Unbreakable

But the fog of sleep disappears, and I recognize Deirdre’s blond hair.

“What happened?” I ask. “Is Jared okay?”

“He’s fine,” Deirdre says. “But there’s been a distress call. We need to go to Qualcomm.”

I nod and roll out of bed automatically. My jeans are in a pile on the floor. I put them on and grab my hoodie and my gun and am out the door just seconds after her. Deirdre hasn’t said what the distress call is for, but she doesn’t need to.

Qualcomm, the middle of the night. Another missing person.

When we’re in the car, I pull my hair back into a ponytail. My watch says it’s 3:38 a.m. We’re the only people on the road except for the Marines at the checkpoints. They check our IDs and wave us through, their faces pulled into tight expressions.

I think about Qualcomm, about Cecily and how she’s going to take this. I never told her about the multiverse, not because it sounds crazy—between her obsession with all things science and her love for anything new and different, Cecily is probably the one person who would believe me without a doubt—but when I was with her, I was trying to hold on to the aspects of my life that were almost still normal. Telling her about the multiverse, about the portals, about Ben leaving me for his world—it would mean thinking about it. Hanging out with Cee is one of the only times I’m distracted enough to relax.

But now she’s getting dragged into it anyway. I’m going to have to tell her so she can do something to help protect people at Qualcomm.

I wonder who will be missing now—and what kind of slaves they’re going to become—and it makes me feel sick. Other than a buddy system, I can’t even begin to think of a way to combat more abductions.

I need to see Barclay.

I almost say it aloud, to Deirdre, before I stop myself. She might not go for my plan. She might not see the logic in it because it will mean letting Barclay go. I’ll talk to Struz when we get back and ask him to make some kind of deal. If Barclay can give Struz something concrete that people can do to arm themselves against traffickers, or some way for us to track them when they disappear, or something, I’m sure Struz will let him go back to Prima.

We need to be working with Prima—with IA—not against them.

Because I know who would win, and it wouldn’t be us.

When we get to Qualcomm, Cecily’s aunt is awake to meet us, her eyes bloodshot and her face red and splotchy. The stress is obviously getting to her, too. “Thank God you’re here,” she says, and as soon as we’re close enough, she pulls me into a hug.

I cover my surprise by getting down to business. “Two people are missing?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, as she pulls back. “Jack Wright. He’s eleven.”

I can feel the bile moving around in my stomach.

“Where did this happen? Was he alone?” Deirdre asks.

Cecily’s aunt nods. “Both his parents were killed in the quakes, so we’ve housed him with the other kids who are alone now. Cecily and some of the girls have been taking care of them.”

No wonder she’s so upset. This is going to be hell on Cee.

“He’d gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,” she adds. “He was gone a little too long, so Cecily and Kate got up to check on him.”

I glance off to the side and see Kate, a blanket wrapped around her. She’s shaking a little with her head down, as if she’s crying into the blanket. I’ve finally gotten over the way she turned on me and traded our friendship for popularity. We’re not exactly friends again, but I’ve let go of the hate.

I look around for Cecily, since she is usually quick to comfort anyone who’s crying, and a shiver moves through my body. I don’t see her anywhere, and when I look back at her aunt, the question almost freezes in my throat.

“And the second?” I ask.

Her eyes water and Deirdre says, “Please tell us it’s not another kid.”

It’s not, but for me, this answer is worse.

“It’s Cecily.”

She was blond, bubbly, and far too excited to be at school. She was perkiness personified.

Alex had a huge crush on her, and I hated her a little on principle.

Then I got stuck with her for a lab partner.

Alex was at some special “best students in California” weekend up at Stanford, and Easterly was trying to discourage Mason Rickman from coasting through class by letting Cecily do all the work, so he stuck me in a threesome with the two of them, knowing I’d badger Mason into doing his fair share. The lab itself was essentially analyzing a few different chemicals in commercial bleach. My plan was to just get it done—even with Mason slowing us down, it would be an easy one.

But then Mason spilled some of the bleach and Cecily said, “God, Mason, just because Janelle is here doesn’t mean you have to get all weird. Stop letting her make you nervous. It’s like you have a crush on her or something.”

Mason snorted. “Well, I certainly don’t have a crush on you.”

