by Devon Monk
I rushed out of the pantry and glanced out the window. A lot of soldiers were on the ground, some of them moaning.
They’d be on their feet soon. Too soon.
“Are you done?” I asked Neds as I grabbed the rifle out of the broom closet. “Did you get the calculations?”
“No,” Right Ned said.
“Did you get anything?”
“Tilly,” Left Ned turned the paper so I could see it. I took it and the pencil from him. The paper was blank.
“It’s a mess in there. What I saw . . . it’s not going to do any of us any good.”
I nodded, even though everything inside me went a little numb and my ears were ringing. That was it: our last chance to make this right. We had no calculations. My crazy brother was going to try to save the world on a guess. If he could get the machine running in time.
“Thanks for trying,” I said. “And, Neds, I’m glad you’re my friend.”
He nodded. “You too, Matilda,” Left Ned said.
“More like family,” Right Ned agreed.
I handed him the rifle. “So don’t die.”
“Back atcha,” Right Ned said.
I left the kitchen and started down the stairs. We’d just have to make the best of this.
Something was chiming. A sweet, electric-bell sound. I looked down. The wrist screen Welton had given me was lit up. The chime had been ringing off and on for a half hour; I just hadn’t heard it in all the commotion.
I paused, halfway down the stairs, my heart beating hard. That chime meant my crawler had found something. My hack into Robert’s records had a hit.
But had it found Grandma’s journal?
I coded the unlock sequence.
One item located. I keyed that up. It felt like it took a day, a year, a forever to download the file. I opened it.
Scanned pages in my grandmother’s looping handwriting that appeared on the screen. Slater had scanned the journal and copied it to Robert’s files!
I let out a whoop and ran down the stairs. “Quinten!”
In the very short time I’d been away, Welton, Quinten, and Gloria had piled a wild array of mismatched instruments and equipment into three stacks, with the timetable cabinet in the center.
Wires of every kind strung out from the cabinet and knotted and looped into and out of the piles of things. It looked like a mechanical spider had gone mad in a junkyard.
“What?” he asked, not looking up.
Quinten and Welton were both sweating hard, hands shaking as they crimped, strung, and shoved things into place, all the while reminding and correcting each other as they rattled out half sentences involving ratios and oscillation rates and words I’d never heard before.
“Is this it?” I jogged to them and shoved the wrist screen in front of him.
“I don’t have time,” he started angrily. Then his words trickled away.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded. “Where?”
“It’s her journal, isn’t it?”
“I think so. I think it is. Welton?”
“I’ll keep working on this. Look for the calculations.”
Quinten flipped through the document so quickly, I was sure he had already missed the information. We didn’t have enough minutes for him to read through it a second time.
“Oh,” he said softly. “Oh.”
He pulled a grease pencil out of his back pocket and grabbed the blank paper I still had clutched in my hand. “This, no.” He scratched out a line of letters and numbers and replaced them. “It’s this. Easy. Much easier than I thought.”
Welton leaned over to look at the paper.
“Yes?” Quinten asked, turning so Welton could better read the paper.
Welton took it out of his hand, his eyes scanning across the page in record time. “Yes. Though it will kill you, Quinten.”
“What?” Gloria asked. “We’ll be safe in the eye of the storm, right?”
“We will,” Welton said. “Quinten wants to thread that loop and travel back in time. It will kill him. Any of us humans, actually.”
“That’s inconclusive,” Quinten said. “There’s every reason to expect I’ll live.”
“No,” Welton said. “Hardly any reason at all.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” I said as I pulled the paper out of Welton’s hand. “I’m going instead of you.”
“Give me the paper, Matilda,” Quinten said.
“I’ll live, right?” I asked Welton.
“Don’t—” Quinten warned.
“It’s more likely that you will, yes,” Welton said.
“You son of a bitch,” Quinten said. “Don’t listen to him, Tilly. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to change this. I’m the one who should risk it. This is my problem to solve.”
From that reaction, I knew he’d known all along that my going back was the best chance for survival. He just couldn’t stand putting me at risk to do it.
“No,” I said, “it’s our problem, and I’m going. If I die going back in time, well, I was gonna die here anyway. But you’re not going to die now, and I’m not going to let you die in the past. Stay here—stay alive. Love Gloria, if she’ll have you. And if everything works out, then we won’t even remember this argument, right?”
“She’s making sense, Quinten,” Welton said. “You know that she is.”
“Matilda, please . . .” Quinten searched my face, looking for hope. Everything in my heart was breaking to give it to him, but it was my turn to put my life on the line. To do the right thing for us, the galvanized, and the world. There was no bend in me on that.
“Alveré just needs to see this paper to understand what to change, right?” I asked.
He swallowed and nodded. “Alveré Case should know what to do. It’s not a large adjustment. You’ll need to find him before he triggers the experiment. Give me the paper,” he said. “We need to make sure it can go back with you.”
I hesitated. If he took it away, would he give it back?
“I need to put it in this.” He pulled his pocket watch out of his pocket and twisted it, revealing a space big enough for the paper if we folded it down tight.
