It’s hard to accept that I can’t return. The world quivers before me—every blade of grass etched with frost, every tree bough laden with snow, every ray of the morning sun. There is no hint of nostalgia, no whiff of memory. And yet it’s untouchable. When my hands reach out, I feel only paper. The future has me firmly in its talons.

But for Isaac, anything was possible. He awoke with an inexplicable sense of peace; when he hit rock bottom, he tended to bounce. As he lay in bed that morning, as still and quiet as a heron in shallow water, he slipped into a vivid dream.

He saw a traveller who wore a great cloak, midnight blue edged with gold. Above him, innumerable stars and galaxies wheeled in luminescent glory. The traveller did not look up. Sometimes his gaze drifted above the horizon, and he grimaced and dragged his head back down as if the sight pained him.

Isaac woke up staring at the slats of his angled wooden roof. He climbed down from the loft and set about making breakfast.

The dream ensnared him with a peculiar melancholy. It was a longing for the impossible, regret for a choice he could not remember making, an old photograph with blurry, anonymous faces. As he poured himself a bowl of cereal, he grew slower and slower until he came to a complete stop.

He looked out the window. There was no one in sight. The world was a uniform white, dappled with blue shadow.

As he stared through the spindly arms of frost creeping up the glass, he found himself on the verge of revelation. In his head, the pale, crisp lines resolved themselves into a white knife with a too-sharp blade.

Maybe Felix was wrong, and Caasi’s knife really could cut anything, from Jon Sprenger’s unfortunate throat to the fabric of reality itself. Maybe Caasi had sliced open the rift which led into the Boston subway.

Isaac recalled its perfect shape, a square of absence where the world fell away. It felt artificial. Intentional. He knew it was tied to his doppelganger.

And it all started there. Caasi had jumped from the subway station to SEIDR, and from SEIDR to Felix’s workshop. Maybe he needed the rift, or maybe it was just a side-effect of getting what he actually wanted—a way to travel across space and time without passing through either.

And now the whole puzzle was only missing one piece. Isaac could almost see it. All the edges aligned perfectly and left him with a single gap where the truth should be.

Just like the rift. The center was gone, and his doppelganger was responsible.

Which left Isaac with a single burning question: what had Caasi done with the patch of reality he cut away from the universe?

Of course. This was the key, landing with all the subtlety of a stone falling on his head. Caasi was carrying his own little piece of the fabric, somehow using it to jump from one place to the next.

His heart sped up as he imagined the possibilities. If he was right, this was the most beautiful thing he could picture—the option to go anywhere. To choose his own reality.

Isaac stewed in his jealousy until he could work up the nerve to call SEIDR. More than ever, he was sick of playing by their rules. He’d never thought there was such a stunning alternative.

It was so close and yet so impossibly far. Isaac was already wrapped in the fabric, blue-gold strands which held him bound to time and space like a butterfly pinned to a cork board, and yet he couldn’t quite reach it. The lines of it ran along parallel tracks, looping time and space into a great circle.

At 7:49AM, Isaac Skinner called Yaz Toma. As soon as she picked up the phone, he said, “I know how he’s doing it.”

“What?”

“Caasi. I know how he’s getting around.”

There was a gap of uncharacteristic silence. “Can you meet me at the Spire?” she asked.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Isaac tried to do three things at once—brush his unruly hair, finish his bowl of cereal, and pack a bag with everything he might need. Halfway through his preparations, someone knocked on the door.

When Isaac opened it, Basil was standing on the porch. His eyes widened at the sight of his nephew, clutching a hairbrush in one hand and a t-shirt in the other, with a spoon hanging from his mouth.

“Uncle!” Isaac said in surprise, dropping the spoon. He’d never seen Basil awake this early.

“Your lights were on last night,” Basil said hesitantly. “I came to say hello.” He was bundled in a puffy coat and scarf, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“Come in, come in,” Isaac said, picking up his spoon. “I’m leaving in a few minutes.”

Basil stepped into the kitchen, stomping the snow off his boots and watching with furrowed white brows as Isaac ran around the house.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to SEIDR.” Isaac could not keep the slightly crazed smile off his face. “I figured it out. My doppelganger is using the fabric of reality to get around. Or a piece of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I made it. I’m gonna be a wizard.”

“My congratulations,” Basil said softly. “How has it been? Are you happy there?”

“Oh, I’m—well, you know. It’s tolerable.”

Basil sat down in Isaac’s armchair and held his spidery fingers out, warming them over the wood stove. “That is not quite the same thing.”

