15 Minutes- The Complete Saga Boxset

by Jill Cooper

  “I lost a daughter. I don’t see what she’s gone through that was as bad as all that.”

  “I lost everything!” I blurt it out as Miranda rolls her eyes at me. She’s a washed up middle-aged woman with a pill problem. “I was kidnapped as a kid. My family didn’t want me back. I have nothing. No friends, no family. I don’t belong anywhere. You get me? No one wants me anywhere.”

  The truth of my words rocks me and inside I’m hollow. There’s nothing in me that anyone cares about. There’s nothing about me anyone pines for, remembers. The pain is so real, why hadn’t I ever felt it before? Just acknowledging it dares to send my insides collapsing down onto me.

  “And you are…how would you describe your feelings, Cassidy?”

  “I’m angry.” I don’t shout it, but my words simmer with rage. “I’m angry at my family for letting me go. I’m angry at my kidnapper for stealing me from a life I should’ve had. I hate Lara Crane Montgomery for being the reason why it happened! And if I ever see her again, we’ll see what kind of temper problem I really have.”

  The doctor jots something down on her pad and Miranda snorts. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Someone I made up,” I chew on my fingernail and then spit it out. “Someone I can be angry at and focus my rage so I don’t end up killing anyone else. So, say the doctors,” I use air quotes, “who are trying to save me from myself.”

  “Have you really tried to kill someone?” A man asks, bending his knees so he can lean forward.

  “Not try. Have.” I toss my head defiantly, strangely. “I killed more than once. I was trained to, but they never stay dead. Instead they keep coming back and I have to keep doing it over and over again. She’s next.” I smirk at Patricia.

  Patricia glances at her watch. “Group is over for today, but I thank each of you for participating. Cassidy, good work sharing with the group. I’m impressed with the progress you’ve made today.”

  I roll my eyes as everyone starts to leave. Rising up from my seat, I head out of the room and head toward the common room. As I turn past the nurses station, a male doctor stands in a white jacket, staring at me. He wanders away, clearing the way for me to see the clock.

  “Not even the clocks work around here. The damn thing I spining backward.” I shout it out to no one in particular and everyone collectively ignores me. It figures, right? Just another part of my life that isn’t important enough to anyone.

  I grab a magazine as I enter the common room. There are a couple of girls playing checkers, some young men who I rather avoid watching television, and four miss-matched sofas over by the fireplace. The worn green one off to the side is my favorite and three people lounge on it like they own it.

  My eyes narrow to a nasty glare just as a nurse comes up. “Time to take your medicine, Cassidy,” the nurse says as she holds out the tray.

  “That two hours went by fast, man.” I take the small white cup and slam the pills into the back of my throat and rush it with some cold water. It tastes good, almost minty.

  “Get somewhere comfortable while those work. You’re going to be no good to anyone in fifteen minutes.” The nurse shakes her head at me like I’m some sort of on the street junkie. I’d shout at her, defend myself, but something about what she says sounds familiar.

  I have fifteen minutes.

  Where had I heard that before? Who was it that said that before? My skin crawls and tingles. I figure it must be the medicine doing its magic. Damn, that was fast.

  ****

  I sit at the chess board, I don’t even know why, I can’t play chess, and stare at the pieces. The pieces seem to multiple, duplicate, and sway in my vision. The drugs they’ve given me are stronger than ever to control my outbursts, or so they say. Maybe they’re just trying to keep me quiet.

  It’s working, that’s for sure.

  “Hey, watch it!” A girl screams and sits across from me at the table. “Creeper!” She shouts at some male patient. She fixes her blue hoodie before gazing not at me but the chess board. She bites her lip as she moves a pawn, her long brown curly hair covering her face, but I can make out her nose and her high cheek bones.

  She has freckles and when she gazes at me she has sparkling blue eyes. A teen, great, but I feel like I’ve seen her before. “You’re move, hot shot.”

  I raise an eyebrow and lean back in my chair. “You talk tough for a kid.”

  “I’m fifteen,” she says proudly, “not a kid.”

