Leonard looked like it would take a tank to knock him over, and Kyle knew the Tigres would jump him even if he happened to land a perfect punch. Stand tall.
“Pussy, you ain’t gonna hit me,” Leonard said.
For so long, Kyle’s guilt made him feel like he deserved to die young and alone. But, his recent time travel had complicated Kyle’s feelings, and he felt more removed from his guilt now. He still went to sleep every night praying he’d wake up in some other life where he hadn’t been responsible for ending twelve kids’ lives too early. But somehow, just trying to fix everything had reminded Kyle what hope felt like. And now, standing here in this untenable position—his life in the hands of a sociopath, and four other teenage convicts—Kyle was not inclined to just lie down and pay the ultimate price.
“You know what?” Kyle said. “Fuck you.” He brought back his right fist as if he were winding up to land a haymaker, but instead delivered a fast left jab to Leonard’s face, immediately bloodying his nose.
Leonard barely moved when Kyle’s fist landed cleanly. Leonard pulled Kyle in by his shirt now, and put him in a chokehold. It was loose enough, at first, for Kyle to breathe regularly.
A few seconds later, Leonard firmed up his grip a bit and brought his blade up to Kyle’s eye. “Should I carve up your face? Take out an eye? Will that be a good reminder to everyone who sees you to not fuck with the Tigres? Or should I just fuckin’ kill you?”
Kyle tried to shake Leonard off of him, but he couldn’t get his arm to budge. Kyle felt himself becoming more and more light-headed. This is how I’m going to die, Kyle thought with only some of the bravery he’d felt moments earlier. This is it.
At first, Griddle didn’t think there was a chance Leonard would actually kill the kid. But, the longer he choked him out, the more he thought he might.
He got an uneasy feeling just standing and watching. Griddle turned back and peeked out the door of the cell to make sure no one was coming.
No good was gonna come out of some kid dying in here. Griddle had been in the system long enough to know the way it worked—things got lax for a while and everyone could breathe a bit. But then something big happened, like a murder, and it took a long time to get back to the chill way of life. Ochoa escaping had already stressed the guards. This would put ‘em over the edge, and make life for him, and all the Tigres, harder.
“Hey,” Griddle called over to Leonard. “Let’s get outta here before we get busted.”
Griddle watched as each of the other boys looked to Leonard for a response. Griddle could tell that they wanted to go too. But, Leonard just kept squeezing Kyle’s neck. By now, his eyes were starting to roll back in his head.
“Don’t kill him, Len,” Shawn called out.
“I’m just putting him to sleep,” Leonard answered, out of breath.
“Wha’, like in wrestling?” Shawn asked.
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Sleeper hold.”
Kyle’s last grasp on consciousness was fading when he felt a warm liquid splatter on his face. Suddenly, Leonard was off of his neck, and Kyle was on all fours catching his breath. He saw that the liquid on his arm was blood.
Kyle looked up and saw Allaire holding one of the Tigres by his hair as blood poured from his throat. She let him drop face first to the ground as another Tigre tried to grab her arms, while Hector threw a punch at her face. She ducked and jabbed her combat knife into Hector’s belly, pulling it out quickly and turning toward Leonard and his two gangmates. She handled the knife like a ninja.
Kyle stood up as he caught his breath again and watched as Allaire swung her blade once at Raffy’s face—he was their gangleader. She swung again, and this time, he barely got out of the way. Then in one fluid move, she turned and pulled him closer by the shirt, sliding the blade across his throat.
Leonard ran at her now with his blade and tried to stab her in the side. It was almost as if she had eyes in the back of her head, though. She swung Raffy’s quickly dying body around toward Leonard and used Raffy like a shield. Then she pushed Raffy toward Leonard and both fell in a heap to the ground.
“What are you doing here?” Kyle asked Allaire. She shot him a look, but didn’t say anything.
She moved toward Griddle now, and pulled her combat knife back to strike.
