Out of Nowhere Read online

  Beautiful, regardless.

  The clerk smirked at Aidan.

  She thought they were here to fuck.

  It was a logical assumption on her part. Aidan was desperate for a motel room in the middle of the day, and he wasn’t alone. An affair made a lot more sense than the truth.

  Caleb had kissed him to fool Heath. This was minor in comparison, and lying in the service of a goal had never bothered him before.

  He wished it wasn’t a lie.

  Aidan leaned forward, sliding another bill across the counter. “Please,” he said, and found his mouth had gone dry. It came out quiet and conspiratorial. “We can’t wait.”

  “Yeah, I bet you can’t,” she said. She slipped the extra bill into her pocket and tossed a heavy key ring at him. “Room 202. Keep it down.”

  “Uh,” Aidan said, before coming to the blessed realization that he didn’t have to say anything in response. He spun on his heel and reached for Caleb. He intended to tap him to get his attention but switched, at the last minute, to draping his arm over Caleb’s shoulders.

  The move was awkward and unconvincing—please let the clerk be watching her show instead of us—until Caleb leaned into him, not startled, but content.

  “Did she say ‘keep it down’?” Caleb asked as Aidan pushed open the glass door.

  “Yeah,” Aidan said, scorched with guilt everywhere they were touching. Caleb had told him to forget their kiss and here he was maneuvering them into another act.

  Caleb twisted, caught her eye—she was watching them, shit—and winked. Then he grabbed Aidan around the waist and hustled them out the door and up the exterior stairs to the balcony before Aidan could respond.

  Aidan jammed the key into the lock and gave the knob a violent turn. The room was dark inside, a vertical slit in the blinds on the opposite wall the only source of light. Aidan flipped the lightswitch to reveal faded orange carpet and pink walls. There was a similarly garish painting of a sunset bolted to the wall above the bed. The room was small and drab, and the remainder of its dented, sagging furnishings fit right in: two night stands, an armchair in the corner and a screen on the wall. Ugly as it was, the room was orderly, and when Aidan pulled the covers on the bed back, the sheets were scratchy but they smelled like detergent. Caleb had said cleanliness was his only requirement.

  Caleb stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind himself, keeping his hands behind his back. “Hey, you’re not mad, right? It was just a dumb impulse. A joke.”

  “Ha, ha,” Aidan said. Hilarious, the idea of the two of them sleeping together. “And the kiss was a joke, too.”

  “No! The kiss was the only thing I could think of at the time. And it worked.”

  “You said you wanted to forget it, which is hard to do if you keep acting this way.”

  “But you were willing to let that clerk think we were—” Caleb paused, swallowed, and if the room weren’t so goddamn dim and pink, Aidan would be able to tell if he was blushing.

  “I don’t see how it’s different,” Caleb finished. After a hesitation, he crossed the room to sit on the bed next to Aidan.

  “It’s one thing to distract people or cover our tracks when we have to. It’s another thing entirely to make a game out of it,” Aidan said. It was a bullshit distinction, but he couldn’t say every time you flirt with me as a joke, I die a little. That would lead them into the minefield of his feelings, a place he preferred never to tread.

  “Okay,” Caleb said. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  Winning the argument felt a whole lot like losing the argument. Aidan wanted to blurt no you should definitely do it again, but that would be charging right into the minefield. So instead he said, “It’s fine. You should rest.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Caleb asked, like he’d forgotten that Aidan wasn’t tired. He gave the dull confines of the motel room a bewildered glance. There wasn’t anything to do here except sleep or fuck, and they’d already firmly established that Aidan wouldn’t be doing either.

  Aidan lifted the stolen tablet. “Find out whatever I can about Oz.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Caleb said, yawning.

  Aidan removed himself to the armchair in the corner so Caleb could stretch out. He typed “Oz Lewis” into the tablet’s search engine and then rested it in his lap. The results fuzzed out of focus while he wondered, for a moment, if he’d been too harsh on Caleb.

