Splinter
Author: Rysa Walker
Date: 2016-12-17 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Time Travel; Short Stories; Young Adult; Science Fiction; Fantasy; Historical Fiction; Fiction
Description: This CHRONOS Files short story appeared originally in CLONES: The Anthology A familiar blip of green light in the corner of his room has Kiernan Dunne hoping the new arrival is Kate, so that he can abandon the rescue he’s planning. But the time traveler who just blinked in is a future version of Kiernan, and judging from the number scrawled on his forehead, he’s not the only copy.
Publisher: Rysa Enterprises, Inc.

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, organizations, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual locations, events, or people, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Rysa Walker

All rights reserved.  No portion of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews.

Originally published in CLONES: The Anthology  © 2016

For information:

http://www.rysa.com

ALSO BY RYSA WALKER

Novels

THE CHRONOS FILES:

Timebound

Time’s Edge

Time’s Divide

Time Trial: The Graphic Novel

The Delphi Effect

Novellas

Time’s Echo

Time’s Mirror

Simon Says

Short Stories

“The Gambit”

“Whack Job”

“2092”

Splinter
by Rysa Walker

Boston, Massachusetts

07161905_11:23:00

A flash of green pulls my eyes to the corner of the room.  As always, my heart jumps, praying it will be Kate.  Knowing it won’t be, can’t be. The heart keeps looking for miracles, long after the mind has abandoned hope.

The new arrival stares back at me, CHRONOS key still in his hand. Or rather, still in my hand, since he’s clearly a version of me. A future me, most likely, since I don’t remember any circumstances from my past that could have put another me here. Something is smudged in black on his forehead. It looks like one of those…can’t remember the name, but it’s the symbol Hitler and his Nazis thugs will use in a few decades.

And Future-Me is bleeding.  The right side of his white shirt is drenched, the red appearing almost black in the green glow of his CHRONOS key.

Bloody hell. I’ve got a double memory coming.

When presented with a future version of myself who is injured, possibly seriously, the fact that I’m about to get hit with a double memory probably shouldn’t be my first concern.  But it is. I can feel it starting already, gnawing away at my brain.

In memory number one, I’m sitting here all alone, flipping back to the front of my notepad, to see if there’s anything I missed the first few times I tried to reconstruct that night in 1893. It’s a tougher task than I’d imagined it would be, given that I’ve dreamed about running through that burning hotel hundreds of times in the years since. Or maybe that’s why it’s tough--the memories from eight-year-old me are all mixed up with the nightmares.

In memory number two, which is growing by the second, the notepad in my hands is still closed. And I’m staring at this second version of me who’s popped in out of thin air. Who I’m pretty sure has been shot.

The two realities feel equally real, equally true, but since I’m in the middle of the second reality where there are two Kiernan Dunnes in my room, that’s the one I have to run with.

“What happened?” I ask, as I reach under the bed to grab my makeshift first-aid kit.

“Tried taking his gun away. Doesn’t work.  And don’t bother with bandages. I won’t last that long.” He registers my expression and then adds, “No, I’m not dyin’. Hurts like hell, but I don’t think it’s gonna kill me.”

“What’s that on your forehead?”

“A four.”

I squint, and I can see it now.  Kind of. “It’s backwards.”

“Try writin’ a number on your own forehead when you’re in a hurry. I’m livin’ proof that you suck at it.”

I don’t even bother to ask why the number is a four. I’m pretty sure I know the answer and it makes me physically ill to think that it’s not just a double memory I’ll have to reconcile, but a quadruple or maybe even quintuple memory. Never had one of those. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

“No,” he says, reading my expression. “It’s only a double memory. We just needed to keep track of which double I am.”

I open my mouth, but then close it again, pretty sure that any clarification on that point is going to make things worse.

“And stop askin’ questions. I don’t have much time.”

“How far in my future are you?”

He gives me an exasperated look, probably because I’ve just asked another question. But this one is kind of important, since it’s the best indicator I have of whether I’m going to still be here ten minutes from now--whether he’s the splinter or I am.  The amount of time a splinter has varies, but Simon says twelve minutes is the longest he’s seen.

That’s the thing with splinters. They’re really easy to create, although I can’t say I understand the temporal physics or whatever that’s behind it.  To create a splinter, you just jump back a few minutes into your own timeline and change something little thing.  Keep yourself from doing whatever you were about to do. The version you see when you arrive in the past--he’s usually the splinter and his clock starts ticking as soon as you arrive.

The key word there is usually. Under some circumstances, the one who created the splinter is the one who ceases to exist. No one seems certain as to why, but Simon thinks it has something to do with how far you jump back. Twenty minutes or so, and most likely, the other guy is the splinter. Longer than that, and the odds are reversed.  I’ve only splintered myself once, and Simon didn’t mention that there was any ambiguity on this point until after we were both staring at our duplicates.

But then, that’s typical of Simon. He’s never been bothered by existential questions. Me, I’m not too fond of looking at an identical version of myself and wondering exactly what’s going to happen when time’s up. Simon treats splintering--and every other aspect of time travel--as a game. He once splintered himself so he’d have company on a roller coaster that looked like it was made of spit and twigs, after I refused to get on the deathtrap with him.

