Time Catcher

by Cheree Peters

  I wake with my hands above my head, manacles chaffing my wrists. Against the glare of bright lights, I tilt my head back, my eyes squinted, to see chains stretching into the ceiling.

  On the opposite side of the Chamber, Jay also hangs from the ceiling. He is awake and alert, his eyes wide with fear and anger.

  Sentinels man the walls of the basement outside the Chamber and scientists move about, talking to each other, looking at their clipboards – looking at us. I recognise the lone woman in the room: Dr Kelvin. Of course she knew the truth. She helped run the tests on me.

  Beside her stands the loose-limbed Mr Corbin, his greying hair in a ponytail. He looks up from his clipboard and sees me glaring at him. He smiles. ‘Thea, you’re awake. Finally!’ He hands the clipboard to Dr Kelvin and uses a thick black key to let himself into the Chamber.

  Jay struggles against his chains.

  Corbin circles me. ‘You have been such a mystery, Thea Reid.’

  I swivel my head to watch him. ‘You helped create the mystery.’

  ‘I suppose I did.’ He continues walking around me, Jay’s eyes tracking him. ‘Tell me, Thea,’ he whispers into my ear from behind me, ‘what’s your Ability?’

  ‘You should really communicate with the other torturers. Duncan’s asked me and I told him already – I don’t have an Ability.’

  Corbin stands between Jay and me. He smiles at me, then glances over his shoulder at Jay, and back at me – still smiling. ‘I’ll ask again, what is your Ability?’

  ‘Maybe you should try more height tests? They worked so well last time, didn’t they?’ I smile sweetly.

  I look around Corbin to Jay for reassurance, but he doesn’t look at me, he only stares at the back of Corbin’s head. It must have been Corbin who administered the electrodes to his back.

  ‘Do you remember the height tests, Thea? Duncan tells me your memory still isn’t complete.’ Corbin steps closer, centimetres from my face, smiling. I resist the urge to sway back from his black, sinister eyes. ‘Tell me, Thea, do you remember me?’

  As far as I know, I met Corbin in Duncan’s quarters a few days ago. Although Corbin did say he was by my side after my ‘accident’. I search my mind, but it fails me again. I glare at him but his face remains impassive. He knows I don’t remember him.

  ‘Come now, Thea, we spent so much time together. I’m hurt. You must remember me.’

  Anxiety consumes me. I look at Jay, but he seems like he’s in a trance, staring at Corbin’s back. I look to Corbin, searching his face. My mind refuses to cooperate. He reaches up and strokes my cheek and I recoil, jangling my chains. With his other hand, he pinches my shoulder. With his touch, a window in my memory opens. This is the long-limbed man from my dream-nightmare. This is the man who took me from my family. I lurch forward and he nimbly steps back. ‘It was you!’ I strain against the chains. ‘You stole me and gave me to Duncan!’

  ‘Very good, Thea!’ He smiles with delight.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That is an excellent question, Thea.’

  ‘You wanted my Variant blood, my Descendant blood!’

  He leans in and whispers in my ear again, ‘I wanted so much more than that, Thea! And I got it. Everything.’ He turns and walks towards Jay, whose eyes blaze with fear.

  ‘You didn’t get everything.’

  He pauses and slowly turns to face me. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I smile at him. ‘You didn’t get my Ability, did you?’

  For the first time, his smile falters, but it is back in an instant. ‘No, but I will, Thea. I have new techniques. It’s so interesting to meet a subject years later. I see some of your Thea personality traits have meshed with your Althea ones.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I demand.

  A wider, gleeful smile appears on his face. ‘Oh, now I see!’ He turns back to Jay. ‘You haven’t told her.’

  He swings around. ‘Tell me, Thea, why do you trust this strange, deceitful boy over your own father?’

  ‘Duncan was never really my father! It was all a lie!’ My cheeks feel warm, glowing with anger.

  He walks around Jay, circling him as he did me. Jay coils away, trying to distance himself from Corbin. ‘It’s lies you hate, is it? Interesting.’ He stops next to Jay, facing me. ‘I assume you’re firmly against people you trust hiding the truth from you?’ He walks back towards me, stopping beside me and leaning in. ‘Look at him.’ He grasps my chin and points my face at Jay. ‘What do you see? Do you see a resemblance?’

