Kyle stopped sobbing when he felt the stage vibrating underneath him, which he quickly realized were footsteps coming up the stairs to the stage. He looked up and saw that he was surrounded by ten police officers, all with their guns drawn and pointed at him.
“Get up slowly,” one of them said.
Kyle did not have a silk blot on him. The blots were in their backpacks, which were next to Allaire, who was still out of sight behind the stage. If he were somehow blamed for all of this, he wouldn’t have a way to get out of jail.
“Hands on top of your head,” another cop bellowed.
Kyle looked toward Allaire, but then quickly looked away, trying not to draw the attention of the officers to her.
When he didn’t see her, though, he panicked. He wondered whether the police had grabbed her when he ran onto the stage. Kyle jumped when he heard an explosion come from behind them, up Market Street, in an area vacated by the scrum of people escaping the gunfire.
For a brief moment, the attention of all of the police officers was off of Kyle. He saw Allaire waving him over from the sidewalk next to the stage and he hustled away, sprinting as fast as his body would allow him.
By the time the police started moving toward him, Kyle was almost to Allaire. He felt a gunshot hit the ground right next to him, but by that point he was able to get one foot into the silk blot Allaire was holding out for him. She followed right behind him.
He was never so happy to see the inside of the tunnel and he collapsed against the hard metal trying to catch his breath. Then, he thought about Young Ayers again and felt a hole in the pit of his stomach.
CHAPTER 17
April 18, 2017
* * *
One-and-a-half years later
Kyle and Allaire climbed through the tunnel without saying much. They’d started the day as a threesome, and it felt extremely lonely without Young Ayers around. They’d spent so much time mistrusting him that Kyle hadn’t realized how much he’d become part of the tenuous fabric of their lives in the time they’d spent together. Without many people to hold onto, Kyle couldn’t help but feel connected to the few he could.
When they reached the rung labeled 2016, Allaire pulled the silk blot toward the slot, but Kyle put his hand over hers. He shook his head.
“We can check on the tunnel later,” she said. “I just want to get back. You have blood all over you. You need a shower.”
“Sillow needs time,” Kyle said. “If we want him and his family to make the factory their home, we need to let them settle in without us. Let’s go to 2017.”
Allaire nodded and kept climbing through, ahead of Kyle.
“You’re quiet,” Kyle said, following closely behind Allaire.
“You should talk,” she answered.
“I’m just rattled,” Kyle said. “Losing the kid . . . And, now that the other Ayers is gone too, if the tunnel doesn’t get longer again, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
“I don’t know either,” Allaire said. “But, we have to think positively. Ayers is dead! I don’t even remember what it’s like not to be chasing after him, or cleaning up one of his messes.”
They’d achieved exactly what they wanted to in killing Ayers, but it happened in the worst way possible, by losing one of their own. There was still a part of Kyle—buried much deeper now than before—that felt that if anyone deserved misfortune, it was him.
“It’s been a while since the timestream has been clear of obvious danger,” Allaire said. “If we see the tunnel start to grow again, then we get to live our lives at the factory and just hope that everything stays quiet forever.”
“Forever,” Kyle said.
“’Til death do us part,” Allaire answered, and for the first time Kyle thought about the idea that they could have a real, almost normal life together. He was the Sere heir now—there was no one left to say differently—and Allaire was the person he’d eventually marry. Not yet—in his natural timestream, he was still only eighteen years old—but sometime in the future.
No more threats. No more threads to clean up. Just a real future. He’d be a different kind of Sere heir than Yalé. And he’d be different from the other Seres Allaire told him about. He would try to protect their great secret without cutting himself, or the rest of his family, off from the outside world.
“It’s going to be different,” Kyle said. He wanted her to know too that they were going to make a better life. He smiled, the fantasy of an endless tunnel an intoxicating thought.
Allaire stopped climbing through the tunnel and turned toward Kyle. She pulled him by his bloodstained shirt and kissed him in the way that drove him crazy. “Let’s drive cross country back to New York,” she said.
