Skyline (29 page)

“Who?”
Ana laughed. “The Leanor you met? She’s gone, kid.”

“Me,”
Monroe said. “When Charlotte unveiled that astrolabe, when she showed us what
it really did, I just wanted to see history. Not stop some mad bomber. I wanted
to see everything, because I
love
the city.” He surveyed her. “You do,
too.”

Ana’s
sneer proved him right. She ran along the bridge, but Monroe just watched her
platinum hair bob for a moment. Maybe he wouldn’t save only Charlotte and Bill,
thousands of New Yorkers, but he’d do what Charlotte wanted from the very
beginning.

Save
Leanor.

Monroe
jogged to catch up with her and said, “Lead the way, Leanor.”

She
snorted, but he liked pretending she was already his friend. Like she’d chosen
to lead him to Charlotte and Bill instead of being forced.

They
stepped from the long, thin bridge onto a wide, grassy hill. The streets
spidered away, winding around dozens of enormous mansions. Glittering from
their colored glass facades and shimmering metal roofs, every surface spoke of
opulence. Ridged columns holding up pointlessly wide roofs. Windows taking the
place of entire walls. Brittle brown lawns wrapping around the entire house.
These were houses for the rich.

Ana
led on, winding along the still-empty streets. The hot rain became suddenly
cold, then fell slower as it turned to snow. Lightning crackled above.
Thundersnow. Monroe clutched his arms, hoping they’d reach Charlotte and Bill
soon. If this was what careless time travel did to a world, then they’d have to
be vigilant.

Once
they stopped Ana, they’d have to make sure the Council never revived time
travel. They’d have to keep going to keep New York City safe.

At
another house, this one small, tucked between two larger mansions, Ana’s pace
slowed to a walk. She crossed the lawn and swung the door wide.

Inside,
the floor was plush with carpet, but around the edges, stone held the low
couches, the shelves. Lights almost
poured
from the floor. Again, Monroe
couldn’t find the words. The couch was strangely tiered, the shelves curvy
lines, and the ceiling … He shook his head, following Ana into a room.

“Here,”
she said, and stood aside.

The
room was unremarkable—with everything Monroe had seen, this looked just as odd.
Plants growing from the walls, water covering the edges of the floor. “How can
you be so sure?” Monroe asked. His compass was all screwy; this could be Staten
Island for all he knew.

Ana
gave an impatient huff. “I
designed
them, remember? I told the Council
where to place their Cornerstones. When they used them, I set my bombs to suck
the Council back and then to blow up the Cornerstones. So they’d never be able
use my designs. But when you stopped me, I figured it was fine. The Council’d
still be trapped, their Cornerstones stuck in your time.”

Leaning
down to the floor, Ana grabbed a piece of evidence. An orb attached to a
computer board. “Isn’t it obvious that this is where your friends were?”

“Then
where are they?” They should’ve been there. “Did we save them already? In our
future, in their past?”

Ana
threw Monroe an eye roll. “That’s not how it works. Nothing changes until
you
change it.”

“So
where are they?” But in a corner, Monroe saw a lens watching their argument.
Keeping him safe from Ana, perhaps, but also endangering Charlotte and Bill.

“Give
me the device; I’ll take you to the exact moment they arrived.”

Monroe
couldn’t hold in his laugh. “I think I can manage.” He pulled Charlotte’s
astrolabe out and drew an insignia on it. “How long ago?”

Ana
crossed her arms. “When do I get that back?”

“When
we find them,” he said, but he didn’t meet Ana’s eyes. He couldn’t let her go,
not until he was sure she wouldn’t set another bomb.

“When
really
? What are you waiting for? For us to get home? For me to swear
not to place another bomb? For me to welcome the Council with open arms? Or,
no, it’s still about
regret
. You want me to apologize. To become best
friends with your sister? To hug you and sob about how sorry I am.”

“Something
like that,” he said as he spun the lights backward in his hand. He couldn’t
tell Ana how right she was. He hated that this was what everything boiled down
to. He tried to watch the dates shining from the astrolabe on the floor. So far
in the past, the four-digit year readout was worthless. But he just watched the
clock, spinning it back a little over an hour. Surely that was all they had
been running for.

