Time Trapped (9 page)

“Sure, I'm available,” I say.

“Excellent.”

“Is that all, Uncle?”

He smiles and says nothing. Goose bumps race up and down my arms. A small wisp of a thought begins to take hold in my mind—that I might actually leave this meeting without being punished. I try to crush the thought before it takes hold because, as unpredictable as Uncle is, he usually inflicts his punishments at the very end of meetings, when you have one foot out the door.

“Yes, Caleb, that is all. Except for one small matter . . .”

I swallow hard.

“As you are freshly back from a rather long absence,” Uncle continues, “it would do you good to reacquaint yourself with the Compound. You will see that we have made some changes, including relocating the sleeping quarters for all senior time snatchers to here from Headquarters. Why don't you assist Luca with the tour he will be giving this week's new recruits? It will begin shortly—as soon as they receive their mindpatches and translator implants.”

“Certainly, Uncle.”

As I walk through the doorway, I don't feel any great rush of relief. He hasn't punished me yet, but it's coming, all right. Sure as the rain comes to Scotland in the spring. I suppose I should be grateful for our little meeting, though. Because, now I have something new to worry about—tomorrow's meeting with him and Frank.

So thank you, Uncle.

October 4, 2061, 8:43
P.M.

The Compound
SoHo, New Beijing (formerly New York City)

L
uca is herding eight recruits into a line. A few of them are fingering the backs of their necks where the implants were inserted.

Watching him in action, I'm struck again by how much he looks like Nassim. Which leads me to wonder whatever happened to Nassim. The last time I saw him was when I escaped with him and Zach to 1967.

I continue to watch Luca. Uncle must have given him orders to be gentle with the recruits, judging from the way he's sweet-talking them.

“Make a nice straight line, now,” he says. “For anyone who behaves, he'll get a treat at the end of the tour.”

The recruits look tired. Razor catches my eye and gives me a devilish smile.

“You mean he or she will get a treat,” Razor pipes up.

There are a couple of snickers from the other recruits.

Luca whips his head around. “Who said that?”

Wonderful. That didn't take long.

Razor steps forward. She's not shaking at all, which I find amazing, given that Luca is about three times her size.

“Repeat what you said,” he says, smiling.

“I said ‘he or she will get a treat,'” Razor says coolly.

“You don't like my English?” Luca says, his eyes gleaming.

“No, I don't like your English,” Razor says, and this draws a laugh from the other recruits.

Luca walks around her. The others fall silent.

“You're a very funny girl,” he says. “At least I think you're a girl. Does Funny Girl know baseball?”

“Sure,” she says. This time, there's a slight crack in her voice.

“Good. Strike one on you, Funny Girl.”

“For doing what?” she shoots back.

Luca stares at her. His right hand moves under his shirt where he keeps his E-Prod.

I cringe. This is my fault. I should have warned her that this is no game. That Luca will jolt her if she doesn't fall in line.

“Strike two now. One more, and you're out, Funny Girl.”

I hold my breath, praying that she doesn't do anything stupid.

Thankfully, she keeps her mouth shut. I let out a long, slow breath.

Luca resumes walking and leads the group to the north end of the Yard. “This used to be a factory,” he says. “You see those machines over there?” He gestures to an iron contraption hiding in the shadows, near the wall. “They had something to do with making shoes. I think one of them was for stretching the leather.”

The curly-haired boy with glasses, Abbie's quarry, I think, walks over to one of the machines casual as can be and starts running his fingers over the controls.

“No touching.” Luca grabs his arm and pulls him back to the line. “What's your name, recruit?” he says, crouching down to the boy's eye level.

“Dmitri.”

“Well, Dmitri,” says Luca, leaning closer, “you don't want that nasty machine grabbing your skin and stretching it now, do you?”

“It wouldn't,” Dmitri says.

Luca laughs. But no one else joins in.

“How do you know for sure?” he asks.

“That machine isn't for stretching leather,” Dmitri says. “It's for perforating fabric.”

Luca laughs again. “
Perforating,
you say. Such a big word for a small boy. Would you like to give the tour, Dmitri? Maybe we should switch places. Who votes for Dmitri?”

Not one hand goes up. But as I look around at the recruits, something niggles at me. Something isn't quite right.

“Follow me, everyone,” Luca continues. “We're going to the second level.”

A parade of feet follows Luca up the stairs. With every step, the sensation of something being wrong is stronger. I can see the heads of seven recruits. One is missing. Razor . . . where is she?

Panic seizes me. I've got to find her, and quickly. I go tearing down the stairs.

“Caleb, where are you going?” Luca shouts from above.

I don't answer. He's obviously not pleased that I've abandoned my post, but he's the least of my worries. If Uncle finds out we've let a recruit escape, I'm the one he's going to blame.

As I take the stairs two at a time, I'm thinking,
That's it, Razor's gone.
She saw an opening and went for it. Who can blame her, really? She must have decided she could do better on the streets than at the Compound.

