The Flight of the Silvers (11 page)

Amanda sat rigidly in her seat, her hands hidden deep inside her sleeves. “What happened?”

“I regret to say it’s our fault,” Czerny admitted. “Our security men gave him apacistene, a dermal sedative more commonly known as a baby spot.”

Hannah averted her gaze from the giant neon
TOLD YOU SO
that sat in place of her sister.

“It’s not a harmful drug by itself,” Czerny explained, “but it can be particularly strong on first-time users. The problem in this case is that Mr. Maranan had a high amount of alcohol in his bloodstream. The combination caused a toxic reaction and . . . well, you saw the results.”

“When can we see him?” Hannah asked.

“Not for a while,” Quint replied. “Once he’s sufficiently detoxified, he’ll be sure to join you.”

Zack glanced around uneasily. “I’m late to the party. I take it Theo’s another one of us.”

Hannah nodded. “Yeah. I met him right after you.”

“Wow. You do move fast.”

No one appreciated the joke, least of all the sisters. As he cooked in the heat of their smoldering glares, his inner Libby shook her head at him.
You never learn.

David wound his finger impatiently. “I’m glad Theo’s okay, but can we please get to the main topic at hand?”

Once again, Czerny deferred to his superior. Quint took an expansive breath.

“I know Dr. Czerny has told some of you about our organization, but for those who came in late, let me explain again. The Pelletier Group is a privately funded collective of physicists, all specialized in the study of temporal phenomena. We’re not beholden to any college or corporation. Our only mission is to follow the science, no matter where it takes us. It was through keen observation and a little dumb luck that science took us right to you.

“There’s a unique subatomic entity called a wavion that’s been fascinating physicists for decades. It moves differently, spins differently, clusters differently than any particle known to man. Though we still have much to learn about it, we know for a fact that wavions, when positively charged, move backward in time.”

David opened his mouth to speak. Quint cut him off with a curt finger.

“Thanks to their atypical nature, wavion clusters are easy to detect with the right technology. In fact, one of our first discoveries, four years back, was a fist-size concentration in a San Diego parking lot. Soon we discovered a handful of others, all scattered within a ten-mile radius. They were all the same size, all expanding at the same slow rate. After thirty months, the clusters had each grown into the same specific form.”

“An egg,” David mused.

Quint grinned at him. “Yes. Each eighty-one inches tall and fifty-five inches wide, all invisible to the human eye but very perceptible to our scanners. The images became even more interesting, one year ago, when we began to notice a distinct hollowness inside each formation. To our amazement, every gap took the frozen shape of a human being. Although we’re seeing you today for the first time, we’ve been familiar with your silhouettes for nearly a year.”

The room fell into addled silence. David shook his head. “That’s insane. You’re saying you’ve been observing us for months when it all just happened a few hours ago.”

“Like I said, charged wavions move backward in—”

“He gets the concept,” Zack said. “We all do. We’re just having a hard time stapling it to reality.”

David nodded at Zack. “Exactly. Yes. Just the notion of anything traveling back in time. I mean the logistics, the paradoxes . . .”

The physicists exchanged a brief glance, filled with quizzical interest and—in Czerny’s case—deep astonishment.
They’re surprised,
Mia noted.
Surprised at our surprise.

Quint stroked his chin in careful contemplation. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past five decades, it’s that time is more . . . flexible than we ever imagined. That’s the gentlest explanation I can offer at the moment. You seem like a smart young man, Mr. Dormer, and I’ll be happy to discuss it more in the days to come. But for now, in the interests of keeping things manageable—”

Zack cut him off with a bleak chuckle. “Oh, I think that ship has sailed and sunk, Doctor. But here’s something you can answer. You say you spent four years watching us from a distance, waiting for our eggs to hatch. I wasn’t anywhere near mine when your security goons got me.”

“Me neither,” Amanda added. “I was at least two miles away. How did you find us?”

“You’re still teeming in wavions,” Czerny replied. “They’re emanating from the silver bracelets you share. It’s nothing to fear. The particles are harmless. But they did make you easy to track.”

Zack curtly shrugged. “Okay, fine. But none of this explains how we got here.”

“Or where ‘here’ is,” Hannah added.

“Or what these things are,” said David, brandishing his bracelet.

