“I’m scared of him,” I say softly. “I never thought I’d be scared of him.”
“Me neither. God, we’re really not imagining this, are we?” Finn says. “I mean, we all know I’m self-centered and unreliable, but if you feel it, too . . .”
I swallow. I hate him for saying it out loud. I’ve always secretly prided myself on my loyalty, my dogged support of the people I love. I thought James and I would be forever, that nothing could make me betray him.
“That’s it, then,” Finn says. “We have to leave. Get out of the city before it’s too late and never look back.”
Things go dark and flicker in and out, like a film reel that’s come off its spool, as I’m thrown forward in time again. I’m still in my bedroom, but it’s days later. I’m packing the tiny bag that’s all the smugglers will allow me to take. We don’t have the right papers for travel, and no one gets out of D.C. without the right papers. The armed Marines at the checkpoints see to that. Finn’s parents can’t help and mine refuse to, but there’s already an underground network of people who can get us out for the right price.
Finn has it easy. He’s living on campus at American University, so he can leave his roommate a note bequeathing him his television and stash of Cherry Coke and disappear.
I have to wait for my mother and her new boyfriend, clad in a tux and evening dress, to leave for a charity function before I can tear through my room, separating the true necessities from things I just can’t bear to leave behind. I pack my bag with a few spare clothes, a toothbrush, the wad of cash I’ve been pilfering from Mom’s wallet one bill at a time for weeks, her best jewelry to pawn for more cash, and the four faded sheets of paper from a yellow legal pad that are my only insurance policy.
At the door, I turn and look back at my bed, the posters on my wall, the messy assortment of jewelry and makeup and gum wrappers on top of my dresser. Already it looks like another world, someplace I only lived in a dream. On my bedside table a picture frame lies facedown against the wood. I pick it up, studying the three faces that beam back at me. I suddenly want desperately to take it with me.
But there’s no room. I set it back on the bedside table and close the door behind me.
I walk through the hall and down the stairs on socked feet, my sturdiest sneakers held in my hand. I’ve nearly reached the front door when Luz steps out of the shadows, her face lined with age and sadness.
The sight of her instantly turns me into a child again, and my lower lip wobbles. “I have to go.”
“Mija—”
“I’m not safe here,” I say. “You’re not safe with me here.”
Luz gathers me up in her arms and rocks me, and I cry the hot tears I’ve been holding back.
“I love you, Luz,” I say, mopping at tears with my sleeve.
“Te amo, mija.”
My vision blurs again, and I see the outline of James’s face and the tiled wall of the bathroom through the ghost of Luz. The two pictures flash one after the other, taking each other’s place and melding into each other before separating.
“Marina!” James reaches for me but stops short of touching me. “Em!”
The world spins, and James recedes into shadow. I’m back in my cell, and the director is standing in front of me, telling me with a vicious curl to his lips that Luz is in DHS custody for suspected terrorist activities.
“Tell me where the documents are,” he says.
I start to cry. This is before I learned to never, ever cry in front of Richter. Before I exhausted my lifetime’s worth of tears and became dry and dead inside. I know what will happen. Enough of me still remembers myself sitting in an office bathroom to know that Richter, with James’s blessing, will have Luz locked up in the FEMA detention camp on Long Island, all for the crime of loving me.
A hand on my face snaps me back to the present, and I come back to myself. I’m lying on the cold bathroom floor, looking up into James’s dilated eyes.
“Em?” he says.
I roll away from him and struggle to catch my breath.
“What the hell just happened?” he says. “Your eyes rolled back in your head, and you slumped over and started to shake and . . . and flicker.”
“It’s time.” I try to swallow away the dryness in my throat. “I’m a paradox, and time doesn’t like that. It’s trying to erase me. It will, sooner or later. I’m surprised you didn’t try to take the gun.”
“I did. Your whole body seized up, and I couldn’t get it out of your hand.”
I look down at my palm, which has a red impression of the pistol grip etched into it. “Oh.”
James is obviously shaken, but he presses me. “You said Finn and Marina leave D.C.”
“Right. They’ll run for over a year, but eventually you’ll catch them. You’ll lock them up in the same facility where you hide Cassandra. You’ll keep them there for . . . four months? Maybe more. And almost every day Richter will come interrogate them and ask them where the documents are.”
“Interrogate?”
I just stare at him, remembering the beatings, the days on end where I wasn’t allowed to sleep, the sound of Finn screaming next door. I don’t think I need to spell it out for him.
“Oh God,” he whispers.
“Sometimes you’ll watch, but I don’t think you like it,” I say. “You’ll have this look in your eyes, like there’s a wall between what you see and your brain. I think you’re trying to prove yourself to Richter, show him you’re not the delicate little genius he thinks you are.”
James stares down at the floor, so all I can see is the crown of his head. The dark hair that is usually so neat has grown unruly from days on the road and pushing his fingers through it again and again. In a few minutes, when I’ve made him understand why I have no choice, I’ll put a bullet through it.
