The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  I’m dying, Gran.

  I make sure to tell her and Pops I love them before I go, look them in the eyes when I say it. Because I can’t say it enough. Today might be the day I die. Blue said we never made it to our eighteenth birthday, which means any day between now and my birthday in August could be my last. I have to make them count. All of them.

  I don’t wear my parka or Chucks for my visit with Porter. I wear my black lace-up winter boots with thick socks, and the gray wool coat Gran got me for Christmas a few years back. I smooth my hair back into a long ponytail. I feel somber, so I want to look the part. I want Porter to know I’m not a kid anymore. I’ve grown up an awful lot in the past two weeks.

  I take the Mustang, since Mom and Dad took the Civic to the hospital, and say a prayer that it won’t break down on the way. The Mustang’s been sputtering here and there, and bucking when I press the clutch or the gas. She’s testy, angry for some reason. Or maybe that’s me projecting my own state of mind on an inanimate object. Either way, I toss my toolbox in the trunk just in case.

  The address belongs to a marina ten miles from my house. Some ritzy yacht club. I would’ve thought I was in the wrong place if Porter hadn’t given me a code that opened the towering iron gates at the entrance.

  I park the Mustang and follow Porter’s directions down through the docks. Rows and rows of huge boats, bigger than my house, are docked here, the water bubbling and fluid beneath them despite the ice and snow everywhere else. I know enough about boats and marinas to know you pay top dollar for a spot like this in the winter. Most people have to store their boats on land when the Chesapeake ices over. Not these yacht owners. They can live on their boats year-round if they want. The marina takes care of everything they need.

  When I find the slip number Porter specified, I stop, hands in coat pockets, and crane my neck to look up at the boat. It’s beautiful. Sleek, shiny, hulking over me with two sprawling decks. The top is shrink-wrapped in clear plastic to keep the snow from piling up onboard.

  I look around, expecting to see Porter waiting for me on the dock. Instead, I hear him call out to me from inside the shrink-wrapped boat. I look up and see him waving me around to the side, where a wooden ramp leads up to a door fashioned into the shrink-wrapped plastic wall. Porter opens the door and waves me inside, but I don’t climb up. I stand below, on the dock, staring up at him silhouetted in the midmorning sunlight.

  “This your boat?” I ask, because why not? Why wouldn’t it be? He has so many secrets I can’t keep track anymore.

  “Technically, it’s yours.” He’s not wearing a coat, just his signature black polo and khakis, which means it’s warmer inside the shrink-wrap than out here in the open.

  “Oh, really? More of my treasure hunt spoils?”

  He smiles, his eyes creasing at the edges. “You could say that.”

  “So we’re pirates now?”

  “I suppose we’ve always been pirates. With or without a boat, we’re plunderers, aren’t we? Scalawags?”

  I don’t return his smile. The wind kicks up and tosses my ponytail in front of my eyes.

  His smile fades. I can tell he knows I didn’t actually come to chat about boats. He rubs his pinky knuckle with his thumb. After a while, that quirk of his became sort of comforting to me. Right now it makes me feel cold and empty, and anger swells in me like the water beneath the docks.

  He notices me staring at his hands, and he stops. Drops them at his sides.

  “Micki said she kept the data records for my past lives,” I say. “I’m going to need to see those records.”

  He shakes his head. “Alex, you don’t know what—”

  I step slowly forward up the ramp. “I know you’re going to show them to me, because in the end you always give me the truth when I ask for it, brutally and honestly. Even if it hurts.” I stop in front of him, look him in his watery, red-rimmed eyes.

  “Alex…” His shoulders are slumped, defeat in his voice.

  “You know the reason I’m here. You know why I want to see them.”

  He sighs and motions for me to come inside.

