Erasing Time

by C. J. Hill

  His lips pinched together. “Fine. I’ll talk to them. In the meantime you and your sister will spend your time in detention cells—that’s prison in our language. You’ll have time to consider the reasonableness of your demands in there.”

  “Fine,” she said. She had time. That was all she could ask for.

  chapter

  28

  Sheridan sat alone on the floor of a dimly lit room no bigger than a closet. It was cold and smelled like garbage. She had hoped Taylor would be with her and they could devise some plan together, but the Enforcers had taken Taylor to a different room.

  Minutes stretched into hours. She knew she couldn’t keep up the pretense of being Taylor for long. Then what would happen to her and, more importantly, to Taylor?

  Sheridan lay down, curled up for warmth, still thinking about every possible scenario, contingency, and option she might have. Most of the scenarios had bad endings. Memory wash or death.

  Sometime before she fell asleep, she decided thinking was overrated.

  She awoke when the door slid open. An Enforcer stood in the doorway motioning for her to come out. She got up, stiff and cold from the floor, and trudged to the door. She still had no idea what she was going to say to Reilly.

  The Enforcer took hold of her arm and pulled her out of the room. Her feet were clumsy with sleep, but he propelled her down the hallway anyway, whispering, “Rápido.” They took an elevator to another floor, then went down a colorless hallway. Sheridan expected to be taken into a room with Reilly or Helix or at least some schematics of the QGP. Instead, the man took her to a back doorway and hurried her outside the building.

  A car waited nearby, humming as it idled.

  This didn’t seem right. Where was Reilly sending her, and why hadn’t anybody explained what was going on?

  Her steps faltered, but the Enforcer yanked her along, half dragging her to the car. The door slid open and she saw Taylor lying limply against the seat. Her face was swollen so badly that the blue swirls now made lopsided ovals across her cheeks and her eyes seemed to have shrunk. Sheridan climbed in next to her sister and only then noticed Echo and Caesar sitting across from them.

  The door slid closed, and the car moved forward. Sheridan’s gaze ran over Taylor, checking for other injuries. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said, slurring the word. “But what in the world were you thinking by telling Reilly that stuff?”

  “I was thinking that I didn’t want to see your face used as a punching bag anymore.”

  Caesar broke into their conversation, his metallic bronze eyebrows rising as he spoke. “Echo has a talent for finding beautiful girls. It’s gripping to meet you.”

  Sheridan didn’t answer. After all, Caesar didn’t know she could understand him. She turned to Echo instead. “Are you translating for Helix again? Is that why you’re here?”

  “I’m rescuing you,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Rescuing?” She turned in her seat, looking out the window to see if Enforcers were pursuing the car. She saw nothing except for the building growing more distant.

  Echo gestured toward Caesar. “My friend has connections in the detention system. He was able to have you sneaked out.”

  Sheridan looked Caesar over more carefully. His chin jutted out confidently, all attitude and swagger. Although he smiled, there was something hard and calculating in his eyes that made Sheridan wary. Elise hadn’t liked him. Was Caesar one of the bad friends who had led Echo to become entangled in the Dakine? She gulped and looked away. Caesar must be Dakine. Who else would have connections in the detention system?

  Sheridan checked the control panel to see what street was starred. The entire panel was dark. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To a place where you’ll be safe,” Echo said.

  “Where? Out of the city?”

  “Not out of the city. Just a safe place.”

  Taylor lifted her head from the seat so she was sitting more erect. “Safe until when? What’s going to happen to us?”

  Echo’s blue eyes didn’t waver, but his posture was tense, on edge. “You don’t need to worry about that now.”

  Which only made Sheridan worry more. She looked from Taylor’s sullen face to Echo’s quiet one, and then at Caesar’s grin. It slowly slid into a leer.

  She turned back to Taylor. “Were you able to take care of …” She trailed off, not sure what Taylor had told Echo about the QGP or how far she’d gotten with her plan to destroy it.

  Taylor understood what she was asking, though. “It worked,” she said. “We unplugged the freezer.”

