Chapter Twenty-One

We found Samuel sitting in front of his computer, staring silently and intently at the glowing screen. He glanced up as we got a little closer.

"What's happened?"

"Samuel, we're from ninety-six hours in the future. I need you to scan Esa. I think she has some sort of tracker on her."

Samuel didn't seem surprised by what Theo was saying. "We all have trackers."

"This is different," Theo said.

Samuel walked over to me and put his hands down on the table. "All right, Esa. Come over here and lie down. We've done a couple of scans on you already, but there is definitely a chance we missed something."

Without a word, I reclined on the hard aluminum table. It was the same one I'd been lying on just minutes ago. Samuel pulled an odd-shaped machine out of a drawer in his desk. It was small and flat, no larger than a television remote control. The machine let out several soft clicking sounds as it hovered over me. Slowly, it drifted down toward my toes, before coming back up to my head.

"Is there something inside of me?" I turned to look at Samuel.

"Hmm. I'm not entirely sure." Samuel studied his computer screen. "There's something in your wrist. I saw it before, but I really didn't think much about it, because it looks like human tissue. Now I'm starting to think I may have missed something. Hold on. This might hurt a little bit." Before I had time to react, Samuel took out a large syringe and pushed it into my wrist.

My eyes bulged. "Wha—?" I yelled as the needle pierced my skin. The pain moved from my wrist to my entire body. I had to be dying. There was no other explanation for the agony coursing through me. Small slivers of electricity jumped out of my wrist around the needle.

I tried to think of a happier place and time—anything to help me keep my composure while Samuel extracted the unknown object. I didn't want these two to see me cry, or show any sign of weakness. They needed to know that I was strong; at least stronger than I was when Samuel found me in 2010.

"Hold still, Esa," Samuel said, pulling back on the syringe.

"Don't you have some sort of numbing medicine you could have put on my wrist before putting me through this pain?" I said through gritted teeth. Every muscle in my body was on high alert. "It's 2105. Surely we've developed a way to eliminate pain."

"No. I've almost got it. Two more seconds. Just hold on, Esa. Our bodies don't like metal. It tends to intensify the pain."

"Now you tell me."

Samuel slowly removed the needle from my throbbing wrist. He turned and put the contents under a large microscope.

"What do we have here? Very interesting. I was right; whoever made this device used a substance that mirrors human tissue. Take a look." Samuel pointed to a large screen on the wall.

I stepped closer, but I really didn't have any clue what he was talking about.

Samuel continued to monitor the screen. "When did you jump from again?"

"Four days from now," Theo responded.

"Okay. That's not a lot of advance time, but I'll make it work. Go back. That will give me the opportunity to study this object and figure out what it is," Samuel said. "Some of the puzzle pieces are starting to come together. By the way, Esa, you look a little bit more comfortable now that you've had a few days in 2105."

"Anything else we should know?" Theo asked. I, too, wondered what Samuel might be keeping from us.

"I can't tell you yet, but I will have an answer soon enough," Samuel responded. He turned back to me. "How do you feel?"

"Fine."

"Are you sure?" He asked, his lips pinched.

"Uh, yes."

"Okay, Esa." He wrapped my wrist in a gel-like substance. "This will make your arm feel better. Just give it a few seconds."

"Esa, let's go." Theo pulled at my other arm. "We need to get back to the present day."

I nodded; although, I wasn't entirely sure where Theo planned to go. Before I could say anything else, Theo slid his hand into mine, and together we walked out of Samuel's lab.

As soon as we hit the hallway, Theo reached up for his medallion and the Jump Line came into view in front of us. When we got back to the house in our primary time. Audrina was standing at her command post in Samuel's lab, watching a large screen with various colored lights expanding and then decreasing. The dots had doubled in size from what they'd been just minutes ago.

"I've never seen anything like it before. There's so many of them; they're everywhere. If we can't get the situation under control, we may need to take precautionary actions," Audrina said, sounding exhausted. "They'll eventually be able to get inside."

"What does that mean?" I asked, already feeling mounting pressure in my head. Despite the removal of the tracker, I still experienced pain. Maybe it was a mental thing since we had just returned to this place.

"It means we need to do something with the house. We can't risk them getting inside and getting ahold of any of our research. It's too dangerous. It's time to extract. I'll set the timers. You guys get out of here."

"Wait! We can't just destroy this place!" I threw my hands in the hair. Her solution seemed ridiculous.

