by Julie Cross
Holly and I both squinted into the nearly dark trees before jumping to our feet.
“Holly!” a second voice called. Blake. Of course he was the one to go searching for Holly.
I rolled my eyes in her direction. “Your BFF is here to save you from me.”
She mustered some strength despite not looking too well at the moment and shoved me hard enough to cause me to stumble into a tree as Dad, Blake, and Mason appeared in front of us.
Dad’s dark hair and forehead were covered in sweat and his face reflected that of an extremely pissed-off agent. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“You can’t leave without telling anyone,” Mason added, though he didn’t have any of the edge that Dad had in his voice.
Blake’s eyes bounced between me, Dad, and Holly, then he nodded toward the path ahead. “Want to walk back with me?” he said to Holly, who scrambled to his side, following quickly, probably wanting nothing to do with this domestic dispute.
“You go, too, Mason,” Dad said, his eyes still focused on me.
Mason threw a glare in my direction and then jogged to catch up with the other two. I dropped my gaze to the forest floor and kicked a few sticks. “What’s his problem?”
“Mason?” Dad folded his arms across his chest. “He’s speaking on Courtney’s behalf. She’s pissed off at you for getting everyone worried.”
I felt like I was eight again, facing Dad after watching Courtney’s rodent pet commit suicide. “I was doing what she wanted to do. Drop off supplies to those poor people. All the little kids.”
“I figured that,” he snapped. “But you have no idea what you’re dealing with. And neither does Courtney, no matter how badly she wants to help. I can’t keep doing this with you, Jackson.”
I finally looked up at him. “Doing what?”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Dealing with this fear of letting you out of my sight. Every time I do, I have to wonder if you’re going to do something stupid and get yourself killed.”
I balled up my hands and then released them, letting out an angry breath. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll stay under your careful watch from now on ’cause God knows I can’t be trusted to keep myself alive—”
The metallic, rusty smell invaded my nostrils, cutting me off. I groaned loudly, closing my eyes. “I hate this shit.”
This time, my mind sifted through a dozen images, each holding itself still for only a millisecond. Adam bleeding. Holly falling. Courtney taking her last breath. I pushed the memories aside. The world around me returned to normal so fast I wondered if I’d imagined it. I had my answer the second I opened my eyes.
Dad’s arms were now uncrossed, his face blazing with anger. His pistol pointed right at my head. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to be in this exact position? How long I’ve wanted to watch you die right at my feet?”
My heart took off on a full-out sprint, my hands lifting in the air. “Dad, please … don’t.”
He took two long steps toward me, leaving only five feet between us. “I want you to feel a few seconds of that fear I’ve lived with every day for seventeen years. But this isn’t just for me. It’s for my father, for Eileen. For the years I’ve spent waiting for you to hurt Jackson. I want you to feel it right now. I want it to be the last thing you feel before you take your final breath.”
I was feeling the fear. That was for certain. “Dad, it’s me, Jackson! It’s just the memory gas!”
His face twisted with rage and before another word was uttered, he pulled the trigger. But instead of squeezing my eyes shut and waiting for the inevitable, my vision zoomed in on the bullet, a tunnel forming around it, the speed quickly decelerating, until it become clear to my conscious mind that my next move was to dive to my left.
My body hit the hard ground with a thud as my left shoulder landed on a giant tree root. I waited—heart pounding and lungs constricting—to feel the sting of a bullet. To feel my world collapsing around me. Dad had been too close to miss. Too close to allow any human enough time to move before getting hit. But there was no sting, no bullet lodged in my body.
I had dodged that bullet. And I had no idea how the hell I’d done it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DAY 14. EVENING
“Oh God,” Dad whispered. “Jackson, please tell me I didn’t really fire.”
I peered up at Dad, seeing his face transform right before my eyes. He had snapped out of the memory and was left with an aimed gun he couldn’t remember drawing. I slowly rose to my feet as he looked over at me in horror.
