by Michael Shaw
His forehead started to show a bruise from where my past self had hit him with the baseball bat. Blood from the gun wound covered his hand and the ground.
I reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone. He was losing consciousness. I held up his arm and scanned his Mark. “Daniel Pruitt,” the phone displayed..
I took out my wallet to compare names. I had always remembered the name of the man that was found at the scene of my parents’ death, but I just had to see it. I took the card out and looked at the name I’d written down. “Peter Simmons.”
Taking out the card, I saw something underneath it; something I had forgotten was there. “Eclipse.” It was the card Hunter had given me.
The kidnapper named Daniel Pruitt was continuing to lose blood. I dialed for the police on the phone.
A voice came on the line. “911, what is your emergency?”
I hesitated, knowing it would attract police to this area. All of this distance that I had gone would mean nothing. But it already meant nothing anyway. Luna sent a hired gun my way the first night. I would have to keep running, just like the man with the photos had admonished. “Someone’s been shot,” I said restlessly.
“Okay, sir, are you in danger?”
“No,” I stood up. “I shot him.”
A moment of hesitation from the call-taker. “What is your location?”
“I know how this works. You’ve already tracked the location through my phone.” I pulled out my keys and unlocked the door. “Come quickly. He’s losing blood.”
“Wait, what is your name-”
I hung up and dropped it on top of him. Stepping over his body, I closed the back door to my car. The entire window was gone. I bent over, picked up the bat, and tossed it into the back seat.
Now was the time to leave. But where would I go? I couldn’t run as I had done today. They would find me; I’d learned that in one night. I needed a plan. A real, concrete plan. But so far, all that anyone had told me to do was run.
“You,” he growled.
I looked back at Daniel Pruitt as I stood next to the driver’s door of my car.
His eyes made as though to grab me through his dark mask. He shook with each breath he took. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he groaned.
I opened the door.
“You’re just going to leave me here?” He yelled.
“You tried to take what’s mine,” I replied tersely. It came out in a tone I was not accustomed to. It was hardened. Cold. I swallowed in response to my own words and stared at the man lying helpless on the ground.
“You don’t know me, do you?” He mumbled.
“No.”
“No,” he repeated, shaking his head, “but I know you.”
I had no time to waste. The police would be on their way. I put one foot in the car.
“They’re going to kill you, Ashe,” he spat.
Goosebumps jumped onto my arms; I looked at him once more before getting in the car and driving away.
At the end of this day, I realized that finding the pocket watch had thrown me into a conflict that I did not understand.
That, and that I really sucked at time travel.
Chapter 12
Finding another place to hide for the night was not a problem. As for forming a plan, I was lost.
A few hours passed, and it was already the next day. When the clock hit 8:00 am I got up and kept moving. At this point, I knew that simply running, though initially understandable based on my intuitions, would now be ill-advised. These people knew how to find me, and I did not want to be caught in an inescapable situation. Luckily, looking through my wallet had given me an idea. “You will find help.” Jason’s words repeated in my head. “You’ll just have to look in the right places.”
I had to ask to borrow a phone on one of the many sidewalks in the streets of San Jose. Either Luna or the police could trace me through my own phone, and I didn’t want to risk that.
“Please, I just need it for two seconds,” I said to the woman. She appeared nice; she looked very old, and she was the only one who would look at me when I tried to get her attention.
She looked me up and down. “Okay,” she smiled, “I’ll even give you two extra seconds.”
“Thank you.” Turning to the side, I pulled out the card. “Eclipse.” The print was now faded, rubbed off by leather and worn down by time. I turned the card over. All the digits to the phone number were still there.
For some reason, my heart began to pound. Perhaps it was because it had been so long since Hunter and I last spoke. Perhaps it was because he and I had parted on bad terms. I had nothing to make up to him, though. He had wronged me back when we were teens, and even though he made it right in the end, I wondered if he would be too ashamed to talk to me.
I turned on the screen. “Ashley’s phone,” it displayed in large text. I felt her eyes on me as I opened up the phone application and dialed the number. Once I entered it in, I didn’t have to wait long.
After four rings, a man picked up. “Hello?” It was a voice I did not recognize.
“Hello,” I responded, not knowing what to say next. “Is - is this Eclipse?”
“Sorry,” he said quickly, “you have the wrong number.”
“Oh,” I scratched my head. “Well, could you-”
He hung up.
I lowered the phone. A monotone ring dragged along.
The woman watched me, hands behind her back.
“Sorry, I need to try one more time.” I redialed the number.
He picked back up after a single ring. “I told you, you have the wrong-”
“Hunter Calhoun.”
He stopped mid-sentence.
“Hunter Calhoun gave me this number.” I shifted my eyes at the woman.
I was left with more silence, making me worry that he would hang up again.
A new voice came on the line. “Who is this?”
I closed my eyes and exhaled. “Hey Hunter.”
“Yes? Who are you?”
“The guy who still carries a wallet.”
“What… Jon Ashe?”
I nodded. “Hey.”
“How did you-”
“I hope you remember that you gave me this number.”
“No, I mean, how are you not dead right now?”
