MADRIGAL

Chapter 12

Two days later, the group reassembled in their headquarters. Ernest lay on the couch, having left the hospital against doctor's orders. Monty leaned against a cabinet, Graham was in his chair, Deanna sat on a counter, and the rest of the women stood.

"So, let me see if I have this," Monty said. "If we do nothing, Washington goes, which is maybe one hundred thousand killed. If we stop the Monument bombing, Atlanta goes, which might result in million or more dead, right?

"Correct," Sheshai agreed.

"And we always get our information after the fact, and this time, there is no after the fact, correct?" A nod was his reply. "So maybe we track the first group of bombers, see if they lead to the second group."

Sheshai shook her head. "Since yesterday, we've tried different variations, informing the government weeks, days, even hours before the Monument attack. Every time, if the bombers didn't succeed, the nuke moved to Atlanta. No exceptions."

Monty sighed. "And there's no reason for the first group to know about the second attack. Anyone sophisticated enough to acquire a nuclear weapon probably keeps their people compartmentalized."

"This leads me to another thought." Graham interjected. "I have a timey wimey wibbley wobbley idea here. We all think that the first time Ernest looked ahead, before he met any of us, he saw a year in advance, but you were only unconscious for a day or so, right?"

Ernesto nodded. "Right."

"And it takes more than a day to experience a day in the future, right? An hour in the future takes at least an hour in the real world. Well, what if you didn't see in the future, but that time was real? What if, before your abilities, you really lived up until Memorial Day, and your mind sent you back, or you communicated your memories back? What if what happened to you doesn't stop with, but actually started with the nuclear explosion? You think that you can't see past Memorial Day, but it seems too damn coincidental that a guy with your new ability just happened to die from a nuke. Isn't it more logical that something as epic and cataclysmic as a nuclear detonation caused everything? You might have been right in the heart of it, and some force, pulse, energy, pushed you back to an earlier point in time.

"It's like your survival skill. Every time you try to go past eleven o'clock on that day, you're knocked back to the new restore point you create when you lay down. The explosion always stops you, so maybe if you stop the explosion, you can jump to a further point, or maybe your ability is only tied to the time period up to the bomb."

"That, or you die." Deanna pinched lint off her purple shirt. "That's still possible, right?"

Jane turned less to see Ernest and Graham than to ensure Deanna was not even in her peripheral vision. "It's a theory, but how does that help the situation?"

Graham tilted his head towards Ernest. "One less thing for him to worry about."

"Well, from what I'm hearing," Jane continued, "the government investigating the first bombing yielded no results, and we can't investigate the second before it happens. That leaves only one option: contact the government." Sheshai, Monty and Graham offered individual protestations, but Jane waved them down as she approached Ernest. "If what you say is true, then this is bigger than all of us. You want to save lives? Everything you want to do with this group for the next twenty years could not compare to what you could do with help on this one day. We can't be nearly as effective as receiving information directly from the source."

"You're asking him to forfeit his freedom," Sheshai said.

"Well, then, I'm sorry, but that's the price that has to be paid. We're talking about a million lives lost or a million lives saved. Face it, what you're doing is not working. You need every arm of the government working for you, not in opposition. If you fail because you're afraid of going to jail, a jail that's most people's dream of an overindulgent retirement, and if because of that, hundreds of thousands die because you didn't do everything possible, could you live with yourself, because I couldn't. Tell me I'm wrong."