The Children Who Time Lost

by Marvin Amazon

  I nodded. “They’re innocent. What you did to them and the mothers was wrong.”

  “And what about Dylan?”

  I clenched my fists. “What about him?”

  “You ever wonder if he was human?”

  I hissed and moved forward.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Rachel,” Michael said through the earpiece. “Remember, she can kill you in seconds.”

  I paused and rubbed my nose. “What’re you saying?” I said to Carrie. “Is he one of you?”

  “And if he was?”

  “He’s still my son. Human or Shrinik, he can’t help what he is, just like the other children.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. When she stopped, a broad smile lingered on her face. “You know, for a minute there I almost bought it. You caring for Shriniks like they were just normal children.”

  I just stared at her without speaking.

  “Stop with the lies, Rachel.” She walked forward, anger now on her face. “I know exactly why you’re here.” Her voice took on a nasty tone. “You want the journal.”

  I swallowed. I had to give her something else to throw her off the scent. “I don’t know about any journal, but I’ll do a trade with you.”

  She laughed and folded her arms. “I’m listening.”

  “Tell me where my son and the rest of the children are and in return I’ll give you information you’re dying to have.”

  Carrie cocked her head and studied me. “I’m curious now. What could you possibly know that I’d even care about?”

  I took a step forward. “What if I could give you the name of a rogue traveler in your inner circle? Someone you trust.”

  She lowered her hands and seemed to shudder. “How do you—”

  I held my hands out. “I know more than you think. But first, do we have a deal?”

  She gulped down her drink and sighed. Then she folded her arms again. “No. No deal.”

  Although my ploy had been in the interest of time, I thought she’d genuinely want to know about a rogue traveler working right under her nose. Unless we were completely wrong in our assumption that it was Jarrod. Or maybe she already knew who it was and was handling it her own way. I gave her a confused look, hoping she wouldn’t see how false it was.

  “Don’t give me that look.” She lowered her arms again and stepped forward, this time with more urgency. “You think we don’t know where you’re getting your information? You think we don’t know you’re working with Curtis? At first we thought something had happened to him. We even thought your pathetic team might have killed him. But then we started hearing that you all escaped our guards at the facility because one of us turned and fought for you. Who else could it be but Curtis?”

  I just stood there, not speaking. She moved closer to me.

  “Doug,” Michael said through the earpiece, “we need you in there right now.”

  “Twenty seconds,” Doug said.

  “She might not have twenty seconds.”

  I backed toward the door with each step Carrie took.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Don’t lie to me,” she roared. “If you know about the rogue travelers, Curtis must be with you, which means you know about the journal. And you obviously know it’s in here somewhere. But what I wanna know is how you plan to get it. The only person who can open it is…” Her eyes widened as if she had just realized what we were planning and why I’d insisted we meet in her room. She gasped. “How could I have been so stupid? You—”

  The door slammed open. The guard who had been outside was on the floor. Carrie staggered back and a bright white light surrounded her head.

  “She’s changing,” I shouted.

  Doug ran into the room and fired a tranquilizer dart into her chest. Carrie grimaced and dropped to the floor. Then the light around her head faded.

  I sighed and squatted. “About damn time,” I said.

  Doug shrugged. “What? I had to make sure no one saw me.”

  “Is she down?” Michael said.

  Doug rolled Carrie onto her back. “She’s out.”

  “Remember,” Curtis said, “you need to tie her hands and legs as tight as you can to stop her from changing.”

  “Got it.” Doug pulled thick rope from the black bag over his shoulder and bound Carrie’s arms and legs. Then he pulled the downed guard into the room. After binding his hands and feet together, Doug gagged him with duct tape.

  The guard’s radio crackled. Then a voice came through. “Everything okay in there?” It sounded like Lorenzo’s voice.

  Doug picked up the radio and deepened his voice. “Everything okay here.”

  “Roger that,” Lorenzo came back.

  Doug put the radio into his pocket. “I’ve got to go back or they’ll miss me.”

  I looked at him in shock. “No one told me that. You mean I have to do this on my own?”

  “We’ll be right here,” Michael said.

  “But that wasn’t part of the plan,” I said. No one said anything. “Why didn’t you guys tell me?”

  “Because we knew you wouldn’t go with it,” Michael said.

  I grimaced and squatted again.

  “Doug,” Michael said, “I think your boss is looking for you. You need to get back to the bar now.”

  Doug nodded toward the guard. “I’ll answer any calls on his radio that come through.” He took the blazer off and grabbed his vest from the bag. After putting it on, he handed me the Glock he’d probably taken from the guard he’d knocked out earlier with Curtis. He ran out and shut the door.

  I walked around the room, eyeing the downed guard and Carrie. You can do this, Rachel. You’re so close now. I sat in the chair behind the study table and waited, praying no one would come looking for Carrie. All it would take was for Lorenzo to suspect that the voice he was hearing on the radio was an impostor’s. Carrie’s laptop made a beeping sound. I leaned forward and flipped the screen open. I saw a number of names on the left side of the screen, but none of them were familiar. I focused on the first name on the list: Joshua Franks. To the right were four radio buttons marked “age,” “sex,” “year” and “status.” I clicked on the first two. Joshua was male and three years old. Then I clicked on the “year” button and 2050 popped up. I waited a moment before clicking on “status,” but nothing happened. I clicked it again and again before the screen went blank. I just waited. Then the spreadsheet reappeared, except this time, beside the “status” button for Joshua Franks, was the word deceased.