“But sometimes at night,” I continue, “when the facility is quiet, you’ll come to my cell. You’ll sit on the floor across from my cot, like you’re doing now, and tell me how much you hate what’s happening to me. If I’d just give Richter what he wants, you could change everything. You’ll spend hours trying to convince me of all the good you’re doing with Cassandra, the lives being saved, the disasters averted, the wonderful changes the government has been able to make. I think you need me to believe it alongside you. Richter wants us dead, I’m sure of it, but you make him keep us alive because you need us to believe what you’re doing is right. You can’t stand the kernel of doubt that we put inside of you by refusing to go along. And I think, in your own way, you miss us. You won’t have let anyone get close to you in a very long time, too focused on your mission, and I think you miss the part of you that could.”
“But I know all of this now,” James says. “I won’t let things happen that way again.”
I shake my head. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. Can you promise me you won’t build Cassandra, now that you know you can?”
James hesitates.
“See?” I say. “You have to do it. And once you do, the rest of the story falls like dominoes. This is my fifteenth trip back in time. I left myself a list of everything I did to try to stop the future from happening. I spoke to you and to Nate and to Dr. Feinberg. I tried to get you to go to Princeton instead of Johns Hopkins, and I tried getting you expelled. I destroyed your computer and all your notes. I got rid of an engineer who helped you build Cassandra. I tried everything I could to avoid this, but nothing worked. I’m sorry, James, but you’re the one who tried so hard to convince me that sometimes people have to die for the greater good.”
I raise the gun, and James lunges for me.
Thiryt-Four
Marina
My head feels heavy, like it’s encased in concrete. I can’t see or hear, only feel the pull of gravity against me. I try to lift my head, the muscles in my neck straining, but my chin falls back to my chest. I hear a low groan from somewhere.
Wait, was that me?
With an effort that feels like swimming to the surf
ace in a lake of molasses, I open my eyes. When my blurry vision clears, I see that I’m inside a strange house. I look around with a mild sort of curiosity. The walls are covered in whitewashed beadboard, and the furnishings have been mismatched with the greatest of care. The paintings are of nautical scenes, and all of the fixtures are brass. We must be at the beach somewhere.
I like the beach, I think numbly.
I try to stand and find that I can’t. It’s puzzling. I pull myself forward only to be jerked back again. The haze over my mind slips a little with each attempt. I struggle in the chair and eventually realize my wrists are bound to the wooden slats that form the back.
“Help,” I croak. I meant to scream it.
I turn and discover Finn beside me, similarly bound in a plain wooden chair, unconscious. I crane my foot to kick his leg.
“Finn!” My voice is half whisper, half sob. “Wake up!”
Finn makes a soft sound deep in the back of his throat and the muscles in his forehead contract, but he doesn’t wake. He must still be swimming in the molasses.
“Finn, please,” I moan, yanking at my restraints. I can’t handle this—whatever this is—alone.
“He’ll wake up soon,” a voice says.
My head snaps to the far doorway. Leaning inside it, arms crossed casually over his chest, is not-James.
“No, no, no . . .” I screw my eyes shut. I’m not seeing this.
“He’s bigger than you,” the man in the doorway says, “so I had to give him a bigger shock. Shouldn’t be too long now.”
“Who are you?” I ask, eyes still shut. “What do you want with us?”
“You know who I am.”
“No, I don’t!” I jerk at my restraints until I’m sure the bones in my wrists will snap.
“Marina.” I hear him move closer to me, sense him leaning down, bringing his face to mine. “Look at me.”
I shake my head, lips pressed together to stop my whimpering.
He puts his hands on my cheeks, and I shudder. “Open your eyes.”
I don’t want to open them, but I can’t stop myself. I focus on the man in front of me. He looks the same. A little older, and the angles of his jaw and cheekbones look sharper, as if he’s lost weight. His hair is shorter, the cut severe. I start to tremble. Is this what going crazy feels like?
“James?” I whisper.
“That’s right.”
“W-what are you going to do with us?”
“Nothing yet. It’s not actually you I’m mad at. She’s the one who started all of this, but unfortunately there’s no stopping her,” he says. “I’m sorry, Marina, but I’m going to have to kill you.”
Em
James moves with astonishing speed, throwing himself at me as I raise the gun. Was this his plan the whole time? Get some answers and lower my guard at the same time? He knew exactly which of my buttons to push—the ones about friendship and loyalty—to make me go along with it.
When it comes to James Shaw, it seems, I’ll never learn.
I get off one shot before he tackles me, but it misses wildly. He hits me with such force that I go flying back onto the tile floor, my head hitting with an audible thunk. Black stars burst in front of my eyes. James is on top of me, pinning me to the ground. I hold the gun as far away from him as I can, stretching my arm above my head to keep it out of his reach as I try to jostle him off of me. He lunges for the gun, which means taking the bulk of his weight off of my torso. I knee him in the groin and scramble away when he doubles over. The gun is upside down in my hands now. I struggle to right it, but he’s too fast. He lunges at me, wrapping his arms around me and pinning my arms to my sides.
“I’m sorry,” he says, the words hot against my ear, “but I can’t just let you kill me. I’m going to do good things.”
I try to elbow him in the stomach, but his grip around me is too tight. My only advantage is that he can’t grab for the gun without letting me go enough for me to twist free.
