Rift (Rift Walkers #1)

  I flash him a look of annoyance. “I know,” I say. “All outside doors.”

  “Just checking that you can do it.”

  “Of course I can do it.”

  Security feed up and running, Soda chats. All’s well.

  I give Heath and Saige a thumbs-up, and they leave. I set about making the water pressure in the kitchens go haywire. A few distant shouts meet my ears, signaling my success. Next, I key in Cooper’s electronic configuration so his door will be disabled. Then he can get out and find Cascade.

  I check the timer on my Circuit. Forty-five seconds. Heath and Saige should’ve made it into Subterranean D by now. It was Heath’s job to jam that door so it couldn’t slide all the way shut. I check it, and sure enough, it’s ajar. If it doesn’t seal in two minutes, an alarm will sound. Cooper needs to be out by then.

  But Cascade isn’t in Sub-D. The thought sends my fingers into overdrive. It takes me less than thirty seconds to find the codes for all the Subterranean levels—but they require more clearance than I’ve got.

  Still clear, Soda chats. They’re watching the activity in the Subterranean level, but they haven’t dispatched anyone yet.

  I know how to get the codes to access the entire Subterranean level, but it requires me to become the Black Hat, right here, right now.

  Can I switch identities? I chat to Soda.

  To do what?

  Get all the Subterranean doors open.

  Black Hat?

  Yes.

  Footsteps echo from below. I press my flatpanel to my chest and squeeze myself into the corner in case it’s a Hood.

  It’s Saige. “She’s not in D,” she says, panting. “We need access to the other sub-levels.”

  “Give me thirty seconds,” I say. “Go tell Heath to close D so the alarms don’t go off.” Saige sprints back down the stairs, and I take a deep breath.

  If it’s necessary, Soda has chatted.

  If I become the Black Hat, it’ll be like advertising to the Security Sector—to Dad and to Wilder—that I’m here. All they’ll have to do is send their Hoods up from below and their security detail down from above. I think of Cascade, and her stormy eyes, and her fierce nature.

  I’m doing it, I chat. Watch everything. Let me know the second anything looks even remotely dangerous.

  On it.

  I quickly switch over to my Black Hat identity and sneak in through the sutures I made in Wilder’s security interfaces. I actually feel bad doing it. I like Wilder, appreciate that he’s won a battle against my dad. Playing the dangerous role of the Time Keeper can’t be easy either.

  I’m taking a huge risk, one that if anyone in Sector S is looking for, they’ll find. I’m putting a lot of faith in their shift change, which I know from their schematics happens in six minutes.

  I can practically hear the doors hissing upward as I enter the codes. Finally, all the doors are open, giving Heath, Saige, and Cooper free reign to find Cascade in any of the Subterranean levels. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans, wishing I could chat Heath and let him know he has sixty seconds before someone finds my signature.

  Their codes are catching yours, Soda chats. Thirty seconds.

  “Come on,” I mutter, my frustration rising along with the heat in the stairwell. If I don’t hear from Saige in the next ten seconds, I’ll have to de-energize all the cells in every Subterranean level. Someone’s running toward me, but I recognize the lighter steps of Saige.

  “Subterranean B, cell 37.” She barely stays long enough for me to confirm.

  Get out, Price! Soda commands.

  I ignore her as I fly through the codes and have Cas’s door de-energized just as the siren starts.

  Saige

  I DON’T REMEMBER WHEN I STARTED to sweat. Everything around me disappears into white noise and blurred movement, as it usually does when I’m scared out of my mind.

  I haven’t seen Cascade yet, but Heath said she was here. Everything in me screams to go up! Get out! But I pound down the rest of the freaking stairs just as three people burst from the second door on my left.

  Heath, Cooper—and Cascade. She looks at me, and I freeze. She’s her—no makeup, no jewelry, no flashing lights on her face. Her hair is clean, but unspiked. Her dark eyes are still a tad on the predatory side, but the emotion swimming in them tells me she sees me, too. The real me. The unafraid Saige. The one who stood up to her mother, who devised a plan, who stepped through a freaking time rift.

