I had heard enough.
“Why?” I asked, staring straight at Olivia.
“Why what?” she asked in her most innocent voice.
“Why should we believe anything you say? You’ve been playing us. Every single thing you’ve said about yourself for the last five months has been a lie. Give us one good reason why we should trust you now.”
Olivia took a moment to collect her thoughts, then stood up slowly and faced me.
“Because you want your life back, or at least you want to live the rest of your life as close to normal as you can. If that’s what you want, Tucker, I’m your only hope. The Sounders are your only hope. Is there anything you’ve seen since stepping through the Bridge that makes you think I’m lying now? Is there anything you’ve seen since it hit the fan on Pemberwick Island that makes you think I’m not telling the truth about all this? Tell you what, I can show you something that’ll freak you out even more than the story I just told you.”
“Oh please don’t,” Kent said.
Olivia reached down to the control panel and let her fingers hover over the keyboard.
“I can show you history. My history. When that bomb opened the Bridge in 1952 it started the clock on an entirely new existence. But the old existence didn’t go away. It’s still there. You’re in it right now. Like I said, you can’t change events that already happened.”
She waved her fingers over the controls, teasing us.
“You want to see the history of my time, Tucker? This time? I can show you what became of you as an adult. What do you think of that? Do you want to know the day you died? What about you, Tori? Your dad lived to a ripe old age. You know what else? Marty Wiggins went on to play for USC. Your father didn’t die from an overdose of the Ruby, Kent. And Quinn wasn’t killed out on that boat. I looked it all up. That’s my history . . . the history that led to the world you’re in right now. When we go back through the Bridge, we’re not just going back in time, we’re going back to a different existence. A new existence that was created when that bomb went off. The future of that reality hasn’t been written yet.”
“I think I like our old existence better,” Kent said.
“Really?” Olivia shot back. “You like this? You like how the world turned out?”
“No, but I like that the Retros didn’t wipe out billions of people. And oh yeah, my father.”
“There’s the trade-off,” Olivia said. She walked toward the large window and stared out at the filthy desert city. “Which is the bigger crime? Wiping out most of humanity in a single invasion, or slowly destroying an entire planet for multiple generations to come?”
“It sounds like you’re agreeing with the invasion,” I said.
Olivia spun away from the window to face us. Her eyes were wild and her breathing was heavy. She was way more upset than I had realized.
“Nobody is innocent here,” she said. “But we have to live with what we do and I can’t live with being an executioner. That’s why I’m a Sounder and that’s why I want to stop the invasion. But don’t think for a second that going back to your old life would make everything all better because it wouldn’t.”
Through the window behind her, a large dark shape floated down from above and hovered outside.
“What the . . . ?” Kent said.
“Get down!” I screamed.
Olivia’s eyes went wide and she spun around to face the black attack drone that loomed outside.
I reacted without thinking, jumped at her, and tackled her to the floor. An instant later the window exploded from the impact of the energy cannon that had been fired at us.
The Retros had tracked us down.
Bits of glass and recycled garbage rained down on us as the plane continued to fire, pulverizing the outside wall and the contents of the small apartment.
“Crawl back to the door!” Tori screamed over the sounds of destruction.
We were all flat on our bellies. Safe, but for how long? Once the outside wall was destroyed there would be no more protection.
Olivia went first, crawling for the front door of the apartment. The rest of us followed, pushing our way through the growing rubble as the black marauder pounded away unmercifully. Kent shot past her and got to the door first. He bravely reached up and opened the door so we could all scramble into the corridor.
“The elevator,” Tori yelled and started running for it.
“No!” Olivia shouted. “They’ll take control of that. The stairs.”
She led us in the opposite direction, sprinting for the stairwell on the far end of the corridor. As she ran, Olivia held her communicator up to her ear.
“They tracked us to my quarters,” she screamed over the sounds of her apartment being blasted apart. “We need to come in. Now!”
She pushed open the fire door that led to the stairs and ran down faster than was safe.
“Four of us,” Olivia shouted into the device without breaking stride. “Give me a location.”
“Location for what?” Kent asked, breathless.
“We’ll get picked up and taken somewhere safe,” Olivia called back to him.
“Safe like this place?”
Olivia didn’t have a comeback to that.
“Understood,” she said into the device. “Five minutes.” She jammed the communicator into her pocket and called back to us, “We’ll get picked up five blocks from here.”
“Or they’ll pick up our pieces downstairs,” Kent said. “What the hell is going on?”
