Skyline (6 page)

Bill
shucked his shirt off, twisting it, squeezing out the water into a dripping
line as he walked. Charlotte had never seen him shirtless; there was no reason
for it to happen. But now that she saw his furry chest, his larger tummy, him
strutting like nothing was the matter, she saw a glimpse of why he and Monroe
were perfect for each other. They were confident in the same way: not despite
their body, their style, but
because
of it.

He
glanced over, saw her looking, and smiled warily. “Growing up,” he said, “I
always learned about a savior.”

Charlotte
frowned, not sure why he was saying this. But she let him continue.

“God,
my parents wouldn’t stop
talking
about him. I believed them, y’know?
Then I grew up. I learned that there was no man out there waiting to save me.
Because the very people I needed saving from …” He shook his head, slapping his
shirt over his shoulder.

Ranging
across his back, from one shoulder to the other, Charlotte saw why he was
telling her this. While she was thinking about the connection between he and
Monroe, he suspected she’d been looking at his tattoo. Six enormous block
letters, spelling out a single, hateful word. SINNER.

When
he and Monroe had begun dating, Charlotte had learned a little about Bill’s
family. How they’d ordered him out when he revealed who he wanted to date. He’d
never brought it up with her, but maybe that was because he’d memorialized their
accusation on his back. Clearly the tattoo didn’t mean he’d stopped thinking
about it. His history still informed who he was today.

“Some
people need a savior,” Bill continued. “They want him to exist so much, but
they don’t ever realize that he’s just an
example
. That they can save
people, too.”

Not
just explaining his tattoo. Explaining his actions. Thinking exactly what
Charlotte was.

“Could
this be why Leanor sent us?” Charlotte asked. “To learn that we can change
time? That’s all I’ve been thinking.”

“Yeah,”
Bill said. “God, could she be that brilliant? To know you well enough to know
you’d never stand for people dying in a subway?”

Charlotte
shrugged. “She knew me well. Only …”

The
Leanor who’d told them to go to the Blast didn’t know Charlotte at all. She’d
interviewed Charlotte one day, then been murdered the next. And still, she’d
told her to go to the Blast.

They
turned a corner, back onto the street where they’d left Monroe, and Charlotte
realized that maybe they’d come here for a different reason. Not to learn that
they could change time, but to confront the woman who’d started this whole
mess.

Because
the anachronistic woman stood right beside Monroe.

•
• • • • • • • • • • •

Charlotte
raced over, but as she approached her steps slowed. Her gallop changed to a
run, to a fast walk, a stilted walk, then to a stop.

Standing
outside Suni’s in the past, Monroe was gesturing to the woman with platinum
hair. She had her hand on her chin, listening, then responding. And when she
did, Monroe didn’t yell loudly enough for Charlotte to hear. If he was arguing
with her, it was less of an argument than Charlotte had had with him hours ago.
Could it really just be hours?

Bill
breezed past, but had slowed, too.

Charlotte
shook herself, and jogged to catch up. When she got within earshot, Monroe was
saying, “But what’ll be there? Won’t it be dangerous? Why the hell can’t
you
go?”

“’Roe?”

Monroe
held up a hand to Charlotte, but didn’t even turn to her.

“I
can’t
,” the woman said. “You’ll understand it; you’re too new at this
yet to see the big picture.”

“I
get your side.” Monroe folded his arms over his chest. “You think time can be
changed; we’ve already seen the outcome. But y’know what I think? I think
you’re lazy.”

The
woman rolled her eyes. “
Please
. You think it’s a coincidence Leanor sent
you here? That you met me on both trips? I needed you; you came. You can stop
this, just like she asked of you.”

“But
we don’t know
what
she asked—”

“Trust
me,” the woman said, pushing her head forward earnestly. “Just this once, okay?
Trust that I know Leanor as well as you do.”

Shaking
his head, Monroe told her, “Fine, we’ll go. But with all of history to search
…”

“Not
all of history,” the woman said. “Look, one more hint. The person you have to
stop …” She looked away from Monroe, to the empty air where skyscrapers used to
stand.

For
the first time, Charlotte began to realize what this woman must’ve been saying.
Not that Leanor wanted them to go through time and save people from disaster.
Not even to save
Leanor
from her death. No, nothing so pedestrian.
According to this woman, Leanor wanted them to stop the
Blast
.

Charlotte
inhaled.

Maybe
she’d learned the right lesson today, after all. That she could change time.
That
she
could stop the Blast, however it had happened.

