Vortex

by Julie Cross

  Nothing I’d ever done with Tempest had felt this frightening. Whatever Holly had gotten herself into was far worse than my division. She was in way over her head. And it was all because of me. She squeezed me around the waist and I could feel her trying to pull herself together, to stop crying. She tilted her head upward a little and I brushed the tears from her cheeks with my thumb. My heart skipped a beat. Her mouth was so close to mine … Focus! Focus on getting her away from them, convincing her to let me help. We could run away to some island that no one knows about and stay there forever.

  If I could rescue Holly from this horrible fate, that would at least be one accomplishment toward saving the world. Her fingers slowly moved from my waist to my chest, but it felt like she was holding something—a sock, maybe? I had only a half second to contemplate the item before the rag was pressed over my mouth and nose. The fumes from the poison invaded my nostrils and made everything turn black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  JUNE 20, 2009, 10:00 A.M.

  “Jackson … Jackson!” A hand smacked my cheek.

  The hard floor was underneath me again, the smell of sewers returning to my nostrils, nearly causing me to gag, a thin layer of sweat forming across my forehead. I wiggled my eyes open and looked right into Kendrick’s. Kendrick … not Holly?

  “Don’t try to sit up yet.” Both her hands pressed against my chest, forcing me to stay down. “God … your heart is racing. What did she give you?”

  I tried to recall more specifics about the scent of the chemical-covered rag Holly had smothered me with. “I don’t know … How did you get in here?”

  A high-pitched beep went off above our heads and I looked up to see a hole in the ceiling, a big chunk missing. “So that’s how she got out,” I said to myself.

  “And it’s how I got in.” Kendrick pulled out a tiny handheld computer and punched in several numbers. Seconds later, the door swung open.

  My wallet, keys, and phone were still lying on the floor where Holly had dumped out the contents of my pockets. I snatched the items from the floor and headed for the door.

  Kendrick followed behind me as I thundered up the steps and reentered the subway tunnels. I stopped for a second when I felt her hand on my arm.

  “Are you … are you okay?” she asked.

  “Don’t baby him … He’s already spoiled and pampered.”

  We both turned around to see Stewart, looking slightly battered, her clothes torn and hair frazzled.

  “Do you know if Holly’s okay?” I asked, looking at both of them.

  Stewart glared in my direction, then gave me a shove, nearly knocking me onto the tracks. “Seriously? Blondie leads you right into some kind of high-tech cave, doses you with chloroform or whatever she gave you, somehow manages to climb up the walls and knock out one of the ceiling tiles, then leaves you drooling on the floor while she escapes without a scratch … and you want to know if she’s okay?”

  We had just walked outside, finally breathing fresh air, and I was surprised to be hit with late morning sun. I’d been down there for hours. “I think they tricked her. She wasn’t supposed to be locked in the room with me.”

  “Junior, I think it’s time you face the truth,” Stewart said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Blondie’s got skills,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “Way more than you ever realized.”

  “No … she’s…” Was everything last night just an act? I froze in the middle of the sidewalk, piecing together this crazy puzzle. But the way she was crying … there was no way that was fake. It didn’t mean she trusted me. Just that she used real grief to manipulate me.

  None of that changed the fact that I knew Holly was scared and all she had wanted to do was survive last night. She could have killed me while I was unconscious, but she didn’t.

  But now wasn’t the time to present this theory to Kendrick and Stewart. They both looked more than a little pissed at Holly and Eyewall. “What about everyone else? What’s the mission status?”

  Kendrick and Stewart exchanged a glance, then Stewart answered. “We lost two agents, killed one Eyewall chick … someone we hadn’t been in contact with before. Freeman’s holding four near the underground hospital.”

  “Which two agents did we lose?” I asked, feeling the weight of being out of it for several hours.

  “Miller … Parker’s partner,” Kendrick said.

  “And Davis,” Stewart said.

  I exhaled heavily, glad that I had made it out alive, but feeling guilty for the same reason. “They were outnumbered. How did they get two of us?”

  “They knew exactly what we had planned. Every detail, down to who was gonna follow who. And they know all of our strengths and weaknesses,” Stewart said, moving to my other side. “If Kendrick had been locked in that room that you were in, she’d have decoded the lock on the door within an hour. You, on the other hand…”

  “Can shoot a gun really well … which didn’t help me in that situation.” We had arrived in front of our building and I figured Stewart would come in with us. “Do you think we have a mole?”

  “Freeman thinks so,” Stewart blurted out.

  “Okay, so neither of you told me what happened to you guys,” I said.

  Both of them grinned. “Kendrick took Collins down in no time … which is seriously insane, and I’m not sure what was going through her mind. I had some dude named Strowski. We caused a little bit of a riot in the middle of a film studies class, but he wasn’t too hard to catch.”

  I couldn’t imagine Kendrick running after Agent Collins. That would be like me facing Freeman, and, well … actually, I had done pretty well against Freeman in another timeline, but he hadn’t expected me to know any form of self-defense.

