His head spun as he processed their next move. This was bad. Two days was too long to wait. Without his Omnis, he had no way of communicating with his team, no way of letting them know what danger he was in. What danger they might all be in.
Interactions with people from the past were rare, but they happened from time to time. After all, time travel wasn't perfect. In fact, it was often unpredictable, making it a dangerous job to take on. But the repercussions usually only backfired on the Migrators.
An unknown subject Affected by time could alter the future for everyone in existence. The progression of being Affected was fatal and the last stage was the most dangerous of them all. The subject's body would become so confused, it would migrate through time without reason. The subject could migrate to a new time, showing up disoriented and alone. It would happen again and again, weakening their body until death. It had the potential to alter lineages, not to mention to reveal the existence of time travel and Migrators.
It could get them killed.
What had he done?
"Ben?" Amelia broke into his thoughts. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." His lips said the words for him, but he wasn't sure he meant them. They'd lost so much time at the hospital, and the time left ahead of them was daunting. If he had migrated successfully, by now he would have been resting to regain his strength. He wasn't sure how long he was going to last.
Thirty-six hours was a long time.
They drove down the highway in silence, Ben's thoughts overwhelming him. There was no easy solution, no quick fix. He was just going to have to ride out this journey the old-fashioned way. He felt ashamed to admit to himself that he had never felt this lost before. But he was a Migrator. A solider. He'd get the job done, even if it killed him. Quickly, he became frustrated with the slow pace of the ambulance, annoyed with each bump in the road they hit, furious that the technology was so outdated.
Amelia changed positions every so often in the seat, tension radiating from her uncomfortable movements. She had gotten up a few times, disappearing behind his seat to check on her sister, then returning to sulk. The pair sat in silence for what felt like hours, only broken by the directions from the GPS.
The sky ahead became a lighter shade of blue, the sun hanging high in the sky. It would be mid-day soon. He looked to his side, surprised to see Amelia curled up in her seat, knees to her chest, staring at him.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I'm trying to figure you out," she said, as if she'd thought of this answer a while ago and just now had the chance to say it.
"Figure what out?"
"If this is all real," she said. "If you're really what you say you are."
Carefully, he raised an eyebrow. "What reason do I have to lie to you?"
"If you really are a time traveler—"
"Migrator," he corrected her.
"Migrator. Can't we just go back to before the crash and fix this whole mess? Then we wouldn't have to take this trip, you can go on with your business, and Faye and I could just go back to our normal lives."
Ben smiled. The simple-mindedness of a Predecessor. "Don't you think I would have already done that if I could? That's not how Migrating works. If we went back to the other day, we'd duplicate our timeline. Two versions of ourselves. And you don't want to see how that plays out."
She processed the comment with her lip between her teeth. Ben could see how easy it might seem for time travel to fix things, but that convoluted simplicity was what tore up time travel in the first place. Someone from this time certainly couldn't understand the complexity of the rules surrounding time travel. Besides, he didn't have the time to explain it to her.
"Well, I suppose that makes sense."
"I'm not lying to you," he told her simply. She seemed to be having trouble wrapping her mind around his existence, and that was understandable. Still, she'd followed him this far. "Some part of you must believe me."
She seemed to think about that for a moment before nodding. "It's crazy. But I don't not believe you. It's too coincidental."
He gave her a small smile. "Let's just get your sister the help she needs."
She turned away from him, tensing at the subject. He hit a nerve, though he hadn't meant to. It all came back to the simple worries these Predecessors had, creating strong attachments to other humans. It made them weak. After all the death and destruction that had descended upon Ben's world, one only had the capacity to care about themselves. That's what kept him alive.
A Migrator needs no friends or family.
Achieving the perfect timeline is his purpose.
"By the way." Her voice was softer this time. "What's your plan for this ambulance?"
Ben tried to ignore her.
"You know they could throw us into jail if we get caught with this thing, right?"
He sighed. That was the least of their worries. "One thing at a time. Don't worry about that right now. We can always leave it and move on."
She laughed softly. "You make it sound so easy."
"Isn't it?"
She sighed, but didn't answer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They sat in silence, the drive becoming an afterthought. Empty road stretched out before them, scenery blurring together as they drove through town after town, each road identified by a sign. The trees that surrounded them were a mix of greens, reds, oranges, and yellows, vivacious colors that Ben never had the time to appreciate. It was beautiful; like being in a different world. Coming here was such a privilege.
"Ebenezer." Amelia finally broke the silence. "That's not a name I'd expect from someone from the future."
He glanced at her, half expecting a smile, but she still frowned, like she still couldn't quite figure him out. He preferred that. There was nothing for her to figure out. He couldn't expect her to understand him.
"And what did you expect?"
She shrugged. "Not something so old-sounding. Do you have a last name?"
"A last name?"
"You know, a surname."
"Ah." He understood. "No. There's no necessity for Migrators to have surnames."