He
and Ana watched the hour rewind, but Charlotte and Bill never materialized,
never walked backward into the room. Time slowed, and Monroe kept his fingers
on the astrolabe to send them farther back in time.

Then
he heard voices from outside. The low bass of Bill, the firm tone of Charlotte.

Monroe
dropped the astrolabe into his bag, then walked out in time to see Charlotte
and Bill step outside into the foggy air. The door swung shut behind them.
Monroe raced over, gripped the door handle, but a hand on his shoulders stopped
him from pulling it open. “Don’t,” Ana whispered.

He
spun, keeping her away from the bag, but that wasn’t her focus. Instead, she
tiptoed to the door and peered through a peephole. Monroe frowned, but stepped
to one side of the door, looking out the window just in time to see three
figures appear out of nowhere. He flattened himself against the doorframe, out
of sight.

The
Council had arrived.

Before
Monroe could even consider pulling out the astrolabe, two members of the
Council—Paris and Cora—flickered from their spots and were suddenly behind
Charlotte and Bill. Paris took Bill, gripping the man’s arms before he could
react, spreading Bill’s legs wide, then slowly running his hand over ever inch
of fabric. Pulling out Bill’s wallet, keys, and chapstick before tossing them
back. The woman with red hair did the same with Charlotte and, once satisfied,
they walked back.

Now
Monroe clutched the astrolabe in the bag. He could go back. Stop Charlotte and
Bill from exiting that door. The Council would never know. But beside him, Ana
was shaking her head, even as she kept on eye to the peephole.

“Why?”
Monroe hissed, but Ana continued shaking her head. He tried thinking it
through. The Council had already seen Bill and Charlotte. And if Monroe leapt
back, they would see him, too. Chase them down like they had Ana. But she got
free once …

Biting
his lip, Monroe peered through the window, instead, keeping his head below a
dried brown plant.

Once
the two were beside the tall, white haired man—Alek, Leanor had named him—he
stepped forward, murmuring something. Monroe slowly inched the window open to
hear. Warm, sticky air whistled at his face, but he didn’t risk pushing it open
farther. Alek smoothed his dark gray suit, touching his short goatee and saying
something. It didn’t sound like English.

Paris
sneered from his position, but didn’t respond. His eyes didn’t have the same
vindictive look as he’d had on the streets of the future. Nor the regretful
look when he’d returned Charlie. Perhaps this Paris hadn’t met them yet.

The
woman with deep red hair raised an eyebrow and responded to Alek, her eyes
never blinking. Cora wasn’t wearing a suit, but a slinky red dress that matched
her hair. After a moment, her eyes flicked to Bill. Her ruby red lips smiled,
head tilting down.

Monroe
caught himself before he laughed aloud. Was she actually trying to seduce Bill?

Again,
the pale man said something, louder, angrier. And then he touched his ear.
“Perhaps you are New Yorkers, then?”

Monroe’s
jaw dropped. All along, he’d figured they were from the future. That, of
course, they knew English. But now he saw how foolish that was. They didn’t
speak English at all. It was technology allowing them to speak and understand.
It made them ten times more frightening. If they could translate themselves on
the fly, appear right in front of Bill and Charlotte the moment they stepped
from the house, what else could they do?

“Yes,”
came Bill’s voice.

With
a curt nod, the woman explained something to the two men in their quick, rolling
language. When she finished, she lifted an eyebrow, waiting. Paris grinned at
whatever idea she’d presented, but the pale man’s eyes narrowed. “Leanor,” he
said.

Monroe
shot a glance to Ana, who lifted an eyebrow.

“We’re
not with her,” Charlotte said. The words came out too quickly. An obvious lie.
But she amended, stronger, calmer, “We’re here because we tried to keep her
from destroying our city.” She exchanged a glance with Bill, who nodded.

Charlotte
had said, “Tried.” Could they know about the fifth bomb?

For
a moment, as Alek hissed at his companions, Monroe puzzled over it. But maybe
it was a guess on their part. They’d seen Ana escape. The Council was here,
too. Of course there’d been another bomb.

“How?”
Cora asked, her voice snapping Monroe’s attention back.

“Yes,
how?” Alek asked. “How could
you
?”

