Strike (16 page)

I stared at the image of the globe and the reality of what Earth had become. It was a devastating reality that, unlike everything else we’d seen, seemed possible.

“Living in a city is like being jammed into a crowded ant colony. There are no private homes, only government-controlled housing. Don’t even ask about crime. These buildings we’re in? These beautiful buildings? They’re all made from recycled plastic and other waste. They’re trash. Literally. Tori ran her hand along the arm of the chair she was sitting in, trying to grasp the concept of a world that was made from recycled junk.

“If that weren’t bad enough, the inevitable happened. Fossil fuels dried up. Natural gas, oil, coal . . . all spent. That threw the world into chaos. The Middle East spiraled into anarchy because the money dried up along with the oil. The stock market didn’t just crash, it crumbled and disappeared because the rules of normal commerce didn’t apply anymore. Fortunes were lost, big and small. The world came dangerously close to going dark. Everyone saw it coming, the same as with climate change, but no practical alternative energy had been developed. Private industry didn’t bother trying to develop anything because it was too expensive. The only realistic alternative was nuclear power. Now it’s the prime source of energy. Everything you’ve seen, like the planes and the cars and the weapons and even this computer right here, is nuclear powered. It’s convenient and practical and there’s an endless supply. That’s the good news. Bad news is that it needed to be developed so quickly that precautions weren’t taken. After all, the lights had to be kept on. But there was a cost. The radiation from billions of nuclear powered devices increased the cases of cancer a thousand fold.”

“What about the miracle medicine?” Tori asked. “Doesn’t that help?”

“No. It regenerates tissue, but it doesn’t cure disease. People are physiologically better off than ever. They’re more athletic. They’re stronger. They never have to worry about injury. It’s great, except that the average lifespan for a man living in the United States is now only forty-two years old. Women live slightly longer. Forty-three. Haven’t seen many elderly people around, have you? With the lack of farmland, growing enough food to feed the population is next to impossible. What we get is mostly beans and rice. Yum.”

“It’s a nightmare,” Tori said.

“And those are just the highlights.”

“No wonder everyone’s walking around like robots,” Tori said. “It’s like mass depression.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Olivia said. “The number-one concern on everyone’s mind is survival. There’s no value put on art, music, or literature. We all just live day to day, waiting for the next disaster to strike.”

“With no joy,” Tori said.

“It’s everyone’s worst fears come true,” I said.

“Not everyone’s,” Olivia said. “That’s where things got really ugly. By stepping into the future, the government and military leaders of your time got a glimpse of what was to come. But they didn’t do anything about it. I can’t say they didn’t try, but they failed. They didn’t push for the development of safe alternative fuels, because the business community didn’t see the potential for profit. They didn’t press the issues on climate change because they couldn’t convince enough people that it was real. People still drove their big cars and kept burning coal to create the electricity that kept the factories pumping out goods. The population kept increasing while the food supply dwindled. They saw what was coming, but it didn’t make any difference.”

“That seems . . . impossible,” Tori said.

“But it isn’t. The fact that nothing changed is at the very heart of the war we’re fighting. The people of my time live in hell, and they hold the people of your time responsible. There were nearly seventy years of diplomacy when the United States Governments from two different eras worked together to try and avert this nightmare. They failed. Miserably. The people of the past were given a gift, a chance to reverse the fate of the world. That stupid bomb test offered a chance to get it right . . . but they didn’t. It was out of desperation that my government, and the military, quietly devised a plan to try and save our people. To save our planet.”

“They invaded the past,” I said, hardly believing the words.

“They went public a few years ago,” Olivia said. “They revealed the existence of the Bridge. They told us about the years of futile negotiations to try to get the people of the past to change course and how they were met with nothing but resistance. It was all part of the plan. They were building up hatred for those who were responsible for the horror. It was the only way to get the people to accept . . .”

“Genocide,” Tori said.

“Yeah. Genocide.”

“Whoa, wait,” Kent said. “What if the people in the past listened? If they made any changes, even small ones, it would have completely altered the future. What’s it called? The Butterfly Effect? Everything would have changed. Different people would have been born. People from here might suddenly disappear because every little change would create an entirely different future. If the people of the past made big changes it might have actually destroyed the people trying to save their own future.”

“Except it didn’t work that way,” Olivia said. “They did simple experiments to see how changing the past would alter the future. What they found was it didn’t. Nothing changed. They planted time capsules in the past and when they went to dig them up in my time they weren’t there. They planted newspaper articles in major publications back in the fifties and sixties but when they searched for them in the archives of the present, they no longer existed. They finally concluded that if an event happens, it can’t be altered. The two eras exist completely separate from one another. The past is yours. This future is ours. The two can’t be mixed. It’s like they’re two different worlds.”

