Free Time Eternal by Lily Worthington Page B

literally pushed her arms wide to keep Knox and him apart. She called out to her assistant who had been hovering outside her door, just as protocol dictated in the event of unauthorized visitor. “Curtis, please prepare a guest suite for Mr. Dusan.”
     

Chapter Ten
    Skyla stayed at her parents’ the entire afternoon before heading back to the city in the evening. They couldn’t give her any more information than they already had. They didn’t know more than what she had guessed from the two encounters with the man who called himself Rei Dusan and from the images she had seen in her mind’s eye before she passed out in his study. All her parents could confirm was that she was not their natural child and that the government heavily guarded all other details about her. Part of her felt angry at her parents for not telling her the truth sooner. The other part of her couldn’t help but love her parents even more for taking in a stranger and loving her with no reservations, even when they did not know where she came from or what kinds of danger might have come with her from the past.
    As soon as she got back inside TSCCA, she went straight to see the director, who she had thought until this morning was her aunt. Skyla was prepared to knock Curtis out of the way if necessary. Surprisingly, Curtis didn’t cut off her path as usual but instead let her into the director’s office quietly. Guess Mom and Dad called the director already.
    “Director.” She forced herself to relax, but the tension didn’t seem to want to leave her. She walked stiffly toward the desk.
    “Sit down, Skyla.” The director waved her to the conference table. She sounded just as agitated as Skyla felt.
    As soon as she sat down, she got straight to the point, “Director, I demand to know what’s—”
    The director pushed a thick manila file toward her. “Here is your file. Take a look at the photos and the first few pages inside the folder first. Then I’ll explain.”
    She looked down at the cover of the folder. It had a standard “Top Secret” stamp from a joint taskforce she had never heard of, despite her high security clearance level. Pressing her lips tightly together to avoid saying anything she would regret later, she opened the folder expecting the worst. The first twenty or so photos showed something like a crime scene investigation, except military personnel and plainclothes agents surrounded it. Their standard dark suits, dark ties, and crisp white shirts always gave them away.
    There were also photos of people suited up in biohazard gear examining a machine, a capsule, that looked awfully familiar…a draft of some kind of time traveling paper she’d glimpsed at during a recent Renaissance exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, the machine in the photo looked exactly like the one that had captured her attention at the Met.
    “Oh my god, is that a time machine?” She could only imagine how shocked her face looked judging from the guilt and regret passing through her commander’s eyes.
    “Yes.”
    Not trusting her voice enough to say more, she looked at the stack of photos again. The next few photos showed the slight form of a person, possibly a female, being removed from inside the machine. The next photo hit her like a thunderbolt; she couldn’t move. Her hand was still midair flipping through the stack. Impossible! A closer shot of the girl in the photo showed an uncanny look-alike of herself, her younger self to be exact, after she’d woken up from her coma.
    A firm, smooth hand reached over and squeezed hers. “Yes. That was you.” When Skyla looked up from the folder, her aunt’s expression was impassive. The only sign of any emotional reaction was her aunt’s slightly trembling hand.
    “How?”
    “We didn’t know then, and we still don’t know much.” The director stood up and walked to the tropical fish tank covering the entire wall behind her desk. “A rancher discovered the machine in a