At my suggestion, we move down to one of the dark spots and approach the wall. I’m hoping the surface is pitted enough for us to climb it, but the material used to build it can clearly stand up to desert winds. There are no divots or breaks, only a smooth surface from bottom to top.
We retreat to the safety of the desert and hunker down.
“If we go east,” Jovan says, “we’ll eventually reach the bay. Maybe we can find a way around the wall in the water.”
“How long will that take?” I ask.
“The rest of tonight, and probably a lot of tomorrow.”
I shouldn’t feel annoyed. It’s taken us months just to get here, so a delay of another day or two shouldn’t be a big deal. But I can’t keep my disappointment off my face.
“If you have another idea, please share it,” Jovan said.
“I wish I did.”
We head east, staying outside the lights.
__________
MIDNIGHT, AND I swear I can smell the sea on the breeze. I’m hoping we are farther east than we think, and that we’ll reach the gulf before morning.
“Saltwater,” I say. “Tell me you can smell it, too.”
Clora sniffs the air and smiles. “Yeah, I—”
One moment she’s walking between us, the next she is on the ground, gasping for air.
Something rips through the night a few feet from my head.
“Down!” Jovan yells.
We drop to the ground and scramble to Clora. As we do, more projectiles scream through the air above us.
“Oh, god! No, no, no,” Jovan says.
Blood pumps from a wound in Clora’s throat. Jovan presses his hand against it, trying to stop the flow as she continues struggling to breathe.
Another bullet whizzes by, this one lower, forcing us to remain flat on the ground.
I search for any other wounds on Clora, but all the blood seems to be coming from the one.
“You’re going to be all right,” I say.
“Yes,” Jovan agrees. “It’s not that bad. You’ll be just fine.”
It is that bad, though. The amount of blood pumping out of her could come only from an artery, and even if one of us were a doctor with a bag full of medical supplies, I’m not sure there’d be much we could do.
I hear movement by the wall and want to take a look, but am afraid to raise my head.
Steps coming our way. Fast. Several pairs.
Voices shouting, “Don’t move,” and “Stay down,” and variations on the theme.
There are ten of them, all holding rifles pointed at us. Their uniforms are tan, not the dark green of Shim’s army.
“Please,” I say. “She needs a doctor.”
“We don’t give help to desert dogs,” one of the men says with disgust.
Jovan talks faster than I can keep up. I do notice, however, when he says Trinity and Dumont.
The desert-dog soldier looks dubious, but he shouts something at a couple of the other men, who run back to the wall and return a few minutes later with a stretcher.
But there’s no need to rush. Clora’s already dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I’M IN A cell again. The room doesn’t look like the one I shared with Jovan and the others in prison, but that doesn’t matter. A bed, a chair, a toilet, a sink, and a door that opens only from the outside—it’s a cell, all right.
I wish I knew where Jovan is, but I haven’t seen him since we were separated right after we were brought inside the wall. Throughout the first day I was in here, I yelled his name through the crack around the door but I never heard a response. That was three days ago.
When the door opens now, I think it must be mealtime again and I sit down on my bed as instructed. Standing on the other side of the threshold is not a guard holding a tray, however, but Langer Min, Dumont’s surviving linguist.
“It is you.” She says this not in Latin or even Gaulish, but in English. “We did not believe it. We thought you were dead.” She speaks slowly and pronounces most of the words almost correctly.
“There were a few times I thought I was dead, too.”
“Come.” She turns and walks out of sight.
When I exit the cell, I see she’s not alone. There are three soldiers wearing the same tan uniforms as those who caught us outside the wall.
My armed escort and I follow Langer to a room on an upper floor. Three other men are already there. One is in a uniform similar to that of my guards, though his is more ornate, while the other two are dressed in formal-looking civilian clothing.
The older of the suited men sits behind a desk, while the other one and the officer stand on either side of him. Langer walks up to the desk and motions for me to join her.
“So?” the older man asks in Gaulish.
“He is one of ours,” she says.
“And the other one, too, I suppose.”
Langer looks at me and says in English, “Jovan is with you, correct?”
“Yes, but I don’t know where they put him.”
“Were there any others?”
“There was a girl with us. Clora. She was an astronomy student at Trinity.”
Langer looks surprised and turns back to the man. “You didn’t tell me there was a third person with them.”
“What does it matter? She’s dead.”
“How did that happen?”
“They were approaching the wall. They’re lucky they aren’t all dead.”
I can tell she’s trying hard to hold her temper as she says, “Yes, the other man is ours. I’ll take him, too.”
“What did they do with Clora’s body?” I ask her in English.
She asks the man.
He turns to the other civilian. They whisper for a moment before the seated man looks back and says, “It’s scheduled for disposal.”
“I’ll take her, too,” Langer says.
The man snorts. “No problem.”
Langer bows deeply. “You have the deepest thanks of the Trinity Education Counsel. Professor Dumont wanted me to convey that if you ever need anything from us, all you need to do is ask.”
