The Eighth Guardian (15 page)

Of course, there is no Abe in my future with Annum Guard.

Before I know it, the pilot announces our initial descent. I straighten my chair and fold up the tray before tucking it back into the armrest.

When we deplane, there’s a driver dressed in a black suit outside the airport, holding a handwritten sign that says
SMITH
. Zeta walks up to him and shakes his hand, then we all pile into another black Town Car and head into the city. No one says a word the entire trip, which only takes about twenty minutes. The driver drops us off on the corner of Potomac and N Street. We’re in a residential zone, and there are a bunch of brownstones lining the street.

Zeta stops us at a house on the corner as a college-age guy wearing black plastic glasses and a yellow-and-green plaid shirt tucked into black skinny jeans slows to a halt in front of us. He turns to Indigo. “Cool tie, bro. Urban Outfitters?”

I bite my tongue to keep from laughing as Indigo flashes a coy smile. “It’s vintage.”

“Going for legit cred. I like it.” And then he nods his head and keeps walking. I look at Indigo and can’t help but smile.

“Can we focus, please?” Zeta asks in a clipped voice. I wipe the smile off my face and turn to see him gesturing toward a brick three-story with a bright-red front door and a little herb garden planted out front. “This is it,” he says.

“Annum Guard headquarters?” I guess. It makes sense that a government organization would have its headquarters in the nation’s capital, but Zeta shakes his head.

“You live in Annum Guard headquarters. We don’t have an official presence in DC. They don’t mention our name in public, our funding is hidden in miscellaneous Title 10 projects, and only those persons with the highest level of clearance know about our existence. Anonymity keeps us safe, Iris.”

I don’t know what it is about Zeta, but he has a way of making me feel as if I’m being scolded every time he speaks to me.

He clears his throat. “Training mission number Iris-Two,” he says as he points to the house we’re standing in front of. “In the fall of 1960, this brownstone was home to one Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic senator out of Minnesota. Do you know anything about Senator McCarthy?”

Senator McCarthy. That name sounds familiar. And then it hits me.

“Communism!” I practically shout. “Senate hearings to determine whether there were any communists living in America. He organized it. Led to a lot of Hollywood people being blacklisted.”

Zeta shakes his head. “Wrong McCarthy. You’re about ten years too late. And that was Joseph McCarthy. We’re dealing with Eugene McCarthy.”

“Oh,” I say. “Then I know nothing about Senator McCarthy.”

“Nor do you need to. Your mission is a simple one. At precisely 8:53, Senator McCarthy is going to walk down those steps, hail a cab, and head to the Capitol building just in time for an important vote, which takes place at 9:08. You are going to make him miss that cab and miss that vote, thereby freeing up funds that your modern-day commerce secretary has decided would have been better spent on . . . other projects. Understand?”

This is just like Alpha’s first example to me. The smallest feeling of disappointment creeps in. Making someone miss a cab? Ho-hum. But I nod my head.

“You get one try,” Zeta says in a hushed whisper as he walks a few yards down Potomac and stops in front of a black gate leading into the backyard. He takes a black leather pouch from his inside suit pocket, jiggles the padlock on the gate, and pulls a tension wrench and hook lock pick from the pouch. The lock clicks open in about three seconds. “If you fail, you fail. No going back in time again to correct your mistakes. We can project back here without being seen. Now set your watch. October 25, 1960.”

I look over at Indigo, who’s already turning the knobs on his watch as he steps through the gate into someone’s backyard. I do the same. I start to shut the lid, but Zeta reaches out and grabs my hand before I can.

“One word of caution. This is your first time projecting outside of Annum Hall. The gravity chamber spares us some of the stresses that projection can wreak on our bodies.” Beside him, Indigo nods his head with his lips pursed. “Traveling this way is rough, I won’t lie to you. Most times we opt to travel from Annum Hall and commute to our location in the past. Sometimes this is impractical, say if I needed to get from Boston to San Francisco in 1849. Much easier to hop a flight to San Francisco in present day than to travel three thousand miles in a covered wagon.”

“They had air travel in 1960,” I point out. At least I think they did.

“I know. But I wanted you to experience this. To know how it used to be for all of us.”

“So this is like hazing?” I clutch the watch in my hand and squeeze.

