Infinite Time: Time Travel Adventure (13 page)

“My turn?” Gumi actually looks surprised. “I am not a liar. I did not go back on an agreement.”

“Oh, but you did lie. You lied when you said you found my men in your territory. And you lied when you said that I went back on our deal.”

Gumi laughs, but there’s something wrong with it. It takes me a second, but I realize the laughter is filled with guilt.

“He did lie!” I yell.

Anger suddenly explodes in my chest. He’s lying and he made Oshiro cut off his finger for nothing! That wasn’t right! Someone should do something… and then I remember that it’s my job to do something. But what can I do? I don’t know how to fight like Scarlet. I don’t have a gun. All I have is my dweeb’s body and some sick skills with video games. But this isn’t a video game. This is way too real.

Gumi jerks the knife out of Oshiro’s hand and throws it to the floor.

“Face it, brother,” he says slowly in a voice that is deep and well controlled, “it’s over for you. You’ve lost control. And your little girl? She’s not going to be your savior. The Sumiyoshi-rengo is dead.”

Gumi gestures to his men and they grab Oshiro, pulling him backward across the warehouse floor. They lift his wife, too. Toward the chains hanging from the ceiling …
oh, please! Please tell me they aren’t…

But they are.

They wrap the chains around their wrists and lift them up, hanging them high over the concrete floor. Oshiro’s wife screams, thrashing her body around. Oshiro remains silent and calm. As I watch, horror making me numb, Tora struggles against my chest. She breaks free and screams to her parents, but I manage to grab her and pull her tight against me, her face buried against my chest.

Gumi, fascinated with the scene in front of him, is pulled out of his reverie. He marches over and snatches Tora out of my arms even as I try to hold on. I grab her ankle, but I’m not strong enough. Her shoe pops off, my grip begins to slip, and Gumi lands a sharp kick to my ribs. I fall to the ground, nearly falling into Scarlet’s lap. Gumi walks away with Tora struggling like a small, frightened animal in his arms.

Oshiro begins to scream at Gumi, begging in both English and Japanese for his daughter’s safety. But his screams, underscored by his wife’s similar pleadings, fall on deaf ears.

I wish my ears were clogged. I wish I couldn’t hear their pleas.

And then I see an opportunity. I wasn’t paying attention when Gumi tossed the knife away. But I see it now, see that it’s only a few feet in front of me. I edge forward, cautioning myself not to move so quickly, to be cautious of the many eyes in the room. My fingers itch to feel the handle of that knife, my desperation to do something, anything, suffocating.

I manage to get the knife while everyone else is focused on Oshiro and his wife. I slide up behind Scarlet and carefully saw at the thick edges of the rope holding her wrists behind her back. I’m sawing and sawing. The knife seemed so sharp before, but it’s dulled now.

I hear a scream and look up over Scarlet’s shoulder. Tora has her teeth buried in Gumi’s shoulder. He pulls her away from his body and drops her on the hard concrete floor. I hear the crack of her arm landing awkwardly under her slight body. She screams and then she’s deadly quiet. The quiet frightens me.

“Pick her up,” Gumi orders one of his men, gesturing toward Tora with the hand that isn’t holding a hanky to his shoulder. “She’ll watch her parents die. And then it’s her turn.”

“Vandir wants her alive,” Hector says, speaking for the first time since the chaos began.

“Why? What will he do with her?”

“Where we are taking her no one has ever escaped.” There is deep satisfaction and foreboding in Bruce’s voice. But then his gaze moves across the room to where I am still sawing at the ropes around Scarlet’s wrists. “Well, one escaped.”

Gumi glances at Scarlet. “You can have her, too,” he says. “Tell Vandir she is my gift to him.”

I feel a shiver run through Scarlet. It takes me a second, but I realize she’s scared. I’ve never seen Scarlet scared. Not even when we were fighting Vandir’s men, not when bullets were flying all around us. Not even when she was tied up and dumped in this warehouse. But she’s afraid now.

