The Collapse: Time Bomb

by Penelope Wright

  I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “Do you have paper and a pencil?” I pause and second-guess myself. Will pencil be legible in sixty years, or will it fade over time? “Wait – no, I need a pen.”

  Carlos is still super irritated with me. “Do I look like the kind of guy who carries paper and a pen in his backpack?”

  I don’t even stop to think about it. “Yes.”

  “What happened to you? If I’d known Mexican food would make you so touchy, I would have suggested Chinese.”

  My laughter catches me by surprise, and it loosens the tight, lumpy feeling in my throat. Things are going to be okay. Yeah, 2018 is close, but depending on what month it is right now, I could have a year before disaster strikes. Maybe even more.

  I throw my arms around Carlos and squeeze him in a giant hug. I lean back, my hands still clasped around his waist, so I can look him straight in the eye. “I’m so, so glad and thankful for you, Carlos, you have no idea. I’m sorry I can’t explain right now. I promise to try – right after I take care of this business. But it’s probably something that you’re going to think is really weird, and I need you to roll with it. Will you do that for me? Please?”

  Carlos smiles and looks down at me. He’s at least a foot taller than I am. “I actually do have paper and a pen in my backpack,” he says.

  I smile back. “Follow me.”

  We ride the elevator to the top floor and I’m no longer scared of it. We don’t have elevators in my time – they’re death traps. They’ve long since been removed or rotted away. But here, they’re very useful. The shafts in my time can be death traps too. My eyes narrow and my heartbeat speeds up. Sarah’s pretty face, twisted with malice, swims into my mind as I picture her stomping on my fingertips and trying to murder me in the straws.

  The door dings and we step out of the elevator. I don’t have time to dwell on Sarah right now. I hurry directly to the false panel, dig my nails into the crack in the wood and pry it outward.

  “Oh, god, it’s another mural inci – ” Carlos cuts himself off as I pull out the lockbox. “What the? What is that thing inside the wall?”

  “A scale.”

  “And what did you take out of there?”

  “A lockbox.” I spin the numbers on the dial until they read 3351. The box springs open.

  “How did you know that would be inside the wall?”

  I ignore his question and hold out my hand. “Can I have the paper and pen?”

  Carlos digs into his backpack and pulls out a spiral notepad and a pen with a white shaft and a black cap. “Look away for a minute please.” I don’t want him to watch what I write. I’m going to try to explain this to him, but I still don’t know how. If he reads my note to my dad, it’s just going to raise a million questions that I won’t have answers for.

  “Boo…”

  I grip the pen. “Please.”

  Carlos sighs and turns around, and I scribble madly.

  Dad. I’m in 2018.

  I chew my lips. Dang it. “What day is it?” I ask Carlos.

  Carlos drawls out his answer. “Monday.”

  “No, I mean the month and the day.”

  Carlos sighs. “July second.”

  I go back to my writing. It’s July 2nd. Sarah pushed me into the straws. I didn’t die because I used my return chemicals from the aborted trip to escape. I only just got my memories back. Please come get me. Bring three syringes of return chemicals. One for you, one for me, and one for my friend. Meet me on the twentieth floor landing of the south stairwell of Columbia Tower on July 2nd at 9:00 p.m.

  I pause, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. I just defaced the mural on forty this morning. Do I dare risk going into Columbia again so soon? Will Carlos agree to come with me? If he decides I’m crazy and refuses, we won’t need that third set of chemicals. Maybe I should give it more time? I do a quick calculation. July 2nd, 2018 to April 19th, 2019. I have two hundred and ninety-one days. More than I thought, in my initial panic. Should I spare a couple days before I meet Dad, to give myself some time to convince Carlos?

  I glance up at his stiff spine, his head held high, and I decide not to change the date. More time would probably just serve to drive a wedge further between us. Carlos is never going to be able to wrap his mind around what I have to tell him. A couple more days is just more time for Carlos to convince himself that I’m crazy and leave me.

  I lick my lips and turn back to my writing. I love you, I write. I underline the last line three times, rip the page out of the spiral notebook, fold it in half, and throw it and the black pen into the lockbox. Carlos turns around at the noise.

  “Done?” he says.

  “Yeah. I had to keep the pen.”

  Carlos rolls his eyes. “That’s the least of my worries.”

  I put the lockbox on the scale and replace the false panel, tapping it gently into place with the pads of my fingers.

  I rise and take Carlos’s hand.

  “I can’t believe you just did all that without getting caught.”

  No sooner are the words out of his mouth than the elevator bell dings and the doors slide open. A tall, grimy man steps out and spears us with blazing brown eyes under craggy white eyebrows. Carlos lets go of my hand and throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “Old Dirty! You have got to stop following me around, man!”

  I feel like my eyes are going to pop out of my head as I goggle at the man standing before us on the top floor of Smith Tower. “General Safeco?” I say incredulously.

  Safeco’s eyes glaze over for an instant, his mouth drops open, and he shakes his head violently. He reaches with his right hand and slaps at his left breast, sliding his hand inside his filthy tattered clothing, searching frantically. His hand emerges with a syringe.

