TWELVE
Erin Salgado was the first to meet the newest guests.
As the pink light of dawn washed over the premises, she carried her gun down the winding driveway. She had no idea what to expect from her last-minute patrol. All she knew was that Mia had scared her something fierce.
Shortly after midnight, Erin had spotted the girl on camera, fretfully pacing the third-floor hallway. Mia paused at David’s door in dilemma, then Amanda’s, then Zack’s, and then repeated the cycle all over again.
Soon Erin went upstairs to find her. “Honey, are you okay?”
Mia hugged her journal, her face a quivering mask. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to start a whole panic over nothing. I mean I once got a note saying ‘Don’t trust Peter,’ and then another note saying to disregard the first note. So I’ve gotten bad messages before.”
Erin stroked Mia’s shoulders, hopelessly lost. The physicists didn’t go out of their way to explain things to the Salgados. Most of what the family knew was gleaned through surveillance and eavesdropping. Erin had overheard some very odd chatter about Mia.
“Is there any way I can help?”
Mia’s eyes lit up. “Can I come with you to the security room? Is that where you see everything?”
Erin knew her clients would frown upon her bringing one of the subjects into the monitoring station, but Mia had a way of tugging her heartstrings. They were both husky gals, both from a large family of men. Erin could only imagine how she’d be if she lost her dad and brothers.
She took Mia downstairs to the cramped little office that, to everyone on night watch, had become synonymous with boredom. As Mia perched at the console and watched the nine color screens, Erin sat behind her and twisted her long hair into braids.
“What exactly are you looking for, kitten?”
“I have no idea. It’s probably too early to see them anyway.”
Erin eyed her nervously. “People here are saying you can tell the future. Is that true?”
“I don’t tell the future,” Mia replied, through a gaping yawn. “The future tells me.”
At 3 A.M., she finally succumbed to fatigue. Erin led her to the worn green couch at the back of the room and draped a blanket over her.
“Wake me up before sunrise,” Mia mumbled. “They’re supposed to hit at sunrise.”
Unnerved, Erin popped a can of orange vim, then resumed the monitoring. At 6 A.M., her twin brother Eric arrived to relieve her. He eyed Mia quizzically.
“Let her sleep,” Erin whispered. “She had a bad night.”
“What, like nightmares?”
“I think so.” I hope so, she thought. Otherwise, trouble was coming right about now.
Instead of driving straight home, as her weary thoughts demanded, Erin drew her pistol and took a cautious sweep around the perimeter of the building. She walked down to the front gates, testing them. The property was sealed within a ten-foot iron fence. Good enough to keep most stragglers out.
By the time Erin returned to the family van, the sun had climbed above the trees. She stashed her gun and texted her brother.
Okay. This is silly. I’m going home. Keep an eye on M
A reflective gleam caught her eye. She turned to spy a wiry man standing on the front lawn, forty feet away. He cut an ominous figure in his dark jeans and black leather jacket. Erin couldn’t see his face through the shaded visor of his motorcycle helmet, but he was clearly looking at her.
The gleam had come from the three-foot Japanese sword in his right hand.
Wide-eyed, Erin reached for her gun. Her fingers barely touched the holster before the man sped past her in a dark blur. She felt a hot blast of air, then an odd tug in her midsection. Erin Salgado considered the very strange thing she just witnessed, then fell to the ground in two pieces.
—
Eric was pouring sugar into his coffee when his sister’s death occurred on the upper-right screen. It wasn’t until the image looped back to the driveway, fifty-five seconds later, that he glimpsed the long blood spatter on the side of the van. His coffee mug shattered on the floor.
“Erin!”
Mia woke up, startled, as Eric sped past her. He ran down the hall and stopped short at the lobby. Two intruders stood by the reception desk. One was petite and unseasonably dressed in thick winter clothes. A long blond ponytail poured from a hole in the back of her ski mask. The other was tall and wore a simple gray tracksuit. His face was covered in a rubber novelty mask molded in the smiling semblance of Teddy Roosevelt.
Both strangers turned to Eric as he reflexively aimed his pistol.
“Don’t—”
With fearful eyes, the woman raised her hand. A quick burst of light enveloped Eric, freezing him solid in an instant. Everything within five feet of him glistened with a fresh coat of frost.
The man in the Roosevelt mask flicked his wrist, causing long tempic whips to emerge from his fingers. They broke off little pieces of Eric, toppling his corpse like a statue.
The woman glared at her companion. “Why’d you do that?”
“I wanted to see if he’d shatter.”
“You really are sick.”
“Maybe. But you’re the one who killed him when you could’ve just frozen his gun.”
The blonde looked at her victim in dismay. Winter mist escaped with each shallow breath.
“I panicked.”
“No fooling. You need to mettle up, honey. We haven’t even started yet.”
She glared at him. “Just go upstairs and help Rebel. I’ll take care of the one down here.”
Mia swallowed her scream. She’d witnessed Eric’s death on the monitor and now frantically scanned the security console for something, anything that could help. One button caught her attention: hot red, with a flame-shaped icon.
She slammed it hard, and the building came to life.
—
Czerny launched awake in the futon. A chain of loud woops filled his office. The entire ceiling flashed with red lumis. He scrambled for his shirt.
Beatrice blinked at him several times, holding the blanket to her naked chest. “What’s going on? Is it a fire?”
