“Oberi, you’ve got to be able to heal him,” I barked. “Dosomething.”
“I— I was trying to save you,” Marcus rasped. I felt his arm reach for Kallie before his entire body went limp, and he gasped his last breath.
“No,no!” Kallie screamed.
My whole body went numb. It was like losing Marty all over again. I’d already lost one best friend, and that had nearly shattered my world. Losing another felt like a black hole had opened up in my entire reality.
Guards flooded out of the cafeteria. “On your feet!” one of them yelled. I heard the click of noxite guns.
Fuck!
I grabbed Kallie’s arms. “Kallie, we’vegot to go.”
Kallie sobbed hysterically, and I didn’t think she’d heard me. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Wecould notlose Marcus. We had to go back and stop this.
“I saidon your feet!” a guard roared.
“Now, Kallie!” I snapped, and I shook her roughly. I had to get her to snap out of it, otherwise, there’d be no fixing this for sure.
Kallie snapped her fingers, and I felt the world spinning once more. Marcus’ body disappeared beneath us, but I was still covered with warm blood. Chatter spilled out from the cafeteria, but the angry guards were gone.
“When are we?” I asked.
Kallie’s voice trembled. I could hear tears spilling from her as she replied, “A little before nine.”
I shook her. “Marcus is still alive. We can fix this, but we have to make therightdecisions this time.”
Oberi shoved himself between us.No. No more changing things. You have to set things back to the way they were.
“If we do that, Thaddeus will still die,” I protested.
Every time you change something, it gets worse!Oberi pressed.You have one last chance to fix this, and if you get it wrong this time, you could lose MarcusandAva both. Do you understand?
My stomach twisted into horrible knots.
“What’s he saying?” Kallie demanded.
I drew a deep breath. “Oberi wants us to put things back the way they were. He thinks if we try to change anything else, more people will die.”
“No. There’s got to be a way,” Kallie insisted. “Let’s go through the timeline again. Marcus and I were outside this morning, checking out the grave site. When we didn’t find anything, I came inside to get my grimoire, then Marcus found us at the cafeteria. Esther started tailing Thaddeus sometime this morning. We met up with you and Ava after lunch, then ran into the riots, then…”
Kallie trailed off.
“No,” I said. “We ran into Thaddeusbeforethe riots. Or was that in a different timeline?”
My memories of the day began to entwine together. I remembered walking in from the prison yard, straight into the riots, but I was almost certain Kallie and I had time traveled into that scenario. So how did I remember what happened before we reappeared in the new timeline?
I wascertainI’d been time traveling with Kallie most of the day, but every reality seemed to exist just as equally as the others. “Marcus died this morning, but then he was alive when the riots started. It doesn’t make sense.”
Because your day is no longer linear, Oberi said.It all happened. You’re just remembering it as one day.
“Oberi says we’re remembering everything all at once,” I told Kallie.
“Of course. The details are still fuzzy, but that’s why you felt like we’d passed the cafeteria several times, because wehadpassed it several times today. Our memories must take time to integrate when we go back and change things, but wewillremember, as if we’d been in both places, because wewerein both places.”
“But time’s a line,” I stated. I couldn’t wrap my head around existing in two places at once.
“It’s not,” Kallie replied. “It’s more like… folded on top of itself. That’s why when we changed something and I took us back to the present, we ended up in a different spot than we left. Because we still experienced everything leading up to that new moment. There can be two of you in the past, and two of you in the future, but you can only exist at one point in the present moment— the time you leave and come back to. It’s like… a checkpoint.”