“They must have identified me from the roof of the Academy,” Olivia said. “Like I said, they don’t appreciate traitors.”
We hit the ground floor and blasted out of a back door to find ourselves in a narrow alley between buildings. All four of us instantly looked to the sky for fear of seeing the black plane hovering above.
“Gee, just like old times,” Kent said.
“Does the Air Force know about the Sounders?” I asked.
“They know there’s an underground but I don’t know how much they actually know about us, or who any of us are.”
She took off running down the alley and we followed closely. When we reached the corner we all cautiously peered out to see two Retro attack planes hovering high above the building, pulverizing the spot that used to be Olivia’s apartment.
“I guess they know about you,” Tori said.
Olivia shrugged and said, “Yeah, guess I’ve been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force.”
She then led us on a race through the narrow streets of the filthy city. Olivia seemed to know exactly where she was going, dodging down multiple narrow alleyways while keeping off the wider streets. We passed hundreds of people who were either dressed in camouflage fatigues or the dark-pants-colorful-shirt uniforms. None of what we were seeing seemed real, least of all Olivia, who led us with such confidence.
She had played the role of the spoiled rich girl well. The only hints she had given up that there was more to her were the few times she did something totally uncharacteristic, like when she cared for Tori’s wound after being shot by the SYLO sniper or when she saved Kent from being crushed in the Las Vegas casino. I saw her perform heroically those few times but thought it was a fluke. I had no idea just how much she was hiding.
“Walk,” she commanded. “There’s less chance of us being spotted.”
Gratefully, we slowed to a walk. I was totally winded. It was torture sprinting through a jammed, polluted city in the burning desert.
“This city only exists because of the Bridge?” I asked.
“It’s the training and staging area for the invasion and colonization,” she answered. “Every last person here is preparing to move into the past. They all have specific jobs and have already been assigned a new home.”
“What’s your assignment?” Tori asked. “Pemberwick Island?”
“Hardly,” she said with an eye roll, flashing a hint of the Olivia we used to know. “Because of my advance work I was given my choice of where to settle.”
“And where’s that?” Kent asked.
“Paris. I always wanted to see the City of Lights.”
“You’ve never been there in your time?” Tori asked.
“It doesn’t exist in this time. Paris is a polluted salt marsh.”
There was no escaping the reality of what the world had become. It almost made me feel sorry for the people of 2324. Almost. They may have been backed into a desperate corner by the ignorance of those who lived before them, but they were still a cold-blooded society who believed mass murder was the solution. At least most of them did.
Then there were the Sounders—proof that some people still had a conscience. Whatever their plan was for derailing the invasion, it was looking more like the best (and only) hope for salvaging whatever remained of the world we knew. Our world.
As we moved through those dusty desert streets I knew in my heart that I would do whatever it was they asked of me. I was going to have to become as cold-blooded as the people we were trying to defeat. I would become as ruthless as Feit. As callous as Bova. I would do whatever it took and I welcomed the chance. I owed it to my friends, and to my family. My mother was back in that Retro camp. As far as I knew, my father was still on Pemberwick Island. I had to fight for them. For us.
Olivia threw up her hand and we stopped at the edge of an intersection that was crowded with people. I listened for the telltale musical sound of the attack planes, but only heard the white noise of a few hundred people shuffling on their way to wherever.
“There it is,” she said and took off quickly, leading us through the intersection until we came upon a black military-looking vehicle.
“Get in,” she commanded and went for the shotgun seat.
Kent grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Tell us where we’re going,” he said.
“To a safe house,” she said.
“I’m not going,” Kent said adamantly. “Being with you guys is too risky.”
“Seriously?” Olivia shot back. “Taking you in is a far bigger risk for us. Feit wants your heads.”
“So then why protect us?” Tori asked.
“Because the invasion is about to happen. People are going to start moving through the Bridge to repopulate the past. Before that happens they plan on wiping out millions more from your time. Either we stop them now, right now, or blood will start flowing again. We have a plan but we need you three to pull it off. I’m trusting you. Can you trust me?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Kent said.
He wanted to grab some control over the situation, but he was floundering.
Tori shot past him and got in the car.
“Wait, no,” Kent whined.
We were starting to draw the attention of people in the street.
“Get in, Kent,” I commanded. “Now.”
Kent snapped a surprised look at me. He’d never heard me talk to him like that before because I hadn’t. But this was no time to worry about hurt feelings. The Retros were coming after us. They were coming after the Sounders. People were going to die. It was now or never.
