by Holly Hook
I can’t help but shudder. I’ve never seen Simon’s eyes go completely gold before like some other Timeless members I’ve seen, but he can’t completely hide that he’s an immortal. I think it freaks him out just as much as it does me. I’m still dreading the day I see that glitter in my own. I've had several nightmares about it since Time pulled me out of 1912. Studying myself in the mirror has been a no-no since then.
He rubs his face. “Did you see it again? Rats.”
“Yeah. It’s just a lot to get used to.” I sip my drink. I’ve got to ask the question. “What if someone notices that with me?"
Simon lays his hand over mine. “Even if they do, they’ll probably just think they’re seeing things. And a Timeless member’s eyes only turn completely gold when they want them to. You don’t have to worry.”
“Thanks.” I can’t imagine Nancy or Monica seeing such a thing. “I could always chalk it up to contact lenses if it happened, but that’s good to know.”
Simon lets go of my hand, leaving electricity racing over my skin. He tears the straw wrapper into bits while I watch. Wads one up, turns, and flings it at the woman in the cream dress. It bounces off the side of her head while she takes a sip of her soup. She keeps eating like nothing happened.
“Simon!” I say, unsure whether to be upset or to laugh.
He leans so far back in his chair that it threatens to tip over. “Hey, we’ve got to have a little fun here. It’s not like they’re real or anything.” But there’s a knife hiding in his voice. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed that these people aren’t real.
And I don’t know if I am, either.
The air in the room grows thicker. Darkens. It might just be my imagination, or maybe I’m tired. The band plays slower and notes stretch out, long and exhausted. My Coke on the table has stopped fizzling like it’s already gone flat.
“Julia, are you okay?” Simon reaches over the table and massages my bare forearm.
I’m staring at my glass. “Yes. I think I am.” I will be. I have to be. If there’s any hope of ever going back in time to save my little brother—
My little brother and my father died in the sinking and here we are, enjoying a stupid dinner.
I became this to save him, not to sit around with the rich people who got to live while he drowned in the icy Atlantic. And so far, we're doing nothing.
I swallow down the pain. Simon massages my arm a little harder. My skin warms, soothing some of it away.
“We’re going to save them, Julia. We’ll find a way.”
“Then why haven’t we, already? I've been this way for almost a month now." The memory’s frozen there. The falling. Melvin calling for me, his voice a razor of panic. The stampede of people and the screams of agony…
“We need to work out a way. If we rush, Frank will be there to stop us. Time's not going to help, either. We're only both here together since you outsmarted it. This is the first example of two Timeless coming from the same tragedy, as far as I know."
“We need to outsmart Time again.” I need to focus on something else for both of our sakes. Of course we can’t rush in. It’s what Frank expects. “How are we supposed to hide this at all? Time’s going to know if we put Melvin and my father in Nancy and Monica's period. It'll send the other Timeless to go after them like it tried to do with me."
“Exactly,” he says. “We’ll figure out a way. I’m thinking.”
"So am I." It's all I've thought about night and day. If I were still human, the whole thing would have killed me by now.
“Your bread rolls are done. Enjoy.”
The waiter sets a plastic basket in front of us. The bread smells just like the real garlic sticks that Grondin's back in the real world serves as an appetizer. I seize one. My stomach's growling. I breathe slowly, all too aware that Simon's watching me, hoping that I can forget things for one night and enjoy myself. My pulse slows and I'm Julia again, the Julia that was happy for the year before she found out she was a transplant from the past. Before she learned she was supposed to die there. Before she tricked Time into making her an immortal.
I loosen my grip and take a bite of the bread roll.
A taste like dry sewage explodes in my mouth and I spit it out.
“What's wrong?” Simon leans over the table to look at the bread sticks. They glisten in the yellow light like they just came out of the oven.
“I don't know.” I take a swig of the Coke to wash the bad taste away. It's flat, but it's better than the bread sticks. “You try it.” I cough and my eyes water. “I don't get it. That bread tastes like it's five years old.”
