by Zach Milan
His chest rose. His eyes flickered open. He gasped. “Holy …” And then he breathed in and out. His eyes closed with relief. “Ow.”
“C’mon!” Charlotte said, gripping him and tugging him up. Bill heaved Monroe the remaining distance into his arms, and Charlotte led the way back along the marble walkway toward historic New York. The black smoke flickered orange as the flames grew larger, consuming the exhibits around and behind them. They were almost free.
At last Charlotte burst through the metal frame, smoke pouring out on either side of her. All around, ancient New Yorkers watched the building burn. Watched as she came free. As Bill came, carrying Monroe in his arms. As Leanor followed.
They were safe. Everyone. Her whole family intact. “Let’s go,” she said, shivering despite the heat from the fire as it destroyed the Crystal Palace. “Let’s get Charlie and Felix.”
Leanor offered Charlotte the astrolabe that, once upon a time, they’d built together. She felt everyone’s touch—Monroe’s hand, Bill’s shoulder, and Leanor’s gentle fingers on her back. Charlotte twisted the lights, unable to keep her fingers from shaking. Everything was good now. For now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
TOO MANY FAREWELLS
SEPTEMBER 21, 1999
When they appeared in the dark emptiness of Bryant Park, Charlotte’s heart leaped as two shadows stepped into nearby lamplight. A man in a polo, a boy beside him. Charlie and Felix.
Felix squinted, then leaned down to Charlie and pointed in their direction. The boy bolted across the stones, onto the grassy section of Bryant Park. “Mom!” His little arms squeezed her knees. “You’re okay.”
“Of course I am,” she said. “Your uncle was quite something.” She looked up to Monroe, hoping to impress him with her gratitude. She’d never be able to thank him enough for what he’d done. Not only had he retrieved her from a horrible past, he’d made sure Charlie and Felix would be here, too.
But Monroe didn’t return her look. He wasn’t smiling proudly. And though he nursed his broken wrist, his focus was on Bill.
The familiar queasiness returned, but she couldn’t ask; Felix joined his son, placed a hand on her waist. She leaned in, kissed him, making this her timeline. No matter that this wasn’t the man she’d married. That she wasn’t the woman he’d divorced. His lips tasted the same as they always did, but somehow better.
The kiss ended, and Felix pulled back, his hand lingering on her soot-stained shirt. “Is everyone okay?”
“We’re fine,” Charlotte said. “Though I had to break Monroe’s wrist.” But her brother didn’t look over in forgiveness or anger. He still simply watched Bill. What was she missing?
“The Blast?” Felix asked.
“Stopped,” Leanor replied.
Felix’s mouth fell open as he turned to the woman he’d never met, but only heard of.
“Felix,” Charlotte said, “Charlie, I’d like you to meet the woman who invented time travel. Who had us stop the Blast. Leanor, meet Felix, my … husband. And Charlie, our son.”
Felix offered a hesitant hand.
While Monroe watched Bill, Bill simply watched Felix shake Leanor’s hand. There was a slight sad smile on Bill’s lips. He was the source of her queasiness. Something about him and Monroe.
“’Roe?” Charlotte asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
At her words, Bill turned from Charlotte’s family. Took Monroe’s good hand. “I …”
“You’re staying,” Monroe finished for him, shaking his head. “I know you’re staying.”
The memory crashed through Charlotte. Monroe explaining history on Liberty Island, wholly focused on Bill. The contentment on Bill’s face making it clear that he no longer belonged in their world.
“What happened when you left?” Monroe asked, his eyes boring into Bill’s. “Where did you go? What did you see in that timeline? Why can’t you stay?”
Bill slid an arm around Monroe’s back, squeezing him tightly. “I lived and died there, Monroe. That Bill, he saved those lives. He was exactly who I’ve always dreamed of being. And now maybe I can be someone else. Someone different, Monroe.” A tear fell down his cheek.
Charlotte tutted, unable to help herself. “You already are, Bill. I saw it in the Crystal Palace. You’re already different.”
