Time's Edge
Author: Rysa Walker
Date: 2014-10-21 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Time Travel; Young Adult; Science Fiction; Fantasy; Fiction; Historical Fiction; Romance; Adventure; Science Fiction Fantasy
Description: To stop her sadistic grandfather, Saul, and his band of time travelers from rewriting history, Kate must race to retrieve the CHRONOS keys before they fall into the Cyrists' hands. If she jumps back in time and pulls the wrong key--one that might tip off the Cyrists to her strategy--her whole plan could come crashing down, jeopardizing the future of millions of innocent people. Kate's only ally is Kiernan, who also carries the time-traveling gene. But their growing bond threatens everything Kate is trying to rebuild with Trey, her boyfriend who can't remember the relationship she can't forget.
Publisher: Skyscape

Also by Rysa Walker

Novels

Timebound

Time’s Edge

Novellas

Time’s Echo

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 © 2015 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.

For information:

http://www.rysa.com

First edition: June 2015

For my Mama

And all the other Mamas and Moms
who give your kids the side-eye
when they call you Mother.

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

September 14, 1984, 2:32 p.m.

“There’s no way Mom will let you out of the house in that,” Deborah says, looking up from her book. “Or with that much makeup. She’s going to march you right back upstairs and—”

“Ah, but Mother isn’t taking me. She’s locked up in the study working on some report. Dad’s driving me.”

Deb nods, because we both know that unless I get into the car in my underwear, Dad won’t have a clue whether what I’m wearing has earned the Katherine Shaw stamp of approval. A skirt this short would be vetoed in a flash. I had to buy the outfit with my own money, sneak it in, and hide it in the very back of the closet, behind that poufy thing I wore to the eighth-grade dance.

It was worth it. The edges of my red bra peek up over the black lace shirt if I move just right. I practiced in front of the mirror, and it looks perfect when I hold the violin up to my shoulder. Jason already seems to have forgotten that I’m fifteen—well, practically fifteen. With any luck, this ensemble will also make him forget I’m his student.

“But what about when you come home?” Deb asks. “You still have to get up the stairs, Pru.”

“Well, that’s where you come in, my dearest darling sister. Could you run interference when you hear the car pull up? Pretty, pretty please? I’ve been waiting three whole weeks for this opportunity, and who knows when I’ll get another one. I’ll return the favor and I’ll even let you wear this. Promise!”

Deb laughs and shakes her head, because we know that both promises are pretty much risk free. The guys Deb likes have parents picking out names for the grandchildren after the first date. And unless Deb has a radical change in style, she wouldn’t be caught dead in this outfit. We’re twins, but we’re most definitely not identical.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “But if Mom catches you, I had no idea what you were wearing. I was taking a nap when you left, capisce?”

“Capisce.”

“It’s capisco, if you’re agreeing.”

“Don’t care, mon frere. Thank you, thank you. I owe you one.”

Deb snorts. “You owe me about a million.”

Which is true, but she’ll never expect me to pay up, and that makes her the perfect sister.

I squeeze her foot and hurry over to the mirror, pulling my dark curls up and off to one side. “More lip gloss, or do I look perfect?”

She tips her head to to the right. “If by perfect, you mean three years older and asking for trouble, then yes. Absolutely perfect.”

Since I’m actually going for four years older, I add one more layer of my aptly named Darkest Berry lip gloss before grabbing the violin case. “Could you tell Dad I’m waiting in the car? And…maybe make sure the witch is still in her study?”

Sighing, Deb closes her book and stashes it under the mattress. Okay, that’s the one area where she matches me in secrets. Mother lets us read any sort of non-fiction, but when it comes to fiction, if she had her way we’d both still be reading Nancy Drew.

“Love you!” I yell as Deb heads downstairs.

“Yeah, yeah, love you, too.”

I reach into the dresser drawer, pull out the medallion, and stash it in the pocket of my skirt. If Deb or Mother saw it we’d just have another fight. I’m starting to think Deb is color-blind, or maybe just plain blind-blind, because she swears it’s plain bronze and I’ve never seen anything more neon green than this baby. I’m pretty sure Mother sees the color, too, because she turned white as a ghost when she caught me with hers, yanking it away like I’d found her diary or a sex toy or something.

She’s not as good a liar as she thinks. Like when we were arguing the other day and I asked if she’d ever dated someone older than her before she met Dad. Mother said yes, and then added that the guy was only two years older. Her eyes got all round and innocent like one of the characters on Astroboy when she said the last part. They always do that when she’s hiding something.

I don’t think this is the medallion that belonged to Mother, because that one was on a silver chain. This one, I found yesterday. It was hard to miss in the dark attic, with the green light seeping through the edges of the box. The same hourglass thing is in the middle, but this medallion hangs from a black leather cord. It doesn’t match my outfit, aside from the cord, but I want to see what Jason says. He’s artistic, like me. I bet he’ll see the light, too.

I wait until I hear Deb give our secret “coast is clear” knock on the stairwell wall and dash down the stairs, through the kitchen door, and into the garage. Dad joins me about half a minute later, patting his pocket for his keys and his glasses. I love him to death, but Jim Pierce’s picture is in the dictionary right next to “absentminded professor.”

We’re two blocks from the house, about to turn onto Glebe, when Dad says, “Oh, rats. I forgot my book.”

“Dad! We’re going to be late.”

“Nonsense. It will only take a minute to turn back. I’m not going to sit there for an hour doing nothing. I’ll just leave the car running and go in the front. We have plenty of time.”

I’m not so sure about that, given the rainy weather, but there’s no point arguing. He’s already turning around.

Dad leaves the car idling near the sidewalk and dashes into the house, pulling his jacket up slightly so that it shields his head from the rain. It does only take a minute before he’s climbing back into the car, book in hand.

I look up at the last second to see Mother standing in the doorway. There’s absolutely no doubt that she sees my makeup, even if she can’t see the clothes. There’s no way Deborah will be able to distract her now. She’ll be waiting at the door when we get back and I’ll be grounded for all eternity. Next violin lesson, she’ll have me dressed like I’m ten years old.

What the hell. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

I pull the medallion out of my pocket and hold it up to the window, giving her a screw you grin. Yes, it will probably add an extra eternity to my grounding, but it’s worth it to see that look on her face one more time.

“New outfit?” Dad says as we turn onto the main road.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I like plaid.” He turns up the radio, which—as always—is tuned to the local university station that plays news and classical.

Mother’s going to yell at Dad, too, although she’ll let him off the hook pretty quickly because she knows he’s clueless about this sort of thing. But I guess I’m still feeling a little guilty, because I’m compelled to say I like the song that’s playing, even though I have no idea who the composer is.

We drive along for a bit. I listen to the boring music and watch the raindrops connect as they drip down the windows. The sky beyond the bridge is nearly the same shade of gray as the Potomac. I start to put on the medallion, but then I remember that one of these has been in Mother’s jewelry box for who-knows-how-long, and I don’t really want to know if Dad can see the glow. I’d rather believe that only Jason and I, along with a few other truly romantic souls, can see this light.

After my lesson, I’ll give it to Jason and he can hide it in his car. That way, he’ll think of me all week, each time he sees the glow.

I wrap the cord around my wrist, deciding to wait and put it on when I go in for my lesson. But I keep glancing back down at the thing. It’s weird, because I can occasionally see more than just the green glow when it’s in my palm. There’s an almost holographic effect as this black fuzzy square rises up from the circle, and occasionally, I see a blip of something that looks like numbers.

It’s hypnotic. I stare into it, watching as white specks like tiny snowflakes drift downward in front of my eyes.

The car in front of us brakes suddenly. Dad does the same, jolting me forward.

I blink.

And then I’m falling.

When I open my eyes, Dad, the car, the gray sky, and the gray river have all disappeared. There’s nothing but the blackness, although it’s not entirely black anymore. The glow of the medallion creates a halo of green, lighting up the tiny white specks around me that look like bits of paper or maybe rock.

It’s pretty until I look down and see that the ground below is rushing straight toward me.

My hand is on top of my face.

It's the first thing I see when I open my eyes. My hand, my arm, the black lace of my blouse. The blouse that will push Jason right over the edge.

Except I don’t think I’m going to make it to my violin lesson today. I can’t move my legs. In fact, I can barely move at all.

I smell smoke. And something else. Blood, maybe.

Where the hell am I? How did I get here? Why is my hand on my face?

The last thing I remember is watching the raindrops work their way down the windshield, and goofing around with the stupid pendant, looking at that odd, static-filled square of black hanging above it. Then the static cleared up. The square was pure black, with a few specks of light in the distance. And I was falling into that blackness.

Why can’t I move? Why is my hand on my face? And why does my brain keep insisting that the hand on my face is more important at this moment than the fact that every inch of my body is in pain? More important than the blood dripping down the back of my neck.

There's nothing weird about my hand being on my face. Except…I can't feel my face under my hand. The angle seems wrong, too. I can see the glow of the green medallion in that hand, but I also feel that same medallion in the hand down by my side. I feel the cord wrapped around my wrist. When I squeeze the disk tightly, the sharp edge cuts into my palm.

Yep. It’s definitely in my hand.

And the hand and the medallion can't be both places at once.

My mind drifts away and eventually settles on a memory from a few years ago. I’m sitting in the living room with my dad. He’s watching 20/20 and I’m doing the crossword puzzle in the TV Guide, mostly because I don’t want to go to bed yet. Barbara Walters comes on with this story about amputees who can still feel their limbs even though—

That thought rips a scream from my throat. The extra arm moves then, and I discover there's a body attached to it. An entire extra me. Wearing the same clothes, with the monogrammed purse Deborah gave me for Christmas strapped across her body. That seems to be the only difference. I must have dropped mine during the fall.

Stranger still, at the very same time that I see this other me and feel her weight on top of me, I also remember her not being here. I don't mean a memory from before she arrived. It’s not that she wasn't here and then suddenly she was. I remember both things at the same time. They’re both equally true, and that makes my head ache in an entirely different way.

I have to get out of here, but my legs still won't move. They seem to be pinned down.

Turning my head to the right, I see her face—my face—tinted a sickly green from the key. A chair of some sort is just behind her, leaning at a drunken angle. In fact, the entire room seems to be tipped downward, toward the center, almost like gravity is stronger there. Like we're inside a funnel.

She moans again, and opens one eye, staring back at me. When she moves, the medallion in her hand brushes against my face and a sensation like a static shock—a big one—runs through me. She must feel it too, because she moves her hand away.

I don’t know what she is or why she’s here. But I’m certain that this other me shouldn't exist. And from the way her eyes just narrowed, I’m pretty sure she's thinking the same damn thing about me.

When I try to move my arm at the shoulder to push her off, a blinding pain rips through my back. So I try my lower arm. It moves just enough for me to loop one finger under the black cord strapped around her wrist.

I pull the cord. She tightens her grip when she feels the tug, but it's too late. I flick the medallion to the ground on the other side of my body and shove her away.

Or rather I attempt to shove. It's more like a feeble nudge. I can't see what's on top of my legs, can't even feel the weight, really. Just a sense of pressure from a few inches above the knee.

But I can move my lower arm. I feel around the space beside me until my fingers locate a large chunk of something hard and jagged. A rock, or maybe cement.

She pulls herself across my upper body, reaching for the other medallion. Her legs seem to be working just fine. In fact, she's in better shape overall, probably because I cushioned her fall.

When her hand locks on to the medallion, my own face looks back at me with a grin of triumph.

It's instinct. Pure self-preservation. I bring the rock I’m holding down against the side of her head. It isn't a very hard blow, since I can barely move my arm, but the edge of the rock is sharp enough that she doesn’t want a second helping. She dodges away. Just a few inches to the left, toward that oddly tilted chair.

She reaches for the chair to brace herself. A look of pure terror fills her eyes as the chair slides even further, tumbling downward, into the funnel.

"Help me!" She grabs for my blouse, untucking it from my skirt. As she struggles to get a better grip on the fabric, the medallion she’s carrying slips from her fingers. It slides across the floor and disappears into the hole.

The other me pulls my upper body toward her, wrenching it away from the legs that won’t move, that are pinned to the floor by something I can’t see.

We both scream the same scream, in stereo.

I smash the rock downward again, this time on the hand grasping my shirt. Her fingers open.

She screams again when she falls, but I don't join her this time. I just clutch the rock and my medallion to my chest, and lie there, whimpering.

"Dad! Mom! Anybody? Someone help me! Please!"

But no one comes.

My bones are being ripped from my flesh. I try to scream, but no sound comes out.

Voices. A man's face.

Arms lifting me.

Then it’s just the blackness again.

When I open my eyes, I see green. Everywhere. It's like floating inside a bed of lime-green Jell-O. I flex my fingers through the stuff and then carefully move my arms. They move, both from the elbow and the shoulder, but my legs don’t respond. I can't even tell for certain that they're there.

I peer through the goop, searching for Deb, even though I know she’s not here. Wherever this place is, it’s nothing like the hospital where she had her tonsils removed last fall.

The next time I wake up, the medallion is missing. That's when I realize the goo I've been lying in isn't really green. It was just reflecting the light from the pendant. The room still seems to have a faint green glow, but the vivid light is gone.

There’s no pain when I’m inside the tub of goo. There's only boredom when I’m awake and nightmares when I sleep. Nightmares where I’m falling into the dark. Nightmares where the girl with my face crawls out of that hole. And this time, the rock is in her hand.

People come into the room twice a day and pull me out of the tub. There's plenty of pain on the outside. Sometimes, a machine runs a thin wire along the bottom of my foot or performs one of the dozens of other tortures in its routine. Then back into the boring goop I go.

I prefer the boredom at the beginning, because the pain is intense. But after a while—weeks? months?—even pain is better than just lying here staring at the ceiling. That's about the time someone decides the goop is now only for nighttime. Only for sleep.

During the day, I sit on a bed that looks very much like a normal hospital bed. Rails on the side, but the bed seems to respond to my movements. When I lean backward, it reclines. When I try to sit up, it helps me. And it’s softer, conforming to my body.

I don’t remember eating when I spent my days in the goop. But now that I’m out, they bring food several times a day and I eat and drink what they put in front of me. Except for the meat. They get the point after a day or two and start bringing me cheese and nuts. Mostly it’s healthy stuff, but one of them slipped me a square of chocolate last week. The next day, she asked if I wanted more. Said she'd get me a whole bar if I'd say something. If I’d answer their questions.

As bribes go, it's pathetic. Unless she's offering me a large bag of Cheetos and a cherry Slurpee with that chocolate bar, it's not even tempting.

I'll talk when I have something to say.

For the first few weeks, I tried really hard to convince myself that this is just a different country. That this is a high-tech Six Million Dollar Man kind of place, maybe somewhere in Europe or India. Most of the doctors and attendants I've seen are dark-skinned. Or at least darker than I am, even after summers at the pool. Hair color tells me nothing. There's every color of hair in the freakin' rainbow, often on the same person. Cyndi Lauper would feel right at home here. Some of the words they use are odd, but it’s definitely English.

The tattoo thingies are what finally force me to accept that I'm either not on Earth or I’m not in 1984. Most people have at least one of the tattoos, and nearly all of them move. One of the men who lifts me out of the goo-tub has an image of a little girl's face on the inside of his arm. When he caught me staring, he said it was his daughter when she was tiny. Said how nice it was to look at the picture now that she's all grown up. He tapped the image and then twisted his arm around so that I could see the video that hovered about two inches above his skin…that same little girl dancing in a tutu.

The tutu looks a lot like the one I wore six or seven years ago when I thought ballet was cool. But everything else in this place is pure Star Wars.

I think maybe they use the tattoos as telephones, too, because one guy touched his and then started talking about something that didn't have anything at all to do with my therapy. Acted like I wasn’t even in the room, but I couldn’t hear anyone else talking.

Once I'm somewhat mobile, they start moving me over to the windows, into the sunshine. The Washington Monument off in the distance confirms that I’m still in DC, but the layout of the city seems different. Less green space. More water.

The attendant comes in once I’m settled and drops the flat black rectangle into my lap again. It’s about the size and shape of a Pop-Tart. Probably another of their psych tests. No thanks. I push it aside and close my eyes, just as I did yesterday and the day before.

"Come on," she says, coaxing my head back toward the front. "You need something to keep your mind clicking. Why stare at the wall all day? You can game. Or read. Watch a vid. Just blink twice and then nav with your eyes."

She leaves the Pop-Tart thingamajig in my lap this time, and after a while, I start playing around with it. It's frustrating as hell at first, but eventually a transparent screen sort of pops up in front of me. It reminds me of how the hologram of Princess Leia shows up when Luke presses the button on R2-D2…it’s there, but you can still kind of see through it. The music selection totally sucks and there aren't any games I recognize on the menu, but a few shows seem interesting. Sort of like soap operas, except they keep pausing at key moments, waiting for me to make a choice. Should Daura confess to Elon? Should Abro return the levbar he took from Sam? This would be a lot more fun with Deb around to make fun of their accents and clothes and bad acting, but it passes the time.

When it eventually dawns on me that these little Choose Your Own Adventure stories are just another form of mental exam, I push the Pop-Tart aside. But after few hours, boredom wins out and I search around until I locate books. Thousands of them. Mostly writers I don't recognize, but there are exceptions. Some I know from school, like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters. Poe. A lot of stuff by Stephen King, including The Shining, which Mother confiscated last year because…you guessed it, too old for me.

I was born in 1970. I've been told it’s now October 2305. I did the math and I'm pretty sure that makes me an adult, so I'll read any damn thing I want. And since they're probably analyzing the books I choose, the King stories will give them something to chew on. They can wonder whether I'm just waiting for the right moment to go all Firestarter on them.

The time goes faster once I have something to do. For the first few days, I read a lot of stuff set in the 1980s, because it's familiar. Comforting. But that just makes me homesick, so I start reading fantasy, hoping to find something even more out-there than my own situation.

I haven’t had much success on that front.

I'm about a hundred pages into another King book—The Drawing of the Three—when the door opens. The doctors and nurses usually knock first to give me a few seconds’ notice. Maybe they decided why bother since I never respond.

It’s not one of the medical people. The man has been here before, though, back when I was in the goop. I saw him again one day when I was coming back from the physical therapy room. The eyes—unnaturally bright and piercing—are why I remember him. He’s dressed the same as before, in a plain gray suit that looks a lot like menswear from my time, minus the tie. A piece of jewelry—a simple gold circle—sits in front of the top button on his white shirt, just below an Adam’s apple that looks like he swallowed an egg. Dark blue hair is slicked back from his forehead. Just a single shade, which is as close as you get to button-down around here.

The nurse made him go away before, but either he snuck past when they weren’t watching or they’ve given him the green light to question me. Because I can tell that’s why he’s here. His odd eyes are narrowed down into inquisitive little slits as he crosses to the window where I’m sitting.

“Ms. Shaw? Detective Sutter.”

I shoot him a quick glance, and then look back out the window. Hopefully, he’ll take the hint and leave.

No such luck. He parks his uninvited butt in the other chair and leans forward, scowling. “Enough wallowing in self-pity, young lady. If you’re well enough to read, you’re well enough to answer some questions.”

When I don’t look at him, he slides his chair closer to the window so that he’s partially in my line of sight. But two can play that game. I put my feet on the floor, bracing some of my weight on them. Then I turn my own chair a few inches to the right, fighting to keep from wincing when the pain shoots through my legs. That hurt even worse than the physical therapy.

Sutter’s annoyed huff is worth the agony, even though I can still feel his creepy eyes glaring at the back of my head. But it only lasts a moment and then he’s up, grabbing the edges of my chair to twist me back around to face him.

“I can do this all day, Ms. Shaw. But I’m guessing you can’t. While I’m quite certain you’re faking the inability to speak, I’ve seen your med files…broken spine, broken hip, multiple fractures pretty much everywhere else. Why don’t we stop playing games and get down to business?”

He taps something on his arm and then swirls his finger in the air, pivoting an image so that it faces me. It’s a video or holograph or whatever of my mother, a little younger than she was in the pictures from when Deb and I were babies. She’s at a party of some sort—noisy and crowded, with small groups chatting in the background. A tall, thin man with dark hair has one arm around her, and she’s laughing as the guy leans in close to the recorder, clearly trying to get his point across.

“…better back then. Ask any man who can use the key and he’ll tell you the same. Well, except maybe Richard or Grant, but—”

My mother laughs again and elbows him. “Be nice, Saul.”

“Shush, Kathy. Your only job tonight is to look beautiful and tell me how brilliant I am.”

They all laugh and someone says, “Oooh…burned, Kathy.” The voice is familiar, but I’m not sure why.

She fake-punches the Saul guy and starts to walk away, but he laughs and pulls her back, kissing her hard before he turns back to finish what he was saying.

Saul is handsome. He looks a lot like that actor in The Outsiders, the one who played Soda? Rob Somebody. Except he’s older, maybe even thirty.

Sutter pauses the video. “Can you identify any of these people?”

When I don’t respond, he taps the air to zoom in on a man in one of the clusters along the far wall. He’s younger, with light brown hair, and he’s staring over at Mother and the dark-haired guy. He looks worried.

“How about him?”

I turn my head away from the recording and Sutter springs up out of the chair, getting right in my face. The eyes that seemed weird at a distance are downright freaky up close. Little lights shine inside them—not reflections, but actually inside his eyes.

“Katherine Shaw is your mother. Saul Rand is your father. We know this. So how did you wind up here with the key that belonged to Richard Viers?”

I lean back into the chair and squeeze my eyelids tight so that I can’t see his weird robo-eyes. It doesn’t stop me from hearing him, however, or from inhaling his breath, which smells green and chemical, like cilantro.

I want to scream back at him. What key? The only key I was carrying is the one to our house. I don’t know this Saul Rand. I don’t know anyone named Richard Viers, either.

After a few seconds, Sutter pulls away. I hear him drop back into the chair, huffing several times like he’s trying to get a grip on his temper.

Then Mother’s voice is back. I open my eyes again without even thinking.

“…misusing resources. How can future generations hold us in anything but contempt if we fail to use this great power to guide the ship?”

This image isn’t at the party. There’s no background noise. It looks like an apartment. I can see the sky and the tops of buildings through the window behind her, and when she laughs I know she’s been drinking.

More accurately, she’s drunk, or close to it. I’ve only seen her that way a few times, most recently last year, when she and Dad came back from some faculty party. The sitter—and no, we really didn’t need a sitter at thirteen, but whatever—let us stay up to watch Saturday Night Live. It was right after Belushi died and they were doing a tribute. Mom and Dad came in during a musical number. Mink Deville was singing some love song, and Mom pulled Dad into a dance move. He nearly dropped her and they both started laughing.

No, let’s be honest. They were giggling.

Neither of my parents are gigglers, especially not my mother. Deb and I weren’t one bit surprised when she stumbled downstairs the next morning, headed straight for the Alka-Seltzer and the coffee, and then closed herself off in the study for most of the day. And I doubt she was reading anything academic.

That’s how she sounds in this holograph. Giggly. Giddy. It’s a bit disgusting, although to be fair, she’s not that old here. College age, maybe?

After a brisk shake of her head, she starts in again, and I can tell she’s making an effort to keep a straight face. “Our hands have been tied long enough by those who think we should sit by and watch as our forefathers make one catastrophic mistake after another. I will sever the ties that bind us to a history where fate and happenstance dictate the fortune of the world. I will be the Joan of Arc for a new CHRONOS built upon the ashes of the old!”

She glances off to the right, and it looks like she’s going to crack up again, but she gives the camera one last firm and determined stare and then the picture vanishes.

“So.” Sutter folds his hands in his lap and I close my eyes again, because now that the image is gone it’s just him and his freaky eyes in front of me. “You’re clearly part of this ‘new CHRONOS’ she envisioned. How long has she been training you? Who else was working with her when she destroyed headquarters? Your father? Richard Viers? You can either answer now, or I’ll get a court order to chemically induce your responses.”

The idea of Sutter’s people pumping some sort of truth serum into me is terrifying, but I don’t have anything to tell him. And a lot of his questions make it sound like I might need a lawyer.

Do they still have lawyers?

I squeeze my eyes shut even harder and turn my head away. Yes, I know that ignoring him won’t make him disappear, and I know I’m acting like a stubborn toddler, but what can I tell him? I showed up in some future-era bombed-out building and he clearly believes my mother was the bomber. How could I possibly convince him that I don’t know anything about it?

“Your choice, Ms. Shaw. Which is—”

“You’re not supposed to be in here without one of the attendants, Sutter.” It’s the voice I heard earlier in the hologram thing, the guy who said Ooh, burned, Kathy. I recognize it now. Tate somebody. He's been here before. Three times that I recall. His is the first face I saw, aside from my evil twin, when I was hurt. He’s the one who lifted me out of the rubble.

Tate also asks questions when he visits, but if I don't respond, he doesn't seem pissed off. Since I don’t talk, he just talks to me. He's why I know it's October 2305. Why I know I've been in this hospital for over five months.

Sutter gives him a disdainful glance. “Thought she might be more inclined to talk without a crowd, Poulsen. But apparently, we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

He heads toward the door, but Tate is blocking the exit and Tate is big. Sutter may be skinny, but there’s no way he can squeeze through. Tate gives it a couple of beats and then steps into the room so Sutter can leave.

“Friggin’ moron,” he mutters, after Sutter is gone.

Tate isn’t as old as I thought at first. Twenty, maybe? Handsome in a He-Man sort of way. The slightly hooked nose that probably wouldn’t work on most faces somehow fits his. I mostly ignore him when he visits, although I definitely sneak glances now and then. But his comment about Sutter makes me smile.

When I pretend to go back to my reading, he says, "Brought you something, Prudence."

It’s the first time anyone has called me by my name. They all seem to be sure that I’m either Deb or Pru, so they clearly pulled up some sort of records. But they can’t pin down which one and I haven’t confirmed one way or the other, so they tend to call me kid or sweetie. Or Miss Rand, which I didn’t understand at all to begin with.

Tate sounds pretty confident that he’s nailed it, however, and he laughs when I look up. It's a friendly laugh, accompanied by a nice smile that crinkles up his blue eyes.

"So you are listening. Wondering how I knew your name?"

I don't answer, but I don’t look away, either. He’s holding a box in his hands and after a moment, he lifts something out by a leather strap.

It's my purse, the one Deb gave me for Christmas last year, with my initials—PKP—embroidered on the front flap. My lips start to tremble when he hands it to me and I clutch it to my face, partly to hide my reaction, partly to smell the leather. I've been in a hospital gown for half a year. My clothes were never returned to me, although they were pretty ripped up, so there may not have been much to return. This is the first thing I've touched since they took the medallion away that has any connection to home. Everything here smells dry and antiseptic, even the food to some extent, and the scent of the leather mixed with the mint from my box of Tic Tacs starts the tears flowing.

"Hey, don't cry." Tate's voice is surprisingly gentle for such a big guy. He kneels down by the hospital bed and squeezes my hand. "You must have dropped it when you…fell in. They've been cataloging stuff from the wreckage for the museum. Someone found this the other day. I told my boss I'd bring it by."

It's hard to imagine Tate working in a museum. He looks like he should be wrestling Killer Khan and Andre the Giant.

I open the bag and look inside. My Lip Smackers, mascara, a brush, some hairbands. Gum. The Tic Tacs I smelled. My Walkman, the front plate now covered with a spiderweb of cracks. Headphones, cassettes. The only thing missing is the very thing I want—my wallet. Not for the money. I doubt I have five bucks in there. I want the pictures.

My disappointment must show. "The CHRONOS people…kept some things,” Tate says. “They're still trying to understand exactly what happened." He nods at the Walkman in my lap. "Does it still work?"

I push the play button, and the little rotors spin, but only for a second.

"Damn batteries…"I don't realize I've said it aloud until I see Tate's grin.

"So you can talk after all. I was beginning to think the trip goxed up your brain and there was nothing going on behind the pretty face."

The blood rushes to my cheeks and I look back into the purse to cover my embarrassment. But since I’ve let the cat out of the bag, it seems stupid to go back to the silent act, at least with him.

