by Sophie Davis
“I didn’t mean to bring him here, Cyrus, I swear. I don’t know how or why, but I swear, I didn’t bring him here on purpose,” I began, my voice quickly picking up pace. “It all happened so fast. We were in the middle of a prison break when he showed up. Molly had used all the memory mod. We were just going to leave him. I mean, who would believe him anyway? Three people vanishing into thin air? Not exactly something that happens every day, you know? But, I don’t know what happened. I guess…I guess he grabbed me right as I was jumping.”
Aware that my explanation was devolving into incoherent rambling, I clamped my lips shut and took a deep breath through my nose. Cyrus’s blank mask never wavered. Charles shifted uneasily from foot to foot beside me. I didn’t dare look at him.
“Two patients. One female, one male,” a medic barked into his walkie-talkie as he reentered the gate. “Both made a jump without customs. Prepare beds.” The other three were close on his heels, half-carrying, half-dragging Molly and Gaige from the vortex.
Arms crossed over his chest, Cyrus never took his eyes off of me.
“Both of you report to medical,” he finally said.
I opened my mouth to protest, to say that I was fine and didn’t need medical attention.
“That is an order, Stassi,” Cyrus warned. “I want you both checked out. Then I will determine the best course of action. For now, do not let him out of your sight. At all. Stick to him like white on rice, do you understand?” Not waiting for an answer from me, my boss turned to Charles. “Welcome to Branson Isle, Mr. DuPree. Your stay here will be brief.”
Cyrus spun on his heel and left the gate without another word.
“Come on, let’s go get poked and prodded,” I muttered to Charles.
Pale but determined, Charles nodded. Together, we trailed my boss up the stairs.
As we emerged, I saw the bright stars twinkling above, like diamonds strewn across blue velvet.
Charles sucked in a breath of air. “Where are we?”
“Branson Isle, like Cyrus said,” I replied stiffly.
“Which is where, exactly?”
I stopped walking and stared at Charles, appreciating for the first time how bizarre this had to be for him. And it was only going to get more bizarre when we reached the infirmary, and he saw all of the syndicate’s medical gadgets.
Charles stopped, too. I reached out and gave his hand a brief squeeze.
“It’ll all make sense soon,” I promised, not sure that it would. How was Cyrus going to explain everything to him? Would Cyrus explain anything to him? Or would my boss simply hit Charles with memory mod and call it a day?
“I trust you, Stassi.”
You shouldn’t, I thought.
Aloud, I said, “Come on. Cyrus will be pissed if we don’t get our butts up to the infirmary.”
“We would not want that,” Charles replied in a light tone. He reached for my hand, but I pretended not to notice and started walking again.
Along the path to the infirmary, we passed a group of off-duty runners who were enjoying a dip in the hot springs. Loud music and raucous laughter rang out from the pools down below. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Charles staring with interest at the spectacle.
“Hey, Stassi!” a silky voice called out. I glanced in the direction it came from—one of the bungalows not far from the path. Squinting into the darkness, I found the source with relative ease, thanks to a neon pink bikini. Arin, whose swimsuit was secured by little more than dental floss, was standing on the back porch of her bungalow. Her hair was wet and her eyes slightly unfocused.
“Totes bummer about Paris and the whole serial killer thing,” she continued, sipping from a red plastic cup in her hand. “Cyrus was majorly P.O.’ed about that rogue runner. Wouldn’t want to be him right now, you know?”
“Yeah, me neither,” I called back.
I really don’t want to be me right now, either, I thought.
Charles simply gaped at the exchange, his expression a mix of embarrassment and fascination.
“You’re drooling,” I said. Tugging him forward, I hurried on before Arin sobered up enough to realize there was a new hot guy on the island.
“What is she wearing?” Charles asked. “And why was she walking around outside in it?”
“She was swimming,” I replied.
“Is that a bathing costume?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“But it is so…small.”
I didn’t bother telling him that the neon two-piece was probably one of her more modest suits.
