Tempest

by Julie Cross

  Everybody took off running. Dad ushered us inside and the chill of air-conditioning hit us the second we walked into the lobby. We were all dripping wet, shoes squeaking across the marble floor, and yet everyone around us was so calm. It took every ounce of self-control I had to not announce the end of the world to the entire hotel. I couldn’t even tell Tempest what I had seen without telling them about Emily.

  Dad nodded toward the hallway on our left and we followed. I sucked in a breath when I saw him draw his gun; Freeman did the same.

  “What’s happening?” Holly asked.

  “They’re here,” Freeman said.

  “What do they want?” Adam asked desperately.

  “Jackson,” Dad answered. “At least that’s what Melvin thinks. Possibly to replicate the experiment. We’ve kept them away for a couple months now. I let them get close, against Marshall’s orders, two years ago, so they could see you didn’t have any abilities.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just kill me anyway?” I asked.

  “They don’t murder needlessly. Only to gain power,” Freeman said, poking his head around the corner before leading us that way.

  “Power for what?” Holly asked.

  “They believe the world would be a better place if we were all like them,” Dad said. “But Tempest believes time travel by mass population would be utter chaos.”

  “Totally,” Adam said.

  “Dr. Ludwig’s on their side,” I added. “With all his cloning or whatever.”

  “They think Melvin’s creating an army,” Dad said, turning toward me. “Don’t do anything stupid, Jackson. Just try to stay close and keep your distance from them. Freeman and I have done this many times. We can handle it.”

  Freeman froze in the middle of the hallway. Then, about twenty rooms down, that blond woman Rena and the man named Raymond appeared out of nowhere.

  The man who killed Eileen. I couldn’t imagine what Dad went through having to see him over and over again.

  “Damn, that’s freaky,” Holly muttered. “I kinda didn’t believe you about that time-travel thing … Totally believe you now.”

  Dad immediately shoved me behind him and I did the same with Holly.

  “What the fuck are we supposed to do if they just appear and disappear?” Adam asked, fear gathering in his voice.

  “They can’t do it much, trust me,” Dad said.

  “Except Thomas,” Freeman muttered.

  Thomas again. His name kept coming up at very important moments.

  Holly screamed when Freeman fired at them. They shot back at us and I yanked her farther behind me. If they could pop in and out, she wasn’t going anywhere out of my sight.

  Adam yelled this time because another man had appeared right behind us.

  The first two EOTs took off running, away from us, and I yanked Holly in front of me as we ran away from the man behind us and toward the two up ahead. Freeman followed them through two doors into a big dining room. The room was filled with people dressed for a wedding. The second we came bursting through the doors with our guns, screams erupted and everyone started running out.

  The whole place was full of innocent bystanders. They needed to get out. Quick. I scanned the walls and spotted something to help clear the building.

  “Go pull the fire alarm!” I shouted at Holly.

  She ran over to the wall behind us and smashed the glass case with her elbow. The alarm sounded and water started spraying down from the sprinklers on the ceiling. More screams. The room emptied in about thirty seconds. Crystal glasses were on every table. A giant grand piano sat in the center of the dance floor. Not exactly a great place for a gunfight.

  The shoe-print guy aka Raymond sprang up on top of the piano and aimed his pistol right at Freeman. Holly gasped as we both watched Freeman drop his weapon from ten feet away and raise his hands in the air. The surrender lasted about two seconds before Dad jumped up behind Raymond and kicked him so hard he fell onto the table behind the piano and then slid on his back, sending the plates and silverware soaring in all directions.

  The other man suddenly went from thirty feet behind me to right behind me. I moved out of the way and grabbed a chair from one of the tables and threw it in his path. He tumbled over it and sprang back to his feet.

  Rena fired at the ceiling and Holly screamed again when the massive crystal chandelier shattered. She dove under a table as pieces of glass flew everywhere. I slid under with her and pulled her next to me. I could feel her heart pounding even harder than mine.