“Allaire, no!” Kyle yelled to her, springing to his feet. “I’m safe. You don’t need to kill him. Let’s get into your silk blot and get out of here.”
Suddenly, Kyle heard a shredding sound. Allaire winced and an instant later her leg buckled. Kyle looked down and saw Leonard holding his makeshift boxcutter.
From the floor, Leonard grabbed hold of her other leg now, and he quickly dove on top of her, holding her wrists against the floor so she couldn’t strike with her combat knife. She tried kicking him off of her, but he used his body weight to hold her down.
Kyle tried to pull Leonard off, but Griddle grabbed Kyle and pulled him backward.
Leonard still held one of Allaire’s wrists and held his blade up to her face with his other hand. He smiled, enjoying the advantage.
Kyle turned to Griddle and hit him with a huge uppercut, dropping him to a knee. Then, he hit him once more in the side of the head, knocking him woozily to the ground.
He turned back toward where Leonard was straddling Allaire now. Kyle pulled his fist back and delivered a crushing punch to the side of Leonard’s head, knocking him off of Allaire and down to the hard concrete floor of the cell. Allaire squeezed out from underneath Leonard and stood up.
Allaire stepped on Leonard’s wrist, digging her foot into him as hard as she could.
Leonard winced and let his knife drop to the floor.
Kyle picked up the knife. “Let’s go.”
But now Allaire was straddling Leonard, her knife against his throat. “No!” Kyle screamed.
“Kill me. I don’t fucking care,” Leonard said to Allaire.
“Please, Allaire,” Kyle said. “We don’t need to.”
Kyle gently lifted her off of Leonard by her armpits. Her eyes looked different than he’d ever seen them. Focused in a way he’d rarely seen anyone look.
“You okay?” Allaire asked.
“I think,” he answered, looking around the carnage. “You?”
There was a commotion in the hall outside the cell. Voices were coming their way.
Allaire pulled a silk blot from the inside pocket of her jacket. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
CHAPTER 13
February 25, 2016
* * *
Later that day
“How did you know I needed you?” Kyle asked as he followed Allaire through the time tunnel. He was trying to piece together everything that had just happened. “You came back to save me, didn’t you?”
“Kyle . . . ” Allaire said, “why doesn’t matter.”
He was lining everything up in his head just as the words came out of his mouth. “You knew something bad was going to happen when those gangbangers cornered me and you came back to do something about it. That’s why you left the message on the table. But the message must not have worked.”
“Can we please stop talking about it?” she asked, continuing to move through the tunnel. “Please.” He heard her voice crack.
“But what about your whole speech at the bus station? About how it’s impossible to change the past?” Kyle asked. “If they were going to kill me—.”
“They weren’t going to kill you,” she snapped, stopping and turning back to him. She shook her head, disappointed. “Can we please . . . ? I just completely broke every rule, every freaking principle I’ve known since I got dragged into this life in the first place. I’m out of answers now, Kyle! So, how about being part of the solution? Help me do my job instead of shining a light on how much I’ve messed up.”
She started crying. Kyle pulled her into a hug and she collapsed in a ball in his lap. The hard ridged metal of one of the time tunnel’s rungs poked him in the back.
“I did all of this because I’m in love with you,” Allaire said “But, you? You’re in love with some fairy tale idea that you can just go back and erase your big screw-up. Time travel therapy doesn’t exist, Kyle. And if you could see that . . . If you could only see that . . . ”
“I don’t understand what you’ve done that’s so wrong,” Kyle said, still holding her.
She heaved her body as she cried. “You can never go back to your own time again to live,” she said. “That’s how bad I fucked things up . . . Those earthquakes were the universe reacting.”
“I understand,” Kyle said.
“Do you?” she asked, sitting up and putting her hands on his cheeks. “I’m serious. No more do-overs,” she said. “The bus crash happens. End of story. Promise me you understand that.”
