Destroyer

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My guess is that along with building this doorless containment cell, Lidia has stashed a car somewhere nearby. By the time we jump again, I figure she could be as many as twenty or twenty-five miles from me.

The jump is so short that once more the gray never forms. The cement floor that had been under my feet is replaced by sloped ground covered with dry grass. Instantly I start to slide downward, and am able to stop my descent only by falling against the hillside and grabbing a rock.

This action nearly causes me to lose my hold on my chaser. I quickly readjust my grip, and know one of my top priorities is finding something secure to carry it in. After a look around, though, I realize I won’t be able to accomplish that where I am.

The hillside is steep. Below me another forty feet, it becomes nearly vertical. From where I’ve stopped, I can’t see how far the cliff drops, but I’m sure it’s long enough for me to have broken more than just a few bones if I’d gone over.

Above me the terrain continues at the same angle for another 150 feet. Climbable, perhaps, but one missed step and down I’d go. My best bet is to stay where I am until Lidia decides it’s time to travel again.

There is some consolation, though. At least my vantage point overlooks the ocean. Given that the coastline looks very much like that just north of Los Angeles and that the sun appears to be moving in a downward arc leading toward the water, I feel it’s safe to assume that I’m looking at the Pacific. I could access the chaser’s location map to check, but with my precarious position, there’s no sense in taking a chance.

To make myself a bit more comfortable, I clear away some grass and start to level a small portion of ground to use as a seat. Naturally, before I can finish, we jump again.

This trip seems even shorter than the last, and I find myself on the exact same hill, just about a hundred yards to the left of my previous position, and thankfully, in an area with a much gentler slope.

I take a seat on the grass and check the date. It’s May 29, 1952, and the time is 8:47 a.m. Now that I’m able to check the map without worrying I might drop the device, I confirm that my hunch was correct. I’m in the coastal mountains about a dozen miles west northwest of Santa Monica.

Ten minutes pass, then twenty, and then thirty. It’s growing warm, and I wish that there were some shade nearby.

In my caste Eight childhood, waiting seemed to be part of every day — waiting for the doctor to see if he had time for us, for the grocer to put out his inferior goods, for the teacher to finally dismiss us for the day.

For my father to talk to me.

Always waiting for someone else, just like I’m doing now.

I spend three hours weaving between concern over what Lidia might be doing and thoughts about how I might trap her. For each scheme, I plan out every step, and try to ignore the glaring problems they all have. But finally I must face it. I can do nothing if I’m not close to her. I need to find a way to trick her into coming to me.

As I think this through, something tickles the back of my mind. A memory, I think, but before I can extract it, Lidia presses her go button again.

Yet another quick trip. This time, however, I don’t arrive on the side of the mountain but in someone’s backyard. Lucky for me, the occupants of the house haven’t noticed me, and to keep it that way, I duck down and hurry around the side, out of direct view.

I look at the chaser. It’s still 1952, just one day later, and late afternoon.

I look down the side yard toward the front of the house, and spot a nook between the chimney and the trash cans. The perfect place to hide if this ends up being another multi-hour stop.

Once I settle into my new position, I do my best to pretend the smell coming from the cans isn’t as bad as it really is. I’m there for just over forty-five minutes when—

“Hanging in there, Denny?” Lidia’s voice comes from the other side of the gate, just beyond the trash cans.

Before I have a chance to wonder how she found me, the house disappears, and in the blink of an eye, I’m standing between the wall of a concrete building and a field of drying brush. This lasts barely five seconds before we jump again, and I’m back inside the doorless cell.

“Did you have a good time?” Lidia asks from her side of the glass. “See anything interesting?”

“What was that all about?”

“See for yourself.”

She nods past me with her chin. Turning, I see two newspapers stacked on the floor behind me.

“The one on top’s the original,” she says.

The concrete wall I’d been standing near moments ago must be right outside this building. She used that short amount of time to deposit the papers in here. Then we had hopped again, like rabbits, she moving from this room to the one she’s now in, and me from outside to here.

I walk over and pick up the papers. They’re both copies of the Los Angeles Examiner, and, in fact, both are dated May 30, 1952. On the front pages are the exact same articles. “What am I looking for?”

“Page three, at the top.”

