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  “It’s a Bucket Hop. Within five miles, you can think and appear without entering coordinates. All you need is the bracelet activated. Then there’s the Hop, which is when you travel within the same universe. This does require entering coordinates. A Jump? That’s to travel within the Multiverse.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did Sully trigger your Hop?” he asked and I nodded. There was no point in keeping it to myself now. “How?”

  “He kissed me.”

  “A kiss?”

  “No. It wasn’t that part.” I swallowed. “He tried to strangle me after he kissed me.” I said it quickly so it would hurt less, and Iago’s expression landed between anger and pity. I should have told Iago about Sully sooner. Maybe it would have prompted him to think about trackers. I just couldn’t get used to revealing all of my secrets when it seemed like he held onto so many.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I nodded, but something else occurred to me. “Back on Geronimo, when Sully tried to—” I couldn’t say it again. I swallowed and moved past it. “Sully was holding me, and when I Hopped, he didn’t come with me. But back there, you did. Why?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that, but I have a theory, if it helps. Maybe you will us to come with you. Back home, you were escaping someone trying to hurt you, so you kept him from joining you. In Barcelona, you wanted me to come with you, so I did.”

  “But that’s not normal? We Jump to the same location.”

  “Only after I’ve entered the coordinates into the screens and merged our locations. I hate to break it to you, but I think it’s another freak side effect of your mutation.”

  I tried to ignore how shaken Iago was because I knew my nerves were a mirror image of his. Even with the Knowing, there was still so much I didn’t understand about what I could do. I’d Created universes without much effort involved, and I’d dragged him across them without even trying. Another side effect? The fact that I had yet another ability that made me abnormal (even if it was just amongst abnormal Saltadors), terrified me in new ways, but I tried to push the fear back down as I asked, “What are we doing here?”

  “We are about to Bucket Hop, actually. There’s a boat here, but it’s safer to Jump on solid land when it’s available. Moving objects get tricky if you’re not skilled enough to land on them. For this one, just keep your bracelet on, hold my hand, and let me do the thinking for both of us.”

  “You? Thinking? Now that’s a something that doesn’t happen every day.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Boat” was an understatement. It was more like a floating mansion. I couldn’t fit the idea in my head, so I said, “This is a yacht. No. It’s a floating city!”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Iago said.

  It was chrome in color, with two stories above water, and who knew how many below. On one of the walls, the word GEETA was written in loopy, black paint, and I assumed it was the name of the vessel. “How does this exist here?”

  “The civilization that was here before the end built it to live on before the icecaps completely deflated. Humans are adaptable, and when disaster strikes, we find any way to hang onto survival. This is just one example of staving off the inevitable. There’s fresh water converters, a place to farm smaller crops up top, and a food processing lab. And obviously, there’s all the seafood we can eat. We think a small community lived here.”

  I ignored the urge to ask the question of who this “we” was because I had the feeling I’d find out sooner rather than later. I ran my fingers along the railing to the deck. It was smooth to the feel, and everything felt entirely too clean.

  I looked at Iago, and a concerned look crossed his face. “Did you really think I was bringing you to him?” he asked. “Did you really think I wanted to harm you?”

  “Can you blame me? There’s a lot going on, and it’s a little hard to keep it all straight.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but the presence of it was too overpowering to hide. “You’re so cryptic most of the time. It gets confusing.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. You have every right to have trust issues, but I need you to try to trust me.”

  I didn’t have a reply to that. The way he said “trust issues” might have been condescending under other circumstances, but the past couple days had put me face to face with readjusting my definitions of trust. Instead of gracing him with a response, I asked, “What do we do now?”

  “We wait,” Iago said. “And while we do, I’m gonna catch some Zs. I got no sleep this morning.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wanted to be awake when the Change happened.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t tired at all, and waiting for whatever we were waiting for ended up dragging each minute to the limits of infinity. The lulling feeling of the boat made me lethargic, but I didn’t want to sit down and do nothing. I had movement in my veins.

  I set out to explore the ship, and I finally found a room on the second deck that intrigued me. It had expansive windows taking up three walls and the roof, and I couldn’t figure out how they let in just enough light to not be overwhelming. The fourth wall, connected to the inside of the ship, was filled from floor to glass ceiling with books. I wondered how the bindings weren’t faded from all the sunshine that lit them up, but I couldn’t think of a logical reason as I ran my fingers along their bindings. All the titles were strange and foreign: Gaian Law, The Manifesto, Oceana and the Fellowship of the Tower… Some of the texts wavered a bit in my vision, like they were shifting into a language I could understand. It made my head swim, so I stepped away from the shivering shelves. There were two comfy-looking chairs nuzzled up next to a round fish tank that served as a coffee table, and I sat down to look out over the water.

  The sun was tickling the horizon, and it reached over the soft waves to spread into the evening sky. It unfolded and retracted the brightness into night, and I turned on the lamp that rested on the table. There were fish in there that had names I could never know. They were a soft glowing neon as they swum around. I guessed that from now on, wherever I landed, evolution could have participated in a different dance. There were probably piranhas as big as whales in that big turquoise ocean we floated on, and the thought made me shiver.

