad, and Paul is absent now. Here, my parents appear to be his superior officers, no more.
“What about our electron microscope?” Mom asks.
“Minor damage,” Paul says. “Or damage that would be minor, if we could get the replacement parts more swiftly.”
Dad puts his head in his hands. “Bloody hell.”
“It’s all right, Henry. We can still run the resonance test. But not here.” It’s weird, seeing my mother act so official, especially with Paul. “Lieutenant, is the San Francisco facility ready?”
Paul nods. “Very nearly, ma’am. I could travel into the city tomorrow to personally supervise the modifications. Within five days or so, we’d be ready. A week at most.”
“Then we should review the plans,” Mom says. “Normally we’d do this on base, but I trust you won’t object if we meet here today, Lieutenant Markov.”
Even though this is an entirely different universe, an entirely different Paul, something in my heart still sings when I hear those two words: Lieutenant Markov.
Couldn’t I reclaim this splinter of his soul? If Mom and Dad figured out what I was doing, would that be so terrible?
Yes, it would. My heart sinks, imagining my parents’ reaction. This is a world at war; I am an invader, one wearing their daughter’s skin. If they reported me to the authorities, I could wind up in a military prison. Regardless, once they knew I was a traveler from another dimension, I would have no chance to sabotage their work. If I can’t prove I did that when I go to Triad’s home office, Conley won’t give me the final coordinates, or the cure for Theo.
“Of course not, ma’am. I’ll set up at this table.” Paul reaches for the stuff lying in front of him—my sketchpad, open to the portrait of Theo. He hesitates. “That is—if you wouldn’t mind, Miss Caine.”
Miss Caine?
“No, it’s fine.” I step forward to take my art supplies myself. My hand brushes against his, an accidental touch, but Paul reacts to it. His eyes search mine, hoping for meaning.
The look in his eyes is one I know. One it took me a long time to interpret. But once I understood him, I could never miss that look again.
He loves me. At the very least, he cares about me deeply. And obviously Paul and I have known each other for a long time in this dimension.
So why is it still “Lieutenant Markov” and “Miss Caine”?
More than that—if Paul is here, in my life, why am I with Theo?
Our home turns into a makeshift physics lab, which for me is nothing new. But my parents aren’t as warm and welcoming in this universe. Not that they’re unfriendly to Paul or anything; everyone is almost excruciatingly polite as they work. But the warmth my parents showed to Paul from the very beginning, the affection that led them to bake his birthday cake and buy him a decent winter coat—in this dimension, I see no sign of that. Maybe this is the difference between a university setting and the military. The professors who would befriend you in a graduate program have to keep their distance when they’re your superior officers.
While they’re crunching numbers, I’m left with nothing to do. Word comes that the munitions factory where I work was destroyed in the air raid, which is an enormous relief. Me building bombs? That would’ve been a recipe for disaster. The way Dad tells me this, it’s obvious he expects me to receive another duty assignment soon. But “soon” is not “today,” so my day is my own.
Normally, I spend any free time in a new dimension searching for background information. That means web pages or other, more sophisticated sources in universes that have developed that far; in universes not quite so far along, I turn to books. Mom and Dad almost always have plenty lying around, because they’re curious about everything from the ancient Incas to origami. In this world, however, it seems that paper is rationed as strictly as everything else. No encyclopedias or histories are to be had. My parents own only a handful of books, most of them novels. Even reading those might tell me something—but would I be able to figure out what’s true and what’s fiction in each one? So instead of obtaining vital facts for my mission, I wind up reading a Jane Austen novel called The Brothers. I don’t think we have that one in my universe, though, so at least that’s something.
Late in the afternoon, as they’re taking a break for a fairly depressing snack of canned peaches, my mother draws me aside. “You’re not ill at ease, are you?”
“Um, no?”
“I realize how awkward the situation is for everyone involved,” Mom continues. “Lieutenant Markov is essential to our work, and we have to work at home today, so there’s no way around it.”
She seems to expect a response. “Okay.”
“He’s handling his disappointment well, really. That’s all we can ask. I just hope it doesn’t put you in a difficult position.”
It sounds like Paul tried to get me to go out with him and I said no.
Why would I say no?
“It’s all right,” I say to her. “Paul’s a good guy. I know he’ll always do the right thing in the end.”
Mom stares at me like I just told her ostriches orbit Pluto. Is it because I slipped up and called him Paul? After a moment, though, she nods. “Sometimes I forget how insightful you are.”
I hug her, remembering the long weeks when I was trapped in dimensions where she was already dead. Traveling through the worlds gives you perspective. It makes you value what you have.
Just at nightfall, while the ad hoc scientific conference is still under way, the doorbell chimes again. Dad answers before I can. “Why, Private Beck. I don’t think I’ve seen you in ages.”