And then Gumi turns back to Oshiro and his wife.

“I’m sorry to see you go, brother. You were a good rival. But there is to be a new future and I’m to lead it.”

Then he pulls a gun and shoots both Oshiro and his wife in the head as they hang above the warehouse floor. No warning. Nothing. He just shoots them.

Tora screams from the arms of the man holding her. She pushes at his chest, kicks her legs, does everything she can to make him let her go. Tora runs to her parents, falling to the floor in heart-wrenching sobs, followed by the slow patter of blood drops dripping to the concrete.

It breaks my heart.

Scarlet’s ropes break free.

I run to Tora. She shouldn’t be alone in this moment. She shouldn’t have to see this, shouldn’t feel her parents’ blood dripping down over her like morbid rain. I grab her, pull her tiny body against my chest. She shouldn’t have to do this, just like I shouldn’t have had to go to the hospital and stand beside my father’s lifeless body on that gurney. It wasn’t right. If I could have stopped this…

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t stop this any more than I could stop all the times Travis beat me up, the times he made fun of me in front of his friends, the times he tortured me just because I was weaker than him. I am weak. I’m a dweeb who does nothing but sit in front of the television, playing video games that are nothing like real life. I was not prepared for this. I should have been, but I wasn’t.

Why was I here if I couldn’t protect Tora?

“Clean this damn mess up!” Gumi yells at his men.

Some of the men leave the room. Others come over to lower Oshiro and his wife back to the floor. I move out of the way, cradling Tora’s head against my shoulder so that she doesn’t have to watch. She is so still in my arms now. She doesn’t sob, she doesn’t move. I’m not even sure she’s crying anymore. She’s just still, as if all her emotions have been stolen from her.

In shock, I hope.

“Why are you here?” Gumi asks, suddenly confronting Scarlet as if he hadn’t just killed two people. “Why are you trying to protect this little girl?” he adds.

Scarlet glares at him, holding her hands behind her back so that he cannot see that she is free now.

“Are you a time traveler? Are you like Hector and the others?”

She shoots a dirty look at Bruce, but still refuses to answer.

“If you don’t work for Vandir, how do you travel?”

“She’s a natural,” Clint says. “She travels on her own will.”

“That’s possible?” Gumi asks.

“For a few,” Hector says, shooting Clint a look that suggests he shouldn’t have said anything.

“Is that why Vandir wants her? To figure out how she does it?”

No one answers. I suppose no one really knows why Vandir wants her. But the idea makes Scarlet’s face tighten with fear again, though I don’t think anyone but me notices it.

Gumi studies Hector and Clint for a moment, still waiting for an answer to his question. And then he turns back to Scarlet.

“You said she escaped Vandir’s prison once before. The only one to do it.”

Hector nods, then says, “Yes” when he realizes Gumi cannot see his nod.

“What if she does it again? And what if she manages to take Tora with her this time?”

Clint and Hector exchange glances.

“Why are you here?” Gumi demands of Scarlet again, aiming his gun at her kneecaps. “I will shoot you if you do not answer me. You won’t have much luck getting around with a bullet in your knee.”

“She’s important,” Scarlet says in a voice that is strong and determined. It’s as though she is the one with the gun. “She is the key to the future.”

Gumi’s face pales a little. “How does she know that?” he asks the room.

“We’re still figuring out how all this works,” Hector says lamely.

“I don’t like this. If she manages to get free with Tora…”

Hector gestures toward Scarlet. “She could have gotten shot in the struggle.”

Gumi nods as he raises his gun to the center of Scarlet’s forehead.

Scarlet’s leg flies forward, knocking the gun out of Gumi’s hand, then quickly follows with another kick at his jaw. For his age Gumi moves fast, and he manages to avoid her attack.

Gumi’s armed men surround Scarlet before she has the chance to make another move.

“Gun,” Gumi says, waving his hand to one of his men, who throws it to him.

