Her expression darkens. “You bastard! You let them go back home, and then you, you changed it all to…” She looks around as if she’s never seen anything so disgusting in her life. “To this?” Her gaze shifts past me to Iffy. “All because of her?”
My guilt feels like a set of clothes two sizes too small. I sent the others to the equivalent of their deaths. But I would do it again. It was the only way I could ensure my sister’s and Iffy’s survival. “I did what I had to do.”
Those seven words push her over the edge. She leaps at me, knife flashing. Her anger has gotten the best of her so her attack is uncontrolled. I’m able to push her weapon to the side and wrap my arms around her. In a heap, we fall to the ground.
As soon as we hit, I roll to the side but she pins me down with her knees. The knife is gone, but that doesn’t stop her rage. Her hands seem to come at me from all directions — hitting, slapping, pulling.
“You’re going to change it back, dammit! You’re going to bring our world back!”
Her palm slaps against my ear and suddenly all I can hear is ringing.
This actually helps me focus. When one of her hands races toward me again, I knock it away and shove her with all my strength.
She flies off me and lands in a heap.
I hop to my feet and move back to Iffy, intending to pick her up, but my eyes are drawn to a light nearby. The screen on my Chaser is on. In the tumble, one of us must have hit the power button and it hasn’t shut down again. When I see the power level at.88 %, an idea comes to me.
Instead of grabbing Iffy, I grab the device and twist back around just as Lidia pulls herself to her feet. She twirls left and right, searching the ground before reaching down and snatching up the knife.
With a roar, she starts toward me.
I shove my Chaser out in front of me and yell, “Stop or I’ll smash it to pieces and we’ll never be able to change anything!”
Her steps falter, but she says, “Go ahead. I’ve still got mine.”
“Does yours have the exact coordinates of the change? It’s a very precise moment and location.”
“You know the date and time and basic area. We can figure it out from there.”
“And blunder around? Risking an even bigger error? Is that what you want to do?”
Getting the location from me is a possibility, but I could make it very difficult. It would be a hell of a lot easier to use the data stored in the Chaser, and I can see she realizes this.
“Have you really looked at this world?” I ask.
She snorts. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“What happens if you go back? You live the rest of your life inside the walls of the institute? That’s prison, Lidia. Do you really want that? Here you could live free, go where you want, be whoever you want to be.”
“You think I should just stay here?”
“It’s not a terrible idea. In fact, it’s a pretty damn good one. Drop your knife, give me your Chaser, and we’ll go our separate ways.”
“That easy, huh?”
“That easy.”
She looks like she’s actually considering the idea before she laughs loudly. “You really think I’d go for that? Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me your Chaser, Denny.”
I knew she wouldn’t take me up on my offer, but I had to give her a chance. Alternating my gaze between her and my Chaser, I start working the menu, praying it doesn’t shut down again.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I don’t answer.
“Denny, what are you doing?”
She takes a step toward me so I raise the Chaser into the air like I’m going to throw it into the ground. When she stops, I pull it back down and pick up where I left off.
“What are you doing?” she asks again.
Again, I say nothing.
On the screen is a list of jumps stored in the device’s memory. I begin erasing them one at a time.
“Denny! Stop!”
When I get to the entry for the cemetery where my mother is buried, I pause. Though there is no cemetery at that location in this world, erasing it feels like forgetting. My finger hovers above DELETE for several seconds before it finally taps the button.
“Listen to me,” she says. “We’ll go back and fix things together, okay? When we get back to the institute, I won’t tell anyone it was you.”
She takes another step toward me.
“Back off!” I shout.
I’m almost there. There’s only one location left on my screen — the meadow where we gathered in 1702. I leave the location the same, but change the date to one in 1743, hoping that will be enough. I’m just finishing up when Lidia charges.
I twist sideways and hug the Chaser to my chest, expecting her to smash into me, but instead of heading in my direction, she goes left and kneels next to her bag, where she dropped it when we first arrived.
She pulls out her Chaser and smiles at me. As she moves her fingers over the control buttons, I hold out my device and say, “Here. You can have it!”
She pauses.
“The location’s there,” I say. “I was just getting rid of everything else.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because…because I’m not going with you.”
“Oh, no. You need to show me what needs to be done.”
“It’s easy. You’ll see me there. Just stop me from entering the building. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
It takes a moment, but I can see she’s decided I’m not lying to her. And I’m not, at least not completely. “If you stay here…”
“I get erased,” I say. “What do you think my life’s going to be like when I go back? I’d rather it end here.”
She looks past me at Iffy. “You should’ve never left whatever slum it is you came from, Eight. You were always playing over your head with us.”
My jaw tenses. “Are you going to take this or not? Because my offer expires in ten seconds.”
She slips her own Chaser back in her bag and gets to her feet. Pulling the strap over her shoulder, she walks toward me. “All right. Let me see it.”
When she nears, I give it to her, but not the way she’s expecting. I whip it into the side of her head and she drops to the ground, blood oozing from her temple.
I check her pulse. It’s strong, so I probably have only a few seconds. I work her bag off her shoulders and confirm her Chaser is in there.
As I toss the bag to the side, she starts to moan. I scan the immediate area, looking for something long and sturdy. The best I can find is a withered branch about a foot and a half in length. I’m not sure it’s enough but it’ll have to do.
I pick up my Chaser and see the screen has gone blank again.
No, no, no! I tap the power button. When it comes back to life, I whisper, “Stay on, stay on, stay on,” and set the device on Lidia’s stomach.
Stick in hand, I stand.
“Hey, what the hell? What’s this…?” Lidia fumbles the Chaser as she tries to tilt her head up.
I jab the branch into the GO button.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I untie Iffy and coax her back to consciousness.
“You came back,” she says.
“Of course I did. How do you feel?”
“Like someone tossed me off a building.” She looks around. “The girl.”
“Lidia,” I say.
She nods.
“She’s gone.”
Wincing, she pushes her torso off the ground. “Is she coming back?”
“No. She’s not.”
I don’t know if there was enough power in my Chaser to get Lidia all the way back to 1743, but I do know there won’t be enough left for her to leave once she gets there. And since both Iffy and I are still here, Lidia didn’t do anything that changed history back or in any obvious way.