"Have you thought about my offer? We're losing time."
"The doctors are observing her right now," Amelia said with all the confidence she could muster. "They'll be able to help fix whatever you did to her."
Ben shook his head. "Amelia, they won't."
"I guess we'll see about that."
"Please." She hated the way he was pleading with her. He seemed so desperate. "We don't have any more time to waste. If she doesn't come with me soon, she won't survive."
"The doctor said they'd figure out whatever's wrong with her. You should leave us alone." Amelia was rationalizing, mostly with herself. What this man was saying wasn't reasonable. There had to be another explanation.
"She'll only get worse, Amelia. She'll lose her hair, her vision next. Her body will begin to shut down." He frowned at her again. "The doctors here will not know what to do," he insisted. 'You must believe me."
Amelia looked up, inspecting the ceiling. It was crazy, but the possibility still lingered, pestering her like a relentless mosquito on a damp summer day. "Let me hear what the doctors have to say," she whispered. "Then maybe…I'll consider it."
She lowered her gaze to meet his. Ben's stare cut through her. Concern aged his face. As much as she fought it, she saw something in this strange man—a glimmer of hope. He seemed so certain he could help them.
"Okay." He stood up then, smoothed his hands on his jeans, and left her alone.
The night wore on. Amelia switched chairs, her head sagging onto her shoulder as she drifted in and out of sleep. When she checked her watch next, it was just past nine in the morning.
Squeaky wheels woke her as two nurses rolled her sister back into the enclosure.
"Faye!" Amelia jumped up from her seat.
"Hey," her sister mumbled, squeezing her eyes closed. She looked exhausted. Fat tears rolled from the corners of her eyes and she shook her head at her sadly. "Something's not right." Her voice sounded muffled, lips tight, hiding what was left of her teeth. To her horror, Amelia noticed a few white patches on the left side of her scalp. Her hair was falling out.
As the nurses made their move to leave, the doctor returned, almost frantically, stopping abruptly at the edge of Faye's bed. He looked down at his hands, twisting the watch on his left wrist.
"Doctor?" Amelia looked at him hopefully. "Did you find anything?" She was desperate. Desperate for an answer, desperate to confirm that Ben was lying.
"I'm afraid we haven't," the doctor admitted. Her heart sank. "I've never seen something like this happen so quickly before. We'll need to admit your sister. Do more tests this afternoon."
"Nothing?" Amelia cried. "How can you not know? She looks like a different person! She's dying," Amelia hated the words, but it was the truth. Faye looked like she was withering away.
"We haven't exhausted all of our options," the doctor offered. "I can give you names of specialists to go and see in the city."
She stared at him, jaw slack in disbelief. "No." She looked back at Faye who looked at the ceiling, trying not to cry. Amelia brushed past the doctor and into the hallway where she stood for a moment, unsure of her next action. She tried to rationalize Ben's offer, rolling it over in her head. It was crazy.
Still.
He sat in the waiting room, arms crossed, staring at the wall. As she came into view, he turned, face lighting up with hope.
"Where would we go?" she asked him abruptly as she stepped into the room.
He stood in place, straightening his posture. "We call it the Compound. There's a doctor there, Johan. He can help us. He can help your sister."
She observed him for a moment, trying to find any sign of a lie. Somewhere in the back of her mind, logic screamed out to her to weigh her options, to think about this decision, to just trust the doctors. None of this made any sense at all.
Yet, somehow, Amelia knew what she had to do.
She swallowed.
"Okay. Let's go."
CHAPTER SIX
Ebenezer was lucky.
Being born alive was lucky enough. Fertility and pregnancy was a rarity in the world he came from. He was the product of a population that was not destined to survive. Ben was two of twenty-six babies that survived during his year of birth, a particularly difficult year for their population. The number 2 tattooed on the inside of his left wrist always reminded him just how lucky he was.