“Or two different dimensions,” Kent said softly, trying to allow the reality to take hold in his own brain.

“So then what was the point?” I asked. “If this future couldn’t be avoided, why did they even try to get people from the past to change?”

“Good question,” Olivia said. “They said they were doing it for the good of mankind. It was the right and noble thing to do, even though we wouldn’t benefit. That’s what they said, but they were lying. It was all part of the plan.”

Olivia changed the hologram from the globe to a bird’s-eye view of an airfield that was filled with ominous black attack planes.

“Nobody in power admits it, but invasion became an option the moment they realized changing the past wouldn’t help the billions of diseased and starving people of our time. It’s a story as old as history. If a tribe can no longer sustain itself on its own land, it must expand. Since we never created colonies on other planets, there was nowhere for us to expand to.”

“Except the past,” I said gravely.

“Exactly. Once that decision was made, my people continued trying to convince the people of the past to see reason and change their ways, but it wasn’t to try to fix our world, it was to make sure that once we conquered and colonized the past, the new future would be a better one for us to live in.”

“Why didn’t they just tell them the truth?” Kent asked. “People from the future could just filter back and live in the past, right?”

Olivia gave Kent a sideways look and said, “Seriously? Filter back? Overpopulation is already a problem in your time. The world’s population has quadrupled since then. Where exactly would they go? You have some extra room at the Blackbird Inn?”

“Not funny,” Kent said with a frown.

“So they decided to just wipe out the population of the past to make room,” I said soberly.

“That’s about it.”

“And our government had no idea it was coming,” Tori said, dazed.

“Oh they knew,” Olivia said. “Or at least they suspected. That’s why they created SYLO. SYLO was supposed to be the force that held us back. But they had no idea of the firepower the Air Force was building. It took years, but the Air Force created a massive, lethal attack force. The people of the past didn’t stand a chance.”

“These guardians protect us from the gates of hell,” I said. “Or not.”

“Yeah, or not,” Olivia echoed.

Olivia turned off the hologram and sat back into the couch with a sigh.

“I joined the Air Force to help feed my family,” she said. “The military figured out pretty quick that I wasn’t one to carry a pulser and fight, so they made me a spy. An infiltrator. There were thousands of us who leaked through time over the years to blend in and learn about SYLO and the bases they were creating to stage their defense. That’s why I was on Pemberwick Island. There were dozens of us there. Granger knew that, he just wasn’t sure of who was who. Those people who were shot or arrested weren’t innocent islanders trying to escape, they were Retro spies.”

“Not all of them,” Tori said, bristling.

“No, not all of them,” Olivia said with sympathy. “Your father got caught in the crossfire. I’m so sorry for that.”

“We all got caught in the crossfire,” Kent said. “I lost my dad too.”

Olivia said, “Those SYLO bases were meant to preserve your old way of life and rebuild once the Retros were turned back. SYLO had no idea that so many of us were already inside those bases, waiting for the command to rise up and finish the job.”

“And SYLO had no idea how powerful the Retros really were,” I said.

There was a painfully long silence as we let the incredible information sink in. Everything Olivia said rang true. It all fit. It answered every question and made total sense . . . even the concept of stepping through time. That may have been the most outlandish concept of all, yet strangely it was the least disturbing.

“Can I ask you something?” Kent said in a meek voice.

“Sure,” Olivia replied.

“You talk about your government like they’re villains who fooled the people of the past into believing they were trying to help them while secretly planning their destruction. I get that, but what makes you any different? You’re just as cold-blooded as they are. Did we mean anything to you? Or were you just sticking with us to help root out survivors?”

Olivia didn’t answer right away. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried to speak but her voice cracked.

We all just stared at her, waiting for an answer.

“The more I learned about what they were planning, the more disgusted I became,” she said. “I tried to hide my real feelings because they don’t have much patience for traitors. I guess I didn’t do such a great job of keeping it to myself, because I was approached by the Sounders. They saw I had doubts. I learned that I wasn’t alone in thinking that the invasion would be a monstrous act against humanity. I planned on working with them from the inside to try to put an end to the madness, but that’s when I got shipped out to Pemberwick Island.”

“So you went along with the Air Force program after all,” Tori said.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said, trying to keep her emotions in check. “I was being watched constantly. Even after the attack began and we escaped from Pemberwick, I had to report in daily. Just like Jon Purcell.”

“Did you know Jon was a Retro?” I asked.

