Vortex: A Tempest Novel

  “Don’t move unless I tell you,” Dad hissed into my ear.

  Thomas held his hands up and walked closer to us. “We understand why you’re here, and I say this with the utmost respect for your dedication, but you need to leave and let this happen. The future will be better for everyone. I promise.”

  “Why here … why her?” Dad asked Thomas, nodding toward the chancellor.

  I couldn’t look at the group behind us, but I could hear them mumbling in German, the two bodyguards holding out their weapons.

  “She’s at the beginning of a complicated chain of events and we are morally obligated to fix it. To shape the world ahead,” Thomas said, then his eyes burned into Dad’s. “This was a direct mission from Eyewall.”

  Dad sucked in a breath as if this meant something, but I had no idea what. Eyewall? None of us moved, and that must have been enough of an answer. Half of the EOTs in front of us vanished.

  Kendrick gasped beside me and when I turned my head, Cassidy was right behind her, her elbow hooked around Kendrick’s throat. I didn’t even get a chance to attack because my partner had her on the ground in seconds and quickly jabbed Cassidy in the neck with the medication us nonmedical people referred to as “anti-time-travel drugs.” Cassidy’s eyes fluttered shut and Kendrick looked up at me with panic on her face.

  Thomas still stood in front of us as the others jumped to different locations. I knew most of them wouldn’t be able to jump out of here and back again more than a couple times before the heavy fatigue set in. Or at least I hoped they wouldn’t. Then again, we all had thought there wouldn’t be more than four of them. That obviously wasn’t true.

  A gap opened up in the line of defense and I took my chance and tore away from the group to try to get to the explosive. Kendrick was right at my heels, probably knowing I’d need her help.

  “Jackson!” Dad shouted, but an EOT with dark hair popped up behind him and Dad had to throw him to the ground while ducking under Parker’s line of fire. Stewart took off from her attacker and ran ahead of us, toward the tower where the explosive must have been. Screams erupted from the chancellor’s group as Freeman and Parker dove around, trying to cover all of them.

  Thomas’s eyes followed Stewart, and suddenly he was gone. Maybe going after her?

  “Get out!” Freeman shouted to all of us. I almost followed him and Dad.

  From over Kendrick’s shoulder I saw a tiny person with red hair running toward the tower where the explosive was.

  It couldn’t be her … could it?

  I shoved Kendrick in the direction of the exit where Freeman and Dad were headed. “Go!”

  She hesitated, then gave me one last fleeting look before running. I sped through the long corridor and charged up two flights of stairs. I could hear Dad and Freeman shouting at me, but I couldn’t leave. The second I reached the tower, I saw her. Emily.

  Unfortunately, I was interrupted by the appearance of another EOT. A tall man with blond hair. He landed on the step in front of me and reached for me so quick, I flung myself sideways without thinking about the consequences. The man tumbled down the stairs, finally reaching a flat surface, groaning and looking up at the sky.

  I leaped down the stairs and retrieved one of the injections we all had to cart around during a mission, hoping I could stab him in the correct location. I mimicked Kendrick’s movement from a few minutes ago and stuck the needle into the throbbing vein in his neck.

  The man let out a half groan, half laugh and shook his head. “You can fight as hard as you want this way, Jackson, but it’ll never be enough. You have to use it … your abilities.”

  I pressed my foot to his chest, planning to hold him down until the drugs kicked in and he passed out. “Why? So I can blow up the world? It’s not like I can change anything. Only one person can do that.”

  The man shook his head vigorously. “No, no … you’re wrong. There are others like Thomas and there are also other ways to alter the future. Think about it … you’ve already done it.”

  His eyes fluttered shut and I felt my head pounding so hard I couldn’t think for several seconds. What did he mean? You’ve already done it. The imaginary clock counting down for the explosive practically ticked inside my head, jolting me back to reality. I charged up the stairs to the tower and she was still there. Definitely not a figment of my imagination.

