by Jude Watson
Water. So much water it looked like an ocean.
It was like having access to an aerial map. Through her panic she tried to make sense of it. If she lived through this, it could be helpful. Parts of the forest were slightly blurred. Something close to what Javi had described when he’d activated that cloaking device back in the desert. Distortions. There were areas where the trees wavered or shimmered. Lines of barely visible force bisecting the forest. Like a bicycle wheel, she thought, with a glint at the center.
Time folds. She could actually see them.
She could hardly wait to tell the others—except that the giant raptor was no doubt bringing her to its nest, where it would kill her and then eat her. She just hoped it would be fast.
Anna’s teeth chattered. Maybe it would be better to just drop. All the way to the earth. That would be quick, right? Smash.
The bird shifted a bit, descended, and made a lazy circle above a field littered with broken pieces of machinery. She strained for a better view, but the bird descended faster, swooping back into the trees, its beating wings ruffling the leaves.
She could see its nest ahead, a mass of twisted sticks sitting in a forked tree. Baby raptors the size of Thanksgiving turkeys sat in it. Mouths open.
Waiting for dinner.
Something sliced the air, arcing toward them. An arrow. It overshot them and fell just short of the nest, disappearing into the leaves.
Anna peered down. Yoshi was right below her, fitting another arrow into the bow.
“Yoshi!” she screamed. Was he crazy? If he shot the raptor, she’d plummet to the ground!
Another arrow arced into the air, this one well below them. Anna learned something new. Yoshi was a really bad shot.
But the arrow came within a few feet of the nest. It hit the trunk and skittered in a downward fall. The raptor let out a furious cry.
Yoshi was shooting at the nest.
Another arrow came flying. The raptor wheeled, its claws digging harder into Anna’s shoulders. It made a beeline for the nest. Below, Yoshi held up something in the air.
The gravity device.
Now she understood. The raptor would fly lower to protect her babies. She would attack Yoshi. That would put Anna in range of the device.
Anna’s mind worked at lightning speed. The raptor had to be low enough so that if it dropped her, Yoshi would activate the device and she wouldn’t fall. Yoshi would rise. They would meet in the middle.
Hopefully not in the raptor’s beak.
Was he imagining the evil he saw in the green-yellow eye of the raptor?
He’d gotten its attention, anyway. Yoshi fitted another arrow into the bow. He knew the raptor was capable of amazing speed, so his timing had to be flawless.
Hang on, Anna.
Well, maybe do the opposite. Let go. But not until he was ready for her.
Yoshi let the last arrow fly, aiming straight for the nest. With a terrible cry, the raptor shot downward, placing its body between Yoshi and the nest and heading for him. At the same time, the bird released Anna. It had more important things to do with its talons.
Anna plummeted toward the ground, screaming. Yoshi dropped the bow and twisted the gravity device, pressing the glowing symbols.
He felt the lurch as gravity lowered. Yoshi bent his legs and pushed off, shooting into the air.
Her free fall slowed by the antigravity, Anna was able to grab on to a nearby branch. Yoshi bounced off a bulbous tree trunk, higher, closer to Anna. She was hugging the tree, her face red, tears streaking the grime.
Confused, the raptor circled overhead.
“Just stay still,” Yoshi said, wrapping a bungee cord around Anna’s waist.
He figured the raptor could see them. As a bird of prey, its eyesight would have to be supreme. But he was hoping that its instinct to protect the nest overrode everything else. Failing that, if it came after them, maybe the low gravity would slow it down enough that he would be a match for it. He kept the device on and his sword at the ready.
Two heart-pounding minutes later, the raptor finally stopped circling over the nest and took off.
Anna took a deep, shuddering breath. “I owe you two now.”
“We should be safe to float down,” Yoshi said. “You ready?”
“I’ve never been more ready to hit the ground,” Anna said. “Softly.”
Yoshi released his grip on the branch and they slowly floated down. Once they’d set down, he turned off the device and unhooked the bungee cord.
