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“What is going on?” Randr’s whisper was concerned. “What do you see?”
“It isn’t right. I am seeing something that happened when I was younger, but I am seeing things from a different angle as if I was there.”
Randr rubbed her shoulder. “You are needed in time. This happens occasionally. When we need to be in a specific place, this sort of thing takes over our minds and bodies, giving us an imperative to go and take our place in time.”
“How can I do this when I don’t know what I am doing?”
“The energy will guide you, but you need to get a hood.” He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her in his arms.
There was a bright flash of light and they were in a building with racks, tracks and machines that whirred and chirped happily as they filed and retrieved objects.
Randr set her on her feet. “This is our storage facility. You can request anything and it will be found. Simply select your size and view the available objects, or request something and acquisitions will find it for you in an hour or so.”
Aura touched the knife belt on her hips. It had been a reflex to put it on, but based on what she had seen, she was going to have to use it soon.
She stood in line with six others waiting to use the machine. Randr was at her side and they both waited patiently, but her body had other ideas. It started to glow.
The woman ahead of her glanced back and then jumped. She tapped the man in front of her and they parted.
“Why are you doing that? I can wait my turn.”
The woman smiled. “If time is calling you, it must be urgent. Get what you need. We can wait.”
The entire queue parted to let her through and she quickly entered her measurements in and selected a large hoodie.
When the box was delivered to her, she put the black hoodie on and pulled the hood down to cast her eyes in shadow.
Randr frowned. “I do not think you should be going alone.”
She looked at him. “Is the procedure for going back in time the same as for my moving here at Home?”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Not really. We will use the library. It will help you focus.”
She nodded and pictured the library in her mind. It didn’t take much looking to find the frame with the decade she wanted in it. She placed her palm on the edge and focussed.
“I will be here and then, I will come back as quickly as I can. Is that all right?”
Randr turned her to face him and pressed a heated kiss to her lips that made her head spin. “Come back as soon as you do what time commands. If you don’t, I can and will retrieve you again.”
She nodded and returned to the frame, focussing on the image of her sister’s bruised face and using it as the touchstone. With a slight flick of her mind, she found the man who had done it and when she had her focus, she stepped into the image.
Andrew Smith was a normal-looking man and you would never guess that he was a vicious rapist until you saw the dead look in his eyes and the bruises on his knuckles.
Carola had marked the side of his neck with her nails and it was that telltale streak of red that confirmed his identity in Aura’s mind.
To walk the streets of her hometown again, to breathe in the air of her city was a true blast from the past.
Andrew was walking down the street from his home to the car park where he kept the vehicle that he had used to stage his little attack.
Aura followed him, a cool necessity taking over her mind. She hated him with a passion and when she had been told he had been stabbed in a car park, she had felt relief and her sister had begun to rebuild the shattered sanity that had been hanging by a thread.
His death had let her life move forward and so, time decreed that he had to die.
Chapter Eight
Stabbing someone was far messier than she had imagined, but the black of the hoodie concealed the bloodstains nicely.
Her mind remained cool and blank, another moment in her life was now pressing on her. Without thinking about it, she focussed on a night that had flared into memory the moment that she saw the hoodie.
It had seemed so peculiar at the time, but she now knew what she could not have imagined then. When the call for Terran Volunteers spread across Earth and every race and continent put their best and brightest forward, Aura had been sitting in a coffee shop and waiting for her order.
A woman wearing peculiar clothing and a hood had come up and spoken to her in a familiar voice.
In this moment with blood on her hands, Aura was sure of one thing. She had been the woman who had been in that coffee shop on that day.
Sighing, she heard the siren in the distance and quickly moved out of the range of the monitors. Focussing on Home, she stepped through the doorway and right into Randr’s arms.
“You are covered with blood, Aura. Are you injured?” His concern was intense. He swiftly lifted her in his arms and held her while he stepped to his private quarters.
“I am fine. I just had to take care of a moment in time that needed my attention.” She shivered as he hauled her into the lav and quickly stripped her.
She was under the spray in seconds, the stains of the stabbing being sluiced from her skin by his attentive hands.
“What did you do?” His voice was low as he scrubbed her before wrapping her in a fluffy towel.
“What I had to. My sister was attacked and a day later, her attacker was found stabbed to death in a car park. That is where the Orb took me, so that is what I did. The strange thing is that I wasn’t driving my body. It was like when clients use my mind and my mouth to speak through. Time was speaking and this man had to die.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “I hadn’t gotten around to telling you about the rules and that alone might save you here.”
She watched him clean her blade and belt. “What rules?”
“You are not allowed to go back within your own timeline. Nothing that you do can affect your life and alter it in any way.”
