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  Her pride in Charlotte’s work gushed out. She apologized for her coldness prior, but said it was important, in case Charlotte wasn’t right for the project. And then Leanor spoke at length about the astrolabe, quantum physics, where she’d gotten the idea.

  Maybe it had all been lies, but Charlotte had never felt closer. As the weeks, the months went on, they became true colleagues. Working in concert, side by side. Trusting each other to take over an element that they were struggling with. It was exactly what Charlotte had hoped for all her life. Exactly what she needed. Not just a boss, but a mentor. A friend.

  She couldn’t lose that.

  Gritting her teeth, Charlotte raised her chin to stare at Bill. “We can change this, can’t we?” Her voice felt hoarse from the yelling, but her breathing was even. She was ready to undo what this man had done. Even if it meant enduring hours of a painful memory rewrite.

  Bill sighed, crouching beside her, eyes on Leanor.

  Charlotte couldn’t follow his gaze. She didn’t want this version of Leanor to ever exist.

  “Before all this?” Bill lifted a hand to the air, the canopy far above shading them from the sun. “I would’ve said of course. I agree with that woman. Time can be changed. Obviously.” He sighed again, shaking his head. “But after feeling that headache in your lab, there’s a lot we don’t know. Maybe our own timeline is more fragile.”

  “But our timeline was changed,” Monroe said. He still stood apart from them, arms crossed, biting his lip. “We didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Why didn’t I ask?” Charlotte asked. “This past year, through all those late nights, all our tests, I never asked. All these questions about what time is, whether it’s malleable, what the rules are. I never considered that Leanor might have more answers.”

  But she must have. For this man to kill her, to claim she’d done something … For Leanor to know about the woman they’d met in the past … She must’ve been intimately familiar with time travel, not at all new to it.

  “‘Perfect,’ she said,” Charlotte remembered. “When you suggested the World Trade Center, September tenth. Could she …” Had Leanor known that woman would be there?

  “She knew,” Bill whispered. “How could she know that?”

  “And that guy said we should’ve been more careful,” Monroe said. Charlotte twisted to Monroe. What was he talking about? “Remember? When it was still pitch black. But if he found Leanor because we visited the World Trade Center, because we met that woman, then why would Leanor send us there?”

  Charlotte closed her eyes, feeling only the weight of Leanor against her lap. Too many questions. Too much confusion. Leanor had never mentioned she was a time traveler, but that wasn’t the worst problem. Charlotte wouldn’t have believed it until she’d tested the prototype anyway. But why not explain this?

  More and more, Charlotte wondered whether she’d gotten close to Leanor in the past year. Maybe all of it had been nothing more than a front. Leading to this confusing moment without any indication of where to head next.

  But then, Leanor had given some indication. Charlotte’s eyes snapped open. “The Blast. Leanor told us to go to the Blast.” Even as the man was killing her, that’s all that had mattered to her.

  Monroe and Bill were silent for a moment, until Bill asked, “And do what?”

  Another important question. “The Blast” was just a when, not a where, not a suggestion. They could go to that day a dozen times, in a dozen different locations, and never see whatever Leanor meant them to. They didn’t have enough information.

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said. Gulping, she looked back to Leanor. She didn’t want to see this version of her. She wished she’d never traveled at all. She’d longed to get her family back and figured the truth would be the best way to start. But her first trip with her family had inadvertently killed Leanor.

  And after all this time, Charlotte could admit that Leanor was family, too.

  Charlotte slid a hand over Leanor’s eyelids and pushed them closed. Got up and gently set her friend’s head on the earth.

  Maybe this was what time travel meant. Dying in some time you’d never lived.

  But time travel meant something more.

  Time travel meant that nothing was set in stone.

  “The Blast,” Charlotte murmured to herself. It was too big, too vast a problem. But then, so was making an astrolabe that could travel through time. Leanor had never set Charlotte a task that she couldn’t handle.

