by Ty Drago
I threw up my hands. “How the heck should I know? He’s the resident genius!” I pointed at Steve.
They all looked at Steve, who swallowed dryly and replied, “I’m … not sure. After all, it’s not like anyone’s written any textbooks on the mechanics of time travel. There are theories, of course. Plenty of them. A few describe time as nothing more than an endless pile of choices, one after the other, each choice creating a potential timeline that could be completely different if a different choice was made.
“Maybe Will’s return triggered a new potential timeline alongside the one that would have happened if his visit to the future never took place. If so, then we may be able to move forward, into that different future, but still keep everything we had in the past. Or maybe what exists materially in our time stays in our time, regardless of what happens to the future. The physics of matter and temporal science aren’t exactly understood.”
Alex muttered, “I got about half of that.”
Jillian remarked, “Clear as mud to me.”
“Time is a river,” I said.
“What?” asked Steve.
“Forget it,” I told him.
“Don’t really matter,” said Tom. The lock finally clicked. “Sorry about that,” he added, straightening up. “I’m outta practice.”
“It’s open,” Jillian told him, grinning. “That’s the important thing.”
“Where’s it go?” Burt asked.
“I’ll show you,” I replied.
And I did, leading them through the rusted door and out into an all but invisible alcove behind 15th Street Station.
“All these months,” Tom said, shaking his head. “And I never knew this was here.”
“In the future,” I told him, “it becomes the only way in and out of Haven.”
“Unless we rewrite that future,” Steve corrected.
“Yeah. Unless that.”
The platform was deserted. Apparently this subway stop had been evacuated and closed off along with the rest of City Hall and its surroundings. At least there were no cops or bureau people in sight. For the moment, we had the place to ourselves. That was the good news.
The bad news was, with the station closed, no trains would be stopping here.
So we walked, dropping down from the platform to the tracks and following them east. Sounds crazy, I know. But it was actually something we’d all gotten pretty used to since becoming Undertakers. When trains went by, we’d just step into one of the many safety niches that the city set up all along the tunnel walls to protect subway workers. Then, when the danger passed, we’d continue on our way, ever mindful of that third rail.
Believe me, you do not want to touch the third rail.
The next station was 13th Street, but it was closed the same as 15th. Worse, a couple of cops were milling about. So we had to wait until they’d had their look around and cleared out before continuing down to the next stop, at 11th Street. That one was open. Better still, except for a couple of street people sleeping on benches, there was no one in sight.
Climbing quietly up onto the platform, we all took the stairs to street level.
The city was as noisy as I remembered it, maybe even more so, since sirens seemed to cut the air pretty much constantly. As we followed Market Street, continuing east, I found myself smiling.
It was good to be home.
We reached the corner of Market and 6th Street just as dawn broke. To our south stood Independence Mall, the broad grassy park that housed the Liberty Bell Pavilion. In the distance, Independence Hall was in easy view. As everyone gathered up on the corner, I spared a few moments to just stand there, gazing at the famous buildings.
They looked solid. Whole. Weirdly young. Though I couldn’t help remembering the ruins they’d become. The memory made the smile slide off my face.
The last time I stood here, I’d been the last human being on Earth.
“Will?” Helene asked. “You okay?”
“No,” I replied.
“I gotta tell you, a part of me hates those other Undertakers for what they put you through.”
“They gave their lives,” I told her. “Every single one of them, so we could be here, doing what we’re doing. So that we’d all have a chance at a future. They didn’t make the world they had to live in. The best they could do was try to arrange things so that I … we … could unmake it.”
Helene considered this. Then, shaking her head, she replied, “I get that. But I hate them anyway.”
We set off walking north.
To Haven.
The first Haven.
The old warehouse still stood on Green Street, right where we’d left it, as abandoned as ever. The entrance to the unused parking garage had been closed off with wooden planks that were covered with graffiti and sealed using hasps and padlocks. Working together, each with our faithful pocketknife, Tom and I unlocked them. Then, with a final look up and down the empty street, we slipped inside.
The familiar spiraling tunnel was dark, but we had our flashlights and, using them, we followed it all the way down to the old plastic curtain at the bottom, painted to look like bricks.
“Almost forgot about this,” Burt mused. “It was so cool.”
“It was,” Tom agreed, pushing through it.
Following right after him, I heard Jillian gasp and say, “This is the original Haven?”
“Duh,” Sharyn replied.
Stepping through, I suddenly remembered how big this place had been. Cavernous is probably the right word. In the dark, the ceiling seemed so high as to be invisible, and the floor space, empty of all the kids and equipment that used to fill it, looked as roomy as a football field.
The layer of dust on the floor was almost an inch thick.
Alex coughed. “Who owns it these days?” he asked.
“We do,” Sharyn replied. “Well … we still lease it, anyway. Never gave it up, even after we had to split.”
“Why did you abandon it?” Jillian asked. “This place looks way more comfortable than the dungeon we’re in now.”
Everyone went quiet.
Then Alex said, “Ritter.”
Jillian looked at him. “What?”
