A large Eurasian man in a gray cloak shouts words at us that—with the exception of maybe one or two—I don’t understand. Others begin doing the same, and I worry that a mob will form that will take Scout and me down before we can get to Lidia.
Thankfully the village is a small one, and I can see the buildings petering out ahead. But as we near, I spot several oxcarts entering the town and completely blocking the path.
Scout’s hand is on my shoulder before I realize Lidia is yanking up her chaser. We keep running, though, gaining a foot or two by the time she hits her go button.
We stumble over uneven ground as we come out of the jump, heads pounding with intense pain. While I’m able to stay on my feet, Scout hits the ground.
I look back, but he shouts, “Keep going. I’ll catch up.” So I do.
The reason for his fall is that we materialized in a field that has been recently plowed. Chunks of mud lie in lines that slow all of us.
Lidia glances back at me. At first, her eyes blaze with the same wild anger they have had since the chase began, but then something else creeps in, and she almost seems to smile. At that moment she whips up her chaser and starts inputting a new jump.
“Grab on!” I yell.
I thrust my hand behind me, but when I glance back, I see that Scout’s ten yards away.
“Hurry!”
Panic fills his eyes as he sprints across the field. To help, I reverse direction, and run toward him. Scout leaps the final few feet and hits me just as the jump takes hold.
Upon arrival we topple onto hard ground. More cobblestones, I realize. My shoulder aches where it’s slammed into the surface, but I can’t let that stop me.
I stagger to my feet more than spring and then help Scout up. If there is such a thing as fate, it has once more been working against us, and the gains we’ve been making on Lidia have been lost.
“Stay with me,” I say and then start running again.
Heavy gray clouds fill the sky. It hasn’t started to rain, but it won’t be long, which is probably the reason why there are only a handful of people about. As much as I’d like to, checking the chaser now to see when and where we are would just slow me down. A town somewhere, probably in Europe. It has that kind of feel, though who knows in this infinitely changed world? As for the time, it doesn’t matter.
Lidia turns a corner up ahead, momentarily disappearing from sight.
Without either of us saying anything, both Scout and I pick up our speed. From the dampness on the leg of my pants, I know that my wound has started to bleed again, but my adrenaline is still keeping me from feeling anything.
When we turn the corner I expect to see Lidia on the road ahead of us, but she’s not there. I have no choice but to consult the tracking map, which means we must slow to about half speed. The dot indicates she’s ahead and to the left, but when we get to the point where her path diverges from the road we are on, we find not an intersecting street but a building that’s been ravaged by a recent fire. The front door is missing, and much of the stone that surrounds the entrance is black with soot.
The signal from Lidia’s chaser is coming from deep inside the structure, but we enter cautiously nonetheless. The front portion of the building is open all the way to the sky. A stone stairway runs up one wall to the ghost of a second floor. What doesn’t still stick out from the walls lies before us in piles of ash and chunks of partially burned wood. A stone wall divides the building in half, making it impossible to see the back portion, where Lidia should be.
Two soot-encrusted doorways lead through the wall. We approach the one on the left, and look through. Another big room, though here, with the exception of a few burned-out holes, most of the second floor has survived. Several piles of debris scattered around give me the sense someone has started to clean this place up so it can be rebuilt.
A walled-off room sits in the back right corner, the door that once covered its entrance burned away. The map tells me that Lidia is inside it. Quietly we enter the big room and cross toward the corner. No movement from the dot. Is she waiting there for us? Why doesn’t she just jump if there’s no way out of there?
I hear a wet patter behind me, and jerk around, thinking maybe she’s sneaking up on us. But the sound is only raindrops falling unimpeded onto the floor of the front room.
I stop Scout no more than ten feet from the point the map tells me Lidia is. Finally, this is all but over. Whether she comes out or jumps, it doesn’t matter. We’re too close to her now. We will take her down, and then I’ll start mopping up her mess.
“Come on out,” I say. “It’s over, Lidia. There’s nowhere for you to go.”
Something skitters across the floor inside, small, like a pebble. This is Lidia’s only response, so we move into the doorway.
There aren’t any windows and the roof has escaped damage, so the only light getting in is what flows around Scout and me through the entrance. Someone has filled much of the space with what I’m guessing is the salvageable furniture from the fire—cabinets, both tall and short; a few chairs; and a long thin table turned on its end.
According to the tracker, Lidia should be just behind a tall cabinet directly in front of me.
“Enough, Lidia. Get out here!” My tone isn’t as neutral as it probably should be given her mental state, but I’m tired of playing hide-and-seek. I just want to go someplace where I can rest for a little bit before I start detangling the changes she’s made layer by miserable layer.
Another pebble, but not so much scooting across the floor as bouncing on it. I barely notice the difference, though, as I weave through singed furniture, and circle around the cabinet.
I stop dead and stare, surprised. The only things there are Lidia’s rucksack and beside it my satchel, the chaser clearly inside, both sitting on the floor against the wall.