"Do you think those people…the CHRONOS people…would give me back my pictures? They’re in my wallet. They can have the money and anything else they want."

"I don’t think they want your money. And I’m pretty sure they’d give them back if you'd answer a few questions.” When he sees my expression, he adds, “I'm not saying you have to tell them anything. But…you're going to be healed soon, right? The nurse said you took four steps today. And they don't know what to do with you."

"I want to go home."

"Prudence, I don't—"

"Pru. It's just Pru."

I don't go into it, but long story short, this name is the only rotten thing my Dad ever did to me. It's his mom's name, so I don't complain. There are no good short versions, and I can’t use my middle name. I share that one with my mother and she gets on my last nerve. So I’m stuck with Pru, like it or not.

Tate doesn't finish what he was about to say when I interrupted, but it's pretty clear that he either doesn't think I can get home or doesn't think they'll let me.

"If they'd give me back that medallion thing, maybe I can reverse what brought me here?"

I don’t know what I did that landed me in that pit. Still, it stands to reason that the medallion is why I’m here, and therefore it’s my best shot for getting home.

Tate sighs. "Pru, it doesn't work that way. The jump room is gone. All of the equipment, too. It was destroyed in the explosion. And…unless something pretty major happens to change their minds, it's not being rebuilt.” His jaw tightens on the last part and he takes a deep breath before going on. “They're still not sure how you ended up here. Everyone else they found at the…epicenter, or whatever, was with CHRONOS. I mean, they know who you are from your DNA, but—"

"How? How do they know who I am? Or my parents? If this is really 2305, my parents have been dead for hundreds of years. How do they have videos of my mother?"

Tate sighs and goes back over to the chair near the window. "Time travel works both ways. You came here. Your parents went…there. Listen, maybe it would be better if I get Sutter—or better yet, one of the other officials—to come back in and talk to you about all of this. Now that you've gotten your voice back."

"No! I won't talk to them. They keep showing me images of someone who looks like my mom and this other guy, who is not my dad. Sutter got really angry and his eyes…" I shake my head and hold the purse tight against my chest. "No."

"Okay, okay. I get it. I'll ask for your things. Your pictures. But…you shouldn’t get your hopes up about the key."

"What key? The only key I have is to my house. I doubt it's still standing three centuries later, and if they want it, they can keep it.”

"I’m talking about the medallion. The thing that brought you here. Even those of us who were actually with CHRONOS didn't get to keep them, except when we were on assignment. Not that it really mattered, since we couldn’t use them without the equipment in the jump room. That’s part of the reason you have Sutter and everyone else so confused. Some of them are worried that you were able to bypass the safety and use the key without the jump apparatus. Some think you were just pulled in as a fluke, like Grant and a few of the other historians whose bodies they found in the wreckage. Either way, they’ve been keeping this room under a CHRONOS field, just as a precaution. They don’t know whether you exist outside of it.”

My mind flashes back to the other version of me, but I push the image away. “What do you mean…if I exist? I’m right here…how could I not exist?”

“This is the kind of thing you should be talking to them about, Prudence. I’m just a historian, and they—"

"No!" My heart is racing at the very thought of dealing with Sutter again. "If you bring them in, I won't even talk to you. I’ll…stop eating. I’ll…”

What else can I threaten given my current circumstances, short of peeing the bed?

I’m definitely not saying that.

“Please.  Just please, please…no."

"Okay,” he says, his shoulders slumping a bit. “I won't mention it again. But would you answer a few questions for me? I’m curious. The school ID in your wallet said 1984, so you were born…?"

I hesitate, because I have a feeling anything I tell him will be reported to these CHRONOS people. But it’s probably unrealistic to assume they’ll let me stay here and never give them any information at all. And I’d rather talk to Tate than Freaky Eyes.

"In 1970. But…the school ID is old. Three years ago. If I’ve really been here as long as you say, then I guess I'm nearly eighteen now."

The lie is automatic, and it’s only afterward that I realize they may be able to tell my age with all of this fancy-schmancy medical equipment. I’m not even sure why I lied until I look back over at Tate. He’s my only ally, the only semi-bright spot in this insanity, and he said I was pretty, right? He might be more inclined to help me if he isn’t thinking of me as some dumb kid he dragged out of the rubble.

And…the lie was probably a waste of breath, because I don’t think he even heard what I said. His eyes are distracted, like he's working something out. "And you don't remember Richard? Richard Viers? He's the one who should have been jumping to 1970—well, 1969, actually. Katherine was scheduled for 1853, so they must have switched places. Maybe he was in on it. Saul always said Richard had a thing for Kathy."

"Why does everyone keep talking about this Richard and this Saul? I don’t know either of them!”

“Well…your DNA matches Saul’s. He and Kathy had been living together for about a year before the bombing. And the key you were carrying when I found you was the one assigned to Richard. The one he was using on his last jump.”

“I found this key in the attic, in an old box with stuff my mother collects. She has another one just like it in her jewelry box. The picture they showed me looks like her, but she was born a few years after World War II, not…in the future. And I don’t care what your stupid DNA says. My dad is James V. Pierce. He was born in 1940. Don't you people have historical records? Birth certificates, marriage licenses, stuff like that?"

"Sure,” he says. “But most of Kathy's documents—birth certificate, diploma, and so forth—were ones she adopted when she was stranded. She picked them from a safe deposit box that held identification papers for pretty much any time period after 1800. I can tell you what we have, though." He pulls a device that looks a lot like a smaller version of my Pop-Tart thingamajig out of his pocket and searches for something. I can't see a display from this angle, so it must be projected in front of his eyes like the books are for me. After a moment, he starts reading aloud. "Marriage to James V. Pierce in November 1969. Twin daughters, Prudence and Deborah, born 4 February, 1970. Remarried 1989 to Phillip N. Hatch—”

“Wait. Remarried? Why?”

He scans through for a moment, then says, “First husband died.”

My lips move, but no sound comes out, so I try again. “When?”

“Um…” His voice is a little hesitant.  “1984. September 14th. Looks like it was a car acci—”

A scream drowns out his voice. I don’t even realize it’s coming from me until the attendants are in the room, holding me down.

2

CHRONOS
MED TEMPORARY STATION

WASHINGTON, EC

December 31, 2305, 2:25 p.m.

“And that’s it,” the evil doctor says, smiling her evil smile. She nods once at the pale not-quite-human, not-quite-Stormtrooper therapy bot and it glides out of the room with a quiet whirring noise. “That’s your very last physical therapy session, Pru…well, your last one here. You’ll still need to visit the pods at the OC three times a week, and I’ll want to see you back here in one month to be sure there’s been no regression.”

The evil doctor’s name is Coralys Winston, and she’s only a few years older than I am. She has a friendly smile and smooth, dark hair, shot through with shiny reflecting streaks that change from day to day—gold or silver or sometimes whatever color matches her smock.

Okay, I’ll admit I don’t have solid proof that she’s evil. But she’s far too chipper and happy for someone whose job is to put her patients through hell or, technically, to give commands to the therapy bot while it puts her patients through hell. For the past few months, she has listened to my complaints, nodded politely, and then completely ignored every request, every scream of agony, saying that what I wanted—which was usually to crawl back into bed, or better yet, into that lovely, pain-free goop—really wasn’t in my “long-term best interests.” Her amber eyes are always sympathetic, but in a way that makes me want to smack her. Hard.

I don’t think I’d want her job, though. People curse at her, scream at her, and think wicked thoughts about how they’d like to see how long her ass would last with the therapy bot if her back, hip, and legs had been shattered. (At least, those are the thoughts I’ve sent her way each and every day.) But Coralys—who insists that I call her by her first name rather than Dr. Winston—always wears that cheery, encouraging, and quite possibly evil smile.

“Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Sure!” Her smile widens, but her eyes are a little wary now. “I guess I have a few minutes before I leave for the day.”

I’m pretty sure most of the CHRONOS med personnel wish I’d go back to not talking, because they don’t usually have answers for my questions and I have a lot of questions. But hey, if I’m really stuck in this time, like they seem to think, then I need to know how things work, right?

“First—and please don’t take this the wrong way—but how you can be so freaking perky after a day of torturing people? I mean, yes, it’s for their own good, but…doesn’t it wear you down?”

“Oh, no!” She looks genuinely appalled. This is the first time that I’ve seen her smile fade, and I feel a little guilty, like I’ve swatted down a butterfly.

“I love my work! I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Why? Are you unhappy with your progress? You’ve hit every target and even exceed—”

“No, no,” I assure her. “I just…wondered. It seems like it might be depressing. Do all of your patients hit their targets?”

“Well…no,” she admits. “Most of them do, though! And I can almost always tell if it’s because they really can’t handle it or if it’s because they just aren’t working hard enough. I’ve been doing this for nearly seven years…well, twelve if you count my training…and after a while, you just know.”

“How old are you?” I ask, thinking my earlier assessment of her age must be way off.

“Twenty-two.”

I guess my jaw flopping open telegraphs that I’m shocked, because she laughs. “It must be so strange for you. We studied early education systems in history class and…would I have even started my career yet?”

“I don’t think so. You might have started medical school, but I doubt you’d be dealing with patients.”

“I’m so glad I wasn’t born back then. I like our way much better.”

Their way, as I understand it, is a far more streamlined method of learning. While the brain is young and pliable, they chemically activate specific centers and put the kid in sort of a hypnotic state to accelerate the learning of basic facts pertinent to the field they’ll be entering. Because they already know the job the kid will have, even before she’s born.

“Did you ever think about doing something else?”

Coralys shakes her head, smiling. “Never. The job is part of who I am. I probably could shift over to doing something similar, but…this is my calling. I’m just lucky that there’s always a need for my skills.”

It’s not so much a calling as a genetic specification, from what Tate says. Before Coralys was born, her parents determined that she would go into medicine and probably even picked the subfield. Her “chosen gift,” that one genetic alteration that each child is allowed, was selected to ensure that she’d do well in her field.

Like Coralys, Tate’s parents decided he’d be a historian before he was born. They didn’t specify a subfield, so someone at CHRONOS decided he’d be studying the Vikings and gave him some extra tweaks that they thought might prove useful. Tate says they were a little too enthusiastic in some respects. Extra strength and stamina are helpful, but they went a little overboard. He has to rein it in when he’s in the field to keep from hurting people or making them suspicious.

Unfortunately for Tate, there really isn’t a use for his skills in a post-CHRONOS world, and they don’t translate very easily to a new profession. So he’ll be working at this new memorial museum they’re building. He looks forward to having something to do, but he’s under no illusions. Talking about Vikings isn’t the same as being there among them.

“Was there anything else?” Coralys asks.

“No. Except…thank you. I probably haven’t said that enough. I really didn’t think my legs would work again, and I do appreciate it.”

Even though I wanted to beat you to a bloody pulp every single day I’ve been here.

I don’t actually say that last bit out loud, and truthfully, I’m not feeling that way at all right this minute. But I definitely did feel that way before.

“The hard work was all on your part, Prudence. I’m so excited that you get to start your new year on your own two feet, outside of the med center! Just keep up the exercises so that you stay limber, okay? And I’ll transfer the release docs to your comm and also your appointment time for our follow-up.”

“Um…I don’t have a comm?” I hold up my right arm and twist it so that she can see both sides are bare, minus the tattoo-ey things everyone uses to store data and communicate. “I should have one in a few weeks, once they get my credits set up.”

They’re not really tattoos, at least not like the permanent kind. They stick to your skin but you can peel them off when you want to upgrade to a new model. And I really do want one. Music, books, videos. It’s basically one of the Pop-Tart devices, except it goes everywhere you do.

“Okay,” Coralys says, her voice doubtful. “I guess we’ll print your papers out, assuming I can find someone who knows how to do that. We’ll get it finished while you’re packing up your things.”

I nod, thinking that she’d have to twitch her nose and produce those papers by witchcraft in order to finish before I’m done packing up my things. I have my purse, a few sets of clothes that were made for me in this weird closet thing on the third floor, and my shattered Walkman, which still doesn’t work. One of the headphone wires is broken and no one has batteries. There’s also a box that once contained chocolate from Tate, and a note apologizing for dropping the bomb on me like that about Dad. Another note from someone named Anya Shaw, who is apparently my grandmother. Something that looks like a beer stein, which I initially thought had been sent to the wrong room, since it has the initials OC on the side and the card was signed by M. Campbell. Tate says it really was intended for me, however, sent by the owner of the club where I’ll be living once I check out of this place.

Twenty minutes after I have everything packed up, Tate arrives. He is, unfortunately, accompanied by Sutter, who I now know as head of CHRONOS security.

Sutter and I spent several days of quality time together once I decided to cooperate and answer his questions. Not that I had anything more to tell him than before, but I realized that the only way I’m going to get back to my time and stop this from ever happening is to get back my medallion—my key. That’s why I have to keep close to CHRONOS.

Tate’s the one who came up with the idea that I might actually be of some use at the museum as an “expert” on the 1970s and 1980s. I think that’s a major stretch unless they’re talking about TV shows, junk food, and early eighties music, but I didn’t argue.

The idea of having a job when I should be finishing up tenth grade is strange, but they simply don’t know what to do with me. I’m too old for their brain tinkering and they are poorly equipped to handle someone who didn’t pop out of the womb with an occupation crammed into her skull. It’s not like I can find a job flipping burgers. They have machines for that kind of stuff.

The Shaw grandmother offered to take me in, but that was immediately batted down since they believe her daughter is a terrorist. And I guess they weren’t keen about putting me into whatever sort of foster system they have in the twenty-fourth century.

Sutter’s preferred alternative was apparently confining me to my quarters indefinitely. Since he’s the Big Cheese of Security, I suspect that’s what would have happened if I hadn’t made a concerted effort to win him over. Not easy when you’re dealing with someone who can literally see through lies. The strange eyes are part of Sutter’s “chosen gift.” He gets little visual cues that show whether a person is lying. Tate says they aren’t perfect—just sensors showing the other person’s heart rate and other telltale signs—but they’re pretty good. I tried a few small fibs on him during our second session and he nailed me each time. It’s probably a valuable tool for someone who interrogates people for a living, but I can’t help wondering if he’s able to shut it off. Would he really want to know every time someone lied to him? Would he use it on his kids? His wife? So creepy.

Sutter pushes past Tate and holds out a cuff that glows the same neon green as the medallions. He claps it on my wrist without even asking permission. I readjust the cuff to loosen it a bit and Sutter promptly retightens the thing. “You can’t have it falling off. It projects a CHRONOS field, which should alleviate your concerns about disappearing.”

This was one point where Sutter’s eerie lie-detector eyes came in handy—he may not know whether I’m right about that other version of me being in the building that day. It could have been a hallucination. I was in pretty bad shape. What he does know, however, is that I’m not lying to him intentionally. It’s something that actually worries me.

Every time I mention that other me to Old Creepy Eyes, I get the sense that he’s hiding something. Both times I asked, he changed the topic in a hurry. What did they find in at the bottom of that hole? My other body? Another CHRONOS key?

Whatever it is, it must be something that’s known only to CHRONOS security, because Tate had no clue when I mentioned it to him. His only idea was that the girl might have been an accidental “splinter” created by crossing my own timeline, which makes no sense to me at all. How could I have crossed my own timeline when I’ve only used the key once, by accident?

I’m just glad that Sutter confined his interrogation to the actual bombing. I don’t know anything at all about that, so I didn’t have to hold back. If he’d started asking questions about why I want to work at the museum, however…things could have gotten dicey.

“I still think the possibility of you disappearing is highly unlikely,” Sutter continues, “but this cuff also contains a PMD, allowing us to follow your movements.”

I give Tate a questioning look and he whispers, “Parolee Monitoring Device. I think. They use it for prisoners.”

“Oh.” The cuff is smaller than the one I remember seeing Kingpin slap on Spider-Man’s wrist in the comics a few years back, but I’m guessing the principle is the same. “So…you can track my movements as long as I’m wearing this?”

“Yes,” Sutter replies. “I had the tech people tweak it to add the CHRONOS field, but otherwise it’s pretty standard. Any time you’re outside of your apartment, you’ll wear it. If you’re caught without it, I’ll revoke your assignment.”

“She’ll wear it,” Tate says firmly, and I can tell he’s saying it as much for me as for Sutter. Tate has stuck his neck way, way out for me. If I screw up, it’ll reflect back on him.

Sutter gives a quick nod and then says, “You also need to avoid conversations with anyone who isn’t CHRONOS. I’m not sure how your family wrangled you living at the Objectivist Club—or why, for that matter—but don’t go flaunting who you are. There are plenty of people who won’t be happy that Katherine Shaw’s daughter is walking around—”

Tate rolls his eyes. “Stash it, Sutter! Pru is as much a victim of her mom as anyone else. She’s just spent seven months in rehab, for God’s sake.”

“Didn’t say it was rational,” Sutter mumbles, although his expression suggests he might not entirely disagree with that point of view. “Just said it’s how some people feel. I believe the girl is telling the truth, but…”

Of course he believes me, now that he’s looked deep into my soul or conscience or whatever with his demon eyes. I fight back the urge to say something nasty and just give him a twitch of a smile.

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep to myself.”

And I will. What would I have to talk about with someone from this time period? I can carry on a decent conversation with Tate because we have a few common points of reference. He’s been to the 1980s…well, the 1990s. Close enough.

I’ll do what I have to do, say what I have to say, but I don’t plan on making friends here. Because I don’t plan on staying. I just want to find a key and go home to fix this mess.

Because you have to be able to fix things with these keys, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of CHRONOS? I’ll go back and prevent the accident, maybe convince Dad that Mother is crazy, and then he’ll take me and Deb somewhere far away from her.

And yes, I know how it will sound to him. Hey, Dad. The woman you’re married to is from the future. She blew up a bunch of people and broke half the bones in my body.

He probably won’t believe me. But Deb will. And worst-case scenario, if the parental units present a united front, we’ll only have to put up with Mother for a few more years until college. Anything is better than staying here.

When Coralys arrives with my walking papers, Sutter takes that as his cue to leave. Thank God. I was worried he was going to tag along behind me, watching every step. My own personal freaky-eyed shadow.

Once Tate and I are outside—really and truly outside—I hold my face up to the sky, enjoying the warmth on my skin.

He laughs. “You’d think they never let you see the sunshine.”

“Well, they didn’t. Not really. There was a barrier in the solarium. Glass or something. I saw a bird smack right into it. I couldn’t feel the breeze and it still smelled like…nothing. At least you can smell the trees out here.”

And that’s true, although I realize it still doesn’t really feel like—or smell like—I’m in a city. There aren’t any cars, for one thing. Some train-like things whoosh by above us—far above us—but no individual vehicles. There are still roads and occasionally someone zips by instead of walking, like they did in the hospital corridors. Occasionally it’s something that flies by, like a box or container. I don’t know how it works. It’s one of the many techno things I just don’t ask about, because most of the people can’t explain it, and those who can use so many words I don’t understand that I’m just as clueless when they finish as I was at the beginning.

I decided to think about all this stuff like I do TV or the microwave. I have only a vague sense of how either of those work. Did that ever stop me from popping a bag of Orville Redenbacher to munch on while I watched Knight Rider? No, it did not.

I wonder if they’ll have ancient TV shows like that at this club where I’ll be living. I don’t know much about the place at this point, not even where it’s located.

“So…how are we getting to this…Optimist Club?”

“We’re walking,” Tate says. “It’s not far. Most everyone calls it the OC, and it’s the Objectivist Club, not Optimist. The members I know don’t seem very optimistic. Actually, a more fitting name might be the Egotist Club.”

“What is it exactly?”

He thinks for a moment. “They had gentlemen’s clubs that were similar in the major cities back in the early twentieth century, but…I’m not sure there’s anything like it in your time. It’s a place where wealthy people hang out and—”

“Country club?” I suggest.

Tate considers it and then nods. “Ye-e-s-s, but only if some of the members lived there, too. The building itself was constructed in the forties—sorry, the 2240s—but the Objectivist part of the name comes from a group back in your era. Truthfully, though, I’m not sure how much the two groups would have in common, aside from the conviction that individuals are under no moral obligation to help anyone other than themselves.”

“So…you don’t live there?” I try to keep the disappointment out of my voice, because I really did mean it when I told Sutter I plan to keep away from people at the OC. But I still have several months before the museum opens, and I’ve gotten kind of used to Tate stopping by every few days.

“I have…liberal guest privileges, but I’m not exactly a member. I know Campbell through Saul. My family isn’t as well connected as yours.”

His mouth tightens as he says this, so I don’t get the sense that he really likes this Campbell guy who owns the OC. I’m tempted to just drop it, but his comment about my family connections bothers me.

“They’re not my family. I don’t know them. Never met them.”

He shrugs. “Well, they’re footing your bills…”

“Why? If these Rand people are members of the Ob…jectivists?” He nods that I got the name right, and I go on. “If they’re Objectivists and they don’t think they have any moral obligation to help me, then why pay for this place? They’ve never even met me.”

“They haven’t,” he admits. “But they’ve seen the DNA report. Truth be, they probably just want you out of the way, somewhere they can keep the media from asking too many questions about the fact that Saul’s your dad.”

“He’s not my dad,” I mutter, even though I know that, technically, I probably am his biological offspring. He might be my father, but that doesn’t make him my dad.

Of course, that starts me thinking about the accident again, and I don’t want to go down that road. I want a distraction. “Do we have to go straight to the OC?”

“Well…I guess not. Did you need to stop somewhere?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say need to stop, but…” I sigh. “Is there somewhere with junk food?”

“Ha! Like cheeseburgers and fries?”

It sounds really good, good enough to make me drool, especially if you add bacon, but I shake my head.

“Skip the burger. I don’t do meat. But God yes, fries. With ketchup. Maybe pizza or grilled cheese.”

“Why no meat?”

“Personal choice. Why should a cow die so I can have a burger?”

“Well, good point, except…animal sacrifice isn’t required anymore. Most meat comes from the food replicators. So your burger isn’t actually from the cow…the machine just replicates the chemical structure.”

“Oh, cool. Like on Star Trek.”

I don’t really expect him to get the reference, but he chuckles. “Yes. Tea Earl Grey Hot.”

“What?”

“Oh. That’s past your time, maybe. But yeah, it’s the same principle. Except the ones at the OC will be the expensive models. No lights or weird sounds while waiting for your burger to show up.”

“So…what happened to all the cows and pigs and chickens? Ranchers and farmers?”

“The various species are kept on reserves, and we have their genetic structure on file in case of unintentional extinction.  There are still some people outside the cities who farm, who do things the old ways. I considered joining them…after CHRONOS was disbanded. My talents would be more useful there than in the city, and it would be closer to the life I prefer. But once they decided to open the museum, it wasn’t really an option. And I always feel like what they’re doing out there is…I don’t know. Pretend, I guess. Play-acting. That type of life isn’t cost-effective once a society reaches a certain size. You’re better off replicating. Although you can get real meat at some of the posher places, like the OC. It just costs more in credits than most people have.”

“Does the fake meat taste like meat?”

“Yes.” His voice is hesitant. “Okay, not exactly. It’s meat, but I’ve yet to find a replicator that produces anything as good as the haunch of a freshly killed stag cooked over an open fire.” I wrinkle my nose at that and he adds, “Sorry. But it’s true.”

“It’s okay. So…people don’t eat out? They just order up what they want at home?”

“Oh, restaurants? Sure. Plenty of those. There are three in the OC, in fact. People still need somewhere to go when they want to socialize. Did you…”

He hesitates, and I get the strong sense that he’s not really into the idea.

So, even though the idea of sitting at a cafe and soaking up the sunshine while we eat is very tempting after so long inside, I shake my head. “I’ll get something at my apartment.”

My apartment.

One the one hand, those words are exciting. I didn’t think I’d be on my own for at least four or five years.

On the other hand, Deb is supposed to be here, too. We had it all planned. We’d go to college in either Boston (her choice) or California (my choice). After a year in the dorms, we’d get a place together off campus. A place that would let us have a dog (my choice) or maybe a cat (her choice).

I don’t want to live by myself. I wouldn’t have wanted that even in my time, and it goes double for here and now.

An image of the girl in the rubble—that other me—flashes into my mind. It’s the same image I see most nights when I close my eyes, and as usual, she’s holding the jagged rock that I smashed down on her head.

You won’t be alone, Pru. I’ll be there. I’ll keep you company each and every night.

A shiver creeps through me, but Tate doesn’t notice. He’s nodding toward a building up ahead. “They’ve got you on one of the upper floors. So you should have a good view of the fireworks. They shoot them off at midnight over near the National Mall.”

“Every night? Isn’t it loud?”

He laughs. “No, doof. It’s New Year’s Eve. Did you forget?”

I shake my head, even though I kind of had forgotten. Which was nice, because I’ve been trying to forget.

“What’s wrong?” Tate asks.

I want to go home, I think.
But I just shake my head and say, “Nothing.”

He puts one hand on my arm and turns me around to face him, bending down so that he can look me in the eye. And he does have to bend down, because he’s way over six feet and I’m barely five four.

“Hey…you hardly talk to anyone other than me. So don’t tell me it’s nothing, when it’s clearly something. Otherwise, I’m going to tell CHRONOS they need to start the therapy sessions again—”

“No.” The therapist didn’t have Sutter’s eyes, but he had…something. Some way of reading my body’s responses to his questions. About my feelings. About my dreams, and no way was I telling him about those. So I just stopped answering any of the questions. Eventually, they stopped scheduling me for his sessions. Mission accomplished.

“You’ll think it’s stupid, Tate.”

“Try me.”

“Fine. It’s just…if I was home with Deb on New Year’s Eve, I know exactly what we’d be doing. Same thing we’ve done the past three years. Billboard Top 100 Countdown. It was probably even going to be on MTV this year. We’d listen tonight and record it on the Walkmans so we could listen again later. And we’d write each song and artist in a special spiral notebook and compare them to our predictions.”

“You like music, then?”

I give him a well, duh look. “Everybody likes some sort of music. But that’s not the only thing. Whoever gets the most predictions right takes half the loser’s Christmas cash. Deb has won each year…although she never takes my money.”

“Then what’s the point of winning?” Tate asks.

“Exactly! If I win, you better believe I’m making her pay up. And this year, I would’ve won. I was tracking Billboard each week right up until the accident. I’d have mopped the floor with her.”

He laughs. “Okay, this is probably going to piss you off because I know you don’t think of him as your father, but that’s one hundred percent Saul Rand. The man would bet on anything…and he didn’t like to lose.”

This is the second time Tate has said I remind him of this Saul person, and I narrow my eyes, because yes, it does piss me off. It seems disloyal to even think about him, like I’ll jinx any chance I have of getting my real dad back if I learn more about this other father. But there’s also a slightly sad note to Tate’s voice, and it occurs to me that he probably misses Saul. Maybe he needs to talk about him?

“You knew Saul pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” he says. “He was my roommate for a couple of years, around the time I started field training. Before he took up with Kathy. All the historians were supposed to serve as a mentor for a first-year historian from a later cadre. Usually people do it a year or so after they go active, but Saul either put it off or Angelo forgot to assign him. So he got stuck with me. But we hit it off pretty well, despite the age difference.”

“Was he…nice?”

“Um…” Tate considers it for a moment. “No. At least, not in the conventional sense of the word. Saul could walk into a room and manage to whizz half the people off before he finished his first drink. He was definitely a character. Smart. Too smart, maybe. But…he was good to his friends. Helped me out of a tough situation once.”

I want to ask about that, but Tate’s face clouds over, so I don’t press the point. We walk along in silence for a few minutes.  He seems to be lost in his own thoughts, not really paying attention to the pace. My right leg, the one that got the worst of the whole shattering business, starts to twinge. I’ve walked twice this far in my physical therapy sessions, but the ground here isn’t as even. And Tate’s legs are like forty feet long, so I’m taking two steps to his one.

“Is it far?” I ask him.

“Just a few…blocks…” He stops and looks at me. “I’m such an idiot. Do you need a lift?”

Is he asking whether he should call some version of a future cab or offering to give me a piggyback ride? I feel myself blushing just thinking about the last option. Maybe he’d sweep me up in those arms like the guy on the front of that Wicked Loving Lies book I swiped out of Mother’s desk drawer last year…

“God, Pru! You’re all flushed.”