  She smiles, the right side of her mouth lifting too high—just how I remember it. I automatically return the gesture, though I’m still frustrated that she left without explaining anything.

  “Chloe,” I whisper, quickly crossing to her. I look up into her face, always thirteen months older than me, always a head taller. Just like I knew Shep when I looked into his eyes, I see my sister for the first time in five years just by looking into her dark eyes.

  Tears stream down my face, and I’m not sure if they’re from relief or anger. She had access to email, but I didn’t get a freaking message. Not one. I can’t put my fury into words, but she says, “Don’t cry, okay? Please don’t cry.”

  That only makes me sob that much harder.

  “Uh, guys?” Heath says. “We gotta go.”

  An alarm shatters my response, drying my tears and urging all of us into motion.

  “Let’s go.” Heath sprints further into the labyrinth, and his brother and my sister follow. I bring up the rear, fully aware that I’ll be the first one caught in a footrace.

  “Left,” Cooper directs, and we dart into a small room just as several beefy guards pour out of another area. A large plume of steam follows them, but I don’t wait to see where that’s coming from. I follow the others through the room and out another door.

  More stairs. I’m really starting to hate stairs. We go up for way longer than we came down, finally leaving the stairwell to enter another corridor.

  “Activate cosmetic codes,” Heath says, and I watch in awe as his eyes morph to blue. Even worse is looking into Chloe’s naturally brown eyes and watching them cloud into a stormy gray.

  I grab onto her again and hold on tight. I don’t ever want to let her go. She grips me back. “Thanks for coming to the rescue,” she says.

  I smile, because I know I’m now the kind of person who can rescue her. “I missed you,” I say. I hate that I don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m more determined than ever to get them.

  “I miss you everyday,” she says. “I have so much to tell you.”

  “Hey,” someone interrupts. “We’re evacuating the building. You kids can’t be up here.” A man gestures to us from the other end of the hall. We follow him to the elevator and ride to freedom in silence.

  “We have to walk a bit,” Heath says when we hit the street. “Stay close together.”

  Chloe links her arm through mine, and I study her. There’s so much I want to say, but the mob of people milling on the street and the seriousness of the situation keeps my voice quiet.

  At the end of the third block, Heath dives into the backseat of the black luxury car with Cooper right behind him. I squeeze in behind Chloe to find Price pressed way against the opposite window.

  “Good thing this car is huge,” I mutter. Price is staring at Chloe and I can tell they’re talking over their implanted chatting systems. It annoys me.

  “What’s up, blood?” Price asks Heath.

  “Nothing, we got out fine.”

  “The outside doors were all open.”

  “Didn’t need them.”

  No one has anything to say after that. I endure the twisty ride back to the suburbs, and when Monroe pulls up to Heath’s house, we all pile out.

  “Thanks, Monroe,” Price says. “Better get this auto back underground.” His answer comes from the roaring engine as he takes off.

  We stand in the street, and no one seems to want to be in charge. I step next to my sister. “We’re going back to Chloe’s house. Maybe you guys can…t
ake care of whatever you need to take care of, and join us in a little bit?” I make it sound like a question, but I’m not really asking.

  My sister glances at me, a slight twitch in her jaw muscle telling me I’ve said something wrong. “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says, her eyes saying something to Price, who looks like he wants to argue. Heath whispers something and nudges him toward his house, and Price goes.

  I’m left with my sister, though it’s clear she wants a private reunion with Price. I narrow my eyes. “What’s with you guys?” I remember him saying Cascade wasn’t his girlfriend, but all the evidence points to the contrary.

  “He’s my…. Well, he and I….”

  “He’s your boyfriend.”

  “Not in so many words,” she says, but she wipes her mouth when she says it, and I know she’s kissed him. “Let’s go,” she adds, her once-again-dark eyes feeling dangerous.

  I ask her about the freaky eye thing she did as we walk to her house, and she explains how hair and eye color can be changed with a simple download from the Circuit.

