Tomorrow (20 page)

“You said you’d explain,” Freya reminds me.

“I will.” But first I turn to
Elizabeth. “You need to go get us passports. I’ll give you some money for ours.”

Elizabeth
’s face pales. “You’d be better at that than I would. I have no idea how to find someone who could make us convincing forgeries.”

“Or sell us
doctored stolen passports,” I add, gazing protectively at Freya on the bed. “You’ll do fine. I can’t leave her here.”

“You can leave her with me,”
Elizabeth insists. “I’ll watch out for her.”

“Forgive me if I don’t want to leave her in the hands of one of the people who
were ready to do a hatchet job on…” I don’t want Freya to overhear so I stop short, throwing my good hand into the air in a gesture of defiance. “She stays with me. It’s not up for discussion.”

Elizabeth
points her gaze in Freya’s direction and sighs soundlessly.

“Look, you got us through customs and you got us this room
,” I continue. “Dealing with the kind of people who can get us passports will be easy. They’ll want your business. You just need to find them.” My left palm itches under my cast. The cast itself feels heavy and looser than it should. 1986 medical technology is lousy and I haven’t treated my wrist or the cast that surrounds it with the tenderness it requires. “When you get outside ask someone what the worst part of town is. When you reach it zero in on anyone who looks shady, like they could be dealing.”

This is probably a tall order for someone like
Elizabeth, who has likely never dealt with any ‘bad guys’ unless you want to include U.N.A. personnel in the category. Once she leaves the motel with a chunk of my cash in her pocket there’s always the chance Elizabeth will skip town without us. But I have to risk something here and it won’t be Freya.

Crestfallen,
Elizabeth points out, “They’ll need photos.”

“They can leave that part for last
. We’ll stop into a photo booth later and then bring the photos in when we go pick the passports up. Freya needs to rest first.”

Freya bristles
at my suggestion from the bed. “Freya needs to know what’s going on,” she insists, her cheeks pinkening like they did when we held hands in the car.

Elizabeth
clutches her abdomen. “I can’t do this all on my own. Even if I can find someone to sell us passports, what are we going to do about the flights? We’ll need at least fifteen hundred dollars to get us to Europe.”

If that’s even where we want to go.
Having seen inside Freya’s head, if the U.N.A. decides to widen their net beyond North America, Spain would be the first place they’d look for us. Better to avoid Europe entirely and head for South America.

But I don’t plan to tell Elizabeth where we’re going. Once we get to the airport our trio will have to divide into two parts. It’ll be safer for everyone.

Unfortunately, more risks will need to be taken first. There’s no safe, legal way for us to get our hands on anywhere near as much cash as Elizabeth mentioned. She and I both know that. We’ll have to steal it. Hopefully from someone who doesn’t need it as badly as we do. And when it happens, it will be one more thing I can’t allow myself to feel bad about.

In the meantime I
frown and nod. “I’ll figure something out while you’re gone. But it could be dangerous.”

“We can’t be caught.”
Elizabeth’s frown is at least as deep as my own.

“I don’t plan on it. But I’ll probably
need your help.” I feel Freya’s stare on my cheeks, the warmth spreading to my forehead and down along my neck. She’s like a sponge, absorbing every word Elizabeth and I say but giving no indication of how she feels about any of it. “We’ll talk about it when you get back, okay?” Before I can start worrying about coming up with clever robbery plans and the price to be paid if the police catch me in the act, I need to be alone with Freya. My arms are dying to hold her, and we have to talk. One night apart from her felt like forever.

“Okay,” Elizabeth agrees
reluctantly. “Give me the windbreaker at least. I’m still wearing the same clothes they last saw me in.”

“They
who
?” Freya demands.

Elizabeth floats me a wary look as I hand her the windbreaker
and a pair of hundred-dollar bills. She presses the extra room key into my hand before turning on her heel and exiting the suite.

With the door closed behind us, Freya’s head wilts on her shoulders. “My head hurts and I’m so thirsty
, so tired. What happened to me? Where are we and what kind of trouble are we in?”

