Tempest (26 page)

I woke up suddenly, without any trigger other than a bad feeling, or maybe I had been dreaming and didn’t remember what it was about. The recliner nearly tipped over when I shot up, my eyes darting around the room. Holly was still curled up on the couch, right where I’d left her hours ago. I pulled the blanket over her shoulders and walked down the hall to my room.

Adam was passed out sideways across my bed, probably feeling the beginnings of a hangover after all the champagne he drank during the party. The second I closed my bedroom door and took a few steps down the hall, I heard voices coming from the kitchen.

“I don’t see why we have any reason to push him.” Dad’s voice.

I stepped as quietly as possible toward the kitchen. The hall closet door had been left open and I slid into the crack of space behind it.

“He’s lying to us. What reason would he have to lie if he hasn’t been recruited by the opposition?” That voice belonged to Chief Marshall. It was impossible not to recognize the deep authoritative tone. Had Dad told him about my slipups last night? When I mentioned visiting Courtney several times in a time jump and seeing Agent Edwards. Why wouldn’t he tell Chief Marshall? He told him every other damn thing. “We’ve spent years letting you play the father so he’d trust you, and for what? He didn’t even trust you enough to come to you when he first discovered his abilities.”

My whole body was completely frozen, waiting to hear if it would get worse.

“He’s from a different timeline,” Dad said. “You can’t hold me accountable for another timeline or future events.”

“We are
all
accountable for future events,” Marshall boomed.

“It’s possible he’s just scared.” Dr. Melvin’s voice. “Suddenly his world has gone from small and insignificant to something much greater.”

Why weren’t they concerned I’d be listening in?

“Your job is to find the glitch and fix it, Melvin,” Marshall snapped. “I will not have this agency wasting time analyzing the poor boy’s feelings. We could be using him by now.”

Using me?
My stomach turned over and over.

“Wait a minute, Chief,” Dad interjected. “We never agreed on any specific missions.”

“That’s because all we had to work with was a malfunctioning experiment that Dr. Melvin spent half his life creating. Things are a little different now,” Marshall said.

Malfunctioning experiment?
This was getting worse by the second.

“Just give him time … if you could have seen how quickly he responded to the planned stimulation,” Dad said. “Today is out of the question.”

Today?
I literally felt sick to my stomach trying to absorb everything they were saying. Then I just couldn’t take it anymore. My feet moved on their own, toward the kitchen. The three men were sitting around the table with mugs of coffee when I entered.

“What experiment?” I asked immediately.

They all stared at me and finally Dad spoke up. “It’s a confidential project we were discussing. Nothing you need to worry about.”

Seriously? Did they think I was five years old or just a complete idiot? “Maybe you should take the grown-up talk somewhere else if you don’t want me to listen.”

“What exactly did you hear?” Marshall asked.

My hands balled up into fists. “All of it … and someone needs to explain this experiment.
Now.
”

Dr. Melvin jumped up from his chair and walked over to me, staring at my eyes like I had a concussion or something. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I glanced over his shoulder at Dad and Marshall. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, but he’s a little surprised that you were able to eavesdrop on our conversation, given the fact that we were all speaking Farsi,” Marshall said.

“What?” I asked, backing away from Melvin. “Farsi?”

“It worked in one night! This is incredible,” Dr. Melvin said.

Marshall lifted his eyebrows in Dad’s direction. “Finally. Millions of dollars spent on Axelle and we may actually be able to benefit from it.”

Axelle?

This time I heard the difference in sound. He wasn’t speaking English. My palms were sweaty and I had to wipe them off on the dress pants I still had on from last night. “What the hell did you guys do to me? Some kind of weird brain-frying electromagnetic shit?”

Dr. Melvin rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a pair of tweezers. He came closer to me, pointing them right at my eye. “Hold still for one second.”

I froze in my spot and he stuck the tweezers into my ear and pulled out a tiny piece of metal. I stared at it like he had just removed a cockroach from my ear. I felt dirty. Tainted.

