Afterimage

by Naomi Hughes

  I feel the shift coming.

  It’s a river, a crashing torrent of instinct wrapped tight around my chest. It’s a flood, a deluge, a tidal wave, and I curl myself around it as my fingers close on Kyle’s shirt. Home. I am going home, and he is coming with me.

  My knuckles brush his arm. An electric shock jumps between us.

  I’m in the air, falling to my death—

  And then I’m in the water, and my lungs are full of ocean, and I’m choking, drowning, spiraling in the dark. My spine feels cracked and my head goes bright with pain. Quint is gone. Kyle’s fingers aren’t in mine anymore and I don’t know if it’s because the ocean’s current has ripped us apart or because he hit the churning debris a timeline away.

  I flail for the surface, but I don’t know which way is up and all my air is gone.

  Calm people live. It’s what Dad always says in his emergency management classes. So, against all instincts, I go limp—and then slowly start to float. Up is that way.

  I thrash and struggle and break the surface. I choke out salt water and gasp in air. The current has already swept me a quarter mile down the shoreline, but there’s no debris, no wreckage waiting to crash into me. This is a different timeline. I made it.

  Did Kyle?

  I want to call for my brother—but I’ve heard his silence once before, and I can’t bear to hear it again.

  But then: “CAMRYN!”

  I jerk around. Past the tumbling waves and the jagged cliffside, an arm is waving against the stars. He’s alive. I did it. Oh, God, I did it.

  “Kyle!” I scream back. I try to swim toward him, but we’re caught in crosscurrents and every second we spend in the water pulls us farther apart.

  “Are you alright?” he shouts.

  My arms are weak and my vision is blurry and my head is thundering with pain and adrenaline, but I don’t care, because this time I’ve saved him. I’ve saved him, and—he’s here. I can tell him everything, and this time he’ll believe me. He’ll help me.

  I’m not on my own anymore.

  “I’m okay!” I shout back, and for the first time in days, I start to allow myself to believe it.

  “Good, because once you tell me what is happening I am going to kill you!” he calls back, but his voice shudders with relief.

  A wave roars behind me, spinning me sideways and dunking me under. When I surface I can barely hear him anymore. He points up: at the cliff, the lookout point where we jumped from. We’ll meet there. I try to signal that I understand, but another wave pushes me under and I give up.

  I turn and paddle hard, parallel to shore like we were taught in water safety. Not too far ahead a tiny beach juts out from beneath the cliffs. I drag myself up and flop onto my back.

  My wheezing subsides. My heart slows. The pain fades.

  Waves wash ashore and pull away. The ocean breathes. After a count of fifty, I turn my head to find Quint has reappeared, lying at my side. He’s staring up at the sky too, and there’s something small and lost about his gaze. He’s faded again. Not much, but enough that I can tell at a glance, in the middle of the night, that there’s less of him than before.

  His hand is between us. I lay mine atop it. Our fingertips brush, smoke on skin, and I don’t feel a thing—but I want to. His touch should be warm, should be solid, should be electricity and vertigo and that feeling you get at the top of a theme park zip line right before you step out over the empty air. And what does it mean that I want that?

  He turns his head and tries to smile. “We did it,” he says.

  We. We’re a we again.

  “Yeah,” I answer, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “We did.”

  But he only looks away. The ocean washes in at our ankles and silence settles into the sand at our backs. As the minutes tick past, the waning sliver of a moon glows dimly overhead, barely there. Tomorrow it will be invisible.

  “Do you think it’s true, what Matthew said?” Quint asks at last. “That you won’t even remember me?”

  The ocean exhales, water foaming around my heels. I stare at the stars and picture it—my life, as it should be. I would never have been tied to Quint because he would never have existed. I want to think that some small part of me might remember him anyway, that when I saw someone cleaning their glasses I’d feel a twinge or that green eyes would make me think of him, but it’s an empty hope. He’ll be forgotten, completely. And is there any crueler end than that?

  I keep my eyes on the moon. “I don’t want it to be,” I say, and I’ve never meant anything more in my life.

