CHAPTER ONE
THIS IS WHAT I see when my eyes are closed.
A setting sun casting its golden light over Mission Bay.
A campfire crackling inside a circle of stone on the beach.
A sailboat gliding across the water on its way to who knows where.
And the first twinkle of starlight fighting through the not quite night sky.
This is what I feel.
The sand under me, still warm from the fading day.
My girlfriend Iffy, leaning against my side, her head on my shoulder.
My sister Ellie, sitting close enough that her nearness is as real as a touch.
And my heart, full as it could ever be, of love and contentment and peace.
But then, as always, my eyes must open again. And this perfect moment—a moment that has yet to be/may never be/must be—returns to its box in my mind.
WAKE UP.
CHAPTER TWO
AS IT HAS every morning since I’ve been here, the clanging of the bell outside my cell rips me from my sleep.
Around me I hear Jovan and my other five cellmates stir in their bunks and start the process of getting up. I’m not ready for the night to end, though. I turn away from the door and squeeze my eyes shut in hopes of bringing Iffy and Ellie back.
But it’s not to be. The overhead lights flicker on, bathing the room in a harsh blue glare that bleeds through my eyelids. A moment later, Jovan shoves me in the back.
“Up,” he mutters. Not in English, of course, but old Latin. We discovered in the first few days after we met that it’s a language in which we both know a few words.
English as I know it has never existed in this version of the world. My best guess is that Jovan’s language is a mix of a dozen or more tongues from Asia and Arabia and Europe. Because of the mangled way it sounds, I’ve dubbed it Mushian, though Mushish was in the running for a while. The historian in me would love to unravel how it developed, while the practical side of me knows the information would be useless. I don’t need to waste time learning the history. The words that will help me survive are the only things worth learning, something I’ve only just begun.
I hold my position for a moment longer, Iffy’s face a ghost in front of my closed eyes, and then, before Jovan can shove me again, I climb out of bed.
As best as I can guess, I’ve been in this world for a bit more than a month. What I know for sure is I’ve been in this cell for twenty-seven days. I keep track by scratching small lines on the frame of the bed. Where it gets sketchy is the period of time before I was brought here. I was kept in a dark cell where I was unable to determine how many days passed. I also don’t know how long I was unconscious after the soldiers found me in the field where Lidia died. My estimate can’t be too far off, though, because the cut on my hand from Lidia’s knife when we fought—before I killed her—is still tender to the touch.
Lidia.
The self-proclaimed goddess of destruction I chased through time, unable to do more than watch as she wreaked havoc on whatever point in history she chose. It wasn’t until we arrived here, in a very different, very changed twenty-first century from the one I’d left, that I was finally able to get the upper hand. But all that damage she created is still out there, and nothing will be the same until I repair it. A task my current situation is not helping.
I’m sure the prison I’m in has a name, but if anyone has told me what it is, I haven’t understood it. It’s another unnecessary detail, though. The only things that matter are the obstacles to my freedom—high walls of thick stone surrounding the facility, and the armed guards who control our every move.
All prisoners wear jumpsuits. Most, like mine, are red. A few are decked out in bright blue, and a handful in yellow. I don’t know for sure what the colors mean but it’s easy enough to guess. Red is general population, blue is worn by the prisoners who seem to have earned a favored place with the guards, and yellow denotes troublemakers. The blue and the red mix freely, while those in yellow are kept apart from us and watched over by their own set of guards.
I pull on my jumpsuit and take my place in line by the bunks, a few moments before Morning Inspector enters. I don’t know what his real title is. That’s just my name for him. He hasn’t missed a day since I’ve been here. I guess the guards, like the prisoners, don’t get time off. He does, however, have a counterpart who visits us in the evenings, but that guy seems to be only going through the paces, while I get the sense Morning Inspector relishes his job.
He usually takes a moment to scan the room, after which he walks down the line of prisoners, glaring at each of us before ordering us into the hallway. This morning, though, he stops in front of me and sneers.
