15 Minutes- The Complete Saga Boxset

by Jill Cooper

  “Everything is recorded, scanned, and monitored. They call it the time travel corridor, but I’ve never seen it. The area’s restricted. It’s synched in with the time fluxes of the future and the system catalogs who and what they did. That’s when they’re arrested.”

  “And executed.” I rub my chin, gazing at the river. It looks so much like my Charles River; the only thing that is familiar. Knowing where you are, but recognizing virtually nothing, is a scary place to be. “Do any of the officers ever go back in time to catch someone?”

  “Only an elite group and it has to be approved first. Time travel like that causes this thing called time travel sickness--.”

  That at least sounds familiar and it reminds me of a simpler time, crazy as that is. “I know. I’ve had it.”

  “You’ve gone in the past?” Cassidy’s jaw falls open.

  “More than once.”

  “Then how…how can you even be standing here?” Her eyes widen, as if I’m a freak, an impressive one, but still a freak. There’s a little bit of astonishment in her eye.

  “I’m special.” The words come out dry. Boy, do I wish I wasn’t. “When did Daniels invent this time corridor?”

  “Seventy years ago, give or take. His journals were stolen and he had to recreate a lot of his work from scratch.”

  The journals. “Were they ever found?”

  Cassidy shakes her head. “People have been looking for decades. But they’re lost.”

  Finally, I feel like I’ve received a gift. “I had them. I hid them. With luck, maybe they’re still there. We can piece together how he created this and maybe a way to undo it all.”

  “Where?” Cassidy asks as we start back toward the police car.

  “224 Commonwealth Avenue.”

  Cassidy stops in her tracks and goes white as a sheet. “Well, I guess now I know why Reynold Jackson wanted to move into the slums. He moved into your old house. He was trying to find your journals.”

  We have to hope he didn’t.

  ****

  Cassidy tries to prepare me, but there’s no way for me to steel myself.

  Commonwealth Avenue and my beautiful home are in shambles. Ruins.

  Lush gardens have been replaced with brown, dying grass. Flowers are nonexistent and the brownstones that have lasted hundreds of years are decaying. Spray paint defaces their beauty and my hope wilts like the tulip growing beside the steps of my home.

  Cassidy leads and I follow her up the stairs. She rings the bell and when no one answers, anxiety grows in the pit of my stomach. Cassidy sighs and bangs her fist only harder. “Katie, open the door if you’re able to!”

  “Maybe she’s not home.”

  Cassidy isn’t convinced. “She knew I was coming today. She’s…sick. She’d be here.” Cassidy takes a step back and kicks the door open. We head inside and Cassidy tightly holds the black stick she had holstered on her belt..

  I step inside; what should have been the foyer of my townhouse is now a rundown musty hallway. She leads me into a minuscule apartment, in what had been Mom’s kitchen. Just yesterday, Dad had been there prepping dinner for the twins and now Molly is an old grandma. And my life? I don’t even want to think about it.

  On the floor in the cramped kitchen area, is the small, fragile body of who I guess is Katie. Her head is turned to the side, so thin that you can see her tendons beneath the skin. Her eyes are glassy as they stare off toward the screaming tea kettle that is at a roaring boil.

  I turn the burner off and remove the kettle, burning my hand while doing so. I grab a towel off the counter. Beside me, Cassidy is on bended knee beside the body. She shakes her head. “No,” She whispers, her two fingers pressed up against Katie’s neck.

  “You said she was sick…” But even my own voice doesn’t sound so sure.

  Cassidy points to her black sunken eyes and the round bruise on Katie’s chest. Circular and red, it’s like a burn, with veins extending outward in all directions. “That’s caused by an electrical staff held too long. Just like mine.” Her fingers grip her black stick so tight it begins to charge and gives off the smell of an electrical current.

  “You think Rewind? These Global Law people killed her?”

  She stands beside me and wipes her hands on her pants as if she’s dirty. Soiled. But maybe she is. Maybe we all are.

  “I think they killed her. They knew I’d come here and now they’re going to set me up. They know I have you.”