  He leads me through another door and down some stairs into the huge living area below deck. Directly before me is a massive open space, natural light streaming in through rows of windows. Low, long, white leather sofas are surrounded by shiny mahogany workstations with computer monitors everywhere, some showing security footage outside the boat, some running diagnostic-looking programs, others powered down and waiting for use. An electric fireplace keeps the room toasty warm. To my left is a kitchen, sleek and modern, black and stainless, with every amenity you can imagine. Behind that are two hallways on either side, and I can see a bedroom down one of them, more sleek wood and a low platform bed with crisp white linens and a cowhide rug on the floor.

  “Quite a step up from Mrs. Yoder’s place,” I say. We both stand in the living room, neither of us comfortable enough to sit down. “I’m sorry you couldn’t get something nicer with the money from the Rembrandt. You know, because some of it went to my sister’s Scotland trip. Turns out the trip’s canceled, so if you wanted to trade up to a nicer boat, you could make that happen.”

  “Alex,” he says again. This time he whispers it, like it pains him.

  “Do you want to know why it’s canceled?” I don’t wait for him to reply. “She’s in the hospital. Blood clot in her lungs. She can’t travel now.”

  “Blood clots are fairly routine,” he says, like he’s scrambling to offer some hope or encouragement. “A little while on blood thinners and she should be right as rain. Scotland is beautiful in the fall. You could go then.”

  “She won’t get a fall.” I say it bitterly, because it feels like nothing he could say could give me hope. Not anymore. “And neither will I.”

  Porter winces, like I’ve cut him.

  Tears glisten in his eyes, which makes my own well up. I don’t want to cry. I’ve been crying too much lately. I want to be strong and grown-up about all of this. I want to be like Bacall. So I sniff and lower my chin. “The records, Porter.”

  Eternal Youth

  Porter retrieves Micki from one of the back rooms and takes her aside, filling her in on why I’m here. I sit on one of the white leather couches, a mug of coffee in my hand, staring at the gleaming white marble coffee table in front of me. There are magazines stacked on one end. On the top is some scientific journal I’ve never heard of. I suppose the rest are the same. Light reading for the AIDA Club.

  Micki slides a laptop in front of me, a spreadsheet displayed on the screen. “Dates of birth and death, as you requested.” She clops away in her black wedges and black leather leggings.

  I set my coffee down and scroll through all fifty-six entries. It doesn’t take long to see the pattern Blue spoke about. Some lives are shorter, the records showing I died at age fifteen or sixteen, but for the most part, I’m seventeen. Over and over again. Never once turning eighteen. Some dates are missing, but most of them are there. Blue’s data is listed side-by-side with mine. Sometimes his dates correspond with mine, sometimes they’re off by a day or two, sometimes even a week’s or a month’s difference. But it’s all right there, proof that Blue was right.

  My arms are numb. My mouth is dry.

  I down my coffee and hold the mug out to Micki. “Tea this time?” I say, not looking at her.

  I can imagine her eyebrow arching sharply as she takes the mug. “I must say,” she says, heading to the kitchen, “you’re taking this better than I would.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had a few weeks of radio silence to think about it.”

  I hear Porter sigh through his nose, not in a sarcastic way, but remorseful. Like he feels bad for not getting in touch with me sooner, for not checking in on me and my family.

  Good.

  Micki fills the teakettle while I search the list for the life I lived in 1927 Chicago. Blue died not long after we met, murdered in the back of his deli delivery truck. It looks like I died a week late
r. The records don’t show any other details. No names, no places, just dates, so I still have no idea who I was in that life in Chicago. I have a morbid thought about traveling the world and locating all my tombstones, resting flowers on my own graves.

  Maybe then it wouldn’t feel like my lives are just numbers on a spreadsheet.

  “Am I stuck like this?” I look up at Porter, sitting on the couch across from me, his arms stretched across the back. “A never-ending cycle of eternal youth? Always dying and being reborn?” It’s like some twisted cross between Peter Pan and Doctor Who.

