Red, White, and the Blues

by Walker, Rysa

  “Pretty sure there were a few other things mentioned,” I say with a wry twist of my mouth. “She said to give it a few minutes before you try to make the jump. And if it doesn’t work—”

  “Wait another ten minutes and use it again to inject the second dose. Yes.”

  I hesitate as I hold the injector to his bicep. Jack rolls his eyes and takes it from me, then pushes the little button on the end. We both hold our breath for a moment, because several of the more severe side effects she mentioned were the type that would kick in quickly—respiratory distress, heart arrhythmia, tremors.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  He nods. “A bit of a head rush, but yeah.”

  I set a time on my stable point in the basement and press the back of my key to Jack’s to transfer the location. “I will meet you there. I’m not sure how much good that gun will do me, since I don’t know how to use it, but bring both of them with you. I’d rather not travel with a bomb and a gun, and there’s not much room in that storage area.”

  “Especially not once both you and Clio are in there.”

  “Except that’s not going to happen. She and Kiernan will have a double memory to contend with—come to think of it, you will, too—but she’s not leaving that apartment until I’ve disposed of the bomb. As soon as I’m done, I’ll meet you at the stable point by the pool.” I hold his gaze for a long moment, because I know exactly what he’s thinking. “Jack, you’ve got one jump, if we’re lucky. Disposing of this bomb is a one-person job. Your help will be needed much more in Bethesda. And if, for some reason, I don’t make it, there are eight people in that house you need to find a way to save.”

  He sighs and pulls me close. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just . . .” I feel him tensing up. “We don’t even know if the serum will work anyway. You may end up doing it all on your own.”

  “Stop it. No pessimism allowed. I’ll dispose of the bomb. The serum will work. And then we’re kicking those assholes out of our house and out of our timeline.”

  ∞

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  JULY 4, 1940

  I arrive in the living room of the apartment in Manhattan at 1:53 p.m. on July 4th, just as Clio slams the phone down onto the receiver. Kiernan is just behind her. They both turn toward me, and I tell Kiernan, “You can try calling. That’s what you did last time, but they didn’t listen to you, either. They’ve had quite a few calls about bombs today, and they’re in boy-who-cried-wolf mode right now. You’re both going to have some double memories, but it’s better than the alternative.”

  Clio casts a wary eye at the rope in my hand. “What’s that for?”

  “It’s for tying you to a chair if you don’t stay put,” I tell her. “I’ve got this. Kiernan . . . I just spoke to you in 1966. That grave belonged to Clio, and it will continue to belong to her if you can’t keep her here with you. So wrap her in a bedsheet or whatever you have to do.”

  I pull up the location at the British Pavilion, a bit past 4:56 p.m., which is about ten seconds after the man who I’m fairly certain is Saul drops off the bomb.

  “The library stable point is a trap!” Clio says.

  I give her a smile. “Yes. That was a very good catch. Thanks for the warning. But I’ve got this. Really.”

  And with that, I blink into the storage closet, not at all sure that I have this.

  A large round box sits in the middle of the small space. I take one end of the rope and attempt to feed it through the loop on the right side of the box. The rope is too thick, however. I try shoving it through, to no avail, then I quickly begin fraying the rope into smaller cables. When I get enough unwound, I try to loop one end through the hole. It’s still too thick.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Even as the words leave my mouth, I want to yank them back. There could be a guard out there. I twist the cord back and forth a few times and manage to thread what feels very much like the eye of a needle. With a sigh of relief, I tie off the end and move on to the left side. The weave is a bit more stubborn here, and sweat is now pouring down my arms, making the rope slippery, but I finally manage that side, too.

  By the time I get the box ready to travel, I’ve eaten two and a half minutes from the clock.

  I bend down and loop my arms through the rope. I’m about to open the stable point near the fence, but I can’t bring myself to do it. There are no guarantees about casualties if I’m a few seconds off in either direction. People will almost certainly die, but they will also almost certainly not be the two bomb-squad detectives who die in our timeline. There’s no reason to add any more deaths to the tally. There’s no time god demanding a sacrifice.