I looked back at the lady. “What do you mean?”
“You’re all over the news. Theft, assault, murder.”
“Wait,” I cut in, “murder?”
“Yeah, you know,” he hesitated, “Jason.”
I rubbed my eyes, head down. “No, no. That wasn’t me.”
“Well everyone sure thinks it was. You fled the scene after he kicked it, right?”
This was all wrong. My heart rate rose even further. Every time I was reminded of Jason, I was faced with the guilt that they came for him because of me. “I didn’t… I didn’t do it.”
He heard the tremor in my voice. “I’m sorry, Jon. I believe you. Really.”
I swallowed and squeezed my temples. Maybe if I had told Jason about the pocket watch earlier. Maybe if I hadn’t taken the watch out before the interview. If I had done things differently. If. It was always if. If I had made different decisions. If I had thought more clearly. This could have all been prevented.
“I know how much you loved him,” Hunter said softly.
I nodded. “It’s okay.” That was a lie. I inhaled slowly.
“Listen, Jon. We never really talked after everything happened. You know, after what I did.”
“Hunter…”
“I never even admitted it to your face,” he persisted. “I - I guess I’m sorry.” His voice started to shake a bit. “I can’t believe I even-”
“Hunter,” I cut in.
“Yeah?”
“I need your help.”
He sighed. “Yeah. Right, okay.”
“Listen, before Jason died, he told me what I needed to do.”
“What?”
I put my inde
x finger on top of the phone. I had dealt with Hunter before. And while I still didn’t know much about this “Eclipse” business, I did know that it could make one thing I needed. It would have gotten me out of half of the obstacles I had encountered in the past day. I needed a counterfeit Mark ID. “You remember how you always got into the bar? Back in high school?” I asked it softly, so that the woman couldn’t hear.
“Yeah.”
“I need what you had. I need one of those.”
He hesitated, but after a moment’s thought, he conceded. “Sure, anything you need.”
“Where are you located?”
“Upstate. I mean, if you’re in Sacramento-”
“I’m not.”
“Well I’m going to need you to be. That’s about the best I can do. “
I took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll see what I can work out.”
He hesitated. “So, you’re really trusting me again… Even after what happened?”
I stole one more glance at the woman. And then I took a deep breath and replied, “Well, right now, it looks like I have to.”
∞
I drove on an empty road toward the expressway. Back toward Sacramento. Toward Luna. I can’t believe I’m going back in their direction.
I turned the radio on and tuned it until I heard the news. It was about me. Hunter was right.
“We will continue to bring you any update on this investigation as it comes along,” the man said.
“Remember to contact authorities if you see this man. He’s considered extremely dangerous, and-”
I laughed. I actually laughed when he said that. “Extremely dangerous,” I repeated, shaking my head as he blathered on. He went on to talk about the police’s efforts. They were practically tearing apart my house now, searching for anything that could be used in the investigation.
I sighed. How had all of this happened so quickly?
“Jonathan Ashe may be driving a blue Mercedes.”
What? I looked down at the radio.
“And the police have his tag information. So if you believe you have seen this man-”
I pulled the car over to the side and shoved my foot down on the brake. My body lurched forward; the seatbelt locked. My car came to a stop. Dust rose up from the dirt on the shoulder. I looked around at the interior of the car. After a long silence, I inhaled, closing my eyes. They have my car’s description. And tag number. I opened my eyes and peered over into the rearview mirror. A car was advancing from behind. As it drove by, the driver glanced at me.
I shifted in my seat. “Well,” I muttered, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. Looking up to the side, I saw the sign for the interstate. Just to the right of it, a giant billboard. Get There Fast. Ride Aurora Railways. The sign held a picture of a large, sleek train.
I stared at it for a few moments, but finally I remembered. “Aurora…”
∞
I had to leave my car. I had to leave it and travel the Aurora. It was the best way I could get to Hunter, and the news had given a description of my vehicle to the public.
To be sure, abandoning my car felt dumb. Almost as dumb as my frantic escape from the day before. But people were suddenly set on finding me no matter where I went. I supposed the theft and murder charges were enough to do that.
The Aurora was a solar powered, fully electric, and almost completely silent, locomotive train. A route ran up and down state on it, and it was a popular mode of transportation for business men and traveling families. Its slick blue and silver made it distinguishable from all the others, rushing across the onlooker’s eye as it sped along the tracks.
I boarded with all my things; before I drove to Aurora, I had bought another bag for the bigger stuff I was carrying, like the baseball bat. I buried the gun deep inside the bag, and it was stored in overhead bins. No checked bags. This was one advantage to me; Aurora had almost no security beforehand, due to some recent legislation. Privacy, freedom, and the sort. Public opinion can lead to some interesting liberties.
When I went to purchase a new bag, I also picked up some more things to help the pain on my arm. As I continued to use the watch, each press of the button now seemed to cause a burning sensation that occurred more on the inside of the arm than just on the outer skin. What the watch did to it was unlike any other injury. Instead of worsening as it was left untreated, my skin practically healed itself. It went from pain, to irritation, to itching, and back to normal again. But every time I used the watch, its initial effects became worse. That was what I feared now; not the long term results, but the fact the watch was packing a bigger punch with each successive use.
