Timestorm (26 page)

“I guess.” I shook my head, kicking dirt up as I walked. “I still wish I could have managed to keep you and Holly out of this.”

Adam spread his arms out wide, turning sideways to grin at me. “Well, I’m here, so deal with it.”

I managed a short laugh. “Okay, okay. Fine.”

“Thank God!” Adam said, lifting his hands to the sky. “Your brooding, brokenhearted-lover routine was getting a bit annoying.”

I shoved him hard, watching him stumble forward into Stewart, who turned around and caught Adam. “Junior could win an Oscar for his brooding.”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up, Stewart. Besides, you know we share the loyalty curse.”

“True,” she said with a sigh. “Very true.”

“But we’ll get to test that theory soon, right?” I pointed out. “No failing at the destroy-Eyewall mission to save my ass.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Junior. I’m not that fond of you.”

My eyes traveled to Dad and Courtney and eventually to Holly and my stomach was already twisting in knots. Was I loyal enough to this mission to risk survival? Would I screw up again to make sure Holly or Dad or Courtney or Adam or Emily was okay? I guess there was only one way to find out.

CHAPTER TWENTY

DAY 19. LATE EVENING

I stood outside Eyewall’s electric fence, huddled in the evening cold with Blake and Marshall. I was trying hard not to think about Dad, Holly, and Adam right now, tiptoeing their way to the gate and gaining access for all of us after Adam performed his computer magic and hacked into the system. We were all counting on the Eyewall guard chips attached to our bodies to help us fly under the radar for a while. Adam and Emily had both said it wasn’t uncommon for Eyewall guards (aka time-travel-clone experiments) to teleport somewhere and have to return to headquarters on foot due to their brains needing a rest—something I could totally relate to from my own time-jumping experiences.

Three days of planning this mission, three days of walking and sleeping outside, and we were all mentally and physically fatigued, not to mention battered and bruised. I knew Holly had sprained her ankle during that fight when we first stepped outside the force field, I’d seen her limping toward Adam, but she refused to admit the injury existed and had kept on walking with a determined pace for the past three days. Adam said it was the former gymnast in her that knew how to push through the pain. She and I had hardly spoken since I’d given my guilt-ridden public apology, but there was no more tension. She’d sat with me and Adam and Stewart or me and Courtney and participated in conversations with none of the hot-and-cold mood swings I’d seen since arriving in the year 3200. Maybe it was the last memory-gas episode or Adam’s arrival that finally got her to break through that barrier between her and everyone else.

“Any minute now,” Marshall said.

The building was just as Blake had described in his memory file—one and a half stories aboveground. A fence surrounded the perimeter about fifty yards away from the building. Trees were planted all around the fence as if to conceal the building.

“I hate this place,” Blake muttered from my other side. “It’s everything that’s wrong with the world contained in one single architectural structure.”

“So what’s the deal with the explosives?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “They’ve just been sitting on Misfit Island for all those years for what reason?”

“Actually,” Blake said, staring through the trees at the building, “I made the bomb myself from supplies in the technology building.”

“Seriously? How do you know it will work?”

He shrugged. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

I groaned to myself but didn’t complain otherwise. Now wasn’t the time, and if Marshall, Grayson, and Dad had agreed to this plan, then they must have had faith in Blake’s ability to build weapons. Even though he couldn’t fire a gun to save his life, nor did he fit the prototype for garage bomb builders. Quite the opposite.

We squatted behind the trees for another couple minutes. Only our pounding hearts and uneven breathing invaded the eerie silence. When I felt a tap on my shoulder, I literally jumped into action; Blake reacted the same from beside me. I had the newcomer pinned facedown into the dirt and pine-needle-filled forest floor in half a second.

“Jesus, Holly!” I said when I realized my mouth was full of blond hair. I released her immediately and helped her up as she dusted off the front of her shirt.

“You guys are freaks,” Holly said, still breathless and spitting out dirt. “I didn’t even see you move and then I was eating dirt.”

“Quiet,” Marshall hissed, before glancing at Holly. “They’re in?”

