Chapter 44
WORLDS APART
I roll over in bed, then drag myself upright, and swing my legs over the edge. First task. Discover that why.
Second, stop behaving like a love-sick teenager and do something tangible instead of just… I stare at the dampness left on the sheets from my tears. Instead of just sobbing my widdle poor heart out.
After tossing aside the sheet, I stand on the cold floor and kick away my sexy but so-wrong-for anything-else clothes.
A pair of jeans and a top are lying near the door.
Molly or Ron must have left them at some time during the night.
I pick them up and realize these are mine too.
Somehow, they grabbed my leftover clothes from my house. How did they get in?
Those pair are incredible if disconcerting in their burglary skills. I owe them.
When I start dressing, I hear someone moving about outside in the hallway. It seems we are all early risers. I tap my phone and discover it’s ten forty-three. Dayum. I slept in after falling into bed at around three in the morning. This should not surprise me.
I rub the sleep from my eyes and keep pulling on clothes and rehashing the complete disaster that is my life. Father, murdered. Still. Investigation on that, stalled. My monster lover has run away, and I don’t know why.
Boo-hoo. Yes, he dropped me like a hot rock, but he will give a proper explanation.
Or else. Buttoning my jeans in a demented, angry fashion, I manage to hurt my fingers.
This only reminds me of how sore I am down below, and on my neck where he bit me, and elsewhere.
So many places. Sheesh. I deserve this pain.
Stupidly, I feel I must. Still angry at him.
Someone raps on the door. “Come downstairs when you’re ready, Hailey. We have important news to share.” That’s Molly.
News and it’s important? I’m tempted to ask for details, but she’s already heading down the stairs.
I swallow, feel the heaviness in my heart where it persists in skulking, and belatedly yell, “Okay!”
I check myself for sloppy dressing, decide I look presentable if tired. My eyes pop wider. My neck is bruised and marked with red from those love bites. That’s not a damnable offense, though, is it?
I trot downstairs to where Ron, Molly, and Rasmus are sitting at the table in the dining room.
They’re waiting for me, judging by the silence and how they look up as I enter.
A steaming cup waits before a spare seat, along with a plate, a pile of cookies, a bowl of sliced fruit, and some yoghurt sprinkled with nuts.
“Morning.” I smile, fleetingly. “Coffee? And cookies! Thank you.”
“Help yourself.” Molly says. “I can get you some eggs and bacon or whatever, after?”
I smile and nod. Being polite is so very normal, yet the world has fallen off its axis. Maybe manners and niceness are what will help fix this? I wish.
“First we need to talk, but you should eat something too.” Ron nods at the food.
Rasmus leans into the table, hands around his mug and a frown line wedged between his eyes.
“You’re all worrying me. Something wrong?” Something else wrong? Crap. Uneasy, I sit down and start spooning things into a bowl. Do they know what we did last night? “Dare I ask if Kail did something?”
“Why would you think that, Hailey?” Molly asks, gently stirring sugar into her cup.
“Because he said he was fixing things…before he left town.” I wince. “And me. He said he was leaving me too.” I pick up a cookie and spoon some yoghurt onto the fruit.
“Ahhh.” Ron rocks back in his chair. “Rasmus, you can say this.”
“He and Esau went to do something, yeah. At the institute, at eight AM.” He clears his throat. “They’re late. They should be out of there, like hours ago.”
“Inside the institute. Fuck me.” The sweet yoghurt I taste on the spoon in my mouth suddenly becomes nothing and tasteless.
I draw it out, unsure if anything will stay down if I swallow it.
“Keep going. Why. How. All of that.” I take a sip of the coffee then shift aside the food and lean on the table with my elbows, bracing myself.
“I’ll sum it up as best as I can, Hailey.
The cops arrested me last night on some cobbled-together hacking charges, which might be true…
but, moving on. Arrested me, confiscated my stuff, including Kail’s phone.
They released me, and Esau brought me home, but Kail turned up.
There are things I figured out from his phone. ”
I pop up an eyebrow. “You got into it?”
“I did. These conclusions are not trivial, not done on a whim. That said, the phone is living proof of an alternate world. It’s another timeline of our world, we decided—me, Kail, Esau too—and it’s where Kail came from.”
“What?” My mouth is open. Coolness blows through my mind, sweeping away sense and thoughts, and raising goosebumps all down my arms. I shut my mouth and wave at him to continue.
“Everyone says that. What.” He smiles. “Anyway, the cops have got that info, too, and I sent you three a copy. You included, Hailey.”
