(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 55

"This is a horrible, horrible idea, Ida."
There was a very good chance that he was right. Emilie had been guarding the door upstairs while the last time travelers went away, fearing that she would not be able to run up the crude stairs quickly if things went south. Meanwhile, I had said my goodbyes to Karen, sending her to whatever place and time she had chosen. It was now just Mischa and myself in the basement cave.
"It'll work," I said softly, taking a single, very uneasy step onto the platform. I feared the weird fingers would disassemble and rip me to shreds without warning. Nothing happened, luckily. "It'll work."
"How the hell do you know that?" he asked, sounding like it was an actual, honest question. I had no answer, of course, but he was at least not tackling me to the floor to keep me from entering the time machine platform.
"It's not a long trip, Misch. Just a few days into the past. It'll be okay."
I had no way of knowing. Everything could go horribly wrong. It was a horrible, horrible idea. But there were no good ideas checking in. Horrible had to do.
"It's time travel, Ida. Who knows what a long trip really means."
Breathing deep and slowly, I refused to tell him that he was right.
I knelt down, like I had seen the others do, resting on one knee and my knuckles, like a sprinter waiting for the starting shot.
"There's a button flashing on the screen. Press it."
He hesitated. Turning to look at him, I could see that he was looking at the right button, but he hesitated.
"Press it, Mischa. It'll be okay."
The sounds from upstairs were getting worse. The rebel time travelers were either losing or leaving. I could hear things breaking, wooden things and whatever glass still remained. And then, I heard her voice. The woman in white, screaming a command. They had cleared the way enough for her. This was the endgame.
"Mischa, press the..."
I never saw him actually do it, but when sounds suddenly emanated from the machine and the fingers rose into their starting position, I knew he had. A powerful static filled the air, making it painful to breathe, making every bit of skin feel tingly and sore.
"Ida, there are some numbers here," I heard him say over the rising scream of the now rapidly spinning and disassembling fingers. "They're counting down," he added.
"Numbers? What are y..."
Long ago, when I was about seven or eight, I had played with a knife. Not a big one, just an average eating utensil that I had snuck away from my mom as she was doing the dishes. I had been fascinated at how it could scrape layers off of things like electrical wires, and I had hidden away behind the television, whittling away at its power cable. And when I found some shiny metal inside, I had touched it. I remember all lights going out as fuses blew, but mostly, I remembered the intense pain, the kind that made every muscle in your body tighten and made it impossible to scream. Peter had been quick and pulled the cable out ofmy hand, although the fuses had likely already cut the power to it. I had been in the hospital for three days, most of them crying.
This pain made that memory disturbingly vivid again.
For a fraction of a second, everything was a burning, bright light, even though I had my eyes firmly closed. And then, the light became a normal kind of bright. And then dim. Then bright. Dim. Bright, dim, bright, dim. Pain.
This second pain was more tangible. I had hit something, my entire body smashing into something firm, but not too hard. I had spun, and I had hit something. Those thoughts scrambled through my head as I lay there, wherever there was, feeling my body in panic. Everything felt broken and bleeding, and I was afraid to move. Even breathing hurt, as if I had been punched hard in the lungs. And when I finally began moving slightly, the pain just worsened, feeling as if my limbs were, indeed, broken.
Earth. Soil. I was in a field. I was in that field, the one I had passed on my way to the school. Karen had talked about setting up destinations for the time machine. She had been nervous, afraid of being left behind by the others, and while instructing me on how to operate the machine, how to send her to some destination, she had overtalked, telling me far more than I needed to know. I had helped her do so, of course. I wasn't exactly proud of the fact, but I had offered to help her whille hiding my own agenda from her. This was that agenda, or at least a part of it.
Looking around, I found the rock I had grabbed from the field. It was here, now, too, shattered into jagged pieces, smoking in the cool noon air. I had grabbed that rock, grabbed it and taken it to the time machine, where I had fitted it into an empty cartridge for the machine. The thing the size of a wallet that I had pulled out of the damaged machine was such a cartridge, some destination they had put in when someone sent a surge through from the past or future somehow. The ruptured cartridge had let time energy escape, messing up anything related to time travel in the vicinity of the school, and Nakskov, and likely anything farther south of the schoo buildings! Very potent things, destination cartridges. And I had simply picked up a rock, crammed it inside an empty cartridge, and made one.