Zeta doesn’t respond. He turns to Indigo. “Are you ready?”

Indigo swallows what I can only assume is the lump in his throat and gives one quick nod of the head. “Ready, sir.”

And then Zeta looks down at me. “Iris?”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” It’s the truth.

Zeta stares straight ahead. “Watches shut, on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three!”

I slam my watch face lid shut, and instantly I know something is wrong. I’m falling too fast. My body can’t keep up. My limbs are straining, stretching, and I can’t breathe. Can’t talk. My eyes are bulging out of their sockets as wind whips through them, threatening to yank them free. My limbs are being stretched too far. They’re going to pop off. Every muscle in my body shrieks in pain. I try to scream but make no sound. I want this to stop. I want this to stop now.

And just like that I slam hard into the ground. I gasp for breath and look up. I’m on my hands and knees in Senator McCarthy’s backyard.

Indigo and Zeta stand over me, and Indigo bends a knee and comes down to the ground. “Are you all right?”

I nod my head, but it’s a lie.

It’s no big secret that had I been recruited by the CIA, I would have gone through some serious Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training, where they would subject me to Abu Ghraib–type shit. I think this might have been worse. Indigo grabs my hand and pulls me up, and my legs protest. I’m unsteady on my feet. I sway back and forth a few times, trying not to fall over.

Zeta looks amused. Of course he does. He swings open the gate, which apparently doesn’t have a lock in 1960, and I follow him to the corner. He points to the brownstone, and my eyes follow. The front door is black, not red, and there’s no herb garden; other than that, the house is the same.

Nothing else is. Not at all. Huge cars that look more like submarines line the streets. Men hustle down the sidewalk wearing hats. Fedoras. The women all wear dresses and gloves, and one walks past me wearing cat’s-eye glasses.

“Time check,” Zeta says.

I look down at my watch. 8:52. The second hand is ticking past forty seconds on its way to the top. Whoa. Talk about not giving me much lead time. I haven’t even caught my breath yet. A big yellow boat of a cab turns onto N Street a block away.

That has to be the cab.

Behind me, the front door of the brownstone opens, and a very proper-looking man with dark hair and a serious face trots down the steps. He plops a hat on his head, spots the cab, and raises his arm. The car slows, and I forget how much pain I’m in. It all disappears. I have to get to that cab.

“Go,” Zeta hisses behind me, pushing me forward.

I don’t hesitate, don’t think. I sprint across the street, throwing myself in front of Senator McCarthy as he’s reaching for the handle. I open the door and fling myself into the backseat. The senator looks at me with wide, angry eyes.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “Medical emergency. Driver, I need a hospital immediately.”

Senator McCarthy blinks a few times with disbelieving eyes, but then he nods at the driver and shuts the cab door. I breathe a sigh of relief and sink down in the seat as the driver steps on the gas. I did it. I prevented him from getting the cab. That was so simple. Too simple.

I pivot around to see if I can spot Zeta or Indigo. But all I see is Senator McCarthy climbing into the backseat of a cab that must have pulled up ten seconds later.

Son of a—

“On second thought, I’m feeling better,” I snap at the driver. “Let me out here, please!”

The driver slams on the brakes, which sends me flying into the back of the front seat. He pivots around, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “What the hell do you mean, let you out here? We’ve gone half a block.”

“I’m very sorry.” I open the door. “What do I owe you?”

The driver lets out a noise of disgust. “Thirty-five cents.”

I fish out two quarters from the purse and shove them into the front seat. “Keep the change.” I slam the door shut and take off running back down the block. I need to get Senator McCarthy out of that cab!

It’s coming close. What do I do? What do I do? There’s only one thing I can think of. The cab’s not going that fast. I can do this. I draw in my breath and lean back. Here it comes. Just another couple seconds—

“Iris!” Zeta shouts from down the block. He runs toward me. “Stop! No!”

But I’ve already launched myself up in the air. My shoulder lands hard on the windshield, and I cry out in pain. The cab slams on its brakes and swerves to the right, and I go flying off the hood onto the hard, unforgiving pavement of N Street.

I groan as I hear two cab doors open and slam shut, and Senator McCarthy crouches down beside me.

