Infinite Time: Time Travel Adventure (11 page)

Panic begins to build in my chest. I squeeze my eyes tightly together. I want to go home.

Darkness swallows me, sucking all the life from my body. I gasp as if the devil himself just spat me out onto my bed… My bed.

My arm feels weak as I spring up from my lying position.

01:00.01 glows from my alarm clock. I’ve been a sleep for a minute?

I fumble out of my bed for my bedroom light.

I was really shot. I look down at the crimson blood on my finger. My body tingles all over, and the gunshot wound stings and burns as if I’ve got sunburn.

Hysterical laugher pours uncontrollably from my mouth. It’s real? I can time travel? My laughter gets louder the more I think about it. I’ve finally gone crazy. No one can time travel. I shake my head as I look into my mirror.

“If I’m crazy, where did I get the clothes from?” I ask myself as I look at the housekeeping uniform Scarlet stole from the hotel. But if it is real, that means Scarlet is on her own and Tora is still in danger. I thought we couldn’t time travel out of the assignment.

Then all my thoughts turn black, and their weight drowns me. If this is real, that means… No, she can’t be. It would mean that Kimi is really dead. And she died for me.

How do I get back there? I can’t let anyone else die.

I can hear my heart pounding in my chest; the sound clouds my brain from making any clear thoughts.

“You can do this,” I tell myself as I look into the mirror.

I click the light off and lie back in bed, putting the blankets over my body, just as I had done before I first time traveled.

What did I do that first time? I look at the clock. 01:02:01—I’ve already been here two minutes. What’s happened to them in that time? I panic, which really doesn’t help.

Hilton, Japan, room 1616. Take me back there, I repeat in my head over and over again.

Goddamn it! It’s not working. I flip around in my bed. Pain ripples through my arm with the movement.
Take me back there
, my mind wills, pushing through the pain.

The heaviness of disappointment hits me. I can’t do this.

“Parker?” I open my eyes to see amazement in Scarlet’s eyes, then her face swings to the side as she takes a hard punch to the jaw. Her body slams down to the ground with a thud. Vandir’s man snarls at me, and he steps over Scarlet’s lifeless body.

I did it!
I’ve reappeared in the hotel room.

I run, not thinking about where I’m going. I push open another door and step inside, closing the door behind me. Inside it is a bedroom, and huddled on the bed are Tora and, I guess, her parents. She’s here. I found her.

There is a thud of a body against the locked bedroom door.
Please don’t let it be Scarlet.

Tora mutters something to her father, whom she calls “Oshiro.” Oshiro’s almond-shaped eyes widen, and he jerks his head to one side. I turn. There are bodies on the floor in a pool of blood staining the cream hotel carpet. The police inspector. A couple of other people I don’t recognize. He stands tall, as if to tell me he did that.

Now I feel that this isn’t some fun dream, and this is real. I want to know what the frigging hell is really going on!

Who is Tora and why is she so important that I would find myself pulled into her life?

“Parker?” I hear a harsh whisper from outside the door.

Scarlet.

“In here,” I say, opening the door just a crack, fearing that there might be more crazy men with guns nearby. “It’s all real. It’s all real,” I mutter, the words echoing in my mind.

“I told you it was,” Scarlet says as she steps into the room. I turn back to the bed where Tora’s father—Oshiro—is again jerking his head to the left like he’s having some sort of seizure; three men dressed in suits, Vandir’s men, step into the bedroom with their guns drawn and pointed right at me.

Then everything happens so fast I don’t have time to think about it.

One of the men grabs Tora. The other two grab Tora’s parents, her mother screaming as her father speaks quickly in Japanese, begging for his daughter. Tora is wide-eyed, too shocked and frightened to do anything. She stares straight at me as though communicating with me without actually saying anything. And the funny thing is, I know what she’s saying, not from words but from the look on her face.

The man, with his very lethal gun pointed at me, uncovers the watch on his wrist.