  Porter’s frown deepens. He’s been frowning since I arrived. “As far as we know. In your first life you died a week before your eighteenth birthday. Once we set the first reincarnation in progress, your age of death became a constant. Your soul kept resetting at approximately the same time in every life. There doesn’t seem to be a way to stop the cycle. We didn’t know it would happen, but there were many advantages to your shorter lifespans. More points in time means—”

  “Yeah, I get it. More lives means more missions. My expiration dates are what make me so valuable.” I match his frown. “You should’ve told me.”

  “No one should know when they’re going to die.”

  “Audrey’s dying.” I meant to go on, but I have to stop and clear the lump in my throat. “My parents are going to lose two children by the end of the year. How do you expect them to survive that? You should’ve told me. I could’ve helped my family prepare.”

  “How?” Micki asks, clopping up to me in shiny black heels, handing me a mug of tea.

  “I would’ve had time to think of something.”

  “All the time in the world can’t prepare someone for a loss,” Micki says, and she looks like she knows from experience. “There’s nothing you could’ve done. Their mourning is inevitable, was inevitable the moment you were born.”

  “Maybe it’s inevitable for me, but it doesn’t have to be for Audrey.”

  Micki sits down beside Porter, elbows on her knees. They both watch me, brows furrowed, waiting for me to elaborate.

  “If I’m going to die, I want my life to mean something.”

  Porter leans forward. “It does mean something.”

  “Kicking Gesh where it hurts, going on these missions—I’m proud of playing my part, I am. But we both know the time I have left isn’t enough to bring him down. Not all the way. And I want to make my last few days really count.”

  Micki opens her mouth, and I expect her to say something snide, but she doesn’t. “What did you have in mind?”

  I look her right in her tiger eyes, unruffled, like Bacall looks at Bogie.

  “I’m going to find a cure for Audrey.”

  Chapter 13

  Another Way

  I pull a newspaper article out of my coat pocket—the one about the fire at the AIDA lab—and smooth it on the coffee table. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to talk, you’re going to listen.” Porter lifts his chin, like he’s about to say something, but I stare him down. “I’m not doing any more missions.”

  Micki narrows her eyes at me, a skeptical purse to her lips. Porter rubs his pinky knuckle.

  “What I mean is, I’m not doing any more missions for you. From now on the mission, the only mission, is finding a cure for my sister. I know it’s out there. I just have to find it and get it to my mom before it’s too late.”

  Porter leans forward to object.

  “You owe me,” I blurt out before he can say anything. Tears sting the corners of my eyes. “I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me. It’s my time now, and you owe me.”

  He doesn’t try to speak again. They both give me the floor. I explain my mom’s research, the data that was lost in the fire. “I want to go back and save that data. Hide it so we can find it in the present, like we did with the Rembrandt.”

  Micki gets up, and I think she’s going to walk out on me, but instead she fires up one of the computers at a workstation. “What time frame are we talking about?”

  I scan the article I printed. “The fire started during a Christmas office party. Burned the entire AIDA research building to the ground. It was December 20th, 1978.”

  “You were seventeen years, six months, and ten days old. You won’t be that exact age again for another month and three days.”

  My stomach sinks. I can only travel linearly, which means whatever age I am in Base Life, down to the millisecond, is the age I travel to in the past. Audrey may not have another month and three days left. “What happens if I go now? And retrieve the data a month before the fire?”

  “You’d change history,” says Porter. “Instead of the data being lost in a fire, it could be reported stolen. There could be an investigation. The impact could be too great.”

  “You have to go the night of the fire,” Micki says, “and you have to be undetected. It’s the story we have to protect. The story of the lost data—the belief behind what happened to it—can’t be altered. That’s the only way descending works.”

  “But Audrey could be gone by then. I could be gone by then.”

  “I’m sorry,” Micki says, and she sounds like she means it.

  “There is another way.”

  Micki and I look at Porter. He’s digging circles around his knuckle, his eyes far off. “There are countless traditional Chinese remedies that have been used to treat diseases for ages. Gesh and I used to translate ancient texts back in the seventies, searching for lost herbal remedies, recipes to try. Some were useless, others worked on certain patients. One of our discoveries is currently used as a blood-thinning medication. Another for treating dementia.”

