by Julie Cross
My hands were trembling with rage, but I pushed it away for now and focused on easing her into the subject. “I know things kinda sucked for you in Eyewall and I don’t want to screw you up even more.”
She jerked her hand out of my grip and folded her arms across her chest. The impassive-agent face had returned. “Don’t you think it’s incredibly arrogant and self-righteous to assume that you’re important enough to screw me up?”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. This was not going well. I should have kept kissing her. “I don’t think I’m important enough to do anything. Okay, not exactly that, I just—”
She let out an angry breath and shoved me out of the way before stepping past me and snatching her shirt from the floor, throwing it on in ten seconds flat. “Forget it. This isn’t worth the effort. You’re probably a few seconds away from bleeding to death all over me. I doubt anyone wants to see that happen.”
So many emotions overtook me as her hand reached for the doorknob, turning it quickly. Don’t do it … don’t say it. Not yet. “What happened with Carter, Holly?” I blurted out. “What did he do to you?”
Shit.
She froze for a second then spun around to face me, her expression calm. “It sounds like you already know everything, Jackson. I’m screwed up, remember? Your words, not mine.”
“Holly—” I tried reaching for her again but she pulled away so fast.
“Don’t talk to me about Carter,” she snapped. “From what I can see, you’re pretty fucked up, too. We all are. So quit trying to help me or whatever the hell you’re doing. Find another hobby. Like keeping yourself out of this makeshift hospital for starters.”
And with that, she was gone. And I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be engaging in any more impulsive makeout sessions. I’d taken the affair to a level Holly wasn’t willing to go. She and I had been on this wild up-and-down roller coaster ever since I got out of this bed a few days ago. Maybe I just needed to back off, like she had asked.
After taking a few minutes to ward off the blood-loss-induced dizziness and level out my anger, I stormed out the front door and headed toward the technology building. Holly’s blond hair shone in the distance, near the lake.
Everyone besides Holly was either inside or huddled around a giant closet full of wires and electrical stuff right across from the reproduction room. Courtney stood next to Mason—a little too close—and held several tools in her hands, palms open, waiting for him to reach for one. I opened my mouth to comment on their close proximity, but Dad popped out from behind what looked like a water heater. Relief filled his face when he saw me and he started to reach for me, then glanced at his hands, covered with black smudges.
“You look so much better,” he said.
“Did you drink the solution Holly gave you?” Grayson’s voice emerged from behind the big cylinder thing.
“Yep,” I said. “What’s going on here?”
Dad’s attention was jerked back to the problem at hand, whatever that was. Stewart leaned against the wall at the end of the hallway, drumming her fingers. She came to life when she saw me and headed our way.
“He survives again,” she said. “We should start calling you ‘The Boy Who Lived.’”
Courtney laughed and I rolled my eyes. Stewart nodded toward the exit, and said, “I’ve been standing here for over an hour and they haven’t needed me yet. Let’s go do something else … get out of the way.”
Stewart and I headed outside. I stopped her from going toward the lake to avoid another encounter with Holly. Instead, we sat near the fire pit and let the almost setting sun beat down on us.
“So that’s it?” I asked. “They made a decision to go with your … idea?”
Stewart nodded and pulled back her long dark hair with a rubber band that had been around her wrist. I noticed she had new clothes on today. A pair of sweatpants that were rolled at the waist several times and a giant red T-shirt, the bottom tied up in the back with another rubber band.
“Surprised the hell out of me,” she said. “Especially after my warm welcome.”
I scooted closer to her and lowered my voice. “Are you worried?”
“Yeah.” She caught my gaze and plucked the next question right from my head. “No, I’m not going to tell you who brought me here, so don’t even bother asking.”
“Okay, sorry.”
Stewart pulled two of the disgusting energy bars from her pocket and handed me one. We ate in silence for a few minutes and I kept my eyes on the lake to make sure Holly stayed there. “You were there for three days, right? In 2009, after I left?”
She swallowed a big bite, making a face after catching the bitter aftertaste. “Uh-huh.”
“Was Kendrick okay when you left?”
“She was fine.” She stared at her hands. “But Freeman and Parker are dead.”
I sucked in a breath. “I knew about Freeman. I saw him, but not Parker.”
She finally lifted her eyes to look at me. “And Healy, he’s dead, too.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before? Last night when we were talking, I mentioned Healy and you didn’t say anything.”
“It didn’t seem like the right time.”
Hadn’t I seen it happen? In my weird half-jump dream while I was dying. Marshall … Marshall shot Healy before shooting the other me.
“What’s up?” Stewart asked, probably reading the many emotions flickering across my face.
I relayed my story to her about the dream or half-jump. She listened carefully and then shrugged like she really couldn’t trust the memory since even I didn’t know if it was real.
“I don’t know who killed Healy,” she said finally. “I saw the bodies piled up in that weird warehouse place, but it was the aftermath.”
My heart pounded. “Did you see him there? The other me?”
Some of the color left her face. “Yeah.”
“So then it is real,” I said. “Marshall killed the other me and Healy.”