“No,” I lied. “You didn’t fire.”
“Thomas,” he muttered. “I saw Thomas.”
“I know, Dad.” I edged closer, trying to assure him I was unharmed. “Well, at least I figured it was him you saw.”
Something like realization snapped onto his face and suddenly he looked cold and distant. He swallowed hard before asking, firm and direct, “Did I fire at you? Did I actually pull the trigger?”
“I’m totally fine.”
He shook his head, hands moving quickly as he opened the gun and counted the bullets. He stalked across the forest until he found the hole his bullet had put in an oak tree behind me.
After I’d dodged it.
Yeah, I hadn’t forgotten about that part yet.
He walked toward me again and held his gun out to me. I stared at it, not sure what to do. “Take it!” he demanded.
“Dad, you didn’t know what you were doing.” My eyes met his, and there was so much sadness beyond the cold, agent face he’d formed since coming out of the memory-gas trance.
“Take the damn gun, Jackson,” he said more softly, yet somehow forceful and eerie.
I reached out and lifted the weapon from his palm, holding it loosely in my hand. “It’s okay. You couldn’t help it. I know that.”
“It’s not okay,” he snapped. “Now get out of here. We’re not walking back together.”
The sky had turned completely dark, throwing a blanket of black over us, leaving him in a shadow cast by a tree behind him.
“Dad,” I argued. “Come on. Let’s just go back. I shouldn’t have left without telling you. It’s my fault all of this happened.”
“Get out of here now,” he repeated slowly, emphasizing each word.
There was nothing I could do to shake him from his terrible guilt so I turned and did as I was told for once, leaving him alone in the woods, my own guilt at the thought of leaving him in that state eating its way through my empty stomach.
There was no arguing that he’d scared the hell out of me. My hands and legs were still shaking. But what scared me even more was the fact that it had been a perfect shot. Assuming I hadn’t performed miracles in the form of superhuman movement.
I spent the thirty-minute walk worrying about Dad’s mental state, my ability to slow down bullets, and what was coming for Courtney very soon. But my introspection was short-lived. The second I reached the campfire circle, Lonnie was running toward me, the fire blazing behind her. I glanced quickly over my shoulder to see if Dad had changed his mind and followed me anyway.
He hadn’t.
“What?” I asked immediately. “Is it Courtney? Is she okay?”
Lonnie shook her head. “It’s Emily.”
We were already walking briskly toward one of the cabins. “What happened?”
“We don’t know,” Lonnie said. “She’s been like this for hours. Grayson and I thought maybe you’d seen this before from her.”
“Seen what?” I asked, frustrated with the lack of information. Was she bleeding to death? Levitating? Dodging bullets?
The cabin door creaked as we stepped inside and took in the situation. The light from a couple candles illuminated the entire room. Holly stood beside Blake, chewing on her nails. Grayson, Stewart, and Sasha were on the other side, wearing identically concerned and confused expressions.
Emily lay on her stomach on the cabin floor, loose pages from a notebook strewn
all around her, her face paler than usual, her right hand moving furiously as she scribbled neat loopy writing that looked very familiar. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she muttered nonstop under her breath, switching from English to Farsi to Russian.
“Emily?” I approached slowly, kneeling beside her. “What are you doing?”
“She won’t answer,” Grayson said, after we all remained silent for a good ten seconds. “She’s filled over a hundred pages and won’t stop.”
I glanced at the papers, picking one up and bringing it close enough to read. I recognized it immediately. Words stolen from the Tempest Agent Training Diary I’d kept. She’d mimicked my handwriting, my crossed-out words, and the spacing exactly as I’d written it.
“It’s my journal,” I said finally. “She read it before we came here.”
I reached over and gently placed my hand on top of the page she was currently trying to fill. Her little fingers froze for a second then she shoved my arm out of the way with more force than I thought possible from such a tiny person.
“I need to finish,” she said, her eyes still locked on the page.
