Extracted (27 page)

Is he going to deflate? I wonder.

The flat speaker is attached to four wires that stay connected to the so-called ear. Like manipulating a toy transformer, he disengages the round speaker into four distinct parts, handing the small pieces to Ember, Gloves, Stein, and me. The small pieces remind me of tiny black bits of tar hooked to wires.

“Hold them…” Gloves says with a rattling wheeze, “up to your ears.”

Almost in unison, we take the wedge pieces and hold them to our ears. Stein kneels beside Nobel, sharing her speaker with him.

“Good afternoon,” Stills says in a very rich British accent. “I am Stewart Stills. Consider me the property manager of secret loops in the time stream.”

“You can respond any time,” Gloves says, coughing again. He isn’t looking good.

“I rifted back here because we are in quite a quandary. The Tesla Institute has waged war against us. We have lost many good Rifters and now we are losing Gloves as well.”

“Is Claymore with you?” I ask.

“He is at the main safe house in 1986 Los Angeles, right now. We are trying to adapt a helmet like mine for him. We require Nobel’s assistance.”

Gloves coughs again, this time spewing droplets of blood on the side of Stein’s face. She doesn’t move.

“Lex,” Gloves says, looking at me. “It is very important to fix this.”

“Me?” Fix this? How could this ever be fixed? How could the world ever be right again?

“Yes, I am going to commission you on one last assignment.”

“Okay, Gloves, anything,” I say, hoping his plan includes some serious payback.

“The Dox didn’t work,” he says. I nod. “The tear remains open and chaos has completely consumed the time stream.”

He coughs again. His breathing is becoming more labored. His eyes flutter closed for a moment too long.

“Gloves!” Ember yells and he blinks.

“Lex, you need to rift to Tesla’s lab in New York in 1898 and get the original Dox. It is your last chance to set things right. That is your last mission from me.” The words rush out in one long, rattling breath. The blood drains from his face.

“No, Gloves, it won’t work. We need directions or something. How do we use the Dox?”

“Notes. Tesla will have notes. Find them.” He coughs and winces in pain. “They were looking for you. He said—” Gloves coughs again. “Flynn said you’d never get it to work without the key.” He opens his hand and his fingers go limp. In his palm is a pile of green pills. The last of the Contra, or rather whatever didn’t burn in the fire. Also in his hand is the Amber Room beetle.

Gloves’s eyes glaze over and his chair slowly stops chugging. I put my head down and fight back the tears. Behind me, Stein rubs my back in slow circles. I grab the pile of Contra and the beetle from Gloves’s hand and stand up, wiping the moisture from my eyes before anyone can see it.

Stills kneels down and closes Gloves’s eyes. He then taps on the side of his polished brass dome. We respond by putting the small black speakers back up to our ears.

“We need you to complete this last mission,” Stills says. “There is a key, a missing piece to making the Dox work properly.”

“A key?” Ethan shouts, pulling his hands through his hair. “Are you kidding me? How did you miss that?” He looks at me angrily. I step forward, more than happy to go a few rounds with him right now, but Ember pushes between us.

“What key?” she asks. “What does it look like?”

Stills describes it and Ember turns, putting a hand on Ethan’s chest.

“It’s my key. My first key.”

Stills holds out his brass-gloved hand.

“I don’t have it. I didn’t bring it with me,” she responds, biting down on her lip. “But I know where it is. I gave it to Flynn.”

She frowns.

“No problem, Ember,” Ethan soothes. “We will just go back to the Institute and get it. We can go back the day after the Trials, when everyone is taking the oath. I’ll ransack Flynn’s room and—”

She cuts him off. “No. It won’t be there. I didn’t give it to that Flynn. I gave it to a Flynn from a different timeline.”

We all stare at her stupidly for a minute. She rolls her eyes. “Oh. This is going to be bad.”

I grab her arm. “Do you know where the key is or not?”

She nods. “I used it to create a fixed loop. I don’t know if we can get it. Everything inside a fixed loop is sealed.”

Stills cuts in. “Has there ever, in your memory, been a time when your key was missing?”

She pauses, tilting her head to the side. “Yeah. A few months ago. I thought I’d lost it, but I found it under my bed a few days later. I figured it fell off the wall somehow.”