“Yep, Adam’s messing with the computers now and Agent Meyer’s guarding the door.” Holly scooted between me and Blake and sat on the ground, looking out at the building. “I passed the east-side entrance on my way back here. Stewart, Grayson, and Sasha are in position. Mason’s ready to follow them inside.”

I already knew that Lonnie, Emily, and Courtney were hiding out in the woods, waiting for us to return, much to Courtney’s disgust.

“Good,” Marshall said with a nod as he glanced at the stopwatch in his hand. “The thirty-minute mark passed four minutes ago…”

“Right,” Holly said. “I got held up after leaving the south entrance. Memory gas.”

I turned my gaze to her, my stomach plummeting. We hadn’t run into memory gas since the day we found Adam. “You okay?”

She met my eyes, giving me a sad smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. It was just like you said, I moved on to something new.”

Part of me felt relieved and part of me panicked that maybe she’d moved on to something worse and that would be my fault for getting her to talk about it. “Better or worse?” I asked finally.

“Better, I guess,” she whispered. “I broke my neck when I was fourteen. I fell off the uneven bars at gymnastics camp.”

“Shit.” I shook my head. “Want to talk about it?”

She laughed a nervous laugh. “Maybe later.”

I stared out at the building again, letting her words sink in. What if we didn’t have later? What if this was it? I leaned in closer to Holly and inhaled the scent of her hair. “Why does your hair still smell the same?”

“The same as what?” she asked. “007 Holly? The other 009 Holly? Me before getting trapped in 3200?”

“All of it,” I said. “It’s always the same.”

Marshall glanced at his stopwatch. “Fifteen more minutes.”

Fifteen minutes of Dad on the inside and us stuck helplessly out here would feel like an eternity. Fifteen minutes of Holly’s uneven breathing beside me, her body heat colliding with mine. I wanted to take her hand and tell her I loved her. I wanted to hug her and make her go hide out in the forest with Lonnie, Courtney, and Emily. But instead, I just sat in silence trying to convince my own heart to slow down.

“Time’s up,” Marshall said finally.

“Who’s testing the fence?” Holly asked.

I reached my hand out, but Marshall swatted it away and wrapped his fingers around the fence.

Nothing happened.

Blake stood and tossed the bag over his shoulder. “We’re in.”

Holly started up the fence first, climbing twice as fast as the rest of us. I stayed close behind her and landed on the concrete ground inside the perimeter about twenty seconds after she did. We waited another minute for Marshall and Blake to touch ground. The darkness made me squint and wish for night goggles.

“You two head that way.” Marshall pointed toward my right. “Holly and I will let the others know they can cross through.”

Before I could take off with Blake, I reached out and squeezed Holly’s hand. “Be careful, Hol.”

She gave me a tiny nod but wouldn’t meet my eyes. I had no choice but to follow behind Blake as we ran around the dark building and entered through sliding doors. Under Adam and Emily’s directions from earlier today, Blake and I dove into a small closet full of brown coveralls. We both quickly stepped into a pair and fastened them closed. I reached for the doorknob.

Blake grabbed my arm. “You know that ring Emily brought to you in 2009?”

“How do you know about that?”
And why the hell are we talking about that right now?

“I read about it in your journal last night,” he admitted. “The replicated pages that Emily made.”

“Maybe we can talk about it later.” I moved for the door again, but he stopped me.

“Do you have it with you?”

“It’s in my bag,” I said. “With Courtney and Lonnie.”

“Describe it,” he demanded, squeezing his eyes shut, his face so intense it scared the hell out of me.

I took a deep breath. “It’s a gold band with a small diamond in the center and then two tiny diamond studs beside the larger center stone embedded into the band.”

“Is there an engraving inside?”

“Yes.” How the hell did he know about this? “It says J
+
H forever. You don’t … you don’t know where that came from, do you?”

“I do.” He finally opened his eyes again. “It’s Lily Kendrick’s mother’s ring … Jacquelyn and Henry.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “What? Why do I have it—” I shook my head. “Forget it, we gotta get moving. I’ll think about that later.”

He slung the bag of homemade bombs over his shoulder again. “Promise me you’ll give it to Lily? I know she’d want to have it.”

My hand froze on the cold doorknob. She did want to have it. She’d told me that once. But I needed to focus on the mission so I told Blake what he wanted to hear. “Sure, I’ll give it to her.”