  I try to wrestle my head from his grip but he holds tight, squeezing painfully. Jay thrashes against his chains.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I say with difficulty.

  He releases my face and stands beside me, a little in front, giving me a clear view of his face and Jay’s. ‘Why do you call him John?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I can see it in your eyes that you do know, Thea Reid.’ He pinches my shoulder again.

  My temper gets the better of me. ‘Because that’s his name!’

  I didn’t think it was possible but Corbin’s face becomes more ecstatic. ‘Yes! Yes, it is!’

  My annoyance at his happiness grows. ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Because he has never liked the name John, and you, Thea, have always known that.’

  I look at Jay to see his reaction but he doesn’t look back, only tightening and releasing his jaw, staring at the gleaming floor.

  Corbin continues, ‘From childhood you called him only John, just to annoy him.’

  I want to argue but I know it’s true. A new memory forms, flashing through my mind. He has taken my doll, Harriet, and I chase after him, screaming ‘John’. ‘How do you know I called him John when we were little?’

  ‘I saw it, of course!’

  My anxiety builds. I can feel my past slinking through my mind to the surface. Images and emotions combine to create a memory. A memory I don’t want to know. I push it back down. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Come now, Thea, you know who I am. Who I really am. Just think, just remember.’ He stretches his hand towards me, again clicking his fingers three times. He points at Jay. ‘Look at him!’

  Jay is looking at me with sorrow-filled black eyes.

  ‘You can’t remember? What a pity my therapy worked so well. My name is John Corbin. And my son is named after me.’

  I don’t know what to think. I look at Jay and see the truth. There is a resemblance – the same dark hair, the same black eyes. Jay looks at me imploringly, his eyes pained and his brow furrowed.

  We stare at each other while Corbin watches. I’m angry and sad. How could Jay not tell me it was his father who took me? Did he hope I would never remember? He lied to me too. After all he saw me go through with Duncan, with Tahan and Finn, pretending he understood what it was like to be betrayed. He should have told me. I look away, casting my eyes towards the Chamber’s empty corner.

  ‘It seems that everyone lies to you, Thea.’

  The name John Corbin seems somehow familiar, but I can’t place why. Perhaps a memory of hearing his name, or seeing it? ‘You’re a Variant. How could you do it? How could you betray your people?’

  ‘Our plan was finally ready to be acted on,’ Corbin says.

  ‘And those plans involved murdering my mother?’

  Corbin yells, ‘I didn’t kill your mother!’

  ‘What gave you the right to ruin my family?’

  ‘Ask my son, he will tell you ruining families is what I do best.’

  Jay drops his head, not looking at his father. Or me.

  I struggle but the chains hold me back. ‘Why did you take me away from my family and give me to Duncan? What do you want with me?’ My firm tone belies my shaky interior. Memories of Corbin are rushing back: yelling at us kids for making too much noise; a tight grip on the arm of Jay’s mother, yelling at her. No one dared speak to him like I am, except maybe Vaughn, my father. And Duncan, my fake father. My two fathers are the only
people who ever stood up to him. And I am their daughter. I almost laugh, but I’m afraid that if I do, it will turn into sobbing. I guess the mixture of Thea and Althea gives me courage.

  ‘A new era is being ushered in, Thea, and I will play a key role in that future,’ Corbin says calmly, which is more worrying than his manic state. ‘I have begun the new world order.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Watching Corbin stride around the Chamber makes me uncomfortable, reminding me of Jay’s constant pacing. ‘Why should we Variants be the only ones with power? Why should only a select few be chosen, and then still fewer possess useful Abilities? This world is unbalanced and I intend to rebalance it.’

  ‘Let me guess, you intend to rebalance it with you on top?’

  ‘Precisely!’ He turns back to me. ‘You will see, Thea, just wait.’

