by Daniel Price
“No, David—”
“I’ll bring her to them! They’ll fix her!”
“And then take you both,” Zack said.
“You’ll get us back, just like we got Amanda and Theo back.”
“You think Melissa won’t expect that next time? You think she’ll make it easy?”
“Zack, you have to trust me—”
Theo kicked a file cabinet. “NO! She’s going to die in seconds! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! You’re the only hope she has, Zack! You’re the reviver!”
The cartoonist drank him in through saucer eyes. It had been five days since his last healing attempt, one that had gruesome consequences for a poor young fawn. The thought of trying again on Mia, a much larger creature, seemed as safe as closing her wound with dynamite.
“It won’t work,” he insisted. “It’ll just kill her quicker.”
David nodded darkly at Theo. “He’s right. You didn’t see what happened last time.”
Theo was all too familiar with the risks. He’d stopped at this very place in the God’s Eye to view the alternate outcomes. Zack only managed to save Mia ten percent of the time at best. In nearly all other instances, she ended up a pristine corpse or a desiccated husk. Most horrific of all were the riftings, the times Mia woke up screaming in agony as her distended stomach exploded in a torrent of blood and gases.
Theo had spent long, painful hours analyzing the details, looking for some identifiable factor that separated the wins from the losses. In the end, it all came down to timing. There was a three-second window where Zack succeeded more often than not. It was almost here.
“Zack, I’ve seen it. I’ve watched you bring her back to life. But you got to get ready. You have to do it exactly when I tell you. Please.”
David gripped Zack’s arm. “Let me take her to the agents. It’s her only chance.”
“David, shut up! You’re killing her!”
“You’re killing her! You have no idea what you’re doing!”
Zack tuned out his friends, his addled gaze drifting around the cubicle. He was stunned to find a recent issue of Wonders with his own image on the cover, the famous photo of his plummet from a hotel balcony. Once again he saw his face contorted in purple agony as Amanda’s great tempic hand squeezed him from above. In cropped context, it looked like God Himself had reached down to smite him. Now the bastard’s cruel hand was coming for Mia.
No, thought the cartoonist. You will not.
“David, get back.”
“Wait. Listen to me—”
“Get back!”
Theo pulled David to his feet. Zack lay Mia flat on the carpet, then joined the others at the cubicle entry. The augur fixed his stare on the wall clock, his finger raised tensely.
“Wait.”
Suddenly Mia wheezed a loud and broken gasp. Her eyes fluttered to a close.
“What was that?” Zack asked.
“Her last breath,” Theo replied. “Go.”
Zack clenched his fists and squinted in nervous concentration. Mia’s limp body shuddered. Her skin lit up with a gauzy incandescence. Zack gritted his teeth, struggling to hold the temporis that bucked and swerved like a rickety spotlight. He knew that if any part of Mia fell outside the glow, even for a moment, she’d be lost forever.
Four seconds into his battle, the magazine cover penetrated his thoughts, shaking his focus and plaguing him with an overwhelming sense of futility. He shot his rage upward at the malignant forces of the universe—the ones who took his world, then yanked his brother away on a short rubber string. Now they teased him with a flicker of hope for Mia. He could already see the punch line coming.
Suddenly, Amanda’s lovely face bloomed in his thoughts like a sunrise. Her lips curled in a wry and canny smirk.
Oh Zachary, you schmuck. You cynic. You think I wasted time cursing the heavens when you fell from that balcony? Uh-uh. I ran right to the edge and caught you. That’s not God’s hand smiting you in that photo. That’s Him and me saving you.
Warm tears spilled down Zack’s cheeks as his inner Amanda stroked his face.
It’s so easy to believe, after everything we’ve seen, that we live in a cold and senseless universe. But as long as we have a world to live in, as long as we have people to love, we are the lucky ones, Zack. We are the blessed.
Now go catch our little sister. Bring her back to us.
