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Chapter 9- Little Colored Lights

I spin around as fast as possible, and find a pair of blue eyes staring back at me. His usually neat and orderly dark hair is a disheveled mess and he's looking around frantically.

"Jack! Oh my god I've been so worried and scared! What do we do?" I jump up and he shushes me as he slowly closes the door behind him. He ignores my question.

"Alright, I don't know how much time we have, but it's not much." He's out of breath. He grabs my wrist. "I finally escaped my cell. The alarm will sound in a moment, and meanwhile we have to get out of here." Jack takes another breath, and looks straight into my eyes. "No matter what, just know I will always come back for you, so wherever we end up next, don't ever think I abandoned you. I promise." What is he talking about? I thought. But he seems so sincere that I just nod.

"Um, ok. Thanks Jack." I mutter. He takes a deep breath, as if I validated something for him. Then he yanks the door open and glances out the door left and right before pulling me by the wrist after him.

We turn sharply to the right into a bleach white hallway. It seems like everything around here is bleach white, like they are trying to purify everything; Just like they try to do to time itself.

There is a silver door coming up on the left, and Jack stops abruptly in front of it. He reaches in his left pocket and pulls out a silver keyring with a bunch of shiny keys dangling from it. He starts frantically trying keys in the lock, failing, one after the other. None of them seem to be working.

"How do you know the right one's even on there?" I whisper. I keep looking around, thinking we'll get caught. My heart is beating so hard I feel blood pulsing all through me.

"It's gotta be," Jack whispers. He tries another key and fails. "shit." He says. Suddenly I hear something. My neck jerks around to the left and right but I see nothing. My heart starts beating faster, if that's possible.

"Hurry Jack..." I warn, still looking around. Suddenly I hear a click and a whir and I whip around to find the huge silver door opening. I beam and rush after Jack through the door. "You think they would've had electronic locks by now, in 2079 and all." I whisper to the back of Jack's head.

He glances back and nods at me. Past the metal door is a dark room that's about the size of a janitor's closet, but a lot more organized. I see little red flashing lights lining the wall, and as my eyes adjust I see that each red flashing light is coming from a tiny handheld device held behind glass doors. There must be a hundred of these devices, stored in glass compartments. "What are these?" I whisper to Jack as I peer into a glass door.

"Just don't touch them, whatever you do." Jack warns.

"That didn't exactly answer my question," I mutter back. Jack is hunched over a small box sitting on the floor. It's about the size of a toaster and is flashing red, yellow, and blue lights. He mutters something that I can't make out, and continues working.

I decide to explore more of the room. Not that it's that big, but big enough. Mainly all I see is more of the same handheld devices that look like a phone from the 2030s. There are about ten that can fit up the side of the wall, and probably 50 across. so that makes... about 500 of these things. Some of them are missing though, where there are empty glass boxes. My guess is that they are some sort of communication device for time travelers, but I couldn't be sure.

"Oh shit, goddamn it!" I hear Jack whisper not so quietly. I spin around to see him still hunched over the box, but running his fingers through his hair. The box is now shining a green light, and a yellow one is flashing. My heart starts to speed up; something obviously went wrong.

I make my way over to Jack, and he suddenly stands up and puts a hand out to stop me. All of a sudden, the green light grows brighter and I feel dizzy. Jack grabs my hand and pulls me down onto the ground as everything turns white around me, and a wind-like sound drowns out any other noise.

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"Are you sure about this?" I ask timidly, my heart racing as I stare up at the huge hunk of spinning metal in front of me.

"Positive." Seth replies with a grin. Its our summer tradition of visiting Great America (a theme park) for a day. Every year I've come here but I've always been to scared to try this ride. I know it's a stupid fear, but I still never want to try it. This time, Seth says he's making me ride.

The line seems to take forever and I start to get anxious, wanting to just get this over with as soon as possible. I've already tried persuading Seth to skip this ride, but he says we HAVE to try it this year, and he's being really stubborn.

The line inches forward, and I try to reason with myself. It's not that scary right? I mean look at all these people who made it off the ride: I look over at the "exit" gate and there's happy couples, a group of adults, and even a few younger kids getting off. Oh wait- there's a girl hunched over a trash can hurling her lunch. I inwardly groan and look away.

"Pleaseee can we just skip this one Seth?" He shakes his head defiantly and smiles, adjusting his black RayBans. Today it's really hot out and the sun is beating down on us. Seth is wearing a dark striped tank top , cargo shorts, and a snapback, and I must admit he looks pretty attractive. I shake my head because we've been friends for just too long, right?

All of a sudden we are at the front of the line and the guy running it waves us on. We get inside and my stomach is already twisting and turning. We strap ourselves in and the ride counts down, 3... My stomach twists; 2... Seth grabs my hand because he can tell I'm nervous as hell; 1... I shut my eyes right and try to focus on squeezing Seth's hand as the ride starts spinning,

spinning,

spinning,

spinning

I have a splitting headache and I'm dizzy from all that spinning. I'm lying on my back and I don't even want to open my eyes. I try to think of where I am... obviously not at Great America with Seth, because It's not noisy and I'm not still spinning; but then where am I?

I think I remember something about little red flashing lights? All of a sudden it comes back to me. Jeesh, all of this time traveling gives me temporary amnesia every time. I force myself to open my eyes and I'm looking up at a sunset sky.
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OK I know author's notes get really annoying, but I have some stuff to say... Ok so THANK YOU A GAZILLION TIMES FOR 1.07K READS!! This is amazing and I can't believe it happened. Like wow I feel so honored. The next thing: this was updated super late and it's pretty short because I have no idea what time period they should end up in! So please please PLEASE help me and COMMENT A TIME PERIOD. I can't continue until I have ideas and I think it would be fun to have you guys choose :) THANK YOU FOR STICKING WITH THIS STORY CAUSE I AM A SUCKY UPDATER. And the last thing: the media in this chapter is another option for the cover of the book idk if I'll use it but you can comment if you like it or nah. Thanks again!!