Chapter 2

Chapter 2
It felt like one of those lame sitcoms where the main character fades in and out of consciousness. Only, I didn’t dream of hospitals, but I had flashes of other things.
I remember seeing a large suit of black armor, and someone getting stabbed with a Japanese sword, and some bright things I couldn’t interpret. I saw Erin a few times, one time crying, another time smiling and another version of her face plastered with a scream. I heard a solemn tune playing in the distance, and saw a woman dressed in a blue gown. I saw at some point what looked like Trent crawling out of the ground. “Why’re you crawling out of the ground?” I asked my subconscious, but there was no response. Images continued to fly past my unconsciousness and plague me with unrest. After a while it got annoying. When the hell am I gonna wake up?
At that thought, it all stopped. A howling wind blew past my ears in the silence, but I felt nothing besides emptiness. Infinite amounts of time seemed to pass, as if I was absent from time itself and waiting for it to finish and repeat itself all at once over and over again in slow motion. There seemed to be no life here, no emotion, no thoughts or anything physical. Maybe something metaphysical, but it was something I couldn’t interpret. I then felt a deep hatred course through my body, and heard whispers that were impossible to decipher, flooding and smashing through the inside of my skull. The scream wrenched from my mouth seemed to be at a million decibels and at the same time silent. Then images of three large stones appeared before me, all of which continually shattered and rebuilt themselves, turned to dust and then grew like plants. As if it never happened, it was gone again and no time had passed at all, as if I had just arrived in this paradox of time and dimension. My senses started coming back to me at last, or it might have been immediately, I had no way of telling. I felt weightless and numb; then a sensation of falling startled me. As I gradually began to feel again and hear again, I realized that I was very cold. My bones and muscles felt as if they hadn’t moved for centuries and I was waking up from the dead. I felt empty and nauseas.
All of a sudden everything stopped with a flash of sunlight. I was standing up very stiffly, and then gravity seemed to take effect and I fell over from the disorientation. The nausea slowly went away, and my eyes slowly adjusted. It felt like the sun reflecting off of my drool in science class again. Was it all just a dream? When I open my eyes, would I appear back in that classroom? It was such a good dream after all, but if it was real I think I’d be very much afraid.
I opened my eyes to a surprise.
I was still in a ray of sunlight, but this was no classroom.
What the crap?! I hurriedly stood up and saw a landscape that I’ve never known before. Lightly rolling hills covered with trees went for miles and miles. The trees all seemed to be from around the area I lived, but this was not a sight I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a river snaking through the hills, bringing life to the land surrounding, and in that direction the sun was at about a forty-five degree angle in the sky. The air was so clear, the sky was an ocean spattered with cream colored clouds, and I could see for miles and miles. I spun around and stumbled, the wind grew strong; and then stronger. I was standing on a platform about a quarter from the peak of a mountain. I tried to regain my composure, but I began shaking.
What the hell is going on?
I felt a stroke of trauma tugging at my brain trying to put me into a sleep in reaction to the shock.
I turned back to face the landscape and sat down on the stone ledge.
How did I get here? When did I get here? Everything is so weird. My memories seemed to stop there, and they slowly came to mind again.
That strange girl was in trouble… Oh God.
I killed that guy.
And then, then… I was on fire? It was black fire though… if I’m here because of that… Where is that girl?
I looked around.
“Hello? Hey! Anyone up Here?” I shouted to the unresponsive wildness.
The echo of my voice died down slowly, as if in a cave. The wind started to slow. After a few minutes of suspense, or what felt like hours, there was no answer to my call.
I started to get really worried after a bit. I paced around in disbelief, looking about for the girl who was with me before I got here. Instinct was nagging me. Survive, survive. How? Find the girl, she probably knows what’s going on. I received a swift punch in the face at a realization.
I’m in a different world. It hit me. Why? When? How am I gonna get back?
…
Does it matter?
…
……
I was intrigued at the very least. I continued to look around for the girl. I scanned further and further down the mountain… There.
She was unconscious. Shit.
