The Library Rescue – By Claire Davon
THE LIbrARY RESCUE
BY CLAIRE DAVON
About a month after he vanished, Braedon came to me in a dream.
“Go to the library and ask for Ryrise. They will help you,” he’d said.
I woke up with his face lingering in my mind and the name Ryrise on my lips. I repeated it as I rose from the bed. I still used “my” side, though I should have adjusted, but hadn’t. Three years together was plenty of time to establish habits.
The lab Braedon worked in had refused to give me answers.
They filled my email with red tape and sent my calls down endless voicemail boxes.
Visiting them had not done any good either.
His boss, who had been decent in the past, now refused to see me.
Braedon’s research was top secret, and he’d given me little in the way of clues.
Though work insisted he’d left for home that day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened to him.
Going to the police hadn’t done any good. The officer who took my report did everything but state that perhaps something in my behavior had caused a henpecked boyfriend to flee. I suspected that all, but my copy of the statement was filed with the paper shredder.
The morning dragged on as I tried to stay focused on my spreadsheets, and not what my dream suggested. The worst I would do was use up my lunch hour on a stupid errand at the library. At least I’d be taking action. I slipped on my jeans and shoes before I could change my mind.
The double doors opened with a whoosh that reminded me of Sci-Fi movies. I hoped coming here and asking for Ryrise would be enough to dislodge this crazy notion from my head.
I hadn’t been inside a library in decades. These days, most of the reading I did was in my car from downloaded audiobooks. When Braedon vanished, I began listening to the news, hoping that some random stray bit of data would help me figure out what had happened to him.
The memory of him before I woke was so clear that I couldn’t help but take action. A fool’s errand, perhaps, but I’d been called worse. I approached the counter, and a young man with streaks of blue in his hair gave me a nod.
“Welcome to the library. How may I help you?”
I cleared my throat, spots dancing in front of my vision. I’d come this far.
“Um.” I focused on the man whose eyes matched the streaks. He kept his head cocked, but his expression was beginning to change as I remained silent. The library was open to everyone, and I bet they got a lot of crazies.
I hurried on before self-doubt made my tongue stop working.
“I’m looking for Ryrise. Can you help me?”
No such librarian existed by that name. Of course they didn’t. But Braedon was missing, and no clue was too minuscule to pursue. If I had any chance of finding him, I would take it.
“Ryrise?” The man frowned, and I braced myself for the puzzlement behind the careful exterior. Then his face cleared. “You must be Sarina Casters. They have been expecting you. Come this way.”
He motioned to the left as my mind whirled.
Expecting me?
The room was paneled in the sort of wainscotting that had to have been a hundred years old.
This library had echoes of the 1900s to it in mid-century-modern design.
From my brief glance at the shelving as the blue-haired guy led me to the room, those might have gotten an upgrade at one point, but the back offices were in dire need of modernization.
I wasn’t sure what role libraries played in today’s society, with so much of what we consumed coming to us online. The world of dusty, dingy stacks and… I struggled to remember the system they used to have to use to catalog things. It had been on a test, but I couldn’t recall it.
The man left me at the door and retreated.
Braedon had come here a lot in the weeks before he disappeared, which must have lingered in my subconscious.
When the door closed behind me, I started, unnerved, though I couldn’t have said why.
Ryrise wasn’t a serial killer, but rather a librarian.
If they could help me, the rest didn’t matter.
A shudder went through me, along with the sense of something other at the person in the room.
The clerk had said “they”, so I assumed that was their pronouns.
They had a smooth body with a shape that could be a man, an athletic woman, or someone who hadn’t yet gone through puberty.
They stood about five-foot-seven, and their head was covered in just enough hair to not be bald.
My gut tightened. Ryrise was not human.
I shook myself, aware I was being rude. Of course they were. My nerves were just jangled by my trauma. I stepped forward as Ryrise watched me move.
“I am Ryrise. You are Sarina. We have no time.”
I stared at them. “What?” I stopped where I was, though I’d been intending to shake their hand. I drew it back now at the odd sentences.
“Braedon didn’t explain who we were.” Ryrise said the words almost to themselves. “That’s unfortunate. He came to me asking for help. When we investigated, we discovered certain things. Your arrival is not a surprise. He is lost, and we must go.”
