FutureImperfect Read Free Page B

sure how. He did it just by talking to me. I was dizzy the whole time, but I saw these…these beasts there.”
    â€œThat try to become part of the trails. That try to…happen,” Tippicks said numbly.
    It was Siara’s turn to scrunch her brow. “Yeah. Exactly. Did Harry already tell you?”
    Tippicks blank expression ruffled to life. “No, no. I…I just guessed.”
    He was lying, and it was clear from the single eyebrow she raised that she didn’t buy it. After a pause, she continued, probably figuring in for a penny, in for a pound.
    â€œHarry thinks there’s someone else in A-Time, too. He called him the Daemon. And now Harry’s…now he’s really crazy and he’s locked up and all alone, and I’m afraid something even worse is going to happen to him. I thought maybe you could help him, tell someone who might give him a chance to prove what he’s saying is true.”
    Tippicks stared at her, unable to move. He saw her shrink, fold back into her near-fetal position. After a too-long silence, a disheartened Siara Warner, eyes downcast, stood to leave.
    â€œMaybe I shouldn’t have come.”
    â€œNo,” Tippicks said. “Please. I just need some time to think. I want to help, but I’m not sure…I’m not sure where to begin. Give me some time. I’ll try to live up to your trust.”
    She scanned him, exhaled through her nose, and slipped out of his office into the noise-filled hall.
    As he saw the rush of student bodies file past his open door, Tippicks mulled her words and the guileless sincerity of her tone.
    A broken brain that saw through time. Monsters that ate fate. A place of infinite possibility that could be molded with your hands. It was almost exactly, word for word, what his father had talked about when they locked him up forever.
    Tippicks rose and closed the office door. He massaged his brow long and hard, squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, all the while remembering how his father had begged him to believe, and how he couldn’t.
    It was then that Emeril Tippicks decided he would do yet another stupid thing. He would pay a visit to Harry Keller in his padded cell just as soon as possible.
    But first, he had to find some aspirin and clean up the rest of these pens.

3.
    Mother’s voice, sweet as honey, came floating down the hall all the way into Jeremy’s room.
    â€œJeremy, is our tea ready yet?”
    Jeremy Gronson shook his head, even though he knew she couldn’t see him.
    â€œIt’s steeping. I’ve got the timer on,” he called.
    â€œExactly four and a half minutes?” his father chimed in distractedly. He could hear the old man ruffle the pages of the Wall Street Journal as he spoke.
    â€œExactly, Dad,” he answered. “Four and a half minutes.”
    He shut the door, even though he knew most of the sound would still carry.
    Shirtless, Jeremy felt the cool air in his room, the warm carpet beneath his bare feet. He bent forward, exhaling, pushing his palms to the floor, legs straight, knees not locked, back flat. A few bones in his spine loosened and clicked into place. His taut muscles burned deliciously. He inhaled slowly, exhaled even slower.
    After rolling up out of the stretch, one vertebra at a time, he turned toward a hand-carved ivory chess set on the table next to his desk and stared at the pieces. They were set up to reproduce a game he’d played with Harry Keller the other day, a game Keller would have won if the idiot had bothered staying to finish.
    Since then, Jeremy had played the moves over and over, dozens of times, on the board, on the computer, in his head, trying to figure out where he went wrong. But he couldn’t. Keller’s moves were stupid, ridiculous. They seemed to defy logic. But they worked.
    Since they worked, all that meant was that they were somehow logical, but that Jeremy didn’t see the