Trees crack and splinter under a continuing fusillade of hot metal spewed by a weapon with a seemingly endless supply of bullets. Definitely not part of Synergy’s security profile. Clouds of bullets filter through the gaps between trees, some of them punching into our cover, the rest zipping further downhill. Three of them find Boone’s back.
He’s launched into the air, sailing through his own blood as the high velocity rounds exit his body. He sprawls to the ground, a tumble of loose limbs, and slides to a stop. I hear a wet, whispered, “I hate this cussed mountain.” Then he falls still. I don’t need to check him to see if he’s dead. Even if he’s still clinging to life, there’s nothing to be done for him.
The bullets stop spraying after a solid thirty seconds of hell. The whine of a spinning-down mini-gun follows.
And then, aside from the distant rumble of thunder, silence. No screams. No return fire. No running footsteps. Whoever was fighting on the hill above, they’re all dead.
The sound of grinding gears and breaking branches keeps us in hiding. Hushed voices follow, not amplified and not afraid. There’s ten minutes of subdued activity and then it fades, heading uphill. The battle has been won and the victors are returning from where they came—Synergy.
After five minutes of silence, I lift my head and look uphill. Trees have been decimated by the firepower, several cut in half. But I see nothing else. That doesn’t mean we’re alone. The fog is still thick. I’d prefer to wait a while longer, but a howl from below makes the hair on my arms flare to life. The deep bellowing sound is like no creature I’ve ever heard. I’m not sure if it sounds angry or hungry. Either way, I don’t think we want to be here when it arrives, and I have no doubt it will. Drawn by the sound of battle and the smell of blood carried downhill by the wind, most apex predators will come to inspect, especially if we’re in a time when men with guns aren’t the dominant hunters.
“Stay close,” I tell my father and Owen as I stand. “But not too close. If things go bad, just run.”
My father wants to argue. He’s no coward. But with Owen by his side, he knows where his responsibility lies.
Owen, on the other hand, says, “We won’t leave you.”
“Owen,” my father says.
“We can’t!” My younger self yanks free from my father. The idea of watching himself die is no doubt incomprehensible. While we’re the same person, we’re also different people, but that hasn’t stopped us from finding an instant rapport and connection, like brothers whose first eleven years of their lives were identical.
I crouch in front of myself and hold his shoulders. “I know none of this makes sense. I know it’s confusing, and scary, but you need to listen to Dad. If I know you’re doing that, then I can do what I do without worrying about you. Make sense?”
“You’re gonna kick some…” He glances at our father and then says, with a bit of defiance. “…ass?”
“Only if I have to.” I stand and turn uphill. “And I really hope I don’t.”
Because I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t stand a chance.
Despite the howl from below, we make slow progress as we creep toward the peak. While my imagination conjures monsters behind us, I know the real world ahead contains a modern kind of monster. The higher we climb, the greater the destruction, all of it leading to a swath of earth that’s been chewed up by bullets, framed by a collection of fallen trees. When I spot the first body, I motion for the others to wait and enter the killing field on my own.
There are four bodies lying in pools of their own blood.
All of them are wearing black masks and high-tech body armor, the likes of which I’ve never seen. However strong their armor was, they didn’t stand a chance against the mini-gun rounds. Two of the four have missing limbs. The other two have softball-sized holes in their torsos.
I flinch at the sound of footsteps behind me, but it’s just Inola, hatchet in hand, ready for a fight. She’s an impressive woman, but like me, she’s unprepared for the carnage. She winces and asks, “What could do this to men?”
“Other men,” I say, and I crouch by the nearest body. “Keep watch?”
She nods and sneaks past the corpses, entering the still pristine forest above. I check the bodies for ID and weapons, finding nothing. Whoever killed these people, who I’m now sure are Minuteman’s people, picked the bodies clean.
I pull back the mask and stare into the eyes of a man I do not know. In life, I imagine he was intelligent and powerful. A former soldier. I move on to the next two bodies, expecting to find Minuteman’s face, but I’m greeted by the blank stares of two more strangers.
I pause before withdrawing the last mask. My father is leading Owen past the killing field, covering the boy’s eyes as he moves uphill. He frowns when he sees the dead, but then catches my eye, taps on his ear, and points downhill. He’s decided to move upward because someone, or something, is coming up the mountain.
Driven by curiosity, I peel back the final mask and am flung backward by shock and horror. I manage to squelch an anguished sob, telling myself it’s not real. It’s not her. Fighting back tears, I collect myself and crawl back to the body, feeling my professional demeanor slipping away into abject sorrow as I look down into Cassie’s dead eyes.
25
How did she get here?
Why is she dressed like this?
Did Minuteman somehow manage to recruit her, or has she secretly been with them from the beginning?
She wasn’t too far from the truck explosion. Could that have been her? It would explain why it wasn’t detonated until we’d stepped away.
But would she really do that to me? I can’t believe it’s possible. She wouldn’t betray me. This whole time, lost in the past, the only thing I’ve been sure of is Cassie’s friendship, that she’d have my back, no matter what.
I should have kept looking.
I should have found her first.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears dripping onto her blood-soaked cheek.
