Strike (15 page)

The rest of us slowed down and drifted apart to find a spot to stand and wait for her. I stood beside a massive column that looked as though it helped support the roof.

Olivia turned back as a Retro soldier hurried up to her.

She instantly put on a big, dazzling smile as if running into him was the highlight of her day. Olivia was good at that.

“Hello, Alec,” she said sweetly. “So good to see you.”

Olivia was strangely formal with the soldier, though they were obviously friends.

I threw a quick look to Tori and Kent. They both had their eyes focused on her. If they were like me, they were also holding their breaths.

“When did you return?” the soldier asked. He too sounded formal, like Mr. Spock or something.

Alec didn’t look any older than Kent. He had short dark hair and was built like a defensive end. He was handsome too, a fact I’m pretty sure wasn’t lost on Kent.

“Just a few weeks ago,” Olivia said brightly. “How is your training proceeding?”

The guy shrugged. “Adequately. It’s nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times before. I’ve been assigned to the first group that will land on Catalina Island.”

“Congratulations,” Olivia said. “That’s a dangerous assignment.”

I knew she was trying to act as though nothing was wrong, but her manner was strangely stiff. Was that how Retro friends acted with each other?

“Not really,” Alec replied. “They won’t know what hit them.”

My stomach twisted. There was a SYLO ark on Catalina Island off of Los Angeles. This guy was talking about an invasion.

“What about you?” he asked. “I thought you were on Pemberwick?”

She shrugged and said, “I was. I got homesick.”

Alec gave her a surprised look. It was the first time he showed any emotion. “You were homesick for this dump?”

Olivia reached up, touched his chest, and with a flirty smile said, “No. I was homesick for you!”

That was the Olivia I knew. She was a master when it came to manipulating guys.

I think the soldier blushed, which is exactly the response she was going for.

He said, “Maybe we can get together tonight and—”

Olivia backed away from him, heading toward the door. “Ooh, not possible. I haven’t finished my report about Pemberwick and it’s overdue. Another time?”

“Any time,” he said. “But, uh, it should be soon because, well, you know.”

That was ominous.

“I promise! Bye!”

Olivia spun around and practically skipped toward the door. It was yet another technique she used to attract attention, and drive guys wild.

The enchanted soldier named Alec watched with his mouth open until she reached the door. He may have been robotic, but it was hard to resist Olivia Kinsey. Compared to the other emotionless types who were moving through the building, Olivia stood out like, well, like Olivia. Playing her part to the end, she turned to give him a flirty smile and a wave. With a giggle, she headed out.

Alec waited a second more, probably hoping she might change her mind and come back.

Grateful the diversion was over, I walked straight for the door and marched outside.

Olivia was there waiting. The flirty smile was long gone.

“Keep moving,” she commanded. It was back to business.

Tori and Kent were right behind me, as were the remaining soldiers. Or Sounders. As we made our way through the busy courtyard headed for the street, my hope grew that we were not only going to find out what the Sounders were all about, but we would also learn about the Retros and what was going on here. Olivia had known exactly who they were all along, but of course she didn’t share it with us. How could she? She was an infiltrator. An enemy. I was torn between feeling angry at her, bewildered as to what her true intentions were, and afraid of the truth.

She led us quickly through the silent crowds until we reached the sidewalk. Without hesitation she moved across the street and turned down a narrow side street where two white vans were waiting.

In the driver’s seat of the front van was the woman commander. She was the first and only one to have arrived.

“Jump in back,” Olivia said to us.

We obediently piled in.

Olivia sidled into the shotgun seat next to the woman commander, who sat with both hands gripping the wheel.

“We’ll move as soon as the others arrive,” the commander said, matter-of-fact.

Olivia looked at her as if wanting to say something to her superior but not sure if she should. It took her a few seconds to finally make a decision.

“I’m sorry about Conner,” she said with compassion. “I know what a good friend he was.”

“He was with us from the beginning,” the commander said. “He’ll be missed.”

It sounded as though she was trying to keep her emotions in check. I had to believe they were talking about the Retro soldier who was killed on the roof.

“There’s nothing they can use to trace us through him,” the commander added.

“I wasn’t even thinking that way,” Olivia said.

It was odd hearing Olivia speaking with such sincerity and respect. I was more used to her complaining. Then again, it was odd seeing her shooting down an enemy drone too.

