by Lizzy Ford
“You need to be careful, Tomtom,” I said. “No more fighting for a while.”
He blinked at me and swished his tail.
Hungry. The sound of his faint voice in my head made me jerk. It was one thing to have a pet saber tooth and quite another for it to be able to talk to me.
I climbed to my feet and tested my chest with a few deep breaths. The pressure and stiffness around my chest had lessened considerably. “Let’s get some food,” I told him.
I stepped aside and watched his wounds as he slowly got to his feet.
Tomtom padded behind me to the kitchen, and I glanced towards the glass-less skylight. The sky was still blue, though the sun was in the west, approaching the horizon.
“Wait here,” I told him and struck out across the crunchy floor. Avoiding the pool of blood where the monster had died, I went to the fridge and began stacking my arms full of meat my mom intended to use for cooking.
I returned to Tomtom. He nudged my arms and licked his chops, and I put my back to him. Unwrapping two pounds of hamburger, I set it before him.
He swallowed it in three bites.
“I’m going to need a lot more meat,” I murmured as he looked at me expectantly.
I removed the wrappers from everything I held and created a small pile of raw and frozen meat before him. He ate it all in under a minute, and I returned to the fridge to see what else we had.
“Caretaker,” the Woli warrior said as she entered from the direction of the patio. “It is almost time for the portals to begin opening.”
I dropped the container with leftovers in my hand. Swiping at it, I replaced it in the fridge. Once the portal to Nidiani opened, I’d have all of ten minutes to determine if Teyan and my mom were on the other side and whether I locked the door and sealed the fates of the Five Peoples or risked my own world.
My heart ached when I thought about what it meant if I had to lock the door. No part of me wanted to do it. I’d considered several alternatives, including sending my mom back to lock the door and staying with Teyan, without knowing for certain if any of them were possible. I was praying for a miracle, for there to be no more monsters or war when the portal opened to Nidiani, or for Teyan and my mother to cross through the second it opened.
Wordlessly, I went with Tomtom to the front porch to wait for the portal to begin its rotation. I sat on the edge of a rocking chair. He sat down beside me then rested on his belly. I sensed distant pain and scratched his neck.
The sun set, and the portals opened without any sign of activity. The Woli was packed up and ready to return to her world. She waited beside us on the porch. As if she could sense the exact second the portal opened, she struck off down the stairs towards the end of the driveway.
“I wish you well, Caretaker!” she called over her shoulder.
“You, too,” I murmured.
She disappeared when she reached the end of the driveway.
After a few minutes, I stood and wiped my palms on my jeans.
Tomtom started to get up, but I pushed him back down. “You’re too weak to help me,” I told him firmly. “I’m going to go through, see what’s happening, and I’ll be right back to get you. Okay?”
He blinked at me but made no move to rise.
I left the porch and checked the time quickly. After the Woli portal opened, Nidiani was next. I was still uncertain about how I was going to enter the portal, seeing as how I had never successfully done it before on my own. Lives were depending on me doing it right; I’d figure it out, because I had to.
As I neared the end of the driveway, I took a deep breath and recalled what Carey had told me. It was hard not to focus on the portal when I didn’t know what to expect from the other side. After a moment of debate, I closed my eyes and walked the last ten steps towards the portal area blind.
It worked. The chilly December evening in Arizona gave way to the instant warmth of a Nidiani summer morning.
I opened my eyes. All my senses kicked in at once so fast, I was too stunned by the chaos around me to move. Metal had replaced sand. The monsters covered the sand dunes as far as I could see in three directions. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, were converging on the comparatively tiny force forming a crescent around the portal situated in the wall of a tall sand dune. Two dozen Nidiani fought beside half a dozen Tili, two Bikitomani, and one lone Komandi. Three saber tooth cats tore through the machines near the Tili, and the sand beneath the defenders was soaked with blood.