“As long as they keep their end of the deal, I’m not complaining. How have you been? How are the bees?”

“Good, I hope. I hear them humming, but dare not open the hives while it is so cold.”

For a while there was companionable silence between them. Isaac finished packing and slurped up the soggy dregs of his cereal. Basil whistled a small tune. He broke it off halfway through and said, “Do you think you will stay there for a long time?”

“If becoming a wizard takes a long time, then yes. Probably.”

“I will make a bold suggestion,” Basil said. “And if you do not like it, you may call me an old fool and ignore it. You should join the chess club.”

“The frog one?”

“Yes, yes, the New Frog Chess Club. I was a member years and years ago. It is a good way to meet the best.”

Isaac blinked. “The best what?”

“People. Players. Friends.”

Isaac’s conversation with Miriam came back to him in a rush. Laurel Gray had been a member of the chess club as well. “As much as I’m tempted to call you an old fool,” he said fondly, “that sounds like a pretty good idea.” It was a lead, if nothing else.

Basil looked up with a flash of relief. “Good. Good. We can play when you come back.”

“Oh, you’ll destroy me,” Isaac said. “I don’t even know how to play chess.”

Basil grinned and raised a finger. “Yet.”

“Yet.”

Isaac shrugged on his black jacket and picked up his bag. “I’ll visit once all the Caasi stuff is sorted out.”

“You know where to find me. Isaac?”

“Yes?”

Basil opened his mouth, and then hesitated. Several emotions warred on his face. “Take care,” he said finally. “Don’t believe everything you hear. And come back soon.”

“I will.”

And then Isaac was out the door, bounding across the snow. He got into his car and drove off at a tremendous speed, swerving down the narrow road until he reached the highway. It was a straight shot to SEIDR from there; he rolled the windows down and tasted the roaring wind.

***

“Can you prove it?” Yaz asked.

“What?”

“It seems a little far-fetched—using the fabric of reality as a transportation device. ”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Isaac said. He was sitting across from Yaz. A sunbeam bounced off her gleaming white desk and hit him square in the face. He blinked in the dazzling brightness. “You can’t seriously tell me that you’ve got a better idea.”

“I don’t. But that doesn’t mean you’re right.” Yaz took a sip of her coffee.

“How am I supposed to prove that? He has a knife, he cut a square out of the rift in Boston, he used the fabric to get here! It all adds up, but I can’t exactly go back and make him do it again, can I?”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me for,” Yaz said coolly. “But Victor won’t accept random speculation unless you have some kind of evidence. It’s as simple as that.”

“I don’t know how to prove it. I just know that I’m right.” He had to be right; the alternative was unacceptable.

“That’s not good enough. Sorry.” She checked her watch. “You have less than twenty-four hours, so I suggest you act quickly.”

Isaac deflated like a popped balloon. As much as he wanted to argue the point, he knew it would be a waste of time. He couldn’t make SEIDR do anything. If they needed evidence, he was completely hopeless without it. And he had nothing beyond a sudden epiphany that he was beginning to second-guess.

“So what are you going to do?” he asked. “Kick me out?”

“Me, personally? No. Someone else can take care of that.” She wasn’t even smug. That was the worst part. There was no spite in her, just bureaucratic efficiency.

All his momentum was gone. There was truly no way out.

He leaned back, and saw the blue and yellow enamel of the samovar peeking out from under Yaz’s desk. He was surprised they hadn’t returned it to the museum yet. Or perhaps, he mused, they were worried that Caasi would steal it again.

“Wait,” he said. “I think I have an idea.”

***

It was a simple plan which relied on a single assumption—if they returned the samovar to the museum, Caasi would come back and take it.

Yaz was skeptical, but Isaac could not be swayed. Caasi clearly thought the samovars were important, or he wouldn’t have lifted all three of them and left the rest of the room untouched. He hadn’t counted on losing one in Felix’s workshop. He probably wanted it back. He just didn’t know where to find it.

Isaac saw this as logical—logical enough to try, anyway. He had nothing to lose. And if he was right, Caasi’s reappearance would give him a chance to test his theory.

He argued until he was blue in the face, and Yaz finally agreed to give it a shot. He slumped back on the couch, his relief mingled with anxiety. If he was wrong, he would not get another chance.

Raimes took charge of setting the trap. He sent a crew of engineers to the museum, and attached a dozen electronic trackers to the samovar under Yaz’s keen supervision.

“I hope this works,” Raimes muttered as he glued the first bug under the tap. It was an absurdly tiny black dot, the size and shape of a grain of rice.