  After Stewart headed for her place, Kendrick and I took the stairs in silence, but just before I opened my apartment door she started to say something. “I just … I wanted you to know … I get it … Holly … If Michael were in another agency—”

  “Yeah, I figured you would.” I leaned against the doorframe, thinking about my next move … thinking about Holly and everything I hadn’t told my partner since we were experimenting yesterday morning. I straightened up the second I remembered the biggest item of all. “Hey … wanna go somewhere with me? I have something really cool to show you.”

  JUNE 20, 2009, 12:30 P.M.

  “I can’t believe no one knew about this,” Kendrick said, spinning around to look at the hole in the floor of Dad’s closet.

  This time I’d gotten the idea to have Kendrick try and touch the closet wall to get it to open and it didn’t work. It recognized my fingerprints, she had concluded, but not hers.

  “I don’t know who Dad was keeping it secret from. That’s why I haven’t told anyone.”

  She walked toward the little kitchen and stopped suddenly in front of the stove. “Do you feel that?”

  “Feel what?” I walked around her so I could see her face. She had the I-just-had-a-brilliant-genius-person-discovery look.

  “An electromagnetic pulse. It’s so slight … you’d barely notice if you didn’t know the warning signs.”

  Electromagnetic pulse … where had I heard that before? “What’s it do?”

  “I only know because it was part of my…” Kendrick’s eyes locked with mine, a weary expression now on her face.

  “Specialty training?” I guessed, shaking my head at her. Hadn’t we moved past this keeping-secrets shit?

  “Yeah.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “I only know of a couple places that Tempest has set up an electromagnetic pulse. But I don’t know exactly what it’s for.”

  “The underground hospital,” I said, suddenly remembering being trapped down there with Marshall when I did that half-jump to 1996 that one time. And that was when the answer landed right in my brain. “It keeps the EOTs from time-traveling!”

  Shock filled her face. “Exactly … Maybe you can try it? See if you can jump?”

  I focused my
mind as hard as I could on a full jump. A sharp pain shot through my head, and the second I felt myself splitting apart … doing a half-jump … I pulled back, just before the room had started to fade.

  I sank to my knees, clutching the sides of my head. Black and yellow spots twinkled in front me. Kendrick was on the floor next to me, resting a hand on my back. I took a few slow, deep breaths and the pain faded after a couple minutes. I stood up slowly and smiled at her. “Definitely a force field in here. It wasn’t just a failed attempt. I’ve never had anything like that happen.”

  “There’s one in the lab in France, too, but I have to activate it. I’ve turned it on a couple times just to understand the body’s reaction to it. You get this short-term feeling of vertigo and then a wave of nausea. Your dad can probably deactivate this one as well,” she said, flashing me another grin. “You know what this means, right?”

  “Uh…?”

  “This little apartment is your family’s personal fallout shelter.”

  “That’s why it knew my fingerprints,” I said, watching her roam around lifting up objects, inspecting everything. “But if all you need is the magnetic pulse or whatever … why don’t they put it in more places? Why not our whole apartment upstairs?”

  “Well, this room is sealed off. If the upstairs or even the entire building was secured with magnetic pulse, the EOTs could still jump out a window and time-travel that way. Or run out the door.” She ran her index finger along the records on the bookshelf. “Besides, long-term exposure to EMP is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How?” Should we even be down here?

  “A few days or even a few weeks wouldn’t hurt anyone, but months or years could cause cell mutation and deformities in offspring.” She lifted her head and our eyes met, both of us putting several things together.

  “Those weird dudes I told you about … in the future … the bad future. They were so freaky-looking. I could see their veins through their skin.” I nearly laughed out loud at the craziness of this theory. “Do you think we all turn into mutants in the future? Not us personally, but the human race?”

  “What if the future that Emily showed you had so many time travelers they had to control them with EMP and then everyone started coming out deformed?” She shook her head. “No, that doesn’t really make sense, because we already know the effects of EMP. They would figure it out before they let everyone give birth to mutants.”

  “Maybe it only takes a few mutants to destroy the world?”

  “Or one mutant and the rest clones.” Kendrick’s serious-scientist face dissolved and she busted out laughing. “God … we have the most messed-up jobs ever.”

  She plucked a record from the shelf and handed it to me. “Let’s listen to your dad’s music, see if we learn anything new.”

  “Frank Sinatra,” I said, reading the cover of the album before setting it on the player. I stretched out on the floor as “Fly Me to the Moon” began to play. “We performed this song in jazz band … middle school, I think.”

  Kendrick leaned back on her elbows, extending her legs beside mine. “What instrument did you play?”

  “Saxophone.” I closed my eyes, listening to the song, feeling something familiar sweep over me. “I wonder if I’ve ever been down here. Before yesterday, anyway.”

  Kendrick started to respond, but my phone rang, and when I read Parker’s name, I had to answer. “Yeah?”

  “Is Kendrick with you?” he asked immediately.

  “Uh … yeah, she’s with me. We were getting some stuff from my dad’s place.”

  Kendrick froze, listening intently.

  “Great. Healy wants both of you to get your asses down to the underground hospital wing,” Parker said.

  “Did he say why?”

  “He wants you to talk to Agent Collins,” Parker said, then added, “To interrogate Agent Collins. He asked for you specifically.”

