Vortex

by Julie Cross

  Whoa.

  “That’s enough, Agent Miller,” a voice boomed.

  Marshall. Of course. He always found a way to sneak up on us at the worst possible time.

  “Freeman, take your entire crew to classroom six and wait for me there,” Marshall said.

  Freeman tensed up and then shook his head at all of us. “Let’s go. Stow your weapons out of sight, please.”

  Stewart dropped my gun into my palm. “What did I tell you? I knew this would happen.”

  “Hey, I asked you, not Freeman … and you can’t tell me you weren’t wondering the same thing about the EOT numbers last night.” I paused, studying her face carefully. “Or do you know the answer to that, too? Is that part of Covert Ops?”

  “No.” She turned her back to me. “That would be Lily Kendrick’s field of expertise, and I can guarantee she’ll be a little easier to manipulate than me … Maybe try kissing her.”

  Yeah, because that won’t make our partnership awkward.

  * * *

  “Nice dress, Stewart,” Agent Parker said as we all filed into underground classroom six. “I’ll let you interrogate me if you promise to wear that.”

  Kendrick breezed past me, taking in the Parker/Stewart moment.

  “Brace yourself,” I whispered to her.

  Kendrick didn’t look at me. She just stepped around the scene in the doorway and picked a seat all the way across the room. The way she slammed her notebook onto the desk, I could only assume she was pissed at me. But why?

  I started to walk over and sit beside her, but Chief Marshall stormed into the room, breaking up Parker and Stewart’s soon-to-be brawl. Dad, Freeman, and Dr. Melvin trailed behind Marshall. All fourteen of us dove into our seats, not wanting to add fuel to whatever fire we had started this morning.

  “Since it’s obvious all of you feel the need to gossip like a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls,” Marshall said, “I’m going to address everyone at once, with the correct information.”

  Dad stood in a far corner of the front of the room, leaning against the wall. He glanced at me for a second and then looked away.

  “Our division is under serious attack,” Marshall said. “All training exercises are ceased at this time … indefinitely. The information we received during last night’s mission confirmed what we’ve feared for some time now. The Enemies of Time have grown substantially in numbers—”

  “But isn’t that what you’ve been preparing for?” someone asked from behind me. “That’s why you’ve taken on so many new recruits in the past two years.”

  Marshall nodded. “Yes, but this is far worse than we ever anticipated. And now they’ve built a present-day army, another CIA division, with the sole purpose of finding us and wiping us out, one by one.”

  My stomach turned over and over, but curiosity won and I had to ask more questions. “Wait, can this group … I mean … are they—”

  “Time travelers?” Marshall finished, and I nodded. “No, and from what we have gathered, Eyewall has no knowledge of the existence of time travel.”

  “Eyewall?” Mason and I said at the exact same time. He continued before I could. “But … didn’t Thomas say something about a direct order from Eyewall? That was a time-travel mission.”

  “That’s right, Agent Sterling,” Marshall said. “Eyewall also exists many, many years from now. They’re responsible for creating products such as the memory gas we used on all of you. The organization today has no knowledge of these future developments. In fact, we have reason to believe they might be working under the assumption that Tempest supports unethical medical and scientific developments.”

  “Why would they assume that?” Kendrick asked.

  “In this year, it’s a lot more difficult to convince a group of agents to kill another group of agents out of nobility when the ideas for the future are so foreign and far-fetched … and time travel is both a physical risk to the individual and a risk to humanity. Having someone fighting their battles right now makes the EOTs’ job much easier.”

  “So what’s our plan?” Agent Miller asked. “Offense or defense?”

  “Both,” Marshall said immediately. “Senator Healy’s ball in New York next week is an international event, raising money for cancer research and other medical advancements. Scientists and politicians from around the world will be present at the event. We believe Eyewall will be there and they’ll be expecting a few of us to show.”

  New York? Did he just say New York?