  That, at least, was a relief. “Good,” Sheridan said. She wondered how many people they’d prevented from being shanghaied into the future. It seemed unfair that none of them would ever know the sacrifice Taylor had made for them.

  Caesar leaned forward. “Tell Sheridan that I expect to be thanked for her rescue. In many ways.”

  “I wouldn’t want to frighten her,” Echo said.

  Caesar laughed, a deep throaty laugh that filled the car. “I am rippingly frightening, aren’t I? Tell her I think she’s delicious.”

  Echo’s jaw stiffened, but he turned from Caesar to Sheridan. “Caesar says he’d like to eat you. Are you interested?”

  “Um, no.”

  Echo turned back to Caesar. “She’s not interested.”

  Caesar’s smile didn’t falter. “Tell her I know how to create interest. Tell her I’ll fly her places she can’t go to in a VR center.”

  Echo turned to Sheridan. “Don’t smile at Caesar. Just trust me about this. Now say something and shake your head.”

  Sheridan shook her head. “Thanks for the warning. I’m not smiling.”

  Echo shot Caesar an apologetic look. “She says thanks, but right now she’s only interested in me.”

  “You?” Caesar sat back against his seat and humphed. “The girl has no coraje.”

  And whatever coraje was, she didn’t want it.

  Echo said, “Caesar hopes you’ll be happy with his accommodations.”

  Happy? She was glad to be away from the Scicenter and Reilly, but how could she be happy if they’d been rescued by Dakine? It only meant that instead of being forced to work for the government, they would be forced to work for the Dakine. And if the Dakine knew about the QGP, well, there was no way Sheridan could help Taylor then. Echo already knew who she was.

  No one spoke for a few minutes. Sheridan watched cars go by and wondered how strong Echo’s affections for her were. When his loyalties to the Dakine came into conflict with his feelings for her, what would happen?

  The newscast pictures of Allana and Joseph flashed through her mind, and she knew her answer. He wouldn’t protect her.

  Her mouth felt dry. “Do Jeth and Elise know where we are?”

  “No,” Echo said. “We can’t tell anyone where you are or the government might find you. You’ve disappeared from the main life of the city. I’ll take care of you now.”

  Her glance slid involuntarily over to Caesar. “You and your friends?”

  “I need their help.”

  “In return for their help, what will we owe them?”

  “We’ll talk of that later.”

  So he wasn’t going to tell her anything. Maybe he’d let Caesar give them those details along with his expectations of gratitude. Sheridan sat back against the seat, pressing her hands into fists, then forced herself to release her grip and relax. She turned to Taylor and said, “We’ve gone from the frying pan to the fire.”

  Taylor nodded and shut her eyes.

  IT WAS PERHAPS an hour later that the car stopped. Sheridan couldn’t be sure how far they’d traveled. After they’d driven a few miles, Caesar blindfolded Taylor and Sheridan to keep the route a secret. For all she knew, the car drove in circles half the time.

  Caesar could have spared the dramatics. Sheridan probably wouldn’t have been able to find her way around the city with a map, let al
one give someone the location of the Dakine hideout. And even though Echo told them that the secrecy was for their protection, Sheridan didn’t buy it. He was just making it harder for Taylor and her to escape.

  Once they were sitting down inside the building, Echo took the blindfolds off. Sheridan squinted against the light and peered around the most elaborate room she’d seen in the future. Large swaths of velvety cloth hung from the ceiling to the floor, flowing around large pictures of the city landscape. The floor looked like one huge slab of beige marble but had a soft, cushioned feel to it. Golden-painted leaves trailed across the floor, walls, and ceiling. Forest-green gel chairs were positioned around the long glass table. Obviously the Dakine had the finances to afford luxury.

  A young woman brought in plates of ham sandwiches and pasta salad. Sheridan eyed her sandwich carefully. It looked like ham and smelled like ham. For people who abhorred the thought of eating animal flesh, they certainly devoted a lot of time to duplicating the experience.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Sheridan told Taylor after her second bite. “They blame us for eating all the animals, then create food that tastes exactly like meat.”