Simon bites into another one and chews for a second. He squeezes his eyes, gags, and spits the piece back out onto the table. The bread's green, covered in dusty mold. I gag again and look down at mine, fighting back nausea. The piece I spit out has turned the same. Our food has aged by months in only seconds.
“I...I don't understand this.” Simon wipes his mouth with the cloth napkin. “This has never happened before with the food.” He looks at me. His eyes forgive, but they also question.
And I know what they're asking.
“Is me being here doing something to all of this?" I scoot away, watching the bread sticks on the table. Mold spreads on them as I watch, blossoming into green and blue flowers of death. They grow and overtake it all, choking the bread in a layer of alien dust. “Am I like, causing some kind of interference or something? Is my mood changing our surroundings?"
He stands. “I don't know.” Simon shakes his head. It's an apology. “I swear, this has never--”
I stand with him. “Things are weird now,” I say. I fight to keep my voice calm. “I think it's me, Simon. Monica would say my subconscious is acting up or something. If she, you know, believed in this stuff.”
“Is everything all right?”
It’s the waiter. I turn to him.
And choke down vomit.
He’s no longer the friendly dark-haired guy that served us a few minutes ago.
Well, he is…just dead.
His skin hangs off his cheekbones like melting wax. One of his eyes is gone, leaving a pit of nothing in its place. The other eye’s nothing but a pale raisin. He smiles, revealing teeth without their gums. One has a gold crown. I focus on it, unable to look away.
"Um..."
"We should go." Simon grips my wrist so hard, he's cutting off my circulation.
We’re in a room full of the living dead.
Skin falls off bones. Skeletal hands reach for rusty teacups and dessert forks. The woman in cream sips on her soup that’s turned the color of sewage. She’s green, ancient and moldy like the bread that sits on our table.
All heads turn to face us.
Simon pulls on my arm. He’s just as freaked out as me. "The door.”
“I agree.”
We back away. I gag on the stench that fills the room and chokes me. It’s the air of a million corpses that have sat rotting on the ocean floor for ages. I need to breathe. We’ve got to get out in the hallway and get out of this memory.
The waiter lunges forward. Grabs my arm.
I recoil. His skin is slimy. Rubbery. Loose and disgusting.
He looks me in the eyes with those sad pits of despair. “Julia,” he says, his voice still clear and alive. “Go back. Help us.”
Chapter Two
I pull Simon out into the hallway. The dead man’s grip loosens, freeing my wrist. We tumble out, crashing into the wall. Simon closes the door on the scene, standing against the carved wood for good measure while I suck in the most precious breaths I've ever taken.
Silence falls. I shake my arm, but the slimy feeling stays, like I’m wearing a bracelet of ooze that I can’t get off. I gag again and the inside of my mouth burns. My eyes water. I’m going to be sick.
“Julia. I'm so sorry. I didn't know this was going to happen.” Simon takes one step away from the door and pauses, waiting for it to come open. It doesn't. There's only silence on the o
ther end. He sighs in relief. “Let’s get out of here. Do you remember how to shift back up to the Main Chamber?”
I swallow and my stomach settles a little. The dead waiter's voice still rings in my head. Go back, go back...
“Hold on a minute,” I say. “I don't think they're coming out after us. I need to get my bearings. They're just our creations, aren't they? They can't hurt us in that case.” Not physically, I want to finish.
“You're right. They can't. But that was too real.” Simon checks the door again to confirm it's still shut. His cheeks have a sick greenish tint like he's about to throw up. “The Main Chamber. The faster, the better. Hold my hand.”
We have to leave for Simon's sake. “I didn't realize you had a weak stomach.”
“I'm a man. Of course I wasn't going to tell you that.” He manages a smile at me. The color returns to his cheeks.
“To be truthful, I didn't do so well myself.”
“You did better than I did.”
I cough the last of the stale air out of my lungs and stare at the red carpet on the floor. Can the Timeless throw up? That’s not an answer I want. “Okay. Main Chamber. Look up and focus, right?”
