by Dunn, Pintip
“I’ve gotten permission to bring my family their evening meals,” she says. “Will you come with me?”
Does she even need to ask? That’s my job. To be her trusty shadow. Her loyal ally. There’s no shame in that. Even the most courageous people need a little help now and then. If this is my fate, I’ll embrace it.
I was just…confused for a little while. I liked viewing myself through Ryder’s eyes. I liked feeling like I was in charge of my own fate. But that’s over now. He doesn’t see me like that anymore.
And neither do I.
“Sure,” I say to Jessa. “When do we leave?”
…
Half an hour later, we’re guiding a metal cart filled with Meal Assembler trays toward detainment. The handle is lower than is comfortable, as it’s meant for bots, and the cart hovers a few inches above the tile. The thin, bland odor of the food winds into the air, smelling like sawdust and defeat.
“Talk to me,” Jessa mutters. Perspiration dots her upper lip, and the hand that’s not wrapped around the handle is noticeably shaking.
“You know I’m not one for chitchat,” I say.
“True. But you’ve been talking a lot more, and you haven’t dropped a single word since you came back from the wilderness. Have you noticed that?”
I pause. Is that right? I suppose. My words flowed so easily around Ryder. It was just like talking to Potts or to the old Tanner before I left civilization. I haven’t been that comfortable around anyone for ages. I guess my comfort slowly extended to everyone else.
Too soon, we arrive at a metal door equipped with four types of identity scans—voice, retina, fingerprint, and blood. Jessa takes a deep breath. And then another.
Quickly, I scan all four of my biometrics before we run out of oxygen.
We walk inside. A long, narrow corridor unfurls before us. The concrete is bare, and the light is dim—not because of faulty bulbs but because ComA programmed it to be so. The air pushes down on my shoulders, hot and heavy and dense, and already, the smells of sweat and urine cling to each molecule.
Angela and Remi are in the first cell. The little girl looks up as we approach and lets loose a bone-vibrating shriek. She toddles over to the bars, holding her arms open wide.
“She remembers me?” Jessa’s eyes are wide with wonder and shock. “Oh Fates. She’s gotten so big. And she’s walking! When did she learn to walk?” She falls to her knees in front of the cell, reaching a hand through the bars to touch Remi’s hair. “I knew you wouldn’t lose your curl when your hair grew out. I just knew it!”
“She does that with everyone,” Angela says flatly, scooping Remi up and out of Jessa’s reach. “Total strangers. Poisonous snakes. She was six months old when you betrayed us. Of course she doesn’t remember you.”
“Oh.” Jessa folds her hands in front of her, clearly at a loss for words.
Hurriedly, I pick up two trays of gruel and slide them through a slot into the cell. But it doesn’t break the tension. Jessa and Angela continue to stare at each other. I might as well be in another time.
“Where’s, um, where’s Callie?” Jessa asks finally. “And Mikey?”
“ComA took them.” Angela hugs Remi, pressing the little girl’s face against the coarse material of her dull gray jumpsuit. Remi cries out and pulls away. “They have Callie under surveillance in the medical wing, and they needed Mikey on some super-secret project. They wanted Preston, too, but he’s not here. Yet. The chairwoman took great pleasure in telling me that a team was being sent to the rendezvous point. So no doubt, the others will be joining us shortly.”
The words are spoken to Jessa, but she turns her accusing, angry glare on me.
“That was me,” I say quietly. “I told my mom about the rendezvous point. I didn’t know how else to get you the formula, and she promised me you would be treated well. Obviously, she lied.” I move my shoulders helplessly. “I’m sorry. You’ll never know how sorry.”
Angela blinks, her eyes big and brilliant. “You saved my daughter, Olivia. I won’t ever forget that,” she says slowly, as though puzzling out her feelings. “But now, because of you, we’re here, behind bars. I believe you meant well, but that’s the problem with breaking someone’s trust. You have no control over the consequences.”
“Remi’s safer here,” I say miserably. “You should’ve seen what was in store for her in the other futures.”
