Resonance (17 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

L
ATTIMER REACHED FOR THE PHONE
at his waist, but I fired the Taser again, and he hit the ground with a cry and a full-body shudder.

Snatching his ID, I ran to Monty's cell and threw open the door. He was sitting at the table, exactly as I'd left him.

“Get up! We have to go!”

He sprang to his feet, but I saw the wince and heard the hitch in his breath. “Wanted to make sure it was you coming through the door. You don't give a man many hints.”

“We were on camera,” I said, hustling him out of the room. “What was I supposed to do?”

“It's a good start,” he said, standing over Lattimer's still-twitching form. “But like I said, Del. Slapdash. It's important to be thorough in your work.”

Before I could stop him, he yanked the Taser from my grasp and hit Lattimer again. I winced at his shout of outrage.

“Quit it,” I said. “We looped the CCTV from this hallway to buy some time, but it's not much. We need to move.”

I swiped Lattimer's ID, and the elevator slid open to reveal an empty car. “Ready?”

“What about the other guard?” he asked as I shoved him inside.

“He'll be back in a minute.” Klaxons sounded, and the elevator started upward of its own accord. “Less than a minute.”

“Lattimer's card has an override,” Monty said. “Special privilege for Consort members.”

“Why do you think I took it?” I snapped, slamming the card through the reader and mashing the emergency stop button. The elevator alarm joined the general one, layers of cacophony drilling into my skull. Painful, but it would help to conceal our trail.

“We're trapped!” he shouted over the melee. “What's your plan, Delancey? Shoot your way out with a toy gun?”

“We'll Walk out,” I said as a ceiling panel opened overhead.

“But first, we're going to climb,” Simon called down.

Monty gaped. “You found him.”

“Nope.” Simon lowered a rope ladder. “I found her.”

I shoved Monty. “Grandpa, come on. The override will only last until they bring in another Consort member.”

“How did he get in?” Monty asked, heading clumsily up the rungs.

“Friend of a friend of Addie's got me the ID.” With a grunt, Simon hauled Monty through the ceiling hatch. “Guards were so focused on Del coming in, they didn't pay much attention to little old me. Waited until her elevator came back, got in, and didn't hold the door for anyone else. Been waiting up here ever since.”

I started after Monty as the elevator began moving again, the emergency alarm falling silent.

“Clock's ticking,” he said as he helped me onto the roof, pulled up the ladder, and fastened the ceiling panel in place.

“Where's the pivot?” Monty asked.

“Wherever I choose,” he said. “Del?”

“Ready.” I took Simon's hand, tuning out the blare of the alarm and the whir of the elevator machinery. Tension radiated down his arm, and then I heard it. A hiss and a pop, the sound of a choice being made, a few inches in front of me.

Swiftly I reached inside the new pivot and hummed. This was the trickiest part. Simon couldn't exist in same space as his Echo—their differing frequencies would put too much strain on the fabric of the worlds, especially in such close quarters. We also had to find a world where this elevator wasn't working, or it would be a repeat of my time on the freight train. I'd already picked a frequency we knew would be safe. Now I stepped through the formless space, bringing Simon with me, Monty trailing behind.

We'd practiced, of course, but this was different. My balance was unsteady, making it hard to maintain my course. And there was always resistance. Even though this version of Simon moved more easily through the worlds than my swapped one, it was a slow, grudging passage.

We burst through like a cork from a bottle, and dropped several feet to the empty car. Quickly Simon pulled up the ceiling panel and lowered us through, then jumped down.

“How much time left?” I asked. He pressed the button for the ground floor. Moments later we stood in what used to be the
Consort's lobby but was now a department store, my homemade
OUT OF ORDER
sign prominently displayed on the doors.

“Before they find this place? Give them three minutes, tops, to figure out the ceiling trick. Another three to get up there and track the frequency.”

“I like it here,” Monty said, fingering a display of silk ties. “Sounds busy.”

“It's going to get a hell of a lot busier if we don't move,” I said.