  ‘Oh, I can hardly wait. I’ll just stay here, chained up because I’m too excited to be let loose.’ Tahan’s sarcasm has definitely rubbed off on me. ‘How will you create this new order? By experimenting on Variants? By killing them – like you killed my mother?’

  ‘I did not kill your mother!’

  ‘But you did kill mine.’ Jay’s deep voice echoes through the Chamber.

  Corbin’s eye twitches, and he slowly turns to face his son.

  ‘I know it was you! It had to be you. Her illness came on so suddenly! What did you do to her? Poison? You denied it until the day you left, but I know the truth. You killed her!’

  Corbin remains silent. I search my mind for a memory connected with the death of Elena. I remember she died, but I can’t remember how.

  ‘Just admit it, Corbin!’ Jay forces the words through his clenched jaw. I’ve never seen him this angry. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I did it! Are you happy? I poisoned her! Is that what you wanted to hear, son?’

  Jay’s eyes glisten with tears and he strains against his chains. ‘Why? Why did you take her from me?’

  ‘Elena was going to take you from me! She discovered our plan, and she was going to tell the whole of Concord and have me banished or killed. She would have turned you against me – my son. I couldn’t have that.’

  Jay’s face is taut with rage. ‘Don’t worry, Dad, she didn’t turn me against you. You did that all by yourself. And don’t think for one second you can call me your son. I am her son. I am nothing like you!’

  Corbin actually smiles. ‘You are entirely like me – from your hair and eyes, to your temper!’

  The similarities are obvious. I mentally kick myself for not making the connection earlier. All this time I was dreaming about the man who kidnapped me and his mirror image was standing right in front of me. I realise Jay doesn’t share everything with his father. Ms Grayson called him Jay Tomlinson, not Jay Corbin.

  I interrupt the father-son death-stare competition. ‘If he is entirely like you, why doesn’t he have your last name?’

  Corbin angrily whirls to face me. ‘That was his mother’s choice.’

  A memory is triggered by his words. I’m young and it involves Elena telling me who he was named after, and it wasn’t John Corbin.

  ‘It’s time to begin,’ Corbin says with a bright smile.

  I feel like I’ve been pushed off the Rampart, like I’m falling. ‘Begin what?’

  ‘Why, the tests of course.’ I was afraid he’d say that. ‘Don’t you remember the tests?’

  My courage is gone and all I have is terror.

  ‘Having both of you here will make the process so much easier.’

  Jay and I look at each other for the first time since I learned of his lies.

  Corbin leaves the Chamber and the smoky smell of the sedative gas fizzes from the ceiling. My mind hazily skips across the lies. Duncan. Tahan. Finn. Corbin. Jay – John.

  I dream again of the height tests. I am pushed off the Rampart and I fall. It is terrifying. I scream. As the ground below comes closer and closer, my whole body tenses, preparing for impact.

  At the last second, when I am able to see the pebbles in the dirt, I am Vaulted through space, transported back to the Chamber. The combination of falling and the whirling sensation of Space Vaulting is sickening.

  I wake but do not open my eyes. It seems that I will forever be passing out and waking up in the Chamber. It’s scary to think what they do to us while we’re unconscious: poking and prodding, blood taken and injections given. Have the tests begun? Scarier still to think of the memories that return while I’m unconscious.

  Who used Space Vaulting to save me? I know Eli and Vaughn are Space Vaulting Variants, but there must be others. Whoever transported me from my fall to the Chamber was working with Duncan and Corbin – and may be still.

  I slowly open my eyes, this time aware that the lights will be overwhelmingly bright to my drug-affected eyes. I am lying on the white tile floor beneath where I was chained. Jay is across the room, sitting against the glass with his elbows resting on his knees. He holds his left hand in his right, looking at his wrist, his Token. It’s almost as if he is trying to find an answer in his Token. I wonder what the question is.

  ‘Why won’t you show me your Token?’

  My voice knocks him out of his trance. He looks at me, his face uncertain. He rubs his Token with his thumb. He sighs, looking down again. ‘I was worried it would bring back your memories of me. Actually, your memories of him.’

  ‘Show it to me. Please.’

  He is silent.

