“Allaire,” he screamed as he jumped back. “Wait!” He made an acrobatic roll off of the bed.
She rubbed her eyes with her other hand, and laid the karambit next to her in bed. “What’s going on?”
“You fell asleep with your blade?” Kyle asked.
Allaire swept her hair from in front of her eyes. She looked at Kyle and shrugged.
“He’s twelve, Allaire,” Kyle said.
She pulled Kyle on top of her and hugged him tight. “Your heart is pounding.”
Kyle didn’t say anything.
“I know he’s twelve,” she whispered to him. “But they’re the same person.”
Kyle felt exhausted. There hadn’t been many moments to breathe since he’d first entered a silk blot, and having to make decisions that could affect the entire universe was overwhelming. Somehow, though, having to deal with the question of what to do with this younger version of Ayers felt most daunting of all. “I won’t kill him, Allaire. I won’t do it.”
“Okay, my love,” she whispered into his ear, moving her hand from his back down his body. “Okay.”
He felt like he needed to explain himself. He wanted them to be on the same page. If they were really each other’s “people,” shouldn’t they see eye-to-eye on something as critical as this? “I just—”
Allaire moved her finger up to Kyle’s mouth, tracing his lips with her nail. “No more talking.”
He felt her wrap her legs around him and his heart began to race again for a different reason. She kissed his neck and he lifted his chest for a moment to make eye contact with her.
“Are you still attracted to me?” she asked, with none of her normal self-assuredness. “Even though I’m an old lady?” He wasn’t used to seeing her look vulnerable.
“You’re more beautiful than the day I met you,” he said.
“Good,” she said, playfully smiling at him. She reached down and tossed the karambit to the floor below them. As it landed with a thud, she wriggled out from beneath him, gently turning Kyle onto his back.
“What about the surveillance tapes?” he asked.
“Later,” Allaire said as she straddled Kyle and started undoing his belt. He looked past the headboard, up to the platforms above them. What will we do about Ayers? he wondered. But he put the thought as far away from him as he could after that, and gave himself to the moment.
“I don’t have a condom,” he whispered to her.
“I told you, no more talking,” she said, pulling off his belt. She undid his zipper, then flung her black t-shirt to the floor. By the time he could even consider speaking again, his mouth was too busy, and he’d forgotten his point anyway.
Kyle woke up alone in the bed they’d shared the next morning. He tried closing his eyes again. It was the first time he’d slept completely soundly in a long time. But it only took a few seconds for his brain to wake up. His first thoughts were almost too pleasant to handle. He would give anything to go back to last night. He hadn’t thought his feelings for Allaire could get any deeper, but then, after physically connecting for a night, they did. Despite anything else on his mind, Kyle felt more in love than he ever had in his life.
He sat up and tried to collect himself. Today was the day he hoped they’d figure out what year they needed to visit to find Sillow and rescue him from Ayers. Of course, for all Kyle knew, Sillow could’ve willingly joined Ayers in nevering and creating havoc through time. Kyle wanted to have more faith in his father, but he’d known the bad side of Sillow Cash a lot longer than he’d known the heroic side. Sillow had gotten into his share of trouble in his younger days, and Kyle had no way of knowing what Ayers promised Sillow in return for nevering.
As Kyle picked his shirt up from the ground and put it on, he heard a roaring mechanical sound. He looked over the edge of the platform and saw one of the huge door panels of the Silo sliding open. The morning light from the outside shone on Allaire and young Ayers, who were standing in the doorway as the panel opened.
He watched them for a second and saw Allaire put her hand on Ayers’s back. She stepped outside with him and then pointed ahead of her. He nodded and she tapped him as he ran off.
Kyle threw on the rest of his clothes, and his shoes, and hustled down to the ground floor of the Silo. “What’s going on?” he called to Allaire. “Where’d you send him?”
“I need him to get some papers from the factory,” she said.
“I almost got killed out there on my own,” Kyle said. He started to move outside the door, but Allaire grabbed him before he could go.