Kyle nodded. He didn’t really understand—how could he?—but he understood how serious she was. And he knew that nothing he’d done by going back to the day of the crash had amounted to anything but trouble.
She started moving again. “We need to get as far away from here as we can,” she said stoically. “You’ll be a fugitive for as long as anyone believes you might still be alive.”
They’d been climbing quietly through the tunnel for a while. As opposed to their usual flirty banter, this was a funereal atmosphere, with Kyle left mostly to thinking about Allaire’s words earlier. They passed the rung for the year 2022, the year Kyle would’ve been released from his original prison sentence.
“Allaire, I know I can’t go back now, but my life is here. We’re literally passing it by,” Kyle said. “It may not be much of a life, but tell me I can go back to it eventually.”
Allaire moved close to Kyle’s face. “You really don’t get it, do you? If you think all you’re cut out for is to be a convict, go on back. Back to your cell. Back to thinking about those kids—who you can’t save anyway—twenty-four hours a day.”
“I didn’t say I wanted that,” Kyle said. “Why do you care about me so much? I killed twelve kids. I deserve everything that came after. I deserve to be in that prison.”
“You just rotting in a cell for one single mistake,” she said. “That’s something I couldn’t stomach. I’ve been doing this a long time, and you’re the only person I’ve ever broken the rules for.”
Kyle stopped climbing and thought to himself for a moment. For the first time, he saw Allaire as part of something bigger. Everything he knew of her was in relation to him and the crash, but she had a purpose too. She had some type of job. But who she was working for, and why, remained a mystery. There were clearly rules, though, which meant that somebody was probably in charge. He wanted to know more about her—and more about how it all worked. If he went back now, he’d never know any of these answers. If he didn’t, though, he’d be a man without a time. His life might begin to resemble Allaire’s, for all the little he knew about it.
“Why break the rules for me, though?” Kyle asked.
She looked him in the eyes, as if she were still trying to answer the question herself. “There’s something about you, Kyle. It’s more than just how much I care about you. I . . . I just have a feeling.”
“Okay,” he said nodding. “Let’s go.”
Allaire smiled and started down the tunnel again. “I’m bringing you home.”
“Where’s home?” Kyle said.
“Wrong question,” Allaire answered, the playfulness back in her voice.
“When?” Kyle asked, playing along dutifully. “When is your home?”
“There you go,” she said. “Come on, just follow me.” With that, she was off again, climbing through the tunnel toward an unknown destination in the future.
CHAPTER 14
July 22, 2060
* * *
Forty-four years later
The first thing Kyle did when he exited the silk blot at the slot labeled 2060 was to spin around, and take in his first glimpse of the future. They were on the top of a building, and he noticed that it was pitch black. Even with just the moonlight, though, Kyle could tell from the buildings that they were still in New York City.
Less than a minute after they arrived, Kyle felt something tug on the back of his shirt. He stumbled backward until the back of his legs hit against something hard. He turned around and Allaire gently pushed him into a vehicle. Kyle sat in a soft leather seat, and watched as Allaire climbed into the vehicle after him, and then the doors slid shut. The flying vehicle had been completely silent as it landed behind them, and it was quiet now as it took off into the air.
Kyle tried looking out the window to see where they were going, but the bright orange tinting, combined with the lack of lights, made it hard to see.
Allaire pulled two straps from over each shoulder and crossed them like an X in front of her. “Buckle up.”
Kyle secured the straps, then craned his head for a better look at the vehicle’s driver, a hulking blond with solid shoulders. Even though he was sitting down, Kyle could tell he was built like a truck. “Where’s he taking us?” Kyle asked Allaire.
“Just relax. We’re in good hands,” Allaire answered. “You could have a maniac flying this thing, and it’d still be less dangerous than trying to survive out there these days.”
“Who says I’m not a maniac?” the driver asked without turning around. He had an Australian accent.
Kyle felt the vehicle accelerate, and he could tell that they were ascending quickly into the air. He watched as Allaire placed her silk blot into a small glove compartment on the back of the seat in front of her.
