The Children Who Time Lost (56 page)

“The answer’s in there somewhere,” Curtis said.

I nodded and looked at signposts. San Diego was forty miles away. “What’re we going to do when we get to San Diego?”

Curtis shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to lay low until we figure out where the master facility is.”

“But why San Diego?”

Curtis spared me a brief glance. “It just seems logical. It’s pretty close to L.A. It won’t be that hard to get to Stockton from there, either. I was thinking that maybe we could go to Chip for help after things calm down. Michael seemed to trust him.”

I frowned. Something occurred to me. I opened the book and went through the first few pages. Then I reached the section where the boy spoke of his parents’ death. I stared at the roof of the car as if I’d just seen a ghost.

“Get off,” I shouted.

Curtis looked at me, bewildered.

“The highway. Get off now.” I waved at the exit like a madwoman.

Curtis swerved and just about made the exit. He slowed down after a few seconds. “What’re we doing?”

“We need to turn around. Head north.”

He gave me more bemused looks but he rejoined the I-5 and headed north. He cocked his head toward me after a minute of driving. “So why are we heading back toward L.A.?”

“Do you remember what Chip said about Michael’s parents?” I said. “About how old he was when they died?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

I grabbed my phone and searched for Michael again. Nothing had popped up about his death, but I was looking for something else. I found the first article I’d ever read about his parents’ death. I turned the phone’s screen toward Curtis. “Look at how old this article said he was when his parents died in the plane crash.”

He looked at the phone for a moment. “Fifteen. So?”

“But Chip said he was only thirteen. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I just thought Chip got his wires crossed.”

Curtis shrugged again. “What’s the connection?”

“You told us that the Orchestrator was thirteen when his parents died, remember?”

Curtis’ eyes narrowed, but then he shook his head. “But I might have been wrong. Remember there isn’t really any accurate information about him.”

I lifted the journal and turned it toward him. “But it says thirteen here as well. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“My God,” Curtis said. “But what does that mean?”

I shook my head. “It means that we go to Stockton to see Chip right now. He has some explaining to do.”

We drove for almost two hours on the I-5, discussing my suspicion that Michael had a part to play in all this. I believed in coincidences, sure, but this felt different. Curtis wasn’t as sure as I was, but he was willing to follow the evidence. Chip knew Michael’s parents and was as good a person as anybody to clear up the discrepancy.

We’d been driving on the I-5 for nearly two hundred miles when Doug woke up. He listened to my theory and then Curtis’ objection, deciding to keep an open mind until we reached Chip’s place. I continued reading the journal. Some of the boy’s entries were quite sad. The Shriniks that had saved him knew they would die if they stayed on Earth for a prolonged period of time, but they did anyway.

The journal included transcripts of late-night conversations in which the Shriniks consoled the boy for entire nights as the emotional pain of losing his parents flared up.

Halfway through, I started to lose some of the hatred I’d had for them. I glanced at Curtis and then imagined the boy’s guardians to be as compassionate as Curtis. But somewhere along the line, sadness must have driven the Orchestrator to anger. Maybe his adoptive family’s well-being became more important than his fellow humans. Who knows—maybe he somehow blamed everyone around him for his parents’ death. Throughout the journal, he repeated the phrase
They had no chance
.

I searched the Internet for further information, but without knowing the boy’s identity, it was impossible to land any hits. I instead focused my search on Michael’s parents’ deaths—the deaths reported, anyway. It looked like an open-and-shut case. The pilot had reported an engine failure. Everything had been done to save them, but it was too late. I grimaced and wondered if my theory was right. If it wasn’t Michael’s parents on the plane, who was it? And who else knew his parents had really died two years earlier?
But he might not even be the Orchestrator.

I banged my hands against the car’s dashboard and grunted in frustration.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Doug said in a low voice. “We might be completely wrong here.”

I shook my head. “But it also makes sense if you think about it. The Shrinik that helped you even said so. And we can’t forget that Michael helped develop Crixanipam. No matter what, he’s tied to this. What if he lied about not following through?”

“But if he is the Orchestrator,” Doug said, “why did they kill him? Why have they been hunting us? If he’s this great messiah to them, why would the Shriniks risk his life like that?”

“But most of them don’t know who he is, remember?”

Doug gave me a blank stare. Curtis turned and faced him. “She’s right. None of us knows his true identity, even in the future.” He nodded at the journal. “That’s the only thing that is said to hold the truth as to who he is.”

I continued flipping through pages I’d gone through before, but nothing else was jumping out.

“What about Mandy and Manuel?” Doug said. “Were they part of it, too?”

I lowered the journal and turned around. “I honestly don’t know. Nothing makes sense right now.”

I returned to the journal, and Curtis gave me occasional glances. “Anything?” he said.

I shook my head. “Just more clues. He could be anyone of power.”

“I just don’t see that person as Michael,” Doug said. “It doesn’t matter whether no one knew who he was. The powers that be would never let the Orchestrator die. Without him, their work stalls.”

We continued in silence. I cut through my seat with a knife and hid the journal. There was a strong possibility that Chip wasn’t who he said he was, and it would have been stupid to leave the journal in plain sight. Doug remained sprawled in the backseat. Curtis whistled and kept his eye on the road. I thought back to everything that had happened since Tristan Galloway sent the video back with the son he gave to me, trying to remember something I might have missed.

