I heard a noise, like water passing over rocks. I looked around the room to see where it was coming from, but then I realized Carl was laughing. “You still think I chose you.”
“What?”
“You think it was you,” Carl repeated.
“But you did, you told me you did. You said you ran the simulations and I was the . . . the host who succeeded most often.”
“You did not succeed in the simulations, the simulations showed successful outcomes.” The water trickled over the rocks again. “I chose you as host, but you were not the reason for the successes.”
I waited for more, but Carl apparently wanted me to ask.
“Who was it, then?”
“I love you.” The words seemed so careful. “You are so . . . human. You still think it had to be someone. It wasn’t anyone, it was all of you.”
—
And then I woke up back in that hallway in Val Verde, knowing that Carl was dying, knowing that every action they took on our part sped that process. Miranda wanted to run across the Altus campus, but I didn’t want her to because I knew Carl would have to consume their very self protecting her.
I held the door so Carl wouldn’t have to. I fulfilled my part . . . I guarded the others. I made my video. I let the other heroes do their work. It was all of us. It was me and Maya and Andy and Miranda and Peanut and Sippy and Bex and even Stewart Patrick. And then the banging on the door stopped, and I thought maybe they had just moved on to some other tactic. Until a voice spoke in my head. Carl’s voice.
“It’s time for you to go, April. Thank you. Goodbye.”
As far as I know, those were Carl’s last words. Spoken in my head, a gift only for me. A gift I didn’t share until now because I wanted it to be mine only. But I guess you can have it too.
I took a long, unsteady breath and noticed that same hollow feeling I’d had when we first arrived at Altus. I was no longer connected to anything outside myself. I knew if I let myself feel anything, it would be too much, so I put my emotions away. As I walked into the hallway, the monkey ran up to me and climbed onto my shoulder. I didn’t even need to look to know that this wasn’t Carl.
“Where’s Carl?” Maya asked. I could hear the panic in her voice. But I didn’t answer. Instead, with the monkey on my shoulder, I walked down the hall. Peter Petrawicki was slumped and unmoving in his carpeted hallway next to the giant, empty statue that had once contained Carl.
The sculpture’s back was still pressed against the door, and even though it was sitting down, I could still barely reach its head. But I did. I put my hand on its cheek, and I felt it. It was not the neither hot nor cold we had felt on 23rd Street. The face felt cool, like metal, like it was a sculpture someone had created and left as a piece of art in this long, opulent hallway.
“We need to go,” I said. “The plane is waiting for us.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Peter,” Miranda said.
“He is just unconscious, he’ll wake up soon. They’ll all wake up soon. So we have to go now.”
“How do you know that?” she asked. Leave it to Miranda to hold us up worrying about the worst possible guy.
“I’ll tell you on the plane.” My voice sounded flat in my own ears.
“Where’s Carl?” Maya repeated.
I remembered back when Carl had tweaked my brain so that I couldn’t feel things. This wasn’t like that. The emotions weren’t being pushed down, they were in a writhing tangled mess in the back of my mind, but they couldn’t get to the surface. Not yet.
“Carl died,” I said. I wasn’t letting myself feel it, and I saw Maya’s face shift as she did the same.
“But if Carl died,” Miranda said, catching up with us, “then why am I still alive?”
“Because we did it,” I said. “We did it.”
I gathered my friends, and we walked out of the building together, over the unconscious bodies of Altus security guards. I led them, moving straight and fast, a signal that I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want any of them to see my face as it bunched together in grief, snot running into my mouth, tears pouring from my right eye.
“We’ve got a few new passengers,” I told the pilots, the grief walled off for a moment.
“Is everyone OK?” one of them asked.
I didn’t know how to answer. I heard the sob bubble out of me before I knew it was happening. It was like vomit, unwelcome and uncontrolled. I felt Maya’s hand on my shoulder as she guided me back to the cabin.
“Yes,” I heard her say. “Everyone is OK.”
ANDY
The donations grew exponentially. From 6 to 7 A.M. we received $400 million. But then from 7 to 7:10 we raised $300 million. People were willing to take the risk. They had lost friends and family, they had lost their savings, they felt the hope that ten dollars really could change things forever. And it was now or never.
I told myself it would be enough, even as Stewart Patrick and Bex kept telling me it wouldn’t be.
And then the news started coming in. I almost went into the Space to check, but I stopped myself. If you went in now, you would be forced to experience body dislocation, and once you had that experience, your mind locked onto it and could never go in again.
Whatever April had done on that island, it had just destroyed the Space for millions of people who were currently logged in.
I got a text from Stewart Patrick.
Sorry I didn’t believe you. This is perfect. They’re going to start falling now.
And fall they did. By