I know what’s going to happen. I remember how Clint looked at his watch and then he was suddenly gone.

They are going to take Tora to their present, where there is nothing Scarlet and I can do to help her.

They will not take her; I can’t let that happen.

I fish in my pocket and pull out my knife. Before anyone notices I’ve got it, I throw it at the man holding Tora. To my surprise I hit the target, his eye.

Instantly he falls to the ground, wrapping his hands around the knife, blood angrily seeping down his face.

Tora runs to me.

I shelter her with my body as Scarlet lets out some sort of warrior cry, the sound of flesh pounding flesh filling the room as she uses her Bruce Lee moves to take out the other guy. She must be growing tired, but she lands a couple of good punches and a kick to the guy’s thigh before he gets even one punch in. These guys just aren’t prepared for her ferocity, her determination.

It takes longer than it should, but Scarlet finally lands a blow to the last man’s head and he goes down.

“It’s okay now,” I tell Tora.

She runs to her mother, who cries as she holds her, running her hands instinctively over her daughter as though looking for a hidden injury.

“Thank you,” her father says in heavily-accented English.

I just nod, a little embarrassed by his gratitude.

“You time traveled on the assignment. How did you do that?” Scarlet asks, looking at me with new eyes. Not like I'm a kid getting in her way anymore, but as if I'm someone she needs.

“I will tell you once the assignment is over.”
And once I figure out how the hell I did it.

“You did good, Parker,” Scarlet says, coming to stand at my side.

“You too.”

“I always do. But you… that was impressive work with the knife.”

I smile, a little more flattered than I probably should be. But it does feel good to be the hero for once instead of the victim.

We move to the second room in the hotel suite. The living room is nothing like mine at home; this is way nicer and bigger. Tora and her parents are sitting on the couch, still clinging to each other like they’re afraid if they let go of her, she’ll just disappear.

Scarlet is pacing, clearly agitated.

“Can I ask you something?”

She doesn’t acknowledge me with words, but she slows her movements, which I take as acknowledgement. “She’s safe now. Reunited with her parents. We should have gone back, but we haven’t. Isn’t our assignment done?”

She shakes her head. “Something’s wrong. It’s not over yet.”

Almost as if on cue, we hear the ding of the elevator and the sound of many, many feet.

People are coming.

Scarlet races to the door and looks out through the peephole. Once again, tension seems to spread from her scalp to her toes. Then she runs to the windows. There’s bamboo scaffolding outside, left behind by the construction crew still working on the finishing touches on the building.

Scarlet steps back and fires her gun. Cracks appear on the window and then it shatters.

She speaks quickly to Tora’s parents. The father immediately stands and grabs Tora, swinging her up onto his back. Then he grabs his wife’s hand and pulls her across the room to the broken window.

The wind whistles as it rushes through the window. I can see the fear written all over Tora’s face. I touch the bottom of my chin with two fingers, the universal sign to keep your chin up. Have courage. She focuses on me intently for a moment as she does what I’ve shown her and lifts her chin, the fear slowly draining from her eyes.

“Too many,” Scarlet hisses under her breath as the sound of approaching footsteps continues. She runs into the bedroom for a second, shoving guns into her bag as she comes back. Then she goes over to the couch and tugs it. I see what she’s doing and I grab the other end, helping her push it the dozen or so feet to the door. We wedge it up against the door, the back sitting perfectly against the bottom of the door handle. A second later, the handle jiggles, but the couch is too tight against it to allow any real movement.

“That won’t hold them long,” Scarlet says.

“Then we'd better go.”

I run to the open window where Oshiro, with Tora on his back, is just stepping over the windowsill, followed by his pale and shaking wife.

My adrenaline is pumping. I can’t even begin to think about what’s happening, about what will happen if we don’t make it, now that I know it is all real. All I can think about are Tora’s eyes that keep looking at me like I’m the only one who can protect her.

We have to save Tora. I don’t know why. But I know it’s more important than the fear that has begun to take root deep in my stomach.

