4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

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HE LANDS EMPTY-HANDED.

His ragged breathing fills the silence. The zombie that he'd been fighting with has vanished into thin-air. He fights to catch his breath, then looks around. The car is still with him. One hand around the steering wheel, the gun wedged between his knees, and the strap of his bag around his other arm.

When I jump, he realizes, I take with me whatever I am holding.

Except for the living—or dead, depending on which way he looks at it. The zombie couldn't have been brought back to the past, because fifteen years ago, the zombie didn't exist. The zombie had still been human—if the human had been alive fifteen years ago.

Relief surges through him at that. The prospect of having brought the undead back to the past fills him with horror. One guilt-trip is enough. Three lives lost on his hands from the previous jump is already a burden. He doesn't need another.

Dragging in a deep breath, he steadies his hands around the wheel and glances up.

That's when he sees her.

Huddled against the wall of a building, with her books clutched to her chest, she looks up at the three girls advancing towards her with the expression of prey that's being hunted. Through the rearview mirror, he watches as they say something to her in muffled tones he cannot hear. Her eyes dart round in search for an escape route. Finding none, she presses further against the wall, her shoulders hunching over as though bracing herself for an inevitable fight.

Quickly, he unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out of the car. None of them notice his appearance. His eyes narrow as one of the girls snatch at her books, tossing them into the ditch by the side. But when another girl raises a hand, he slams the car door shut with a bang.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he snaps.

The three girls whirl round to face him with matching wide-eyed expressions. But his focus is on her. He sees the exact moment that surprise, followed by recognition, dances across her features. Her lips twitch up in a relieved smile and her shoulders straighten a little.

"We're—" one of the girls stammer, "we were just—"

"Leaving, I hope." He folds his arms across his chest and jerks his head in the direction of the main street behind him. "Now piss off."

They don't have to be told twice. Without a backward glance, the girls scurry off, leaving a tentative silence in their wake. He chances a glance at her, unsure of how to proceed.

At age fifteen, she's very close to the woman she'll grow into. She's much taller than she'd been, almost coming up to his chin if they were standing close enough. He understands now why, in his dreams, she fits so perfectly in his arms. She's outgrown that ridiculous bob of hair she'd had as a child, her hair falling down in waves almost to her waist. But she's gangly and angular, holding herself awkwardly the way some adolescents do. Her eyes are expressive, miles more mature than they'd been five years ago, and she's the first one between them to take that definitive step forward.

"I remember you," she says at last.

He fights to keep his expression neutral. "Do you?"

"Yes." She takes a step closer. "You left me on the sidewalk after saving me five years ago. You just...vanished into thin air, and you look the same now as you did then." She tilts her head to study him. "How'd you do it?"

"Magic."

"Oh, please, I'm not a child anymore," she scoffs, sounding so indignant that he has to press his lips in a tight line to keep his amusement from surfacing. "There's no such thing as magic."

He takes a step back when she moves forward. Then another, and another, until he becomes aware that she's backing him into a corner. His foot hits the tyre, leaving him with nowhere else to go.

"Is that your car?" she asks nosily. Her features are alight with curiosity, a depth of intelligence shining in her eyes. She stands on tiptoes to peek through the windows. "Did you come here in that?"

Unable to find anything to say, he simply nods.

A triumphant smirk spreads across her face. "I knew it. I mean, it's no DeLorean, but the circumstances are pretty similar."

He blinks. "What circumstances?"

"You know, when Marty McFly tried to escape the Libyan terrorists and activated the flux capacitor," she says, with a shrug. "He was travelling at eighty-eight miles per hour and ended up—is that a gun?"

"No, it's not." Nervousness swiftly replaces his confusion. He angles his body to keep her from looking in through the windows. But she ducks beneath his arm and he hastily grabs her by the elbows. "You're seeing things as always, and—"

"Yes, it is!" She rounds on him, her eyes wide. "You do know that guns are totally illegal here, right?"

Not in my time, they're not.

Letting out a sigh, he pries her away from the car. "Don't touch the car. In fact, don't—" he stops, a familiar sound filling his ears.

Tick, tick, tick.

Her eyes flick down to the watch on his wrist, then back up at him. "Is that—hey, wait up!"

Ignoring her indignant shriek, he wrenches away from her and yanks the door open. He hurls himself inside and jams down on the accelerator, reversing out of alley. Keeping one hand around the steering wheel, he grabs his bag and gun as the ticking bleeds into the silence.

Through the rearview mirror, he catches a glimpse of her running after the car before he vanishes.