  “Wait!” I yell. I run toward him, but I see his posture has changed. His training has kicked in. He’s on autopilot, and too fast for me.

  He mouths the words as he performs the actions with lightning speed. Plunge. Withdraw. Drop. Slap. Zip.

  I reach him just as he dematerializes, my fingertips grasping at nothing in the space he occupied a millisecond ago. The spent hypodermic needle clatters lightly on the tile floor.

  I fall to my knees, grab it, and squeeze it desperately. There’s nothing left. Not one drop.

  Carlos’s voice breaks the unearthly silence. “What the hell just happened?”

  My crazed, mixed-up brain can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so I do a little bit of both. Maybe it won’t be so hard to get Carlos to believe my story after all.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  June 9, 2074

  General Enrique Safeco paces his office, feverishly balling then unclenching his fists. Rosarita Columbia had been right there. Right in front of him. And he’d done nothing.

  Safeco rakes his hands through his hair. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been a soldier most of his life. His training was thorough and absolute. When it had kicked in, he’d done what he was supposed to do.

  He wasn’t lying to himself. But still. He’d come face to face with her in 2018 on the top floor of Smith Tower, and he’d plunged his chemicals into his port like the robot he was.

  He shakes his head. No. He is no robot. This isn’t over.

  At a light tap on his office door, he rearranges his features into an emotionless mask. “Come in,” he calls somberly.

  Ellen enters and snaps a salute.

  “At ease.”

  Ellen relaxes into parade rest, her legs shoulder-width apart, her hands held behind her in formation at the base of her spine.

  Safeco scrutinizes her face. Is she the right choice? What other options does he have? He searches her features for several minutes, the silence in the room deafening.

  “Permission to speak, sir?” she finally asks.

  “Permission granted.”

  Ellen doesn’t try to meet his eyes. She stares straight ahead, her body as still as a statue. “My last climb was a week ago. It was hard,
but I passed. I’m hoping to be a welder, sir. I’ll need both my arms, and it’s also important that I can communicate verbally. I’m honored to be selected to help my people, and if I may, I’d like to request that it be my left leg.”

  Safeco’s brow wrinkles in confusion. He’d been following her up to that last part, but what she said makes no sense. He was sixty-seven years old when he embarked on his last trip. How old did that make him? Seventy-one? Or was he seventy-five now? Had he aged these years too? He doesn’t know anymore. This is uncharted territory. He knows people already think he’s ancient. He knows they respect him, but he can’t give them any reason to question his sanity, and he’s not sure how to respond to her last statement, so he sidesteps it.

  “That’s not why I called you here today, Ms. Banks.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  The girl’s body seems to relax a fraction of an inch.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly,” he says.

  “It was an order, sir.”

  He likes her spunk. “You’re right. It wasn’t really a request, was it?”

  “No, sir.”

  Safeco walks to his Gila-shielded window and stands, looking over the city, his hands clasped behind his back. He stays that way for a full minute before he exhales deeply and turns around.

  “You’re from The Banks.”

  “Yes, sir. Wells Fargo.” She lowers her eyes. It isn’t an address to be proud of.

  “You’ve done well in your studies.”

  She looks up. “I have. I didn’t know you followed that kind of thing here in Safeco Tower.”

  “I have a job that I need assistance with, and my research has convinced me that you meet the criteria for the position.”

  Her breath catches noticeably. “A job, sir? Working for you?”

  Safeco nods. “Yes. But it’s not a position you’d be familiar with.” He paces back and forth in front of the window. “It is, however, a job utterly critical to the survival of our society.”

  She blinks solemnly and waits for him to continue.

  Safeco likes that she doesn’t immediately pepper him with questions. “If you succeed in this mission, your position in The Towers will be secured for life. You’ll move out of The Banks into my tower, and I will train you and designate you to be my successor.”

  She gasps. “Sir! I’m only sixteen. I haven’t even passed my final climb.”

  “I’m serious, Ms. Banks. Few in our world will ever know or understand the debt of gratitude and service we’ll owe you after you complete your mission. But I will. And I intend to reward you commensurately.”

  “Whatever it is, sir, I’ll do it for our people, whether I leave The Banks or not.”

  Safeco stares at her for a long moment, then nods. “I believe you.”

  She holds her palms out receptively in front of her body. “What is the mission?”

  Safeco takes a deep breath. It has to be done. He knows he’s ready to reveal the secret for the first time in his life, but he’s surprised by how reluctant his mouth is to form the words. He forces it out. “For the last several years, our society has been aided by a small group of special soldiers who perform critical missions. These missions occur…in the past.”

  The girl’s eyes go wide. “The past? Time travel, sir?”

  Safeco nods curtly. “Yes.”

  His eyes fly around the walls of his office. Nothing has changed, and his head feels fine. He exhales a sigh of relief. “It appears you can be trusted. I’m glad for that.” Safeco looks out over the flooded city again before turning back to her. “This mission is of such sensitivity that I need you to travel immediately. You will not return to The Banks. You will travel right now, from my tower. Do you understand?”

  She nods. “Yes. I’m honored, sir. I won’t let you or our people down.”

