Stolen Time Read online

Chandra pulled the soldier’s shirt loose with a final grunt and handed it up to Dorothy.

  “Not if you look like you belong. In the movies, it works best if you walk really confidently and don’t stop to talk to anyone.” Chandra shrugged, fingers fumbling with the metal prongs of the soldier’s belt buckle. “And sometimes you have to make out with a guy against a wall so nobody sees your faces, but I don’t think that’s applicable in this situation.”

  Dorothy frowned. The soldier’s shirt smelled rather strongly of body odor.

  Chandra finally got the buckle undone, but couldn’t seem to pull the belt loose. Willis was watching her with tightly clenched lips, one finger steadily tapping his chin.

  “This is a highly problematic course of action,” he said, after a moment. “And it has only a small probability of success—”

  “What’s your big plan, then?” Chandra asked. (Groan. Tug.) “Because you just said the only way to get to the east wing is by crossing the gateroom. And the only way to cross the gateroom is—”

  “For me to put on this gentleman’s trousers,” Dorothy finished.

  “Well. Yeah.”

  Willis watched Chandra struggle with the pants one-handed for another moment before lowering himself to the floor beside her and taking over the job.

  Dorothy felt a sudden pang, watching him. There was something resigned about the way he removed the soldier’s trousers; he didn’t approve, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to help. It was sort of touching, in a strange way. Nobody had ever done anything like that for her before.

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to go with you. No one’s going to buy that we’re prisoners.” Willis looked up at Dorothy, offering her the soldier’s pants. “You’ll have to cross the gateroom alone.”

  Dorothy frowned. “What about you? You can’t just wait here for the sheriff’s department to arrive.”

  “I think Chandra and I will have to make our way back to the Second Star. If I can get it in the air, we can find a closer spot to land and rendezvous with you, Ash, and Zora once they’ve found the Professor. I believe there’s a helipad just above the east wing that should do the trick.”

  Dorothy swallowed. Nothing about this plan felt particularly smart. They were asking her to risk her life to save this Professor person, who she didn’t even know. And why? Because she fit into a soldier’s trousers.

  Loretta would never agree to this, not unless she was getting something in return. She imagined her mother sitting stoically at the bar, waiting to see if Dorothy would make it away from her kidnapper, and felt herself stiffen. She knew exactly how much her mother was willing to risk for other people.

  Did she really want to be like that? Trusting no one? Always on her own?

  Dorothy looked over her shoulder, but it wasn’t until she saw the empty tunnel spiraling out behind her that she realized she’d been hoping to see Ash in the distance.

  She felt a strange, sudden rush of warmth, remembering how he’d raced into the darkness after Zora, refusing to let his friend go off on her own. Dorothy couldn’t quite pinpoint why she found the image so comforting. It had seemed very brave to her, but it was more than that: it was the opposite of how she’d felt so many years ago, watching Loretta press a single finger into the drop of brandy on the bar.

  I had to know you could take care of yourself.

  She shuddered at the memory of her mother’s words. Ash wouldn’t leave Zora to take care of herself. They were a team. They helped each other.

  Dorothy realized that she wanted that—to be part of a team. And if that meant walking across the gateroom alone because she was the only one who fit into the uniform . . .

  Well, she supposed that was a small price to pay.

  Resigned, she took the pants.

  Willis said, “I’ll turn my back so you can change.”

  You just have to walk across the gateroom without getting shot, Dorothy thought, pulling the soldier’s trousers over her hips. Small probability of success.

  By the time she finished lacing her boots, it felt as though someone was gripping her around the throat and squeezing the last bits of oxygen from her body.

  “How do I look?” she choked out.

  Chandra started chewing on her fingernail. Willis’s mustache drooped.

  “Walk fast,” he said. “And don’t make eye contact with anyone.”

  LOG ENTRY—FEBRUARY 6, 2075

  17:01 HOURS

  WEST COAST ACADEMY OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

  How do you determine who in history has the “best medical mind?”