Unfortunately, he’d opened the can of questions and couldn’t seem to get the lid back on. From there, Charles peppered me with every query I would’ve expected, and then even more: Are we near Baltimore? Who lives here? Do you live here? Is Cyrus really your uncle? Is Gaige really your adoptive brother? Why are we going to an infirmary? Are we sick?
The last one gave me pause. We’d reached the medical center, but had yet to enter.
“You aren’t sick,” I said definitively, realizing for the first time that Charles, unlike Molly and Gaige, was not puking his guts out. I studied him. No pale or waxy complexion. No feverish eyes. Sweat was beading on his forehead and he did wear a look of confusion, but both were explainable under the circumstances. “Do you feel sick?”
“I am well,” Charles replied.
“It’s the adrenaline,” I said. “Jumping gives you lots of adrenaline. Just let me know when it wears off and you start to feel sick.”
But the more I looked at him, the less certain I felt that it would prove true. Myself excluded, I couldn’t think of a runner immune to time sickness. And Charles didn’t even have a tattoo. No prima embedded in his skin to help ease the journey through the space-time continuum. I shook my head. He was going to be hurting very soon.
“Jumping?” Charles was asking. “Is that what you call what we just did? We ‘jumped’ from Paris to here? Branson Isle, was it? I have never heard of it.”
I sighed heavily and stepped within range of the door sensor. Frosted glass doors slid smoothly apart. Charles sucked in air as he was struck speechless by our not-so-modern marvel.
I felt the corners of my mouth turn up at his expression. Adapting to new surroundings was part of my job as a runner. Even when something shocked or surprised me, I fought to keep it from showing on my face. Then again, I had the added benefit of jumping back to times that I could prepare for. There was no preparing for the future.
Which was precisely why runners didn’t travel forward beyond their own time; it was a fundamental rule agreed upon by all of the syndicates. One glance at Charles’s ghost-white face confirmed that it was a sound decision. He swayed unsteadily on his feet as we approached the reception desk, gaping in an undignified, very un-Charles-like manner.
A wave of sympathy washed over me. The poor guy had to feel like a lost puppy separated from his family. Which he sort was.
The night nurse on duty was a year or two older than me. Her waist-length silver hair was twisted into three separate buns at the nape of her neck and shimmered under the bright infirmary lights. Silver mascara had been liberally applied to her long lashes, and her eyebrows were dyed to match the exact shade of the hair on her head. As she typed on the keyboard in front of her, the text displayed on a clear screen behind her desk.
“Stassi, nice to see you have returned in one piece,” Roxi, the nurse, said with a smile. “Are you here to see Molly and Gaige? I’m afraid the medics are still tending to them, but you can wait if you want.” She gestured to a row of sleek chrome chairs off to one side of the room. “Or, if you’d prefer, you can wait at your bungalow. I’m sure you’d be more comfortable there, and I will comm you as soon as they are able to receive visitors.”
As amazing as heading back to my bungalow sounded, it wasn’t in the cards. I might never be allowed back there. Would Molly pitch my stuff and revel in the luxury of having the bungalow to herself?
“Actually, Ro
xi, I’m here for an eval,” I said shakily. I nodded towards Charles. “Cyrus wanted both of us to be checked out.”
“This must be our visitor.” A man with the tall, lean body of a swimmer appeared in the entranceway to the treatment wing. Dr. Wain Carver was head of the infirmary, and a man I only knew from a distance. The fact that Cyrus felt the need to call him made me queasy. He rarely treated runners for anything as routine as time sickness. Return from a run with the plague, Spanish flu, typhoid—whatever that was—and Dr. Carver was your guy. Time sickness was left to the underlings, particularly in the middle of the night.
“Dr. Wain Carver,” the doctor said, offering Charles his hand.
“Charles DuPree,” Charles replied, the picture of manners and etiquette.
He must have a high tolerance for weird, I thought, marveling at Charles’s ability to speak in the face of technology that had to seem like something from an H.P. Lovecraft novel.
“Mr. Atlic has asked you be given a physical.” The doctor spoke in low, soothing tones meant to be reassuring. Naturally, they had the opposite effect on me. “No need to worry, we just want to make sure you are healthy.”