  “Stay with me, okay?” I said. “Don’t run off or anything.”

  She nodded.

  Dad’s feet raced past me and then the woman followed. I aimed my gun at her leg, but it was too close to Dad and I couldn’t risk it. Holly reached out and grabbed Rena’s ankle, causing her to fall right on her face. Adrenaline rushed through me and I rolled out from under the table, stood up, and then stepped right on Rena’s back, pointing my gun at her head.

  “No, Jackson! Don’t touch her!” Dad shouted, but I didn’t know why.

  The last thing I saw was Dad pulling Adam to the ground as a bullet soared over their heads.

  The room dissolved and I had no idea where I was headed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A full jump. We just did a full jump. Duh. That’s why I wasn’t supposed to touch her.

  Despite the life-threatening situation and the fact that both me and this blond EOT chick were armed, the first thought to cross my mind as my eyes opened was, Holly just watched me fucking disappear!

  If she didn’t believe that I was a time traveler before, she sure as hell would now. I heard several people gasp and I turned my head to look at a group of teenage girls standing on the sidewalk, dressed in weird argyle skirts and socks up to their knees. Like Jackie Kennedy or something. That’s when I realized what exactly they were looking at. My foot on a woman’s back, pointing a gun at her, and both of us dripping wet. And this day was clear and sunny.

  I quickly tucked the gun into my pants and glanced at the street. Old-model Cadillacs were parked all over Fifth Avenue, except they weren’t old. Most of them looked brand-new. Weird-ass hippie buses lined up against the curb and I was half expecting the cast of Hairspray to burst into the streets singing “Welcome to the 60’s.”

  Rena tossed me off her and I landed on my back and also on one of the prissy girls’ shoes. All five or six of them screamed as loud as possible and I sprang up from the ground, running after the blond woman.

  If she jumped, would I be able to get back? And was this the same timeline that we’d left, but in the past? My guess was no, because I knew how hard it was to jump in the same timeline. I could see her head bobbing and I shoved past people to get closer.

  My new observational skills never turned off, and as I ran, I took in everything, the hippie guy singing a Bob Dylan song outside a store, the buildings that were missing from the skyline.

  Finally, I reached the woman and grabbed the back of her shirt. My arms went around her, squeezing tight. “You had better be able to get us back. Exactly where we left.”

  She jabbed me in the stomach with her elbow, but I felt her pulling us back. Or somewhere else. Tagging up in home base didn’t seem necessary in full jumps.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  AUGUST 15, 2009, 4:30 P.M.

  My feet slid and I felt myself falling down a slanted surface. Rain. Thunder. Again. My eyes flew open and I nearly shouted after seeing that I was on the roof of the hotel. I sprawled out flat on my stomach and dug my fingers into the shingles. Rena laughed an evil laugh. She had easily wormed herself at least three feet away from me. I wanted to knock her teeth out, and would have if it weren’t for the fact that I was too scared to let go of anything.

  “Damn. Off by a few minutes. Maybe they had time to kill your dad by now,” she sneered. “He’s really good at getting in the way.”

  Intense fury pulsed through me, giving me the courage to release one hand and reac
h for my gun. Rena was still trying to get to her feet … she wouldn’t even see it coming. But I couldn’t do it.

  Just as my fingers moved from the trigger and reached for a piece of the shingles to grip on to, a loud boom came from below, nearly causing me to tumble to the ground. A bolt of lightning exploded through the sky at the same moment a bullet ripped through her chest. Whose bullet?

  I watched in horror, unable to do anything as the woman fell against the roof, then tumbled down and landed with a smack. I heard shouts from below and sirens going off everywhere. I flipped over so my back was pressed against the roof and attempted to shimmy upward. I pulled the images of the hotel maps up in my mind. There was a roof access door where the roof leveled off above me.

  When I reached the top, I started to stand and made the mistake of looking at the ground below. My stomach turned and dizziness swept over me and I was on my back again, panting and trying to force the fear away. I was pretty sure they didn’t let acrophobes join the CIA.

