Then his momentum stalls at a pair of shoes in front of him. He follows them up and sees the gun. The same one that shot Amanda. The sight of it resurrects the memory and conjures anger. His gaze continues to rise, but the face he sees doesn’t belong to a Macon.
It’s Victor.
Whatever humanity his nemesis once possessed has vanished like a mirage. In its place, Jonas sees nothing but acid. Hate. A man devoid of mercy and thriving on vengeance. A man not only capable of committing murder, but hell bent on it.
THREE YEARS AGO
The note from Amanda was one page in her precise handwriting marching down the paper. Blue ballpoint ink dug little divots through to the opposite side, which Jonas could feel beneath his fingers as he held the instrument of his heartbreak.
There were details, of course, but they seemed insignificant. Amanda had been feeling every emotion that he was. The mystery of why they had never discussed children before. The riddle of why the topic should be so important now. Jonas’s penetrative staring and Amanda’s remorse for being bothered by it. The feeling that the train of their relationship had been derailed. Amanda articulated his own emotions with greater precision than he had been able to. How ironic, Jonas thought, that they would remain in sync even as they grew apart.
The letter ended with Amanda informing him that she was moving out. It didn’t disclose where she would be staying.
About a week before, Jonas’s editor had begun tempting fate. The name “Nobel” kept coming up in their exchanges. If the magnitude of Jonas’s work held up under scrutiny, she said, a Nobel Prize in Physics was inevitable. Jonas remembered shuddering on the phone when she said the word. Inevitable. It was a unique kind of torture that as his professional life rose, phoenixlike, from the ashes of Victor’s smear campaign, his relationship with Amanda would rupture. But maybe, he thought, that was how life was, that there was an equilibrium to its highs and lows. The universe favors certain outcomes. Who’s to say the corollary isn’t that the universe imposes homeostasis on one’s fortunes?
But Jonas refused to accept the will of the universe. He violently rejected the idea that he could only be “so happy,” that fate set limits on it. He railed against the thought that he had to choose between a Nobel Prize and Amanda. Even if he did, he would choose her without hesitation. The Nobel was just a slab of metal without her. The existence of a multiverse was a hollow discovery without a world in which they were together.
NOW
“Hyōketsu!” The scream comes from behind Jonas. He glances back to see the guard advancing, his service revolver held in a tenuous two-handed grip that reeks of training. “Hyōketsu!” the guard repeats before resorting to English. “Freeze!”
It’s unclear which of the other three people on the catwalk he’s addressing, but Victor is the one who brings up his gun. He fires twice. Jonas feels the bullets blur past. He turns sharply around, fearing one or both might strike Eva, and he’s punished for the quick movement by a reassertion of vertigo. The world sways.
The metal door sparks, and the guard flies back, his gun tumbling out of his hands. The dead man and his gun hit the catwalk at almost the same time, producing a metallic clank and a muscular thud, a perverse call and response. The gun dances on the steel pathway as the guard rolls off the catwalk and plummets in silence. Jonas hears the wet sound of the body ricocheting off one of the lower catwalks and then . . . nothing.
He swivels his head to Eva, needing to reassure himself that she’s safe. Apparently intuiting this, she bobs her head slowly, keeping a cautious watch on Victor.
Jonas turns back to him. His entire body feels tight. Cables under tension. Every muscle taut. Every cell screaming. He wishes he hadn’t stopped Eva from going back for her gun.
“This isn’t personal,” Victor says with a pathological failure to appreciate that his vendetta is nothing but personal. His voice barely rises above a whisper, and Jonas almost can’t hear him in the din of the massive chamber. Victor’s tone is distant. His body is here, but he sounds as if he’s speaking from millions of miles away.
Jonas thinks to speak, to reason with his former friend. But all he can think of is the gun in Victor’s grip. All he can see in front of him is Amanda bleeding onto the sidewalk, her eyes filled with tears and a sad confusion about what was happening to her. Jonas swallows, and he tastes metal. Anger. Adrenaline.
