by K. J. McPike
I nodded slowly, my mind running through options for the best way to explain this. “Do you remember the girl with the pink hair who took you to the lab?”
“Yeah,” Salaxia said. “She brought us to the past?”
I started to answer one way but stopped myself. My mind reached for a response that was honest without giving away that Salaxia was from a different timeline than the rest of us. I still didn’t know if it was right to tell my baby sister that our timeline’s version of her had been killed. That was so much for her to—
“I died?” Salaxia squeaked, her olive skin going pale. “I’m dead?”
“No!” Crap. I should have known she would project into my mind at my first hesitation. I glanced around my siblings, looking for some assistance and gaining none. “You’re not dead,” I told her.
“We’ll, um, give you some privacy.” Elliot waved for our friends from The Hill to follow him down the beach, and Kala opted to join them. I didn’t blame her. I wished I could go with them and avoid this conversation, too. Salaxia had enough to deal with as it was.
“Am I a ghost?” Salaxia’s lip quivered, and I could sense the panic building in her.
“You’re not a ghost,” I said. “It was another version of you that was killed.”
“There are two of me?”
“There are two of all of us,” Ulyxses jumped in. “That’s what happens when you travel through time. When you change things, it makes time split in two, and it makes two versions of everyone.”
Salaxia sniffled. “So I’m not really your sister?”
“Of course you’re our sister.” I scooted toward where she sat in the sand and slipped an arm around her, forcing my thoughts to neutral ground before she could read the truth. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she was my sister—I knew she had the same childhood memories, the same personality, and the same DNA—it was just that she wasn’t my version of my sister. I was still thankful to have Salaxia in my life in some capacity, but I didn’t want to think the baby sister I’d had since I was six years old could just be replaced by another. And wherever my timeline’s Salaxia was, wherever her spirit was, I didn’t want her to think that either.
But the Salaxia sitting next to me…I didn’t want her to think we wouldn’t love her as much simply because she’d been pulled from a different timeline. That wasn’t fair to her, either. She was my sister, too.
“Sal, you’re exactly the same,” Oxanna insisted as she and our brothers moved closer to comfort Salaxia. “We’re exactly the same.” She gestured to Dixon, Ulyxses and me. “We come from different timelines, not different families.”
“Yeah,” Dixon said. “We’re just happy to have you back. You have no idea how much we missed you.”
“But what about my family in the other timeline?” Salaxia asked. “Are they okay?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. There was no point in lying about that when Salaxia could figure out the truth so easily. I kicked my feet out in front of me, and sand slipped up one of my pant legs. I didn’t bother shaking it out. “There’s not really a way to know which timeline she took you from, or what happened after you left.” I felt like I should have said something more reassuring, but I didn’t want to get her thinking we could just take her back.
“Sal, what happened before Sariah took you to the lab?” Ulyxses asked. “Do you remember what was going on before you ended up there?”
Salaxia took in a long breath and blew her bangs off her forehead. “She came in at the same time as a bunch of Astralis guys. They were trying to catch us in nets, and that girl helped them. She stabbed Kai with a silver thing that made him fall asleep.”
“The tranquilizer.” I shook my head. “She must have known he would be able to get us out of the house.”
“Well, she could’ve watched how everything happened before she showed up,” Ulyxses pointed out. “She would know exactly what to do to get Sal out of there.”
“Or she could’ve tried multiple times,” Dixon pointed out. “If it didn’t go her way the first time, she could just go back in time and try again.”
“And she could fly,” Salaxia added. “She grabbed me and we flew outside, and then we went really high in the sky, and then everything was black and there were weird, shiny tunnels.“
The space between timelines flashed in my mind as I remembered when Sariah circled back through time to bring Kai and me to the lab. “I think that’s some kind of void where she can choose where she wants to go in time,” I explained.
“Wait, she carried you outside of time in your physical body?” Oxanna looked to me, as if I would know the answer. “Can people survive that?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Well, it’s not like it’s outer space or anything,” Ulyxses said.
“Still.” Oxanna shook her head. “What about breathing? I mean, is there oxygen between timelines?”
“It happens so fast,” I replied, thinking back to the seconds I’d been in limbo between timelines. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“But why did she take me to the past?” Salaxia asked.
“Because Arlo wanted to have your ability.” My fists balled as I said it, the thought of what he’d put my family through making my teeth clench.
Salaxia’s face bunched. “But what if I don’t like this time?”
“We’re not going to stay here,” Ulyxses said, reminding me of our plan for the day. In panicking about Salaxia finding out the truth, I’d almost forgotten. “That’s why Kai went to get Delta,” he explained. “She can help us get back to the right time.”
“And the timeline we’re going to take you to is basically the same as yours,” Oxanna added, her words seeming to comfort our baby sister a bit.
I decided not to mention the part about how we wouldn’t be able to go back to our house for a while—if ever. Then again, that would’ve been the case in her timeline, too. She just hadn’t stayed in it long enough to realize it.
