Page 104 of Middlegame

“Something else like what?” asks Erin. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“Because I still don’t know,” says Dodger. “But I know we need to get to the water. Do you have any more cash on you?”

“I always have cash on me.”

“Good.” Dodger’s smile takes on an almost feral edge. It’s the sort of smile that gives children nightmares, and Roger is obscurely relieved. If Dodger is giving other people nightmares, she isn’t too weighed down by her own. “I hope you have a lot, because we’re taking a taxi.”

“To where?”

“Far away.”

* * *

“Far away” turns out to be Berkeley: they’re back where they started from, in the city where the ashes of the house where Roger and Erin shared so many happy years still smolder. The air feels electric when they step out of the cab, and Roger realizes it’s partially because it’s been so long since he was here with Dodger, who takes his hand as soon as she’s out of the vehicle. The last time they were together in this city, they killed more than a thousand people, and destroyed landmarks that should have stood for another hundred years. Now, they’re just two cuckoos on the run, two more supplicants on the way to the Impossible City. The moment should have more weight to it, should matter more. It doesn’t. This is just a way station. This was only ever a way station.

“The Transbay bus picks up from the Albany BART station,” says Dodger. “We’ll take that as far as the Financial District. There’s a bike rental kiosk near the bus stop. We can get where we need to go from there.”

“And where do we need to go?” asks Erin.

“I still don’t know.”

The cab dropped them three blocks from the station, at Dodger’s insistence. It’s a paper-thin ruse; it won’t cost Leigh and her people more than a few seconds. A few seconds is better than nothing. They walk to the station and stop, looking at its bright lights, its modern lines. This is what normalcy looks like. This is the life that they, for better or for worse, have been forced to leave behind.

“We need more time,” says Dodger abruptly. She turns to Roger. “Order me.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what to do, and we don’t have time to stand around waiting for me to figure it out. It’s only spiders in my brain when I don’t want you to do it. I want you to do it. Tell me to buy us more time.”

Erin steps back, folding her arms, and watches. They need to do this, to find the empty spaces between them and determine the best ways to fill them. She remembers this, or something very much like it, from other timelines, attempts to manifest which ended in failure, and in everything being set back to the start. She doesn’t know when Roger told her to remember it, but remember it she does: she knows this is important. She will not interfere.

It still aches. She remembers the hurt she felt the first time she realized she’d never be part of their closed circle, their nation of two. Reed might have split the Doctrine into two bodies, each with their own thoughts, personality, and desires, but he was never strong enough to make them independent of each other. They’d always come back together, and when they did, they’d always form a single whole, without a crack between them to let anyone else slither in.

Roger grimaces. “Are you sure?” he asks, voice unsettled.

“I am,” says Dodger. “Tell me.”

He takes a deep breath. “Dodger,” he says. “Find us more time. That’s an order.”

The air around them seems to plummet four degrees as Dodger’s eyes widen and go glassy. Behind them, her mind is working double-time, making connections and throwing them aside at a speed she wouldn’t be capable of on her own. Then, without a word, she starts to walk away. After only a few steps, she breaks into a run.

Erin and Roger run after her, following her into the bright open-air lobby of the BART station. She digs in her pocket, pulling out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, and feeds it to the machine, punching a series of keys that shouldn’t do anything but confuse the poor computer. Instead, it spits out a hail of golden dollar coins and three tickets, each set to the value of a one-way trip to Fremont. She fills her pockets with dollar coins, keeps one ticket, and holds the other two out toward her companions.

“Take them,” she says, when they fail to move.

They do.

She licks her ticket on the side without the magnetic strip, and gestures for the others to do the same. They do, and she snatches the tickets from their hands, running away across the station. Roger and Erin stare after her.

“Do you know what she’s doing?” Roger asks.

“Not a damn clue,” says Erin.

Dodger returns at a trot, hands empty. “Gave them to some homeless kids looking for a place to take a nap,” she says. “The tickets are ours. Everything about them says ‘ours.’ Breath and spit and purpose. As long as they’re in the BART system, anyone running the numbers to try and find us is going to get a false positive off those tickets.” She hesitates, face falling. “Leigh wouldn’t . . . she wouldn’t derail an entire train to take us out, would she?”

“No,” says Erin, before Dodger can run to try to reclaim the tickets. She says it so firmly, with so much certainty, that it’s almost possible to believe she’s not lying. “That’s too public. She’ll avoid that sort of thing if there’s any way.”

“Great,” says Dodger. “The bus leaves in five minutes. We should be on it.”