Unbreakable (Unraveling) (27 page)

I don’t exactly think my life has been a cakewalk, but hers . . . hers has been a lot worse. She doesn’t even talk to her brother anymore and she never had anyone like Alex, who would listen to her no matter what, or someone like Cecily, who was determined to make her smile.

And she never had someone love her like Ben loves me.

It makes me wish my dad was still around—or that there was at least some way for me to apologize to him. I was so hard on him when he was alive. I felt like it was his responsibility to do something for Mom so that I didn’t have to take care of her. I felt like it wasn’t fair that I had to grow up so quickly.

A rush of guilt throbs in my chest. Not just because I spent so much time feeling mad at him and now he’s gone, but also for my mom. She’s been missing and presumed dead since the quakes, and the most prominent feeling that left me with was relief.

My parents deserved better from me, and now they’re gone and it’s too late for me to tell them I loved them or to thank them.

If they had made different choices I would have turned out a lot different.

And as crazy as it sounds—even though I’m burned and exhausted, even though I might be executed in three days—I’m glad I’m me.

B
arclay is waiting for me when I come out of “Janelle’s” room. I repeat what she’s told me, but I keep my reflection to myself.

“Who’s the boyfriend?” Barclay asks. I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but the focus in his eyes and the concentration in the lines of his forehead tell me he’s got something that might be the beginnings of a plan. I can practically see the wheels turning in his head.

That he’s coming up with our next steps makes me breathe a little easier.

“Joe Tarancio?” I say. Obviously the name means nothing to me, but it might mean something to him.

Barclay smiles, and the tension in my shoulders starts to drain. His prison-break plan worked—against all odds it worked—so I’m willing to follow Barclay just about anywhere right now.

That thought almost makes me laugh.

Barclay must notice I’m losing it. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say with a shake of my head. “What do you know about the boyfriend?”

“She might be able to help us,” he says. “Tarancio is one of Meridian’s right-hand guys. Between whatever she knows and what Ben has told us about the operation and how it works, we should be able to get the proof we need to the right people at IA in order to get us all in the clear.”

“And we can get Cecily too, right?”

He rolls his eyes. “Relax, Tenner. I’m not going to go back on my promise.”

“In less than three days?” I ask, thinking of the deadline and the people I had to leave behind in that prison.

Barclay nods.

“So what’s the plan?” Elijah says. I turn around and see that he and Ben are down the hall. I can tell from here that Ben’s eyes are bloodshot, and there’s a pang of regret that moves through my chest. No matter how I’m feeling, I don’t like seeing him this way.

“We need food and sleep and a concrete plan of what we’re going to do,” Barclay says, scratching behind his head. “Not exactly in that order, though.”

“We can get food,” Ben offers, looking at me. “What do you feel like?”

“Hell yeah, food,” Elijah says. “Let’s get pizza. It’s been entirely too fucking long since I’ve had melted cheese.”

“Is pizza okay with you?” Ben asks me. I nod. Pizza is fine.

“Good. Get food,” Barclay says. “I’m going to talk to Janelle’s double and get some more information. Then we’ll eat and talk about how the hell we’re going to pull this off.” He looks at me. “After that we’ll sleep and then we’ll go after Cecily.”

T
he radiation levels in the hospital are higher than those in your average nuclear-disaster-free city, and if we stayed here permanently we might die before our time. But according to the tests Barclay did with his quantum charger—yeah, those things can multitask—the next two and a half days aren’t going to hurt us.

And after that we’ll either be headed home or dead, so it’s not a problem.

The food is pepperoni pizza, my favorite kind, and I’m pretty sure Ben did that on purpose. It comes from a different world. I don’t ask how he and Elijah got it since it’s pretty obvious. We don’t exactly have a ton of money on us, and there isn’t a common currency in the multiverse. Two guys who can portal in and out of everywhere can steal what they need pretty easily.

The plan, however, is more complicated.

