He looked at her for a second.
“Listen, we both lost important people today,” he continued. “I know this is all messed up46, but we need to stay together. At least for a while to get to the bottom of it47.”
She couldn’t see and hear him anymore. Emotions finally broke through the barrier of shock.
He took her hand and quietly said: “Don’t worry, Lizzy. We’ll figure this out.”
Then he took a ramp to merge into the highway out of the city.
6 DAYS BEFORE THE JUMP
I guess the most difficult thing in this crazy story was to accept that there was nothing crazy about it. I have 6 more days before the jump, and I must put all my memories together while they’re still fresh and painful. Yes, pain. I don’t know if I feel it after the jump. It connects me to the past. My past. My life seems to be so long ago. Will I still be me if I lose it?
In any case, I’d better start from the beginning.
I was in the car with Mark, or Mark’s copy, and my life was disappearing48 in the rear-view mirror49. When we put a good hundred kilometers between us and the city, he started to slow down.
I had no more tears in me and was just staring out of the window thoughtlessly50.
The car stopped.
“Here’s where we meet him,” Mark said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The man who knows the answers,” Mark said and opened the door. “Are you coming?”
5 DAYS BEFORE THE JUMP
“How do you know him?” I asked Mark when we got out of the car.
“You told me about him,” Mark said. “I mean, the other Lizzy. She found him a while ago or he found her. I’m not sure how that happened. In any case, he told her to bring her copy to him.”
“To do what?” I asked quietly.
“Apparently51, someone didn’t want that meeting to happen,” Mark continued.
“To do what?!” I repeated.
“That’s what you and I are going to find out because Lizzy didn’t live long enough to explain that to me,” Mark said, looking around. “It should be somewhere close.”
I looked around as well. We were close to a mountain.