Our argument is interrupted by Theo, who steps between us. “Wait. Little brother—that’s not you?”
“It is, Theo. Just a different me.” Paul gives Theo a flinty smile, one without any pretense of happiness. But it’s honest, and hard, and so obviously, completely my own Paul that I take comfort in it despite his simmering anger.
Theo scowls and leans against the flying car. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Ah, just to be clear—” Romola raises her hand. “This is the Berkeleyverse Paul with us now, yes?”
I nod. “Even though the Home Office Paul could probably help us more at the moment.” As much as I love Paul, his protectiveness couldn’t have kicked into overdrive at a worse time. “Will you please just let me do this?”
Paul folds his arms in front of his chest. “Not without me.”
“We’re not alone,” Theo announces.
Romola sighs. “How true. We all have other selves, so even in our own individual person, we can no longer be said to be solitary—”
“No, I mean we’re not alone right now.” Theo points upward at flickering lights in motion overhead. More flying cars, which doesn’t seem like a big deal, until the pink-and-red lights begin to flash and a siren’s wail begins to echo in this urban canyon.
My gut drops as if I were on a roller coaster. “The police?”
“Triad security,” Theo says, as if it’s the same thing. His grin is more vicious than his scowl ever was. “Thanks for dropping by. Looks like you led them straight to us.”
Paul and I exchange a stricken look. “And now?” he says.
“We fight for our lives. Or we die. Maybe both.” Theo checks his gun’s charge and points it upward. “Probably both.”
27
CABLES SNAKE DOWN THROUGH THE DARKNESS TO DANGLE all around us. Triad’s guards begin sliding toward the ground, flashlight beams streaming from their headsets, their weapons shadowed against the night—black on black.
“Run!” Theo shouts, and the rest of the resistance scatters. Although some of them are armed, more of them were caught by surprise. None of them were ready for this fight.
Because you set them up, I tell myself savagely as I dash for one of the nearby buildings.
The nearest building stretches up so high overhead that I can’t imagine where it ends. Its lower stories, however, must have been abandoned for a decade or more. The windows are shattered, or simply blank holes covered by ragged cloths. One of them is open to the air, and I vault through it as fast as I can. My leap is more acrobatic than my landing, which sends me sprawling onto the floor of a room empty except for a few broken-up crates.
Mere seconds later, Paul slides through the window after me, though it’s harder for him to get his large frame through. The only illumination comes from the brightening spotlights outside. I duck behind one of the larger, more intact crates, and motion for Paul to join me.
As he kneels by my side, he studies the odd, box-like gun he has in this dimension. “The firing mechanism seems obvious,” he mutters. “I’m not as sure about targeting.”
“You’re not shooting anyone! We didn’t come here for that—”
“We didn’t come here to get captured, either.” Paul takes a deep breath. I see him struggling. This is the splintering at work once more, threatening to shred his self-control at the moment he can least afford to snap. But he’s not angry with me, and I realize now that I wasn’t really the person he was angry with even before the guards. It’s just the unending tension of this chase, and the fear that we’re fighting a war we can never win.
“You should go back to the Moscowverse or move on,” I whisper as shouting begins outside. “This world’s Paul knows how to handle the gun, and he knows where to hide. He’d help me.”
Paul looks at me in total incomprehension. “I can’t leave you like this.”
“You can and you should.”
But it’s too late. A door I hadn’t seen before swings open, and a Triad guard runs in. His weapon is in his hands, and he’s aiming it straight at me.
Paul moves so fast he’s a blur, launching himself at my attacker. They go down together, but Paul winds up on top. The lights attached to the guard’s uniform shine in bright rays straight up toward the ceiling, as though the two of them were fighting in a cage of light. Paul doesn’t even bother trying to shoot the guard. Instead he uses his weapon as a bludgeon, smashing the guard’s face with it.
“No,” I whisper as droplets of blood spatter through the thin beams of light. Paul looks like he’s going beat this guy to a pulp—or to death. “Paul, no.”
But Paul doesn’t hear me. Instead he lifts the gun up, preparing for a more savage or even fatal blow. He’s lost to the fever pitch of violence. Truly lost.
Or so I think, until Paul freezes, hand with his bloody gun still over his head.
I watch, wide-eyed, as Paul stares down at his defeated opponent. He’s breathing hard, trembling from the sheer rush of adrenaline, but in the faint light I can see his face shifting from a grimace of rage back into the Paul I know. After a long moment, he lowers his hand, then tosses the gun aside.
He did it. Paul took control again. He did it! This isn’t like last time, where he spared Romola mostly because he thought she could still fire. He beat the splintering, and he knows he beat it. Despite everything going to hell all around us, I start to smile. Maybe now he can begin to hope again, and that hope can save us both.
Movement flickers at the corner of my eye. My mind supplies only one word: gun.
The next guard is firing even as he runs into the room. Paul looks up in the split second before he’s hit. His body jerks backward, blood spraying from his chest in a halo of red, and he falls.
My screams seem to belong to someone else. This horrible, agonized sound can’t be coming out of my throat; it has to be the whole world shrieking at once. No no no not Paul that’s going to kill them both, this world’s Paul and mine unless he can get to the Firebird, or I can—
I lunge forward, but the guard marching toward Paul shoves me back so hard that I tumble to the ground. Looking over my shoulder through the blur of tears, I see Paul lying on his back, one leg bent under him at an unnatural angle. His hand gropes blindly at his chest—for the Firebird? For the wound? I can’t tell. But then the guard fires again, and Paul’s body jumps once more before lying still.