Since there are no tables in the room, I kneel down and open each paper on the floor. While everything on page two matches, the articles at the top of the page threes are different. In the one she called the original is a story about a robbery at a grocery store in downtown. In the other one, the headline reads:

The story is about a woman named Felicia Andrews. On May 29, while I was getting sunburned on the mountainside, Miss Andrews had apparently been kidnapped in her own car and made to drive nearly thirty miles out of town. The story describes the kidnapper only as a “mystery woman.” Miss Andrews was then freed, and the kidnapper disappeared.

“You?” I ask.

“Guilty,” she says, holding up her hands.

What she’s done probably won’t make a large impact on the time line, but who knows? Perhaps this Andrews woman had originally been destined to do something important, but now will live the rest of her life in fear.

I walk over to the window. “Why?”

“Getting a little practice in first, having some fun.”

“You don’t need to do this,” I plead, trying to come up with something to stop her from doing anything else. “Just… just exile me somewhere like I did to you. That would be fair. You don’t need to destroy everyone’s lives. You just need to destroy mine.”

She responds with a scoff and then takes her rucksack off, puts the chaser inside, and pulls out a hardback book. She approaches the window again, and presses the book against the glass. Printed on the cover is:

“What are you going to do? Change the war?”

She smiles but says nothing as she slips the book back in her bag. “Sit tight. You’ll be out of there soon.”

Like before, she leaves by the door, no doubt to put distance between us again. As soon as she’s gone, I turn to the question that’s been bothering me since she brought me back here. How did she find me in the side yard of the house? The question triggers a return of the thought poking at the back of my mind. Now, though, I am able to pull it into the light.

Back in my first week in Iffy’s time line, right after I had accidentally triggered the switch that kept Washington alive, Lidia had found me in downtown Los Angeles, outside the public library. She had found me.

She’d said Bernard, her supervisor, had showed her how to “tune” her chaser so she could locate other devices. Obviously she had used that method again just a little while ago to find me at the house.

I sit cross-legged with my chaser in my lap and scroll through the menus. I’m sure I’ve seen every function before, and don’t remember any that would activate this ability, but maybe I missed a special setting or something similar. I work my way screen after screen through all the menus, but nothing even hints at detection possibilities.

I must figure this out. I know in my heart there is truth to what Lidia said to me earlier. Perhaps what she’s planning on doing isn’t 100 percent my fault, but I can’t help feeling I share in the responsibility. I’m the one who caused her to step over the edge into insanity. I’m the one who took away everything she understood.

If it’s not a single function, then perhaps it’s a combination of different functions that by themselves can’t locate another machine, but working together might. Yes, of course. That’s got to be it, right? Because the last thing I want it to be is something physically I need to do to the device, like rearranging wire connections. First off, I’d have no clue what wires or components needed to be tampered with, and second, I’d have to assume that the moment I opened the machine, the slave mode would be deactivated. That’s something I can’t chance.

I start going through the screens again, slower this time and with an eye to what functions might be needed to create a makeshift chaser detector. The answer has to be here somewhere; it just has to—

Jump.

My arrival at our new destination isn’t greeted by the safety of night but by bright sunlight. Worse, there is noise everywhere. Engines and horns and voices.

As soon as I fully materialize, a shriek fills the air only a few feet away from me, and is quickly joined by several others. Without even thinking, I close the chaser’s lid as I look around. I’m in the middle of a busy sidewalk. The first scream came from a woman who had been about to walk through the space I now inhabit. She has witnessed my arrival, but she’s not the only one, and I’m quickly surrounded by a circle of fearful stares and shouts.

A man hollers a question at me. At least I think it’s a question. I don’t understand him. He’s not speaking English. It sounds like—

Another yell, this from someone outside the circle trying to push through.

— German, I realize.

The crowd parts for a man in a uniform. Around his arm is a red band with a white circle containing the black symbol I recognize from research I’ve done on Iffy’s world. In light of the book Lidia showed me, I guess it should be no surprise that we’re in Nazi Germany, either in the period known as World War II or the years just before it. A glance at my chaser would tell me for sure, but I can’t open the box and reveal what’s inside with all these people focused on me.

The uniformed man starts to ask me a question, but the woman who almost ran into me cuts him off and begins talking rapidly in what I’m sure is a detailed description of how I appeared out of nowhere.

Even if the officer doesn’t believe her, I must assume he’ll still take me in, and likely separate me from my chaser. Being detained is not an option. I must stay free. So while his attention is momentarily on the woman, I lunge through a narrow gap in the crowd.

A few of the bystanders try to grab me, but most jerk away as if I’m diseased. Those that do get a hand on me are easy enough to shake off, and soon I’m in the street running for my life.

