He checked the countdown timer on his synchron. Two minutes and twenty-eight seconds until Melissa’s speeding bloodhounds reached the fifth floor. He rooted through his duffel bag and placed two gas grenades on the reception desk. Evan had all the right lies and credentials to walk out of this building a free man, but he’d have to send the sisters to sleep so they wouldn’t rat him out. That came last, after the fun.
Hannah watched with furious perplexity as Evan donned a mortarboard and glasses from his bag. Now the young security guard was a professor from the neck up.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked him.
“What I came here to do.” He stooped down to poke Amanda. “Hey, honey? Snookums? I know you’re on the verge of passing out, but if you don’t want me to shoot your sister through her all-access fun tunnel, you’ll need to pay attention to what I say now. It’s very important. Will you listen?”
Amanda dug her taut fingers into the rug, nodding tensely.
Evan smiled. “Smart girl. Keep it up, A-Cup, and you just might hobble out of here.”
He cleared his throat, his brow crunched with scholarly gravitas. Behind his satirical expression, Evan glowed with rapture. This was his favorite part of the show, the absolute high point of his looping existence.
“There’s a crucial bit of information you gals have been missing, a piece of the puzzle that ties everything together. Now the Deps won’t tell you because they don’t know about it. The Pelletiers? Eh. They don’t care if you know or not. But the Gothams? Ah, this is where it gets interesting. You might have noticed they’re a little . . . edgy about something, some future event that has them all soiling their short pants. They might have even said something about it during their many attempts to kill you. Any idea what I’m talking about, class? Anyone? Bueller?”
Hannah looked to Amanda and noticed a quarter-size spot of tempis on the back of her hand. At long last, the solis was wearing off. Her heart leapt with anxious hope. Don’t let him see it. Keep his eyes on you.
“A second Cataclysm,” Hannah replied. “Peter mentioned it in a letter.”
Evan snapped his fingers. “Aha! Yes! Except . . . no. That doesn’t add up. The Gothams don’t give a crap about anyone outside the clan. If they thought their Habitrail hamlet was going tempo-nuclear, they’d simply pack up and move. So then what’s the real issue? Why are they freaking out?”
Hannah kept her tense stare on Evan. Look at me. Look at me, you worm.
“What? You’re saying Peter lied to us?”
“Through his big Irish chompers. Excuse me a moment.”
He aimed the cone-shaped jolter at Amanda and pulled the trigger. Hannah screamed as her sister convulsed in fresh pain. The tempis vanished from her hand.
“You’ll have to try better than that, girls. This isn’t my first day teaching.”
Hannah cried through the bars. “Stop it! Stop! Turn it off!”
“You know if you just paid more attention, you wouldn’t be here in remedial class. The answer’s been out there. You’re just not connecting the dots.”
“Then just tell us! Tell us! Stop hurting her and tell us!”
“You tell me, Hannah.”
“I don’t know!”
“Get it right and I’ll stop hurting your sister.”
“I don’t know!”
“Think harder! This is the lightning round! Take a Hail Mary, shot-in-the-dark, wild-guess stab at the answer! What horrible event do you think is coming?”
“IT’S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!”
“YES!”
He turned off the jolter. The three of them breathed in heavy gasps. Evan took on a new and somber sincerity that Hannah found utterly frightening.
“This world ends,” he announced with a heavy breath. “In four years and seven months, it all goes to hell in exactly the way ours did. The sky comes down. The air turns cold. The buildings go crinkle and the people go crunch. This time no one gets a bracelet. No one gets out alive except the Pelletiers and me. They go forward to their own adjacent future. I go back. Back to the beginning. Back to Nico Mundis and his crappy little store. This is now my”—he brandished the numerical tattoo on the back of his right hand—“fifty-fifth trip through the same time period. I’ve danced this dance over and over again. Sure, I mix things up, just for shits and giggles, but it always ends the same.”
The Givens fell to abject silence, staring ahead in bleak dismay. Evan crossed his arms and studied Amanda. A hard smile returned to his face.
“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Oh that Evan. Such a meanie. He’ll say anything to upset us.’ Well, an hour from now, Peter will confirm everything I just told you. And while you’re all sobbing into your teacups, he’ll falsely assure you that all is not lost. See, just like Rebel, Peter’s got a plan to save the world. You’ll believe it, of course, because you want to. You have to. But the spoiler twist? It doesn’t work. I’ve seen the non-result for myself, again and again and again. You try to stop what’s coming every single time. You fail, every single . . .”
He stopped in the wake of Hannah’s low chuckle. It began as a mirthful rumble, then rose in volume until her giggles overtook the office.