Mend (Rift Walkers #2)

by Elana Johnson

  Twelve minutes later, I give my name to Harlem’s secretary. She watches me while she speaks with him on the phone. She hangs up and takes a moment to collect herself. I know whatever she’s about to say won’t be good.

  “He’s very busy. He can’t see you right now.”

  I frown at the false words. “It’s really important.”

  “All of Mister Ryerson’s business is important.” She gives me a condescending smile. “I can make you an appointment for next week.”

  Cedar leans forward, blinding me with his dazzling, white-toothed smile. “Ma’am, it’s really important that we speak with Mister Ryerson as soon as possible. Could you tell him Cedar Bowman is here to see him?” He nods to the phone when the secretary remains mute. “Please. Just one more call into him.”

  She picks up the receiver and turns her head to the side as she whispers to the man on the other end of the line. I step back from the counter and eye the huge door to the left. I have my hand on the knob when the secretary says, “He’ll see you. Go on back.”

  I whip open the door before she can change her mind, wondering why the name Cedar Bowman changed Harlem’s mind when mine didn’t.

  He stands from behind his executive desk and buttons his suit jacket. His face looks uncrackable as we approach. He doesn’t greet us, offer us a chair, a drink, nothing.

  “Did you know my father was alive?” I ask.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “I thought our business concluded three years ago.”

  “Cascade,” Cedar says under his breath. “Sweet, not spicy.”

  I take one of the two chairs positioned in front of Harlem’s corner desk. From this high up, I can see all the way across the city of Castle Pines. I imagine the ocean on the Oregon coast, only a few miles away.

  “Harlem,” I start. “Did you know time rifts are also portals to alternate universes?”

  By the stunned look on his face, the way he sinks back into his chair, and the lengthy silence, I’m guessing no.

  Saige sits next to me. “She’s telling the truth. Our dad has been living in one of four alternate dimensions for eight years.”

  “And now your alter-ego has crossed over to this world,” I add. “We’re trying to make sense of everything, and we need your help.”

  He lifts one palm in a signal for us to wait and picks up the phone with his other hand. “Linda? Hold all my calls, and reschedule all my remaining appointments. I can’t be disturbed.” After he hangs up, he pulls a notepad in front of him. “Tell me everything, Chloe.”

  I’ve heard him say those words before, and I open my mouth now just like I did when I was thirteen.

  Price

  I’VE CLOSED EVERYTHING DOWN, disconnected from the Circuit completely, even taken my cybernetics out. I can still see the black and white photo of Cascade engrained on the back of my eyelids.

  Her smirk, her intense eyes. Something inside me snaps.

  “This has to stop.” This feud between my family and hers. This changing of realities. This separation between me and Cascade.

  I hail Heath before I realize that we’re not friends in this timeline. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t answer. I can’t contact Monroe. Dad isn’t home.

  I’m forced to live out this timeline for another day. Dad said he’d return the next night, but he doesn’t. I settle myself on the couch for a third night, squeezing my eyes closed so I won’t cry.

  I wake up in the morning, sprawled across my bed face-down. Sunlight plays across my face, and that’s what snaps me to full attention.

  The sun couldn’t reach into the living room of the apartment.

  I’m in my old bedroom, with its slate gray walls and ever-present smell of dirty laundry and nearly-burnt metal. The humming sound of my Link noises nearby. I breathe a lungful of relief, feeling my chest relax for the first time in days. I hadn’t realized how tight I was until this moment.

  I waste no time hailing Dad. “What did you do?”

  “I prefer not to discuss it.”

  “Come on,” I say. “I know everything else. Why not this?”

  “I’d prefer that you be unable to provide answers should anyone come asking questions,” he says over the chat, and I realize that by not confiding in me, he’s protecting me.

  I sign out of the chat, grateful but unable to vocalize it. At least right now. I call up my history, hoping the article about the fire at Cascade’s house will be gone.

