Destroyer

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I look at my chaser twice to make sure I haven’t misread the date. I haven’t.

I’m at the edge of a dark, treelined road. A look at the map confirms what I already know. Though I’ve never been at this exact spot before, I have been in this area on this very day in 1775 several times.

Has it all been a ruse? Have the seeds of destruction Lidia has been sowing simply been a game? Has she just been teasing me? Playing a little joke before doing what she really wanted to do all along?

We are near Cambridge, Massachusetts, no more than a ten-minute walk from the infamous Three Swans Tavern. This is the night and the tavern is the place where I made the twelve-second mistake that wiped away the world I was born in.

Clearly Lidia lied to me when she said she was no longer interested in bringing the empire back. The only reason we are here must be to stop the earlier version of me from changing things. Why else?

I check the tracker and see that Lidia is in the woods off to my right and already moving toward the tavern. There’s no way I can sneak up on her without making a lot of noise, but the road provides a clearer path than the forest she is working her way through, and even with my limp, I should be able to reach the tavern before she does.

I set as brisk a pace as possible. Though I can feel a dull throb in my thigh, for the most part it’s numb. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but it is allowing me to move faster than I had thought I could.

It’s my fault Lidia has found this place. When I was executing my plan to bring my sister to Iffy’s world, I tricked the other rewinders who had survived the initial time line change into thinking I wasn’t the one who caused the break but that I had discovered where the deviation had occurred.

Mixing a bit of truth with a larger lie, I told them that Richard Cahill — the man who should have turned George Washington over to the British — had disappeared from history, his mother killed before he was born.

Oh, God, I realize as I nearly stumble on the path. The death of the two Lincolns and the likely erasure of the man who should one day be president.

She’s taunting me with my own story. A story that was all made up because Cahill’s death had nothing to do with his mother and everything to do with the twelve-second delay I created. That tiny change to the time line caused Cahill to be killed by a pair of British soldiers before he could report on Washington, an event that will be happening in just about ninety minutes unless Lidia interferes.

She’s had three years to check my story. There would be records showing that, unlike what I told her and the others, Cahill had indeed been born, and there would be more documenting the night he died. She could put the pieces together, and while she might not know the exact details of the evening, she had clearly figured out enough to get us here on this night.

It’s those details that I hope will be my savior. I know them intimately. All the events of this night, the multiple trips I made here, are all only a few months in my own past, and still vivid in my mind.

I push my pace even more, and tell myself she’s finally made a mistake. I just hope to God I’m right. I’m about halfway to the tavern when I hear horses on the road behind me. Two, coming fast.

I step into the trees, more to keep from being hit than to hide. Though the riders don’t even glance in my direction as they race by, I’m able to get a good look at their faces. I’ve seen them both before, inside the tavern. These are the two British agents who will instruct Cahill to report on Washington’s whereabouts.

As I watch them disappear into the darkness, I realize that I just discovered a second place where the time line could be altered. All I would need to do is keep them from reaching the tavern, say, flag them down and warn them of a waiting ambush at the Three Swans. Simple and more than enough, I would think, to get them to flee back the way they’d come. It’s not perfect. Cahill would still be alive, so who knows what he might do in his altered future, but I file it away, just in case I need to call on it later.

It’s the strong smell of cooking meat from the tavern’s chimney that lets me know I’m getting close. After making sure there’s no one on the road either behind or in front of me, I check at the tracking app. Lidia’s still heading straight for the tavern, but as I’d anticipated, her progress has been slower than mine.

I’m just about to turn the screen back off when a new dot appears, indicating the presence of a third chaser, this one maybe fifteen yards in front of the tavern. I check the time. It’s 8:00 p.m. exactly, which means the new arrival is me. Specifically, it’s the one I think of as Scout Me, a naïve junior rewinder at the beginning of the mission to observe Cahill. Scout Me’s job is/was to record all the comings and goings at the tavern.

I take a moment to plot a course that will keep me well away from him, but then I pause.

Scout Me’s chaser.

It’s not slaved to Lidia’s.

I could hide my slaved chaser in some bushes, and use Scout Me’s device to hop back a few minutes and be in the woods waiting for her to arrive at the tavern. Since I wouldn’t need to turn off the slave mode, she would think I’m still here and would be unaware as I sneak up on her.

I enter the woods about fifty feet shy of the clearing where the tavern is, and carefully circle through the trees toward Scout Me. As soon as I get a glimpse of him, I pause and check to see where Lidia is.