  We’ve been going over and over this question for the last few weeks. Do you go with the most technically advanced? Biggest IQ? Most experience? Pure genius? I have absolutely no idea which criteria I should be using here.

  Last night, Natasha showed me the Compendium of Suśruta, which is this ancient Sanskrit text on medicine and surgery. It’s so old that she had to get special permission just to take it out of the library. It’s the foundation of the traditional Indian medical practice called Ayurveda. Apparently the ancient Indians were brilliant with medicine, way ahead of Hippocrates. They used plants to treat illness, and they were the first people on earth to perform surgery.

  Natasha made a good point. “We’re going to be traveling throughout all of history,” she said. “So we won’t have any way of knowing what medical equipment we’ll have access to, or what sort of conditions we’ll be facing. We need someone who can be prepared for everything. So wouldn’t it make sense to find someone trained in the most primitive forms of medicine and get them up-to-date on modern technology here?”

  Now the trick, of course, is finding someone capable of all that. Records from ancient India aren’t exactly robust. We’re working off of research that says things like, I kid you not, “We think he lived sometime between 1500 and 500 BCE.”

  That’s a period of a thousand years. Not helpful.

  Natasha found something interesting, though. There was a report of a girl attempting to study at the Taxila center of learning in 528 BCE. The Taxila was one of the first medical schools, but girls weren’t admitted, so she’d cut off all her hair and tried to pass for a boy. The university found out, unfortunately, and threw her out at the end of her first year. She would’ve been fifteen. We looked and looked, but the girl is never mentioned again.

  I have to admit, I have some reservations about this. It’s one thing to get a WWII pilot or a strongman from the circus. But this is our doctor.

  Natasha, on the other hand, won’t stop talking about this fifteen-year-old girl who tried to fool the most brilliant medical minds in all of India. I asked her to explain what she found so fascinating, and this is what she said:

  “This girl gave up everything when she tried to go to school. And all because she wanted to study medicine. Maybe she’ll give up everything for us, too.”

  She won me over with that.

  The girl’s name is Chandrakala Samhita, and it took us three trips back in time to find her. As I mentioned before, records are spotty, and we couldn’t figure out exactly when in 528 BCE she’d been expelled. Luckily, Taxila is a fascinating place to explore. We walked past Gandhara sculptures, endless reliefs of Lord Buddha, and stupas sitting atop green hillsides, all surrounded by lush trees and distant mountains. Over ten thousand students studied at Taxila, hailing from as far as China and Greece, and they flooded the primitive sidewalks, making it difficult for us to move around the campus. It was hotter than I expected, past ninety-five degrees though we arrived in mid-May, by the modern calendar. The air was heavy and wet.

  We finally found Chandrakala at a reflecting pool outside a Buddhist monastery. Natasha had to do the talking, as Chandrakala spoke no English. Luckily, Natasha speaks both Prakrit and Pali. It wasn’t long before she’d convinced the young girl to come with us.

  Unfortunately, the success of our final trip to Taxila was hampered, somewhat, by another vision. The vision has been occurring more freque
ntly (I catch glimpses of it whenever I enter the anil now), and it’s always the same:

  I see an entire city underwater, and then I’m hit with a feeling of deep, overwhelming sadness, like the sun has gone out.

  It chills me to think of it, even now.

  The scientific part of me wants to be logical about this. There’s been endless research on the predictive properties of memory. It’s possible that what I’m experiencing is a kind of “pre-memory,” that entering a crack in space-time has created neuropathies inside my brain where none should exist, allowing me brief glimpses into the future.

  It’s a fitting hypothesis.

  But I hope to God that I’m wrong.

  28

  Ash

  MARCH 17, 1980, FORT HUNTER COMPLEX

  He was here.

  Ash hadn’t realized how little hope he’d had left until this moment. But the Professor was really here. After almost a year of searching, Ash had found him.

  Images flashed through his mind: a boat rocking on black water, white hair dancing in the wind, white trees glowing against the darkness.