Everything was very dry. It confused me at first, but I soon remembered the drought a few days back. This was it. I was those few days back, and it was next to impossible to make my brain wrap itself around that fact. Which was why I tried to instead wrap it around something more concrete. Like the fact that I was on fire!
In a weird way, I had already known for the better part of a minute. My loose blouse had felt wrong from the moment I faceplanted into the field, and I knew the smell of burning clothes, for various reasons at this point. I had rolled over on the burning patches, sloppily trying to suffocate the smoldering heat, but a few had resisted. With a slight struggle, I got the blouse off, checking my underwear for any sign of flames, finding only some hot patches that I slapped out. In my eagerness to deal with the blouse, I quickly realized that slapping even a minor burn was a really bad idea!
There were no puddles, no small bodies of water, anywhere. As my body cooled from the trip, the cool air doing its best to sap away the excess heat, the pain kept telling me of new burns. On my knees, in the dirt, holding my smoldering blouse in my hand, I started a painful game of whack-a-mole, trying to put out a dozen or so tiny fires in my pants, all while I became fully aware that my sneakers had melted.
Tired, in pain, and smelling like a cannibal barbeque, I stumbled towards the road in my gooey, slowly dissolving shoes. While still a good few minutes from it, I watched with a sigh as the only bus in the area rolled by, nearly every seat inside visibly empty, mocking me, taunting me. I had bad burns on the inside of my legs, I could feel the red and peeling skin beneath the charred pant legs, gaping holes in so many places it looked like some new wave of punk fashion.
And the thirst! My throat felt like crumbled up newspaper, sending out stinging pains from just turning my neck! I wanted a warm bed, I wanted a good meal. I wanted to die, for this to end. I tried screaming, in pain and frustration, but the sound somehow got stuck in that dried up throat. I had the road, and nothing else. So I walked.
My first thought was the old school buildings. Fresh clothes, no doubt a first aid kit somewhere. But I forced the thought out of my head quickly. This was not just back before the rain ended the drought, it was back before the time machine had been wrecked. Whatever had been going on at the old school, it was going on right at this minute, blissfully unaware of the impending doom to come. I could go there. I could warn everyone. But it would still happen. Even if they believed me, the time machine would likely still blow, taking everyone nearby with it. That could be them. That could be me. I had no idea what would happen. I never had, but now, it seemed somehow daunting. I was used to not knowing exactly what would happen. But I was not used to feeling this helpless about it.
The streets of Nakskov were fairly quiet, a car passing now and then, a handful of delivery trucks going about their business. Everything looked the same, no drama, no chaos, no nothing. I had gone back in time, defied the laws of the universe as I had been raised to understand them, and all I saw was everyday life, playing itself out before my eyes as it would on any other day. In a strange way, the complete lack of anything special happening was about as surreal as it could possibly get.
Keeping to the alleyways and out of sight along the streets, I slowly made my way into town. There were a few moms on maternity leave with babies in their strollers, a few senior citizens walking slowly in the streets, going to get groceries or simply out for a walk. The average sights of Nakskov. I stayed out of their way, out of their sights. To my knowledge, I wasn't bleeding, but the burns were too bad to hide. I would stick out like a burned thumb. I had no time to come up with explanations, no time for well-intentioned people to offer their help. I knew the event would happen sometime in the early evening, I remembered that much. Everything connected with time travel would be hit, and that included me. Everything that was not far enough away from the time machine when it blew.
In the few seconds that the promenade lay empty of people, I lumbered out from my hideout in the narrow alleyway between it and the harbor. It felt wrong, because it was wrong, but with a quick grab, I snatched a few small pieces of clothing from a bargain bin that had been put outside one of the many thrift stores. I barely glanced at it, my throbbing heart reminding me at any moment to keep an eye out or get caught. The clothes were next to worthless, I knew that. Some donated pieces that nobody had bought for a while, so they ended in that bin. But it was stealing. I felt dirty.
