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  “The only good thing that comes out of today is the people who do good. Who give up food for those who don’t have any. Who offer their homes to others. Who gather when their TVs won’t work to console one another, to be together. That’s it.”

  Monroe fitted his arms over his chest, gritted his teeth, and stared out, finished. He wasn’t going to say another word now. She’d pushed too far.

  And he was right. Today was an awful, horrible day.

  Would Leanor have called this time “perfect,” too?

  Charlotte’s gut ached. Bill’s face was contorted, his gaze on the people beside the subway. Charlotte crossed in front of Monroe, letting him stew, and whispered to Bill, “Time is malleable?”

  He whipped his head to her, squinted, then nodded.

  “Then why are we standing here?”

  “You mean?”

  Charlotte’s gaze slid back to the subway entrance, and Bill turned his head to follow. With a nod, he looked back to her. “Thousands drowned in the subways, right, ’Roe?”

  “What? Yes. Why?”

  Charlotte didn’t answer Monroe’s question. They’d have time later to figure out what was going on. Time to figure out why Leanor sent them here. For now, Charlotte needed to act. She hadn’t been able to save Leanor from death, not yet. But that didn’t mean that every death was fixed.

  Bill met her eyes, and she found herself connected to him once more. “We’re going,” Bill said to Monroe. “We have to.”

  “Going? Going where?” Monroe tugged at Charlotte’s shoulder. “Why would you do that? Thousands died in the subway cars, yes. But did you miss the second part? Those who could get out drowned, too. Dead in the water.”

  “Then they need a guide.”

  Charlotte nodded at Bill’s words, and dropped her purse from her shoulder. “Take care of the astrolabe, ’Roe. We’ll be back for it.”

  “Char, Char.” Monroe spun her around, despair written on his face. “You can’t! Do you really think Leanor sent us here for this? To throw your life into the waters of the Blast? We were lucky to survive it once, to live those few blocks away. And now you want to risk that? Why?”

  “Because, ’Roe,” Charlotte said. She’d thought the words would come out in a fury, in an angry explosion. Instead they were quiet. Serious. “I can’t stand here and do nothing.”

  Bill stepped beside her. “We can’t.”

  Monroe’s forehead wrinkled upward. “And you think … ?” But he shook his head, exhaling. “Fine. Go. I’ll stay here, see if I can learn why we’re really here by the time you get back. Because you’re going to come back, okay?” He stared her down. “I’m not going to lose you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DIVING IN

  APRIL 8, 2016

  Already water covered the steps of the subway entrance. The current wet the surrounding concrete, making it dark and clean. Water churned at the top of the steps, cluttered with debris from the subway tracks. A hushed group stood around the entrance, murmuring to each other, frowning at the submerged steps.

  This was why Charlotte and Bill had to move. So many people didn’t understand the scope of the tragedy. Most wouldn’t until later today, as they trudged home and saw the lines extending from one side of Manhattan to the other, all the way down to the Upper Bay.

  Bill pushed through the group and stumbled down the steps into the water. Charlotte followed, ignoring the looks they got. There couldn’t be much time.

  The chill water bit at Charlotte’s skin; her clothes weighed her down. Her sinuses flushed, and the water tasted like dirt on her tongue. Despite the sunlight above, the water was too murky to see through. But Bill swam on until Charlotte reached out and grabbed his arm.

  She felt him shift, so she kept her grip, and pulled him back toward the stairs.

  Once above the surface, she said, “It’s no good. We can’t see anything. It’s only gonna get darker in the tunnels.”

  Pulling his mouth to one side, Bill stared through her. Then, “Hey!” A few from the nearby group turned. “Does anyone have a flashlight? Anything with a light?”

  Those who’d looked Bill and Charlotte’s way shook their heads. But at the edge, one girl dressed in neon pink sat down. She placed her teal backpack on the wet ground and pulled out a doll, some crayons in a plastic baggie, and a skinny book before finding a small flashlight. She held it out in her hand.

