Resonance (23 page)

C
HAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

T
HE LOBBY DOORS DIDN'T SLIDE
open at our approach. Through the panes of glass I spotted a Free Walker I didn't recognize behind the front desk, and I rapped hard to get his attention. When he saw us, he spoke into a walkie-talkie, then pressed a button to let us in.

“Where's Rose?” I said.

“You two were supposed to stay in the infirmary,” he said, trying to sound imposing. I'd been in trouble enough times to know when you were dealing with a real threat, and this guy, with his scrawny arms and nervous air, was nowhere close.

“I didn't feel like a nap. Where's Rose?”

“Right here,” said my grandmother, coming around the front desk. “I suppose this is better, actually. Makes you easier to move.”

“You mean because I'm conscious?” I sniped. “I'm not going to the First Echo.”

Her mouth thinned. “In case you're unaware, we're in a bit of a crisis. I'm not going to waste time arguing. Why don't we leave the decision to Simon?”

She made a show of turning to him, shutting me out. “Montrose filled you in on our plans. Would you prefer Del to
wait out the attack in the safety of the First Echo? Or would you like her to accompany you to CCM, knowing how desperate the Consort is to stop us, and knowing that they will kill her if we don't succeed.”

He swallowed and looked uneasily at me.

“No.”
He started to speak, but I cut him off. “I swear to you, Simon, send me away again and it will not be the Consort you have to be afraid of.”

“You could come back,” he protested. “Once it was safe.”

“And if the Free Walkers fail?”

“Then at least you'd be okay,” he said softly, and laced his fingers with mine. “I thought I was going to die, Del. Saving you was my consolation. I never expected Powell to come. Ever since, I've been living on borrowed time.”

Fear, ominous and choking, rose inside me, but I said, “That's not true. We can do this, but not if you ship me off the minute things get rough. This is my life, and my choice, and I choose to stay with you.”

He bent his head to mine, the kiss battling back both our fears. Then he straightened and turned to Rose.

“I told you before: We're a package deal. You try to play us against each other, and you'll need to find another Echo to put on your show.”

“It's on your heads, then,” she said coldly. “We have more important problems to deal with.”

She beckoned, and we followed her into the conference room. Inside, the massive table was covered with whirring
laptops, extension cords and power strips winding along the floor like jungle vines. The air was warm, heavy with the scent of burning dust and something electric, and two guys—one heavyset, wearing a sweat-stained blue T-shirt, the other rail thin, with the kind of seedy-looking scruff guys get when they're too lazy to shave—were dashing back and forth between the computers.

“We have a team handling sector Alpha Seven Thirty,” the bearded guy said. “And another in Epsilon Twelve Sixty-Two. But we can't send another team out without spreading ourselves too thin.”

“What are sectors?” I asked, and despite the heat from so many computers running, the sweat that trickled down the center of my back was icy. “What is this place?”

“Branch-based naming conventions,” said T-shirt guy. “Easier to identify on a map. And this is our central monitoring system. Like your friend Eliot's phone, but more powerful. We can even tap into broadcasts from the Key World.”

“You know Eliot?” I said.

“We know his tech,” he said, pointing at Simon. “Impressive. We could use a guy like him.”

Suddenly I missed Eliot so fiercely I could barely breathe. What was he doing now? Was he safe?

“Are we monitoring Consort communications?” Rose asked.

“Yes, ma'am.” The bearded guy leaned over the table and tapped a key. An announcer's voice—the same one I'd heard at my parents'—filled the room. “They're calling out frequencies pretty much nonstop.”

This time I paid attention to what I was hearing. The voice read a string of numbers—an Echo frequency, by the sound of it—paused, and then two more numbers in quick succession. A second voice repeated the numbers, confirming them, and the original voice read them again. We stood silently as the call and response continued, naming another Echo.

Simon frowned. “What are we hearing?”

“It's the Tacet,” Rose said, her face ashen and resolute. “Those are cleaving assignments: a frequency, plus the latitude and longitude of the pivot they should cleave at.”