He rarely talked about where he came from. There was no reason to. He and his small group of Migrators knew their luck was rare. There were many orphans in the Habitat, and not all of them saw the success that Ben and his team had. That's not to say they didn't work hard. They had all trained for most of their lives to become the Migrators they were today. They gave themselves up for the better good of the two hundred living souls in their hands at home. Time travel was essential to their survival. Migrators were essential to controlling the existence of time travel.
From day one, Ben had been a stellar student, living strictly by the set of rules they'd all been taught.
A Migrator stays hidden, patient, and sharp.
Revelation means chaos.
Chaos means death.
He is most happy when following orders.
A Migrator lives to serve the better good of his people.
A Migrator needs no friends or family.
Achieving the perfect timeline is his purpose.
It was an old code, set forth when the need for Migrators became obvious. Time travel wasn't simple. The sheer existence of it turned the world on its head. The rules weren't as black and white as they had once seemed. Migrators were given the select duty to keep order and to put things back to the way they were meant to be. It was an honor...no, a privilege...to be a Migrator. He had been perfect for the job.
That was, until now. He'd messed up. Big time.
This was a routine mission, or at least, seemed to be. Seraphine had failed to mention how far back they'd be traveling. Takeoff for his migration went as planned. Tucked tight in his slender pod, he launched off, his instructions the same as they'd always been: convene back at the Compound following migration. He had scheduled to land a few miles out and travel back on foot to complete his mission.
But the migration only lasted a few seconds, over before he could count to ten. It was a strange journey, like nothing he'd never encountered before. He'd connected with something mid-air, flew off course, skin hot and concentration broken. The pod had exploded, and he braced himself for death. Instead, he hit solid ground, head first. His eyes had shot open, watching the bright white light from the ASC-15 energy that fueled his migration fade into the distance.
He'd brought the inside of his forearm up, level with his eyes, searching for it with the tips of his fingers. The Omnis embedded deep in his arm wouldn't respond. Panic washed over him. He continued to push, harder each time, at the skin in his arm until it turned raw. He met nothing but pale flesh and blue veins.
Defeated, he'd dropped his arm and turned his head to the side, staring at large black mass, with a blinking light. He'd squinted at it, trying to make it out. There had been a clicking noise, then a small hiss, as the thing shifted to the side, colliding with the solid ground he laid on. He had looked further up, towards the sky, finding himself at the base of a relatively steep hill. The thing, whatever it was, had rolled, and found its final resting place.
Then, he'd realized what it was.
He'd shot up, first to his knees, then to his feet, cold sweat coating the nape of his neck. His vision had tunneled in on the car. Overturned and crushed, Ben could barely make out the bodies trapped inside.
Time travel was a tricky thing. A perfected art. The right frame of mind, no distractions, and most importantly, purpose. Migrating was a privilege, one he was sure to lose after all this.
He was, there was no better word for it, screwed.
The past few hours had been agonizing. Pulling them from the car, calling for an ambulance, his face revealed to a new person as each minute ticked
on. He'd lost count at the interactions he'd had, each one, he feared, more damaging than the last. Just the simplest conversation could change years of future history. But nothing was as important as making sure he hadn't Affected these girls.
But he had.
The revelation had been upsetting enough. As the hours ticked by, he became worried he'd need to do something drastic. With the Omnis malfunctioning, he had no way of reaching his team to let them know about the girls. Affecting another human was a training Ben had long since had. He was running purely on gut instinct.
He had been considering leaving them, knowing he might be banished as Migrator if he did so, when the dark-haired girl came storming out into the waiting room, wanting to know where he was going to take them. She doubted him, he knew. He could read it on her face. She doubted herself, too. But the sister was getting worse and the doctors didn't know what to do, and maybe it was the lack of sleep getting to her, but he didn't care. He was going to take the opportunity while he had it. He needed to fix this mistake before she had time to change her mind.
"How will we get there?" she'd asked.
