The Children Who Time Lost (53 page)

“It’s not what you think,” Carrie said.

I shot her a glare and returned to the laptop, ignoring yet more pleading from members of my team to speak to them. I had to know the truth. Was Dylan still alive or dead? I went back to the original spreadsheet and scrolled back to Dylan’s name.

“Don’t do it,” Carrie said. “Just let him go.”

I faced her for a moment before turning back to the screen. Then I pressed the “status” button. It said “deceased.” I sniffled and dropped to my knees. Tears flowed from my eyes. My baby was dead. I was too late to save him. The silence from the others meant they could hear my sobs.

“What’s going on, Rachel?” Michael said again.

I sniffled a few more times. “He’s … he’s dead.”

Silence came back for a moment.

“Who’s dead?” Curtis said.

“Dylan. He’s dead. The other children, too. They’re all dead.” I scowled at Carrie. “They killed them all.”

More silence followed. Then I heard Doug respond to Lorenzo again, saying everything was all right.

“How do you know?” Curtis said.

I told them everything I’d seen after opening the laptop. No one spoke for almost two minutes.

“Rachel,” I heard Carrie say a few times.

I wanted to turn around and shoot her in the head. The mission was over, so why not? I didn’t care about finding the journal, the Orchestrator, the rogue travelers or even the master site anymore. All that rang in my head was that Dylan was dead. But I didn’t understand why they would kill their own. Why kill the children time had lost? They were all Shriniks. I stared down at my dress and felt ridiculous. All the planning, all the hope that I’d finally know what had happened to Dylan, only to discover the cruel truth that he’d been murdered. I faced Carrie. “Why? Why did you kill my son?”

She stared at the floor without speaking.

“Answer me,” I growled.

I started to stand but noticed a miniature screen in the bottom left corner of the laptop. All I could make out was
2086
. It was the year Curtis said he had come from. The year the Shriniks in his reality had declared all-out war against humans. I maximized the screen. Thousands upon thousands of dead men lay across acres of land, with thousands more standing over them, interspersed with Shriniks. I frowned and scrolled down. Why did Carrie have this image on her computer? At the bottom of the screen was a table with three columns and at least thirty rows. The first column said “Year,” and the second and third said “Humans” and “Shriniks,” respectively. I scrolled to the bottom. The last entry was “2056.” Under “Humans,” it said “5 billion,” and under “Shriniks” “2 billion.” I glanced at Carrie and continued going up through the rows. By the time I reached 2060, the numbers of both humans and Shriniks were 3.5 billion.

“My God,” I said.

Carrie didn’t reply.

I continued working my way up until I reached 2086. The number of Shriniks was 6.5 billion, the number of humans five hundred million.

“It was you all along,” I said to Carrie, “wasn’t it?”

She met my gaze but still didn’t speak.

“There were no rogue travelers, were there? You were all in on it. You were the ones messing with the time lines. The meteor was all you.”

She smiled thinly.

“It was your plan all along, wasn’t it? To trigger the infertility so we would have no choice but to beg you to send children back. But it wasn’t human babies you were sending back, was it? You were replacing us with your own people.” I shook my head in disgust. All the child deaths on the spreadsheet started to make sense. It must have been because of acclimatization issues. The whole thing probably had something to do with 2086. They wanted to outnumber us by the time the war came. I couldn’t think of anything else. But why kill their own people at the facility? Did they know we were watching? Was it some kind of show for us?

“My God,” I heard Doug say. Michael said the same, and then Curtis echoed the sentiment.

“You’re too late,” Carrie said. “It’s already done. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“We can destroy the portal at the master site,” Curtis said.

I frowned, put my hand to my ear and stood up.

“Curtis is right,” Michael said. “We really need that journal now. If we destroy the master site’s portal, we end time travel and their plans go up in smoke.”

“Who have you been talking to?” Carrie said. “Michael?”

I ignored her, walked toward the door and placed my hand against the earpiece. “And you’re sure it’s inside the liquor cabinet? I didn’t see anything when she went in there.”

“I promise you,” Michael said, “it’s there.”

