Skyline Page 8

  “I …” Bill stood, too. Reached out a hand to take hers. “I’m sorry, Nellie. What you’re doing is important. And this woman, she, well …”

  “Is none of my business,” Nellie said. “As I was none of yours.” She knocked on the door, and it was immediately opened by Miss Grupe.

  The nurse’s face tightened when she saw them standing. “Not yours?” She gripped Nellie’s shoulder, pulling her from the room. “You can see your way out, I presume.”

  They pressed through the door to watch Miss Grupe shoving Nellie down a hallway.

  “I feel awful,” Bill said. “Couldn’t we have helped her?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “She doesn’t need our help, remember? Two days from now, she’ll change this whole place.”

  “And I was right,” Monroe said. “Something’s going on.”

  “That woman lied to you, ’Roe.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe …” Monroe’s eyes drifted to the ceiling as he ascended the spiral staircase, up to the final floor. He didn’t finish, and Charlotte sensed that he couldn’t. He had no idea why Ana had told them to come here. He lifted his shoulders. “Maybe Ana has something else to tell us.”

  “Sure.” Charlotte sighed. He wasn’t going to see how foolish this was until they were caught in her trap. “Maybe she didn’t lie to us at all.”

  Monroe sneered at her and began to search around the dirty floor. There wasn’t even a door leading to the patient wings here. The cobwebs above, the warped wooden floor, the dirt everywhere showed that this place wasn’t important.

  “What are you even looking for?” Charlotte asked. “The hinges of the trap that’s about to spring?”

  Monroe paused, flicked a look back. “You weren’t there, Charlotte. You didn’t see how changed she seemed. She wants our help. Maybe she left a clue.”

  Charlotte surveyed the small level. There wasn’t even a window looking out onto the grounds. Just a single flickering bulb on either side of the octagonal room. Only silence came from the lobby far below. “What clue could be …” But Charlotte’s voice dwindled as she saw something odd: a single black dot burned onto the floor. The edges of the black dot were too crisp to be anything created in this time. “What is that?”

  Monroe squatted beside her. “Dirt?”

  With a shake of her head, Charlotte licked a finger and scrubbed away the grime. The dot remained amid the now somewhat clean floor.

  “A black dot,” Bill said. “Is that important?”

  With sudden inspiration, Charlotte glanced across the floor and saw another dot. And another. “Not just one,” she said, pointing to the dots splayed across the floor, then up the wall, squished into a sort of rhombus. “Seven.”

  Maybe Monroe wasn’t wrong at all. Maybe Ana had left them some clue to the bomber.

  “But there are tons of dots,” Monroe said. He turned and pointed to a few dots scattered on the wall. “It’s just dirt, Char.”

  He was right. Dots were everywhere, scattered across the floor, the walls, the ceiling. All of the dots only proved Charlotte’s point. She stood, pulling the astrolabe from her purse. An insignia illuminated the astrolabe, and lights scattered across the dingy room, some covering the dots she’d pointed out. “It’s not dirt, ’Roe. They’re constellations. Pointing to wherever Ana went.”

  “Aw.” Monroe touched his heart. “You called her Ana.”

  Charlotte ignored Monroe’s jokey tone. Twisting her fingers, shifting the stars through time, she matched her lights to the burned dots of the Big Dipper. Then she stepped around the room, watching other dots, tracking each, trying to match them up exactly. “April,” Charlotte said. “1995.”

  Monroe lifted his hands. “Doesn’t ring any bells, but I guess that must be where she went.” He placed a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder expectantly.

  She couldn’t release yet. “You’re sure we should go?”

  “It’s probably a trap, Monroe,” Bill said.

  “I just don’t think it is,” Monroe replied, shaking his head. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

  Charlotte hoped she wouldn’t regret this. She didn’t trust this woman who’d appeared in their lives. How could she? Ana spoke with absolute certainty, never doubting anything. But time travel didn’t seem clear-cut to Charlotte. It never had to Leanor.

  Still, Monroe had a point, so Charlotte released her hand. Time sped forward.

