Stolen Time Read online

  “I have a new plan to keep the prememory from coming true,” Ash said, slamming shut the cockpit door. “Unfortunately, it means we’re going to have to become lovers.”

  Zora didn’t look up from the engine. “You’re going to break your no-dating rule?”

  “Only for you. It’s a perfect plan, see? You don’t have white hair, for one thing. And you’d never stab me.”

  “And the thought of kissing you makes me feel carsick.”

  “Ours will be a chaste love.”

  “You’re wrong, anyway,” Zora said. “I can think of at least three reasons to stab you. Four if you count the fact that you left dishes in the sink this morning.”

  “You’re always so violent,” Ash called back.

  Zora stood, wiping her greasy hands on her jeans. She looked so much like her father—broad-shouldered, with dark brown skin and thick black hair that she wore in a braided bun at the base of her neck. They had the same strong nose and jaw, the same black eyes, the same way of frowning with half their mouths when someone was being an idiot. Ash had to remind himself that they weren’t the same person. Zora didn’t know where her father had disappeared to, either.

  I swear, if you die, too—

  Ash gave his head a hard shake. She hadn’t meant it that way, he told himself. The Professor wasn’t dead. He was just missing.

  He unlatched the door to the cargo hold and threw it open, grunting. “Back in the war, we had a word for—”

  The rest of his sentence got caught in his throat.

  There, crouched in the Second Star’s cargo hold, was the girl from 1913, her wedding gown creased and muddy around her.

  She pushed the sweaty hair off her face. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

  And then she vomited on Ash’s boots.

  LOG ENTRY—OCTOBER 10, 2073

  22:47 HOURS

  THE WORKSHOP

  I’ve done it.

  I, Professor Zacharias Walker, am on the verge of what will likely be the biggest scientific accomplishment of my generation.

  I’m not sure how to adequately convey my excitement here. . . . I love good old-fashioned pen and paper as much as the next history-obsessed mega nerd, but if I’d recorded my research notes on video or hologram I could include a badass clip of myself jumping up and down and pounding my fists in the air here.

  As it is, there’s just no way to adequately describe the brilliance of this discovery. But I’ll try.

  Here goes: I’ve built a time machine.

  Just writing those words has every hair on my arms standing straight up.

  I built a time machine.

  In the last year, every single theoretical physicist and mathematician and engineer on the planet Earth has tried. Every day there’ve been new stories detailing their failures, their loss of funding, their embarrassments.

  But I’ve actually succeeded.

  I . . . I think I’m going down in history.

  My wife, Natasha, says this journal will probably be published for posterity someday, so I should be a little more careful about what I write from here on. In fact, maybe I’ll just go ahead and remove those earlier pages, making this the first entry. No one needs to know that I couldn’t remember the exact calculation for channel flow (that’s a little scientific humor for you).

  In any case, let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first: My name is Professor Zacharias Walker. I’m thirty-eight years old and an adjunct professor of mathematics at the West Coast Academy of Advanced Technology (WCAAT).

  For the last few years, I’ve been researching the properties of exotic matter. For those of you who don’t follow science gossip (and, seriously, how could you not?), the study of exotic matter was trendy in scientific circles around ten years ago, when a NASA mission called SIRIUS 5 managed to obtain a small sample of the substance from the outer rim of the black hole MWG2055, the first black hole discovered in our galaxy. As you know, exotic matter is matter that deviates from normal matter and has “exotic” properties or, in other words, properties that violate the known laws of physics.

  Interest in the material waned for a relatively simple reason: lots of scientists, tiny little bit of exotic matter. Well, I shouldn’t say waned. There’s still quite a bit of curiosity around exotic matter, but the next mission to MWG2055 isn’t scheduled until 2080, and, in the meantime, my research proposal was the only one approved for funding.

  I was lucky, to say the least. The EM sample is currently being held at WCAAT, and I happen to eat lunch at the same sandwich shop as half the members of the board of trustees . . . but all of that is beside the point. I’ve spent the last year researching the properties of EM, and I’ve discovered that exotic matter stabilizes an anil.