She, too, has neared the clearing, but has stopped about half a dozen feet within the trees on the side where the wagons are parked. The position gives her a front-row seat for the little shell game the other versions of me are about to play to save my sister and Iffy’s world. In just over a minute, there will be three Dennys near the wagons — Original Me, who is destined to go inside the tavern and cause Cahill to delay his departure; Off Switch Me, whose job it is to stop Original Me and leave the empire’s time line intact so that I could return there to kidnap my sister; and finally, On Switch Me, who’s tasked with stopping Off Switch Me after Ellie is safe. It’s all very complicated and confusing, I know, and I’m sure it’s about to get even more so now that Lidia’s set to join the party.

My plan, what little there is of it, is to wait until Lidia makes her move. I’m sure she will engage the other versions of me, which means Scout Me will see this, taking his attention away from his satchel, which I know is lying at his feet. I’ll grab it, hop back, and stop Lidia before she even gets to this point, ending her march of terror.

I creep through the brush, moving in as close to Scout Me as I can without giving myself away, and then huddle down. All his attention is on the arrival of a new customer, and he is completely unaware of my presence. I want to check on Lidia again, but I don’t dare open the chaser for fear that the light will be noticed. Instead, I look past the wagons, toward the woods where she should be hiding.

On Switch Me is the first to appear. If I didn’t know he was coming, I wouldn’t have picked up on the slight change of shadows at the back of the wagons. Scout Me hasn’t noticed him at all, just as planned. I’m sure Lidia, on the other hand, can’t help but see him.

I tense, my gaze on the clearing, ready to make my move the moment Scout Me sees her break from the forest. But all remains still.

I can’t help but glance over my shoulder to see if she’s decided to sneak up on me. At some point, I know she’s going to want to separate me from my chaser and break our connection so she can roam free through time. It would be poetic to her, no doubt, if this were that moment. But the woods behind me are quiet, nothing moving.

Looking back at the field, I know that by now Off Switch Me should be at the wagons. On Switch is probably moving in behind him to tell him Ellie is safe so there’s no need for him to do anything; as soon as this conversation is over, Off Switch will leave the area. Still no sign of Lidia, though.

What’s she doing? Has the fact that there are two of me caused her to sit tight? If so, she’s about to get another jolt.

In the field beside the wagons, directly in my and Scout Me’s view, appears yet another version of me — Original Me. If Lidia really wants to bring back the empire, now is the time she needs to act. In less than a minute, it will be too late.

No movement. No Lidia running from the woods to throw a wrench into things. No yells to draw everyone’s attention. No nothing. Just the night playing out the way I had designed it.

I have no choice. I need to know where she is, so I crack open my chaser’s lid just far enough for the screen to come on. There are now six dots on the tracking screen. Lidia’s hasn’t moved from the spot I last saw it. Did she only come here to witness what I’d done before? Or did she leave her chaser and is right now moving toward my—

The screen changes to the main jump screen without me doing anything. I’ve never seen this before, but it can mean only one thing. My device is receiving information for a new jump.

My plan to use Scout Me’s chaser is shot, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it at some future point. There is no time for me to finesse it from him, though. I launch myself forward, wrapping one arm around him to move him out of the way as I reach for his satchel with my free hand. My fingertip is a fraction of an inch away when 1775 disappears.

The jump is longer than any Lidia has taken me on yet. When the mist finally falls away, I tumble forward, my head pounding with the effect of the lengthy trip. My fall, however, is cushioned by a body below me.

Though it wasn’t my intention, Scout Me has come along for the ride. Unfortunately, his satchel has not come with us.

He rolls out from under me and scrambles to his feet, ready to either fight or flee. But as he takes a couple backward steps, he looks at me and freezes.

“What… wha… what are… what?”

“Grab on to me,” I whisper as I push myself up and stumble toward him. It’s pitch-black out, and given recent patterns, I know it’s extremely likely Lidia is following protocol again, and at any moment, we’ll be jumping to daytime.

But Scout Me shirks back. While the person I’ve become has had plenty of experience talking with other versions of me, this is Scout Me’s first time, so he’s understandably freaked out. “Where’s my chaser?” He desperately looks around. “Where’s my chaser?”

“Don’t worry about it right now,” I tell him. “Just—”

“Don’t worry about it? How can you say that?” He pauses. “What are you doing here? Which… where…”

I have to remind myself that he is still a junior rewinder working for the institute. Keeping my voice low, I say, “I need you to hold on to me. We’re not going to be here long.”

He looks around, as if just realizing we’re no longer outside the Three Swans. “Where are we?”

