Mend (Rift Walkers #2)

  He slides me a wary glance. “A little. Why?”

  “I just remembered something Payton Openshaw said to his dad. Something about being angry he was abandoned in this ‘awful dimension.’”

  Cedar chews his food slowly, like he needs extra seconds to order his thoughts. “I’ve never been to the other Verses. Only Carl’s done that. He insisted none of the rest of us move through the rift, for fear of being damaged.” He steadfastly refuses to look at Cascade when he speaks the last sentence.

  “He’s detailed them for Shawna. Apparently the Verse Orville comes from is much better than ours. More wealth. More resources. Less illness. I assume Payton wants to take his family there.”

  I think of the anger and desperation in Payton’s voice as he begged his father to come meet his new baby. His wife.

  “Don’t go feeling sorry for Payton Openshaw,” Cedar says. “He’s ruthless, and not only when he needs to be.”

  A shiver tumbles through me, with the seriousness in his voice as well as the memory of Payton’s face, his resolve to eliminate the risk of rift walkers.

  I clear my throat. “So what’s the plan tonight?”

  “I know Harlem Ryerson.” Cedar swallows a pill. “We’ve kept in touch over the years. Nothing big. Nothing anyone would question. His son, Mason, is just a few years younger than me. I’ve made sure we play racquetball at the same time, I run into his wife at the grocery store, that kind of thing.”

  A rush of respect for Cedar runs through me. I shift closer to him, because Cascade watches us with the intensity of a hawk. “And you’ve done all this because you knew one day you were gonna need to help Cas get Price back.” I’m not really asking, and my words don’t sound like a question.

  Cedar’s emotions appear in his eyes—how much he loves Cascade blatantly obvious for anyone to see. He blinks, shuttering the feelings behind a hard edge. “I just want her to be safe, and healthy.”

  “Sure,” I say. “That’s why you have all the supplements she needs in your house.” I start to move away from him, not really sure why, but knowing I don’t really want to like him. Maybe because he’s in love with Cascade and so is Price. And in that match-up, I’ll always root for Price.

  Cedar’s fingers land on my forearm, and grip. Grip hard. I look at them, see the straining whiteness in his knuckles, and then meet his eye.

  “You have no idea what I’d do for that girl,” he says. “When you love someone as much I love her, maybe you’ll understand.” He releases me, takes his pizza and his drink, and leaves the kitchen with a couple long strides of anger.

  I watch him go, thinking of Soda. I loved her—or at least I thought I did. But I’d let her go. Go with her mom to Florida. Sure, we message each other, and I have plans to meet up with her in just a few weeks. But I wonder if I’d wait twenty years just to see her again. If I’d stay in contact with the people she needed me to, just to help her.

  No matter what I do, I can’t get the mad respect for Cedar out of my system.

  I’ve barely finished eating when Cedar returns. He’s wearing dark jeans and a navy hoodie. “Time to go.” He turns toward the door before I’ve moved.

  I cast a glance at Cas, who paints on a weak smile. “Good luck, Heath. I’ll meet you at the rift site.”

  “Wait, what? You’re getting there alone? Which rift are we using?”

  That Black Panther fierceness enters her eyes. “I can get there myself, yes.”

  I shake my head. “No. No way. Orville knows you’re here. What if—”

  “Do not complete that sentence,” she growls. “Orville doesn’t know I’m here. He knows an undetermined number of rift walkers came through the rift five years in the future. He knows nothing about our walk here.” She places her hand on mine, squeezes, and lets go.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m taking a ton of supplements before we enter the rift. Then I’m going to the library, and I’ll meet you in the alley at nine.”

  “Heath!” Cedar calls from the living room before I can protest against Cas’s plan. It isn’t half-bad.

  I stand. “Fine. Please be careful. If I have to tell Price—” My throat closes and I can’t continue. I hurry out of the kitchen and cram my feet back into the hyperdrive boots. Cedar glances behind him and lifts his hand in farewell. I don’t turn. I don’t look back. I don’t want this to be the last time I see Cascade.