Anna looked around nervously. “Have you seen the triple D?”
“More than one, actually, while I was jumping,” Yoshi said. “Looked like a whole family. They were going the opposite way. Here’s the thing. They weren’t interested in me.”
“You don’t taste good, huh?” Anna said, dusting off her pants. She pressed a hand to her shoulder. Her fingers came away bloody.
Yoshi turned her around to examine it. “Your shirt is in bad shape, but the cuts are superficial. You’ll be okay. But we should get some of Dana’s magic cream on it.”
They heard the sound of something moving, and Yoshi pulled her closer to the tree. They watched as a triple D moved through the forest, followed by another. And another. Anna stuffed her fist in her mouth. They were terrifying creatures, tall and feathered, with long beaks like twin razors.
“It’s okay,” Yoshi whispered. “They know we’re here. They’re ignoring us. Maybe they’re not hungry. Or we’re not a threat.”
Anna let out a breath. “I know what this is. They’re migrating.”
“Lucky for us,” Yoshi said. “But why?”
“I don’t know. I saw pretty far when I was up there,” Anna said. “And the forest seems to stretch for miles.” She described the distortions she’d seen in the forest around the compound. “The air was wavering,” she said. “Almost like … cracks.”
“Omoshiroi. And we’re going to have to walk right through that area to get back.”
Anna looked sideways at Yoshi. “So, you are going back to the compound?”
“Of course,” he said. He felt his mouth tighten in just the way his father’s did when he was angry. Why didn’t Anna know he would return? Sure, he had wondered if he could get to the building and save the day with just himself and his sword, but he would never abandon them. “We have to dress your wound, don’t we?”
Anna pointed to some rusty moss on a trunk, and they turned that way. “But you wanted to leave,” Anna said.
“I thought about it.” Yoshi pushed aside a branch and they slithered through. “I thought I could go faster on my own. I’m tired of being told what to do.”
“We can’t make it without you, Yoshi,” Anna said. “You’re the bravest out of all of us. Your courage makes us braver.”
“That’s not true,” Yoshi said, but he felt better just hearing it.
They walked in silence for at least a mile. Then Yoshi suddenly stopped. Ahead was a field of short, spiky grass. It was littered with metal bodies.
Worker robots, worn and rusted and missing parts. Some looked as though they’d been blasted apart, their seams melted.
Yoshi and Anna stopped, surveying the creepy scene.
“The robots … it’s like a junkyard,” Yoshi said.
“No. It’s a battlefield,” Anna said in a hushed voice.
Anna was always the first person to say how robots don’t think; they’re programmed. They don’t have feelings. But this expanse of broken metal made even her look distressed.
Yoshi walked a few feet ahead, kicking through the metal. It had made him feel sad to see the robots like that. It’s not like he was fond of them or anything. But there had been a busy diligence about them. They weren’t out to harm anything. They got in the way, and they ganged up if you got between them and a task, but they were programmed to work, not kill. So in a way, they were peaceful. Which was more than he could say for the rest of the creatures in this crazy place.
“It’s lik
e they were all lured here and massacred,” Anna said. “I mean, I can hear Molly in my head saying, Where’s your evidence for that? But still. It just feels that way.”
“I’ll tell you what the evidence is,” Yoshi said. “The robots are melted. There was some kind of intense heat here. Something big happened.”
“Another mystery.” Anna shivered. “It feels late. We should get back.”
They kept on walking. The stream was near, more of a trickle than the section where they had dived underneath. They crossed it quickly and the ground sloped sharply upward. As they crested the rise they saw that they were behind the grove of upside-down trees.
“Yoshi? Come and see this.”
Anna was standing by a tree at the very edge of the grove. The tree had fallen and broken in half. She brushed away dirt from the trunk.
She traced the lines in the wood. “They have concentric rings, just like regular trunks.”
“Marking time,” Yoshi said.
