Timestorm (28 page)

A lightness filled my chest, relieving me of some of the more recent pain. “I know. We’ll figure it out.”

After that, I opened my mind, focused on the time and space between here and home. Focused on the moment we left—smelling it, tasting it, breathing it. The world vanished and pulled me into a new oblivion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

DAY 1: 2009

Two things were immediately apparent as we landed back in the present:

1) My brain didn’t explode.

2) The Eyewall firing squad wasn’t waiting there for our return.

*   *   *

I knew we’d hit the mark just fine. I felt myself rejoining with the exact millisecond that I’d left 2009. I also knew that hitting this mark was the most natural form of time travel for my brain to handle. I wasn’t sure exactly what I had expected to find. Possibly the parade of Eyewall agents that had been holding us all at gunpoint when we left? Maybe Senator Healy or my dead body lying outside that cage they’d kept the other version of me in for months.

After making my initial assessment, I released Holly and was immediately bombarded by Dad, Courtney, and Holly, who took turns lifting my sleeves, checking for bruises, and looking at my ears to check for bleeding. Dad produced a flashlight and shined it in my eyes.

“You’re okay?” Dad asked. “Any pain at all?”

I knew the answer was important, and since I hadn’t noticed myself dying the first time around, I took a second to step back to shake out my limbs and slowly go through each section of my body piece by piece. There were some sore places that I’d had before I left 3200, but nothing new.

I looked up at him, my eyes wide with relief. “I’m … I’m fine. Really.”

He sighed and laughed at the same time and then hugged me. Courtney joined in until we were finally interrupted by Mason’s asking the most important question of the day, “Okay, so, where’s Eyewall? Are you sure this is the right time?”

“I’m positive.” I stepped back from the group hug and drew my gun, ready for whatever happened to be on the other side of that door. “Is everyone else okay?”

“I’m fine,” both Stewart and Mason replied. Marshall, of course, survived with no problems at all, and Dad, Holly, and Courtney appeared unharmed.

I elbowed Courtney in the side, feeling light with relief. “My jump was totally better than yours. I’m pretty sure I landed a couple milliseconds before you.”

She snorted a laugh. “Did not.”

As the eight of us braced ourselves for a fight, tentatively stepping through the door of the small room and into the hallway, passing the warehouse cage that the other me had been held in, all we found was eerie silence and no trace that anyone had entered this building for quite some time.

“There’s dust on the floor,” Stewart pointed out.

Dad leaned over and examined the untouched ground in front of us. “No footprints.”

“Do you think it’s different because we destroyed future Eyewall?” Adam asked.

Holly exchanged glances with him and I could see the questions silently arising—what would that mean for them? Were their lives altered, too?

No one had an answer. Not even Marshall. When we left the building and walked outside into the warm summer air, it became apparent that the changes to 2009 extended far beyond the absence of Eyewall. The streets were nearly silent. Only a couple cabs passed by, no buses, no people on the sidewalks. Which was why the sound of running footsteps caused everyone but Courtney to raise their guns and point them at the lone figure of a man approaching us in the darkness.

“Agent Collins?” Holly said, lowering her weapon. Adam did the same, stepping toward the man who had been their Eyewall superior. But I knew Agent Collins wasn’t on Eyewall’s side—not after he warned me about protecting Holly when I interrogated him in Tempest headquarters before leaving 2009. Maybe we had landed a few minutes early and they were just now preparing to rush into the building? But that didn’t explain the dust, the lack of footprints, the absence of Healy and the caged version of me.

Marshall held his gun steady but also moved toward the middle-aged agent who, I noticed, hadn’t drawn a weapon and didn’t appear surprised to see the eight of us here.

“Dr. Melvin sent me,” Collins said, lifting his hands and facing Marshall. “We shouldn’t discuss too much out here. There are a lot of government personnel monitoring this area.”

Dr. Melvin’s supposed to be dead, so either something is off or he’s taking orders from a dead man.

“Which government personnel?” Dad asked, looking Collins over. “And why are they monitoring the area?”

“The virus.” Collins’s eyes were wide as if he was afraid to tell us the truth. “Because of the virus.”

