The Collapse: Time Bomb Read online

  The Collapse: Time Bomb

  Penelope Wright

  Copyright 2019 by Penelope Wright

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review to print in a magazine, newspaper, or blog post.

  Cover design by Nicole Conway

  For my husband, Travis Wright

  Contents

  I. April 19, 2006

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  II. June 19, 2018

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Sneak Peek at PARADOX RISING

  Also by Penelope Wright

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Part I

  April 19, 2006

  “She’s going down the alley!”

  I don’t spare time for a look over my shoulder. These cops aren’t on foot like last time. I’m dealing with bike cops, and I won’t stay ahead of them much longer.

  I thought it was a good plan, going to the methadone clinic first. Clearly, I’d been wrong. When I showed up at Seattle Needle Exchange, it was like they’d been waiting for me. Maybe they had been. This wasn’t the first time we’d hit them. And it wouldn’t be the last.

  I tug on the knot that holds my shield sack to my body. It’s tight and the bag’s contents are secure. I try to push an extra burst of energy out of my legs. It’s no use. I’ll never make it to Columbia Tower before they catch me. My eyes dart around frantically and fall on Safeco Tower. It’s farther downhill than Columbia, so I’ll have to climb more flights of stairs before it’s safe to plunge. But that’s fine by me. Bike cops will have to dismount to follow me. Nobody from 2006 is going to catch up to me on stairs.

  I dash into the lobby of Safeco. It’s seven o’clock at night, but there’s still a bunch of people around. I know this place almost as well as my own tower, though the lower floors aren’t accessible where I’m from. I know exactly how to access the stairs from the ground floor, and I burst through the door and gallop up two steps at a time. A cop is right behind me, the door doesn’t even close all the way before he’s throwing his body against it, but I’m already on the second floor.

  I have to get to the twentieth floor before I plunge. Safeco’s only flooded up to the fifteenth floor, but if there’s a storm, waves can send detritus as high as the nineteenth. I don’t want to go home to the present, only to be knocked out by a rogue wave of junk. I hear the cops down below, out of breath, unable to keep up with me. I pull way ahead.

  I allow myself a small smile when I reach the landing marked 18. The smile is wiped completely off my face when a stairwell door two stories above me smacks open with a hollow boom. “Hold it right there. You’re under arrest,” a man’s voice shouts from above. Dammit! He must have taken an elevator to get ahead of me. I always forget about those.

  Under arrest? Oh no I’m not. I can’t let them take me to the King County juvenile detention center. Dad flew me over it once in a helicopter. It’s way too far from the Towers. Even if I could somehow swim the debris filled waters between juvie and Columbia Tower, the radiation would fry me.

  I whip my helmet out of my vest pocket and Velcro it all the way around my jacket collar. I ratchet the two locks on either side of my collarbone. The guy above me stands on the landing of the nineteenth floor. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks in bewilderment.

  I push the extra-long sleeves of my jacket up to my elbows. I unzip my left vest pocket and peel away the second skin to reveal my port-a-cath.

  The cop takes slow, cat-like steps down the stairs, his hands held cautiously out in front of him. “Just take it easy,” he says. From below me, I can hear lumbering steps and the heavy panting of his partner.

  I unzip my right pocket and pull out my hypodermic.

  “Nobody move,” the cop above me shouts. “The suspect has a weapon.” His hand flies to his gun hip.

  I flick the cap off the hypodermic needle. I don’t have time for a proper countdown. Plunge. I thrust the needle into my port-a-cath and depress it. Withdraw. I slide it out. Drop. I open my hand and the spent hypodermic falls to the floor.

  The officer throws himself at me, knocking me to the ground.

  Slap. I flip the second skin back over my exposed port-a-cath, covering it up. Zip. I barely manage to zip the flap on my vest before the cop has wrestled my arms behind my back. He can’t seem to find my wrists under the extra-long sleeves of my jacket.

  It would be better if the cop wasn’t here to witness this, but it’s not the end of the world.

  Everybody knows that’s not for another thirteen years.

  Spots bloom in front of my eyes and grow big enough to burst into a shower of black glitter, and I slip into the void.

  Chapter One

  March 14, 2074

  I emerge face down on the eighteenth-floor landing in Safeco Tower with my hands behind my back. My head pounds, but I have to get to a comm. The lowest year-round habitable floor is two stories above me, on twenty. I stagger to my feet and trudge upward.

  Droplets of water mist the viewing shield of my helmet and I look to my right. There’s a gaping hole in the brick. I wonder how long that’s been an issue. It’s been at least three years since I’ve been in Safeco. It’s only two blocks north and a block downhill from where I live in Columbia, but I rarely leave my own tower. Even the important adults don’t building-hop much.

  The climb to the twentieth floor isn’t difficult at all, just a couple of pieces of flotsam to avoid. A picker must have come through recently. That and the day seems fairly calm. That’s a stroke of luck, especially in March.