I turned around, squeezed the Glock and moved toward Carrie. Then I leaned down, and she met my gaze with unblinking eyes.

“Where’s the safe?”

She just stared at me. Then she smiled. “I knew you were up to something, but I didn’t think you’d be this brave.”

“She’s wasting time, Rachel,” Curtis said.

I walked to the glass liquor cabinet and opened it. I lifted the bottles of spirits with care and placed them on the floor, but there seemed to be an unending supply.

“You sure it’s here?” I said into the earpiece.

“I promise you,” Michael said. “It’s right at the back.”

“That is Michael, isn’t it?” Carrie said.

I glanced at her and turned back to the bottles. But then I stopped and felt faint. Dylan was dead. I told myself that over and over. I shut my eyes for a moment and fought back tears. He couldn’t be. It had been my job to save him and I failed. I thought of Carrie sitting there, bound and at my mercy. I could have killed her right there and then, but then what? We’d probably all have been caught and killed. I shook my head and moved a bottle of bourbon to the side.

“Tell him that he’s outdone himself this time. This smells of him.”

I still didn’t speak. It felt like an eternity that I’d been moving the bottles. Doug had responded to Lorenzo a few more times on the radio. They were probably becoming suspicious. It was looking like we were chasing a dead end. I stopped and looked at Carrie. She met my gaze with a weird calm.

“So all that nonsense about nobody knowing how the infertility reversed itself was a big lie, wasn’t it? You could have stopped it at anytime. You just wanted us to stay desperate, so we’d keep bringing back your own babies from the future.”

Carrie said nothing.

“But why? Why are you doing all this? I thought you wanted peace.”

She twisted her head to the left and stared at the floor.

“At least tell me why you had Dylan killed.”

She didn’t speak. I wanted to smash the Glock against her head so bad, but I fought the urge. I had to understand her motives. “The children then. Why kill them? They were your own kind, for God’s sake.” So was Dylan, probably, but I still couldn’t say it.

She turned and frowned at me in shock. “You really do care for them, don’t you?”

I squatted and nodded.

“But why? They’re nothing to do with you.”

“Because one of the women you kidnapped begged me to save them before dying. She felt just like I did for Dylan.”

She turned away from me. “You’re an idiot, Rachel. You’re not cut out for all this. I’d get out of here if I were you.”

“Stop talking,” Michael said. “You need to find the safe. I promise you, it’s in there.”

I hissed and stood again, moving yet more bottles to the floor. It looked never-ending. But then I saw the edge of what looked like a curved chrome handle. I shifted three more bottles of bourbon to the side, and the safe came into full view.

“I found it,” I said.

I heard everyone cheer through the earpiece.

“Now open the cabinet underneath,” Michael said.

I took a step back and studied a metal cabinet beneath where the liquor was stored. I pulled the handle back until I saw a square screen like the one outside the room.
ID
was displayed in bold across the center.

“Do you see the screen?” Michael said.

“Yes. It’s asking for identification.”

“You know what you have to do,” Curtis said.

I nodded and faced Carrie.

“Forget it,” she said. “I’m not opening that safe.”

I pointed the gun at her head. “I’ll shoot, I swear.”

“Then do it, but I’m not opening the safe.”

I glared at her for a moment, and then I removed the earpiece from my ear and placed it on the table. Carrie’s grin faded. I walked past her and through the door that led to the other section of the room, the actual bedroom. Dim lighting glowed over expensive aluminum effects everywhere, from the en-suite bathroom doors to her reading table. The bed was king-size, with an endless supply of pillows. I grabbed one and walked back into the study.

Carrie’s eyes widened. I saw fear on her face for the first time. “What’re you going to do with that?” she said.

I knelt beside her and held the pillow up with my left hand. “I need to keep things quiet.”

She shifted on the floor and tugged on the ropes around her hands. “This isn’t you, Rachel. You’re not going to kill me.”

“But I will if you don’t open that safe.”

She looked at me with genuine fear but didn’t move an inch. “If you kill me, you’ll never get that safe open.”

