Читать книгу Unbreakable - Elizabeth Norris, Elizabeth Norris - Страница 36

touch Struz’s hand on my shoulder. I squeeze it with my own and whisper, “I will.”

I almost add something snarky—I almost tell him I’m not that easy to get rid of. But I don’t. Because I’m about to follow someone I don’t trust through a portal and into another universe. I’ll be in a different world, facing a human-trafficking ring, a potentially corrupt international agency, and technology I can’t fathom.

Nothing about this is going to be easy.

“Here,” Barclay says, handing me a necklace identical to the one he’s wearing, identical to the one I wore the last time I moved through a portal, when Ben and I were coming back here. “Put this on.”

It’s a metal necklace, the one all Interverse Agents wear. It looks like it’s just braided wire, but it has an electronic charge that allows it to travel through the activated portals without being affected by the radiation.

Barclay watches me, our eyes meet, and he holds my gaze.

I think about how it felt when he pulled me through my first portal a few months ago, when one of the quakes was about to bring Ben’s house down on us—the way it felt like fire was moving through my veins, liquefying me from the inside out, like my skin was melting off my bones. Barclay injected me with something then, to keep me from dying from the radiation.

I crack a couple of knuckles to keep my hands from shaking.

“Do I need another injection?” I ask. I’d rather take the shot first and avoid feeling like that than wait until afterward.

Barclay shakes his head. “You only need those about once every six months.”

I nod, take a deep breath, ignore the pounding of my heart, and tell myself that I’m ready.

From his pocket, Barclay pulls out what looks like a complicated cell phone—some kind of cross between an iPhone and an old Palm Pilot. It’s his quantum charger, another thing all IA agents have. They activate and open portals, like a navigation system that uses coordinates to pinpoint the exact spot in any given universe, so an agent knows where he’s going. And it stabilizes the portal when it opens.

Struz steps back and I want to turn around and say good-bye one more time. Because what if I don’t make it back? What if this is the last time that I see him? I want the moment to matter.

But I don’t look because I don’t want him to be able to see how scared I am. Instead, I just watch Barclay as he presses a few buttons on the charger. He points it at the ground in front of him.

I hear that electrical sound—the sound of something powering up.

And then the portal springs open.

It’s a perfect circle, pure black like oil, with a diameter of a little more than seven feet, and it’s in front of Barclay, backlighting him, giving his silhouette some kind of otherworldly glow.

The temperature drops, the wind picks up and moves through my hair, goose bumps spring up on my neck, and the air smells like we’re in that moment right before a storm sets in.

I shiver.

Not just because it’s cold.

Barclay turns around. His eyes look impossibly blue in this light, and I have the urge to back out. I can’t help but feel like I’m about to violate every law of the natural world.

He must know I’m struggling, because he says, “This is the right thing to do, Tenner.”

Our eyes don’t break contact as he takes a step back into the black hole that is the portal. I watch as the blackness seems to grab hold of him and pull him deeper—until it swallows him, and he’s gone.

I could leave him. I could let the portal just fade out of existence and I could stay here.

But I can’t, and Barclay knows that—he knows I’ll follow him. For Cecily.

And for Ben.

The sky is red and orange. The clouds look almost gray, with glowing white outlines. The sun is rising, a golden globe peeking over the eastern horizon, lighting up a world that almost ended.

I take one last look around my universe at the cliffs under my feet, not so different from the cliffs where Ben and I watched the sun set, where we shared burritos and our first kiss. I listen to the ocean waves beneath me and think of the cold sting of the salt water, of the way my arms and legs burned every time I swam. I memorize the feel of the sun, the way my skin warms as the light touches me and chases back the shadows.

Then I glance back at Struz, too tall and lanky, blond hair and grayish blue eyes, the lines on his face clearly giving away how helpless he feels. “Keep Jared safe,” I say.

And I follow Barclay through.