I abandoned the keyboard and fell to my knees. The printer paused but I could see the first two inches of paper, and with it came all of the exhausted metaphors people love to pair with the smooth and white. I felt high from the sight. Ready to conquer.

“What the fuck do you mean, you’re sorry?” Cal demanded as she commandeered the keyboard. “What did you do?”

FORTY SECONDS

The printer started again and I held my fingertips to the dwindling space between me and my future. My past.

Cal typed, and a map flickered on the screen. The image enlarged in stops and starts. From my position, I could tell it was closing in on America. That was something, at least.

My paper was two-thirds out.

TWENTY SECONDS

Cal banged the mouse on the desk.

“Come on!” she yelled.

Her voice sounded different from the way it usually did, even when she was upset. There was fury in it, sure. But there was also something else. Fear.

I almost felt bad, but then the paper dropped, warm as a tender moment, into my outstretched hands, and I had it. The missing piece, the final key to the only thing I had cared about for as long as I knew myself. I folded it again and again and stood up.

TEN SECONDS. PLEASE STEP BACK FROM THE LOOKING GLASS.

“Cal, we have to turn it off.”

“It hasn’t found him yet.” She gripped the edge of the desk, her nose grazing the screen.

“Let go, Cal. They’ll send you back Downstairs.”

I put my hand on her shoulder, and she bucked me off. The map flickered again, and I could see Florida and the jagged edge of Georgia meeting the Atlantic.

“Cal, now!”

I could’ve left her there. In fact, it would’ve tied a very pretty little bow on the whole thing. Cal back in the Downstairs, her brain turned to goo and back again too many times for her to ever remember me or how I threw our deal, and her, under the bus. KQ wouldn’t care. She would be proud of her character-judging skills. She just couldn’t hack it, boss. It would’ve solved a lot of my problems. But the truth is, it didn’t even occur to me. The handle of the door clicked, and I threw myself into Cal, knocking her to the ground.

LILY

THAT MORNING, LILY WOKE up reaching. Regardless of the distance she constructed while awake, she never stopped reaching for Silas in her sleep. He slept later than she did most days, blocking the sun with a pillow or the crook of his arm, and when she reached, he was there to be found. But that morning, he was gone.

Lily listened for voices from the stairwell but heard none. She turned the corner and knocked.

“Si?”