Tracks of Time

"Wake up, child," came a croaky voice.

I groaned, barely hanging onto consciousness.

"Hurry," the voice said.

This time, something hard and pointy jabbed me in the ribs.

I cracked one eye open to find a leathery-skinned woman with a long, salt-and-pepper braid sitting across from me. She leaned forward, her fleshy elbows creating folds over her knees. Her eyes, two big brown circles, darted from side to side from within dark sockets.

Around her neck was a bright green gemstone hanging from a silver chain. It looked beautiful and seemed to sparkle.

“Th-they’re coming.” The woman pointed a wavering finger toward the red door, pulling my attention away from her necklace.

I searched the space around me. It was small, almost too clean, and smelled of vinegar and lemon, as if someone had spent days scrubbing every inch of every surface. A large window sat on the wall next to me, but I couldn’t see through it—it was black.

Why would someone black out a window?

“Who’s coming?” I asked, my throat scratchy.

Why was I so foggy? I couldn’t remember anything aside from my name—Kria.

My heart thudded as I fought with my brain, trying to remember my last name. But… I couldn’t. I couldn’t even remember how old I was, either.

Beneath me, a soft rattling sound vibrated through the seats.

Was I on… a train?

A yellow overhead bulb flickered every time the room shook.

I parted my lips, prepared to ask the woman for any information, when suddenly, a loud clicking sound filled the little cabin, and the bright red door slid open with a creak. Out from an ominous hallway came a man clad in a white, plastic-looking suit and a helmet with a glass face shield.

“Ticket,” the man ordered, pointing a white-gloved finger at me.

His voice came out authoritatively, and I got the feeling that if I didn’t give him what he wanted, things would get bad very fast.

I stared at him, not understanding what he wanted from me.

The woman across from leaned in her seat and cross her legs as if watching a spectacle. Why wasn’t she afraid? Did she know this man?

“Ticket!” the man growled again.

Flinching, I reached into my pockets only to realize I had none.

What was I even wearing? Where had these clothes come from? I patted my chest, then my thighs. The green fabric of my pants felt soft against my palms, as did my shirt. I patted the sides of the pants, hoping to find a secret pocket somewhere. My long brown hair hung over one shoulder as I searched everywhere, including my socks.

“I—I don’t have one,” I said.

The large man stepped angrily toward me.

“It fell,” the woman said.

“What?” I looked up at her, confused.

At the same time, the man’s big reflective face shield turned on the woman. “Keep your mouth shut!”

The wrinkled woman smiled at the suited man as if they’d been friends for centuries. Judging by his broad shoulders and clenched fists, it was obvious he didn’t feel the same way. Then, without a word, the woman made her droopy eyes go big and aimed them toward my seat.

My seat? What was she looking at?

She made her eyes go bigger, and I realized she was looking under my seat.

Hesitating, I bent forward to find a plastic, rectangle-shaped ticket lying flat on the metal floor. It sat faceup, with a barcode at one end. Text and numbers filled the rest of the empty white space, but I didn’t have the time to read any of it.

Without warning, the suited man grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me upright.

Somehow, I’d managed to snatch the ticket in time.

The hefty man ripped the ticket out of my hand and inspected it. I stared at the ticket’s reflection in his face shield, wondering what he was looking at. Without a word, he raised his wrist to it, and a beam of red light scanned the ticket.

I blinked hard. Had that scanner come out of his suit?

Something beeped, and the man slid the ticket into a slot on his forearm, making me blink even more. He then grabbed my wrist without asking.

“Wh-what are you doing?” I said, trying to pull away.

“Hold still,” he growled.

He raised a shiny white gadget to my wrist and pressed down until I felt a pinch.

“Ow!” I said.

He didn’t seem to care.

Straightening his back, he turned to the woman at the opposite end of the cabin. “Ticket.”

Smiling sweetly, the woman patted her clothing and shook her head as if to say, Silly me, I lost it.

“Ticket,” the guard repeated.

The woman glanced over at me and winked.

Who was this woman? And why did I get the feeling she was helping me?

When the suited man couldn’t get a ticket out of the woman, he grabbed her by the wrists and fastened two silver cuffs behind her back.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Leave her alone!”

I ran toward them, but the big man swung his elbow at me, clocking me in the nose. I stumbled backward as stars floated in front of me.

I blinked, my eyes watering. Then, blood dripped out into my palms, and I glared up at him.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

Before I could even contemplate yelling at him, he disappeared with the woman, and the red door slammed shut.

Panic spread through me as I tried to remember how I’d gotten here. Was this a dream? A nightmare? I slid across the red, velvety seat and pressed my face against the cold black window. No matter how hard I tried to peer through it, I couldn’t. With my thumbnail, I scratched at the blackness, but to no avail.

