by Daniel Price
“I said I don’t want any.”
Raising her palms in surrender, Amanda backed away. Soon everyone took turns at the kitchen juve, reversing their food to a piping-hot state. Amanda passed Zack a glass and a whisper.
“There are at least three of us here in bad moods. Please save me before I become the fourth.”
“I can do that.”
The two of them quickly dominated the meal with their boisterous celebration, trading silly quips and toasts between each sip of mimosa.
“To happy fugitives,” said Amanda.
“To well-rested fugitives,” said Zack.
“To tall and skinny atheist fugitives who can be somewhat cute when they’re not obnoxious.”
Zack retracted his glass. “Sorry. Can’t drink to that without correcting you.”
“You’re not cute?”
“I’m not an atheist. I have no idea if God exists or not.”
“Then why do you make fun of the people who do?”
“Because I’m obnoxious,” Zack replied. “That part of the toast was accurate.”
“I see. You’re an obnoxious agnostic. You’re agnoxious.”
“I’m antaganostic.”
Amanda roared with laughter. “How could you think you’re not cute?”
“I never said I wasn’t!”
Though Mia giggled at their goofy banter, the other three Silvers remained grim and humorless. Halfway through Amanda’s second drink, her fingers turned shiny and white. When Mia awkwardly told her that her weirdness was showing, Amanda laughed, shook her hands pink, and then raised a toast to tempis fugitives. The pun launched Zack into bellowing guffaws.
“I’m thinking those drinks are stronger than you realized,” David mused.
Zack waved him off. “We’re not hammered.”
“We’re just having fun,” Amanda insisted, with a pointed glare at Hannah.
It had taken only five minutes of her sister’s excruciating revelry to make Hannah swallow down the three spare mimosas. But instead of joining Zack and Amanda in tipsy exuberance, the actress felt worse than ever. Her skin burned. Her legs bounced uncontrollably. Angry notions exploded in her mind like popcorn.
Once Amanda propped her feet on Zack’s thighs, Hannah stood up fast enough to wobble.
Theo grabbed her. “Whoa. You okay?”
Hannah yanked her arm away. “I’m fine.”
She washed her face in the bathroom, gritting her teeth as a sneering inner voice taunted her. Hey, Hannah Banana, Always Needs-a-Man-a. Funny how you can’t keep them while your sister can’t keep them away. Shame Jury’s not here to balance things out. Oh well. That’s just the way it goes here in Evansville.
She returned to the balcony with forced poise, determined to ignore Theo’s patronizing look of concern and the escalating flirtations between her sister and Zack.
“It’s true!” Amanda insisted. “You have physical contact issues. You don’t like hugging.”
“That is bull-pucky of the highest order. I hug everyone. Even my enemies.”
“Remember that time we hugged in Ramona? You were awkward about it.”
“That’s because we were in an alley. I could feel the hobos judging us.”
“There were no hobos, Zachary. You have issues that need fixing. Stand up.”
“No.”
“Fine. We’ll do it sitting down.”
Amanda planted herself on Zack’s lap, fastening his arms around her slender waist.
“And what is this supposed to accomplish?” he asked.
“Immersion therapy. You need to get over your resistance.”
“Boy, the charity never stops with you.”
She leaned back against him and blew him a frisky whisper. “This isn’t charity, you clueless man. I want more hugs.”
Hannah jumped to her feet, rocking the table. As drinks spilled onto plates and laps, the actress threw an empty glass to the floor. It exploded all around her shoes.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!”
Shocked into sobriety, Amanda climbed off Zack’s lap. She raised her taut fingers.
“Okay, take it easy . . .”
“Do you even see how pathetic you’re being right now? You’ve been a widow for eight weeks! Eight weeks, and this is how you act!”
David held Mia’s arm. “Let’s get the bags ready.”
Mia gave him a shaky nod. They disappeared inside. Amanda fought to stay calm.
