The trip was silent.
For Lisa, it's a lot to take in. Having to meet and wake up next to the love of your life every day sounds so beautiful to her and yet, now, she feels all these internal conflict on whether all those times spent with other Jennie makes her a cheater.
For Jennie, it's a lot harder to control. Control in a sense that having the person you have ever loved next to you again, after experiencing all those life threatening situations. It's hard to contain your happiness when all you ever wanted is finally next to you.
And Jennie didn't control it any longer, She crashes into Lisa and squeeze her tight and say, "God, I've missed you," before Jennie even think to stop herself.
Lisa just grab hold of her arm and pulls her Jennie closer to her. She glances around and asks with a shaky voice, "Where to now?"
Jennie thought about it on the drive over from the police station-someplace big and bustling, where even if one of the other Jennies followed them, then they could easily blend into a crowd. Now Jennie second-guess that choice.
She think of three alternates-Seoul Park Conservatory, the observation deck of the YG tower, and the Daejeon National Cemetery. Daejeon feels like the safest option, the most unexpected. And Jennie is similarly drawn to YG and Seoul Park. So she go against her instinct and swing back to her first choice.
She tells Lisa, "Water Tower Place."
They ride, hands intertwined, in silence into the city.
As the buildings of downtown edge closer, Lisa's cell phone vibrates.
She looks at the screen and then hands it over so Jennie can see the text she just received.
It's a 773 number Jennie doesn't recognize.
Lisa, it's Jennie. I'm texting you from a strange number, but I'll explain everything when I see you. You're in danger.
Where are you? Please call me back ASAP. I love you so much.
Lisa looks scared out of her mind.
The air inside the car is prickling with electricity.
Their driver turns onto an avenue, which is clogged with lunch-hour traffic.
The yellowed limestone of the Seoul Water Tower looms in the distance, dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers that line the expansive avenue of the
Magnificent Mile.
The Escalade pulls to a stop at the main entrance, but Jennie ask the driver to drop them underground instead.
From Chestnut Street, they descend into the darkness of a parking garage.
Four levels down, Jennie tells the driver to stop at the next bank of elevators. As far as she can see, no other cars have followed them in.
Their door slams echo off the concrete walls and columns as the SUV pulls away.
Water Tower Place is a vertical mall, with eight floors of boutique and luxury stores built around a chrome-and-glass atrium.
Jennie and Lisa ride up to the mezzanine level, which houses all the restaurants, and step off the glass elevator.
The snowy weather has brought the crowds indoors.
For the moment at least, Jennie feels perfectly anonymous.
They find a bench off in a quiet corner, out of the flow of foot traffic.
Sitting beside Lisa, Jennie thinks that all the other Jennies in Chicago at that moment are willing to do anything, willing to kill, just to be where she's sitting.
Jennie takes a deep breath.
Where to even begin?
She looks at Lisa in the eye and brush a wisp of hair behind her ear.
"I love you so much Lisa" Jennie whimpers as she embraces her wife.
She starts telling about her abduction on a crisp October night when she was forced to drive at gunpoint to an abandoned power plant.
She tells Lisa about her fear, how she thought she was going to be murdered, about waking up instead in the hangar of a mysterious science lab, where people she had never seen appeared not only to know her, but to have been anticipating her return.
Her wife listens intently to the details of Jennie's escape from Velocity Laboratories on that first night, and her return to their house, to a home that wasn't her home, where she lived alone as a woman who had chosen to dedicate her life to her research.
A world where Lisa and Jennie had never been married.
Jennie tells Lisa about meeting her doppelgänger.
Her capture and imprisonment in the lab.
Her escape with Jisoo and Rosé into the box.
Jennie describes the multiverse.
Every door she walked through.
Every ruined world.
Every Seoul that wasn't quite right, but which brought her one step closer to home.
There are things she leave out.
Things she can't yet bring herself to say.
The two nights she spent with Lisa after the event opening.
The two times Jennie watched her die.
Jennie will share those moments eventually, when the time is right.
She tries to imagine what it must feel like for Lisa to hear this story.
When the tears begin to slide down Lisa's face, Jennie asks, "Do you believe me?"
"Of course I believe you."
How does someone even begin to process such a thing?
Lisa wipes her eyes and says, "I just want to be sure I understand exactly what you're telling me. So on the night you went out to Rosé's celebration, this other Jennie stole your life? She took you into the box and stranded you in her world so she could live in this one? With me?"
"That's what I'm telling you."
"That means the man I've been living with is a stranger."
"Not completely. I think she and I were the same person up until fifteen years ago."