  Taylor nibbled at her sandwich, not opening her injured mouth too far. “People don’t make sense. Even back in our time, most people would have never butchered a cow or skinned a hog, but we thought nothing of picking up hamburger and hot dogs at the grocery store.”

  Echo put his sandwich back on his plate with a sigh. “You’re talking about eating dead animals, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry,” Sheridan said.

  Taylor opened up her mouth to take a bite and winced.

  Sheridan watched her. “I think you should have a doctor look at your mouth.”

  “Why bother?” Taylor said. “I’ll probably have someone new punching me before nightfall.”

  Caesar set his fork on the table with a noisy clang. His mouth twitched at the corners. “She said the word doctor, didn’t she? What is she saying?”

  Echo put his sandwich down again. “It didn’t mean the same thing back in the twenty-first century. Sheridan was only suggesting that Taylor have a med look at her mouth.” Then to Sheridan, Echo said, “The word we use now is med. If you say doctor, people will think you’re religious.”

  “I am religious.”

  His voice dropped lower, and she knew he was warning her. “Sheridan, have enough sense to value your life. If not for your sake, then for Taylor’s. She needs you, you know.”

  Yes, Sheridan did know. She hadn’t fully realized how much Taylor needed her until she’d seen Reilly hitting her, but now Sheridan understood. Taylor had to be protected at all costs.

  “Besides,” Echo went on, “you don’t worship the doctor. You worship …” He stopped, unsure.

  “The Messiah,” Sheridan finished.

  Echo’s brows drew together. “I don’t know that word.”

  “It means ‘the anointed one’ in Hebrew,” Taylor said.

  “Anointed to do what?” Echo asked.

  Sheridan let Taylor answer. Her mind had suddenly turned in another direction. It struck her how many different names religious people had for God. Christians used Heavenly Father, the Creator, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, among others.

  Judaism had so much reverence for the name of God that Jews didn’t write it often, and when they did, they didn’t spell it all the way out. When they spoke, they used words like Elohim or Adonai that meant “authority” and “master.” Muslims used the name Allah, which literally meant “the one true God,” but they had other names they used as well. When you added in Hinduism and other religions too, there must be hundreds of different names.

  Or at least there had been. What terms would religious people use in the twenty-fifth century? Not the Good Shepherd, which was her father’s favorite term. They didn’t have shepherds—or, according to Echo, sheep. The reference wouldn’t make sense. What metaphors would they use now?

  Doctors healed people, saved them from death, brought forth life.

  Could doctor be a word people used for God? Echo had said the Worshippers wanted freedom of belief. Did that include religious belief?

  She wanted to ask about it, but Taylor was explaining life after death to Echo and telling him how people would be held accountable for their deeds.

  Echo finally shook his head. “You can’t speak of your ideas to anyone here. If people understood you, pues, it’s too close to the kinds of things the Doctor Worshippers say.”

  Sheridan felt hope flutter inside her, come alive again. She smiled. Religion wasn’t gone. More than ever, she wanted to find the DW. “What else do you know about them?” she asked Echo. “I want to hear everything.”

  “No,” Echo said firmly. “If I say more, my friend will get suspicious.” Then to Caesar, Echo said, “They didn’t have our Doctor cult in the twenty-first century. They’re curious about it. I was explaining.”

  “They didn’t have Doctor Worshippers in the old twenties?” Caesar snorted and finished off the last bite of his sandwich. “They tell everyone they’ve been on earth since the first sunrise. It’s a double shame we can’t use these girls to expose them, but then, our guests have more important things to do.”

  Echo didn’t reply, just went back to his food.

  Sheridan ate silently too, wondering what exactly the Dakine expected them to do.

  chapter

  29

  After they finished eating, Caesar gave Taylor and Sheridan comlinks and then took them on a tour of the building. Echo went along, interpreting what Caesar said. Sheridan felt uneasy the entire time, as though she might be shown something terrible. Instead, they walked past meeting rooms and residents’ rooms, and then to the compucenter. “This,” Caesar said as they walked in, “is where you’ll find Echo most of the time.”