Kai appeared then, flanked by Delta and two other males I didn’t recognize. All of them wore the same yellow jumpsuits the rest of us still had on. I hopped to my feet, staring at them open-mouthed.
“Thought I’d get Brendan and Trace while I was at it.” Kai nodded toward the new faces. “I couldn’t just leave them.”
I could tell the one next to Delta was Brendan. Though he was significantly taller than she was, both had the same milky skin and rounded features. I knew they were cousins, but they could have passed for brother and sister. The short one with the broad forehead and light wisps of hair above his lip must have been Trace.
Delta looked like she might faint as her eyes roamed the beach. “I can’t believe it,” she breathed. “I never thought we would make it out of there.”
I gave her a weak smile, taking comfort in the fact that we had managed to help her in this timeline. Maybe on some level, that would balance out her untimely death in ours.
“Did you trap Sariah’s astral energy?” Oxanna asked, not wasting any time.
Delta nodded slowly, but her face didn’t bolster my confidence in getting home. “I trapped her astral energy so that she can’t use her ability and come after you.” Delta glanced up the beach to where our friends still sat talking about a hundred yards away. Apparently, they hadn’t realized that Kai had come back. “I know Elliot asked me to program a stone to pass Sariah’s energy on to be used by someone else, but I have never been able to get that to work.”
Her words knocked the air out of me. I’d known it wasn’t guaranteed, but I couldn’t help the heavy feeling in my chest. Everything always seemed to be stacked against us.
“So we can’t use her power?” Dixon asked, sounding dejected.
“You mean we’re never getting home?” Ulyxses added in a small voice that was barely audible over the sound of the ocean.
Delta gave us an apologetic look. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help you get to your timeline.”
Brendan looked bet
ween Delta and the rest of us. “So…what’s going on?” he asked, his voice startlingly deep.
“It’s a long story,” I told him. “But in short, my brothers can project through time, we accidentally got stuck in the past, and we were hoping Sariah’s ability could get us back to our timeline.” Seeing the defeated looks on my siblings’ faces, I added, “But we’ll have to keep looking until we find another solution.”
Trace looked between my brothers. “You can both travel through time?”
“Yeah,” Ulyxses said. “Dix can go to the past, and I can go to the future, but we can’t time hop like Sariah can.”
Trace laughed once. “Well, if you can go in both directions, you don’t need Sariah to get back to your timeline. You can do it yourselves.”
Chapter 31
Backtrack
No one made a sound at first. We all just stared at Trace, as if speaking might somehow make his words untrue. I told myself not to get my hopes up, but it was too late. My mind had already run away with the promise of getting back to our original timeline.
“What are you talking about?” Delta broke the silence, her cheeks already pink even though the sun had barely made it halfway to its peak. “How can they go back on their own?”
Trace shrugged one shoulder, his mouth hitching up on one side as if it should have been obvious. “They only need to backtrack far enough so they’re at a point in time before the splice.”
“What’s a splice?” Salaxia asked.
“It’s where time splits in two after someone goes to the past and changes things,” I explained.
“So what good is backtracking?” Ulyxses asked, studying Trace like he wasn’t sure whether or not to trust him. After Sariah had betrayed us, I didn’t blame him. “I thought once time is spliced, it’s like you switch tracks.”
“It is,” Trace said. “Time branches into two paths from that point on, but both have the same past leading up to the split. It’s like a single road that eventually branches off in two directions.” He scanned the stretch of beach in front of us like he was searching for something, finally settling on using his hand to draw a Y in the sand. “If you go back in time to before the splice”—he pointed to the stem of the Y—“then you can move along both paths, since both futures are possibilities moving forward.”
I watched him run his finger along one branch of the Y, and then along the other, and what he was saying clicked in my head. As long as we moved back far enough, we could follow either side of the splice. My mouth fell open. Had that been the answer all along?
“But moving back is what causes the split in the first place,” Dixon pointed out.
Trace held up a bony finger. “Not if you don’t change anything. As long as everything in the timeline still happens in the same way, there’s no splice.”
“Are you sure?” Delta asked.
“He’s telling the truth,” Salaxia announced. “He really thinks we can get back to the right time.”
Trace did a double take, leaning away from her like she might be contagious.
“Sorry,” I said, though I couldn’t help my smile. I never thought I’d miss Salaxia barging in on everyone’s thoughts, but now that I knew what life was like without that annoyance, I’d consider it a privilege. “Sal can project into people’s minds.”
“Guys, can we focus?” Oxanna snapped her fingers to get Trace’s attention again. “Are you positive about this whole backtracking thing?”
“Well, I haven’t tested it,” Trace said. “But that was how Sariah explained things.” He winced as he spoke her name. “At first, I thought she was being forced to work for Arlo too, and when she found me, we talked about what happened—why I got stuck. Even if she is conniving, what she said about navigating timelines is logical.”
“She’s gotta be right,” Ulyxses whispered, the sound barely audible over the waves lapping at the shore. “That has to be why I could project to the future at first when we were in the transposer tunnel.”
Oxanna arched a brow. “What are you talking about?”
