"I dare you," Sydney starts, jabbing a finger at Ivy for emphasis, "to kiss Tyler."
Bryce makes a gagging sound. Tyler wants to agree because Ivy's his friend. He grew up with her, sharing skinned knees and games of make-believe and endless hours of basketball in his driveway. Ivy is one of the guys. But there's something else in play, something underneath the surface he doesn't quite understand.
Ivy shrugs and flips her long red hair over her shoulders. "What do you say, Tyler?" she asks. "You game?"
Tyler shrugs. Ivy quirks a smile and leans in toward him. Her breath is warm on his face, her lips featherlight against his own. Something warm stirs inside him. The kiss lasts barely a second, but it's imprinted in Tyler's mind forever.
Ivy pulls away, grinning. Bryce makes another gagging noise. Tyler feels a blush creeping down his neck. "There," Ivy says, flopping back on the couch. "Not so bad, was it?"
Tyler doesn't see her mild acne or the braces worn by a gawky eleven-year-old when she smiles at him. He sees bright eyes and a smile that lights up the room.
And that's the precise moment he falls in love with his best friend.
Run Richards disappears on a Tuesday afternoon. Ty walks through the Timewise offices and someone else is at Run's desk like he's always been there. Ty stops in front of the new guy, marveling at the fact that he feels fine. His stomach isn't churning, his head isn't throbbing and it's all because Run is gone.
"Who the hell you apposed to be?" the guy asks.
Ty shrugs, running his fingers across the edge of Run's old desk. They come back slightly dusty. "What happened to Run?"
"The hell kind of name is Run?" the new guy says.
His name was Run Richards, Ty wants to say. His name was Run Richards and someone messed up on a mission and got his mom caught crosswise. He's gone now and you don't deserve to be sitting where he used to be.
Instead he keeps his mouth shut and walks away, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.
Run Richards is dead, just like he never existed.
And nobody talks about it.
Annie catches up with Ty in the stark white halls of Timewise like nothing in the world is wrong. Like she didn't rat him out to Spense and get him pulled off the Tucker case.
"How's it happening, Smith?" she asks, grinning widely.
Ty glares at her, shaking his hands and splattering the white tile floor with the sticky yellow tikker blood. "Did you find Zane yet?" he snaps.
Annie blinks owlishly. "Yeah, we did. Just brought him in."
"Super," Ty says. "Fantastic, spectacular. You know what? I don't care. We're not working the same job. I don't want to hear about it."
He turns to stalk down the hall. He needs to get to Spense's office. If there were one tikker in that time, there are bound to be more. Tikkers spreading out from a battle day is bad news. It means Timewise is losing; humanity is losing.
"Ty! C'mon, Ty. Crissakes, we're all appose to be friends here," Annie yells. He hadn't realized she was following him until she called his name.
Ty spins around. He grabs her roughly by her shoulders and pins her to the wall.
"You caught Zane," he says, "cleaned up my muck and I thank you for it. But us, right here, right now, we aren't friends, not never going to be friends. Annie, you got me pulled off my case. You got me shoved into psych eval fixing to see if I was going to go the road of Zane Tucker." His voice breaks. He hates his weakness. "Crissakes, Annie, Timewise is all I got left."
"Bad slip?" Annie asks.
Ty blinks, only just realizing where he is, only just realizing he's got his hands on Annie. He lets her go abruptly, running his hands through his too-short hair.
"Acorse it was a bad slip," Ty says. "It's always a bad slip close up to your own scrubbing, close up to your old life. If it weren't bad enough to start, I have to run into Ivy Lane—"
"Hold a tick," Annie says, eyebrow arched. "Ivy Lane? You ran crossing Ivy Lane?"
"Who's she to you?"
"What are you on about? Everyone knows Ivy Lane. Learned about her in school afore I even made Timewise. First human killed by an alien. May 18, 2013. Coming back from a graduation party. Age eighteen."
Either Ty's head is spinning or the hallway is. He fights to keep standing. May 18. Just three days from his last slip. Three days after he leaves, she's dead. The victim of a tikker attack.
Eighteen years old.