“Good evening, sir. Is Marguerite at home?” Theo catches sight of me and lights up like sunrise. He’s playing his role in this universe a little too well.
Still, the roles have to be played. “Theo,” I say as I go to him. He pulls me into his arms, an embrace so fervent, so intimate, that I can’t deal with the fact that my parents are watching this. In Theo’s ears, I whisper, “That’s enough.”
“For now,” he says in a low voice.
This isn’t my Theo.
The Theo from this universe—the one who’s been to bed with Marguerite, the one who loves her—that’s who’s holding me now.
I manage to part us without actually shoving him against the wall. My parents studiously stare down at their equations. From his chair, Paul watches us, then ducks his head when he realizes I’ve seen him.
“How did the telemetry systems fare in the raid, Private Beck?” My mother asks him this without ever looking up from her work.
“Very well, Dr. Caine,” Theo says. Huh, so my parents got around to getting married in this universe. Good to know. “In the first rush—for a moment, it felt as though I didn’t even remember how I’d gotten back to base. Strange.”
That’s because my Theo was in charge during that trip; this Theo’s consciousness didn’t reclaim his body until afterward. He must have spaced out the reminders like I told him to.
“We didn’t take too much damage,” Theo continues. “I’ve reviewed the entire system. We’ll be back to full capacity by tomorrow.”
“Have you eaten dinner?” Mom says. She’s being a bit cool—probably because she remembers us running out of the house half-dressed last night. “I can’t offer you much beyond cheese on toast, because we’re at the low end of our rations. But it’s yours if you want it.”
“I ate already. Just wanted to talk with Marguerite for a bit.”
Dad waves us off. “Fine. Go on out back.”
Out back? Theo seems to know what this means, though; he takes my hand and leads us toward the rear of the house. As we go, Paul watches us, his gray eyes yearning—no. Hungry. Then he sees my mother looking at him, and returns his attention to the papers on the table.
I love our back deck at home, with its silly tropical-fish lights and the yard that slopes so sharply you can’t even set up a lawn chair. I love the way it’s ringed by tall trees, making it seem as though our house in the Berkeley Hills isn’t crammed into an overpopulated neighborhood; instead, I feel like we’re cut off from the rest of the world, in a quiet, peaceful place of our own.
In this dimension? No such luck. We have no back deck, only the one tree. Instead, there’s a few inches of concrete that has to count as a patio, and one rickety bench. But from the way Theo pulls me down next to him on that bench, this must be our favorite place.
“I missed you today,” he whispers, and he draws me close.
My whole body flushes, but I manage to hold him back. “Wait.”
When I pull the Firebird from his uniform jacket, Theo stares. “What the hell is that?”
“You’ll see,” I say, punching in the sequence that will activate a reminder.
The charge jolts him. Theo swears under his breath and pushes himself away from me. After a couple of deep breaths, his eyes go wide. He’s my Theo again. “Whoa.”
“Are you all right?”
“I was like—I was in my body, but I wasn’t. Like sleepwalking while you’re awake. That is the weirdest thing I have ever—ever—wow.” Theo shakes his head, as if trying to clear it. “How do you deal with this?”
“It doesn’t happen to me,” I remind him. “I’m always in control, no matter what world I’m in.”
“Nice work if you can get it.” Theo takes a deep breath, then refocuses. “What exactly happened inside?”
Since Theo’s not a perfect traveler, he doesn’t remember what happens during his journeys quite as clearly as I do. So maybe he’s forgotten the passionate embrace. Or he’s pretending to. Either way, I’m grateful. “Nothing much. You came to see me, Mom and Dad pretended you weren’t here this morning, and sent us out here.”
Theo says, “That was Paul with your parents, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you go after him? Rescue that splinter of his soul?”
“Because I have to be in contact with him to do that,” I say, blushing again. “Close contact. It’s not like I can tackle him in the middle of the living room.”
Theo frowns. “What if that’s what it takes?”
“Of course, if I have to, I will. But if I start acting weird before we get into Mom and Dad’s computer systems, they might figure out something is up.” I hook one finger around the two Firebird chains at my neck. “Remember, it’s hard for people from another dimension to see our Firebirds, but they can, particularly if they know to look for them. In this world, they know.”
“Right, right. I’ve got it.” Theo hesitates, then says, “I thought—I figured you couldn’t know him yet, in this universe. Paul.”
“Well, I do know him,” I say as lightly as I can.
My casual attitude doesn’t fool Theo for a minute. “Am I allowed to feel good about this?”
“About what, exactly?”
His eyes are dark, unfathomable. “About the fact that there’s at least one world in the multiverse where you picked me.”