We shuffled out into the hallway, passing a woman in brown coveralls. I held my breath as she gave us a curt nod and continued on. I exhaled, moving with more ease down the tiled hall. A shrill alarm pierced the air. Red lights flashed. An automated voice shouted a warning. “Doors closing. Please verify and account for presence of all experiments.”

“Shit.”

Blake took off in a jog and I followed behind him. “They know we’re inside. They know the system’s been penetrated.”

He looked over his shoulder for a second, probably taking in the panic on my face as I searched around for signs of Dad, Adam, Holly, or any of the others. “I’m fine, Jackson. Go look for them if you want.”

I shook my head and kept following. Blake pointed his finger to the right, counting doors as we ran. Finally, he stopped in front of a door with a huge red warning sign—
DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE
. He grabbed the door handle and swung it open.
Of course, we’re going in this room. The only one that screams: Enter and you shall die.

“Stand guard at the door while I set up?” he asked.

“Yeah, go.” I stood in the hallway while he went in. Suddenly, people in coveralls rushed into the hall, doors flew open along the length. I removed my gun and held it behind me. I spotted Dad and Stewart way at the far end of the hallway, but before I could make eye contact with either of them, someone appeared behind me, pressing something into my back, causing my body to freeze, my brain to fog over.

“Jackson.”

I recognized the voice

The hard object dug deeper. “Of
course
you’re right in the middle of this,” Thomas said.

I opened my mouth to warn Blake of Thomas’s presence but I wasn’t sure any sound came out. I did, however, take in the image of Stewart kicking the hell out of Thomas and then Thomas, hunched over on the ground obviously in a great deal of pain, vanishing before he could finish me off and probably Blake, too. The world swirled around me and it reminded me of the time I tried ecstasy at a party when I was sixteen. The only illegal drug I’ve ever used in my entire life. I processed images and blurred movements all around me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care, let alone take action. Yet somewhere amid the haze, a thought formed in my mind. Maybe Blake would blow up this place with Thomas in it. That was a bonus we hadn’t counted on.

I knew time was passing but I was unable to react. The alarms kept sounding, people kept running, and I leaned against the door and stared into space.

*   *   *

“Is it under his nose?” Adam asked.

Something cold and metal tickled the inside of my nostrils and then I heard a clank as metal hit the tile floor. Seconds after the device was dropped to the floor, I finally felt a sense of urgency. My body sprang from the wall, my gun aimed at nothing but readied regardless.

“It worked!” Stewart said.

I shook my head and looked back and forth between the two of them. Stewart had a huge bruise on her cheek and blood running down her face from a cut on her forehead. Adam had dirt all over his face so I couldn’t tell if he’d been in a fight or not. “What happened? Where’s everyone else?”

“We don’t know,” Stewart snapped. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“They’ve got guns,” I accused, aiming my words at Adam. We had not counted on anyone at Eyewall having a gun.

“I never saw a single weapon while I was here, I swear,” Adam said.

As if on cue, gunshots sounded from the floor above us. “Get out of here! I’ll get Blake.”

Stewart looked at me for a long moment and then grabbed Adam’s arm and took off, dragging him along.

I found the door Blake had disappeared through and saw him bent over some complicated device full of wires. “Blake, we gotta go! Plan’s changed.”

He stood up and looked right at me. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

My heart raced as I heard more gunshots coming from unidentifiable locations. Where were Dad and Holly? Did they leave already? I could only hope. “You don’t even have a gun, come on!”

I grabbed on to his sleeve but he shook out of my grip, yanked up the leg of my pants, and swiped my spare gun. “Now I do.”

“You don’t even know how to use it,” I snapped. “Let’s just go.”

I waited while he reached into the back of his jeans and removed a white envelope, holding it out to me. On the front, in careful script, was a name: Lily.

When I didn’t reach out to take it from his hands, he lifted my shirt and stuffed it inside my waistband before stepping back farther into the small room. “I’m not leaving, Jackson. I was never going to leave.”

Something twisted in my gut and my heart sped even faster. “What the hell, Blake? Why can’t you set the damn thing and go?”