Violet is right. I can’t run forever. I have to get this tracker out of my arm. But how?
And then I see a man selling cheese and eggs from a wooden pushcart. There’s a knife sitting right beside him.
Oh my God. Can I do this?
POP!
I have to. I spin the year dial a half turn, grab the knife, and shut the lid as Yellow lurches toward me.
My body explodes again. I can’t take this.
I’m gasping for breath on the side of Tremont Street. People are still yelling. It’s a never-ending symphony of screams, a cacophony of horrors, shrieks following me through time. I run down a side street. I don’t know when I am. Sometime when women wore long dresses and men wore top hats. But there’s no time to process. I have to do this.
I yell and plunge the knife into my forearm. Pain explodes through my entire body. I scream like I’ve never screamed before, and people on the street run away from me with horrified looks on their faces. I twist the knife into my arm and choke back tears.
I don’t have much more time. A few seconds.
Blood spills out onto my light-pink sweater, and I drop the knife and press on the wound. I move the skin around, looking, searching. Every movement is agony. My vision is getting blurry, but I focus on something green and metallic. The size of a computer chip. I blink. That’s it! I pull it out.
POP!
I hold on to the tracker with my left hand while spinning the year, month, and day dials with my right.
“Iris!”
My heart skips a beat. I don’t need to look. I can tell by the voice. It’s Indigo.
“Iris, stop running!” He holds up a taser as he charges toward me. His eyes are sad. Regretful. “I don’t want to have to . . .”
I push myself up from the wall, cradling my blood-soaked arm. I sway to the side. I’ve never been this dizzy before.
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. “We’re done here.”
I throw the blood-spattered tracker at his feet and shut the watch. And I’m gone.
CHAPTER 19
I land in a crumpled heap on the street. Tears flow down my cheeks, and I don’t try to stop them. Blood seeps out of my arm, and my body feels as if it’s just been stretched on the rack. I take short, shallow breaths.
When am I? I need to figure this out. I need to get to a hospital. I’m losing too much blood.
I push myself up and stumble back onto Tremont Street. A horse trots past, pulling a carriage. Horses still? I didn’t go very far. But then a car whizzes past. An old Ford Model T. And then another.
So I’m in the twentieth century. The early-twentieth century. The 1920s. The 1930s. I don’t know. I can’t breathe.
There’s a man ahead wearing a white butcher’s apron. He’s standing outside his shop hammering a board with meat prices onto a rail. Dead, skinned animals hang in the window. I stumble over to him, and he gasps and drops his hammer.
“Miss, are you all right? Let me help you!” He grabs hold of my waist, and I have to fight every impulse in my body not to allow myself to sink into his arms and drift off to sleep. . . .
“What year is this?” I whisper.
“Ssh,” the butcher says. “Don’t speak. Rogers!” he yells to a man down the street. “Come help me! This girl needs help!”
“What year is this?” I repeat.
“It’s 1921,” he says. “What happened to you? Were you attacked? Can you describe your attacker? Where else are you hurt?”
“What’s the date?” I whisper. I’m so dizzy. Faint. I’m fading.
“May the fourth,” he says.
The other man rushes up, takes one look at me, and gasps. “Why, she’s been stabbed!”
May 4, 1921.
“She needs the hospital!” the butcher says. “Flag down a car. We’ll take her to Mass General.”
The hospital. I do need the hospital. But not in 1921. I need blood. I’m losing too much. I don’t know if they have blood in 1921 like they do in the present.
“Help me up,” I whisper, pushing away from the butcher. The files and notebook start to slip from my hands, so I hug them closer to my chest.
“Let me take those,” the other man says. He grabs at the files and tries to pull them away, but I yank back.
“No!” I croak. So dizzy. So weak. Blood is seeping from my arm. “I have to go.”
“We’re taking you to the hospital,” the first man says. He loops a hand under my knees and I’m in his arms, still holding the files. They’re slipping.
“Let me down!” In my mind I scream it, but in reality it’s barely a whisper. The cobblestone street is swirling in front of me as we walk. I have to get out of here. I don’t have much longer until I pass out. If I pass out here, I’m dead.
The files are plastered to my chest, and I can feel the watch pressing into my sternum. I slide one hand under the files and grab hold of the pendant with my pinky finger, then bring it to the front. I pop open the lid and turn the dial one whole rotation. Sixty years. That will take me to 1981. When did they start screening blood? I don’t know.
I keep turning, concentrating and counting as best I can. Black spots cloud my vision. I think I’ve turned it so that I’ll go back a year before I left. But I don’t know. Now I have to get free from these men so I can disappear.
“You have to let me down,” I whisper.
He doesn’t hear me.
“Sir, please,” I whisper. “You have to let me down.”
He doesn’t even look at me. Am I really speaking or am I only thinking the words in my head?
But I have to go. I’m fading.
“I’m sorry.” I shut the watch.
The pain is blinding. I can’t take this. It’s too much. I’m fading. I’m flying. I’m done.
When I come to, I’m in a sterile, pale-green room with linoleum floors. There are two IVs stuck in my arm, one pumping blood into my body, the other giving me fluids. I’m wearing a hospital gown. I gasp and bolt up. When am I? Did I make it? My eyes dart around the room. I’m in a hospital bed. I’m in a hospital. Where are my files?
A nurse rushes in.
“Honey, lie down!” she commands. “Now! You lost a lot of blood.”
“The files I had with me,” I gasp. “Where are they?”
“You need to lie down,” the nurse says. She takes hold of my shoulders and guides me to the pillow. She’s bony and thin, with flabby arms. Under normal circumstances, I could push her off me and get out of here. But today she feels like a linebacker.
“The files—”
“Are right there.” The nurse points to a small wooden table a few feet away from the bed.
I blow out every ounce of air that had been housed in my lungs. They’re safe. Now if this nurse will just get out of here, I can grab them and go.
“Don’t you want to know how you got here?” the nurse asks, hands on her hips.
I shake my head. Not really. All that’s important is that I’ve been stitched up and pumped full of blood, and now I’m ready to disappear again.
“An ambulance brought you.” Her voice drips with no-nonsense attitude. “You were found lying in the middle of Tremont Street with a huge gash in your arm. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. God, just leave already!
“What’s your name?”
What is my name? That’s an excellent question. It sure as hell isn’t Iris. Maybe it’s Amanda again, but I’m not going to tell her that.
“Jane Smith.”
The nurse raises an eyebrow. “We’ll chat later.”
The door hasn’t even fully shut when I rip the fluid IV out of my arm. I leave in the one giving me blood. There’s half the bag left. I’ll wait until it’s drained, then I’m out.