  You’ll know all about the anil, of course. The discovery of the Puget Sound anil, on June 10, 2066, was compared to man’s landing on the moon. Wormholes have always been thought to be these teeny, tiny little cracks in space-time, but the Puget Sound anil—a type of wormhole—is massive. Easily large enough for a human to travel through.

  As of this writing, the Puget Sound anil is the only known anil in existence, and it’s conveniently located right off the coast of Seattle.

  Since its discovery, every theoretical scientist worth his or her salt has been trying to come up with a feasible plan to use the anil for space-time travel.

  Unfortunately, it’s volatile. Winds in an anil are so strong they make a hurricane seem like a light breeze. Only two men have entered the Puget Sound anil, to date. The first was killed instantly. The second is in intensive care. I believe his doctors are still looking for a way to reattach his skin.

  But exotic matter keeps those pesky walls from tearing you to bits.

  It’s quite a bit more complicated than that, of course. You need a vessel, and the exotic matter needs to be very carefully incorporated into the structure of the vessel, or else it won’t extend its exotic properties to the normal matter it’s protecting. (Normal matter is a scientific way of saying everything that isn’t exotic matter. Like, a person.)

  I’ve spent the last twelve months restoring an old A-10 Warthog, and I believe I’ve come up with a way to fuse the exotic matter with the vessel without upsetting the overall integrity of the matter. If my theory is correct, then the EM should extend its exotic properties to me when I enter the anil. Which is just a fancy way of saying that I’ll get to keep my skin on my body.

  The anil is supposed to be a tunnel that leads backward in time. So if I’m correct, I should be able to fly my modified fighter jet backward in time.

  I can’t believe I just wrote those words.

  I need to pause for a second here. Think this through.

  Technically, the EM is the property of the school. It’s to be used “for research purposes only.” Which means that, if I want to test my machine, I’ll have to steal it.

  I’m not sure of the ramifications for stealing university property. Hefty fine? Jail? Death by a thousand cuts?

  And that’s if I actually survive the trip through the anil. No one has before. In addition to a wife, I also have a thirteen-year-old daughter, Zora. She’s the one who named my time machine the SECOND STAR, after that line in Peter Pan that tells you how to get to Neverland by following the stars: “Second to the right and straight on till morning.” In any case, I don’t want to die before I have a chance to see her grow up. So I should probably take all that into consideration.

  And, of course, I’ll have to think about the earthquakes.

  I know we all hoped they were just some weird anomaly, a strange effect of climate change, but they’ve been occurring more frequently than any of us expected. The last one was only a couple of years ago, and it was a 4.7. Still not terribly strong, but if I happen to be on the sound when an earthquake hits I’m going to have to deal with waves. Big ones.

  I could be killed on impact. Would be killed on impact.

  Really, this thing is only worth doing if I know I’ll be
successful. If I have a guarantee.

  I’m going to need to think on this for a bit.

  UPDATE—23:13 HOURS

  I have an idea. It’s a little out there, but what the hell? We’re talking time travel, here.

  The thing is, I want a sign.

  And I think I know how to get one.

  I’m going to call this mission Kronos 1, after the Greek god of time.

  Objective: Tomorrow, October 11, at 0800 hours, I will pilot the Second Star into the Puget Sound anil. If the exotic matter keeps the anil stabilized, as I theorize that it will, I will travel back in time to October 10, 23:13 hours, and I will stand on the sidewalk outside my workshop. And I’ll wave.

  I’m sitting in my workshop now, of course. And it happens to be October 10, 23:13 hours.

  Which means there should be a future me standing on the sidewalk outside. Waving like crazy.

  I just have to look.

  UPDATE—23:15 HOURS

  I guess I’m going back in time.

  5

  Dorothy

  OCTOBER 14, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

  The images moving through Dorothy’s head were too vivid to be memories, too precise to be dreams. It was as though a silent film were playing back all the strange and beautiful moments of her life so far.

