The Fray Theory: Resonance (24 page)

“The
hell
are you babbling
about?” Romer frowns.

“Free will
,” Neve says and looks to Dylan. “What if your Proxies’
deaths were all sparked by something specific? And all you have to do is avoid
that same trigger in
this
dimension?”

“If the theories are true, Neve,
that means there is no such thing as free will,” Dylan says.

Her brows furrow. “Yes. There is.
The existence of multiple dimensions means—”

“That everything is predetermined,”
Dylan cuts in. “I’m sorry, but free will and destiny can’t coexist.”

Neve feels a twinge inside her
chest cavity. “No,” she asserts, refusing to surrender to the same defeat. Refusing
to accept the frightfully real possibility that soon, she will be burying him
too.

“It’s okay,” Dylan shrugs.

“No…
NO
, don’t give me that
defeatist bullshit!”

“Neve—”

“Just because everything that
can
happen
does
happen, doesn’t mean your fate is set in stone! It just
means there are
so
many variations out there, that eventually
every
possibility will play out.”

Dylan’s lips part slightly.

“But
your
reality, in
your
dimension will always depend on
your
actions. And that’s
free will
.”

Dylan stares, softening a bit.

“In a universe, there’s only
one
you, and
one
path for you to take,” she continues with milder intensity.
“Either it’s predetermined,
or
you choose it one step at a time. But we
don’t live in a universe. We
never have
. And that means we’re not stuck
with an either-or scenario.”

“The existence of every reality is
destiny,” Romer mutters to himself, “and
which
one gets to be
your
reality… that’s free will.”

“And how do you know one of these
realities isn’t already assigned to me?” Dylan challenges.

“Because you’re
choosing
to
stand here,” she says. “
Choosing
to argue with me over being powerless.
Because you’re not a goddamn puppet on strings!”

“Okay—alright,” he raises his
hands.

Romer turns away and walks to the
corner of the room. Neve takes a few moments to calm her nerves, and then looks
up at Dylan who’s staring soullessly at the sketchbook in her hand.

“Dylan—” she drops it to the floor.
“I’m not saying you
have
to agree with me,” she swallows the pill in her
throat, “but I can’t fight your battle without you.”

“Okay,” Dylan blinks a slow blink,
and then nods with a somber smile.

“Okay.”

Once Dylan
and Romer have dragged the final body out of the way, Neve begins to carefully
take off the content pasted onto the wall. Content she is unlikely to have time
to read, but can’t bring herself to rip off—content containing information that
could very well help them out of this mess.

“Where are the handles?” Romer
asks.

Neve traces along the base of the
doors until she finds the gap between them. She then starts to clear her way up
to where the door’s handles would be.

Dylan joins in, but it soon
becomes evident that these doors don’t even have handles.

“The
hell
?” Romer starts
massaging his shoulder.

“Hmm,” Dylan leans his weight onto
the doors and pushes hard, but they just shudder in place. A couple of more
forceful shoves, and he withdraws and kicks the unyielding barrier.

“Probably locked from the other
side,” Neve says.

“Shit.” Romer rests his hands on
his hips, licking his lower lip. “That fucker left us here to rot.”

Neve looks to Dylan. “What do you
think are the odds of Young coming back?”

“Wouldn’t count on it,” he says. “He’s
not exactly stable.”

Romer scoffs. “Yeah, no shit.”

Dylan looks to Young’s blood
spatter on the wall. “And he’s been shot. I highly doubt we’re his priority
right now.” He sits down and rests his back against the wall, sinking into
thought.

And silence befalls them once
again.

After mulling it over, “Yeah we
are,” Romer nods to himself. “I mean, would you look at this place? You don’t
put this much effort into something and then just drop it on a whim.”

“He’s been
shot
,” Dylan
repeats.

“In the
arm
,” Romer says. “It’s
not exactly fatal.”

Neve thinks back to the night of
her exhibition. To when she bumped into Young, having no idea this seemingly
harmless stranger would wind up playing such a monumental role in not only
her
life, but in Dylan’s and Romer’s as well.

“What exactly did you mean when
you said Young is not stable?” Neve sits down also, facing Dylan.

Romer walks over and leans against
the adjacent wall, completing the triangle.

“He’s just—
unstable
, you
know? One moment he is all smiles, joking around like he’s your big brother. Next
thing you know, you’re on the ground, praying to God he won’t beat the shit out
of you if you can’t give him the fiftieth push-up.”

“How was he not fired?” Neve frowns.

