cards and makeshift drums and piles of colorful glass, the treasures of their wagers.
Finally, Mox pulled away enough to touch his forehead to Ziva’s.
When she collapsed, he was ready to catch her. A tension Sloane had not truly felt went out of the room all at once, like a change in air pressure. The bodies of all the soldiers went brittle and dry, unmoving. Mox lowered Ziva to the floor, his hair hanging in his face.
Sloane stood and made her way to his side. For a while, she stayed silent, watching his shoulders shudder. But when he went still at last, she offered him her hand and led the way out of the safe house.
And when the building went up in flames, she stood by the river and watched it burn with him.
Ines sat in the driver’s seat of an old Jeep Wrangler, swearing at the steering column. Mox sat beside her in the passenger seat, a toolbox on his lap, offering suggestions that only seemed to make Ines swear more. Sloane observed it all from the curb, where she was keeping watch—there was a lot of looting going on as well as a fair amount of violence, and she had a pipe wrench in hand, ready to defend her distracted friends if necessary.
The Jeep was parked on the street just outside Ines’s apartment, which meant they were lucky to have gotten to it first. Most of the good cars had already been stolen, leaving only rust-buckets and mopeds behind.
“Hey.” Matt stepped out of the apartment building carrying a few bottles of water in one hand. His other hand, the one that had been crushed by the siphon, was wrapped in a thick bandage. Cyrielle had found a Genetrix doctor for him that morning.
He offered the water bottles to Sloane, and she took one. “Thanks.”
“Just got back from our place,” he said. “Or, rather, the public Genetrixae park that is now in place of our place.”
There was a hint of accusation in Matt’s voice. Sloane stayed quiet. He looked exhausted, his eyes puffy and his shoulders slumped.
“If your whole theory is true,” Matt said quietly, “then our apartment is gone because you wanted it to be gone.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said. “That’s—a place I was dreading going back to. Because I knew it would be hard. That’s all.”
Matt nodded, but his jaw still looked tight.
“You can have this one if you’re eager to leave,” Sloane said, pointing to the Jeep. They were all setting off on their own road trips: Ines and Esther were driving to California to check on Esther’s mother and then to Mexico to see Ines’s family; Matt was going to New York to find his parents; and Mox and Sloane were heading to central Illinois to find out if Sloane’s mom was still there or if her entire hometown had blinked out of existence. Sloane was terrified to find out, even though, deep down, she already knew it was gone.
The worlds had combined according to her every whim, every preference, and every petty fear. She felt naked in a way she had not known was possible. But she was almost feverishly grateful that Matt was still here, that even though her desires were revealing themselves to be murkier and smaller than she had expected, she still wanted him to be in her world.
“No, I’d rather find something that’s not a gas-guzzler,” Matt said. “It’s a long drive to New York.”
“You sure you want to go alone?”
Matt nodded. “I think I could use the thinking time, actually.”
Their breakup felt real now that they were back on Earth—more or less—and Matt had met Mox and they were quite literally going in different directions. But it was worse now than it had been before. Whatever misconceptions Matt had had about Sloane’s mushy insides were gone now. All he had to do was look around at all the things she had destroyed to see the truth.
A victory shout came from inside the Jeep Wrangler as the engine roared to life. Ines stuck her head out the window. “And a full tank of gas too!”
“Okay,” Sloane said. “I guess I’ll see you in a month.” They had all agreed to meet at Ines’s place then to take stock of things.
She wanted to tell Matt so much. That she was sorry she hadn’t saved their apartment. That she hadn’t moved on from him as easily as it seemed. That she wished she were better. But their intimate drama seemed insignificant compared to the chaos around them, the uncertain fates of their families. So she stayed quiet. She handed a bottle of water to Ines and hugged her goodbye while Mox piled their bags in the trunk.
Then she stood in front of Matt, unsure how to let him go.
He leaned in first, wrapping an arm around her and squeezing her tight. She had only just begun to return the gesture when he released her.
“Stay safe,” he said.
“You too.”
“You’re going to have to learn how to drive,” Sloane said as Mox folded himself into the passenger seat. She had tried to find a car big enough to accommodate him, but that had proved to be impossible. At least the Jeep could handle the unstable roads on the drive south.
Mox had found his wrist siphon in Nero’s intact workshop in the Camel, and it was now on his hand. He had offered to find one for her, but Sloane knew she didn’t need one. She had the Needle.
In the back seat were two bags, one packed with clothes, the other packed with food and other necessities. Sloane didn’t generally approve of looting, but there was nothing left of her earthly possessions, and she couldn’t access any of her money—not that money was terribly useful right now anyway, with two standard U.S. currencies floating around. Money was just a bunch of green paper if you didn’t have a government or a sense of order.
Sloane started down Lake Shore Drive, which was mostly intact, having been similar in both universes. There were ridges and cracks where the different pavements had come together, but she had heard people talking about the road being drivable.
Sloane hadn’t wanted to make this trip, but as Mox had said the night before: Maybe you just have to know. Someday, he might find that he had to know, too, about his own family.
Mox fumbled in one of the bags for something. When he was hunched over, Sloane looked at the bumps of his vertebrae. The spine siphon had come loose as Nero died, he had told her. It was at the bottom of the Chicago River.
He produced a CD from the bag. Pet Sounds.
Sloane smiled.
As the first song came on, Mox said, “I think I know why you really did it.”
“Why I did what?”
“Killed Nero.”
“Oh.” Sloane glanced at him. “Why did I really do it?”
“Because he was going to force me to do it,” Mox said. “You decided that if one of us was going to have to bear the burden of it, it would be you. So in the end . . . it wasn’t revenge, or inevitability, or some other dark purpose. It was a kind of . . . small mercy.”
“There was definitely revenge in it,” she said.
“Yeah, of course,” Mox said. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “But there was kindness in it too.”
He reached across the gearshift and took her hand.
They drove along Lake Michigan, and the water glittered in the sun.