“I told you to accept the judgment of the universe,” Victor says. “I told you that, remember?” He sounds plaintive, almost wounded.
Jonas measures the distance between himself and Victor, calculating whether he can close it before Victor can raise and fire his gun. His own wrath, his need for vengeance and justice for Amanda, eclipses any survival instinct, and he would throw himself at Victor right now but for the chance that an errant shot might strike Eva.
“I told you to accept the judgment of the universe,” Victor repeats. He sounds disappointed, as though this is for Jonas’s own good. And then his voice grows cold and hard, with a terrifying ferocity. “But then I realized . . . I am that judgment.”
Jonas watches, transfixed, as Victor raises the gun, his finger coiling around the trigger. The barrel levels straight at Jonas’s heart. From someplace far away, some distant country, a part of Jonas rages and commands him to do something, anything. It can’t end this way. Not like this. He reminds himself—his mind bellowing a primal scream—that Amanda is waiting for him in another reality.
Without thinking, Jonas drives headlong at Victor. Victor’s finger is squeezing the trigger, but Jonas wills himself to believe that he can get to Victor faster than Victor can fire.
He can.
Jonas collides with Victor, angling so that his shoulder, bone under a thin canopy of muscle, drives into Victor’s sternum. On impact, he hears the air rush from Victor’s lungs. The sharp crack of the gun stings Jonas’s ears—Victor’s managed to get a shot off—and at this range, it’s as loud as the end of the world.
Pressing his advantage, Jonas pushes all his weight down on Victor, forcing them both down to the catwalk. They land hard, but Victor gets the worst of it, the catwalk slamming into his back, punctuated by Jonas falling atop him.
Victor lets out a scream of either agony or rage. Jonas can’t tell which. The gun, still in Victor’s grip, arcs up toward Jonas’s head. Jonas catches Victor’s wrist with both hands and jerks it back as hard as he can. Once. Twice. Three times. He scratches at Victor’s wrist hard enough to draw blood, but Victor does not relinquish his hold.
Jonas jerks his body slightly so that the next time he yanks Victor’s arm, Victor’s hand is positioned to strike the catwalk’s steel edge.
Victor wails in pain. Jonas is sure he hears the crack of bone. But all that matters is that Victor let go of the damn gun, so Jonas drives his arm down again. And again, the bones in Victor’s hand snap, sounding like popcorn popping. Victor howls once more, and this time the gun falls from his shattered hand and plunges down the shaft.
Victor moans in a paroxysm of agony. Jonas pushes himself off and tries to stand. His head feels light. His chest heaves and falls, and he realizes he’s hyperventilating. He commands himself to slow his breathing, but his lungs rebuff him. Too much adrenaline. Too much rage.
He watches Victor roll on the catwalk, his good hand cradling the broken one, undone by a level of physical anguish he’s had no experience with, the novelty almost more debilitating than the pain.
“Jonas.”
The cavern’s thrum is so loud and Jonas’s breathing so rapid that at first he doesn’t hear his name.
“Jonas.”
It’s Eva.
Jonas pivots. He knows he shouldn’t turn his back to Victor, but the way Eva spoke his name contained an unsettling amalgam of fear and weakness. A disquieting echo of the past.
And stranger still, Eva isn’t where she should be. Panic leaks in as Jonas’s eyes dart down to find Eva lying on the catwalk. Her fingers are laced across her midsection, blood snaking through them. Her breathing is rapid and shallow. She looks afraid.
The world spins. Jonas’s breath won’t catch. He’s lightheaded. He wants to vomit. He wants to scream. He wants to cry.
“No.” The word is barely audible, the moan of a dying animal. He drops to his knees beside Eva. “Just—try not to talk, Eva,” he says. “Just breathe. Just breathe.”
As Eva does her best to comply, Jonas considers her abdomen. The gunshot wound glistens, spurting blood with each beat of her panicked heart. His hands work to stanch the bleeding, but he feels Eva’s warmth flowing between his fingers.