“It plays sound in your ear while you sleep. I programmed it to play foreign language lessons. Nothing but audio copying,” Dr. Melvin said in the calm voice I knew so well from years of childhood memories with this man. “This is just like the picture diagrams you looked at yesterday … the photographic memory … only it’s auditory.”

“But … how can I understand a language I haven’t been taught? I can’t say anything in Farsi. It didn’t even sound different until you told me it was.” I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to focus on getting information. Absorb now, process later.
Panic later.

“You can’t speak the language because speech is a motor skill. You have to practice forming words just like you practice throwing a baseball, or riding a bike when you were six,” Melvin said.

“It just means you can absorb the information like a sponge. You can’t learn things you haven’t been taught. You have above-average intelligence, but not a genius IQ or even close,” Dad added. “There’s a difference.”

“That’s a relief,” I muttered. “So, is that the experiment … Axelle or whatever you called it … you just play stuff in my ear?”

Melvin glanced at Dad, who was staring at Marshall, who looked at his watch before saying, “We don’t have time for this. Let’s watch and see if he worms his way out of this situation.”

“Who? Me?” I asked. “What situation?”

Dad jumped up from his chair. “I heard something coming from down the hall.”

I took off running before any of them had a chance to move, but I heard several feet pounding behind me. Holly came stumbling out of the TV room, rubbing her eyes. She stopped when she saw all of us. “Oh … I was just going to see where you went,” she said to me.

Something about her expression didn’t look right. She felt around with her hand until it landed on the wall in front of her, then she rested her forehead against it. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Holly, are you all right?”

“Huh?” she mumbled.

“It’s the drugs,” Melvin said.

“What drugs?” I demanded, trying to turn around, but Holly tilted sideways and I had to hold her in place.

“This is just protocol for her protection,” Marshall said.

“I don’t care if it’s protocol!” I glared right at Dad. “I can’t believe you let them do this.”

I scooped Holly up off the ground. Her eyes were barely open and she was still feeling around with her hands. Her fingertips brushed over my face and eventually stayed pressed against my cheek.

I turned my back on them and walked toward the TV room with Holly.

“She’s the next name, Jackson,” Dad said so quietly I barely heard. “The next name on Marshall’s list.”

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Slowly, I turned around. “Someone wants to hurt her? Why Holly?”

“We just found out … that’s what we were discussing when you walked in,” Dad said.

Marshall spoke up first. “The girl is just a device to get to you. One device. I’m sure there will be other methods. My theory is that you set them off in 2009. One of your time jumps revealed your abilities. Before that, we had them convinced that you had turned out completely insignificant … normal.”

My legs turned into Jell-O and I stumbled toward the couch to set Holly down before I dropped her. She mumbled something and then curled up with her face against the cushions.

I sank down onto the floor beside Holly’s head.
It was my fault
. Getting stuck. Everything that had happened to Holly. Not Karma, but an actual, concrete reason. If I hadn’t kept doing those stupid experiments with Adam, if I had told someone … I could barely speak but I forced out a few words. “Why did they ask me to come with them … if any government people had approached me…?”

I stopped talking and stared at Marshall, who was still calm yet nodding like he knew I had just answered my own question.

“They want me on
their
side,” I croaked. “The Enemies of Time.”

Dad spoke up next. “Yes, but we’re not going to let anything happen to you, Jackson … or Holly. Now that we know what’s going on.”

Melvin’s eyes got really big all of a sudden and Dad and Marshall both whipped out guns and pointed them behind the couch. I jumped up from the floor and came face-to-face with a woman. The first thing I noticed was her hair.

Flaming red … just like Courtney’s. She was like a middle-aged version of my sister. For a second, I lost hold of my surroundings, the danger, and nearly said Courtney’s name aloud. Could she be time-traveling, too?

Then I had to remind myself that Courtney had never reached her fifteenth birthday.

I shook the thought from my head and saw the man to her right. Shoe-print guy. And a tall, dark-haired man stood on the woman’s other side.

None of them had weapons out like Dad and Marshall.

“We didn’t come for a fight,” the woman said, holding up her hands. “Just a message from Thomas.”