  “Circuit?”

  “It’s like the Internet, and we’re all connected to it.” She holds up her right hand to show me her Receiver. “I alter my appearance all the time as a way to stay off the Ryerson’s radar.”

  “Well, dating one of them doesn’t seem that low-key,” I comment.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she snaps. “It just sort of…happened.”

  “Right,” I scoff, elbowing her. “You just sort of stumbled into him and latched onto his mouth with yours.”

  “Saige!” She laughs and jostles me back, and every hollow part of me swells with joy to be joking with my sister.

  “Chloe,” I say, my voice hushed. Before she can answer, I fling myself toward her and wrap my arms around her. I need to feel something solid, something real. I need to remind myself that I’m grounded in reality, to remind myself that I came to the future and did something.

  Chloe is warm. Her breath whispers coolly in my ear.

  She’s real.

  I step back and hold her at arm’s length. “You’re alive.”

  “I’m alive,” she confirms, her voice strong and steady, so unlike mine. My breath shakes going in and out, and I can’t make my mind settle onto one question long enough to ask it. I just keep looking at her, toes to head, trying to understand.

  “You were with Price.” The realization burns going through my mind and out my mouth. I cast her a look that says traitor! “You were in the car with me, and you didn’t say anything.”

  “I gave you that note,” she says, her mood darkening. “Isn’t that why you’re here? Did you talk to Mom?”

  I roll my eyes. “You know Mom.” As I say it, I realize that the Mom I know and the one Chloe does are two different people.

  “Let’s get to my house,” Chloe says, casting a cautious glance around.

  Once inside, neither one of us wants to open the conversation. I cast my eyes around the room, hoping the words I need will be written on the walls. Chloe busies herself in the kitchen, but she keeps glancing at me and looking away real fast.

  “I saw the emails,” I finally blurt. That seems to undam the word vomit. “And I just need to know. Did you really take Mom’s research and give it to Harlem Ryerson?”

  She picks up the tray she prepared and moves to join me in the living room. “Saige. It’s complicated.”

  “Make it uncomplicated.”

  She indicates the stairs with the tray. “Let’s go talk with Shep, okay?”

  I follow her upstairs and into Shep’s bedroom, where he’s asleep in an armchair near the window. Chloe sets the tray on an end table and gently nudges Shep. I want to warn her to watch out, but Shep’s eyes simply open with a flutter.

  He smiles at Chloe, and I realize the two of them have been through a lot together. Maybe not a teenage Shep and a teenage Chloe, but this elderly Shep and my teenage sister. They love each other. I can see the affection he has for her, the concern she has for him.

  I realize that while I lost five years with Chloe, I didn’t lose forever. The hole in my chest feels significantly smaller. I wait while Chloe pours him a cup of tea and steadies it in his trembling hands.

  She glances at me pointedly, and I join them near the window. “There’s something wrong here,” I say.

  “I’m very ill,” Shep says. “Cascade does a great job taking care of me.”

  I’m surprised he doesn’t call her Chloe. Their charade runs deep, I suppose.

  “He’s lying,” Cascade says. “But I try.” She focuses her attention out the window. “I started rift-walking so we could pay for his medical care. Otherwise, I would’ve never gotten involved with rifts or the Ryerson’s ever again.”

  I watch her, listening to the ghosts of the past haunting her in every note. Tears form in my eyes. I want to ask her why she didn’t tell me anything. Why I couldn’t be included. Why I couldn’t help. The angry and frustrated words boil in my throat.

  “Say it, Saige,” Chloe says, still refusing to look at me. I want her to face me, see the pain and loneliness she left me with. The fact that she won’t makes a buzz start in my ears.

  “You chose to enter the rift. You chose to leave me behind.” My chest rises and falls so fast. “Look at me!”

  She swings her head toward me, almost lazily, almost like she’s only putting up with me because I’m her annoying little sister. When our eyes meet, I know she’s hurting too. Has been for the five years we’ve been separated.

  “Keep going.”

