Redux (The Variant Series, #3)

by Jena Leigh

  In the end, it was Aiden who answered.

  “We were on deck securing a pot when Nate spotted the girl. She appeared in the sky off the starboard side of the ship,” he said, offering up a decidedly abridged account of the nights’ events. “She fell in the water and Nate managed to pull her out. We carried her in here to get her out of the weather.”

  “A jumper?” asked Ellis, raising one eyebrow. “Way out here?”

  “The color of the light was wrong,” said Nate. “The lightning she created was red, not blue or purple.”

  “St. Elmo’s Fire, burning red,” Mallard mumbled softly. “No good ever comes from seeing the fire.”

  The crew stepped back as their captain approached the sleeping girl and knelt beside the bunk. As he looked her over, Ellis rested his elbow on his knee and tapped thoughtfully at his lower lip.

  Nate wondered what the captain would choose to do with their unexpected guest.

  “Palladino knows her,” said Seamus, interrupting the brief silence. His tone was accusing. “Or she knows him, at least. O’Connell, too.”

  Ellis spared Nathaniel a glance, but his wooden expression never changed.

  Old Man Mallard was still eyeing the girl warily; sixty years of superstition lurking behind the frown that creased his features.

  Women on a ship were thought to be incredibly bad luck. Even a greenhorn like Nate knew that much. Ancient mariners used to believe that having a woman on board would make the sea jealous.

  And while Nate hadn’t learned all the superstitions associated with a life on the sea, he was willing to bet that her inexplicable appearance in the midst of a raging tempest probably wouldn’t be counted as a good omen, either.

  Mallard fished a Saint Nicholas medal from beneath his thermal undershirt and rubbed it distractedly between two fingers.

  Seeming to have made his decision, Ellis stood and turned to address the crew.

  “Seamus,” he said. “Topsides. Take Pike, Aiden and Timothy with you. The storm’s letting up. I need you to pull in the remainder of the pots. And Mallard—head to the house and take over for a few. I’ll be back up to join you shortly. The second that gear is stacked and the last pot is secured, we’ll lay in a new course for Dutch Harbor. I want us back at the docks before noon tomorrow.”

  “Wait, what?” Seamus sputtered, furious. “We’ve got maybe three thousand pounds in the tank… It’s not even half of our usual haul. We offload now and that’s half the paycheck and two full days of the season wasted!”

  Ellis leveled an icy glare in Seamus’s direction. “We’ll discuss your lost profits later, Mr. Ryan. Until then, how about you get back on deck and do the job you were hired for?”

  With an angry huff, Seamus turned away, pushed roughly past his brother, and trudged out into the hall. The rest of the crew followed suit, all of them stealing final glances at the girl before leaving the bunk room and making their way topsides.

  Soon only Aiden, Nathaniel, and Ellis remained.

  The captain regarded Aiden with a scowl. “Didn’t I just give you an order, O’Connell?”

  Grudgingly, Aiden stepped around Ellis and made to leave. He sent one last inscrutable glare back at Nathaniel, before disappearing around the corner at the end of the hall.

  “You spoke to her?” asked Ellis.

  “She said a few things,” said Nate. “Most of it didn’t make sense.”

  “Did she say who she is?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Did she give you a name?”

  “Said it was Alex.”

  “How about where she came from?”

  Nathaniel shook his head.

  Ellis was silent a long moment, watching the girl closely. “Anything you’re forgetting to tell me, Mr. Palladino?”

  “No, sir.”

  A sigh. “Will she make the trip back to Dutch Harbor, or do we need to radio the Coast Guard?”

  Nathaniel took inventory of the girl sleeping in his bunk. “I think she’ll be okay.”

  A nod. “Alright. In that case, you’ll spend the rest of the night below decks keeping an eye on her in case she wakes up again. When we reach Dutch, you and O’Connell will go ashore with her. Is that understood?”

  “But, sir—”

  “Is that understood?”

