It all sounded kind of sad to me, but I supposed it wasn’t really my problem. After all, once the actual intergalactic government swooped in and erased this timeline, this planet and all the people on it wouldn’t even exist anymore. I didn’t understand the finer details of it, but I was also pretty sure that none of us on this ship would remember it, except for the memories tied to whatever Zik had planned.
As far as any of us knew, Zik’s entire plan was to kidnap a handful of humans from this timeline and bring them onto the ship for the duration of the trip. He’d paid the Rogues very well, according to Rosa, and they’d built him a special, soundproof torture chamber. I didn’t even want to think about what would be happening in that secret room while the rest of us ate and slept and lived out our own goals and fantasies.
For starters, it wasn’t any of my business. But also, despite my reputation and my overwhelming darkness, torture never quite appealed to me.
It was a little too sociopathic for my taste.
Zik had left the ship as soon as we landed, but the rest of us had taken our time with getting dressed and eating breakfast, milling around the common room in the relative calm and quiet of the Rogue ship.
After about an hour, figures appeared on the other side of the glass. Zik, accompanied by two Rogues, dragged with them about ten prisoners, their hands chained behind their backs. Thick cloth bags had been forced over their heads as well, and they marched in the correct direction only with the help of Zik’s cold pistol pressed to the nape of each of their necks and the loud barking shouts of the Rogues.
Moments later, we moved into the bare entryway of the ship as Zik’s prisoners were led away from their planet and into the gaping jaws of the Rogues. If only they knew what was about to befall them. Except, actually, it was probably best they remained unaware. “Ignorance is bliss” and all that.
I bit my lip, watching with furrowed brows beside Rosa as the ten prisoners were forced to their knees. The Rogues yanked the bags off of their heads while Zik stood by, visibly impatient from the incessant tapping of his foot.
The humans were of varying genders, ages and sizes. It seemed that Zik didn’t discriminate when it came to his victims. They did, however, have certain characteristics in common. For example, they were all skinny, exhausted and generally rumpled; it was exactly how I imagined a bunch of humans would look in the immediate aftermath of a devastating global war.
Lee entered the room at that moment, carrying a small device that resembled a gun, but had a larger barrel and a digital screen. I grew even more confused as he pressed it to the forehead of the human male on the far end of the line. A few beeps sounded from the strange device, followed by a negative message code on the screen.
With a nod, Lee gestured at Zik. “This one’s fine.”
He then moved on to the next person in line, pressing the not-gun to their forehead the same way. The humans watched us with wide, wondering eyes. They didn’t seem to realize they were in immediate danger, or perhaps they’d simply grown used to being confronted with imminent peril, given the rather dire situation on their planet.
“What are they doing?” I whispered to Rosa.
Rosa shrugged casually. “Routine stuff. Checking to see if any of them are time lost before they pull them out of there. If they aren’t time lost, Zik can go ahead and have ‘em; they’ll cease to exist the minute the Agents evaporate the timeline anyway. But, if they are…” Rosa simply pursed her lips and shrugged again, her way of communicating to me that she wasn’t quite sure what would happen in the latter situation.
My curiosity was piqued.
Time lost wasn’t something you heard about often. With my limited understanding of time travel, most of which I’d gleaned from gossip and hearsay over the years at parties and soirees, I knew that being a time-lost person was extremely rare.
If I understood correctly, being time lost meant that someone didn’t belong to just one single timeline. It meant that they could, theoretically, flourish in a multitude of timelines and live out an infinite number of scenarios. It also meant that, if their original timeline (the timeline they were born into in the first place) was destroyed, they would survive. They wouldn’t be erased from time and space, or forgotten for the rest of eternity.
The Rogues were probably covering their own asses by checking to see if any victims were time lost. They couldn’t have someone who wasn’t a paying client wandering around the universe blabbing the details of what they got up to. But I also figured it was deeper than that. Because time lost individuals were so rare, I assumed they had some kind of monetary value to the Rogues. Dark Tourism was, when it came down to it, driven by financial gain; it was the cold, hard truth.
As Lee moved methodically down the line of Zik’s prisoners, it became clear that none of them were time lost. Rather, they were perfectly ordinary.
That was, until Lee reached the final human and pressed the time-lost-detector to her temple.
A strange, high-pitched ding emitted from the device and a bright green plus symbol appeared on the tiny screen.
I froze, craning my neck to get a better look at the human. Zik was glaring at her.
Lee was smiling.
“Well, friends,” said Lee. “We’ve got ourselves a time-lost lady.”
The entryway cleared as the Rogues pulled the other nine prisoners away, probably toward the special torture chamber they built, with Zik following close on their heels. Still, he shot one last backward glance at the tenth human left behind, either because he was also curious about her time lost status, or because he was angry that he’d missed out on another person to torture horrifically.
I guessed it was the latter.
With less people in the room, I could see the human clearly.