That
explained why they’d chosen 2016 to appear in New York City. They must’ve
figured that no one could take them on there. New York had technology, but it
hadn’t advanced so much that the Council couldn’t take over.

“He
thinks we’re stupid,” Charlotte mused. Her tone wasn’t disdainful, but amused.
Exactly how she’d described the way Paris spoke to her. She drew herself up,
squaring her broad shoulders. She laughed.

“Time
travel, duh,” Bill said, matching Charlotte’s breeziness. “We learned what this
Leanor
of yours was doing. We stopped her, but got caught in her Blast.
And if you’re still here, she must have come up with an alternate plan when we
stopped the four bombs she’d placed around the city.”

Paris’s
eyes widened. “Four?”

“Sure,”
Bill replied. “Here, on opposite sides of Manhattan, and one in the upper
middle of the island.”

Paris
gasped. “The Cornerstones.” Then, pressing his ear, he spoke to his companions,
arms wide and gesticulating.

At
the word, Monroe saw Ana’s grin widen. The Council was realizing how she’d
stopped them. Why they shouldn’t have tortured her to invent their way out.
They’d given her the exact tools she needed to stop them.

“Paris,
go,” the white-haired man directed.

Paris
nodded, and disappeared. It was weird to see the man who’d stolen Charlie so
easily cowed.

Alek
turned back to Charlotte and Bill now, his voice sickly sweet. “So you saved
your city. How noble.”

“That
was our plan as well, right, Alek?” Cora asked. “We wished to save your city,
too.”

“Too
true,” he replied.

An
obvious lie to match Charlotte’s, but it was true that the Council wanted the
Blast stopped. Maybe Monroe wouldn’t need to lift a finger to free Charlotte
and Bill. All of them—except Ana—wanted the same thing.

Yet,
if Charlotte and Bill had escaped, they would’ve been home. If the Council
worked with them, gave the two of them a way out of this time, then they
would’ve sought out Monroe, Felix, and Charlie. At the very least, they
would’ve gone after the fifth bomb.

No,
this was a lie. A severe lie that could entrap Bill and Charlotte. Because
whatever their future held, Monroe knew it wasn’t home. That was clear. The
Council would likely imprison them, exactly as they had Leanor. Torture them,
to get a clearer picture of what happened to the Cornerstones? Or maybe they’d
just leave them to rot.

“How?”
Charlotte asked. Monroe prayed she didn’t believe this lie. That she and Bill
would escape to someplace Monroe could retrieve them. “How would you save our
city?”

“We’d
save you from yourselves,” Cora said, leaning her head in.

“You
discovered time travel,” Alek said, spreading his hands. “Well, look around.
The sky you see?” The thunder boomed above, precisely on cue. “Time travel
caused this.”

Alek
began a tale much different than Ana’s had been. About how every moment is a
fragile jewel, perfectly placed. Or like dominoes, lined up to fall. Remove
one, and the picture doesn’t
quite
come together. Remove enough, and the
pieces stop falling. Eventually nature took over. An ice age wiped out their
race. He said nothing of the EMP Ana had told them the Council had set. Said
nothing of his displaced people.

“This
is what Leanor did to
our
age,” Alek finished. “We would stop your time
from suffering the same fate.”

It
sounded reasonable. More convincing, in fact, than the idea that a bunch of
out-of-time people somehow took revenge on those who had abandoned them. But
Ana had been earnest then. Alek was probably filtering in lies with the truth.

Monroe
arched an eyebrow at Ana, but she simply rolled her eyes.
She
at least
believed Alek was lying. But could she truly know? Hadn’t she been imprisoned
until she fled this age?

Charlotte’s
brow was low, a finger at her chin. “But wouldn’t you coming to our time—using
time
travel
to do so—have the same effect?”

“A
single domino,” Alek replied. “A necessary one. Or would you have us die?”

“We—”
Bill began, probably about to say, “We would never.” No matter what he’d seen,
he didn’t condemn others to death.

Then
Paris appeared, breathing hard. He explained something in their language, then
turned to Bill and Charlotte. “They’re gone,” he said, heaving. “The
Cornerstones are gone.”

Ana
had succeeded in trapping their empire, but from here on out, the Council would
chase her down. Once they dealt with Bill and Charlotte, of course.