“Yes.” He pulls me farther away from the door, as if I need any convincing.
I blink away the final tears of disgust. I have to leave just as much as Simon and it's not all due to the zombies. We look at the white ceiling together. I remember Simon’s earlier instructions. Look up. Think about returning to the Main Chamber. Think about standing there already with the cathedral over our heads. It might take a few seconds, but then a rift will open and--
A brilliant flash of light explodes around us. It's a rift. The body of Time is full of them. I’m flying through sunlight, through glitter, through waving curtains of gold. My skin tingles with power. We must be travelling through the fabric of Time itself. Simon can't say that's the case when this happens, but it's the conclusion I've reached.
The slimy pressure of the dead waiter’s hand dissipates like a bad dream. Simon keeps his gentle grip on my arm. It’s warm and inviting. Understanding.
There's one more flash of gold and the crystal floor of the Main Chamber races up to meet us.
I land on my feet, letting my knees bend to absorb the shock. My hands meet the cold crystal floor and the chill of the Hub wraps around my skin. Simon’s standing next to me, smiling and steady on his feet. He’s had far more practice going through rifts than I have.
“Feel better?” he asks, leaning down to help me up.
“I think so.” I stand and slap him on the arm. “You're the one who was ready to throw up back there.”
“Like I mentioned, I'm a man.”
He releases me and I twirl around, taking in the enormity of the Main Chamber. We stand in the ballroom of the gods, a white crystal dome large enough to cover a small city. The ceiling’s so high that if weather happened here in the body of Time, clouds would form and rain down on us. I keep waiting for that to happen. There are nothing but miracles—and nightmares—here where all times and places meet.
“Julia, I don’t understand what happened back in the restaurant.” Simon paces in front of me, digging his sneakers into the floor like he's a child who's been caught writing on the wall. “I’ve never had anything like that go on in there before. To be honest, I’m pretty alarmed.”
The Main Chamber’s very tall and quiet. Vast and empty. It’s leaving us alone with our thoughts. I glance at the dome entrances to all the corridors. Hundreds of them form a ring around us. There aren't even any other Timeless here, escorting lost people back to the original times and places. Usually when Simon and I are here, there's some life here in the Hub.
Go back. Help us.
The dead waiter’s plea rings in my head, over and over and over again. It'll get more desperate and harder to ignore when I sleep tonight. It’s a seed that’s going to grow and grow until its vines choke me to death.
Because I am going to go back to the night Titanic sank.
I am going to rescue my little brother.
But everyone else—
“It was me who caused that scene,” I say. “I think we both know that. Simon, thank you for trying to take me to a nice dinner. I didn't mean to let my bad mood come in and ruin it.”
“Julia, it's not your fault. I should have taken you somewhere else. It's just that--” he turns away and studies the other side of the Main Chamber for a moment. “It's just that sometimes, we'll have to spend time in our quarters between assignments. You won't be living with Nancy and Monica forever. I wanted to do something nice, to show you that with some work, it's not so bad.” I can hear the frustration in his voice. I'm making this hard for him. He feels like it's his responsibility to make me happy after the decision I made.
“Simon, you shoulder enough. I'm the one who tricked Time into making me like you.”
He faces me and takes my arms. “Because you would have died if you didn't. You had no choice. I didn't want this fate inflicted on you.”
“Then I'm going to make the most of it,” I say. “Like you always say, Time doesn't care how anyone feels about anything. That means I don't care how it feels about what I do. When are we going to go back and get my father and my brother off the ship?” I eye the corridors. I have no idea which one leads to the Titanic rift. There must be millions—no, billions or trillions—of rifts here, all going to different times or places. I'll never find the right one if I walk around here for an eternity, searching. For some reason, I can remember where the gateway to Nancy and Monica's time is—it's down that corridor to the left and behind me, about two miles down the hallway. Since I went Timeless there's something like a mental map working inside of me, no matter where I go in the Hub. There's even a sign hanging above the rift that reads Trenton that I couldn't see while I was still mortal.