“Look, I don’t know what’s really bothering you . . .”
“You think it isn’t upsetting enough to watch you disrespect Derek?”
“You barely even knew him!”
“I know he’d hate to see you give a lap dance to some other guy!”
Zack shook his head in seething pique. “Hannah, you’re way off base and way out of line.”
“Well then let me be the second one to call you clueless. I swear to God, there isn’t a single man in this group who knows a single thing about women.”
“Look, you’re angry at me,” Amanda said. “Don’t take it out on him.”
Hannah laughed bitterly. “Oh, you just love being noble. The great and noble Amanda Given. Oops. Sorry. I meant Amanda Ambridge. Hey, Zack, I hope you’re not intent on having her take your name. She’ll just drop it the minute you die. That’s how noble she is.”
Amanda gritted her teeth. Her eyes filled with tears. “You sad little child . . .”
“Yeah, the child. Your other favorite meme. You just love being better than me.”
“Well, you make it so easy!”
“Oh, go to hell!”
“You go to hell! We did this for you! We took this whole week so you could feel better! Of course you’d do everything in your power to stay miserable! That’s all you know how to do!”
“Shut up!”
Theo reached for her. “Hannah, don’t—”
She turned to him, red-faced. “You do not say a word to me. You do not say a word!”
Amanda eyed the two of them with dark revelation. She burst into a caustic chuckle.
“Oh, I get it now. I see why you’re so pissed.”
“Shut up! You don’t know a thing!”
“And you call me the pathetic one? Amazing. You never learn.”
Theo and Zack both yelled as Hannah hurled a second glass. This one hit Amanda in the face.
—
Mia gathered her bags from her room, her stomach churning with bitter acids. For all she knew, this latest fight would plague them for months. Worse, it could split them up forever. What would happen then? Who’d go with who?
As she adjusted her bedspread, she noticed a rolled-up note. She read it with growing fear, then fled back to the living room.
—
The flute glass cracked in two against Amanda’s forehead, leaving a pair of gashes along her brow. She touched her new wounds, then stared in trembling rage at the blood on her fingers.
Hannah covered her mouth in white-eyed horror. “Oh my God . . .”
Zack made a furious beeline for Hannah. “What the hell’s wrong with you?!”
The cartoonist could suddenly feel every molecule in Hannah’s body. It scared him to think that he could rift her dead with a single thought. Scarier still, a part of him wanted to.
Mia ran to the door. “Zack, stop! The drinks were drugged! You’re all drugged!”
Though her future self hadn’t elaborated, the chemical that affected them was called pergnesticin. It was initially developed as a mood enhancer, as it did a fine job turning good feelings into great ones. Unfortunately, it also had a tendency to turn bad moods into violence. The drug was illegal in the United States but remained wildly popular as contraband. In dermal patch form, it was appropriately known as a leopard spot.
/> Theo could suddenly see the shape of the problem ahead. He knew now that Evan wasn’t content to return a middle-finger gesture at Hannah. He was going to give her the whole hand.
“Hannah, you need to get out of here . . .”
“I’m sorry, Amanda! I didn’t mean to do that!”
The widow’s world fell hot and silent as chemical rage overtook her. There was no sister, nurse, or Christian inside her anymore. There was only the tempis.
The whiteness exploded from her left palm, a spray of solid force that toppled everything in its path. A wooden chair fell while another snapped to pieces. The dining table flipped over, spilling drinks and dishes everywhere. By the time the tempis reached the other end of the balcony, it took form as a six-foot hand. It shoved away the two men who had the unfortunate luck of standing near Hannah. Theo toppled to the right, colliding painfully with the hot tub. Zack flew to the left, flipping over the side of the balcony railing. He caught a loose hold of the edge.
The tempic palm barreled into Hannah, shoving her six feet through the air. Amanda retracted her hand in time to see Hannah crack her head against the far brick wall. She spilled to the floor in a lifeless heap.
