“So Crow really did work with our parents?”
“Yes.”
“How did you end up working with him in The Tower?”
“When I was a teenager,” Emily said, “I found a bunch of crazy shit in my parents’ closet—stuff that led me to believe they weren’t actually real estate agents. The thing that immediately captured my imagination took the form of a complicated underground game—a game that I quickly became obsessed with figuring out how to play.”
“Rabbits.” I could almost hear the crackle of the static on the radio and feel the hum of the truck’s wheels as she spoke.
“Cut to later. My obsession with the game resulted in the death of my sister.”
“It was an accident.”
“An accident that was pretty quickly followed by the death of my parents. And, if I’m being honest, I didn’t really handle either of those events all that well. By the time Crow found me, I was making ends meet as a kind of online bounty hunter–slash–collections officer in New York City. I was an easy recruit. Crow explained what he had in mind, how he was planning on putting my particular set of skills to use, and I started working for him.”
“Your particular set of skills? That sounds like a Liam Neeson movie.”
“You know how I asked you about feeling strange, noticing patterns and coincidences, or missing time?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, that’s because the research our parents were doing at the Gatewick Institute involved them taking a large number of experimental drugs—including a prenatal cocktail our mothers were instructed to continue taking through all three trimesters of their pregnancies.”
“You’re saying these drugs are somehow connected to my experiencing missing time and obsessive behavior around coincidences and patterns?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, K. My mother took those drugs as well. All of the Gatewick parents did.”
“Wait…so you’ve experienced these things?”
She nodded.
“Does that have anything to do with how you were able to bring me here? To this…dimension, or whatever it is?”
“It has everything to do with that, yes.”
“How does it work?”
“Something happened at Gatewick—something completely unintentional.”
“Which was what?”
“A few of the children born to Gatewick parents who’d been taking part in the prenatal drug study presented with certain…unique abilities.”
“Like what?”
“Under very special circumstances, these children were able to manipulate Meechum’s Radiants without using the advanced mapping techniques and computer systems normally required.”
“What sort of special circumstances?”
“Moments of extreme emotional distress.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry.
“So, you have these…unique abilities?”
“I do—a little.”
“What does that mean?”
“My mother stopped the drug therapy early in her first trimester, so I didn’t end up with very much Gatewick sauce.”
“But you had enough to manipulate Meechum’s Radiants, to bring me here, to this dimension?”
“What I did is like a…trick. I created a kind of temporary bubble that’s going to compress soon—and when that compression happens, I need to be somewhere else.”
“What about me?”
“The compression should take you back to where you began. Or at least, to where you were when you began following this trail.”
“Should?”
“I’m sorry, none of this stuff is…absolute.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“How much…Gatewick sauce do I have?”
“Do you know how long your mother was taking the Gatewick drugs?”
I shook my head.
“Well, then,” Emily said as she stood up and started walking over to the elevator, “it’s a mystery.”
“When I met Crow in The Tower, he told me I wasn’t supposed to be here. Do you know what he meant?”
“Your parents used your ability to hide you from him.”
“My Gatewick sauce.”
“Exactly.”
“Is that why he tracked me down and threatened me?”
“I’m not sure, but he was surprised when you showed up in The Tower, and Crow really doesn’t like surprises.”