Marshall looked around, taking everything in. For the first time ever, I watched the careful composure drop from Marshall’s face and form something other than anger or greed. I’d seen both of those looks on him before. But this was different. The expression that filled his face right then was a cross between wonder and panic. Neither of which was too reassuring. “Deludere Virus,” he said under his breath.

Collins’s expression was grim but he gave a nod to Marshall. “We need to get underground.”

“Is it contagious?” Courtney asked. “Should we hold our breath or something?”

“No one knows exactly how it’s transmitted.” Collins turned his back on us, pulling out his own weapon and heading down the street, eyes darting around as we all followed behind him.

“But you know, don’t you?” Holly said.

Collins looked over his shoulder at her and then faced forward again. “Dr. Melvin has a theory. I’ll let him explain.”

“Melvin’s alive?” Stewart asked.

Collins took a moment to assess her question before finally answering. “Yes.”

I forced back the sickening and gut-wrenching image of Dr. Melvin lying dead on the floor of his office, sheet white and cold as ice.
He’s alive. That’s all that matters.

“This is totally going to turn all
I Am Legend,
isn’t it?” I whispered to Adam, who was now beside me. “The crazy monsters are going to come flying at us any second trying to eat our flesh.”

Adam’s eyebrows lifted. “Deludere. It’s Latin for—”

“Delusion,” Stewart finished. “A false belief.”

We all fell silent at that revelation. I had no idea if this was connected to the merging timelines and the delusions Holly, Stewart, and Adam had all experienced along with Dr. Melvin.

The entrance to the underground CIA headquarters was in a desolate subway station. Agent Collins glanced around before opening a heavy brown door, revealing a concrete staircase, with rusty metal railings and paint peeling from the walls. The stench in the air was similar to the smell you’d find after leaving sweaty gym clothes zipped up in a bag for a week. We trudged down several flights of stairs; Holly’s arm brushed mine a few too many times to be accidental. I had envisioned our return to 2009 as the moment she’d stop relying on me, take off on her own, and go back to her life, but even without any words from her, I could feel them floating across the space between us—I’m not done with this. I’m not done with us yet. Even in light of the looming mysterious changes to 2009, I felt a tiny surge of hope simply walking beside her, watching the walls slowly crumble between us.

It took about twenty minutes to reach headquarters, which were still located below the NYU Hospital, despite all the changes. We found Dr. Melvin in a lab with Lily Kendrick. Of course, like an idiot, I ran up and hugged her. Instead of leaping with joy at my reappearance, she stiffened in the way you might when a relative you don’t remember tries to hug you. I released her and stepped back.

“Um … this is new,” she said to me before looking at Stewart and then Mason. “Where the hell have you two been for the past three months? I thought you were dead! We all thought you were dead.”

“Uh…” Mason stuttered.

“Oh my lord.” Dr. Melvin had wide, crazy eyes as he moved toward Courtney. “I can’t … I mean … how?”

Our group had now grown to eleven members and we were huddled in the lab, everyone looking confused until Dad stepped into the middle of the room and held his hands up.

“All right, obviously we are
not
where we expected to be, so before anyone has a heart attack or draws weapons, let’s assess the situation, get our bearings.” Dad nodded toward Marshall, who walked to the giant whiteboard and picked up a dry-erase marker.

“Collins, you first,” Marshall said. “State your name, position, and year of recruitment.”

Collins snapped to attention, obviously recognizing Marshall as his boss, which was another strange phenomenon since he’s been an Eyewall leader before we left 2009. “Agent Mike Collins. Graduate of Dunston Academy’s early CIA recruitment program. Tempest Agent. Official CIA recruitment in 1989. Joined Tempest in 1996.”

Dunston Academy? The teenage Agent Meyer Senior in the 1950s had told me he graduated from that school, too, as well as his father.

“Tempest?” Holly and Adam said together.

Marshall let out a frustrated breath and then grabbed Courtney’s arm, shoving another marker in her hand. “Okay, in addition, state which individuals currently in this lab you recognize and have interacted with in person and under what circumstances. Kid A will record those responses.”

Courtney glared at him but uncapped the marker anyway. “
Kid A
happens to have a name.”