Kyle had never been anywhere. Even his time weaving had all taken place in New York. Other than a few trips with his mom, or a few class trips, all in the northeast, Kyle had spent his entire life inside New York State. “That’s a great idea,” he said. “But we should check the tunnel first. See if it’s gotten longer.”
“No,” Allaire said, putting her finger on his lips. “Let’s just go. We’ll check the tunnel when we’re back. I’ve spent my life in this tunnel, and it’s time for a break.”
He was anxious to start their new, more relaxed life together, and after a few more minutes of kissing, they both eagerly climbed toward 2017.
Three weeks later, Kyle and Allaire returned to the factory building in New York. Their drive across the country had been a revelation. It was the first time they’d spent time together without a crisis going on around them. They’d gotten some strange looks from hotel clerks and other guests during the course of the trip—although Allaire was a young looking thirty-five-year-old, when looking at the couple, there was no debating that she had at least a decade on Kyle, who still had a baby face at eighteen.
While it was Kyle’s first trip beyond the northeast, it was the longest stretch of Allaire’s life that she’d devoted to leisure. Her time with the Seres had been so solemn. Even before Ayers was born, which simultaneously gave her purpose and put her in danger, her life had been completely isolated from the outside world.
After their three-week trip, Kyle led Allaire off the elevator on the fifth floor of the factory. They both seemed to know right away that everything had changed. This was confirmed when they saw a chandelier hanging in the elevator bank. It was nothing fancy, but it provided more light than the area had ever had before.
They walked inside the main factory room and found all three machines running. Someone had built a fourth console in the room as well, which looked almost like a drying rack, with several silk blots hanging off of it.
Kyle heard the patter of footsteps coming toward them and saw Sillow’s daughter, Tinsley, run into the room, skidding in her socks across the tile floor. “Hi Kyle,” she said. “Hi Allaire!”
“You’ve gotten big, sweetie,” Kyle said to his younger half-sister, who had aged a year-and-a-half since he’d last seen her. “Where is everybody else?”
“Mama’s cooking dinner, and Daddy and Larkin are playing Monopoly,” she answered, dancing across the room, twirling a few times for them. “I hate Monopoly.”
Kyle started in the direction of the back area of the fifth floor, toward the kitchen and bedrooms.
He turned back and saw that Tinsley had grabbed Allaire’s wrist, swinging her arm in front of her playfully. “When’s cousin Ayers coming back?” Tinsley asked her.
Allaire gave the girl a toothless smile and looked at Kyle.
She gently pulled her wrist away. “I’m thinking we should get ice cream tonight, if your mom and dad say ‘okay’ . . . What do you think?”
Tinsley did a little ballet jump and shook her head “yes” before running off back down the hall, past Kyle.
The factory looked as if they’d brought in an interior decorator. Walls had been painted more inviting colors, comfortable furniture had replaced the industrial looking pieces that were there before.
&
nbsp; As Kyle walked into the kitchen, he stopped and just looked around for a few minutes before even saying a word.
“It looks like a home,” Allaire said to Sillow’s wife, Yolanda.
Yolanda looked up from stirring a huge pot. “That’s what I was going for . . . Thank you for saying that.”
Kyle looked around. The entire room had been transformed. What used to be a barebones cooking range and refrigerator now looked like the kitchen in an expensive suburban home. “How did you—?”
“I’m used to working,” Yolanda said. “I needed something to keep me busy here.”
Allaire nodded and Kyle could see that she empathized. In order to live here long-term, things would need to be different. In addition to being less isolated, they’d need to be less utilitarian.
“It looks amazing,” Allaire said. “Truly unbelievable.”
“The girls are in school,” Yolanda said. “At first, I bought into the home schooling, but New York’s the greatest city in the world. I’m not going to have my girls live here and never even get to experience it.”
