In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  This medical facility appeared to be located in the basement, with concrete steps leading up to a street. She took a firm grip on the chair and bounded up the stairs into soft morning light. She wavered a bit at the top, dropping the chair back onto its wheels. The rush of blood was making the world spin. The sky was light blue with white puffy clouds drifting in the breeze, but the sun was just coming up over a distant hilly horizon. Narrow three story row houses densely packed the sloped street and ran downward toward a traffic light. What part of the city was this? And how was it morning already?

  The pounding of footsteps behind her made her move.

  She sprinted down the barren sidewalk half dragging the chair behind her. The doctor emerged onto the sidewalk and glanced around. Emily looked for help but the street was deserted with the exception of cars crossing the intersection down the hill.

  “Hey! Somebody!” She screamed but the cars were too far away and immune to her pleas.

  The doctor headed toward her. He pulled the mask from his face to reveal a stubbled square jaw and cleft chin. He was glaring as he began jogging, and then running after her, the Taser poised in one hand.

  Emily pumped her free arm, her bare feet slapping the concrete as she ran, but it was difficult. The chair she was dragging kept rolling into her heels to trip her up and the steady decline was making it hard to gain speed without toppling over. Plus whatever they had drugged her with was making her sluggish.

  The doctor was almost on top of her. He stretched out a hand for her shoulder. “Get back here!”

  Emily put on a burst of speed, and in a desperate maneuver, swung the office chair around in front of her and leapt onto it, attempting to steer it with her weight on her knees.

  It was working!

  She barreled away from her pursuer, picking up speed as she flew down the sidewalk. A man was standing on a doorstep ahead of her. Where had he come from? With bright red hair and a jacket for a sports team she vaguely recognized, he walked off the doorstep and into her path.

  “Watch out!” she screamed.

  She cringed as she flew toward him, closing her eyes at the moment of impact, but a moment later, she realized it hadn’t happened.

  She opened her eyes to find her path clear. The man had somehow avoided the collision and was now behind her, blocking the path of the man chasing her. The doctor had trouble slowing his speed and the red-haired man sent a fist into his face at full force.

  “Yes!” Emily shouted. But her elation immediately vanished when the wheel of her office chair hit an uneven edge of sidewalk. The chair overturned and sent her sprawling to the concrete. The chair followed her as she tumbled, rolling overtop of her before slamming into the sidewalk on the other side. The arm of the chair broke free and the rest of the chair skidded a few more feet down the hill. Emily rolled over and got gingerly to her feet. Her elbow was burning, her knee and the top of her right foot as well, but the scrapes looked mostly superficial. She cringed as she stood, brushing bits of concrete from the wounds. When she looked up, she was shocked to find that both of the men behind her were gone.

  She stared at the vacant space where she had seen the red-haired man punch the doctor, but it was empty. No. Not quite empty. The paper mask the doctor had been wearing was lodged in a tuft of weeds growing near the gutter. But the men were nowhere to be seen.

  A car came down the hill, cruising by slowly, but the passenger was absorbed in some device or another in their lap and paying no attention to the outside world.

  Emily hobbled up the hill a little, glancing at the closest doorways to see if the men had entered one of the houses, but then quickly turned and continued downhill, eager to get away from the scene.

  She was a mess. She’d ripped a hole through Dom’s jacket and shirtsleeve at the elbow, a rivulet of blood was coursing down her bare leg from her knee, and her foot was bleeding as well. She was leaving a bloody footprint as she walked.

  That wouldn’t do. She wasn’t going to leave a trail for the other doctor to find her. She might have broken his nose, but his eyes still worked.

  She limped as far as the next intersection, turned the corner of the block, then looked around for the nearest smart surface. A Digi-Com logo on a window caught her eye and she staggered over. She raised her left hand to touch the window but the chair arm still handcuffed to her wrist made it too awkward. She switched to her right hand instead, tapping the windowpane with a fingertip. A generic menu of common apps appeared on the window-turned-screen and she tapped the logo for a local public car service. She pressed her thumb to the screen when prompted and her private passenger profile popped up. The windowpane didn’t appear to be wired for audio so she was required to manually select a destination. Her frequented sites appeared. Dom’s apartment. Her office at Gammatech. Home. But when she tapped the home button, the address displayed on the screen was incorrect. It listed a building in Highland Park downtown, somewhere she had never lived.

  “What the hell?” Emily frowned at the screen and simply swiped the destination away, manually entering her address instead. She hastily pressed the call button and got an immediate ping back from a public car in her area. At least she was beating the commuter traffic.

  Emily quickly logged out of the smart screen and limped to the curb.

  There was still no sign of the doctor who had pursued her, or her red-headed savior.

  The car pulled up to the curb only moments later and the door opened automatically. Casting one last look around, she gingerly climbed inside and shut the door.

  The car started rolling.

  Thank God.

  The realization of what she had just survived was pressing in on her and she had to keep herself from shaking. She put her hands to her head but the arm of the office chair thunked against her thigh, reminding her that she was still dragging a piece of the experience along with her. She grabbed at the triangular-shaped chair arm and tried to find a way to get it free from the handcuffs. The frame of the arm was continuous however, and short of a hacksaw, it wasn’t going to come free.

