by Julie Cross
Emily had been walking beside me the whole journey so I was the first person to notice her stop in her tracks, just past the forest, her forehead wrinkling, hands pressing against the sides of her head.
I knelt in front of her. “What’s wrong?”
“My head,” she whispered.
I glanced at Dad and Grayson, who were closest to me. Hopefully we weren’t about to see another episode of Emily’s information overload. “She says her head hurts.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she explained. “It just … it’s loud.”
Oh boy. Loud voices in her head? This poor kid was in need of some psychiatric assistance we didn’t seem to have available despite the fact that we had toilets and showers that folded up into a backpack.
Grayson didn’t look nearly as concerned as he had two days ago when Emily had freaked out. He squatted in front of her. “It’s all the people who can jump. The buzz just got louder, that’s all.”
Emily nodded and let out a breath. “I know, but it still makes it hard to think.”
I looked from Grayson to Dad, and then Dad spoke up, “Because she senses the presence of time travelers? It’s more prevalent if she’s around more of them?”
“Yes,” Grayson answered.
“But wasn’t she with them before?” I asked. “She said Thomas dumped her there.”
“I’m guessing that’s why she had to leave,” Grayson said, and Emily nodded. “That’s probably what gave her the strength to do what Ludwig thought impossible. She truly had to get away from it.”
I scooped her up off the ground and held her upright in my arms. “Let’s get this done so you can get rid of all that noise, okay?”
Emily buried her face in my shoulder, and whispered, “Thank you.”
No other words were spoken, as most of us hadn’t seen the communication box that Dad and Holly had checked out the other day and we were all anxious to see how it worked. The box sat on top of a long, concrete pole like an old-fashioned pay phone.
Grayson stepped forward and opened the metal box, pressing a few buttons before turning to face the group. Everyone else’s eyes seem to shift toward Holly.
She took a deep breath and moved beside Grayson. “Can we review the procedure one more time before I pass through the retina scanner?”
“Of course,” Dad said, because he had been the one to draw out the exact plan, CIA-mission style. “You’ll open the access and we’ll all cross through the barrier. Three minutes after, Eyewall agents will teleport directly to the barrier line, at which time we’ll need to incapacitate them before they have a chance to alert headquarters of our escape. Within a few minutes, we’ll need to remove the tracking chips implanted behind their ears and attach them to ourselves.”
“Wow, that sounds pretty daunting when you say it like that, Dad,” Courtney said.
Lonnie took Emily from my arms. “You’re gonna need your hands free.”
Blake and I were to be on the front line, so to speak, and Dad wasn’t too happy about this; but for everyone else, given the recent discovery, it was a no-brainer.
I held my breath, pulse pounding in my ears as Holly pressed her fingerprints into the gray box, accepting the red light flowing past her pupils. Blake did the honor of crossing the line first, and when he walked through, there was an immediate release of air from everyone’s lungs. I walked through next.
The rest crossed through after me. I half expected the scenery to change or some big alarm to sound because we’d finally ended up on the other side of the force field. If this was a revelation for me, I could only imagine what it felt like for Grayson, Lonnie, Blake, and Sasha, who had been here for years, not days.
Thirty seconds passed as we walked farther from Misfit Island. My stomach flipped over a dozen times, my anxiety hitting a peak. I could feel Holly’s presence beside me and instinct took over. I reached for her hand, tugging on it to get her to look at me.
“Holly,” I said quickly. “I want you to know—”
She yanked her hand from mine and pointed to something in the distance. “Look! Someone’s out there! There’s a tent.”
Sure enough, we all squinted into the rising sun and could just make out a tent much like the ones we’d packed. The blur of a dark-haired figure sat in front of a fire.
“Ninety seconds,” Dad whispered.
“Do you think they’re waiting for us?” Mason asked, nodding toward the tiny tent in the distance.
As if to answer his question, the figure stood up. He lifted a hand to his head as if to shade his eyes so he could see us. And then he started sprinting in our direction.
Those of us with guns drew them immediately, but the guy stopped. That was when the men and women in dark blue coveralls landed right in front of us. It was a flashback of what had happened in Heidelberg, Germany, when we’d been invaded by a greater number of EOTs than we thought existed.
And that was exactly when my panic, my nerves, completely left and I switched on my months of training, diving to take down a stocky dude who outweighed me by nearly a hundred pounds. I got him on the ground and wrapped an elbow around his neck until his eyes fell shut and his body stilled.
I left him there, my heart thudding as cries of pain rang out all around me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Holly kicking some dude in the chest, sending him flying backwards, giving Dad the chance to leap on him, giving him a blow to the temple that knocked him out.
Stewart had gone down on my other side and I took off after the guy that had pressed something to her back. He aimed some kind of weapon at me that looked like a laser gun, but I dove for his ankles before he could hit me. He crashed onto his back but when I lifted my head, I saw a stream of something drift through the air and knock Mason right in the chest. He fell to the ground, landing in a heap.
“Mason!” I shouted, but then I turned my attention back to my attacker, knocking him out quickly by hitting his temple like Dad had done.
