The Flight of the Silvers (45 page)

“What about me?” Mia asked. “What should I do?”

David regarded her with tender concern, mixed with an insulting amount of doubt. “I think you should stay here and watch from the balcony. You can let us know through the transmitters if reinforcements arrive.”

Mia shook her head. “Are you insane? You guys are outnumbered enough already!”

“He’s right,” Zack said. “I mean none of us are commandos, but at least our weirdness gives us a fighting chance. It’s not like you can throw notes at them.”

“But what if you get captured?”

“We won’t,” said David.

“We might,” Zack countered. “If that happens, use the money to get to Peter. He’ll take care of you. He may even be able to get us out.”

“You can’t . . .” Mia choked on her words. The thought of being alone on this world made her knees buckle. She failed to notice the tiny new glow in front of her chest.

“You can’t ask me to do that.”

“Mia . . .”

“You can’t ask me to sit here while you guys risk your lives!”

“Mia, you’re getting a portal.”

“What?”

She looked down at the glowing circle, yet another breach at the worst possible moment. She only seemed to get them when she was sleeping or stressed.

“Oh shit. Not now.”

“No, this is good,” said David. “It could be useful intel.”

She fished her journal from her bag. “It’s not. It’s a past portal. I’m sending, not receiving.”

Hannah’s brow rose with cautious hope. “Wait. Where does it go? How far back?”

Mia blushed, thoroughly grateful that none of them could see through the keyhole. Her younger self sat on a toilet in the Marietta library, her pants bunched around her ankles.

“Three days ago,” she replied. “Right before Theo and I met the girl with two watches. I need to tell myself about a passage in one of Quint’s books.”

“Oh my God. That’s perfect!”

Zack eyed Hannah cynically. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? You said you were open to alternatives.”

“Yeah. Realistic ones.”

“How is it any less realistic than storming a building full of Deps?”

Mia was relieved to see David share her confusion. “What are you two going on about?”

“Changing the message,” Hannah said. “We can tell Amanda not to go to the health fair!”

David blinked at her like she was selling rainbows in a jar.

“I don’t think that’ll work.”

“How do you know? We never tried it before.”

“If it were truly possible to alter past events—”

“It
is
possible, David. Look.” She pulled the license of Jury Curado from her pocket. “We used to know this guy. Now we don’t. Evan changed the past. Why can’t we?”

Zack eyed the license with a raised brow. “That’s a good point, actually.”

“Thank you. See?”

Mia blinked in addled stupor, her mind filled with images of apocalyptic carnage. “You’re talking about deliberately causing a paradox!”

“Your notes are already paradoxes,” Hannah attested. “Just because you write the same words with the same pen color doesn’t mean you’ve created a perfect duplicate of the message you got. There’d be dozens of tiny inconsistencies. Apparently the universe doesn’t mind.”

“That’s what
you
say! For all we know, that’s what killed our world!”

David shook his head. “It wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, Mia, I don’t believe this trick will work. But you’re not going to tear the fabric of time just by changing a message.”

Hannah gripped Mia’s shoulder. “Sweetie, if there’s a chance to save Amanda and Theo without throwing us in the path of a thousand bullets, don’t you think it’s worth a try?”

Mia scratched her cheek in hot dilemma. She could feel the portal slipping away.

“Shit. Shit.”

She tore a scrap from her pad and scrawled a frantic message.

Tell Amanda not to take Theo to the health fair! The Deps will get them! Please trust me!

“God. I can’t believe I’m doing this . . .”

Hannah squeezed Zack’s arm. “If this changes the timeline, you think we’ll remember?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “If it works, I don’t care.”

Mia spun to face him. “And if this kills us all?”

“It’ll be fine,” David assured her. “Do it.”

Mia winced and looked away as she placed the note in the breach. The portal swallowed the paper, then vanished.

The Silvers stood rooted in place for thirty taut seconds. Zack and Hannah threw their wide gazes around the living room, nervously scanning for signs of change.

Soon Mia opened an eye and peeked at David. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, his expression dancing a fine line between annoyance and amusement.

“And here we still are.”

