All Our Yesterdays

by Cristin Terrill

  “Remember when you used to hate me?”

  I laugh-sniff-hiccup. “Well, you used to be insufferable.”

  “I think incorrigible is a better word.”

  I lean my forehead against the wall and let myself imagine for a moment that it’s his shoulder, warm and firm, beside me. “You’re so full of it.”

  “Hey, I just got tortured for you. Easy on the ego.”

  “Finn—”

  “Shh,” he says softly. “Now, tell me how wrong you were back then and how wonderful I am.”

  He is wonderful. And he doesn’t deserve this.

  Neither do I.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I say softly.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “No, I’m serious. We’re going to get out of here,” I say, “and I’m going to kill him.”

  I explain everything—the drain, the paper, and the message at the bottom—in a whisper through the slats of the vent. Finn’s silence is as thick and solid as the wall between us. I try to picture him. Shaggy blond hair probably in desperate need of a cut, curling around his ears and the nape of his neck. Blue eyes wide and unfocused with shock. Or are they green? No, definitely blue. Blue like deep, clean water. His mouth hanging open, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t remember what that mouth looks like. Lips thin or full, pink or pale?

  I’m not even sure what I look like anymore.

  “Can we do it?” he finally asks.

  Can we kill him is what he means, but maybe he can’t say the words. “I’m not sure we have any choice.”

  “But first,” he says, “we’d have to break out of here. Go back. You think it’s possible?”

  “Judging from the note, we’ve done it fourteen times already.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure I would have told me if I needed to know.”

  He laughs. “I can’t believe the insanity of that sentence.”

  “Can’t you?” I envy Finn’s gift for finding humor in every situation, but nothing about this is funny to me.

  “Em . . .”

  “Don’t tell me we don’t have to do this.” I must have had a damn good reason for writing that sentence, and the twisted little creature inside of me, the one made up of all my anger and bitterness, isn’t sorry. “Don’t tell me there’s another way.”

  “Actually, I was going to ask what you’re wearing.”

  I bite my lip to stop the smile. Okay, that was kind of funny.

  “God, I miss you,” I say, and instantly wish the words back again. I turn my face away from the vent, irrationally afraid he’ll see me blushing.

  “I know,” he says, voice soft. I imagine him pressing his hand to the other side of the wall. “But I’m right here.”

  Days pass. Finn and I spend the time that spans three meals talking over what I’ve discovered.

  “What time should we go to?” he finally asks. We’ve both been avoiding the subject. It’s painful, and we get enough of that in here already.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I say. “We need to be there for January fourth. Four years ago.”

  Silence.

  “Really?”

  I get his hesitation. It’s not a time I want to relive, either.

  “We can’t do it before he’s figured out the formula,” I say. “The paradox would be so massive that there’s no way to predict what would happen. It has to be after.”

  “Okay,” he says, “but why the fourth?”

  “Because he’ll never think to look for us there,” I say. “Remember when I got the documents?”

  “Of course. It was that day.”

  “But the doctor doesn’t know that,” I say. “He thinks I stumbled on them sometime later. Know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he doesn’t remember discovering the formula that day,” I say. “He thinks he first wrote it down three days later, on the seventh.”

  “So if we go to the fourth,” Finn says, “we’ll have at least three days before he expects us.”

  “Exactly.” I sigh. “Plus, he’ll be weak because of what’s just happened. Any later in time and he’ll be too powerful. Too protected.”

  Finn agrees. He knows as well as I do that there’s no other time that will give us as good a chance. We go over everything again, working out every detail we can in advance. By the end, I’ve memorized every struck-out word of the note and think I know the chain of events that led it to my hands. I don’t remember the events that compelled me to write these lines, but those past versions of myself, copies of me that no longer exist, left me enough clues to figure it out.

  With nothing left to discuss and without the drain to obsess over, there’s nothing to do but stare at the ceiling. The bad food, the pain, even the visits from the doctor, I can handle. But this tedium? This waiting for something to happen? I’m sure it’ll drive me crazy.

  “Finn, you awake?” I say, rolling over onto my side.

  No response. His ability to sleep under any circumstance amazes me. He must spend sixteen hours a day sleeping just to stave off the boredom.

  “You suck,” I whisper.

  I stare at the door for a while to give the ceiling a break. Somehow, one of these days, I must get out of this cell. At least I have before, every earlier version of me who’s escaped and added to the note under my mattress. How do I do it? I wish I could remember the events those other Ems experienced, because escape seems impossible. I work through every option in my head for the hundredth time. I could overpower the guard who brings me my meals, or get a hold of the doctor when he comes for one of his midnight visits and use him as a hostage. That would get me out of my cell and maybe get Finn out of his. But even if I were able to do that—and, let’s face it, that’s a huge if—there’s still a massive government facility beyond my cell that I only glimpsed once, months ago, on the day they dragged me in here. It’s full of armed soldiers standing between me and Cassandra, even if I knew where I was going, which I definitely don’t. Every plan I come up with leads to a dead end or a bullet through the head.