Taking in everything, cold terror tore through me. It wasn’t possible for a force this tiny to prevent the overwhelming number of robots from breaching the portal before the portal closed in ten minutes. My heart slammed into my chest, and I searched for familiar faces among the few people who survived to reach the portal.
My gaze settled on the three humans in distinctly twenty first century clothing huddled in the space between those defending the portals and me.
“Mom!” I cried, spotting her dark hair. I dashed forward and dropped beside her. She was pale and unconscious, and a gash in her head had created a large pool of blood beneath her. “Oh, god! Mom!”
“Caretaker?” another of the people asked.
“Please wake up, Mama!” I said and gently took my mom’s face in my hands. I ignored the attempts of the other two to speak to me. In that moment, I could only think of my mom.
“Gianna!” Teyan’s voice was strained.
I looked from my mom up to the thinning line of warriors and then past them to the swarming machines. A Bikitomani and Tili fell beneath the machines as I watched, followed by three Nidiani. The line of defense shrank back towards us.
No one was going to survive, not from this world, not from mine. My heart slammed into my chest, and I rose instinctively as Teyan broke away from the group and ran towards me. My warrior was bloody and fierce. He gripped my arm and pulled me back towards the portal.
“Tell me you have a plan!” I said, starting to panic.
“I do,” he said and faced me. “Lock the door.”
My mouth fell open.
“We can hold them off long enough for you to do it, if you go now,” he said.
My eyes went to my unconscious mother. “No, Teyan, I can’t leave you. I can’t leave –”
Teyan took my cheeks and turned my face to his. Sweat trickled down his face, and more than one wound in his chest oozed blood. His skin was dark in the first rays of the Nidiani suns’ light, and his eyes mesmerizing tanzanite. “We can’t hold them long enough to wait for the portal to close,” he said in an urgent whisper, voicing what I already knew. “If they get through, no one will survive from any of our worlds, Gianna. I won’t let that happen.”
“I won’t leave you!” I cried.
His response was a kiss so desperate and raw, it bruised my mouth and rendered me breathless. I clung to him, willing this moment to last forever. When he pulled away, I wobbled.
“You must do this, Gianna.”
“I’m not strong enough,” I said, tears spilling over my eyes. “I can’t lose you both. I’d rather die with you!”
“I have loved you since we first met, Gianna.” He held my gaze, and I wanted to wilt beneath his fierce intensity. “In any time, on any world, in any situation, we are destined to find one another,” he said hoarsely. He smoothed hair from my face. “But we are not destined to die together. I will not let this be your fate. Lock the door. Save my people and yours. Let me die knowing you are safe.”
A sob escaped, and my hands shook as I touched his face.
“Run,” he whispered and then pushed me towards the portal.
I had no chance to respond and couldn’t if I wanted to. My throat was too tight, my emotions splattered across the sands like the blood of the men whose deaths were about to mean nothing, if I failed to lock the door.
The sense of destiny returned, only this time, I knew without a doubt my life had been leading up to this moment. If this were a time loop, what had I done before?
<
br /> Refused? Stayed with him? Gotten home only to realize it was too late? Collapsed into tears and let my world be destroyed?
Because this was what I felt like doing now. My mom lay dying and Teyan would soon be beside her. I didn’t want a world without them.
The machines broke through the flimsy defensive line, and Teyan whirled, swords in hand.
“Run, Gianna!” he shouted.
Time seemed to slow down as I watched four of them attack him. His swords were a blur of motion. My mind retraced everything I’d learned from Carey and Hiko about the time loop. If I were meant to break it, and to save what I could of the Five Peoples and my own world, what were the odds I’d been here before and tried to figure out what to do? What were the odds I’d failed everyone I loved by remaining right here? How many times had I failed this test only for the time loop to start over?
Run, Gianna. The same tiny instinct that jarred me out of my anxiety attack when Tomtom was hurt returned. Save the worlds.
Teyan went down, and my heart twisted in my chest.
What were the chances I could reset the time loop now by locking the door and preventing any of this from ever happening?