“Don’t know. I’m hoping it’s just a glitch.”
Czerny donned his glasses and keyed a three-digit number into his desk phone. He was surprised to find a frightened girl on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she said, in a frantic half whisper. “Who is this?”
“This is Dr. Czerny. Who . . . Sorry, I was expecting someone else. Who am I speaking to?”
“It’s me! It’s Mia!”
“Mia? What’s going on? Why are you in the security room? Where’s the guard on duty?”
“He’s frozen or petrified. And I think Erin’s hurt. I see four different people on the monitors. One of them’s really big and he has a gun.”
“My God!”
“There’s a woman in a ski mask. I think she’s coming this way. I don’t know what to do!”
Panicked by proxy, Beatrice rushed to get dressed. Czerny cradled the phone and finished buttoning his shirt.
“Okay, Mia. Listen to me. I want you to stay calm. If you haven’t already locked the door—”
“I locked it. And I pushed the couch in front of it.”
“Good. Smart girl. Now I want you to deactivate the fire alarm. Just press the red button twice.”
“Should I? I mean—”
“Mia, please trust me, all right?”
Five seconds later, the clamor came to a stop. The emergency lights disappeared.
“Good. Good, Mia. Now you just stay where you are. Help is coming.”
“I think they all have a—”
He hung up before she could finish. For lack of a better term, she was about to say “weirdness.”
Beatrice clutched his arm. “Constantin, what’s going on?”
He fished a small item from her purse, a gray metal gadget that resembled a baby air horn.
“If our youngest guest hasn’t lost her poor mind, then I fear we have armed intruders.”
“Oh my God! Should I call the police?”
“No. Call Martin. Get him and his son to come as quickly as possible. Then call the fire service and tell them it was a false alarm.”
Beatrice peered anxiously at the little weapon in his hand. “You’re not seriously going out there with my chaser, are you?”
“If I had my pistol, love, I’d be wielding that.”
“Don’t go! You’ll get killed!”
Czerny caressed her cheek. The two of them had come together six weeks ago, under the influence of red wine and scientific exuberance. They’d been together almost every night since. It was the worst-kept secret in the building. Even the Silvers knew.
“Stay here,” he told her. “Stay hidden. Don’t come out until I tell you it’s safe.”
“But what if they come looking for me?”
With a heavy sigh, Czerny opened the door. He had the strong urge to tell Beatrice he loved her. Instead he remained ever practical.
“I don’t think we’re the ones they’re after.”
—
Thirty seconds after the alarm stopped, the two oldest Silvers emerged from their suites. Zack had taken the time to get decent in a shirt and sweatpants. Amanda was content to let her T-shirt hang down over her underwear. As Zack’s higher functions pondered the circumstances behind his rude awakening, his sleepy id admired her long and shapely legs.
“Hellooo, nurse.”
Amanda threw him a cool squint. She had yet to forgive him for his impending exit.
“What was that? The fire alarm?”
“Sounded like it,” said Zack. “It’s probably a glitch.”
Or a trick, he mused. Though Zack knew Quint wasn’t his biggest admirer, the little man had been far too cavalier about losing one of his alien specimens. He must have had something up his sleeve.
David stepped out of his room, fully dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He glanced around the hall, his handsome face lined with worry.
“Where are the others?”
Zack shrugged. “Still in bed, I guess.”
“Lovely. Why get up for something as trifling as fire?”
“I don’t think it’s a real fire,” Amanda said.
David knocked on Mia’s door three times before pushing it open. He scanned the room.
“She’s not in there,” he said.
“What?”
Amanda rushed across the hall and thumped on Hannah’s door. David hurried to the stairwell.
“Where are you going?” Zack asked him.
“First floor. She might be in the kitchenette.”
“Amanda’s right. It’s probably a false alarm.”
“It can’t hurt to see if she’s okay. And it won’t hurt you to check on Theo.”
As David disappeared down the steps, Amanda opened the door to Hannah’s room. She looked inside, then checked the bathroom. Her sister was nowhere to be found.
—
Three minutes earlier, just as Erin Salgado finished her sweep of the rear property, Hannah stepped out to the patio and stretched her calves. Her inner clock had become muddled from all the time-shifting she was doing. For the fifth day in a row, she woke up at the crack of dawn with no hope of falling back to sleep.
On Thursday, Charlie Merchant suggested that she try something called exertion therapy, a tight regimen of exercise and catnaps, all strategically timed to loosen the body’s circadian rhythm. Hannah wondered if it would be easier just to get her exertion from Charlie himself. He was kind of cute for an egghead.
Once her limbs were sufficiently loosened, she straightened her tank top and trotted along the path that looped around the property. She made it only fifty feet before the building alarm sounded. Hannah could only guess that she’d triggered it somehow, since no one else was awake at this ungodly hour.
Wincing at the thought of all the apologies she’d have to offer, she dashed back to the patio. She caught a quick gleam in the reflective glass of the door, then spun around. No one.
Something in the air felt strange, the same smoky aura that Hannah had come to associate with speeding. Once the alarm stopped, Hannah heard a noise that sounded like a flat and heavy drumroll.
The hairs on her arms stood up. A tiny voice in her head offered urgent advice.
Shift.
