Allergic To Time (2 page)

Without really meaning to, my head drifted towards the side door exits as well. The side exits had a row of windows at the top, and I could see the crowd for the next lecture already gathering, which would make exiting the room even more difficult. Luckily my only plans for the hour which directly followed involved a trip to the nearest cafe and several espressos.
 

I was about to glance back to the front of the hall to see if Martin was finally going to take mercy on his class and announce the end of the lecture, when a dark figure outside the hall caught my eye and caused me to freeze.

Him. Not again.
 

He was a tall man, bald but wearing a black hat — like he always was — and he had dark sunglasses covering his eyes, like he always did. He was wearing his regular uniform as well: a dark suit with a crisp white shirt underneath, his attempt to remain unnoticeable in the outside world, I would have guessed, but completely incongruous in a campus filled with lazy 20-somethings wore tracksuits to class. He starred straight through the glass, right at Martin Anderson. I craned my neck to get a better look at him, my heart pace quickening. What the hell was he doing here? I quickly looked over at Martin to see if he to had noticed the man, had realised that he would have been waiting for him.
 

“And lastly,” said Martin, “we’ll go through the expectations and requirements for you passing the course.” There was a combined groan in the auditorium as yet another lecture slide flashed up on the screen. Even in his current frazzled, distracted state I knew Martin would be gaining some kind of sick pleasure in forcing the class to remain seated for another five minutes.
 

“Firstly, attendance: all students are required to attend a minimum of 95% of classes or your marks will be affected. Attendance levels below 80% will result in you failing the unit.” Looks of horror flashed on the faces of everyone in the room. I knew he was partly bluffing, but he would never admit to it. I also knew that approximately 30% of the class would drop the class immediately following the end of the hour, meaning there would be a lot more breathing space in the room the following week.
 

Martin was about to continue on when he happened to glance up at the side exit with the windows above it. Upon seeing the man in the black hat, he stopped dead in his tracks, like he was actually frozen in time. For approximately three seconds he just stood like that, staring at the man in black in shock.
 

“Erm,” he said, finally gathering himself and regaining his place. “I...think that’s it for today actually.”
 

The time was 10:55.

“We’ve only got five minutes to go so I’d better let you get to your next class.”

Now I knew something was terribly wrong.
 

He hurriedly packed up his papers and shoved them into his briefcase without any care about their order. With a single flick of a button he shut off both the overhead projector and the lights in the room, leaving students to fumble for their books and umbrellas in just the dim sunlight coming from a few high windows. Without so much as a nod or a look at Connie or I he rushed past us and out the door before the students or tutors could even get to it.

“Hang on — ” Connie said to me, scrambling to put her pens and papers in her bag. “Isn’t he hanging around to answer questions?”
 

I ignored her and snapped my laptop shut, placing it underneath my arm as gracefully as I could and hurried after Martin. My heels tapped on the flooring as I flew up the stairs, around the door and into the crammed hallway.
 

Martin was already a good 50 meters ahead of me, deep in angry conversation with the man in black. The man was hurrying ahead and Martin was both trying to keep up with him and trying to stop him. They both ignored the surging throng of students pushing past on either side of them as they headed towards the North exit, where there were steps which led down to a car park. Martin was shaking his head and exclaiming something at the man, who simply hurried ahead, indifferent to Martin’s distress.
 

I pushed through the crowd anxiously trying to reach the exit as close behind them as possible. I knew — or at least I suspected — what was about to happen, and this time there was no way I was being left out of it.
 

Politeness gave way to impatience as I shoved aside a girl who was slowly meandering down the passageway. I neglected to apologise as she lost her footing and stumbled slightly. With a brief clear path
 
opening up in front of me I began to run towards the end of the hall way. I pushed through the double doors into the outside world and was greeted with rain pouring down on my head.
 

“Shit,” I swore, remembering I had left my flatmate’s umbrella at entrance of the lecture theatre, and was now carrying my exposed laptop under my arm. I tried to position it underneath my coat as well as I could but had no bright ideas about how to protect my hair. If I ducked back inside I would lose the two of them: through the pouring rain I could see them rush down the steep steps towards the physics department car park. They were making a beeline for a large dark Rolls Royce parked on the edge of the block.
 

There was no other choice: if I wanted to catch them, if I wanted to confront them about what it was they were up to, I would simply have to hurry down the stairs through the rain and puddles, and suffer the consequences. Securing the laptop under my coat I took one glance up at the grey sky and began sprinting down the steps towards the carpark, where Martin and the man in black were entering the man’s vehicle.
 

Shit
, I thought. They were going to pull out of the car park before I reached them. What the hell were they in such a hurry for, I wondered, but I thought I knew the answer. I flew down the steps as fast as I could considering that I was wearing 4 inch heels and the steps were filling with deep puddles. The steps were both muddy and slippery, making their steepness seem infinitely more so as my ankles struggled to navigate them.
 

I finally reached the edge of the car park, drenched and out of breath, as the Rolls Royce swerved violently out of the lot, heading towards Parramatta Rd.
 
I didn’t know what else to do so I threw myself in front on it, running in towards it from the left side, splaying myself across the front bonnet. The breaks jolted violently as I bounced off the front and hit the pavement.
 

“Jesus christ!’ The man in black pushed his door open and glared at Martin over the hood of the car, as Martin also evacuated the passenger seat. “Who the hell is this?”

I had landed on my arm but the fall had not been a particularly violent one: nothing felt broken. I lay there and reached up to feel my head just in case, as Martin rushed over to check if I was okay. At least I had succeeded in stopping them.
 

