by Daniel Price
Theo blinked at her, dumbfounded. “How did you expect him to take that?”
“Exactly the way he took it.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me if it’s true?”
“I wouldn’t trust your answer.”
“Then why would you trust my ‘why’?”
The 3 ball stopped just shy of a side pocket. As Red Ioni began her turn, White Ioni leaned on her cue stick and cast a jaded look at Theo.
“Let me ask you something. Last year, when you and your friends first got to New York, you guys had a really shitty day. The Gothams, the Deps, the Pelletiers, Evan Rander, they all converged on you in the same office building. You remember that?”
Theo narrowed his eyes. “Of course I do. What about it?”
“Four of you escaped through an old steam tunnel. Hannah and Amanda got left behind. Zack didn’t want to leave without them, but you made him. You insisted on it.”
“I had no choice.”
“You knew damn well that the sisters were suffering.”
“We had to go.”
“Why?”
“It was the only way to save them,” Theo said. “I knew they’d die if we didn’t get to Peter.”
“Zack didn’t see it that way.”
“Zack didn’t see the strings.”
Theo stopped in his tracks. He looked to Ioni in horror. “Wait a second. You can’t possibly . . .”
She crossed her arms with a vindictive sneer. “Now you’re getting it.”
“You’re drawing a parallel?”
“I’m explaining the ‘why.’”
Theo plopped down on a couch, stammering. “You sent Rebel to kill us in order to save us? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“She’s telling you what you already know,” said Red Ioni. “The future’s a tricky business. It’s never a straight line. It’s always—”
She knocked the cue ball to the far side of the table. It cut a triangular path around a tight cluster of solids, then deftly sank the 10.
“—bank shots.”
Theo stared at Ioni in disbelief. She jerked a lazy shrug. “Sometimes you have to make things worse to make them better. You know this. You’re not new to the game.”
“The game.”
Ioni frowned. “Figuratively speaking.”
“No, no.” Theo leapt to his feet and approached the table. His voice dripped with venom. “A game. That’s perfect. Now I really understand.”
“Look—”
“Since you’re such a big fan of visual aids, let me show you something.”
He picked up the 6 ball and chucked it over his shoulder. “That was Zack’s brother, the one Rebel killed.”
He moved down the table and tossed five more balls. “Those were the rest of Heath and Jonathan’s friends. All dead now, thanks to you.”
The Ionis sighed in unison. “Theo . . .”
He swept the remaining billiards to the floor. “That was Ivy Sunder and every other Gotham who got killed in your war.”
“Theo!”
He pointed at Naomi. “That was a child who died in your game!”
The pool table vanished, along with both Ionis. Theo threw his puzzled gaze around the lobby. “Hello?”
After ten seconds of silence, he waved her off and stretched out on the sofa. Good riddance.
Theo supposed he had all the time in the world to figure out his next move. He certainly wasn’t eager to jump back into that mangled wreck of a body. Maybe if he held on long enough, his friends could get him to the vivery and have the real Mother Olga reverse him back to full health. She’d certainly have her work cut out for her tonight, between David and Carrie and Jonathan and—
“You think I’m doing this for fun?”
Theo sat up and looked around. Ioni had complained right in his ear but he couldn’t see her. She was nothing but a disembodied voice.
“You think I like seeing good people die?”
He once again heard the clip-clop of wooden heels. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.
“I love Rebel. He’s one of my favorite people on this world, and I betrayed him. I set him on a path that cost him everything. You think that makes me feel good?”
The footsteps stopped. A heavy sigh filled the lobby.
“The worst part is that he won’t even live to see the fruits of his sacrifice. He’ll die without knowing why he suffered.”
“Why did he suffer?” Theo asked her. “Why did we have to suffer him?”
“You still don’t see it.”
“See what?”
“Me.”
She appeared out of nothingness and straddled him on the couch, a new Ioni. This one had jet-black hair and a charcoal-colored sundress. Her eyes were slathered in shadowy cosmetics, making her wrath all the more fearsome. This Ioni was clearly in no mood for games.
Theo struggled beneath her, but he couldn’t move. Ioni pressed him down with the weight of an elephant.
“You piss me off, Theo. You’re the strongest augur of your age, but you’re so damn myopic. You think this is all about you and your friends.”
“Then tell me! Tell me what it’s about!”
“Oh, I’ll do better than that. Brace yourself.”
“For what?”
A smile teased the corners of her lips. “A visual aid.”
She arched her back and exploded into a million glowing spores. They swarmed inside Theo, invading him through his mouth and nostrils, his ears, even his pupils. His eyeballs flared like tiny suns. He screamed with affliction as thousands of images flooded his consciousness at once. The sensation was overwhelming, nauseating. He felt like he’d been dropped all over again.
Once the initial shock passed, Theo found himself back on an old, familiar voyage. He was flying forward through time, toward the great white void at the end of all strings. The journey felt the same as it ever did—same sights, same sounds, same sickening dread.
