TIME & TIED: AWARENESS

ARC 1.1 - Of The Device

PART 3a: THE PLANE TRUTH 1

"I... don't need... this stress..." panted Frank Dijora.

As he ran after Carrie Waterson, he tried to mentally sum things up: He was now in the terminal of some unknown airport, in pursuit of a girl he barely knew, because despite trying to help her, she was managing to get on his nerves more and more the longer they were together.

Of course, looking at that time in the literal sense, he technically didn't even know her yet, since both of them were now eleven years in his past (thirteen years for Carrie), making the two of them something like three years old, logistically speaking. Perhaps an empirical time travel experiment had not been the way to go. But Frank had expected to still be in his basement, at the very least!

The brown haired teenager pushed past a man wearing a sweatshirt that read LARS 01, mumbling an apology as he did so. “Lars” apologized back. So perhaps they were still in Canada. For that matter, the signs were English and French.

Damn, but Carrie was fast – he’d now completely lost track of her. On the bright side, stopping and looking about, he was only getting a few curious stares, so their sprinting out of an arrival gate hadn’t been worthy of attention by security personnel. Yet.

Standing up on a convenient chair, Frank scanned above the crowd, looking for signs of the blue hairband that Carrie had been wearing. He also used the opportunity to catch his breath.

Blonde teenager, blonde teenager... there! Was that her? She seemed stationary now. What was her problem anyway? She'd screamed something outside the terminal before running to the nearest gate entrance, but with all the noise, Frank hadn't caught it.

Climbing off the chair, he hurried in the direction of the figure as fast as he was able, calling out "Carrie?" as he got closer. No response.

There was a break in the crowd, allowing Frank was able to see that it was indeed her. She was staring at something, and following her gaze, he realized it was a clock. A clock that read 3:14.

Shaking his head, Frank came up next to her and panted out with as much authority as he could muster, "Carrie! What... on earth... are you DOING?"

"Not now," Carrie responded dazedly. Frank thought she was brushing him off until she turned and looked at him. Her spooked look from before had now resolved itself into some form of quiet serenity. Though that was just as spooky, if not more so, particularly given how her makeup was starting to run because of her unchecked tears. "Not now. Thank goodness, I've still got over three hours..."

Frank sighed. Were older girls always this cryptic? He wasn’t a mind reader. “Over three hours until what??" Frank fired back in frustration.

Carrie's eyes unfocussed slightly. "Until... until my mama gets on the plane... and... ends up... dead..." With that, she crumpled to the ground and passed out.

***

Carrie Waterson felt someone slapping at her face. Without thinking, she reached out and slapped back, feeling her hand connect. "Ow!" came a familiar exclamation. Carrie blinked her eyes open and sat up to see Frank staring irritably at her while rubbing his cheek. He turned away.

"She's fine," her time travel companion remarked to a couple of people who had apparently taken an interest in her momentary collapse. Perhaps she shouldn't have pushed herself so hard while running, but she hadn't known what time it was, only the date and the place... she'd wanted to make sure she was in time... mama...

Was Frank saying something else? "Huh?"

Her companion sighed. "I said, let's move over to those chairs, out of the way."

Carrie blinked and nodded, stumbling back to her feet and following Frank over to the wall. It didn't really matter where in the airport they were. As long as they were here, now, in time to prevent what was about to happen. What were the odds that they should have ended up here?

Actually, pretty good, Carrie decided. After all, her first experience with time travel had involved a link to her mother in the form of her broken crystal swan, so on some level she'd anticipated a similar result this time. That was why, when they'd ended up outside this airport... she'd known what the date had to be...

"But since it's obvious you're not paying attention to me, maybe I shouldn't bother talking," Frank concluded dryly.

"Huh?"

Frank pressed a hand to his forehead. "Carrie, please, PLEASE snap out of it!" he pleaded. "As I said, I know you're distraught, but I'm flying blind here. What's wrong? What do you mean about your mother? Is a plane going to crash here in the next three hours?"

Carrie frowned. She'd said too much. She hadn't stopped to fully consider the situation, and as a consequence, things were spiralling outside of her sphere of control again.

"Damn it," she muttered, clenching her fists. She couldn't very well feign innocence now. How much should she say then? Carrie paused to consider what she knew of Frank.

Not much, despite them being in the same high school homeroom. Mainly because he was not one of the "in" crowd - more one of the "geek" crowd, as Julie referenced them. That is, the socially inept weirdos with a fixation on grades.

Recently, she'd also found Frank lurking in the ravine out back of her house, citing as a reason alleged "tree frogs". In fact, she and Julie had just thought of a way to get back at Frank for snooping around, which... oh, shoot. Had he actually been looking for the time machine? They might not want snipe back at him for that.

Well, that was neither here nor there; right now, she and Frank were in the past, and Frank had requested an explanation, and she supposed he was entitled to it. She'd simply have to... to trust in his discretion. "All right," she said. "But Frank, assuming we get out of this..."

"...if I say anything it's my head on a platter and you'll deny it all anyway," Frank finished.

Mildly annoyed by the interjection, Carrie still nodded in response. “Okay. Thirteen years ago..." she stopped. "That is, in about three hours... my mother had to... that is, she will fly off to Bermuda on business.” Grimacing, Carrie decided to stick with past tense.

“She worked for this company that produced documentary films, and they were doing a shoot there. So..." Carrie stopped again. She didn't really know all the details, or want to remember them... she decided to say everything as quickly as she could.

"So after dinner me and my father drove her here to the airport where she caught a plane that was to bring her down to Florida and from there to Bermuda but it was the last time either of us ever saw her alive," she said in one breath.

Frank looked uneasy. "Then... her plane... crashed?"

Carrie bit her lip. There was a reason she'd never told anyone even this much before. “No... see, my mom got to Florida just fine but on the smaller corporate plane flying the rest of the way..." Could she actually say it? "Mama disappeared in the Bermuda triangle, okay?!”