Stolen time timeless boo.., p.1
Stolen Time (Timeless Book 2), page 1
Stolen Time
Book One of Timeless
Fae York
Beyond Dragons and Relativity Publishing
Prologue
Bewilderment and Sorrow
Her wails ripped through the entire living compound with such sorrowful complexity that everyone stood still, uncertain how to be of support to her, how to assuage her pain, how to make right all that was so . . . not right. Everyone had known about her loss almost instantaneously, the news rippling through the network they were all logged into. Any device would have reported the news to them, so the word spread at lightning speed. She had been in the shower, standing under a hot stream of water, grateful that they still had clean, hot, running water, at least.
They had had an argument before she got in the shower. He was insistent that he was going back to get that insipid girl. He looked exhausted; all the time hopping was wearing him down and it was evident in his appearance. His suit was fraying, his face was drawn, his energy lagging. She had begged him to stay, but he said he had to go because they were running out of time. The revolution had begun and if they didn’t get her, everything would cease to exist—everything they had fought for would be for naught.
Although she was the leader of a vast army that did her bidding, her husband never did unless he full-heartedly agreed and this time, he didn’t. They had fought for hours, instead of him sleeping, which would have been the most beneficial use of his time. He needed his strength restored, she explained to him. Just give it a few days, she implored. Only with him had she allowed her tender side to show. He was the only person in the world that had witnessed her in a state of pleading—and he had witnessed it many times throughout their life together because he was as equally stubborn as his beloved girl. He was the only person she would beg to listen to her and it came from a space of deep, abiding love and fear of losing him. To everyone else, she was the great, infallible, and merciless Artemis. With him, she was that too, but she was also vulnerable, raw, and open, because she trusted him to the ends of time.
Their argument had just ended. “Shit,” she muttered.
He chuckled, appreciating as always, her use of the ridiculous word.
“I’m getting hungry, Aleph.” She said, trying not to grin. She knew he loved it when she said that word—it always made him chuckle. She decided to use it to lighten the energy in the room. Things were just too heavy these days. All the time, actually.
“Can we pause this battle for a few so I can shower and get dressed; then we can go grab dinner?”
“Of course!” He wrapped her arm in his, “Would you like help in there?”
Even though they had been fighting, they didn’t let it come between them. It had always been part of their rhythm from the beginning. They always allowed their love to fill the space between them and cushion the arguments, choosing to commit to one another every single day to live together as if it were their last. That choice had made their love indestructible and ever new.
“No, my love, I don’t need help in the shower. I’m too hungry for you to help me. We’ll never get out of there if you help.” She smiled, rising on her toes to kiss him, “I love you, you big lug.”
She stepped out of his arms and crossed to the shower, dropping her clothes as she went. As she stepped into the glass encasement, he said, “MimiGirl, I love you beyond time and space.”
She smiled and blew him a kiss, turning on the hot water as high as she could stand it without squealing. Almost instantly, the glass steamed up and she was lost in the sensation of being in the stinging downpour.
When a traveler left, there was an electric feeling in the air for about thirty seconds following their departure. So when she stepped out of her shower, speaking to her beloved and expecting a response, the thick sensation of his traveling caused her throat to close and choke off her words. Her heart immediately squeezed and her stomach turned over.
A deep, gut instinct that told her he wouldn’t make it back to her; her one great love would die on this mission. He would die trying to save that stupid girl who was battling him at every turn and being obstinate about traveling. He would die trying to get that girl to travel with him because there was no other way to make this horrific and wretched war on humanity stop. Other than getting her here, there was no other way to put an end to the genetic mutations and government sanctioned genocides and misogynistic collusions that prevailed in this world. The only way to make it all stop was to get her here so they could undo all the horror that had been done.
Although time travel had begun in giant labs with hordes of equipment, computers, monitors, and teams of personnel to track everything accomplished in the past by the projected hologram of the traveler who was there—which was how the government still operated—the rebel forces were far more advanced. These days the rebels used a personal system that catapulted the travelers physically across time and space through a portal through which all wormholes were generated. That portal was monitored twenty-four hours a day, year-round by rotating teams of professionals. The physicists and engineers working for her had honed the travel machines to arrive back in the twenty-second century with accuracy, although they were still sketchy on arriving in the past at the exact moment or place they wanted to land. This meant that the rebel system would have registered Aleph’s death at almost the same instant he left. Artemis was also aware that everyone in the territory would know of her loss.
Artemis stood there, the hair on her arms standing on end, knowing she would never see her husband alive again. She wanted to be wrong on every level of her being as she was enveloped by the crackling silence of the room, but she had known the moment she stepped into the room that it would be hoping against hope to trick herself into believing he was still alive.
Wrapped in a frayed towel and with water from the lengths of her hair running in rivulets down her body when the messenger arrived, she listened to his words with tears in her eyes. Although she was utterly devastated by his confirmation of her intuition, she wasn’t surprised. She had learned long ago to trust her body to reveal the truth to her at all times. She wasn’t going to start ignoring it at a time like this. That would be foolish and if she was anything, she wasn’t foolish.
