The Eighth Guardian

CHAPTER 19

I land in a crumpled heap on the street. Tears flow down my cheeks, and I don’t try to stop them. Blood seeps out of my arm, and my body feels as if it’s just been stretched on the rack. I take short, shallow breaths.

When am I? I need to figure this out. I need to get to a hospital. I’m losing too much blood.

I push myself up and stumble back onto Tremont Street. A horse trots past, pulling a carriage. Horses still? I didn’t go very far. But then a car whizzes past. An old Ford Model T. And then another.

So I’m in the twentieth century. The early-twentieth century. The 1920s. The 1930s. I don’t know. I can’t breathe.

There’s a man ahead wearing a white butcher’s apron. He’s standing outside his shop hammering a board with meat prices onto a rail. Dead, skinned animals hang in the window. I stumble over to him, and he gasps and drops his hammer.

“Miss, are you all right? Let me help you!” He grabs hold of my waist, and I have to fight every impulse in my body not to allow myself to sink into his arms and drift off to sleep. . . .

“What year is this?” I whisper.

“Ssh,” the butcher says. “Don’t speak. Rogers!” he yells to a man down the street. “Come help me! This girl needs help!”

“What year is this?” I repeat.

“It’s 1921,” he says. “What happened to you? Were you attacked? Can you describe your attacker? Where else are you hurt?”

“What’s the date?” I whisper. I’m so dizzy. Faint. I’m fading.

“May the fourth,” he says.

The other man rushes up, takes one look at me, and gasps. “Why, she’s been stabbed!”

May 4, 1921.

“She needs the hospital!” the butcher says. “Flag down a car. We’ll take her to Mass General.”

The hospital. I do need the hospital. But not in 1921. I need blood. I’m losing too much. I don’t know if they have blood in 1921 like they do in the present.

“Help me up,” I whisper, pushing away from the butcher. The files and notebook start to slip from my hands, so I hug them closer to my chest.

“Let me take those,” the other man says. He grabs at the files and tries to pull them away, but I yank back.

“No!” I croak. So dizzy. So weak. Blood is seeping from my arm. “I have to go.”

“We’re taking you to the hospital,” the first man says. He loops a hand under my knees and I’m in his arms, still holding the files. They’re slipping.

“Let me down!” In my mind I scream it, but in reality it’s barely a whisper. The cobblestone street is swirling in front of me as we walk. I have to get out of here. I don’t have much longer until I pass out. If I pass out here, I’m dead.

The files are plastered to my chest, and I can feel the watch pressing into my sternum. I slide one hand under the files and grab hold of the pendant with my pinky finger, then bring it to the front. I pop open the lid and turn the dial one whole rotation. Sixty years. That will take me to 1981. When did they start screening blood? I don’t know.

I keep turning, concentrating and counting as best I can. Black spots cloud my vision. I think I’ve turned it so that I’ll go back a year before I left. But I don’t know. Now I have to get free from these men so I can disappear.

“You have to let me down,” I whisper.

He doesn’t hear me.

“Sir, please,” I whisper. “You have to let me down.”

He doesn’t even look at me. Am I really speaking or am I only thinking the words in my head?

But I have to go. I’m fading.

“I’m sorry.” I shut the watch.

The pain is blinding. I can’t take this. It’s too much. I’m fading. I’m flying. I’m done.

When I come to, I’m in a sterile, pale-green room with linoleum floors. There are two IVs stuck in my arm, one pumping blood into my body, the other giving me fluids. I’m wearing a hospital gown. I gasp and bolt up. When am I? Did I make it? My eyes dart around the room. I’m in a hospital bed. I’m in a hospital. Where are my files?

A nurse rushes in.

“Honey, lie down!” she commands. “Now! You lost a lot of blood.”

“The files I had with me,” I gasp. “Where are they?”

“You need to lie down,” the nurse says. She takes hold of my shoulders and guides me to the pillow. She’s bony and thin, with flabby arms. Under normal circumstances, I could push her off me and get out of here. But today she feels like a linebacker.

“The files—”

“Are right there.” The nurse points to a small wooden table a few feet away from the bed.

I blow out every ounce of air that had been housed in my lungs. They’re safe. Now if this nurse will just get out of here, I can grab them and go.

“Don’t you want to know how you got here?” the nurse asks, hands on her hips.

I shake my head. Not really. All that’s important is that I’ve been stitched up and pumped full of blood, and now I’m ready to disappear again.

“An ambulance brought you.” Her voice drips with no-nonsense attitude. “You were found lying in the middle of Tremont Street with a huge gash in your arm. What happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble. God, just leave already!

“What’s your name?”

What is my name? That’s an excellent question. It sure as hell isn’t Iris. Maybe it’s Amanda again, but I’m not going to tell her that.

“Jane Smith.”

The nurse raises an eyebrow. “We’ll chat later.”

The door hasn’t even fully shut when I rip the fluid IV out of my arm. I leave in the one giving me blood. There’s half the bag left. I’ll wait until it’s drained, then I’m out.

The IV is on a wheeling cart, so I get out of bed and slide the cart over to the table. I grab all three files and the notebook and toss them onto the bed. My necklace is there, too. I slip it over my head, then tuck it inside the hospital gown.

I slide Alpha’s notebook inside my grandfather’s file for safekeeping and grab my dad’s. I almost don’t expect to find it. This all has to be a dream. A weird, very sick dream. But there it is. Mitchell Obermann. Delta from Annum Guard Two.

Born on May 1. Killed on November 2.

The word cuts me straight through.

Killed.

Every mission he’s ever been on is in this file, but I flip straight to the back. To Dallas. And I gasp. There’s a report on my father’s death. Everything I’ve ever wanted to know. And the report is authored by Alpha the day after my father died. Name of Reporter: Alpha Summary of Events: Only a short time ago, in the late evening hours of November 2, the tracker injected in Annum Guardian Delta went off. Delta was tracked to Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Delta did not have any missions scheduled on that date, which is immediately apparent as the date President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

My breath catches in my throat. My dad was trying to stop the Kennedy assassination? I immediately dispatched Guardian Beta to assess the situation and escort Delta back to Annum Guard Headquarters before he could inflict any permanent alterations on the course of American history.

Why didn’t Alpha just go himself? That doesn’t make sense. At approximately 1:00 p.m., Guardian Beta arrived back with the body of Delta. Delta had been shot once in the chest at close range. I debriefed Beta immediately. When Beta arrived in 1963, he located Delta staked out in front of the Texas School Book Depository at 12:15 p.m. He confronted Delta, who told him he was on a covert mission that came directly from President Clinton, funneled down through me, to stop the Kennedy assassination. I had already briefed Beta that no such mission was authorized, and Beta ordered Delta to surrender his weapon and return to the present. Delta refused to do so, and Beta attempted to subdue him with force. Delta knocked Beta onto the sidewalk outside of the depository and escaped into the building. Beta pursued him on foot through the building and up the stairs. It was on the landing below the sixth floor that Beta ordered Delta to drop his weapon and surrender. Delta refused, and Beta shot him once in the torso. Delta died almost instantly.

My hands shake, and the file drops to the bed. My father was killed by a member of his fellow Guard. By Beta, who’s also now dead. My mind is flying a million miles a minute, trying to process what I’ve just read. My dad was sent on a covert mission. Or he acted on his own. Why did they kill him? They didn’t need to kill him.

I have more questions than answers. This doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.

The door opens behind me, and I shut the file. I turn to tell the nurse to back off and let me be, but then there’s this weird whirring sound that stops my heart. It’s wrong. All wrong for a hospital. Someone steps into the room. It’s not the nurse.

It’s Yellow.