Rewinder (26 page)

“You mean you’ve been waiting for something like this to happen?”

“Not waiting, more like dreaming.” He pauses. “You’re wasting time. You should go.”

I look at the other two. Marie nods while Other Me looks scared.

As I retrieve my Chaser and activate the screen, I say, “I can give you an hour’s cushion before the change takes effect. Use it to jump back before…” I pause. Sir Gregory is right—it’s better if I’m the only one who knows when the switch is, so a seventy-five-year cushion should be enough to prevent its discovery. “Before 1700. You’ll be safe there.”

I realize I’m not the only one who knows when the switch is. Other Me might not know the details but he does know when it happened. But I trust him completely.

Sir Gregory holds out his hand.

“Good luck,” he says as we shake. “I’m not sure I’d have the mental strength to do what you’re doing.”

I walk back to Marie. We hug.

“Will I see you again?” I whisper.

“Count on it,” she says.

“Santa Monica Pier. June 20
^th
, 2015, at noon.”

She looks at me funny.

“You’ll figure out where that is.”

When we release each other, I glance at my Chaser’s screen. The power level has gone down a couple hundredths of a percent since I last checked. I’m not sure it’ll be enough to complete all I need to do. “Do any of you have a charger I can take?”

None of them do, so Marie says, “I’ll fetch one and be right back.”

But as she retrieves her own Chaser, the population of the room suddenly triples. Most are security men, but right in the middle is Sir Wilfred.

“Denny! Go!” Sir Gregory yells.

Sir Wilfred spins around, looking for me, but my fingers are already depressing the emergency escape combination. I’m now ten feet from where I was and fifteen minutes earlier.

I want to jump to my room and grab Other Me’s charger, but I can’t be sure Sir Wilfred’s men won’t already be waiting there. Instead, I quickly adjust the location and time and jump clear across the continent to the cemetery in New Cardiff, an hour and fifteen minutes ahead. This time pad will give Marie, Sir Gregory, and Other Me the extra hour I promised. I hope they’re able to escape Sir Wilfred’s men and use it.

As much as I don’t want to look, I check the power level again and see it’s dipped below five percent.

One of the functions of my Chaser’s calculator is to estimate energy use of an upcoming trip. The only other time I’ve used it was in my instruction room when Marie and I were going over the various functions. I’m scared to use it now, but I need to know if I’m going to have enough power to finish my plan.

Most of the jumps I have planned are of set lengths, so I have little to no margin to play with. I input these first and am shocked to see there’s very little power left to work with. I then do calculations for two additional jumps.

The results are heart-wrenching. Making both jumps will be impossible.

I guess I should be happy that at least I don’t have to make a choice between them. Only one will fit within the parameters of my remaining power, and even then I won’t be able to go as far back as I’d like.

Since this will be my first stop, I enter the location number and set the date back eight years, pushing the time back as much as I dare.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

I
T’S THREE IN
the morning when I appear in the empty lot down the street from my family’s house. A few minutes later I’m at the bottom of the steps that lead up to our door.

The house, like all the others around it, is dark. I can see the window of my room where twelve-year-old me should be sound sleep. There’s also the window to my parents’ room—well, my father’s room, since at this point it’s been a year and a half since my mother passed away. Neither of these is the room I’m interested in, though.

I carefully move around the side of the house until I can see the window of my sister’s room. Using the location calculator to home in on the hallway outside her door, I make a jump of thirty seconds.

The floor creaks as I appear so I hold my position, fingers hovering over the escape combination in case my father decides to check out the noise. When all remains silent, I pad quietly into Ellie’s room.

The strongest memory I have of Ellie is of when she was fifteen, not long before she died, with hair chopped short, her skin ashy white, and bones showing everywhere. She’s asleep on the hospital bed, and I’m sitting on the mattress holding her hand. Father is by the window, looking outside as the doctor finishes his prognosis.

“The truth is, Mr. Younger, there’s little else we can do here,” he says. “Home would be the best place for her now.”

