"We could pop forward a few minutes."
I smiled at her enthusiasm. And again, the need to keep her under control seeped into my thoughts. "Impatient are we? We can wait. I don't want to miss them if they come out running."
"Fine!" It was a whine, but she gave me the box.
I stuffed it into my backpack. Her enthusiasm was contagious. "So we've got a few days with Noah and Jim before things calm back down. Where do you think we should bunker down and plan our takeover?"
"How about Paris?"
"What?" The word came out as a laugh.
"Well, we've got that sphere, I can take us anywhere. Why not somewhere fun?"
I couldn't think of a reason to object. "Let's see what Jim and Noah think when they come out." Why not Paris, I thought to myself. I'd never been there. Noah would love breaking out the French accent again, to be sure.
"Why give them the chance? Let's grab them the instant they come out and leave!"
"People don't like being whisked away unannounced unless they're being saved from imminent peril." She sulked so I decided to throw her a bone. "Paris sounds good though. Noah will hate it." She grinned again. It was odd, I felt like I had inherited a daughter. Noah’s adoptive daughter. What a strange little family the four of us would make for the next few days. I wondered how much to tell Noah about who Daphne was to him in the future. We sat in the field and leaned against the hay bale for a while. She was thankfully quiet for a few minutes, no doubt thinking about Paris. "Think you'll have any trouble traveling with two more people?"
"Nope. Easy peasy."
It occurred to me that we never traveled into the future on missions, with the exception of my accidental arrival eighty years from this point. I always assumed it was an impossibility. Yet Daphne had just suggested going a few minutes into the future here to pass the time. “How far into the future could you take us?”
She grimaced at me. “I’m not completely sure. Not far beyond what year it was when we left the island, I think. Technically, we’re still in my past. But I couldn’t see anything beyond the present while we were on the island or when I was working with Noah on honing my skills.”
“What do you think would happen if you had tried to send someone ahead in time?”
“Noah asked us to. Me and Erica. She said no, and I was too nervous about it to contradict her. I can’t see anything. I’d have no reference for where to put someone.” She looked disappointed and a little frightened by the idea.
“But Noah said he skipped 10 years into the future to plant the box in the safe.”
“Erica merely waited 10 years to bring him back. For him, it was instantaneous. She basically just had to ignore him for all that time. I don’t think she could’ve sent him forward though.”
“It was an idle curiosity. Probably better to leave the future unknown anyway. Which reminds me, you probably shouldn’t talk much about the other version of Noah that you know.”
“Why not?”
I sighed. As much as I resented the lab, their rules made it easy for their employees to just obey without question. “Noah didn’t react that well to finding out that there was another version of him. Especially one who didn’t adhere to his version of a life. I think it might be better for him to not know how he turns out in another timeline.”
“Was he very different?”
“No,” I said. “But had he been given the option to continue along in his current state, I think he would’ve turned out slightly different. But he’s stubborn enough that if he knew what he was like in another life, he would want to be different from it. Almost like he would need to prove it wasn’t him.”
She giggled a little. “Yes, I could see that about Noah.” We sat in silence for a moment. “How is he different here?”
“It’s hard to say. I don’t think he’ll seem that different to you. Younger, but you’re meeting him at a rather pivotal moment in his life. While we were in the lab together, his personality was much the same, but the traveling through time was really the driving force in his life. As much as he might complain about the lab, he needed it. Without the lab, he seemed like a much more relaxed person, though he still seemed to be driven by the same needs.”
We heard a hollow metallic thud as the handle on the hatch moved and were instantly alert. We jumped up and watched over the top of the hay bale as the door opened and Jim's head peered out. He glanced around quickly and came out, turning his back to us. I moved around the front of the hay bale and motioned for Daphne to be silent. I leaned against it as casually as possible and waited. Noah was emerging from the door while Jim looked around to get his bearings. His eyes skimmed over me and the bale of hay before snapping back to stare at me. He was too far away for me to hear, but I saw the word "Adelaide" form on his mouth.
Noah had emerged from the tunnel and was closing the door, and turned to see where Jim was looking. His mouth broke into an enormous grin and he ran over to greet me with a crushing bear hug and a hearty chuckle. I joined in his laughter.
"Adelaide, at some point you'll have to explain that bit in the root cellar!" He put me down and noticed Daphne. "You were there too, weren't you?" She looked at him curiously. He held out his hand. "I'm Noah."
"I know." She looked a little wary of him and didn’t take his hand, but focused on his face. I could only assume she was trying to see the resemblance between this Noah and the one she knew in the future.
"We've met?" He looked amused.
"I'll explain later," I broke in. "We need to find someplace a little less exposed."