She hit a button on the wall and the panels started to close. “You can’t.”
He tried to twist away from her, but by the time he did, the doors were closed.
He bolted upstairs to the tech platform. When he sat down at the bank of monitors again, he flicked the setting to LIVE and saw a feed from outside the factory. There was a cluster of people camped not far from the entrance. He moved his face closer to the screen and saw that they looked like the same group of people who had tried to attack him when he’d walked from the factory to the Silo. They’d chanted a language Kyle had never heard before and tried to get his silk blot. Kyle had been lucky to get away without the chanters killing him and finding their way into the tunnel. “Dammit,” he said to himself. He’d barely survived the attack with a silk blot in hand. Young Ayers wouldn’t stand a chance.
He got up from the chair and headed toward the stairs. He and Allaire almost bumped into each other as she entered the tech platform, but he brushed past her. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he called behind him. “What happened to doing this together?”
“We had to do something,” she said.
Kyle pivoted toward her. “They’re gonna rip him apart. They’re going to eat him! I said I wouldn’t kill him!”
“I know you did,” Allaire said.
Kyle shook his head at her, disappointed.
“I did it to protect us, Kyle,” she said. “Don’t you see that?”
At that moment, he hated that he loved her. There were times when he admired that she had the conviction to do whatever needed to be done, even the unpleasant things. And there were times like this, when she seemed only a few shades down the spectrum from a psychopath like Ayers.
Kyle pounded down the stairs and raced to the Silo’s exit. He hit the button to open the door.
“Kyle, no!” Allaire screamed behind him.
As soon as the door opened enough for him to squeeze through, he was out and racing down the street after Ayers.
Kyle could hear his own breath as he sprinted toward Ayers, who was walking slowly in the middle of the deserted street, about a block ahead of Kyle. “Ayers!” he screamed when he stopped to catch his breath. “Ayers!”
The boy stopped walking and turned. A few seconds later, Kyle caught up to him.
“Hi, Mr. Kyle,” the boy said, completely oblivious to any danger nearby.
“Allaire found what she was looking for,” Kyle said. “You don’t need to go to the factory anymore.”
Ayers thought about it for a second and nodded. “Okay.”
They turned around and headed back toward the Silo as Kyle wondered what he could do to keep Ayers safe if Allaire really believed their only option was to kill him. And worse, he wondered if she was right and he just couldn’t see it.
They hadn’t even been walking for a minute when Kyle heard footsteps behind them, then to the side. He saw two flashes of red go past, and he did a full turn, trying to figure out what was happening. Instinctively, he pulled Young Ayers closer to him by his t-shirt.
Two of the people in the red shirts were standing in front of them. They were the chanters who’d come after Kyle the last time he was out here. In back of them, he saw four more chanters. Within a few seconds, they were completely encircled. They each carried a long pole with a knife on the end of it. The people chanted and waved their makeshift spears, as they had the last time Kyle encountered them.
<
br /> “Bar . . . Bar . . . Barfoo . . . Bar . . . Bar . . . Barfoo,” they called out, over and over.
“What’s happening?” Young Ayers asked Kyle. “Can we go back now?”
Two of the chanters moved next to Kyle and Young Ayers, positioning the blades of their spears only inches from their bellies.
A beautiful young woman stepped forward. Kyle recognized her as Mayor Jada from the last time he’d encountered them. “Another time weaver with you this time,” she said, in her heavy accent.
“Just let us go,” he said.
“You have magic silk again?” Mayor Jada asked.
“Keellen eem eenywee,” one of the men called out. It was Bertie, the man who’d tried to kill Kyle last time.
“What’s going on, Mr. Kyle?” Young Ayers asked, a fearful look on this face.
All of her people, dressed in various shades of red shirts, began chanting “Keellen eem eenywee,” over and over. Mayor Jada stayed silent. After a few seconds, she held her hand up.
“We were reasonable last time, time weaver, and we will be reasonable again,” she said to Kyle. “We just want your magic silk, and for you take us into the steel castle. Show us your way.”