  Nathaniel nodded. If Ellis was sending him and Aiden ashore as an escort for the girl, then it meant that their tour on the ship was officially finished. The Misty Rose would fish the remainder of the season without them.

  “I need to get this ship and this crew back out to sea the instant we’ve offloaded this haul. I’ll call Navarri and see if he can’t scrounge up a couple guys to replace you and have them teleported in before we have to leave port,” said Ellis, more to himself than to Nathaniel. “But there’s no way in hell I’m dropping this girl off in some godforsaken town just north of Nowhere without someone to accompany her. You rescued her, she’s officially your responsibility.”

  “And Aiden? Surely he can finish out the season. He doesn’t have to—”

  “No. He’ll be going ashore with you,” said Ellis, making to leave. “I’m assuming Seamus was telling the truth when he said that she recognized the both of you.”

  Nate didn’t reply.

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on with this girl and, frankly, I don’t believe I want to know.” Ellis paused in the doorway. “What I do want, is the three of you off my goddamn ship and out of my hair so I can finish this season without any more complications.”

  With that, Ellis headed back to the wheelhouse, leaving Nathaniel alone with the sleeping mystery girl.

  Five

  “How many times do you want me to apologize? I’m sorry, man. You’re pissed. I get it. But—”

  “You know what? I don’t think you do get it… at all.”

  “Ellis said he’d give us partial pay for—”

  “Partial? Partial?! News flash, asshole: Partial doesn’t pay my rent.”

  Alex blinked her eyes slowly open, awakened by the argument taking place nearby. The voices were angry, but low, as though both parties were making an effort not to let their words carry.

  “Thirty grand,” a voice hissed. “Over thirty grand, Nathaniel. That’s what your decision to play hero just cost me—cost us both.”

  Aiden?

  Sitting up, Alex took a quick inventory of her surroundings.

  She was in a small, dimly lit living room. Someone had deposited her on a dark gray couch and draped a heavy quilt over her as she slept.

  Alex shivered and tugged the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. The room was freezing.

  “I realize that thirty grand is chump change to a guy who grew up with a family worth four-and-a-half billion, but Christ, Nate. That was my rent money for the entire year!”

  “What did you want me to do, Aiden? Just stand there like a heartless bastard and let the girl drown?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what? How is yelling at me going to fix anything? What do you want? Another apology? Fine. I’m sorry for saving the crazy girl’s life. I’m sorry that she recognized us both and then got us kicked off the trawler for the rest of the season. Had I known what would happen, of course I would have just left her there to drown and saved your precious paycheck.”

  A frustrated growl, and then, “I’m telling you man, the girl is trouble.” In a lower voice Aiden added, “We need to ditch her the first chance we get.”

  Alex finally pinpointed the source of the row.

  A few steps to the left of the couch, a wall of windows looked out onto a small balcony with a breathtaking view of a massive waterway. Beyond the shifting gray waters, the sun had nearly set, leaving the world to be swallowed by hazy twilit shadows.

  The sliding glass door had been left cracked, explaining both the chill in the room and the sounds of Aiden and Nathaniel’s argument.

  Aiden leaned against the metal railing, flicking ash from his cigarette ov
er the side as he stared across the water.

  Since when did Aiden smoke?

  The question prompted her heart rate to quicken and her stomach to drop.

  The attack on the Agency facility.

  The jump.

  The fall.

  The ocean.

  The ship.

  Everything came back to her in a rush of images. She’d slipped through time—to the wrong time.

  She’d aimed for a sunny afternoon over twelve years in the past.

  She’d obviously missed.

  Alex scrutinized Nathaniel and Aiden in the gathering gloom. They were, at most, a few years younger than the versions of themselves she’d left behind. Despite his light, scruffy beard, Nathaniel looked to be barely out of high school. Aiden, maybe a year older than that.

  On the boat they’d said it was October.