In one sense, I guess Simon has a point when he says it doesn’t matter who’s the splinter. The other guy is still you. But it gives me a god-awful headache. Judging from the expression on the face in front of me, Future-Me feels the same.

“I’m twenty-five days in your future.  I’m pretty sure that makes me the splinter, but if I’m still here five minutes from now, you can pull out the first aid kid. For now, just shut up and listen, okay?” He reaches behind him, grimacing as he pulls something from under his belt. A few drops of blood spatter onto the wooden slats of the floor, and then he shoves a handful of papers toward me. “Most...of the information you’ll need is here. Skip the stuff we already tried. Any attempt to rescue Kate before we get her grandmother to safety will fail, and it’s getting crowded in that room. And--obviously--don’t try for the bastard’s gun. He’s got more than one bullet. Me takin’ this one didn’t save her.”

The confusion I’ve been feeling for the past few hours makes perfect sense now. This is the reason I’ve scratched through seven pages of in my notebook. Earlier today, I’d have sworn I knew exactly what happened that night in Chicago, at least up to the point where my eight-year-old self, along with a much-younger version of Kate’s grandmother, dropped out the window onto the fire escape. But tonight, when I began writing things down, my memories were jumbled, out of sequence.

“You said it was just double memories.”

Future-Me gives a reluctant shrug.  “If you count the old memories we’ve been tampering with--from when we were eight?  Well, then you’re gonna need double digits. That’s why I’m sayin’ to steer clear. Your first idea of stoppin’ Holmes before he torches the place just muddles things up anyway. It’s gotta be after we get through the window. But...there’s not much time. Five seconds, tops.”

“Before…?”

“Before Holmes kills Kate.”  His tone--which I guess is my tone, although it’s hard to think of it that way--is annoyed, like I should have figured that out on my own. Shouldn’t have made him actually put it into words. “Give me your key.”

I pull the leather cord that holds my CHRONOS medallion over my head and slide it out of the pouch. He presses the back of his key to the back of mine in order to transfer a stable point.

An odd tingle runs up my arm.

“What was…”

Other-Me shakes his head and runs his finger across the key to check it.  “Don’t know. We think it’s the whole duplicate thing. This is the same key, just twenty-five days older.  They’re still working fine, though.”

I pull up the interface on my key and he’s right. The only change is the new stable point he transferred--a single black square speckled with green lights.  Five, maybe six, of them.

The other me reaches out and grabs my arm.

“We’re losin’ it okay? Everything’s gettin’ jumbled. That’s why I came back. To find a time when your--our--head is clearer. If you have to go in more than once, don’t...don’t interact with the earlier versions. It just confuses things more. And it would be nice if you avoid this, too.” He nods down at the gunshot wound.

“But I thought you were--”

“Yeah, so what? It’s not fatal and I’m the splinter. It still hurts like bloody hell. Skip the early steps, and move carefully so you don’t have to erase anything.  Read the notes. Maybe if we can avoid creating splinters in the first place and focus on--”

And then he’s gone in mid-sentence, just like the duplicate me I created that one time with Simon. No fade out, no sound effects. He didn’t pull up the CHRONOS key and blink away to another place and time. He’s just there one minute and not there the next. Even the red splotch on the floor from his blood--my blood--is gone.

It’s probably not logical to be glad that he’s the one who disappeared instead of me.  He knew more about what worked and what didn’t than I do, even with these notes in my hand. But I am glad, nonetheless.

When I unfold the papers, I see a list of eleven time jumps, each crossed out.  Below the list are notes corresponding to each jump. The first in the list is marked Kate’s Room, with a timestamp of 10311893_19:13:00.  The next is Third Floor Corridor, same day, at 20:22:30. Another says Holmes’s Office 20:20:00.

The remaining eight jumps are all within the span of a single minute, most clustered between 20:25:37 and 20:25:42. None after that point. All are marked Hidden Room. The words make my gut clench with the remembered smells of rotting flesh and smoke.

I activate the key and navigate visually to the stable point that Future-Me transferred, a black square with the green lights. The familiar shade of green tells me that those specks are from CHRONOS keys.  If Kate was viewing this stable point, those lights would be blue. Simon claims they’re the deep orange of the setting sun, one of the rare moments where Simon has ever waxed poetic.  Anyone without the CHRONOS gene couldn’t see the display at all.

When I expand the view, I detect a single light in front of me, slightly to the right. It moves slightly as I watch and I see a hand--Kate’s hand--in the light.  She’s trying to pull up a stable point on her key. She seems vulnerable, exposed, and I have to remind myself that Holmes doesn’t have the CHRONOS gene, so he can’t see the light from the keys, can’t see Kate in the darkness.

But he could hear her. I find myself straining to pick up sounds--Kate’s breathing, Holmes’s movements, or noise from the city--even though I know it’s not possible to hear anything through the key.