  “My mistake. You have all the answers, right?” I move a pawn across the board.

  We play back and forth for a while in silence. Then I move my rook and I didn’t even know I knew how to play chess, but I seem to know all the moves the pieces could make. “What’s your name?”

  “Molly. Molly Montgomery.”

  I freeze with the white knight in my hand. “Montgomery?” My voice cracks.

  Molly nods, disinterested in whatever I have to say, but it can’t be a coincidence that her name is the same as the one I made up for Lara Crane. “It’s a mouthful, I know.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?” I snarl at her and then toss the chess piece at her head. “It’s not nice to make fun of someone’s delusions, you know. We all have them. That’s why we’re here!”

  Molly doesn’t duck but instead holds out her hands as the piece lunges for her. Somehow it bounces off of her hand and right back at me. It spins, taking out all the pieces on the board and ruins our game. I stand up, fan my hands and shriek in frustration. When I push my hands out, the pieces pause in mid-air.

  They spin counterclockwise, then reverse, floating up in the air like there’s no gravity in the room. Molly’s eyes widen and then in time we both rise up from our seats. Gazing around, everyone else is frozen in time and slowly reversing, too.

  “How’d you do that?” Molly asks with a shaking breath, but instead of fear, she seems exhilarated.

  “I don’t know. How come you aren’t effected?”

  She shrugs and points her finger at me. “You aren’t either. Maybe we should figure out why. What’s your name?”

  “Cassidy—.”

  “Winter,” Molly answers for me, her eyes widening. “I know you, even if I shouldn’t. I don’t know how I do.”

  I nod. “But just do.”

  “Guess we should figure this out, but we can’t let them know.” Molly gazes over at the staff.

  “Why?”

  “I just know we shouldn’t. It’ll be dangerous. Too dangerous, for all of us. Even the ones of us who aren’t here.”

  She talks like a space cadet but I have a feeling I should listen to her. Slowly, we lower ourselves back into our seats. We gaze at the chess board and with a rotation of my hand, the pieces fall back onto the board in time. Nothing is out of place, not even a strand of Molly’s curly hair. She grips the side of the table and I do the same. One by one everything in the room—the music, the people, the television—snaps back into place and it’s as if nothing ever happened.

  Except Molly and I exchange smiles. Whatever that was, we can control it. Whatever that was, it might just be the key we’re looking for to getting out of here.

  *****

  I pace back and forth in my doctor’s office hours later. I’ve come off the high from my medicine and convinced myself that what happened with Molly was a drug hallucination. But I wait for my doctor to come into the room and confirm that I’m not losing my mind. I pull on the sleeve of my torn blue hoodie and feel the exact opposite.

  My skin is crawling like it has a mind of its own. All I can think about is my next dose of medicine. It’s all I want and everything else be damned but what I did with Molly, if I can find a way to do that again…

  When the door opens, I jump. My doctor, the fair haired and handsome Donovan James enters the room. He wears a white lab coat and wears round spectacles on his face, but beneath them, his eyes are passionate and his jaw is strong. As he walks by me, he smells of a spicy cologne.

  I want to ravage h
im as he goes through the file in his hand, barely looking up at me. “I don’t know if I should apologize or not, but I’ve been through the records at the hospital. There’s no record here of anyone by the name of Molly or Montgomery. I’m sorry, Cassidy.”

  My fingers interlock and twist together like the festering anxiety in my stomach. I’m both relieved and sad at the same time. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” He offers me the folder. “I shouldn’t let you look, but I know how you are. You’ll sneak into the office tonight to make sure. You’ve never been able to shake that you are a police detective deep down, even if you won’t admit it. This way, you can see there isn’t a Montgomery here without getting put into lockdown.”

  I scan the list and then I scan it again, flipping the pages back and forth. Finally, I sigh and feel so stupid. “Just a drug hallucination? Really?”

  Donovan pulls my hair off my neck and his hot breath blows into my skin. I peer down at him over the frame of his glasses and his glance is all passion. “I’ll adjust your prescription. We’ll find the right balance, I promise you.” His hand sweeps under my hoodie, grabs my ass, and pulls me closer to him.

