by Ryan Dalton
“He’s out with my friend Mr. Crane, dear,” Oma Grace called up the stairs. “I just found the note.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Valentine’s forehead scrunched. Mr. Crane? Really? She’d have to get that story when he got home. Maybe he’d manage to find out more for their history project. She clicked on his desk lamp, thinking to leave the food on his desk, but then thought better of it. There was no telling how long he might be.
A reflection caught her eye, the lamp light glinting off something she’d never seen before. Curious, she set down the plate and picked up the object, examining it from all sides.
When did Mal buy a pocket watch?
Normally he would show off any antique he’d found, but not this one. The jewel and scrollwork in the silver elevated it from an average antique to a work of art. It sparkled with a fine polish, every facet and curve catching the light.
Valentine thumbed the release button and the cover clicked open with a fluid motion. On its black face, the silver hands and letters sparkled—almost shimmered—in the faint light. What are those made of? With her thumb, she brushed specks of dust from the face.
The hands spun, blue light sprang from the watch, and Valentine’s eyes nearly bulged from her head. Light particles floated above the face and resolved into two images. To the left floated a spinning model of Earth.
The right image resembled a river, except the current looked more like energy instead of water. Bright pinpoints of light floated in the current, and a menu floated beside it.
OPTIONS
COMMANDS
EXECUTE
Valentine shivered. Mal, what did you find? Do we even have real hologram tech yet? She licked her lips, wanting to explore it but afraid to touch the wrong thing. But if it were dangerous, he wouldn’t have kept it.
She swept her finger through COMMANDS. The menu scattered into dancing light particles and resolved into a new submenu.
HOP
SKIP
JUMP
She touched JUMP. The model Earth shrank, the river grew bigger, and the menu scattered and reformed as another submenu.
JUMP HISTORY
NEW DESTINATION
Some sort of travel guide? She touched JUMP HISTORY. Let’s see where you’ve already been. The pinpoints of light inside the current pulsed brighter. She touched the nearest one, bringing up a date, location, and a window of full-motion video.
January 1945: Führerbunker
Valentine watched, mesmerized, as the video played out. Judging by the stacked crates, the footage had been shot from some old storage area looking out on a heavily-trafficked hallway. She could see armed soldiers and men in military uniforms hurrying to and fro.
It’s a holographic history book! Punch in a date and time, you get information and video. Why program this into a watch?
Another menu appeared under the date and location.
EXECUTE
CANCEL
Valentine wiped her hands on her jeans. They’d been sweating as her heart pumped double-time. Calm down, calm down. Let’s just see what it does. She touched EXECUTE.
The blue light disappeared and the watch hands stopped spinning. As the watch cover snapped closed, a whirring sound emanated from deep inside. The watch vibrated, then grew cold. In her shock, Valentine nearly dropped it.
Blue-white energy bubbled out from the watch and formed a shimmering sphere around her hand. To Valentine, it appeared as if she were seeing the hand through a rippling mirage. Goosebumps rose on her skin as the room’s temperature dropped.
The energy sphere expanded, circling her entire body. She gasped, wanting to run, but was fearful of the consequences. The sphere spun around her, arcing with electricity, swirling faster and faster until she could see nothing but the glowing ripples. Dazzling beams of blue light flashed from the watch and filled the inner sphere. Valentine swayed as a wave of disorientation washed over her.
Then the watch darkened and the sphere disappeared.
Valentine gaped at her surroundings. The light show had taken maybe five seconds, yet Malcolm’s room was gone. She found herself standing in a storage area—the same place she had just witness in the video.
WHERE AM I?!
“Hast du das Licht?” a voice said from the hallway.
German? She thought she had recognized one word—Licht, or light. Scrambling to the back of the room, she crouched behind a wall of crates.
Too late.
“Ich sehe jemanden! Jemand hier!”
Booted footsteps stomped into the room. Oh, God! She clicked the watch open and swiped her thumb over the dial. The hands spun and the menu hovered in front of her face again. She worked back through the options as quickly as possible, pulse pounding in her ears.
“Suche das Zimmer!”
Footsteps drew closer to her hiding place, and Valentine risked glancing past her cover. Six armed soldiers entered the room, machine guns ready. Wait a minute. Isn’t that . . . ?
She squinted at their uniforms and her insides melted. The patch on their arms was a swastika. The destination she had chosen exploded in her mind. Führerbunker, January 1945—the last command center for Hitler during World War II. The soldiers hunting her were Nazis.
Did I just travel to 1945?!
She stifled a gasp and opened the JUMP menu. Got to get out of here! No time to learn how to choose her own destination. JUMP HISTORY would have to do. She touched the menu option and the flowing timeline—it must be a timeline—moved into view. She stabbed another point of light, accessing a new time and place.
“Ist etwas glühende da drüben?”
She waited the eternal seconds while the watch processed her commands. A mechanical clatter sounded above her head, and Valentine found herself staring down the barrel of a Nazi machine gun.
“Wir fanden den Spion!” the soldier shouted at her. “Kommen von dort! Lassen Sie die Waffe und Hingabe!”
EXECUTE pulsed at the edge of her vision.
