Departure (22 page)

THE SWISHING SOUND OF THE DOUBLE DOORS OUTSIDE,
in the corridor, brings me back to the moment, to this posh bathroom in the Titan apartment. I can barely see through the thick steam. The cool marble sticks to the backs of my legs; a thin layer of warm condensation coats me. I wasn't asleep. Or awake. Rather in a daze, somewhere in between, an unfocused state where I hoped time would pass and everything would be okay.

Through the pitter-patter of the shower, I can just make out bootsteps in the bedroom, padding quietly on the carpet.

I sit still, hoping . . .

The footsteps come to a halt. I can't see the figure through the cloud of steam. Maybe they can't see me.

More footsteps. Walking away.

I exhale.

A sliding sound.

Steam flows past me, out of the room, past the balcony. The figure
opened the sliding glass door, and now the rectangular opening is sucking my cloud of safety away, revealing me. The figure marches through the mist, each step unveiling more of its body.

I expected a glassy, semitransparent suit, but the outer shell on this suit is gone. Half the glass tiles are missing, revealing black, rubbery lining beneath, gashed in half a dozen places to expose cut, burned flesh.

But I focus only on the face. Nick's face.

Or is it Nicholas?

Is this the Nick I know, who saved so many after the crash of Flight 305? Or is it Nicholas, the man who caused the death of so many, who came here to take even more lives—just to be with me?

“Harper.” His voice is a whisper.

I want to start my interrogation, get right down to which Nick Stone he is, but I can't help pushing up off the cold marble floor and racing to him, scanning the gashes and bruises all over his body. He's in bad shape. A gentle touch on his blackened, exposed side draws a wince.

“I'm okay.” He makes a pained smile. “Harper, this might sound crazy, but there are two of me. The version of myself from this timeline is still alive.”

I have limitations. Decisions have always been one. And lying is another. I can't even play poker.

Here in the steam-filled bedroom, I just try to look confused. At least I've had a lot of practice with that this week. I don't know if he buys it, but he goes on.

“Nicholas, the other . . . me, told me what's going on here. Yul created a device, a quantum bridge that connects our two worlds. He and Sabrina are going to use it to send us back to 2015. It will be like none of this ever happened . . . except our world will end up exactly like this one. We have to destroy that device so it can never be reset. But we'll never go home.”

I nod. My mind races, trying to formulate—

“Do you know where it is?”

Wind blows in through the open balcony, a cool gust that drives the steam back even more. The moon is bright tonight, but my eyes lock on the twinkling lights of the airship hovering out over the Atlantic, waiting to bring the last colonists home.

“Harper.”

I search every micron of his blood-caked face. The hair is the same. The features—

“Harper, come on, we don't have a lot of time here.”

“Yeah. Yul told me where it is.”

“Thank God.” He starts toward the door, leading me. But I stop.

“After the crash, you found a glass structure. What was inside?” I ask, trying to mask my nervousness.

He turns, confused. “What?”

I speak softly. “Please answer.”

“Stonehenge.”

“Before you went there, you and Sabrina had a row. What about?”

“She wouldn't give you antibiotics. You were at death's door. What the hell is going on here?”

“We can't destroy the device.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“If we do, those passengers who died in the crash and in the outbreak after will be dead forever. They'll never have a chance at growing up or living the rest of their lives.”

“That's the price of saving our world, Harper.”

“It doesn't have to be. Yul and Sabrina have another solution. They're going to use Yul's quantum device to send our memories back. Flight 305 will return to our time, and the four of us will remember everything that happened here.”

“Why didn't they tell Nicholas?”

“They did. Nicholas and Oliver betrayed them. Bringing Flight 305 here wasn't about testing that vaccine. Not for them. That was secondary, a cover.”

“Cover for what?”

“Bringing Grayson and me here. I'm what Nicholas is after.”

Nick turns away from me. Hurt? Confused?

His voice comes out hard, determined. “He's here for you
and
the device, right?”

“Yes. What do you want to do?”

“I want to finish this.”

STEAM SEEMS TO HAVE PERMEATED
every square inch of the residential tower, but Nick and I march through it, descending as quickly as we can. On the first floor, on the landing of the stairwell, a pool of blood surrounds a clump of stacked bodies. I recognize the face at the bottom of the pile. Yul.

Nick steps over him and jerks the stairway door open.

I bend down to check Yul's pulse, letting my fingers linger even after I feel the cold flesh.

