Kyle didn’t know how Sillow would respond when he emailed four vouchers for one-way plane tickets to New York. A few days after sending them, though, with a note about wanting to meet his half-siblings for the first time, Sillow and his family arrived at the factory.
They came with two taxis full of luggage and looked like they’d planned to stay for a while, which was, of course, Kyle’s hope. Before they’d even been properly introduced to Kyle and Allaire, eight-year-old Tinsley and ten-year-old Larkin were engaged in some type of game with Young Ayers that looked like tag. The sound of children’s laughter in the factory was something new.
Kyle was surprised to learn that Sillow’s wife, Yolanda, was an intellectual—an author and former professor of women’s studies. Not exactly the match he’d have pictured for his father, but Kyle was glad to be surprised in this case.
At first Kyle had been shocked that Sillow could so easily pick up his entire family’s life and move from Florida to New York, but the timing had actually seemed to work out perfectly. Sillow and Yolanda’s house had been badly damaged in a recent hurricane, and they’d been living out of suitcases in a hotel. Sillow had also been recently laid off from his job at Jacksonville Central Hospital. It turned out they were actually eager for a change, and Kyle’s email was the perfect catalyst.
The morning after they arrived, Kyle would be the one to deliver a surprise, as he and Sillow strolled down 7th Avenue on their way back to the factory from a trip to Starbucks. Kyle explained everything he knew about the Seres to Sillow. After dancing around it for a while, Kyle told Sillow that they were a part of this ancient bloodline. He explained how, technically, Sillow was a “second son,” but that Ayers had proven far too dangerous to be tasked with watching over the ancient secret of time weaving. And, of course, Kyle explained that they would always be at risk of grave danger until they could find a way to subdue Ayers. And finally, based on the shortening of the tunnel, it was quite likely that Ayers’s actions would lead to the end of the world if they couldn’t figure out a way to stop him. Although this was quite a story, Sillow seemed to believe every word of it.
What Kyle proposed was simple: that Sillow and his family move into the factory, and take on the role that Yalé had before his death. Sillow would learn how to spin a silk blot, while Kyle and Allaire would continue to try to stop Ayers and limit the damage he did to the timestream. Together, Kyle told him, they would do their best to ensure that the universe continued.
“I want to say ‘yes,’ son,” Sillow told him on their walk. “But I’m afraid I’ll let you down.”
Kyle smiled. “We’re all in the same position. This is new to me too, because we had no idea you were a Sere.”
Sillow shrugged at him. “It’s a lot of responsibility, based on what you’re sayin’.”
“You showed up when I needed you,” Kyle said. “And you just showed up again. I think the Sillow that used to let me down is in some other version of history . . . Like the bus crash.”
Later that day, Allaire gave Kyle and Sillow the grand tour of the factory—the living quarters, the different machines for making silk blots, and she even opened up the huge cylinder which ran through the middle of every floor in the building. Allaire used an oven mitt and opened up a small hatch, letting Kyle and Sillow each peek inside at a huge dense forest of mulberry bushes, growing up from the bottom of the building. There were millions of silkworms and silkworm cocoons running through the huge cylindrical area.
“This living habitat provides all the silkworms you need,” Allaire said. “There are instructions for the machines in Yalé’s office . . . I mean, your office, Sillow. Some of them are written in Serican, but the pictures should help.”
“Serican?” Sillow asked.
Allaire smiled. “It’s the language of your people, but I’m afraid Yalé was the last person on the planet who could read or write it.”
Sillow smiled. “Is there a book that can teach me? If I’m gonna do this, I want to learn it.” Kyle knew Sillow had never even had an inkling about his own genealogy. Sillow’s adoptive mother dying when he was nine led to him spending the rest of his childhood in foster homes and orphanages.
In the evenings, everyone in the factory slept on mats in the gym where Allaire used to train with Demetrius. While Kyle and Allaire didn’t see a reason for Ayers to risk coming back to the factory building, they didn’t want to risk the lives of the three children now living there in the event they were wrong, so they all slept in the same place and, more or less, took turns keeping watch.