Whirling, I sprinted straight into the sand dune and emerged onto the driveway in Arizona. My ears were filled with the echoes of battle, and I pumped my arms, running as fast as I could towards the front door. Tomtom leapt to his feet and barreled towards me, his roar filling the air seconds before I saw the flash of metal fly by my head.
Danger! His mental warning was a bellow in my head.
My cat tackled me and knocked me to safety before launching at the two machines that had followed me through the portal.
I leapt to my feet and glanced back once.
Tomtom had no shield. The monsters were tearing chunks out of him as he did them, and agony flashed through our telepathic link.
Stifling a sob, I stumbled then pushed myself to finish the sprint down the driveway. Slamming the door open, I screamed at the top of my lungs for Tomtom to come to me as I began to close the door.
Blood and metal was all I could see in the driveway. He was holding them off – and he was dying.
“Please, Tomtom!” I begged.
The monsters moved past his lifeless body.
I slammed the door closed, crying almost too hard to focus, and fumbled with the lock. Something heavy smashed into the porch, and I locked the door and sank down against it, sobbing. The final visions of my mother, of Teyan, of Tomtom flashed through my mind with intensity that made me want to vomit and scream at the same time.
I had no time to ponder whether or not I’d made the right choice, or how I was going to live without those I loved most in the universe.
The sense of Tomtom dying vanished, and the floor beneath me started to melt. Stumbling to my feet, I stared in horror as the world around me began to change and blur. Thunder belted overhead as it had the first time I locked the door, and a wall of rain slammed into me hard enough to hurt my exposed skin and push me back against the door. Just as quickly, it was gone, replaced by warm light.
I coughed and wiped my eyes, unable to see my surroundings through my tears and the rainwater.
Someone knocked at the door hard enough to terrify me, and I leapt away and grabbed for the first thing I could find with my hands: a vase.
My surroundings took form once more. I blinked at the door before me then glanced down with some confusion at the vase in my hand.
We didn’t have vases by the door in the hacienda.
The creak of the ancient floor beneath me drew my attention downward, and slowly, I began to register my surroundings. Thick, faded rugs atop a wooden floor, a sagging stairwell, rows of Civil War memorabilia lining the walls … the soft sounds of discussion coming from the three parlors lining the narrow hallway … grandfather clock ticking loudly from its position beside me ... air conditioning cranked up too high …
I was back in the farmhouse.
Another knock came, startling me. I dropped the vase. The sound of it smashing into the floor jarred me out of my shock. I stared at the shattered pottery dumbly and then leaned forward to unlock the door.
“Yankee!”
I jerked.
“Do they teach you kids to listen these days?” the Caretaker belted.
I faced her, unable to recall a single moment when I’d been even remotely pleased to see her as I was now. She stood outside the third parlor, squinting at me with her dark eyes, and wearing her blue dressing gown.
“I asked you to make tea and answer the door. What in the name of God’s green earth did you do?” She looked me up and down.
I glanced down. I was drenched and my clothing speckled with blood from the battle I’d barely escaped. I didn’t need a mirror to know my eyes were swollen from tears and my nose red.
“Answer the door, girl!” she snapped.
Is this real? Dazed, I hesitated to do so in case monsters were on the other side. “Um, what day is it?” I asked her.
She didn’t answer but turned and scuffled to the kitchen. “I’ll make the tea myself!”
Was I going crazy? What happened? I tried to make sense of everything as I stood in the middle of a house that hadn’t existed in ten years. With some apprehension, I swept shards of the vase out of the way and went to the door. I opened it and gasped.
“Hey, there.” None other than Carey stood in the doorway, flanked by several Nidiani. “You must be The Prisoner. I’ve heard all about you from the Caretaker! I’m – ”
“You son of a bitch!” Rage blinded me. I punched him. Hard. It was as much instinct as it was out of absolute fury for the mess he’d made of my life.
Carey went down and didn’t get back up. I shook out my hand, too angry to feel pain. I trembled with too much complex emotion to know what exactly was going through my mind. This didn’t feel real and yet, I was here, in the past. My senses registered the world as real, even if I couldn’t grasp how it was possible.