Five soldiers and an officer converged on her, shoving their weapons in her direction. They cocked their guns and shouted commands at her.
Dear God, please work!
Valentine thumbed the command and cried out in relief as the sphere enveloped her. She could hear shouting and gunfire coming from outside. It seemed the bullets couldn’t reach her here. The lights and a wave of disorientation hit her again.
The sphere disappeared and the watch deactivated, depositing her in a green field surrounded by massive trees. Lush vegetation stretched in every direction and the quiet air smelled fresh, reminding Valentine of pictures she’d seen of Costa Rica or Hawaii. She bent over, resting her hands on her knees.
“Holy crap!” she gasped.
Who on earth would travel to Hitler’s stronghold? When she got home, Malcolm was going to get the verbal beating of his life. After she caught her breath and calmed her nerves.
GRUNT.
SNORT.
Valentine stiffened at the noise behind her.
THUMP. THUMP.
A tremor passed through the ground. She forced herself to turn around. One hundred yards away, an animal carcass as big as a car lay on the ground, twisted and half-eaten. Above it, a monster crouched with flesh hanging from its teeth. As tall as her house and nearly as long, it stood on muscled, scaly hind legs and sniffed the air.
It stared right at her.
Oookay, yeah, that’s a T-Rex.
She backed away slowly. Flipping the watch cover open, she accessed the main menu while keeping an eye on the beast.
Come on, just a few more seconds.
The dinosaur reared to its full height, maw open wide. A roar shattered the air and vibrated through Valentine’s body. She gripped the watch hard, struggling to quell her panic, and continued to back away. Don’t provoke it; just ge
t out of here. It’s a football field away—
With one spring, the T-Rex leapt over its prey and charged. Powerful legs drove into the ground, chewing up yards and shaking the earth with every step. Valentine screamed and ran.
No, finish the jump!
She skidded to a halt, knowing she could never tap the right commands at a flat-out run. Instead she let her fingers work while every instinct screamed at her to flee.
The T-Rex closed half the distance in seconds. Valentine touched JUMP HISTORY and pinpoints in the timeline glowed brighter. Which one do I choose?! So far, both choices had been death traps. Where might the next one take her? Just pick one!
Her vision shook as the predator pounded closer, roaring again, hunger in its eyes. Forty yards away. She couldn’t escape death three times in a row—this choice had to be right. Her insides twisted.
The first choice showed up as 539 BCE: Babylon. The year Persia invaded Babylon? No thanks! She canceled the jump, silently thanking Malcolm for drilling her with useless history.
Thirty yards away.
Wait, what’s this? Below the image of the timeline, a third option floated in smaller, darker letters.
JUMP KEY
She stabbed the option and the pinpoints faded, new ones taking their place. Date and time descriptions floated above each, with what appeared to be priority numbers. Hope blossomed in Valentine. They’re bookmarks. Carefully chosen and ranked destinations in history, waiting to be activated.
Twenty yards away.
She could smell its hide and see the jagged points of its razor-sharp teeth. Her heart pounded close to bursting. A destination drew her eye—the number-one priority.
Present: Home
Please don’t be a death trap! Please don’t be a death trap! Valentine held her breath and chose the destination.
Ten yards away.
She touched EXECUTE before the letters even finished appearing. The prehistoric monster loomed above her with massive jaws open wide. Steaming hot breath jetted down at her. She could see half-eaten bones protruding from its teeth.
An energy sphere formed around her hand—only this one was red. Massive jaws descended, opening wider to pluck Valentine from the ground. A shriek erupted from her and she dove to the grass.
The rippling red light enveloped her. The T-Rex’s jaw clamped around the sphere, roaring as it tried to swallow her. Red light burst from the watch, Valentine’s head swam, and the beast was gone.
She found herself lying on a rough wooden floor, a persistent electrical hum filling the air. She hugged herself, shivering with terror. Oh God oh God oh God I almost died. Lying still, she forced herself to breathe evenly.
After an eternity, her pulse slowed. She opened her eyes and sat up to examine her surroundings. Wherever she was, it wasn’t Malcolm’s room, which meant she could still be in danger. She clutched the watch tightly—her one lifeline.
Valentine sat near the center of a square room fifty feet across. At least I made it out of Jurassic World, she thought. But why had the time bubble changed color? Maybe because she’d traveled forward this time, instead of back?
The wall in front of her held a window looking out into a dark night. Is that a bullet hole? She shook her head and refocused on the important details. In each corner flanking the window were two ten-foot-tall black cylinders, blinking with indicator lights. Industrial power cables sprouted from their casings and snaked along the walls and floor toward the center of the room. To her right, a set of stairs led to a lower level.
The watch called this place home. Maybe this is where it came from.
A clink echoed from behind her. Alarmed, she came up to a crouch and turned toward the noise. What in the . . . ?
In the center of the room, four curved metallic panels stretched from floor ceiling. They faced each other like the points of a compass, or the corners of a hollow sphere. Their shiny inner surfaces were speckled with circuitry and multicolored lenses, and many of the cables snaking along the floor attached to their backs.
