Timestorm (31 page)

My vision had started to become clear and I realized that this wasn’t the eight-year-old Emily that Lonnie had taken away from me. “What are you doing here? How old are you now?”

“Twelve … almost thirteen.” She sat beside me on the bed. “I’ve been with Lonnie for a while now. Where we went, it’s just amazing. We have this cabin in the woods. I think it’s what you’d call Upstate New York. The town is really small but I know everyone there. There are no time travelers yet but the technology is far more advanced than 2009. I’ve also been to New York and it’s amazing. It’s the UN capital in 2522—”

“There’s a UN capital in 2522?”

She smiled and nodded, giving me a chance to really study her. The oldest I’d ever seen Emily in the past was eleven and that was the first time I ever met her, though not the first time she’d met me since she already knew me then. Now that she was closer to Courtney’s age, the difference between the two of them had become more apparent. Emily was smaller—shorter and skinnier, less developed. She also had not only my eyes, but my nose. She looked ten or eleven instead of almost thirteen. I vaguely recalled my own growth spurt happening much later than my sister’s and a time, before middle school, when Courtney had gained an inch or two on me in height. Emily clearly possessed more of my genetics than my sister’s despite the matching gender and hair color.

“What are you doing here if 2522 or whatever is so awesome?” I asked.

Her face fell. “I have to show you something.”

“Uh-oh…” I rubbed my temples, already preparing for the worst. “Half-jump or full jump?”

She exhaled heavily. “Half-jump.”

I was sure the cry of pain that escaped my mouth as the splitting-apart sensation ripped through me had to be more than loud enough to wake Holly from the living room. But there was nothing I could do about that because we were headed to another time.

*   *   *

We landed right in the middle of a busy hospital hallway. NYU Hospital. A man in a white lab coat smacked into us from behind, dropping the clipboards he’d held in his arms.

“How did you two get in here?” he asked, as Emily and I snapped around to fully face him.

“Sorry,” Emily said, tugging my arm. “We were just leaving.”

The man considered stopping us but I think he must have decided picking up his clipboards was more of a priority. I followed behind Emily as she rounded a corner and then stopped in front of room 512. There was a name written on the whiteboard beside the door.

FLYNN, HOLLY M.

PATIENT #35724

INFECTED: DELUDERE

I sucked in a breath, feeling my heart race, my stomach tie in knots. “Holly…”

“I’m so sorry, Jackson,” Emily whispered, her arm brushing against mine as she stood beside me. “I came to find you as soon as I found out.”

“When does this happen? Is there going to be a cure?” Before Emily could answer, my gaze traveled to the tiny window into the room on the other side of the door. An empty bed sat to one side of the room, white sheets and blankets flipped back, and then I saw someone’s feet.

Dangling feet.

“Oh God!” I reached for the door handle, shaking it, not registering the security-code box above the handle. “Help! Somebody help!” I shouted down the hallway, hoping a doctor or nurse would hear.

Emily finally caught on to what I was seeing and her hands flew to her face. “Oh no! Jackson, I didn’t know! I swear I didn’t know!”

Ignoring her, I rammed my shoulder against the door, trying to open it. My heart thudded in my ears. I raced down the hall and grabbed a metal chair sitting near an observation window. Skidding back across the tile floor, I smashed the leg of the chair into the window, shattering the glass. I tossed the chair aside and crawled through.

Holly dangled from what looked like shoestrings. Her blond hair falling all around her, concealing her face. The checkered hospital gown reached almost all the way to her ankles, just ghostly white feet sticking out. A chair lay tipped over on the ground.

I hurdled over the fallen chair and grabbed her legs, lifting her and taking the weight off her neck. The sound of her choked breaths echoed through the room.

Who did this to her? I’ll kill them. Whoever it is, they’re dead.

“Somebody help!” I shouted again. A red emergency button on the wall caught my eye. I lifted my foot, scooting sideways, and kicked it with full force. A bell rang through the room and suddenly a crowd of doctors and nurses rushed in as the door was finally flung open.

“What the hell happened in here?” one of them shouted, taking in the broken glass and exposed window.

