The Flight of the Silvers (59 page)

“IT’S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!”

“YES!”

He turned off the jolter. The three of them breathed in heavy gasps. Evan took on a new and somber sincerity that Hannah found utterly frightening.

“This world ends,” he announced with a heavy breath. “In four years and seven months, it all goes to hell in exactly the way ours did. The sky comes down. The air turns cold. The buildings go
crinkle
and the people go
crunch
. This time no one gets a bracelet. No one gets out alive except the Pelletiers and me. They go forward to their own adjacent future. I go back. Back to the beginning. Back to Nico Mundis and his crappy little store. This is now my”—he brandished the numerical tattoo on the back of his right hand—“fifty-fifth trip through the same time period. I’ve danced this dance over and over again. Sure, I mix things up, just for shits and giggles, but it always ends the same.”

The Givens fell to abject silence, staring ahead in bleak dismay. Evan crossed his arms and studied Amanda. A hard smile returned to his face.

“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Oh that Evan. Such a meanie. He
’
ll say anything to upset us.’ Well, an hour from now, Peter will confirm everything I just told you. And while you’re all sobbing into your teacups, he’ll falsely assure you that all is not lost. See, just like Rebel, Peter’s got a plan to save the world. You’ll believe it, of course, because you want to. You
have
to. But the spoiler twist? It doesn’t work. I’ve seen the non-result for myself, again and again and again. You try to stop what’s coming every single time. You fail, every single . . .”

He stopped in the wake of Hannah’s low chuckle. It began as a mirthful rumble, then rose in volume until her giggles overtook the office.

Evan cocked his head at her quizzically. This was new. “You don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I believe what you’re saying, Evan. It makes perfect sense in its own sick way. What I don’t believe is you. You went through all this trouble, you risked life and limb just to give us the bad news before Peter did. You had to see the looks on our faces.”

He slit his eyes as she rolled with pitch-black laughter. Hannah wasn’t sure if it was a Method act or a sign that her mind had finally snapped for good, but it seemed only right to rob this sick little demon of the one thing he came for.

She wiped her eyes. “God, Amanda. You missed it earlier, when he told me why he hated me so much. You won’t believe this.”

“I didn’t tell you anything.”

“You told me
everything
.” She laughed. “You drew all the dots. I just had to connect them. You see, Amanda, he used to be one of us. In times undone, days gone bye-bye, Evan lived with us in Terra Vista. Then one day I made the awful mistake of being nice to him. I rubbed his arm. Maybe gave him a hug. Though he creeped me out with his constant eyefucks, he’d lost his world just like the rest of us. I felt sorry for him.”

Evan scoffed with forced amusement. “Nice try, but that’s not even—”

“And yet instead of realizing that I’m touchy-feely with everyone, Sad Sack over here convinced himself that something hot and heavy was brewing between us. In his twisted little mind, I was one tender moment away from becoming his devoted love cushion.”

“Your ego’s truly—”

“Shush, now. I’m talking to my sister. Anyway, one night he’s walking the grounds, looking for me as usual. Maybe he went by the pool house, or the garden shed, someplace without a camera. And then he heard it. The sounds of my screwing, my melodious oohing. He looked through the door and learned that while he was picking out china patterns, I was spreading my legs for Jury Curado.”

Evan’s fists clenched with trembling rage. Though the details were off, the gist of her tale was painfully accurate. Her lips curled in a vengeful smirk.

“Oh, how that must have stung him, Amanda, to learn that this brand-new world was just like the old one, where the boys with the biceps got the girls with the tits. Nothing changed. Except—”

“Shut up.”

Hannah’s smile flattened. Her eyes cracked with grief. “Except it got worse. As time went on, this little shit came to realize that what Jury and I had wasn’t all that shallow. He saw the way we looked at each other and he knew we’d developed something strong, something that had eluded me my whole life.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything! You’ve never even seen the guy!”

“I saw him, Evan. You didn’t erase all of him. I glimpsed him with my own two eyes and I know why you killed him. It’s because deep down you knew that Jury wasn’t just the better-looking man. He was the better man.”

Hot blood rushed up Evan’s neck. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Hannah grew a teasing sneer.

“I bet you even tried a round without him, just to see if you could get me on your own. I’m sure that worked out really well for Theo.”

“That’s because you’re a goddamn whore!”