I said, “Normally, Cleavers get an assignment from the Consort and the navigator prepares the Walk. They make sure that protocols are followed, paperwork is filled out, that the Cleavers go in with a specific plan for how they'll handle the strings. But this is . . .”

“Slice and dice,” said T-shirt guy. “They're gutting the Echoes as fast as they can.”

My parents must have been excused from cleaving so they could stay home and lay a trap for me.

“Coordinate with the Indianapolis cells,” Rose said. “They should be able to cover at least two more.”

“Cover what?” Simon asked.

“Cauterizations,” Rose said. “We know which branches the Consort is cleaving. Our teams are cauterizing them instead—much like we did with Train World. We can't save every branch, but it's better than nothing.”

“Usually we have advance notice,” said T-shirt guy. “We can
get there before the Cleavers show up. Now we're scrambling.”

“If you're cauterizing worlds while the Cleavers are there, what happens to them?”

Rose shrugged. “We can survive in Echoes. Why shouldn't they?”

My stomach dropped. “But the frequency poisoning! They don't know how to deal with it. And they'll be trapped.”

“Every war has casualties,” she said. “It's time the Consort learned what that's like.”

For a moment I panicked, thinking about Addie and my parents before I remembered they'd been sidelined. But Eliot's father was a Cleaver. My dad's team—the ones who'd saved him from frequency poisoning. Nearly half the Walkers in the Consort, left in Echoes.

“Amelia was right,” I said. “You're as ruthless as the Consort.”

Rose's voice was cold and terrible. “How else can we win?”

Simon's hand found mine.

“While you two were off endangering yourselves and our mission,” she added, “we decided to move up the strike on CCM. By tomorrow morning, all non-essentials will have been evacuated to the First Echo. A skeleton crew—Simon and his security detail and, I suppose, you—will move to a new location. The rest of us will—”

She broke off as the announcer fell silent, and a new voice took over.

“This is Randolph Lattimer. By order of the Major Consort of Walkers, immediately hold all cleavings in abeyance.”

We turned in unison to the speaker.

“He's stopping the Tacet?”

Rose shushed me.

“We are aware that those who do not support the calling of the Walkers are listening at this moment, monitoring our work. I am speaking to these so-called ‘Free Walkers' now.

“I am speaking to you, Rosemont.”

Rose straightened, throwing her shoulders back.

A pause. A hiss of static filled the air, blotting out other noises, blotting out thought. He knew Rose was alive. He
knew.

“Two days ago, the Free Walkers infiltrated our headquarters and freed a dangerous criminal, a man who threatened the very fabric of the multiverse. They have weakened the Key World, assaulted a member of the Consort, and even as I speak, they are killing Walkers who are performing their sacred cleaving duties.

“This is beyond treason. This is a declaration of war, and make no mistake: We shall defend ourselves and the Key World, as we have been called to do. The Tacet will continue. We will unravel world after world until we have dissolved your squalid little hiding places, all the weak spots that molder and threaten the Key World. We will silence every Echo in the multiverse before we allow you to continue this blasphemy. Every world you've ever passed through will be returned to dust.”

Rose's breath came fast and shallow in the silence that followed his words.

“We will stop the Tacet when you have surrendered, and turned over your leaders, starting with Rosemont Armstrong and Delancey Sullivan.”

“Like hell,” Simon snarled. “This is a trap.”

“I'm not a leader,” I said. “Why does he want me?”

“Doesn't matter,” he replied. “We're not doing it.”

“Until you agree to our terms, we will continue to shear away every Echo attached to the Key World, and be the stronger for it. The Consort awaits your decision.”

Rose stood, unmoving, and the techs watched her openmouthed. Simon drew me into him.

There was a rustling sound, as if Lattimer was stepping away from the mic. And then distantly: “Let them fall. Every last one.”

