I raised a hand and the rain stopped before it could reach me or the people immediately around me. It pattered against an invisible dome instead, sliding down the sides and trickling into the grass. Mark was halfway inside and halfway outside the dome; part of him was getting soaked. That was fine. Other peoples’ discomfort didn’t—
No. That was a cuckoo thought. I slapped the equation away from the parts of my mind where I stored my carefully learned and hard-won empathy, forcing it back into the box I had drawn for it, and expanded the dome enough to cover Mark completely before I resumed my recitation of the factors to the storm-drenched sky.
Was it enough? Was anything, ever, going to be enough? Because that was a subtraction, too, even if it was only an estimated and hence low-balled figure: the damage the cuckoos had done since arriving in this world, where they had never truly belonged. How many broken families? How many deaths? How many children smothered in their cradles to make room for a cuckoo-child who should never have been there in the first place? The damage was incalculable, and still I did my best to calculate it, and the area of impact shrank, again and again, until it was almost small enough. Until it felt like it might be fair.
I couldn’t loosen my grip on the equation for even a second, or I’d lose it. It was furious at what I’d done, thrashing against my mental hands as it tried to break free and restore some of its original scope. This wasn’t enough damage to satisfy what it had been built to do . . . but I thought I could see, buried under piles and piles of junk modifiers, the core of what it could have been, if it had been designed by someone kinder. Someone who cared about what it did to the world. The equation the cuckoos remembered forgetting . . . it had been a subtle thing, a scalpel. This was a sledgehammer.
I glanced at Artie, who was standing perfectly still as I used every spare neuron he had to power this ridiculous, impossible attempt. Every spare neuron, and a few he technically didn’t have to spare.
“I love you,” I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe he’d have an easier time letting go. I closed my eyes, shutting him out, shutting everything out except for me, what I had to do, and the unfinished equation.
Then I finished it, and the conclusion slammed into me so hard that it was like a bullet to the brain, and I went down hard, with no way of knowing whether I’d done what I set out to do, whether I’d defeated my last and greatest opponent . . . or whether I was going to survive this.
Please let it be okay, I thought. Please let them walk away. Please.
Please.
Ple—
Epilogue
“No one’s ever really lost. Sometimes we don’t know where they are, exactly, but that just means it’s time for us to go out and find them.”
—Alice Healy
. . . well, that’s an excellent question, when you really stop to think about it
EVERYTHING WAS COMFORTABLE DARKNESS, and nothing hurt. That was the best part. Maybe I’d allowed a predatory equation from another dimension to devour the world, but dammit, I’d at least earned the sort of afterlife where I got to take five minutes to myself. It would probably suck in a few hours, when I realized I was going to be alone with my thoughts for eternity, but whatever. That was a problem for future-Sarah. Present-Sarah was enjoying the chance to catch her breath without anyone trying to seize control of her mind or force her to unmake reality. Future-Sarah could suck it.
“I think she’s dead.”
The voice was Mark’s. He sounded remarkably disinterested, given that he was reporting on my supposed death. I already hadn’t been his biggest fan, but that was when I decided to really dislike him.
“Pour water on her. That always works with me.”
Annie.
“Because usually if we think you’re dead, you’re also on fire, and it’s hard to check someone’s pulse when they’re burning themselves alive. Has anyone checked her pulse?”
James.
“She’s a cuckoo. They don’t have hearts, so they don’t have pulses, either. A pulse isn’t possible without a heart.”
Artie.
If I’d had a heart, it would have been racing. Artie was alive. Artie was alive and here—wherever “here”