In that case, I'd better make a good show of looking for her, because things will go worse for me if I don't. I burst into the Yard and shout her name. No answer. I run back out and race to the Viewing Room. She's not there either.

At the top of the stairs leading to the basement, I stop to catch my breath. Should I go down? There's nothing down there except for the boiler room. A noise makes me look up. The front door to the Compound is banging softly against its frame. It's open.

I swing the door open the rest of the way. Razor is lounging on the front steps, staring out into the street.

“What are you doing?” I say. My fantasy of Razor's bold escape from Uncle's clutches evaporates.

“What does it look like I'm doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Exactly,” she says. “You should try it sometime. Most times, I find doing nothing beats doing something. Especially if it's the kind of something I don't want to do.”

I'm torn between screaming at her to run and dragging her back inside. But instead I count to ten and try to calm my breathing.

Better. I walk down the steps and turn to face her.

“You weren't joking, were you?” Razor says.

“About what?”

“About this being the future and all,” she says.

“No, I wasn't joking.”

“And those kids in there were brought here, like me.”

I nod.

“And they're gonna train us to go to the past and steal stuff?”

I nod again.

She stretches her legs out in front of her and yawns. “Well, I guess I'll wait here, then.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I already know all about stealing. I don't need more training.”

“It doesn't matter if you think you need it or not,” I say. “Nothing here is optional. You've got to do what they tell you.”

“That wasn't part of our deal,” she says.

“We didn't have any deal,” I say too loudly. But she's right. I fooled her to get her here. Maybe I didn't lie to her outright, but I left out a few choice parts.

She brings her legs up and rests her elbows on her knees. “Look, I get it, okay? You were just doing your job in grabbing me and taking me to this hole. I'd do the same in your shoes. The thing is, I ain't in your shoes. I'm in mine. And my shoes are telling me to walk.”

“So what's stopping you?”

She doesn't say anything for a long time. The only sounds are from the late-night traffic on Lafayette Street.

“I lived in a place like this once,” she begins slowly, “all nice solid brick walls on the outside. It makes you wanna believe that the people inside are nice too.”

I wait quietly for her to continue.

She rolls up her right sleeve and traces a slim finger along a long scar that goes from the inside of her elbow to her wrist. “This is one of my souvenirs from the brick house. I got others too. But I'm especially proud of this one. 'Cause I didn't scream when he smashed his beer bottle on the wall and then cut me with it. No. Not one peep. I ran away that same night. There's lots of places you can go when you don't have stuff weighing you down.”

She rolls her sleeve back down, shifts position on the stoop and looks me in the eyes. “I'm willing to give this whole time snatchers thing a try. But if I don't like it, I'm outta here.”

“That's not the way it works,” I say, and then add in a quiet voice so that the audio surveillance doesn't pick it up, “This may be your best chance to leave. Right now. Before they start training you.”

In the distance, a siren wails. Music spills out of an upper floor window of the brownstone across the street. A woman pushing a stroller pauses under the window to listen before carrying on.

Razor stands up, stretches and says, “What's the food like in this place?”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Not bad . . . when I'm not cooking.”

She looks away. “You'd better be right about the food,” she says, and I follow her back inside.

October 5, 2061, 7:48
A.M.

The Compound
SoHo, New Beijing (formerly New York City)

A
noise wakes me. I roll over and open one eye. It's morning. Frank's bunk bed is empty, but Raoul's is occupied.

Raoul! I scramble out of my bunk and rush over to his. I see a shock of blond hair and stop dead in my tracks. Raoul doesn't have blond hair.

So who's sleeping in his bed?

Then I recognize him. It's the boy from 1912—the pickpocket from the Houdini escape at the East River. I can't believe it. Or maybe I can.

“Out with the old. In with the new,” Frank says behind me. “You'd better hurry, Caleb. Most everyone else has eaten. You know, for someone freshly back from a long vacation, you don't look relaxed at all. In fact, you look quite stressed.”

“Shut up, Frank,” I say. “Raoul was one of us.”

“He was incompetent, and you know it,” Frank says. “And you'd better watch how you speak to me. In case you haven't noticed, Luca has a bit of a violent streak. And, unlike Nassim, he doesn't mind taking orders from me. Especially if they involve inflicting pain on others.”

I turn my back to him and get dressed. Frank's right about one thing. The game has changed since I've been gone.

“Cale, are you up yet? We've got to take the recruits to China today,” Abbie says over my mindpatch.

“Be right there,” I mindpatch her back.

I finish dressing and jog to the dining room. All of the new recruits are already there—none of them is smiling, which I guess is to be expected, since it hasn't even been a day since some were ripped from their families.

Abbie is at a table with four recruits: Razor, Dmitri and two I don't recognize.

“Recruits, this is Caleb, your other trainer along with me,” she says. “Caleb, meet our squad. I believe you already know Razor and Dmitri.”