  She was five years old and running barefoot through the overgrown field behind their small house in Nebraska. The sky was achingly blue and monstrous above her. She felt like she might run forever. . . .

  And then she was twelve and standing in the cold outside a tavern in Salt Lake City. Her mother had pinched her cheeks to give them color, and they still smarted. . . .

  She was sixteen and perched on the edge of a stiff chair in Avery’s parlor. A young man with bright curls and a wicked smile was seated beside her. He reached for her hand. . . .

  And then she was kneeling in a clearing outside the chapel where she was to be married. She was covered in blood, screaming. . . .

  No, said a firm voice inside her head. That hasn’t happened yet.

  The images came faster now, a whir of colors and shapes that Dorothy could no longer pick apart. She began to feel dizzy. Her stomach clenched.

  This must be what dying feels like, she thought.

  And then she woke up.

  A girl with brown skin and black hair swinging over her shoulders was leaning over her, holding a damp cloth to her forehead.

  “You’re awake,” the girl said. The skin between her eyes crinkled as she adjusted her chunky black glasses. “Thank God. No offense, but I really didn’t want to mop the sweat from your forehead all night. Zora thought you’d be out for hours, but I told her she was being insane and, anyway, she can get intense when she doesn’t have control over every single aspect of a situation, you’ll see. Hey, did you really stow away on the Second Star? Because that’s so seriously badass. Ash barely even lets me touch it.”

  She said all of this very quickly, her voice tinged with an accent Dorothy didn’t recognize.

  Dorothy sat upright, heart hammering as she looked around. She was on a lumpy mattress, inside a small room with low ceilings and no windows. Distantly, she heard the hum of voices.

  “Where am I?” she croaked, throat scratchy. “Who . . . who are you?”

  The girl placed her cloth inside a black case that looked an awful lot like Avery’s surgical bag, only the leather sides were hard instead of soft and creased, the buckles a much brighter silver.

  “My name is Chandra.” The girl pushed her glasses up on her nose with one finger. “You rode in with my friend Ash. You remember Ash, right? Ornery? Nice eyes but sort of smelly? Like maybe try some cologne to cover the stink of engine grease once in a while?”

  “Oh.” Dorothy felt her cheeks color, remembering the pilot with the gold eyes. Ash. She thought of the dry, smoky scent that’d clung to his skin.

  She’d planned to sneak out of his airplane before he noticed that she’d stowed away, but the flight itself had been such a blur. She could clearly picture crouching in the small, dark space, her stomach dropping as the airplane lifted off the ground—

  And then there was nothing except for those haunting memories and dreams that seemed almost real.

  Dorothy brought a hand to her head, cringing with embarrassment. “W-where are we?”

  Chandra seemed to be avoiding her eyes. She took a folded pile of clothes out of her bag and placed them on the bed. “These are pretty hideous, but you obviously can’t go around wearing that gown. They won’t fit, but they were all we could find on short notice.” She snapped the bag shut and headed for the door. “I’ll let you change—”

  “Wait!” Dorothy swung one leg off the bed. “You didn’t—”

  But Chandra had already left the room, the door settling shut behind her.

  Dorothy glanced at the clothes she’d left behind. She wasn’t fond of charity. In her experience, people didn’t give things away for free; they always had a price in mind, even if they didn’t say what it was. Dorothy much preferred to steal outright. At least that was honest—in its own way.

  But Chandra was right; she couldn’t go around wearing a ruined wedding gown.

  She removed her gown and unfolded the clothes, finding a pair of pants and a thin white shirt.

  She pulled the T-shirt on over her corset, and then moved on to the pants, frowning. She’d never worn pants before. She pulled them over her legs and waist, fumbling with oversize buttons. They were much too large, even when she rolled the waistband down three times and cuffed the hems. Standing, she held her arms out to the sides and took a few practice steps around her small room.