Simon pulled a heavy, fleece-lined sweatshirt and a pair of gym shoes from his backpack and shoved both at Monty. “Put these on.”

Outside, the wind whipped through the corridors of the Loop, biting into our skin, snatching our breath.

“Union Station,” Monty said at the next intersection. “Easiest thing in the world to lose them there.”

“They'll be expecting us at Union,” Simon replied. “It's the first place they'll go. Too much surveillance.”

“How do you propose we get out of the city, then?”

“We don't,” I said, and towed him down Wacker Drive. “Time for you to keep your end of the bargain, Monty. I want the frequency.”

He scowled, a familiar, mulish look on his face. “How do I know you won't leave me to be captured again? You can be a spiteful girl.”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. People swerved around me without realizing it, a boulder in a stream. “True. But I keep my promises, unlike some people.”

“We'll get you to the Free Walkers,” Simon said. “But we had a deal.”

Monty eyed Simon, then me, his fingers fumbling. “Can't we get somewhere warm?”

This was another trick, another way to show me he was in charge. But I'd had enough of Monty's tricks.

“Have a nice what's left of your life, Monty,” I said, and started moving again.

“Del!” He chased after me. “Pen and paper?”

“Tell me as we go,” I said, pulling out my phone. He rattled off a series of numbers, and I keyed them in.

A few blocks away we approached a gray limestone building, dwarfed by the steel-and-glass skyscrapers but beautifully ornamented.

“The Board of Trade?” Monty asked.

“Fourteen million trades a day,” I said. “Fourteen million pivots in the pit alone.”

“We can't get on the trading floor,” Monty said irritably. “That's restricted to traders. And too crowded.”

“That's why we're playing tourist,” Simon replied, and ushered us through the doors.

The overheated lobby felt good after the frigid outdoors, but we couldn't afford a moment to thaw out. Traders in polyester blazers and oversize IDs rushed past, clutching coffee and antacid. The number of pivots was incredible, an irregular, jarring stream of pops, like a toddler with Bubble Wrap.

“Observation deck,” said Simon, unfazed. He led the way
upstairs. I kept throwing glances over my shoulder, looking for any sign of Consort guards, listening for another note from the Key World.

Snatches of conversation filtered through, and as we reached the enormous plate-glass window overlooking the trading pit, I began to match up conversations with the pivots that trailed them.

“Let's get pizza for lunch! Isn't Chicago deep dish, like, legendary?” The air whooshed and crackled like dry wood catching fire.

“Can we just go back to the hotel, please?” A soft sigh of a pivot.

“Everyone make sure they have a buddy, and let's go back to the bus.” Staccato strikes as a group of elementary-school-aged kids paired up and filed out.

“Easy pickings,” I said to Monty. The sheer number of pivots would muddy our trail.

“Hurry it up,” Simon said.

The field trip had cleared out, leaving a gap in the crowd. I checked my phone and found a safe pivot—Simon might be immune to frequency poisoning, but Monty and I weren't. The more stable, the better.

“Don't rush me,” I muttered, but very faintly, I heard a shift in the world's pitch, a new note breaking into the regular tone.

The Key World frequency.

The Consort guards were here.

Swiftly I slid my hand into the pivot, found a signal at random, and pulled us through.

The room itself was similar, but the crowd was different—
adults in suits, eating hors d'oeuvres and quaffing champagne. The air here was as lifeless as the conversation.

Monty grabbed a stuffed mushroom as we ran out.

Simon started for the street, but I tugged him back. “The pit.”

“Too many people. We need to run.”

“Monty can't sprint across the Loop,” I retorted. “Look at him.”

He was slumped against the wall, huddled into the heavy sweatshirt, struggling for breath. The plea in his eyes was genuine.

Without waiting for a reply, I headed down to the packed trading floor. Easily three stories tall, with giant monitors and tickers everywhere, paper slips ankle deep. The shouts of the traders were overwhelming, and it was hard to say which was stronger: the scent of panicky financial types, or the sound of the pivots, dense with static.

We didn't bother with subtlety. I ducked behind a wall of wildly gesturing traders and grabbed the first pivot that caught my ear.