“Right. Hannah Banana, Always-Needs-a-Man-a. Except that man was never you. You stopped trying a long time ago, but you never got over it. So this is how you spend your days. This is what you do between Armageddons. Jesus Christ, Evan. You have got to be the single most pathetic—”

The gunshot shook every wall and window, rattling teeth. While his thoughts and ears rang with clamor, Evan studied the large new spatter of blood on the wall behind Hannah, the trickling hole in her forehead. The two of them traded a wide look of horror before the actress fell dead to the floor of her cage.

For a short hot moment, Evan wondered if perhaps someone else in the room had shot her. He didn’t remember aiming his .38 at her head or pulling the trigger. And yet there was the smoking gun in his hand, still raised. Strange. He’d killed Hannah so many times before but something, something, something about this didn’t feel right. Something—

He shrieked when a cold white blade cut into his calf. Before he could register Amanda on the ground, she jammed her tempic knife through the back of his knee.

Screeching, Evan swung the pistol down and fired a bullet through the top of her skull. Her face splashed down into her own exit blood and she fell still. He only just now realized that Amanda had been howling along with him. She’d been screaming the whole time between gunshots.

Wide-eyed, bleeding, Evan stumbled against the wall and pondered the consequences of his actions. The Deps surely heard the blasts. They’d be here in seconds now, but they were the least of his problems.

“Oh no . . .”

The sisters were dead.

“Oh shit. Shit . . .”

Trembling, he closed his eyes and struggled to concentrate through the ringing in his ears, the pain, the fear of what Azral would do to him.

Two speedsuit agents appeared outside the door, cracking the smoked-glass pane with their armored fists. Evan pressed his fingers to his temples and yelled in desperate torment. His skin tingled with bubbles as the clock of his life spun back forty-nine seconds.

Now he found himself once again standing at the reception desk, the cool .38 back in his hand. He looked to Hannah—unmurdered, unsilenced. She continued to rail at him in all her gorgeous fury.

“Right. Hannah Banana, Always-Needs-a-Man-a. Except that man was never you. You stopped trying a long time ago, but you never . . . you never . . .”

Hannah trailed off, thrown by the sudden change in Evan’s demeanor. A moment ago, he looked ready to bare her throat with his teeth. Then his head snapped back as if he’d woken up from a nap. Now his face was white with inexplicable terror. Gemma Sunder, a girl who shared Evan’s talent but not his impression of it, would have said that he was being possessed by a future self.

To Hannah, it looked the very opposite of possession. It appeared the devil inside Evan Rander had finally fled.

He dropped his gun and raised his palms in trembling acquiescence.

“Okay. Okay, look, we’re all good here. I went too far, but it’s all right now. You’re okay.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’ll be fine. You and . . .” He suddenly remembered Amanda and nervously jumped away. His unstabbed leg screamed with phantom pain. He didn’t want a repeat of the real injury.

Hannah eyed him incredulously as he limped across the room. “You’re insane.”

Evan crowed a grim and broken laugh. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve seen the world end fifty-five times. At the very least, it’s made me cynical.”

“Then hate the universe, not me.”

“I hate the universe through you,” he told her, with a sorrowful shrug. “It’s just the way it is.”

A round white portal opened up on the northern wall, stretching from rug to roof. Evan’s stomach dropped. His pants trickled with urine. He’d been carrying a ray of hope that his transgression would go unnoticed. Of course not. Of course they knew.

He kneeled on the ground, raising stretched and shaky fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I screwed up. I know it. But look, they’re fine! They’re both alive! I undid it!”

The portal continued to ripple with the quiet serenity of a spring pond. Evan’s eyes darted around in frantic thought.

“All right, listen, listen, I’ll leave them alone. I promise. Not even a phone call. I’ll . . . I’ll go to one of your facilities. Breed with whoever you want me to breed with. Just give me a chance to make things right. I’ve helped you before! You said so!”

The sisters stared at the portal with the same white horror as Evan. No one was coming out.

“Azral?”

A colossal hand of tempis burst through the surface with terrifying speed. Amanda and Hannah screamed as the man-size fingers engulfed Evan like a chess rook. As quick as it arrived, the monster arm retreated, pulling its shrieking victim into the shimmering white depths.

The portal shrank closed, leaving two siblings alone in devastated silence.