  I breathe a sigh of relief when I reach the twentieth story landing but wonder who I’ll startle when I emerge from the stairwell. It doesn’t matter which tower you’re in, only a couple classes of people go anywhere near the flood line, and I am obviously neither a flotsam picker nor a building inspector.

  I shove open the interior door, the same one the cop burst through a few minutes ago, back in 2006. Dandelions and nettles grow in vertical hydroponic rows. An attendant mists precious pure water along the stacks.

  “Excuse me,” I call out, grateful that I didn’t barge into someone’s living quarters.

  The attendant is so startled, he nearly drops his mister, which would have been a disaster, but he fumbles with it for a second and gets it back under control.

  “Who are you?” He clenches his fists, like he’s ready to dash my brains in.

  “My name is Rosarita,” I say. “Rosarita Columbia.” He stiffens and straightens up at my last name. “And I need to borrow your comm.”

  The gardener nods curtly and leads me to a box with a button pad. He looks away discreetly, like we do, as I punch in the number to Dad’s private line.

  My father picks up on the first beep. “Hello?”

  “Dad!”

  “Rosie!” He bellows loud enough to wilt the plants, and my stomach rumbles. Wilted dandelion leaves sound wonderful. Man, I’m hungry.

  “Hey…” I rub my toe in
to the smooth floor. “I had a bit of an issue with, you know, what I was working on. I’m in Safeco Tower. Can you, uh, come and get me?”

  Ten minutes later, I’m slumped in a chair in General Enrique Safeco’s quarters on the fiftieth floor. My head is pounding, which is weird, because the return trip usually isn’t hard on the brain. Sometimes I lose my helmet in the past and I don’t have it for the return. It’s never been an issue. This time I was wearing it and my head feels like it’s going to cleave in two.

  The comm on the desk emits a burst of static. “Rosie?”

  “General Safeco?” I answer. It’s not my dad’s voice, and who else would know I’m here?

  “Yes. I’m sorry I’m not there to greet you. I had an issue arise on forty-five.” As the commander of this tower and one of Dad’s top military leaders, I’m sure he feels a responsibility to be here, but I’m also sure he has more important things to worry about than a wayward teenage girl lounging in his living room. What was I supposed to say? ‘I almost got caught stealing Botox and syringes sixty-eight years ago, and unfortunately I ended up in your building instead of mine, my bad?’

  “That’s okay.”

  “Your father commed. He’s on his way. Wait five minutes, then go upstairs to the decon chamber and prep for transport. It’s the same layout as Columbia, you won’t have a problem finding what you need. If I can, I’ll come upstairs to see you off.”

  “Thank you, Sir, I appreciate the use of your building and your facilities,” I say. I don’t tell him that I won’t need the plastic sheeting in his decon room; the suit I wear when I’m time traveling is more than enough to keep the radiation at bay. Maybe I should put the sheeting over my suit anyway, to disguise it. Safeco doesn’t know about the time travel program. Only Dad and I do. I don’t want to waste the sheeting, but I also don’t want to raise unnecessary questions in Safeco’s mind about what I’m wearing.

  I grind my teeth, then snap my jaw wide open. I need those molars to stay healthy. I’ll decide what to do about the sheeting when I get upstairs.

  I curl back into the cushy chair, and my mind wanders for the next few minutes. Dad might be upset that he had to use aviation fuel to come get me from the wrong tower, but he’ll be really happy about the chemicals and supplies I’ve brought back. Hopefully my haul from 2006 is enough to cancel out the unnecessary waste of fuel. Of course, if I’d planned better, I wouldn’t have been chased in the first place. I close my eyes. My five minutes are up.

  I rise to my feet and climb to the decon chamber. A strip of test tape flutters just outside the window. It’s to gauge the burn level. I know that the numbers one through five are printed on that test tape, but the one, two and three have faded, and all I can read are the four and five.

  Ugh, a four. It’s better than a five, but still, a bad day to have Dad flying around out there in a helicopter. I guess I should be thankful I arrived in Safeco Tower rather than somewhere farther away or harder to get to, like the Washington Mutual Tower, or, god forbid, the Space Needle. The less time spent outdoors, the better.

  I hear rotor blades chopping the air, and Dad’s helicopter is suddenly there in front of me, six feet above the roof’s surface. I’m not going to sheet up. I don’t need to; it’s a waste of the Safeco Tower supplies, and no one’s here to see me in my weird silver time travel suit anyway. I pull my flexible helmet from under my arm, jam it over my head, and step out onto the roof.

  The helicopter touches down, its nose facing me. I see the pilot and my father seated side by side. I raise my hands in the air a second before the third man bursts out the helicopter’s side door; I know the procedure. He points his machine gun at me. I make sure he sees that there’s nothing in my hands. Keeping the gun steady, he wiggles his head to the left and the right, giving me permission – and an order – to take off my helmet. Well, at least I had it on for thirty seconds. I lift it over my head in a smooth motion. A smile cracks Dad’s face briefly before his expression returns to his typical stern public façade.