Jim had joined us at that point. "I know of a little house not far from here. I'm friends with the family. I was going to take Noah there to sort out what to do next."
"That sounds lovely. But Paris sounds even lovelier." I gave them a devilish smirk.
Noah grinned in response and adopted a patronizing tone. "Ok, Miss Adelaide. How do you propose we get to Paris?"
"With this." I pulled the wooden box out of my backpack.
"You captured Paris in a box?"
I grabbed his hand. "Hold Jim's hand, Noah."
Jim gave me a curious look and Noah reluctantly took his hand. I handed the box to Daphne and took her hand. She flipped it open. Noah peeked inside and gasped slightly when he saw the glowing red button. We arrived on a deserted bank of the Seine. Jim and Noah were a bit stunned.
"Welcome to 2053!" Daphne said.
"Twenty years prior? Why did you take us back in time? We could've just stayed in the present."
"This is a great year in Paris' history,” Daphne said. She dropped my hand and gestured across the river. “Jean DuFreulle's unveiling of 'The Slathering of Snarlak', the opening of Susan MacInnes's groundbreaking play 'Trained Monkeys'! We'll have some time for sightseeing won't we?"
Those events seemed harmless enough. "Well, we do have a time machine. And I suppose it helps that at this point the lab doesn’t even know we exist. But first let's find ourselves a place to stay for the next few days and settle in, alright?" I held my hand out for the box.
She practically bounced with delight and seemed sated. "Alright." She gave me the box back without hesitation and I shoved it in my pack again.
Noah watched me. "What is that, Addy?"
"It's a sphere, obviously."
"Doesn't look very sphere like."
"Don't be so closed minded, Noah."
"I think you have a lot of explaining to do."
"Yep, but it would be much better over room service, don't you think?" I nodded down the river toward the city.
Daphne started off along the river bank toward the Eiffel Tower. We followed, Jim looking wary, Noah looking amused and me, exhausted. She led us to a hotel right off the Eiffel Tower. I knew it would be expensive, but we still had plenty of cash from my visit with Montgomery. We got four rooms, and with a stern lecture about remaining inconspicuous, I left Daphne to wander while I filled Jim and Noah in on the events of my past few days. "What I need help with
now is figuring out how to take over the lab. From what I've been told, the board will be killed but Doctor Lancing survives. I have a plan to get rid of him, but I’m not sure where to find him. I saw a laboratory area that seemed to be his office, only he wasn’t there."
Jim had been able to fill in some of the gaps of my knowledge as I explained what was going on. However his knowledge of Doctor Lancing was even more scarce than mine. "I’ve seen blueprints of the complex. He lives in a dome isolated from everyone else, but it should be connected to that office you found. Do you know when he leaves it to come after Noah?"
"Montgomery didn't mention it to me, no."
"He probably won't leave his quarters for at least a few days. He'll need time to make sure it's safe for him to emerge and plan what he's going to do next. It won't be easy to get inside, it's heavily secured. And airlocked. Shame the Gardians didn't break into that one for us. But you might be able to lure him out if you can get to his lab area. You especially, Adelaide. If he sees you, he'll put two and two together and come after your sphere."
The locked doors I hadn’t been able to explore from Doctor Lancing’s office hadn’t looked that secure to me. "That's fine then, I can handle it."
Jim gave me a concerned look. "What are you going to do to him Adelaide?"
I tried to ease Jim's concern with a nonchalant look. "Nothing. I simply plan to deliver the doctor to some people who will want to see him and leave him there."
He didn't seem convinced, but changed the subject anyway. "I’m not looking forward to going back. I’ve seen what you guys go through on the return trip.”
“That won’t happen, Jim. I’ve traveled a few times with Daphne now, and no sickness.”
Noah perked up at this news. “I’m not going to vomit all over myself when we get back? That’s good news. Why?”
"You met the original programmer, right?"
"I did,” Jim said. “A very troubled young man."
"Well the restrictions they put on the programmers to keep them in line inhibit their ability to perform their tasks and move us through time. Once Erica learned how to control the sphere and the person holding it and got the hang of moving them through time it became effortless for both her and the traveller. She explained it as we're not physically moving, just time is shifting around us." I had to smile at his confused look as I remember Erica trying to explain it to me. "I don't pretend to understand it either." I thought back to my nervousness about Daphne's incredible abilities. "Let's hope he's still there though, it would be good to have a second programmer around. Jim, we'll need you to take over once we get back there. You know more about how that place runs than either of us. You're more likely to be able to talk people into staying and find ways to get in touch with the people who were funding us. We'll need to regain their trust quickly and assure them that everything is fine."