  Caleb had kissed him, and seized the opportunity to embrace him in front of the clerk, and gotten flustered several times when sex came up, or when they had to touch. They knew for sure that his double was attracted to men. Maybe Caleb was curious.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if Caleb kissed him again, even as a joke or an experiment. Sure, it would break his heart later, but it would feel good in the moment. There was precious little of that in his life now and the future didn’t hold much promise. He’d have to disappear after taking down Quint. Even if they succeeded, Aidan was still a hated public figure, and Caleb would never be safe while he was around.

  If he was planning to blow up his life anyway, why not take a little stroll through that minefield? What was he afraid of? It wasn’t concern for Caleb stopping him. Caleb had made clear that he didn’t have any real feelings for Aidan. Besides, he’d never had any trouble picking up the pieces after his girlfriends left. He’d be fine. He always was.

  Aidan wouldn’t be, but that didn’t matter. Next time Caleb showed any inclination to kiss him, Aidan would volunteer for that experiment.

  Oz Lewis didn’t answer when they buzzed the main door of his apartment complex, but since it was six in the evening, two of his neighbors were coming home from work and Aidan and Caleb were able to slip inside. They found the door to 1E quickly, but had to knock four times before someone yelled “What?” from inside.

  “Oz Lewis?” Aidan asked.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “You don’t know us, but I’m Aidan and my friend’s name is Caleb,” Aidan said to the door. He’d been less on guard against cameras in this reality, but he assumed there was one. There was always a camera somewhere. “We were hoping to talk to you.”

  Oz cracked the door open and peered out. “About what?”

  “We have a proposal. We need your help.”

  Oz squinted, skeptical, and then opened the door all the way. He walked back into his apartment without inviting them in.

  Caleb touched Aidan’s hand, an unspoken question in his expression, and Aidan shrugged. It wasn’t the ideal welcome, but they didn’t need Oz to be nice.

  He stepped into the apartment, a studio that was hard to see because all the blinds were drawn and the only light came from the screen of the wall display and the tablet in Oz’s lap. He’d dropped into a slouch in the apartment’s only chair, and in the blue light from the screen, he was even schlubbier in person than in his photo. He clearly hadn't shaved or showered in a few days, since he had the beginnings of a wispy blond beard and his long bangs were clumped into greasy ropes.

  The room was stifling and stale, the overripe kitchen trash pervading the air. Once Aidan’s eyes adjusted, he could see that there were empty beer cans and old food wrappers littering the kitchenette’s counters, and Oz’s armchair was surrounded as well. Other than the trash, the apartment was stark, with nothing on the walls and very little furniture. Oz didn’t have a bed, only a mattress on the floor. It was bare except for a wrinkled top sheet and a black-and-white plaid blanket piled in the middle. Wadded-up tissues dotted the grey carpet around the mattress. Aidan shouldn’t judge, since he mostly wandered from friend’s couch to friend’s couch, but still.

  The drama playing on the wall display was the same one the motel clerk had been watching that morning. Funny that daytime soap operas were recognizable even in alternate realities.

  “What do you want?” Oz asked. He didn’t pause the drama or look up from the tablet in his lap.

  Shit, this was already going badly. Aidan should have mad
e Caleb do this part. Caleb could have used his superpower of figuring out what people wanted. He was charismatic and warm. People were happy to do what he said just to please him. Without him, Aidan couldn’t have persuaded terrified, hunted runners to band together into a union to protect themselves—even when it was obviously the sanest, most logical course of action.

  If Aidan were going to stick around after they were done with Quint, which he wasn’t, he might try to get Caleb to come back to the Union.

  How would Caleb persuade Oz? He’d use his beautiful face, the fucking cheat. Aidan couldn’t do that, but he tried to give a friendly smile.

  “Like I said, we need your help.” He spread his hands. He felt awkward standing in the middle of Oz’s apartment, but there was no other furniture, and given the state of things, he wouldn’t have wanted to sit down. “It’s going to sound strange, what I’m about to say next.”

