Infinite(33)

I shoved through the crowd, because I had to get away from here. I needed air, but my surroundings grew claustrophobic as the room filled with more Dylans. I had to fight my way forward, wrestling people aside. All the Dylans around me did the same thing, each one seemingly oblivious to the others.

Finally, in the atrium near the museum’s grand staircase, I found a railing where I could lean and catch my breath. The marble statue of Samson and the Lion loomed immediately behind me. Blinding sunshine poured through the skylights overhead. The atrium was filled with a strange sound, a susurrus made up of tiny noises—clothing brushing together, heels tapping on stone—that combined into a deafening assault on my senses. I wanted to shut it out, because it was simply so loud, but covering my ears did nothing to quiet the tumult.

Eve had warned me about this part of the experience, too. The first time was overwhelming.

I was tempted to say it. Infinite. Say the word, and this chaos would be over. I’d go back to my version of reality, where there was only one of me. But it was a reality where Karly was dead and I was wanted for murder.

Then I looked down.

I saw him.

Where the four staircases from the museum’s top floor converged on a square landing below me, I saw a single Dylan among a thousand others, standing absolutely motionless. The others yielded to give him space. The sea of doubles parted around him.

He wore my father’s jacket.

As I stared down at him, he looked up and saw me. His sea-blue eyes were clear and cold. His lips formed a smile of cruel, violent intent as he recognized me. We knew each other. A wave of sadism engulfed me, and I knew this was the man who’d whispered to me near the river, who’d hidden inside my bedroom closet and confessed his crimes to the police, who’d stabbed the hearts of at least four women who looked like Karly.

Not an endless number of killers named Dylan Moran.

Just one man. This one. The man who’d figured out how to break the rules.

I shouted. “Stop him! Hold him!”

No one did. He headed down the steps, as a new path opened up in the crowd ahead of him. I tried to run, to follow him, to chase him, but I was trapped and couldn’t move. The crush of Dylan Morans held me where I was, and they showed no reaction as I screamed for them to get out of my way. The staircase, like the railing where I stood, teemed with doubles. I had nowhere to go. Below me, my doppelg?nger disappeared from view. If I didn’t get to him now, he’d be gone, out the door into another world, where I would never be able to find him.

I took hold of the railing with both hands. To free a tiny bit of space, I kicked hard to my right, driving the other Dylans back, and then I did the same on my left. When I had a few inches in which to move, I swung my legs over the second floor railing and jumped. It wasn’t far, but far enough to feel as if I were diving from a cliff. My body accelerated, and then I landed hard on the crowd below me, scattering Dylans like bowling pins. They cushioned the blow. I fell, got up, lowered my shoulder, and charged down the last few steps like Walter Payton.

Over the heads of the others, I saw the museum doors. Through the glass, the sun let in a blinding light. I didn’t know if the doors led to Michigan Avenue and the sculpted lions guarding the museum entrance, or to someplace else entirely. But the doors led out of here. They were the gateway out of the many minds of Dylan Moran, and like a vast parade, my doubles were leaving one at a time. The doors opened. The doors closed. One by one, they headed to different worlds.

I could see him. Waiting for his moment.

He stood beside the doors, watching each person leave, studying them up and down, as if he were trying to judge the perfect Dylan for the next perfect crime.

I thrashed toward him, shouting across the mass of people who blocked my way. He saw me coming, but he made no effort to escape. He watched me with stoic, evil curiosity, a wolf puzzled by the charge of a dog. I got closer and closer. I didn’t care about the others around me. I pushed, kicked, swung my fists, and opened up a trail like a pioneer chopping down one tree at a time.

When I was six feet away, with only a few bodies left between me and him, everything happened at once.

One of the Dylan Morans reached the glass doors. This Dylan looked a lot like me: same haircut, same blazer, as if he’d come to meet Edgar in front of Nighthawks and was now heading back to the LaSalle Plaza Hotel. The only real difference I could see between us, when he lifted his arm to open the door, was that he wore no ring on his right hand. Me, I’d worn Roscoe’s high school class ring there ever since the accident.

I wondered where our choices had split.

I wondered what road he’d taken in life that diverged from the one I’d traveled.

I didn’t have time to think about it. The door opened, and a wave of fresh air blew inside, along with noises of the city. Somewhere out there was Chicago. The Dylan without Roscoe’s ring disappeared into the white light, and as he did, the Dylan in the leather coat winked and stepped across the threshold in the wake of the other man.

Whatever you do, don’t let him follow you out of here.

The door began to swing shut behind them. I knew, somehow I knew, that when the door closed, the world on the other side of it was sealed off from me forever, just one universe among billions, and I’d never find it again.

I sprinted across the remaining space and left my feet in a desperate leap. My body tumbled through the door just as it closed, and the light around me got brighter and hotter, as if I were diving into the sun.