He couldn’t stay here in the open any longer. He chose a planter at random and sprinted for it, MP7 leveled in case Finn was already hiding there. He passed the first corner: nothing but open space beyond it. He ducked low and made his way down the box’s length, and took the next corner without pause. That side was empty too.
He advanced on the last obscured face. The smoke was thinning by the second. This kind of cat-and-mouse stuff was all luck when it was one-on-one. A team of four people or more could use tactics, cover each other’s backs, but between single opponents it was almost purely random. Finn would be around this next corner or he wouldn’t. If there, he’d be facing away or he wouldn’t.
Travis took the corner.
Finn was there, crouched five feet away, his pistol aimed straight back at Travis.
For three seconds neither made a move.
The cylinder lay at Finn’s feet, safely out of the crossfire; Travis saw it without breaking eye contact.
Travis considered the situation. He could pull the trigger on the guy right now and probably resolve the whole thing. The risk was that, even with half the guy’s head missing, motor reflex could still fire the .38—and probably hit the target, at this range. Travis thought he’d probably take the risk, if it were just his own life on the line. But it wasn’t.
“The two women who were with me in New York,” Travis said. “They’re still there. They’re stuck in the ruins.” He indicated the cylinder with his eyes. “I need that to get them back. I’m not leaving here without it.”
Finn’s gun hand remained steady. “That’s not going to happen. If you take this, Garner can still stop me.”
“Garner’s stopping you as we speak. He knows about Longbow. He knows you’re activating the satellites. He’s on the phone right now setting up raids at all their corporate properties. I imagine one of them will net Audra.”
Each piece of information seemed to rattle the man more deeply, though Travis thought his reaction was missing something. It looked like unwilling acceptance where surprise might have been.
“You had to know it was over,” Travis said. “From the moment Paige slapped Garner last night, you were never going to pull it off.”
Finn shook his head. He took the cylinder in his free hand and moved back two feet, rising to full height as he did. The .38 stayed level.
Travis stood upright, too. He felt sunlight begin burning his neck through the dissipating smoke. Visibility was better: it was like standing in a thin fog, though the light glared through it everywhere. Travis still couldn’t see beyond the nearest forty feet of paver stones and planter boxes. This place seemed to be a plaza of some kind, where the airport had been in the present.
Finn’s eyes narrowed. They didn’t quite leave Travis, but they moved a little, like the man was reading a list of options in his own head. Looking for some way to salvage his plans. He took another step back. Nine or ten feet away now. Travis saw the risk of getting hit by a reflexive shot begin to drop. He kept the MP7 sighted for a head shot.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” Finn said. “I mean that. But I can’t just let you take this thing.”
He retreated a step further. Maybe he thought he could make a run for it. Put some distance behind him and cross back into the present, somewhere else in Arica. Then try to call Audra and warn her.
The MP7 required four ounces of trigger pressure to fire. Travis applied two.
Finn backed up again.
And then the wind shifted.
Whichever way it’d been blowing before, the boxes in the plaza had spun it in circles. Now it came on dead straight from behind Travis, its speed seeming to double, and in the span of five seconds the smoke drew away like a veil.
Finn took a sharp breath.
Travis felt his own eyes widen involuntarily.
They might as well have been standing in Midtown Manhattan. The Arica they’d seen in the present was long gone, and in its place reared a skyline of concrete and glass and steel, some of its towers standing to a height of seventy stories or more. Broad avenues crisscrossed at their bases, complete with traffic lights and crisp white lines. Along the length of the nearest street, Travis could see the downtown district snaking up the coast for over a mile, and the height and density of the structures held consistent for most of that distance.
None of it lay in ruins. The skyscrapers’ glass faces looked like they’d been washed yesterday. The sidewalks were immaculate. Vehicles stood parked at curbsides, 2011 models or earlier as far as Travis could tell. Wooden benches framed the plaza, their green paint gleaming in the desert sun.
Yet nothing moved. Beyond the filled parking spaces, the streets were deserted. Through ground-level windows, every visible lobby sat vacant. The traffic lights were dark. The tires of every vehicle were flat and beginning to crumble. Arica was imposing and beautiful and pristine, but it was also abandoned. For how long, Travis couldn’t guess.
“It worked,” Finn said. He looked around at the place while keeping the gun on Travis. “The survivors flourished here. They made it.”
“For a while. What does it matter? They’re dead now.”