Time Keepers

by Kate Allenton

  “Nope, no monster here,” Sarah said as the woman leaned into the flying contraption. “James, take her to 5524 Terrance Street.”

  The flying contraption shot to the sky, making Sarah’s stomach flip. It flew and lowered near where the ocean used to be, where only dry cracks in the dirt remained.

  “Was that…?”

  “The Atlantic. It’s out of bounds for everyone,” James answered.

  “Oh my god, Sarah, are you seeing that?” Ziggy 2018 asked.

  “Yes,” I whispered before questioning James. “What happened to the ocean?”

  “The aurora borealis vanished, and along with it, all the water in the ocean started to vanish. Scientist still haven’t uncovered the reason but are hopeful that they will return it back to its natural state.”

  A holographic screen appeared on the windows, showing Sarah a historic recount of what happened.

  “What about drinking water?” Sarah asked, unsure how it was even possible that people from the future were still surviving. “Humans still need water to survive, right?”

  “The Enforcement Board and local governments have sanctions in place that provide the daily allowance to each citizen.”

  Sarah’s stomach dropped as she watched the screen reading off the statistics. “Millions died from lack of water.”

  “Yes. The weak and sick were terminated so that the strong could survive and fix things.”

  “They were terminated?” Sarah asked, unable to shake the anger stirring in her body.

  “Sarah, it’s a freakin’ apocalypse. Only humans are responsible.”

  Chapter 12

  “This is taught in schools. Did you miss your education?”

  “No.” Sarah’s cheeks heated as the flying contraption lowered to the ground. She climbed out, and James left without any further questions. It was probably a good thing he did.

  Learning millions had died, and not from war, made her stomach heave and the blood drain from her face. She needed to get back more than ever just to stop this from ever happening. If not only for her but for future generations.

  “Ziggy, I think I need to remove my contact. You shouldn’t be seeing this. It could change things.”

  “Damn right it will,” he growled.

  “Whatever you just decided to do, don’t do it,” Sarah said. “It won’t work, or rather…it didn’t work.”

  “I keep forgetting that my actions and outcomes can be seen there by you.”

  “Crazy, right? If we had time, I’d get you to write me a message on this building,” Sarah teased.

  5524 Terrence Street led to an abandoned-looking warehouse on the outskirts of town near the out-of-boundary marker by the ocean. It should've surprised Sarah that Foster knew about this place. It was precisely the type of place she would assume he’d hang out. She waited until the car floated away before approaching the garage-style door on the warehouse. She knocked twice as Foster had instructed and dug the address out of her bra. She flipped it to the other side to read where Foster had written, The phoenix rose, before sliding the paper under the door.

  Sarah took the moment to take in the dry cracking ocean floor and the reality of what was going to be coming in future years.

  Her heart clenched at the devastation. Since arriving, she hadn't seen any protests. She hadn't even seen any TVs. Was this what her future has in store? Keeping citizens in the dark to avoid protest or any emotion whatsoever?

  Sarah had no intention of sticking around to see what else this place lacked when others probably considered it and the futuristic gadgets an advancement. This place made her skin crawl. Sarah couldn't put her finger on why she felt the dread.

  Sarah turned toward the sound of the door unlocking. She didn't know what to expect, or rather who to expect. If the person behind the door was a friend of Foster’s, she only wished right now she had more than the revolver strapped to her ankle. She couldn’t afford to waste a single shot.

  The door creaked open, and Sarah ignored the urge to flee. Out of everything that she had expected, she didn't expect this. Standing on the other side of the door was somebody she recognized. Someone who, like her, had no reason at all to be in 2130.

  “Zeke the deke.” Ziggy’s excited voice rose an octave, making Sarah cringe. “Sarah, what the hell is he doing there?”

  Sarah ignored the question, unsure she was ready to let Zeke know Ziggy was in her ear.

  Ziggy’s hacker friend from 2018 answered the door. His gaze went down to Sarah’s shoes and back up to her face. "You look exactly as I remember you."

  He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her through the door. When Ziggy and Sarah were trying to figure out who to trust only six months ago, Ziggy had introduced her to Zeke. He’d been running a lucrative underground hacking group that understood how to get things done. They’d exploited the bad to help the good and Ziggy had talked them into help Sarah in a time when she’d really needed it.

  "You look older. What are you doing here?" Sarah asked.

  “Saving your ass, again," Zeke said.

  "I don't remember you ever saving my ass the first time around."

  “I guess that makes you from prior to 2021.” Zeke chuckled as Sarah followed him through the warehouse. A collection of stuff from the 2018 time frame existed in every nook and cranny of the warehouse. It was a collector’s paradise. She bet the hoarded goods might be priceless for the right person.

  "I won't get into specifics, but this building is a direct connection between our time and theirs. Ziggy believes that it has something to do with the energy running underneath it or maybe you guys used it too many times to open rifts. But whatever the reason, this building has access to a gateway built into its structure.”

  The building looked vaguely familiar, possibly the one from last year’s shootout when Sarah tried to save one of her tourists.