  He’d been counting down the months to that moment. And then the weeks, the days . . .

  Now, he felt the sand in his hourglass freeze. Finding the Professor meant there was still a chance that he might keep it from happening at all.

  Grinning, Ash moved in next to Zora, his eyes glued to the screen. The Professor appeared to be . . .

  Whistling. He was walking down the hallway of one of the most secure military fortresses in the history of time and whistling.

  Ash laughed, amazed.

  Then, the security image flickered. The Professor moved quickly across the screen, stopping in front of a door. He hesitated for a moment, and then opened the door and disappeared inside.

  It was a heavy metal security door, marked with a single word: RESTRICTED.

  Zora dropped her hand from the screen. “Where does that go?”

  “I don’t know,” Ash said. He searched the other security images, but there were too many other people crowded on the screens. He felt his heart sputter inside of his chest. No. The Professor was here. He was in this building.

  He’d just seen him.

  Zora pulled the gun farther up her shoulder. “You find Roman. I’m going after my father.”

  “Wait,” Ash said, but she was already pushing past him and racing down the hall, her boots thudding heavily against the concrete floors.

  He knew he should run after her, but he found himself turning back around, his eyes moving to the label beneath the screen where he’d just seen the Professor.

  Environmental Modification.

  Ash frowned. That was it? The mysterious east wing was devoted to environmental research? He raised a hand to the label and moved his finger over the words, as though that might help him understand.

  Why would the Professor travel a hundred years into the past to study the weather?

  As Ash contemplated this, another person stepped into the screen. He felt himself stiffen, expecting Roman. But it wasn’t Roman. It was a girl.

  She shifted toward the camera and Ash caught the sketchy, white curve of a foxtail painted over the front of her dark coat.

  Quinn Fox. Ash stared, uneasy. If Quinn was here that meant they’d really done it. The Black Cirkus had found a way to travel through time without exotic matter.

  Quinn lifted her hands, pushing away the hood covering her face.

  She was turned away from the camera and, at first, all he saw was her scar. It carved up half her face, a misshapen, gnarled thing that made it difficult to focus on the rest of her. Ash cringed at the sight of it. It wasn’t unusual to see bad scars and deformities in New Seattle—medical care wasn’t what it used to be. But now Ash understood why Quinn hid her face. Her hair came out of the hood next, tumbling around her shoulders in a tangled mess of curls.

  Ash’s heart stopped beating. Somewhere deep inside his body, his veins were leaking acid.

  He’d never seen Quinn’s hair before. It had always been hidden under her hood, and now he felt stupid for not putting two and two together.

  White. Quinn Fox’s hair was white.

  On the screen, a black-and-white Quinn Fox tugged long fingers through her hair, pulling the last few strands loose of her coat. She wasn’t looking at the camera anymore, so Ash stared at her hand, studying every detail he could make out on the grainy screen. Her short fingernails. The creases of her knuckles. A small black smudge that looked like a tattoo.

  He raised a hand to his cheek, premembering the brush of her fingers on his skin, seconds before she slid a blade between his ribs.

  She started walking again, heading deeper down the hallway before disappearing through the same door as the Professor.

  Ash jerked around, scanning the other black-and-white screens as he waited for her to reappear. But she’d disappeared into the throng of people.

  “Damn it to hell.” His fist connected with the desk more violently than he intended it to. The screens trembled, and the bound-and-gagged soldier made a frightened grunting noise, like an animal in a trap. Ash flinched. He’d honestly forgotten the soldier was there.

  “Sorry, man,” Ash muttered, eyes on the screens. His brain was still struggling to catch up with what he’d seen. The woman with the white hair was Quinn Fox.

  Quinn Fox, the cannibal of New Seattle. The girl whose lips always smelled of blood. The thought that he might kiss those lips made his stomach churn. It was impossible.

  But the vision couldn’t have been lying, not after all this time. Ash was going to fall in love with a monster, and then she was going to shove a dagger into his gut. She was going to watch him die.

