After hearing Nile’s voice, my first thought was to turn and run back up to the roof. There had to be another entrance to the building that we could use to ambush him. The clanking of footsteps coming down the stairs behind us vanquished that thought from my mind. Someone else must have survived the grenade, and it wasn’t one of our own.
“Yes, Evin and Rain, why don’t you join the party?” The LEO’s taunting tone made me want to punch him in the face.
I could do better than that, I thought. I turned around, pointing my gun at the landing above us, waiting for him to round the corner.
“I know you two are armed,” shouted Nile from below. “Go ahead and bring your guns with you. I must let you know, however, that I have a gun pointed at Ori’s temple. My guards have their guns on Lech and Dal. If you don’t harm us, we won’t harm them.”
Ori’s voice echoed up the stairs, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. Lech’s and Dal’s voices chimed into the conversation, too. Nile mumbled something back.
“You heard the Commander,” the LEO said as he came into view.
I gasped. His cheek looked like someone had taken a vegetable peeler to it. His black uniform had melted into his charred arms and legs. He looked half-alive. How could he possibly be standing there pointing a gun at us? My finger hovered over the trigger, but I couldn’t pull. A gunshot might just cause Nile to kill my friends. This LEO, though, looked like a gunshot was exactly what he needed to put him out of his misery.
“Man,” Evin said. “How are you walking?”
“I look worse than I feel,” the LEO said and laughed a crazed laugh that erupted into a wheezy, phlegmy cough. He spit a bloody wad of sputum onto the landing, making my stomach turn. He descended a couple of steps toward us.
“Who’s up there with you?” Nile yelled, the familiar irritation rising in his voice.
“Agent 474 here with two rebels, sir,” the LEO shouted down to Nile.
“Aw, Christ,” Nile muttered. He didn’t say it loud, but he said it clearly. Why would Nile be annoyed by a LEO doing his duty?
“I’m disarming the rebels and bringing them down,” the LEO shouted. He grinned at us with bloody teeth.
There was a moment of silence before Nile resumed the conversation. “Agent 474, please return to the roof and remain on guard at the roof access door. Do not let anyone in or out.”
First, Nile told us to keep our guns. Next, he ordered this grotesque LEO to go away. Had he lost his mind? None of this made sense. My mind flashed back to when he let Evin and me escape from Live the Memory while LEOs pounded on the doors to get to us. Then my mind flashed to when he ordered me to shoot the LEO in the back of the van outside Segura’s camp. It seemed that Nile had a complicated relationship with LEOs, to say the least.
The LEO looked as confused as I felt. “But I have them. I can bring…”
“That’s an order, Agent 474.”
The LEO simply glared at us. He coughed and spit again. A bright red string of saliva dangled from his lip. He lowered his voice to a raspy whisper. “Unless you want me to spit one of those into your face, turn around and walk.”
Shocked by his macabre appearance and his blatant defiance of authority, I did what I was told, and Evin followed suit.
“He wants them to keep their guns, so I’ll let them keep their guns,” the LEO muttered to himself as we marched ahead of him down the last two flights of stairs. A low chuckle followed through his wheezing breaths. “Things could get interesting with everyone armed. Could be fun.”
Evin stole a quick glance behind him at the LEO. “Face front,” the LEO hissed and jabbed our backs with his rifle barrel. “Don’t try anything or I’ll take you out before you can turn around.”
When we reached the bottom, a LEO held the stairwell door open for us to enter the building. Straight ahead, Nile stood with a gun pointed at Ori’s head like he said. In true Ori fashion, she looked unperturbed. One other guard pointed her gun at Lech and Dal, who seemed surprisingly relaxed considering our predicament.
As soon as the zombie LEO entered the space, everyone reacted with a collective gasp. Nile was the only one to speak. “Oh, damn! Agent 474, you are a fright. Wow. Well, your condition actually makes this a lot easier.” Nile fired his gun three times. Agent 474 went down first, then the LEO that held the door and last, the LEO that guarded Lech and Dal. It was as impressive as it was shocking.
