by Fae York
Emelia remembered the flowerpot crashing into the John Doe from her apartment complex. Then she remembered the falling ornaments narrowly missing Aleph the night they met. The dots began to connect.
“So that’s what’s happening to the Does,” Emelia said, her eyes wide with awe. “They’re dying because they’ve overstayed their time here.”
“Wait, who is dying?” Now it was Vane’s turn to be confused.
“The Does,” she answered. “I work at the FBI and for the last few weeks we have had more than twenty unidentified men and women roll into the autopsy room on stretchers. Up until now, the only connecting thread has been their matching tattoos and lack of documentation. If what you’re saying is true, Time is what has been killing them. Right now, it just seems like they’ve all died from unfortunate accidents.”
Vane shook his head. “Staying in the past too long is far from an accident, it’s just plain reckless. Speaking of which.” He glanced at a clock on the wall, then back at Emelia. “I have to go.”
“Go?”
“Yeah. I’m almost out of time,” he said. “But, you need to stay here. This is a safe house. The cupboards are stocked and no one will find you here. I saw you grab your phone, don’t use it. For anything. The people who are after you have technology that will track you much faster than any modern police force. Trust me, there isn’t much that anyone from your time could do for you at this point, anyway. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t go out tonight.”
“Can I go to work tomorrow?” Emelia asked, just to see what he would say. Work was the last thing on her mind. She wanted to talk to Aleph, to apologize, and hopefully make more sense of everything that was going on around her.
“Absolutely not. I’ll explain in the morning,” he said.
Emelia nodded and Vane rose from the coffee table. He picked up his mask, crossed the room, and tossed her a pillow and a blanket. Then, without warning, he disappeared.
14 Lightning
The clock on the wall chimed and Emelia let out a frustrated sigh. Eight o’clock and Vane was nowhere to be seen. She had followed his orders, staying put in the safehouse and spending the night on the lumpy couch—though she hadn’t slept much. Try as Emelia might, she couldn’t get her brain to turn off, couldn’t come to terms with everything that had happened to her in the last few days. She still had so many questions, no idea what was going on, or who to believe. For the last two hours she had been staring at the clock, waiting for Vane to come back and take her . . . wherever he was supposed to take her. Emelia was done waiting.
She folded the blanket in her lap and set it down on the coffee table along with the pillow. Vane was right, there wasn’t anyone from her time who could give her answers. However, if everything he said was true, Emelia still knew someone who could help her. Vane didn’t know about Aleph, and she intended to keep it that way. Though he had saved her life, there was something about him that made her wary. Emelia wasn’t planning on trusting either one of them completely, not yet, not until she figured some of this out on her own first.
Disregarding Vane’s counsel, Emelia made a phone call as soon as she stepped out onto the street, although it wasn’t to the police.
“Hello?” the voice on the other line sounded as confused as she felt.
“Aleph?” she cleared her throat. “Can we talk?”
Silence.
“Please?” Emelia added.
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll be to your apartment as soon as I can.”
Luckily, Aleph didn’t live too far away from the safehouse. One fifteen-minute bus ride later, she was standing at the portal for his apartment complex, anxiously waiting for him to come down. Emelia could hear footsteps above her on the stairs.
“Hey,” he said, rounding the corner.
“Hey.”
He didn’t look so good. Then again, she probably didn’t look all that put-together either.
“We need to talk.”
“I know.” He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “You said that on the phone.”
“Right. Yes.” Her head was pounding. “Let’s go for a walk.”
The sidewalk took them past President’s Park. Emelia studied him for a few moments as they walked, then quietly asked, “Aleph, how is this happening? How can you be from where . . .” she shook her head, “when you say you are?”
“Emelia, you made it very clear that you don’t want to hear anything that I have to tell you.”
“Now, I do.” She pulled her ponytail tighter and tried not to let her frustration show. “I’m sorry about earlier. Please, just talk to me.”
“What changed?” His tone was skeptical. The sound of Meredith Jane’s screams on the phone and the attack flashed in Emelia’s brain. She swallowed hard.
“I don’t really want to talk about it right now, but I will. I promise. First, I just need some answers. You told me before I stormed out that you wanted to explain, so this is me letting you try.”
They stopped at the crosswalk and she took a deep breath. “Tell me about the tattoos.”
He hesitated for a moment, then spoke, “It’s a sort of . . . marking system that we have in the future. The machines that we use to move from one time to another mark us every time that we travel. The width and length of each line indicates where we were and for how long.” He tugged at his shirt collar, pointing out the distinctions in his own tattoo.
“Who is tracking you?”
“The government. Theoretically they are supposed to monitor time travelers for our own safety and track our actions for the safety of everyone.” He rolled his eyes.
“Theoretically?” she asked.
“Let’s just say that our ‘utopian society’ has become far from a utopia—and we have the U.S. government to thank for that.”
Emelia tried not to bristle.
“Our government is good,” she said. “Flawed, yes . . . but good.”
“I don’t argue with that, but the government that exists now and the government that will exist in one hundred years are not one in the same.”
