The Pocket Watch

by Michael Shaw

  ∞

  I met up with Alex at his house. We sat at his desk, in front of his laptop screen.

  A blurry picture. It came from a security camera at one of the stores on the side of the street.

  “Why did it take this long to get?” I asked.

  His finger hovered over the trackpad. “It was the only camera that caught the accident. The file was somehow corrupted. Only recently did they get it recovered.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” I leaned forward. “How does it take that long? All these months and it just turns up?”

  “I don’t know,” he clicked play, “but they got it.”

  The camera had a view of the street from the top of the store. His mother’s car pulled out onto the road, turning left.

  I preemptively flinched, knowing what was about to come. That type of foreboding was always odd to me. The kind where you know what is going to happen, but still react to it as though you were seeing it for the first time. Some things are hard to get used to, I supposed.

  The culprit drove a green truck. A dull, dark green. I couldn’t make out who was driving. It sped into view, and by then it was too late for anyone to react. The driver applied the breaks for just one moment before hitting her. It wasn’t anywhere near soon enough. The front right of the truck’s bumper made contact with Mrs. Nelson’s door.

  I grimaced. Her window shattered, glass flying inward. The door caved in with the brunt of the truck speeding through. I looked at Alex. His eyes fixated on the scene. Mouth closed. Jaw rigid.

  Back at the screen. The dust was settling now. The truck had ruined the door, and, as we already knew, everything that was behind it. After a moment of stillness, the truck backed up, separating from Mrs. Nelson’s car, and drove around it. It just kept going. It sped out of frame.

  And then the picture was still. It stopped, immortalizing the view of Claire Nelson, mangled and crushed behind her car door.

  Alex’s hand lifted off of the mouse. Shaking. He put both hands in his lap. But his eyes stayed on the monitor. Quiet breaths. Slow and deliberate, through the nostrils.

  We didn’t say anything. The AC turned on abruptly, and the vent in the ceiling began to breathe a light wind into the room.

  A sound came from downstairs in the kitchen. Something rolling across the wooden floor. It was faint, but I knew the sound. Mrs. Nelson was rolling through the kitchen in her electric wheel chair.

  I swallowed and leaned back in my chair, bringing a squeak that broke the silence. My lips parted. “So…” I stared at the picture. “Do they have any leads on who-”

  “No.” Alex lifted his hand back to the mouse.

  “What about the license plate-”

  “No.” His index finger curled on top of the left-click button.

  “But it’s on video. Why couldn’t they-”

  “There is no license plate.” He turned his head to me. “The vehicle didn’t have one.”

  Our eyes locked for a short moment, and then Alex looked back at the computer. He clicked the mouse, playing the video back again.

  I rubbed my forehead with my thumb and forefinger. “So this adds nothing to the investigation?”

  “Investigation?” His voice raised.

  I closed my mouth.

  “There is no investigation, Jon. It’s a hit-and-run from months ago. I’ve talked with the police enough to know,” he tightened his grip on the mouse, “they don’t care anymore.”

  I nodded. “Trust me. I understand.”

  His eyes met mine again.

  I breathed in slowly. “When police stop caring. When people stop caring. I get it.”

  Both of us breathed slow, deep breaths now. Alex’s eyes lowered. “I know you do.” He looked at the screen and watched the collision again. “But it’s just… It’s right there.”

  I looked with him.

  “I’m staring at it. It’s happening in front of me,” he pointed at the monitor, “but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  He played it over. Every time, it happened the same way. Mrs. Nelson crosses, the guy t-bones her, and he drives away. But Alex watched it as though playing it once more would make it happen differently.

  “There’s nothing,” he rested his hand on the keyboard, “nothing we can do.”

  The rolling of the wheels on the floor below us stopped for a moment.

  “I just… I…” He squinted for a second. When he opened his eyes back up, I saw that they were watering. He looked down at his lap, “I believe that things happen for a reason, but…” he shook his head, “I just don’t understand why all of these things had to happen this way.”