  No such luck. It’s still there; the anniversary of her death in less than two weeks. The tightening in my chest returns, and I feel that same snapping in my bloodstream as I did when I hailed Heath and he didn’t answer. I realize I’m not desperate. I’m angry.

  I storm into the bathroom and glare into my own slate blue eyes. My fists press into the hard counter until they hurt. I cannot let Cascade die in that “faulty wiring” fire. I hail Heath again, and this time he says, “Go,” in under three seconds.

  “I need to jam,” I say, “And I don’t mean on-Link. I mean you and me, the way we used to.”

  “What building do we need to break into?”

  “The Time Bureau.”

  “Oh, no problem,” Heath says sarcastically. “They haven’t upped the security at that place or anything. Anyone can walk in and do whatever they want.”

  “We can,” I say. “I can get us clearance.”

  “You need a badge just to get through the front door now, dude. Is your dad going to give you his for this little jam?”

  There’s a computer station on the sidewalk outside the Bureau now. It’s monitored twenty-four-seven by the eyes in Sector S, and if I try to get us in without Dad, they’ll know.

  “I need a rift,” I say. “I need to go back in time and warn Cascade.”

  “Warn Cascade?”

  I don’t have to explain. Heath can search and Link while the chat is open. Only a few seconds pass before he says, “Faulty wiring, my ass.”

  “Exactly,” I say, my throat narrowing to the point where I can’t say more.

  “We have to plan this, blood. We can’t just go storming in there tonight or anything. Let’s be smart.”

  “Can we be smart and fast?” I ask. “Because the clock is ticking.”

  Three days later, midnight finds me pacing from the Link station to the window in my bedroom. We’re going through the rift in the morning, and I can’t sleep. Heath and I have dedicated every waking minute over the past seventy-two hours to planning how we’re going to get inside the Time Bureau in broad daylight.

  I’m going to see Cascade in six hours. The thought makes something hot burn underneath my skin. What will she do? Will she be mad I’ve come to the past? Will I even care about her reasons for not coming straight back? Or will being with her be worth it?

  It was before. I was willing to sell out my dad for her before. I loved her.

  I love her, I amend in my head. Present tense.

  “Can’t sleep?” Heath asks over a secure chatline. I’d set it up three days ago, using my newly formed identity. I can’t get caught hacking again, but I also can’t sit here and do nothing when Cascade is in danger.

  “Can we do this?” I’m not normally so unsure, so indecisive. Every time I close my eyes I see the leaner, meaner version of myself. The Price Ryerson from Dimension B. I haven’t witnessed much of his life, but I know it’s much rougher than mine. I know there are men with guns who aren’t afraid to use them. Gangs that rule society, with people living in tents and horrific conditions.

  Heath’s voice cuts through the panic rising through my chest. “We can do this. You’ve got the clearance, and that gets us in. That’s the hardest part.”

  I nod, though he can’t see that. Two nights ago when I couldn’t sleep, I broke into my dad’s office and stole one of his visitor passes. Our entry will show up on his profile, but we’ll be back before he’s even awake. The plan is to get to the Time Bureau early enough that they’re still operating with a skele
ton security team. Once through the rift—which is housed in a building that has no ground-level entrances and no exits—should only take a few minutes. We’ll step through time to warn Cascade, and then come right back. The whole thing should take less than fifteen minutes.

  We should be at Sunnyside Up! drowning our relief with coffee by seven a.m.

  Should take less than fifteen minutes. Should be sucking down coffee by seven. Should be, should be, should be.

  “Okay.” I exhale. “See you in a couple of hours.”

  “Try to sleep,” Heath says before signing off. I don’t have the opportunity to remind him that he’s still awake too.

  I manage to keep myself contained in my house for an hour before the walls feel like they’re closing in on me. I dress in jeans and a dark hoodie. I collect the backpack of supplies—a couple of gadgets I took from Cas’s house, some snacks, and all the money I have—and scamper out the window.

