The Flight of the Silvers (26 page)

“Darling, the minute I get back to the office, I’m making you the lead on this case.”

“Sir, I’m not at a level to—”

“You will be. I’m putting in those papers too. You’re ready for this. Trust me.”

“All respect, sir, it’s not my readiness that concerns me. The directors—”

“I’ll handle the idiots above me. You’ll have to handle the idiots below. A lot of them won’t like the fact that you’re cutting in line. And others . . . well, I don’t have to tell you why they’ll have problems. You’ll just have to earn their trust or push them out of the way.”

Cahill held her arm, then jerked his head at Amanda’s ghost.

“Just promise me you’ll find these people. Whoever they are, they’re scared, they’re reckless, and they’re powerful. You track them down. You haul them in. And for the ones who hurt those troopers, you make damn sure to give them their due karma.”

The chief interrupted them with updates. His men had just discovered the original van in question, abandoned twelve miles away at the edge of a national forest. Additionally, the registered owner of the vehicle—one Martin Salgado—had been located in Terra Vista. He and his son were found hunched forward in the front seat of a drifting aerocruiser. Cause of death was currently unknown.

Having two fresh new avenues to explore, two dotted lines to the dangerous oddities, Melissa Masaad took a heavy breath, then plotted her next several moves.

SEVENTEEN

For those traveling east, Ramona was the last pocket of suburbia in San Diego County. The town was home to fifty thousand people, twice the population of the Ramona that had existed on the Silvers’ world. In the wake of the Cataclysm, millions of East Coast emigrants made a cold rush on California, crowding every city, burg, and hamlet until the state cracked in half. By 1940—when Ramona, CA, became Ramona, CS—the local headcount had tripled and the town had bulged a half mile in every direction.

Theo groaned like an old man as he hunkered down on a wooden park bench. He’d spent the last four hours trekking through the margins of civilization, all the ranches and branches and gulches of South California. He wanted nothing more than to take a deep nap, but he knew from experience that cops didn’t take kindly to rumpled dozers. The last thing the group needed was more police attention.

At 11:30 on a Monday morning, the playground park was only minimally occupied by human life—two mothers, three toddlers, and four weary Silvers. A string of single-level storefronts lined the street across from Theo, brandishing offers both familiar and strange. An auto supply shop professed to be the number one place for custom liftplates and swore that none of their parts were tooped. A spa clinic advertised a special on Circadian Adjustment Therapy, inviting all to
Extend Your Day the Natural Way
. A business called Farsight Professional Augury peddled fortune-telling services with the elegant veneer of a bank. A fancy sign boasted that their staff had a prediction accuracy rating of 68%.* Theo was too far away to read the asterisk’s fine print.

He rested his face in his palms, dreading all the new headaches ahead of him. He was used to wandering cashless through California, but never sober, and always alone. He wondered if he’d be better off without the group, and vice versa. He didn’t know them very well (and vice versa). Besides, what did he bring to the table? He wasn’t all that resourceful, and he didn’t sport an eerie talent like each of them did. Of course, after witnessing Amanda’s tempic blowup, Theo didn’t feel too bad about being left off the weirdness wagon.

A three-year-old girl in a little pink romper wandered away from the playground and studied Theo from a curious distance. It took a few moments for him to notice her.

“Uh . . .”

Theo scanned the park behind him. The two mothers on scene remained rooted at the swing set, hopelessly distracted by the sight of a shirtless David.

He shined the girl an awkward smile. “Hi.”

She shyly bit her fingers. On seeing Theo’s bloody arm bandage, her half grin melted away.

“It’s just a scratch,” he assured her. “A little owie. Listen, you should probably—”

One of the mothers, a chubby woman not much older than Theo himself, hurriedly scooped the girl into her arms. She shot Theo a glare of nervous judgment, as if he were holding a fishing rod with candy on the hook.

With a jaded sigh, Theo turned his gaze back to the augury service. He wondered if people were all that friendly here in Altamerica.

Hannah rested in the comforting shade of a sugar pine tree, her mind even more exhausted than her legs. All throughout her trek, her thoughts had run circles around her.
I wish I knew what Azral was wow I bet every cop in the state is looking for Christ I really broke their fingers when damn we’re all gonna starve if Amanda can’t Jesus what did she do to those policemen?

By the time she’d reached Ramona, she couldn’t conjure anything more than a few impure notions. David stood bare-chested against a nearby elm tree, staring off into the distance like a high-fashion model. For a teenage genius who didn’t eat a lot of protein, he sported a surprising amount of muscle tone. The skin on his chest was hairless and glistening. To the women of the park, he was the thing to look at. He wasn’t just the group’s David anymore. He was Michelangelo’s.

