THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

five

TWO DAYS.

Two days left to make a decision, after three of faffing and loafing and generally trying to avoid thinking about the crumpled card in her wastepaper bin. Daryl put it down to post-interview-rejection-distress, and mostly left Amelia alone. But that gave her more time to think.

And worry.

And doubt.

"Get a hold of yourself," she murmured as she stared at the clock that ticked on the far wall of the living room. The exact place this whole mess had started. "It's not like lives depend on you agreeing to this."

But what if they did? A traitorous thought snuck into her mind. They want you for your paleontology skills — and if they really are going back into the Jurassic Period, they'll need all the help they can get. Why don't you want to be a part of that?

"But what if I fail?" She asked aloud. The clock only ticked in response. Daryl was once again at the electricity farm, probably cleaning and fixing solar panels at the outskirts of the city, and wouldn't be home until late that night, if his shifts didn't go crazy. Boredom threatened to stifle her now that she didn't have a presentation to practice and applications to hand in for every available position in the city that payed. And there hadn't been a lot.

If you pass this up, the voice was quieter now, you will have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

Amelia continued staring at the wall.

━━━━

One day.

Amelia's mind burnt with the numbers — stark against the faded card, cheaply made since trees were a scarce consumable, yet still managing to terrify her at every turn.

Washing her thick brown curls and working her fingers into her scalp, she tried to force a decision into her brain as her nails scraped against her skin. Anything. Any certainty — she would take. If only the scale of 'yes' and 'no' could be tipped from 'maybe', and yet it showed no sign of giving. With a sigh, Amelia tightened her mid-back length hair in her hands and squeezed the water and dust from it. Her faded white shirt once sporting a logo that was no longer visible grew wet from the droplets that missed the metal basin, and she paused, gazing into her reflection's eyes as though her mirror image would provide an answer.

"For goodness' sake," she whispered into the already hot air, despite the early morning. Smacking her lips to rid them of their dryness, she wrote a quick note on her PortScreen, timing it so that it would alert Daryl once he got up (if he did; he often conveniently slept through his alarm), before jogging into her room and dressing into more hardy clothing.

Fishing into her wastepaper bin basket for the mostly-destroyed note, Amelia's chocolatey dark eyes quickly memorized the distorted numbers before she ran out the door, her backpack in one hand, and most of her doubts left to fester in her home rather than in her mind.

Even if she wasn't overly eager to go along with the plan of the men who had broken into her home, Amelia was already certain — had always been certain — that she could never be the cause for the deaths of millions. If there was a chance to resurrect the little girl within her who still saw the good in mankind, then she'd gladly grab it and cling to it for dear life. No more uncertainties, even though her self-preservation was screaming at her to stop as she dialed the number into the public phone booth a block from her apartment.

Dinosaurs. Her life's work. How could she ever imagine living beside them?

One step at a time, she told herself. As the dial tone trilled in her ear, she pressed her hand against the side of the booth, light-headedness suddenly belting through her skull, and nerves doing pirouettes in her stomach.