  Outside, I breathe easier even though the air partially freezes my lungs. I could go inside Heath’s house and get warm. I’m sure he’s still up, though when I arrive at his house, his bedroom window is dark.

  Instead, I sneak around to his backyard and climb into the tree house in the giant oak. This place has mixed memories for me. I kissed Cascade for the first time here. I close my eyes, and instead of seeing something that makes me never want to sleep again, I see her face the last time she was here. Soft, and scared, but still fierce.

  Of course, this is also where we were caught by the Hoods. Immediately separated and then hauled off to prison in the basement of the Time Bureau. I can’t believe I’m actually trying to get back inside that building. I quickly refocus my thoughts on Cas—she’s the reason I’m doing this. I’ve been trying to figure out how to reach her for six months, and going through that rift is my best chance.

  I doze off at some point, because the next thing I know, Heath prods me with his boot. “Time to go, blood.”

  I jerk awake, unsure of where I am. It takes a moment for the walls of the tree house to focus, for me to remember that I couldn’t stay at my house for another second. “What time is it?”

  “Time to go,” Heath repeats, turning to leave.

  I grab my pack and follow him. We don’t speak on the way to the Bureau. With Heath and I, we never need to. We’ve always hashed everything out in the days before a jam, and I feel like my old self for the first time in months. One glance at Heath, and I know he’s coming back from wherever he went after Soda moved.

  This jam is good for both of us.

  All too soon, we arrive at the new computer check-in terminal outside the Time Bureau. I extract the stolen pass from my back pocket and hold it under the scanner. A beep indicates it’s been read. Instead of waiting with baited breath like I want to, I casually slide the card back into my pocket like I expect to be admitted.

  Anyone watching won’t be able to see the slight tremor in my hands or the slight tightness in my chest because I’m not breathing.

  Heath looks over his shoulder as if he hears something down the street. We don’t look at each other. The worry would be too evident then.

  Finally, the station clicks and a voice says, “Welcome to the Time Bureau, guests of Guy Ryerson. The door will be unlocked for fifteen seconds. Please proceed to the entrance now.”

  Heath and I waste no time getting through the doors. Once inside, a retina scanner whines into existence. “Please step forward to the identification monitor,” a cool female voice says.

  I glance at Heath. Neither of us knew of this new security checkpoint, and we have no way of avoiding it. I step forward, wondering if I need to take my cybernetics out. Worry seethes just under my skin. What if I’m denied access? I’ve been a prisoner here before, so even though my dad is the Time Keeper, anything is possible.

  “Price Ryerson,” a robotic voice declares.

  “Please proceed, Mr. Ryerson,” the female says. I wait for Heath to clear this checkpoint before we move toward the lift with our final destination in mind: my dad’s office.

  See, the rift isn’t housed in the Bureau. It’s actually contained on the property behind the building itself, something I only know because of a rift-walk Cas and I took last summer. We’d returned through a multi-dimensional rift, and the people chasing us had burned it. But I know there’s still a thread of rift energy in the building out back. Why else would it have been rebuilt without any doors, any windows, or any roof-top access points? That whole building is tightly monitored and under extreme lock-down—because it houses a rift.

  I’m sure my dad fixed it, just like I’m sure the only way to get into the building is through his office.

  Heath and I make it to Sector T, no problem. The next trick is figuring out how to zip ourselves through walls, across space, and into the rift site.

  I’d studied everything about my dad’s office that I could, including the public records and the very private ones I’d lifted from the Bureau when I was one of its prisoners. I go immediately to the wall behind Dad’s desk. It looks seamless, stretching sleek and silver without a break or a gap.

  I tap on it, and sure enough, there’s a wallscreen embedded in the metal. Now for the code, I chat to Heath, who watches a few steps away.

  My flatpanel cycles through its processes, producing the code in less than ten seconds. Tap, swipe, key, thumbprint, and the wall hisses to the side.