We arrived in Stockton an hour later. Visiting someone who wasn’t expecting you at 5 a.m. wasn’t the smartest idea, but we thought the unsocial hour would work in our favor. Curtis turned into the same winding road Chip’s driver had taken us along when we came the last time.

Something felt different, though. The flat silence was more noticeable, for one thing. No birds flew in the sky or even chirped. We drove for a few minutes and then reached the front gates. They were already open.

When we were within view of the house, I stared at it wide-eyed. Curtis parked the car in the middle of the empty driveway and gave me a blank stare.

“What is this?” Doug said.

We got out and stared at the house without speaking, like we had been hypnotized. The door was wide open. There were no curtains on the windows. No sign of life whatsoever.

We heard a brief shuffling to our right, and Curtis drew his Glock. The shuffling returned after a few seconds. Doug flashed a torch in its direction. We saw a fox scampering away. We turned to the house once more, the shock still preventing any of us from speaking.

I took a step forward, but Curtis stopped me. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“Still think this is all a coincidence?”

He let go and I continued. I stepped through the front door and walked in. Doug and Curtis caught up, but Doug still grimaced in pain with each step. Curtis’ regenerative cells had done a great job of healing him, but it wasn’t an instantaneous process. I studied the main hall of the house, more shock on my face. All that fine Brazilian rosewood I’d seen during our first visit was gone, as if someone had stripped everything down. In its place was coarse timber everywhere. There were no sofas or tables. We might as well have been somewhere else altogether. I walked toward a light switch and pushed it. Nothing. I went to another, and another. None of them worked. All we had to light our way were Doug’s flashlight and the sliver of moonlight that shone in.

“What’s going on?” Doug said.

“This can’t be explained,” Curtis said, looking at Doug and me. “Unless Chip made a run for it after hearing what happened to Michael.”

“No way,” I said. “He didn’t have enough time to clear his house like this. This must have taken maybe a hundred men or more. Maybe even some Shriniks. This is a week’s work, maybe more. They must have done this in, what, six hours? This must have been planned well in advance.”

“That makes no sense,” Curtis said. “How did they know to have it ready for us and then tear it down the second we left?”

I scratched my head and walked around the dark hall. “It must be Michael. He must have something to do with all this.”

We walked around the house, venturing upstairs and through the halls. The rich aromas had been replaced by dampness. I’d hoped to get answers by coming here, but all I got were more questions. Had the Shriniks done this? Was Michael alive? The whole thing was just strange. We took a thorough look around and didn’t see any personal effects. No photographs, no loose pieces of paper, nothing. It was a thorough clear-out.
I bet we won’t even be able to find fingerprints if we try.

We left the house thirty minutes later and walked to the car. We leaned against it, staring at the dark skies.

“What now?” Doug said. None of answered. He faced Curtis. “If we went somewhere else—say, Europe—would you be able to work the portal?”

I stared at Doug and frowned. “What’re you saying?”

He shrugged. “It’s over. There’s nothing we can do. I say we just get out while we can.”

I shook my head. “You’re kidding, right?”

“We have the journal,” Doug said. “That’s leverage. But if we stay here, they’ll find us and kill us. If we go through another portal, we can go to any year we want, regroup somewhere else. Maybe use the information in the journal to our advantage.”

“Or I can take it back to 2086 like I was going to do,” Curtis said. “But instead give it to the rebels. You could both come with me.”

I grunted and took a few steps forward. I turned around, my face tight. “Are you hearing yourselves? We can’t just run.” I faced Curtis. “And what good will taking it to 2086 do? By then they’ve already won. We’ll stand out like rabbits.” I pointed at the car. “The journal’s got the blueprints to the master portal, right?”

They nodded.

“But what if they’ve moved it by 2086. What then?”

Neither one spoke.

“If we run now, we’ll never find the Orchestrator, but he’ll find us wherever we go.”

“Michael, right?” Doug said in a condescending tone. “The person who’s been helping us all this time? The person we saw die?”

I faced the ground. Curtis walked forward and held my hand. “We need to lay low for a while. It doesn’t have to be 2086, but there’s nowhere in 2013 they won’t find us. They have people everywhere.”

“But they’ll find us even if we use a European portal.”

Curtis shook his head. “Maybe not. Remember, I helped build them. There might be a way to hide where we’re going.”

I continued pacing. I had no right to tell them what to do. After all the deaths, they were entitled to go their own way. “I’m not running,” I said. “These people took everything from me. My medication is practically finished.” I reached into my purse and held the bottle up. I shook it and strained to see the drop of liquid at the bottom. “This is all I have left. You two can go if you want, but I’m staying here. I’m not giving them time to regroup.”

Doug moved toward me, irritation on his face. “But what are you going to do, really?”

“We destroy the master portal and stop time travel altogether. You said it yourself. Without it, they won’t be able to bring all their people here. And without going back and forth, they’ll never be able to acclimatize or weaponize Crixanipam.” I glanced at the car. “We have the C4. All we need to do is use it.”