Freya’s skin
is waxy and pale and she hasn’t had any fluids since before I unhooked her from the wires back in British Columbia. “Let me get you some water,” I say, zipping into the bathroom for glasses.

I upend one for each of us, turn on the faucet and
fill two glasses of water. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds but when I return to the bedroom Freya’s asleep on top of the bedspread, her feet still hanging off the mattress. Elizabeth said coming out of the wipe process could be gradual and it looks like she was right. Freya’s worn out.

I set her water on the nightstand next to her
and gulp mine down. Then I gather up Freya’s feet, sandals and all, and lift them slowly onto the bed. I fold the bedspread over her and lie down next to her, watching her sleep, so happy her higher reasoning capabilities seem intact that it feels like something close to what Kinnari was looking for in meditation and numerology. We didn’t really have words to describe the feeling in the U.N.A. but I know what many people here and now would call it.

A
state of grace.

Outside, a woman’s whistling “The Greatest Love of All.” Still half asleep, I roll over onto my left arm. It’s the feel of the cast around my wrist that makes me open my eyes. In the first moments of wakefulness you can forget anything. Freya was never taken. I didn’t break my wrist or shoot Isaac Monroe. My sister never died of Toxo. There’s only this unseen phantom woman whistling cheerfully from some undefined place. One of the motel maids, maybe, I realize as I float closer towards consciousness.

The bedspread has been
folded over me the way I folded it over Freya earlier and there’s a space where her body should be. I gaze sleepily at the closed bathroom door. “Freya?”

In the corridor
, the sound of Whitney Houston’s biggest hit begins to fade. Since the future I knew is in the process of being rewritten, Whitney Houston has another chance along with everyone else. Maybe this time she’ll live to be ninety-seven.

“Freya?” I repeat, my gaze flicking over to the empty glass on the nightstand at her side of the bed.
“Are you all right?”

I jump to my feet
, take three long strides to the bathroom door, and pull it open.
Empty
.

The U.N.A. can’t have taken her
—they would’ve grabbed me too—and I curse as I fly into the hall. Where would she go? I rampage through the motel with my face burning—the coffee shop, the pool area, and every damn hallway in the motel—I scour them all looking for her.

The
extra room key is snugly in my back pocket, and I stand in the lobby counting what’s left of the cash Isaac returned to me. Minus the two hundred dollars I gave Elizabeth, it’s all still there. Freya’s fled with only the clothes on her back.

I don’t know why she’d do it
and I don’t know who I’m angrier with, myself or her. But I have to find her. Jogging into the street, I’m breathless with worry. I circle the streets surrounding the motel, expanding my perimeter as I see no sign of Freya’s red hair or pink miniskirt.

I run
with a violence that leaves me gasping on the corner of Northeast Forty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue, my body bent and my palms on my lower thighs to steady myself. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was in some not-quite-trendy urban Vancouver neighbourhood—the low-rise apartment buildings and modest houses look and feel West Coast familiar.

A wave of dizziness knocks me to my knees. After everything that happened last night
—the drugs, the shootings, the shock—my body can’t take much more. I need a minute. My knees ache from the fall and I stretch them out in front of me as I fill my lungs with oxygen. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Freya said she remembered me but
clearly she didn’t remember the U.N.A. snatching her. There were holes in her memory that caused her to run off. Where would I go if I had gaps in my memory? Where would I look for answers? Is it possible she’s wandered back to the motel and is waiting for me there?

I force myself up and half
sprint, half walk to the University Motor Inn, fighting the sensation that I’m about to pass out. Inside the motel I race to the room and find it just as I left it. I knock back two glasses of water, hoping that will be enough to keep me upright, and head straight back into the street where I snare the first cab I see.

It smells like smoke and
my lungs greedily suck in the bad air. “Where to?” the driver asks.

I have no clue. I’m out of my mind with worry.
Can barely string together the words that will get the cab moving.

“Got an address for me
?” the driver prompts, an edge creeping into his tone. He must’ve faced down a dozen varieties of weirdoes while doing his job. I’m just the latest.

“No address,” I mumble. “I need to find someone.” I tell him about Freya’s pink skirt and red hair, say we had a
terrible fight and she ran off.