“Thank goodness. I don’t need another stalker. I mean, it’s hard enough to leave my house as it is.”

Mason looked at me and rolled his eyes, but the smile never left his face.

“Don’t worry, Janelle,” Cecily said to me. “He’s a little funny looking, but I promise you he’s pretty harmless. In fact, if we let him, he’d probably just go to sleep.” Then she handed me a beaker. “Here, fill this before he manages to spill it and get it all over our clothes.”

I realized Cecily was funny. She made fun of Mason—and me—constantly. And she loved it when we managed to think of something witty enough to make fun of her right back.

She was smart and hard-working—like me, if I was less serious and more friendly. When Alex came back, she and I stuck him with Mason on most of the labs and worked together. Though he hated working with Mason, he loved the attention he got from Cecily as a result.

I’ve already lost Alex. Cecily is the only friend I have left. I can’t lose her, too.

I try to listen to Cecily’s aunt as she describes what happened. Kate and some others heard Cecily shout, “Fire!”—it’s the one thing you can shout and guarantee that people will come running—and got up and ran to the hallway in time to see her disappear through some kind of black hole. But there’s something wrong with either my ears or my focus—or both. I feel like I’m caught in some kind of air tunnel and the wind is roaring in my ears.

We’re on the first floor of Qualcomm, where the small children and families with young ones are staying, where the crime took place. Despite the time, handfuls of people are standing around watching Deirdre and me.

And I can’t stop staring at them, memorizing each one.

Their faces all ask variations of the same question: What are you going to do about this?

A young boy is missing, which is tragic enough as it is. But Cecily is missing too—the girl who kept this place together, the girl who gave people hope. Underneath the lines of anger on their faces is a desperation—you can see it in their eyes. Because without Cecily, how will they keep going?

The faint singed line of a burn on concrete—what I now know is the mark of a portal flaring to life and disappearing quickly—draws my eye, and I squat down to touch the end of it with the tips of my fingers. It doesn’t feel any different. There’s nothing about this soft mark to suggest that two people were just ripped from this world.

I look a hundred feet south, toward the bathroom. In my mind I see Cecily in pink sweatpants and her I ONLY DATE NINJAS Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt coming out of the room where she sleeps and heading toward the bathroom. Her white-blond hair is mussed, probably from tossing and turning, and she has circles under her eyes from not actually sleeping.

I see her stop and her head swivel at a sound—maybe a shout or a yell, maybe just something unusual and therefore alarming—and then I see her take off running toward us, toward an eleven-year-old boy with sandy-brown hair struggling against one or both of his captors. She shouts for them to stop, and one of them turns to her, grabbing her when she gets close, deciding that taking her is far better than leaving a witness. A girl who just turned sixteen, a girl who’s petite, and thin, with blond hair and innocent doe eyes—she’ll be easily placed as a slave.

She shouts, “Fire!” as one of the abductors covers her mouth and jabs her with a syringe. Then they’re vanishing through the portal.

He opens his mouth, probably to ask about our newest case, but I don’t let him get that far.

“Don’t leave yet,” I say, walking past the kitchen and toward the stairs. “You and I are going to see Barclay.”

Deirdre calls after me as I run upstairs, but I don’t stop. My plan has changed slightly, but the dynamic here is still the same. I need Barclay, and I don’t need Deirdre trying to step in and stop me.

When I get to my room, I move straight for the closet and reach toward the back, grabbing my backpack from the floor. The clothes I’m wearing—jeans, T-shirt, hoodie, and sneakers—are going to have to be good enough, but I can’t walk blindly into whatever Barclay’s planning. I grab my dad’s old hunting knife, his backup gun, and all the ammo we have for it and stuff them into the backpack. And I take my leather jacket because who knows how cold it will be where I’m going.

With everything in the backpack, I put it on.

I get up and leave the room without looking back, because it would be easier to stay here and just be upset than try to do something about it. I need to hold on to my anger—I need to wrap myself up in it, in the injustice of everything that’s just happened, and keep it close. I can’t lose my resolve.

I peek into Struz and Jared’s room before I head downstairs. My brother is still asleep, tangled up in his covers like he fought them into submission, his brown hair sticking out in odd places. I think about before the quakes, when we went to Disneyland and I knew it might be our last time together if the world ended. I remember how much he smiled then—how much he still manages to smile now, despite everything.