  I stared at the screen.

  “I mean why this? Why her?” Alex said, looking at me.

  The truck hit her. Again. And again. It played over and over, and I just kept watching.

  He expected an answer. “Jon?”

  The rolling of Mrs. Nelson’s wheels began once again.

  I exhaled. “Things don’t happen for a reason.”

  Alex started. My words made him pause.

  “Nothing’s preset, Alex.” I shook my head. “Jason would say the same thing as you, but, I’m sorry, things don’t happen for a reason.”

  He stared at me in surprise.

  The AC cut off.

  “Why would fate make anything better?” I asked, my voice escalating. “I mean, what the heck is that even supposed to mean?”

  “Jon,” he said, “I just meant-”

  I stood up, cutting him short. “If that’s supposed to mean that there’s some guy behind the curtain, pulling the strings…” I laughed uncomfortably, my voice even louder.

  He stood up. Tried to put a hand on me.

  “Then - then I want to know where he is!” I said firmly.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off and dug my thumb into my chest. “I want to know so I can kill him myself!”

  “Calm down,” he pleaded. “You know I feel the same way-”

  “We’ve all been cheated, Alex.” I made fists. “You didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve that.”

  He reached for me again. “Jon-”

  I backed up. “Our fathers are dead.”

  “Stop. Just, just listen to yourself-”

  “And no one cares anymore, because that’s just what happens.”

  He grabbed my shoulders. “Jon!”

  ∞

  “Jon.”

  My eyelids fluttered.

  Hunter was giving me a pat on the back. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, my mind still in the past.

  “I was just asking you, do you know what’s making the watch cause your veins to get all red like that?”

  I looked around. The pocket watch was firm in my hand. It happened again. I rubbed the back of my hand. What’s going on here? “No,” I finally said, “I have no idea what makes it do that.” I had to close my eyes for a moment, ashamed of some of the things my past self had said. I hated the way I had treated Alex, shoving my bitterness onto his situation. I didn’t know how to handle the past in light of the present, now that Alex himself had turned his back on me.

  “By the way,” Hunter handed me a piece of paper; it had a phone number on it, “that’s my new cellphone number. Use that to contact me from now on.”

  “One of your own guys threw my phone out the window, but sure, thanks.”

  We made toward the door that led back to all the portals. I scanned the faces of some of the people in the main room, wondering if I would recognize any.

  “You seriously don’t know where this place is?” I asked Hunter as we walked.

  “I heard it’s somewhere underground. No one knows but the higher-ups.”

  “Is Donald one of them?”

  “Yeah.”

  I flexed the fingers of my right hand. “So, who else is coming with us?”

  Cooper emerged from a side door, approaching us as we walked to the portal room.

 
“There’s one of them,” Hunter said. “Cooper Weston.”

  We stopped while he came up to us.

  “Looks like we’re in this together for a little longer, Ashe.” He nodded his head toward me. His eyes shifted over to Hunter. “Calhoun.”

  “Hey.” Hunter looked down at the paper. “Okay, the only other person is Cooper’s twin, Sam.”

  “You have a brother?”

  The other two were already turning and walking toward the next room. I hurried to catch up. We all entered back into the portal room, ready to return to Sacramento. However far away that actually was, none of us knew.

  Cooper opened the portal back up. “My twin’s in the city. Get ready.” He peered at me. “Sam’s the loud one.”

  Chapter 20

  “My little brother is such a quiet one.”

  Cooper was right about Sam Weston. He had left out a detail, though. Sam wasn’t his brother. She was his sister.

  The likeness was apparent. Of their more distinguishing features, though, were the eyes and hair. Cooper’s eyes were a light blue, and Sam’s a dark hazel. Her brown hair went to just over her ears, and Cooper’s dirty blonde hair was buzzed close to his head.

  “Little brother?” Cooper echoed. “We’re twins.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Two minutes,” Sam held up two of her fingers. “Two minutes older, dude.”

