The first thing I noticed was the silence. No sound of rain or thunder. I opened my eyes and looked around.
"Is this ... a subway station?" I asked.
"Yes, there"s no one here," the girl said in this formal, adultlike tone.
I knelt down in front of her again, looking her over. She was thin, frail, but looked so much like Courtney. She turned her head and stared at me. Her eyes were blue ... not green.
"Wait a minute ... I"ve seen you, haven"t I? At the zoo?"
Water dripped from the end of her nose and she wiped it away. "Yes."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I"m like you."
"What"s your name?" I glanced around the empty station, half expecting a train to come barreling through any second.
"Emily," she said.
"You"re just like me?"
She shook her head. "Almost, but not exactly."
"So you"re like the others?" I backed away from her a little, remembering the vanishing child I had seen in the hotel the other night, wandering around. Looking two years younger.
"Almost, but not exactly," she said again, smiling a little bit.
I shook my head in disbelief. "I fell asleep, didn"t I? Or hit my head? You look just like my sister."
"We all look alike. Most of us. Similar DNA, right?"
"I don"t know ... I guess," I said.
Emily held out her small hand to me. "Just come with me."
"Why?" But I took her hand anyway.
"I have to show you something."
She was leading me toward a set of stairs, probably leading up to the street. I used my free hand to pull out my gun. "What do you know?"
She shook her head. "I"m not going to hurt you."
"It"s not you I"m worried about. It"s whoever told you to find me."
"No one told me." Then she turned to me and smiled. "Actually, you told me."
That"s when I stopped in front of the staircase and froze for a second, then lowered myself so we were eye-level. I forgot my question when I looked into her swirling blue eyes. "You have my eyes..."
She smiled again. "Yes."
"Why? How?"
She frowned and shook her head. "I can"t tell you that. Please let me show you something."
But before she took the first step, she spun around again. "I almost forgot." She reached into her pocket and put her hand over mine before dropping something into it. "I"m supposed to give you this."
I stared down at the tiny object in my open palm. The sparkle of a diamond reflected against the flickering lights above us. I turned the ring over in my hand, thinking that it must have some significance beyond what I had just asked Holly today. Either way, this other version of myself had really bad timing. It hardly seemed necessary to drag me to a subway station in some other time to give me a ring, especially in the middle of a storm that nearly killed us.
I followed Emily up the steps and could see light peeking in from above. It was daytime. "Is this New York?"
"Yes."
When we reached the top step, I expected to hear the familiar sounds of the city, horns honking, engines running, people talking on cell phones. But it was silent. We emerged from underground completely and all I could do was stare with my mouth hanging open.
This was New York, but like nothing I"d ever seen. A few buildings remained completely upright, but they were covered in a sand-colored dust, probably a result of the surrounding buildings having crumbled.
My legs felt so weak I could hardly stand. This was my home. The place where I grew up. But no one was around. Nothing. I turned slowly in a circle and saw the street filled with so much debris that I couldn"t even see the road.
I snapped back to reality when I heard Emily coughing beside me and realized I was coughing, too. Everything aboveground was covered in the sand-colored debris. No wonder we were choking on the air.
"Emily ... is this ... the future?" I asked. It couldn"t be the past ... at least not any past I had studied in history.
"Yes," she said through her coughing.
"What happened? What year is it?"
"I can"t tell you that."
"But how did it happen ... is it a war or ... something else?"
"All I can say is ... some people are fighting to keep this from happening and some people are going to ... make it happen."
I gave her a long searching look and saw the truth in her eyes. So it wasn"t just gangs fighting gangs. This place, this year, was very bad. Someone needed to prevent this destruction.
"I ... I"ve never jumped outside the span of my own life," I said.
"It"s because you"re with me," she sputtered while coughing.
"You"re different from me, I get that. But how are you different from them?"
She covered her face with her hands, wiping away the dust. "I have everything they could ever want."
She didn"t seem pleased with this at all.
I heard barking from far away. The first sound I had heard since we"d arrived here. Seconds later, a pack of brown dogs came barreling around the corner, snapping their mouths at us. Emily and I backed up against the building and she grabbed my hand. I expected us to jump back, but she just stood there, frozen.
"Emily, let"s go!"
Her eyes closed for a second and I could see that she was trying, but nothing happened. "Oh, no ... I did something wrong. They"re not supposed to be here!"
Her eyes were monster-sized, but the dogs suddenly turned their heads and took off in the direction they had came from. I had about half a second to sigh with relief when three men came around the same corner the dogs had emerged from.
At least I think they were men. All of them had shaved heads and indistinct features. Their eyes were almost all white and their skin was practically transparent. The blue and pink veins running under their skin were clearly visible, like a few layers were missing.
"He was right! I don"t believe it!" one of them shouted with triumph.