“You can’t run if your legs don’t work,” Gumi says, moving the gun toward Scarlet’s kneecap.

A gun fires.

I close my eyes, not really wanting to see Scarlet get shot, despite the fact that she’s never been all that nice to me. She got me off the street and saved my life a few times. She was stubborn and short-tempered, but I didn’t want the assignment to end this way.

But then another shot and another shot ring through the warehouse.

I open my eyes. Gumi’s on the floor. So is the man who’d been standing beside him. And more fall as I watch.

Scarlet jumps, fighting with Hector and knocking him to the ground, quickly recovering to go after Clint as he tries to flee. And more men fall.

It’s chaos. More of Gumi’s men come back into the warehouse, but they quickly fall, one after another. And that’s when I realize we are no longer alone in here.

Someone else is here and has some pretty impressive skills with a gun.

They all fall, one after another, all around us. All I can do is stand there and hold Tora close to me and wonder whose side this person is on.

It’s a woman, around my mom’s age, with the same fiery hair as Scarlet, and the look of emptiness that I’ve caught in Scarlet’s eyes. It’s Scarlet’s mom.

I back up when she walks toward me, but it’s not me she wants. She reaches toward Tora and takes her very gently from my arms. I think I hear her whisper, “I’m sorry,” as she checks her face for injuries.

“Scarlet?”

“You can trust her,” Scarlet says with disappointment as she walks over to us.

“She’s your mom?”

Scarlet nods. “Beth. How did you get here?” She addresses her mom using her real name. She spoke of this woman earlier. She’s their self-appointed leader.

“Parker sent you back to me,” Scarlet says, staring at me with wonder and making me feel uncomfortable.

A ripple appears in the warehouse, making my eyes feel blurred, but there isn’t anything wrong with them.

“More of Vandir’s men are coming,” I announce.

“Scarlet, hold onto Tora,” Beth says.

Out of the ripple a man appears, every angle of the man’s face sharp and harsh. His eyes feel as if they are ripping into my soul, bringing my deepest worries and fears to the front of my mind. He’s not Vandir’s man, he’s Vandir himself. The temperature drops from his arrival, yet sweat begins to pour down my face.

Scarlet and her mom glance back and forth between one another, and then from Vandir to me.

“Vandir,” Beth says firmly.

“Beth,” Vandir smiles, creating sharper wrinkles in his face. Vandir’s pale face stares at me. I feel like he’s inspecting every part of me.

“What?” I snap at him.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Parker,” Vandir replies condescendingly. He knows me.
How does he know me?

“Isn’t this lovely, Beth? We finally have the family all together.”

Beth’s face twists up. “It’s time to leave,” she says as she places her hand on my shoulder.

Scarlet gasps, a sound that is left unfinished because everything disappears.

I wake in my bed with that sensation of falling that sometimes happens when you first fall asleep. I gasp for breath. My whole body jerks. And pain flares in my arm. I sit up, snap on my small bedside lamp, all the muscles in my body screaming with the movement. I look at my arm. The wound is still there, made by a bullet grazing against my body.

And my skin is on fire. Sunburned.

I glance at the digital time display on the television. 01:07:32.

I take off my glasses and rub them with the corner of the sheet. When I put them back on, Scarlet is standing in the middle of my room, with a ripple fading behind her. I jump, sliding back against the wall and pulling the sheet up over my lap.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. “I’ve already seen your boxers.”

“Before, I came back with clothes,” I spit out.

“Might be because before, you time traveled by your own will and not because your assignment was over.”

My head is spinning as I try to comprehend that this really happened.

I study this girl standing in front of me. She looks like Scarlet. The same hair, the same eyes. The same dark clothing. But there are not marks on her wrists from where the ropes cut into her flesh. No bruising on her face from all the punches she took while she fought Vandir’s men, or Gumi’s men. No signs at all of what just happened to us.

“Why aren’t you bruised?”

“Because my present is different from yours. The Scarlet that was with you in Tokyo is at home recovering from her experiences.”