Kyle wondered how Allaire felt hearing Yolanda’s words. If Allaire had had someone advocating for her the same way, she would be a different person. She’d be someone who had experienced the world outside the factory’s walls.
Yolanda put her cooking spoon down next to the fancy stove and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “I hope it’s not a problem for you that I put them in school.”
“Of course not,” Kyle said. “We’ll just need to make sure the girls are careful once they’re old enough to understand what we do here.”
“They think we just moved into a funky new apartment,” Yolanda said.
“Where’s Sillow?” Kyle asked.
Yolanda smiled. “In his office . . . He’s really embraced all of this . . . ”
“Oh really?” Kyle asked with a slight smile. Bringing Sillow here had been his idea, but the reality was that he didn’t know his father all that well. There’d been no guarantee that the experiment would work.
“Go see for yourself,” Yolanda answered.
Kyle looked over at Allaire. “You coming?”
She smiled at him. “Go see your father . . . I want to see what smells so good.” Allaire walked toward the stove.
“It’s vegetable stew,” Yolanda said. “We’ve got an organic garden up on the roof. Lots of stuff beginning to grow now that it’s gotten warmer.”
Kyle walked down the hall to the room he’d always known before as Yalé’s office.
CHAPTER 18
April 18, 2017
* * *
Moments later
Again, Kyle noticed the office had been transformed. When Yalé was alive, the room he worked in simply had a desk, chair and a file cabinet. Sillow’s office had papers and blueprints pinned to the wall. They’d repainted it a dark blue, which made the room feel imposing, and Sillow had set himself up with a new computer—a high-end Mac with a huge monitor.
Sillow looked up from the floor where he sat cross-legged next to Larkin with a Monopoly board in front of them.
“Hello, son,” Sillow said.
“Hi, Kyle,” Larkin said, springing up to hug him. Larkin had a head full of curly ringlets, which bounced when she moved. She ran into Kyle and squeezed his waist.
“Lark,” Sillow said, standing up, “why don’t you go help Mommy in the kitchen while your big brother and I catch up.”
She nodded and started toward the door. “I’m happy you’re back, Kyle.” Larkin left and Kyle turned back to Sillow.
“They’re doing well here, huh?” Kyle asked.
Sillow nodded.
“He’s gone,” Kyle said. “Ayers. The boy too.”
“You did what you needed to,” Sillow said.
Kyle shook his head. “No. The kid sacrificed himself. We wouldn’t have gotten Ayers if he hadn’t. He knew there was no choice, and that we wouldn’t have let him do it. The kid’s a hero. And it’s so strange. The evil inside of Ayers could have ended the world, but the good inside of the boy . . . I don’t know. It’s confusing.” Kyle pointed to the walls, changing the subject without speaking. He looked over at the different stacks of folders on Sillow’s desk. “Looks like you really dove in.”
Sillow smiled. “You have no idea, Kyle. This stuff is more fascinating than even just time travel.”
“Just time travel?” Kyle said. “What more is there?”
“Time travel is the part you can see,” Sillow said. “I’m trying to figure out the things we can’t see . . . Yet.”
“What kind of things, Sill . . . Dad?” Kyle asked.
Sillow walked up to a huge chart on the wall. It had large letters that were completely foreign to Kyle, with writing underneath. This looked like the same language that was etched into the wooden paddle Young Ayers had been swinging around just before they traveled to 2015.
Kyle followed Sillow over to the wall and stood next to him. “Their language—our language—it’s all numeral based. The numbers just don’t look like what we’re used to. The different number combinations make up words, but just like in Spanish where words are male or female, the Sere language assigns a numerical value to each word. And, it usually kind of makes sense.”
“I’m lost,” Kyle said.
“There’s no time to teach you the language now,” Sillow said. “Not this minute, at least.” He slid over to another huge paper hanging on the wall. This one was old, framed behind a piece of tall, thin glass. “But, look here at this . . . ”
Kyle saw the same characters, but this time, they were stacked on top of each other. Sillow had post-it notes all over the frame. One said “inside-out.” The other said “man-made.” And another said “second son/second daughter.”
