by Tricia Reeks
But Hailey just slides out of her seat and stands, her lithe figure draped in that signature red cape of hers. “I’ll meet you in the Falory parking lot,” she says, “two hours from now.” Then she’s gone—moving across the diner the way a ghost might, drifting along the path of least resistance, slipping past tables and between patrons like a crimson gust of wind, unnoticed. When she’s nearly out of sight, our waitress saunters over—a freckle-faced blonde in a baggy uniform. She starts clearing the table without acknowledging me.
Everything about tonight has me feeling like an afterthought, an insignificant ripple in Hailey’s grand design. A flaw to be corrected. Have I really become this dispensable? “But you didn’t even hear my answer!” I call out.
Hailey turns, her smooth profile draped in shadow, and replies, “I did.” Her lips pull down in a miniature frown. “Four minutes from now.” She places a delicate hand on the front door and says, “You tell me, ‘Fine. But after this, no more.’” She shoves through the door and steps out into the storm, the rain bristling against her hood. “I just don’t feel like waiting around to hear it.”
Before I have a chance to respond, the door thuds shut.
***
The storm has passed by the time I show up at the Falory parking lot. I can see the supercell on the horizon, a dark tube of clouds flickering like an eel. The pavement around my motorcycle gleams, flecked with shallow puddles. They catch the street lamps like windows to another world.
I stomp on one just to see it splash out.
Hailey arrives a few minutes later, her cape flowing in the wind. She nods at me like we’re strangers passing on a sidewalk. “You came early.” She narrows her eyes. “I told you two hours.”
We’ve never been in a relationship. At least, not an intimate one. But something about our dynamic lately has emboldened Hailey. She doesn’t just talk to me anymore—she scolds me, like a disgruntled romantic partner. All the squabbling without the sex. The damn opposite of friends with benefits. “I came right on the dot,” I say, dismounting my bike. “You’re the one who’s slipping.” I yank my helmet off and prop it on the handle. “Imagine that. Mistress Time herself.”
Hailey’s face crumples, her eyebrows lowering, her bottom lip jutting out. She turns and studies the outline of the factory, its neon edges cutting into the black sky. “I had things on my mind.”
Running through all the possible outcomes, I’m sure. One thing about Hailey: her vision only extends as far as she wants it to. That means only glimpsing future lines that intersect with her own. My future, as far as she’s concerned, must be nothing but a blank slate—no way to tell how her actions will affect me. No way to tell, because—let’s be honest—she obviously doesn’t care enough about me to look. “I’ve been thinking a lot, too,” I say. I shrug off my leather jacket and drape it over the handlebars. “And I’ve decided this is a bad idea.” I meet her cold stare and tell her, “We should abort.”
Hailey blinks and takes a deep breath. A calculated pause. “The particle cannon,” she begins, “will have its first trial run at the end of August.” She rests her hands on her hips and says, “Two months from now. The detonation will kill one maintenance worker and injure two lab assistants. But the test will be successful.” Her shoulders sag, just a little, like she’s given this speech one too many times. “Seventeen seconds later, a pocket of space-time collapses. The edge of our dimension crashes into another.” She closes her eyes and says, “The flux kills millions before they pull the plug.” Before I can respond, she turns and sprints toward the electric fence. With a leap, she somersaults over it, the end of her cape sparking as it clears the top wire. She lands in a crouch on the other side, her boots glistening on the pavement. Keeping her back to me, she says, “I’m not going to let that happen. Are you?”
How do you argue with someone who’s got a bird’s-eye view all the way to eternity? I stomp to the fence and grip the metal links. The high voltage current sizzles against my palms. Over the noise I shout, “Okay, it’s bad news. I get that. But we’ve got time! We should call this off. Plan it out. Rushing in tonight is just asking for trouble!” I wait for a response that doesn’t come, then yell, “Did you hear what I said?”
Hailey exhales and removes her hood. “I did,” she says, her words barely audible. She shakes her hair out and turns to face me, her red-brown curls glinting in the light of the sparks. “And everything you’re going to say.”
This is the problem with visionaries. They all think they know everything. And they do. “So there’s nothing I can say to change your mind,” I mumble.