  She leaned back in the seat and stared at the ceiling. One problem at a time.

  The scene she had just lived replayed in her mind.

  What on earth was Dom thinking? Did he know these doctors were on the other side of the doorway? What was that door even made of? Wherever she was, it was miles away from the Gammatech facility they had started in. Had Gammatech been developing some kind of teleportation technology? Why had she never heard about it?

  The questions were overwhelming.

  She tapped the car window to open another smart screen. She opened a call line but hesitated over Dom’s profile picture. Should she call him to see what was going on? What if he was organizing this whole thing and tracked her call? No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t understand how this situation made any sense. This was Dom she was talking about, her fiance—the most devoted man she had ever been with. Never in all the time she had known him had he ever done anything to harm her. It was the opposite. He did everything for her, cherished her, almost to the point of obsession . . .

  She closed the phone app.

  The car pulled onto her street and began to slow, but something looked wrong. Emily couldn’t exactly put her finger on it but the neighborhood looked . . . different. Nothing specific stuck out to her, but there was definitely something off.

  When the car pulled to the curb in front of her apartment building, she got out cautiously. It was still early but there were lights on in the building. Some of her neighbors were definitely awake. She didn’t relish the idea of trying to explain her appearance to any of them. Luckily everyone still had their blinds down.

  She made a futile attempt to wipe her bloody handprint from the seat using the sleeve of Dom’s jacket, but gave up and limped her way to the front steps. The car company could bill her if anyone complained. She just needed to get inside.

  When she reached the door and stuck her thumb to the access pad,
the lock beeped at her and flashed red. Frustrated, she wiped her thumb on the jacket and tried again. The red light flashed again.

  “Let me in, you stupid piece of—”

  “It won’t work.”

  Emily jolted and spun around. The red-haired man was standing casually on the sidewalk behind her as if his miraculous appearance there was the most commonplace thing in the world. He took a step forward.

  “Get away from me!” Emily brandished the chair arm at him. “Don’t you touch me!”

  The man held up his hands and took a step back. “Hey. Just trying to help. I’m on your side.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Emily snapped. “And how did you follow me?”

  The man slowly lowered his hands and rested them at his sides. “I’m sorry to tell you, but this isn’t your house.”

  “What?” Emily tried to process what he was saying.

  “You don’t live here,” he replied. “Not anymore.”

  “Bullshit,” Emily said, pressing on the keypad again with her thumb. She pressed harder this time. The aggravating red light flashed again. She continued to hold the chair arm toward him.

  “Do you want me to get that off for you?”

  Emily eyed him suspiciously. “You have the key?”

  “No. But I have something just as good.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and extracted a metallic cylinder about the size of a small flashlight.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s called a degravitizer.”

  “That sounds like a word you just made up.”

  The man slowly took a step closer. “I don’t have to touch you. But if you just want to step a little closer, I can use it on the cuffs.”

  Emily continued to eye him cautiously but his bright blue eyes seemed sincere. She vacillated for another moment, then held her breath and took a step closer.

  He gently grasped the chair arm between two fingers to hold it steady, then aimed one end of the flashlight-looking device at the chain holding the two cuffs together. He pressed a button on the device.

  Nothing seemed to be happening but the man moved the device confidently, working his way along the chain to the section of metal just below her wrist. He was careful not to aim it at her hand. She didn’t see why, because when he pulled his hand away, the handcuffs seemed as intact as ever.

  Emily shook her wrist. “How ever will I repay you for your incredible locksmithing services?”

  The man smirked at her. “I’m not done yet.” He slipped the device back into his pocket, then pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a wristwatch. At least it resembled a wristwatch. It looked more complex than any timepiece Emily had seen before, with several extra dials and indicators. He moved one of the dials just slightly. “Okay, this is the part that you do need to touch me for. You can grab my shoulder if you like.”

  Emily considered his request, but not seeing how it would change their situation for the worse, laid her free hand on his shoulder.

  “You might want to close your eyes. Some people get dizzy at this part.”

  “I’m already dizzy,” Emily replied. “I’ll be keeping them open.”

  “Have it your way.” The man reached for his wrist and pressed a button on the side of his watch.

  Emily blinked. Or at least it felt like she did. She was fairly certain that her eyes had stayed open the entire time, but it was almost as if the world had blinked.

  The man was smiling.

  Emily failed to see what he was grinning about, as her wrist was still handcuffed. But then she noticed it. The section of the cuffs he had waved his magic wand thingy over was missing. More accurately, it was now lying in several pieces on the sidewalk near her feet. She moved her wrist, backed up a step, and the handcuff slipped open, the guts of its locking mechanism now relocated to the ground.

  Emily’s mouth dropped open. After a moment of trying to comprehend what had just happened, she looked up into the man’s smiling blue eyes.

  “Who are you?” she finally managed.

  He took the remnant of the chair from her and held out his hand. “My name’s Carson. I’m a time traveler, and I’m here to help.”