I could practically feel the anger and vengeance rolling off of the three men and I knew they weren"t here to have a friendly chat.
Emily still wasn"t moving, and for some reason, running was my first instinct. I tugged her hand and pulled her in front of me as we ran along the side of the crumbled building. This was panic of the worst kind and there was no chance my dad would show up here to rescue me, like he had on the boat.
The pounding of my feet matched my heartbeat. Emily"s hair flew behind her as we ran, and more dirt rose from the ground, landing in my eyes and mouth.
She glanced frantically over her shoulder at me. "Jackson, running won"t help ... we"ve got to-"
Both of us practically screeched to a halt as the three men magically appeared right in front of us.
"I"m shocked the two of you even considered running," one man sneered. "Why run when you can jump?"
Emily backed up and I shifted her behind me and against the building. Her chest rose and fell so quickly, there was no mistaking her fear. Probably the reason she couldn"t get us out of here.
Jenni Stewart"s diagrams played in my mind over and over and it was like the rest of me just knew what to do, without even thinking about it.
One of the attackers lunged for Emily, and just as he was about to get his hands around her, I kicked him hard in the stomach, sending him flying backward. The back of his head cracked against the sidewalk. I jabbed the second man, who had approached from my other side, in the face with my elbow. He staggered backward as Emily slid down the wall, like her legs were giving out.
"Can I do it?" I asked her frantically. "Can I jump us both back if we"re in the future?"
Her huge eyes searched mine and she opened her mouth to answer and then let out a scream. "Jackson, look out!"
The third guy had his arms around my neck from behind. I threw his weight over my body and he smashed into the ground. He hollered in agony and I quickly pulled Emily up by her arms and lifted her off the ground. She squeezed me tight and pressed her face into my shirt. She was trying to block everything out. To get us the h.e.l.l out of here. I had never been more happy to feel the awful sensation of a half-jump as I was right then.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.
AUGUST 15, 2009, 3:30 P.M.
The storm had picked up even more, which I didn"t think was possible. Rain whipped me in the face. Emily was still gripping me tight, her face hidden, but I could feel her shaking. I was, too. I attempted to set her down, but she wouldn"t let go of me and her shaking had turned into sobs. I hugged her back, a.s.suming she must be comfortable enough with me in the future, whatever year she came from.
Finally, she released me and took in a deep breath. "I didn"t know it would be ... like that."
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
She nodded and then reached for the pole again, gripping it. "I didn"t exactly aim well ... did I?"
"Were you trying to end up on a swim dock in the middle of a giant storm?"
"No, but things change ... sometimes it"s hard to get it right."
The wind picked up and rocked the swim dock. My stomach turned over and I gripped the pole above her hand, trying to focus my eyes on the now distant boat.
"I have to swim back," I said to Emily, pointing toward the sh.o.r.e.
"Me, too." She cringed when another roar of thunder cut her off.
"Can"t you just jump? Like, to another day?"
She shook her head, flinging rain everywhere. "No, let them see us swim back and then I"ll jump. You can"t tell anyone about me. About what I can do. I"m just the kid you rescued from the storm, okay?"
That"s why she did a half-jump, so everyone would still see us here, though I doubted the visibility would stretch that far. "What"s going to happen?"
"You have to let me go, no matter what, promise?" Pink and blue lightning brightened her face and I could see she already doubted my ability to take orders from a little girl.
"You took me to the future ... does that mean ... have you even been born yet?" I asked her.
"I can"t tell you."
I knelt in front of her and looked her straight in the eyes. "How old are you?"
"Eleven."
"Do you know Dr. Melvin?"
She wasn"t floundering in this unannounced staring contest. "I know of him."
"Then he"s not the reason you exist?"
Her defenses crumbled and she took a step back. "We have to go!"
I grabbed her hand. "Not yet."
"You told me not to answer questions. Not many of them anyway," she yelled over more thunder.
"That was the other me. He"s, like, really old, right? n.o.body listens to him."
"Oh, really? So you don"t trust your future self, even though he obviously knows more than you?"
I knew she was right. It was irresponsible to force anything out of her. "I"m sorry ... It"s just ... right now there"s something that might happen and I"ve got to make sure it doesn"t. It"s hard to think about anything else."
"I know you feel like you have to change everything or fix it, but don"t overthink. Trust yourself to make the right choice. It"s not as hard as it seems." She pointed to the sh.o.r.e. "We need to go."
We both jumped in and I helped pull Emily along. Waves came flying over our heads, but finally we reached the sh.o.r.e and walked the rest of the way up the beach. I nodded toward the hotel. "Just run in that direction and I"ll say you found your way in, okay?"
She started to turn and then hesitated for a second. She kept her eyes down but wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed tight. ""Bye, Jackson ... good luck."