“What the hell?” Evin said. He turned to Ori. “Who is this guy?”
“All in good time, Evin,” Nile said as he peered out the window at the top of the door between the stairwell and the rest of the building.
“And how the hell does he know my name?”
There was so much I wanted to tell Evin. So many stories about Nile that involved Evin as well as those that didn’t. As an extraordinary Mark, there were times when I knew so much more than everyone else, especially about previous timelines. But not now. Ori, Lech, and even Dal seemed to know more about what was going on than I did. None of them batted an eyelash when Nile went on his shooting spree. They weren’t surprised, but they still looked confused.
“I, too, would like to know how he seems to know so much,” Lech said. “Ori, would you care to enlighten us?”
“We don’t have time,” Ori said distractedly. Her pursed lips and rigid stance set off a red flag in my mind. Something was wrong. Nile seemed to be helping us, but Ori didn’t seem to like it.
“I’ve dismantled all of the cameras,” Nile said. “And I’ve convinced the remaining LEOs—the ones inside the building that didn’t die at the hands of your deadly grenade, Evin—that any surviving rebels went down the staircase you all originally used to gain access to the roof. They will be realizing soon enough that you aren’t there. Then, they will come here.”
“We need to make a break for it through the building,” Ori said.
“We’ll head out the front door and race to the trees,” Dal added. He probably didn’t know what was up with Ori and Nile, but he loved his girlfriend and would go along with this. Whatever this was.
“All right, fine,” Lech said with a shrug of his massive shoulders. “We can all pretend that nothing strange is going on. I mean, WaterPure execs always want to sabotage their own.”
“Why are you doing this?” Evin said, glaring at Nile.
“Let’s not worry about the why right now and focus on the getting out of here,” Dal said.
“Yes, let’s,” Nile said. “We have less than a minute before LEOs barrel down on us from above. Let’s move.” He opened the door, stuck his head out for a brief glimpse, and motioned for us to follow. I remembered my plan to go first out of fear of accidentally shooting my group with my horrible aim. I wouldn’t feel so bad about shooting Nile. Lead the way, dude, I thought.
Evin sidled up next to me. “Do you trust this guy?”
“Of course not,’ I whispered. “But Ori does. That counts for something.” I never thought I’d give Ori credit for anything, but I knew she would never compromise her cause. She must know something about Nile that the rest of us didn’t. If we got out of this alive, I would find out what was going on between the two of them.
Nile stopped at a blind corner.
“What I don’t understand,” Lech said, “is why we aren’t going through with the plan. I realize the element of surprise has been lost, but we could still do this.”
No one spoke. We waited for Ori to make the decision between fight or flight. She remained silent and stoic.
“Believe me,” Nile said. “You can’t. Petrov has already been evacuated.”
“You know,” Lech said with a growl, “I’m disliking you more and more. You probably helped Petrov get away, and you’re probably leading us into a trap right now.”
“I’m not, and it’s best that you trust me,” Nile said.
“Why the hell are we following Mr. WaterPure? “Lech said. “Don’t you remember the corpses of our friends up there?” Lech waved his gun at Nile. “There are more of us than there are of him. I say we kill him now.”
“I’m your best chance of getting out of here alive,” Nile said. “Look at your side. And if the blood on your clothes doesn’t alarm you, you might want to check your pulse. Don’t ruin your chances to survive out of spite.”
Lech cringed at the mention of his injury. At some point, he had tied a rope around his waist, but his shirt and now his pants leg were soaked in red. Behind his black beard, his complexion looked pale. He was running on pure adrenaline.
“I think Lech has a point,” I said. “You seem to play whichever side suits you best.”
Lech nodded and patted his gun.
Nile glanced at Ori as if wanting her support. She simply shrugged and … did she actually roll her eyes?
“Doesn’t look like you have many friends here, dude,” Lech said.