I’m grateful for the darkness around us. Maybe that keeps him from seeing how flustered I am. “I—it’s like you guys always said. In an infinite multiverse, everything that can happen, does happen.”
“So this—you and me—we were in the realm of possibility? Not sure how that makes me feel.” Theo stares up at the sky. Maybe lights are turned down, for fear of more bombers, because I can see every star above. “Probably you never even met Paul before today.”
I ought to agree with him and move on. Instead, I tell the truth. “No, I know him. And he—he cares about me. I can tell.”
“Poor bastard.” When I look at him, Theo shrugs, but he’s no better at faking casual than I am. “Being in love with a girl who doesn’t love you back? It sucks. I’d know.”
There’s nothing I can possibly say in reply.
“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. So I definitely wouldn’t wish it on Paul.” Theo hesitates, then moves us along to a new subject. “Listen, when I was on base, I tried using the military computers to get at the Firebird data. No luck. Maybe that’s just because I’m not part of the project, but I figure your parents are as security-conscious as ever.”
Mom and Dad aren’t the type to use passwords like ABC123. For a while, my mom’s log-in code at home was the molar heat capacity of magnesium, and that’s just for her email. To get into a classified military project, they’re going to employ every barrier that exists. Still, I thought Theo’s familiarity with them would give us an edge. “You don’t think you can get through at all?”
“If I had unobserved access to a terminal for long enough, probably, but in this universe, those are hard to come by. I can’t exactly hack into a military computer from a military base. I’d be arrested before I even hit Enter.”
What are we going to do? We have to complete Conley’s errand if there’s any chance of saving Paul and Theo. The computer virus can do the work for us, but only if we can access the system the virus is designed to destroy.
The answer comes to me, and I turn to Theo. “We don’t try to get in through my parents. We get in through Paul.”
“How exactly do we do that?”
“He’s going to San Francisco tomorrow to set up the lab for a test of the Firebird components. If we go to San Francisco too, we could sabotage the new lab. Right?”
“Maybe.” Theo still looks doubtful, though. “But why would Paul give us access?”
I take a deep breath. “Because I’ll ask him to.”
For a few moments, neither of us speaks. Then he says, “You’d betray one Paul to save another.”
“If I have to.” But when I hear Theo say it, my plan sounds so much harder. Crueler. “Besides, it gives me a chance to get . . . closer to him. So in the end I can rescue this splinter of Paul’s soul.”
“Makes sense,” Theo says flatly.
“I hate this, okay? I hate every minute of it. Probably Wyatt Conley thinks I don’t give a damn about my family in any other dimension, but this version of Dad is still Dad. This version of Mom is still Mom. Josie, Paul—if I do what Conley wants us to do, I might take away their last chance to win the war. But I have to. Getting close to Paul isn’t the worst thing I’m going to do in this dimension. It’s not even close.”
Together we stare into the distance, at the place where light streams through our window and paints squares on the scrubby grass. Even electricity is rationed here, so the night has become quiet and still. Instead of traffic noise, I hear only the wind through the trees.
Theo speaks first. “I eavesdropped on as much war talk as I could today at the base. Apparently the situation doesn’t look good. We lost Mexico. Which I guess means this country had Mexico at some point, but, whatever. Supply lines from the Midwest have broken down.”
“Is this like, if we lose the war, we have to rebuild? Like the Civil War?” Reconstruction and Jim Crow sucked hard, but even that sounds better than the alternative. “Or is this like, if we lose the war, Adolf Hitler rules the world?
“The way the guys at the barracks talk, it sounds more Hitler-y. Still, it’s wartime. They could be exaggerating. Everybody hates the enemy, right?”
We have to hope.
“Listen, we don’t have the power to permanently end your parents’ research, no matter what Conley says.” Theo takes my hand—for emphasis, probably, or simply for comfort, but I am vividly aware of his touch. “Say we manage to infect their project with the virus, screw up the computer system they have here—which is so tightly knit together, by the way, that taking the whole thing down would be a cinch. How long do you think it would take your parents to rebuild? A year, maybe? A little less?”
“Do they have a year left?”
From inside we hear the sound of Josie cackling, like she does at Dad’s awful jokes. If I do this, I’m betraying my sister, too. Guilt feels like a fist closing around me, squeezing tighter and tighter until I hardly remember how to breathe.
I whisper, “If my Paul were here, I . . . I think he’d tell me to leave him and save them.”
“If he were here, you’d tell him to shut up while you saved his ass.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “Probably.”
“Listen. This ‘cure’ for Nightthief exposure Conley’s talking about—even he admitted it might not work,” Theo says. “If you’re forcing yourself through this for me, don’t bother. But it’s not just about me. We have to get Paul back. That means we do whatever we have to do. Right?”
