Unbreakable

“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 they’ll get worse before they do—the rest of the winter will be hard, harder for people in colder climates, harder for people in poorer communities. It’s a different kind of aftershock.

“Gotta love SpaghettiOs,” I say with a sigh. I’m hungry, but I go to Jared first and ruffle his hair. “Did you get enough to eat?”

He picks up his book and rolls his eyes. “Don’t even try to give me your dinner again.”

I don’t respond, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. Instead I say, “How was school?”

“Lame,” he answers. “I don’t know who decided it was okay to have school on Sunday, but they should be abducted by aliens.”

Schools shut down when the quakes happened, but they’ve opened up again—large, auditorium-style, and organized by accessibility instead of grade, and they’re open every day. Jared walks to the old Mira Mesa High School each morning with the other kids who live on the base. Grades seven and up have classes in the gym, and everyone else is in the cafeteria. I went the first few weeks, but Jared’s right, it was lame.

The truth is, organized school keeps kids out of trouble. It’s a mild sense of normalcy to hold the hysteria at bay. That’s why there’s school on Sundays. Instead of that, I say, “Got to make up for that lost time.”

Jared frowns, but he doesn’t bother voicing his opinion about my absence at school. It’s a discussion that was considered closed a long time ago.

I put in to take my GED and effectively graduate early. So did most of the people I knew from Eastview. A lot of them got involved with the Red Cross to help the reconstruction effort. That’s what Kate and Nick are doing. Anyone a little more hard-core took the ASVAB, the military entrance exam, and joined the military.

I got where I am now because of Struz. After I “graduated,” I went one step further with the tests and firearms qualifications. Then Struz signed off on my employment with the FBI—so I’m essentially a cross between an apprentice and a temp. He paired me with Deirdre because of her experience and told me he expects me to pick up and go to college once things get back to normal.

We have no idea when that will happen, though, and I don’t know what else I would want to do with my life, anyway. I didn’t really ever have concrete plans, but I wanted to go to college, travel, and study abroad. I wanted the chance to figure out what my dreams were. Alex wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps. With both of them gone, I feel like I owe it to them to do what they can’t—to fight the bad guys and all that.

Jared’s stomach growls but I ignore it. “How’s the leg?” I ask.

“Fine,” he says, but his face scrunches up a little and I know it’s not. He broke it during the quakes, and even though it’s healed now, it’s not as strong as it was before.

I lean into him and remind myself it could be worse. Deirdre’s son lost his arm, and her daughter hasn’t spoken since the world changed.

“What are you reading?” I ask, but focusing on the book makes me think of Ben’s lookalike and how maybe I should have helped him pick up the books I made him drop—maybe I should have talked to him—and I have to shake him from my head.

Jared’s eyes light up. “It’s super cool. Struz found it somewhere. Some of the pages are water-damaged, but it’s all still readable. It’s about this guy who just got out of prison and goes hiking up in Alaska and he finds this downed airplane that had the president’s wife on it, and she’s dead.”

“Because of the crash?”

“No way, people totally murdered her,” he says, standing up. “I’m only like fifty pages or so in. It’s pretty awesome. You’d like it.” Then his face gets serious. “You’re really not hungry? Because if you are, you should eat, but if you’re not …”

I shake my head. “Go for it. Struz out back?”

“Yeah, he’s doing the whole walkie thing.”

I nod and head out through the sliding glass doors to the porch and the five square feet of lawn that we call a yard. Struz is sitting in one of the two folding chairs and his legs make him look like he’s too big for the chair, like it’s a kiddie chair or something. He doesn’t pay me much attention as I shut the sliding door behind me. He’s got a walkie-talkie to his ear and a high-powered flashlight trained on a map of San Diego on the patio table.

“President’s new orders,” a voice crackles through the walkie, followed by a bitter chuckle, and I wonder what orders these are. And what part of the conversation I’ve missed.

Struz sighs and says, “I’ll see what we can do.”

The real president, the one who was elected and in office when the world changed, is in a coma, and the vice president is dead. The speaker of the house is now the president, and apparently he’s sort of a joke. It’s supposed to be an election year, which means that in less than a year we could elect a new president, but that would require getting voting methods under control before then, and I doubt that’s going to happen.

It doesn’t matter, though. The government we had doesn’t work for this kind of large-scale crisis. If San Diego had been the only city affected, or even if it had just been California, the rest of the country would be sending us aid and going on with life as usual.

But everyone was affected. No one—no matter who they were or where they lived or what they believed in—was spared.

The first thing the acting president did was suspend habeas corpus and declare martial law. Since then he’s passed temporary acts to give the military the power to absorb every able-bodied member of local law-enforcement agencies in order to keep peace and maintain some sort of structure.

Struz looks at me and says, “False alarm?” There’s hope on his face, like every time he’s asked, but I don’t think it’s as real as it used to be. He’s still hoping but he doesn’t believe in it anymore.

I shake my head.

“You should go to bed. Early day tomorrow. I’ll check out your report in the morning.”

“What about you?” I ask, because now he’s as bad as my dad was. He hardly ever sleeps, and when he does, it’s sitting up with his walkie next to him in case something happens.

