Departure

by A. G. Riddle

  A hand grabs my arm, and I feel someone turning me around. My helmet display is offline, but through the clear glass, I’m staring at myself—at Nicholas. His suit must be offline as well. He mouths the words stay here, then releases me and kicks into the now dark water.

  A second later, I see a small light flick on from his wrist. It rakes across the darkness and I get my first glimpse of the carnage. Pieces of the turbine drift past, motionless, suited figures mixed in with the scraps of black metal.

  One by one, members of our team swim toward me, and we link arms, pressing ourselves against the smooth concrete wall.

  Nicholas returns and hands me a rifle (I dropped mine in my rush to activate the propulsion system). He moves down the row, passing out rifles and tapping at each person’s forearm. He’s looking for someone with a working suit. Why? What’s his plan? With the turbine off, we can swim into the power plant above it—we don’t need the packs to swim the rest of the way.

  I peer down the row. We are sixteen strong now. Eight people—a full third of our force—perished here. And we haven’t even reached our enemy yet. Our long odds have just become impossible odds. I try not to think about that. I’m glad we’re in a line, glad we can’t see each other’s faces.

  Nicholas is before me again, signaling, but I can’t make out anything. I think he wants me to stay back. He points to my rifle, then pulls his own rifle close to his body, holding it tight. I get it: hold on to your rifle. My stomach turns, and I feel my mouth go dry. I swallow hard but it doesn’t help.

  Nicholas faces the group now. He points to the light on his wrist, turns it off then on, then draws a line across his throat. Keep your light off.

  Nicholas motions to two others, and they kick away, descending fast, leaving us in the darkness.

  A minute later, through the faint light, I see someone break from the line. A wrist light illuminates the face: Oliver. He motions for us to follow and kills his light. We huddle close, holding our rifles, kicking with our legs, a school of fish diving in the darkness.

  We reach the turbine, what’s left of it, and have to pass single file through the web of jagged metal. On the other side, I can just make out Nicholas and the two others waiting above us. When the last of our group clears the turbine, the two Titans with Nicholas activate their propulsion units, apparently at maximum velocity, because they surge toward the surface, clearing the water.

  Weapons fire crisscrosses the chamber above, but I only hear faint echoes, then a cascade of thunder—two explosions. The force sweeps gently through the water. The divers deployed the explosives above the water. They were clearing the opening.

  Oliver motions for us, and we’re kicking again, rushing to the surface, rifles at the ready. Just before we reach the surface, gunfire rakes across the room, into the water. The two divers activate their packs again, rushing to the sources of the shots. Two more explosions, smaller than the first, and the room is quiet again.

  When I clear the water, I feel an arm grip my forearm, pulling me out. Mike. I scramble out of the way, and he pulls the next person up. There are two entrances to the domed chamber, and I raise my rifle, ready to fire, scanning the room. Bodies are strewn across the metal floor, a dozen at least. A few moving, trying to push up. A shot from the darkness catches the Titan beside me full in the chest. I raise my rifle and fire without hesitation. My first shot ricochets off the wall, but my second brings the man down. I watch, but he doesn’t move. And neither do I. I stare at the man, my breath filling the helmet, fog blotting him out, as if trying to erase what just happened.

  I tear the helmet off in time to see one of our Titans rushing to one of the openings. He tosses something, a ball that bounces off the walls, the sound of metal on metal. The dark mouth of the corridor breathes fire when it explodes. A second later the other corridor explodes, and I hear someone yell “Clear!” behind me. Then they race around the room, inspecting the fallen enemy combatants, kicking weapons into the water.

  Titans cover the two entrances, their rifles at the ready, while Nick addresses us. “There are two ways up: the power plant and the maintenance tunnels. The tunnels will be harder to pass: they’re more narrow and easier to defend—or booby-trap. The power plant offers more open areas to fight, fewer choke points, and more opportunities to bypass resistance if you meet it. Oliver, you’ll take the bulk of the group. I’ll take two Titans.” He motions to the two divers who set off the explosions that allowed us to surface. “We’ll try the maintenance tunnels.”