Hannah tossed up her hands. “Goddamn it. How does Evan do it then?”

“Obviously not through notes.”

“How did you know it wouldn’t work?” Zack asked him.

“Because multiple chronologies exist. This whole world is proof of that. The best I can figure is that Mia created a fork in time, a branching chain of events that runs parallel to ours. If that timeline’s Amanda chose to heed the warning, then I imagine these alternate versions of us are having a much better day than we are. They’re the ones who benefited from Hannah’s idea. Not us.”

The actress scowled at her feet. “Great. So they get a happy ending and we still get shot to death.”

Mia remained firmly unsettled. Between all her thoughts and apprehensions, she experienced a strange new sensation, as if someone tapped an undiscovered third shoulder.

Zack held her wrist. “You okay?”

“No. Something’s not right.”

“What, like some kind of—”

“Zack, move!”

She pulled him aside as a new portal arrived where he was standing. The shimmering gateway was the size of a dinner plate. It had a windy pull that was strong enough to ripple all drapes and garments.

The Silvers shielded their eyes at the blinding glow. For a maddening moment, Hannah feared Mia was right after all. This was the paradox apocalypse. It was the Rupture.

“Mia, what’s happening?!”

“I don’t know! It’s a portal but I don’t think it’s mine!”

“Past or future?”

“I don’t know! It’s not mine!”

A brown cloth bag suddenly popped through the surface, hitting the rug with the faint sound of clanking metal. A flat manila envelope fluttered out after it. Before anyone could process the new items, the portal shrank away.

Half-blind and teetering on lunacy, Zack reached for the envelope. A line of angular scribble stretched across the front.

To the damn fool Trillinger and his mad boy accomplice.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”

Mia scanned the cover. “I don’t know. That looks like Peter’s handwriting.”

Zack opened the envelope and emptied the contents. Among an assortment of maps and sketches was a hand-scrawled message on notebook paper.

You know, for two allegedly clever men, you don’t have enough common sense to fill a bee’s rubber. You cannot waltz into a building full of armed federal agents and expect to come out again. Hannah knows this. You should listen to her more often.

There’s a better way to save Theo and Amanda. At 4
A.M.
, a group of five agents will leave the building in a Tug-a-Lug truck, heading east toward Washington, D.C. Three Deps will be riding in the trailer, along with your friends. If you position yourselves at the stretch of highway I’ve marked, you’ll be able to intercept the truck at 4:45.

Use everything at your disposal, including the handcuffs I sent you. Be careful around Melissa Masaad, the black woman with the funny hair. She’s their leader and she’s smarter than you.

I’d come out and help, but my people are still watching me closely. I can’t join you without bringing Rebel back down on your heads. All I can say is good luck and godspeed. Don’t let Theo die.

—Peter

PS—Don’t go to the Brooklyn address I gave you. It’s been compromised. When you get to the city, have Mia—and only Mia—call 11-53-34855. We’ll arrange a meet from there.

The room fell to silence as Peter’s message passed from hand to hand. David dropped the note to the coffee table with a frustrated sigh.

“I have no idea how to react to this. I mean I don’t know if this is Future Peter using hindsight or Present Peter using foresight. If it’s Future Peter—”

“David . . .”

He threw a nervous look at Hannah. “I’m just trying to make sense of it.”

“I understand that. But have you ever hijacked a truck before?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, that makes four of us. Maybe we should focus on that.”

Freshly stung by Peter’s rebuke, the boy nodded. “You’re right. You’re right.”

Zack emptied the bag of handcuffs and spread out Peter’s materials. Among the maps was a sketch of a rental truck, and another of the rocky outcropping that would serve as the ambush point.

As the beleaguered Silvers began to formulate their plans, Mia found her gaze drifting back to the little patch of air where she’d just split time. She’d only just gotten used to the idea of multiple futures. Now she had to process multiple pasts. She’d been so worried about destroying the Earth. Now she had to wrap her mind around the possibility that she’d just created one.

TWENTY-NINE

The 3
A.M.
chime broke the silence in the interrogation room. Melissa yawned and checked her watch. The building had been on high alert for five hours now, with no sign of intruders.