A green light flickering off to the left in the display catches my eye. Another version of me popping in to scope out the situation, I guess. Closer to the stable point, I make several cots against the wall. An array of bottles on the floor nearby reflects the green from the CHRONOS key. Just above the bottles, a skeletal hand hangs over the side of the cot, a hand that was fuel for many of my childhood nightmares.

In the other direction, near the small door leading into the linen closet, a green light blinks out and then reappears a few feet to the right of the door. Then that one flickers out, and reappears a bit closer toward the stable point. More versions of me scouting the room.  It’s a bit like watching fireflies and I’m mesmerized for a moment, waiting for the next light to appear.

It doesn’t.

The narrow window of time that Future-Me mentioned must have passed. When I pan back toward Kate, I no longer see the light from her key, except for a very faint glow around the man in front of me. And then he moves, and I see Kate again. Slumped to the side, eyes closed, a bullet hole near the center of her forehead.

Something else, too. Something seems to be eating away the green fabric of her dress. Her hair. Her skin.

I wince and look away. Then I roll the time back thirty seconds and watch again.  And I take notes this time.

∞

Boston, Massachusetts

07171905_06:45:00

The familiar aroma of tobacco hits my nose when I blink into the storeroom. Jess won’t open the doors to customers for another hour, but I know his routine well enough to be sure that he’ll be puttering around behind the counter. Unless it’s a day when his arthritis is really acting up, Jess always pours a cup of coffee after breakfast and takes it downstairs, telling his wife he has work to do. In reality, he’s just seeking a bit of solitude, because Amelia tends to snipe in the mornings. She needs a few hours to mellow.

This morning, Jess isn’t even pretending to be busy. Just sitting on the barstool he keeps behind the cash register, enjoying his pipe as he stares out at the early morning bustle. A lone automobile is winding its way around the horse-carts in the road outside the store.  The sight is still enough of a novelty that two kids run along behind the car for a better look.

If I wanted, I could jump into the store directly. I set a stable point off to the right of the register earlier this week, while trying to explain the whole time-traveling insanity to Jess. But Jess is nearly eighty-three. I prefer to give him a bit of a warning, rather than just popping in and scaring the holy hell out of him, even though he’s had a crash course in the effects of Cyrist-engineered time shifts over the past few days. The last shift cost him a granddaughter, a girl he can remember only because he was in the range of my CHRONOS key when the shift happened. To the rest of the world, Jess’s granddaughter never existed at all.

I tap on the door to give him a warning before interrupting his solitude.

“Jess?”

He raises one gray eyebrow and turns slightly toward the storeroom. “Was beginning to think another time shift came along and swallowed you up like it did Irene.”

“Just been a little...preoccupied. Thought I’d stop in and let you know I’m goin’ out of town for a bit.”

“I see. Taking the train?”  The wry look on his face makes it pretty clear that he’s teasing me.

“No train to the 1893 World’s Fair. I’m stuck usin’ the key.”

“What’s in 1893?”

I want to tell him that Kate’s in danger, but Jess has been through enough in the past week. Losing his granddaughter was a blow, and he only saw Irene once or twice a year.  Kate has been in here every few days for the past eighteen months or so. Helped him behind the counter on many occasions. They flirt shamelessly with each other, and threaten to leave me and Amelia behind so that they can run off to Niagara Falls together. Jess has asked about Kate each time I’ve stopped by the past few days. Well, past few days for him. It’s been weeks for me, but I spent most of that in other time periods, trying to piece together what Simon and his Cyrist cohorts have done with Kate.

The one thing I know for certain is that the Kate I’m trying to save isn’t the one Jess knows. She’s not the Kate who stood at the altar with me, as Jess and Amelia watched me slide that gold band onto her finger a few short months back. This Kate is younger, and she barely knows who I am. Telling Jess that Kate’s in 1893 would mean explaining the differences between the Kate I need to save and the Kate that Jess has come to know and love. I’m just not sure he’s ready for that.

“A really bad man is in 1893.  Do you think I could I borrow your gun?”

“Depends on who you’re planning to shoot, boy.”

“I’m thinkin’ more of using it as a threat. Or maybe as a distraction.”

“In my experience--which I’ll admit is limited in these matters-- it’s never a good idea to bring a gun into a situation unless you’re willing to use it.”

“I’m more than willing. It’s just...complicated.”

Jess reads my face for a moment, and then reaches under the counter to pull out the pistol. But he keeps one hand on it.

“So... who is it you’re planning not to shoot?”

Jess and I talked a lot about my time at the World’s Fair during the months that I worked for him here at the shop.  Back in 1893, Jess had wanted to make the trip from Boston to Chicago. He kept telling Amelia it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the wonders of the world, all collected in one place. But she wasn’t nearly as keen on it as Jess and there was no one to watch the store for them, so they never made the trip. I think Jess was glad that he at least got to visit it vicariously through me.

