People gasped, and Damien looked surprised. The recording continued:
“I did not intend for Damien to be found and blamed for this. In my room you can find the schematics and plans for the assassination.
“You don’t have to hunt me down and kill me. I’ve taken care of that last bit for you. Good luck, Federation. Today the sun is going to rise, the sun is going to set, and everything will be right.”
The message went to static, then silence. No one could speak.
Kira pulled out her own cell phone and dispatched police to Jamie’s residence, but they were already on their way.
The Council deliberated, then unanimously agreed to suspend Damien’s execution. The workers took the blindfold off Damien, and he stepped down from the platform that was he not meant to emerge from alive.
No one seemed to remember that Ariel and Thomas were still there. They stood against the wall, dazed.
“Were you expecting that?” said Thomas.
“No. Were you?”
Kira was speaking to the Council, and the two time travelers could only catch a few words.
“I’m sorry,” said the Councilwoman, “but without speaking to the princess, we can’t make any decision—”
Another phone started ringing. Kira pulled it out of her pocket, checked it. “It’s yours,” she called to Thomas, tossing it to him.
He caught it with one hand and opened it. “Hello?” he said. “You’re back already? Is Zoë all right?” He listened. “Okay. I’ll pass it on.” He held up the phone. “Message from Emily Montag. She wants to speak to a member of the Council.”
“The princess?” said the Councilwoman. She took the phone and listened. “You’re sure?” She looked up, then spoke to Kira for a moment, then turned to the guards.
“Arrest the Commander immediately for conspiracy against Damien Martínez and the princess,” she said. “We need to conduct a full investigation.”
“No—wait—you can’t—” said Delacroix, as guards handcuffed him. “Kira! Tell them I didn’t do this.”
Kira stared at him for a moment. “You don’t make the decisions around here anymore,” she said. She nodded to the Council. “Take him away.”
“No,” he protested, as guards pulled him back into the prison. “Kira! Kira!”
A member of the council was speaking to another. “But do we have any proof of a plot, besides the girl’s word?”
Thomas strode up to them, clearing his throat, and handed them Ariel’s music player. “Here,” he said. “Listen to the first recording.” Before the woman could ask questions, he slipped back into the crowd.
When he found Ariel, she looked perplexed and flushed.
“…Kiddo?” said Thomas.
She swayed, and Thomas caught her. He signaled to Kira that he needed help, and she came over. (Between the Council making calls to the press to do damage control and discussing the Commander’s possible plot against Emily, no one noticed them.)
“She’s sick,” said Thomas. “It’s the falling-sickness, I think—”
“You should get out of here anyway,” said Kira, not quite listening. “I’m in charge of the investigation now, so consider yourselves released.”
By the time they reached the parking lot, Caxton was waiting for them in a car. Thomas and Kira helped Ariel inside. Her eyelids fluttered and closed.
“He can take you to the hospital. If there are any problems, call me.”
“Thanks,” said Thomas. He climbed in next to Ariel.
“Wait!” A blond teenager flailed after them. Emily. She rushed up to them, out of breath. “Miss Martínez and I just came. Let me come with you. Please. She’s not a citizen, but with my authorization, they’ll treat her.”
Kira hesitated, then relented. “Go.”
“Where’s Zoë?” Thomas asked the princess.
“Headed to see Damien.”
“I need to see her.”
“No,” said Kira. “Go with your friend.”
“Right. Uh, Kira, can you tell her just one thing for me? Tell her I love her.”
“Sure,” said the lieutenant, but she seemed baffled. “Okay.”
Emily climbed into the front passenger seat, and Thomas closed his door. Kira stepped back, walking toward the building, and Caxton started the car. It lifted off the ground and flew into the sky.
Thomas was seized by a sudden panic when he saw the world moving beneath them. He sat back, unnerved.
“You’ll be fine, kiddo,” he said, even though his heart was still thudding. He took a breath, and realized they had left behind Jamie’s watch. Kira still had it. Ariel had no way of getting back.
“Oh my God, listen to this,” said Caxton.
Thomas faintly listened to the report on the radio, then froze. Celestials had burst into Jamie Parson’s Tenokte home, ready to arrest the singer, and found they couldn’t.
“Offed himself, huh?” said Caxton. “That’s epic.”
“It’s awful!” said Emily. She was in tears.
Thomas turned to Ariel. She was drifting off, and if she heard the news of Jamie’s suicide, she didn’t give any indication. But, then again, she already knew, didn’t she? And so did Jamie…
He sat back, his head hurting. Damien had survived, but he and Ariel wouldn’t. He was probably never going to see Zoë again.
“How long now until I die?” he asked out loud, to no one in particular.
“Oh, Thomas,” Ariel murmured, “you were never supposed to know.”
Chapter Nineteen
At the age of nineteen, Jamie Parsons climbed as high as he could go.
He reached the roof of a friend’s apartment complex and looked over the edge. Cars flew above him, like fish in a great sea of sky and clouds, but no one who saw the figure below thought it was a possible jumper. There could be a lot of reasons why a young man would climb to the top of a building. Photography, maybe. Only, he didn’t have a camera in his hand.