Emelia thought about that for a moment, unconsciously chewing the inside of her cheek. “If you think the government is corrupt, why work for them?”
“That, my dear,” he said, glancing at his watch, “is a story for another time.”
“Okay. So next question. What are you doing here?” She tried to meet Aleph’s eyes, but he was staring intently at the sidewalk.
“I am here to find you, Emelia,” was his only response.
“But why?”
Vane had said that she was important, that Emelia was somehow connected to a powerful woman of the future, but he had been so vague about everything. She needed to know more. Aleph sighed and stopped walking.
“Because you asked me to,” he answered, finally meeting her eyes.
Emelia cocked her head and waited for him to elaborate.
“It’s a long story, but I’ll summarize.” He took her hand and pulled her over to a park bench where they sat down. “When I am from, time travel has existed for a while now. That said, it still has its kinks. We can move pretty freely backward in time, but for whatever reason, no one has been able to travel forward in time—or rather, no one had traveled forward in time until you.”
“Me? What are you—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhhh. Let me finish.” Emelia nodded and he dropped his hand. “Somehow, in the year 2118, you showed up in government headquarters. You don’t remember because it hasn’t happened for you yet. But it will, soon. That’s the whole reason why I am here. I came to stop you from travelling to the future in the way that you did the first time and take you with me instead.”
Emelia pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Why would you want to do that?” she asked.
“Well, first and foremost I am here because you, er . . . future you, asked me to be here. In 2131 you are not only my wife, but also my captain. This
mission was a direct order. Secondly, the moment that you stepped into my time; life became dangerous for you. You had to assume a new identity to keep yourself safe. However, there are a few who have begun to connect the dots between you, Emelia Plater, and your future alias.” As strange as it was, Emelia found herself believing Aleph’s story.
“Who am I? In your time, I mean.”
“Well, let’s just say that you are the head of a very powerful group of individuals. You go by the name Artemis.”
The blood drained out of Emelia’s face.
“I am Artemis?”
Aleph put his hand over her mouth and shushed her a bit too dramatically.
“That is not something you want to be yelling at the top of your lungs, Emelia. Hardly anyone knows that you are Artemis, they just think there is some sort of connection.” He paused for a moment. “Wait . . . how do you know about Artemis? Where have you heard that name before?”
Emelia folded her arms and stared up at the cloudless blue sky. She would have to talk to him about everything eventually, now was as good of a time as any.
“After I left your apartment last night I was attacked,” Emelia stated flatly.
“You WHAT?”
Now it was Emelia’s turn to do the shushing. “I got home and the door was unlocked, but I didn’t think too much of it. I figured that I had forgotten before we left for the bar or something.” She shifted uncomfortably and put her hands under her thighs. “I was listening to my voicemails because Meredith Jane had called three or four times, which isn’t unlike her. Anyway, in the voicemails she told me how she had stopped by and knocked but I hadn’t answered. Meredith Jane could hear movement inside my apartment and she was really worried . . . the last voicemail ended with her screaming.” Emelia shivered, and it wasn’t because of the cold. “At that point I started to freak out, and I noticed that there were a few drops of blood in the hallway. I tried to make it to the door, but a man dressed in black came out of the bedroom and attacked me. He was screaming about this lady named Artemis, wanting to know where she was. I had no idea what was going on.”
“Emelia, I am so sorry . . . how did you get away?” he asked, draping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her in close.
“A man, another time traveler, appeared out of nowhere and shocked the first man with this sort of glowing glove thing,” she answered. “He took me to a safehouse and told me that a faction from the future is after me because they think Artemis is my descendant. He was in the middle of explaining about time travel and what the heck I have to do with all of it when his time ran out. At first I thought he might be crazy too, but then he just . . . vanished. That was when I realized that you had been telling the truth earlier.” She buried her face in his chest. “Aleph, I am so sorry for all those things that I said.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, running his fingers through her hair. “You had every reason for thinking that I was crazy. I had meant to tell you about all this earlier, but I didn’t know how. I’m the one who is sorry, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” He lifted her chin so that he could see her face. “Are you okay? Really?”
Up until that moment, Emelia had been holding it together pretty well. However, before she could nod and tell him that everything was fine, tears stung her eyes.
“I’m . . . overwhelmed,” was the answer that she gave. Emelia sat up and wiped the frustrated tears from her cheeks. “A lot has happened, and I don’t know what I am supposed to do now. Meredith–” her voice caught in her throat again. “That man killed Meredith Jane and she had no idea about any of this. Now . . . now she is gone. I’m worried about what those people will do to me, and to the people around me. Vane told me all these things and I—”
“Wait, you met Vane?” Aleph interrupted.
“Yeah. That was the name of the man who saved me, do you two know each other?”
“Yes. I know Vane,” he said, his voice darkening. “I’ll explain more later, but he is bad news. We need to get you out of here.”
Inky clouds were gathering above their heads and Emelia wondered where they had come from.