  “Then we better move fast.” I push my lips together and study Cassidy’s sad features. “The journals are in my old room. Upstairs.”

  She takes a deep breath and nods; she’s back. She’s pushed Katie’s death to the side. Maybe they were close or she just felt bad for Katie. In either case, I want to give her time to grief, but I can’t. I know how it goes.

  We need to move. Push on. Forget for now those we’ve left behind.

  Back in the hall, I find the stairs right where I left them, but the carpet is dingy and in need of a wash. All of this overwhelms me and my brain hurts as I climb the stairs.

  Cassidy isn’t far behind me.

  The upper hallway should be where the bedrooms and bathrooms are, but instead, they are just a series of dingy doors. I go to the mine and put my hand on it. “This is it.”

  Cassidy nods and knocks the side of her fist on the door. “Global Law! Please open the door and step away!”

  The door unlocks and Cassidy pushes it open. She goes in first, holding the black stick in her hand and I take in the sight of my old bedroom. It has a pull out sofa, and a small kitchenette that isn’t even big enough for a full sized fridge; my heart is crushed. The sight of the people, a family of three, against the wall near my old window, further dampens my spirits. The little girl’s hair is done up in braids, one higher than the other. Her face is dirty.

  And worst of all, she looks terrified.

  The mother hugs her kids close and I try not to look at them. Everyone is scared. Everyone is terrified that they might break the law, someday in the future. That they’ll pay for it now. It’s no way to live. No way to be.

  I go to the small television and wheel it away. I see it.

  The patch job I did.

  I don’t know how it’s survived so long, but Cassidy hands me a knife from the kitchen cart and I saw into the drywall. Reaching in, the scraps of drywall scratching me, my fingers wrap around the dusty books and I pull them out. Flipping through the leather binders I see the pages have aged and browned.

  It’s all mystifying.

  “Let’s move, Lara.” Cassidy nudges me.

  “Wait.” I reach inside a moment and pull out the gun. The time assassin’s revolver. Looks as if it’ll still work. I stick it into the back of my jeans.

  “Guns are outlawed. No one’s allowed to have one anymore.” Cassidy’s lips are pressed together hard and it’s clear she doesn’t view herself as above the law. Commendable, but not something we have time for.

  “It’ll still work, won’t it? Besides, I got it from the time travel assassin. I’m assuming Daniels sent him after me.”

  “The who?” Cassidy scowls and it’s clear she has no idea there are even time travel assassins. I guess Daniels has more secrets than even we know.

  “You have evidence that Daniels has an assassin?” Cassidy asks the question as if I have a buried treasure map. She wants to put him away, prove he’s guilty.

  I just wish I could provide that. “Only that he tried to kill me, more than once.”

  We take the hallway toward the stairs. Cassidy’s comm goes off and her face drops as she eyes the image. I glance at it and I see the hologram image of Cassidy’s face on her wrist. Wanted: for the murder of Katie Jackson and corruption charges.

  I guess it’s her turn to be executed for a crime she didn’t commit, all because she helped me. She wants a better future. Present. Whatever we’re stuck in.

  Personally, I think it’s hell.

  Cassidy takes the comm off an
d steps on it, squishing it into the ground with the heel of her shoe. She notices my raised eyebrows and answers the unspoken question. “They can track me with it. Let’s move out.”

  We charge down the stairs, and as the green light scans us, it turns red. An alarm sounds as the green light swims over Cassidy’s eyes. “They’ll be here any minute.” Cassidy grabs my arm and pulls me outside.

  We head to the car; it’s the only place we can go. Cassidy jumps in the driver seat and I take the passenger seat. We’re cruising along at top speed and she takes a hard right turn.

  Off in the distance, police car sirens blare and lights flash. “What now?”

  Cassidy grips the steering wheel in her hand, caressing it. “We head out of the city. If we stay here, we’ll be caught. Then we come up with a game plan. Figure out what’s in those journals that can help us.”

  Sounds almost like a Lara Crane plan. But at this point, any plan is better than no plan. Even a crazy one.

