Chapter Sixteen

"Esa, do you want to go on a tour of the house?" Audrina eyes twinkled with a glimmer of mischief. I wondered if she was trying to get my mind off everything she had just told me about the bodies. "I mean, I know you've seen some parts of it, but you probably haven't seen the entire place, and we've done a lot of work on it over the past three years."

"Okay," I responded, not exactly sure what Audrina was up to. I felt like I had already seen the house, but Audrina's facial expression told me there was more to see. Much more. I had walked the main floor. It was relatively small, with a sparsely decorated kitchen and living room. Everything seemed perfectly in place. The second and third floors were down the staircase, underground. I assumed that anyone passing by didn't see much of the house.

"Great! We've added some new things since you left," Audrina replied in a giddy voice. She looked over her shoulder and gave me a little wink as we headed down the hallway. Her long blonde ponytail cascaded down her back in soft waves. Her hair was almost as white as our suits.

She grabbed my hand and led me down the stairs to the second floor. "Come on. There's so much to show you. I have to admit that I do like the new Esa. I never thought I would be able to say that it's nice to just hang out with you." Audrina was talking a hundred miles a minute.

"Esa, our team used to be close, and then you vanished. Poof. You were gone. It was horrible. Of course, Samuel and Theo took it the hardest. They both searched and searched for you, and then one day we received your letter letting us know you didn't want to be found."

Audrina walked swiftly through another set of doors and stopped in front of what appeared to be a blank wall. She turned back to me. "Why did you send that letter? Didn't you realize how horrible it would be for your brother to hear you didn't want to be found, much less Theo? He was scary mad that first year. At one point, none of us could stand to be around him any longer. He was miserable without you. What made you decide to hurt him so much?"

I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about. I never sent a letter. How could I send a letter when I didn't even know I was missing? I didn't know you guys existed. Trust me, I would have returned if I had known you were here. Living in 2010 was tough. No one would talk to me. They all called me names."

Audrina's eyes narrowed. "Don't worry, Esa. We'll find out what happened to you. I've been going back through some of what I saw at the accident scene." She grasped my hands, and before I could move back, I felt the small jolt of electricity from her palms.

She giggled then turned to slide her hand over a small clear plate. The wall suddenly disappeared and we were standing in Samuel's lab. "It just never gets old."

"What never gets old?"

"The look on peoples' faces, even our own, when we touch them" She opened her hand to reveal a thin line of electricity. It danced for a second before disappearing.

"Do you have any other special capabilities?" I asked.

"We're all very similar. Theo is our leader just because he's a natural, and he was a higher rank than the rest of us in the real military. Dr. James was trying to create a soldier who could travel on the Jump Line; anything additional was just the cherry on top. I'm sure if Paul and Troy had their way, they would create an entire army of us. We're the future, which is why we have to protect ourselves. No one else is going to do it for us. We're too valuable. You must be careful, and don't trust anyone. Do you understand?" Her eyes bore into mine as she waited for my answer.

I nodded slowly, and Audrina continued.

"Esa, we have rules we have to follow, like Samuel said, so we don't alter the course of history. If we changed anything it might modify us and our existence."

"Really? What exactly are the rules?"

"We call them the big three. They're pretty easy. Basically, don't attempt a jump into the future, don't travel more than a hundred years into the past without telling the rest of the team, and don't travel back in time and take a person or belonging that might be missed."

"Why do we have to tell one another if we travel back farther than a hundred years?"

"The farther back we travel in time, the weaker it makes our bodies."

Hearing Audrina list off the rules made everything seem so real. Even so, I had a question.

"But what about visiting Mary?"

"Exactly. It's dangerous, but we have all found comfort in visiting her. She has protected our existence and helped us when we've needed her."

"How did we meet her?"

"It was your mom who found her. I guess she was doing some tests on the Jump Line and ended up at Mary's house. One day she took all of us there and told us we could trust Mary."

"See seems very nice. I get why we would want to visit her."

"Oh, Mary's nice, but also very helpful. I know why your mom found her—"

"Why?"

"Mary likes to make magical potions. Some of them are very effective in this century."

"Potions? Is she a witch?"

"It's funny. I had never even heard that word until recently. Luther said something like that and it made me do some research. I guess the answer is, yes. She's a witch and a very good one. We definitely like her potions, and they're very much appreciated by our customers."

We walked out a different door in Samuel's lab and down a narrow hallway that led to a large freezer like room.

