Resonance (22 page)

“Only less horrible ones.”

She inclined her head.

“Enough philosophy,” said Original Simon. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”

I hugged Amelia carefully. She looked better than the last
time I'd seen her, but she moved gingerly, as if the world was filled entirely with sharp corners and hard edges.

“I'm glad you're safe,” she whispered, and released me.

“Ladies first,” Original Simon said mockingly. I reached for the closest pivot and held out my hand. The brush of his fingers against my palm was gentle, but when I turned back, his face was stony as ever.

The Walk was smooth, depositing us in an empty kitchen with a lightly trilling pitch. “We shouldn't stick around here,” he said. “In case I come back.”

I nodded, and he led the way outside. “What did you want?”

“Did you know the Free Walkers drugged me?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Glucose solution. To rebalance your brain chemistry after the frequency poisoning.”

“Sugar water doesn't knock people out.”

He considered this. “I wouldn't put it past them. But they didn't do it when I was there.”

Memory stirred. “When you brought me to base camp, what did you do?”

He slid his hands in his pockets, as if he was sulking. “Brought you in. Decided I'd stick around to make sure the medical team stabilized you. Then I left.”

Not according to my Simon. “That's it?”

“That's it,” he said. “So, you and Rose are butting heads, huh? Wish I could have seen it. What's the problem?”

“She wants to send me to the First Echo.” He didn't break stride. “Which you knew.”

“We'd discussed it,” he said.

“And you agreed I should sit at the little kids' table?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Can you cauterize a world?”

“I can tune. How different can it be?”

“Can you fight Consort guards in hand-to-hand combat?”

I flushed, but responded, “I did okay during Monty's escape.”

“Can you fire a gun? Have you ever
touched
a gun?”

“Do Tasers count?”

He threw up his hands. “What did you expect? You're a newbie, Del. You're a newbie with an impulse-control problem, and they're not going to let you in until you earn it.”

So I was an outsider. Again. An outsider among outsiders, and I was beginning to wonder whether Simon and I should
stay
outsiders. We could leave both the Consort and the Free Walkers and try life on our own. I couldn't tell if the skip in my pulse was fear or excitement.

We'd arrived at my Echo house, either by accident or design, and the familiar sight brought a wave of homesickness down on me. Before I could get too nostalgic, I forced myself to remember why I'd come back. I sat on the front steps, leaned my head against the pillar.

“I'm guessing you're in on the plan to take over CCM.”

He sprawled out next to me. “Yeah. Finding the First Echo was the last piece of the puzzle.”

“It's going to be a bloodbath,” I said.

“Not if we get our message out.”

“Can't you talk to Rose? Convince her there's another way?”

“Why would I?” He stared at me, aghast. “You seem to be confused about the goal here, Del. The Consort are the bad guys. They're the mass murderers. They kill their own people rather than allow a whisper of dissent. They killed my dad. If you think I'm going to beg the Free Walkers to go easy on them, you need more sugar, because you have scrambled your goddamn brain.”

“What if it doesn't work?”

“Then we'll go after the other Consorts.” he said. “Seventy-five people control the Walkers and the multiverse.
Seventy-five.
How many Echoes do I have? How many do the other hybrids? They can't fight all of us. Seventy-five against infinity? I like our odds.”

Seventy-five targets. My mind reeled. “You're going to kill all of them?”

“If we have to.”

“The weapon Lattimer was after,” I said, my voice emerging thin and panicked. “The one your dad developed? This was his plan all along—to use it to assassinate the Consorts?”

Simon blinked. “The weapon?”

“Lattimer used me to get information about the weapon from Monty. He didn't know what it was, only that your dad had been working on it before he was captured. Amelia insisted there was no such thing, and I believed her, but—” I broke off as his face contorted, a lighting-fast shift between disbelief and anger and black humor, before his mouth settled into a bitter twist.

“You don't know? Neither of you?” His laugh was so caustic it could have stripped varnish. “You've had your hands on it all along. Gil's weapon is Simon.”

C
HAPTER THIRTY-SIX

S
IMON WAS THE WEAPON.