“Right,” I say, trying not to hear my family talking inside.
Theo brightens, like everything’s all right, when it so obviously isn’t. He’s doing this to help Paul, and I feel a wave of unexpected tenderness for him. “Okay,” he says. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to get you to San Francisco.”
We pitch it as a romantic getaway, claiming Theo has leave. (Hopefully he can get it.) Until I’m assigned new war work, the destruction of the munitions factory means I’ve got some free time. So—why not San Francisco?
Before we talked to my parents, Theo had said, “Are you sure they’re going to say yes instead of taking a shotgun to my head?”
“Dad’s not the shotgun type. Mom—maybe, but probably not.” Besides, I remember how they reacted when I told them Paul and I had fallen in love. Maybe Mom and Dad aren’t cozy with Theo in this universe, but they like him. They’re not prudes. They’re . . . realistic. “Anyway, if she were going to shoot you, she would’ve done it this morning.”
“That isn’t half as comforting as you think it is.”
But asking your parents to let you go away for the weekend with the guy who’s been sneaking in and out of your room—no matter what universe you’re in, that does not go over well.
“I can’t believe you’d ask us this,” Dad says as he paces the front room. “Not knowing what you know. Traveling down to San Francisco! It’s outrageous.”
Theo and I dare a glance at each other. His expression says what I’m thinking: We screwed up.
Mom speaks for the first time since I asked her about the trip. “Henry, we’ve had no problems with the train lines this far north.”
Dad is not appeased. “Not yet. But at any moment—Didn’t today’s raid teach us anything? We don’t know when the next attack will be. We don’t get to know.”
Wait. He’s not freaked out by the thought of my staying in a hotel with Theo. Dad’s upset because I want to travel away from home, period.
I venture, “Dad, the raid last night—we came this close to being blown away.”
Mom’s voice is sharp. “Don’t remind us.”
“Don’t you see? We’re in danger everywhere. All the time. It’s not like I’m safer if I stay here.”
After a moment, my mother nods, but Dad keeps pacing. “You remember what happened to your aunt Susannah. Everyone said the passenger ships were safe as long as they sailed under a neutral flag, but still—” His words choke off, and Mom takes his hand.
Aunt Susannah is dead.
I can’t wrap my head around it at first. She’s my giddy, spoiled London aunt, who never seemed to care about much besides fashion and high society—but she loved all of us, and welcomed us whenever we visited Great Britain. One time when I was little, she took me to tea at some fancy hotel, and I felt so grown up. So special.
The last time I saw Aunt Susannah was in another dimension, the futuristic London where my parents had died during my childhood, and she had raised me. It was clear that she hadn’t done the best job at mothering; maternal instincts and Aunt Susannah don’t mix. But still, she took me in. She did her best.
Now I have to imagine her on a ship on the ocean hit with torpedoes, sinking fast. She would have been so scared, and there would have been no hope of rescue. No escape.
Mom strokes Dad’s hand. “Marguerite is right. Safety is a luxury none of us have had in a long time, and may never have again.”
He doesn’t argue, exactly, just changes strategy. “She’s eighteen, and we’re sending her off with her boyfriend?”
“We should live life to the fullest,” Mom says. We all hear the unspoken while we can.
Dad shrugs, and I know then that we’re more than halfway to a yes. My mother always wins in the end.
Theo had been willing to lie about accompanying me to San Francisco, but it turns out he didn’t have to. He was up for leave, and his superior officers gave him three whole days off. As glad as I am not to have to do this alone, Theo’s presence complicates things in ways neither of us has to speak aloud.
It’s one thing to pretend to be a couple when we’re sitting on my parents’ sofa. Another to carry that pretense all the way to a hotel for the weekend.
“I can’t believe they’re letting you do this,” Josie fumes as she drives me to the train station Friday morning. “Mom and Dad practically handed you condoms for the trip.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” I protest. My small suitcase sits in my lap; it feels like it’s made of something not much sturdier than cardboard.
Josie shrugs. “Well, there’s a war on.”
Which is pretty much what she said last night, when she let me borrow her one good dress—dark red, and made out of fabric soft enough to almost feel silky. For your romantic getaway, she’d said, and of course I couldn’t contradict her.
The train station buzzes with activity, but I glimpse Theo right away. When I wave to him, he jogs to us and—fulfilling his role—gives me a hug. “Hey. Was starting to think you’d ditched me.”
“Never,” I say. I hope that sounds flirty enough.
“Have a good time, you two,” Josie says. Already she’s turning to go. “Bang those hotel walls even louder than mine.”
Oh, my God. My cheeks feel like they’re on fire.
Theo waves goodbye to her, then crooks his elbow. I slip my arm through it. Like a man and woman would if they wanted to touch each other every moment. Like we were in love.