by Jill Cooper
Cozy. Feels like home.
There are framed pictures on the wall and my eye is drawn to one. I can’t believe it and my heart lodges in my throat as the old woman’s footsteps draw near. “Of everyone that could have come, it was you I dreaded the most.”
My hands shake as I pull the frame picture off the fall. I gaze at the three faces behind the glass and then up at the old woman. I notice the ends of her bun and how curly her hair is beneath the butterfly brooch that secures it to her head.
The way her eyes see through me.
That half twisted smile that shows how heartbroken she is.
“You were my friend.” Tears shine in the old woman’s eyes. “Like my sister.”
I gaze back down at the framed photo of me, Molly, and Lara. We’re smiling wide on her wedding day. It had happened only days ago, but the photo I hold has brown edges, as though it’s survived the test of time.
My heart runs wildly, like a freight train speeding ahead with no control. “Lara?” My voice cracks and tears form in my eyes.
Her smile confirms it, but there’s a dark quality to her eyes that I don’t recognize. She places both hands on top of her cane and slams it forcefully into the ground.
I don’t have time to move or respond. Electricity flows from the cane into the hardwood floors and rushes toward me like a growing cavern. When it meets my boots, it travels up my body and I fall over backward.
The frame in my hand goes wide and I stare up at the ceiling unable to move. The shock has me paralyzed and I listen to Lara’s footsteps as she approaches me. She bends down to meet my eyes. I want to talk to her. Find out what happened, what is she doing back here?
How much danger are we all in?
“Good night, Cassidy,” Lara whispers and the next moment, she pokes the blunt end of her cane against my chest, filling my body with an electrical charge so strong, I scream. I grab at my chest and scream.
Quickly my vision faces to black and with it, the pain fades and all thought slips away.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Molly
Cassidy isn’t answering her phone and she’s not on the bridge. I worry about where she’s been, what she’s up to. I can’t find any trace of her after Lara’s visit to confront her about Donovan. Our family is being torn apart and the worst part is, we let it happen. We’d ended up here because of the choices we made.
I’m not even sure we can undo them. Donovan was right about one thing. The world without Lara would be dark, almost impossible to imagine.
I stand in my room and outside the sun is beginning to set. Mike sits on the window sill beside my bed with his feet curled up on my mattress like when we were little. His arms are crossed, and he stares off at the pattern in my rug. “So we’re on our own? We have to do this alone?”
“Looks that way. If you want to call this thing off….”
Mike shakes his head. “If Morgan is out to get us or Dad, we have to keep moving forward with this. Can we use the bridge?”
I shake my head. “I tried. Something about Trident is blocking the signal from the bridge. I can see it, but I can’t get a portal to open there. Best I can do is a few blocks away. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
“Let’s do it then.”
I fill a small messenger bag with supplies that I think we’ll need. Slinging it over my shoulder, I head downstairs and Mike isn’t far behind. Mom is sitting on the sofa in the living room poring over papers. I can hear running water from the kitchen and the clank of dishes. John must be cleaning up, which means we only have a few minutes.
John’s B.S. meter works better than Mom’s.
When she hears us coming, Mom glances up and pulls off her glasses. “Hey kids.” She stands and swings her arms around our shoulders and pulls us in for a great big hug. “You guys aren’t planning to head out, are you? It’s a school night, you know.”
I glance at Mike who rolls his eyes. He recites our script from memory. “I forgot I have a paper due tomorrow. Was going to go to the library and I’m bringing Molly to keep me focused.”
Mom scowls. “Mike, really! If your head wasn’t attached…”
“It’s right down the street,” I chime in. “He knows what you’re going to say, Mom, but this is important.”
“Can’t you use the internet for that?” Mom asks and crosses her arms.
Crap, she’s been hanging out with John too long. It’s like her oh-shit-o-meter has gotten an upgrade.
“There’s a book I need to use specifically. Not available to read online. I checked. It’s damn old,” Mike says. After Mom gives him a pointed Mom-look he corrects himself. “Darn old.”
Mom sighs. “All right, but you have two hours before I come and look for you. Keep him in line.” Mom kisses my cheek and then Mike’s. We’re out the door before you can say lickety-split.
Mike wears the worse sourpuss expression on his face as he closes the door. In a moment, we trot down the front steps. “Why is it she always puts you in charge?”
“Other than I’m two minutes older? She probably senses you’re trouble.” I try to keep my tone carefree but my real feelings seep through.
“Hey,” Mike says and grabs my arm. “I know I made some mistakes. I fell for Rex’s con and when I met that other version of myself, I fell under his spell. He was so powerful, and he could do things I only dreamed of doing.”
“I was kidding. I didn’t mean it, Mike.”
His eyes narrow as he steals a glance at me. By now we’re on the sidewalk and hurrying toward the subway platform past all the residential streets. We turn left to the business district and Mike zips his black jacket up. I can see his breath and a chill runs through me.
“I don’t want to end up that guy, Molly. He had too much pain. Too much anger. I don’t want to hate you or Lara. Even if it means getting used to living with John Crane.”
