The flap came free.
He felt a tug, like someone trying to pull him back from cutting places in line. He had just enough time to wonder whether he should look up when a bus rammed into his body.
The straps around his shoulders, chest, and groin all tried to scissor through his bones at once. What little air had been in his lungs gushed out as sure as if Brian Steinhoff had sucker punched him. His head jerked up as his legs flopped down.
Disoriented and gasping, Winston had enough wits still functioning to hear something snap above him and know that it was either the chute inflating or…something bad. A spider web of white cords extended high above him. Except for one. One strand of the web whipped freely in the wind, threatening to tangle among its mates. Above these, the oval blue of Winston’s canopy billowed, but part of it, probably the part where the broken cord was supposed to connect, flapped and folded backward around a gash, probably where the debris that had sliced his arm had also nicked his parachute.
Did that matter? Could he complete the jump safely with a broken line and a not-completely-inflated canopy?
Winston didn’t know. That scenario hadn’t been in the lecture.
His heart jackhammered madly, and he felt fear threaten to swamp every thought trying to form in his head. Even the steadily descending trail of black smoke in the distance, and the thicker column of smoke now rising from the earth at the trail’s end, barely registered. He didn’t have a second to think about that. The crash was beyond his control. Right now, he had to make a choice.
The ground pushed up toward him, slower now, but only to taunt him before opening its jaws to swallow him up.
Winston might live with one busted cord, but he might not. And was that tear in the canopy getting longer? What if his fear was fooling him?
Better safe than sorry.
Without daring another moment to think himself into further delays, Winston reached up to his shoulder and yanked hard on the cutaway handle. It came free in his hand, like a pin pulled from a fire extinguisher. In the space of a heartbeat, his main chute snapped away and billowed into the air above him. Winston felt himself whipsawed up and down, as if he were riding a demon-possessed elevator. He plummeted freely for an instant, feet down, arms flying up over his head, and he opened his mouth to scream into the wind. As he did so, his other hand found the reserve handle near the left strap over his chest, just above his backpack. He pulled it, and almost instantly his body jerked violently upward again.
The reserve chute deployed above him, rectangular and ribbed, but also plain white and smaller than the previous chute. It was also, much to his relief, anchored by another web of nylon lines, all of them untangled and unbroken.
Winston found a new set of bright yellow handles dangling from the straps on each side of his head. He gripped these and began to experiment, giving each side a gentle tug to see how it affected his downward trajectory. Sure enough, Winston found he had limited control over his lateral movement.
At last, he could look down without moderate certainty that he was about to die. So long as Colonel Bauman was right and his falling speed wasn’t much more than twenty miles per hour, he knew from his jump off the top of Safeway that he should be OK. More or less.
Winston had to make up his mind on where to try to land. If the map had been correct, the old nuclear explosion, and thus Area X, would be only a few hundred yards northeast of the pass between bluff ridges. From up here, Winston couldn’t see any signs of activity, but that didn’t mean anything. A labyrinth of tunnels had once flowed under this dried-up lake bed. If the place was important, there might still be military staff or at least surveillance out here. If he landed to the east, it would be a hot trek over miles of nothing, and he would be in plain sight the whole way.
Winston trusted his gut. He aimed for the flat area between the pass and the farm. If he ran into trouble, he might find help within range at the farm. If not, he could hop back to 1948, proceed straight east through the gap, and hike on to Area X.
Something moved on the ground below him. It might have been the sun reflecting off a shiny surface or the shifting of a shadow. As Winston focused on it, though, he soon made out the tiny figure of a walking man. Winston was still too distant to discern facial features, but the black pants, white shirt, and shiny, shifting object floating above his hand left no doubt. As Winston watched, the man morphed into a pillar of sparks, vanished, and then reappeared in a similar lightshow almost directly under Winston.
Bledsoe waited for Winston to fall straight into his grasp.