Alek
pressed his ear, said something to Paris, but Cora stepped forward. “Maybe you
can help us,” she said, lifting her hand. “We all want the same thing. Help us
save your city.”

“No,”
Monroe hissed before he could stop himself. A lucky boom of thunder kept anyone
from hearing.

Charlotte
glanced at Bill, who bit his lip. Looked at the sky, the house, then back at
the Council. And then he nodded. Charlotte did, too.

“Come
then,” Cora said, her hand still out to them.

“Er,
do you have a car waiting or something?” Bill asked.

The
woman grinned. “Do not presume to know so much.”

After
another shared glance, Charlotte and Bill took Cora’s hand. All five of them
vanished.

•
• • • • • • • • • • •

Monroe
blinked. “Where did they go?” He hadn’t expected the encounter to end so
abruptly. He turned on Ana. But no, he was asking the wrong question again. “
When
did they go?” He pulled Charlotte’s astrolabe from his bag, spinning through
time. “Before? Was this the old Council?”

No,
they’d been reacting to the Blast’s effects. They’d sought out the
Cornerstones. This was the Council after the Blast, so when would they go?
Forward in time didn’t seem too safe, the weather only got crazier as Ana and
Monroe had run through the city.

“Stop.”
Ana was by his side, her hand pressed on top of his, freezing it in place.

“What,
you think we should go back farther? To when Charlotte and Bill first came? I
could pull them through time first. We could—”

“Stop.”

And
then Monroe realized where her hand was. Too close to the orb that would free
her. He snatched the astrolabe away, scrambling back to the wall. “
You
stop. What do we do?”

“We
can’t save your friends yet. The Council would only follow. Especially
since—you heard them—they believe you’re with me.” She raised a platinum-blond
eyebrow.

Exactly
what he’d assumed. “So what then?” He dropped Charlotte’s astrolabe into the
bowling-ball bag—where it clunked slightly against Ana’s device. To distract
her from the sound, Monroe stepped out into the greenish fog. “Travel forward
or wherever the Council went? We could find the exact time, snag ‘em, then
we’re done.” He clapped his hands.

“They
aren’t
here
,” Ana said, following him out. “Not now, not before or
after. Not anymore.”

“Of
course they are.” That was how Charlotte’s astrolabe worked. How Ana’s time
device worked. It sped through time, but never changed locations. Why would the
Council’s be different?

“No.
They aren’t.” Ana said, her eyes rolling. “Haven’t you noticed something
strange
about my time? About this city? Something missing?”

Monroe
frowned and stepped across the lawn to see what Ana meant. The architecture was
odd, indescribable. Roofs and roads were metallic. Some houses seemed wrapped
in windows. But that was what
was
there, not what was missing.

There
were lawns all around the houses. Pools in the back. Streetlights above the
skinny streets. All of that seemed normal. As normal as this prehistorical
civilization could seem.

“
Cars
,”
Ana finally spat. “Don’t you see?”

“Cars?”
Monroe asked. There was a street, but it was too thin for anything but bikes.
There weren’t garages. No driveways. “But across the bridge the streets were
wider, wide enough.”

“Old
streets,” Ana explained. “Made before the Council invented another mode of
transportation.”

The
roofs didn’t seem to have any landing pads or storage for a large flying
machine. And he hadn’t seen any entrances to a subway on their run down here.
Not in the air, not underground. “What other sort?”

“Can’t
you guess?”

The
Council hadn’t done anything peculiar. They’d merely grasped Bill and
Charlotte’s hands, spun up their devices and vanished. “The orbs. It has to be
the orbs.”

“Obviously.”

“So
what are we waiting for?” He took out the orb he knew would work on this era’s
streets. Ana’s. Her eyes grew wide at the sight, but Monroe snorted. “You
thought I was magically at the Blast day?” He shook his head. “Tell me how to
use it.”

“Well,”
Ana said, leaning in. “First you turn it on.” She made an insignia. She slid
closer, her hand under his. “Then you drag a finger across, mimicking the roads
we ran down. Then when you release, it’ll take you there. Easy as that.” She
left her hand on it, and he didn’t stop her.

Then
Ana yanked her orb away.