“You can come home,” Monroe murmured. “You have a life with us. We’re family.”
Charlotte’s heart swelled. The very same words had convinced her that Bill could come along.
Bill exhaled. Shook his head. “I have to go. You’ll see; you’ll be better off without me. Without someone so judgmental, hypocritical, irritating.”
“No, no,” Monroe’s voice was petulant, angry, and full of love. He squeezed Bill hard. “I’ll never be better without you.”
“But you were.” Bill pulled back. “You should’ve seen yourself there. We only saw the tail end, but I saw how different you could be. You were incredible.”
“No. No.” Monroe gripped Bill’s shoulders. “I was better because I had you to look forward to.”
Charlotte gulped. There was an easy solution to all of this. Something these obtuse men couldn’t see. “So?” She stepped toward them, setting her jaw. This had to be done. “He wants to stay here? You want to be with him? Easy.” She tried to blink away her tears. “Stay here with him.”
“Char, I …” Monroe began.
“But the Council …” Bill agreed.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “You two have something. You both make each other better. Looking forward to the other, watching out for each other. Go, ’Roe. Go be better together.”
Quiet now, Monroe watched her. His mouth worked up and down slowly, his eyes squinted, widened, blinked. He was making the decision that would take him away. That would wreck the family she’d had for a single moment.
“No.” Monroe stepped away from Bill. Toward Charlotte. “No, I’m staying in our time.”
Why? Why would he leave Bill here? “Don’t do this for me,” Charlotte whispered. It would be hard, but she could live without him. For a few great days, it had felt like they were kids again. Connected. That feeling would last her a lifetime.
Monroe laughed, shaking his head as his eyes watered. “I’m not, Charlotte. I’m doing this because I need to. For me. Bill had years to change, and me? Bill’s right. I’ve barely begun.” He laughed sadly and cradled his right arm. The wrist bulged, red and angry beneath the cuff. “Anyway, I prefer the doctors of our time.”
With a final step, Monroe stood beside Charlotte. Behind them, Felix, Charlie, and Leanor looked on. A group of five against a single, obstinate man who’d made up his mind.
Bill drew himself up. “I know 9/11 is only two years away, but I won’t tell a soul. I’ll get my team prepared, we’ll help, but I won’t tip my hand. They wouldn’t understand.”
“No,” Monroe said. “They wouldn’t. But you can’t.” He balled the hand on his healthy arm into a fist. “You can’t go to the World Trade Center that day, Bill. I know you; you’d give your life. Don’t you want to be someone different?”
Bill’s pale green eyes flicked away. Worrying he’d never change.
“You can’t leave us,” Charlotte whispered. She couldn’t help herself.
Stepping forward, Felix echoed, “You can’t leave him.” Charlie squeezed between Felix and Charlotte, shaking his head.
“He has to,” Monroe said, an edge in his voice. Charlotte heard him convincing himself as much as he was trying to convince them. “This is who he is. It’s why I love him.” He turned back. “I love you, Bill.”
In seconds, Bill crossed the distance, pulling Monroe into another hug. “I love you too,” he said. “I really do.” And Bill kissed him. Monroe closed his eyes, squeezing into Bill. This was their final moment as a couple.
When the kiss ended, Monroe stepped back, and Charlotte handed Bill the astrolabe. “One more trip,” she said. “To get you home. If you won’t change your mind.”
“From here on,” Monroe said, biting his lip, “you’ll have to live every moment one at a time.”
Bill didn’t reply; he simply drew a C on Charlotte’s astrolabe. The stars illuminated the darkened park. Bill carefully twisted the stars forward, choosing the time when he’d return to his position on the bomb squad. February 4, 2000. Monroe, Charlotte, Felix, Leanor, and Charlie stepped forward, placing their hands on him. A final touch for a final trip. When they were connected, Bill released.
The air became chill. Summer faded into winter. The sun came up above the trees and slowed, casting shadows across the grassy park, white with frost.