She diverted her eyes from mine. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. And I don’t think we have a division to get back to anymore. Everyone is dead. I’m not even sure what the point of escape is.”
“Then why are we doing it?”
“Because we’re supposed to.” She exhaled heavily. “I want something to fight, you know? Not this sit-around-and-survive shit. I know we can’t change anything by staying here, I’m not even sure we can change things if we make it back to 2009. But if we don’t at least try … then what? We wait to be killed and for Eyewall to take over the world?”
Her questions left me with a fire under my skin. An itch to do what Blake suggested and blow the Eyewall headquarters and all those clone-making machines into a million pieces.
I stared right at her. “What if we escape and we don’t go back right away? Like we do a little mission first. Give you that fight you’re looking for.”
Stewart’s eyebrows lifted. “What are you talking about?”
“Exactly how big is your save-the-world complex?”
She leaned in closer. “I’m listening.”
I pulled her to her feet and dragged her all the way to the hospital room so no one would overhear us if they came out of the technology building.
Then I told her everything. All the information from Blake’s memory files and the plan he had to make the others think we were jumping back and then to not go and the part about how he and I might be too damaged already to make a return.
“Wow, so Kendrick had a love stalker from the future,” Stewart said. “Kind of pervy, don’t you think? Considering he watched her get pushed out of her mom’s lady parts.”
“I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but maybe a little. I don’t know, I’ve heard worse. Blake doesn’t really seem like the pervy type to me.” I scratched at the scab on the back of my head. “What do you think about the fact that my time-travel powers might be done for for good, even if we do get out?”
“I heard Grayson talking about
that earlier. I wasn’t sure if you knew so I didn’t want to say anything.” She paused and shook her head. “So, are you going to do it?”
“I didn’t want to at first but now I think … I think I want to see that place go down. Especially now that I know the horrible stuff they’ve done to the experiments. The cloned children, I mean.”
“Me, too.” Stewart stood up and dusted off the back of her pants. “So yeah, I’m in.”
There wasn’t a hint of doubt in her voice, like there had been in mine when Blake first presented the idea. And Stewart’s confidence confirmed my decision. Now we just had to keep anyone else from knowing.
Let the others get back safe and sound.
Mason came bounding into the room, interrupting us. “Hey, dude! Still alive. Good job.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but held my sarcastic remark when I saw Stewart’s face go a little white. She was probably thinking about Mason’s being blown to bits on the night of Healy’s ball in 2009.
“We’re going on a hike at 0500,” he said, a grin spreading across his face. Guess Blake isn’t the only one itching for a mission. “We’re gonna check out the other side of the island. See if we can access that electric box like Stewart says we can.”
Stewart glanced at me, eyebrows lifted. “Here we go.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DAY 14. 4:40 A.M.
I rubbed my hands together, bringing them closer to my mouth, and attempted to warm them by blowing hot air on them.
“Damn, it’s freezing.”
Dad nodded his agreement as his eyes scanned the forest in front of us. We were both early to arrive and waiting on Stewart, Mason, and Blake. The rest of the crew was staying back since this was a test run. An exploration of the potential point of escape.
“Still feeling okay today?” Dad asked, looking me over as carefully as possible in the dark.
“Yeah, I think so. Other than Holly’s being ticked at me. Again.” I removed the gun from the back of my pants and aimed it at the forest. My hands trembled slightly and I let out a frustrated sigh before putting it away again. “I really wish she could have been kept out of this.”
Dad shook his head. “Me, too.”
“Do you think she was already in the CIA—like part of Eyewall—when we were doing Tempest training and you were getting updates from your secret source?”
“Absolutely not,” Dad said firmly. “Somewhere between my last contact with my source and the point when you first saw Holly in that NYU bookstore, the world had been altered. Not enough change for us to pick up on right away, apparently. But that’s because it was all a carefully orchestrated plan. Eyewall was born right in front of our eyes and we never saw it coming.”
I could barely wrap my head around that concept because my time-travel experience had rarely been so circular. But that was what people thought of as the normal method of time travel.
A wave of grief swept over me. “If only Holly could have been kept out of all of this. It would be so much easier to live with.”
“Speaking of Holly…” Dad cleared his throat and glanced back at the cabins. “I haven’t had a chance to ask you what was going on yesterday morning in the technology building?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head, releasing another frustrated breath. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Didn’t look like nothing.”
“I guess it was something,” I conceded. “But not the something I want from her. Not that I deserve anything from this Holly. I have no claim on her, no past with her. I just … she won’t even talk to me. She’s got a lot of shit to deal with and she won’t talk about it.”
He inhaled a long, slow breath and nodded. “I’ll take a stab at it, okay? Grayson thought she might have some issues, too. He’s worried about her. Especially if we’re going to give her the responsibility of taking down the force field with her fingerprints. Grayson doesn’t like to force anyone to do anything. He’s pretty serious about all of us retaining our free will while we’re trapped here, as much as we can, anyway.”
“Well, I’m all for that,” I said, hoping I could stay as true to this conviction as Grayson had. Holly deserved it. More than anything else, she deserved free will.