“Kind of,” Anna said. “Dendrochronology is the measurement of time by counting tree rings. Growth changes seasonally, so one ring indicates one year. Except look at how these lines wobble, stop and start. That’s because of the time warping. But see here?” She placed a finger on a small notch in the wood. “This is a knife mark,” she said. “Someone was trying to count the rings. And here … see the little flourish at the end? Like the tail on a quarter note?”
“I guess,” Yoshi said.
“Just like the notations in the book I saw, the ones Hank made about the tuber crop yields.”
“We know Hank has been here before. This was where Cal got bit by the triple D,” Yoshi said.
“But why was he keeping track of time here? Or trying to. He never mentioned it.” Anna’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Look at the marks. He knew that large chunks of time had passed.”
“But how can you know about a time warp if you’re in it?” Yoshi asked.
“You can’t.” Anna thumped the trunk. “Unless you’re the one doing it.”
Molly sat on the floor of Cal’s hut. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there. The twilight today seemed to last forever, the sky hanging low with mist. She’d been quiet for a long time. She hoped her presence—and her silence—would get Cal used to her.
He, too, sat, his fingers drumming something on his leg. “Sounds, words, sounds, words.”
“What?” Molly asked.
“Sounds.”
She heard birdsong and leaves rustling. The usual noises of the woods. “I’m a city girl,” she said. “I miss the sound of traffic. The hum and the whoosh.”
“Hum. Hands on the ground.”
She put her hands on the hard-packed dirt. Whatever she was supposed to hear or feel, she couldn’t get it. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Cal didn’t answer. He hummed instead, a tuneless noise that reminded her of Hank playing the oboe without a reed.
Suddenly, he leaned in closer to her and cocked his head. “Breakdown is coming.”
Molly leaned forward. This was it, this was what she wanted to know. “What did your breakdown feel like?” she whispered. Did it feel like what she was feeling? That something was taking her over? “It happened suddenly, right? Did you have some kind of warning?”
“Intruder takeover!” he suddenly shouted.
Molly slumped backward. If Cal didn’t make sense, it didn’t make sense for her to go to him for answers. She couldn’t help trying, though.
He pushed the watch across the ground toward her. She picked it up and examined the cracked face. “It’s broken. I know.”
“Can’t stop time,” he said.
“Is that a joke? Why did you break it?”
“Stuck like glue.”
“You can’t glue it back together, dude,” Molly said. “You broke it.”
The door opened, and Yoshi and Anna tumbled in.
Molly scrambled to her feet. “Yoshi, where have you been? We’ve been freaking out.”
“You thought I left for good,” Yoshi said.
“I knew you wouldn’t abandon us,” Molly said. “But a few more minutes and I was on my way out to find you.” A few minutes? She frowned, trying to think. How long had it been since Kira announced that Yoshi had left?
“We’ve been gone for hours, Molly!” Anna cried. “Maybe even longer than that.”
“You left, too?” Molly asked. “But you were with us just a moment … Wait, what do you mean hours?”
Cal started to drum both hands on the ground. “Manipulation transition!”
“Let’s go,” Molly murmured. “I don’t want to upset him.”
As soon as they were outside, she turned to them. “What happened?”
“Oh, just a little thing,” Anna said. “Like me being gripped in the talons of a giant bird and flying over the forest toward certain death.”
“What? Are you hurt?”
“She’s okay, but she needs some of that antiseptic gel,” Yoshi said. He snuck a glance at the compound, where the others were building a fire. “But, Molly, first we have to talk. We found something. Something you need to know. Somebody’s been keeping track of time. Counting years, or trying to, anyway.”
Quickly, Anna described the field, the robots, and the calendar someone had kept on the tree rings. She described the end flourish on the mark. “It looks just like the marks Hank made in the tuber book.”
The implications clicked through Molly’s mind. “That means he knows that the Cubs are caught in a time warp. Which means that—”
“We could be in one right now,” Anna said. “And it might not be by accident. We don’t know everything our devices are capable of. If they can warp gravity, maybe they can do the same for time.”
