I could see recognition slowly move across Emily’s face. She let go of my hand and stopped running.
“I’m not going back there, K.”
“It’s at least a half hour drive,” I said. “I don’t have time to argue.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“What if we can put everything back to how it was?”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone’s still dead.”
“You can’t know that,” I said. “Things could be different.”
I had no idea how much of what Crow said was real, but I wasn’t just going to sit there in the arcade and wait for the end of the world. I stepped out into the street, put my hands in the air, and almost got hit by a car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Emily asked.
I started walking along beside the cars parked outside the arcade, checking to see if any of them were unlocked.
“We need a car,” I said.
Emily shook her head and stepped out into the street.
I finally found a car that was unlocked and turned to Emily just as she flagged down a cab.
“You can’t hot-wire a fucking Prius, K,” Emily said. “Come on.”
* * *
—
We made it to Emily’s car in six minutes. There was almost no traffic. The cabbie smiled and thanked me for the generous tip. If the world was really ending, who gave a shit about an extra twenty bucks?
Emily put her car into gear and started to pull away from the curb when somebody knocked on the window.
It was Marianne Sanders, the detective with the scar across her face who’d taken our information at Fatman Neil’s.
Emily rolled down the window.
“Where are you two off to in such a hurry?” she asked.
“Visiting a friend for dinner,” Emily said.
Sanders smiled at Emily, then turned to me. “How do you know Easton Paruth?”
“Um…I don’t. I mean, not really,” I said.
“Then why do you suppose she was tracking you on her phone?”
“I have no idea. We went to see her, to ask her a couple of questions.”
“Questions about what?”
“About the game I told you about.”
“The same game that led you to speak with Neil Arroyo just before he was killed?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you saw Ms. Paruth?”
“Um…a couple of days ago I think. Why?”
“She’s been reported missing.”
I shook my head. Fuck. I hoped she was okay. Easton was kind of terrifying, but she’d been （mostly） nice to me.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need you two to come with me,” Sanders said, and moved to open Emily’s door.
“Sorry,” Emily said, “we’re in a hurry,” and floored it.
If the world was going to end, whatever Detective Sanders wanted to talk about really didn’t matter. If we somehow survived, we could deal with her then.
* * *
—
I loaded Google Maps and found the quickest route to the freeway.
I listened to the sound of the tires on the wet asphalt as Emily guided the Volvo through mostly deserted city streets. I wondered if the lack of traffic was due to the violent shaking, or if maybe it was something else—something connected to the way the gray sky above us no longer felt like a sky, but rather like a permanent stain on the world.
Whatever was going to happen, it wouldn’t be long now.
44
THE NIGHT STATION
We made it safely out of the city and drove down I-5 in silence for twenty minutes. As we moved through the night, the chaos of the city gave way to the peaceful quiet of the suburbs, and I imagined the people who lived there feeling safe and warm behind their perfect lawns and creatively shaped mailboxes. They’d be getting ready for bed, reading stories to their kids while half-thinking about something else, signing forms for field trips, putting off sex to finish bingeing a show on HBO, and all the while, just outside their doors, the entire multiverse was most likely coming to an end.
I kept running back over everything that had happened—everything I’d learned about my parents, the Gatewick Institute, and Annie and Emily Connors. But if what Swan had said was true, did any of that stuff matter?
“We’re almost there,” Emily said.
I heard a slight tremor in her voice as we approached the road leading up to the Petermans’ house. As we made the turn, I felt something pass through my body.
The darkness was coming.
“Can you feel it?” I asked.