CH
APTER THIRTY-NINE

T
HE NUMBERS RESUMED. FREQUENCY, LATITUDE,
longitude. Frequency, latitude, longitude. Each one a death sentence, the matter-of-fact delivery magnifying the horror. So mundane, so routine and bloodless.

So much death.

“You can't go,” Simon said. “You can't turn yourself in.”

“Send the signal,” Rose said to one of the techs—the guy with the beard, whose face was ashen. To the other tech, she said, “Pack up. We move in fifteen.”

“Move where?” I asked, but nobody paid any attention.

Rose beckoned to us as she strode toward the front desk.

“You can't turn yourself in,” Simon repeated. “You're sure as hell not handing over Del.”

“Everything's in place,” said Prescott, coming out of the front office. “We're still on track.”

Then she caught sight of me and scowled. “This is your fault. Lattimer moved up the Tacet because of you.”

The words landed like a kick to the ribs. I struggled to respond, and Simon stepped in, saying, “Lattimer moved up the Tacet because you poked the hornet's nest. You wanted
Monty out of prison—how did you think they'd respond?”

“We weren't going to spring him,” Prescott retorted. “But it was the only way to get the frequency.”

“You supplied Del with everything she needed to bust him out and you used me as leverage. You want someone to blame? Look in the mirror.”

“Enough,” Rose said. “Prescott, this is a minor change.”

The girl loosened her death grip on the clipboard, but the back of my neck prickled with alarm. I knew better than anyone how big an impact came from a ‘minor change.'

Rose said, “Continue the cauterizations as planned. With any luck, the Consort will believe that's where the threat lies. You'll head up the attack team, and I'll get Simon to the meet-up at the safe house.”

“I should come with you,” Prescott said, eyes widening in alarm.

“We need to separate,” Rose said firmly. “If something should happen to me—”

“You mean if you turn yourself in,” she cut in.

“I mean that getting Simon to his security team is critical. I'll take him now. The First Echo evacuation should be complete by tomorrow morning, but give them a good thirty-six hours to settle in and cover their tracks before beginning the attack. I want this building cleared out before it happens. Once CCM is secure, you proceed as planned. Am I clear?”

A message passed between the two of them, some wordless communication that had Prescott blinking back tears.

Rose gave a short, sharp nod and strode away.

We chased after her, leaving Prescott alone and stricken.

“You're abandoning ship?” I asked.

“It's not uncommon for the Consort to cleave our safe worlds. We likely would have moved in a week or so. We're accustomed to it.”

“How often?”

“When I first fled, we moved nearly every day. Then, as the Consort grew complacent, we could stay in one place for months at a time. Recently it's picked up again, for obvious reasons.”

I tried to estimate how many times they'd moved, but it seemed impossible. No wonder they weren't sentimental. They never stayed still long enough to let an attachment build.

She stopped in front of her room, unlocked the door, and ushered us in.

Monty was sitting on the edge of the bed, fingers sifting through the strings, brow creased in concentration. She touched his shoulder, and he tucked his hands behind him like a child caught misbehaving.

“Time to go, my love,” she said in the gentlest voice I'd ever heard her use. “Have you packed?”

He looked at her blankly. “What would I bring? All I need is you.”

She shook her head, her face mingling exasperation and affection, and pulled on a heavy gray parka.

I hadn't noticed before how generic and impersonal her
room looked. Not just tidy, but barren. Only Monty's handful of buttons was visible.

“Where's your stuff” I asked.

She took a duffel bag from the closet, swinging it over her shoulder with a grunt. “Here.”

“I mean your regular stuff.”

She adjusted the strap. “Here.”

She didn't carry anything except a go bag. She'd spent twenty years assuming that she wouldn't stay in one place long enough to unpack. The future was a gamble to Rose, I realized, and she was smart enough to know the house always won.

“Simon,” she said, “gather your things. Meet us in the lobby in ten minutes. Del, stay with him.”

I hadn't unpacked either, come to think of it.

“You're not turning yourself in,” Simon said, not moving.

“Turn herself in?” Monty asked. “Don't be stupid, boy. Of course she wouldn't.”