  Next to the lamp was a journal lying flat and open. I picked it up, and the handwriting startled me. Every letter was straight and perfect, but the notes looked scientific and boring. The last line rested in the middle of the page and read: subject still shows restraint and refuses to be pulled into Collective Energy. Subject? I closed the journal and set it under the lamp. Despite the fact that what I glimpsed sounded as boring as dirt, I wasn’t one to invade someone’s private thoughts.

  A fluffy bed rested in the center of the room, and as much as I wanted to swim in it, I didn’t. Whoever lived here was surgically clean, and to compare it to the little cabin Ringo and I lived in, with its piles of unfolded laundry and perpetually half-full sink, was uncomfortable. Who was that neat?

  I watched the stars gather in the cloudless sky. They were timid until the moment they became bold, and soon, they were all I could see. I shut off the lamp and stared at them until it hurt. I’d never seen anything so brilliant, even during those camping trips Ringo and Papa would take me on to Big Bend. I remember Papa tracing pictures in the sky with his wrinkled finger and wondering how it was possible that that many stars existed. But with the absence of light pollution, this sky was a million times more vibrant. Not to mention, my eyes felt sharper than ever before, and I could catch every waver and every flash within the light.

  I wasn’t sure when the tears started, but I eventually noticed the way crying stuffed up my nose. The Change. It wasn’t just about what happened to my body. It was about what happened to my life. Everything I knew was gone. Whoever I thought I had been was gone. Lindsay? I’d never see her again. Sully? He’d tried to kill me—twice—and even despite that, I couldn’t let Iago shoot him in Spain. He’d asked me to let him explain
, but how could he explain away his betrayal? Ringo and Papa? They’d lied to me my entire life. Iago? He wasn’t a pain-in-the-rear neighbor, but my new guardian. These were my new realities, but they still felt unbelievably unrealistic.

  I had asked Iago, “Why didn’t y’all tell me from the start?”

  “Because they couldn’t risk the secret accidentally getting out. Plus, if it didn’t work…”

  “Just say it.”

  “They truly thought the mutation wouldn’t catch. We all expected you to die.”

  It was hard to swallow. It was death or this, and no one thought I’d beat the odds. What did it mean that I had? This kind of knowledge should have given me a new reverence for life, and I should have been overjoyed that I survived even if it meant my life must change. “I could have died just as easily as mutated,” I whispered to the stars. Either way, life as I knew it was destined to disappear.

  I closed my eyes and remembered my whispering spot by the river. All the stories I spoke up into the sky as a kid, thinking my mother heard them all. And here I was still whispering my thoughts up to her out of habit. The fact that she never existed hurt in new ways, and I let out a gargled sob.

  I wanted to stick my head in the sand and pretend it hadn’t happened because I didn’t ask for any of it, nor did I want it. But then I found myself thinking about what Iago said about humans being adaptable—how we do anything to survive when disaster strikes. I knew I was too stubborn to curl up in a ball and give up, and I’d learn to accept and deal with it all. I always did. Why should this be any different?

  Instead of concentrating on what I no longer had, I tried to concentrate on what I did have. And right then and there, I had the sky and access to more stars than I ever knew existed. I wanted my eyes to drink in every spark that glittered off them. There was a bigger picture out there, one that I was just now starting to glimpse, and suddenly I wanted to see it all.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was as familiar as an ancient memory. I reached out to turn the lamp back on, but he said, “No. Don’t. Let’s just enjoy it for a minute.” My hand stilled around the chain, but I didn’t tug it down. The boy walked to the other chair and sat. I had half a mind to be scared, but I was too tired to be afraid. The starlight adjusted around him, and I could make out some of his features. He had a solid feel about him, like I could crash an entire mountain against him, and he’d still be standing when all was said and done.

  He spoke again. “Neat, huh? If you sit just still enough, it’s almost like you turned on the lamp. Sometimes, I spend an entire night without turning on a single light.” He pointed a strong finger towards the sky and started tracing pictures between the freckles of light.

  The motion reminded me of Papa and the countless times he connected those dots into stories for me. It also reminded me of someone else, and I said the words even though they really belonged to Lindsay. “Where I’m from, it’s never a good sign when a boy starts a conversation with starry-eyed clichés. It’s an immediate warning that he’s only trying to get into your pants.” I remembered her telling me about the time Gunner Proctor tried to make out with her out on his ranch. He’d pointed up at the stars while trying to drape his arm around her shoulders. Knowing Lindsay, she wasn’t kind to him for the attempt.

  This boy laughed, and it triggered a strange tingle in my ear. Once again, it sounded familiar, although I’d never heard it before. “Don’t worry, Champ. That’s the last place I’d try to get into. But have you ever seen anything like it before?”

  The easy joking and snarky attitude was something I could relate to. It calmed me enough so I could look away from his shadow and reexamine the sky. “No.”

  “The cool thing about being a Saltador is that you will. You’ll see so many things that won’t feel real but are. This new life of yours won’t be entirely bad.”

