Timestorm (39 page)

My limbs and my heart were numb again. “I don’t know. I think I’d like to think about nothing. Or maybe everything … everything good, at least?”

Tears tumbled down Courtney’s cheeks, but she sniffled and nodded her agreement. I stepped closer to hug her and noticed dark clouds rolling over us, a clap of thunder breaking the rhythm of my heart in my ears. I glanced up at the sky, now growing dark, and then over at Marshall.

“Chief?”

Marshall’s face was filled with alarm as he raced across the boat. “We’ve got to go now!”

One look at Courtney and both of us hopped up onto the ledge, trying to balance in place, Marshall moving his tall figure up beside Courtney. I drew in a deep breath, staring at the ocean, focusing on the swirling water and nothing else.

I felt Courtney’s hand in mine, and then as I imagined my feet leaving the boat and hitting the cool water, I was falling backwards, my head slamming against the floor of the boat, the weight of a large body on top of me.

With all the force I could muster, I shoved my attacker off me and onto his back, then drew my gun and pressed it to his temple. I didn’t recognize him, but he had the familiar features of one of the cloned time travelers. From the corner of my eye, I saw over a dozen more of them popping into view, landing on our boat.

They knew. They knew what we were trying to do.

“Let’s go, now!” Chief Marshall shouted.

I pulled myself off the attacker as Courtney reached out a hand to help me up to the ledge.

And then I saw them. Hostages. One for every two time travelers.

“No … oh no.”

All the faces I had never wanted to see again, especially not here, came into focus—Adam, Mason, Stewart, twelve-year-old Emily, Dad … and Holly. Each of them struggled to free themselves from their attackers, but they were halfhearted attempts, as if they’d been knocked out for the time jump.

They didn’t just know what we were going to do, they knew what would stop us.
There was no point in saving the world if all the people I was dying for would be killed anyway.

“Jackson, now!” Marshall said again, preparing to pull himself onto the ledge.

Before anyone could stop him, one of the dudes grabbed Courtney from the ledge and yanked her back into the boat, holding her upright with an elbow hooked around her neck. I released the guy I was holding at gunpoint as both Marshall and I sprang to Courtney’s rescue.

The clouds had turned the sky nearly black, and thunder rolled over us in loud booms. A bolt of yellow-and-pink lightning burst through the sky, illuminating Chief Marshall’s stunned expression.

Courtney and I both watched as Chief Marshall fell to the ground, as if in slow motion, blood oozing from his head, his chest … everywhere.

I froze on the spot, my eyes following the trail that led to Thomas, holding a gun. Courtney’s eyes were wide with panic. Red flashed in front of me. Intense fury coursed through my body and I didn’t even bother with my weapon. I used my newfound powers, moved with such speed that I must have been a blur in motion. I extricated Courtney from the cloned time traveler’s hold, then knocked him out before he even had time to react.

Without stopping for breath, I headed straight for Thomas. But he showed no fear. His mouth remained a thin line and the second I launched myself at him, one hand reached out, a small metal object clutched in his fingers, barely grazing my skin.

My body hit the deck of the boat hard, my mind clear as anything, unlike whatever he’d done to me at Eyewall headquarters. But everything else was paralyzed.

This is what he did to Blake. He made him watch, unable to move, while Kendrick’s family was killed.

Thomas kept the weapon pressed into my gut as he leaned over. Rain fell down in giant sheets, pounding against the deck, hitting me square in the face. I couldn’t even blink away the drops. More lightning burst through the sky and thunder clapped. All the time jumps were causing a huge storm to brew. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this happen.

“Look at us,” Thomas said to me, knowing that all I had in my line of sight was the dark sky above us. “This is all we have left of the project that took over twenty years to build. Twenty of us. And now you want to go and destroy the timeline that allows my people to use their power. Look at the abilities you’ve developed, I’ve never seen any one of us move the way that you just did. Of
course,
I’m going to have to kill you now. You’re just too dangerous to live.”

I yelled every curse word imaginable at him inside my head. The anger inside me felt so huge, it should have been strong enough to force my frozen body into action. Yet still I remained paralyzed. I had to get free. I had to get Dad and Courtney and Holly and Adam … and everyone out of this mess.