  Age swept through the Octagon, dirt filling every corner. Cobwebs grew until a wrecking crew knocked down the wings, leaving gaping holes streaming sunlight up from the lobby below.

  “You’re sure it’s now?” Monroe asked, suddenly whispering.

  Before anyone could respond, Ana appeared on the opposite side of the balcony. But she wasn’t waiting with a knowing, cruel smile. No trap sprang. Ana didn’t even look their way. Instead, she dropped to the ground, settling a massive metal box on the floor.

  “Is that … ?” Charlotte asked, her voice barely audible.

  “A bomb,” Bill agreed.

  Charlotte’s heart thumped wildly. Ana hadn’t just lied about who would be here; she’d lied about who she was. She wasn’t Leanor’s friend or assistant.

  She destroyed New York City.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FIRST BOMB

  APRIL 15, 1990

  There was no question now. The Blast was a time event.

  The box that Ana placed on the ground glowed with light. Several windows showed blinking red and green lights inside and a red readout on top showed eight hundred million seconds, ready to countdown. It had to be part of the Blast. The fact that it was triggered in the nineties wouldn’t mean much to a smart enough time traveler.

  Ana’s hair was cropped tightly instead of feathered out as it had been when they’d seen her a few hours ago—thirty years in the future—outside Suni’s in the wake of the Blast. Now, instead of mirror-Bedazzled pants and a red-piped jacket, she wore all black.

  Beside Charlotte, Monroe chewed his lips in fury.

  Charlotte couldn’t be thrilled that she’d been right not to trust Ana. Because, for whatever reason, she had led them here.

  As Ana sat beside the bomb, unpacking an orb, a screwdriver, and a few screws from a bag around her shoulder, Charlotte remembered trying to save Leanor. When she’d failed, Bill had had another idea of how to stop Leanor’s death. Not traveling back in time and enduring a memory rewrite. He’d suggested that they could send Felix back.

  Only someone who hadn’t been at the initial event could help.

  Ana looked younger than who they’d met prior, more the girl Charlotte had first thought she was. Her mouth was turned down in anger as she worked. She was so focused on her task, not at all the woman who’d come back to talk to Monroe beside the Blast.

  She was the bomber; that was certain. But perhaps, with time, she’d also become the woman who wanted the Blast stopped. Just like Leanor.

  Once the lid of the bomb was off, Ana connected a small metal sphere to the guts. She fiddled with a few wires, checked their connection points, and nodded to herself. With a magnetic screwdriver and a few small screws, she resecured the lid. Then she turned the screwdriver over, holding it above a small hole that it could fit into perfectly.

  “Ha,” Ana muttered to herself. Perhaps for her, the Blast hadn’t happened yet. Perhaps she didn’t realize that she’d want to stop herself. But perhaps, if she got a little push, she could get there faster. They could stop the bomb before it was ever set.

  “Ana.” Charlotte stepped forward. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Her head snapped up to look at them. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You don’t have to bomb the city,” Bill said, joining Charlotte.

  “So you’re with them?” Ana asked. “Well, guess what? You’re too late.” She inserted her screwdriver into the tiny hole, and the readout on top began to count down.

  “No!” Bill said, leaping toward her. Charlotte raced with him, not
having to speak to know their plan. Their time in the subway had bonded them. But the readout was counting down; they were too late. They only had …

  Well, almost a billion seconds.

  “Who is them?” Monroe demanded from behind. “That short man? Darker skin, blue hair?”

  Ana’s eyes widened. “Paris sent you?” She reached for the bomb, but Charlotte knocked her hands away, gripped a wrist.

  Bill tugged the bomb from Ana’s reach. “Tell us how to stop it.”

  Monroe said, “Ana, please, help us. We’re not with them—him. Paris.”

  She laughed. “Please.” Ana twisted her wrist out of Charlotte’s grip. “Like I’d trust that. You know him. You knew where I’d be. You can travel. So.” She backed away.

  “You can help us,” Charlotte said. “Whatever this is for, we can find another way.”

  Again Ana laughed. “You don’t even know why you’re after me, do you?”

