I glance down at my phone where it sits on the table. There was a notification…
“Check later,” Rasmus says. “It’s real. Kail believes it, but I think he didn’t tell you because of why he told nobody. He thought we’d not believe him.”
Oh.The significance of this sinks into me like a stone falling into silent ocean depths. This is part of the why, part of the reason he left me. It must be. I’m beginning to understand.
“So, there’s more. He wanted to fix things for you, Hailey, yes. And Esau wanted to help because of Niamh going missing. He blamed Clay for her disappearance. So, they wanted to get into the institute and get evidence of the cryogenics happening of bodies they were never approved to use. Of forbidden research happening. Illegal stuff.”
I’m a bit lost in some of this, but I nod. Rasmus restarts his soliloquy.
“And Kail had a USB with the code we needed to get inside the institute.”
Now I understand. We were supposed to both get that and Kail swiped it. Saying this might make them think badly of me. I can skip the details, though, of having sex in front of everyone. I flashback to last night only to reassert the here and now a second later. “That was Zedder’s hacker, Dawid. He promised. He said he could get that code. We paid his price to get us in, but I never saw that USB.”
Kail took it and said nothing. He was making sure I couldn’t follow him. I pinch my lips together.
“Yes. So, he showed me that, and I checked it out. It was good. I swear it was fine, but something went wrong after they went into the institute. They went in at seven fifty-eight, dressed as cleaners, along with the early staff. Entered the underground garage and never came out. It was supposed to be fast. In and out within thirty minutes, tops, we thought. I’ve had no messages since then.”
What do they want of me? I clasp my fingers under my mouth and lean on my hands. “So, you’ve all had longer to think on this. What are we doing? They’ve been caught?”
Bang, bang, bang, goes my heart.
“We can’t be sure,” Ron says.
“Alternate timeline,” I whisper, catching up on the torrent of fantastical info dumped on me. “What does that even mean?”
“It means Kail comes from here but with a few minor and maybe a few major differences? We don’t know exactly, but he is not really a stranger here. The institute existed, so did many other things.” Ron opens his hands. “You and your father existed there.”
“Oh.” I have a doppelganger. My brain is racing ahead,and I think I can feel the reason for what he did in this murky new landscape of what-ifs, and I know it somehow… “Kail Stone. Ohmi-fucking-god.”
Kail. Stone.
“What is it, Hailey?” Molly asks.
He is the man that my Kail Stone could have become. He didn’t randomly pick the name. What were we in his world? Lovers? Friends? I close my eyes.
“Kail Stone is someone from my childhood. He died here, in Revenant, as a teenager. I think in his timeline, he survived.” I suck in a long breath. He never said, never told me, and duh, of course not. Would I have done so?
I shake my head, come back to the table full of people waiting.
“Do you think he loved you in his world?” Molly gets it.
I grimace, feel the tears coming, and nod.
A helpful distraction arrives and brushes his furry head against my leg. Purring commences. I duck my head to see Squiggle Cat, cruising down there and lower my hand to pat him. Cats are always soothing.
Some calmness reinstalls itself. I smile at my white fluffy friend as he climbs partway up my jeans leg, his forepaws propped on me.
A second later, he leaps up and does circles in my lap. He curls up and snuggles in, barely fitting under the table. With my forefinger, I scritch the black splotch on his head.
“Okay. Enough of this. I want to get him out of there. Out of the institute. How? And any idea as to why they were trapped?”
“Maybe the USB code had more in it than I found.” Rasmus shrugs. “It was a lot to analyze. I did manipulate it in ways that this Dawid could not have meant anyone to.”
“Meaning? Is that good or bad?” I tilt my head. Can I use this?
“I enabled control of some of the background services. The elevators, for one. It wasn’t enough to save Esau and Kail.” He puffs out his lips, touches the cogwheel tattoo on his neck. I imagine Esau put that tattoo on him. “Also, Dawid is dead. The sheriff reported an accident that almost set the house on fire where he was found. The Laramie house.”
My-my. So that was the fire. Can’t say I’m feeling any grief.