“Me too,” Isaac said. “Do you know how long it’ll take to get set up?”

“At least a few more hours. We’ll put the samovar in place once everything else is finished. Don’t want Caasi showing up before we’re ready for him.”

Isaac could hardly stand the waiting. He was caught in suspense, absolutely sure that vindication was just around the corner. Over the course of a minute, he sank into a deep and unshakable depression, convinced that Caasi would never arrive. The whole thing was sure to be a waste—unless it saved him entirely. He could not make up his mind.

Pacing kept him grounded, so he went back and forth in Yaz’s office until Raimes growled, “For the love of God, Skinner, can you sit still?”

“Sorry,” Isaac said, and threw himself down on the couch again. There was a potted fern draped over one of the armrests. He found himself fiddling with the leaves automatically.

“Please stop shredding my fern,” Yaz said, and Isaac yanked his hands back.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. He was a complete wreck. Total despair was so much easier for him to handle than the tentative possibility of success. The not-knowing was going to drive him crazy.

He managed to sit very quietly for almost a full minute before he broke. The only way to calm the constant rise and fall in his head, it seemed, was to transform it into motion. He vibrated in his seat, tapping out complex rhythms with his feet.

Finally, Raimes set the samovar down. “Skinner, why don’t you find something else to do?” he suggested with strained patience. “Distract yourself. We’ve still got a while to go.”

“How am I supposed to find something else? This is the only thing that matters right now,” Isaac said. “I can’t just stop thinking about it.”

Raimes scrounged around in his pockets and passed him a ticket. “Here. I was going to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame with my—with Maria, but she bailed last week. There’s always a matinee on Fridays. It should be starting soon, but you can probably catch it if you hurry.”

“You want me to watch a play,” Isaac said.

“Musical, actually. It’s at the Catacomb, so you’ll be nearby. I can come and get you as soon as everything’s ready.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“I’m not asking.”

Isaac stared at the ticket. It had Catacomb Theater - SEIDR Season Pass - Free Admission printed across the front of it. He had to admit, it sounded better than ruminating for the next several hours.

“Go on. It beats sitting around in my office, killing plants,” Yaz said. “And who knows? You might even enjoy yourself.”

“Just don’t lose that pass,” Raimes said. “I’ll be wanting it back.”

“Fine.”

Raimes and Yaz didn’t even look up as Isaac left. They were both hunched over the samovar, carefully applying daubs of glue.

***

As it so happened, Isaac did not see The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

He intended to. Somewhere along the way, he got distracted. I can’t blame him. He passed the long line of aspiring actors, saw the posters on the walls, and made up his mind. In all his years of acting, before the fall and after it, he’d never refused a chance to play Hamlet.

He went to the back of the line. It was like dunking his head in cold water. All of his thoughts about Caasi dissolved in the suspense of auditioning. He couldn’t decide if this was better or worse, but at least it was different.

It never got easier. His confidence drained away with every crawling minute.

The waiting would kill him, he decided. He could tolerate anything—missing lines, tripping over his own feet, the scorn of a crowd, any mistake, any criticism, any humiliation—if only it happened immediately. He would rather die than wait.

The line crept forward. The actors ahead of him, one by one, stepped through an unremarkable doorway and vanished. There was no clue as to what lay beyond, save for a sign which read HAMLET AUDITIONS - HERE AND NOW! It yanked him squarely into the present, and the present lasted forever.

When his turn came around, he shook off his dread and went into the room. Three people sat behind a table, staring at him. The walls to his left and right were each covered by a floor-to-ceiling mirror. When Isaac glanced in either direction, he was faced with infinite versions of himself, multiplying into a darkening tunnel. The effect was disconcerting.

“Name?” asked the woman in the center of the table.

“Isaac Skinner.”

“Do you have a role in mind?”

“Uh, just Hamlet.” Someday he would play Polonius, he told himself. But not today.

She gestured to one of the men flanking her, and he got up and handed Isaac a sheet of paper.

“You can read from the top,” she said.

“Now?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

In the eerie space between two walls of endless duplicates, Isaac clutched the paper and tried to gather himself. He searched for some wellspring of inner fortitude and found a lump of fear sitting under his rib cage instead.

But that was how it always went. He found readiness in a steady, measured breath.

“O that this too too solid flesh would melt,” he begged, “thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.”

Being Hamlet was easy. For all his woe and indecision, his problems were quite simple. Terrible, yes, but clean. He was designed to be sad, and that was a strange comfort. In the paper world of the script, suffering had a meaning beyond mere coincidence. It was refreshing.