“What a waste,” Thomas spat, disgust filling his face as the rain soaked both of us.

The sound of a gun’s firing broke through the storm and the crashing ocean. Thomas rolled to the side, dodging a bullet before glancing around, panicked. I didn’t know if it was the similar DNA or the fact that he and I had met like this a few times already, but it was like I could read his mind, could see him assess the situation and weight pros and cons of staying here with his people and fighting this battle or getting out alive so he could continue to lead this war and take the chance of no longer having a World B to bounce off.

His decision was clearly written on his face and he leaped into action. “Oh no you don’t!” I pinned him against the deck and the second I felt him pulling us to another time, I pressed myself, my thoughts, every bit of being into this space in time.

His eyebrows pulled together and he hollered in pain. “You don’t know what you’re up against, you don’t even know what you’re destroying!”

I gritted my teeth and pressed all my weight into his shoulders, “This time … I’m. Not. Letting. You. Go.” Pain shot through my head, but Thomas’s yells were louder and more urgent, echoing off the dark sky and emerging even through the rumble of thunder.

“Stop it! Stop it now! You’ll kill both of us!” The strain in his voice was all too familiar, taking me back to the minutes following my return to that rooftop after he’d tossed Holly from it.

Holly. Holly is here. I have to win this fight.

He pulled us harder into another time and I fought with every bit of strength I had. Through the pounding rain, I caught sight of the blue beginning to streak up my arms. It’s working.

And then someone yanked me up by the collar and the fire of a gunshot right beside my ear deafened me momentarily. Dad was holding me by the shirt collar, his gun in the other hand and his face filled with as much fury as it had been that day in the forest when the memory gas blinded him into thinking that I was Thomas. My gaze snapped back to the man I’d been running from for what felt like an eternity. Blood seeped across Thomas’s chest, his eyes wide with surprise, much like Marshall’s.

Both Dad and I were breathing heavy, staring down at a lifeless Thomas, but we only had a few seconds to absorb the magnitude of this moment before we became aware of the battle around us again.

“Jean!” one of Thomas’s men shouted.

I spun around to see a red-haired young woman just as Blake had described her in his memory files, fall to the deck, facedown, as a bullet from Stewart’s aimed pistol hit her square in the back.

In the half second it had taken me to scan the deck and assess the situation, Courtney had reached me, grabbing my arm. “Can we do it now? Without Chief Marshall?”

At that moment, through the storm, all the way across the deck while the others still fought our fight against Thomas’s remaining time travelers, my eyes met Emily’s and silent words were exchanged.

She knew. She’s here to be Marshall’s substitute.

As much as it pained me to accept it, as wrong as I thought this was, I could see myself having every one of these arguments with her and the determination to help, to fix the problem showing on her face. She gave me a tiny nod and began making her way through the battle toward us.

“Emily can help us,” I shouted to Courtney. “But we can’t leave them like this.”

I dove into action, moving with my newfound speed and agility, helping Holly take out two really big dudes.

“I knew you were drugging me the other night but I never thought it was to run away to Norway,” Holly shouted, throwing an elbow and then a kick into the side of a woman at least a foot taller than her. “I figured you had some mission to do and I trusted you! Why would you come here to fight this battle alone? You have plenty of people more than willing to help.”

The storm had turned violent, wind whipping hard, rocking the boat and making it difficult to stand or see. But somehow, only minutes later, the last body had fallen to the deck. Thomas’s army had been defeated.

I felt an unexpected surge of elation and satisfaction, but it dissolved the second Adam stumbled across the deck gripping my shoulder for support. “You should go now! Before anything else changes.”

Some kind of revelation must have clicked into place in Dad’s head because his eyes grew wide and he limped toward me. Blood was seeping through the leg of his jeans.

“Dad!” Courtney said, rushing to him. “You got shot.”

Collins whipped out a pocketknife and then sliced a big strip of T-shirt from the bottom of his shirt. He knelt in front of Dad, tying it around his thigh.

Dad barely took notice of this, his eyes locked on me and Courtney. “What are you doing, Jackson? What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Courtney said, finally getting close enough to get her arms around him.

