Ty's never seen Zane this animated before, never seen him this passionate, never heard his voice croak with emotion. In that moment, he forgives Zane for the months of hell and the betrayal. Forgives him because whatever happened to Zane woke him up and made him alive in a way he wasn't before.
(Ty envies him that)
"We lose, Ty," Zane says, and the hollow look's back in his eyes. "That's what I saw. The tikkers win and we lose. After I got away from the tikkers, I was on this slip with Val and I see this girl in an alley, tears falling because she's got a gun on her. I figure, world can't be worse off if she lives. So I stun the guy. Girl gets away, lives. And I get on thinking again and I realize you can't change the big picture, but the little one you can. And if you can keep tweaking at the little picture, it'll add up, you know? Tacking on and on until maybe the big stuff starts to twist too."
It's not insanity Ty sees in Zane Tucker's eyes, but it's something close. Like a fire burning inside him that can't be put out. Seeing it makes Ty feel tired, empty somehow. He doesn't have anything left inside him. "Why are you telling me this, Zane?"
Zane shrugs. "Because you're my friend, maybe?" He shakes his head. "Nah, that's about the final thing you want to hear. Try this one — acause I knew your dad."
"You what?"
"Never told you that one, did I?" Zane asks. "Before my time, but I crossed lines with him once or twice. Nice guy, John Smith was."
"My dad's name was Garrett Smith," Ty croaks.
"Nah, that was a cover," Zane says. "See, guy was arrested suspecting identity fraud at least four times I know of. Name like John Smith sounds like an alias. Started going by Garrett then. Stuck somehow. Only folks who knew he was John were back at Timewise. Got left pastside after a pickup. Figured me he was gone. Lane up." He shrugs. "Guess it turned out right by him."
"He died," Ty says. The tightness in his throat makes it hard to speak. Tucker had to be lying. Looking for a weakness that would make him trusted. (or worse, he might be telling the truth) "Robbery. I was three. I barely remember him."
"Skorry," Zane says. "Skorry about everything. But Ty, you've got to know, I'm not the bad guy. I'm not the enemy."
Ty swallows. Glances back to the one-way glass only to see his reflection and Zane in his orange prison jumper. There are higher-ups watching no doubt. Ty doesn't care. He can't do this anymore.
"I don't care what your reasons are," Ty says. "You're still going down for this. If you're looking my ways for helping, that's something I won't give."
"Never expected any," Zane says, nodding slowly. His eyes don't leave Ty.
Ty has to turn away from his gaze. "Goodbye, Zane," he says, stands up and leaves his former partner alone in the white room.
Outside the door, Annie Gallagher greets him. "Ty," she says. "I just wanted a—"
"He's a madman," Ty says, lie springing to his lips with surprising ease. "Don't trust a word out of his mouth. Futureside? How shitful is that getting?"
"And what by ways of your dad?" Annie says, raising an eyebrow.
"None of your business," Ty snaps. "None of his either, but definitely none of yours."
"Ty," she says again.
"I don't want to talk on it," Ty says. "I just want to go to my room and sleep."
Ty wakes up in a daze. The lights are out and he has no idea where he is. He tries to move his arm only to find it encased in a thick white cast. As his eyes start to adjust to the darkness, he starts to figure it out. The memories filter back to him slowly, flashes at first and then the whole picture coming together like a jigsaw puzzle. He's seconds away from screaming.
Then he sees where he is. He's not in the battle anymore. He's in the medbay, nestled into the scratchy hospital sheets. That means he's made it. He dove into one of the never-ending one-day battles and kept breathing.
He doesn't know many people in Timewise who can say that.
Hesitantly, he pulls off the white sheet and eases from the bed. Save his arm, everything appears to be in working order. The room is in shadows. All four dozen hospital beds are occupied. Suddenly Ty just wants to get the hell out of there, back to his own room where he can curl up next to memories of home and forget.
In his haste to leave, he trips over the end of his bed, stumbling across the median into another patient's space. To Ty's horror, the guy sits straight up in his bed. In the darkness, all Ty can see are the whites of his eyes, gleaming with an ethereal light of their own.
