“Are they pressing charges?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“And I’m not injured, right? There’s no medical reason to keep me here.”

“No medical reason,” she says, leaning on “medical.”

“In that case—”

“But a few psychiatric reasons are springing to mind.”

Jonas hands the phone back to the doctor. “You’re right,” he says. “This situation is unusual.”

Caught off guard by Jonas’s sudden cooperation, the doctor considers the phone in her hand, weighing her next move. “I’m going to order a CAT scan,” she says. “Let’s just confirm there’s no physical damage before we . . .”

“Move along to the ‘psychiatric reasons’?”

“One step at a time,” the doctor says.

“Words to live by,” Jonas deadpans. He climbs back into bed, the paragon of reasonable comity.

She shoots him another look full of the skepticism born of his sudden acquiescence, but it transmutes into a friendly smile, and she heads off.

When the door closes behind her, Jonas leaps from the bed and dresses as fast as he can. He needs to leave before an orderly comes back to retrieve him for the CAT scan. Like a criminal, he skulks out of the room and into the hallway. As he passes patients and personnel, he works to affect the confidence of someone who’s where he belongs. An elevator takes him down to the lobby. It feels as though everyone is watching him. Looking. Assessing. Judging. When he finally escapes into the open air, he rewards himself with a deep breath.

He thinks he has the directions to American Express memorized, but the streets quickly become a tangle. He gets as far from the hospital as he can before he risks asking passersby if they speak English and can point him in the direction of the American Express office. Most speak English, but no one knows where American Express can be found. Finally, a woman in her sixties breaks out her phone and sets Jonas off in the right direction.

When he arrives, he recites the story that had worked for him before. This time, he doesn’t have to wait. The officer doesn’t retreat from view, spiking his concern that police are being called. This time Jonas’s replacement card is produced promptly, accompanied by a sincere apology for his fictional ordeal. As before, the card offers a new lease on life. Jonas’s emotions are the stuff of television commercials. With this card, all things are possible.

His next step is to get to the American embassy in Tokyo. It’s a one-hour flight, but he doesn’t have the requisite ID. He has no alternative but to hitchhike, a process that ends up taking thirteen hours. By the time he’s finally standing in front of the nondescript office building that serves as the United States’ diplomatic presence in Tokyo, it’s the middle of the night.

Making a mental note of the embassy’s location, Jonas wanders. He takes in the looming skyscrapers, a crush of architecture awash in bright lights. To walk the city is to be inside an electronic billboard. He has no idea what month it is, but the air is crisp. He should be cold, but he isn’t. He should be hungry, but he passes restaurant after restaurant. He should be exhausted, but he has no desire to sleep. His footsteps feel light. Everything he sees is sharper. This, he now knows, is what it’s like to live past grief. The only thing standing between him and Amanda is geography. Halfway around the globe may as well be a walk around the block for someone who has traversed universes.

Nine hours later, the embassy’s consular officer, a Japanese woman in her thirties, is peering at Jonas over black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. Her expression drips with incredulity as he repeats his now-familiar story.

“What a nightmare,” Jonas exclaims. “The bastard took my wallet, my passport, even my damn health insurance card . . . I thought Japan was supposed to be safe, y’know?” He holds up his American Express card. “I’m just lucky I kept this in a separate pocket.” He feigns astonishment at his purported good fortune.

The officer takes the credit card and types some information into her computer. She considers her display and sours. Jonas knows what’s coming but tries to act surprised when she says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Cullen. But our records show you as deceased.” Her expression is impenetrable.

Jonas shrugs with as much charm as he can muster. “I feel a little tired, but I’m pretty sure I’m not dead.” He adds a smile for disarming effect. “You know, I happened to read an article in Wired about how hackers are altering public records like that,” he says, hoping Wired exists in this universe, or at least that it doesn’t rouse suspicion. “I guess it makes identity theft easier somehow.”

“Sounds right,” the officer replies, but coming off as disingenuous. “If you could just wait here for one moment . . .” She stands and moves off with Jonas’s credit card in hand.

Jonas cranes his head, trying not to draw attention, and sees the officer talking to a marine embassy guard. Although he can’t make out what she’s saying, she speaks urgently, stabbing at the air with Jonas’s card.

This is wrong.

The thought arrives unbidden, and Jonas is gripped by a powerful instinct to leave. If it’s a choice between that and waiting to retrieve his card—and getting arrested and detained for questioning—there’s really no choice at all. He’s free from the fear of being deprived of his tether, but he’s terrified of any development that could keep him separated from Amanda for even a minute longer than necessary.

He slowly rises from his seat and begins to pad toward the lobby, hoping the officer will remain focused on her conversation with the marine long enough for Jonas to slip out of the building. It takes him three minutes to reach the outdoor gate that surrounds the embassy. Two more marines stand guard. The gate is maybe eighteen feet away.

“Sumimasen. Tomate, kudasai,” a voice calls from behind him. He ignores it, but then the man switches to English. “Excuse me, sir. Could you please wait a second?” The voice carries enough steel to leave no doubt that it isn’t a request.