  I shuddered and went through more of the names. The years varied, but everything was after 2022. It must have been children won as part of the Lotto. Michael and Curtis called out to me a few times, but I ignored them. When I was twenty rows down on the spreadsheet, most of the statuses had read “deceased.” Why were there so many dead children? Was it acclimatization issues? It couldn’t be. These babies were human. Or were they? I continued going through the names, skipping over a few. Then I saw Dylan Galloway in Row 80. I quivered and took my hands away from the mouse and keyboard. I sat there and stared at the screen. This was the moment I’d been waiting for since I came to 2013. I was about to get information on Dylan. But was I ready for the truth? I leaned forward and moved the cursor over Dylan’s name. Then I heard moaning to my right. Carrie was waking up.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Rachel,” Michael said through the headset, “you okay?”

  I ignored him and kept the cursor over the “status” button beside Dylan’s name. I heard more moaning from Carrie but didn’t look at her. Michael called out to me again, and Doug did the same moments later, but I didn’t respond. I ruffled my hair and moved to press the button on the mouse, but my eyes drifted ten rows down. A child’s name wasn’t written this time. Instead, the entry said “Children of 2022.” I stared at it for a second and then it hit me. It had to be the children time had lost. It was the only entry of 2022 and it didn’t have a name. I
clicked the “status” button and the screen didn’t freeze this time. A new screen opened with seven rows, each containing numbers listed in ascending order, starting at one. It had all the same radio buttons that had been on the previous screen. The children were all from ages three to five and a combination of male and female. The year was 2022 for all of them. I now had no doubt that these were the children Sophie had begged us to save with her dying breath.

  I heard Carrie tug against the rope that bound her hands. “I should have seen this coming,” she said with disgust.

  I ignored her and remained focused on the screen.

  “What’re you doing?” she said.

  I turned and saw her glaring at me. Michael called out to me again, but I didn’t answer. I twisted my head back and pushed the “status” button. Every entry came back as deceased. I gasped and lurched backward. My chest tightened.

  “It’s not what you think,” Carrie said.

  I shot her a glare and returned to the laptop, ignoring yet more pleading from members of my team to speak to them. I had to know the truth. Was Dylan still alive or dead? I went back to the original spreadsheet and scrolled back to Dylan’s name.

  “Don’t do it,” Carrie said. “Just let him go.”

  I faced her for a moment before turning back to the screen. Then I pressed the “status” button. It said “deceased.” I sniffled and dropped to my knees. Tears flowed from my eyes. My baby was dead. I was too late to save him. The silence from the others meant they could hear my sobs.

  “What’s going on, Rachel?” Michael said again.

  I sniffled a few more times. “He’s … he’s dead.”

  Silence came back for a moment.

  “Who’s dead?” Curtis said.

  “Dylan. He’s dead. The other children, too. They’re all dead.” I scowled at Carrie. “They killed them all.”

  More silence followed. Then I heard Doug respond to Lorenzo again, saying everything was all right.

  “How do you know?” Curtis said.

  I told them everything I’d seen after opening the laptop. No one spoke for almost two minutes.

  “Rachel,” I heard Carrie say a few times.

  I wanted to turn around and shoot her in the head. The mission was over, so why not? I didn’t care about finding the journal, the Orchestrator, the rogue travelers or even the master site anymore. All that rang in my head was that Dylan was dead. But I didn’t understand why they would kill their own. Why kill the children time had lost? They were all Shriniks. I stared down at my dress and felt ridiculous. All the planning, all the hope that I’d finally know what had happened to Dylan, only to discover the cruel truth that he’d been murdered. I faced Carrie. “Why? Why did you kill my son?”

  She stared at the floor without speaking.

  “Answer me,” I growled.

  I started to stand but noticed a miniature screen in the bottom left corner of the laptop. All I could make out was 2086. It was the year Curtis said he had come from. The year the Shriniks in his reality had declared all-out war against humans. I maximized the screen. Thousands upon thousands of dead men lay across acres of land, with thousands more standing over them, interspersed with Shriniks. I frowned and scrolled down. Why did Carrie have this image on her computer? At the bottom of the screen was a table with three columns and at least thirty rows. The first column said “Year,” and the second and third said “Humans” and “Shriniks,” respectively. I scrolled to the bottom. The last entry was “2056.” Under “Humans,” it said “5 billion,” and under “Shriniks” “2 billion.” I glanced at Carrie and continued going up through the rows. By the time I reached 2060, the numbers of both humans and Shriniks were 3.5 billion.

  “My God,” I said.

  Carrie didn’t reply.

  I continued working my way up until I reached 2086. The number of Shriniks was 6.5 billion, the number of humans five hundred million.

  “It was you all along,” I said to Carrie, “wasn’t it?”

