Free Unbreakable (Unraveling) by Elizabeth Norris Page A

tell Struz how to fight this stuff.”
    “What about Ben?” Barclay asks.
    My stomach drops and I feel short of breath, like he just punched me. “What about him?” I’m not about to tell Barclay that I’ve been lying awake at night waiting for Ben Michaels to walk back into my universe while he’s been running around and getting himself in trouble with IA and who knows what else. I need to make sure he’s safe, but the most important thing is to get Cecily back. That’s what I need from Barclay right now.
    “Fair enough,” he says with a shrug. The corners of his lips turn up, though. Like he doesn’t quite believe me.
    The truth is there’s actually not a lot Barclay can tell us that will block the portals. If we had hydrochloradneum, we could use it. Apparently in New Prima, the capital city where Barclay lives and IA is headquartered, there are buildings with the chemical compound in their foundations, and it acts as a shield to prevent portals from opening inside those buildings.
    We don’t have that, though. And even though Struz has given information to scientists, there hasn’t been much advancement in the Multiverse Project, not that anyone can blame them, given the state of the country right now.
    “Can’t IA track these guys through their quantum chargers or something?” I ask.
    He shakes his head. “No, that’s the problem. They’re either using black-market chargers or they’ve dismantled the tracking chips.” Barclay sighs. “If it was that easy to track them, Tenner, we’d have shut them down.”
    “Well, can’t you track the activity or something?” Struz asks.
    “Not likely. Every universe has soft spots. They’re spots where travel between universes is easy—or easier, at least. Those spots don’t register activity unless the portals are unstable, unless they’re creating some kind of bigger disturbances between universes.” Barclay shifts on the floor and looks directly at me. Ben’s portals were unstable. That’s why we ended up with so many problems.
    “Where are the soft spots?” Struz asks.
    Barclay chuckles. “We’re in a big soft spot. It’s called San Diego.”

05:01:44:59
    B arclay looks at me. “You think it’s a coincidence that your boyfriend and his friends got dumped here? They opened a portal with no direction, so it chose the closest soft spot, and here they were.”
    “Why the ocean, then?”
    “Because that’s the thinnest part,” Barclay says. “This whole area is a soft spot, but some areas are thinner than others—some more conducive to portals.”
    “So we’re looking for the thinnest soft spots where someone could portal in and do some reconnaissance, and areas that are highly populated,” Struz says. “Dammit.”
    I look at him. I’m not sure what he’s on to.
    “We need to break up the evac shelters. Think of how many disappearances there have been from Qualcomm alone.”
    “Oh, God,” I breathe. “Even all the people in the beginning that we thought might have abandoned the shelter because it was too crowded . . .”
    Struz nods. “I’ll get our people on it while you’re gone.” He looks at Barclay. “Are there any spots that are . . . whatever you’d call it, thick?”
    “Downtown,” Barclay says. It’s a mess downtown, not exactly habitable. “It would be the last place I’d want to portal in if people were looking for me. The veil between the universes is thickest there, and portaling in would register a certain level of activity.”
    I look at Struz. He certainly has his work cut out for him.

05:01:42:58
    A fter Struz gives the order for the soldiers to release Barclay, he drives the two of us to where La Jolla Village Drive turned into North Torrey Pines Road. It’s what used to be the south-western tip of UCSD’s campus. Now it’s just uneven land, downed buildings, and cliffs that drop straight down into the ocean.
    Between the quakes and the tsunami, the California coastline retreated anywhere