Chapter Text
One of them fired, and a laser beam narrowly missed Filif, carving a burnt trench into the wall behind him.
"Shit!" said Sah'hli. "Make the weapons go away!"
She pulsed with energy, and the guns flew out of the reptilians' hands and vanished. They hissed and began advancing toward us. Urruah slashed at the air, and the attackers were knocked off their feet and thrown backwards. "Go! We've got this!" he shouted.
Mal and I were both frozen.
"He's right, we need to go," Filif said urgently. "Come on!"
Hannah grabbed Mal's hand, snapping her out of her shock, and before I knew what was happening, we were tumbling through the open worldgate, landing in a heap of limbs and branches. Through the other side of the portal, I saw Urruah's silhouette tugging at an octarine string, and the gate zipped closed behind us, blocking any pursuit—hopefully.
Welp. That, uh, that was…bracing.
"Ow," said Hannah. "Is everyone okay?"
I examined my surroundings. Cocoa was perched on top of Hannah, who seemed to have broken my fall as well. Hannah was sprawled out face-down next to Mal, whose lower body was pinned underneath Filif.
We were in a corridor. It smelled generally grungy—I wasn't skilled enough yet with my feline olfactory senses to get anything more specific than that. There was graffiti on one of the walls, and it looked like a sign was posted a little further down, although I couldn't read it from here.
"I'm okay…I think," said Mal shakily. "A little bruised, but nothing feels broken."
"I'm okay too. Sorry about that," Filif said, righting himself so that she could stand. "Oof. Twice in one day. I need to stop falling out of gates before I break all my branches."
Hannah sighed. "I'm fine, except…" She propped herself up on her elbows and picked up her glasses. They'd fallen off her face; one of the lenses had cracked, and the other was completely shattered. "…I don't think these are going to be much good anymore."
I meowed sympathetically.
"I'm fine too," said Cocoa. "Where are we? Also, when are we?"
"You're underneath Manhattan," a new voice said in the Speech. I looked behind me. A young male cat about Sah'hli's age with black and white fur had appeared in the corridor, seemingly out of nowhere. "It's the summer of 2012. Dai stihó. Visiting from the future?"
"That obvious, huh?" I said.
"Nah, I just know because it was flagged in the gate logs. You're off-target, too. Thought I'd check it out. What year are you coming from?"
"2024," I replied.
"Neat. I'm Arhu. Junior worldgate technician. What's your business in the past?"
"We are on errantry, and we greet you," Filif said. "Sorry, Arhu, it's a secret mission, can't tell you the details. Say hi to the rest of the team for me, though!"
"Uh…sure, definitely, definitely…who are you again?"
"You don't remember me? We worked together during the…" Filif trailed off. "Ah. No. Wait. Never mind. Just, uh…don't worry about it!"
"Okaaay, well, I look forward to…uh, whatever that's about…happening on my end."
"I think I already hate the Temporal Prime Directive," Mal remarked. "I have this sudden terrible urge to warn you about the horrible dangerous things that are going to happen in 2012."
Arhu cocked his head. "Probably a bad idea to do that."
Mal shrugged. "It's just as well. I don't think I even remember what happened in 2012. I was five years old; I wasn't exactly paying attention to the news at the time."
My ninth birthday would have been coming up soon. Right now, somewhere in the greater Sacramento area, a young Katie Winters was probably spending her summer vacation arguing with her baby brother about whose turn it was on the trampoline and then eventually settling the matter with a spreadsheet. I think this was the year I broke my arm, actually. That trampoline was always an accident waiting to happen.
Hannah placed her broken glasses in her pocket. "We should get a move on. Filif, where are we headed from here?"
"We need to get in touch with the Mobiles, and that means getting in touch with their mother. She has a direct link to them."
"Uh, is this the secret part that I'm not supposed to hear?" said Arhu.
"Eh, you were going to eavesdrop anyway."
"Wow, you really do know me!"
"In that case, may as well warn you that we might be chased by space lizardfolk with ray guns," Mal said.
"Could be here any minute," Cocoa added. He had perched himself on top of Hannah's head and was scanning the corridor in both directions, alert for any potential threat. You could tell he was shaken by the encounter with the reptilians because he didn't seem to have any qualms about turning his back to Arhu. At this point, an unfamiliar cat was nothing compared to laser lizards.
"Oh, dang! I'll let the rest of the team know. If we can set up an intercept checkpoint for any incoming transits where weaponry is detected, we could really slow down your pursuit." Arhu closed his eyes like he was concentrating.
"While he's working on that, how do we get in touch with your contact, Filif?" said Hannah, pushing the discussion back on track.
"At this point in the timeline, if I'm remembering right, she should either be on the planet Wellakh, or…nope! Never mind! I'm being told she's currently at her home in Long Island!" Filif said. "That's good news! It means we should be able to reach her by telephone!"
Evidently, Filif's equivalent of a Manual was also whispered directly to him by the Powers that Be, and he was currently receiving a real-time update. That made sense, I guess—it would be a little weird if a species of sapient trees had spellbooks made from paper.
Hannah got out her cell phone. "I don't have any bars here," she said.
"Me neither," said Mal. Perhaps we'd gone back to a time before their phone service providers had cellular network infrastructure in place here. Or perhaps the signal just sucked in this tunnel.
"Are there any pay phones around here?" I asked.
Mal raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Do they even still have pay phones? I mean, I know we went back in time, but we didn't go that far back in time, right?"
"The rest of my team is officially looped in," Arhu reported. "They're working on the interception spell now. And pay phones are definitely in decline in 2012, but we still have 'em! There's a working phone booth around the corner."
"Hot damn, the good luck is flowing!" Hannah said cheerfully. "I've even got some coins to pay for it, too! Lead the way, Arhu!"
Arhu seemed to bristle a little at being told what to do, but he flicked his tail in acknowledgement and led us down the corridor and around the corner to an empty stairwell, where a dingy phone booth waited. The door was missing, the walls were marred by graffiti, and although there was a phone book attached to a chain, it looked like it was missing half its pages. But the important thing was that it worked.
"I've never used a pay phone before," Hannah remarked as she picked up the receiver and dropped some quarters into the slot. A dial tone sounded. "This is kind of cool, actually."
"We don't have anything like it on my planet," said Filif. "Wizards operate openly on Demisiv, so we use magic for a lot of things humans use technology for. Oh, the number is (516) 555-6768, by the way."
Hannah dialed the number. "It's ringing," she said. "What should I say when they pick up?"
"Ask for Dairine," Filif suggested. "She'll have known me for about two years at this point."
"The progenitor of an entire silicon-based species is named 'Dairine'?" I whispered. Mal shrugged.