This Strange and Familiar Place

by Rachel Carter

  But I don’t know if Wes will ever be willing to relive those memories—not even to be whole again.

  We walk through the woods until we reach one of the old bunkers. It looks like the one my grandfather loved to visit, the one I snuck into a few weeks ago. There’s a wide, sealed door that’s set in the base of a small hill. Two concrete wings frame the entrance on either side, then taper down to the ground.

  “There’s one other thing.” Wes’s voice is even lower than a whisper, and he constantly scans the woods around us. “While we’re in the Facility, we have to act like strangers. You can’t react to anything that happens in there. You have to hide all your emotions.”

  “I can do it.”

  His black eyes find mine. “I know you can.”

  Without another word, he steps forward and slides his ID badge into an almost hidden crevice near the bunker. The cement door glides open quickly and noiselessly. We slip through, and it slides shut behind us with a smooth humming sound.

  We’re in a small, narrow space. It’s completely dark, completely silent. But even without light, Wes moves easily toward one of the walls. I listen for his footsteps and follow as best I can. In the blackness, I feel him take my hand. He guides it up to the keycard around my neck, then gently tugs. Taking his cue, I step forward and touch the wall in front of me. The cement is rough, like sandpaper on my fingers. I trace the grooves until I find a small slit in the wall. I push my card into it.

  There’s a low beeping sound and a light above us flashes green. A door swings open in the concrete, revealing a long staircase on the other side.

  Wes goes first. I can hear his steady footsteps in front of me as we descend into the Facility. Somehow it seems even darker down here. With each step, I feel my heart pounding in my chest, my throat. All of a sudden, this doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Even if we can make it through the Facility without getting caught, there’s still the trip through time to look forward to—that feeling of having your body ripped apart, of every molecule splitting, separating, and getting jammed back together again. Thinking of it makes me want to turn around and run back to my safe life. But that’s not your life, I tell myself sternly, and I keep following Wes into the shadows.

  The smell hits me as we reach the last few stairs—the sharp sting of bleach and battery acid burning in my nose. As soon as Wes steps onto the floor, dim fluorescent lights flicker on, clearly reacting to a motion detector. I blink, and it takes me a minute to get used to the sudden light.

  We’re in a small, clean room. On each wall is a door with a black, inch-long square next to it. Wes walks over to the door furthest to his left and places his index finger down on the small pad. There’s a whirring sound, like the noise a computer makes when it’s booting up. I see Wes’s hand twitch slightly. When he pulls back, a tiny drop of blood is beading on his finger.

  An automated male voice says, “DNA authorization complete. Voice recognition?”

  Wes leans forward. “Eleven. One. Seven. Six. Five.” He is completely emotionless. There is little distinction between his voice and the one coming from the invisible speaker.

  “Voice authorization complete.”

  The door slides open, disappearing into the wall. Wes moves through the doorway and I stay close at his back.

  The door closes behind us and we’re trapped inside a brightly lit small room. I turn wild eyes on Wes, but he just looks at me sharply and almost imperceptibly shakes his head. I stay frozen, waiting.

  The white light around us flickers and then dies. We’re in complete darkness, and I fight the urge to reach for Wes’s hand. With a low hum, a red plane of light appears above us. It slowly scans the room from ceiling to floor. As soon as the light hits my head, I stiffen and close my eyes. Wes didn’t say anything about them scanning our bodies. They’ll know for sure that I’m not Seventeen.

  This is it. I’m caught.

  But Wes had to have known about these lights, that they’re not too dangerous. They’re probably just scanning for the tracking chip, safely embedded in my arm. Still my body stays rigid as I feel the heat from the beam travel down my body.

  Finally, the red laser disappears, and the light overhead sputters back on. A door opens on the opposite wall, and I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding.

  We step out into a white, empty hallway. It’s so bright that it makes my eyes water. It is so different from the last time I was down in this Facility; there is no siren blaring overhead and the constant red, flashing alarm has disappeared. Instead, fluorescent lights illuminate the white concrete walls, and everything is eerily silent.

