“How can we end the curse?” Kyle asked. “Shouldn’t we be trying?”
“How would I know?” Yalé answered, his eyes watery now. “I’m just a coward. I let your father out into the world because I didn’t have the guts to do what was necessary when a second son was born. For thousands of years, Sere families have had a single heir. I never should’ve been born. Your father never should’ve been born. And you, the son of a second son, certainly should never have existed.”
Kyle looked at him. Yalé had such reasonable eyes. He looked like a man who could handle anything with diplomacy. Even though he’d tried to kill them, Kyle didn’t feel he was beyond their trust. “Help us, Yalé. Help us protect Ayers from himself.”
“If second sons are so worthless, why does Kyle have the mutation?” Allaire asked. “He’s the same as Ayers.”
“People have been telling people they weren’t worthy, based on birth order, or their gender, or where they were born, or what color their skin is, forever,” Kyle said. “It doesn’t make them right.”
“Of course it does,” Yalé said. “For the herder to exist, you need the sheep. For the king, you need the commoners.”
“Social constructs,” Allaire said. “Do you know for a fact you can’t go into the time tunnel? Aren’t you curious? You can’t be that big of a coward.”
Kyle thought he saw Yalé considering what they were saying. For a moment, Kyle wondered if they’d cracked something in him. Introduced doubt for the first time in a long while, or ever.
Then, Yalé picked up the same scalpel he used to stitch Sillow’s arm, and to harmlessly puncture Ayers. He held it in his closed fist and looked right into Kyle’s eyes. “I knew my place,” Yalé said. “And that let me have a purpose. It let me have somewhere I belonged. And it let me survive, even though I should’ve never been allowed a life at all.”
Kyle looked at Allaire and saw her focus was on the scalpel in his hands. She had her hand on her holster.
“A genetic mutation doesn’t change the fact that you have no claim to this bloodline,” Yalé said. “You’re an interloper in this world, Kyle, and that won’t ever change.”
“Help us stop him,” Kyle said, walking closer to Yalé, hoping he might have the opportunity to pull the scalpel from his hand . . . “Otherwise, none of this will matter. The bloodline will be gone, because the world will be gone . . . Allaire was lied to. Maybe you were too.”
“You both think the tunnel is shortening because of Ayers,” Yalé said. “But what if it’s because the son of a second son has been weaving so much?” Yalé asked. “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you’re the problem, Kyle?”
“That’s bullshit,” Allaire said.
“You’re so fast to write it off,” Yalé said. “I’m just giving you a different way of looking at things. It was right around the year Kyle was born that we first noticed the tunnel getting shorter. Don’t be so fast to discount that.”
Allaire shook her head angrily. “Kyle, he’s just trying to protect Ayers by making you doubt yourself.”
Yalé looked at Allaire and smiled. “You’d have no problem killing Ayers if you could, and you knew it would save other lives, but would you be as quick to kill your lover?”
Allaire started to speak, but she couldn’t find words. Kyle had never considered that he himself could be the danger to the universe that they were trying to stop. He could see the conflict in Allaire, who would desperately want to write off Yalé’s words, but would have no choice but to consider the possibility.
Suddenly, Yalé jerked the scalpel up to his own throat, creating a deep rupture, then let out a guttural moan as he pulled the scalpel out and did the same thing again, a few inches to the right.
Unlike Ayers, Yalé bled and bled. Within seconds, the entire front of Yalé’s white dress shirt was crimson. He stabbed himself twice more before he fell to his knees. His final attempt missed, as he fell over onto his side, spurting blood out onto the factory floor for another few seconds before the last of the life inside him was completely gone.
Kyle and Allaire stood for several minutes just looking at Yalé’s body without speaking. The longer they stayed silent, Kyle thought, the longer they could avoid confronting Yalé’s last words, which still hung in the room like a low fog.
Finally, Allaire moved toward the body and knelt down, her knee landing just outside the radius of blood around him. She closed Yalé‘s eyes before standing up.