5
Plea from the Past
Bledsoe shielded his eyes and studied the Chase boy’s descent. He was drifting a lot, either intentionally or because the wind had him. It didn’t matter. Bledsoe could bounce a few hundred yards along the ground as needed. Those long jumps were taxing, but he could manage a few more line-of-sight hops without much trouble, especially now.
As he watched, the crashed plane’s smoke spread slowly across the sky. Bledsoe expected to feel some remorse or at least sentimentality for sending Amanda to a fiery death. But he didn’t. None of it mattered. Besides, he had offered her plenty of chances.
His only concern was for those artifacts drifting down to him. And perhaps, as a distant afterthought, getting to put a bullet or two in Claude’s son. Perks of the job.
Bledsoe pocketed the Alpha Machine pieces and released his Beretta M9’s magazine to check the rounds. All good, and one in the chamber.
For a moment, he thought about using the Alpha Machine to appear in mid-air right next to the boy and simply take him out at point-blank range. He wasn’t sure about trying to shoot and use the Alpha Machine at the same time, though. He suspected it wasn’t quite like bouncing on a trampoline, and the last thing he needed was to somehow lose control of those pieces five hundred feet above the ground.
Patience.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot. God, it was hard to wait around for gravity. He wasn’t sure if the sweat on his forehead was from his excitement or the desert’s mounting heat. It had to be at least eighty-five already, but, as they said, it was a dry heat, and somehow that was supposed to make it all better.
Bledsoe wondered how he was going to hide Winston’s body and parachutes, then he caught himself and laughed out loud. It was going to be a long time before he ever cared about what happened in 2013 again.
He pointed the M9 at Winston and flipped up the safety lever. At this distance, he probably wouldn’t hit the kid, but what did it hurt to try?
“Mr. Bledsoe.”
Bledsoe spun toward the voice behind him, pistol out at arm’s length.
The man wore a black business suit, complete with black tie, slicked-back hair, and sunglasses. The red-accented dress shoes were a dead giveaway. He walked with calm, unhurried assurance from behind a rock outcropping fifty or so feet away. A second man, blond and only slightly heavier than his partner but otherwise eerily similar, followed close behind.
Management agents. Had they gotten here before Bledsoe? How would that even have been possible? Could there be another Alpha Machine? Bledsoe wouldn’t rule out the possibility, but where were their pieces?
Even more disturbing were the questions of how they’d known he would be in this spot and how they would interfere when Winston landed.
“Mr. Bledsoe,” said the first agent. “It is imperative that you stop what you’re doing. You cannot shoot Winston Chase.”
That suggestion did not work for Bledsoe at all.
The man reached under his suit jacket. Bledsoe had no interest in discussion. He fired a shot at the middle of the agent’s chest and hit just above his belt and a few inches to the right. As the man stumbled back, Bledsoe adjusted his aim. The next round went into his chest.
The agent fell onto his back. His jacket fell open, revealing two rapidly spreading red patches on his white shirt. Bledsoe saw no sign of a gun. The man took two more shuddering breaths, then fell still, mout
h open as if he’d been in mid-thought.
The remaining agent seemed impressively calm at his partner’s death. He held still, open hands out to his sides, and said, “I am unarmed. We came only to deliver a message and make a request.”
“Don’t shoot the kid,” said Bledsoe as he carefully approached his target. “I got that. What’s the request?”
“That you come with me to Management — immediately. There, you will receive a debriefing and further instructions.”
“Ha!” Bledsoe shook his head. “A debriefing? You don’t say.”
He checked Winston’s position in the sky. The boy had drifted several hundred yards to the east. Bledsoe would have to jump again, but he still had time.
“So, I shoot two agents,” he continued, “maybe three, and Management just gives me a rap on the knuckles and best wishes for a pleasant day? Unlikely, don’t you think?”
“You will see that loss of life is inconsequential to Management. Matters are not how they seem to you.”
