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Theo sighed "You’re worrying about er problems to deal with"

I think he rowing dread

We already knee had to do In the car afterward, we didn’t even discuss other options--just argued over ould get to save Theo I said, "You know I should be the one to go"

"No," Paul said, in that zero-arguments tone that sometimes drives me crazy

"The version of you in the Triadverse ran off to South America, remember?" We appear in our alternate selves, wherever they happen to be, and we have to deal hatever situation we leap into I’ve fallen down staircases, woken up underwater, you name it

Paul insisted, "I wouldn’t have to be in Triad headquarters to get the information All I need is a coh Triad’s security"

"You know Conley has to have beefed up his systeical move, yes"

"So you see the problems?"

"I may not be the ideal candidate, but you’re even worse"

Paul’s bluntness felt like a ss hurt too quickly, though He never s So I said only, "You want to explain that?"

"At least I have a chance of getting the infor undetected," Paul pointed out "You have none"

I didn’t want hiins and ends with hit poitch, ht-brained person in the fa or two about getting past firewalls "When did you get so good with coht ers with his "He took you under his wing from day one, huh?"

"Not day one But early on--after I called out an error in one of his equations At first he was pissed off, but the next afternoon he said he’d rather have o the size of the Golden Gate Bridge His saving grace is that he’s as ready to admire others as he is to admire himself

Paul spoke so tentatively, like he’d never tried to say any of this out loud before and didn’t kno "I’d never gone out to a club before Theo took me Never even drank a beer So he took me out with him He called it ‘remedial adolescence’"

No wonder Paul idolized Theo But he didn’t know the other Theo Not like I did I was the one who’d been led into Triad headquarters for Wyatt Conley to take captive, the one as physically attacked in a submarine The one Theo kissed and clai Paul for the oodness in him--but there’s darkness there too Even that afternoon, when I was more afraid for hi how much the Triadverse’s Theo and our own have in common

Paul had no such doubts His loyalty to Theo was, and is, absolute If he had to break Wyatt Conley’s truce to save Theo, so be it

Conley had said only that we had to stay out of the Triadverse But the Triadverse invented Nightthief--which meant if any cure or treatment existed, that was the only world where we’d be able to find it

First the two of us headed back to Paul’s dor his journey would be, we needed him to leave from a location that could be sealed off to be sure nobody was in the wrong place when he returned, and his physical body once again started interacting with our universe Like, if he left fro on that couch the moment he came back--my parents aren’t one hundred percent certain ould happen, but it could lead to both bodies being fused together in a very perross way