I held Holly’s legs tight as the dresser was slid over and a doctor stood on top, releasing Holly’s neck from the confines of the string. She fell into my arms, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, her face a mixture of dark red and blue.

“Put her on the bed.”

I laid her down on the white sheets and stood beside the bed, frozen, as half a dozen people crowded around, jumping into action.

“Who left her with shoelaces?”

“Airways clear. She’s breathing, but irregularly.”

“At least we’re not cleaning up a pool of blood this time.”

“Sedate her again until we can consult her family again. I don’t care how opposed they are to restraints, she’s just going to keep doing this over and over again. One of these times we’ll be too late.”

One of Holly’s arms was flipped over, a needle inserted into it. My eyes traveled the length of her biceps down to her elbow and then I gasped, seeing the streaks of red scabs, scars two to three inches long, covering her forearms. Cuts. Slit wrists.

Slowly, I backed away from the bed. My chest was caving in.
I’m dying. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t see this anymore.

“Jackson! Jackson!” I barely registered Emily, still trapped in the doorway, blocked by the crowd of people. “You can’t change this. It’s just a half-jump!”

My feet started to move in her direction, my hand reaching out until I grasped her fingers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

DAY 2: 2009

I knew that Emily had pulled us right back to Holly’s room in 2009. I knew that my body hadn’t really left and the horror I’d seen seconds ago was only a mirror image of reality, but I still couldn’t gather a single thought or a word.

My legs shook and I told myself to sit down, only to realize that I was already seated on Holly’s bed. I’d never gotten up.

“Why … how…?” I managed to sputter before adding, “When?”

Emily’s voice wavered as she spoke and her hand landed on my arm, gripping me tight. “It’s the virus, Jackson, it’s spreading. That’s why I had to leave 2522. I woke up one morning and everything had changed. Lonnie was gone. The destruction happens much earlier now.”

I should probably have been crying after what I’d just seen. But the shock, the panic was too great for tears. “When did
that
happen?” I emphasized
that
so I wouldn’t have to say the words out loud.

“A year from now,” she whispered.

One year. One year and the world would be a horrible place. Not a hundred or two hundred.
We’d all need a bucket list at this rate.
It wasn’t crumbled buildings and piles of remains. It was the fall of sanity. The one thing we were allowed to keep no matter how bad the environment became around us.

“One year,” I repeated aloud, resting my head in my shaking hands.

“I went to see Eileen,” Emily said, quickly brushing a few tears from her cheeks.

I lifted my head to look at her. “That’s right, you did go to see Eileen because she knew about … about Courtney…”

“There might be a way to fix this. A theory she had.”

Already, based on Emily’s reluctant tone, I could tell this plan was either very unlikely to work or very dangerous. Or both.

“We have to get her notes,” Emily said. “And then figure the rest of it out.”

“Does that mean you’re staying here with me?” It was selfish to want her here when I knew that she’d had a better life with Lonnie in 2522, but I couldn’t help it. Emily had become such an important part of my life.

“Yes, I’m staying.”

There was a finality in her tone that scared me, but suddenly all I could think about was Holly in the other room. I got up and opened the bedroom door, gesturing for Emily to follow. The TV blared, playing an early-morning repeat of some Food Network show. Holly had her feet up on the coffee table, a knitted blanket with frayed edges thrown over her and her head falling sideways as she slept.

All it took to wake her were a few creaks as the wood floor groaned beneath our weight. Holly’s eyes bounced from me to Emily then she rubbed the sleep from them before looking again.

The blanket was tossed aside. “Okay, Emily, right? But not the same Emily…”

“Same version, just older.” Emily emerged fully from behind me and rushed over to Holly, plopping down and hugging her.

Holly hugged her back and glanced up at me, her eyes full of questions. “Just tell me if we’re leaving again? Like, leaving this year or this timeline or whatever. That’s all I want to know.”

“No one’s leaving,” I said finally.

Holly sighed with relief and Emily stood up again, moving toward the kitchen. “I’m going to get some water.”

I took Emily’s spot beside Holly and turned my head to face her. “Couldn’t sleep?”

