by Julie Cross
I laughed under my breath, but there was no humor in it. “What’s worse than hanging yourself after dozens of previous brutal suicide attempts.”
He stared at me, hard and fierce. “Killing five other people before succeeding in suicide.”
I’m sure there was nothing but horror and panic filling my expression. “Six months?”
He nodded. “I don’t want to be a murderer. Not ever. I swear to God I’ll tell you the second I feel like I’m slipping but you have to keep this between you and me, please?”
“I promise, I won’t tell anyone. I trust you. I’ve always trusted you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.” He stood up and shook his head. “But I don’t want to turn into a monster. We need to fucking fix this merging timeline. There’s got to be a way.”
No matter how much Adam seemed to doubt his ability to hold on to good judgment, I didn’t doubt it one bit. In another timeline, Adam had been dying but he still made it a priority to give me a message about not screwing up the world with time travel and that he knew Eyewall was bad. In his last moments, he cared about everyone but himself.
I stood up and clapped a hand on his back. “I won’t let you do anything you’ll regret.”
He let out a breath of relief. “Thanks.”
“Besides making out with Stewart,” I added, getting a shit-eating grin in return from Adam. “Seriously, what’s up with that?”
He shrugged. “No idea. But I sure as hell enjoyed it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DAY 3: 2009. 6:00 A.M.
Holly closed the notebook she’d been poring over for the last hour and rubbed her eyes. “I gotta head home before my mom gets up.”
Everyone who had crammed into the small underground room was now either seated around the kitchen table or leaning against a counter, searching Eileen’s notebooks for some answer to saving the world from its inhabitants. Except for Courtney. She was making pancakes.
“Do you want me to go with you?” I asked Holly.
She shook her head immediately. “It’s light out now. I’ll be fine.”
“Actually”—Chief Marshall looked over at us from across the table—“Agent Sterling has an assignment to fulfill in New Jersey. He can ride back with you.”
Mason was clearly not happy with this plan but didn’t protest; nor did anyone elaborate on the assignment. Holly shrugged, and mumbled, “Whatever,” like she didn’t really think she and Mason combined was all that different from her alone, but it made me feel a little better.
“I’ll walk you out.” I stood up from my chair and followed Holly toward the front door while she waited for Mason to gather his things. “Call me in a little while, okay?”
“I will.” She gently tugged my face toward her and kissed me until we heard Mason shuffling behind us.
I leaned closer to her ear, and whispered, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
“More Shakespeare?”
I nodded. “That’s what I would write first on the ceiling.”
She smiled and pinched one of my cheeks. “Your charm is deadly.”
Mason brushed past us to open the front door, making an obvious effort to roll his eyes in our direction.
When I returned to the kitchen, Courtney rewarded me with a giant stack of pancakes. Adam was already inhaling his, probably an attempt to sober up. Stewart looked ready to pass out right on top of the red spiral notebook she was currently in possession of. I steered clear of the Eileen’s notes and instead leaned against the counter beside Courtney.
“So, what do you want to do today? What’s on your list besides Harry Potter movies?”
She grinned at me, flipping a pancake in the process. “Central Park Zoo? Is it still open? With the virus and all?”
I was temporarily distracted by Adam. His fork had frozen in his hand and his face turned completely white again as he read a page in the notebook lying in front of him. Even from across the room, I could see the vein in his neck pulsing, indicating his heart rate had suddenly sped up. I watched as he discreetly glanced at Collins, then Dad, before dropping his eyes to the page. He took about three seconds to pull himself together, then closed the black notebook.
“Nothing in this one,” he said, faking disappointment.
My gaze drifted across the table and landed on Marshall, who was studying Adam carefully. Had he seen what I had?
Marshall’s eyes met mine for a brief second and then fell on Dad. “I’ll accompany them to the zoo.”
Dad looked up at him, clearly confused and surprised. “You’re going to take Jackson and Courtney to the zoo?”
Marshall stood to his full height, impassive expression plastered on. “Someone needs to accompany them given the fact that you and Agent Collins are scheduled to report to the mayor’s office in a few hours for the strategy meeting.”
“Right,” Dad said.
“Stewart can go with you and take notes,” Marshall ordered.
“No way. I hate the secretary gig,” Stewart said.
Marshall glared at her and she shut her mouth immediately. “And Agent Silverman will go with me.”
Adam seemed lost in thought and barely gave a nod as he reached for another notebook to open. Dad walked behind Courtney, rubbing her shoulders gently, and whispered, “Be careful, okay? Take your medicine and don’t overdo it.”
“She’ll be fine,” I told Dad.
* * *
At exactly fifteen minutes before the zoo opened, Marshall, Adam, Courtney, and I exited the building and crossed the street toward Central Park. Nothing outside looked too altered except the way people moved, hurrying to their destination with an even greater speed than usual for New York City. And there were no tourists in sight. Living in the city my entire life had made spotting tourists and their cameras and T-shirts, showing off where they’d been already, an easy task.
The four of us walked in silence until it was obvious that Marshall had headed in the wrong direction.
