Death Thieves

by Julie Wright

  “So what exactly does the future need from me?” I didn’t really believe his claims to be from the future. Sure the hydrator was kind of cool but not outside the realm of the unusual. I felt pretty certain the military had things just like that. I made a mental note to do a Google search once home again. I’d do it now, except my phone had been on the seat between Nathan and me when our lives exploded.

  “Your blood.”

  I sat up straight, instinctively grabbing the thermal blanket to keep it from slipping off again. “What?”

  “No. Not like that. Your blood is pure. You have no disease. You can bear children within your own body without the help from labs and testing.”

  “How do you know if my blood is free from disease? A doctor once told me I had anemia.” Did he really just say bear children? I had no intentions of bearing any children for at least another decade. Maybe not ever. “For all you know my blood isn’t pure at all.” I thought I had him on that point, though I scooted farther away from him in case he decided to stick me with a needle to get proof. When he stayed quiet and didn’t meet my gaze, I paused. “You. You took my jeans after the cave. You stole my blood.”

  “I had to be certain you were what the records stated.” He shifted as though he felt uncomfortable. Well, he should feel uncomfortable, going into a girl’s room uninvited and stealing her pants. I glared at him, not that I’d ever really stopped glaring. I took several deep breaths. Keep him talking. Make him your friend.

  “So you have a blood sample. What does that mean?”

  “You can bear children.”

  I shook my head. My heart rate went up. Was he seriously discussing having babies? What kind of psychopath was I dealing with? “Lots of people can have children. It’s not exactly a superpower.”

  “It is to some people. In the year 2113, no one can have children. All women and men are sterile due to HTHBI. All newborns are born sterile due to the infection passing from one genetic subject to another.”

  “HTHBI?”

  “Human-to-human birthing infection.”

  That actually sounded bad. Like a zombie apocalypse infection. “So what? The world is dying off?” His continual references to having babies freaked me out. I wanted to run away screaming but couldn’t think of how to get away without getting caught again. I darted furtive glances to the woods around me. The trees stood like dark sentinels refusing me safe passage through them.

  He shook his head. “Of course not. Scientists have formed alternative methods to create life. But those methods are—” He frowned. “Not always stable.” He finished eating the contents of his pouch, crumpled it, and put it in the small silver knapsack near his hydrator. “We’re lucky in many ways. There’s a scientist with extraordinary talent and intelligence. He could see patterns of time and dimension. Because he could see those patterns, he was able to find ways to pass through the windows of time and into other places. Because of this, he found a way to mend the future.” Tag gave me a meaningful look. I snorted at him and then chastised myself. Snorting at a crazy guy wouldn’t make him my friend. It wouldn’t get me home.

  Tag glanced at his wristband. “The next window to our destination won’t open for several more days.” He picked up his hydrator. “We don’t have enough food to last that long with any comfort. We’ll need to skip.”

  “You want me to skip?” Oh great. I’d been abducted by the hopscotch killer.

  “Skip through time. Calculate what windows we could take that will allow us to skip in and out until we get to where we want to go.” He fiddled with his little wrist screen. “The next window will take us back two years but allow us to jump eighty. That’s why I had to bring you here. This is where the most viable window will be. From there we’ll only have to wait an hour until the next jump, which will take us exactly where we want to go. We’ll leave in thirteen minutes.” He hurried to his feet and packed the hydrator into his knapsack. He looked as though he might take the thin blanket I’d kept wrapped around me to stave off the cold and then turned away, apparently thinking better of it.

  “Changing dimension is easier than changing time,” he said. “Time shifts are disorienting. Hang on to me, and I’ll help you adjust.”

  Hang onto him? As if! After all his creepy comments about bearing children and being a queen? I wouldn’t touch him to scratch his face off. We stayed silent for several long minutes while he cleaned up, making sure we didn’t leave anything behind.

  “My sister will worry if I don’t get home soon. We’re twins. Twins need each other. If I don’t go home, it’ll be like killing her.” Would he care if he killed her?

  “She’ll survive it.”