  His heartbeat thrummed. He rolled his shoulders back, but the tension in his muscles wouldn’t release. He felt like lit matches and rags soaked in gasoline and engines running too hot for too long.

  This didn’t make any sense. Quinn was the worst type of monster. She was violent and soulless. Ash didn’t even think she was capable of love. Levi told him she’d killed a man with a spoon.

  He thought of her gravelly voice on the Black Cirkus’s nightly address.

  Join the Black Cirkus, and we’ll use time travel to build a better present, a better future.

  She stood for everything he was against.

  He would never—could never fall in love with her.

  But bigger than that was this: he finally knew who was going to kill him. He knew her name, her face. He knew where she was right now.

  Forget Roman—forget the Professor. Ash knew how to keep the prememory from happening.

  He just had to find Quinn and kill her before she could kill him.

  He calmly knelt on the cold concrete floor. He fished the pistol—a SIG Sauer P226—out of the holster at the bound soldier’s belt and checked the chamber. Six rounds left. Not bad. He hadn’t been trained on this gun, but it looked straightforward enough. All he had to do was point and shoot.

  The door marked RESTRICTED was down the same hallway that led to the east wing. Ash angled the tied-up soldier so that he could see the screen and pulled the napkins from his mouth. “I need you tell me how to get here,” he said, pointing.

  The soldier blinked. “The east wing?”

  “I need to get to that hallway without crossing the gateroom or walking past any cameras. You got any ideas? There’s got to be another entrance or something.”

  He rested his hand on the SIG Sauer, just in case the soldier needed incentive.

  “Th-there’s a stairway,” the soldier said, swallowing. His eyes never left the gun. “Just down the hall. Goes down to the east wing, but there will be a guard—”

  “That’ll do. Sorry to leave you like this.” Ash slipped the SIG Sauer into his jeans and pulled his jacket down over it. “But I gotta go see about a girl.”

  29

  Dorothy

  Dorothy stood at the edge of the gateroom, trying not to look as uncomfortable as she felt
in her stolen uniform. She could see the hall that led to the east wing on the other side of the room, maybe fifty yards away. Zora and Ash would be waiting for her there, and maybe this Professor person, too.

  The problem was the hundreds of puke-green uniform-clad soldiers that filled the space between.

  Dorothy watched them swarm, wary. Gun muzzles gleamed black in the overbright lights. Actual automobiles rumbled through the room; their engines sounded tinny echoing off the far walls and soaring ceilings. Almost like toys.

  She inhaled as deeply as she could manage without drawing attention to herself.

  You just have to walk across the gateroom without getting shot, she thought. Small probability of success.

  Briefly, she considered leaving. She could probably walk out the front entrance in this uniform. True, she didn’t have any money or friends in this new time period, but that had never stopped her before.

  But then she thought of Willis, kneeling to help Chandra even though he wasn’t entirely sure of her plan. She thought of Ash racing after Zora in the dark.

  “Team,” she muttered, her lips barely moving to release the word.

  Holding her breath, she stepped into the crowd.

  This was just another con, and, like all cons, it could fall to pieces with a single misstep or poorly chosen phrase. Right now she was just another soldier in the throng. But she could already feel how the men’s eyes lingered on her for a beat longer than they needed to. Their glances sent fear squirming down her spine. Beauty wasn’t always an asset. Surely it wouldn’t be long before they realized she didn’t belong here.

  Her legs itched to move faster—to run—but that would only draw more attention. She forced herself to move slowly. She was halfway across the room now, the hall leading to the east wing tantalizingly close. She didn’t catch the other soldiers’ eyes, but she could feel them traveling over her. She pinched the inside of her palm, her breath coming faster. The hall lay straight ahead.

  Dorothy found herself starting to relax. Despite the long glances and the crowd, this ludicrous plan seemed to be working. There were simply too many people, and they all were in a rush. A few men spared a second glance for the too-small soldier in the ill-fitting uniform, but no one bothered with a third. They all assumed that she belonged there. That she was one of them.