  Oliver shakes his head. “Nicholas—”

  “There’s a chance they’ve ignored the tunnels.”

  “It’s suicide,” Oliver says.

  “We have to take the chance. This is what we’re doing.” Nicholas’s voice is final, but not condescending. I see myself, hear myself by the lake a few days ago.

  The group breaks, and Oliver begins giving us a quick rundown of the power plant, planning angles of attack and contingencies.

  Nicholas takes the diver propulsion pack from one of the operational suits, replacing his damaged unit, then heads toward me, ushering me away from the group. “You have a much better shot at reaching the quantum device than I do.”

  He waits, then glances at the unmoving soldier in the opening. “If the time comes, you can’t hesitate.”

  “I won’t.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Harper

  THE SWISHING SOUND OF THE DOUBLE DOORS OUTSIDE, in the corridor, brings me back to the moment, to this posh bathroom in the Titan apartment. I can barely see through the thick steam. The cool marble sticks to the backs of my legs; a thin layer of warm condensation coats me. I wasn’t asleep. Or awake. Rather in a daze, somewhere in between, an unfocused state where I hoped time would pass and everything would be okay.

  Through the pitter-patter of the shower, I can just make out bootsteps in the bedroom, padding quietly on the carpet.

  I sit still, hoping . . .

  The footsteps come to a halt. I can’t see the figure through the cloud of steam. Maybe they can’t see me.

  More footsteps. Walking away.

  I exhale.

  A sliding sound.

  Steam flows past me, out of the room, past the balcony. The figure opened the sliding glass door, and now the rectangular opening is sucking my cloud of safety away, revealing me. The figure marches through the mist, each step unveiling more of its body.

  I expected a glassy, semitransparent suit, but the outer shell on this suit is gone. Half the glass tiles are missing, revealing black, rubbery lining beneath, gashed in half a dozen places to expose cut, burned flesh.

  But I focus only on the face. Nick’s face.

  Or is it Nicholas?

  Is this the Nick I know, who saved so many after the crash of Flight 305? Or is it Nicholas, the man who caused the death of so many, who came here to take even more lives—just to be with me?

  “Harper.” His voice is a whisper.

  I want to start my interrogation, get right down to which Nick Stone he is, but I can’t help pushing up off the cold marble floor and racing to him, scanning the gashes and bruises all over his body. He’s in bad shape. A gentle touch on his blackened, exposed side draws a wince.

  “I’m okay.” He makes a pained smile. “Harper, this might sound crazy, but there are two of me. The version of myself from this timeline is still alive.”

  I have limitations. Decisions have always been one. And lying is another. I can’t even play poker.

  Here in the steam-filled bedroom, I just try to look confused. At least I’ve had a lot of practice with that this week. I don’t know if he buys it, but he goes on.

  “Nicholas, the other . . . me, told me what’s going on here. Yul created a device, a quantum bridge that connects our two worlds. He and Sabrina are going to use it to send us back to 2015. It will be like none of this ever happened . . . except our world will end up exactly like this one. We have to destroy that device so it can never be reset. B
ut we’ll never go home.”

  I nod. My mind races, trying to formulate—

  “Do you know where it is?”

  Wind blows in through the open balcony, a cool gust that drives the steam back even more. The moon is bright tonight, but my eyes lock on the twinkling lights of the airship hovering out over the Atlantic, waiting to bring the last colonists home.

  “Harper.”

  I search every micron of his blood-caked face. The hair is the same. The features—

  “Harper, come on, we don’t have a lot of time here.”

  “Yeah. Yul told me where it is.”

  “Thank God.” He starts toward the door, leading me. But I stop.

  “After the crash, you found a glass structure. What was inside?” I ask, trying to mask my nervousness.

  He turns, confused. “What?”

  I speak softly. “Please answer.”

  “Stonehenge.”

  “Before you went there, you and Sabrina had a row. What about?”

