Resonance (29 page)

With a grunt, Monty lowered himself next to me. “Some will lead directly to him.”

“Which part? His head? His hand?”

“The whole of him,” Monty said. “I can't explain it any better than that, Delancey. We're all part of the multiverse. It's woven into the warp and weft of who we are, and binds us together. All one, all distinct. You have to find the connection.”

“The connection,” I murmured, and shut my eyes, blocking out the garage and everyone in it, keeping perfectly still, letting the vibration of the threads fill me up. The Key World sang its clear, crystalline song, so familiar I often ignored it. This time I listened so closely that I could almost see the strings, resonating in tune against a field of black velvet, each with its own texture and voice. This was the only place entropy hadn't triumphed, this perfect arrangement of notes, strong and vital. But one of the strings was going silent, and I searched for it, for a sound that dropped away, an unexpected rest in the symphony.

I searched for Simon. All the Simons, through all the worlds, and it gave me a sensation of falling asleep, sinking deeply into something vast and billowing, the world expanding with every second, spinning out like the arms of a galaxy, tiny and infinite at once, and the order of the Key World gave way to the multiverse, entropy crashing around me, and still I searched for Simon.

For his silence.

I caught the string, its stillness against my finger so wrong in the middle of all the noise, and traced a finger along it. The line was slackening, and I knew what it meant. I listened to the
faintness of the signal, my heart bleeding with every faltering beat.

“I've got it,” I said. “Now what?”

“There are more,” Monty said. His hand pressed heavily into my shoulder. “They'll be nearby. Gather them up, gently.”

A life should come down to more than a few memories. A few acts. A handful of strings clutched like a child's balloon. A life should be summed up by its connections, by the way it alters the world around it, the daily choices that accrue and give it meaning, that shape the world in ways you never imagine but couldn't exist without. A life should be about the people it has touched, an infinite, ever-widening circle that expands even as its song stops. A life isn't contained in words or moments, but in the traces it leaves throughout the world.

I held Simon's life, and the lives of his Echoes, and I listened as hard as I could, so I could carry it with me, so I could make it a part of my own song.

“You have to cut the threads,” Monty said, pressing a divisi into my hand. “Hold them fast, and make the cut on the side closest to the Original. I'll help you finish them properly.”

“Do you promise?” Strange, in this moment, that I would trust Monty over everyone. But who better to guide me than the person who best knew this pain?

“I promise you, Delancey.”

I opened my eyes, to see Original Simon's face one more time, to tell him, once more, that I was sorry. To thank him for the life he had lived, and for the life he'd given to my Simon. But it was too late. His face was gray, his eyes shut, his chest still.

“Now!” Monty said, and the force in his voice propelled my knife hand upward.

A turn of the wrist, jerky and rushed, and the strings fell free, brushing against my arm.

Before me, Simon exhaled, soft and slow, slow, slow, and was gone.

The sob choked me, and I struggled for air, dropping the knife.

“Pay attention,” Monty said sharply. “You have to weave the strings. Once you start, they'll grow and cleave together, but you have to give them shape, then knot the ends.”

I shifted, angling myself toward my Simon, clutching the remaining threads tightly.

“Let me help,” Addie said, and her hands brushed mine. Carefully she separated a cluster of strings, roughly half of them, wrapping her elegant, shaking fingers around them. “I've got them, Del. Let go.”

I shook my head. If we failed, Simon would vanish. All the Simons, everywhere, would fade away to nothing. He'd exist only in my heart, and in terminal Echoes, like clocks winding down. Every death would be my fault. I would kill the boy I loved, a million times over.

I tried to imagine the Echo forming from this moment. Too weak to sustain, of course, but if there was . . . my Simon was dying and I wasn't there for him. None of us were. The longer I waited to act, the longer his time there was drawn out, solitary and in flux. He was waiting for me. Every Simon in the
multiverse was waiting for me, whether they knew it or not.