“Here they come,” the commander said.

I was hoping she meant the other Sounders, but instead there were several more small drones that swooped by overhead on their way to the building we had just escaped from. They were soon followed by dozens of armed Retro soldiers who sprinted for the building and set up in the courtyard, their eyes trained on the entrance. The drones hovered overhead, keeping a watchful eye out . . . for us.

“We got out of there just in time,” Olivia said.

“Maybe,” the commander said, ominously.

Thankfully, the rest of the Sounders arrived and hurried to the rear van. The commander fired up our engine, but rather than the throaty roar of a gasoline engine coming to life, the cabin was filled with the familiar musical tones that came from the Retro jet fighters.

The commander stepped on the gas, or whatever it was that they called the accelerator here, and the car rolled forward. We were under way and nearly home free when a squad of Retro soldiers appeared from around the building in front of us. Their leader, a tall dark-skinned guy with probing eyes, raised his hand for us to stop.

The other soldiers with him took up positions in front of the car, blocking our way.

Olivia calmly pulled her pulser out from her sleeve and held it close to her thigh, out of sight but ready.

The commander lowered her window as the squad leader strode up to her.

“Identification,” the leader said curtly.

The commander handed him a plastic ID card that the squad leader took and passed it over his own handheld device.

“Make this quick,” the commander said with authority. “My team is deploying in ten minutes.”

The leader looked at his device with a scowl, then to the commander.

“Colonel Pike?” the leader said.

“Yes?” the commander, Colonel Pike, replied.

“You aren’t in uniform,” the leader said, suspiciously.

“As I said, my team is about to deploy,” she said curtly. “And you’re wasting my time.”

The leader didn’t flinch. “There has been Sounder activity in the Academy. They destroyed one of our security craft and tried to escape with three native prisoners. I need to see everyone’s credentials.”

That wasn’t going to happen.

Olivia gripped her pulser tighter, though it wouldn’t help us much seeing as four other armed Retro soldiers were standing directly in front of us.

“
Tried
to escape?” the Colonel said. “That means they’re still inside?”

“We believe so,” the leader said. “We’ve sealed the building.”

“Then why exactly are you wasting my time by checking my team’s credentials out here?” the Colonel said with disdain. “If we miss our deployment window you will need to explain that to your commander. Is that how you want to spend your evening?”

The squad leader looked shaken. His eyes shifted to us, then back to the Colonel.

“Your choice,” the Colonel added.

The squad leader handed back the Colonel’s ID card and waved for his men to move aside.

“They’re clear!” the squad leader said.

The Colonel stepped on the accelerator and we lurched forward, barely missing one of the Retro soldiers who hadn’t moved away fast enough. We quickly picked up speed and drove away from the building called the Academy, which was now under total lockdown . . . a few minutes too late.

“Idiot,” the Colonel said with disdain. “I should report him.”

Olivia laughed, but quickly held it back since her Commander wasn’t really the joking type.

We sped along the narrow streets of the filthy city, passing hundreds of soldiers and civilians that clogged the sidewalks. There were very few vehicles. Most everyone traveled on foot.

Kent continued to stare at Olivia. Or at least, at the back of her head. I had to think he was still in shock over her resurrection. I knew the feeling.

Tori reached over and grabbed my arm. She needed the support. I did too. I wanted to trust these people but everything was happening way too fast.

“Olivia?” Kent finally said in a small voice.

She turned to look at us.

“Why aren’t you dead?”

“I couldn’t feel your pulse,” I said. “You were past the brink.”

“Apparently you don’t know how to take a pulse,” she said. “I was hanging from a thread, but I wasn’t gone.”

“I gave your body to some of the other survivors from Las Vegas,” Kent said.

“And they were ambushed by a squad of Air Force personnel from the base,” she explained. “Lucky for me they actually knew how to read a pulse, and shot me with the field meds.”

It all seemed plausible. If Feit could come back from the dead, twice, why not Olivia?

“I was back here before morning,” she added. “Good as new.”

“And where exactly is here?” Tori asked.

It was the simplest, most straightforward question possible.

It meant everything.

Olivia gave a questioning look to the Colonel.

The Colonel waited several long seconds before saying, “Your call.”