Allaire bent down once more to pick the scalpel out of Yalé’s hand. She tossed it onto the hospital bed. “He was the last person alive who knew me as a child.”
Together, Kyle and Allaire dragged Yalé’s body to a smaller room down the hall from the main factory room which Kyle had never seen before. Inside, there was a huge brick oven—an incinerator they’d used on their dead bodies for many years. They dispassionately tossed Yalé inside, and Allaire pressed a series of buttons on a panel next to the machine, igniting a fire that quickly engulfed the body.
They turned and exited still not having said a word, and Kyle began mopping when they returned to the main factory room.
With only a few words, Yalé had made Kyle go from feeling like a potential savior of the entire universe to a villain.
“I’m going to get the kid from outside,” she said. “The other Ayers isn’t coming back here.”
Kyle nodded and continued mopping. He wanted to be stronger. He wanted not to let Yalé’s final words erase everything he’d learned about himself, and the way he felt about that. Finding out he was a Sere had been scary at first, but then it brought great meaning to his life for the first time . . . maybe ever. But now, all of his grand notions about trying to save the universe felt foolish to him. Kyle couldn’t help but lapse back to the mindset of someone desperately trying to make up for the original tragedy he’d caused. It was like the bus crash all over again.
What if I am the problem? he thought to himself, over and over.
Meanwhile, the numbers 1997 flashed into his mind out of nowhere. He swept the meaningless thought from his head, but it kept creeping back in.
If all it took was a few words from Yalé to bring him back to earth, then he certainly wasn’t cut out to be a hero, he thought to himself. 1997.
There was no plan. Nowhere to go next. 1997. Ayers was long gone and could’ve brought Sillow anywhere. Kyle sat down and put his head in his hands.
1997, Kyle thought to himself again. The number flashed brighter in his head now, the way a sparkler leaves a trail of light behind it. It was a force. It was unstoppable . . . 1997. What did it mean? His attention shifted away from the memory of Yalé’s words, as he couldn’t ignore the light in front of his eyes anymore. 1997. It was as if he could reach out and touch the numbers, even though they were clearly not actually in front of his face. 1997. Was he going insane? 1997! 1997! 1997!
He’d had this feeling earlier in the Silo, without seeing a specific year. It was almost as if he’d known this would come to him, and now, here it was. With each passing second, the numbers became brighter and brighter. By the time he heard the elevator doors opening, the image was so vivid that he could barely see in front of himself. He waved his hands in front of his face, but there was nothing to feel. 1997 was indeed just inside his head, only there for him to see.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Allaire asked, walking in with Young Ayers as Kyle was running his hands through the air in front of him.
“He was wrong, Allaire,” Kyle said. “Yalé was wrong.”
He looked at her and she smiled. “I know he was. I’m glad you do too,” she answered.
“I know what year we need to go to,” Kyle said. “I know where Ayers and Sillow went. The universe. The tunnel. Something. It’s talking to me, Allaire.”
CHAPTER 9
November 30, 2016
* * *
An hour later
While Kyle finished cleaning up the mess in the main factory room, Allaire put togethe
r backpacks for all three of them. It was the kind of planning for a trip through the tunnel that they usually never had time for. She was able to bring extra ammo, night-vision goggles, and other accoutrements they always needed, but never had. Young Ayers explored the fifth floor of the factory, and while Kyle was too eager to get moving to do the same, he was envious and couldn’t wait to explore his new home when he had the chance.
Allaire came into the main factory room and placed the three bags on the floor near Kyle’s feet. “Ready to go?”
Kyle nodded. “Where’s Ayers?”
Before either of them could yell for him, Young Ayers walked into the room holding a wooden object, which he playfully swung back and forth through the air, like a tennis racket.
“What’d you find?” Kyle asked, more to be friendly than out of curiosity.
Ayers stopped swinging it and showed it to them. It looked like a decorative fraternity paddle, except the writing on it wasn’t Greek. It was polished and had characters etched into it on both sides in a language Kyle had never seen before.