She sat cross-legged on the desk, her crumpled red bra resting in her lap. As caffeine and exhaustion pummeled her from both sides, a high and giddy chuckle escaped her throat.

“My agents think I’m crazy. Even more so than usual. I’d blame you, Mr. Augur, but really the fault is mine. I’ve let the surrealism infect me to the point where I actually believe that an actress, an artist, and two minors would dare attack this place.”

Theo lay on the folding cot, his arm draped over his eyes. He was coming down off a bevy of neuroleptic drugs, a dilating effect that made the ceiling bulbs burn like desert suns.

In the sober light of reason, he regretted leaving his mumbled clue for David in Marietta. If he’d been wrong, he would have sent his friends on a wild-goose chase. Being right was even worse. He might have lured them into a trap, thanks to Melissa’s adaptive reasoning.

“I still can’t shake the feeling that they’re coming to rescue you,” she said. “Perhaps they’re waiting for some kind of signal.”

“For the hundredth time, I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what they know. If you’d just let me sleep—”

“No, no. If I have to stay up, so do you. I blame you enough for that.”

Theo clenched his jaw. “God, you’re ridiculous. Do you even have a life outside this job?”

“Not much of one. No.”

“Well then maybe you should live it up while you’re still young and hot.”

“Thank you for the compliment, but I don’t do well with flings. We at least have that in common.”

Theo raised his arm to glare at her. “Did you ghost my entire relationship with Hannah?”

“Not the naughty parts,” she assured him. “We have rules about that.”

“Oh good. So you didn’t chuck the entire Fourth Amendment.”

She dangled her shapely legs off the table and swayed them like a bored child. “I know you don’t have ghost drills on your world, but do you even have Domestic Protections?”

Theo rubbed his eyes. There was no point in pretending.

“We call it the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Interesting. I like that. And what about the NIC?”

“The what?”

“The National Integrity Commission. I guess you don’t have that either, as such.”

“I guess not, considering I have no idea what that is.”

Melissa sighed a heavy breath. For his sake, she hoped he’d never find out.

Howard poked his head into the room, his eyes dark and bleary with fatigue. Melissa could sense that even he resented her for the overzealous lockdown.

“The tugs are here,” he announced.

“Excellent. If I can have four men help me with the generators, I’ll escort Amanda myself.”

“Okay. I’ll round some up.”

“What’s happening now?” Theo asked.

Melissa hopped off the table and grabbed her gun. “We’re leaving.”

—

In their long freeway travels, the Silvers had become quite familiar with the sight of the blue-striped Tug-a-Lug truck. The company had grown so dominant in the do-it-yourself moving business that “tug” was now the casual term for any rented hauler.

At 4
A.M.
, a trio of sixteen-foot trucks left the field office and split up at the first intersection. The maneuver was a skittish ploy on Melissa’s part, a vehicular shell game to thwart any would-be rescuers. Two of the tugs returned to the building within the hour. The third kept moving east on Highway LXX.

The atmosphere inside the trailer was downright eerie. The battery lamps on the floor created a sinister underlighting for everyone but Amanda. She continued to shine like an angel in the blue-tinted radiance of her solic generators.

She and Theo faced each other from opposite walls, their arms handcuffed behind their folding chairs. Beneath the powerful joy of seeing each other alive and well was the pain of greater separation. Theo wished he could talk to Amanda telepathically, to pick her brain about the status of the others without alerting their captors.

Melissa’s loud yawn bounced off the metal walls. She and Howard sat perpendicular to the captives, like bridge opponents.

“We’ll be in Washington in two hours,” she told them. “Your accommodations there will be far more comfortable.”

Theo couldn’t get over all the chains and safeguards the Deps were using on Amanda, as if this skinny nurse and Christian had become their personal King Kong.

“You going to keep those machines on her for the rest of her life?” he asked Melissa.

“We’re completing construction on a special cell that achieves the same effect. She’ll have more mobility. If we’re fortunate, we’ll find a drug that safely suppresses her access to the tempis.” Melissa looked to Amanda. “I imagine you wouldn’t be too upset about that.”