"This is where we store some of the bodies and food so that it doesn't go bad."

"It's cold in here."

"We have to keep it at this temperature so that they will keep longer."

"How big is this place?" I asked. Audrina was right. There were a lot of rooms I hadn't seen.

"Just big enough for us."

I turned towards Audrina. "Samuel said it was too hard to explain, but where exactly is this house located?"

"I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you that," Audrina responded, "but we're safe here, for now." A sly smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

We then walked into another room that had glass on the far wall that looked out into what either had to be a large aquarium or the ocean. There were large sharks swimming past the glass, their eyes staring straight ahead.

"We have fish?"

"They're not our fish, but this is one of the rooms where you can come if you need some space from the others."

She then took me into a smaller closet like room off to the side. The space was filled from floor to ceiling with all sorts of clothes, hats and bags. Despite the vast amounts of stuff crammed into the area, it was all neatly organized by decade. "And this is our costume room. You will need to come here to grab items to cover your suit."

"This is awesome," I let my hand sweep over all of the clothes. All of the items looked almost new."

"All right, let's take a trip. Do you want to see yourself six years ago?"

Audrina's question made me stop. "Yes, I totally want to see the old me, and see what everyone has been talking about."

"Okay. Let's get dressed. It's too easy where we are going for one of them to spot us."

Audrina grabbed two similar looking military style outfits. "Put this on. This hat too—your white hair is way too visible."

After several minutes, we glanced in a mirror. Both of us looked a little different, but it was hard to completely hide our pale skin and white hair.

"I think I'm ready." My mind was already racing, wondering what I looked like and how I'd acted in my previous life. Samuel had said I was tough.

"Okay, but I've seen you in this year. We can only stay for a couple of seconds. Don't disobey me. You got it?"

I blinked to find us sitting in some sort of flying machine. It was dark and cold. Audrina pushed past me and quietly pulled back a thin black curtain. Several feet in front of us was the pilot. Her dark hair was pulled up into a ponytail. Audrina motioned for me to take a seat and buckle up. She sat down in the seat across from me and put on the seatbelt. The machine suddenly nose-dived. Audrina and I grabbed on to one of the steel bars and tried not to make any noise. A moment later, the aircraft leveled out and the pilot spoke calmly into a microphone.

"Tell them I'm about to land and if they can't bring me the traitor then I will hunt them down and kill them all individually."

The flying machine leveled out and made a soft landing. A door slid up next to the pilot, and she got out and strode over to a group of other soldiers standing around a man who had on different clothes. There was something about him that made me think he wasn't a soldier. The man sneered at the pilot and spit on the ground in front of her feet.

We both scrambled for a series of small windows towards the front of the plane.

Audrina whispered and pointed to someone standing among the group. "Look, Esa, that's me standing off to the side."

I tried to regain my composure as I turned to the right and saw a tall female soldier with long black hair and olive eyes. I could see the resemblance, but Audrina looked so different now.

"Wow. I would never have recognized you," I whispered back.

"I know. We all changed."

"Where am I?"

"Duh. You're the pilot. Can't you see the resemblance in the way you walk? The same long legs. Don't move. Just watch right now. I remember this day. It's haunted me for a while."

"Why?"

At that moment, the pilot—me—pulled out a gun and pointed it at the other man's head. She said a few words I couldn't hear and then squeezed the trigger. The man fell to the ground. The pilot kicked his hand and then turned and headed back toward us.

"Oh my God, Audrina, get us out of here," I pleaded. It felt like we were in the middle of a bad movie. My old self had just murdered someone and didn't seem at all bothered by what she had done. She just walked away.

"Hold on," Audrina said, as the Jump Line opened.

We landed back at the house, inside the closet. I felt completely lost. "That couldn't have been me. I would never have done that to someone."

"Oh, that was definitely you. I wouldn't joke around about something like that. You were always very hard."

"But I just killed that guy."

"He was a traitor who left the rebels and went to work for Troy. He also put a sizeable bounty on your head. It was either you kill him or he was going to kill you, or have someone else kill you. You had to make a statement to get his guys to stand down. You made the right decision back then, Esa. You always made the right decisions, and you had everyone's respect because of it. No one wanted to mess with you."

"I still didn't like what I saw. The old me seems so mean," I said, thinking back to all the comments Samuel and Theo had made about me. No wonder they kept saying I seemed so different. I was nothing like the old me.