But then the path abruptly curved and Theo found himself in strange territory. He saw new faces mixed in with the old: orphans and Gothams and government agents, a strong-looking clan of dark-skinned timebenders. They were all fighting together on the streets of an abandoned city, against a fast-moving army that Theo could barely see. There was a massive explosion. A Cataclysm.
And then everything changed.
The new world looked almost suspiciously like the old one. No flying traffic, no lumic billboards, no tempic barriers as far as the eye could see. Food lines stretched for city blocks, past decrepit buildings and long-shuttered stores. The country was suffering a new Great Depression, but how did it happen?
Theo watched in fast-forward as the situation improved. The cities looked cleaner. The suburbs looked greener. The land was almost beginning to resemble Altamerica again, yet Theo didn’t see a single face he recognized. There was no one even remotely familiar to him except—
Oh my God.
—one woman. Her skin was wrinkled and her hair was white, but Theo knew those eyes anywhere.
Melissa Masaad was as beautiful as ever. And she was very, very old.
He had no idea how far he’d traveled. He must have shot decades past the four-year mark, miles beyond the apocalypse. Except there had been no apocalypse. The danger was gone, and the strings of time stretched out to infinity. This world had more future than Theo had ever—
“Stop.”
He snapped out of his travels and found himself back in the lobby, back on the couch, still pressed beneath the weight of Ioni. She’d reverted to her bleached blond state, and had become so light that Theo could have pushed her to the floor. Instead he gripped her arms and shook them desperately.
“Bring it back! Bring it back!”
“I can’t.”<
br />
“Please! I need to see more!”
Ioni shook her head softly. “It’s still a fragile string. I can’t show you more without breaking it.”
She pulled a handkerchief out of thin air and dabbed the tears from his eyes. “This is the game I’m playing, Theo. These are the stakes I’m playing for. Billions of people with infinite futures. We’re the only hope they have.”
Theo ran his fingers down the side of her face, awestruck, oblivious to propriety. Ioni smiled patiently as his hands moved down her arms, her ribs, her narrow hips. There was nothing rude about the way he explored her. He touched her like a boy who had just discovered his birth mother.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice a trembling whisper.
“I’m Ioni Anata T’llari Deschane. I have forty-four titles and not a damn one would make sense to you. I’m not from this Earth, but I’ve lived here a long time. This is my home, and I intend to save it.”
She climbed off his lap and joined him on the sofa. They sat shoulder to shoulder, their ethereal legs propped up on an ottoman.
“It hasn’t been easy,” Ioni said. “I’m making a thousand-point bank shot on a very busy table, and there are consequences at every turn. A lot more lives will be ruined before this is over, Theo. A lot more people will die.”
“Why didn’t you just tell us what you were doing?”
“Why didn’t you tell Zack that Evan was torturing Amanda?”
Theo nodded knowingly. “Because he would have gone back for her.”
“And he would have died,” Ioni said. “It’s a lonely road we travel, my dear. We lie to the people we love. We manipulate them. And sometimes, when there’s no other choice, we throw them to the wolves. We do horrible things for the greater good. It doesn’t make it any easier.”
Theo looked at Naomi’s corpse. “But why set us against the Gothams? How does that serve the greater good?”
Ioni waved two swords into the air. One was a broad blade, as thick and rugged as iron. The other was a rapier—sleek and shiny, like silver.
“Human will is a stubborn force,” she explained. “Sometimes dense, often inflexible. I needed your people and Rebel’s people to come together as one, but I knew that words wouldn’t do it. Your alliance would never last on promises and handshakes. You needed something stronger.”
The two blades melted, then merged together, resolidifying into a formidable-looking scimitar.
“You needed fire.”
Theo scowled at her. “You think we’re happily bonded now?”
“Happily? No. But you are bonded. It may not seem like it, but this was your very last fight with the Gothams. They’ll be your allies now till the bitter end.”
She vanquished the scimitar, then folded her hands on her stomach. “The string just got a whole lot stronger tonight.”
Theo studied Hannah from a distance. He could barely imagine the hell she had gone through, all the quick and stressful decisions she’d been forced to make. The Hannah of last year would have never survived this battle. The Hannah of next year wouldn’t have broken a sweat. Like everyone else in the group, she was a blade forged in fire, folded and folded into an increasingly powerful weapon. Maybe that was also by Ioni’s design.
“It’s bullshit,” he muttered at the floor.
“What is?”
“All that talk about me being the messiah.” He looked to Ioni. “It’s been you all along.”
Her hair and dress turned red before his eyes. She straddled Theo and grabbed him by the collar. “I don’t ever want to hear that word from you again. You understand me?”
Theo struggled in her grip. “What are you doing?”
“‘Messiah’ is a stupid term that only stupid people use. Ask me why.”
“Why?”
“Causality,” she said. “Everything we do, everything we say, even the things we think make ripples in time. Just look at all the stuff that happened in the last six minutes. Hannah saved Amanda, Amanda saved Jonathan, Jonathan saved Heath, and Heath saved you. You remove any one of those links and you’d be dead now. So tell me, Theo, who was your messiah tonight? Which one person will you single out for that honor?”