  Dad’s guard pats down my shield sack, which is strapped across my body. I’m sure he’s feeling for weapons, but he doesn’t peek inside. Dad’s orders, I assume. I keep my eyes fixed on my father, these pat-downs are standard but they always creep me out.

  Dad’s eyes widen, and he looks past me. He lifts his hand in greeting, and a weird expression flits across his face that I can’t quite name.

  General Safeco must have come upstairs, like he said he would, to see me off. I don’t turn though. I’m not allowed to move a muscle until Dad’s guard says I can. The guard’s eyes flick to my father, who gives him the okay sign. He shoulders his weapon and steps aside so I can pass by and enter the copter.

  Before I do, though, I turn to look at General Safeco. He’s one of the oldest members of our community, so he’s always seemed ancient to me. It’s been about five years since the last time he came to Columbia in person, but he looks even older than I expect him to, and that’s saying something. He was a teenager during The Collapse; one of the few people alive who remembers it. He must be around seventy now, but he looks two hundred.

  Before I even know what I’m doing, I wave at General Safeco. “See ya later!” I call.

  His mouth drops open and he presses his hands against the Gila-shielded glass. I’m mortified. See ya later? Where on Earth had that come from? I bet no one’s ever treated him so informally in his own tower, let alone David Columbia’s daughter. Now Dad will probably have to send a formal, respectful apology. God, could I screw this day up even more? I fall heavily into my seat in the helicopter. I avert my eyes and stare at my folded hands, properly deferential now, but just a bit too late.

  It doesn’t take long to debrief Dad once we get back to Columbia. I wasn’t gone that many days, and I did return with everything on the list.

  From the debrief, we move on to strategy. Traveling to the 2000s means Google is everywhere, so I have the ability to do good research. I spent a little time at the Seattle Public Library and I found an article about a needle exchange in Tacoma that was founded in 1988. Of course we’ve never hit it, because we haven’t known about it until now. Dad hadn’t specifically given me a research goal, but he’s proud of my initiative.

  We brainstorm a future hypo mission. Tacoma is close enough that we can copter there and back in our time, if we wanted to. Not that we ever do. No one’s gone there in my lifetime. Tacoma is nothing more than the tops of a few deserted buildings poking out of the water. Anything useful there was harvested decades ago. But now that I’ve learned they have a late-eighties needle exchange, maybe we’ll make the trip.

  Dad steeples his fingers together and touches his lips thoughtfully. “We could land a copter on 1201 Pacific. Nice flat roof, built in 1970, flooded to the twentieth floor, top three floors accessible.”

  I nod. “I could begin the journey from a stairwell on the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, or twenty-fifth floor. I’m sure I could find one that’s easy enough to clear of debris. We wouldn’t need a travel chamber or anything, there’s no risk of anyone seeing me dematerialize since Tacoma’s uninhabited. I could return to Tacoma as well, assuming we can spare the aviation fuel.”

  Dad inhales sharply at the word ‘assume,’ which is one of his least favorites. Assumptions get people lost or dead, and I immediately regret choosing that word. “I’m sorry Dad. It seems like whenever I go to the past, I act like a zed for a while.” I put my hands over my face. “I waved at General Safeco and said ‘see ya later’ before I got in the helicopter,” I mumble miserably.

  Dad snorts and relief surges through me. I part my fingers and peer at Dad with a tiny smile. “He must have felt like a teenager,” Dad chuckles. “I’ll send an apology for your breach of protocol, but between you and me, I think it’s funny, and I am the president.”

  The zeds I navigate around when I’m in the past would probably think the way we treat each other is crazy here in 2074, but when you live the way we do, with so little s
pace and such limited resources, you must have order, and order demands formality. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Let’s wrap up for now. You brought back enough hypodermics to last us six months, probably longer. I’ll see where we’re at with av-fuel, and I’ll let you know if we need you for a Tacoma mission. You did good work, Rosie.”

  I glow with pride. Dad loves me, but he’s really stingy with compliments. These might need to last me a while.

  “Head to your quarters.” Dad pats me on the back. “Comm your letter-mate, get caught up on the last few days’ lessons. Say ‘hello’ to Sarah.”

  My shoulders sag a fraction. If Dad notices, he doesn’t say anything about it, he just gives me a couple more commands. “Listen to a game. Relax.”

  “With Sarah?” My face screws up. Spending time with her is the opposite of relaxing.

  “If you’d like, but you’re free to make your own choice. Perhaps your letter-mate. What’s her name again?”

  “Ellen.”

  “Ah yes, I remember. One of the Banks, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s lucky to have you.”

  I feel lucky to have her too, but as a resident of one of the difficult-to-access Banking towers, Ellen was pretty far down the list to get a replacement letter-mate after her original letter-mate, Enid, died when they were seven. Failure to thrive. Ellen flew solo for four years. I was eleven when I lost Rachel. That’s the way it is in the towers. Some people, like Enid, die. But far more, like Rachel, are simply lost, and we never know what happened.