A Sampler Pack Page 2

I have fifteen minutes.

  “Lara Crane?”

  Standing in the sterile waiting room of the time travel agency known simply as Rewind, I turn towards the voice. A redhead technician with a tight ballerina bun offers me a handshake. I've met her before. Her name is Delilah.

  I should be in second period lab class, but instead I cut. I have something more important to do than completing junior year chemistry.

  “Nice to see you again.” After a glance over my shoulder, I follow her through a tiny hallway and into a secure room. I crinkle paper brochures in one hand, and with the other repeatedly tuck my hair behind my ears.

  Her lips perch together in a tight smile. “You too, Ms. Crane. One of my favorite return visitors.”

  I sit down in the overstuffed black recliner, and when she latches the door, the metallic boom makes my heart skip a beat.

  This is it. Turning back is not an option.

  The stark white walls, sparsely covered with posters, make me feel like a trapped rat. Time travel has rules, the posters warn, and I plan on breaking every one. A daughter will do anything for her mother.

  I have one chance at this, and with my heightened blood pressure, it’s clear my body knows it. Once you travel back to a specific time, it’s catalogued as off limits. Frequent travel to the same moment, in the same space, causes a rut in space, like pacing across a worn floor. If I fail, if I can’t do this, my mother will remain dead forever.

  The technician is wearing all white, and her shoes squeak against the shiny silver tiles.

  She straps the belt around my lap, and my knees bounce up from my bottled-up tension. The clustered nerves in my gut grow larger. I swallow to settle them, but bile rises in my throat.

  Delilah sits at her computer a few feet in front of me, probably checking the records for my time travel history. This is my tenth trip, thanks to the frequent visitor discount card Delilah sold me on my second visit. I’ve been time travelling to plot my route and improve my sprinting time through the city.

  She slides over to me on her desk chair. Her eyes search mine, and they glint with distrust. “We checked out the date and location,” Delilah says. “It seems like a happy memory. How old were you?”

  She’s scoping me out. I try hard to keep eye contact. I’ve worked too hard on this to get found out now. It took every penny I had to pay for this final trip. “I was five. I sang in front of the mayor. My dad was there. It was a big deal to me then.”

  Delilah slips a standard white hospital-issue heart monitor on my finger and clamps it tightly, catching my skin. With a deft movement of her foot, the chair reclines like the one in the dentist’s office, and I’m peering up at the glass ceiling.

  She speaks again, seemingly bored now, as she goes through her pockets looking for something until she pulls out a pen.

  “You’ll have fifteen minutes and will have to watch from the hall.”

  I nod and try to keep from sweating, but my heart is beating so rapidly it’s echoing in my ears.

  Her eyes are steady on mine, and her lips pinch together. She recites as if from memory, “No interactions and don’t try to meet or touch anyone along the way. You wouldn’t be able to anyway.”

  Or so she thinks. My fingers grip the flyers. Hidden beneath them is a photo of my mom.

  “We’ll be monitoring you. Any sudden changes in your breathing or heartbeat and we’ll yank you out.”

  Delilah injects my neck with the sleep serum. It pinches like a snapping beetle, and the electrodes surge on my temple. My head tingles. Electricity pulses through my skin, making my foot twitch and my finger clutch involuntarily.

  My eyelids are heavy. They close, but the sound of banging forces them open again. I see Rick, my boyfriend, through the window in the door. He bangs the glass with his hand, and I grip the armrest as restraints clamp down on my forearms.

  “Arrest him,” she hisses into a wall intercom, and armed security guards force Rick’s arms behind his back. Delilah turns to me and gives me a smile. It doesn’t look friendly.

  It’s chilling.

  “She’s ready to go back.”

  “Lara!” he screams, and the longing, the begging in his voice breaks me. “Don’t do this, Lara!”

  The chair begins to spin, and the room swirls around me until I’m dizzy with the urge to vomit. The velocity forces my head back against the cushion, and my mouth falls open. I whisper a single word.

  “Mom.”

  ****