“Hold up a minute. What exactly are you concerned about? Should we be worried? Do you think we brought back some kind of plague from ‘42?”
Applegate had already took several steps away from Peter. “Relax, Peter. Everything will be fine. Just follow Randall, and you’ll be home before you know it.”
“If you’d follow me, Mr. Cooper,” Randall said, motioning forward.
Peter shook his head in disgust. “Lead the way.”
They wound down the hall toward the stairwell. Peter couldn’t help but feel pangs of fear as he remembered the explosion back in 1942. He followed his guide down the steps.
Despite the promise of a new and improved model, Peter still didn’t trust Applegate, and he longed to be out of his grasp. He knew once he left this compound, their contract would be up. He wouldn’t have to think about time travel or 1942 ever again. He could scrape this entire experience off his boots.
Randall led Peter down to the lower apartments, where he knew Stella and Benny had been living before they were murdered. He briefly wondered if they were alive and well in this timeline, but he couldn’t think about that, not now. He was far too exhausted. He thanked Randall for the sheets and the toothbrush Randall had given him, then shut the bedroom door.
Thirty minutes later, Peter had showered and was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, his thoughts whirling. Suddenly, a crushing realization hit him in the chest. Julie was dead. There was no feasible way that she was alive. She’d been thirty-eight when they’d arrived in 1942. That meant that she’d be hundred and nine years old in 2013.
He closed his eyes, trying to fall asleep. But all he could imagine was Julie’s life, both before and after him. He could only imagine the men she had courted, the way she’d looked as she’d grown older. His heart ached for her. He wanted her beside him in bed, kissing him. Rubbing his back. For only a moment, he imagined what their child might look like. Seventy-one years old, by now. Seventy-one years old …
Peter fell into a fitful sleep. He dreamed of the French countryside, of little Marion’s face as she helped Julie milk the cow. He dreamed of the canals of Sete, and he imagined that couple on board the ship, headed back to the United States from France. He wondered what had happened to them, if they’d reached Boston. He wondered if they’d been happy, all those years ago.
When Peter woke up the next morning, he blinked into the sour light of his underground room. A knock at the door brought him fully awake. Perhaps it was Applegate’s crony with some breakfast. He ran his fingers through his hair and opened it. He did, indeed, find Randall. He looked up at Peter nearly menacingly; his breath smelled of rotten eggs as he spoke. “Applegate is ready for your debriefing. You need to be ready in five minutes.”
“What?” Peter said, rubbing his straggly morning beard. “Debriefing? God, what time is it?”
“That’s right,” Randall said authoritatively. “It’s seven in the morning. Get dressed.”
Peter breathed deeply, squelching his anger. He grabbed his pants from the chair and slid his legs into them, fastening the button at his belly. The pants were from the past, giving him an anachronistic look. His crotch was tight. He pulled at it for a moment, huffing. “Fine. Let’s go,” he said finally. The sooner they got through this, he thought, the better.
Randall led him back down the hall, toward the stairwell. Peter longed to pepper him with questions, but he didn’t feel he had it in him. His very soul was fatigued. A small thought passed through him, then. He thought that, perhaps, he had finished his mission; he’d completed what they’d wanted from him. And now he knew too much. Maybe he’d be killed.
Peter drew his hands into fists as they passed by many security guards, all of whom were much too strong for him. If he tried to run away, there would be no hope of escaping them. He’d come all the way into this future only to meet his death.
Finally, Randall stopped at what Peter recognized to be Applegate’s office. He held open the door and gestured for Peter to enter. Peter frowned. As he entered, he found that Applegate’s desk had been pushed to the side. Only a table stood in the center. A pair of chairs were positioned on either side. The room reminded him so much of that German cell he’d been imprisoned in in France. Manstein flashed into his mind, and he shuddered.
Applegate turned from his desk, holding a cup of coffee. He gestured, offering the chair to Peter. “Please, Peter. Want a cup of coffee?”
