by Holly Hook
“We're good,” he says, and we run back to the middle of the Main Chamber.
Simon raises his foot and stomps on the floor. “Isabel,” he says. “Sorry to wake you up, but can you come out in a minute?”
“That's it?” I ask.
“Think of this thing as a doorbell. Just call the name you want, and you reach them. That's how Isabel found me and got me to pull you out of World War Two.”
“I’ll remember that.” I’d been hoping for something a little more exotic.
And then she’s there, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt like she was never asleep. I jump. Isabel blinks and looks between us. There are bags under her eyes, like she’s been up thinking for days. “Did you come up with any good ideas?”
I look at Simon. We’re going to have to explain this together.
So we do. We tell her about the fact that if we stop her ship from sinking, she'll never become Timeless or remember the fact that she agreed to help us.
Isabel's face gets longer and longer as we talk. “Are you sure there isn't another way?” she asks. But underneath that long face is hope. There's a big part of her that's hoping that what we're saying is true, that we can stop her ship from sinking and she can live out her normal life with her family.
It’s something I totally understand.
“Not a good one,” Simon tells her. “I've gone in there three times. It would be different if the lifeboats on the Gustloff weren't a lost cause.”
Isabel turns away. Simon's rubbed a raw nerve. I have no doubt she's remembering that giant anti-aircraft gun falling towards her. Towards her family she left behind.
I've got to change the subject. “Isabel, I have no problem stopping the Gustloff from sinking. Trust me. I completely understand. The thing is, if your ship makes it safely to where it's going, Time will never take you and bring you here. You'll stay human in your old time and never even remember all of this. Then we’ll have to find you again, bring back your memory of all this, and have you go to 1912.”
“I don't know if this will be good,” she says. “I don't know if I can stay with my father, even if I won't know what he really is. If I'm in that life again, though, I'll find out the truth sooner or later. And...I know things will be rough after the war.”
“But your mom and your sister,” I say.
“I'd do it for them,” she says. Isabel faces us. “I should do it for them. But what about you, Julia? You want your family to be safe, too. And who will pull your past self out of 1912 the first time if I never become Timeless? Saving my family could mean your death.”
God. She's right. This won't be as easy as I thought. No wonder no one has gone back and changed history. “But I saved myself the second time.”
“That's right,” Simon says. “Julia's in no danger of ending up dead from this. What she did last time we were on the Titanic sort of, I don't know, overwrote what happened before. You pulling her out never happened now, Isabel. That always happens. You know this.”
Isabel's shoulders drop with relief. “You’re right. So, what were you saying?”
“We stop your ship from sinking. We could pull the human you out of 1945 after the Gustloff docks. We'll find another rift somewhere,” Simon says. “Sure, you'd still be human, but at least you wouldn't be at risk of getting sent back to something really dangerous.”
“But I won't remember either of you. And I won't be able to go into the Titanic to save Julia's family without learning your language all over again. That is, if I even listen to Simon in 1945.”
“And if you go to the Titanic human, some other Timeless will come after you and pull you out. Or worse,” Simon says. “I don't want to see that happen to you. It wouldn't be fair.”
“I would still do it if I was human,” Isabel says. “Well, if there is some way I could remember all of this. If you stop my ship from sinking, I'm going to owe you yours.”
She's actually offering to stop the Titanic from sinking.
And I don't want to say no.
“Rats,” I say. “There's got to be a way around the whole memory thing. A way for you to keep your memories of all this, kind of like what Simon did for me with the necklace.”
Something screams at me from the back of my head. I turn away, staring at the other side of the Main Chamber. The caveman and the monk are returning, a third man dressed in furs between them. The caveman talks to him in a low voice. He's reassuring the guy, who looks shaken.
They're gone and down another hallway. Their voices disappear. I try to imagine what time the third man wound up in by mistake. Maybe a big city, or somewhere far in the future that I can't even imagine.
“Wait,” I say.
Simon and Isabel look at me.
“Arnelia,” I say.
“What about her?” Isabel asks.
“I never told you,” I say. “Even though she wound up in the wrong time, she knew who I was. It's like her memory never got blocked at all.”
“She what?” Isabel asks. “That's impossible. Time always blocks your memories when you travel through it. Well, if you're mortal. That Arnelia girl couldn’t have found a way around it.”
“She was looking for me,” I say. “She did have her memories. I think. Maybe it's worth it to go ask her how she did it?”
Chapter Thirteen
We have no better ideas.
Arnelia's the best bet for figuring out this mess. She told me she was here for something, but Isabel and Frank never let her finish.
Was it to help us? To make sure Isabel could stop the Titanic from sinking? Or was it to stop us from screwing things up?
I don't know. But we're going to find out. There’s nothing else to go on right now.
“Arnelia is from the year 5052,” Isabel reminds us. She leads us down one of the hallways to where she knows that door is. “She lives in one of the Antarctic colonies. Pretty much, it’s the science district of the planet at that time. Many of us Timeless have chased people from there enough to know where they always come from.”
