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Sarah arrives on the platform a full five minutes early. This is out of the ordinary for her, and she knows it - but everything’s out of the ordinary now. The life that she’s become habituated to, the running and fighting and digging into the murky past and desperately trying to predict the future, is over now. Neolution’s gone, its members scattered to the four winds. Dyad’s been dissolved. All the nemeses of her and her sisters - at least the ones they can think of - have been dealt with in some way or another.
She should be happy, she supposes, but she’s not. Not really.
Her feet fall heavily, all too noisily, on the concrete. She looks ahead and sees the conductor already directing people onto the train, most of whom are dragging luggage behind them. Her own backpack, a huge trekking thing, weighs heavily on her shoulders and hips, holding clothes, snacks, toiletries, and a well-wrapped handgun. It’s one from Beth’s old armory, and Sarah hopes she’ll never have to use it, but Mrs. S insisted she take it just in case things go south quickly.
There is a danger, though, that some rogue Neo agent got hold of the files they’ve been using, and will be lying in wait to ambush her. Or so Cosima and Mrs. S thought, anyway - that’s why Sarah has to get to her sisters first, as soon as she can.
Delphine’s helped her and her sisters track down eighteen other clones so far, but they’ve only managed to get in touch with five yet. Sarah imagines what they must look like, all these sisters she’s never met: Julia Legrand, elementary school teacher, from Sherbrooke. Emma Truman, EMT, from Brooklyn. Katie Alexander, theatre actor and barista, from Boston. Maggie Petrowski, PhD student in political science, from Cleveland. Callie Herter, temp worker, from Milwaukee. Marie-Laure Dubois, punk rock guitarist, from Laval. All of them, carrying around that unrealised bond to all the others, every day of their lives... Sarah only hopes they won’t take it badly and totally reject her - she doesn’t think she could stomach that. She remembers Alison’s attitude at first, the rejection and apprehension, even fear, at confronting the reality of being a clone.
But now that there’s no longer a mysterious multinational conspiracy breathing down their necks, maybe it’ll be easier on them. Their lives and livelihoods are - hopefully - no longer in danger of being constrained and suffocated, especially now that Cosima’s got a method of making large amounts of the cure.
Even so, she thinks, she’s lost far too much of her family. Amelia, her birth mother, who she knew for less than two days before Helena murdered her. Katja, who she knew for barely two minutes before Helena shot her. Helena herself, that shattered husk of a woman who’d been slowly rebuilding herself from the inside, her strange, devoted twin sister, dead. MK, who’d been living outside of the system of control for so long, dead. Rachel, the child of Dyad who’d turned on her creators, dead. Ira, Rudy, Seth, nearly all her Castor brothers, all dead before she’d even gotten the chance to really know them. Beth, who set her off on this long, bizarre, mind-bending, painful journey, who couldn’t find a way out, but who transferred the mantle of protector onto Sarah as she walked off the platform into the path of a train.
This platform, in fact.
Sarah realises it as she notices the cracks in the concrete, the battered payphone she just passed, the sign up ahead with the platform number on it. She remembers calling Mrs. S and that feeling of fatigue combined with exasperation and annoyance, and how it shifted to curiosity as she approached the woman who’d taken off her heels and set down her bag, then the complete confusion as she saw Beth’s face for the first and last time in the flesh, and then the horror as she bore witness to Beth’s suicide.
She’s stopped walking towards the train, because she can see the exact spot where Beth had turned to face her. And somehow - she can’t really process how it happens - she’s face-to-face with Beth once again. Except this time, Beth is standing there, gazing at Sarah with an enigmatic look on her face, dressed in her police blazer and her white button-down shirt, and a million times less tired-looking.
Sarah doesn’t want to look away. She can’t look away. This is Elizabeth Childs standing there, on the platform, as any being made of flesh and blood and bone would do. She can see the little strands of hair that have escaped from Beth’s ponytail, peeking out from behind her ears; the tiny wrinkles on Beth’s lips, which are shaped into something that looks like the barest beginning of a sardonic half-smile, but it’s hard to tell; the worn glint of the brass buckle on the belt she’s wearing, the creases in her pants where her hand are stuffed into her pockets, the impossible softness of her eyes. Sarah is utterly, completely transfixed by the sight, and her insides are flooded, overwhelmed with something, a mix of a million emotions she can’t hope to identify. Beth is the only thing Sarah can see clearly anymore; everything else is just a blur of light and dark.
“Hey,” says Beth, a warm, slightly sad smile appearing on her face.
Sarah can’t fathom how or why this is happening, She tries to say something, but she’s powerless to utter a single word to her dead sister. She takes a deep breath, though, and manages to speak. “Hey,” she says weakly in return.
“You finished what we started,” says Beth simply. “You’ve done what we set out to do.” She pauses, then adds, “You’re a better protector for our sisters than I ever was.”
Sarah doesn’t know how to respond to this. She still can’t believe this is happening. All she can find within herself to do is to just continue gazing at Beth, drinking in the sight of her sister standing there like nothing had happened, absorbing every detail and nuance.
“But you’re not done,” Beth continues. “You can’t stop now. You have to love your sisters, you have to love your family, as much as you possibly can - for me, for Mika, for Helena, for Rachel, for Katja, for Jennifer, for Miriam.” Her gaze is steely now, boring into Sarah, gripping her with its unshakeable force. “You’re the grounded one. You’re the rock. Be brave.”
Sarah feels weightless and immeasurably heavy at the same time. There are tears just behind her eyelids, but she can’t let them fall. She breathes shakily and doesn’t stop staring at Beth, this strong, beautiful, wonderful sister who she’ll probably never see again.
“Go find the rest of us. And take care of them.” Beth’s expression turns suddenly pained, and Sarah sees a bottomless regret in her her eyes for a moment, but then she adds, “You need to.”
Sarah is about to break, about to collapse, about to give way, but she takes a deep breath and says, “I love you,” and it comes out uncontrolled, her voice cracking.
Beth’s eyes pin her to the spot, and she replies, “I know.” The warm, sweet smile returns to her lips.
The conductor’s voice comes blaring into Sarah’s consciousness like a car horn - or perhaps the screeching of emergency brakes on the wheels of a passenger train - and her attention is ripped away. “Last call for the eight thirty-five to Montréal! Last call to board!” Sarah looks around for the source of the voice, and sees the last couple passengers being herded into the coach. In a daze, she realises that she has to hurry up, or it’ll leave without her.
She reaches the doors of the coach, fishes the ticket out of her pocket and shows it to the conductor, and steps up onto the train, still breathing shakily. She turns around to look back at the spot on the platform where her sister was.
But Beth is gone. The air is vacant in her place, and no-one else is anywhere on the platform. Sarah’s chest convulses, and a violent, breathy sob escapes from her. Her eyes can’t contain the tears anymore, so they begin to stream down her face; she tries to keep her mouth pressed firmly shut, but she’s trembling.
I can’t stop now, she thinks, as she stares forcefully at the platform, trying to keep Beth’s image in her head. I have to keep going. I have to find my sisters. For Beth.