Two large medics loitered in the hallway behind the doctor. Their nonchalant attitudes weren’t fooling me. Probably not Charles, either. The medics were hanging back far enough as to not be threating, but close enough to tackle Charles should he flip his shant.
Charles ignored the men and smiled serenely at the doctor, nodding politely.
“Of course, doctor.”
Dr. Carver gestured Charles towards the hallway. “This way.” He turned to me. “Someone will be with you shortly, Stassi. Have a seat for now.”
The first sign of true distress appeared in the form of a deep frown line between Charles’s eyes. “You are not coming with me?” he asked, voice cracking on the last word. “I thought you would be staying with me. Your uncle said you were to stay with me.”
The medics moved closer to Dr. Carver. I shot them a look that said, “Back the hell up”, and reached for Charles’s hand.
“This is very routine, no big deal,” I told him with a large fake grin. “Dr. Carver will take good care of you. I promise. And as soon as he’s finished running some tests, I’ll come see you.”
“Precisely. All very routine,” Dr. Carver agreed.
“You said I wasn’t sick,” Charles said to me, lowering his tone as though there was a chance the others might not hear him in the quiet reception area.
The medics took another step forward. Too much more protesting or procrastinating, and they were going to dose him. I hated to admit that it might be for the best. Thus far, Charles was handling all of this amazingly well. But he was beginning to crack. One look at the medi pods, and he was likely to freak out.
“You probably aren’t,” I replied slowly, feeling terrible for him. “The island is very isolated, though. Cyrus just wants to make sure you don’t have any communicable diseases.”
The lie slipped out easily enough, partly because it was rooted in truth. Someone from a different time period could very well be carrying a disease long since eradicated. I didn’t want to think about the other reasons Cyrus might want him to undergo a medical evaluation. Or, possibly, a psychological one.
“Stassi, when are—”
I cut him off abruptly, planting my mouth firmly over his. Charles stiffened at first, but relaxed quickly. The kiss didn’t last long, just long enough to shut him up. Then, I brushed my lips softly over his cheek and murmured quietly in his ear.
“Cooperate, please. They won’t hurt you. You’ll be safe. And you’ll be back with me soon.” I straightened and gave him my fake smile. “I’ll see you soon.”
Heart heavy, stomach a bundle of nerves, I watched Charles disappear through the doors.
THOSE SLEEK CHAIRS in the waiting room were torturous. My butt had more knots than a sailing rig by the time someone came for me. To my surprise, and dread, that someone wasn’t a medic.
Cyrus entered the infirmary waiting area and took a seat next to me. Without a glance in my direction, my boss leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, and stared at the floor in front of him. I rubbed my eyes, stifling a yawn as I steeled myself for my beheading.
“I’m so sorry, Cyrus,” I whispered.
He didn’t answer. For several extremely long minutes, I stewed in the silence. When I finally couldn’t take it anymore, I broke down and asked the question weighing heaviest on my mind.
“How much trouble am I in?” I asked quietly, bracing myself for his judgment.
“Depends. Which transgression are you referring to?”
I hesitated, and then opted to wait him out.
“Afraid you’ll hang yourself with the rope I’m giving you?” he prompted after another lull.
“A little,” I admitted.
Finally, my boss turned to look at me. Those emerald eyes studied me with the intensity of a high-powered microscope. It wasn’t long before I began to squirm under the scrutiny.
“Answer me one question, Stassi. And answer it honestly. Did you intend to bring Charles DuPree back with you?”
“What?” I exclaimed. “No. Of course not, no. Cyrus, I swear. It happened just like I said. He must have grabbed me right before I jumped. I didn’t even realize he’d been brought along, until we landed here and I gained my bearings. I swear.”
Cyrus nodded. “I believe you. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“You do?”
“Of course.”
Though I was grateful that he believed me, I wasn’t sure it was enough. Bottom line, Charles was here because of me. Did my intentions matter?
“What is the punishment for stowaways?” I asked, my voice low and wavering. “Exile?”