  His chin dips and he sighs, then rolls to his feet. “We’d better get moving,” he says, and starts toward the trail.

  I turn my head and look at him: the boy who’s letting me use up his soul piece by piece to keep it from being used up all at once. The boy who, even if our plan succeeds, will be erased from existence. The boy with no happy ending.

  “Why’d you do it?” I call after him, unable to stop myself. “Why’d you let me jump if you knew it wouldn’t change anything for you in the end?”

  “I told you. I did it for you.”

  “We both know that’s not the whole reason.”

  He stops, sighs again. “Because he was sweating,” he says, his back to me.

  I climb to my feet but don’t start after him yet. “What?”

  “Matthew. It’s maybe seventy degrees tonight, and he was sweating.” He looks at me over his shoulder, eyes weary. “He’s scared too. He’ll do anything to get what he wants, anything to fix the past, but not because it’s the right thing to do. It’s because he’s afraid. He’s so terrified of having to live with his mistakes that he’s willing to screw with the entire universe to reverse them. If it was him in my place, him who couldn’t remember anything, him who was being asked to give up his life to save the world—he’d have told you to keep running, and I know that because it’s what I want to do too. And maybe I’m not brave enough to die like I should, but at least I’m brave enough to not be him.”

  He turns back around and starts up the trail. I watch him go, hardly able to breathe past the weight in my chest. I can’t save Quint—so he’s saving himself, the only way he can.

  I follow him. The trail is steep, littered with beach grass and boulders and a brittle sort of quiet, the kind that shatters when it breaks. So instead of trying to tell him it’ll all work out or that I’d give him a happy ending if I could, I try to focus on planning the next part of our mission.

  The double of Kyle’s phone is still in my pocket. If I show it to him and explain everything, surely he’ll have to help me this time, especially once I can prove we’re in a different timeline. Then he could get us into their system and figure out what and where Matthew’s “old equipment” is. We’ll steal it back, zip to the other timeline, hand it over, and fix everything.

  My lips thin out. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t like how Matthew told us about this other way: like it was a dare, a last resort. But the only other option is one I refuse to consider, and we can’t turn back now anyway.

  Thunder rumbles, low and ominous. Another unseasonable storm is on its way in and overhead the clouds are thickening. In the dim starlight that remains, I can barely make out the figure waiting at the top of the trail, staring out over the city. One hand clutches a phone, salt water dripping from his knuckles. The other is curled into a fist.

  I hesitate. Deep breath. I try to step up to my brother’s side, but he turns around before I can speak. “Go back to the beach,” he orders, and if his voice was granite before, it’s steel now, cold and flat and impenetrable.

  My stomach sinks. Is he even going to give me a chance to explain? “I know you said you were going to kill me,” I reply, struggling to sound breezy, “but if I get a vote as to the method, I’ve already had enough drowning to last a lifetime.”

  He doesn’t move. “Go back,” he says again, and this time the faintest hint of emotion colors the steel. It takes me a moment to identify i
t because it’s a shade I hardly ever hear in Kyle’s voice.

  Fear.

  I narrow my eyes and examine him more closely. His stance is wide, like he’s trying to block the path. His phone is glowing and his hand covers most of the screen, but I can make out pieces of a message between his fingers: APB and Camryn Kingfisher and potential act of terror.

  Quint has moved past us, cresting the top of the trail. He stops. “You need to see this,” he calls, his tone laced with dread.

  My breath stalls and I duck past my brother. Kyle grabs for me but misses. “Camryn,” he says. The word reaches after me. Just that, only my name—but he says it like it’s a warning, a prayer, like it’s the only word he knows.

  I dart to the top of the path and freeze.

  My city is burning.

  Sprawled beneath the cliffs, a wide swath of the suburbs is ablaze. The fire shifts with the growing wind, leaping from house to house at the edge of the destruction, and the smoke billows and coils and sifts through the gathering clouds. In the center of the smoldering rubble is a block that’s almost entirely flattened—not from the fire itself, but from the explosion that started it. The train station.

