by Pintip Dunn
51
I lie on the bed, my head propped on some pillows. There are white sheets all around me, and a white teddy bear with a red bow sits on the windowsill.
I fidget, turning left and then right. Looking at the closed blinds and the bear. Drumming my feet against the mattress. Clearly bored to death.
I don’t know how right I’m about to be.
The other me, the one who’s sixteen and perched in the air shaft, shudders. “I…I can’t see this,” I whisper to Tanner. “I’ve relived this moment hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my memory. I don’t know if I can live through it again in real life.”
He wraps his hand around my wrist. I don’t know if he’s restraining or supporting me. Either works. Pain snakes up my arms, and I look into his deep, bottomless eyes, searing even in the dim light.
“One second at a time,” he says. “All you have to do is exist, from one second to the next.”
His next words are unspoken, but I can read them clearly in the creases of his forehead. If I can survive six months of torture, then you can get through this.
I only have time to nod, and then the door opens. Callie comes into the room.
I freeze. It’s here. The moment that changed all of our lives.
Every rational thought flees, and all of a sudden, I’m struggling, pushing, shoving. Doing everything possible to wrench out of Tanner’s grasp.
“Think of Remi,” he growls in my ear.
I know these words should mean something. I know this name belongs to someone important to me. But right now, the words are nothing but noise. The only thing I want is to get into that room. To stop my sister from what she’s about to do.
I struggle harder. He winds his arms around my torso and clamps his legs around my knees, locking me in place. My pants hike up, and my leg scrapes against a seam in the metal shaft. His hands clasp around my waist, his grip digging into my skin. I fling my head back and arch my spine, but it’s no use. I can’t get free.
A burst of laughter pierces my consciousness. Callie’s laugh. It is high-pitched and hysterical. And shuts off an instant after it begins.
“Callie! You came!” I hear her voice. My voice, but so young, so strange. Like the voice you hear on a holo-mail. The voice that could never be you—but is.
“Of course I came,” my sister says.
Tanner loosens his hold on me, and I look through the vent to see Callie pick up little Jessa’s hand.
I want to nail my eyelids closed. Anything not to see this scene from a new perspective. Anything not to have another angle to my nightmare.
But I’m as helpless to look away as I was to stop my sister ten years ago.
“How are they treating you?” Callie continues.
“The food is gross,” the younger me says. “And they never let me play outside.”
“When you leave, you can play as much as you’d like.” Her voice cracks, and so does my heart. “I love you, Jessa. You know that, don’t you?”
Tears geyser through my body, filling every space, every cavity with hot, stinging liquid. Please, Callie. Don’t do this. It’s been so hard without you. We’ll find another way. Just don’t leave me. Please.
“Forgive me,” Callie whispers. Her arm whips through the air, and she plunges the needle into her chest.
A hole rips in my own soul, and I open my mouth to scream long and loud and lost.
Before I can make any noise, Tanner’s hand slaps over my mouth, turning me to face him. I resume my struggle. I don’t want this. I need to see what’s happening below. Need to live the worst moment of my life all over again. But he presses his forehead against mine and his eyes swallow my despair.
The door clatters open. I hear Logan’s voice. “No, Callie. Don’t do this. Don’t—”
Tanner’s eyes pierce into mine. This is the past, they tell me. We are here now. You will survive today because you survived it yesterday.
“What have you done?” Logan pleads. “Oh dear Fates, what have you done?”
The tears spring from my soul, spilling onto my cheeks, dripping onto Tanner’s face.
Callie’s response comes more from my memory than from anything I actually hear. “This is the only way,” she says. “The only way to save Jessa. The only way to save the future.”
Those were the last words I heard her say as a child.
Fates help me, they will not be the last words I hear now.
Tanner eases back, and I look into the room, my vision blurry with sorrow.
Below, Logan cries like somebody reached into his chest and ripped out his soul. The little girl who is me is hysterical, ripping tubes out of her arm and flinging away the bedsheets. “What happened? Get up, Callie. Get up.”
Logan lays Callie’s body on the floor and places a kiss softly, reverently on her lips. He straightens, tears streaming down his face.
“Jessa.” He catches my younger self as I claw off the last tube, lifting me up before I can reach Callie’s body. “Do you remember me? I’m a friend. Your sister’s friend.”
“Of course.” My younger self calms momentarily. I remember those arms. I remember how safe they made me feel. “You’re the boy from the park. We made roses out of leaves together.”
Little Jessa flails, trying to get down. Logan continues to hold me, as if he knows that if I touch my sister, I’d never let go again.
“Callie needs to rest,” he says hoarsely. “And we need to get out of here. Before they come back.”
“Who?” Little Jessa asks.
“The bad people. You want to get away from the bad people, right?”
“Yeah. They locked me in a nightmare cage. And they wouldn’t stop, even when I begged them.”
“We’re leaving,” he says. “They’re never going to hurt you again.”
“What about Callie?”
“Callie can’t come with us right now.” His face crumples for half a second. Then, as I watch from above, he puts his mask back into place, feature by feature.
My six-year-old self doesn’t notice. But I do.