But Angela’s already turned away, trying to find a comfortable patch on her shoulder for her daughter to lie on. Closing her eyes, she strokes Remi’s hair and croons softly. Jessa and I exchange a deep, sorrowful look, but there’s nothing else we can say or do, so we push the wobbly cart down the hall.
We pass Logan, asleep on a mat in his cell. The mat’s thicker than a strand of my hair—but not much. I slide a tray of gruel into his cell, and we keep going.
Ryder’s waiting for us by the bars. “Don’t talk to me,” he says darkly. “Just give me the food and go.”
His eyes skim over Jessa, as though she doesn’t exist, but they latch onto me, the rage burning more brightly than anything else in this corridor.
“Ryder, I—” I start to say.
“I said, don’t talk to me,” he thunders. “I gave you a second chance. Against my instinct, against my nature, I trusted you. And this is how you repay me?” He shakes his head, his chest vibrating with anger.
My skin should be thicker by now. I should’ve expected nothing less. But his anger cuts me off at the knees, and I stumble, gasping for breath.
Jessa leaps forward, catching my elbow. “Olivia! Are you okay?”
I manage to nod, and Jessa rounds on her former best friend. “I’m ashamed of you,” she says. “You can be mad at me all you want. I’ll be the first to say I deserve it. But what has Olivia done? She owes the lot of you nothing, and yet, she dove in front of an electro-lash to protect Callie and her unborn baby.”
He sets his jaw. “She was the reason we were in that situation to begin with.”
“She was trying to save you, damn the Fates! She did what she thought was right. Just like I did.” Jessa steps forward until the only things separating them are the metal bars and a few inches of air. “I know it’s hard for you to see things from my perspective. And probably, you’ll never agree with me. But I hope one day you’ll understand that I never wanted to hurt you. I’m the same girl I always was. I love you just as much now as I always did.” She takes a deep breath. “If you can’t trust me today, then you were wrong to ever trust me. Then our friendship, from the mud puddles to the acorn graves, from the hover parks to the ten-foot wall, was false. Can you tell me you honestly believe that?”
“I…” Right before my eyes, Ryder’s hard and impenetrable features begin to melt. “I don’t know what to do. How to feel.” His voice is low and anguished. “I’ve been betrayed all my life, Jessa. You know that. It’s the only thing I’ve come to expect. I don’t know how to take a leap of faith. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“How about your heart?” Jessa puts her hand on the bars, over his fingers. “That’s never steered you wrong before. And it won’t lead you wrong now.”
I hold my breath, waiting for the improbable. Will Ryder forgive Jessa? Will he forgive me?
Before he can respond, the door swings open and Tanner bursts into the corridor. He runs too fast and crashes into the metal cart, sending a couple of trays flying to the ground.
“Jessa! Livvy!” He scrambles to his feet, tries to pick up the trays, but then stumbles again. I’ve never seen him so frantic. “You have to come! Now!”
“What is it, Tanner?” Jessa asks.
His eyes focus on her, dark and scared. “It’s Callie. They’re withholding the formula from her, and she’s fading away.”
31
All the color disappears from Jessa’s face, until it looks like she, too, might vanish.
I also feel faint but for an entirely different reason. I’ve seen this pathway before, over a deca
de ago. It didn’t make sense at the time. It was ripped out of context. But it contained one dominant image that’s been seared into my mind for the last ten years: Jessa and me, fighting side by side.
I drift over to her and grasp her hand. “I’ve seen this, Jessa, all those years ago. This is the scene I told you about, when you traveled ten years into the past and talked to my six-year-old self. The two of us, fighting together to save your sister. We can do this. We can get her the formula. We can make sure she doesn’t disappear.”
My words seem to bring Jessa back to herself. A hint of color flows into her cheeks, and she nods resolutely.
Ryder rattles the bars. “Take me with you. I can help.”
Tanner swivels his head from us to the detainee. “I could break into the com terminal at the guard’s station. Open his cell door. But then, the chairwoman will know we’re not on her side.”
“Won’t she already know that?” Jessa asks, a muscle throbbing at her temple. “We’re going to defy all her orders and get the formula to Callie. I think the jig is up.”