“Eventually. It made it that much more difficult to tell you the truth, but I did what I could to protect you. I didn’t want to go to Fort Knox because I feared we’d uncover another SYLO base. I didn’t want to go to Nevada and find survivors because I knew I would be leading the wolves to their door. That’s why I wanted to bail and go to Florida. I thought maybe we could just get out of the crossfire until everything settled. I was fully prepared to desert.”

“But you didn’t,” Kent said.

“I didn’t because I cared about you guys,” she said boldly. “And because I’m a Sounder. There are hundreds of us. None of us wanted the invasion but we didn’t have the power to stop it. I’m not even sure we had the
will
to stop it. That is, until it was too late and the horrible theory became a reality.”

“Why do you call yourself Sounders?” Tori asked.

“They had to come up with something that we could use to refer to each other without raising suspicion. Sound thinking doesn’t lead to genocide. There’s no justification for mass murder. I’m not sure I fully understood that until I saw what happened for myself. In Portland. And Boston. And every other place we visited from there to Las Vegas. The idea that so many lives, so many stories, had just ended was . . . it was mind numbing. All I wanted to do was get back here and reconnect with the Sounders. They needed to hear about what I saw. What
we
saw. They had to know the reality. It was the only way to convince them that we had to take action and do something before the rest of the people from the past were executed.”

“That all sounds very noble, but are there enough Sounders to derail the Air Force?” I asked.

The mischievous sparkle returned to Olivia’s eyes. I hadn’t seen that in a good long time.

“In pure numbers, not even close,” she said. “We can’t battle them outright. But there is a plan. We couldn’t set it in motion until we found a critical piece of the puzzle. Now we think we’ve got that piece.”

“What is it?” Tori asked.

Olivia smiled slyly and said, “You.”

I
had heard enough.

“Why?” I asked, staring straight at Olivia.

“Why what?” she asked in her most innocent voice.

“Why should we believe anything you say? You’ve been playing us. Every single thing you’ve said about yourself for the last five months has been a lie. Give us one good reason why we should trust you now.”

Olivia took a moment to collect her thoughts, then stood up slowly and faced me.

“Because you want your life back, or at least you want to live the rest of your life as close to normal as you can. If that’s what you want, Tucker, I’m your only hope. The Sounders are your only hope. Is there anything you’ve seen since stepping through the Bridge that makes you think I’m lying now? Is there anything you’ve seen since it hit the fan on Pemberwick Island that makes you think I’m not telling the truth about all this? Tell you what, I can show you something that’ll freak you out even more than the story I just told you.”

“Oh please don’t,” Kent said.

Olivia reached down to the control panel and let her fingers hover over the keyboard.

“I can show you history. My history. When that bomb opened the Bridge in 1952 it started the clock on an entirely new existence. But the old existence didn’t go away. It’s still there. You’re in it right now. Like I said, you can’t change events that already happened.”

She waved her fingers over the controls, teasing us.

“You want to see the history of my time, Tucker?
This
time? I can show you what became of you as an adult. What do you think of that? Do you want to know the day you died? What about you, Tori? Your dad lived to a ripe old age. You know what else? Marty Wiggins went on to play for USC. Your father didn’t die from an overdose of the Ruby, Kent. And Quinn wasn’t killed out on that boat. I looked it all up. That’s my history . . . the history that led to the world you’re in right now. When we go back through the Bridge, we’re not just going back in time, we’re going back to a different existence. A new existence that was created when that bomb went off. The future of that reality hasn’t been written yet.”

“I think I like our old existence better,” Kent said.

“Really?” Olivia shot back. “You like this? You like how the world turned out?”

“No, but I like that the Retros didn’t wipe out billions of people. And oh yeah, my father.”

“There’s the trade-off,” Olivia said. She walked toward the large window and stared out at the filthy desert city. “Which is the bigger crime? Wiping out most of humanity in a single invasion, or slowly destroying an entire planet for multiple generations to come?”

“It sounds like you’re agreeing with the invasion,” I said.

Olivia spun away from the window to face us. Her eyes were wild and her breathing was heavy. She was way more upset than I had realized.

“Nobody is innocent here,” she said. “But we have to live with what we do and I can’t live with being an executioner. That’s why I’m a Sounder and that’s why I want to stop the invasion. But don’t think for a second that going back to your old life would make everything all better because it wouldn’t.”

Through the window behind her, a large dark shape floated down from above and hovered outside.

“What the . . . ?” Kent said.

“Get down!” I screamed.

Olivia’s eyes went wide and she spun around to face the black attack drone that loomed outside.

