Mend (Rift Walkers #2)

by Elana Johnson

  “And thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I might just kill Cascade when I see her.” He hangs up, leaving me to wonder how close Cas and Cedar were in the past.

  I sit on the floor in the foyer with my back against the wall and shut my eyes. I’m not closer to a solution for the missing-Price issue, and with Cascade sick downstairs, getting him back feels farther away than ever.

  Cascade

  I WAKE UP TO THE TOUCH OF COLD HANDS. Very cold hands. Very cold hands and an angry voice.

  Cedar, then.

  I force my eyes open, and sure enough, there’s Cedar’s face hovering a few inches above mine. He’s older now—much older—but the frown lines between his eyebrows are so familiar, I almost smile.

  Almost.

  Because he looks livid, and the tense atmosphere surrounding me testifies of it.

  “She’s waking up.”

  I sit up, but it feels harder than it used to. “I’m awake.” Heath hovers near the steps, watching me with a heavy glint of concern in his eyes. A man has his back to me as he works on something at the counter, and Cedar glares from a few feet away.

  “What time is it?”

  “About nine,” Heath says. “Remember we’re in twenty-thirty-three?”

  “Yeah.” I rub the back of my head, which hurts. “I don’t have amnesia or anything. I was just…tired.”

  “Depleted,” an older, wiser voice says. The man turns, and I see the face of Trader. Gray salts his hair, but his smile is just as warm and comforting as always. He motions to my arm. “I only had you hooked up for ten minutes before you started to respond. So that’s good news.” He glances at Cedar, who only takes the glaring up a notch. “Or not.”

  “It’s good,” he grinds out between his teeth. “But she shouldn’t have gone in the first place.”

  “You’ve had twenty years to get over it.” Trader nudges him out of the way. “So get over it already.”

  It’s strange to see the changes in them. “Thanks for coming,” I say as my stomach growls.

  “No solids until morning.” Trader gives me a stern look. “But Cedar brought that drink mix you like.”

  “Strawberry grapefruit?” I look at him with hope in my eyes.

  “You know they stopped making this like, a decade ago,” he says as he holds up a package. “My wife couldn’t figure out why I wouldn’t throw it away.”

  A knife stabs clean through me with his words. “So you’re, you know, married.”

  “Yes.” He hands me a water bottle and the package of drink mix, along with a dark bottle of sorghum soda, before he retreats to the counter to let his brother work.

  I should be happy for Cedar. I am happy for him. I told him to move on, and he did. My main goal is to find a way to get Price back. I drink, and strawberries and grapefruit never tasted so good.

  “Drink the sorghum too.” Trader asks me to open my mouth and he scrapes a wand along the inside of my cheek. He removes it and checks the handle. “Bacterial.” He turns and fiddles with something on the counter. “At least it’s not viral. I wouldn’t remember how to treat it if it was.” He tosses me a smile over his shoulder, his way of saying he doesn’t blame me for going through the rift again.

  “But you are depleted. Not enough iron, low sodium, low calcium, and one of the worst dehydration cases I’ve seen in years.” He taps the line going into the vein on my wrist. “I think you should stay hooked up overnight. This has the nutrients you need, as well as a few concentrated minerals and vitamins. You should be feeling much better in just a few hours.”

  Gratitude swarms my chest, making it difficult to speak. “Thanks, Trader,” I manage to say.

  “Thank Cedar. He’s the one who stole me from my—” He cuts off as if he’s just remembered not to say something. The death glare Cedar’s giving him might have something to do with it. Or maybe I’ve coached them both enough to keep their futuristic details to themselves. It’s never good to know too much about your future.

  “Thanks, Cedar,” I say into the awkward silence, popping the top on the bottle of sorghum soda a moment later. Cedar had discovered sorghum had calcium, and iron, and more. He brought me a bottle every time we met up in the past.

  His features soften for just a minute, and I see the guy I first knew, the teenager who worked in my mom’s lab. “Thank Heath,” he says.