  That means we made it to the right timeline, then. But something else is wrong. Cold slivers of premonition prickle down my spine and I take a long step sideways, trying to shift my perspective, trying to spot the thing that’s off. It takes me a moment to place it: not something I’m seeing, but something I’m hearing. Or rather, not hearing.

  My city is silent.

  There are no sirens howling to each other from the edges of the fire. No shouting refugees, no honking horns. To the west the stadium is lit up like the dawn, but there’s no cheering, no booming commentary floating in snatches over traffic. To the far east is the Fort Wells airport, and its planes—white smudges from this distance—sit still and cold on their runways. I crane my neck but can’t make out a single running light anywhere in the sky … except for a cluster of military helicopters that are circling off to the north like flies on a carcass, spotlights aimed down at the grid of streets. The faint buzz of their engines cuts clear across to my cliff even though there’s no way I should be able to hear it above the clamor of my city. But that clamor, the buzzing heartbeat I’ve been listening to every day and night since Mom got stationed here three years ago—it’s gone, and there’s nothing left but the silence.

  The slivers of premonition grow and spread like ice crystals in my veins.

  My feet move. I stumble down the path, ignoring Kyle’s shouts. The breeze is acrid and singed like burnt meat at a barbeque. I stifle a gag, pull my shirt over my mouth, and break into a run. The trees end. The buildings begin. The inhale and exhale of the ocean fades, and the silence grows until it’s a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and eyes that glimmer in the dark.

  The first body is a hiker.

  She’s wearing a bright pink windbreaker and polka dotted sweatpants. The dirt around her is scuffed and there’s grass under her fingernails. Lightning flickers, illuminating her face. Her eyes are open. She’s staring at the clouds.

  I check her pulse. Under my fingers, her wrist is cool and her body is rigid. She’s been dead for hours, maybe a day.

  I climb to my feet and run.

  The second body is a security guard. The third is a teenager. The fourth is a homeless man, his little brown dog still tucked beneath his arm.

  I stand in the middle of an intersection. All around me, cars are crashed into light posts, buildings, each other. The bodies inside are beginning to swell. I lean against a building, lungs burning, fingers splayed against the brick, and finally let myself understand:

  My city isn’t silent. My city is dead.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  NEEDLE-THIN RAINDROPS ON MY FACE. Cold fingers on my arms. You have to tell me what happened, my brother is shouting. They think you did this.

  But all I can see are the cars, the bodies, the blood and the bloating, and all I can hear is the horrible thundering silence, and all I can think is:

  Side effects. Instabilities. Catastrophic.

  Kyle shoves his phone at me. APB FOR CAMRYN KINGFISHER, it reads, the screen dripping with rain and salt water. WANTED FOR QUESTIONING INVOLVING THEFT OF CLASSIFIED DATA AND POTENTIAL CITYWIDE ACT OF TERROR. SUSPECTED TO STILL BE IN THE CITY; ALL NEARBY AGENTS TO FORM SEARCH PARTIES. SEARCHERS’ AIRCRAFT WILL BE GIVEN AN EXEMPTION TO THE CURRENT NATIONWIDE NO-FLY ZONE.

  And if Kyle was ever going to believe anything I said, if he was ever going to help me, he won’t now. The agency knows I stole the tablet. They know I lied to them. They think I had something to do with whatever killed the city, and Kyle is afraid they might be right.

  But I know the truth.

  This is what Matthew wanted me to see. This is why he sent me here. Atmospheric anomalies that suffocate cities, he’d said. And this is how he knew. There is no old equipment, no other way. There is only one alternative to murdering Quint, and this is it.

  Time shrinks to a pinpoint, a blistering moment of certainty, and this is what I know: I will not allow that to be true. There has to be another way. I am going to make one.

  The agents should have taken Kyle’s gun. It’s six inches from my face, snug in a shoulder holster, secured with nothing but a button. My brother’s hands are on my shoulders, and his eyes are on mine. He follows my gaze too late.

  I unsnap the button. I draw the gun. I take a long step backward, point it at the street, flick off the safety and fire.