When he was halfway through the monologue, something odd happened. A flicker of motion caught his eye, and he glanced to his left.

In the double mirror, six copies down the line, one of the Isaacs stepped forward. Desynchronized from the long line of reflections, he began to walk deeper and deeper into the mirror.

Isaac stopped reading. All of his duplicates turned in unison to stare at the rogue Isaac as he continued down the tunnel. He stepped through frame after frame, getting smaller and more distant as he went.

Isaac wondered if he was losing his mind. He could do nothing but gape as he watched himself vanish, a tiny black silhouette that grew fainter and fainter until he was swallowed by the dark.

“Are you alright, Mr. Skinner?” the woman asked.

“Fine,” he stammered. “I just lost my—uh, place.” He’d memorized this monologue years ago, but his head was empty. He scanned the page and started again, his voice trembling. “Heaven and earth! Must I remember?”

As he spoke, he could not stop himself from checking the mirrors, searching for a hair out of place, an unexpected smile or frown, a copy of Isaac falling half a second behind. None of them stepped out of line.

Isaac finished, and bowed awkwardly, and escaped into the Catacomb Theater’s cramped hallways. From there, he found his way to the lobby, where he could faintly hear a luminous singing drifting through the wall.

He tried to convince himself that he’d imagined the whole thing, out of nerves and stress and exhaustion. It didn’t work. The apparition would not leave his brain.

He was getting sick of chasing himself.

Raimes found him an hour later. “We’re ready,” he said. “Are you?”

***

The museum had transformed into a crimson hellscape. Lacquered, grinning masks with white teeth and carved human skulls lurked behind panes of glass, staring with empty eyes and frozen grins.

The spotlights were all red, and the engineers had pitched a bulky tent against one of the walls. They’d added a bear trap in front of the samovar exhibit, painted white to blend in with the marble.

Though, as Isaac pointed out, it wouldn’t help much if Caasi was actually using the fabric of reality to teleport. Raimes grunted and said it was better to cover all your bases.

They climbed into the tent, which had been carefully pinned and painted with the texture of the cave around it. From the outside, if you squinted, it looked like a large bulge in the chiseled walls. The facade was not so effective up close.

They sat on flat pillows and observed the museum through a screen in the canvas.

“This might be dangerous, you know,” Raimes said, once they had settled in. “You could watch from the control room cameras if you’re—”

“I’m not going to watch from the fucking cameras,” Isaac said. “He’s my doppelganger. I want to see it happen.”

“Did you read Silas’s case?”

“Are you saying Caasi wants to murder me?”

“I’m just saying—there is a precedent for that kind of thing. Doppelgangers killing their counterparts.”

“Where’s Yaz?”

“She’s on her way. You like changing the subject, huh?”

“I want this to be over,” Isaac said, staring at the overlapping mesh of the screen. It cast a grid of shadow over his face and neck, dotting him with tiny pinpricks of red light. “One way or another.”

Raimes opened his mouth, and then thought better of it. They sat in dark, cramped, uncomfortable silence until Yaz arrived.

Her footsteps clicked across the floor. She carried the samovar reverently. Dodging around the bear trap, she set it down on the pedestal and then sprinted to the tent like she’d just dropped a live grenade. Isaac held the flap open for her.

“Hello, boys,” she said, climbing into the tent. “Having fun?”

Raimes frowned. “You’re staying too? This is a bad idea.”

“Sorry to crash the party, but Victor wanted a first-hand report.”

“I can give him a first-hand report,” Raimes said. “If something goes wrong, Caasi could kill all three of us and leave the Institute crippled.”

“You’re exaggerating. Isaac isn’t that important,” Yaz said. She winked at him.

Isaac said, “This is all assuming that Caasi actually shows up.”

“You better hope he does,” Raimes said. “This was a pain in the ass to set up. Especially on short notice.”

Isaac did hope. Fervently. He would’ve prayed, if he believed that God paid any attention to that kind of thing. This was his sole remaining chance, and he clung to it like a drowning man clutches a thrown rope. His earlier energy was gone, replaced by a grim sense of resignation.

At first the three of them waited, tense and quiet, eyes peeled. There was no sound but the whistle of Raimes’s breath escaping his nose and the chiming of distant bells to mark the hours.

Eventually, they began to relax. The samovar stood shining, bold and bright in a sea of red light, with two bare pedestals beside it. It seemed Caasi had not noticed its return. Or perhaps he didn’t want it anymore.