“It’s going to be a long night,” he says with a shake of his head.

I know better than to argue so I turn to go back inside. As I open the door, I hear a grainy voice over the walkie-talkie say, “Hey, Struz, we’ve got reports of another one out in Poway. I’ve got a team en route.”

Another one. I don’t need anyone to spell out what that means. It’s always the same thing—more abductions.

More people missing.

I light the candle on the nightstand and peel off my jeans and change my T-shirt, then reach under the bed for a manila folder before crawling under the covers. The file is worn and a little frayed from overhandling, but that doesn’t stop me. It was already overhandled before it was passed to me.

Lying back on my pillow, I look at her name—Emily Bauer. The blue ink is faded, as if time is trying to erase her existence completely. For a minute, I imagine what Emily was like, if she was anything like I am now. I wonder where she’d be and what she’d be like if she hadn’t gone missing seventeen years ago.

Then I open it up—the one case file of my father’s that I refused to throw away.

I don’t even need to read it—every word has been burned in my memory at this point.

The file is an unsolved case from 1995, from one of my dad’s first years on the job, back when he worked missing persons—ironically, the same job I’m working right now.

A seventeen-year-old girl—captain of the swim team, with an academic scholarship to USC, a boyfriend, friends, the perfect family with a dog and a white picket fence—went missing from her bedroom. All her possessions were untouched and in their rightful place. No forced entry, no signs of a break-in, no one who heard or saw anything unusual—it was like she just disappeared.

Except for a bloody partial handprint on her wall.

I know the case is cold now; it’s been cold for the past seventeen years while it sat on my dad’s desk, and now that the world is changed, I know there isn’t any hope of solving it. But this case isn’t that different from the ones we have now. Maybe something will help me solve them. Besides, if my dad were still here, he would still be looking over the file every night, still looking for something he missed.

Once, when we were twelve, Alex asked my dad why he held on to the case. He said, “Why haven’t you given up?”

It was a Saturday in the summer. We’d just played in one of those coed Little League softball games, and we were sweaty and starving, and my dad was pulling pizza leftovers from the fridge. But when Alex asked that, he stopped and turned around. His face was so serious that, even then, I knew whatever he said would be something I never forgot.

And I haven’t.

He said, “Giving up on something is like admitting you never wanted it in the first place. I won’t ever give up on that girl. I’ll always be looking for her. Even if everyone else in her life has moved on, I won’t rest until I figure out what we missed and we’ve gotten her back. Until she’s safe.”

He’s not here to look for her anymore, but I am, and I’m not going to give up on her either.

Who knows—maybe something will help me with the people going missing right now.

Or that’s what I tell myself. The other reason I reread this file every night is because I need something to focus on right before I go to sleep—something to think about—because that’s the moment when my mind is at its worst, when if left to its own devices, it won’t stop remembering.

The gunshot, Reid’s and Alex’s hands on the gun, blood pouring from the hole in Alex’s neck, his eyes glassy, my hands covered in blood.

I can’t shake these images. I see them every time I close my eyes. I dream about that night almost every time I fall asleep. In the dreams, I try to make different choices, but the end result is always the same.

My dad is still dead. There won’t be any more X-Files marathons or bad Syfy movies. Alex is still dead—his blood still staining the ground just outside Park Village—and he’s never going to drag me to another terrible action movie with no plot. He’ll never have the chance to defy his mother and go to West Point instead of Stanford. He’s never going to follow his dreams.

And Ben is still gone.

Like my body knows something bad is about to happen.

“Dude, if you’re not going to listen to me …”

“Jared, I’m sorry, I spaced out.”

I look at my brother—he’s got Monopoly set up, and he’s playing against himself. He sees me looking and says, “I set it up so you could play with me when you got back, and then I got bored. But we can set it up again.”

“Sure, that works,” I say. I suddenly feel like I’m too old. Not physically, but just that I’m too tired, too stressed, and too anxious. Even though there isn’t any danger of Wave Function Collapse and there’s no Oppenheimer counting down to the end of the world, it’s like I’m waiting for something else to go wrong.

I sit on the floor with him, and he launches into a story about his class field trip to the movie theater down the street from the school. “It was so cool. Mr. Hubley totally broke into the theater and we went in the biggest one, and he had the other teachers all sit with us while he set up a projector and we watched Mission Impossible 4.”

I’m not sure if it’s considered breaking in now that the theater has been abandoned, although I guess it’s still private property. “How was the movie?” I ask, even though I’m sure it was just as bad as the first three.

My eyes burn with that thought, because it’s something I would have said to Alex.

“It was so awesome. There’s this really cool part where Tom Cruise flies down the side of this building. Maybe Cecily can get that for the next movie night?”

“I’ll ask her,” I say truthfully, as we clear the houses off the board.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” Jared asks. “No spaghetti, right?”

We try to have something special on Mondays. I’m not sure if it was Struz’s idea or mine, but we all eat together then too. It’s nice. “I was thinking a feast of macaroni and cheese, and canned peas and chicken.”

“Canned chicken?” Jared makes a face.