Bledsoe sucked thoughtfully on his teeth, then shrugged. The way things seemed to Bledsoe, he was moments away from achieving his life’s ambition. He would fetch the fifth piece from Hanford somehow, then off he’d go to fetch himself a new and improved Amanda before reshaping the world as it should have been.
Or he could go with this agent and either be locked away for life or executed.
Yup, no question.
Bledsoe fired three rounds into the man, and this time he was less careful. Two missed entirely, but the third went through a lung. The agent sank to his knees, head bowed forward. He reached with a shaking hand into his outside jacket pocket and withdrew something small and metallic.
Fearing some sort of explosive device, Bledsoe automatically put two more rounds into the man. He fell face-first into the brown dust and lay still. The object fell from his hand and clattered across the rocks. It certainly didn’t look like an explosive, although it could have been a detonator. Closer inspection revealed it to be an Olympus digital voice recorder.
What the…?
The agent had said something about delivering a message. Perhaps it hadn’t been about not shooting the boy. Still expecting some trick, Bledsoe cringed as he pressed the device’s play button.
“It is October 18th, 1954,” said a thin but all-too-familiar voice. “This is Devlin Bledsoe. As proof, I’m telling you, who is sort of me, that I tried to strangle the neighbor’s dog when I was six.”
Bledsoe froze. This was impossible. He had never admitted that to anyone, ever. This could conceivably be some sort of clever, digitally manipulated mash-up of his own words. He’d read about audio geeks doing such things. But he had never made such a recording. He had never even been in 1954.
That could only mean one thing: He had succeeded. He had obtained the Alpha Machine and gone back to execute his plan.
“I want you to stop,” said the 1954 Bledsoe. “Stop pursuing Winston Chase. Stop what you’re thinking. Stop what you’re about to do. Please.”
Bledsoe felt his mind go blank with confusion and fear. This wasn’t possible. Everything he had ever wanted depended on finishing this. If he didn’t, his life would lose all meaning. He would rot in a cell, and the world would continue its slip into slow, degrading oblivion.
And…please? It was his voice, but Bledsoe would never talk like that. His timbre sounded different, too. It carried his faint accent, but it was missing his edge, that sharp tip of toughness that had become a part of him over the years. What had happened to him? Why was he trying to sabotage himself?
“You have to believe me,” said the other Bledsoe.
Then he knew. Something had gone wrong. Perhaps this other Bledsoe had a gun to his head and was being coerced to say these things. His plan had not gone entirely as intended. He was not in the sort of control he’d anticipated.
Why? Where was the flaw in his design? He would need to figure it out. But he had time. Once he had the Alpha Machine, which was now a foregone conclusion, he could have all the time in the world. He would just have to be doubly careful.
“I will definitely take that under advisement,” he said as he dropped the recorder into the dirt and felt it crunch satisfyingly under his heel. “For now, though, business beckons.”
Bledsoe located Winston again. He was much lower now, probably within shooting range. Time to seal the deal.
Grinning uncontrollably, Bledsoe lifted the two Alpha Machine pieces, took a deep breath, and jumped to Winston’s new position.
6
Mayhem and Midichlorians
Winston had been yanking hard on the right handle by his shoulder, having found that it gave him the most lateral movement away from Bledsoe and the bodies falling still on the desert before him. Unfortunately, his worst fears were confirmed when, almost in the same instant, Bledsoe vanished in a column of blue sparks and rematerialized right below him.
Winston couldn’t have more than seconds left. He was down to only one chance.
As if to drive the point home, Winston felt his parachute jerk slightly. The crack of a gunshot arrived a second or two later. Winston’s gaze snapped up to the canopy, where he found a small hole in the gossamer fabric a couple of feet from its left edge.
Winston let go of the steering toggle and groped for his backpack’s zipper. Fingertips white with chill and devoid of feeling, Winston found he couldn’t grip the tab. Concentrating as much as he could with the ground and Bledsoe racing toward him, Winston sandwiched the tab between both of his thumbs and pushed it to the side.
