I shiver a little and sit up straighter.
Something’s not right.
He looks up and says, “What’s your business on the road?” His voice is deep, and I don’t recognize it. He’s either new to this checkpoint or new to the night shift.
My heart speeds up, pumping a little too fast.
Deirdre has the patience of a saint, so she doesn’t snap at this guy. Instead she quietly explains, “We’ve just come from Qualcomm. Another missing-person case, endangered, class two.”
Endangered means it looks like an abduction scenario, rather than someone who’s run away or someone who hasn’t been found and is presumed dead from one of the disasters. Class two means it’s someone between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four.
“Can you step out of the car, please?” he says, and my breath feels shallow.
Deirdre must be feeling like me because she says, “Seriously?”
He waits for us to get out. I force my breath to stay even and my hands to relax. Clenched fists don’t exactly say cooperation.
Deirdre opens her door and glances at me. I’d have to be blind to miss the pointed look she gives me. It says, Don’t cause trouble. I don’t need the reminder. Before anyone declared martial law, people sometimes fought the military—there were even a few cases of leftover entitlement after it was official, people who didn’t want to believe the world had changed, people who refused to give up their liberties.
Those people ended up dead.
I bite back the spike of fear that shoots through my chest and open my door.
Getting out of the car, I immediately raise my hands and intertwine my fingers, locking them behind my head. I exhale evenly and tell myself that I know this drill. That I will cooperate and that this is routine.
In a few minutes we’ll be back on our way.
Two Marines in full camouflage step out of the darkness. One trains his gun on me.
“No, sir,” I say.
He nods and begins patting me down.
I almost tell him my gun is in the glove compartment, but then I don’t.
For one, he didn’t ask. And I’d rather he not know it’s there in case I need it.
My whole body is tensed, poised for something—fight or flight, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m also just inherently resistant to some guy with a gun feeling me up. I see two Marines search the car, and I hear the muffled sounds of Deirdre’s voice, though I can’t make out the words.
I force myself to let go of my breath and relax a little.
The Marine feeling me up straightens. He’s young and makes me think of Alex—not because they look anything alike, but because four months ago, this guy could have been in high school.
“You can put your hands down,” he says to me, adding louder, “we’re clear.”
Not for the first time, I wonder if Alex would have enlisted if he hadn’t died out behind Park Village. The wave of guilt and sorrow at that thought roils through my body, leaving an ache in my chest and a bitter taste in my mouth. I made so many mistakes, and Alex paid for the worst of them.
I hear Deirdre open her car door. “Janelle, get in.”
I don’t hesitate. I jump in and shut my door in one movement.
My leg bounces a little while I wait for Deirdre to start the car. Her movements are slow and purposeful, so it doesn’t look like we’re running away. Even though I understand the psychology of it, I feel a panicked urge to reach over and do it for her.
I keep my face blank while the engine roars to life. As we start to drive away, slowly leaving the flares and guns behind, I realize I’ve been holding my breath.
“We’re fine,” Deirdre says, her shaking voice the only thing that tells me she’s trying to convince herself as much as me.
“I know,” I say, so she doesn’t worry, but then I lean my forehead against the cool glass of the window, feeling my pulse ring through my ears.
Either she’s unconvinced, or talking it out will help her calm down, because she continues, “They stopped a driver, alone, fifteen minutes before us. He had no explanation for being out after curfew, and when they asked him to get out of the car, he abandoned the vehicle, disarmed one of the Marines, and gave the guy a bloody nose. They lost him in the dark.”
“He got away?” I ask, because I’m surprised. The checkpoint Marines are well trained and heavily armed. Probability would suggest running from them would mean injury or death.
Deirdre nods. “The suspect was male, approximately six feet 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.
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.