  Bill clambered from the water and knelt before her. “Thank you.” He scooped up the baggie too, asking, “Can I have this?” The girl nodded, so he dumped out the crayons, slid the flashlight in, and sealed the baggie.

  Charlotte nodded his way. Not a bad improvisation.

  He raced back to the water and plunged past Charlotte.

  She dived after, following the tiny light even as the chill water shocked her senses once more. The light glimmered in the murk, barely bright enough to show the subway turnstiles, the platform, and where the platform ended and the tracks began.

  No train was in the station, and Bill’s light bobbed with the current flowing north.

  The shadows vanished, the girl’s flashlight illuminating empty water. The tracks below were hidden in the gloom. The light stopped, and Charlotte swam forward to find Bill spinning about, looking down, to the left and right, even though nothing was visible. Charlotte tapped his shoulder, and they rose.

  The ceiling met Charlotte’s hands, and she moved with it until the plaster ended. They surfaced into a pocket of air, away from the platform’s ceiling. Although the water was coursing all through Manhattan, the air couldn’t escape everywhere. They should be able to breathe in various places throughout the underground system.

  Bill gasped in the air, pointing the flashlight up into the dark. Metal struts held up the dirty ceiling, but at the water line the steel was being washed clean.

  “It’s too murky,” Bill said. “I can’t see anything.”

  “But we saw the turnstiles. If we get close enough …”

  Bill nodded, watching the ceiling pass as the current swept them farther north. “We’ll never be able to follow the tracks,” he murmured.

  That was okay. Somehow Charlotte remained calm, confident. All her life she’d worked out, trying to be strong like her Dad. Now she had her opportunity—to use not those muscles, but what Leanor had given her. Trust in her own intuition.

  “We’ll follow the current,” she told Bill. There was no way the current would match the path of the subway lines exactly, but it was a direction. “Search everywhere we can.” The water swept them to another low ceiling, and Charlotte ducked under it, following the plaster ceiling of another station. Bill’s light didn’t show any train below, and soon they were back in a pocket of air.

  She was ready to dive, but Bill was watching her, waiting. “What?”

  He squinted at her. “Thank you.”

  “For?”

  He lofted the flashlight in a shrug. “Changing time.” And then he dived down into the water. Charlotte followed.

  He’d been so hesitant until that anachronistic woman mentioned that changing time was like carving Mount Rushmore. But he was right; time travel was powerful, dangerous in the wrong hands, as they’d learned. But why should that asshole who’d killed Leanor be the only one to fuck with time? Charlotte could do it. With Monroe, with Bill, they could do anything. Bill would know how, innovating as he’d done with the flashlight and the bag. Monroe could direct them through history and …

  Was this what Leanor wanted them to learn? How to change time?

  Before she could think it through anymore, Charlotte slammed into a metal wall.

  Clutching her banged arm, she rose, seeing Bill’s feet drift up, too. He must’ve done the same idiotic thing, probably just as lost in thought. “Damn, that hurt,” Charlotte said.

  Massaging his head, Bill asked, “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just hit my arm on something metal. …”

  “The train,” they said in unison.

&n
bsp; They dived together, fighting the current, and almost immediately found the top of a train car. Following with her hands, Charlotte felt the empty space between cars. Bill came alongside, shining his light at the window, illuminating dark shapes standing on the seats as the water rose.

  At the light, someone pounded on the glass.

  As she’d thought, those inside hadn’t realized the enormity of the Blast yet. Most likely, they’d assumed the tunnel had flooded, but would be emptied soon. Who would imagine that the East River, the Hudson River, and the waters from the Upper Bay were flowing through?

  A wide bubble came from Bill’s mouth, drifting up. He must have some plan, but Charlotte couldn’t hear it. She shook her head and pointed to the crooked metal door handle that would lead in. She yanked it down, but the door didn’t slide open automatically as it should’ve.

