Yesterworld: Down World Series Series, Book 2, page 28
I looked down, and a surreal feeling encircled me as I realized what I was looking at. In between my feet and Adam’s, the slightest dollop of neon pink had dripped from the canister in my hands. It sizzled into the track, making us both step back from each other.
It covered only a few inches of the rail, which glowed an ominous pink for a few seconds and then faded back to metal.
Adam and I continued to back away from the spot—the spot where the future coins would be made, the spot where Robbie would be killed but not killed.
It was the train portal.
I had backed off to one side of the tracks, Adam to the other. We stared at each other, the gulf of the tracks—of the most dangerous portal of all—now lying between us.
I didn’t see where the man came from. He appeared as if on the wind. Was he real? Was he not? I couldn’t tell. At first he looked like any man from the 1940s. Tan trousers and a button-up shirt.
A hat to block his gaunt face from the sun. He walked onto the tracks and leaned down at the spot where the radioactive material had dripped onto the metal. He touched it with his long, skeletal finger. He touched it slowly, mournfully, as though placing his finger for the last time on the head of a sleeping child who would never wake up.
And then he looked up at me with piercing blue eyes, eyes that looked right through my soul.
He was alive. He was real. But he wouldn’t always be.
The conductor stared at me, and with silent words his eyes condemned me.
Shame. Shame. Shame.
Dr. Kleiner was beside me now, his hands outstretched. I handed him the canister, and when I looked back at the tracks, they were empty. The conductor—or the man who would become him, rather—was gone. The sirens were almost upon us. Adam and I would have to explain ourselves somehow. We would have to get ourselves out of this.
But during the brief moment of reprieve before that happened, I crossed over to the other side of the tracks, stepping carefully over the place where the portal would forever exist, as though stepping over my own fate.
Then I fell into Adam’s arms and pretended they were the only truth in the world.
Chapter Forty-Four
Even pale and free of makeup, a cannula in her nose, her face gaunt from the loss of blood, and her lips chapped with dehydration, Jenny managed to look beautiful. She looked like one of those heroin-chic models from the ’90s, all cheekbones and shoulder blades. She held out a long, trembling arm towards Adam when she saw us at the foot of her hospital bed, and Adam obliged by taking her hand in his.
I was surprised, however, when she then held out the other hand to me. I stared awkwardly at it for a moment, misinterpreting the gesture as weakly hostile. But then a strained smile across those whitened lips informed me that she meant for me to come to the other side of her bed and comfort her too.
I did so, and her hands were so cold and bony that it was hard to believe she was still alive.
The military guard who had escorted us here was kind enough to wait out in the hallway while we visited with Jenny. Adam had been quick on his feet while we were being questioned back at the train track. He seemed to pull every answer out of his head ready-formed, as though he’d been thinking ahead the whole time.
Jenny was a friend of mine from the base, he’d told the MP—a stout, middle-aged man with round glasses who would probably have been a bank manager or a vice principal had the war not come.
We had gone to Jenny’s house for brunch, he’d explained, and her boyfriend had attacked her. Shot her in the stomach. No, sir, we didn’t know he was a spy until Jenny told us. No, sir, we’d had no idea he’d had a gun. No, sir, we didn’t know what was in the canister, just that it belonged to the base.
We were just being good citizens, Adam had explained.
Good Americans.
I had stood silently while they talked, grateful for once that the sexism of the time precluded me having to add much. My voice had been lost somewhere in the hot summer air that had enshrouded us in afternoon heat.
We had done everything we’d set out to do in this world. We’d stopped the Russians from obtaining the plutonium. They wouldn’t get the bomb before we did now, and so this dimension would not diverge from our own. Sage and George, our friends in the diner—they would be safe now.
It should have been a moment of jubilation. But somehow all I could think about was that it felt like something deep inside of me was dying.
Turning my attention back to Jenny in the bed, I tried to offer her a sympathetic smile. I tried to think about her and stop thinking about myself.
“They gave me a transfusion,” she whispered now through a dry throat. “Seven bags, the doctor said. He had never used so many before. He didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“You’ll be fine,” I insisted, although I had no idea if that was true.
“You’re cold,” Adam noticed. “I’ll find you another blanket.”
“Not wool,” she called as he walked off.
“Not wool, I know.”
She smiled, turning back to me. “Wool upsets my skin.”
I nodded, secretly stung to realize how many little things like that Jenny and Adam must have known about each other. Their long history hovered over the room even after he had walked out of it, just as it had always seemed to hover just above the surface of every conversation he and I had ever had.
I shook the selfish thoughts away, trying to stay present for Jenny.
“What happened with Alexei?” she asked.
“I stopped him from taking the fuel for the bomb. He got away, but I don’t think he’ll be able to try it again. Everyone knows what he looks like now.”
She nodded, but her face looked pained. “I’m so sorry. I should have never let it get to this point. I should have stopped him myself.”
“He just would have shot you sooner.”
Her eyes darted up at me, surprised by the frankness of my tone.