I’ve never been brave, but this is the moment to be brave.

We rush down the bamboo scaffolding that’s wrapped around the outside of the hotel. Even though I’m not scared of heights, this is frigging scary. I grip the bamboo which, to my amazement, is strong.
Thank God
. Tora and her parents are in front of me, with Scarlet behind me. I know the moment the bad guys break through the door of the hotel suite because there is a loud crash and a lot of swearing. A part of me wants to press my hands to Tora’s ears, keep her from hearing such vulgar words, even if most of them are in English and she can’t understand them.

And then someone’s at the window.

He yells at us; I guess telling us to stop. Maybe they will give us a head start and we can use the elevator instead of climbing down the outside of a very windy building.

Scarlet yells, “Faster.”

I run as fast as I can without risking tripping over my own feet.

A whizzing sounds passes by my ear. “They’re shooting!”

“Yeah. Run faster!”

“Why can they shoot at us if we can’t shoot at them?”

“Because they don’t care what happens to the future!”

I look at Tora. Her face is snug against her father’s neck, but her shoulders are shaking. She’s scared. I’m scared, but seeing how afraid she is makes me run faster, makes me move up behind her and her father to shield them as much as I can with my very thin body.

The scaffolding is set up on a slight angle so that it is continuously working its way down the side of the building. Once we reach a certain point, it stops just working its way down the front of the building and begins winding around the other side. We are nearly to that corner when another bullet whizzes past me. It’s so close that I can feel the breeze against my cheek. I worry for a second that it might lodge itself in Tora or her dad, but it passes them by, too.

And then Tora’s mother is around the corner and we aren’t very far behind.

I move closer, my feet doing something of a dance as I try to run and slow down all at the same time. I press my hand to the small of the dad’s back, urging him forward. But even as I’m going forward, he’s stopping, and we nearly topple each other.

“What are you doing?” Scarlet demands.

“That’s a good question,” a man’s voice answers.

And that’s when we see them, a group of men standing on the scaffolding. It’s Clint and Bruce, and behind them are men naked from the waist up, shirtless men with massive tattoos displayed over their chests, their bellies, their arms. They’re the tattoos Mr. Conrad talked about in class yesterday. What did he call them?
Irezumi
. These men are members of the Yakuza, and the men that were holding Tora’s family hostage were, too. Mr. Oshiro belongs to a rival gang.

The tattoos cover just about every inch of their muscular bodies. They look like they have just stepped out of prison, where they spent their whole lives training for today.

Scarlet moves up in front of Tora and her dad, pushing the mother back behind them. I watch as Tora’s dad hands off Tora, pushing her toward her mom, and he moves up beside Scarlet. That’s where I should be, I realize. I should be beside Scarlet, protecting these people, because that is the assignment. That is my purpose.

I touch Tora’s little hand and move up.

The men’s tattoos stare at us like they have thoughts and opinions of their own. The tattoos really are impressive. I find it difficult to pull my eyes from them, especially this one that depicts a beautiful geisha with the most intense eyes. The work is amazing. I’ve never seen anything quite so beautiful in all my life… not that I go out of my way to look at tattoos, or art for that matter. But it is beautiful. Almost as beautiful as my sweet Clara.

Almost, but not quite.
Jesus,
Parker, get a grip, this isn’t the time to let your mind drift!
I curse myself.

Then the men separate, and another man, an older man, steps in front of them. He’s short and a little on the heavy side. Oshiro hisses under his breath when he sees him. And that makes the man smile, creating wrinkles over his face.

He says something in Japanese, bowing his head to Oshiro, who, clearly feeling as though the movement is meant to be disrespectful, ignores him. The man’s eyebrows rise. Then he seems to brush it off.

“I am Gumi,” he says in heavily-accented English. “I am the
kumicho
of Yamaguchi-gumi. The leader.”

I cross my arms over my narrow chest, trying to imitate Scarlet’s less-than-impressed attitude.