  So I lock in the first outdoor stable point that I see. It’s the one Clio transferred to show me that there was no name on the gravestone. There’s a certain poetic logic to leaving the bomb there. I won’t risk doing it when Jack is in the house, because if I fail, he shouldn’t have to witness that. So I roll the date back to a random day, October 16, 1957.

  In that last moment, I wonder what kind of delay there is when you travel through time? Will this bomb explode en route? And if it does, what would that mean?

  Too late for second-guessing, though. I blink.

  I land in the same crouched position in which I began, my arms still looped through the rope holding the bomb. Leaning forward, I rest the bomb on the ground, then quickly pull my arms away. Unsure whether to trust my shaking hands to pull up a stable point, I take off running. About a quarter of the way down the hill, I lose my balance. And that’s probably what saves me. As I hit the ground, I hear a loud whoosh and boom. I keep to the ground, rolling the rest of the way down the rocky hill until I smack into a pine tree near the base. About a foot above my head, three carpenter nails are sticking out of the tree. Several more are scattered around me. As I look back up the hill, I see a cloud of smoke and dust. The box is gone.

  And so is the third gravestone.

  ∞

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  NOVEMBER 20, 2136

  The familiar smell of salt water hits my nose before my eyes open. My body relaxes instinctively, and promptly tenses back up as I scan the basement. Jack isn’t here. That can only mean the serum didn’t work, and I’m going to be on my own, unless I go back and ask for Clio’s help. I’m reluctant to do that, however, given that she’s probably working through a rather strong double memory at the moment—one where she was mortally wounded and one where she wasn’t. The plus side is that her double memory won’t last long at all, while the same can’t be said for the rest of the Dunne family. In the diaries, both Katherine and Kate said that their extended double memories faded over time, to the point where they were more like a book they’d read or a movie they’d watched. I hope that’s true, because otherwise, they’ll have several decades of disjointed memories.

  I start to pull up the library on the CHRONOS key, but then I remember that I’m now in the same house and have a better option. “Jarvis, show the library on the wall screen. Volume to two.”

  “Yes, mistress. Did you know that there are uninvited guests in the house?”

  “I do know that,” I say, taking a few steps toward the wall so that I can hear better. “I’m working on a plan for kicking them out. Can you tell me where they’re located?”

  “In the library. And one was in the bathroom inside suite three briefly, but not any longer.”

  “Is that first or second floor?”

  “Second,” he says.

  The scene in the library hasn’t changed much since I last checked, aside from the fact that Katherine and Alex are again in the office chairs near the sofa, rather than crouched in front of Alex’s desk. Everyone is against the back wall, either on the couch or in the chairs. Yun Hee is awake and cranky. Thea’s hand keeps fidgeting inside the pocket of her dress, like she’s rubbing at a worry stone. She’s saying something, too, although no one is looking at her, so maybe it’s under her breath. Probably one of her positive affirma
tions. Or maybe she’s cursing the lot of them. In which case, kudos to Thea.

  The countdown is visible again, and I realize with a start that it now reads 00:01:07. Which is wrong. I look down at my key. We should still have a little over twenty-seven minutes. Not that it matters, of course. If Team Viper is holding an entire household hostage, we’ve moved well beyond the realm of style points and advance predictions or whatever they were called. This is, as Kiernan noted, war.

  A hand falls on my shoulder, and I very nearly scream.

  I turn, one finger on the Timex, ready to fight. But it’s Jack. The two rifles and his backpack are slung over his shoulder. He gives me a sheepish smile. “Sorry! And, yes. I was waiting to see you jump in before I committed to coming here rather than to 1940. And I’d like to think I’d have followed through on my promise rather than trying to save you if you hadn’t made it, but . . . I’m glad I don’t have to find out.”

  I hug him tightly, grinning as tears of relief fill my eyes. “The serum worked! You’re home.”