I flinched, realizing how it had sounded. Bedside manner was never my best quality. I had a dangerous tendency to say things exactly as I thought them.
No medical career for you, Marina. Luckily, robots don’t have feelings.
But Jenny smiled despite my mistake. “You’re right. He would have.”
Adam came back into the room with a small white blanket that appeared to be made of cotton. “From the pediatric ward,” he explained as he tried to stretch the square of fabric over her delicate body. “It’s the only nonwool one they have.”
He sat on the edge of her bed now, his hand lying awkwardly near hers but maintaining a couple inches of distance. “Jenny, I have to make sure Marina gets back home. But then I’ll come back and help you—”
“No,” she said, her voice calm and certain. “You go back too.”
“I’ll wait until you’re out of here.”
“Adam . . .”
She didn’t seem to know what else to say, so she simply took my hand, still linked with hers, and placed it into Adam’s open palm.
It took his warm fingers a second to adjust to the shock and to wrap around mine.
“I’ve been down nearly a year, Adam. Anyone who knew this version of me assumes I’m dead, if I can even go back.”
“You’re going to stay?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I like it here. It’s simpler. Now that the war is ending, it’ll be a good time to live.”
“Jenny,” I protested, ripping my hand from Adam’s and leaning in towards her. “You can’t just stay here.”
“Don’t worry, kid. I won’t disturb anything. The truth of the matter is, I never really felt like a part of the modern world. I was always a square peg in a round hole. I just didn’t fit.”
Adam sat frozen on the bed, unable to look at her or say anything.
“Adam, kiss me goodbye.”
But he only shook his head.
With a great effort, Jenny propped herself up onto her elbows.
She reached a weak arm towards his downturned head and tilted his chin to her. Then she leaned over and gave him such a gentle kiss on the lips that I wasn’t sure he’d even be able to feel it.
It felt strange and very intrusive to be watching this scene, but somehow I was afraid it would be even more distracting if I got up and left in the middle of it.
Jenny collapsed back into the bed, having exerted herself too much. She trembled with exhaustion, her eyes fluttering closed.
Adam couldn’t take it anymore. He stood and kissed her one more time on the top of her head and then bolted out the door, leaving me there like a dinghy abandoned at sea.
Jenny smiled again, whispering to me, “Take him home, Marina.
Promise me you’ll take him home.”
I nodded, but Jenny’s eyes were already closed. “I promise,” I whispered, patting her hand one more time before standing to leave the room.
I bypassed the guard who had been smoking a cigarette and reading a dirty magazine while he waited for us. He gave me a cursory glance, but I waved him off, finding Adam several feet farther down the hall.
His back was plastered against the stark, white wall, and his green eyes were a sea of pain. His usually stoic face crumbled before me into grief. I walked up to him and put my arms around his middle, letting him col apse into me, his body doubling over. My kisses peppered the top of his head as he laid it upon my shoulder.
I wished I could be a giant, so I could hold him in my hands and press him to my heart.
Chapter Forty-Five
The first part of our problem was solved for us: the MP escorted us in a jeep back to Fort Pryman Shard for questioning by a senior official. “Just a formality,” he insisted as the jeep jostled its way down the bumpy road between the hospital and the fort.
“You should be cleared for leave after a few routine questions.”
Adam nodded, and I offered a half-hearted smile. Only the slightest brush of Adam’s hand against my thigh in the back of the jeep informed me that he was thinking the same thing I was: at least we’d be on the grounds.
Now we just had to get down to the new portals somehow.
The same guard who had flirted with me in the morning was still on duty, and I saw a quizzical look pass over his bright, freckled face when he noticed me in the back of the car while waving us in. Adam had yet to see the school in this condition, and the shock was evident in the way his mouth fell open slightly while looking out the window.
“We’ll be in here,” the guard called over his shoulder, pulling into a parking spot at the building called Y12. It was the exact entrance I had used earlier, which relieved me, if only because it meant I would be in a place that was somehow familiar. Yet once inside, the click-clacking of the typewriters filling the halls seemed somehow incongruous with the dramatic events of the past few hours. It was as though nothing here had changed at all.
Of course, for the secretaries behind the desks, nothing had changed. The world was exactly as it had been this morning for them: America on the brink of winning the worst war in world history; Germany on the brink of defeat. They were part of a winning team, these secretaries, and you could hear it in the decisive-ness of their undulating fingers.
While I knew it was a good thing that the world under the lake had been prevented, I couldn’t help but feel that the victory was bittersweet.
The bombs would still fall. The people would still die. What had we really accomplished?
The officer who had been escorting us opened the door to one of the offices—a clean, nondescript room painted in the same shade of greenish beige as the rest of the building. It could have been anyplace, and I guess that was the idea. It looked innocent and boring, not like what it really was: a factory. A factory that made only one thing.
“He’ll be in in just a minute,” the officer informed us, depositing us in our chairs like we were packages he had to deliver before he could get back to work. He left the room, and the knob clicked behind him as he locked us in.
We didn’t speak for a moment, but a glance at Adam revealed a sea of thoughts overtaking his brain.