Dmitri is staring off into space, oblivious of my presence, but Razor looks me straight in the eye and says, “You've got a real sorry-looking bunch here, Jack. But don't worry. You and me will whip them into shape.”

Then she passes a hand right in front of Dmitri's eyes. He doesn't even blink.

“Caleb, this is Judith and Gerhard,” says Abbie. “Judith is from 2013 Wales, and Gerhard is from 1987 Munich.”

Judith is short and slight with bright eyes. Gerhard looks big and strong. Right now he has his head down and is busy adjusting the distance between his fork and knife. Neither answers when I say hello.

I try to think of a joke to break the ice, but Abbie has given me the two-minute warning, so I decide that the best use of my mouth right now is for eating. There's one more piece of toast left, but as I reach for it, a slender hand darts out and nabs it first.

“Got to be quicker than that!” Razor says, already spreading strawberry jam on it.

I stand up and walk over to the next table. No toast there either. The best I can do is scrounge a bowl of cereal. I eat it standing up.

“I hope everyone had a good breakfast,” Abbie says to our little group. “Today we are timeleaping to 1311, Yunnan province, China. Our mission is to snatch leaves from an ancient tree known for producing a type of tea, pu'er tea, that has a strong Qi or life energy. Since this is a training snatch, there will be no official time limit on completing the mission. However, because eventually you will be doing snatches that have thirty-minute time limits, we will stick to that timing. In a minute, I will hand out wristbands. They have been programmed to our current time, date and place.

“When you complete your training,” she continues, “you will be fitted for time patches, same as the ones Caleb and I have, but for now, you'll make do with the wristbands. Remember, they're only for emergencies. So long as you are with either me or Caleb, you won't need to use them, since you can hitch rides through time with us. It's only if you get lost or we get separated that you'll need to use your wristband.

“Never take it off. And never touch another person's band. Finally, don't even touch your own band unless it's an emergency or I tell you to. Does anyone have any questions so far?”

Dmitri's hand shoots up.

“Yes?” Abbie says.

“Why do we need to go to 1311 China to purloin pu'er? I expect that pu'er tea is in abundance here now.”

I stare at the kid and wonder at his vocabulary. The only time I think I've ever used the word
purloin
was a year ago, and even then, it was only to help Nassim solve a crossword puzzle clue. Or maybe that was
sirloin.

“Strictly speaking, you are correct, Dmitri,” Abbie says. “But the purpose of our field trip today is not primarily the snatch. It's to get you used to time travel and to experience what a mission is like. Now, Razor and Dmitri will go with Caleb. Judith and Gerhard, you two will timeleap with me. We'll be leaping from the courtyard.”

Abbie leads everyone down a flight of stairs to the first floor, along the hall and then out the side door.

I've never been in the Compound's courtyard before. It's pretty small, but I can see why Uncle wants all our training leaps to be from here. It's private, and since we can't leap from inside the Compound because of iron in the walls that messes with time travel frequencies, this is the next best thing.

“All right,” Abbie says, handing out the wristbands. “Remember, your wristband is only for emergencies. To use it, remove the narrow green strip and press down. You will end up back here. At which point, you will wait until the rest of the group arrives back. Any more questions?”

Judith raises her hand.

“Yes, Judith?”

“This isn't exactly a question. But may I recite a poem?”

Life is full of surprises.

“Well, I suppose,” Abbie says, “so long as it's short.”

“It is,” she says.

Judith clears her throat and starts.

“Angry toenails and the cement juice of exhaustion

forge a blustery end to the feathery rain

pounding the river of my soul.”

Wow. Who would have expected that? Not me for one. I particularly liked “cement juice of exhaustion.”

“That's very—” Abbie begins.

“Weird,” Razor finishes.

“Okay,” says Abbie, “everyone make a circle and join hands, please. For this first leap, I suggest that you close your eyes and relax. You may feel a little dizzy, but that's normal.”

I take Razor's and Dmitri's hands. Abbie takes Judith's hand, but when she reaches for Gerhard, he stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes one step backward.

“Gerhard,” she says with more patience in her voice than I could ever manage. “We have to hold hands in order for the timeleap to work.”

“I . . . don't hold hands,” he says, with a pained look on his face.

“You don't hold hands?” Abbie repeats.

“That's right,” Gerhard says. “But if you like, I can give you my elbow.”

Razor narrows her eyes at Gerhard as if she's studying him. “He's a germophobe, Abs. I knew a guy once who was the same way. My advice is take the elbow. It's a good deal.”

I begin to wonder if the forest will still be there by the time we finally arrive. Which is a ridiculous thought, since this is time travel we're talking about.

Abbie taps her wrist and puts her hand on Gerhard's elbow. Just before the timeleap takes us away, I sneak a look at the recruits. All of them have their eyes closed except for Razor.

When she sees me looking at her, she cocks her head toward Judith and mouths the words
angry toenails.