I barely register this, though, before she jumps off the top of the cabinet and onto my back, tumbling us both to the floor. I try to push up, but she knocks me back down and grinds her knee into my kidney. She starts choking me with one hand while hitting me with the other.
“Get off him!” Scout yells.
I can’t see what’s going on behind me, but I can feel him pulling at her. She stops hitting me, and replaces the hand around my neck with her arm. I hear the two of them struggle, but unlike me and Lidia, Scout has never been in an actual fight before, and soon she’s yanked him to the ground. I twist left then right then left again, and at last succeed in turning enough so that I’m lying on my side instead of my stomach. This finally loosens her hold, and I’m able to suck in some precious oxygen.
With renewed strength, I slam my elbow into her ribs over and over and over until I’m able to roll away.
Lidia then turns her full fury on Scout. He covers his face with his arms to block her blows, but this opens his midsection to a brutal kick that sends him flying backward through the doorway.
My own breaths are still coming hard and fast, my wounds both old and new all screaming for attention, but I know I’m a helpless target if I stay on the ground. I pull myself up with the help of the tall cabinet and then turn to face her onslaught. Instead of coming at me, however, she dives past me.
I turn as she grabs my satchel and sticks her hand inside.
“No!” I yell. I whip back around and lock eyes with Scout. He’s on his elbows a good fifteen feet away. I’ll never get to him in time. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s my—”
Those are the only words he gets out before Lidia activates her chaser and she and I leave Scout Me behind.
Lidia clearly pre-entered the jump coordinates prior to setting the trap that would separate Scout and me, because she’s chosen our destination well. The trip has taken us to an empty desert that goes as far as the eye can see in every direction, on a journey that was at least as long as the two-century jump that took us away from the dead Mongol messengers.
I arrive a huddled mass of pain. When I hear movemen
t, I pry open my eyelids to thin slits and see Lidia coming at me. The only defense I can mount is to turn my head away and hope I can weather her attack. But though I feel a tug at one of my arms, she doesn’t actually hit me.
I force myself to turn and look at her again. Instead of hovering over me, she’s moved back several dozen feet.
I get up, thinking the whole time she’s going to rush me, but she never moves.
Once I’m standing, she smiles and raises her hand. Dangling from it is the makeshift bag I created to carry the slaved chaser. Reflexively I look down, as if she couldn’t possibly have it, but mine is gone, and she is now in possession of both devices.
It’s a hot day, but the sweat seeping from my forehead is not caused by the sun. One push of the button, and I will be alone here forever.
I guess I should be grateful that if she does leave me, it will be only a matter of days until my death, because there is no way I’ll find water in time. But grateful is not what I feel.
As dire as the situation is, I can’t give up. I won’t give up.
“Don’t do this.”
She snorts. “Do what?”
“I know you have a problem with me. I know that I took the world you knew away. I can accept whatever personal punishment you decide, but everything else you’ve done, all the changes, you’ve been damning billions for the guilt of one person.” I tap my chest. “I’m the responsible party. Just me. I’m the only one who should pay the price.”
“You want to pay the price? Sure, good idea. Let’s start with this.”
She swings her arm so that the burlap bag flies high above her, and then she brings it quickly down again and smashes it into the ground. It’s impossible to miss the crunch of wood and metal. I take a step forward but stop as she swings it up again and repeats the maneuver. Though the machine is surely destroyed by now, she does it again and again and again. After she finally stops, she turns the bag over and dumps the contents on the desert floor. All that falls out are bits and pieces that can never be put back together again.
The only way out of here now is the chaser in my leather satchel, hanging at Lidia’s side.
I run at her without thinking. If she can get to the chaser and disappear before I reach her, so be it, but I’m not going to just stand around and let her wink away without a fight. She makes no play for the bag, though. Instead, she sets her feet and leans slightly forward, anticipating my arrival.
At the last second I duck to the right to go under her arms, but she’s anticipated this and steps farther to my left and shoves me on the back as I fly by.
I lock my knees and skid across the dirt to a stop. When I turn back, I half think she’ll already be gone, but she’s still standing there, grinning at me.
Fighting has always been Lidia’s thing, not mine, but having no other choice I charge again. This time she grabs me, and we twist around in a tense dance of shoving and wrestling as we each try to get the advantage.
“I can smell your desperation,” she whispers in my ear. “That’s the kind of odor you inherit from your parents.”
She flings me away.
“I have to admit, though, I thought you’d have given up jumps ago. All your gutter-dwelling friends would have. I guess I should be impressed, but I can’t seem to muster up the energy.”
I know she’s trying to goad me into a mindless attack, but I’m not that naïve anymore. I circle to the right, staying just out of her reach.
She raises an eyebrow as she pivots her head to match my movements. “Already taken your best shot? Now I’m really disappointed.”
I continue to move around her, saying nothing. Though I don’t look at it directly, my attention is really on my old satchel resting against her right hip. I just need to get it and run. Unfortunately, her arm rests over the top, her hand clutching the strap just above where it’s attached to the bag.