  I almost roll my eyes, but I turn them on Heath instead. “Thanks, Heath.” I glare back at Cedar as if to say, Satisfied?

  He gives me a smirk and heads for the stairs. Trader finishes whatever he was doing at the counter and follows his brother out.

  Heath and I wait until we hear their footsteps fade and several doors close. I sigh and lean back on the couch, glad when Heath sits next to me. “You too tired to talk?” he asks.

  “No. What’s up?”

  “Heard some freaky stuff upstairs…” He slides me a worried glance, and a jolt of adrenaline shoots through me.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “This house is owned by Orville Openshaw, but he doesn’t live here. He doesn’t even exist in this dimension.” Heath stares straight ahead as he speaks, delivering the facts with almost clinical precision.

  “But his son does, and he came to the house. The whole thing is empty, except for this one bin in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Next thing I know, he’s talking to his holographic father. They know we’re here, and Payton Openshaw has been tasked with finding us and removing us.”

  I tip back the soda, but even it doesn’t coat the dryness in my throat. “We won’t be here long enough for him to remove us.”

  “Let’s hope not, Cas. Because I don’t think Payton’s gonna send us through the rift with a warning. More like a bullet hole in the head.”

  Cold fear skates through my stomach. “Is there a rift here?” I glance toward the counters, the corner where we used to keep the tanks of hydro-2.

  “No idea.” He sighs and slides down on the couch so the back supports his head. “But I don’t think the one we came through is an option. They know we used it before, and my guess is it’ll suddenly be hella-busy in that building.”

  “Did you tell Cedar or Trader about the plane crash?”

  “Didn’t need to. Cedar knows we’re trying to save Price. He knew the event from five years ago.”

  My mind warps around the space-time continuum and I close my eyes, wishing I knew how to stop that plane from crashing.

  I jerk my eyes open. “We don’t need to stop the plane from crashing. We need to stop the Ryerson’s from getting on it.”

  Heath’s eyebrows lift, but he nods. “Good idea, Cas. How are we gonna do that?”

  “Let’s go back to twenty-thirteen and tell Harlem.”

  A frown mars Heath’s face. “So you think simply warning him about a plane crash that won’t happen for seventeen years is good enough? That’s what you’re pinning your hopes of getting Price back to?”

  I don’t appreciate his incredulous tone. “What’s your plan?”

  “Get to that day. Delay them. Tell them then. They’ll listen. They know about rifts and…people who make changes in timelines.” His eyes dance away from mine as he speaks, but I feel the distaste he has for people like me. People who make those changes. Familiar shame, and guilt, and desperation pools in my veins.

  “There’s a fundamental problem with both of our plans,” I say, though his is definitely better.

  “There’s no rift,” we say together.

  I hate how final his voice sounds, like he’s given up.

  I hate how angry mine sounds, like fury ever fixed anything in my life. It only made Dad die over and over. It coaxed me into stealing Mom’s research, leaving my siblings in the past, and stepping into the rift. It fueled my desire to take down Guy Ryerson.

  “I’ll be back.” I clutch my water bottle in one hand and the small IV container in the other as I climb the steps and enter the empty game room. I don’t even remember walking through
here to the basement. I really must’ve been in bad shape.

  I move down the hall, my steps sure. But they slow as I round the corner and glance into what used to be my mom’s office. I wonder if she was the last person to live here. I wonder where Saige is in this year, or Shep. I wonder if they’ll ever forgive me for choosing Price over them.

  I step into the office, but I leave the door open. I’ve never wanted to be contained by these walls. Mom used to have a long couch in here, one she’d sleep on after she worked so hard she couldn’t even drag herself upstairs.

  After Dad died, she slept here more often, and I always thought it was because she couldn’t bear to go up to their bedroom. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time feeling sorry for her. She’s been communicating with Dad for years, and I’m the one who didn’t know he was still alive.