Of course, that makes the situation even worse. “No. I’m okay. Just…maybe we could stop for a minute or two?”

“Sure! Absolutely. No problem.” He scans around until he locates an unoccupied bench in the park across the street. Then he reaches down, pulls me against him and upward with one arm, to the point where my legs are barely touching the ground.

“No, Tate! I can walk…really.”

Tate doesn’t listen, and I’m wishing I hadn’t said anything, just kept going. But…I’m also kind of happy that he doesn’t move away from me when we reach the bench. He leaves his arm around me, giving me a slightly worried smile.

“Better?”

I nod, rubbing my right knee. “Just needed a little break. You have long legs…it’s hard to keep up.”

“Sorry. We were talking and then…I wasn’t really thinking. But it’s not my fault you’re a short stack,” he teases. “That’s clearly your mom’s fault. I think Kathy was even shorter than you.”

“She is. You knew her pretty well, too, didn’t you?”

I want to ask whether he really thinks she did it. But I know he thinks she did it. Everyone here does, and it’s hard to blame them, given the evidence. I have to admit there’s still a little part of me that has a tough time buying it, though. Mother is a pain in the ass and a major thorn in my side. I don’t like her, but I can’t imagine her killing anyone.

“I would have said that I knew her about as well as I knew anyone at CHRONOS, aside from Saul and the guys I roomed with when I was taking classes. Kathy and I were a few years apart, but we had three, maybe four, classes together. She was sharp. Pretty. High strung. Jealous as hell when it came to Saul’s time.” He glances across the street, his eyes settling again on the large white structure a few blocks down. “But if someone had asked me to bet on a building Kathy would blow up, I’d have ranked the OC a million times higher than CHRONOS HQ.”

It seems almost like a change of topic…going from her being jealous to talking about the OC, but they must be connected. “Was Saul seeing someone else…some girl who lived there?”

“More likely four or five of them,” Tate says, chuckling. “Saul wasn’t exactly…monogamous. I know several girls who tried to warn Kathy, and she turned on every one of them. But the girls weren’t the reason she was jealous of the OC—or at least not the main reason. It was Campbell.”

“Really?”

Tate catches my expression and laughs. “Not that way. Saul prefers women, generally, although…” He doesn’t finish whatever he was about to say, even though I make a little gimme gesture with my hands.

“Nah. He’s your father and…I think he was joking.”

“He made a pass at you?”

“No! It’s just…there’s this test we all have to do where we go back in time and encounter an earlier version of ourselves, okay? It’s a bitch. I had a headache for a week. Saul, on the other hand, said he had no trouble at all, and was hoping he could borrow a key and do it again. Said he wouldn’t mind a little…um…private time with himself.”

“Ewww.”

“Yeah. But the really ewww part is that I think he was serious. I mean, not about borrowing a key for that, because the only way we could jump was with the rest of the cohort. But about being attracted to himself.” He chuckles when I wrinkle my nose. “See. I told you that you didn’t want me to finish it.”

“It’s okay. He’s not my dad. I don’t care what you say about him. And there’s a word for that, right? Narcissism. We learned all about it in psych class.”

“Yes. Saul is a classic narcissist, but…like I said, he could be good to his friends.”

“And this Campbell guy was his friend?”

“That’s an excellent question. I don’t think friend is the right word, but Saul was definitely obsessed with Campbell. He spent more of his time figuring out ways to annoy that old man than he did on his job. They’d have these mental jousting matches that lasted weeks about some stupid point in history. Everything else, even your mother, came second to proving Morgen wrong. He was either madly in love with the guy or he hated him. Maybe both. Even after he moved in with your mom, he spent most of his spare time at the Club, and it pissed Kathy off.”

“But the Club isn’t just for guys. She could go, right?”

“Well, yeah. Go and be ignored while Saul yakked to Campbell. Kathy went to some events, like the big New Year’s Eve bash, but…”

That, of course, reminds me that it’s New Year’s Eve, and apparently it reminds him that he’s reminded me. “You’re thinking about your sister again. The music contest thing.”

His vague phrasing makes me realize that a lot of what I say probably makes zero sense to him…MTV, Billboard.

“It’s no big deal. And it’s only New Year’s Eve for us. It’s not like Deb’s listening to it right this second without…me…”

I can’t breathe. I push myself off the bench and start walking away, fast, even though my leg objects and air is only coming through in tiny, panicky sips. I need to get out of here, because I’m about to cry or scream or something else that will make me seem like a blubbering little brat. And that’s not how I want Tate to think of me.

“Pru?” Tate catches up with me in a couple of his giant steps and takes my arm again. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head, because I simply won’t, can’t talk about it, but then he leans down, his blue eyes level with mine and just oozing sympathy and dear God I want to punch him because now I am crying.

“Deb isn’t listening right this second because she’s already listened! Without me. Each year until she got old and bored with it, and then she died and she’s been dead for more than two hundred years. Deborah is dead and my dad is dead and it’s all my fault because I swiped that stupid frigging key and—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Come back to the bench, Pru, okay? Sit down.”

I don’t have much choice, really, because he does that half-picking me up thing again, and my butt hits the bench almost before he’s done talking. He puts his arm back around me and says, “You need to cry, then cry. My shoulder is waterproof.”

His shirt is waterproof too, as it turns out. That’s probably a good thing, because it’s two or three minutes before I get myself back under control. Unfortunately, there are now two gray streaks on his shoulder.

“What’s wrong with your eyes? You’ve got dark circles—”

Oh, great. Raccoon eyes on top of everything else.

“Mascara.” I rub the area under my eyes with my knuckles, hoping I’ve gotten the worst of it.

“What’s it for?”

“Making a mess when you cry.” He gives me a strange look. “I’m joking. It’s to make your eyelashes look longer. Darker.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment. “You can probably get that done in the Juvapods and it won’t rub off. But…you don’t really need it. I mean, your birthday is coming up in about a month, right? You’ll be sixteen. That’s the age everyone starts field training, so you don’t look much younger than the last batch of CHRONOS trainees you’ll be working with at the museum—well, the three of them who weren’t at headquarters that day. You’ll fit right in just as you are.”

If we count from my actual age when I landed, I just turned fifteen two months back. But February 4th is my birthday, and if everyone wants to let me skip ahead ten months or so, they’ll get no argument from me.

Tate never even mentioned my earlier lie about being eighteen. As I see it, there are three equally plausible reasons: he didn’t hear what I said, he doesn’t think age is important, or he just plain isn’t interested. And since there’s no way I’m going to admit I put the damn mascara on so that he’d think I looked older, I just nod toward the OC building. “Let’s go.”

“Wait a sec. I wasn’t going to mention it since it’s your first day out of the med center, but…I’m thinking maybe you don’t want to be alone on New Year’s Eve. Campbell’s annual party is tonight. Everyone at CHRONOS is invited. He thought about canceling, since there’s not many of us left, but…it’s a tradition. He’s holding a downsized version in Greenwich Hall. Why don’t you come? You can meet some of the people you’ll be working with. And if you get tired, you can just take the lift back up to your room.”

“Sutter said—”

“If Sutter’s there and he’s whizzed off about it, I’ll deal with him. The party is mostly CHRONOS and you’ll be working with these people. You can’t spend your whole life in hiding.”

OBJECTIVIST CLUB, ROOM 1013

WASHINGTON, EC

December 31, 2305, 4:02 p.m.

“It’s close,” I say, after another sip of the root beer. “A little too sweet, maybe? But the pizza is really good.”

There are some things I could learn to like about the future. This replicator thingamajig, for example. Tate called it a “food processor,” which I would have sworn is the name of an appliance they were hawking on TV last Christmas. Dad jokingly said he was going to get one for Mother, because her cooking is pretty awful. We eat a lot of frozen dinners and takeout.

“Well, you can tweak the formulas,” Tate says, “until you get it the way you like it. Or combine recipes, although that can backfire. One thing I miss is bringing back samples of stuff we found and liked from the past. Your dad—sorry, I mean Saul—he’d bring back a different type of beer almost every trip. Had a sample of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the World’s Fair back in 1893, which is the actual year they earned the blue ribbon. The system is pretty good at reproducing the samples for stuff from the twentieth century and later, and simple stuff from earlier. I’ve been trying to recreate the mead recipe from Eystribyggo that I lost when my personal quarters at CHRONOS were destroyed. It was so much easier when I could just put a few drops in the system and let it decide how much honey or whatever.”

He takes another sip of his drink and adds, “You may be able to find some eighties stuff in the files here at the OC, though. Saul would sometimes bring back a historical sample for Campbell to feature in the dining halls or bars, although it may have been just to rub it in that he could jump and Campbell couldn’t. He’d always make a point of noting that the processor version didn’t have quite enough basil or lime or whatever, just to annoy him.”

We finish the last two slices of pizza and Tate shoves the plates and glasses back onto the same shelf in the wall that served them up a few minutes ago, complete with a steaming hot pineapple, jalapeno, and onion pizza that I think I enjoyed more than Tate did. The dishes vanish as soon as he pulls his hand away.

I’m really tempted to ask him to explain how the damn thing works one more time. But no. I will think of it as a microwave oven. Just a tool. If I try to puzzle out how everything works, I won’t have enough spare brain cells to figure out a plan for getting back to my own time.

With the dishes now done, Tate says, “Listen, I’ve got some stuff I need to take care of. How about I pick you up here a little after nine and we’ll go down to the party. That’ll give you time to get ready, even nap if you want.”

“Okay…” I glance down at the black pants and t-shirt I’m wearing, which is probably the dressiest outfit in my bag. “So, it’s a casual thing, right?”

“Oh, no. I do think it’ll be slightly more low-key this year, since it’s the first gathering after the attack and the memorials and all, but it’s definitely a dressy affair. You’ll need to whip up something new. You learned how to use the tailoring pods in the hospital, right?”

“Yes, but…I don’t have any money or credits, whatever you call it. I don’t even know where to find one of the pods.”

He laughs and nods toward the bedroom, the only room in the place aside from this one. “Check the closet. If you search by date, you can probably pull up designs worn to the last party. I know you won’t want to wear the exact same thing, but it might give you an idea. And there are Juvapods if you want to get your nails done or fix your makeup…although they might be full on New Year’s Eve. Do you want me to check Octavia?”

A blank look is all I have, because I have no idea what he’s talking about.

Tate laughs. “Octavia will schedule appointments, answer questions, whatever you need. Should I check?” I nod, and he says in a slightly louder voice, “Octavia, can we get a Juvapod appointment this afternoon for Prudence?”

A voice that reminds me of Krystal on Dynasty replies, “The earliest opening is five thirty p.m. Shall I reserve it?”

“Yes.”

“Confirmed for Juvapod seven at five thirty this afternoon.”

“Where are these pod things?” I ask Tate. “What do they look like?”

“Third-floor gymnasium. Ask for directions in the lift if you have trouble. And you can’t miss them—they say Juvapod right on the door. There’s usually someone at the front desk—or at least an infobot. They’ll help you if you say it’s your first time.”

The idea of venturing out on my own is terrifying. I guess it shows on my face, because Tate laughs again, squeezing my shoulders.

“You’ll be fine, kid.” He plants a quick, big-brotherly kiss on the top of my head.

I stand there frozen as he walks out the door.

Kid. Ugh.

After he leaves, I sink down onto the sofa, glaring at the door.

But…maybe there is a bright side. For the first time since I crash-landed here, I have a challenge. Not a physical challenge. I’ve had plenty of those. But a goal. A mission.

Jason, my violin instructor, was nineteen. Not much younger than Tate. During my very first lesson, I decided I wanted Jason to notice me. Before the third lesson was over, he was paying more attention to me than he was to the music, although I’m not sure you could call what I was doing with the violin music. If I’d actually made it to that last lesson…

Challenge accepted.

By the end of this evening, Tate Poulsen will not be thinking of me as a kid.

Not by a long shot.

3

OBJECTIVIST CLUB, ROOM 1013

WASHINGTON, EC

December 31, 2305, 4:22 p.m.

I spend the next hour sitting on the little bench in the closet, browsing through the styles worn in the past at these parties. There are holographic video clips of the party itself, and you can click on the people to get more information about the style and fabric. It’s not hard to pick Mother out of the crowd. Last year, she wore a floor-length silver sheath that looks entirely unlike anything I’ve ever seen her wear. With every movement, the fabric changes hue slightly, like it’s picking up and reflecting colors from around the room.

I flick my finger against the image of another woman standing nearby to pull up her information. Delia Morrell is absolutely stunning, with coloring similar to mine, dark hair and pale skin. The dress she’s wearing—royal blue with gold inset panels at the waist—hugs every one of her curves, from the plunging neckline to the skirt that’s slit to the thigh on each side. The tall stiletto heels pull her almost to the height of the man next to her, who’s identified as Abel Waters—a taller, more muscular Billy Dee Williams, minus the mustache. He wears a simple blue-gray suit, and his hand rests on the woman’s waist as he whispers something in her ear. She smiles, and I find myself wishing there was audio so I could listen in.

I mentally paste Tate’s face on Abel and mine on Delia. I’m tempted to actually ask the system to do that. I suspect it could, but I’d be mortified if anyone ever saw it.

“That dress, Octavia,” I say, as I strip out of my clothes and toss them onto the shelf. It still feels weird to see them disappear, but one of the workers at the hospital said it’s really more efficient this way. No laundry, no growing out of your favorite outfit, and all of the raw material is recycled for later use.

“Crimson with black inset panels. The same shoes, but in black. And…any undergarments I need to make me look like her.”

“Please stand still with your arms extended.”

Is this why Mom hated clothes shopping so much? If she grew up with something like this, where you could order what you wanted and it always fit perfectly, shopping at the mall must have been pure torture.

And maybe that’s why she took long baths and showers. No tubs here. The shower thing at the hospital was called a zephyr. It had steam, and it was wonderfully warm, and whatever tingly thing it does to your skin leaves you squeaky clean afterward—including your hair. It even lets you choose different scents and it dries off the few droplets that remain. No more waiting forever for my hair to dry, and that’s a huge bonus, because no one wants to see these curls if I have to use a blow-dryer. But I do miss the sensation of shampooing my hair and the suds sliding down my legs…

Damn!

As soon as the scan is done and the tailor moves on to the next step, I slip out and peek inside the zephyr tucked into the bedroom wall. It’s a little larger than the one in my room at the Med Center, and unfortunately, it’s missing the same thing. A razor.

I pull up my pants leg and wince. Full Sasquatch mode. No nylons in the world could hide that.

A quick inspection of the toiletries menu on the closet tailor reveals no razors, no electric shavers, no Nair. They don’t even have tweezers. Maybe women don’t shave in the future? Like that colleague of Dad’s at the university.

Shudder.

“Octavia, where can I get a razor?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A razor? To remove the hair from my legs.”

“Oh,” the info voice says. “There are no depilatory devices in the system. Hair removal is available in the Juvapods.”

Major sigh of relief.

A faint ping from the closet indicates that my outfit is finished. I slip the heels onto my feet, because I’m pretty sure they’re going to require a practice session. They’re a full two inches taller than anything Mother would let me buy, and the few times I’ve tried on a pair like this in the store, I felt like I was on stilts.

As soon as I slip my feet inside, however, I can tell these are different—it’s like walking on a cloud. No pain at the base of my foot, and they seem to have built-in stabilizers, like the leg braces I wore when I first began rehab. No wobbling, even with my still slightly shaky legs, and every now and then, I feel that same faint tingle running from my toes up the back of my legs.

The dress is gorgeous. I hold it up against my body and look in the mirror. But I don’t try it on. I tell myself it’s because looking like Little Fuzzy below the knee would totally ruin the effect, but that’s only a tiny part of it.

I miss Deb. Half the fun of going anywhere was sharing it with her.

“Octavia, could you play the top 100 songs of 1983, in reverse order, please?”

“I’m sorry. If you pick a year after 2100, I’d be happy to comply.”

Oh well. Worth a shot.

“Do you have a specific artist—”

“Michael Jackson.” I say without hesitation. “1982. Thriller album.”

When the first notes of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” hit my ears, I sink down onto the bed. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine I’m back in our room and this has all been one long, extended bad dream.

Almost.

OBJECTIVIST CLUB, ROOM 1013

WASHINGTON, EC

December 31, 2305, 9:11 p.m.

“Tate Poulsen has just exited the lift,” Octavia announces. “Shall I let him in when he arrives?”

“Yes, please. And change the music to…um…Spandau Ballet. 1983. ‘True.’ Lower volume twenty percent. Oh, and dim the lights.”

Since I’d prefer that Tate doesn’t know I’ve been sitting on the couch staring at the door for the past twenty minutes, I duck into the bedroom and check my reflection one last time. My makeup is perfect after a little bit of trial and error in the Juvapod. The “shaving” was also easy and painless, although if I’d followed the instructions of the jerk at the information desk, I’d have been bald from head to toe. I’m not entirely convinced that his misinformation was accidental. The man looked like he’d swallowed cat poop when he saw my name on his screen.

The butterflies in my stomach are buzzing around like they’re on speed. I’d feel much better if Deb were here to confirm that this is the most fantastic I’ve ever looked.

Come on, Pru, you can do this.

Ten slow, deep breaths before I walk in.

And…Tate’s facing the other way, toward the window, which completely ruins my grand entrance.

He looks really good, although he could use a haircut. The navy blue suit sets off his unusually broad shoulders. If Tate lived in my time, he’d never be able to buy anything off the rack. That chest would split J. C. Penney’s shirts faster than the Hulk. And the cut of the pants is different these days. A little more like something a football player would wear. Not shorter, just a bit more formfitting.

I wait a few seconds, hoping he’ll sense me standing there, but whoever tweaked his genetic makeup must not have been worried about other Vikings sneaking up on him.

And then I notice the headphones.

They look like my headphones.

He doesn’t look up until I tap him on the arm. His eyes move from my face down my body, the welcoming smile fading along the way. Then he takes a step back and pulls off the headphones.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” I try to keep my face from falling, but it’s no use. “You don’t like it.”

“No! No…you look great, Pru. It’s just…I thought I was the one with the big surprise, and you’ve aced me. That dress just…” He exhales loudly and shakes his head. “Let’s just say it makes me wonder what happened to the kid I left here a few hours ago.”

I give him my best sexy smile. “She wasn’t actually a kid. You just weren’t looking close enough.”

“I guess not. And judging from the music, I see you’ve learned to navigate the entertainment options. You may not even want this.”

“You fixed my headphones?”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out my Walkman, no longer shattered. “I swiped it from the side pocket of your bag today when you were in the lav…hope you don’t mind? I’d have asked, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“You found batteries? Coralys said they don’t make those anymore, that they couldn’t even replicate them.”

“Well, not exactly. A guy I know over in historical tech wedged something in there that will work as a power source…should last a whole lot longer than batteries. Fixed the front cover, too.”

Once he has the headphones over my ears he pushes play and the announcer says, “…peaking at number six on the charts in July, coming at number sixty-three, ‘Come Dancing’!”

Then The Kinks start singing, but it’s the voice in the background that stops my heart. Deb is yelling, “Told you, told you, told you! The Kinks. ‘Come Dancing.’ Right there at number sixty-three. I hit it on the nose. Five points for me!”

Even with the stabilizers, my heels feel a little shaky right now.

“Are you okay? Pru?”

I hug him, partly to mask my emotion, but also because this was really thoughtful. “Thank you so much.”

Tate’s back stiffens when I press against him. He doesn’t push me away, but he doesn’t really return the hug, either—just sort of pats me on the back and steps away.

“There’s a second part to the surprise,” he says. “The CHRONOS music archives took a bit of a hit in the bombing, but they’re gradually getting the stuff they stored off-site back into the system. My friend Dana let me in this afternoon so I could put together this…she said you used to call it a mixtape?”

I nod. The tape part is right, at any rate, although I can’t remember anyone ever saying mixtape.

“I didn’t have another cassette, and I didn’t want to record over the ones with your sister, so…Octavia, play Tate Poulsen music list, Mixtape 1984, reverse order, with position, artist, and title.”

There’s a brief pause and then Octavia says, “Number 100. James Ingram and Michael McDonald. ‘Yah Mo B There.’”

The song starts, confirming my worst fears. Without me there to keep tabs on it, 1980s music is going straight into the dumper. Even Deb made fun of that tune. Oh well, at least it barely made the list.

Of course, I don’t actually say how much the song sucks, because that would sound ungrateful.

“Thank you.” I smile up at him—even in these heels, the only way to smile at Tate is up—and squeeze his arm, resisting the urge to hug him again. Being pushed away once is quite enough for one evening.

Maybe he’s gay?

And then the little voice at the back of my head that sounds just like Mother chimes in.

More likely he thinks you look like a little kid playing dress-up. Couldn’t you have found something more age appropriate?

Oh, shut up, Mother.

Once we’re in the elevator, Tate gives me another long look. His eyes are still a little uneasy, but he smiles. “Did I mention you look really nice? That color is perfect on you.”

“Thanks.” I look away quickly, partly because I’m nervous and partly because I don’t really believe him after his initial reaction.

When the door slides open on level two, my first thought is that we’re outside. It’s only after we step into the corridor that I realize we’re overlooking a sunken room that just resembles a forest at sunset. The walls are a panorama of trees. There’s a brook off in the distance, and the ceiling is lit in streaks of orange, pink, and purple. Orbs of light about the size of tennis balls dance in the air above the guests’ heads, like giant fireflies or incandescent bubbles, bobbing and weaving as people move about. It’s almost as though I’m walking into a scene from The Hobbit or A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The music has an otherworldly feel too, like something you’d hear at the Renaissance festival we go to each year—except even weirder. It’s like all of the Ren-nerds are playing their tunes on electrical instruments, or one of those bizarre theremin things, instead of flutes and lyres.

There are far more people than I expected, clustered in small groups, some eating, some talking, a few…I guess they’re dancing? While it’s probably the only kind of dance you could do to this music—fluid and trancelike—it would get them laughed off the floor at the 9:30 Club.

Tate’s already in the hallway, but I instinctively take a step back into the lift. After my little adventure earlier at the Juvapod infodesk, I can’t help but wonder how welcome I’ll really be.

“I’m sorry. I’m just…maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

He shakes his head, grinning as he grabs my arm. “Oh, no. I’d hate for the first impression you leave on your new colleagues to be me carrying you into Greenwich Hall. Because I will.”

I narrow my eyes, but don’t move.

“Come on, Pru. Campbell is expecting you. You have to meet him at some point. And…it would be a waste to go hide in your room, when you look this gorgeous.”

Okay, that wins me over.

“Fine.” I take the arm he’s holding out. “But don’t wander off. I don’t know these people and some of them…”

I don’t finish the sentence, and he shoots me a questioning look. I was going to say some of them would be happier if he’d left me in the rubble of the CHRONOS building, but I just give him a nervous smile.

“Nothing. Let’s do this.”

We walk down the short flight of stairs and into the room itself. The aroma of bacon—which always smells good even if I don’t eat it—hits my nose as we turn the corner. Tate snags two glasses from a tray and hands one to me. It looks like champagne. I don’t object, since I have no idea what the alcohol laws are in this time. Or maybe it doesn’t even have alcohol anymore? I take a sip and discover that the bubbles are nice. It might actually be good if I could add a packet of Sweet’n Low.

Tate seems a little distracted, craning his neck around like he’s looking for someone. After a moment or two, he relaxes.

“Come on. Let’s go meet Campbell.”

We make our way through the room toward a back corner, where an older man sits in a high-backed chair. Like Tate, he’s head and shoulders above everyone else. As we get closer, I see why. The chair is on a raised platform.

The man reminds me of a cartoon we saw in history class last year. Some New York City politician named Tweed. Big nose, big belly, more hair on the bottom half of his head than on the top. A cigar is chomped between his teeth, and he looks out over the room like it’s his kingdom. One of the lighted orbs floating around the room dips down to intercept a curl of smoke rising above the man’s head. The overweight black dog stretched out at his feet, gnawing on a large bone, doesn’t look particularly friendly.

“Is that Morgen Campbell up on the throne?”

Tate chuckles. “As much as you probably don’t want to hear it, that’s exactly what Saul called it.”

“Seems pretty obvious to me. Is his dog nice?”

“Not especially. But I’ve never known Cyrus to bite, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I still keep a wary eye on the creature as we approach the Royal Lord of the OC. His gaze flickers in our direction when we’re still a few yards away, but he waits until we’re right in front of him to actually look at us.

“Ah, Poulsen. And this must be the infamous Ms. Shaw.” My expression must shift a bit at the name, because he adds, “Or do you go by Rand?”

“Neither. Prudence Pierce. You can just call me Pru.”

He nods and gives me a more thorough appraisal, taking in the dress. “Even if you choose to abandon their names, I must say you’re a delightful combination of your parental DNA. I do wish Saul were here to see you. It would be interesting to see whether paternal instinct would keep him from drooling down your cleavage.”

Okay, this guy is a creep. I have absolutely no idea how to respond to his comment, so I just glance up at Tate.

“Ignore him, Pru. Morgen just likes to see if he can get a rise out newbies.”

“On the contrary. I simply like to assess the mental prowess of the people around me. In Ms. Rand—I beg your pardon, in Pru’s case, she looks like an adult. Very much like an adult, in fact. Still, I suspect there’s a scared little girl hiding inside. It’s nice to see that you’re putting our amenities to excellent use…or did Poulsen dress you?”

“I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, Mr. Campbell.”

“It’s just Campbell. Or Morgen, if you prefer. And I’m sure you’re very capable, but just to put your mind at ease, the information attendant in the Juvapod center has been fired.”

My first inclination is to ask how he knew about the incident, but who knows what sort of surveillance Campbell has in this place. My second inclination is to say that he didn’t need to fire the man, but then I think about what very nearly happened. I’d look like the woman in that Star Trek movie if another customer hadn’t overheard the exchange and warned me to carefully specify which sections of your body when you ordered hair removal.

“What happened at the Juvapods?” Tate asks me. “You said—”

“Just a…miscommunication.” I turn back to Campbell. “I’m glad to see that you don’t tolerate incompetent employees.”

“Oh, it was neither miscommunication nor incompetence, my dear. It was revenge, pure and simple. That man’s daughter was a makeup artist at CHRONOS, and, unlike your friend Poulsen, she did not receive a message that conveniently kept her out of the building that fateful day.”

Tate’s arm tenses beneath my fingers. This is the first I’ve heard about any warning message.

Still, as furious as I was at the attendant, this puts a somewhat different light on the situation.

“I didn’t know,” I tell Campbell. “Maybe…I mean, it still wasn’t right, but maybe you should reconsider.”

Campbell laughs. “Somehow I doubt you’d be quite as magnanimous if those gorgeous curls weren’t still on your head. No, the man put his own feelings before the interests of the OC, and that’s beyond pardon.” He raises his bushy eyebrows, looking over our heads at the crowd, and then settles back into his chair with a smug look.

I find out why two seconds later. A woman walks up next to Tate and gives me a brief, scathing stare before pasting on a fake smile. Her dark red hair is stacked up in an ornate style that reminds me of a lattice piecrust. I can see through it in spots to the walls beyond and little ribbons of blue light are wound through the rows of hair. More of those very same ribbons make up her dress, except it’s skin that shows through there. A lot of skin.

“Surely this can’t be the child CHRONOS has you babysitting, Tate? She looks a bit old for you to be fixing her toys.”

“Hi, Dana.” Tate’s voice is tired, and I get the feeling I now know what—or rather who—he was looking around the room and hoping he didn’t find when we walked in. “This is Prudence Pierce. She’s not…as old as she looks.”

I wish I could sink into the floor.

“That’s true.” Campbell’s tone is cheerful, making it clear that he’s thoroughly enjoying our discomfort. “She’s what, sixteen? But I doubt that’s a problem for Poulsen. From what Saul told me, his taste runs toward…younger women.”