“Finish what?” Grayson asked before I could. “Emily, take a break and talk to us.”
“It’s been four hours, kid,” Stewart added. “Give it a rest.”
Emily shook her head furiously. “I. Can’t.”
Holly stepped closer, kneeling on Emily’s other side. “You can’t stop thinking about things that you don’t want to think about, right?”
“Yes.” Emily lifted her head for a split second, looking at Holly like a savior before sliding a page across the floor and ripping a blank sheet from a spiral-bound notebook. “Can I give it to you? I have to give it to someone. I can’t keep it. I just can’t anymore.”
More big fat tears rolled down her cheeks and she sniffed back a sob. Catching her off guard, I reached for the pen, removing it from her grip before she could stop me.
She sprang to her feet, panic all over her face. “Give it back! Give it back, Jackson!”
I tossed the pen across the room to Blake, who snatched it out of thin air without even batting an eyelash. Emily took off toward Blake but Holly caught her around the waist, holding her back.
“Explain what you’re writing,” Holly said gently, reminding me instantly of my 009 Holly and the voice she used on her six-year-old campers. “And then we’ll give you back the pen and all the paper you need.”
I stood there helplessly as Emily fought Holly, trying to break away. “Please, give it back. I need to … I need to … there’s too much…”
“This isn’t helping,” Sasha said, throwing a disgusted glance in our direction before stomping toward the cabin door, calling over her shoulder, “Guess I’ll be the responsible one and check on the fire.”
Grayson completely ignored Sasha as he moved closer, studying Emily’s face carefully. “I think she’s overloaded. She copies everything. Remembers everything. If I had access to a brain scanner … I bet every region of her brain would be lit up—”
“Is that what’s wrong?” I asked Emily, desperate to help her calm down so I could figure out where Dad was and check on Courtney. I had more than enough to deal with already. “Have you been reading too much or thinking too much or something?”
From the corner of my eye, I spotted Stewart, picking up a trail of papers, sorting them in a stack, eyes scanning each page quickly before picking up the next one.
“Did you have access to the Eyewall systems before you left?” Grayson asked Emily. “Did you copy information from the system and now you’re overloaded?”
Holly glared at him. “God, she’s a kid. Not a computer.” Then she moved back a little, gripping Emily by the shoulders and looking her right in the eye, blocking Emily’s view of the pen resting in Blake’s right hand. Emily’s head moved from side to side as she tried to see around Holly. “Look at me, Emily!” The little girl’s eyes finally paused on Holly’s face for a second. “Good. Now close your eyes. Take a break.”
I was pinned to the spot, mesmerized by the intensity radiating off both of them. Emily stared hard at Holly, ready to pounce any second.
“It’s not what you know that’s overwhelming,” Holly said. “It’s what you’re feeling. You can’t get rid of that. Putting it on paper won’t get rid of it.”
More tears slipped down Emily’s cheeks and a sob escaped. “I have to. It’s too much.”
“You just need to feel something else.” Holly’s voice stayed calm and steady. I completely bought into whatever act she was pulling, but Emily wouldn’t. No way. “Fill your head with something else. A poem, maybe? A book?”
The storm calmed in Emily’s eyes and she looked as though she might actually be trying to do this. Her voice emerged, tiny and youthful as she muttered under her breath again. The tension began to visibly roll off her shoulders. She looked like she was waking up from a nightmare.
“Those people out there,” Emily said to Holly, her voice shaking with more tears. “I’ve been with them. I got away and I couldn’t come back to help them.”
“What people?” Stewart said, looking up from the page she’d been reading.
“The ones in the woods that Courtney and Jackson saw today.” Emily spoke directly to Holly, not moving her eyes to anyone else in the room. “Thomas … Thomas took me there and left me because I wasn’t right. Not for him. Not for the experiment. And when I’m older … I’m supposed to tell Jackson to leave you, and then another Holly is going to be hurt and then Adam will die and nothing can save Courtney. I couldn’t get the blood samples from Lily’s parents either.”