David lunged toward the railing, rushing to grab Zack before he lost his grip. Between the blood in her eyes and the many alarms in her head, Amanda processed the simple but devastating notion that the boy wouldn’t make it in time.
Indeed, just inches before David could reach him, Zack’s fingers lost their hold. He dropped from the side of Tower Five.
—
Ten days ago, as he floated over Kansas in a giant teacup, Zack wondered what it would be like to plummet to his death. He debated how much time his mind would give him to process the sad and messy end of his tale.
The answer, he now knew, was “quite a bit.”
For the second time in his life, the cartoonist fell into a state of breathless suspension, an almost supernatural acuity that allowed him to register dozens of details in the span of a blink. He could count the number of balcony railings between him and the ground (eight). He could scan the unforgiving elements of his future impact zone (wood and concrete). He could envision the reactions of his surviving friends and enemies (Oh God, Amanda . . .).
As he passed the fifth-floor balcony, something odd happened. The shift in his momentum was so abrupt and painful that he feared he’d already hit the pavement. A cold, hard pressure immobilized Zack’s body, as if he’d been packed in dense snow. When he opened his eyes, he could see the ground fifty feet below him. It wasn’t getting any closer.
He turned his head and caught his reflection in a patio door. A giant tempic fist had seized him, snatching him from above like the hand of God itself.
She caught me, he thought. Jesus Christ, she caught me.
Zack once again gazed down at the grotto, where dozens of bystanders began to gather in a messy clump. They pointed up at him, gawking and shouting, snapping photos.
His last thought before blacking out was of Peter Pendergen, a man who’d worked so tirelessly to keep the public cynical about chronokinetics. Zack cast him a weary apology for the unwitting countereffort. All the minds they changed today. All the new believers.
TWENTY-THREE
Evan woke up in a sour mood on Saturday, haunted by the memories of his multiple pasts. They leapt at him from his cutting room floor—scenes deleted but not forgotten, words unsaid but not unheard, all the hurtful actions of a woman he’d cherished but now despised. They always hit him worst in the morning.
With a drowsy yawn, he crossed the floor of his hotel suite. He showered and shaved, dressed himself in a sleek charcoal business suit, then tucked his hair beneath a wavy brown wig. Once he applied his putty nose and chin, Evan chuckled at his reflection. He could have passed for Zack’s dapper young brother.
After a hearty breakfast in the grotto café, Evan rented a room on the tenth floor of Tower Five, just a few doors down from his fellow Silvers. He ordered six mimosas from room service and then called the front desk to launch an incoherent complaint about his new accommodations.
Soon a manager knocked on his door. He was bald and barrel-chested, with a strong lantern jaw that unpleasantly reminded Evan of his father. The manager did a double take at Evan’s suit, a nearly exact replica of his own.
“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”
Evan tapped the square brass pin on the man’s blazer. “Lloyd Lundrum. Good name. I like it. Listen, the room’s fine. I’m just hoping to play a gag on some friends down the hall. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to lend me your name tag for an hour.”
The manager’s eyes narrowed to frosty slits. Evan laughed.
“Okay. Wow. You even glare like my dad. I guess there’s no point in raising my offer.”
“No, sir. There’s not. And I don’t appreciate you calling me here under—”
Evan’s skin tingled with tiny bubbles as he reversed his life fifty-eight seconds. He straightened his sleeves, then answered the knock at the door.
“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”
“Well, Lloyd, there’s an ugly red stain on the carpet and frankly, I’m not happy about it.”
Sixty seconds later, the manager lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, a trickling bullet hole between his frozen white eyes.
Evan stashed his silenced .22, then stooped to remove Lloyd’s ID pin. He could only imagine that Luke Rander was shaking his head from the great beyond. His father never understood him in the old world and sure as hell wouldn’t get it now. In Evan’s Etch A Sketch life, nothing mattered. All that was done was inevitably undone. The screen would wipe clean for Round 56, and Lloyd Lundrum would live again to scoff at wealthy pranksters.