The
woman turned back to Monroe. “The bomber loves history. Just like you.” She
lofted her mesh astrolabe in her hands, spun it, and disappeared before
Charlotte could chime in, could ask what the Blast
was
.

If
there was a bomber—something this woman seemed to believe—why did the Blast
look nothing like a bomb?

Monroe
she could question.

“That
woman,” Charlotte said. “What did she want?”

Monroe
shook his head in annoyance. “She didn’t say, just hinted. Mentioned a bomber
when I mentioned that Leanor had told us to come here. It’s gotta be that same
guy, the one who killed Leanor.”

“You
think …” Bill said.

Monroe
lifted his hands. “I don’t know what to think. But I know where that woman
suggested we go. And I think I know when.”

“And,
what?” Bill spread his hands. “You
trust
her?”

Quietly,
Charlotte said, “She wanted us to stop the Blast, Bill.” In her bones,
Charlotte felt it was true. Somehow or other, that was Leanor’s plan all along.
Why else would she buy a laboratory so close to the Blast lines? Why take
Charlotte to Suni’s—where some anachronistic woman would come visit them in the
past? Why else would a tragic place like the World Trade Center be “perfect?”

Leanor
wanted them to stop the worst tragedy New York had ever endured.

“That’s
what she claimed,” Monroe said. “And of course I don’t trust her, Bill. But she
said—hinted—that the locations where the Blast ended are important. It’s worth
checking out, at least. Worth going to one endpoint to see what we can. 
And if we find nothing?” Monroe shrugged. “We’ll travel through time until we
find something out of place.”

Bill
tugged at his beard, then gazed at Charlotte.

His
wide eyes, his mouth tugged to one side showed that he was once again fighting
himself. The opportunity to stop the Blast was too good. Charlotte agreed.
“Where, then? Which of the four Blast lines do we visit?”

“My
favorite,” Monroe said with a smile. “The onetime insane asylum known as the
Octagon. But along the way, we watch for traps.”

Time
travel was getting to Charlotte. With all the travel she’d done before today,
she’d never tried traveling longer than a couple hours. Never had to force
herself to keep going. She needed to sleep, but she couldn’t go home yet. When
she finally saw Felix, she wanted to have answers, to have a clear explanation
for why she’d acted the way she had.

Right
now, all she had was questions.

They’d
have to keep going, no matter how exhausted she was.

On
the trip to the Octagon she got to rest her eyes a little. The tram ride over a
portion of the East River, to Roosevelt Island, passed in a flicker of her
closed eyelids. Monroe tugged her up, and then they boarded the island’s only
means of public transportation—a bright red bus that went up and down the
skinny landmass.

“I
still don’t understand what an insane asylum has to do with the Blast,” Bill
said, keeping Charlotte from sleeping on the bus. “Wasn’t it proven that the
four endpoints weren’t important?”

“
Nothing
was proven,” Monroe said. “And what do you think? The Blast just happens to
start and stop at four historically important locations. That’s coincidence? No
one thought maybe it’d say something about the bomber?”

Before
Charlotte had fallen asleep on the tram, Monroe had gone over his theory.
Stopping the bomber here would prevent him from killing Leanor. Would set time
right. If the Blast was a time event, then it made sense to stop it. Gave them
carte blanche.

He
was still worried about changing time.

The
red bus slowed at its final destination—the northern tip of Roosevelt Island,
where the Octagon once stood before it was taken in the Blast. “I just don’t
get why you trust her suddenly,” Bill said.

“You
should’ve seen her face when I told her about Leanor’s death—sudden surprise,
followed by immense sadness. No way is she working with that blue-haired
monster. And when she talked to me, it was just like Leanor would. Guiding me.
Letting me get to the point. You heard her at the end. I think she is—was—Leanor’s
assistant somehow. Like you, Char. Didn’t you see the similarities?”

Charlotte
lifted her eyelids and shook her head.

“I
just think Ana’s on our side.”

With
a frown, Charlotte pushed herself up from her seat. Stood and let Bill and
Monroe exit the bus first. In the open air, Monroe’s words didn’t make any more
sense. “Uh, ’Roe?” she asked. The bus pulled away and everyone else wandered
around the monument that had been built here to commemorate this arm of the
Blast’s destruction. “‘Ana?’”

“Oh.”
Monroe wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Well, I figured we couldn’t just keep calling
her ‘that anachronistic woman.’ So I figured, ‘anachronistic.’ Ana Chronistic.”

Charlotte
couldn’t keep her guffaw in. “Oh, ’Roe. That’s terrible.”