Peter nodded. The aroma wafted toward him, making his mouth water. He sat at the table and heard the chair creak under him. “How long is this going to take?” Peter asked.
“Ah, Peter. You didn’t think I’d let you just waltz out of here after all that, did you?” Applegate chuckled as he sat down on the other side of the table. He held a tape recorder in his hand and placed it between them. The tape was already whirring. “You don’t mind if I record this session, do you?”
Peter shook his head, sipping at the coffee.
“You’re going to have to speak into the recorder, Peter. Cooperate with me. The sooner we get through this, the better it is for you. You know that, of course.”
“No. I don’t mind if you record this,” Peter said through his teeth.
“Good. Well, let’s get started.” Applegate sipped his coffee, peering at his notes. “Why don’t we begin with the very first day.”
“You mean the day that Mark killed my friend Stella in front of me?” Peter asked, his voice icy.
Applegate tapped at the recorder quickly, stopping it. He chuckled for a moment. “Peter. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is this Stella someone from 1942 or from your past 2013 existence?”
“My past. You said you wanted me to talk about the very beginning. I’m telling you what I remember,” Peter retorted. He felt a bead of sweat slide down his face.
“Whatever happened before the actual mission is irrelevant,” Applegate said. He cleared his throat and hit record once more, rewinding just a bit to delete the previous part. “All right. So. You’re in the time machine. Now tell me what happened.”
Peter allowed his mind to drift. He tried to calm his rushing heart. “We arrived in 1942. Julie, Dr. Lamb, Dr. Larsson, and I. We met with Dr. Epson, who believed us about our origin almost instantly. His assistant, one Michael Gallagher, disputed us. We soon learned that he was a mole.”
“Dr. Epson had an informant? Just as my counterpart suspected,” Applegate said, his voice serious.
“Yes. We were alerted to a secret society run by Asher Mandrake, who was very concerned with our mission. I was kidnapped and taken to their offices.”
Applegate’s eyes were wide. “Kidnapped?”
Peter sighed. “Yes. Kidnapped. But ultimately, at least in the beginning, Mandrake wanted the mission to succeed.”
Applegate held up his finger once more. “You told him about the mission—”
Peter brought both hands to the desk. There was so much to go over. “You don’t understand. We wouldn’t have been able to go on with the mission, otherwise. We’d still be in 1942, in some jail cell, if we hadn’t told him.”
“Relax, Peter,” Applegate said.
“I’ll relax when you tell me when I can see my kids again,” Peter said.
“Your family is fine,” Applegate said. “Please. Continue your story.”
Peter flared his nostrils and continued. He told the story from the beginning, from the train ride across the country to New York, where he and Julie had taken the passports from the couple who, they found out later, had been eliminated.
Applegate nearly fell out of his chair at this news. “Eliminated?” he asked. He leaned toward Peter and tapped his fingers against the desk. “You may have in fact destroyed two entire timelines, Peter. We can’t know how this will affect—”
Peter looked at him grimly. “No, we can’t. But you’ve been living in this timeline forever, haven’t you? And you’re still here.” Peter thought for a moment. “What about my family? Are they still
here?”
“Peter,” Applegate said, turning his head toward the door. He’d tired of this, Peter assumed. “I think that’s enough for this session. Randall!”
Randall burst through the door. “Yes, sir.”
“Please show Peter back to his room. Peter, you’re to stay there until our session tomorrow.”
“How long is this going to go on?” Peter asked.
“As long as it takes,” Applegate said, raising an eyebrow toward the sky.
Peter followed Randall, feeling completely defeated. He began to wonder if he would ever get out of there; he knew he couldn’t trust anything that Applegate said to him. He just needed to get through the debriefing.