We’re walking fast. “That’s where the time travel lab is. It must be what you sent her back to,” Simon adds.
Isabel's irritated now. “Yeah. It’s pesky. Those people open rifts all the time, go through, and wonder why they can’t remember anything when they get back. They’ve succeeded at time travel, but they never know it. I think that we’re chasing nothing here. Arnelia couldn’t have found a way around having her memory blocked. No one ever has.”
“I have a feeling Arnelia still remembers.” I have to have hope. Did she find a way to fool Time? If she did, maybe we can use it. Isabel can still help us even if she becomes human.
And Isabel doesn’t have to help us. She could easily just take our help and go on with whatever life she would have had. After all, she saved my life once. Why put herself through danger all over again?
But she’s the one leading us along. The one walking fast like the world’s about to end.
“Here,” she says, stopping in front of a rift. “This is it.”
The golden curtain swishes inside the arch, ready for us to go through. On the other side will be that wall and that touchpad that Arnelia used to come here.
We’re going to the future. I can’t help but feel an excited rush. So many people would kill for this opportunity.
“Ready?” Simon asks, looking between the two of us.
I nod. “Ready.”
I think we all pile into the rift together. I fall through the golden abyss for a few seconds, reaching for Simon, but I only brush his hand before my feet hit the ground and the world snaps into place.
“Wow,” Isabel’s saying.
Wow doesn’t quite cut it. We’re standing next to the gray wall that Arnelia came through. It’s a lot different than that vision we saw in the Main Chamber, which didn’t show too much.
For one thing, the gray wall is nothing more than a slab sticking out of the floor in a huge, huge room. We’re standing in the middle of a glass do
me. The sun peers down at us through haze. Wires crisscross over the top of the wall and throughout the room.
I expect to see computers everywhere, but there aren’t any. There are more gray slabs up everywhere, rows and rows of them, but they're longer and shorter than the one we just came through. Chairs sit in rows, facing them. None of these walls have any controls on them that I can see. Maybe they're those strange touch screens, like Monica's iPad thing that she uses for homework sometimes. That must be it. Computer monitors must be a thing of the past here.
Now I'm even more out of place.
“I haven’t actually stepped in here before,” Simon says. His voice echoes in the room, cutting over the sound of some fans. “You know, I feel quite bad for these people. Working so hard like this and all. And—am I wearing a dress?”
I have to check it out. Simon's in a long, brown garment with emerald trim that resembles a silky robe. It matches his eyes perfectly.
“I like it,” I say. “At least our clothes still change with man made rifts.” I glance down. I'm in a similar piece, only mine is gray with shiny blue trim around my sleeves.
“I don't.” Simon picks at his. “It looks like a dress.”
“It does not. It must be normal for men here.”
“This must have cost the world a lot of money.” Isabel speaks loudly in a way that tells us to stop arguing. She turns, the fabric of her light green robe flowing. “We should make sure we can get this rift to work again for when we leave. I think this is the one we’ll need to use to get back. I’m not walking around outside to look for another stray rift. It must be well below zero out there.”
“I agree.” Even though there’s no one in here, I keep my voice low.
The gray wall is featureless right now. There’s no rift swishing and making weird noises. It’s off. That’s why.
I remember how Arnelia did this and lift my hand. I tap the wall where I’m sure the keypad has to be.
Nothing happens.
“I thought it was here,” I say. “Come on.” I tap it again, but the wall stays gray and boring like it’s trying to laugh at me. “Didn’t you guys see a pinpad here or something?”
“We did,” Simon says. “Crap. We'll need to find another place and open one ourselves where no one can see. I'm sure there's cameras everywhere here. There's three of us. We should be able to do that.”
I tap my fingers on the pad, harder and harder and harder. “We of all people should be able to open this up.”
“You can not. Your DNA is not in our system.”
My heart leaps, Isabel gasps, and Simon leaps in front of me as I turn.
It’s Arnelia, standing there in a flowing blue tunic that matches the sky. Her hair’s down today, with no crystal butterfly tying her hair back. Thankfully, she's not holding a stun prism thing, either. That’s good. I’m shuddering thinking of what it did to me last time.
Isabel looks at me. I know what it means. I need to prove what I’m saying about her. Is that recognition on Arnelia’s face?
“Do you remember me?” I ask.
She squints at me. Her freckles all mash together. “You?”
“Yes. Me. What’s my name?”
She shakes her head. “Right now, I do not know,” she says.
Isabel practically glares at me. Arnelia doesn’t remember a thing.
My face gets hot. I brought us here for nothing. And now we likely have to rely on her kindness to get us back out of here.
“Wait,” Arnelia says. “Let me go get something that might help with that. Stay right here. You may want to sit low and stay quiet.”
And then she’s walking away. I watch as she walks out of the room, into a circular tunnel that’s got water flowing all the way around the walls, and glances back at us. I wave, just to say that we’re not here to kill her.
“I think we should leave,” Simon says. He looks around the room like lasers are about to shoot at us.
“Where do we go?” I have a feeling we should stay. Maybe this will work out after all. Arnelia seemed pretty confident that she can sort this out.