The promenade gave way to small streets, which in turn gave way to the road going through town, passing by the schools near the train station. I turned away from them, taking the street that ran parallel to the harbor, out of sight of any schoolyard. Everything hurt. I picked through the clothes I had grabbed, counting among them a pair of green socks, long shorts, and a top meant for a very small child. Struggling against the urge to go back to return the top, I instead snuck into the corner of an open garage to change into the shorts. The light was limited, the spot hidden enough that very little of the afternoon daylight found it. It hurt. Removing the pants was like pulling off an old bandaid, much of it clinging or outright sticking to my sore skin. Standing the, legs bare, I felt my heart sink and my stomach twisting as I gave the burns and the bruises a quick look. The shorts ended up covering my thighs well, clearly made for someone a size or two bigger than me, but with excellent elasticity. My shins looked like I had been hit by a car. And in my head, I kept hearing my mom's voice, a replay of a hundred times I injured myself as a small child. But there was no bathroom to sit down quitely and clean the wounds. I had to make due with the small top, and the experience was every bit as painful as I expected.
The socks went into a pocket, for later use. Amongst all the stories I had forgotten from my history classes, the one I remembered was soldiers during one of the world wars taking off their boots, only to have their sore feet swell and become too big to get back in. I hadn't marched for days or been in firefights, but I only had to look at the red skin on every visible part of my body to have horrifying images appear in my mind.
With a sigh, I threw the destroyed pants in an open dumpster.
I had never been good with the town's geography. I knew how to get from and to most places, simply because I remembered it. I knew many other places, and had a fair idea where most of them were, but I never had the innate sense of direction to find any of them easily. I kept that lack of skill in mind as I tried to avoid the main road to the time traveler house north of town, doing my best to build up a map in my head as I followed the myriad of smaller streets that ran alongside it. There was no grid, no rhyme or reason to the layout, just streets that had been drawn and laid down as people needed them. Winding roads, at first, then long, straight ones, lined with houses of varying size, age and quality. Nakskov's own version of suburbia.
Before I really knew it, I was on the outskirts of what most would consider to be the actual town. Fields and woodlands, all carefully maintained and sharply defined in the landscape, reached as far as the eye could see. The residential parts were still nearby, and from a good spot, some of the taller buildings in town could be seen clearly. Houses and their streets grew along the main road out of town like leaves on a branch. I was simply at the edge of the leaves, following the branch from one street away. That simply happened to be where fields and forests started.
With an eye always on what could be seen at the far end of any street, I made it to where that all ended. This was where I stood, at the end of a gravel path going by the outmost houses, with a narrow road going from left to right, one way leading back to the main road, the other leading along fields and bending inward in the distance. It would rejoin the main road, too, but not until it had gone by a few farms. That was where I stood. And it was stilll where I stood when a strange, nauseating wave went through me.
Everything seemed to spin and fray, like a video image hit by some kind of interference. I gasped for air as I sunk to my knees, feeling like I had been punched in the chest from inside my own body. And as my eyes looked across the sky, I tried to remember that evening more clearly. How late had it been? It felt like it was too early for the event to happen. It was too light. Getting my wind back, I took a look at the houses nearby. It was late afternoon, but even with no lights visibly on, I could spot the flicker of TV screens inside a few of them. The power outage had not struck yet. This was not it.
And yet, getting up was a mean fight. My legs were buzzing, my arms like rubber. Thoughts felt scrambled and unclear.
On the left, open landscape along the fields. Nobody to look at me as I stumbled about. Nobody to see. Which meant nobody to help me. And to my right, down the narrow road, was the main road again. People. Eyes. I imagined the concerned locals coming to my aid, and instead of feeling safe, I felt fear. I felt that I was dragging them into something they were not a part of, much like I had been. Even before looking even one of them in the eye, I felt guilty.
The forest. We had been here before, a year or two ago. Biology, nature walk. The forest had a ton of clear and open paths. People walked animals there, rode bikes and had lunches. It was lare enough that at most a few would be out, doing any of those things. And it was early enough that the forest would not be covered in darkness.