“What is this?” Kyle asked.
“From what I can gather,” Sillow said. “This is the most important thing in this entire factory. It explains how to create the machine to build a silk blot.”
“But that machine’s already been built,” Kyle said.
“Yes,” Sillow answered. “But, who wrote these instructions? And how did they figure it out? That’s the exciting part.”
Kyle nodded.
Sillow continued, “This comes from before there was even a tunnel, or maybe when the tunnel was very small.”
“It says how the tunnel was built?” Kyle asked.
“Not really,” Sillow answered. “It says that the tunnel is supposed to be built inside out, by someone called ‘the rebel.’ It took me forever, but there’s really no other translation I can find that works. It’s ‘rebel.’
“What does ‘inside out’ mean? Who’s the rebel?” Kyle asked.
Sillow smiled and shrugged. He walked over to another paper hanging on the wall. This one looked like a technical drawing of a circular space. “Recognize this?”
“It’s not the tunnel,” Kyle said.
“That’s right,” Sillow answered, leading Kyle out of the room. He pointed to the round cylinder that ran through each floor in the factory.
“That’s where all of the worms are,” Kyle answered.
“Yes,” Sillow answered. “According to my papers, it’s called the ‘colony chamber.’”
Kyle followed Sillow back inside his office.
“So, what does any of this mean?” Kyle asked.
Sillow looked troubled for a second, and sat down in the chair behind his desk. Kyle sat across from him. “I don’t think this whole thing—the tunnel, and time weaving . . . I don’t think it was meant to go on forever. Everything I’ve read in these different papers seems to reference the tunnel being temporary . . . Yalé was trying to figure this stuff out too. I’ve got all of these old papers written in Serican, and they mention a second son repenting for some great sin. Like he’d done something wrong, and now was being punished. And it seems like, somehow, the tunnel is involved in the punishment. But, I haven’t seen anything to make me think it was supposed to be this permanent thing that ju
st stays there.”
“But what happens when the tunnel goes away?” Kyle asked.
Sillow shook his head. “These papers are all very old, and they tend to repeat themselves a lot. We come from a long line of people with a lot of time on their hands. For every answer I’ve found, there’s another question that comes up . . . Maybe, the tunnel goes away, and that’s it. No more time weaving. Maybe, the tunnel is the way humanity keeps going and without it, there’s nothing.”
“So what do we do?” Kyle asked. “What do you think we should do?”
Sillow shrugged. “I think we need to check on the tunnel. If it’s longer, or at least holding steady, we have some time to figure this all out.”
“And what if it’s still getting shorter and shorter?” Kyle asked.
Sillow smiled. “Then we’re going to have to figure out what’s on the other side.”
“The other side?” Kyle asked.
“There’s something out there,” Sillow said. “Everything I’ve found here keeps using the words ‘inside out’ when it mentions the tunnel, but that’s all it says. The tunnel doesn’t exist here, but it exists somewhere. If it’s going away, we need to figure out why and how to stop it, and the answer is beyond those walls.”
Kyle smiled at the audacious suggestion. “You realize that the tunnel is made of steel, right? And the silk blots are too small to bring any big equipment inside.”
Sillow opened the drawer to his desk and pulled out a huge drill with a bit thicker than Kyle’s thumb. “Solid diamond bit. If anything can get through the walls of the tunnel, it’s this . . . Diamond cost me nine grand. Good thing there’s a few hundred g’s in petty cash laying around here.”
Kyle pressed the button on the drill and it came to life. “You bought this so we could drill through the tunnel?”
“If it’s cooperating, and not shrinking on us,” Sillow said, “then we leave her alone. We wait and see . . . But if you get in there and it’s shrinking, then how could you argue that it’s time to break through?”
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