  The little eleven-year-old girl was busy leaning over this complex and massive explosive. “Emily!” I had to step over one of the fallen branches just to get to where Emily sat.

  She looked up at me for a second and then her hands were moving fast, pulling pieces apart. Stewart was right. This explosive was weird, made of glass, with clear tubes and vials of colored liquids running in all directions. Maybe Mason got to study these in his specialty training in Futuristic Technology, but I had never seen anything like it before. No wires. Nothing familiar from the basic deactivation training I’d been given.

  She mumbled to herself and I could see her hands shaking as more tubes ended up beside her, outside of the massive glass case. Finally, she let out a breath and sank back onto her heels, one hand clutching her chest. “Twenty seconds to spare.”

  I knelt down across from her and reached for one of the tubes with a light blue liquid sloshing back and forth. She grabbed my hand to stop me. “Don’t touch anything … trust me.”

  “What are you doing here? And how did you know how to do … that?” I asked.

  She stood up and dusted off the knees of her jeans. “We have to destroy this, we can’t let anyone see it. The technology is too … advanced.”

  “How do we destroy it?” I asked frantically.

  Then I saw another victim of the sudden lightning storm lying at the bottom of the steps I had just come up to get to this section of the tower. Not a human victim. Another thick branch, like the one I had just stepped over to get to Emily, this one with tons of smaller branches and bright green leaves stemming from it. I could clearly see sparks and the first sign of fire near the end of the branch.

  I jumped over the branch again and yelled to Emily, “Pull this right over the explosive … and put as many leaves in the center as you can.”

  After racing down the steps, hurdling over the EOT’s body, I carefully extracted the piece of tree on fire, holding my hand in front to block the wind and rain from putting it out. It was possible this was a very bad idea and I should have just handed over the bomb to Dad and Freeman so we could study it, but I had to trust her at least a little. She might have been taking orders from another me.

  The second we had some good-sized flames going, Emily and I raced down the stairs and clear to the other side of the castle. She leaned against a wall, catching her breath. “Jackson … I don’t know what’s happening, but things keep changing.”

  “In the future?” I pressed.

  She nodded. “Just be careful … about jumping … I think someone has already changed things since your last jump.”

  “What things?”

  A pained look crossed her face and then disappeared right away. “Just stay in this timeline, okay? Promise? No matter what you find out?”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “I promise I’ll try.”

  She gave me a quick squeeze around the waist and whispered, “I’m sorry … that I can’t tell you more … but I have to go.”

  Her hands dropped to her sides and she was gone. Like a figment of my imagination. I heard Dad’s voice coming through my earpiece. “Jackson! Where the hell are you?”

  “West tower, Dad,” I answered, speaking directly into my wristwatch.

  “We think the explosive might be inactive now. Apparently Thomas has decided to set an entire section of the castle on fire.”

  An entire section? It hadn’t looked that bad a few minutes ago.

  Sure enough, when I looked over at the farthest end of the castle, black smoke drifted toward the sky. It was going to take a lot more than this rain to put out that fire.

  “What?
??s the new cover story? Are we drugging the witnesses?”

  “We’ve already gotten the chancellor out safely. Freeman’s taking the whole delegation to our third command center. Hopefully in twelve hours they won’t remember a damn thing.”

  I spun around in a circle, looking at the flames and the perimeters. Dad was nowhere in sight. However, I could see the back of Thomas’s head as he ran after Parker. Blood pumped twice as fast through my veins. The urge to kill him that I’d had earlier today, after the memory gas, returned with a vengeance. The image of him tossing Holly off the six-story-high roof flashed through my head and I shook it out. Focus. She’s not here.

  I ran fast, gaining ground on him, but just as I got about three feet from Thomas, he was gone.

  “Damn!” I spun around, looking for any others. The wind picked up and blew the thick black smoke directly in my face. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I coughed out the smoke.

  I almost retreated, but Stewart’s voice came through my earpiece. She was giving her coordinates and requesting backup. And of course she was right in the middle of the flames.