  Sarah followed Zeke up a set of stairs to a living area. The couch and furniture were similar to the furniture she currently owned. The new age stuff, which looked harder to sit on, was stacked in the corner.

  “Sorry about the clutter. I thought for sure the future would have softer furnishings, but I was wrong. I can’t even tell you how many antique collectors I had to bribe just to get the stuff in here now.”

  “When I get back, I’ll find this building and make sure there’s plenty of furnishings waiting for you in the attic,” Sarah said, glancing around in wonder.

  Computer screens covered all the walls. One had what she could only assume was a government sanctioned media outlet. The screen displayed her picture. Only this picture was from the day she arrived. Beneath it scrolled Wanted in connection with breaking law 242.

  Sarah folded her arms over her chest and nodded toward the screen. It was only a matter of time before they would figure out what she’d done to Ziggy. “What is law 242?"

  Zeke didn’t even bother to look up from digging through a box when he answered. "Law 242 is something that is hardly used anymore. It’s bodily harm to another individual. You probably have every citizen in town worried. It's a foreign concept to them and so is the feeling of fear."

  Perfect. That is so not what she’d wanted to do. Zeke pulled a gadget out of his box. "Eureka."

  "Did you really just say eureka?"

  "Yes, and you will, too, when you see what I found." He took her hand and guided her up another set of stairs into another area on the top floor.

  The windows of the entire top floor were floor-to-ceiling glass. This was the first birds-eye view of the ocean where she could see the destruction of future years.

  Why anybody would want to live in this time and think it was okay was beyond her.

  "I don't know if I should be more concerned that Foster sent you here or more concerned that you listened to him and came here on your own," Zeke said.

  He had a point. Following others blindly wasn’t high on her to-do list. "Well, if you haven't noticed, I didn't have much of a choice. The Enforcement Board wants
to keep me jailed here forever, and I have other ideas in mind. I just want to go home so I can fix all of this."

  “To fix this, you're going to have to go back to the beginning."

  "Which beginning?"

  Zeke move to the middle of the room and picked up two pairs of glasses. He slid one on his face before handing her the other. Sarah slid the cool material up her nose and watched in confusion as a quantum computer appeared before her eyes. It was similar, if not identical, to the one that she used in 2018.

  "Where did you get this?"

  “You of course. Just a later you, not from 2018. It was the best gift ever. Now hand me your chip."

  “How did you know I had a chip?” He couldn’t have possibly been watching Sarah in the fake beach house.

  “Sarah, it’s a long story, but we need to take a look at that chip before we look at where this all started.”

  Sarah handed him the chip and watched as he shoved it into a reader on the quantum computer.

  Henrietta’s bio pulled up with a 3-D version of her turning as if she was on a pedestal. “Look, she’s wearing a pendant, and is that the animal that Ziggy said attacked you? He told me about it years after it happened.”

  “I’ll have to remind him about the confidentiality agreement he sighed.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “She did send that damn thing after me.”

  “Look at her credentials. She’s more than a time trooper. She’s a historian and teacher of that time period.”

  “Why in the world does she want to kill me?”

  “That’s a question for another day.” He pulled the chip, and Sarah pocketed it again with the proof that the woman was out to get her. Sarah wouldn’t turn her in until she knew exactly why. Not yet.

  Zeke used his fingers and hands, flicking his wrist and scrolling through time itself before stopping at one of the significant moments.

  Sixteen faces were on the screen. The same sixteen faces that started it all; the witness protection pretenders.

  "If I go back and stop them from entering and staying in our time, are you're telling me that all of this will change?"

  Zeke pointed at the faces, poking his finger through the hologram, disbursing it before it gathered against and settled into place.

  "I'm telling you that I have pinpointed a connection to the beginning of all of this to those people, but you don’t have all of the equation yet."

  Zeke flipped a few more images on the screen and stopped on the picture of a man she knew well. Dr. Stephen Steed, her biological father.

  "If you stop that man in a time prior to 2018, everything will go back to how it was supposed to. If you’re unable to stop him prior to 2018, then nothing changes and everything remains the same. You’ll end up here in 2130, locked in a cell, and Foster will use every resource he has to break you out of it. If it weren’t for Dr. Stephen Steed, none of this would have been set in motion.”

  "I don't understand what he had to do with the rest of everything that is going on. He was looking for the love of his life, Francesca."

  Zeke turned to Sarah and raised his brow. "At one time she might have been the love of his life, but now all he wants to do is kill her. She's the reason behind everything that goes wrong with his plans in the future. All of this stems from his broken heart and anger. She took the once brilliant scientist and broke him and made him into a monster. That all-consuming love that turned into an all-consuming hatred and desire to find her. This all started because she gave birth to you."

  What the hell was Sarah supposed to do with that? "How exactly do you expect me to change things when I have no idea what timeline she's even from?"

  Zeke grinned. "I'm glad you asked. You might not know where she's from, but there is one person who does."

  Sarah tossed her hands up. "Great, well, if you'll just tell me who that is and point me in that person's direction, I can get all this started."