Quint nodded at them with forced patience. “Yes. These are all pertinent questions. Mr. Trillinger, we don’t have an answer for you. Not yet. We can’t even offer a working theory until we speak with all of you in detail and get a better sense of the events leading up to your arrival. Mr. Dormer, we don’t have an answer for you either. Not yet. Now that we have the broken pieces of Ms. Given’s bracelet, we’re very eager to study them.”

Hannah didn’t learn until Czerny’s introductions that Amanda had dropped her married name. She’d thrown her sister a baffled look, only to get a vague and heavy expression in reply.

Now Quint turned to Hannah. “In answer to your question, I can only tell you what you already suspected. You’re on Earth, but a far different version than the one you knew.”

Hearing it out loud, delivered so bluntly, was enough to make several stomachs churn with stress.

“We’ve made tremendous advances in the field of temporal science,” Quint continued. “But for all our progress, our understanding of alternate timelines has never advanced beyond hypotheticals. I’ve devoted my career to these theories, but it’s not until today that I’ve been graced with proof. Actual living proof. Trust me when I say that your arrival is unprecedented. There’s nothing on record that’s even remotely similar to what we’re seeing now.”

Zack threw his hands up in frustration. Quint pursed his lips.

“You still seem to have a problem, Mr. Trillinger.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Look, don’t get me wrong. You’re excited and I’m happy for you. But at the moment, you have five people—sorry, six—who couldn’t give a crap about the advancement of temporal science. We’re confused and scared as hell. If you don’t have answers to the big questions, then at least tell us what you plan to do with us. And before you say we’re not prisoners here, you can drop the whole Mister/Miss thing. It’s not helping my tummy ache.”

Quint leaned back in his chair and eyed the cartoonist for a long, cool moment. “As you correctly guessed, Zack, we’re not holding you here. You can leave anytime you want. But you seem like a clever man, so I probably don’t need to tell you that you’re not equipped to venture out on your own. You have no contacts, no valid identity, no legal currency, and little to no information about your new environment. You’re not just foreigners here. You’re aliens. It would be in your best interest to stay with us, at least in the short term.”

“As it stands, I agree with you, Sterling. But I’m thinking ahead. And I believe I speak for the others when I say we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives as specimens.”

“Understandable, but—”

“Good. Now surely a smart man such as yourself realizes that without options, we
are
prisoners here. So I suggest a deal, a
Quint pro quo
if it tickles you. We tell you everything we know about our world, you tell us everything you know about yours. We give you our time, our testimony, our spit samples, whatever. In exchange, you give us money. A thousand dollars a week for each of us. You can keep it all in a safe until we choose to leave. I don’t care. The important thing is that when we do leave, we won’t be as helpless as you so eloquently described.”

All eyes turned back to Quint. He studied Zack through a face of stone.

“That all sounds perfectly reasonable.”

“Good. See? We’re connecting now. But before we shake on it, I’m adding a rider. No invasive medical tests without our consent. You tell us what you’re doing before you do it, and if we don’t like it, you stop. That’s a deal breaker.”

Quint narrowed his eyes in umbrage. “You seem to have a sinister notion about our methods.”

“I don’t know crap about your methods. I’m just covering all bases. As you said, we’re aliens here. Should we happen to do alien things, like sprout a third eye or levitate, I just want to make sure there are limits to your scientific curiosity. If you were in our shoes, you’d want the same comfort.”

Amanda suddenly realized, with dizzying inertia, what a good thing it was to have Zack around.

“That’s easy to agree to,” said Quint, “as we’re not in the habit of vivisection. Anything else?”

“Actually, yes. Not a rider. A question.” Zack launched a cursory glance around the room, studying every corner of the ceiling. “Got any hidden cameras in the building?”

In the all-too-telling silence, Mia felt a hot rush of blood behind her face.
Oh God . . .

“It’s not a big deal,” Zack said. “You’ve known for a year that those eggs would hatch people. I assume you prepared for us. You know, cameras, beds, a medical lab. Makes sense. I just want to know.”

David saw Czerny’s knuckles curl tightly around his pen. Quint remained stoic.

“Yes. We have cameras.”

The sisters cracked the same frosty scowl.

“I wish someone had told me that before I showered,” Hannah griped.