"You're meaning you didn't know?" Annie is looking at him oddly. "Never heard the phrase lane up? You know, death by tikker? Where do you think it came from? Ivy Lane. They made a whole mess over her in school." She whistles. "Ivy fucking Lane. You actually went and talked at Ivy fucking Lane."
Something inside Ty breaks, shattering into a thousand little pieces.
(he doesn't know if putting them back together is even possible)
He can picture Ivy if he closes his eyes. He can see red hair, green eyes and a big smile like she's standing in front of him.
She'd be dead by now anyway. It shouldn't matter anymore because it's 2404. All his friends from his native time are dead. They'd all be dead even if they'd lived a century. But it still hurts, still stings, still crashes into him like a physical blow, forcing all the air out of his lungs.
He feels broken, empty, gutted. He doesn't want to think about Zane in a holding cell or Ivy Lane dead and bleeding at graduation or the tikkers gathering in 2013 or the poster above the locker bay screaming Seniors! 1 day left!
But when he finally gathers himself enough to speak, his voice is surprisingly steady. "What do you want, Annie?"
"Tucker's not talking. Had him in interrogation for more than half a day. Says he's not going to talk at no one and nadie saving you." Annie shrugs and shoves her hands in her pockets. "The higher-ups want answers. So I'm asking you a favor. Talk at him."
"Got a mess after my last slip," Ty says hollowly. "Got a dead tikker in 2013 that needs scrubbing. Got a report to write. Got tikkers spreading out from the battle day. We got mounting problems bigger than just Zane. Get your own information."
"Ty," she says.
"Go hellside," he growls.
He stalks off down the hallway. Annie doesn't make a move to follow him, just stands there and lets him go. He's still fuming by the time he makes it to Spense's office. He takes a moment to breathe. He unclenches his fists and then he goes inside.
Like most private spaces in Timewise, Spense's office evokes his native time period. He'd been picked up in 2389 so he's practically a contemporary of the agency. The room is starkly decorated. The carpet is gray. The walls are white. The desk is black. Still the room isn't as harsh as it could be. The oddest thing about 24th century design is that things rarely have sharp edges. Smooth curves seem to detract from the stark colors.
Spense's desk is piled with paperwork. He has dark circles under his eyes that lead Ty to believe he hasn't been sleeping well. Ty coughs to get Spense's attention.
Spense jerks his head up. His normally immaculately groomed blond hair is messy and his suit jacket is rumpled. He's got the scraggly beginnings of a pale blond beard. "Ty! What's on?"
"Trouble abounding in 2013," Ty says, leaning up against the doorframe. "Found a tikker. Figured that was your temporal paradox. Expect to see more in coming. Spillover from the May 18 battle. Probably best we get a scrubber down to clear out the mess."
"Perfection," Spense mutters, digging through the mound of paper. "Just what we need. We'll get to it. Problems abound nowadays. Has Annie spoke at you?"
"Yes," Ty replies shortly.
Spense looks up. "She asked you to talk at Zane Tucker?"
"Yessir, Spense, sir." Ty doesn't like the turn of this conversation or the tone in Spense's voice. "Told her to go hellside. I'm not in that muck anymore."
"Ty," Spense says with a regal air, "I would also like to go extending my request that—"
"Due respects, Spense," Ty says, "but you pulled me off this case and I'd like it to stay that way. Just
following orders."
My best friend's dead. My ex-partner's a criminal. My current partner betrayed me. I'm tired. I just want to go home.
"Don't due respect me, Ty. We're old friends."
Friends. Ty nearly laughs. There's that word again. Annie's his friend, Zane's his friend, Spense is his friend. The only one who can say that and have Ty believe it is Ivy and Ivy's not here. Ivy's dead. These people are not his friends.
"Friends," Ty says. A slight note of hysteria colors his voice. "Sure, Spense, we're friends. I'll talk at Zane for you. I was his friend too, you know. Funny how it ends."
"Thank you," Spense says, looking haggard despite his obvious relief. "I'll get the muck in 2013 cleared soon as I can."
"Yessir," Ty slurs, "Thank you, sir, Spense, sir."
"Zane's in holding cell 67B. When you get the time?"
"Right away, sir," Ty says and walks out of the office and toward his old friend's cell.