In a bored voice, the man says, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“We would also like to thank you for keeping this confidential.”
A half smile.
“If you have confirmed the receipt of the fees,” she says, “then we will leave you to your work and be on our way.”
The seated man nods.
__________
WE RIDE IN a rotor at least twenty times larger than the one we stole half a year ago. It needs to be, to hold the contingent of soldiers Langer has brought along.
Clora’s body lies in a container in the back, Jovan and I sitting beside her. I sense he has no desire to talk so I remain silent. I’m not sure if he ever came to love Clora, but they did comfort each other through our exile. Maybe that’s a kind of love.
Looking out the window, I see the gulf, which means we’re flying south. Though I expect the flight to be a short one, we stay on this course for well over an hour, bypassing the Trinity research facility my friends and I were headed toward. We then turn east and fly across the water to what I think of as the main part of Mexico. Like so much of this world, what it’s called here escapes me.
The land is covered by vast cities, separated by large strips of what appears to be uninhabited territory. Am I seeing more evidence of city-states?
Surprisingly, we are still heading south when the sun sets.
“How much longer?” I ask loudly enough for Langer to hear me at the other end of the cabin.
It’s not the first time I inquire, nor the first she doesn’t reply.
I doze on and off as we fly into the night. I’m not sure what time it is when the rotor finally slows and we start descending.
I look out the window and am surprised by the darkness below. While there are some lights, they’re concentrated in the small, rectangular area we’re heading toward. Everywhere else, there’s nothin
g. No cities, no towns.
A moment after we land and the rotors wind down, the door opens. Several of the soldiers on board pick up Clora’s container and carry it out.
Jovan tries to follow them, but one of the other soldiers grabs him and pushes him against the wall.
“Let go of me!” Jovan shouts. “I’m going with her.”
“You are not,” the soldier says.
Jovan twists and turns but can’t break free from the man’s grasp.
“She’s being prepared for burial,” Langer says as she approaches us. “You will only be in the way.”
“Burial?” Jovan says. “I-I thought she’d be sent back to her family.”
“Things are…unsettled in Saint Jakup right now. Professor Dumont thinks it would be best to put your friend to rest here for now.”
“I want to be there.”
“Of course.”
“I mean it.”
“I promise. You will be.”
With a nod from Langer, the soldier lets go of Jovan.
“If you will both follow me,” she says, and exits the craft.
She leads us to a second-floor room in one of the buildings and motions for us to enter.
A light automatically comes on as we step inside. It’s a single room, about fifteen-foot square, with two beds and a toilet and sink in one corner. On each bed is a tray of food.
We flew god knows how far to be put into yet another cell.
Jovan and I turn back to the door but it shuts before we can take another step. We hear the lock turn but Jovan tries the handle anyway. Of course it doesn’t open.
A click from above draws my attention to a speaker in the ceiling.
Langer’s voice spills out of it. “It’s been a long flight. I have no doubt you can use some rest. Good night.”
“No!” Jovan yells. He pounds on the door until his fists are red.
I stand by one of the beds, wondering if he’ll turn his anger toward me.
I wouldn’t blame him. If I didn’t come into their lives, Clora wouldn’t be dead now.
When he turns back to the room, I brace myself, ready to take whatever punishment he unleashes on me. But he ignores me as he walks straight to the other bed. He shoves the tray of food onto the floor and lies on the mattress, his back to me.
I would feel a whole lot better if he punched me in the face.
__________
JOVAN’S STILL NOT talking to me the next morning.
It doesn’t matter how many times I apologize for getting him into this mess, he just stares at the wall, his face blank, acting like he doesn’t hear me. We’ve been through a lot together this past year, and I’ve become good at reading his moods, but this one is new. I can’t tell if he’s still angry or if he’s decided I don’t exist.
Our cell door finally opens around midday. Six soldiers, no Langer. They order us out and escort us through the building to a large, unoccupied room on the first floor. The space is set up similarly to the room we performed our translation work in back at Trinity, complete with one of those tables that can project three-dimensional objects.
What’s different is there’s a glass wall running across the room, separating the section we have entered from the part where all the equipment is located. The only things in our portion of the room are the two chairs we are directed to sit on.
I’m feeling a disturbing sense of déjà vu. Though I’ve never been in this room, I’ve been in one very much like it. Lidia took me there. It was a space she’d designed so she could talk to me from one side of a large window without worrying about any trouble I might cause. I have no doubt the glass wall here is meant for a similar purpose.
The soldiers exit, locking the door as they go.
We have been sitting silently for at least fifteen minutes when Jovan whispers, “What the hell’s going on?”
I glance at him, sure that he’s talking to himself, but he shoots me an inquisitive look.
“I-I don’t know.”
Whatever anger he’s been harboring against me seems to have ebbed, at least a bit. Or maybe I’m just projecting my hope. Whatever the case, he doesn’t sneer at me before he turns away so I’ll take that as progress.
