False Future (17 page)

“W
ould you really let me do that?”

He nods. “I would.”

The idea is too perfect. To finally be left alone, to just exist the way we’re supposed to. If we destroy ourselves in time, that’s on us. It’s a huge choice, but is it the right one?

Albin must sense my hesitation. “Listen. Only so much Black has been added to your world. You can transfer that amount back. It will not destroy True Earth, but it will plunge them into the same darkness. You will be sentencing many to die, but many will live.”

“Why can’t I just release it into an empty world? Some place they’ve already destroyed? I don’t want to wreck our future—
I can’t
.”

“The Black can only be returned to its source. Adding the Black to a different universe would be another process entirely and would have no effect on your world. You would just be ruining someone else’s day.”

“But the director said she was going to remove the Black in a few weeks….Surely she wouldn’t have been turning it back on herself.”

“Then maybe she was planning to send it further into the future. It must remain in your shared world, at one time or another.”

He looks me in the eyes. I stop walking. “I am telling the truth when I say I don’t care about your future. As long as it’s no threat to my world again, the condition of it matters to me not at all. This is not about vengeance. It’s practical. It’s a blameless way to end a threat with an infinite number of universes watching.”

Somehow, I believe him. It horrifies me, but I understand him.

“Then if I poison the Black, and traveling through it is no longer possible, I will lock in the future. There will be no way to tamper with it ever again.” I’m talking to myself now.

“Yes.” Albin sighs. “Are you going to do this or not? Because if not, I have to find another Miranda.”

“Why another Miranda?”

“Only the director has the clearance to enter the Dark Room. And you are the same person. No other clone could do this.”

“I feel so special.”

A moment passes before Albin says, “You won’t when the time comes.”

Before turning the corner and being in the line of sight of Kellogg’s building, Albin stops. “I will be with you going forward, but I will hide myself from the eyes of everyone else. Only you will be able to see me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Use your brain, you poor, unevolved creature. What do you think?”

“You want me to bring my team along.”

“I want you to bring everyone along. Everyone who will come. This is your one chance. If you’re injured, you need others who will pick up the slack.”

We go back inside, past the two men guarding the door.

“Where is your gun?” the left one says. Sharp guy.

“Hidden,” I say without thinking. Not sure why I would hide it out there.

The men share a look, but I just walk into the lobby.

Down the hallway Peter is walking ahead of Noble, shrugging off his hand. “I’m going after—” Peter freezes when he sees me, and his jaw tightens.

“I wanted to stretch my legs,” I say quickly. “Patrol a little.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I march toward him and grab his hand. Noble is staring at me, waiting.

“I have news.”

“Well, let’s hear it,” Peter says.

“Not here. Get Sophia.”

In Kellogg’s apartment I brief them all, including Kellogg. Noble is instantly wary.

But before he can ask a question, Kellogg does. “Where is this
Albin
person right now?”

“Um…outside the door.”

“You led him
here
?” Kellogg grabs his rifle off the table. I snatch it out of his hands.

“Haven’t you been listening? He knew we were here and yet we’re still alive. He’s giving us a way to save the people of this planet. The
only
way, unless you have a better idea,” I challenge him. “Last I heard, nobody had a solid plan. So we’re doing this.”

Kellogg tries to stare me down, but I’m not the kind of person it would work on. Finally he sighs. “I guess you should introduce us, then.”

“Albin, come in,” I say. The door opens and Albin stands in the frame. Everyone can see him now.

“Greetings,” he says.

Sophia is the only one to respond. “Hi.”

“My men are ready to fight and die,” Kellogg says. “But I have to make sure it’s for a good reason. It has to count toward something.”

“Time is short,” Albin says. “People are dying every second. So here is what we must do.”

T
he plan is pretty simple. We storm the Verge, and I try to get to East and therefore possess the Key. Albin says East will be as close to the Black as he can be, which makes sense, I guess. So he’ll be under the Verge, or as close to under it as possible. The last time I was under a Verge, I was about to blow myself up. Good memories.

Albin will hide me for as long as he can, but we’ll have to be fast.

I leave my outer clothing in Kellogg’s apartment; I don’t need to hide anymore. Five minutes later I’m standing in the courtyard in front of the survivors who came with us. They gave me a milk crate to stand on, so their heads are tilted up slightly. The fire casts black shadows over their eyes, giving them a demonic appearance. I can pick out Kellogg’s men wearing their urban camouflage; there are fewer than I remember.