This is my brother, the only member of my family I have left. I have to stop these abductions before they get worse, before these guys start grabbing people out of houses instead of just shelters. I have to do this to get Cecily back and to keep my brother safe, so that I don’t have to worry if he’ll be next.

I move into the room and touch his shoulder, his skin warm from the blankets. I sit carefully on the edge of the bed. His eyes flutter open and he groans a little, pulling himself tighter into a ball.

Brushing my fingers through his hair, I whisper, “I love you, Jared,” and then, because I know it’s an X-Files quote he’ll understand, I add, “‘Even when the world was falling apart, you were my constant. My touchstone.’”

A muffled, “‘And you were mine’” comes out from under the covers. From the sound of his voice, I can tell he’s smiling.

He’ll be mad when he fully wakes up and finds out that I’m gone, but if this is the last conversation we’re ever going to have, it’s a good one. One that’s true—and worth remembering.

After kissing his forehead, I get up and head downstairs.

Both tense and red-faced, Struz and Deirdre pause what is clearly an argument and turn toward me. Again, I don’t give them a chance. I just look right into Struz’s blue eyes.

“I need you to let Barclay go,” I say. “Because I need to go with him.”

Struz doesn’t say anything yet, so I don’t either. I stand still and straight, with my lips pressed together in a hard line. I let my body language and facial expression tell the complete truth. I let them say that I’ve thought this through, that I can do this, that it’s the only way.

Struz takes a slow sip from his coffee mug. Then he looks at me. “You’re not going anywhere. And I can’t just let Barclay go. We need to know more about what happened this fall. And if what he’s said is true, we need to know what we can do right now. After we’ve gotten information, we could let Barclay take a team of trained agents with him if he needs help and can’t trust his own people.”

“You think we can really afford to wait that long?” I ask.

“Struz,” Deirdre says. “You can’t possibly … Where the hell is she going to go? We can’t trust him!”

He doesn’t answer her. “It doesn’t have to be you,” he says to me.

But he’s wrong. It does have to be me. I think of Ben and Cecily and know that it does.

It has to be me.

I don’t say a word because my face says that I am my father’s daughter. That I’ll do this with or without his help.

Because I will.

Even if Struz doesn’t want me to. I can’t sit around and wait for someone to figure out how to get Cecily back. And I can’t sit around wondering if Ben is dead because of my inaction. Doing that last night was enough.

And Barclay isn’t going to take a team of FBI agents or Marines and go through a portal into Prima and shake things up with the IA. He isn’t even going to hang out and let himself be detained very long. If they’ve still got him, it’s only temporary—maybe even because he’s waiting for me.

When Struz pours the rest of his coffee down the sink, I know I have him.

“J, come with me. Let’s talk to Barclay,” Struz says. To Deirdre he adds, “Call another meeting for an hour from now. We need people to be prepared and not panicking. We need a way to fight this.”

“Struz—”

“D, we’ve got enough shit to deal with without people disappearing right and left.” He looks at me. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t even look up when the door opens and he doesn’t acknowledge it when Struz says he’s come to talk.

When he adds, “And I brought someone with me,” that makes Barclay react. He smiles.

“I knew you’d change your mind, Tenner,” he says.

I sort of want to smack the smugness right off his face.

Struz frowns. “We need information.”

Barclay doesn’t answer.

“We need to know everything about Prima, the portals, this human-trafficking ring, and exactly what part you played in the events that happened a few months ago,” Struz says.

Again, Barclay doesn’t answer, but he looks at me like he’s a combination of annoyed and surprised that I gave up information about what happened.

“Don’t be an asshole,” I say. “We don’t care about your problems as much as we care about ours.” It’s not necessarily true, since I care a lot about Ben and Cecily, and someone dirty in the IA has the potential to be a huge problem, but I have to say something.

“It’s against IA regulations to discuss the multiverse to persons in a world that isn’t part of the Interverse Alliance,” he says.

“Seriously, you’re going to spout that at me?” I fold my arms across my chest. “I seem to recall you’ve already broken that one.”

He knows I’m referring to the information he told me before the quakes—and what he told me yesterday.

“Look, the sad fact is that you need me,” I say, even though I’m not a hundred percent sure why yet. “I’m not going to help you for nothing. So you need to talk to us and give us answers.”