I was halfway to the dirt road leading into the forest when it became apparent that others had had a similar idea! A few shouts, angry and startled, and one old lady giving a frightened scream, were the first warning of something on the way. As I scanned the edge of those outermost houses, I noticed little signs of something going, at least at first! Bushes were shaken, someone threw a large ball, and the top of a head briefly came into view, just behind a hedge! With the sounds and little visual cues combined, I could follow where things were happening.
And then, a young woman came running out of one of the gardens! Short, with short blond hair and thin lines cut across her tanned face, only bleeding slightly, she had a determined look on her face as she darted out of the garden, turned sharply, and sprinted down the dirt road into the forest. She was barely even gone from sight when another, a young man with messy black hair, slammed into a car parked by one house, never quite falling over but struggling to regain balance without ever stopping his run. Clumsily, perhaps hoping to cut half a second off his run, he leapt over the low growths around the dirt road, but only just avoided a complete tumble as he landed awkwardly on the other side. He was still visible, scrambling into the forest, when the third one came running from a street near the garden. She looked Asian, with...
"Vera?"
I was too far away for her to hear, too far away for her to even notice me. And even if she had, this was before I had named them, so to speak. But it was like she had never gone away. She looked the same, down to the orange aviator glasses and the blue patchwork coat flapping about her as she darted into the woods!
It all happened in the blink of an eye, but sounds persisted in the area, sounds that seemed unusual. Had I known nothing, I might have guessed at a sports event spilled into the streets somewhere, the occassional shouts and dispersed sounds of someone running being almost like watching a match of some kind, with only the sound on. I never even noticed it at first, but my jog had slowed down to a slow stroll as I watched for more things to happen. And happen they did.
They came from everywhere, pouring out of every yard and street, all within a span of a few seconds. Had I not spotted a missing hand, parts dangling like Christmas ornaments, I would have mistaken them for human. Robot copies, clearly on the hunt, about an even dozen or so. They had barely shown up before they filtered down the forest road with what looked like impeccable coordination, not one of them bumping into another on the narrow path.
Finally satisfied that no more would pop out of the woodwork, I took chase! The gravel path into the wooded area was fairly torn up, the underlying soil not only exposed but sprayed about as feet had taken sharp turns and skidded. Even with the path trimmed nicely, branches from trees along its sides had been snapped en masse, some going as far as damaging the trunk, likely from full on colliding with it!
As if that was not enough to track the commotion, it could be heard, too. The trees muffled a lot of the noise, but when the wind died down for a moment, shouts could be heard. I followed them, followed them blindly, not stopping to think or look around. The sores in my legs felt like they were being ripped apart when someone slammed into me, pulling me from the path and through a thin line of trees. We ended in the water, in the lake on the other side of the trees, one of the many small lakes in the area. Like the unseen attacker, panic grabbed me, up and down becoming blurred as I went down. Everything turned green from light passing through the water, but we quickly hit the bottom, the lake luckily being shallow at the edge. All it took was a few frantic kicks, and I was free to stand.
Drenched, cold, and with every sore burning and every joint and muscle aching, I more felt than saw my fists strike about in the air, hitting nothing. As my eyes thoroughly cleared, I saw my attacker twitching under the water. Robot. Badly damaged. Water was obviously leaking into its systems, or whatever ran it. It was no longer a problem, at least not for me.
Flares of blue and yellow were lighting up around the lake, perhaps even farther into the little piece of woodland around it. Climbing up onto the old boardwalk build for those who fished in the lake, I thought I could spot a human head or entire figure amongst the trees and tall grasses, but everything was a mess. The sky was turning darker, too, and whether it was the weather changing or my soaked clothes, the cold made me shiver badly.
None of that really held me back. On the contrary, the cold made me move, made me warm up my body by not simply standing still. Keeping my wits far more about me than before, I followed the gravel path deeper into the woodlands. I, we, were already far enough inside that it would be hard for anyone outside to hear us. I was alone. Nobody would come if I called out for help.