"Where is it?" the guy mutters. "I can't find it. I've lost it."
"I'm sorry," Ty says. "You lost what?"
"It's gone now," the guy rambles. "I had it and now it's gone. Don't know what happened. Can you fix it? Can you fix me?"
He reaches for Ty's arm, and Ty staggers backward to avoid the contact. "Skorry," he mutters. "Skorry. Just... ssorry. I don't know what you're missing."
Behind him, someone grabs both Ty's shoulders. He yelps in surprise as he turns around, automatically reaching for the switchblade in his jacket that is not there. Jones Longwood catches his arm before he can take a swing at him. "Easy Ty, easy. Jus' me."
"Jones," Ty says, breathing heavily. "Crissakes, don't sneak in on me like that. Hellside you doing creeping around the medbay?"
"Came to see you," Jones explains. "Such a suspicion, me seeing a friend?"
"Couldn't have done it in the light?" Ty mumbles.
Jones shrugs. "Looking to surprise you."
"You're a sick sadistic son of a bitch, you know that, Longwood?"
Jones grins at him and for a moment all Ty can see is white teeth standing out in the darkness like the Cheshire cat's smile. From the bed, the patient mutters. "Something missing. Something gone. I've lost it, got to find it."
Looking over his shoulder, Jones examines the patient with distaste. "Guessing he's one with the Procedure. Missing something. Something loose in his head. Lucky if you look at it that ways. Only about half make it out living. Maybe one in ten make it out the same as they came in."
"What he do a deserve that?" Ty asks.
(what's wrong with him?)
"Level one timeline infraction," Jones says. "Not the kind of guy a be trusted with time travel elsemore so they cut it out. Lop it straight outta the genome. The Procedure."
"Can you help me find it?" the guy rambles. "Can you fix me?"
A chill runs down Ty's spine and he turns to grab Jones's shoulder. "Let's go. Hate me a hospital."
They leave the medbay together, padding through the sleeping patients and taking care not to make noise. The man's mumblings still float over to them on the soft, still air. "I can't find it. I can't find it."
Garrett Smith likes to pull up a chair to his son's crib and tell him stories when Tyler is a baby. Fantastic tales about aliens and time travel and places in the future with things that are almost unimaginable.
On some of his darker nights, Garrett strokes the feather-soft hair from Tyler's forehead and tells him secrets, one after the other in a hushed voice while his wife softly snores the night away in the next room.
"Not really called Garrett, you know," he says in quiet tones as the moon splashes a thin, milky light through the blinds and onto the carpet. "Used to be John. Yeah, John Smith."
Tyler gives him a toothless smile, reaches out and tries to pat his cheek. Garrett lets out a dry laugh, barely audible even in the still night air.
"Practically sounds like an alias, don't it?" Garrett says. "Took me in three different times for ident fraud because of it. Garrett was easier. Stuck, that did. Always seemed to when you didn't like it. Afore long everyone knew me as Garrett and never saw fit to change it back. Your mom still thinks that's the real me. Doesn't know about the forged birth certificate or the old Timewise ident I've got in the back of our dresser. Our little secret, yeah, Ty?"
He tells the story more and more the older Ty gets because he knows his time is starting to run thin.
"Didn't mean for it to happen," he slurs one night, voice th
ick with sleep even as his son slumbers on – unaware of anything, much less his father's anguish. "I mean you go on an op and you don't expect to get left behind. You expect to do your job and get out, but I was late getting back and they thought I was dead. Didn't check the hospitals afore they left. Didn't have much reason. Tikkers don't usually leave survivors. Just got lucky."
He leans in closer, arms folded at the edge of the crib as he surveys his young son.
"You know those first six months I spent here, I used to think all the time how I just wanted to get back," Garrett says. "Didn't get the chance for nearing five years. When Spense showed up, I didn't want it anymore. I just wanted my normal life with your mom and Erica. People change, you know. People change and you don't always have the chance to keep up with the present. Thing about it is, Timewise always catches up. No matter how long you're gone, Timewise is always going to catch up. After all, they've got practically eternity."
