Chapter 16

Jamison woke up his implant. Nessa squinted at the screen, then shook her head. The resolution prohibited getting a closer look at what was on his implant, and it was only with the holospace translator that she understood speech.

"Alright, Area 51," Jamison muttered. "Why on Earth do you have an unsecured teleport link?"

He stepped between the metal disk on the ceiling and the metal disk on the floor. A tractor beam flooded the immediate area with light, and it swallowed Jamison from the holofeed.

A chill coursed through Nessa's body. She shivered.

Then a yellow light broke through the ceiling until a tiny figure took its place.

Jamison? Nessa wondered.

"Whoa! You're the alien?"

Nessa raised her eyebrows, and she pounded her implant on. She sped through the home screen, stopping at the icon of two creatures in dialog.

She looked up from her implant, and her eyes met Jamison's. Behind the soft gray eyes, she saw time dials and digital readers that appeared and spun into oblivion. A woman with purple hair and fair skin cradled a blond, red-faced baby.

A blond boy slightly older than a toddler gazed into Enya Conner's face.

"Are you seeing my past too?" Jamison asked. "Like I'm seeing yours?"

They stood in a dark tunnel. Behind Nessa, commerce towers soared into the evening sky. Blues, Purples, and Greens roamed the streets. Behind Jamison, the field where he spent countless hours gazing into the heavens.

"I believe so," Nessa replied. "You saw what happened on my planet."

"I'm so sorry."

The tunnel opened, and the images from their worlds lifted. Now they stood in place: Jamison outside the holding unit, and Nessa in.