“Thank, you,” Bill said, offering the orb back to Charlotte. “Thank you for everything.” He gave Monroe one final peck. “Thank you,” he whispered to Monroe, and strode away.
His shadow lingered beside them.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
Before Monroe asked for it, Charlotte spun time forward twenty-three more years. Back to their changed timeline.
The wintery Bryant Park vanished, melting into a green lawn before icing over once more. The sun strobed above, as it had only a week ago, when Charlotte showed Monroe what the astrolabe did. Time sped forward, and when April 8, 2016 went by, there was no blinding flash. Instead, the Council’s enormous black tower blinked into existence. Time continued, but the black tower never seemed to age. No ghostly figures sped by—as if every New Yorker were staying as far from the tower as they could.
Time slowed, and the sidewalk remained empty. Far above, the tower reached upward, its pointed top almost piercing the clouds. The Council’s spire was now a part of their time—2023.
“This is what we did,” Monroe said. “This is what we saved.”
“No,” Charlotte said. “There was more.”
There were millions of lives. A thousand buildings. Whole histories left intact. There was Bill, a man alive who should’ve died. And there was Charlie, a boy who’d likely never been born.
But now the Council was free in this time. Free to torture anyone, steal children, and chase down …
Charlotte turned to Leanor. “You have to go.” She hated having to say it. This was her family, and they’d already lost one member. “The Council will come for you; you know they will.”
Paris had appeared before them so many times; the Council would come soon.
But Leanor didn’t run. She tapped the glass astrolabe she’d once invented. “Put that away,” she said. “Get it out of sight.”
Charlotte stowed the astrolabe, slipping Bill’s bowling-ball bag over her shoulder. “Why won’t you run?” she asked. Pleaded.
“I can’t anymore,” Leanor said, facing the spire. Monroe had asked the Council to get her to regret. But Leanor’s regret meant more than not starting the Blast. It meant hating herself for ever ruining another city. It meant she had to do more than stop herself. Charlotte saw it in her eyes, fixed on the Council’s out-of-time tower, never moving. It meant she had to serve penance for what she’d done and never done to New York City.
Charlotte reached out to grip Leanor’s hand and saw Monroe take the other. Felix and Charlie gripped her arm, her leg.
Alek, Cora, and Paris popped into view in crisp suits and more sedate hair. Alek’s was still white, his goatee and mustache matching. Paris had a crew cut now, the slightest tuft of blue at the front. Cora’s hair was mostly black and short, long strands of red sweeping out beside her ears.
“You found her,” Paris said, stepping forward and gripping Leanor’s hand. He gave them his hungry smile. “Perfect.” Gone were the eyes that recognized them. The sad smile he’d had when Cora told him some secret.
“Well done,” Alek said breezily. “You’re released from our service.” He didn’t seem to note the cuff on Monroe’s broken arm. If he did, he didn’t care. “Enjoy the rest of your life.”
Before Charlotte could ask what he meant, what service they’d been in that they were released from, the Council vanished into thin air, taking Leanor with them.
The question Charlotte had been about to ask didn’t matter. Who cared if, in this timeline, the Council had somehow used them? What mattered wasn’t what was in this world, but what she’d just lost.
Charlotte closed her eyes, tears running down her cheeks. She stepped away from the spire, leaning into Felix, gathering Charlie’s hand into hers. “I thought we had her back. I thought we’d go home and life would be perfect.” She shook her head, angry. “That was too much to expect, wasn’t it?”
Charlie looked up at his mom, his deep brown eyes wide with love. “But you saved us, Mom. Me and Dad’ll remember you. And Bill. He’s alive now. Safe.”
“That’s right,” Monroe said quietly. “We saved everyone.”
Everyone but Leanor.
EPILOGUE
AUGUST 8, 2016
Like I said, I know how an entire cross section of New York City could be taken out at once. I know why someone would do such a thing. But no one did.
Not anymore.
Three months after the Blast should’ve happened, three months into my penance, my cell door opened.