  Like everything else, contemplating my escape and/or death eventually gets boring. So boring that I’m almost relieved when my door opens to reveal the doctor and the man Finn and I have dubbed “the director,” the puppet master who pulls the doctor’s strings.

  Almost.

  I pretend to yawn, because I know it rankles him, but my heart is hammering. “Is it time again already?”

  The director inclines his head, and a soldier comes forward to yank me to my feet and sit me down in the metal folding chair they’ve brought with them. He secures my hands to the supports of the chair with the same kind of zip ties our gardener used to use on the rosebushes.

  “Her feet, too,” the director says. I’m gratified to see he remembers what happened last time.

  Once the defenseless teenage girl surrounded by the men with machine guns is properly restrained, the interrogation begins. I used to count how many times the doctor and the director visited for one of our little chats—thinking each time might be the last, that their patience would run thin and they’d finally kill me—but I lost track somewhere in the twenties. That was weeks ago.

  “Where are the documents?” the director says.

  “You’re not even going to ask me how my day’s been first? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”

  The director slaps me across the face. Unlike the doctor, he doesn’t mind bloodying his hands. My vision swims. The movies didn’t prepare me for this, for how much getting hit actually hurts, and somehow it’s always still a shock.

  “I’ve got no time for your games today,” the director says. “We need to know where the documents are. Who did you give them to? China? India?”

  “Lives depend on this,” the doctor says quietly from the corner of the room, as though he gives a damn.

  I blow the director a kiss as best I can without the use of my hands. I know very well that the moment I
tell them where the documents are, my last bargaining chip is gone. That I have that information and they don’t is the only thing that’s kept Finn and me alive this long. Even when I’d rather give it up and get my death over with already, knowing I also hold Finn’s life in my hands keeps me silent. No matter what they do.

  And they do their damnedest.

  I’m sure my screams wake Finn from his nap, but at least I don’t give us up.

  Three

  Em

  Another day passes. I’m only half awake, staring at the ceiling, trying to make out the cracks I know are there in the faint bluish light from the hallway. I finger my bruises idly. From the way they feel when I press my fingers against them, I think they’re probably that purplish-red color that’s like the bedspread in our old guest room. My mother always liked that color. I suspect it had something to do with her affinity for a good cabernet.

  I hear boots in the hallway and frown. I’m not hungry; is it time for breakfast already? But no, the lights are still off.

  My door opens slowly, and the guard behind it is one who’s only recently been assigned to us. I like him. There’s still the glimmer of basic human decency in his eyes, and, unlike Kessler, he always hands me my meals and even says thank you sometimes when I hand the tray back. I’m unsure of his name. Connor? Cooper?

  “When you were little,” he says, hovering in the doorway, “you had an imaginary friend named Miles. He was a purple kangaroo.”

  I bolt upright. “What?”

  “Come on. We have to go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m getting you out of here.”

  My mouth goes dry, and my tongue feels suddenly too large for my mouth. This is what I’ve been waiting for. The way out. I never told anyone about Miles, not in my entire life.

  Except, apparently, this guard.

  “What about Finn?” I say.

  “Him too. Hurry up.”

  I jump to my feet, and my legs are surprisingly solid beneath me. I reach under my mattress and pull out the sheet of paper in the plastic bag, stuffing it in my pocket. The guard—Connor?—is already gone, on his way to free Finn. I step toward my cell door slowly. It’s wide open. I touch the door frame with the tips of my fingers, examining the place where the walls that have been my boundaries for so long end and become nothingness. I take a tentative step through, and for one stupid second I think I might cry.

  I hear the rattle of a key in a lock, and turn, watching Connor struggle to open Finn’s cell. Oh my God. The realization crashes over me like that rogue wave at Kiawah Island that knocked the air from my lungs: I’m about to see Finn.

  Connor finally manages the lock and pulls the door open, and everything slows until the silence between each heartbeat in my ears is expansive and deafening. If I reacted to our sudden freedom like an animal who had forgotten the world outside its bars, Finn flies out of his cell like a bird from a cage. I barely have time to look at him before he collides with me in a tangle of arms and legs, holding me so tightly I can’t breathe and don’t care.

  “Oh my God,” he says over and over. “Oh my God.”

  “Let me look at you.” I pull away and put my hands on his cheeks, examining his face. Blue eyes, of course. And how could I forget that mouth? Thin pink lips with one crooked corner always suggesting a mocking smile. My God, how had I never noticed before how handsome he is? “You need a haircut.”

  He rubs the side of his thumb over my cheekbone. “You’re beautiful.”

  I’ve been scared for years. On the run, isolated from everyone I love, and then locked in this cell, tortured and interrogated with the threat of death always hovering over my shoulder. But I swear I’ve never been as scared as I am when Finn leans forward to kiss me for the very first time.

  He presses his lips to mine so softly that I think he must be afraid this is a dream that will dissolve at the best part. His hands press tighter to my back, pulling me close, and for a second all my fear is drowned out.

  “I’m sorry,” Connor says, “but we’ve got to get moving.”