I looked over at him, lying on the ground. His lips were moving, silently, but I knew what they were saying. Could hear his voice in my head, even now.
Don't you ever give up on us.

Weaving is a question of layers, of overlapping strings in a way that will make something three-dimensional out of two. Like playing counterpoint.

Like falling in love.

I met Addie's eyes. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

In the background I heard Monty, singing. “Nimble fingers, open mind, hum a tune both deft and kind.”

My fingers didn't feel nimble—they felt cold and clumsy, sticky with blood. I had to work without my broken finger, and the muscles in my hand cramped as I tried to compensate. Addie matched her rhythm to mine, moving the threads over and under as necessary, keeping the tension even, knotting the ends to keep them from ever unraveling again. We hummed in the Key World frequency, infusing the fabric with its strong, steady tone.

As we worked, I envisioned my love for Simon as a tangible presence, a silver-bright filament mingled with the others, strengthening the threads, reinforcement against entropy. I was his, and he was mine, and I wasn't going to let anything—the Consort or the multiverse or entropy itself—part us again.

And then I felt a string—a wisp, really, twined with another one, its song faint as memory, different from the silence that had fallen around us, a contrast to the Key World pitch.

Simon's home world. This was his anomaly, the difference that had destabilized the multiverse, that had caused him to fall in love with me the first time.

Hum a tune both deft and kind.

I could tune him. If we could cleave a person, cauterize them, certainly we could tune them. Take a single strand of their being and transform it. Would it change him? If I could tune it now, as we were reweaving his connection to the multiverse, the tuning would stay. He'd be safe, permanently, and so would the multiverse. But what if it changed some essential part of him? Would it change how he felt about me? Did I have the right? Did I have the courage?

“Almost there,” Addie said. “You with me?”

“Yeah.” I stroked a single finger along the errant thread, smoothing and singing it into submission. The one choice only I could make for him, and I did, even if it meant he forgot me, or no longer wanted me.

“Tie the strings off,” Monty instructed. He sounded weary, like he'd been right in there with us, working and weaving and holding his breath. But maybe he was just worn down from the loss, from years of seeking Rose, only to find her and lose her again within days. “If it's worked, that will be enough.”

Carefully we knotted the last of the ends together, making a seam in the fabric of the world, a thin raised line like a scar.

It's a myth that scar tissue is the strongest in the human body. But right now, when I was made entirely of wounds, scars were the best I could hope for—healing no matter how imperfect. I
wanted scars that would knit together the loss and the grief and the triumph into something strong and flexible, into the person who was worth the sacrifices that had been made.

I turned to my Simon, lying on the ground. I took his hand in mine, held his palm against my cheek. “Can you hear me?”

His arm was heavy, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell, so slowly that my own lungs seized up.

He blinked. His lips moved, silently at first, and then he said, “You were singing.”

I nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.

“You were singing inside me.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “You've got a good voice. Way better than mine.”

“That's not saying much,” I replied, clinging to the teasing like a lifeline, like it was the only thing that could pull me out of the tidal wave of emotion. “You're okay.”

“Better than okay.” He sat up, shaking his head gingerly. I touched my mouth to his, savoring the feel of him. The strong, steady sound of the Key World surrounded us as he kissed me back. “I knew you'd do it. Knew you'd be amazing.”

“How?” I helped him to his feet.

“Because everything about you is amazing, Delancey Sullivan.”

“I was amazing too,” Addie pointed out.

“I'll be sure to tell Laurel,” he said.

Her face lit up, then dimmed. “Amazing or not, we need to leave. The fire department's sweeping the building—and the minute they're done, the Consort will send more guards down here.”

“We can't leave Simon,” I protested.

“How are we going to explain two bodies, Del? They'll assume Lattimer had a heart attack or something, but a bullet wound is another story.”

“We're not leaving him!” I cried, even as Addie tugged me toward the van. “I'm not abandoning him to the Consort.”