  Sam had met us at the portal; she was waiting in the storage unit when we got there. I grabbed my bags, and we left in Cooper’s Jeep. After a few minutes, we were pulling into the parking lot of a large hotel.

  “This place looks expensive,” I mused.

  “Donald told us to get a hotel,” Hunter grinned at me, “and this one’s the closest to Luna.”

  We entered the hotel, and I felt uncomfortable. We were so close to the place I’d been running from that I felt like I was being far too risky by just waltzing around the place.

  We all walked up to the front desk.

  A woman in a collared shirt and slacks welcomed us. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” Hunter replied, “We need…” He looked back at the group, “two rooms.”

  The woman smiled and nodded. But then she looked at me, and her smile lowered a little. It was small. But we made eye contact, and whether it was the watch or just intuitions, time seemed to slow then.

  I broke gaze and lowered my eyes, feeling her suspicion.

  The transaction went on fine. She gave us key cards for our rooms.

  We entered into one the elevators.

  “Hunter,” Sam said, “do you have Midas?”

  He patted his pockets. “Yeah.”

  She grinned. “How’s Donald? Still wearing his pants too high?”

  “High and tight,” Hunter replied, smug.

  “I’ve been hearing about this video clip problem for a while, now.” Sam pulled the sleeves up on her gray jacket. “All of a sudden, I get a call that they found the way to do this, and it’s…” she smiled, suppressing a laugh, “time travel?”

  “That would be this guy.” Hunter patted me on the back.

  Cooper glanced at me and shrugged. “I believe him.”

  “It’s real,” I declared. “Just like the portals and the gloves.” I took the watch out and immediately felt a jolt. Luckily, no memory. I remembered that I needed to stop taking it out so much. “You’ve seen things just as amazing as this by now.” My eyes scanned the members of the group, and I realized just how young Eclipse’s lower tiers were. “I’m not sure you told me,” I looked at Sam. “what exactly do you all do for Eclipse?”

  Her smile vanished.

  The other two looked down.

  For a moment, she lost her positive demeanor. “We do everything for Eclipse.”

  I nodded, not because that made any sense, but because I wanted to diffuse the moment. Sufficiently creeped out, I avoided any further questions.

  Cooper cleared his throat. “If Donald thinks this thing works, I’d trust in what Jonathan has.”

  Sam leaned against the door. “We’ll see.”

  “When exactly is this going to happen?” I asked.

  “No specific date, but at least by the end of the week,” Hunter answered. “I say we get ready tonight and do the job tomorrow night, after most everyone’s left the building.”

  We reached our floor and stepped into the hallway. It was a piercing white. Light fixtures ran down the center of the ceiling. On the walls hung pictures of abstract art, mounted in metal frames with jagged angles.

  We entered one of the two hotel rooms that we had gotten. When we walked in, I dropped both of my bags on the floor, and Hunter took out his two Midas gloves.

  I stared at them for a moment. “Are those the only weapons we have?”

  Sam pulled out a pistol from behind her back. Cooper did as well. She raised an eyebrow. “Sufficient?”

  “You tell me. We’re raiding their headquarters.” I shook my head at the guns. “And it’s a stealth mission, by the way.”

  “This is a barebones operation, Jon.” She put her gun back into its concealed position. “We’re in and out in ten minutes. We shouldn’t even have to use these if that device of yours works.”

  Just at the mention of it, I felt compelled to take the pocket watch out again. But I resisted. It seemed that merely making contact with it would send my brain back in time through my memories. And now, I felt lucky when it didn’t.

  “Do you have everything you need?” Cooper asked.

  “Yeah.” Hunter took his satchel out. “We’ll need to go over a few details on the layout of the building.” He pulled out a heavy duty case and opened it up. A laptop was inside; he started typing.

  I watched Hunter peck away at the computer. “Floor schematics?”

  He nodded.

