Destroyer (Rewinder #2)

by Brett Battles

  Iffy and I are escorted to the back of the house, where we find Lidia sitting at the kitchen table, a plateful of eggs and sausage and fruit in front of her. Sitting at two of the other places are similar meals, but any illusion that the food might be for Iffy and me is quickly dispelled when we are led to the two chairs where no breakfast waits.

  Once we’re all seated, Lidia says, “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

  Neither of us answers.

  She smiles, amused, and then looks past us to where Kane and Leonard are seated. “Boys, please eat.”

  As Iffy and I watch as the others dig into their breakfast, my stomach can’t help but grumble. The last thing Iffy or I had to eat was the sandwiches we purchased just before we got on the bus in Lone Pine.

  Lidia is the last to finish. The moment she sets her silverware on the plate, Leonard gets up and collects both of their dishes. Kane lifts his plate as Leonard nears, but the giant walks right by without stopping. Flustered and embarrassed, Kane gets up and buses his things over to the sink.

  “Leonard, if you could bring the saucer back in with you, I’d appreciate it,” Lidia says. “And, Vincent, there’s a container of toothpicks by the stove. Grab them for me.”

  The men return with the requested items and set them in front of her before retaking their places. The blood on the saucer is now a dry, dark brown stain.

  Lidia tilts it toward me. “Good enough?”

  “It should do.”

  Perhaps it’s odd, but I’ve been tied up since last night, and it’s only at this moment that I feel the situation is truly starting to get away from me. Once the chaser is rekeyed to Lidia, I’ll have little time left to do anything. The problem is, I have no clue what that anything should be.

  Lidia uses a toothpick to scrape the blood loose. What she ends up with is more than enough material for the job.

  A sense of inevitable failure pounds in my mind like the drums of an approaching army. I try to block it out, but the feeling refuses to go away.

  Lidia says, “Vincent, could you be a dear and bring the other chaser in? And the charger, too, please. Don’t forget that.”

  “Sure,” Kane mumbles.

  As he walks out, she reaches around the back of her chair, grabs the strap that’s been slung over it, then pulls my satchel onto the table. From inside, she removes the chaser that had once been hers, and turns it toward me.

  “Open, please.”

  “Can’t,” I say, twisting sideways to remind her that my hands are still tied behind my back.

  “Leonard,” she says.

  The giant pulls a knife out of his pocket, opens it, and turns me in my chair so he can cut the rope. Once my hands are free, I flex my tingling fingers to get my circulation going again.

  Lidia nudges the box. “Now open it.”

  I hesitate until I hear Kane coming back down the hall and then touch my thumb to the screen.

  My timing is perfect. The lid unlocks at the very same second that Kane returns. Though Lidia is still looking at the chaser in front of us, I can tell that her grandson’s arrival has distracted her.

  Knowing this might be my only chance, I pull the chaser quickly to me, and move my fingers toward the emergency escape combination.

  The blow that hits me in the side of the head knocks me to the floor. I lie there, not sure what happened, and for a few seconds not even sure where I am. A hand clamps down on my arm, lifts me straight up, and then deposits me back in my seat.

  Leonard.

  “Nice try, Denny,” Lidia says. The chaser is once more sitting in front of her, now with the flap open. “Perhaps I should do this myself.”

  She goes into the kitchen and comes back with a table knife and the same paper clip I fashioned into a hook last night. She struggles with getting the panel unlocked, but she doesn’t give up, and eventually the rectangular section pops up. Once she has pulled out the tray, she pushes the bits of dried blood into the dimple. She then closes the drawer and pushes the panel back down.

  “Is that it?” she asks.

  It is, but there’s no need for me to confirm this as digital readouts on the display are all suddenly replaced by a single, blinking word: STANDBY.

  This goes on for more than a minute before the screen goes blank and the machine reboots itself. I tense, knowing that all Lidia has to do now is push a few buttons and she could jump out of 1952, leaving us all here to be erased in her wake.

  Lidia, however, does not immediately input a destination. Instead, she closes the lid and then tests if the rekeying has worked by pressing her thumb against the lock screen. As I knew it would, the lid clicks open.

  While this clearly makes her happy, she still doesn’t tap in a locator number. In fact, she sets the chaser to the side and grabs the one Kane has brought in. The lid is still propped partially open by one of the charger’s cords. When she flips all the way to the side, the screen comes on.

  My hope is that she’s left the device plugged in overnight only to check how the recharging went, and I think I’m right when she says, “Forty-three percent. Well, I’ll be damned. You weren’t lying.” She picks up the battery component of RJ’s charger. “So, how do I recharge this?”

  I’m done helping, so I remain silent.

  Looking unperturbed, she shrugs and says, “Forty-three percent should be more than enough for now.”

  For now? What does that mean?

  She begins scrolling through the menu options. Though I’m at an angle, I can easily see the screen, and am confused when she enters the area for instructor settings, a section used only during initial rewinder training. The highlight bar moves down the list, stopping at one I’m familiar with—slave mode. Once she selects it, there’s some back and forth she does between both chasers before the function is fully activated.