  Echo didn’t translate that part of Caesar’s comment. Instead he went on repeating Caesar’s instructions about what they could and couldn’t touch, what rooms were off-limits, and how they needed to get supervision before accessing anything. Echo told them, sternly, that they couldn’t ever leave the building by themselves. It wasn’t safe.

  “Don’t clue them about the alarm system,” Caesar told Echo. “We’ll test their intentions by letting them think they could leave if they wanted.”

  Echo said nothing, and Sheridan kept her face impassive, expressionless.

  Caesar and Echo talked for a few minutes about something called the Prometheus project; then Echo took them down the hall to an office. “Lobo runs this building,” Echo said. “He wants to talk to me and to meet you.”

  When they walked into the room, a man stood up from the desk. His silver hair shone like chrome, and Sheridan couldn’t help but notice his rank number, 522. Lobo was someone important.

  Echo stood stiffly, his nervousness shadowing him like a tangible presence. “Caesar said you wanted to meet the girls. This is Sheridan,” he said, gesturing to her, “and that’s Taylor.”

  Lobo sauntered around his desk, surveying them. “These are the time riders, the government’s costly mistake?”

  “Yes,” Echo said.

  “Do they have any skills?”

  “They were students back in their time. Most of what they learned isn’t useful to us.”

  Lobo ran his tongue across a row of straight, silver teeth. “They don’t have tracking crystals. That could be useful to us. They’d make effective assassins—even if someone had a signal-jamming detector.” He took slow steps around Sheridan and Taylor, still looking them over like they were cattle he was purchasing. “How long until they can understand our language?”

  “Learning new languages takes months,” Echo said. “Sometimes years. But since the language we speak is based on theirs, it shouldn’t be that long. I’d guess they’ll be able to understand us within a few weeks. Maybe a month.”

  He certainly guessed wrong. Still, Sheridan kept her face blank.

  “Help them,” Lobo said. “The
y need to be upbooted as soon as possible.”

  Echo nodded. “Caesar wanted me to work on the Prometheus project, but your orders will come first.”

  Lobo waved a hand of dismissal at them. “Report back in a week and tell me if their language skills are ready.”

  Echo didn’t move. “A week isn’t long enough to relearn how to pronounce every word in a language.”

  Lobo was already returning to his desk. “I believe in your abilities, Echo. I always have. Besides, we can’t delay the Prometheus project too long, can we?”

  Echo nodded, then motioned to Sheridan and Taylor that it was time to leave.

  As they were about to go through the door, Lobo called out, “And, Echo, you’re done with your grieving time, aren’t you?”

  Echo stopped walking. His posture went rigid. Sheridan saw a flash of hatred in his eyes, but the next moment it was gone, evaporated like a drop of water on a hot stove. He turned back to face Lobo, and when Echo spoke, no emotion spilled out in his voice. “I’ll never be through grieving for my brother.”

  Lobo sat down, unconcerned and unmoved. “We’re all fond of our families; but when you joined us, we became the only family that mattered. You understood that.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “The need to protect ourselves takes priority. We let you have time by yourself because it wasn’t your fault, but now, pues, we expect more from you.”

  Echo nodded. “I’ll do my best with the time riders.”

  Lobo leaned back in his chair. “You have full responsibility for them. Don’t disappoint me.”

  Even after they left the room, the suffocating feeling of tension remained hovering over them. Echo was clenching his jaw. No one spoke.

  As they walked down the hallway, Echo took Sheridan’s hand in his.

  He has full responsibility for us, Sheridan thought, and he’s worried about it. He knows we’ll try to escape, and he can’t let us.

  Or maybe she was being overly suspicious of his motives, of him. He hadn’t told the Dakine who Taylor was. On the other hand, the Dakine had murdered Echo’s brother and girlfriend, and yet—unfathomably—he was still working for them.