“It’s this way,” Courtney said, pointing to a path behind us.
Marshall stopped at a table secluded in the woods of Central Park. “We’re not going to the zoo. Have a seat, please.”
Courtney opened her mouth to protest but I pulled her down onto the bench beside me before she could object. I didn’t know what Marshall had planned but he had obviously orchestrated the exact people he wanted to hear whatever information or news he had for us. And I had figured it was about Adam and what he knew about himself six months from now. Maybe Marshall already knew it and wanted to keep it secret from the others?
“Mr. Silverman,” Marshall said. “Care to tell us what you discovered in Eileen Covington’s notes this morning?”
Adam’s face turned pale for the third time today and he shook his head fiercely. “No.”
Marshall wrapped his large, dark-skinned hands around the end of the picnic table, leaning forward. “You have the missing piece, don’t you, son?”
Adam swallowed hard, continuing to shake his head.
“You read what I read, the timestorm formula, and then pieced that with knowledge of your own and figured out the solution, didn’t you?” Marshall pressed, leaning closer to Adam.
“No,” Adam said. “I only reacted like that because I didn’t have the information. It just felt more impossible than before, that’s all.”
Even I could see that Adam was lying, so he had no chance of Marshall believing him.
“What’s going on?” Courtney said. “What’s a timestorm?”
Marshall hesitated for a long moment, as if forming a new plan, then he slid into the spot beside Adam, folding his hands on top of the table and giving Courtney the most sympathetic expression I’d ever seen Marshall wear, which wasn’t saying much given his uncanny coldness.
“First of all, young lady, that tumor pressing on the back of your skull”—he reached across the table and touched a spot under Courtney’s ponytail—“is going to rupture in two weeks. The ra
diation you had early on the first time you experienced this prolonged your life by a month or two.”
Adam dropped his face into his hands. I swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat and scooted closer to my sister, laying a hand on her shoulder and watching her eyes fill with tears.
“Two weeks,” she croaked.
“Can she have the radiation now?” I asked desperately.
Courtney shook her head, sucking in a breath and trying to steady her voice. “I don’t want it. Lily said the side effects are terrible and I’d be miserable longer.” She quickly swatted away the tears that had fallen. “Does… does Dad know?”
“He would if he had gotten through all the notebooks before I swiped the pages giving us that information.” Marshall removed several torn pages from the back of his pants. “Which brings us to Mr. Silverman…”
Courtney’s gaze moved to Adam but I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister. My chest felt constricted, as if the walls were caving in on me from all sides. Two weeks. That was all I had left with her. Six months with Adam and one year with Holly. Could I really stick around to watch everyone I loved fall one at a time? It would be worse than dying. Far worse.
“The timestorm formula is so complex and the code completely foreign, I expected to be the only one to grasp it after reading it a few hours ago,” Marshall said to Adam. “And then when I saw your face, I knew that you had the location. Am I correct?”
I finally looked away from Courtney and saw that Adam’s head was still in his hands. “Adam?” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Eileen solved the problem,” Marshall explained. “If the alternate world began to merge with the original universe, the solution was to create a timestorm. A time jump from a very specific point in the world that has the power to destroy the World B that Agent Meyer unintentionally created, a location that Agent Silverman has known for a very long time.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said, attempting to shake the five tons of emotion from my head. “A time traveler stands in this one spot and does a jump to somewhere and then poof … bye-bye World B?”
“That sounds way too simple,” Courtney agreed.
Adam finally lifted his head. “You’ll drown,” he croaked. “Maybe after you pull it off but maybe not.”
“The location is underwater?” I asked. “Where? The bottom of the Hudson?”
“I volunteer.” Courtney lifted her hand in the air. “I’m dying in two weeks anyway. Might as well save the world right before I check out.”
“No!” I stared at her in utter horror. “No way.”
Courtney snapped around to face me. “Why not, Jackson? Why the hell not? Because it’ll make you feel guilty? It’s not your fault I have cancer.”
“You’re not even an experienced time traveler. You’ve done it like twice.” I looked away from her and faced Marshall. “I’ll do it. I’m ready right now. I’m the one who opened the portal and caused this mess in the first place.”
“It won’t work,” Adam spat.
“Why not?” Courtney and I both said together.
“It won’t work,” he repeated. “Unless all three of you do it. At the same time.”
That put the lid on our sibling feud instantly. Marshall, however, didn’t look in the least bit shaken. “That’s the other missing piece of information that I needed.”
Adam glared at Marshall. “I never said I’d tell you where. You want to go on a death mission, figure it out yourself.”
Marshall stared at him, a calculated expression drifting into his features. “And I thought you were smart, Mr. Silverman. Surely logic works in your head as well as it does in mine. Everybody on the planet, or three people with a dangerous gift, one of whom has an incurable and fatal disease.”
“We can’t tell Dad,” Courtney whispered to me. “We have to leave and not tell him.”
My heart was beating furiously, the weight of this discussion hitting me like a subzero gust of wind. Adam looked at me, something desperate in his expression, like he knew Marshall had a point, but since it was about me, his friend, he couldn’t face the logic.