“You wanted me to trust you.” Ryder reaches through the bars and touches Jessa’s shoulder. “Well, then, you have to trust me, too. Let me help. Callie’s like a sister to me. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. Please.”
Jessa turns to me. “What do you think, Olivia? What does the future show?”
“Very little,” I say slowly. “I’ve had big holes in my precognition lately. My mom says it’s just part of the time stream deterioration. I can’t see enough to get a full picture.”
Energy snaps into her body, and it’s clear she’s made a decision. “Fine. Do it,” she says to Tanner. “We don’t know what we’re up against, and an extra body won’t hurt.”
Tanner dashes into the glass-walled office. Less than a minute later, the gate slides open. Ryder bounds out, rubbing his wrists where the electro-cuffs must’ve pinched.
“Let’s go,” Tanner calls from the guards’ station.
We sprint past a drowsy Logan who’s beginning to wake. Past the identical gaping mouths of Angela and Remi. Out of detainment and down the corridor, as fast as I’ve ever run in my entire life.
“The chairwoman’s put out a news alert,” Tanner pants as we run. “It’s been flashing across all the holo-screens at fifteen-minute intervals. That’s how I found out about Callie.”
We take the elevator capsules to the ground floor and step out. The sheer number of people causes me to stumble backward. Civilians are packed so tightly in the open atrium there’s hardly room to breathe, let alone move. Not just the seventeen-year-olds I’m used to seeing in the FuMA lobby, either. There are people here of every age, from babies younger than Remi to the elderly who have mechanical braces on their legs. They push and bump, elbows flying, as FuMA guards attempt—badly—to organize them into lines.
“What in Limbo are they all doing here?” Ryder asks.
“That’s what I was telling you,” Tanner says. “They’re here because of the chairwoman’s news alert.”
He drapes his arm around Jessa, in an attempt to shield her from the errant elbows, and pushes into the crowd.
After a moment’s hesitation, Ryder does the same with me. My lips part. A few minutes ago, he glared at me with hatred in his eyes. But I suppose we need to work together if we’re going to save Callie. I close my mouth—my acknowledgment of our uneasy truce—and we follow Jessa and Tanner.
We haven’t traveled ten feet when the holo-screen on the three-story atrium wall flashes. An instant later, an image of my mother appears.
Ryder’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “I think we’re about to find out what’s happening,” he mutters, so close to me that his lips brush against my earlobe. “Whether we like the answer or not.”
Involuntarily, my stomach flips, but I push the fluttery sensation away. I have no business feeling this, for this boy, under these circumstances.
The holo-image of the chairwoman smiles, the picture of serenity. She could be advertising a lake vacation at a virtual theater.
“Citizens of North Amerie,” she begins. “We find ourselves once again in the middle of a crisis. But like every other challenge our nation has faced, I am confident if we come together as a people, we will vanquish this problem.
“Some of you may have noticed some strange symptoms of late. Walking into walls, when your eyes are laser-corrected. Holding conversations with people who don’t exist, when you’ve never been accused of daydreaming in your life. Perhaps you’ve simply been dizzy or confused. Maybe, all of a sudden, you’ve found yourself in a different place, a different time.”
All around us, the mob murmurs its agreement. A few even yell at the holo-screen, although the newsfeed isn’t live.
“I thought I was kissing my wife, and it turned out to be my dog!” a man with moving tattoos shouts. The red rose transforms from bud to bloom to dust—and starts all over again.
“I tried to do the butterfly stroke in my bed,” a kid with a swim cap offers.
“I told my boss I loved her,” the woman next to us says. And then she smirks. “Although I wasn’t actually confused.”
The crowd snickers and hoots. Oblivious, my mother leans forward, as if she’s sharing a secret with the entire nation. “These symptoms are the result of what we’re calling a virus of sorts that’s spreading rapidly across North Amerie and the entire world. This time stream virus causes us to waver in and out of our time. In those moments of dizziness and confusion, you aren’t imagining things that don’t exist. You are literally in a different time stream, on a parallel world similar to but not quite this one.”
