The Children Who Time Lost (38 page)

Michael paused and turned around. “Then you’ll have to convince them that something happened and you didn’t come through.”

Curtis shook his head. “They already know I’m here.” He held his right hand up, with his cell in his grasp.

I stared at Doug for a while. Then I grabbed the cell from Curtis and threw it to the ground. I stamped on it three times. “I don’t care if they know. You’re coming with us.”

Curtis shook his head. “That was a bad move. Now they’ll know exactly where my cell signal disappeared.”

None of us said anything. As Michael continued helping Manuel, we could hear the engines of the cars as they drew closer. There were four of them, judging by the headlights.

“How much longer?” Doug said.

Michael and Manuel didn’t answer. We waited a few more minutes.

Doug grew restless. “Guys?”

“We’re done, we’re done,” Manuel said.

Doug prodded Curtis in the back with the gun. “Right, come on.”

Curtis glared at Doug but didn’t move. I lifted my gun to his head. “You’d better start moving or I swear to God I’ll shoot you right here.”

Curtis nodded and turned around. Michael ran up the hill using the same narrow pathway we’d come down on. Curtis and Doug followed, while Manuel and I trailed them, my gun still pointed at the Shrinik. It sounded as if the cars had reached us. The engines stopped when I reached the top. Manuel ran toward our SUV and put the bags in. Michael lay flat on his stomach at the edge of the hill. Doug stood a few yards back, his gun still trained on Curtis.

“What do you see?” Doug whispered to Michael.

“It’s a bit hard to see anything from here.”

I frowned and realized that there was a solution to our problem. “I’ll be right back.” I ran to the car, where Manuel was about to close the trunk.

“Wait,” I said. “Leave it open.” I rummaged through my stuff and found the binoculars.

I jumped in the air with a smile on my face. Manuel looked at me like I was mad.

“Trust me,” I said, “They’re special.”

We returned to the others, and I lay beside Michael.

“Where did you go?” he said.

I waved the binoculars at him. “To get these.”

He nodded, took them from me and used them to look down. “They’ve got no zoom,” he said with a frown.

I reached out and turned the knob on top a few times.

“What the …” He turned and looked at me. “What did you do?”

I smiled. “They’re not any old binoculars. They’re from the future. It can see through walls, rocks—everything.”

He grinned and peered down again. “They’re getting out of the cars.”

I nudged him. “Can I see?”

He handed the binoculars to me. I saw three men get out of the first car. Lorenzo led them, still in his fitted suit. Two men stepped out of the second car, and a woman got out of the third. It was Sergeant Briggs again. She walked with a purpose that suggested that she was not under control like Willie had been. For all I knew, she was a Shrinik.

They walked up to the crater and stopped. Lorenzo pulled his cell out and typed into it. He stared at the screen for a while and put it to his ear. He shook his head at the others with a scowl. Although I couldn’t hear them, I felt as if I were a few inches from them, thanks to the binoculars. He typed into his phone again before putting it to his ear. This time his lips moved.

“I think he’s speaking to someone,” I said.

Michael tapped my shoulder. I gave him the binoculars and he looked through them. Then he crawled back and dragged me with him. I started to speak, but he put his finger to his mouth. He looked at Doug and Michael and did the same. We waited in silence. The buzzing dragonflies all around us were all I could hear. I stared at the glow the full moon was casting on the ground. I hated not knowing what they were doing beneath us, but none of us dared sneak a peek, even from our height.

I sighed when I heard the sound of an engine kicking to life. I lay on my back and shut my eyes. The other cars’ engines also started.

Michael crawled to the edge and looked down again. “They’re leaving.”

We waited until the silence returned. Michael stood and gave the binoculars back to me. Then he walked over to where Doug had Curtis. Manuel and I followed him. Curtis looked at us as if we had made the biggest mistake of our lives.

“That was the wrong move,” he said. “They will be back with a forensics team to scour this whole area. I say you have no more than an hour to pack and get out of here.”

I knelt in front of Curtis. “Back there, you said something about my face giving you hope. How do you know me?”

He smiled at the heavens. “Who doesn’t know about you? Rachel Harris, the only woman to naturally bear a human child in a time no one else could, the person who came closest to destroying my people’s plans. Your story is legend. Every time an uprising is heard of, people compare it to yours.”

I swallowed and leaned closer to him. “Uprising? What for? What am I supposed to have done?”

“You led the fight against my people.”

“What about my son? What do you know about him?”

Curtis shrugged. “I know nothing about your son. I’m sorry.”

I stood up and looked away. What did any of this mean? Was Dylan even alive?

“So this uprising,” Manuel said. “She didn’t succeed, no?”

Curtis grimaced at the ground. “I’m afraid not.”

I knelt in front of him again. “Did …did I die?”

He just stared at me.

Doug prodded him on the head with his gun. “Answer her.”

“In my reality, yes, but it was a heroine’s death. I swear—”

I stood up and backed away, my hands trembling. I looked toward the sky, lost in thought. I didn’t want to be any type of heroine. I just wanted my son. How could I continue, knowing that I would fail? And that I’d never even see Dylan again. How could I if Curtis didn’t even know Dylan had existed. I didn’t actually care if I lived or died. I just had to save my son. I turned and walked toward Curtis again, my face hard this time. “What happened? Why did I fail?”

“It’s not completely clear,” he said. “You have to remember that the leaders of my people did everything in their power to hide your story. Some of my facts are probably incorrect.” He rose to his feet and held my hands. Doug hissed, but I waved my right hand and he stood down. “But the future isn’t written yet,” Curtis said. “You can still succeed. You’re here right now, with a blank slate. You just need to make the correct choices.”