  She knows me so well—or maybe she knows I haven’t been able to have an opinion of my own since she left. “Mom had me institutionalized. She’s been lying to Shep for years. Even when I told her I knew about the rift, she still denied it. Why? What’s so important that she does all that? That you had to leave?”

  “It’s warped, and hard to explain.” Her voice is even and steady, the direct opposite of the thrumming of my heart and the pounding frustration behind my eyes.

  “Mom wouldn’t disclose her findings to Harlem Ryerson. I thought that was bogus, so I took her research and gave it to him.” She waits while Shep coughs, watching him with empathy in her eyes.

  “Blame me all you want,” she continues. “I worked on stabilizing the rift too, and Mom was messing with dangerous people. Once I got here and turned over the research, I made a deal with Guy Ryerson.” She and Shep exchange a glance, and he nods.

  “Chloe did everything she could to protect us,” Shep says, his gravelly voice settling some of the fury boiling inside me. “She made sure that we couldn’t be contacted by Guy’s rift-walkers, now or in the past. Her agreement with him ensured that Mom would get credit for the discovery of time rifts and time travel.”

  “So what?” I explode. “Who cares? Why couldn’t she do all that and come home?”

  “An agreement is a give and take thing,” Shep says.

  “And I needed things from Guy,” Chloe adds. “My friend Eliza was getting abused. I wanted to use the rift to bring her and her mother to safety. Guy said he could do that. I wanted to save Dad. Guy agreed that he’d send his walkers to prevent the accident.” She returns her attention out the window, like it’s a movie screen playing the sad scene where Dad left for work and never came home.

  “Dad still died,” I point out, my voice harsher than I mean it to be.

  “Yes, he did,” she says. “But that is Mom’s fault, not mine.”

  I remember the line in Chloe’s only email to Mom. She said she’d found out how Dad really died. “How did he die?”

  Shep clears his throat, but Chloe pierces him with a glare. “She gets to know everything.”

  He waves his hand, and she continues. “He was at work with Mom. Doing tests on the rift. Did she ever tell you that? I thought he’d stopped after work to buy my science fair supplies, because that’s what Mom told me. Do you know how much guilt I carried? I thought he’d died because of
me. But it was a lie. A huge, colossal lie. She needed help with an experiment, and he went with her to assist. Mom screwed up. She used too much hydro-2 and the wrong laser. She blew that lab to hell, Dad with it.”

  I stare at her, sure she’s wrong. But one look at Shep, and I realize they’re telling the truth.

  “So I gave Guy the research, and I got to help my friend and try to save Dad.”

  “Guy’s stipulation was that Chloe could not return to the past,” Shep says. “He didn’t want her to continue working on the rift in any capacity, and he promised that we—” He gestures between the two of us—“Would be safe and left alone. We’d be able to lead a normal life.”

  “Normal life?” I stand up, the absurdity of his words too much to bear. “There has been absolutely nothing normal about my life!” I cast them one final glare before stomping out of the room. My footfalls land heavy on the stairs as I fly down them.

  No one follows me, and I might be more upset about that than anything else. I’m alone on the porch, tears running down my face, when Cascade finds me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. The apology in her voice sounds genuine. I want to tell her it’s okay, but I can’t make myself say the words. Nothing about the past five years has been okay.

  “Guy is not the type of person you oppose,” she says. “I hate him for how he’s using the rift, how he’s using me because Shep and I need the money so bad.” She exhales like she doesn’t have much more to say. “We tried to save Dad, but we couldn’t. The rift Mom was working on in her lab collapsed when we were there to get him. We barely made it back here alive, and he—he didn’t make it at all. So I’m sorry. I tried to do the right thing. I was only thirteen, and I tried.”

  She sniffs and wipes her eyes, but I still say nothing. “I chatted you just a few days ago. You thought I was Price.”

  “Once?” My voice comes out as a screech. “Wow, thanks for that one chat where you pretended to be someone else.” I sound cruel, but I don’t care. She left me in the past without an explanation, and she thinks one chat that happened a few days ago makes it okay?