After he’s demolished two slices, Barclay opens his backpack and spreads the contents on the table. He’s apparently been carrying an armory around with him since we left Prima. I touch the gun I’ve had with me, and think of the prison guard and the way I could pinpoint the exact moment when his life slipped away.

I take a deep breath and try to tell myself that I didn’t have a choice.

“We’re going to be outmatched,” Barclay says. “I can’t be sure exactly
how
outmatched, but it will be bad. Our advantages are the element of surprise, their arrogance, and him.” He gestures to Ben, who’s sitting next to me. I look over at him, and our eyes meet for a second before I look away.

Then Barclay lays out his plan for taking down the biggest interversal criminal operation anyone’s ever seen.

We can’t go back to the Piston and get Ben’s family out. IA will expect us, and we’ll probably never be able to get out again. We just have to hope they can hold on another day or two and that we can get the proof we need to convince IA that Ben is innocent and his family shouldn’t be punished.

Step one is the Black Hole. We’ll portal into the processing center. Ben draws us a map of what he remembers—where the guys slept, where they portaled in, where they kept the slaves, and where the control room and surveillance are located. Lucky us, they don’t have any hydrochloradneum shields in place.

“We can go straight into the control room,” Ben says. “There will be a couple guys on duty, but we can surprise them and subdue them pretty easily. The computers are there, so we can copy the files we need. From there we’ll be able to open the cells and get any of the slaves in holding. There will probably be somewhere between twenty and thirty, and we can bring them back here with us.”

Barclay thinks it’s as good a plan as any.

Step two is Cecily. We’ll find out where she is and rescue her. Hopefully her location will be in the files we steal in step one.

Step three is dealing with IA. We’ll have proof about Meridian and his operation. If this was a normal case, Barclay would file the paperwork, put together a task force, and they would bust everything up. But it’s not. Which means we need to take the proof to someone high up, who we can trust isn’t involved.

And right now, that’s a really short list.

We need the files at the processing center to help us with that.

As Barclay goes over the minor details, we all lean toward him to make sure we get it right. A couple of times Elijah asks questions and makes Barclay repeat his idea in different words. Other times, he offers his own suggestions—like how we should break into IA and search through their files to find out who’s dirty, or go after Meridian ourselves, both of which get shot down.

After a while, I realize Ben is so close to me we’re almost touching. We’re barely an inch apart and every time he moves I’m sure he’s going to reach out and brush my arm or my thigh. The air in the space between us is electrified.

But no matter how many times my heart skips a beat, or lurches forward, he doesn’t touch me.

Worse, I don’t know if I want him to.

I
’m on the roof of the building when Ben comes to see me.

We’ve hashed out the plan as much as we can. We’re leaving around three a.m. because the middle of the night will be our best chance of getting in and out alive.

Despite what I’ve said about my double and the fact that she’s unlikely to go anywhere else, Barclay doesn’t trust her enough to leave her alone. Not even while we’re sleeping. He’s promised he’ll figure out somewhere for her to go before we leave. But for now, he’s pulled three more beds into her room so that all five of us can lie down and sleep before we leave.

None of this is her fault, and I don’t blame her for whatever’s going on now between Ben and me—at least, logically I don’t. But I don’t exactly want to spend any more time in the same room with her than I absolutely have to. Not even an extra minute.

She makes me feel . . . crowded.

When I’m in that room with her, it’s like I can’t move without touching someone or bumping into them—it’s like everyone is in my personal space.

Her presence is stifling.

Instead of sitting there and pretending it’s normal, I wander around. But empty hospital beds, peeling paint, and the absence of anything alive is the last thing I need.

Then I find the roof.

I never realized there could be so many stars. The only other light is the full moon and some faint red lights off in the distance.

I’m sitting on the edge of the roof, my legs dangling over the side, when I hear the hinges of the door creak. “Don’t let it swing shut,” I call, assuming it’s Barclay. “It locks from the inside.”

“Got it.”