Jonas keeps walking toward the gate, fourteen feet away, pretending the marine isn’t addressing him. Footsteps sound behind him. The marine has summoned reinforcements. Jonas feels nauseated.

“Teishi,” the marine says. “Stop right there.”

Jonas starts to slow. He feels the marine drawing close. He looks ahead to the gate.

And he bolts.

The marine and his cohorts are yelling now, barking commands to stop. Up ahead, the gate begins to close. Sprinting, Jonas collides with a woman but doesn’t break stride. She spills to the ground in his wake. He feels the stares of everyone witnessing the commotion, but his focus is on the gate, slowly closing like a maw.

As he races toward it, a guard moves to grab him, but Jonas slips the man’s grip. He throws himself through the gate, barely threading the gap as it closes. It bites at his shirt. For a second of panic, Jonas’s sleeve is pinched in the gate, but he yanks his arm, tearing the fabric, and shoots out into the street. A chorus of the pursuing marines tells the ones at the gate to “Open it up! Open it back up!”

Jonas darts down a narrow street, dodging cars and mopeds. He chances a glance back and sees the marines in pursuit. He fights the tide of traffic, parrying against the current, and comes face to face with a huge bus. It bears down on him, thirty thousand pounds of metal, just like the one in New York. This time, though, he surges across the street, drawing an arc around the front of the bus such that it flies past him, forming a makeshift bulwark between him and the pursuing marines. It takes only seconds for the bus to clear, but that’s all Jonas needs to slip into the closest store. A mannequin provides cover as he watches the marines fan out and disappear into the crowd.

NOW

Eager to put as much distance between himself and the marines as possible, Jonas heads out of the city. He finds a man willing to trade a peacoat for his shirt. It does little against the creeping chill, but it’s better than nothing.

The escape from Tokyo brings the problem of getting to America without a passport. He doesn’t even have a change of clothes. The soles of his shoes feel threadbare, as though they’re sucking up cold from the ground and channeling it straight into his feet.

In a bookstore, he finds a guidebook for Japan. A plan begins to take shape. It will require luck, for certain things to break his way, giving the universe more opportunities to thwart him.

Using a map torn from the guidebook’s pages, Jonas walks along the shoulder of a highway, traveling west. His thumb remains poised toward the road, but no one stops. At night, cars whip past. The halogen headlights of oncoming trucks envelope him in brightness before thundering on.

Exhausted beyond description, Jonas eventually stumbles. His legs refuse to take another step. On the side of the highway, a sign straddles a culvert, where he takes refuge. He is cold and hungry and thinks he has never been so tired. He doesn’t fall asleep so much as pass into it as if crossing a border, awake one moment and unconscious the next. A deep slumber without dreams.

In what seems like only a minute, the rising sun and roar of traffic snap him awake, and his odyssey continues. He keeps his thumb out, despite the fact that his hand weighs a hundred pounds and his shoulder burns with the effort of holding his fist aloft. He tries walking backward to change arms, but he’s too fatigued to summon the coordination required.

It would take five days of walking nonstop to get from Tokyo to Osaka. Despondency grows with each car and truck and van that ignores his offered thumb. It is as though they are doing the will of a disapproving universe.

But then, a respite. An eighteen-wheeler rolls past, bathing Jonas in light before pulling off to the shoulder. The driver, a man in his sixties with a face of leather, knows just enough English to convey that he, too, is en route to Jonas’s ultimate destination of Hyōgo. Jonas exhales, not quite believing his luck. Even more fortunate—the man has mochi to spare. As he eats, Jonas remembers that the last time he ate anything was before he and Eva left for the Spire. He inhales the rice cakes.

The driver deposits Jonas in Hyōgo Ward, a quaint portside town. Still ravenous, he finds a street vendor and, when the man is preoccupied with a customer, pockets a single plum. He waits until he’s far away, well inside the Port of Kobe, before risking his first bite. The pop as his teeth puncture the skin is visceral. Juice floods his mouth, and the soft meat of the fruit is springtime itself. He’s convinced it’s the most delicious thing he’s ever tasted.

The port is more than two miles long. Massive merchant ships sit in thirty-four berths running the length of the shore. The dense plants and generators and factories of the Hanshin Industrial Region provide a backdrop of omnipresent gray. Cranes swing cargo containers overhead. Trucks and forklifts skim over the asphalt, belching out diesel fumes and coughing up black clouds.

Jonas moves from ship to ship, giant floating cities with names like Golden Nori and Guanabara and Heroic Ace. He looks for vessels bound for America and captains who speak English and might be looking to take on another hand. He talks to crews as they work. He sees a lot of shaking heads.

Eventually he finds a captain who doesn’t hire him so much as takes pity on him. “This is hard work,” the captain says. “Tough labor. Men are the lightest thing on this boat.”

“I don’t mind hard work,” Jonas assures him.

Seeming to find this humorous, the captain grabs one of Jonas’s hands in his. The man’s skin feels as coarse as rope. He offers up a dry chuckle and tells Jonas his hands might as well belong to a child. He doubts Jonas has seen a hard day’s work in his life. “But we’ll change that,” he promises, flashing a grin that’s missing two teeth.