  That’s why Leanor had tasked Charlotte with re-imagining her previous inventions. Then had her work on little pieces of the astrolabe. When the big picture seemed too big, it was best to start small. Do a little at a time. Learn about yourself, learn about the small aspects, and then the big picture would snap into focus all at once.

  And then she had it.

  Not any clue about what Leanor meant, who those people were, or whether she could reverse any of this. Not yet. But she knew how she could collect a little more data. Get some more guidance on how to start.

  For the first time since their conversation outside Suni’s, Charlotte found herself focused. Almost grinning. “Why don’t we just ask her?”

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Standing at one of the rare pay phones remaining in 2020, Charlotte paused. Tomorrow, Leanor would go to her newly rented lab. Tomorrow, she would be confronted by some blue-haired villain. But after today, none of that would happen. Leanor wouldn’t die tomorrow.

  Right now, Charlotte could do more than ask Leanor about the Blast. She could save her, too. “Here goes,” she said, sliding several quarters into the machine and dialing Leanor’s number.

  “Hello?” came the fragile voice of Leanor. But her voice had been—would be—so strong tomorrow, pushing through the pain as that man tortured her. Had the voice, the hair, the wrinkles all be a lie?

  Charlotte shook the thoughts away. “Leanor, you’re in danger.” It didn’t matter that Leanor had thought—would think—that the Blast was more important than her life. Charlotte could learn about the Blast as easily as she could change tomorrow.

  “Is this—”

  “Charlotte Osqui. Look, I know you don’t know me. Not really. Not yet.” She breathed, trying to infuse her words with wisdom that Leanor would listen to. “You can’t rent that space you’re thinking about. Don’t even look at it. Someone is after you. He’ll kill you. He killed you.”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “Leanor, I know. We finished the astrolabe, and I took my brother on a trip, but when we returned, everything was different. We tracked you down, tried to stop him, but there was this memory rewrite, and I saw you die. But you can fix it. Stay away and—”

  “Enough,” Leanor said. Gone was her feigned fragility. “You say the astrolabe works. I’ll trust that you are the woman I interviewed yesterday.”

  “I am. But what’s important is—”

  “Then you know me. You know I’d have a backup plan. That I wouldn’t let someone else stop me.”

  “You said something,” Charlotte said. “Before you died. You seemed to know that we’d met some woman at the base of the World Trade Center. You mentioned the Blast. Told us to stop something, but he killed you before you finished.”

  “Listen.” Leanor’s voice was sharp, commanding. So odd to know someone so well and be treated as though they’d never met you. Charlotte never realized how much time travel would ruin something she held dear. “This is up to you now, understand? I can’t help. I can’t be there. I know, I mean, I’m guessing that we were friends. That I took care of you. I saw a spark of it yesterday, with our easy interview. But I can’t now. Like you said, I’m dead.”

  “No.” Charlotte’s voice was ragged. “You aren’t! You answered your phone! You can stop this. You can stop him, join us.”

  “This isn’t what you should focus on,” Leanor said. “I didn’t create the astrolabe to save myself. That was never the pu
rpose.”

  “Then what—”

  “The Blast,” Leanor said. “That’s all that matters.”

  Monroe was watching her, mouthing something that Charlotte couldn’t understand. No idea he had would help her convince Leanor; that much she knew. Once Leanor had a plan, she didn’t sway. Now, for some insane reason, she had to die tomorrow.

  “At least tell me!” Charlotte shouted. A few passersby glanced at her. A cop down the way frowned. “Tell me who they are. That woman you knew we’d meet. The man who’ll kill you.”

  “You’ll figure it out. You’ll have to make a choice, but … Charlotte, I hired you for a reason. Because I saw me in you. Because of your history-loving brother. I knew you were perfect from the moment you mentioned him. Now it’s up to you; do you understand?”

  She didn’t. Leanor wouldn’t help her. Leanor wouldn’t explain. She was clinging to her secrets, taking them to her death. How could Charlotte ever figure any of this out, when she had no idea what to do next?

  “You can do this, Charlotte. Go to the Blast. Everything will be okay; you hear me? You’ll make everything okay.”

