“Negative. Stand by.”
Sofia was at Jack’s feet, facedown and unmoving. The dark fabric of her evening gown made it tough to tell where she had been hit. Blood pooled into antiseptically shaded tiles.
There was blood on the console, one thick line pawed diagonally across the screen and keyboard, ending at Sofia’s fall. The destination date had changed. The trip to the past was now the trip to the future, the destination committed and locked. And the date was blank.
Through the airlock’s grimy viewport Beth pressed a hand to the glass. She tried for an “oh well” kind of smile. Pointed at her watch, then at Jack-Don’t be late-gave a single wave and, just like that, walked into the future.
No date, headed forward. The end of time.
“Beth! Wait!”
The machine screamed and threw off a pounding beat of energy.
Jack didn’t notice Irene drop through the ceiling-a fast rappel-timed to coincide with the machine’s flash and noise. He leaped the console and went after Voss, who immediately booked it beneath the machine.
“Boss! I need cover!”
Gibson pressed a finger to his ear mic. “Nice goin’, Voss! Keep him busy!”
“I ain’t playin’, boss!”
Irene glanced over her shoulder. Nick was still at the entrance, framed and petrified in the doorway. “Don’t sweat it, Voss. I got you.” She blasted a few random shots in Nick’s direction, sent him hobbling. “Gonna play with your little friend, Joyce! Hope you don’t mind!”
She set off after her target with an easy, loping grace.
Jack gave up on Voss, changed course, and jetted after Irene. Nick retreated to the lobby. Irene used gunfire to herd him up the stairs to the cafeteria and chased along behind.
Gibson waited until Jack had pursued far enough to take him beneath the cafeteria, then hopped out the window. “Chaffey. Time to bug out.” He landed on the roof of the prefab housing the diesel generator, then down to the ground floor. He went straight for the machine’s bloodied controls.
Subvocalized into his mic. “Voss, come on out. You’re first up.”
Voss rolled up from the maintenance recess as Chaffey, Reeves, and Dominguez flowed in from the locker rooms.
“Wilder went through, Voss.”
Realization dawned. “She knows the mission. You think… she went back to protect Joyce?”
“Get into the airlock. I’ll scatter us all wide, different dates. Chaffey’s boys as a crew, the rest of us solo. She won’t be able to pick us all off.”
Jack zipped to the base of the cafeteria stairs. As Irene ducked out of sight Jack heard the machine crescendo. Dust punched off the walls and ceiling as the core fired. A framed black-and-white from a 1940s swim meet crashed to the floor.
Irene called out, “You’re looking tired, sweets. Is all the fun taking it out of you?”
Then, behind Jack, the front door kicked open and a Monarch Security team flowed in.
A shot took Jack through the side, spinning him. Shouting, Jack encapsulated the first four members of the squad in a sphere of frozen time, blocking the door with it, and fell to the ground.
Prone and gasping, he fired bursts at the first two, six rounds suspended on a trajectory for their targets’ helmeted heads.
The round had blown a hole the size of a golf ball just below Jack’s ribs. Manifesting a handful of stutter bubbles, and flying after Irene, had expended almost everything he had. He felt the cells of his body thirstily draw in every scrap of chronon energy they could get, shock and instinct repurposing and localizing it to the wound. His body was pulling itself back together, but it was going to take time.
Upstairs Nick threw himself out the cafeteria window as Irene closed in from behind. He hit the tiles hard, yelped, and hobbled to his feet, limping hard.
Irene pulled her sidearm as the time machine shrieked and flashed.
“Voss is clear! Irene, get down here! Chaffey, Reeves, Dominguez, you’re up! Go go go!”
She didn’t hesitate. This was everything they had trained for. She hopped down, bounced neatly off the roof of the generator prefab, just as Chaffey’s crew went through. Crossing the distance to the machine’s ramp in no time flat she sprinted-straight to the airlock, no hesitation.
Gibson closed it down, gave her a new date, and sent her through.
Nick limped to Jack-his hockey injury now kicking his ass. That fall hadn’t treated him kindly. He found Jack on his back in a pool of blood, a bloodied hole shot through his side and pale as a sheet. “Jack… Jesus man don’t be dead.”
“I’m… okay. Irene went through didn’t she?”
“The machine? Yeah. I think they all did.”
“Fuck.” Jack got to his feet.
Gibson changed the date again. Four different dates meant anyone who came after C-1 had no chance of stopping them, or knowing when they would emerge from the machine.
The airlock door opened. Gibson keyed the machine to activate. The airlock door hissed, preparing to lever itself shut.
He quickly changed the onscreen date but did not commit it-just covering his tracks, making sure nobody could pick when he had gone to-then leaped the console, pounded up the ramp, and slid inside the airlock just before it sealed.
Atmosphere vented, internals pressurized, the airlock and Promenade flooding with chronon particles.
Mission accomplished. Ha-ha fuck you.
The door to the past opened, and Gibson was history.
So.
Jack felt the fight go out of him.
That was that then.
Nick leaped backward as Jack turned and emptied a full magazine into the stutter bubble behind him.
Nick looked away as the stutter bubble collapsed and freed rounds tossed the Monarch Security squad like dolls.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Let’s go.”
He ran to the controls, kneeled, examined Sofia. The hit was to her left arm. She was cold, and her breathing was shallow, but she was alive.
He glanced at Nick. “Can you get her to a hospital?”
Nick nodded toward the television. It had been running on silent the whole time, tuned to coverage of the Riverport situation. It was clearly getting worse. It wasn’t just the attack on Monarch Tower; things were beginning to go wrong across the city. The Riverport power grid was fluctuating, brownouts traveling across neighborhoods.
“The Riverport Emergency Facebook group has a conversation going at the moment. People are seeing ghosts, reporting lost time. Not a lot, but a few. Checked it on my way over here.”
“Sofia said the end was coming soon.” Jack got to his feet and tried to make sense of what Gibson had done. He didn’t know where to begin. The date field was blank. Sofia wasn’t going to be able to help with this. There was only one date that he knew for certain would get him somewhere he needed to be: the date he tried to send Beth to. The date she would head for, if she could.
Jack set the controls for July 4, 2010. The day of Bannerman’s Overlook. The day Will’s Countermeasure went missing.
“I’m going to catch up to Beth. It doesn’t matter if the city’s losing its mind, Sofia needs a doctor.”
“I’ll get her there.”
“See you soon.”
Jack slapped the button, activating the machine. He ran up the ramp and swung into the airlock. Earlier Beth had noticed an odor to the machine. She wasn’t wrong. He smelled it now. It was the odor of rot and decay.
The airlock smooched shut. Chronon particles flooded the chamber. The door to the past opened, and Jack ran.
16
The hatch between airlock and the bulb-lit Promenade hissed and smooched shut behind her, the homemade corridor curving away ahead. In that moment some higher power hit Stop on the player. Abruptly, cruelly, every sound and movement ceased. Stillness. The follicles on her arms and scalp puckered closed. This world was separate and apart from the one she had just left.