The vehicle was long and thin, and when Kyle turned and looked backwards, he saw scalloped metal walls that made it look like the machine had a tail. As they leveled off and accelerated, the tail swung back and forth with every turn.
“What is this thing?” Kyle asked.
“We call it a ‘pillar,’ like caterpillar,” the pilot said, reaching his hand behind him to shake Kyle’s hand, while keeping the other on the H-shaped steering device. “Everett.”
Kyle leaned forward and met his firm grip. “I’m Kyle.”
“I know your name,” Everett said. “My wife told me you were the first boy she ever fancied.”
“Your wife?” Kyle asked. He looked over at Allaire, who just stared forward biting her lip.
“Yeah,” Everett answered, sucking the air out of the vehicle. “My wife.”
The Aussie turned and gave a quick glare at Allaire. He didn’t look happy at all. For the first time, Kyle could see his eyes, blue and intense.
No one spoke for the rest of the ride, except once, a few minutes later when Kyle finally managed to catch Allaire’s glance. “It’s complicated,” she whispered.
Everett spent more time tinkering with a touchscreen above his head than actually steering. Kyle noticed that the pillar had four little red fire alarm boxes on its ceiling, each covered with plastic, with small metal hammers mounted next to them. They looked like fire alarms, but were placed only inches from each other. If they were alarms, there’d be no need for four so close together.
A few minutes later, Kyle felt the pillar slow up and gently land. Everett pressed a few more buttons on the control panel, took out a huge key from the ignition, which looked like a tuning fork, and Allaire undid her seatbelts. “Welcome to the silo,” she said.
Kyle followed the two of them out of the pillar, which from the outside looked like something out of the Transformers movies. He hopped down about three feet to the ground, and looking up, he saw that they were inside a tall structure, like a tower. The name “silo” made sense—the ceiling was at least a hundred feet above them, and the walls were rounded. Allaire and Everett spoke quietly to each other a few feet away.
There was a long staircase running in a spiral along the outer wall of the building. The stairs led from one loft to the next. Every room was built on top of a platform jutting out from the wall. Each platform was at a different height. Some of the rooms had bamboo dressing screens in place
of the absent walls. Kyle assumed these were bedrooms. Others were completely open. The ground floor was part kitchen and part garage, with the pillar only about twenty feet from the refrigerator. Kyle could see into the first platform up, and it looked like some sort of surveillance or security area, with a bay of screens and computers lined up next to each other.
Allaire and Everett shared a short hug, but it didn’t look to Kyle like a romantic one. Everett grabbed her tight, but the way she tapped his back looked more maternal than wifely. This was a relief to Kyle, who hadn’t ever been made to feel jealous before when it came to Allaire.
Kyle followed Everett with his eyes as the large man walked up the spiral staircase to the room with all of the TV screens. Suddenly, he turned back down the stairs as if he’d forgotten something.
The building was unlike anything Kyle had ever seen. His head was spinning. It was too dark for him to get much of a look at 2060 New York City in the minute he’d spent out in the world before the pillar picked them up, but this building was unlike anything he’d ever seen in his life.
Everett opened a small hatch on the wall and grabbed something that looked like a first aid kit. He opened the box, pulled out an item that looked like a Q-tip, and walked toward Kyle.
“Open your mouth,” Everett said.
Kyle considered asking why, but he was too overwhelmed with everything he was seeing. He didn’t have the mental bandwidth to resist.
Everett swabbed the inside of his cheek, then turned away. “Thanks,” he said, holding the Q-tip up as he walked back upstairs. Kyle expected some kind of explanation, but none came.
As soon as Everett went upstairs, Allaire turned away from the kitchen area and walked over to Kyle.
“When can I go outside to see everything?” Kyle asked. As baffled as he was about Everett and Allaire, and where that left Kyle’s relationship with her, he was astonished and energized at the idea that he was actually in the future.
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