“C’mon, Kent,” Tori said, coaxing him sternly. “We don’t have a lot of choice here.”
Kent was mad and still hurting over Olivia’s deceitfulness. I wanted to feel sorry for him but I couldn’t. Not just then.
“Please, Kent,” Olivia said gently, sounding like her old self.
Kent may not have trusted Olivia. But he still cared about her. With a huff, he climbed into the backseat.
I jumped in right after.
At the wheel of the vehicle was a bald guy with dead eyes wearing Air Force fatigues. Under any other circumstances I’d be afraid of that guy, but I was glad he was in charge of getting us out of there and away from a predator drone. You want that job to go to a steely eyed professional.
“Name?” Olivia asked.
“Statham,” he replied with no emotion.
“Situation?”
“Bad boys are circling. I’m to get you and three packages safely to Mayberry. Priority One.”
“Good. Go.”
Statham hit the accelerator, the music grew, and the vehicle launched forward.
“Packages?” Tori said skeptically. “Mayberry? Isn’t that a little cloak and dagger?’
“It’s a lot cloak and dagger,” Olivia said. “It’s what’s kept us alive.”
Statham knew how to drive and it had nothing to do with being safe and obeying traffic laws. We screamed down the narrow street, forcing people to jump out of our way.
Olivia pulled back a panel in the ceiling to reveal a sunroof. She wasn’t trying to get light. She was looking for the drones.
“How far?” I asked.
“The edge of the city,” Olivia answered. “In the industrial sector. Ten minutes away.”
I realized she must have been talking about the area of the city I saw from the rooftop that was belching colorful smoke from tall stacks.
Statham took a couple of quick turns, I assume to make it more difficult for us to be followed. I don’t know how he knew where he was going since every building looked exactly the same.
“We’ve lost them,” Olivia finally said.
“How did they find you in the first place?” I asked. “Just because they saw you on the roof?”
“That must be how,” Olivia said. “I’ve never been under suspicion before.”
We drove past the last of the tall buildings to find ourselves in a section of town that was cluttered with low industrial-looking structures, enormous tanks, and old-fashioned soot-belching smokestacks. I watched as they poured colorful, deadly clouds into the sky that fell back to earth as burning rain.
“We’re going just beyond the sluice,” Olivia explained.
“Sluice?” Tori said.
“It’s a huge gutter for industrial waste. Every last one of the factories dumps its runoff into it. It’s disgusting. I don’t even know where it goes. Somewhere out in the desert. When we drive over it, don’t breathe.”
“Over?” Kent said, nervously.
We were headed directly toward a two-lane bridge that spanned the “sluice.” There were similar bridges spaced fifty yards apart, all crossing the wide river of filth. It looked to be a few hundred yards to the far side. We hit the bridge, which ramped up until we were speeding high over the foul-smelling sludge. Looking over the edge we saw it was a long way down to the dreck, which was just as well. It smelled bad enough from where we were. If we were any closer it would have been impossible to breathe.
“Once we’re over, Mayberry is only another minute—”
“Communicator,” Statham said, holding out his hand to Olivia.
“What?” Olivia asked, thrown.
“Give me your communicator.”
Olivia wasn’t sure of how to react. Reluctantly, she handed it to the driver.
He took the black device . . . and smashed it against the dashboard, destroying it.
“Are you crazy?” Olivia screamed.
“That’s how they’re tracking you,” Statham said, and pointed up through the sunroof.
We all looked up to see a black Air Force drone hovering above us.
“We’re trapped on this bridge,” Kent said.
The drone started firing, blasting out chunks of the roadbed around us.
Statham swerved, doing his best to become a difficult target. It seemed futile, considering it was only a two-lane bridge.
“Faster!” Olivia screamed.
No sooner did she get the word out than the vehicle was rocked by a shot from the craft that hit the bridge directly in front of us. It was too close for Statham to avoid. He spun the wheel and we slipped into a dangerous skid, hitting the damaged section. The vehicle flipped, doing a complete rollover before skidding closer to the edge.
The squeal of metal scraping across cement was deafening. Or maybe it was the sound of Kent screaming. We skidded nearer to the edge until we finally came to rest back upright, but with our front wheels dangling over the edge of the bridge.
It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to be scared.
“Get out!” Olivia screamed.