Olivia nodded. I felt as though she was bracing herself to deliver some very bad news. The pained look in her eyes only made it seem worse. She looked to me, then to Tori and to Kent.

“I know this will be hard to believe,” she said. “But I love you guys. I truly do. I hope I’ll be able to prove that to you.”

“Answer the question, Olivia,” Kent said, his voice cracking with emotion. “No more lies. What is this place?”

Olivia took a nervous breath and said, “That’s the wrong question. I think you already know what this place is. What you really need to know is . . .
when
it is.”

I felt Tori stiffen.

Kent shot me a confused look.

“What does that mean?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

“We’re not aliens,” Olivia said. “We’re not from another place. We’re you. We’re from The United States of America . . . in the year two thousand three hundred and twenty-four. This is the twenty-fourth century.”

S
ilence.

That’s what Olivia’s revelation was met with.

Total silence.

I can’t speak for the others, but I had to believe they were having the same stunned reaction as me. I want to say that it was disbelief, but I was long past trying to find logical explanations for our new lives. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t believe it; it was more about trying to wrap my mind around the possibility that what Olivia had said was true.

On the one hand it quickly answered the question as to why the Retros had such incredible technology. Three hundred years was a long time. But it didn’t explain what we were seeing outside the windows of the speeding SUV. This was the future? Where were the moving sidewalks? The flying suits? The modern buildings that proved we had found a way to live in harmony with our environment? What I saw instead was filth. This was not some utopian city that proudly displayed the wondrous advances of mankind. It was a crowded slum of bleak buildings that could have been built in a faraway nation before I was born, not three hundred years into the future.

And it rained acid.

“Not exactly what you expected?” Olivia asked, reading my mind.

“On any level,” Tori replied, while staring out the window with a look that was a mix between wonder and disgust.

“Does the rest of the world look like this?” I asked.

“No,” Olivia replied. “This city is here because of the Bridge. The doorway between this time and the past. The rest of the world is nothing like this.”

“Thank God,” Tori said.

“It’s way worse,” Olivia added.

That brought the silence back.

We travelled for several minutes along the crowded, grimy streets. The nondescript buildings made it impossible to tell one block from the next. There was a constant swirl of dust in the air that forced the people to cover their mouths with stained bits of cloth. Some wore surgical masks to block the choking clouds of chemical dust as they hid beneath their silver umbrellas.

I couldn’t imagine what “worse” might look like.

“Where are we going?” Tori asked.

“Olivia’s quarters,” Colonel Pike answered. “You’ll be safe there until you’re needed.”

“Needed for what?” I asked. “You’ve got to give us a lot more to go on before we do anything to help you—”

The Colonel hit the brakes and the vehicle slammed to a stop. She quickly spun around to face us and said, “Olivia tells me you came all the way across the country to join a group of people who were willing to fight back against the Retros, as you call us. Is that true?”

Nobody replied.

“Answer me,” she said, insistently.

“Olivia’s a liar,” Kent said. “Everything she said to us from the moment we met her was a lie.”

Olivia slumped in her seat.

“She was doing her job,” the Colonel said tersely. “Under incredible stress and impossible circumstances. You were swept up in this. She volunteered. I’d trust her with my life and I suggest you three do the same. Now I’ll ask you again, do you truly want to fight back?”

“We destroyed about a thousand of your planes,” I said. “Does that answer your question?”

The Colonel gave me a small smile.

“But we have to know the truth,” Tori said. “All of it.”

“You’ll get it,” she said, then nodded toward Kent. “What about you, All-American?”

Kent looked away.

“He wants to stop the Retros as much as any of us,” I said. “Give him some time to process what’s going on.”

“Fair enough,” the Colonel said.

She hit the accelerator. The vehicle lurched forward and we were back under way.

Olivia stayed focused on the street ahead.

A small tear ran down her cheek.

I was too stunned to know what to say. Or think.

2324.

The future.

Was it possible? All we could do was go along for the ride and put our trust in the one person who turned out to be the most untrustworthy of us all.

After careening through the crowded streets for fifteen minutes, Colonel Pike stopped the car in front of a tall gray building that looked exactly like every other tall gray building.

“Are you all right?” Pike asked.

“No,” Kent replied.

“I was talking to Olivia,” she said curtly. “Can you do this?”

Olivia nodded.