The widow shook her head. Though she retained a wary fondness for Melissa, she didn’t like the other two agents in the trailer. Howard never took his nervous eyes off her, as if she’d disembowel him the moment the generators flickered. The other one, a strange and bookish little blond named Owen Nettles, seemed to have a creepy fascination with David. He spent the first few miles pestering the prisoners with questions about the boy. After his sixth failed attempt to gain answers, he sulked in a dark corner, resting on a blanket like the family dog.

“How you feeling?” Amanda asked Theo.

“Better. No pain. No visions. Whatever they gave me did the trick.”

Amanda looked to Melissa. “You must have gotten the results of his hospital tests by now.”

“I have them,” Melissa confirmed.

“Don’t you think he has a right to know what you found?”

Melissa fought the urge to withhold the information as leverage, but they had a long struggle ahead of them. She had to start building trust.

“The scanners discovered a foreign object in your thalamus,” she told Theo. “A perfect ring, no larger than a crumb. Any idea how it got there?”

Theo had every idea. His only surprise was that he shared it.

“The Pelletiers. Has to be.”

“Why?” Melissa asked. “What’s the purpose of the object?”

“I have no idea. I can’t imagine it’s there to kill me. There are easier ways.”

“Is there anything you’re willing to tell me about this Azral and Esis?”

“I know you’ll never find them unless they want to be found,” Theo responded. “You’ll never get them in an interrogation room. I just hope for your sake that you never become a problem to them. They slaughtered two dozen of their own employees by remote control. They wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

Howard’s leg bounced in anxiety, sending soft tapping echoes through the trailer. Melissa stroked her jaw in rumination.

“So what do they want from you? Why did they bring you here?”

Theo shrugged as best he could. “I don’t know. None of us know.”

“I hope we never find out,” Amanda said.

The truck veered to the left, then rolled to a quick halt. Melissa raised her radio.

“Carter, what’s going on? Why are we stopping?”

The receiver hissed loud static. “We got an accident up ahead. Overturned truck across both lanes.”

“Is anyone on scene yet?”

“Yeah. An ambulance and two local poes.”

Melissa muttered a curse. Something didn’t feel right. “Okay. Talk to them and see if you can get an estimate.”

She scrutinized Theo’s face for hints of canny awareness, finding none. Frustrated, she turned to Howard. “Call Michael with our coordinates. I want the rest of the team on standby.”

Amanda and Theo watched her closely as her thoughts once again bounced with mad leaps of logic. When it came to the fugitives, no assumption was too far-fetched. Nothing was out of the question. Melissa was living in their world now. She didn’t like it at all.

—

Carter Rutledge stepped out the driver’s door with a tired grunt. At five-foot-four, he rivaled Owen Nettles as the shortest man in the unit. He battled his stature with a ferociously overpumped build. Even his loose wool blazer flaunted the pneumatic bulges of his biceps.

Like Ross Daley—his colleague, gym partner, and current copilot—Carter did not like having an eccentric female foreigner as his supervisor. They certainly didn’t enjoy driving a tug through the sticks in the wee hours, all because their batty new boss was jumping at shadows.

They closed their doors and examined the fracas on the highway, a gaggle of emergency lights in the dark middle of nowhere. A fourteen-wheel bread truck had flipped onto its side, spilling across both lanes at a forty-five-degree angle. A young paramedic pushed the injured driver on a squeaky-wheeled stretcher while three doughy state troopers chatted beside their cruisers.

Ross smirked at his teammate. “I love flashing my badge at these country duffs.”

“Careful,” Carter teased, “I hear they shoot duskers on sight here.”

“In that case, maybe we should bring the boss out.”

They laughed and approached the policemen. Ross held up his ID. “Excuse me, gentlemen . . .”

The cops kept conversing, oblivious. Ross cleared his throat and raised his badge higher.

“
Excuse me
, gentlemen . . .”

Still no response. Ross looked to Carter in outrage. “Can you believe this?”

“I can understand why they wouldn’t
see
you in the dark . . .”