I tense. This is the first time he’s ever done this. When he speaks, the only word I recognize is their version of you. I learned that one early on, after not responding to it resulted in the butt of a rifle slamming into my stomach.
His other words have no meaning, but he knows this. All the guards and all the prisoners know this. I’m the curiosity, the foreigner who speaks a language no one else does. The guards take pleasure in berating me with what I assume are insults, while the other prisoners mostly just avoid me.
Jovan is the exception. He is as close to a friend as I have here and has taken on the role of steering me away from trouble. When possible, that is.
The inspector says something that sounds like a question and continues staring at me.
When it becomes clear he’s waiting for a response, I use one of the few phrases Jovan has taught me. “Apologies, sir. No understand.” At least, I think that’s what it means. What it sounds like is a garbled mess.
When the inspector howls in laughter, the other guards and even a few of my cellmates join in. I’m guessing my pronunciation isn’t the best. That’s okay. They can have their fun. They need to enjoy life while they can because they’ll all vanish the instant I fix what Lidia did to the timeline. Which is exactly what I’ll do when I figure out how to get out of here and find my chaser—my time traveling device.
When the inspector finally stops chuckling, he orders us out of the room. None the wiser as to why he singled me out, I march down the hall with my cellmates and join the line of other prisoners heading to the cafeteria.
We are allotted twenty minutes for meals. The time frame includes however long it takes to shuffle through the line and find someplace to sit. If you are at the end of the line, you start eating the moment the food is put on your tray or you’ll go hungry.
The second our time runs out, a bell similar to the one near my cell rings and everyone immediately stops eating and stands up. Another ring and we make our way to the specific doorway that leads to our work assignment and join yet another line. When everyone is in place, a third clang sends us on our way.
My job is in the metal shop where inmates make things like brackets and braces for uses I have not even tried to figure out. My job is to wheel a bin around the room and collect scrap I then take to the furnace room, where it’s all melted down to be used again. At least I don’t have to stoke the fires. That seems like a truly miserable job.
Jovan also works in the shop, though his is one of the craftsman jobs, meaning he gets to sit all day at a machine. In his case, it’s one that bends metal into whatever shape is needed.
The best part of working in the shop is that we cross the open yard to get there. Since we’re kept indoors most of the time, everyone, guards included, takes a deep breath as we step into the fresh air. What I love about these few moments is seeing the sky. It doesn’t matter if it’s clear or cloudy, it’s the only thing that’s the same in all three of the timelines in which I’ve lived. And for a moment, however brief, I can pretend I’m home with Iffy and Ellie. That I’m free and this madness is behind me.
There are four guards standing outside the door to the metal shop when we arrive. They seem disinterested in our little parade until it’s my turn to enter the building.
“You,” one of them says, pointing at me.
When I stop, Jovan bumps into me from behind.
The guard says something, and the few prisoners behind Jovan circle around us and go inside. Jovan hesitates, but a bark from the guard gets him moving.
The look in his eyes is one of concern as he passes me. I share his sentiment.
The guards who escorted us from the cafeteria follow my friend inside and pull the door shut, leaving me alone with the four others.
The main guard says something to me again and I give him my no understand line. There’s no laughter this time. Instead, the man nods in my direction and two of his associates grab my arms. They guide me around the shop and into a building I’ve never been inside at the far corner of the yard.
We enter a square room about twice the size of my cell. The wall to my right appears to be made entirely of thick glass or clear plastic, and through it I can see another room where several guards sit, looking at video monitors that show images from around the prison.
My new companions yank me through another door into a long, empty hallway. Our footsteps echo off the tiled floor as we pass several closed doors. Finally we stop at one that looks no different from the others. The main guard taps on it twice and takes a step back.
The door opens almost immediately, revealing a uniformed woman. I recognize her right away. She was in the examining room where I woke up after I passed out in the field next to Lidia’s body. She is also the person who had me taken to the dark cell I was in before I was transferred here.