My father was one of the many job-seekers who flocked to Chicago in the months before the Exposition opened in May of 1893, as they struggled to turn 600 acres of swampland into one of the most celebrated World’s Fairs in history. At age eight, I tagged along behind him most days, helping out with small chores and running errands, but mostly just being a kid. Watching. Learning. By the time the Expo opened its gates, I knew the place like the back of my hand. I put that knowledge to good use, giving guided tours to visitors, and earning a bit of extra cash.

H.H. Holmes was another enterprising capitalist who sought to make his fortune catering to the tourists. His World’s Fair Hotel catered mostly to women, and many of the women who entered his fine establishment never left. The police and newspapers were overworked with the influx of people into the city, and people went missing all the time. Chicago papers would name the hotel the “Murder Castle” during Holmes’s trial, but by then it was too much too late.

I’ve shared many stories about the Expo with Jess, but I’ve never mentioned Holmes or his hotel. I also don’t talk about the fire that ripped through one of the buildings killing my father.  Some memories are best left alone.

“How much do you know about H. H. Holmes?” I ask.

“The doctor who killed all those women?”

“Yeah.”

Jess shrugs. “I know what I read in the papers during his trial, mostly, although I did wonder how much of that was made up. Selling skeletons to medical schools seems a bit far-fetched.”

“He did, but it was only a couple. I remember seeing him a few times at the Midway, when I was workin’ there as a boy--mostly helpin’ my mum at the dairy exhibit and runnin’ errands. Seemed like a nice enough guy until he smiled. Something always hit me wrong about his smile. He’d hand out these flyers for his World’s Fair Hotel to groups of ladies who were visiting. Had a couple of kids with him sometimes.”

“Those the kids he killed?”

“Yeah. Guess they became inconvenient. Anyway…” I stop for a moment and try to find a way to summarize, something that doesn’t go into so many details that Jess’s head will explode. “He’s connected to the Cyrists. The ones responsible for your Irene...not bein’ around anymore. And more people could die--two women who didn’t die the first time around--if I don’t go back and keep them out of Holmes’s path.”

His eyes stray down to the outline of my CHRONOS medallion beneath my shirt. “Why don’t you just jump in with that key-thing of yours, kill the son of a bitch in his sleep, and be done with it?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Holmes murdered what--fifty women at least? Maybe more. Even if something happened and you got caught, there’d be plenty of evidence to support you if the cops--”

“Maybe. But then there wouldn’t be the trial that you and a million or so others read about in the papers, would there? It would change too much history, and that’s what we’re tryin’ to stop the Cyrists from doin’. This has to be a surgical strike.”

I unfold the paper my other self gave me and take a pencil from the cup by the cash register. It would be easier to just show Jess the layout of the place through the CHRONOS key, but since that’s not possible, I sketch the long narrow room on the back of one sheet.

“The place isn’t even as wide as your storeroom, Jess, but the length is probably ten times that...maybe half as long as this block. It’s dark, so Holmes can’t see me. I can see him pretty well in the light of the CHRONOS key.  The only door is one you have to crawl through--it opens into a linen closet.  Holmes used the room to hide things from creditors--furniture he bought and claimed wasn’t delivered, and other stuff.  He also used it to hide some bodies. Two of them are on cots along this wall here”--I mark two smaller rectangles with an X—“and at the far end here, is a window with a fire escape. Holmes gets off a couple of shots toward the window as one of the women and I--”

“Wait. You’re already there?”

“Yeah, but it’s eight-year-old me that’s going through the window. And there are...some other versions of me who’ve already tried to fix this and failed scattered around the room.”

“I’m gonna ignore that bit on the grounds that I want to stay sane.” He motions for me to go on.

“There’s another shot when we’re on the fire escape.  Probably two. That was about the time that one of the windows on the second floor cracked due to the fire, so--.”

“The fire?

“Yeah.  Holmes set the place on fire to cover the evidence. Or maybe for insurance. Or both. Anyway, like I said I can’t kill him. Apparently I can’t take his gun away either, because I’ve already tried that and…” I look at his expression and say, “I’m guessing you don’t want details about a duplicate me jumping in to give me this information. Let’s just say it didn’t end well and I’m not planning to repeat the experiment.”

He shudders, as though to shake off the twists and tangles of time travel, and then he pushes the gun toward me. “Take it. My vote is for shooting the blackhearted son of a bitch outright, no matter what it changes. To hell with history. I’m perfectly okay with you spinning the wheel again.  Maybe we’ll get the timeline that has my granddaughter in it and Amelia will stop thinking I’ve lost my damn mind.”

∞

Wooded Island

Chicago World’s Fair

11271893_22:21:00

I slide down against the outside of the cabin wall. It’s cold and drizzling out here, but I need to feel the night air on my face. I’ve spent most of the past two days alone in the cabin, with occasional field trips to a corpse-filled room.  The only company I’ve had is H.H. Bloody Holmes and the other versions of myself in that room, none of whom I can talk to without splintering myself or at least triggering a double memory. Kate’s there, too. But all I’ve been doing is watching her die, so for once, I don’t count her company as a good thing.

