Table of Contents
Get free books!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Books by Elana Johnson
Mend Chapter One
Mend Chapter Two
About Elana
Copyright
Get free books!
Join Elana's speculative fiction newsletter to stay updated with new speculative fiction releases and her bookish news. All new subscribers will receive Elemental Rush, the first novella in the exciting NA dystopian fantasy Elemental series!
Join Elana's newsletter here.
See all of Elana's books here.
Price
“PAUSE,” I SAY, AND THE IMAGE stills. The sound cuts off and leaves only the hum of the Link station behind in my bedroom. I get up and close the door, something I should’ve done earlier. But Heath had sent me a flick in an email, with the subject line: DROP EVERYTHING AND WATCH THIS.
I suppose I should know that anything Heath sends me will be the latest, breaking-est newsfeed. Usually I don’t care much, and I ignore his messages until he puts the subject line in all-caps.
In this case, I want to see the flick. At the same time I don’t.
After casting another glance at the door to ensure it’s locked, I say, “Restart.” I’ve opted to watch the footage on my Link station instead of my cybernetics. The Link has a much bigger screen and data can be erased at will. Anything I watch on my cybernetic lenses—multi-media contacts I wear day and night—will remain in the history until I’ve viewed five additional items.
The flick flips back to the beginning, where a squad of technofoil-jacketed Hoods block the entrance to a building. They wear silver, metal suits from boots to heads.
Everyone says they need the helmets to cover their scarred faces. That one of the requirements to become a Hood is to incur at least two facial injuries in the line of duty. I don’t know if I believe the rumors, but I know the Hoods scare the crap out of me. More military than regular policemen, if a Hood comes calling, there’ll be heavy consequences—because it means you’ve messed with something time related.
The Hoods can punish citizens before inquiring, and I’ve seen enough vids of smashed noses and missing teeth to know I want to steer clear of their all-seeing eyes.
On-screen, their jackets will prevent anything from penetrating, and their loudspeakers and weapons keep the gathering crowd at bay.
The shot pans beyond the sidewalk-crowd to show what building the Hoods are safeguarding, and though I can’t see the whole thing, I glimpse enough.
The white light from the enforcement orbs glint off the gold letters of the Time Bureau.
I suck in a breath. There’s something equally disturbing and intriguing about the Bureau. I’ve been many times with my father, because he works there as the dean of technological development. I watch the south corner, where I know a concealed entrance lurks. I notice several Hoods are turned that way too.
Seeing the Time Bureau on-screen when I’m going to be hacking their system tomorrow night is especially unsettling. I quell the churning unrest in my gut and keep the flick rolling.
The main door to the Bureau hisses upward and four people spill out. Three of them are obviously teens, and the fourth is an adult. Two of them—the adult and one of the teens—wear hoods, their faces turned toward the ground as they run. This is where I’d paused the flick before, because the people aren’t the only things the building has to confess.
A bright—so bright it hurts to look at it—green light accompanies the people, highlighting their hair in alien hues and painting the surrounding crowd into stunned silence. Even the Hoods watch, electrorays hanging limply at their sides.
Green light kaleidoscopes from the building. I know what I’m seeing. My mind forms the words—time rift—but I can’t quite believe it. Dad has never said anything about the Bureau housing a rift. Before I can say “Pause,” again, the flick ends.
The creaking of my old house settles into the silence left by the termination of the feed. Just as I’m about to start it again, a date flashes on-screen. November 6, 2068.
The screen shrinks until it sits in the corner of the main picture, where a news rep looks earnestly into the camera. “This flick, apparently recorded five years ago and showing an alleged time rift at the Time Bureau, began circulating video logs an hour ago. The Time Bureau has no record of a rift site at their facility and claims the Black Hat falsified and released the feed. The notorious jammer that’s had his hand in numerous hacks has been recently traced to Castle Pines. He has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for this alleged cyber attack.”
I lean away from my station; my heartbeat hammers with his words.
They’ve traced the Black Hat—they’ve traced me—to Castle Pines.
Saige
I SEE CHLOE EVERYWHERE.
Sometimes in the dry towel hanging in the bathroom, sometimes in the empty space at the dinner table. Sometimes in the shag rug that covers my hardwood floor now. Mom ripped up the carpet when Chloe disappeared.
I let my eyes skate over that rug as I watch the moonlight chase shadows through my bedroom. Chloe used to be the one who couldn’t sleep at night.
Now that she’s gone, I’ve taken over the role of insomniac in the Phillips household.
I can’t get away from her, no matter how many times I’ve cried and begged to move. Mom loves this house, apparently more than she loves me. She inherited the mansion from her grandmother, and it’s seen our family dwindle from five—Mom, Dad, Chloe, me, Shep—to four when Dad died. Now that there are only three of us living here, I could go days without seeing anyone. That is, if Mom didn’t have a scheduled Sunday morning check-in.
