Time's Divide (The Chronos Files Book 3) (37 page)

“Okay, stop. I guess that explains how she’s around, but how did we get me? This me? Did Simon know that would happen?”

“It actually wouldn’t have happened if Pru had done the job Saul assigned to
her
during that time shift. Simon says she was supposed to go back and kill Katherine when she landed in 1969. But . . . it’s like Pru said back at the Expo, remember? Doing that would have erased her own existence. And your mom’s.”

Kiernan lies back in the sand and stares up into the darkness. It looks like he needs a moment, and I’m kind of okay with that, because my brain is already reeling.

“This next part,” he says, “is what I’ve managed to piece together from being around Pru during some of her less . . . lucid . . . moments when she doesn’t realize she’s letting something slip. You’ve seen how she is now. It’s hard to tell how much is real and how much is fantasy. One night, Pru was going on and on about killing herself, and I’m saying no, you shouldn’t, but she’s saying she already
has
killed herself, back when she was fourteen, and she’s sad about it. Wishes she hadn’t. So my point is, a lot of what Pru says is just plain crazy. But . . . this is the only chain of events that makes sense.”

Kiernan pauses, and I can see that he’s trying to decide how best to explain all of this. I feel a time travel headache coming on just watching him. As much as I want to understand, part of me wishes I could just tell him to skip the explanations.

“Imagine for a minute,” he says, “the timeline before they started inserting any of their Cyrist nonsense. Katherine landed in 1969, had the twins, Pru disappears fourteen years later. And Katherine had cancer in that timeline, just like she does now. Except there’s no Connor with her because they never met, so Katherine’s all alone when she gets sick. Maybe your mum never married because Katherine had no reason to set her up with your da, so there’s no you, and despite their differences, your mum ends up taking Katherine in during those last few months.”

He stops again, watching my face. “What? You don’t think she would?”

“No. If Katherine had nowhere to go, Mom wouldn’t turn her away. But she’d have been miserable.”

“Apparently she was—”

“My question is . . . was Pru watching them? And if so, why didn’t she let them know she was alive? I’m pretty sure she thought Katherine was behind the bombing of CHRONOS, so maybe that’s why she didn’t want anything to do with her, but couldn’t she at least have let Mom know?”

“That part is fuzzy for me. There was something about a video . . . or a recording of some sort. With your mum. It didn’t make sense to me, so it could be something else Pru’s made up in her little fantasy world. Last time she had some new nonsense, talking about Deborah as her daughter rather than her sister. I’ve given up trying to make all the pieces fit. Anyway—”

“That last bit might be my fault. The 1872 trip? I had to tell her something to get her to trust me.”

He gives me an annoyed look. “Shush, okay? I’m trying to keep all this straight, and you adding in new twists and tangles isn’t helping. Anyway, Pru saw what taking care of Katherine did to your mum. So in the next timeline, after they insert the
Book of Cyrus
and the
Book of Prophecy
into the past, Pru goes back, bribes someone at the hospital in Italy that first time Katherine goes in for testing. Has them tell her everything’s fine, just an infection. The pills Katherine gets aren’t antibiotics, however. They’re an anticancer drug Pru got from some point in the future. Katherine gets better, and then wham! Two months later, she starts training my Kate. Pru was pissed. Said she did a good deed and that’s how Katherine repaid her.”

“But . . . it’s not like Katherine knew.”

“Didn’t say it was logical. Just said that’s how Pru
felt
. Then Saul decides, for whatever reason, that the best bet is to reset everything.”

“Maybe because he was worried you and your Kate were getting too close to stopping him?”

Kiernan shakes his head. “Pru always said Saul wasn’t worried about that. Simon, too. I suspect they’re right. Think about it. Saul tells Simon to snatch my Kate’s key and erase my memory, knowing it means Simon is writing off our friendship. He tells Pru to kill Katherine back in 1969, knowing it means killing herself and her unborn sister, too. I think they were loyalty tests. Simon once said Saul had one of the regional Templars kill his own wife to prove his loyalty, so it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“So, like the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Bible?”