Ivy and Tyler walk into the seventh-grade dance holding hands. It's not actually a date. They're just a couple of friends going to one of the lame school dances together. The gym lights are covered in blue cellophane to create an air of mystery. Tyler figures the theme has something to do with underwater because of the cutouts of sea creatures all around. Ivy surveys the scene with a wrinkled nose. "Are those fish?"
"Looks like," Tyler says.
She frowns and then shrugs dismissively. "All right then. Hey, we should try to find Bryce and Syd."
The music is some sort of loud pulsing rap, the lyrics barely audible under the grinding background rhythm. Tyler can scarcely hear Ivy in the din.
"They here together?" he asks, surprised. Sydney and Bryce are more antagonistic toward each other than anyone he's ever met. Despite hanging out together all the time, the two of them have never seemed like friends. Ninety percent of their time together is spent trading insults that don't sound quite friendly.
"Together?" Ivy says, laughing. "Not yet."
With that, she starts picking her way through the crowd, dragging Tyler along for the ride. His hand, slightly damp with sweat, is still clamped in hers. He feels like the blue-checkered tie around his neck is more a noose than an accessory.
Ivy's red hair swirls behind her. She's wearing a green dress that is just tight enough to highlight her developing hips. Even in the gymnasium's dim light, Tyler can't help but smiling at how good she looks.
A commotion breaks out. A group of ten or so people, all varying in size, gathers. Most of the girls are taller than the boys. Tyler can't quite see what's going on until he and Ivy push their way through the crowd.
"Are you kidding me?" Sydney shouts.
"It was a joke!" Bryce yells back.
It's not a fistfight, just Bryce and Sydney verbally sparring in a very public venue. Sydney is wearing a red dress with her dark hair swept into a bun. Not even an hour into the night, wisps fall into her face. Bryce is wearing a white long-sleeved dress shirt with a crimson bow tie. His face, naturally rosy, is bright red and his blond hair seems oddly luminous in the faint blue light.
"Break it up!" Ivy says, stepping between them. It's sweltering inside the gym. Ivy's makeup, applied too thickly, is running down her cheeks. Streaks of black eyeliner stain her face.
The guys in the group of spectators groan in disappointment. One by one, they wander off to watch a pair of kids in dress slacks attempt to break dance.
Bryce adjusts his bow tie and takes a deep breath, the color in his face beginning to return to normal. Sydney hugs Ivy, grinning as if the argument had never happened "Ivy! You look amazing."
Tyler claps a hand onto Bryce's back. "How you doing, man?"
"I called Syd fat," he says. "Bad idea. Girls, huh?"
Tyler casts a subtle look in Ivy's direction. She is laughing. It lights up her face. He looks past the smudged makeup and the braces on the teeth and just sees Ivy.
"I dunno," he mutters to Bryce. "They're not all bad."
The Zane who has stumbled into Timewise after being missing for six months is not the intelligent, intensely focused Timewise operative Zane that Ty knows.
A dull look mars his normally sharp features. His eyes are open, but oddly empty. His hair – usually clipped in neat, military fashion – is long and messy, falling into his face in thick, dirty clumps and obscuring his line of sight. A technicolor bruise spans the left side of his face, standing out against his ashen skin, sucking in all surrounding color.
This is not Ty's partner sitting in that hospital bed in medbay. But then, how could he be after spending six months at the hands of tikkers? No one has ever crawled back alive before. When tikkers get you, it's over. The end.
(it is the first rule Zane has ever broken but it won't be the last)
"Zane," Ty says. He sits down on the edge of the bed. The sunlight streaming through the window and the crisp, clean white sheets illuminate everything, not in a good way. There is a tiny cut against Zane's temple, still too fresh to fade. "You look shitlike, you know?"
Zane stares out the window, not replying. So Ty clears his throat and starts talking. "You went and left and I get stuck with Annie Gallagher. Remember her? Identity fraud extraordinaire? Conned her way into Callope University? You used to say I talked too much. Everything out of that girl's mouth is smart. It's. . ." He takes a deep breath. "Crissakes, you probably don't even hear me."
And then a miracle happens. Zane turns his head to stare at Ty and a flicker of the old Zane is in his eyes. "Ty?" Zane's voice is sandpaper rough, like he's talking through a mouthful of gravel. "Ty Smith?"