“Remember when Dix first took us back to when past-Lali and past-Kai were in the tunnel?” Ulyxses’ words came out in a rush of barely distinguishable syllables. “Right after they disappeared, I projected you guys to the future. We decided not to move through the transposer because I wasn’t sure exactly where we were in time, but my ability worked. It must’ve been because we hadn’t changed anything yet. Then after we talked to past-Lali—after we spliced time—I couldn’t go to the future anymore.”
I gasped. Ulyxses had been able to move into the future at first. It was only after the splice happened that his power stopped working. “So if Dix takes us back far enough in time, Lyx can choose which future path to take?” I asked.
Trace tossed his head, his curly hair lifting in a soft breeze. “In theory.”
“And if I take us to our timeline, to the moment right after we left to go to the past, then we won’t have to worry about our astral energy merging,” Ulyxses said, more to himself than to us. “The alternate versions of us will be gone, and it’ll be like we never left the timeline at all.” He blinked, turning back to Trace. “But how will I know which one is the future we came from?”
Trace scratched his ear. “I think you just follow each path and see which one you want.”
“You should be able to find ours,” Dixon told his twin. “If you go about twenty years into the future from here, you’d just have to look for all of us in the transposer tunnel. The only timeline where we’d be there with Kala would be our original one.”
“How do you know?” Oxanna asked. “We haven’t been to the other futures.”
“But we went back to warn past-Lali about the attack, so their Sal wouldn’t have been killed,” Dixon pointed out. “They wouldn’t have gone back in time at all.”
“So they wouldn’t be in the transposer tunnel,” I said, piecing together what my brother was getting at. “At least not around the time we went back.”
“Right. Then Dix just has to take us further into Mom’s past, to a time when she was in the transposer tunnel before we got here.” Ulyxses’ bushy brows pulled together. “And from there, I can take us to our original timeline.”
“But what if Sariah comes to take me again?” Salaxia cried.
“She can’t,” I assured her, reaching out to run my hand along her back. “Delta trapped her astral energy. She can’t use her ability at all anymore.”
“Wait a minute,” Oxanna said. “Could another timeline’s Sariah still come after us?”
I tensed. I hadn’t thought of that. Even if Delta stole Sariah’s astral energy in this timeline, there could still be other versions of her in other times. I pinched the bridge of my nose, my fingers blocking out some of the sunlight heating my face. Were we ever going to be safe anywhere?
“But other versions of Sariah wouldn’t know about us,” Ulyxses said. “So they’d have no reason to come after us, right?”
Dixon blanched. “What if Solstice sends her?”
“If Solstice had that option all along, why wouldn’t she have done that in the first place?” I challenged.
“I can program crystals to protect you from her,” Delta offered. “If I put the intention into stones to trap only Sariah’s astral energy, they’ll activate if she comes near you. Then she won’t be able to pull you out of any time, no matter where she comes from.”
I let out a relieved breath. “That would be perfect.”
Our friends came back over then, and I wondered if they truly hadn’t noticed Kai return or if they were just trying to avoid more awkward conversations like the one we’d had earlier with Salaxia.
“What’s the word?” Truman asked, coming to a stop as the others caught up in a line beside him. He offered a small wave to Delta, Brendan, and Trace.
“I think we’re going home,” I said, my heart thumping harder at the thought. We’d been through so much to get to this point, but now that it was here,
it didn’t seem real.
“Speaking of home…” Macy poked at a shell with her toe, her eyes trained on the sand. “Elliot told us what you guys are trying to do, and we were wondering if we could come with you.”
Kala met my eyes, the insides of her heavy brows lifting in a silent question.
“It’s just that we have nowhere to go,” Bianca added. Her voice broke on the last word, and she slid an arm around Caleb, whose big blue eyes reflected the same worry as hers. “The Astralii who took us know where The Hill is. We can’t go back there.”
I sucked in a lungful of salty air. She was right. With Paris gone and The Hill’s location compromised, they had no one to take care of them and nowhere to go. As much as I would have loved to bring them with us, we were only twenty years into the past. That meant there was a good chance that alternate versions of them were still alive in our timeline, and we’d have to worry about their astral energy merging. But how could we leave them with nowhere to stay? It was our coming here that had caused all the problems in the first place.
“It wouldn’t be safe to take you to the future.” Ulyxses spared me the task of shooting down the idea and disappointing them. “If there are other versions of you in our timeline, you could die.”
Kai heaved a sigh. “He’s right. We can’t risk your lives.”
Our friends’ faces fell one by one, and I tried to think of ways around the dilemma. Maybe Delta could trap their astral energy the way she’d offered to do for us right after we first traveled into the past. But she’d said it wasn’t guaranteed, and I would never be able to forgive myself if bringing anyone to our time ended up deadly.
“Then we’ll figure something else out,” Elliot said. “I can get a job and find us a place to live.”
“No one is going to let the six of us move in anywhere without an adult,” Bianca said.
“I’ll be eighteen soon,” Elliot argued, only making me feel worse. There was no way he could support all of them.
Bianca shook her head. “What are we going to do until then, Elliot?”