  She met my gaze but still didn’t speak.

  “There were no rogue travelers, were there? You were all in on it. You were the ones messing with the time lines. The meteor was all you.”

  She smiled thinly.

  “It was your plan all along, wasn’t it? To trigger the infertility so we would have no choice but to beg you to send children back. But it wasn’t human babies you were sending back, was it? You were replacing us with your own people.” I shook my head in disgust. All the child deaths on the spreadsheet started to make sense. It must have been because of acclimatization issues. The whole thing probably had something to do with 2086. They wanted to outnumber us by the time the war came. I couldn’t think of anything else. But why kill their own people at the facility? Did they know we were watching? Was it some kind of show for us?

  “My God,” I heard Doug say. Michael said the same, and then Curtis echoed the sentiment.

  “You’re too late,” Carrie said. “It’s already done. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  “We can destroy the portal at the master site,” Curtis said.

  I frowned, put my hand to my ear and stood up.

  “Curtis is right,” Michael said. “We really need that journal now. If we destroy the master site’s portal, we end time travel and their plans go up in smoke.”

  “Who have you been talking to?” Carrie said. “Michael?”

  I ignored her, walked toward the door and placed my hand against the earpiece. “And you’re sure it’s inside the liquor cabinet? I didn’t see anything when she went in there.”

  “I promise you,” Michael said, “it’s there.”

  I turned around, squeezed the Glock and moved toward Carrie. Then I leaned down, and she met my gaze with unblinking eyes.

  “Where’s the safe?”

  She just stared at me. Then she smiled. “I knew you were up to something, but I didn’t think you’d be this brave.”

  “She’s wasting time, Rachel,” Curtis said.

  I walked to the glass liquor cabinet and opened it. I lifted the bottles of spirits with care and placed them on the floor, but there seemed to be an unending supply.

  “You sure it’s here?” I said into the earpiece.

  “I promise you,” Michael said. “It’s right at the back.”

  “That is Michael, isn’t it?” Carrie said.

  I glanced at her and turned back to the bottles. But then I stopped and felt faint. Dylan was dead. I told myself that over and over. I shut my eyes for a moment and fought back tears. He couldn’t be. It had been my job to save him and I failed. I thought of Carrie sitting there, bound and at my mercy. I could have killed her right there and then, but then what? We’d probably all have been caught and killed. I shook my head and moved a bottle of bourbon to the side.

  “Tell him that he’s outdone himself this time. This smells of him.”

  I still didn’t speak. It felt like an eternity that I’d been moving the bottles. Doug had responded to Lorenzo a few more times on the radio. They were probably becoming suspicious. It was looking like we were chasing a dead end. I stopped and looked at Carrie. She met my gaze with a weird calm.

  “So all that nonsense about nobody knowing how the infertility reversed itself was a big lie, wasn’t it? You could have stopped it at anytime. You just wanted us to stay desperate, so we’d keep bringing back your own babies from the future.”

  Carrie said nothing.

  “But why? Why are you doing all this? I thought you wanted peace.”

  She twisted her head to the left and stared at the floor.

  “At least tell me why you had Dylan killed.”

  She didn’t speak. I wanted to smash the Glock against her head so bad, but I fought the urge. I had to understand her motives. “The children then. Why kill them? They were your own kind, for God’s sake.” So was Dylan, probably, but I still couldn’t say it.

  She turned and frowned at me in shock. “You really do care for them, don�
�t you?”

  I squatted and nodded.

  “But why? They’re nothing to do with you.”

  “Because one of the women you kidnapped begged me to save them before dying. She felt just like I did for Dylan.”

  She turned away from me. “You’re an idiot, Rachel. You’re not cut out for all this. I’d get out of here if I were you.”

  “Stop talking,” Michael said. “You need to find the safe. I promise you, it’s in there.”

  I hissed and stood again, moving yet more bottles to the floor. It looked never-ending. But then I saw the edge of what looked like a curved chrome handle. I shifted three more bottles of bourbon to the side, and the safe came into full view.

  “I found it,” I said.

  I heard everyone cheer through the earpiece.

  “Now open the cabinet underneath,” Michael said.

  I took a step back and studied a metal cabinet beneath where the liquor was stored. I pulled the handle back until I saw a square screen like the one outside the room. ID was displayed in bold across the center.

  “Do you see the screen?” Michael said.

  “Yes. It’s asking for identification.”

  “You know what you have to do,” Curtis said.

  I nodded and faced Carrie.

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’m not opening that safe.”

  I pointed the gun at her head. “I’ll shoot, I swear.”

  “Then do it, but I’m not opening the safe.”

  I glared at her for a moment, and then I removed the earpiece from my ear and placed it on the table. Carrie’s grin faded. I walked past her and through the door that led to the other section of the room, the actual bedroom. Dim lighting glowed over expensive aluminum effects everywhere, from the en-suite bathroom doors to her reading table. The bed was king-size, with an endless supply of pillows. I grabbed one and walked back into the study.

  Carrie’s eyes widened. I saw fear on her face for the first time. “What’re you going to do with that?” she said.