Campbell’s eyes slide back over to Dana as he says the last sentence. Dana is stunning, especially in that dress, but she’s also clearly older than Tate. Her mouth flops open twice, like she’s trying to think of something to say. Instead, she pivots around on her stilettos (which make my heels look like Mary Janes) and stomps off into the crowd.

Tate runs one hand through his hair and then looks down at me. “Dana’s a friend. I don’t want her to leave angry. Are you okay here for a moment, Pru?”

The very last thing I want is to stand here talking to this creepazoid while Tate goes off after his girlfriend. But I’m not going to admit it. “Sure. I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks. Just…wait here, okay?” Then he starts pushing back through the crowd.

“Poulsen should know that sex with friends is a bad idea,” Campbell says. “So many ways it can go sour. And he should also know better than to entrust Saul Rand with a secret. No offense.”

“None taken. I don’t even know Saul.”

And even though I really don’t want to ask this next question, this secret he mentioned had something to do with Tate liking younger women. I can’t resist asking, but I try to toss the question out casually, like I’m just idly curious. “What sort of secret did Saul tell you? About…Tate.”

Campbell arches one bushy brow. “Saul collected secrets. Sounds like you may have inherited his curiosity.”

I shrug. “Just making conversation.”

Silence.

“All right!” I admit. “Yes. I’m curious.”

“Very well. Poulsen was involved with a girl about your age in the past.” He chuckles. “In the very, very distant past, if you get my drift, in some Viking village. He’s just lucky Saul helped keep it off his official record. CHRONOS has—or I guess I should say, had—very strict rules on that sort of thing.”

“Oh. So, that’s why he hopes they’ll rebuild CHRONOS. So he can see her again.”

“I doubt it. Saul said it ended badly. Hardly a surprise. Long-distance relationships rarely work out.” He pauses, staring at me like he’s waiting for something, and then says, “Now it’s your turn.”

“What?”

“Your…turn. I gave you information that you can use to your advantage if you’re smart. Now you reciprocate. I’m sure that’s how the game works in your time as well.”

“But…I don’t know anything that would interest you.”

“On the contrary. Your mother went to all this trouble to strand herself in the past. I’m curious as to what she’s doing with her life in…the 1980s, right? How has she used her knowledge of the future? I suppose she’s quite wealthy by now.”

I snort. “No. She’s a history professor, like my dad. I mean, we’re not poor, but—”

“A shame,” Campbell says, tsking softly. “I’d hoped the speculation was wrong. That Kathy actually did it for something other than spite. Other than wanting revenge on Saul for his…wandering libido.” He waves a hand, looking over my shoulder at someone. “And on that topic, let me introduce my daughter, Alisa.”

He’s still laughing at his own joke when the woman reaches us. She doesn’t look much like Campbell. Her hair is a vivid, metallic silver, long and jagged with dozens of different layers, shot through with thin strands of black. Combined with her pale skin and wide-set light green eyes, she reminds me a little of this lynx I saw at a zoo last summer, while visiting my dad’s parents up in Massachusetts.

“Did you want something?” Although Alisa’s voice is several octaves higher than her father’s, it has the same bored, cynical note.

“Only a moment of your time, sweetest.”

Even though Alisa doesn’t seem any more pleasant than the old man, I feel a momentary twinge of sympathy. Rotten to have your father call you sweetest in public. Doubly rotten to have the word come out dripping with sarcasm.

Alisa tosses her silver mane over one shoulder. “Clock’s ticking, Morgen.”

“I just thought you might like to meet Saul and Kathy’s daughter.”

She gives me a quick once-over. “Kids grow up so quickly these days. Seems like only last year she was nothing more than a gleam in Saul’s eye.”

“A gleam you saw quite often, if I’m not mistaken.”

Alisa responds to Campbell’s comment with a suggestion that’s both physically impossible and entirely disrespectful to her father. I expect him to take offense, but he just laughs.

“I hear CHRONOS will have you on display at the new museum,” she says, looking back at me.

“Not exactly. I’ll be working there.”

“Well, good luck with that.” Her eyes flicker briefly with something that looks a bit like pity before she strolls off.

The champagne churns in my stomach. Alisa is probably closer to the truth about my new job at CHRONOS than I am. How many of the visitors will stop in simply to gawk at the girl from the past, like I’m a Neanderthal or something? Granted, they probably won’t put me in a cage. They’ll just pop me on a vintage beanbag chair with my newly repaired Walkman. Maybe Tate asked his buddy to repair it just so I’d have a prop to hold.

I don’t actually believe that. He seemed too happy about giving it to me for it to be work related. But it’s been much longer than the moment he promised. I scan the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of his head above the crowd.

I can feel Campbell’s eyes scrutinizing me. “Can she still use it?” he asks when I finally glance over. He must see confusion in my eyes, because he clarifies, “The key. Can Kathy still operate it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her with it.”

“Does she know you can use it?”

“No-o-o,” I say, although now that he has me thinking about it, I guess she might have suspected I’d be able to use it when I found the medallion in the jewelry box. “She took it away when I said I could see the color, but then I found another one.”

He shrugs. “Not too surprising. She was probably worried you’d try to undo her damage.”

I’ve definitely thought about this, but I haven’t had the nerve to discuss it with anyone.

“Do you think I could?” I ask.  “I mean, could I go back to just before the explosion and warn someone?”

As I say it, my mind is already spinning. It would save a lot of lives. But they’d arrest her, almost certainly. Deb and I would be born here, probably in prison. Dad…wouldn’t be my dad. It would be this Saul person I don’t even know. And would he even want us?

Campbell doesn’t respond for a moment. He just watches me, and I get the strangest sense that he knows everything I’m thinking.

“You certainly couldn’t do it without access to a key. And there are people here, in the government, who think it best that this disaster serve as a lesson about the so-called dangers of genetic enhancement in general and time travel in particular. I suspect you’d have a difficult time securing official permission to change anything.”

“Even though hundreds of people died? And…didn’t it change things, having those people stranded in the past?”

“Apparently not in any significant fashion. The official word is that it all averaged out over time, although I’m not sure I buy it.”

Campbell folds his hands over his stomach and belches. One of the little bubble things floats down just above his head, sucking up the smoke or whatever else was in the air around him, then floats upward to a large vent in the “sky” above us, where it’s sucked away with a few others. It’s like the commercial with the cartoon scrubbing bubbles, only flipped upside down.

“Of course,” Campbell continues, “they had the CHRONOS tech people who survived the attack scrambling to see if there were serious historical aberrations in the months after. If they found anything, it wasn’t reported to the rest of us. And truthfully, how would we know?” His eyes flit down to my wrist, where the bracelet Sutter gave me is concealed—barely—by the black lace of my glove. “The rest of us don’t have a device to shield us inside a CHRONOS field. The entire history of the world could change and we’d be none the wiser.”

I feel a hand on my arm and Tate says, “Sorry about that.” Then he glares at Campbell. “What the hell were you thinking? Dana didn’t deserve that.”

“Perhaps not.” Campbell picks something from between his front teeth, and stares at his finger for a moment before flicking the unseen speck onto the floor. “But you should consider your goals in life, Poulsen. Dana Erskine won’t help you achieve them. You’d be far better off focusing your attention elsewhere.”

Campbell looks straight at me when he says the last word. I feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.  He might as well have just come out and told Tate I’m interested in him.

But why is he championing my side?

Tate gives him a dirty look and tugs at my elbow. “Come on, Pru. We’ve paid our respects to the host. Let’s go eat his food and let him annoy someone else.”

He leads me over to a long buffet and heaps enough food onto a plate to feed three people. I try a few things—some cheese, fruit, a few veggies. But most of the food looks strange, more like decorations than anything I’d actually want to consume. Even the fruits are weird. For every variety I can identify, there are two or three that look like someone crossed a watermelon with a kiwi, or an apple with a blueberry. I’m not very hungry, anyway.

Tate introduces me to a half-dozen CHRONOS people over the next hour, including a younger guy and girl who will be in my cadre—whatever that means—when the museum opens. They’re both polite, but not exactly friendly. The girl studies late twentieth century history, according to Tate, and he started asking both of us about my era…easy stuff, softball questions. It was blatantly obvious that he was trying to get a conversation started, but either the girl didn’t want to talk work at a party or she’s not exactly thrilled about having me on board. Maybe both.

My mind keeps returning to Alisa’s comment about being on display. Every time someone looks in my direction, my whole body tenses up. This time when I look around, it’s Campbell staring at me as he talks to a tall, dark-haired woman. I think she’s older, maybe even older than Campbell. Not sure why I think that. She doesn’t look that much different from the other women in the room. Just something about her bearing. She’s definitely not happy with Campbell, and from the fleeting, scathing look she tosses my way, I’d guess it’s because of me.

Tate follows my eyes and groans. “Can’t believe she actually ventured out of her crypt.”

“Who is she?”

“Saul’s great aunt. Regina Rand. She’s the grande dame of the family. I haven’t seen her at a public event in years.”

The woman’s conversation with Campbell apparently over, she stalks off toward the elevator, casting one more glance in my direction as she crosses our path.

Campbell makes the same little hand motion he used earlier to wave his daughter over. When Tate doesn’t respond and trot straight to him, Campbell rolls his eyes and nudges the dog.

“Maybe we should see what he wants?” I suggest.

“He can come here if he wants to talk to us. It’ll do the fat gox good to get up off his throne.”

Campbell nudges Cyrus again. The dog eventually rouses and plods along behind him. It takes a full minute for the two of them to make their way across the room to where we’re standing, but Tate seems determined not to take a single step to bridge the gap.

“I’m turning in for the evening,” Campbell says when he finally reaches us.

“Thanks ever so much for letting us know.” Tate’s voice is bone dry.

Campbell chuckles. “Don’t flatter yourself. This conversation is merely so I can tell Queen Regina that I delivered her message. She’s not impressed with your choice of companion for the party, Poulsen. Said the girl shouldn’t be mingling.”

Tate mutters something I don’t catch and then adds, “They can’t hide Pru forever. She’ll be working with a lot of these people soon enough. Better to meet a few of them in advance.”

“I should go back to my room,” I say.

Tate starts to protest, but I suspect that’s more a result of not wanting to follow the Rand woman’s request than any real desire to stay at the party with me. And as much as I’m dreading sleeping alone in the apartment, I’m actually ready to leave.

“Personally,” Campbell says flatly, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do. You can stay down here until sunrise. I just told her I’d give you the message.” He snaps his fingers once, and the dog, who had been staring off in the other direction, looks up at him. “Let’s go, Cyrus.”

Campbell catches my eye one last time as he sticks his right hand into the pocket of his suit coat. The movement is subtle, but I’m pretty sure it’s intentional, and given the angle, it’s meant only for my eyes. A single, brief flash of the inside of his coat, just enough for me to spot the circular neon-green patch of light seeping through the lining of his pocket.

How did Morgen Campbell get a CHRONOS key?

As we go the lift, Tate starts grumbling about both Campbell and the Rand woman, but I tune him out. He’ll drop me off upstairs and head back to Dana. I’d probably have better luck romancing Campbell, and he’s the one with the CHRONOS key, after all.

The idea is repulsive beyond belief, however. And even if I manage to get the key, could I figure out how to use it without shattering half the bones in my body again?

When the door to my apartment slides open, the music starts up right where it left off at number 97. Rick Ocasek is singing uh-oh, it’s magic, and I can almost see the video where he walks across the water.

“You’re tired,” Tate says. “I should get going.”

“Stay. It’s only twenty minutes or so until the fireworks start.” I try to keep my voice light, but it sounds needy even to my own ears. “Stay and watch them with me.”

“You should get some sleep.” He leans down, and I can tell he’s about to give me one of those awful, platonic forehead kisses.

Now or never, Pru. Show him you’re not a kid.

I reach up and pull his mouth down to mine, pressing my body to his. He hesitates for a moment, and then he deepens the kiss. His hand is against the bare skin of my back and then it sinks lower, scooping me upward so that my feet leave the ground and my face is level with his.

As we kiss, a delicious little fire starts to build inside me. I kissed Jason and I kissed a few guys at parties, but it felt nothing like this. I’ve been so caught up in not wanting to be alone, and in finding a way to get home—and yes, those things are still important. But everything else aside, I want Tate’s kiss. I want him touching me.

It’s not just a game this time.

Tate slides his arm down the side of my body where the skirt is split to mid-thigh. He sucks my lower lip into his mouth, and then slips his hand under the fabric of my dress, under…

It’s an automatic response. I can’t help it. I just…freeze.

And so does Tate.

I reach up for him again, but my feet are now back on the floor. Tate’s arms are flat against his sides, almost like they’re pinned down.

“What?” I ask, even though I know. “What did I do?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s not your fault. I should know better. You’re just a—”

“Don’t!” I scream. “Don’t say it! I am not a kid. I’m the same age she was. Campbell said…” I’m about to go on about the girl in the Viking village, but I instinctively trail off when I see the look on Tate’s face.

“Campbell doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about! His only acquaintance with history is sitting in that chair of his, hashing through the great debates. Maya was fifteen, yeah. In Eystribyggo—hell, pretty much anywhere in the eleventh century—that means she could have been married several years. She could have given birth to a babe or two, she could have watched them die in her arms. Maya wasn’t a schoolgirl. She was a woman. She was ready for…” He waves his hand once between the two of us. “For this.”

“Look around, Tate. No family, no school to attend. I have an apartment. Soon I’ll have a job at the same place you do. I’m not a kid. I’m ready for this, too.”

“No, Pru.” His voice is gentle. “You’re not. And that’s okay. Tell you what. I’ll stick around for the fireworks. We can watch them together.”

Yeah, right, I think. And then you’ll leave here and go bang Dana. But you’ll be thinking of me—or more likely, of your Maya, who’s been dead for centuries.

I want him to stay. Part of me is willing to take what I can get, probably the same part of me that froze up like a nun a few minutes ago. It’ll probably be weeks before Tate touches me again after that.

My inner nun can kiss off.

“No,” I tell him. “I’d rather be alone.”

Except I won’t be alone. Sometime around two or three a.m., when the party is long over, when Tate is snoring next to Dana, or maybe back in his own bed, the other me, the one I killed, will crawl out of the closet.

And she’ll have that damn rock in her hand, same as always.

4

OBJECTIVIST CLUB, ROOM 1013

WASHINGTON, EC

June 9, 2306, 2:47 p.m.

Anya Shaw doesn’t resemble anyone else in my family, aside from her slight build. Like Mother, she’s short and kind of thin, but Anya’s features are more Asian, with dark hair and eyes. I guess her hands are similar, too—small and delicate, with thin fingers. She fidgets her thumbnails back and forth, back and forth as she talks.

“So…how’s your job going?” I ask. Not that I’m especially interested in transportation computing, whatever that is. I just want to avoid the topic Anya always brings up as soon as there’s a lull in the conversation.

Anya smiles. “It’s going well. I’ll probably never be as quick with some of the systems as those who were trained organically, but…I don’t mind the challenge. And Toronto is nice.”

It’s about ten minutes until three, and Anya always stays exactly one hour each time she visits. I pause, hoping she’ll go on a bit longer about work, but the silence is back.

I scramble to think of something non-work related to say. Generally speaking, I avoid talking about my work at the museum, both because it’s boring as holy hell and because it seems to be a sore spot for Anya. She wasn’t asked to return when they started shifting CHRONOS over to function as a museum for the information they’d collected during the sixty years or so historians were jumping around and spying on people in the past. Tate says Anya’s not the only one who wasn’t rehired, but I can see why they didn’t ask her back. Some of my colleagues clearly don’t like working with the daughter of the madwoman who gleefully killed hundreds of people and put hundreds more out of a job. Working next to the person who actually gave birth to her and raised her, who might have had some influence over her personality would be even harder.

Unfortunately, I’m not exactly current on appropriate chitchat topics for the twenty-fourth century. And it’s too late anyway. I can tell from the expression in Anya’s eyes as she looks up from her one-person thumb war that the conversation is headed there.

“Did you listen to the diaries I left last time?”

Great. I’m cornered. No choice but to answer.

“Yes. I haven’t finished them, though. I’ve been looking over some of the stuff that Tate—Tate Poulsen, one of the—”

“I know him,” Anya says.

We haven’t really discussed Tate, mostly because I never like to talk about a project when I’m working on it, and Tate is most definitely a project these days. Pretty much a full-time project. It took six entire weeks to get back to where we were—or rather almost were—on New Year’s Eve. And still, on two occasions, I’ve said or done something that makes him pull back, like a giant turtle retreating into his shell. He’s not seeing Dana anymore. He’s not seeing anyone else, according to Campbell. But he’s still Mr. Hands-Off-the-Jailbait unless I get him into just the right mood.

“He’s the Viking historian. Saul’s friend,” Anya continues, her mouth twitching downward. I guess she realizes Tate must be my friend, too, because she adds quickly, “He always seemed like a nice boy, though. I believe he was in some of Kathy’s classes during her last year of training. I don’t think he was in on it.”

By it, she means the bombing. This is her fourth visit, and each time she has a new fact to add to her theory about what really happened on that day last April when CHRONOS headquarters went kaboom.

Anya doesn’t believe my mother was responsible, but she’s the only one.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t completely convinced at first. Yes, I’ve always thought my mom was a little crazy. Sometimes she would say stuff that didn’t make sense. Occasionally mutter a strange word or sing a song that was…well, weird. She wasn’t like our friends’ mothers. Deborah always said it was just that she was smarter. An academic who wasn’t worried about baking brownies or PTA meetings.

Between the video confession—well, not really a confession, but video evidence—and the other bits and pieces that I’ve picked up from Tate, Campbell, and the two people at the museum who’ve actually been willing to talk to me about it, I think
I was much closer to right than Deb, as usual. Our mother is—was—a full-fledged lunatic.

Anya swears the video was rigged. That Saul is the real culprit. That he set her Kathy up. But Tate says my mother’s fingerprints were on everything. All over the office where this supervisor guy was killed, even on the tape wrapped around his nose and mouth when they found the man’s body. All over the kit they found in her apartment that they believe held the bomb.

The video diary Anya left for me last time is supposed to be evidence that her daughter wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s really two different diaries—a daily training log and a personal diary. Anya turned them over to the authorities during the investigation, but she kept copies.

The Katherine Shaw that I’ve seen in these recordings is my age, maybe a little older. In her training log, she drones continuously about her classes, about history and the various equality movements she studied. That part is totally my mother. God help you if you’re stuck in a room when she starts talking history. In the recording, she also prattles about how she wants to impress some guy named Angelo, who it turns out was the one they found killed and stuffed in a closet. If I were a CHRONOS investigator, I’d use that as Exhibit A showing that the girl cracked under the pressure and decided to take the whole organization down.

The private diary is more interesting. If I ever make it back, I’ll have a bit of ammunition if she starts jabbering about how I should pay attention to boys my own age. Saul was eight years older than her—eight years!—and she gushes on and on about how he smiled at her and complimented her when she wasn’t much older than I am.

“He got the same message that I did, you know.” Anya stares at me for a second, waiting for a response, and then adds, “Tate, I mean.”

“What message?” I ask, a little hesitantly, because it may be something Anya mentioned, either just now, or during one of the many other occasions when I’ve tuned her out. But I think I’d have remembered if she mentioned Tate.

“The message that was supposed to be from Kathy. Telling us to steer clear of CHRONOS on April 22nd. It was sent from her comm, but…she didn’t write it. Never, not even once in her life, did she refer to me as Mother. That’s Saul Rand, not my Kathy. I was Mom. Or sometimes YaYa, which is what she called me when she was small. And she always signed off as K, just the initial.”

Okay, most of Anya’s conspiracy stuff seems out there, but on this, she has a point. My mom hates, hates, hates for me to call her Mother. I figured this out about a year ago, so I’ve been calling her that ever since. Unless there’s something I really want. Then I switch back to Mom. Deb still says Mom most of the time, but she’s even figured out that the M-word is a kickass weapon when the parental unit is on her case.

The signature thing is dead on, too. Every note Mother ever left for Dad was signed K. Not Katherine, not Kathy—just K.

Thinking about those notes has me thinking about my dad again, and yes, it’s my fault, sort of, but mostly it’s her fault. It’s Mother’s fault for having these damned keys in the first place. Mother’s fault for stranding herself and all of those other people in the past. For killing everyone who worked at CHRONOS. For putting her own mom and Tate out of a job.

I can tell that Anya misses her work. I think she misses her husband, too. But she’s doing okay. She seems healthy and more or less happy, aside from this campaign to convince everyone, or at least me, that her daughter is innocent.

But Tate? Seeing him each day at work is like watching a balloon slowly deflate. He clearly hoped talking about his research would be a good thing. That he’d be happier. But it seems to have only reminded him of what he’s lost.

Campbell’s right. Working inside, working here in this time, is sucking the life out of Tate. He isn’t cut out to answer questions on the comm from school kids. He needs to be out there hacking something down. Trees, other Vikings, whatever.

“No, Anya. I didn’t know Mother sent him a note.”

Although, now that she has me thinking about it, this would explain one of Campbell’s comments at his New Year’s Eve party, something about a warning. I need to ask Tate about that.

But Anya is glaring at me now, angry tears in her eyes. “Your mother didn’t send him the bloody note. She didn’t send the one I got either! Haven’t you been paying attention to anything I’ve said the past few weeks?”

“That’s not what I meant, Anya. I’m sorry. It’s just…”

I spend the next few minutes trying to calm her down. Telling her I’ll keep an open mind until I finish watching the stupid diaries.

Even though she still seems a little hurt, she gives me a hug when she leaves (at exactly three o’clock), saying she’ll call to schedule a visit in July. I hug her back, a little harder than usual, partly because she’s the only member of my future family who bothered to visit.

But mostly because—if things go the way I’m hoping—I won’t be here for anyone to visit in July.

REDWING DINING HALL

OBJECTIVIST CLUB

WASHINGTON, EC

June 30, 2306, 8:32 p.m.

It’s the first time I’ve invited Tate to one of these little dinners with Campbell. I’m glad to have him along. While I’ve gotten used to Morgen, he’s still…slimy. I don’t like dealing with him. But since he’s the only person I know with a CHRONOS key, the squeamish feeling lost out to curiosity when he asked me to dinner back in February. And it’s lost out again and again every few weeks since then.

Not that Campbell has ever made any actual advances. His eyes cover plenty of territory, but he’s always a perfect gentleman, aside from the occasional innuendo. Of course, it’s occurred to me that the man owns the equipment that scans me to create the clothes I wear. He owns the Juvapods and the rooms where I sleep and where I shower. For all I know he’s got an anatomically correct Pru-Bot back in his room.

Blech.

Morgen carves another chunk from a barely cooked steak that I’m pretty sure came from a real cow, and shoves it, still dripping, into his mouth. I stare down at my own half-eaten salad and try to think of an indirect way to work our conversation around to the topic I need to discuss.

But then, Campbell already knows why I brought Tate. Screw it. I’ll just dive in.

I lower my voice just above a whisper and lean toward Tate, hoping to keep the conversation at our table only. “Campbell has a CHRONOS key.”

“What?” Tate looks back and forth from me to Campbell. “That’s not possible.”

Campbell looks up from his cow carcass, eyebrows arched. “Lower your voice, Poulsen.” His eyes slide around to the other tables. “And Pru, have a bit of discretion. Can’t this wait until after-dinner drinks?”

Which means we have to wait over half an hour, since no dinner is complete for Campbell without at least one dessert. Tate and I mostly sit there in silence after a few lame attempts at chitchat. He keeps giving me looks that practically scream why the hell didn’t you tell me?

I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him. I’ve nearly told him a dozen times in the past few months. I think the real issue is that I’m not entirely sure Tate won’t run off and tattle to CHRONOS, and Tate knowing that Campbell knows he knows about the key seems to make that less likely.

Once we’re in Campbell’s apartment, Cyrus, his fat Dobie, greets us with a mixture of snarls aimed at me and Tate, and whimpers aimed at Campbell.

“Okay, okay, boy. I know. Yes, I brought you something.” Campbell reaches into his pocket and flings a chunk of meat across the room. Cyrus runs off—okay, waddles off just a tiny bit faster than usual—with his long nails clacking against the floor as he chases down his prey.

Campbell’s living room is a weird mix of old and new. The inner wall is wood paneled—dark, with ornate carving around the top—and his taste in art is boring. Fruit in bowls and fat naked cherubs. The outside wall is more interesting, since it’s nothing but a floor-to-ceiling curved window. He has a fabulous view of the city, with the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool off in the distance. They still call it a pool, even though it’s larger than some lakes now. The monument sticks up straight out of the water like a big white toothpick.

Tate refuses the offer of a drink, but I need a little courage-booster.

“Took her long enough to figure it out,” Campbell says, as he hands me a ruby-red concoction that looks and tastes a bit like cherry cough syrup. “I was beginning to think she couldn’t see the light at all.”

“Not true. I saw the key at the New Year’s Eve party.  I just didn’t know you well enough to…trust you.”

Okay, that last bit is bullshit. I still don’t trust him. But I do think I can manipulate him enough to get my hands on that key.

“So what about me?” Tate says. “You didn’t trust me either?”

I start to respond, but he’s moved on to Campbell. “How did you get it, Morgen? I work at CHRONOS. Hell, Pru, you work there, too. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t report this.”

“See? That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything before, Tate! And you want a reason? I could give you a dozen, including all of the people who died, but let’s just pick the one closest to home. You’re miserable at CHRONOS, and maybe I can fix all of this. Maybe if you show me how to use the key, I can figure out how to send a message forward so we can stop my mother.”

“Which means she never goes back in time, which effectively erases you, or at least this you, and then you’re not around to send the message,” Tate says. “At least, that’s the most obvious of the possible conundrums it could create. We don’t know. Right now, the situation seems to be stable, Pru. Maybe the critics are right. Maybe we should never have screwed around with time travel in the first place—”

“Oh, boo hoo,” Campbell says. “Maybe Eve should never have plucked the damn apple from the tree…or maybe Adam should have had the balls to pluck it first. Maybe we should never have split the atom…or maybe we should have wiped out all our enemies when we were the only ones who had the bomb. You can go round and round, but none of this matters once the genie is out of the bottle. Someone will use that technology again. Only question is whether you and I will still be alive to benefit from it. And it’s hardly Pru’s fault that she’s stuck here. Would you rob the child of the chance to meet her father?”

I narrow my eyes and give Campbell a warning glance. He was doing fine until he shifted over to the poor child crap. Let me handle Tate, old man.

“I should have mentioned this to you before, when I first suspected he had the key. But I wasn’t sure how you’d react…and I need your help, Tate. Campbell has the key, but he doesn’t know how to use it. You do. You can help me go back. Maybe I can figure out a way to fix things so that you still have a CHRONOS. So you can get back to…there. To her.”

I have to look away at the last part, because I don’t like thinking about this woman, this girl, the one I’m pretty sure Tate thinks about when he’s kissing me. I have my pride. I don’t want to be his Plan B, the girl he settled for, but not the one he really wanted.

“God, Pru! Is that what this is about?” Tate says. “No, okay? I don’t have a future with Maya. She married someone else.”

“But you could change that, right? Fix it?”

“Absolutely not. I’m done with tweaking history, okay? I just want to do what I’m good at. What the scientists at CHRONOS designed me to do. Would I go back to that time period? Yes. In a heartbeat. If I could, I’d stay there. But not back to that village. Too many memories. Some good, but far too many of them bad.”

Campbell is watching us over the rim of his glass of green stuff. “Are you done with the little lovers’ spat? All patched up now?”

Tate tosses a few choice words at him and then turns back to me. “Pru, if you want to try this, if you want to go back, it has to be for you. And it’s most likely a moot point. I doubt you can even use the key.”

“But I did use it once. The way you’ve described using the key is exactly what I did. I pulled up that black square. It looked all fuzzy, white specks everywhere, but that was the debris in the air as more of the building caved in. I saw it floating around me when I blinked in, as I was falling. I don’t think it was a fluke, like the historians you mentioned. I felt my eyes locking on the point and then I blinked. I blinked hard, because the car…” I shake my head. I still can’t talk about that. “There are other stable points, right? Other points on the key that I could travel to? Maybe those historians who got stranded would help me. I mean, they can’t be too happy about it.”