She sat on the small chair near the vanity table. “The problem arises in the fact that the man who raped my sister was definitely murdered via stabbing within forty-eight hours of the attack and he was killed in that car park before he could get rid of the vehicle with her blood in it. The timing of his murder gave my entire family and my sister’s friends rock-solid alibis. They were all together in the family home and the police were taking interviews from the friends who were with her the night she was taken. It was a window of two hours and it ended her torment and let her get on with her life. When I left Earth, she had three kids and a husband who doted on her.”
Aura teared up a little as she thought of her family getting older and her own existence continuing on until she met some catastrophic end.
He finished drying her belt and started to oil it lightly. “What was the effect of her attack on your life?”
“My parents took more of an interest in our lives. They planned for our futures and helped us to achieve our goals. Until that horrible night, we had simply been accessories to them as far as we knew. Deep down, we knew they loved us, but after that day, they started to show it. It marked a turning point in the way I thought about family and friends. It changed my life.”
He cupped her cheek with his hand. “That must have been quite the shock.”
She shrugged. “Our pasts make us who we are, shape the future that we will take. Without that moment, I would never had had the ability to take a risk on the Volunteers and never ended up here. I would not be me.”
“Remember that. You will have to explain it to the seven. At least you have plenty of witnesses to the summons.” He smiled and disappeared into the bedroom.
He returned with the third box of wrap tunic and trousers. She put it on and brushed her hair out once again. They were just walking back into the bedroom when a wall panel lit up.
Winking, Randr answered the call.
“Randr, we need to see you and your pupil immediately. Her first transit was moni
tored and she will need to face the council.”
“Understood. We are on our way.”
He disconnected the call and turned to her. “Are you prepared to meet with the seven and explain what you did?”
She grabbed one of his cowls and draped it around her neck. “Ready as I will ever be. Just let me put the knife back in place and I will meet you there.”
Randr frowned but nodded. “If you are not there in three minutes, I will come looking.”
She smiled brightly. “Be right there.”
Aura buckled the dagger into place and opened the rift in time and space. If she was going to be kicked out of the Nameless for moving through her own timeline, may as well be reprimanded for twice as for once.
The shop was as busy as she remembered it. With her cowl drawn over her head, she looked like one of any number of religious observers.
Lone Aura was sitting and reading a paper while drinking coffee. Current Aura paused by the seat across from her and asked, “May I use this chair for a moment?”
Past Aura looked up and smiled. “Of course. It is standing room only in here today.”
Present Aura looked up at the television that was announcing the amazing news of alien life and the request for Volunteers. “Would you ever consider doing that?”
Past Aura looked at the monitor, “What? Applying for something like that? No. With all of the Olympic athletes and military personnel being shoved at them, a little nobody like me would never even make the final cut.”
Present Aura looked at herself and smiled. “You never know unless you try. Someone who truly embodies humanity with all its flaws could be just what they are looking for. Give it some thought. Thank you for the chair.”
Aura sighed and got to her feet, walking past herself to the door.
Past Aura grabbed her arm. “Weren’t you going to have coffee?”
Aura smiled, “I got what I wanted here today. Space may be a stepping stone to your destiny. Keep an open mind, go to the office and see what they say.”
The crowd jostled her and her cowl slipped back for a moment. She quickly tugged it back into position, but Past Aura’s face had a shocked look.
When Aura made it out of the shop, she breathed a sigh of relief. Seeing an alien had indeed been her primary motivator to apply to be a Volunteer. The woman with black eyes had made an impression.
Walking into the alley nearby, she walked back to the council hall where seven Nameless were waiting to kick her ass for breaking rules she barely knew existed.
Chapter Nine
Her timing was perfect, but she was wearing a coffee stain that she hadn’t realized she acquired.
“Am I late?” She stepped into the centre of the council room once again.
Randr looked down at her and did a double take. “You didn’t come straight here, did you?”
She sighed. “Let’s find out.”
They stood together and waited. Ravikka waved her hand and the image of a blood-spattered body on the ground filled the screen.
“Aura, the seven has called you here to address the matter of you using the Orb-given abilities to tamper with your own timeline. This is forbidden as it causes damage to the time stream and changes you.”
They sat and stared at her.
Aura stared back.
Randr was trying not to laugh, she could tell.
Gwetho leaned forward. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Aura gave a quick bow to the council. “I had to.”
Ravikka cocked her head and the others murmured at her words. “What do you mean?”
Aura straightened and explained her past and the necessity for the vengeance that she had enacted. “The Orb must have agreed, because it replayed the date and time over and over in my mind and set my body glowing. There were folk in line at the acquisition centre that saw my skin lighting up and can confirm my story.”
Gwetho leaned back with a strange look in his eyes. “How did you feel while you were killing him?”
