by K. J. McPike
Solid ground materialized beneath my feet again, and when I opened my eyes, we were standing in a wooded area I didn’t recognize. The sky carried a soft haze the sun hadn’t burned off yet. About a hundred yards away, a two-story motel beckoned us.
I could hear Kai’s heavy breathing, and I turned to see him holding onto a fir tree for balance. “Are you okay?” I asked, dread like an anchor weighing me down. Was this the same thing that had happened to me earlier, or another case of him overexerting himself by projecting with all of us?
“I’m fine.” He straightened up, but his inhale still sounded labored. “Let’s go.” He started up the slight incline and toward the motel, and the rest of us hurried after him.
“Why didn’t you just take us to her room?” Dixon asked, swiping a branch out of his path.
“Because I’m pretty sure at this point, she still had a block on,” Kai replied without breaking stride.
“How does she have a block on?” Oxanna glanced over her shoulder at me as if I might have an explanation. All I could offer was a shrug. “I thought blocks were around areas, not people.”
“She figured out a way to make a block from some kind of net thing she put over her hair,” Kai said. “She’s the crystal master. What’d you expect?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised; of course Delta would have figured out crystal accessories. It would have been nice to have wearable blocks for my family during that attack. I forced away the thought. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway—all the Astralii who invaded our house had the necklaces that allowed them to penetrate blocks.
Kai and Kala turned around the front of the motel, and I sped to a jog to keep up. Oxanna and my brothers were at my side as we crossed the mostly empty parking lot.
“Her room’s the last one on the left.” Kai pointed to a green door on the second floor. The outdoor corridor was lined with a flimsy-looking metal railing that turned down the cement stairs and twisted into a swirl at the end. Leading the way up the steps, Kai stopped at the last room and knocked.
A rustling sound came from inside. Seconds later, the curtains shifted as Delta’s round face appeared in the window. Seeing her alive sent a shiver through me.
She gasped, letting the curtain fall back into place. “Go away!” she shouted from the other side of the glass. “I’ll call the police!”
Oh, no. She must have known about what Kai had been up to during this time.
“I’m not here for Cade,” Kai insisted.
I inhaled sharply, realizing that Cade was still alive at this point, too. He was the last person I wanted to run into while we were stuck in the wrong time.
“I said go away,” Delta cried. “You and whoever else you brought with you.”
“We need your help,” I called through the door. “Please.”
Oxanna threw up her hands. “Kai, just project in there and open the door.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I told you, she has a block on. The last time I tried to project near her, I got knocked on my butt.”
My sister rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll do it.” The next second, her astral form stepped out of her body, marched right up to the door, and walked through it.
Delta screamed on the other side, but a moment later, the deadbolt clicked and Oxanna’s astral form waved us inside.
Kai’s mouth hung open. “How did you—never mind.” He charged into the room, and the rest of us followed close behind. Oxanna’s astral form disappeared, and her physical body brought up the rear.
Delta backed away from our group, squeezing between the queen bed and the wall like a cornered animal. Her eyes darted around the six of us, freezing on Kala’s yellow jumpsuit. “No,” she whimpered.
“We only want to ask for your help,” Kai assured her, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Please. We’re desperate.”
“Who are these people?” Keeping her plump body pressed against the textured wallpaper, Delta looked between Kala and me before moving her frantic gaze to my brothers and Oxanna. Her short, sky-blue hair was tucked beneath a mesh-like cover marked with shiny black stones. That must have been the block Kai had mentioned. “What do you want?”
“We’re Xiomara’s kids,” I told her, not bothering to clarify that it was only true for some of us. If Delta and Mom had been friends, I hoped that meant Delta would want to give us a hand. “And we’re stuck in the wrong time.”
Her face went blank. “You’re what?”
“It’s complicated.” I glanced at Kala and my siblings, all of them a step behind Kai and me. “My brother can project to the past, and we used a transposer to come back here so we could stop an attack from happening.”
Delta’s hand shot to her mouth. “No. No, no, no. You can’t play with time.”
“Well, it’s too late for that.” Oxanna huffed. “We already did it, and now Lyx can’t take us to the future we came from.”
“That’s because you’ve spliced time.” Delta’s original fear at seeing us barge in seemed tame compared to the new terror in her eyes. “You created a future that doesn’t exist yet.”
“The future doesn’t exist yet where we came from, either,” Ulyxses said. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
“You have not seen it yet, but it still exists,” Delta explained. “Time doesn’t work in a linear fashion. But now that you’ve gone backward, you created a new timeline. It’s going to take a while for things to catch up.”
Dixon heaved a sigh and leaned against the wooden dresser at his side. “So we’re stuck here until time catches up?”
“How long will it take for that to happen?” Kala asked.
“Longer than you have, I’m afraid.” Delta’s cryptic tone made my skin crawl.
“What does that mean?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the feeling of impending doom rising inside me. Something in her fearful expression communicated pity, as well.