The zipper slid open just enough for him to wiggle two fingers into the gap so he could pull the mouth open wider.
Tinnitus rang out in both his ears, loud enough to make him wince. Below him, he saw Bledsoe raise one hand to the side of his head. The timing and frequency of these ringing attacks couldn’t be coincidental. Winston had experienced them for as long as he could remember, and he’d always read that people got tinnitus flares from old age or exposure to loud noise that led to damage of the hair cells in the inner ear. Neither of those factors applied to Winston, but he knew that the bouts had been arriving more frequently in the last few days. The last one had been right before his mom had spoken to him telepathically on Council Crest.
Winston felt the parachute jerk again as his fingers wrapped around Little e’s crossbar. Like during a thunderstorm’s approach, the time to hearing the pistol shot seemed slightly shorter than before.
Winston didn’t waste time with looking up.
Bledsoe changed his stance. He’d been almost lazily pointing at Winston with one hand. Now he spread both feet, squared his shoulders to Winston, and brought his left hand up to cup his right in a proper shooter’s pose.
Bledsoe! Winston mentally yelled at him, gambling that his hunch was correct.
Almost instantly, the tinnitus faded into a dull background hum. Winston didn’t understand the mechanism that the QVs used to link their minds, but he imagined it was something like two radios tuning in to each other’s frequency.
Chase?
I need you to listen to me, Winston thought.
In the following pause, Winston lifted Little e’s wrist guard free from the pack. The device connected with his brain, building pressure. As warmth started to press into his palm, Winston could feel that there wasn’t much energy left in it — or himself.
He wondered what would happen if the device ran out of power in mid-jump, then pushed the thought away. He could ponder interesting accidental ways to die later. Hopefully.
How are you doing this? Bledsoe asked.
Good. Bledsoe didn’t know about this capability, and now his curiosity was getting the better of him.
Winston remembered one time in fifth grade when Brian Steinhoff had found him alone in the Char Burger parking lot. Steinhoff had gotten in Winston’s face and threatened to hurt him if Winston didn’t hand over all of his food and money. Struck by inspiration, Winston had asked if Brian had any allergies,
then proceeded to explain in highly technical gibberish that these foods were ideal for his own allergy conditions. Within sixty seconds, Brian had become so confused that he simply walked away, and Winston had learned the art of “baffling with BS.”
He had Little e’s arms unwind and try to grasp the chronoviewer and chronojumper, but it was difficult to maneuver inside the bag. He didn’t want to take the pieces out and tip Bledsoe off as to his intentions, but he might not have a choice.
Winston went with the first word that came to mind.
Midichlorians, he thought to Bledsoe.
Shade would never forgive him for referencing The Prequel That Shall Not Be Named.
What is that? Bledsoe asked.
Winston didn’t know how much Bledsoe understood about QVs, but he was fairly certain that it was more than whatever his parents had mentioned to him in passing. It was also more than he knew about Star Wars.
He pulled Little e out a bit farther, trying to create more space. Now he could see the silver chronoviewer, and it was jammed into the bottom of the bag amid two water bottles, several snack bars, and two pairs of underwear. He reached for it, trying to lift the ring free with numb fingers.
Midichlorians are a byproduct of QV oxidation. When QVs interact with stem cell mitochondria, the energy produced throws off ionized free radicals with sub-QV particles attached to them. These cross the blood-brain barrier and permeate a section of the hypothalamus that unlocks inter-individual communications.
There was nothing for it. Winston had to remove Little e from his backpack. He did so as quickly as he dared, shoulder wound protesting loudly, and then felt the chronoviewer in his left fist. He placed this within Little e’s grasp and felt the two magnetically jump into place. The chronoviewer began to rotate as Winston saw the chrono controls appear in the lower-right corner of his vision. He jammed the slider over to the left and overshot clear to 1922. The tension that flared in his mind in preparation for such a massive jump almost made him cry out.
Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy Page 66