He doesn’t acknowledge that I said anything.
I try to move myself into a more comfortable position, and finding none, just settle on laying on my back. “Davis figures out a way to alter the Jabberwocky. He teams up with you. You go back in time, make whatever changes to make him filthy rich, and put him in the running for this. He covered the tracks so no one would notice. You must have a third man on this—Henderson, the guy everyone thinks was TEA the whole time. You needed a plant, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to maintain control of the Jabberwocky. So you pulled the trigger, what, around the Aztec incident? So just a few days ago then? Which, wow. That’s wild to even think about. That’s why they overshot on the trip, and that’s why the time issues have been increasing since then. Allyn knew something was up and that’s why Westin—or Olson—was coming after you. When Olson got too close you killed him and stashed him through the gateway.”
He doesn’t say anything, but I’m on a roll, and talking gives me something to focus on.
“So you get yourself put on this, and you mess with things a little, just to sow some chaos. Maybe get one of these guys out of the running. I imagine after all the changes you made on the setup and getting that lotto ticket for Reg, you didn’t want to risk going back in time to game the summit too, right? Anyway, you step things up, going so far as to maybe poison Kolten. And you realize as things progress that you should make it look like someone went after Davis, which was sloppy, but sloppy enough it might throw suspicion on Teller. Which I guess was moderately clever.”
“You kept seeing it happen,” he says, grumbling.
“If you just wanted to scare everyone away, why did you let out the dinosaurs?”
“The CDC lockdown screwed with my plans, so I had to improvise.”
“Right, because you knew Drucker wasn’t going to cancel. It was kinda dumb, but I’ll give you credit for one thing. You started off with a really smart move. You swapped my pills so I’d be less stable. Take me off the board by making everyone think I was nuts.”
Silence, which I accept to mean I am correct.
“And I guess word about the gateway was getting around. Kolten knew about it. That’s why you swiped the book. Make sure more people didn’t find out about it.”
More silence.
“How long has Drucker been party to this?”
Nik rolls onto his side and laughs. “Actually, I found out she cut deals with everyone. She didn’t care who won. But she made sure everyone promised to get her elected. She’s a snake.” He shrugs. “We finally assured her we were the ones to make it happen. Well, I was the one to make it happen.”
“To what end? What does Osgood even want? It wasn’t enough that he made himself a trillionaire in the course of a few days?”
“What does anyone with power want, January?”
That’s an easy one, at least.
“More,” I tell him.
Silence. Another answer.
“Nice to see you got something out of the job. You asshole, you know the rules…”
“Fuck the rules. All these scientists are like, well we think this or we think that. If any of this ‘look, don’t touch’ bullshit was real, the timestream would have torn itself apart by now.”
“Have you looked outside?” I asked. “There are anomalies rippling across the planet.”
Nik struggles with the bindings, twisting like he’s going to try and get up. “The timestream heals itself. It’ll settle down.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
And it’s the same as the other idiots.
If it’s true, it runs counter to what he wants, so how could it be true?
I push myself to standing, lurch over to my knife, the blade still marred with my blood. I grab the shawl and yank him up, being sure to hold the knife close enough he can see it, and walk him toward the Atwood stairwell.
As we climb the stairs he asks, “Doesn’t it ever make you mad?”
“Lots of things make me mad.”
“We bust our asses, day in and day out, and look what it gets us? What are we even doing it for? We like to think we’re playing by the rules, but meanwhile the rules are being written by someone else.”
“Don’t get all high and mighty right now,” I tell him. “You picked your side.”
“Well, maybe that was my mistake.”
“Why, because I got your ass?”
“No, because I finally figured it out. I didn’t dream big enough.”
“Yeah, well, hope you’re ready for some nightmares.”
“That’s a shitty line.”
“I’m bleeding. Shut up.”
“I’m serious though,” he says, almost pleading. “Just across the way is a machine that will let us go anywhere, do anything. Think about what we can do with that. We can go there right now. We don’t even have to go through the door. We have all the time in the world. I can fix this whole thing right now. Hell, I could put us in charge. Are you telling me you’re not even tempted?”
We reach the fifth floor and I push him into the hallway. “Every day I was tempted. Every fucking day. And I didn’t do it.”
“Well, maybe you just lacked the courage.”
I consider kicking him out behind the knees and stomping his head into the carpet, but I’m supposed to be ending suffering, so I don’t.
When we reach the storage closet, I push him inside, then hold the knife to his throat as I punch in the code. I open the door and shove him out, time moving around us again. Immediately, I feel a rip of pain in my side and collapse to the ground. I press my hand to it and bring it back and it is shiny and wet, drenched with blood.
Chaos erupts. Hands grab at me. Nik dodges away. Someone gets knocked over. I don’t even know who is here. All I know is: there was something holding in that wound.
Time.
Or the lack thereof.
Then Allyn is there, on his knees now, his hand pressed to my side, trying to hold me together.
“January, what happened in there?” he asks.
“Just, I…” I’m struggling to get the words out.
His watch erupts with reports of disturbances in the lobby. People knocked down and not knowing why. A dog flying through the air. And then one drowns out the rest.
Danbridge. Danbridge, respond. We found Osgood Davis down in the ballroom. He’s been killed, sir…
“January, what the fuck…” Allyn says, before his back arches and he cries out, and then he tumbles off of me, my knife now sticking out of his back. He hits the floor with a thud and before his body even stops moving, I can see that the light is gone from his eyes. I try to reach for him, like there might be something I can do, but I’m losing too much blood.
There’s a ripping sound, and then there are hands on my torso. Something wrapping around and around and then tying tight. I cry out just as I hear a door slam. I look up and fight through the pain to focus and see Brandon is over me.
“January,” he says. “That guy just went back in.”