"You don't have to like it. The key is to survive. Don't forget, your father is the general. You had a little more pressure than most to perform and you were definitely one of his top soldiers," Audrina said. "We all lived in your shadow. That's one of the reasons Samuel decided to focus on his research. He couldn't keep up with you on the battlefield."

"Really?"

"Yes. I need to go make the delivery. Do you want to come with me on that assignment as well?"

"Yes. Do we need to change?" It was exciting getting to go on missions with Audrina. She seemed fearless and was a much better trainer than Theo and Samuel.

"No. These clothes will be fine. It will be a quick trip."

We walked upstairs, to the area where I had seen the large bags earlier.

Audrina grabbed one of the bags and then looked over at me. "Get that one?" She pointed to the last bag in the line-up. "These two are exactly what they need to get by for a few more days."

I held on to the bag as we jumped to a dark room that smelled damp and musty.

"Did we land in the right spot?"

"Yes. We'll just leave the bags. They will pick them up in a second." Audrina tapped her medallion again and we were back in Samuel's lab. "I have a rule that they have to wait to collect the bags until after I leave. I don't trust them; they might try to capture me. They all know that, if they play games with us, we will discontinue our services."

"Good to know."

Samuel entered through a door on the opposite side of the room. Various holographic images came to life in the middle of the room as he got closer to that area. A screen above him had all of our names with the year 2105 off to the side.

"What's that?" I pointed upwards.

"Oh, the screen with your name and year?" Audrina said. "We like to track your primary location. So, you may have a future and past self, but right now, right here today, we are all in our primary states. We don't track secondary and tertiary jumpers. The system would get too clogged."

"Secondary and tertiary? What exactly does that mean?"

Samuel looked over at me. A small pair of glasses rested on the tip of his nose. "Your primary is you right now. It's your main being. Secondary and tertiary are your past and future selves."

"So, there are more of me?"

"Yep," Audrina said. "And there are more of me, Samuel, Theo, Luther and Gave. So watch it." Audrina crossed her arms.

"How do we confirm we are in primary states?" Samuel pointed to the screen. "The system tracks you. I've also got a watch for you to wear, so you can keep up with the rest of the team. Once I set it, if it comes off your hand it will destroy itself," Samuel said. "Esa, you have to be careful around your secondary and tertiary selves. Try not to be seen. It just makes things complicated. We know we are all time jumpers, but it's best if we don't interact. It's too easy to give them information they shouldn't be told."

"Technology advances and we will change out the watch again next year," Audrina said.

"By 'destroy itself', do you mean it will explode?" I had watched Mission Impossible on several occasions and had seen what happened when the voice told Ethan his message would self-destruct in three seconds. The entire statement sounded silly coming out of my mouth. We're weren't spies. Why would something self-destruct?

"Don't worry about it, Esa," Audrina said. "As a way to cheat, you can recognize the primaries because we all have this style of watch." She raised her hand to display a silver bracelet that fit snugly around her wrist. "Our future selves get much savvier, cooler-looking devices."

Samuel rolled his eyes at her. She glared back at him. The two held their eye contact for what seemed like an eternity. Suddenly, there was a cold tension in the air.

"I've obviously missed something. Is everything okay between the two of you?"

"Yeah, just peachy." Audrina whirled around and abruptly quit the room.

Samuel returned his attention to me. "We didn't have these watches three years ago. I didn't realize the importance of tracking all of us. I didn't think one of us could so easily disappear since we can feel each other's energy. But then you vanished. You were completely gone. Even your secondary and tertiary selves stopped existing. I've never seen anything like it," Samuel said, a sad look in his eyes. "Esa, you are my only sister. It was devastating to know that first Mom and then you were gone."

"What happened to our mother?"

"She died."

"How? When?"

"I don't know. Everything happened about the same time. You both were gone."

"Is it possible she may still be alive? Maybe she's stuck in a different time." My voice cracked. "Like me."

Samuel shook his head. "Paul said he discovered her body not too long ago. She's gone."

Samuel's last sentence caused my stomach to twist into a tightly wound knot. My mother was dead. I didn't even get a chance to know her... again.

Samuel walked over and wrapped his arms around me. His soft voice whispered into my ear. "Don't worry, Esa. I'll make sure we never get separated again. You're the only family I have."

"What about Audrina?" I asked, pulling back. There was definitely some tension between the two.

"You noticed," Samuel said. "She's not my twin sister, Esa."