Tate gives Campbell a look I can’t quite decipher, but he seems less resolute about reporting all of this than he was before. “This key could be a replica, Pru. It wouldn’t be the first time Campbell has pulled a prank that no one else would ever imagine was funny.”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t think so. I’ve touched it. It’s…” I can’t really explain it, so I just shrug. “It feels the same.”

He turns to Campbell. “Let me see it.”

Campbell weighs the situation for a moment, and then pulls the key out of his inner coat pocket. The lime-green light fills his palm, but he pulls his hand back when Tate reaches out to take it. “Now you’ve seen it. I’m not fool enough to hand it to you.”

Tate rolls his eyes. “Morgen, if I want to take that from you, I’ll take it. Your guard dog over there is way past his prime, and even if Pru decided to help you, the two of you combined couldn’t stop me.”

It’s a valid point, and Campbell knows it. “And now you see why I was hesitant to bring him in, Pru. Big Viking bully.”

Tate takes the key and runs his finger across the surface. I can’t see the interface when he holds it, but he’s navigating with his eyes, like I did with the reading device.

After a couple of minutes, he slides it into my hand. “It’s real, as best I can tell. What do you see?”

I focus on the display and my mouth goes dry when it pulls up that same black static-filled square. “It’s still bringing up the CHRONOS building…after—”

Tate puts his hand between my eyes and the interface.

“Relax, okay? You’re all tense. It’s defaulting back to that stable point, so you’re going to have to navigate away from it yourself. I’m not sure you’d make it through that fall a second time though, so don’t blink.”

“Thanks. Now I really, really feel like I need to blink, even though I didn’t before.”

“Then look away. Look down at the floor. And don’t worry too much. A short blink won’t do it. Never did for me, anyway. Okay, now just let your eyes lose focus a bit…pull out. Do you see the little red dot at the top?”

I don’t see it at first, but then I relax my eyes a bit more. “Yeah. It’s there.”

“Okay, shift focus to that. What do you see now?”

“Squares. A bunch of them. Mostly black, but there’s a green one at the top.”

“Yeah, the black ones are stable points for night jumps. Hand it back and let me find one for you.”

“You’re not going to let her jump now, are you?” Campbell asks. “Without any sort of a plan?”

“Of course not,” Tate says, as his eyes scroll across the interface. “First, I’m going to see if she actually can use it. I need to test two things.” He stands up and takes a few steps away from the couch, then tries to enter something on the display a few times. “Nope. I can’t do it,” he says, handing the key back to me. “Let’s see if you can.”

“If I can what?”

“Set a local stable point. The system blocked historians from setting any local points after 2150. We could set new local points on jumps to years before 2150 to make it easier for upcoming research trips to that same location, but we couldn’t use those points without jumping back to HQ first. Point A to Point B, then back to Point A. No side trips. The key still reads my pattern as blocked. But your genetic pattern was never in the system, so…let me talk you through it.”

It takes nearly an hour, but I finally manage to create a local point for this room. I set the time for exactly one minute later. Morgen is still in the display at that later time, but he’s no longer snoring. He’s now at the other end of the couch, closer to Cyrus’s doggy bed, staring straight at me.

“Okay,” I say to Tate. “What next?”

“Focus and blink.”

I do, but nothing happens.

“You need to keep your hand steady,” Tate says.

“I’m trying!” And I am trying, but this suddenly feels very real. The last time I used one of these devices I shattered half my bones and spun off some strange alternate me.

Tate puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes. “It’s okay, Pru. Just a local jump. I did this at age twelve. You’ll land right here, right next to me, at eleven twenty-eight. Both feet on the ground. You won’t feel a thing.”

I give him a shaky smile as he steps away, and try to focus. The fact that Morgen is staring straight at this spot gives me a bit of confidence…I mean, why would he be staring like that if I don’t make the jump?

This time, it works. I don’t feel any different, aside from the strange sensation of having the scene in front of me slightly altered when I open my eyes.

“I’ll be damned.” Campbell’s expression shifts from anticipation to something closer to amazement. When Tate laughs, he adds, a little defensively, “That may be nothing big to you, Poulsen, but those of us who weren’t gifted with the CHRONOS gene or assigned to one of the jump crews haven’t seen a time jump in person.”

Tate nods and takes the key from me. “Okay, now we know you can use it. I think it’s a safe assumption, then, that you can get back here if you land in trouble.”

“So what’s next?”

“Um…it’s nearly midnight. Campbell may be a gentleman of leisure, but we both work tomorrow. Maybe…”

“No!” I grin up at him. “Don’t tell me you’re tired. I’m way too wound up to sleep. At least find me a stable point in the past where I can actually see something, okay?”

“Fine.” Tate smiles, but it’s clear that he’s just humoring me.

Campbell seems wired, too. “We need to figure out some way to get a message to Saul. He might not even listen to her otherwise. Do you still have access to the diaries you used on missions?” he asks Tate.

“Sure,” Tate says absently, as he browses through the stable points. “The personal logs, at any rate.”

“Good. Record a message for him on one of those. I’d like to borrow it so I can record one as well. Privately.”

“Why privately?” Tate asks.

“I don’t plan to ask what you tell him. Why shouldn’t I have the same right?”

Tate looks up from the key. “Well, mostly because you don’t have the gene to operate it.” His eyes narrow slightly. “Unless you’re working with someone else at—”

Campbell snorts. “The arrogance of you CHRONOS people never fails to amaze me. Just because we lack the gene to travel with your keys, you assume no one can hack them. My tech crew worked with Sutter to help extend the field around the Club, and they even assisted on that bracelet he popped onto Pru’s wrist. Believe me. They’re more than capable of inserting a simple message into a diary.”

Tate doesn’t answer, but his frown deepens. At first, I think he’s just annoyed at Campbell, but he’s reacting to something on the key.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Those black squares aren’t night jumps, like I thought. I tried pulling up a few of them. They’re empty, like the stable points have been…scrubbed. Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where you got this key, are you, Campbell?”

“I’d be delighted to, but I doubt it will help. It arrived in a box the morning of the bombing, with a machine-printed note that read: So you’ll know. No signature. My security sweep found no prints on the box or the key itself.”

“And you reported this?” Tate asks.

“I did not. No one ever asked me directly if I received a package containing a CHRONOS key, and I didn’t see the need to volunteer the information. Sutter would have liked nothing better than to pin me as part of some conspiracy.”

“You’re saying my mother sent it? Why would she send you a key?”

“I don’t think it was your mother, Pru. My best guess would be Saul. To be honest, I suspect he sent Poulsen the note that got him out of the building that day, as well.”

Tate shakes his head. “Doesn’t make sense. Saul wasn’t even scheduled to jump that day. He was just one of the people in the building whose—” Tate stops, glancing at me.

“Whose body was never found,” Campbell finishes for him. “And yes, I’ve told Pru there’s a good chance her father—apologies, dear, her biological father—didn’t survive the blast. So if you’re dancing around that bit of bad news, don’t bother.”

“You think Saul was working with Kathy, then? Before, you said absolutely not. And I know they asked you that question, because they asked me. Have your tech people found a way to slip a lie past Sutter, as well?”

“No, they have not.” Campbell’s face twitches slightly, and even without Sutter’s freaky eyes, I can tell he’s not being entirely honest. “I told Sutter what I told you. I do not believe for a moment that Saul Rand and Katherine Shaw planned the bombing together. I also told him, however, that I do think Saul may have had a clue that she was plotting something, probably with the historian whose key Prudence used, Richard Vier. There was a record of Kathy sending Vier a coded message the night before, and Saul was definitely agitated when he stopped by the OC later that evening. His jaw was swollen. Said he and Kathy had a fight.”

Tate looks like he wants to follow up on that point, but I interrupt him. I’m much more interested in the key he’s holding than the intricacies of who knew what and when.

“What about the other stable point, Tate? The green one at the top. Won’t that give us an idea who sent the key?”

“Maybe.” Tate does the eye navigation thing again and then pauses. “It’s in a garden of some sort. Or maybe a forest. The location isn’t labeled, but…I can look it up. Hold on.”

He taps the comm on his wrist and starts reading out a string of numbers.

“Don’t bother,” Campbell says. “My tech guy tells me the point is in south central Florida. Fort Myers. More precisely, it’s a banyan tree inside a garden on some inventor’s estate…Edison, I think. June 16, 2024 at six a.m.”

“Okay…anything special about that date?” Tate asks him.

“A Muslim holy day, one of the Eids…al-Adha, I think. Other than that, nothing significant.”

A pause, then Tate says, “Which means it’s Shaila’s jump, probably.”

“Who’s Shaila?” I ask.

“Our primary Islamic historian, but…I can’t imagine her working with Kathy on this. She was from an older cadre. Supposed to be retiring soon. Nice enough, but she kept to herself. And we know that she made it. She picked up an identity from the deposit box at a bank in Miami. There were records for a marriage. A death certificate too, some years later. It seems like she assimilated, settled down.”

Tate pulls up the stable point again and stares at it for about thirty seconds.

“There she is,” he says when he looks up from the key. “She’s wearing one of those burqas, where pretty much all you can see are her eyes. And I can’t even see those, because she walks away from the stable point after she jumps in. It’s just the black cloth.”

I take the key from him and carefully navigate away from the ruins of CHRONOS HQ and back to the view with the smaller squares. Then I focus on the green one and wait.

The scene is exactly as Tate described it. An overcast sky, or maybe it’s just dim because it’s early morning or because the stable point is in the shade. There’s an empty bench beyond the tree, with flower bushes behind it. Everything goes black for a moment, then the greenish-gray of the grass and trees reemerges as the figure in the black dress moves off to the left, away from the stable point. I follow her with my eyes automatically, and as I do the interface shifts slightly in that direction.

When I pan back to the right, a young guy suddenly appears on the bench. My age, maybe. A bit overweight. He’s reading something and he doesn’t pay any attention to the woman in the burqa.

Or that’s what it seems like to half of my brain. The other half is certain that the guy has been there all along, that the bench was never empty in the first place. Trying to reconcile those two images does weird things to my stomach.

“You okay?” Tate asks.

“Yeah. I saw her. Did you see the guy on the bench?”

He gives me a puzzled look and then takes back the key. After a moment, he says, “Hmph. I was so focused on Shaila I didn’t even notice him. It shouldn’t be a problem, though. The stable point is pretty well camouflaged.”

Campbell is leaning back on the sofa, drumming his fingers lightly on the cushion. “Speaking of camouflage…can we be sure that it’s even Shaila? A burqa makes a damn good disguise.”

I pull the stable point up again and watch until the figure moves away. “He could be right. You said they cover head to toe. And this is more head to mid-calf.”

Tate grabs the key back. After a moment, he lets out a sigh. “Yeah. Probably not Shaila. And those could definitely be Saul’s feet…I’ve seen them enough times propped up on the furniture.” He turns to me. “Then you can’t use this to contact him, Pru. He must have been working with Kathy.”

Campbell makes a noise like he’s disgusted, and pushes himself up from the sofa. “And why would you assume that, Poulsen?” he asks as he walks over to refill his drink. “Some friend you are. I don’t believe for a minute Saul was helping Kathy with anything. More likely, he took Shaila’s place trying to figure out what Kathy was doing. Trying to stop her. To keep her from making a mistake even greater than the one you made. The one he helped you cover up even though it could have wrecked both your careers.”

Tate’s face turns red and he jerks forward. For a moment, I think he’s going to slug Campbell, but he changes his mind, slumping back into the cushions. He just sits there silently for a minute, that little muscle in his jaw twitching like the tail of a pissed-off cat.

“Okay,” he says, finally. “Maybe you’re right. But it still seems dangerous to send Pru in there, not knowing.” He takes my hand and squeezes it gently, ignoring Campbell as he looks into my eyes. “We need to think about this. Mull it over for a few days, okay?”

I nod and return his smile. It’s nice knowing that he cares. That he’s worried about me. So, I’ll take a few days and let him think I’m debating, considering all the pros and cons.

Even though I already know what’s going to happen.

We have a key and I can use it. That means there’s at least a chance that I can fix this, all of this.

Maybe I can get back to Deb.

Maybe I can stop Dad from hitting that car.

Maybe I can stop my mother from destroying the one thing that made Tate happy. He could go off and do his Viking things, but he’d have to be back here sometimes. And he said he wasn’t trying to get back to this Maya girl. I could set a local point at his place. I could visit him when he’s not off chopping down forests and sailing over icy seas.

This little disc of lime-green light is chock-full of possibilities.

5

EDISON AND FORD WINTER ESTATE

FORT MYERS, FLORIDA

June 16, 2024 6:01 a.m.

I feel the change in the air on my skin before my eyes open. Everything smells real here—earthy and alive. A soft buzz surrounds me. Crickets, maybe.

When I open my eyes, I’m near the back of the banyan tree. The aerial roots hanging down around me make it look more like dozens of trees instead of just one. Closer to the building, I see the guy on the bench, still looking down at whatever is in his hand.

Farther away, Saul—if it even is Saul—moves at a rapid clip toward the gate. The burqa fans out behind him as he rushes past the information booth, unmanned at this early hour.

I slip the key into my back pocket and take off toward the gate, dodging banyan roots as I go.

But someone calls my name before I even clear the tree. It’s the guy from the bench.

How in hell does he know my name?

I ignore him and keep moving. Saul is about to turn onto the sidewalk that runs along the white picket fence bordering the estate. If I don’t hurry, I’ll lose him.

A hand grabs my upper arm just as I reach the outer edge of the banyan. “You need to wait, Pru.”

I give one confused look back at the sidewalk, but I can’t even see Saul now due to the tall shrubs. At that moment, a wave of dizziness hits me and I lean against one of the tree’s twisted prop roots for support.

I can feel the bark of the tree against my back. I can feel this idiot’s fingers digging into my upper arm. I know these things are real.

But I also remember when he didn’t stop me. I didn’t hear him yell my name, and I didn’t get socked in the stomach with this…whatever this dizzy sensation is. I picked up my pace and caught up to Saul less than half a block outside the gate.

My mind insists both of these things happened. But that’s impossible. Right?

“Prudence? You need to listen, okay? Following Saul is a bad idea. You did that once, and yeah, it eventually works out, sort of, but this way will be much faster.”

He’s talking like I’m a child. Not a very bright one, either.

“Who are you?” I take several quick steps backward, away from him, nearly tripping over my feet in the process. “How do you know me?”

After heaving an overly dramatic sigh, he smiles. The expression reminds me of the tiger from that Jungle Book movie Deb dragged me to the theater to see last summer. I don’t trust that smile, not one little bit.

“It’s complicated,” he says, stretching the smile even wider. “The name is Simon. Saul—and you, actually—sent me here to make your adjustment go more smoothly…”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to reconcile another memory as it floods in. Or is it a memory? It’s like it’s happening now, at the same time this guy is talking.

I catch up with Saul. I grab his sleeve and he shoves me backward, into the fence and takes off running. I yell the word Campbell told me to say—zwischenzug. Tate says it a chess term they appropriated for some history game they play. Even though it makes zero sense to me, the word stops Saul dead in his tracks.

Back in reality number two, Simon is saying, “…going to have to trust me, Pru. All of this is a bit disorienting at first, but we’ll be able to move a lot faster this way, because we already know the things you’ve done. How and when you did them. What went wrong, what went right.”

I pull away and go to the bench, clutching my head in my hands.

He sits down next to me. “You’re remembering catching up to Saul, right? Giving him that CHRONOS diary you’re carrying, the one with the messages.”

The diary and a few other items I didn’t want to leave behind are in my purse. The game plan was for me to give the diary to Saul right after I said the zwischenzug code word.

I clutch the purse tighter and slide toward the other end of the bench. There’s no way I’m turning anything over to this guy. My gut is screaming that he’s not a friend, not an ally, even though something about him seems familiar.

“After Saul looks at the diary, the two of you go off and eat donuts or cookies or whatever.” Simon’s voice takes on a snide tone as he continues. “And Saul gets all emotional ’cause you’re his baby girl all grown up, and he never got to see you toddle around in your diapers and pick your nose and watch TV. All that dad stuff he missed.”

He pauses, like he’s expecting me to respond. When I don’t, he goes on. “Come on. You know I’m telling you the truth about that first part, because you can remember it. You remember catching Saul, right?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I don’t know!” I scream. “How can I remember something that didn’t happen?”

“Well, it did happen. Just in a slightly modified timeline. You’re wearing the key, so you’re going to remember both events. So will Saul. I wasn’t here the first time around, so I’m okay, but I’ve had double memories. They’re a little disconcerting at first, but you get used to them, and Saul thinks it will be easier on everyone if we skip you forward. You’ll remember what you need to, and we’ll get a lot more accomplished while you’re still young enough to be useful. Now, if you’ll just give me your key—”

My hand slides into the pocket of my shorts, but I don’t pull out the CHRONOS key. Instead, I pull out the little device Tate insisted I carry, once it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to talk me out of going. It’s about the size of my pinky, and it has a button on the end that you twist and then depress. Tate called it a masher-basher, and said it should disable an opponent for about two minutes. Long enough for me to run away or use the key to return to 2306.

“Back off,” I say to Simon. “You’re not touching my key.”

Simon holds his hands up. “I just want to transfer some coordinates! You don’t need that. Just hand me the key. I’ll give it right back.”

“No. You heard me. Now. Back. Off.”

He takes two steps away, rolling his eyes. “As usual, you are one truly unreasonable bitch. Fine. Fine. Have it your way.”

Simon pulls a CHRONOS key out of his pocket and tosses it to me. Then he turns around. Even with his back to me, I can tell he’s reaching down the front of his pants.

I squinch my face in disgust. He catches the expression as he turns back toward me. “Had to get my spare out. Since you’re being unreasonable. The first stable point on that key I tossed you? That’s a little place Saul calls Nuevo Reino. The rest of us just call it the Farm. It’s about ten miles from here, but that stable point is a couple years in the future. We’ll drop in, let you chat with your papa, and then we can plan next steps.”

“Why didn’t Saul just meet me here? Why send you?”

He shrugs. “Saul’s grounded. None of the historians can use the key. While Saul won’t admit it, I don’t think that was part of the master plan, but…he’s adjusted. He has me to help him now.”

The emphasis on the word me is subtle, but it’s there.

Another of the double memories kicks in—

—I’m sitting on a bench, watching Saul try to use the key. He’s still wearing the burqa, so all I can see are his eyes, but they’re angry. Furious. I give him the diary, tell him to listen to the messages. That maybe we can fix what my mother did.

I squeeze my palms against my temples again, but it does nothing to relieve the headache.

“Hey.” Simon is standing a few feet away, his expression somewhere between pity and exasperation. “We have a doctor at the Farm, you know. She has stuff that will help—a bit—with the pain. But we need to get moving now, before the crew that works this place arrives. First stable point—top left corner. You go first.”

I activate the key Simon gave me, but keep the other one in my hand, still not entirely certain if I’m going to use the stable point to this Farm place or switch keys and jump back to Tate. After about thirty seconds, a thin, dark-haired man comes into view. He’s wearing a long white tunic with gold trim over a pair of ordinary-looking jeans. He’s a few years older, but it’s definitely Saul. I recognize his face from the videos Sutter showed me when I was in the hospital.

And…yes, I’ll admit it. I recognize him from features I see in the mirror. His hair is straight, but the color is the same as mine—deep brown, bordering on black. The shade of his skin, his nose, his cheekbones…all similar. For years, I’ve looked at my parents and wondered what weird throwback gene produced me. Mystery solved.

Saul Rand is not my dad. He’ll never be my dad. But he’s quite obviously my father.

I’d almost managed to forget about Simon, until he clears his throat. “Come on, Pru. Blink or get off the pot.”

I shift my eyes from the key and glare at him. My dislike is almost instinctive. I hate that he acts as if he knows me. And the way he seems to treat everything as a big fat joke. I’ll jump into this stable point because I’m here to talk to Saul and I can see him waiting on the other side, but it chafes my very last nerve to follow this rat bastard’s orders.

“I’m going. But you need to jump somewhere else. Saul and I are going to have a father-daughter chat. Private. And since you’re not family…”

“What?” He laughs, and gives me one of those fake-offended looks. “I’m hurt that you’re disowning me so soon. Come along, mamacita. Let’s not keep Gramps waiting all day.”

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

April 10, 2030, 2:21 p.m.

Saul slides a glass of water onto the table in front of me and drops two lavender pills into my hand. “June says two of these will do wonders for that headache.”

“Who’s June?”

He crouches down next to the chair where I’m sitting. Simon jumped in right behind me, but he made himself scarce at Saul’s insistence as soon as we arrived.

“She’s the doctor here,” Saul says. “And, just like Simon, she’s one of yours.” He reaches out and lifts one of my curls. “When I first saw June, her hair looked a lot like this, but…that was a long time ago. Well, for her. Just a few years for me.”

The idea of having a child who’s older than I am—who’s older than her grandfather, apparently—sets the headache off again. I was going to ask exactly what these pills are, but unless it’s aspirin or Tylenol, I wouldn’t recognize it. And if they were going to poison me, they could just as easily put something in the water. I pop the pills into my mouth, hoping this June person isn’t a quack.

“So, how many of…mine…are around here?” I can’t bring myself to say my kids, my children, offspring, whatever.

Fortunately, Saul gets my drift. “Here at Estero? Right now? Five, maybe? But if you mean in total, then twenty-one. No…wait. Twenty-two.”

My eyes drift down to my abdomen, and Saul laughs. “No, no. Only one pregnancy for you. The others were through surrogates.”

“What?”

He explains the term and I follow him, more or less.

“So, it’s like that test tube baby born…” I’m about to say a few years back, but I guess it’s over fifty years ago in this time.

“Well, sort of. Your offspring were carried to term by other women here at Nuevo Reino. Women who were honored to help us. Honored to carry your children.” His eyes darken. “It’s a shame that most of those children are useless.”

I guess he catches my expression, because he smiles. “Useless with the key, I mean. And even so, I still find ways for them to contribute. It’s taking a lot of effort to fix the mess that Kathy made…the mess I should have had the good sense to stop. And at the same time, we’re fixing other problems that no one has had the courage to address. Just think of it, Pru—we can stop wars before they happen! Clean up the planet. Make sure that the people who know how to lead are the ones who stay in power, and—”

His eyes are glowing as he speaks, but my mind shifts over to that other reality. Simon was right—

—we’re eating donuts, or rather I’m eating them. Not the kind with the holes in the middle, but more like Munchkins, even though it’s not a Dunkin’ Donuts. They’re good, with lots of cinnamon. Eating them gives me something to focus on while Saul watches the videos that Tate and Campbell included in the diary. He stashed the burqa in a bathroom trash can and he’s now in jeans and a white shirt. I watch his face, trying to decipher what he’s hearing from his expressions, since I can’t hear anything without one of those translator disks behind my ear. I know what Tate told him. I was there when he recorded it, right after begging me to call the trip off. He said he had a bad feeling about all of this. But I still don’t know what Campbell recorded. Saul keeps shooting looks over at me, mostly angry looks, as he listens. I can’t blame him for being furious that he’s stuck here, that he can’t use the key to get back, but it’s not my—

And then I’m back in the present again, in this version of the present, where Saul has taken my hands in his. “And it’s all because of you. Because you were smart enough to see the wisdom of my plan.”

Being touched by people I don’t know always bothers me, and I don’t really know Saul yet. But I don’t want to offend him, so I give him a shaky smile.

“I just…I don’t understand. If this plan was going so well, why did you send Simon to intercept me today? Do you think we can just skip all of the stuff I did…since I already did it?”

He laughs. “Well, the bad parts, yes. But not the things that were useful, because then you won’t have done them and a lot of stuff will change. The point is, we’ve kept records of each jump you took. We know what worked and what was a waste of time…and sweetie, there was a lot of wasted time. Mistakes that you’d have to go back and undo. Over and over. The last time I saw you, you were older than I am. Older than June, even. It made me sad to think how much of your life you wasted. And then I thought…we have the key. We can expedite everything. Make sure your valuable time is preserved for things that matter. Things that help people.”

Back in alter-reality, we’ve left the donut place. We’re on a sidewalk now, in the middle of town, flagging down a cab to take us to a train station so we can get to Miami. Something about documents in a safe deposit box. Saul is more relaxed now, friendly almost. Asking questions about Tate and Campbell. He has a nice laugh—

The Saul back in the real world is looking at me like he’s waiting for something. “That’s what you want, right? To help people?”

I think about my response for a moment. It’s not that I mind helping people. I generally like it, but something about Saul makes me suspect he puts big-picture problems first. And I have small-picture issues I need to resolve before we start ending wars and saving the environment.

“Could you help me see Deb? My sister? I need to do that first—”

I stop, because he almost looks like he’s going to cry.

Why is he giving me that look? What happened?

“I just want to get word back to her that I’m alive and…oh my God, she’s okay, isn’t she? I mean, I know she’d be old by now but I’m talking about back then. My time. I just want to know she’s okay, and tell her I’m safe and I’m coming back—”

“Pru, she’s fine. It’s just, you were so hurt when you saw Deborah. I don’t know if it was Kathy manipulating her or if she was just that angry about…his name was Jim, right? Your stepfather?”

The word makes me angry. He’s my dad, not my step-anything. But even though I know I’m angry, I can’t quite touch that anger. Like it belongs to someone else. My headache is beginning to calm down, too.

The medicine, maybe?

“Deborah blamed you,” Saul says. “And then you tried to go back and stop the accident, but you can’t, because it sets up a conundrum, baby. You went a little crazy for a bit. You wasted five years trying to fix something that just wasn’t fixable, and you spun off dozens of timelines in the process. In one, your interference pushed Kathy over the edge, and she killed herself and your sister. In another, she even went so far as to hire a company that took her order and waited until 2028…then sent a hired killer after the two of us.”

He rolls up one sleeve and shows me a long scar that runs down his lower arm. “I managed to protect you, and our security guards actually took the guy out, but not before they got one shot in. We were lucky, Pru.”

Nothing he’s saying makes any sense, and I don’t have the energy to process it. My head is starting to spin. I just want to lie down somewhere and sleep, but he keeps talking.

“…have gotten things mostly patched up, with Simon’s help, but you can’t open that wound, sweetheart. I really don’t want to hurt you, but you have to hear this. I don’t think you’ll believe me, otherwise. You’ll have to go and see for yourself and this whole cycle will start all over.”

Saul pulls something out of his pocket. “Simon followed you—for security reasons—the last time you went back to try and talk to your sister. He recorded this.”

He clicks a button. I hear traffic noise and voices. Then he hands me the device.

The video is small and it’s a lot blurrier than the images I’ve gotten used to at the OC—not all that different from the grainy home movies Dad used to record on vacations. I guess video technology doesn’t really improve much until after—when are we now? 2030?

The picture is clear enough, however, that I recognize the corner where we’re standing. It’s a few blocks from the house. My back is to the camera, but the girl I’m talking to is very clearly Deb. She’s wearing the same blouse she was wearing in one of the pictures that I finally got back from the CHRONOS snoops.

She’s not just angry, she’s angry at me. “…know what that medallion does. Mom says you’re lying, that you could have fixed all of this if you wanted to. You’re just doing what he…”

A truck passes by at this point and I can’t follow what she’s saying for a few seconds. “…want nothing to do with you! Not unless you find a way to fix what you’ve done. To bring Dad back.”

I’m talking more softly in the video, trying to calm her down. I can’t make out most of the words. It doesn’t matter, though. Whatever I’m saying just seems to make it worse. At the end she shoves me backward, and hurls a few choice words at me before yelling, “I hate you!” and hurrying away.

When the video ends, I feel someone’s thumb on my cheek, brushing away a tear. It’s Saul. I didn’t even know I was crying.

He pulls me into a hug that I’m too numb to resist, and then holds me out at arm’s length so that he can look into my eyes. “This is why I had Simon go back and intercept you, Pru. If we can do all of the things we need to do, just faster, then you’ll have time. Time to patch things up with Deb, and maybe have a life…”

His mouth is still moving, but the words aren’t registering anymore. I have to sleep.

Tate was right. I shouldn’t have come.