“Well, two weeks into my transfer
the guy before him just upped and quit out of nowhere. They hired Young like—the
next day. Which was really lucky for me because—” he pauses, looking like
someone who almost just drove off a cliff. “It was good timing,” he drops his
head and licks his lips. “We uh—we needed someone like him to whip us into
shape.”

“Even if he is a bipolar psycho?”
Romer asks.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, we all
hated
his guts. His drills were impossible.”

“But?” Neve asks off the light in Dylan’s
eyes, who puffs his cheeks as he exhales through a tight smirk.

“He really
was
something
else, though. Built like a rock, and
easily
twice as strong as the next
guy. And twice as fast. He’s like a viper when he attacks you.”

“Okay, explain something to me,” Neve
starts, “if Young was hired
after
you started at the academy, how did he
already know who you are?”

Dylan’s brows sink, his enthusiasm
waning.

Is it because he’s been pondering
the same thing?

“I mean, how did he teleport you
from Vancouver to New York without you even noticing? I almost had a heart attack
when he brought
me
here.”

Dylan lowers his gaze, and his
eyes shift ever so slightly to his right. Towards Romer, who looks away just as
Neve makes eye-contact with him.

And she now feels even more
confused.

“What?” she asks, looking back and
forth between the two boys.

Romer runs a hand through his
hair. “Look, we’ve got way bigger things to worry about right now.”

Neve returns her focus to Dylan,
who’s looking at Romer with a ghost of a smile.

“Look—” she levels, “I’m just
trying to understand how your sergeant plays into all of this.”

“I obviously don’t know, Neve.”

“What do you mean, you don’t
know?” she frowns. “You said:
I never flew to New York, did I
? And Young
said,
no, you didn’t
. So my question is: how has this never come up
before? One day you just woke up in New York and didn’t think twice about it?”

Dylan rubs his stubble out of
frustration, exhaling into his hand.

“I’m not trying to interrogate you…”
she says with less sting in her voice. “I’m just trying to understand what
happened.”

“I was obviously dealing with a
lot of shit,” Dylan meets Neve’s gaze with a deep frown. “And my dad thought
military school would fix everything. So then Alex—” he pauses, staring into
space as though he’s forgotten what he was about to say.

Neve leans in, watching as his
thoughts unfold.

“Alex said he enrolled me on my
behalf,” he says.

“What does
that
mean?” A baffled
frown contorts her face. “I’m talking about the jump from Vancouver to New
York.”

When Dylan doesn’t respond, she takes
to Romer only to find him glaring at her.

‘
Drop it
,’ he mouths.

It feels
like forever since anyone uttered a word. And although Neve believes pressing
Dylan for answers was perfectly justified, the memory of Romer’s steely glare
keeps cutting her afresh. It’s just not fair. They can’t keep covering up the
line, and then snapping at her for stepping over it. And no matter what Neve
says or does, she can’t seem to get through to either of them.

This is Elliot all over again.

“They’re trying to turn us into
weapons,” Dylan breaks the silence. “We can bend the rules. Do what normal
people can’t.”

“I think you’re reaching,” says
Romer.

Dylan tilts his head back against
the wall, staring at the ceiling. “I thought it was pity,” he mutters.

“What do you mean?” Neve asks.

“Young,” he clarifies. “He took
special interest in me—train me outside regular hours, teach me things he wouldn’t
teach the other cadets…” He scoffs at his own naiveté. “I think you might be right,”
he tilts his head towards Neve. “He must’ve known about me before we even met.”

“How would he?” she asks.

Dylan tightens his lips, then lowers
his head back down. “I only told Ro and Alex about my dreams.”

Romer raises his brows and
flattens his lips.

“So that just leaves Alex,” Dylan
turns to Neve.

“But why would he share something
like that with a random military sergeant?” Neve asks.

“Why would he share it with a girl
he’s just met?” Dylan squares his shoulders.

And suddenly it feels like Neve is
sitting under an interrogation lamp. But Dylan
is
right. She wondered
the exact same thing about Galen’s intentions.

“Just to be clear, Dylan, he
only
told me about the theories,” Neve finds herself defending Galen. “I even tried
bringing up your nightmares, but he wouldn’t have it.”

“Young can teleport, right?” Romer
cuts in. “Even if Galen had everything locked up in a room, who’s to say Young
didn’t just teleport through the wall and grab whatever he needs?”

Neve and Dylan consider it. That
would certainly explain how Neve’s sketchbook wound up here.

“I obviously don’t know Galen as
well as you do,” Romer says to Dylan, “but I really doubt he sold you out. I
mean—you should have seen his place. It was totally ransacked.”