Theo couldn’t form a coherent response. His glimpse of the string had left him thoroughly discombobulated. He couldn’t even chart his many different feelings for Ioni. A part of him still hated her and a part of him had fallen in love.
“We’re all connected,” she told him. “Our friends, our enemies, the people we know and the ones we don’t. It doesn’t matter who we are. We’re all messiahs, or none of us are.”
She let go of Theo and stared at him for what felt like a small eternity. “You’re having quite a night, aren’t you?”
He nodded weakly. “There’s been some stress.”
“Want to do something about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
“Uh . . .”
Ioni scrutinized him for a moment before rolling her eyes. “Christ. I’ve got three men working for me, and none of them want to . . .” She threw her hands up. “Am I really that intimidating?”
“What? No. I just—”
“Fine. We’ll keep it professional.”
She stood up, spun around, and clapped her hands together. By the time she faced Theo again, her dress had become an executive pantsuit. She willed a floating recliner into existence, then dropped it on the other side of the ottoman.
“Guess there’s nothing left to do but talk business.”
“Business?”
Ioni sat down, crossed her legs, and stared at Theo with calm blue eyes.
“The future,” she said. “We need to talk about the future.”
—
Hannah struggled to hold herself together. Her exertions had left her with a blinding headache, while her whole body teetered on the verge of collapse. She could have passed out right here if it wasn’t for the pressing matter of Theo. Her first instinct was to run to the vivery and get one of the night-shift turners. But her powers were as tapped out as the rest of her. She couldn’t move faster than anyone else.
Heath glanced around, then noticed a lime-green phone on the eastern wall of the lobby. The receiver had been painted with a heart in a clock face, the Altamerican symbol for medical reversal.
Hannah watched him nervously as he made a beeline for the phone. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t know how far Heath could be from his creations before they started disappearing. The wolves were the only things keeping Theo alive.
“Heath, wait! What about—”
Theo woke up on the tempis with a howl of pain. Ioni had warned him that his return would be . . . unpleasant. If anything, she’d undersold it. His spine had been shattered in two places, leaving him paralyzed and numb below the neck. Everything above it was concentrated agony. He felt like a severed head on a plate of broken glass.
Hannah reached for him, then pulled her hand back. The last thing they needed was for him to solidify with her fingers inside him.
“Don’t try to move.”
“Hannah, listen to me . . .”
“You took a bad fall but—”
“Hannah, listen!” He closed his eyes and spoke through shallow breaths. “I only have eighty-one seconds before I pass out. The turners are coming, and they’ll heal me just fine. But I’ll forget everything I learned tonight. You have to remember exactly what I tell you now. You need to give me the message when I wake up.”
Hannah wrung her hands in tense dilemma. She had no idea what Theo could have possibly learned during his three-second fall, but who knew how augurs worked? She could already see Heath talking to someone on the emergency phone. Maybe Theo was right. Maybe the turners were coming.
She gathered herself and nodded at
him. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“We have to find our people,” Theo told her. “All of them. The Coppers of Seattle, the Platinums of Tampa, the Irons of Austin. They split into two.”
“What?”
“There are a bunch of us in other countries too,” he said. “The Netherlands, Japan, England, Canada. We have to find out exactly where these people are and get them. Every one of us who lived. Even . . .”
Theo censored himself. He didn’t have the heart to tell Hannah what he learned about Evan Rander, the pivotal role he’d play in events to come.
He could feel himself slipping. He fought to stay lucid. “We’re gonna need every timebender on Earth, no matter who they are or where they come from. There’s no hope for this world unless we all work together.”
Hannah took a skeptical look at Naomi. After a fight like this, she couldn’t imagine any future where the Gothams and her people got along.
“Are you sure about this, Theo? I mean—”
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
He thought of Melissa, so old and so lovely. His eyes welled up just thinking about it.
“It exists, Hannah. I’ve seen it.”
“What?”
“I’ve seen the string.”
His eyelids fluttered. His head rolled to the side. Hannah leaned forward. “Theo?”
A ten-foot portal opened up on the wall. Sean Howell stepped out and ushered in a team of turners in lime-green jackets. Hannah watched in confusion as they hurried up the stairs.
“Wait! Stop! What about . . . ?”
A final figure emerged from the portal, a heavyset woman that Hannah had no trouble recognizing. She hurried into the stairwell and fixed her wide blue eyes on Theo.
“My goodness.”
As Hannah processed the real Mother Olga, she realized what a crude forgery Harold Herrick had made. That Olga had scoffed at her like a bratty teenager. This one carried years of wisdom in her eyes.
Olga kneeled at Theo’s side. Hannah flinched when she reached for his arm. “No, wait! He’s not—”
Shockingly, Olga was able to touch his wrist with no trouble at all. The drop effect must have worn off.