  “It was a close call,” he says. “It took the full dose. And I knew you’d succeeded with the bomb because the house . . . I was still there by myself, but it was clear that they’d simply vacated the premises for a bit in order to accommodate me. There are pictures on the walls now, and it looks like a home. And . . . just two gravestones on the hill.”

  Jack looks toward the wall screen. The red timer has now disappeared, and a holoscreen display hovers above the game console with a different timer, currently at twenty-seven seconds, beneath the TD Off-World logo, which is slowly spinning. “I hadn’t thought about the fact that we can utilize Jarvis for this. I wonder . . .”

  The logo stops spinning when the timer hits zero, and Morgen Campbell comes into view. He doesn’t look quite as gleeful as he did last time, and the reason why becomes clear as the face of Morgen Jr. appears on the screen behind him. “They know he’s dead,” I tell Jack. I’m not sure why that surprises me. According to the rules, it was clear that their side of the game, and possibly ours when we were at the Fair, was being recorded for the benefit of the studio audience.

  Saul’s face is on the screen now. Not their Saul, with his scar and weird eye, but our own in-timeline version. He’s in the police uniform I last saw him wearing, standing over the body of Morgen Jr. Then there’s another image beside that of the storage closet, not with the bomb as I saw it a few minutes ago, but with the two desiccated bodies. A large stamp with the words WANTED FOR MURDER is now superimposed over Saul’s image.

  “It’s a trial.” I’m about to add that it’s Saul’s trial, and at least somewhat justified, but then more pictures pop onto the screen. Me. Clio. Jack. And then the image of the others seated against the wall in the library.

  “Jarvis,” Jack says, “can you cut power to the library without disrupting the protective field around the house?”

  “No. The enclosed bookcases in the library are wired directly into the grid, but the amplification device that extends the field to the house and yard is not.”

  I look back at the screen. I’m certain that Lorena, RJ, and the baby are wearing the field-extender devices that Alex designed. I can’t see Alex’s hands, but he had one of the bracelets on last time I saw him. He said that the bracelets amplified any CHRONOS field within a hundred meters. Thea, Tyson, and the others are all under a CHRONOS key.

  “They’ll be okay,” I tell Jack. “The bracelets will extend the field around the books to protect them.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I give him a helpless shrug. “That’s what Alex told me.”

  “Okay, then,” Jack says. “If anyone would know, it’s Alex. Jarvis, on my command, shut down power to the library. Everything not on the main grid.”

  “Don’t turn yourself off, Jarvis. Otherwise, you’re not going to be much help.”

  “Yes, mistress. Should I switch to one of the backup generators?”

  “No,” Jack says. “And immediately after you cut power, announce over the house intercom that there was a surge. That you have attempted to restore power to the room, but it will require a manual override at the terminal in . . .” Jack looks at me.

  “Um . . . something on the ground floor where we don’t have to go through any of the main rooms to get there. The laundry room?”

  “But there is no power terminal in the laundry room,” Jarvis says.

  “We know that,” Jack says. “And so do you. But they don’t. Can you repeat those words back?”

  “Yes, Master Jack.” There’s a brief pause and then Jarvis says, “A power surge has disabled the outlets in this room. My attempts to reset them have failed. A manual override is required at the power terminal in the laundry room.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “Welcome to the team, Jarvis. I like our odds a lot better with three.”

  “But they’re even better with four,” says a voice from behind us.

  I want the voice to be Clio’s. But it’s much too deep.

  Jack’s hand goes up to the rifle. Saul, however, already has his gun out—a small silver pistol that I suspect is an energy weapon of some sort, since there’s a red light blinking on one side of the barrel.

  “Who is this?” Saul asks. “Tell him I’m on your side. Morgen’s carbon copy would have blown you to kingdom come if I hadn’t taken him out of the equation. He might even have killed Einstein for good measure.”

  “How did you get in this house?” I ask. “Who gave you this stable point?”

  “No one gave me your stable point,” Saul says. “I came in the old-fashioned way . . . through the servants’ entrance.”