One morning, Kyle opened his eyes and saw Allaire sitting cross-legged on the mat right next to his face. She was gently rocking back and forth and Kyle noticed tears in her eyes.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“It’s gone,” she said. “Ayers. The Silo. The pillars. Everything.”
Kyle sat up and saw that they were the only two who were awake. “Gone how? The Silo doesn’t even exist yet.” He put his hand on her back and noticed her shirt was completely saturated with sweat.
She shook her head and blotted at her eyes with her wrists. “I dropped the retriever ball and the tunnel sounded short, but I had to see for myself. 2054 is the last year we can get to now. This is it, Kyle. If we don’t stop this soon, there’s going to be no ‘us’ anymore. Our world is going to be completely gone, along with everyone in it.”
Kyle looked through the room at his new family. He didn’t know his half-sisters well yet, and wasn’t sure what he and Allaire were going to do with Young Ayers. But, he wanted them all to have a shot at a life together. With Ayers running around, rebelling against time itself, there was no telling how little they all had left.
“You having any more visions?” Allaire asked him. “Maybe visions about how to fix all of this? Because I don’t feel like we have chance.”
“We’ve got to find him again,” Kyle said. “We just need to figure out a time and place we know he went. It’s no different than before we ever had the tracker on him, or before I ever had that vision, right?”
“Your instincts have gotten better and better,” Allaire said. “Do you think if we find him we’re even going to have a shot?”
Kyle smiled. “How could I possibly know that?”
“You know a lot, Kyle Cash. Listen to your gut . . . Is it possible kill him?” Allaire asked again.
“Okay . . . ” Kyle said, closing his eyes. For the first time, he tried to just listen to his own mind. It didn’t sound any different to him. This wasn’t like a certain year just flashing before his eyes. Until . . . he saw Young Ayers, headless, laying in a pool of blood and body parts. The image disturbed Kyle enough to jar his eyes open.
“Well?” Allaire said.
“I don't know, Allaire,” Kyle said. “If we can’t kill him, is there a room here where we can safely lock him up?”
Allaire nodded. “There’s a cell Rickard built down on the fourth floor. Rickard was your uncle, I guess. Not a good guy. If he hadn’t died, I might’ve wound up in that cell myself.”
“I’m not getting any kind of sense of where he is, or in what year,” Kyle said. “Let’s get online and start looking through major news events that are new to this timestream. Maybe we’ll find a time and place where we can grab him.”
Allaire looked as if she was about to throw up for a moment.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked. “You sick?”
“I’m fine,” she said, before standing up and heading out toward the restroom.
CHAPTER 14
December 6, 2016
* * *
Later that day
Since Sillow and his family arrived at the factory, the three children had become fast friends. Young Ayers was so thrilled to have two playmates, it didn’t matter to him that everything they played together was completely new to him. He’d read about games like hide and seek, and seen it on TV, but had never had a friend to play it with. And Tinsley and Larkin seemed to enjoy how prov
incial the older boy was, teaching him the “rules” to everything from soccer to playing princesses.
Still at square one in their search for Ayers, Kyle and Allaire tried to enjoy the time getting to know their new extended family. Living under the same roof as Sillow for the first time was strange for Kyle, who hadn’t had the benefit of getting to know his father’s day-to-day habits and quirks while he was growing up. He and Sillow had caught up on a lot of the big stuff during their efforts to stop the bus crash, but they hadn’t yet developed a rapport suited for downtime or non-crisis moments.
Kyle walked into the kitchen of the factory and saw Sillow and Young Ayers sitting at a table together. “Hey, guys,” Kyle said.
“Morning,” Sillow answered. “Not sure if you’re a meat guy, but I just made some bacon . . . Yolanda ran out and got some groceries. Those energy bars you got in those cabinets taste like sawdust.”
