by Holly Hook
It's louder this time. More desperate. Something about the noise makes me think of some giant crack opening into nothingness. I want to scream. I still remember the sight of that Chronophages's open mouth all too well.
“Okay,” I say. “We need to go investigate. Then we'll think of what to do next.” Will Simon's bandage hold? I'll need to help him.
"I don't like the sounds of whatever that is," Monica says. She's pressed up against the wall between two rifts. "Here. I'll help Simon walk."
"No. No. I'm fine," he says, and steps away from the wall. He puts his full weight on his injured leg and curls up, seething. "Okay. Maybe I'm not. I'm going to have to use you girls as crutches. My calf feels like it's on fire. It's cramping up, too."
"That's fine," I say, letting him put his arm over me.
The four of us walk towards the Main Chamber. Isabel leads the way and Simon keeps his injured leg off the crystal, hobbling along on one foot. There's yet another crack and rumble. Whatever's going on is out there. All of the Timeless seem to have vanished. If any remain, they're staying safe out in the regular world, tucked away in random times. I find myself hoping that they don't manage to come through any rifts.
“I don't like this,” Isabel says.
Another rumble.
Another crack.
I break into a run, but Simon pulls against me, slowing me down. “Careful,” he says. “I don't want to open the wound again. And I still feel dizzy."
“Sorry.” The hallway curves more up ahead and I know we're close. The fog seems even thicker up here. It almost smells rotten. Strange. I never noticed that smell before.
And then the world opens up.
Fog spreads out in all directions as if that's all there is. There's something huge ahead of us, something round only about ten feet away. I jump back and Simon cries out in pain as I step on his toe. I don't have time to apologize again.
It's a Chronophage, ramming itself up against the red wall of the Main Chamber over and over like it's beating its face against it in frustration. With each hit, the wall rumbles like it's ready to come down. I back away more. The Chronophage rams the red crystal again, and there's a definite cracking sound. It's the source of the noise.
"What's going on?” I ask. “It's like Time is trying to attack itself now."
"I think you're right," Simon says. "Maybe that's because it's so messed up, it doesn't know what to do.”
"This whole situation is messed up," Monica says. She stares at the Chronophage, eyes wide.
Isabel enters the Main Chamber, keeping her distance from the giant, gelatinous sphere. "What if Time starts falling apart or something? We need to be out of here before that happens."
"How will that affect everybody?" Monica asks. "Will it just make it so that people can't travel through time anymore?"
"I don't know," I say. I face Isabel. She has the most Timeless memories out of anyone. I need her input.
The Chronophage head-butts the wall again. There's another cracking sound, but I don't notice any splits in the red crystal. Maybe Time isn't going to fall apart after all. I can hope. But what if they continue this forever and eventually, the crystal begins to crack? Right now it's holding up. And how can some giant, glorified white blood cells take down all of Time? This place is huge.
The rotten egg smell gets stronger.
Isabel holds her nose. "It's like Time has lupus or something. You know, that disease where your body attacks itself and can't stop. It's gone crazy and its signals are crossed. Since we changed history three times now and in three different places, it's like Time's body parts are rearranged and not working the way they're used to."
Simon stares at the red walls. "Let me see if this does anything." He breaks away from Monica and I and kicks at one. There's no groan or anything like I expect. That might be too much. "Nothing." Simon seethes again and grabs his leg. "I...I have to lie down."
He slumps to the floor. Another rumble sounds from the other side of the Main Chamber, and another.
"Simon!" I yell.
He bends his knees up and I kneel beside him. Monica joins me.
"Are you bleeding again?" she asks.
"I don't think so. I'm just dizzy. I'll be fine." He sounds groggy almost. "I just shouldn't have done that."
"Stop being such a tough guy all the time," I say. "Stay down. You're not feeling good and you've lost blood. Now's not the time to argue."
"Sorry," he says like I'm reprimanding him.
