Page 84 of Butterfly Effects

Which was never going to happen. I could tell from the way Alice was standing that she had the beginnings of something she would truly, earnestly think of as “a plan.” But because it was Alice, the plan would probably be “grenade.” Thomas could usually be counted on to serve as her common sense … only right now he couldn’t say anything without all the Johrlac hearing him, which meant he could neither help her come up with a better plan nor convince her that “grenade” was not the answer to everything.

As soon as she started blowing things up, Sam and Annie would get involved, and people would get hurt. I didn’t care all that much whether the Johrlac got hurt, but I wanted my family safe. Most of all, I wanted them to make it home alive. I couldn’t give Uncle Ted his wife back. I could give him his son, and maybe that would be almost as good.

I looked at the bracelet on my wrist, then held up my arm.

“Can you take this off me, please?” I asked.

The queens turned toward me, all of their eyes flaring white. “Why should we do that?” asked one of them. “Asking nicely does not end your trial.”

“No. But you told me what I had to do to end it. And if you promise my family—my entire family, Artie included—goes home unharmed, I’m willing to agree.”

“Unharmed?” asked one of them, and snapped her fingers. Her eyes flashed brighter. Annie screamed, the sound short and quickly cut off, and collapsed backward against Sam.

“Hey!” I shouted. “That is the opposite of ‘unharmed’!”

“We’re only undoing the damage you did,” said the queen.

Annie was straightening. Like Artie, she pressed a hand against her forehead as she did. Sam kept his hands clamped on her upper arms, helping her stay upright.

She groaned and lowered her hand, looking toward me. “Sarah?” she asked, sounding bewildered. “What the hell did you do?”

“Oh, good, they didn’t melt your brain,” said Sam, and crushed her in a hug. “Don’t do that to me!”

“They didn’t melt my brain, but I feel like they put parts of it back where they belong,” said Annie sharply. “Ow. It feels like my whole childhood is rearranging itself. Sarah—Sarah, I remember! I remember you! We found you on the way home from Lowryland. I was so worried for a long time that finding you meant we’d have to leave one of us in a ditch for someone else to find. And Elsie was so mad when we came home with a new cousin and she wasn’t sure she’d be included!”

“Oh,” I said. “They gave you back your memory.”

Taking her memories of me away had been an accident, a combination of needing the space for processing and storage and a subconscious attempt to make sure she wouldn’t have to mourn me when I died. I hadn’t known what I was doing when I did it, but I hadn’t tried to undo it, either, because she’d deserved the ability to move on and let me go. And now, just when I was going to leave her for good, she remembered me. Everything we’d been to each other, and everything we were never going to be again.

“They did,” she called. “I know you, Sarah Zellaby, almost better than you know yourself, and I just want to tell you that whatever noble, self-sacrificing bullshit you’re about to pull, you need to cut it the fuck out. We’re not leaving here without you.”

“I think you’re wrong about that.” I held up my arm, showing the bracelet to the queens. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Just make sure they get home.”

“We can do that,” said the central queen. Her eyes gleamed white, and my family vanished. All five of them—Alice and Thomas, Annie and Sam, and Artie.

My Artie. I hadn’t killed him after all.

I closed my eyes, and felt, rather than saw, the moment when the bracelet clasp let go and the whole clumsy apparatus dropped to the platform. Then the collective crashed down on me with the full might of the five queens comprising it, their minds tangling around mine and bearing it down, down, down into the abyss without end.

I didn’t fight them. There were things I wanted in the world, yes, but Alice would care for Greg if I never came home, and Isaac would have Charlotte for his sister no matter what, and the life of one cuckoo was more than sufficient payment for having Artie returned to the world. A thin thread of guilt tried to penetrate my peace—what about Arthur?—but I dismissed it, focusing on the fall. The queens had said they weren’t going to delete him, that they might need him later. I had to believe they’d meant it, that they hadn’t thought we were important enough to lie to.

Then the fall was everything, and the abyss was all, and we descended ever deeper, and I was gone.

Twenty

“Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but take a bow and leave the stage. The most powerful words in the world are all too frequently ‘goodbye.’”

—Enid Healy

The abyss without name or end, eternal in its emptiness

THE COLLECTIVE CONTROLLING THE TERRITORY around Ka’krin was comprised of five queens, all survivors of the final, sometimes fatal instar that saw them to the pinnacle of our species’ power. As they rasped against me like sandpaper against a rough piece of wood, I began to learn them. Two had been here for hundreds of years, solidifying their positions in the city: two were more recent members of the collective, brought in to replace queens lost in a local conflict. The fifth was Collate, who still remembered her original name, even as she viewed it with distant disdain, like it more properly belonged to someone else. She didn’t need it anymore. She had been revised.

But as Artie and Annie proved, revision could be undone. I didn’t know how it was accomplished, but it had to be something any member of the collective could do. That was the danger of sharing your mind so completely with others that the boundaries between you dropped away: the four older members of the collective could no more keep secrets from Collate than I could keep secrets from my own left knee.

She brushed against me, the sharks circling my small sphere of telepathically etched safety, and I unfolded a tendril of thought, dangling the bait in front of her. Fetch and Carry grieve you, I informed her. They have never forgotten you. They have never forsaken you. They would gladly welcome you home if only you came back to them.

Those are the names of menials, she shot back, before I cut the connection. They are beneath me. They will be beneath you. Release your barriers and join us. You promised.