She flipped the switch in her mind. Once again the world turned blue and sluggish. The drumbeat slowed to the sound of hurried footsteps. She turned around in the shadow of a six-foot man in a motorcycle helmet. Another half second of hidden advantage and his sword would have lopped her head off.
As it was, Hannah had just enough time to scream and duck.
The man overshot, stumbling over a patio chair. White-eyed, Hannah jumped back. Unlike everything else around her, the man existed at a normal speed and color. She could see every glistening red speck on his blade, his clothes. Her throat closed when she considered the notion that she was looking at her sister’s blood.
Hannah fled, and the Motorcycle Man followed. He’d been walking at a brisk pace until his quarry decided to shift. Now he was forced to run.
—
Czerny paused in the stairwell, debating his next move. Should he go up and warn the others or go down and help Mia? The girl was safely barricaded in the security room, but there were also tools in there that could help the situation—weapons, surveillance monitors, a building-wide intercom system.
He went down.
Five steps into his descent, a tall man popped around the corner and stepped onto the landing. He and Czerny jumped at the sight of each other, then reflexively raised their hands in battle. Unfortunately for Czerny, his trigger finger was delayed by two perplexing observations about his opponent: his rubber Teddy Roosevelt mask and the fact that he’d aimed nothing but his bare palm. For a crucial split second, Czerny took it as a stop sign, a call for mercy to the man with the upper hand. It wasn’t.
A tempic tendril burst from the stranger’s fingers, snaking ten feet up the stairwell and embedding itself in Czerny’s gut. The physicist screamed as the Roosevelt Man twisted his thoughts, causing the engorged end of the projectile to expand and bloom thorns.
Half-blind with agony, Czerny raised the electron chaser in his hand and fired.
Temporis and electricity had a complex relationship. While one could be used to generate the other, electric current proved stubborn to most forms of temporal manipulation. It couldn’t be advanced, reversed, sped up, or slowed down. It could, however, be steered through the air with laser precision, a development that made power cables a thing of the past. It also allowed for some interesting new weapons.
The moment the invisible bolt struck the Roosevelt Man, his tempic tendril disappeared and he stumbled backward over the railing. He fell nine feet, cracking his skull on the reception desk before crumpling into a motionless heap on the marble.
Czerny dropped the chaser and examined his bleeding stomach. He knew from battlefield experience that abdominal wounds, while painful, were typically slow to kill. With the proper triage, he’d have hours to get himself to a reviver.
His legs grew weak. He teetered backward. In his feeble attempt to gain balance, his heel slipped on a patch of his own blood.
He went down again.
—
The Motorcycle Man moved faster than Hannah. He gained yards on her every time she looked back.
Their high-speed foot chase took them past the front of the building. As soon as Hannah passed the entrance, she felt the man’s cool glove on the strap of her shirt. He’d been running too fast to swing his katana. His goal now was to pull her down.
Frenzied, Hannah broke to the left, toward the green van parked in the driveway. She spied a pair of heavy boots on the far side of the vehicle, toes pointed upward. Beyond them, Erin’s freckled arms lay prone on the asphalt.
The last working piston in Hannah’s brain registered the sight as two dead Salgados, until she turned the corner around the van and saw just one woman in two places.
Suddenly her mind and limbs all quit in synch. She fell to the lawn.
The actress wriggled away on her stomach, gasping in panic. The Motorcycle Man de-shifted and approached her at a leisurely pace. His sword swayed idly in his grip.
Hannah flipped over and scuttled backward out of his shadow. “Why are you doing this? What did I do to you?”
The Motorcycle Man stood over her, pointing his blade at her stomach. All he had to do was lean in and she’d be impaled through the gut, stabbed on the grass like park litter.
It was at that moment that Hannah discovered something hard beneath her. As the Motorcycle Man leaned into his stab, she screamed into velocity. She rolled over, grabbed the rock from the grass, and then hurled it with all her strength.
It flew from her hand at 205 miles an hour and careened off her aggressor’s helmet. The visor cracked. His balance teetered. He toppled back to the grass.
Hannah climbed to her feet and lunged toward him in a furious streak, thumping his chest as he made his slow-motion fall.
“You asshole! You killed her! You cut her to pieces!”
Hannah hit him five times before he collided with the ground. On her final punch, she felt something snap inside his rib cage. She chucked his sword over the gate and then watched him writhe from a safe distance. She knew she should go inside and check on the others, but she couldn’t seem to work her muscles. A cruel little voice in her head insisted that the people she cared about were already gone. Everyone dies, Hannah. You should know that by now. Every friend. Every sister. Everyone under the sky.
The actress crumpled to her knees at the base of the fence. She wept at high speed.
—
Mia cursed her future self for not teaching her the security console. In her frantic button-mashing, she’d somehow constrained her surveillance images to the second-floor cameras—six in test labs, two in the hallway, one in Theo’s room. The former prodigy was awake and fully dressed. He nervously paced the rug with a wooden post in his hand, a leg he’d unscrewed from his desk chair. He’d been on high alert since 5 A.M. without having any idea why.
Through the monitors, Mia saw a very good reason for him to be scared.
A bald-headed gunman patrolled the hallway at a methodical pace, as if sniffing for prey. Though Mia couldn’t tell his height from her bird’s-eye vantage, he carried the thick frame of a wrestler. His sleeveless black T-shirt advertised every bulge of his powerful arms. His face was concealed by a bandana mask and sunglasses.
