Tempest. Part 17

It was at that moment that I tried to focus and get out of there, back to Adam in 2007. Of course, like that time when I was in my dad's office with his hands around my throat, I was too freaked to do it. One of the armed men grabbed me and started feeling my pants all the way up to my shirt.

"He's clean. No weapons."

"Thank you. Follow me."

I managed to put one foot in front of the other and took in my surroundings. It was some kind of underground tunnel. The man opened a door and pushed me inside a room. Another man forced me into a chair, like the kind at the dentist. He tied my arms with straps. I thought about fighting back but decided there was no point if these dudes had guns.

"I'm Chief Marshall," the man who had led me down here said. "Who are you? We both know Jackson Meyer doesn't have a brother."

I didn't answer and Chief Marshall nodded toward the other man. "Test his blood."

Okay, totally creepy. I closed my eyes and tried to let the room dissolve. To get the h.e.l.l out of there. To avoid the one experiment Adam and I couldn't perform.

Yes, the dives into the past were like Groundhog Day. And the light feeling that I always had while in a jump (except that one time on October 30, 2009) kept pain at a minimum. In other words, if I hurt myself in a jump, when I came back to the present, I'd have a b.u.mp on my head or whatever, but never a bad one.

But still, what if they killed me in this year? One that wasn't my home base? I had no idea what would happen. If I would really be dead.

I barely felt the needle p.r.i.c.k my arm, and seconds later I heard feet shuffling away.

"You can't leave from here, just so you know," Chief Marshall said.

My eyes flew open again. "You already told me that."

"I mean you can't leave by any method. New security device Dr. Melvin invented. An electromagnetic pulse."

Um. What the h.e.l.l was he talking about? And he knew Dr. Melvin. Maybe Courtney was right about the connection. Was Dr. Melvin trying to zap me, or whoever else they brought in this room, with electromagnets? Except Chief Marshall was in here, and the other dude, too.

"Come on, tell me your name," Chief Marshall said in his deep Southern voice as he sat in a chair across from me, arms folded over his chest. "How do you know Jackson Meyer?"

I stayed silent, staring over his shoulder, trying to calm myself.

"He's not an Enemy," the other man spoke up.

"Are you positive?" Chief Marshall asked.

"Yes." He walked over and stared closely at my face, then yanked off the stocking cap.

"An Enemy?" I finally said.

"Don't act dumb," Chief Marshall said. "You see the resemblance?" he asked the man with the needle. "To the others."

Others?

The man put his face so close to mine I could smell the garlic he must have eaten for lunch. "Yeah. I see it. But it can't be ... right?"

For the first time, Chief Marshall's face lost its calm, collected expression. He hit a b.u.t.ton on the wall and shouted, "Edwards, get in here!"

Seconds later, the man who had raced past me out on the baseball field came charging in. "What's going on, Chief?"

"Get Agent Meyer down here right away," Chief Marshall said.

Oh, man. Too freaky!

"Sorry, sir, he's with the boy."

"Fine. Melvin, then."

"Also with the kid in the OR," Edwards said.

Chief Marshall turned slowly to face Edwards before saying, "And so am I."

Edwards opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Do you mean he can ... I mean, not yet, but eventually-"

I didn't get to hear the rest. The idea of my father coming down there and seeing me, older, after what had happened in his office in 2003, was enough to give me the ability to focus on my escape. The last thing I saw was Chief Marshall's face up close as he examined mine. I don't know what freaked me out more ... the look in his eyes or the greedy smile that was snaking onto his face as I jumped out of 1996.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2007, 12:30 A.M.

"Jackson!" Adam shouted into my ear.

I was lying on his bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling. "What year is it?"

"2007," he said slowly.

The room spun and when I sat up and stared at Adam's giant DNA model on the desk, the blue and red b.a.l.l.s swirled around like the birds that fly over a cartoon character's head. I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. "I have to call my dad. Like ... now."

"Okay." He lifted me up and I slumped over onto him.

"I can't feel my legs," I mumbled before collapsing onto Adam's bed. I lifted my hand in front of my face, turning it over, expecting it to fade away or turn transparent.

Then the spinning blue and red turned black, along with everything else.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning was the lump next to me, sound asleep. I rolled over and stood, happy that feeling had returned to my legs. But they were weak and my head throbbed, like a bad hangover.

Adam's eyes opened slowly. "You're standing."

"Barely." I clutched my sides, putting pressure against the stabbing pain running up and down my ribs.

Adam pulled a shirt over his head and opened the bedroom door. "Let's get you something to eat."

Food was the last thing on my mind, but my lack of appet.i.te in the last week had already caused me to lose at least five pounds. Pretty soon I really would disappear.

"Morning, Mom," Adam said to the woman in the kitchen flipping pancakes.

"You're up early. I didn't know you had a friend over." Mrs. Silverman turned her back on the griddle and smiled at me.

I tried not to laugh, because Adam's parents were a big joke for me in 2009. I named them "Paul and Judy" because they made me think of the d.i.c.k and Jane books I read in preschool. The ones from the 1950s. They were completely clueless about what their son was up to or capable of. It was all pancakes and sunshine.

"I'm Jackson," I said.

Adam and I sat at the table and he slid my journal in front of me. "Write down what you remember."