“I can’t do that,” Kyle said. “Kill me if you’re going to, but just let the kid go.” He hated seeing the fear on Young Ayers’s face. No twelve-year-old should have to face down real danger like this. Kyle hated that Allaire was completely responsible for their predicament.
Mayor Jada stood there for a minute, not saying anything as her people chanted. “Half my group died since the last time I see you. This world you time weavers made ain’t no good.”
“Get eez silk,” Bertie called out.
Kyle saw out of the corner of his eye that Allaire was creeping up the block. She held her karambit in her hand. He should’ve been relieved, but he knew now that there would unquestionably be more blood spilled today. He’d seen enough brutality for a lifetime recently.
“If he had magic silk, he’d have used it by now,” Mayor Jada said to her people.
One of the chanters in the group pointed ahead, past Kyle and Ayers. Everyone turned toward Allaire, who tried to slyly tuck the karambit into the waistband of her pants. She walked in the middle of the street toward them now.
“There you are, Allaire,” Mayor Jada called out. Allaire quickened her pace, but when she got within about ten feet of the chanter in the front, Mayor Jada held her hand up. “Stop there,” she said.
Allaire stopped and put her hands in the air. “Jada, I need these two.”
“That’s not for you to say,” Mayor Jada answered. “All of a sudden, you need the boy? He was going to be our dinner.”
“Just let us go back,” Allaire said. Kyle was concerned by how worried she looked. The ground started swaying, and everyone stopped talking for a moment.
“What’s happening?” Young Ayers asked Kyle. “Is that another earthquake?”
Kyle put his hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
The shaking became more violent and most of the chanters knelt to the ground to keep from being knocked off balance. Kyle considered whether this might be their best opening to get away, but it would risk all of their lives, so Kyle put his arm around Young Ayers and gently pushed him down to a kneeling position.
A few seconds later, as the violent shaking continued, Young Ayers stood up, pulled a spear from the unsuspecting hands of the chanter next to him and impaled the man through the throat, pushing the spear all the way through him. As the man fell backward, and the shaking stopped, Ayers confidently jerked the spear out of him and moved toward Jada.
Kyle turned toward Bertie to try to do the same, but the huge man shook his head and pushed the spear closer to Kyle’s midsection.
Jada used the dull side of her spear to quickly disarm Young Ayers and then pulled him close to her, whipping an ice pick from her back pocket and holding it against his throat.
“Drop your weapon, Allaire, and tell me how to get into the steel castle, or I open the boy’s neck right now,” Jada said, holding the ice pick up to Ayers’s throat. Allaire’s eyes darted between Jada and Kyle, who was stuck with Bertie and the spear pointing at his midsection.
“I’m not sure I need you anymore, Allaire,” Jada continued. “Those scraps of food you gave us kept you safe for a little while, but I want the steel castle now, and there are more of us than you.”
Kyle looked at Allaire. A few minutes ago, she’d sent Young Ayers out of the Silo and shut the doors, hoping the chanters would kill him. Kyle tried to speak to her with his eyes. If their hearts were really as connected as he’d felt last night, maybe he could convince her without speaking. This kid did not deserve to die just because of what he might become. He didn’t break eye contact with her for nearly a minute.
Allaire slowly took the karambit from her waistband and held it in her hand by its handle, lowering it toward the ground.
She made the motion of tossing it off to the side, but then she lifted it over her shoulder and flung it right at Jada. The knife flew end-over-end through the air, striking Jada in the shoulder. As Jada fell backward, Allaire pulled a second karambit from a holster on her leg and ran at the shorter of the two men nearest her. She lifted the blade to strike him. “Fight, Kyle! Fight!”
The taller man lifted his homemade spear and slapped it against Allaire’s forearm, jarring the blade loose before she could strike the shorter chanter. The karambit slid on the ground and stopped between Kyle and Bertie, right at their feet.
Allaire grabbed onto the long stick and tried fighting off the two men.
Kyle sidestepped Bertie’s spear and dove to the ground to grab the knife.