Mia didn’t know if he was moving farther or closer to Theo. All she could see was that his revolver looked powerful enough to shoot through walls.
For the third time, she grabbed the public address microphone and furiously hit its buttons.
“Theo? Theo, can you hear me?”
He kept pacing, oblivious. Mia cursed again.
The intruder suddenly ducked into a lab. He placed his back against the wall, aiming a vigilant gaze through the door crack. He was ambushing someone. Who?
On the second hallway monitor, Zack popped into view. Mia blanched.
“Oh my God . . .”
—
The cartoonist stepped off the landing with a listless yawn. He wasn’t fully awake yet, and he was nervous about all the wrong things. His mind was still trying to predict Quint’s next move.
He saw the door to Quint’s office and fought the temptation to reverse the lock. Maybe his parting cash was already in there. Or maybe he would find some smoking-gun evidence that would convince the others to leave with him. The closer Zack got to his departure with Theo, the worse he felt about splintering the group.
Sighing, he abandoned his burglary scheme. Odds were slim he’d find anything useful in there. And knowing Quint, he probably trained his mice to attack.
He continued down the hall, glancing in perplexity at the many unmarked doors. He cupped his hands around his mouth and projected his voice.
“Uh, hey, Theo? It’s Zack. Just thought I’d play fire marshal and see if you’re okay. The thing is, I don’t know which room is yours. Can you give me a yell? Or better yet, come out?”
After ten more seconds and two more calls, Zack reeled with fresh unease. Three of his friends seemed to be missing in action. Half my world’s population, he bleakly mused.
“Okay, Theo, I’m at orange alert now. Last chance to speak up before I get twitchy.”
Theo kept his back to his door, his face trembling. He couldn’t bring himself to move. His higher functions and lower instincts seemed united in the fear that Zack would die if he made a sound.
Frustrated, Zack began testing locked doors. He soon noticed one that was open a crack.
As he touched the knob, a tinny squeal filled the building, loud enough to make him wince. Mia’s high voice blared down from the ceiling.
“—AWAY FROM THERE! THERE’S A GUY WITH A GUN IN THERE! ZACK!”
The door flung open. A large man shoved Zack across the corridor, pinning him against the elevator doors. Hot air escaped his lungs.
The intruder pressed his gun to Zack’s temple. Mia screamed through the speakers.
“NO! I ALREADY CALLED THE POLICE! THEY’LL BE HERE ANY SECOND!”
The man kept his gaze and his muzzle fixed. He spoke in a deep graveled voice, peppered with the unmistakable inflections of a native New Yorker.
“Would you please do something about the girl?”
Zack shook his head. “I don’t know what you want me to—”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Zack could see a small microphone clipped to the man’s collar.
Mia debated extending her bluff. In truth, she had no luck reaching anyone on the phone. The concepts of 0 and 911 were purely old-America. There were no signs, no stickies, no wisdom again from Future Mia on how to reach the authorities.
She suddenly felt a deep chill on her skin. She saw the steam of her own breath. Mia turned around, just as the door to the security room grew white with frost. It creaked. It splintered.
—
The moment the gun touched his skin, Zack lost his foothold on time. He existed in a breathless state of suspension, in which every sensation and detail was exponentially magnified. He could feel each bead of sweat on his skin, count every peach-fuzz hair on the scalp of his assailant. He could see through the man’s sunglasses, into his dark brown eyes. Early thirties. Italian. Maybe Jewish. Doesn’t look crazy. Doesn’t even look angry.
For all his hyperclarity, Zack couldn’t reach the trigger to his own special weapon. His weirdness rested deep on the other side of his mind, behind a cyclone of fearful distraction. He didn’t want to die here. Not like this. Not without knowing why.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
Without taking his eyes off Zack, the large man fired his gun at two different parts of the ceiling. Zack grimaced at the booming gunshots, then noticed the new glass fragments on the floor.
He shot the cameras. He shot both cameras without even looking.
The gunman pulled down his bandana. He had a wide and bumpy nose that had clearly been broken more than once, plus several tiny scars along his cheeks and chin. Zack could only guess that he’d been picking fights from the moment he left the crib.
“Folks call me Rebel, but that doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that this is my world and you ripped a hole in it.”
Zack spotted a hint of movement in the corner of his vision. He fought to keep his gaze on Rebel. “You think it was my choice to come here?”
“Doesn’t matter either. The longer you people live, the worse the problem gets. I’ve seen the future, brother. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop it from happening.”
He pressed the gun to Zack’s chest. What was once a cool muzzle now burned like a stove.
“No!” Zack yelled. “Just go! Go!”
“Sorry. This is how it’s gotta be.”
Zack wasn’t talking to Rebel. Ten feet away, Theo continued his sneaking approach. He’d crept out of his room, chair leg in hand, then deftly skirted the broken glass on the floor.
Sadly, none of his stealth mattered. The moment he got within eight feet of Rebel, the man’s muscular arm swung like a hinge.
He shot Theo without even looking.
—
Five seconds and fifty-one degrees ago, the microphone dropped from Mia’s numb fingers. It crashed at her feet, among the shards of Eric Salgado’s coffee mug.
She knew exactly how he died now.
A gloved fist struck the door, knocking away a frozen patch of wood. The blonde in the hall was barely an inch taller than Mia. The lines around her sharp blue eyes revealed her as an older woman. Mia could see from her thick white parka that she was also much, much warmer.
