The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(194)

“Look again. Search the strings more carefully. You’ve no reason to hurry. We don’t age here. Our bodies don’t clamor for food or sleep. In this realm, time is our servant. Use it.”

Theo raised his head and squinted at the array of tiny lights. Glancing at it was like staring into an endless crowd of suffering children, searching for the one who smiled. And Azral expected him to do this for days, weeks, years on end. Is this how you learned the strings, you murderous shit? Is this what turned you cold and white?

He squinted his eyes shut. “I can’t do this! I can’t keep watching her die!”

“Then she is indeed lost.”

“You know how to save her. Just tell me!”

“Am I indebted to you, boy? Are you the one who rescued me from a dying world, or was it perhaps the other way around?”

“I never asked you to give me a goddamn bracelet! And you wouldn’t have saved us if you didn’t need us for something. So just tell me! Tell me how to keep her alive!”

Azral sighed defeatedly, a reaction that nearly made Theo burst with jaded laughter. Though he was new to the Gray or the God’s Eye or whatever this place was called, he was a decorated veteran in disappointing people. The familiarity soothed him like a warm shot of whiskey.

“It seems I overestimated you, Theo.”

“You found me drunk at a bus stop. What did you expect?”

“I found you long before that, but no matter.” Azral touched Theo’s back. “Come.”

Their final journey was different from the others. Instead of twirling around like a leaf, Theo shot forward at blurring speed, his vision a tableau of bright, streaking colors. Occasionally he felt a shift in direction, as if Azral steered them down a branching path. Forks in the road, Theo mused, though he imagined it was hardly so binary. There were likely millions of options at every juncture, millions of variations and subvariations, even a few minor miracles.

After an indeterminate period—nestled somewhere in the space between “soon” and “soon enough”—the pair emerged into a sparse but cozy living room. Venetian blinds filtered afternoon sunlight. Taped moving boxes lined the bare walls. A group of mismatched chairs and couches stood in sloppy formation around a circular glass coffee table. The cushions were occupied by five people Theo readily recognized, including himself.

His twin stretched out on a plush recliner, locking his arms around Hannah’s waist as she wearily leaned against him. Zack, David, and Amanda all slouched alone in their sofas. Amanda wore a makeshift splint of broken broomsticks and duct tape. The others sported numerous bandages.

The spectral Theo peeked over David’s shoulder and examined his wristwatch.

“It’s a quarter after one. A little over an hour from now.”

Azral cracked a patronizing grin at Theo’s muddled notion of “now.”

“Where is this?” Theo asked.

“Approximately five miles east of the office tower.”

Theo peeked out the window at a red-leafed sycamore tree. “Brooklyn. Jesus, we really did get out.”

“In this string, yes.”

“But what about—”

Hannah cut him off with a melodious yawn, startling him. He thought the scene was a still frame like all the others. His friends were merely languishing in dull stupor.

Now he heard the clinking of ceramics through the kitchen door. His eyes bulged when Mia entered with a tray of steaming mugs. Though her face drooped with fatigue like all the others’, she looked healthy enough to live for decades.

She placed a cup on the end table next to Amanda. “He doesn’t have milk. Sorry.”

The widow stared ahead in dead torpor, her voice a flimsy wisp. “Okay.”

The spectral Theo continued to study Mia in slack awe. “God. It’s like she was never shot. How did that happen? Was there a reviver in the building?”

“There was a reviver in that very room,” Azral replied. “You simply failed to see it.”

“Well, how do I find it then?”

“What do you mean?”

“When I go back. How do I make this the future that happens?”

Azral eyed him with dark disbelief, as if Theo were lost in a broom closet.

“This is happening, child. Every path of time exists on the landscape, one as real as the next. Did you think I merely brought you here for instruction?”

Now Theo was truly lost. “What are you telling me?”

“I said you could resume your journey at any time. You have only to concentrate to take your place in that chair. Your life will continue seamlessly from this moment. Is that not preferable?”

Theo blinked distractedly, his mind twisting in furious dilemma. As tempting as it was to be done with all the day’s traumas, he couldn’t shake the subtle air of incongruity that kept him detached from this scene. These friends didn’t feel exactly like the people he knew. This was Zack with an asterisk, Hannah with a caveat.

Azral studied him warily. “What troubles you now?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. I mean if I do this, what happens to the other timeline?”

“It continues.”

“Without me?”

“Very much with you.”

“How does that work?”