Zeta clears his throat, and I shake my head and jump out of the closet. And then I stop in my tracks as colonial Boston spreads out before me. And I do mean spreads out. I’m not looking into an alleyway. I’m staring at open land. There are cows where the Public Garden will be one day. There’s no Back Bay. There’s . . . water. It’s an actual bay. I look out over Boston Common. There’s no looming state house with a giant dome. There are no skyscrapers, no downtown shopping district. Instead, in the distance I see the Old State House. That’s where the Boston Massacre took place. It’s right there, unobstructed from view.
There isn’t a row of brownstones either. Just this one house, set here on what will one day become Beacon Street, one of the most densely populated streets in Boston. I mean, the cheesy Cheers replica will be going in right down the street, a tourist trap for the unwary. The house we’re standing in front of is tall and wide, with brown, stone walls and a balcony off the front.
“What is this?” I ask. “Where’s the brownstone?”
Zeta doesn’t blink. “The brownstones are still about a hundred years away. This is Hancock Manor. And that”—he points across the Common to the Old State House—“is our destination. You are to listen to me and do exactly as I tell you, understand?”
“Do we have some sort of plan?”
“I do,” Zeta says. He yanks on his sleeves to tighten them and doesn’t look at me. But his implication is clear. I’m on a need-to-know basis, and Zeta doesn’t think I need to know anything at this point.
Just then church bells ring in the distance.
“Come on!” he shouts. “It’s starting!”
Zeta zips down a Beacon Street that looks more like a cow pasture than the crowded road I know. He makes a right, and I have to run to catch up. I can’t breathe in this damned dress! We make a left, where the state house sits in front of us. A crowd has already gathered. I head for the action, but Zeta pulls me back.
“Uh-uh,” he says. “We watch from afar.” He whips me around so that I’m facing him. His hands are pressed into my forearms so hard I’m going to have bruises. It’s a display of strength. A way of telling me not to bolt for it because he’s stronger and faster than I am. Yeah, I get it. Let’s not forget the fact that I also have a tracker in my arm.
“What’s our motto?” Zeta asks.
“Enhancement, not alteration.”
In the background, dozens of men rush toward the Old State House. They’re cursing and shouting about taxes, and a chill runs down my body. People are going to die. Soon. The crowd is yelling at the soldiers, pelting them with sticks and clubs. The soldiers’ faces are white with terror, a polar contrast to their gleaming red coats. They’re young. So young. They could be me.
The whole scene is chaos. Frantic chaos. It reminds me of one of my mom’s paintings. Whirls of competing colors racing around on canvas, so frenetic that your eye doesn’t know which way to look. Her paintings display madness, and that’s all I see here. A red coat here, a flash of white there. A woman screams, a baby cries, a man behind me barks an evil laugh as he launches a rock over my head. It misses a soldier by several feet.
“Tell me how you’d alter the past,” Zeta shouts over the crowd. “Tell me how you’d alter history here, right this second.”
“What?” I yell.
I look at the crowd and try to focus. Their numbers are swelling, and the British soldiers have called for backup. Panic screams in all directions from their eyes. This crowd is about to pummel them. One man yells to string them up, and I gasp. This is not at all how I remember the Boston Massacre from my history textbooks. Where are the soldiers firing on helpless, unarmed civilians? These colonists are a mob, and this is mob mentality. There’s no stopping this.
“I can’t!” I shout to Zeta. “There are too many people!”
A light-skinned black man bumps into me as he rushes to the front of the crowd. He looks back for a split second, as if he’s sorry, but then turns and runs toward a white man standing in the center shouting the loudest. The white man seems to be a leader of the group. He’s shouting cries, which the crowd echoes.
“That’s Crispus Attucks,” Zeta says, pointing to the black man. “And that”—he points to the white man leading the crowd—“is the rope maker Samuel Gray. Both of these men are going to die today. Do you want to know who else?”
My mouth falls open as I watch two of the soldiers shout at the men to back up and keep order. One man throws a stick that hits a soldier straight in the jaw, and the crowd cheers at the crunch.
Zeta grabs my arm and points to two boys pushing their way to the front of the crowd. “James Caldwell and Samuel Maverick. Victims three and four.”
One of the boys turns to the other. “Is there a fire?” he shouts. “We have to help!”
He doesn’t know. Neither of them does. They’re about my age. Sixteen. Seventeen at most. They shouldn’t die like this. I try to break away from Zeta to run to them, to try to pull them back, pull all of them back, but Zeta holds on to me tight.
“There’s number five.” He points to a man standing on the edge. “Patrick Carr.”
I stop breathing when I look at Patrick Carr. He knows what’s about to happen. It’s written all over his face. But that’s not what gets me. It’s the young boy standing next to him. Patrick Carr is a father.
“Go home,” he says to his son.
“But—” the boy says.
“Now. You go home now.”
His son turns and runs away, as fast as his little legs will carry him.
The crowd throws more sticks. Rocks. Whatever they can find. A big, burly man launches toward a soldier. “You sons of bitches to fire! You can’t kill us all! Fire! Why don’t you fire? You dare not fire!” he shouts. I gasp.
“And there’s who we’re helping.” Zeta points to a man across the crowd. “Christopher Monk. He is going to be shot today but will not die for nearly ten years, during which time the city of Boston will pay an exorbitant sum to see to his care. We’re going to ensure the money gets put to a better use.”
I barely notice the guy Zeta’s pointing at, a guy about my age holding something that looks like a small baseball bat and shouting at the soldiers. I’m still staring at Patrick Carr. The crowd swells forward toward the soldiers.
“When I give you the signal, you are to run to Monk and pull him to the ground,” Zeta yells over the roar of the crowd.
A shot rings out, and I duck my head, then look toward the soldiers. One of them has his rifle raised in the air.
“What?” I yell to Zeta.
“No!” Samuel Gray shouts in the middle of the crowd. “God damn you, don’t fire!”
But it’s too late. Shots ring out, and the crowd screams as Samuel Gray falls. I squat down, but Zeta jerks me back up. “Hang on! Almost!”
I can’t think. Men zip this way and that, ducking their heads and screaming. Soldiers are still firing. Patrick Carr waves to someone across the street and motions the person away, then steps out to cross.
No! He can’t! His little boy is going to have to grow up without a father. I know what that’s like. And I can’t let him feel that pain. I twist away from Zeta and run just as the crowd reaches us.
“Iris!” Zeta shouts. “Don’t do anything!”
I block him out. I head right toward Patrick Carr. I’ll take him down. I’ll tackle him to the ground, and then he’ll miss the bullet that was meant for him. He’s close. And my eye flashes to a glint of red a few feet away. A soldier takes aim at Carr. I scream and rear back to launch myself forward.