The driver pushes at one of his sleeves.
“Look, I’m no private eye. Your girlfriend will come back when she’s cooled down. You’re better to sit and wait it out.”

“I can’t do that. I need to find her now.” Maybe he’s worried I won’t pay him. I pull a hun
dred dollar bill from my pocket, waving it frenziedly. “Take it. You can give me the change later.”

The driver stares at the offered bill. “No American cash?”

I’d forgotten I’d have to change currency. Last I heard the Canadian dollar was worth a lousy seventy-one cents. “Sorry, I just got here.”

The driver pinches the inferior Canadian bill between two of his fingers and gives me a tired look, like he’s doing me a favour. “Okay
, then. Let’s go.”

Because I have no idea where
Freya could be, we begin by making a wider circle around the motel. Then we cross the bay and the driver takes me to the heart of the shopping district. I do a double take every time I see a girl with red hair or one poured into a pink miniskirt. The driver points out likely candidates. None of them are Freya and we continue to whirl around the city for close to an hour before the driver suggests I try the Space Needle.

“Everybody who comes to Seattle for the first time wants to go up the Space Needle,” he says
. “I bet that’s where she went.”

He could be right
and I ask him to take me there. Relief lights up his face when we reach the Space Needle. He hands me American greenbacks in change, happy to be rid of me.

The disc section at the top of the needle reminds me of the one
perched atop Vancouver’s Harbour Centre. I can only hope Freya feels the same way and that it drew her here. I pay $3.50 to ride the elevator up to the observation platform. The sunny morning has become a sunny day and the view from the platform is striking—blue water and blue mountains in nearly every direction, ferries, cargo lines, cruise ships, and buzzing city streets framed with skyscrapers. There’s even a float plane coming in for a landing on the lake below while I roam the deck looking for Freya. I check the revolving restaurant too, and when I’m one-hundred-percent sure she’s not here, I stagger into the street.

There’s a bus approaching and I
dash for the nearest stop. Since I don’t know where to search next, public transit is as useful as a cab. Soon I’m heading south on Second Avenue, my eyes glued to the window and my mind filled with visions of pink and red. I can’t think straight. Can’t believe this has happened.

Fifteen minutes later I hop off
the bus and start pounding the pavement, light-headed again. My feet carry me in random directions, zigzagging by late nineteenth century brick and stone buildings. Art galleries, cafés, nightclubs,
and book stores dot the area but it’s anything but gentrified. As I walk the people’s faces become harder. Lower East Side people. People like the Cursed of 2063. Many of them homeless or otherwise down on their luck, like me.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this is
the spot Elizabeth ended up in search of passports. With her help, I’d have a better chance of finding Freya, and I wonder if I should head back to the motel to see if Elizabeth has returned, or at least call our room.

I’ve only begun scout
ing out a payphone when I spy a totem pole across the street. Accordion music wafts in my direction as I near the public square where the totem pole is rooted. I’ve seen these in Vancouver too—a collection of vibrantly painted totem poles nestled in the middle of Stanley Park—and I guess that’s what tugs me towards the square, the eye’s fondness for familiar things.

When I reach the square, which is really
more of a triangle, the accordion player launches into “American Pie,”
his feet moving in time to the music
.
The man’s wearing a fedora and brown plaid suit and he smiles jauntily as I pass.

I can’t smile back.

Not in that moment.

T
hen everything changes.
I see her
. In that pink miniskirt she’d never pick out for herself, her red hair a beacon in the sunshine. She’s sitting on a park bench next to a homeless man with a grizzly grey beard and oversized hood pulled over his skull, the two of them deep in conversation and unwrapped Big Macs in their laps.

The totem pole is
directly behind them and I approach quickly, my eyes smarting as my world hastily reassembles itself. I stand in front of Freya, the man next to her noticing me first. “Can you spare any change, buddy?” he asks, his eyes leaping to my face.

I don’t answer him. I sit on my haunches and touch Freya’s knee
. “What happened to you? Why did you leave?” It would be easy to shout at her now that I’ve had the good luck to find her again, but the anger’s already dissolving. “You had me worried sick. How did you even get here?”