Without thinking, I hurried into action. I jumped over a precipice. Don’t ask why, it was impulsive. About halfway down I caught onto the side of the slope with my hands, and slid down along the Cliffside with a cascade of loose pebbles which provide a sliding surface for me to travel on. A boulder decided it wanted to stay in the way, and I was unable to choose a different pathway, so I had to jump over it. Dropping a good twenty feet, I landed with a roll onto another platform. The girl was right there, and she was beginning to stir. She seemed really dazed.
“…How did… How… you recovered first?”
I had no time to think or consider her question, let alone answer it. I hoisted her onto my back as a rumbling echoed from higher up the mountain, and then a series of crashes. A bit further up the slope something was moving; something very big. A rock leapt over the ledge heading straight for us.
“We gotta go. Whoever you are, hold on!”
She made an effort to clutch to my neck, but she seemed feeble from what seemed like the same disorientation I had experienced. I jumped again, and again. The rock made some friends and wanted to have a party with us. Not today.
I had to speed up; I began running, jumping, whatever helped us along down the steep stone behemoth. We weren’t going to make it. We were running out of mountain to move down, and at that finish line was what looked like a deep canyon. We came to the end of the line.
The girl screamed in my ear. God damn, great timing, now I’m half deaf.
I jumped as we reached the cliff above the ravine. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I looked down and saw all the reason in the world to join in with the girl in screaming. Below us was at least a thousand foot drop that I was positive I wasn’t gonna survive.
… No! Just as things started to get interesting. Damn it all. I wanted to talk to that girl and find out what the hell is going on.
I closed my eyes, and the sensation of falling didn’t come, but a strange humming did. I opened them again to find myself encased with the girl in a translucent blue sphere, and we were drifting as serenely as a feather down towards the foothills.
“What?”
I turned back to see the avalanche take a nosedive for the ravine. We were supposed to do that first, damn avalanche cutting in line. Gosh. In bafflement, I looked forward again. Our path was pretty much y= -x + 20, or so to say it was very straight. I didn’t know what the heck was going on, so I did my best to enjoy the moment, as well as check on the girl. Her eyes were very wide with worry, and she looked around like a frightened mouse. Poor girl, I wish I was good at comforting people. We slowed our descent to land safely on a grassy hill. The shield disintegrated as we touched down softly on the grass which felt oh-so-bouncy. When the shield was gone, we could feel the wind again, which had been absent for the past minute or so in that bubble.
“What was that?”
Surprisingly it was the girl who was asking, and not I.
“…I don’t know.” And then I thought of something. “Hey! Wait. Who are you?”
She stuttered for a bit, then stopped and took a deep breathe to regain her composure. She continued with “…Well I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m Erin. Erin Madrid.”
Erin. It’s nice to meet you. Very nice indeed, I thought. The smile she gave me was one that could make anyone want to protect that pretty little face no matter what.
I gave a rare smile.
“I’m Grim, but everyone else calls me Lee. No one but you knows that. Why is it that everyone in the world knows me as Lee, but you know my real name, which I have never spoken aloud until now?” I questioned.
“I’ve been sent to protect you, by the higher-ups in my organization. I had no idea we’d end up here though, of all places.”
“Sent to protect me? Why? From where?”
“Your appearance was just chance, as everything you’ve done thus far. The question isn’t where I’ve been sent from, it’s when. I’m from the future, but what time period exactly is something I’m not permitted to tell you or anyone in this time period. I can’t say why or how, it’s classified for your protection.”
God Damn it. I’ve read science fiction novels but I never imagined how frustrating it must be to be confused. Where’s a lifeline when you need it? And now that I think of it, whoever invented that game is an idiot.
“Erin… I’m completely lost here. I have almost no idea of what context I ought to be speaking to you in, or where we are or what we’re supposed to be doing. Even if there’s nothing we’re supposed to do, I don’t know what we should do, or how I’m supposed to get back.”
She smiled again, and comforted me a bit with “It’ll be okay, that’s why I’m here.”
I stopped my many complaints for the moment.
She continued.