“She jumped in front of me!” I hear the old cab driver yell. “This crazy broad jumped in front of me!”

“Quiet!” the senator barks. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“Yeah, in the head,” the cabbie says.

I turn my head to the side and see Zeta and Indigo, standing across the street half a block down or so. They’ve stopped running, and Zeta has his arm out, holding Indigo back. I’m on my own with this one.

“Are you all right?” the senator repeats, his voice firm.

Am I all right? No. Clearly not. My body has already been through hell this morning, and then I got hit by a moving vehicle. A snaking line of purple bruises is already starting to dot my right arm and shoulder. My left arm is scraped and bleeding. But I don’t think anything is broken.

“I think so,” I say. But then I glance at the senator’s wristwatch. It’s only 8:55. There’s still plenty of time to get to the Capitol for the vote. I have to stall him. He pushes off his hands to stand.

“Wait, no!” I yell. “My leg, I think it’s broken!”

Senator McCarthy looks down at his own watch. He sighs. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tend to you now.”

But then the cops show up, in their long, flat, black-and-white cars with domed flashing lights; and I know this mission is over. No way a cop is going to let an eyewitness leave an accident scene. Sure enough, the cops survey the scene and make everyone stay for questioning. I ditch my purse in a nearby bush, then tell the cops I realized I’d left it back at the house and had run to get it and didn’t see the cab. No one gets ticketed or arrested, but the cops take almost half an hour. I’ve done it. I’ve made the senator miss the vote.

The senator and the driver get back into the cab to head off to the Capitol, I assume, and I smile. Every muscle in my body is protesting; and as I see Indigo and Zeta walking toward me, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach, too.

“Damn!” Indigo calls as he gets close. “That was so badass! That’s dedication right there, huh, Z?”

Zeta doesn’t say anything as he comes up next to me. Instead he stares at me with cool, hard eyes. “That’s . . . something,” he finally says. “Tell me; did you forget that the laws of physics have always existed? Or did you think that hurling your body in front of a moving vehicle wouldn’t hurt you in the 1960s?”

“I just thought—”

Zeta makes a buzzer sound. “Eh. Wrong. You clearly weren’t thinking about anything. Had you been thinking, you would not have jumped in front of a car.”

“Okay, fine!” I say. “I wasn’t
thinking
. I just knew that I had to stop the senator from getting to the Capitol, and I did the first thing that popped into my head. But it worked, I’d like to point out.”

Zeta takes a slow breath. “Indeed it did,” he admits. “You successfully completed your mission, and my report will reflect that.” Yes!
Finally
. I’ve finally done something right. “However, I told you before that whatever happens on a mission stays a permanent part of history. Had you died, it would have been nice knowing you. So I will also make sure your reckless behavior is included in the report. Now are we ready to go back?”

I get that uneasy feeling my stomach has come to know and love. And now we have to go back. My body will be put through hell again. The voice in my head cries out in protest. Throws itself on the floor, kicking and screaming like a toddler who’s been told to do something she doesn’t want to do. But I whip out my watch and punch the top knob like it’s as easy as climbing a flight of stairs.
Never show weakness.

“I’m ready, sir,” I say as I march myself toward the senator’s backyard.

Zeta lifts an eyebrow and looks over to check that my watch is set correctly. “All right. Then go.”

I snap the watch face lid shut before I have time to reconsider. My body is shot up so fast that my arms are plastered to my side. It’s as if I’ve been stuffed into a cannon. A real one, not a circus one. All the pressure is on my shoulders. They’re pulling down and away from my body. They’re going to be ripped off. My head is pulled up, as if someone is trying to twist it off. Pressure. So much pressure. My neck muscles strain and scream, and the pain travels down to my arms, already bruised and black from the cab. It feels as if someone is taking a rubber mallet and swinging away at the bruises. I would scream if I could.

And then I land, back in present-day Washington. I hear two pops as Indigo and Zeta appear. I’m still on the ground, the wet morning grass staining my dress.
Never show weakness
, I remind myself. But I can’t get up. I can’t move.

Indigo drops to my side, and I lower my chin. Everything hurts, and I want to cry. I can’t believe that this is how they used to travel all the time. That this was routine. It’s no wonder nearly all of them are dead or disfigured. Time travel—projecting—is hell.