“Ancient Serican writing,” Allaire said. “The original Seres were from a small, long-gone place called Serica and this was their language.”
“Where’d you find this?” Kyle asked.
Ayers pointed to Yalé’s office. “In that room over there. It was in a drawer, but it was wrapped in branches and it had bugs on it. I cleaned it off myself.”
“Do you know what it says?” Kyle asked Allaire. “Can you read it?”
She shook her head.
“What about you?” he asked Young Ayers. The kid had surprised him a few times by having answers he hadn’t predicted.
Ayers picked up the smallest of the three backpacks and put it on his back. “I don’t know, Mr. Kyle. Sorry . . . Can I keep it, though? Please?”
Again, Kyle could sense something that he couldn’t really put into words. “No.”
“Please?” Ayers asked again.
Allaire scrunched her face up at him. “Let’s just go Kyle, what’s the diff—”
Kyle sensed that there was something more to the paddle. He felt like it was meant to stay here. “I’m sorry . . . Please put it back where you found it.”
Ayers walked with his head down toward the office, while Kyle and Allaire put on their backpacks. “Did you put rocks in these?” Kyle asked. “I hope the kid’s bag isn’t this heavy.”
“You can handle it,” Allaire answered, leaning over and kissing Kyle on the cheek. “I want to make sure we’ve got everything we need.”
Kyle adjusted the pack to distribute the weight as comfortably as he could and then shrugged. “Of course, I can handle it.”
Allaire pulled a silk blot from the spinning machine in the room and held it in front of her.
When Young Ayers returned a minute later, the three of them went outside to the alley next to the building and ducked into the blot. The clanging inside the tunnel had become so loud that they could barely hear each other over the noise. If Kyle was wrong about where they needed to go, he had no idea what their next move would be. But just as he began to doubt himself, the number flashed again in front of his eyes, as if to reassure him: 1997.
CHAPTER 10
September 29, 1997
* * *
Nineteen years earlier
Allaire’s thorough packing came in handy immediately when they needed to stake out the front entrance of the factory building. She pulled a wire hanger from her backpack and quickly got them into an Oldsmobile parked right across the street from the entrance. A few seconds later, she had the car hot-wired and the air conditioning on, too.
Kyle had the temporal tracker’s receiver in his lap, watching the red light on the screen blink without moving, meaning Ayers was inside the factory building. The tracker still wouldn’t confirm Ayers’s temporal location, but it worked fine to pin down his geographic location.
After sitting quietly in the back seat for almost an hour fiddling with his Rubik’s Cube, Young Ayers leaned forward toward the front. “What are you going to do to me?”
Kyle looked at Allaire, but neither of them said anything as the question hung there for a few seconds.
“If we didn’t believe there was a way for this to turn out okay for all of us,” Kyle continued. “We wouldn’t be here.”
“You promise?” Ayers asked.
Kyle nodded. “Yup. I do.”
“Good,” Ayers said. “Because remember that kids can kick some ass, too.”
“I know you can,” Kyle said. He thought about how Young Ayers probably had no role models at all, stuck in the single room that Ayers had put him in. Any of his positive experiences with people were likely from movies, TV, video games or books. Even the slightest bit of encouragement from him, Kyle thought, must mean the world. The thought made Kyle feel twice as bad that he hadn’t said something more reassuring about their plans for him.
“Let me show you guys how these earpieces work,” Allaire said, changing the subject. “They’re like walkie-talkies, but you don’t need to hold them.”
It was late in the afternoon when they saw Ayers and Sillow walk out of the factory’s entrance and turn left toward 7th Avenue. The street had the buzz of early rush hour. Both men wore New York Mets baseball caps low over their eyes, with Ayers leading the way and Sillow following.