“Lily Kendrick?” Holly asked, glancing briefly at Blake, who looked stricken by the mention of my Tempest partner.
Emily nodded. “Lily wanted to know what killed them. I need to go back and bring her samples and in my head I keep doing all these things and then watching the effects on the future and it’s turning out all wrong. I can’t fix it!”
She was breathing so hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
My heart completely broke and I knew everyone in the room felt it, too. That weight piled on top of this child was so heavy she’d started to drown in it. But I understood. I understood in a way that I was afraid to admit because I’d felt the same crushing guilt and grief so many times I’d lost count.
But I wasn’t eight years old. I wasn’t a child who’d never experienced love and had seen nothing but evil and destruction.
“Calm down,” Holly said. “You’re going to lose your grip again.”
Emily sank to her knees, hitting the floor with a thud and falling into Holly’s lap, who willingly held her, letting her half cry, half whisper furiously to herself.
While Emily’s face was hidden, I tried to communicate silently with Holly. She met my eyes and then nodded toward the door. Slowly, I rose to my feet and tugged Stewart and Lonnie’s arms, directing them toward the door and waiting for Blake and Grayson to follow behind us.
The cool night air hit me in the face and I couldn’t help glancing out toward the woods, wondering if Dad had returned.
“The child has unmatched intelligence and memory capabilities,” Grayson said. “Psychologically, it might just be too much to handle.”
“Maybe that’s why Thomas ditched her?” Stewart said.
Lonnie just shook her head. The situation was obviously painful for her and she probably didn’t want to speak scientifically just yet. Blake stared out at the campfire, lost in thought. “She’s not supposed to care. He was banking on her not caring. The caring takes up too much space and time. Literally.”
He was right. It went with everything Emily had said to me about Thomas and Ludwig hating that she was like me. And it went with Blake’s memory files. The day he went to the future and Thomas told him about his special experiment. When he’d stolen my hair, my DNA, he’d gotten more than he’d wanted from me.
“This is exactly what we’d all been afraid of,” Grayson said. �
��It’s why I knew Ludwig and Thomas shouldn’t mess with nature.”
Just then, I saw Dad emerge from the woods, his gaze met mine for a split second before he turned his back to me and headed toward the lake. I sighed with relief but left him alone because he obviously wasn’t ready to talk yet. I walked toward the hospital building instead, hoping the sight of Courtney, still breathing, would help calm me down.
When I walked into the room where I’d slept the first ten days of my stay on Misfit Island, Mason nearly fell out of his chair, his hand dropping to his lap too quickly to not reveal guilt on his part. He was holding her hand. God, talk about inducing both anger and nausea all at once. I glared hard at him then turned to Courtney, whose eyes were wiggling open.
I only had to point to the doorway and then Mason scrambled to his feet, exiting without a word of protest. I shut the door and then sat on the side of the bed, waiting for Courtney to unleash some of that anger Mason had mentioned earlier.
“How’s Emily?”
I looked at my sister and then let out a heavy sigh before twisting my body and lying beside her, our shoulders touching. “She’s messed up, like the rest of us.” I hesitated for a second, and then added, “Dad tried to shoot me in the woods.”
Courtney bolted upright, staring down at me. “What?”
I kept my eyes on the ceiling. “He didn’t mean to. It was the memory gas. I don’t know what I did, but I dodged the bullet. It was almost like what you did when we first got to this year and we were fighting off those ugly, faceless dudes and you kept vanishing. I slowed down the bullet. Or maybe I slowed down time. And then I fell out of the way.”
“Could life possibly get any stranger?” She sank beside me again. “What did Dad say?”
“He took it pretty hard,” I admitted, even though Courtney had enough to worry about at the moment. But maybe she’d know what to say to him to make this all right. “He handed over his gun and made me leave him in the woods.”
Her mouth hung open. “You didn’t, did you?”
“I had to. But he’s back already. Avoiding me, but safely returned.”