“I need to monitor the conference room,” she said. “Ten minutes.”

“Why would we turn ourselves in?” Monty said, bewildered. “After all the effort I went to getting out?”

He flapped his hands, agitated, and Rose caught them in hers. “No one is making you go back.”

“Randolph is after you,” he warned her, his gnarled fingers gripping her. “He won't rest until he thinks he's won.”

“He won't win,” she promised, the words as tender as they were
fierce. “We'll start over, if we have to. But we won't be defeated.”

Monty let go of her hand and looked away, nodding. One hand toyed with a button, dancing it through his fingers like a magician with a coin. But I knew better than to fall for the mis­direction. My eyes were glued to his other hand, sifting and sorting the threads of the world, tiny gestures that nobody—not even Rose—noticed. It was as if he was running scales, practicing until he could play without thinking.

“It should be me,” Monty said. “I'll do it. One last chance with Lattimer, face to face.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “So I can get my hands on him.”

“Nonsense,” she said briskly, as if that put an end to the discussion. “We leave in eight minutes. Gather your things.”

Simon didn't budge. “I'm not going anywhere until you promise you won't turn Del in.”

“I won't turn Del in,” she said with the same precision she'd used earlier. I met her eyes, the same hazel as mine, and she nodded once.

Words work strangely. The fewer words someone uses, the more their silence tells you. Lattimer's grandiose speech meant as little as his promises. But Rose's silence in the face of Simon's panic meant exactly what she'd said: She wouldn't turn me in. She'd turn herself in, and she'd expect me to do the same. Simon didn't hear it, because he only listened to the words, and not the silence around them.

“Seven minutes,” I said, and we headed for Simon's room,
just down the hall. The door was unlocked—not everyone got the privacy Rose did, it seemed. Simon pulled my old backpack from the closet. “Half this stuff is yours.”

“Was it useful?”

“Eliot's phone, definitely. The tech guys acted like it was Christmas morning when I handed it over. I ate some of the candy bars. I didn't try the picks or the duct tape, though. It's quite the collection.” He began stuffing clothes into the backpack at random.

“I like to be prepared.”

“Runs in the family, huh?” He closed the bag and pulled me to him. “Tell me this plan will work.”

I buried my face in his sweatshirt, inhaling the scent of him, soap and sunshine and boy. It didn't mute the memory of the cleaving numbers, but it muffled them. How many worlds would Lattimer destroy before this was over? How many lives would unravel to nothing?

I drew back and kissed him, so hard that the memories stopped and my mind filled with Simon, with the taste of him on my tongue and the feel of his hands on my skin, blocking out the rest of the world.

When he broke the kiss, we stood for a moment, breathless and sweaty and dazed, and I remembered what had turned everything so frantic, all the awfulness we were trying to hold back, a dam trying to contain an angry river before it swept away the shore.

“It'll work,” I promised, careful not to say more, and drew him down to me again.

•   •   •

When we reached the lobby, Rose was pacing next to a high-backed leather chair, arguing with Monty. Her head snapped up as she caught sight of us. “You're late.”

“He had to pack,” I said, rebraiding my hair.

From the chair, Monty snorted. I ignored him and peered around the deserted lobby. “Where is everyone?”

“Doing their part. Now we do ours.”

Rose had given me a device similar to Simon's, to mitigate the worst of my frequency poisoning, but I felt shaky as we crossed the parking lot with Simon's hand at my waist. Rose strode ahead, and Monty scurried to keep up with her.

The night sky was blanketed with clouds, a hazy gray overlaying deep blue, light pollution from the city turning the horizon orange. I let the cold air fill my lungs, snapping me into alertness. “Where's the pivot?”

“A few blocks west,” Rose replied. “There's a bus terminal that will make it harder to trace us.”

Simon tucked my hand in his as we crossed streets and dodged pedestrians. “This isn't what I expected.”

I laughed. “What did you expect? A few weeks ago, you had no idea Walking even existed.”