  There are doors on either side of us, at least ten in this corridor alone. Some are metal, while others are a cloudy glass that I can’t see through. We walk down the narrow space. It bisects with two other hallways, and Wes takes the one on the right. I have no idea where we are underground, but this bunker wasn’t far from the entrance I came through last time, which means we can’t be too far from the TM.

  Now that I’m not distracted by a screaming alarm, I notice more details about the Facility. It looks like it did in the 1940s, though the tiles on the floor and the white walls are slick and more modern. It feels almost futuristic: clean and sterile, filled with glass doors and rounded light fixtures.

  I hear footsteps coming up ahead and I falter, but Wes keeps moving forward steadily. A guard rounds the corner. He’s walking toward us. Don’t scream, don’t scream. I breathe slowly and think about the ocean in summer and the beat of the waves crashing against the shore. He is right in front of us now, in what looks like an army uniform, only all black. I keep my head down, but he barely glances at Wes or at me as he walks past.

  As soon as he’s gone, I pull the hood of my sweatshirt more firmly over my head. The shadow of it covers my hair and most of my face. I want to smile at Wes, to touch his arm, but I can’t. Instead I silently follow him through the underground corridors.

  He approaches another door and puts his index finger onto the pad again. We enter another long hallway. Halfway down, a female guard with buzzed brown hair is standing in front of a wide metal door.

  There’s a noise like marching up ahead. Wes immediately steps back, flattening himself against the nearest wall. His eyes flicker toward me and I copy him. I stay completely still, my body pressed against the cool concrete.

  The first to emerge is a guard, a little older than the girl in front of the door and carrying a large gun. Behind him, in two neat rows, come the children.

  They are different ages, races, and heights, but they all shuffle forward as one body. Though they are not the same children I found in the Facility in 1944, they might as well be—half starved, vacant, with little life left in their small bodies, gray pajamas hanging off their frames. They move more like zombies than humans, completely unaware of Wes or me as they pass. It’s as though we’re simply part of the wall. Another piece of this place designed to hurt them.

  I swallow hard as they pass us, the sound of their feet shuffling through the hallway. Wes is tense at my side. Our hands are close enough to touch. I block out everything but Wes, until I can almost feel his fingers covering mine.

  Another guard marches down the hallway after them, his arms clenched around a gun. I don’t let myself look after them. I can’t change their fate, these children who are destined to grow up like Wes, even though I wish I could.

  The hallway is clear. Wes peels himself away from the wall and approaches the guard. “Eleven,” he says to her coldly. The young woman tilts her head back and then steps to the side. Wes opens the door behind her.

  We walk into a lab. Several scientists are sitting around a long table, with beakers and equipment spread out in front of them. The room smells like chemicals, gasoline, and fresh paint. One of the scientists stands when he sees Wes. He is approaching old age, with almost-white hair and a bulging stomach that he can’t quite hide beneath his lab coat.

  “Which one are you?” His voice is low
and gravelly.

  “Eleven,” Wes responds.

  “Ah, right. Of course. Are you prepared?”

  “I am ready, sir.”

  The scientist steps forward. He turns to look at me, and I automatically drop my eyes to the tiled floor. “This one is going with you?”

  “Seventeen is also scheduled for the mission, sir.”

  “They’re expecting you?”

  “Yes, nineteen eighty-nine has been made aware of our arrival.”

  “Good, good.” He turns to the other scientists. They are mostly younger than him, spanning from late twenties to middle age. “Dr. Provist, please escort these two to the TM. They need to be set for August eighth, nineteen eighty-nine. Five o’clock exactly.”

  That’s six days before my grandpa is supposed to disappear. I wonder again if it could have something to do with this rift in time. I should have mentioned it to Wes earlier, but I was too distracted, and there’s no way to bring it up now.