“She’s a student of mine,” Martin explained, kneeling down on the concrete besides my head. “Anna?” he looked in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I thought about lying. If I admitted I was fine, then they might just get straight back in the car and keep going. For all I knew they would be just that cold and callous: after all they seemed to be on quite the mission. So I lay my head back down on the concrete and feigned injury for a moment, neglecting to answer Martin’s question.

“ANNA?” he yelled.
 

I sat up and rolled my eyes. “Alright alright, I’m fine.”

Martin took a sigh of relief. “Are you sure?” After I nodded he looked back at the man in black, who was growing extremely impatient. “Fine, then we’ll get going.”

I stumbled quickly to my feet. “Hang on! I’m coming with you.”

Martin paused at the side of the car, looking horrified, the passenger door wide open, as the other man started the engine. I ran around to Martin’s side and opened the back left door and attempted to climb in but Martin wrestled it shut, pushing his way between me and the door. “What are you doing? You cannot possibly come with us.
 
Are you crazy?” I stared back at him, defiant. “Anna, stand back, I mean it.”
 

The man in black was revving the engine and starring angrily at Martin and I. “Get in the car!” he bellowed at Martin.

“Look, I am trying, but she’s refusing to let go of the door.” If Martin wasn’t going to let me in the back door then I wasn’t going to let him in the front. I had positioned my way between him and the door making it impossible for him to get inside the car.
 

“I told you,” I said, staring straight at him, our faces barely centimetres apart. “I am coming with you. You can’t stop me. Not this time. Not again.” Martin stared back at me and hesitated. I could see the conflict flash across his eyes as he summed up the his options.
 

“Both of you just get in the car!” We both turned and looked inside the vehicle, seeing the man in black about ready to explode.
 

I grinned and raced to the back door, opening it quickly and sliding inside. Martin hesitated a second longer and climbed into the front, sighing and looking as though he was having the worst day of his life.
 

As we travelled down Parramatta Rd I realised I had no idea where were actually going and whether or not they might be taking me on a one way trip to the Blue Mountains to murder me and dispose of my body. Martin kept glancing nervously at me in the rear side window, but the man in black sped down the road at a speed 20 kilometres faster than the legal limit. I looked out the window as the landscape of the campus flew past us, but the trip ended up being surprisingly brief.
 

We pulled up barely two kilometres down the road at RPA hospital. Martin and the man in black dutifully opened their doors and climbed out of the car in silence. I nervously unbuckled my seat belt and followed suit. My hand shook slightly as I opened the door and stepped out of the Royce, setting my heels down on the concrete of the hospital car park.
 

I followed alongside Martin. I looked up at his face, questioningly.
What the hell are we doing here?
 

But in return he simply glanced down at me briefly as he simply said, “You have no idea what you are getting yourself into.”

Chapter Two.
 

I had been inside RPA hospital once before, when I had gotten violently ill one morning in my second year of University and had to be taken to the Emergency room. The Emergency waiting room was the only place I was familiar with, but the man in black swiftly and silently led Martin and I to a ward around the far back of the hospital which was down two flights of stairs from the ground level. The man strode right past the escalator and directed us to follow him down the staircase.
 

“Are we going to the basement or something?” I whispered to Martin, but he just ignored me and kept walking. He seemed furious at me. Whatever, I didn’t care what his feelings about the matter were. He had tried for too long to keep me away from whatever it was he got up to whenever this mysterious man appeared. Well, this time it was going to be different. I was with them now, and I wasn’t going anywhere without at least an explanation.
 

The floor we were on was dim, barely lit by the fluorescent lights above us. We walked down a long corridor of rooms, each with their door firmly shut. There were no nurses or waiting family members littering the hall: in fact, there were no chairs there at all.
 

Martin gravely plunged ahead, his hands in his jacket pockets and his head down. He was keeping a brisker pace than I was so I ran slightly to keep up, cursing my decision to wear heels, having let the vanity of the first day of class get the better of me. A quick glance in one of the tinted room windows confirmed that the rain had, as suspected, completely ruined my hair: it hung in a drab jet-black mop around my face.
 

After what seemed like a million years the man in black suddenly stopped in front of a room. Like all the other rooms we had passed on the ward it had a closed door, and it had the same dark-blue tinted windows, so that when you looked through them you had to fight your own reflection to look inside. I stopped alongside the other two and fought to squint through the blue tint in order to see the interior of the room. We must have stopped in front of it for a reason, but I couldn’t make out anything inside.
 

Martin was standing beside me, hands still burrowed in his pockets, with his face contorted into an agonised expression. He glanced at me and then at the man in black. “She shouldn’t be here,” he said. “This is an extremely bad idea.”

I took in a deep breath and got ready to defend myself. “I’m sorry, but I have as much right to be here as you do...”

Martin’s eyes grew wide. “What?” he spluttered.
 

“That’s right,” I said. “I know what you get up to, I know what you’re here for. And I am just as qualified as you are, if not more! I’m the one who actually knows about time travel, after all.”

Martin rolled his eyes and angrily whispered back at me, trying to control his volume in the hospital ward but unable to contain his annoyance with me. “You’re more qualified than me? Anna you haven’t got a damn clue what this is about. You should not even be here.”

“Can you two shut the hell up?” The man in black finally spoke up. He looked at me and Martin with a disgusted look, like we were two naughty children, and Martin stopped stalking and stood up straight, clearly embarrassed at the implication. After all, at 39 years of age he was almost 15 years older than me. He might have considered me a child, but I am sure he did not consider himself to be one. He always thought he was so superior to me! Well, I had had enough of his condescending, patronising attitude. Not to mention the hypocrisy.
 

The man in black interrupted my train of thought by fetching something out of his pocket and shoving it towards Martin. It was a folded piece of paper, a document of some sort. Martin paused for a moment before committing to taking it. “Is this the file?”