My Simon.

And he had no idea.

“He's not an assassin,” I said through frozen lips. “He doesn't have it in him to kill someone.”

Simon's brows snapped together. “They aren't expecting him to assassinate the Consort.”

“Then how is he a weapon?”

“We both are,” he said. The words were calm, but an emotion I couldn't name shimmered above the surface. “You've heard Rose, haven't you? Hybrids are the future of the Walkers. He and I are the proof. Once we've got the Walkers' attention, Rose will bring us out for show-and-tell.”

I stared at him.

“We're proof,” he repeated. “Tangible, verifiable evidence that the Consort lied. The Walkers will have no choice but to believe us, and that will be the end of the old regime.”

“Lattimer said it was a weapon. Like a gun, or an amplifier, or . . .”

Gil always said the truth was the only weapon they needed.

Simon was the truth incarnate. Which made him dangerous, and put him in danger.

Anything can be a weapon, depending on who controls it.

Monty had figured it out. Alone in the oubliette, he'd put the pieces together. He'd tried to warn me, but I'd refused to listen. They'd used a reunion with me to control Simon.

“Why him? Why
my
Simon, instead of some other Echo?”

He turned away. “He sounds like an Original, so Walkers are more likely to accept him in their world.”

“Great. Maybe they can start a book club,” I said. Simon was keeping something back. I'd known too many versions of him not to recognize the signs. “How will you prove it? Is he going to Walk in front of them? Cauterize a world? Give a presentation?”

“Something like that.” He kicked a stair tread. “If my Echoes can Walk, they're part Walker. And since Walkers are alive, no matter what world they're in, so are the Echoes.”

It seemed like a weak argument to hang a revolution on, and I tried again, hoping to needle him into revealing more. “So the Free Walkers take CCM, I get shoved into the First Echo, and you . . . hang out here?”

“I've earned a break,” he snapped. “I've spent seventeen years fighting the Consort. Cauterizing worlds, building networks, with no family except the Free Walkers. I deserve a little bit of time to enjoy the life I was supposed to have. The one your boyfriend had instead.”

“You're jealous of Simon.”

Even in the fading light I could see the clench of muscles in
his jaw. “Not jealous. But I've been running for my life while he's been hitting free throws and nailing cheerleaders. Hard to work up a whole lot of sympathy for the guy.”

“He grew up thinking his dad bailed. His mom is
dying
. I wouldn't call his life easy.”

“But it's
his
. A home and a family and a dog and you. It was supposed to be mine. Excuse me if I want to enjoy it while I can.”

“He lost out too. You've always known who you were. He thinks he's been living a lie.”

“He has.” His face was flushed with anger. I couldn't blame him—he'd lost more than my Simon, no question—but one person's pain does not invalidate another's. If you break your arm, breaking your leg doesn't make it hurt less or heal faster.

And Original Simon's existence didn't undo my Simon's. “Amelia loves him. Not in place of you, not as a substitute. He's absolutely her son. That's not a lie. How I feel about him isn't a lie. It's not tied to whether he's an Echo or an Original. It's who he is.”

“He didn't even see you,” Simon said. “For years, he literally couldn't see you.”

“But he does now. More clearly than anyone.”

He reached out, his fingers hovering over my cheek. “If I'd been here, I would have seen you. From the very beginning.”

“Even if you had,” I said, as gently as I could, “you wouldn't have been him.”

His hand dropped, his expression turning shuttered and unreadable.

“I'm sorry,” I said, searching for a way to undo the damage. But it was seventeen years in the making. A few words from me couldn't begin to make reparations. “We should go.”

He stood and headed down the driveway, back toward his house.

“Simon . . .” I started to follow, but he held up a hand.

“Five minutes, okay? Can you give me five minutes before we break up the happy family reunion?”

I backed away. “Sure. Take as long as you need.”

He stalked off, and I stared at the darkening street, listening to the pitch of the world and the whisper of the pivots around me. If I picked one right now and Walked through, I could see my parents.

They might listen. Despite her unshakeable faith in the Walkers, my mom wouldn't refuse to hear me out, would she? I was her daughter. Rose was her mother. For once, she'd have to pay attention.