“Apparently not,” Nile said. He sounded defeated. Actually, it was more than that. He sounded sad. “There will be two more guards at the end of the hall. Dispose of them and then use them for the retinal scan at the front door. The building is on high alert. All doors are locked down, even from the inside. There, you don’t need me anymore.” He looked at Lech and spread his arms wide in a posture of supplication. It reminded me of the moment I shot him in Live the Memory right before Evin and I escaped. I wondered if he remembered it, too. “Do your worst,” Nile said, staring at Lech.
“No one is going to kill you,” Ori said, putting her hand on Nile’s outstretched arm. He relaxed his stance until his arms rested at his sides. Her touch was so gentle, so familiar. The intimacy of it made me suck in my breath.
Ori gave each of us a commanding look and settled her sights on Lech with a stern glare. “We go on three.”
Three never came. Heavy clanging footsteps alerted us to the LEOs’ descent from the roof in the stairwell behind us. Ori peeked around the corner to our escape route and whipped her head back. She let out an exasperated breath. “There’s at least a dozen guards searching rooms and headed this way.”
“We’re trapped,” Dal said. The metallic echoes grew increasingly louder. We had seconds before the stairwell LEOs found us. If we started firing at them, the other guards doing the room searches would come running. We could put up a good fight, but we didn’t have enough people or firepower to stop them all.
“Is there another way out of here?” Lech said.
“Back the way we came. This way,” Nile said, grabbing Ori’s arm to pull her with him. She followed Nile with the rest of us close behind. We made it past the stairwell door, to a long hallway full of classrooms. We’d be lucky to reach the passage that led to the back door we’d used to enter the building—it was too far away. Like Evin and Dal, I knew this building pretty well. On another timeline, I took management training classes with my brother and our best friend inside these rooms. The fond memory made my throat constrict. Was this how I was going to die? At the hands of an army of LEOs while Dal and Evin would never get the chance to know me and love me the way they used to?
“There they are!” shouted a LEO.
I whirled around to face her and a man standing behind her. The look on her face told me that she realized her mistake. From a crouch, Lech gunned the two LEOs down before they had time to aim their pistols. Pistols? Why didn’t these LEOs have automatics?
I remembered now. I could see the guards of WaterPure in my mind’s eye, strolling the halls in between classes, mocking the students who would make a far better living as engineers and research scientists than they ever would as hired guns. Plus, they had the added embarrassment of their role within the WaterPure hierarchy. Patrolling the inside of a highly secure corporate building was considered a cushy job for a LEO. The perimeter guards and street LEOs needed the big artillery and got more respect for it.
Dal pulled Lech to his feet. We had to keep moving. The other LEOs would be right behind. Ori rushed back to Dal, who supported Lech under his shoulder. As we continued down the hall, she trotted backward, aiming her rifle in the direction of the staircase. No one appeared.
There had to be more guards. Even if there weren’t more coming from the roof, the ones near the front of the building must be on their way. And they were.
“Get down,” Ori shouted and started firing. Dal, Lech, and Evin spun around and dropped to their bellies beside her. In the hollow corridor, the echoes of the gunfire were deafening. A bullet buzzed by my ear. It wasn’t until hands pressed down on my shoulders that I finally dropped to my knees. I knew better than to fire. Chances were I’d hit my friends.
Nile pushed past me to the front line, but his efforts weren’t needed. The LEOs’ pistols were no match for our automatic rifles. The whole shootout was over in less than six seconds, resulting in fifteen guards dropped in a heap at the end of the hall.
“Thank the lord for lesser-armed LEOs,” Lech said with a weak chuckle. It took some effort for him to stand.
“Is that all of them?” Ori asked Nile. He nodded.
“Anybody hurt?”
“Just a graze,” Evin said. He spread open a tear in his shirt, revealing red dots of blood bubbling up from a small wound, seared by the hot bullet. Ori dug around in her pack for a piece of cloth and some tape. Surprisingly, she tossed them to me.
“Bandage him up,” she said. She motioned for Lech and Dal to join her. They ran down the hall to kick and prod the LEOs to make sure they were dead.