“So…”

A great beginning. Someone coughs. Two of the kids already look bored, and one is surreptitiously making a snowball.

I take a breath.
You’ve done harder things than this.

“We have a plan to end this. I know many of you still have no idea what’s going on, but you know what the damage has been. My friends and I have a plan to stop this. To make everything the way it was.”

“So
do
it,” one woman holding a tiny, shivering dog says. I try not to glare at her.

“What I need is help.”

I wait for someone to say
Help how?
but no one does.

“I need as many people as possible to come back to Central Park with us. You’ll get a weapon, and the soldiers here will instruct you how to use it. I have a way of sneaking into the Verge undetected, but it’s important we draw the Roses—the enemies—out and occupy their attention.”

“Why?” the woman with the dog asks. I hate her and I hate her dog.

“I’m not sure how long our mission will take once we’re inside. Or what kind of alarms will be tripped. So I need you to make some noise, to provide the best distraction you can, and then…run. You can use the subway tunnels to come back here. If we succeed, you’ll be able to return to your homes. If we don’t, then this is it. For the rest of your lives, this is it.”

I guess I should say more, but I don’t know what.

That guy coughs again.

“Take five minutes to think about it. If you’re in, talk to one of Kellogg’s men.” Just because they escaped with Kellogg doesn’t guarantee they’ll want to fight when the time comes. I just have to hope for the best.

I find Peter’s face in the crowd, and he gives me a thumbs-up and a wink.

“Thanks,” I say, then step off the milk crate. Someone actually claps. Then someone else claps. It doesn’t catch, but it is funny. I guess if this were a movie, everyone would do a battle cry or something.

Peter and Sophia walk with me back to Kellogg’s apartment, where he has a last-minute spread on the table. There’s a half-eaten tub of hummus, some tomato juice, some eggs. Kellogg is cooking with Sterno. “I figure we should use this stuff now. Since we’re either coming back heroes or not coming back at all. Please, eat. You’ll need the energy.” He notices Albin standing off to the side. “Do you eat?”

“I eat,” Albin says.

“Then have at it.”

Albin looks startled, like he didn’t expect kindness. I didn’t, either. But he seems warmed by it.

We eat our fill, and I notice my hands are shaking. Peter does too. He takes my right one and holds it in his lap, squeezing it gently.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks.

“Of course not.” Though I seem to remember already committing. I can’t imagine just sitting by and accepting this as our new reality. I won’t.

“Actually,” I say, “I am sure.”

He leans in and drops his voice to a whisper. His eyes look almost black in the candlelight. “Then I’m with you.” He kisses where my cheek meets my ear.

Peter turns to Albin. “How are you keeping the director unaware of all this? Especially with how far away we are right now?”

“I’m not. I assisted in your escape, nothing more. The director is searching for you now….And if she catches you, she won’t be as liberal with the freedom she gives you as she was before.”

The door opens behind us. One of Kellogg’s men enters holding a SCAR—a Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle. Very powerful by earth standards, but nowhere near the RAW. Not even in the same universe, so to speak.

“We’re ready,” the soldier says.

There’s a brief argument to catch a few hours of sleep first, but that’s quickly shot down. There is too little time. In the next day, more people without water will die. In the end we have twenty-seven volunteers, men and women of all ages, plus the fifteen soldiers under Kellogg’s command. Kellogg has to tell a nine-year-old girl that she can’t come.

As we’re walking back to the nearest subway station, Kellogg hands me a small black pouch. Inside is a knife. “US Navy MK3. Used by Navy Seals across the globe. Best for silent kills.” I suddenly miss Beacon, my sword, very much. This knife is a decent size, straight and black, no glare—not that there’s a chance of glare with the constant darkness. One side is serrated in case I need to saw through rope or build a log cabin or something.

“Thanks,” I say, slinging the pouch around my waist. I stick the memory shot Noble gave me inside as well.

“That belonged to my friend,” he says.

“I’ll take good care of it.”

We take the subway tunnels back to Central Park, led by my team with our RAWs held in the ready position. Any spiders we come across will be quickly demolished, but all we find are the corpses from the first trip. Dead arms among the tracks, most of them being nibbled on by rats, which don’t bother scattering at our approach. The creatures even died like spiders, on their backsides, arms curled inward, palms up.

Flashlights aren’t working, so Kellogg’s men form up around us carrying road flares. I ask Albin to assist, but he wants to rest his mind for what’s ahead. One brave soldier walks about ten meters in front of us to make sure we’re not walking into a trap.