Something is different one night when Garrett comes into Tyler's room. His son is a toddler now, and he's squirming in the grips of a nightmare. Garrett is barefoot, wearing pajama pants adorned with a Bugs Bunny print and a dark gray T-shirt with a pink bleach stain on the left sleeve. He is shivering, goose bumps raised on his arms. He runs a hand down Tyler's cheek only to find it cool to the touch despite the night's relative warmth. Garret gets a blanket from the dresser and covers his sleeping son. Tyler squirms, rolls over and slips his thumb into his mouth. His breathing, light and soft, is the only sound in the still air.
"You're like me," Garrett says quietly. An air of certainty colors his voice along with a smidge of disappointment. "You can feel it too. Things are changing."
Garrett lets out a heavy breath, and he thinks he can see it hanging there in the dark, like a puff of smoke from a cigarette. "I'm sorry, Tyler. If you're really like me, I'm sorry. I never wanted this for you."
Those are the last words Garrett ever says to his son, the last words he ever says to anyone.
He leaves Tyler's room earlier than he does most nights and goes downstairs to grab a midnight snack. Someone is waiting for him in the kitchen and somehow Garrett is not surprised. He's been expecting this, after all. He still believes time wants to be linear, something he learned at the Academy.
Before the bullet slices through his head, he can't help but think maybe this is just the universe righting itself, maybe this is his punishment for leaving Timewise, for abandoning the war and his duties. Even though his decision is about to cost him his life, he thinks it was worth it. That this little life he's made for himself, tucked away in a discreet corner of the past, was worth the risk of paradoxes, tikkers and anything else the universe could throw his way.
And then he doesn't think anything any more.
When Ty hears about Spense electing to reopen the battle of May 18, 2013, he does something he never expected to do: he volunteers.
"I already have a cover," he tells Spense. "I've been there before. Crissakes, I was at their graduation rehearsal. Let me go a day early. Two. I can keep an eye out for more tikker activity. I can keep the days afore clean at least."
Spense concedes, even compliments Ty on his work ethic. And that's how Ty finds himself sitting at another graduation rehearsal in the Lewis Baker Secondary School gym waiting for Ivy to appear.
Ivy Lane, his best friend, who will die in two days.
And I get on thinking again, Zane's words whisper in his head, and I realize you can't change the big picture, but the little one you can.
A spark struck when Ty was in that interrogation room, a tiny flicker in the hollow din that is Ty's soul. Ivy is going to die in two days.
The more Ty thinks about it, the less he thinks he can stand to watch.
"If it isn't Timothy Langerhanz," a voice says, as someone collapses into the seat next to him.
He turns around, a smile, big and real and genuine, involuntarily sweeping over his features. "Ivy Lane," he says.
Ivy is wearing a red T-shirt and pair of black jeans. Her hair is standing on edge. Through glasses with a thick black frame, she stares at him in accusation. "I'm waiting."
"For what?" Ty asks, genuinely baffled.
"For what," Ivy spits, eyes wide. "Let's count it out, shall we? One, we've got the mysterious Tim Langerhanz — if that's even your name — who shows up at rehearsal pretending he's always been at Lewis Baker. See, he says he's working undercover, but he looks my age so I figure he's lying. Except I can't find him in a single yearbook as far back as I have. Two, said mysterious Mr. Langerhanz claims to be part a shadowy group called Timewise which, according to Google, is a brand of watch and not a government agency. He's got a gun that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been invented. To top it all off, he's hunting some alien blue thing which shouldn't exist." She pauses, catches her breath and says, "I miss anything, Timothy?"
"Nope," Ty says. "Not a thing."
"You going to tell me why you're undercover?"
"Nah." He leans back in his chair, positively beaming at her.
She shakes her head in annoyance. "You're really not going to explain?"
"Nope," Ty repeats, his grin stretching. "Nada and nothing."
She laughs despite herself, and Ty follows suit. It's strange, he thinks. It's been so long since he laughed, so long since he kicked back and just enjoyed being Tyler Smith. He'd almost forgotten what it was like.