Soon the tempic bars of Hannah’s cage flickered away. She fell to her knees and scuttled awkwardly across the rug. She ran her quivering fingers through Amanda’s hair, her mind painfully perched between aching concern and the utter futility of asking her if she was okay.

As emergency lights flared outside and a speeding Dep began his thermal scan of the fifth floor, the daughters of Robert and Melanie Given wept in soft harmony. Neither of them were okay. No one was okay. Not a single damn thing in the world was okay.

THIRTY-FIVE

The tunnel was a relic of the hydroelectric age, a dank and moldy passage of steam pipes that stretched beneath the buildings of Battery Place. The last dangling bulb had burned out years ago. David lit the way with a melon-size ball of sunshine, a ghost from an even earlier era.

Mia rode piggyback on his shoulders, her thoughts swirling like drain water around her nine-hour memory hole. All she knew from David’s curt summary was that she’d been mortally wounded by Rebel and then magically unwounded by Zack.

She launched a shaky glance at her wavy-haired savior, desperate for some kind of confirmation—a sigh, a squeeze, a “thank God you’re okay.” For a man who’d pulled a feat of Christlike proportions, Zack looked as macabre as his surroundings. He kept his tense gaze on Theo as the augur scanned the latest ladder to the surface.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Zack asked.

“A mouse.”

“A mouse?”

“A dead mouse,” said Theo. “Our exit has one at the base of the ladder.”

Theo knew how crazy he sounded. Though the miracle in the magazine office had granted him fresh credibility with David, his latest plan threw Zack into the role of the angry doubter.

“Goddamn it, Theo . . .”

“I told you. We’ll get them.”

“How? By leaving them behind? By moving in the opposite
direction from where they are?”

“They’ll be all right in the short term.”

“Then why did David hear one of them screaming?”

Theo’s fingers twitched with stress as the cartoonist’s wrath echoed down the tunnel. If Zack knew the sisters were at the mercy of Evan, he’d make a hot dash back to the building. The decision would not end well for him.

“I care about them as much as you do, Zack.”

“I’m not doubting your motives. I just don’t understand what’s happening with you. Eight minutes ago, you were barely lucid. Now you’re floating around like a Level Ten deity.”

“No deity,” Theo insisted. “Just a Level Two augur. I’ll explain when we have time.”

He stopped at the next ladder and noticed a dead brown mouse on the floor. There it was, just as he’d seen in the God’s Eye. He glanced up at the square metal cover.

“Okay. This is the one. It’s welded shut. You’ll have to do your thing again.”

Zack moved to the ladder and launched his temporis upward. In the dim light of the tunnel, his friends could see the otherworldly glow in his skin and hair, the mighty white beam that burst from his hand. Clearly Theo wasn’t the only one who went up a level today. Mia wondered how many ascensions it would take before the people she loved started looking and acting like true gods.

They emerged into a delivery alley two blocks north of the office building, a thin and lifeless corridor full of concrete ramps and tempic pallets.

David lowered Mia from his back, then scanned the street at both ends. “Where to now?”

“Nowhere,” said Theo. “We wait here.”

“Won’t be long before the Deps expand their search.”

“We’ll be gone before that happens.”

Zack opened his knapsack and cursed at the sight of Mia’s pink journal. He’d grabbed the wrong bag in the rush to flee the office. Every last cent of their money was back in the building.

In the light of day, Mia could see the huge patch of blood on Zack’s shirt.
My blood
, she thought, with heart-pounding distress. She moved closer to look but was gripped by a sudden violent sickness. The others watched in concern as she dashed behind a truck ramp and threw up the bacon and waffles that Hannah had cooked in Quinwood.

David stroked her back. “You all right?”

She wiped her mouth, grimacing at the mess she made. “I’m okay.”

While Zack pondered the side effects of his temporal healing act, Theo fell into grander worries. The Mia he’d seen in the God’s Eye hadn’t vomited at all. Something happened differently. Events had changed.

He checked David’s watch, then fixed his restless glance on the eastern exit. “He should’ve been here already.”

“Who?”

Theo was afraid to answer. Now that they were off the gilded string, his faith in a perfect outcome fell to rubble. Maybe their ride wouldn’t show up after all. Maybe Hannah and Amanda—

“Someone’s coming.”

The silver van gleamed with sunlight as it sped down the alley. With each approaching yard, the vehicle looked less like a DP-9 cruiser and more like their old Royal Seeker. Were it not for the New York plates and slightly altered chassis, the group might have wondered if their beloved chariot had come to life and followed them.