The next day seemed to go on much like the first. Peter and Applegate argued; Applegate stopped the tape and reprimanded him with a sour word, with a rewind of the tape. “If you want to get out of here to see your family, Peter, you’ll cooperate,” he said, tapping his tongue against the top of his mouth again and again. “Never have I seen such lack of cooperation during a debriefing. We’re here to help each other, Peter. Remember that.”
Five days later, Peter sat at the same desk. He hadn’t been able to eat for days; he’d been tossing and turning every night. He needed to get out of there. His thoughts had begun to revolve in a sort of helter-skelter: Julie, his children, even Minnie. He’d begun to think that those memories were only illusions—that nothing in his life had really happened.
“Julie voluntarily stayed in Oradour-sur-Glane, then?” Applegate asked many hours later, tapping his pencil against his notebook.
The hum of the tape recorder had begun to grind into Peter’s mind. He brought his fist forward with a sudden anger. “I already told you. She had to, to look after Marion. Just tell me if my kids exist here or not. Tell me if I even had kids to begin with. I don’t know how this time travel shit works. I don’t even know if I exist in this timeline. Suppose my parents never had me; suppose I was never married.”
Applegate clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth again, his eyes flashing. “What makes you question me, Peter?” he asked. He tapped at the tape recorder once more, stopping it.
Peter thought about that for a moment, frustrated. Applegate had lied to him at nearly every opportunity. He’d spied on him; he’d taken his friends and killed them. For all Peter knew, Applegate could have lied about everything. His children might never have been. Tori. Brett. Peter tried to picture their faces in his mind. He sputtered, looking for words. “We didn’t exactly have a history of trust,” he murmured.
Applegate rolled his head back a little. “History of trust?” he sneered. “So we had a deceitful relationship in your past, eh?”
Peter slammed his fist onto the desk, making the tape recorder bounce. “The hell with you,” he said. “I’ve told you everything you need to know. I’ve completed your mission, and more. You failed to tell me some secret society was going to come after us and try to blow us up with a bomb. You didn’t tell us that the war was going to break out in Oradour-sur-Glane the very moment we arrived. You didn’t tell us anything.”
“You knew the variables, Peter.”
But Peter looked at him furiously.
“All right, Peter. I understand. I’m just as lost and confused as you are. You have to understand—I received an anonymous envelope some ten years ago, and all I could think of was that it was a joke. Then, as some of the things I’d read in it started to come true, I re-evaluated everything. I started to look into everything the other Harrison Applegate had sent. I looked into the entire team, and into Dr. Epson. You wouldn’t believe how much I had to put on the line to pull this stunt off. In my own timeline, life seemed pretty great,” Applegate said as he methodically tucked all of the documents and paperwork strewn across the table into a manila folder. “I suppose that life in your timeline was much different, and I respect that. I just had to make sure that everything you experienced in 1942 coincided with my, um—the other Applegate’s notes on the mission. The mere fact that the mission was a success is sincerely incredible.”
His eyes traced Peter’s face. “I’m sorry for the lies I told you, in the past. I can’t tell you if they were meant for your protection and for the benefit of the mission or not. I can, however, assure you that your children are fine. They were unaffected by the mission. I think you’ll find, in fact, that they benefited from it.”
Peter felt his face releasing its tension. A small tear dripped from his eye. He was exhausted, beyond anything else. He needed to see someone other than Applegate—someone who could assure him that everything that had been worth it, that all his sacrifices hadn’t been for naught. “Let me see them,” he whispered. His throat felt tight.
Applegate rapped his knuckles on the desk. The noise echoed through the room. Randall burst through the door, on command, and nodded curtly.
“Prepare the car, Randall,” Applegate said. His eyes searched Peter’s. “It’s time.”
CHAPTER 27
Applegate and Peter sat in the back of the black limousine as it traveled through the city. Peter cracked the window and breathed in deeply, closing his eyes. He was going home.
The car rolled on past Peter’s old neighborhood. He turned his head quickly, toward Applegate. “I thought—”
“Not everything can stay the same, Peter,” Applegate said. “You should keep that in mind. Change has a tendency to promote a butterfly effect, which we spoke of in greater detail during your training. Whatever you did in the past probably affected where you ultimately chose to live in this timeline.”