Five minutes later, all the blue-coverall people were down (obviously Dr. Ludwig and the rest of the Eyewall experiment team were too busy playing Dr. Frankenstein to teach his experiments any form of hand-to-hand combat skills). I went to Stewart and hovered over her, checking her pulse, listening to her breathing. She was out cold but still appeared to be okay.
“It’s a temporary, chemically induced coma,” Grayson said. “Might last a few hours or a few days.”
Mason, Stewart, and Sasha had all been hit. Lonnie stood over Sasha. Blake, Emily, and Courtney were all checking on Mason.
When I looked over at Grayson, I saw him grit his teeth, remove a pocketknife, and slice into one of the Eyewall dude’s skin.
“Get the tracking chips out and then we’ll worry about our fallen soldiers,” Grayson instructed, looking slightly annoyed that he was the only one slicing open skin at the moment.
Dad pulled out a pocketknife, while Courtney turned her head. “I can’t watch this.”
Lonnie suddenly leaped to her feet, snatched Mason’s gun from his limp fingers, and pointed it at the guy we had seen before with the tent. “There’s another one!”
Holly had been staring at the figure ever since we’d finished our three-minute battle and now she was limping toward him. Did she get hurt during the fight? “Stop!” she yelled at Lonnie. “Don’t shoot!”
I was on my feet again, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Or who. I took several long strides in her direction. My mouth fell open. Shock filled every bit of my body.
“Holy shit,” I muttered. Then I turned quickly and yelled over my shoulder, “Dad, it’s Adam! Adam Silverman!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DAY 16. EARLY MORNING
“Adam!” Holly shouted.
He ran toward us, staring in disbelief before throwing his arms around her. “Oh my God … what the hell?”
“I thought you were dead,” Holly whispered loud enough for me to hear. “What are you doing here?”
He looked at me from over Holly�
��s shoulder, and I literally had to hold myself in place to keep from hugging him as hard as Holly had. I didn’t know which Adam this was.
“It’s the Jackson Meyer,” he said, whistling under his breath. “No wonder things have gotten crazy lately.”
“Who is this?” a voice demanded from behind me.
Lonnie stood with Mason’s gun pointed at Adam. I quickly shifted to face her and put myself between them. “It’s okay, we know him. He worked with Holly.”
“Did you know to not enter the force field?” Holly asked him, dropping her arms and stepping back. “Or wait, are you the source Stewart mentioned?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Adam said. “I’ve been undercover, working at Eyewall headquarters for the past six months, getting information by being on the inside. Until they were on to me. I took off before things got scary.” Adam nodded at me. “I had this feeling that it might be you they had trapped here. But I never thought Holly would be here.” He turned to her and stared in disbelief. “How did this happen? Agent Collins and I purposely kept all the info from you so you wouldn’t end up in this time-travel mess, too.”
I couldn’t attempt to wrap my head around how he got here, I was just so elated to see him that I didn’t care. And this time I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing him and giving him a giant hug. “You remember me, right? You’ve had flashbacks of us being friends?”
He seemed startled but didn’t resist. I dropped my arms soon after, moving back a comfortable distance. After having watched him bleed to death, I just couldn’t stop the grin spreading across my face.
Adam was my constant.
“Yeah, I remember,” he said, laughing. “Though I really need to know how you know about that?”
Lonnie kept the gun pointed at Adam and grabbed him by the arm. “Let’s go see what Kevin and Grayson think of your story before we let down our defenses, all right?”
“Yeah sure,” Adam said, then he turned to Holly. “Hey, Hol, grab the little handheld computer from my tent. I think it’ll help prove my case.”
She headed toward the tent we’d seen earlier from a distance, limping noticeably. I followed after her. “Are you okay? You’re limping.”
She waved me off from over her shoulder. “I’m fine. Just twisted my ankle.”
“Well, stop and let me look at it,” I said, but she had already entered the dark blue, rectangular tent. Before I could go in after her, the metallic scent hit my nostrils so fast and so strong there wasn’t time for even one word of warning to escape my lips before the scenery dissolved and I stood facing my sister’s dead body lying in a plush casket.
“No!” I yelled, backing away, but an invisible force held me in place, lifting my eyelids, preventing my eyes from shutting tight as they had done at Courtney’s real funeral.
My stomach churned and my eyes blurred with tears, both from grief and the cold April wind that had been present on the day of her funeral. Her face appeared so discolored, her red hair falling all around her. It was anything but peaceful.
“It’s not real, it’s not real,” I muttered to myself over and over again until the trees formed behind the casket and eventually the casket disappeared altogether. I sank to my knees, clutching my stomach, and literally tried to shake the image from my head. I hadn’t even looked that carefully on the real day of Courtney’s funeral. But somehow that image had stuck itself into my brain and emerged with the help of memory gas. That’s what they wanted. To see all of our weaknesses. To know what could be thrown in front of each of us to get us to follow their orders.
