Paradox (15 page)

“What do you mean?” Zac said. His voice
was soft, careful.

Bryce leaned against the wall,
then
collapsed, sinking to the floor. “I’d rather not talk
about it.”

“I have dreams about my mom dying, too,”
Zac offered. “Almost every night, I replay it in my head, every bit of it. It’s
always muddled, and I don’t remember the details. I just remember her getting
shot in a crowded place and falling to the ground, and then my dad attacking
the guy. And then it usually ends.”

“I’m not talking about dreams,” Bryce
said. “I get to revisit my mom’s last moments every time I watch those planes
crash into the towers. I get to hear myself say, ‘Don’t come back,’ and wonder
if that’s the last thing she thought about me. If she really believed I meant
it.” He sniffed and wiped his shirt sleeve across his eyes. “Well, she didn’t
come back. And every time I see it, it doesn’t get easier. It just gets worse.
Every time is a reminder to me of what I
did,
a little
stab in the heart to rub it in. And I can never take it back.”

Zac sat down next to him. “I’m sorry,” he
said. “I didn’t realize. Haven’t you told my dad? You can’t keep doing this to
yourself.”

“I need to,” Bryce said. “I hate it, and
it makes me hate myself, but it shows me who I really am deep down inside.
Hateful, angry… and no matter how many times I watch it, I know it wasn’t the
terrorists flying those planes into the buildings that killed her that day. I
did.”

Zac shook his head. “You can’t blame
yourself,” he said. “We’ve all done things we regret.”

“I seriously doubt that it was as bad as
what I did. I can’t be forgiven for what I said to her.”

“So is that why you joined TEMPUS?” Zac
asked.
“To make amends?”

Bryce didn’t answer, but stood up and
started up the ramp to the main office.

Zac sat in the conference room and watched
the news, hoping to see some sign that the people responsible for the subway
attack would be caught. He knew that the police wouldn’t tell the media what
kinds of leads they had received. It would only cause those who did it to go
into hiding. But he had hope.

He walked over to the couch alongside the
wall and lay down, putting his hands behind his head and keeping his eyes
trained on the scrolling updates on the television. It would take time, of
course. But he didn’t want to see anyone else get hurt.

His eyes became heavy, and he began to
close them, slipping into sleep.

He was back on the subway train. He sat in
one of the seats, riding along. The movement of the train tossed him gently
from side to side as it moved along the tracks. He felt a tug at his sleeve.

He looked down and saw the little girl
from the train. “Hi,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Um… Zac,” he said.

She smiled. “Mine’s Samantha. Today, I get
to go see my daddy at work. We’re gonna have lunch together!” She leaned
against her mom’s side.

“Honey,” her mother said, “leave the man
alone. He doesn’t want to be bothered.”

“It’s okay,” Zac said. “I don’t mind.”

The woman smiled. “She’s been talking
about this for days. Her father’s always working, and he’s been out of town for
a week. They’ve been video-chatting for days, and now she’s ecstatic because
she gets to spend some time with him.”

“I understand,” Zac said. “Where are you
going to get lunch?”

“A pizza place!” the little girl
exclaimed.
“My favorite.”

“Yeah,” Zac replied, “I like pizza too.”

The girl’s demeanor became serious. Her
gaze fell to her lap, and her stuffed giraffe hung at her knees. “Why are you
leaving us?” she asked.

“What?”

“I won’t get to see my daddy. He’s going
to miss us. And you’re leaving.”

“What are you talking about?” Zac asked.

The girl began screaming hysterically. The
mom didn’t seem to notice. Zac tried to calm the girl down, to reassure her,
but suddenly the mother began screaming, too.

One by one, the passengers in the subway
train opened their mouths and let out blood-curdling shrieks. Zac jerked his
head back and forth, looking between them. His heart began beating harder, and
he stood up, turning around.

A bald man stood up and came near him,
standing face to face. His mouth was open in a loud yell, and in an instant,
blood ran down his face.

The floor of the train ignited, flames
licking the passengers. Zac clamped his hands over his ears, shutting his eyes.
He could feel the hands of the passengers grabbing his shirt and pants, tugging
at him, pulling him down with them. He struggled against it, and began
screaming himself.

He woke to find a hand on his arm. Bryce
stood over him, shaking him. “You okay?” he asked.