Collins let his gaze drift around the room as he listed off his answer. “Dr. Melvin, met him on my first day with Tempest. Chief Marshall, also met him on day one. Agent Kendrick, I oversaw her training beginning in 2008. Agent Sterling and Agent Stewart started working under me in 2007. Haven’t seen them since they left for a mission in the Middle East three months ago.” His eyes fell on Dad. “Agent Meyer is my superior and the man who recruited me from my former CIA division.”

Marshall nodded toward Holly and Adam. “Do you recognize those two?”

“No, sir.”

“Maybe he always worked for Tempest,” I heard Holly whisper to Adam. “A double agent.”

Marshall rested a hand on Courtney’s shoulder while she wrote responses as quickly as possible. “And Child A?” Then he pointed at me. “Or Child B?”

Collins glanced wearily at Courtney. “I know them as Agent Meyer’s adopted children … but … well…”

Courtney turned around and rolled her eyes. “I’m dead. We know. That’s why I’m mysteriously three years younger than my twin even though I was born first. Okay, moving on…”

“Why is no one talking about the fact that Stewart and I are fucking MIA?” Mason interrupted. “Are we dead or what?”

“What he means,” Stewart clarified, “is that … unlike Junior and Blondie here, neither Mason nor I returned to the point where we left, so…”

“There might be duplicates,” Kendrick finished.

I raised my hand but spoke before anyone called on me. “I think I can eliminate a few individual assessments assuming that in this current 2009, neither I, nor Holly nor Adam have joined the CIA, which is why Collins and Kendrick know Courtney and me only as Agent Meyer’s kids, correct?” I waited a second to get a nod from both Collins and Kendrick. “Marshall is the boss of Tempest, Dad is a subboss, and so is Collins. Now, have any of the people who didn’t just time-travel from the year 3200 ever heard of Eyewall?”

Dr. Melvin slowly lifted a hand in the air. “The child. She’s the reason I knew you’d arrive today and where you’d arrive and that none of you have any idea of the danger involved in returning to your former homes.”

“Emily,” Stewart and Holly both muttered.

“Can we just get to explaining that whole deadly viral outbreak thing?” I asked.

Kendrick stared at me. “Why did you try to hug me? I’ve never interacted with you in person.”

I had to admit, that stung a little. I valued Kendrick’s friendship even more than I’d realized. “We were partners in Tempest. I guess you could say we were friends.”

She must have read some of the disappointment in my face because her expression turned less hard, making her look more like the Kendrick I had known.

I clapped my hands together. “Okay. Virus. Danger. The world is different. Let’s talk about that.”

“I second Jackson’s suggestion,” Adam said.

“Me, too,” Holly said.

Honestly, I had expected Dr. Melvin or Marshall to start explaining first, but it was Dad who cleared his throat and started talking, his voice low, carefully concealing his emotions. “It was a theory of Eileen’s … creating an alternate world … the one Jackson calls World B … might eventually cause—”

“Convergence,” I suddenly remembered from a chat in Dr. Melvin’s office that seemed like five centuries ago.

Dr. Melvin nodded. “It’s not a clean break; splitting off to create this World B might not be completely separate. The virus most likely started from time jumps to World B. Any tiny alteration that Jackson made in that world which is different from this world causes delusions to occur in any individual who might have been affected by those changes.”

“And Jackson would have no idea of the chain reaction he’d created. It would all seem subtle,” Kendrick chimed in.

Dad’s hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing it tight. My heart was already racing, my palms sweating. Could I really have caused this viral outbreak and to what extent?

“The affected individuals then see two possible paths to every one journey,” Dr. Melvin explained. “They lose the ability to differentiate reality from delusion, or at least in the eyes of the U.S. government and the United Nations, the alternative paths they are seeing or remembering are viewed as delusions. But
we
know it’s reality, just not this reality.”

“Wait,” Holly said. “You mean you haven’t shared this information with the government? Or the UN? Isn’t that a little extreme, keeping your time-travel information a secret when there are people going crazy out there?”

“If we thought our information would help with finding a cure, of course we’d share it,” Dr. Melvin said. “But everything we know does nothing but confirm the fact that there is no cure and it’s only going to get worse.”