“Adam?”
“Yeah.”
“How many people die in Japan?”
“Don’t think about that.”
“I have to.”
He nodded, taking in a deep breath and slowly letting it out. “A lot.”
“Thousands?”
“Over a hundred thousand. Two hundred with the radiation poisoning.”
The words floated from his mouth and hung over my head. They expanded into the room like helium, filling every crevice.
My body began to shake beneath me, and before I knew it, I was sobbing. “We didn’t stop it.”
“We weren’t supposed to stop it. They were going to die anyway, Marina.”
“No, we should have stopped it,” I insisted through my tears, my throat clutching around the words.
“Then the war wouldn’t have ended at all. And millions more would have died.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe there was another way.”
“Don’t, Marina. Please.”
I was still shaking, my head buried in my hands. I could feel Adam crouching in front of me, his palms on my knees. He waited patiently for me to finish. “We did the only thing we could do,” he whispered. “We stopped the Russians from getting it. We saved Sage and Caryn and even that jerk Milo. Their world will be the same as ours now.”
But I could only shake my head. I was happy our friends’ lives would be better, happy that the dark world under the lake could never take over ours again. But what difference did any of that make to the people of Japan? What difference did it make if we didn’t even save any lives?
We’d just moved pieces around the chessboard. The outcome of the game would always be the same.
I had handed that canister to Dr. Kleiner, glad to be rid of it, knowing that it was on its way to New Mexico. And all I had felt in that moment was relief because handing it off meant it wasn’t my problem anymore.
Despite what Adam might have believed about my education, I did remember certain things from history classes over the years.
I remembered what happened in New Mexico: the mushroom clouds. They showed as an old movie called The Day After in class once. Mannequins melting in their chairs.
And Dr. Oppenheimer, on seeing what he had done, thought of an ancient Sanskrit text. I couldn’t remember how it went, but Adam had quoted Sanskrit to me once before, and I had a feeling he would know it.
“What did Dr. Oppenheimer say about seeing the bomb for the first time?”
Adam bowed his head low before me, his face falling in my lap.
When he looked up at me again, his lip was quivering. “‘Now I am become Death,’” he answered. “‘Destroyer of worlds.’”
I gulped down an unsteady breath, trying to calm myself. But I couldn’t find any rhythm to it. “Are we good people, Adam?”
He sighed, heavy and long, then leaned up and kissed me tenderly on the lips. He stood and started pacing without answering me. There was nothing more to say.
“I want to go home,” I whispered. Hearing the words escape my lips solidified them in my brain. “I want to go home. I miss my dad. I miss my brother.”
“We will.”
“Now.”
He rolled his head as he walked, shaking off his frustration. Then he padded over to the door and tried the handle, even though we both knew it was locked. Looking futilely around the room, he seemed to be seeking something—anything—that could get us out of this.
“Is anyone out in the hall?” I asked.
“Just a cleaning lady.”
My head popped up at the words. “What does she look like?”
He turned back to me with a questioning face, but before he could say anything, I stood to meet him at the door and looked out of the little window. A smile cracked over my lips when I saw her.
I wiped the tears off my cheeks.
“Lorena!” I called through the door. She didn’t hear me at first, so I called again. Finally, she looked up.
“Marina?”
I nodded. “Ayúdanos, Lorena. Por favor.”
° ° °
The inside of the Lorena’s cleaning cart was definitely not big enough for two people, and yet it was our only option if we wanted to have any chance of making it down to the portals. After much pleading and cajoling in my pathetically broken Spanish, Lorena had agreed to take pity on us. She’d used her master key to get us out of the office and practically shoved us into her cart like overstuffed turkeys in a miniature oven. The metal doors wouldn’t close completely, and so Adam had to maneuver the hand that wasn’t crammed into my rib cage around the handle, pulling it as close as possible to our hopelessly entangled bodies.
I only prayed that nobody saw his fingers jutting out around the edge of the door as Lorena took us down the freight elevator and through a hallway towards the X10 building.
“Dime otra vez,” she asked now through the shield of cleaning supplies and rags that separated us as she pushed our cart down the long corridor leading to the other building. “¿Por qué tienen que regresar a este edificio?”
“What is she saying?” Adam whispered.
“She wants to know why we’re going back to the other building.”
“Tell her you forgot something important down there.”
“Dejé algo importante.”
“¿Y qué? No vale el riesgo. Ustedes deben irse mientras ya se pueden.”
Adam grunted into my hair. “What’s she saying now?”
“She says it’s not worth the risk to go back.”
“¿Y qué dejaste? ” she asked now.
I had to think of an answer quickly, something that would have been worth going back for. “Mi anillo,” I said, the long-lost Spanish words starting to drift back to my tongue now that I was using them again. I remembered my abuela in the kitchen frying tortillas. The words in my mouth tasted like her cooking oil.
She had had a ring on her finger, a small diamond. The only thing my grandfather had left her. She would twirl it around her finger sometimes and talk about him. “Mi sortija.”
