Vortex (32 page)

Because he’s not back from class yet.

Seriously? Its seven o’clock. What the hell has he been doing for the last five hours?
Some kind of mysterious activity. Like always.

By seven-thirty, I’m completely pissed off and he doesn’t answer his phone. I decide
not to leave because I’ll lose my nerve and I won’t be able to say what I need to
say tomorrow.

I knew I had avoided reading this last night for a reason. My eyes drifted from the
notebook page to the picture of Adam and me at the zoo … an elephant’s ass positioned
right between us. I turned a bunch of pages, choosing one closer to the front of the
notebook. There was another picture of me and Adam at an overnight campout, Holly
seated between us, sharing a blanket.

Holly knew the answer to 007 Adam’s question: he was my friend, even without the time
travel. I think I had never actually come up with concrete reasons why he and I connected
so well right after we met, but looking back on it now,
that
me was probably very desperate for someone to see through all my bullshit and not
make a big deal out of it.

And he was Holly’s friend, someone who shared her restless desire to avoid ordinary
life.

And he was gone.

“Jackson?” Kendrick said, while Stewart continued her search for the photos. “While
you were asleep, we came up with a couple different strategies for making sure Holly’s
safe and not in the line of fire between Tempest and Eyewall.”

I heard her words, but I couldn’t let them sink in. My eyes bounced between Stewart
and Kendrick, then down at Holly’s diary and Adam’s picture. And the idea that Stewart
and Kendrick had spent all of last night helping me. Now they had a plan to protect
a complete stranger …
for me
. It was risky and against CIA orders and neither of them looked even the least bit
doubtful.

And I’ve been lying to them all this time.

It was too much to handle … too much to keep to myself and still be open about everything
else.
Adam’s gone … Mason’s gone … Dad’s MIA … Holly’s brainwashed
. This was my family now, or as close as I’d get in this timeline.

“Junior?” Stewart abandoned the laptop and walked toward me, snapping her fingers
in front of my face. “Did you hear anything Kendrick just said?”

I grabbed her arm and held on to it to keep her from snapping. “I’m not sure you guys
should help me.”

“Why not?” they both said together.

“No one in Tempest is going to kill me or throw me to the wolves … The EOTs aren’t
going to kill me,” I said, feeling my breath quicken with panic, knowing it would
all tumble out. I couldn’t stop it. “But you guys—especially Stewart—are disposable.”

“Because of your dad?” Kendrick asked. “I don’t think that really gives you a big
advantage. He’s just as replaceable as us.”

“No, nothing to do with my dad,” I said slowly, trying to figure out why they hadn’t
caught on to my hints.

“He’s just fucking with us,” Stewart said, shaking her head.

“I’m not fucking with you!” I took a deep breath, lowering my voice. “They won’t kill
me because I’m too valuable … An EOT didn’t bring me to this timeline, I brought myself
here.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JUNE 18, 2009, 7:27
A.M.

Stewart leaned her face very close to mine, then threw a worried glance in Kendrick’s
direction. “Do you think it’s just shock?”

“Most likely,” Kendrick said, walking closer to us.

I gave Stewart a light shove out of my way and went straight for the closet, digging
up my lockbox with all my notes. “I’m only telling you guys all this because I probably
won’t stay here very long. So it really doesn’t matter.”

“We should call Dr. Melvin,” Kendrick muttered under her breath.

I found the page and slammed it onto the bed. “In 1989, Dr. Melvin and Tempest used
the eggs of an EOT and joined them with an average Joe’s sperm and stuck them in a
woman named Eileen Covington’s uterus, and nine months later a pair of half-EOTs were
born.”

“Wait … are you talking about Axelle?” Kendrick asked.

I gaped at her. “You know about it?”

Stewart looked back and forth between the two of us, confused.

“Yeah, I know about it … but not much. I don’t know what happened to products or the
subject,” Kendrick said. “I thought it hadn’t happened yet.”

“The subject was shot by an EOT named Raymond in October of 1992. The female product
of Axelle died of brain cancer in April of 2005,” I said, all in one long breath.
“And the male product of Axelle … well … you’re looking at him.”