The only real thought that would form in that moment was that I hated Carey more than anyone I’d ever met. It wasn’t fully his fault the monsters had destroyed everything I loved – but he had revealed the secret of the door to our enemies, chosen his people over his duty and failed to stop what was happening. Whether he was working with Jiod or a coward, he had shattered the world in a way no one else had, save the man who attacked me when I was seventeen. He was the absolute worst man for the Caretaker job. If I were truly back in the past, I was going to stop him this time around.
And if being back in the past was some sort of cruel dream, I was still going to stop him. I didn’t care – not Carey or anyone else was going to have the chance to destroy me or my world ever again.
Glaring at the unconscious Carey and silently daring him to get up so I could hit him again, I didn’t notice the voices in the parlors had fallen silent, or the shocked looks of the Nidiani, until someone spoke.
“First a Komandi, then a Nidiani. My friend Gianna would make a good Tili.”
“Her instincts are good. Perhaps you should take her home with you, cousin,” someone else said.
Laughter followed the words, but it was the familiar voices that made my breath catch.
My anger fizzled. I turned to see young Teyan standing beside the Komandi, Kikkonam, with the swollen nose he earned after slapping my backside. Teyan was my age again, and I began to realize when I was. It was the night we became allies, two days before I locked the door.
Teyan was alive.
Mesmerized by the sight of him, my throat was tight enough I couldn’t speak. He gazed back at me with every bit of the intensity that made my stomach fill with butterflies and none of the sorrow and darkness in his eyes he had displayed after I locked the door. This Teyan hadn’t yet lost his family, hadn’t spent ten years checking the portals to make sure I was okay, wasn’t leading a losing battle against the monsters.
In any time, on any world, in any situation, we are destined to find one
another.
This Teyan wasn’t the man I left on Nidiani, but he still loved me. Did he know it yet? Was he just now figuring it out? Or had he been serious when he said he knew when he first saw me that we were destined to be together?
“Yankee!”
God, that woman’s sharp tone could, and did, ruin the best moment of my life.
“Kitchen, now!”
Wordlessly, I fled through the crowd, overwhelmed by what had happened and terrified this was some kind of dream I’d wake up from too soon.
The Caretaker stood in the kitchen with her tiny hands on her hips. “What’s gotten into you?”
I looked around, recognizing the red velvet sheet cake and the plates left over from the dinner I’d made. I touched the smooth tabletop to reassure myself this wasn’t a dream then patted down my clothing to make sure I was real. This was the night Teyan and I became allies, and the same night the Caretaker told me to stay away from Teyan and called us both fools.
Disoriented, it took me a moment to realize she’d asked me a question.
“Are there monsters?” I ventured, afraid of the answer.
Her eyebrows went up. “Monsters.”
“Robot-machine things trying to eradicate the Five Peoples.”
“You’re drunk.”
I shook my head. “I saw them. You died, and I went ten years into the future, where I learned the Five Peoples are from a million years in the future, descendants of humanity, and they were betrayed by a Nidiani Caretaker and his apprentice. I went to Komandi, Tili, Nidiani and Bikitomani and we were all stuck in a time loop and my mom and Teyan were slaughtered by –”
“Rubbish.” The Caretaker rolled her eyes and turned her back to me.
I stopped speaking, too unsettled to know what else to say, if she didn’t want to hear the truth. I reached out to touch the table again and reassure myself I was really here.
“There are no monsters, girl,” she said roughly. “No Nidiani will ever be a Caretaker.”
It took a minute for this to click. Hiko, Carey and Teyan’s explanations of a time loop, and the history of our worlds, swirled through my head. Carey had been right in his parting words when he said I’d be the only one to remember what I’d been through, and Hiko had been right about one person making a difference. And Teyan … without him, I’d be nothing but a teen girl scared of her shadow waiting for the world to pounce on her. He had shown me how powerful love could be.