“Who do you think Young is doing
all of this for?” Neve looks about the room. “This is way too big to be a
one-man operation. He must answer to somebody.”

“American military?” Romer
suggests.

Dylan mulls it over, then squares
his shoulders. “I honestly don’t know.”

Even more questions with no
answers.

“What do you guys think about
Synchrony?” Neve asks.

Romer scoffs and crosses his arms.
“I think they rake the streets for people like us, grab them when no one’s watching,
and then erase all traces of them.”

“Do you think they want us dead?” Neve
asks. “Or do you think it’s like a bidding war?”

Romer squints. “Like two rival
organizations that are trying to weaponize people like us?”

“Young admitted to infiltrating
Synchrony,” Dylan says. “Maybe it wasn’t to jeopardize their operations. Maybe
he was trying to take advantage of their intel in order to get to us first.”

“So, you don’t believe they want
us dead?” Romer asks of Dylan. “Is it because they were shooting at us with
darts, not bullets?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,”
Dylan says. “It may have just been to avoid spilling blood where it’s hard to
clean up.”

“But why
kill
us?” she
asks. “Based on everything Galen said, Resonance is just the next stage in
human evolution.”

“Makes sense if you think about it,”
Dylan says. “
If everyone could teleport into
banks, or kill someone and disappear into thin air, there’d be anarchy. The whole
system would collapse.”

σ

Neve sits
on an inverted crate in the corner of the room, watching Romer and Dylan
repeatedly thrust themselves against the doors.

Bang, after bang, after bang, with
nothing to show for but the echo of their defeat.

Bang! “It’s not working!” Neve
snaps. “You’re just wearing yourselves out!”

Dylan takes a few steps back and
wipes the sweat from his brow. “We’re not hitting you,” he pants.

“It will WORK, come
ON
!”
she springs to her feet. “What are you waiting for? For us to run out of air?”

“We’re
not
hitting you,
Neve,” Dylan presses. “Just keep looking.”

“These are all observational
data,” Neve says, “not superpower instruction manuals.”

“Read that report again,” Dylan
suggests, “the one I showed you about Merging.”

Neve strides over and holds Young’s
hand-written note right up to Dylan’s face.

“
Her Syncing is triggered by extreme duress,” she
paraphrases.

Dylan snatches the note
out of her hand. “For you to be put under duress, you need to be exposed to
real
danger.”

“
Romer
!?” Neve
looks to him.

“I’m Switzerland,” Romer backs
up with his hands in the air.

“Look,” Neve pulls up her
shirt to show Dylan her stomach. Her formerly pink bruise is now purple and
spanning across her entire abdomen. “You see this? I can handle it.”

“What happened?” Dylan’s
eyes widen, emitting a soft, amber glow.

“The guy that jumped me at
Galen’s,” she pulls her shirt back down. “He completely lost it when I fought
him back and started punching me in the gut.
That’s
when I started to
Merge.”

“Did you see his face?”
Dylan’s frown deepens.

“Just let it go. Okay?
It’s done.”

“It’s not done till I get
my hands on him.”

Neve’s shoulders slacken
as her intensity wanes. “He’s dead, Dylan.”
I crushed him to death
. “Now
will you just hit me,
please
!?”

“I’ll do it,” Romer steps
up and starts to crack his knuckles.

“You better be fucking
kidding,” Dylan warns.

“She’s our only shot,” Romer
says. “She survived a crash, remember?” He forms a fist, but before he can
throw it Dylan shifts in front of Neve and shoves him back against the wall.

His impact makes their
metal cage quiver. And as the air soaks up the reverberations, Neve wonders if
she has just triggered something she won’t be able to contain.

Rustling sheets of paper fall
to the floor as Romer pushes off the wall and starts to bridge the gap.

“Dylan,” Neve rests her
hand on his shoulder, but he doesn’t even budge. “I’ll be fine,” she says, then
jerks back as Romer’s powerful punch knocks Dylan to the floor. “ROMER!”

Romer dives down and
starts pounding on Dylan.

“What is the matter with
you!?
STOP
!” Neve tries to pull Romer off, but he pushes her away.

Regaining her balance,
Neve looks down at Dylan who’s barely recoiled to shield himself from Romer’s
blows.

“Why aren’t you fighting
back!?”

“Three
YEARS
!” Romer
hoists Dylan up and knees him in the gut. “Three FUCKING
YEARS
!”

Prison…

Neve’s flesh starts to
tighten at an unprecedented rate. Almost instantly, it feels like she’s sinking
into a sea of pins and needles, and she’s too heavy to tread the excruciating
waters.