  Bill touched her side, and they rose back to the surface.

  “Here.” Bill grabbed onto a small stalactite hanging from the ceiling. “What d’we do?”

  “The main doors.” The doors between cars had some locking mechanism that she couldn’t undo with the water pressure. But if they tugged enough, the double doors that let passengers on from a platform should open. That was their only chance. “If we can pull them open, they should stay open. Then we can get everyone else.”

  “That sounds risky. Couldn’t people drown in the gushing water?”

  She chewed her lip. “It’s that or suffocate, waiting to see what happens.” Charlotte had read enough to know that the brave police and firemen throughout the city had saved only a fraction of the submerged subway passengers.

  “Okay,” Bill said. “You ready?”

  “Terrified,” Charlotte said. But it wasn’t like they could make anything worse. “Ready.”

  They swam down again, keeping close, and reached a train car attached to the same subway. Once there, Charlotte felt her way over the top to the sides where passengers entered. At a set of doors, the current sucked in through the rubber seal at the bottom, spraying water inside.

  Charlotte found the opening and shoved her fingers in, then propped her feet against the small lip on the doorframe. Below, Bill did the same with the opposite door. Together they pulled the doors apart. With a ca-clunk, the doors slammed open and waves gushed inside.

  In those few seconds, there wasn’t time to coordinate. Charlotte swam through, grabbed someone, and directed them to the door, pointing up. “There’s a pocket of air!” she shouted in the diminishing air in the train car.

  Bill did the same, sometimes next to her, sometimes grabbing people from the opposite side. When she needed air, Charlotte would go up to the metal roof, sucking a little oxygen from the bubble floating near the ceiling.

  At last the car was empty, and Charlotte swam out, up to the feet dangling there. The air was bright with a burning red flare. Fifty faces looked her way, and she felt Bill surface beside her.

  “What happened?” someone called out.

  “There’s no time,” Bill said, his hand clinging to another stalactite for safety. “There are other cars. If you can help, do. If you can’t, make room for the next group!”

  Charlotte remembered Monroe’s words about those who’d drowned, unable to find their way out. “The current’s pulling that way.” She pointed. “Follow it as far as you can; you should find an exit near one of the lower ceilings.”

  “I’ll take them,” a woman in an MTA uniform called. Her black braids hung bedraggled behind her head, but her face was earnest. “I know the next station well enough. I can get us out.” She held up her flare and swung it around. “Those who can’t help, come with me!” She passed another flare Charlotte’s way. “Good luck.”

  Bill, Charlotte, and those who stayed behind swarmed the other subway cars. It took a bit for the others to understand what Bill and Charlotte had done, but soon every door in a single car was pried open. Faster still it was emptied, and they swam to the next. Another saved MTA employee offered a few more flares, and led the new group of survivors away.

  At the final car, Charlotte rose once more with the group of rescued people. But when she surfaced, Bill wasn’t there. Ignoring the questions called out, Charlotte dived back down and saw the pinprick of the girl’s flashlight, a white speck amidst all the red light from the flares.

  She swam down, but he wasn’t in the car they’d just emptied. The idiot must be double checking the other cars. Wanting to make sure that absolutely everyone was safe. She pulled herself through the water; there couldn’t be much air left in any of the cars. Just as she reached him, she saw the flashlight drift from his hands. He grabbed at the water, but then his head slumped.

  Charlotte slid her arms under his armpits, her muscles burning under the new weight after so much work. But she could do this. She was built for a tough workout. So she dragged him from the car, kicking, kicking, kicking her way to the surface, to where several others could help.

  She gasped as she hit the air, called, “Help,” but Bill was gasping too, his hands floundering, even as others braced him. Helped him stay afloat.

  “Bill!” She didn’t know whether to hug or slug him.

  “I’m f-fine!” he choked out.

  “Jesus, you fucking idiot.”

  “I’m fine. Just—”

  “Does anyone know what happened?” a voice called, saving Bill from having to explain himself. That wouldn’t save him forever.