  On the floor, Bill fumbled with the edges of the box. They hadn’t brought a screwdriver.

  “Bill?” Monroe asked. “Do you even know how to defuse a bomb?”

  “Clearly Paris should’ve trained you better.” Ana lit up her mesh astrolabe, the lights springing onto their surroundings, burning an impression of where she was headed. Then she was gone.

  Her bomb kept ticking.

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  “We have to go after her,” Monroe said. “There’s no time to—”

  “No, Monroe,” Charlotte said. “This isn’t the Ana you met.” Didn’t he see how different she was? What mattered now was the bomb. “This isn’t just a normal bomb, with eight hundred million seconds ticking away slowly. She placed an orb in here. A little time device nestled amid all these wires. Sometime soon, the orb will be activated; the bomb will be taken through time.”

  “You mean all those seconds …”

  “Are probably more like thirty or sixty,” Charlotte said.

  Bill exhaled, hands still clinging to the corners of the box.

  “Then we have to go!” Monroe shouted. “We have to get out of here; there’s no way we can defuse it in time. Bill, c’mon.” Monroe tugged at his thick shoulder. “You don’t know the first thing about defusing bombs.”

  Bill wouldn’t move. Just like in the subway, he was being an idiot. “I can’t.”

  Charlotte shoved him to the side, getting her hands on the bomb. “Then let me.” Within seconds she had a grip on the lid, and she pulled it as hard as she could. The thin metal bent, creaking with Charlotte’s strength, tugging the few screws Ana had used. With Bill’s help, the lid sprang off, revealing the mass of wires within.

  Nestled inside the wires was the orb that Ana had placed. Not wire mesh like her astrolabe, not a glassy orb like Charlotte’s, but there was no doubt the dull metal sphere contained a time device.

  If Charlotte could get it free, the bomb would never relocate to the future. Would never cause the Blast. The problem was: she didn’t have the time to investigate each wire connecting to the orb. She couldn’t see what risks there were. The orb could activate at any second, and those eight hundred million seconds would count down all at once as it launched forward in time.

  Without any other options, Charlotte yanked out the wires connecting the orb and tossed it to Bill. He snatched it from the air, closing one eye in a flinch. But nothing happened. Bill wasn’t transported away. The rest of the bomb didn’t trigger.

  “Okay,” she said, leaning back to the box. “Now we should have a little time.”

  “Almost a billion seconds,” Monroe said with a smile. But as he flipped over the lid that Charlotte had wrenched off, his smile fell. The nine digits were no longer counting down second by second, but by a thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand. She hardly had any time at all.

  Charlotte’s hands trembled as she plunged them into the wires of the bomb, trying to understand how it was constructed, what all the wires did, whether there was any fast way of defusing it. But there wasn’t any easy-to-see switch. The wires all tangled into a computer board below. As she ran her fingers through, she felt another round object. She shifted the wires around, twisting her head closer to see it.

  Another time orb.

  “Um.” Why would that be there? What could this bomb be for? The first orb would likely get it to the Blast day. But why would there be a second?

  Could it be that this wasn’t an explosive at all?

  “Another one?” Bill asked.

  Charlotte didn’t reply; there wasn’t time. The red digits ticked past ten hundred thousand. She pulled out small wires to disconnect the larger cables, slowly freeing the orb. As the timer ticked past two hundred thousand, there were only three cables left. Two. She yanked out the remaining cables, right as the timer hit zero. She could breathe again, and found herself chuckling. “We’re fine,” she said. “See?” She held up the small sphere for Bill and Monroe. Without the box’s power, the orb remained in her hand.

  But there could be other pieces of this device. There’d been two orbs; could there be three, four, all doing who knew what? The Blast had been as wide as three city blocks.

  She pulled out all the cables she’d undone to get a better view of the computer board she’d felt. On the right, beside where the second orb had been, a gyroscope spun. Lights connected to it blinked on, off, then three quick blinks.

  The readout on the floor sprang back to life, two numbers lighting up in blinking red. Twenty seconds.

  “Shit,” Monroe said.