She registered Mia through a wide, unblinking stare. “God. You really are just a kid.”
Mia desperately scanned her memory, trying to recall the note she’d received about the Winter Blonde. Her future self had given her the woman’s full name and advised Mia to use it as a stalling tactic. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember it now.
“I didn’t do anything to you! Please don’t kill me!”
The blonde’s voice cracked with anguish. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to do this. But I have a daughter your age. She has to live.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I’m afraid it has everything to do with you. All of you. I’m so sorry. There’s no other option.”
The blonde took a step back. Thick tears ran under her mask.
“This’ll be quick. I promise.”
As Mia felt her entire future whittle down to milliseconds, she closed her eyes and thought about her family. If there was truly justice in the multiverse, then she would travel back across the great divide and rest in the afterlife with her dad, her brothers, and Nana. She didn’t want to end up in this world’s Heaven, where she’d only know one or two Salgados.
Suddenly a pair of radiant orbs materialized in front of the woman’s eyes. She covered her face just as a piercing electronic squeal—an echo of the feedback that had blared from all speakers a minute ago—erupted inside her ears. She fell to the ground screaming.
By the time Mia dared to open her eyes, David faced her through the broken door. He pointed to a metal prod hanging on the wall.
“Can I have that, please?”
“What?”
“The baton, Mia. The zapper. I need it. Quickly.”
With shaking hands, Mia tossed the weapon to David. He studied every side of it until he found the power switch. Now he jabbed the electric end at the back of the Winter Blonde’s head. She shrieked again, then fell silent.
Mia stared at David, dumbfounded. “She was going to kill me.”
“I know. I saw. Listen to me—”
“She was going to kill me!”
David grabbed her shoulder. “Mia, I know you’re upset but you have to pull it together. Please. We’re not safe yet.”
Krista Bloom. Her name was Krista Bloom. Mia recalled the note now. Too little, too late. She remembered a few other things as well.
“Oh no! Zack!”
She spun around to the monitors, only to find that her view of the upstairs hallway had gone dark. The cameras had been shot and killed by a very dangerous man.
—
Theo slid down the blood-flecked wall. He couldn’t help but wonder if his latest move had been a first attempt at heroics or merely a second try at suicide.
In either case, he knew he’d failed. A last-second twitch had thrust a less vital piece of himself into the path of the bullet. It cut a nasty gash across his arm, slicing the skin before piercing the wall. As he examined the mess below his T-shirt sleeve, his legs gave out and he slumped to the floor.
While keeping Zack pinned to the elevator, Rebel turned to look at Theo. Something had gone wrong. He’d foreseen the bullet’s entire journey before pulling the trigger. In his thoughts, he watched it go right through Theo’s heart.
Perplexed, Rebel re-aimed his weapon at Theo. Once again he took a glimpse into the immediate future, checking to see if his shot would connect.
The vision he received, though accurate, was not good news at all.
“No!”
He had just enough time to face Zack, right as the cartoonist rediscovered his weirdness.
Suddenly Rebel’s gun flared with cool white light. A thousand needles of pain covered every corner of his hand. Bellowing, he dropped his gun and hostage.
Zack stumbled backward, startled by his results. He’d focused his thoughts on rusting Rebel’s weapon. Now the revolver lay on the ground, nine weeks older but still very functional. Rebel’s hand, however, had become a gruesome horror. The skin was white and bloodless, with scaly splotches of rot. His fingernails had turned a gangrenous black.
He lashed out with his good arm, striking Zack in the jaw and knocking him down to the carpet. Rebel stooped to reclaim his gun from the floor, testing its weight and feel in his left hand.
“Son of a bitch.” He groaned as a new wave of pain overtook him. “I swear to God, if this kills me—”
Rebel’s eyes suddenly rolled back in his head. He shuddered violently in place before crumpling to the floor.
Eight feet behind him, Amanda kept an anxious vigil from the stairway landing. Zack dazedly blinked at the peculiar little device she continued to aim at Rebel.
“What . . . what is that?”
She looked down at the electron chaser in her quivering hands.
“I don’t know.”
—
She’d gone downstairs in search of Hannah and found Czerny instead.
The physicist lay on the stairwell, holding his bunched shirt to his stomach. His skin was pale, his breathing labored. He was lucid enough to tell Amanda which medical supplies could be found in which cabinets.
“Be careful,” he wheezed. “There are still intruders.”
The only stranger Amanda encountered in her trip to the medical lab was the man in the Teddy Roosevelt mask. He lay unmoving at the foot of the reception desk, a terrifying sight with his eerie rubber grin. Worse, Amanda could sense a familiar energy coursing inside him. He had the same beast as her. The tempis. From Czerny’s grievous wound, it was clear how he enjoyed using it.
The moment she returned to Czerny’s side, Mia’s frightened voice filled every speaker in the building, warning Zack of an impending ambush.
Amanda covered her mouth. “Oh my God. Zack . . .”
“Where is he?” Czerny asked.
“I don’t know. I went back to my room to get dressed. By the time I came out, he was gone.”
They heard the sounds of struggle upstairs, followed by two loud gunshots.
Czerny thought of Beatrice, then fumbled for the chaser with a bloody hand. He thrust the weapon in Amanda’s grip.