My father says nothing, so I decide to speak up. “But there are treatments. I’ve read about them in the paper. I even found a book at the library that—”

Looking embarrassed, the doctor says to my father, “If you have any questions, you can always contact me.”

“I have questions,” I say.

“Denny. Quiet,” my father orders. “Thank you, Doctor.”

After the doctor is gone, I say, “But there
are
treatments. We can—”

“Not for us,” Father says. “Pack your sister’s things. We’re going home.”

If we’d been Fives like I am now, it would have been different, but we were Eights, and our options were limited to waiting for her to die.

Tonight, that day is well over a year away, and she lies before me with her hair still long and her face full of the promise of the beautiful woman she should have become.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I stare at her.

My God. It’s her. My sister, alive.

I ache at the sight of the pills on her nightstand that help her sleep. The illness that will waste her away has started to move in. I hoped to come before that happened, but the Chaser’s lack of power meant this was as far back as I dare go. Still, the disease is in its early stages. I know from the research I’ve done on the subject after reading about the medical documentary that there’s an excellent chance it can be stopped. But not here. Not in this world.

I grab the pill bottle and shove it in my pocket. After prepping my Chaser for the automated series of hops to the next destination, I kneel next to Ellie, gently wrap her blanket around her, and then climb in beside her. She stirs slightly as I put my arms around her but doesn’t wake.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I whisper, and then we jump.

__________

T
HE LAST HOP
takes us into the copse of trees about a hundred yards from the Three Swans Tavern, where everything started.

“What’s going on?” Ellie mumbles, her lids barely parting.

Wincing from my post-trip pain, I whisper, “Just sleep.”

“Dad, my head hurts.”

Dad? Does my voice really sound like his?
“Hold on.” I remove one of her pills from the bottle and slip it between her lips. “Chew it up, then rest. I’ll return soon.”

I wait until she drifts back to sleep, then I leap even further back in time.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

L
IDIA’S INSTRUCTIONS WERE
to be at the meeting point in 1702 at noon, but wanting to give myself some extra time, I’ve set my arrival for ten a.m. As an added precaution, I’ve also adjusted my location to materialize a quarter mile away, just in case any of the others are already there.

Despite my jump-induced migraine, I force myself to look around to make sure I haven’t been observed, given I’ve arrived in daylight. But I’m in a forest, and the only other living things around are the birds calling to one another.

Satisfied that I’m safe, I allow the pain that’s built up over all my hops to run its course. Once it passes, my first order of business is to get out of my colonial outfit and change back into my 2015 clothes. I grab a black T-shirt, but then see the Mr. Peabody shirt Iffy bought me and I don that instead.

As I start to lose myself in thoughts of her, I force myself to focus. I need to stay sharp, and thoughts of a nonexistent Iffy aren’t going to help. Ready now, I sling my bag over my shoulder and head through the woods to the meeting point.

The actual site turns out to be a meadow, not unlike the one Marie met me in, and makes me wonder if choosing places like this is part of some kind of advanced training seasoned Rewinders receive.

So far, no one else is here. Instead of walking out into the meadow, though, I choose a spot under the cover of the trees to wait.

Bernard is the first to arrive, appearing at exactly 11:40 a.m. He’s a tall man, thin but muscular, and if he’s feeling pain from his trip, he’s hiding it well as he scans the area. I have never seen him without a serious look on his face. This time is no exception.

At ten minutes to noon, two others show up, both women I don’t recognize. Bernard clearly does, though, and comforts them while they work through their trip trauma.

A trainee I know named Cole winks in with his supervisor, a man I believe is called Morris. Then Lidia shows up two minutes later, and I’m happy to see she’s as affected by her jump—if not more so—than I was by mine. Her appearance tells me she lied and didn’t leave at the deadline like she said she would. Each of those arriving must have left Iffy’s 2015 before I did, or they would have been erased when I changed everything back.