Cyrus looked alarmed as he met my eyes. The kindness I saw set my hopes aflutter.
“Accidents happen, Stassi,” he said gently. “You’re not going to be punished for it.”
My sigh of relief could be heard on Mars as the crushing threat of exile was lifted from my shoulders. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around Cyrus and squeezed.
“Thank you, Cyrus,” I said, my voice cracking.
“We’ll still have to hold a council meeting for you to tell the other Founders exactly what happened. They need to hear it in your own words.”
“I understand,” I replied quickly. “No problem.”
A genuine smile played across Cyrus’s lips. “Nice job with the prison break. You and Molly make quite the team.”
Blushing, I looked down and waited for a reprimand. When none came, I ventured a question of my own.
“Have you seen her?” I asked. “Molly? How is she?”
“Not too bad. If I am being honest, surprisingly well, in fact. I expect she’ll make a speedy recovery.”
“Thank goodness,” I said, relieved. “Gaige, too?”
“He’s a little worse for the wear. Being locked in a damp cell for a week was already taking a toll on him. And, in general, jail food isn’t the most nutritious. No need to worry, though. He’ll be good as new in a couple of days.”
“And Charles?”
“Now that is interesting.” Cyrus furrowed his brow, perplexed. “He demonstrates no signs of time sicknesses. For his sake, let’s hope he’s just as lucky on the return trip.”
My heart sank. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been hoping that somehow, someway, Charles would be able to stay on the island with me. The notion was ridiculous, of course.
He didn’t belong here.
He didn’t belong with me.
Our lives were so very different. Our worlds couldn’t have been further apart, our times less compatible. He could stay in 2446 no more than I could stay in 1925. At least, not indefinitely.
“When will he go back?” I asked quietly.
“Soon,” Cyrus answered, leaning back in his seat. “Dr. Carver wants to run some tests. I need to speak with him. When we’re finished, I’ll t
ake him back to 1925, give him a heavy dose of memory mod, and send him on his way. Then the alchemists will monitor him for a while to ensure his mental and physical health are unaffected.”
Make sure he doesn’t go blabbing about futuristic islands and time vortexes, I thought.
“Can I take him back?” The question slipped out, spoken so softly I thought for a second I’d simply thought it.
“That might not be best,” Cyrus said, not unkindly. He squeezed my shoulder affectionately. “His feelings for you are very strong, Stassi. I’m not even sure the memory mod will erase them at this point. The less contact he has with you, the better it will be for him.”
Averting my eyes, so Cyrus wouldn’t see the ridiculous tears gathering in the corners, I nodded.
“Can I at least see him before he goes?”
Cyrus’s hand tightened on my shoulder. He took a painfully long time to answer.
“I suppose one last visit won’t hurt. Not too long, though.”
My head shot up, the tears forgotten. “Really?”
“Think of it as a reward,” Cyrus replied, nudging my shoulder with his own.
“For bringing back a guy instead of a book?” The sarcastic response slipped out without thinking. I clasped my mouth shut, not wanting to test the limits of my boss’s benevolence.
To my surprise, Cyrus chuckled at my comment. “Definitely not. Rupert found the briefcase in the vortex. It seems you not only completed your assignment, but also went for extra credit. Those Hemingway novels will fetch quite a bit.” He shrugged. “Who knows? I may keep them for myself. I have always loved ancient literature.”
“How crazy is it that we got those?” I asked, faint guilt still tugging at me. “I feel terrible for stealing from Hadley, we were only after Blue’s Canyon. I cannot believe everything else we acquired, too.”
“C’est la vie,” my boss replied with a wink. He checked his watch. “Voulez-vous voir votre ami maintenant?”
Even without the Rosetta, I knew what he was asking.
“Yes, please,” I replied.
Cyrus personally escorted me back to Charles’s treatment room. Despite the late hour—or early, depending on how you looked at it—Charles was awake and alert. He wore pale blue scrubs and the wide-eyed expression of a man sure he’d blink and find the last twelve hours had been a dream.