“You were asleep,”
Freya tells me, without the slightest note of apology. “I didn’t think it could matter when none of this is real.”

“This is real
life.” I say it with complete conviction. I should’ve made the point more forcefully before she had the chance to run away. “It’s not a dream and you’re not in gushi.”

Freya’s neighbour on the bench frowns. “She’s a bit touched,” he says
under his breath. “I’ve been looking out for her. Got her something to eat.” He glances at her half-eaten Big Mac, then back at me. “It seems you know her well.”

“
Very well. I’m going to take her home. Thanks for watching over her.” I reach out to shake his hand.

The man pumps my good hand and then tips an imaginary hat to Freya as she rises to
accompany me, leaving the remains of her Big Mac behind. She waves goodbye to the man before turning to face me. “I don’t understand any of this,” she says, distraught. “It can’t be real.” She runs one of her hands over the hip of her skirt. “The clothes, the transportation. They must be nearly a hundred years old.” Her gaze soars to the architecture surrounding us. “The buildings are even older. Like in Moss or parts of New York. But this is the West Coast—the
deserted
West Coast.”

“It’s not deserted. Not yet.” I point to the first
greasy spoon I see. No more waiting. I’ll tell her everything right now, but I need something to eat while I do it. I’m wobbly on my feet. Feel like I could collapse at any second. “This is 1986 Seattle. Not a simulation or any kind of game, the genuine article.”

“Not possible,” Freya
counters as the two of us slip into the restaurant. A waitress gestures in the direction of an empty booth with two menus in the middle of the table. I order sausages and eggs with French fries without looking at the menu and Freya asks for ice water.

Our eyes lock across the table.
“Tell me the last thing you remember before waking up in the car,” I say. The din from the other customers will prevent anyone from hearing us. Besides, who would believe the things we have to say?

Freya
shivers and wraps her right hand around the salt shaker, pulling it closer. “Playing veloxball at Thomas Jefferson. In Gym C. You know, the one near the general auditorium.”

Thomas Jefferson
is the school Freya and I went to together in Montana before we were sent through the chute.
Veloxball
…I haven’t heard the word in so long it freezes my brain. As it sputters to life, it’s jerked nearly eighty-years into the future. Veloxball is essentially soccer played in a simulated low-gravity environment—much faster and wilder than traditional sport, which is seldom played in the future, except by people much older than us who aren’t as aggravated by the slower pace. My mind yo-yos, crashing back to the here and now. Freya. Seattle. 1986.

“
What year was that?” I prod. If she doesn’t remember anything of her time in the 1980s it’s no wonder she can’t accept this as reality. There’ve been so many occasions, late at night, lying in bed sleepless, that I’ve found myself nearly losing grip on the truth myself.

“2061
.” Freya’s voice bubbles with impatience.

2061: t
wo years before Toxo hit, which means any of her surviving memories are from when she was fourteen or younger.

“So that’s where you remember me from
—Thomas Jefferson?” I think of the day we spoke about her family’s domestic Ro being taken into custody. Freya would’ve been a couple of years younger than fourteen then. Her stares in the hallway came later. I can’t remember exactly when —I didn’t pay much attention at the time. But is that why she let me hold her hand in the car earlier? Had she already begun to develop an attraction to me in 2061? It’s been a long time since Freya’s crush on me was a secret, but she never pinned it down to a date.

Freya
nods and swallows a mouthful of the water the waitress has delivered to the table.

I choose my words and tone carefully, remembering how
difficult it was for me to accept the truth in 1985. “This is going to be very hard to believe, Freya, but try to keep an open mind.” The waitress has brought me coffee. I forgot to order it but I must look like I need it and I loop my fingers through the mug’s handle and gulp down caffeine before continuing. Then I begin with 2063, explaining about the Toxo outbreak—the convergence of biological weapon P-47 and the terrorist-created virus Mossegrim.
Together they created too big a threat for the U.N.A. to neutralize and I hate to be the one to take Freya’s brother from her this third time
but
she has to know.