“I really didn’t mean to hurt you.” I squeeze Mike’s arm tight and bring him in closer to me. “I didn’t think of how my words would hurt you. I’m really sorry.”
Mike nods but doesn’t look over at me. Instead, his eyes focus on the giant T sign, illuminated in the dark. “I’m with you now. You, Cass, and Lara. I won’t get left behind.”
God, I hope not. I need Mike with me.
We head down the stairs toward the subway and that rich smell of diesel fumes hit us. We have less than one hour and forty-five minutes until Mom heads to the library and discovers we’d never been there in the first place.
*****
Good thing time travel is our friend.
We arrive at Trident Technologies twenty minutes later, just as Mike’s finishes eating a hot dog. He wipes the mustard off the corner of his mouth before crumpling up his dinner wrapper and tossing it into a neraby trash can.
“How you can be hungry at a time like this…” I shake my head as I peer into the windows of Trident. There are only a few emergency lights illuminating the lobby and there’s a security guard sitting at the counter on the far side of the room.
He’s watching the monitors, but it appears his head bobs up and down, like he’s falling asleep or listening to music.
“Remind me of the plan again?”
“Get inside, get to the elevator,” I say and pull back from the window. “We won’t be able to do it without being seen.”
“So….time travel, time freeze?”
I nod. “Get in. Get our pictures. Prove there’s an illegal lab downstairs. Get out fast. We need to prove it to Dad. He’ll help keep us safe.”
“This is a horrible plan. If they can prove it’s us, we’ll be in a lot of trouble,” Mike says with a serious scowl.
I shrug. “What else can we do? I’ll use our time blink to get us out to safety.”
“I can use memory wipe. No one will even remember we were here.”
It’s my turn to give him a severe glower. “Only if necessary. You know how I feel about that. Messing with people’s minds isn’t something you should b
e doing. Casually or otherwise.”
Mike rolls his eyes and obviously doesn’t take my judgment seriously. “Trust me, that’s something I know. It’s invasive, blah blah.”
I’m not happy with how lightly he takes the subject. Still, I feel like I have little choice but to drop the subject. Now isn’t the time to get into an argument. I need us to work together. “Then let’s do this,” I whisper.
Mike nods and I give the door a try. It’s locked. “I could try knocking?”
“I’ve got this,” Mike says with a shake of his head. He puts his hand on glass door and it starts to wobble, bending with time like a thin roll of candy. Mike steps over and through it first and I follow after him.
I glance back and watch the door wiggling back and forth like one of those inflatable balloon men at the dealership. Then it snaps back into place like it had never happened to begin with. Wow. Mike’s power takes my breath away.
From how he smirks, he knows it too. Mike’s proud. Too proud. And I think of the older version of Mike I’d met in the washroom. So willing to do whatever was necessary to get the job done, yet he’d talked about himself with such sorrow and heartbreak.
I don’t want that for my brother.
As we walk toward the rear of the building, the security officer rises from the seat. He’s tubby and hurries over with a penguin waddle to greet us. He holds one hand out while the other rests on his hip right above his gun.
“Stop right there.” His eyes narrow into an angry scowl and his brow comes down. “Who are you? And how did you get in here?”
Mike raises his hand and the security guard’s movements slow down to half speed, until he’s completely frozen altogether. The guard’s face turns to panic, and he blinks but is unable to move.
“He looks terrified.” I sigh and feel bad for him. He’s only trying to do his job.
“Let’s hurry up so we can put him back the way we found him.” Mike waves his hand in front of the security guard’s face. I worry about what he’s done as I snatch the keys off the security guard’s belt. We race behind the security booth and I toggle between the monitors.
Mostly it’s offices and empty conferences rooms. Then I find the view of a laboratory. There are jackets with white lab coats, not a lot, but enough to be running nightly research.
“This is it.” I place my finger on the monitor.
Mike searches through the clipboard files that the guard kept. “Subfloor thirteen. What a lucky number,” Mike says dryly.
I glance up to make sure the security guard is still frozen. “We’d better hurry. How many people can you keep frozen like that at once?”
Mike shrugs as we make our way over to the hidden panel on the wall behind us. “As many as I want? I haven’t found a limit yet.”
Terrifying.
We feel around the panel until we find a hidden switch. The door swooshes to the side to reveal an elevator with blinking lights on the front. There are no keys. Instead we discover we need a thumbprint for the bio-reader to allow entry.
Crap. I sigh and glance back at the security guard. “Do you think I can get him over here without him killing us? I bet his thumbprint would—” The elevator beeps and when I glance back Mike has his thumb pressed against the scanner. It’s lit up green and has accepted him into the system.
Which means somewhere down there we might find another version of Mike, maybe even the one I’d met in the bathroom, but if he used to work with Morgan, or still did, why try to kill her? Did he have a change of heart or was something more devious going on?
Mike removes his thumb as the elevator doors open. His forehead sweats and he draws a deep breath as he stares into the elevator.
“Don’t go jumping to conclusions. We don’t know what this means yet.”
He throws me a doubtful gaze. “You promise you won’t turn on me, no matter what we find?”