The Wooded Island is silent now. In fact, the entire fairground is silent. Empty, like a ghost town. Or a ghost metropolis, I guess. On any given day between May and the end of October, an average of 120,000 tourists roamed every inch of this island. The massive buildings I can still see in the distance, on the other side of the bridge that connects the Wooded Island to the mainland, were never meant to be anything other than temporary. Aside from two buildings and some of the statues, the White City will be reduced to ashes in a fire much like the one that killed my dad, less than a quarter-mile from this cabin.

I take another swig from the flask in my pocket. The bourbon probably isn’t helping me sort things out, but it is definitely helping to keep panic at bay.

Here’s the crux of the problem: four seconds isn’t much time. That’s doubly true when you have to make incremental steps and avoid bumping into the other versions of yourself. Most of them were just there scouting things out, but a few have already tried things and failed. I’ve been careful to ensure that no more than two of me are in the room together for longer than a second, but that’s become tougher to pull off as the day goes on.

For one thing, I’m getting tired. My skills with the CHRONOS key have never been as good as Kate’s or Simon’s, probably because I inherited the gene from one grandparent and they got it from all four. It wears me out, and even though these are short time jumps, to a nearby location, I doubt I have more than a few jumps left before I’ll need to rest.

My brain is also muddled from trying to balance two different versions of the past few days.  Adding another set of memories to the mix would render me damn near worthless, so rule number one has been to avoid interacting with my other selves and most of all, to avoid doing anything that I might have to go back in time and talk myself out of.

And now I’m going to have to break that rule.

My latest plan was to make a noise to distract Holmes. I nudged one of the iron cots slightly, just enough that it clinked against the bottles Holmes had stashed by the wall. If I could make Holmes stop for a moment and look my way, I thought it might buy Kate an extra few seconds to pull up a stable point on her key and jump out.

Only it was Kate who looked my way when the faint ping of glass against glass echoed in the silent dark.  Kate who paused as she moved toward the exit. Kate who gasped, and thus guided Holmes’s gun to where she was standing.

On the plus side, he didn’t have to bother with the acid. I also didn’t have to listen to his comment about how Kate’s kick wasn’t half bad for a girl, but still no match for a gun.

On the very negative side, Kate was looking straight at me when Holmes’s bullet hit, right above her left eye.

I shudder and take another swig. The whiskey burns on its way down, but the fire doesn’t begin to wipe that image from my mind.

The only way to fix this is to go back and stop myself before I take that jump. To splinter myself and hand off the torch to Past-Me. And maybe it’s the whiskey, but I find that idea doesn’t bother me so much any more.  I’m beyond caring whether it’s this me or some other version that goes forward as long as Kate does.

I tuck the flask back in my jacket and pull out my CHRONOS key. It’s 20:24. I roll the display back to 20:05 and jump back to the stable point inside the cabin.

It’s just a single room, with a small fire crackling in the fireplace. Between the light of the fire and the two lanterns there’s just enough light to read, and my earlier self is huddled over my notes.  On the ground next to him is the bag of medicines I swiped from a pharmacy in the late 2030s--some pain medication and a hydrogel that’s supposed to reduce burn scars, along with gauze, medical tape, and other items that I wouldn’t have much luck finding in the local apothecary in 1893. In a perfect world, I’d get Kate out unharmed. But it’s a far from perfect world and I know I need to be prepared.

“You botched it,” Past-Me says, when he sees me standing in the middle of the room. There’s not even a hint of a question in his voice. The fact that I’m standing here pretty much confirms his accusation as fact. “And here comes my double memory. Thanks.”

I give him a sympathetic look, because I’ve been in his shoes. The good thing about being the one who creates the splinter is that the double memory isn’t quite as strong, but I still don’t like looking at him.  It’s like my brain is stuck on one of those hamster wheels...running in circles, but not really going anywhere.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry about that. That distraction you’re planning right now causes Holmes to veer toward the center of the room. Must’ve thought it was a rat or somethin’. He’s lookin’ when Kate steps into the light from the window. Shoots her square in the head.”

He rolls the time back on his CHRONOS key and watches the display. A few seconds later, he curses, and shoves the stack of notes to the floor.

“Got any other ideas?” he asks. “Because that was my last one, and now I’ve probably only got another nine minutes or so before I’m history.”

His voice is bitter on this last part, and I realize I’ve become much more philosophical on the whole splintering thing in the past half hour. Or maybe I’m just tired. Him, me. Doesn’t much matter which one vanishes as long as one of us is still here to help Kate.

“I jumped back twenty minutes. So I’m probably the splinter. And no, I don’t have another idea yet, but at least we’ve got two brains to...ap...ply...”

“What?” he asks, waiting for me to go on.

“I don’t know, just...maybe we’ve been going about this all wrong? Been tryin’ so hard to avoid the double memories, to avoid becomin’ a splinter, that we’ve missed the best chance to get Kate out of that hell hole.  I don’t know if you’re the splinter or if I am, but one thing’s for sure.  For the next few minutes, there are two of us.”

“So? The place is already crowded from all the times we blinked in and out of there earlier. I’m not sure how both of us going in at once is going to help matters. The other one...the one with the four on his head.  Didn’t he say that interacting like this was a bad idea?”