I swear under my breath and then grab him just above the elbow and yank him over, then wrap an arm around his chest so his back is to me.

“What are you doing?” he asks. He struggles with me, but it’s only halfhearted, his confusion making him unsure what he should do.

“Don’t you think you should trust me?” I say.

“But—”

Lidia hits the go button again, and the deep night suddenly dissolves into the yellow light of daybreak.

Scout Me pulls away again, but this time he doesn’t go far. “Where have you taken me?”

“Keep your voice down,” I whisper. At last check, Lidia was about a hundred yards away. It would be to my advantage if I could keep her from knowing I brought someone with me.

His jaw tenses, but he speaks more softly when he says, “Answer my question.”

“I haven’t taken you anywhere.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I pause for a moment. “A lot has happened since I was you.”

“What do you mean since—” He cocks his head, his eyes narrowing. “You don’t look any older than me.”

I give him a quick humorless smile as I open my chaser and switch it back to the tracking app. Lidia is moving to the northeast, away from our position. I then check to see where exactly we are.

Europe. East of Vienna in an area I know as one day being part of the Russian Empire, and in Iffy’s world would be Slovakia, I think, or maybe Hungary. The year turns out to be 1242.

I’ve never been this far back in time before, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not experiencing an irrational sense of unease. Home, whether Lidia has destroyed it or not, is so far away.

Now that we are earlier than 1775, we are in the part of history that I loved to study growing up. I close my eyes and try to remember if there’s any historical significance to this time and place.

Yeah. There is something, but my mind is too scattered with all that’s been happening to function the way I need it to, and I’m having a hard time remembering.

Frustrated, I say, “Stay close,” and start moving in the direction Lidia has gone.

“Where are you going?”

I look back and see that Scout Me hasn’t budged. As much as I’d rather not waste the energy, I limp back to him. “You need to come with me. We need to stop her.”

“Stop who?”

“Lidia.”

His eyes widen. Perhaps I didn’t hate her as much at his point in my life as I do now, but I never liked her.

“She’s trying to destroy everything,” I say, attempting to push him over the edge.

“What do you mean?”

He’s having a hard time connecting the dots, so I give it to him straight. “She’s changing the time line. She’s already done it probably a dozen times.”

Blood drains from his face. “Why would she do that?”

Because you did it first, I think. But those words will do nothing to help me at the moment, so I say, “It’s complicated and I don’t have time to explain it to you. You’re free to stay here, but if I suddenly jump, you’ll be left behind without a chaser.”

A whole other type of fear fills his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

“Because my chaser’s slaved to Lidia’s. I go where she goes.”

When we start off, I tell Scout — as I’ve decided to think of him — to keep a hand on my shoulder, in case Lidia decides to jump. I’m not sure this will be enough contact to guarantee he’ll be pulled into the mist with me, but before long, it’s no longer an issue. I’ve been going nonstop, and my leg has decided it’s done being numb and starts throbbing again. Seeing me wince with every step, Scout puts his arm across my back and takes some of the pressure off my uncooperative thigh.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Knife accident.”

“Lidia?”

“Her grandson.”

He looks at me as if I’ve gone crazy. “What?”

“I told you it’s complicated.”

My chaser guides us after Lidia through a patch of densely wooded hills. That’s another surprise for Scout. He had no idea the device could locate another one. But I have no doubt his day of being shocked is only just beginning.

Though we are steadily moving, we can go only so fast traveling in tandem, and much to my dismay Lidia is increasing the gap between us. Finally, fifteen minutes into our hike, she stops moving.

I want to hurry so we can make up some ground, but we’re walking through an area where the terrain rises and falls like static waves in the middle of the ocean. The downward slopes are hardest for me to negotiate, and if not for Scout’s support, I would have fallen and hurt myself worse long ago. When we reach the top of what turns out to be the final ridge, we stop, both of us taken aback by the beauty in front of us.

We are on much higher ground than I had thought. The ridge where we are standing falls off in a long gentle slope down to a wide grass-covered valley. To our right, the valley continues on to what look like distant hills, though it’s hard to tell for sure. In the other direction, though, the expanse quickly narrows down and funnels into a pass between the forested hills we are on and those directly across from us.

Deep in the valley I see thin columns of controlled smoke that hint at civilization, but excluding that, there are no signs of people anywhere.

I check the map. Lidia is approximately seven hundred feet to our right. It’s impossible to see her through the trees, but I’m certain she is on the same ridge we are.