Mom’s a laser fusion scientist at NovaRad, a research firm. She’s trying create energy without creating waste. She’s methodical in everything she does. Chores are scheduled and get done exactly the same every time. The garage gets cleaned every May. The back shed every October. Mom freaks if the gardeners are late, or if I don’t fill up the car with gas as soon as the indicator light comes on. Making dinner is the only thing I’ve seen my mother do without a set of rules. She calls cooking her “m
ad scientist” moment, minus the lasers.
Everything else in her life is done according to the scientific method: Ask a question, research, hypothesize, experiment, analyze, communicate. Except we suck at the communication part. Thus, the scheduled check-ins.
The alarm clock next to me indicates my check-in will arrive in seven hours. I close my eyes and roll toward the window.
When I open my eyes again, I find a wispy, see-through version of Chloe sitting in the window seat, her knees clenched to her chest.
My pulse accelerates; my heart skips; I inhale sharper than I mean to. Chloe doesn’t turn to look at me, but continues to gaze through the window.
I’ve seen versions of my older sister before, sitting at the window, rushing down the stairs, wandering through the formal living room and into the hall toward the game room. She loved to lounge in the beanbag there.
Her dark clothes melt into the surrounding shadows, her long hair is ponytailed, the silver buckles on her boots glint in the glossy moonlight. Her jaw muscle twitches, something that used to happen when she was nervous—or when she had a problem she needed to work through. I’ve seen her do that a lot. Before she disappeared, she’d been hanging out at my mom’s lab in all her spare time. She said she loved watching the lasers, that she got to listen in during Mom’s meetings, and once she told me that she was researching the practical uses of laser beam energy for Harlem Something-Or-Other, Mom’s boss. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but Chloe constantly carried around a notebook, always scrawling notes and equations with more letters than numbers.
An unearthly blue glow rests on her shoulders and slides down the curve of her back, almost like an outline. I’m not sure why I continue to see my sister when she’s been missing for so long. At first, I thought she was a ghost, but after five years I know that phantoms aren’t real—even if you can still see them.
I’m not sure what to make of the nearly translucent visions of my sister. The Chloe I see can’t possibly be the same person who disappeared in the dead of night. For one thing, she’s aged right along with me. Always thirteen months older, with hair that’s longer and longer, and then cut again.
When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a seventeen-year-old junior whose only texts consist of asking her younger brother if he needs a ride home from school. I see a girl with gaunt cheeks and dark circles under her dad’s green eyes. I see freckles, pale skin, and mousy hair that hangs in strings to the middle of her back.
Chloe used to be jealous of my green eyes;
I wanted her dark ones.
Mom used the word “prodigy” when talking about us—my piano, Chloe’s science. I followed her around at school, perpetually one year behind, but hopelessly pleased when people thought we were twins. The year she disappeared, she was at the junior high and I was still in elementary school. It was the first time I realized Chloe had a life without me in it.
Now my whole life is lived without her in it. When my sister turns from the window and looks at me, I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, she’s standing up, staring toward the door. She’s still a head taller than me, with olive skin and dark eyes—like Mom—but her black hair has been cut into a stylish A-line.
I fill my brain with useless thoughts. I’ve already organized my closet according to size and color—everything I haven’t packed, that is. I’m determined to convince my mother to move, and every time I see my sister, I fill another box.
This idea soothes me. I close my eyes and imagine boxing up my desk. Top drawer: pens, old stationery, matching envelopes. I have just the box for those….
I hardly use the old desktop computer anyway, choosing to complete my assignments in the lab at school or at Sarah Jane’s house. Or not at all.
Second drawer: sheet music I haven’t played in a while. Some Beatles, Maroon 5, Jason Mraz….
With my eyes clamped shut and my mind racing through the packing list, I don’t have space to worry about where Chloe is, or what she looks like, or how she’s aged right along with me.
At some point while I list the songs I used to sing and play, I fall asleep.
Someone breathes in the room with me. The inhale, pause, exhale creeps through the darkness, filling the spaces between the whistling of the breeze and the chirping of the crickets. The sound of that breathing comes steadily, and strong.
My eyes jerk open. The empty window stares back at me from across the room, highlighted with the shimmery glow of the moon. The curtains flutter in the early summer wind. Mom won’t turn on the air conditioner for a few more weeks, claiming the weather is still cool enough to leave the windows open at night.