“I mean that it’s only a matter of time before the astral energies inside all of you merge with the astral energies inside your past-selves and double,” Delta said.
“What does that mean?” Kai’s nostril twitched. “We’ll be supercharged?”
Delta shook her head slowly, ominously. “Much the opposite. One version of you will lose their ability completely. And the other…” Her brown eyes tightened. “The other will die.”
Chapter 11
Morality
My voice lodged in my throat. I stared at Delta as I tried to process her words. How could time travel kill people? I could understand leaving them stranded in the wrong era, but death seemed so…extreme. Glancing at the others’ stunned expressions, I fought off a shudder. Had our attempt to save Salaxia put everyone else at risk?
Delta cleared her throat, lifting her soft features into a flat, sympathetic almost-smile. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the queen bed across the room. “All of you. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Numbness took over my body as I studied the headboard, a plain wooden rectangle that topped the red and gold stripes lining the comforter. Kai and Kala moved toward it first, followed by Dixon, Ulyxses, and Oxanna, but my feet stayed firmly planted. I didn’t want to sit down. I didn’t want to hear the dangers of what we’d done. All I wanted was to go back to the time we’d come from and find that my baby sister was alive. I wanted to hug her and celebrate that we found a way to save her from the attack. But I could tell from Delta’s demeanor that whatever she was about to tell us would shatter my vision of how things were supposed to go.
Something squeaked, and I turned to see Delta dragging an office chair out from under the desk opposite the bed. She spun it to face the others, took a seat, and clasped her hands like she needed to brace herself for what she was about to say. Maybe we all needed to brace ourselves.
Forcing down the lump in my throat, I made myself move to the bed. We’ll figure this out. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. I repeated reassuring thoughts as I sank onto a corner of the mattress. It wasn’t like my
family had never overcome a tough situation before. Why should this one be any different?
“Simply put,” Delta began, “two versions of you cannot exist in the same timeline. At least not two versions of you with the same astral energy.”
“But our past-selves don’t have astral energy yet,” Ulyxses said. “We didn’t have our powers at this point in time. At least, the three of us didn’t.” He indicated Dixon, Oxanna, and himself.
Delta blinked twice, dual creases forming between her sparse brows. “Staying in the same timeline as another with identical energy is still a potential risk, whether it has been awakened or not. Even if the energy is dormant, it is still there.”
The bed shifted as Kai squirmed behind me. “Besides, Lali and I had our abilities already, so we’re screwed no matter what.”
“This is what I tried to tell you all,” Kala hissed. “Time travel poses risks we cannot completely understand.”
My back went rigid. Did she really think this was the time for I-told-you-so?
“But why would anyone die?” Oxanna asked, seemingly unfazed by Kala’s reminder.
“Yeah,” Dixon said. “It’s not like we got in the way of our parents meeting and stopped ourselves from being born or something. We hardly changed anything.”
“Death is a risk because the astral energy from both versions of you will combine and choose one body.” Delta leaned forward in her chair. “It will overwhelm and kill the body it chooses, leaving the second version of you without any astral energy—without any abilities.”
I fidgeted, remembering my headache shortly after talking to my past-self. Was that the start of our energies merging? Of me dying? “How long do we have?” I asked, my throat tightening.
Delta lifted her shoulders and glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand to my left. “It’s hard to know. I would imagine that putting distance between you and your past-selves would buy you some time, but I only know of one other semmie this happened to. It was soon after I awakened his ability, and—” Her face drooped. “How long have you been in the wrong time?”
“Twenty minutes, tops,” Kai said quickly, as if he could somehow convince the powers that be to spare us. “Would it happen that fast?”
Oxanna scoffed. “No way. I still have my ability, and I’m not dead.” Though she sounded confident, her chest was starting to rise faster and faster. Mine was doing the same.
“Does this mean the other version of me died already?” Ulyxses asked, falling back against the headboard.
Delta scanned our group, chewing the inside of her bottom lip. “I don’t think so. If the rest of you still have your abilities, then both versions of you are probably still alive for now. Statistically speaking, I doubt all of you would be the version of yourself that survives.”
Her words were like a fist in the gut. I couldn’t let another of my siblings die. I couldn’t see another lifeless body of someone I loved.
“How do you know which version will live?” I asked.
“I don’t think there’s any way to tell,” Delta answered softly. “After it happened to Trace…well, he didn’t have much time to give me all the details.”
“Hold on.” Kala raised her hand like the tiny motel room was some sort of classroom of doom. “How could he tell you anything if one version of him died and the other lost his ability in another time? How could he come back to talk to you? How would they have found his body at all?”
Delta acknowledged the questions with a small dip of her chin. “They sent Sariah after him. She was a semmie who could project through time, as well as beyond time.”
I frowned. “Beyond time? What does that mean?”
“And how come Sariah could get to the future when I can’t?” Ulyxses added, slouching even more.