If I had doubted that fact, I would not have doubted it when I turned into the clearing! Shouts rang out as hazy blue bolts shot through the air, most disappearing into the surrounding trees, a few striking the robot targets they were likely aimed at. The first girl was limping away from the clearing, bloodied nose and her one eye mostly shut. The young man and Vera were covering her. Suddenly, Vera shouted something at the others, and they both kneeled down, firing their knuckle guns with renewed intensity. As I watched from the edge of the small battlefield, Vera disappeared into the woods. The robots, taking cover behind the public benches and assorted other things there, popped out to fire off a red or orange bolt of some kind every now and then.
And then, a hum filled the air, like every machine in a laundromat switching to spin drying simultaneously! I watched silently as Vera smashed out through the trees, wearing what looked like a medieval suit of armor, except designed by an experimental car manufacturer! In one leap, she crossed the clearing, landing hardenough to send a slight tremble through the ground. Raising the suit's two arms in either direction, she sent a blue flash through the ranks of the robot copies, making them pop like balloons.
She never stood up. The suit remained kneeling, with her in it. After a few seconds passed and nothing happened, I started to worry. The suit only covered strategic spots, making most of her face visible, and her eyes were closed, her head hanging. Only when the young man came over did she open her eyes and look up at him, making my heart skip a beat from pure relief!
Forgetting myself for a moment, I also walked towards the suit. A strange sensation went through my body, like placing your hands on an old TV set and feeling the hum from the screen, and I noticed the injured woman pointing her knuckle gun at me.
"I'm not a robot!" I yelled across the clearing, feeling weird at how mundane it felt to say that. The woman, clearly confused, stared at Vera and the young man. The man was clearly confused, too, because in spite of what had just happened, he still held his knuckle gun pointed rigidly at me!
"I'm a friend," I called out. Neither the injured woman nor the young man seemed very convinced, but I could see Vera squint and think very hard as she snapped open the chest of the suit, allowing her to climb out.
"You've been looking for me. I'm Ida," I added. Vera still looked as if she was analyzing every word and move from me, while the two others seemed completely unaffected by anything I said. She climbed out of the armor, gathering her strength as she got to her feet, and the man stepped into it in her place. They shared a look that seemed like a silent debate for a second, then he walked off, armor and all.
"Who did you say you were?" she asked, tightening muscles in her arms and legs, getting tension out. Had it only been her body, she seemed fit for fight once again. But her eyes told a different story, constant fits of rapid blinking, much of it very unevenly. She was as good as done, running on fumes.
"Uhm, Ida," I stuttered, watching as the man in the odd armor half carried the injured woman away. It took a few seconds, and then they were gone.
Vera looked me over multiple times, appearing very unsure of herself. Or more likely, unsure of me, and what to do.
"You've been looking for me, right? Your simulations or whatever said that I was the right one to help you out?"
She said nothing, the expression on her face screaming disbelief. It suddenly occurred to me that she might not even know how I looked! Hoping to win her over, I said nothing as she looked me over one more time.
"You jumped recently," she finally said, and the word had to rattle around my skull for a moment before I caught on.
"Yeah, I used the time machine! I fixed it, like you asked me to."
"Fixed it? Who d..."
A pulse of blinding, scorching pain went through me, and I could hear her scream, as well, as I dropped to my knees! It felt like every organ in my body was brutally ripped apart, every bone broken into pieces, and my brain itself being stretched and twisted so hard that thoughts had trouble forming inside of it.
When it had all passed, we were both on the ground. Fighting to make my limbs work again, I pushed myself up on my right hand, enough to look over at her. She was already up on all four, trying to get up on her wobbling knees.
"What was that?" she asked in a hoarse voice, not making eye contact. "What did you just do?"
I shook my head, thinking for sure that I had heard that wrong.
"I didn't... do anything," I panted, fighting to breathe right after the event. "That was your time machine. The one in the old school, south of town?"
Standing with her legs wide, like a newborn pony, she raised her head to look at me, but her neck muscles kept failing on her, making the head instead bob around softly, like on one of those dolls you found in novelty stores.
"Who the hell are you? How do you know about any of this?" she hissed, sounding like every syllable hurt her on its way out. "You're a #*@!ing native, a civilian. What have you done?"
The last word was an outright growl, an angry snap from deep down in her stomach. I just stood there, knees bent and arms supporting me against them.
"But... your models. Your predictions. You know me, Im the special person. You've been #*@!ing look..."