There are several shouts behind me, but I keep my focus on my path ahead, and cut through the traffic, then duck into the crowd moving along the opposite sidewalk.

The shouts continue as I push through the crush of pedestrians, and soon the voices are joined by the shrill blast of a whistle.

I turn down the first street I come to. It’s at least as crowded, if not more so, but instead of forcing my way through, I slow my pace a little so that I can blend in more and not draw as much attention. Unfortunately, it’s not working, as many of those I pass still look me up and down.

My clothes. Most of the men here are wearing button-down shirts and slacks or uniforms. My bloodstained jeans and dark T-shirt must make me look like I’ve escaped from some kind of hospital.

I hear the whistle again, but it’s farther behind me now, and sounds as if whoever is blowing it — the officer, I assume — is still on the street where I originally arrived. Whether he is or not, I can’t afford to ease up, so at the next street I turn right.

Every few blocks after this, I randomly change directions again. I have long stopped hearing the whistle when I reach a park and finally allow myself to rest on an empty bench among several trees and bushes. In the grassy area at the other side of the park, several women are gathered together watching their children play. Except for an older couple walking down the stone path, there is no one near me.

When the beat of my heart starts to slow, I look at the chaser. The date is July 23, 1939. I’m still not sure if that’s before any fighting has begun. I just know it’s a few years prior to when the United States will join the war.

So what is Lidia doing here? Killing their leader?

I think for a moment. Hitler. The guy with the small mustache.

From all the accounts I’ve read, ridding the world of him would be a great thing. Though that would definitely change history, in Lidia’s current state, I can’t see her doing something that might improve the time line. So what then?

My mind explodes with dozens of different possibilities, all of them equally horrendous, but there’s no way for me to really know the answer right now. I tell myself I need to focus on what is in my control and note as much about this reality as possible so that once I do figure out what she’s done, I’ll have a familiarity with this time that will help me when I come back and fix things.

I check my chaser for location information, and discover we are in the city of Berlin — the capital of Germany in both this time line and mine.

I close my eyes and try to remember what I’ve read about this era, but it’s really only been overviews, with little specific information about Berlin, other than this is where Hitler ruled from. The little I know continues coming back to me in dribs and drabs. If I’m remembering correctly, at this point Hitler has been in power for several years, and has basically turned the country into a military state.

As my eyes open again, my gaze falls on my bloodstained pants. I’m in need of another change of clothes, and it would be best to do it soon for my own safety. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to find any washing machines sitting outside like I did in Lone Pine.

I look beyond the park, wondering where people of 1939 Berlin buy their clothes. Not that I have any money, but it will be easier to take from a business than to break into someone’s home.

Stone buildings surround the park. Perhaps there’s a store in one of them I can sneak into. I scan the area to make sure there are no military or police around and then head off in search of a new outfit.

I discover a handful of clothing stores and two tailor shops down a side street four blocks away. Unfortunately, one of the tailor shops is locked up tight, while the other shop and the clothing stores all have several customers inside. Fewer people will give me a better chance of getting away.

I slip into an alley with the intention of waiting until one of stores is less busy, but then I spot something white fluttering from a back window three floors above me. A shirt. I scan the rest of the building and spot hanging in a higher apartment window several dresses and a couple pairs of pants. There are other windows where clothes are drying, but these two straddle either side of an iron fire escape that runs up the back of the building, making them much easier to reach.

I loathe the idea of stealing from another residence, but this is an opportunity I can’t pass up.

After tucking my shirt in and sticking my chaser inside it so I can use both hands, I maneuver an empty barrel below the fire escape and use it to reach the ladder sticking down from the second-floor landing.

My leg throbs as I jump up to grab the lowest rung. I need to attend to my wound soon. If it becomes infected, it could derail what I need to do. It’s a problem for later, though.

I head up to the third-floor landing, making as little noise as possible. The metal structure isn’t designed to be silent, though, and the best I can manage is to minimize the intensity of the clanking. Every few steps, I glance over at the building across the alley, convinced that I’ll see someone staring out a window at me, but so far my presence has gone unnoted.

I move to the railing along the right-hand edge of the third-floor landing. The window I’m interested in is three feet away, and the shirt one foot farther. I lean out over the rail, stretching my arm as far as I can. My fingers touch the shoulder of the shirt, but I’m unable to grab on to the material.