The most beautiful girl in the world, or so he believed, had dumped him. From here, there was nowhere to go but down. He reached out his foot, looked below to the distant street, and stayed a moment in the breeze. His mind said Let go, but he just wanted to stay there for a second, thinking.
Then felt someone grab him from behind. Paramedics.
Jamie spent the night recovering in a hospital bed, sick and slowly detoxing. They put him on suicide watch for three days, and he felt absolutely miserable. He turned away all visitors, even his parents, and spent his time staring at a poster on the wall: a flowchart of the human body’s biochemical pathways.
The next afternoon, he turned and saw a young woman standing by his bed. He hadn’t heard her walk in.
“Go away,” he said.
“You’re Jamie Parsons, yes?” she asked.
“What do you want?”
“Unrequited love, huh?” The girl sat down on his bed. “You’ll need something to cheer you up. How do you feel about traveling?”
“I hate traveling.”
“But you owe me something,” she said, smiling. “Who do you think noticed you left the party? Who called the ambulance?”
He froze. She’d been there; he remembered now. A red-haired girl, watching him.
“I wanted to die,” he said. “Why did you stop me?”
“Because history says you should live. You need to get used to traveling, too. You only hate it because you left Sydney. Was it nice there?”
He nodded slowly.
“Sydney, Australia. And that would be, oh, five years ago, right? Want to go visit?”
He didn’t quite understand what she meant. But a few days later Ariel took him there, and she explained everything bit by bit. He had a good run, exploring different cities, ancient and future, for a few months—until he tripped over a memorial emblazoned with his name and the date of his death.
His request was simple: he wanted to forget her. Go back to his own time and think it was all a dream. The last night they w
ere together, he and Ariel sat in a diner with wide windows that opened out to the street. The occasional car passed outside, its headlights flashing. Aside from a waitress who came every ten minutes to refill Jamie’s coffee, they were alone.
Ariel tapped her fingers on the table. “So Bailey knows?”
“Yep. It’s all set. You just have to train a replacement.” He leaned back, smiling faintly. “I peeked. The band gets huge, doesn’t it?”
“Quite.”
“And it’ll just form on its own?”
“History says so.”
“So you’re fine now, do you think?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
A waitress came by, picked up their plates.
“I mean,” he said, “won’t you miss me?”
She was taken aback by the question. How could she not? This was their way of life: late nights blending into early morning, thriving when all connections were cut, when tomorrow was long as they wanted to make it. And it was all about to end. They had been perfect partners, laughing their way through history: Jamie with his curiosity, Ariel with her clairvoyant way of looking at the world.
“Of course I’ll miss you,” she said. “But I’ll know where to find you if I need you, won’t I?”
He accepted that answer. She left him in Tenokte, said a quick goodbye, and walked out of his life. He took one pill, an amnesia drug, hoping to wake up in the morning and forget everything.
But he didn’t. Six months of constant traveling is harder to erase than a night of partying. So was alone with all the knowledge of time travel and no way back to it, all the details of his short but explosive future, and nothing to do but wait and watch it pass by.
And only after Ariel was gone did Jamie fully realize he could read minds with the sunglasses. Sometimes he stood on crowded streets, the thoughts of passerbys drowning out all the music in his head, and he waited for one brief unspoken mention of her. But it never came. If she were real, wouldn’t she come visit him at least once? Of course she would. So it couldn’t be real, he thought, and he couldn’t die just yet.
Six years for Jamie; a handful of days for Ariel.
All that time he wished he could contact her, just once, to know that he wasn’t losing his mind. And when she did come back, not even a week before the date he’d seen carved in stone, he lost control of everything.
And he knew that dying wasn’t easy, so he tried to do it right.
After he heard his false confession on the radio and received news that Damien’s execution was stalled, he took an overdose of pills to stop his heart. But when that didn’t work fast enough, he slashed his wrists and plunged them into the warm water of his bathtub.
Everything seemed unreal, and the room looked bright and hazy. He wanted to die, and he especially wanted to die before the Celestials reached his house. Would anyone weep for him, after what he admitted to doing? No, and he didn’t want them to.
When the police arrived, the rock star’s eyes lay open, as if he were staring at someone who was longer there. The paramedics pulled him out of the tub and attempted resuscitation. Then they brought out an AED.
“Clear.”
Jamie’s body jerked.
“Clear.”
Another thud. No response.
“Call the lieutenant,” said Commissioner Huxley. “He’s gone.”
3.
Dawn burst over the sparkling silver city, and a car zoomed toward the hospital.
“We’ll be there soon,” Thomas said to Ariel, even though by now she could not reply.
He sat back in the seat.
So Kira had been helping them, or at least been sending suggestions toward Ariel. The lieutenant turned the kaleidoscope of the world, and seemed to get whatever she wanted—no matter what stood in the way. Thomas and Ariel had not saved Zoë’s brother, or at least not yet, but Jamie had gained valuable time for them.
“You really care about her,” said Emily, peering back at them from the front seat.
Thomas looked down at Ariel, but didn’t respond.
“How’d you get hurt?”
