“The serums are individualized?” I ask. “Or Starla’s was special?”

“Or yours was, and he gets the medical scans to track its effects,” she says, which feels like an obvious option now that she’s said it out loud and everything.

Has Adam experimented with me? I wonder if Jean knew. The urge to call him up and ask is so strong I could cry from it.

“You should go,” I say. “Nothing good will come of you being seen lingering around my apartment.”

“Is there anything else I can do?” she asks.

I struggle with how much to tell her. I don’t want her getting in trouble over this, but it’s not fair to let her get taken by surprise.

“Don’t come to work Friday.”

“Friday? This Friday? That’s only three days away.” She tilts her head. “Cara, you can’t kill Adam. If he dies, the hatches will stop working.”

“I know. Trust me, no one lets me forget,” I say. “I’m just going to disable traversing for a while. I’m working on something for the long term.”

“The hatch?”

I stay quiet.

“No, I understand, don’t tell me.” She stands. “I thought after Jean died you spiraled and got involved in a dangerous relationship. I could see you were sneaking around, hiding something. I just thought it was your runner boyfriend trying to ruin you.”

    “And your solution was to beat up a man who beats up people for a living?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“You? I didn’t think you ever lost control.”

“Only every single time something happens to you,” she says, putting on her coat. “These last few weeks, I’ve felt you truly slipping away from me for the first time. I handled it poorly. I’m sorry.”

I know what it sounds like, but that might just be what I want it to sound like. She’s gone before I can form a response. Which is just as well, because I don’t know what to say. At some point, maybe when she gets home or maybe when it’s already too late, she’ll realize she’s right and I am slipping away. Adam will know that someone on the inside helped the runners, and he knows I hate him for what he did to Jean. I’m not going to get away with it this time. But I’ll leave that nightmare for Friday. When she gets a call, or sees a news report with my name on it. Until then, let her think we’re fine. Let her believe we can keep up this dance forever.

* * *

THE NEWS PROJECTIONS catch fire after the runners’ display. They used flamethrowers, chainsaws, and motorized skates to terrorize the garden with one clear message: We didn’t kill Jean Sanogo. I scan the coverage obsessively, making sure none of the images contain my eyes or utterly unique facial striping. I’m in the clear, but I may have a new problem. There’s a capture going around of Adam Bosch just after the runners receded, which means it’s Adam Bosch just after he saw his brother’s face for the first time in decades. He looks wide-eyed and utterly shaken, but just beneath it all, where another person would have confusion or hurt, there is cunning.

    My building access still works, a Maintenance gang doesn’t come for me in the night, but I’m still convinced he’s making moves.

I monitor things around the office to make sure he doesn’t increase security in anticipation of Nik Nik’s next act. But as far as I can tell he hires only a little more security for his house and garden. Maybe he thinks Nik Nik will strike only at him personally, not professionally, so he’s not thinking about protecting his company. Or maybe he’s made preparations I won’t see until it’s too late. But it is too late, too late to think of something else and too late to pull back. The pieces are already in motion, and we’re about to find out if Adam or I played the better game.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The day before we strike, I find myself looking at everything like it’s for the last time. When I pack, I expect a mountain of possessions, heavy as an anchor, to prove I did belong here. But it’s just a backpack’s worth of clothes and a box filled with my collection of items from other Earths. Soon my name will be off Eldridge’s books, off rotation, and these sealed bags will be the only evidence that I once walked among stars, that I was valuable and the universe looked me in the eye.

Instead of dread or sorrow, it’s gratitude that fills my last normal day. When I get breakfast at my usual place, I’m compelled to say thank you, and then say it again when the first goes unheard. Thank you for always being open. Thank you for always being as rude to me as you were to every other citizen patron, even when I barely passed as a resident.

I walk slowly through the street gardens, staring in wonder at the tall buildings like I haven’t since my first week here. Under a flowering tree I thank the city for treating me better than any stranger deserves. For giving me a comfortable place to sort out who I really am. For letting me know what security felt like, even if just for a few years that feel briefer now that they are coming to an end. And I thank the city for letting me know Dell, not just because she’s beautiful and I got to see her, but because I was able to know a person who carried strength and perseverance, but was utterly devoid of self-pity.

    When I get to work, Dell doesn’t quite seem to know how to interact with me. She avoids my eyes in a way she never has. I’m desperate to bring up what she said in my apartment, just to hear the parts of it again that make it sound like she loves me.

The closest I can manage is to look her in the eyes and ask, “Any plans for tomorrow?”

“No,” she says. “I might take it off. Personal day.”

I nod. When she doesn’t pick up the thread of conversation, I climb into the hatch and let her send me away for the last time.

I stretch out to touch Nyame’s muzzle eagerly, and the energy doesn’t withdraw. I let her know she’s going to be alone again. But then I see pictures of shamans in trances and dancers in drum circles and children sleeping and I know she’s never been alone. She’s never needed us. There have always been those who transcend, and traversing is just one way to walk between worlds. I don’t think she’ll miss me, that’s too limited a way of thinking, but she makes me feel like she’s noticed me, and I am grateful for that too.

When Dell pulls me back I sit for a moment in the total dark, saying goodbye to this space, the womb that brought me here, the grave that took Nelline. By the time I climb out of the hatch for the last time, I’m near tears.

“I got you something for your interview tomorrow.”

Dell hands me a box. Inside is a suit, the kind I’ve always admired but never purchased because I was saving my money like an idiot to remove tattoos I might as well have kept.

“You asked me how I found you,” she says. She’s looking at me squarely, and I can hardly take it. “You asked me why I was always on the fortieth floor if I lived and worked on eighty.”

I lick my lips. It’s a nervous habit, but the attention it draws only makes me more nervous.

“Why were you?”

    “For the same reason I have never taken a promotion or a vacation, Cara. I’m always on the fortieth floor because that is where you are. I will always want to be wherever you are.”

I drop the box so I can pull her close, wrapping my arms around her waist so I’m surrounded in her scent. I stretch up to kiss her, because what the hell. I’m sure the tears I taste are half hers, but when I step away her eyes are clear. She holds my face and kisses me again. I close my eyes and let her make me feel small one last time.

“I love you,” I say, out loud and formal like I never have before. Wiley words for my Wiley girl. “You know that, right? I’ve never said—”

“Come home with me tonight,” she says, Ashtown all the way.

And I don’t think there is a version of me on this or any other world that could say no to that. The walk to her place passes in a giddy haze where the buzzing reality of touching her—really and finally her—is only matched by my disbelief that this is happening at all.

In her apartment I learn that our height difference means I’m perfect for her on my knees, and that her being strong enough to toss me around brings all the thrill of Nik Nik with none of the cloying fear. Most important, I learn that you can love someone so much and so thoroughly it chases away even thoughts of death.

The bubble doesn’t shatter until late in the night when we’re lying in her bed and she says, “It’s going to be okay, Cara. Everything’s going to be all right.”

They’re her last words before she falls asleep, and once she goes soft with oblivion I get up and head toward her kitchen. I won’t leave, I’ll soak up every inch of her until I have to go, but I stand naked in her kitchen and use a knife to cut sizeable chunks from the hair on the side of my head. I find paper wrappings and bundle two chunks separately before writing a note for Esther on the outside.