Erasing Time

by C. J. Hill

  Lobo had said it wasn’t Echo’s fault. Surely that meant Echo hadn’t requested their assassinations in a jealous rage because Allana chose Joseph over him. But then, what was the reason Joseph and Allana died?

  Echo took Sheridan and Taylor to a bedroom. It had half a dozen gel beds pushed up against two of the walls. Apparently they weren’t sleeping alone, although no one else was in the room at the moment. Shelves, drawers, and vanities lined the other two walls, and computers sat on a multiseat desk in the middle of the room.

  Echo pointed out the bathroom door, the closet where they’d find clothes, and a bowl on the desk full of multicolored balls that looked like huge marbles. “Candy,” he said. “In case you want something sweet.”

  Echo didn’t seem to be seeing anything he showed them. His eyes had a distracted look. Would he tell Taylor and her that these people were Dakine? Would he admit Lobo wanted to train them as assassins?

  Echo walked to one of the computers. “Lobo wants me to teach you our way of speaking. Can you understand any of our language?”

  “Not really,” Taylor said.

  Echo nodded. “I’ll help you, but I have to leave right now, so I want you to listen to the conversations on the computer and repeat what you hear. You can do that while I’m gone, can’t you?” He ran his hands across the keyboard, accessing a children’s television program. It showed a little girl talking to animated dolls. They were, not surprisingly, discussing how much they loved the city. Echo straightened. “Get a feel for the way we say our vowels and consonants. Most e’s sound like long a’s now, and i’s sound like long e’s. If a word ends in a vowel or n or s, the next to last syllable is stressed. Otherwise it’s the last syllable. R’s are trilled.”

  Taylor sat down at the desk obediently, watched the girl, and did a poor imitation of the sentence.

  Echo gave her a forced smile. “Keep practicing. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Sheridan didn’t move. “Where are you going?”

  “The compucenter. I have some work to do.”

  So, despite the fact that Echo had just told Lobo that his top priority would be teaching her and Taylor, Caesar was right. Echo was going to spend his time in the compucenter.

  Didn’t Echo tell the truth to anyone?

  Sheridan frowned and waited for him to leave.

  Instead of walking out the door, Echo sighed and took her hand. He pulled her behind a freestanding full-length mirror so that they were blocked from Taylor’s view.

  “Don’t wear that expression, Sheridan; I’ll be back as soon as I can. Oh, and don’t go out the doors. They’re alarmed.”

  At least he had told her the truth about that. Still, Sheridan didn’t change her expression. “We’re prisoners here, then?”

  “You just came from a detention room—you tell me, do you think this the same?”

  “It might be. Who are these friends of yours, Echo?”

  His gaze left her face and swept around the room. Looking for … what? “I can’t talk about that now. I can’t talk about a lot of things. You’re going to have to trust me, all right?” He gave her hand a squeeze. “All right?”

  Sheridan let out an exasperated breath. “Echo, I have been chased down by Enforcers, shot, and dragged to a room where I watched Taylor being beaten—knowing full well that I was going to be next. Then I was taken to a detention room, taken to your car, blindfolded, and brought to this place. I know nothing about these people except that they make you nervous, and at this point, I’m running low on trust.”

  “Running low?” he repeated.

  “I want to know what’s going on. Are these people Dakine?”

  He stepped closer to her. “Don’t say that word. You’re not supposed to know what it means and you’ll get us in trouble.”

  She inwardly groaned. He wasn’t going to give her any answers.

  “Listen to me, Sheridan.” Echo put his hands on her shoulders and whispered, “Whatever happens to either of us, this is what you need to know. I care about you. I’m doing everything I can to help you, to help all of us. Do you believe me?”

  She looked into his blue eyes and wished he hadn’t asked this particular question. How could she believe him? And yet she wanted to, and for her own safety, for Taylor’s, Sheridan couldn’t say no.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He bent down and dropped a soft kiss on her mouth. “I’ll come back soon.”

  He gave her a smile as he left, a smile that seemed completely genuine and caring. It was amazing how he could smile like that and at the same time be Dakine. And it was amazing how she could know he was Dakine and still feel her heart beat faster because he smiled.

  chapter

  30

  Sheridan watched Echo go, then walked over to the computer, noting as she did that the children’s program was already gone from the screen. Taylor had switched it to the computer function. Her hands moved quickly across the keyboard, accessing what appeared to be a monitor full of numbers and squiggles.

  Sheridan squinted at the screen. “What are you doing?”

  Taylor didn’t take her eyes from the monitor, just held up one hand to indicate she wanted silence. Finally she said, “If there’s a recording function on this computer, it isn’t turned on now. None of the sensors are intaking data. We can talk.”

  “Good.” Sheridan slid into the chair next to Taylor. “So what do we do now?”

  Taylor exited out of one page and brought up another. “We’re going to get out of here as soon as I can figure out how to turn off the door alarms.”

  “What about Echo?”

  “I guess he’ll have to find some other girls to train as assassins.”

  Sheridan sighed, unable to abandon Echo quite as easily. “He says he’s helping us.”

