“I’ll take Maryland,” she says.
I nod. I’m relieved. Getting to Lynn is going to be so much easier. And faster.
We agree to meet up when we’re done, at the Christian Science reflecting pool in Boston on Christmas Day 1963. We already have the clothes, and it’s safer to stay away from the present, especially in Boston. Who knows what the manhunt looks like now.
Yellow and I walk to the bus station together. There’s a bus leaving for Lynn in twenty minutes and one leaving for the capital in three hours.
“Good luck,” I tell her as I climb the steps of a silver bus with a rounded top. She reaches out and squeezes my hand.
“You, too.”
The doors close behind me, and I take a seat. Here goes nothing.
CHAPTER 25
I spend the entire bus ride with my head leaned against the window. When I get out of this—if I get out of this—I’m going to get my mom help. I won’t take no for an answer this time. I need her. I need normalcy. I’m going to haul her to the doctor, then the pharmacy; and I will shove those pills down her throat every damn day if I have to. I won’t let her stop taking them after two weeks—not this time.
I will be enough for her, goddammit. She will get better for me. I’m only a year away from eighteen. One year before I’m officially an adult. She owes me one last year of a normal childhood.
Normal.
I laugh. My father was a time-traveling assassin, and I’m a minor employed by a secret wing of the United States government. That’s as far from normal as you can get.
The bus drops me off at Market Square, which is somewhere in Lynn. I don’t know. I’ve passed the stops for Lynn on the highway before, but I’ve never been here. I find someone manning the ticket counter. He’s short and squat and wears a greasy blue shirt and an expression that shows he’s none too pleased about working on Christmas Eve.
“Pardon me,” I say. “I need to get to 1100 Western Avenue. Could you point me in the right direction?”
The man squints behind his glasses. “What did you say the address was?”
“1100 Western Avenue.”
The man’s brow furrows. “The GE plant?”
“The . . . the what?”
“GE,” the man says. “General Electric.”
I’m not sure why, but a funny feeling tickles the middle of my stomach. “Oh, right, yes.” I say it as if all along I was headed to a huge power plant.
The man points. “That crossroad there is Western. Hang a left and start walking. It’ll be on your left in a mile or so. Can’t miss it.”
I’m walking toward the water. An inlet of the bay. The wind is kicking up, and a light snow falls from the sky. I hunch my shoulders and keep walking. What I wouldn’t give for a coat right now. Or even a jacket. Anything to block out the cold that’s blowing right through the arms of my dress and piercing my skin. I can see my breath.
The streets are nearly empty as the sun sets on the horizon. Church bells ring in the distance, which reminds me that it’s Christmas Eve. I have no idea what day it is in the present. Definitely past Christmas, I would imagine.
There’s not a soul near the GE plant. I walk up to the front doors of the main building and peer inside the glass. It’s dark. Then I look up to the corner of the doorway. No camera. I have no idea when cameras became standard fare, but I was sort of expecting one here. You know, this being a power plant and all.
I unravel the black dress Yellow bought me in 1894. It’s so wrinkled that the few shakes in the air I give it do absolutely nothing. I glance down the street once more to make sure it’s safe. Deserted. I slip out of my 1963 dress and into my 1890s one, then stash the sixties dress behind a trash can. I’ll be back soon enough to pick it up.
I turn the dials on the Annum watch back to June 2, 1890. And then I laugh. I’m standing in front of a massively huge power plant, and I’m about to go back in time to try to track someone I don’t know and have never seen a picture of as she does something (I have no idea what) somewhere inside this building.
Easy.
I snap the lid of the watch face shut and am immediately ripped back through time. I land on the sidewalk in the early-morning light and gasp for breath. I close my eyes to block the vision of Epsilon’s broken body mangled before me during orientation, but it comes anyway.
That won’t be me. It won’t. As soon as we stop Alpha, I’m never projecting again. Ever.
Time check. 5:30 in the morning. I shake my head and turn around, then I gasp. I should be used to this by now, but I’m not. The plant that stands before me is probably half the size of the plant I left behind. Well, that should make finding Eta marginally less difficult. A sign outside the door welcomes me, not to General Electric but to Thomson-Houston Electric.
Just as I suspected, the plant is pretty empty at this time. I wander around the perimeter to get my bearings and try to come up with a plan. There’s an entrance marked WORKMEN ONLY around the side of the building, and I figure that’s going to be my best bet. I’ll pretend to be an employee.
But when workers start showing up a few hours later, I realize the fatal flaw in my plan.
They weren’t kidding when they said workmen. They’re all men. Men dressed in pants and shirts and work boots. And I am very obviously a female wearing a wrinkled black dress.
I put my head down and duck behind a group of men anyway. They’re carrying silver-colored lunch pails and talking about the census. It dawns on me that I don’t even know what day of the week it is. A workday, obviously, but Friday? Monday? Who knows?
Vulnerability creeps into my skin. I feel so unprepared. I hate this feeling more than anything.
I duck my head even lower as I follow the workers through the doorway. My eyes are trained on my feet, and I’m not really watching where I’m going.
Which explains why I run right smack into a tall man with enough girth to put a sumo wrestler to shame.
“What are you doing in my plant?” the man growls.
I meet his gaze. One eyebrow is cocked to the sky, and he’s peering down at me from a very red face.
“I work here.” I straighten myself. It’s something they taught us at Peel. Standing up straight asserts authority even when you have none. Which is what I have in this situation. None. Less than none.
The man’s eyebrow raises even more. “Since when?”
“Today.” My voice is loud.
“You one of Bessie’s girls?” he asks.
“Yes.” I have no idea who Bessie is. Hell, she could be running a prostitution ring for all I know. But if telling him I’m a part of it means I can stay in the plant, then I’ll pretend to be a hooker. Emphasis on the word pretend, of course.
The man’s left eyebrow lowers to meet his right. “Bessie’s girls don’t enter through this door. They go in through the front. Turn around and go back to the main door.”
My mind races. What if I go back to the main door and they won’t let me through? That will make two entrances that are blocked for me. There can’t be that many more doors in and out of this place.
“I’m already late.” I give a sheepish smile. “Is there a way through from here?” And then I blink my eyes a few times because it strikes me as something Yellow would do, and Yellow seems to have no problem getting what she wants.
The man grunts but jerks his head toward a hallway to my left. “That’s the main hallway. It’ll take you to the entrance. You know where to find Bessie from there.”
I fly down the hallway and pick up the hem of my dress to prevent from tripping. The hallway ends in a lobby of some sort. There are a number of men standing around, so I slow myself and wait. I close my eyes and try to listen to their voices.