My parents were well-regarded. Highly placed. They could tell their friends, tell their teammates. Change didn't have to come from one sweeping moment. It could come from countless small ones. A single drop of water had little power—but enough of them, over time, wore away mountains.

Simon was nowhere in sight, which meant he couldn't stop me from Walking through the pivot by the mail slot and heading into my kitchen.

CH
APTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Days until Tacet: 8

Begin Tacet

H
OMECOMING SOUNDS SO EASY. SO
celebratory. But it's not nearly so simple, even when you know the way. It's a kind of time travel, the person you are colliding with the person you were, a gap between what was and what is, and there's no smoothing over the difference.

I heard the radio first—not NPR or some other news station, but the special half frequency the Consort used for emergency broadcasts—the announcer's droning lost amid the hammering of my heart.

My parents sat at the table in their usual places, ramrod straight, food untouched.

Mom jumped up as I came down the hallway. “Addie! Did you—”

“Sorry,” I said with a weak smile. “Just me.”

“What are you doing here?” she exclaimed. Her face was blotchy, eyes swollen. “Del, of all the dangerous, irresponsible, stupid things you could have done! The Consort is—”

My dad cut in. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Did someone force you? Did Monty and the Free Walkers threaten you?”

“Nobody forced me to do anything,” I said, which wasn't strictly true. I would have rather left Monty in the oubliette, but getting Simon back had been worth it.

“Then why would you betray us? Those people are dangerous. They're lunatics!”

“They're not,” I said. “If you would listen to me for two minutes—”

“We're past listening,” she said. “You've left the Consort no choice.”

On the radio, the announcer read a string of numbers, repeating them twice.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The Tacet,” my dad said. “They're calling out cleaving assignments.”

My knees gave way, and I grabbed the edge of the table. “The Tacet wasn't supposed to happen for another week!”

“The Consort decided it was better to hold a smaller Tacet now, rather than wait for the rest of the plans to be completed,” he said.

There was no such thing as a small Armageddon.

A clammy sickness spread through me. “Aren't you supposed to be running it?”

“We've been removed from anything directly related to the
Tacet,” my mother said stiffly. “The Consort feels we're a security risk.”

“What about Addie?”

“Don't,” she snapped. “Don't pretend you're concerned about us after everything you've done.”

“I'm not trying to get you in trouble,” I said. “I came because I didn't want anyone else to get hurt. The Free Walkers—”

“I've heard enough about the Free Walkers,” she said.

“You haven't heard anything! They want to stop the cleavings and protect the Echoes. They found a way to do it that won't harm the Key World, and the Consort's known about it all along. They have proof it will work! If you would just listen,” I said, seeing the worry in their eyes, “we could stop this before it gets worse. Please.”

“Come here,” my dad said, and it felt so good to let him envelop me in the familiar bear hug, to know my parents had finally heard me.

Tears of relief sprang up, and I sniffled into his shirtfront. “I don't want anyone else to get hurt.”

“I know, kiddo,” he said. “Monty was a bad influence, and you got caught up. We understand. So does the Consort.”

I drew back. “The Consort?”

“They're willing to reduce your sentence,” he said. “Maybe even grant you immunity.”

“You cut a deal for me?” I asked. “You think I'm here to turn myself in?”

They looked at each other uncertainly.

“It's a generous offer,” my dad said finally. “They'll let you come home in no time.”

“Come home?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mom pull out her phone. They hadn't listened to me at all. “Who are you calling?”

“Someone who can get you help,” my mom said.

“You're turning me in? I'm not coming
home
,” I snarled, twisting out of my father's arms. “I was trying to keep anyone else from dying!”

“Nobody's going to die.” My dad stepped toward me, hands extended. “The Consort isn't killing anyone.”

“They'll kill me.” I edged around the corner of the kitchen island. Amelia had made pivots all over this house. I needed to find one. “If you turn me in, Lattimer will torture me, same as he did Grandpa, and then he'll kill me.”

“Del,” my mom said, desperate and raw. “We're trying to help you. To keep you safe.”