Stills nods. “That is your window. Take the key during that time and return it when you have used it. It will preserve the Fixed Point.”

“Can we do that?” I ask. Following his logic feels a lot like banging my head into a brick wall.

It’s Stein who answers. “I guess we’ll know soon enough. Either someone already stole the key once and it’s part of the Fixed Point, or we’ll get our butts bounced back to next Tuesday when we try for it. Either way, it’s our only shot.”

“Let’s do it then,” I jump in, ready to go.

“What are the risks?” Ember asks Stills quietly.

“Honestly, it’s hard to say. But it still has to happen.”

She swallows hard and takes a step back.

“I’ll go with you, Ember,” Ethan says, holding her hand.

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” I say. “No offense and all, but there’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight. I’ll go with her.”

“Really?” Stein adds. “You’ll go with her? And I’ll do what? Stay here and make you a sandwich?”

“She’s right. You should go with your girlfriend, keep her safe, and I can go with Ember and do the same,” Ethan says.

If there was a stupid comment cow pie on the burnt grass of the courtyard, Ethan just stepped in it.

“Keep me safe?” Stein challenges.

Ember folds her arms over her chest and moves to Stein’s side. “In case you’ve forgotten, I stabbed you in the leg the first time we sparred, and I wasn’t even trying then. You wanna give it a whirl right now? Then we’ll see which of us needs protection.”

“That’s not what I meant. Just that—” Ethan says.

I nudge him. “Shut up.”

Stein glares at me. “Why don’t we do this, tough guys. Ember shouldn’t go back into her own timeline. I think there have been enough potentially world-ending hijinks for one week, don’t you? She and I will go together to get the Dox, and you boys can go protect each other,” she says. “Unless, of course, you don’t trust us to go without male supervision?”

It’s a trap. Some kind of weird secret girl code. Ethan sputters.

“Good job, Ethan,” I hiss.

Reluctantly, I hand them their Contra.

“You boys can go get the key, if you think you can handle that?” With that, Stein and Ember hand their speakers back to Stewart Stills and walk away.

Ethan has the dumbest look on his face—like he just had an accident in his pants. Ember turns and shouts to him, “Three months ago, the day I almost broke your leg in sparring practice? That’s the day I noticed it missing. It’s in my room.”

He nods.

I hand my speaker back to Stills and thank him. He reconstructs the earpiece and inserts it back into its socket.

Nobel is in the corner of the courtyard, cradling somebody. I can just make out singed, frizzy red hair. Journey. He sobs into her limp body. I’ve never seen him show emotion like that before. It’s a nightmare. My mind reels. If we can get the other Dox and the key, maybe none of this will ever happen. Maybe everything will be set right. I hold on to the hope.

Ethan and I make our way over to where Stein and Ember are standing with Nobel. Ember has her hand over her mouth and Sisson is talking to her. The way she is moving her arms, I can tell she is recounting what happened to Ember, who still looks unnervingly fragile. Normally I’d ask Nobel to watch my back, especially on this, my last mission for the Hollows, with a guy I’m not sure I trust. But looking at him, I decide to leave Nobel to mourn the girl he secretly loved.

I approach the others.

“We have our missions,” I say, holding out my hand. The green pills are soiled with soot from my hands. Ethan grabs his. “Good luck, everybody.”

“Lex, maybe you should stay with Nobel,” Stein says, leaning in to hug me good-bye. “Ethan can get the key.”

It’s a tempting idea. But then I remember my outburst after Stein died and how Nobel had been smart enough to give me the one thing I really needed—space to grieve.

I shake my head. “We need to fix this, and I’m not sure I trust Ethan enough to let him go alone. At the rate the vortex is growing, it could chew through a full century in a matter of days. We don’t have time to waste.”

“I’ll stay,” Sisson offers, her face smeared with coal dust and tears. I want to reach out to her, to offer some comfort, but I don’t. I’m not sure why.

Ethan puts his arm around her small shoulders and offers her a squeeze, earning him somewhat reluctant points from me. Then he holds his other hand out for my sister and she takes it without hesitation.

“Who are the other bodies, the ones from your group?” Stein asks.

“Mistress Catherine,” Ethan answers. “She was one of our teachers.”

Ember shudders and he squeezes her. “And that’s Trace and Connor. The other one is Doctor Kevlotrotsky.”

