Erasing Time (2 page)

“If it made perfect sense,” Sheridan said, “it wouldn’t have taken so many years for people to discover it. I mean, how long did civilization exist before that apple dropped on Newton’s head?”

Taylor didn’t answer. She finished with her makeup and ran a hand through her strawberry-blond hair, unsure whether she was pleased with it.

Their natural hair color was a coppery red, but Taylor had abandoned it last year. She kept saying she wanted to be an
individual
, which basically meant she tried to look as little like Sheridan as possible. Sheridan’s hair was long and straight, so Taylor’s hair was bleached, layered, and wavy. Sheridan wore glasses, so Taylor wore colored contacts that turned her hazel eyes green. Sheridan only used a little makeup, so Taylor put on so much foundation, you would have thought freckles were a sin.

Taylor had a date tonight. A stealth one, because their parents didn’t allow them to go out with guys who were in their twenties. In Taylor’s defense, that was hard to avoid since she was in graduate school. She didn’t meet a whole lot of teens.

Their parents also wanted to thoroughly interview any guys who asked Taylor or Sheridan out. This was probably because their father was a minister. Years of counseling teens with raging hormones had made him cautious about anyone who might talk to, socialize with, or in any way touch his daughters.

“Where are you going tonight?” Sheridan asked.

Taylor picked up some red lipstick and brushed it across her mouth. “Movie.”

“You’ll get caught.” Knoxville wasn’t a small town, but somehow it was small enough that things got back to their parents.

“Nah, it’s one of those artsy foreign films on campus. I won’t see anyone who knows Dad and Mom. However …” She turned and cast a smile at Sheridan. “I told Mom that the two of us were going, so I need you to come to campus with me. You can hang out at the library while I’m with Mason.”

Sheridan tapped the end of her pencil against her lips and gazed at the ceiling. “Let me think about the benefits of spending all evening at a library and then possibly ending up grounded.... Nope, nothing’s coming to me.”

“I’ll help you with your homework.”

Taylor used to do that without expecting payment in return. Sheridan shut her physics book with a thud.

Taylor didn’t notice. She took Sheridan’s new denim jacket from the closet and slipped it on, covering a top that was tighter and lower cut than their parents would have liked. “Or if you’d rather, I’ll do your physics homework for a week.”

Which wasn’t the point. Sheridan wanted to understand the homework, not cheat. Still, she hated fighting with Taylor. Taylor had a memory that held not only an unnatural amount of scientific minutia, but also grudges.

“Fine,” Sheridan said, flipping her book open again. “I’ll go. Just explain Newton’s third law. I don’t care what my teacher says—a chair doesn’t push back when you sit on it.”

Taylor flopped down on the bed. “Yes, it does. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, even sitting on a chair.”

“I’ve been sitting on chairs all of my life, and not once has one ever pushed back.”

Taylor didn’t answer. Instead she looked, with a startled expression, over at the corner of the room. Sheridan turned to see a small ball of light floating halfway between the floor and the ceiling. It twirled in on itself, like water flowing down a drain.

“What’s that?” Sheridan asked.

“I don’t know.” Taylor stood and walked cautiously toward it.

It must be a reflection, an optical illusion of some kind. Maybe some trick one of their little brothers was playing. Sheridan glanced around, searching for something that could cast light up that way. When her eyes returned to the ball, it had grown. It shimmered, spilling out over itself.

Sheridan left the bed and edged over for a closer look. The light spread out horizontally, pulsing, growing so large, it looked dangerous. Could it be an electric field from a broken wire somewhere? The bright afterglow made it hard to see anything.

Sheridan took a step backward, shielding her eyes. “Mom!” she yelled. “Something weird is happening in my room!”

Taylor stood transfixed. Her hair lifted from her shoulders, and sparks pinged off her fingertips. She raised her hand as though to push the light away.

Sheridan grabbed her sister’s arm to pull her backward. “Don’t touch it!”

Taylor didn’t budge, didn’t answer.

You weren’t ever supposed to touch electric currents. Taylor should know that. Sheridan tried again to yank her sister backward, but instead felt herself being dragged toward the widening crevice of light. Sheridan’s hair swished out in front of her, fluttering.

“Mom!” she shouted again, alarm spiraling in her chest. Her mother’s footsteps quickened into a run. In another moment she would be here, and everything would be all right.

Sheridan held on to Taylor. The muscles in her arms and legs felt like they were hardening. Sparks flew from her body and twirled away, swallowed into the crack of light. None of this made sense.

Sheridan didn’t hear the sound of her door opening. It was swallowed up in a noise like a wave crashing over the room.

“Stop!” her mother called. The word twisted, distorted, broke into a thousand tumbling pieces.

Sheridan wanted to turn and look at her mother, but the light enveloped her, a brilliant electric mouth devouring her and Taylor both.
I’m going to die
, she realized, and didn’t have time for another thought before a shock slapped through her, buckling her legs. Then everything went deeply black.

At first Sheridan sensed nothing. Then, slowly, she heard voices, far away, filtering toward her.

“Two?” someone asked, and then she heard mumbling she couldn’t understand.

Sheridan shook her head in an effort to rid herself of the drowsiness that clung to her. She had a sense that time had passed but couldn’t tell how much. She opened her eyes, then immediately shut them. Colors blurred together in a kaleidoscope of shapes.

Mumble mumble
… “Awake,” one of the voices said. Or perhaps he said, “A wake.” Wasn’t that another word for a funeral? Was she dead?

She opened her eyes again. Everything still looked jumbled, dizzy. She raised a hand to her eyes, checking for her glasses. They were still there. She blinked several times until the colors coalesced, kept the boundaries of their shapes.

