Disrupted Read Free Page B

rolled from my shoulders. Chris, on the other hand, was rigid and mute, his face screwed into a frown as he stared at Drustan.
    “It’s okay,” I said softly, folding my fingers over his arm, “he said it’s complicated, not fatal.”
    “Yeah, right.” Chris wrenched his arm away from me.
    Drustan came closer. “You’re not supposed to be dead, Christian. The past has been altered. The changes have only just begun rippling through to us, but we’re fairly confident that so long as you’re here with us in the future and alive, that wave cannot actually crash.”
    “ Fairly confident?” I didn’t like the doubtful expression in our expert’s eyes. If he didn’t know, who did? Not me, that was for sure.
    “Back in your time,” explained Drustan, “Christian remains dead and the chain reaction will continue weaving through the time lattice, imploding historical fact as we know it. If that reaction reaches certain critical events, the means for me to go back and save Christian may no longer exist. We are uncertain as to how such a paradox will resolve itself.”
    This didn’t sound like much of a plan to me. “So Chris could just go ‘Poof!’ at any moment?”
    “Be assured, Miss Ervant, we will find what triggered these events and reverse it. We cannot allow Christian to die. Failure is not an option.”
    The way he said it was ominously ironic, tagged with unspoken plots and sub plots and alternative endings. The recap went something like this: “We cannot allow Christian to die. Because if that happened, the death of one teenage boy from Biggs Hill will be the least of anyone’s troubles.”
    “That’s if I’m even dead,” said Chris, giving Drustan a mutinous look. “Who died and made you God, anyway?”
    It would have been cruel to state the obvious, so I didn’t. “Listen to him, Chris. He said he won’t allow you to die.”
    “Shut up, Willow.”
    “I’m only trying to help.”
    “Yes, and every time you help, my life stinks a little worse. So just don’t, okay?”
    “I wish you’d both shut up,” muttered Drustan, which was so far from his earlier mild manner, Chris and I did just that.
    “Thank you,” said Drustan, reverting to self. He pushed up his left sleeve to reveal a chunky diver’s watch with lots of circles within circles. Before I could get a closer look, he pressed a button and then brought one hand down on each of our shoulders and muttered, “TIC, transmute to my apartment now.”
    I blinked involuntarily as a hot force struck my shoulder and then flashed through my entire body. Bones quivering, I came out of that blink with a nasty suspicion.
    Totally justified.

 
     
    Chapter 3
     
     
     
    “Y ou Leaped us again,” I accused, taking in the sleek leather sofa propped with marble end tables, the plush rug and plain white walls. Except for one wall, that was glass from ceiling to floor.
    “We transmuted, Miss Ervant,” said Drustan, releasing my shoulder. “A shift in space only. We’re still in the year 2106.”
    I once again found myself needing to test wobbly legs. Chris, apparently much better at this mutant froggy stuff, drifted over to the window in something of a daze. Probably looking for a way to blame this on Jack as well.
    “Wanda,” commanded Drustan. He folded his arms, looking intently at nothing in the middle of the sparsely furnished room.
    And then suddenly there was something, a shimmering electrostatic buzz that slowly took the holographic form of a woman. The image sparked and crackled a couple of times, then the woman became a whole lot less holographic and a whole lot more real.
    “Sorry about that,” she said, smoothing a hand through her shoulder length hair. “My circuits are playing up again.”
    “Didn’t Monty sort that out?” asked Drustan.
    “He came, he left.” She shrugged an elegant shoulder, her blue eyes sweeping over me to Chris, who’d turned from the window to watch. “You know how useless he is.”
    “In