Shadows Out of Time

“When they first came to me, I was as scared as you are now,” he said. “They looked so…inhuman. But I learned very quickly that they’re intelligent, sophisticated. Their knowledge and technology are light years ahead of ours.” He chuckled. “I suppose that’s apt, considering how far they traveled to come here. But they’re scientists, just like me. It turned out I had no reason to fear them.”

Fear who? It sounded like he’d gone crazy. Was that why he’d killed Sean? Was that why he was going to kill her, too? He turned away from her to look at the picture of his family on the desk. She didn’t give herself time to think twice. She spun and reached for the lock on the door.

“Don’t,” Professor Vaughan said.

She flinched, put her hands up, and turned back to him.

“Did I ever tell you what happened to my wife? To my children?” he asked. Emily glanced at the framed photograph, the smiling woman, the two young boys. “It was five years ago. We were driving home after eating dinner in town. I swerved to miss a deer that had wandered into the road, but I lost control of the car.” He closed his eyes against some awful memory he was reliving. She thought about knocking the gun out of his hand or trying to grab it, but she didn’t have the courage, and then his eyes were open again. “I was the only survivor.

I walked away with nothing but a few cuts and bruises. The doctors said I was lucky, but I didn’t feel it. I went to church every day after the accident, looking for comfort, for answers, but there weren’t any. Everyone said it was a miracle that I survived, that it was an act of God, but what kind of god would kill my wife and two innocent children? I decided if something this terrible, this wrong, could happen, maybe there was a way to undo it. I read ancient texts that very few people have ever read, tomes filled with powerful, forgotten science and rituals, looking for a way to fix it, but nothing worked. I prayed to gods whose names you’ve never heard, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.”

He looked at the gun in his hand as though he were contemplating turning it on himself. She got the sense it wasn’t the first time.

“And then they came, dropping out of the sky like an answer to my prayers. They told me there was a way to change what happened. A way to go back and save them. They told me about a temple at the very center of the universe. Arneth-Zin, the place where all the timelines converge. Within that temple is a sentry, a watcher, someone who’s seen all of time unfold, everything that ever happened or will happen. Someone who’s studied the pattern of time, who knows where the seams are, and who can open those seams and drop me back in so I can change the course of events. So my family can live. They promised to take me to Arneth-Zin, and in return all I had to do was help them collect specimens to bring back to their world. Human specimens.”

Okay, so he really was insane. She could only wonder what he’d done with Sean. Or with his corpse. The thought made her cry again, but Professor Vaughan mistook it for fear and tried to calm her.

“Don’t be frightened, Miss Bannerman, they require living specimens, not dead ones. This gun is only my insurance policy. I have no intention of using it so long as you don’t try to run away. You have nothing to fear from them. They only want to learn. Their scientists and scholars are interested in trading cultural information, but transporting specimens to their world is a problem. Their bodies are perfectly constructed to withstand the cold, airless expanse of space, but our bodies would never survive the trip. Luckily, it’s not our bodies that interest them, it’s our minds. Our knowledge, our philosophies, our cultural memories. All they need are our brains.”

He went back behind the desk and took a syringe out of the drawer. It was already filled with a strange, glowing orange liquid. He pulled the protective cover off the needle with his teeth and spat it out. He came toward her with the syringe in one hand, the gun in the other.

She took a step back, her arms raised in front of her as if she could fend him off. “Don’t hurt me. Please.”

“I assure you there will be no pain,” he said. “They’re truly gifted surgeons, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Their understanding of neuroscience is centuries ahead of ours. They can remove your brain safely and easily. They can keep your brain alive to transport back to their world, where I’m told if you cooperate with them you will be given a new, artificial body.”