Time Shift

Chapter 9

Derek woke up from his sleep, and he found a laptop sitting just next to him. It was still turned on. He grinned and got up from the ground, minding the laptop later. He went over to the wall of paintings and saw that the portrait with Wene on the ground, sad and terrified, wasn't there anymore. It was instead replaced with Wene looking at someone beat up somebody else. He was automatically filled with surprise and glee. He did, in fact, travelled to the past. But who was this Wene? And how was Gary related to Wene?

Derek went towards the laptop and looked at the screen. There was just one folder that said, 'Apollo's Work'. He touched the small laptop mouse pad and moved the mouse to hover over to the folder and double tapped his finger, opening the folder. It then expanded into the whole screen and there were three document files. The top one was a 'List of Customers'. The middle one was a 'Research on Teleport Cubes'. The last one was an 'Unnamed Book'. The first two made a lot of sense, but the last one didn't. The public didn't know about time spheres, not to mention teleport cubes. If they ever saw one, the government would be placing a ban on time spheres, or worst case scenario, a war. Maybe this book was directed towards assemblers.

He clicked at the 'Research on Teleport Cubes'. The file opened up and it revealed words. Lots of words that Derek didn't want to read. It was like an essay, a really long essay, about fifty-thousand words or so. He probably didn't need it for now. He could show it to Conor if he could take the laptop with him when he could finally escape. He closed the file and opened the 'List of Customers'. The file opened and a long list appeared. There were countless names on the screen, all of which Derek didn't recognise, and there were names of places beside their names. This was a clue, but he had no idea where he was.

"Gary," Derek called out. "Who was the one who kidnapped me?"

"Why, it's me, of course!"

"No, I mean the person who took me here."

"Why should I tell you?"

"Where are we?"

"In a castle."

"When was it built?"

"Sometimes around the fifteenth century. Why?"

"And now, I ask again. Where are we?"

"In a castle," Gary repeated.

"No, what's the name of the city we're in?"

"Why, we're in Sid, of course!"

He wasn't sure why Gary would reveal this 'secret' location, let alone help him find everyone else. It was a bit obvious that he could use this information against him, but Gary could be overconfident and, to a certain point, dumb.

"Which part of Sid?" Derek pressed on.

"Oh, come on. Have you seen the sea? It's obvious, ain't it?"

Sid was the capital city of Dissi. That, he agreed on. But, he knew that Sid wasn't surrounded by water nor was Sid next to an ocean or a sea. That would mean that this place was at a lake or a lagoon for that matter.

"What lake are we in?" Derek asked.

"I don't know. You tell me."

The first portion of the list didn't have Sid or Dissi in them. He scrolled through the file until he found Dissi. But there were multiple cities in Dissi. He scrolled through more until he found Sid. It was already a long way down the file, but he was just one quarter of the way down. Through the minutes that felt like hours, he looked through the list like a persistent mosquito. He had always hated mosquitoes, though.