"What was the time on my stopwatch?" I asked.

"A little over two hours."

"And your stopwatch?"

"Four minutes," he answered.

Even though I'd done this so many times with the older Adam, it was still weird to be gone that long and then come back and find only minutes had pa.s.sed. But usually it was seconds.

"What did I look like?"

"Just like the other times you recorded with m ... with the other guy. You were staring into s.p.a.ce, completely unresponsive." He tapped the page again with his finger. "Write."

The memory was choppy and jumbled, but once I started forming a list and Adam drilled me with questions, most of it seemed to come back.

"Wow, it sounds like you picked the right date. So, now we know, he's definitely an agent of some kind," Adam said.

Mrs. Silverman slid a giant plate of pancakes in front of each of us. "Who's an agent, honey?"

Adam shrugged. "It's just this TV show."

She smiled at him. "Orange juice, anyone?"

"Sure," Adam said.

"No, thanks," I said.

"Okay, so, you resemble these mysterious other people ... or was he talking about you looking like your younger self? No surprise if that's the case."

"He just said, 'You see the resemblance?' Then he said something about looking like the others ... or maybe he said 'other' ... like the other me," I said.

Feeling nauseous from my wild adventure last night, I pushed the plate away from me, but Adam slid it back. "Eat."

I could only force down a few bites before running to the bathroom and puking it back up. While I was brushing my teeth, I heard Adam talking to his mom. "Probably bad sushi."

"I've got Maalox," I heard Adam's mom call through the bathroom door.

Adam was waiting for me outside the bathroom, holding a bottle of Maalox, when I came out. I chugged it straight from the bottle as we walked back to his room, where I promptly fell onto his bed. He shut the door behind him, balancing his plate of pancakes. "It's the time travel that's making you sick. Based on your journal notes and your latest binge and purge, it's obvious."

"Are you sure it's not psychosomatic? Guilt manifesting itself into illness? It never happened until Holly was shot." I pulled the covers up to my neck, rolling myself into a shivering ball.

"Someone's taken Psych 101." Adam sat in his desk chair and continued stuffing his face. "I think it's all relative. Before you went back to 2007, the furthest you'd gone was a couple of days. It's a formula based on the number of years you travel backwards, along with the length of time you stay in the past. You knew that part already because the formulas were in your journal."

I nodded. "But why don't I feel constantly sick in this year? Technically, it's the past for me."

He shrugged. "I think it's because this is your home base now. Every other year is the one you shouldn't be in, so bad things are going to happen to you when you travel to those non-home-base time periods. And the longer you stay away from home base, the worse the symptoms are. It's like your body's actually being pulled apart and maybe you can only stretch so far."

"I guess it makes sense. I just don't get why."

"I think we can safely say there's a ton of s.h.i.t we haven't figured out yet."

"Agreed. But ... I really need to call my dad. I can just ask him if he's a government agent. Tell him I overheard a conversation or something. It's not like he's the bad guy, right?"

Adam lifted an eyebrow. "You positive about that? So he rushed you to the hospital when you broke your arm. Big deal. And even if he is good ... what if it doesn't matter and he has to turn on you the second he knows you're not in the dark anymore? Since the jumping around in time is kicking you in the a.s.s, I think you have to limit your jumps to very important tasks. You need to recover, man. For now, I think you should just play dumb around your dad. It'll be easier to get information. From what it sounds like, those guys in the underground hospital wing were not too happy to see you, and they knew your dad ... like they're on the same side." He stopped for a minute and I could tell his mind was racing.

I sat up and leaned against the wooden headboard. "d.a.m.n. I feel like s.h.i.t and I was gonna try and get Holly to go out with me today. She gave me her number last night."

Adam turned his back to me and fumbled with a stack of papers on his desk. "She's busy."

"She is?"

"I told her I'd help her study for her calc test."

"Great, then I have an excuse to see her. I can tag along on your little study session. Tell her we were hanging out."

He grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet and pulled them on, still not looking at me. "I don't think that's a good idea. She's really freaked about this test-"

"Adam, what are you not telling me? Did she say something to you?"

He finally looked at me, then sighed. "I wasn't going to bring this up today, but obviously I don't have a choice. After reading all your notes, it seems like ... you and Holly were just having fun. Nothing serious."

"Do you mean 007 Holly or the other one?"

"007 Holly?"

"Yeah, it sounds much cooler than 2007 Holly."

He shook his head and laughed. "Interesting way to decipher. But I meant the other one. From 2009. Anyway ... other than guilt about leaving her to die ... is anything really different now than it was in the future?"

I just stared at him, not sure how to answer, feeling my face redden with unintended anger.

"Look, Jackson, I don't have anything against you. You've dealt with a lot of crazy, f.u.c.ked-up s.h.i.t, and the fact that you want to keep her alive, make sure she's safe, proves you're a decent guy. But don't you think it's a little risky to be close to her ... for several reasons? Holly's my friend and I don't want her to get hurt."

"Do you think I'm trying to get close to her out of guilt?" I asked, because I really wasn't sure. These were uncharted waters for me. In fact, relationships of any kind were uncharted.

"It kinda seems that way ... but maybe I'm wrong. Either way, you need to stop feeling guilty."