“Kria,” I mumbled to myself. “And I’m from…,” but I couldn’t finish my own sentence.

Where was I from?

“Is that your name?” came a boy’s voice.

My eyes went big at the sound. Was I imagining things? Where had that voice come from?

“Psst, over here.”

I followed the voice to a little vent under the seat.

Tapping it with my finger, I said, “Hello? Who are you?”

“Name’s Ty,” the boy said. He sounded young—maybe sixteen. “And that’s all I know.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” I said. “I don’t remember anything.”

There was a long pause until finally, he said, “That woman in there with you… she was mumblin’ something about a note under your seat.”

“The ticket,” I said. “I found it.”

“No, not that,” the boy hissed through the grate. “A note.”

A note?

Dropping to my knees, I searched under both seats. It wasn’t until I looked under the woman’s seat that I found a little slip of paper stuck to a piece of gum. I pried it off, the pink gum stretching before snapping.

“Kria Thompson,” it read.

“Thompson,” I breathed.

That was my last name?

“What?” the boy said through the vent.

“Nevermind,” I said and kept reading.

“We did it. We finally succeeded, but I need your help. The jump can be made at Orientation. I couldn’t reach it. But you can. Look for the tourmaline gemstone. Tell no one about this note. They'll kill us if they find it or discover what we have planned. And all of our work will have been for nothing. The world needs us, Kria. I’ll be waiting for you at Orientation. Don’t hesitate. Jump.”

I parted my lips, but no sound came out.

Was this woman insane? Her message didn’t make sense to me. She spoke as if she knew me, but I hadn’t recognized her.

“What does the note say?” Ty whispered.

“N-nothing,” I said. “Nothing that makes sense, anyway.”

What did she mean, jump? Jump off the train? I didn’t even know where the train was going.

An intermittent beeping sound suddenly echoed around me. Above the red door came a flashing orange light, and the door slid open on its own.

I slipped the note back under the seat and right back up into the sticky gum. Something about this place didn’t feel right. I got the feeling that if I were to get caught with that note, I’d disappear… forever.

“Out!” came a blaring voice.

I poked my head through the open door to spot several other people doing the same.

“Out!” the voice repeated.

It had come from down the narrow passageway. A short woman with a shiny white suit and a matching helmet stood with a baton in her fist. She whacked it in her palm, almost threateningly.

“Your orientation is to begin,” she said. “This way.”

“Orientation?” someone whispered.

“What’s she talking about?”

“Where are we?”

“I don’t even remember my name.”

I turned around to find a sweet-looking guy with light brown skin and short hair standing behind me. When he caught me looking, he smiled and said, “I’m Ty.”

Ty, from the vent.

I tried to smile, but couldn’t.

We formed a row inside the narrow passageway and followed the short, bulky woman. Scraping her baton against the white walls, she led us through a series of metal doors and into a room filled with glossy white chairs.

“Sit,” she ordered, tapping her baton on one of the chair’s backrests.

I turned to look at Ty. He shrugged, no doubt as confused as me.

I sat at the very front row, wishing I hadn’t. In front of me was a large black screen with white writing scrolling across: WELCOME TO ORIENTATION.

Orientation. The note.

Was I stupid to trust a woman I didn’t know?

“Welcome to Orientation,” came a loud, obnoxious voice.

Out from behind a curtain came a beautiful woman in a fancy white suit with blue buttons. She wore matching blue heels that clicked menacingly against the tiled floor as she approached us. Her hair, an auburn red, sat high at the back of her head and flowed down into a long, pointed ponytail.

Something about her told me she couldn’t be trusted.

But who could I trust?

I didn’t remember anything.

“You are all confused,” she said. This hadn’t been a question. “But I am here to help clarify a few things.” Then, with a gentle hand over her chest, she said, “My name is Ivy, and I will be—"

“Where are we?” someone suddenly shouted from the back.

Ivy’s piercing blue eyes shot up at the girl who’d spoken.

“Rule number one,” Ivy said through clenched teeth. “No talking unless spoken to.”

Next to us, a few faceless figures with helmets stepped forward, smashing their batons in their gloved hands—a gesture meant to shut us up.

The girl who had spoken gulped and leaned back into her chair.

“Your memories have been scrambled,” Ivy continued. “And with good reason.” She paused, almost as if for effect. “Many of you have suffered greatly in the last two years. War. Trauma. Loss.”

I blinked. War? What was she talking about? I didn’t remember a war. And what trauma? What loss?

“None of you will remember it,” the woman continued. “You have all voluntarily chosen to be here because you want to heal. You want to help us make this world a better place.”

When no one said anything, she pointed at Ty. “You, young boy. Do you remember anything about the war?”