“He did.  But like you said, we’re running short on ideas. Bad ones seem to be all we have left. I’ll jump into the stable point close to the cots.  You jump into the hallway.  You can monitor through the key and jump in as backup if I fail. Or if I...disappear.  And if, by some miracle, Kate makes it into the hallway, you help her jump out.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Tackle the son of a bitch. Slow him down.”

Past-Me drags one finger through the soot at the base of the fire and then walks toward me. He stretches out his hand when he reaches me and draws something on my forehead.

It’s not a four.

“It’s a five.  That way if I have to come in, I can sort you out from any other Kiernans in the room.”

I don’t wipe it away. Instead, I swipe my finger through the ashes and draw a six just above his nose. He doesn’t appear to like the new label anymore than I do.

The clock is ticking for one of us, so I pull up the stable point near the cots on my key. I set it to 20:25:30, a few seconds earlier than before so that I can, hopefully, get my bearings before the action starts.

Unfortunately, the display shows nothing but the dim white fabric of my shirt. One of my earlier selves is loitering inside the stable point and I can’t jump in until he moves. So I wait. He has to know this stable point might need to be used again. Idiot.

After about three seconds, Earlier-Me finally moves to the other side of the room. I give it another second, then blink in.

∞

World’s Fair Hotel

10281893_20:25:30

I hold the air in my lungs as long as possible, and then pull in shallow, hesitant breaths, steeling myself against the pervasive smell of smoke and rot that fills the room.  As I move away from the wall, something crooked and gnarled that looks a bit like a tree branch, catches against the side of my jeans. I hold the CHRONOS key down to investigate and realize that one bony finger has snagged the edge of the denim.

The sight causes me to startle. My two other selves turn and look directly at me, even though we’re doing our damnedest to avoid contact and the duplicate memories that follow. I feel two new memories worming into my head, a memory of looking over and thinking what an idiot, and another, from a slightly more recent self, of thinking, oh, it’s the idiot again. These memories almost, but not completely, overwrite the earlier one, when no idiot stood on this side of the cot.

I inch toward the center of the narrow room, away from the skeletal hand and its long-dead owner. Then I crouch down, doing my best to keep my breaths small and silent, and tuck my CHRONOS medallion into the leather pouch around my neck. Holmes may not be able to see the light from the key, but Kate can, and my last attempt proved exactly how much damage I could cause by distracting her.

A few yards in front of me, two shadows--one adult and one child, both dimly lit in green by their CHRONOS keys--shuffle toward the window and the ladder. Even though I’ve watched this over and over during the past few days, it’s still strange to see my eight-year-old self creeping along that wall next to Katherine. It’s not like a double memory, but more like when Simon drags me along to watch some movie he likes for a second time. A third shadow, which belongs to Kate, works its way carefully toward the linen closet that leads back into the hotel.

Somewhere between Kate and and the linen closet is Holmes. That part of the room is too dark to see clearly. I can hear him, though. He moves cautiously, but with a speed that shows how much more familiar he is with the layout of this abominable room than the rest of us.

Two shots ring out, in fairly rapid succession, followed by the crash of breaking glass. Like the stench, these noises have become routine, things that I hear and smell each time I’m here.

A third shot sounds as Katherine shoves the window open. Even though I can’t hear or see it from this distance, I know that Katherine and my younger self are currently having a brief, nearly silent squabble over who goes through the window first. I’d promised Kate that I’d get her grandmother back to safety, and I took that promise seriously. On the other hand, I was used to getting my bottom whacked if I argued with my elders. And since Katherine’s expression suggested she might just toss me out the window if I didn’t go willingly, I didn’t hesitate long before following her orders.

The next few seconds would be the best time, strategically-speaking, for me to attack Holmes. But I know that Katherine is still there, crouched below the window. It was several seconds before she followed me onto the ladder, and I remember hesitating, wondering if I should go back up and help her.

Watching the scenes over and over in the past few days, I know now that she could probably see Holmes at this point, faintly lit by the glow of Kate’s CHRONOS key. He’s staring at the window, pistol raised, ready to take another shot. And she’s waiting for something to distract him before making her move.

Kate provides that distraction, kicking out and upward as Holmes passes in front of her. Another shot echoes in the room as he stumbles.

I’m still in a crouch, and for a moment, I think I’ve bumped into one of the bits of furniture in the room. Something pushes me backward, and it’s only when my ass lands on the floor that I realize the last bullet hit me.

Not in the shoulder like the one that hit Number Four. This bullet hit at least a foot lower, on the left side of my abdomen.

Kiernan Number Six should be at his station in the hallway by now, monitoring this room.  But he’ll be watching Kate and Holmes, so I doubt he even realizes I’ve been shot.

Holmes manages to grab Kate’s foot, and she falls backward, banging her head hard enough that I feel the vibration through the floor.

I wait until Holmes starts talking and then try to get to my feet. Wetness seeps through my fingers and I have to pause to steady myself as the pain ratchets up.

