He turns the Firebird over in his hand, even more curious than he is angry. Then it hits me: The very thing Paul’s been trying to create for the past few years—the thing he and my parents believe can turn the tide of this horrific war—it’s his now, not mine, and there is no way he’ll ever give it back.
“Please!” I take a step closer, but when he turns to look at me, I know I’d better not come any nearer.
“What was tonight about?” Paul says. “Coming on to me? Seducing me? What kind of game are you playing? Why are you here?”
“I’m here to save you. Not—you you. My Paul, from my universe. He’s been splintered. Have you guys discovered the risk of splintering yet?”
“Consciousness becoming divided during interdimensional travel?”
“Yes! Exactly!” Oh, thank God for that, because I’d never have been able to explain the science behind it. “My Paul splintered. I mean, he was splintered, on purpose, and he’ll never be able to come back home again unless I rescue him.” Talking about him in the third person, to his face, feels strange. Worse, it feels futile. My legs have begun to shake. This has to sound crazy, spilled out all at once like this, and I can tell Paul doesn’t believe me. In desperation, I say, “Couldn’t you tell? The way I was with you—I wasn’t pretending, not really. I love him so much.”
“So much you seduced someone else?” Paul tilts his head as he studies me, with distaste. “How touching.”
“I wasn’t going to sleep with you. Besides, you’re not someone else! A splinter of his soul is inside you, and—and it wouldn’t matter, even if it weren’t. You’re him, and he’s you.”
Paul flinches when I tell him about the splinter within him, but he doesn’t respond. “You were with me just because you missed him so much? You wanted the next best thing? Somehow I doubt it. You’ve confessed to being from another dimension. You have a fully operational Firebird—the technology we’ve been trying to create here for a long time. Technology we need very badly. If you’ve been in this dimension for as much as a day, you know how the war is going.”
I nod. “The air raid was my first night here.”
“Then you have no excuse. If you’re your parents’ daughter—and in love with another me, one so similar you find us interchangeable—you should have turned this technology over to us immediately.”
I remember the lesson I learned the hard way as a little kid, when I tried to sneak around my parents’ rules: Trying to outsmart a genius rarely ends well.
Paul takes one step toward me, reminding me powerfully of his greater size and strength. “Do you want to change your story? Or stick to the original lie? The latter technique works better during interrogations. That’s what they tell us.”
In this dimension, they prepare people for being captured and tortured. If I’m turned in as an invader or a spy, this is what will happen to me. Paul wouldn’t hurt me—I know that much—but he might report me to people crueler than he is. I’m so far out of my depth here that I have only one possible defense left: the truth.
“No. I wasn’t with you only because I missed you. I do miss you—him, okay, him. I love him. That’s why I’m doing this. The only reason I’d ever do this.” The cold wind whips around us, making me shiver. We seem to be the only people on this entire street—otherwise deserted and desolate. “My Paul really was splintered against his will. The people who did it won’t give him back unless I do what they say. They told me to . . . to sabotage your work here. To ruin the Firebird project if I could. That’s the only way they’ll let me know the other dimensions Paul is hidden in.”
Paul believes me. I almost wish he didn’t. “You’re here to sabotage us?” His fist tightens around the Firebird; the metal corners must be cutting into the skin of his palm. But he doesn’t even notice it. “That’s why you cozied up to me tonight? To get information?”
I feel so cheap, so small. But I shout back, “To save my Paul? I’d do worse than that. I would do anything to get him back home and safe. Anything in the world—in all the worlds. And that means I need the Firebird.”
He stands completely still for a moment—long enough to give me hope—before he says, “Not as much as I do.”
“Paul, please.”
But already Paul has turned his face from me and begun walking away. No goodbyes.
I want to chase Paul down, plead with him, but I already know it wouldn’t do any good. If I could only prove to him how deeply I love him, how well I know him.
So I call, “You—you don’t get along with your parents! You think your dad’s a bad person, and your mom won’t stand up to him, so you try to stay away from them. You won’t even tell me anything else about them. You always sleep with one foot outside the covers. And you—you don’t enjoy porn that much because you think the men and women never seem to actually like each other, and that ruins it for you, which is basically the sweetest thing ever. But naked pictures are okay! You’re into those.” No—stupid subject to pick—it just makes me sound crazier. “Your favorite cake is chocolate with caramel icing! You like rock climbing—”
But he wouldn’t have any time to go rock climbing in this universe. Ration cards wouldn’t allow for much chocolate cake or caramel icing. I’m calling out things about my Paul that this one doesn’t remember or understand.
I’m calling to my Paul, really. The one who’s lost to me. The one hidden deep within the man stalking away into the dark, leaving me alone.
The entire walk back to my hotel, I feel like I ought to be crying. Or panicking. Instead, I trudge forward, almost numb with shock and despair.
I screwed up everything. My Paul is still in danger, and I may have just made it impossible to ever get him back. I would’ve thought that was the worst feeling imaginable—but the reaction of the Paul from this dimension burns it in deeper. Salt in the wound. He caught me trying to betray him, my parents, everyone in this entire world—and called me out about flirting with him, which now seems so cheap and stupid and small.
It’s one thing to fail, another to fail in a way that makes you ashamed you even tried.
The single Firebird hanging around my neck now is Paul’s—so I still have that sliver of his soul. It helps a little to think that he’s still safe. If this were the Firebird about to be disassembled and broken down into component parts for study, then I would have lost him forever. One Paul would have unknowingly murdered another.
But losing my own Firebird is catastrophe enough.
The old-fashioned clock in the hotel lobby says it’s after midnight by the time I come in the door. As I ride up in the elevator, I think, Theo’s our last chance. How would Theo be able to get close to Paul, especially now that Paul is going to distrust every single person he meets? How could Theo use the computer virus to tear the project apart? I don’t know, but he’s going to have to figure it out.
When I enter the hotel room, the lights are off. Of course—Theo went to sleep already. He’s lying on the bed, on his side, and somehow his face looks innocent. That’s a first.