“Yeah, except Saul doesn’t intercede and tell the guy to stop at the last minute. Anyway, neither Pru nor Simon can follow orders . . . it’s not in their nature. Simon did a decent job of hiding it. Saul may still not know what Simon did with Kate. But Pru, she told Saul flat out that she didn’t kill Katherine. She gave him some garbage about how she wanted Katherine to die a slow death and that she wouldn’t give her the cancer treatment so that she’d be too sick to train you. But she knew that wasn’t why Saul set that task for her. She’s crazy, but she’s not stupid.”

I’m silent for a long time, trying to untangle all the threads. This stuff screws with my brain under the best of circumstances, and I already felt like crap before Kiernan started piling on the conundrums. There are at least half a dozen things that bug me about what he’s just said, but I think most of them are because I’m thinking linearly. And logically, which probably isn’t any better when it comes to Saul and Prudence. Maybe Simon, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me this when I asked in Georgia? You knew then, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know for certain. Simon told me about a month after we left Martha’s. I think he was testing me. Saul taught him well, huh? But . . . the whole thing at Norumbega was bugging me. Why would Pru be there with Simon? She bloody hates him. She hated him when she was younger, too. Drugged or no, she wouldn’t have stood there quietly and . . . she wouldn’t have been watchin’ me that way, either. Like her heart was being torn out—”

“And Simon says he’ll give your Kate back in exchange for the keys and me. What if you refuse?”

“He yanks her key.”

“Let’s say you did hand the keys over, then what? The two of you just go back to the cabin and don’t worry about the next century when nearly a billion—”

“The three of us.” His tone is still low and flat as he says that, but then the next words explode out of him. “You saw her, Kate! She’s with child. You saw her. It’s not so simple. The baby . . .”

“But that’s one child, Kiernan! How many children die in the Culling and after?”

“How many people died in World War One, Kate? World War Two? How about the other wars in the last century? Tally up those deaths, and no, it’s not quite the ‘nearly a billion’ that you mention, but it’s not so far from it. And there’s plenty more to come.”

“But Katherine says things get better, that they’re getting better even in my time, if people would just look at things objectively. There’s less hunger, less disease, fewer wars. The Future-Wiki that Delia and Abel put together, everything Grant told me, what Campbell and Tate said, too—everything points in that same direction. Even if that future wasn’t perfect, I’m certain it’s better than what we see here.”

“I’m not arguing with that, damn it. Would you let me finish? What if someone said you could stop all of those deaths by sacrificing an innocent child? Would it be an easy choice for you? What if the child in question was your own?”

I don’t know how to answer. I mean, I know it wouldn’t be an
easy
choice, but could I do it? Could I sacrifice a child of my own—or any concrete, living child for that matter—to save millions? I’d like to think the answer is yes, that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one, but I have to admit I’m not certain, even when the idea of having a child of my own seems distant and remote.

And while I don’t have the guts to admit it out loud, I have very mixed feelings about the news that Other-Kate is alive. I’m relieved it’s not me in Rio, and I’m really and truly happy for Kiernan, even though I think the odds of him getting her back safely with everything else currently on the line aren’t good. There’s also a touch of jealousy, however unreasonable it may be. Not over Kiernan. I care for him. Okay, yes. I love him. But not the way I love Trey.

The jealous feeling is that she’s butting into
my
timeline, a timeline where she’s not supposed to exist. And that’s kind of scary. Maybe I’ll be the one who evaporates this time, like the other Other-Me did during the library fire.

But the baby? That’s a very different kettle of fish. Thinking about this baby—a baby that shares half my genes, a baby I most likely will never see even if it survives—stirs up an odd sense of protectiveness.

“Is it . . .” I try to think of a delicate way to phrase it, but there isn’t one, so I just blurt it out. “Is the baby yours?”

He’s quiet for a bit, and then he says, “I think so. After I left Estero, the supply of contraceptives June gave me ran out. So Kate was taking care of it, but when most of your days last longer than twenty-four hours, it’s hard to stick to a schedule. I think she may have missed a few times, especially during the whole craziness with the jump to Georgia. She was going to get one of those implant things, but she never got around to it. And Simon swears it’s mine. Swears he never touched her, swears Saul and the others don’t even know about her, that they think she’s Younger Pru. He claims his goal all along was to give her back to me, once it’s all done.”