I shook my head and sat on the ground. In my quest to save Dylan, I could end up changing so much, even affecting my younger self. Some of the alterations to the time line could even result in my never meeting Kevin or having Madeline. But being in 2013 had already triggered huge changes, and my son was still somewhere scared, hoping his mother would come for him. I stood up again. “Stop preaching and just tell me why I failed.”

Curtis met my gaze and then looked at the other three. “You were betrayed.” I swallowed and edged back. Curtis took a step forward. “I can’t tell you who betrayed you, but people compare your story with Jesus and Judas.”

“So it was someone close to me?” I looked into the faces of Manuel, Michael and Doug.

Curtis shook my shoulders, drawing my attention back to him. I lifted my gun and he backed away holding his hands up. “It could be anyone,” he said. “It could be someone you’re yet to meet or even someone from your own time. The fact is that you now know. What you choose to do with the information is up to you.”

We all stood in silence. I didn’t know what to do. “Fine,” I said.

Doug gave me a bewildered look. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve got to carry on.”

“Hang on,” Michael said. “He’s just told us there’s a traitor around and you want to just carry on?”

“We can’t know who the traitor is just yet, but we can’t just stay here.”

“I agree with Rachel,” Doug said. “Those things could be back any minute.”

“You’re in a bit of a rush, aren’t you?” Michael said to Doug. “Why the hurry? Is it you? Are you selling us out?” He moved closer to us. “It is mighty convenient how you just showed up. Are you a plant? The inside man?”

Doug aimed the gun at Michael. “Back off, pal. I came here with two names. One of them was yours. So don’t tell me I’m the traitor.”

“Guys,” I yelled. “This isn’t helping.” I faced Curtis. “Where were they going to take you?”

“Probably to the regional portal. I’m supposed to collect something valuable from there to take back with me to the future for safekeeping. But the reason
I’m
here and not someone else is to find out why one of our spaceships crash-landed through the portal.”

I gasped. “So it wasn’t a meteor?”

“No. It was one of ours.”

I stamped my feet. “I knew it. I knew it wasn’t a meteor.”

Everyone looked at me but didn’t speak. I cleared my throat and focused on Curtis again. The others turned to Curtis with blank stares. Then my mind went into overdrive. I created scenarios and devised solutions, but nothing stuck.

“Why you?” Doug said. “Why have you got to fix the gateway?”

“I’m an engineer,” Curtis said. “I’m one of the people who helped build the time machines.”

“No kidding,” Michael said.

Curtis nodded.

“So these portals,” Doug said. “They’re everywhere, right? Like the one you came from.”

“I’d love to tell you all I know, but I’m telling you, we need to get out of here. I’ll even take you to the regional portal if you want, but not tonight. They’d expect me to come there.”

“Then when?” I said.

Curtis shrugged. “Tomorrow night, maybe.”

“On one condition: You have to help me find my son. I think the Shriniks have him, but I don’t know where.”

“But why do you think that? And how do you know he’s in 2013?”

I gave him a quick recap of what had happened after Lorenzo killed Kevin.

“Okay,” Curtis said. “I’ll do what I can to help you, but we must leave.”

“We’ll need somewhere to stay tonight,” Michael said. “Where is this regional portal?”

“Sacramento.”

“Then what’re we waiting for? That’s nearly a six-hour drive.”

“I’ll start the car,” Manuel said.

We all walked toward the SUV, Doug still pointing the gun at Curtis. I understood his hesitation about trusting the Shrinik. Nothing had been what it seemed so far.

We got on the freeway after a few minutes of driving. I sat in front this time, with Michael sitting behind me. Curtis sat between him and Doug, and Doug no longer pointed his gun at the Shrinik. I guessed he’d begun to develop a little trust.

“So what’s the deal with all these portals then?” Doug asked after almost an hour of silence.

I spun around and rested my chin on the top of my seat. I had to hear this.

“Well,” Curtis said, “the best way to look at them is like you would a hierarchical model. Like a central controller and lots of substations spread around the place. The facility in Sacramento is the central controller for North America. In Europe, there’s a facility in London and so on. I’m sure you get the picture.”

“So from Sacramento,” Doug said, “you can create portals anywhere in North America?”

“That’s correct.”

“But how do you pick the locations?” Michael said. “Like Barstow, or even Tonopah.”

“We don’t select the location. The location selects itself. From Sacramento, we can perform a sweep across a five thousand-mile radius in under a minute. Almost like a computer ping.”

“But what are you looking for when you do the sweep?” I asked.

“Various compounds in the air that assist in creating strong portals that will remain stable for the entire trip across.”

Doug shrugged. “Compounds?”

Curtis paused for a moment, as if considering what to say next. “Look, it’s no secret that you guys have satellites stationed all around the world. Do you think all they do is watch? No. We needed a way to find the best spots for our portals, so we took a vested interest in your satellites. With them, we spread different kinds of gas, not of your world, into the atmosphere.”

“You mean alien gas?” I said.

Curtis nodded. “These gases react at certain locations, but we still don’t understand their full molecular code when they merge with your atmosphere. To a normal scientist, it’s made up of methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and hydrogen sulphide.”

“Natural gas,” Michael said. “You’ve just described natural gas.”

“Precisely. Except ours carries none of those elements. In fact, it’s untraceable.”

“So they help you find the best place to create portals,” Doug said.

“Correct.” Curtis turned to Michael. “As you said earlier, Barstow is a great location. We have many in Nevada, some in Honolulu, Cancun, Toronto—we have portals everywhere.”

“And the other central controllers around the world,” I said. “Are they all operated out of the Sacramento facility?”

“No. There is a master location that controls everything, but I don’t know where that is.”

I frowned and leaned forward. “What does that mean?”

“Yes,” Doug said. “I thought you helped build the damn thing.”

“I did, but there are things even I don’t know. The site of the master location is one of them.”