The mood here was as bright as the pitch itself, the trading excited instead of desperate, but I didn't stop to figure out why—once I'd made sure Simon and Monty were behind me, I took another pivot, and another, shifting through Echoes so rapidly they seemed to blur. It was the kind of challenge I'd enjoyed as a kid. The floor shifted and slid as we moved, like walking atop wet sand.

Sometimes it's the act of choosing that saves you, not the choice itself. Sometimes your only option is to move, and move
fast, because if you don't stay ahead—or at least get out of the way—the world will collapse beneath your feet.

Hard to say how far we'd Walked, but by the time we were done, we'd passed an art gallery, countless law firms, a vacant lot, and a gym. We stopped in a restaurant.

“Rest,” Monty wheezed, and leaned heavily on the bar.

Simon poured him a glass of water from a nearby pitcher. Monty drained half, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and started digging through a bowl of mixed nuts.

“I suppose you've got some grand plan, Delancey. You're not just dragging an old man across the city in the dead of winter?”

“Would you rather I send you back?” I checked my watch. “Yes, we have a plan.”

He grunted. “You've found your boy.”

“He's
not
my boy,” I said firmly, and Monty paused, eyeing him with fresh curiosity.

“You're the Original, then?”

Simon checked the window for any sign of the Consort. “That's me.”

“Impressive,” Monty said. “Gil always was the sentimental sort.”

“You really didn't know about the swap?”

He popped a pistachio in his mouth before answering. “Rose never said a word. I put it together on my own, right about the time my granddaughter tried to murder me.”

I shook my head. “Slapdash, Monty. You should have figured it out years ago.”

“Fight later,” Simon snapped as the guards appeared outside. “Run now.”

We dashed through the kitchen and out the back door, the guards in pursuit, Monty leaning heavily on Simon. Despite the big leap in worlds, the Loop felt the same: skyscrapers and bitter wind and traffic and people and the damp, funky smell of the river a few blocks away.

“Cab,” I said as we ran, deliberately bumping into a banker, wincing as his briefcase banged my knees. Monty and Simon followed suit.

Once we were all visible, I stepped into the street and hailed a cab while Simon gauged the progress of the Consort guards. “Hop in.”

Simon and Monty climbed in after me and slammed the door. I leaned forward to direct the driver. “Navy Pier.”

“Cutting it a little close,” Simon said.

I dug two bags of M&M's out of my backpack and tossed one to Monty. “I didn't think they'd find us so fast.”

“We're moving too slow,” Simon said.

“Sorry to be such an inconvenience,” Monty grumbled around a mouthful of candy. He twisted to look out the back window. “They're following us.”

“I'm sure. We've got to get back to the Key World,” I told Simon, blinking away the spots clouding my vision. “I'm already feeling it.”

“Almost there,” he said.

The other cab was only a few cars behind us. I slipped the driver a twenty. “We're in a hurry.”

He nodded and punched the gas, speeding through a yellow light. The other cab, snarled in traffic, stopped for the red, and my breath came easier.

“Navy Pier,” Monty fussed when we arrived at the massive brick entrance of the park, Lake Michigan cold and choppy a short distance away. I threw a handful of bills to the driver, and we hustled Monty down the main walkway without responding. “Are we going on the Ferris wheel?”

“Better,” Simon said. “We're going on a cruise.”

•   •   •

Even though Lake Michigan turns dangerously frigid in winter, it rarely freezes solid—which means the boat tours along Navy Pier run year-round. It wasn't my idea of fun, but it served our purpose.

Minutes before the ship set sail, we boarded with tickets Simon had bought the day before. I watched through a porthole as the Consort guards arrived just as we glided away, safely out of reach.

I dropped onto a blue-velvet bench, fighting the urge to curl up and sleep.

“You've bought us a few hours at most,” Monty said, “They'll board when we dock again and pick up the trail.”

“You're welcome, you ungrateful old man,” I snapped. “Keep it up and I'll push you overboard.”

Monty toyed with the zipper of his sweatshirt and scowled.