Jim’s face fell as he looked at me. "I don’t think I can do that, Adelaide.”
“What?”
“Look, I’ll put you in touch with the people you’ll need to talk to, but I can’t go back there.”
I couldn’t speak. My plan was suddenly falling apart all around me. “But Jim, we need you.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. That place has too many bad memories. I did too many things I didn’t agree with.”
“But it will be different if you’re in charge!”
Jim gave me a piteous look. “Adelaide, you have no idea what that place did to me. No idea how I tried to fight back. In some ways, I succeeded, but in most I didn’t. It’ll be different I’m sure, with you and Noah in charge, but I can’t have anything to do with that place anymore.”
I thought about telling him about Sunithe’s disease, and how he didn’t have that much longer to live. That he needed the lab to find a cure. I kept silent, because it felt like blackmail, and I couldn’t do that to Jim. He had confidence in us being able to pull it off, and I had to believe in that. I looked to Noah for help, but he just shrugged at me.
Chapter 23
We spent three days in Paris. Though I was eager to finalize things, I knew I needed a break. Daphne was beside herself with glee, and I wanted to spend a few final days with Jim. The time finally came for us to start putting our plan into action. Daphne dropped Jim off at the island, then came back for us. The three of us grabbed hands again and found ourselves delivered into the center of the living dome's central courtyard. Noah laughed at our arrival and I found myself overwhelmed with relief to be back, even though I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. It was like coming home to a house that had been ransacked by a tornado. Some people milling about turned to stare at us. We had appeared out of nowhere. I registered shock and distrust on their faces.
One man who looked mildly familiar came up to us. “Where did you come from?” He looked like he was ready to run from us at the slightest provocation.
“We’re not with the Gardians if that’s what you’re worried about. We’ve come to get the lab back up and running.”
“We were told yesterday that the lab was closing.”
“Who told you that?” I asked, but had a feeling I knew it was Doctor Lancing.
"I don't know, some voice came over the loudspeaker system. I didn't even know we had a loudspeaker system in here. It was like a voice booming down from the sky." The man eyed me suspiciously.
Noah glanced at me, but I waved him off. “Well the voice was wrong.”
“Who are you, if you’re not with the Gardians?” His voice sounded accusatory.
“We work here too. We had to leave when the lab was attacked, but we came back as soon as we could. We’re here to fix things and get the lab back up and running. Spread the word!” I said as cheerily as possible. I grabbed Noah and Daphne by the arms and dragged them off to the time travel laboratory entrance before he could ask me more questions I wasn’t entirely prepared to answer.
The door slid open easily and we started down the hallway. There were a few guards, dead on the floor. Daphne gasped beside me. I tried not to breathe too deeply. The guards looked gaunt under the harsh lights of the hallway.
We peeked into the doors as we continued. Most rooms were fine but perhaps a little disheveled. The place was deserted, though. After passing a few more dead guards I didn't blame people for wanting to stay away. "Noah, what are we going to do with them?" I asked.
"I guess we'll bury them, Adelaide." He pressed onward. I recognized the room where Jim and I had last eaten a meal together after my return from my Shakespeare mission, and I knew that the return chamber was ahead. We entered the room where I had gotten my haircut. I wondered if Vanessa was still around, and if I could now voice my suspicions to her without fear of repercussions.
It felt strange going backwards through the rooms. The cleaning tub looked fine. There was no algae or dirt in it. I remembered the disorder from my last time through the examination room, so I was a little surprised to find Doctor Crebbs when we opened the door. She froze in place, organizing some paperwork in a drawer. Her usually stern demeanor melted in relief and surprise when she recognized us. "Noah." She put the papers down and came over to hug him. "Someone said you escaped."
"Jim got me out. He didn’t think I had much of a future here."
"I'm glad, I wasn't looking forward to helping her erase your mind."
I could feel Noah tense beside me as I wondered who Doctor Crebbs had meant by “her.” Before I could ask who she meant, Noah stepped forward slightly to confront her. "You mean you are the one who does it?" His temper flared.
She held a hand up and spoke quickly to stop him. "Noah, I didn't come up with the idea, and I certainly didn't approve of it's use. But I know to do what I'm told or I'll end up the one with the scrambled brain."
He seemed unconvinced.
"I've saved your life more times than you can possibly know, and it killed me to know that I was basically about to undo all that." She didn't seem to be able to continue and her head fell.
I
turned back to her and glanced down at the box of files beside her. "Are you leaving?"
She didn't raise her head. She kept looking sadly at the floor. "There's nothing for me here. I was just trying to organize some of my research to take with me and then, yes. I was going to try and find another medical lab that would take me in."
The Sphere: A Journey In Time Page 21