  I roll onto my back and close my eyes. If they’re going to keep us in here, they should set it up like it was when they first brought me here five years ago. A bed would be appreciated, even if it was the same uncomfortable steel-based one I had last time.

  A shadow appears, dimming the light through my eyelids. I open one eye to see Jay standing above me, offering me his right hand. I ignore his hand and get up myself. The thought of touching him bothers me, his long fingers remind me of his father’s, curling around my arm to pull me away from my family in my dream-nightmare, pinching my shoulder during the first round of tests in the Chamber.

  Standing, I try not to see Corbin’s scary eyes in Jay’s face. Jay’s eyes aren’t menacing, but they are the same dark, shadowy eyes of his father. I search deeper, trying not to see Corbin. I find Jay. His eyes have softness, the softness of his mother.

  He says nothing, looking at me with his soft, black eyes.

  Finally he raises his left arm, pulling back his jacket sleeve. As soon as I see his Token, the feeling of repulsion at touching him disappears. I reach for his forearm, holding it still. His Token is the silhouette of a tree, branches curl up his wrist like black veins. I run my finger over the mark, tracing each thin black branch down through the trunk.

  As I trace the last branch, Jay pulls his arms away. ‘Enough, Thea.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ I know how stupid that sounds.

  Jay’s face confirms it. ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, it’s just . . . it’s a nice Token. Did Elena have a similar Token?’

  He walks away from me.

  ‘There you go, avoiding personal questions. What are you hiding this time? Do you have a secret evil uncle that had the same Token?’

  He pauses, looking over his shoulder at me. ‘Not funny, Thea.’

  ‘Were you ever going to tell me about your father?’

  Anger flashes across his face. ‘I don’t ever talk about my father, Thea, especially not now – with you.’ He walks to the edge of the Chamber and stares out at the empty space of the basement. The scientists and sentinels are gone – home to their families, maybe.

  I sense there’s more to his words, but I have to get to the bottom of the main issue first. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was your father who took me?’ I raise my voice. ‘Did you just hope that I would never remember?’

  No response.

  ‘John!’ His back twitches. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He rolls his shoulders.

  ‘John–’

  He
turns and storms towards me, stopping in front of me. ‘I didn’t want you to remember!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I . . .’ I see anger and sadness in his black eyes. ‘I liked the way you looked at me.’

  I look at him now, confused.

  ‘I mean, I liked the way you didn’t look at me. You don’t understand.’ He turns and strides away again.

  ‘Then help me understand!’ I follow him. ‘For five years people have hidden things from me, including you! You are not going to make it six years! Tell me!’ I grab his arm, twisting him to face me. ‘Tell me,’ I say softly.

  ‘The people of Concord look at me differently. I catch them staring at me. They see him in me and they doubt my loyalty. Vaughn monitors me, making sure I’m always watched. Even Eli has the look of suspicion occasionally. It hurts. To know that my people, Variants, will never trust me because I look like him, because they think I may have inherited his treachery.’ He runs his fingers through his black hair, staring bleakly into my eyes. ‘You look at me and see me, not him. Or at least, you used to.’

  I feel conflicted. One part of me wants to throw my arms around him, reassure him. But another part still resents his lies. I take his hand. ‘You’re not him.’

  A grunted reply is all I receive.

  ‘John, you are not your father.’

  ‘Please, Thea, don’t call me that.’

  ‘No, John, it’s your name. Your name. You are not your father.’

  He drops my hand and steps back. ‘Why? Ever since we were kids, Thea! Why do you have to call me that?’ Anger rekindles in his eyes and I can’t help but see his father.

  ‘Because it’s your name!’

  ‘No! It’s his name and I don’t want it! I don’t want anything of his!’ He takes a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself. ‘Do you really hate me that much?’

  I look at him, surprised. ‘No, I don’t hate you.’

  ‘Then why, Thea? Why torment me?’ The anger has left him, leaving only sorrow.

  Now that Corbin isn’t around, it is time to tell Jay the memory of Elena that Corbin triggered. ‘Your mother gave you your name.’

  He shakes his head. ‘She named me after him. He wanted it.’