  The ride to the Ryerson’s takes only minutes. Apparently, they live on the upper floors of their technology firm, Hyperion Labs. The top three floors, to be precise, which can only be accessed through a special bank of hidden elevators, an advanced key code Price and I would need at least a week of pre-jam surveillance and specialized—illegal—equipment to crack, and a carpet of Watch-Dog bots placed every three feet in the ceiling.

  I trail a half-step behind Cedar as he navigates past the security desk in the lobby of the building. It’s after-hours, but there’s twenty-four-seven muscle here. Guys wearing dark suits, dark ties, dark glasses. Not a single hallway or doorway is unguarded.

  My confidence rises. If we can keep the Ryerson’s from getting on that plane to Flagstaff, they might actually survive into the future.

  Cedar steps up to a display screen set low into a wall. He swipes on it, and a man’s face appears. More muscle.

  “Name?”

  Cedar introduces us, and says we have a dinner appointment with Harlem for seven that evening. The man’s face disappears and moments stretch long. I wonder what would happen if the appointment isn’t confirmed. Would he call up to Harlem and ask? Or simply chat one of the guys on this floor and have us tossed into the street?

  A guard edges closer, and I automatically turn so I can see the entire space. We’ve gone around the corner from the security checkpoint for the building, but three guards watch us. One takes a step forward, his hand going to the side of his glasses. A blip of light skates across the metallic surface, and I know: He’s just taken my picture.

  “Cedar,” I hiss under my breath.

  He grabs my arm and turns me around. “Don’t act like we shouldn’t be here,” he whispers back.

  I face the wall, every nerve in my back screaming at me to turn around! Protect yourself! Look for an escape!

  Just as I’m about to bolt, the display screen in front of us brightens. “Take elevator three to the eighty-first floor.”

  The man fades and the wall inches up, the way grocery store doors slide open, to reveal a small room with three shiny elevators. Cedar steps into the room and waits while the wall slinks back into place.

  Tinkling music plays from speakers in the ceiling, a new addition from the stark silence of the technology firm. An older version of Harlem greets us when the elevator arrives on the eighty-first floor. “Cedar.” He smiles at him, but the action doesn’t quite illuminate his eyes. “And Heath.” He steps back and sweeps his hand toward an open apartment door. “Come in, please.”

  “We need everyone here,” Cedar says as he steps into the suite.

  “We’re all in the panic room.”

  Panic shoots through me. “The panic room?”

  “Best place to be if someone’s trying to kill you.” Harlem steps in front of Cedar and leads the way down a marble-tiled hall. I try not to stare at the grand furnishings, the priceless artwork, the high-end décor.

  I manage to keep up until Harlem turns down a hallway littered with pictures. Versions of Price and Guy smile back me, holding a cherry popsicles and riding bullet bikes. It’s freaky to see pieces of him in them, and know that he doesn’t exist yet.

  I suck in a breath, and hold it hold it hold it as reality hits me. I’m going to see Price’s father in just a few seconds. An eight-month-old version of him.

  No wonder Cascade didn’t want to come.

  I yank my eyes from the baby blues of a baby Guy and hurry to catch Cedar and Harlem. A few more turns I can’t catalog, and Harlem presses his hand against an invisible panel on the wall. A computerized voice asks hi
m a question, and he answers with a complicated pattern of letters, words, numbers, and tongue clicks.

  The panic room door slides open, my heart rocketing to the back of my throat. My feet don’t want to seem to move into the room, but I force them to.

  This room feels less used than the rest of the apartment, with no pictures or art, no warm, inviting light. Metal walls line the space, which does have several doors leading into other rooms. I catch sight of a bed in one, and a wall of display screens in another. They show every inch of the pathway one would need to take to enter this apartment.

  In the main area, several people—Price’s ancestors—wait on a huge sectional couch. The dark-haired woman holding a baby stands as Harlem introduces us, and she flips the infant around to face the front.