I glance down at my phone where it sits on the table. There was a notification…
“Check later,” Rasmus says. “It’s real. Kail believes it, but I think he didn’t tell you because of why he told nobody. He thought we’d not believe him.”
Oh. The significance of this sinks into me like a stone falling into silent ocean depths. This is part of the why, part of the reason he left me. It must be. I’m beginning to understand.
“So, there’s more. He wanted to fix things for you, Hailey, yes.
And Esau wanted to help because of Niamh going missing.
He blamed Clay for her disappearance. So, they wanted to get into the institute and get evidence of the cryogenics happening of bodies they were never approved to use.
Of forbidden research happening. Illegal stuff. ”
I’m a bit lost in some of this, but I nod. Rasmus restarts his soliloquy.
“And Kail had a USB with the code we needed to get inside the institute.”
Now I understand. We were supposed to both get that and Kail swiped it.
Saying this might make them think badly of me.
I can skip the details, though, of having sex in front of everyone.
I flashback to last night only to reassert the here and now a second later.
“That was Zedder’s hacker, Dawid. He promised.
He said he could get that code. We paid his price to get us in, but I never saw that USB. ”
Kail took it and said nothing. He was making sure I couldn’t follow him. I pinch my lips together.
“Yes. So, he showed me that, and I checked it out. It was good. I swear it was fine, but something went wrong after they went into the institute. They went in at seven fifty-eight, dressed as cleaners, along with the early staff. Entered the underground garage and never came out. It was supposed to be fast. In and out within thirty minutes, tops, we thought. I’ve had no messages since then. ”
What do they want of me? I clasp my fingers under my mouth and lean on my hands. “So, you’ve all had longer to think on this. What are we doing? They’ve been caught?”
Bang, bang, bang, goes my heart.
“We can’t be sure,” Ron says.
“Alternate timeline,” I whisper, catching up on the torrent of fantastical info dumped on me. “What does that even mean?”
“It means Kail comes from here but with a few minor and maybe a few major differences? We don’t know exactly, but he is not really a stranger here. The institute existed, so did many other things.” Ron opens his hands. “You and your father existed there.”
“Oh.” I have a doppelganger. My brain is racing ahead, and I think I can feel the reason for what he did in this murky new landscape of what-ifs, and I know it somehow… “Kail Stone. Ohmi-fucking-god.”
Kail. Stone.
“What is it, Hailey?” Molly asks.
He is the man that my Kail Stone could have become. He didn’t randomly pick the name. What were we in his world? Lovers? Friends? I close my eyes.
“Kail Stone is someone from my childhood. He died here, in Revenant, as a teenager. I think in his timeline, he survived.” I suck in a long breath. He never said, never told me, and duh, of course not. Would I have done so?
I shake my head, come back to the table full of people waiting.
“Do you think he loved you in his world?” Molly gets it.
I grimace, feel the tears coming, and nod.
A helpful distraction arrives and brushes his furry head against my leg. Purring commences. I duck my head to see Squiggle Cat, cruising down there and lower my hand to pat him. Cats are always soothing.
Some calmness reinstalls itself. I smile at my white fluffy friend as he climbs partway up my jeans leg, his forepaws propped on me.
A second later, he leaps up and does circles in my lap. He curls up and snuggles in, barely fitting under the table. With my forefinger, I scritch the black splotch on his head.
“Okay. Enough of this. I want to get him out of there. Out of the institute. How? And any idea as to why they were trapped?”
“Maybe the USB code had more in it than I found.” Rasmus shrugs. “It was a lot to analyze. I did manipulate it in ways that this Dawid could not have meant anyone to.”
“Meaning? Is that good or bad?” I tilt my head. Can I use this?
“I enabled control of some of the background services. The elevators, for one. It wasn’t enough to save Esau and Kail.
” He puffs out his lips, touches the cogwheel tattoo on his neck.
I imagine Esau put that tattoo on him. “Also, Dawid is dead. The sheriff reported an accident that almost set the house on fire where he was found. The Laramie house.”
My-my. So that was the fire. Can’t say I’m feeling any grief.
Ron and Molly seem okay with this, so I guess they knew. Unflappable pair.
“We think.” Ron steeples his fingers. “That Zedder is in league with the sheriff and by extrapolation with the institute.”
“Make that Clay Skinner, and I will believe it,” I mutter. “You two.” I indicate him and Molly. “Are awfully well informed for…”