  I hung up the phone and looked at Kendrick. “Have you ever done an interrogation before?”

  “Nope. Never.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  JUNE 20, 2009, 3:00 P.M.

  Healy stood in front of the locked door, preparing to punch in a code. He paused and glanced at me again. “Remember the techniques Agent Parker showed you … Give him something he wants and ask for twice as much in exchange.”

  I had spent a couple hours observing Parker mentally breaking down the other three EOT prisoners, trying to find out who was leading Eyewall, who called the shots, and how and when all this started. The only thing we got from the three agents was Collins … he called their shots. Now we needed to know who pulled his strings.

  “Right … got it.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and took a deep breath.

  “He asked to speak to you. He’s ready to crack,” Healy said, even though I’d heard this a dozen times already today.

  The door opened and I walked in alone, trying not to jump when it slammed shut. Collins sat on the tile floor, leaning his back against the wall. His arms were folded across his chest and he looked much calmer than the others had.

  “Agent Meyer … Took them long enough to bring you in,” he said in a quiet nonthreatening tone that made me even more nervous.

  “I had things to do.”

  “Of course.” He gestured toward the table in the middle of the room and we both sat down in chairs across from each other. “Since my future outside of this place is a little up in the air right now, I need to ask you something.”

  “Me first,” I said, pointing to my chest.

  “Fine.”

  “What’s going to happen to all your other agents now that their leader is locked up?”

  He smiled at me. An arrogant smirk. “We have backups, just like Tempest does.”

  “Right … because the world’s going to end if you don’t stop us.” I rolled my eyes and waited for the sarcastic reply he’d most likely throw my way.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. The battle has gotten too big to keep track of … to grasp the main reason we started this fight.” He leaned forward, his eyes beaming into mine, X-raying my brain. “And I really don’t think I’m the only soldier feeling a little confused right now. Right, Agent Meyer?”

  Okay, I officially suck at interrogating.

  I decided to take the less mature route. “So … I heard you got beat up by a girl?”

  He laughed and leaned back in his chair again. “Yes, I sure did. We knew she was with Tempest, but I honestly believed she was the brains in your partnership. The combat skills caught me off guard for a split second, which I’m sure you know is long enough.”

  “He’s not going to kill you,” I said, following the questioning plan Parker had made for me. “Healy won’t kill you … not if you agree to help us.”

  “You mean tell you who my boss is?”

  “Exactly.” I sighed with defeat, knowing he wasn’t going to tell me. Of course he wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Are the rumors true?” he asked, switching subjects abruptly. “I wasn’t the only one to get beaten by a girl?”

  “Well … I’m not being held prisoner by the opposition.”

  “‘Opposition’ is a very loose term, Jackson. You’ve been in the CIA long enough to have learned this.” He stared at me again in that same intense way that made me feel like my thoughts were on trial.

  “Why did you want Holly … Agent Flynn to be locked up with me yesterday? What was the purpose of that experiment?”

  “I’m using her to get to you,” he said without hesitation. “I’ve had questions for quite some time and the one person who was actually starting to find answers is dead … murdered, coincidently, and I don’t doubt your division’s involvement.”

  “Adam,” I muttered under my breath.

  “That’s right.” He leaned forward again. “Are you recording this? If I were you, I’d shut the tape off.”

  Something in his face, his voice, indicated that we were about to go “off the record.” I turned off th
e tiny recording device attached to my sleeve. My pulse raced and I wasn’t even sure why.

  “For a long time now,” he said, speaking in a low, barely audible voice, “I’ve been working on my own assignment. Building a team that could help me with a difficult project. And until recently I thought you were hiding the answers from me, but now I’m starting to believe you know even less than I do.”

  “About what?” I asked, leaning closer to Agent Collins.

  “Do you know anything about my background? How I ended up in the CIA?” I shook my head. “My father was an agent … so was my grandfather.” He reached in his pocket, removing a beaten-up wallet. An old photo slid out onto the table. “That’s my grandfather … in 1952.”

  I looked down at the photo and nearly fell out of my chair. The blond-haired, middle-aged man stood next to a younger guy, maybe nineteen or twenty, with dark hair. My dad … Agent Collins’s grandfather was in a picture with my dad … in 1952!

  I sat there staring at the photo with my mouth hanging open. “How…?”

  “How is your father, a man not much older than me, in a picture with my grandfather, who died two months after this photo was taken? Kevin Meyer shouldn’t have even been born when this picture was taken.”

  What. The. Hell? Agent … you’re an agent … think this through. Be logical. “How do you know for sure this was taken in 1952?”

  “I did a fair amount of research. Agent Silverman was my lead man on that project.”

  My stomach twisted, leaving me with a sick feeling. Adam … I needed Adam right now, more than ever. “If I look up your grandfather in the database, I’m going to find this man and that he’s deceased?”

  “Yes.” He stared at me now, more intense than before. “This is what’s kept me with Eyewall for so long. The idea that you guys are messing around with…”

  “Time,” I finished for him.

  “Time.”

  “And you think my dad did this? He went back to 1952 and met your grandfather and took a picture with him?” Was it possible? Could he be like me? He looked right around the age he had in 1992.