(almost forgotten what he is like)
"So give me the scoop," he says finally. "People still say scoop at this school, right? Who was prom queen? Which superlative went where? How's the football team?"
Ivy's laughing again, so hard her face is turning red and her chest is heaving. One lock of her hair falls into her into her face instead of standing on edge like the rest of it. Ty itches to brush it into place. Ivy's eyes shine out from behind her glasses. Ty's smile is so wide it hurts.
She finally composes herself. Her cheeks are still wet from tears. "You looking for help with your cover story?" she asks.
"Something like that," Ty says.
Ivy wrinkles her nose and gives him a funny look. "Football team is terrible, I mean really, really terrible. First game of the season, some players got caught at a party with underage drinking and the coach booted the lot of them. The junior-varsity kids started the rest of the season. A girl named Katelyn Radford got voted prom queen as a joke more than anything: sweet kid, but definitely not a looker. Two of my best friends, Bryce Benson and Sydney King, got voted cutest couple which is funny considering they weren't a couple at the time and did nothing but insult each other. Strange thing was Bryce asked her to prom a day later and they've been going steady ever since. The principal got pulled over for a DUI a few weeks ago which is just a scream considering she's heading this huge alcohol-abuse seminar in about a week and. . ."
She keeps talking straight through the morning's inspirational speaker, the student body president's stammering practice speech and the instructions they'd already heard before. Ty sits back and listens, pretending this is what he does every day. That he sits in the comfortable presence of Ivy and gossips about anything and everything. Pretends he'd never been taken to Timewise, never met Zane, never heard of a tikker.
Pretends he doesn't know Ivy Lane will die in two days and become world famous as first human slain by a tikker, the first one lane up.
(graduation ticks closer)
Ty makes it through the tikker block and into battle even though Zane doesn't. He's slipped a little off target. Getting the time right is the easy part; the place is more of a challenge. He's always been shit with coordinates.
Still it's not hard to find the battle. It's 2099. Ninety-odd years from his native time and people still act the same way in a crisis. Slang changes, clothes change, hair changes but human nature stays the same. He clutches the stunner to his chest, trying to shake the numbness from his fingers and failing.
Screams sound in the distance. Civilians flee the scene, eyes wild with panic. Ty paus
es. He doesn't have to jump into the meat grinder of a battle that has been going on for one hundred years and one day all at once.
He can run, Ty thinks suddenly. Steal a bicycle, find a basketball court and play pickup until his body aches. He can slip back to his time, the right time, and curl up in his own bed or scare the hell out of Ivy. He doesn't have to stay here and be one of the hundreds who will die today.
(he is only sixteen years old and that is far too young to die)
He moves toward the battle all the same. The chaos is coming from a stadium. The battle is at a high school. It's the day of a homecoming football game, if Ty remembers right. Hundreds of students, natives of the time, try to push their way out of the stadium, seeking safety.
They students have always been here and will always be here – stuck in this spot, this day, this battle forever.
He starts shoving his way through the panicked masses, heartbeat pulsing in his throat. Though the day is warm, his fingertips are numb, freezing.
"What are you doing?" Someone screams at him. "Are you off? You knowing what's in there?"
"It's all right," he says, flashing his badge. "I'm called Ty Smith. I'm from Timewise. Needing you to stay calm!"
That doesn't work, not even close. The entrance to the stadium is too small for everyone to get through at once. Too many people jammed at the gate in not enough space and the fences too high for most to climb. Ty squeezes his way through the throng of people, for once thankful for his slight stature. If he thought it was chaos outside, inside is even worse. He glances around. Twenty tikkers on his first count, blue lightning flickering from spindly fingertips.
He counts four bodies, but there's no saying how many the scrubbers have wiped from this day. He draws his stunner. It's impossible to shoot to kill. He needs to fire the stunner and then slit blue alien throats.
It's low-tech warfare at its absolute worst, and Ty tries not to choke on the scent of sizzling flesh as he moves into the battle.
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