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

April 11, 2030, 12:43 p.m.

More of the crazy false memories start flooding in when I wake up.

A hotel suite. In Miami. Pancakes from room service and then Saul goes out to get the documents and money from a safe deposit box at a downtown bank.

I push those thoughts away. I need to focus on what’s happening here without being dragged there, wherever there is. And that seems a little easier to do than it was yesterday, maybe because I’ve gotten some rest.

My gut twists when I think about the video Saul showed me. Deb yelling that she hated me.

I’m not even sure how I got to this bedroom. The last thing I remember thinking is that Tate was right. I shouldn’t have come.

Oh, crap! What if they took—

The panic fades away when I reach into my pocket and pull out the CHRONOS key. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m coming back, but I know for certain that I need to discuss all of this with Tate. Maybe even Campbell. Things are just way too weird for me to keep going without someone else’s take on things, someone who has more experience with timelines and time travel than I do.

The panic comes surging back as soon as I activate the key. This isn’t mine.  It’s the medallion Simon gave me yesterday, with the stable point that brought me here to the Farm.

Except it looks like someone added a few other locations. I pull up one at random and my pulse begins racing even faster. It’s a war zone of some sort. Bodies everywhere. The other locations look eerily similar, except for the last one, which appears to be the front entrance to a hotel.

A quick pat of my right pocket reveals that the other key, the one Campbell gave me, is definitely missing. So is the masher-basher thing I got from Tate. And I’m pretty certain who took it.

Suspect number one is sitting at the kitchen table when I storm in. “Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakens at last. Thought I was going to have to come in and kiss you.”

“Where the hell is my key, Simon?”

He snorts and pushes his plate away—empty, except for the crusts of the sandwich he was eating. “Well, you seem to be feeling livelier. You want some lunch?”

“I want my key! Where is Saul?”

“He’s busy.” Simon taps a button on the wall. “Barb, be a love and bring in another sandwich, some water, and the medicines June prescribed for Sister Prudence.”

“I’m not taking any more of those pills. I need to talk to Saul.”

Simon shrugs. “Your choice on the pills, but I told you, Saul’s not here. You’ll be with me today. We have to go on a little field trip and then I’ll get you to the hotel.”

“What hotel? Is that where Saul is?”

He rolls his eyes like I’ve asked a dumb question. “Yes. But it’s earlier Saul. The hotel where you would be staying with him now. If I hadn’t diverted you.” I give him a pained look and he adds in a more condescending, singsong voice, “I have to get you back to when Saul first arrived. So the two of you can get started…just more quickly now, since you’ll know what the hell you’re doing. Because you’ll have the List.”

I can actually hear the caps when he speaks. He apparently thinks I should know what he’s talking about, but I don’t. “What list?”

“God, Pru. Why did you even bother having that little family chat with Saul if you weren’t going to pay attention? I’m talking about the detailed agenda Saul and I put together with all the things you need to accomplish. Some of them have specific dates, and you’ll need to pay attention to those, especially the ones that are starred. But otherwise, we’ll just get them done in order as quickly as possible.”

I park myself in one of the dining room chairs. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you give me back my key. Until I see Tate. Let me talk to Saul.”

Simon sits in the chair opposite me and closes his eyes. His face wears a look that suggests he’s praying for patience. I’m doing the exact same thing, because I really just want to slug his stupid face.

He leans forward and gives me another of his smiles. “Tell you what. You do everything you’re told to do over the next few days. We’ll get a few things marked off the List, then we’ll talk to Saul about key privileges and jumps to the future. Once you’ve shown—”

And my patience is all used up.

I punch him in the mouth, as hard as I can, and take off. I have no idea where I’m going other than out the door I saw at the other end of the hallway.

My only hope is that swiping Campbell’s key was Simon’s idea, and Saul isn’t in on it. Last night is fuzzy, but Saul seemed nice. I think I can reason with him. Simon? Not so much.

But the door is locked when I reach the end of the corridor. Through the glass, I can see that the place is a farm of some sort, like Simon told me. There’s another, smaller building just across the courtyard, and what I think are orange trees beyond that.

I scan the door to see if there’s a deadbolt. No luck. For the first time ever, I really wish we’d taken the jiu jitsu class Deb suggested, instead of pottery. I back up a few feet and run toward the door, turning my shoulder toward it like I’ve seen in the movies, half hoping that the glass shatters and half dreading the possibility that it will.

It doesn’t yield. And Simon is right behind me now. He’s wiping the blood from his lip with one hand, and pointing Tate’s masher-basher at me with the other.

“You son of a bitch!”

“Not the slightest doubt about that,” he says as he pushes the button.

6

For the second time in a row, I open my eyes without the slightest idea where I am, when I am, or how I got here. I have a vague memory of being at the Farm after Simon zapped me. He was arguing with an older woman. I didn’t hear the first part, but it had something to do with me, and I think Simon won, because the woman huffed off. A moment later, something pricked my arm and everything went blank.

I sit up and swing my feet over the side of the bed. Then I hold that position for several minutes, waiting for the dizziness to pass. This wasn’t just the masher-basher. The Rat Bastard drugged me. A quick pat of my pockets reveals that he’s also taken both medallions.

My stomach rumbles. I have memories of eating donuts and pancakes in that other timeline, but I haven’t eaten anything in this one. And I have absolutely no idea how long it’s been since I left 2306.

Wherever I am, I seem to be alone. There’s a luggage rack against the wall and a plastic ice bucket on the dresser, so my best guess is a hotel room. It’s dark, with the exception of a thin streak of sunlight that glares in through a gap in the curtains and a very familiar lime-green glow near the dresser. It’s not a CHRONOS key, or I guess I should say it’s not just a CHRONOS key. The device looks a bit like a hand mirror, but there’s an additional handle. The key itself sits in the center, pulsing slightly. Four small green dots are also visible around the room, one attached near the center of each wall.

I grab for the key, and that’s when I notice the tattoo on the back of my hand. The color isn’t clear in the green light, so I go over to the window and pull back the curtains a bit. Pink. A pink orchid, I think. Or maybe a lotus. The edges look a little puffy. I lick my finger and rub it over the top, but it doesn’t smudge at all. No scent, either, so I don’t think it’s one of those temporary tattoos.

Even though a pink flower is far from the worst thing you could wake up and find permanently affixed to your body, I feel violated. I didn’t agree to this.

My efforts to yank the medallion out of the weird holder prove spectacularly unsuccessful, partly because I’m trying to be quiet. The damn thing is locked down…both the device, which is bolted to the dresser, and the medallion itself, which appears to be locked into place. When I slide my finger across the surface, the holographic display pops up as usual. It seems like it’s in a different position, slightly off to the side, rather than directly above the key.

Even though I can’t see the display well from this angle, it’s obviously not the original medallion that Campbell gave me. This is Simon’s key, and he’s stripped away all but that one stable point—the location with the dead bodies stacked up like kindling.

I move around so that I can get a better look as I debate my options. I need to find someplace to hide while I figure out how to get back to Tate. The only question is whether I’ll have a better chance of doing that in this hotel room or in that field among the stacks of bodies.

The door opens. I freeze, expecting Simon, but it’s Saul who pokes his head through.

“Um…hi. I’m Saul, but I guess you know that. Apparently we’re related?”

This Saul is younger and his hair is shorter. I’m again reminded of that Rob guy, the actor, and I kind of get why my mother might have been a possessive girlfriend. Which is a truly gross thought to have about someone who is apparently my biological father, but then, in a normal world, he’d be in his forties, like Dad, and way past the hot zone.

“Do you mind if I come in?” He takes my silence for permission and steps inside, closing the door behind him. “I’m very relieved to see you. I thought I was going crazy.”

Saul leans back against the dresser. He’s wearing the white button-up shirt with his jeans, instead of that tunic. It’s the same thing he was wearing underneath the burqa in the double memories I kept having.

“I was halfway down the block from the Edison stable point when I started getting the feeling that everything was…off, you know? Double memories. Were you getting them, too?”

“Yeah.”

He tilts his head to the side and looks at me for a moment. “You don’t look much like Kathy. More like my sister. She had the curls, too.”

I notice the past tense, and the faint note of sadness in his voice, but I don’t ask for more information. Maybe he expects me to ask, maybe he’s even planned some sad story he can tell me about how he lost a sister, too.

I trust him more than Simon, but that’s not saying much.

“Where’s Simon?” I ask.

“Don’t know. He showed up at the door of my hotel room—not this one. A smaller room, downstairs. Told me he had this suite reserved, that he could explain the double memories I was having. So I followed him. Thought he was with CHRONOS, actually, until we got up here and he gave me the diary, with the messages from Tate and Morgen, and also a message from…me. From the future. As for Simon, after he gave me the stuff, he blinked out. Said the less he talked to this version of me, the easier it would be on everyone. Oh, but he said he’d be back later to take you on the…tour?”

His eyebrows go up like he’s waiting for me to explain.

“No clue.” Actually, I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the corpse-filled stable point, but I don’t see any need to give him extra information.

Saul is silent for a moment, just staring at one of the little green dots on the wall. When he finally speaks, he still doesn’t look at me. “I thought I’d be in time to stop her. Stop them, I guess, since it’s pretty clear that Richard Viers is the one who talked her into it. He was always putting ideas in her head.  We had a fight just the night before.”

“You and Richard?”

“No! Your mother and I. She was furious at me. And it was my fault…I’ll admit I was never really good at the whole fidelity thing, and she found out I’d been with one of the other historians. Shaila. Kathy sent her a threatening message, and Shaila was terrified. I told Shai to stay put and borrowed her costume—the burqa. I was going to get to the jump room early, to see if I could reason with Kathy. I didn’t want her to get into trouble. I loved her. And it was my fault she was angry, so maybe I could fix it, you know? She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant when we were fighting. Maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe that’s why she was so angry.”

He sighs, and his voice is shaky when he continues. “But when I checked Kathy’s badge location, I realized she’d stopped by to see Angelo…he was our supervisor. By the time I got there it was too late. He was dead. Kathy killed him, or maybe it was Richard who did it. Left his body in the office, stuffed in the closet. So I ran to the jump room, and…they had Shaila hostage. Some sort of explosive was strapped to her chest. Richard said for everyone to get into position or he’d kill her. There was a blast…but I guess you know that part, from what Tate and Campbell said.”

A couple of sniffs, and then he says, “I’m sorry. It’s just…this is really recent for me. Then I find out I can’t use the key, can’t get back home. I’m stuck here. I still can’t believe Kathy would do that. I knew she was a little unstable, but this is just…too much.”

I’m silent, mostly because I don’t really know what to say. He seems sincere, but…

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “Here I am blathering on and what you’ve been through is so much worse. And that’s kind of my fault, too, because I’m the one who pushed her over the edge. If I’d been faithful, or at least more careful, she’d never have had reason to listen to all of Richard’s nonsense about the evils of time travel. You’d never have suffered the way you did. You’d have been born in my time, with a father.”

Something about what he’s saying doesn’t make sense, but I can’t put my finger on it, partly because the bit about me not having a father makes me angry. “I had a father. Jim Pierce. He was a good man, a good dad to me and to Deborah.” I can feel the tears building up behind my eyes. I’m not sure if it’s because Saul’s crying, or just the stress of the past few days, but I bite down on my lip and blink them away. “What my mother did…what you did, too, I guess. That’s why he’s dead now.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Pru. Campbell told me he died when you used the key.”

Saul’s expression is so sympathetic that I may have imagined it, but I think there’s a slight emphasis on the word you.

Your fault too, Prudence.

He didn’t really need to say it. It’s always there at the back of my mind. Judging from the video he showed me last night, it’s in Deb’s mind, as well.

Saul waits a moment and then nods over at the CHRONOS key locked up in the weird mount. “Those medallions have an incredible amount of power. More than I ever realized. Campbell…well, he didn’t want to say anything in front of Tate, since Tate is still working with them, but he believes there were major changes to the timeline as a result of what happened. It’s hard to believe CHRONOS doesn’t know…I mean, we’re talking billions of additional deaths. But I can easily see them covering something like that up, since they’re implicated. And then Simon gives me the message I sent myself from the future. Apparently, you…we…went about everything all wrong. Not just once, but several times. We both try to contact your mother, your sister…and it only makes matters worse. You’ve just started working with the key, Pru, so I don’t know if you can feel the different realities, but I can. This is far from the first time we’ve had this conversation.”

I shake my head. “I only remember…once. You ordered pancakes.” I nod to the room beyond this one. “We ate them at a table that looked like that one, but I think it was in a different room and I…I think it happened yesterday. Or earlier today, maybe. Just before I punched Simon. I can’t remember a lot of what we said, but you were angry that you couldn’t use the key. Either way, it felt very real. Still does. I can even smell the pancakes.”

Saul laughs. “Actually, you smell the pancakes room service delivered about a half-hour ago. I thought you might be hungry when you woke up…and you slept a little longer than Simon thought you would. I’m impressed, by the way. June had to put two stitches in his upper lip. You have a mighty right hook.”

“Let’s just say I was motivated.”

I start toward the door, but Saul grabs my arm. “No. I’ll have to bring your food in here. Simon said the field extender won’t go beyond this room, and…we’re not entirely sure what would happen to you outside of a CHRONOS field. Simon also seems to think you’re something of a flight risk right now.”

My eyes flick automatically to the lime-green glow behind his shirt. He laughs. “Sorry, sweetie. You can’t borrow mine. But we’ll get this figured out.”

“So…I can’t leave this room? I’m a prisoner?”

“No! Not at all. You’ll be going places with Simon, and eventually, I think we’ll be able to trust you on your own. Let’s just say that for now you’ve been…grounded. For your own safety.”

Simon doesn’t knock, just shoves the door open and tosses me a white dress. It looks like a toga.

“Put it on,” he says. He’s holding his mouth a little funny, and I see that Saul was right. There are two small stitches on his upper lip.

“Why?”

“Because that’s what you’ll wear every time you make a jump.”

I toss the dress right back at him. “I don’t think so. You wear it.”

There’s a snort from the doorway, and when I look over, I see a second Simon. “Hi.” He gives me a little finger wave. “I’m his backup.”

The first Simon tosses the dress onto the bed, and pulls a wrench out of the duffel he’s carrying. At first, I think he’s planning to use the wrench on me, but then he turns around and starts unbolting the field extender. “You can either put the damn dress on by yourself or the two of us will put it on you. Your choice, mamacita. And if you get any rowdy again, I’ll call in more backup. You can never have too many Simons in a room, can you, Simon?”

Simon-in-the-doorway takes a step toward me. “My thoughts exactly.”

I duck into the bathroom and do as the Simons say. The idea of him—them—touching me sends cold shivers down my back.

When I come out, Simon #1 is holding the field extender gadget. “Grab the other handle,” he tells me. “Once the stable point is visible, keep your eyes on it and blink when I say.”

I tell him exactly where he can shove the field extender.

He’s silent for a couple of seconds, focusing on the display he’s pulled up. “Have it your way. But you’re not going to enjoy the ride. Last chance.”

He rolls his eyes when I flip him off. Then he grabs my upper arm.

“Eventually, you’ll learn to take my advice, Pru. This is gonna hurt.”

Oh dear God was that an understatement.

My insides are being pulled out through my pores. Once we land in the middle of a dark, wet field, I proceed to puke those same insides out. Afterward, I collapse onto the mud, inches away from my former breakfast.

“Warned you.” Simon doesn’t sit. He just stands there next to me looking out into the night, with his leg pressed against my back. As soon as the retching stops, I try to move away, but he says, “Nuh-unh-unh. Not unless you like the idea of popping out of existence.”

When I finally push myself up to sitting, I see why he chose to remain on his feet. I suspect some of that moisture on the ground is from rain or dew. But most of it is blood. My body isn’t the only one sprawled out on the field, but it’s by far the liveliest.

“The year is 2074.” Simon’s voice is monotone, bored, almost like it’s his turn to recite in speech class. “In your time, this area would have been Niger, near the Chadian border, but in this reality, it’s all Akana. Throughout recorded history, the region has never been what you’d call peaceful, but one rather powerful ethnic group, the Akan, took control back in the thirteenth century, thanks to the foresight of a leader named Esther. Odd name for an Akan woman, and coincidentally, the name of a CHRONOS historian who was stranded in that period. Esther and her daughter, Edna, made a number of changes for the better within her culture—for example, they’re one of the few groups who never snip-snipped the private parts of either sex. But they were aggressive and territorial, and as you can see, many generations later, they still don’t play nice with their neighbors. The Akan are responsible for this…” He waves one arm around at the stacks of corpses. “And there are many other fields where the mud is redder still.”

He offers me a hand up, and I reluctantly take it. I start to brush the blood-mud from my skirt, but it’s a lost cause.

“This is one of the things we have to fix,” Simon tells me. “Among numerous others that I’ll be showing you today. When you’re ready to move on, let me know. And this time, I’d suggest following my instructions. Unless you want a repeat of your last little adventure.”

I do not.

I grab the handle. And when Simon says blink, I blink.

RITZ-CARLTON

MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA

Day 6—June 19, 2024

There’s a tap on the door and then Saul asks, “Hungry?”

I am. But I shake my head. “The device makes me queasy, and Simon has me scheduled for another jump in a few hours.”

Saul shrugs. “Okay. I can wait until you get back. I hate eating alone.”

I add that to the small, but growing, list of things that Saul Rand and I have in common.

“Thanks.” I try to sound a little cheerier than I actually am. The place is nice enough, as cells go. Movies, TV, my own bathroom. Room service.

But jail is jail. I carved another notch into the wall behind the bed last night. There were a few days at the beginning when I didn’t keep count. It may even have been a week. Since I started the tally, I’ve crossed off five days. It’s my nightly ritual, right after I brush my teeth.

The only time I get out of this room is to go on another of Simon’s field trips. The recent ones haven’t been as bad as the first few, the ones I think of as Simon’s Tragical History Tour. The beach I can see from my window is underwater a hundred years from now. Dolphins and horses are practically extinct, along with several dozen other species, as a result of several odd flu-like viruses that Saul suspects were man-made. Terrorists attack locations all over the world in 2092, and the animosity that emerged in the wake of those attacks leads to a third world war. Saul says these things weren’t in the history books in his day, or at least not in quite the same way. Mother and this Richard guy seem to have set most of this in motion, but Simon told me that things got much worse after I contacted Deborah and pushed Mother to act more quickly than she’d planned.

Most days, I just feel…numb. Not quite as numb as I did after taking the pills that first night at the Farm, but still kind of floaty. I’m not on any medications that I know of, but what I thought that night is just as true now—they could be putting something in my food or drink. But I have to eat, and I have to find a way for them to trust me enough to give me my own key back. If I can get to Tate, we can talk this through. I need someone to help me figure out this mess.

I’m not sure about their plan to set things straight, either. Saul’s right that we need to get people to listen, to pay attention, if we’re going to fix the damage, rather than making it worse, as Simon claims I did before. And religion can motivate people to action—good and bad.

Either way, I guess the die is cast. Four days ago, Simon and I traveled back to 1476 London. I was there more as a prop than anything else, the little wife who held on to her husband’s arm like a timid mouse. It’s not a role I enjoyed playing, but letting go of Simon’s arm without a medallion of my own carries certain risks I’m not ready to take. Simon dropped two manuscripts into the hands of William Caxton, who had just opened his printing shop. We paid the printer a rather handsome bribe to bump the Book of Cyrus and the Book of Prophecy ahead of the first book in his queue, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Chaucer could hardly complain, since he was long dead even back then, and Caxton seemed pleased to have a bit of extra cash in his pocket.

Simon made a few trips without me, to pick up the books he had printed and then to distribute them in some libraries. He also deposited a portrait of me and a painting of Saul feeding the hungry at one of the larger Cyrist churches that popped up over the next hundred years.

Some of these solo trips were on my own List, but Simon said he’d take care of them. It sickens me that I actually felt a bit of gratitude, since it meant one less tandem jump with that stupid field extender.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Saul says.

I nod toward the evil gadget. “I was thinking I’d like to jump back and give whoever designed that thing a piece of my mind.”

Saul’s expression is rueful. “Well…Simon got the specs from me, actually. Handed them over to a young guy who was working with Edison, down in Florida. A former protege of Tesla. It’s actually very impressive for something built in 1902.”

“There were some very impressive torture devices during the Spanish Inquisition, too.”

“You have your mother’s dry sense of humor, I see. One of the things that attracted me to her, actually.” He flashes me a quick smile. “Well, if you aren’t hungry, are you at least feeling up to meeting another recruit? Simon will be back with him soon.”

Simon has been a busy, busy bee. I think several months have passed for him…the stitch on his upper lip is long gone, with just a tiny scar remaining. Two offspring of CHRONOS historians appeared yesterday to meet with Saul and hear his theories on what happened at CHRONOS and how they can help fix it. I wasn’t part of those discussions, since I’m confined to quarters, but Saul opened the door long enough to introduce me to both of them.

I have mixed feelings about the young woman, Edna. She’s the daughter Simon said was mainly responsible for building up the Akan empire, and thus very indirectly responsible for the slaughter I saw on that first trip with Simon. Edna is not much older than I am, and she seemed nervous. That’s probably not surprising for someone jumping hundreds of years ahead of her time. At first, I was surprised at her command of English, but then I realized Simon probably talked to Edna’s mother about all of this before the woman was even pregnant with her daughter. Edna was groomed for this, just as she was probably groomed to lead before. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’ll be staying.

I’m less certain about the man, a guy named Dunne. He didn’t hang around long, and when Saul introduced us, he made a special point of asking—twice, in his thick Irish brogue—if I was sure I was okay. I’m not sure he believed me when I said yes, which suggests he has pretty good instincts. After the Dunne guy left, I heard raised voices in the other room. Saul and Simon arguing. I only caught the loudest bits of the conversation, one of which was Simon telling Saul that the Dunne family was non-negotiable. That they’d have to find a way to convince him, or Saul could just find someone else to—

“Pru?” Saul prompts. “Did you hear my question?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. I’ll meet him.”

He starts to leave and then turns back. “Are you okay, Pru?”

His voice sounds like he actually cares. And maybe he does. Am I being too cynical? I may not have spent any time with him, but…I’m his kid, right? Maybe it bothers him to see me miserable, especially when he’s playing a role in making me feel that way.

“I’m okay,” I tell him. “But I’d be much, much better if you’d give me back my key. Why is Simon calling all of the shots now?”

Saul sighs, and sits down on the bed next to me. “If I were to give you a key, where would you go? You know you can’t contact Deborah or your mother. You’ve seen what happens as a result of that. We can’t risk it.”

“No. I want to see Tate. I want to talk all of this through with someone who’s not in the middle of it.”

He’s silent for a very long time.

“I’m not…opposed to that,” he says finally. “Especially if you could carry a message back for me. It would be interesting to know how much history CHRONOS whitewashed in order to cover up their own liability for this mess. But, on a personal level, maybe you should be careful if you’re actually…interested…in Tate Poulsen. He was—”

“I know about Maya. He told me.”

His eyes widen slightly. “Everything?”

“Enough for me to know it’s over. And even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Tate is miserable in the museum. He doesn’t belong there. If we can fix things so that CHRONOS doesn’t shut down…”

“Well,” Saul says, “I have good news on that front. The simulation currently puts the probability at seventy-two percent, up from twenty-four percent before we planted the seeds for Cyrist International. I still have to put in the latest figures, and these machines aren’t what I’m used to, but that’s a hopeful sign, right?”

The equipment Saul has here seems pretty impressive to me. Some of it hasn’t even been invented yet, which is reason he doesn’t let the maids in to clean. It’s also why he says we’ll be packing everything up and moving to the Farm within the next few days, once a few additional dominoes are in place.

He brushes a strand of hair back behind my ear and then tips my chin up to look at me. “We’ll talk again later, okay? I don’t want you to feel like you’re a prisoner here. You agreed to help us fix this disaster, and I trust that you’re going to hold up your end of the bargain.”

Saul goes back to his computers and I lie in bed listening to my Walkman.

He’s right. I agreed to help. No one twisted my arm, although after my little tour with Simon, how could anyone not agree? Still, there’s no question that I am really and truly in this now. And maybe it’ll all be for the best. Saul ran a computer search for Sister Prudence last night and showed me the results. There are dozens of schools named after me. Art of every variety is decorated with my face, my body—although it’s hard to recognize as my body in some of them.

Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure I could back out now. You can’t exactly weasel your way around a commitment when your face is on the stained-glass windows.

But here’s the cool part. Cyrist International is doing so much good. Programs for education, to help the poor, feed the hungry, improve the environment. I’ve never been a fan of the whole cheery when-life-gives-you-lemons philosophy, but we’ve got a great big pitcher of lemonade now. And whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know any way to put the juice back into those lemons.

The next tap on the door isn’t Saul. It’s the Rat Bastard. “Wakey, wakey. I have a big surprise.”

If I ever get my hands on a weapon again, I’ll have a big surprise for you, too.

But I sit up and try to keep my expression pleasant. Saul says I don’t have to like Simon. I don’t even get the sense that Saul really likes him. But I do have to work with him. We have to coexist.

Simon pulls someone forward, a boy in his early teens. He’s tall and lanky, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes that dart around the room.

“Patrick, meet Sister Prudence.”

The kid is frightened, but trying not to show it. His clothing looks handwoven—a belted tunic over tightfitting pants and leather shoes. There’s something vaguely familiar about his face that I can’t place.

Simon stands there next to the boy, grinning, almost quivering with anticipation, like a dog expecting a treat. He’s clearly waiting for me to figure something out.

After a moment, Patrick asks Simon a question. I’m not sure what language he’s speaking. Simon responds, using a few foreign words mixed in with a bit of English. Judging from the kid’s expression, it didn’t really answer his question.

Simon looks back at me. “Oh, come on! Doesn’t he look anything like his daddy?”

Does he mean Saul? Is this some half-brother they’ve dredged up?

And then the boy turns slightly to one side. His nose is a bit too large for his thin face, and there’s a familiar little hook near the top.

Simon is already blurting out his next clue, about finding the kid in a Viking village. But I already know the boy is Tate’s.

Tate’s and Maya’s.

So yeah, maybe Tate didn’t tell me everything.

What’s really bothering me, however, is the realization that the Rat Bastard has that very same nose.

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

Day 121—May 27, 1908, 2:24 p.m.

June also has the nose. Otherwise, she looks a bit like me, or like I’ll probably look when I’m older. Assuming I never wear makeup or color my hair. And after seeing June, I’ve decided I’ll be doing both.

She’s nice, though. Smart. Seems to know her stuff, which is probably a good thing, since she’s my doctor.

“Well, you pass inspection, Pru. I’d give anything for five minutes inside the medical facility that patched you up.”

I’ve already explained the process to her in detail. She seems especially interested in the tub of goo at CHRONOS med, and a little disappointed that I didn’t ask more questions of Coralys and the rest of my med team.

“So, is that it?” I ask.

“Yes. Now I’m going to go in there once again and try to explain simple biology to Simon.”

“Good luck with that.”

She grabs a computer tablet from the counter, and says, “Pamphlet on egg donation.” When the document pops up on the screen, I follow her back into the waiting area, where Simon is sitting. I don’t know which I loathe more, him or the field extender he’s holding.

“Okay, Simon.” June hands him the tablet. “Full details are here, because I know you well enough to know you’re not going to take my word for it. But first, let’s go for a little stroll.”

“I’m afraid I need to take a rain check on the walk, June. I don’t have all morning. Places to be…”

“It won’t take long,” June says, in a tone that suggests she isn’t taking no for an answer.

We step outside and she pushes a button near the clinic door. The screen just above the button switches from The Doctor is In to The Doctor is Out.

The day is warm and humid. June sniffs the air as we walk past a grove of trees, and then pauses. “Mmm. The mangos are finally ripe.” She pulls two of them and hands them to me.

“One is for you. Take the other one back for Brother Cyrus.”

Simon huffs. I don’t know if he’s objecting to the leisurely pace or the fact that she didn’t pick one for him.

