by K. J. McPike
Words failed me. What could we do? Staying here would mean giving up our abilities and living in a world with two versions of ourselves—and that was only if Delta’s trapping our astral energy could keep us alive. Even that wasn’t guaranteed. If we traveled one hundred years into the past, we would never see Salaxia, our parents, or anyone we cared about ever again. And if by some miracle we found a way back to our proper timeline, Salaxia would still be gone. We’d be right back where we started.
“Well, we can’t stay here.” Kai was already starting to pace along the shore. “Delta doesn’t know for sure that we’d be safe even if she traps our astral energy, and it’s not worth taking that chance.”
“Then we must go back one hundred years?” Kala asked, making no move to sit. Her dark ponytail swayed as she shook her head. “That is taking a chance, too.”
“What if we let Delta trap our astral energy just long enough for time to catch up?” Dixon suggested. “Then she can release it and Lyx can project us to the future.”
“It will be the wrong future,” Kala reminded him. “If we remain in this timeline, there will still be two versions of us.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, doing all I could to tune out their back and forth. I needed to think. How was I going to put my family back together again?
“I say we try to find Sariah,” Kai announced, stopping short in front of me. “We could go back in time to when she first found Trace and brought him back from his trip to the past. If we can find her, we can get her to take us to our proper timeline.”
“It won’t matter,” I said miserably. “None of this matters if Sal is—if she’s—” I couldn’t form the word. Saying dead would acknowledge on some level that it was true. That it was permanent. But it couldn’t be. There had to be a way to fix it.
Everyone stayed quiet, and I stared out at the waves breaking twenty yards from me. They rolled in steady and unrelenting, wearing against the beach the way reality was trying to wear down my resolve to save Salaxia. But I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t listen to the thoughts careening at me, insisting we would never see her again.
“What if we took Sal with us?” Dixon asked in a small voice.
I gasped. “What?”
“Well, she’s okay in this timeline,” he said. “If we have to leave, we could bring her with us.”
“You cannot pull her from her proper timeline.” Kala looked at my brother like he’d just suggested the worst imaginable sin.
Oxanna lifted her head, looking at all of us through her tangled mess of hair. “Why not?” She wiped at her cheeks and searched my face like she was looking for permission. “According to Delta, Sariah pulled Trace out of his timeline. And the whole point of coming to the past was to get Sal back. This might be the only way to do it.”
I pulled in a gulp of briny air. Could it be as simple as projecting Salaxia further back in time with us? If we managed to find Sariah in the past, maybe she could take us to the timeline where the Astralii had attacked our house. Then we’d have Salaxia back, and we’d be in the right time.
“Can we do that?” Ulyxses asked.
“Yeah. And it wouldn’t even be hard.” Dixon sat up straighter in the sand, his words tumbling out at full speed. “Kai could project right to her and bring her here now. Then I could take all of us into Mom’s past, back to the last time she was in the tunnel by the transposer, and we could all switch to our physical bodies.”
“Actually, the last time Mom was in the tunnel would probably be when they trapped Cade’s astral energy and got stuck in this realm,” Ulyxses pointed out. “You would have to go to a time before that. Or a few times before, just to be sure.”
“Still,” Dixon said. “It’ll be easy to do.”
Kala huffed and looked down her nose at the rest of us. “That is both insane and dangerous. You could create situations that are far worse than the one we are in now.”
Oxanna shot her a glare. “What could be worse than this?”
“Wait.” I held my forehead, willing my brain to keep up with everything being thrown at me. “We need to think about this.” I wanted my baby sister back more than anything, but what would happen if we took her to a different time? It was my suggestion to come back to the past that had gotten us into this situation, and I couldn’t risk making another rash decision.
“What’s there to think about?” Dixon asked. “How else are we going to get Sal back?”
“What you are suggesting is wrong,” Kala snapped, the disgust in her voice palpable.
“Talk to me when it’s your little sister on the line,” Oxanna fired back.
Kala bristled and turned to Kai. “Tell them this is wrong.”
“I can’t.” His face tightened. “I can’t judge what’s right and wrong when it comes to family. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of trying to get you out of Alea, and I owe these guys everything for helping me.”
Kala jerked her head back, studying him with an expression I couldn’t read. “How could you be okay with kidnapping a girl after condemning the Astralii who kidnapped me?”
My body caved. I didn’t want to admit it, but she spoke the truth. If we took this timeline’s version of Salaxia with us to a different time, we would be kidnapping her from her family here. But when I envisioned seeing her smile and imagined the sound of her laugh, my caution wavered. I didn’t know if I could stand the pain of living without her.
So you’ll put that pain on someone else?
The thought popped into my head uninvited, and shame heated my cheeks. Pulling Salaxia out of this timeline would mean another version of my family would go through the same loss we had experienced, except there would be no explanation. Salaxia would just be gone. How could I even consider putting anyone through that kind of grief when I knew what it felt like? I wouldn’t wish that hurt on anyone, especially not the people I loved most in the world. Even if this was a different variation of them, it was still my family.
“You guys,” I rasped. “Kala’s right.”
Dixon gaped at me. “What do you mean? Don’t you want Sal back?”
