The Flight of the Silvers (20 page)

The moment the invisible bolt struck the Roosevelt Man, his tempic tendril disappeared and he stumbled backward over the railing. He fell nine feet, cracking his skull on the reception desk before crumpling into a motionless heap on the marble.

Czerny dropped the chaser and examined his bleeding stomach. He knew from battlefield experience that abdominal wounds, while painful, were typically slow to kill. With the proper triage, he’d have hours to get himself to a reviver.

His legs grew weak. He teetered backward. In his feeble attempt to gain balance, his heel slipped on a patch of his own blood.

He went down again.

—

The Motorcycle Man moved faster than Hannah. He gained yards on her every time she looked back.

Their high-speed foot chase took them past the front of the building. As soon as Hannah passed the entrance, she felt the man’s cool glove on the strap of her shirt. He’d been running too fast to swing his katana. His goal now was to pull her down.

Frenzied, Hannah broke to the left, toward the green van parked in the driveway. She spied a pair of heavy boots on the far side of the vehicle, toes pointed upward. Beyond them, Erin’s freckled arms lay prone on the asphalt.

The last working piston in Hannah’s brain registered the sight as two dead Salgados, until she turned the corner around the van and saw just one woman in two places.

Suddenly her mind and limbs all quit in synch. She fell to the lawn.

The actress wriggled away on her stomach, gasping in panic. The Motorcycle Man de-shifted and approached her at a leisurely pace. His sword swayed idly in his grip.

Hannah flipped over and scuttled backward out of his shadow. “Why are you doing this? What did I do to you?”

The Motorcycle Man stood over her, pointing his blade at her stomach. All he had to do was lean in and she’d be impaled through the gut, stabbed on the grass like park litter.

It was at that moment that Hannah discovered something hard beneath her. As the Motorcycle Man leaned into his stab, she screamed into velocity. She rolled over, grabbed the rock from the grass, and then hurled it with all her strength.

It flew from her hand at 205 miles an hour and careened off her aggressor’s helmet. The visor cracked. His balance teetered. He toppled back to the grass.

Hannah climbed to her feet and lunged toward him in a furious streak, thumping his chest as he made his slow-motion fall.

“You asshole! You killed her! You cut her to pieces!”

Hannah hit him five times before he collided with the ground. On her final punch, she felt something snap inside his rib cage. She chucked his sword over the gate and then watched him writhe from a safe distance. She knew she should go inside and check on the others, but she couldn’t seem to work her muscles. A cruel little voice in her head insisted that the people she cared about were already gone.
Everyone dies, Hannah. You should know that by now. Every friend. Every sister. Everyone under the sky.

The actress crumpled to her knees at the base of the fence. She wept at high speed.

—

Mia cursed her future self for not teaching her the security console. In her frantic button-mashing, she’d somehow constrained her surveillance images to the second-floor cameras—six in test labs, two in the hallway, one in Theo’s room. The former prodigy was awake and fully dressed. He nervously paced the rug with a wooden post in his hand, a leg he’d unscrewed from his desk chair. He’d been on high alert since 5
A.M.
without having any idea why.

Through the monitors, Mia saw a very good reason for him to be scared.

A bald-headed gunman patrolled the hallway at a methodical pace, as if sniffing for prey. Though Mia couldn’t tell his height from her bird’s-eye vantage, he carried the thick frame of a wrestler. His sleeveless black T-shirt advertised every bulge of his powerful arms. His face was concealed by a bandana mask and sunglasses.

Mia didn’t know if he was moving farther or closer to Theo. All she could see was that his revolver looked powerful enough to shoot through walls.

For the third time, she grabbed the public address microphone and furiously hit its buttons.

“Theo? Theo, can you hear me?”

He kept pacing, oblivious. Mia cursed again.

The intruder suddenly ducked into a lab. He placed his back against the wall, aiming a vigilant gaze through the door crack. He was ambushing someone. Who?

On the second hallway monitor, Zack popped into view. Mia blanched.

“Oh my God . . .”

—

The cartoonist stepped off the landing with a listless yawn. He wasn’t fully awake yet, and he was nervous about all the wrong things. His mind was still trying to predict Quint’s next move.