"Let me worry about that," he had replied. "Get your sister out of bed. I'll meet you in front of the building in twenty minutes."
She looked over her shoulder, back at the bed where her sister was.
"Twenty minutes," he repeated sternly. "We don't have any more time to waste."
That had been at least seventeen minutes ago, and now he was here, peering around the side of the brick hospital wall at the emergency room exit. An ambulance sat idling before it. The back doors hung open, with two EMT's in baby blue shirts struggling to lift an overweight man from the back of the vehicle.
"Hey!" one of them called. "We need some help!"
The driver's side door flung open and a new man slid out, coming around the back to assist. He added the strength they needed to safely transport the stretcher onto solid ground. Together, they wheeled him through the automatic doors of the emergency room.
The opportunity appeared. Ben pushed off from the wall, running straight to the open door of the ambulance, adrenaline kicking in. His sensations brightened and focus sharpened as he reached the door with his shoulder. He threw himself up and into the large leather driver's seat, taking the wheel with a steady hand. The car hummed, the motor still running, so he shifted the car into drive and slammed on the gas. The vehicle gave a mighty lurch and, with the back doors still slamming together, Ben steered it towards the front of the hospital.
It had been quite some time since he'd driven a vehicle like this and it was testing his skills. The thing was wide and clunky, the frame rattling over every small dip in the pavement. He came around the front of the hospital, narrowly missing a parked car, and jumping the sidewalk curb with the two right tires at the entrance.
As instructed, Amelia stood out front, the whites of her eyes visible as he slammed on the break to stop. She clung to the handles of a wheelchair that held her blonde-haired sister. The girl was limp and asleep, hunched over in the seat. To his horror, patches of white were visible on her scalp. Hair loss. They had lost more time than he thought.
He scrambled out of the door, around the front of the ambulance, his chest tightening, amplifying the pounding of his heart.
Amelia stood still, watching him.
"Hurry up," he commanded, his frustration peaking, pointing towards the rear of the truck. "Before someone sees us."
"What is this?"
"An ambulance," Ben replied impatiently. "Get in. Now."
"We're stealing an ambulance?" she asked incredulously. "Are you serious?"
He debated picking her up and throwing her into the vehicle himself. He hadn't anticipated this being a fight. "Got a better idea?" he shot back. "Come on!"
Amelia hesitated before finally moving the wheelchair. Ben helped Amelia lift her sister into the back of the ambulance. Faye was frail now, even more so than the last time he'd seen her. Her state concerned him, but he didn't have the time to worry about it now. There was no time to waste. They needed to get out of here.
Ben jumped out the back, slamming the doors behind him, and raced to the driver's side again. Shouts in the distance hung in the air. They'd surely noticed that the ambulance was missing by now.
Ben pulled the vehicle back into drive, straining his calf to help his foot meet the gas. The tires squealed, propelling the ambulance forward. He steered the massive thing out of the hospital lot, leaving an empty wheelchair in their wake.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They were a ticking time bomb as long as they stayed in the general vicinity. The size of an ambulance made it hard to hide. But there was no going back now. They didn't have a choice. They needed to start moving towards the Compound, and they needed to do it fast.
He felt unsettled. The focus he felt minutes ago dissipated rapidly, and now panic rose like bile in his throat, though he tried hard to swallow it down. The landscape they drove through sent chills up his spine. It was a town, filled with people. Too many for his liking, yet they fascinated him. He knew how time would progress, how cruel the future would be to them, to their children, to their children's children. Stoplights forced him to slow down every mile or so, giving him the opportunity to observe them.
Men, women, and children crowded at shop windows, stopped to talk on the sidewalks, some with coffees in their hands. The weather was cool, the air crisp with autumn, causing many to pull their coats a little tighter. Ben always found Predecessors, or those from the past, curious. They were blissfully unaware of what was to come, concerned with the mundane tasks of their lives. How little all of these things would ultimately matter.
"Ben?"
