Vortex (25 page)

The reality must have hit me at the same time as it hit Stewart.

Mason is in there
 … was in there.

I peeled myself off the floor and walked up next to Stewart. She was shaking her head …
eyes still huge.

“No … no way. He got out. I know he did. There’s got to be some escape or…” My voice
trailed off and both of us continued to stare.

“Jackson!” I heard Dr. Melvin shout.

I spun around and saw him and Senator Healy sifting through the mess to get to us.
But it was Healy who reached me first and placed both his hands on my shoulders. “Are
you okay, son?”

His tone was completely different than earlier. This was genuine concern.

“Mason … he’s…” I couldn’t say it out loud.

Stewart swallowed hard and then spun around to face Healy. “He’s dead … blown up into
tiny bits.”

The anger in her voice was so thick it hit me like a punch in the stomach. This was
the most emotion I’d ever seen her show. I reached out and touched her shoulder. “Stewart…”

She slid away from me, holding both hands up in front of my face. “Don’t … just shut
the hell up—all of you.”

Freeman tried to stop her from walking away, but she shoved him against the wall and
took off running. I was still weak and frozen to my spot, but I didn’t miss the complete
devastation on Dr. Melvin’s face and the long look he gave me, and maybe I was imagining
it, but it seemed like he was asking me to fix it. Or just wishing I could.

But it didn’t work like that, did it?

Kendrick stared at me for a second, her eyes filling with tears, and then she ran
after Stewart, but I knew she’d be right back. If Stewart wanted to be alone, she
would be alone.

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, hoping everything would be different
when I opened them.

“Get him some water,” I heard Healy shout to someone. Then cold fingers touched a
tender spot on my cheek. “What happened, Jackson? Did someone take you with them?
It’s okay to tell me. All the EOTs are gone,” Healy said.

I opened my eyes again and glanced past Healy to see Dr. Melvin still staring at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “We tried to stop him, I swear.”

He nodded his head slowly and then walked closer, jumping into doctor mode. “Let me
check your pulse. And yes, you should have some water, Jackson.”

Healy backed away and let Dr. Melvin take my wrist.

“I’m sorry,” I said again to Dr. Melvin. “He just went in there and … I don’t know…”

“I know …
I know,
” he said, but his voice cracked.

The nausea from my earlier jumps, and from all the drinking, hit me at once, and next
thing I knew, my head was hanging over a white porcelain sink and I was staring down
at my own vomit. I barely noticed Senator Healy handing me a bottle of water in the
bathroom or him asking me if I was all right. All I could manage to do was try and
shake the blurriness from my head and stay on my feet. Nothing else mattered at the
moment.

*   *   *

An hour later, the mission group was in the underground classrooms. Stewart was nowhere
to be found and none of us wanted to talk about it. Most of us were sure that Freeman
would have us on a flight back to France within the hour, and honestly, I couldn’t
wait to get out of here.

I slumped farther down in the chair I had fallen into the second we entered the room.
Freeman and Parker sat on either side of me, upright and alert, instead of leaning
on their desks for support like I was.

“Though many of you may have just learned this information in the past week,” Senator
Healy said, pacing in front of the fourteen Tempest agents, “my position in this agency
is meant to be a silent one. However, in both Chief Marshall and Agent Meyer Senior’s
absence, I’m left with no choice but to take over as your commanding officer.”

“What the hell happened tonight? Obviously someone wanted to lock us all up together
so we couldn’t do a damn thing about the EOT attack,” Parker blurted out. “Who infiltrated
our alert system? I didn’t think that was possible.”

Senator Healy glanced at Dr. Melvin, who sat at the desk in the front of the room,
leaning on his elbows. He pulled himself up straighter and nodded before saying, “There
are always ways around our security. The Tech Support Team is already working on identifying
the source.”

“Tonight’s event … the loss of a very valuable agent … is going to be difficult for
all of us to deal with,” Healy said. “I encourage each and every one of you to offer
support to your teammates and take some time to rest and recover so we can be strong
and prepared for next time.”