“This is what Callie wanted,” he continues. “She wanted those bad people never to hurt you again. Can you do this for her?”
Little Jessa nods. In three large strides, Logan crosses the room and wrenches open the laundry chute. He deposits my younger self inside and then climbs in himself. The flap bangs shut. And then they’re gone.
Leaving Callie’s body lying inert on the ground.
52
We have less than a minute to act.
“Come on,” I say to Tanner, the sadness gone, the adrenaline kicking in. “We have to hurry.”
Moving quickly, the steps familiar from my multiple lab break-ins, I remove the vent and stow it in the air shaft. Next, I lower myself feet first through the opening, dangle for a moment from the ceiling, and then drop onto the floor.
Unlike the labs, this room isn’t armed with motion sensors. If it were, Callie and Logan would’ve set them off long ago. Tanner drops beside me, and we go to Callie’s body. Without missing a beat, he takes the antidote from his pocket, finds a vein in her wrist, and injects the syringe.
Or, at least, he tries to. Callie jerks at the last second, and the red formula ends up all over the tile, mixing with the antidote she smashed on the floor.
My heart stops. “What happened? How did she move?”
“The formula must still be working through her system,” he says shakily. “It’s a good thing we brought the second needle.”
I shudder. We came so close to leaving behind that second needle. So close to failing our mission. So close to not reviving my sister.
He swallows hard and holds out his hand. “The syringe?”
“Yes, of course.” I fumble in my pocket and give him the needle.
He takes a deep breath. And injects my sister once again.
This time, the syringe goes in. This time, Callie inhales sharply, her entire upper body rising off the ground. Her eyes flutter
open halfway. They stare at me, unfocused, and begin to close again.
I slide my arms gently under her torso and pull her onto my lap. “Callie. It’s me, Jessa. I need you to listen to me. I have something very important to say.”
A puff of air escapes her mouth, and her eyes open all the way. “Jessa,” she breathes. “My twin. My half. My soul.”
The tears rise in my throat. I want to sob and rage. I want to shake her, to throttle time. She changed her future, all right, but it shouldn’t have been like this. I should be lying there, not her.
Never her.
I take a shuddering breath and force the emotion back down. There simply isn’t time.
“Listen to me, Callie. Your life depends on it.” I wait, reviewing the nursery rhyme in my head. The one I skipped rope to during the Fitness Core. The one Olivia posed to me before she got on the stealth copter. The one with which my mother primed Callie this morning.
When my sister’s eyes focus on me, I take a deep breath and say:
“How do you kill the beast?
You take away his food, he feeds off the air
You cut off his head
He grows another one with hair.”
And then, I change it. I change it into something that will resonate with her. Something that will make her zooming mind pause. Something that will yank her back to the present.
“How do you stop the chairwoman?” I enunciate each word, making sure she doesn’t miss a syllable. “You become her friend and change the system from within.”
That’s it. Just a few words different from the original, but I hope it’s enough. It has to be enough.
“Remember that, Callie. Oh, please. Remember that.”
She nods. Her hand twitches, as if she would like to bring it to my face, but she is weak, so weak. It’s a miracle—in the form of a red liquid antidote—that she is awake now.
“I would do this again,” she says. Her voice is so soft that I have to read her lips. “In every life and every world, I would choose to save you. Every single time.”
The tears spill from my eyes. There’s no stopping them now. If not through my eyes, the liquid would escape through any available opening—the pores of my skin, my open mouth. Some way, somehow, these tears are finding their way out.
So this is her Fixed. She doesn’t know the terminology, of course, but this is what she means.
“I love you, Jessa. They’ll never be able to take that away from me.”
I grip her hand. “I love you. So much. I’ll never be able to tell you how much.”
Her eyes close, and carefully, I lay her on the floor. They’ll find her soon enough. When my younger self ripped the tubes from my arms, it would’ve set off an alarm. The medical assistants will be here shortly to check on Little Jessa. They’ll find Callie, and they’ll do what needs to be done to keep her alive. My work, here in the past, is done.
I look around the room, searching for Tanner. It’s time for us to go home.
There’s only one problem. He’s not here. Sometime during my last conversation with my sister, he disappeared.
53
I don’t understand. He was just here. Where could he have gone? Why would he have left me now, of all times?
Unless…this was what he intended the entire time. His words in the air shaft come rushing back. If we get separated, meet me the cabin where the time machine is housed.
Why would we get separated? I asked.
He didn’t answer.
Why? What could he possibly want to do here in the past, without my knowing?
The answer comes to me, and it pitches me forward, slamming my knees hard against the tile. Other than saving Callie, there’s only one possible thing that could interest him about this past.
His younger self.
My heart thunders. My throat dries. My gut alternates between screaming and weeping. This isn’t right. He’s not finding his younger self to say “hello.” He wouldn’t have been so secretive. He’s looking for his younger self in order to do something to him. I have no idea what, but it can’t be good. I need to find him. Now.
I race into the corridor. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know where I’m going. Tanner’s the one with the security clearance, not me. He’s the one who knows his way around the computer systems. He’s my only contact. So what do I do? Who can I get to help?