“But,” Peter began, his voice having lost its synchronicity with his thoughts. “What if … I can’t remember?”
“I’m not saying that it will be easy, but trust in yourself and I’m sure you’ll do fine. Peter, consider your life before the mission, and how far you’ve come, how much you’ve grown, all because of what you experienced. Simply arriving at a house that is new to you should be a breeze,” Applegate said, attempting to build Peter’s confidence.
Peter nodded. As the car sped toward his new life, his new home, he thought back through all the moments of his transformation. All thanks to his journey through not one, but two linear shifts. Applegate was right—he did feel like a new man, full of confidence that hadn’t been present in his previous life.
“And you mustn’t tell them anything that might confuse them, Peter,” Applegate continued. “As far as they know, your job kept you away from them for a mere four weeks. They’ve been waiting for your return, of course. A few things have changed. Tori has gone on her first date, for one.” Applegate’s eyes were amused. “I’m sure the boy was glad not to have you waiting at the front door.”
Peter’s heart ached. Before the mission he’d been constantly drinking, missing entire days with his children because he felt as if he were at the bottom of a deep well. Now, he shook with the understanding that he’d missed thirty days of their lives. Tori had begun dating? So much could alter in a child’s life, so quickly. Time was so fleeting.
The limousine pulled up in front of a quiet brick home. The house was smaller than the one Peter and Minnie had purchased in his original timeline, but it was decent, with beautiful flowers out front. He wondered if he and Minnie had been happy here, in this timeline’s past. He imagined himself poring through old photographs of the two of them, pictures of adventures they hadn’t really had, the first time around. He knew it didn’t matter that they didn’t share memories anymore, of course. He knew she was gone.
Peter unbuckled his seat belt and thrust his hand toward Applegate. Applegate accepted it, and the men shook hands.
“It’s been one hell of a ride,” Peter said.
“I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done, Mr. Cooper,” Applegate said. “Now, you’d better get going. I know Minnie’s been preparing your favorite meal for your arrival. I had Randall call a few hours ago. She’s anxious to see you.”
Peter’s chest constricted a
s the air whooshed from his lungs. His grip tightened around Applegate’s hand. “Wha-what did you say?” he stammered.
Applegate’s eyebrow rose. “I’m sorry, Peter. Is there a problem?” Applegate winked knowingly.
Peter released his grip on Applegate’s hand and brought his hands toward his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but his breath wouldn’t come.
Minnie? Minnie? Inside of this strange house?
“Peter?” Applegate said, trying to get his attention once more. “Peter. Remember. You mustn’t say anything about …” But Peter’s mind was somewhere else. He was on his own, and Minnie was the only thing on his mind. She was alive!
Peter lurched toward the car door. He pushed against it, stepping out onto the sidewalk. He walked with his head high toward the house, still feeling Applegate’s presence behind him. He felt like he was walking through another dimension. His head spun. The flowers gleamed up at him: purples, yellows, pinks. They were petunias—Minnie’s favorite. He swallowed, trying to find words. What would he say to her, if she was truly there? What would he do?
He brought his hand forward and grasped the door handle. The door was unlocked, allowing him entrance into this new world—the world of this timeline’s Peter. He stepped warily into the foyer, gazing at a portrait he knew well—one that had been hanging in his own home, back in his previous timeline. Peter, Minnie, Brett, and Tori—taken about ten years before. His children’s faces gleamed at him, and blood rushed in his head. The picture was exactly the same—down to the bad sweater he’d picked for the session. He ran his fingers through his hair, neglecting to shut the door behind him.
He felt like he was a ghost as he crept through the house, into the living room. He heard a slight sizzling as he walked further toward the kitchen; the aroma of steak simmered through the house.
She was making his favorite meal.
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