Shadows Out of Time

He stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, you’re back?”

“Sean, don’t go to his office tomorrow,” she said. “They’ll cut your head open and steal your brain—”

He stood up. “Come on, you can’t be serious.”

“Come with me. Tonight,” she said, her voice growing shrill in desperation. She grabbed his arm. “We’ll get in my car and just drive. He won’t be able to find us.”

“You mean leave school?”

“I don’t know how else to keep us safe. I’ve tried everything else I can think of, I shot him twice, I shot the Mi-Go, but—”

Sean yanked his arm out of her grasp. “Stop it. I don’t know if you’re on something or if this is some kind of joke, but I’m not in the mood.” He opened the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Emily chased after him into the hallway. She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back. “Sean, no! We have to leave! It’s the only way!”

“Emily, stop!”

“We can’t let them take us!” she shrieked, tugging at him, desperate to pull him back.

“Get off of me!”

He pushed her angrily, hard enough to make her let go of his arm, hard enough to make her fall. She stared up at him from the floor, tears streaming down her face. Up and down the hallway, students came out of their rooms to see what was happening.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you’re acting crazy!” Sean noticed the other students watching and put up his hands. “You know what? I just can’t deal with this right now.” He walked away.

“Sean!” she screamed after him. “Sean, promise me you won’t go to Professor Vaughan’s office tomorrow! Promise me!”

He didn’t turn around. She collapsed against the wall, sobbing. She could feel the other students staring, but she didn’t care. She’d failed again. Sean would still report to Vaughan’s office in the morning. He would still wind up on that surgical table.

She couldn’t save him, but maybe she could still save herself. She grabbed her car keys and ran to the student parking lot. Half the lamps were out, leaving wide, dark pools of shadow across the lot. She glanced nervously at Professor Vaughan’s stone cottage, but no lights came through the windows. He wasn’t there. She hit the unlock button on the key fob, and her car gave a comforting chirp. Just as she reached for the driver’s side door, someone grabbed her from behind, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream, and pushed her against the car so she couldn’t turn around.

Professor Vaughan’s voice hissed in her ear, “That was some stunt you pulled in class today, Miss Bannerman. But I promise you, whatever you think you know, the truth is far more extraordinary than you can imagine.” She struggled as she felt a hypodermic needle pierce her neck. “Stop fighting, I’m doing you a favor. You have no idea what a unique opportunity I’m giving you. To see an alien world. Experience an alien culture. You should be thanking me.”

It’s bad enough I’m a victim of Professor Vaughan’s obsession and an unwilling subject of the Mi-Go’s studies, but to be given the power to change the past and still not save myself from this fate is maddening. It’s as though every choice I make brings me to the same end. Every path leads to the Mi-Go. What’s the point of being given a second chance if nothing changes?

I miss Sean, whose cylinder is being kept somewhere else. Occasionally, I hear the mechanical voices of other brains speaking in other rooms and wonder if one of them is him. I haven’t spoken to him or heard his voice — his real voice — since we were last together at Middlewood.

I wish I’d never gone through that damn anomaly. I wish I’d never been tormented with this useless ability to reshape the past.

Maybe that, at least, is something I can change for the better. One last time, I reach through the white.

She didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t stop the Mi-Go who carried her brain cylinder from flying through the anomaly. But if she tried hard enough, could she reject the splintering of her mind? If she were prepared for it, could she force her consciousness not to scatter back through her timeline?