Kyle grabbed a piece of bacon out of the pan and ate it. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” he said with a laugh. It had been a long while since he’d enjoyed something home cooked.
Young Ayers stood up without saying a word and left the room.
Kyle looked at his father. “What’s that all about? First time all week I’ve seen him without a smile on his face.”
“He was asking me all about the other Ayers,” Sillow said. “He’s a good kid. You can tell just by spending five seconds with him.”
“I’m hoping that, maybe, knowing what the other Ayers is doing and seeing him hurt people will be enough to change his destiny,” Kyle said.
Sillow nodded. “Gotta be careful, though, son. He’s just a young kid. He told me he knows what you and Allaire are looking for on that computer all day . . . Asked me if I thought Ayers was a terrorist. Also asked me if he was really safe here.”
Kyle grabbed another slice of bacon and sat down, exhaling as he did. “Truth is, I don’t know the answer to that . . . If we just let him grow up and ignore what he could become, then we risk there being two of these horrible monsters in the world.”
“So, what, you’d just kill him?” Sillow asked.
“Probably not,” Kyle said. “We’re not even sure we could. None of us really understands what nevering means, and whether the older Ayers doing it means the younger Ayers can’t be killed either . . . We may reach a point where we need to lock the kid up for everyone’s safety.”
Sillow shook his head and exhaled. “You got it wrong, son, if you think locking him up is a kinder thing to do than killing him.” Kyle hadn’t thought of it that way before.
Allaire walked into the kitchen, and Kyle pointed to the bacon. “Try that,” he said. “It tastes like a lazy Sunday morning.”
She walked over to the pan and picked up a piece, sniffed it and put it back.
“How could you pass up bacon?” Kyle asked.
“Not hungry, I guess,” Allaire said, scrunching up her face. “Come. I want to show you guys something.”
Kyle and Sillow followed Allaire into the office right off the main factory floor. She sat down at the computer and opened up a window on the screen, calling up a San Francisco Chronicle article from a year earlier. “I couldn’t find anything that seemed like it had Ayers’s fingerprints on it,” she said, “until I stumbled on this piece talking about how Halloween celebrations around the country were more subdued this year, and how crowds were so small in some places that the events were cancelled.”
Young Ayers walked into the doorway and Kyle considered asking him to leave. But knowing that he was stressed about his place in their growing family unit, he didn’t say anything.
Allaire clicked around with her mouse, moving too quickly for Kyle to read it. “So, I did some digging and found this thing that happened last year. These four gunmen, all in different costumes, just strafed the crowd with bullets at the big Halloween parade in the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco.”
She zoomed in on the only picture they had of one of the shooters. It was impossible to know if it was Ayers underneath the soft rubber Justin Bieber mask, but it was certainly someone with similar murderous intentions. “The article says the four shooters just disappeared into thin air, slipping away even though a perimeter was set up around the entire area.”
“How many dead?” Sillow asked.
Kyle couldn’t help but look at Young Ayers, who seemed like he was trying to do his best to act unfazed, but was doing a terrible job of it.
“One hundred twenty-seven,” Allaire said.
Young Ayers backed a few feet away from the doorway slowly, pulling his Rubik’s Cube out of the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. He stood in the hallway, head down, leaning against the wall and working on the puzzle.
“What are we waiting for?” Kyle asked. “Let’s go stop this.”
“We can’t go back to stop the shootings,” Allaire said. “But, if it’s Ayers, we can try to grab him, cuff him and get him into a silk blot.”
Kyle nodded. “Okay,” he said, with less conviction than he wished he had. Even with his new role as the protector of time weaving, Kyle didn’t know whether he could ever go back to a tragic event without having any inclination to change it. Would it really be so bad if we grabbed Ayers before he started shooting? he wondered to himself, knowing that he shouldn’t be thinking that way anymore.
“I’m going with you,” Young Ayers said, not taking his eyes away from his Rubik’s Cube.
