The Time Hopper

Moving Out

A few hours later, I knew that something even worse than what I had expected was going on. First of all, we were in Chicago, the city I liked the least in America. It was also a million miles away from the sanctuary, and given I had no money or passports or friends to help me, we may as well have been on the moon. Secondly, our progress was slow to none because I kept bumping into other mages. At first, they had been offering help, and being quite forceful when they said no, but now they were fully trying to threaten us into going with them. Luckily, I was able to fight them off with relative ease, but I didn't understand how they kept finding us. We were in the suburbs now, and there weren't many cameras to even track us with. Besides, mages tended to be technologically illiterate. 

"Kat, are you being tracked?" I asked her after the sixth person approached us, aware that my luck wouldn't hold forever, especially as they got more forceful and insistent. Kat didn't even look at me, staring blankly ahead and making me drag her along. There was a buzzing in the back of my skull, one that had been there ever since I absorbed my power, and it sounded like very quiet whispers. I tried to listen in on it, to understand if someone was trying to tell me something or if it was just white noise, but it was too loud around me to focus it. Maybe if I had more time to stop and think for a moment- but I don't. 

"Okay, that's fine. You can just sit tight with me, and then I'll figure out how to heal you up later. Come on, Kat, we just need to get away." I kept talking to her, a constant stream of nonsense to try and call her back to me, to try and summon whatever vestige of her soul that was still left to come forward and tell me to just shut up already. I was careful not to say where we going, in case someone was listening through her ears, and I even paused and took her scarf from around her neck. Carefully, I tied it into a blindfold around her eyes and took her head. I was leading her anyway, and maybe the passer-bys would just think we were playing a stupid game. 

We rounded a corner, and I paused for a moment, tucking both of us behind a hedge so I could peek out without being seen. There was a family loading up a huge truck with furniture, clearly moving out, and they were almost done. A moment passed, and they all went back inside. I knew that I only had one chance, and not enough time to think it through. Gripping Kat as tightly as I could, I ran forward as quick as I could without pulling her over towards the moving van. 

I reached it and glanced around, not seeing anyone. Not wasting a second, I let go of Kat's hand and boosted myself up into the bed of the truck, noticing that there were enough crannies for us to hide in between the stacked furniture. I grabbed Kat beneath the armpits and grunted as I bodily dragged her up and into the van, tense as I expected to hear shouting at any moment. Quick as I could, I pulled her over to where two sofas had been stacked and pushed her into the gap between them so she would be hidden from sight. 

And then I heard voices approaching. Realising that I was almost out of time, I dived for the closest nook. It was under a desk, and I accidently shoved it to one side as I forced my joints to bend unnaturally to let me hide. It was a child's desk, and while I wasn't very tall I also was far too big to comfortably hide here. 

"Here, tuck the desk in so we can close the wagon, and then we'll be off!" The voice of an older man rang out, and I sank my teeth into my hand as someone pushed the desk against the side of the van, squishing me so much I heard something pop in my ankle. My eyes widened, and I barely managed not to yell out as the inside of the wagon suddenly got much darker as they closed the door. As soon as the engine started up, I pushed the desk back and rolled out of the hiding place, laying there in pain for a few moments before forcing myself to stretch out and recover. 

I went and pulled Kat out from her hiding place before she fell out and caused a noise, and sat us down with our backs to a table. I pulled her blindfold off as I inspected it. Not new, not by a long shot. It was worn, the grain of the wood uneven and marked, paint stains and ink stains and a thousand other markings a family would make covering it, etching a silent history into the piece, but it was carefully polished and clean. As the truck began to move, I began to cry. I kept a hand clamped over my mouth as I tried and failed to stifle the sobs, tipping onto my side and curling up into a ball as the hopelessness of my situation utterly overwhelmed me. I always tried to be optimistic, because there was usually a way out of everything, in my experience. But god, it was getting harder and harder to stay optimistic, because what was the point anymore?