“Leanor,” Alek said, stepping through the low doorway. “We’ve made a decision.”
New York City sprawled below, intact. Not a single building out of place. Once I had ruined it, had changed it, had wielded time as my carving knife. Now all I could do was stand above and wonder what that city had been like. Charlotte, Monroe, and Bill had lived there, had loved it; had it really been so bad?
“Leanor,” came Cora’s voice. Strong, demanding.
I turned from the window. Alek and Cora stood on either side of the door; Paris’s shadow loomed beyond the doorway. “Have you finally decided imprisonment is too easy?” Perhaps my penance was finally over.
Alek grimaced, but Cora rolled her eyes. “Too wasteful,” she said. “You never told us exactly how those New Yorkers captured you. Never told us why you finally decided to stop running.”
The view behind me looked so similar to the memory I’d seen. A vast city far below, filled with life and opportunity. A city could be just like time. The slightest change could delay a train, make someone late for an interview, ruin an entire life.
I would never tell the Council what the trio of New Yorkers had shown me. And since the Council had never endured my bombs, since they’d never been sent back in time, they’d never met Charlotte, Monroe, or Bill. There was no need to alert the Council to how much these New Yorkers knew.
But with the Council waiting, saying that imprisoning me was wasteful, I had to give them something. “They got me to regret.”
Paris snorted, his shadowy head tilting away.
“Regret?”
“I told you, Alek,” Cora said through the side of her mouth. “Why else would she be here?”
“Regretting what, specifically?” Alek asked, not even looking Cora’s way.
I turned away, back to the city below. What had happened to this city had never happened. Every time I set a bomb, the trio stopped me. I never got to see the world they inhabited, never got to become the woman they knew. But at least they—and their astrolabe—existed. A few people who would always remember the woman I could become.
“I regretted our age,” I told them, their footsteps falling on the concrete as they came closer. Either it was enough, or the torture was about to start.
But when Cora approached, she bypassed me. Set a hand on the glass and splayed her fingers out. “We’d like to offer you a chance to redeem yourself.”
“One last chance,” came Paris’s threat.
“A final chance,” Alek said. He stood back from the window, his hands tucked behind him. “You may have ruined our time, Leanor, but you gave us a gift. You invented time travel without any of our resources. Alone in some lab. Think how much more we could do together. Think of what you could invent with us, instead of against us.”
I looked from Alek’s calm demeanor, to
Cora’s entreating smile, to Paris’s hungry grin. “You want me to work for you.”
Alek scoffed. “We want you to work with us, Leanor. No more division. There are so few of our people left; how can we leave you here to rot?”
My stomach felt empty, but I didn’t dare mention how they’d hurt our people too. “So what’s the deal? You keep me imprisoned here, and I do everything you ask?” Just like before, only without the whips, perhaps.
Paris laughed, but didn’t explain the joke.
Alek squinted at me. “I told you this was a bad idea, Cora.”
“No, Alek. You agreed it would be a waste.” She straightened her shirt. “You want the deal? You work with us. Tell us how we make this city the best it can be. Help make it the best it can be. We trust you; you trust us. No one wants a second ice age.”
I shouldn’t have, but I had to ask. “How can I ever trust you?”
Alek arched a white eyebrow. “How can we ever trust you?”
Ah, right. I could never work with them. I could never join them in their crusade to run New York as they’d run our city. I would never believe that they feared another glacier enough to change their ways. They had probably retrieved the Cornerstones, ready to abandon this era, too.
But what other choice was there? Stay in this cell forever? No, I’d be better on the outside. The moment they stopped chasing me through the future, I’d learned a powerful lesson. I could do more with freedom than on the run.
I offered a hand. “Deal.”
Alek shook it; Cora shook it; even Paris came from the shadows and took my hand, gripping it hard. “Deal,” they each said, and led me from my cell.
I had changed this city once. Though the Blast had destroyed thousands of buildings, it had also ushered in a Golden Age. People cared about their city, about history, about one another. I could do it again. I could carve the mountain of history once more.