"I mean it, Simon. We need to get you some medical help and get back to our time right away."
He pauses. His face is a grimace. "I'm so dizzy. I feel like I'm going to throw up. Trust me, never feel like you're ready to pass out. It's not pleasant."
"Simon!" I prop his head up, but he groans and forces me to set it back down.
"Something's really wrong," Monica says. "He's bleeding again. Look."
I do.
His towel's loosened. It's soaked with blood. He's bleeding all over the crystal floor. I wonder if the Chronophage is going to lumber over to devour the foreign substance. It's attacking everything else. But it doesn't. It continues its assault on the crystal wall in a hopeless bid to tear it down. More cracking joins in, growing into a concert of rumbles and cracks. All of them must be beating away at the walls of the Main Chamber. The crystal around us shakes as if we're in an earthquake. That's not helping Simon's situation.
Enough arguing, then. We need to get him help now. The only place I know that can heal him quickly--and the only place that I know we can reliably get out of again--is Arnelia's time.
"Grab him," I say. "I'll tie the towel around him again. I don't know how much good it'll do, but Arnelia will know how to heal him. I remember where that rift is, thank God. We have to carry him there."
Monica grabs his arm and Isabel, the other. I can't think of anything better. We don't have a gurney to drag him with. I take his legs and place them up on my shoulders. Simon groans.
"Now!" I yell. "Keep his head low."
"We'll need to hunch over," Monica says.
"I don't care."
We carry him out into the Main Chamber. Isabel and Monica walk like old, stopped women and Simon looks up at the fog above. His hair falls and waves as we carry him. The trembling grows worse, but none of the giant cells turn to come after us. They must only want to devour things that have to do with Time itself. The Timeless, who have Time in their blood. Now, the walls of the Hub. It makes sense. I'm surprised they haven't come for Amelia's device yet, which is supposed to contain the hair of a Timeless person.
"The corridor we need is all the way across the Main Chamber," I breathe. Simon groans. At least he's still awake. "It's a long walk." A scream rises in my throat. We have to keep Simon's head below his legs. I never took any first aid in any time, but it makes sense. I have to keep as much blood out of his calf as possible and hope it can clot again. The cloth stays put as Simon's heels dig into my shoulders. The scent of his blood mixes with the stench of rot.
I hold my breath as much as I can. The Hub is smelling worse by the minute, almost as if it's building up to some disgusting climax.
At last--and it could be minutes or hours or days--we reach the other end of the Main Chamber. I scan my mind for which corridor is the right one. Thankfully, I traveled to Arnelia's home when I was Timeless, so I still know where to go. It's the fifth one on the right. "Simon," I manage. My shoulders are on fire from balancing his calves. His blood soaks through my dress, making it damp. Somehow, I keep the strength to keep his legs in the air. It's not easy. My back protests. "Are you still with us?"
"Yes. I feel like rubbish."
"Good. Not that you feel like rubbish," I say. "We're almost there."
"The rift to Arnelia is half a mile down this corridor," Isabel says. "We should be there in a few minutes."
We enter. I back into the corridor, passing archways and whatever rifts they contain. The fog remains thick as ever. I realize that
we haven't thought about Isabel's father in about an hour, maybe more. All that matters right now is Simon. The rest can wait. Once Simon is all fixed up, we're going to figure out how to reverse this mess.
"We're almost there," Isabel huffs.
"I hope so," Monica adds. "No offense, Simon."
We're trying to keep the tone light for him, but I can't hold back my panic much longer. If Simon dies, I won't be able to fix this on my own. I need all the help I can get. Or will I? Could I go back and save his life?
No. We need him. If he dies here, he probably won't be in 1912 to save all over again. I'll never see him again and Arnelia will die, too.
But then again, we're supposed to die. Maybe this is Time's way of fixing itself. By taking us out of it. Maybe Time even wanted us to get hit by the shrapnel.
My breath comes in gasps. How long have we been walking? The blood's growing dry and stiff on my dress.