This speech was already the complete opposite of Chief Marshall’s usual suck-it-up-and-move-on
lectures.

“Where is Marshall, anyway?” an agent from across the room asked. “And Agent Meyer?
Why did we do this mission without them if it was going to be so difficult?”

More sounds of frustration followed his question, as if everyone were thinking the
same thing. Including me.

“Unfortunately, I have some more bad news.” Healy shook his head, looking grim. I
held my breath, feeling my heart thud with renewed fear despite my exhaustion. “We
lost contact with Agent Meyer and Chief Marshall three days ago.”

Silence fell over the entire room. After several long seconds, I found my voice and
managed to croak out a couple words. “Three days?”

Healy and Dr. Melvin exchanged a look, and then Healy said with a sigh, “I think all
of us are going to have to accept the possibility, given certain evidence, that Agent
Meyer may have accepted a bribe from Eyewall—not the group you all were hunting tonight,
but the people responsible for that group’s presence in this year.”

Future Eyewall. The clone makers.

But Healy was wrong. Dad would never take a bribe from them …
ever
. He’d never leave me alone unless he absolutely had to.

“What about Chief Marshall?” someone asked. “Did he take a bribe, too? Maybe he handed
them Agent Meyer to get himself out of a bind.”

Okay, another Dad fan. Good to know.

“Agent Meyer has a very specific motive for accepting help from the EOTs,” Healy said
immediately. “One I can’t share with any of you at this time, but it makes the evidence
a bit more concrete.”

I could feel all eyes on me, as if I had the answer to this unspoken question. As
if I knew what would be more important to Dad than staying with me. I didn’t know.
I had no idea. And I really needed to find him and to tell him that I’d done a Thomas-jump.
I needed his help more than ever right now.

“But he’s alive?” I blurted out.

Healy’s face tightened. “We believe so.”

“Are we going back to France or what?” Agent Parker asked.

It was Freeman who spoke this time. “We did manage to gain some insight into Eyewall
during tonight’s mission. There’s a lot of data to review and it’s worth sticking
around for at least forty-eight hours.”

I sighed and forced my heart to slow back down to a normal pace.
It’s only two more days
. I just needed to focus on finding a way to contact Dad. This would be considered
a situation of great need and might call for a time jump … assuming I could even manage
it.

It was nearly two in the morning by the time everyone started to file out, slowly,
like stepping back into the real world would force us to think about Thomas’s speech …
about Mason.

“Jackson?” Senator Healy called to me before I stepped out the door. “Can I have a
word with you?”

I glanced at Kendrick, who I assumed would want to ride home together.

“Dr. Melvin wants me to help him with something in the lab,” she said, exhaustion
filling her voice. “It’s just down the hall. I’ll wait for you.”

I nodded to her and Healy closed the door after the last agent walked out. He gestured
for me to sit down again and I did, mostly because standing was difficult. The old
man slid behind the desk across from me, angling his chair slightly so we were facing
each other.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said gently. “You can’t let yourself
feel responsible for what’s happened tonight. No one expects you to be able to fix
this. I hope you know that…?”

I shrugged but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t that simple.
And it never will be
.

He sighed like he could read my thoughts. “We aren’t going to give up trying to contact
your dad. No matter what the protocol tells us, I won’t stop searching. He’s a good
man. No matter what any of the other agents tell you, don’t doubt what you know to
be true.”

I didn’t want Healy to know how close Dad and I were, so I shifted the subject. “I’m
having trouble thinking about anything except all those EOTs. Do they have, like,
a dozen cloning machines in the future or something?”

Healy scrutinized my face, maybe checking to see if I had gone into shock yet, but
shock seemed to come a lot slower for me these days. “Dr. Melvin is very ashamed of
his years spent trying to make cloning a real process, attempting to get government
funding for such projects. Without his research, we might not have many enemies to
battle. It was a foolish boy’s dream. But it takes age and experience to fully comprehend
the weight of one’s actions.”