She was, admittedly, gorgeous. Undeniably stunning, breathtakingly pretty. Long, chocolate brown waves spilled over her petite shoulders, messed up from her capture and also, probably, basic survival, though irresistibly sexy nonetheless. Pure green eyes, framed by a charming smattering of freckles on porcelain skin, glared up at Lee with a mixture of confusion and defiance. With that look alone, she was daring Lee to lay a finger on her.
I took a step forward. No one paid me any mind, their attention fixed on the woman.
“What’s your name?” asked Lee.
She cocked her head to the side. “Who wants to know?”
Gutsy.
Lee chuckled at her sassy response. “My name is Lee Leoni. I’m an alternative time travel expert and dark tourism guide.”
The poor woman clearly had no idea what half of those words meant, but she appeared to soak them in anyway, as if she were storing them for further use. It was the type of thing strong survivors did.
I was enamored by her.
“I’ll ask again,” sighed Lee. “Your name?”
“Ellen Moore,” she answered.
Around us, the time ship’s engine started up again. We hadn’t been on the planet for long, but I supposed the entire point of this destination wasn’t to stick around, but instead to gather up some innocents and hand them off to the Rogues’ well-paying customer and then carry on with the trip.
Ellen seemed to realize that there was no getting off this ship at that point and frowned at the hard metal floor beneath her. Perhaps she, too, had some comments to make about the interior decor of this place or perhaps she was merely pissed off, confused and wanted to know why the hell she’d been dragged onto a foreign spaceship by a crowd of well-dressed aliens.
I didn’t blame her.
I felt the urge to reach out to her, to pull her attention away from Lee.
“Well, Ellen Moore,” continued Lee. “It appears to me that you’re time lost.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” she snapped.
I snorted quietly. Lee never was very good at explaining himself. He was all about dramatic effect in favor of clarity.
“I’ll explain in time,” answered Lee. “In the meantime, please a
llow one of my crew to show you to a private room for you to wait in.”
A Rogue attendant helped Ellen off the floor of the room and unlocked her chains. She shook them off and rubbed her wrists, eyes fluttering around to the attendant, to Lee, to the door behind marked with a large white X. She was taking in her surroundings, making mental notes about possible escape routes and logging away any other information she could pick up about the people around her.
Yeah, definitely a keen, unstoppable survivor.
Her eyes skittered over mine for the briefest of seconds, her gaze not holding mine even though I was practically burning a hole through her with the intensity of my stare. I supposed I was of little consequence to her survivor-mode brain.
That brain of hers seemed to come to the conclusion that, given the fact that she was in foreign territory surrounded by mostly inhuman creatures, it was best not to cause a scene. Not to mention the very real possibility that any trouble started would probably earn her a place back in chains and in the bloodthirsty hands of the menacing Zik.
“Fine,” Ellen replied at last, fixing Lee with a distrustful stare. “Whatever.”
I watched her and the attendant walk away, feeling every cell in my body yearning to follow.
But I couldn’t. Not yet, at least.
All I knew was that I had to talk to her.
Chapter 4
Inhuman
Ellen
There were two possible explanations for what was currently happening to me.
One: I’d inhaled some seriously intense fumes in my mother’s chemistry lab and was now experiencing strange, hallucinogenic side effects.
Two: I really, truly had been kidnapped by aliens and taken onto their spaceship to be dissected and tortured or whatever, only to be deemed “special” by their leader and put into some kind of holding cell.
Time lost.
The blue-haired guy’s words echoed in my head. I had no idea what they meant. No one on my planet had had any contact with aliens since the AI war destroyed pretty much every bit of technology there was. As such, I didn’t know much about what went on in the intergalactic plane of existence, nor was I familiar with the technology they’d produced. None of us back home were.
We were just trying to survive day by day.
All I could think about was my parents, who were probably worried sick about me, wondering where on Earth I’d disappeared to. People didn’t just go missing in our village. Since the war, there were so few of us left that we had no choice but to congregate in close-knit communities. Because of that, not much happened without everyone else hearing about it.
I was going to have to find a way off this ship as soon as possible.
With a sigh, I sat down on the edge of the bed in the sparse room I’d been led to. I hadn’t been able to tell what their intentions were when I’d been brought in here. They’d been fairly violent with us when we were grabbed from the streets of our ruined city, but it seemed like the moment that strange gun-like device chimed differently for me than it did for the others, I was no longer treated as roughly. At least, they hadn’t physically forced me into this room the way the other nine people had been dragged off with the disturbing, gray-eyed man.
I knew all of them. And I had a sick feeling I’d never see them again.
A soft knock on the door set my heart hammering in my chest again. Maybe they had decided I wasn’t as important as they originally thought and were going to take me away with the others. I frantically searched around the room for anything resembling a weapon, but came up with nothing. The room was practically empty except for the basic furniture.
They could really stand to improve their hospitality.
“Come in,” I called to whoever was knocking, doing my best to keep the tremble out of my voice.
I expected the sinister man with a murderous aura, or at least the weird man with blue hair and a silver tattoo on his neck.
Instead, an unfamiliar man gently inched open the door and stepped inside the room. He closed the door quietly behind him as if he was trying not to draw attention.
The first thing I noticed about the man was that he was insanely, almost inhumanly, beautiful.