Theo pressed down David’s gun. “Put it away. We’re good.”

“Wait. Is that—”

“Yup.”

“The real one?”

“Yes,” Theo said, through a weary smile. “That is most definitely him.”

He’d seen Peter Pendergen in enough visions to know the man by sight. Their futures were hopelessly entwined, a twisting braid of kinship and conflict, smiles and shouts. At the moment, the man was nothing short of golden. He was the first glimpse of sunshine after a very long storm.

The Seeker pulled to a halt. The window rolled down. Now the others could see why Rebel cast Bruce Byer as Peter’s impersonator. The two men could have been siblings, with their hero’s jaws, their boxer’s noses, their feathered brown hair and rugged lines of experience. There was a marked difference in the eyes, however, a deep blue soulfulness that Bruce lacked and Peter had in spades.

He shined a handsome smile at Theo, both cheery and glib.

“Don’t tell me I’m late ’cause I already know.”

“Just glad as hell to see you.”

“Likewise, Theo Maranan. You have no idea.”

Peter’s deep and sandy voice danced with Irish inflections. His
“T’eo
Maernin”
nearly chipped a daffy grin on David’s face.

“How did you find us here?”

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know, boy, and a few things you don’t. But right now we’re shy on time. Hop in.”

The side doors rolled open with an electric whirr. David, Zack, and Mia clambered into the cushioned back rows while Theo took the bucket seat up front. His toes brushed against a wooden cane. He couldn’t imagine it was Peter’s. The man boasted a powerful build beneath his blue henley shirt. He looked like he could land a few bruises on Rebel if the need arose.

The doors closed. Peter began a convoluted series of dashboard adjustments. He caught Zack’s stony glare in the rearview mirror.

“If looks were daggers, cousin, I’d be a lot shorter now.”

“Just waiting for you to explain what the hell happened. We called the number you gave us. It served us right up to Rebel.”

“Yeah. They pulled a fast one on me too. I’m just glad you guys are all right.”

“All right? Have you bothered counting us?”

“I know exactly who’s missing. We’re getting them next.”

Theo turned in his seat. “He’s right, Zack. Trust me. They’re okay. They’ll be waiting for us.”

“Waiting where?”

“The roof,” said Peter.

“The roof,” said Theo, a hair out of synch. He cast a leery glance at Peter. “You’re an augur.”

“Nope. Just a guy with good sources.” He tilted the mirror at Mia and smiled. “By the way, darlin’, it’s great to finally meet you. You’re not fat at all.”

Mia blinked at him confusedly. “What?”

“All right. We’re good to go. Strap in.”

David skeptically eyed the dashboard. “Uh, this is a Royal Seeker. If they’re on the roof—”

“Got it covered, son.”

Technically, the van was a Royal Seeker Plus. It cost twice as much as the standard model, with one key difference.

The Silvers jumped in their seats as the vehicle emitted a steamy hiss and rose six inches off the ground. The doors locked. The tires folded inward.

They went up.

—

Hannah sat against the wall, cradling Amanda in her arms while they both stared catatonically out the window. It seemed like decades, not moments, since the Pelletiers yanked Evan away to God knew where. The sisters could have been elderly women by now, a pair of doddering old crones who were as white-haired as Azral and as crazy as Esis.

As the wall clock turned to 12:04, Hannah looked to Evan’s handheld computer and saw several tiny figures bustling about on-screen. The tragic little creep hadn’t lied about the Deps. They were all over the lobby.

“Shit.” She smeared her eyes, then looked to Amanda. “We have to go.”

While Hannah spent the last minute in a dull static haze, Amanda’s thoughts stayed sharp as swords. She played the visceral images of the day on a savage loop—the two young Gothams gored by tempic spikes, the fierce man-demon with the six tempic arms, the giant tempic fist that pulled Evan screaming to Hell. There was no sense to this life. No God. Only cruelty and madness and tempis, tempis, tempis.

“Amanda . . .”

And that was exactly how the world would end again.

“Amanda, the Deps are coming. They’ll get us if we stay here.”

The widow’s deep green stare briefly came into focus. She spoke in a broken whisper.

“Go.”

Hannah shook her head, fighting tears. “Goddamn you. Don’t.”