  If Alex was right and she’d traveled back in time to an October just after Nathaniel graduated, she was roughly one year and eight months in the past.

  And, God… where was Declan? His hand had slipped from her wrist in the middle of the jump. Nathaniel seemed certain Declan hadn’t arrived with her. So where was he? When was he?

  A cascade of terrifying possibilities raced through her thoughts, each scenario worse than the one before.

  He’d managed to break through, but fell into the ocean at a time and in a place when there was no one around to save him.

  He’d reappeared in some prehistoric era when the Earth was still forming and its atmosphere wasn’t even breathable.

  He’d reappeared billions of years in the future and the Earth was no more.

  Or perhaps he’d never made it to a destination at all, and was still trapped in that awful place, imprisoned for all eternity because of her.

  The parade of horrors came to an abrupt halt as Alex stared down at her hands and realized with growing dread that she couldn’t sense any of the electronics in the apartment.

  She curled and uncurled her fingers, desperate to find any trace of her jumping ability.

  It was no use.

  The weather ability… the jumping ability… they were both gone.

  The sound that escaped her throat in the next instant was barely human.

  Dropping her face into her hands, Alex began to cry.

  Not only had she failed in her mission to save her friends and her family, Alex had just lost Declan in the process. And now that her abilities had faded, she had no way to go looking for him.

  Declan was lost, and Alex was stranded in the past.

  Through the escalating clamor of her thoughts, she recognized the sound of the glass door sliding open.

  Someone knelt beside her.

  Alex wiped quickly at her face, as though she could erase the evidence of her sudden breakdown as easily as she could the tracks of her tears.

  Her inexplicable arrival had left Aiden and Nathaniel both on edge. The last thing she could afford right now was to have them write her off as a basket case before she’d even had a chance to explain.

  Next to her, Nathaniel remained silent, waiting patiently for her to speak while Aiden glowered at her uneasily from across the room.

  Alex was at a loss.

  What should she tell them?

  What could she tell them, if she wanted to salvage her own timeline and not risk changing their future for the worse? She needed to play this perfectly, or risk losing everything and everyone she’d been attempting to save—Declan included.

  They both stared at her expectantly. When another moment passed and she still didn’t speak, Aiden grudgingly asked, “How’re you feeling, Alex?”

  Heartbroken.

  Desperate.

  Angry.

  Lost.

  “I’m… fine,” she said, forcing herself to smile.

  Behind the smile, Alex was forging a plan to get herself—and Declan—out of this mess.

  She needed to be careful how much information she gave Aiden and Nate about their future. Until she had a better handle on the potential consequences of such foreknowledge… well, the less they knew, the better.

  If Alex had appeared in this time, there was still a chance that Declan would as well. She needed to start searching for him.

  Step one?

  Get Nathaniel and Aiden to help her by any means necessary. Judging by Aiden’s glare, that wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Are you sure you’re alright?” asked Nate, brusquely. “We can still take you to get checked out somewhere. The EMT up in Dutch Harbor said you would be fine, but we could—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s alright, Nate. I’ll be okay.”

  Upon hearing his name, his scowl deepened. “Who are you, Alex? How did you get all the way out there? And how is it you know our names?”

  Alex opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again.

  Where to begin?

  Slowly, she said, “My name is Alex Parker.”

  The admission brought Nathaniel to his feet.

  “What?” asked Aiden. “Alex Parker? As in… the Alex Parker?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You can drop the ‘the,’ Aiden,” she said. “But, yes. I’m that Alex Parker. And at the same time no, I’m not the Alex you think I am. I’m… um…” She sucked in a deep breath. No going back now. “I’m an Alex from the future—one where the three of us are friends.”

  Aiden snorted, his face twisting in a strange expression of amusement shot through with disbelief.

  He thought she was lying.

  Or crazy.

  Likely both.

  Nathaniel, on the other hand, was now scrutinizing her closely. His expression didn’t say doubt, it said maybe.

