Page 88 of Middlegame

Dodger thinks she should be nervous. The day has been an equation of inevitabilities, from her therapist’s inexplicable attack to the phone call from her past self to the knock at her door. The reasons for the call are already becoming fuzzy when she doesn’t focus on them: she remembers Roger calling from the future now, and with those memories intact, she’d have no reason to call herself from the past. Living in a paradox isn’t exactly comfortable. She’ll still take it over the alternative. Without the paradox, this would all play out very differently.

(She can’t stop the feeling that it has played out differently at least once: maybe dozens of times. Dozens of iterations with no careful cosine to connect the halves of the equation, no judicious cheating to make sure she’d be prepared to continue. She’ll take the discomfort of the paradox over the agony of that linear but imperfect world.)

The knock comes again, more urgent this time.

Dodger opens the door. Silence falls.

Roger has gotten another gawky inch or so taller, finishing his growth as second puberty had its way with him. He’s still a rail of a man, skinny bordering on scrawny. His hair is too long to be neat and too short to be elegant; it falls scraggily in his face, making the circles around his pale, haunted eyes seem even deeper. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt that look like they were pulled out of the laundry hamper, clutching a backpack to his chest.

Erin, on the other hand, is perfectly put together, strawberry hair pulled in a sleek ponytail and face scrubbed clean. She’s wearing gray spandex and a plain hoodie; she looks like trouble about to start or an accident about to happen. Her backpack is smaller than Roger’s, less tightly packed. It has the look of a bug-out bag, something that’s been ready for a long time. She’s not frowning, but there’s a darkness in her eyes that speaks of bad times coming.

Dodger barely notices. It’s all data to be filed away and dealt with later. Her attention is on Roger, the way he breathes (he’s still smoking; she can see it in the slope of his shoulders), the way he stands, the way he’s looking at her, like she’s an impossibility. A paradox. The thought would be enough to make her smile any other time. But not now. Not now. This is an inherently unstable moment, and she can’t help thinking that all this back-and-forth between past and present and future has been an effort to shore it up, to make it slightly less likely to collapse. A smile could be a step too far. So she just looks at him, grave and quiet and waiting.

Erin pushes past Roger, into the house. “Snap out of it and get your things,” she says, voice brusque as ever. She doesn’t seem to have changed since the earthquake: she’s still vital and angry, shivering under her own skin, ready to explode. “I’ll explain once we’re on the road, but there are some very bad people looking for you, and they’re going to be here any second.”

“They already are,” says Dodger, taking her eyes off her brother’s face and turning to face the other woman. Erin looks nonplussed. That’s a nice change. She was always dismayingly difficult to throw off her stride. Dodger continues, “My therapist broke into my house and tried to shoot me. I knocked him out with a toaster. He’s tied to a chair in my dining room. Want to help me make him answer some questions?”

Erin’s eyebrows raise. “Seriously?” she asks. “You didn’t call the cops?”

“Oh, I called them.”

Erin’s eyebrows drop again, into the beginning of a glower.

“I told them there were kids setting off cherry bombs in the gully, which is a fire risk, and also a valid explanation for the gunshots. No one’s coming for him.”

This time, Erin’s eyebrows rocket all the way to her hairline as she stares at Dodger in open-mouthed approval. “When did you get so vicious?” she asks.

“When people started trying to kill me.” Dodger allows herself to look at Roger again. He looks confused but not afraid. As long as he’s not scared, she doesn’t have to be either. “I never gave up on you, you know. I was just waiting for you to be ready.”

Roger steps into the room, covering the space between them in two steps, and when he reaches her, he takes her into his arms and holds her, so tight that there’s no space left between them. She works her arms free and wraps them around him in turn, closing her eyes and burying her face into his shoulder. Her vision shifts to a higher perspective, showing her hallway in less-saturated colors, with more distinct dimensions. She laughs a little at that, but the sound struggles to turn into a sob, and so she stops. If she starts crying, she’s not going to stop any time soon, and they can’t afford that. Not right now.

“Fuck, Dodge, I missed you,” says Roger.

She pulls away, opening her eyes. Her vision returns to its normal angles, its normal limitations. “Good,” she says. “I’d hate to think I was the only one.”

“This is a touching reunion, but maybe we should deal with the man you have tied to a chair,” says Erin impatiently. “Where is he?”

“This way,” says Dodger, waving for the others to follow her. She feels strangely serene. The omnipresent feeling of déjà vu is back, but weaker, like some foundational piece of the event has changed. In all the times they’ve been in this hall, on this day, she suspects this is the first time she’s looked at Roger and been able to forgive him for leaving her the way he did. The version of her who couldn’t let him back in is gone.

She should be angry about that, demanding to know what gave him the right to pick up a phone and change the equations that make her who she is, but all she feels is relief. She needs him for the math to work properly. Anything that revises him back into her life can’t be wrong.

Erin follows by walking almost in step with Dodger, her whole frame vibrating with anger. Dodger glances in her direction, frowning.

“Have you been with Roger this whole time?” she asks.

Erin nods. “Someone had to be.”

Dodger doesn’t have an answer for that, and then they’re stepping into the dining room, where Dr. Peters has been trying to free himself from the ropes. He hasn’t succeeded. He hasn’t even been able to knock his chair over. He turns to glare at the sound of footsteps, and stops when he sees Erin. Slowly, smugly, he begins to smile.

“Why, hello,” he purrs. “I didn’t know they were sending anyone to check up on me. Come to finish what I started?” He shifts his focus to Dodger. “Shouldn’t have answered the door, Miss Cheswich. You would have been better off running while you had the chance.”

“I think you’re working off some bad assumptions, old sport,” says Erin. She walks to the table, shrugging off her backpack. She opens the central pocket and removes a mummified hand. “I don’t work for your employers anymore. You could say I’ve joined the other team.”

Dr. Peters goes pale. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying if they wanted to control the elemental forces of creation, they shouldn’t have turned us into people. People have their own agendas. Mine doesn’t match theirs anymore.” Erin produces a lighter and begins lighting the fingers of her terrible candle, one by one. She looks over her shoulder to Roger and Dodger. “Go pack a bag. We’re going to have to run soon, and I’d rather not hold your hand through this whole thing.”

“What are you going to do to him?” asks Dodger.