Chaos

by Lanie Bross

  It was wrong. All wrong.

  Intuitively, she glanced at the stack of newspapers by the door again.

  Cleanup Efforts Continue. Search For Survivors Continues, Day Two.

  Monday, October 15.

  She froze. Was this a joke?

  Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat. She looked over her shoulder to see if the girl was watching her. It had to be a trick—some hidden-camera, practical-joke kind of thing. Maybe it was a new reality TV show. But the girl didn’t even glance her way.

  A man in a dark suit started to push past her, a large to-go cup in his hand.

  “Excuse me.” Jasmine licked her lips nervously. Her throat felt parched. “Could you tell me what day it is?”

  The man looked at her curiously. “Monday.”

  “Are you sure?” she blurted out.

  “I had to go back to work today. So yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He pushed out the door and jogged to a car double-parked at the curb, using a newspaper as a makeshift umbrella. Jasmine followed him out onto the sidewalk, mindless of the rain. She barely even felt it.

  She breathed in deeply, like the school counselor, Mrs. Cole, had instructed her to do when she felt overwhelmed. If she wasn’t caught up in an enormous conspiracy of practical jokers, that left only a couple of possibilities:

  She was crazy.

  She was jumping back and forth in time.

  Time. Ford had said something about time. He was talking about Miranda. Time was always an obsession of hers.

  And the note she’d found in the hidden room: Find Ford. He’ll know what to do.

  Luc had mentioned that Miranda was responsible for what had happened to Jasmine on Friday night.

  It all kept coming back to the same woman. Maybe Miranda was the crazy one.

  Maybe Jasmine would be okay. She had to believe that.

  Jasmine stepped back from the curb as a bus rumbled by. If it was truly Monday—again—then Ford would be at the rotunda. Maybe she could get him to take her to Miranda.

  Jasmine ran down Jackson—noticing, again, how easily she took the hills, despite the fact that it had been hours (days?) since she’d last eaten—past the park and the gym where she’d seen Ford boxing. She caught the bus at the next stop and slipped loose change from her pocket into the slot where the driver sat.

  She made her way to an empty seat.

  The voices of the passengers around her slugged through her mind, distorted and deep. The constant lurching of the bus, the starting and stopping, sent spikes shooting into her head. She felt sick to her stomach. Time travel. Christ. It was something out of a science-fiction book. It was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  When the bus shuddered to a stop near the Palace of Fine Arts, she exited quickly, staring at the ground. She couldn’t have been on the bus that long, but with so many streets still without electricity and the sky filled with deep gray clouds, it looked darker than before. She estimated it must be around four p.m., about twenty minutes later than the first time she’d met Ford at the rotunda. She hoped he would still be there.

  Jasmine walked in the direction the bus had gone, her head down and hands in her pockets. Divisadero was familiar enough to her that she knew where the rotunda was.

  Rain ran under her collar, soaked her shirt, and made her long hair stick to her face. But it felt true, and real. It convinced her she was real.

  The debris had been cleared away from in front of the hidden staircase. What did that mean? Had Ford discovered the hideout himself? A strong feeling of dread washed over her. The attack. It was here she’d felt a hand grab her ankle; it was here she’d blacked out.

  Suddenly, she realized that if it really was Monday again, that meant her attackers would pursue her here, to this very spot, again. She was an idiot to have come.

  She froze when she heard footsteps. A familiar figure moved into the light. Ford.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  She came down the stairs toward him. His face was in shadow. “Leaving,” she said. She seized his hand. “And you’re coming with me.”

  “I thought I told you yesterday—” he started, but Jas cut him off.

  “Yeah, I know. Different sides and all that. But you have to trust me on this one.”

  Ford wrenched his hand away from hers. “How did you know where to find me? Were you following me again?”

  “Not exactly.” How much time did they have before her attackers appeared again? “Look, there’s no time to explain everything. But we need to go. Now.”

  He hesitated for a second longer. Then he sighed and shrugged. “Lead the way.”

  They made it only halfway up the stairs before the boy appeared above them, blocking their way.