“Harper, come on!”

I glance up, still unable to move.

“I'm . . . sorry, but there was nothing I could do. He was dead when I got here.” He stares at me a moment, and says quietly, “Sometimes we have to skip the back rows—save the lives we can.”

The airplane on the lake. I swallow hard.

“Harper, we need to go right now.”

I rise unsteadily, and he grabs my hand and pulls me through the dark passageway toward the cacophony of gunfire and other blasts ahead.

The five towers, fingers of Titan City, meet in an elaborate promenade aptly named the Palm—it's shaped like a palm, but it's also dotted with palm trees, both inside and outside.

The Palm I saw before was pristine. Now it's battered and bloody. Shredded leaves and bark cover the previously spotless white marble floors. Scorch marks pock the walls. Half the glass panes in the wall of windows that looked out on the promenade are gone, letting the breeze in from the valley side of the dam. The rush of the waterfall is punctuated by firing, screaming, and occasional grenade blasts. The sound is sickening.

Nick and I pause in the dark corridor, waiting, watching for a break in the carnage. We're at the base of the little finger. The device is in the ring finger, the hotel tower adjacent to the Titan apartments, so we don't have far to go. That's a break. But still four people stand in our way, crowding the entrance to the hotel tower: two colonists, dressed in simple gray garb, and two Titans loyal to Sabrina and Yul. The Titans hold rifles, watching the battle unfold, their faces pained, as if they're resisting the urge to join the Titans on their side below,
who are steadily losing ground to Nicholas's assault force moving up the Palm.

We edge closer to the corridor's threshold, the shadows giving way to moonlight through the seven-story wall of glass.

The Palm is actually seven levels of restaurants, shops, and sundry stores, all long since abandoned. Two lavish marble, glass, and steel staircases shaped like DNA helixes flank the open space that looks out on the valley and waterfall.

Suited Titans are fighting their way up the twisting stairwells, shooting and taking fire from combatants hidden in the shops and restaurants on each level. It's like mall warfare, an elaborate game of laser tag, but these shafts of light draw blood. Occasionally a Titan is shot off the stairwell, plummeting down to the massive fountain on the bottom floor.

“Stay behind me,” Nick says.

I want to ask what his plan is, but if there's one thing I know, it's that Nick Stone is good at thinking on his feet. There's no one I would rather follow. We just need to reach—

He steps out into the promenade, raises his rifle, and fires point-blank at the Titans guarding the entrance to the hotel tower, catching the Titan on the right with a deadly shot to the head.

The two colonists shield the remaining Titan with their bodies, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of her, but Nick doesn't hesitate. Two blasts from his rifle. They drop. Two more, and the Titan falls, her rifle still by her side.

Shock and fear consume me. I'm only vaguely aware of him pulling my arm, dragging me to the entrance of the hotel tower.

Down the dim corridor the moonlight fades with each step, replaced by the soft glow of emergency lights. We're on the first floor, near my room, where I awoke in the white layered garments I still wear, where I finished the outline for Alice Carter, the girl whose decisions determined the fate of her world.

He's still dragging me, almost forcibly now.

“Harper, focus.”

His face is inches from mine.

“What room?”

I close my eyes. Swallow.

“It was just two colonists, Harper. They have five thousand more—plenty to repopulate the planet. Now where is it?”

I say the word fast, hoping . . . “Two three oh five.”

He lets out a laugh. “Clever.”

We bound up the stairway, my legs burning, but I push, trying to keep pace, knowing what's at stake. The stairway is straight up, but the tower actually curves, the finger curling slightly toward the Mediterranean. I don't know how many floors it is to the top, but I know the rooms on the first twenty floors all face the Atlantic—as mine did that first morning. Higher up, they look out on the valley where the Mediterranean once was.

At the landing to the twenty-third floor, he stops and pants, smiling at me.

“Room five?”

I gasp for air. “Yeah.”

He throws the door to the corridor open and leans out quickly, rifle first, peeking.

“Clear,” he announces before storming down the hall. I follow slowly, watching him charge into the room the same way. I need to catch my breath. Need every ounce of energy for this.

He's searched the room by the time I reach the threshold. He stands in the center, just between the bed and desk.

“Where is it?”

“Balcony.” I almost choke on the word.

He glances behind him, to the glass door, the dark, rocky valley beyond it, and then squints, scrutinizing me. “Balcony?”