“Go help them,” he implored her. “Please.”
She did.
Amanda had no idea how long she stood in the hallway, aiming the chaser at the twitching man on the floor. Once her gaze fell to Theo, her nurse’s mind took over.
He watched her anxiously as she examined his wound. “How bad is it?”
“You need stitches.” She turned around. “Zack . . .”
The cartoonist climbed back to his feet, fixing his shell-shocked gaze on Rebel’s rotted hand.
“Zack!”
He snapped out of his trance. Amanda motioned to the stairwell. “Dr. Czerny’s badly hurt. We need to get him to a hospital. Can you get Theo downstairs?”
He wiped the blood from his mouth. “Yeah. Go help Czerny.”
Amanda hurried back downstairs. Zack lifted Theo to his feet. They both kept a wary eye on Rebel.
“Jesus,” Theo uttered. “What did we ever do to that guy?”
Zack wasn’t sure he followed the man’s vague account of ominous holes and preventable futures. All he knew, from looking at that hand, was that Rebel sure as hell had a reason to hate him now.
—
By the time Zack and Theo rejoined Amanda on the landing, the orphans had entered the lobby from the east hall. With a high cry of relief, Mia ran up the steps and wrapped her arms around Zack.
“Oh my God! I thought you were dead!”
Zack returned the hug, reeling with guilt. When he’d first decided to leave the others, he didn’t think his absence would hurt them any more than the loss of a funny co-worker. In the wake of Mia’s hug, her warm correction, he never felt so cruel.
“It’s okay. I’m all right.”
Amanda passed Zack a roll of sterile gauze and some alcohol wipes.
“Take Theo down to the couches. Clean his wound and wrap it as best you can. Mia, keep his arm raised above heart level. That’ll slow down the bleeding.” She looked down the steps. “David, where did you go?”
“Right below you.”
Zack reached the ground floor and saw David kneeling at the side of the Roosevelt Man. The boy had two fingers pressed against the intruder’s neck.
“Are you insane? Get away from him!”
David stood up. “I was just checking his pulse. It’s weak but he’s alive.”
“Yeah, well, be careful. He still could get up.”
Theo had the same concern about the large man upstairs. He’d snatched away Rebel’s revolver, fiercely determined to keep it away from its owner.
Amanda peered over the railing. “David, go to the medical lab and find a stretcher. We need something to move Dr. Czerny.”
David nodded, then left the way he came. Mia stared at Czerny’s wound with nauseous dread.
“Will he be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Czerny weakly assured her. “Just have to get to a reviver.”
“Can’t Zack heal you now?”
“No,” said Amanda and Zack, in unison.
“No offense to him,” said Czerny, “but his healing experience is currently limited to a four-ounce mouse. Should he fail to capture all of me within his temporic field, the results would be far worse than my current predicament.”
Zack turned his white gaze to Czerny. “Wait. What do you mean?”
The physicist grimaced as Amanda placed a bandage on his wound.
“To manipulate the flow of time on a living creature is to manipulate the flow of blood. If you reverse just part of a person, it creates chaos in the vascular system, which can lead to all things from blood clots to a fatal embolism. That’s why revivers are full-body devices, and why shifters only work in enclosed spaces.”
Zack felt a high scream in his throat. For all he knew, he’d just sent dozens of air bubbles on a murderous path to Rebel’s heart. He may have just killed a man.
Throughout all the blood and chatter, Amanda kept glancing at the frozen corpse of Eric Salgado. She fought back tears.
“Can someone please go find my sister?”
“I’m here.”
Hannah hobbled through the west archway, covered in scrapes and grass stains. She looked ten years older now, and utterly miserable.
Amanda moaned in relief. “Oh thank God! What happened?”
“Some asshole with a sword tried to kill me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right. I got lucky.”
“Where’s the sword guy now?” Theo asked Hannah.
“Out on the front lawn. I hit him with a . . . Jesus, Theo! What happened to you?”
“Got stupid. Got shot.”
Mia glanced at the unconscious man on the floor. “I think that’s all of them. I only saw four people on the monitors.”
“I don’t care,” Zack said. “We’re getting out of here. All of us.”
“And going where?” Hannah asked.
Amanda finished placing her bandage on Czerny. “We have to get to the hospital as fast as we can.”
Czerny debated the notion of mentioning Beatrice, who was still hiding in his office. He figured her best chance for survival was to stay here, away from the targets.
“How exactly are we getting there?” Theo asked.
“Driving,” said David. He emerged from the north wing, an aerostretcher in one hand and a jingling key ring in the other. “I grabbed these from the security room. I assume one of them starts the Salgados’ van.”
Zack grabbed the keys from him. “Good thinking.”
“Are you okay driving? I’m not sure how differently the vehicles operate here.”
“I’ll figure it out. Let’s just go.”
Mia looked through the windows at their escape vehicle. She recalled the warning she’d received ten hours ago about Amanda. If she gets out of the van, they will shoot her. They will shoot her and she will die.
—
A large round portal bloomed on the wall near Rebel. A tall figure emerged from the whiteness. She was a young woman of Indian descent, as slender and pretty as Amanda. Her hair hung in a braid that extended all the way down the back of her black nylon bodysuit.
Her dark eyes popped at the sight of Rebel. “Oh no! Richard!”