  Oz looked up at last, blinking at them. He had startlingly blue eyes. There was an Oswin Lewis Quint double under there somewhere.

  Oz gestured around the dark apartment, with its piles of dirty dishes and its rats’ nest of trash. “How could you possibly need my help with anything? Are you looking to get yourselves deeper in debt?”

  “Do you know about the Nowhere?” Aidan asked.

  “Yeah, obviously.”

  “And do you know it can be used to travel to other realities? Worlds like this one, but not quite?”

  “Get the fuck out,” Oz said, and Aidan couldn't tell if he was expressing shock or a genuine demand.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Did I not get enough sleep last night? Is this a prank?”

  Aidan, having already expressed his seriousness, said nothing.

  “It’s not a joke,” Caleb said. “And the reason we need your help is because you look just like someone in our world who's very powerful. A trillionaire named Oswin Lewis Quint.”

  “Ugh,” Oz said. “I stopped using that asshole’s last name the minute he left my mom and took all our money.”

  Aidan glanced at Caleb, wondering if he knew anything about Quint’s family life, but Caleb was at a loss. He nodded sympathetically and said, “You’re different people with different lives. I met my own double and it was disconcerting.”

  Aidan wondered if Caleb was extending the sympathy in his voice to himself. Was he reassuring himself with that “you’re different people” line?

  Oz picked up a bowl of instant noodles from the floor by his chair, a half-congealed dish Aidan had assumed was abandoned, and poked at it with a plastic fork. “Yeah, whatever. I don’t believe you yet, but I don’t have a whole lot else going on. Keep talking. Tell me your amazing plan.”

  Caleb continued gamely. “Like I said, you’re not the same person. But you look the same, and that’s what we need. Your double has, unfortunately, done a lot of unethical things. We’re hoping you can help us by posing as him.”

  Aidan stepped in. “The police haven’t moved to arrest Quint, despite significant evidence exposed in the press. We need to do something that will get their attention. If you could publicly confess to and apologize for what your double did, we think it could force the police to arrest him. As soon as he’s sentenced, we’ll switch you with him. He’ll go to prison and you’ll be free.”

  “Where’s he gonna be, while I’m posing as him?”

  “We’ll take care of that,” Aidan said quickly, and Caleb’s composure slipped. He paled. Aidan continued, “Not with murder or anything, don't worry. We’re just going to keep him somewhere safe for a while.”

  “You honestly think this scam will work?”

  “I think it’s worth a try,” Aidan said. “This guy’s rich and powerful. It's not going to be easy to take him down. But we might be able to catch him by surprise. Most people in our world don’t know this world exists.”

  “What did he do? This guy who looks like me?”

  Caleb stayed quiet just long enough for Aidan to realize that he had to be the one to answer this question. He didn’t want to play up his victimhood, so he described his imprisonment and torture as briefly and clinically as possible. He imagined reading a bulleted list: abduction, starvation, cell in space, unauthorized experiments, violation of bodily integrity.

  “Wait, people don’t respect runners where you come from?” Oz asked.

  “They do here?” Aidan asked, equally puzzled.

  “Yeah, of course. They’re heroes. Do you know how much better they’ve made the world? Can you even imagine life without them?”

  Aidan exchanged a glance with Caleb. “You don’t think of them as untrustworthy criminals? People who can’t be made to obey the law?”

  “What? No! We wouldn’t even have space elevators or life in orbit without runners. They save lives all the time. What the fuck is wrong with wherever you come from?”

  “I wish I’d grown up somewhere like this,” Aidan said.

  “So this amazing plan,” Oz said. “The one part we haven’t covered is what’s in it for me.”

  “Because righting a wrong isn’t enticing enough,” Caleb said dryly.

  “We can pay you,” Aidan said. “Whatever’s left of Quint’s fortune when we’re done, which will be significant. Our currency’s different from yours but I assume rare metals like gold still have value here. That kind of payment can be arranged.”

  “Well,” Oz said, putting aside his bowl of noodles and standing up. “You should have led with that.”