Barclay’s eyebrows draw together and I’m pretty sure he’s clenching his teeth, but he gives a quick nod and then says, “What are your terms?”

I take a deep breath. “My friend Cecily has been taken. So I’ll go with you—”

Struz clears his throat. “Actually, I’ll go with you. Janelle will stay here.”

My mouth falls open, though I’m not sure what I’m about to say. I can’t tell myself that it’s surprising that Struz would go in my place. But I just hadn’t seen it coming.

Barclay shakes his head. “No deal. I don’t need you. I need her. She knows about the IA and they know about her. I can bring her in under the guise of questioning her and no one will think it’s off. If I brought you in, it would draw attention to us.”

Struz looks like he’s about to argue, so I put a hand on his arm. I don’t know why Barclay needs me, but I believe him. And I also know I need Struz to take care of Jared while I’m gone. To make sure he’s safe.

“I’ll go with you,” I repeat. “On two conditions.”

“That we get your friend back?” he asks.

“Yes. And that you tell Struz how to fight this stuff.”

“What about Ben?” Barclay asks.

My stomach drops and I feel short of breath, like he just punched me. “What about him?” I’m not about to tell Barclay that I’ve been lying awake at night waiting for Ben Michaels to walk back into my universe while he’s been running around and getting himself in trouble with IA and who knows what else. I need to make sure he’s safe, but the most important thing is to get Cecily back. That’s what I need from Barclay right now.

“Fair enough,” he says with a shrug. The corners of his lips turn up, though. Like he doesn’t quite believe me.

The truth is there’s actually not a lot Barclay can tell us that will block the portals. If we had hydrochloradneum, we could use it. Apparently in New Prima, the capital city where Barclay lives and IA is headquartered, there are buildings with the chemical compound in their foundations, and it acts as a shield to prevent portals from opening inside those buildings.

We don’t have that, though. And even though Struz has given information to scientists, there hasn’t been much advancement in the Multiverse Project, not that anyone can blame them, given the state of the country right now.

“Can’t IA track these guys through their quantum chargers or something?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, that’s the problem. They’re either using black-market chargers or they’ve dismantled the tracking chips.” Barclay sighs. “If it was that easy to track them, Tenner, we’d have shut them down.”

“Well, can’t you track the activity or something?” Struz asks.

“Not likely. Every universe has soft spots. They’re spots where travel between universes is easy—or easier, at least. Those spots don’t register activity unless the portals are unstable, unless they’re creating some kind of bigger disturbances between universes.” Barclay shifts on the floor and looks directly at me. Ben’s portals were unstable. That’s why we ended up with so many problems.

“Where are the soft spots?” Struz asks.

Barclay chuckles. “We’re in a big soft spot. It’s called San Diego.”

“Why the ocean, then?”

“Because that’s the thinnest part,” Barclay says. “This whole area is a soft spot, but some areas are thinner than others—some more conducive to portals.”

“So we’re looking for the thinnest soft spots where someone could portal in and do some reconnaissance, and areas that are highly populated,” Struz says. “Dammit.”

I look at him. I’m not sure what he’s on to.

“We need to break up the evac shelters. Think of how many disappearances there have been from Qualcomm alone.”

“Oh, God,” I breathe. “Even all the people in the beginning that we thought might have abandoned the shelter because it was too crowded …”

Struz nods. “I’ll get our people on it while you’re gone.” He looks at Barclay. “Are there any spots that are … whatever you’d call it, thick?”

“Downtown,” Barclay says. It’s a mess downtown, not exactly habitable. “It would be the last place I’d want to portal in if people were looking for me. The veil between the universes is thickest there, and portaling in would register a certain level of activity.”

I look at Struz. He certainly has his work cut out for him.

Between the quakes and the tsunami, the California coastline retreated anywhere between two hundred feet and a couple of miles. Here in northern La Jolla, the ocean starts about two thousand feet inland of where it used to.

According to Barclay, this is a good place for us to disappear.

When he parks and turns the engine off, Struz says, “Barclay, a word.”

The two of them get out of the car and head about ten yards away. I’m not sure what exactly Struz has to tell him, but I imagine it’s something along the lines of, Make sure she doesn’t get hurt. Not that Barclay could guarantee that—not that he would, either.