Propping myself on my good leg, I raise my bad one higher. This helps me to extend my length by a few more inches, and I’m able to clamp my thumb and first two fingers over the shirt and give it a pull. It easily slips from the nearest wooden clip holding it to the wire across the window. The other clip, though, isn’t so eager to give up. When I give the shirt a hard yank, the clip pops off the shirt and flies into the air.

I curse to myself. If the clip falls inside the house, I’ll be discovered. But instead of flipping through the window, it hits the stone outside it and then tumbles through the air to the alley below.

Careful not to let my new possession touch my bloody pants, I pull myself back onto the landing, then head up one more floor. The window the pants hang in is closer to the fire escape, and the pants should be easier to obtain than the shirt. As I reach for them, though, I hear a shout behind me.

A woman is leaning through a window of the opposite building, pointing at me. She continues to yell at me in German, and though I can’t understand her words, I get the meaning well enough. More people look through their windows, and a few join in with shouts of their own. I see a man on a lower floor duck back inside, and I’m sure he’ll be in the alley in moments.

I reach for the pants, intending to grab them and then make my way up to the roof. There should be another way down, which will allow me to avoid those who’ve already spotted me. But as I’m pulling the pants free from their clips, a hand reaches out and grabs my wrist. It’s old and small, but squeezes tight like a vise. I hear a door open down below, and see the man who’d been looking out his window rush into the alley.

I give my arm a yank, but the hand does not let go. Realizing that my best option is no longer to go up, I swing one leg over the rail that surrounds the landing and then the other leg, and jump through the window into the apartment.

The old woman who’d grabbed my wrist stumbles backward, but she quickly gets over whatever shock she may have had and starts talking loudly at me in what I’m sure is some kind of lecture about the flaws of my character.

“I’m sorry,” I say as I scan for the door.

The apartment is stuffed with furniture that’s even older than the woman. On the walls are a few dusty paintings and some framed photographs.

The woman steps toward me again and tries to grab the pants away. I can’t help but feel like a complete jerk as I move them out of her reach, but it’s not like she’ll understand me if I tell her that I need the pants so I can save the world as she knows it.

The only exits from the room are on either side, open doorways to elsewhere in the apartment. I move toward the one on my right, hoping it will lead to the way out, but I find myself in a bedroom. There’s an old man on the bed, sleeping. These, I think, must be his pants, and I feel even worse.

The woman comes in behind me. She’s still berating me, but her tone is now a harsh whisper.

“Excuse me,” I say as I push past her back out of the room.

I hurry over to the doorway on the left. It leads into a small kitchen and dining area, but more importantly, there’s a door that looks like a main entrance.

I glance back into the other room and see the woman walking toward me as fast as she can. I wish there was something I could leave for her to pay for what I’m taking. But I have nothing of value, and all I can do is say, “I really am sorry.”

I pull open the door and enter a long dark hallway. There seem to be exits at either end. I go left and limp-run past a handful of other doors by the time the woman enters the hallway and yells after me. I worry that her neighbors will rush out to help her, but it’s not until I reach the end of the hall that I hear the first door open somewhere behind me.

Stairs lead both up and down. I head to ground level, the old woman’s shouts fading fast. When I reach the bottom floor, I peek into the hallway. The closest section is a mirror image of the fourth floor, but then, maybe ten doors down, the left side opens up in what I assume is the lobby of the building.

I want to run again, but I worry that if someone comes out and sees me, it will make them curious and could cause problems, so I keep my pace to a quick walk.

A mother and two young children are entering the building when I arrive in the small lobby. I grab the door for them, and she gives me a relieved look as she herds the kids inside.

“Danke,” she says.

This is a word I do know. I’m also pretty sure of what the response should be, but I don’t want to risk messing up the accent, so I just smile and nod as I scoot by them and exit.

I clasp my ill-gotten garments against my shirt to help keep the chaser tight to my stomach, and head down the street. Thankfully, the sidewalk here is not as busy as the others I’ve been on.

A couple of minutes later, I find another alley. This one is surrounded by mostly businesses, and there are few windows along it. I head down it until I reach several bins that will block me from view of anyone who might wander into the area.

I pull off my T-shirt and jeans and then take a moment to examine my wound. I’m happy to see that though a few of the stitches have popped, more than I expected remain. It’s a dirty mess, though. I wipe what I can away with the jeans and then tie the T-shirt around it like a bandage. This won’t keep blood from staining my new pants forever, but at least it should slow the process.