“So they could pick it up with the airship, evacuate it if needed.”

He turns his head slightly, as if hearing a noise.

Then he takes a step toward the sliding glass door. I follow, my pace matching his. This is far enough. I plant my feet, bend my knees a bit. One chance.

If I'm right, the passengers of Flight 305 will live. If I'm wrong . . . we're all doomed. I have only one thing to go on: the Nick Stone I know would never have killed those four people in cold blood, not that quickly, not that easily.

He slides the door open, and I take off, running full-on across the room.

He turns just in time to see me charging for him. There's horror on his face.

He opens his arms a second before I reach him, bear-hugging me as I bowl us both over the rail of the balcony.

Time stops.

The air grows colder as we fall, flying toward the jagged valley floor. The hotel tower is just left of the middle tower and the wide waterfall below, but we'll miss it. We'll hit the hard, rocky bottom.

He pushes back so he can see me. The shock is gone. There's no horror on his face anymore. A sad smile spreads across it. Then he hugs me tight. Behind my back, I feel him fidgeting with his hands, tapping his forearm, still bear-hugging me.

We move in the air. The pack on his back sputters, slowing us.

A spray of cold water assaults me, pelting my body—the waterfall. He almost loses his grip, but he holds tight as the deafening spray envelopes us. Through the rush, I hear the pack choking on the stream, but then the coughs turn to a rumble and a new jet of water erupts from the bottom of the device—a vortex of white foam. It can't stop our descent, but it could slow us—and it might be just enough. I reach back, fighting his hands, but he simply tightens his grip.

His somber grin turns triumphant.

THEY CALL IT THE PALM. I CALL IT
hell.

A seven-story mall with a wide-open space in the center, a round granite fountain on the ground floor. The statue in the center of the fountain features a smiling Oliver and Nicholas, their arms raised, hands intertwined on the day Titan City opened, the day they revealed their immortality. It lies in pieces where bodies have pummeled it, some falling from a single story up, others from the second, third, fourth, and fifth stories—each level we've taken. We've paid for every inch with lives, our blood spilled here, some deposited in the now-red water of the fountain.

Mike, Oliver, Grayson, and I reach the sixth floor and retreat into an abandoned shop. Glass trinkets—molds of the Gibraltar Dam, the faces of the first hundred Titans—line the glass shelves. It's weird, seeing glass replicas of my face in all sizes staring back at me. I took a shot to the arm on the third floor, but I've tied my arm to my body, and I think I'm okay otherwise.

For the last hour, it's been a deadly game of hide-and-seek. We make a move up the grand, helix-shaped stairway, take a floor, then recede into the shadows of the dark shops, hoping they'll come after us. We harass them with fire until they do, or until we think they've retreated enough to take another level.

We're a distraction force. An attempt to buy time.

Everything changed in the power plant. We met heavy resistance. We lost four of our twelve-person force down there, two to booby traps, two to enemy fire. We finally broke through, but it was clear we weren't going to reach the towers.

Nicholas, however, caught a lucky break. He's cleared the tunnels and should be close to finding the device by now.

In case he can't find it, he and Oliver devised a backup plan. We placed bombs at key locations in the power plant. If we can't make it to the device, we'll set them off, bringing the entire dam down, destroying the quantum bridge with it. It's a high price to pay, but it's worth it to ensure the other faction can't reset the bridge and send Flight 305 back to 2015, dooming our world to repeat the mistakes made here. Those are the stakes.

I hope Nicholas finds the device soon, and we can get out of this place. We can't leave the way we came in, via the power plant, not without functioning suits and oxygen. When we make it to the top, to the promenade on the Atlantic side, we'll jump and swim to safety. It's a bit of a drop, but we're assured we'll make it. Besides, it's our only shot. Once Nicholas has what we came for, we'll make a run for it. We just have to hold out, distract them a little longer, wait for the signal from Nicholas.

Oliver has a handheld device, a backup link that shows Nicholas's location. Oliver checks it every few minutes, letting us all follow along. Nicholas finished the search of the apartments a half hour ago; now he's moving up the hotel tower, hopefully closing in on the device.

I slump behind a counter, let my back fall against it, and lay my rifle across my legs.

Grayson collapses next to me. “How you doing?”

“Peachy. You?”

“Been better.” He lets the hand he's been holding against his stomach fall forward, revealing a deep gash. Blood fills his palm in the few seconds it lies open.