"There!" Isabel shouts.
She stands at a random rift and the memory tickles the back of my mind. This is the one, all right. Simon, Isabel and I went through it as Timeless. Even better, on the other side there's an artificial rift that Arnelia can turn on for us. She did escape from Frank, right? Frank did try to murder her.
She did. Frank's not Timeless anymore, and he never will be as far as I know. He should be back at the Civil War, fighting the Confederates.
A part of me hopes that he survives, that he gets to go on and be happy like everyone else. That he's not going to lie there and rot in the sun, and that he's not going to be lying in the ground while Lincoln gives the Gettysburg Address. The same for Fred, too.
We stop at the rift.
"We're going to have to get Simon upright to pull him through," I say.
"I can walk now," he says, lifting his feet off my shoulders and landing on the floor. "I'm a lot less dizzy with you holding me like that."
"No, you can't." I'm relieved to see him up and about again. Maybe he just needed to get some blood back to his brain. Understandable.
He straightens up.
And sways.
"Simon!" I grab him to stop him from going down.
"I'm tired,'" he says. "Sleepy."
"That's a sign of blood loss," Monica says. "We need to go through. Now."
Monica's the first to jump through the rift this time. Whether it's to get out of here or to go get help, I'm not sure. I make sure the hair clip is still fastened to my scalp and hit the button to make it save my newest memories, as much as I hate them. Isabel takes Simon's other shoulder. And together, we jump through.
Chapter Sixteen
"Where is this?" I ask.
Everything's a blur at first and I stop, taking in the huge glass dome that's over my head. I'm standing next to a guy with dark brown hair. In the sunlight, it has red highlights. But the guy is pale, sick-looking, almost. Things that look like gray, five-foot-high walls with chairs facing them line the room. There's a walkway that leads to a tunnel all the way across the room. There's two girls standing with us too, a blond girl in an old gray dress and a dark girl with curls in her hair, who's looking around at the room in astonishment.
I have no idea why we're here.
Or what this place even is.
All I can scrape from my memory is my name.
Julia.
"What's going on?" I ask. "Why are we here?"
The guy I'm holding leans on me more like he's going to pass out. "I dunno." He looks up at the room. "But it's pretty cool."
Then I catch the smell of blood. I look down.
The boy I'm holding has a towel or cloth wrapped around his calf. It's bleeding. There's so much blood on it that at first, I think I'm looking at a red cloth, not a white one. More blood drips down to his stockings and starts to pool on the floor.
He leans on me and groans.
"Did we just finish with some weird party or something?" the dark girl asks. She's dressed in jeans, unlike me. I'm wearing a brown dress with ugly flowers on it. Nothing about this makes sense. Who are these people?
But one thing's clear.
I need to call for help.
We're standing next to a tall wall that's gray and featureless. I run my hand across it. It's made of some strange material like canvas or something. Nothing here. No one else is in the room with us. The air grows darker like the sun's going out, but I can't see any clouds in the sky above us. The sun's at a low angle, like we're at some crazy latitude or something.
"Hello?" I call. "Anyone? I don't know what's happening, but this man is bleeding. Someone needs to come right now!"
One of the gray walls has some kind of computer screen lit up on it. Strange symbols that might be Chinese or Arabic dance across the screen. I'm not sure how I know what a computer is. It's just there, screaming at the back of my memory.
The guy sags against me. His head lolls onto my shoulder. He's losing strength.
"Hello?" I shout.
My voice echoes around the room. There's tingling sensation coming form the wall behind us. I turn to face it. Nothing's happening.
"Hello? We need help!"
I contemplate dragging the boy towards the tunnel that leads out of the room--there's one just down a walkway between all the gray walls and chair and computer monitors--but decide against it. If this boy is bleeding, I don't want to make it any worse.
"I want to lie down," the guy says.