“That was how her power worked,” Delta explained. “From what I understand, there is an in-between space away from time. And from there, she could see everything—including the points where time had been spliced—and she could enter any timeline at any point she wished. Not only that, but she could carry others with her, from their original timelines to wherever she chose to put them. She brought both versions of Trace back with her, but only after the second version of him died.”
“Where’s Sariah now?” Kai asked. “It sounds like she could get us back to the right time.”
I nodded eagerly. “She sounds like exactly what we need.”
“Yes, in theory.” Delta tossed her head. “But the last I heard, Sariah and Trace were both imprisoned for endangering Astralii safety. I have no idea what happened to either of them after that. All I heard from then on were the warnings about the dangers of time travel.” Her eyes narrowed as she adjusted the crystal-lined hairpiece over her cropped sky-blue locks. “Of course, they used it to add fuel to their anti-semmie fire.”
“Then how do you know for sure that any of this is even true?” Oxanna challenged. “Maybe they made it all up because they hate semmies.”
Something twitched in my stomach. Maybe Oxanna had a point. If this was all just propaganda to push the idea that semmies were dangerous, maybe we had nothing to worry about. I turned back to Delta, searching for any indication that it was a possibility, but she just studied the worn-out carpet.
“Trace told me what happened,” she replied, her posture falling as she spoke. “Well, the version of him that lived. The Eyes and Ears forced answers out of him later, but I know he was telling me the truth. Time travel is a tenuous art; there is no denying that.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” I asked in a thick voice. “If there’s no way to get to the right timeline and no way to find Sariah, how do we stop our astral energy from merging?”
Delta hesitated for a long moment. “Your best bet is moving to a time well before you existed. You would have to make sure you are far enough back that there’s no chance of your life overlapping with an alternate version of yourself. To be safe, I’d suggest going back about a hundred years.”
“A hundred years?” Oxanna was incredulous.
Dixon huffed. “That’s insane. How are we supposed to know how to live a century ago?”
“Or I can try trapping your astral energy,” Delta offered.
“You mean like you did with Cade?” Kai’s face suddenly looked ashen.
“Yes.” Delta rolled backward in her chair, as if she were afraid Kai would lash out at her for what she and her friends had done to his uncle all those years ago. “Though I can’t be sure that will work. It’s never been tested.”
“But we would lose our powers.” Kala made it a statement, not a question. She seemed appalled by the thought, but that was the least of our worries right now.
“That’s true,” Delta said. “You would lose your astral projection abilities.”
Everyone started talking over each other, and I dropped my face into my hands. What had we done? What had I done? It was my suggestion that had gotten the rest of us stuck in the past with no way back to our correct time. And even if we did get back—
The realization hit me like a speeding bus. “Delta,” I gasped, and the chatter behind me quieted. “If we find a way back to our correct timeline, nothing will have changed there, will it?”
“No.” That single word made my heart plummet. “When you splice time, it creates a new branch, so to speak. From that point on, there are two versions of events, and you alter what happens in the new timeline you made, not the old.”
Suddenly there wasn’t enough air. I squeezed the comforter in my fist as the pressure built in my chest. She’s gone. She’s really gone. Even if we made it back to where we’d come from, we still wouldn’t have our baby sister. We had only saved her in this new spliced timeline, not the one we’d come from.
“So nothing will have changed with Sal,” Ulyxses whispered, further driving the point home in my mind.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder, but I couldn’t find the strength to look up and see who it was. I just stared at the lap of my jeans
, the light blue wash blurring in and out of focus. How could Salaxia be out of our lives forever? There had to be something we were missing.
A car door slammed outside, making me jump.
Kai cursed under his breath. “That’s probably Solstice. I brought her back here right after Lali and I talked to her about getting to the portal.”
“She is the one who threatened to have me killed?” Kala asked.
“Yeah.” Kai jumped up and hurried over to the window, cursing again as he pulled back the thick green curtain. “It’s her. We gotta get out of here. I don’t want her seeing Kala with us. God only knows what that will mean for the future here.” He let the drape fall back into place and moved back toward the bed.
“I’ll get rid of her,” Delta said, getting to her feet. “Come back in five minutes. I’ll take my block off so you can project here without a problem. Then I just need to pick up some supplies, and I can try trapping your astral energy.”
“But you don’t know for sure that’ll work,” Oxanna argued.
Delta sighed. “There’s no way to be sure, but I can try.”
The click of heels told us Solstice was walking down the corridor outside, and Kai held out his hands. “Let’s get out of here.”
Everyone else slid off the bed, and I stood on shaky legs. All of this was too much at once. My brain could hardly keep up. Moving in a daze, I joined hands with the others, and we vanished just as the knock came on the door.
As soon as we appeared on the beach, I let myself drop into the sand. My siblings plopped down beside me, and I swore I could feel their despair compounding my own. I didn’t want to break down in front of my family, but my sanity was on the brink of collapsing. How were we supposed to choose from the options we’d been given when none of them would reunite us with our sister? None would get us back to life as we knew it at all.
Oxanna pulled her legs to her chest, burying her face in her knees. “What are we gonna do?” she moaned.