“You knew her?” Inola asks, crouching beside me. Her voice isn’t exactly compassion, but I get the sense she understands my grief. She’s lost people, too. Given the era she’s from, probably a lot.
When I can’t manage a reply, she says, “You loved her.”
The words hurt. My chest constricts.
Desperate for air, I crawl away from the body while Inola replaces the mask.
“Who is it?” Owen’s small voice makes me flinch from sorrow’s grasp.
I wipe an arm across my face, smearing tears, but doing little else to hide my anguish. When I ignore him, he asks again, a little louder. “Who is it?”
I can’t do it.
I can’t tell him. The pain I’m feeling now is familiar. An old friend come to pay me a visit. I’ve regained my father at the cost of my best friend, who should have been more.
I’m caught off guard when I’m shoved from the side. “Who is it!” Owen shouts, tears already in his eyes.
“You don’t know her,” I say. “Not yet.”
I push myself up, trying to shove down my emotions, not just for Owen, but for all of us. This is the second worst moment of my life, but every second we linger puts me in greater danger of having to relive the first.
When I look at my father, I see wet eyes and intense compassion that catches me off guard. In that moment, there is no doubt.
He knows.
Who is under that mask.
Who I am.
And that in my time, he’s no longer around.
My feeling of loss compounds, and when my father reaches his arms out to me, I’m undone. I all but fall into his embrace. He rubs my back as I weep into his shoulder, all the military training in the world unable to cope with my emotional cauldron.
“I got you,” he says.
I’m not sure how long we stand like that. Probably not long enough.
When I lean back, Owen sniffles and wipes his nose. He must sense the same thing my father does—seeing him is
hard. It’s amazing, but it’s left me vulnerable, for the first time in a long time. I’ve spent my whole life walled up and cut off. Hell, it took Cassie’s death for me to admit I loved her. No wonder nothing ever worked out between us.
With my father back, and the chance to save his life within reach, the mortar holding my emotional walls together is crumbling.
“I think he knows,” Owen says.
My father smiles. “I’ve known for a while.” He lifts my chin. Looks me in the eyes. “There isn’t a father who loves his son that wouldn’t recognize him at any age. I’ll admit, the beard threw me off, but you’ve got my father’s eyes.” He looks at Owen. “Always have.”
“You can’t go to work tomorrow,” I blurt out.
“Can’t say I was planning on it,” he says, looking around to remind me we’re stuck in the past. Then he grows serious. “Why?”
I struggle to say it. Owen is right here. But this time, the news won’t be devastating, it will be hopeful. Tragedy avoided.
He beats me to it. “Something happens, doesn’t it? At the mine. Because of the earthquake this morning.”
“Earthquake?” I ask, but then I remember. The day before my father passed, there was an uncommon earthquake, the likes of which have been recorded throughout Black Creek’s history, mysterious because they never seemed to have a cause.
The date and time of my arrival in 1985 coinciding with the earthquake couldn’t be a coincidence. And all those past quakes…they must be periods in which this time-bending effect briefly touched down, like a skipping rock over a pond.
“What happens?” my father asks, somber now. He’s not sad about his own death, but he can see how profoundly it affected me.
“Cave in,” I say, feeling no need to retell the story in detail.
“Who else was caught in it?” he asks, more worried about the safety of others, no doubt already planning to upend time to save them, too.
“You’re the only one who didn’t make it…”
“Dad dies tomorrow?” Owen asks. He looks petrified.
“It’s not going to happen now,” my father says, rubbing Owen’s head. “Even if I could go to work, I wouldn’t, and I’d make damn sure no one else did until it was safe.”
Owen gives a little nod, but keeps his eyes locked on mine.
“You’ll be okay,” I tell him.
“But you weren’t,” he says.
“No,” I say, and before I can elaborate Inola emerges from behind a distant tree and shushes us. I didn’t even notice her leave.
Instinct chases my emotions away. I hold my breath and listen. The faint whine of small spinning motors fills the air.
“Sounds like an RC plane,” Owen says.
“Close,” I say, scanning the sky above the thick layer of trees. I’ve heard the sound before. It’s a drone. Not the missile-firing kind, but given the destruction wrought on these people, I doubt its use is recreational.
Owen spots the two-foot-wide, eight prop drone at the same time I do, whispering, “What is that?”
“Recon drone,” I say.
“Someone is watching us through that?” my father asks.
Owen tenses, ready to bolt. “Should we run?”
I don’t know the answer to that question. Right now, running and staying have the same odds of getting us killed. I look to Inola, as the other person with some kind of combat experience, hoping for an opinion, but she’s vanished again.
They never saw her, I realize.
Despite being from a time long before drones, and Marine Raiders, she’s doing a much better job at stealth and evasion. Then again, she doesn’t know that this drone is likely controlled by the very people we need to confront. I’ve never seen the drone before, but it is clearly a product of my time, a fact that is confirmed when the masculine, electronic voice fills the forest once more.
“Who are you?” It hovers close enough for me to see the camera on its underside swivel toward my father. And then to Owen. “State your names, and—”
The camera locks on to me, and the voice goes silent for a moment. Then, “Owen McCoy?”
