in height, and in his twenties with shaggy dark hair, blue eyes, and light facial hair. He was dressed completely in black with boots that looked military.”
She stops, and I wait for her to keep going. There’s obviously more.
But she doesn’t say anything else, so I look over. Her face is a mask as she stares out the windshield, but then she presses her lips together, slows the car to a stop, and looks over at me.
She repeats the description, though she doesn’t need to. “Sound like anyone you know?”
I look away. Of course it does.
It’s exactly how I would have described a certain agent with the Interverse Agency, the agency that polices the multiverse. An agent who infiltrated the FBI when he was trying to stop Wave Function Collapse. An agent that I don’t have a stellar relationship with.
Taylor Barclay.
06:11:27:56
I don’t say Barclay’s name out loud, as if speaking the words could somehow make them more likely to come true.
Deirdre adds, “They sent out a search team, but it’s like he disappeared.”
Chills move over my arms and down my neck. These days, disappeared has a new meaning to me—for several reasons. First, because we have so many people just dropping off the face of the earth. But also because I’ve seen people vanish right in front of me.
I’ve seen black holes that open out of nothingness, circular portals to other worlds, seven feet or taller, like some kind of big vertical pool of tar. I’ve felt the temperature drop as the air around me suddenly took on a different quality and smell—wet, never-ending, open. I’ve had to watch people get swallowed up by portals and leave this earth.
And it’s not the first time I’ve wondered if the disappearances in my world and the portals are somehow connected.
People disappearing into thin air shouldn’t be this common.
06:11:20:45
We don’t have any answers—just too much speculation—when we finally pass through security at Miramar and pull into the on-base housing.
“Do you want to tell him, or should I?” Deirdre says before we get out of the car. I know she’s still mad that I never told her anything this past fall until it was too late. I know it was careless to keep everything to myself. As soon as we uncovered what was happening with the portals, Alex wanted me to tell Struz what was really going on, and I didn’t.
And I know that’s probably the main reason Alex is dead.
I have to live with that.
“I’ll tell him,” I say.
Deirdre nods, and we get out of the car. She heads to her apartment and I head to the one I share with Jared and Struz. It’s a two-bedroom and military furnished, which means everything is taupe and gently used, but it’s dry and sturdy and we have cases of bottled water stacked up in every closet, which is more than a lot of other people have. For the past hundred and fifteen days, we’ve been calling it home.
“Dude, I’m starting to feel like a neglected housewife,” Jared says with a smile when I get inside. The room is dark, but he’s got a paperback in his lap and a candle lit on the corner table next to the La-Z-Boy that he’s started to refer to as his chair. Electricity is scarce; brown-outs are common, and as a result everyone is only supposed to use it when they have to—luckily the base has a wood-burning stove.
“Did you make me dinner, at least?” I say, joking right back, even though the irony of the situation twists a little like a rusty knife in my gut. After I tried so hard to keep him from having to grow up too fast, the past few months have forced it beyond my control.
“There are cold SpaghettiOs on the counter.”
Food is rationed and handed out once a week, one of my many jobs. Right now we’re dealing with nonperishables, because that’s all we’ve got. Things like fruit, vegetables, dairy, and meat are already all gone. Anyone on a farm is working to rebuild, but I don’t know how long that will take. And I’m not sure we have a plan for when the nonperishables run out.
Water is the worst. Anyone with a well can boil water to purify the effects of the wildfires, but tap water in most of Southern California is undrinkable. The military has been doing supply runs, bringing in cases of bottled water that had been stockpiled by FEMA. Struz keeps saying things will get better, but