We move on toward the building on the other side of the grove. It looks like a school. There’s a swing set, a tall metal slide, and a strange-looking round disk suspended by metal wires from a tall pole. It seems to be a type of group swing. Three of the older kids are standing on the planks that make up the lower circle and holding on to the wires, leaning back and forth to make the thing move from side to side.

The children in the play area range in age from about two to nine. Three women are seated on a bench near the building, watching them. Two hold infants, and a few older babies are crawling on the grass nearby.

June waves to the women, and then leans back against the gate. “Okay. Now that we have our visual aid in place, I’ll start the lesson. Here’s the short, succinct version. Some things can’t be accelerated even when you have a CHRONOS key. Prudence here is currently, based on our best guess, sixteen years and fifty-six days old. My records indicate that she’ll conceive when she’s seventeen years, two hundred and four days. Earlier than I would have recommended, but that decision was before my time. The egg donor process will take place when she is twenty years, eighty days.”

“Yes,” Simon says. “I get when it happened in the past. What I’m saying is start it now, and we save some time. And maybe we just skip the whole pregnancy thing. Pru hated it, and Brother Cyrus kind of likes the whole virgin birth motif.”

June flashes me a look that makes it clear she knows that ship has sailed, but she doesn’t share that info with Simon. “Start it now and we don’t get the same batch of eggs, Simon. We might get the same sperm, assuming that nothing changes about the time of her…encounter with the male donor.”

“Yeah, June. We considered that. Brother Cyrus says he’s fine with that possibility, and I agree. We might get a few extra jumpers. No offense, but the current batch of kids in this nursery isn’t going to knock his socks off in that regard when they reach testing age. There are what, maybe seven who’ll have any ability at all. Let’s roll the dice again and see if Pru can produce a better batch.”

“That’s certainly an option.” June smiles, but it’s the smile of someone watching her opponent walk into a carefully baited trap. She nods toward the children running around. “Some of these kids are from the Koreshan Unity crowd, but there are nine or ten of yours in the mix, Pru.”

I watch them run around, and I can’t help but smile. I like little kids. They’re honest. They say what they think until they get civilized, and taught manners, and all of the stupid things their parents want them to believe. I feel a little pang, wondering exactly what these kids are being taught.

“Do they…have families?” I ask her. “Do they go home when school is over or…”

“This is their family,” June says. “Lots of kids to play with. Lots of parents who love them. Hold on…yeah. There.” She points to the far corner, near the back gate. “See that little kid over there on the teeter-totter? The one at the bottom. I’m not positive, but I think she’s me. And you should look around a bit, Simon, because according to my records, one of the others is you.”

Simon’s smirk fades.

“So…you still want to roll the dice again?” June claps him on the shoulder once and starts walking back to the clinic.

Simon stays behind, still watching the kids on the playground, probably trying to figure out which one will grow up to be the Rat Bastard.

I’d rather walk with June than him, so I jog a bit to catch up. She’s pulled another mango from the tree and bites into it, skin and all.

“Don’t feel sorry for those kids,” she says between bites. “They do okay. Every one of their mothers was honored to carry the child to term, and the men and women who live here are honored to raise them so that they might carry on the message of Brother Cyrus. They are loved. They are cherished. It may not be the same kind of family you grew up in, but it works.”

The Brother Cyrus talk is beginning to grate. I have to remind myself that June grew up in this place. She’s been drinking the Kool-Aid since she was born. I feel guilty that they’ve accepted a lie, but then I remember all of the progress Saul showed me. All of the good that Cyrist International is doing in the future. And June probably wouldn’t believe me if I told her the truth, anyway.

When we arrive back at the clinic, the sign has changed. Now, it reads The Doctor is In. June curses under her breath. Then she pulls out a CHRONOS key and starts rummaging through the stable points.

“What’s wrong?”

“Need to find a time when the clinic is empty.”

“Who’s in there?”

She arches an eyebrow. “Me. I’m in there. That’s what the sign is for. We keep a calendar, too, but it’s easy to get mixed up. This keeps me from crossing my own path too often. And if I do see her, we don’t speak…well, occasionally we have to talk briefly. But I never talk to the ones who are a lot older or a lot younger. That’s asking for trouble. Your brain will end up mush. I’d tell you to avoid it, too, but I already know you don’t listen. Or they don’t let you listen, and I guess that amounts to the same thing.”

7

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

Day 267—May 27, 2030

When I hear the rustling noise in the corner, I don’t open my eyes. I just sneak my hand slowly toward the nightstand to grab my weapon. Gizmo, who you’d think would be an early alarm system considering the noise he makes during the day, just snorts and presses his cold puppy nose against my shoulder.

This is the third night in a row the woman has paid me a visit.

The first night, I assumed that this was simply my intermittently scheduled nightmare—just older and unusually vivid. I screamed, which finally woke up Gizmo. By then, she was gone. I might have convinced myself it really was the nightmare, except…it wasn’t like I was waking up from a dream. And she wasn’t exactly like me, the way she always is in the nightmare. She wasn’t wearing that same outfit. She was older. Thinner. And she didn’t tumble down into some dream version of that hole in the floor at CHRONOS. She disappeared using a key.

The next night, when I opened my eyes once again to see this older version of me sitting in the chair near my window, watching me, I hurled the first thing I could find—the hand lotion I keep on the nightstand—straight at her head. She stepped back and it hit her in the chest. Then she scooped it off the floor and hurled it right back at me.

Apparently my aim has improved with age, or maybe she was just more awake, because the tube connected right between my eyes. She gave me a satisfied little smile right before blinking out again.

Gizmo didn’t even budge that time until I plopped back onto my pillow. In retrospect, the lotion was a piss-poor weapon. Only a tiny red spot remained on my forehead when I looked in the mirror the next morning.

Tonight, however, I’m prepared. I know exactly where the stone mortar is, because I stubbed a cigarette out inside of it just before falling asleep. It was the closest thing to a decent weapon I could find in this place, although I suspect the Rat Bastard has a sizable arsenal stashed somewhere. I know for certain he still has Tate’s masher-basher.

But when my hand reaches the nightstand, the mortar is gone. I open my eyes slightly, peering through my lashes to see if I’ve just missed it, but no. It’s gone.

When I flip over onto my back, I draw my arms around my head instinctively, certain that I’ll see the heavy stone bowl crashing down toward me. Instead, I see only my room, dark except for a faint lime-green glow near the window.

Gizmo finally stirs when I sit up, crawling out from under the quilt and onto my lap, where he’ll fit for another month, tops. His head cocks to one side for a moment, and he snarls, the way he always does when someone has a CHRONOS key out in the open. But he doesn’t bark at her, which is weird. June came into my room last month when I had the flu, just to check my temperature, and Gizmo raised holy hell.

The woman in the chair raises her hands, palms up. She has a CHRONOS key strapped to her left arm. “No jagged rock,” she says, glancing at each of her hands in turn. “I’m unarmed, with the exception of your little bowl here.”

She runs her forefinger around the edge as she gives me a long, calculating look. “You needn’t worry. I’m not the girl you sent hurtling to her death in the ruins of CHRONOS. You were right to get rid of that one. I don’t know if she was a mistake, but she was most definitely an extra. She wasn’t supposed to exist. But I’m just you. Later-You.”

I’m pretty sure she’s telling the truth. I’m still pissed, however, both because she snagged my weapon and because she scared me. So I say, “Yeah? Prove it.”

“Hmmm. Shall I tell you all about Tate’s birthmark? Or maybe that little scar just behind his knee and the way he shivers when—”

“Stop.” Her words stir up an immense feeling of homesickness, not for my own time and place, but for Tate.

Saul kept his promise. He allowed me a one-week trip back to 2306, about a month after we relocated here to the Farm. He said he trusted me to return.

Simon apparently did not share that sentiment. He handed me another picture of Deborah right before I left. It was taken in 1999. She’s walking along a sidewalk with some guy, and she’s pregnant. The city doesn’t look like DC, but I don’t ask Simon for details anymore. He gives me a new photo every few weeks. He always gives one to Saul, too. Saul smiles and thanks him, then attaches it to the board in the kitchen with all of the others.

I see that board every day. It looks very out of place in the ultramodern kitchen. It’s just a plain corkboard, exactly like the one in our kitchen back in 1984. For all I know, Simon could have broken in and swiped it.

At first, I thought Saul was too naive to understand that Simon intends these pictures as a threat. But then I realized they really aren’t a threat to Saul. Only to me. For me, they are a concrete reminder of why I’d better behave. Of why I’d better come back.

I’m sure Simon has the coordinates from Campbell’s key. He could follow me if he wanted to. I know he’s been to 2306, because he tacked a souvenir from the 2306 World Series to that same kitchen bulletin board. Maybe he was there keeping an eye on me, but if so, I wasn’t able to spot him.

And they have another method of keeping tabs on me. June took a blood sample before I left, and one when I returned. She ran those samples through a filter hooked up to one of the computers in the clinic. It spat out a whole list of results, including the fact that I overstayed by four days. It’s not precise—I’m pretty sure I was more like seven days late—but the Rat Bastard latched on to my failure to color between the lines, and Saul freakin’ grounded me. Again.

I’m under a key this time, but they’ve stripped every single stable point. I can set a local point here at the Farm and change the date, but there are always people around here to tattle if I try to leave the premises, no matter when I jump to.

I was late coming back mostly because Tate got cold feet after we snagged the spare medallions from a back room in the CHRONOS archives. We could still put them back, Tate said. I could stay there with him, and we’d work at the museum. He couldn’t shake the feeling that handing the keys over to Saul before we knew more might only make things worse.

Everything Tate said was tempting. He was so convincing. He was convincing several times for the last five nights I was there. Convincing a few afternoons and early mornings, too. All of his qualms about me being too young and not ready vanished.

But as I lay there in his arms, I knew deep down that Tate wouldn’t be the same person after a few years of answering stupid questions, like whether the Vikings were the ones who wore kilts. And I kept thinking of the picture of Deborah that Saul tacked to the bulletin board. How long before they figured out I wasn’t coming back? How long before Simon came hunting me? Maybe he was already watching us?

My dad paid a high price for my mistakes. I won’t let Deb pay, too.

In the end, I managed to convince Tate that Cyrist International is a good thing. That Saul really is trying to fix the problems my mom created. That maybe we can get everything back to how it was without triggering some stupid conundrum along the way.

And then we spent that last night convincing each other that we weren’t making a huge mistake.

Those days and nights with Tate were private. I don’t like the fact that the woman sitting in my chair knows anything about them. They’re my memories. And the fact that she’s an older version of me doesn’t make me feel any better about having to share those memories with her.

“Why are you here?” I ask. “What do you want?”

“Ooh, no chitchat for you. Straight to business. Okay, then.”

Older-Me comes over to sit on the edge of the bed and tosses me the mortar. I catch it, but one of the cigarette butts bounces out onto the quilt. Gizmo sniffs at it, and then ducks back behind me. The woman’s eyes follow him. They seem sad. Confused.

She shakes her head briskly and looks back up at me. “You shouldn't smoke in bed. In fact, you shouldn't smoke at all.”

Her voice is a lot like mine, although I hope to God I don’t sound that preachy. That part is more like Mother.

“You’re not addicted yet,” she continues, in that same prim tone, “and you’ll need to quit about six months before you hit item twenty-nine on Saul’s to-do list, anyway."

“There are only twenty-six items.”

“And there were twenty-two commandments when our own personal Moses jotted them down initially, right? I’ve seen the list. I know what’s missing. I know he’ll add more.” She stops, looking perturbed. “Come to think of it, I can’t guarantee that it will even be number twenty-nine. He and Simon have been juggling things around pretty much at will lately. But that task will most definitely have a star beside it, and a specific day you need to do it.”

“They all have specific dates. That’s part of the travel coordinates on the key.”

“No, dummy. I mean a specific day for you.” She grabs the diary on the nightstand with her left hand, and I get a closer look at her medallion. It’s not strapped to her arm, as I first assumed. It’s inside her arm—an implant. The skin around it is raised and slightly puckered.

It’s horrible. I start to ask her about it, but then I catch a glimpse of my own unmarked arm. If that thing is in my future, do I want the details?

No. I do not.

She taps the calendar app on the diary. “You’ll take care of task twenty-nine when you are seventeen years, ninety-two days old. Day 811. Around nine p.m.” A sly grin sneaks across her face. “And it’s a task you’ll enjoy quite a bit, as long as you don’t follow Saul’s exact orders.”

“It’s Tate, isn’t it? I go to him to get pregnant, instead of this guy Saul wants. Moehler. The historian in Copenhagen.”

Older-Me smiles. “Yes. That was a little twist I added. Saul might consider it a mistake, but it definitely wasn’t. And it served him right, after—” She stops abruptly, and her eyes drift over to the pillow next to me, where Giz is chewing on the edge of the quilt. “No, I can’t tell you about that. You’ll find out on your own.”

She reaches down to pick up a stuffed bear that’s partly under the bed. Saul gave it to me, so it’s not something I’m exactly attached to. But it’s still a little disconcerting to see her rip at the seam in its leg and start pulling out bits of the stuffing.

I decide not to mention the systematic destruction of the bear, mostly because I think it would be a bad idea to get her off topic. “This whole secrets thing is infuriating, you know. Surely you can tell me something.”

She thinks about that for a moment. Then she gives me a tiny smile as she shakes her head and pulls her fingers across her lips with a zipping motion. “No spoilers.”

I’m really tempted to whack her with the mortar. Why wake me up if all she has to offer are cryptic bullshit warnings?

Gizmo is getting braver now. He inches forward and sniffs her hand, patting at the diary in her lap with one oversized paw. He’s a German shepherd and Chow mix, and June says he’s going to be huge if he keeps growing at this rate. He may have looked like a Gizmo as a Christmas gift, but he’s starting to resemble a lion now. I grab his brown-and-gold ruff and tug him back, shaking him a little the way he likes when we play-fight. As I expected, he forgets all about Other-Me and rolls over on his back, with my wrist in his mouth, gnawing and growling.

Older-Me watches us play for a moment, frowning. Then she does that weird head-shake again, as she keeps right on pulling the fluff out of the bear. I wait to see if she’s going to say something else, but she seems to be on another planet.

“So…?” I prompt. “Did you just stop by to scare the hell out of me and remind me to use sunscreen and conditioner?”

That pulls her out of the little trance, although her hands keep right on going with the bear. “No, smart ass. I came to give you some advice. You’re making yourself—no, you’re making us—much too dispensable. Enough of this Brother Cyrus is the font of all miracles crap. Veer off his damned script when you’re at these temple events. Take some credit for yourself. And listen to June, for God’s sake! What she said about all the things you’re changing, the so-called mistakes they have you correcting? June is right. You’re producing double memories. It may not seem like a huge deal right now, but the closer you get to me…to this age? The impact of all those changes will mushroom. June isn’t just predicting. She’s seen it. Those things Simon and Saul call mistakes? They make you who you are. You can’t keep tugging at those threads.”

I glance down at the bear, whose threads and innards she’s been tugging. One leg is now a hollow sleeve and he’s lost a bit of weight around the middle, too.  The parallel between what her hands are doing and what she’s saying seems to be lost on her, however.

Everything she’s just said is an echo of what June tells me each chance she gets. I don’t entirely trust June, but I trust her far more than the others around here. I think June might actually have my best interests at heart…well, except for her concern that I make sure she continues to exist. But hey, I kind of get that.

“And keep in mind,” Older-Me continues, “that Saul and Simon don’t know everything about what I did. They don’t know all of my…mistakes. There are already a few that you’ve missed, and neither of us are going to like the end result if this keeps up.”

She pulls a sheet of paper out of her pocket and unfolds it.

“I think this is all of them. Well, all of the major ones. It’s always kind of hard to tell when something small becomes important.”

There are maybe twenty items on the list she hands me, several of them starred. Some have Day 1763 or Day 2102 or whatever beside them. Some of them include names. And quite a few of them include details that I really don’t want to see.

One in particular catches my eye, because I’ve met him, and also his father. “You’re kidding me? The little guy who came over on the boat last week? He's a baby!”

Okay, not a baby exactly, and I guess it was only last week from my perspective. Simon finally convinced the elder Kiernan Dunne to bring his family over from Ireland. I helped, mostly by spending a few minutes talking to the woman, Cliona. She seemed a little in awe of me, probably because Simon was laying on the Sister Prudence stuff really thick. I told Cliona about the Farm up near Chicago—one of the five we have in the US now—and how there was plenty of work for them, and plenty of food. The kid clutching her skirts couldn’t have been much more than four, a dark-eyed little guy who didn’t say much. He didn’t look like he’d been eating much lately either.

“A baby?” Older-Me rolls her eyes. “Do you know how stupid that sounds? By all means, jump forward to when he's eighty if that's what turns you on. You saw him back at the Cyrus Teed resurrection, didn’t you? He’s growing up nicely.”

Her words send a cold chill through me—a chill that has nothing to do with the Dunne family and everything to do with Cyrus Teed’s so-called resurrection. That jump was the fifth task on my List, one of the starred items that Saul said I had to do exactly the way I did before, or we’d mess everything up. So I followed the script to the letter. I let Saul paint me with the stupid glow paint, I even smiled up at the rafters like I was happy to be standing behind the tub where that old coot was slowly rotting.

The Kiernan kid was there when it happened, near the back of the barn. He’d been hanging out earlier with a younger version of Simon and this electrical engineer we recruited. Kiernan helped them set up the lighting so that I’d look all ethereal and otherworldly.

I saw Kiernan’s face after those people slit their throats to show their devotion to Cyrus. The boy’s mouth hung open and he just stared at the bodies, as huge tears rolled down his cheeks. Seeing him there, seeing someone else looking the way I felt—I think that’s the only reason I was able to hold it together until I got out of there.

Saul tells me that fewer people died this time, but I’m pretty sure he’s lying. I get these flashes of double memory every now and then. I think it happened almost the exact same way last time around.

And the flashes I get?  They’re only double memories. I’m now convinced that Saul lied about me doing things over and over, spinning off multiple timelines trying to get things right. That has me wondering what else he might be lying about.

“I’m not interested in Kiernan Dunne,” I tell her. “He’s got bad taste in friends.”

I can tell from her expression that she agrees with me on that point, but she taps one of the starred dates on her little addendum anyway. “All I’m saying is this thing with Tate doesn’t last forever. I probably shouldn’t even tell you that. Kiernan and I spent a lot of time together, if you get my drift. He’s not a bad guy…and unlike Tate, he’ll be around when you’re lonely. If you don’t add Kiernan to your little to-do list, there are going to be more double memories than our head can handle. And I think you’ll regret it.”

I don’t think she really means the last bit as a threat, but it still annoys me. “I don't have to do everything—or everyone—that you did. Saul said that was the whole purpose for intercepting me. To fix your mistakes. That way there would be time for me to have a life when all of this is over. He said…he said I could avoid becoming like you. You're not me. You're who I could become. But I have choices.”

I raise one hand and run it across the new haircut I gave myself right after Saul grounded me for staying too long in the future. It’s short on the left and shaved almost bare above my right ear, which has four new piercings. One in my nose. One on the left eyebrow. And then I pull down the shoulder of my nightshirt so that she can see the brand-new tattoo on my arm. It’s a Cyrist symbol…black and flipped upside down. Saul hasn’t even seen it yet.

“Oh, yes. You’re such a rebel.” She practically spits the words out, and then grabs me by the shoulders. “Do you think you're the first to try and shock Saul? Just because it wasn't on your official to-do list, don't assume that I didn't do it. You have no choices, no free will as long as Saul and Simon are calling the shots. And don't think for a moment that the list they gave you is the final list. Because I can promise you Saul will have a few surprises waiting for you at the end.”

Older-Pru shoves me backward onto the pillows. I land partially on Gizmo, who lets out a little yelp. I pull him up into my lap and he starts chewing on my arm again, growling his cute little puppy growl.

She flips her arm over and activates the key. It must make a sound that humans can’t hear. But Giz definitely hears it. He startles, yanking his mouth away from my arm before his mouth is fully open. Several of his razor-sharp little puppy teeth rip into my skin.

“Ow! Gizmo!”

The puppy cowers under the covers. We horse around all the time and he usually just leaves little red tracks on my skin, but he’s definitely drawn blood this time. I press the hem of my nightshirt against the wounds to stanch them until I can get an actual bandage.

He looks frightened, either from the blood or because I yelled. “It’s okay, Giz. I’m all right. You’re still a good boy.”

Older-Me just sits there, watching. All of the anger is gone from her eyes. They’re nearly as sad as Gizmo’s now, and when she speaks her voice is soft, almost childlike.

“You should play more gently with him. I’m surprised he’s not dead already.”

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

Day 268—May 28, 2030, 8:47 a.m.

I wish the Other-Me would visit in the daytime. It took several hours to fall back asleep, and since I operate on Saul’s schedule, he expects me to check in for breakfast and dinner. Saul really doesn’t like to eat alone. The only reason lunch isn’t required is that he rarely bothers with it. Breakfast is always served in the sunroom at eight thirty sharp. If I’m not there, I’d better have a good reason.

The mandatory mealtimes aren’t really a big deal, except for the days when the Rat Bastard is hanging out. A granola bar in my room is much better than Marcel’s blueberry waffles if Simon’s at the table. And I can tell that today is a Simon day the moment I turn into the hallway. The noise level increases by a factor of five when he’s in the house. You never know which Simon you’re getting, either. He’s popped in for breakfast at every age from fourteen to late twenties.

Saul can actually carry on a decent conversation if it’s just the two of us. I liked him better in 2024, but he can still relax. He’ll call me down to watch a movie with him some evenings. When the Rat Bastard is here, however, the conversations revolve around Cyrist International and financial holdings and various bits of court intrigue as Patrick, Edna, and several others jockey for Saul’s favor.

It’s weird. Patrick, the scared kid Saul introduced me less than a year ago from my perspective, now has silver hair and a daughter who’s around my age. Of course, they probably find it weird dealing with my older self at these meetings and then coming back to the Farm to find this me here, waiting for the next time they need to pull a toga over my head and cart me off to bless a new temple or whatever. Saul couldn’t decide where to “park” me at first. I spent a week or so at the Farm back in 1901, but it was so very boring. I rode Wildfire, but they wouldn’t let me go outside the perimeter, and even with hundreds of acres, there’s only so much time you can spend on horseback. Someone finally decided I needed quality time with my father, so…voila…back to the future. I’m not complaining. There are computers here, movies. And the horse in this barn isn’t the same Wildfire, but he’s not bad.

Saul and Simon talk about her, too, sometimes—the older me. How to keep her in line. I suppose I should listen to those comments a little more carefully from now on, but…I’m equally tempted to tune them out. Two can play her little no spoilers game. And how much do I really want to know? I think June is right. There’s a good reason why the vast majority of the Cyrists who can use the keys don’t cross their own timelines. Life is easier if you live it in a straight line.

I really don’t want to deal with Simon today. I’ll just go back to my room and face Saul later. Tell him I overslept or whatever. He’ll give one of his passive-aggressive punishments, but I’m learning to weather those. You just push back. This haircut. The piercings. The tattoo he still hasn’t seen.

I’ve already turned heel and I’m heading the other way when I hear Simon say my mother’s name. The context isn’t clear, but they rarely mention her, at least not within my earshot, so I’m curious. Of course, they’ll move on to some other topic if I join them in the sunroom. So I cut through the formal dining room and into the kitchen that sits between the two areas, ready to give some excuse for coming in this way if Marcel is still in there cooking or cleaning.

The kitchen is empty, however, so I can listen in without Saul or Simon seeing me. I snag a banana from the wire basket and park myself on one of the barstools.

Even though I’m closer now, Saul’s side of the conversation is a little hard to make out. “…much harm can they do?”

“Probably not much,” Simon replies.

I wish I could see Simon from here, because it’s a lot easier to gauge how old he is by sight than by hearing him talk. And unless you’re in the room when he gives Saul the date he’s popping in from, it’s hard to know when he’s talking about.

“Since Pru and your buddy came through with the spare keys,” he says, “we don’t really need the ones the girl is hunting. I just don’t like her snooping around.”

The girl. Usually that means me. But…he just finished saying that I came through for them.

“It’s something that changed,” he adds. “I guess that’s what’s bugging me most, Saul. And I don’t know how much we can trust Pru where this situation is concerned.”

“I thought that was the entire…” something, something, “reboot? How many sets is she carrying around now?”—I don’t follow anything for the next few seconds, but Saul sounds angry. He doesn’t yell when he’s mad. In fact, his voice gets softer—“…that Kiernan kid?”

“No,” Simon tells him. “He doesn’t. All of that was before the timeshift. I made sure he doesn’t remember any of it. He doesn’t remember Kate at all now.”

“You’re certain about that?”

“Yeah.”

But he doesn’t sound certain. And I’m apparently not the only one who catches it, because Saul mumbles something I can’t hear.

Whatever he said seems to have set Simon off. “Hey, I don’t ask for much, Saul. Have you ever had reason to question my loyalty? Or my competence? No. You know you haven’t. If I tell you I’m taking care of something, I’m taking care of it. Kiernan’s a friend. You let me handle him, okay?”

There’s a brief silence, and then Simon chimes in. “Pru bungled the whole thing with Katherine, or we wouldn’t even be having a discussion about her granddaughter. Maybe the best bet is just to solve both our problems at once. What we talked about before—a clean slate. I’m assuming you don’t have any sentimental reasons to keep them around.”

Saul says something I don’t catch, but he must have answered in the negative, because Simon continues, “Then the only question is whether it will impact what happens later?”

“There could be a minor schedule change. I don’t…” A long space where Saul is too soft to hear, and then, “…ironed itself out. Wouldn’t be the first historian they lost in the field. The question is whether you have the votes from the board if Pru gets wind of this.”

“You want a formal vote on this at the meeting?” Simon sounds surprised.

“No. And I think we should do it either way, but why make the board angry when they find out? If we can get their support…”

A pause, and then Simon says, “I’ll make sure we have a majority. There are only few weak links. Ronald could go either way. Jeanine…well, you know Jeanine. If I don’t get a chance to talk to her before—”

“Sister Prudence!” The door from the dining room swings open.

It’s Marcel, the guy who usually cooks for us. I hop up from the stool and toss my banana peel into the disposal.

“Breakfast is on the sidebar,” Marcel says.

“Yes, thank you. I just…I was playing with Giz and I forgot to wash my hands before I left my room.”

“Yes, miss.” He glances into the sink, where the yellow end of the banana peel is still visible in the drain, probably wondering why I was eating a banana if I was about to go in for breakfast.  But he doesn’t say anything.

The sunroom is silent when I enter. Simon and Saul are both looking at me, and I suspect they’re combing through what was said in the past few exchanges, trying to figure out if there’s anything I might have overheard.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I tell them. “I didn’t sleep well last night, and then I overslept the alarm.”

“We waited for the first ten minutes, Prudence.” The fact that Saul is using my full name is a bad sign.

“Holy shikes, you weren’t kidding, Saul. That is one…original haircut. Did you take the scissors to it yourself, Pru?”

“A steak knife, actually. Do you like it?”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“I haven’t,” Saul says. “But I made my feelings on the matter clear to her the first time I saw the butchery. Marcel!”

He pushes open the kitchen door. “Yes, Brother Cyrus?”

“It’s after nine. Clear the sideboard.”

Marcel shoots me an apologetic look, and then bows his head and starts to collect the serving dishes.

“That’s fine,” I say, shrugging. “I wasn’t very hungry anyway. May I be excused?”

“Hold up.” Simon reaches into the bag by his side and tosses me a dark, curly wig. “There’s an ordination at the temple in Jakarta.” He snaps his fingers. “Key?”

I step closer and he presses the back of his key to mine, transferring the coordinates. “Is that all?” I ask, when he’s finished.

“Wait,” Saul says. He’s staring down at the gauze wrapped around my wrist. “What happened to your arm? Are you okay?”

His voice is gentler than before, and it takes me by surprise. It usually takes a few days for his mood to improve when we have a spat.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Looks worse than it is.”

“Did you see June?”

“No. It’s just a scratch, really.”

But he’s up, and coming toward me. “Let me see it, Pru.”