Stewart, Blake, and Mason joined us, passing around the disgusting meal bars we had boxes and boxes of here. We had just started talking strategy and looking over the map Blake had drawn when we heard arguing coming from the cabin area.
A flashlight pointed at us from a couple hundred feet away. Dad squinted and then Blake shined his own flashlight at the people approaching. My stomach did a few flips when I saw who it was.
“Holly’s coming with us?” I muttered to Blake.
“Yeah, I thought you knew,” he said. “We need her to test out the access.”
“Aren’t we just looking at it?”
“I’m going with you,” I heard Courtney say to Dad.
Dad shook his head. “No.” His tone was firm, like the time he denied her pleas for a fifth hamster.
“I tried to tell her that,” Holly said.
I glanced in Holly’s direction and tried to meet her eyes. She looked away, keeping her agent face on. Blake handed out flashlights to everyone while Courtney and Dad continued their argument. Eventually, Stewart cut in and ended it.
“Grayson said there was nothing dangerous,” Stewart told Dad. “I don’t see why she can’t come. They don’t need her help back there.”
Dad narrowed his eyes at Courtney. “If I tell you to go back, you will without a word of protest, understood?”
“Yes,” she said.
I watched my sister’s gaze travel to Mason, and I didn’t miss the triumphant smile she flashed in his direction. I glared at the back of his head and pushed my way to the front of the group as we entered the woods.
“Mason and I will take the lead,” I said. “Courtney … you stay in the back with Holly.”
“Who put you in charge?” Courtney muttered, but she did what I said and stayed next to Holly.
I gave Mason a shove from behind, putting a good amount of distance between us and the others. Stewart joined me on the opposite side of Mason.
“Are you conspiring with my sister now?” I snapped at him.
He held his gun at his side, glancing in every direction. “She won’t shut up about those stupid dots. I just figured if she came with us, she could see whatever it is she wanted to see.”
“That’s great.” I glared at him, pulling my own gun out. “Let’s drag the untrained, unarmed, fourteen-year-old girl into the woods to an area we haven’t even explored yet. Seems like a fabulous idea.”
“Blake is untrained and unarmed,” Mason said. “And your sister can kick some ass. I showed her a few moves. She’s good, really good.”
Complete and utter rage went through me at the idea of Mason’s wrestling with my sister, and I nearly pummeled him right there in the woods but Stewart must have sensed my mood and jumped between us.
“Not now,” she snapped at me.
“We wouldn’t have a problem if Mason would do what I told him to do,” I said.
He lifted his free hand up in surrender. “I didn’t touch her!”
Leaves crunched under our feet as we walked with only the glow of flashlights to guide us.
“Like hell you didn’t,” I said, leaning around Stewart to point my light at Mason’s face. “Oh Courtney, let me show you some self-defense moves. Everyone knows that game, Mason.”
“Just because you were a sleazeball at seventeen doesn’t mean I am, too.”
I dove around Stewart, reaching for Mason’s shirt, but she jumped between us again, gripping the front of my jacket and shoving me backwards. “Enough! Get in the middle with Blake.”
Staring right at Mason, I said, “We’ll finish this conversation later.”
I shuffled next to Blake, who looked mildly amused. “I’m starting to get the impression you don’t play well with others.”
“Not when they keep i
nsisting on messing around with my sister. She’s freakin’ fourteen. Seriously.” I glanced at Blake and then shut my mouth, remembering his weird relationship with Kendrick at several different ages. At least I never had to encounter an infant Holly or even any version younger than seventeen. Blake looked over his shoulder and then back at me. Holly and Courtney were quite a ways behind us. I could hardly make out who was who. Dad was even farther back, bringing up the rear.
Blake reached a hand toward my ear and then quickly stuck something inside it. He lifted his eyebrows. I opened my mouth to respond and then I heard Courtney’s voice coming through my ear.
He’d bugged my sister? When? Maybe Blake has more skill than I realized. And maybe this was a less violent method of finding out what was up with Mason and my sister. Of course, leave it to Saint Blake to come up with the peaceful solution. Then again, he did express a desire to cause a deadly explosion at Eyewall headquarters. That totally doesn’t count as peaceful.
“I don’t care if Jackson’s pissed off at me,” Courtney said. “He needs to chill out. He’s, like, so intense all the time. I don’t know where it’s coming from. My dad’s being overprotective, I can understand, but not Jackson.”
“Uh-huh,” Holly said dismissively.
“Do you have any brothers?” Courtney asked. “Or sisters?”
“Nope, just me.”
“Maybe you’re lucky then. It’s like he exists for the sole purpose of agitating me,” Courtney said. “You know, he used to make these Lego dynamite minefields and steal my dolls and then leave ransom notes in my room. Not to mention the fact that he killed my hamster. Now he’s taken up the hobby of controlling my life. As if I don’t already have a parent to do that.”
Blake kept his eyes straight ahead, watching Mason and Stewart as if he was giving me privacy while I invaded my sister’s.
“Didn’t look like you hated him all that much yesterday when you were cleaning up after him, watching him vomit buckets of blood,” Holly said, her voice low and free of any emotion.