  “We don’t have a servants’ . . .” I trail off, realizing that he means the side exit used by the pool service that handled regular maintenance during the years the house was unoccupied.

  “That door seems to be the only one our friends from Team Viper didn’t know about and therefore aren’t monitoring with stable points of their own. Furthermore, the only reason you have this house is the goodwill of Cyrist International, which owes me a certain debt of gratitude for elevating them above a navel-gazing cult hanging out in the swamps of Florida. They provided me with the code, so I didn’t even have to break your door. Are you happy?”

  I’m not at all happy, actually. I don’t trust him in the slightest. But it seems like a bad idea to mention this when his gun is out, so I just give him a curt nod.

  “Very well, then,” he says. “Could we go? Assuming you want to save Katherine and the others from Campbell’s little tribunal?” Saul nods toward the screen, where the camera is focused on the baby, who is currently seated in Lorena’s lap. There’s a meter at the top of the screen, and the needle is hovering between Guilty on the left and Innocent on the right. It flickers near the middle for a bit and then flips toward Innocent.

  “No shit,” Jack says as he backs toward the staircase. “She’s a baby, for God’s sake.”

  We hurry up the stairs and take a right into the hallway, which sits just below the library. Sounds of background music and applause drift down to our level. Ahead on the left is the laundry room. The linen closet is just beyond that. I open the door to the closet. There’s only room for two, thankfully. Saul hides behind the laundry room door.

  “Jarvis,” I say softly. “Cut power as we discussed and make the announcement.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  I expect a snide remark from Saul or at least a chuckle, but he doesn’t seem to find Jarvis’s mode of address unusual. “Why aren’t you armed?” he hisses.

  “I’ve never fired anything that large.”

  Saul rolls his eyes. “Give me the other rifle,” he says as Jarvis is announcing the outage and the need for someone to do a manual override. As soon as Saul has the rifle, he hands me the little silver gun. “It’s very simple to operate. Point and pull the trigger.”

  “Does it stun or kill?” I ask.

  “It kills,” he says, looking at me as if I’ve asked an exc
eptionally dumb question. “So don’t go waving it around. And once we have a hostage, get ready to storm the library.”

  I’m not sure why he assumes we’ll have a hostage. I think it’s equally likely that they’ll just send one of our people down, given that they have everyone else as leverage. But at least that will give us one additional person on this side of the door.

  We can’t pull up the wall screen here, so I open the library stable point and watch the discussion in pantomime. The display above the SimMaster has vanished. The Anomalies Machine is also quiet. I haven’t really looked at it yet. I’m sure there are some differences between this timeline and the last, but maybe they’re minor enough that the machine has already ground through them.

  After about a minute of arguing and attempts to plug the system into a different outlet, Esther finally grabs Katherine’s arm and yanks her up out of the chair.

  I lean back against Jack, trying not to think of all the ways this could go horribly, horribly wrong as we wait.

  FROM THE VERSES OF PRUDENCE

  For if the Scourge shall rise, the Sisters shall restore.

  He who slaughtered Gizmo and would have slaughtered more

  Will not set Earth’s future and will not shape our path.

  Take as our solemn vow, he’ll face the Sisters’ wrath.

  ∞33∞

  KATHERINE

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  NOVEMBER 20, 2136

  The TD Off-World intro music is appallingly cheerful until the very end, when a discordant note reverberates just as the words Justice for Team Viper are stamped on the screen in red block letters. As the logo fades away, Campbell appears on a dais very much like his throne in Redwing Hall at the Objectivist Club. Unlike last time, his expression is far from genial.

  “I’m Morgen Campbell, your host for TD Off-World,” he says in somber tones. “Tonight’s episode—and quite possibly our next one as well—is a departure from our usual proceedings. For the past three sessions, you’ve watched as our team was subjected to bloodthirsty, illegal actions by Team Hyena, which seems incapable of following the rules. We made some concessions for the fact that they are new to our variant of The Game, but still they insisted on not only removing our observers from the contest but doing so in the most gruesome way possible.”