“And now I don't exist. I shouldn't, anyway.”

“Don't talk like that,” I said sharply. “Your existence is the thing that's going to save us all.”

“I'm not sure I care about saving everyone, Del. Just you and my mom. Besides, he's the one who's special.”

My pace slowed. “He's not the only hybrid, you know. There are more of them—enough that the Consort has studied their effects on the multiverse. But you're unique. You're the only Echo with a Key World signal. You're the only one who's Walked. Cleaving and cauterization . . . those are physics. They're facts. You're a truth.”

I went up on tiptoe to graze his jaw with my lips, blinking back tears before he could see them.

We kept moving until Rose halted.

“Here,” she called, motioning to a rift that hovered a few feet off the ground near a ticket kiosk. We crossed over to another pivot, where Rose boosted a minivan in the time it took Simon to reset his tuner.

We ended up on the South Side, crossing over outside a convenience store. Rose and Monty bought snacks while Simon reset his tuner again, and we set out on foot through the neighborhood of neatly tended lawns and brick bungalows, their windows glowing in the darkness.

“Here,” Rose said finally, gesturing at an orange bungalow with a
FOR SALE
sign in the yard. “It's vacant.”

“How can you tell?”

“Newspapers.” She pointed to a small pile of waterlogged
Tribune
s on the front stoop.

Inside, a cluster of pivots hung near the front door, another set in the kitchen, another at the stairs. Everything was perfectly staged—no family pictures on the mantle, just an assortment of candles that had never been lit. A bowl of wax fruit sat on the
kitchen table, and the couch pillows practically stood at attention.

“I'm hungry,” said Monty, pushing past me to tear into our supplies. He rummaged around the drawers, discovered a lone plastic spoon, and dug into a tube of cookie dough.

Simon watched him, baffled, and then turned to Rose. “What's the plan?”

“Tomorrow you'll meet up with your security detail. Once CCM is secure, you'll be brought in, along with the Other Simon, to show the Walkers the truth.”

“Dangerous stuff,” warned Monty through a mouthful of cookie dough.

Rose's lips pursed in annoyance, then smoothed out again. She seemed happy enough to have Monty back—there were plenty of affectionate looks and brief, fleeting moments of contact, as if she was reassuring herself he was truly here. But underneath the affection was impatience. She ran the Free Walkers with stark efficiency, and maneuvering around Monty's shambling, lackadaisical nature was slowing her down.

As for Monty . . . I wanted to know why he was keeping up the dotty, distracted routine. Was it a way to punish Rose for leaving him behind? Was he so unsettled by the woman she'd become that he couldn't trust her? The way his face lit up every time she entered the room suggested he wasn't holding a grudge.

It didn't make sense. Monty had gotten exactly what he wanted, so there was no need for the act—unless there was something else he wanted. Some new scheme.

“What exactly is it I'm supposed to do?” Simon asked.

“I can't tell you that,” Rose said.

He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, deceptively at ease. But I knew the look in his eyes. The tiniest flash of pity ran through me, for Lattimer and the Walkers and any other person—Rose included—who tried to take a single thing more from him.

“I've gone along with you,” he said, pleasant as June, stubborn as February. “I've done what you wanted, to protect Del, to find a cure for my mom, and because I like the Consort a hell of a lot less than I like you. But I'm not going in there without a game plan.”

“We don't have time for this,” she said sternly.

I moved next to Simon, let him slide an arm around my waist and draw me closer.

“I don't think this place has cable, Rose,” I said. “We've got plenty of time.”

“You,” she said, pointing at me, “should have gone to the First Echo. Since you didn't, you're a security risk, and I will not jeopardize our mission to satisfy your curiosity. Simon, you'll be given the information you need once you reach your team.”

His jaw worked, and I knew the discussion wasn't finished, only postponed. “What are you going to do about Lattimer's offer?”

Monty paused for moment, sighed, and returned to his snack.

“I'll go, of course,” Rose said.