“I’ve been thinking that what’s holding you back is a lack of motivation,” Father said, “but I’ve come up with a solution for that. We’re going to try a version of an experiment I believe you’re familiar with.” He gestured toward the corner. “Winifred, get inside the Faraday cage.”

Winnie eyed the cage anxiously. It was for her own protection, but it still made her nervous—being trapped. She swallowed her fear and stepped into the eight-by-eight cage of heavy metal mesh. The walls of the Faraday cage were grounded, preventing any charge from accumulating on its outside surface. Father could surround Winnie with an electric field, which he theorized might act as a medium for her ability, and inside the cage, she would be perfectly safe.

Father was always careful to protect her from harm during their special experiments, just like he safeguarded all his difficult-to-replace equipment.

“Scott, there’s a cardboard box upstairs in the hall. Bring it down, please.” Scott retreated upstairs. After a few moments, he still hadn’t come back, and Winnie wondered if they’d finally reached his edge. She was relieved when she heard him coming down the stairs, but when he returned, his eyes were dark, and his mouth was set in a straight line. It was an expression she’d never seen him wear before.

Scott met Winnie’s eyes through the mesh of the cage, and it was plain as day—he’d stayed for her. But he didn’t want to be there.

“Well, bring it out,” Father said.

Scott opened the box and lifted out a small black kitten. He cradled it to his chest and stroked its fur absentmindedly. The kitten let out a tiny mew.

This was too much.

She could easily guess the experiment Father had planned. It was awful. And how could she pretend it had never happened, with Scott there as witness?

Schrödinger’s cat-in-a-box thought experiment was quite well known. Imagine a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source in a sealed box. If a single atom of the radioactive source decayed, a monitor would register the radioactivity and the flask would be shattered, killing the cat. There was equal probability that an atom would or would not decay over the course of an hour. Within that time frame, the cat must be considered both alive and dead. It was all theoretical, of course, or at least that was what Schrödinger’s paper supposed, and what other scientists assumed.

Winnie knew better.

This was a representation of how splits happened. The cat really was both alive and dead, just in separate realities.

“You’re both familiar with Schrödinger’s famous paradox, I assume?” Father asked.

“It’s meant to be a thought experiment,” Scott said, speaking through his teeth, “not an elaborate method of exterminating house pets.”

Winnie braced for Father to explode, but he just laughed.

“Father, please—”

His smile froze, and he spoke flatly. “Perhaps this wouldn’t be necessary if we’d had any measure of success—if you’d tried a little harder.” Father turned to Scott. “Put it on the workbench,” he said, pointing. “There is fine.” He looked back atWinnie. “We don’t need any elaborate setup, do we? Geiger counters, uranium, and the like? Schrödinger always was more of a showman than a scientist, and there is, as they say, more than one way to kill a cat. As for our element of chance, a coin toss should work just fine.”

Father had made her play this game before, but without such grim stakes. He flipped a coin, then checked the results without letting her see. After years of training her focus, Winnie could usually force herself to see the splinter of the toss, and then she would know that if it was tails in that other world, it was heads in her own, or vice versa. The next step—the one she’d never succeeded at—was changing the results of the coin toss that had already happened. After she tried to will it different, Father would look again, hoping to see a new result, and be disappointed.

Winnie didn’t really think she could affect the outcome of something that had already happened like that. Then again, Father always told her that she was small-minded to cling to a linear idea of time. Space and time were a continuum, and relative to the observer. She was a different sort of observer, wasn’t she? So, Father said, why wouldn’t she be able to use her observations to influence time as well as matter?

Winnie glanced at the kitten, looking so forlorn sitting there on the workbench. It didn’t know it should run away. It was such a baby, she didn’t even think it would be able to.

Would Father really kill it if Winnie failed to change the results of the coin toss? She looked at him—the wildness in his eyes.

Yes.

He would.

Winnie would try her hardest. That was the most she could do.

“All right,” Father said. “Put your hands on the receivers.” Winnie took hold of the metal rods that measured the electrical activity in her own body. “Scott, the circuit, please.”

Scott stood there a moment, looking at her, his expression one of confusion and pity—exactly what she’d wanted to avoid. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her.

Then he flipped the circuit, flooding the Faraday cage with current. Electricity would saturate the metal mesh surface, then harmlessly bleed back into the earth below through the grounding wire.
Father tossed the coin in the air, caught it, and placed it, covered, on the back of his hand. He glanced at the face of the coin himself without letting Scott or Winnie see, but Winnie didn’t need to look to know. She’d caught the splinter as soon as the coin was tossed—it was heads there. So, tails in her own world.

“All right, Winifred. I want you to change the result. Now concentrate, and tell me when you’re ready.”

Even though Winnie thought she had no control over the coin, she still had to try. She closed her eyes so tight they hurt and focused as hard as she could. She could hear the kitten meowing on the bench a few feet away. Why did Father do these things?

But she knew. She knew.

Winnie squeezed the receivers in her hands and wished for a different outcome. Heads, heads, heads, she repeated fervently in her mind.

“Enough—five seconds and I’m looking, whether you’re ready or not.”

One of the machines began to whine, but she pushed the noise aside. Do it, she told herself fiercely. Just force it to happen.

Winnie could hear the cage humming. She felt a sort of pop below her breastbone. Her eyes flew open. Something was wrong. If something was wrong with the cage, all that current could touch her, stick out a forked tongue and take a taste . . .

“Scott?” Winnie cried shrilly, her head full of images of being electrocuted, burnt to a crisp. “Scott! I think something’s wrong!”

Scott hurried close. “It’s buzzing.” He bent over to take a closer look at something, then immediately jumped up. “The grounding wire—it’s frayed! Professor Schulde, cut the power!”

But it was too late. There was too much current to be contained, and with the grounding compromised, nowhere for all that energy to go. Electricity jumped off the Faraday cage in a blinding arc—how could something so dangerous be so pretty?—and Scott was right there, the quickest path to the ground.

Winnie saw Scott seize as electricity surged through his body. Then he crumpled.

Winnie’s legs gave out beneath her almost in tandem with Scott’s, and she collapsed onto the floor of the cage. Its surface was still buzzing with charge, but she was safe inside. If the wire mesh had been damaged, she would have been at risk, but she should have realized immediately that wasn’t the case. She’d been worried for herself, when she had been the only one who was safe.

Her nose was thick with the acrid smell of singed hair. Scott’s hair. She shook her head ferociously, as if she could undo what she’d done through the sheer vehemence of her denial.

First Mama, then Scott. Was anyone who got too close to Father doomed, or was it just anyone she loved? Or was it the two of them, together, who destroyed all pure, good things they touched? She couldn’t bear it. Everything was too awful. She couldn’t bear it.

Father shut off the generator and stumbled over, looking like a ghost of himself. Pale, edges blurred—that was the smoke. “Are you all right?” he asked her, voice trembling.

Winnie didn’t bother to answer. “Scott? Scott, can you hear me?” She pushed the door of the Faraday cage open and tried to run to him, but Father blocked her way.

“Stay here. I’ll check on him.”

Scott was crumpled on the floor like a discarded rag doll. She could see the scorched hole on the arm of his lab coat from where the electricity had struck. He was so still.

Father knelt by his side and shook him, shouting Scott’s name right in his face.

But he didn’t move.

Father looked back at her. He looked shell-shocked, and suddenly sober.

She hated him. She hated him like she had never hated anything.

Scott couldn’t be dead. Her mind skipped away from the thought. She refused to live in a world without him in it.

Winnie’s head buzzed.

Her vision tunneled, then went dark.