The elevator door starts to close, and I throw my arm out to by us some more time. “I promise. We’re in this together until the end. No matter what we find.”
Mike nods and steps inside the elevator. I follow suit and when the doors close, I insert the security guard’s key into the panel. We push the button for sub-level three and slowly the elevator begins to move down. I open my messenger bag, I take out my camera and hold it loosely in my hands.
My heart is racing. There could be an entire lab worth of people down there. Or armed guards. We have no idea what to expect.
Mike holds his hands at the ready as the elevator dings. We’ve reached our level. Slowly, the doors part to the side, revealing the interior of a lab. It’s a giant expanse of a room with white walls and white tiles. Perfectly sterile in every way. The first thing I see are a few computer terminals and there are technicians sitting at them.
They spot us as we step out and they rise from their seats. Mike pushes his hands out and the technicians slow down, but don’t freeze completely. Mike sighs and makes two fists as if testing his own strength.
“Something down here is trying to block me. I can’t completely freeze them.”
They move like turtles moving through quicksand. One goes for his telephone receiver. I’m able to walk quickly and move it out of reach. The technicians move their heads toward me in such a slow manner I could almost miss the fact they’re moving at all.
“Quick, find whatever evidence you can,” Mike says, and steps passed the terminals to gaze further down the hall.
I flip open a manual and take pictures. It talks about time travel and how to utilize it properly, how to find someone who is missing in the multiverse time stream, and how to focus on one specific person.
Who are they looking for?
They’re willing to move hell and high water to find someone. The amount of energy they are funneling into the building, and the money it’s taken to bring the project this far, is almost unimaginable to me. It seems the entire thing has been bankrolled by a specific person, a company that was founded at the turn of the 1900s.
She’d be hundreds of years old by now.
I take pictures of the clipboard that show who had signed in and out of the lab, namely Morgan Drake. I look through one final document and find what Morgan is planning to do, and what she thinks will harness my power along with Mike’s. There’s an update in the document dated this morning.
“If it’s true that Lara James no longer has the ability to time travel, she’s of no use to me or the program. She’d be nothing but a liability. I hereby authorize for Lara and Donovan James to be neutralized any means necessary.”
It’s signed with Morgan’s name. God, Lara and Don are in danger. Terrible danger. “Mike!” I call to him, but I can’t find him anywhere.
Where is he?
“We have to get out of here. Mike!” I run passed the computer terminals and turn down the hall. There are offices on all sides. I come to the mouth in the passage that dumps into a room labeled ‘Experiments 1’ and I feel like I slam into a wall.
I can’t move. It’s like my arms and legs are stuck to a spider’s web.
Glancing down, I see I’ve stepped on a panel of light and now it has me trapped inside what must be a stasis field. It’s not built of time travel, but instead created with science and technology—a type of science we don’t have yet.
It could mean only one thing.
The light’s turn on in the experiment room. The background has reclining chairs fastened with restraints and head bolts, but the thing I notice the most is Mike, trapped inside his own stasis field. His eyes are wide with fright as he fights against it.
Footsteps draw near. A woman navigates in front of Mike and starts her way over to me. It’s Morgan and she smiles at me most kindly.
“I have to thank you. If you didn’t come to visit me, I wouldn’t have realized how close to figuring me out you’d be.”
It was a pretty bad mistake and one I hadn’t even given any thought to until I’d sat down in Morgan’s office. “If I hadn’t come, I wouldn’t
have figured out how dangerous you are to my family.”
Morgan smiles. “It’s my family too. Or, well, would have been.”
“That’s what I don’t get. Why go after my dad? Was it just to get close to us?”
“At first, yes, but I do actually like him. It’s too bad he got messed up with Miranda Crane and had you kids. His life would be a lot simpler without the lot of you.”
Her words sting with a little bit of truth to them, but I know Dad wouldn’t wish us away.
“Time travel is nothing but trouble. Trust me, you don’t want it.”
“Hmm, maybe, but it’s my birthright.”
I shake my head. What is she talking about?
“I’m surprised you hadn’t figured it out when you touched my hand. I was sure I was a goner when that happened, but I guess you hadn’t slipped far enough down the wormhole for it to be revealed to you.”
“Just come out and tell me.”
“Well, that’s not fun, Molly. And I’m all about fun. Think about it. Everyone in here is frozen, or moving at a snail’s pace, except I’m immune. I didn’t go to Lara’s wedding because there’s someone there who would recognize me. An old friend? Or someone who is my family from a different time?”
I scowl. The stasis field blocks my ability because I can’t do anything. I can’t read her.
“I really thought you’d be a more challenging opponent. Why, in the future nothing gets passed Aunty Molly.” Morgan’s smiles twists to the side and I’m dumbfounded by what she said. What she called me.
She lowers my stasis field and two security guards rush me from behind now that Mike’s ability has been choked off completely. They grab my arms, but I focus only on Morgan. Slowly my mind fills with her past choices in the future.
“Time travel is my birthright.” Morgan shrugs. “It skipped me. It passed me by because he stole it from my mother.” Morgan points at Mike. “He stole it from Lara James, my mother. And I’m here to get it back.”