"But she's more than just a friend." I already knew what his response would be, but I wanted to hear him say it.

"Yes. Esa, I'm really hoping you get your memory back soon. Having to tell you everything again is very time consuming. Audrina and I have been together for a long time. That's how she was included in the experimental group. Marie and Paul had already discussed the two of us being included. It was their way to hopefully help us survive. Without this experiment, our entire world would have eventually disappeared. Next was Audrina, and then Theo. He was a soldier with us. Gave and Luther were the last two. We knew them, and they had the right skill set."

"Do Luther, Gave and Theo all have significant others?"

"I think you are probably specifically asking about Theo," he said, his eyes brows slowly arching.

The idea of Theo Marcus caused a strange feeling in my stomach. We had only been separated from each other for a very short time, but already I missed him. There had to be a way to get him out of my head. Finally, I asked, "What's the deal with Theo?"

Luther walked into the room before Samuel could answer. He was shorter than my brother, with large, muscular shoulders that were slightly hunched as he pulled out a chair near Samuel and plopped down. Unlike the rest of the team, Luther was bald. "What's up, brother from another mother?"

"Seriously? Do you ever think about anything that comes out of your mouth before you say it?" Samuel said, clearly annoyed.

"Nope. I try not to. That's just too much of an effort," Luther responded with a snort, stretching out his long legs on one of the tables.

"All right. What gives? What made you decide to venture into my workspace?"

"I think, technically, you mean 'our' workspace," Luther said. "We need to do another recon of OnyxFive. When you guys pulled me out, without my consent, I was actually working on something."

"And what was that?" Samuel asked.

"Monitoring our good friend General Paul. He's got something up his sleeve right now. He kept talking about Esa, but I couldn't figure out exactly what he was saying. I managed to get near another lab and saw one of the general's minions working on some new thing."

"Hmm. You have piqued my interest, but I also need to ask you something. How long were you at OnyxFive? You were missing for almost two days. I can't believe you were there the entire time. We would have felt your energy on one of our recovery missions."

"I wasn't there. I don't know what happened. One minute I was making a jump into OnyxFive, and the next I woke up lying on a beach somewhere. It was the weirdest thing ever, dude. I'm not sure what I took or did to cause me to lose so much time, but I looked at my watch and I had been out for almost two days. It was freaky."

"Really? Why didn't you mention this earlier? This is something you should have told me!"

"Because you didn't ask me earlier, and I was more focused on what I found at OnyxFive."

"Luther, it's a pretty big deal that you lost forty-eight hours of memory," Samuel said.

"It's not that big of a deal. Don't worry so much about it."

Samuel shook his head. "We just found Esa. We can't have others go missing."

"Fine. I will make sure to let you know if it happens again."

"Thank you. Now, what do you think Paul was working on?"

"Oh, I don't know, just a new set of machinery that could destroy the six of us. Nothin' real big." Luther shrugged and then began to pick at his fingernails.

"All right. Let's get the team together and see who we should send for a quick recon. Luther, the key word is 'quick.' We don't want to alert Paul, and this time you need to actually jump back. I don't want to have to go searching for you again," Samuel said.

"Fine. I call being the leader of this mission," Luther responded, with a goofy grin, before getting up from the chair. "See you in the living room in five."

A small, blinking light danced across the screen next to Luther's name. The years quickly changed from 2105 to 2103, and then 2101, before finally back to 2105.

"What's happening?" I asked Samuel as we both watched the monitor.

"Oh, Luther is just getting prepared. He probably lost something and couldn't remember which year he left it in. Let's go talk to the others."

We walked the short distance back to the living room, where the other three were already seated on the couches. Luther was standing in the middle of the room. "We need to do a recon of Onyx Five. Who's game?"

Theo stared silently at Luther for several seconds. Then he stood and looked around the room. "All right. Samuel, Audrina and I will go with you. Esa and Gave will stay behind."

"What? Why can't I go?" I asked, feeling a lump form in my throat. "I've already been to OnyxFive."

Theo looked over at me and shook his head. "Did you seriously just ask that question?"

"Yes," I responded hesitantly, taken aback by his tone.

"Honestly, Esa, we don't know what you are and aren't capable of right now. You're a wild card," he said, dismissively. "I get that you've been to OnyxFive, but you were just used as a distraction for Paul. This is an actual mission."

"Fine," I muttered, disappointed. I had hoped Theo would want me to come along on one of the missions, but, once again, he was willing to leave me behind.