With a last cry of strain, Zack engulfed Mia in a cool blinding flash. David and Theo unshielded their eyes to find Mia motionless on the floor. Her feet were bare and her hair was damp from the shower. Her clean silk blouse was unbuttoned all the way to her navel, revealing a perfectly unblemished sternum.
The men stood as frozen as statues while they waited for her body’s response. They knew this was the crucial moment, the point where Mia would scream or explode or merely die quietly. Or . . .
She sat up with a lurch, gasping with urgent breath. David and Theo flanked her sides.
“Mia!”
She looked around the cubicle with frantic eyes, and then screamed in bewilderment. This Mia was nine hours younger than the one Rebel shot. She’d only just slammed the bathroom door on the sisters in Quinwood. Then suddenly her whole existence screeched like a yanked vinyl record and she felt the vague sense of drowning. Now here she was in some strange corporate office that looked like it had been through World War II. Zack and David were both marred with bloody gashes. Theo never looked healthier.
Mia glanced down at her open shirt, then anxiously covered herself. “What’s happening? Where are we?”
David wrapped his arms around her, hugging her with a gushing relief that scared her as much as it thrilled her. She feebly returned the embrace. “You’re bleeding.”
He croaked a soft chuckle. “I’m all right. I’ll be fine.”
“David, what’s going on?”
“We’ll explain it,” Theo promised. “But right now we have to go. David, can you carry her?”
He nodded at Theo, his young brow curled in gentle contrition. “What’s the plan?”
“There’s a hatch in the generator room. It’ll take us underground. We have to move fast.”
“I heard someone screaming upstairs. I think it was—”
“We’ll deal with that.” Theo looked to Zack. The reversal had left him even more shell-shocked than Mia.
“Zack . . .” Theo shook his shoulder. “Zack!”
“Huh?”
“I know that took a lot out of you, but we’re not done yet. This is the hard part.”
Zack’s absent stare turned sharp with worry. “Amanda. Hannah . . .”
“I know.”
“We have to get them.”
“We will. I promise. Come on.”
While Zack regained his footing, Theo avoided David’s suspicious leer. It seemed like weeks ago that Azral warned the augur about the burden of foresight. Our choices often seem questionable to those around us, even cruel. You’ll know this soon enough.
“Soon enough” had come far too soon for Theo. There was no way to prepare his friends, no time to explain why they had to leave Hannah and Amanda behind. Even the best strings turned in bad directions. The sisters had to suffer just a little bit more.
—
The law office shook with loud orchestral drama. Evan had cued Hannah’s iPod to the original Broadway cast recording of Les Misérables, thirty-ninth track. Now he danced around the reception area in his security guard uniform, a puckish smile on his face and a cone-shaped gun in his swinging hand.
He minced his way to the dismal corner where Hannah wept, strutting with operatic pomp as he marched to the final battle song.
“Ohh, would you listen to that drama? I’m all tingly. Aren’t you tingly?”
The actress lay fetal on the floor of her cage, her hands presse
d over her eyes. Evan had drawn three screams from her with his handheld jolter, a weapon legally restricted to riot police. Though its static electric charge could clear a small crowd without causing injury, the blast was far less gentle to those who couldn’t flee. Every inch of Hannah’s skin throbbed with hot needle stings.
Evan paused the iPod, then heaved a bleak sigh.
“Tragic. The only surviving music from our world and it’s all showtunes and crap pop. Typical Hannah. Bouncy, flouncy, mispronouncy. It kills me to think of all the great minds who died while you just keep on jiggling.”
She pulled her hands away, only to flinch at his sickening leer. It bore through her clothes and skin, making her feel worse than naked, worse than the dumb animal he’d trapped so easily.
“Bet you’re itching to know how I got my hands on your little pink jukebox.”
“Go to hell,” she croaked.
“Yeah, that’s right. Azral gave it to me. He knows I’m a sucker for old-world gewgaws.”
“Why?”
“Hey, I have a sentimental side.”
“Why would he give you a gift?”
“Oh.” Evan’s grin deflated. “I guess he has a sentimental side.”