  "Somebody's grumpy. Did you not eat today?" Sarah recognized the voice coming from the stairwell behind her. She had mixed emotions about the owner of that voice. She couldn’t stifle the smile that formed on her face. "Foster is here?"

  "Ziggy tells me you have a thing for him."

  "Don't listen to them. I don't talk about you," Ziggy 2018 said in her ear.

  “Apparently you did, and we’ll have to talk about that later," Sarah said.

  Foster stepped into the room, making her heart race. She didn't know whether to be thankful that he was there or be searching for a gun to take him down finally.

  "I see you missed me."

  Sarah rolled her eyes but would never admit he was right. She did miss him. She missed all of 2018, including every annoying ounce of him. "So did you come to help take me home?"

  "Not quite. I came to help you deal with Francesca."

  "Speaking of which, isn't Steed missing you about now?"

  "I'm working, sort of." He left his sentence hanging without explaining what that meant. What was his assignment? Had she been his assignment all along?

  At this point, she didn’t care what she was to him if he could help her get back. "You are going to take me back, right?”

  "In order to change this reality and in order to save your adoptive mother, Jane and your friend, Natalie, we have to go back to where it started. Where Francesca and Steed fell in love. We need to change what happened to them, or nothing will change.” Foster held out his hands and guided her to the window.

  "All of this stems from that one incident in time. It had a ripple effect. It was the domino, the linchpin. Your parents created all of this."

  Her breath stuttered and her legs gave way as though she were standing on noodles. She walked over to the comfortable sofas in the corner and collapsed onto the cushion. If she understood what he was saying, and she liked to consider herself smart, when she stopped Francesca and Steed from having their relationship, that would mean that she prevented herself from being born.

  Her life would be over like she never existed. How could they expect her to go along with this plan?

  Chapter 13

  It was hard to fathom that millions of people would die in the future because Sarah's parents’ relationship had ended badly. Sarah knew what a linchpin was. She understood the domino effect of changing time. Her adopted mother had instilled that belief in her from a very young age when one of her mentors died. Sarah had asked her mom to go back in time and save him. It wasn't okay then, and it wasn’t okay now.

  Foster walked over to her and rested his hands around her shoulders, pulling Sarah into his chest. He kissed her temple. "Everything will be fine. You have to trust me."

  "The last time I trusted you I almost died from drowning."

  Foster chuckled. The vibration from his chest made her grin. At least he didn't deny the truth. Sarah slipped out of his arms and turned to Zeke. "How exactly are you going to send me back?"

  She didn't miss the look he and Foster shared. There was concern in each of their eyes, and that told her one thing; whatever they had planned probably was not a good idea.

  An alarm blared through the building, piercing her eardrums. Zeke hurried down the stairs to where all of the screens were located on the walls. Foster grabbed her hand and held tight as if connecting them brought safety. They ran behind Zeke. They reached the bottom stair to find more than just one screen with her picture on it. Several screens were lit up now. AI police had surrounded the building.

  "I guess they're not friendlies?"

  Foster gestured to the TV screen. "I see you made a friend in the year 2130."

  She spun toward the screen to find the nanny that had lent her the driver and car talking to a reporter. She and her driver had given up her location.

  "Get her into the chamber so I can send you two back,” Zeke ordered while continuing to push buttons.

  Sarah watched in horror on the screen as a fire burst out on the downstairs floor.

  "Do you think it's wise he's putting this place on fire when there's no wate
r in this time?"

  Foster pulled her through the building. He yanked open something akin to a supply closet door, pulled her into the darkness, and slammed it shut.

  “Aren’t we a little too old for hiding in a closet?” she asked.

  “Foam will put out the fire, and we aren’t hiding; we’re traveling. Now close your eyes and just don't let go of me whatever you do. This might hurt."

  "I have time traveled before. It didn’t hurt."

  "Yeah, well, we're doing it illegally, so we don't have all of the accommodations you provide at your facility. The places he's going to send us probably aren't supplied with necessities that we’ll need. Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand."

  She grabbed his hands and closed her eyes just as she felt the pull from the travel. Blue and white electrical streams attacked their bodies and the floor around them as if trying to use them as a grounding agent like the metal bar back home in the transponder room. Her mouth parted as it dawned on her that was exactly what they were missing.

  A scream bubbled from her lips and broke free. Foster pulled her tighter to his body. Holding on for dear life. Just when she couldn't take any more of the electricity running through her body, they both dropped to their knees. And then the pain was gone. They opened their eyes and were in a building. The same closet.

  "Did it work?"

  "There's only one way to find out."

  Foster eased the closet door open.

  "Well?"

  He was taking his time to step out. There is no noise on the other side that she could hear. There was nothing to indicate that they were under attack by the police from moments ago.

  Foster closed the door again and dropped his gaze to Sarah’s in the darkness. She could just make out the lines of his face without any window and incoming light.

  "We definitely aren't in Kansas anymore. We most definitely are not in the same place we just left."

  Unable to take any more of his cryptic answers, she shoved him out of the way and turned the knob herself and peeked out. "Where the hell are we?"