Crap.

Pings. Metal on marble, like a ball bouncing.

“Stun grenade!” Mike yells.

Unfortunately we've all become quite familiar with stun grenades and a few other choice combat weapons in the last few hours. Oliver, Grayson, and I duck our heads and cover our ears. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the blast is still overwhelming, a wave that slams into me, pulverizing my hearing and sight.

I'm vaguely aware of Mike reaching up, plopping his rifle on the glass-topped counter, and pulling the trigger, his head held below, firing indiscriminately, hoping to repel any forces rushing in after the blast.

Twinkling sounds, faint, like someone playing a tiny piano at the bottom of a well. It's the glass from the shelves and the tall window panels shattering, falling on the marble floor, a sea of shards from us to the open area and stairwell. My hearing normalizing, I can just make out shots raining down on us. Mike keeps firing, and I push up, ignoring the pain from my wounded arm. I lay my rifle next to his and fire wildly as well. We keep shooting until their fire subsides, no one connecting. These rifles seem to have an endless supply of electric charges—they don't use projectiles as far as I can tell, and there's no magazine.

We settle back against the counter, once again in darkness and quiet, everyone saving up energy for the mad dash to freedom, to the promenade, which has to come soon, for our sake.

A soft, pulsing alarm rings out from Oliver's oblong tablet. He draws it out, holds it up. Nicholas's location beacon is sailing out of the hotel tower, down the Mediterranean side, toward the basin. Why? He should be on the other side.

His pack activates, steering him into the waterfall, but it's too late. His velocity. There's no way he'll survive the fall. Fear fills Oliver's face.

“Did he send the signal?” I ask. “Does he have it?”

“No. He sent no signal,” Oliver says, punching his thick fingers on the tablet.

The view switches to a video feed of the outside of the dam. A drone. That was smart.

There's no sign of Nicholas.

Oliver works the tablet, backing the video feed up. A speck—a body—flies up from the dark pool at the bottom of the dam to high in the hotel and back inside. He pauses the feed, zooms in, moves forward. It's still too dark, and he adjusts the settings, making it lighter. It's grainy, but I can just make out the figure of Nicholas inside a hotel room on a high floor. The moonlight casts just enough light through the sliding glass door for me to see him searching the room. Maybe he found the quantum device and decided that jumping was the only way to destroy it.

An errant shot hits the shop's floor, sending a spray of glass shards into the back of the counter.

Mike throws his rifle up on the counter and squeezes three rounds off.

Silence.

We all lean in, focusing on the video.

It creeps forward.

Nicholas pauses. He seems to be talking to someone. He pulls the sliding glass door open and scans the empty balcony. Confusion.

He turns his back to the passing drone and focuses on something in the room. His arms spread. Another figure, rushing out of the shadow.

Blond hair. A face I thought I might never see again.

The video inches forward.

Harper slams into him, driving him the few feet to the rail, then over. Oliver works the feed, panning, zooming, following them down. They're freefalling, then suddenly they veer into the waterfall and thread in and out of the white stream. Nicholas holds Harper tight while working the control panel on the forearm of his suit behind her back. Their descent is slowing. A small shred of hope emerges inside me. Maybe . . . But Harper twists, reaches for his arms. She's fighting him. Stopping him. Why? My mind burns, trying to unravel it.

Whatever she was trying to do, she did it. The slow descent becomes an unstoppable plummet.

They hit the surface of the water at a deadly speed, disappearing into the black abyss.

My mouth goes dry. My heart pounds in my chest.

Oliver lets the panel fall to the floor. A shadow passes over his face, and then his features grow hard. He taps the panel angrily, calling up the remote detonator for the array of explosives we planted in the power station at the base of the dam. He activates them, putting the main array on a timer, set to five minutes, with a few peripheral charges set to sixty seconds.

The numbers fill the screen, ticking down.

My God.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yell at him.

“It's over, Nick.” He slips the narrow panel back inside the sleeve of his suit and begins to pull on his glove, but I reach for him, grabbing for it.

He shoves me back, pushing me to the ground. Pain from my arm racks my body.

Oliver pulls Grayson up and drags him toward the door, speaking quickly, his voice low. “When the charges go off, we'll run up to the next level, shoot out the far windows—they overlook the Atlantic. Jump and don't look back.”

Grayson looks back to me, lying there at the base of the counter.

Through the pain, I try to piece the puzzle together.