“Uh-uh,” Kendrick said.

“No way,” Stewart said, shaking her head.

Okay, so they weren’t going to try and attack like I had thought, but they might check
me into the mental ward. I hadn’t really considered that outcome. “If you guys would
just sit and think about it for a few minutes—” I stopped suddenly, not having the
patience to wait for them to think it through. Blood was pumping too fast through
my veins. Despite Emily’s warnings and everything else, I took the impulsive route.
“I’ll just show you.”

“Show us?” Kendrick and Stewart said together.

“Yep.” I took a step back, away from both of them. “Don’t blink.”

*   *   *

Half a second passed and I stood in the exact same spot in my apartment. But Stewart
and Kendrick were gone, all the papers and cups strewn across the coffee table were
gone. I turned on my computer monitor and clicked on the date: June 16, 2009, 12:22
P.M.

It was two days ago … I had focused on that date, but it felt more forced … or just
heavier, and I was sure I had jumped further back in another timeline, unless …

Frantically, I grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer and shoved the bed aside, then
slowly lifted a floorboard with the aid of the knife blade. I flipped the jagged piece
of wood upward and carved the words:
Jackson was here
.

I made sure the board was smoothed down flat and the bed returned to its original
position before jumping back.

JUNE 18, 2009, 7:32
A.M.

I ended up landing so close to Kendrick I knocked her back onto the couch and fell
right on top of her. She just looked up at me, eyes wide with shock, and said, “Holy
shit!”

“Oh, my God,” Stewart said from behind us.

I swallowed hard, waiting for either a million questions at once or an attack.

“But you don’t have it,” Kendrick argued from underneath me. “The Tempus gene … you
don’t have it … I’d know.”

“Maybe because I’m only a half-breed?” I rolled off Kendrick and onto the floor, then
lifted the bed up toward the wall. My fingers searched frantically for the almost-invisible
crease where I had pulled up the wooden floorboard. My hand froze, feeling it … just
like I had left it a few minutes ago. My heart raced as I pried it up and stared at
the carving, now two days old.

“Holy fuck!” I shook my head in disbelief. “I actually did it. I mean, I’ve done it
before, but this time I actually tried to do it … I altered the past. I did a Thomas-jump.”

The grin on my face must have looked totally creepy, because Kendrick and Stewart
slid closer to each other, as if preparing to converse quietly, but probably neither
knew what to say.

For me, I had just realized that maybe I didn’t have to leave after all. Didn’t have
to take the risk of making new timelines. I could actually alter the past. Fix it.
Everything.

“Let’s make some more coffee,” I said finally. “This is gonna take a long time to
explain.”

“Oh … kay,” Kendrick said, moving toward the kitchen.

Stewart sighed and sank onto the couch. “I’m all ears … This is gonna be good, isn’t
it?”

“If crazy is your definition of good, then yeah. It’s gonna be great.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

JUNE 18, 2009, 5:30
P.M.

“It’s not working!” Pain shot through my head and all I could do was lie facedown
on the wood floor, panting and waiting for even ten percent relief.

“Maybe you’re focusing on the wrong moment?” Kendrick suggested.

We had spent the last eight hours talking time travel and experimenting. Kendrick
knew a lot more than I ever could have imagined and was almost as helpful as Eileen
had been. It was now even more obvious why she was in this division.

But none of her knowledge or research could help me actually succeed in doing the
Thomas-jump again. I totally sucked at it and the half-jumps were wearing me thin.

“Let’s take a break … please?” she said, pointing to the couch. “We can review the
timeline data again. Maybe that’ll help you get a grasp on what you’re trying to do.”

I sighed with frustration but couldn’t really argue when I had zero energy left. I
pried myself from the floor and rubbed the blurriness from my eyes. “You know when
I jumped off the roof … in August 2009 … before I came here…”

“Yeah?”

“I keep forgetting about this question, but I’ve been wondering ever since it happened,
and something always prevents me from asking Dr. Melvin or my dad.” I leaned back
against the couch, closing my eyes and breathing slowly to fight off the nausea. “There
were two Hollys … It was weird, because I assumed it was the 2007 timeline—”

“World B,” Kendrick added.