“Should have thought of this earlier,” Nile muttered as he opened up a classroom door to shield Evin and me in case more LEOs made a surprise attack. “Pretty sure that’s all of them, but you can’t be too careful.”
I showed Evin the cloth. “Do you mind if I…”
“No, go ahead,” he said. He rotated his right arm around for me to do my work. I tore his sleeve to make the opening large enough to fit the bandage through. Next, I folded the cloth to fit the wound and slid it through the tear in the sleeve. Without thinking, I grasped his hand with the intention of placing it on top of the cloth to hold it in place. Instead, I froze with his hand clasped midair in mine. Touching him had sent an electric jolt up my arm, through my shoulder, and down into my chest. My breath, my heart, even time seemed to stop. I slowly raised my gaze to meet his. His wide gray eyes stared at me in wonder.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said and placed his hand on the bandage. “I’m just … remembering you.” I tore off two long pieces of tape and stuck them on the ends of my fingers.
“Right,” he said. “You knew me from before. You said we grew up together. It must be really strange to have memories of a life that never happened for the rest of us.”
“Yeah,” I said with a sardonic smile. “Strange.” Strange didn’t begin to describe it. Heartbreaking was more like it. Cruel might be a better word. I taped the rectangular cloth on each end and put the tape roll into my pack.
“I couldn’t imagine what that’s like,” he said, not even glancing at my first-aid handiwork. “I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but you had another life, and it’s just … gone … in a matter of minutes.”
I looked at the ground. His sympathetic tone made my throat constrict. I had to hold it together. I couldn’t think about all I’d lost. Not now when we still weren’t out of the building.
“I know I’m the last person you want to take advice from,” Nile said. “But if I were you, Evin, I’d let this go until another time.”
I actually welcomed Nile’s words. Of all the people in the corridor, Nile knew me the best. Strangely enough, that fact didn’t make me feel sick like it did before. It was oddly comforting. Plus, he had been the one to put his hands on my shoulders, pushing me down and out of the way of the gunfire. If you add that to his shooting the zombie LEO who had me at gunpoint, this was the third protective act Nile had done since we arrived here. Could he be a different person in this reality? Had my Memory Visit changed things that much?
Nile raised his silver eyebrows. “Tsk, tsk. Now don’t get all sentimental on me, Rain. You know me better than that.” As always, he could read my every thought.
“I’m sorry,” Evin said, ignoring my exchange with Nile. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” His kind eyes made me smile. “When you’re ready to talk about it, though, I’ll be here.” He smiled back, holding my gaze.
Nile huffed and rolled his eyes. “Ugh. Doesn’t matter which timeline we’re on—you two will never change.” He walked past us to the others who were gathering up guns and HTs from the corpses. Evin crinkled his brow as he watched Nile walk away.
“What did he mean by that?” Evin asked.
“Nothing,” I said, feeling myself blush. “Nile knew us from before, too. We got the better of him, and he’s bitter about it.”
“I can’t wait to hear that story,” Evin said with a grin. I grinned back, suddenly feeling much lighter. Maybe there was a chance for us in this reality after all.
“You know,” Evin said, his face growing serious once again, “you’re not what I expected.”
“What do you mean?” My hackles began to rise.
“I mean, I expected you to be different.”
“Yeah, I guessed that,” I said, an edge to my voice. “But different, how?”
“Never mind,” he said. Now it was his turn to blush. “I’m talking when I shouldn’t again.”
I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “You mean, you thought I’d be unstable.” Even though I wanted him to be my friend—even though I wanted him to notice that I wasn’t the violent girl that was banished from school and from Oasis—I was still angry. He shouldn’t be so surprised I wasn’t a delinquent. He should have more faith in me. He should know and trust me the way I knew and trusted him.
Obviously, I had a really difficult time separating the Evin I knew from before with this new Evin.
“No, I didn’t mean that,” he said in a lowered voice. “I’m sorry, I just meant that … well … your mom always made it sound like you were…”
“What? What did she make it sound like?”