“He’s right,” I managed to say, faking calm. “We’re supposed to do this. Eileen told me herself that Courtney and I were made to do something great, to make a sacrifice that Dad would hate. This must have been what she was talking about.”
My insides were numb. Numb and cold and heavy with a sadness that had so much weight, and yet part of me felt light. I wouldn’t have to watch them die after all. Maybe I could fix things for Holly and Adam. Me and Courtney together.
And Marshall.
I’d never felt an ounce of compassion for Marshall since the first time I met the guy, but I had to respect the fact that he didn’t even flinch upon hearing this news, as if he too had always known he’d be making a huge sacrifice like this one.
“There’s no way to be sure it will work,” Adam said, holding on tight to that desperation.
“But there’s a chance?” I asked.
He hesitated before nodding.
“Where are we headed, Mr. Silverman?” Marshall asked for what felt like the hundredth time.
Adam sighed heavily, and there was concession in his sigh as his face transformed to the genius-on-the-verge-of-explaining-a-great-discovery expression I had come to know so well. He was shutting down emotionally, and I needed to do the same or else I’d never make it through this last mission.
“I couldn’t figure it out at first,” he said. “Obviously, Eileen didn’t have the answer either, but she knew a timestorm would destroy the alternate universe. She also knew that time travel affects weather patterns. Whenever a time jump is performed, air pressure in the location the time jumper lands is instantly altered. When it’s more than one time jumper, the change in air pressure is even more drastic. We also know that an electromagnetic pulse shuts down the part of the brain that you use to time-travel. Eileen discovered something I don’t think Tempest was aware of until today. That certain elements of weather give off the opposite of an electromagnetic pulse.”
“So, like, time travel during a tornado could be easier or more effective?” Courtney asked.
“That’s the idea,” Marshall said, taking over for Adam. “But Eileen didn’t have the benefit of test subjects and advanced equipment to study major elements of weather throughout history as Mr. Silverman did during his six months at Eyewall headquarters.”
I turned my eyes to Adam. “That’s what you did there?”
He and I had talked about so many things during the three-day walk from Misfit Island to Eyewall headquarters, but this apparently wasn’t one of those subjects.
“Yeah, they wanted to find ways to increase the cloned time traveler’s power to equal the level of the originals. Emily was the only subject who exceeded the originals. No others even came close to matching them.”
“But why didn’t they just copy the experiment they used to create Emily?” I asked.
A grin spread across Adam’s face. “They did. Thomas and Dr. Ludwig nearly went insane trying to figure out what was different about her. They’ll never figure it out because it goes against everything they believe.”
“What?” Courtney asked. “What’s different about Emily?”
Marshall looked right at me, his face completely impassive. “She uses her power the same way that Jackson does. She feels her way through it. It’s emotionally driven. She began using her power at eight years old. Since her brain was still developing, it easily adapted and expanded to allow her to hold on to her superior intelligence and more powerful time-travel skill in addition to an uncanny ability to feel the change in air pressure, the buzzing she describes when she’s around me or other jumpers. Unlike the others, she’s going to fight the emotional overload you described before forever. It might get easier, but it will always be a battle for her. She was altered about five years into the experiment. Someone showed her a side of life she hadn’t known before. One that includes
love and hate.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who altered her?”
Adam shook his head. “We don’t know. I thought maybe it was Blake but you said he hadn’t met her before Misfit Island, right?”
“Right,” Courtney answered.
“Blake would have told us if he’d known Emily before. We were all trying to understand Emily’s breakdown.” I sat there in silence for a few seconds, mulling over the fact that Emily was like me in more ways than I’d realized, only she had never known a normal life. She’d always been a pawn in someone’s big plan. Even when she’d been helping Marshall by showing up and giving me information and answers, she was a pawn in his plan. I understood why, I just couldn’t help but want her to get the opportunity to live. To truly live. “Emily isn’t going to have to go on this mission with us, is she?”
Marshall looked to Adam, who spoke up immediately. “Eileen’s formula calls for two original time travelers performing simultaneous jumps. Since you and Courtney are half-breeds, you count as one.”
“And I count as two,” Marshall said firmly. “The child has been through enough. She’ll be left here.”
As opposed to the bottom of the Hudson? I really needed Adam to get to the point now. “Where exactly are we going to hold hands and time-jump?”
“A maelstrom,” Adam said. “That’s the weather element that provides the most powerful time-travel source. There’s an invisible current that will multiply the force of your time jump to such a high level, it’ll create a timestorm and thus destroy World B.”
“Ending the delusions that people are already having before they reach potent levels,” Marshall finished.
“A maelstrom? Like a whirlpool?” I asked.
“Totally not the Hudson then,” Courtney muttered.
“Yes, it’s a whirlpool.” Marshall turned to Adam again. “And if we aim for the most powerful maelstrom, we have an even better chance at success.”
Adam nodded, glancing wearily at me and then Courtney.
“Like the Loften Maelstrom,” I said. “From ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom’ … that Edgar Allan Poe story. That’s Norway, right?”