Her humorless, almost accusatory expression hasn’t changed. She motions for me to enter and says something to my guards. As soon as I pass inside, she shuts the door.
The woman says something to me and points toward the table in the center of the room, where three other people—two men and another woman—sit on the side facing us. I walk over and take one of the two empty chairs on my side. The uniformed woman lowers into the seat next to me and speaks for a few moments to her associates.
The man in the center is the oldest person in the room, in his seventies at least. His silver hair is flecked with black, and the skin on his face is pulled unnaturally tight, giving him a perpetually toothless grin. To his right is the other man, younger but not by much. His hair is mostly gone, though a rim of gray hugs the back of his head from ear to ear.
The woman to the older man’s left is much younger. If she is forty, I would be surprised. Her dark hair is pulled back into a bun that sits at the base of her skull. Unlike the woman beside me, she and her male companions are not in uniforms, but wear sharp, business-looking attire.
When the uniformed woman stops speaking, the man in the center says to me, “Salve.”
For a second I pass it off as another bit of Mushian, but then I realize I understand what he said. He’s greeting me in Latin, albeit not pronouncing the word in the way I would have.
“Salve,” I repeat.
“My regrets,” he continues in Latin. “I do not…speak the old…words…well.”
“Nor I,” I tell him.
He touches his chest and says, “Reynosa Willmon.” He gestures to the other man. “Zhao Braden.” He turns to the female. “Dumont Elaine.”
Interesting. He seems to be using the naming convention that’s prevalent in parts of the Asian regions of Iffy’s and my realities—surname first. While both men look to have some Asian heritage—Reynosa more so than Zhao—the woman looks more like what I’d call Mediterranean.
The man nods at the uniformed woman. “You know already—” he says a word I don’t understand and then stops and thinks for a moment. “Dux Shim.”
I nod, confirming I know who she is. Her rank, though, is a surprise. Dux is a Latin term referring to a general in the Roman army, if I remember correctly. She is considerably higher placed than I assumed.
The man says something else in Latin but I pick up only a few words.
“No understand,” I say.
He repeats it, but I still don’t get it.
His frown makes me think he’s wondering whether or not I’m faking it.
Zhao whispers something to him. Reynosa then pulls what looks like a briefcase onto his lap, removes a large photograph, and sets it on the table. Touching it, he says, “What is it?”
For several seconds I forget to breathe. The picture is of the chaser Lidia used to rewrite history. The only chaser in existence anymore, since the one I had was destroyed before we reached this place. So this is my chaser now.
Beside it is the prototype charger Iffy’s friend RJ made.
Even if I knew the right words to respond, I wouldn’t.
I study the image. The chaser is open but the screen is dark. That’s not a total surprise. I propped it open with one of the cords from the charger, intending to rekey the device to recognize me as soon as I had the strength. If I’d let it close first, I would likely not be able to open it again without damaging it.
I don’t even realize I’ve picked up the picture until Reynosa plucks it out of my hand and sets it back on the table.
He taps on the chaser and repeats, “What is it?”
“No understand.”
He narrows his eyes. “You understand. Tell us. Now.”
I lean back from the table and cross my arms over my chest. “No understand.”
Reynosa opens his mouth to speak again, but Dumont puts a hand on his arm and whispers something. Reynosa glares at me for a moment before giving her a nod.
After setting her own briefcase on the table, Dumont removes a rectangular box about the size of two stacked smartphones, and from this she pulls out a set of cards. She lays each card on the table, face up. No two display the same image. There are animals, a tall building, a house, and a vehicle that must be their version of a car. There are symbols, too, some that look vaguely familiar, and some that are completely foreign to me.
When all the cards are out, she touches one showing a map of North America, points at me, and raises an eyebrow. It doesn’t take a genius to know she’s trying to figure out where I’m from, but I keep my arms folded and my mouth closed.