“I’m sorry, Artemis.” The young man said, horrified that he was the one who’d literally drawn the short straw.
Everyone knew that she would already have known, given that he left their quarters, and never returned. In the beginning of the time travel days, that wouldn’t have been unusual because travelers were often unable to immediately return to their time and space, but these days, they always instantaneously returned to the place from whence they left. Confirming the reports from the portal was only a formality of protocol and someone had to confirm the news, but no one wanted to, so they had drawn straws. James got the short straw.
“He was a good man,” James said, tears shimmering in his eyes. “I will miss him, as will everyone else, I imagine. Is there anything I can do for you now, Artemis?”
“No, thank you. I will be fine,” she whispered emotionless in front of one of her soldiers. “Thank you for delivering the message. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”
James nodded and walked out of their room. The door slid slowly closed behind him, sealing her in the cement and metal, windowless space. Living underground, as they all did in this compound, offered several benefits—controlled temperature, enclosed hot springs, natural cold storage rooms, and most importantly, having an entire community concealed from above. However, while it provided all these great benefits, it also took some time to grow accustomed to the claustrophobia-inducing environment. No amount of “false windows” that had been designed to create the illusion of being outdoors and the fantastic, yet still false, full-spectrum lighting fixtures everywhere made up for the fact that none of it was real.
She looked around her, noticing for possibly the first time how everything was so grey and cold and harsh. She missed the colors of the past—green and red and yellow and blue—those vibrant splashes of aliveness that she had adorned her walls and her body with way back when. There was no longer a focus, or the time to spend, on prettifying anything these days. Life was about survival and she was tired, especially now, as the despairing monochromatic display wavered in her tear-filled vision.
She missed the sound of the ocean, collecting seashells along the shore, watching movies while eating popcorn, and the smell of laundry detergent. She really missed the smell of freshly mowed grass and the feel of it beneath her bare feet, as there was none here to be found near their compound; she still could enjoy the earthy smell of the forest all around them, but there was no grass. And, she really missed the taste of chocolate. She had been here for quite some time and she still longed for life as it was back then, but in that moment, even the memories of how life had been such a sensory experience back then was not enough to wipe away the despondency of now.
She sat down on her bed and screamed for all she was worth, the sound tearing through her body and laying down a trail of fiery pain, leaving her scorched and shredded. Aleph had died on a mission she had assigned him to. Even though she had asked him to hold off, she had been the one who ordered him to go in the first place. She had been the one who started all this. She had killed the one man that she had loved across time and space. It was another death on her shoulders—another death amongst a long list of them, but particularly of the far too many loved ones who had been killed on her account. She crumpled beneath the weight of it, pulling herself into a tight ball as she sat on the floor, rocking and swaying in fixated despair, moaning nonsensical sounds of grief. She felt like she was going to dissolve and evaporate.
The thing was the pain was so great that she thought it would kill her; she begged for it to end. But it didn’t end. The torment stretched on before her as she looked into the future and saw her life without him and nothing beyond this moment made sense to her.
Actually, almost everything leading up to this moment didn’t make sense, either. She could not accept that Aleph was gone—forever. He would never laugh with her or tease her or hold her or make love with her ever again. There was no hope of them ever enjoying a peaceful future together, not because the hope of peace had disappeared—she never lost that hope—but because she had, in essence, killed him. They would never have those children they had wished for. They would never see together the cessation of the war and the healing of humanity. All of that had been killed with Aleph and she would have to live. The merciless aspect of having her beloved die was that it didn’t kill her too. She was left to live—and to live with the knowing that he was dead because of her.
Each person in the common room had been touched by Aleph’s life, some more profoundly than others, but each of them had served with him on missions, marched with him in the wars, and had stood witness to his joining with Artemis. His death impacted everyone gathered there and the room was a container for tender grief. Her friends sat silently in vigil for her because it was all they could do—be there and provide support if she needed it. They all knew she would never ask, that she would stay locked in her room until she had raged it all out, then she would emerge and the topic would be closed forever, never to be broached again. But, they had to be there. In that moment, time stood still and everyone breathed ragged breaths of mourning.
In her room, Artemis screamed and sobbed, her pain so penetrating and her anguish so sharp that she couldn’t breathe deeply enough to fill her lungs or chase away the discomfort. It felt like acid had been dumped on her and the world around her had narrowed to this black pit of hell, where the only light was the blue haze of the acid on fire. And still, she lived. She was falling apart, cell by tortured cell, but she did not die.
The gods were not that generous.