  “Yeah, he says a lot of things. Did I mention that he tackled me in the Scicenter, turned me over to the Enforcers, and then turned us both over to the Dakine?”

  “He didn’t have a lot of choices, did he?”

  Taylor kept her eyes on the screen, skimming through rows of numbers and signs. “Look, I know the guy is hot, but despite that sterling quality, I don’t trust him. So you can’t tell him anything about our escape plans.”

  “Isn’t it possible that he’s trying to get away from the Dakine?”

  Taylor grunted the way she always did when Sheridan failed to grasp the obvious. “Judging from our accommodations, I’d say no.”

  “Didn’t you see the way he looked when Lobo mentioned Joseph’s death? It was pure hatred.”

  “It may have been hatred for Joseph.”

  “I think Echo has made mistakes, but he’s basically good—”

  “Listen,” Taylor said, turning in her chair toward Sheridan. “I let you make the last important decision. Instead of looking out for ourselves and escaping first thing this morning, I went to the Scicenter and destroyed my QGP.

  “Around the time Reilly was pummeling my face, I started questioning the wisdom of that decision. So this time we’re not taking the moral high ground. We’re not trusting in the goodness of human nature or in your crime-lord boyfriend. We’re leaving alone.” Taylor turned back to the computer, typing quickly.

  Sheridan watched her, noting her swollen face again. “You don’t regret staying to destroy the QGP, do you? Think of the lives you saved.”

  Taylor kept typing. “Right now I’m too busy thinking of my own life.”

  Sheridan didn’t say anything else. There was no arguing with Taylor when she was like this.

  A grid came up on-screen. Taylor examined it. “We’re in quadrant two-C in the refuse outtake district, smack-dab next to a city wall. They process garbage here.” A jaded smile crossed her face. “I’m sure the location comes in handy when the Dakine are getting rid of their unwanted bodies.”

  “Does it say that on the computer, or are you just guessing?”

  “I don’t guess. I make educated deductions.” Taylor brought up another s
creen and then another. Some had words on them, but most were numbers and squiggles. With each new page of data, her expression grew grimmer. “If I didn’t already know Echo was involved with these people, I would now. These programs have his handiwork all over them.”

  “He wrote the Dakine computer programs?”

  “He showed me the loopholes in the government’s programs, but every one is plugged here. He knew how to use them, so he knew how to prevent them from being used.” She applied more pressure to the keyboard than needed. “The alarms are controlled by the computer system, but I can’t get past the security grid without an approved DNA scan. He’s also blocked out the locks to the weapons room, the layout of the building, the personnel file—just about anything that might be useful to us. Oh look, the Dakine have their own set of cars, and I can’t get to them either.”

  She flipped to another screen, a list of names and figures. “I should have known I’d find this. The Dakine keep track of everybody’s rank. I bet if you pay them enough, they’re willing to rearrange some number for you.”

  Taylor typed in Jeth’s name, then found his picture among a list of similar names. His number was 4,583,776. “Ouch,” she said. “That’s gotta hurt.” Next she typed Echo’s name. His picture appeared with the number 98,704.

  Taylor let out a low whistle. “That’s nothing to be ashamed about. He’s in the top one percent of the city.”

  The top one percent? The number made Sheridan pause. She would never be in the top one percent. Not in this time period or her old one. Echo probably knew that. Could he really be interested in her?

  It bothered her that this thought had even crossed her mind. Rank didn’t exist. Not really.

  Taylor left the rankings and went to another site. Her fingers stopped their tapping. “Here’s something interesting.”

  “What?”

  “I guess they didn’t feel the need to protect this information.”

  “What?” Sheridan asked again.

  “There are doors leading out of Traventon in quadrant two-C; city workers use them to take unrecyclable garbage outside. Anyone who uses those doors has to have their signal approved and temporarily shielded by the government or they’ll receive a deadly shock from the city’s force field.

  “The Dakine have a stealth program that cuts into the government’s, so they can block their signals and use the doors.” Taylor leaned back with a satisfied smile. “Of course, Echo has cleverly installed security devices around that program, so I can’t access it.”

  “But you don’t need to,” Sheridan finished for her, “because we have no signals to block.”

  Taylor grinned, the tension draining from her shoulders. “If we can get out of this building, we can walk out of the city.”

  Sheridan reached for the candy bowl and popped a piece into her mouth. Chocolate. That hadn’t changed in four centuries. She emptied half the bowl into the pockets in her dress, then handed the rest to Taylor. “We’ll need something to eat while we’re out there.”

  Taylor didn’t take the candy. “If anyone catches us with food in our pockets, they’ll know we’re up to something.”

  “Or they’ll think we’re chocolate addicts. We did come from the twenty-first century.”

  Taylor closed out one screen and went to another. “If we can manage it, we’ll take the candy right before we escape. But we’ll need to do some foraging once we leave the city. Luckily, we’re used to the outdoors.”

  Sheridan took another handful of candy. “We’ve never foraged in our lives.”

  “If it looks like nettles or poison ivy, we won’t eat it.” Taylor’s concentration returned to the computer, her fingers already punching in a succession of numbers and letters. “I’ll find a way around the alarms. I’m not about to be undone by that glorified English teacher.”