Aleph was looking at the clouds too and he seemed uneasy. “Let’s go. The sooner, the better. My time is almost up.”
Suddenly, the soft breeze became a howling wind that pulled at their hair and the hems of their clothes. Aleph stood, pushing his dark hair out of his face. It began to rain.
“Okay. I have to go now. I promise that as soon as we get to my time, I will fill you in on everything.” He extended his hand, his eyes pleading. “Emelia, come with me. Please.”
She hesitated and the storm began to pummel her with drops the size of silver dollars. Aleph didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead he took off running, trying to get as far away from her as he could before Time killed them both.
“Aleph, Wait!” Emelia yelled, hoping that he might slow down.
Aleph stopped and turned around, holding out his hand. The rain was coming down in sheets now, and Emelia couldn’t tell if the hand meant he was beckoning her or warning her to stay put. Either way, she pressed toward him. She was only twenty feet away when she realized that he didn’t want her to come any closer.
Through the storm, Emelia saw Aleph look at his watch and glance up at the sky. It was too loud for her to hear him now, but she could see now that he was shaking his head, gesturing for her to back away. Not a second later, a brilliant flash of lightning struck where Aleph had been standing . . . She slid to a stop, nearly falling on the slick cement. She half-expected to see Aleph’s charred body somewhere in the vicinity, but he was nowhere to be found. Stumbling, she found her way out of the rain and collapsed in a heap.
Aleph would come back for her. He had to. He would come back, and they would figure out this mess together.
15 A Surprise Visit
As the shock began to wear off, Emelia muttered curses between clenched teeth as she made her way on foot from President’s Park to her apartment. She was soaking wet and shivering violently; the thought of a hot shower was the only thing that kept her pressing forward. Vane had told her to stay at the safe house, but after everything that Aleph had told her Emelia wasn’t eager to trust him. She hoped that the Minutemen, or whoever was after her, wouldn’t expect her to go home after what happened. With Meredith Jane gone and Aleph in his own time, her options were limited.
Meredith Jane.
In the chaos of everything, Emelia had just assumed that the intruder had disposed of her. But what if he hadn’t? What if the body was still there, somewhere in her house? She tried to push the mental image of Meredith Jane’s empty eyes and battered figure from her mind. Emelia had seen enough bodies to know what to expect, seeing Meredith Jane would be more than she could handle right now.
Emelia pulled her cell phone from her pocket with a shaky hand and dialed 911.
“I-I think I need to report a murder,” she choked when the operator answered her call. She told the kind-voiced lady on the other end what had happened, minus the time traveling details. As far as the police would know, Emelia had arrived home late to find that her door was unlocked. She had listened to the voicemails from her aunt, seen the blood, and ran. Emelia had been too overwhelmed by the shock of it all to call until now.
The lady on the phone told her to stay where she was, and that soon a patrol car would come to pick her up. Fifteen minutes later, an officer with a bushy mustache drove her to the station and kept her company while a team was sent to her apartment to check things out. Emelia filled out a statement, after which the officer told her that it would only take a few hours for the others to perform an investigation and for a clean-up crew to come through. Sitting on a wooden bench, listening to the mustached officer go on and on about his job, Emelia eyes began to droop.
When Emelia opened her eyes again, it was because there was a hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her awake.
“Miss, we can take you home now.” The woman who had spoken had bright blue
eyes and wore a police uniform that was just slightly too big. She led Emelia to another patrol car and drove her home. Emelia wanted to be left alone so there wasn’t any idle chit chat.
When they arrived at Emelia’s complex, the policewoman asked if she would like to be escorted to her door. Emelia turned down the offer but thanked her for the ride and promised to call if she needed anything else.
The policewoman assured her that a police car would be in the area tonight, just in case. Emelia thanked her again, took a deep breath, and climbed up the stairs to the top floor.
The moment that Emelia opened her front door, she was met with a cold breeze and the overwhelming smell of cleaning supplies. The investigation team had left every window in the apartment open so that the space could air out, but it obviously wasn’t working. Emelia walked in and out of each room, shutting windows and double checking that they were locked. If she was paranoid about locks before the attack, Emelia was bound to be obsessive now. You never could be too sure.
She closed the last window in her bathroom then ditched her clothing, all of which was still damp from the storm. After a not-long-enough hot shower, Emelia changed into some comfortable clothes and climbed into bed. Though it was two o’clock in the afternoon, she wouldn’t be going anywhere today.
☐ ☐ ☐
Emelia awoke in the afternoon of the next day exhausted and hungry.
I should eat, she thought, making her way to the kitchen.
Emelia stood in front of the fridge for several minutes, trying to find something appetizing, before finally giving up. Though her stomach was growling, the thought of food made her want to vomit as the smell of detergent still laced the air. Maybe in a couple hours she would try again.
Emelia curled up on her couch with a copy of the police report they had left for her to review. The authorities, apparently, felt obligated to keep her updated on the investigation. Though she wasn’t interested in the details, Emelia did want to know if they had any leads. She was sure that a murderous time traveling faction was not on their radar.