“Oh.”

That makes sense. Or, at least, it would make sense if I believed—or even understood—all this time travel stuff.

I watch her as she turns and moves around my room, taking in the video games piled on nearly every possible surface, her fingers playing over a stack of school books on my desk, pausing at a picture of my dad and me taken a few months before he died.

Why did Kimi tell me not to trust her? Does she betray me at some point? Does she try to hurt me? Does she lie to me?

I don’t know. But she’s the only other person I know who can travel in time. And, if I’m not simply having some sort of psychotic break, I kind of need to trust her so that she can teach me how to control this thing I can apparently do. And to teach me some of those karate moves so I’m not quite so useless next time.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m here to show you a little of the future,” she says, turning to face me again. “I want to show you Tora’s future. To show you a small part of the reason why we had to protect her.”

“How? I thought you said you never find the people that you rescue.” In the ice cream shop before we went to Tora’s uncle’s bar, she had told me that the people they rescue either disappear or end up dead. A weight lifts off me at the thought of Tora not ending up as the others.

A small smile touches her full lips. “You might want to get dressed first.”

Note to self: start wearing more clothes to bed.

I pull on some sweats and a t-shirt.

“Sit on the edge of your bed and close your eyes.”

I do what she says.

“Now remove everything from your mind. All thoughts. Try to make it a blank slate, a place where there’s nothing, no worries, no questions, no emotion.”

I peek at her from under one eyelid. “How do I do that?”

She rolls her eyes. “I would have thought it would be easy for you.”

“Unlike you, I do actually have a heart. And last night was pretty intense.”

She waves her hand. “Just concentrate on your breathing. A deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out. Can you do that?”

“I think I can manage.”

I close my eyes again and do as she says. Deep breath in. Hold it for three heartbeats. Let it out. I find myself wondering what my mom would say if she walked in and found Scarlet here. Would she even see her? I mean, if I’m delusional, Scarlet might be just a figment of my imagination, right? But there are marks on my body. I couldn’t just do that with the power of my mind, could I?

And then I think of Tora. I hope she’s okay. As bad as my dad’s death was, it was nothing like what she had to go through.

And then… breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Good,” Scarlet says. “Now come here.”

She stands in the center of my room again. I go to her and she takes my hands. I finally have a girl in my room and all she does is hold my hands. Story of my life.

Scarlet’s eyes move slowly over the clothes I’m wearing.

“Do you have anything nicer?”

“What’s wrong with this?”

Her eyebrow rises like she’s wondering why I don’t see it. Then she shrugs.

“I’ll come back later and take you shopping. Your sense of style definitely needs an overhaul.”

“But I don’t have any money.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

“How?”

She shrugs again. “I told you: there are lots of benefits to time travel.”

I stare at her for a second. “Do you rob banks?”

“No, of course not. But there are lots of ways to get money when you can move around in time.” She kind of jerks her hand where her fingers are still locked around mine. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know. And you need to tell me how you were able to time travel out of the assignment—everyone wants to know that.”

“Everyone wants to know?” My cheeks tingle with pride.

“Yeah. You’re the new kid with special tricks,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Can I go to meet them when we get back?”

“Not until after school. You need to get some sleep, and I have other things to do.”

She sounds an awful lot like my mom. “Now close your eyes. Empty your mind.”

It’s like she can read my mind.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re traveling. Normally I would tell you to concentrate on the place you want to go, but this time we’re going where I want to go. So you keep your mind blank and I will take us to our destination.”

So I do as she asks. I’m anxious to learn how to control this thing so that maybe, just maybe, I can go where I want to go, affect the future or the past the way I want to.

I close my eyes and concentrate. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

I suddenly feel odd. A strange sort of tingle runs up and down the nerves throughout my body. And then I open my eyes and we’re no longer in my bedroom.

We’re in an apartment somewhere. There are windows and I can see signs outside. Japanese characters.

We’re back in Tokyo. I was kind of hoping to never see this place again.