Ilavarasi Sunder was the only one who called him by his real name. As his match, his mate, it was her prerogative. He simply called her Ivy. They all did.
A second figure stepped through the gateway. Gemma Sunder was a slip of a girl, barely five feet tall. She wore a sleeveless silk blouse over a black leather miniskirt, plus a garish amount of makeup. Her appearance was pure defensive strategy, a way to minimize the fact that she was technically ten years old.
Upon seeing Rebel’s unconscious frame, Gemma crossed her arms and scowled. “I warned him. I told him the breachers were fast learners.”
Ivy glared at her niece. “I don’t have time for your attitude. Just give me the picture.”
“Working on it.”
Once the MacDougals stepped through the portal, Ivy closed it shut. The redheaded brothers were short and stocky, and utterly indistinguishable from each other except for the color of their tracksuits.
The twins helped Ivy roll Rebel onto his back. She screamed when she saw his withered hand.
“Oh God, he’s been rifted!”
“He’ll be okay,” Gemma said. “He won’t—”
The girl’s head suddenly jerked back as if she just woke up from a nap. She looked to the stairwell in hot alarm.
“They’re getting into a van. Right now. They’re leaving and they’re not coming back.”
“Damn it!” Ivy shot to her feet, then pushed the MacDougals to the stairs. “Go!”
The brother in green pointed to his concerned face, then the ceiling.
“Forget the cameras!” Ivy yelled. “Just go! Stop them! Kill as many as you can!”
—
The weather inside Mia’s head was wet and foggy. She could barely hold a thought as she watched her friends in action. While Zack hurried around to the driver’s side of the van, David helped Amanda load Czerny’s stretcher into the back. Hannah stayed to the side with Theo, propping up his wounded arm as he kept a nervous eye on the lobby. Everyone seemed to have a task. Mia could only clutch her journal and ponder Krista Bloom, a woman who didn’t seem particularly crazy or evil. Why did she want them dead? Why did she make it sound so crucial?
She noticed Erin’s boots on the other side of the van and mindlessly moved toward them.
“Mia! No!”
With a burst of speed, Hannah blocked her way. “You don’t want to see that. She’s . . . gone.”
“But that’s Erin.”
“I know. I know it is. But if you see her like that, that’s all you’re going to see whenever you think of her. Please trust me.”
Mia idly reached behind her head, to the fading braids that Erin had tied six hours ago. She bit her lip to keep from crying.
David poked his head out the back doors. “Ladies, we need to go.”
“I need someone up front with me,” Zack yelled.
Hannah moved to the passenger door and climbed inside. She saw Zack fumble the key ring with shaking hands. For him, there was no avoiding the sight of Erin Salgado. He had to step over her bisected corpse to enter the van.
The actress put a calming hand on his arm. He looked at her. “You saw her.”
She grimly nodded. Zack suppressed the mad screaming fit that had been eluding him since day one.
“Goddamn it. Goddamn it.”
David tapped on the metal mesh that separated the front seats from the back. “Dr. Czerny says the hospital’s not far. Make a left at the front gate, then keep going for two miles.”
“Okay.”
Hannah spotted rapid movement through the lobby windows. “Oh no . . .”
David pressed against the grate. “Two more are coming this way, Zack! We need to go!”
“I’m trying!”
The Salgado family had three vans, four cars, and two motorcycles between them. All keys were present, and none seemed to fit the ignition.
The front doors of the building swung open. A pair of stout, red-haired twins stepped outside. They fixed their stoic gazes on the Silvers.
Hannah cocked her head at them. “Why are they just standing there?”
The MacDougals each raised their outer arm, aiming an open palm at the van.
Theo went pale. “Shit. I don’t like this . . .”
Zack jabbed another key at the ignition. “What? What are they doing?”
A loud metallic squeal filled the van. Suddenly the passenger-side windows turned cloudy and cracked.
Hannah looked up at the creaking roof. “Are they crushing us?”
Amanda rooted through the first aid kit, struggling to stay focused on her task. Czerny’s skin had turned cool and clammy. He’d lost too much blood. He was slipping into shock.
Mia kept her tense gaze on her. “Amanda, you have to promise me you won’t leave this van.”
“What?”
“I got a note—”
“David, keep Theo’s arm raised!” Amanda lifted Czerny’s legs to push circulation. She glared at Zack through the grate. “Would you start the damn van already?”
“I’m looking for the right key!”
“Amanda, you have to promise me you won’t leave this van until I tell you it’s safe!”
“Okay, Mia! I won’t! I promise!”
Hannah screamed as a door hinge came loose. Patches of rust grew along the edge of the windows.
“They’re not crushing the van,” David said. “They’re aging it.”
Cursing, Zack isolated the failed keys, then held the ring out to Hannah. “Take over.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m undoing! Just go!”
Hannah grabbed the ring and bent uncomfortably toward the ignition. Her door let out another rusty groan. She tried not to think what would happen if the twins got an open line of attack on her.
Zack concentrated on the windshield, reversing away the clouds and cracks. He could see the blue-suited brother in front of the van, raising a palm at the hood.
“Shit. He’s going for the engine.”
David pressed against the metal mesh. “Open the gate!”
“What?”
“I can take him, but you need to open the gate!”
Zack slid the grating. David squeezed his upper body through the opening and aimed a hand at the attacking twin. Suddenly the man’s head became enveloped in seven-year-old construction noise, localized and amplified for maximum effect. The twin covered his ears, wincing in agony.