I reacted without thinking, jumped at her, and tackled her to the floor. An instant later the window exploded from the impact of the energy cannon that had been fired at us.

The Retros had tracked us down.

Bits of glass and recycled garbage rained down on us as the plane continued to fire, pulverizing the outside wall and the contents of the small apartment.

“Crawl back to the door!” Tori screamed over the sounds of destruction.

We were all flat on our bellies. Safe, but for how long? Once the outside wall was destroyed there would be no more protection.

Olivia went first, crawling for the front door of the apartment. The rest of us followed, pushing our way through the growing rubble as the black marauder pounded away unmercifully. Kent shot past her and got to the door first. He bravely reached up and opened the door so we could all scramble into the corridor.

“The elevator,” Tori yelled and started running for it.

“No!” Olivia shouted. “They’ll take control of that. The stairs.”

She led us in the opposite direction, sprinting for the stairwell on the far end of the corridor. As she ran, Olivia held her communicator up to her ear.

“They tracked us to my quarters,” she screamed over the sounds of her apartment being blasted apart. “We need to come in. Now!”

She pushed open the fire door that led to the stairs and ran down faster than was safe.

“Four of us,” Olivia shouted into the device without breaking stride. “Give me a location.”

“Location for what?” Kent asked, breathless.

“We’ll get picked up and taken somewhere safe,” Olivia called back to him.

“Safe like this place?”

Olivia didn’t have a comeback to that.

“Understood,” she said into the device. “Five minutes.” She jammed the communicator into her pocket and called back to us, “We’ll get picked up five blocks from here.”

“Or they’ll pick up our pieces downstairs,” Kent said. “What the hell is going on?”

“They must have identified me from the roof of the Academy,” Olivia said. “Like I said, they don’t appreciate traitors.”

We hit the ground floor and blasted out of a back door to find ourselves in a narrow alley between buildings. All four of us instantly looked to the sky for fear of seeing the black plane hovering above.

“Gee, just like old times,” Kent said.

“Does the Air Force know about the Sounders?” I asked.

“They know there’s an underground but I don’t know how much they actually know about us, or who any of us are.”

She took off running down the alley and we followed closely. When we reached the corner we all cautiously peered out to see two Retro attack planes hovering high above the building, pulverizing the spot that used to be Olivia’s apartment.

“I guess they know about
you
,” Tori said.

Olivia shrugged and said, “Yeah, guess I’ve been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force.”

She then led us on a race through the narrow streets of the filthy city. Olivia seemed to know exactly where she was going, dodging down multiple narrow alleyways while keeping off the wider streets. We passed hundreds of people who were either dressed in camouflage fatigues or the dark-pants-colorful-shirt uniforms. None of what we were seeing seemed real, least of all Olivia, who led us with such confidence.

She had played the role of the spoiled rich girl well. The only hints she had given up that there was more to her were the few times she did something totally uncharacteristic, like when she cared for Tori’s wound after being shot by the SYLO sniper or when she saved Kent from being crushed in the Las Vegas casino. I saw her perform heroically those few times but thought it was a fluke. I had no idea just how much she was hiding.

“Walk,” she commanded. “There’s less chance of us being spotted.”

Gratefully, we slowed to a walk. I was totally winded. It was torture sprinting through a jammed, polluted city in the burning desert.

“This city only exists because of the Bridge?” I asked.

“It’s the training and staging area for the invasion and colonization,” she answered. “Every last person here is preparing to move into the past. They all have specific jobs and have already been assigned a new home.”

“What’s your assignment?” Tori asked. “Pemberwick Island?”

“Hardly,” she said with an eye roll, flashing a hint of the Olivia we used to know. “Because of my advance work I was given my choice of where to settle.”

“And where’s that?” Kent asked.

“Paris. I always wanted to see the City of Lights.”

“You’ve never been there in your time?” Tori asked.

“It doesn’t exist in this time. Paris is a polluted salt marsh.”

There was no escaping the reality of what the world had become. It almost made me feel sorry for the people of 2324. Almost. They may have been backed into a desperate corner by the ignorance of those who lived before them, but they were still a cold-blooded society who believed mass murder was the solution. At least most of them did.

Then there were the Sounders—proof that some people still had a conscience. Whatever their plan was for derailing the invasion, it was looking more like the best (and only) hope for salvaging whatever remained of the world we knew. Our world.

As we moved through those dusty desert streets I knew in my heart that I would do whatever it was they asked of me. I was going to have to become as cold-blooded as the people we were trying to defeat. I would become as ruthless as Feit. As callous as Bova. I would do whatever it took and I welcomed the chance. I owed it to my friends, and to my family. My mother was back in that Retro camp. As far as I knew, my father was still on Pemberwick Island. I had to fight for them. For us.