Ty shook his head.

“Good,” she said. “Because your entire family was slaughtered before your eyes.”

Ty pulled his face back, looking more confused than ever.

“Do my words hurt you?” the woman asked.

“N-no,” Ty said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The woman smiled and clasped her hands together. “Exactly. We have erased your pain.” She spread her arms out as if trying to fill the room with her love.

But all I felt was coldness.

“I want to thank you all for cooperating today—for providing your tickets to prove your eligibility on this train.” Bowing her head, she paced back and forth in front of the black screen with the moving text. “In case you’re wondering: your ticket was an affirmation that your memory was effectively erased. Some weren’t so… lucky. And those too traumatized to be healed were unfortunately denied tickets.”

A few gulps filled the room, and my stomach knotted. Some people were denied tickets? I thought back to the woman in the cabin. Had she given me her ticket? The way she’d looked at me told me she was trying to help me.

I remembered the note: Don’t hesitate. Jump.

What had she meant by this? Then, I remembered something about tourmaline. I wasn’t sure what it was, but she’d said tourmaline gemstone.

“The reason you are all here today,” Ivy continued, “is because we need young, vibrant minds to help us save the world.”

Save the world, I thought. That sounded a bit dramatic. Everything about this place screamed cheesy and phony.

I searched the room for this gemstone. What was I looking for? Why hadn’t the note specified a color?

Ivy continued to pace across the room, explaining to us how we would be the ones to help science advance. I had no idea what she was talking about. As I searched the room, her voice grew distant. Even so, I learned was that this train was our only chance at survival—something about a self-energized train that had no intention of stopping until we made our way back to the past and prevented the war from happening.

Wait, what?

I blinked hard, refocusing on Ivy.

The past?

“Time travel?” I mumbled.

Her terrifying blue eyes rolled toward me, and I suddenly wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

Rather than sic one of her guards on me, she crossed her arms and forced a smile. “Time travel sounds so… fictitious,” she said. “What we do here is much more than that. We are looking to restore the timeline before the war fragmented it.”

I didn’t say anything, especially not with that icy stare fixated on me.

“Do you not wish to be a part of this mission?” Ivy asked me.

I parted my lips to answer when a hot, searing pain exploded in my brain. I reached for the bridge of my nose as countless images flashed through my mind:

A fight with a boy.

A bloody nose… not mine.

Police officers showing up at my house.

A judge slamming a gavel.

My mother and father sobbing in the courtroom.

A prison cell.

A man with black, gelled hair telling me to sign something in exchange for something great.

A room full of bridge lights… being injected with something.

“Hey,” came a deep voice.

I was nudged back to reality, the pain no longer melting my insides.

A shiny face shield floated inches away from me. Although I couldn’t see a set of eyes behind the glass, I could feel them watching me. The man suddenly grabbed my wrist and scanned it with his strange, red laser. “Kria Thompson,” he said. “She’s here, in the database.”

Ivy rubbed her pale, pointed chin, looking unconvinced. “If she has another episode, take her to Dr. Ikram.”

The muscular figure nodded, stood up, and returned to stand with the rest of the guards.

Episode? What had just happened? Had I experienced… memories? I thought back to the image of the fight in my mind. Although fuzzy, the memory began to expand. I had gotten into a fight with a boy who had tried to sell cigarettes to my twelve-year-old sister.

I’d broken his nose.

He’d pressed charges.

Were these memories real?

Ivy crossed her arms, watching me intently, and that’s when I saw it; around her neck was a thin black rope attached to a green gemstone—the same gemstone I’d seen around that older woman’s neck.

Tourmaline, I thought.

The older woman had told me to take it, but I couldn’t very well rip it off Ivy’s neck. Maybe with time, I could get closer and find a way to steal it.

Maybe…

At once, a blinding flash of green light exploded behind Ivy. She swung around with her arms raised to shield her face from the bright light. The guards stiffened, reaching for their batons, and around me, people screamed.

Flashes of green swirled so fast that I didn’t see her at first. But finally, the woman from my cabin stepped out from the light, waving wildly at me.

Don’t hesitate. Jump.

Without thinking, I shoved Ivy out of the way, but not before grabbing the necklace around her neck and tearing it off. She let out a high-pitched squeal and tried to grab me, but I was too fast.

Holding the gemstone tightly in my fist, I did the opposite of what any sane person would do—I jumped into the portal of twirling green light.

* * *

“Up high,” the woman said.

What? I rubbed my head, feeling disoriented.

She stood with her palm flat in the air, waiting for me to high five her. When I didn’t, she said, “Yeah, it’s a bit rough on the body at first. Sometimes, you even—”

I spun around and vomited bile.