She shrugged. “I did sleep for a little while and then I just wanted to walk around my house and look at everything else and then I wanted to watch TV. It just seemed so…”

“Normal,” I finished.

“Yeah, normal.” She eyed me carefully then lifted a hand to rest it on my cheek. “Oh boy. Those are some big, big secrets you’re wearing, Jackson Meyer.”

I leaned in, resting my lips against her forehead, and closed my eyes. “I’m just now beginning to realize that my life resembles a very difficult game of chess. Keep this piece, sacrifice this one. Move this way and twenty moves from now …
checkmate.
”

She pulled away from me and lifted my arm around her shoulders, then curled up against my chest. The emotional walls between us had clearly been knocked down in the past twelve or so hours and I couldn’t think of either a better or worse time for this to happen. Instead of thinking, I sank farther into the couch and pulled her a little tighter into my arms and just tried to breathe … in … and out.

Emily eventually returned and stood in front of us, waiting for someone to make a decision. Holly yawned, and mumbled, “A few more hours of ignorance, please? We shouldn’t go anywhere in the middle of the night, right?”

Emily took the spot on the couch beside me and we all sat in silence watching episode after episode of
Iron Chef
until the sun began to rise and drift through the space between the blinds in Holly’s living room.

Around six-thirty in the morning, after both Holly and Emily had drifted off, the doorknob to the front door twisted. My senses were immediately alert, but I relaxed after watching the intruder’s obviously noisy and amateur method of entering the house. It wasn’t anyone who shouldn’t be here.

Katherine Flynn stumbled through the door, tugging a rolling, carry-on-sized suitcase. She froze the second her eyes landed on me. “What—?”

Her voice must have pulled Holly from her sleep because she jerked awake and was on her feet so suddenly it startled me and Emily. I figured she’d rush into an explanation about why I was here while her mom was out of town. Once, with the original Holly, we’d been caught in a more-than-compromising position when her mom had been out for the day and returned about five hours early to find us asleep in Holly’s bed, clothing spread out all over the floor and the awful casserole we’d concocted for lunch, and then forgotten about, literally on fire in the oven, smoke filling every room.

But today, Holly didn’t start explaining or even mention me at all. She just fell into her mom’s arms, hugging her like she hadn’t seen her for weeks, which honestly was about right. Katherine looked extremely startled but squeezed her back anyway.

“What’s going on, Holly? What happened?”

My chest ached and my throat tightened. This was too hard to watch. Seeing Holly’s future a year from now had nearly killed me and
this
? This show of emotion was like stomping on a soldier who had already fallen to the ground.

“Nothing,” Holly mumbled, her voice shaking as she sniffled. “I just … I mean…”

I cleared my throat. “There was a security breach at work yesterday. It was pretty scary and Holly didn’t want to come home alone.” I glanced at Emily, who nodded her encouragement. “And I’m taking care of my
cousin.
So we just thought we’d hang out here with her until you got back.”

“You work together?” Katherine said over Holly’s shoulder. After I nodded my answer, she pulled back and got a good look at her daughter for the first time. I braced myself for the reaction. “Did you … did you cut your hair?”

Holly laughed and quickly brushed away a few tears. “Yeah, I cut my hair. It was just too long.”

“You look thinner. Did you forget to eat all week or something?” Katherine turned Holly around and guided her toward the kitchen. “You’re eating every bite of breakfast that I make you and taking every single vitamin I set in front of you, understood?”

Katherine shook her head, sighing, but I could tell she didn’t mind taking care of her daughter, maybe even enjoyed the opportunity. “I knew you should have gone to Indiana with me. Grandpa insisted you were old enough to stay on your own. Shows how much he knows, right?”

Emily and I followed them into the kitchen and sat at the small round table with Holly as her mother shuffled around, quickly putting a meal together for her allergy-ridden, vegetarian daughter.

After the basic introductions, with Katherine’s back to us as she cooked, we answered casual questions as best as we could.

“How old are you, Emily?”

“Twelve,” Emily said.

Katherine spun around to look her over carefully. “Older than I would have guessed. Reminds me of someone else I knew at that age…” She tossed a grin in Holly’s direction.