Death Thieves (20 page)

His smoothly shaved face darkened. He bit his lip and scowled as though working through something important in his head. He gave himself a little shake and offered over a tight smile. “I doubt she ever found out anyway. My mom wasn’t young. She was forty-eight. Forty-eight just yesterday and today . . .” He gave himself another shake. “Half a century would make her near a hundred. She would’ve died without knowing.” He nodded as if we’d agreed on his assessment. I nodded, too. He needed me to agree—to be on his side. His pain was etched deep on his face. “They had me leave my shirt with the wallet at the scene, like a land marker of what should have happened. I’m grateful to be alive—don’t get me wrong. I just never imagined my life turning out like this.”

I smiled sympathetically. “I hear you. This is . . .” I shrugged. Jay looked so lost, that changing the subject seemed the only way to keep him from crying. His worries took the focus off my own. “So what year are you from?” The get-to-know-you questions we used were weird. How did you die? What year are you from? And yet, we all seemed to be acclimating to those questions as though they were perfectly normal.

“1987.”

“Wow. I wasn’t even born yet. How old are you?”

“Seventeen. What year are you from?”

“2010. I’m seventeen, too.” I answered the question before he could ask it.

“I’m still older than you.” He smiled and took a sip of his drink.

“Oh whatever! We’re the same age. I might even be older, since I’m turning eighteen in a month, or at least I
was
turning eighteen in a month. I don’t know how that works anymore.” I eyed the table and found that the food looked pretty good. I grabbed a plate and started loading up. If I got my ring and was able to get out and find Tag, there was no telling when my next meal would be. I had agreed to help save the future, but I couldn’t do that without confirming his safety.

“Still, I
was
born twenty-three years before you.”

I snorted softly. “Well don’t go thinking that makes you more mature than me. Chronology and maturity aren’t the same thing.”

He laughed. His laugh made me smile. It felt good to talk to someone in my same situation who seemed
normal
.

He sobered up a bit and glanced over the rest of the room. “How many people do you think are here?”

I followed his gaze and did a quick estimation. “Maybe one hundred fifty?”

“We’re going to be here a long, long time, then, if that guy plans on taking that much time with every person.” Jay’s acidic tone made me pause.

“You don’t like him?”

“I don’t trust him. Let’s get our food and find a place to sit down.”

I almost protested, believing that by staying close to the door, I’d be picked out among the first and could be on my way. But I had a pile of food to plow through on my plate and would need some time to eat it. I followed Jay to one of the couches.

After a few more minutes of conversing, I figured Jay, with his conspiracy theory mind, could be friends with someone like me. If I ever decided to ditch the future, I’d ask if he wanted to come with me.

We ate, talked, and were joined by several others. An eighteen-year-old girl, named Mita Sarin, had been in a biking accident in India. She was stunningly beautiful but still looked incredibly shaken over her day’s events. A twenty-year-old guy named Henry Woodard from London had been hit by a train while listening to his MP3 player. He seemed relieved and relaxed to be involved in an option that had nothing to do with a train. Apparently, a couple of the teens in the room had been the victims of actual kidnappers—people who had taken them to hurt them and kill them. All of those were grateful to the soldiers who’d saved them, grateful to be anywhere but where they’d been, grateful to Professor Raik for giving them a second chance to live.

There were a few more hiking incidents, a few drownings, a few bombings, many car accidents, motorcycle accidents, and fires. There was even one guy who said he’d been killed in a bowling accident. I didn’t bother to ask him what such a death might actually entail.

These were only the ones around me. There were a lot of people I didn’t talk to, a lot of stories I didn’t know. But I felt torn with every new story.

Most of the people praised Professor Raik for being life and salvation. Others were too traumatized from the day’s events to make any judgment, and a very small minority seemed genuinely ticked off to be where they were.

“How many of us are there?” Jay asked. Once he put the numbers to how long we’d all be waiting for the professor to talk to each of us, everyone in our circle let out a collective groan.

Kathleen tapped my shoulder. “Miss Rae. Professor Raik will see you now.”

I stood, met Jay’s eyes, and found courage there. I took a deep breath and followed Kathleen out of the room.