  “A bomb,” Bill said. He kept his gaze from Charlotte. “Bombs. Destroying hundreds, thousands of buildings. Killing millions.”

  But he and Charlotte had reduced that number. Snatched a few hundred from the death tally of the Blast. They’d changed time for the better, just as Charlotte wanted.

  The others quieted at Bill’s news, their exhilaration quashed by the truth.

  “C’mon,” another MTA employee said. “We can deal with that once we’re aboveground.”

  The current took them, and they watched in silence as the ceiling passed. Bill stayed with Charlotte as they drifted along behind the others.

  There was more to do, more lives in danger, but Charlotte was spent. She couldn’t do this again, couldn’t endure this again. Especially not if Bill was going to throw his life away on the chance of rescuing someone else.

  The group reached the earnest MTA employee with black braids. “You made it,” she said. “You’re almost there. Swim that way”—she pointed to the side—“down and then up toward the sunlight. You’ll see it; just follow everyone.

  “You two,” she said when she spotted Bill and Charlotte. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

  Charlotte nodded, but Bill was already gone, diving beneath the waves.

  Light glimmered through the water; Charlotte and dozens of others headed toward it, over a set of ghostlike turnstiles, below a berm that separated the turnstiles from the exit, and up the stairs onto Sixty-first Street. Up here, the only sign of the Blast was the submerged subway and the distant sirens.

  Initially, on the walk south to Twenty-third Street, Charlotte considered scolding Bill, but what difference would that make? They’d saved hundreds. If it came up again, then she could tell him not to risk his life. That she needed him here.

  Because today, Charlotte had learned something important: not just that time could be changed, that it was a mountain able to be carved, but that she could carve it. She got to choose how the mountain would look.

  Bill shucked his shirt off, twisting it, squeezing out the water into a dripping line as he walked. Charlotte had never seen him shirtless; there was no reason for it to happen. But now that she saw his furry chest, his larger tummy, him strutting like nothing was the matter, she saw a glimpse of why he and Monroe were perfect for each other. They were confident in the same way: not despite their body, their style, but because of it.

  He glanced over, saw her looking, and smiled warily. “Growing up,” he said, “I always learned about a savior.”

  Charlot
te frowned, not sure why he was saying this. But she let him continue.

  “God, my parents wouldn’t stop talking about him. I believed them, y’know? Then I grew up. I learned that there was no man out there waiting to save me. Because the very people I needed saving from …” He shook his head, slapping his shirt over his shoulder.

  Ranging across his back, from one shoulder to the other, Charlotte saw why he was telling her this. While she was thinking about the connection between he and Monroe, he suspected she’d been looking at his tattoo. Six enormous block letters, spelling out a single, hateful word. SINNER.

  When he and Monroe had begun dating, Charlotte had learned a little about Bill’s family. How they’d ordered him out when he revealed who he wanted to date. He’d never brought it up with her, but maybe that was because he’d memorialized their accusation on his back. Clearly the tattoo didn’t mean he’d stopped thinking about it. His history still informed who he was today.

  “Some people need a savior,” Bill continued. “They want him to exist so much, but they don’t ever realize that he’s just an example. That they can save people, too.”

  Not just explaining his tattoo. Explaining his actions. Thinking exactly what Charlotte was.

  “Could this be why Leanor sent us?” Charlotte asked. “To learn that we can change time? That’s all I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “God, could she be that brilliant? To know you well enough to know you’d never stand for people dying in a subway?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “She knew me well. Only …”

  The Leanor who’d told them to go to the Blast didn’t know Charlotte at all. She’d interviewed Charlotte one day, then been murdered the next. And still, she’d told her to go to the Blast.

  They turned a corner, back onto the street where they’d left Monroe, and Charlotte realized that maybe they’d come here for a different reason. Not to learn that they could change time, but to confront the woman who’d started this whole mess.