“You have an impressive kick for such a little lady,” Holmes says, as he digs for the spare bullet in his jacket pocket. “But it’s no match for a gun.”

As he begins chambering the round, Katherine drops out the window, disappearing onto the fire escape.

My second attempt at standing fares no better than the first and I decide that staying close to the ground might be a wiser bet.  I begin crawling toward Holmes, one arm pressed against the wound in my side.

Kate is still recovering from the fall and she looks around, disoriented, as Holmes steps backward, trying to figure out exactly where she landed.  The back of his leg bumps against one of the cots, causing the collection of bottles to clang against each other.

He curses, and then abruptly shifts to a laugh. He’s just remembered the bottle of acid in his pocket.

Across the room, Kate has the key in her hand and is working on locking in a stable point. I lunge forward to grab Holmes’s legs, hoping to trip him before he gets the stopper out of the bottle.

I don’t remember crying out, but some noise must have escaped me because Kate looks away from the key toward me, losing her chance to blink out.

She screams as the acid hits the side of her neck.

I’ve heard that scream before, too.  Five times now.  But it pierces me, nonetheless. That sound could never become routine, even if I was locked in this cycle for eternity.

Holmes takes a step back, maybe to avoid any splash-back from the liquid. As soon as he’s in range, I hook one arm around his legs and tug. The gun flies out of his hands, landing just a few inches behind Kate who is frantically crawling toward the door to the linen closet. His foot lashes out, connecting with my stomach.  It’s not directly where the bullet entered, but close enough that hurts like hell. For a few seconds, I’m helpless, curled into an agonized ball.

As Holmes hunts for the gun, I push myself back toward the cots. The bony arm is still there, inches from me as I tug my CHRONOS key out of the pouch, but it doesn’t bother me the same way now that I see Kate approaching the door.

In my dreams, I think that hand has always been Kate’s hand, representing my fear that she had become just another anonymous corpse in this makeshift morgue.

Holmes scrambles around on the floor and eventually locates the gun. He looks around for me, trying to determine why he tripped, but his attention is pulled back to Kate when she shoves aside the body that’s blocking the exit.

For the first time since I began watching this horror show, Kate opens the door, and that jolts Holmes out of his momentary stupor.  I need to stall him, keep him from following her.

I toss one of the bottles toward him. “Come get me, you son of a bitch.”

Holmes jumps and looks behind him, waving the gun in the direction of my voice.

“What are you waiting for?” I speak louder this time, since Kate is out of the room.

Does he think I’m a ghost?  Most of the people he killed were women, but a few men lost their lives at his hand, too, including a few business partners. Maybe he’s expecting his own personal Jacob Marley to crawl from the shadows. He hesitates, but he only has the one bullet left and in the end, it’s Kate he decides to pursue.

The CHRONOS key now reads 20:25:43. Nine seconds longer than Kate’s lived in any scenario. But she’s not out of harm’s way yet. I need to find my other self, my unwounded self, so that he can help her. I don’t know how badly injured she is from the acid or from the blow to her head when she fell. Is she even in a state where she can use the key?

That thought is oddly prophetic, because it takes me two tries to pull up the stable point near the stairwell, where Kiernan Number Six is positioned.

I roll the time back to 20:24:00 and blink in at the hallway location. At first, I don’t see Six. It takes me a few seconds to realize that this is before the time he was supposed to jump in. And I’m blocking the stable point he’ll be using.

Idiot.

Once I drag myself a few feet to the right, Six blinks in. When he sees me, color drains from his face, almost as if he’s the one who’s in danger of bleeding out.

“What happened?”

“I seem to have caught a bullet.”

He glances down at the blood for a second, and then he pulls out his key. “I’ll go back and--”

“No.” I stop to catch my breath. “Kate gets out. She’ll be coming this way in about forty seconds. She’s injured, but she’ll be okay unless Holmes catches up to her. He still has one bullet.”

“Okay, then. Get back to the cabin. I’ll take it from here.”

“I’m don’t think I can get back to the cabin. It took me two tries to blink back to this spot. Just leave me. Help Kate.”

He gives me a doubtful look. And even though I wish he’d go and quit wasting time, I get it. I remember feeling the same way back in my room, and that version of me wasn’t in nearly as bad shape.

“Damn it, just go. Get her to safety.”

Six blinks away and returns a second later, holding a wet cloth that smells a bit like baking soda. Gauze pads and a roll of medical tape are tucked under his left arm.  He hooks his right arm under my shoulders and pulls me to my feet.

“I said, leave me.”

“This isn’t about you, damn it.”

Six half drags me to a door across the hall and after a brief struggle with the knob, he manages to open it. I lean against the wall, and he pulls the door closed behind us, then tosses me the wet cloth and other medical supplies.

“I’ve set up points along the hallways and watched what’s happening. She’ll come this way. I’m going to distract Holmes and see if I can buy her a little more time, hopefully without getting myself killed. Kate will try this door, but it sticks, so she’ll think it’s locked. Open it, transfer the stable point to her key.”