She slammed me to the ground. It was a clumsy move, her balance clearly still of and her mind still struggling to adjust to what had just happened to it. She looked on the verge of puking her guts out, pale skin damp with sweat, eyes watering, limbs twitching gently as she got to her feet.
"Who... who sent... you..."
She barely managed to force the words out before she grabbed her head with both hands, screaming in pain, tumbling back to the ground! It took about a second, then I felt it, too. Like shrieking, a thunderstorm of angry banshees, in my ears, in my brain! She was still half on top of me, pinning me, and the only thing that kept her from holding me down by force was the pain, just as the only thing keeping me from throwing her off of me was the pain, as my body twisted and convulsed along with the screams.
"What are you doing?" she asked, whispering, fighting for breath, tears down her cheeks, as she tried to raise herself up on her limp limbs. "How are you..."
She swayed, her eyes becoming unfocused under the messy, short, black hair. I wanted to respond, but my head felt like it might crack open, too. I struggled, resisting the urge to scream out in pain or break down crying, to get up enough to just sit.
"Look around you, V..."
I cut myself off, reminding me that she didn't know that name yet. She was still swaying, shaking her head like a dizzy animal, growling softly, too, not unlike an animal.
"Look around. Lights are out. The city is dark, for #*@!'s sake. The time machine was blown apart."
She more stumbled to her legs than actually stood. Staring me straight in the eyes, she nodded. Feeling that she might have actually understood, or at least accepted to listen, I felt a calm wash over me. As my body relaxed, I slipped back on the ground, prepared to breathe deeply to regain strength. I looked up to find Lisa and Elmer standing behind and now above me, looking down. Then Lisa pulled a small device, and everything became numb.

They carried me back with a pillow case or the like over my head. Nothing to see, but plenty to hear. Which was a good thing, as not a single muscle in my body seemed willing to respond, so hearing was all I had. Hearing and smelling. Both signalled very clearly that we were not in town any longer. We were out amongst the fields, which left me with only one guess.
Elmer removing the pillow case confirmed my suspicions. The house looked different, though, full of activity! Other people, people I had never seen before, were loading things in crates much like the ones I had seen in the basement cave under the old school buildings. Nobody was talking, everyone knew their place.
"Are you all the same time traveler, sent back so many times?" I asked, realizing too late that these were not yet the people I knew, or felt I knew. The young man from earlier showed up, glaring at me angrily, as if I was somehow offending him by being awake. I tried moving, but apparently my wrists and ankles had each been tied together while numb. I only felt it when the blue nylon rope dug into the skin as I moved them about, or at least tried to.
"How do you know about that?" he mumbled skeptically, giving me a glare that could be anything from intrigued to disgusted by my words.
I was on a couch, an old leather one that I just barely recalled in the house. It seemed long ago, making it that much more frustrating to think that it hadn't even happened yet. Even just entertaining the barest hint of the thought made me shut my eyes down hard to push the whole matter deep into the back of my head again. The furniture in general seemed the same, with the same old glass cupboards flanking the same TV shelf along the wall. The crowd was the real difference, but as I looked on, they seemed to be thinning out.
"We're gonna be best friends a week from now, buddy. Just you wait and see," I said, making the sarcasm as obvious in my voice as I humanly could. He gave me a frown before disappearing into the moving mass of people.
The knots were tough. My hands were on my back, making it impossible to actually get a look at them, but I could feel them, feel the many bulges and trace the complicated path of the rope. And all the while, it almost frustrated me how people ignored my desperate writhing and growling on the small couch!
When I finally writhed enough to tumble to the floor and someone finally paid attention, I quickly regretted having ever wanted anyone to notice me, though. There were still no voices, nobody saying as much as a word to one another, but a smallish woman with short, pink dyed hair and a large man with nearly none quickly picked me up and carried me upstairs. Neither said anything as they dumped me on an old single bed in a room barely large enough to contain it, and then left. As the door shut, I was left in near silence, the only sounds being from the activities downstairs and what sounded like a car leaving outside.