I almost yanked her back, afraid Dad might hold her hostage. The storm grew more violent, and I realized that the boat needed to turn back and head for safety before it was too late.

“Let’s get out of here,” Collins said when he’d finished tying up Dad’s leg.

Dad stared at me, over Courtney’s shoulder, a pained expression on his face that had nothing to do with the bullet in his leg. “There’s no other way?”

I shook my head. “She warned you, Dad, remember?”

He closed his eyes briefly, swallowing hard, and nodded.

“What are you doing?” Holly asked, moving closer, fear dripping from every word.

With great strength, I forced myself to turn around and look at her. Her blond hair clung to the sides of her face, her blue eyes shining and lighting up with every bolt of lightning. I opened my mouth to answer her but no words came out.

“It’s the only way to stop the virus,” Adam said. “It’s the only way.”

Everybody held still, forming a horseshoe shape around me, Courtney, and Emily as we stood with our back to the ledge we had already unsuccessfully tried to jump from.

“What’s the only way?” Stewart asked. “What the hell is going on? We just killed the last twenty time-jumping cloned bastards and we’re about to die out here in this fucking storm if we don’t go now.”

“If they time-travel from the bottom of the maelstrom, they can destroy the alternate universe and end the virus,” Adam said.

I saw the plan click into place in everyone’s faces. Shock followed by shouted protests, but the only voice I heard was Holly’s.

“No! You can’t do this, Jackson! I won’t let you. I’ll hold you down if I have to.” She sprang toward me, like that was exactly what she intended to do, but luckily Adam grabbed her around the waist, dragging her farther away from me and the ledge.

Dad must have known that Adam wouldn’t last long against Holly because he hobbled over to me, wrapped his arms around me briefly, and whispered, “I love you.”

And then he spun around and moved to block Holly from me. The anger on her face, watching her fight off Adam like that after all we’d been through, the idea of leaving her hating me broke my heart a hundred more times.

Emily took my hand and tugged on it. “Come on, Jackson.”

But I couldn’t. Not yet. I shook off her grip and turned back to Holly. “This is all you get, Hol. I’m not going to change my mind and you’re gonna be okay. But if you don’t say good-bye, you’ll regret it forever.”

As the boat rocked and nearly tipped, I kept my eyes locked on her. She broke free of Adam’s grip and knocked Dad over, causing him to tumble right down next to Marshall’s body. I braced myself for a fight but instead she jumped into my arms, her legs wrapping around my waist, her mouth colliding with mine, kissing me so hard.

I staggered backwards a few steps before finding my balance and holding her tight. And I just let the moment consume me, standing there in the middle of the storm kissing, both of us crying, our fingers numb from cold and from holding on too tight.

“I love you, Jackson Meyer,” Holly said between kisses.

My heart swelled and broke at the same time.
She loves me. This Holly loves me.
“I love you, too, Holly. Forever. It’s always been you.”

I set her down on the deck and Adam was right behind Holly, pulling her into his arms. This time when Courtney and I climbed up on the ledge, my legs no longer trembled. Emily held my left hand and Courtney my right.

Just as my feet prepared to leave the ledge and head into the cold water, I saw Dad roll over from his position lying on the deck, rip the plastic bag from Marshall’s back and crush one of the tiny pills between his teeth. He rolled onto his back again and closed his eyes.

“No!” I shouted. “Dad!”

Courtney’s and Emily’s jumps had dragged me along with them, and I hit the water with a splash and a sting to every inch of my body. I fought against the waves, trying to turn back, but Courtney grabbed my shirt, struggling to tread water. “It’s okay, Jackson. It’s okay.”

“But he—”

“Did you really think he’d stick around with us gone?” she shouted. “I know I wouldn’t.”

I felt hot tears rolling down my face, mixing with the cold drops of rain. “I wouldn’t either.”

The tug of the whirlpool pulled us down and I quickly turned to Emily, looking into her tiny face. “I’m sorry you’re here, Emily. It’s not fair.”

“Everyone will be okay, Jackson,” she argued. “I’ve been hurting so much thinking about everything that’s wrong. I need to do this just as much as you.”