  “Prove it,” he said.

  The setting sun had transformed the living room into a maze of shadows.

  There were plenty of things Alex could say that would prove she knew Nathaniel—but only one or two things she could say that would prove that he knew her.

  Just as she had back on the ship, Alex brought up the one subject that would, without a doubt, pique Nathaniel’s interest.

  “The white irises,” she repeated, darting a nervous glance at Aiden.

  She was almost certain that Aiden didn’t know about the flowers.

  It was something Nathaniel had told her during one of their final training sessions together—something incredibly personal.

  A story that, she assumed, Nathaniel wouldn’t have told to just anyone.

  On the afternoon Nate confided in Alex (barely a week before they’d both been taken by the Agency) it had just begun to rain and they’d been sparring alone on the training field.

  Not in the same way that she’d often seen the others fight—with lightning fast movements and a sense of control that only came from years of practice and training—but in a series of jagged motions meant to hammer home the basics.

  Nathaniel was taking it easy on her, but she still struggled to remember the correct defensive counters to his attacks.

  And, just like every other time they trained together, Nathaniel emphasized concentration above all else.

  “You get distracted,” he chided, “and you’ll be on the defense for the rest of the fight. Don’t lose your focus, Alex, or you’ll pay for it.”

  When Alex was forced to halt her motions in order to wipe the rainwater from her eyes, Nathaniel first pounced on her distraction and then on her, sending them both to the ground as he easily pinned her beneath him.

  He’d smiled down at her through the shower of heavy droplets.

  Alex, meanwhile, grumbled something about cheating and tried to wriggle free.

  Needless to say, she hadn’t made it far.

  “There’s no such thing as cheating in a fight for your life, Alex.”

  “Alright, dirty fighting then. You, Nathaniel Palladino, fight dirty.”

  Nate laughed as he rolled off of her and landed on his back in the matted grass. “Taking advantage of an opponent’s distraction isn’t fighting dir
ty, Lex. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that will give you the upper hand when you and your opponent are evenly matched.”

  “I’m pretty sure you could best me in any fight, Nate.”

  “Not a fight with abilities,” he said. “And one day, you could find yourself facing off against someone who’s your equal in that department, too.”

  Masterson.

  Alex closed her eyes as the rain poured down. “You really think I’ll end up going head to head with him someday?”

  Nate sighed. His lighthearted mood evaporated. “You need to be ready.”

  She sat up. The rain was beginning to lessen, the clouds overhead transitioning from an ominous black to a placated gray.

  “Has anyone told you…” Nate trailed off as he pulled himself into a seated position and wiped the water off his face. “Do you know how my mom died?”

  Alex frowned. “No,” she said softly. “Only that Masterson killed her.”

  Nathaniel plucked a blade of grass from the ground in front of him. “She and Samuel Masterson were dating when it happened.”

  Despite the muggy warmth of the afternoon, Alex felt a chill trickle up her spine as she watched Nate tear the grass apart, bit by bit. “They were… together?”

  Nate nodded.

  Another piece of grass. Another pile of shredded pieces.

  “My dad skipped out on my mom before I was born,” he said. “She raised me by herself. Never really dated before Masterson came along. Never really had a desire to, I guess. Or maybe she just didn’t have the time, having her hands full with me, but when she went to work for Grayson, she met Samuel and something changed.”

  Nathaniel’s eyes stayed on the blade of grass in his hands, but his thoughts were miles away.

  “She was the last of his victims. The last life Masterson took before Grayson, your aunt, and Carson Brandt managed to take him down,” he said. “When he killed the others, it was because he was trying to get to you. But with my mom…”

  Alex pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  “With her it was different,” he said. “No one else was there when it happened, so the details are kind of vague, but she’d been working at the mountain—at their old headquarters in Virginia. Somehow, Masterson got in and… well, near as anyone can tell, she tried to confront him on her own. And he killed her for it.”