The fabric flaps against the windowsill irregularly, but the movement doesn’t match the breathing. I can still hear the inhale, pause, exhale. Sudden fear seizes my muscles. The breathing migrates much too close, coming and going like ocean waves on the shore. The constant roar of it is everywhere, echoing and exhaling and excruciating.
My thoughts collide and tangle, with only one swimming to the surface. Get out!
I want to fling the blankets away and rush into my parents’ bedroom, the way I did when I was younger and nightmares followed me into the dregs of slumber. Dad was always able to soothe me. His calming presence is what I missed the most in the days and months immediately following his death. I’ve forgotten the timbre of his voice, the way he could calm me when I was afraid. I haven’t yearned for him so strongly in a long time.
But I’m not a child anymore, and I haven’t frequented my parents’ bedroom at night since Dad died when I was nine years old.
The breeze stills. The curtain pauses. The pounding of my heart quiets.
Maybe it’s Chloe, breathing in and out, though I’ve never been able to hear her. Not a footfall, a breath, a word. I’ve tried to talk to her, tried to get her to explain why she won’t leave this house.
Every time I try to interact with her, she doesn’t respond. Her eyes don’t flick to mine. She doesn’t say anything. She ignores me as completely as if I’m not here—or as if she isn’t. Once, I tried to touch her, and I couldn’t. So I know she’s not real, not a ghost, not here.
I see her face on the backs of my eyelids; the house oozes Chloe from every crack; I have to get out, get out, move.
We shared a room, though my uncle removed her bed three days after the memorial service. Mom took out the carpet and laid hardwood. The plush purple rug and an upright piano were brought in, so I could pound on the keys whenever I wanted, so the room wouldn’t look so huge and feel so empty.
My bedroom door gapes open, as does the door that leads into a shared bathroom. Through that, my brother’s room is shrouded in darkness. Maybe the sound comes from his bedroom across the way. But he started closing his doors a couple of months ago. “Fourteen needs privacy,” he’d told our mother. “I don’t want Saige in my room, messing with my stuff.”
She didn’t argue, and I couldn’t care less about his things. I never wanted to go in his room—until mine suddenly didn’t feel safe anymore. My room has been my sanctuary, the one place I knew I was okay.
I’m not crazy, I tell myself in the sternest mind-voice I can muster. The wind bartering with the curtains whispers back, Maybe I am.
I lean up on my elbow so I’m looking into the bathroom that divides my room from Shep’s. He could be in there; he might not be. A notoriously deep sleeper, Shep doesn’t wake up until he’s ready. Summer before last, he walked right into the sliding glass door in his first of many sleepwalking episodes. Sometimes Mom finds him asleep in the backseat of her car.
If he hasn’t wandered off yet, I won’t be able to wake him, not from all the way in here. I whisper-hiss “Shep!” anyway.
The breathing continues. Maybe Shep’s, but probably not.
Orange night-light shadows paint the mirror and the floor in the bathroom. I strain to see through them, into Shep’s bedroom.
That’s when I hear another body breathing.
One is fai
nt and far away, deep in the recesses of slumber, coming from my brother’s room.
The other is still strong and steady, rhythmic and loud, echoing behind me. Could be Chloe, but it could also be something else entirely.
Without thinking, I leap from bed, dart across the room, and slam the window shut.
I don’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my veins, the drag of my blanket on the hardwood, and the slap of my feet across the bathroom tile.
I settle on the edge of Shep’s bed, as far from my bedroom as I can get. My arms shake as I cast one last look toward my room. I see mist rising through the moonlight outside the window. I blink; it’s gone.
I duck and cover my head with my blanket, screaming inside myself. The comforting, steady warmth of Shep’s body calms me. He’s real, and he’s here, and I use these very solid facts to ground myself. The whispering in my head quiets. In fact, Shep’s breathing is all I hear for the rest of the night.
“Saige!”
My name floats through the haze in my head. The pain in my lower back registers. As my name gets called again, I notice an odd smell, like dirty socks and burnt metal.
Loud knocking nearly brings me to the surface of sleep. “Shep? Have you seen your sister?” Mom’s voice carries through his closed door, half-frustrated, half-worried.
I groan, the pain along my spine twice as sharp now. I recognize the smell as the standard stench in Shep’s room.
I sit up as fast as I can with the debilitating sting in my back. The creepy breathing. That’s why I spent the night in Shep’s bed. I must’ve fallen out sometime during the night.
His clock reads 8:04, and Mom’s on the prowl for our Sunday morning check-in. I groan as I scramble back to his bed just as he comes out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his hair dripping wet. “Haven’t seen her,” he yells to Mom.
“Shep,” I say.
He yelps, spins, and drops his towel.
I scream and press my palms against my eyes.
“What are you doing in here?” he demands. Scuffling follows, and I hope he’s gluing that towel to his body.