He saw the door to Quint’s office and fought the temptation to reverse the lock. Maybe his parting cash was already in there. Or maybe he would find some smoking-gun evidence that would convince the others to leave with him. The closer Zack got to his departure with Theo, the worse he felt about splintering the group.

Sighing, he abandoned his burglary scheme. Odds were slim he’d find anything useful in there. And knowing Quint, he probably trained his mice to attack.

He continued down the hall, glancing in perplexity at the many unmarked doors. He cupped his hands around his mouth and projected his voice.

“Uh, hey, Theo? It’s Zack. Just thought I’d play fire marshal and see if you’re okay. The thing is, I don’t know which room is yours. Can you give me a yell? Or better yet, come out?”

After ten more seconds and two more calls, Zack reeled with fresh unease. Three of his friends seemed to be missing in action.
Half my world’s population
, he bleakly mused.

“Okay, Theo, I’m at orange alert now. Last chance to speak up before I get twitchy.”

Theo kept his back to his door, his face trembling. He couldn’t bring himself to move. His higher functions and lower instincts seemed united in the fear that Zack would die if he made a sound.

Frustrated, Zack began testing locked doors. He soon noticed one that was open a crack.

As he touched the knob, a tinny squeal filled the building, loud enough to make him wince. Mia’s high voice blared down from the ceiling.

“
—AWAY
FROM THERE! THERE’S A GUY WITH A GUN IN THERE! ZACK!”

The door flung open. A large man shoved Zack across the corridor, pinning him against the elevator doors. Hot air escaped his lungs.

The intruder pressed his gun to Zack’s temple. Mia screamed through the speakers.

“NO! I ALREADY CALLED THE POLICE! THEY’LL BE HERE ANY SECOND!”

The man kept his gaze and his muzzle fixed. He spoke in a deep graveled voice, peppered with the unmistakable inflections of a native New Yorker.

“Would you please do something about the girl?”

Zack shook his head. “I don’t know what you want me to—”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Zack could see a small microphone clipped to the man’s collar.

Mia debated extending her bluff. In truth, she had no luck reaching anyone on the phone. The concepts of 0 and 911 were purely old-America. There were no signs, no stickies, no wisdom again from Future Mia on how to reach the authorities.

She suddenly felt a deep chill on her skin. She saw the steam of her own breath. Mia turned around, just as the door to the security room grew white with frost. It creaked. It splintered.

—

The moment the gun touched his skin, Zack lost his foothold on time. He existed in a breathless state of suspension, in which every sensation and detail was exponentially magnified. He could feel each bead of sweat on his skin, count every peach-fuzz hair on the scalp of his assailant. He could see through the man’s sunglasses, into his dark brown eyes.
Early thirties.
Italian. Maybe Jewish. Doesn’t look crazy. Doesn’t even look angry.

For all his hyperclarity, Zack couldn’t reach the trigger to his own special weapon. His weirdness rested deep on the other side of his mind, behind a cyclone of fearful distraction. He didn’t want to die here. Not like this. Not without knowing why.

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

Without taking his eyes off Zack, the large man fired his gun at two different parts of the ceiling. Zack grimaced at the booming gunshots, then noticed the new glass fragments on the floor.

He shot the cameras.
He shot both cameras without even looking.

The gunman pulled down his bandana. He had a wide and bumpy nose that had clearly been broken more than once, plus several tiny scars along his cheeks and chin. Zack could only guess that he’d been picking fights from the moment he left the crib.

“Folks call me Rebel, but that doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that this is my world and you ripped a hole in it.”

Zack spotted a hint of movement in the corner of his vision. He fought to keep his gaze on Rebel. “You think it was my choice to come here?”

“Doesn’t matter either. The longer you people live, the worse the problem gets. I’ve seen the future, brother. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop it from happening.”

He pressed the gun to Zack’s chest. What was once a cool muzzle now burned like a stove.

“No!” Zack yelled. “Just go! Go!”

“Sorry. This is how it’s gotta be.”

Zack wasn’t talking to Rebel. Ten feet away, Theo continued his sneaking approach. He’d crept out of his room, chair leg in hand, then deftly skirted the broken glass on the floor.