  Crack. Crack. Crack. Three bullets. Three holes in the asphalt. Three signals to tell the search parties exactly where I am.

  Kyle moves to stop me. I lift the gun and aim at his torso. My finger isn’t on the trigger now, because there is no force on earth that could make me put my finger on the trigger, but all he sees is the barrel of his gun and his sister’s face behind it. He slowly lifts his hands and raises his eyes to mine, betrayal etched impossibly deep into the lines of his expression. “Camryn,” he says again.

  Like a warning. Like a prayer. Like it’s the only word he knows.

  Shouting echoes in the distance. Agents, coming to catch me.

  “I have to get Matthew’s equipment,” I tell Kyle, and my voice cracks but the gun stays steady. “I have to turn myself in, and you have to run.”

  Kyle will be safe and I will face the agency. I will tell them I know what destroyed the city, and I will make them give me Matthew’s old equipment—which does exist, it has to—in exchange for that information, and this will work because it’s the only option I will allow to be true. No one else will die because of me. Not my family. And not Quint.

  Kyle’s gaze goes from me to the gun, which is still pointed at him. He lowers his hands and something shifts in his eyes.

  He steps forward. He takes the gun from me gently, like it’s fragile, like it’s a thing crumbling bit by bit that he has to hold together. His fingers brush across the barrel, wrap around the grip. He lets out a breath, lifts the gun, and aims it at me. “No,” he says. “I don’t.”

  The granite is gone. The steel is gone. It’s just me and my brother, and a ghost, and a gun.

  And because I have nothing left to lose and nothing else to say, I let my hands fall to my sides and I raise my eyes to his and I ask the thing I’ve wanted to ask of him ever since he abandoned my bedside to return to his agency job the morning after our mother died.

  “Kyle. Choose me,” I tell him, and my voice breaks, but I don’t care. “Not the agency. Stay with me. Believe me.” The plea is nearly drowned out by the storm, but he hears it anyway.

  Rain streams over the gun. No one moves. No one speaks. His expression doesn’t change.

  Thunder clatters. Someone shouts from a block away. Lightning illuminates the scene in brilliant strobe-light blasts: two agents running toward us, yellow hazmat suits burning like torches against the dark. They aim their guns at us both. They shout to Kyle and he shouts back, neither of us looking away
from each other. The agents’ guns shift to me. Kyle holsters his weapon. Steps away. He turns his back as the agents push me against the brick wall, snap cold metal handcuffs tight around my wrists, say something about my rights and acts of terrorism that void them—but I’m too numb to hear the words. I’m too numb to do anything but stare at my brother as the bricks scratch lines in my cheek and think about how he’s failed me, and how I’ve failed him, and how our whole world is balanced on my choices and I’ve made the wrong one.

  The sharp rain turns to hard-flung hail, bouncing pellets that spray against the street and threaten to rip holes in the agents’ suits. They shout about shelter, about reinforcements being delayed, about safety. “Three blocks south,” Kyle suggests.

  Three blocks south. My brother is taking me home.

  I’m sitting on our couch, but all the cushions are gone. An agent is slicing them open one by one, dragging her hands through their innards, pulling out fistfuls of feathers that drift to the carpet. She’s already ransacked the cupboards, the beds, the closets. She won’t tell me what she’s looking for, but the government already has all the evidence it needs to lock me up. Whether it’s for one year or twenty, it’ll be a death sentence for us all.

  The other agent sits on the loveseat opposite me. His hazmat hood is in his lap, mahogany hands folded casually atop it like he’s interviewing me for a job instead of asking me how I killed the city.

  “Reinforcements will make it through the storm soon enough,” he says. “It’ll be easier if you talk to me first.”

  I look at Quint. He’s sitting at my side, head bowed. He knows how this has to end. But my mind is still spinning like a top at the end of its life cycle, circling around and around the only option I will allow to be true. The equipment Matthew needs exists. I can still get it, can still save Quint. He deserves the chance to choose his own death, even if that’s all I have left to give him.