Olivia threw up her hand and we stopped at the edge of an intersection that was crowded with people. I listened for the telltale musical sound of the attack planes, but only heard the white noise of a few hundred people shuffling on their way to wherever.

“There it is,” she said and took off quickly, leading us through the intersection until we came upon a black military-looking vehicle.

“Get in,” she commanded and went for the shotgun seat.

Kent grabbed her arm to stop her.

“Tell us where we’re going,” he said.

“To a safe house,” she said.

“I’m not going,” Kent said adamantly. “Being with you guys is too risky.”

“Seriously?” Olivia shot back. “Taking you in is a far bigger risk for us. Feit wants your heads.”

“So then why protect us?” Tori asked.

“Because the invasion is about to happen. People are going to start moving through the Bridge to repopulate the past. Before that happens they plan on wiping out millions more from your time. Either we stop them now, right now, or blood will start flowing again. We have a plan but we need you three to pull it off. I’m trusting you. Can you trust me?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Kent said.

He wanted to grab some control over the situation, but he was floundering.

Tori shot past him and got in the car.

“Wait, no,” Kent whined.

We were starting to draw the attention of people in the street.

“Get in, Kent,” I commanded. “Now.”

Kent snapped a surprised look at me. He’d never heard me talk to him like that before because I hadn’t. But this was no time to worry about hurt feelings. The Retros were coming after us. They were coming after the Sounders. People were going to die. It was now or never.

“C’mon, Kent,” Tori said, coaxing him sternly. “We don’t have a lot of choice here.”

Kent was mad and still hurting over Olivia’s deceitfulness. I wanted to feel sorry for him but I couldn’t. Not just then.

“Please, Kent,” Olivia said gently, sounding like her old self.

Kent may not have trusted Olivia. But he still cared about her. With a huff, he climbed into the backseat.

I jumped in right after.

At the wheel of the vehicle was a bald guy with dead eyes wearing Air Force fatigues. Under any other circumstances I’d be afraid of that guy, but I was glad he was in charge of getting us out of there and away from a predator drone. You want that job to go to a steely eyed professional.

“Name?” Olivia asked.

“Statham,” he replied with no emotion.

“Situation?”

“Bad boys are circling. I’m to get you and three packages safely to Mayberry. Priority One.”

“Good. Go.”

Statham hit the accelerator, the music grew, and the vehicle launched forward.

“Packages?” Tori said skeptically. “Mayberry? Isn’t that a little cloak and dagger?’

“It’s a lot cloak and dagger,” Olivia said. “It’s what’s kept us alive.”

Statham knew how to drive and it had nothing to do with being safe and obeying traffic laws. We screamed down the narrow street, forcing people to jump out of our way.

Olivia pulled back a panel in the ceiling to reveal a sunroof. She wasn’t trying to get light. She was looking for the drones.

“How far?” I asked.

“The edge of the city,” Olivia answered. “In the industrial sector. Ten minutes away.”

I realized she must have been talking about the area of the city I saw from the rooftop that was belching colorful smoke from tall stacks.

Statham took a couple of quick turns, I assume to make it more difficult for us to be followed. I don’t know how he knew where he was going since every building looked exactly the same.

“We’ve lost them,” Olivia finally said.

“How did they find you in the first place?” I asked. “Just because they saw you on the roof?”

“That must be how,” Olivia said. “I’ve never been under suspicion before.”

We drove past the last of the tall buildings to find ourselves in a section of town that was cluttered with low industrial-looking structures, enormous tanks, and old-fashioned soot-belching smokestacks. I watched as they poured colorful, deadly clouds into the sky that fell back to earth as burning rain.

“We’re going just beyond the sluice,” Olivia explained.

“Sluice?” Tori said.

“It’s a huge gutter for industrial waste. Every last one of the factories dumps its runoff into it. It’s disgusting. I don’t even know where it goes. Somewhere out in the desert. When we drive over it, don’t breathe.”

“Over?” Kent said, nervously.

We were headed directly toward a two-lane bridge that spanned the “sluice.” There were similar bridges spaced fifty yards apart, all crossing the wide river of filth. It looked to be a few hundred yards to the far side. We hit the bridge, which ramped up until we were speeding high over the foul-smelling sludge. Looking over the edge we saw it was a long way down to the dreck, which was just as well. It smelled bad enough from where we were. If we were any closer it would have been impossible to breathe.