The man’s eyebrows rise again. But this time he doesn’t seem to brush the disrespect off as quickly and easily as he did with Tora’s dad.

“And you are?” he asks tersely.

“You need to let us go,” Scarlet says.

Even I know that isn’t going to happen. We already heard the men from the hotel suite above join us, their footsteps heavy on the bamboo scaffolding behind us. It felt like an army, though I’m afraid to turn and look. And then there are these men in front of us, half a dozen of them, it looks like. Scarlet is good with her karate skills, but it would take quite a bit to get through these men and outrun those behind us.

Scarlet gave me my gun back earlier. It is pressed against the small of my back where I shoved it when we came out the window. It won’t take much for me to get to it and fire. It’s a move I’ve practiced many times in front of the mirror in my bedroom. You know, for that moment when Clara might show up at the arcade and want to watch me kick zombie butt. I’m ready to help Scarlet with whatever she wants to do.

“How did you get past my men?” Gumi asks.

Scarlet doesn’t seem intent on answering him. But Gumi doesn’t seem interested in an answer.

He tugs at the collar of his shirt and I see a peek of a tattoo. Heck, this guy is covered in tattoos, too!

“I saw on the security camera. You’re quite talented with the karate moves.”

“Yeah?”

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“Bruce Lee.”

Gumi stares at her for a second and then he bursts into laughter. The men behind him begin to laugh as well, especially after he turns to them and makes a crude gesture.

I can feel the tension rolling off Scarlet. She doesn’t like people laughing at her.

Maybe she should stop being so honest.

“Bruce Lee is dead,” Gumi says.

“I’m aware,” Scarlet says, the words tight as they slip between her clenched jaws.

“He died long before you were even born.”

“Of that I am also aware.”

Gumi’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t like her answer.

“Why are you protecting these people? What business is this of yours?”

“Mine. Not yours.” She studies him for a long second. “And, if you don’t want to get hurt, I would suggest you get out of our way.”

Again, everyone laughs. Especially Gumi. It almost feels like a festive atmosphere, like these men aren’t here to kill us and do whatever they had planned for Tora and her family. But then Gumi suddenly sobers, his face losing all trace of amusement. He gestures to Scarlet, Tora’s family, and me.

“Grab them. But don’t kill them.”

And then he goes to turn toward his men, but Scarlet reacts immediately, even before Gumi’s words register with me. She moves into a perfect front stance and slams the side of her hand into Gumi’s throat. And then all chaos erupts.

Oshiro pulls me back and jumps into the fray, displaying fighting skills that are just as good as—if not slightly better than—Scarlet’s.

Gumi staggers back, gasping for air, and the tattooed guys attack with the same sort of skills as Scarlet. There is no way we can win this fight. I watch as one of them delivers four blows to Scarlet’s face, all in quick succession. But none of them seem to faze her.

Scarlet returns the punches as she also blocks a few more with her forearms.

Then she gets off a good kick and then another, knocking the guy back into the others behind him.

At the same time, Oshiro is wrestling with the other two tattooed men. Somehow Oshiro manages to be aware of where each one is at any given time, landing blows just before they can touch him. He takes a couple of blows, but not as many as Scarlet. And Oshiro, too, knocks one man back into the men behind him. But, like the one Scarlet is fighting, he comes back like a human boomerang.

And then one of the guys in black decides to enter the fight. He heads toward Scarlet, murder in his eyes. I can’t let that happen.

She’s already overwhelmed. I don’t want her to get hurt.

I pull the gun and fire.

The man falls forward and I turn to watch him nearly knock over the man holding a gun on Tora’s mom—the man I hadn’t even noticed until just now. But he’s like a tree. He doesn’t move, doesn’t take his eye off me. And his friends are quickly moving up around him, one headed toward Scarlet, another toward Oshiro.

“Stop,” says the man holding a gun at Tora’s mom, his voice low and steady, just like the hand holding the gun.

A weight falls against me and I turn… and the world goes dark.