  14: Lara

  We ditch the squad car up by the harbor and Steal a rowboat. Before you know it, we’re paddling across Boston Harbor toward the islands. The island we dock on isn’t huge, but it’s big enough to get lost on. We pull the rowboat onto land, within the tree line and cover it in twigs and fallen foliage. If Rewind’s cameras do a sweep of the area, we don’t need them finding the boat.

  We hike to the center of the island. The night sky is huge, blanketed in twinkling stars. Out here in the harbor, they seem bigger and brighter. Intense. I can’t help but wonder how many times Mom or Donovan have looked at these stars.

  Wondering where I was. What I was doing.

  Now I wonder where they might be. Mom, Dad, Jax—are most likely dead-- unless people here can live to be one hundred and twenty. Don would be a senior citizen like Molly, except a few years older. Insensitive as it is, I hope I don’t have to see them.

  To hope for anything else would be too heartbreaking.

  Out on the island, we’re not monitored or under surveillance, but we’re not alone. There are a few homeless men, but they don’t look like bums. Their eyes glint with intelligence and they move away from us whenever we get close.

  They want to be left alone just as much as we do.

  “What made you want to be a Rewind officer?” It’s hard not to be judgmental as I ask, but I try. She grew up here. It’s the only way she knows.

  We drudge through the woods for a few more paces. “My parents died in a car wreck when I was a kid. My Granny,” Cassidy raises her eyebrows, “Molly says Daniels killed them. She’s lived in fear of him all her life.”

  I wait for her to finish as she clears her throat. “Anyway, I was told I was special. I had no future that could be read but now…” she shrugs.

  “Now you think Daniels saw the future and deleted it. He’s kept you close to control you and stop whatever it is we’re about to do.”

  “Precisely.” For such a small word, Cassidy packs a lot of emotion behind it. “I became an officer because of him. I thought he was like…a dad.” Her brows scowl and her eyes flash with anger.

  Vengeance.

  A look I’ve seen, when I’ve look in the mirror.

  “What happened to my mom? Jax?” I take a deep breath and almost lose the nerve to hear her answer. “Donovan James?”

  She stops and leans against a tree. “I don’t know a lot. It was a long time ago. Only what Granny told me. Her parents were divorced. Granpy Mikey died young in a boating accident. Eighteen, I think.”

  Poor Mike. So Mom and Jax went through with it. It saddens me and when I ask about my dad, Cassidy just shakes her head. She said she had no idea Molly had a half-sister so has no knowledge about my dad.

  That saddens me most of all. I saved him. Did everything I could to free him and now, not even family remember him.

  We fall silent. I’m weighed down with grief. Cassidy collects enough dry wood to light a fire. We sit by it and it warms my soggy feet, but my heart is still ice cold. I flip through the pages of the diary. Not a lot of it makes sense to me. It reads like drivel. However, when I turn the page to a drawing, everything is labeled and I think I understand it.

  I lick my lips and my heart patters faster, like the feet of little children.

  “What you got there?” Cassidy asks, hunched toward the fire. “The time corridor.”

  I’m not even sure what that is, but it’s written across the top of the pages. “The diagram is here and it looks like he’s manipulating more than just linear time.”

  Cassidy extends her hand and takes the diary. I let her study it for a while and watch her flip back and forth between it. “Timelines? He’s tapped into alternate timelines? It powers these things?”

  “Maybe all the timelines. Like chess, he extrapolates what will happen in each of the timelines with the various changes. Looks like his assassin,” I take the diary and flip it open, “is able to travel to the different timelines. Daniels suggests here that to do so would be worse than time travel sickness and to travel like that wouldn’t be limitless. There’d be consequences that even modern medicine here couldn’t fix.”

  Cassidy falls silent. “Is that how he framed Reynolds? He grabbed the images from another timeline?”

  I shrug. But it’s as good a hypothesis as any.

  “How is he doing it? What’s powering the corridor? If he got the tech in the past by studying your brain, you can’t do that, can you?”

  It’s a good question and one I don’t have an answer for. “No. Before now, I’ve only ever gone back in time. Then returned to the present. But never ever have I gone forward.” I pause. “Ever.”

