Years Beyond - Old Soul Sequel

10

<Avalie's POV>

When the blindfold came off, I found that I was in the same room I was in when Brunsen healed me, laying on the same doctor's office bed chair thingy as I was when the serum was injected into my veins. Now, it is a different needle Brunsen holds before me, and I glare.

"Relax," Brunsen says. "Just a sedative. You need to sleep if you're going to go where I have in mind."

I frown. "Where exactly is that?" I don't like the way his mouth is twitching, like he's trying not to smile but he just can't help himself. It looks as if he's concocting an evil plan, and it makes me nervous.

"A timeless land," Brunsen replies. He lowers his needle to fix me with a curious stare, and I can practically see the gears turning in his head. "I wondered for so long if it could even be measured by time. But isn't everything?"

"Time doesn't exist," I tell him flippantly. "It is a concept humans created."

Brunsen wags a finger at me before I can finish. "Ah, but you see, for you, that isn't the case." He perches on the edge of the chair, and I flinch away. "Time for you is a playground. Time for you is a means of transportation. Time for you is tangible, because you can comb your way through it. Which is why," he says, and once again, he raises the needle. "I need you to go to a place where time doesn't pass, where time is frozen."

I gulp. I remember a time in which I was in a timeless place. I had travelled with Steve to spy on a Hydra meeting, and we got stuck in a state of numbness where no time passed and everything disappeared. I had felt myself slipping away, and I feared I wouldn't be able to find my way back until Thor's lightning shocked us into reality. With that in mind, I am not so eager to find out what Brunsen is talking about.

So instead of asking, I think of something else on the mind. I cross my arms and look up at Brunsen, who now hovers over me waiting to stab me with his syringe. "Why didn't you tell me?" I ask him. "A girl should know her own uncle."

At this, Brunsen looks genuinely surprised, and I am secretly pleased. It's not every day you surprise the mad scientist who annoyingly always seems to be one step ahead of you. He looks at me for a moment, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. "How did you find out?"

"The resemblance," I answer nonchalantly. "You know, same left nostril and third eyelash. Oh, and I, too, also feel the need to poison my niece and then keep her boyfriend around to torture."

A sparkle sprang into his eyes so bright, I think for a minute that he has never heard a joke in his life. His eyes widen with such sudden fervor, it is like he has made a discovery. "She reached out to you, didn't she?" he asks me, and the syringe in his hand is long forgotten as he drops it on the tray by the chair to spread his palms. "She took you somewhere. Where? Where did she take you? What did she tell you? When did it--"

"What are you talking about?" I snap, shaking my head. He speaks so fast and with so much intensity, I quickly grow confused. "Who? Who reached out to me?"

"Francine!" Brunsen shouts.

I still, my mouth falling open. The dream I had--the one where I was with Landon in the bus lot, and then I was behind the dumpster in the back of my high school learning that Brunsen was my uncle--that was Nana?

I had wondered why I had been there. Why did my mind take me there? My first travel coming out of the sickness and I go back to high school, to a moment I had no idea had happened? Could it be possible that Nana was that reason?

"What..." I say slowly, trying to gather my thoughts. "What are you talking about?"

Brunsen has his pad in his hand, rapidly scribbling down notes. I could see what he was writing, but I couldn't interpret it--the language looked like German. "She reached you," he says without looking up. "She got to you, and she showed you something. What did she show you?"