He pointed at me. “Ritter did it. He pulled one of his stunts and got Helene captured by Kenny Booth, top deader at the time, who brainwashed her into telling him where we were hiding. So we had to bug out … fast. It was his fault.”
Sharyn scowled at him. Steve and Burt looked unhappy. Tom stayed calm and quiet, as ever. Helene started toward the kid, her hands balled into fists. But I grabbed her arm, holding her back.
“No,” I told her. “He’s right. It’s true.”
Alex looked at me. Then his scowl weirdly softened. “But then he went out by himself and rescued her, so I guess it pretty much evened out.”
And Amy added, “Besides, if Will hadn’t done what he did, I’d be dead.”
“Old news,” Sharyn muttered. “Though I gotta admit bein’ here brings it back.”
“Hey guys!” Burt called. He’d wandered off, and now stood about thirty feet away, just inside an old steel door set into one of the warehouse walls. “I forgot we left some old bikes here. Some skateboards, too! Dang, I remember this place! We used to have a half-pipe set up in the far corner. Back then, Chuck and me used to …”
Then his words died.
A heavy silence settled over our group. It didn’t take a shrink to figure out the reason.
We were remembering lost friends.
Finally Tom said, “Let’s do what we came here to do.”
We picked a spot along the outer wall, not far from the little room where Burt had found the bikes and boards. Then, while Steve and Alex went to work wiring the Anchor Shard to the car battery that we’d lugged all the way from Haven, Tom gathered the rest of us together and delivered the news.
“Only four of us are goin’.”
Everyone went quiet.
>
Then Jillian asked, her eyes narrowing, “Which four?”
The chief looked levelly at her. “Me, Sharyn, Helene, and Will.”
“Whoa!” Burt exclaimed. “I gotta go!”
“You gotta stay,” Steve replied. The Brain Boss was crouched down, busily positioning the Anchor Shard atop the car battery that would power it.
Burt whirled on him. “Says who?”
“Says your brother,” replied Steve matter-of-factly. “I lost Ian. You lost Chuck. Isn’t that enough?”
Burt opened his mouth. Then he closed it, his face reddening.
Jillian, on the other hand, had plenty to say.
“You don’t trust me!” she exclaimed, actually poking Tom in his barrel chest for emphasis.
“Should he?” Sharyn asked dryly.
Jill ignored her. “We talked about this!” she said to Tom.
“We did,” he admitted.
“You gave the deaders Haven!” his sister snapped.
“So did I,” I said, quietly. “Isn’t that why we had to abandon this place? Isn’t that the story Alex just told us?”
Sharyn blinked. “Ain’t the same thing!” she exclaimed.
Jillian paled. Guilt rang on her face like a bell.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “But in a way, it is. We both screwed up and we both gotta live with it.”
Sharyn scowled. “Yeah, but—”
“It’s not about trusting nobody,” Tom said, still looking at Jill. “It’s about having a backup plan. We go. You stay. Then, if we don’t come back, a second group goes through. But if that happens, the second team’s mission can’t be about rescuing us. Our goal … our only goal … is to trash the Eternity Stone. We ain’t gonna get another shot at this.”
“There’s only one Binelli,” Jillian pointed out. “What’s the use of a second team if they won’t have a weapon?”
The chief reached under his jacket a produced a pistol. Not a water pistol.
A real pistol.
“Got this from Hugo,” he said, handing the weapon to Jill. “It may not work on the Eternity Stone. But it’s worth a try.”
The girl took the gun, looking very unhappy about it. But she didn’t say anything else.
The chief said, “Y’all give us six hours. If we ain’t back, then Team Two makes its move. Jillian, Burt, and Alex. Amy and Steve, you stay here. You ain’t combat trained. If Team Two don’t make it back either, then you close the Rift and go talk to Ramirez. Tell him what went down. Everybody cool with that?”
We all nodded, though I could tell most of us weren’t “cool with that” at all. Jillian was pissed. So was Steve, who’d just made that speech about his brother not going. And Alex … well, he always seemed pissed.
But none of it mattered. The stakes were too high.
“We’re ready, Chief,” Steve announced, stepping back from his makeshift creation. The car battery sat in the dust. The Anchor Shard was wired to a small silver box with a toggle switch atop it. The box, in turn, was wired to the battery’s leads. “Alex and I have grounded it to a standpipe.” He pointed to a thick copper wire that ran from the shard all the way to a corner of the big room. “As far as I can tell, it should work.”
“Okay,” Tom told him. “Then let’s do it.”
“Back up, everyone,” Steve said. “There’ll be a shockwave when the air’s displaced.”
As everyone backed up, the Brain Boss actually laid on the floor, his belly in the deep dust. Then he gave us a countdown.
“Five.”
Helene took my hand, pulling me further back. The last time this had been tried, furniture had gotten knocked around. But that had been back in the Brain Factory at Haven, where space had been tight. Here, there was plenty of room for the energy to disperse.
“Four.”
Or so Steve had told us on the walk over here.
“Everyone on your knees,” Tom said. “Cover your mouths and close your eyes. Dust is gonna fly.”
“Three.”
We did as we were told, though Helene kept holding my hand.
“Two.”
I clamped my mouth shut and used my free hand to cover my eyes.