We’re in a stalemate.
One of us will weaken first. I’m afraid it will be me, and I can’t just wait for it to happen. I take a deep breath and drop the gun. I give it a good kick, sending it clattering across the tiles to the other side of the bathroom. I feel James hesitate, and then he lets me go to throw himself after it. I grab his leg, clawing into his jeans as he tries to kick me free. He’s sprawled out across the floor now, and I have the leverage. I can beat him to the gun. . . .
But then one of his feet connects, kicking me right in the nose. My vision explodes, and I think I hear the bone crack. My hands fly to my face, and I use the sleeve of Connor’s hoodie to staunch the warm flow of blood.
When I force my eyes open, James has the gun. He points it at me, his chest heaving.
“Do it,” I say. “I’ll only come back.”
His eyes are bright. “I could never do it. That’s not what this is about.”
I bow my head, thinking of Marina and how I’ve failed her. All the fight seeps out of me. Does the doctor have her by now? “You’ll feel different someday.”
The shrill ring of my cell phone fractures the silence, and I jump. Finn. I keep my eyes on James as I pull the phone slowly from my pocket. He can shoot me if he wants, but I’m damn well going to answer it.
I flip open the disposable phone and push the speaker button. “Finn?”
James’s jaw tightens, but otherwise he remains still.
“He’s got them.” Finn’s voice is harsh and distorted over the line. “The doctor’s got them.”
His words sucking all the air out of the room. There’s suddenly no bathroom, no gun, no James, only Finn’s voice. “What happened?”
“He ambushed them down the street from Marina’s house. He knocked me out, and when I woke up they were gone.”
“Where did he take them?”
“I don’t know,” Finn says. “There’s something else. He left a note beside me that says Bring James unharmed. Have you found him?”
“Bring him where?” My voice rises hysterically. “Where are they? He’s going to kill them!”
Visions of blood and bone and pain float before my eyes. My grip on this world is so tenuous with Marina’s life in the doctor’s hands that I expect to dissolve at any moment.
“No, Em, think.” Finn’s voice is like a rope mooring me back to the earth. “If he wanted to kill them, he would have done it right there in the street. We’re the ones who betrayed him, so we’re the ones he wants to punish. He won’t do anything to them until we’re there. They’re just—”
“Tools,” I say. The doctor knows the best way to hurt me is through Marina. He’ll do to her the things he’s done to me. It took four years for all of my illusions about James to be stripped away, but he could do it to her in mere minutes.
“You’ve got to know where he is, Em,” Finn says. “He would have told us if he didn’t think you could figure it out.”
I rack my brain. James had favorite places—like a café on M Street that had big squishy chairs, a preferred table by the window in the library—but nowhere he could take a couple of hostages. I have no idea where he’s taken them. He’ll get impatient and kill them, all because I can’t read his mind.
Oh.
Panic, or maybe the multiple blows to the head, must have clogged my synapses, because it takes me a good ten seconds to realize I have another James sitting right in front of me. He still has the gun pointed at me, but it lacks conviction. The gun betrays the tremor in his hands. He’s flushed and disheveled from our tussle, but his gulping breaths are too fast to be from the physical exertion alone.
“Wait there, Finn. I’ll come get you.” I snap the phone shut. “You must know where he would go.”
“What’s going on?” James says slowly, like he’s taking great care to keep his voice even.
“It’s you, from the future,” I say. “You followed us back, and you’ve taken Finn and Marina.”
“Why?”
“To punish me. A
nd to keep me from doing what I came here to do.”
“You don’t mean I’d hurt them?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what I mean.” I almost regret having to tell him this. No one should be confronted with the depths of darkness they’re capable of all at once. “He’ll kill them both, because it’s the only way to stop Finn and me for good.”
James’s face is a frozen mask of horror. What is he thinking? Is he thinking about Marina, how much he cares for her, and how devastated he’d be if something happened to her? The doctor wouldn’t be, but this boy still might.
“We have to help them,” he says. “I know where he took them.”
“We?”
“You can’t do it by yourself, and neither can I.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You don’t have much choice, do you?” James snaps. “You can’t find them without me. Look, I know you think I’m a monster, but Marina and Finn are the only people left in the world who I care about. I won’t let anyone hurt them. So how about a truce until they’re safe?”
I stare at him. He’s not the doctor yet, but he will be one day. There’s no way I can trust him.
But then I think of Marina. I imagine her crying, hurting, maybe dying, and I have no choice. I have to do whatever it takes to help her.
“Okay,” I say. “Truce.”
“Good. But I’m keeping the gun.”
The stolen Chevy is still where I left it. I drive while James points the gun at me.
First we go to Georgetown to pick up Finn. As we turn onto my old street, I spot him sitting on the curb, head between his knees, like the weight of his guilt is folding him in on himself. He looks up at the sound of the approaching car, and I see an ugly red bruise rising on his cheekbone, joining the purple one on his jaw. I’m out of the car before it even stops rolling.
Finn stands to meet me, and I crash into him, throwing my arms around his neck. He staggers back but holds me close.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I say.
“I was right there,” he says, “but I couldn’t stop him—”
All Our Yesterdays Page 25