  It’s all I need to feel like I’m his and it’s all I want to feel. “Someone might catch us,” my open mouth searches for his and they meet hurriedly as he lifts me onto the edge of his desk.

  I lock my wrists around his neck as he removes his glasses and comes back on top of me. “Let them find us. I’m ready for us to be free. Are you ready to be free, Cassidy?” Hurriedly I nod as he unzips my hoodie with his teeth.

  “He’s mine!” A woman’s voice screams at me. Donovan doesn’t flinch so I write her off as not real, a figment of my imagination. The woman with the curly brown hair wears a wedding dress and in frustration she throws her boutique at me.

  “He’s mine!”

  I close my eyes and block her out. I block out my feelings and my thoughts as I watch the arms on the clock spin backward instead of forward. The imaginary woman grabs my hair and it hurts, it actually hurts. I grab her hand and wince. “Donovan!”

  She drags me off of the desk and the setting fades. I’m in a dark room, a cage of some sort with this woman with short brown hair. There’s a scar running down one side of her face and she comes at me with an angry snarl. Her eyes unhinged. I’ve never seen a look like that in my life, and I’ve seen some pretty bad ones.

  “Stop!” I scream and lift my hands to block her punches, her unrelenting attack on me.

  “Cassidy, stop!”

  Everything snaps back into place. I’m back in Dr. James’s office and he’s on the floor cowering away from me. His hands are up in the air to protect himself and there’s blood trickling out of his nose.

  I gaze at my fists and see his blood on my knuckles. There wasn’t some angry woman attacking me. I was the angry woman and I had attacked him.

  Meanwhile, behind me the clock ticks backwards. Tick-tick. Tick-tock. What does it mean?

  Chapter Thirty-One: Cassidy Winters

  I’m cleaned up and placed in solitary confinement. In white pajamas, I lay against a white wall with my hands bandaged up. I don’t have a bed and there’s nothing for me to do but think about my life’s poor choices and stare up at the ceiling. I gaze into the light longer than is comfortable. Blinking my eyes, I gaze away and see something that’s not really there. I know it isn’t but that doesn’t mean I don’t see it.

  A girl, no a teenager, sitting on a bed. She’s in a different room, but I can see her and when she turns my head, she sees me. It’s Molly, the girl who beat me at chess earlier in the day. The same girl that everyone told me didn’t exist.

  I walk over to her as she walks toward me. “Do you still have it?” She asks. “You’re power? Do you still have it?”

  I raise my hand, unsure of the answer. When I cup my fingers toward each other, I feel a crackling. Something that is there that shouldn’t, like electricity bouncing from fingertip to fingertip.

  “Careful,” Molly says, “they’re trying to steal it from you. From me. They want to give it to him. You have to hurry.”

  “Him? Him who?”

  Molly’s eyes widen. “Mike.”

  Mike. The name sets alarm bells in my head off as Molly starts to fade. “Don’t go!” I slam my hand repeatedly onto the padded wall that I think separates us. She’s completely gone and something comes back to me. I remember a hall and I was standing with the man who calls himself Rex.

  “And that’s how a villain is born,” Rex smirks. “With your help, we’ll make him stronger than ever.”

  No, that couldn’t happen. I gasp and my head lurches back as I remember. My search for Molly, learning that someone had changed the timelines and snatched Lara, putting Patricia back in power, and the multiple Rexes all with the plan for revenge on our family.

  Our family. I’m a Montgomery too. All of this is fake. A dream of the worst kind because it’s artificial and someone else is pulling the strings.

  I remember.

  I snort, wake up and pull the cable that is tethered to the back of my head. When I sit up, I see I’m not in a padded room, but a locked plexi-glass cage. Rex had me plugged into a virtual reality world, just like he did to Lara.

  I have to find a way out of here.

