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It took me a few seconds to grasp the hint. “Yes, the time. But I don’t think I want to see more of Trent. I want to understand the connections. I want to see what led to the death of that poor boy with his face blown away.”

Just like that, one-half of this split-screen reality replaced Trent and Pete with the solemn scene of the far-distant funeral.

Messenger seemed accepting of my initiative, even approving. “Proceed.”

“What?”

“Don’t be timid, Mara,” he chided. “You’ve seen that we can travel through time. So do it.”

I glanced back along the void. Would going backward take us backward in time? This was not how we’d previously done it. Messenger had always just made it happen.

But of cours

e this was the simple version. This was Time Travel 101, an introduction before greater secrets and techniques could be learned.

I turned and walked with far more confidence than I felt, back along the narrow black bridge between facing realities. And yes, to my satisfaction, time went into reverse.

On her side Samira spit her food into her bowl, placed the stew in the microwave, took it out and put it in the freezer, walked backward from the kitchen.

Far more disturbing, the shrouded body of Aimal once again leaped from its grave and landed on the stretcher, which was then borne away.

I walked faster, faster, and time reeled backward at a geometrically quicker rate. Now Samira was back at school being harassed, and Aimal’s body was being ritually washed by his male relatives, and Samira was in class, and Aimal was quite suddenly alive. I noticed that the time lines were not synchronized, not matched up. I sensed that Aimal’s was the more recent event.

Distracted by that realization, I saw that I had moved too quickly. I reversed my direction and slowed my pace.

Aimal now was in the dirt yard of a bare, one-room cinderblock schoolhouse. There was a single tree providing scant shade from a blistering sun. There were other kids, younger, older, many kicking a soccer ball. Others read. Others just sat in small groups, chatting.

If you ignored the opium poppy fields and the distant but intimidatingly sharp-edged mountains, and the poverty of the school, it could be any school.

A pickup truck came barreling down the semi-paved road, kicking up a plume of dust. There were two men in the cabin, one more in the back.

The kids in the yard didn’t notice. But Aimal did. He rose slowly to his feet, the biggest of the boys. He shaded his eyes and watched the truck and peered closely at something particular.

Without even realizing what I was doing I stepped into his frame and peered as though through his eyes. I saw the thing he focused on.

It was the upraised barrel of an assault rifle.

3

AIMAL BEGAN YELLING. IT WAS NOT ENGLISH, OF course, but I understood it nevertheless.

“Hide! Hide!” he yelled. “All the girls must hide!”

But by the time his shouts were noticed and conversation had fallen silent and all heads had turned toward the truck, two men were already leaping from the back and both were armed with assault rifles.

“Run! Run!” Aimal shouted.

Some of the girls responded now. There were only six of them, ranging in age from ten to perhaps fifteen. But now they saw what Aimal saw and understood what Aimal understood, so they ran.

POP! POP POP POP!

That’s what it sounded like, the gunfire.

One of the girls fell facedown in the dirt. A cloud of dust rose from the impact.

A second girl ran to the fallen one and a piece of her shoulder blew away, a twirling chunk of bone and meat, trailing blood.

Now everyone, boy and girl, was screaming, screaming, but only Aimal was running the wrong way. Not away from the guns. Toward them.