  “All of you will be leaving tomorrow and will spend the week conducting searches throughout the Plaza and attempting to identify any and all of these Eyewall agents.” Marshall sat down on the desk in front of us and I could hardly listen to him, my heart was pounding so loud. I can’t go back there. “Even though this isn’t how we usually do things … even though you’ve been told otherwise, it’s important that we take out these agents before they get to us. If we don’t kill them first, we’ll be chased forever … all of us.”

  Silence fell over the entire room. The dive-in-with-both-feet attitude that most of us usually had was gone today. We had never been told to kill anyone … Yeah, out of self-defense, like in a fight or something, but really all we’d ever been taught was defense against EOTs, and that always involved anti-time-travel drugs. We had to interrogate them later for information and we needed them alive. This plan left me feeling more conflicted than ever.

  And I did not want to go to New York.

  “Do you need a few agents to stay back here and keep watch?” I said suddenly. “I’ll volunteer.”

  Marshall glared at me. “If I needed that, Agent Meyer, I would have asked for it. You will go with your team to New York. Agent Freeman will work with the substitute chief to lead the mission.”

  “Agent Freeman? What about Agent Meyer? What about you?” Mason asked.

  Marshall looked over at Dad and then back at us. “Agent Meyer and I will be conducting a separate mission and won’t be traveling to New York.”

  What?

  “We have a substitute chief?” Stewart asked.

  “Who?” someone else asked.

  “Yes, we have a back-up leader and you will find out who when you get to New York,” Marshall said.

  The second Marshall dismissed us to pack our bags, I headed straight for Dad. We had to get out of this. He had to let me go on whatever mission he was going on or at least find a way to go to New York with me.

  Unfortunately, Marshall jumped right in my path. “You wanted to be a big boy and play secret agent, so that’s what you’re going to do. Dad can’t follow you everywhere.”

  I glanced at Dad, his face revealing more anger than I’d ever seen before. Marshall was testing us … both of us. He was testing our commitment to Tempest and also punishing us for running off by ourselves so many times. I let most of my fury out in one long breath, knowing I was risking more than just my own punishment. He’d take it out on Dad. “I was just going to ask where we’d be staying.”

  “At your home, I presumed,” Marshall said, looking bored with the question.

  “I’d rather not, sir, if that’s okay.”

  “Fine. We own an apartment down the hall from Agent Kendrick’s,” Marshall said, surprising me. “You can stay there for the week.”

  Marshall waved Kendrick over and told her about the housing plan, then his eyes narrowed at her. “I understand you were given a task by your partner that you did not complete. Is this true?”

  Her eyes dropped to the floor. “Yes.”

  “You’ve earned twelve hours of stitching up cadavers in the morgue,” he snapped. “Dr. Melvin will supervise.”

  The color completely drained from Kendrick’s face and I felt like the biggest ass in the world. Kendrick kept her eyes on the floor and mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

  The second Marshall had walked away from us, I tugged on Kendrick’s sleeve. “You have an apartment in New York? You live there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “
Where? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Because you never asked.” She sighed and looked away from me. “East Village … that’s where I live.”

  “East Village?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m a med student at NYU … obviously you knew that.”

  Yeah, I did. And now she had to sew up dead people, all because Dad gave me that little piece of information. I shut up then to avoid making her even more pissed off at me. As I walked out the door, I heard Dad say, “Jackson?”

  I turned around, but Chief Marshall stood between us, arms folded across his chest. The pained expression Dad wore made my stomach feel even sicker than earlier.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.” I left and caught up with Kendrick, deciding to drag one more answer out of her. “Aren’t you worried … about going home? Running into people you know while you’re doing secret-agent stuff?”

  “I’m a lot more worried about getting through the seven-hour flight.” She flung the door open to her room and went inside, leaving me to guess what she meant.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JUNE 10, 2009, 7:00 P.M.

  It took an hour and a half of the seven-hour flight for me to see what Kendrick meant. Honestly, I’d never seen anyone with such terrible motion sickness.

  “We’ve ridden in helicopters dozens of times, how is this different?” I asked her as she leaned over the garbage can I had just swiped from the bathroom a few minutes ago.