“They’re on the move,” Kyle said. He felt a surge of confidence as he watched the men walk up the block. Either Kyle’s abilities really were as strong as he hoped they were, or some force wanted to lead Kyle to exactly this time and place. Either way, seeing Ayers and Sillow here in 1997 made him feel more confident that he was doing exactly what he was supposed to.
Kyle and the version of Sillow walking down the street were about the same age. Sillow was even skinnier at eighteen than he was a few years later when Kyle met him during his first trip through time.
“Let’s go,” Kyle said, once they were up the block a bit, and Allaire started the ignition. “You really think driving at rush hour is a good idea?”
“I don’t want to risk them seeing us,” Allaire said, pulling out of the parking spot onto West 38th Street.
They drove slowly up 38th following behind them as the two men continued down the block. His heartbeat already racing, Kyle jumped when he heard the roaring horn of a taxicab, the driver clearly annoyed to be stuck behind them. The driver sat on his horn and didn’t let up, even when Allaire picked up the pace a bit.
At the corner, they watched as Sillow and Ayers turned left and went up 7th Avenue.
“Shit,” Allaire said. “It’s a one way.”
Without hesitating, Kyle opened his car door. “Come on.”
Young Ayers popped out in the middle of the street and Kyle corralled him to the sidewalk. Kyle looked back at Allaire who sheepishly followed right behind them, not looking back to face the taxicab, now stuck behind their abandoned vehicle and once again screaming with his horn.
“Traffic’s not that bad,” Allaire said. “I just forgot Seventh was a one-way street.”
Once they were safely onto the sidewalk, Kyle started running to keep from losing Ayers and Sillow. He weaved around pedestrians, with Allaire and Young Ayers right behind. Their blue Mets caps made them easier to spot in the thick crowd, but it was hard to move quickly through such a dense sea of people. He glanced down at his tracker and watched them move down the street. As he looked up, Kyle slammed into a UPS delivery driver carrying a heavy box, bouncing off him without losing his balance. Several times he lost a visual on the two blue hats only to spot them again a few seconds later. They were coming up on Times Square, though, where it would be even more difficult to keep tracking them.
If they were going to catch up, Kyle thought, he needed to move faster. But every time he tried, it seemed like he wound up behind a mother with a stroller, or an elderly couple. By the time he reached 40th Street, Kyle had lost them. The red dot representing Ayers was gone from the tracker too. He stopped and
waited for Allaire and Young Ayers to catch up. Kyle felt relieved that she’d stayed with the boy, making sure not to lose him in the crush of pedestrians.
“Let’s keep going,” she said. “Maybe you’ll have another feeling.”
It felt good that Allaire believed in him. Kyle peeked over a railing going down to the subway, and then out at the mass of people. He spotted four more subway entrances within a couple of hundred feet of them. There were likely more people in one square block here than in all of Flemming. The chances of finding them before they showed up again on the tracker were minimal.
“How many more people will be dead by the time we find him?” he wondered out loud. “They’re down in the subway now, or else they’d be on the tracker . . . And why the matching caps?”
“To keep anyone from noticing them, probably,” Allaire said.
Kyle looked across the street at a newsstand. “Come with me a second.”
They waited for the light and walked across the street. He picked up a copy of the Daily News from a newsstand and flipped it open to the sports section. “Mets play tonight?” he asked the guy inside the kiosk, as he looked for the information in the paper.
“Who cares?” the guy answered in a foreign accent. “Baseball’s boring.”
“What time is it?” Kyle asked him.
“Ten to seven,” he answered.
Kyle put the paper down, and walked toward Allaire and Young Ayers. Behind him, he heard the guy in the newsstand complaining that he’d looked at the paper and not bought it.
“Let’s go to the ballgame,” Kyle said.
Allaire looked at him skeptically. “Is this another feely thing, like you knew to come to 1997? Or . . . ?”
“We just lost them right here by the entrance to the Seven-Train, which goes to Shea Stadium. And they were wearing Mets caps . . . ” Kyle said, realizing it didn’t sound quite as compelling when said it as it did when he thought it.
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