Remember
The Maelstrom
Josh
Sinason
Genre:
Sci-fi Romance
Publisher:
TWB Press
Number
of pages: 40
Word
Count: 10,000
Book
Description:
A
botched investigation into the past triggers a domino effect,
thrusting T.I. Agent Amanda West into a race to get home to the man
she loves in a future that may no longer exist.
Excerpt:
“Let’s
go, rookie.” I set my blaster on stun. “I want to be home in time
for dinner.”
Corporal
Winger nodded and drew his gun.
I
noticed his hand shake. That should have been my first cue something
was wrong. He clutched his gun so tense his knuckles turned white.
This was his first op, and it already went way far south way too
soon. This was just supposed to be a routine run: bring back a
fugitive who had bolted through an unauthorized time portal. We were
the closest ship to it. He was just one guy, but he had a gun. Who
would have thought things could’ve gone so wrong?
I
kissed the scar on my right hand before we chased him through Central
Park in the year 2014. It was a silly ritual, but when I found myself
far from home, I started to get superstitious. On cold nights, when
time, space, and a universe kept me away, I’d look at that scar and
think about Parker.
Winger
was a hair faster than me catching up with our time jumper. Maybe if
I’d been there a second or two sooner I could have stopped him, but
I arrived just in time to watch him aim his gun. I was just within
view when our jumper pulled in a hostage, a little girl, something
that would’ve made any experienced agent hold his fire.
Winger
was just reacting on instinct. He didn’t pull back in time, and
the guy held the kid in front of him. The scene played out in slow
motion. Maybe Winger thought he could make a head-shot on the perp,
or maybe he just fired in the heat of the moment; we were both tired.
All I knew was, as the girl and our jumper fell to the ground, the
look of horror on Winger’s face didn’t last long.
I’d
never seen a person fade from existence before, not until that
moment. The theory, according to Temporal Investigations, was that
one dies before actually disappearing completely. Sheer shock and
horror was the killer, like falling off a tall building. But Winger
looked me in the eyes the entire time, silently pleading for help as
he faded right in front of me. I reached out to grab his hand, but it
vanished, and that’s when I noticed my scar begin to ghost.
I
didn’t know who that little girl was. Maybe she had invented
something that made the Galactic Conferences possible, or maybe she
was the grandmother of the grandmother of someone who assigned cores
in the Academy, and because she no longer existed in the future,
Parker and I may have ended up in different course plans. Or maybe
she did something at just the right moment, a move in one direction
or another, a decade from now, and things just fell into place for
us. It was impossible to tell what could happen without her
influence, but I feared something was wrong. I could have lost Parker
already without even knowing it.
When
I saw that scar on my hand ghost, I knew it was a sign that the time
stream was starting to realign. We were briefed on ghosting at the
Academy. They told us to run; they said always run back to the ship,
flat out as fast as we could. But we all knew the truth. We couldn’t
outrun a time realignment. It would be like outrunning the hand of
the universe.
The
moment I saw that scar flicker, I took off in a dead sprint back to
the ship and leaped into the captain’s chair. As the controls came
on around me I felt the hum of the hyperspace time bubble curling
around the ship like a warm blanket. Then, when I tried to catch my
breath, I felt a hot sting in my gut. Our jumper had managed to get
off a shot, and as luck would have it, his blaster charge went
straight through Winger’s ghosting body and hit me in the stomach.
I did my best to breathe slowly, but each inhale felt like razor
blades slicing through my chest. I winced and put pressure on the
singed and bloody wound then throttled up the engines.
“Well
today just sucked, didn’t it.” I looked at the picture of Parker
I kept on my dashboard. We had our pictures taken when we were
assigned to The Bartlett. Knowing this meant I hadn’t forgotten
about him...at least not yet. Then I looked to make sure the
hyperspace time bubble had restored the scar on my hand. Yes. I gave
it another kiss for luck. Just lifting my arm sent shooting pains
through my stomach, but I figured I needed a fair amount of luck
right about then, so the pain was worth the effort.
“Just
make it home for dinner.” I clutched the steering yoke tightly.
“Just one more trip.” I forced a breath. “Let me see that
everything is all right with Parker. Then let whatever changes I’ve
made to the future do what they will to me.”
“Some
time cop I turned out to be.”
I
slammed on the thrusters hard and gunned the engine boosters through
the time jump, but the inertia field didn’t have time to boot up,
so I felt my ribs crack as my chest slammed against the crash belt
and the back of my head bounced off the top of my chair.
I
screamed in pain.
In
flight school I had experienced what happened without an inertia
field. Senior cadets would watch Parker and I train in the flight
deck sim. We’d shoot to hyperspace without any problems. But every
once in a while the cadets would program in an inertia field glitch
just to see how we’d respond to the stress, at least that’s what
they told the instructors. It was really a rite of passage made worse
by the fact that the simulator didn’t have crash belts, so the only
way to go was flying backwards. If it wasn’t for the crash helmets,
our brains would’ve splattered against the cold metal exit door.
“Stupid
prank,” I said, spitting blood. I was bleeding internally. The scar
on my hand ghosted again. The time bubble was weakening already, so I
started going over my past, wondering just how much of it I would
forget.
I
decide to listen to my personal logs and make sure everything was
just as I remembered. Hopefully that last ghosting wasn’t a sign
that I was too late. The computer accessed my files, starting with my
first week studying for the Academy mid-terms.
I
remembered that day by the lake on the Academy grounds, fresh in my
mind no matter what time jump I was in. The lake was clear blue
enough that I could see the incoming spaceships reflected in the
surface. I had sat there so often over that first month I could tell
how low the ships were flying by the ripples their wakes made in the
water.
I
sat near a tree, hoping to keep my mind on my introductory
engineering midterm studies. Sometimes the Academy felt like a
monster looking to swallow cadets whole, but out there, under the
shuttles flying by and the transport ships jumping to hyperspace like
little daylight shooting stars, the Academy grounds felt peaceful.
That day the transports lit up the clouds like purple and red
lightning. I listened to the low rumble of the shuttles as I skipped
a rock across the water. Then I cracked open a book.
About
the Author:
Josh
Sinason grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, and has been featured in the Two
With Water reading series and at DIY-Film.com.
His
work has been recently featured in Burroughs Publishing Lunchbox
Romance Line and Eternal Press’ young adult fiction line.
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