Wired (24 page)

Leo stroked his chin, studying Mason's face. Suddenly they both looked at me, and then at each other.

“Back to square one? Are you kidding me?” My sanity couldn't take much more of this.

“We haven't secured an outcome, and instead have worked ourselves to an impasse,” Leo said. “And I think neither of us can take the chance that fate will give us what we want. This . . . well, this has never
happened before.” He looked almost embarrassed—not a look I could remember seeing on his face before, which made it all the more disconcerting.

“Meaning?” I pressed.

Leo sighed and looked at Mason. “I cannot believe I'm saying this, but if we are not willing to accept fate, then it seems Mason and I must enter into an agreement to reset the playing field or neither one of us can get what he wants.”

Wow. I'd nearly died more than once. This wasn't a playing field.

“A handshake agreement,” Mason said, testing the idea.

“Yes. Honor. I know it's a foreign concept for you.”

“Shut up, Leo. A handshake deal's a foreign concept to you, too. And the only reason I'm going to do it is because there is no doubt in my mind that I'm going to beat you, just as I have before.”

“You are so fixated on the past. What does any of it matter if you lose now?”

“Save it. Where do you want to start?”

I just stood there, watching the guys discuss my future. I would have acted if I'd had any idea what to do.

Leo shrugged. “Neutral territory.”

“Fine with me.”

I had no idea what
neutral territory
was, but Mason seemed to know. The wind ruffled Leo's hair, and he carefully smoothed it back down as he and Mason stared at each other.

“The only reason this is going to work,” Leo said, “is because neither of us trusts the other at all.”

“It's one for the history books,” Mason agreed in
a murmur. “So, the deal is, we reset the playing field, and then it's each man for himself?”

Leo nodded and held out his sleek, manicured hand. Mason's rough, tan fingers closed around it. They shook on their agreement.

Then they both turned to me.

After arguing for several minutes about who was going to take me to wherever we were going, the decision was made that we should all go together. I didn't bother pointing out that if they really were in some kind of détente then it shouldn't matter who had custody of me on the way. This arguing suggested that neither of them meant to keep their word if it came down to the wire and they faced losing the game.

Neutral territory
turned out to be in front of the inside goddamn 7-Eleven. “Why here?” I growled.

“DMZ,” Mason said. “And it seemed appropriate for the reset.”

“In other words . . .” I trailed off, hoping one of them would finish my sentence with something helpful.

Leonardo smiled. “In other words, we agree on almost nothing.”

“Except for one thing,” Mason said.

Both men looked at me.

“Which is?”

“We don't want you to die now,” Leonardo said.

“We
definitely
don't want you to die now,” Mason said, glancing at Leo and proving to me he'd added the word in the spirit of one-upmanship.

But . . . 
now
? “Well, thanks,” I said dryly. “That's considerate of you.” Especially given that both of them had nearly killed me at different times.

“So, if you feel ready . . .” Leo began, advancing on me.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I put up my palms. “You know what? No can do. There comes a time when a woman has to stand up for herself and take matters into her own hands. I'm very sorry if some snippet of code I wrote or will write contributes to the Apocalypse or whatever, but I'm through listening to you two. You've thrown me around, taken advantage of me, taken advantage of my lack of information—which, I might point out, is the direct result of your not telling me anything. I've almost died several times, you've made me cry, and none of it has amounted to anything. We never get anywhere. Because you do something”—I pointed at Mason—“and then you do something”—I pointed at Leo—“and both of you just keep negating the other person's actions.”

“Yes, that's kind of how it works,” Mason agreed, his voice low and measured like that of a hostage negotiator. “Except that usually there's no reset. I get how upsetting the idea of starting from square one must be for you.”

Oh, do you, now?
I almost punched him again.

“You're a highly unusual case,” Leonardo said.

“You'd better believe I'm a highly unusual case,” I yelled. “This stalemate is
your
problem, not mine.
I'm done with this. I refuse to cooperate. So I demand that you take me home and leave me alone.” And then I waited.

And I waited.

Let's not all rush forward at once
.

“I see how it is,” I said, mentally weighing my options. It didn't take long. There weren't any.

“I'm not sure you do see. You're not done,” Leonardo said. “You can't be done. You're not a Peripheral; you're a Major. You're the point of all of this. You're indispensable.”

I leaned against the wall, wondering why I didn't just get on a plane or a train or hop in Kitty's car and disappear myself from all of this. Well, I didn't
really
wonder. I already knew that I didn't really have the moxie Leonardo had once credited me with, even if I was starting to stand up for myself. And I also knew that out there held nothing for me. At least here I had bits of the life I wanted to lead. And who knew if I could even hide from wire crossers?

I watched the men argue over procedures and who would do what, and a thought occurred to me. If I did what they asked, we'd reset to a reality where Mason wasn't my stalker. We'd end up back on that first wire, and maybe I could stop Leonardo from switching things up and making Mason the villain.

“You okay, Rox?” Mason asked, a kind of concern in his voice and eyes that just didn't say
stalker
. What did that mean to me, though?

“I don't know.” I looked numbly at him. “Just tell me this is it, that this is the end. I mean, I realize we're starting over here, but in a way it's also the end, right? When this plays out, I'll be done? I can
just go on with my life? I can learn from this and . . .”

An uncharacteristic look of guilt showed on Leo's face; Mason looked stricken. “I'll try to come back and fix it,” he said.

I stared at him in confusion. “What?”

“Well, in a reset . . . you've been hyper-aware of your realities through the past jumps, but this time you should be cognizant only of what you knew the first time around,” Leo finally said—a scary answer if I ever heard one.