  Glorified English teacher. Honestly, did Taylor even remember that Sheridan had planned on being an English teacher? Sheridan popped another chocolate ball into her mouth. “You just can’t bear to think that anyone is as smart as you.”

  “I can bear to think someone is as smart as me, just not Echo.”

  “Why not him?” Because he liked Sheridan instead of her? Did Taylor think that showed a glaring lack of intelligence?

  “Because instead of doing something useful, the guy joined the Mafia and studied words for a living.”

  Sheridan leaned back in her chair. “Which bothers you more?”

  Taylor shot Sheridan an exasperated look. “He should have been an engineer, a scientist, a researcher. He could have been someone great.”

  “And people who use and study words are never great?”

  “They’re great when you need a good book, but even you have to admit that none of the important advancements in society—the breakthroughs in science, technology, and medicine—were discovered by English majors.”

  And science, technology, and medicine were, of course, the only valid advancements society ever made. Sheridan usually would have let it drop. This time she didn’t. “Words create thought. Thought changes society.”

  “Maybe, but words don’t create automobiles, computer chips, or penicillin. If all the great minds had studied words, we’d have some really nice novels we could read by candlelight in our caves.”

  Sheridan pushed herself away from the desk. Taylor needed to work on the computer, not debate the merits of the literary profession. Still, it irked her. Sheridan might not be able to understand computer functions on first sight or invent machines that changed matter into energy, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t smart in other areas.

  As Taylor mumbled threats against the computer, Sheridan pulled the mirror around so that it blocked the view from the door. That way, if Echo came back soon, or if anyone else came into the room, they wouldn’t see what Taylor was doing. Then, because Sheridan needed a plausible excuse for having moved the mirror, she took some of the jeweled things from the desk and clipped them into her hair. It looked ridiculous, but at least she could pretend she’d been preening in front of the mirror.

  After a while, she peered around the mirror at Taylor. “Any luck?”

  “He’s blocked every way I can find around this encryption. It’s not even a two-dimensional block, it’s three-dimensional.”

  Whatever that meant.

  Taylor pushed her chair away from the desk and ran both hands through her hair. “It’s impossible to get around this.”

  “Then we’ll find another way to accomplish the same thing. Can we trick someone into taking us outside?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Sheridan returned her gaze to the mirror, to the reflection of the freckleless girl with golden eyes. “What happens when the alarm goes off?”

  “A loud noise blares through the speakers, and all the doors in the building automatically lock.”

  Sheridan considered this. “Could you change it so that the alarm still goes off but at such a high pitch that no one can hear it? And then the doors—”

  “The sound level is unchangeable,” Taylor said sourly. “It’s part of the door, not part of the program.”

  “Could you make the alarms go off continually? If they malfunctioned, then the Dakine would have to turn them off.”

  The frustration slowly melted from Taylor’s face. She looked up at the ceiling as though considering invisible equations written there. “That might work. As long as I hide the problem so they can’t fix it easily …” She returned her attention to the computer and typed out a line of numbers and letters on the keyboard. “If I made it look like it was part of the original programming … next time it cycled through a reset …”

  She didn’t finish speaking; instead, she kept typing.

  chapter

  31

  No one questioned Echo’s presence in the compucenter. He checked in, sat down in front of a computer, and accessed the control panels in what he hoped was a natural manner.

  That was the problem. He’d been tense for so long,
he’d forgotten how to act natural. Had anyone here noticed him acting differently?

  But then perhaps they expected it. After all, he’d just become a fugitive from the government, cut off from his father and everything in his old life. It would seem more unnatural if he acted like the old Echo—happy and carefree.

  He brought up the Prometheus program on-screen and gave it an algorithm loop to run so that he could do his real work undetected.

  Elise was still the only chance of a safe way out of Traventon. He had to contact her. It was risky to send a message to her comlink, though. If Enforcers had her in custody, they would be monitoring her comlink for information. They could use it to set a trap for him.

  But that was only if they had taken her into custody. Jeth and Elise couldn’t be blamed for losing the time riders. The Dakine had taken them from the government’s own detention rooms. Still, the wordsmiths might be in trouble for the things that had happened beforehand, when Echo went off with Taylor and Sheridan escaped from the Histocenter. Hopefully Jeth and Elise could make their innocence convincing, or at least slide the fault over to Echo. By now the government had certainly realized the contradictions in Echo’s Scicenter story. They were looking for him. He was certain of it.

  Would his father have the sense to blame Echo, or would he give way to parental loyalty and defend him? Echo could see Jeth standing in front of Helix, the anger on his face shining as brightly as the green circles he wore. “Of course Echo disappeared along with the time riders. The Dakine knew they’d need a translator to speak to the girls, so they kidnapped him too. How can you accuse him of crimes when you should be finding and freeing him? I’ll contact the mayor himself about this!”

  Yes, Jeth would probably defend Echo, the same way he’d defended him to anyone who implied that Echo had something to do with Joseph’s death. Jeth would defend Echo even if he didn’t believe in his innocence himself.