Timestorm (36 page)

“So, like, time travel during a tornado could be easier or more effective?” Courtney asked.

“That’s the idea,” Marshall said, taking over for Adam. “But Eileen didn’t have the benefit of test subjects and advanced equipment to study major elements of weather throughout history as Mr. Silverman did during his six months at Eyewall headquarters.”

I turned my eyes to Adam. “That’s what you did there?”

He and I had talked about so many things during the three-day walk from Misfit Island to Eyewall headquarters, but this apparently wasn’t one of those subjects.

“Yeah, they wanted to find ways to increase the cloned time traveler’s power to equal the level of the originals. Emily was the only subject who exceeded the originals. No others even came close to matching them.”

“But why didn’t they just copy the experiment they used to create Emily?” I asked.

A grin spread across Adam’s face. “They did. Thomas and Dr. Ludwig nearly went insane trying to figure out what was different about her. They’ll never figure it out because it goes against everything they believe.”

“What?” Courtney asked. “What’s different about Emily?”

Marshall looked right at me, his face completely impassive. “She uses her power the same way that Jackson does. She feels her way through it. It’s emotionally driven. She began using her power at eight years old. Since her brain was still developing, it easily adapted and expanded to allow her to hold on to her superior intelligence and more powerful time-travel skill in addition to an uncanny ability to feel the change in air pressure, the buzzing she describes when she’s around me or other jumpers. Unlike the others, she’s going to fight the emotional overload you described before forever. It might get easier, but it will always be a battle for her. She was altered about five years into the experiment. Someone showed her a side of life she hadn’t known before. One that includes love and hate.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who altered her?”

Adam shook his head. “We don’t know. I thought maybe it was Blake but you said he hadn’t met her before Misfit Island, right?”

“Right,” Courtney answered.

“Blake would have told us if he’d known Emily before. We were all trying to understand Emily’s breakdown.” I sat there in silence for a few seconds, mulling over the fact that Emily was like me in more ways than I’d realized, only she had never known a normal life. She’d always been a pawn in someone’s big plan. Even when she’d been helping Marshall by showing up and giving me information and answers, she was a pawn in
his
plan. I understood why, I just couldn’t help but want her to get the opportunity to live. To truly live. “Emily isn’t going to have to go on this mission with us, is she?”

Marshall looked to Adam, who spoke up immediately. “Eileen’s formula calls for two original time travelers performing simultaneous jumps. Since you and Courtney are half-breeds, you count as one.”

“And I count as two,” Marshall said firmly. “The child has been through enough. She’ll be left here.”

As opposed to the bottom of the Hudson? I really needed Adam to get to the point now. “Where exactly are we going to hold hands and time-jump?”

“A maelstrom,” Adam said. “That’s the weather element that provides the most powerful time-travel source. There’s an invisible current that will multiply the force of your time jump to such a high level, it’ll create a timestorm and thus destroy World B.”

“Ending the delusions that people are already having before they reach potent levels,” Marshall finished.

“A maelstrom? Like a whirlpool?” I asked.

“Totally not the Hudson then,” Courtney muttered.

“Yes, it’s a whirlpool.” Marshall turned to Adam again. “And if we aim for the most powerful maelstrom, we have an even better chance at success.”

Adam nodded, glancing wearily at me and then Courtney.

“Like the Loften Maelstrom,” I said. “From ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom’ … that Edgar Allan Poe story. That’s Norway, right?”

Courtney’s eyes widened. “Norway!”

“Saltstraumen is the most powerful,” Marshall said. “Also off the coast of Norway.”

This was all getting too insane for me to grasp. I needed it broken down into simple terms so that I could begin mentally preparing myself. “So, we’re going to head on over to Norway, paddle off the coast in our North Face jackets, follow the signs that lead to the giant swirling whirlpool, and then do a time jump? To where?”