Amelia raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"
The woman was insatiably curious. "As Migrators, our names really hold no importance. What we do, our jobs, our ranks, that's what's important. That's how we leave our legacy. None of us need surnames."
"Yet you have a nickname?"
His teammates doing. "Unfortunately."
"But you must be invincible. Knowing the secrets of time?"
"Not at all. Migrators don't live forever. In fact, our life expectancy is fairly short. At least in comparison to others from our time."
Amelia seemed to think for a moment. "But what if you have children?"
He locked eyes with Amelia. The woman's questions were innocent and eager, but they frustrated Ben. Her concerns felt frivolous and meaningless, given the circumstances.
"We don't."
He turned back towards the road, uninterested in more conversation. He wanted to focus on the task ahead and get to the Compound with everyone in one piece. Or at least try.
"There are others, you said? Other Migrators?" she tried again.
Ben clutched the steering wheel. "Yes." He saw her shift uncomfortably in the seat beside him, seemingly perplexed by his short answers. He looked down at the cell phone he'd positioned beside him. Thirty odd hours left. They truly had nothing but time. He dropped his shoulders and sighed. "Esau is the youngest. He's sixteen."
Amelia leaned over the arm of her chair, listening intently. "Wow," she said.
"What?"
"Sixteen is…young."
Ben shook his head. "It's the age of adulthood. Esau reminds me a lot of myself," he admitted. "Strong, loyal, focused. He's a valuable Migrator. Cheyenne is seventeen," he continued, "and Lucy is twenty. Nine months younger than me. We've been together almost since the beginning of our migrating days."
"And they're all at the place we're going to?"
H
e nodded reluctantly. "They've probably been there for a day or two by now. I suspect they've all assumed I've died or lost my way during the migration. With my Omnis broken, they'll have no way of locating me." He peered down at his bare arm again out of habit, expecting it to light up.
"Won't they be worried about you?"
"Worried?" Ben forced a laugh. "Hardly."
"So, they're not going to care that you didn't come back when you were supposed to?"
"They'll care once they learn of your sister. But under normal circumstances, no. If I die or get lost on mission, they'll need to move on. All that matters during a migration is completing our task. A Migrator lives to serve the better good of his people."
"But still," Amelia pressed, "they wouldn't even come looking for you? After all that?"
"They know I'll be able to find my way back eventually, if I'm alive. Like I said, time travel can be unpredictable. Sometimes we end up in places we're not supposed to be." He sighed. "It's just never this far off. And Affecting a Predecessor on top of it." He swiped his hand over his face.
"What's a Predecessor?"
He looked at her. "You are. A person who's from before our time."
She nodded. "But what you did to Faye, that was a mistake. Wasn't it?"
"Of course it was." Ben gritted his teeth. "I would never willingly Affect someone. It's not a fate I'd wish upon anyone."
"She'll be all right," Amelia said after a heavy pause. "Won't she?"
Ben let his foot slip from the gas pedal before regaining his composure. "I'll do my best to make sure she is. It's the best I can do." It was the honest truth.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her bite her lip and lean backwards into the seat. "I guess that's all I can ask for."
"I am sorry." And he really was. But he couldn't waste time trying to make her feel better when he needed to focus on getting them to the Compound.
Amelia shifted in her seat. "So, how far in the future are you from?"
"About a thousand years from now."
She took a deep breath. "What's it like?"
Ben hesitated. "It's…different than your world." The question was a tricky one to answer without completely diving into knowledge Amelia had no business knowing. But the damage had already been done. They'd been looped into his timeline. There was no reversing their meeting now.
"Different how?"
"Well, for starters, we're different. Humans, I mean. We're the product of ages and ages of the perfectibility of genes, and so some of our genetic makeup has changed, most notably our precognitive abilities."
"You mean—"
"There was a time where at least thirty percent of our population could see bits and pieces of what was going to happen in the future. We called them Seers."
"Wicked." Amelia grinned, bringing her legs underneath herself to kneel on the seat. She looked like a small child, eager to hear a new story. "And the time travelers?"
"Migrators."
"Right, sorry. The Migrators. Where do they fit in?"
"Migrators are a recent concept, generally speaking. It's our responsibility to fix the faults of time travel. It's necessary to ensure the survivability of our generation. The creation and existence of time travel messed a lot of things up."
"Can you see into the future?"
"No. Seers have mostly died out. There are only two with that ability from where I come from."
"So, you're like a superhero. Travel through time and save the world?"
"Superhero?" The term was lost on Ben.
"You know, Batman, Spiderman. Beat up the bad guys. Save the world?" He looked at her blankly, and she shook her head in response. "Never mind."
"Migrators are not a joke, Amelia." His frustration peaked. "We commit our entire lives to cleaning up messes from the past. Messes that people from this time felt compelled to create. For a period of time, time travel was a common practice for people who had the money to use the technology. It was misused, abused by those who had access to it. It continues to cause a lot of problems in our time. We've made progress, but there's still so much work to be done."