“Like you had snapped. Like the old you was gone, replaced by someone Dal and I would never recognize.”
Good old Moraine, always making things easier for me. That was how she kept Dal away from me. She made me out to be some sort of monster. And all along, I thought she’d paint a prettier picture of me to save her own image.
“Well, your mom was wrong. I can see that now.” He smiled at me again, and all my resentment faded, replaced by longing.
“Let’s head to the boats,” Ori called as she, Dal, Lech, and Nile approached, loaded down with LEO guns and HTs. We trotted down the hall toward the door we’d entered just an hour earlier. That moment seemed like days ago.
“What’s going to be waiting for us on the other side of that door?” Lech spat at Nile.
“The open sea,” Nile said.
“Won’t there be more LEOs?” Dal asked.
“There would be if there were any left,” Nile said.
“How is that possible? There is always an overabundance of LEOs,” I said.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Nile said. “There are more on their way. We’ve got enough time to get out of here, though. This building is pretty remote.” Nile started laughing to himself. “They never thought that thirty LEOs wouldn’t be enough to handle a few outcasts with sticks. If anything, they thought they were over-prepared.”
Evin and I glanced at each other.
“I cannot figure you out, dude,” Lech said. “You seem to get way too much enjoyment out of the destruction of your own people.”
“I just enjoy a little irony is all,” Nile said, still chuckling.
“You’re crazy,” Lech said.
Nile whirled around, his nostrils flaring. “You will learn someday, young man, that having your own people is highly overrated.”
Lech stood still and stared. I’d never seen him speechless. Nile’s intensity had us all transfixed.
Ori, once again, laid her hand on Nile’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said softly. At her touch, Nile removed his fixed glare at Lech and continued following her down the hall. She definitely had some power over him, and I couldn’t begin to imagine how. If he had finished the job and brought her in, he would be celebrated. He could probably have anything he wanted in the WaterPure world. Why was he helping her and us escape?
Sunlight glowed like fire through the crack beneath the door. A few more steps and we’d be free. We had paired up—Ori and Nile, Dal and Lech, Evin and I. It felt good to have Evin by my side. For a split second when Nile opened the door, I imagined hordes of LEOs aiming guns at us from the beach. Once my eyes adjusted from the fluorescence to the blinding sunshine, I saw nothing but our canoes and the crashing waves.
“It’s going to be a much harder swim around the rocks than it was earlier,” I said to Evin.
“I think you can handle it.” He winked at me, and I smiled. “It’s warmed up. At least we won’t be freezing.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I still think you should grease up, though.”
Oh, my God, had I really said that? That was way too familiar, and way too suggestive, and way too bold…
“You want to help me with that?” he said, grinning.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t way too anything. I looked at him with my mouth ajar.
“Oh, wow. Rain,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I said that to you. What made me say that? That was totally inappropriate.”
“Don’t,” I said, laughing. “It’s okay. I’m actually used to you talking to me like that. Maybe you remember it, too, in some weird way.”
Evin looked at me with questioning eyes. “Wait, were we…?”
Since he seemed to be catching on, I decided I was ready for him to know about us, about our relationship in that other reality. As I’d learned in all of my lives, time was short. I had to make the most of it before my world changed again and all was lost.
I would answer his question in the best way I knew how. I placed both my hands on his cheeks and brought my mouth to his. Our lips touched, gently at first as he bent down to meet me. I inhaled his familiar scent the briny seawater couldn’t conceal. My whole body trembled. I arched into his chest to calm the storm, but the shivering only grew. He clutched my back, pressed his fingers into my skin, and pulled me into him. My hands went to his shoulders as our hungry mouths moved together. I couldn’t get enough of his taste, his smell, his touch. I pulled him tighter, unable to get close enough. Evin was alive. I was alive. I vowed that nothing would separate us.
“Um, guys?” Dal’s startled voice snapped me back to reality.
Our lips parted, and Evin rested his forehead on mine.