“This isn’t funny anymore.”

Ross moved to the nearest officer and reached for his shoulder. His hand passed right through it.

“Oh shit.”

The entire accident scene disappeared in a blink, leaving nothing on the road but a lone female figure. In the light of the moon and the tug’s distant high beams, they had no trouble recognizing Hannah Given and the deadly .44 she aimed at them.

Zack’s open sketchbook dangled in her left hand, a large message scribbled in thick marker ink.

ON YOUR KNEES.

HANDS ON YOUR HEADS.

NOW.

Though she had no way to measure it, Hannah was shifted a speed just shy of 22×. She had over a dozen prefabricated messages written out in Zack’s pad, one for nearly every anticipated occasion. She would not slow down for purposes of comprehension. She would not take her eyes off their hands. Though her weapon experience didn’t go beyond stage pistols, she was ready to fire a warning shot before they even touched their guns.

The Deps processed her ferocious expression, fueled as much by acting as it was by adrenaline. She impatiently shook the pad at them.

Carter raised his palms. “Okay, look, you don’t want to do this . . .”

“She’s shifted, you idiot. She can’t understand you. Now do as she says. This is your last warning.”

Ross and Carter looked around, unable to see the young Australian who just spoke in their ears. David’s command was a ghosted echo of words he’d uttered fifty-five minutes ago. He’d created some prefabricated messages of his own.

Stymied, the agents grudgingly kneeled on the pavement, their palms on their scalps.

“Now if you value your lives,” said David, “you won’t move a muscle.”

He emerged from behind the rocky embankment and seized their guns and radios. Ross clenched his jaw as he watched his pistol fall into a knapsack.

“I don’t care how young you are, boy. I’ll tear you open for this.”

“Yes, we’re all impressed by your manliness. Put your hands behind your back. Hurry.”

Melissa’s tinny voice crackled through the fabric of David’s bag. “Carter, what’s going on? Report.”

David motioned to Mia, who’d been watching from behind the rocks. The moment she reached him on the asphalt, he passed her two pairs of handcuffs.

“I need to help Zack. Will you be all right taking over?”

She glanced at the men, then gave David a shaky nod. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Don’t worry. Hannah will keep you covered.”

He stood behind the two agents and hissed a whisper into their ears. “Stay still and do exactly what the girl says. You touch one hair on her head, I’ll kill you with your own guns.”

Mia could only watch in slack-jawed stupor as David dashed toward the truck. Between the shock and concern over his murderous threat was a savage thrill that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She existed in a dreamlike state, only half-present. Only half-scared.

She studied the handcuffs in her grip, then squinted at the Deps. Her voice fell two octaves.

“All right. You heard the man. Hold still. Don’t fuck with me.”

—

Melissa scanned the road through the three-inch crack in the trailer gate. She raised it four more feet and climbed down to the dirt. Howard followed her out.

“Keep them quiet,” she told Owen. “Watch Amanda closely.”

The agent croaked a querulous mutter, then closed the gate. Melissa raised her gun and motioned Howard around the other side of the truck. She advanced up the driver’s side, cursing herself for letting Theo spook her about the Pelletiers.

Soon she spied Carter and Ross up the road, both handcuffed and seething as Hannah and Mia led them behind the rocks. A soft sigh of relief escaped Melissa’s lips. The only thing better than a foolish enemy was a nonviolent one. This situation could be turned. If Melissa was lucky, she might even reach Washington with a complete set of fugitives.

She heard soft footsteps behind her, then spun around with her pistol. Zack stood at the rear of the truck, his palms raised high.

“Whoa. Easy. I’m unarmed.”

“No you’re not.”

“Well, I’m as unarmed as I can get. In any case, you don’t want to shoot.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But if I see one flash of temporis—”

“It already happened,” Zack informed her. “Look at your gun.”

Melissa studied her weapon. While she was staring up the road, the barrel had aged several decades. She studied the muzzle, now thoroughly clogged with oxidation.

“Goodness. That’s quite a trick, Zack.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

“You realize you could have rifted my hand.”

“Exactly why I’ve been practicing.”