I take a sip of my soda, partly to disguise how rattled I am at even having to contemplate killing anyone, but I also want to gauge their reactions. I doubt anyone at the table has qualms about killing Saul. Connor would do it with his bare hands if we had a way to push him far enough into the future that he could confront Saul one-on-one. The consensus on Simon is pretty much the same, although I wonder about Kiernan—from what he’s told me, they were once friends. I’m probably the one who’s the least okay with the idea of killing either of them, but then I’m almost certainly the one who’ll get stuck doing it. Some things sound a lot easier in the abstract.
Prudence is a different matter. She’s Katherine’s daughter, Mom’s sister, my aunt. I don’t even like to think about the possibility that the only way to end all of this is to end her, and I suspect Kiernan has similar views.
And that’s only stating the three most obvious people who might have to be killed in order to stop the Cyrists. How many others might we have to go through to get to them if or, more likely, when our cover is blown? From what Kiernan showed me at Estero, we could face quite a few who are willing to risk their lives for their beliefs. I take a deep breath, trying to forestall an anxiety spiral.
Katherine is at the opposite side of the table, her mouth pressed in a tight line. “As you said, we can cross that particular bridge when we come to it. Saul, Simon, and Prudence will be the final keys.”
Kiernan’s hand is beneath the table, and he gives my knee a brief squeeze before he speaks. “And when we do reach that bridge, you will not be on your own.” He looks over at Katherine. “I don’t know how much Kate’s told you about my relationship with your daughter. All I can say is Prudence was a very troubled young girl when I knew her, and that’s only gotten worse now that she’s older. Despite the role she played in all of this, it’s hard for me to wish her ill. She’s battling her own set of demons. Some of her own making, and others Saul created for her. But Kate knows—and I want to be certain all of you know—where my loyalties lie. Leaving aside everything they’ve taken from me, I don’t want the future they’re planning.”
Katherine nods and then says, “It’s good to know we now have two people who can use the keys on our side. Even as historians, when we were simply out there to observe, CHRONOS generally advised us to travel in pairs for the first few years. I’ve never liked the idea of Kate traveling without backup, no matter how capable she claims to be.”
I’m not sure if there was a subtle emphasis on the word claims or if I just imagined it. I flash Katherine a tight smile and look back down at the list. “So that leaves seven keys we need to find first.”
“Six,” Katherine says. “Marcus—the one who was studying the Nazis? He destroyed his key.”
“And you’re sure that he actually destroyed it?” Dad asks. “For that matter, how do you destroy the things? What are they even made of?”
“They’re made of something called trinium,” Connor says. “A superstrong alloy that hasn’t been invented yet.”
Dad raises an eyebrow. “Did you say trinium? Why does that ring a bell?”
Connor rolls his eyes. “Because it was a geek test. Trinium is a case where the sci-fi name became a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, right now, it’s sci-fi, but by Katherine’s time, some geeks gave the name to something they created that’s stronger than titanium.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s pretend that makes sense so that we can get back to Dad’s first two questions—do we know for certain this Marcus guy destroyed his key? And second, how do we destroy them?”
“I’ll add a third,” Kiernan says. “Shouldn’t you go ahead and destroy most of the ones you already have? Keeping them around seems like it’s asking for trouble.”
Connor nods. “All good points. I’ll take the second question. Short answer: you can’t physically destroy it. At least, you can’t destroy it with anything I’ve found. But you can turn it into a relatively worthless hunk of metal. The trinium casing is just the shell, inside which the time travel guts are housed.” He nods toward the medallion on Kiernan’s chest. “That thing is actually two pieces of trinium fused together. While I can’t create a high enough temperature to melt the metal, I can separate the two pieces just enough that the seam along the edge is permeable. Not easy, but it’s doable. And while the microscopic pieces inside the shell may be waterproof, they’re no match for sulfuric acid.”
“Waterproof?” Kiernan says to me out of the side of his mouth. “Knowing that would have made showering a lot easier.”
I smile, and then I feel a blush rising to my cheeks. Because now I’m visualizing Kiernan in the shower. And it’s clear from the smirk on his face that he’s guessed what I’m thinking, which, of course, makes me blush harder.
Katherine’s voice yanks me back to the here and now. “So it would actually be more correct to say that we have thirteen working keys and one useless trinket. And that is exactly what Marcus showed me when I caught up with him in Vienna a few years back. I couldn’t see the light at all, and the hourglass on the front was perfectly still. It was the only time I’d ever seen how the medallions appear to everyone else. Deborah has a point when she says it’s an eyesore.”
“But”—Connor looks around the table—“to answer Kiernan’s question, I’m not sure there’s any point in destroying them until we have them all. I know it seems like we’re tempting fate, keeping them here when Saul could probably arrange for the National Guard to take them if he really wanted to. But if someone shows up with a CHRONOS key, planning to steal our stash, and finds them deactivated, what’s he or she going to do next?”
There’s a moment of silence, and then Dad says, “Figure out when you deactivated them and storm the house just before.”
Kiernan shakes his head. “With all due respect, I disagree. Destroy them. Why make it easy? Yeah, they’ll backtrack if they don’t find them, but that may buy us a day or an hour. And we may need that day or hour. Maybe they’re waiting for us to collect them all, so they can come steal our stash.”
“Hmm . . . Grandpa has a point,” Connor admits, a bit reluctantly. “I’ll narrow it down to the minimum we need to keep the house and all of us safe, and maybe keep a spare, just in case. The rest get the acid bath.”
I grab a pen from the counter behind us. “So we mark the Nazi historian off the list, and we’re down to six. We have five that we can pin down with some degree of certainty—one in Russia in 1957, one in Port Darwin in 1942, and three in Athens, Georgia, in 1938. That leaves one.”
“Or maybe two. Saul might have traveled with two keys,” Katherine says. “I think Shaila’s was destroyed along with the others at CHRONOS headquarters, but I can’t be sure. Saul might have grabbed it.”
“Okay,” I say. “Leaving Shaila’s aside, you’re certain that other key is in the past and not ahead of our time?”
“Yes. The three cohorts were roughly divided by era, so that we had our research days to prepare for the various trips at the same time. That way, we could share expertise with others looking at the same general historical period. As I noted before, only two cohorts were in the field at a time, so that meant that the modern history group wasn’t on the jump schedule. Shaila’s was the most recent—sometime around 2020.”
“It was 2024,” Kiernan says. “That’s when Saul landed.”
“Nice to be able to pinpoint that after five decades of wondering,” Katherine says as she jots it down on the sheet in front of her. “As for that remaining key, I have nothing beyond what I put in the document I gave Kate. Esther was studying a matrilineal society in Africa sometime between 1100 and 1300. I’m pretty sure it was the Akan, which would put her location at the one and only jump site in Ghana at that time. But, that was seven hundred to nine hundred years ago. I suspect that one is buried somewhere, most likely with Esther, and will never be found. Think how long it took you to observe the various sites in Dallas, Kate. Can you imagine trying to do that over a two-hundred-year span?”