Timebound (41 page)

Prudence let go of my arm. “Damn it,” she said. “I have to go. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”

“Wait,” I called, running a few steps after her. “Don’t bother. She knows—she’s going back to HQ.”

Prudence turned back toward me as I continued. “Katherine will skip the next jump,” I said. “She understands what she needs to do—and not do—over the next few weeks in order to keep the timeline intact.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Well, maybe you’re not
entirely
worthless,” she said. “I just hope you didn’t screw it up—otherwise it’s going to be very difficult to get back in here to fix things, due to the mess you’ve made. I was trying to do a surgical strike and then you come through like a tank… There’s no telling how many ripples this will create in the timeline.”

It was beyond hypocritical for Prudence, who was working for a radical overhaul of history, to be lecturing me on the sanctity of the timeline, but I suspected that fine point would be lost on her. Rather than stick around and argue, I turned on my heel and
headed toward Kiernan, who was still watching us from the sidelines.

Prudence grabbed my arm again, yanking me back to face her. I had an intense desire to flip her over my shoulder and see how pushy she would be when she was flat on her back, but I gritted my teeth and returned her stare.

“We’re not finished here,” she said. “I will keep Simon and anyone else from threatening Katherine on these jumps. Your existence and Deborah’s and mine will be protected.
But.
Don’t cross me again, Kate. You don’t want to end up on the wrong side of history. You could have a nice, comfy little life if you play things smart. The Cyrists are the future and, given your obvious gifts with the equipment—”

“No.” I opened my mouth again to elaborate, but there was really nothing more to add. So I just repeated it, shaking my head. “No.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging one shoulder dismissively. “You can’t fight the Cyrists on your own, Kate. You can be one of the Chosen or you can line up with the other sheep to be fleeced and slaughtered.”

I strongly suspected that she was right on the first point, but the casual way she referred to the destruction of those who were not “Chosen” turned my stomach. It also strengthened my resolve. No amount of power should be in the hands of a person who could say something like that with such conviction.

There was, however, little gain to be had in arguing with her. “Are you done?” I asked, my jaw set.

“Just one more little thing,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Stay away from Kiernan. He
will
be one of the Chosen—and he will be
mine.
”

I glanced over at the boy who was watching us nervously from the bench. “He’s eight years old, for God’s sake!”

“Now, yes. But he most definitely wasn’t eight when I knew him. And not when you knew him, either,” she added with a smug little smile. “But I guess you
lost
that bit of memory when the timeline shifted, didn’t you? You’re not the Kate he was in—in
fatuated
with. And I intend to make certain that it stays that way.”

The fact that Prudence could remember a version of me that I would never know bugged me much more than I was willing to let on. Katherine had said I wasn’t the same Kate she would have met if we’d been able to start my training six months earlier, and while I understood this on one level, it was an inconsistency that kept nibbling away at the back of my brain. If I understood Connor’s explanation of the changing timelines, that other Kate shouldn’t exist. Katherine’s cancer would have been a constant in all versions of the timeline. And if so, I would always have started the training when I did and I wouldn’t be listening to stories about this rogue Kate who was off somewhen having adventures I couldn’t recall.

But I
had
glimpsed that other Kate’s life briefly in the medallion. And Kiernan—the very much grown-up version of Kiernan on the Metro—was clearly thinking of that other Kate when he pulled the band from my hair and slipped it onto his wrist.

Remembering the expression on his face when he looked at me, I felt a sudden rush of empathy. How would it feel to stare into the eyes of someone you loved, someone who had loved you, and see no recognition, no love in return? I would soon know firsthand, assuming I made it back to my own time and found Trey.

I glanced back over at Kiernan. The trains ran on the half hour, and the crowd around the platform had now cleared out entirely, except for an older black groundskeeper who was using a large push broom to sweep bits of debris into a pile behind the ticket booth. Kiernan was still waiting, his face tense and his hands clenching the wooden slats of the bench. He had already been through so much at such a young age.

Despite my decision not to antagonize her, I couldn’t ignore that issue. “What about his dad?” I blurted. “Kiernan said that you were responsible—”

“Kiernan is a little boy with a big imagination,” she snapped, cutting me off. “He doesn’t
really
believe I had a hand in his father’s death. His mother most certainly doesn’t believe it. And when Kiernan is all grown-up with”—she paused, giving me a suggestive little smile—“adult appetites, he’ll be quite eager to follow me back into the Cyrist fold. Or anywhere else I want him to go.”

Prudence reached into the bodice of her dress and tugged out a thick gold chain with a CHRONOS key at the end. She quickly scanned the area around us and then activated it. “Stay away from Kiernan and stay out of my way. If you can remember those two little things, you should be okay.

“Oh, and be nice to your mother,” she added. Her eyes twitched down to the CHRONOS key and then she was gone.