  His bitter tone and scoffing grunt infuriated me. “She won’t survive anything! She needs me! Don’t you get it? If someone takes a swing at her, I catch the fist. If someone tries to hurt her, I get her somewhere safe. I protect her, and she takes care of everyone who might come after. That’s the way we work. But she’s not strong enough to protect herself. She’ll shrivel into a submissive mass of nothing! You’re wasting the most incredible potential humanity has ever created. Just let me go back. You want me to go to the future with you and be some alien experiment, let me bring her with.” Not that I had any intentions of allowing him anywhere near Winter. But if I could get him to take me home, I could sic Aunt Theresa and the police on him.

  The way he packed things up and then seemed to be waiting on some miraculous window to the future to open had moved me to a new realm of freaking out. Would he wait the full thirteen minutes and then shoot me or stab me? So far, no evidence of a gun or a knife had presented itself, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. That jacket had a lot of pockets.

  “I can’t take her. You’re the one not getting it. You died in that car wreck. If I hadn’t pulled you out, you’d be lost to her anyway—except you’d be really dead. Your sister had to learn to be her own person on the day of your accident. I didn’t change anything for her.”

  “Then just go get her. I’ll go with you if she comes with me.”

  “I can’t pull her life out of history. I won’t chance the chaos that could arise from ending the influence she has on the world around her. She has her part to play in history. And you have yours.”

  “Oh, yeah! Great part I’m playing. I get to die! You know what? Just don’t talk to me anymore. I hate you, you know that. Hate you!” So much for making him my friend.

  “I know.” His whole response—two words that seemed as heartless and cold as a machine. He knew I hated him and didn’t care. I turned away, scrubbing my hand hard over my cheeks to clear away the tears. I got up, which brought Tag abruptly to my side, his hand on my arm.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to touch me.” I let the hate ooze into my words.

  “I am allowed, and required, to detain you. But I would never violate you.”

  Even just hearing him say the word violate made my skin crawl. The thought of Winter facing the world alone filled me with a pain so deep, the back of my throat burned and my whole body shuddered.

  What would Winter be doing right now? Would she be huddled in a corner of our room lost in a depression so deep no one would be able to pull her out? Would she be scrambling through Theresa’s medicine cabinet, trying to pull a stunt like Mom and drug herself into numbing relief? I couldn’t conceive of how I would handle it if anything ever happened to her. I’m so sorry, Wineve . . . so sorry . . .

  More minutes passed; Tag continually checked the time. His hand stayed on my arm, but as the minutes ticked away from us, he settled his hand firmly around my wrist. “It will feel uncomfortable at first, like trying to wear a shirt that’s too tight. But if we stay in contact, you’ll be fine.”

  His waiting for some imaginary time warp to whisk us away drove me insane. Without letting go of my wrist, he moved to press his fingers into his screen. Out of irritation and outright anger, I reached my own fingers out, and swiped them over the screen. The pulling sensation grip
ped at my middle at the same time Tag shouted, “Nooooooooooo!”

  His shout echoed and vibrated in my ears and the tugging sensation gave way to the feeling that someone squeezed the air out of my lungs. The world around me blurred away in a spinning funnel of color and texture.

  Chapter Five

  In a panic I tried to pull away, but Tag tightened his grip on my wrist. When the pressure at my chest let up a little, the spinning color slowed enough I could almost make out the images within the swirl.

  Cold wet drops splattered down on my face and hands. I looked up to the rain beating down from thick clouds. There was enough light to prove it was no longer night, yet the clouds made everything seem dark and dismal. I pivoted, or tried to pivot. Tag still had a mean grip on my wrist. When I finally looked at him, mostly to question what in the world had just happened, his eyes flashed. “You did it again! We missed the window to the proper time. Now we’re in—” He checked his wrist thingy. “In the middle of a rain pour in 1572! 1572!” His grip tightened, cutting off the blood supply to my hand.

  Disoriented, I tried to blink the raindrops from my vision and really see around me, tried to get my bearing as to where I was, when I was.

  Not only had the weather and time of day changed, the fire pit had disappeared. The clearing where the picnic table had been had also vanished. I blinked some more. A mist rolled through the trees.

