by Meg Ripley
When they finally made it back to the lobby, Hava crossed over to the metal bars that surrounded the original torch and gazed up at the impressive piece. It seemed larger than life, and yet smaller than it should be at the same time. She leaned forward on the bars and heard Josh make a scolding sound behind her.
"Miss, please step away from the bars," he said in his most professional tour guide voice.
"I’m not supposed to touch the bars?" Hava asked, leaning on them further.
"No."
"So, you wouldn't like it if I did this?"
Hava rested her stomach on the upper bar and pulled herself up so that she was balanced nearly horizontally across the metal.
"Stop it. Get down."
"You probably really wouldn't like it if I did this."
She leaned forward, causing her body to flip upside down so that she dangled on the opposite side of the bars and stared at the boys through the bars.
"Hava, you’re a grown woman, get ahold of yourself!"
Hava laughed and tried to right herself.
"See? You didn't think that through, did you? This is why twenty-something year old women do not dangle from bars like they are on the freaking playground."
Josh reached for her shirt to help right her, but the movement made her lose her balance even more and she slipped, tumbling to the floor on the opposite side of the bars.
"You can't be in there," Josh said, his voice reduced to a hiss, "That's why those bars are there."
Hava pulled herself up to her knees and started to stand.
"I know why the bars are there, Josh. And I'm perfectly fine, thank you for your concern."
She was nearly on her feet when something on the bottom of the torch caught her eye. She took a step toward it.
"No, Hava. That's the wrong direction. Come this way. This way is the way out of the forbidden area so that you don't get me fired."
"Hold on," she said, taking another step closer to the torch and crouching down to look at the bottom. "The torch is made of copper and glass, right?"
"Yes."
"And it contained electrical arcs for a while so that they could use the statue as a lighthouse?"
"Yes. Thank you for the trivia, we'll be sure to whip it out next time we are embroiled in a heated game of 'Jeopardy'. Please get out of there now."
"Would there be any reason for one of the glass panels to be open like a door?"
That question seemed to strike Josh as strange because he stopped gesturing for her to get out of the torch enclosure and stepped up a little closer to the metal bars.
"Open like a door?" he asked.
"Yeah. Open a little bit like it's on hinges. That's not how they would have maintained the electrical arcs is it?"
"I don't think so."
Hava eased forward until she was standing beneath the curve of the torch and narrowed her eyes to look more closely at the glass panels still several feet above her head. One looked like it was hanging open just slightly. Not thinking beyond the next moment, she grabbed onto the patina-covered metal base of the torch and pulled herself up so that she could climb closer to the glass and copper flame.
"Oh my god. You are going to fall and kill yourself and I'm going to have to explain it to your mother. Or worse, we're going to get caught and I'm going to have to explain it all to both of our mothers."
Hava ignored Josh and continued to climb until she was close to the glass panels. Her heart was pounding. She knew that what she was doing was not only highly illegal, but also dangerous. As she did it, though, she didn't care. She felt drawn to the torch in an intense, almost irresistible way and she needed to know why that panel seemed loose.
As she drew closer to the out-of-place looking panel she realized that it was not just one of the copper-outlined glass panels that appeared open, but two that were open in opposite directions like cabinet doors. Hava carefully balanced herself on the metal bar where she stood and reached up to touch the panels. One opened further at the touch of her fingers and she found herself staring up into the torch.
****
Liberty.
"What's going on?" Jake called up to her, but Hava was too focused on the glass doors in the torch to acknowledge him.
She reached up with her other hand and grasped the other loose panel so that she could both balance herself and open the doors. For a moment, she lost her balance and she heard Josh gasp, but she was able to right herself and turn her attention back to the inside of the torch. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears and her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to tremble in the base of her throat.
The original electrical arcs placed inside the torch more than a century before were no longer there. Instead, she saw what looked like a ball of light emanating from the center. When she held her hand in front of it, however, there was no reflection of the light off of her skin and it did not seem to be pouring out of the torch as she would expect it would.
"Do you guys see any light coming out of the torch?" she asked, not looking back at them.
"No. That thing hasn't lit up in about 100 years."
"That's what I thought, too."
Hava adjusted her hands so that she grabbed the bottom edge of the torch and jumped, pulling herself up into the torch despite the shouts from Jake and Josh below. As soon as she straightened inside the torch she saw that what she saw as a ball of light seemed more like a faintly glowing orange disc that appeared to sink down in the middle like a whirlpool. She heard Josh and Jake scrambling up the sides of the metal base of the torch, but she was so enraptured by the disc that she didn't even turn to watch them drag themselves into the space with her.
"What the hell is that?" Josh asked when they had gotten inside.
Hava looked up at him.
"You don't know?"
"No. I didn't even know you could climb through the glass and get in here."