  Safeco cracks his first smile of the interview. “Good. The most important thing you need to know about time travel is that we do not speak of it. We must do everything we can to prevent a conundrum. There are rules, laws of time travel, that we’ve discovered. The first is that you will not be missed, even by people who know you well. Only other time travelers can notice that you’re gone. Another important rule is that you can travel through time, but not space. You will depart from my tower and arrive in my tower. Because of this, I’ll be giving you an extra year in the past to complete your mission, but we’ll get to that. Finally, you cannot confront yourself in the past. If that were possible, I’d be performing this mission myself. You will undoubtedly catch sight of me while on your mission. You must not approach me. Do you understand?”

  She nods emphatically. “Yes, sir.”

  He looks her straight in the eye. “You cannot travel under the name ‘Ellen Banks.’ We can’t run the risk of you becoming part of the historical record under your own name. For this mission, you’ll go by the name ‘Lita.’”

  He scrutinizes her face for a reaction. It remains receptive, with no flicker of recognition. The name means nothing to her. Safeco feels a burst of energy. She’s passed the final test.

  He ticks two fingers in the air. “Now, the details. Your mission it two-pronged, which you must achieve in the exact order in which I list them. Upon your arrival in July 2017, you are to assimilate into society in whatever way possible. Learn as much as you can about the city and how to move through it without being apprehended. Pay special attention to Smith Tower. Know it inside and out.”

  Ellen’s eyes shoot to the southwest wall of the room, beyond which the pointy tip of Smith Tower pokes out of the floodwaters. She nods firmly. Safeco can tell she doesn’t understand the meaning of the task or why it’s important, but he knows it doesn’t matter. It’s her directive, and she’ll do it without question.

  Safeco folds a finger down. “Your mission objective occurs on July 2nd, 2018. On that date, you must be inside Smith Tower, hiding on the top floor, near the north wall. At some point between daybreak and twilight on that date, a person will enter the upstairs hallway, access a box hidden inside the wall, and leave something inside it. After that person and her companion are gone, your mission is to destroy the box and everything inside.”

  She nods again. “I can do that.”

  Safeco folds down the final finger. “Your second objective is to kill the person who accessed the box.”

  Ellen’s brow wrinkles and her eyes cloud, but she shakes it off quickly. “But, sir, if I have to wait until she’s gone to destroy the box, how will I know how to find her again?”

  Safeco stares into infinity. He can’t have Ellen kill Rosarita when she arrives at Smith Tower, or she won’t be able to shout “General Safeco” at him to jog his memory and send him home to 2074. But she must see Rosarita, in order to know who the target is. It’s the only way to right the course of history.

  Safeco finally blinks and speaks in a low, flat tone. “You’ll know when it’s time. She is not who you think she is.”

  Ellen presses her mouth into a firm line. “I understand, sir. I’m ready.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  July 2, 2018

  “What just happened?” Carlos stares in wide-eyed shock at the end of the hallway.

  I grab Carlos’s arm and try to get him to move with me toward the elevator, but his feet are planted to the floor like he’s grown roots. “I’ll tell you, Carlos, but we need to get in position first. I’ve sent for help. We need to be there when my dad arrives.”

  It’s like Carlos doesn’t even hear me. His feet unfreeze from the floor and he stumbles forward. He drops to his hands and knees and rubs at the carpet where until moments ago, ODP – General Safeco – had been standing. “Old Dirty Plastered,” Carlos says wonderingly. “He just vanished, Boo. Into thin air. He was there, he walked out of the elevator, and then…” Carlos flails his hands in the air above his head. “Gone! I swear. He was right here.”

  I fall to my knees too. I take his hands. “He was there. You’re not crazy.
I know him, and his name’s not ODP. His name is General Safeco, and he’s a very important man where I come from. A great man. He’s my father’s most trusted lieutenant. If my dad had friends, he would be his best one.”

  Carlos meets my gaze, confusion written all over his face, and I forge on. “I was worried about how I was going to explain it to you, Carlos. I didn’t know how to make you believe me.” I fall silent as the weight of everything I have to tell him crushes me.

  After a moment, Carlos’s voice snaps me back to reality. “Where did you go just now, Boo? You’re here, but you’re not here. You’re not going to vanish all of a sudden like ODP, are you?” He chuffs a wobbly laugh, but I know it’s a legitimate question.

  I shake my head and rise, gently pulling him to his feet. He stands a foot taller than me, and I tilt my face back. We only have a few hours to get to Columbia Tower to meet my father and escape from this world. “No. I’m not going to vanish like that.” Yet. But when I do, you’re coming with me. I guide him toward the elevator. I have so much to tell him.

  Rosie has regained her memories…but at what cost? Her budding relationship with Carlos is put to the test as Rosie struggles to get them both safely to 2074, while being stalked by an unseen assassin. What happens next? Find out in Paradox Rising, Book Two in The Collapse series.

  Turn the page for a preview!

  Sneak Peek at PARADOX RISING

  July 2, 2018 – Rosie

  “What just happened?” Carlos stares in wide-eyed shock at the spot where a filthy homeless man just dematerialized in front of him. He pushes his dark brown hair back from his temples and rakes his hands down the sides of his angular face.