  It’s obvious now why she wants both machines powered up and ready. What the slave mode does is link one chaser to another. Back in training this meant Marie would initiate a jump on her device, and my device—with me holding it—would instantly follow wherever she went. Lidia has made it so that my original chaser will mimic everything her device does.

  She’s going to take someone with her, and it’s pretty clear to me who that will be.

  I give Iffy a quick look. Though I know she hasn’t figured out the details, she knows we’re in serious trouble.

  Lidia coils up the charger and slips it into my satchel. “Vincent, my bag is on the counter behind you. Please grab it for me.”

  Kane looks almost as concerned as Iffy does, but he retrieves his grandmother’s black purse and gives it to her. From inside she pulls out a leather-bound journal. Though it’s the same size as the one Kane referenced to get us here, it’s nowhere near as aged and the design on the cover is different. I would bet everything that this is a journal her grandson has never seen.

  She opens it to a page marked by an attached ribbon. I can see three handwritten columns. I can’t make out the words in the first due to the messy scrawl and the fact I’m looking at it upside down. The second column is easier, though. Numbers only, written in the distinct order one uses when writing dates. The third column is as difficult to decipher as the first. But there’s more than enough there for me to make a guess as to what she’s looking at.

  It’s a list of jumps, at least a page long, though, who knows, maybe there are more pages after this one. What I don’t understand is why she’s compiled even a single page of jumps. All she has to do is go back to Massachusetts in 1775. A little hunting around, and she’d figure out how to stop me from interfering with the original path of the time line.

  She traces her finger across the first line and then begins entering the information into her chaser, confirming that these are indeed jump coordinates.

  “I’ll never let you stop me,” I tell her.

  She looks at me, confused. “I’m sorry?”

  “I won’t let you stop me from making the change.” When she arrives at the Three Swa
ns Tavern, she’ll find four of me, and I know two of them will quickly understand what’s going on and stop her. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

  But her expected grin confuses me. “That’s adorable, and I appreciate your concern. I’ll admit, there was a time when I first got here that righting your error is exactly what I had planned to do. In my rage, I wanted nothing more than to bring the empire back. But I eventually cooled down and asked myself, why? There was nothing waiting for me in the empire. And there’s no way that I wanted to spend the rest of my life behind the walls of the institute. I realized that there’s only one thing that interests me. Do you want to know what it is?”

  She locks eyes with me, and I stare back, impassive.

  “You, Denny,” she says. “All I care about is you and destroying everything that you know or have known.” She finishes inputting her jump coordinates and then looks at me again. “Have you heard of the Hindu goddess Kali?”

  India was part of the empire I grew up in. I have read history books that touch on the Hindu deities and I have heard the name Kali, but I don’t recall anything specific about her. As before, however, my lips remain sealed.

  “She’s the goddess of time and destruction. Don’t you see? I’m Kali, and I’m going to fulfill my destiny by taking everything from you.”

  I’ve always known that a wide river of evil flows through Lidia, but now I think it’s more than just that. She’s insane. Temporary or permanent, I don’t know, nor does it matter, but something has snapped inside her.

  She is right about one thing, however. Being both crazy and in possession of a time traveling device does make her Kali.

  After putting the book in my satchel, she picks up the slaved chaser, stands, and says, “Leonard, it’s time.”

  As I suspected, she’s taking the giant with her.

  He rises from his chair, but instead of leaving me there unguarded, he pulls me to my feet and shoves me against the wall.

  “Don’t move,” he says calmly.

  He watches me for a moment to make sure I’m doing as told before he grabs Iffy and guides her around the counter into the main part of the kitchen. There, he tells her the same thing he’s just told me and then returns to the eating area.

  “Vincent, please make sure she doesn’t move,” Lidia says.

  Kane gets up, but he remains on our side of the counter. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I told you, when I’m done, I’ll come back for you.”

  “She’s lying,” I say. “You’ll be erased, just like—”

  I see Leonard’s punch coming, but am unable to jerk completely out of the way. His fist grazes off my arm with enough force that I’m sure it’ll leave a large bruise. I tense, knowing I won’t be able to duck from a second swing, but Leonard grabs me by the front of my shirt, straightens me back up, and then gives me what I’m sure he thinks is a gentle tap on the face.

  “Behave,” he says.

  “Is he right?” Kane asks his grandmother. “Am I going to be erased?”

  “I’m changing his past, not yours,” she says. “I told you before, I’m the one who understands this stuff, remember?”

  He looks unconvinced.

  “I’m your grandmother. Why would I lie to you?” The words would sound funny coming out of her twenty-two-year-old mouth if not for the fact that several of us are about to cease to exist.

  He looks at Iffy and me. While I can tell he’s having a hard time believing her, there’s resignation in his eyes, like he knows what’s really going to happen but is still hoping the grandmother he knows, the one who would never do anything to harm him, is inside Lidia somewhere.

  “Okay,” he whispers.

  “I’ll be back before you know it,” she tells him.

  She hands the other chaser to the giant.

  “You can’t do this,” I say, desperately grasping for anything that will delay her. “You can’t leave us here.”