“Wow,” Evin whispered. “Was it always like this?”
“Always,” I said with a smile.
We stood there in a tableau of embrace. It didn’t matter that everyone’s eyes were on us. We were finally together.
“Yep,” Nile said. “It was only a matter of time before that happened.”
I glanced at him. He quickly looked away, a smile playing on his lips. Did Nile have a soft spot for young romance? I turned to Evin, who gazed at me tenderly. His gray eyes told a story I longed to hear. He’d missed me, too, without knowing it until now.
“Don’t stop, you two,” Lech shouted at us from the canoes. “We’re enjoying the show.” He snickered and then clutched at his side with a grimace.
“That’s my sister you’re talking about,” Dal scolded.
I didn’t think anything could make me as happy as kissing Evin, but hearing my brother claim me as his sister came awful close. I felt a small miracle at work. Either that, or Evin and Dal did remember me after all. Evin once theorized that people retained memories of alternate realities somewhere deep in the recesses of their brains. I was beginning to believe he might be right. What else could explain Dal and Evin’s change of attitude toward me?
“We need everyone’s help if we’re going to get out of here before the waves get too strong.” Ori didn’t look at Evin and me, but we knew she meant us. Dal trotted over to give her hand.
“I don’t want to let go of you,” Evin breathed into my ear. “It’s weird, I just don’t want to let go. It’s like if I do…”
“I know,” I said, running my fingers down his arms and then clasping his hands in mine. “Stay close to me, okay?”
“I couldn’t stay away if I tried,” he said and kissed me on the forehead.
I pulled him toward the canoes. We loaded our guns and stripped off our pants and boots. Evin’s gunshot wound bled very little onto the bandage. Lech’s wound was a different story. He had lost so much blood. He looked even paler in the sunlight.
“Salt water will be good for it,” I said.
Lech gave me a sad smile. “Yeah, you may have to push me along while I float on my back like one of these canoes.” His breathing was hard and heavy. His eyes were pained. The adrenaline had worn off.
Nile handed Dal his gun to toss into the canoe. “You might want to shed some clothes, Nile. They’ll weigh you down.”
“Forgive me,” Nile said. “I will not be swimming with the rest of you.”
“Really?” Lech said, more accusing than questioning. “If you’re not swimming, then how are you getting out of here?”
“I’m not,” Nile said. We stared at him.
“What are you going to do?” Ori asked.
“I’m going to re-enter the building and find someplace to play dead until I’m ‘rescued’ by the second wave of LEOs.”
“The hell you are,” Lech said with a snarl.
“I’m of no use to you now. You can make your escape without me.”
“Yes, we can,” Lech said. “But you’ve got to be crazy if you think we’re letting you go. You know too much.”
“I know exactly as much as I did before you burst onto the rooftop.”
“Bull. It’s time to do what we should have done in the stairwell.” Lech reached down into the canoe for a pistol, lost his balance, and landed hard on the sand. He sat up, pointing the gun at Nile. His arm wavered, but I knew he could still make the shot.
“Wait, Lech, there’s no need to…” Ori’s voice was pleading.
“Get out of the way, Ori,” Lech said, panting heavily from the small exertion of grabbing the gun.
Dal’s eyes grew wide. He reached for Ori’s arm to pull her away from Nile, but she wrestled herself free. “What are you doing?” Dal exclaimed.
Ori didn’t answer. She stood beside Nile who actually took a step away from her toward Evin and me. I instinctually stepped in front of Evin and inched ourselves backward. Lech seemed determined, and I didn’t want us in the line of fire.
“Lech,” Ori cried. “There’s no need to do this.”
Lech squinted his eyes at her as if seeing her for the first time. His arm shook as he held the gun. For a second, I thought he would drop it and collapse back onto the sand.
“I don’t know what you’ve got going with this sleazeball,” Lech said. “But it’s ending right now.” He cocked the pistol and as his finger pressed the trigger, Ori took one quick step in front of Nile.