“I could move your body.” I paused and smiled. “Actually, no.” I looked around the room and rose. I walked to her table and opened the drawer in it. After rummaging through it, I saw a long sharp hunting knife. I grabbed it and traced a circle around my eye with it. “Or I could get creative.”

Her face turned white. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me. One.”

“Please, Rachel. Don’t do this.”

“Two.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Three.”

“You won’t hurt me. I know you won’t.”

I looked at her with unblinking eyes. Then I dropped the knife to the floor, lunged forward and pressed the pillow against her face. She moaned and struggled to move her restrained hands and feet. I pressed harder and her moaning grew softer and softer. I didn’t want to stop. I thought of Dylan and the poor children they’d killed. I thought of the billions of humans they’d slaughtered in the future. But I could still do something to stop all of that from happening. Just not like this. I lifted the pillow and her face had turned almost completely white. She looked no different from any human who’d almost been smothered to death. She took long ragged breaths for almost a minute.

“Okay, okay. I’ll do it. Help me up.”

I sighed and placed the pillow beside the knife on the floor. Then I put the Glock into my purse and dragged her across the floor to the screen. A green light appeared on the screen after a few seconds, and I heard a click. Carrie turned her face away and lay on the floor.

I put the earpiece back in. “It’s open,” I said.

Silence greeted me before I heard Michael’s angry voice. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. What now?”

“Okay,” Michael said. “It should be the only thing in there.”

I pulled the handle. The journal lay in the middle. It looked as large as an average-size book. The brown laminated cover looked worn, like it had passed through many hands. I grabbed it and just stood there as if I couldn’t believe it was in my hands.

The door burst open. A pretty young woman in a lime-green dress stood by the entrance, a pistol in her right hand. I gasped. “What’re you doing here?”

She didn’t respond but just stood there, her grip on the gun tightening. Her jet-black hair and blue eyes were as I remembered, as was her unblemished skin. It was Amelia Simmonds, the other winner from California who’d gone to 2108 with me. But her sudden appearance made no sense. She turned and shut the door.

I squeezed the journal and inched back. Amelia stepped forward, her eyes devoid of any emotion, like a zombie’s. Maybe she was being controlled like Willie was.

“What’s going on?” Michael said through the earpiece. I didn’t answer.

Amelia continued taking small steps forward. Then she stopped and eyed the journal in my hand. “I can’t let you take that.”

My eyes narrowed. I looked at the journal and then back at her. “How do you know about this?”

“I know about everything, Rachel. I can’t believe how selfish you are.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you’re planning to destroy the portal. Angela came to me and told me they’d give me another chance to get a baby but that you came back here to stop time travel altogether. I stop you, I get a baby.”

I wondered how they knew all that. Something didn’t feel right. I moved forward. “I promise, they’re lying to you. Just listen—”

“Shut your mouth,” she said. “You’re not in charge here. I am. She said that journal contains the secret to time travel, which is why you want it.”

“I’m not doing this for me,” I said. “There is so much you don’t understand. Just put the gun down and we’ll talk.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Carrie said.

“Not another word from you,” I said to Carrie.

Carrie smiled. “You’re not the one in control anymore.”

I faced Amelia again. “I’m begging you. Walk out of here with me and I’ll explain everything.”

“I don’t want your explanations. I just want a child.” She wiped tears from her face. Then she extended the gun and shook her head in sorrow.

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll give you the journal. But please put the gun down.”

More tears fell from her eyes. “I can’t do that, Rachel. The journal isn’t enough. They also told me that you’re the biggest threat to me getting my baby.”

I frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen the future. Angela showed me. There won’t be any more time travel. And it will all be because of you. As long as you’re alive, I won’t get my baby.”

My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? You’re going to kill me?”

“I have to. You’ve already had your chance. I want mine now. I’ve dreamed of having a baby since I was a little girl.”

I reeled back but hit the open safe door. I grimaced and moved to scratch my back but Amelia extended the gun even farther. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Please just listen to what I have to say. I’m trying to stop the infertility from ever happening. Don’t you want to have a natural birth?”