Free Infinite Time: Time Travel Adventure by H.J. Lawson, Jane Lawson

she huffs, then adds, “where’s Tora?”
    I look down at the floor beside me where she was, but she’s no longer there. I look around in a panic, and a face looks back at me, smiling. Tora is standing in the doorway of a store. I want to scold her for leaving my side, but this is the first time I’ve seen her smile. It makes me smile back.
    “She’s there,” I say, trying to pretend I didn’t lose her.
    Scarlet shakes her metallic rods at me. “One more stupid move from you, and I’m leaving you here!”
     
    I scoop the frozen dessert into my mouth. It's refreshing after all the running. Scarlet sits across from me. I’m glad there is a table between us because she looks like she’s ready to attack me.
    “Do you want to try some?” I ask Scarlet, who didn’t order any food, and is just sipping on water. I gulp it down.
    Scarlet frowns.
    “If you ever give up the time travel assignment job, I wouldn’t be a tour guide if I were you, because you suck at it,” I joke.
    Clearly Scarlet doesn’t think it's funny, as she springs to her feet. “Jesus, I’m just kidding. Calm down, all right?”
    “You don’t get it,” she says, dropping back into her seat.
    “No, I don’t. What’s really going on? Why are Vandir’s men here in Japan? What do they want with you?”
    Scarlet’s cheeks move as she clenches her teeth, then lets out a sigh. “I may as well tell you. This way you can hear it firsthand instead of from the gossip back home.”
    “Home?” I question.
    “One thing at a time. What do you want to know first?” Scarlet reluctantly asks.
    I drop my spoon and rub my lips as I think.
    “Today, before I change my mind.”
    “Vandir... why is he after you?”
    Her eyes flicker upwards as if remembering something, bringing a look of pain to her face. “He’s worse than any nightmare you could think of, and he’s not only after me. He’s after all of us,” she says, looking at Tora, who’s peacefully enjoying her ice cream, as if she’s able to block out the events from the last three hours. She’s stronger than me, but I’m glad she can’t understand what Scarlet is saying.
    “Why is he after us?”
    Scarlet rubs the back of her neck. “To power more of his time-travelling robots like Clint and Bruce.”
    “How do we power them?”
    Scarlet closes her eyes for a moment, then turns the back of her head toward me and flicks her ginger ponytail up, revealing a metal disk about the size of a quarter welded into her head. “Through this,” she says, pushing on it. It looks like something you would use to charge up a robot.
    “They did this to you?”
    Scarlet looks her age for a moment, then nods.
    “Did it hurt?”
    Scarlet frowns. “The fight getting me there hurt. And when I woke up I had this,” she says, touching her neck.
    “Why do you still have it?”
    “Because when you remove it, it takes away your powers, and you can no longer time travel. And if I couldn’t time travel… I don’t know what I would do.” It seems to me that to Scarlet, losing her power is more terrifying than what Vandir did to her.
    “How does it work?” The tech geek inside me wants to know the answer.
    Scarlet sighs. “They pin you in a chair and there is a silver electric wire attached to a computer attached into the metal hole in your neck.” She rubs the back of her neck. “Then they send a wave through your body, knocking you out.”
    “They electrocute you?”
    Scarlet nods.
    “Damn. Does it feel like you’ve been hit by lighting?”
    Scarlet frowns. “I don’t know, Parker. I’ve never been hit by lighting, have you?”
    Way to go, Parker, annoying Scarlet just as you got her speaking . “No, just I hear about people being struck by lightning more than I hear about the kinds of things that have happened to you.”
    “Well, I guess it's like it. When I woke from it, I had a burning taste in my mouth,” she says, moving her lips together, then she takes a gulp of water. “What