  Gritting my teeth I scream, thrusting my hand against the glass wall. It reverberates around me; the wall shakes and ebbs out like an elastic only to be snapped back in place. This isn’t real, it’s virtual which means the walls can’t hold me. Rex, Donovan, the things I’ve seen here have been fake. A lie.

  Which means I can control it. I can destroy it to get to the other side and find Molly, so together we can bring Lara home and restore the timeline to how it’s supposed to be.

  Bending my knees, I do it again, this time using the full weight of my body behind my two hands. I hit the wall with a thundering power and pixel by pixel, as if they are the building blocks to this world, implode outward. For an all to brief moment, I’m staring across at a dark lab.

  Molly is behind a glass cage and her hand presses against the clear wall. Her mouth opens in horror as she calls out. “Hurry, Cassidy! He’s coming! They’re all coming.”

  A figure steps from the shadows. It’s Donovan. I back up as my heart races with loathing and reaches the cage and opens the door. He steps a foot inside before he speaks. “We need to talk. You need to stop this and lay back down.” This timeline everything’s been corrupted. He’s supposed to be Lara’s and he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t even remember.

  Looking at him is painful as the love of the altered timeline swells in my chest even if it shouldn’t be there.

  “Stop this, Cassidy,” Don says and pulls a gun from his waist, “you’re only hurting yourself if you keep this up. I don’t want to hurt you but I need you to get back in that bed.”

  I pull back before he can touch me. “Like you did to Marcus O’Reily?”

  He comes toward me but I don’t have time for games. I have to get Molly out before she suffers too much and before escape is impossible. I grab the gun in his hand before he even realizes it and turn it back on him.

  Don’s eyes widen and he raises his arms. “How did you do that? How—.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I have an itchy trigger finger that I’ve used more than I should have. I’ll use it on you if you don’t get me out of this room.” I cock the trigger and aim the gun.

  “All right, all right, but first, let’s talk things through. If we go out there like this, everything between us is over. The drugs too, you won’t get anymore.”

  The simulation tries to convince me to stay but it can’t beat me anymore. I’m more powerful than it. I’m more powerful than him, than them. All of them.

  “Move it or you’ll feel what it’s like to die. Even if all of this is make believe.”

  Donovan opens the door but he doesn’t leave. I press the gun against the flesh of his neck and his breath shakes
with fear. It smells just like the real Don and it frightens me how real all of this is.

  “Don’t think I won’t do it.” Nothing is more important than Molly. I won’t leave her to rot in a virtual world any more than I’d let Lara suffer in a forgotten timeline. “I’m angry. I guess this world made me realize that. I tried to pretend I wasn’t but I won’t make that mistake again. I won’t take it out on Lara though. I’ll take it out on you.”

  Don gives a slight nod and then moves out into the hallway. He turns his head so I can see his profile and he leads me over to Molly’s room. She’s so close, I can taste my anticipation. I raise my hands to open the door and Donovan swats them away.

  “Kill me if you want but if you do this, if you go in there and my mother sees you can’t be broken, she’ll kill you once she steals what it is you can do. She won’t need you anymore.” Donovan’s face mirrors heartbreak and my resolve to shoot him weakens.

  “Don’t act so choked up about it. You know as well as I do that you were with me from the beginning to control me. You never loved me.”

  “No, I mean yes, it’s true, but I fell in love with you, Cass.” Donovan grabs at my face and I back away. I can’t tell anymore if that’s really him or a virtual version of him, but damn it sounds like him. It feels like him too and I so badly want to give in to that illusion.

  “None of this is real. This timeline isn’t real. We were never meant to be together.” His face just twists with further confusion. He doesn’t believe me and I don’t know if I can make him understand with the time we have left.

  “Don’t you see, they altered the timeline. Rex used Mike’s power to manipulate this timeline to get us here, to rip Lara away so he can do whatever he wants. Controlling Molly was next and then they used me to get you out of the way so you wouldn’t look for Lara. Because you love her.”

  My voice quivers as if I’ve lost something I never really had.

  “You’re speaking nonsense. I don’t know Lara. She died years ago. Years!”