  “Everything?” Everything except reversing Leanor’s death. Charlotte gritted her teeth and asked, “But what do we do at the Blast?”

  The pay phone was silent. After a few seconds, it beeped three times. Leanor had hung up.

  Just as she had during their first year together, Leanor was leaving Charlotte to her own devices.

  Charlotte set the phone on the cradle, clenching her teeth together. “She didn’t listen,” she said to Monroe and Bill behind her. “Didn’t care that she was going to die.” Charlotte couldn’t know for sure without going back in time to watch Leanor die again, but it didn’t feel like she had succeeded. If anything, it seemed like Leanor was resolute in rushing toward her own death.

  She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. Monroe asked, “What did she say?”

  Charlotte turned herself away from the phone. This call should’ve confirmed that time could be changed. But she couldn’t help feel like she’d already lost her mentor. She’d left Leanor lying on the ground, thousands of years ago. But who was that woman? Who was this woman that she’d just called? Not the woman she’d known. “She said she hired me for a reason. Told me to go to the Blast. That I’d make everything okay, but she didn’t explain what ‘everything’ meant.”

  Monroe attempted a smile. “Then maybe everything will be okay.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Bill and Monroe watched her, waiting for her to speak. There was nothing more to tell. Nothing more that Leanor had relayed, aside from confirming that she’d been lying all this time. She’d had plans for Charlotte from the beginning. Plans she’d never mentioned until the moment of her death.

  “So,” Bill said at last, tugging the long tendrils of his beard, “what d’we do?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “She won’t listen, even if we went to her apartment. She wouldn’t save herself, so: the Blast. That’s all we have left.”

  “Did she answer you?” Monroe asked, eyebrows up. “What do we do at the Blast?”

  Charlotte lifted her hands. It was impossible to say. But Leanor had called a visit to the World Trade Center “perfect,” somehow knowing that they’d meet that anachronistic woman. What was this but another vague instruction?

  “We go to the Blast,” Charlotte replied at last. “And see if anything jumps out at us.”

  Maybe Leanor had been right that “everything” that would be better. Maybe, in her own way, Leanor was giving them the tools to save her from certain death. Or, knowing Leanor, she was sending them on some other errand, trusting that Charlotte would innovate.

  Monroe bit his bottom lip, his eyes staring through her. But he didn’t say what was on his mind.

  “It was her dying wish,” Charlotte said. “We have to at least try.”

  With a nod, Monroe placed his hand on her shoulder. Bill did, too. Charlotte took them backward four more years. To the morning of the Blast.

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  The sun slowed, and the scent of burnt apples was in the air.

  “We have fifteen minutes before the Blast happens,” Charlotte said. “Keep your eyes out.” She led them up a few blocks, and there stood the cinema Dad took them to as kids. Beside it was Monroe’s favorite after-movie doughnut shop. But down the street was Charlotte’s true destination. She’d been to Suni’s so many times; she knew its storefront would be safe from the Blast.

  Right now, the building looked run-down, not even a sign in the window. A few worn stools stood beside the bar, but the few couches were a little too pristine. Unused. Right now, Suni’s was about to go out of business.

  The Blast would change that.

  Monroe slowly followed, gazing at everything that would be taken away in a few moments’ time. Bill was beside Charlotte, but kept sniffing. Distracted by his nose. “Is that apples?”

  Monroe inhaled, a grin growing. “God, yes. That’s how the day started. I forgot about all those weird news stories about it.”

  Bill tilted his head, frowning. “Could the smell and the Blast be connected?”

  “If apples were an appetizer for disaster? No one ever found out,” Monroe said. “There’ve been dozens of mystery smells over the years. Waffles, syrup, a nice Brie. Most figured it was a coincidence. But if I ever smell apples again? I’m running.”

  Charlotte nodded along with his story, but wasn’t paying attention. There had to be something here. Leanor would know that Charlotte would visit Suni’s. Why else would she make this the first place they went after Charlotte learned what the astrolabe did? A hidden clue to the future—or past. But no matter how much Charlotte looked, nothing seemed out of place.