She led me down the hall to a plush office filled with extravagant woodwork and lots of oil paintings. I recognized a few paintings and figured they must be copies, since the originals were supposed to be in museums. Professor Raik sat behind a large, imposing desk, his hands folded neatly in front of him. When I fully entered the room and Kathleen closed the door, leaving me alone with him, he stood and extended his hand.

Even more cautiously than I had with Jay, I took his hand and shook it.

“Miss Rae. It’s a delight to meet you. The reports of you were excellent. Excellent,” he repeated, and then pulled his chair in under him as he sat. “Please be seated.” His arm waved toward the chair next to me. I sat down.

“Did you not find your new wardrobe to your liking?”

“It’s fine, I guess. I’m just comfortable this way.” I picked at the loose threads in the knees of my jeans. When he noticed, I forced my hands to sit still in my lap.

“You experienced a lapse in time from the moment you were taken from your time and the moment you arrived here. I’d like to hear about your travels in the interim between times.” He settled back, his hands clasped together once again on the desk in front of him.

What if Tag told them something different from what happened? How would I know? If they hadn’t already killed him, they might after I say something stupid. My heart pounded so hard, I was sure if I looked down, I’d see the thump against Winter’s shirt. “I’m sure Tag can tell you better than I could. He’s a lot smarter than I am.”

“That’s not true at all. Yes,
Taggert
is intelligent, but we know you are also very intelligent, more so in many ways. You are the elite.
Taggert
is only a soldier. Naturally, your viewpoint is valued differently.” He emphasized Tag’s full name, insinuating that my shortened version, Tag, might be too familiar and therefore inappropriate. And Professor Raik may as well have said outright that a soldier was of far less importance than a pure-blooded
student
from the past.

“The weather was bad.” I tried to remember what Tag had told the general with the red hair, and remembered how Tag had refused to say anything at all to the driver. Tag had said he would only give information to the professor, yet he had given information to the general, too. I wondered if he did that on purpose just so I could hear, just so our stories were the same. “The Orbital didn’t work right because of the weather, and we ended up in the middle of the Rainier volcano explosion. It was a mess! Tag saved my life for the second time when he got us out of there. The Orbital wasn’t working at all then. I thought we were really going to die, but Tag made it work.” I used the name Tag as much on purpose as Professor Raik had used Taggert. It was the only power struggle I dared to engage myself in with this man.

“What happened then?” Professor Raik didn’t blink, didn’t move. A fly could have landed on his nose and the professor would likely not have noticed it.

“We ended up in another time—sometime in the future. The Orbital still didn’t work and we were hungry and tired. Tag took care of me. He found us a place to lie low and get rest and food while he figured out the problem with the Orbital. As soon as he fixed it, we jumped here.” I nodded, more to myself than to him, thinking surely I said nothing too incriminating. Surely my story had to match Tag’s enough to clear him of anything wrong.

“Did you get to know Taggert very well?” He no longer put the emphasis on the name, likely thinking I was too dumb to take the hint.

“No. He never would talk about himself.” That bit of truth bugged me. He
hadn’t
ever talked about anything personal. He never gave any hint as to the person he really might be, except for acknowledging that he’d cried while reading
A Sliver of Midnight
.

“But you like him.”

“I respect him.”

The professor mulled that over before saying, “So if you didn’t talk or discuss things, what did you do to pass the time?” Professor Raik now leaned back in his big chair as though merely curious. But his eyes sharpened, and fear shivered through me.

“The house had a library. We read books.”

This information took him off guard. “Books?”

“Yes. We read books.” I smiled—or tried to. My nerves were so strung out; the smile might have looked more like a wince.

Professor Raik cleared his throat. “I see. Well then, good. A packet for you will arrive at your dorm room tomorrow. It will list classes that are available, so you can enroll in the university. We expect great things from you and your fellow students. You will have two days to acclimate and get the enrollment forms filled out. School will start Monday.”

I waited. He seemed done with me, but I waited. Where was my ring? Surely he’d give me a ring. Everyone else had come back with one.