Zac sat up and examined his surroundings.
His heart pounded, and he was covered in sweat. “Huh? Yeah,” he said. “It was a
nightmare.
About the subway.”

Bryce sat down next to him. “I’ve had
those.”

Zac was still breathing hard; his hands
were shaking.

“Look, I’m sorry for going off on you
earlier,” he said. “I don’t talk about my mom much. The only other person who
knows how she died is Rock.”

“It’s okay,” Zac said, rubbing the sleep
from his eyes. “I guess I deserved it.”

“No, you didn’t. But we’ve got bigger things
to deal with right now. It’s Emilee.”

“What?” Zac sat up. “What happened to her?”

“Nothing yet,” Bryce said. “It’s what she
did.”

“What do you mean?”

Bryce sighed. “She saw me storming out of
the building after I talked to you. She tried to calm me down, and we went out
to eat. She told me that Rock’s recovering, but he’s going to need some
physical therapy. The poison was a neurotoxin, so it messed up his nerves. He
may never get full use of his arm back.”

Zac hung his head.

“We started talking, and I told her about
what you and I
were
talking about, how it’s tough to
accept that we can’t change the past and what happened. And then she just broke
down and started crying.”

“About what?”
Zac
asked.

“She didn’t really say, but I think it was
about her stepfather. With Rock being hurt, I think it touched a nerve or
something. She said something about hating how things turned out, something
about her brother. And then said she was going to make sure it didn’t happen.”

“But you think she was talking about her
stepfather?”

Bryce nodded. “I think that’s what she
meant. I think she wants to change things so he never hurts her or her brother.”

Zac’s thoughts wandered to Emilee and how
distant she was when he brought up her brother. He glanced up at the television
screen. Still no breaking news saying that those responsible for the subway
attack had been caught. He had to give it time. He wished he could jump ahead
to the future to see what happens.

“So what did Emilee do that’s so
important?” Zac asked.

“She used the machine,” Bryce said. “I
think she’s going back to stop her stepfather.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

Zac jumped up. “She can’t do that. If she
changes something, it can cause a wound in time.”

“She may already have,” Bryce said. “It
may be bleeding through right now and we just don’t realize it.”

“I have to stop her,” Zac said.

“You can’t,” Bryce said. “Whatever she
did, wherever she went… there’s nothing we can do.”

“Sure there is,” Zac said, walking toward
the door. “I can just have the machine send me to the last-known coordinates.
If she’s there, I can stop her before she changes anything. Maybe she hasn’t
succeeded yet; everything seems the same right now.”

“Or maybe…” Bryce said,
then
hesitated.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe something happened to her. Maybe
that’s why we don’t see any changes.”

A chill ran up his spine. If what Bryce
said about Emilee’s stepfather was true and he did something to her… Zac shook
the thought off.

“I have to do something,” Zac said. “I
need someone to send me to those coordinates. Where’s Chen? Where’s my dad?”

“Chen went home. Your dad was pretty angry
at him for sending you to the subway like that.”

“What about my dad?”

“He’s not happy with you, either. He saw
that you were sleeping so he went to go smooth things over with Rock’s parents.
But when he gets back, I think you’re going to get an earful.”

Zac shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I
need you to set the machine for me,” he said. “There has to be a way for you to
tell it to send me to the same time Emilee arrived.” He stepped into the
hallway.

Bryce thought. “I don’t know,” he said.
“It’s possible, but I don’t know if it can be the same exact moment.”

“Come on,” Zac said. “You worked on the
machine’s programming. Don’t tell me you can’t figure
something
out.” He
was at the bookcase now and tugged at it, sliding it open. He headed down the
concrete ramp.

“Okay, I’ll try,” Bryce said. “Emilee
would know how. But I can try to get you as close to the place as possible. But
once you’re in the past with her, how will you find her?”

“I don’t know,” Zac said, opening the case
and grabbing the Wand. “I’ll figure something out. But I have this horrible gut
feeling that she got in way over her head, and now she’s in trouble.” He
hurried around the corner and pointed to the computer screen. “Get it set,” he
said. “Please. After this, I won’t ask for anything else.” He looked Bryce
directly in the eye. “But I need to stop her.”

Bryce moved to the computer and sat down,
pulling the keyboard toward him. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do what I can. But
there’s no guarantee. When this thing malfunctioned the other day, I wondered
if Emilee was somehow responsible for it. She might have altered the
programming so that no one can stop her.”