  I heard a door burst open and voices.

  “Just tell me what happened to him!” Holly said. “Can he come back if he … vanished?”

  I sighed with relief. She was okay. But who was she talking to? I didn’t want to draw attention to myself yet, not until I knew it was safe.

  “I have a feeling we’ll find out very soon, now that you’re here,” another voice said.

  A very familiar voice. One I had heard on the very worst day of my existence. I had to see his face … the other man in Holly’s dorm.

  Slowly, I stood up and forced my eyes to stay on the sky and not the ground.

  The man had Holly pressed against a pole. It was the same man who fired his gun and shot her on October 30, 2009. It hasn’t happened yet, I forced myself to remember.

  “Jackson, just the person I was looking for,” he said. “I’m not sure we’ve officially been introduced. I’m Thomas.”

  “Thomas,” I spat. Of course it was Thomas. The EOT who could keep doing this over and over again until the fight turned out exactly how he wanted. Maybe I’d have to give him what he wanted right away, so he wouldn’t try and do it over again. All I had to do was pretend to be on his side.

  Easy, right?

  I couldn’t look at Holly or I’d deviate from my plan. Screw it up. But I could feel her eyes burning into the side of my face.

  “Was that Rena flying off the roof?” Thomas asked casually.

  “Um … yeah.”

  He turned to face me. “I’m not here to hurt you, Jackson. That was never the intent. We’d be happy to leave your father alone if he hadn’t killed so many of us.”

  I sucked in a breath and tried to calm down. Dad is a survivor. He makes it out alive all the time, I repeated to myself. “What is it you want from me, Thomas?”

  He leaned closer to me, still gripping Holly, and I could see the slightest bit of resemblance between him and me. Probably fifteen years older, but still, we looked alike. “I just want you to hear my side. You’ve been influenced by others. Others not like you … they don’t understand us. I want you to see what you could have. The perfect life. We’ve tried to get you alone and now the only solution seems to be threatening the life of this girl. Look how you discovered your full abilities when she was shot. Amazing progress.”

  I could feel my face hot with rage at the mention of what had happened to Holly … but the other dude … Raymond said it was a mistake. Did he mean that?

  “What’s he talking about?” Holly asked.

  Thomas looked at her. “Just the future, dear, nothing you need to worry about. The future’s always changing.”

  “Yes, it’s changing already,” I said, jumping into my plan before I got distracted. “A lot of time has passed since that event. For me anyway. The more I use my abilities, the more I want to learn. Everything else is nonessential.”

  A grin spread across his face. “Now, that’s exactly what I love to hear.”

  “Like Rena. You don’t care that someone just killed her, because she’s alive somewhere else. Another timeline, right?”

  “Ah … I see you haven’t been taught everything. When someone like myself…” He pointed at me. “Or yourself is killed, we cease to exist anywhere else, forever. Not in the past. Nowhere. But this young lady, and ordinary people in general, may be perfectly fine when we create another timeline. It’s one reason we were against Dr. Melvin’s experiment.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. From the corner of my eye, I could see Holly’s chest moving up and down as she took in heavy, fearful breaths.

  The rain was slowing to a light drizzle, but the sky was still as dark as the middle of the night. I had tunnel vision right now, ignoring the turmoil I knew must be happening down below.

  “Well … creating multiple timelines could lead to the destruction of the world. Time travelers driven by emotion will never stop saving loved ones. You’ll act the part of complete idiot regardless of the power you have. It won’t matter to you, and pretty soon … well … world destruction.”

  Like what Emily showed me? Could I have caused that in the future? Or another time traveler?

  “What if I fixed things without making a new timeline?” I asked.

  He smiled this patronizing smile. “Yes, that would be excellent for you, but only I can do that. Others have tried. So much that they rotted their minds and died. Besides, changing one event often creates a chain reaction, and if you haven’t carefully considered each alteration, if you act impulsively, the results could be disastrous. It’s a responsibility few can handle.”