“Yeah … World B … but, you know … in 2009 … like I fast-forwarded a couple years
and
jumped sideways…”

“You couldn’t have jumped past—”

“The last date I left in 2007,” I finished, nodding without opening my eyes. “I know.
Dr. Melvin explained all that. But then it had to have been a Thomas-jump, right?
But it couldn’t be, because she would have remembered seeing me and herself when we
fast-forwarded again.”

Kendrick’s forehead wrinkled as she flipped through pages of notes. “What was the
date for that jump?”

“It was 2009 … the second time, after I returned from World B. We jumped from August
fifteenth and landed on August twelfth … I have no idea of the time.”

“What was your source?”

“Some woman’s newspaper,” I said.

“That was the only source you checked?” Kendrick asked, and I nodded. “Well … from
my research on complete jumps, the memory could have come on slowly. Tempest doesn’t
have a lot of data recorded from actual subjects affected by a complete jump. It was
only, what, like fourteen or so hours before you jumped back to March fifteenth?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” I opened my eyes and looked over the paper in front of me again.
“So what you’re saying is … if I’d stuck around, she might have remembered seeing
another version of herself three days in the past?”

“She already did remember seeing two of herself … She was there,” Kendrick said. “The
only memory she may have acquired would be the memory of that other version of herself
getting to Central Park with Raymond and whichever EOTs were around. Some people are
just built to handle shock better than others. Maybe Holly is like that. Instead of
crawling into a shell and shaking with fear when she gets thrown off a roof and sent
through her boyfriend’s time portal, she just stows it away … doesn’t absorb the impact
of that moment until much later.”

“That sounds like an agent skill,” I said dryly, hating that Holly had anything to
offer the CIA. I wanted her out of there … back to her normal life, worrying about
which classes to take and whether or not her old clunker of a car would start in the
morning.

“You know the future that Emily took you to see?” Kendrick asked, pulling me from
my thoughts of Holly.

“The shitty one that looked like the Zombie Apocalypse had just happened?”

“Uh-huh.” She thumbed through her notes for a minute then finally glanced over at
me. “I think I know what happened. It’s a term I stumbled on in the Tempest database
while I was studying everything ever written on time travel. A Vortex. That’s what
it’s called when the frequency of time travel increases. It supposedly can cause earthquakes,
tsunamis, hurricanes…”

I gaped at her with my mouth half open. “What…? I mean, why wouldn’t anyone have told
me about that? Or told me not to time-travel because it may cause an earthquake in
the future? That seems like an important detail to not keep secret, even if Marshall
and Dr. Melvin were trying to hide things from me.”

“Probably because it would take a lot of time travel to do this. By ‘a lot,’ I mean
hundreds of people … maybe thousands … jumping all over the place.” She leaned back
against the couch and diverted her eyes from mine. “It’s possible … I don’t know for
sure … but this might be Eileen’s data.” She let out a breath and rushed to get the
rest of her words out. “It goes with her theory of you somehow opening up World B
and allowing the EOTs to bounce off of it, thus increasing the number of time travelers,
and as a result, a Vortex was created. Or will be created. I’m not sure which it is.”

Her words hung in the silence that followed this revelation. So, basically it was
my fault the future crumbled to bits. I started the Vortex.

“Wow … that’s a fun bit of info to carry around. So glad we had this chat.” I smiled
at her to show I wasn’t blaming her, but the timing was a little bad. I had enough
shit to deal with right now.

Michael knocked on the door before Kendrick could respond, and after watching her
face light up when she saw him, I had to tell her to go. Healy would most likely be
sending us all back to France anytime now and she’d have to leave him again and I
knew it was on her mind even though she had devoted all her energy to helping me these
past two days.

I had about five minutes to myself before Stewart burst in like she lived here. “They’re
gone!”

I jumped up from the couch. “Who’s gone? What happened?”

“Not who,” she said. “The photos you told me to find. I got my hands on everything
up until four fifty-nine in the afternoon on March fifteenth … and then I found all
the photos beginning with six thirteen in the evening—”