As I pass behind her, Lidia whips her head from one shoulder to the other, taunting me to attack her from the back. I have no intention of doing that, at least not yet, but her arrogance has caused her to make a mistake. In that moment when she’s moving her head and her eyes aren’t on me, I glance at the bag and see my opportunity.
Peeking out of the flap covering the smaller side pouch is the hilt of her grandson’s knife. If I can get it out, I can cut the strap like I did before and get away.
I circle around in front of her again, my eyes once more locked on hers.
“What are we playing at here, Denny?” she asks. “Ring around the rosies?”
I say nothing, and continue past her left shoulder. Like before, once her head has gone as far as it can, she starts to turn it back the other way. The moment her eyes are off me, I charge.
Sensing I’m up to something, she immediately drops into a crouch and tries to hurl me over her head. It’s a move we both learned during defensive training at the institute, but in this case it plays to my advantage. I jerk to the right as she reaches up for me, and slide across her back instead of flying over her head.
As my right arm rubs against the satchel’s strap, my hand is already searching for the pouch. Unfortunately, while I’m able to pull loose the tie holding the flap down, I’m moving too fast to grab the knife, and instead sweep past Lidia’s shoulder and onto the ground.
I quickly jump up before she has a chance to come after me.
“Nice try,” she says, grinning wider than ever. “But you’re going to have to do a lot more than—”
I launch at her again, throw my arms around her torso, and tackle her to the ground. I shove a hand over her neck to distract her and use my other to free the knife. I find the flap first, and move it out of the way so I can grab the blade. Only the pouch is empty.
A harsh, choked laugh escapes Lidia’s throat. “So predictable.”
I feel the blade cut through my shirt and slice the skin over my shoulder blade. Groaning in agony, I push myself away, but Lidia is having none of it. She jumps on top of me, her knees on my chest, and presses my newly sliced shoulder into the ground. As I yell in pain, she presses the knife against my throat, the blade nicking at my skin.
“This was fun and all, but it’s time we take one last trip together.” I must not be able to hide my confusion, because she then adds, “Someplace I’m sure we both would like to see. Well, I would, anyway.”
Since she has only the one free hand, it takes her a moment to pull the chaser out of the satchel and unlock the flap. She doesn’t input a destination, though.
I realize now that this desert was never to be my graveyard. That Lidia has had something else in mind all along.
That her mission won’t be complete until she’s shown me the hell she has wrought.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A temporary paralysis seizes a person when inside a jump. One usually doesn’t notice it because the mere fact you are traveling in time makes you not want to move. But as my own experience has demonstrated more than once in the last twenty-four hours of my personal time line, someone in motion before a jump remains in motion after arrival. So if I’m running, I continue to run, and if I’m falling, I don’t stop just because I find myself somewhere else.
As Lidia moves her finger to the chaser’s home button, I tense my arm and start it on an arc that will collide with the hand Lidia’s using to hold the knife. It’s barely off the ground when we enter the mist.
One of the longest jumps I’ve ever taken landed me in a New York hospital for several days. This jump is not quite that long but close. No matter how torturous, I need to hold on and subdue Lidia. Unconsciousness can take me after she’s no longer a threat, but not before.
The dimming of the mist finally signals that our journey is coming to an end.
As the black of the jump fades into a dark night, my arm flies up and smacks Lidia’s hand. I’m not even sure she notices. I barely realized what’s going on myself as my brain feels as if it’s on fire.
Hold on, I will myself.
I flop onto
my belly and force myself up on all fours, then look around. Lidia lies on the grass beside me, eyes closed and moaning.
Crawling toward her, I tell myself, Get . . . the chaser.
I’m almost to her when something bites my palm. I snap my hand up, and can feel blood oozing from the puncture. I scan the ground, looking for the animal that attacked me. But the bite didn’t come from an animal at all.
Shimmering softly in the dull starlight is the knife.
I grab it with my bloody hand and continue over to Lidia. My mind is working at only a fraction of what it should, and I’m already moving the blade under the satchel’s strap to cut it free when I realize the chaser isn’t in the bag at all but lying on the ground next to her. I grab it, and then, since she’s obviously in no condition to put up a fight, I work the satchel over her head and pull it off.
She moans again as I do this, her eyes fluttering but not opening. Once I’ve strung the bag across my chest, I put the chaser inside. My hand brushes against a coil of wires and for a moment I wonder what else she’s put in the satchel until I realize it’s RJ’s charger.
I use Lidia’s limp finger to unlock the lid of the chaser and then wrap one of the charger’s cords around it several times so that it doesn’t close again. Now I’ll be able to rekey it once I can concentrate enough so that I don’t screw it up.
As I close the satchel’s flap, I breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s over. I’m the one in charge now.
While there’s still much work for me to do, Lidia can cause no further damage. I’ll start with the Mongol messengers and then slowly work my way forward through time.
But not yet. Rest first. A good long rest.
I stagger to my feet. I need to get as far away from Lidia as I can so that when I do collapse from exhaustion, she’ll never find me.
We seem to be in a shallow depression covered by tall tufts of dried grass. Nothing looks familiar, but that’s not surprising.
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