I took a step back, raising my hands. “What can you tell me about where he went?”
Though I wouldn’t have assumed this person was dangerous, I couldn’t be sure. For each Ted Kaczynski was a Ted Bundy whose charm and attractive face had lured dozens to their deaths.
Ryrise’s lids flickered, like a super-fast motion camera shutter would. I couldn’t help but regret my choice to come here. No wonder the blue-haired man gave me a strange look. If this Ryrise was half as odd with him, I couldn’t imagine they were popular among the rest of the staff.
“He needed the assistance of the library, and it took him to places we could not have anticipated. We are responsible for his safe return. You must request our aid. Will you do so?”
I might be stepping into as much trouble as he was in. This could lead me to a burial under the earth, or some other grisly fate. I had to find out what happened to him. No matter the cost, even if that meant dealing with this strange being.
I nodded. “Yes. I need your help. The library’s help.”
As soon as I said the words, Ryrise whirred like they were set to hyperdrive.
“Good. We must go. Take my hand, and everything will become clear.”
Despite my hundred thousand million misgivings, I took their hand. I had no time to think about the strange way that hand felt before I was sucked into a vortex, the library swirling around me. I might have screamed but couldn’t hear my voice as the world around us vanished.
I didn’t know much about last century’s America, but judging from the large, paneled cars and the poodle skirts on the women, we were in the mid nineteen hundreds.
I wouldn’t have been able to say which decade if I’d gotten it on a quiz.
This was grandma’s era, or great grandma’s.
The stacks clued me in that this was a library, from a hundred or so years ago.
My jaw dropped open like I had it on a hinge. “What is happening?” I could have had a psychotic break and was imagining all of this. Maybe I was dreaming.
If I was, I’d like to wake up now.
Ryrise gazed at the new library without the slightest trace of fear. The room flickered, giving me the impression that we hadn’t quite synced up with it.
“Your Braedon was conducting time experiments. He must have told you, of course.”
I swallowed, bits of our conversations coming back to me. “His experiments were top secret, but he gave me hints. That was all he could do.”
The folks bustling around had not yet taken any notice of us, though we were standing in an open alcove. It wouldn’t be long. I had no idea what they would make of the two strangely dressed arrivals.
“I expected you before now. He came to us for help when he learned of our existence. Sarina, we are Ryrise, a cyborg librarian, and we help those who require it. Like your Braedon. We fear our assistance is the reason he is lost. When we learned of his plight, we placed adverts at points throughout time. Let’s determine if your partner has answered one of them. ”
Perhaps that aforementioned psychotic break was happening, but I couldn’t deny that we were no longer at the library near the apartment. I had no idea what was going on, but I had to trust in Braedon, if not in Ryrise.
“A… cyborg librarian?” I repeated, the words feeling odd on my tongue. “We don’t have the tech for that. As for Braedon’s work, from the little he said, everything he did was theoretical.”
Ryrise didn’t blink, unless they were doing that shutter thing.
“You are correct and yet are not. You do not have the ability at this time. This is the start of it, which is why it’s vital Braedon is found. We have discovered that there are those who would stop his discoveries, and they stranded Braedon in time. If we are to find him, you must trust me.”
The cyborg gestured to the front of the ancient library and pointed. I stared at the outside. The doors opened as we watched, and a man came in. My heart stopped before I realized the person was a patron and not my beloved.
“What am I doing?”
We were still wavering but becoming more solid.
Ryrise pointed to a board with paper pinned to it. I supposed such a thing still existed today, but I hadn’t used one since I was a kid. “This is where I put one of my notices. It’s untouched. Your partner is not here. Let us continue.”
The room faded around us, and we were once again swept into the void.
This time, I was pretty sure I screamed.
The next place we landed didn’t have the corkboard, and the librarians were all men. The building itself had a hushed feel, with strange dress that suggested we had gone back centuries. My insides were queasy, and my stomach roiled like I might vomit.
“Let’s say I believe you. Where are we now?”
Ryrise’s lids shuttered again with that clicking motion that unnerved me. I clung to their hand and despite myself didn’t let it go.