Poor Dr. Melvin. And I thought I was living with guilt. “Why did you tell me that
Kendrick was important to this division? Are you related or something?”

“No, nothing like that, Jackson,” he said with a slight smile. “I don’t know all the
details, Marshall told me as little as possible, but she is supposed to discover a
cure for a deadly epidemic that will plague the future. I believe that’s one reason
the EOTs may spare her life.”

“Seriously? Does Dr. Melvin know this? And won’t the EOTs know whatever magic medicine
she’s destined to make and they can just make it themselves?”

He shrugged. “Apparently they prefer not to adjust events that don’t need adjusting.
Mess with as little as possible and hope to shape everything perfectly. And Dr. Melvin
doesn’t know any of this and you aren’t going to tell him. He’d spend the rest of
his life trying to discover something he was never meant to find … He’d kill himself
trying.”

I let out a frustrated breath. “Okay, but why does she have to be in Tempest? Can’t
she just work in some lab and keep out of the way of explosions and whatever else
we have to put up with?”

“First of all, she
wants
to be here. For reasons I don’t understand.” His face turned more serious. “But your
idea was the exact option I presented to Chief Marshall. However, he felt her skills
were too valuable to not use her as an agent … and now she’ll never be allowed out.
Not alive, anyway. But if she continues to study medicine and stays free of distraction,
she can still make her discovery.”

The not-allowed-out part wasn’t a surprise. I had already assumed that for all of
us, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. I leaned my head against my hands
and rubbed the blurriness from my eyes.

I felt Healy rest a hand on my shoulder. “Jackson, you should go and get some rest.
I’ve already said too much. I’m truly sorry for everything you’ve been through tonight.”

“It’s all part of the job, right?” I slowly stood up before retreating down the hall
to find the lab Kendrick had mentioned.

Kendrick was already slipping out the door as I walked up. We both looked at each
other for a long moment. Neither of us knew what to say. Her hair had slipped out
of the careful updo from earlier tonight and her hands and face had traces of blood
and dirt. She looked like hell and I’m sure I did, too.

“Ready to go?” I asked her.

She nodded, and both of us headed out in silence. There was nothing to say. Not tonight.

*   *   *

Kendrick’s hands shook so badly, she couldn’t get the key into the lock of her apartment
door. I slowly took it from her hand and opened the door. The gust of air-conditioning
hit us and her eyes lifted to meet mine.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Lily!”

We both stepped through the door, surprised to see Michael up and dressed, the TV
blaring. He was supposed to be out of town. “Thank God! I’ve been watching the news
for hours. I came back from Long Island as soon as I heard about the accident at the
Plaza. I’ve been calling your cell all night … I was sure…” His voice cracked and
he stopped talking and looked at me, then at Kendrick. “What happened to you? Is that …
blood
?”

Senator Healy had told us there was no hiding the explosion from the media, but to
the public, the EOTs’ weird bomb was actually an electrical explosion in the boiler
room. I had no clue how many memories had been modified tonight and I couldn’t think
about it now.

Kendrick glanced at me and her eyes widened like it had just occurred to her that
she couldn’t be the shocked agent in the presence of her unsuspecting fiancé. “Well …
it’s just … well … first we went…”

I jumped in to help her because the stuttering was too much to handle. “Luckily, we
weren’t anywhere near the explosion, but this little kid and his mom were hurt and
Kendrick … I mean, Lily tried to … you know—”

“Stop the bleeding,” she finished for me.

Michael flopped down onto the couch with a huge sigh of relief. “God, Lil, that must
have been awful. I don’t think I’ve ever been so worried in my entire life. What happened
with the kid?”

She looked at me again for a second, tears already falling, then she walked across
the room and curled up next to Michael, hiding her face in his shirt. He wrapped an
arm around her and reached his other hand down to pull off her shoes.

I knew she was thinking about Mason right now and that she didn’t want to fall apart
in front of me. But Michael didn’t expect her to be tough. He was okay with this softer,
less confident version of Kendrick. I turned around and left them alone, heading toward
my still-nearly-empty apartment.