Kyle and Allaire looked at each other. It was a race to say “no.”
“Sorry, kid,” Kyle said. “It’s way too dangerous. Remember? Your head could explode?” Kyle thought back to the vision he had earlier and again, he saw a clear image of Young Ayers’s body, missing its head, laying in a bloody heap on the sidewalk.
“I have to see it for myself,” Young Ayers said. “If he and I aren’t the same person, I need to see how we’re different.”
Allaire turned to him. “You don’t have to come to prove that to us.”
“I have to prove it to myself,” he said, crying now. In some ways, the boy seemed so much older than twelve to Kyle. But he was just a child, and this all had to be very overwhelming.
Again, Kyle and Allaire looked at each other. Having an extra person there wouldn’t hurt. But, trying to make sure he stayed far enough away from the older Ayers to avoid any problems would be an additional concern.
Allaire shrugged, gesturing toward Kyle that it was his call.
“I, uh, I guess,” Kyle said. “But you’re going to need to stay as far away as possible, so you don’t get close to the other Ayers. Kyle wondered whether Young Ayers was thinking rationally enough at this point for it to make sense to bring him. He seemed very rattled to learn about a massacre that “he” may have caused.
CHAPTER 15
October 30, 2015
* * *
Thirteen months earlier
For all of the time weaving he’d done, it was Kyle’s first time on an airplane, and the entire process made him nervous. Ever since they’d taken off, he’d been jumpy. Young Ayers was reveling in it, though, enjoying every second of his first flight. They’d let him pick out a bunch of candy from the Hudson News at JFK to take on the plane for the six-hour flight to San Francisco.
They’d gone through their silk blots to 2015, but after entering and exiting their blots in New York, they had to fly to San Francisco for the Castro neighborhood’s Halloween festival where, tomorrow night, they believed Ayers and three other gunman would fire hundreds of bullets into a huge crowd of people.
Kyle marveled at how much time Young Ayers could devote to practicing the Rubik’s Cube. Whereas Kyle would’ve thought that solving it once would be enough to make someone put it aside to pursue a new challenge, Ayers wanted to be the best. He wanted to get faster at solving it. And, he was fast. Kyle had been watching him for most of the flight and still didn’t have the faintest idea as to how to solve it.
Allaire enjoyed the downtime on the plane, immersing herse
lf in the lives of the stars through US Weekly, People and In Touch magazines, while Kyle sat in the middle seat, mindlessly gazing at the tiny TV in front of him and gripping the armrests every time they hit a small bump.
After one such bump, Allaire looked up from an article about the Kardashians and caught Kyle tensing up over a bit of turbulence. Kyle felt like his stomach was going to digest itself.
“You need to chill,” she said to him, putting her hand on top of his.
Kyle shook his head. He was having trouble staying rational. “I just feel like—”
“This is safer than getting in a car,” Allaire said. “In a car, you have the illusion of control, which makes it feel better, but it’s actually much less safe.”
Kyle white-knuckled the armrests for the rest of the flight, and felt a surge of relief when the pilot announced their final descent into San Francisco International Airport.
Allaire had long since given up on getting him to relax, but pulled him close by his shirt collar after the announcement and gave him a quick, hard kiss. “Told you everything would be fine.”
About three minutes later, as the plane descended, there was a bigger bump than any of the others, and Kyle could feel the air shift the plane from pitching all the way to the left to all the way to the right. Kyle looked at Allaire and noticed that, while she didn’t look overly worried, she had bothered to pick her head up from her magazine this time to look around. Kyle nervously looked up at the flight attendants, already strapped into their jump seats, and saw that they weren’t alarmed either.
But then, a minute later, with the plane about ten thousand feet in the air—according to the flight tracker on Kyle’s mini-screen—he heard a loud pop come from outside the plane. Now, when Kyle looked at the flight attendants, he could see them conferring with each other, concerned faces all around.
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