"I don't think anybody does," Jake said, flattening his hand on one of the glass panels and pulling it away to reveal a layer of dust, "It doesn't seem like anyone has been in here for a very long time."
"What do you think it could be?" Hava asked.
Without waiting for an answer, she reached forward. She intended to place her fingertips on the edge of the disc, but instead felt like someone had grabbed her wrist and was pulling her harshly into the whirlpool center of the glow.
Hava tried to resist the yanking feeling, reaching back to try to grasp anything that would allow her to stay in place. Her fingers brushed against Josh's hand and she heard his voice call her name, but it sounded like it was coming to her through water. Cold air rushed past her and a vibrant swirl of colors went past her eyes so quickly she couldn't see anything else.
She no longer felt the floor beneath her feet and suddenly it seemed like there were walls closing in on either side of her. In a matter of seconds, she felt herself hit the ground hard, pain shooting up through her knees as she made contact with a metal floor. She gasped for breath and tried to stand, but something hit her in the back, sending her forward so she sprawled on her belly across the floor with her face only inches from what looked like a pair of heavily studded black boots.
She heard a groan that sounded like Josh and she pushed back, forcing the weight on her back off her so that she could roll over. Josh and Jake lay on the floor, crumpled as if they hit the ground with the same hard intensity that she had and were trying to recover from the shock.
"Who are you?" a deep, growling voice demanded.
Hava turned her eyes sharply back to the studded boots and then let them travel up along tight black pants, a studded belt, and a chiseled, smooth body that made her bite down on her bottom lip despite the fear and confusion rolling through her.
"Who are you? Where did you come from?" the voice demanded again, louder and more aggressive this time.
The force behind the words had what she suspected was the opposite effect of what the speaker had intended, filling her with anger instead of fear. S
he climbed to her feet, ignoring the pain in her legs and hands, and lifted her face to confront the man. As she did, the breath caught in her throat and she took an involuntary step back.
Standing still and strong, the man appeared to be nearly a foot taller than Hava and carved out of marble. His body rippled with muscle and his stance told her that he was not frightened by their sudden appearance. What had startled her, though, was his face.
A black mask concealed his face, covering from the top of his head down to his neck with what looked like smooth, dark leather. The mask only closed over the front of his face and connected at the back of his head with a series of strings tied together. Hava could see a thick, dark ponytail running along the back of his neck and settled into the curve of his neck and shoulder.
"You aren't supposed to be here," the man snarled, "We are supposed to receive a transmission from 1776. How did you get here?"
His words swirled around her in a confusing cloud. She tried to sift through them, but she wasn't understanding what he was saying to her.
"What do you mean a transmission?" she asked.
"How did you get here?" he demanded again, his voice becoming angrier and more frantic each time he spoke.
"We climbed into the torch of the Statue of Liberty."
She felt dumb with the words coming out of her mouth, but it was the only explanation she could give him.
"That portal is not supposed to be open yet. How did you get through it?"
"Portal? I don't know what you're talking about. We didn't mean to go through anything."
"You have to go back."
Hava turned and saw her friends staring at the wall. Josh flattened his hand against it, but it didn't move.
"The wall is solid, Hava."
She turned back to the man and pointed behind her at the wall. The fear that she had forced away with her anger was creeping back and the look of the mask on the man's face was causing it to ripple down her neck and coil in the center of her chest.
"There's no door. How are we supposed to get back?"
The man suddenly took a long stride forward and Hava moved out of his way. He touched his hand to the wall in several places and then balled his fists and slammed them into the surface, letting out an angry sound as he did.
"The portal sealed itself. It's like it doesn't exist."
"How is that possible? We just came through it. It has to exist."
"That's not necessarily the case. That portal was not meant to open for another fifty years, which means that it didn't exist when you came through it and it seems to have ceased to exist again. The question is, though, whether it is just the portal that doesn't exist, or its vessel."
****
"How would the statue of liberty not exist anymore?" she asked, feeling like her mind was swelling, "We were just there. Just seconds ago, we were standing in it. How can it suddenly not be there?"
"I need to know who you are," the man replied, ignoring her question.
His voice was slightly muffled by the mask in front of his mouth, but she could still hear the edge in it.
"Why do you need to know?"
"The portals are only meant to provide authorized transmissions. You are not an authorized transmission that I know of and you came through a portal without a predetermined transmission set for the next fifty years. I need to know now who you are and why you are here."
"I don't have any idea why we're here," she told him, "I told you, we were in the original torch of the Statue of Liberty and then we were here."
"I'm Josh," Josh said, startling Hava with his forwardness as he stepped toward the masked man and extended his hand toward him, "I'm a tour guide at the Statue."
The man looked at Josh's hand, but didn't take it. He looked over at Jake.
"Who are you?"
Jake extended his hand toward the man as Josh had.