“Wait a second,” I whispered. What if things got worse this time around? And I'd never know the difference?

Mason selected one of the presets on his reader, Leo injected the punch, and I knew the past wouldn't wait.

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us
.

I'm not going to panic . . . not going to panic . . . not going
 . . .

What are you doing, Roxanne?

I'm going to the 7-Eleven. People go to the 7-Eleven all the time and absolutely nothing happens to them. So, chances are that nothing is going to happen to you, which means there is absolutely no point in panicking. Keep walking
.

I lost my footing and stumbled a bit. I put my hand to my forehead as if I could stop what felt like an audiotape of my very own thoughts, prerecorded, playing back without commercials.

Give me a break
.

I'm going to die
.

If nothing else, go down fighting
.

How strange
.

I stopped in the middle of the street, halfway between the 7-Eleven and my home, and looked around. How strange, indeed. I was as scared as I'd been the first time around, but I had the sense that it wasn't for the same reason; I knew why I was scared now, and it made me wonder all the more what I'd been scared of then. Unless I was caught in an endless cycle of this crap, which was something I didn't even want to take seriously.

A half block later I slowed to a halt and looked behind me toward home. A discarded
S.F. Chronicle
blew across the street. I looked forward; the pale glow of the 7-Eleven was only a block away.

I almost started to laugh in spite of my fear. They had been wrong again. I wasn't rewound to L. Roxanne Zaborovsky on the brink of her very first reality splice, before Leonardo Kaysar, before the second coming of Mason Merrick. Because if I were that person again, this moment would have seemed fresh and new and I'd be panicking the way I was before, still not knowing why. No, I was still the Roxy who was three times removed from her original reality and cognizant of bits and pieces of every single one. That wasn't what they were expecting when they'd gambled on a reset.

As I stood there staring at the glow of the 7-Eleven sign, a figure emerged from the shadows and stepped into the street.
Mason
.

I looked behind me. The figure of a second man rose up from a crouch in the shadows.
Leonardo
.

Give me a break
.

“She's mine, Leo!”

I couldn't see Mason's face in any detail. I couldn't see his expression, and I'm not sure it would have mattered. My recent life had begun again, events unfolding just as they had the first time. My body began responding to invisible cues as if I were repeating a dance I'd practiced many times before.

The way I pulled at my messenger bag and started searching for my phone, the way the men started toward me, the way I dropped to the street on my knees, spilling my things; the way the pavement vibrated, the way I tried to crawl away on my hands and knees.

And . . . the way I gave up and curled my body into surrender in the street.

Mason and Leo were shouting at each other. Curled up in the street, I let my mind wander as I waited for my cue, as it were. And it was then that I realized that while the motions were all the same, I wasn't. I might be scared, but not like before. I might feel some panic, but not like before. I might find my heart beating overtime, but my breathing was measured, my mind silent of screams.

Everything around me was exactly the same, but I didn't have to be. If I could purposely hesitate or make a proactive move, if I could slip even an extra second into time or pluck one out, I could change things. Meaning, I had as much ability to create a new reality for myself as they did. And that wasn't something the guys had counted on.

They'd commented how I was unusually cognizant of the reality splice, how my transition from one reality to another hadn't been seamless. And Leo had
also seemed surprised at the residual memories I'd kept from previous versions of my reality. Leonardo had said I was an unusual case. He was right. And given what they said just before the reset, even more unusual than they realized.

Silver streaked through the air, and I watched a gun flip end over end until it hit the pavement. Except, I kept my head up this time and took a closer look. That wasn't a gun; it was a punch.

Mason ignored it, barreling full-force into Leo as if the guy were a tackling dummy. Watching them closely, I saw that now they were grappling over a gun that had come from inside Leonardo's jacket. I would have bet a lot of money it was the same gun he'd give me later.

I closed my eyes and waited for Leo to come for me. He did, as he had before, picking me up under my arms, crushing me face-first into his chest, moving backward, dragging me along with him like a rag doll.

Except this time I wasn't so busy being scared out of my gourd, and this time I noticed the object in his jacket pocket bumping against my rib cage.

I knew Mason would be fighting to win the advantage all over again, and Leo for a second chance to gain
possession
of me. But it was as if they were in a scripted realm. Every cry of pain, every blow, the gun arching up in the air . . . it unfolded exactly the same way. With my eyes squeezed shut and the toes of my shoes scraping on the pavement, I heard Leo say, “This is where it ends.”

I kept waiting to see which one of them would break first and change things. But as they fought on,
I figured out the answer for myself. It was going to be me. In the moment that I was supposed to wonder how a person prepared herself to die, just as the gun went off and Leo lurched sideways, I slipped the hand that was supposed to be hanging loosely at my side into Leo's jacket pocket and took his smartie.

I knew where the punch was on the ground, and when Leo let go of me and I fell away from him to the pavement, I twisted my body to face it.

“This is where it begins,” Mason shouted. The two men started running, smashing together and wrestling each other to the ground.

I lifted myself to my knees and crawled hand over hand, knee over knee, grabbing the strap of my messenger bag on the way, then crawled to the punch lying in the street. I stuffed it in my bag along with Leo's reader and retreated.

Now
I was as scared as I'd been the first time.

I kept crawling down the middle of the street, the gravel raking my knees and palms, the messenger bag heavy with the equipment. Blinking back tears, I set my sights on Mason's Mustang, parked just as it was before, in perfect condition.

At some point, the boys would recognize that I was stepping off the wire. My hands were shaking when I wrenched open the car door and climbed in. The heat begin to build. If Leo didn't take advantage and overpower Mason before Mason picked up the gun and locked in the sweet spot as he had before, I had only a moment or so before the reality splice.