She had thought she was lying down, but instead found herself standing—upright and weightless, floating somehow, behind a glass wall. She could have reached out to touch it, but her attention was drawn to the people who stood on the other side watching her.

They looked nothing like angels.

About a dozen men peered back at her. Some had hair that stood straight up in colorful geometric shapes. The rest had long hair colored with strange streaks, stripes, and designs.

Their faces were likewise decorated. Some wore only smudges of color, others looked like they’d painted entire murals on their bodies. Most of the men wore shirts in colors that matched their hair and faces. A couple were dressed in metallic black suits and wore helmets with smoky-colored visors. No one looked very happy.

How odd.

Sheridan blinked some more, hoping this might further change the scene. A man with fierce eyes and black-and-gray-striped hair stepped away from the others. He came toward her, frowning.

Sheridan watched him, trying to keep him in focus. “Apparently, I didn’t make it to heaven.”

“What?”

It was only then that Sheridan noticed Taylor suspended next to her in the glass booth. She groggily lifted her head and opened her eyes. “Where are we?”

“My first guess is hell, but I’m not sure yet.”

The man in front of the wall spoke to them.
“Wet es yerr yama?”
As his lips moved, Sheridan could see his nostrils flaring but couldn’t make sense of what he’d said.

“What?” Taylor asked, half slurring the word.

“
Yerr yama?
” he repeated.
“Wet es yerr yama?”

What language was he speaking?

Taylor gave a shudder and jolted into wakefulness. She put her hands along the glass wall in front of them, leaning toward it. “Where are we?” Her voice rose sharply, as though just realizing she should be panicking. “Let us out of here!” She hit the wall with the palm of her hand. It made a pointlessly small smacking sound.

The man with the black-and-gray-striped hair turned to the men behind him and motioned a couple of them forward. “Jeth, Echo.”

Two men broke away from the group and walked toward the glass wall. The first guy was perhaps only a few years older than Sheridan, with broad shoulders and light-blue hair that grew darker toward his shoulders. A turquoise crescent moon curved around his left eye and down his cheekbone, making his blue eyes stand out with vibrant color.

He studied them with open amazement, his gaze taking in their every detail.

The other man was middle-aged and slightly shorter. Dark-maroon hair receded over a high forehead, and a row of large green dots traveled down his face. He smiled up at them. “I. Am. Jeth. Don’t. Be. Afraid.” He enunciated each word slowly. “We. Are. Not. Hurting. You.”

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Taylor said. “Get us out of here.”

Jeth looked at them blankly. “The judge?”

“Let us out!” Taylor shouted.

Jeth’s speech relaxed as though he was finally confident they could hear him. “We have a few questions before you’re released. What are your names?”

Taylor kicked the wall, with no better results than when she’d hit it. “Let us out now!”

Sheridan put one hand against the wall’s surface, looking for a door out. She didn’t see one. They were in some sort of cage, and screaming and kicking wasn’t going to help them. “I’m Sheridan Bradford.”

A whole roomful of brows furrowed.

“And the other girl with you?” Jeth asked.

Taylor was still kicking the wall, so Sheridan answered for her. “Taylor Bradford.”

Now not only did the brows furrow, but heads shook and gazes dropped. Only Jeth and Echo seemed unruffled by the news. Jeth shook his head philosophically, and Echo—although he tried to hide it—smiled.

The men in the background turned to one another, talking in so many different conversations that the room rumbled with noise. The man with the black-and-gray-striped hair marched from one group to the next, spitting out words. He looked like he wanted to hit someone.

Sheridan brought her attention back to Jeth and Echo. “Who are you? Why are we here?”

“You’re here,” Echo said with a smirk, “because the Time Strainer doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to.”

Taylor took a break from smacking the walls. “Time Strainer?” she repeated. “What are you talking about?”

“The year is 2447,” Jeth said.

Taylor shook her head, but her eyes grew worried. “Time travel is impossible. It’s a scientific fact.”

Jeth gave a bemused shrug. “We were surprised too.”

This wasn’t happening. It was an elaborate prank. Someone had made that big ball of light appear in her room, had brought Taylor and her here, put them in this glass cage, and rigged things so they floated in air like gravity didn’t exist....

Oh no
.

You couldn’t make people float in air. This was real.

They were in the future.

On one hand this was probably better than, say, being dead. Even as fear pushed through Sheridan, pounding in her stomach and making her ears ring, another part of her breathed out the word
opportunity
. Some people dreamed of the future, would give anything to see it, and here she was in it. The future.

She saw a stark white room and a dozen people who looked like clowns who had gone bad.

It was no good being optimistic about this. She didn’t want to find out about the future. She wanted to go home.

Jeth was explaining the Time Strainer to Taylor. “The scientists expected it to retrieve a man—Tyler Sherwood—but instead it brought us you.” He shook his head. “It’s the machine’s first use. Obviously it still has some problems.”

Taylor had gone so pale, her red lipstick looked like two bright slashes across her mouth. She gaped at the men and didn’t speak.

Usually Taylor said whatever she thought, uncensored. Sheridan was the one who chose her words carefully. But in Taylor’s silence, Sheridan found herself stepping into her sister’s role. “Problems? What sort of crappy search engine does your machine have? It can make people time travel but it can’t tell the difference between a man and two girls?” Her voice rang with accusation. “Like what—it just grabbed the first two people whose names sounded remotely like the right ones?” She rubbed shaking fingers across her temple and took deep breaths. “You’re going to make sure this thing is working before you send us back, aren’t you?”

She suddenly had visions of ending up in a time and place where people who unexpectedly popped into existence were burned as witches.

Echo sent her an apologetic smile. “We don’t run the Time Strainer. We’re just here as translators.”