These bullet points were recited, verbatim, from the last time they’d had a similar conversation. “Will had the knowledge and power to interfere. We’re too close to zero hour. The risk he presented was unacceptable.”
Hatch maintained his usual countenance. “Convince me that sentimentality will not play a role in your handling of Jack Joyce.”
“We’ve tried and failed for years to replicate my abilities. Jack survived where we failed. He is valuable.”
“That is irrelevant this late in the game.”
“Replicating the powers Jack and I share, sans my… ailment… would lessen Lifeboat’s dependence on chronon storage and rescue rigs, thereby increasing the viability of end-of-time survival.”
“William’s interferences would have been inconvenient. By contrast the actions of a chronon-active insurgent, such as Jack, in pursuit of a vendetta could derail-”
“Martin.” Paul looked his friend in the eye. “You are Monarch. The blood of ten people is on your hands. Mine are plunged into an ocean of it. No single life is worth the life of all that has been, all that is, and all that might one day be. When it comes to Jack I won’t hesitate, but for now he resides on the correct side of my own cost-benefit analysis.” Martin held his gaze. That was enough. “I chose you to be the man to safeguard humanity through its most terrible hour. Your diligence now only reaffirms my confidence.”
Martin inclined his head, an acceptance and leave-taking. He did not accept the rationale, or the flattery. Without another word he exited, the conversation over.
Paul’s hand went to the talisman that hung around his neck on a thin, woven chain. Orrie “Trigger” Aberfoyle’s bullet: a reminder that time cannot be taken for granted, and that eventually it runs out. For everyone.
8
Will was whistling while he worked, sitting at his wooden bench in the barn, an articulated lamp isolating him in a pool of warm light. Jack was outside the barn door, playing with action figures before bed. Will looked over, smiled, and kept on whistling tunelessly.
Jack looked up, saw the bomb drop. It punched through the barn’s frail roof, scattering tiles, splintering wood. Then the flame: a wall of fire, bright and cold and…
It was dark. He was cold. He was in a car, moving, his head resting against the passenger-side window. Wind whistled off-key through two sharp-edged breaks in the glass. Bullet holes.
Christmas lights. The smell of coffee. Nick’s cab.
Someone shared the backseat with him, curled into herself, the painted words on the back of her hoodie catching the moonlight: RESPECT EXISTENCE OR EXPECT RESISTANCE. Amy. She was alive.
Nick glanced at him in the rearview. “So,” he inquired. “How was your evening?”
The radio was burbling. Some loudmouth Jack remembered from his high school years was still bellowing down the airwaves¸ except this time he sounded more alarmed than brash.
Nobody was talking about frozen time. Why would they? They had all been frozen right along with it. Nobody would have noticed a thing.
“How’d you get off campus?” he said.
“Skin of teeth, friend,” Nick replied. “We in trubbies.”
“They killed everyone,” Amy mumbled, turning her face toward him. “Like it was no big deal.”
There were specks of blood on her face. She let him take that in, then turned away, pulling the hood tighter around her head as if she was trying to fall away to some other place.
“It’s true,” Nick said. “News is saying it looks like an act of domestic terrorism. Some anti-Monarch group.”
“Those guys were Monarch.”
Amy sat bolt upright, shot across the seat, and got in Nick’s face. “I fucking told you!” She punched the back of Nick’s seat, hard, then hurled herself back into her own. “We tried to get the others to the car,” Amy added, voice close to breaking. “They didn’t make it.”
“Found you inside the cab,” Nick said. “I must have left it unlocked.” Then: “Monarch? Really?” Like someone had told him his mom had cancer.
Zed. Had Jack really seen her?
The water bottle Nick used to fill his little espresso gadget had taken a round and exploded. The front seat was soaked. “They must have made you as you left.”
“A couple of goons, probably. We didn’t hit the cordon. Amy had a way out. Blasted through a few hedges, trashed a fence, tore up the football field, and roared into the night.” Nick’s voice wasn’t doing a good job of living up to the bravado of his words. He sounded far away. “Dad’s gonna murder me. You can’t get paint in this shade anymore.”
“They’ll be looking for this car.”
“The cops,” Amy said. “They have to be in on this. How can they not be? Was this all for a library?”
She had curled up again, vulnerable, shaking as the adrenaline wore off, so different from the rough-edged battler who had cornered him a few hours ago.
“No,” Jack said. “This had nothing to do with you and your friends. Wrong place, wrong time, that’s all.”
“Sing it with me,” she mumbled.
Library. Will’s final moments looped for him, endlessly. Despair, farewell, flame, gone.
Then Paul. Jack wondered what he would have done with that gun, if Zed hadn’t shown. Would he have used it on Paul? Killed the kid he grew up with?
“Nick? Where are we going?”
“Out of town, I figure. Wait and see what happens.”
Amy sat upright. “I have to get home. My parents will be freaking out.”
“I know, buddy. Jack, your phone work?”
Jack thumbed his on. Nothing but bars of rainbow scramble. “Nothing.” Monarch comms had been working fine the whole time, though. “Most likely they remote-uploaded something to every cellular in the area. I watched a fifteen-year-old do it in a cafeteria once.”
Amy was becoming agitated. “Just drop me off in my neighborhood, okay? I gotta get home.”
“Are you hearing the radio? Everyone’s losing their minds. If they’re looking for us-”
“Then stop the car. I’m getting out.”
“I don’t think-”
“Stop the fucking car! Stop it! Stop it!”
“Hey hey, if you-”
Amy was already reaching for the door. Jack grabbed her. “Amy!”
She lashed out for his face, dug in, drew blood. Before she could swing again he locked her in a bear hug and did his best not to move while she screamed every last thing she could think of at the ceiling.
“Guys, guys, come on, man, we…!”
“Eyes on the road, Nick. Please.”
Amy kept screaming, for what seemed like minutes. She kicked the shit out of the back of those original seats, Nick’s head rocking back and forth with each strike. Eventually the steam ran out, leaving her cold and vibrating. Jack loosened his grip; she didn’t push him away. Jack imagined that if she was anything like him, right now she felt like she was falling down a very deep well. A lot of people she cared about were gone. Her entire world, for all he knew, and nobody could know what that was like. She hadn’t even begun to work that out. Neither had he.
“They killed my brother,” Jack said, quietly. The disclosure dispelled the terrible isolation she felt, the being-alone with friends who would forever be absences. It made their extinguishment all too real, a safety catch flipped, and it all poured out of her. She gripped him hard, joints locked, her frame bucking with each wracking sob.
Nick fished a box of Kleenex from the glove compartment, eyes on the rearview mirror. “Jack,” he whispered, as discreetly as he could. “You might want one for your face.”
Jack took the box, which was when Nick noticed that the blood was still there but the cuts were not.