It’s Ben’s voice, and I freeze at the sound of it, my heart picking up speed, thumping harder against my chest, as if it’s straining to know whether he’s going to come over or just fade back inside.

I hold my breath as I wait.

And suddenly he’s beside me, sitting down next to me. We’re not quite touching, but I can feel the warmth of his body next to mine.

“I was wondering where you went,” he says.

“I just needed some air.”

He nods. I feel the movement next to me.

I don’t say anything, and Ben seems comfortable with the silence. I’m not sure how much time passes like that—the two of us, side by side, yet somehow so far away.

When he finally breaks the silence, he says, “Those red lights out there . . .”

“What about them?”

“They’re trees.”

“Trees?”

“I checked it out a few nights ago,” he says. “They’re really close to one of the nuclear power plants that got taken out. The fallout from
that
is actually probably what ended up destroying this whole area. The radiation there is still so bad, like three hundred thousand times what could kill a person, or more, that the trees glow in the dark because they’ve absorbed so much of it.”

I don’t ask why he knows that. I kind of like that he does, because it reminds me of the guy who sat next to me in AP English just a few months ago, the guy who crashed my AP Physics class because it would be a good place for us to hang out.

But this isn’t what I want him to say right now. It’s a start, but I just want something . . . more.

More real. More meaningful.

Just
more
.

But he doesn’t say anything, and again we lapse into silence. It’s not a comfortable one, not like we could have shared before all of this. It’s awkward, like two people who want something from each other but don’t know how to express it.

It’s like we’re broken, and I don’t know what we can do—if anything—to fix that.

“We’re going to make it,” Ben says, breaking the silence.

I nod, even though I’m not sure I believe it. We’re one IA agent and three teenagers, and we’re up against some of the worst criminals in the multiverse.

“I love you,” he adds.

And I realize he’s not talking about whatever is going to happen at the processing center. He’s talking about
us
—about him and me. He thinks we’re going to make it. That we’re going to be okay.

It’s what I thought I wanted to hear. More than that, it’s what I’ve been waiting to hear from him since I first realized I was falling for him. Just a few hours ago, what I wanted more than anything was for him to tell me that what Elijah said was true, that he was planning to come back. That if IA hadn’t grabbed him, he was going to come back to my world and to me.

But now he’s saying that and I can’t help but think about the consequences. If he does come back with me, then what? Sure, it might be great for a little while, but in five years or in twenty? What if he regrets his decision, what if he decides to leave then? I feel like I can’t take that chance.

For four months I looked for Ben. For 120 days, I thought about him. Every time a door opened or I walked into a room, I looked for him. I was jumpy and on edge, and . . .
waiting
.

I’m just not willing to put myself through that again.

For a long time I don’t say anything. Then I feel Ben’s hand cover mine. His skin is rough and calloused like I remember it, and it takes everything I have to ignore the wave of sheer yearning that sweeps over me. I want so desperately to lean my head against his shoulder and pretend we’re just stargazing and not two people looking out into the end of the world.

“After all this, I’m going to come back with you,” he whispers. “I thought about you all the time.”

I squeeze his hand, because I’m not sure I can form words.

Ben turns toward me, and even in the dark, I can see the tragic beauty of his face, his deep-set eyes and hard jaw, the way his hair is too long, how it flops into his face and covers his eyes.

Flushed and breathless, I lean into him, our foreheads touching, our noses brushing against each other, his breath warm against my cheek.

And right when I think he’s going to kiss me, I say, “We can’t be together.”

H
e reels back and I see the surprise in his face and the hurt in those brown eyes, and somehow that makes it worse. It’s not that I want to hurt him. I just need to save myself from getting hurt again.

I push to my feet and start walking away.

“Wait,” Ben says, and I can hear him following me even though I don’t look back. “Why are you running away?”

I turn around, but keep walking backward. “You have a family and a life in your own world, and I have one in mine.”

“And I’m saying I want to be a part of yours.”