  “Run!” Jasmine shouted, but it was too late; there was nowhere to go. The boy launched himself at her and drove her backward, into Ford. All of them fell. The air whooshed out of Jas’s lungs when she landed on the concrete floor, catching Ford’s elbow in her side.

  Quickly, she rolled free and stood up, ignoring the shooting pain in her knee. The faint light from the main room barely illuminated the stairway. Ford scrambled to his feet, but the boy from the park was on his feet just as quickly. The knife glinted in his hand.

  He didn’t look like a deranged stalker or a hired killer. He looked like any other guy Jasmine might know. He wore jeans, a dark T-shirt, and a worn brown leather jacket. His hair was a little too long, and it curled over his eyes.

  “What the hell?” Ford said.

  “Stay out of it,” the boy said. He kept his eyes on Jasmine, even as he addressed Ford.

  Ford growled. “Like hell I will. You have a knife in your hands.”

  For just one second, the boy glanced at Ford. “This isn’t about you.”

  In that second, Jasmine struck. She drove her knee straight into the boy’s groin. He howled in pain. His gaze swung around and met hers. Then he doubled over, falling to his knees. Jasmine had to step over him to reach the staircase, but he barely seemed to notice.

  “Come on,” she said to Ford.

  Jas burst into the open air and collided with the female attacker on the other side of the door. The girl was obviously startled; Jasmine reacted first and grabbed the girl’s arm, yanking her into the stairwell. Ford flattened himself against the wall as the girl stumbled, her arms swinging wildly for balance. Before the girl could right herself, Jasmine pushed her and sent her rolling down the stairs.

  “Remind me to stay on your good side,” Ford said.

  They ran past the fallen columns and the chunks of fissured concrete and debris. At the street, she stopped. She blinked rain out of her eyes. Which way now? Her attackers would find her again. They had done it twice already.

  As if on cue, raised voices came from the direction of the rotunda. Jas’s heart was wild with panic; she could feel it pounding in her throat.

  Ford grabbed her hand. As always, a jolt of electricity went through her when he touched her. “This way,” he said, pulling her toward the bay instead of inland.

  “Where are we going?” Jasmine looked over her shoulder as they ran. When they were a hundred yards away, she saw the boy and girl burst into the street. The boy still looked a little green, but he was moving fast.

  Ford led her to the parking lot and yanked her over to the nearest motorcycle. He pulled a helmet off the handlebars and tossed it to her. She barely managed to catch it.

  “Put it on,” he said, already climbing onto the bike.

  As Jasmine was fumbling with the clasp, she saw the ignition spark, and the bike rumbled to life.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  Ford revved the throttle a few times. “Are you going to keep asking questions or are you going to get on?”

  He was right. Jas had ridden with T.J. enough to know how to fasten the chin strap and swing her leg over the bike, behind Ford. From the corner of her eye she saw someone running toward them shouting. She threw her arms
around Ford’s waist, clasped her hands, and held on tight, and the bike jumped forward.

  Ford drove across Lyon and wove around a pile of debris, then crossed Marina and turned left onto Mason. A car swerved around them, horn blaring, but Jas barely heard it over the frantic beating of her own heart. The girl and boy were still chasing them on foot, unnervingly close.

  How could they run so fast?

  Not human. The words, the idea, suddenly broke into Jasmine’s consciousness, and she knew it was true. They weren’t human. They couldn’t be.

  She remembered how she’d watched Ford split a bag apart at the boxing gym. Was he something other than human, too?

  They shot down Mason, the throttle wide open and the engine loud. The storefronts sent back a watery reflection of their headlights. Jas peeked over Ford’s shoulder and couldn’t hold back a shriek of surprise. Someone had run into the middle of the road and stopped, right in their way.

  The girl. She held the knife waist high, waiting for them. Waiting for Jasmine.

  “Hold on!” Ford shouted. He didn’t stop; he aimed straight for the girl. He leaned forward and Jasmine gripped his waist. His coat was slick with rain. Jasmine’s chest was tight with terror. He was going to run the girl down.