“That,” she said.

When I managed to straighten up, she patted me hard on the shoulder. “You good?”

Wiping the sides of my mouth, I nodded.

“Now, put this on.” She reached for the broken necklace in my fist, wrapped it around my neck, and formed a knot.

“Wh-what is this?” I asked.

“Tourmaline,” she said as if teaching me my ABCs. “It’s a protective gemstone,” she continued. “Specifically against negative energy. That being said, they also discovered a few years ago that it works wonders for time travel.”

So Ivy had been right—time travel was real.

My head spun.

“Whoa, easy,” she said. “I need you to be alert right now.”

Only then did I realize we were standing in the middle of a field next to a bus stop. The woman crossed her arms and gazed off into the distance, wrinkles spreading across her face as she squinted.

What was she looking at?

“See that?” she said, pointing at a red brick building in the distance. “That’s Granten’s Juvenile Detention Center.”

Was this supposed to mean something to me? When I didn’t answer, she looked at me and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll remember soon enough. The memory thing didn’t work on us.” She twirled a finger around her ear. “Hence the no ticket.”

“Why do you keep saying us, like we’re a team?” I asked. “I don’t even know you.”

Ignoring me, she pointed at an approaching orange bus with metal bars over its dirty windows. It pulled into the prison’s main entrance, drove through a series of metal gates, and parked. Out from it came two guards clad in blue uniforms, and behind them, a dozen teenage girls in orange jumpsuits and cuffs around their wrists.

Then, another memory hit me.

A clear blue sky.

A detention center.

Red bricks.

I knew this place… I’d been here before.

“Recognize anyone?” the woman asked.

Like her, I squinted and took several steps forward. Although I couldn’t see anyone’s features from here, there was one girl I recognized—and only because of her wild, purple pigtails.

“Purple looked good on us,” the woman said nonchalantly. She eyeballed my brown hair. “They forced us to change it when they took us, but I think it might be worth revisiting that color.”

“That’s… that’s… that’s….” I tried.

“That’s you,” she said. “We jumped back a year, and this is when we got sent to juvie.”

Again with the we.

Suddenly, it hit me.

But… it wasn’t possible.

As if reading my mind, the old woman smirked and said, “Finally, you figured it out.”

“You’re… me?” I said.

Again with that quirky smirk. It was my smirk—one side pulled up higher than the other. And that freckle under her nose. That was my freckle. She was… me. I was her.

“Process all of this quickly,” she said, “because we need that you to refuse Red Glass Corporation’s offer.”

“Red Glass Corp—” I tried.

“The ones who own the train,” she said. “The bad guys.”

“And what offer?” I asked.

“In a week from now, they’ll offer us the deal of a lifetime,” she said. “But we can’t take it.”

“What deal? What will they offer?” I asked.

“Freedom. And a lot of money,” she said.

I sighed. How was I supposed to convince my other self not to accept a bunch of money?

“Why couldn’t you just go back farther in time?” I asked, resentful. “Couldn’t you stop the fight? Prevent me from getting in here in the first place?”

My old self smiled at me as if I still had a lot to learn. She gently squeezed my shoulder and said, “It’s way more complicated than that. And I’m still not a pro at this. It took me fifty years to make it back to the train. I made mistakes. I still do. I don’t always get it right. But what I do know is that we meet someone very important inside this prison—”

“Liana,” I said.

I remembered now.

“Ivy’s daughter,” she said. “And we need her if we want to stop Red Glass Corporation from expanding on time travel in the first place.”

I got the feeling things were about to get very messy.

“There is no war, is there?” I asked.

The older woman averted her gaze. “The only war is the one Red Glass has created. They’re using prisoners as testing experiments for time travel. Countless have already died in these sick experiments. The only reason we’re still alive is because one of the experiments worked, and we were lucky. They shot us into the future by ten years. But Kria…” she looked at me the way I looked at my little sister when I wanted to tell her something important. “Things only get worse in the future. War really does happen, but Red Glass is responsible, and more than half of the world’s population gets obliterated. We have to stop this.”

Breathing in a lungful of clean air, I nodded. “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m willing to try.”

“That’s all I’ve been doing for fifty years,” she said. “Trying. So let’s try the heck out of this and save the world.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can we not say that? Save the world? It sounds so….”

“Dramatic?” she said, nudging me.

We walked toward the detention center, heading toward a future—or past—full of uncertainty. But if there was one person I trusted more than anyone, it was myself. And if I’d seen the end of the world with my own eyes, well, I had to try to do something.

I wasn’t some hero—I was a sixteen-year-old juvenile delinquent.

I didn’t have any superpowers.

But I had freaking time travel on my side.

Watch out, Red Glass—here I come.