Finding Fiona (20 page)

No matter what, though, she had no way of
knowing what would happen. She gave them all happy endings–the
Alarias in jail, her friends and family alive and well. But who
could tell? Maybe the Alarias would have found the upper hand.
Maybe they all would have died. Or maybe they could have had that
happy ending. Maybe that was the worst part. Not knowing this path
was the best one for all of them. They just ended up with it based
on a series of random decisions, a tumbling snowball of choices
until they reached the bottom of the hill.

But maybe in some other universe, there was a
different set of decisions, a different ending.

“
It’s like Schrodinger’s Cat,”
Fiona suddenly said, “and the many-worlds
interpretation.”

“
Huh?” James asked.

Fiona turned toward him. “Have you heard of
Schrodinger’s Cat?”

“
Is that a band?”

Fiona laughed. “No.” She paused, trying to
figure out how to put it into words. “It’s a paradox. Say you put a
cat in a box with a bit of radioactive substance, stuff that could
kill the cat. Say the chances that it’ll kill it are just the same
as the chances that it won’t. Then you wait an hour. During that
hour, no matter what’s happening inside the box, until someone
looks inside, the cat’s both dead and alive.”

“
What do you mean? How can it be
dead and alive?”

“
Well, the theory is that there’s
no such thing as independent reality. It all depends on
observation. Someone has to be there to see it.”

“
But it’s a reality for that cat,”
James said, glancing at her.

“
Sure, but until someone else knows
what that reality is, you have both realities.”

James raised his eyebrows. “That’s
interesting.”

“
Yeah, and there’s another
interpretation of the paradox called the many-worlds
interpretation. It says that if you open the box and the cat’s
dead, there’s some other reality where the cat’s alive. But the two
universes act independently of each other. They can’t
interact.”

James didn’t respond for a moment. They were
near Elmscott. Fiona watched the buildings grow larger as they
approached them.

“
So, you’re saying somewhere, in
some universe… Troy’s alive,” James said.

“
And my parents. And my
replica.”

“
There’s a universe where your
replica never existed.”

Fiona nodded. The possibilities were endless.
“According to the many-worlds theory.”

“
I like that theory,” James said,
giving her a smile.

* * *

Fiona glanced around James’s apartment,
smiling. She knew this place. She recognized the beat-up futon,
covered in a gray sheet. His tabby cat greeted her, rubbing up
against her legs. She bent down to pet him. “Hey, boy, did you miss
me?” she asked.

James chuckled. “Probably. He likes you more
than he likes me.”

“
What’s his name again?” Fiona
smiled as the cat licked her fingers.

“
Lickins. Because he licks
everything.”

She repeated the name, petting him. She
noticed the scab on her hand from her fall out of the van was gone;
it was gradually becoming a scar now. She touched her forehead.
She’d had the stitches removed yesterday. There would be a scar
there, as well.

“
Have you gone through Troy’s bags
yet?” James asked.

Fiona shook her head, straightening her legs.
“I can’t yet.”

“
Well, it’s only been a few days,”
he said softly. “Give it some time.” He smiled and clapped his
hands. “You want to make those cookies?”

She grinned. “Yes, of course.”

It’d been James’s idea. After Fiona told him
she hadn’t slept a full night since her confrontation with the
Alarias, he suggested they do something they used to do before the
fire. He said one of their favorite things to do was bake oatmeal
chocolate chip cookies and watch B movies from the sixties. He said
they did it both at Elmscott and at his apartment, and Fiona wanted
to get out of her house. She’d spent most of the last few days
exploring New York City. She was trying to forget what had happened
with the Alarias and trying to remember her life before
them.

She’d moved her things into her old bedroom in
the renovated bank. Keith had offered her the master bedroom, but
she liked her room. It wasn’t the same as her room at Hannah’s
house, of course, but it was starting to feel like home.

The apartment was soon full of the smell of
baking cookies. It brought back emotions she only felt around
James. They ate chunks of cookie dough in the kitchen.

Fiona accidentally put her hand in the flour.
“Oh, yuck!” she said, making a face.

James laughed, and she streaked a line down
his nose. He gasped, mock-offended, and backed her up against the
counter. She put more flour on his face, giggling.

“
I probably look like I’ve been
snorting cocaine,” he said with a grin.

She nodded. “Or like you’ve been baking.” Her
face hurt from smiling. The last few days had been hard and full of
dark thoughts, but being with James changed her. She rested her
hand on his shirt, white flour staining the gray cotton. “I love
being with you.”

“
I love it, too.” James brushed
some hair away from her neck, and his eyes bore into her. She
leaned towards him, and his lips met hers. She closed her eyes,
wrapping her arms around his neck. He kissed her gently at first,
then deeply. The smell of the cookies mixed with the scent of his
cologne. His fingers pressed into the small of her back.

This was something she remembered. Something
she’d never forget again.

* * *

Friday night, Fiona finally went up to Troy’s
duffel bags, which had been sitting in the lab all week. Keith and
Sarah’s voices floated downstairs from the kitchen. Fiona unzipped
the dark blue bag. Inside were clothes and shoes. The second one
had more of a structure on the inside. Among the toiletries, she
found a red folder.

On one side of the folder, she
found a birth certificate. Her name caught her eye, and she pulled
it out.
Fiona Gilliam
.
Mary Memorial Hospital in New York
City, New York. April 3rd, 1991. Father: Walter Montgomery. Mother:
Carol Gilliam.

Fiona stared at the certificate, trying to
discern its meaning. She wasn’t his daughter… what did this
mean?