  Guy.

  I let Cedar do all the talking. None of the Ryersons seem to care that I’m their grandson’s best friend from the future, but I feel twitchy. Maybe because the clock keeps ticking closer to nine, and Cedar keeps talking. Mason keeps asking questions. Guy keeps fussing.

  Finally, everything is settled. The Ryerson’s are going to send decoy cars to the airport without anyone in them. They’re not going to cancel their tickets, and in fact, will check-in for their flight in the morning, as if they were on it.

  Harlem promises to beef up the security around his family and his tech firm, and Cedar and I leave the building the same way we entered.

  “We need to hurry.” Cedar’s long legs and increased pace cause me to practically run to keep up with him. “Cas can’t be in that alley alone.”

  I agree with him, and bite back a remark that she should’ve come with us.

  He nearly hits a pedestrian and takes out a trashcan on the way to the alley. He pulls right into the narrow space between the two buildings that stand on the grounds of the Time Bureau in the future. I wonder if such a thing will exist in the future, especially now that the Ryersons aren’t involved in time rifts or time travel.

  A swoop stains my stomach as I think about me and Price not being friends. He’d said he’d woken up to a different reality one morning, and we weren’t. I don’t remember it, because my timeline hadn’t changed.

  I follow Cedar out of the car and to a section of the wall that’s not made of brick, but smooth computer panels. He has the rift cued up to open in only a few seconds, and he glances toward the mouth of the alley.

  “She should be here any minute.”

  But that minute comes and goes, and then turns into five. I pace to the end of the alley and peer around the corner in the direction of the library. The streets aren’t completely deserted at this hour—it’s not particularly late. But there’s not so many people that I couldn’t see Cas if she were there.

  I watch, desperation pooling beneath my tongue. Where is she? Did something happen? Did one of the bounty walkers find her? How?

  Just as I’m about to return to Cedar and demand he call her, she appears. She’s moving fast, and she doesn’t look around at all. This isn’t a casual student making their way home after a study session at the library.

  Something’s wrong.

  I hurry back to Cedar and tell him to open the rift.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “I think she’s being followed.”

  He works his magic and opens the rift. It’s just as tall and towering and thick as it was when Cas and I went through it a couple of days ago. I can’t believe no one looks this way, no one sees it and wonders what that blazing blue light is.

  Cascade turns the corner and breaks into a run. “Bounty walkers tailing me.”

  I reach for her hand and step toward the rift.

  “Blow it, Cedar,” she says, her voice lined with terror. “And get out of here.”

  His mouth flattens, and he looks like he’s going to protest. Then he nods, raises his hand in a final farewell, and turns back to the panel.

  I square my shoulders, meet Cascade’s determined gaze, and we step into the rift side-by-side.

  Price

  I WAKE UP WHEN MY DAD BARGES into my room, his face earnest and eager. When he sees me sitting in bed, clutching my blanket in my fists, he sags against the wall.

  “Uh, good morning?” I say. My brain feels foggy, but even I know his behavior isn’t right.

  “You’re here.”

  I think of the many midnight jams I used to perform—things I haven’t done since Cascade went through the rift to take her sister home.

  “Of course I’m here.”

  Dad pulls an unfamiliar chair from my Link station, moves it next to my unfamiliar bed, and sits. “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  Bits and pieces of memory float in my mind, snatches of a plan, of seeing Cascade without her eye enhancements. I glance around my room, noting that it is definitely not the bedroom I’ve lived in for the past several years. We don’t live in the house in the suburbs anymore, and a jolt of fear races through my blood.

  “You’ve been gone for three days.” The somber way he speaks tells me this isn’t a joke.

  “Gone?”

  “Dead, gone, vanished, disappeared.” He sighs and runs his hand up the back of his head. “Erased.”

  “I don’t get—”

  “You and Heath went through the rift at the Time Bureau three days ago.” He raises his eyebrows. “To go back and warn Cascade and her family about a fire that kills them all.”