Bandages. Ointments. Gauze. I didn’t really know what I was doing; there would be no “treatment for time travel” remedies in the store. I went into a bathroom and covered my palm in bandaids; fortunately, the glass hadn’t dug in deep. I unwrapped my arm and took a look. There had been burns before, but they were gone. There was some dead skin now, all in the places where I had scratched the itching. None of that bothered me. What did, though, was the color of my veins. They stuck out with clear definition, just as Jason had noticed the day before he died. What stood out even more was the color. I held my arm up in the mirror. The veins were a deep, blood red. I grimaced at the sight. My left arm did not even have the same anomaly. It was just the right arm. The spread had started from the hand that I always held the pocket watch with. The veins could be seen from the bend in my elbow down to the wrist, completely red all the way through. The outer pain and burns, while irritating, were manageable. But these veins were beneath the flesh. There was not much I could do about them. This was that inner pain that I did not know how to handle.
I looked at the gauze that I had taken from my arm. It had done almost nothing besides cover the irritated areas, so I got rid of it. I put on a long sleeve shirt in order to hide the red veins, and I took one last look at my reflection. My brown, straight hair. Green eyes. Rigid jaw. I wondered how recognizable my face would be. I wondered if anyone had noticed me while I traveled. If the next person I saw would be the one to report me to the police. I wondered if I would ever be safe. If I would ever be in control.
I left my Mercedes in the parking lot for the train.
“3:00 pm to Sacramento. Now boarding.”
I boarded the back part of the train with my book bag. The train was a lot of metal. Metal steps. Metal ceiling. My feet stepped on a metal floor. As I entered, a door opened up toward me and hit my forehead. “Oh, sorry,” I backed up. It was someone emerging from the back restroom. A woman. When she got a glimpse of me, she narrowed her eyes.
Come on, I thought while feigning a smile, I don’t need suspicion already.
After a second, I realized she was actually just looking at my wrist. The red veins were exposed. I pulled down my sleeve.
She closed the door and walked back to her seat. I advanced to mine. Aisle seat.
The train began moving shortly after I boarded. Not too many people were in this car. That put me at ease; being noticed wasn’t something I preferred right now. I was the only one on my row of two seats. I stared out the window as the Aurora flew through the city. Buildings blurred by, and as we went further along, trees and a constant blue sky passed my window.
Televisions at the front of each aisle displayed movies and shows as we travelled, but I paid no attention. I focused on the watch. It was at three percent now, and I figured it wouldn’t be much longer before it died. It was clear that the power was not referring to its functionality as a watch, but as a time device, so it could potentially go on for much longer if I did not have to pause time again. But I had a feeling I would be needing it.
I held onto those two pictures. The one of my family, and the one of Jason with me and my mother. And I remembered why I was doing all of this. I also looked back at the pictures of me, from my mysterious stalker. Who would have left these for me? And why the simple admonition to keep running?
A news segment came on the tel
evisions. I heard my name.
“New information today on Jonathan Ashe, the college graduate who allegedly stole a valuable prototype from Luna Corporation.”
My face popped on the screen. I slumped down in my seat.
“Now, investigators are saying that he is a primary suspect in the murder of Jason Spade. Spade had been Jonathan’s caretaker after his parents’ death.”
I put all the pictures back in the book bag, but I held onto the note. “Keep running.”
“On top of this, sources say that Jonathan believed he was in possession of, get this, a time machine.” The anchor said it with a smirk on her face.
It cut to an interview shot. The current CEO of Luna. It was a name I had honestly forgotten. Patrick Corley. Skinny, pasty, and old.
“According to his longtime friend, a current employee of ours, Alex Nelson, Mr. Ashe truly thinks he has, well, a time machine.”
I gripped my arm rests. No. Alex told them?
The CEO grinned as though it were ridiculous. “And, obviously, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
It cut back to the anchor. “As more information on this investigation comes, we will keep you updated.”
As the news went on, I clutched my bag closely. Most people around me didn’t notice. But there was one man who did. Throughout the news story, he kept glancing back at me.
I kept my head down, and when the man wasn’t watching me, I tried to get a good look at him.
He held a hood over his head. Sunglasses on his face. Was this the same man? The one who took out the police man?
He kept one hand inside the bag on his lap. What was he holding? He took it just a bit further out of the bag, keeping it low. It was a camera. He held it tightly, finger on the button.
I looked back down at the note, then up at the man.
The train was slowly coming to a stop.
“Passengers traveling to Sacramento, we are about to reach the station.”
I watched the man. When he saw that he had gotten my attention, he quickly turned around.
I shoved the note into my pocket.
Once the train completely stopped, some passengers began to stand up. I stood with them, slinging my bag onto my back. This time I did not choose escape. This man, unlike the others, was not trying to catch me. He was instructing me. And that didn’t make sense. Did he know Jason? Did he know my father? I approached his seat from behind, prepared to box him in, and to ask him what was happening. To ask him who he was. To ask him why he was following me. Why he was taking those pictures.
