“We’re evacuating!” Paul runs faster, getting ahead of us to open the door. “Southern Alliance troops are moving in on the Bay Area.”
Whatever the Southern Alliance is, the last time I was here, their fighter planes nearly bombed me. “They’re invading today? Now?”
“Soon.” My mother remains calm, even as she quickens her steps and tows me along. “We have orders to transfer the entire Firebird project to the aircraft carrier J. A. Quinteros within two hours. And as of this moment, Marguerite—the project includes you.”
15
THE MILITARY BASE SEEMS QUIET AND ORDERLY, AT LEAST our section of it. As soon as we run from that room to begin our escape to the Quinteros, however, we are plunged into chaos.
Military vehicles crowd every roadway. Soldiers and sailors carry huge boxes of equipment if they’re assigned to help with evacuation of war materials; if they aren’t, they mostly run for their designated escape vehicles. I sit on the back of a jeep between my parents, Firebird around my neck swaying with every pothole and bump in the road. Paul’s behind the wheel, driving with what I first see as a cold-blooded indifference to the safety of anyone around us. Then I realize everyone else is driving or running the same way.
Low-hanging gray clouds mask the sunlight—hardly unusual in San Francisco. But not all of the sky’s darkness is due to the clouds. Smoke hovers at the horizon in several directions, sometimes many miles away, sometimes closer. The smoke doesn’t look like the product of a currently raging fire; instead, it reminds me of the smoldering aftermath of a wildfire. As bad as it is to see the fires consuming hundreds of acres of countryside, it’s worse to see that smoke coming from downtown, and maybe even Berkeley, too. How many hundreds or thousands of people must have died?
After the destruction of the Romeverse, though, I can’t work up enough energy to panic. Instead, I feel numb to everything but my astonishment that I am still alive—and that this world’s Paul came to save me.
The gargantuan scale of aircraft carriers is familiar to me because of the USS Midway, which is permanently docked in my version of San Francisco Bay. That doesn’t make the J.A. Quinteros any less intimidating. It towers overhead, stretches into the distance. Boarding it is going to feel a little like climbing a mountain. My parents begin commandeering some sailors to help tote equipment and files across the boarding ramp as Paul leads me onward.
“Shouldn’t you be helping haul top-secret stuff?” I nod at the guys laboring under heavy boxes.
Paul gives me a sidelong look. His grip tightens on my elbow. “I am.”
He didn’t say it to be funny, but any break in the tension is too precious to waste. When I start laughing, his stern expression cracks—just a little—enough for the light to get in.
Another one who loves you, he said to me in Rome. . . .
From the crowd of soldiers just beneath me, someone shouts, “Marguerite!” I turn, and in the middle of the frenzy, I see Theo—this dimension’s Private Theodore Beck—waving his cloth uniform hat back and forth overhead, desperately signaling me.
And I can no longer breathe.
In a flash, it feels as if I’m back in Egypt, pinned on the floor of a tomb, eyes filling with tears and neck crushing in the viselike grip of my own scarf, Theo crying as he strangles me to death.
“Marguerite?” Paul steps closer, and his hand on my arm becomes less possessive, more protective. “You look terrible.”
Blunt in every universe: That’s Paul. I whisper, “Theo. I saw Theo.”
Frowning, Paul looks from me to Theo—still waving, apparently unaware I’ve seen—and then back at me again. “Then why aren’t you happy?”
“They must have told you I died in the Egyptverse. But I guess they didn’t tell you how.”
“No, but what—”
“Theo killed me.” The words haven’t gotten any easier to say. The reality remains almost too horrible to believe. I know it’s true—I could never forget that terror and pain, not as long as I live—and yet nothing will ever make that feel entirely real. “Not my Theo. Not your Theo. The one from the Triadverse. He wrapped my lace scarf around my neck and choked me until I was strangled to death.” I catch myself. As terrible as that was for me, I wasn’t Theo’s main victim. “I mean, I leaped out just before losing consciousness. But that world’s Marguerite would’ve died only seconds later.”
Paul staggers back a step, as though he were the one who had been attacked. When he looks down at Theo again, raw anger darkens his gray eyes. “How could he ever . . .” Then he swears in Russian and turns his head so he doesn’t even have to see Theo.
Meanwhile, poor Theo waves with both hands, broad arcs, desperate to get my attention. Although the sight of him fills me with terror, I know that fear should be directed at the Triadverse’s Theo Beck. Not this world’s, and not mine.
My Theo deserved better, just like this Theo deserves a chance to tell his girl goodbye, if I can bear it.
Determined, I turn to Paul. “I should go to him. Do we have five minutes?”
Paul stares at me in disbelief. “You can’t want to be with your murderer.”
“I don’t, but he’s not my murderer. This isn’t about me, okay? It’s about this world’s Marguerite, and it’s about him.” I point to Theo, who, encouraged, begins struggling through the crowd toward us. “If we’re evacuating the entire city of San Francisco, I’m guessing the situation is beyond scary. This might be the last time he ever gets to see the girl he loves, and he should get a chance to say goodbye. So that’s what I’m going to give him. Could you get over yourself long enough to show some grace?” The anger I’ve felt toward my own Paul’s fatalism has begun to bubble over, but that’s not fair—this is another man, with another fate. “I love you in so many worlds, Paul. Maybe now you can actually see how many there are, and you’ll finally believe me. But this world belongs to Theo.”
With that, I start down the boarding ramp, and Paul lets me go.
“Marguerite!” Theo disappears from my view for a moment, because now I’m too low down to see him through the crowd. He’s lost amid uniforms and shoving and the smells of sweat and salt water. So I push myself toward the sound of his voice until finally I see his face. He pulls me into his arms so tightly—