Infinite(91)

“None of it. Nothing I’ve seen. It’s never been real.”

“No.”

“Where am I?”

“You tell me. Where are you?”

“I don’t know! All I know is that I don’t belong here. I’m supposed to be somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know! Tell me! Tell me the truth! You lied. You said it was over.”

“I lied because you needed to figure out the truth for yourself.”

“You put me through hell!” I shouted at Eve. “I watched people die. I’ve had to lose everyone I care about, over and over and over. And for what? So you can play games with me? So you can send me to world after world? I’m done with this. I quit.”

Her eyes never blinked, not even once. “Quit? When you’re so close?”

“Close to what?”

“To what you want more than anything.”

“Stop with the riddles! Tell me what’s happening!”

“You don’t need me for that. You already know.”

“I don’t! I don’t know what’s real anymore!”

“Where did your worlds split apart, Dylan? Where did it all begin?”

“Here,” I said. “It happened right here at the Art Institute. I saw that other Dylan in the leather jacket. That’s why I went to your event at the hotel that night. That’s why I found you.”

Eve shook her head. “No, you were well on your way by the time you came to me. You didn’t have to go looking for the Many Worlds. They’d already found you.”

I tried to let it come back to me. I pushed on my temples to think, but my brain felt starved of oxygen, unable to process. Then I realized she was right. To get to the beginning, I had to go further back. I had to return to the one place that my mind didn’t want to go.

“Wait. No. I was in the water. I made it to the surface, and I saw him on the riverbank. Me. That was the first time.”

“Then what happened?”

“I dove down for Karly, but I couldn’t get to her.”

“How did you get out of the water?”

“What?”

“How did you get out of the water, Dylan?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. The police asked me that, but I don’t remember.”

“Why are you here, and Karly isn’t?”

“I don’t remember!”

“What do you remember?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all! I was trying to get to Karly, but I couldn’t find her. That’s when—that’s when everything stopped.”

“Yes.”

“That’s when everything else began.”

“Yes.”

I backed away from Eve, feeling an electric charge travel through my whole body. I looked up at the sky, which poured down a flood of rain over my head. I felt a tightness in my chest again, and I couldn’t breathe. Blackness darkened my eyes. Something briny and dank filled my senses.

“Oh, my God.”

“See? You know.”

I did know. A curtain parted, and I saw through all the illusions. It was as if Eve were a magician, and I finally understood the trick. I knew where I’d been, while my mind passed from world to world to world. I had traveled in a circle so I could go back to the place where my story began.

“What do you want, Dylan?” Eve asked me. “What do you want more than anything else in life?”

It was a question that had only one answer. “A second chance.”

“To do what?”

“To save Karly.”

Eve twirled her umbrella with a flourish. “Then you need to hurry.”

I ran. Yes, I ran. I ran like a madman through the Chicago streets, because I finally knew where I needed to go. I knew where my life was. I knew where I was supposed to be. I heard Karly calling out to me. She’d been calling to me ever since this began, and I hadn’t listened. Her voice was muffled. The sound had to reach me through the thickness of water, because that’s where she was.

In the river.

“Come find me. I’m still here.”





CHAPTER 36

I had no map to guide me back, but I didn’t need directions. The river drew me with the irresistible pull of a magnet. With each mile I drove, the storm intensified, as if this final world knew I was trying to escape and didn’t want to let go of me. It threw up a maelstrom in my path. Angry branches of lightning shattered the sky, and thunder growled at me in a deep voice to turn back.

Chicago disappeared like a dream into the fog behind me. So did the suburbs. Soon I was in terra incognita, heading past open fields and deserted towns, where it felt as if I were the only person alive. I started out in daylight, but as the hours passed, night fell. No lights came on, leaving me blind as I headed deeper into the middle of nowhere. The only relief from the swath of darkness came from blinding shock waves that speared like tridents between the clouds. With each orange burst, I saw emptiness around me. Silhouettes of cornstalks in the fields. A few lonely farmhouses, devoid of light. The leafy crowns of oaks and maples. A rippled layer of clouds in the charcoal sky.

I drove and drove and drove, through flat mile after flat mile. I was a man in a bubble, hearing nothing but the drumbeat of rain and seeing only the cramped silver glow of wet pavement through the headlights in front of me. I lost track of time and distance, but eventually, the heaviness in my chest told me the river was close. I slowed down; I peered at the road ahead. I felt the way a soldier must feel when he’s about to meet the enemy.