  My thoughts meander to Saige, and where she is and what she’s doing. She was so angry too when we found out Dad was still alive. She really suffered, and then when I left… I cut off the thoughts and step to the built-in filing cabinets on the back wall. I open one and find nothing inside. I don’t know what I was hoping for. A long-lost file with one of my school pictures in it?

  I’m not sentimental like that. If Saige lived here, she probably took them all with her. Or shredded them. Right now, it’s a toss-up.

  There’s no power here. No computer. No way to open the rift and get where I need to get to save Price. Maybe I should look up my sister. Maybe she can help.

  Confusion swirls in my mind, an uncomfortable sensation I’m not familiar with. I collect facts, make decisions, and act. There’s always a way, always another option to solve the problem. I will my brain to work the way it does when I’m on the job for Guy, when things don’t go as prescribed, when I have to judge situations with a hair of information and a split-second to decide.

  “Mom’s lab,” I say to myself in the dark room. I know there’s a rift there—one connected to both space and time. It’s just a matter of whether or not I can force myself to go through it.

  Cascade

  IT’S TORTURE TO WAIT FOR MORNING, but Heath hasn’t slept in a while, and he’s conked out when I get back to the basement. I managed to doze a bit too, but the sleep is fitful. I dream of Price, and he’s transparent, a flag that waves in the breeze.

  I wake on and off through the night, my phone battery inching closer to zero as I look up The Global Initiative and search for my mom’s name. She still works there, and though I shouldn’t be, I’m surprised by how old she looks. She’s sixty-two now, but I know she’ll recognize me. Like Cedar, she’s probably been waiting for the day when I’d show up and demand to go through the rift.

  “Might as well give her what she expects,” I mutter to myself as I thumb off my phone. A floorboard above squeaks, and my body freezes.

  I don’t care what Heath said about no one living here, someone’s in the house. I stand without making a sound and nudge him with two fingers. “Heath,” I whisper as low as possible. “Wake up.”

  His eyes open, disoriented and unfocused. When they meet mine, I’m already pressing my finger to my lips. I point to the ceiling with my other hand just as another footstep makes the old house protest.

  His eyes widen and he flings the thin blanket to the floor. We move to the stairs and peer up into darkness.

  I touch his arm. He meets my eye. I nod.

  He goes first, with me right behind him. He checks to make sure the door is locked while I examine the window. The screen’s already popped out, and I exit first to a blast of cold pre-dawn air. I jump for the lip of the window well and heave myself out. Heath closes the window behind him before he copies me, and we sprint across the lawn to the shed. I press into the unforgiving metal, my breathing ragged and a strong bout of vertigo making the world spin.

  “I left…my water bottle,” I pant. “And the IV unit Trader brought. They’ll know…someone was there.”

  “They don’t have to know it was you.” Heath peers around the corner. “Let’s get out of here.” He vaults the fence, but the climb from the window well has stolen everything from me. I hate feeling this weak, this unable to make my body do what it’s always been able to do.

  Heath perches on the top of the fence and reaches for me. I’ve just cleared the fence and dropped to my knees in the gravel on the other side when someone whistles.

  A dog barks. Claws scrabble against the other side of the wood. I don’t wait to make sure I’m okay, that I can breathe, that my muscles work.

  I just run.

  “It’s dead.” I want to chuck my phone into the nearest sewer grate. But there aren’t any in this blasted city, in this particular year.

  “There’s a bus stop.” The relief in Heath’s voice could paint beautiful pictures. We’ve been running for a solid thirty minutes. My chest feels like someone scrubbed it out with steel wool and then doused it with rubbing alcohol. But I didn’t dare stop, won’t slow Heath down, can’t let him know how weak I am.

  The barking dogs had stopped after only a few minutes, but I don’t believe for a second our hunters aren’t still on the prowl. There are many and diverse ways of finding someone, especially with advanced technology, and I have no idea what this Payton Orville has access to.

  We join the dozens of people waiting for the bus, and I wonder if we’ll be able to get on. Heath moves to a couple of guys and asks them where this bus goes. He seems satisfied with the answer, and a couple of minutes later, our salvation arrives.

