“I thought as much,” he says, still keeping my satchel out of reach. “Is this other place so much better than here?”
“It’s not perfect. But, yes, it’s better than here.”
Sir Gregory tosses the satchel to me.
I look inside. Everything is there. My Chaser, my clothes, some money, even the newspaper I pulled out of the bin.
“I think it might be better if we don’t know when and where the switch is,” Sir Gregory says. “That’s something you should always keep to yourself.”
“You know what it means if I go,” I say.
“I do.”
“But why would you—”
“Humanity’s been on a downward spiral for over a hundred years,” he says. “I and a few others have been fighting as best we can, but we’ll never turn the tide. You, though, have found the answer I’ve been hoping for.”
“You mean you’ve been waiting for something like this to happen?”
“Not waiting, more like dreaming.” He pauses. “You’re wasting time. You should go.”
I look at the other two. Marie nods while Other Me looks scared.
As I retrieve my Chaser and activate the screen, I say, “I can give you an hour’s cushion before the change takes effect. Use it to jump back before…” I pause. Sir Gregory is right — it’s better if I’m the only one who knows when the switch is, so a seventy-five-year cushion should be enough to prevent its discovery. “Before 1700. You’ll be safe there.”
I realize I’m not the only one who knows when the switch is. Other Me might not know the details but he does know when it happened. But I trust him completely.
Sir Gregory holds out his hand.
“Good luck,” he says as we shake. “I’m not sure I’d have the mental strength to do what you’re doing.”
I walk back to Marie. We hug.
“Will I see you again?” I whisper.
“Count on it,” she says.
“Santa Monica Pier. June 20th, 2015, at noon.”
She looks at me funny.
“You’ll figure out where that is.”
When we release each other, I glance at my Chaser’s screen. The power level has gone down a couple hundredths of a percent since I last checked. I’m not sure it’ll be enough to complete all I need to do. “Do any of you have a charger I can take?”
None of them do, so Marie says, “I’ll fetch one and be right back.”
But as she retrieves her own Chaser, the population of the room suddenly triples. Most are security men, but right in the middle is Sir Wilfred.
“Denny! Go!” Sir Gregory yells.
Sir Wilfred spins around, looking for me, but my fingers are already depressing the emergency escape combination. I’m now ten feet from where I was and fifteen minutes earlier.
I want to jump to my room and grab Other Me’s charger, but I can’t be sure Sir Wilfred’s men won’t already be waiting there. Instead, I quickly adjust the location and time and jump clear across the continent to the cemetery in New Cardiff, an hour and fifteen minutes ahead. This time pad will give Marie, Sir Gregory, and Other Me the extra hour I promised. I hope they’re able to escape Sir Wilfred’s men and use it.
As much as I don’t want to look, I check the power level again and see it’s dipped below five percent.
One of the functions of my Chaser’s calculator is to estimate energy use of an upcoming trip. The only other time I’ve used it was in my instruction room when Marie and I were going over the various functions. I’m scared to use it now, but I need to know if I’m going to have enough power to finish my plan.
Most of the jumps I have planned are of set lengths, so I have little to no margin to play with. I input these first and am shocked to see there’s very little power left to work with. I then do calculations for two additional jumps.
The results are heart-wrenching. Making both jumps will be impossible.
I guess I should be happy that at least I don’t have to make a choice between them. Only one will fit within the parameters of my remaining power, and even then I won’t be able to go as far back as I’d like.
Since this will be my first stop, I enter the location number and set the date back eight years, pushing the time back as much as I dare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It’s three in the morning when I appear in the empty lot down the street from my family’s house. A few minutes later I’m at the bottom of the steps that lead up to our door.
The house, like all the others around it, is dark. I can see the window of my room where twelve-year-old me should be sound sleep. There’s also the window to my parents’ room — well, my father’s room, since at this point it’s been a year and a half since my mother passed away. Neither of these is the room I’m interested in, though.
I carefully move around the side of the house until I can see the window of my sister’s room. Using the location calculator to home in on the hallway outside her door, I make a jump of thirty seconds.
The floor creaks as I appear so I hold my position, fingers hovering over the escape combination in case my father decides to check out the noise. When all remains silent, I pad quietly into Ellie’s room.
The strongest memory I have of Ellie is of when she was fifteen, not long before she died, with hair chopped short, her skin ashy white, and bones showing everywhere. She’s asleep on the hospital bed, and I’m sitting on the mattress holding her hand. Father is by the window, looking outside as the doctor finishes his prognosis.
“The truth is, Mr. Younger, there’s little else we can do here,” he says. “Home would be the best place for her now.”
My father says nothing, so I decide to speak up. “But there are treatments. I’ve read about them in the paper. I even found a book at the library that—”
Looking embarrassed, the doctor says to my father, “If you have any questions, you can always contact me.”
“I have questions,” I say.
“Denny. Quiet,” my father orders. “Thank you, Doctor.”
After the doctor is gone, I say, “But there are treatments. We can—”
“Not for us,” Father says. “Pack your sister’s things. We’re going home.”
If we’d been Fives like I am now, it would have been different, but we were Eights, and our options were limited to waiting for her to die.
Tonight, that day is well over a year away, and she lies before me with her hair still long and her face full of the promise of the beautiful woman she should have become.
Tears roll down my cheeks as I stare at her.
My God. It’s her. My sister, alive.
I ache at the sight of the pills on her nightstand that help her sleep. The illness that will waste her away has started to move in. I hoped to come before that happened, but the Chaser’s lack of power meant this was as far back as I dare go. Still, the disease is in its early stages. I know from the research I’ve done on the subject after reading about the medical documentary that there’s an excellent chance it can be stopped. But not here. Not in this world.
I grab the pill bottle and shove it in my pocket. After prepping my Chaser for the automated series of hops to the next destination, I kneel next to Ellie, gently wrap her blanket around her, and then climb in beside her. She stirs slightly as I put my arms around her but doesn’t wake.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I whisper, and then we jump.
The last hop takes us into the copse of trees about a hundred yards from the Three Swans Tavern, where everything started.
“What’s going on?” Ellie mumbles, her lids barely parting.
Wincing from my post-trip pain, I whisper, “Just sleep.”
“Dad, my head hurts.”
Dad? Does my voice really sound like his? “Hold on.” I remove one of her pills from the bottle and slip it between her lips. “Chew it up, then rest. I’ll return soon.”