The answer, he now knew, was “quite a bit.”
For the second time in his life, the cartoonist fell into a state of breathless suspension, an almost supernatural acuity that allowed him to register dozens of details in the span of a blink. He could count the number of balcony railings between him and the ground (eight). He could scan the unforgiving elements of his future impact zone (wood and concrete). He could envision the reactions of his surviving friends and enemies (Oh God, Amanda . . .).
As he passed the fifth-floor balcony, something odd happened. The shift in his momentum was so abrupt and painful that he feared he’d already hit the pavement. A cold, hard pressure immobilized Zack’s body, as if he’d been packed in dense snow. When he opened his eyes, he could see the ground fifty feet below him. It wasn’t getting any closer.
He turned his head and caught his reflection in a patio door. A giant tempic fist had seized him, snatching him from above like the hand of God itself.
She caught me, he thought. Jesus Christ, she caught me.
Zack once again gazed down at the grotto, where dozens of bystanders began to gather in a messy clump. They pointed up at him, gawking and shouting, snapping photos.
His last thought before blacking out was of Peter Pendergen, a man who’d worked so tirelessly to keep the public cynical about chronokinetics. Zack cast him a weary apology for the unwitting countereffort. All the minds they changed today. All the new believers.
TWENTY-THREE
Evan woke up in a sour mood on Saturday, haunted by the memories of his multiple pasts. They leapt at him from his cutting room floor—scenes deleted but not forgotten, words unsaid but not unheard, all the hurtful actions of a woman he’d cherished but now despised. They always hit him worst in the morning.
With a drowsy yawn, he crossed the floor of his hotel suite. He showered and shaved, dressed himself in a sleek charcoal business suit, then tucked his hair beneath a wavy brown wig. Once he applied his putty nose and chin, Evan chuckled at his reflection. He could have passed for Zack’s dapper young brother.
After a hearty breakfast in the grotto café, Evan rented a room on the tenth floor of Tower Five, just a few doors down from his fellow Silvers. He ordered six mimosas from room service and then called the front desk to launch an incoherent complaint about his new accommodations.
Soon a manager knocked on his door. He was bald and barrel-chested, with a strong lantern jaw that unpleasantly reminded Evan of his father. The manager did a double take at Evan’s suit, a nearly exact replica of his own.
“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”
Evan tapped the square brass pin on the man’s blazer. “Lloyd Lundrum. Good name. I like it. Listen, the room’s fine. I’m just hoping to play a gag on some friends down the hall. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to lend me your name tag for an hour.”
The manager’s eyes narrowed to frosty slits. Evan laughed.
“Okay. Wow. You even glare like my dad. I guess there’s no point in raising my offer.”
“No, sir. There’s not. And I don’t appreciate you calling me here under—”
Evan’s skin tingled with tiny bubbles as he reversed his life fifty-eight seconds. He straightened his sleeves, then answered the knock at the door.
“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”
“Well, Lloyd, there’s an ugly red stain on the carpet and frankly, I’m not happy about it.”
Sixty seconds later, the manager lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, a trickling bullet hole between his frozen white eyes.
Evan stashed his silenced .22, then stooped to remove Lloyd’s ID pin. He could only imagine that Luke Rander was shaking his head from the great beyond. His father never understood him in the old world and sure as hell wouldn’t get it now. In Evan’s Etch A Sketch life, nothing mattered. All that was done was inevitably undone. The screen would wipe clean for Round 56, and Lloyd Lundrum would live again to scoff at wealthy pranksters.
Evan whistled a chipper tune as he stirred a vial of crushed pergnesticin into the mimosas. Soon he heard Amanda in his earpiece, placing the room service order. He waited in the hallway until a freckly young porter emerged from the elevator. Fortunately the kid was more flexible than Lloyd, and was happy to relinquish the food cart for a thousand dollars. Evan dawdled in his room for another half hour before wheeling the cart down the hall.
He stashed his hatred behind a genial grin when Amanda greeted him at the door. Evan couldn’t look at her without recalling the trauma from his last life, the cold and rainy night she jammed a tempic sword through his chest. That Amanda had died before Evan could get his revenge. But this one was standing right here, just ripe for the plucking.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. I sincerely apologize for the delay.”