  How did he know what I was worrying about? The comfort I felt seconds before disappeared just as quickly as it came. “Won’t be bad? Do you have people trying to kill you because of what you are?”

  “Not yet.”

  I studied the shadowed line of his jaw and reached over to turn on the lamp. It was a face I’d never seen before, but I knew it. A square jaw attached to his ears, and I don’t know why I noticed the ears, but they were absolutely even with each other. The symmetry created a straight line across darkly tanned skin to his turquoise eyes.

  “I know all these changes are strange, but if it makes you feel better, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life on this boat. Then, yesterday, I was told I’d been lied to my entire life. How’s that for things we have in common, huh?”

  I stared at his face and tried to pin it to a memory that didn’t exist. I knew him, but I didn’t know him.

  He kept talking, though he wouldn’t look directly at me. “They never let me meet you, you know. There are ways to transport children before they turn three. They are called Transport Spheres, but they never took me to meet you. I just spent my entire life Watching you.” He picked up the journal that had been returned to its place by the lamp. “There’s an entire shelf over there with written documentation of things I noticed about your life. If you ever get nostalgic, you’re welcome to read through them.”

  Between this guy and Iago, who knew how many secrets I actually didn’t have. There was nothing about my old life that was sacred to the people trying to protect me. If anything, my own secrets had been kept from me. Fodder for everyone else’s plans. “Forgive me if I don’t find it flattering to discover I had a stalker,” I said.

  He laughed. “Sounds creepy, huh?”

  “I don’t know what’s creepy anymore. I’m past the point of being creeped out. Does my stalker have a name? I’m guessing you know mine? I’m Subject.” I pointed to the journal, and I was surprised to feel a smile spreading along my face as if I hadn’t just been crying pitifully in a dark room by myself minutes before. I suddenly hoped my face wasn’t splotchy and blotchy from the tears and stuttered breaths caused by crying.

  “Liam.”

  I let the name nuzzle into my ears, but even that name was unfamiliar. “What’s next, Liam?”

  “Santiago and I are going to teach you what we can before we have to leave.”

  “Why here?” I asked.

  “It’ll be nearly impossible for you to Splice this planet accidentally. The Energy has already converted away from inertia, and there are no Movers to stir it all up. Until we know what you can do for sure, we can’t risk keeping you long term anywhere you can enter into Creation. We will travel to Newly Stagnant Universes for training purposes, but we will spend most our time here for now.”

  “What’s the difference between this and a Newly Stagnant Universe?”

  He nodded like he approved of the question. He was obviously the same age as me, but there was something ancient about this boy. “Newly Stagnates still contain an abundance of human Energy. They may even be highly populated, but their Culture Pulse has slowed. They are in a dying Vein, even if the population within it has another hundred generations to live out.”

  I wanted to ask how he knew the number of generations a Vein had left, but I didn’t. It was like Iago’s triangle in the cabin. I had to accept that I wouldn’t learn everything at once, so I had to be patient with my questions.

  If Liam noticed the contemplative look on my face, he ignored it. He continued: “Universes like this one are completely dead because the human race finally died off naturally or killed each other towards extinction. I guess you can’t blame them for it. When humans feel the end approaching, madness seeps into every ounce of their souls. The loss of Collective Energy destroys their hope, and they become desperate or self-destructive. Neither reaction saves them.”

  He didn’t sugar coat any of his explanations, and he spoke as if I knew what every term meant. It was a crash landing into his world, and I tried to latch on to the few things I did understand. “What type of universe
did I grow up in?” I asked.

  “It was an Established Stagnant. There’s no more proof needed to confirm that Geronimo has only a few more generations in it.”

  “Huh?”

  “The underground politics are leading it to a nuclear war. Those that survive will mutate into something else, then die off eventually.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Culture Pulse tests tell us. In a way, Saltadors can see into the future for at least seventeen to eighteen generations. Sometimes we have to travel deep into Veins before we figure it out. It’s why finding the Optimal Path is so difficult. Sometimes a Vein feels like it’s thriving until all a sudden it doesn’t.”

  Veins. I ran my finger along the blue veins peeking through the pale skin on my wrist. “How can you tell it’s dying?”

  “When you reach a certain point, you feel the shift in culture, as if you’d walked into the shade after spending all day in the sun. I describe it as a shadow, because there’s a darkness in all humans that, once encountered, spreads throughout the whole.”

  I closed my eyes. That would be the fate for the great, great grandchildren of Lindsay and Gunner and all the people I went to high school with. A deep sense of loss hit me, because not even the world I grew up in would exist for long.

  “I know it’s hard to hear, but there’s a peace to it all. Look at these stars, untouched by humanity’s greedy light.”

  I looked out at them and tried to find the peace he had.

  “It’ll all be okay. You’ll learn to accept it eventually. Explorers search for a pathway to preservation, but we know that eventually, we will all return to the Nothing. As for Lindsay, you may just see her again on a Vein that is not Stagnant. Her lineage may just surpass us all.”

  “How’d you know I was thinking about—“

  “I know things about you that not even you know.”

  I laughed. “Again with the creepy, stalker crap.”

  “I’ll work on being less creepy,” he promised.