  “I get it. Well … I do now anyway. Now that I’m more experienced,” I said, channeling Jenni Stewart and her ability to dive into a role so completely. To pretend. “So, tell me, then … tell me your side.”

  He smiled and released Holly, then wrapped his fingers around my arm. We were jumping. Together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I shook Thomas’s hand off my arm the second I felt the ground underneath me.

  “It’s Times Square,” Thomas said. “What do you think?”

  The buildings I knew so well surrounded me, only they were painted in soft earth tones, reflecting perfectly the sun’s rays.

  And this version of New York had people everywhere. Their clothes matched the earth tones of the buildings. A woman walked by us and smiled, then said hello. My eyes dropped to the ground. It was covered in greenish brown brick that extended out everywhere. No dividing lines between sidewalk and street.

  “Where are all the cars?” I asked.

  “No cars. Just teleportation devices for traveling lengthy distances,” Thomas said. “Notice the air. It’s perfect—always clean, never too hot or too cold.”

  Not like the air in the destroyed New York Emily had taken me to. I wouldn’t have lasted a day breathing that in. What was she trying to tell me? “Some people are fighting to keep this from happening and some people are going to make it happen.”

  “Is this where you’re from?” I asked Thomas.

  “Don’t you mean when I’m from?” Thomas asked, then he laughed. “That’s the wonderful thing about being one of us, you can call anywhere home … anytime. Why not choose a world that makes the most logical sense?”

  Okay, so obviously he isn’t going to tell me what year he was born. Not that I expected him to.

  Behind me there were kids playing on a playground. At least I think it was a playground. But they were almost silent. Nothing like the kids I had in my group at camp. All the equipment seemed to be moving or electronic. A beam ran in between two poles and shifted side to side and the kids walked the length of it while it swayed.

  The small climbing wall leading up to the main structure revolved so kids just climbed in place. They all moved like little Spider-Men, practically leaping tall buildings.

  “All solar-powered,” Thomas said, turning to face the playground next to me. “Here, in the future, we don’t do anything that damages the Earth.”

&
nbsp; But somebody did damage the Earth in the future. Or at least New York. I saw it with my own eyes. Or maybe that had already happened and they’d fixed it? Or … it was just a different timeline?

  He started walking closer to a light brown building and I followed.

  “We’ve improved the quality of life beyond what anyone could have imagined. Eliminated obesity, improved vitamin supplements, increased brain function.”

  Vitamins that gave everyone superhuman strength? That would explain the amazing spider-children. “When does this happen?”

  More important, what kind of drastic measures did it take to achieve this type of success?

  “That I can’t tell you.” He spoke in this formal yet calm tone, like he was a guide giving me the four o’clock tour of the perfect future.

  I continued to take in my surroundings, and it truly was beautiful. No trash anywhere, nothing out of place. The color schemes were brilliant. Like city and country blending together. Unbelievably perfect … exactly why I didn’t trust it. Emily had showed me the other future for a reason. I really wanted dates. For both worlds.

  “Time’s up,” Thomas said, grasping my arm and pulling me back.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  AUGUST 15, 2009, 5:00 P.M.

  Thomas did have skill. We were exactly where we’d left. I bent over, panting and trying to orient myself. Obviously, time travel had a different effect when I went with another time traveler. Going two years in the past had weakened me quite a bit and the half-jump to 1992 had beaten the shit out of me. But I felt fine now.

  “So, were you impressed?” Thomas asked me.

  “Yeah, it was … incredible,” I said.

  He walked toward Holly, who must have been standing there for only a second or two, because she was still in the same place. He grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her closer to the edge.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, not sure if I should make a move yet.

  “Your speech earlier about nonessential items was very convincing, knowing what you’ve been through recently. But unfortunately, I’m a little too smart to allow myself to be fooled.”