Aura tried to remember, “I don’t know. I was completely blank as if something else was riding my body to do what was necessary. I still have no clear memories of the event other than knowing that I was the one to do it and being covered in blood.”
Rehnara leaned forward. “You didn’t have control over your body?”
Aura rubbed at her forehead. “It was more like this was something I had to do. The impetus to carry out this task was all consuming. The other one I did on my own.”
Randr stiffened at her side.
Ravikka blinked, “What other one?”
Aura straightened, “In the spirit of full disclosure, several years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop and a strange woman came by and gave me the idea that I could volunteer to leave my world and I would be considered. Without her words, I never would have left my planet, never joined the Alliance, never gotten the training as a kah-dore and never ended up here. I went and spoke to myself to give me that pep talk.”
Rehnara asked, “You spoke to yourself? How do you know this?”
Aura looked down at her clothing. “A woman wearing this non-Terran outfit sat next to me with a cowl over her features. We spoke quickly and she left, I left. Wow this time stuff is weird.”
Gwetho snickered, “So, the first trip into your own life you did innocently, the second knowing that it was forbidden.”
Aura nodded. “I knew I had to get the trip to see myself in before I was locked down by the council. I know it is weird, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunities that I have had in my own life.”
Ravikka rubbed her forehead. “This is a very difficult situation. Please give us an hour and then return to receive our decision.”
Randr wrapped his arm around her waist and forcibly escorted her out the door and onto a huge arc of a bridge. “You could have told me.”
“I didn’t know what was going to happen. I just wanted to get it in before they Un-Namelessed me or something. If they were going to lock the current me in, I didn’t want the past me to suffer.” She leaned against him and sighed.
“They can’t undo what the Orb has done. They can try and restrict you here at Home or put you in a subservient position like polishing the frames in the library.” He stopped on the bridge, the expanse of their peculiar Home spread out as far as the eye could see.
Aura looked up into his fathomless eyes and watched the stars spin. “I don’t care what they do to me. I did what I had to do to keep myself on the path that led me here.”
“You didn’t warn yourself of the treachery that you would encounter?”
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t want to colour my reactions when it happens. My innocence was proven when I was scanned over and over. It was the only thing that kept me from being imprisoned for killing the ambassador. The security teams were eager for a conviction.”
He grinned. “Well, knowing that, you will be fine. You may be restricted in your movements for a while, but nothing punitive will be done to you, I am sure of it.”
She smiled up at him and noticed a small device clipped to his right earlobe. “Are you wearing a wire?”
He blinked. “What?”
“A transmitter.” She scowled.
“The council wished to know the details of your actions and compare them to the imager. If the two match up, you will be free to go where you will.”
She sighed. “They could have just asked me.”
“Their experience is that people will lie to gloss over their lapses in etiquette. They will check and then they will render their decision.”
He kissed her and she remained passive.
“Is something wrong?”
“You kept that from me. That is not a good thing.” Her tone was grim and she tried to continue on the bridge.
Randr gripped her arm and held her.
“It was necessary to clear your name. The seven are not interested in disciplining the Nameless, but it is one of their tasks when this sort
of breach occurs. Usually, they only have to attend the celebrations when a new Nameless is brought aboard.”
“I am still not happy.”
“What can I do to make it up to you?” He was sincere, it radiated from him.
“I don’t know.” Aura sighed. “I honestly don’t know.”
They walked together in silence, doing a long loop across several walkways until they returned to the council chambers.
The seven were on their feet and witnesses were assembled.
Aura and Randr took their position on the central icon on the floor.
Ravikka gave them a solemn look. “It pains us to have to discipline one of our own, but on this occasion, there is nothing else to be done.”
Aura was resigned, but Randr tensed.
Ravikka continued, “Randr, as you are the tutor of this woman and responsible for her until her training is complete. We are binding you to her for as long as you both shall live. She will be unable to walk the worlds alone, as will you. Where one of you walks, the other will follow.”
Randr jerked physically as if struck. “A forced bonding? That has never been enacted.”
Ravikka smiled, “We have reason to believe that you have already woven your timeline with hers and she with yours. You will be bonded and her knowledge will be yours and yours will become hers. There is no other way that the council will allow her power to traipse around Home and the universe at large. She needs a guard and a keeper and you are now both.”
Aura was confused. “What is happening?”
Rehnara piped up, “You are being ordered into an arranged marriage, Aura. Your punishment for breaking the rules and Randr’s for sending you off without you knowing all the regulations.”
Gwetho was smiling and one of the observers stepped forward, handing him a strange object. “Acquisitions tells us that it is traditional for a bride of your species and culture to carry flowers, so they brought these along for you.” He handed her a bouquet and gave her an encouraging pat on her arm.
