A knock on the door made me jumped up off my armchair. Could it be Owen? Owen who I had just caught up cheating on me with my best friend? Was he planning to apologize? Was he going to pick up his things and break with me? Or maybe it was Lynette.
I left the carton of ice cream on the table and ran to the door. I brushed my hair with my fingers and straightened my clothes only to realize that those were not the clothes I had been wearing when I caught up Owen cheating on me with Lynette.
Confused as I was, I opened the door, only to become even more confused.
A tall middle-aged man with striking facial features and in a fashionable blue-black suit was standing at my door.
“Are you Gwen Smith?” he asked with an adenoidal voice.
“Yes, who are you?”
“Gwen Smith, you’re arrested for illegally manipulating time.”
Before I even opened my mouth to utter a word, the tall man with the blue-black suit wielded a golden baton with a white glowing end, and everything turned dark.
CHAPTER 4
*
Is this how it is to be dead?
I looked around but I could see nothing. I was dipped into an abyss, surrounded by darkness and silence.
A sharp pain in my wrist had woken me up. My pulse was beating in my ears. A musty odor filled my nostrils. My wrist was on a handlock attached to a heavy chain, clanging eerily as I tried to free my hand. I was in sitting position in a place so dark that I could not see my hands. And it was cold.
My legs were free; no shackles on them. I slowly moved into a kneeling position and blinked my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I could not figure out where on earth I was locked in.
I groped along the cobblestone floor, until I reached the wall. I fumbled for the shackle where my hand was locked in.
There was no chain! Or, at least, not a visible one.
My fingers came across something solid before they finally touched the chain attached to my handcuff; and yet I could not see it.
With my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could now look around and scrutinize the trap I was in. It was a dungeon; a cold, dark, round chamber that stank of moldy moss and rotten flesh. I grabbed the chain and pulled it with all my strength. In vain; it did not even move. A ray of light emitted from behind. It was coming from the corridor behind the iron door and was slipping into the cell through a small opening on the upper part of the door.
“Hey!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Get me out of here! What the heck is going on in here?”
“Here ... here ...” The echo of my voice answered him back.
Drops of sweat rolled down my forehead. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. With my right arm still locked on the wall, I placed my free palm on my upper chest and inhaled in three parts; first into my chest, then my upper abdomen, and finally puffed my belly out like a balloon. Then I smoothly exhaled the air, first from my belly, then my upper abdomen, and finally my chest.
I felt thankful for the years of yoga practice as my breathing became normal again. However, I still did not know where I was. Most importantly I could not understand why I was in there. All I knew was that I needed to get out. I had to retain my calm and clear thinking to find a way out.
“Where are you?” I shouted. “I know you can hear me.”
I knew who had dropped me in that pit. I just did not know why.
“Where the heck are you? Come on here, you coward!”
An adenoidal voice sounded as the cell door opened with a clunking sound.
“Did you call for me?”
It was the tall middle-aged man, in his fashionable blue-black suit, standing at the cell door, showing a loose attitude with his hands in his pockets.
“What’s all this noise for?”
With my hands clenched into fists, I ran towards him targeting his chin. Without losing his composure the man bent down to avoid my fist and rapidly wielded his golden button creating a blurry block of air, like a virtual wall, between us.
“What do you want from me?” I yelled at him as I punched the transparent wall only to have my fist bounce on some kind of elastic surface.
“There is nothing I want from you. The question is what do you want from us?”
“Who the heck are you talking about? I don’t even know who you are. You just showed up on my doorstep, you said some crappy you-are-being-arrested kind of thing and the next thing I knew I was imprisoned in where-the-heck I am now. How did I end up here anyway? In a blink of an eye?”
“Are you finished?”
I was so furious by the disparaging tone in his voice that I would have punched his nose if there was not that transparent jelly wall between us. I pursed my lips instead.
“You do not have the luxury of asking questions. You are only entitled to answering one single question: who your parents are.”
His question caught me by surprise. “What do my parents have to do with this?” I asked him after a moment’s hesitation.
“The gift of time hopping is passed down from one generation to the next. It’s a hereditary prejudice. My job is to track down time hoppers and build their family tree.”
“So, you are saying that I am a time hopper.”
“Exactly.”
“And you want to track down my ancestors.”
“Correct.”
“How on earth could I know who my ancestors are? I am an orphan.”
“Well, that makes things trickier for me but won’t stop me from discovering where