  “I’m fine for an hour or so … and then this … happens.” Her face was buried deep in the garbage can now as she heaved out whatever was left in her stomach.

  Luckily, this was a private government flight. I waved Dr. Melvin over despite Kendrick’s protests. She wiped her face with a tissue and leaned back against the chair, closing her eyes.

  “You’ve got to give her something. She’s been barfing for two hours straight … started about ninety minutes into the flight,” I said to him.

  “I can knock her out with antinausea drugs.”

  Kendrick shook her head vigorously. “The second I’m unconscious, one of those evil time-traveling bastards is going to pop up on this plane and kill me.”

  “Do you have any documentation of EOT attacks while in flight?” I asked Melvin.

  He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “None at all, Agent Meyer.”

  “Yet,” Kendrick said, reaching for the trash can again.

  I pulled her hair off her face. “I think you’ve suffered enough.”

  I nodded to Melvin and he retreated down the aisle and then returned with a syringe full of something. He jabbed her in the arm with the needle and her eyes closed seconds later. I got up from my seat and lifted the armrest so she could be stretched out across both seats.

  Melvin tossed a blanket over her and smiled. “This will probably be the most peaceful rest she’s had in over a month.”

  I stumbled into the aisle and took the only empty seat left, next to Stewart. Then I leaned back and closed my eyes, knowing I wouldn’t sleep. How long had it been since I’d slept soundly, like Kendrick? It felt like, by now, my body had been trained to survive on very little rest.

  * * *

  “Jackson? Wake up,” Stewart said, nudging my shoulder. “ETA is five minutes.”

  Did she just call me Jackson and not Junior?

  I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms over my head. “Wow, I can’t believe I fell asleep. Any EOTs show up?”

  Stewart pushed her lap tray up and snapped it into place. “Yeah, about ten of them. None of us wanted to get up, so we sent Dr. Melvin to deal with it.”

  I laughed and yawned at the same time. “He probably bribed them with candy.”

  Both of us looked out the window and watched the New York skyline get bigger as we dropped toward the ground.

  “Are you glad to be home?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine and I could tell she was searching for meaning in my answer. Why wouldn’t I want to be back here in my comfortable life?

  “What about you?” I pressed. “What’s your New York cover? You were here for two years, right?”

  She grinned maliciously at me. “It turns out I’m from your neighborhood … well, not really, but that’s been my cover on occasion. Spoiled daughter of an Irishman. I have my own Upper East Side apartment, a couple buildings away from yours. And that little test mission I did yesterday won me a very fast car.”

  Isn’t she a little dark to be Irish?

  “Great,” I mumbled. So I get my Dad shipped off somewhere unknown and Stewart gets a car. And I had a feeling as soon as we landed I’d be forced to listen to her speak with an Irish accent for the next week. Maybe that was better than the French character she’d been maintaining for the last three weeks.

  Kendrick was still passed out cold when we landed. Melvin said she would be loopy for a couple more hours. We stuffed her in the back of a car and she slept all the way to her building. Even just the twenty-minute drive from the airport to her apartment was enough for me to feel a strange sense of freedom, except it wasn’t the comforting kind. More like wide-open exposure. My senses were a little too alert as we drove through the streets of New York.

  The driver took the bags up to the door outside and I still hadn’t gotten Kendrick to wake up. I had to yank her from the backseat and then toss her over my shoulder. I could feel her head swinging back and forth behind me. Her long hair nearly touched the sidewalk. While I stood in front of her apartment door, digging for the keys in her purse, I heard a noise coming from inside.

  My heart started thudding, but I clicked into agent mode and held tight to the back of Kendrick’s legs while drawing my gun and holding it at my side. I turned the doorknob slowly and heard someone shuffling inside.

  “Whoever you are, don’t move!” I yelled.

  I pointed my gun in the direction of the kitchen and a tall guy with blond hair came running into the living room with a huge knife in one hand.