Zac nodded and headed around the corner
toward the pentagon. “Yell when it’s ready.” He stood outside the glass door,
waiting for it to open. He fidgeted with the Wand, moving it back and forth
between his fingers.

The hum grew louder and the door swung
open. “You’re online!” Bryce yelled. “Good luck. It’ll set you somewhere in the
vicinity of where she landed.”

Zac stood in the center of the platform.
He looked down at the blue light, the dark swirls moving beneath his feet.
“Here goes nothing,” he said to himself. He pushed his thumb down on the device.

Something felt different this time. His
body was still tossed and jerked around, but it felt strange.
Unfamiliar.

The world slowly came into focus, and he
steadied himself and began looking around. He was in a metallic room. Bright
white lights shone overhead, and he could see several metal tables supported by
a base filled with drawers. Next to each table were wide silver trays.

To his left, he saw a door with fogged
windows, the kind of glass that lets light in but obscures what is inside.
Something to his right caught his eye. Filling the wall were doors of what
looked to be giant filing cabinets. Zac approached them. They were bigger than
anything he had seen before, but they looked familiar.
Like
he had seen them somewhere before in a movie or a television show.

He stood in front of one and grabbed the
handle. He checked behind him; no one was there. With great care not to be
heard, he pulled on the drawer.

The pale face of a woman with her eyes
closed faced him. He recoiled in horror and shut the door with a loud
slam
.
He immediately started shaking. It was a dead body. He was in a morgue. That’s
what those drawers were for—bodies.

Could Emilee be in one of them? He
shuddered to think that he might need to open every one of them to check for
her. Was he too late?

A whining noise startled him, and he saw
the door across the room slide open and into the wall. A man with a graying
beard and in a doctor’s coat entered.

“Can I help you?” he asked. “What are you
doing in here? Do I need to call security?”

“No!” Zac said. “I can explain. I… got
lost while looking for a friend. I wandered in here by accident.”

The man gave him a puzzled look. “You
shouldn’t even be on this floor,” he said. “The visitor’s kiosk is on the
sixteenth floor.”

“Visitor’s kiosk?”

“Are you looking for a patient?” the man
asked. He held up his clipboard, which was clear and thin. Zac could see his
shoes on the floor beneath it. The man touched the surface of it, and it came
to life, lighting up in the center with a computer screen. “I can check for
you,” the man said. “Tell me his name.”

“Uh…” Zac hesitated. This sounded like a
hospital, but why would Emilee go to a hospital? “That’s okay,” he said,
watching the words scroll down the clipboard like a computer screen. “I think
I’ll just go back up to the sixteenth floor and check the kiosk. Thanks for
your time.” He turned to walk out the door and headed to the right.

The man chased after him. “Sir,” he said,
“the elevator’s in the other direction.”

Zac shook his head as if he were simply
confused and headed the other way. “Long day,” he said. “Sorry.” The man eyed
him suspiciously. As Zac headed toward the elevator at the end of the hallway,
he looked back to see the man watching him. He came to the elevator and pressed
the button.

The door shot open faster than any
elevator he’d ever seen. The walls inside of it were made of a smooth, black
surface. The buttons on the side weren’t buttons at all, but rather a
touchscreen panel with lit numbers beneath the transparent surface of the wall.
He gave it a curious look and pushed the number sixteen.

Right before the door closed, he could see
the man down the hall staring at him, talking down into the clipboard. A
feeling of dread filled his stomach.

The elevator shot up, and Zac fell to the
floor. It came to a sudden stop within five seconds, throwing him off balance.
The door opened again. A woman was waiting outside and stared at him as if he
were from another planet.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Zac said. “I just slipped.” He
pushed himself to his feet and stepped out. “Thanks.” The woman stepped into
the elevator and the doors closed.

Zac turned around and took in his
surroundings. He walked around the corner toward the hallway, and pure white
walls stretched on for what looked like a mile. He knew his eyes must be
playing tricks on him.

He started walking, and the wall changed
to reveal a person that began talking to him. “Greetings,” the woman in the
wall said. Zac looked behind him, not sure if it was talking to him or someone
else. “Welcome to Carter Memorial Hospital. Please select an option from the
menu.” The wall next to the woman became a screen, and Zac stared at it. It
looked like a web page with its layout.