Page 82 of Meet Me in Another Life

He meets her eyes. “We gave up the prime of our lives to spend them sleeping in a metal box. We made that sacrifice willingly, for the sake of the journey. But a lot of people put in a lot of work to make sure that wasn’t all we would experience.” He picks up Félicette, sits her in his lap while he strokes her chin. “And I think they made that decision for a reason. This world may be an illusion, but it’s given us the space to grow, to learn. To think beyond the bounds we’re trapped in.”

Thora crosses her arms. “What’s your point?”

“This—this life, this world—is a gift. I think we should start treating it like one.”

“And I think that sounds dangerously close to treating it like reality. We can’t forget for a second where we really are.” She picks up a sheaf of his sketches, brandishing them at him. “Whyare you still making these? Pictures of our imaginary lives? We already know who we are. How is this helping us find a way out?” She feels her anger surging, but she doesn’t resist it. This is part of who she needs to be: the person who challenges him, who jolts him out of his complacency. She sweeps a pile of drawings to the floor. “Wake up, Santi. Or we’re both going to die in our sleep.”

He sets Félicette gently down and kneels to put his drawings in order. “I’m not sleeping,” he says. “I’m wide awake. You’re the one who’s closing your eyes to everything that brought us this far.”

Thora stares. “Stop.”

He looks up at her, frustrated. “What?”

She grabs at the drawing in his hand. Baffled, he lets her take it. She looks down at the cross-hatched scribble of a familiar face: long-haired, bearded, wreathed in shadows. “You painted this in the memory house.”

He nods, getting warily to his feet. “The face I saw when I fell from the tower.”

She looks up at him. “It’s you.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t recognize it before.” She holds it up. “I guess when I saw your painting, I hadn’t seen the video. I didn’t know what you look like in real life.”

Santi smiles. “En un mal espejo, confusamente,” he murmurs. His gaze becomes urgent. “Thora. When you fell. You said you saw a woman.”

The face is burned into Thora’s memory. Long-haired, shadowed, framed in blazing light. She was looking so hard for an enemy that she didn’t recognize herself.

“Our reflections,” she says. “In the glass panels of our compartments.” Her eyes meet Santi’s. “We must have woken up.”

They head for the door. Neither of them speaks until theystand in the shadow of the tower. Thora watches Santi climb through the gap that leads inside.

“Wait,” she says.

He turns, framed in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

Thora faces him, old bloodstains under her feet. Too much has happened between them in this place. She bites her lip. “We both think this is the right thing to do.”

Santi tilts his head, almost laughing. “If we agree for once, isn’t that a good thing?”

Thora’s eyes travel up the tower, the clock face unreadable at this angle. “This could be our last chance. If we’re doing this, I don’t want us to just agree. I want us to agree on why.”

Santi spreads his arms as if it’s obvious. “We know it worked before.”

“For a second,” Thora says. “But then the simulation just reset. What makes you think it’ll be different this time?”

“Back then, we didn’t know what we were seeing. This time, we’ll know it’s reality. We’ll recognize ourselves, and we’ll be able to hold on.”

“How can you know that?”

He shrugs. “I can’t. But I’m willing to hope.” Thora’s heart sinks. Santi steps out of the tower. “I don’t understand. If you’re not sure, why do you think we should do it?”

She leans back against the stones, feeling like a cornered animal. “Because we’re not going to think of anything else. This is all we’ve got.”

Santi comes to face her. “That’s the wrong reason.”

“So is yours,” she argues. “We can’t just try the same thing again out of misguided hope it’ll turn out differently.”

“We can’t do it out of desperation either.”

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