  “Goddammit!” Charlotte wrenched up the second black chipboard and revealed a mass of luminescent purple goop. Buried in the goop was some kind of metal mesh connected via cables to the gyroscope and computer board. Charlotte froze, chipboard still in hand. Maybe she was wrong about what the device did. The goop looked thick enough to be an explosive.

  There was no time to defuse this. Charlotte knew tech, but not true bombs. She shook herself, grabbed Bill from his crouch, and shoved Monroe away. “C’mon!” she shouted. She looked back to see the bomb count to five, four, three, two, and Charlotte leaped out into the air, tugging Bill and Monroe with her.

  “Char?” Monroe shouted, twisting as they fell to stare at her.

  With a colossal boom, Ana’s device exploded. Heat blossomed behind and above, pressing against Charlotte’s back. Monroe’s eyes widened, the whites of his eyes visible. The shockwave sent them tumbling toward a staircase, too fast.

  They careened into the stairs; Charlotte took the brunt of the impact to her gut. The astrolabe slipped from her purse and bounced down the staircase. Then the structure cracked, and they tumbled through the air again as the stairs fell.

  They slammed into another set of steps below, and this staircase held steady. Their momentum took them tumbling down and out into the center of the Octagon’s lobby. Charlotte curled into a ball as debris smashed onto her back, all around her.

  Monroe groaned. “Nice. Very well thought out. ‘Let’s jump into the air!’”

  “We’re alive, aren’t we?”

  A massive rotten log smashed between her and Monroe. She scrambled back as a few more timbers slammed against the floor. Far above, wooden struts snapped from their places in the domed roof, chunks of wood flying. The creaking roof dipped toward them as the remaining support beams bent to their breaking point.

  “Let’s go. Let’s go!” Monroe said, and Charlotte scrambled to the orb where it had fallen. She made the C, and it sprang to life despite its fall. Charlotte reached a foot out toward Monroe, and he clutched it tight, grabbing Bill’s shirt at the same time.

  A final beam cracked, and the lobby was flooded with sunlight. The dome fell toward the trio.

  Charlotte spun the ball in her hands quick as she could to get them home. She didn’t consider the risks—that if this hadn’t been the bomb that caused the Blast, they’d fall into the waters of the Mid River. She released as the roof crashed where they’d been moments bef
ore. They sped through time, watching as the Octagon was renovated into luxury apartments. For a split second, a flash of white light filled the building, but the lobby remained. The only sign that the Blast had still occurred was a wide cut in the lobby wall, filled by a long glass pane.

  When they could finally uncurl from the floor, it was bright inside, but the cut the Blast had made revealed the night skyline of Manhattan. The Mid River still led into the city, just slightly reduced from the width it had once been.

  “God,” Monroe said, standing and patting off the dust from the stairs. “That was fucking close.” Then he looked around, spotted the six-foot-wide cut in the wall, and sprang to his feet. “What year is this?”

  Charlotte glanced around, less concerned with the Blast’s residue and more concerned with others. But the men at the concierge desk didn’t seem too concerned with their sudden presence. “Are you all okay?” one of them called. Somehow they hadn’t noticed the three time travelers appear. Did their minds readjust, avoiding the impossible implication? Or had they been busy behind the desk?

  “Fine,” Charlotte called. She shook out her shivering limbs. They’d almost been caught in the destruction, but they survived.

  Thanks to her work, so had all the people who’d lived here seven years ago.

  “I took us back to when we left,” she told Monroe. “2023.”

  Monroe squinted her way. “Wasn’t that a bit risky?” He shrugged. “But we did it! We stopped her bomb.” He raced over to the glass doorway that had been set in the cut. Beyond it, several tables were positioned over a boardwalk stretching over the widening Mid River. Throughout the boardwalk, plates of glass showed the dark water reflecting below.

  Beyond the bar seats—which must’ve been new; Charlotte couldn’t remember Roosevelt Island being much of a hot spot before the Blast—gondolas sat, waiting to take people back into Manhattan. A massive pier had been built along one side, where a tour boat currently bobbed, waiting to take people along the Blast’s destructive path.

  Not much had changed, but she was proud of the very little she’d done.