Sherry Ficklin - Extracted

Rummaging through the tech bench, Nobel opens a wooden box by breathing onto the lock. Inside the box are dozens of test tubes with blood in them. Our blood—DNA samples for such an emergency. He walks his fingers along the corks until he finds Sisson’s sample. With a small dropper, he puts a few drops of her blood into the machine, which then beeps to life.

I realize I’ve never rifted and not been spit out somewhere in history. It’s going to be strange just mucking around in the time stream without any specific destination. The stream can be disorienting at times, painfully mind-bending. That’s why we use the Contra.

We stand in the middle of the common room and swallow the smooth, green pills. The Amber Room mission will have to wait. Priority calls. The Contra that will bring us back is secure in the small hidden pocket inside my vest. All Hollows have one, a secure place to keep their pills.

After Stein takes hers, I hold tight to her hand and smile. Something about Contra creates an almost euphoric effect, and it always makes me happy and tingly inside. As serious as our missions are, some of the side effects are laughing and smiling. We look at each other, and Stein has a huge smile across her face. Nobel smiles behind his surgical mask and his eyes light up and dilate. I glance down at my hand, interlocked with Stein’s, and then at her face as the common room starts to dissolve behind her. Our skin becomes more and more transparent until we are pulled by an invisible rope and stretched into thin strands, like taffy being pulled.

A rush of wind and a blur of colors replace the common room, and usually at this point, we’re spewed out at our destination. This time, though, our transparent bodies start to take form. I watch my hand become denser, more solid. Tiny, skin-colored particles start stacking on top of each other until my hand is fully formed. The process repeats itself on Stein and Nobel.

It’s like my mouth is full of cotton. “You guys feel okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Stein shouts against the wind.

Nobel gives me a thumbs-up.

Pulling the DNA Detector out of his lab coat, Nobel pushes the button. The gears on the end start to spin and suck up wisps of the time stream. He waves it around until the end dips, then lets it pull him toward Sisson.

The DNA Detector pulls Nobel in a zigzag motion through the blur like a Great Dane pulling its master. He motions for us to follow, and Stein and I move behind him, but our movements are slow without the extra pull of the machine. I push forward as sweat rolls into my eyes. I can’t tell if we’re actually making progress or not. There are no reference points, no way to tell if we’re moving at all. I can’t help wondering if the device is really working, or if the DNA Detector is taking us on a wild goose chase. Just wandering like this makes me dizzy. Stein isn’t doing well either. A sheen of sweat is forming right above the cupid’s bow of her lip.

And Stein never sweats.

By the time we get to her, Sisson is lying in the time stream flat on her back. Her clothes are ripped, she’s bleeding, and she’s unconscious. White strands of the time stream have cocooned her, woven into her hair, and are drawing the color from it. Two small robots with glass dome heads are attached to her waist and foot. We hurry over to her and pull her from the invisible hammock. I’m afraid I’m going to pull her arm out of its socket, so instead I bear-hug her and start pulling. Frantically, we work, not knowing what damage the time stream has done to Sisson.

“She’s breathing.” Nobel shakes his head like he’s surprised. “I think the time stream has protected her somehow, kept her alive. That’s why she’s wrapped in that stringy stuff.”

“Can she swallow, though?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Nobel replies. “We need to get these Gear Heads off her.”

Using my fingernail to pierce the hard gel covering of the Contra pill, I pry Sisson’s mouth open and carefully drip the contents under her tongue.

Then I pry the claws of one mechanical creature off her foot as Stein wrestles with the metal lasso that the other has wrapped around Sisson’s waist. She slides it up and off Sisson, along with the machine attached to it. We let them go, and they are blown away. Lost in the time stream.

Good riddance.

I pop a pill into my mouth just as Nobel and Stein do, and we all grab hold of Sisson.

In a blur of motion and color, we are pulled from the time stream. I hold my breath, because returning home always has the sensation of walking under a waterfall without getting drenched. Gloves is already there as we materialize into the common room. Some of the same Hollows that watched us spar are also there, staring with concerned expressions. Low voices whisper to each other around us. Silence sweeps through the room as they see Sisson’s limp, bloody body.

Moving quickly, I lay Sisson on a tattered Oriental rug in the center of the room. Nobel holds her head while I kneel at her side, and Stein stands behind me with her arms folded.

“This should take care of it,” Gloves says, taking a gas mask with a blender attached to the mouthpiece from a compartment in his wheelchair.

Nobel must know the routine, because he takes the rubber mask and slips it over Sisson’s head, securing the leather straps. Gloves turns on the blender and pulls some shimmering gear-shaped items from his blue conductor’s coat pocket. With Sisson’s head laid back, he starts tossing the gears into the blender.

“She’s inhaled too much of the time stream. Remaining in it that long isn’t good for the lungs. This should help flush her system. These nanites will eat the remaining Contra from her blood,” Gloves says over the sound of metal grinding metal.

Sisson convulses. Nobel squats behind her and props her up. Gloves puts his white-gloved hand on her forehead and secures the blender with the other hand.

I see a yellow powder fill the eye ports of the black rubber gas mask. Sisson’s chest heaves in and out as she gasps for air. I can feel my pulse quicken, and it takes all my self-control to not knock Gloves over and tear the mask off. Then her breathing normalizes.

“It’s done,” Gloves says.

I quickly unstrap the mask and watch Sisson’s eyes flutter open. She is mumbling. Stein bends down and strokes Sisson’s sweat-filled hair out of her eyes.

“You’re safe now,” Gloves says, looking sincerely relieved.

Sisson reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small vial of black liquid. With shaking hands, she presses it into Nobel’s palm.

Then her eyes roll back into her head, and she passes out.

EMBER

The world is on fire.

At least, that’s how it feels. The heat is unbearable, scorching not just my exposed skin, but also blistering its way into my lungs and throat with every breath I draw. Even though I don’t dare open my eyes, I know there is no way to escape the inferno. His room is on the second floor, my brain reminds me.

Even if I can somehow grope my way to the window, there will be no exit there, so I huddle in the farthest corner from the blazing doorway, desperately shielding the person screaming behind me. My new dress is melting off my skin, and the burning lace is blistering my already red arms.

I don’t recall much. Not how the blaze began, not the name of the person behind me, not even my own name. But the lace I remember. How I’d begged for it, complained that the dress was much too plain without it. And at my insistence, a man with eyes like blue sapphires and a gentle smile had told the frustrated seamstress to add more lace—not the cheap, thin kind, but the thick French lace. My father, I remember now. How could I ever have forgotten him? He smiled at me and bit down on the end of his pipe.