“Run as fast as you can. They won’t catch you.”

“Don’t do this to me. You can’t give up like this.”

Amanda covered her face with trembling hands, muffling her sobs and her horrible thoughts.
What does it matter, Hannah? Where will we run? Where can we possibly hide?

“This is just what Evan wanted,” Hannah cried. “He came here to break us. It’s not supposed to work on you. You’re supposed to be the strong one!”

“I can’t go through it again.”

“You think I can? You think I
will
? I’ll slit my wrists before I watch the sky come down again.”

“Don’t . . .”

“Don’t what? Don’t check out early? What do you think you’re doing now?”

Amanda closed her eyes. “Hannah, please . . .”

“I’m not leaving without you. You either come with me or we sit here and wait for the Deps together. I can’t imagine they’ll be nice to us, Public Enemies Number One and Two. But hey, maybe they’ll put our brains in matching jars. At least we’ll finally look alike.”

“Hannah, what do you want me to do? My leg’s broken.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“Where? How do you expect to get past them if you’re hauling me around?”

Hannah pinched her lip in busy contemplation.

“We’ll go up.”

“What?”

“You remember when we woke up Theo at the parade? He was all confused and thought he was picking us up from the roof. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was a premonition.”

“That’s crazy. How would they pick us up?”

“I don’t know. Two of them have a direct line to the future. One’s a boy genius. And there’s no limit to the crazy things Zack will do to get you back. He’s probably already stealing a blimp.”

Amanda let out a teary laugh.
The maddening artist would jump into fire for her, and yet he fled for the hills at the first sign of romantic trouble. If anything, she wanted to live just to smack him.

“We don’t even know if they got out of the building.”

“They did,” Hannah said. “I’m in the blackest mood of my life, but I know in my heart they got away. I know I want to see them again. I might even be able to handle what’s coming if I had all of you with me. Can’t you understand that, Amanda? Don’t you feel the same way?”

Warm tears spilled down Amanda’s face. She bit her lip and nodded.

“Good. So you’ll quit bitching and let me carry you?”

She sniffed and nodded again. Hannah looked around.

“All right then. I guess the first step . . .”

Her eyes froze wide at the office door. A large black figure stopped just outside the clouded glass. “Oh no . . .”

The armored Dep raised his handheld thermal scanner. He snapped to alertness at the orange figures on his display.

“I have two on the fifth floor! Two on the fifth—”

His body twitched with neuroelectric mayhem as a hidden chaser from the nearby flower pot jolted him. Hannah had snatched Evan’s computer from the rug and frantically mashed at the controls. She knew from Amanda’s painful experience that one of the buttons remotely triggered the weapon. Apparently she’d found it.

The agent staggered forward, his mirrored black helmet crashing through the glass. He toppled back to the hallway carpet.

The other seven elites quickly converged on the fifth-floor landing. Melissa eyed the twitching agent from a distance, then motioned to three of her crew.

“Loop around and flank the other side. Make sure they—”

A small black ball the size of an apple flew out of the broken door of the law office. It bounced off a planter and rolled five yards down the hall.

The Deps watched in puzzlement as Evan’s sleeping-gas grenade exploded in a swirling white cloud, far away from any living targets. Melissa caught a hint of quick movement through the smoke cover.

“It’s the swifter. She’s making a run for it. Go downstairs and guard all exits. Do not let her out of this building.”

The agents hurried down the steps. Melissa held her breath and sped through the gas cloud. She could see the cumbersome figure on the walkway now. To her surprise, it wasn’t just Hannah on the move. The Great Sisters Given were fleeing as one.

Hannah clenched her jaw, struggling to keep Amanda steady on her back. A week ago, she’d taught herself how to expand her temporal field, a trick she hoped she’d never have to use. She knew that if even a small piece of Amanda left the confines of the temporis, she’d be rifted. But with armed and armored agents running around like cheetahs, there was little choice. She had to try. She had to run faster.

Melissa bolted after them, vexed by the widening gap. Even with the burden of a 120-pound sibling, Hannah had the speed advantage. She must have been shifted at twice the suit’s limit.

Before Melissa could line up a decent leg shot, Hannah ducked into the stairwell. Melissa chased her inside and crunched her brow at the heavy footsteps above her.
What the hell is she doing?

She activated her transmitter. “Disregard my last order. The targets are ascending. Follow me in pursuit.”