Thief of Time by CJ Lyons & CJ Lyons

Author:CJ Lyons & CJ Lyons [Lyons, Cat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edgy Reads

Chapter 10

Annie’s mind wrenched and warped, twisted and spindled into knots of overlapping history. Not history from a textbook, her history, their history…our history?

In a flutter of a hummingbird’s wings, she/he went from losing his/her parents to a frack-quake in Oklahoma when she was barely nine to being laughed at in school when her little brother threw his lunch tray at the vice-principal to panicking, certain she was going to die as her mother led her and her classmates down, down, down, deeper into Iron Mountain.

A kaleidoscope of memory shifting from choking smoke of burning waters, blue flames shooting up from the ground, a mother clutching her child, running, falling, flames consuming them…a slap in the face when she tried to help her brother…the death of a beloved man, grown old before his eyes, a man who died long before Annie was ever born. “Yes, Mr. President, I accept…I give you my solemn promise, Unity will be safe. It will never happen again.”

Finally, like a rubber band stretching too far and snapping back, she was Annie. Just Annie. But where was she? It was totally dark, no sounds, no sense of up or down, nothing to feel, not even her body…She was alone, absolutely alone…Panic over took her and she tried to scream, but she had no mouth and so could make no sound…

Reach for the AI, a man’s voice coaxed. Resume the connection.

His words made no sense, yet somehow they calmed her. Slowly, like sunrise in a deep mountain gorge, a glimmer of light edged into the darkness. With it came pain. Overwhelming pain.

And voices. Not her own. From outside.

“Look. She’s integrating,” a girl said. She sounded excited. “The brainwaves are merging into one cohesive pattern.”

“Who cares, if she’s dead!” a boy responded. She should know that voice, shouldn’t she? He sounded scared, so scared, she wished she could comfort him. “Annie, it’s okay. We’ll fix you. Hang on.”

“Wait, now they’re disintegrating. As if they’re somehow canceling each other out.” Now the girl sounded upset. “No, no, no. Give her the Key. It might help.”

“What if she can use it to connect with Delphi?” the boy protested. “What if she destroys it? She can’t control her own bot, we can’t give her the Key.”

“Do it!”

“No. There has to be another way.”

“Killian Albanese, for once in your life you need to trust someone besides yourself. If you don’t trust me, then trust in Annie. Give her the Key.”

A weight settled into her hands—she had hands! The boy’s voice came closer and she felt his arms wrap around her, tight. It felt good. “I believe in you, Annie. You can do it. Use the Key, and come back, we need you.”

His words became clearer. She felt the solid disk he helped her hold in her hands, felt gravity holding her body on a floor, sensed the presence of two thousand and eleven different chemical compounds, analyzed his voice pattern as belonging to the male, Killian Albanese, registered Citizen of Unity.

“It’s working. The waveforms are stabilizing.

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