They started betting when nearly three hours had fallen past them.

“I’m thinking it’ll happen soon,” Raimes said. “I’ll put my money on him showing up before midnight.”

“How much are you offering?” Yaz asked.

“Nothing crazy. Twenty bucks, maybe?”

“A hundred says that he never shows,” Isaac said. He was met with quizzical silence. “I’d rather see him, and lose the money, but I wouldn’t mind some cash to soften the blow.” Like pouring a water bottle on a house fire.

“Fair enough,” Yaz said. “Then I’ll put a hundred after midnight.”

“Time will tell,” Raimes muttered, checking his watch.

Time kept its lips sealed for a while. Suspense degraded into boredom. Over and over, Isaac asked himself why he thought this would work. It relied so much on speculation. Caasi might be able to teleport using the fabric of reality itself, he might want the samovar, he might realize that it had been returned to the museum, he might come back to take it, he might not sidestep their entire trap—but all it took was a wrong turn somewhere along the way, and Isaac’s whole plan fell to ruin. He had all night to agonize about all the ways he could be wrong.

He could not say when things changed. It was like a subtle pull on a string he could not see. The world became taut, motionless, and the air had the quality of hollow expectation that he associated with thunderstorms. There was nothing to justify his sudden vigilance, but he sat up and stared at the samovar.

Yaz seemed to notice it too. As they both became alert, Raimes said, “What’s—”

“Shh,” Isaac hissed.

In the middle of the museum, in front of their expectant gaze, a man stepped out of thin air.

He was Isaac. He stood like Isaac. The narrow shape of his face and his hands and his curly dark hair were unmistakable. There was no distinction between him and the flesh-and-blood Isaac who sat on the other side of a wall of canvas, his heart beating rapidly, his eyes fixed on the screen.

Under the steady red light, Caasi was shrouded in a swath of royal blue. It was tied around his neck and trailed out behind him in a weightless cloud, sparking with rutilant gold. The world around it seemed so dull, so monotone, in comparison with that impossible shade of blue.

Isaac sucked in a breath through his teeth.

He wanted it. Before his very eyes, the fabric of reality floated on an invisible current, almost close enough for him to touch. His fingers itched for it. This was the stuff of dreams.

His doppelganger reached for the samovar, his fingers wrapping around the handles. In a moment Caasi would be gone, and Isaac would be left to deal with SEIDR’s bargains and bullshit and constant duplicity. He could’ve choked on the envy that bubbled up within him. He wanted to slip between realities as easily as a bird takes flight.

It was not a conscious decision. Before he could think twice, Isaac climbed out of the tent.

Caasi spun around in a wave of blue. Suddenly, Isaac was face-to-face with himself.

He froze, his bravado melting away. In a flash of recollection, he saw the photos of Silas and his doppelganger, lying next to each other in pools of blood. Adrenaline hit him like a kick to the head.

It was too late to back out now. “Hello,” he said.

Caasi opened his mouth. His teeth were dripping with a thick black liquid. A sound came out of his throat, a low groaning and cracking noise, like a tree bending in a strong wind. He sounded angry. His eyes were dark holes.

Now Isaac understood what Miriam meant. Caasi was shaped like Isaac but it was a lie, a thin layer of skin stretched over … something else.

He found it comforting to see nothing of himself behind the mask. It was merely an image of Isaac plastered over a monster. Far, far better than the alternative.

Yaz and Raimes whispered furiously inside the tent, but they were too quiet for Isaac to understand. The sound was like wind through the reeds.

He could not look away. Something kept him fixed in place. He shook a little, but his feet would not move.

Caasi took a step forward and his leg landed in the bear trap. It snapped around him with a loud clang. He glanced down, his brow furrowed.

Isaac wanted to run. Instead, he found himself staring at his doppelganger with a pang of recognition. Beneath the fabric, Caasi was dressed in a black tunic, rough-spun trousers and soft leather shoes. Such was the very outfit Isaac wore when he fell into Oshun, eleven years ago. He knew it better than his own face.

“What are you?” Isaac said.

Caasi hacked and spat a gob of black goo onto the floor. Before Isaac could react, the fabric wrapped around Caasi and he melded into it, vanishing entirely in the span of a second. The glorious, luminous blue disappeared along with him.

He left the bear trap behind.

Isaac staggered and fell to the ground. He heard Raimes and Yaz come out of the tent, but their words were only a low buzz in his ears. He could have laughed with sheer relief. He was alive. More importantly, he was right.