  Finn shoots me a shy smile as we disentangle ourselves, and Connor draws his gun as he starts down the hallway. I take Finn’s hand and weave our fingers together. Now that he’s beside me, I don’t want to lose him again, even for a second.

  Connor leads the way, and we follow just behind. My head is constantly moving, taking in everything around us. It’s my first glimpse of the place since they locked us in here however many months ago, and I wasn’t in a state then to take in the scenery. There are three more cells next to mine and Finn’s, reinforced like ours with cinder-block walls and metal doors, but they’re empty. The rest of the hallway seems to be used for storage, and it’s so banal that I’m shocked and not a little offended. It looks like the doctor packed Finn and me away with the rest of the old junk, like a box of winter clothes put away for the summer and eventually forgotten.

  “Where is everyone?” I whisper once we’re through the locked door that separates our hallway from the rest of the facility. So far we haven’t spotted a single soldier.

  “It’s the middle of the night, skeleton shift,” Connor says over his shoulder. “And I drugged the coffeepot in the break room.”

  “You know,” I say, “I’m really starting to like you.”

  “Don’t decide that until we get to Cassandra.”

  We creep toward the heart of the facility, which I see now is huge. Connor has to be careful to keep his boots from thumping against the concrete floor, while Finn and I pad silently in our thin prisoners’ slippers. My breathing grows more labored with each step, the center of my chest burning from the effort. I didn’t realize what a toll living in a room only four steps across was taking on my body until this moment. I glance at Finn to see if he’s starting to sweat and shake the way I am, but he seems unaffected. He’s probably been working out in his cell, the vain little bastard.

  I’m wishing now I’d thought of it.

  “You okay?” he says. I’ve been slowing down, and he’s now pulling me forward where our hands are still clutched together. I nod, take a deep breath, and force myself to quicken my pace.

  I’m so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that I don’t hear the door open at the other end of the hallway or see the dark-haired man step through it. But Connor does. His arm crashes into my chest, shoving Finn and me into the recess of another doorway, and I only catch a glimpse of the man as I’m shuffling backward, out of sight.

  It’s the doctor. I plaster myself against the door and try to rein in my ragged breathing.

  Connor walks toward him, and terror slices through me like a knife. I’m suddenly sure this has been some setup of the doctor’s, another trick to break us down. Connor will turn us back in to him now, and we’ll never leave our cells again. I’m seized by the wild desire to run.

  Maybe sensing what I’m thinking, Finn squeezes my hand, holding me in place.

  “Connor, what are you doing in this part of the building?” we hear the doctor ask from our flimsy hiding place. All he has to do is take a few steps in our direction and the recess in the wall will fail to hide us any longer. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching the prisoners?”

  “Yes, sir. Abrams is covering me. The sergeant sent me to find you.”

  The doctor sighs in irritation. “I’m not even on duty; I just came in to finish some paperwork. What does he need?”

  “Not sure, sir. All he said was that he needed to see you in cent-comm.”

  Footsteps approach us. Not Connor’s heavy-soled boots, but what I’d bet my life is fine Italian leather. I press myself so hard against the door at my back that I’ll have new bruises to add to my collection if we survive the night.

  “I need to go to my office first,” the doctor says, “and then—”

  “He said it was urgent, sir.”

  The footsteps stop. “Take your hand off me, soldier.”

  Oh God. I ball my free hand into a f
ist. If the doctor comes this way, at least I can give him a few bruises of his own before he kills me.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Connor says in a shaken voice. “I only meant that the sarge really needs you, and there’s not time . . .”

  The silence stretches, and with my eyes closed I can almost see the evaluating expression on the doctor’s face as he looks at Connor. To my ears, Connor sounds wildly guilty, and the doctor would have to be deaf not to realize something is amiss. I can only hope his obliviousness to people and his own sense of invincibility will win out.

  “Fine,” the doctor finally says. “I’ll go to cent-comm, and you get yourself back to those prisoners. And next time, remember your place.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The doctor’s lighter step moves away from us, and I release the breath I’ve been holding.

  “We’ve got to move now,” Connor says when he returns to us. “He’ll know something’s up when he gets to cent-comm and no one’s there. It’s on the other side of the facility, though, and Cassandra is close.”

  We run through the corridors, Connor ten or fifteen feet ahead to scout for other soldiers and Finn practically dragging me alongside him. When we stop, I double over, resting my hands on my knees as I struggle to catch my breath. Finn rubs my back in soothing little circles, but Connor’s attention is entirely focused forward. He has his gun pulled up to his chest, poised at a turn in the hallway. He holds a finger to his lips.

  “Control room’s right around the corner,” he whispers. “It’ll be guarded—nothing I could do about that—so you two stay back.”

  Finn tenses beside me. “What are you going to do?”

  “Does it matter? Once you go back, none of this will have ever happened, right?”

  I swallow another gulp of air. “That’s the idea.”

  “Don’t move.” Connor tucks his gun back into its holster and turns the corner at a run. We hear him shout, followed by the sound of fists banging on glass. The control room. Finn puts his arm around my shoulders, and I tuck myself close to his body. God, he’s warm. It’s been so long that I’d forgotten how warm another person could be.