She is at the verge of
collapsing when her nervous system ceases fire, banishing all mental and
sensory confusion. And then she is one with her Proxies.

Solid, and indestructible.

An ear-splitting squeak
shakes up the space, and becomes worse and worse by the second. And Neve realizes
that despite having surpassed the threshold of pain, her density is still rising,
causing the metallic storage unit to deform under her weight.

“NEVE! THE DOORS!” Dylan
shouts.

Neve snaps to attention
and looks to the far end of the room. But taking a step towards it, the floor starts
to fold under her foot with a deafening groan.

The entire space suddenly trembles
violently, and the middle of the room dips down by a few feet.

Dylan and Romer lose their
balance and slide to the center fold along with the bagged corpses.

Papers, photos and maps peel
off the walls as all six planes deform, collapsing inwards. The room is
crumpling like a box made of aluminum foil.

Neve is terrified. Her
anxiety is exasperating her Merging. At this rate, the entire space will
implode onto itself, crushing Dylan and Romer.

MOVE
!

Neve explodes into a
sprint towards the exit, each stomp denting the spot where her foot lands. Romer
and Dylan take cover as she leaps over the entangled pile of dead and living
bodies, and
THRUSTS herself
against the doors like a small wrecking ball.

Upon impact, whatever
locking mechanism had secured the place rips off the back, and the deformed
doors dislodge from their frames.

Neve’s momentum propels her
through the fresh air, and she plummets with an earth-shattering bang onto a cold,
metal surface. An enormous dent forms where she lands, and then all she feels
is the entire world atremble.

“NEVE!?” Dylan calls out from
higher up.

Neve opens her eyes and looks up
through heavy fog at a mountain of cargo containers stacked on top of one
another.

The one Dylan is peeking out of is
dark blue, and irreparably disfigured, thanks to her. The yellow one directly below
is not in too good a shape either.

Neve pushes up into a heavy slouch
and scans her surroundings.

She can’t help but marvel at
Young’s genius. What a brilliant spot for him to lock up his abductees: an
anonymous cargo container on a secluded industrial harbor. With his ability to
jump through walls, he can come and go as he pleases without ever having to compromise
the integrity of his cage.

“She alive!?” Romer’s voice beckons
her attention back up.

Even through the veil of sunken
clouds, Neve can detect Dylan’s wide grin as Romer triumphantly pats him on the
back.

“That was a stupid stunt, you
guys!” she yells, her irrepressible smile sweetening her tone.

“Hey—it worked!” Romer says
gleefully.

Dylan gauges the drop and jumps down,
landing a few feet shy of Neve.

“Well done,” he reaches out with a
big smile.

Neve squints at him with a tight smirk,
and then takes his hand.

Dylan pulls her up, but overcompensating
for her weight, she winds up slamming into him.

“Whoa, sorry—” he chuckles. “Guess
you’re back to normal.”

Neve’s gaze drops to the bruise on
his lower lip, her smile vanishing. “Are you okay?”

Dylan smiles. “Let’s get the hell
out of here.”

σ

The world
below was more obscure, so they sought out the summit. They climbed the
mountain of metal, and now stand atop the topmost container as the fog weaves
through the gaps below.

Along the waking horizon,
Vancouver is sprawled on a blanket of clouds, its glass towers soaring up to
the sky like a crystal crown.

If only the three of them weren’t
gazing at this heavenly sight from a drifting purgatory. From atop a cargo ship
so monstrously big, they can barely feel it moving.

“We’re too far out,” Romer says. “No
way we can swim this distance back to shore.”

“Think of what we’d be swimming
back to,” Neve says, her gaze glued to the streaks of pink breaking along the
horizon.

“We need to dump those bodies,” Dylan
glances at the mangled container several levels below.

“I’m not doing Young’s dirty
work,” Romer says.

“If we leave them, they’re gonna
rot,” Dylan fires back, his patience wearing thin. “We don’t know how long
we’re going to be stuck on this ship. We don’t even know where we’re headed.”

Romer’s gaze lingers on Dylan for
a few moments, and then he looks back out at the view. “It
would
be
better than being caught with them.”

“Do you think Young planned this?”
Neve asks.

Dylan exhales a heavy sigh. “I
think it would make sense if this was his backup plan… in case we didn’t trust
him enough to go with him willingly.”

“He hid us well, I’ll give him
that,” Romer says.

Neve looks back out at her city,
and all she sees is the landmine the three of them navigated through with sheer
dumb luck.

Or
was
it luck?