Hailey smiles, her lips pulling up at the corners, her cheeks bunching around her nose. But her eyes look more distant than usual. Sad, even. “Now you’re catching on.”
I’ve never been a believer in fate. I like to think I’m in control, that my life hasn’t been plotted out ahead of time. Sometimes all it takes is one wild thought, one brave decision to change everything. This must be one of those times. “Then I’m just going to leave,” I say. To drive the point home, I let go of the fence.
The sparks clear and the roar sucks away, echoing down the street. Hailey’s sad smile is swallowed up by the darkness, but her voice rings out, loud and unfazed. “All my life,” she says, “I’ve watched people die. Ever since I can remember.” The gravel crunches under her boots. “Every time I close my eyes, there they are: Young men. Old men. Women. Children. All of them dying. All of them in pain.” She clears her throat and adds, “You know what time really is, Oss? It’s an endless stream of death. An infinite line of heartache and suffering.”
Whatever the right thing is to say here, I sure as hell can’t think of it. So I ask her a question instead. “What about all the good stuff in between?”
Hailey’s laugh flutters through the darkness, weak and off-key. “Tell you what: when this is over,” she says, “you can tell me all about the ‘good stuff.’ But right now, I’ve got people to save. You do what you want.” Then she’s gone, her boots clapping against the wet asphalt.
This is where I should hightail it out of here. Climb on my bike. Twist the ignition. Peel off down the street to find Hailey waiting for me at the intersection, her moonlit face tight with angst. But something pinches inside me—some soft spot in my chest cavity—and it hits me: Hailey’s the one person—the only person—I care about in this world. And there’s no way in hell I’m letting her fight this on her own. “Damn it,” I mutter. I grab the fence and wrench the crackling links apart. Blue veins of electricity arc around me, searing holes in my Hendrix Experience T-shirt. “Hailey!” I hiss. I stumble through the gap. “Wait!”
***
Hailey disarms the first mechanical guard easily enough, slipping behind it and snapping its spine before it’s even aware of the breach. The next two guards come in charging, their photon rifles clattering, the muzzles flashing like tiny starbursts. Hailey dodges the bullets like she’s dancing a slow-motion ballet, predicting the path of each projectile before it’s even fired.
Me, I’m not one for dancing. I’m also not equipped to deflect bullets—photon or otherwise. The only thing I’ve got going for me is brute strength. So I pick up the motionless guard and fling its metal body like a Frisbee.
It connects with the other two guards, driving them back in a scraping mass all the way to the thrashing electric fence. The whole section explodes when they hit it, like a fireworks display gone wrong.
Someone—or something—trips an alarm and the whole structure flushes red. The siren whoops so loud it’s like someone’s jammed a seagull into my skull. Hailey grabs my shoulder and points to the nearest building, where a wall of metal stands, gleaming and defiant. “The door!” she shouts. “Come on!”
I want to leave. I want this to be over. But most of all, I want Hailey to be proud of me. So I brush past her, my muscles flaring under my smoking shirt, and I drive my fist into ten inches of solid steel. The impact makes the bones in my wrist sing. Sweat sl
ithers down the small of my back. Flecks of blood spray off my knuckles. But Hailey’s counting on me, damn it, so I keep swinging.
The concussions sound like I’m thudding a giant gong, a tribal war drum, the dinner bell for King Kong. The sound vibrates the entire city block. Hailey winces and plugs her fingers in her ears.
Somewhere behind us, more animatronic guards are swarming, their robotic voices buzzing and chirping, their metal feet clanking against the asphalt. The sound is . . . ominous, to say the least. Like the rumble of distant thunder. Like an angry swarm of bees returning to the hive. Hell, let’s just call it like it is: Hailey and I, we’re running out of time. “Come on,” I pant. My arms pump like pistons. My heart crashes against my ribs. “Come on!”
It takes a few more hits for the door to finally come loose. One last right hook and it crashes down like an imploded bank vault. I go down with it, onto my hands and knees.