Marshall didn’t even attempt to put it gently and at this point, I appreciated the straightforward approach. “We won’t be time-jumping from the boat, we’ll be actually jumping off the boat. If I’m understanding everything that Eileen and Mr. Silverman have laid out for us correctly, we’ll need to jump from the most powerful access point and that will be as close to the bottom of the ocean as we can get. As far as where we’ll be aiming for, it needs to be the largest, longest jump possible. Since I’ve seen the point the world ends, I will pull us toward that year and date. Just before we leave the boat, I’ll describe this location to you in enough detail that you’ll be able to use your own mind to search for it.”

“Great.” I pressed my forehead against my hands and tried to breathe normally. “When exactly have you had time to go and visit the end of the world? With leading a division and signing up my friends and loved ones for the CIA…”

“Eileen provided me with the dates based on her theories and I performed the action to provide that data for her research. Trust me when I say this,” Marshall added. “Your brain will not survive the jump this far into the future. You won’t bleed to death and become covered with bruises and experience the incapacitating pain you experienced when jumping to 3200. The lack of oxygen from being underwater prior to jumping combined with the distance of the jump will be enough. We’ll all be dead upon arrival.”

I stopped breathing.

Courtney’s leg pressed against mine. Her breath caught in identical fashion to mine. There was no denying the fact that I was scared shitless. My hands shook and I balled them up into fists to hide it. I didn’t want Adam or Courtney to know I still had doubts.

Marshall stood up, looking almost relaxed, or at least, the same as he always looked. “We’ll leave tomorrow at 0400 hours. I’ll arrange the flight and the boat upon our arrival in Norway. I will also see to it that no one is in any condition to try to stop us from completing this mission. Mr. Silverman, I trust that you’ll keep this information under complete lock and key?”

“What about after?” Adam managed to croak.

“What you tell Tempest Division agents after our mission is of no concern to me whatsoever.” Marshall angled himself to face me and Courtney. “Take the rest of the day to fulfill any last-minute tasks of your choosing.”

He made it sound like he was leaving us time to pick up travel-sized toiletries. Not to say good-bye to everyone. Good-bye to life itself.

The second Marshall was out of sight, Courtney covered her face with her hands and started crying. She leaned against my chest and the crying turned into shaking sobs. I sat there with my arms around her, my eyes completely dry, and waited until she could breathe again.

Adam’s head was down, his fingers dragging furiously through his hair over and over. “I hate this. I hate knowing these answers. I hate knowing the bigger picture.”

I looked over his way, desperate for a guarantee and assurance that it would all be worth it. “Will it really work?”

He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I wish so badly right now that I could tell you no or even that I don’t know, but it makes so much sense.”

Courtney stopped crying and used my sleeve to wipe her face. “Then we’re doing it. We have to.”

Grief sat heavily on my heart, but this type of grief came with a complete lack of guilt, which I welcomed. I brushed the remaining tears from Courtney’s face and nodded.

“We have to avoid Dad if we can,” Courtney said. “It’ll be so hard … God, I just want to say good-bye, but he’ll know. He’ll see it on our faces and try to stop us.”

“I think Marshall must be planning on drugging everyone tonight or something,” I said. “So then Dad’ll wake up and we’ll already be—”

“Gone,” Courtney finished for me.

She started crying again and all I could do was hold her and let her fight this emotional battle in her own way. That was all we could do at this point.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

DAY 3: 2009. 1:20
P.M.

I was rifling through a medicine-supply closest in the underground hospital when Holly bounded into the exam room.

“Fancy meeting you here.” She grinned at me, waiting for some clever response, and then kept talking. “So, I was thinking that since my mom is working all day, maybe we could hang out today.”

I stared at Holly, a bag of pills hanging limply in my hands. I hadn’t planned on seeing her. I hadn’t planned on even talking to her, fearing she’d change my mind, but looking at her now, I knew I wouldn’t chicken out. Not if chickening out meant Holly slitting her arms with razors and hanging herself in a hospital room. And now I wanted more than anything to be with her for a little while.

My smile wasn’t even forced. It was genuine. “Give me a few minutes to get some more medicine for Courtney?”

“That’s perfect because Dr. Melvin wants to scan my brain, so I’ll be in the FMRI center.” She opened the door again and called over her shoulder. “Come find me when you’re done.”