The white shirt fits well enough, but the pants are at least two sizes too wide at the top and nearly that much too short at the bottom. I look around for something I can use as a belt, and find a length of twine from a discarded package in one of the bins that will do the job. Set now, I head back toward the street.

I make it within a dozen feet of the end when Lidia moves us again.

A second later, I find myself in the backseat of a car. Since I was standing when the jump occurred, my chaser’s safety functions detected the obstructions and forced me to arrive in a crouch. It’s an unnerving sensation, but not the first time it’s happened. Thankfully, there are no other occupants.

It’s night again, and the vehicle appears to be parked along a residential street, with no one currently using the sidewalks. Satisfied there’s no immediate threat, I check my chaser. We’ve traveled about ten hours to 3:00 a.m. on July 24. Since this makes it unlikely the owner of the vehicle will be returning anytime soon, I decide to stay where I am. It’s a perfect opportunity for me to figure out how to get a fix on Lidia’s exact location.

I start methodically going through the menus again. The mapping function would have to be part of any search tool. But what else? I scroll through a dozen other menus, but nothing stands out to me. Returning to the master sections list, I’m about to select the category covering maintenance functions, when my attention is drawn to the line item several below it: COMPANION.

Back at the institute, using a companion was an integral part of every trip. Companions eased the trip effects rewinders felt by taking much of it on themselves. They also helped with the accurate arrival at destinations. I’ve grown used to jumping without a companion since I disconnected the function soon after I’d exiled Lidia. My first chaser had somehow linked to Iffy, and I didn’t want my newly appropriated one to do the same and force her to take on my pain. But the fact that the machine could reach out through the companion function makes me think there might be something there that can be used as part of this detector.

I look through its menu and identify two additional functions that I have a feeling are relevant. I think I’m close now, maybe one or two more functions to bring the tracker to life.

As I return to my search, though, I’m yanked out of time again.

I’m starting to feel like a dog on a leash that never knows when and in which direction its master will pull.

It’s night and a city again, though if this is Berlin, we are in a totally different district. The buildings along the street I’m on are much taller. Not quite the skyscrapers of 2015 Los Angeles, but working on it.

The time and date on my machine put us at 11:30 p.m. on June 1, 1950. I use the map function to decipher the location number, and discover that we’re in New York City, on the island of Manhattan. That explains the buildings. What it doesn’t explain, however, is the complete lack of activity. The New York I’ve read about, seen in movies, and experienced on a small scale myself seems to be in constant motion. Even in this earlier decade, the city was supposed to always be hopping. But the street is deserted. Even the intersections that cross it are empty.

It could be that I’m just on a minor road in a part of town that is more active during the day. Whatever the case, I have more important things to worry about. I sit on the curb and pick up my examination of the menus again.

Though I hear a car turn onto my street, I stay focused on my task. I have no interest in the occupants, and assume they’ll have no interest in me, either.

“Hey!”

I look up, startled. The sedan rolling to a stop across from me is not just any vehicle. It’s a police car.

As calmly as I can manage, I close the lid of the chaser and say, “Yes, officer?”

He stares at me, waiting, but I have no idea what he wants.

“It’s after eight,” he finally says.

“Um, okay. I know.”

Again the stare.

“What?” I ask.

With a growing scowl, he opens his door and climbs out. I can see his partner now, behind the steering wheel, looking bored. The first cop opens the back door and then motions me toward it. “All right, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Come on, buddy. Let’s not make any trouble.”

“I’m not trying to make trouble. I haven’t done anything.”

“Is that right? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you’re three and a half hours over. As much as I’d like to ignore that fact, you know I can’t do that. Now get in the back, or I’ll put you there myself.” To emphasize his words, he takes a step toward me and sets a hand on the gun hanging from his belt.

“Three and a half hours over what?”

“Enough already. Get in the damn car!”

He flicks off the tab holding his gun in place and starts to pull the weapon from its holster.

A few times I’ve been in a situation where there are no good options, just ones that are slightly less bad than others. This is one of those times, and at the top of my current list of bad options is being trapped in the back of a police car.

So I take off running down the street in the direction from which the police car has come.

A gunshot rips through the night. I don’t know where the bullet’s gone. I’m just grateful it hasn’t hit me.

I’m fifty feet from the nearest intersection when the cop shoots again. This time I actually hear the bullet pierce the air a few feet above my head and then smash through a window of the building to my left.