  Why the hell did she go in there? Did someone tell her to get the explosive out? None of us had come equipped for fire.

  I pulled my shirt over my face and ran into the fire. I expected to see Thomas, but it was just Stewart tied to a pole.

  Someone tied her to a pole with a rope?

  I could barely see in the midst of all the smoke and flames. Stewart’s head bobbed around as she lost consciousness. I snatched the pocketknife from her hands and started on the section of the rope that she had already begun sawing apart. Water streamed out of my eyes and I could hardly breathe. Finally the rope dropped to the floor and I picked Stewart up before she fell over, then I charged up the nearest staircase, hoping that a helicopter was on its way.

  I had to admit, I was glad Stewart needed rescuing instead of Kendrick because she’s four inches shorter than my partner. With my lungs ready to collapse and three flights of stairs to climb, those four inches and fifteen fewer pounds made a big difference.

  “Where the hell are you?” I shouted to Dad through my coms unit.

  “We can see you. We’ll be right there. Helicopter’s on its way.”

  Magic words.

  I reached the top of the final staircase and put Stewart on the floor and collapsed next to her. Her eyes were still closed, but she continued to cough. Parker was the first to reach us.

  “What the fuck happened to you guys?” he said, dropping beside her, loosening the buttons on her shirt.

  “She got tied up, literally, in the fire,” I said between coughs. “I don’t know how long she was down there.”

  Feet pounded against the stairs next to us and then Dad and Kendrick appeared. Parker and I both looked up at the sky where the helicopter hovered nearby. It turned sharply and headed in our direction.

  Dad pulled me off the floor, his hands clutched around the front of my shirt. “Don’t ever go against my orders … understood?”

  He didn’t sound angry. He sounded like me after 007 Holly had climbed across that swing set and flipped off of it. Only worse.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t tell him that because I’d never told anyone about Emily. Not even Dad.

  “The fire must have deactivated the bomb,” Kendrick shouted over the approaching helicopter. “Otherwise it would have exploded by now?”

  All of us stared at each other, and it was obvious we were thinking the same thing: What the fuck just happened and why did Marshall throw us to the wolves tonight? Nobody said a word, but it was a mutual, silent question.

  I picked up Stewart again and got her in a seat first before digging for an oxygen mask. Her head fell against the window and Kendrick handed me a mask to slip around her face. Her eyes barely opened.

  “You’re all right,” I shouted to her over all the noise. “It’s over.”

  “We’ll head back to headquarters. Have Dr. Melvin meet us on the ground,” Dad yelled to the pilot.

  Medical attention was a must for this group right now. Dad had a cut across his forehead that would probably need stitches, and Parker was pulling off his shoe, revealing a very swollen ankle. I had several cuts and scrapes on my face and arms, but nothing else.

  Kendrick sat in front of us and started removing the streaks of black from Stewart’s face with alcohol wipes. “Her breathing doesn’t sound too labored.”

  I decided now might be the time to break the news to her. I pointed at Dad’s now-oozing cut. “You have to stitch that up. It’s your task.”

  She looked up at me and her eyes were huge. “No … please … anything but that.”

  “I can’t take it back now that I’ve told you,” I said.

  She glanced quickly at Dad and then back at me. “I can’t … I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  “You’ll be fine. Seriously, how hard can it be?” I said, wishing I hadn’t picked this moment to spring it on her after all.

  She shook her head again and I thought there were tears in her eyes, but with all the smoke, it was hard to be sure of the cause.

  The helicopter lifted up and made a sharp right turn. Flames were still rising despite the emergency personnel now on site. I hoped they would be able to stop it before it spread to the surrounding trees. Looking at this destruction and remembering how the hotel at the beach had also been nearly demolished made my stomach tie in knots.