“I don’t like being in this big open room,” Isabel says. She looks at the water tunnel. “Who knows who else is here? They might have those stun things. Or she might be going to get one of those. I think we should follow her.”
“But she told us to—“
Isabel’s already running towards the tunnel.
“No!” Simon yells.
There’s a hissing sound all through the dome like something’s losing a lot of air. Isabel must not hear it, because she keeps running for the water tunnel.
And then a metal box rises around her. It's liquid at first, shimmering in the sun. Isabel stops a split second before the box rises high enough to block her from view. With a sucking sound, it closes on top and solidifies.
“Isabel!” I yell.
She shouts something back, but it's muffled. The box shimmers. It looks as solid as any of the walls here, and it’s got her trapped inside.
“This must be their security in 5052,” Simon steps forward, then stops. “This place must know when someone’s here who shouldn’t be. DNA or something.”
The box doesn’t move. Isabel’s still stuck. She shouts again but I can’t make it out through the material. This place is designed to deal with intruders coming from both the rift and outside the chamber. If we leave this middle area, Simon and I will end up inside those boxes, too. Then we'll have to wait for someone to come deal with us.
Do they still execute people in 5052? They wouldn’t succeed with us, of course, but it would still be pretty horrible. Is this a bad enough offense?
“Arnelia!” I yell. She must know how to undo this. She got through the room okay. But she doesn't return through the water tunnel.
“There might be some controls in here for letting Isabel out.” Simon searches the room. “If we move really, really close to the walls and jump back when we hear that hissing, it might work.”
“I doubt the computer screens or whatever here will let us use them.”
Simon slaps his forehead. “Good point. But we still have to try something. What if she’s being tortured in there?”
“I don’t hear any screams.” But he’s right. Standing here doing nothing is stupid.
Simon waves me over to him and we creep along one of the long gray walls that runs along the walkway. We scoot past chairs, not daring to move them. Maybe they’ll block those walls from coming up around us. Perhaps the trap only happens when you go through the main walkway.
Someone must be coming and we have to hurry.
Simon goes first. We slide along the gray wall together, holding hands, inching closer to the box that's keeping Isabel prisoner. I've got to get her out of there. I'm the one who suggested this whole thing. I hold my breath and listen for any hissing noises. There aren't any, but I can't let my guard down. If I hear that, we'll have to run back to the platform.
My arm seems like it's glued to the gray wall.
Simon stops. “Julia, are you stuck?” Simon asks. He looks at me, his brown eyes huge and worried.
And he's not moving, either. It's like the gray wall's sucking in his robe like a gigantic magnet. It's sticking to it like someone's sprayed it with invisible crazy glue. His arm's on the wall, too, and he's trying to yank it off.
“Let me see.” I reach for him. No use. I can't peel my whole left side from the wall. It's the weirdest feeling. I don't feel like it's pulling at me, but I can't move. We're still holding hands, which are both on the wall, too.
Isabel shouts something from inside the box again. She's getting impatient.
“I think something in this room detected us,” Simon says. He forces a grin. “Looks like all we can do is wait for Arnelia to get here. This must be the same technology Arnelia used on you in the bathroom.”
“Or--”
Footfalls approach from the direction of the water tunnel. A guy's yelling. I can't understand the words. He's spea
king whatever language they use three thousand years from now. The yells grow louder. I can't see the water tunnel around the box that Isabel's trapped in, but I can tell he's in the room. I tense. Will he try to shoot us? Simon gives me a glance. “We might have to do a mind trick. Get ready.”
I don't mind the idea now, especially if this man is armed. My heart pounds. Can I? This isn't like Mr. Iris. I can't even talk to this guy, unless he's as learned in English as Arnelia is.
The man appears from around the box, taking us in. He's a short guy with black hair in a lab jacket. He squints at us. Shouts a few words. Then he points at the trap box and rants some more. I realize he's giving us an angry lecture, like we're kids that got caught skipping class. I don't have to hear the words to know what it means.
“Just nod like you understand him,” Simon whispers.
I do. The guy lets loose another torrent of yells, and I nod a bunch of times like I understand.
Finally, he lets out a breath and turns to the low gray wall opposite us. He jabs it with one finger.
It's amazing. I forget all about the fact that we're in trouble. The gray wall's turned into a long, high-definition TV screen. There's charts everywhere. Something that looks like someone's pulse, glowing in blue. There's long numbers everywhere, but I can't read the actual text. It's written in something that looks like a cross between Chinese and Arabic.
I'll ask Arnelia what it all means if she ever gets back here. What if she's abandoned us? She might have even called for this guy. I have a lot of answers to give Isabel when we're out of here, answers that I don't have.
The guy hits a few buttons on the screen and Simon and I practically fall off the wall. He's freeing us. At the same time, the box around Isabel retracts, shimmers like mercury, and sinks into the floor. The floor shimmers for a moment before turning solid again. Isabel stands there and lets out a breath. She opens her mouth to say something to the man, but must think better since she remains silent.
I know what's next.