“He doesn’t want us to leave,” Yoshi said. “We could be his prisoners and not even know it.”
Molly dug something from her pack. It was the smartphone they’d salvaged from the luggage in the desert. “I’ve been saving this. It has a little battery life on it.” She looked at both of them. “I have to know.”
They nodded. Molly switched it on. As soon as she saw the date she powered it down again.
“How long do you think we’ve been here?” she asked them.
“Only a night,” Anna said. “Or was it two?”
“One,” Yoshi said. “I think.”
“According to the phone’s internal calendar, we’ve been here almost two days,” Molly said.
“How trustworthy is that, even?” Yoshi asked. “Could the phone be fooled, too?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “Which is why I’m going to activate the GPS receiver, so the phone can sync to whatever date or time it truly is.”
Yoshi opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. “You—what? I thought we couldn’t get any GPS signals!”
Molly sighed. “We couldn’t, but I’ve got an idea. I think we should try the gravity device’s tech-boosting setting.”
Anna looked at her doubtfully. “That setting has a habit of blowing things up.”
“We’ll just use it for a second,” Molly said. “Enough time for the phone to get a ping. It’s a gamble. The boost may not even work that way. Or it could destroy the phone outright. But I think the risk is worth it.”
Anna and Yoshi frowned at each other for a long moment, then Yoshi nodded and held out the ring.
“Let’s be fast,” he grumbled. “Get ready for bright.” He twisted the ring around to the symbol they’d learned meant tech, and pressed the more glyph.
Suddenly the phone burst to life, the screen beaming like a flashlight. Molly felt it grow warm in her hand, then almost scorching hot.
“Quick! Turn it off!” she said, nearly dropping the phone.
“Going dark.” Yoshi deactivated the ring.
For a moment, all Molly could do was lob the phone from hand to hand, like a one-person game of Hot Potato. “I probably shouldn’t have been holding this when we tried that, huh?”
Then, when it
had finally cooled, she turned the screen on again.
“Two weeks … ” Molly rasped. “We’ve been here for two whole weeks.”
Yoshi scowled and Anna covered her mouth in shock.
“We’re leaving,” Yoshi said. “All of us.”
“But what about the others? What should we do?” Anna asked.
“We have to tell the Cubs,” Molly answered. “Hank has to be stopped. He’s messing with all of them.”
Yoshi nodded. “I agree.”
“But before I do, we have to try to convince them to come with us.”
“I don’t think they will,” Anna said. “But even if we tell them, why would they believe us?”
Molly held up the smartphone. “I still have a tiny bit of charge yet.”
“They may not trust our calendar,” Anna said.
“The phone itself, though,” Molly told them. “It’s enough to prove we’re from the future.”
They joined the group around the fire. Slide-whistle birds roasted on a crude grill. Stu and Drew and Dana were on meal duty, turning tubers with sharp sticks. Kimberly had gathered plates and forks, Javi trailing behind her to help set the places, and Crash was spooning red berry jam into a bowl. Everyone had a job, everyone knew what to think and where to go. It was why the Cubs had done so well here. And she was about to throw a bomb in their midst.
Molly walked to the front of the semicircle. Everyone paused from their tasks and looked up. Hank appeared uneasy. He took a step forward, as if to try and stop her, but he halted, waiting.
“First, we all want to thank you for welcoming us and helping us,” Molly said. “Second, we want to tell you that we’re leaving tomorrow morning at first light.”
“But we agreed,” Hank said. “One more day.”
“We’re going to take our chances. Anna and Yoshi made it beyond the stream today, and they think the triple Ds—or the big beaks—are migrating out of the forest. We’re going to make it to the ridge, no matter what. We’re going to make it to the end of the valley, and we’re going to find answers there. We want you all to come with us. There’s strength in numbers, and we could use all your skills.”