He looked down at the sling. “Long story,” he said. “I—” He stared ahead, eyes wide.
The driver tried to swerve, but too late: another flying car slammed into the front of their vehicle, spraying shards of glass everywhere.
Thomas grabbed for something, anything, but the car was spinning out of control, and falling. He could hear Emily screaming, but he had no time to be terrified, and remembered the indisputable fact of flying cars’ crashes: it wasn’t the first impact that caused death.
It was the second.
Only when Thomas opened his eyes did he realize he’d survived. The first rays of sunlight teased his eyes, and he felt pain, but could not quite identify it.
Ariel sat with her eyes closed, her reddish-auburn hair swept over her face. The driver was unconscious. Emily was turned away, and he could not get a good look at her. In the distance, he could hear sirens.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and looked around: they were surrounded by blue skies. Skies? When he pushed his door open, he understood why they were all alive. They’d landed on the roof of a skyscraper.
Suddenly he felt someone grab him. He screamed and tried to fight, but the man slipped a gloved hand over Thomas’s mouth and slammed his head into the door frame, knocking off his specs. His head burst with pain, and, dazed, he stopped protesting. The man dragged Thomas away from the car.
Emily stirred when she heard the noise, and, realizing what happened, pushed open her door and ran out. “Stop!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him.”
The assassin paused: he did not expect her to be there. He suddenly started to laugh. “Who are you, then? No one important, I hope.”
Thomas closed his eyes. Don’t say your name, Emily.
“What did you do?” she said. “Did you—?”
The man peered over the edge of the building, where ambulances and fire trucks sat around a crumpled car. “Teen drivers,” he sighed. “I didn’t do a thing. Such a dangerous way to travel, though.”
Thomas tried to stir, but he heard the click of a gun and went still.
A golden glow bathed the horizon, then reflected off the skyline of towers and covered tunnels.
Emily suddenly recognized the man. “You killed Richard,” she said.
“I did,” said Jude Fawkes. “Have to protect my own. So, Huxley, any last words? Something I should tell Zoë?” He slid his hand off Thomas’s mouth.
“Don’t hurt the girl,” said Thomas. “She’s just a kid. She won’t remember you.”
“How sanctimonious of you,” said Jude Fawkes. “Hear that, doll? Last words were to save you. I guess I’ll have to grant them. Nothing personal, Huxley, but you’re a liability. If you live, I’ll have to run. And I’m not going to run anymore.”
A soft voice made both of them turn: “Hey, Jude.”
The assassin whirled around; Ariel was standing ten paces behind him, pointing a gun at him.
“Ariel—” said Jude.
“Drop it. Drop the gun and walk away.”
“Ariel, just run! Mmmph—”
Jude slipped a hand over Thomas’s mouth. “How did you get back?”
She smiled. “Jamie.”
“Ah. Should’ve figured. But he’s already dead, so that’s taken care of. You shoot, Huxley dies. That is, unless you can take me out in one shot, without missing, before my finger moves. How’s someone’s aim in the last stage of the falling-sickness? Don’t you start to see double?”
“Put it down.”
“I have to kill him, Ariel, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Jude—”
“I have to.”
“You don’t—”
Two gunshots sounded.
At first, Thomas thought Ariel shot the assassin. Her expression hadn’t changed. In fact, she didn’t move at all for a few seconds, but then she blinked and put a hand to her chest, where two hol
es had appeared in the dark cloth. She looked down, as if perplexed, and collapsed.
The world seemed to slow down. Thomas fought, he tried to get away, but Jude twisted his left arm and he screamed and went still.
“Easy, now,” said Jude. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“She saved your life,” said Thomas, through gritted teeth.
“It doesn’t really matter now.”
Thomas closed his eyes. He was going to die. Nothing could prepare him for this. Everything flashed before him: Zoë. His daughter, whom he would never see.
Ariel—
A gunshot rang out. Thomas opened his eyes, but when he drew another breath, he realized he hadn’t been hurt.
The assassin let him go, and Thomas turned. Jude crumpled to the ground, his eyes wide and lifeless. A bullet had gone through his skull.
Thomas heard a soft sobbing behind him. He turned.
The princess stood about twenty feet away, holding a pistol, her face pale with shock.
“Emily,” he murmured.
She looked up at him, her eyes glistening with tears.
Thomas kicked the Jude’s weapon away from the body, and a glint of copper caught his eye. He took the timepiece from the assassin’s hand, then, as an afterthought, he checked the man’s pulse. Nothing. He walked over to Emily.
“He—” she stammered. “He killed—”
“It’s all right.” He gently took away the pistol, put it to the ground, then held her for a moment.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” she said, tears streaming down her face, “but he was going to kill you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s all right.” Then he jumped. “Ariel!” He turned and dropped down to the girl’s side. “Ariel, can you hear me?”
No response. He checked her injuries. Two holes were in her jacket, right over her heart. “No, no! Ariel, listen to me. You have to be okay.” He listened to her chest. Faint breathing. “Ariel…”
Emily crouched down beside him. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, no.” Thomas lifted Ariel’s head, cradled her body in his arms. “Ariel, you have to wake up. Please.”
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