“I am a time traveler. In fact, I’m one of the middle ranking travelers, so I’m basically the best out of those who still travel back in time. However, I’m still left in the dark to an extent by the higher-ups so that I don’t reveal any information that I shouldn’t through my actions or thoughts. My job is to do my best to effect only one aspect of the past to rectify an error in the space-time continuum without changing anything else. These errors are most often caused by Odin. The information we have on him is very limited, and the only time we came into direct contact with him was in this time period. He is considered to be the only being in history with the Omega Threat Level label. However, we have not been able to do anything to stop him. There are two things we have going for us though, and one of them is you, if we can persuade you, but I’ll get to that.”
She was beginning to get hard to follow. So much information on your mind when you originally thought it to be impossible for the concept of time travel to exist, let alone involve you.
“You see, we knew much of the past, yet you seem to be an independent variable of the planar values. You cause changes that shouldn’t happen. An analogy that might help explain it is to look at Newton’s first law. An object in motion remains in motion unless an outside force acts upon it. Now consider the object to be a segment of history. There have been four segments of history that have changed without any force acting upon them, or what ought to be the equivalent of no force at all. See, when we use a time scope to see what’s in the past and understand what we need to do in order to rectify situations, you were never there. Yet you still managed to bring changes to history. How is that possible? We asked ourselves this. We looked through all the instances of change with no catalyst, and went back to the first one, dated 12 years ago from now. That was when we first came into contact with you. So beyond the strange coincidences that have been occurring lately, you were just an ordinary boy who just happened to exist without a trace and without any way to know where you were unless we found you with our own naked eyes. That’s why I did not expect you there. Or here.”
Breathe. Breathe, Grim. What the hell makes me so important? I mean, I’m good at a lot of things, but I never did anything worthwhile, and I never planned on it. The air up here was very clear, but I was suffocating. I had no idea how bad it was back in my town. Now that I think about it, the world I was living in was a corrupt and dirty place. I used to try to stay out of it, and everything became boring. Every time I got involved in a sports team or club or event, there was always a level of unfairness. It wasn’t always unfair for me, but it was always unfair for someone, and I always felt bad about it. Was it so troublesome to be honest or fair? These are the same thoughts that have reoccurred in my mind every day for years. I learned to tune them out so long ago. Is this my fault too? If I truly don’t have any place in history, or I’m not supposed to, then how do I exist?
Erin was poking me in the ribs. “Hey. Wake up, snap out of it. We have to go, Grim!”
I shook myself out of my daze, and rubbed my face to rid a sense of solemn and quiet agony.
“Okay, where are we going?”
“To another void-zone. So we can get you somewhere safer. Please close your eyes.”
“What? ‘Void-zone’? What are you talking about?”
“That’s classified.”
“Why am I closing my eyes?”
“Just do it.”
I did. I repeated my question “Why am I closing my eyes?”
Her reply came from in front of me, but I could still hear an echo from the surrounding hills.
“You aren’t allowed to see any technology from the future. Those are my orders, and I have to find what time we were in precisely.”
I opened them, but she must have put away whatever technology she had been talking about before I got the chance to see it.
She gave me a frown.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re in the same period, just a different place. This isn’t supposed to happen, and I can’t contact my higher-ups. Our original destination was further back. I guess we’re on our own for now.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. We’re stuck?”
“No, I found a void-zone that is about fifty miles away. If we can get there before it collapses, I should be able to find out way out of this sector.”
Besides her use of words that I couldn’t know, this was a shock. There was a breeze tugging at my hair, teasing me and pleading with me to go back to the mountain. This felt like one of those pirate movies where they were all like “if ye go past this here point, then ye be goners, and there be no comin’ back.”
Erin offered me her hand just in case I might need a hand in taking forward steps.
Here I was, in a place I’ve never known being offered the hand of a hazel-eyed stranger. In this place I have nothing at all. The money in my wallet means nothing to nature and I have no place to sit and hide, no menial tasks calling my attention. My chest ached a bit, and Erin pushed her hand closer to me with a look of determination.
“Well, I’ve got nothing to lose,” I whispered to myself.
I smiled, purchasing a new path in life. I wasn’t quite this used to so much smiling.
“You know Erin, this better not be a dream. If I ever go back or find myself alone again, please find me and kick my ass.” I said to her face. It softened.
She smiled radiantly.
It was like the sun on its dawn of a golden age. The wind stopped tugging.
…
I took her hand.