Chapter 1
New Beginnings
There was an unfamiliar buzzing filling every cell of her being. Blinking her eyes rapidly and cringing, she longed for the uncomfortable sensation to cease immediately. She felt the commotion within her ramping up and she watched as he closed his eyes and grew infinitely concentrated. It seemed as though a raging cyclone has erupted within her, a black, swirling mass of energy and the core of it is a vacuum, tearing her apart from within. She was fairly certain that only her skin was keeping her together and soon, that would no longer even be possible.
In a painful blink, he disappeared and she felt as though she was stuck in a silent scream of pain and disorientation. She covered her head with her arms and discovered she was whirling in a pall of vibrations. All at once, the screaming and popping energy melted into churning, spinning, and concentric circles of lights gyrating around her unpleasantly. Even though her eyes were closed, those lights were blinding her and evoking nausea that was threatening to burst forth at any moment in projectile vomit.
I’d never been good with merry-go-rounds.
Sensing the lights beyond her tightly clenched eyelids, it seemed as though they were within her and outside of her all at once, and she watched as they coalesced into a very focused direction of force, pulling her toward some unforeseen point. She was terrified because she wasn’t sure she wanted to go where they were dragging her. She was confident, in fact, that she hadn’t signed on for this trip.
Ongoing and ferocious blasts of cold wind caused her to shiver violently while the very particles of air grabbed at her, tugging her in every direction, as though she had found her way to the center of a tempest. Her entire body was covered in goosebumps and she could sense that she was falling, as though she finally dove off into that abyss she had been dangling over for far too long. Although she wanted to grab onto something to stabilize her, there was nothing there. She was in free fall and it wasn’t some nice, floating, free fall. This was an unstoppable, spiraling, tumbling, end-over-end fall into nothingness.
Within her and around her, there was no longer anything recognizable. She was transforming, but she didn’t know why or how. All that she knew was, for some reason, she was changing and she would never be the same. She would never be able to go back. Only forward. Only onward through this calliope of feelings and sounds and into . . . Where? What? She didn’t know, so she lets go into the fall of it all and realizes she is in the middle of something miraculous, although she has no idea what that miracle is.
Perhaps, I’m dying.
As abruptly as the shift began, it stopped and she was ensconced in cool blackness, suspended somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Floating there for seemingly centuries, she released herself and surrenders into being held by the universe. With a sigh, she realized there is no more conflict, no more worry, no more pain. Hey, no more pain!
Mentally, she took inventory of her body. She checked in with the area where there should be a stitched up wound from the surgery in her leg where he had removed her bone sample to harness her DNA code. When she realized that it stopped throbbing long ago and seemed to have disappeared altogether, she felt a wave of joy amongst the fear and bafflement.
Bonus! Whatever this holy bleeding light tunnel is about, I’ll take the side effect of no pain any day. I may barf up a lung, but hey! No pain!
Ahead of her, although her eyelids were still closed, she could sense a lightening that seems light years away.
I’m in a tunnel. There’s light ahead. She chuckled when she heard herself think, I hope it’s not a train.
Drifting lazily and allowing the light to draw her forward without hesitation or struggle, she relaxed into the experience, releasing any remaining tension and giving over to the unseen hands that were holding her. She felt calm, serene, trusting—emotions she hadn’t felt for possibly her entire life.
Yep. I’ve definitely died.
Then, without warning, the lazy, hazy gentleness erupted into another twisting, cascading fall. She was certain that her cells were going to erupt from the building pressure as the velocity of her descent increases exponentially with each passing second. The drastically plunging temperature of the eddying air caused her to shiver again as she was forcefully ejected out of the column of swirling lights, into black oblivion where she was poised for a split second before crashing into an unforgiving surface.
The sound of machines slamming over into one another and shaking the ground she was lying upon filtered through her head. She felt dizzy and breathless, as though she had just gotten off the Tilt-a-Whirl. Clawing at the ground, her fingernails grated across stone and gave her no purchase to pull against. She struggled to rise, but had no energy to do so.
From a distance, she heard voices, but could not distinguish any specific words. Everything was jumbled and incoherent. Feeling broken, exhausted, and delirious, she sensed she was in some place that was definitely too loud and overcrowded. The energy was frenetic and people were running frantically, as though their running would make matters better.
She could sense that everyone was shocked and it was definitely not a “happy to see you” sort of surprise. It’s more of a “oh my hell! How did this happen?” sort of bewilderment.
Someone hollered orders and it echoed painfully in her skull as people poke and prod her. From what little she could gather, she was the source of their distress, but she was unable to speak or even open her eyes, so her only choice was to lay there immobile, helpless, and frustrated.
Dear . . . whoever is listening, if you’re listening. If this is what heaven is like, I want to go back to Earth. Please send me back.
As she finally came to and suffered through the barrage of questions, a man extricated himself from the crowd and came toward her. She felt immediate and immense relief when she discovered she knows him: Vane! He was the only familiar face in a sea of faces and she wanted to run to him, but she didn’t trust her footing. Without warning, loving warmness bloomed within her and she felt an affinity for him that she had never felt before. He was her lifeline.