As he was on the ground, Bertie raised the spear and brought it down toward him, but Kyle rolled away, the spear missing him by only a few inches. He stood up and dodged another lunge from Bertie’s spear. Then, he sprang up and buried the blade deep into Bertie’s belly.
Kyle looked over and saw Ayers straddling Jada, stabbing her over and over again in the chest with the karambit blade Allaire had thrown at her.
Kyle grabbed Ayers by the shoulder and pulled him off of her. “She’s dead, Ayers.”
Kyle and Ayers started running back toward the Silo, while Allaire gave one more swipe through the air with a spear causing the remaining two chanters to retreat in the opposite direction. Then, she turned to follow Kyle and Ayers back to the Silo.
The three of them walked back silently to the Silo. Ayers clung to Allaire’s karambit and examined the blade, which was now slick with blood. He’d deftly killed two of the chanters, and hadn’t flinched at the brutality of what they’d just done.
Kyle had no interest in talking to Allaire right now, and had no idea what to say to a twelve-year-old kid who’d just seen—and participated in—such a brutal battle.
“Told you kids can kick some ass,” Ayers said.
The chanters were among the last survivors in the city. Without a silk blot, Kyle wondered, how long would he last in a world like this? Allaire would have a chance virtually anywhere, because she was willing to do whatever she thought necessary. Kyle wondered whether it would be possible to fully hold onto his humanity, even if he accepted that extreme violence was necessary to survive on the front lines of the war that older Ayers had waged against time.
Kyle knew Allaire needed him—maybe because she loved him, and maybe because he helped her keep that tenuous hold on her humanity, after so many years of making such severe compromises with her conscience. Or maybe, it was just because he was the last Sere.
The truth was, he needed her too. Partially, because when she was underneath that fallen building, he’d felt more lost than he ever had. But also because if he was going to fulfill what he now thought was his destiny, he needed someone to remind him that saving the world wasn’t always going to be pretty.
He slowed down and let her catch up to him. He took her hand in his.
“I’m sorry,” she sai
d, as Ayers ran up ahead of them, playing with Allaire’s karambit as he did.
He wanted to show Allaire that this time was really different—that, like he’d said, he was done with the back and forth, and wasn’t going to turn his back on her just because she’d done something he didn’t like. He squeezed her hand.
“I love you,” she said. “I really am sorry.”
Loving her, though, didn’t mean sitting idly by. “Never again . . . You want to do this by yourself, you tell me. Otherwise, when we have a decision to make, like what to do with the kid, we talk about it. We decide together.
She shook her head. “You have my word.”
“Okay,” he said. “You have more of those blades at the Silo?”
She nodded.
“I want you to train me,” he said.
“If Ayers can’t be killed, what does it matter?” she asked.
Kyle shook his head. “If he’s really immortal, then we’ll find some way to contain him. We’ll lock him up the way he locked up the kid.”
“Not to broach a sore subject, but what are we going to do with him?” she asked as Young Ayers reached the door of the Silo about a hundred yards ahead. “In a few years, we’re going to have two psychos on our hands.”
“Perhaps,” Kyle said. “But maybe not. I think we need to train him, too . . . He’s a Sere, and it’s my job to keep my people safe, right? Until he shows us he’s dangerous, we have to treat him like family.”
CHAPTER 6
September 4, 2060
* * *
A week later
The unlikely threesome spent the next week in the Silo, making it through about a decade of surveillance footage each day. So far, they’d seen nothing to clue them into what year they would find Ayers and Sillow. Kyle still had the nagging feeling, though, that he could sense how to find them, but he couldn’t define exactly how.
Except for a few hours each night while Ayers slept, and Kyle and Allaire “slept,” two of them trained together, while the third scanned security footage. Even Young Ayers pitched in, and every day Kyle could see Allaire’s trust in him growing. He might one day become a problem for them, but he wasn’t one now, and Kyle thought she might finally be coming around to the fact that they couldn’t be casting off any potential allies at this point.
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