Infinite(84)

“Because I would never let you go.”

She stared down at me, trying to find answers in my face. I felt her kiss me again, slow and soft, like a fairy touch. She got to her feet and stood over me, memorizing the look of me, the way I’d memorized her.

“Come find me, Dylan,” she murmured.

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.

“Come find me,” she said again. “I’m still here.”

Then she walked away, not looking back. I followed her with my eyes until the darkness of the park enveloped her. She was in her world; she had her husband and her child. I was alone again.

I lay on my back, staring at the sky. Stars ran across the heavens in limitless numbers. There was no more pain at all. My blood was on the ground, but I doubted it would be here for long.

My chest swelled with one last breath.

It gave me the strength for one last word.

“Infinite.”





CHAPTER 33

“Welcome back,” Eve Brier told me.

I still lay on my back, but instead of a field of stars above me when I opened my eyes, I saw the white foam tiles of an office ceiling. Beneath me, the damp grass of River Park had been replaced by a leather sofa. Instinctively, my hands went to my abdomen, where I expected to feel blood gushing from an open wound. Not anymore. I was completely uninjured.

With a jerk, I sat up, trying to orient myself. A little bit of nausea lingered, as well as a splitting headache. “Where am I?”

“Hancock Center,” Eve replied. “My office.”

She sat across the room from me in a cushioned roller chair near a row of floor-to-ceiling windows. Behind her, I could see the expanse of Lake Michigan, a view that was interrupted by one of the building’s huge diagonal crossbeams. On the horizon, the blue of the water met the blue of the sky.

Eve cocked her head over her bony shoulders. She had an enigmatic smile on her face. Her almond-shaped eyes still looked alien. She had a pen in her hands that she stroked in an oddly suggestive manner. Her lush blond-and-brown hair swept messily across her shoulders. She pulled her chair close to the sofa and leaned forward, looking at me with an intense, curious expression.

“Did you go there?”

I knew what she meant. “The Many Worlds? Yes, I did.”

“Was it what you imagined?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. I got off the sofa and had to brace myself, because my legs were unsteady. I crossed to the windows and stared at the vista. Chicago looked the same. “Why are we not at Navy Pier? How did we get here?”

“Navy Pier? I don’t understand.”

I turned away from the windows. “That’s where you gave me the injection.”

Eve shook her head. “No, we’ve been in my office the whole time.”

“I’ve never been to your office before.”

“Actually, you’ve been here half a dozen times. We’ve been working through your grief over Karly. But today was the first time we tried my new therapy.”

I sat down again and tried to puzzle out what was happening to me. By saying the escape word, I should have gone back to my world. The real world. And yet my surroundings all felt brand new.

“How long?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How long have I been here?”

“Today? About five hours. That’s quite a bit longer than most of my patients experience in their sessions. I was starting to get concerned. If it went on much longer, I was debating how to bring you back. But I assume you finally said the escape word.”

“I did,” I said, after a moment of silence.

She sensed my hesitation. “Dylan, it may feel strange, but you really are back where you belong.”

Was I?

Then why did everything feel different?

“I don’t remember any of this,” I told her. “Your office. The sessions we’ve had. I don’t remember the past few weeks at all, other than being in the Many Worlds.”

“That’s not surprising. Short-term memory loss is a common side effect of the treatment.”

“Because of the psychotropic drugs?” I asked.

“Psychotropics?” she replied with surprise. “Where did you get that idea? All I gave you was a simple muscle relaxant to put you in a receptive frame of mind. The rest is hypnotic suggestion, and then . . . well, it’s up to your brain to take it from there. However, the intensity of the experience can leave patients extremely disoriented. Your memory typically comes back after a while. It may take a few hours, or even up to a few days. Given how long you were under, I’m not entirely sure what you can expect.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember my recent past, but the only experiences that were vivid were what I’d been through in the other worlds. I could still remember the violence and death I’d seen there. I could feel it. My hands were raw where I’d squeezed them around Dylan’s neck. I could taste Karly on my lips.

“This hypnotic suggestion you gave me,” I said. “How did that work?”

“Before we began, you picked a place that you wanted to use as your ‘portal.’ The place where the various versions of yourself would intersect.”

“And that was . . . ?”

“The Art Institute,” Eve replied with another curious smile, as if she knew I was testing her. “So that’s where I told you to go.”