It was a free biweekly called The Rocket.
* * *
—
“Welcome to Sea-Tac Station,” said a woman’s voice on the loudspeaker as the train pulled into the station. I’d spent the fifteen minutes it took to reach the airport alternating between scanning the train and the faces of the six other people riding it, and looking through The Rocket for clues.
I couldn’t find anything.
But there had to be something.
It turns out that something was actually a someone.
She was standing on the platform when I stepped off the train at Sea-Tac Station.
It was Emily Connors.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing my arm. “I don’t have much time.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Wasting my time looking for you when I should be figuring out a way to save the world,” she said, leading me down to the street.
“I’m sorry?”
“You don’t need to be sorry. Just get in the fucking car.”
Emily pressed a button on her fob and the gull-wing doors of a nearby black Tesla X opened with a distant whir and click.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Is reality somehow…changing?”
“I’m guessing you noticed a few…discrepancies on your way here?”
“Yeah. Is this…”
“Another dimension?”
“I didn’t wanna say it,” I admitted. “But…is it?”
“It’s kind of complicated. But right now, I really just need you to get into the fucking car.”
The two of us got into the car and Emily started driving. Fast.
As we merged onto the freeway, I looked out the window at downtown. The building that had appeared out of nowhere earlier was gone and the skyline was back to the way it had been before all of this stuff started. Sure, the Fremont Troll was holding a different car, and the monorail had three stations, but if I didn’t look too closely, I was almost able to imagine that everything was back to normal.
Emily pulled off the freeway one exit later.
I had a million questions, but I couldn’t decide what to ask first, so I sat silent in the passenger seat as Emily guided us through the city.
She eventually pulled into a small concrete carport just off Lake Washington Boulevard. We stepped out of the car and onto what I’d assumed was a stone pathway treated with some kind of rubber, but as soon as our feet touched the surface, the path started moving. It was a conveyer belt, kind of like you might find in an airport—what they call a people mover.
The conveyor belt eventually dropped us off in front of a small white concrete structure that housed an elevator. There was no call button, but Emily did something on her phone, the doors opened, and the two of us stepped inside. As soon as the doors shut behind us, the elevator started moving up.
We stepped out of the elevator into a marvel of open-concept design.
Directly across from us as we entered, facing the lake, were enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. The view was impressive. It felt as if somebody had removed everything that wasn’t water, trees, and distant mountains. The dark gray clouds hanging above the lake gave the place a sad but cinematic feel, like a wealthy murderer’s house in a Nordic thriller.
Through a sliding-glass door that opened onto a wide deck, I could see a set of stairs leading down to the conveyer belt we’d just taken to the elevator. Beyond that was nothing but grass and trees.
The interior was perfectly appointed, from the Florence Knoll sofa, Noguchi table, and Nelson ball pendant lamps to the built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and light cork floors.
“Your place is amazing,” I said.
“Me?” Emily laughed a little. “No way. It belongs to a friend.”
“They must be some friend,” I said.
Emily’s smile disappeared and she nodded toward the sofa. “I don’t have much time, so if you have a lot of questions, you’ll want to start asking.”
I took a seat on the sofa. Emily grabbed a nearby molded plywood chair, slid it across the floor, and sat down directly across from me.
For the first time since she’d picked me up at the monorail station, I could see Emily clearly. She looked tired—nothing that a few good nights’ sleep wouldn’t clear up—but there was something else: a look in her eyes, a kind of distance, a sadness.
“The last time I saw you, in that penthouse at WorGames…was that real?” I asked. I figured why not start with a big one.
She didn’t answer me. Instead, she just stared.