I held out my hand for the watch, and he pressed it into my palm.
“This is the countdown,” he said while I folded the paper into a small square and slipped it into the watch.
“It’s calibrated with . . . never mind—that isn’t important. Press the button when I say one, and it will trigger the force to catch the break in time. When you cross back into the past, it will reset and begin a countdown to when the Mercury Wings experiment is triggered. Get to the tower and Dr. Case before time runs out, and show him the paper.”
“I will. I promise. And if I don’t . . . well, even if I do, I want you to know I love you.”
He placed one hand on the side of my face, his fingertips curling at the edge of the stitches tracing the curve of my cheek. “Just look for the tower. It will be huge and somewhere to the west of here. He built his lab beneath it. That’s where he’ll be.”
Then he pulled me into a hard hug, and I hugged him back, wishing I could stay here, wishing my life had never come down to this moment. This might be the last thing I ever did before I died.
“I love you too,” he said in a fierce whisper near my ear. “Never forget that.”
I nodded and bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t cry.
“Time,” Welton said. “Now, Matilda. Now.”
Quinten stepped to the side, and Welton motioned me toward the center of the contraption.
“Anything else I should know?” I asked, suddenly panicked that I hadn’t gotten enough specifics or details about . . . well, anything.
“You know what I know,” Quinten said. “But you . . . well, your body was alive back then. You need to avoid her. She was young. Still a child.”
“And if her body meets her future body, that’s bad, right?”
“Let’s not risk it,” he said.
; A roaring explosion from somewhere above us rattled the ceiling and sent dirt sifting down to the floor.
“They’re coming!” Right Ned yelled.
A second explosion blasted so bright, the light spearing the basement was blinding.
“Five!” Quinten yelled, but he might as well have been whispering, for all that I could hear him over the insane rattle of gunfire.
Neds stumbled down the stairs, half of him covered in blood and unresponsive, Left Ned’s head lolling to the side.
“No!” I yelled.
“Four!” Quinten said.
Gloria was running past me, trying to reach Neds in all the dust and debris that exploded through the door.
Slater, no longer tied to the chair, was tossed down the stairs. He scrambled to his feet, bloody but still mostly whole.
“Three!” Quinten yelled.
Foster was the last down the ruined stairs, firing round after round of ammo at the surge of soldiers clotting the doorway.
Foster was missing an arm and was drenched in blood. But he held that staircase like a lion taking a last stand. When the bullets ran out, he roared up the stairs and tore the soldiers apart limb from limb.
“Foster!” Welton screamed, “no!” Welton ran toward him, but Slater had found a piece of metal the size of a bat. He swung for Welton’s head.
Welton crumpled and fell.
“Two!” Quinten said.
A massive blast pulverized the basement.
It blew Quinten in half before he could say one, his mouth half-open in surprise, the top half of him twisting off while the bottom somehow stayed still.
My brother was dead. Gone. Dead.
Everything in me stopped, except my heart that throbbed hard once, twice.
The basement collapsed. Stone, wood, metal, dirt buried Neds, Gloria, Welton, and Slater. They were dead. Even before I’d had a chance to try to save them, even before the break in time had mended.
Everyone was gone.
We had failed.
Then a great bell rang out, a sound that built up out of the marrow of my bones, filling me, filling the air I breathed, my skin, my muscle, my blood with a single cosmic peal of sound that was more than sound. The universe paused, its voice raised in ecstasy.
I thumbed the button on the watch . . .
...and screamed as the infinity bell shattered me to dust.
25
You gave up everything to change the world too. I never had the chance to thank you.
—from the diary of E. N. D.
Cold rain falling upon me, wet earth below. I was curled in a ball, shivering. Alone.
I opened my eyes. Darkness. Faint light just beyond me between slats of stone.
I was not in my basement. I was in the middle of a field, and it was the middle of the night.
Had I been thrown in the blast? Had I been knocked unconscious?
The light ahead of me moved, swinging in a long, slow arc. A single flame burned in the darkness and rain.
A lantern?
I pulled myself up straighter and was surprised when rain pattered against my bare legs.
I wore a dress and boots and a hat on my head. Even though I felt all the right proportions to myself, my arms were short and so were my legs. And in the nearly nonexistent light, I could see something else that had changed.
I had no stitches. Not on my hands, my wrists, my ankles. I ran my fingers across my neck, up the side of my cheek. Nothing but smooth skin.
What happened?
I ran away, a tiny voice said.
I jerked and looked around. There wasn’t anyone I could see in the tall grasses surrounding me. But the slats of stone were curved at the tops, some shaped like crosses.
A graveyard?
By the church, the little voice said. Only this time I realized the voice was inside my mind. More than a thought or a random impression. This voice belonged to a whole person. I could feel the heavy weight of memories and ideas and fears and needs coiled up in a tangled ball in the middle of my mind.
Are you an angel? the little voice asked. I prayed for an angel to find me.
What’s your name?
Evelyn Douglas. What’s your name?
Matilda.