  “She wouldn’t give you antibiotics. You were at death’s door. What the hell is going on here?”

  “We can’t destroy the device.”

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “If we do, those passengers who died in the crash and in the outbreak after will be dead forever. They’ll never have a chance at growing up or living the rest of their lives.”

  “That’s the price of saving our world, Harper.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. Yul and Sabrina have another solution. They’re going to use Yul’s quantum device to send our memories back. Flight 305 will return to our time, and the four of us will remember everything that happened here.”

  “Why didn’t they tell Nicholas?”

  “They did. Nicholas and Oliver betrayed them. Bringing Flight 305 here wasn’t about testing that vaccine. Not for them. That was secondary, a cover.”

  “Cover for what?”

  “Bringing Grayson and me here. I’m what Nicholas is after.”

  Nick turns away from me. Hurt? Confused?

  His voice comes out hard, determined. “He’s here for you and the device, right?”

  “Yes. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to finish this.”

  STEAM SEEMS TO HAVE PERMEATED every square inch of the residential tower, but Nick and I march through it, descending as quickly as we can. On the first floor, on the landing of the stairwell, a pool of blood surrounds a clump of stacked bodies. I recognize the face at the bottom of the pile. Yul.

  Nick steps over him and jerks the stairway door open.

  I bend down to check Yul’s pulse, letting my fingers linger even after I feel the cold flesh.

  “Harper, come on!”

  I glance up, still unable to move.

  “I’m . . . sorry, but there was nothing I could do. He was dead when I got here.” He stares at me a moment, and says quietly, “Sometimes we have to skip the back rows—save the lives we can.”

  The airplane on the lake. I swallow hard.

  “Harper, we need to go right now.”

  I rise unsteadily, and he grabs my hand and pulls me through the dark passageway toward the cacophony of gunfire and other blasts ahead.

  The five towers, fingers of Titan City, meet in an elaborate promenade aptly named the Palm—it’s shaped like a palm, but it’s also dotted with palm trees, both inside and outside.

  The Palm I saw before was pristine. Now it’s battered and bloody. Shredded leaves and bark cover the previously spotless white marble floors. Scorch marks pock the walls. Half the glass panes in the wall of windows that looked out on the promenade are gone, letting the breeze in from the valley side of the dam. The rush of the waterfall is punctuated by firing, screaming, and occasional grenade blasts. The sound is sickening.

  Nick and I pause in the dark corridor, waiting, watching for a break in the carnage. We’re at the base of the little finger. The device is in the ring finger, the hotel tower adjacent to the Titan apartments, so we don’t have far to go. That’s a break. But still four people stand in our way, crowding the entrance to the hotel tower: two colonists, dressed in simple gray garb, and two Titans loyal to Sabrina and Yul. The Titans hold rifles, watching the battle unfold, their faces pained, as if they’re resisting the urge to join the Titans on their side below, who are steadily losing ground to Nicholas’s assault force moving up the Palm.

  We edge closer to the corridor’s threshold, the shadows giving way to moonlight through the seven-story wall of glass.

  The Palm is actually seven levels of restaurants, shops, and sundry stores, all long since abandoned. Two lavish marble, glass, and steel staircases shaped like DNA helixes flank the open space that looks out on the valley and waterfall.

  Suited Titans are fighting their way up the twisting stairwells, shooting and taking fire from combatants hidden in the shops and restaurants on each level. It’s like mall warfare, an elaborate game of laser tag, but these shafts of light draw blood. Occasionally a Titan is shot off the stairwell, plummeting down to the massive fountain on the bottom floor.

  “Stay behind me,” Nick says.

  I want to ask what his plan is, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Nick Stone is good at thinking on his feet. There’s no one I would rather follow. We just need to reach—

  He steps out into the promenade, raises his rifle, and fires point-blank at the Titans guarding the entrance to the hotel tower, catching the Titan on the right with a deadly shot to the head.

  The two colonists shield the remaining Titan with their bodies, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of her, but Nick doesn’t hesitate. Two blasts from his rifle. They drop. Two more, and the Titan falls, her rifle still by her side.