  “Do you have any idea how easily you can kill us with time travel? Of all the stupid stunts to pull. We could end up in the middle of a war zone!” He started undoing the binding clips that held the device to his wrist. I wasn’t sure what taking it off would accomplish but felt dazed enough not to be able to comment, make observations, or ask questions beyond the involuntary squeak my voice made.

  The wind howled, ripping Tag’s words away as he cursed and muttered about me and my stupidity. He looked up and seemed to be cursing the sky, too, something about needing solar power.

  Trees creaked and swayed under the slashing wind, their shadows mournful and disturbing. Then I looked closer, some of those swaying shadows were advancing. I found myself gripping Tag’s jacket, trying to position him between me and whatever moved toward us.

  Tag’s head shot up from where he’d been focusing on his wrist thing. It hung by one binding clip, dangling from his arm. He took a sharp breath. “Tacoma Indians.” Instead of undoing the last binding, he picked up the dangling part and rested it back against his arm, though he didn’t take the time to rehook it. His fingers moved deftly over the screen. He reached around and pulled me in by the waist, since I still held onto his jacket and was too terrified to let go, we ended up in some odd version of an embrace.

  He tapped his screen.

  The tugging at my gut again, the tightening of my chest until breathing became a miraculous feat. I buried my head into his jacket, not wanting the disorientation that came with the world swirling around me. His arms stayed around me, holding me close to him. Under his jacket, the solid mass of muscles felt like a cage’s iron bars holding me in. I didn’t care. I just wanted away from the torrential rain and the shadows moving with the trees—moving toward me.

  How had he done that? How had he made everything different? He changed the weather, the time of day, everything. How? He was like some sort of magician, some sort of psycho sorcerer. I’d seen a rerun from some hypnotist show with Derren Brown, where in the middle of daylight he hypnotized some guy into a catatonic state, and then left him that way until the sun disappeared into the horizon and the only light came from the stars. He changed the guy’s watch time and then woke the guy up.

  The guy was totally messed up. He believed the hypnotist had altered time. He completely freaked. Had Tag done this same thing to me? Was I trapped in illusion?

  After what seemed an eternity, Tag released my waist, lifted my chin, and looked me directly in the eyes. I held the intensity of his gaze. My fingers, wound tightly into his jacket, still refused to let go. I had to force myself to pry each individual finger free.

  The world around us had stopped spinning. The sun hung at its zenith. The only clouds in the sky were the ones of the huge white fluffy variety, and none of them dropped rain on us.

  “You’re safe.” The words came out with the heat of his breath, warming my face, which was still cold and wet from the rain.

  I shoved away from him. “Safe?” I spat. “I’m not safe! First it was nighttime in early autumn, then it was raining and there were Indians!” I dropped the blanket to the ground.

  He picked it up and stuffed it into his knapsack. “They were probably friendly.”

  I jabbed him in the shoulder. “You don’t know that! They could have been headhunters! And now we’re . . . and now . . . now it’s the middle of the day in . . .” I cast a hasty glance to the trees surrounding us. The fiery leaves shivering on their branches announced the autumn season we stood in. “What is this? October?”

  He looked at his wristband thing. “Good guess. 2058, October 21st.”

  I fell to my knees and threw up.

  I stayed on my knees, detached thoughts swimming to my consciousness, and then diving back down to be replaced by something equally detached. I left my life almost fifty years ago. Winter would be sixty-four years old. Would she be married? Would she have children and grandchildren? Was Aunt Theresa dead? Odd that I thought about Theresa, odd that it bothered me to think she might not be in the world anymore and to feel so exposed by that fact.

  A piece of cloth appeared in front of my vision. “Here, you can clean your mouth off with this.” He jiggled the cloth in front of me to entice me to take it.

  I moved away from the mess I’d made in the dirt and took his cloth. He handed me a water bottle, too. I thought once more about being like Persephone and not eating or drinking anything offered by my captor but had lost my will somewhere in the years. “I didn’t even like Theresa,” I said after taking a sip of the water.