She didn’t wait to find out if anybody was hurt or knocked out or even dazed. She knew what was at stake. We were totally exposed with an attack plane on the prowl . . . and we were inside a car powered by a nuclear engine that had just been tumbled. The sound of the engine powering up was unmistakable. Those engines were fragile. We saw what happened in Portland when a drone was rammed by a car. You didn’t want to be anywhere near one if it exploded, and this engine sounded as though it was headed in that direction.
Luckily, Tori and Kent were conscious and still with it. We all yanked off our seatbelts and dove out of the car. Without our weight, the vehicle shuddered and slid further over the edge of the bridge. It was either going to explode, or fall into the polluted abyss. Or both. We all sprinted back to the ramp that led onto the bridge.
All of us but Statham.
“Wait, the driver,” Kent screamed and slowed down.
Statham was still in the doomed vehicle.
We stopped to look back to see that the man was strapped in the front seat, his head tilted to the side, unconscious . . . as the vehicle slipped closer to the edge.
Far in the distance, hovering above the bridge was the Retro drone. It remained there as if watching and waiting to see what would happen with the vehicle.
“We can’t leave him there,” Tori yelled with desperation.
“Yes we can,” I shouted. “He may be dead already. C’mon.”
I tried to pull Tori away, but she wouldn’t go.
I was out of my mind. In those few seconds all I could think about was the Sounders and the one chance we would have to save our world. Millions of people had died. Millions more would follow. I didn’t want to leave Statham there either, but he was just one man. We couldn’t jeopardize the entire future for the fate of one person.
“We have to get out of here!” I screamed.
I tried to pull Tori away but she wouldn’t budge.
“We can’t leave him,” she argued.
Kent didn’t argue with me.
He sprinted back to the vehicle.
“Whoa no!” I shouted.
Kent had his head down and his legs pumping. He went right to the driver’s door and tried to yank it open. The damage from the rollover must have jammed the lock. Kent pulled like a mad man but it wouldn’t budge.
Behind him, the attack plane started to make its move. It dipped down low and picked up speed, headed our way.
“Kent, get out of there!” I yelled.
Kent hammered on the glass with his fists but it wouldn’t break. He threw his shoulder into it but only bounced back.
Tori pulled away from me and started back toward him but I grabbed her and stopped her.
“They’ll be killed,” she screamed.
“And so will you.” I shouted, “Kent! It’s coming!”
The attack plane was picking up speed.
“Kent, run!” Olivia yelled.
That got through to him. Kent glanced to the sky, saw the plane, and stumbled away from the vehicle. He was breathing hard and crying and could barely keep his balance but he ran back our way.
“Get down!” Olivia shouted.
Kent half fell/half dropped to the ground.
A second later the drone fired. The invisible pulses of energy shot toward the doomed car. When they hit they knocked it onto its side and triggered a fiery explosion that created a wave of intense heat that hit us like a fast-moving truck. The force instantly knocked us all to the ground.
The burning vehicle teetered on the edge of the bridge for an agonizing second, then with the shriek of tearing metal it dropped over the side, fell quickly, and then crashed into the chemical river far below. The instant it hit it ignited the sludge, creating an inferno beneath us.
The drone continued on, gained altitude, and streaked off.
“Why is it leaving?” I asked nobody. “Does it think we’re dead?”
Olivia got to her feet and ran for Kent.
“I hope to God he’s okay,” I said to Tori.
Tori was staring at me with such cold eyes it made me gasp to catch my breath.
“You all right?” I asked.
I stood, gingerly, and held out my hand to help her up.
Tori didn’t take it. She stood up on her own and staggered toward Olivia and Kent.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“You didn’t want to help him,” she said coldly.
I pulled myself to my feet and followed.
“He was as good as dead already,” I argued.
“And what’s one more death, right?” she said angrily.
She was wrong. Kent was wrong. Statham’s death was tragic, but it was nothing compared to the larger challenge. We were trying to save millions of people. It would have been wrong to risk our lives—and our entire future—to save one individual. I truly believed that.
When we reached the others, Olivia was on her knees holding Kent’s head. I was relieved to see Kent’s eyes open and focused on her.
“He was still alive,” he cried, fighting back tears. “He looked at me but he couldn’t move. I tried to open the door but—”
“I know,” Olivia said, soothingly. “There was nothing you could do.”
“I’m proud of you, Kent,” Tori said.
“I’m proud of you all,” came a voice from behind us. “Together again. This is so absolutely awesome.”
I suddenly knew why the drone had flown off. It didn’t think we were dead. It left because it was no longer needed.
Standing on the bridge, flanked by two armed Retro soldiers, was Mr. Feit.