  8

  Harebrained Scheme

  It took Caleb two trips to return from the other reality to Facility 17, one with Aidan and one with Oz, and he collapsed as soon as he and Oz materialized in the room. Oz stood there, useless, so Aidan had to rush forward to catch him. He dragged Caleb to the bed, an ungainly movement. Oz didn’t offer to help.

  Caleb opened one eye as Aidan was pulling his shoes off. “You didn’t ask.”

  Their little personal security system. “I think you remembering that is good enough for now.”

  “Deb’s favorite doll,” Caleb said, closing his eyes, “was named Lulu.”

  “You’re right about that. Get some sleep.”

  Caleb didn’t need to be told twice.

  “Stay there. I’ll be right back,” Aidan said to Oz.

  He went to retrieve Laila. Unfortunately, Laila wasn’t in her room, but in the kitchen sitting across from one of the Facility 17 team members, a rangy woman with short brown hair named Clara Chávez. Aidan didn’t really know her, and his dismay must have shown on his face because the smile she offered him was cut short.

  “Laila, I need your help with something,” Aidan said.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Laila demanded. “Kit came back almost twelve hours ago. He brought Lange back by himself. And now you just walk in and say you need my help?”

  Right. He was being an asshole. Caleb reminded him about this sometimes, that he focused too much on his own plans and forged ahead without accommodating other people. “I’m sorry we worried you. And I’m glad that Kit and Lange made it back safely.”

  “That doesn’t answer her question,” Clara observed.

  He’d been standing here for minutes and Oz was back in the room waiting for him. Aidan wanted to shift his weight from one foot to the other, or huff and roll his eyes, but he had to put Clara off the trail without antagonizing her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just have a question for Laila about... our shared experience. In the cell.”

  There, that was private enough, wasn’t it?

  “What else could there possibly be to say about it?” Laila asked.

  “Laila,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “It seems important,” Clara said, stretching an arm across the table and laying her hand over Laila’s. “Go talk. I’ll be around.”

  Laila relented and they took their leave. As soon as they were in the hallway, she elbowed him in the side. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  �
��I wouldn’t have needed to lie if you’d just come with me the first time!”

  “Next time you’re flirting with someone cute, I’m gonna ruin it,” Laila muttered, but she followed him back to the room. When he opened the door and ushered her inside, she stopped in her tracks and said, with no effort to keep her voice down, “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Uh, hi,” said Oz. He gave her a funny little smile that landed somewhere between embarrassed and hopeful. Aidan would bet all of Oswin Lewis Quint’s trillions that the executive had never made that expression in his life.

  “His name is Oz and he’s the key to everything,” Aidan told Laila. “And Caleb’s sleeping, so be quiet.”

  “Oh, right, we’re being quiet because Caleb is sleeping, and not because you have some harebrained scheme involving a Quint lookalike,” Laila said. Aidan was only guessing, but something about her intonation suggested she didn’t believe him.

  “Do you think you could make him look more like Quint?” Aidan asked. He knew she could. He’d made a point of learning what all the runners in the Union could do in addition to being runners. He had some practice avoiding facial recognition himself, but his makeup skills were rudimentary.

  To disrupt the algorithm, you had to treat your face like the canvas of an abstract painting, and Laila did museum-quality work. Aidan always thought of her personal style as fuck you, I’m wearing makeup. But she could do other, more subtle kinds, too. That was what he needed for Oz.

  “I was really hoping you weren’t going to ask me that,” Laila said. “I was hoping you were going to say ‘harebrained scheme? what harebrained scheme? I don’t have a harebrained scheme!’ and instead you were like ‘hell yeah, harebrained scheme! I’m all in on that!’”

  “It’s going to work,” Aidan said steadily. “We just have to do it right.”

  “You activists and your optimism,” she said. “But sure, fine, I’ll do what I can. I don’t have anything here with me, though. I need supplies. And even then, if you want him to look like Quint, you need a kind of tailoring I can’t afford.”