“Of course I do. But what about her family here? Taking her from them means we would be just as bad as the Astralii who took her from us.”
“I don’t care if it makes us bad.” Oxanna kicked out her legs in the sand and dropped her arms to her sides. “I can live with that if I have to.”
Despite my earlier argument, I couldn’t help but want to agree with her. Maybe I could live with the guilt, too. If the only thing standing between me and getting Salaxia back was my conscience, then maybe it wasn’t worth it to have one.
My eyes shot to Kai, and in that moment, I understood him. I understood him, and I envied him. He didn’t hesitate to do anything for the sake of getting to his own sister. Why couldn’t I do the same? Why couldn’t I turn off my morality when it suited me like he could? There was no reason I had to be the one to suffer.
Except you wouldn’t be the only one to suffer. The true weight of what we were considering hit me all at once. If we took Salaxia from this timeline, we would be ripping her from life as she knew it and dragging her into our mess. We didn’t even know where we were going from here, or if wherever we went would be safe. I couldn’t do that to her for my own selfish reasons—especially not when I knew she was likely to survive in this timeline now that we’d warned my past-self about the attack.
“I can live with it, too.” Ulyxses kept his face smooth, but his voice betrayed his doubt. “Guilt is better than pain any day.”
I stared at him, my heart breaking at how lost he looked. I couldn’t blame him for preferring not to hurt. But I also couldn’t sabotage Salaxia’s chance at a safe, happy life here.
“It’s not just that,” I said, frustrated tears threatening to spill over. “We have to think about what’s best for Sal. Taking her back in time with us when we have no idea what’s going to happen once we get there isn’t the best thing for her.”
; My brothers and Oxanna stayed quiet, and the tension in Kala’s body seemed to relax as she shared a glance with Kai. But I didn’t want her approval. I wanted someone to make a case against what I was saying and convince me that it was okay to take Salaxia with us.
No one did. Instead, my siblings deflated one by one.
“Do you think there’s a timeline where it could work?” Oxanna asked, so softly I could hardly hear her over the sound of the water. “Maybe there’s one where the rest of us died, and it’s just Sal so it would make sense to take her out of it.”
Our brothers perked up at the suggestion, but I couldn’t seem to find even the smallest flicker of confidence within me. The best I could offer was, “Maybe.”
“The best way to find out is travel further into the past,” Kai said. “Like you were saying, Dixon, you can go back to your mom’s past and we can try to get her to help us find Sariah.” His gaze moved over to my face, though I didn’t know what he hoped to find there.
“Let’s just focus on getting somewhere safe.” I looked at my remaining siblings, barely containing the tempest of emotion swirling inside me. “We have to get out of this timeline before anyone’s astral energy starts to merge. I can’t risk losing you guys.” My voice wavered, and the rest of the words only sounded in my head:
You’re all I have left.
Chapter 12
Housing
Flashes of Mom’s life whizzed past us at lightning speed. I couldn’t make sense of what we were seeing as Dixon projected us further back in time, but I didn’t have the energy to try or even care. All I could think about was the nagging voice in my head that questioned if leaving Salaxia behind was the right choice. For being the ethical thing to do, it felt like the worst decision I’d ever made.
None of my siblings spoke, and I wondered if they were questioning whether we should have brought her with us, too. How could they not? She was right there. It would have been so easy. And we hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. Though we all agreed we should get out of that timeline quickly to avoid our astral energy merging, not being able to hug my baby sister one last time gutted me. It was just another blow to add to the growing list.
The blur of images finally came to a halt, and it took me a moment to register that we were in the transposer tunnel again. The glowing ring lit the hollowed-out space like it always did, shining like everything was okay, and I wanted to smash the stupid beaming circle into a million pieces. Every other time I’d seen the transposer, it had been like a beacon of hope telling me not to give up—not to give up on getting to Alea, on reuniting with my mother, on saving Salaxia. Now it only drove home that none of it mattered. It was like everything had been some cruel cosmic joke. Why put me through so much trying to reunite my family only to rip it apart again?
Someone giggled, and my head twitched in the direction of the sound. Barely five feet away, a version of my mother who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen stood bathed in the transposer’s golden light. Her dark hair was much longer than the chin-length bob I was used to, but it was definitely her. She linked arms with two equally young-looking girls I recognized as Ursula and Ori, Mom’s friends and fellow members of XODUS. Ursula had the same thick black curls I remembered, but Ori’s head was shaved and her scalp dyed green.
Dressed in jeans and midriff-baring shirts, the three of them made their way toward where we stood. I panicked, backing up until my shoulders almost touched the wall.
“Stay out of their way,” I called out to my invisible co-travelers. “Don’t let them run into you.” I didn’t know if someone bumping one of us would drain Dixon’s energy faster or what would happen if he got knocked into the transposer before everyone else, but I couldn’t handle any more complications.
Oblivious to our presence, Mom and her friends moved past me, toward the end of the tunnel. Their giggles and whispers faded as they pushed through the trap door leading to the cliff house above us, letting it snap shut behind them.