  A draft of hella-cold air punches me in the face, stealing my breath and frosting my cheeks. I rub my hands together and step into the chamber.

  Heath joins me, and a faint green glow on the wall near my waist blinks with one word: go.

  I press the button, and I’m immediately slammed forward into the wall as the compartment lurches away from Dad’s office.

  By the time we arrive at what I hope is our destination, my stomach rides in the back of my throat. We’ve gone up, down, left, right, looped, curved, right, left, down, up, and around for at least five minutes.

  The door hisses open, and I don’t take time for precautions. I stumble out of the death trap and bend over, gasping for air and trying to make my gut play nice.

  Heath groans and leans against the wall for support. Let’s never do that again, he chats.

  Deal. But we’ll have to do it again to get out of here. The thought tightens the knot in my chest.

  “Guy Ryerson has checked his email,” a security bot says in my ear. I’d hacked into a company called Know-It-All—a monitoring service—and created an account. I only needed it for a few days, and I only needed to know what my dad was doing for these fifteen minutes.

  “He has seen a notification about Price Ryerson’s entry to the Time Bureau.” My name is said in a different tone than the rest of the sentence.

  I swear out loud, which earns me a pointed glare from Heath. My dad knows, I chat to him, and he flies into overdrive.

  From here, our plan is sketchy. We both believe the rift to be in this building, based on the data, maps, and heightened security we’d unearthed from the Bureau. We just don’t know it’s exact location.

  “Guy Ryerson will be arriving at the Time Bureau in thirteen minutes.”

  I flash ten fingers at Heath, signaling to him that we have ten minutes to get out of here, or get caught. He raises his shoulders, asking, Should we abandon this plan?

  I shake my head violently. Cascade could die in only ten days. If we don’t go now, she’s as good as gone. And I can’t stomach the kind of permanent dead is.

  I stride past Heath, only half-checking the open doorways before I pass them. The rift will be locked down, I know that. We’re not going to waltz right up to it in a darkened hallway lined with open doors.

  I weave left, then right, following my gut. She rarely lets me down, and as the hallways widen and the lights brighten, I know I’m in the right place. Finally, we have to break our way through another coded door and enter a buzzing-with-energy hallway.

  I nod at Heath and he nods back. We’re here,
and we’re still doing this.

  “Guy Ryerson has arrived on-site,” my Know-It-All software tells me.

  “Location?” I ask, cringing as my voice echoes down the corridor stretching in front of me. My bootsteps do the same thing as I hurry forward. If I can get through the rift before Dad finds me, I can at least warn Cascade.

  “Sector S, Time Bureau.”

  “He’s going to try to cut the power,” I tell Heath, not bothering to use the secure chatline.

  There’s a door at the end of the hallway, perfectly circular and made of seamless silver. A chill pours from it that sinks all the way to my spine.

  “Here,” Heath says, his voice foreign. I can’t believe he’s spoken. He’s stopped next to an ordinary door, no knob, no color, but definitely nothing special. I look back to the circular door. Could it be a decoy? A trap?

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  He’s reading something on a gadget he brought. “Here,” he repeats. I send my chaser after the door’s code, and we’re in after just a few seconds.

  The room beyond is dark, the lights kept at ten percent even after we enter and re-seal the door. Heath steps to a control panel, which paints the room with unearthly white light as he wakes it. I tear my eyes from the light as he taps on the panel, setting the year we want and the duration we need the rift to remain open.

  He sets it for 2013, same day, same time, and the open duration to fifteen minutes.

  “Hurry,” I tell him even as the rift light blazes and expands to house a gateway big enough for both of us to walk through side-by-side.

  “Price,” Dad barks over a chat. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving someone,” I tell him. “I just need twenty minutes.” I swallow hard, desperate to keep myself from vomiting. Fear streams through me now. What if this rift doesn’t tether us to time, but to another dimension? What if there are Dimension Cs or Ds?

  Dad says something else, but Heath and I step into the rift, leaving his threats behind.

  Price