  Dr. Provist stands and leads us to a door on the opposite side of the room. We follow her out into a hallway. A guard emerges as if from nowhere and trails along behind us. I don’t have to turn around to know he’s also carrying a gun. We round a corner and Dr. Provist stops at a door on the left. There is a large computer screen next to it. The scientist has to press her entire palm to the black panel before the door will open. We enter the time machine room.

  It looks exactly as I remember. Built-in digital screens run along the back wall, while desks with large consoles and computers sit to the left of the door. The wall to the right is a black-rimmed mirror, though I know that a narrow observation room sits behind it. I wonder who might be watching us now.

  The TM is in the middle of the room. It has a tube-shaped metal frame that stretches halfway to the ceiling. The top of the machine is made of glass.

  It doesn’t seem to begin or end—it rises out of the floor and disappears into the ceiling. I can’t suppress the shudder that runs through me as soon as I see it.

  “Who’s first?” Dr. Provist asks. She adjusts her glasses as she presses buttons on the computer in front of her. There’s a beeping sound and the TM starts to buzz. It is so much quieter than the one I traveled through in 1944, but the vibration of it still rattles through my entire body. I can even feel it inside my head. My teeth begin to chatter.

  “Me.” Wes steps forward. A door suddenly appears in the smooth metal of the machine and glides open. Wes enters the hollow tube and turns to face me. Dr. Provist is too busy scrolling through codes and inputting dates to pay much attention to us. Wes’s eyes lock on mine. We don’t break eye contact, not until the door slides shut between us. I feel the buzzing get louder, until the machine is shaking and pulsing. The light catches above it, swirling, first white, then multiple colors, brighter and brighter. There’s a moment of silence, right before everything seems to explode outward. The light is blinding, there’s a numbingly loud crash. I close my eyes. When I open them again, the machine is calmer, only lightly humming now, almost like a purr.

  And then it’s my turn. When the door shuts, I am trapped in the darkness. I hold my breath, waiting. My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. And then the floor flashes once, twice, three times. The lights are so bright that I see them even when I squeeze my eyes shut. I hear a low sound, at first quiet, but then louder and louder, until I can hear it in every inch of me. It feels at once mechanical and organic, as though this stream of noise and light and metal is coming from my own body. I hug my arms around my stomach, trying to keep the pieces of me together. But the floor falls away, and everything is suspended, and then there’s a jolt and a scream. I feel myself dissolve.

  When I come back into my body, I am sitting in the bottom of the machine in the pitch black. I stumble to my feet, grabbing onto the slick metal walls when the room spins. I have to be strong. This isn’t over yet.

  The door opens. The room beyond is dimmer than the one in 2012. Two scientists sit in front of the slighter, older computer systems. Wes is standing next to the door. His back is straight, though I see a gleam of sweat on his upper lip and at his hairline. The machine isn’t something that gets easier with time.

  I step out of the TM.

  “Seventeen?” one of the scientists asks without looking up from his screen.

  “Yes, sir.” My voice is rusty, unused. I cannot remember the last time I’ve spoken. Not since I was outside the bunker with Wes. It feels like hours and hours ago, though it couldn’t have been more than forty minutes.

  “Good. Go with Eleven to the Assimilation Center. You’ll depart immediately after.”

  My legs are like water as I walk across the room to Wes. He gives my body a quick scan, and I twist my mouth at him. It’s not a smile exactly, but I hope it’s enough to show him I’m okay. He returns the gesture, but he won’t meet my eyes. There is something defeated in the way he holds his body, like it is difficult for him to stand up straight.

  I limp toward him, knowing the pain of the TM is written all over my face. Afraid that it will give me away, I glance over at the scientists. But none of them have even raised their heads.

  I was nervous they would take one look at me and know that I wasn’t Seventeen, but they don’t even see us. We are less than human, not even as important as the hunk of metal still humming lightly behind me.

  Wes was right: it is easy to be invisible here.

  CHAPTER 5

  I keep my head down as we walk through the corridors. The 1989 Facility is not quite as bright or clean as it is in 2012. The walls are more of a tired beige color than a bright white. There is dust in the corners, and some of the tiles on the floor are chipped.

