Moaning and grimacing, the Silvers extracted themselves from the van. Zack carried Amanda on his back while Mia kept her leg stabilized. Theo and David bolstered Hannah like crutches.
Peter Pendergen led the hobbling procession, moving at an impressive clip for a man with a lame left leg. He poked the call button with his cane.
“How’d you get crippled?” David asked.
Peter eyed him, stone-faced, as the doors slid open and the group boarded the elevator. He set a course for the sixth and highest floor.
“Had a cerebrovascular mishap a short while back. It’s no big deal.”
“You seem awfully young to be suffering strokes.”
“Well, thank you. I thought the same thing. Unfortunately, these kinds of problems start early for my people. Just comes with the territory.”
“Of being chronokinetic, you mean.”
Peter tossed him a weak shrug. “What can I say, boy? Time always hurts the ones it loves.”
The elevator fell into grim and listless silence.
“It’s just temporary,” Peter attested. “Few months of leg rehab and I’ll be good as new.” He took a bleak gander at Amanda’s ankle. “Guess I won’t be doing my exercises alone.”
Zack kept his dark stare on the floor. Amanda rested her chin on his shoulder and studied Peter through the mirrored doors. The man was tall, well built, and ridiculously good-looking, though he carried his appeal with a preening peacock vanity that unfavorably reminded her of Derek. He’d probably charmed dozens of doe-eyed ingenues out of their tight wool sweaters. For all she knew, he was already scanning Hannah for loose threads.
And why wouldn’t he? Amanda thought. It’s the end of the goddamn world. Isn’t it, Peter?
Teetering back from the edge of hysterics, she ran a soft finger near Zack’s neck gash. “We’ll have to disinfect that.”
“We will,” Peter promised. “I got everything back at the house—meds and beds, duds and suds, all an ailing body could ever hope for. You folks went through five kinds of hell to get to me. I’d say you earned some rest.”
He scanned the dark reflections of his new companions, stopping at Amanda. It wasn’t hard to recognize the abject despair in her lovely green eyes.
“Just wait,” he told her.
Amanda looked up at him. “What?”
“Don’t go losing hope just yet. Wait till you hear what I have to say.”
—
The view from the roof was astonishing. The Silvers only had to take a few steps onto the windy lot before they saw all the way across the Hudson, to the city they’d just escaped.
From a river’s distance, Manhattan was a feast for the eyes, a utopian array of artful slopes and novel curves, winding spires and colored spheres. One tower resembled a Space Needle with twenty rings. Another looked glassy to the point of translucence. Tempic tubes connected buildings at their highest levels and every street was peppered with aer traffic. For Theo, the skyline went miles beyond modernism and deep into the realm of high-budget, “holy shit,” has-to-be-CGI sci-fi. Mia couldn’t find the words to describe the sight. It was beautiful enough to bring her to tears.
David eyed Peter curiously as the man took a slow, wincing seat in the middle of a parking space.
“You said your home was just a few steps past the elevator.”
“It is.”
“Meaning we’re about to take another portal.”
“We are,” Peter confessed, to the angry groans of Zack and Hannah. “I know. It hurts. You’ll build up a tolerance. Trust me.”
He tapped the ground with his cane. “Might as well sit and enjoy the fresh air, folks. I need a bit of rest before I open the next door.”
While the others joined him on the concrete, Zack and Amanda stayed conjoined in their tight piggyback hug. The look of desperate solace on her sister’s face prompted Hannah to lean forward and wrap her arms around Theo, her own quasi-non-boyfriend. She traded a dismal glance with Amanda. It’s never simple for us, is it?
Theo caressed her wrists, his vacant gaze stuck on the distant metropolis. “I can’t believe we were just there a minute ago.”
“I can’t believe we traveled like one of Mia’s notes,” David said. He furrowed his brow at Peter. “Wait. We didn’t jump through time, did we?”
“No. Just space. Time portals are brighter and have a strong vacuum pull. They’re also quite fatal.”
“Fatal?”
“A living being can’t handle a trip like that,” Peter explained. “I’ve seen folks try. It’s never pretty. Me, I’m perfectly happy to stay in the present. Still plenty of places to go.”
Zack eyed him sharply. “If you can jump anywhere—”
“I never said I could.”
“—why did we drive twenty-five hundred miles to get to you? Why didn’t you come get us?”
“There are limits to my talents, Zack. I can’t leap the nation. I can’t teleport someplace I’ve never been. If I had the power, believe me, I would’ve pulled you from Terra Vista before you ever met Rebel or Rander or that Dep with the funny hair.”