I roll my eyes and unwrap the bandage. “It doesn’t need stitches. We were just playing and Giz got a little excited…”

“That’s not a mere scratch. It’s a puncture wound. Several of them, actually. You could get an infection. Your immune system is probably already weakened from this little stunt.”

He yanks down my sleeve to reveal the tattoo. Simon laughs, but he cuts it off pretty quickly when he catches Saul’s expression.

“I told you when you asked for the pup that you’d have to control him. Clearly you can’t. A dog that will bite its master is a dangerous creature.”

“No, Saul! Please, please no.” I grab his arm. “It was an accident! We were playing and something startled him. I’ll be more careful. Or…obedience training. We can do that. You can’t give Gizmo away!”

Saul gives me a sad smile, but something very different is dancing behind his eyes. Something that terrifies me.

“I have no intention of giving him away.”

I bury Gizmo near the mango grove.

Marcel heard the whole exchange and offered to help me dig the hole, but I said no thanks. The almighty Brother Cyrus might have been angry at him for meddling. I wanted to be alone anyway.

The tears don’t start until the last shovelful of dirt is on the grave and I’m walking down the path to Bamboo Landing. Then they come so hard that I can barely see the trail. I just curl into a little ball on the riverbank until the shaking stops.

When I’m all cried out, I climb inside the small skiff that’s tied to the dock. I’ve taken the boat out a couple of times, but never all the way into Fort Myers. Is Fort Myers still above water in 2306? If I set a local point and scroll the time forward, will I drown? Tate says there are a few digits in the sequence that control things like altitude, and that I can’t simply roll the time forward. I might end up in the middle of highway. Fifty feet above ground or fifty feet below it.

There’s a part of me that genuinely doesn’t care right now. I’d be willing to play a little Russian roulette and spin the barrel. Win or lose, at least I’d be out of here. And losing might be easier, because it would wipe the image of Saul calling Gizmo over to him and calmly snapping his neck.

Giz didn’t even have time to yelp. But his eyes rested on my face for just a moment before they glazed over. He didn’t look angry, or like he blamed me at all. He looked just like he always did. Like he loved me.

He should have blamed me.

Strangely enough, it’s my mother’s voice that keeps me from pushing the skiff away from the dock.

It’s your decision, Pru.

I was six. Our neighbor, Donny Westhall, was eight years old and mean to the core. Usually, he was smart enough to stay in his own yard, because Deb and I together could kick his butt. But that day, I was solo. Deb was still in bed, fighting off some virus. The fact that I was alone is why Donny decided it was safe to rip the medal off my Gold Medal Barbie. After a few minutes of taunting me as I tried to get it back, he ran out to the sidewalk and dropped it into the sewer.

When I ran inside, Mother hugged me and dried my tears. She was pretty good about that kind of stuff when I was little. And when I calmed down a bit, she nodded toward the fence that divided Donny’s yard from ours.

It’s your decision, Pru. You have two choices. You can sit here crying, and he’ll probably do it again. Or you can teach Donny that he can’t treat you that way.

I thought about it for a bit, and then I went into Donny’s backyard. He was on the far side of the yard, playing with his older brother. I snagged the two newest looking Hot Wheels from their sandbox and yelled something witty like, “Hey, dookey-face!” to get Donny’s attention.

When he looked up, I took off running as fast as I could toward that same sewer grate. I waited until he rounded the corner. Once I was certain that Donny could see, I dropped them into the hole. And then I quickly retreated into the house.

Donny Westhall never messed with my stuff again.

Saul’s a bully, just like Donny. I know he’ll do it again. Trouble is, he has a lot more power than Donny, power that I helped him acquire. It’s not as simple as just tossing his toys into the sewer.

That’s when I remember the conversation he was having with Simon before he decided to kill Gizmo. They’re planning something for the board meeting tomorrow. Something that the Older-Me isn’t going to like. Something she may not be able to stop.

But maybe I can.

I’m still a bit tempted to push the boat away from the dock and see how many double memories my older self will have when I head to Mexico and become a stripper or something. Because she knew what was going to happen to Gizmo. She could have warned me.

But as angry as I am at her, I’m a million times angrier at Saul. I want to take all of his toys.

I want him to burn.

8

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

Day 268—May 30, 2030, 8:25 a.m.

I show up at breakfast with a clean face, wearing the stupid wig and one of the demure dresses Saul likes. I even apologize for making him angry.

At first, I think I’ve gone too far, that he’s going to realize I’m faking. But he relaxes after a minute or two as I just sit there, quietly eating my eggs.

“I’m sorry, too, sweetie. But you can see why I had to do it, right? It was for your own good. For your own safety.”

It takes a huge amount of restraint to keep from stabbing him with my fork. I just duck my head slightly so that he can’t see my clenched teeth, and nod.

“I’ll get you another puppy. Something small, that can’t hurt you.”

Fat chance. No way I’m giving you another weapon to use against me.

“Sure,” I say, and manage a weak smile. “But not yet.”

When we’re finished, I ask to be excused.

“Of course,” he says. “My lift will be here in about an hour. Listen, though, I was thinking maybe you’d like to visit Tate? Might cheer you up a bit, and there are going to be a lot of people in and out for the board meeting this evening. You’d just be underfoot.”

That’s his way of saying that various leaders of Cyrist International will be in and out today, and given my current hairstyle and piercings, he’d prefer they didn’t see me. Older-Pru will be here, as well. Saul doesn’t hold the actual meetings at the Farm. He’s too paranoid to let the others know his exact location and, I suspect, equally paranoid about confirming his own inability to use the key. The lift he mentioned is a chopper that will take him to one of his other houses, probably in Miami. Everyone else will get the meeting coordinates when they arrive at the conference room here at Founder’s House, and when they return to this location, Saul’s coordinates will be wiped from their keys.

I let my smile grow a little wider. “Sure. A trip would be nice.”

The truth is, it would be freaking wonderful. I don’t care what Saul’s motives are for packing me off. I need to get out of here. I need to talk to Tate.

“Good. You’ll have to get up with Simon before you can leave. He has the key Campbell gave you, and you’ll need that stable point. He should be around this afternoon, since he has to talk to a couple of the board members before the meeting. But listen up. Leave a blood sample at the clinic before you go. Stay one week, and come back on schedule this time, so we don’t have any more disagreements. If you can do that, maybe we can arrange for that stable point to remain on your key. I know you’re lonely here, and I think Tate might be good for you…well, at least until CHRONOS is back up and running, and he finds other distractions.”

I force myself to hold the smile and say thanks. I don’t even acknowledge the evil little dig about Tate that he added at the end. My only goal is to get out of this room while I still have myself under control.

“Pru!” Saul yells, just as I step into the hallway. “Get that tattoo removed in one of the Juvapods when you’re there. Unless you want me to scrub it off myself.”

When I reach my room, I beat the crap out of a pillow, the closest thing I have to a punching bag. It holds up better than the teddy bear my older-self dismembered, which is still lying in a sad little heap next to my bed.

Once I’ve let off enough steam, I change out of the good-girl dress into something cooler—and I mean that in both senses of the word. Tate’s interest in me would evaporate instantly if he saw me in the Sunday school getup. After that, I stash a few things into my shoulder bag, and then there’s nothing left to do but wait for Simon.

I miss Gizmo. He’d be chewing on one of my shoes or barking at the chickens and geese as they pass the glass door that leads into the yard, but he was good company.

The afternoon drags by with no sign of Simon. I finally hear his voice when I come downstairs around six thirty. He must have blinked straight into Saul’s study, because he’s in there chatting with someone when I walk past the door.

Simon is a creature of habit, and I know those habits pretty well. He’ll have a scotch or three before he heads into the board meeting, and the bar is in the sunroom. So I make myself a cheese sandwich in the kitchen—trying, as always, not to look at that damned bulletin board. Then I go into the sunroom to wait for Simon.

I look out the window as I eat, mostly to be sure that I don’t have another encounter with Older-Me, who is probably over at Planetary Court, the house she stays in when she’s at the Farm. I’m not sure at what age I get to move my stuff across the courtyard and away from Saul, but I’m definitely looking forward to it.

I’ve just finished the sandwich when the barn door opens, catching my eye. The barn door opening isn’t unusual when I’m at the Farm a century ago, but this is the modern barn, with only a few horses inside. I check on them each day and I ride one of them occasionally, but I’m pretty much the only person who goes in there. And even in my case, I almost always jump to around 1915 if I want to ride. Wildfire is around back then, and I have that horse almost to the point where I could ride him without any tack at all. He’s my baby, and I’m so, so very glad he’s in a time when Saul can’t touch him.

Someone coming out of barn is pretty rare in 2030, so I watch. It’s a guy, tall, with dark hair. He must have jumped in for the board meeting, so I’m surprised when he doesn’t head toward Founder’s House.

He does glance briefly in this direction, however, before turning toward the river. That’s when I realize it’s Kiernan, Simon’s buddy.

I’m tempted to follow and spy on him, given my older self’s comments and the fact that his name popped up in the conversation between Saul and Simon yesterday. What does he have to do with Deborah’s daughter?

But I’m worried I’ll miss Simon, so I just watch until Kiernan disappears around the bend.

At six fifty-four, I hear Simon’s laugh coming from the hallway. Someone else is with him.

“…a little something to make the meeting tolerable.”

There’s a clinking noise. So much for my plan. The lush must keep a bottle in the kitchen now. Or maybe in his pocket.

After a second, the other person says, “Whoa. Easy with that stuff. I haven’t eaten yet.”

I don’t recognize the voice, but I don’t think he’s a jumper. He must be one of the board members they’ll teleconference in.

“Then have a banana or a sandwich with it,” Simon tells him. “You really want to go into a conference room with Mother Prudence when you’re stone sober?”

Mother Prudence? Ugh. Even though I know he’s referring to the older version of me, that’s still obnoxious.

The other guy laughs, but he sounds uneasy.

“Listen.” There’s a scraping sound, so I guess Simon pulled his barstool closer to the other guy. “I know you’ve got mixed feelings about this. I do, too. We both know the sacrifices Prudence has made. I mean, aside from Brother Cyrus, she’s given more than any of us. She’s just not thinking rationally on this issue. I’m not sure she’s thinking rationally about anything anymore. Brother Cyrus has been concerned for some time, even though I doubted for a while.”

“You should have more faith in the wisdom of Brother Cyrus,” the other man says, in a soft voice.

“True.” Simon’s tone is somber. “I should know better than to doubt him, but I did. It was a lapse of faith. I prayed about it.”

I feel the urge to barf up my sandwich.

After a moment, the other man says, “I have a hard time disregarding Sister Prudence’s wishes in this case. Isn’t there another way? Are we certain that this is the woman in the Prophecy?”

“I think Brother Cyrus made that quite clear.” Simon is growing angry now. “Listen, he gave Prudence the chance to solve this herself. She either chose not to do it or she bungled it.”

“Prudence seems to think she’s in danger if you do this.”

“Then maybe we should be questioning her faith, or at the very least, her judgment. Do you really think that Cyrus would put her—would put any of us, but especially her—in danger? We’re his most valuable assets!”

There’s a pause, followed by a clink of glass on glass. Probably Simon refilling his drink. “I mean, we’ve all seen how Prudence has been the past few years. It’s sad that she’s falling apart, but it’s the reality we face, Ron. We certainly can’t trust her to lead us, especially in these times where every decision is critical.”

“Fine,” Ron says. “I won’t say anything to her if that’s Brother Cyrus’s final decision. Are you planning to do it now, or after the other arrangements are made?”

“After. I don’t see why this would cause a major shift in the timeline. Either way, I’d rather wait until we have everything else synched up. Pru has people watching both houses, and I’ve been told the grandma never leaves. The girl’s in school, however. It’ll be easier to grab her before she gets good with the key. The flip side is that she probably won’t have the information we need. But I’m guessing we can lure grandma out into the open if we have her as bait.”

My mind flashes back to the picture of Deb, pregnant. This must be her daughter they’re talking about.

The two men leave, and I really should follow. I need to catch Simon. But I don’t want him to wonder whether I’ve been listening in. So I run around the long way, rather than cutting through the kitchen, and head him off in the hallway just outside the conference room.

“Simon! Saul said—”

He glances toward the conference room and then down at what I’m wearing, giving me a warning look.

“Brother Cyrus,” I correct, in a lower voice, “wants me to take a trip. And I need to get the stable point from you. Did he mention it?”

“Yeah, yeah. He mentioned it. Give me your key.” He transfers the location and then says, “Leave a blood sample for June so we can keep you honest.”

“Already did.”

“Oh, and Pru. Speaking of blood, I ran a few tests of my own after we talked to June. When the time comes, don’t worry about the thing in Copenhagen. Handle it your own way. I’ll take care of Moehler. Saul doesn’t need to know. I’ll take care of everything.”

If I didn’t know better, I could almost imagine he was watching out for me. But then I remember his expression as he looked out at those kids on the playground. Simon just wants to make sure he remains Simon.

I turn to go, but he grabs my arm. “Almost forgot.” He reaches into his pocket with his other hand. “Took this picture for you yesterday. Thought you might want to put it in your album.”

Of course you did, you snake.

It’s Deborah, as always. She’s sitting on steps outside of a building, laughing. There’s a little girl sitting between her knees, looking up at her. My breath catches in my throat for a minute, because the girl could almost…almost…be me at that age.

“Hurry back,” Simon says. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Is that even possible?” I mumble under my breath as I walk away. Simon clearly hears it, though, because he chuckles as he heads toward the conference room.

I grab my bag from the dining table and unzip it to drop Simon’s photo inside. It lands face up, and Deborah’s eyes look at me. The kid is holding something up for her to see and Deb seems so happy. Content. That’s how I want to think of her. That’s what I want for her. And I have no doubt that whatever Simon and Saul are plotting is going to destroy that.

REDWING DINING HALL

OBJECTIVIST CLUB

WASHINGTON, EC

Day 273—July 22, 2306, 9:20 p.m.

We’ve eaten at my place or at Tate’s every night since I arrived. I really haven’t been in a mood to deal with Morgen Campbell. But I need to leave tomorrow afternoon if I’m going to have any hope of making my curfew, and Tate’s probably right that it would be a bad idea to dis the old man entirely. So we’re sitting here at a table in Redwing Hall, the same table Campbell eats at every night.

“Saul has always been…complicated,” Campbell says, when I tell him about Gizmo. He takes another sip of his drink, that green stuff he always seems to like after dinner, and then adds, “I wouldn’t read too much into the thing with your animal.”

I glance down at Cyrus, who is snoring loudly by his owner’s feet. “Yeah? What would you do if he snapped your dog’s neck?”

“I’d have security toss him off the top of the OC and cheer from my balcony when he splatted on the sidewalk below. But you’re missing the point. Saul was raised around pets that weren’t really alive. Cyrus is a rare exception. You’ve seen the pets around here. Designer doggies. No poop, and you pick the color, style, and degree of intelligence. Some might disagree with me on this point, but I don’t consider those sentient life forms. From Saul’s point of view, if your pet malfunctions, you simply dismantle it before it does any more damage, and order a replacement. You wouldn’t think twice about it.”

“Giz wasn’t a robo-pup!”

Tate gives my arm a squeeze and then looks back at Campbell. “I think you’re the one missing the point, Morgen. The dog isn’t really the issue. It’s what the dog meant to Pru. Saul knew it would hurt her and he didn’t care. It was cruel.”

I stay quiet, because I’d rather avoid getting emotional, and I don’t disagree at all with Tate’s statement that it was cruel. But he’s wrong on one point. Gizmo is the issue. Saul had no right to harm him.

“Well,” Campbell says, “let’s keep in mind you’ve never had experience as a father. What’s the saying, cruel to be kind? Maybe Saul thought of it as discipline. Misguided,” he adds when he sees my expression, “but discipline nonetheless.”

“If that’s your idea of discipline,” Tate says, “I can see why you and Alisa are barely on speaking terms. But to get back to the main point of the conversation, my biggest concern is how long we have before CHRONOS realizes the spare keys are gone. For all I know they monitor activity in the backroom. We could show up at the museum tomorrow and find that Sutter has a picture of you blinking in and out.”

“Well, you’re safe for the next two days, at least,” I tell him. “I already worked tomorrow’s shift, and Tuesday’s as well.” I’ve actually worked six shifts since I arrived, mostly helping one of the researchers organize the late twentieth century files, but also answering questions about the 1980s for two school groups. It’s not exactly my idea of fun, but it beats hell out of playing Sister Prudence. The key reason I worked those shifts, however, is that Tate’s cover will be blown if I skip out entirely. If CHRONOS decides to come looking for me, they’ll start by questioning him.

“Personally,” Campbell says, “I’m more worried about someone noticing changes to the timeline. I disconnected the field we set up here in the OC, but how many people does the government have under a CHRONOS field? I seriously doubt that Tate and I are the only ones.”

Tate has the bracelet that Sutter made for me on a chain beneath his shirt. I left it with him both to make sure he’d remember if things suddenly changed, and to keep from tripping Sutter’s alarm with my travels through space and time.

But Campbell?

Tate’s clearly thinking the same thing. “You never have explained how you’re still under a field when Pru has your key.”

Campbell gives him a sly grin. “Connections, my boy. And some of those connections would like Saul to succeed. They might not admit it openly, but they’d like to see CHRONOS reopened, and they’d like to see these barbaric International Genetics Accords abolished. They’d like a system that rewards initiative over blind equality. And I think they’d be willing to…overlook…any tweaks in the timeline that work toward that goal.” He adds, almost as an afterthought, “And, of course, that mitigate the damage Pru’s mother caused.”

“Do you think this war—the one that started in Africa—was really her fault?” I ask. “You’re sure it didn’t happen before CHRONOS was destroyed and those historians were left in the past?”

Tate and I have already discussed this issue at length. The simple truth is that he can’t know one way or the other. He wasn’t under a key when the headquarters building was attacked. If history changed around him, he wouldn’t have known.

Campbell did have a key back then, but he swears he didn’t start wearing it until after he heard about the explosion at CHRONOS. If that’s true—and like anything Campbell says, I wouldn’t guarantee it—then he also wouldn’t know if anything changed.

“I have no evidence either way,” Campbell says. “Saul was the one under a key. He’d certainly know better than any of us if history started spinning off in a new direction. And he’d be in a better position than anyone else to figure out how it might be repaired.”

“But,” he says, leaning forward, “here’s the catch. So far, all I’ve seen from Saul Rand is another piss-ant cult leader. Yes, he’s got more followers than most, and yes, he’s moved some money away from other religions. Your Cyrist International has appropriated a few of their charities, inserted a few people into positions they wouldn’t have obtained otherwise. But Saul hasn’t changed a damn thing of importance, at least not anything that’s filtered forward to this day and time. And I don’t think he will. Go back and tell your Brother Cyrus I believe he’s about two moves away from checkmate. In the end, I’ll win.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out Morgen Campbell. One second it seems like he wants Saul to succeed. They appear to have the same political goals. Neither one is a fan of this genetics agreement, whatever it entails. Both claim to want CHRONOS back up and running.

The very next second, however, Campbell says something that makes me think he’s rooting for the universe to come crashing down around Saul’s ears. And while I’d love to join him in that wish, that means the universe will come crashing down around my ears, too, so…

“So, you’re more interested in winning than in seeing any sort of meaningful change?” I ask. “I have no love for Saul, but the Cyrist environmental programs he’s put together are helping reverse the damage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Cyrist educational system increased literacy by nearly three percent in the developing countries where we’re operating within the space of five years. The birthrate and hunger are both steadily declining. And that’s just the result of programs started in the twentieth century. We don’t have to leave it there! Think about how much good could be accomplished if I go back a century. Find a few visionaries and help push them in the right direction. I was looking at this one woman, Victoria Woodhull. She had so much charisma, and a lot of good ideas, and I was thinking—”

“A drop in the bucket,” Campbell interrupts. “Reformers come and go. The type of changes you’re talking about will mean nothing over the course of decades. People may unite for a short time to do good, but they’ll only stay together if there’s a solid profit to be made—and that’s entirely as it should be. The profit motive will conflict with the do-gooder agenda pretty much every time. This little scheme of Saul’s—of yours, too, I guess—simply isn’t sustainable.”

We continue to argue for a few more minutes, but even Campbell looks weary. I guess I’m not as good a sparring partner as Saul. Maybe it’s because I can’t muster up much passion for the ideas of a man I personally detest.

I’m in too deep now to back out. Doing that would just leave all of the power in the hands of Saul and Simon. It’s just hard to see how I can preserve the good elements of Saul’s vision without embracing the bad.

And it’s even harder to see how I can change anything they’re planning without losing my mind along the way.

Later, when Tate and I are back at my place, I lie next to him, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his shoulder beneath my head as he sleeps. Over and over again this past week, I’ve heard the voice of my older self in my head, saying that Tate and I don’t last. As much as I hate it, I know she’s probably right. I know she must be right, unless I plan to create a whole host of double memories and make my future self even crazier.

I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know about Saul and Simon’s plans for Deb’s daughter. For Kate. I don’t like the fact that my niece is working with Mother, but I no longer believe that there are clear sides in all of this. It’s not black or white, good or evil, from where I’m standing. Here in the middle, everything looks gray.

The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t want Deb’s life to suck. I saw the way she looked at the little girl in that picture. If something they do erases that kid, part of Deb will die. And if they erase Mother, Deb will never even exist. I won’t either, if someone snatches my key.

Suddenly, the CHRONOS key embedded in my older self’s arm makes a lot more sense.

I’m thinking more and more that I’ve made a mess of things.  And maybe the only way to handle that mess is to follow my conscience, one tiny, incremental step at a time. Baby steps, while I still can, and for as long as I still can. Because I’ve seen the future, in more ways than one. Eventually, my grip on reality will start to crumble and I won’t be good for much of anything other than cryptic warnings in the middle of the night and yanking the stuffing out of teddy bears.

I press a kiss against Tate’s neck. He mumbles and turns toward me, but it takes a lot to wake a Viking. I slip out from under his arm and he clutches my pillow instead. I’ll come back later to tell Tate goodbye—hell, I have to come back and keep my appointment with the Juvapod unless I want Saul scrubbing this tattoo off with a Brillo Pad.

But first, I have to go and do this one little thing.

Before I lose my nerve.

Before Saul and Simon erase my sister’s smile.

THE FARM

ESTERO, FLORIDA

Day 273—May 30, 2030, 6:50 p.m.

I step outside, onto the stoop at the side entrance. Saul has the doors of Founder’s House set to auto-lock for security reasons, but we all find ways to get around it. I pick up a little stone I keep at the corner of the top step and wedge it between the door and the jamb so that I can get back in without going around to the front. From here, I’ll be able to see Kiernan when he comes back from the river.

Ignoring the inner voice that sounds a little like Older-Me and a lot like Mother, I park myself on the bottom step and light up a cigarette while I wait. It’s one of the old-fashioned kind, without a filter, and it’s more for show than anything else. I wouldn’t smoke at all, except for the fact that Saul finds it disgusting. Not the nasty cigars that Simon smokes, however. Those are apparently okay. Saul is the king of double standards.

When I’m about halfway done with the cigarette, the door behind me opens.

“Hey, Pru.”

It’s Kiernan, standing in the doorway. He looks a lot more like his father now that he’s grown up. I glance back over at the barn, confused. “Thought you came in at the stable?”

“No,” he says, but he looks a little uncomfortable. “Should you…you know, be here?” Kiernan nods toward the Planetary Court, which makes me wonder how many times he’s been there with my older self.

I like his voice. It has a nice lilt, just a faint touch of his father’s thick Irish brogue.

He comes down the first two stairs, as I’m putting the cigarette out on the step next to me.

“The old lady won’t be out for another ten minutes or so,” I tell him. “Saul’s in his secret lair, meditating or eating babies, or whatever he does in there, now that he’s finished going over his grand plans with the Rat Bastard.”

Kiernan’s lips twitch upward, which tells me that even if he is friends with Simon, he’s aware that the guy has issues. I push myself to standing and head back inside. As I reach for the door, I’m hit by a wave of doubt. This is almost certainly a waste of time. Simon told Saul that Kiernan doesn’t remember this girl, this Kate.

I’m tempted to just blink out from here and crawl back into bed with Tate, but who knows what tales Kiernan might take back to Simon.

I push past him and kick the rock out of the way. “You coming?” I ask, since he’d have to go around the long way if I close the door behind me.

“Yeah.”

I expect him to turn toward the conference room when I take a right at the hallway, but he follows me toward the kitchen instead.

“Listen, Pru—I need to talk to you.”

I sigh and keep walking. At what age did my older self start fooling around with him?

“Not a good idea, Kiernan. You know that.”

“Yes, but this involves you. It’s about your sister and—”

I whirl around to face him. “God, Kiernan, how stupid are you? Shut up or they’ll hear you!”

Grabbing his arm, I drag him down the hall and into the dining room. I glance at the clock and see that it’s almost six fifty-four. Any second now, Simon will be in the kitchen, chatting with that Ron guy. Talking about their plan. And while I don’t know exactly what they’re plotting, I do know that it involves Deb’s daughter.

I hear voices off in the distance, so I push Kiernan back against the wall next to the china cabinet and stare at him, hard. Then I nod toward the door that leads to the kitchen.

Kiernan steps forward. He looks toward the kitchen, as the voices grow louder.

I pull up the stable point I set next to my bed where Tate is sleeping.

I don’t know for certain that what Simon says over the next minute will make any sense to Kiernan. I can’t risk asking him. I’m not even sure I’d know what to ask. But his mention of my sister when we were in the hallway gives me hope. If Kiernan remembers that I have a sister, I’m pretty sure he remembers that I have a niece, too, and she’s clearly someone he cared about.

And what’s the harm in leaving him here to listen? Simon’s comments about Kate and my mother will either mean something to Kiernan or they won’t.

Whatever happens, the ball will be in his court now. I’ve done all that I can.

“Who is—” Kiernan starts, but I blink out before he finishes his question.

OBJECTIVIST CLUB, ROOM 1013

WASHINGTON, EC

Day 274—July 23, 2306, 1:17 a.m.

Tate doesn’t even stir when I slip back into bed next to him. I lift his arm and rest my head on his shoulder again. He’s my favorite pillow.

I lie there and imagine a world where I control Cyrist International. Where I make certain it does the right thing, whatever that may be.

A world without Saul and Simon.

For the first time in ages, I drift off to sleep with a smile on my face.

And Other-Me, the girl with the jagged rock, is nowhere in sight.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This note will be short, mostly because Pru’s story doesn’t contain a lot of history, aside from the 1980s.  If you don’t remember that era, go ask your parents. There is a good bit of future history in this novella, but to give details about that would, to paraphrase my friend, River Song, constitute spoilers.  And we really shouldn’t go there.

I once again tip my hat to each and every one of the friends, family, and early readers that I mentioned at the end of Time’s Edge— thank you for all that you do. All of you have been tireless champions of this series and many of you gave feedback and advice that helped to shape this work, tying up any loose ends, and addressing at least some of the “head scratchers” that come with time travel stories.  Any that remain are my fault, not yours, and will hopefully be satisfied in October 2015, when the final CHRONOS Files book, Time’s Divide, hits the bookshelves.

Thanks go out to my team at Skyscape, the publisher for The CHRONOS Files books, and to Courtney Miller, my editor, for her flexibility in letting me to go "hybrid" with the two novellas.

Special thanks and appreciation to my family, far and near.  You keep me inspired and focused.

Finally, this one is dedicated, with gratitude, to my Mama. (For those who don’t speak Southern, that translates as “Mom,” not “Mother.”) She did her best to keep this voracious reader in books during my childhood—something that wasn’t easy in the era before Kindles and computers. More importantly, she always supported my dreams and aspirations, even the ones that might not have seemed achievable. Some of them fell by the wayside—for one thing, I no longer have any desire to be the governor of Florida—but through it all, she’s always been there to cheer me on.

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, where she is hard at work on the series finale. If you see her on social media, please tell her to get back into the writing cave.

For news and updates, subscribe to the newsletter at http://www.rysa.com/contact.

Table of Contents

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Acknowledgments

About the Author