EverWorld (Book 3 of the Down World Series)

Chapter Forty-Eight

Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot.

I made Minerva send the Morse Code signal for SOS over and over again to the light on Adam's ICD, having no idea if he would even see it. It was 3:00 am, and I'd left the cabin in the woods almost twenty-one hours before. Did he even realize I was missing? Or did he think I changed my mind about being with him, that I had chosen to remain with my family instead?

My family—Robbie and Mom. Both of whom Alexei had brought to this room at gunpoint and then trapped in one of his three portals while I was with Adam.

And it was my fault. Maybe if I'd been there at the hotel, he wouldn't have had the opportunity. Maybe he just would have come for me instead, and left them alone. Then I'd be the only one lost. The only one...gone forever.

As I crouched on the cold metal floor of the server room, my knees pulled up to stay out of Jin's sight, I tried to shake these thoughts away. But they wouldn't leave. Since the moment I'd realized that Alexei had taken Robbie, my only goal had been to rescue him. But now I didn't even know where he was. I could only assume that Alexei had shoved him into one of those three doors, just like he did to Mom. Alexei himself had practically confirmed it: "He's alive in all of them."

But wait. I shuffled uneasily on the floor, some vague thought itching at the surface of my brain. Then suddenly, it came into clear focus with such ferocity I actually had to clap my hand over my mouth to stop a gasp from escaping.

Alexei's new portals all led to a specific place. They weren't general doors, like the ones that used to be under the high school. They were designed to lead to only one location:

Adam's funeral.

The room in Vietnam.

And the train.

Alexei had chosen three different variations of my future—mine alone—because he was trying to stick me somewhere where it would be too late to stop him from taking control of Minerva.

But at Adam's funeral, the version of Robbie I'd seen had clearly been his real future self. He would have been acting very differently if it had been my present-day brother suddenly swapped with his other body.

And he wasn't in the room in Vietnam, as he would have been if Alexei had made him enter that door. His other self would have been too far away to meld with, and so I would have seen him if he'd been there.

And that just left the train. He wasn't there, either.

Robbie's not in one of the doors, I realized, and a wave of relief rushed over me, followed by unspeakable dread. If he wasn't in a door, then where the hell was he?

Did you have a question, Marina?

The calm, cool voice of Minerva in my head sounded like buzzing flies to me, distracting me from my thoughts. But I took a deep breath and touched my ICD, as if to let her know that now I was talking to her.

Minerva, I asked silently, you told me Robbie was behind the spiral staircase.

Yes.

What did you mean by that?

Exactly what I said, she answered flatly.

I clenched my teeth in frustration. If I ever made it out of this room alive, I was going to have to make Minerva way less literal.

How do you know that? I finally asked Minerva.

I can sense his vitals.

My head whipped around, as though to give her a chastising look. It was still strange to remember that she was not a physical being. She was inside me. And also inside the air around me.