We spent days between gate jumps on our pink sand beach where we could be alone and let our guards down. Yusuf slept in the sand with his head propped on a balled-up hoodie I lifted from our last jump. Figueiredo followed us even here, on the edge of the multiverse, as the disembodied shadow voice. You think you’re safe, but you’ll never be happy. To shut him up, I séanced with the Envisioner that was half-buried in the pink sand, knowing I could get stronger. I’d already one-upped him by lighting the fuse of the Envisioner at the Hotel Selene, but he could still do things with the box that I couldn’t. Footage clattered in my head of him opening gateways to whatever universes he wanted and tossing machines inside, starting this whole mess. As easy as chucking trash out a car window. I didn’t sleep that night until I was able to squeeze my eyes shut and find the thread that felt like the familiar tension of home. I could almost see my place in South Boston. I opened my eyes and the glowing circular gateway under my hand was a window into my apartment. The smell of wet wood and old coffee. Eyes stared at me from the walls around my bed, the long-dead men dressed as cops and carpenters, their open shirts over muscled chests, torn from the pages of antique beefcake rags. My old life that I could step back into if I wanted, or take Yusuf there with me, but the gateway would close behind us and we could never leave.

And all of that belonged to someone that I used to be, anyway.

*   *   *

We fell into a pattern, gating into a universe and hanging out a while, sticking to crowded places in case Kaori and Figueiredo had escaped the rubble and tracked us down. I had to stop asking the machine on the hour because it was driving me crazy. Instead, I killed them in my head. I showed Yusuf how I could gate anywhere, regardless of whether the universe had an Envisioner or not. I saw the spark in his eyes—the scientist who wanted to observe, and study, and theorize—that had faded a bit over weeks of travel. Interesting, he said, but maybe not useful right now. Worst case scenario, I’d drop us into a universe and we’d be stuck there forever, with no Envisioner as an emergency exit. Handy or not, the new ability made me want to lean in and see what else I could do.