I haven’t been this worn down since my last sparring match with Steve. My forearms are on fire. My lungs feel ready to burst. My knuckles glint in the patchy moonlight, the tendons raw and wet. If there’s another steel door to smash through, there better be a wrecking ball lying around somewhere, because I sure as hell can’t do it. In fact, I end up doing the only thing I can do: I collapse, face first, onto the cracked cement. And God, does it feel good. “In,” I gasp. “You’re welcome.”
Hailey bounds over me with the corners of her cape flapping like wings. She waves her hands in front of her face, swatting at the dust. Then her eyes go wide. “There!” she yells. She jabs a pale finger toward the back left corner of the bay. “The wooden crate!” She looks down at me, her cool eyes blazing. “Ossen! You have to destroy it! Now!”
I’d rather sleep, to be honest. Slip into some fancy, Technicolored dream, one of those fantasy worlds where I’m being grape-fed by topless women. But when Hailey tells you to do something, you do it. Chances are, the fate of the world depends on it. So I struggle to my feet and stagger across the room, blood dripping from my hands. Somehow, I find the strength to lurch into a jog. Through my clenched teeth I mutter, “Here goes nothing,” and I pinch my eyes shut.
Like a bull, I plow through the crate, obliterating whatever’s inside in a miniature supernova. The explosion hurls me, end over end, into a concrete support beam. Shards of metal spray around me, whizzing past my ears. The whole building groans and shudders. I collapse onto my back, my torso exposed where my clothes have torn off and burned away.
I’ve never broken a bone in my life. Not as far as I know. Right now, it feels like I’ve broken all of them. I moan and tilt my head back, looking for Hailey. “Did we get it?” I whisper. “Is it over?”
Hailey stands on the dented vault door, her limp cape swaying, her face plastered with soot. Dust particles and smoke twirl in the air around her. She nods at me, her eyes red-rimmed and wet. “You did it, Oss,” she says. “You did it.”
Then a bullet rips through her throat.
***
What happens next is a blur. One moment Hailey’s dropping to her knees, her face contorted in pain, the next I’m on my feet, barreling into an army of metal guards at hurricane speed.
Bullets snag on my flesh. Electricity jolts my bones. But I am rage personified. I am the definition of the word unstoppable. Bodies spark as I rip limbs from torsos. Oils gush as I tear heads from necks. Weapons plume to powder in my grip. I ravage everything within an arm’s reach until there’s nothing around me but a dull, throbbing silence.
Silence . . . and Hailey.
When I get to her, she’s arching her back on the cement, blood pumping from the wound in her throat. Her eyes are the widest I’ve ever seen. Her mouth is flexed in a silent, Oh. She thrashes out at me, gripping my arms, her fingernails digging into my skin.
This isn’t supposed to happen. Not to Hailey. Not to the girl who knows everything. “Hang on,” I stammer. I pick her up, making sure to cradle her head. “I got you.” I start running, stumbling, tripping over broken bots and debris, but I can’t see where I’m going. There’s too much smoke. Too much oil and crap running off my forehead into my eyes. “Stay with me!”
Hailey whimpers, a dog-like cry of anguish, and her trembling hand finds the back of my head. She grips my hair.
Hailey’s the only friend I’ve ever had, and I am losing her. I am failing her in her time of need. I keep my legs driving, uselessly, one foot in front of the other, through the rubble and crunchy bits of plastic. “Almost there,” I gasp. My throat constricts, strangling my words. My eyes burn. “Just a little longer!”
I step on something round—a stray wheel, or maybe a robot skull—and the next thing I know I’m falling backward, looking up at a starless night sky. It’s here that I’m struck by a lone epiphany: I love her. I love Hailey Watts. I’m more sure of this than I’ve been about anything in my life. Then a second thought streaks across my brain, like a meteor scraping the sky: Tell her!
This much I can do.
I take a deep breath and squeeze out the words. “Hailey, I—”
But we crash backward into a heap of bricks, and the words are knocked right out of me. In their place, I’m left with a searing hole. A collapsed lung, maybe. Or perhaps a broken heart. Hailey coughs from the impact, her blood splattering my face, and it becomes all too obvious: we can’t go any further. Not like this. Everything inside me’s begun to shut down. My limbs feel shackled to the ground. My head weighs a metric ton. My confession will have to wait. Right now, saving her is all that matters. “The bike,” I sputter. “You can make it.” I gag on something wet and force it back down. “Follow the river,” I gasp. “Find your way out.”