"That's right, Zane," Ty says. "It's me. Think I'd ever quit bothering you?"
Zane's eyebrows bunch and he has to work to form the words. "Did I make it back?"
"Acorse you did," Ty says. "Anyone could do it, it's you. You're the best there is."
"How long?" he croaks.
Ty sobers. For the first time he realizes that getting Zane back and having him back are two different things. "Six months."
Zane turns away, eyes settling back on the barren landscape outside the medbay window. "Felt longer."
Zane is sitting in a white room. Ty stands outside for a long time, staring at him through the one-way glass. Zane doesn't move, doesn't flinch, barely even blinks. He's wearing an orange prison jumpsuit with the badge number 2115ZPT stitched into the breast. Ty can hardly believe Timewise caught him. The fact that Anne Gallagher, of all people, managed to bring him in doesn't seem fair.
The agency has given him a haircut, a severe one that leaves him nearly bald. He's dropped weight since the last time Ty's seen him and at least part of that is from lost muscle. There's a bruised, sunken look to his cheeks that has never been this pronounced.
Ty recognizes the wire band around Zane's wrist as a new-age handcuff. It's equipped with a pulse that will immobilize the body in instances of escape attempts.
Zane has not tried to escape.
Ty takes a deep breath and presses his hand against the door. It slides open. He walks into the white light of the interrogation room and pulls the chair across from Zane back from the table. It screeches as he drags it across the floor, the sound impossibly loud in the still air. Ty sits down, crossing his arms over his chest, determined not to be the one to speak first.
Zane stares at him with the hollow, dead eyes of a tikker. Ty's still got the alien's visceral yellow blood coating his shirt, splattered all over his pants. He can smell it now, a sour, acidic scent that burns the inside of his nose.
"Ty," Zane says finally.
"You asked for me," Ty says. "Now I'm here."
Zane nods, looking down to fiddle with his cuff. "You know pastside, these things were metal."
"I remember," Ty says. "I predate you."
A smile spans Zane's face, stretching the skin until he looks like a smirking skull. "Guessing you do."
"The higher-ups want to know why," Ty says. "Me, I'd rather just lock you up and forget about you."
&nb
sp; "You know what Timewise does to the ones who get out of line?" Zane asks. "They take it out. The time travel, I mean. It's a genetic mutation. They slice it right out of the genome. Most people survive it. Well, at least some do."
"Oh, boo hoo," Ty spits out. "You knew what you were getting into when you started. Everyone knows the consequences." He sighs. "Just tell me why you did it, Zane. Tell me whyfore and let me get out."
"What happened to you, Ty?" Zane asks.
The words put Ty on the brink of collapse. The other ones who'd called themselves his friends hadn't noticed Ty's misery, hadn't seen his pain. Zane, whom he'd chased for months, recognizes it on sight.
"What happened to you?" Ty says thickly, "That's the real question. What got you turning?"
Zane pushes his chair back, balancing on two legs, a thoughtful expression on his gaunt face. "Remember that pickup?" he finally asks. "The one where the tikker grabbed me?"
"Acorse," Ty says. "You were six months gone afore anyone sighted you again."
"I was futureside," Zane says. "And I was there a lot longer than six months."
"The future," Ty repeats. "You expect me a believe that. Timewise—"
"—is the present," Zane finishes. "The past is history and the future's yet to be written. Tell me how that's making sense?"
Zane leans forward in his chair, bruised face alive for the first time in recent memory. "Think on it. I ran 'cross you before current Timewise did. That's meaning I existed sometime in the future and you knew exactly where and when I was going to be."
"But if the future's already in existence," Ty says. "Then—"
"What happens by way of free will?" Zane interrupts. "What happens to everything? Can I watch the ending of the earth knowing I can do nothing and nada by ways of stopping it? Time isn't that rigid, Ty. If it were, the universe would have splintered same tick Harrison Wise found out 'bout slipping. Time changes every time we slip into someplace we haven't been before. Little stuff changing, never the huge things, but enough to make some difference somewhere. Who knows what it'll be by the end. And what's more, who wants to know?"
Timewise Page 10