I look back at the valley, once more trying to figure out what it is about this place and time that has brought her here. I feel as if I should know this. History’s my thing, after all, but I’m still trying to pull whatever nugget I can from the depths of my memory when we jump.

Interestingly, the only thing that’s changed is time. We’re still on the ridge above the quiet valley, just forty-eight hours forward on the time line. As I turn to tell Scout this—

Jump.

Same place. An additional seventy-two hours ahead.

Jump.

We’ve gone ahead a week this time, our feet anchored to this spot as if we’re rocks that have been here forever.

Jump.

Another week.

Jump.

Another.

Jump.

A month.

Jump.

We pause.

There’s been a change to the valley. While it’s still empty and quiet, much of the grass has been churned up, creating a corridor of destruction that continues off to the right as far as I can see and into the pass on our left.

Something has moved through here. Horses, I would guess, thousands of them.

A light flickers dimly in my mind, a marker taunting me that I should know what’s going on.

“Why is she doing this?” Scout asks.

I open my mouth to tell him to be quiet while I think, but then I pause.

Not only is he me, he’s the innocent version of me who hasn’t lived through the chaos that has rained down through the additional months I’ve lived. His mind is not clouded in the same way as mine.

“Twelve forty-two,” I say. “Eastern Europe. What’s the significance?”

His face scrunches in confusion. “Is this some kind of test?”

“Just answer the question.”

He looks at the ground in the way I often do when I’m thinking.

This is the pose he’s in when we jump again. For the first time since our initial arrival, we move backward in time, a week. The valley floor is still trampled into a muddy mess.

“Well?” I ask.

“Where in eastern Europe?”

We jump back again, another week. No change in the scenery below.

I almost tell Scout Slovakia, but that’s not a name he’d be familiar with. “Not far from Vienna. Between it and Budapest.”

Another jump, another week. Only this time the grass has returned. Whatever force will come through here has not yet done so.

Lidia takes us on a series of four quick micro jumps, each moving us twenty-four hours in a forward direction again. The first three are mirror images of one another — the silence and the grass and the wisps of smoke in the distance.

Day four, though, is something else entirely.

About a quarter mile below us, moving from the valley into the pass below us is a vast army. Almost everyone is on horseback. Both Scout and I stare at the mighty sight as they ride on.

“The Mongols,” Scout whispers and then looks at me. “It’s the Mongols. You said 1242, right?”

I nod, unable to speak.

“That’s the year they retreat from near Vienna.”

His words open the dam holding back the identical information in my mind. Retreat is not the right way to describe it, though. Their leader back in their homeland — not Genghis Khan, but one of his sons… Ögedei, I believe — has recently died. When word gets to the khan’s army in Europe, something that takes months, the advance will grind to a halt not far from Vienna, and the troops will return to the steppes, while the leaders head all the way back for the gathering that is supposed to choose a new khan.

One of the many history tests Marie gave me during my training was loaded with questions on this very subject. I curse myself for not remembering sooner.

Of course, Lidia in her altered state would be drawn to this place and time. It’s a linchpin moment in the story of the whole human race. The Mongols had Europe by the throat. If they had not suddenly turned back east, there is no doubt they would have not only conquered the continent, but the British Isles beyond. Everything in both Western and Eastern cultures would be different from that point forward.

Everything.

But once they went back to select their new leader, they never returned, and the potential of not just ruling a vast empire but the entire world never came to pass, leaving scholars with probably the biggest what-if question in history.

I’m sure Lidia’s plan is to find out the answer. What I can’t imagine is how she could possibly go about it. The task seems far too massive. To keep an entire army from turning around due to the death of a khan that at this very date has already happened? That seems as likely as her being able to go to the Mongol capital and keep Ögedei from dying.

Forget that she’s a woman in a decidedly male era; she can’t possibly speak thirteenth-century Mongolian. Even most of her modern English wouldn’t be understood by anyone anywhere.

But whatever her plan is — and I know she has one — we need to get to her before she can execute it. I’m already daunted by all the changes she’s made that I must undo. Adding a monstrous one such as this feels as if it’s a step too far, and if she succeeds, I will never be able to make anything right again.

In the woods just behind us, we hear a horse snort.

Scout and I whip around and see three soldiers riding through the trees about fifty feet away. They don’t look Mongolian, but then again, the Mongols often forcibly recruited into their ranks those they didn’t massacre as they moved westward.

Before we can dive behind cover, one of the men yells and points in our direction.

“Come on,” Scout says as he turns me downslope and starts off in a half run.