  He was going to kill her.

  Ford. She tried to shout his name, but she couldn’t get the word out of her throat. It was too late anyway. They were almost on top of the girl, so close Jas could see her mouth open in surprise, the small dimple between her eyebrows as she frowned. Jas squeezed her eyes closed and braced for impact.

  But the bike kept purring along. They didn’t even swerve.

  When Jas looked back, she saw the girl picking herself up off the pavement. She must have jumped out of the way just in time. Jasmine exhaled. The girl was quickly swallowed up by the distance and the dark. Jas wondered what had happened to the boy with the long hair.

  She knew that both of them would be back. They wanted her dead. That much was obvious.

  She still had no idea why.…

  On their left, lit windows streamed past and buildings danced in and out of sight.

  On their right, the wide mouth of the bay was open to the dark gray sky. The salty smell of the bay mixed with newly cut grass and dew.

  Several more minutes went by before Ford slowed the bike and they veered right, onto a boardwalk along the beach. The bike trail. The normally packed trail was empty as Ford guided the motorcycle with ease along the boardwalk.

  Jas was cold. Salt spray from the bay mingled with the rain. She leaned in closer to Ford, feeling the heat radiating through his back. He smelled good. As she pressed close to him, she remembered what he had looked like without a shirt on, the muscles, the jacked-up strength.

  Not human. She quickly pushed the thought aside. She was too tired for questions and doubts.

  Maybe they would just keep riding forever. That would be okay with her.

  Ford weaved expertly around the pitted spots on the trail and places where the earthquake had punched a fist skyward, leaving broken piles of wood in its wake. They jumped back onto the road. Ford slowed the bike and pulled into a parking spot at Fort Point. When he cut the engine, Jas pulled off the helmet and swung her leg over the seat, surprised at how solid the ground felt under her feet. The crash of the waves against the rocks was thunderous, and the sky was still bleeding rain. Jasmine realized she had no idea what time it was—the clouds had turned everything a uniform gray.

  Ford climbed off after her and put a hand on her back.

  “We’ll be safe here for a while!” he shouted, leaning close so she could hear him.

  Jas was so surprised by how nice it felt to hear him say we that she couldn’t even ask where here was. He started toward the chain-link fence put up to keep people out of the section of the fort under the Golden Gate Bridge, which rose above them, a vast steel giant with fingers pointing to the sky. A big No Trespassing sign was visible in the half dark. Ford ignored it. He shoved at the gate, exposing a narrow gap just large enough to slip through.

  He motioned for Jasmine to enter. She hesitated. Jas had sworn to Luc to stay out of trouble. Even thinking about her brother, and where he could possibly be, made her chest feel heavy. What if something had happened to him? What if those crazy assassins, or whatever they were, had gotten him?

  Thinking about the boy and the girl and the possibility of their return made her decide. She slipped through the gate, and Ford followed. She could still hear the slurring of the waves against the shore and the drumming of the rain on the damp sand, loud as a march. She realized with a start that although Ford was walking next to her, she couldn’t read anything off him—no feelings. No wants. Nothing.

  “What are we doing here?” They had arrived at the base of an enormous cement footer that served as one of the bridge’s supports. Here the noise of the waves was even louder, amplified by the arched steel beams.

  “Hiding.” Ford stopped in front of a narrow door. There was a lock but no visible handle. The door was barely distinguishable from the gray cement all around it. Ford fumbled in his pocket, and Jas watched him shove a thin file into the lock. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching. But they were alone. Just the beach and the bay and the endless rain.

  The lock gave with a click, and Ford held the door open and motioned for her to go inside. It was pitch-black. The air that reached her from inside was warm and dry and smelled musty. Again, she hesitated. This is where the dumb girl in every horror movie walks right into her own death.

  “Now it’s your turn to trust me,” Ford said with a small smile. Her stomach jumped. He was right. Jas stepped into the darkness. When Ford stepped in and shut the door behind them, the noise of the waves was suddenly silenced. Jasmine found the unexpected quiet deafening.