Just as I reach the corner, I hear a door slam and then the engine of the cop car roar into reverse. I take the turn, hoping there’s another intersection close, but it’s a long block without any breaks. I sprint — if you can call it sprinting — knowing I will never make it to the next corner in time.

Behind me, I can hear the cops nearing the corner. They’ll be behind me at any second. Now would be a great time for Lidia to take another jump. Apparently, though, she’s otherwise occupied.

I scan ahead, looking for anything I can hide behind. That’s when I spot the storm drain along the curb. I don’t know if it’s wide enough for me to slip through, but I run to it, and drop to the ground beside it.

My feet and legs go through without a problem. My waist rubs against both sides, but also doesn’t slow me. The police car’s tires squeal as it takes the corner. I’m unsure if they can see me or not, so I continue to push my way through the opening.

It’s my head that proves to be the biggest problem. I have to turn it sideways and can feel the skin scraping off my ears as I pass all the way inside. At this point, the cops have already driven by me. I hear them screech to a halt in the middle of the next intersection, and can imagine that they’re looking in all directions, wondering where I’ve gone.

I figure it’s only a matter of time before they decide to check the drain, so I follow the spillway into the main tunnel and then head down the tube. I randomly turn down other pipes, and don’t slow until I am well away from where I started.

When I spot another spillway, I grab the lower lip and pull myself up so I can peek outside. The road in front of me is wide, and I can see darkened stores on the other side. While this is clearly a main thoroughfare, what I don’t see is a single moving vehicle or pedestrian. It’s as quiet as the street where I arrived.

I try to remember if June 1, 1950, is some kind of special day in Iffy’s time line. There are a few of those in her history, I know, where the whole country seems to shut down for twenty-four hours or more. Perhaps this is one of those occasions, but if it is, I can’t remember its cause. The truth is, I should be right in the middle of America’s postwar boom, when the country was going nonstop.

I move back into the tunnel until I come to a ladder leading up to a manhole. I know if Lidia were to jump now, the chaser’s safety buffers would deposit me at ground level, but I’d feel better just the same not to be underground when the journey begins.

The manhole cover is extremely heavy, and I have to push up with my shoulders to unseat it. Moving the lid proves nearly as difficult. Once there’s enough room for me to wiggle around it, I do. To close the cover again, I sit on the ground and push it with my feet against until it drops into place.

As I stand up, I notice a pair of headlights several blocks to my left — the only ones on the road — heading in my direction. There’s a fountain in front of the building on the far side of the street. I hurry over to it and duck behind the retaining wall, where the water pool would be if there were any water.

The vehicle drives by without slowing. I chance a peek as it moves off, and see that it’s another police car.

It’s after eight… you’re three and a half hours over.

Now that I have time to process what the officer had said, it sounds like he was talking about a curfew. That would certainly account for the shutdown. I’ve read about political and social protests sparking curfews in the latter half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries. Did those stretch as far back as the beginning of the 1950s? And if yes, then wouldn’t a curfew in New York City have been a major event?

Stop it, I tell myself. It’s unimportant.

What I need to do is finish working out how to find Lidia. Everything else is just noise.

According to the chaser, we’ve already been here six minutes shy of an hour. I can’t imagine we’ll be hanging around for that much longer, but I feel exposed here by the fountain.

I spot what looks like an alley a half block to the right, and I head toward it. On the way I notice that there are banners hanging from most of the streetlamps. While they are all similar, they are not the same. I give the closest one a look.

An American flag is printed at the top, but otherwise it is all white with black letters.

The next one reads:

Wouldn’t today’s date be around the time the Korean War begins? It must be what the signs are referring to. At least that’s what I think until I read a third:

Himmler? German machine? War bonds?

But it’s 1950. The war in Europe should be five years finished. Himmler, who I believe was one of Hitler’s closest advisors, should be dead or, at the very least, on the run. He certainly shouldn’t be in charge of Germany.

We were in 1939 for no more than a few hours. What was there in that history book Lidia showed me that she could have used to cause this? Did she kill someone whose removal from history paved the way for the Nazis’ success? Maybe she did kill Hitler. From what I’ve learned, his ego certainly didn’t help his country in the end.

I am still staring at the banner, dumbfounded, when I hear the sound of a car around a nearby corner. I race into the alley and huddle in the dark, hoping I wasn’t seen.

It turns out it wouldn’t have mattered much if I had been.

Fifteen seconds later — jump.