Page 78 of Middlegame

“Done is done. We’re going to die here, and I’m not going to forgive you. Let me work.” She turns back to the wall.

Roger goes still. Done isn’t done; not according to Erin. Forgiveness isn’t the key. Knowing when to forgive, that’s the key. He can’t change how he reacted to the earthquake: he knows himself well enough for that. But there are things he can change. There are things he can do. Here, and now, and knowing what he knows—knowing what Erin’s told him, what he’s seen in the days they’ve spent running for their lives, the blink between the last grain of sand falling and the hourglass being turned back over—there are things he can do.

He pulls the phone out of his pocket. Sets it to airplane mode. Changes the clock, until the phone believes it’s ten years ago, the day of the earthquake, the day he ruined his own life in the interest of saving it. Dials a number he knows by heart. Numbers have never come easily to him, but this one, he will never forget.

He leaves his message, stuttering and stumbling over his words, feeling like a fool, watching as Dodger stops writing and turns to face him, eyes wide and bewildered. When he’s done, he throws the phone aside. It isn’t needed anymore. He opens his arms.

“Come on,” he says, and Dodger moves toward him. She can’t take her hand away from her side, but he puts his arms around her and gathers her close, smelling her expensive perfume, feeling the way she shivers.

“You ready?” he asks. How many times have they been here? How many times have they done this? A hundred times, a thousand, a million, and once, because every change begins it all again. They can do this over and over again and never really repeat a thing.

“No,” she says. She tilts her head back and looks at him, eyes wide and gray and trusting. She still trusts him. Even after everything that’s happened, she still trusts him, and that is the best and worst thing in the world. “Do you think this will work?”

“If it doesn’t, I guess it isn’t going to matter.” He chuckles darkly. “If it doesn’t, everything that’s ever happened to us has been coincidence, and we’ve ruined ourselves for nothing. You can’t save the world with math unless you can also change it with a question.”

“Then I’m ready,” she says.

There it is again, the sensation of déjà vu: unsurprising. He knows from Erin that they’ve been here before. At the same time there’s the sensation of something new happening. He doesn’t think they’ve been here many times before, if ever.

“Dodger,” he says, and his voice is calm and clear, “don’t you die, and don’t you give up on me. This is an order. This is a command. This is an adjuration. Do whatever you have to do, break whatever you have to break, but don’t you die, and don’t you let me go. This is an order. This is—”

This is her nodding before she closes her eyes, pale and silent and so fragile-looking that he wants to protect her from the world, even the part of it that he represents.

This is the sound of gunfire going silent outside. Not tapering off; just stopping, like the world has been muted.

This is the world going white.

This is the end.

We got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we

Avery wasn’t sure he could go any further.

He was tired. He thought he had never really known what tired was before today: he had heard of being tired, but he’d never really felt it. Tired went all the way down to his bones, wrapping around them like ribbons, until his legs were lead and his arms were sacks of sand suspended from his shoulders. Tired sapped the color out of the world, turning everything gray and dull. Tired hung weights from his eyelashes. Whenever he blinked, he thought his eyes might refuse to open again.

But Zib—stupid Zib, who thought she knew everything—was supposed to be somewhere around here. That’s what the Page of Frozen Waters had said, before pushing him over the waterfall. He needed to find Zib. He needed to tell her he was sorry.

There was a bundle of rags on the riverbank, covered in glittering silver dust, like fish scales or moonlight. Avery paused. Rags didn’t normally have tangled, uncombed hair.

Avery found that he could run after all.

—From Over the Woodward Wall, by A. Deborah Baker

Book V

Aftershocks

Familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it.

—L. Frank Baum

You are an alchemist; make gold of that.

—William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

WE ARE

Timeline: 14:02 PDT, June 15, 2016 (seven and a half years later).