There’s only one possibility, really. Someone who will help me without asking too many questions. Someone whose approximate location I know.
The six-year-old Olivia.
Tucking my head, I skip down the stairs and walk toward the spot where Tanner crashed into Olivia and sent a plant flying. According to the blueprint I memorized, William’s office isn’t far from here. Hopefully, even though Logan came tearing after Callie, Olivia is still with the FuMA guard in his office, resting after receiving that horrific vision of the future.
I pass our point of interception, but I don’t see any ceramic pieces on the floor. No trail of spilled soil, either. Which means enough time has passed for someone to clean up the mess.
Please, Olivia. I break into a jog. Please still be with William.
I careen around the corner, making a beeline for the first block of glass-walled offices. Oh, thank the Fates. They’re here. I press a hand against my chest, breathing hard. Olivia is sitting in a lounge chair, and a man with russet hair tipped with gold holds out a cup to her, urging her to drink from it.
They both look up, startled, when I burst through the door.
“Callie.” The man I assume is William jerks to his feet, the cup slipping through his fingers. “Is everything okay? Logan was so worried. He seemed to think somebody might get hurt.”
He thinks I’m Callie. Good. I have on a FuMA uniform rather than the silver jumpsuit she was wearing. My wig’s also a slightly different color from hers. He doesn’t notice. Why would he? What’s more likely—that I’m a time traveler from the future or the girl he just saw a few minutes ago?
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” Are our voices similar enough? William doesn’t blink, so they must be. “I just need to talk to Olivia. Privately. Is that okay?”
He picks up the cup and sets it on a tray next to a white candle. “Of course. She may be in shock after receiving that vision of the future. It’ll be good for her to talk to you before we take her back to MK.”
Without another look, the guard ambles out of the room.
But Olivia is not so easily fooled. She tilts her head, her eyes flitting from the too-brown wig to the new set of clothes. “You’re not Callie. You can trick him, but you can’t trick me. You’re the one I see in my future. The one who helps me. I thought it was Callie at first. That’s why I showed her the vision. But it’s not. It’s you.”
I crouch in front of her, so that our eyes are closer to being level. “My name’s Jessa,” I say slowly. “Like your friend Jessa. Exactly like her, except ten years older. I’m from the future.”
She nods. The realization passes through her eyes. The knowledge settles in their depths. She doesn’t freak out. She doesn’t cry or scream. She is the most composed six-year-old I’ve ever met, but maybe that’s because she’s lived decades, maybe even centuries in the future. She bears the weight of human experience on her thin shoulders.
“I need your help,” I say. “I came here with a friend. You know him—or at least you know him as he was in this time. His name is Tanner Callahan, and he lives in these buildings. FuMA is training him to be a scientist.”
“Of course I know Tanner,” she says primly. “But I don’t play with him ’cause he’s a boy.”
“Can you…take me to him?”
“Sure. I know exactly where he is. He spends all his mornings in one place.”
I help her out of the lounge chair and, thank the Fates, she seems steady enough on her feet. We stop by the room next door, the other half of William’s office.
He’s picking helmet contraptions off the floor, fr
om where they must’ve been knocked down. “Are you taking Olivia? I don’t want her going anywhere unless it’s back to MK. You and Logan better get out of here. Especially now that we know what the future holds.” He shakes his head, his face almost translucent next to his red hair. “That vision was damn scary. Jeesh. No wonder the chairwoman wants to keep it under wraps.”
“You have my word I’ll get Olivia back to MK.” I cross to him and take his hand. I don’t know him, but he helped my sister. For that, I’ll always be grateful. “Things are about to get…crazy. You’ve helped us enough. I don’t want to get you in more trouble by telling you anything else.”
He nods, and I know this is nothing new for him. As an Underground sympathizer and a FuMA employee, he’s used to operating on a need-to-know basis.
We leave. Olivia walks next to me sedately. No jumping. No skipping. A completely different girl than the one who ran down these halls earlier.
“Olivia, are you okay?” I ask softly. She might be the most powerful precognitive of our time, but she’s still a little girl. One who just saw a vision of her mother condemning her to death.
“My mother doesn’t love me.”
“I’m sure she does,” I say automatically and then wince. I know no such thing. I don’t know if Dresden is capable of loving anyone, even her own daughter. “I mean, in her own way, she must.” Fike. Am I making things better or worse?
“That vision…” Her voice is so young, but the knowledge in her tone is beyond her years. Fates, it’s beyond my years. “It doesn’t have to be the future, you know. It’s only one of many possible paths. We still have time to change it.”
“I know.” The words are heavy with all the tears I still have left to shed. “When Callie left you, she came to my room and injected the syringe into her own heart. She thought it would save our world from genocide.”
“No. I’ve seen the future. I saw the girl who changes everything. And it’s not Callie. At first, I thought it was, since you two look so much alike. But I was wrong. You’re the one who saves our world.”
My mouth goes dry. “You mean because I came back here to the past? Am I successful? Does Callie wake up ten years from now?”