  The future that Emily had shown me, that horrible version of New York, didn’t seem so impossible anymore. But who really caused it? Did it happen before the perfect future that Thomas had shown me? Or maybe they were in completely different timelines, and if so, I had no idea which one I was living in.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JUNE 9, 2009, 7:00 A.M.

  The many questions surrounding last night’s mission weighed on my mind all through the morning’s training. Even Stewart showing up at the Advanced Defense group’s target practice in a very tight red dress couldn’t distract me from finding answers. Apparently she’d had some kind of training mission in a local town, but wouldn’t tell any of us what exactly she’d had to do that required this particular attire. Of course, Freeman had no problem letting Stewart barge in on our training time and possibly show up most of these guys. Except me. I could beat Stewart in accuracy with target shooting. But sometimes just the sound of the gun brought back the memory of Holly falling to the floor, blood seeping through her robe, and I wondered if I would actually be able to kill anything that wasn’t cardboard. Luckily, no one knew I had these kinds of doubts.

  Stewart found a new cardboard cutout behind a tree and set it up on my side of the field, while Freeman ran through a skills test that I had already mastered with some of the other agents in my group. “Give me your gun, Junior.”

  I almost didn’t loan her my weapon, but then I got an idea and handed it over. She aimed for her fake person, knocking a hole right through its forehead.

  “Nice shot.” I stood beside her, keeping my eyes on the side of her face. “Too bad you didn’t get here about twenty minutes ago … Freeman was telling us about Eyewall—”

  She laughed. “Nice try, Junior. My specialty studies organized opposing forces, not yours. Your little robot Advanced Defense buddies couldn’t process that information if their lives depended on it.”

  I took note of the fact that she only said my group members couldn’t handle it, but left me out of that accusation. I wondered if it was intentional or not. Did she think I was more skilled than the others in my group?

  “So you know what Thomas was talking about?” I pressed, having nothing to lose at this point.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Is it another name for the EOTs? Or another CIA organization?”

  She glanced at me, raising her eyebrows. “Give it up, Junior. You know the rules … Don’t go digging for shit you’re not supposed to know.”

  “Tomorrow,” Freeman said, gathering every
one together, “we’re going to practice this again, but with a few altered variables. All of you need to be prepared for changes in a mission’s plan that happen on the spot. I’m sure everyone’s looked over the reports from Heidelberg … Many unexpected changes occurred and we had to think on our feet.”

  “Yeah … what was up with that?” Agent Miller asked. “All of us were here sitting around doing nothing.”

  “We should have been there,” someone else said. “Both teams could have been wiped out if it weren’t for that fire.”

  Freeman’s eyes bounced among all of us. Even Stewart lowered my gun and turned her attention to Freeman. “I don’t think the chief expected—”

  “Why were there so many of them?” a trainee named Agent Prescott interrupted. “We’ve never had more than four time travelers present at any attack … There were nine of them last night.”

  So I wasn’t the only one with questions on my mind after yesterday.

  “True…” Freeman’s face stayed completely impassive, but I could almost see his struggle to find a response … probably to figure out a lie to tell us.

  “How do we know fifty of them aren’t going to show up at the next mission?” Agent Miller asked. “We don’t even have fifty agents in our division.”

  Freeman let out a sigh and leaned the bundle of cardboard people he’d been carrying against a tree. “Look … this group covers Advanced Defense and only Advanced Defense. Other than basic information all agents are given, I can’t go into specifics about the mission unless you want to review guns or hand-to-hand combat from last night—”

  “What about that bomb? No one got a picture of it?” Agent Prescott asked.

  None of us had ever bombarded Freeman like this and I knew there must have been a lot of fear and curiosity flowing through the entire division. It wasn’t just me.

  “Taking a photograph for you to study wasn’t exactly a priority,” Stewart snapped.

  “Tell that to the Futuristic Technology guys,” Agent Miller said, glaring in her direction. “That gas yesterday was weird enough. I’d like to know what we’re up against, numbers and weapons, and I don’t give a damn what you are or aren’t supposed to tell us.”