  There are also more people down here than I thought there would be, and we pass guard after guard. I lose some of my fear when none of them even look at us. Sometimes we even pass other recruits wearing the same black spandex outfit as Wes, and I try not to stare at them. Even though they all look different, they have a similar quality in the deliberate, determined way they carry themselves. As if every action has been carefully thought out and planned.

  They are too much like human robots, and so I stop watching them, instead concentrating on Wes’s back as we wind through the halls.

  Despite how crowded it is, this place is lifeless. I have to think of a plan to get Wes away from here. That’s why I came with him, so we’ll have time to find a solution. But first we have to make it out of the Facility.

  We arrive at a metal door with ASSIMILATION CENTER written on a plaque overhead. Wes pulls his own ID badge out from under his shirt and fits it into a slot near the handle. It opens immediately.

  We walk into a small space with several rooms connected to it. Each door has a name above it: FINAL DEBRIEF, OUTFITTING, WEAPONRY, CULTURAL INTEGRATION.

  I want to ask Wes what they all mean, but I stay silent. He leads us toward the one marked OUTFITTING, and uses his badge to open this door too.

  Inside is a large room with white cupboards built into every wall. There are a few dressing tables toward the back, with wigs and makeup arranged in neat rows.

  Wes walks toward the fourth door on the left. He gives me a look, then tips his head to the side. I follow his line of sight and approach the second closet.

  It is filled with neat dresses, skirts, and sweaters. We are investigating an election, and that means we need to dress the part—young professionals. Uptown kids. I grab a blue dress with a wide lace collar. I start to take off my sweatshirt, then pause. Out of the corner of my eye, I glance over at Wes. He pulls his shirt off and tosses it into the open closet.

  I feel my face start to heat up, but a noise near the door distracts me and I turn to see another recruit enter the room. She is about seventeen, with long dark hair and a small, compact body. Her eyes skim past me, then linger on Wes as she moves forward.

  She seems different from the other recruits out in the hallway, and I watch her closely as she walks toward the other side of the room.
There is a spark in her eyes, a sense of recognition as she studies Wes. And . . . something else. Something that makes me want to throw a blanket over Wes’s bare chest.

  I turn my back to her and peek over at Wes again. He has on dark, pressed slacks, but hasn’t put a shirt on yet, and I see the muscles in his back flex as he bends over to pull on black dress shoes.

  I don’t like that girl looking, but I understand why she would, even if it does seem oddly out of character for a recruit. Wes straightens and I quickly unzip my hoodie. I toss it aside, then reach for the hem of my own shirt.

  Can Wes see me? Will I have to be naked in front of him and this recruit? There’s certainly nowhere to hide in here. How many times has this pretty dark-haired girl seen him without his clothes on? What will he think of my non-athletic body?

  I grip the hem of my shirt with both hands. Wes still has his back to me, likely trying to give me some privacy.

  As quickly as I can, I pull off my clothes and yank on the new ones. By the time I’m dressed, Wes is near one of the mirrors, slicking down his newly side-parted hair. The girl recruit is taking a shirt out of the closet with her back to us. She is standing in a sports bra, completely unself-conscious. I notice that Wes is studiously ignoring her.

  My eyes meet his in the mirror and he cocks his head toward one of the dressing tables. I sit down and take in the little pots of makeup and accessories.

  We’re aiming for uptown preppy kids. That means classy. I stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is down, streaming over my shoulders, and my green eyes seem larger than normal. The skin underneath looks bruised and a little purple.

  I grab some concealer and smooth it over my cheekbones. I add blush, a light pink lipstick, and a soft green eye shadow. My hair is too messy to be tamed, so I pin it back into a low bun. Wes comes and stands over me. He nods slightly and I know I’ve gotten the look right.

  The girl recruit turns to watch us as we walk to the door. No one speaks, but I don’t miss how she leans toward Wes as he passes, like a flower opening its petals in the sun.