  We went over everything. It had been tipped off to Eclipse that someone on the seventeenth floor was in possession of the video, so it would probably be contained in one of the hard-drives on that floor. Knowing the plan actually worried me. It all hinged on my pocket watch working, and each member of the team had to complete everything in ten minutes. Take the fastest route, find which cubicle had the computer with the file, and get rid of it. And that was assuming this was the only copy of the file. What about Howard Miller? Had he shared it with someone else in Luna?

  After most everything was prepared, we settled in for the night. I got to eat, shower, and have a change of clothes. Cooper and Sam had a room just down the hall from ours.

  Later in the evening, Cooper and Sam came in one last time to go over the plan. They were serious about this, but I still felt unprepared.

  When we’d finished up, Hunter kept typing away on his laptop.

  Sam looked over at me. “You never told me how you found your secret weapon.”

  She and Cooper leaned against one of the beds while Hunter and I sat on the other.

  Cooper watched me, curious as well.

  “It was my father’s,” I said.

  I felt Hunter’s eyes on me, but when I looked at him, his gaze was back at the computer screen.

  “And it goes back in time?” Sam crossed her arms.

  “Yeah, and for the mission, it’ll stop time.”

  “Man,” she smiled, looking up at the ceiling, “if I could go back in time, I sure wouldn’t be here.”

  Cooper nodded, staring at the floor.

  “What would you do?” I asked.

  She looked at Cooper. “Did you tell him?”

  He shrugged, eyes still on the floor. “Sort of, I guess.” He nodded his head my way. “He’s lost his parents, too.”

  Her eyes connected with mine. She bit her lip, nodding. “Well, Ashe, your folks are gone like ours, so I guess you’d understand. I’ll tell you what I’d do.” She scratched the space above her eyebrows. “Our father was…”

  “Alcoholic,” Cooper supplemented.

  “He was the devil,” Sam pronounced. She wiped her nose. “Everyday when he came home…” She squeezed one ha
nd into a fist.

  Cooper turned his head away.

  Her hand trembled. After a moment she closed her eyes and breathed out through her nose. “I’ll spare you the details, but,” she opened her eyes back up and looked forward, staring out the window, “one night he felt sober enough to drive Mom home.” She looked down at me; I felt as though her eyes pierced through me. “The car wreck killed three people plus our two parents.”

  I opened my mouth to console. But I thought better of it. All I would have said was, “I’m sorry,” or any of the usual condolences.

  “If I went back, I’d only save one of my parents.” She cracked her knuckles, then crossed her arms once more.

  Cooper held his breath.

  I looked over at Hunter, amazed that he was still on his laptop.

  A long silence followed.

  The quiet finally ended when Cooper’s phone rang in his pocket. He picked up. “Yeah.”

  I noticed Hunter and Sam immediately stop and watch Cooper. Sam stood up straight. Hunter stopped typing. Apparently, this call was important. We waited, watching Cooper for a moment.

  Cooper’s eyes fell on me.

  I held my breath. What was going on?

  He stared at me, listening to whoever was on the other line.

  Sam grabbed the laptop case and closed it up.

  “Whoa!” Hunter lifted his hands, “what are you doing?”

  Sam watched Cooper. “We may have to leave. Quick.”

  Cooper put his phone back in his pocket.

  “Well?” Sam asked.

  “Someone’s here.” Cooper opened the door and left. His hand was reaching behind his back, getting ready to grip his gun.

  I shut my eyes. Not again.

  “Already?” Hunter stood up. “Cops?”

  “No.” Sam approached him, case in hand.

  Hunter stood. “Then what’s-”

  She whipped the case around and slammed it against Hunter’s head. He fell back and hit the floor. He was out cold.

  I took a step back. “What are you-”

  She reached into Hunter’s pockets and grabbed the Midas gloves. As she dropped down, I saw a black box on her neck. Just like Hunter’s. She came back up and directed her hand at me. “Use the watch.”

  I held out my hands. “What? What are you doing?”