“Do you believe him?”

His laugh is nervous, shaky. “The sad thing is, I really do. Why else would he bring her to watch me at Estero? Simon took the stars down that night after he and his goons grabbed Kate—probably the same goons that knocked me out in the alley. Said he was worried Pru or Saul might catch on to the fact that he didn’t follow orders. But he’s also the one who came back later and put the stupid things back up, to let me know I shouldn’t give up hope. It’s like Kate said long ago, Simon’s never loved anyone other than me. No one can love Saul, it’s like lovin’ a damned cobra. You might try to please him, but that’s mostly self-preservation. And Pru . . . there’s no love lost there. Saul set the two of them against each other from day one. With no mum, no dad, he latched onto me like a brother. So, yeah, I believe him when he says the baby’s mine. But there are limits. He’d feel bad about yanking Kate’s key, just like he’d probably have felt bad about killing her. But he’ll do it if he finds I’ve double-crossed him.”

A defiant note comes into his voice as he continues. “But on the issue of the baby, it wouldn’t matter either way, Kate. The child is indisputably hers, and . . . she is my very heart. So the child is
mine
. I won’t be asking any questions of her.”

Kiernan reaches into his pocket and then stretches his hand out to me, dropping something into my palm. “Sorry. I lied to you about that, too.”

The gold is tinted blue in the light of the CHRONOS keys. It’s still obvious that it’s a wedding band. Something is engraved inside, but I can’t read it.

“It was just a civil ceremony in Boston, about three months after my mum died. Jess and Amelia stood up for us. Katherine would’ve had a fit, and so would your mum and dad, probably—Kate had barely begun college. We had so much uncertainty in every other part of our lives, though, and I needed . . .” He shrugs. “Kate would’ve been just as happy to wait, but she humored me. Simon said he had to drug her to get the ring off her finger.”

That image clearly riles him up. He clenches a handful of the sand-stuff and squeezes it into a firm ball, then smashes it back into the ground.

“So . . . you’re pissed at yourself because you couldn’t betray me—and what we’re working for—to save your Kate and the baby. And you’re also pissed at yourself for even thinking about doing it. Is that it?”

“Yeah,” he says, still looking off in the distance. “Pretty much sums it up.”

“Kiernan, would you just look at me?” I wait until he finally turns toward me. “I’m not angry. Well, maybe a little, but I
understand
. I just . . . I wish you’d told me. You acting like such a jerk makes a lot more sense now that I know what’s been weighing you down. And we’re not at odds here. We’ll both do our best to stop this, but if we can’t? I’ll go with Simon and help him do whatever he needs to do to calm the survivors if he keeps his promise and lets Mom and Katherine go—that’s my fallback option, too. This just means there are two more lives we might be able to salvage if all else fails.”

It’s my best effort at making peace, and I give him a hopeful smile. But if anything, he looks even angrier than before.

What did I say to set him off this time?

Kiernan struggles with whatever it is for a moment, and when he finally speaks, it’s through clenched teeth. “First, let’s not forget that it wasn’t just a matter of trading you for her. I was toying with the idea of looking the other way, of accepting Simon’s argument that all those lives are irrelevant. And second, cut the bloody martyr act. I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself. I suspect there are others who might object to that as well.”

I really, really want to punch him. To hear him talk, it’s like I’m one of those Koreshan women, eager to sacrifice my life for the cause. I take a few calming breaths, but my voice is still quivering when I reply.

“First—and I know this was your second point, but since it’s what pissed me off the most, that’s where I’m starting—if you think I plan on just giving up, that any of us plan on giving up without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. And as for your other point,
everybody
toys with the idea of walking away, Kiernan! Do you think I haven’t thought of it? I haven’t even seen Saul’s demo reel of the collected horrors of the next few centuries. But even without seeing everything you’ve seen, there’s a part of me that just wants to say
screw it all
and run. I want to believe that voice would never win out, but if I had the option of finding a safe corner of the past and taking the people I love with me . . . the way you can? Let’s just say the temptation would be a whole lot stronger.”