Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy

by Bodhi St John

  The swirling confusion and fear Winston had felt moments before catalyzed into raw, explosive rage. Time suddenly collapsed to a crawl in a way that had nothing to do with the Alpha Machine.

  Winston saw Bledsoe slowly raise his gun away from Claude’s body. Bledsoe’s shoulders began to turn toward Winston. The malicious hatred on his face morphed into worry and surprise.

  They both understood that Winston had one second to live.

  Winston couldn’t duck or dodge. This wasn’t The Matrix, and even at this range, if Bledsoe’s first shot missed, the second would not. And besides — ducking was an act of fear, and there was no fear left in Winston.

  He did the first and only thing that came to mind: With the Alpha Machine still gripped between his hands, Winston hurled the device at Bledsoe’s head. However, this wasn’t some paltry push with his scrawny arms. Winston remembered how he had been able to pull the Alpha Machine pieces and Little e back to himself after landing in the Columbia River. He didn’t pause to wonder if the same mechanic could work in reverse. He simply willed it with every cell of his body. A lifetime of moments comprised of missing and loss, all like grains of sand in an hourglass, instantaneously rushed into the nexus of his fury and streamed out in a beam of directed energy. That beam was invisible, but it sent out a shock wave that pounded into every nearby metal object. The medical instruments on their stands rocked away from Winston and crashed to the ground. Claude’s bed jolted and skidded a couple of feet, knocking Little e free from its hook to bang and clatter among the debris. Even the RV and closest planes visibly rocked as if struck by a gust of wind.

  In the split second between when Bledsoe’s gun pointed at Winston’s body and when his brain could send an order to pull the trigger, the Alpha Machine struck Bledsoe in the forehead. Hard. Bledsoe’s shot fired wildly upward into the hangar’s ceiling while the man’s head snapped backward. Droplets of blood arced into the air as the force of the impact knocked Bledsoe off his feet. The sound of Bledsoe’s skull striking the floor was like the thudding echo of the gunshot. His shoulders and body followed close behind.

  The Alpha Machine continued in its trajectory for dozens of feet, almost making it to the main hangar doorway. Still flush with dark rage, Winston willed the pieces back. They obeyed, pausing in midair as whatever force commanded them reversed direction and sent them back to Winston’s waiting right hand. Winston noticed Little e and pulled the device to himself. It obeyed, sliding along the floor before rising and rocketing back into Winston’s left hand. The geoviewer also tried to return to Winston, but it was trapped in the crook of Bledsoe’s elbow.

  Somehow, Bledsoe kept his hold on both the gun and consciousness, although it looked like a close call. He was dazed, eyes blinking but not seeing, as he tried to roll onto his side.

  Winston knew this was his chance to act. For an instant, he thought about launching the Alpha Machine at Bledsoe’s head again and again, but then Bledsoe’s own words returned to his mind: Believe me, if I could make this hurt him more, I would.

  No. Winston would not become Bledsoe. He would not give in to anger and hate and complete his journey to the dark side. Oh, but how he wanted to.

  His next move was obviously to reclaim the geoviewer. Winston made it three steps toward Bledsoe when the man’s vision and coordination seemed to return. He saw Winston rushing toward him and fired again. The shot wasn’t remotely well aimed, but it was enough to make Winston skid to a stop and immediately back away.

  Bledsoe fought to level his gun. He blinked continuously and with deep concentration as blood streamed from the gash in his forehead down his face and into his eyes. The man roared with pain and frustration as he tried to get an elbow underneath himself, then fell back onto his side as his balance failed.

  Winston knew Bledsoe would recover quickly. He couldn’t reach him, and he couldn’t save his father.

  “Hey!”

  A woman’s voice. To his right. Winston looked in her direction and saw Nurse Hendrix standing in the RV’s doorway, the gleam of tears evident on her face. She mouthed a word to Winston and pleaded with her outstretched hand: “Run!”

  Winston took one more step back, then another. His father was gone. All that work, everything he had endured to follow his father’s trail for the Alpha Machine. For nothing. All for nothing.

  Bledsoe made another attempt to rise, failed, and contented himself with trying to focus on Winston while on his back.

  “See?” Bledsoe called, his speech somewhat weak and mushy. “See the camera? In the window?”

  Winston didn’t see a camera anywhere, but he suspected there must be at least one or two surveillance cameras running. There was probably one inside the RV capturing all of this.

  “Your mom had a front row seat,” Bledsoe said.

  He squinted and again fired in Winston’s vague direction. So far, he wasn’t able to keep the muzzle steady, but that would change soon.

  “She saw it all,” he said. “Can’t wait to…review it with her. Hell, I’ll loop it on twenty-four-hour big-screen playback.”

  “We are not done,” Winston growled as he backed out of the central hangar lighting and into the shadows.

  The two agents who had been assigned to patrol the perimeter ran around the corner of the massive hangar door.

  “We heard shots and—” one started to say, then both realized that Bledsoe was on the floor and bleeding from a head wound. They took in the fallen and scattered medical equipment, then spotted Winston’s movement in the distance.

  “Twenty-four hours for your mom!” called Bledsoe. “I made you a promise!”

  Both agents raised their guns toward Winston. He spun on his heel and sprinted for the museum lobby doorway as shots erupted behind him and bullets ricocheted off the floor and walls about him.

  Winston tore past the stands of clothing and hurled himself at the exit. Fortunately, it opened easily. He launched into the cold, misty midnight and sprinted as fast as he could through the parking lot, Alpha Machine still clutched in his hand, backpack pounding against his spine.