"What happened fifteen years ago?"
"The multiverse exists because every choice we make creates a fork in the road, which leads into a parallel world. That day we both proposed to each other in Thailand didn't just happen the way you and I remember it. It unfolded in a multitude of permutations. In one world, the one we live in now, you and I decided to make a life together.
We got married and made a home. In another, I decided that becoming a wife in my late twenties wasn't the path for me. I worried my work would be lost, that my ambition would die.
So there's a version of our life where we're not together. You pursued your art. I pursued my science. And eventually, we parted ways. That woman, the version of me you've been living with for the last month-she built the box."
"Which is a large version of that thing you were working on when we first met-the cube?"
"Exactly. And somewhere along the way, she realized everything she'd given up by letting her work be the thing that defined her. She looked back at the choice she made fifteen years ago with regret. But the box can't take you back or forward in time. It only connects all possible worlds at the same moment, in the present. So she searched until he found my world. And she traded my life for hers."
The look on Lisa's face is pure shock and disgust.
She rises from the bench and runs toward the restrooms.
Jennie patiently waited for Lisa. She's not going anywhere, her wife isn't going anywhere. Although all the things she have endured basically tells her to panic about not seeing Lisa for more than 30 seconds, Jennie trusts her wife and the chances she have.
She won't lose Lisa again.
And she was correct. Lisa came back, her eyes red while her face looked like she tried so hard to hide the fact that she cried in the restroom. Jennie wished she can hug her wife again but she believes that it would be best for Lisa to face these information on her own for now.
"I knew something wasn't right."
"What do you mean?" Jennie asks.
"You-well, not you, her-she had this different, like, energy about her. We talked more, especially at dinner. She was just, I don't know..."
"What?"
"Different."
There are things Jennie want to ask her wife, questions blazing through her mind.
Was she more fun?
A better wife?
Was life more exciting with the imposter?
But Jennie is afraid the answers to those questions might shatter her.
Lisa, on the other hand, looks so pale.
Jennie asks, "You all right?"
"I have a question for you."
"What?"
"This morning, when you got yourself arrested-was that to get me to come to you?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why not just come to the house after...Jesus, I don't even know what to call her."
"Jennie2."
"After Jennie2 left?"
Jennie say, "Here's where things get really crazy."
Lisa scoffs, "Things aren't already crazy?"
"I wasn't the only..." It sounds insane to even be saying the words but Jennie have to tell her.
"What?"
"I wasn't the only version of me to make it back into this world."
"What does that mean?" Lisa asks.
"Other Jennies made it back as well."
"What other Jennies?"
"Versions of me who escaped into the box in that lab, but took different paths through the multiverse."
"How many?"
"I don't know. A lot, maybe."
Jennie explain what happened at the sporting-goods store and in the chat room. She tells Lisa about the Jennie who tracked her to her room and the one who attacked her with a knife. Lisa's confusion takes a turn toward outright fear.
Jennie say, "This is why I got myself arrested. For all I know, many Jennies have been watching you, following you, tracking your every move as they try to figure out what to do. I needed you to come to me in a safe place. That's why I had you call the car service. I know at least one version of me followed you to the police station. I saw her as we drove past your car. But it doesn't matter. We're here together, and safe, and now you know the truth."
It takes Lisa a moment to find her voice.
She says softly, "These other...Jennies...what are they like?"
"What are you asking?"
"Do they all share your history? Are they basically you?"
"Yes. Up until the moment I stepped into the multiverse. Then we all took different paths, had different experiences."
"But some are just like you? Versions of my wife who have fought like hell to get back to this world. Who want nothing more than to be with me again."
"Yeah."
Lisa eyes narrow.
What must this be like for her?
Jennie can see her trying to wrap her mind around the impossibility of it all.
"Lili, look at me."
Jennie stares into Lisa's shimmering eyes.
"I love you."
"I love you too. But so do the others, right? Just as much as you do."
It rips Jennie's guts out to hear those words.
She have no response to them.
She look up at the people in their immediate vicinity, wondering if they are being watched.
The mezzanine level has become more crowded since we sat.
Jennie sees a woman pushing a stroller.
Young lovers meandering slowly through the mall, holding hands and icecream cones, lost in their bliss.
An old man shuffling along behind his wife, with a look on his face that says, Take me home, please.
We're not safe here.
We're not safe anywhere in this city.
Jennie ask, "Are you with me?"
Lisa hesitates, looks around then back at Jennie.
"Yeah," she says. "I'm with you."
"Good."
"So what do we do now?"