As it approaches 11:55, I decide it’s time to make my appearance. I adjust the newspaper so that a portion of it sticks out of the flap at the back of my bag. When no one is looking in my direction, I slip out from the trees and stand at the edge of the meadow, my hands to my head.

Bernard sees me first and waves me over. Slowly I walk to the group, making sure the pain I’m projecting is appropriate but less than what Lidia experienced.

When noon hits, there are eleven of us, a few still suffering from the effects of their trips, but most have recovered. Bernard appears concerned as he takes another look around the field.

“They should have been here by now,” he says.

“There are others?” someone asks.

Bernard turns back to us. “Four more.” His gaze locks on Lidia. “You
did
give them the right time, didn’t you?”

This is the first time I’ve ever seen Lidia look scared. “I did,” she says defensively.

“And you stayed until the deadline?”

“Yes.”

Liar
, I think.

“There are others here I talked to.” Lidia says quickly, then glances at me. “Obviously I gave you the right time.”

I nod, but keep my mouth shut.

“Then where are they?” Bernard asks.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “Well, they’re traveling without companions so they could have arrived a little ways away, right?”

Bernard scans the woods. “We’ll pair off, do a perimeter search. Lidia, you’re with me.”

If the missing Rewinders left Iffy’s world even one second after I did, then they’ll never arrive.

“You. Denny, isn’t it?”

I look toward the voice and see it belongs to a veteran named Carter. He was the last to arrive.

“Uh-huh,” I say.

He waves for me to join him. “Let’s go.”

If I don’t say something now, I will likely lose control of the situation. When I say, “Wait,” the first time, there are too many other conversations going on for anyone to hear me, so I repeat it, louder.

This time I have their attention.

“I don’t think they’re coming.”

“What are you talking about?” Carter asks.

“I…I…”
Come on
.
Just like you practiced.
“They must’ve not left on time and were trapped when”—I take a breath—“ I fixed everything.”

Stunned silence from everyone but Bernard.

He hurries toward me. “When you
what
?”

“I figured out when the change occurred,” I said. “So I fixed it. That’s what we wanted to do, isn’t it?”

“You fixed it?” Morris barks. “You’re telling us that everything’s back the way it was?”

I nod.

“So you trapped the others back there?” Bernard says. “You erased them.”

“I waited until the cutoff time,” I lie. “I left right at the hour on the dot. Just like Lidia did. If I left early, she wouldn’t be here.”

I glance at her and see she’s trapped by her lie. When the others look toward her, too, she says, “He must have waited.” When they look away, though, the look she gives me is one of suspicion.

“If they didn’t leave by the deadline, then it’s their own damn fault,” one of the women who arrived right after Bernard says.

Morris moves in until his face is only inches away from mine. “I don’t care when you left. What I want to know is, who authorized
you
to fix anything?”

His breath is hot and rancid, causing me to take a step back. “I just thought, um, well…”

Bernard grabs Morris by the shoulder and pulls him away. At first, I’m thankful, but then I see Bernard’s anger has kicked in again.

“How did you find out when the problem was?” he asks.

“Lidia said I was supposed to see if I could figure out when it was,” I say.

“Figuring it out is not the same as fixing the problem,” Morris says over Bernard’s shoulder.

“When did it happen?” Bernard asks.

“The problem? Um, it was during the American incident of 1775. One of their leaders was supposed to have been killed. What I realized was that the man who turned him in was prevented from doing so.”

“How?”

It’s time for my next lie, one I spent hours thinking through after my last visit with Iffy.

“He was never born.” The words sound false, but I hope I’m the only one who picks that up.

“And how did you figure that out?” Morris yells at me.

If Bernard weren’t between us, the man’s hands would probably be around my neck.

“Answer him,” Bernard says.

“The era is kind of my specialty,” I explain. “Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. I’ve read a lot about it so I’m very familiar with the period. When we ended up in that other time…” I pause, and then clarify, “the time that wasn’t supposed to be—”