No wonder Rhyme still had that nightmare. She still thinks that it was the biggest mistake of her life, though unintentional. Even if it was just breaking a single bone, she kept thinking that he might have even died if she did what she wanted to do at that moment; she thought of hitting him on the head with the flower vase!
It all happened in the heat of the moment, and no one was to blame for what happened, but Rhyme still thinks that it was all her fault. Had it been someone else, she won't have been affected this much, but it was Jay. Rhyme's image already became very distorted in front of him after rejecting him despite having a secret crush on him, and this mistake did nothing to improve it , but made it worse.
She still regrets her decision of rejecting Jay, but that was her only option. She had to do it due to her belief on herself, that she never makes bad choices.
Rhyme woke up early in the morning, it wasn't tough to wake up early if you haven't slept whole night. She then got dressed for that day's meeting.
It suddenly struck to her what she had to do today, and one couldn't say if she was happy and excited or more scared. She remembered that she had to bring her briefcase without fail and also didn't open it .
(She did thought of doing so once but she was way too afraid to disobey Mr. Robert after hearing his cold a** voice the previous day)
On arriving at the hotel, she followed exactly what she did the last time to attend the meeting, and walked past that Doraemon inspired door graciously this time.
She was a little earlier than the reporting time, so she wasn't afraid of encountering Mr. Robert's cold glare today. When she stood before the large wooden door, it was left slightly open and she could hear faint noises of Dr. Jacob and Chief Stephen Hawking from the little gap between the open door.
She thought that it won't be ok to eavesdrop on personalities like them, but couldn't help not hearing them. If she had gone inside, they would have stopped talking. So she decided to stay there and hear what they were saying, in hopes of finding something about the experiment. After all she was very curious about it!
Dr. Jacob : " Master, finally, after decades, your real dream is going to be fulfilled by this evening"
Chief : " Jac, why do you think I was so interested in studying about the outer space?" *in a cold, heavy voice*
Dr. Jacob : " I do not know Master. "
Chief : " My primary goal was to achieve the control over time!" *Bang * (on the table)
Rhyme : *eyes widening and pupils dilating*
Dr. Jacob : " It did seem like it , Master"
Chief : " I didn't had the physical abilities like that of normal humans back then, but now I have everything I need. No one can stop me this time- "
Rhyme : *Gasp*
Dr. Jacob : "Who is it outside the room? Show yourself immediately!"
Rhyme walks into the room. Her feet are shaking, but she manages to keep a straight and innocent face.
Chief : * in a cold voice, rather whisper* "How much did you hear? "
Rhyme : " No-Nothing Chief. I - I just arrived." *sweating profusely*
Dr. Jacob : " You are 15 minutes early. You better come exactly on time to meetings. Early or late none of them is allowed! Do you get it?"
Rhyme : "Ye - Yes. I won't be-"
Dr. Jacob : " And about what you heard, it shouldn't pass on to anyone else. If we find out that someone knows about the chief, we might be forced to dig your grave. And you would yourself be responsible for it - "
*creak*
" Oh hello Mr. Robert, is everyone here?"
Dr. Rosé , Dr. Arthur and Dr. Ze followed Mr. Robert and took their respective seats.
"Not yet. I think Dr. Maya is late again. She would be here by any second now."
*another creak*
"Did someone say my name?" said Dr. Maya, an African-American in her thirties, who looked perfectly ready for a meeting in her formal wear.
"Let's start the meeting. Chief-"
"Today is going to be a historic day which will be remembered by several generations on this planet. We are about to conduct the first experiment for time travel on this earth."
By the looks on other's faces, Rhyme could say for sure that everyone else but her knew about this experiment.
Due to the chaos between her, chief and Mr. Robert, she wasn't able to notice it before, but there was a black coloured box kept carefully at the centre of the glass top table in the conference room. However, she didn't knew what was in that box. She hoped to find out soon.
"Today's is the most important meeting of all, as it focuses on the safety measures one has to take while traveling through time, the rules of time travel and the hazards and risks involved in doing so."
"It is now time to open your respective briefcases. You will find a tablet which has all the information preloaded in ROM format, that we will be discussing today in case you do not remember after travelling to another time realm. Then there are 10 time capsules, which are the basis of this experiment. If you loose any of them, then think of it as you loosing an option of returning back home. Each one of you have to insert one of the time capsules into your time lockets present in your breifcases, whenever you wish to travel from one time realm to another. We have also made an ultimate time capsule, just in case if you loose or use up all the ten time capsules as you are all conducting this experiment for the first time. This ultimate capsule can give you additional powers along with many time trips, but if you try to be oversmart and use it at the first go, you will be left with nothing. Benefits come to you when you pay a price for it. The ultimate capsule is so powerful, that a human body would not be able to tolerate it after mere 5 minutes. It is just a precaution to save one's life in a situation of deadlock. If you fail to take off the locket from your body before 5 minutes of inserting the ultimate time capsule, your body will be dried to ashes on the spot. "
"The most important thing regarding time travel is, that you have to keep yourself covered in an invisibility cloak, which is provided in your breifcases, as there cannot be two bodies of a single person in a particular time realm. Even if you do not exist as yourself in that time realm, your soul would be present in some different form. This invisibility cloak turns you into dark matter, which is not visible to the human eyes and also erases the existence of your body, but you won't feel a thing. According to you, you will just become invisible."
"The most important rules and precautions of time travel are explained to you by the chief, and the other smaller ones are mentioned in your tablets. So, let's wrap up this meeting here and be ready at 6 this evening near the gate no.2 of central park. Also do not forget to dress up in casual clothes so that the passer-bys do not get suspicious about us."
"Okay" everyone said in unison and started collecting their stuff before leaving.
As no one was watching, Mr. Robert signalled Rhyme to stay back.
When everyone except Rhyme left the conference room, the chief spoke up
"You better do your own job and do not spill any other beans around everywhere. Also take this black box and keep it safely in your briefcase."
"Yes sir. But why only me ?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why am I the only one getting the black box?"
"You don't need to know the reason right now. I will tell you later."
"What does it have? "
"You ask a lot of questions. Just quietly do as we say. You have been told just enough"