"I'm Jake. I live on a farm."
He winced and stepped back so that he was partially hidden behind Hava.
"And you?" the masked man demanded, turning his attention to Hava.
"I'm Hava. I'm a history student." The man started to turn away and Hava raised her voice slightly, "Who are you?"
He paused and slowly returned his gaze to her.
"Makhahr."
"Where are we?"
Makhahr crossed the room and pulled what looked like a lever on the far wall.
"It doesn't matter where we are," he said, and Hava noticed that that wall behind them had started to glow and sparkle, "Because you are going back."
Hava felt the same sensation of someone grabbing her and pulling her that she did when she was standing in the torch near the orange disc and an instant later she, Josh, and Jake landed in a tangled heap onto a hard-packed wood floor.
She slowly rose to her feet, stood carefully and looked around. A fire in a fireplace on the opposite side of the space filled the room with light and she could smell damp earth, a sharp, nauseating chemical, and something strangely sweet. The adrenaline of the fear rolling through her sharpened her senses and she detected a sawing sound from behind her.
Taking a steeling breath, Hava turned around. A table was several feet away and a heavyset man stood with his back to them, hunched over something laid out on the wood surface. A lantern positioned in the corner of the table cast extra illumination on the area, making the man's shadow stand in stark contrast across the floor.
He seemed to be concentrating on whatever was on the table and hadn't noticed their presence. Hava stepped forward cautiously.
"Excuse me?"
The man didn't move and Josh stepped up beside Hava.
"Sir?"
He still didn't move, but before Hava could call out to him again, she heard Jake.
"Where the hell are we?" he shouted as if everything that was building inside of him from the moment they climbed up into the torch suddenly broke.
At that, the man whirled around and Hava's hand flew to cover her mouth. She was staring at Benjamin Franklin.
The four of them stood in stark silence for a few seconds before Benjamin closed the space between them with speed and intensity that startled Hava so much she stumbled backwards into Jake. He caught her by her arms and held them, keeping her against him as if trying to both protect her and feel protected by her.
"Who are you? When are you from? How did you get here?"
The questions came out so fast that it took Hava a moment to process them.
"We are just people who were in the Statue of Liberty. We don't know how we got here or why," she said.
"Statue of Liberty," Benjamin muttered to himself, looking down as if the words sounded familiar but he couldn't quite place them. Suddenly he looked up at them and Hava saw a blend of fascination and panic glittering in his eyes, "You are not an authorized transmission."
It was the same term that the masked man had used.
"What do you mean?" Hava asked.
"You should not be here. You must be an emergency transmission. There is a reason that you are here."
"What reason? How could there possibly be a reason for us being here when we don’t even know where we are or how we got there?"
"I need to show you something," Benjamin said.
He gestured for them to follow him and guided them toward the table. Hava gasped when she saw a body lying on the table, its face covered with a cloth but its chest cavity open. She felt nausea roll through her and she turned away. As she turned her back to the body, she felt Jake push past her toward the table.
"Where is his heart?" he asked.
"Are you a doctor?" Benjamin asked.
"I'm in medical school."
"I have eight more bodies just like this buried beneath this floor. You have just noticed why."
"Did you kill them?" Hava asked in a hushed voice.
"Of course, not," Benjamin snapped, "This is how they leave them."
"Who is 'they'?"
Benjamin met her eyes sharply.
&nb
sp; "We need to go back. They need us."
****
"You told us that the problems with the portals in China had been resolved."
Hava looked down the long table at Thomas Jefferson who was glaring at the masked man sitting at the other end with fire in his eyes. Her mind was reeling. She felt like she was standing still and that everything was happening around her so fast she couldn't get control of it.
"We thought they had."
"If you are going to sit with us and have a civilized conversation, the least you could do is remove your war mask."
"War is coming."
"It's not here now."
There was a moment of tense silence and then Makhahr lifted his hands and released the ties on the back of the mask. He eased it away from his face and Hava was stunned at how incredibly beautiful he was. His eyes met hers and she saw something in them that told her he was not human.
"The portals in China were destroyed, but the warriors who were still weaponized have gone rogue. They plan to use the knowledge of the universe and all of history to destroy Earth and all of its inhabitants so that they can claim the planet and rebuild it."
Hava noticed that even as he spoke to the other men at the table, among them Sam Adams and George Washington, he didn't turn his eyes away from her.
"How is this happening?" she asked, "How are any of you here?"
"Our kind and yours have cooperated for centuries," an older man sitting near Benjamin said, "We mastered technology long ago that allows us to break through the barriers of time. This has enabled us to help structure the world as it should be. Now these rogue warriors seek to destroy that by changing the patterns of time so that key moments do not happen. If they succeed, it will set off a ripple effect that will destroy all of history as you know it."