I turned my attention to the closet and removed the small scrap of paper I had written medication names on. I was pretty sure Marshall wouldn’t want us drugged up and loopy for the actual mission but I sure as hell wasn’t about to sit on a seven-hour flight doing nothing but thinking about what would happen after we arrived at our destination. I wanted to be out cold the second I sat down and not wake up until we got there.

I read the list carefully and filled a few empty bottles, which I stuffed into my backpack. I added plenty enough for Holly in case we ended up in the same place tonight. If anyone was going to prevent her from waking up and stopping me from leaving in the morning, I wanted it to be me and not Marshall.

After I finished in the supply closet, I headed up the elevator to the FMRI room. Even before seeing Holly, I had planned on going in there to finally give Kendrick the letter and ring I had promised Blake I’d pass along.

Kendrick was seated in the control room alone while Holly’s head disappeared into the tunnel. I knocked on the window and Kendrick buzzed me in.

“Holly,” she said into the microphone. “You’re going to hear a lot of clicking. That’s normal; try to breathe and keep your heart rate from fluctuating.”

“How’s it going?”

Kendrick’s eyes were glued to the computer screen as Holly’s brain image lit up in a multitude of colors. “Not too bad. Her scan looks great so far. Mason had some slight damage and Stewart, too. Nothing major. But your dad and Holly look like they didn’t actually jump to the year 3200. It’s amazing how resilient the two of them are.”

It was a relief to hear this about Holly, and I already knew Dad was a survivor. “That’s good. I was worried about her.”

Kendrick glanced sideways at me and smiled. “So tell me about this partnership we had in another version of this world?”

I released a nervous laugh. “Right. We had an interesting dynamic, that’s for sure. I was all antisocial, I’m the job—”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You, antisocial? I can’t even fathom that. Not that we’ve ever socialized much but I read plenty of reports.”

“Yeah, yeah, so I’ve heard.” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I was focused on work and avoiding getting too personal and you were constantly like,
‘Let’s hang out, let’s talk about our feelings. This is where I want to have my honeymoon someday. Where do you want to have yours? Why haven’t you thought about this before? Are you having fun yet, Jackson? Isn’t this great? Let’s be friends.’
And our introduction came after I’d spent over two months going neck and neck with Stewart, throwing daily insults at each other. Needless to say, I was very confused by your approach and pretty much backed away with my hands in the air.”

She laughed and shook her head. “You make me sound like one of those talking dolls where you pull the string on the back and they say a total of five different phrases. I’m so not like that. In any version of this universe.”

I shrugged. “Hey, I’m just repeating the facts. I do have a photographic memory and you did say all of those things at one point or another.”

Her eyes narrowed and pink rushed to her cheeks. “This was a platonic partnership, right? I mean you did hug me when I first saw you the other night.”

“Actually…” I wiped the amusement from my face. “We were passionate lovers and you had three of my babies.”

Her glare faltered for a split second, and then she released a breath and turned her attention back to the computer screen. “Real funny, Jackson. All right, so I drove you crazy with my friendliness and then what happened? Eventually you caved?”

“My dad disappeared. He was supposed to be on this mission with Marshall and we came back to New York without either of them. And none of the agents except Dad and Marshall knew that I could time-travel. Then I found out about Holly’s being an agent and that Adam was dead. I couldn’t get through it alone.” I raised my gaze to meet hers, remembering all this made me wish for that Kendrick again so I could thank her. “And you were there. It was some of the worst moments of my entire life and you were there for me. That’s not something I can easily forget, even if you don’t have those memories right now.”

She turned to face me, silence filling the room for several long seconds while she absorbed everything I’d just revealed. “Well, I’m sure if I was there for you, it probably went both ways. You must have helped me out, too.”

This was the perfect window into what I’d come here to talk to her about. What I needed to give her. “Maybe a little. You told me about your family. I think you needed to say it out loud. Probably to someone who understood that kind of loss and I did. In a lot of ways, you reminded me what it was like to be human again. To feel things. I hated you for that, but at the same time, I appreciated it.”