In their center, the floor was replaced by a ten-foot circular hole. Wire bundles ringed the opening, along with hexagonal plates made of an unusual-looking red metal. Their surface almost seemed prismatic, reflecting the dim light at unexpected angles, like pictures Valentine had seen of satellite panels.
Valentine peered to the other end of the room, and her heart leapt into her throat. Stifling a yelp, she flattened against the nearest panel and peeked around the edge. On the far side, a mass of cobbled-together computer equipment covered the wall from floor to ceiling. Dozens of screens displayed technical schematics and scrolling data feeds. Two laboratory tables, covered with unfamiliar and exotic devices, filled the space between the panels and the computers.
A tall, dark-eyed man sat at the table to the right, scowling down at a tablet computer. Its casing had been cracked open and wires connected it to a flat, shiny surface in the middle of the table. He tapped on the screen.
“Prepare test protocol twelve, live specimen,” he said with a husky, rough-accented voice.
Light particles lifted from the shiny surface and spun, resolving into a scale model of the panels she hid behind. Valentine glanced down at the watch. Looks like you did come back home.
The man grabbed a box by his feet and turned a hawklike stare on the panels. Valentine ducked behind her cover again.
“Engage test.”
The electrical hum leaped to a high-pitched whine. Lights on the giant cylinders flared to life, and the panel she hid behind began to vibrate. She took a step back, careful to keep it between herself and the man.
Beams of red energy shot from the top of each panel and converged on the hole in the floor, combining into a glowing orb. The prismatic plates tilted to face left, and the orb began to spin.
The four panels came to life—gadgets clicked and whirred, and lenses turned toward the orb. The energy spun and warped, flattening into a disk that filled the opening in the floor, like a glowing whirlpool.
Valentine’s hand went to her mouth. Who can do something like this?
The man reached inside the box and drew out a squirming white rabbit. Casually, he drew back and tossed it into the machine. Valentine’s hand clamped tighter to muffle a scream.
The rabbit tumbled around the vortex as its energy grew brighter, and the high-pitched whine reached a crescendo.
“Execute.”
In the blink of an eye, the disk collapsed on itself and shot through the open floor, disappearing. White light burst out from the hole like a blazing sunbeam, and Valentine shielded her face until the room darkened again. When it returned to normal, she glanced around the panel’s edge. No vortex, no rabbit.
Outside, lightning crackled and thunder shook the sky. Valentine stopped short. Wait a minute. A storm had been building when she’d found the watch in Malcolm’s room.
She whipped around and stared at the nearest wall again. In its center, between the black cylinders—were they generators? Batteries?—was a window. A large, round window.
It can’t be.
Staying in shadows, Valentine crept toward it. Outside, rain poured and treetops swayed in the distance. Sweat dotted her forehead, and she tried to quell her fear as she inched closer.
Outside the window, across the quiet street, sat Oma Grace’s house. Her house.
Valentine felt lightheaded, suddenly unable to stand being within these walls anymore. She returned to her hiding spot and clicked open the watch cover. With a swipe across its face, the menu rose to greet her.
At the computer banks, a klaxon rang out. She heard the dark-eyed man move, and she rushed through the watch’s root menu. She knew where and when she was now, and couldn’t bear to travel through time again. Home was right across the street!
Come on, you must be able to do more!
The COMMANDS subme
nu appeared.
HOP
SKIP
JUMP
“Source of breach?” the man said.
He knows I’m here. She guessed the watch’s activation had set off the alarm, and he was probably reading about it on his screens. Stupid stupid STUPID!
She stared at the three options and did her best to reason through them. JUMP took me to a new place and time. I just want a new place. Okay, HOP!
“Temporal anomaly? Display location.” A pause, then she heard a clatter and running.
Oh, no!
She pressed HOP and waited for a destination menu to appear. Instead, the watch closed and the energy bubble sprang up around her. It spun more slowly, in a different direction, and the glow seemed dimmer. What does this—?
She fell through the floor.
Valentine’s insides whirled as she dropped to the floor below. She smacked onto a mattress, crashing through the thin wooden bed frame. A groan seeped from her lips, and she rolled onto hands and knees to catch her breath. Footsteps stomped overhead.
She forced herself to her feet. Okay, so HOP seems to phase through things. She dove through the menus and landed on SKIP. Please be the right one! She tapped the command and the spinning holographic Earth enlarged, taking the center spot. A submenu appeared.
SKIP HISTORY
NEW DESTINATION
Okay, SKIP HISTORY! A finger tap sent the watch zooming into the United States, then deeper into the Midwest, then into their state, and finally it became a three-dimensional map of Emmett’s Bluff.
“Locate intruder!” her hunter shouted.
Valentine heard a beep, and tracer lights lit up in the walls and floor. Every light coursed in her direction and drew a luminescent circle around her feet. She dashed away and the lights followed her. Great. Dragging the watch’s holo-map to the far east side of town, she pinched and zoomed the image, and there they were—her street, and the pinpoint of light inside the image of her house.
Footfalls hit the stairs and swiftly descended toward her. She tapped the hologram of her house. Hurry up!
“Countermeasures!”