His last encounter with Azral and Esis had been a tense, mystifying affair. He knew they were mad about his hotel prank, the spiked mimosa cocktails that triggered a near-fatal brawl between Amanda and Hannah. And yet instead of venting their ire, the pair took Evan on a portal jaunt to Amsterdam, treating him to a sumptuous lunch at a five-star floating restaurant.
At dessert, Azral presented Evan with a book bag full of treasures rescued from Terra Vista—Zack’s original sketchbook, Theo’s Oakland A’s cap, Hannah’s iPod and Entertainment Weekly. The unprecedented bounty had left Evan speechless. After fifty-four lifetimes, he still couldn’t figure out the Pelletiers. They operated with the convoluted madness of a Rube Goldberg machine, shaping all their actions on complex calculations and byzantine prophecies.
Once they returned to Indiana, Azral acted more in line with expectations. He’d gripped Evan’s arm, chilling him to the bone with his harsh blue stare.
“You will not jeopardize Hannah again. Not until she serves or fails her function.”
Esis made it clear, in her own loopy way, that the same applied for Amanda.
As the days passed and his purpose on this world grew muddier, Evan convinced himself that there were still plenty of ways to strike at the sisters without risking their precious bodies. If anything, the challenge made Round 55 a hell of a lot more interesting.
He plucked his handtop from the reception desk. An empty view of the hallway filled the tiny screen. Christ, sister. Hop to it. We’re on a clock here.
“You know, it wasn’t easy bringing your iPod back to life,” he boasted to Hannah. “They have none of the right cables or batteries here. I had to jury-rig a solution. And hey, speaking of Jury . . .”
“Fuck you.”
“Whoa ho ho! The man’s a sore spot already. And just from a driver’s license photo. Good thing you never saw his biceps. You’d be inconsolable.”
Hannah shot him a murderous glare. From the moment Evan showed his cruel and juvenile face, she sensed an odd frustration behind his loathing. He wanted to do so much more to her than he was currently doing. Clearly it wasn’t his conscience holding him back.
“My iPod wasn’t a gift,” she speculated. “It was a bribe. Azral doesn’t want you hurting us.”
Evan narrowed his eyes in pique. The woman could be jarringly sharp when she wanted to be. He scrambled for cover behind a sneering grin.
“Nice thought, Giggles, but Azral didn’t care when I killed Jury. He won’t shed a tear over you. By the way, I have to know. Are you still carrying his license? You can tell me.”
“No.”
“Liar. Come on. I know you’re keeping Jury near your naughty bits. Show me.”
“Would anyone shed a tear if you died, Evan?”
“You would.”
“I’d cry with joy.”
“That counts.” He raised his jolter. “Now are you going to empty your pockets or do I need to make you fork over your pants?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That’s what this is all about.”
“Getting in your pants?” Evan cackled with scorn. “Oh sweet Jesus. The ego on you. If I wanted that, hon, there are easier ways. Spreading your legs is the fastest thing you do.”
“For men like Jury,” she seethed. “Not like you.”
“Amazing how you’re proud of your shallow standards.”
“Is that why you killed him?”
“Don’t play detective, Boopsie. You’re out of your element.”
“You told Zack you used to be part of our group. You and Jury both.”
Evan sighed with ennui. It was always so tedious to watch the Silvers play catch-up.
“In times undone,” he told her. “Days gone bye-bye. Don’t mistake my wistful look for nostalgia. The memories aren’t fond.”
“What did I do to make you so angry?”
He checked the screen of his handtop. All right. Finally.
“The question you should be asking right now . . .”
He pressed a button on his console.
“. . . is what did she do?”
Hannah spun around in her cage, just as her sister collapsed in front of the open door.
“Amanda!”
Forty minutes ago, Evan had stashed a video camera and an electron chaser in the planter outside the law office. The moment Amanda hobbled into range, he remotely activated the weapon’s charge. In an instant, the widow’s world went red with pain and her muscles turned to jelly.