“That will be all, Miss Rae.” He pushed up off the desk to a standing position and smiled his running-for-congressman smile. “A pleasure to meet you.” He shook my hand again as he ushered me to the door.

I stopped at the door, thinking fast, trying to stall for time in case he’d forgotten that one important part of this meeting. “But sir? What day is today? If classes start Monday, what day is today?”

“Today is Friday,” he answered.

“Oh. Okay then. Thanks.” I hesitated, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. Frustrated and uncertain what to do next, I grabbed the door handle wondering if it would open for me even if I didn’t have the ring. My bedroom door opened, so it might.

“One more thing Miss Rae.” Professor Raik turned and went behind his desk.

I tried to contain my desperation for whatever he might be getting. It was so important that he not know I anticipated anything, suspected anything, or
planned
anything. I’d decided no one could read my mind. If they could, I’d be in jail already.

“It’s a gift from the Amerio regent to welcome you to the future.” He held out a small wooden box on the palm of his hand.

“Amerio?”

“The regent running our continent.”

“Oh.” I reached for the box, working hard to keep my hands from trembling. “What is it?” I hoped the question sounded innocent enough.

“Open it.”

I did as instructed. “Oh. It’s a ring.” I hoped I sounded surprised.

“Yes. Put it on.”

I did as instructed and then examined it on my hand. I put it on my wedding band finger like Tag had worn his. Professor Raik didn’t say that it mattered what hand I wore it on, but it fit best there anyway.

“It’s an identification ring, or an IDR. Blood samples were collected from you, and your genetic code was fused with the ring. You cannot use another’s ring because it only functions when in contact with the living DNA it’s fused with. It’s a means of communication, identification, entertainment, it is our monetary system. If you enter a store, you need not burden yourself with a purse, or a pocket full of clunky coin and paper. Your financial accounts are tied to your IDR. Shortly, we will give instructions on how things work here. The ring will be better explained then.”

“It sounds complicated. I’m glad we’ll get some instructions. Thank you.” I smiled and left the room, careful to shut the door behind me. My smile dropped as soon as the door clicked closed.

What he hadn’t said interested me more than the things he had. It occurred to me that the ring would be traceable. If a door opened for me with the ring, then it stood to reason there would be a log kept of that door opening. By giving us the rings, they would be able to track us, keep tabs on our comings and goings. The ring was like an invisible leash on a dog.

Stupid!
And here I’d been thinking the ring would grant me freedom. Where was my brain? I glared at the ring, even the fact that it was possibly the most beautiful piece of jewelry I’d ever seen, I wanted to throw it out the window. Tiny suns and moons chased one another around the wide band.

“All the scroll work and pictures are encoded with data. So it’s functional as well as beautiful.”

Startled, I looked up to see Kathleen who’d come to collect me and escort me back. “Is everyone’s designed differently?” I asked. “How would they know what size to get?”

“While the soldier collected data on you, he sent it back to be processed. They knew the symbols you felt connected to and tried to emulate them on your ring. Personalized IDRs are very expensive, and Professor Raik and the regents wanted you to have the best.” She started walking behind me, herding me forward.

I didn’t like having been spied on but appreciated how closely the suns and moons on the ring matched those on the quilts that belonged to Winter and me. Tag must have known how much I would miss them and, in his own way, tried to recreate them for me.

The rest of the day offered no time to escape or plan for escape. Though Professor Raik’s time spent with each student became markedly shorter—less than a minute in some cases, it still took forever. After half of us had received our rings, they sent us to the auditorium. The other half was taken to a day spa of sorts, which gave pedicures, manicures, massages, and had steam rooms. They were much more comfortable while awaiting their rings that way. Eventually, we switched places with them, and we got the royal treatment while they learned about their new world.

For all of Professor Raik’s understanding that we needed time to rest and mourn, he hardly gave us time to breathe. We were tossed from one seminar to another, learning about the technology of the future, learning we each had what they called lapdesks in our rooms to do our homework on. They didn’t mention implanting hard drives into our brains, but they likely would sometime later, after we’d acclimated to our new environment. Jay stayed close the whole day. So did Alison and a guy named Eddie, who seemed to have taken a liking to me throughout the afternoon.