The knots refused to give, no matter what I tried. I was never a girl scout, never boarded a real boat, and never had anyone teach me knots for any other reason, either. My skin was aching from writhing under the tight rope, and I could feel my patience running out. Wringing and twisting my body, I managed to sit up, narrowly avoiding what seemed to be an old tanning apparatus hanging over the bed, for some odd reason. Small boxes were stacked along the wall, making for even less available room, but I quickly noticed that what I had thought was just another wall by the door was actually a kindof woven bead curtain, roughly the same color as the wall. Clumsily jumping to my feet, I stood by the bed, fighting to keep balanced with my ankles bound, looking around to the best of my abilities. The last remnants of daylight were nearly gone, but the ghostly glow of the outside streetlights helped me make out everything, at least the general details.
The window to the outside was tempting, but I managed to lean enough to see the steep, vertical drop outside, and quickly reconsidered. Heart in my throat, I took a few small hops through the bead curtain, but my heart sank back again when all I found was a small kirchenette, the kind that had a microwave and waterheater by a sink, likely once the living space of a teenage child or someone renting very cheap. What it did have, however, was a slanted window. The kind that had a roof outside.
It took some acrobatics, and my first attempt at getting on the kitchen table beneath the window failed when the faucet got in the way, but on the second attempt, I got up. On my back, scraping my feet at the handle of the window, I got it open, enough to raise myself out through it.
It was getting cold outside. In the distance, I could see lights coming on in Nakskov, but the immediate surroundings were a greater problem. Faint yellow streetlight snuck over the angled roof of the house, but only enough to see vague outlines. The old roofing tile crunched and creaked as I slid slowly down it, stopping at the top of the indoor terrace. It's plastic roofing made a horrible, squeeky noise as I wriggled along it, staying over one of the wooden beams that I could see through the semi-transparent plastic. With visions in my head of crashing through and breaking every bone in my body, I nonetheless made it to the edge. Now, there was nothing below but a thin strip of backyard, and beyond that, the small stream running by the house. Everything was overgrown, but I could make out the slope from looking at the plants growing closer to the neighbour's yard.
"Please, no thorns. No thorns..." I whispered, right before I rolled off the roof.
There were thorns.
With a loud splash, the cold water of the rapidly flowing stream engulfed me. It was too narrow and too shallow for the strength of it to carry me along, the drought no doubt having part of the blame for that, but it did mean I could easily stand up. And as I did, I noted the wet ropes stretching a bit. Not much, but enough for my small hands to slip out. My excitement got a bit of a kick in the balls when I remembered the faucet upstairs, though, and I briefly cursed my ignorance about rope properties.
The streaming water felt cold, and the evening air on my wet clothes felt even colder. The indoor terrace had its lights on, and I did my best to sneak through the water, but the activity inside the house was unlike what I had ever seen any of the time travelers doing. Someone kept emerging from the door leading into the garden, most times carrying something that looked heavy, in spite the size. My brain kept leaping to new conclusions, guessing at a range of different things that could be crammed into the various crates and boxes. But I blocked it out. There was no real way to know.
The nearby road, the one leading into town, ws upstream. I struggled, thinking that such a small stream could hardly be enough to hold me back, but I was very wrong. Even standing still pushed enugh against me to be a problem. I would have expected that after rainfall, but how the drought made the waters run was beyond me. I finally began sloshing along with the stream, keeping the noise as low as possible, following the water to wherever it would guide me. It guided me to the neighbouring homes, not surprisingly, with no real place to sneak through easily, hedges and bushes in the way. I instead grabbed some long grass on the other side and struggled my way up onto the field behind all the houses. Dirty, wet, and tired, I looked back at the house I had escaped. My mind kept going over the entire course of events. They had told me about their models, about my place in their plans. If she didn't know me, who was I to them? What was so special about me? The intense feeling of betrayal boiled inside, making my head hurt and the shivering from the cold bite even worse.
The school.
As I stood on the side of the road, shivering, having snuck by the house without notice, it all began to click. I had gone to the school south of town. Was that really it? Was that all? I had snooped around in the place they wanted to get into, but couldn't?
That sinking feeling came back. Not the feeling of betrayal, not anger or even frustration. Emptiness.
And then, after that, the anger.