“I wish someone had told us in general,” Amanda said. “This isn’t the way to get our trust.”

Quint shook his head. “I apologize. It wasn’t our intent to deceive you. Ever since the six of you appeared, we’ve been scrambling to catch up. Rest assured you’re only being monitored for your own well-being. Furthermore, in the privacy of your rooms, you’re only being watched by someone of your own gender. This I swear.”

“And of course you swear not to release any footage of us without our consent,” Zack said.

“Yes,” Quint replied, with all the warmth of a glacier. “Of course.”

Sensing the end of his employer’s affability, Czerny stood up.

“Look, you’ve all been through an unprecedented trauma, and you’re all coping with remarkable bravery. It won’t seem like it now, but you’re very fortunate. Fortunate to be alive. Fortunate to be together. And fortunate to be here with us. No one knows more about parallel world theory than Dr. Quint. If anyone can solve this puzzle, he can. In the meantime, have patience and have faith. You’re going to be okay.”

The guests sat in anxious silence, their muddled thoughts bubbling with a thousand and one concerns. Despite all of Quint’s rosy promises, Zack knew there was no way on Earth—
any
Earth—these scientists would let such prize discoveries walk away. To truly leave, they’d have to run. It wasn’t a plan right now—it was an option. Zack needed one, as much as the fair and fiery redhead needed a benevolent God.

As his head throbbed and his inner self screamed with childlike hysterics, the cartoonist leaned back in his seat and forced a cheery grin.

“Well, that was a fine presentation, gentlemen. I’m sold. When’s lunch?”

—

They spent the afternoon in an aggregate daze, more like ghosts than guests. They gazed out windows without truly looking, flipped through books without really reading, and wandered the hallways with no clear purpose or direction.

As the sky turned to dusk, a pair of scientists arrived with bags of store-bought clothing—a generic assortment of T-shirts and sweatpants, plus the most basic cotton socks and undies. Soon the refugees stopped looking like day spa clients and now resembled an intramural volleyball team. Mia noticed, with silent distaste, that Hannah had seized the snuggest tank top in the collection.
Yes. We get it. You’re blessed.

An hour later, their evening meal arrived by physicist. Whereas lunch had been a casual buffet set on the pool table, Czerny had opened up the dining room for supper. In its hotel days, it was known as Chancer’s, an upscale bar and bistro that hosted gospel brunches on Sundays. The scientists had briefly used it as a cafeteria before shyly settling back to desk dining.

The guests served themselves from steaming tins. Amanda and Zack were the first to sit down, each with a grilled chicken breast and a scoop of pasta salad.

“They’re sure leaving us to ourselves a lot,” Amanda observed.

“They’re probably giving us a day or two to adjust. I figure come Monday . . .”

Zack trailed off as Amanda lowered her head and closed her eyes in prayer. Hannah wasn’t sure if the blessing was real or just a showy middle finger to Zack. She didn’t know how anyone could thank God after everything that happened today.

The actress sat down with a plate full of greens, the only thing her ailing stomach could handle. “Okay, here’s a stupid question. If we’re on an alternate Earth, does that mean there are alternate versions of us walking around somewhere?”

“No,” said David, from the serving table.

“Doubtful,” Zack added.

“Why not?”

Zack lazily motioned to David. The boy sighed and turned around to Hannah. “Okay, obviously our two worlds have a shared timeline. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t be speaking English here. They might not even be humans as we know them. So clearly our histories split at some point. From what Dr. Czerny told me, they still have Abraham Lincoln on their pennies. But from what Zack discovered, they separated California in 1940. That suggests the point of divergence occurred sometime between the American Civil War and the start of World War Two.”

Mia stood behind David, eyeing him with rapt fascination as he expounded.

“Now, even if it’s the latter end of that spectrum, the butterfly effect can change a lot in seven or eight decades. Our grandparents may have still existed as children, but the odds of them meeting and breeding as adults, then the odds of their own children meeting and breeding as adults . . . it’s just astronomically small. And that’s not even factoring the biology. The same sperm, the same gestational factors, the same hereditary toss-ups. At the most, you’d have a genetic relative walking around. But as you and Amanda prove, even genetic siblings can look quite different from each other. So, long answer short, no. Don’t expect to find a twin out there.”