  I lean forward, elbows on knees, when he pauses. “What are you saying?”

  “One of the texts mentioned a remedy that treated symptoms consistent with leukemia. Gesh and I believed that, if used in conjunction with chemo, the remedy could be the answer everyone’s been looking for. The recipe wasn’t included in the text; it’s been lost over the centuries. But if you went back there, retrieved a vial, and buried it, then we could exhume it, test the compounds, and figure out the ingredients and measurements. I could recreate the drug, and we could have it tested for treatment.”

  “You want me to travel to ancient China?” It may not be recovering Mom’s data, but it might be worth a shot in the meantime.

  Micki taps away at her keyboard. “Not ancient. The Qing Dynasty, the year 1770.”

  I look to Porter. “And you think this recipe could help cure Audrey?”

  “There is no guarantee; we’d have to run clinical trials, but I believe it’s worth a try. It does come at a price, however.”

  “What price?”

  “Gesh hasn’t yet retrieved this drug for a reason. He’s saving it.”

  “What the hell for? A rainy day?”

  Porter speaks slowly, carefully, like the words boil inside him. “For when it suits his interests best.”

  “You mean when it’s most lucrative for him,” I say, disgusted. “Of course he’d hold a global cure hostage. The bastard.”

  Micki crosses her long dark legs. “I’m not so sure about this mission. He’ll know it was us, if we go through with it.” She trains her tiger eyes on me. “He’ll know it was you, and you’d be compromising your sister’s, and your family’s, safety. Think about it. A miracle drug is discovered from the past, and one of the first ones to benefit is Audrey Wayfare? He’ll look into your family. He’ll find you. It could risk everything, all we’ve sacrificed to keep you safe.”

  “Then we open the drug up for everyone,” I say. “Once it’s tested and ready to go, we give it to all leukemia patients for free. Blanket the world with it so there are too many patients to track. And we make sure Audrey isn’t the only one to get treated first. We treat a whole group of them in a clinical trial.”

  “That could work,” Porter says, “but that’s not the price I was referring to.” He frowns gravely and folds his hands in his lap. No more rubbin
g circles on his knuckle. He meets my eyes. “There are benefits to this particular mission. You don’t have to travel back to any specific date. You could leave tomorrow if you wanted. When we placed you in this time period, we weren’t looking for any one treasure in particular. Any antiquities you could find and bury in a time capsule would be worth a considerable amount if we dug them up today. Qing Dynasty vases, bowls, other pottery. It’s all worth thousands, millions even. But compared to that, the cure is priceless. You wouldn’t only be stealing Gesh’s funding this time, you’d be stealing his ability to play god, to keep the cure out of reach for those who need it. Right now, the thrill of the hunt keeps him going. Finding you. Chasing you through time. Gesh loves a good hunt. Especially when he thinks he’s one step ahead. But if you do this, you’ll be declaring war. He’ll retaliate. He’ll call for blood. He’ll turn his entire focus on you, all of his resources.”

  The back of my neck prickles. The hair on my arms stands on end. And maybe I’m selfish and a little too desperate, because I don’t even consider the consequences Gesh’s retaliation might have on Porter, Levi, and Micki after I’m long gone. I think back to Levi’s words: Don’t worry about us. Make the right choice for you, and say, “When do I leave?”

  My Only Companion

  There’s another level below the living area on Porter’s boat. You have to go through a series of doors locked with high-level security to get down the stairs. Micki set up a mix of electronic and mechanical security, which makes me grin to myself. Having all electronic security makes you vulnerable. All you have to do is cut power. Same with using all manual locks. Enough muscle and you’re in. But using both together is almost impenetrable. Not fully, but it makes the process harder. And no self-respecting thief has time for that.

  Not that a common thief would have an interest in what lies behind the labyrinth of doors. The FBI, on the other hand…