She sat down and examined the rest
of the folder. A driver’s license for New York. Fiona’s. A Social
Security card with her name. An official looking piece of paper
written up by a lawyer. After a moment, she realized it was a will.
Everything was left to Fiona Gilliam, who he claimed was Troy’s
daughter. And a note in Troy’s messy handwriting read,
Fiona, thought you could use this.

She sat in silence for a moment, looking over
the certificate and ID. They looked so real to her. She put her
hand over her mouth, wondering how he came about these documents.
Would people accept them as real? What would happen if they didn’t?
She wondered if she could get deported. But the police had
recognized her as Fiona Gilliam. That helped.

Fiona couldn’t hold back a smile. She wondered
how long it took him to get these, how long he was planning it. She
loved that he’d used Hannah’s last name instead of his
own.

As she looked at the Social Security card, the
numbers made her want to check out the vault again. She went to the
hallway on the far side of the downstairs and walked to the wide
metal door of the vault. Looking at the keypad, she decided to
punch in the first five numbers that came to mind.

27491.

Just as she was pushing the one, the door
clicked. She pulled at the handle. A strong sense of déjà vu washed
over her again, and she opened the door.

Fiona held her breath as she stepped into the
vault, which was the size of a walk-in closet, metal shelves lining
its walls. The first thing that caught her eye was a rectangular
frame as tall as a door standing in the middle of the
vault.

Her heart was pounding as she studied the
frame–no, it was the machine. This was it. This was what had
changed everything. A small keypad was on the right side. The bar
across the bottom had two narrow ovals. Fiona closed her eyes as
memories came to her.

She’d stood here before and put in the code.
It hadn’t been in the vault, though, but in the lab. She’d closed
her eyes as the machine’s scanner shot pain through her body. When
she’d opened her eyes, her replica stood before her.

Relief flooded her as the memory replayed in
her mind over and over again. She wasn’t a replica. She was
Elizabeth Normans. Or she had been at one point, before the fire.
She was a natural creation. She leaned against the shelves as she
fought back tears. Gazing at the machine, she wondered how the
replica must have felt about her creation.

She finally pulled her eyes away from the
frame to examine the shelves. Boxes and boxes of files. Graph
paper. Notebooks. Research that went into the development of the
machine that stood before her. It was here. It was all here. All
the answers she’d been searching for, all the Alarias had killed
for.

She let out a shaky breath as she moved to the
other side of the vault. She found a box with birth certificates
and Social Security cards. Another with dozens of photo albums. A
third with memorabilia from Fiona’s childhood. She wondered why
some pictures had been outside of the vault. It was one of the many
questions that would remain unanswered.

Another box on one of the high shelves held a
video camera and various memory cards. Fiona found the camera’s
computer cord and went into the lab, sure to close the vault behind
her. She plugged the video camera into Keith’s computer.

The memory cards were password protected, but
Fiona figured out the password after twenty minutes of guessing.
They held countless videos about their research. In the beginning,
the video logs included Daniel and Greg Alaria.

It gave Fiona a thrill of excitement to see
her parents moving and speaking, staring into the camera as though
they knew she’d be watching it someday. She hurried through them,
though, skipping ahead to this March, when Elizabeth wrote about
Remus’s success.

Her own face loomed on the computer screen.
She looked younger, and baby fat padded her jaw. Her hair, its
regular brown color, was pulled back into a ponytail.

“
March 15th, 2011,” she said, her
voice low. “I’m in the lab. My parents are out. I think I just made
a huge breakthrough. I calibrated the machine to fifty gigahertz.”
She paused, chewing on her bottom lip. “I’m going to try the
machine. Dad would kill me, but I can’t wait until they get here. I
don’t know what’s going to happen, though, so I’m going to send my
dad a text right before I put in the code. Just in
case.”

Elizabeth positioned the camera so the frame
was in sight, and she stepped under it. She fiddled with her phone
for a moment, then took a deep breath and put in the code. Purple
lines shot out of the bars on either side of her and moved down her
body. She closed her eyes, grimacing.

Fiona couldn’t believe she could remember
exactly how it had felt. Like the feeling when her foot fell asleep
and started tingling painfully. Her ears had started ringing; the
hairs on her body had stood up.

As Fiona watched the purple lines move down
Elizabeth’s body, two feet appeared on the ground, then two knees,
then a torso. When the machine was finished, two Elizabeths, two
Fionas, two identical girls stood in the lab. The replica stood
next to the machine, facing the camera.

Elizabeth opened her eyes. She gasped when she
saw the girl and she backed up, out of the camera frame.

Fiona covered her mouth in awe. She looked
toward the hallway, where she knew the machine stood, unused for
months. A chill spread through her.

Back in the video, the replica stared at
Elizabeth, her eyes wide. “It worked.”

Elizabeth sputtered. “What are you–you know?
You know what happened?”

The replica’s brow furrowed. “Don’t be afraid.
My name’s Elizabeth.”

“
No, my name is Elizabeth,”
Elizabeth said. She motioned to the frame. “I just used this…
to…”

The replica stared at her and slowly shook her
head. “I used it. It… it created you.”

“
No…” Elizabeth went to the camera.
“I’ll show you the video.”

It cut to black, and Fiona stared at the
screen in awe. The replica thought she was the original. She must
have had memories, all the same memories Elizabeth had. What
Elizabeth had written in her journal wasn’t true, just like Fiona
had suspected. It took Elizabeth just as she was in that
moment–scars, memories, and all–and duplicated her.

The next video was later that night. Elizabeth
explained what happened to the camera: the replica refused to
believe she was the replica and not the original. Her parents had
come home after Elizabeth called them. They’d been upset, but they
didn’t know who was the original, unable to distinguish between the
two. Fiona wasn’t even sure who was speaking to the camera,
either.