I thought my body wouldn’t cooperate enough to stand until I heard Holly’s voice, shouting through the fog of false images. I was on my feet in seconds, ripping open the flap to the tent. The moment I saw her thrashing, fighting some invisible force, when I heard the words she was saying, I knew with complete certainty exactly what was haunting her. Clarity came quickly, along with a rage I’d never experienced before. A desire to murder someone who had already lain dead at my feet. As my hands balled up, my pulse pounded, I imagined killing him a hundred thousand more times and I didn’t care if using time travel to do this would eventually kill me.
But Holly’s voice, the intense fear in it, snapped me back to worrying about her. I lay on the ground beside her and tried to pull her into my arms. She fought hard against me, kicking and throwing her elbows into my face and chest. Just the thought of what she was reliving made me sick to my stomach and broke my heart all over again.
“Holly, it’s okay,” I said, finally pinning her arms down. I wouldn’t let her be alone this time even if she screamed at me to get out and called me an asshole. If she could just talk about it, maybe this wouldn’t keep happening. Maybe she’d move on to a different memory, the way Blake and Grayson had theorized. I pulled her closer, her face pressed against my chest. “I’m not going to hurt you, Hol. You’re okay, I promise.”
I kept whispering the same words into her ear over and over until she eventually stopped fighting me. Then she was crying so hard her entire body shook with sobs. I lay there and held her tight, stroking her hair and rubbing her back. I couldn’t convince myself to be anywhere else despite the turmoil going on around us. Despite Adam’s and everyone else’s presence not too far from us.
“Please don’t tell Adam,” Holly whispered after she had calmed down, though her voice was hoarse and still thick with tears.
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to take any chance of upsetting her more. “Whatever you want.”
She rolled away from me, lifting the bottom of her shirt and wiping her eyes and nose with it. I waited patiently while her gaze stayed focused on the ceiling of the tent. “He’ll blame himself.”
I turned on my side, propping myself up on one elbow so I could see her better. “Why would he—”
“Trust me, he will.”
I couldn’t help myself, I leaned down and kissed her forehead before tucking some loose hair behind her ears. “Hol, we need to talk about what happened with Carter.”
She let out a breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a second before opening them again and looking at me. “I know.”
“We could get hit with the gas again any second. It happened in the woods with my dad, just minutes after you and I were dosed. Maybe if you talk about it, you won’t have to see it anymore…?” I suggested.
Her eyes stayed focused on mine. “I’m sorry I got so pissed at you yesterday. I freaked out because the weird visions started making sense and before, I’d honestly just thought I’d been given memory-modification drugs.”
“That’s what Stewart thought, too,” I said, remembering when she’d first had 007 visions. Her hand lay between us, so I slid my fingers over and covered her hand with mine.
“I don’t remember what happened to me.” Her voice had turned from shaky to steady as if she had fully committed to telling me this story. The real question now was whether or not I could handle hearing it. “I got some sort of vibe after … after it happened. I knew I stayed at his place. I knew there was clothing removed. I remember him kissing me. And then nothing. I think subconsciously I ignored the physical evidence.” She shook her head like she was angry at herself, at her own brain’s ability to deny something like that had happened. “Obviously, there was evidence.”
I tried to draw in a slow, calming breath but all I could do was fight the urge to punch something.
“You heard what he said though, right?”
“You mean before I shot him,” I said through my teeth. “I remember.”
She pulled her hand free and rested it across her stomach. “That was when I knew we’d gone much further than I realized, but it wasn’t until the memory gas hit that first time that I figured out it wasn’t … it wasn’t consensual. He drugged me and I still fought him but he still…” She covered her face with both hands and took a deep breath to regain composure. “So when you had these memories that I didn’t have, in a way it felt the same. I
don’t really want them, but part of me needed to push you and see if—”
“Oh, God, Holly. It’s not like that, I swear.” I reached for her hand again, picking it up and squeezing it. “You have no idea how badly I want to kill him all over again.”
Her gaze shifted back to the ceiling, her voice turning almost casual. “So we were together? You and me?”
“Yeah, a couple different versions of you.”
“Did you love me?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “We loved each other.” Her eyes widened, her head turning to me in surprise. “But listen to me, okay?” She nodded. “What I just saw you relive, I’d do anything to take that away, to make sure you never had to feel like something like that could happen to you against your will, without your being able to choose. I want you to have freedom more than I want you to love me back. Sometimes I forget my goals and I cross the line, look at you the way I used to when we were together. But I do want you to be able to choose, more than anything. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you about us.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “You’re not lying.”
It wasn’t a question. She knew I meant it. Her agent training had provided her with that much at least. “And I feel terrible for messing around with you in the reproduction room—”
“And then again in the hospital room,” she added, giving me a half smile.
“You’re my friend, Holly. Whether you like it or not,” I said. “We’ve been through too much together and I’m talking about this version of you. You can stop pretending that you don’t care about me and everyone else in our little commune.”
She laughed a little. “I guess I can live with that.”
My thoughts snapped back to reality. “Shit! We should go help.”
We both jumped to our feet, but before we left the tent, Holly stood on her toes, wrapped her arms around my neck, and gave me a huge hug. I squeezed her so tight, her feet left the ground.