  He didn’t ask who Theresa was or why I would say such a thing. He just sat next to me and watched me.

  “Is this real? Is this a trick, like some stage hypnotist making a girl flap her arms like a chicken? Are we really in the year 2058?”

  He nodded, the action seeming almost apologetic. He looked worried, whether about me or the year or whatever, I had no idea.

  I stared at the ground, seeing nothing. “Winter’s an old woman. Old without me. Her face wouldn’t be my mirror anymore.” Tears started falling again.

  “You’re going to get dehydrated if you keep crying and sicking out like that.”

  I lifted my head to gawk at him. “And you think I care? I have nothing to live for without her. Nothing.” My voice cracked, and I felt my chin quivering. I scratched my fingers into the dirt and, in a moment of clarity, formed a plan. I rolled back from my knees so my feet were under me. Tag didn’t really notice the change in the movement and was completely unprepared when I picked up fistfuls of dirt and debris and flung it into his face.

  His hands flew to his eyes as I clawed for the wrist thing still hanging on by a single binding clip. He tried standing up and batting me away, but I yanked and jerked with all my might on his time-traveling wristwatch. I fell back when it finally broke free from his arm.

  I jumped to my feet and ran.

  Branches tangled in my hair and tore at Winter’s shirt as I shoved my way through the trees. Tag crashed through the trees after me. I tried to look down at the little screen on the time-travel thing and almost tripped.

  Tag’s feet thumping behind me sounded closer. He’d catch me within minutes if I didn’t get this thing to work. An exact time and date could be a later concern; anything different from being stuck in 2058 with a kidnapper would be good. I pushed my finger against the screen. Nothing happened.

  “Stupid!” I pushed it again, swirling my finger over the screen in the hopes it would change something. Nothing happened.

  “Stupid! Stupid!” And with these words I went down, falling face first
into the dried out leaves and dark soil. I spat out the dirt stuck on my lips and tongue. My fingers tapped at the screen desperately trying to make anything happen.

  Tag’s face appeared through the underbrush. I army crawled while continuing to swipe my fingers against the screen. “Please, get me outta here!” The tugging-at-my-gut feeling came at exactly the same instant hands grabbed at my legs. The world spun as I kicked to make Tag let go. “Leave me alone!” I screamed. The words rolled around the bowl of the swirling funnel, echoing back to my ears again and again.

  But he didn’t let go. When the world slowed to the speed of a merry-go-round, I’d grown too tired to fight him. My body felt drained and weakened with no food and little water for at least a day. Had it been a day? Persephone would’ve scoffed at my weakness.

  Tag climbed over me as soon as the world stopped and grabbed the time-travel device. He was crazy if he thought I’d give up the device that easily. I rolled again, knocking him off balance and over to the side of me, though he still clung to a strap of the time thing. I moved to press the screen again, but stopped when my brain finally registered the world around me. We sat in a pile of ashes. Ash fell from the sky like snow. I would have thought it was snow except the smothering heat indicated otherwise. Mount Rainier was on fire.

  Confused, I sat up. “Where are we?”

  Tag shook his head, making the ash fall off his hair, only to be immediately replaced by more. “I’d tell you, but you won’t let go of the Orbital.” His low voice could have been a shout for all the anger it possessed.

  “You won’t let go, either.” I countered.

  “That’s because it’s mine. Your entire plan is to take the Orbital and leave me stranded in an unspecified time and space. I can not and will not allow that.”

  As if to punctuate his declaration, the earth shuddered beneath us. Old leaves shivered off the tree branches. Impulsively, I reached out and grabbed Tag around the neck, trying to hold on to anything more stable than I felt. With my motion I yanked his hand, still holding on to the strap, back behind his head. Our faces were so close, our noses almost touched. It seemed almost like the early stages of a kiss, except, in my fear, the only thoughts in my head were ones of panic. When the shaking stopped, he looked down at me as though he might kiss me. He must’ve seen my look of revulsion because he gave himself a violent shake and shoved me away. In my moment of surprise, he nearly pulled the time device out of my grip. Idiot. I’d had the upper hand before, now I was stuck clinging to a corner.