  “Oh, Denny. Why would I leave you here? That would defeat the purpose, don’t you think? You need to see what I’m going to do. That’s how this works.”

  As horrifying as this sounds, it means that maybe all is not yet lost. If she takes me with her, I’ll still have a chance to stop her.

  She gives the giant a nod, and turns to the table to retrieve her chaser. Leonard reaches out for me with his massive free arm to pull me to his side so that I can be his passenger on the trip.

  As he does this, he turns his back to Kane. Lidia’s grandson, whom I’m sure Leonard no longer even gave a second thought about, suddenly does something none of us are expecting.

  With a quick step to the side, he rips the slaved device out of Leonard’s hands and shoves the unsuspecting giant into the wall. I slip out from under the man’s arm, but the move causes me to stagger several feet away.

  No! I think. I need to get in contact with Kane now that he has the chaser before Lidia hits go, or it’s all over. But she’s already pulled my satchel over her shoulder and is reaching for her device.

  “Here!” Kane shouts. For a second time, he does the unexpected and throws the slaved chaser toward me.

  In the blink of an eye, I see Lidia pick up the other device. I see Leonard pushing from the wall in an attempt to intercept the chaser heading my way. And I see Kane, already in motion, slam into the giant to keep this from happening.

  What I know, though, is that there’s no way the slaved chaser is going to reach me before Lidia is gone, meaning it will disappear in midair and take no one with it.

  I do the only thing I can and leap for it, my arms outstretched.

  I think I hear Iffy call my name. I want to look back at her. I want to tell her everything will be all right. But there’s no time.

  Just as my fingers wrap around the box, Lidia activates the jump.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I’m surrounded by black, and for a split second believe that I have indeed been erased. But the fact that I can even think this means I’m still alive.

  That’s when I become aware of the gray mist and know that I’m within a time jump.

  I made it. Dear God, I actually made it.

  It’s Kane who deserves the credit, though. He sacrificed himself to give me a chance to stop his grandmother. No, that’s wrong. The Lidia I’m currently bound to is not Kane’s grandmother. Which is exactly what I think he realized at the end.

  The relief I feel for making the jump dissolves in an instant as I remember that Iffy has been left behind. My heart seems to stop, and my throat feels as if it has constricted to the width of a hair.

  I tell myself that in the grand scheme, it doesn’t matter. Once I deal with Lidia and clean up whatever mess she creates, my final act will be to return to San Diego in 2015 and change the time line so that Kane never steals the chaser. As far as Iffy will be concerned, everything that has happened after that point will not have occurred. But as many times as I tell myself all this, I can’t get rid of the thought that there’s a real possibility I’ve lost Iffy forever.

  And then there’s my sister, too.

  Oh, God.

  The weight of it all feels as if it’s about to crush me when the gray starts to fade and our destination begins to replace the mist around me. It’s only at the last second that it dawns on me that I’m not arriving as I typically would. I entered the journey nearly horizontal and in midair. And while my chaser is able to accommodate for elevation, I materialize at a steep angle that has my toes touching the ground, but my head and my outstretched hands a good couple feet above it.

  I thump down on a grass field with an oomph, and know that I’ve just racked up a few more bruises. The headache from the journey is annoying but not overbearing, and I’m able to quickly get to my feet.

  I turn in a circle, knowing Lidia has to be somewhere near.

  Wherever we are, it’s night. Lidia has stuck to training in that regard. The field is surrounded on three sides by a U-shaped building and by a high fence on the fourth
. As my eyes adjust, I realize it’s not a typical building. While it has a roof, the side nearest me is open air and contains rows of chairs moving higher and higher, all facing the field.

  A stadium, I realize. And I’m right in the center of it.

  I turn toward the sound of movement off to my right and see the outline of a person push up from the grass fifteen feet away. Lidia. Since she hasn’t traveled in several years, I’m guessing it’s taken her longer to deal with the trip’s side effects than it did in the past.

  I rush at her, knowing that this will be my best shot to subdue her. But I only cover about a third of this distance, when everything disappears again, and we are once more in the grip of a time jump.

  When traveling great distances into the past, the preferred method is to make a series of shorter trips. This is done to lessen the pain one feels, since the longer a jump, the stronger the headache. A trip of a couple centuries could even black you out for days. Go too long in one leap, and you’ll arrive dead.

  Given that Lidia has taken us on a second hop so quickly, I figure our ultimate destination must be a great distance from 1952. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d been lying about no longer being interested in resurrecting the empire, and that we’re actually heading for the trigger point in 1775.

  As the mist begins to clear again, I brace myself, knowing Lidia will be in front of me. I want to get to her before she triggers the next jump. The night is so dark, however, that I can’t even see her outline this time.

  I rush forward anyway, my hands blindly waving in front of me, ready to grab her. But she also hasn’t remained still, and instead of knocking into her, I feel her brush by me going in the other direction.

  As I’m turning, we jump again, and I am surprised to find that we’re back in the stadium. I finish whipping around and see that Lidia is running toward the seats, already thirty feet away from me. I raise my foot, and—

  Jump.