Sadly, none of his stealth mattered. The moment he got within eight feet of Rebel, the man’s muscular arm swung like a hinge.

He shot Theo without even looking.

—

Five seconds and fifty-one degrees ago, the microphone dropped from Mia’s numb fingers. It crashed at her feet, among the shards of Eric Salgado’s coffee mug.

She knew exactly how he died now.

A gloved fist struck the door, knocking away a frozen patch of wood. The blonde in the hall was barely an inch taller than Mia. The lines around her sharp blue eyes revealed her as an older woman. Mia could see from her thick white parka that she was also much, much warmer.

She registered Mia through a wide, unblinking stare. “God. You really are just a kid.”

Mia desperately scanned her memory, trying to recall the note she’d received about the Winter Blonde. Her future self had given her the woman’s full name and advised Mia to use it as a stalling tactic. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember it now.

“I didn’t do anything to you! Please don’t kill me!”

The blonde’s voice cracked with anguish. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to do this. But I have a daughter your age. She has to live.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I’m afraid it has everything to do with you. All of you. I’m so sorry. There’s no other option.”

The blonde took a step back. Thick tears ran under her mask.

“This’ll be quick. I promise.”

As Mia felt her entire future whittle down to milliseconds, she closed her eyes and thought about her family. If there was truly justice in the multiverse, then she would travel back across the great divide and rest in the afterlife with her dad, her brothers, and Nana. She didn’t want to end up in this world’s Heaven, where she’d only know one or two Salgados.

Suddenly a pair of radiant orbs materialized in front of the woman’s eyes. She covered her face just as a piercing electronic squeal—an echo of the feedback that had blared from all speakers a minute ago—erupted inside her ears. She fell to the ground screaming.

By the time Mia dared to open her eyes, David faced her through the broken door. He pointed to a metal prod hanging on the wall.

“Can I have that, please?”

“What?”

“The baton, Mia. The zapper. I need it. Quickly.”

With shaking hands, Mia tossed the weapon to David. He studied every side of it until he found the power switch. Now he jabbed the electric end at the back of the Winter Blonde’s head. She shrieked again, then fell silent.

Mia stared at David, dumbfounded. “She was going to kill me.”

“I know. I saw. Listen to me—”

“She was going to kill me!”

David grabbed her shoulder. “Mia, I know you’re upset but you have to pull it together. Please. We’re not safe yet.”

Krista Bloom. Her name was Krista Bloom
.
Mia recalled the note now. Too little, too late. She remembered a few other things as well.

“Oh no! Zack!”

She spun around to the monitors, only to find that her view of the upstairs hallway had gone dark. The cameras had been shot and killed by a very dangerous man.

—

Theo slid down the blood-flecked wall. He couldn’t help but wonder if his latest move had been a first attempt at heroics or merely a second try at suicide.

In either case, he knew he’d failed. A last-second twitch had thrust a less vital piece of himself into the path of the bullet. It cut a nasty gash across his arm, slicing the skin before piercing the wall. As he examined the mess below his T-shirt sleeve, his legs gave out and he slumped to the floor.

While keeping Zack pinned to the elevator, Rebel turned to look at Theo. Something had gone wrong. He’d foreseen the bullet’s entire journey before pulling the trigger. In his thoughts, he watched it go right through Theo’s heart.

Perplexed, Rebel re-aimed his weapon at Theo. Once again he took a glimpse into the immediate future, checking to see if his shot would connect.

The vision he received, though accurate, was not good news at all.

“No!”

He had just enough time to face Zack, right as the cartoonist rediscovered his weirdness.

Suddenly Rebel’s gun flared with cool white light. A thousand needles of pain covered every corner of his hand. Bellowing, he dropped his gun and hostage.

Zack stumbled backward, startled by his results. He’d focused his thoughts on rusting Rebel’s weapon. Now the revolver lay on the ground, nine weeks older but still very functional. Rebel’s hand, however, had become a gruesome horror. The skin was white and bloodless, with scaly splotches of rot. His fingernails had turned a gangrenous black.