Erasing Time Read Online Free Page B

failure would make the scientists wary of using the machine again. They didn’t seem to care who they accidentally zapped into the future. She hoped that next time they got nothing but a swarm of angry bees.
    Taylor went back to rubbing her temple. “What will they do if they find him?”
    “They’ll ask for raises,” Echo said, then added, “Actually, they’ll probably do that anyway.”
    Jeth ignored his son. “Tyler Sherwood will help our scientists with biology work.”
    Sheridan decided to return to her original question. “So when are they going to send us back?”
    Jeth’s eyebrows drew together, as though he wasn’t sure why she hadn’t understood his first explanation. He spoke slowly to her. “Back in your time, were you familiar with the freezer?”
    “Yes,” Sheridan said, and felt reasonably certain she could answer for herself when the machine involved was no longer a computer but a kitchen appliance.
    “And sometimes you put vegetables in and saved them for later.”
    “Yes.” Sometimes it had been vegetables, although more often it had been ice cream or frozen pizza.
    “When you took a vegetable out later—even much later—it was preserved, just as it had been when you put it in?”
    Sheridan nodded.
    “But if you had wanted to, you couldn’t have returned it to its harvest, could you?”
    “No.” She choked out the word, and it seemed to take all of her effort, all of her energy.
    “Our technology preserved your matter and brought it into the future, but we can’t return you to the past.”
    Sheridan began shaking then, violent tremors she couldn’t control. Her family, her time period—everything was gone, erased. In one moment it had disintegrated into dust. She thought of her mother running to her bedroom. Had she seen Taylor and her disappear?
    The pain came next. Sheridan felt like her middle was being cut in half. She bent over until her cheek touched the cold, smooth surface of the table.
    Taylor said, “Get a blanket for her.” Only it sounded far away, and Sheridan wondered why Taylor said it, since blankets wouldn’t help anything.
    Taylor was saying other things now, very fast, and some of them sounded like swearwords, but that couldn’t be right. Taylor didn’t swear. Taylor was always in control. Always smart. Which was why Taylor had gone into shock at the beginning of this whole thing. She’d understood what it meant and had gotten her breakdown out of the way so she could be back in control. Now she stood there yelling like she wasn’t grieving. As though she hadn’t lost everyone in the world too.
    The med came toward Sheridan, and he carried not a blanket but a shot. Taylor was still yelling at him, and the words were most definitely swearwords.
    Sheridan pushed herself up from her chair and took dizzy steps backward. She wanted to find the scientists and demand they make this right. How could they build a machine that snatched people from their time period without creating a way to put them back?
    Echo was beside her even though she hadn’t seen him get up from his chair or cross the room. His tone was low and soothing. “It’s all right.”
    He took her hand, but she yanked it away. “This is not all right.” She stepped backward from him. “What is your definition of all right, that you could possibly think any of this is all right?” She took another step away. There was nowhere to run, though, no way to escape from what had happened. She was going to cry, sob probably, and she didn’t want to.
    Echo took her hand again. Instead of leading her back to the table, he pulled her gently into his arms. It was almost an embrace. “The med has no reason to hurt you.”
    He had said the same thing to Taylor, and this time Sheridan heard what he was actually saying. A phrase of her father’s came to mind, and she said it out loud—not as a compliment, but as an accusation. “A lie doesn’t sit comfortably on your tongue.”
    Echo tilted his head