The chairwoman pauses, as if to make sure the audience understands her point. Even through a holo-screen, she makes me want to shrink under Ryder’s arm.
“The bad news is: if left unabated, this virus will affect us all, every man, woman, and child. The good news is that we have an antidote. A formula our scientists have been hard at work developing for months. Sector by sector, we will ask all of you to proceed to your local FuMA office, where you will receive a dose, courtesy of ComA.”
The people in the atrium clap and cheer, but that’s to be expected. After all, they’re already inside, which means they were the first sector called.
“Now, some of you may feel like you’re too busy,” the chairwoman says. “You may think a little dizziness here and there is no big deal. I assure you it is. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take a look at this.”
The holo-screen divides in half, and a vid of Callie lying on a medical bed appears on the right. At first, I think it is a bad transmission, but then, I realize that Callie is flickering in and out of this world. One moment we can see her ghostly outline, and the next moment, we don’t. Tears stream down her face, and she’s holding her hand up in front of her. It is a replay of the scene inside the tent—except for one thing. Whereas before, her hand simply turned transparent, this time, the flesh above her wrist is simply…gone.
I gasp, and Jessa cries out, clinging to Tanner.
“What’s happening to her? Will she get her hand back?” she sobs.
Tanner told us Callie was fading away. Intellectually, I knew what this meant. But none of it prepared me for the sight of a hand that’s simply been…erased. I flash back to the futures I saw for Callie, before her pathways were blocked to me. The virus affects the extremities first. What’s next? Her entire arm? The rest of her body?
“Advanced symptoms include parts of your body fading from this time stream,” the chairwoman says. “We have reason to believe that as the sickness progresses, your entire body will disappear altogether.”
The murmurs increase in volume, and Jessa buries her face deeper in Tanner’s shoulder.
“Luckily, we have access to the patient with the most advanced condition. Our First Victim, if you will. By studying her symptoms, we hope to stay ahead of the virus and develop formulas to treat each stage. But we need your help, too.” My mother folds he
r hands in front of her. “The Adam sector, please proceed to your local FuMA office as quickly as possible. Everyone else, please sit tight. I promise you will all have a turn.”
The newsfeed flicks off, and the pushing commences.
Tanner turns to us, and between his and Ryder’s broad shoulders, we’re shielded from the swarm.
“Poor Callie,” Jessa moans. “We have to find her. We have to get her the formula.”
I frown. “I can’t believe even my mother is this cruel.”
“She wants to study the progression of the disease,” Tanner says, his voice grim. “She can’t do that unless one of the victims…progresses.”
Of course. That kind of cold thinking fits perfectly with my mom’s philosophy. Sacrifice the individual for the greater good.
“Well, we’re not going to let them.” Jessa straightens, pushing away her despair. “Do you know where Callie is?” she asks Tanner.
He nods. “B-273. The medic floor. I looked up her location in the patient portal.”
“Good.” She surveys the throng. “There.” She points, and I notice for the first time that the people are semi-organized into a blobby, winding line, leading to a conference room. “The line flows that way. That’s probably where they’re getting their injections.”
“Okay.” Tanner nods rapidly. “We’ll go into the room. I’ll distract the technicians with my extraordinarily good looks—and you girls and Ryder will grab the syringes.”
“Hey, what am I?” Ryder protests. “Day-old gruel?”
Tanner runs his eyes over Ryder’s body. “You’re not bad. But don’t forget, I’m famous, too. Combine my looks with my status as the Father of Future Memory, and they don’t stand a chance.”
Jessa rolls her eyes. “At least we know some things never change. Can you see into the future, Olivia? Is Tanner as charming as he thinks he is?”
“I’ll try,” I mumble. Taking a deep breath, I reach forward to Tanner’s futures. The branches are filled with blurry images and missing pathways, but I see enough to hazard a guess. “In roughly one-third of the pathways, the technicians are female, and they find Tanner absolutely adorable.” I pause. “In another third, the technicians are male, and they also find Tanner absolutely adorable.”