Read Online Just in Time: Portals of Time by Kathryn Shay - Free Book Online

“It was only supposed to be me, right Dorian?”
    “Ah…”
    “That thing said just
me.”
His voice rose a notch. “And not until later in the summer.”
    Luke assumed his cop glare. “What the hell are you two talking about?”
    Shaking his head, Jess looked at his brother. “Her computer thing. It said I was supposed to die before the end of the summer. That’s why she’s here.”
    “I don’t understand.” Helen clutched his arm. “Jess, you’re talking crazy.”
    Luke eyed Dorian. “What’s going on? This whole bodyguard thing hasn’t added up from the beginning. Helen’s right. Now you’re talking gibberish. I want the truth. Who the hell are you, Dorian?”
    “I’m who I say I am.”
    “Jess?”
    “She is. It’s just that she’s not from here. Not from now. Oh, fuck it,” Jess said running a hand over his scalp. “I thought keeping this from you would be best, but it isn’t working out that way.” He shot an apologetic glance to Helen, then faced Luke. “Dorian’s from the future.”

Chapter 6
     
    ALISHA WALKED INTO the hotel room after running out of inside. Though she was jaded about the current society, having researched it for decades, the ability to go out in real air and run, work up a sweat, was mind-boggling. But she had bigger things to deal with. “Something’s happened,” Alisha said without greeting.
    Celeste, seated at a table, looked up from the book she was decoding. “Hello to you, too.”
    “The cat’s out of the bag.”
    “Once again, I have no idea what that means.”
    Alisha held up her new cell phone. “It means Jess told Helen and Luke Cromwell who Dorian is, more to the point,
when
we came from.”
    Celeste set down the book. “It was Jess’s decision
not
to tell them. What changed his mind?”
    “There was an incident.” She described how Jess was almost hit by a taxi. “Dorian called as soon as she could to tell us.”
    “Oh, Nord, Lisha, was that…was that when he was originally killed?”
    “I don’t know because of the corrosion of the chips. He could have been killed earlier than the end of the summer, for all we know. But Helen would have died this time, too. Luke dragged her back. The computeller says she had a child, and we know for certain that hasn’t happened yet.”
    “Seems coincidental to me.” Celi’s brow furrowed. “Maybe our very presence here has changed history.”
    “Or maybe it’s related to one of those time paradoxes we discovered at the Institute. If we weren’t here, both of them would have died yesterday. So it’s like we were supposed to come and stop that, too. Nothing else happened, though.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well…” Alisha wasn’t sure how much to share with Celeste. But she missed having Rhea and her other institute workers to examine ideas with. Again, she thought back to their meeting with Rhea, which had haunted Alisha…
    “Returning to 2514 poses problems,” Rhea told the group when they received their assignment. “You need to know this before we reveal your specific tasks. If you don’t want to participate after you hear this, the exact content of them will be kept from you.”
    “Why wouldn’t we want to if society needs us?” Celeste asked.
    Her eyes on her offspring, Rhea said, “There is a ninety-eight point six percent probability that if you do change the past, we won’t be able to return you to the present. If things are different in our time period, which we’re
hoping
will happen, we might not even exist as we are now, or our technology may be different. Time travel may not have ever been perfected.” Rhea sighed heavily when she finished with the bleak news.
    Celeste smiled gently at her. “It’s all right to feel bad that you may never see me again.” She stood and went to her donor, squeezing her hand. “My love will always be yours, Rhea, no matter what happens.”
    “You don’t have to go, Celi.” She scanned the group. “None of you do.”
    “If the