Hailey twists in my arms, her slender body smooth and feathery inside her cape, and she wheezes, “I just . . . did.” Then her mouth finds mine. The kiss is soft, gentle. Lingering. Her lower lip trembles. Her cheeks tighten. Her eyes squeeze shut. Then her body sags, her lips release me, and her warm breath slides across my face before disappearing into the night.
Her head lands on my chest with her eyes half-open, her milky gaze fixed on me.
For a moment I just lie there, looking into her distant stare. Then something erupts inside me. A crate-sized bomb. A seismic blast. A cosmic fucking supernova. “No,” I whisper. I grasp at her cape with my numb fingers, but the damn fabric keeps slipping away. “Hailey?” I clutch at her shoulders with my fractured hands, but I can’t keep a grip on them either. “Hailey!” I watch, helplessly, as her irises clear, like clouds melting into an afternoon sky. And for the first time in my life, I realize Hailey’s eyes aren’t violet—they’re blue.
***
It’s been a month since the Falory incident. A month since I lost Hailey. A week since I stopped crying.
The headlines say the company’s rebuilding, that they’ve already got a replacement prototype in the works.
I’ll be sure to destroy that one, too.
For now, I spend my days back at the restaurant, my dirt-stained boots tapping against the pink linoleum. Every night I order corned beef, for myself, and a bloody steak, for Hailey. The freckle-faced waitress looked puzzled at first. Now she has it ready for me as soon as I step in.
“I get it,” I say, my words slipping over the oily wad in my mouth. “I understand why you did it.” I gulp down the gristle and say, “That was your way out.”
Thin wisps of steam curl off Hailey’s untouched steak. Beads of condensation roll down the side of her full glass.
I can sense her energy signature: thin tendrils of radiation curling around our booth. Like a ghost. It’s a sign that, somewhere in the past, Hailey saw this conversation, right now. A sign that she glimpsed this future line. A sign that she cared enough to look. “I know you’re listening,” I say, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
Someone flicks on the hidden jukebox and the air swells with some new-age rock song, the punchy bass vibrating the knife on my plate.
I can’t change the past. I don’t have that abil
ity. I’m only a Class 1 and 2. But if I can change Hailey’s mind, maybe I can save her. Maybe I can show her that life, even when you know all the outcomes, is still worth living. “You want to talk about the ‘good stuff’ worth sticking around for?” My voice tightens. “How about love, for one thing?” I look right at the shimmering plume of air beside me. “Damn it, Hailey. How about me?”
Metempsychotic
Leah Brown
Meg hated how typical it was, the same old story that’s been told a few hundred times before. Dave was the cute boy in the back of the classroom, the one always wearing the band T-shirts. The one who self-labeled as the class clown, a quip for everything. The one who seemed incapable of irritating the teachers, no matter how much he interrupted.
Dave left his back-of-the-class lair and sat behind her, drumming a pencil on her shoulder with a nervous twitch as he asked her to a concert. The rhythm that never really stopped through the entirety of their date. And this thing had all the markers of a date, the way that he insisted on paying for her, asked her opinion of everything and actually listened to what she had to say.
Away from class and school and the fishbowl of it all, Dave was sort of fantastic, sort of quiet, sort of brooding in a way that made it obvious that his quick humor was seated in actual intellect.
“You know, tonight was pretty fun,” he said when he dropped her off at home, his arm landing across the back of the passenger seat, still cross-hatched from the wand of a vacuum, his hand drumming: Click-click-thump. Click-click-thump.
He had removed the headrests on the front seats, like he was planning to talk to a camera crew in the back, and Meg found herself liking it. She liked that he was the same, but different, like looking at the surface of a swimming pool from underwater rather than just dangling her feet in the water.
Being Dave’s entire audience was different and preferable to being the only one in the front of the class room not laughing.