She moves her finger to the Europe card, and when I still don’t answer, she does the same with Asia, and then Africa, and Australia, and finally South America.
Reynosa slams a hand down on the table and shouts, “Which one is your home?”
I take a moment before saying, “None of them.”
While this does nothing to quell his anger, it has provoked a curious look from Dumont, which, in addition to confirming she also understands some Latin, makes me feel uncomfortable.
Before I have a chance to decipher why, Reynosa yells at me in Mushian. When he pauses for me to respond, Dumont whispers to him. He looks confused and then annoyed. To cover his embarrassment, he looks at Shim and says something that sounds like an order.
She shoots to her feet and grabs my arm. Dumont says something to Reynosa that sounds like a plea, but the old man dismisses her with a wave of his hand.
In what looks like desperation, she glances at her cards, puts her fingers on one, and looks at me as I’m being lifted to my feet. Once she knows she has my attention, she looks back at the table.
I follow her gaze to the card her fingers are tapping on.
It’s an image of a clock.
As my lips part in surprise, I catch a glimmer of excitement in her eyes.
No, I tell myself. I’m overthinking.
The clock could mean anything, such as she’ll make sure they come back at a later time. That must be it. Her excitement is just a reaction to the fact I understood her. There’s no way she knows the chaser’s true nature.
Right?
Right?
CHAPTER THREE
FOR THREE WEEKS I stand in the morning line, wondering when I’ll be pulled out again and taken to the building at the far end of the compound. But my routine remains undisturbed, and I begin to think my visitors are not coming back.
On the twenty-fifth day, they do. But this time the only people in the room are Dumont Elaine and the stone-faced Dux Shim. I take the chair across from Dumont while Shim remains standing behind me.
“Salve” Dumont says.
“Salve,” I reply.
She points at herself. “Latin not good.”
I smile and tap my own chest. “Latin not good.”
Her return grin catches me off guard. However small, it’s the first sign of friendliness I’ve received from any authority figure since I arrived in this world.
She sets her bag on the table and pulls out her deck of cards. She also removes a photograph of my chaser, smaller than the image I was shown last time, and places it on the tabletop between us. She looks through the deck, selects a few cards, and sets the remainder to the side.
She lays the first card next to the picture of the chaser. It’s the clock again.
“Tempus,” she says, touching it.
Tempus, time. Not specifically clock. It could mean nothing. Perhaps she doesn’t know the Latin word for clock. I certainly can’t remember it, but of course she would have had the benefit of being able to look it up before she came here.
Slow down. Don’t read too much into it.
She moves her finger from the card to the photograph, says “Tempus,” and looks at me expectantly.
My mouth has turned so dry, I’m not sure I can respond even if I want to. And I do not want to.
From behind me, Shim says something that sounds dismissive. Dumont’s response sounds curt to my ears.
She looks back at me, then flicks a glance at Shim. “No understand Latin.”
Why would Dumont tell me that? Is she trying to put me at ease so I’ll tell her what the chaser is? She appears to be speaking truly but how can I gauge that? I don’t know this culture. I don’t know this woman.
I can, however, test if she’s right about Shim.
“Ipsa piger canis,” I say.
It is an insult I saw in a book on Latin when I was younger, though I’m not sure I’ve said it correctly. Still, the point should get across, and if I’ve judged Shim’s character correctly, she’s not one who will tolerate being called a lazy dog.
Dumont is trying to work out the meaning of my words. A few seconds later she chuckles, and I know she’s figured it out. Behind me, Shim hasn’t moved. Either Dumont is telling the truth, or Shim’s knowledge of Latin doesn’t extend to domesticated animals.
Dumont points at the clock card and the chaser again. “Tempus.”
Just because she’s using the word doesn’t mean she’s making the colossal leap that the box is a time-travel device. In fact, I see now she’s specifically pointing at the display screen that, when activated, shows the time and date. This eases my conscience enough that I decide there’s no reason not to confirm this.
“Ita,” I say.