The first few miles are easy enough. We just follow the rails—how hard can that be? But people are getting tired, many of them having just made the journey in the other direction. It can’t be more than one hundred and thirty blocks. Twenty blocks is supposed to be a mile in New York, so that’s less than seven miles. Crybabies. Though I should be grateful any of them came along. I
am
grateful.

Sophia works her way to my side at some point. She nudges me with her elbow.

“What’s up?”

“Sorry,” she says. “I want to say sorry. I’ve been unkind.”

“We’ve all been under serious stress.” It seems like the thing to say.

“That’s no excuse. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister. I’ve never had anyone besides Noble, not since I was too young to remember.”

That makes me feel terrible. If I’m her sister, I haven’t been a very good one. I haven’t bothered to get to know her at all, or comfort her after Rhys’s death. I wish Olive,
my
Olive, were still here; she would be a better friend to Sophia.

“I was angry,” she continues.

“About Rhys.”

“Yes. And I’m sure you were too.”

“I still am. That’s why we’re doing this. He died so we’d have a chance to keep fighting.”

She nods, her dark skin glowing orange in the torchlight. “Yes he did.”

We walk for another hundred feet.

“When this is over, let’s go do something normal together,” she says.

“Okay. What do normal people do?”

“I guess we’ll find out. Oh! We could go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met. Have you heard of it?”

“I have.”

“Noble took me and Rhys there and showed us the different exhibits. The man seems to know everything about everything. It was so amazing to see the history of your world in art. Noble would sometimes point at something especially beautiful and say,
This is what we’re fighting for
, or something like that.”

“That sounds like him,” I say, and up ahead he looks over his shoulder and smiles at us.

Sophia lets out a big, satisfied sigh. “That was a great day. Then we ate lunch from a cart on the street. Like the ones back where I come from, but the food wasn’t made of dead rats.”

“You know, I’ve never eaten from a food cart.”

“That’s what we’ll do, then!” Sophia says. “The museum and a food cart.”

“It sounds wonderful.” Too wonderful to think about for more than a few seconds without feeling tired.

It takes a couple hours to get back to Central Park, since we stop several times for breaks. Kellogg says it’ll all be for nothing if people can’t sprint once they have True Earth’s attention. There isn’t much talking, so we can hear sounds traveling up and down the tunnels. A distant, ghostly shout. Water dripping somewhere. The scuttling sounds of spiders, which are really just echoes from our dragging footsteps.

And then we come out of the tunnels, a safe distance to the north of the Verge, out into the same darkness. We walk to the edge of the park, where we can barely see the outline of the Verge. Some of the surrounding fires have died, and there’s even less light for it to reflect now.

Peter steps over to Albin. “I want to go in with her.”

Albin shakes his head. “I’m getting fatigued. I won’t be able to hide you both from everyone.”

“I didn’t ask,” Peter says.

Albin just looks at me, eyebrows raised like,
Is this guy serious?

“No unnecessary risks,” I say to both of them. Peter looks away to hide his anger.

I try my best to address the group, though I can’t see many of them in the gloom. “If the flying machines show up, let them chase you into the trees. Move east or west from there, and scatter as best you can. Hole up. If you can make it back up to Washington Heights, great. We’ll know if this is over soon enough.” The plan is to make as much noise as possible to draw out the Roses, but the strategy once we have their attention is little more than
run
.

Kellogg appears on my right. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as…you know.”

He grimaces, nodding. “Sadly, I do. I’ll remain near the Verge with your teammates, just to the north. If things go badly, we’re all going in after you.”

Albin steps up. “If it’s impossible to get to East ourselves, we’ll come find you.”

“Roger that.” Kellogg whistles softly at his men and starts away, leading the group of citizen fighters.

Peter puts his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to do this. I can go.”

“No,” is all I say.

“Dammit, Miranda, you don’t always have to be the one.”

“This is the last time.”

I’m about to lean in to kiss him, but he turns away, muttering something I don’t hear. It feels like I’ve been slapped. I could die in the next five minutes—we could
all
die, and he’s doing this now? Does he think we have such a small chance?

Then it’s Noble’s turn to say good-bye. “You know what to do. I have complete faith in you.” He kisses me on the cheek.

The groups move in their respective directions, disappearing fast into the dark. Soon Albin and I are the only ones left.

“You’ve been fighting for a long time,” he says. It’s not a question.

“I have.”

“Do you have one more in you?”