  4

  “There’s no such thing as time travel,” Emily said.

  Carson smiled at her. “I beg to differ.”

  Emily appraised him skeptically. “Thanks for unlocking me. I think you should go now.”

  “You need help,” Carson replied.

  Emily couldn’t really argue with that statement. Standing on the steps of her apartment building bleeding all over the stoop was all she had going for her at the moment. She couldn’t even get inside.

  “Are you a crazy person?” she asked.

  “I’m not,” Carson replied.

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Prove it.”

  Carson smiled. “Prove what? That I’m not crazy or that I’m not a liar?”

  “You said you were a time traveler. You’re either crazy, you’re lying, or you’re actually telling the truth. So prove it. Time travel.”

  Carson put his hands in his pockets. “I just did. You’re out of those cuffs, aren’t you?”

  “Magically disintegrating things is not time travel,” Emily said. “They could have been trick handcuffs or something. You could be a circus magician. That’s not the same thing.”

  Carson nodded. “Okay. What size are you?”

  “What?”

  “In clothes.” He looked down at her bare legs.

  “That’s none of your business.” She wrapped Dom’s jacket a little tighter and clenched the neck closed with one hand.

  “Fine. But you can’t blame me if they don’t fit. Hold this.” He handed her the piece of chair again, then he walked over to the railing at the side of the steps and rested a hand on it. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.” With one hand on the railing, and the other on his wristwatch, he promptly disappeared.

  Emily took a step back.

  “What . . . the . . .”

  But then he was there again. She barely had time to register it, but there he was, still touching the railing. Now he was holding a shopping bag. A shopping bag pulled from thin air.

  “Holy shit,” she muttered.

  “I brought you some options,” he said, rummaging around in the bag. “And a first-aid kit.” He held up a white plastic box with a red cross on it. “You want to get cleaned up?”

  Emily stared at the bag then looked up at his face. He was acting like it was no big deal. That red hair, his laughing blue eyes. A time traveler. He just vanished and came back with clothes? This man was entirely too impossible to be believed.

  She didn’t know if it was her adrenaline ebbing, the drugs taking hold or just plain exhaustion, but her knees began to shake. She wobbled once, then again, trying to regain her balance.

  “Whoa there.” The man dropped the bag and reached for her as she began to faint. The world seemed to narrow around him, until it left just his face, and then his mouth. “I did say it might make you dizzy.”

  She felt his arms slip around her waist, then she surrendered to the black.

  When she woke up, Emily was lying on a bed. She was fairly certain she had never been in this room before, but there was something very familiar about it. She liked the curtains at least.

  She stayed horizontal while getting her bearings, but she felt better. The effects of whatever had been in her system seemed to have worn off. Her head felt clear again. Or at least as clear as it could be considering the circumstances. She wanted to believe that the entire experience had been just a bad dream, but that wasn’t an option. She was here. This room that was strange and yet familiar.

  At least she was clothed.

  Someone had cleaned her up. She propped herself up to an elbow, winced, then remembered her injury. She pushed up the sleeve of the white cable knit sweater she was wearing and found that her elbow had been neatly bandaged. Her l
eg had been bandaged too. She could feel the lump at her knee beneath the jeans someone had put on her, and her right foot was carefully wrapped in a bandage that went all the way up her ankle. She could flex it, but it was securely affixed.

  A full glass of water was perched on a coaster on the nightstand. She picked it up and took a precautionary sniff, then sipped at it.

  Oh that was good.

  She hadn’t noticed how dehydrated she was at first, but the more she drank the more she realized she needed it. She set the glass down and tried sitting up. She slowly let her legs dangle over the edge of the bed till her feet touched the floor. It was cool and soothing.

  The room was well lit and sunny. It had to be at least midday. Had she been unconscious that long? Perhaps just asleep. She tried to remember what day it was. Saturday? No, Sunday now. Had to be. She slid forward and pushed herself to her feet.

  The bedroom door was open a crack. Somewhere on the other side, there were voices speaking quietly. She crept gingerly across the rug, then paused briefly when she passed in front of the mirror. The cozy sweater kept sliding off one shoulder, but otherwise she looked good. Clean. Rested. Her finger sparkled in the sunlight and she held up the engagement ring.

  Where was Dom right now? Was he searching for her?

  She let her hand drop and moved toward the door. She peered through the crack in the doorway, searching for the source of the voices. Not seeing anyone, she cautiously opened the door.

  The living room was decorated with a wide couch, seasonal fall decorations and tasteful artwork. She recognized a worn blanket on the couch as one that she herself owned. Whoever lived here must shop at the same stores. She moved into the kitchen and admired the view out the broad windows.

  She was many floors up. A condo of some kind with a patio overlooking downtown.

  The voices she had heard were coming from a second bedroom but she couldn’t make out much of what was being said.

  There was a butcher’s block on the countertop with a set of knives. She eased over to it and gently removed one of the smaller blades, then hid it in the sleeve of her sweater. If there were more surprises here, she meant to be ready.