“You won't,” Simon assured me. “But we can't help him now. Let the fire department find him. They'll take him to the morgue. Once we're safe, we can figure out how to get him back.”

I shook my head. “They don't know him! They won't take care of him the way . . .”

The way he deserved. It was cruel to leave him here.

“We'll come back for him,” Simon assured me. “I swear it, Del. But right now we have to leave, or this will all have been for nothing.”

I shook my head, pulling away and crossing back to kneel at Original Simon's side, taking his hand in mine.

“Would you rather go back to the oubliette?” Monty snapped. I glared at him, and he glared right back. “Say your good-bye, Delancey, and then do him proud. It's all we have left.”

I smoothed his hair back, searching for the words. But nothing I could say would reverse this moment or save him, or give him the life he deserved. So I pressed a kiss to his forehead and touched the spot at the corner of his mouth, the place where his scar wasn't.

Monty's hand pressed hard on my shoulder. “It's time.”

Numb and wordless, I climbed into the van. Before Simon
had pulled the door shut, Eliot was flooring the accelerator. We burst out of the shadowy garage into sunlight and freedom, but the frozen feeling remained.

•   •   •

Nobody spoke until we crossed the city limits. Finally, I said, “Did the Free Walkers cauterize the First Echo?”

“Doubtful,” Monty said. “They won't cut it off unless their attack fails, and they're still trying to figure out how they'll get inside the building.”

“How'd you manage?” I asked Addie.

“The only people allowed inside CCM were on Lattimer's short list. So we found some guards with similar features and . . . replaced them.” She gave me a quick, sad smile. “Simon was right—a smaller team was better.”

Eliot caught my eye in the rearview mirror, his eyes bloodshot and exhausted. “We're going to have to deal with the Consort. You're free, but they're still running everything—and we're terrorists.”

“We're not the ones killing innocent people,” I said.

“There's no proof,” he replied.

“What about the laptop?” I asked. It had slid beneath Monty's seat, and I nudged it with my toe. “There's video of Lattimer admitting everything. If we can show it to the rest of the Walkers . . .”

“Two videos,” Simon said, voice strained.

“What do you mean?” Addie asked.

“Every part of that building was under surveillance.
Including the parking garage,” he said. “Which means there's a tape of Lattimer shooting me. Him.”

“And of me cauterizing him,” I whispered. “They won't be able to see the strings, but they'd know what they were seeing.”

“They couldn't ignore that,” Addie said, sitting up straight. “There's too much evidence.”

“You'd be surprised what people can ignore,” Monty said softly.

“Where's the footage kept?” Simon asked.

“It all feeds to the same server I hacked before,” Eliot said. “I can pull it once we get somewhere with a Wi-Fi signal. But what do we do with it?”

“Get it to the Free Walkers?” Addie offered.

“Not the Free Walkers,” I murmured, but only Simon heard me. He lifted his eyebrows in a silent question.

Original Simon had known he might die. Rose had warned him, and his animosity made a perfect, horrible sense. It wasn't only because my Simon had lived the life that should have been his, all those years he was on the run with the Free Walkers. It was the life my Simon was
going
to live. He'd known his death—and his Echo's survival—was the ultimate proof. He'd known the Free Walkers would sacrifice him for the greater good, and he'd gone along with it. He'd believed in it, and them, and their methods.

I wasn't sure I did.

The similarities between the Free Walkers and the Consort were too great to ignore. Their willingness to treat people like
pawns, to conceal the truth for their own ends, to justify their actions in the name of a cause, to view dissent as something to be crushed rather than understood. Both were absolutely convinced of their nobility, but I wasn't. Not anymore.

“Whatever we do, it needs to be fast,” said Addie. “You can bet the Major Consort's going to be all over this. Unless we can get it out quickly, they'll manage to cover it up.”

“We could upload it to a public site on the Internet,” Eliot said absently, checking his mirrors. “But there's no way to stop Originals from seeing it. Everyone would know.”