  I immediately raised my gun and moved my finger over the trigger. “Drop the knife, now!”

  “Oh, God.” The dude’s eyes completely bugged out. “Okay … just put her down and you can have my wallet … whatever you want.”

  I lowered my gun after hearing the panic in his voice. Then I noticed he was wearing a pink apron and something was cooking. Something that smelled like stewed tomatoes and onions. “Um … sorry, I think I have the wrong apartment.”

  “Wait! This is Lily’s place,” he said. “I’m Michael…”

  “Michael?”

  “Her fiancé.”

  Fiancé? As in getting married? Kendrick is getting married? And to a guy who obviously hadn’t had a single self-defense lesson in his life? Talk about fifteen-year-old-girl gossip … this would make Tempest headlines, for sure.

  I tucked my gun away, deciding to fall into step with whatever cover Kendrick had created until she woke up and could fill me in. “Sorry, I thought you were an intruder or … something.”

  I tossed Kendrick onto the couch and Michael set the knife on the coffee table and leaned over her. “Lily, you okay?”

  “She had some issues on the flight. The doctor knocked her out with something so she could sleep.” He was still looking at me like I might shoot him. “We work together,” I added.

  “Do all CDC employees carry a weapon?”

  CDC? Not sure I could fake this cover job. Let’s just hope Michael knows as much about the Centers for Disease Control as he does about self-defense.

  “Brand-new standard protocol,” I said.

  His face relaxed and then he jumped up. “Are the bags still outside? Let me run and get them, you must be ready to pass out after carrying her up the stairs.”

  I made another attempt to wake Kendrick while Michael went to get her suitcases. She stirred a little and finally opened her eyes. “God, are we home already?”

  “Yep, safe and sound.”
I helped her sit up and then looked around the room for the first time. Everything was pink and flowery. Wedding-planner books were strewn across the coffee table. This was the most girlie, anti-secret-agent apartment ever.

  Good cover, I guess.

  “And I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting your soon-to-be spouse.”

  She rubbed her temples and groaned. “Oh, God…”

  “You couldn’t have warned me? Seriously, I pulled a gun on the guy, thinking he was an Eyewall agent or an EOT.”

  Her eyes widened. “Shit … tell me you’re kidding…?”

  I shook my head just as Michael came banging through the door, lugging two suitcases. “Lil, you’re awake.”

  She sprang up from the couch and practically jumped over the coffee table before wrapping herself around him. “I knew you were here, I smelled my favorite dinner.”

  “Well … I’m going to go check out my place,” I said, stepping around the hugging couple.

  “Wait, you have to stay for dinner,” Michael said. “You deserve a good meal after putting up with Lily for weeks.”

  “Please, Jackson,” Kendrick said, lifting an eyebrow.

  Was dinner a bribe to keep me quiet about the fiancé thing? Guess I’d have to find out.

  “All right, if you insist.”

  * * *

  “This is seriously the best coq au vin I’ve ever had,” I said to Michael during dinner.

  “It’s soaked in a wine sauce for twenty-four hours and the tomatoes and onions add the final touch,” he said.

  “Michael’s going to culinary school,” Kendrick told me. “He’s almost done and already has a ton of job offers from some of the best restaurants in New York.”

  So badass CIA agent Lily Kendrick was going to marry a chef. This gossip got better and better by the minute.

  “I can totally see why.”

  Michael grinned at me and refilled my wineglass. “So, how did you end up working for the CDC and going to med school? You barely look old enough to be out of high school.”

  I wiped my face with a napkin, giving me a second to think. “I’m not really a med student.” Kendrick coughed into her napkin, but I ignored her. I couldn’t pull off being a pretend soon-to-be doctor. It just wasn’t within my abilities. “I’m mostly doing data entry for the CDC and really basic intern-type stuff. Unfortunately, I’m not a science genius like some people.” I rolled my eyes toward Kendrick. “And my dad’s in the pharmaceutical business … so he’s really the one that got me into the CDC. Lots of corporate and government connections. You know how that goes.”