Oliver couldn't care less about the thousands of colonists—or any of the lives in Titan City—at this point. He's focused only on Grayson. That's what this was about for him. And his loyalty to Nicholas. Harper killed Nicholas. Why?
It's over, Nick.
I go through what I know, what Nicholas said to me. His guilt.
Oliver and I killed everyone we ever loved. Everybody else, for that matter.
I've missed something—something crucial.
Think
. Oliver stole the immortality therapy for Grayson, the prodigal son he wanted to give one more chance, the confused boy in a thirty-one-year-old body who peers back at me now, his father's arm around him, the father who never loved him in his time.

But why did
Nicholas
help Oliver steal the therapy? His words:
I'd met someone, someone very near death. Like Oliver, I was terrified, unsure what life would be like after she passed. I had made my own proposal to save her, but it had been defeated as well. Oliver and I were desperate to save our loved ones . . .

My mind runs through every moment with Nicholas. He knew me, coached me. Worked me. He needed the passengers for this assault, but what did he come here for? To destroy the quantum bridge? They would do it at any cost—to keep the passengers here. So why risk an assault? Why not just bomb the place as planned?

What had he become?

The power of seeing the world he created, the arrogance. And the sorrow of seeing it ruined by his hubris, killing the only thing he loved. The only person he loved.

Focus.

The question I need to ask is: Why Flight 305?

Nicholas's words run through my mind again.
We had an incredible opportunity: a flight where the key people involved in the Titan Foundation and our great mistake could be taken out of your timeline.
But they
told
Yul and Sabrina to board that flight—they were not originally supposed to be on Flight 305. They weren't on that flight in this timeline. Only Harper, Grayson, and me . . .

For Oliver the objective was Grayson. A second chance to do something about his one true regret. Which meant for Nicholas . . .

Harper.

It has to be. The love of his life. And she stopped him, knew it was him somehow. That's why he pumped me for information, for an account of every second I spent with her.

She must have known something I don't. She gave her life to stop Nicholas, to keep him away from the device. She took away the one thing he would stop at nothing to possess: her life. And if she was willing to do that, then something is very, very wrong.

“Stop!” I yell, sitting up.

Grayson turns back to me, but Oliver keeps his arm around his son, corralling him, whispering to him.

“He came here for her, didn't he?”

Oliver turns, an amused smile on his face.

“Grayson, get the tablet! Stop the countdown!”

The floor booms below us. All the glass figurines and trinkets rattle and shake, falling, shattering. It's a sickening sound, accompanied by a shower of sharp pieces, debris and dust from the ceiling mixing with it, burying me behind the counter.

I feel Mike's arms around me, pulling me up, around the counter. We stumble over a sharp blanket of broken glass, toward the door and stairway, where Oliver is practically dragging Grayson.

“Help us, Grayson!” I yell.

Oliver turns, fires a shot that catches me in the shoulder, blowing me back into the store. I slide over the bed of glass. The shards cut into my back, a million agonizing slices, jabbing deep, cutting me to shreds.

Mike stands and fires, but Oliver catches him with a shot to the head. He's dead before he lands at my feet.

Grayson grabs his father's arm, forcing the rifle out of it. Our eyes meet, and I see the pain in his, the sadness, the struggle. His moment of hesitation allows his father to trap his arms at his sides. Oliver leans in, speaking, but Grayson frees his right hand and jerks the tablet out of his father's sleeve, tossing it clanging on the marble floor. It settles halfway between us, and Grayson lunges for it, but his father restrains him, pulling him back.

With far too much force.

I watch in horror as they both crash through the glass rail. A second later, I hear the sickening sound of the fountain's granite breaking, more pieces of the Titan statue crumbling away, splashing in the water.

The tablet's screen is cracked, but still lit, displaying the countdown.

I try to sit up. Every movement pushes the glass deeper into my skin. I crawl, the shards grinding into my knees and elbows through my tattered suit.

Footsteps. Boots on the marble. Titans and colonists descending the winding helix of the grand stairway.

My hand reaches the tablet.

“Stop!”

I minimize the countdown.

“Stop, or I'll shoot.”

I work my fingers, pulling up the access program for the array of explosives. There's no pass code, just a fingerprint verification, keyed to only two people in the world: Oliver Norton Shaw and Nicholas Stone.

A shot hits the floor three feet from me. I wince, close my eyes, and press my thumb to the screen.