“Then don't call the Consort,” I begged, feeling blindly behind me. “If you love me, don't make the call.”

“But—”

I didn't hear the rest of the sentence, because I was already gone.

•   •   •

Simon was waiting on the other side of the pivot, eyes nearly black with fury. “You are a goddamn idiot,” he snarled as we tore through backyards and Echo houses. I heard my dad come through the pivot, but we were younger, and used to running, and had desperation on our side.

“The Tacet,” I panted. “They've started.”

He cursed. “Rose won't let that stand.”

He dragged me inside a garden shed. “We need to head to the Key World. They can't follow your signal once we cross back, and I don't want the trail leading to my mom's.”

He was right, and a few steps later we were standing in the Key World, on the outskirts of Simon's neighborhood. He grabbed my arm, slowing me down. Running would only draw attention.

“Of all the half-assed things to do—” Simon started to say.

“I thought they'd help!” I said, horrified by the crack in my voice.

“Why? Because they're
family
? The only person family has ever mattered to is Amelia. Walkers don't give a damn. Family's just another idea sacrificed on the altar of the Key World, no matter which side they're on.”

I didn't reply, afraid I might agree.

Simon and Amelia were sitting on the living room couch when we arrived at Simon's house, his hands clasped with hers. The coffee table was littered with wadded-up tissues, and Amelia's eyes were glassy and red, but there was no time left for sentiment.

“What's wrong?” Simon sprang up.

“The Tacet's started,” I said. Amelia pressed her hands to her face.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“My parents,” I spat. “I went to ask for their help. I thought I could make them see reason.”

“I'm sure they were worried about you,” Amelia said, but Simon was already throwing on his coat.

“Sure. Worried enough to turn me in. They wouldn't listen to a thing I said.”

“Can they track you here?” My Simon asked.

“Doubtful.” Original Simon stuck to the far end of the kitchen, keeping as much distance as possible between himself and my Simon. Carefully I reached into the strings, searching for any sign of stress on the Key World's fabric. But the threads resonated against my fingertips, smooth and true. Rose was right: Since their signals matched, the Simons could coexist.

“If the Consort guards come here, all they'll find is the guy who dumped you and sent you into a tailspin,” he continued. “There's nothing wrong with my frequency, so they won't suspect anything. In the meantime, you'll get back to the Free Walkers, where you should have stayed.” He scowled. “No wonder Rose drugged you.”

“She what?” Amelia said, startled.

“I'm fine,” I assured her. “But he's right. We need to leave.”

My Simon bent and kissed Amelia's cheek. She hugged him tightly, and then pushed away, resolute. “Go. If they come, we'll stall them.”

“Don't stall,” I ordered. “Don't do anything that might make them pay attention to you.”

Iggy whined, and Simon tousled his ears. “Be good,” he ordered, and looked up at Amelia again. “I don't want to leave you.”

“Then make sure you come back.”

He swallowed, met my eyes over her head, and nodded. “Love you, Mom.”

“I love you too. Get out.”

I looked at Original Simon, his expression a strange, sad blend of wonder and longing, like someone from the desert seeing the ocean for the first time. The life he was supposed to have was spilled out in front of him, all the emotions and grief and love he'd been denied. It wasn't only the Consort who had cheated him.

We spend so much time thinking about how the future will unfold, all the newness in the world and the frontiers to be discovered, that we forget about what came before. But we carry the past with us, the bright pieces and the damaged bits giving the world meaning in the same way hope gives it direction. Simon had a past of fleeting moments and shifting worlds; hard ground that made it tough to put down roots even now, and I watched the realization of all he'd lost hit him full force.

“Go,” he said roughly, and shoved me toward the door.

We slipped back through the garage pivot and found the car, saying nothing until we arrived a few blocks from the Free Walker base.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“It's only a matter of time before they find us, isn't it? Either we beat them, or we're just running out the clock.”

I leaned my head against his arm, felt him brush a kiss over my hair. “Probably. But after tonight . . . I'm not sure how much time we have left.”

When we walked into the lobby of the hotel, it was clear the clock had run out.