“The timetable is going to accelerate,” the woman said. “Keep them here until you hear from me.”

Olivia sat up straight as if bracing herself to take on a new challenge.

“Got it,” she said with confidence that seemed genuine.

The Colonel looked back to us. “Are we good?”

“Not even close,” Tori said coldly.

“Stay with Olivia,” Pike added. “She’ll tell you everything you need to know and probably more than you’ll want to hear. If you don’t want any part of us after you hear what she has to say, we’ll get you back to your time safely.”

“And into the hands of Feit and Bova,” I said.

The woman shrugged. “Or you could stay here, but you’d be on your own.”

“I really hope there’s a third choice,” Kent said.

“There is,” the woman replied. “That’s what you’re here to talk about.”

Olivia sighed and quickly got out of the car. She was done with conversation.

“Go with her,” Colonel Pike said to us. “Try to keep an open mind.”

I was done with conversation too. I got out of the car and went right up to Olivia.

“Give me one reason to trust you,” I demanded.

“Sure,” she said without thinking for even a second. “I didn’t stop you from sabotaging the drone fleet at Area 51 and nearly died saving your life. How’s that?”

Tori and Kent joined us as the Colonel sped away.

“It gets our attention,” I said. “No promises after that.”

“Fair enough,” Olivia said curtly.

She walked toward the building and disappeared through the grimy double glass doors.

“What do we do?” Kent asked.

“We have to hear her out,” I said. “If she can tell us what this is all about, it’ll be worth it.”

“Is it possible?” Tori asked. “Did we really come through a doorway into the future?”

“If it’s true,” Kent said. “The future sucks.”

We followed Olivia into the building, where she waited for us at an open elevator. We all boarded and rose to the top floor. The fifth floor. At the end of a long corridor was a doorway marked with a similar bar code as the signs we saw on the street. Olivia pulled a black communication device from her pocket and waved it in front of the door. A short hum followed and the door swung open.

If we truly were in the future, rather than having evolved into something amazing, the world had become a sad, tired version of itself.

“This is my home,” Olivia said. “My real home.”

“So you were lying about living in New York City too,” Kent said with disdain.

“No, I lived there with my mother until I joined the Air Force. She’s still there. In this time, that is. I lied about living there in your time.”

“This is making my head hurt,” Kent said.

Olivia led us into a dark, simple apartment that had no personality whatsoever. There were no pictures on the walls or books on shelves. The furniture was functional but plain. There was one main room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. There was nothing about this place that seemed like Olivia at all. Then again, we didn’t know who Olivia really was.

“Depressing, isn’t it?” she said, as if reading my mind. “This is standard quarters for lower-level personnel. I’m an Airman. First Class, for the record, as you’d say Tucker. I just got a promotion for making it back from your time alive. It’s not great but I don’t spend much time here anyway. Who’s hungry?”

She headed into the kitchen.

“Are you serious?” Tori said, incredulous. “We’re not here for afternoon tea.”

“Good,” Olivia said as she reentered with a cardboard box. “I don’t have tea. Or anything else delicious. These are nutrition bars. They taste like dirt but they’re loaded with nutrients.”

She dropped the box on a low table, took one for herself, and gnawed on it.

“Yum,” she said with fake delight. “Not like an Arbortown lobster roll but better than going hungry. Eat.”

Kent took a bar, shrugged, and ate. Tori and I passed.

Olivia plopped down on her dusty couch and propped her feet up on the plain table in front of it. All of the furniture was bland and functional. There was nothing made from wood. It all looked to be molded out of some sort of synthetic material.

“I’m guessing the future isn’t exactly what you thought it would be,” she said. “I can’t complain though. I’ve got this place to myself. Most people have to bunk four or five to an apartment. It’s one of the sweet perks I got when I risked my life by going undercover.”

“How is this possible?” Tori asked. “That thing in the dome is a time machine?”

“Not exactly,” Olivia replied. “It’s a time bridge. A gateway between different ages.”

“Uh. . . .” Kent muttered. “What?”

Olivia sat forward and slid back a panel on the table to reveal what looked like a keyboard, but with symbols I didn’t recognize.

“Quick history lesson,” she said. “January 27, 1951.”