  We managed to squish on, but we have to stand near the front. A guy next to me stares at me hard, a smile curling his lips. Heath slides his hand into mine like he’s my boyfriend, and I squeeze to convey my appreciation.

  The guy turns back to the window, but I notice another man near the back of the bus watching me. He pretends like he’s not, first pulling out his phone and then placing something behind his ear. Probably something that allows him to listen to music, but I have a strange feeling he’s communicating with someone. Communicating with someone about me.

  His gaze slides over me again as he looks out the opposite window. Back across me as he glances out his window.

  The bus pulls to a stop and I have to smash into Heath to let people by to get off. By the time the doors close, there’s more room on the bus, but the guy who’s been watching me has moved closer.

  I can see his face clearer now. He has blue eyes—as clear and as blue as a tropical sea. A hat made from a material I’ve never seen covers most of his hair, but a few mousy strands poke out below his ears.

  His strong jaw and sloped nose remind me of someone I know. He’s about my age, and he raises his hand as if acknowledging me.

  I look away, realizing I’ve been staring at him for a full minute. My skills at blending in and stalking a target have disappeared.

  “We need to get off at the next stop,” I whisper to Heath.

  “But our stop isn’t for three more.”

  “There’s a guy back there—don’t look—who’s been watching me.”

  Heath stiffens, and he’s much better at keeping a straight face and focusing his attention where it should be. “Let’s give it one more stop,” he says. “Get as close as we can.”

  “Okay, but if a lot of people get off, I think we should go too.”

  He squeezes my hand in affirmation, and the seconds roll by with the blocks. The bus stops, the doors yawn open, and people spill onto the sidewalk. Again, I press into Heath, who slides both arms around my shoulders and to my waist. It feels strange to be held by him, but I forget about that when someone bumps into me.

  “Sorry.” The guy who was staring at me looks directly into my eyes, and I see grids in his. I know instantly who he is, and horror ices all my muscles. Something slides into my back pocket, the guy moves on, and the bus doors close.

  “Who was he?”

  “One of Guy’s rift-walkers,” I manage to stammer. “Johnny. He came from about the same year as me. Started about the same ti
me too.” My heart feels like it’s pumping so fast it’ll explode.

  Heath frowns. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Maybe Orville does the same thing as Guy.” I fumble for whatever Johnny put in my pocket. It’s a circle, flesh-colored, no bigger than the tip of my finger.

  I show it to Heath. “What do I do with this?”

  He examines it, tilting my pointer finger one way and then the other. “It has a slight rise in the middle. My guess is you—”

  “It’s a speaker.” The guy who was staring at me first stands and crowds me in the aisle. “You press it behind your ear, and you’ll be able to hear the message.” He steps toward the front of the bus as it pulls to a stop.

  Heath and I wait until he disembarks and the bus continues toward our stop before looking at each other again.

  “Okay, listen up,” he says.

  I saw Johnny press something behind his ear, and he didn’t die. So I place it just behind my lobe, and a low voice speaks instantly.

  “They know you’re here. The lab will be crawling with bounty walkers. I can buy you maybe ten minutes. Hurry, Cas.”

  The sound of Johnny’s voice awakens a memory I’d long forgotten. One of my first walks. He’d been there too, and he’d coached me through speaking with someone to get them to change the course of their life.

  I’d never seen him after that. I’d never heard what happened to him. I’m confused about why he’s here now, and what a bounty walker is, but I don’t have time to dwell on unnecessary details.

  Johnny can get me ten minutes. I’m going to use it. I push to the front of the bus so that when it stops, I’m the first one down the stairs. I hit the ground running, eating up the block between the stop and my mom’s building in only half a minute. To Heath’s credit, he follows me without question, without hearing Johnny’s message, without a word.

  “He can get us ten minutes,” I tell him once we enter the safety of the elevator.

  “How?” His labored breathing matches mine.

  “I don’t know. Don’t really care. He said there were bounty walkers here, and I don’t see any of them, so…” I shrug.