As soon as it did, Dixon’s voice startled me. “Hurry up and switch,” he said. “I’m already feeling drained.”
Oh, no. Rushing to the transposer, I moved through it at the same time as Oxanna, and the two of us landed in a heap. We crawled toward the wall just as Kai and Ulyxses appeared. Kala was next, followed by Dixon, who hit the ground panting.
“Dix, are you okay?” I scooted to my brother’s side, searching his face. Beads of sweat reflected the gold light back at me.
“I’m fine.” But I could see tightness in his features. Taking all of us into the past twice in such a short time had pushed him too hard. What would have happened if he’d run out of energy? “Let’s just figure out what we’re going to say to Mom,” he said.
I helped him to his feet, trying to keep my frazzled nerves in check. We hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to go through how we were going to approach our mother. Just thinking about it made me jittery.
Ulyxses stood and dusted off his hands on the back of his corduroy pants. “I guess we just explain that we’re stuck in the wrong time and need help finding Sariah.” He watched everyone else get up and shrugged. “That’s all we can really say.”
“You are not going to tell her that you are her children?” Kala asked.
“Maybe we should,” Oxanna said. “That’s probably the fastest way to get her to agree to help us.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. “It might also be the fastest way to freak her out,” I commented.
“We don’t have time to debate.” Kai looked to his right, toward the blackness that led to the tunnel’s entrance from the bay, as if he were afraid we might have company. “I don’t wanna be standing here if another Astralis comes through.”
I sighed, hating that we had yet another issue forcing us to rush. We’d barely had time to breathe, let alone process everything. But I knew Kai was right, and the way things were going, I didn’t want to risk getting caught here.
“I’ll go first,” he offered. “Just in case there are other Astralii in there. I’ll be able to get out the fastest.” He started toward the trap door before anyone could protest. Exchanging nervous glances, the rest of us moved after him, stopping as he pushed into the cliff house.
“We have clearance!” The cry came before Kai had gotten all the way through the opening. I recognized the voice as Mom’s. “Look under Solstice Yilden,” she added in a less frantic tone, catching me off guard. Why would she use Solstice’s name?
“I’m not here to get you in trouble,” Kai said, holding the door open with the top half of his body. “I’m only here to ask for your help.” He looked down to where I waited just below the trap door. “We all are.”
“We?” That was Ursula’s voice. “Who is with you?”
“Friends who need your help, too.” Kai looked at me again, and I pressed my palms against the cold tunnel walls to climb through the opening. The three girls on the other side blinked at me as I moved into view. Ursula whispered something to Mom that sounded like she looks just like you.
“Hi,” I offered weakly. My eyes darted around the lavish living room, and goosebumps prickled along the back of my neck. The airy space was as elegant as I remembered, with high ceilings, chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the sunset above the San Francisco Bay. Despite the undeniable beauty of the home, all I saw were flashes of the horrors I had witnessed here: shards of glass raining down around Kai and Cade as they crashed through the window and fell over the cliff face; Solstice aiming the gun at Oxanna’s chest and pulling the trigger; Delta’s blue hair stained dark red from lying in a pool of her own blood on the marble floor.
My mind jumped to the memory of Salaxia’s crimson-stained shirt without warning, and my chest collapsed. But now wasn’t the time to lose it; I still had three younger siblings to keep out of harm’s way. Biting down on my tongue, I forced away the hurt trying to cripple me.
“Who are you?” Mom asked, she and her friends looking more and more uneasy as my s
iblings and Kala filed in next to me. By the time everyone in our group had gotten inside, we formed a line half as wide as the living room. “Why do you ask for our help?”
“We’re stuck in the wrong time.” Kai got the words out before I could open my mouth to speak.
Ursula blanched. “What?”
“Is this a prank?” Ori asked, her narrowed eyes the same shade of green that she’d dyed her scalp. “Did Cade put you up to this?”
The mention of Cade’s name made my shoulders stiffen. I knew he was a part of Mom’s life when she was younger, but I hoped to avoid him at all costs—him and Solstice.
“No one put us up to anything.” Somehow, I managed to keep my voice even. I didn’t want my nerves to come off as dishonesty, especially when I knew how crazy our story sounded. “It’s complicated, but in short, we projected to the past and spliced time, and now we’re stuck.”
“Wait.” Ursula’s eyes darted around our group. “You are semmies?”
“Yes.” I scanned the three of them, trying to gauge their reactions. After we undid the energy sink in our original timeline, Mom told us that she had never bought into the theories about semmies being dangerous, not even in her youth. Still, I couldn’t help my nerves at the confession. I wasn’t convinced her friends would be as sure about semmies as she was.
We all stayed still, as if in some kind of silent standoff beside the couches as Ori studied our group. “What makes you think we would believe you are from the future?” she challenged.
“Because we know about XODUS,” Dixon said, standing taller as he spoke.
Mom, Ori, and Ursula shared confused looks, and I sighed. We must have come back too far for them to have formed the group yet.
“Never mind,” I muttered.
“We know that you never believed all the theories about semmies,” Ulyxses tried. “That’s why you wanted to be a geneticist. Because you didn’t think it was fair for them to ban interbreeding, and—”