He doesn’t meet my eyes as he speaks. At first, I think he’s avoiding the whole hamster-on-a-wheel feeling, but there’s something else in his expression. Getting the medical supplies, setting all those stable points, watching them to see which way Kate would run...all of that took time. This hotel is a maze of hallways, and even if he was just watching the most likely routes, it took more than a couple of minutes.

So I ask him outright, before he can blink away. “It’s been almost nine minutes for me. How long has it been for you?  Since I caused the splinter?”

“Not sure.”

Yeah, right.  The truth is written on his face--my face--and I’m not so far gone that I can’t read it. And even if there’s a touch of bitterness, and more than a touch of fear about what’s coming down the pike very, very soon, I know it’s better this way.

“It’s okay. No point in lyin’ to yourself. I’ll get her to the cabin. You take it from there.”

He does look at me then, and gives me quick nod.

A split second after he leaves, the door handle rattles twice, followed by a frustrated curse. I’d recognize that voice anywhere, even strained as it is now from pain, from breathing smoke, and from running through these hallways seconds ahead of a madman.

Crossing the short distance to the door is agony, but I make it. I twist the handle sharply to the right, and as Kate falls backward against me, I place one hand over her mouth to trap the scream that I know is coming. With the other hand, I press the wet cloth against the angry welts on the side of her face.

My knees are shaking harder now that her weight is added to my own. I lean back against the wall, struggling to stay upright, as I close the door and push the bolt into place. That lock won’t hold Holmes for long--one good kick will probably do it. It’s flimsy and barely screwed into the wood, unlike the sturdy locks he’s placed on the outside of these doors. Holmes isn’t nearly as concerned with keeping people out of these guestrooms as he is with keeping his guests trapped inside.

Kate struggles against me. I whisper her name softly, as I press my face against her hair, breathing her in. The stench of this place, full of smoke and death, clings to her, but her own scent is there, too, and it fills me with a sense of relief that I haven’t felt since I lost her.

She looks up at me, and even though the light is dim, I can see that she’s barely holding it together. Her green eyes are unfocused, confused.

“Kiernan?  But how--”

I hold my CHRONOS key against hers to transfer the stable point for the cabin, and then help her pull up the interface.

“Kate, please. You have to focus. I’ve pulled up a stable point, love. Just slide your fingers over it and go.  I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”

That promise is a lie in one sense, but hopefully, she’ll never know it. Six will be there.

It takes a second longer than usual, but Kate manages to lock in the location.  And then she’s gone.

I slide down to the floor. The gauze and medical tape are a few feet away, but I don’t have the energy.  And it’s pointless. Holmes is already trying the door. Whether he shoots me, or I bleed out, or I simply vanish, the end result is the same. My time’s up.

Still, I bring up the cabin on my key. Not to follow her. The fact that pulling up the stable point is a struggle tells me that’s not possible. I just need to see that Six made it back, that someone is there to help her. I’m not sure what I’ll do if he’s not, but I need to know.

Holmes twists the handle again and then the door shakes. Once, twice and then it flies open.

My eyes remain on the holographic display. Kate is in the cabin, crumpled on the floor. A moment later, I blink in--or rather, Six blinks in. He lifts Kate into his arms and I pan the view around to follow them.

From the corner of my eye, I see Holmes. He scans the room for Kate, then raises the pistol in my direction.

Closing my eyes, I hold fast to that final image of Kate, safe in the cabin, and wait for the end.

Afterword

This short story originally appeared in CLONES: The Anthology, a collection of stories about—you guessed it—clones, edited by Daniel Smith.  Time travel isn’t the most common method of producing clones in science fiction, and it’s certainly not the most technologically feasible. But clones of this sort exist in my series, The CHRONOS Files, created when a time traveler doubles back on his or her timeline and changes something.  That action results in a splinter--a temporary duplicate of the time traveler.  One copy or the other vanishes in ten minutes or so, and the timeline continues on its slightly-altered way.

But...which copy vanishes? You or the new you? Does it even matter if they’re both you?  What sort of challenges would you face working with multiple yous toward a common goal?  These existential questions are touched on briefly in Time’s Divide, the final book in my series, but I wanted to explore them in a bit more detail. The events that happen to Kiernan after the end of Time’s Echo, when he’s forced to create multiple splinters in order to save Kate, seemed like a perfect opportunity to dig a bit deeper, so I was delighted to have the chance to explore this somewhat unusual method of cloning for the Clones anthology.

Thanks for reading “Splinter.” If you enjoyed this short story, you can find the entire CHRONOS series online at http://www.amazon.com/author/walker.

About the Author

RYSA WALKER is the author of the bestselling CHRONOS Files series. Timebound, the first book in the series, was the Young Adult and Grand Prize winner in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.

Rysa grew up on a cattle ranch in the South, where she read every chance she got. On the rare occasion that she gained control of the television, she watched Star Trek and imagined living in the future, on distant planets, or at least in a town big enough to have a stop light.

She currently lives in North Carolina. The Delphi Effect, the first book in her new series, The Delphi Trilogy, debuted in October 2016.

If you see Rysa on social media, please tell her to get back into the Writing Cave.

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