I let him. The blond girl and I set him down on the steps. He manages to prop his leg up, putting his foot up on the gray wall. His eyes flutter open all the way like he's regaining some consciousness. The towel around his leg loosens. It's soaked with blood, both new and old.
"Stay there," I tell him. My heart pounds. "We need to get you help. Do you know what happened to you?"
"No clue."
I search my pockets for something, anything, to help stop the bleeding. There's nothing. My hand closes around lint. I pull it out.
"You're beautiful," the guy says. He smiles. "I love that hair ornament."
"Thanks," I say, patting the top of my head. I am wearing one. It's something with wings.
"What are you doing?" the girl with dark curls asks. "We should be looking for help for this guy. We can figure out why we all have amnesia later."
My scalp tingles.
And all of it comes surging back.
This is Simon, my love, lying here and bleeding to death.
We're in the year 5052, where our descendant, Arnelia, lives.
And if Simon dies, she dies, too.
"ARNELIA!" I shout. "Where are you? Get in here!" I face Isabel and Monica. "Stay on this platform. If we move off the steps, they'll trap us here."
"Huh?" Isabel asks.
"Trust me."
This lab has security measures. The moment I step away from the artificial rift, some walls are going to come up off the floor and surround us. And if I hug the gray walls that double as computer screens, they'll pull me to them and keep me there until someone comes to arrest us.
Maybe that's what will have to happen.
"What's going on?" Monica repeats.
I don't have time to restore their memories. I have to act now. No one's coming. I have to make sure that someone comes and sees Simon here, bleeding. If they see that, they'll call someone to help. Arnelia will have to find us soon enough. But what if somehow, she doesn't exist anymore? We won't have anyone to go to in this time.
But it's a risk I'm going to take. I'm going to trip the security measures after all. This room will sense that my DNA doesn't belong in here.
"Don't panic," I say, and step off the steps.
I run along the walkway. Any moment now--
The floor turns to liquid around my feet and surges up, surrounding me. I scream with the shock of it. The wall grows higher, blocking the walkway and the entire lab from view.
"Hey!" Simon calls.
At least he's still awake. But I know that won't last too much longer.
I watch the liqui
d metal close above my head. I'm trapped in here. It's pitch dark. But at least some alarms must be going off and someone will come, even if it's that guy that yelled at us the first time we came here as Timeless. But he won't remember that, at least.
"Where are you?" Isabel shouts.
I can't answer them and be understood. I remember the time she was caught in this thing.
Hurry, I think
Hurry.
Footfalls approach and I hear the yelling of an angry man in some language I don't recognize. I hear a chair scraping across the floor and someone touching a computer screen. At least, I think that's what's happening. It beeps as the guy works. Monica and Isabel say nothing. At least help is here.
And then, the metal wall comes down in a flash, melting back into the floor. I stand there. It's him, all right--the short, dark man in the white lab coat. He glares at me and advances, ready to give me the chewing of my life for being in here.
I point at Simon. "Help him!"
He turns his head.
Studies Simon, who still lies on the floor, bleeding. Monica and Isabel kneel next to him like they're not sure what to do. None of them remembers anything past the last few minutes. How can they know what to do?
"Yes. Help him!" Isabel cries. "I know you can't understand us, but--"
The man's jaw falls open as he takes in the blood and carnage. He races over to another one of the long, five foot tall walls and touches it. Another screen pops up and he puts in what might be a code. He's calling for help.
I breathe a sigh of relief and rush back to Simon. The security must be deactivated for now. I wrap my arms around him.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"Simon. I love you," I say, mashing my lips to his. "I love you. You're going to be okay. Someone here is going to get you fixed up."
"Well, that's helping already," he says.
I kiss him again.
More footfalls rush into the room. I look up. It's four men in white uniforms and they're pulling a gurney out of the tunnel along with them. It looks like it's made of some kind of canvas. And is it levitating?
It is. The men merely guide it forward with their hands. They're wearing things that look like metal gloves.