"Esa, you need to understand, we will never have a single place to call home. This is becoming our life. We will adjust and rebuild for as long as we can. Whether it's on this planet or elsewhere."

"No!" The word echoed through the room. There had been so many moves and changes in my life. For three years, I was forced to move in and out of foster homes every few months. Just as I would get settled, the family would decide it was time for me to leave. There was something about me, they would all say—something that made them uncomfortable. For once, I had a place. A sense of belonging. My own space. Now that, too, would be gone.

A wave of sadness washed over me. Everything was happening so fast. Audrina, Gave, Theo and Luther were running through the house, preparing for the so-called extraction.

"What about Samuel's stuff?" I asked to no one in particular.

"Don't worry. It will be taken care of," Audrina said as she ran past. Her long hair hung loose around her shoulders. One of the strands softly slapped me in the face as she hurried by. "Samuel is good to go."

Theo looked over at me. "We need to regroup. We'll head to Mary's house. Does that work for everyone?"

"Yes," I heard in unison from the chaotic scene. It sounded like the voices were, once again, underwater. The pressure inside my head was becoming insanely painful.

"Why Mary's house?" I asked out of curiosity, trying to hide the pain.

A frustrated sigh escaped Theo's lips. "Because I said so."

"When will Audrina, Gave and Luther follow?" I asked as Theo grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the Jump Line.

"Any second now. They're just taking care of last minute preparations," he said.

"What exactly does that mean?"

"It means they're taking care of things. What do you think it means?" Theo's voice rose. "Esa, you've got to stop asking so many questions."

"I would stop if you would start providing me with better answers. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on."

"I know, but it's frustrating."

"Sorry."

"You don't have to keep telling me that you are sorry. I get it."

"I just have one last question. What will happen to the house?" I asked. They'd told me that the clock was ticking; I guess I just hadn't thought about how fast.

"It depends," Theo responded, with a shrug. The twinkle in his eye from a couple of hours ago was now gone. An intense coldness settled between us. There was something he wasn't telling me. Something they were all not telling me.

"Has this happened before?"

"No, and, trust me, this will be the only time it does happen," Theo said as we arrived on Mary's front doorstep.

Audrina, Gave and Luther appeared next to us. Audrina was breathing heavily. She looked frazzled. "That was a little too close."

Gave nodded in agreement and, through deep gasps, said, "We needed more time, Luther. You set the timers too fast."

"No. I set them right. Something caused them to speed up. We should have had more time."

"What happened?" Theo looked at the other three.

"The first explosion in the outer boundary went off almost thirty seconds early. It triggered the others. If it hadn't been for Gave, we might not have made it out," Audrina said.

"Just remember that, you two eggheads. I saved your lives... again." A small smile crossed Gave's lips as he turned back and opened Mary's front door. "I do think we put a big dent in Paul's army. There's no way those robots were able to escape that blast zone."

"I agree," Audrina said. "It seems like such a waste of machinery. Why can't they just leave us alone?"

"Because they need us," Theo said. "Mary," he called as they entered the cottage. "Mary, we're here."

There was no response. Only the sound of a bird chirping somewhere outside could be heard echoing in the room. The back windows were open, sending a warm breeze through the small space.

"That's odd. She's always here," Theo said. "I've never jumped to this year and walked into an empty house."

"Mary?" Audrina called. Again, no response.

"Maybe she needed to go and do something," Luther responded nonchalantly. "Or maybe she doesn't want to see us. Let's just get out of here. This place always gives me the creeps. I've never really understood why we keep coming back here."

Audrina looked around. "I think we need to check her cottage out before we leave. Something seems off. It's just too quiet. Theo, take the rooms. Luther and Gave, go check the exterior and see if she's out wondering around."

"I think you might be overreacting," Luther said, walking out of the cottage. "We should just leave. There's no reason for us to be here."

Gave rolled his eyes and then set off behind him. "I'll take the right side. You go left." Theo headed down the hallway and peered into the different rooms, his back rigid. There were three small rooms inside Mary's small cottage. I watched in silence as he made his way toward the last of them. I wasn't sure what we expected to find, since it wasn't like we had that much to worry about in the year 1910.

Mary had probably gone out to get more herbs or something. I shivered as I remembered the awful smell that had greeted me the first morning I had woken in Mary's house. It had been horrible, but Samuel had said that she was always making different concoctions.

"No!"

Theo's cry shattered the silence, turning my blood to ice.