Evan dragged her inside and closed the door behind them. Hannah shook the bars of her cage. “Stop it! Leave her alone!”
“Hush now, darling. Screaming time is over.” He snickered derisively. “I swear, you two are so easy to trap. Just a shame it took Peter’s Cotton Tail so long to hop her way over here. We’re a little behind schedule.”
His synchron watch beeped its noon chime. Evan adjusted the handtop to access his lobby cameras.
“Yup. There it goes.”
Hannah eyed him confusedly. “What are you talking about?”
“The barricade,” he replied, with a savage grin. “The Deps are storming the castle.”
—
At the stroke of noon, the tempic sheath around the building fell to the government’s solic drill. The glass doors shattered at the edge of a metal battering ram.
Rosie Herrera shouted a staccato barrage of orders as she led the charge to the lobby. Her motormouth zeal was fueled half by adrenaline and half by fear that Melissa would try to seize control of the operation. To Rosie’s surprise, the eccentric agent from L.A. followed the crowd in demure silence. Once she reached the first bloodstain, Melissa uttered a single word.
“Shift.”
Eight armored speedsuits lit up with a crosshatch of bright red lines as their wielders jumped to maximum velocity. A temporal voice converter in each helmet allowed the team to communicate with their unshifted brethren, though Melissa had quietly disabled those devices nine minutes ago. The speeding elites were now isolated in their own headset network, Melissa’s to command by default rank protocol. Sorry, Rosie. It’s easier this way.
“Fan out,” she ordered them. “Search every corner. You see a fugitive, shoot them in the gut, even if they raise their hands in surrender. These people are never unarmed. And I assure you they have no intention of coming quietly.”
The men dispersed in streaking blurs. Melissa moved to the elevator bank and studied the two young corpses on the floor. They looked like they’d been gored by rhinos. No sword or lance could have killed them this brutally.
Tempis, she thought, with sinking dread. God help
you if you did this, Amanda. God—
—
—help me.
Amanda lay chest-down on the carpet, her slender frame convulsing with shudders. Her wall-hugging hop down the hallway had been the single most agonizing experience of her life, until Evan’s chaser set every nerve ablaze. Now she was a prisoner of her own fractured body, a tiny creature in a cage of screaming flesh.
She had a moment to register Hannah through a sideways glance before Evan crouched to eclipse her view. He chuckled at her bug-eyed recognition, the long pink fingers that wriggled helplessly like earthworms.
“The tempis you’re trying to call is currently unavailable,” he teased. “Please try again later.”
“P-please . . .”
“Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t cork your weirdhole. That was the cute Asian solic you met downstairs. Her name’s Mercy Lee, but you can call her the Future Mrs.—”
“Leave her alone!”
“—Trillinger.” He spun around to glare at Hannah. “Don’t step on my lines.”
“She never did anything to you!”
“BAAAP! Incorrect.” Evan squinted venomously at Amanda. “She’s done plenty.”
Though Amanda didn’t know it, she and Evan carried centuries of animosity between them, dating back to his first days on this world. Even when he’d tried to be a good little Silver, the sharp-faced bitch never trusted him for a moment, never liked the way he looked at her sister. He, in turn, hated the gooey hold she took on his one true friend. She ruined Zack every single time.
As a full-fledged adversary, Amanda was even worse. Just months ago in his recollection, on a cold and rainy night near the end of his fifty-fourth lifetime, the widow came looking for blood in the wake of Hannah’s murder. She took Evan by surprise on a Boston rooftop, swooping down from the sky on her mighty wings of aeris. Before he knew what was happening, Amanda’s cold tempic sword burst through his chest. One inch to the left and he would have died instantly.
Instead, Evan spent sixty-two of the longest seconds of his life on the wet concrete, sobbing and pissing and begging for mercy while Amanda looked down at the wretched creature she’d made of him. Though her disgusted pity allowed him enough time to concentrate on a rewind escape, the phantom pain followed him for weeks. The memory still tortured him at night.