Simon glances down again and back at me. “Don't worry. We will get them back. I just need to figure out a way to do it. It's not as easy as it seems like it should be.”
“Because once we rescue Melvin, he's going to be a Rogue like I was.” I've thought of that. A regular, mortal person becomes a Rogue if they end up in the wrong time. Time sends the Timeless to go capture them and send them back to where they belong. It's why Frank and Isabel came for me a few months after I started living with Nancy and Monica.
“And Time will send someone after him,” Simon finishes.
“Then we need another way to save him and my father.”
“Exactly.” He hugs me so tight that I press my face against his shirt. “We'll think of something. We just have to give it time. The rift to the Titanic will never disappear.”
I close my eyes and breathe in Simon’s salty scent. He’s the ocean. The beach on a sunny day, and on a stormy day. “Simon, how come nothing like those zombies happened when you were in your quarters by yourself? Frankly, you do get upset quite a lot. It should have manifested something bad for you. Or has it?”
We separate and look at each other. I’m so close to Simon that I have to struggle not to cross my eyes. “I think it happened this time because there’s two of us from the same tragedy now. Maybe our combined mental energy is much for our quarters to handle.”
“I’m never going to understand this place,” I say, taking a few steps towards the hallway that leads to Nancy and Monica's rift. How do I know which one is right? All the corridors look the same from here.
“I never will, either,” Simon admits. “One of these days, I should draw a road map of the Hub or something. We could work on it together. That would be a fun project.”
“It would take forever.”
“We have forever.”
His words hang in the huge room, echoing off the walls and bouncing farther and farther away. The chill returns now that we're not embracing.
Forever.
It's a scary, horrifying word.
But before I can dwell on it, another sound floats towards us. It’s miles away at first, then closer, b
ouncing around a curve somewhere.
Voices. Two of them. One male, one female.
Someone’s coming.
I tense and turn in a full circle, looking for the hallway that they’re coming from. We’re standing in the middle of the Main Chamber. There’s nowhere to hide. The freaky acoustics of this place loft the voices across the room at us, preserving them in the still air.
“…that she is a danger to the stability, of, well, everything. I’m shocked time even chose her. There’s some mistake—“
It’s Frank.
The one who wanted me dead.
I grab Simon's arm. “We’ve got to go.”
We turn. Run. My footfalls shoot everywhere and reverberate through the Main Chamber like sonic ping-pong balls. Frank says something else behind us, but I don’t need to hear it. Even though he can't kill me now, I don't trust him. He's sneaky. Ruthless. There's no telling what he'll do. And he's not talking about anyone else besides me. What if there's a way he can get Time to make me mortal and send me back to the sinking? I'm new at this Timeless thing. I don't know.
We run and run. A minute passes. I glance at Simon and he nods at the corridor that leads to Nancy and Monica's time. Why does the Main Chamber have to be so big? At least I'm not running out of breath. Maybe becoming Timeless has done something for my stamina.
Frank's voice washes over us again. “And furthermore...”
Isabel interrupts him. “Why do you keep repeating yourself? It's done.”
They must be almost to the Main Chamber by now. They must be able to hear our footfalls as well as we can hear them.
“In here.” Simon keeps his voice low and waves me into the corridor. We duck in and I hug the wall. He takes my lead and does the same. Thankfully, the hallway curves, hiding the Main Chamber from view. Simon stops, leaning against the space between rifts. I join him and he hugs me from behind.
We wait in silence. Golden rifts swish and sparkle around us, lined in rows up and down the hall. The crystal walls down here give off light like there's a million Christmas lights hidden behind them. I can't help but stare. The Hub has come to life ever since I went Timeless. As a mortal, I couldn't see these rifts, just the archways up and down these halls that hold them. Only the strongest rifts are visible to normal people. Now I can see even those random weak ones that form out in the normal world.