Glimmering auburn locks curled softly atop his head, arranged artfully and fashionably around his lightly-tanned face. Deep brown eyes, so dark they were almost black, fixed on me with obvious curiosity. I tried to take in the rest of him as fast as I could, as if all my eyes wanted was to drink him in before he could disappear again. He was all broad shoulders, a strong jaw and sharp, powerful limbs.
I wondered briefly if he was one of them; one of the kidnappers or part of the black-clad ship crew. But, he carried himself with a confidence and grace that was almost regal, and it became clear to me that he was of a much different status than the blue-haired man and his cronies.
“Hello,” he said, his voice accented in the most subtle way. “How are you?”
I cocked my head to the side, observing as he approached the bed. He stopped a few feet away, hands clasped behind his back as he stared down at me. There was a darkness about him, something just the slightest bit off, or even dangerous, but he also felt…stable. Sure. Dependable. He bit his lip thoughtfully and I found myself feeling a little jealous of his teeth.
God, I was a loser.
“Are you a doctor or something?” I asked, unsure what he could possibly be doing in a hostage’s room if he wasn’t here to hurt me or interrogate me.
He snorted at that. The sudden humor that glittered in his eyes and danced on the edges of his lips hinted at something playful and boyish within him. Almost mischievous, as if he was one of those people who equated fun with trouble.
“No,” he replied. “I’m not a doctor.”
His voice was smooth like a deep, crooning melody. There was no way this guy was human.
He gestured to the chair at the desk nearby with a questioning glance and I nodded, watching as he sat down and leaned forward to place his elbows on his knees. He glanced up at me through thick lashes and I desperately tried to remind my racing heart that I was most likely in extreme danger and that it was no time to be swooning.
“Are you…a therapist?” I prodded.
“A what?”
“Nevermind.”
He offered me a coy smile. “I’m just…Markus.”
I sighed heavily and shifted on the bed so that I was facing him properly. “Well, just Markus, what can I do for you?”
Something vaguely devious flashed in his eyes, but then the curiosity reappeared, softening his features into something less…greedy.
Markus shrugged. “I’ve never met a time lost person before.”
There was that term again. “I don’t even know what that means,” I admitted.
“Oh,” he answered, brow furrowing. “I can try to explain… I’m hardly an expert, though.”
“I’m all ears,” I responded. Markus seemed confused by my phrasing, as if he’d never heard the terminology before, but opened his mouth to offer his explanation anyway.
“I’ve heard that someone is time lost when they can, theoretically, be pulled from their original timeline and placed in another without ruining the balance of the time-space continuum,” he said, his voice edging around the words as if he wasn’t quite sure about them himself.
My head was already spinning. “So, there’s more than one timeline?”
Markus nodded. “Oh, there are millions. Billions, even.”
“Like…parallel universes?” I pulled from my small memory bank of sci-fi knowledge that I’d gleaned from various movies when I was younger, before the humans had no choice but to destroy all electronics and technology in the AI war.
“Sort of,” he replied.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and pursed my lips, gazing off into the opposite corner of the room in thought.
“But…why would I be time lost? Like, how does a person get to be like that?”
Markus shrugged. The casual rise and
fall of his shoulders was somehow endearing.
I really needed to get a grip. I’d been kidnapped, barely escaped possible death, was who-knew-how-many-miles away from my family, and all I could think about was how hunky this strange alien guy was? Maybe I had been inhaling too many fumes in the chem lab.
“That’s the part I don’t understand, either,” replied Markus. “A friend once explained that it’s as if a time lost person holds so many future possibilities within them, like they could potentially live so many lives, that one timeline alone can’t hold them. That’s why they can be extracted so easily.”
I still didn’t totally understand, but it was beginning to come together. I wondered what my other life possibilities were… Surely they had to be better than being one of a handful of survivors of a horrifying robot war that destroyed my entire planet.
At least, I hoped so.
“So, what am I doing on this ship? What are you doing on this ship?” I asked.
Markus sat up and shifted uncomfortably. “We’re tourists, of a sort,” he replied. “Lee and his crew take us to different timelines, ruined ones that are due to be erased by the feds anyway, and… Well…we do whatever we want, I guess.”
Lee must have been the guy with the blue hair. I was glad to finally be able to put a name to that cold and calculating face.
“So, kidnapping me and those other people was all part of that creepy guy’s vacation?”
“Um, yeah,” he replied, clearly holding back some important information. I narrowed my eyes at him, but let it slide. I’d get the details out of him eventually. Or, out of someone, at least. “His name is Zik. Absolute psycho, if you ask me. It’s a good thing you managed to avoid that.”
I chewed my bottom lip and fixed Markus with a steady stare. “So, what are you here to do? Are you an absolute psychopath, too?”
Markus chuckled darkly at that. “I’m not psychopathic, no. Just…vengeful.”
That last word was uttered with so much venom and desire, it practically turned my blood to ice. There was no denying that there was something ungodly about this guy, and it wasn’t just the devilishly good looks.
A Wife for the Torturer Page 3