“One.”
Helene gave my palm a frightened squeeze.
The Brain Boss flipped the toggle. At least, I assumed he did, because the air around us seemed to shudder and then blow outward—a momentary, hurricane force that almost knocked me over.
Then silence.
Chapter 33
The Energy Ferry
I risked a peek, but Tom had been right. Dust was flying in every direction, the air so thick with it that it was almost like being inside a cloud. Somewhere close by, I heard somebody cough. I think it was Amy.
“Just sit tight, y’all!” Tom called. “Let’s give it a minute.”
So I shut my eyes again and gave it a minute, counting the seconds. At sixty, I opened them. There was still plenty of dust in the air, but it was starting to settle, and I found that by standing up, I could get above the worst of it. Beside me, looking a little shaky, Helene did the same.
“Jeez,” I heard Alex mutter.
Strange, alien light filled the warehouse. It was emitting from the Anchor Shard, which glowed almost like a miniature sun. From its pointed end a beam had emerged, splashing against the cinderblock wall.
Only the cinderblocks were gone.
In their place was a Rift, a circle of black, weirdly shimmering energy about five feet across that seemed to have been drilled into the wall starting at just about knee height. Seeing it, Steve got to his feet and brushed off.
“Huh,” he said. “I expected a larger tear. Perhaps if I’d set up the Anchor Shard further back. Must’ve gotten the math wrong.”
“Should’ve carried the two,” his brother suggested snarkily.
“It’s big enough,” Tom replied. Then, without even a trace of worry, he marched past Steve and poked his head in the hole.
“Bro!” Sharyn yelped.
“Tom!” Jillian called at exactly the same instant.
Both girls glowered at each other.
Tom pulled his head back out. “It’s the same temp as out here. And there’s air.”
Steve nodded. “The tunnel’s taken on the properties of the environment that created it, just as my older self predicted.”
“Now, if we just knew about the other end,” his brother added.
“Can I have a look?” the Brain Boss asked.
“Everyone should look,” Tom replied. “We all gotta understand what we’re dealing with.”
So Steve went first, leaning so far into the hole that the entire upper half of his body disappeared. For most of a minute he didn’t move, and I was suddenly, alarmingly reminded of when his lower half had fallen into a Rift.
Finally, he came back out, looking none the worse for wear. “I was talking,” he said. “Did any of you hear me?”
“Not a thing,” said Jillian. “My turn.”
After her, Burt took his peek. Then Sharyn, Alex, Helene, and me. For some reason, I was totally okay with being last. In fact, I offered to let Amy go ahead of me, but she refused. “I don’t want to look,” was all she’d say. Maybe the uneasy expressions on everyone’s faces had freaked her out.
And when I finally did poke my head through the Rift, I totally got why.
It looked like a tunnel, but one that was way bigger than the five-foot hole I was leaning into. It was also rectangular, not round like the Rift, the four edges as square and sharply defined as any man-made room.
The ceiling—yes, it had a ceiling—had to be twenty feet above my head, with the floor—yes, it had a floor—the same distance below. Except neither the ceiling nor floor was smooth. Instead, they seemed rippled, forming a weirdly uniform series of horizontal ridges and valleys that ran away into the distance. Each ridge rose ten or twelve feet into the air, only to cut suddenly downward on the
far side into another curved valley. Then that valley rolled smoothly upward, forming a new ridge, and then another valley, and so on. One after the next, after the next, until they disappeared from sight.
Picture lazy waves on the ocean—never breaking, but only rising and falling, rising and falling, over and over.
Got it?
Now imagine that same ocean—frozen in an instant of time.
That might give you an idea of what I was looking at.
Thing is: those trenches and ridges reminded me of something—I mean, besides the time-frozen ocean. But I couldn’t quite think of what.
The tunnel was long, but I could see the end of it, or thought I could. There was something in the far distance, small and glowing. I didn’t think it was the Eternity Stone.
For one thing, whatever it was seemed to be getting closer.
“Uh … guys?”
But then I remembered the Rift’s soundproofing and realized they couldn’t hear me.
Pulling myself back out through the hole in the wall, away from the huge tunnel and the weird advancing light, I turned to find them huddled around me. Each wore a similar expression of wonder. But no one was really afraid.
Except me.
I had time for one word, and I screamed it at the top of my lungs. “Down!”
So-called “normal” kids living so-called “normal” lives would have balked. They’d have said something like “what’s up?” or “what’s going on?” But these were Undertakers, and all of them—every last one—dropped to their bellies in the dust without a moment’s pause.
So did I.
A second later, something came through the Rift.
It was like a spear of red energy that shook and shimmered as it moved to and fro above our heads. I got the impression that it was looking for something, its search becoming more and more frantic with each passing second. The energy hovered over each of us in turn, drawing little cries of fearful alarm from Amy, Steve, and even Alex.
Then I realized what it was.
A Malum Self.
Somewhere on the far side of the tunnel we’d just created, the Malum had recognized a newly-opened Rift and had sent one of their own across, probably assuming that another of their kind had just made contact. This—thing—had come here expecting to find a nice, handy cadaver to inhabit.
