“One shouldn’t enter a trap on an empty stomach. At least eat first. I’ll come with.”
“Yeah. Let’s do that.”
A sense of contentment settles on Ellie. It would have never occurred to her to ask. He offered, though. Having him along to deal with Chris feels right.
The blindfold and earplugs disappear. Daniel, however, doesn’t move.
“About time.” Neeson manages to sound entitled even while squashed. “Have a good chat?”
Daniel doesn’t react. He merely maintains his effortless, unbreakable hold on Neeson. Ellie doesn’t answer either. Neeson shouldn’t have the chance to warn Chris that Daniel is coming with her, just in case. Neeson summons up an impressive amount of imperiousness as he continues on.
“True, he didn’t say it explicitly, but I believe your boss implied that you could let me go.”
“If you don’t mind”—Daniel’s voice is its usual soft but unusually polite—“I’d feel better if I hang on to you until we leave.”
The door starts to splinter. The folks on the other side have apparently given up on finding someone to undo the magnetic lock.
Ellie and Daniel exchange glances. Daniel lets go of Neeson and dissolves. Ellie follows. She nudges the rare earth alloys in the door and jamb back to their original nonmagnetic forms first, though. No sense in leaving the door locked.
CHAPTER 23
Ellie unlocks Chris’s front door. As she steps through, the emptiness and chill slams into her again as if it were the first time. That same sense that something has been ripped away and can never be replaced still screams in her mind. Maybe the house will warm again over time, maybe she’ll get used to the insatiable void, or maybe this is how Chris’s house will always be for her now.
Chris’s hug is an ambush, one that Ellie notices in the nick of time and chooses not to avoid. Ellie meets Chris’s open arms with open arms of her own. They hug and, in the end, the hug is only a hug. There isn’t a secret shiv that Chris slices into Ellie’s back or a takedown that leaves Ellie flat on her back with Chris in full control of her body. Ellie was prepared for both possibilities and a dozen more. Old habits die hard.
“You’re here. I can’t believe you came.” Chris gives Ellie one last squeeze before letting go. “I’m so sorry for everything. It was all my fault. Let’s forget the past and start over from scratch.”
Daniel follows Ellie in. Chris registers his existence. Something unreadable flickers across her face before she ambushes him, too, for a hug. Daniel avoids it, dodging Chris’s grasp with a stumble too precise to be convincing. She doesn’t try again.
“I’m sorry to you, too.” Chris offers a hand, which is not accepted. “I’ve been awful to you over the years, and you didn’t deserve any of it. If you can’t put any of that behind you yet, I understand.”
Daniel remains silent. A vague, genial smile rests easily on hisface. He looks completely relaxed, but Ellie is certain that one aggressive move from Chris, and she’ll be unconscious and slumped to the floor before Ellie can blink.
“Come on, you two.” Chris walks toward her office door. “There’s something I want you to see. I’ve been working on it for weeks.”
The door handle glints the instant before Chris twists it. It glints again as she pushes the door open. Chris never carries a key. She always extrudes the correct one from the air when she needs it and then makes it go away when she’s done. As a reflex, Ellie feels her pockets for the keys to her apartment and lab at school. She doesn’t even need them right now.
Chris’s office is as cold as a morgue and nothing like what it was the last time Ellie was here. Back then, it looked like an office, if not a usable one. A desk was pushed to one wall, a row of file cabinets to the opposite wall. The bookcases were always against the third wall. The shades were drawn on the window that lined the fourth because who needed anything as useless as light. A computer, a small trash can, piles of papers, and piles of books cluttered the desk. All this was to make room for the daybed that Mom lay on for most of her coma. There was just enough room around the bed for two people to stand on either side and reposition Mom every couple of hours.
All of that is gone. The room shimmers. The desk, the daybed, and everything else in the room have all been broken down into their raw materials and transformed. The contraption that now occupies the office is an empty box that stretches from ceiling to floor, hugs the walls, and blots the windows. A coffin stands open in the middle of the room. It has its own fair share of almost invisibly small gadgetry. Tendrils connect it to the machinery in the walls on all sides. They trap it taut like a fly in a spiderweb. The near-microscopic machinery is dazzling and Ellie has no idea what any of it does. It involves structures she has never seen before. Some of the machinery seems designed to function in aphysics nearly but not exactly the same as the physics Ellie derived from the isolationists’ change records. The irrefutable confirmation makes Ellie’s stomach sink. The only people who knew ahead of time what the new physics would be were Neeson’s cabal of maintainers.
The door shuts behind them and disappears. The rest of the world is gone. It feels like this room is the entire universe. Nothing exists on the other side of the walls.
Chris folds her arms. The disapproving frown reappears on her face. The gash it reopens in Ellie’s heart never really closed in the first place. That for a minute, Ellie saw the Chris she hoped for is now a retractor that tears and keeps the wound open. Her frown is never a sharp frown. If it were, it might slice right through. The blood would seep but the wound would be clean and she might not even feel it until it was too late. Instead, Chris’s frown is always dulled. The lips are set just so. The brows are furrowed but not too furrowed. The arms are taut but not tense. The gaze is always focused a little past Ellie. It’s aimed at Ellie but refuses to admit she exists. The dulled frown rips and tears as it hacks through Ellie. It always has and always will.
“It would have been easier if you’d shown up next week like I told you to, Ellie. You made me work nonstop to get this done in time. I’ve spent all day today making the final adjustments.” Chris gestures at Ellie to go into the coffin. “I’ve sacrificed myself for Mom and, Ellie, it is, at long last, finally time for you to do the same.”
Chris closes in. She reaches for Ellie.
“What are you talking about?” Ellie shakes off Chris’s grasp and backs away from both Chris and the coffin.
“The rules of this universe have changed. I can violate causality.” Chris’s gaze shifts for a moment to the ring on her hand. “This holds everything I need to re-create the Mom I know and love, except the body of one of her direct descendants.”
The diamond ring glints against the room’s shimmer. Ellie studies the diamond. Its facets and internal structure are folded and twisted like the planes of air Daniel constructs. Mom really did give Chris the ring. It’s just some alternate version of Mom from a universe that might have existed but didn’t. That’s who Chris wants. If Ellie makes it out of this house alive, she’s never coming back.
“No, we got Neeson to revert the changes and stop blackmailing the maintainers one universe out.” Ellie dodges Chris’s lunge for her. “The physics of this universe has not changed and is not going to change.”
“Chris.” Daniel waves his hand to get her attention. “Aunt Vera’s dead. You can’t bring her back. Let her go.”