Several additional minutes pass before a door in the other section of the room opens and Langer and Dumont enter.
I can’t help but feel relief. If Dumont’s here, the chaser must be nearby.
The women stop a few feet from the glass wall and look at me.
“I was sure we’d never see you again,” the professor says. She adds to Jovan, “Do you need to translate?”
“I understood you,” I say.
“Is that so? How much have you learned?”
My sense of caution kicks in. If she thinks I speak their language well enough, there’s no reason for her to keep Jovan around. So I act like I’m struggling for the right words as I say, “Not understand, um, everything. Not close.”
“Is that true?” she asks Jovan.
“He’s getting better, but is far from perfect.”
Dumont is quiet for several seconds, and then says, “The last time I saw you, you were standing in the middle of the attack. I’d heard rumors that you’d gotten away, but that was months ago. What happened?”
I let Jovan tell the story while I interject here and there, making sure not to sound fluent.
When we finish, Dumont says, “I’m impressed. For a while I thought Shim caught you, but when I learned she was still hunting for you, I was relieved. When you didn’t turn up anywhere, though, I began to assume you were dead. I’m glad to see I was wrong.” She smiles. “And you say you came south looking for me?”
“We did,” I say.
Her brow scrunches. “Why?”
During our journey south, I thought a million times about the moment I would be face to face with Dumont again, and imagined her asking this very question. Why would we, former prisoners, risk our lives to find her again? I made up dozens of responses, but they all would fall apart with just a few follow-up questions. There’s only one response I know will work.
“Because you still have my device.”
Her eyes widen in pleasant surprise. “I appreciate your honesty. But if I recall correctly, you said the device was your companion’s, not yours.”
Since it’s not a question, I don’t reply.
Dumont whispers something to Langer, who walks over to a cabinet along the back wall. She pulls something out of it, and as she turns to head back, the breath catches in my throat.
The woman is holding a protective container like the ones that held the history book and the chaser. Sure enough, when she opens it, Dumont pulls out my time-travel device.
If not for the glass, I don’t think I could stop myself from launching at her and ripping the device away. Then my heart stops. The lid. It’s closed. No! How did that happen? I’d propped it open with a cord from the charger right after Lidia and I arrived. I’d even told Dumont the lock was malfunctioning, that if it shut we wouldn’t be able to open it again without breaking it. Why did she allow it to be closed? I’ll have to break it open and hope it still—
Dumont touches the side with her thumb and the lid ticks open.
My lips part in shock.
How is that possible?
The chaser is keyed to Lidia. Her thumbprint should be the only one that can release the lock, and she’s been dead for a year.
But if seeing Dumont opening the box was a shock, what she does next is downright terrifying.
“If I were you, I would have come back for this, too,” she says with a smirk. Then she pushes the go button and disappears.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JOVAN JUMPS TO his feet, his chair clattering onto the floor. “What the…? Wha…? Where…is…?”
He takes one step toward the window, then seems to think better of it and backs away quickly.
I’m also on my feet, also stunned by her disappearance, but my surprise stems from the fact Dumont kno
ws how to use the chaser.
Langer appears unmoved, however. Clearly this isn’t the first time she’s witnessed the device in action.
I barely have enough time to register all of this when Dumont reappears. She squeezes her eyes shut and touches her temple for a moment in reaction to the headache brought on by the jump.
If Jovan was freaked out before, he’s on the verge of imploding now. He’s at the door, trying desperately to get out.
When Dumont opens her eyes, she looks at me. “Do the headaches ever stop?”
“How far?” I ask, ignoring her question.
“Twenty years.” A grin forms on her lips. “This time.”
If I took a jump of twenty years, I wouldn’t feel a thing. But she’s an amateur and has not been trained to be a rewinder.
“How did you figure it out?” I’m no longer trying to obscure how much I know of their language.
“You told us.”
“What are you talking about? I never said anything.”
“Maybe not directly to me or my team, and maybe not all at the same time, but you did talk. Sometimes to yourself, sometimes to Jovan.”
Find the chaser. Extract my blood. Dry it. Rekey the chaser. Make things right. My mantra. That and other things I said pieced together…dear God. “You were taping us?”
“Of course I was. I never thought for a moment you were telling us everything. The problem we had was translating, but once we were set up here, Min worked at understanding…English, is it?”
Langer nods.
“How long have you been able to use the device?”
“It took us a while to figure out what you were saying and then apply that to the chaser. We had a few missteps, but we were able to finally rekey your machine about four weeks ago.” She says chaser and rekey in English, though the latter comes out more rekay. “I took the first journey a week after that.”
Three weeks. Three weeks in which Dumont could have done enough damage to have already erased me and removed any chance of me saving Iffy and Ellie.
My legs feel like jelly, and I have a strong urge to fall back onto my chair, but I fight through it and remain on my feet. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised she figured it out. She is a scientist, after all. Study and observation are her way of life.
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