With a rustle, Amelia popped her head into view just beside his shoulder. He perked up at her sudden presence, knowing he needed her as a resource now.
"How's your sister?"
"Asleep," she told him. "They gave her a sedative."
"Good."
"Where are we going?" She took the other seat. "How far away are we?"
He clenched his jaw. "Actually," he said slowly, looking at her from the corner of his eye. "I need your help with that."
She looked at him in surprise. "Really? You? The time traveling man? I would have thought you'd have it all figured out."
"I crash landed." He held up his left arm. "Omnis is broken." He pointed to the inside of his forearm. "Otherwise this all would have been much easier."
"Omnis?"
Ben frowned. "It allows me to communicate with my team. Gives instructions during our missions, syncs with all technology at the Compound." He sighed, frustrated in his explanation. "It's advanced technology that I needed."
She squinted at him, then slumped back in her seat. "Okay. What do you need me to do?"
"I have coordinates of the Compound. But I need to consult a map, or a global positioning system. You should have those now, I'd imagine," he thought out loud.
She raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"A GPS," he simplified with a sigh.
"Oh. Yeah. I have one of those on my phone."
"Your phone?"
"Yeah." She reached underneath herself. In her hand she pulled out a slick silver object, slightly larger than her hand. She pressed a button, lighting it up, then held it out for him to see.
"What is that?" He leaned over, taking his eyes off the road for a moment.
A sly smile toyed at the sides of her lips. "I'm sorry?"
"What is it?"
"How do you not know what a cell phone is?"
"Oh no." He shook his head. Ben knew of cell phones. He'd seen heaps of them in the trash after the invention of projector wristbands, which was the early prototype of Ben's Omnis. There was nothing more convenient than having all your technology embedded in the inside of your forearm.
"What?" she teased. "You've never heard of a cell phone?"
"Of course I have," he snapped. "It's ancient technology. Wildly inconvenient."
She caught her tongue between her teeth, looking like she wanted to say something, but had decided against it. He was glad she didn't. Ben wasn't interested in making conversation.
"So," he continued, "if I give you the coordinates, can you find the place?"
She gave him a nod. "Sure."
"36 degrees, 38 minutes, 44 seconds north. 115 degrees, 18 minutes, 31.4 seconds west," he said slowly, allowing her to process. Her fingers went to work on the touchscreen as he spoke, thumbs working against the glass that covered it. How impractical. One fall to the ground and the entire thing would shatter.
"Okay." She looked satisfied with herself. "I found it."
"Let me see." He reached for the phone.
She held it out of his reach, glaring at him. "Absolutely not," she said. "Focus on driving. One accident in the past twenty-four hours is enough for me." She wiggled a finger forward.
Ben pinched his lips together. He was a highly skilled Migrator, with years of training under his belt. He was highly proficient in combat, technology, and above all, migration. The idea that he could not focus on two things at the same time was laughable.
"I think I'll be fine." He snatched the phone from her, even though she sneered at him in return.
The screen lit up in his hands. 1 day, 12 hours. 2500 miles.
"This isn't right." He showed her the screen. "It can't be."
Amelia had crossed her arms, but leaned over to look at the phone anyway. "Yes it is," she said between her teeth. "It's all the way in Nevada. How long did you think it would take?"
"All the way in Nevada?"
She shook her head forcefully. "Don't tell me you're not familiar with geography either."
"Where are we?"
"We're on the East Coast. This is going to be at least a three day trip. Two, if you don't care much about sleeping."
"Three days?" Ben pressed his foot down against the gas pedal and the ambulance groaned in return. "We don't have three days!"
Amelia gently pulled the phone back from Ben's fingers, pressing her thumb to the screen. A voice activated, telling them that it was starting the route to their destination. "Then we'll make it in two," she said determinedly. "Thirty-six hours of driving." She looked over her shoulder towards the back of the ambulance. "We can do it." Her eyes traveled back over to him. "We have to."
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