  “I get it,” Cassidy says with a wry smile. “Maybe we don’t need to know. Maybe exploding the corridor is enough. Destroy it.”

  “That won’t send me back. It won’t bring back Reynold Jackson or anyone else Daniels has hurt.”

  Cassidy stares into my eyes and I picture her wheels turning inside her head. “So, go back and fix it if you think that’s what we should do.”

  “I can’t.” Unconsciously I rub the nub on the back of my head. “He fitted me with a restraint. I can’t travel back even if I want to.”

  Cassidy reaches around my neck and feels my device. “It’s a simple port? If we can get you into the lab, we can hook you up, deactivate it. It’s simple. A monkey could do it.”

  She’s so much like me I can’t help a smirk. “Except for the get me into the lab part. Your ID won’t work. Everyone is looking for us. How are we going to get in there?”

  “It won’t matter if we get caught if we can get it done. I deactivate you, you travel back in time, and you unravel all of this.”

  “How? I don’t know how Daniels creates the time corridor. I won’t know what to do when I go back.” A thought hits me and everything in front of me sways. “I need to talk to Daniels.”

  Cassidy’s mouth slips open. “Are you nuts?”

  “Maybe,” I admit. “Doesn’t mean I’m not right. I talk to Daniels, get him to admit how he did it. Make him think he’s won.”

  “And then go back in time.” Cassidy whispers and this time it looks like she might be the one who faints. “He’s going to have to think he’s caught you. If he thinks you’re up to something we’re dead in the water.”

  “I know. And it hasto be me, alone. I’m going to need you close. Someone still needs to deactivate this thing in my head.”

  Cassidy nods and her face sets to stone as I hand over my gun to her. She holds it as if it’s forbidden fruit.

  “Are you sure about this? Your career, everyone you love—.”

  “None of it will matter if we win. If we get you back in time to stop it, everything here will be different. Who knows, maybe I won’t even remember.” Cassidy studies the gun in her hand, as if it being there is heartbreaking.

  “I will. I always do.” I don’t mean to sound so forlorn when I say it, gazing across the harbor. My heart feels the pain of it all. Losing mom at the age o
f five, losing dad to prison. Watching Jax die. Now all of this…

  Cassidy grips my shoulder. “Then this time, let’s cripple Rewind. Let’s make it so they can never do this again. No more reboots.”

  No more reboots. I like that. “Cassidy, I think you might take after your crazy aunt.”

  “Great aunt.” She reminds me.

  “Ouch.” I cringe.

  It’s time to get to work.

  ****

  I take the rowboat back to the harbor. I drop Cassidy off, beneath the bridge where she will be hidden and safe. When I offer to give her my hoodie, to hide her face, she shakes her head. “We don’t want them to suspect we’re working together, remember? Just stick to the plan. I’ll be okay.”

  Taking a deep breath, I settle back into the boat and row off. I aim for the spot we’ve settled on and I’m in no rush to get there. It’s in the quiet, those moments alone that are the hardest. I can’t stop myself from reflecting on the beauty of Boston, my home. Except now, there are beams of green light on all of the buildings.

  In the night sky, a helicopter flutters past and churns up wind around me. When the light hits the boat, and me I pick up speed. The light turns red and I dive into the harbor to get away. I’m not that strong a swimmer, but I’m strong enough to make it to the New England Aquarium, or what was once the Aquarium. Now it’s Rewind Harbor & Search and Rescue.

  Just something else it has taken charge of. Another thing Rewind has corrupted, like an infection. A disease. Everything it touches turns black, brittles and dies.

  When I pull myself up, my clothes are soaking wet and I’m freezing in the night chill. Police sirens are close. I want to buy Cassidy more time to find a way deeper into the city, so I make my way toward a shopping plaza, long closed for the night.

  “Stop!” Police behind me scream. They’re hot in pursuit and closing in on my tail.

  They don’t have guns, so I don’t listen. I charge up the steps toward a boutique. There is a chair outside so I grab it and fling it at the window.