Authors: Zach Milan
Skyline (35 page)
Like
I said, I know how an entire cross section of New York City could be taken out
at once. I know why someone would do such a thing. But no one did.
Not
anymore.
Three
months after the Blast should’ve happened, three months into my penance, my
cell door opened.
“Leanor,”
Alek said, stepping through the low doorway. “We’ve made a decision.”
New
York City sprawled below, intact. Not a single building out of place. Once I
had ruined it, had changed it, had wielded time as my carving knife. Now all I
could do was stand above and wonder what that city had been like. Charlotte, Monroe,
and Bill had lived there, had loved it; had it really been so bad?
“Leanor,”
came Cora’s voice. Strong, demanding.
I
turned from the window. Alek and Cora stood on either side of the door; Paris’s
shadow loomed beyond the doorway. “Have you finally decided imprisonment is too
easy?” Perhaps my penance was finally over.
Alek
grimaced, but Cora rolled her eyes. “Too
wasteful
,” she said. “You never
told us exactly how those New Yorkers captured you. Never told us why you
finally decided to stop running.”
The
view behind me looked so similar to the memory I’d seen. A vast city far below,
filled with life and opportunity. A city could be just like time. The slightest
change could delay a train, make someone late for an interview, ruin an entire
life.
I
would never tell the Council what the trio of New Yorkers had shown me. And
since the Council had never endured my bombs, since they’d never been sent back
in time, they’d never met Charlotte, Monroe, or Bill. There was no need to
alert the Council to how much these New Yorkers knew.
But
with the Council waiting, saying that imprisoning me was wasteful, I had to
give them something. “They got me to regret.”
Paris
snorted, his shadowy head tilting away.
“Regret?”
“I
told you, Alek,” Cora said through the side of her mouth. “Why else would she
be here?”
“Regretting
what
, specifically?” Alek asked, not even looking Cora’s way.
I
turned away, back to the city below. What had happened to this city had never
happened. Every time I set a bomb, the trio stopped me. I never got to see the
world they inhabited, never got to become the woman they knew. But at least
they—and their astrolabe—existed. A few people who would always remember the
woman I could become.
“I
regretted our age,” I told them, their footsteps falling on the concrete as
they came closer. Either it was enough, or the torture was about to start.
But
when Cora approached, she bypassed me. Set a hand on the glass and splayed her
fingers out. “We’d like to offer you a chance to redeem yourself.”
“One
last
chance,” came Paris’s threat.
“A
final chance,” Alek said. He stood back from the window, his hands tucked
behind him. “You may have ruined our time, Leanor, but you gave us a gift. You
invented time travel without any of our resources. Alone in some lab. Think how
much more we could do together. Think of what you could invent
with
us,
instead of against us.”
I
looked from Alek’s calm demeanor, to Cora’s entreating smile, to Paris’s hungry
grin. “You want me to work for you.”
Alek
scoffed. “We want you to work
with
us, Leanor. No more division. There
are so few of our people left; how can we leave you here to rot?”
My
stomach felt empty, but I didn’t dare mention how they’d hurt our people too.
“So what’s the deal? You keep me imprisoned here, and I do everything you ask?”
Just like before, only without the whips, perhaps.
Paris
laughed, but didn’t explain the joke.
Alek
squinted at me. “I told you this was a bad idea, Cora.”
“No,
Alek. You agreed it would be a waste.” She straightened her shirt. “You want
the deal? You work with us. Tell us how we make this city the best it can be.
Help make it the best it can be. We trust you; you trust us. No one wants a
second ice age.”
I
shouldn’t have, but I had to ask. “How can I ever trust you?”
Alek
arched a white eyebrow. “How can we ever trust
you
?”
Ah,
right. I could never work with them. I could never join them in their crusade
to run New York as they’d run our city. I would never believe that they feared
another glacier enough to change their ways. They had probably retrieved the
Cornerstones, ready to abandon this era, too.
But
what other choice was there? Stay in this cell forever? No, I’d be better on
the outside. The moment they stopped chasing me through the future, I’d learned
a powerful lesson. I could do more with freedom than on the run.