  Cars raced by as the lights aligned green. A stream of people hurried across the street. Somewhere nearby a truck backed up. A jackhammer destroyed concrete. A cab honked when a bicyclist veered into its path. Just like at the World Trade Center, they had one final moment of normalcy.

  The city would never regain this.

  A minute out, Charlotte drew them back against Suni’s storefront. She hadn’t visited the Blast before—she couldn’t dare—but the destruction would race through the city. Here they could see it all. But here was a little more dangerous than the apartment where she and Monroe had lived seven years ago. Now.

  “Will we be safe?” Bill asked as they pressed themselves against the grate covering Suni’s front entrance. He laced his fingers into the metal grate, clinging tight. “This close to the Blast?”

  “We should be,” Monroe said. “That’s another weird thing. No one at the edge of the Blast zone got hurt. I guess we’ll see why.”

  “Brace yourselves,” Charlotte said, checking her astrolabe. Below, the clock shining on the ground was only ten seconds away from noon. She stashed it away, then counted down. “Three. Two. One.”

  One second later, the street lit up bright white. Charlotte closed an eye, squinting the other to look for clues. After an instant the light vanished, taking all the buildings and the ground with it. All that remained was a wide pit, curved at the edges up to the sidewalk where they stood.

  Across the way, three blocks south, a man snatched a tottering woman back from the new cliff.

  A delayed boom sounded; wind howled forth and knocked down everything within a mile. Charlotte gripped the grate closed over Suni’s, her fingers turning white as the wind tried to tug her away. The air calmed just as suddenly, a brief moment of complete silence.

  It didn’t last.

  With a roar, water crashed through the clean channel in front of them, splashing eagerly into subway lines and sewers. People spilled from a nearby subway station with white faces, their pants drenched with water. They collected on the new shoreline, standing in a line, watching with wide eyes and open mouths.

  Sirens erupted city wide. Hoarse chatter, screams, and sobs filled the air. On all sides, peop
le tiptoed to the edge of the newly-formed river, staring in shock. Horrified laughter bubbled out of a nearby man’s mouth.

  Beside her, Bill whispered, “What the fuck was that?”

  “No one ever figured out what caused it,” Monroe said. “Why there wasn’t any debris, rubble, or heat.”

  “In Idaho they taught that it was a bomb, but that wasn’t anything like a bomb.”

  A white, heatless light. Things vanishing into thin air. Maybe this was why Leanor had demanded a visit to the Blast. This wasn’t a bomb; Bill was right.

  Then what was it?

  “We’re missing something,” Charlotte said, turning from the vanished buildings, the still-churning dark water, to Monroe. “We’re supposed to be seeing something, but I can’t. Tell us, ’Roe. Tell us what happens today.”

  He lifted his hands. “It’s nothing you don’t know, Char.”

  “Try.” There was something here, and Charlotte didn’t want to have to go back through time to re-watch the Blast. She couldn’t take watching the event again. Couldn’t just stand here as a sobbing line of people formed along the shoreline. “Please.”

  Shaking his head, Monroe began, “Power’s knocked out on the Triangle. Immediately, as soon as the Blast happened, it was out. Toilets won’t work there for months, contractors working overtime to repair all the pipes. The Circle Line boats have to come in, cart people to and fro until they build new water taxis and gondolas.”

  “No.” Charlotte’s voice came out too harsh. “Today, ’Roe. Not tomorrow or months from now.” Even though she’d been there, she needed his memory. He taught the Blast every year. Maybe he’d know something she hadn’t seen.

  Monroe’s hands curled into fists. “What do you want from me, Char?! Today? Today was awful. All of these people?” He flung an arm out toward a gathering mass on the shoreline near the subway. “They’re going to keep sobbing at their homes, if they still have homes. Hundreds of New York’s Finest will take to the streets, but what can they do? Thousands of people will die, trapped on subways, too confused to escape the water, even if they get out of their metal coffins.