  Pants were shockingly comfortable. It was a sin no one had told her. No skirts bunching around her legs, tripping her up. She ran her hands over the fabric, and her fingers brushed against a thick seam. Pockets. Just like in men’s trousers. She jumped up and down a few times to make sure the pants wouldn’t fall from her hips, but they stayed put.

  There was a mirror leaning against the wall. Dorothy stopped in front of it, examining her new appearance. She looked lumpy and boyish and unkempt, the opposite of the gleaming, beautiful bride she’d been this morning.

  A grin unfurled across her lips. Perfect.

  She reached for the door and then hesitated, fingers twitching. Chandra wouldn’t tell her where they were. It bothered her, the thought that she might walk out of this room and into . . . well, anything. She didn’t know the first thing about airplanes. She didn’t know how fast they could fly, or how far, and she hadn’t the faintest idea how long she’d been crouched in that cargo hold. She could be anywhere in the world.

  A thrill ran through her, delicious and terrifying at the same time. She could be somewhere dangerous.

  But wasn’t this why she’d climbed on board the airplane to begin with? To go someplace new? Until now, her life had been one dusty town after another, an endless line of well-mannered men with expensive clothes and hungry eyes. The airplane had been a sign. There was something more. There had to be.

  Carefully, Dorothy eased the door open and found an equally dark and dreary hallway, empty except for the pilot, who sat in a metal chair a few feet away.

  She frowned.

  He hadn’t seemed to have heard her open the door. He was crouched over, whittling, his forehead creased as he maneuvered a knife around a shapeless hunk of wood. He’d stripped down to his undershirt, jacket hanging over the back of his chair. He still smelled of airplanes, and the scent tickled Dorothy’s nose as she breathed it in. Chandra was wrong; it wasn’t a bad smell at all. Compared to the cloying cologne Avery was always wearing, it was actually sort of nice. It made Dorothy think of adventure and far-off places.

  But the man himself . . . Dorothy tilted her head, allowing her gaze to linger over the muscles flexing along his back and shoulders. Again, she thought of how different he was from the men she usually associated with. She’d taken it as a good sign, at first, but now she thought there might be a reas
on her mother picked gentlemen. This man had been perfectly content to leave her alone in the woods after she’d asked—no, begged—for help. He’d been unmannered. Rude, even. Avery might wear too much cologne, but he wouldn’t have left a girl alone in the woods.

  But Avery would’ve expected something in return, said a voice in the back of Dorothy’s head. She shook it away. Everyone expected something in return. Help never came for free.

  She slipped a hand into her pocket, curling her fingers around the cool metal of the pocket watch she’d stolen from the pilot. It looked like little more than junk, unfortunately.

  More trouble than he’s worth, her mother would’ve said. Dorothy hated to admit that she was right. Still, there was no way to get past without him noticing, so she cleared her throat.

  “Jesus,” Ash muttered, flinching. “Do we need to get you a bell? I nearly took a finger off.”

  He waved his finger at her for some reason. Dorothy frowned.

  “Where have you brought me?” she asked, stepping into the hallway.

  Ash tugged the jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged it on. “Where have I—?” He shook his head. “How about thanks for cleaning up my vomit and hauling me out of the garage after I passed out?”

  Dorothy winced. She didn’t remember vomiting or passing out, and the knowledge that she’d done both sent heat flaring through her cheeks.

  Her eyes flicked down the dark hallway. There were still no windows, but the voices were louder out here. Grease stains crawled up the walls, and the air held the heavy smells of fried fish and beer.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is this a bar?”

  “Not up to your standards?” Ash’s voice was light, but his smile was all teeth. “A friend of ours rents out the spare rooms, and he doesn’t ask a lot of questions. My place is all the way across town, so we figured you were better off here.”

  “He doesn’t ask questions,” Dorothy echoed drily. She’d known plenty of men like that, although she certainly wouldn’t brag about associating with them. Her opinion of Ash was worsening by the minute. “So I take it you drag a lot of unconscious people through bars?”