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“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I asked for a water when he offered a drink, and I checked the calendar on his computer while he was out of the office. He had ‘Jamaica with kids’ blocking out the whole week, as well as check-in info for his Airbnb.”

Jack pulled out the paper on which he’d scribbled down the list of branch director surnames and crossed out “F.” That meant they were down two. Three more to go.

“Nice work, man,” Jack said as he circled the next name on the list. Ms. G. Summers.

A pause from the other end of the line. Then, in a smaller voice than had been there before, one from decades in the past, “Thanks, Jack.”

Jack hung up a few moments later. Apparently the job was Carter’s if he wanted, which he didn’t, but the offer was flattering nonetheless. Flores, in Carter’s words, was a friendly if no-nonsense guy who had little to say when Carter had tried to subtly inquire about the higher-ups in the nearby branches.

With the only pickup on his docket done shortly after lunch, Jack spent the remainder of his working hours napping with his chin propped in his hand so it just looked like he was concentrating very intently on his laptop screen to anyone passing by. The all-nighter had resulted in a whittling down of his culprit list, and when he returned home that night, he’d hunt down Ms. G. Summers’s information on the spreadsheet and vet her next. Everything was going exactly as he’d expected, which was exactly as he liked it. This job, while a little unorthodox, had no real surprises to worry about. Of that he was sure. And of that he was grossly mistaken.

26

Jack had always known Fort You Again wouldn’t hold forever. It had been cobbled together by discarded elements of nature, and it was only a matter of time before nature reclaimed them. Eventually the kids who’d built the fort became teens who could barely fit in it, and branches that had once seemed like trunks became little more than twigs rotting their way back into the earth they’d once grown from. It hurt to say goodbye. The wind in those woods whispered with their secrets and plans. The leaves rustled with their laughter. That forest was theirs. But as long as Jack had the You Agains, he could plant his roots anywhere.

Billy’s All-Day Diner became the next logical hub. Billy himself ensured every booth was a confessional, and their apple pie was impossible to top. High school was merely an often avoidable obstacle between evenings at the diner, the six of them crammed onto ripped upholstery as they plotted or schemed or gossiped or, very occasionally, did homework. The grime on the walls and the scuffs on the tables made sense to Jack the way the sunrise in the mornings and the jingle of his mother’s keys at night made sense. The world had a rhythm and its patterns were etched on every coffee-stained cup placed in front of him.

That rhythm carried him through the decades, until one day he died, and the rhythm no longer seemed quite so smooth anymore. Suddenly his greasy diner had been replaced by the marble tabletop of Margaret’s kitchen island in a house worth more than Jack’s organs had been before they were buried, but Jack didn’t really notice much. As long as he had the You Agains, he could plant roots anywhere. And as everyone gathered in what had now been solidified as their usual spots, he could feel those roots taking anchor, even through this strange trunk that wasn’t his. Because, in some ways, it was becoming easy to forget. He was Jack McCoy, after all, and that felt just as true now, in this new old shell, as it had in his old but comparatively new one. It was something Jack had always been good at, finding himself no matter where he found himself, and he would do anything, even cheat death, to keep from losing that. Not after last time death came for the You Agains and he’d lost everything.

Eli was back behind his laptop as Carter unpacked his interview to the others and Jack listened on with his eyes closed, ostensibly to better absorb the story but mostly because it meant he could doze a little through the bits he’d already heard.

At some point Eli’s voice replaced Carter’s through Jack’s sleepy haze, though he let most of the words run off him like water until one broke away from the stream. Jack’s eyes flew open.

“Say again?”

“You needed the info on that Ms. G. Summers person, right?” Eli said. “Well, that’s her.”

“Right,” said Jack. “But her name. What did you say her name was?”

Eli poorly stifled a grunt. “You could at least pretend you were paying attention. I said it’s some chick named Greta. Greta Summers.”

Jack’s thoughts raced back to his conversation with Brenda when she’d reeled off all the directors’ names: “Ms. Summers works almost exclusively from another branch and is, if you’ll forgive me, terrifying.”

The new archivist certainly fit the bill for terrifying, and she’d transferred over from another branch after Jack’s would-be date Gerard died, but would a higher-up at S.C.Y.T.H.E. work what was, as far as Jack could tell, a mid-level job in conjunction with a position at the top? It didn’t make sense, really. Unless, of course, she’d come to Jack’s branch with the sole purpose of stealing the Master List. She’d have had one at her own branch perfectly primed for stealing, but maybe the Room of Records was easier to access here. Maybe the names would be worth more for some reason. Jack couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that, if his suspicions were correct, the human exclamation mark in his office basement wasn’t who she seemed, and Jack knew a thing or two about what that was like. Which meant he’d have the upper hand in finding out the truth.

27

Twins

September 2000

Julia Nguyen transferred to Jack’s school two weeks after term started, which was not an ideal way to set a third grader up for success, but at least she had her twin, Martha, to commiserate with. Jules was quiet, infamously weird, and could also be a bit of a biter. Martha, on the other hand, was bubbly and dangerously unafraid of confrontation. By the end of their first week, even the fifth graders like Jack had taken notice of these strange specimens. Opinions were divided into three camps: Team Jules, Team Martha, and Team Both Suck, with the latter two garnering the most votes among the student body. Everyone noticed the way Jules spent most of her time mumbling to herself alone. Everyone noticed how Martha could silence the whole cafeteria with an applause-inspiring burp. What none of the other kids seemed to notice, but what Jack picked up within days, was that he’d yet to see the twins together.

Thursday of that first week, Dale, Carter, Eli, and Greer met at Fort You Again for a debrief. Greer, who was a freshman in high school, deemed the whole drama totally lame. Ashley Robinson had been caught with weed and expelled, which seemed way more interesting to her for reasons Jack simply could not fathom.

“My mom said they never call Martha’s name during class attendance,” said Carter, whose mother was a teacher at their school and thus got the juiciest intel from the teacher’s lounge.

“Because there is no Martha,” Jack said matter-of-factly.

“But I’ve seen her,” Dale said in a rare instance of disagreement with Jack’s opinion. “She always wears that denim headband.”

“Yep, and Jules always wears braided pigtails with ribbons and feathers. It’s smart,” said Jack.

“What’s smart?” Greer’s tone was an eye roll.

“To give Martha and Jules different looks.”