Dr. Melvin tugged on the back of my shirt, pulling me closer to him and farther from the five people facing off. Marshall and Dad both walked around the couch, forcing the three intruders to the far side of the room.

“You have five seconds, Cassidy,” Marshall said.

Cassidy. I tried to etch the name and her face into my head so I wouldn’t forget.

“We’re here to take the boy back to where he came from,” shoe-print guy said.

“That’s not happening,” Dad answered.

“He’s drifted from his main path and Thomas believes this could be detrimental to all of us,” Cassidy said.

Who the hell was Thomas? CEO of the Enemies of Time?

For the first time ever, I watched Marshall’s face falter a little. Fear. He believed them. The theory Jenni Stewart told me about timelines merging and the world ending or brains exploding came swimming back into my head. Somehow, I doubted Marshall was too worried about my brain rupturing. But the other option sent my heart into a full-out sprint.

And could they really take me back there? To 2009? Without thinking about what the hell I was doing, I pointed right at the shoe-print guy. “What were you doing there … in Holly’s room? Why did you … I mean, why did that other guy…”

I couldn’t say what had happened to Holly out loud. The shoe-print dude nodded from across the room. “All of us were under the impression that you were a threat. We realize now that her death was a mistake. That you were unaware of our existence.”

The room had become so silent, I heard Dad’s finger move over the trigger clear as day.

“Agent Meyer, you will work under my orders only,” Marshall said quietly but firmly.

Shoe-print guy kept his eyes on me and very slowly pulled something from his pocket. I walked closer to him as I stared at the image of Holly and me, in our swimsuits, sitting by the camp pool.

Me and 009 Holly.

“Where did you get that?” I demanded.

“I took it myself,” he said. “I thought you might need a reminder. This is where you belong.”

It scared me that he wanted the same thing I did. Like I was already on their side. But honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on either side. Maybe it wasn’t good and evil, but a whole bunch of gray area. Like gangs fighting gangs.

“But—” I started to say, before the man interrupted me.

“Don’t believe everything you hear about us. We’re not so bad. I thought maybe you would come looking on your own, but I guess Dr. Melvin’s little Frankenstein only knows what he’s been programmed to think.”

I stepped closer and lunged for the photo in his hand. For some reason, I hated that he had it. He blocked my attack so quickly, I didn’t even see it coming.

“They don’t want you to know how to jump for real. That would make you a threat. I can show you how to leave anytime you want. I can tell you when and where you can be with her, safely, both of you.” He stuck the picture of Holly right under my nose.

He was probably just as capable as Dad and Marshall, if not more capable, of killing someone fast and easy. But he wasn’t doing anything like that. Just making an offer.

“I believe I have a say in his well-being, given the circumstances,” Cassidy said, turning her eyes on Dad. “Much more than you ever will.”

Dad’s face twisted with anger, but the dark-haired man who hadn’t spoken a word dove forward and wrestled the gun from Dad’s hand before getting him to the ground. I immediately jumped over the back of the couch and landed on Holly, covering her completely. I lifted my head for a second and watched Cassidy and the shoe-print dude vanish.

I couldn’t breathe or think for several seconds, realizing what they had just done. Marshall fired his gun into the empty space they had left behind, but the bullet just tore into the wall. I pressed myself farther over Holly and heard another gunshot, followed by a man’s loud cry of pain.

“Damn it!” Marshall shouted.

I slid off Holly, not sure if I could even stand. The sound of the gun was all too familiar. Dr. Melvin pulled himself slowly off the floor and Dad stood over the dark-haired man with a gun pointed at his chest. The mysterious man had been shot in the leg. Blood seeped through his pants and all the color had drained from his face as he moaned in agony.

The thought running through my head was,
Why isn’t he jumping?
Then I remembered that time in 1996. I was too scared to focus on getting the hell out. I assumed the pain was clouding his ability to concentrate.

My stomach turned over and over as I got closer to the man and his bloody leg. Marshall looked up at us and nodded. “Agent Meyer, would you please question the witness?”