"Well, if you can't go back to a time where you've been, couldn't you just go back to that time and take time travel away from those people? Make it so it was never created?"
"It's not that simple. There are many rules. We have a strict timeline that we need to maintain. The invention of time travel, the access it gave to people, that was a major event of the timeline. The only way we could change it is to work backwards. Modify the timeline in succession, in just the right way so that it never existed in the first place. But it's painstakingly detailed work. So many travelers were careless, trying to change things that weren't theirs to change."
"So why do you do it? Why not just leave things the way they are?"
"Once the timeline is complete, back to the way it was meant to be, our world, in our time, will be right and in order. Our world now, it's not ideal. The perfected timeline will fix that."
She opened her mouth again, but before she could ask another question, there was a blood-curdling scream. Amelia jumped.
"AMELIA!" The yell was filled with pain. Ben winced, his guilt still heavy.
"Jesus." Amelia struggled to unbuckle herself from the passenger side seat.
"She needs something for her pain. There might be something in the back of the ambulance."
She stared at him with wide eyes.
"Side effect," he told her.
"Oh." Amelia grabbed her small bag from the floor of the vehicle. "I'll take care of it," she mumbled, and disappeared into the back.
CHAPTER NINE
Amelia thanked the gods and goddesses that she had scooped those baggies of pills up into her purse. She'd never wholeheartedly agreed with the whole drug dealing thing that Faye caught herself up in, but it paid the rent. Right now, she didn't care where the pills came from, as long as she could do something to stop her from screaming.
Faye laid flat on a small stretcher in the back of the ambulance. She roared in pain, rolling to her side to face her sister. Her swollen eyes haunted Amelia, tears flooding her cheeks.
"Faye." She steadied her feet with the moving ambulance and took a seat next to the stretcher.
"My body," Faye sobbed, squeezing her eyes shut. "It feels like my insides are drying up."
"I grabbed some stuff before we left the crash." Amelia nervously rummaged through her purse. Dirt filled the bottom, along with her phone charger, a small wallet, and at least three dozen small baggies. "The pills," she explained, even though Faye knew exactly what she was talking about. "The painkillers."
"Oh god," Faye breathed. "Amelia, thank god."
"Here." Amelia frantically dumped two pale orange pills into Faye's hands. She popped them into her mouth, squeezed her eyes closed, and swallowed dry.
"Are you okay?"
"No." Faye opened one eye slowly. "Where the hell are we?"
"Highway," Amelia said. "We're going to Vegas."
Faye frowned at her. "I appreciate the gesture since you know strippers and gambling take me to my happy place, but I'm not sure now's the time."
"Faye." She looked at her seriously. "We're following the man who rescued us."
"Thought as much." Faye gritted her teeth as she fought the pain within her body.
"There's a place. The Compound, he called it." Amelia grasped her sister's hand and squeezed, trying to empathize with her pain. "It's just outside Vegas. He says there's a doctor there that can help you."
"Amelia." Faye moaned again, rolling onto her back, biting her lip to try and manage her pain. "Are you sure we can trust this guy? I mean…" She winced again. "He was babbling on and on about time travel."
Amelia hesitated to elaborate on the conversation she'd just had with Ben. Faye's lip was bloody from where she bit it. Now wasn't the time. "We can trust him."
Faye looked up at Amelia, eyes tired, weak from whatever was happening inside her body. "Okay. This is crazy
, but…I trust you." Amelia placed her palm against her sister's face. "Don't do that crap," Faye said, recoiling from her touch.
"What crap?"
"All that lovey-dovey comforting crap." She rolled her eyes. "I don't need you treating me like some victim."
"Just want you to know I'm here," Amelia said simply, pulling her hand away, face flushing red. This was typical Faye—rejecting any sort of emotional connection, especially when she was feeling vulnerable.
"You should sleep."
"Amelia."
"It's okay." Amelia stood. "I know you're hurting. The pills'll help."
Faye nodded. "Love you," she offered as a pseudo-apology, though she'd never actually say she was sorry.
"Love you," Amelia replied as she moved to the front of the ambulance. Annoyed by her sister's response, she tried to remind herself that Faye was in pain. She was the one with the mysterious illness. Still, selfishly, Amelia felt like this was all happening to her, too.
The sun rose above the ambulance—the sky a cheerful blue with wisps of clouds available just above the trees that scattered at the sides of the highway. It did not match Amelia's mood. Ben's window was cracked, the fall breeze adding freshness to the stale smell inside of their vehicle.
"She okay?" he asked as she settled into her seat. He looked more relaxed now, leaning back in the chair, left hand draped lazily over the steering wheel. His profile was alarmingly sharp, but still pleasant to look at. She saw his eyes flick towards her for a moment before they returned to the road.
"Yeah." Amelia pulled her legs up on the seat. "Still stubborn as hell."
The sides of his lips curved upwards. "I know the type."
She glanced at her cell phone that stated they still had thirty-two hours left in their journey. Amelia wondered how long the painkillers would last. The journey still seemed excruciatingly long.
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