zero, or all of this will have been for nothing—like it’s been for nothing so many times before. Erin didn’t want to tell him that part. Erin never wants to tell him anything if she can help it, says ignorance is bliss, or at least ignorance leads to better choices: ignorance doesn’t try to account for the costs and consequences of a hundred doomed timelines every time it takes a step. He wishes he knew how it was she could remember.
And then he knows.
“Dodger,” he says, and his voice is low, almost drowned out by the gunfire from outside their little corner of the ruins. Erin is holding off their attackers as best she can. She can’t hold them off forever. “When did it go wrong? When, exactly, did it go wrong?”
“Like you have to ask?” She keeps painting. There’s more blood seeping between her fingers now. There’s so much blood. “You’re the one who came to me.”
“Before that. When did it go wrong before that?”
She turns her head, her fingers going still. She’s so pale. She’s always been pale, but there’s so little blood left for her to spill. Her hair is longer than he’s ever seen it, her two-hundred-dollar hairstyle ruined by gunpowder and blood and exertion. Her earrings are diamond set in platinum. She looks like an adult, and he still feels like a child.
“The earthquake, Roger,” she says softly. “That’s when I knew you were never going to stop leaving me. That’s when I decided to stop letting you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Done is done. We’re going to die here, and I’m not going to forgive you. Let me work.” She turns back to the wall.
Roger goes still. Done isn’t done; not according to Erin. Forgiveness isn’t the key. Knowing when to forgive, that’s the key. He can’t change how he reacted to the earthquake: he knows himself well enough for that. But there are things he can change. There are things he can do. Here, and now, and knowing what he knows—knowing what Erin’s told him, what he’s seen in the days they’ve spent running for their lives, the blink between the last grain of sand falling and the hourglass being turned back over—there are things he can do.
He pulls the phone out of his pocket. Sets it to airplane mode. Changes the clock, until the phone believes it’s ten years ago, the day of the earthquake, the day he ruined his own life in the interest of saving it. Dials a number he knows by heart. Numbers have never come easily to him, but this one, he will never forget.
He leaves his message, stuttering and stumbling over his words, feeling like a fool, watching as Dodger stops writing and turns to face him, eyes wide and bewildered. When he’s done, he throws the phone aside. It isn’t needed anymore. He opens his arms.
“Come on,” he says, and Dodger moves toward him. She can’t take her hand away from her side, but he puts his arms around her and gathers her close, smelling her expensive perfume, feeling the way she shivers.
“You ready?” he asks. How many times have they been here? How many times have they done this? A hundred times, a thousand, a million, and once, because every change begins it all again. They can do this over and over again and never really repeat a thing.
“No,” she says. She tilts her head back and looks at him, eyes wide and gray and trusting. She still trusts him. Even after everything that’s happened, she still trusts him, and that is the best and worst thing in the world. “Do you think this will work?”
“If it doesn’t, I guess it isn’t going to matter.” He chuckles darkly. “If it doesn’t, everything that’s ever happened to us has been coincidence, and we’ve ruined ourselves for nothing. You can’t save the world with math unless you can also change it with a question.”
“Then I’m ready,” she says.
There it is again, the sensation of déjà vu: unsurprising. He knows from Erin that they’ve been here before. At the same time there’s the sensation of something new happening. He doesn’t think they’ve been here many times before, if ever.
“Dodger,” he says, and his voice is calm and clear, “don’t you die, and don’t you give up on me. This is an order. This is a command. This is an adjuration. Do whatever you have to do, break whatever you have to break, but don’t you die, and don’t you let me