Okay, this was all kinds of weird. Was I hallucinating? Possessed? Was there a little girl somewhere nearby and my ears were thrown off because of the rain and stones—correction: gravestones—surrounding me? And why was I crouched down in the middle of a graveyard at night in the pouring rain anyway?
I ran away, Evelyn said again. Can we go to heaven now?
Why did you run away? I asked. I thought about standing up, and I did. A moment of vertigo swept over me, and I put my hands out to catch myself on the gravestone. Beneath my fingers was carved DOUGLAS 1910.
Whose grave is this? I thought.
Mother and Father. They went to heaven. I want to go too.
Her sadness filled me, and I tried to think comforting thoughts, filling her with warmth and the image of my arms around her, rocking. She calmed almost immediately.
Can we go now?
Not yet. It’s not time yet, I thought.
Time. I wondered how much I had left.
The watch! The paper. I checked my dress for pockets. Nothing. Then I crouched down and searched the grass. My fingers finally brushed the cool, smooth curve of the pocket watch, and I clutched it to me like the lifeline it was.
I knew where I must be—or, rather, I knew when I must be.
What year is it, Evelyn? I asked.
Nineteen hundred and ten, she said. Are you a new angel?
Yes, I thought. Very new. Is this your dress, Evelyn? I asked, touching the cloth at my waist.
Yes.
And I’m inside your mind. Talking to you?
Yes, she said a little doubtfully. A dream. You are a dream and you are going to take me to Mother and Father. Aren’t you?
I will. Of course I will. But I need your help. There’s . . . People are going to be hurt if we don’t . . . give a message to a man. Do you know a man called Dr. Alveré Case?
No.
Do you know a doctor or scientist who lives nearby?
No.
I got the distinct impression of her turning away from me and pushing shut something like a door between us. She found a pocket of her mind so far away, I couldn’t sense her anymore.
Evelyn? Evelyn?
She wasn’t answering. Maybe she thought she was still asleep and didn’t have to dream me if she didn’t want to.
I tucked the watch tightly in my fist—her fist? Our fist, since I was sharing her mind and body—and walked toward the lantern light.
The rain eased a little, but I had to watch the ground so I wouldn’t trip on the clumps of heavy wet grass.
That was probably good, because if I had the luxury to focus on anything else, I’d be in a panic. I’d gone back in time like Quinten had supposed I would, but he had been wrong about one thing: it was just my mind, my personality, my thoughts that had survived the travel and were impressed on the brain of this girl—the girl whose body I had been stitched into all those years ago.
Quinten certainly wouldn’t have survived this. I’m not sure any mortal human could.
He was right about the pocket watch traveling with me, though I didn’t know why it, of all things, would.
That didn’t matter. I had to find my great-great-and-then-some-grandfather and convince him I was a grown woman from the future with a highly advanced set of calculations he needed to use to adjust his experimental time machine.
He’d never listen to me in this little girl’s body.
I didn’t even know where to find him.
Quinten had told me to look for the tower, but it was so dark out, I couldn’t see the top of the steeple on the church ahead of me.
Just take it one step at a time, I told myself. Quinten had said the watch would count down to when the Wings of Mercury experiment was triggered. How much time did I hav
e left?
I tipped the watch in my palm, trying to catch the watery light from the lantern a very tall man was holding just a ways off.
Yellow slipped across the wet pewter, revealing the watch face. Instead of a circle of numbers and two arrow hands, the watch was exactly as I’d seen it last: a liquid screen with a set of geometric shapes floating across it.
And in the center was a very plain digital countdown. Five hours, and steadily decreasing minutes.
That wasn’t enough time. Not nearly enough to find the tower, the scientist, and the machine in a world I didn’t know, in a time I didn’t know.
I hurried over to the man holding the lantern. Since I appeared to be a lost child, I hoped he would be willing to help me.
The lantern—a basic kerosene, lit-wick sort of affair—was low in his hand. The man was tall and wore a long black coat, slick with rain. He had on a brimmed hat and was leaning on a shovel, staring down at a fresh grave.
Seeing him nearly shocked me to silence.
I recognized him.
“Foster?” I said in a voice too young and too quiet. Then, a little louder, “Foster?”
He didn’t move for so long, I wondered if he could hear me. If maybe I wasn’t even substantial enough in this time to be heard.
Could I be a ghost? Could I be nothing but a stray collection of memories and random neurons firing in this girl’s mind?
Was I dreaming?
I tried again, this time reaching out and tugging on the sleeve of his coat. “Foster? Can you hear me?”
Finally, his head moved and he looked down at me.
Even in the uncertain light, I could see that there were no scars, no stitches crossing his face. He didn’t look younger, but he was not galvanized. His hair under his brimmed hat was still ghost white and so was his skin. His pink eyes were the same too, and so was the deep, wrenching sorrow in them.
“Go home, child,” he said in a rumbling whisper. “There is nothing but death here.”
“I’m lost,” I said, and I was not lying. “I need to find my family. I need to find Dr. Alveré Case. Please help me. Please.”
He stared at me for so long, I wondered if he was in a trance.
“Who did you bury?” I asked.