“Sorta
amazingly
bad,” Bill said.

“Anyway,
that’s not what matters.” Monroe waved his silly nickname away. “What matters
is her clue. That whoever set off the Blast loves history. At every other
endpoint, there are multiple possibilities. Here there’s only one major
historical event.”

Bill
wrinkled his nose, looking out at the waterway leading back into Manhattan. Lit
skyscrapers towered over the dark cut leading all the way to the Hudson. “At an
insane asylum?”

But
Charlotte knew. The Blast had happened at the end of Monroe’s first year teaching.
For those final few weeks of school, his students craved any answers. With the
police having none, Monroe did his best to provide the historical information
he could of every landmark obliterated in the Blast. Since then, he would tease
the information out, doing small units throughout the year. His lessons on the
Octagon only discussed a single person. “You really think he visited Nellie
Bly?”

Monroe
lifted his shoulders. “I think we can ask her in person.”

Charlotte’s
heart stopped. God, was this why Monroe suddenly trusted that woman? Because
he’d get to see moments in history he’d only dreamed of? She watched him,
gritting her teeth instead of asking.

Whether
Ana was trustworthy or not, this was the only clue they had.

•
• • • • • • • • • • •

Monroe
specified the time—September 30, 1887—and Charlotte spun the lights back to the
date. Even if this clue didn’t work, this was what she’d wanted. Hours ago,
she’d dreamed of traveling with Monroe. And once she fixed things with Felix,
once she had Leanor back, this was what her life would be: traveling through
history with her brother.

Charlotte
did a quick check around; despite the pinprick lights everywhere, the other
tourists’ focus was on the city across the East River. She released, confident
that no one would notice their disappearance.

After
the first few moments, the bay that the Blast had created illuminated in a
bright flash. The Octagon returned. A tall rectangular building led away from
them, joined to an octagonal shaped entryway. Atop the Octagon’s lobby, flags
waved from a pristine blue dome. Too soon the luxury apartments deconstructed.
A building with the same footprint, but much lower, stood in its place.

The
dome was gone, replaced by a flat stone roof. The pavement vanished, replaced by
a dirt road. As time slowed, their surroundings came into crisper focus.
Beautifully kept lawns lead to the entrance, but in the distance a line of
women in stained dresses walked into a side entry.

After
the grandiose beauty of the renovated apartments, the smaller stone structure
looked like a sad prototype. Moss and vines crawled up cracks in the walls. The
windows were caked with dirt and impossible to see into. The road leading here
was abandoned, weeds growing in the dirt.

Unlike
Charlotte, Monroe would have expected this. His face didn’t fall at the dismal
sight, his dark eyes gleamed. They’d stepped into history, and his grin
reminded Charlotte that she was right to bring him into this. She swallowed,
hating the next thought that entered her mind.
Right to choose him first
over Felix.

She
had a lot to deal with when she finally got home.

“So
… Nellie Bly?” Bill asked as they walked toward the doors.

Monroe
shushed him. “Nellie
Brown
.”

“But
I thought—”

“No
one knows her by that name,” Charlotte told him. She remembered a little of
what Monroe had said while preparing for his lessons. How Bly made her name as
an investigative journalist here. How she wanted to report on the terrible
conditions inside.

“She’s
a reporter for the
World
,” Monroe said, his voice hushed. “But this was
her first piece that wasn’t just about housekeeping. She’d heard about the
conditions inside, got herself committed, and lived here for ten days. In a few
weeks, her report will come out, and a government committee will appropriate
the asylum a million dollars.” Monroe paused, hand on the door handle. “A
massive sum for this time.”

“Brown
is her alias while she investigates,” Charlotte clarified for Bill’s sake. He
nodded sagely.

“If
that bomber loves history, he must have met her. Maybe she’ll know where he
went.”

If
Ana hadn’t lied to Monroe.

“Sure,”
Bill responded, and when he glanced Charlotte’s way, she could see he felt the
same way. Charlotte shrugged in response, lifting her eyebrows. This was, at
the very least, a direction.

Monroe
noticed their glances, too, rolled his eyes, and shoved through the heavy
wooden doors.

Several
nurses in well-pressed white caps stood at a central desk, and a few people
waited in chairs off to one side, newspapers folded between their hands,
unread. Despite the bright lamps and Charlotte’s clothes, dried in the sunny
day of the Blast, the air was chill.

A
sign of the true conditions that Nellie Bly would reveal.

“Good
afternoon,” Monroe said to the nurses. Charlotte drew beside him, wondering how
he’d sell his lie.