I
offered a hand. “Deal.”
Alek
shook it; Cora shook it; even Paris came from the shadows and took my hand,
gripping it hard. “Deal,” they each said, and led me from my cell.
I
had changed this city once. Though the Blast had destroyed thousands of
buildings, it had also ushered in a Golden Age. People cared about their city,
about history, about one another. I could do it again. I could carve the
mountain of history once more.
Not
through destruction, but through invention.
After spending six years in
New York City—where he fell in love with the buildings and the rich, and often
hidden, history that the city is built upon—Zach Milan now lives in Denver,
Colorado with his husband, Jeof, and their two ridiculous dogs, Amelia and
Alonso.
I’ve read and watched a lot
of time travel stories. After I started watching
Doctor Who
, I realized
how few narratives embrace the maddening fun that true, twisty time travel can
be.
The Time Machine
,
11/22/63
, and
Outlander
are more
portal stories—like
Alice in Wonderland
—than they are time
travel
stories.
Back to the Future
plays some, but it still seems to think time
shouldn’t be messed with. Even
Doctor Who
has “fixed points” for no real
reason.
When I set out to write
Skyline
,
I wanted to make something different. A world where not only could characters
travel through time, but they had full control over it. No mystery portals
leading to a single time. No malfunctioning system that seemed to know better.
No mistakes or accidents. And what I discovered was that—while it was extremely
difficult at first—a better story comes out. One where characters are making
constant choices. Where both protagonists and antagonists have to be smarter.
And what better place to do all of that, than in New York, a young city filled
with history.
I tried keeping my time
travel rules simple, then found myself constantly simplifying them for the ease
of the reader. In this world, there is only one timeline, despite what words
Bill, Leanor, and the others use. One timeline, where every change you
make—unless altered by another time traveler—remains. The timeline shifts, but
I figured this was preferable to constantly joining a new timeline. With fresh
timelines, too few of their previous decisions, their previous effects,
would remain.
It took a lot to wrap my head
around. Hopefully it didn’t take you as long as it did me. My goal was to
create a new type of time travel. Something without “fixed points.” Without
Time, oddly, caring about whether it was changed. A world where everything
could be revised. A world where every consequence was real.
More than anything, I wanted
time travel to seem limitless, just like life can be.
I had several early readers, too
many to name here, who helped by providing some feedback, but mostly by being
willing to read
Skyline
before it was polished or perfected. Most
important were the two women of my critique group, Jonna Gjevre and Kate
Lansing. Both provided invaluable feedback, reading scenes and chapters several
times, always focusing on making this a better book. Thanks also goes to my
editor Tiffany Yates Martin. You may have made me depressed for months on end,
but you also made
Skyline
the work it is today. Without you, I could
never have been as confident and proud.
An insane amount of thanks
also goes to all the historians who came before me. Whether it is Edwin G.
Burrows and Mike Wallace, writers of
Gotham
, Eric W. Sanderson, writer
of
Mannahatta
, or Nellie Bly herself, without dense histories laying out
New York City’s complicated past, Charlotte, Monroe, and Bill would’ve had
nowhere to visit. Any mistakes or embellishments are my own, of course, but I
tried to keep the eventual timeline close to the truth. The history of New York
City is riddled with fires (but not necessarily bombs), renovations, and newer
buildings replacing the old. What my characters see in
Skyline
is but a
hint at all that New York City’s past has to offer.
Finally, the most thanks go
to my husband, Jeof Oyster. Without him, I would never have had the time nor
courage to write
Skyline
. He read dozens of drafts, heard all my whining
when timelines wouldn’t align like I wanted, and worked hard to make the work
go from words on my computer to the volume in your hands. Like it says in the
dedication, I’m supremely lucky I found him in this timeline.
Coming Soon…
For news and announcements about
Skyline
,
including local events and release date for the next book in the series, sign
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Skyline
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Skyline
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Skyline
on Amazon.com, even if you didn’t like it, because
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Please stay in
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Charlotte, Monroe, and Bill have a lot more work ahead of them, and I’d love
for you to come along.
