Her legs are twitching under the long skirt, as are Mary’s, so they’re still alive. A small group of people rushes forward, including an elderly man. He bends down, and it looks like he’s feeling for Eloise’s pulse. Then I realize he’s taking the knife from her hand.
Prudence’s eyes are huge, and her mouth just sort of hangs there. It’s clear that she didn’t anticipate this. I want to scream at her to say something, to speak out, because she’s the only one who has the power to stop this.
But I’m silent as Kiernan’s arms encircle me, and his fingers fly over the interface of my CHRONOS key to bring up the stable point in his room. “Kate, we have to go. There’s nothing we can do here.”
The old man raises the knife to his throat. I’m pretty sure that my nightmares aren’t going to be PG-13 tonight, and I definitely don’t want to push them up to NC-17 by watching another suicide. I snatch the medallion from Kiernan, look down at the stable point, and blink.
BOSTON
July 25, 1905, 12:05 p.m.
I arrive in Kiernan’s room and sit there, shaking, wondering where the hell he is. Then it hits me that I’m blocking the stable point, so I slide toward the bed.
When he appears, I fly at him, hitting his chest with both fists. “Why did you take me there? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Kate, I’m sorry.” He grabs my wrists and moves toward me, trying to put his arms around me, but I push him away. “I’m sorry, but you needed to see that.”
“You don’t get to decide what I need to see! Just because you showed her—”
“Damn it, Kate—no. No, no, no. That’s not it at all.” He’s still holding my wrists, and he moves closer, his deep brown eyes imploring me to listen. “She took me. That’s how I knew you needed to see it. I’ve seen that look of doubt before, not in your—” He sighs. “I didn’t see it in her eyes. I saw it in my own, in the mirror.”
He lets go of my wrists and slumps back against the side of the bed. “Kate made me go back to Estero and see it again. Reminded me just how seriously they take their beliefs and how far they might go to protect them. Reminded me that any group that would stand by and encourage or even allow that type of fanaticism must be opposed. I’m sorry you had to see that. But I still think it was the right thing to do.”
A little of the anger drains away, but my eyes are still stinging as I blink back tears. “What happened to the rest of them, Kiernan? The others in the stable? How many died?”
“Only three died in the stable. Then Pru snapped out of it and told them to stop—said that even the purest of soul and body couldn’t be resurrected if they resorted to suicide. Told them they had to trust God and the Prophets to know when their time was right, instead of taking it into their own hands. But two more still took their lives before it died down.”
“So five people?”
He nods. “The community wanted all five of them put in tubs like Koresh had been. Of course, none of them were resurrected, and that’s where the old timeline and the new merge a bit—the county health inspector showed up and made them bury the bodies after about a week. Annie Ordway was more than happy to comply, of course—she was suspicious of Pru from the beginning—but she sacrificed her last bit of credibility with the group when she ordered the burials. They pushed her out. And, yeah, they voted her out in the other timeline, too, but it took a lot longer. Once she’s gone, Pru became the leader, although really she was more of a figurehead, since she was gone most of the time.”
I’m silent for a moment, thinking through everything he’s just told me. “Wait . . . you said Kate made you go back? You were there when it happened?”
He stares at the floor, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t see anything other than Pru all lit up. I was at the rear of the stable, with Simon. I helped him set up the lighting.”
“So you knew what had happened? That those people cut . . .”
“Yes, but it wasn’t like that was part of the plan, Kate. You saw Pru’s face. She was shocked. I don’t know if Saul had any clue that something like that might happen, but she didn’t. She was really upset about it. We all were.”
My mouth tightens. “Not too upset, or one of you would have gone back and changed it.”
He shakes his head. “Pru thought about it, or at least she said she did. But Saul was set against it, and he convinced her those deaths would serve as a warning to others not to assume they were pure enough to be . . . resurrected. Or reincarnated, whatever you want to call it. Rebooted was Simon’s word for it. Anyway, Saul’s argument was that those deaths would deter others and make the community easier to control. It was for the greater good.”
“And everyone just said, ‘Okay, Saul, whatever you say, Saul’? You, too? No one questioned him at all?”
There’s a defensive note in his voice when he responds. “I was barely sixteen, Kate. And tell me, why didn’t you yell out that Prudence was a fraud just now? Why didn’t you scream when you saw that first woman fall?”
My eyes narrow. “I very nearly did, but we both know that’s not the same thing, Kiernan! I was observing something that has already happened. If I screamed, what might have changed? Another timeline where I don’t exist? Prudence deciding this little truce we have is off? I couldn’t risk that. And it all happened so fast—”
“Exactly. It all happened so fast,” he says. “Step back for a minute, and think about what you’re saying. Try to see it from my perspective back then. I’m not making excuses for anything, Kate. I was a Cyrist. You know that. I didn’t fully trust them, but Mum did.”
“But why? You told her about your suspicions. Why would she trust them?”
“Yeah, back when I was eight.” He laughs, but it’s bitter. “Did your mum listen to you about anything even slightly important when you were eight? Mum was unskilled, widowed, and she had a kid to feed. And I was still a kid, no matter how grown-up I tried to act. The Cyrists offered her food and shelter for the both of us, and she took it, gratefully. That’s true of many, many people who’ve followed them over the years, Kate. I lived there among them for eight years. Longer than Da was around. You start seeing things different after a while.”
He leans back, his elbows on the bed, his face pointed toward the ceiling, still covered with those improbable stars, and lets out a slow breath. “I think trusting them was the only thing that kept my mother sane after my dad died. Because she’s the reason he took that job at the Expo when Pru brought it up. She talked him into trusting Prudence. If she hadn’t, he’d never have been at the Ice House the day it caught fire and he was killed. So if she was wrong about trusting Pru and the Cyrists . . . well, then maybe she’s the reason he died, you know?”
He closes his eyes and is silent for a moment. “I never blamed her. But I knew she blamed herself, so I bit back my suspicions, and we returned to the Farm after the Expo closed down. When they merged with the Koreshans and moved to Estero, we followed.
“Three months before that night in the stable, Simon took me around on a little time tour, to locations selected by Saul. Or maybe older Pru chose them. I don’t know for sure. Ever seen videos of concentration camps? Genocide? Nuclear or chemical weapons? One stop was in Africa—a place called Chad—in the early 2020s. A famine in the region, made worse by climate change. Add in refugees and groups who turned on each other when the food and water got scarce. The stack of bodies was taller than I was, and there were dozens of those stacks, Kate. In just that one town. And the rest of the world did nothing until it was too late. That famine was only one of the many places he showed me. Let’s just say that 2070 isn’t a pleasant decade between the bioweapons and—” He opens his eyes and shifts them in my direction. “I’m guessing you don’t want the gory details?”