“What are you thinking about?” Hannah asked him.

He continued to gaze at an empty patch of grass as he absently tapped his wristwatch.

“David?”

He shook his head and blinked at Hannah. “I’m sorry?”

“Just checking up on you. You look so lost.”

“Actually, I was scanning the local past in my head. I can’t help myself. Everywhere I go now, I nose through history like a curious dog.”

“Yeah? See anything interesting?”

“Oh yes. Every year, around October, they host a candlelight vigil in this park. Everyone wears white robes and masks, and no one says a word. It’s quite eerie. There was also a gruesome murder here about five years ago. Some poor woman got stabbed in the neck.”

“Ewww. God. Why would you even look at that?”

“Guess I’m just in a grim mood.” He grew a sheepish smile. “Though I admit I keep coming back to a sunbather who was here last weekend. She’s . . . quite nice to look at.”

Hannah was sure the girl would feel the same about him.

“You probably think that’s creepy,” he said. “It is creepy. I should stop.”

“Sweetie, you do whatever makes you feel good.”

Mia sat alone at a nearby picnic table, forcing her anxious gaze at her journal. For the fifth time in four minutes, she lost the fight against her teenage id and drank David in. In the corner of her vision, she caught Hannah smirking at her. Mia suddenly grew hot with humiliation and anger until she took a second glance and saw that the actress wasn’t mocking her at all. Merely empathizing.

Mia reeled with guilt. She kept misjudging Hannah, even after everything that happened today. While Mia had to be rescued from her attacker in Terra Vista, Hannah saved herself. While Mia couldn’t handle her one simple job of keeping Amanda in the van, Hannah did everything that was asked of her. She took on armed policemen with just a nightstick and set her friends free.

Too tired to find the right words, Mia shined Hannah a look of warm regard, and then quietly resolved to think nicer of her in the future.

The future . . .

She focused on her journal again, scanning all the hints and warnings of her elder selves. If the notes were right, then Mia was due to visit the rebuilt New York (
“So beautiful, it brings me to tears”
) and ride a flying taxi (
“Holy @$#%!”
)
.
She was supposed to meet a man named Peter, who was either great or untrustworthy, depending on which of the two contrasting notes she chose to believe. And of course the prophecy remained that Hannah would one day save her life. Mia no longer had trouble envisioning that scenario.

On the second page of her notations, an old message jumped out at her.

If you see a small and creepy guy with a 55 on his hand, run. That’s Evan Rander. He’s bad news.

Mia had originally filed the warning away as a distant concern, as none of the physicists matched the description. Now it merited some thought. She decided to wait a bit longer before burdening the others with this information. They were all running on shattered nerves right now. She feared one in particular was dangerously close to snapping.

—

Amanda bit her thumbnail, tapping a nervous beat on the counter as the sweaty man conducted his tests. She could see from the pawnbroker’s license on the wall that his name was John Curry and he was twenty-nine years old. Genetics had unfortunately screwed him in two directions, giving him the acne of a teenager and the hairline of a middle-aged man. To make matters worse, he carried both the shape and smell of an overstuffed trash bag. Amanda was too unglued to think charitably, and could only assume that one of the torments that awaited her in the infernal beyond involved handcuffs, a bed, and John Curry.

He’d already examined her wedding ring through a grading loupe, inspecting every curve and facet for impurities. Now he put it inside a device that resembled an Easy-Bake oven. As the machine whirred, the pawnbroker fixed his appraising eyes on Amanda. He studied her in a way that made her empty stomach churn.

She turned around to check on Zack. He’d accompanied her to the store to help negotiate a good sale price. Now he strangely hung back near the entrance, browsing the hocked watches.

Amanda threw him a tense, baffled shrug.
What are you doing?

He replied with a nod and an assuring palm.
It’s okay. You’re fine.

Though Amanda had been through hell and a four-hour hike, and was forced to wear David’s T-shirt to cover the bloodstains on her own, she was still a fetching sight. Zack saw the pawnbroker’s eyes pop with interest the moment she stepped through the door. He figured Amanda would have a better shot handling the business on her own.

The pawnbroker scratched his pitted cheek as he pondered the machine’s analysis. “I’ll give you five hundred.”

Amanda balked at him. “Five hundred? The ring cost eight thousand dollars.”

“I doubt that.”

Zack wasn’t able to remind her that she was working from another world’s economy. All the same, the offer was disappointing.
Come on, man. You know she puts the “dish” in disheveled. Cut her a deal.