“Yes?”
one woman asked them, inspecting Monroe, then Charlotte. She turned to Bill.
“How can I help you?”

“Er
…”

Then
Charlotte remembered. Every time she traveled far enough back, no one paid her
any mind. It was always Leanor—the white woman—in charge. It seemed horrible to
think of whiteness as an asset, but with time travel it was.

“My
friend
, here,” Monroe corrected, understanding as Charlotte had, “read
in the paper about a woman who was recently committed? He thinks she may be his
wife. The newspaper said her name was Nellie Brown, but—”

The
nurse sighed. “Wait over there.” She pointed to the set of chairs and turned to
the other nurses. “
Another
one. You’d think she was the prettiest girl
in New York.”

“Another?”
Bill asked while they walked across the cold lobby.

“When
she was committed, the
New York Sun
and the
Times
both printed
stories about her,” Monroe said. “We’re not the only ones to show up looking
for a missing wife.”

“Brown?”
a new nurse called, staring Bill’s way. “You’re looking for Nellie Brown?”

“Uh,
yeah,” Charlotte replied on Bill’s behalf, standing.

“What’s
your interest in her?” the severe woman asked. Her graying brown hair was
pulled back into a bun. Lines around her mouth showed that she rarely smiled,
despite her kind-seeming eyes.

“Our
friend’s wife,” Monroe said. “She was recently lost. The picture in the
Sun
made us think it was her, but under a different name.”

The
nurse surveyed Bill, making some decision. “Fine.”

She
led them up a wide spiral staircase that ringed the inside of the octagonal
lobby. “Nellie’s been giving us lots of trouble. Told the doctor a bunch of
lies about me, making up stories. Asked for special treatment. I’m glad she got
transferred from my hall.” At the top of the stairwell, she opened a door to a
small room containing a table and a few wooden chairs. “I hope she is your
wife. I’ll be glad to see the back of her.”

Charlotte,
Bill, and Monroe entered, and the nurse closed them in without another word.

“Isn’t
she
a peach,” Charlotte said.

But
Monroe was grinning. “That was Nellie’s
nemesis
! Grue-something. Grute.
Groose.” He snapped his fingers, eyes alight. “Miss Grupe. She
hated
Nellie for always asking for better food, thicker clothing, the treatment the
patients deserved.”

Charlotte
frowned. “I can’t imagine she’ll keep her job long after Nellie’s report.” Not
quite something to grin at.

Monroe
gave her a look, but the door opened before Charlotte could continue.

A
girl stumbled in.

But
like Ana, Nellie only
seemed
like a girl. Her height, the way she held
herself, even the fire in her eyes told the story of the brilliant woman Monroe
had mentioned. The dirty white dress, her bedraggled hair, her dirty nails, all
of it put a lie onto this woman, turning her into something foolish instead of
strong.

Leaning
in after Nellie, Miss Grupe said, “Five minutes,” and closed the door on them
all. Leaving them alone with Nellie.

For
the first minute, they surveyed one another, Nellie staring each of them in the
face, daring Bill, Monroe, then Charlotte to speak. But what could she say?
They’d come to ask after a bomber, some short, blue-haired time traveler. They
knew who Nellie was. Saying either of those things seemed to be a silly way to
start.

Nellie
Bly folded her arms over her chest. “You know, don’t you?”

Charlotte’s
mouth fell open. Had Ana been right, then? Could this not be a trap at all, but
a way of undoing the Blast? And could Nellie really tell, this easily, that
they were after the other person who must’ve visited her? “How did you know?”

Nellie
frowned. “I told the last person that the
World
sent. I’m close. Just
give me another couple days. And don’t send someone else to ask after me. Just
retrieve
me. Otherwise Miss Grupe will get suspicious.”

Huh,
evidently working for the
World
had been that man’s lie to explain his
presence. Charlotte glanced at Monroe, who said, “We’ll be sure to tell them.”

“We
just wanted to see if you’re okay,” Bill interrupted.

“
I’m
fine,” Nellie said, her eyes glinting like steel. “But that isn’t the point, is
it? I’m not the point, it’s these women. And things here … they’re brutal, just
as I thought. They only use cold water for baths. They give us these starchy
old dresses.” She picked at the fabric. “And there are dozens of women here,
like me, who aren’t crazy.”

“It’s
going to be quite a report,” Monroe said.

Charlotte
could hear the awe in his voice. But Nellie didn’t appreciate it. She narrowed
her eyes at him. “Yes. That’s almost what
she
said.”