  At once, everything that happened since I entered the rift at the Time Bureau rushes back to me. My eyes fly between my father’s. “What happened?” My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone else who swallowed a lot of chalk and then tried to speak.

  “Cascade and Heath moved through time to save you.” A tender look accompanies the words, but I don’t know what to do with it. My dad always seemed made of steel when speaking about Cascade.

  He gestures to the room around him. “And look around. You don’t have the same life you used to.” A vein of worry rides between the syllables, almost like he’s concerned I won’t like this life.

  I’ll admit, I’m worried about that too. I flip the blanket off my legs and get out of bed. I move to the huge wall of windows and look out—over the entire city of Castle Pines.

  “We live downtown?”

  “Top floor of our technology firm.” Dad joins me at the window, close but not touching. Which is great, because my skin feels like it’s on fire.

  “So no house in the suburbs.”

  “No,” he says. “My great-grandfather got out of the time travel business sixty years ago. Went into gadgets and inventing technology instead.”

  I think of Harlem Ryerson’s doppelganger, Orville Opensahw. “So that must mean Orville…”

  “His family has what ours used to.”

  I stare at my dad. “And you’re okay with this?”

  “I am, yes. We have everything we used to.” He claps his hand on my shoulder. “Look around the Link, you’ll see it all.”

  He leaves me alone in my massive bedroom, wondering if I’ll see Cascade on the Link.

  An hour later, its pretty obvious Cascade doesn’t exist in this time. Her brother, Shep, does though, and I’ve taken the el-rail out to the suburbs to see him.

  I knock and enter that familiar red door at Shep’s house. I know he’s asleep as soon as I push open the door. The house has an unused feel to it, and I stop on the threshold, my heartbeat drumming against the roof of my mouth as I think, Maybe Shep died.

  The sound of his soft breathing eliminates the thought. My heart settles into a normal rhythm as I see him sleeping in his recliner. In the kitchen, several stacks of dirty dishes balance on the counter. I stare out the window above the sink, much the same way I did six months ago after Cascade had shown me a vid of an exploding rift. If I’d known then that my rift was about to do the same thing with her inside it, I would’ve done anything to stop her from going.

  I wander upstairs to Cascade’s bedr
oom, where I finger the gadgetry she left behind, search through a couple of drawers, hoping for a note from the past. She dropped something through once, maybe she has again since I’ve been gone.

  But there’s nothing.

  Movement downstairs sends a noise up the stairwell. “Price, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” I call to Shep. I sweep Cascade’s room with one final glance before turning my back on it and heading downstairs.

  “Hey,” I say when I find him awake in his recliner. “Have you had lunch?”

  He glances up at me, his eyes as alive as ever. “Price, I’ve hired a home-health bot.”

  My stomach knots. “No. You don’t need to do that.”

  “It’s time we both move on. She’s not coming back.”

  “She is.” The words have too much weight in my mouth, and I feel like throwing a punch. “She has to. She has a contract here, and she said she was coming back.”

  He rests his hand on mine. “I don’t think she is, son.”

  I move away from him and toss a couple slices of bread into the warmer. “Tea with your toast?”

  He doesn’t try to muffle his sigh. “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been over for a few days.” I don’t tell him why I’ve been absent. “You don’t need a home-health bot.” I cut him a glance over my shoulder. He can’t afford that. Of course, maybe he’s not planning on living long enough to have to pay for it.

  “Okay,” he says, accepting the tray I present him with his tea and toast. I don’t need to hang out with Shep for long to get my fix. Just having a tie to Cascade settles me. He can’t take that away from me. I won’t let him. Cascade is coming back, and I’m going to be here when she does.

  After I leave Shep’s, I head over to Heath’s though he hasn’t answered any of my chats. His mother answers the door, gasps, and covers her mouth with her hand.

  “Uh, hello, Mrs. Stonesman.” I look over her shoulder. “Is Heath here?”