“How about six hundred?” Amanda asked.

“No way. I’d be taking a loss.”

“How? This is eighteen-karat gold with five diamonds.”

“Right. And it’s also been juved.”

Zack was surprised to learn that his work left traces, and that reversal affected the resale value.

“Five fifty,” Amanda offered.

The pawnbroker removed the ring from the scanner, holding it out to Amanda as if he were proposing the most cynical marriage ever.

“You only have two choices here: five hundred or keep walking.”

She slapped her palm on the counter. “Look, I wouldn’t be selling this if I didn’t need the money! I guarantee the extra fifty dollars will mean a lot more to me than it will to you.”

The pawnbroker stared in turmoil at the cash safe under his desk. The moment Amanda struck the counter, the tempic shell rippled like jostled milk. It took five seconds for the walls to settle back to normal.

“Look at me, John. My name’s Amanda Given. I’m not a gambler or a drug addict. I’m not . . .” Once again she suffered a tactile flashback, and could feel the broken ribs in the chests of those policemen. “I’m not a criminal. I’m just someone who’s hit bad times. A bunch of us need this money for food. Now, you’re going to make a profit on this ring regardless. I’m asking you out of the goodness of your heart to raise your offer. Please.”

Between the freakish incident with his safe and Amanda’s unbearable intensity, the pawnbroker’s sexual interest became replaced by a burning desire to get her out of his store.

“Five ten. That’s my absolute last deal. Take it or go. Just decide fast.”

Frustrated, Amanda glanced at Zack. All he could offer was a hopeless shrug.

She turned back to the pawnbroker. “Fine, John. Fine.”

He counted out a thin blue wad of bills. Amanda snatched it from his hands.

“Fine deal. Fine profit. Fine person you are.”

While the pawnbroker glared, Amanda took a final look at the ring that had traveled with her across the multiverse. Her thoughts teemed with images of Derek, a flip-book chronicle of decline that began with his marriage proposal and ended with his last spiteful words.

She joined Zack at the exit and passed him her money with trembling hands. “It’s not enough.”

He led her outside. “It’s enough for now.”

“No. It’s not enough money. I should . . .”

She fumbled for her golden cross necklace, tucked away under two T-shirts. “I should see . . . I should see how much . . .”

“No.”

“It’s just a symbol.”

“Amanda . . .”

“I don’t need a symbol to be a good Christian.”

The walls of her composure crumbled away. She fled down a narrow alley between the pawnshop and a bakery. There among the boxes of old discarded bread, she crouched to the ground and wept into her hands.

Zack followed her down the alley and took a seat on the milk crate next to her.

“I should have listened to Mia,” Amanda confessed. “I should have never gotten out of the van.”

Zack knew this wasn’t the best time to agree with her. “They’re being fixed. Whether it’s through temporis or good old-fashioned medicine, those cops—”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I did it.”

“No. Can’t say it does.”

Zack fixed a dreary stare on the abandoned loaves and rolls. He assumed it was only professional pride that kept the bakers from selling rejuvenated bread.

“I hurt that guy back in the building. Rebel. I panicked and I aged his hand. If Dr. Czerny—rest his soul—was right about what that does to a body, then I probably shot a bunch of fatal air bubbles into his heart.”

“You were defending yourself,” Amanda said. “That man was trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t attack those cops until one of them fired a bullet at Mia. It’s also worth noting that Rebel would have killed me and Theo if you hadn’t stopped him. I’m sorry I never thought to thank you until now. I just hope the next time you think about the two men you hurt today, you also remember the two you saved.”

Amanda looked up at him with red eyes. Though she was loath to praise him in their tense early days together, she’d noticed from the start that Zack was humble to the point of self-deprecation. There wasn’t a vain bone in his body.

She took a deep wet sniff and gazed across at the bread boxes.

“They’d have to be big bubbles.”

“What?”

“Rebel. You’d have to make big bubbles in his bloodstream in order to kill him. A few centimeters at least. Even then, he could still survive if he got treated in time. You don’t need a reviver. Just a hyperbaric chamber. Most hospitals have one, at least where we come from.”

Zack almost laughed at his conflicting reactions to her information. He was relieved to be that much less a murderer, and worried that Rebel would be that much more alive to murder Zack someday.

“Thank you. It’s been bugging me all morning. I needed that perspective.”

“No problem,” she replied, with black humor. “I’m here to help.”

What began as a snicker soon escalated into a series of near-maniacal giggles. She caught Zack’s puzzled grin.