“Good, David. Good!”
“Just get us out of here!”
“I’m trying!” Hannah screamed.
Fortunately, her sixth key was the right one. The electric motor came to life with a loud whirr.
“I got it! I got it! Go!”
Zack reflexively reached for the space where a gearshift would be. There was nothing there but a cup holder. He scanned the wheel and dashboard. “Where the hell . . . ?”
“What’s the problem?”
“The gearshift. I can’t find it.”
Hannah searched with him. “Did you check the other side?”
“I’m looking everywhere. I can’t see it.”
The second hinge rusted away. Hannah’s door fell to the asphalt with a loud crash. The green-suited twin stood fifteen feet away. He aimed his hand at the actress.
“Oh God!”
She shifted into high speed and clumsily hurled a walkie-talkie. It shattered at the man’s feet, cutting his ankle with a bouncing piece of shrapnel. He lost his concentration.
The window behind Theo crumbled with age. “Zack, why aren’t we going?!”
“The controls are all weird! I can’t find the gearshift!”
Mia snapped to attention and opened her journal. She’d been so busy worrying about Amanda that she forgot the other notes she received.
“The steering column is the gearshift!” she yelled. “Press the white triggers on the wheel to—”
The rear doors suddenly flew open. Mia screamed as a bloody glove grabbed her arm.
The Motorcycle Man was out of patience. His cracked helmet had been removed, revealing his gaunt, leathery face. By official records, he was twenty-nine years old. A lifetime of shifting had done a number on his body, not to mention his mind. The six people in the van all looked like Hannah to him. He was fairly sure he was hallucinating again, but what did it matter? Rebel said they all had to die. If he killed them one by one, he’d eventually get to the bitch who broke his ribs and took his sword.
The moment he seized Mia, Amanda’s mind went white.
“NO!”
A geyser of tempic force erupted from her palm. It split evenly around Mia, converging on the Motorcycle Man in the form of a twenty-inch hand.
The tempis shoved him with enough force to knock one of the rear doors off its hinges. It crashed to the driveway. The Motorcycle Man crashed harder.
Amanda stammered in shock as she eyed her broken victim. She’d acted without a single thought and yet somehow the tempis knew who to save and who to hurt.
Zack pressed the white triggers on the steering wheel and pushed the column forward. He floored the pedal. The Salgado van peeled away, its one rear door swinging loosely on its hinge.
Nobody spoke a word as Zack navigated the long and winding path to the exit. Hannah looked out her empty door at the moving trees. Mia gazed at the shrinking building behind her. David peered ahead to the front gate. Amanda stared down at her bloody, trembling hands.
Only Theo glanced around at the others in the van, his fellow survivors. He’d lost his memories of the apocalypse they’d endured. Now he had a strong idea of what he’d missed.
“Jesus,” he said, in a croaking rasp. “Jesus Christ.”
—
Gemma Sunder screamed.
She’d been in the middle of a calm sentence, a theory as to how the breachers might have been alerted to their attack, when her head snapped back and her face contorted with sudden terror.
“We have to get out of here! We have to go right now!”
Ivy took a step back. Her niece didn’t just see the future. She lived it one minute at a time. Her nonlinear lifestyle made her a strange and difficult child, but she was rarely one to panic.
“What are you talking about, Gemma? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t have time to explain! Just make a door and get us out!”
With a circular wave, Ivy drew a new portal in the wall. Rebel forced himself up to a standing position. His muscles still throbbed from the chaser attack. His hand screamed with stabbing agony.
“Not leaving without the others . . .” he groaned.
“There’s nothing we can do for them!” Gemma yelled.
Ivy shook her head. “No. I have to get Krista.”
“Goddamn it! Why don’t you two ever listen to me?! If we don’t get out of here in the next twenty seconds, we’re dead!”
“Gemma, what’s coming?”
“Something bad,” the girl replied. “Something really bad.”
—
Hidden among the bishop pines at the front of the property, Slim Tim Witten readied his weapon. At sixty-three, he was a clan elder, one of the last of the third generation. If his slight build and advanced age hadn’t been enough of a perceived liability, he had a talent that didn’t lend itself well to combat. But he’d begged to come along on this crucial mission, and Rebel ultimately gave in. Ivy had stashed him among the trees by the main gate. His task was to shoot any stragglers who tried to escape.
With quick concentration, he refreshed the earthly hues of his skin and beard—his lumiflage, as he called it. He blended among the foliage like a chameleon.
Now he could spot the van’s approach in the curving driveway. He saw two people behind the windshield, with hints of more in the back. Fourping hell, Rebel. Did you get any at all?
Once the vehicle reached the straight and final homestretch, Tim aimed his rifle at the wavy-haired man up front. The augurs said he was some kind of artist, and that he could be dangerously clever if given half the chance. Whatever he was, he was the driver, and so he was first. Tim lined Zack in his sights and fired.
The bullet traveled fourteen inches before disappearing into a small white portal. Tim cocked his head, flummoxed, until a cold hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. In the span of a heartbeat, he advanced in age—from gray to white to ancient to desiccated. At last Slim Tim Witten crumbled into dust, fertilizer for the shrubbery.
Standing in his place, Azral Pelletier watched his young Silvers approach. He had just arrived. He was not happy.