“Well,” Stein winds her fingers into my empty hand, “what are we waiting for?”

I can’t help the feeling of lightness spreading in my chest, even though I know it’s not the right time to be feeling it. Something about feeling Stein’s hand in mine again makes all the bad stuff seem survivable.

Nobel stands erect. “Before you go, we need to bury them. They deserve that.”

He’s right. Time is not on our side, but we can’t just leave him and Sisson to do it alone. I look to Ethan, who nods.

Most of the fires have died down or gone out. The smoke from the burnt tower and the smoldering bodies leaves the courtyard shrouded in an eerie haze. It’s like a cemetery’s had all its bodies dug up and sprawled everywhere.

“Let’s make a cemetery in the front corner,” Nobel says, pointing to the spot in the courtyard. He wipes his nose and flicks the tears from his face like they are pesky gnats.

“We should put the fallen Tesla people in there too,” Stein says. She looks over to Ember. “They were all on the same side, once. Maybe we can put whatever bitterness separated them and made them enemies to rest too.

I blink. Part of me wants to burn the ones who did this. But looking at Stein I can see she’s trying to heal a rift I didn’t realize even existed. The one between Ember and me. We’ve been pulled apart, drafted to opposite sides in a war that wasn’t our own. I can see now that it hurts Ember, having been a part of that for so long. So I agree. Not for them, but for my sister.

Ethan tosses his shovel and comes to my side. Lex and his friends are huddled over the last grave. He’s pounding a makeshift cross into the ground. I don’t want to be too close to them right now. What right do I have? Tesla did this. Attacked these people. Beyond the soft ache in my heart, there’s only shame.

“They need a minute,” he says gently.

I nod. “Ethan?” “Yeah?”

“I have to tell you something.” I pause. “It’s something I should have told you a while ago, but—I dunno—I suppose there was never time.”

He scoots close to me, shoulder to shoulder.

“Okay.”

“Right. So back at the Institute, the day of my rift test, you came to get me from the cafeteria, remember?”

He grins. “You were so nervous, you were almost green. How could I forget?”

“Well, I was in the cafeteria and sort of appeared to myself.”

Whatever he expects me to say, it isn’t that. His mouth falls agape as he struggles to understand.

“Wait, you mean you rifted back from somewhere and spoke to yourself inside the Institute?”

I nod. “Yeah. It was weird. She told me, well I guess I told me, to take something on my first rift. It was something specific. The thing is, I haven’t done that yet.”

“Took something on your test or gone back and talked to yourself?”

“Gone back. How will I know when to go do it?”

He sighs, rubbing his hand down his face slowly so he has time to think. Finally, he shrugs.

“Well, I would imagine you’ll know when. I mean, something will happen and you’ll know it’s time to go back. Was there anything different about her? Anything that stood out?”

I think back. “She was dressed differently. And she had…” I reach up and touch the scab under my chin, “a scar right here.”

“Did it look old or fresh?” he asks seriously.

“Older, I think. It was healed, at least.”

He turns his back to the others, blocking my eyeline. “Then you have some time.”

I see something glint on the ground. Kicking it with the toe of my boot, I see it’s one of Lex’s bottle caps. There’s a bunch of them, scattered in the grass. Bending over, I pick them up and stuff them in my pocket.

“If any of it even matters after this,” I say, earning me a confused look. “I mean, if the Dox works, then what? It sets time back on track? What does that even mean? Does this still happen? Does Lex ever save Stein? Or will I wake up in bed like none of this ever happened?” A sudden thought sends sparks of dread through my mind. “What if I don’t remember any of this?”

Ethan takes a deep breath but says nothing. There’s no comfort he can offer. Instead, he pulls me into a tight embrace and kisses the top of my head gently. In the distance, through the smoke and tears of the night, the sun rises. I can’t help wondering what tomorrow will bring. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much to lose or so much weight on my shoulders.

A memory slides to the front of my mind—my sisters and I sewing the royal jewels into our corsets to hide them from thieves. I remember not feeling like it was going to happen, like it was a waste of time. But Mama was panicked, so we sewed all night long until our fingers were raw. When I finished mine, Mama held it up to me.

“Here, Anya. This will be your armor. It will protect you from the dark things that come for us tomorrow.”