Evan whistled a chipper tune as he stirred a vial of crushed pergnesticin into the mimosas. Soon he heard Amanda in his earpiece, placing the room service order. He waited in the hallway until a freckly young porter emerged from the elevator. Fortunately the kid was more flexible than Lloyd, and was happy to relinquish the food cart for a thousand dollars. Evan dawdled in his room for another half hour before wheeling the cart down the hall.
He stashed his hatred behind a genial grin when Amanda greeted him at the door. Evan couldn’t look at her without recalling the trauma from his last life, the cold and rainy night she jammed a tempic sword through his chest. That Amanda had died before Evan could get his revenge. But this one was standing right here, just ripe for the plucking.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. I sincerely apologize for the delay.”
“What happened?”
“We’re short on bellhops today. It’s a madhouse. I’ve been delivering food all morning.”
Amanda looked over the cart. “Are you sure this is our order? Those drinks—”
“I threw in the complimentary mimosas as our way of saying sorry. If you don’t want them—”
“No, that’s fine. My sister loves those.”
Evan smiled. “Well then I hope you and your sister have a wonderful brunch.”
As Amanda processed him with her sharp green gaze, he fought the urge to rewind and start over. But soon she passed him a twenty-dollar tip and then pulled the cart inside. Evan grinned all the way to the elevator until he realized the bitch never once looked at his name tag.
Twelve minutes later, he sat on the balcony of his Tower Five rental, listening to Zack and Amanda’s giddy banter in his earpiece. When Evan first discovered they were staying in the Baronessa Suite, he rewound two days and became its previous occupant. Tiny listening devices were concealed in various parts of the living room, the balcony, and of course Hannah’s bedroom.
The hardest part of Evan’s week was having to once again hear her dulcet moans of pleasure, each one a pinch of salt in a very old wound. Bu
t he knew her fling with Theo never lasted long or ended well. Evan had only seen two men pierce the formidable shell around Hannah’s heart. He’d already killed one of them. The other would crash her life next year, with deliciously tragic consequences.
Evan had been wiping the makeup off the back of his hand, scrubbing his “55” tattoo back into visibility, when Hannah smashed her first flute glass. He launched forward with the binoculars, hoo-hooing and oohing as the sisters traded angry barbs. When the second glass cracked across Amanda’s forehead, Evan squealed with delight. This was a thing of beauty, a moment so perfect that he had to watch it six times.
His smile vanished when Amanda’s tempic hand knocked Zack off the balcony. Evan shot to his feet now, staring in alarm as Zack lost his grip and fell. Screaming, Amanda threw herself against the railing and launched a tempic arm at Zack. She caught him at the fifth floor.
Evan closed his eyes and moaned with hot relief. He didn’t want to reverse such a beautiful chain of events, but he would have done it to save Zack. The cartoonist was the focus of Evan’s next mission. More than that, he was a friend.
—
Amanda’s mind howled with chaos, a fire in a crowded theater. Panicked thoughts trampled each other on the way to her mouth as her body twisted painfully over the railing. Her hands were submerged in an enormous white arm, fifty feet long and as thick as a manhole cover. She could feel Zack’s body in her thoughts, resting limp and unconscious in her titan grip.
“I got him. I got him. Oh my God.”
David pressed up against her backside, holding her in place. “Okay. Good. Good, Amanda. Now you have to bring him back.”
“It’s not working! I can’t control it!”
“Yes you can,” said David. “Concentrate.”
Six weeks ago, Sterling Quint’s physicists had attempted to gauge the limits of Amanda’s tempic talent. Her creations took an increasing amount of willpower to maintain. At sixty seconds, it felt like squeezing a tight fist. At two minutes, it felt like squeezing a tight fist around thumbtacks. Czerny had stopped the endurance test at 148 seconds, when Amanda began to cry and bleed from her nose.