Her fingers danced over the touchpads and an animated three-dimensional holographic image appeared in the air over the table. This future world made no sense. Most everything looked like a tired, dirty version of the past. But every once in a while some amazing piece of technology appeared that would never have existed in our time. It was like all the efforts of mankind had gone into advancing technology and the weapons of warfare while everything else was left to decay.

The hologram grew from the tabletop and slowly rose until it became a recognizable form. It was a three-foot-tall mushroom cloud . . . the result of a nuclear detonation.

“The first atomic test explosion at the Nevada Test Site. That’s where we are, by the way, in case you hadn’t figured it out.”

“We hadn’t,” Kent said.

I watched in awe as the perfectly rendered image grew with incredible detail. The image was so realistic I took a nervous step back, afraid the growing cloud of smoke might actually be radioactive.

“Hundreds of nuclear devices were tested right here. At first they were set off above ground. That was until they realized the radioactive fallout was spreading cancer. Duh. After that all the detonations were done underground. What doesn’t get mentioned in the history books is that there was an interim step. Project Alcatraz. Named after the prison I guess. Not sure I get the connection.”

Olivia touched a few more pads. The mushroom cloud disappeared and was replaced by a two-foot-high hologram of the familiar dome. The gateway to hell.

“The idea was to create a structure that could contain the force of the blast and the radioactive material. They only made one test. January 24, 1952. The bomb went off inside. The dome didn’t blow apart. No radioactivity escaped. Everything went as planned except for one tiny little detail. When they went into the dome, they discovered that by containing and concentrating the blast they had accelerated matter to such an incredible degree, it produced an event even Einstein couldn’t have predicted. I can’t explain the science but what they had done, by dumb luck if you ask me, was to blow a hole through time. A kind of black hole right here on earth. When somebody finally got the guts to go through it, they found themselves still here in the desert, but three hundred years later.”

She touched a few more pads. The dome disappeared to reveal a miniature version of the glowing frame we had stepped through.

“It was as simple as that,” Olivia explained. “The Bridge was permanent and safe. They built a big old frame around it but that was just for looks. Travelling back and forth between these two eras was as easy as stepping through a doorway. A doorway between times.”

I knelt down to take a closer look at the image of what they called the Bridge. It seemed impossible, yet explained so much.

“It’s incredible,” I said with awe. “Can it be controlled? I mean, can you pick what time you want to go to?”

“No. I told you, it isn’t a time machine. We were briefed on the physics once. It has to do with nuclear fission accelerating particles past the speed of light and countering gravity and the actual shape of the dome and I don’t know what else. They don’t even know why it ended up opening the door to this particular time. But it did, and that’s why we’re sitting on the edge of disaster.”

“Why didn’t anybody know this happened?” Tori asked, incredulous. “You can’t keep something like this a secret.”

“Well, yeah you can. And they did,” Olivia said. “Think about it. If people found out they could step into the future, it would have destroyed every known concept of science and God. People’s basic beliefs would be blown out of the water. And who wouldn’t want to see their own future? You could find out how you died and avoid the circumstances that got you there. Heck, you could find out who won the next thirty Super Bowls. Or invent the iPad before Apple. Knowledge of the future was the most powerful weapon ever imagined. You gotta give credit to the U.S. government. They kept it quiet for over seventy years and only shared it with a few select people.”

“Did the people of this time know about it?” I asked.

“Not at first. The U.S. government on this side stepped in and sealed the area. It had been a secure military base since the 1940s so keeping the Bridge a secret was fairly simple. Knowing what to do with it wasn’t.”

She worked the controls again. The frame disappeared and was replaced by a detailed globe of planet Earth that slowly rotated before our eyes.

“The years haven’t been kind to our little planet.”

“Seriously,” Kent said. “There’s lots of modern stuff but mostly it looks like everything just got old and crappy. Was there a nuclear war or something? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Olivia replied. “That was the problem. Nothing happened. Things just kept on going the way they were. I’ll throw some highlights at you.”

She stood and pointed out specific areas on the globe. It was definitely planet Earth, but the landmasses had changed.

“Climate change melted the polar ice caps, flooding low-lying regions all over the world. Lower Manhattan is underwater. So is much of Los Angeles. New Orleans is gone along with a dozen other major cities. Pemberwick Island no longer exists. Sorry. The population continued to grow while livable space shrank along with farmland.”