“I imagine the canned sardines are worse,” I tell him.

“Why can’t you just lift something better from the commissary?” Jared asks.

I don’t tell him there is nothing better. Instead, I say, “Wow, Jared, I don’t know, maybe because that’s stealing?”

“Whatever, plenty of people steal stuff.” Jared begins listing all of his friends and the amazing things they’ve gotten to eat recently.

There’s a knock at the door.

“I bet Struz forgot his keys,” Jared says, bouncing up from the floor.

“I can assure you if Victor Le says he had filet mignon last night, he either has cattle in his backyard or he’s lying,” I call after him.

I hear my brother say something muffled, and then there’s a slam as someone kicks open the front door.

I have a split second to consider a strategy, but I don’t know what I’m up against, so I jump up and step into the hall.

In my doorway is the outline of a man, standing behind my brother. Based on his height and build, I know it’s not Struz.

It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. I have absolutely nothing to defend myself with, and this guy has my brother.

But when he uses his foot to kick the door shut and the light adjusts in the room, I realize it’s Taylor Barclay.

“What’s the matter, Tenner? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he says with a smile.

He’s got one hand on Jared’s shoulder. I don’t like that.

Barclay must see the shift in my position. “Why don’t you head upstairs, kid?”

Jared looks at me, and I nod. The last thing I want is him getting dragged into whatever has Barclay showing up at my door. We both watch him as he leaves the room.

“Tenner, relax.” He raises his empty hands and smiles. “Just here to talk. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

His smile is disarming. It’s light and casual, like we’re long-lost friends and he’s happy to see me.

“So you come to my home and scare my brother?”

Barclay shrugs. “I knocked.”

“What do you want?” I ask, because let’s face it, he wants something.

His smile disappears and his eyebrows draw together, a flicker of annoyance on his face. “I need your help. I need you to come with me.”

He pulls a quantum charger from his pocket—I’d recognize one of those anywhere—and I shake my head. I remember how much it burned the last time he dragged me through a portal, and that thought sparks one that’s worse—all our missing people. What if that’s why Barclay is here? What if I’m next?

“I’m not going anywhere.” I bite my bottom lip and debate what to do next.

“We don’t have time to argue right now,” he says. “I’ll explain everything once we’re out of here.”

In hand-to-hand combat, I don’t stand a chance with Barclay unless I can take him by complete surprise and knock him out. I’m sure he has a gun on him, and I don’t. He also has a quantum charger and as a result he has access to anywhere—any universe. I can’t possibly keep him away from us.

Which means I need to hear him out.

“If you want me to go somewhere with you, you can explain it right now,” I say, pulling back. “I’m not about to just blindly follow you through a portal.”

“Fine, you want to have a chat, Tenner? Why don’t you have a seat,” he says as he sits down on our taupe couch with that stupid, arrogant smirk on his face.

I move into the living room and sit down on the couch as far as I can physically get from him. “So what is it?”

“We have a problem.”

“We?” I ask. Because there’s Barclay, and then there’s me. There’s no we at all.

He turns his blue eyes to me and stares for a second. Then he says, “It’s Ben.”

Barclay sits up straighter. “Have you seen him?”

I swallow. Hard. “No, he’s back in his home world.”

Barclay nods. “If you have—”

“I haven’t,” I insist, and I hate the fact that I’ve had to say it again.

He nods. “A couple months ago, I stumbled on a case. It’s big, Tenner,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “People from different universes are disappearing. They’re being kidnapped.”

Kidnapped. As in abducted.

He has my full attention now. I can feel my pulse all over my body, even in the tips of my fingers.

“Everything I’ve uncovered points to a complex organization, one that’s avoided getting caught for a long time,” Barclay continues. “Someone has set up the ultimate human-trafficking ring. They’re going into different universes, kidnapping people, and then selling them into slavery on other earths.”

“Human trafficking? Like sex slaves?”

“It’s bigger than that,” Barclay says with a grimace. “Think about the overall picture. Stealing people from other universes, especially universes that don’t have interverse travel capabilities. No one’s going to come looking for them, and they don’t have anywhere to go. No escape.

“And if there’s no fear of getting caught, someone could turn a huge profit by selling house slaves to the wealthy in every different world. Slaves for cheap labor, slaves that could be soldiers in a war you’re waging, and yes, slaves for sex, too.”

No one’s going to come looking for them, and they don’t have anywhere to go.

I can’t help be stuck on that. I see what he’s saying—that makes it the perfect crime—but there’s something in my brain that’s having trouble computing. How selfish and depraved does a person have to be to put something like this together? I wonder if they watch people and pick them out with a purpose, or if they just grab them at random and figure it out later.

I think of Renee Adams, and I wonder what kind of slave she is right now. The thought makes me want to throw up.

“So that’s what’s happening here—why we have so many missing people?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

“What?” Barclay asks, before he nods and says, “Oh. Yeah. Any world that has low technology capabilities would be a huge target. A world that’s just gone through a disaster or a war, or any kind of devastating event, of course would become a likely target. More people can be abducted in a shorter period of time before authorities catch on.”