  “Just ahead, to the right, there’s a small room,” Ford said. He rested a hand on her hip to guide her; warmth radiated from his touch. This close, she could smell the cinnamon scent of his skin. It was comforting. Familiar, somehow, even though he was a stranger.

  And he was obviously keeping secrets.

  But she was glad to be out of the rain and the cold.

  Ford nudged her forward. She stepped carefully, her hand on the rough wall. She could feel slight vibrations coming from the floor—impact from the waves, maybe, and the wind—and smell something sweet, honeylike.

  “Here we are,” Ford said. He moved around her. There was that delicious word again—we. A light flickered and Ford raised a hurricane lantern to eye level. “It’s not much. But we should be able to hide here for a while.”

  The small space looked like some kind of mechanics’ room that had long ago been stripped of its contents. A couple of blankets were folded neatly on the floor, and a camp stove sat in a corner. The ceiling was so high it was lost in the vast darkness beyond the small circle that the lantern could illuminate. The air smelled tangy, like salt—but there was that second, deeper layer of sweetness as well, almost as if there had been flowers growing here at some point.

  “Is this where you live?” She hugged herself, trying to get warm. It was warmer here, but not by much, and her clothes were heavy and water-soaked from the rain.

  Ford set the lantern down and grabbed one of the blankets, shaking it out before he wrapped it around her shoulders. She buried her nose in the soft fleece. It smelled like him.

  “I’m staying here for a bit,” he answered cryptically. Jasmine realized she didn’t know how old he was. He quickly changed the subject. “How about something hot to drink?”

  Jasmine sank down onto the other blanket and watched as he lit the small, one-burner camp stove, then set a teapot to boil. His movements were relaxed, easy, as if the two of them hadn’t just gone on a wild motorcycle ride through the rain to escape a couple of homicidal maniacs. Jasmine’s hands were still shaking, and her mind was spinning around and around—she couldn’t make it land on any logical explanation. Maybe she was in shock.

 
“Are you all right?” he asked, looking up at her as if he could read her thoughts.

  “Been better,” she said. She hugged her knees to her chest. “It’s not every day someone tries to kill me.” She didn’t even know how to talk about the other part—how she had left her aunt’s house on a Tuesday and wound up in Monday again.

  There was a mug sitting next to a glass jar full of tea bags on a wooden shelf. Ford added a tea bag to the mug, poured in water, then sloshed in liquid from a bottle he wrestled out of his pocket. She raised an eyebrow.

  “You trying to poison me?”

  He half smiled. “You don’t like whiskey?”

  She took the mug from him. It was hot, and felt good in her hands.

  “Go ahead,” Ford said. “It’s best when it’s hot.”

  It did smell amazing, with hints of vanilla and wildflower. The tea was delicious and the whiskey added just enough of a good burn. It lit a fire in her stomach and, after a few sips, made her swirling thoughts begin to settle. She closed her eyes for a second, savoring the taste and the silence.

  “So. Do you have any idea why?”

  Ford’s question surprised her. She opened her eyes and saw that he was staring at her.

  “Why what?” she asked.

  His dark eyes drilled into her. “Why someone is trying to kill you.”

  “None.” She set the steaming tea on the ground. “I have no idea who those people are, or why they’re following me.”

  “Following you?” Ford repeated. “You’ve seen them before?”

  It occurred to her that he didn’t know about the attack in the park. Or that she’d already lived through the attack at the pavilion twice. Would he think she was insane if she told him that time was skipping around?

  Probably. But somehow, confined in this little room and feeling safe for the first time in days, she felt she could truly trust him.

  She took a deep breath. “This isn’t the first time they’ve attacked me. Actually, this isn’t the first time they’ve attacked us, either.” Ford frowned. Jas rushed on. “Look, this is going to sound crazy. But I knew they’d be there today because they attacked us in the same spot … not yesterday, really, I guess today, but before.…” She knew she wasn’t making any sense. She glanced up at Ford. His expression hadn’t lost its neutrality.