Timestone

Chapter Twenty-One ϟ Fight

Vela reacts instantly. She sends a roundhouse kick to the man's outstretched arm. The force throws his arm sideways, but he maintains his grip on the taze. After hesitating for a fraction of a moment, I remember the newly found weapon in my hand and raise it to shoot. The guard fires his taze first, hitting Vela. Her limp body falls into me, throwing off my aim just as I squeeze the trigger.

Everything disappears in a blinding flash. A popping sound fills my ears. Vela falls, hitting her head on the rocky ground. I stumble and nearly step on her.

Our attacker has fled. I spin to locate him, and I'm startled to see how far he's moved in such a short time. He stands forty feet away, next to the cave entrance. Then it hits me . . . he's still next to the cave entrance.

He didn't move.

Vela and I did.

A wave of confusion crashes over me, but I don't have time to think. The man turns, and we lock eyes. He appears just as dumbfounded as me.

I dive just as his taze erupts in my direction. I hit the ground and return fire. Everything blinks out again, and another deep pop fills my head. The guard is suddenly standing right over the top of me. What the skrak.

Swinging my body, I kick and sweep the man's legs. He falls to the rocky ground with a thud, hitting his head on a rock. He briefly winces in pain, and then all his muscles relax as he falls unconscious. I grab his taze and shoot him with it just to be safe. It's surprisingly fun shooting the weapon, so I fire on the unconscious guard once more.

I stand up and realize that I'm next to the cave again. Vela lies on the ground in the distance. The confusion and adrenaline make it impossible to reason. I run to Vela and kneel at her side.

"What happened?" she asks weakly once the paralysis starts to leave.

I can't answer—partly because of shock but mostly because I have no idea what happened.

"Are you okay?" she asks. She's the one that just got shot and hit her head, so why is she concerned for me?

"Yeah, I'm—"

"The guard!" she shouts, remembering who shot her. She frantically looks around and finds him lying motionless in the distance.

"We need to get out of here," I tell her.

She agrees but has enough sense to suggest we tie up the guard first. I shoot him with his taze. I didn't land a direct hit, so I shoot him again—you can never be too cautious. Using rope from my pack, we tie his arms and legs. He'll squirm out eventually, but it will take a while. I fire the taze at him one more time before departing. I wanted to shoot him twice, but Vela assured me that once was enough. We begin our descent—but not before I change my mind and turn to shoot the guard a final time. Like I said, you can never be too safe.

As we hike, Vela presses for details. Did the new weapon work? Why did I drag her away from the cave? (I didn't.) I'm still trying to process everything myself. I replay the events over and over in my head.

We had scarcely exited the cave when I fired the new weapon. Vela and I were instantly transported a stone's toss away. We hadn't run there—Vela was paralyzed at the time. I fired the gun again and found myself back at the cave entrance, with the guard standing over me.

I would have thought I was hallucinating—except this wasn't the first time something like this has happened. A similar thing occurred when the lightning nearly struck me on the mountain, and I immediately found myself on the valley floor. After learning about timestone, I devised a theory for how I teleported off the mountain. When the lightning struck near me, it must have reacted with the timestone to distort space. It opened a wormhole which sucked me to the valley floor. At least, that remains my best guess.

So, this gun we found in the cave . . . isn't a weapon. As impossible as it seems, it's some sort of teleporter. It must use a similar combination of timestone and energy to create a wormhole. Even to my damaged mind, it sounds ridiculous, but I can't think of any other explanation. This gun is what Tanek was so desperate to find.

I tell Vela I'll explain everything as soon as we're safe and have time to talk.

"I know a place where we can hide out for a while," she says. We alter our course. Instead of descending, we traverse across the mountain. "There's another cave," Vela explains. "My dad points it out to me every time we pass it."

I feel exhausted, but we keep a quick pace. The longer we hike, the less we speak.

At last, we arrive. We squeeze through the narrow entrance, which opens into a decent-sized cavern. Enough daylight pours through the cave opening to see reasonably well. We remove our packs, pull out blankets for padding, and sit against a rocky wall.

I explain everything that happened after the guard attacked. Unsurprisingly, Vela doesn't buy my explanation of the teleporter gun.

"Is this supposed to be funny, Payaso?" she asks. "Or is this the brain damage talking again?" she says with a smirk.

I can't convince her with words, so I stand up. Hoping I'm not about to prove my insanity, I raise the gun. The yellow lines converge at the center of the cavern floor. I draw a deep breath and pull the trigger.

Everything flashes. Instantly, I'm standing twenty feet away in the very spot I aimed. A shriek from Vela echoes. I spin to face her.

"Diablos!" she yells in horror. She leaps to her feet, her jaw hanging to the floor.

My insides burst from excitement—not insane after all. I aim the gun just to the side of where Vela stands. A pull of the trigger, another flash, and I'm back at her side. I give a wide grin of victory. She looks like she's seen a ghost.

"How. Did. You. Do. That?" she asks.

I jiggle the gun. "I told you."

She closes her mouth, but the fear on her face remains. "Do not do that again," she demands in a slow, measured tone.

I give her a Why not? expression.

"We don't even know what that . . . that thing is," she answers. "It could be dangerous."

She has a good point. We both just stand there, not saying anything for a moment. I think we're both unsettled by this gun but unavoidably curious.

"Oh, just a second," I say. It occurs to me that the cubes might contain information about the gun. I kneel and begin rummaging through my pack. By the time I find them, Vela has pulled out her food. Eating remains the last thing on my mind, but a teleportation gun isn't enough to make Vela lose her appetite.

I decide the cubes can wait.

We take our time eating and talking. The lighthearted conversation and laughter carry us well past our meal. Vela tells me more about her mom and dad, her childhood, and other random topics. Getting to know her so well makes me slightly uncomfortable because I have almost nothing to share with her. The place in my mind that should hold memories of my childhood and family remains an empty void.

I begin to suspect she's drawing out the conversation because she doesn't want to talk about the gun. I think she's more spooked by it than I am. But the conversation winds down and inevitably turns back to it and the cubes I'm holding.

Vela doesn't understand how the tiny cubes canhold information. I explain the ones Tanek showed me—the game and the map. Butit's difficult to convey how incredible they are—like trying to describe fishsticks and tartar sauce to someone who doesn't even know what fish are.