She points at the box on the chaser where the location number of the destination is input. “Quid est?”
Now is my chance to guide her away from the device’s true nature. “It’s a calculator,” I say in English. “For advanced math problems.”
As expected, she looks at me, confused.
I pretend to try puzzling out the correct word before saying in Latin, “Do not know how to say.”
“Try. Please.”
Again, I act like I’m thinking about it. After several seconds, I pantomime writing on something.
She jams her hand into her bag and pulls out a pen and some paper.
Before she can give them to me, though, Shim steps over and snatches the pen out of Dumont’s hand. She is clearly not happy with the idea of me having something she considers a potential weapon.
The two women talk for several moments. When they finish, Shim reluctantly gives the pen to me, with a stern warning I take to mean she’ll break my neck if I look like I’m using it for anything but its intended purpose.
I write out a simple mathematical formula: 2 + 3 = 5. But when Dumont reads it, she looks confused again.
Of course. I’m an idiot. I’m forgetting about the history I studied while training to be a rewinder. The change to this timeline came in the thirteenth century. The Arabic numerals I grew up knowing had been a work in progress prior to the Mongols’ rise to power. I also have a feeling the mathematical symbols I used had not been developed then and are likely completely different here.
To test my theory, I write out 1 through 9 and ask her if she knows what each number is. She recognizes some but not all. I put dots next to each, the number of dots equaling its representation. She gets it now. I then write down several simple formulas. The mathematical symbols are unfamiliar to her but she quickly picks up on what I’ve done. Something is still bothering her, though.
She touches the answer to the formula. “Quid est?”
I’ve been hoping my calculator ruse would take hold but she’s seen through that. She obviously wants to know how the box uses that answer.
I point at the numbers in the calculation, like I’m not sure she understood how the math works.
She shakes her head and taps the answer again. “What…now?”
Again, I pretend not to understand.
As she starts to repeat her question, the door opens. A guard I recognize as one of the supervisors sticks his head in and says something that gives me the impression Dumont’s time with me is ending. Whatever it is that Dumont tells him is enough to get him to leave for now.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a second picture, which she sets on the table. The focus of this shot is RJ’s charger. She waves her finger back and forth between the two photographs, obviously wanting to know if the two devices are meant to work together.
The only reason they haven’t figured that out yet is, the charger’s connector doesn’t fit perfectly. RJ has/had promised/may never promise to fashion a better version next time. If the prototype’s connector is propped up just right, it’ll stay in place and juice will flow from the solar-charged battery into the chaser. If not, the connector will fall out.
“No. Different.” I point at the picture of the charger. “For, um…” I hold a hand next to my head and pretend to talk. I’ve seen guards use communication devices somewhat similar to the cell phones in Iffy’s world, so I’m confident my gesture will be understood.
Dumont’s eyes widen, and she points at the hand I’m using to hold the imaginary phone. “Ubi est?” she asks, wanting to know where it is.
“Do not know. You not have?”
She looks past me at Shim, and says something that sounds like both a demand and a question.
“No,” Shim says, using another of my very small collection of Mushian words.
Dumont focuses back on me and holds her hand like she’s cradling a phone. “You have…before?” She pauses. “Where Dux Shim…find you?”
I intended only to distract her by making her think the charger belongs to a communication device, but I might be able to use the lie to convince her the fictional phone is out there somewhere. Maybe then she’ll take me back to the hills so I can show her where.
I can’t pass up any potential opportunity to get beyond the walls of the prison. I say, “Yes.”
Dumont says something to Shim, who walks over to the door and lets my escorts in.
“Thank you for your time,” Dumont says.
“We are done?” I say, surprised.
“Vale,” she says, and motions toward the guards.
I almost suggest she takes me to the spot in the hills, but worry that doing so will make her realize I have an ulterior motive. The best I can hope for is Dumont returning soon and suggesting it herself.
I rise out of my chair and bow my head. “Vale.”
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