“Who am I speaking to?” I ask.
“Dr. Langdon.”
Dr. Elias Langdon is my boss. Actually, he’s my boss’s boss. He not only owns Synergy, he’s also the lead scientist. What is he doing monitoring the feed of a security drone I didn’t know we had?
“Can I ask…what year are you from?”
“2019,” I say, and then I motion to my father and Owen. “Same as them. They got caught up in whatever’s happening.” I’m not sure why, but I’m not about to fully trust my employer. Too much bad shit has gone down, including the brutal killing of these people. I look straight at the camera, and hopefully at Langdon. “Do you know what’s happening?”
“We’re still teasing that out,” Langdon says. “But we’re hopeful the effects can be resolved and everyone restored to their rightful times.”
“And what about them?” I motion to the dead bodies and watch the camera swivel toward them. “Will they be restored to their rightful times?”
“Not alive,” Langdon says.
Was that a joke? Was that supposed to be funny? I’ve only met Langdon a few times, but he didn’t strike me as someone who’d be flippant about the deaths of four people.
“But yes,” Langdon clears his throat. “Their…demise is unfortunate, but necessary, I’m afraid. They were heavily armed, and their actions could have severely undermined our ability to rectify the situation. Their group of radicals was not unknown to us.”
“That’s why you have attack drones I wasn’t aware of?” I ask.
“I hoped they’d never be needed,” he says, “and I think you’ll agree that sending a robot into battle is far more humane than putting the lives of your security team at risk.”
I’m not sure Minuteman would agree, but I don’t argue the point. It’s the same justification the U.S. Military uses to send its own drones in pursuit of terrorists. And it won’t be long before robot battalions are rooting out the enemy, rather than men who can bleed and die. It’s not even the distant future. It’s the near future. Or, if you’re a high-tech research company with far reaching resources, the present.
Emotion sneaks up on me. “You did put a member of your security team at risk. Did you even bother to identify the bodies?”
“I assure you, all members of your security detail are alive and well.”
“Cassie.” I say, glaring into the camera. “Cassie Dearborn.”
“What?” Owen says, his voice rising. “Cassie?”
Damnit.
“As I said, all members of your security detail are alive and well, including Ms. Dearborn.”
“Bullshit.”
“We picked her up along with a few men from the early nineteen hundreds…or was it the late eighteen hundreds? I’m having trouble keeping track. This is a busy mountain. She was with a young man. I believe his name was Levi.”
Then who…?
I glance at the masked body of the woman I was certain was Cassie.
“Mr. McCoy,” Langdon says. “Would you like to come in out of the cold? Well, it’s not cold anymore, but you understand. I’m sure your people would like to see you, and I think your friends would enjoy having walls around them. The mountain is not safe.”
“I’ve noticed,” I tell him, and then I consider our options, which are to either destroy the drone and try to sneak in, or simply follow the drone. It’s an easy call, and I make it for all of us. “Lead the way.”
The drone spins around and sets out on a slow upward course, setting an easy-to-follow pace. A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. I glance without turning my head and see Inola, matching our pace up the mountain, a hundred feet to the side. I give her a subtle nod. She’s made the right call by staying hidden. I hope Synergy is a safe haven for my family, but there’s something off about Langdon, about Synergy’s drone usage, and the fact that Cass
ie is, without a doubt, lying dead behind me.
26
“Been a long time since I saw the mountain like this,” my father says, motioning to the thinning forest surrounding the peak. Like him, his father was a miner who worked at several other sites near Black Creek. My father hiked these woods before Adel’s summit was cleared, strip-mined, and had holes dug in her sides.
He points uphill to where a line of clear blue sky can be seen beyond the trees. “Top is just ahead.”
“Think you might have this confused with another mountain,” I say, doing my best to hide all traces of fear. The buzzing drone is just ten feet ahead, and I have no doubt that the people on the other end can hear our every word. What they can’t seem to hear is the occasional shift of leaves behind us, revealing Inola’s mostly silent pursuit.
“This is Grayson, right?” my father asks.
“Adel,” I say.
“Ahh.”
It’s a tenuous ruse. While Grayson is a nearby mountain, it has never been home to a mine. And Adel’s stripped and striated peak is hard to confuse for another mountain. While her base is intact and pristine, the upper quarter, in my time, is home to layers of barren stone.
Now that I see the mountain’s true, untouched beauty, I regret ever having felt fondly for the mines. Money and the promise of creature comforts is enough for people to turn on nature, no matter how impressive it might be.
When the drone reaches the clearing ahead of us, it turns around and hovers in place.
“I’m afraid this is where I must ask you to leave any weapons you might have,” Langdon says.
“Synergy requires me to carry a firearm,” I point out.
“Not any longer. Our new security measures are more than adequate.”
“New since when?” I ask.
“Well, today.”
While it’s odd that they wouldn’t have filled me in on such drastic security changes, if they had any idea that their experiments might lead to this… “Why wasn’t I informed about the changes?”
“Corporate secrecy, I’m afraid,” Langdon says. “You never know who you can trust.”
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