But even if I were uninjured and we were able to sprint, we are no match for the horses. As it is, we’re only a dozen feet down the slope when the soldiers reach the ridge.

A couple of them laugh, maybe all three. I don’t know. I don’t turn to look.

They let us continue for several seconds, then I hear movement behind us. Not horses — men. This time I chance a look. Two of the soldiers have dismounted and are working their way toward us at a leisurely pace.

My leg has finally betrayed me to the point that I am done for.

“Take the chaser,” I say to Scout as I reach for the strap of my makeshift bag. “Find Lidia. You have to stop her.”

Before I can get the strap over my head, though, Scout jerks it back down. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to!”

“I don’t even understand what’s going on.”

“You don’t need to understand. You just need to stop her.”

I start pulling at my strap again. Though Scout won’t be able to undo all the havoc Lidia’s unleashed, he can at least keep her from causing this colossal shift. A small victory in the face of otherwise total defeat, perhaps, but I’ll take what I can at this point.

I love you, Iffy, I think as Scout reluctantly takes the bag from me. I love you, Ellie. I’m sorry.

When he doesn’t leave, I try to push him away and then fall to my good knee so that I’m out from under his arm, but it’s too late. The soldiers are upon us. One of them twists Scout around, punching him in the face.

The Mongol army is notoriously ruthless, and I fully expect to feel the blade of a sword slicing through the back of my neck at any second. Instead, though, the other soldier wrenches me to my feet.

Scout is brought up alongside of me, blood flowing around his mouth from his broken nose. The soldiers look back and forth between us, surprised by our identical looks.

One of them finally shouts something at us. When we don’t respond, he rips the bag holding the chaser out of Scout’s hands.

The other man says something, and then they circle around us and push Scout and me back toward the ridge. Scout props me up under his arm again, and we start walking.

Halfway up, I stop to rest. I could make it all the way, but if I’m heading to my death, I might as well stretch things out. The soldiers try to keep us moving, but I gesture at my leg and wince, hoping that doing so will buy us a few seconds.

The man who stayed on the ridge yells down to his companions. They yell back, and then the one who has my bag opens it and pulls out my chaser. Thankfully, the lid is closed, but it’s little comfort when they possess the box and I do not. As much as I don’t want it to happen, I can’t help but wonder what Lidia’s reaction would be if she hit the go button right now and then finds out she’s now hauling a Mongol soldier with her.

The man turns the box over, tries unsuccessfully to open it, and then says something to us.

“Sorry. I don’t understand,” I say.

Looking at me oddly, he says something that I’m pretty sure is just a repeat of his previous statement.

“You want to know what’s inside?” I ask, miming opening the lid.

A short word this time, confirmation, I assume.

I hold my hands out. I’m more than happy to unlock it. If there was ever a time for me to deactivate the slave mode tying me to Lidia, it’s now. The question is, can I distract him long enough to do it and jump Scout and me out of here?

The soldier laughs, though, and says something I take to mean that he’ll open it. I just need to show him.

I point at the security pad on the side. Though it looks like wood, the small rectangle is actually a type of glass. When the soldier touches it, he pulls his finger back in surprise. He then shows it to his friend, who taps at the plate with equal fascination.

The first one pushes the pad and then tries sliding it side to side. When none of these methods works, he looks at me and says something again.

“It only opens for me.” Since they can’t understand me, there’s no reason not to be honest.

I hold my hands out again. This time, after hesitating a moment, the soldier gives it to me.

Looking right at them so they think I’m speaking to them, I say, “Don’t let go of me.”

Scout responds by tightening his grip around my back.

I turn the box and place my thumb against the pad. As it always does, the lid pops up a quarter inch. Before the soldier can grab it back from me, though, I open the lid all the way. The screen lights up, and, as I have desperately been wishing would happen, both soldiers pull away in fearful surprise.

When I touch the main screen so I can navigate to the slave menu, the first soldier yells.

“It’s okay,” I say, holding up my hand in what I hope he takes as a peaceful gesture. “I’m just showing you how we’re going to escape from you.” I finally get to the list of training functions, and scroll down to the item SLAVE MODE. The two soldiers move in a bit, their curiosity overcoming their wariness. “So in a moment, we’re going to disappear, and you’re going to freak out. Sorry. Can’t be helped.”

I’m just about to open the slave mode function screen when the display reverts back to the main jump screen.

“She’s moving again!”

We remain on the side of the hill just long enough for me to see that one of the soldiers has reacted to the change in my tone before we enter the jump.