  Shock and fear consume me. I’m only vaguely aware of him pulling my arm, dragging me to the entrance of the hotel tower.

  Down the dim corridor the moonlight fades with each step, replaced by the soft glow of emergency lights. We’re on the first floor, near my room, where I awoke in the white layered garments I still wear, where I finished the outline for Alice Carter, the girl whose decisions determined the fate of her world.

  He’s still dragging me, almost forcibly now.

  “Harper, focus.”

  His face is inches from mine.

  “What room?”

  I close my eyes. Swallow.

  “It was just two colonists, Harper. They have five thousand more—plenty to repopulate the planet. Now where is it?”

  I say the word fast, hoping . . . “Two three oh five.”

  He lets out a laugh. “Clever.”

  We bound up the stairway, my legs burning, but I push, trying to keep pace, knowing what’s at stake. The stairway is straight up, but the tower actually curves, the finger curling slightly toward the Mediterranean. I don’t know how many floors it is to the top, but I know the rooms on the first twenty floors all face the Atlantic—as mine did that first morning. Higher up, they look out on the valley where the Mediterranean once was.

  At the landing to the twenty-third floor, he stops and pants, smiling at me.

  “Room five?”

  I gasp for air. “Yeah.”

  He throws the door to the corridor open and leans out quickly, rifle first, peeking.

  “Clear,” he announces before storming down the hall. I follow slowly, watching him charge into the room the same way. I need to catch my breath. Need every ounce of energy for this.

  He’s searched the room by the time I reach the threshold. He stands in the center, just between the bed and desk.

  “Where is it?”

  “Balcony.” I almost choke on the word.

  He glances behind him, to the glass door, the dark, rocky valley beyond it, and then squints, scrutinizing me. “Balcony?”

  “So they could pick it up with the airship, evacuate it if needed.”

  He turns his head slightly, as if hearing a noise.

  Then he takes a step toward the sliding glass door. I follow, m
y pace matching his. This is far enough. I plant my feet, bend my knees a bit. One chance.

  If I’m right, the passengers of Flight 305 will live. If I’m wrong . . . we’re all doomed. I have only one thing to go on: the Nick Stone I know would never have killed those four people in cold blood, not that quickly, not that easily.

  He slides the door open, and I take off, running full-on across the room.

  He turns just in time to see me charging for him. There’s horror on his face.

  He opens his arms a second before I reach him, bear-hugging me as I bowl us both over the rail of the balcony.

  Time stops.

  The air grows colder as we fall, flying toward the jagged valley floor. The hotel tower is just left of the middle tower and the wide waterfall below, but we’ll miss it. We’ll hit the hard, rocky bottom.

  He pushes back so he can see me. The shock is gone. There’s no horror on his face anymore. A sad smile spreads across it. Then he hugs me tight. Behind my back, I feel him fidgeting with his hands, tapping his forearm, still bear-hugging me.

  We move in the air. The pack on his back sputters, slowing us.

  A spray of cold water assaults me, pelting my body—the waterfall. He almost loses his grip, but he holds tight as the deafening spray envelopes us. Through the rush, I hear the pack choking on the stream, but then the coughs turn to a rumble and a new jet of water erupts from the bottom of the device—a vortex of white foam. It can’t stop our descent, but it could slow us—and it might be just enough. I reach back, fighting his hands, but he simply tightens his grip.

  His somber grin turns triumphant.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Nick

  THEY CALL IT THE PALM. I CALL IT hell.

  A seven-story mall with a wide-open space in the center, a round granite fountain on the ground floor. The statue in the center of the fountain features a smiling Oliver and Nicholas, their arms raised, hands intertwined on the day Titan City opened, the day they revealed their immortality. It lies in pieces where bodies have pummeled it, some falling from a single story up, others from the second, third, fourth, and fifth stories—each level we’ve taken. We’ve paid for every inch with lives, our blood spilled here, some deposited in the now-red water of the fountain.