20

The wooden bench was empty. Kiernan had been watching us intently, and I turned around immediately to see how he would react to Prudence’s disappearing act. But he was no longer there. It seemed strange that he would have waited patiently for so long and then simply run off without saying anything.

The only person who had been there the entire time was the groundskeeper, who was putting his push broom back into a tiny alcove on the outside of the booth.

“Excuse me,” I said. “There was a boy, waiting for me on the bench here. Did you by any chance see where he went?”

“Yes’m,” he said, glancing up briefly, and then back down at the ground. “You mean Li’l Mick, right?”

I nodded, wondering exactly how many people at the Expo the kid knew.

“He took off that way mebbe a minute ago, miss,” the old man said, tilting his head toward the Midway Plaisance. “He looked to be followin’ a gen’l’man who come runnin’ through from across the way—from over where the state buildins are.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Do you remember what the man looked like? It’s important.”

“Well, I din look
real
close, miss—I was sweepin’,” he said, his forehead creasing as he tried to remember. “But he looked
young t’me, ’bout your age mebbe. Di’n’ look like he worked outside much, kinda pasty-lookin’. And di’n’ look like he missed too many meals either, if y’know what I mean,” he added with a low chuckle. “Mick’ll be able to keep up with ’im, no doubt there. He’s a smart li’l cricket.”

“Thank you,” I said, giving him a shaky smile over my shoulder as I ran toward the Midway entrance.

The description was too much like Simon to be a coincidence. Was Kiernan working with him? His older self and Simon had been on the Metro together. And they’d apparently been friends or at least compatriots at some point, based on what Simon had said when he attacked me in Katherine’s front yard.

I had a hard time believing Kiernan was in on this, however. It seemed more likely that the boy had realized Simon was the one I’d pointed toward when yelling, “He has a gun!” Maybe he was still acting as my assistant, and trying to keep tabs on Simon for me.

Either way, his absence worried me. But what really baffled me was why Simon would be going to the Midway. If he’d come back to make a second attempt on Katherine’s life, which was the only reason I could think of that he’d be back at all, why was he going in the opposite direction from the stable point on the Wooded Island?

And then I remembered—there were
two
Katherines wandering around the Expo today. That first trip was also in the diary that Simon grabbed when he took my backpack. Having been thwarted in his attempt to kill Katherine at the station, he had just moved on to the
next
logical target.

Connor’s voice in my head was telling me to go back to the stable point, head home, and have another go at this after we’d had a bit of time to plan. But the idea of trying to tail Simon and, at the same time, avoid running into myself or anyone I’d seen that day, seemed fraught with even more problems than trying to find him here and now on the Midway. And he couldn’t be
too
far away—I was only a minute or so behind him.

I just prayed that Kiernan wasn’t with him. I really didn’t think the boy would be helping Simon—it seemed too out of character—but I had to admit that I hadn’t known Kiernan long enough to be completely certain. And if he was simply following Simon, I just hoped he would be careful, because I was pretty sure that Simon wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him. Or use him as bait.

The Midway was much more crowded and noisy than it had been earlier in the day. I had to veer off the sidewalk into the main street in order to avoid a large group lining up to enter the one o’clock showing at Hagenbeck’s Trained Animals exhibit. Colorful banners over the entryway displayed a collection of elephants, lions, and tigers patiently standing on a pyramid of platforms, watched over by a ringmaster cracking his whip. The temperature had increased since the morning and the air around the building now had the stale, fetid odor that I remembered from the one sad little circus I’d attended as a child. That didn’t seem to affect the enthusiasm of the people in the line, but in this era, I supposed that most of them had seen these exotic animals only in paintings and black-and-white photographs.

My eyes scanned both sides of the wide street for any sign of either Simon or Kiernan as I tried to recall everything Katherine had said or that I had read about the earlier jump. We had focused most of our research on the second trip. I’d just skimmed through the first one, mining it for background information about the fair itself. Katherine had said that the jump hadn’t been connected to her own research—she was there to gather general impressions about the last days of the fair and the people’s reaction to the assassination of Mayor Harrison, along with some background work for other CHRONOS agents.

I vaguely remembered her saying something about a camera, an African exhibit, and a beer garden. By African exhibit, she must have meant Dahomey Village, at the far end of the Midway. The beer garden was just ahead in the German Village, but I had no clue which day she’d gone where.

Rather than waste time trying to dredge the pieces up from memory, I paused in the shade of one of the viaducts that intersected the Midway and pulled the copy of the 1893 diary from my bag. After a few minutes of searching, I found the entry for October 28th and quickly scanned it. Katherine had spent most of the morning talking to young women at the International House of Beauty, a sort of global fashion show that was very popular—there was a long line outside both times I walked past, oddly enough with nearly as many men as women, although I suspected most of the guys were there to see pretty girls from around the world rather than to observe the latest trends in global fashion. Around noon, Katherine had walked back to the main Exposition, where she talked to some of the many workers who would be looking for new jobs in a few days when the fair closed its gates for the last time.