  His father was gone, and four federal agents were well on their way to capturing Shade. He had come here to gain the Alpha Machine piece, then to save his father, and succeeded only in losing a piece and failing to do anything to change his father’s grisly fate. All the hope Claude had placed in him in 1969 had been entirely misplaced.

  Claude’s final word had been “slippery.” As shots continued to ring out behind him, Winston knew the terrible truth: If the future were slippery, then that slick, treacherous footing only led to the cliff of defeat and death over which Winston had just leaped.

  30

  Discussion Denied

  After the intensity of his encounter with the Chase boy, Bledsoe found that the hangar’s immense emptiness and near-silence only deepened his sense of isolation. He could make out the far-away patter of rain on the hangar’s walls and, almost as quiet, the muffled sobs of Nurse Hendrix from within the RV. Most of all, though, he couldn’t get over Claude’s absolute stillness. The veins in his exposed brain no longer pulsed. His sunken chest no longer rose and fell with shallow, shaky breaths. His EEG readout, somehow still attached and operational from its position on the floor, registered a never-ending flatline.

  Bledsoe had no idea there were tears in his eyes until one fell from his lashes onto Claude’s bare arm. It traced its way into the crook of his elbow and vanished into the sheets below.

  “Damn you,” said Bledsoe quietly as he gripped one bed rail and wiped at his eyes. “Why couldn’t you have cooperated? None of this was necessary, Claude. None of it. I would have made sure you were happy.”

  He straightened and stepped slowly around the foot of the bed.

  “What am I thinking? You still can be. We all can. As soon as I have the other pieces, I’ll set things right at Area X. You’ll see.” Bledsoe gave a small laugh. “I’ll need a head scientist. You’ll have your own team. And if you betray me agai
n…” He gripped Claude’s thigh through the thin gown until his fingers dug into the stringy flesh. “We’ll just start over. And over. Until we get it right.”

  The futility of punishing a dead man struck Bledsoe, and he let go of the leg.

  Talk of using the Alpha Machine reminded him of the piece he’d reclaimed from Winston. Bledsoe lifted the small object and examined it. High floodlights gleamed from its dark surface. Despite being made of some metal, the artifact felt surprisingly light, no more than three or four ounces.

  He knew that each piece performed some function, but he’d never worked closely enough with the artifacts all those years ago to know which did what. Still, if that boy could figure it out, why couldn’t he?

  Bledsoe closed his fingers around the ring, gripping it with light but even pressure.

  He felt something in the back of his head, a prick of sudden pressure above the base of his skull that made him wince. Then the pressure lessened and spread up and into his brain. Bledsoe could sense the connections between his mind and the object forming.

  Without realizing he’d done so, Bledsoe found himself staring at Claude’s downturned face. This made him uneasy, but his attention quickly shifted as an object formed in the lower-left corner of his vision. It looked like white crosshairs surrounded by a white circle. As the symbols became clearer, Claude and the world around him began to dim slightly.

  Instinctively, Bledsoe reached out with his left hand to grasp at the icon, but his fingers found nothing but emptiness. Stupid. The thing was in his mind, not in front of him. But what was it for? What did he do with it?

  Bledsoe moved his head and body to the side, and the icon moved with him. He had worked with technologies like this — augmented reality — only this was clearly done in his mind rather than with glasses or goggles. Bledsoe gestured with one hand, then the other. Nothing.

  He imagined grabbing and pulling the crosshairs, and suddenly the world took a blurred, lurching shift into all-consuming movement.

  No, that wasn’t true. Part of the world stayed in place. He could still see Claude and the hangar, just as before. But now that vertiginous swirl of motion ran across the world behind Claude. He closed his eyes against the sensation and wanted it desperately to stop.

  When Bledsoe opened his eyes, he found Claude and the hangar still in their proper places, but that other element in his vision had become a view of the ocean. Waves undulated all around Bledsoe, illuminated by a moon high overhead peeking out from thin, feathery clouds. Bledsoe didn’t bob with the waves. Instead he seemed to be suspended in midair among them just enough that they failed to touch him. There was no land visible anywhere. For all Bledsoe knew, this place was a thousand miles from anything.

  “I remember, Claude,” he muttered. “That time you took us into the future? There was a moment like this, right before you stranded me.”

  Bledsoe focused on the icons in the corner of his vision and tried to scrutinize them more closely. The white crosshair had separated into three colored crosshairs arranged in a stack. He mentally reached for them one by one, experimenting with different motions. He discovered how to activate place names and work with elevation to make movements more precise and learned to close his eyes during location shifting to help minimize that intense motion sickness.

  “I get it,” he said to Claude’s corpse. “Same time, different place.”

  The ramifications of his discovery began to sink in.

  “Do you know what this means?” he asked as he continued to experiment with navigating the device’s controls. “I can see anywhere. I could see what Amanda’s doing right now. Ha — I could look into meetings at the Pentagon. Or the Kremlin. Oh, Claude, my friend…”

  Bledsoe straightened over the hospital bed and, since it was too large to fit in any pocket, slid the artifact back over his jacket sleeve. As soon as it left his hand, that second place layer vanished, and the hangar returned to its normal brightness.

  “I am going to have so much fun with this. It was really nice of your boy to leave it with me.”

  Bledsoe heard footsteps behind him — slow, measured steps that tapped the concrete with firm leather soles. Bledsoe turned to meet the newcomer, and his heart sank.

  “Mr. Bledsoe,” said the man. “This scene is…unexpected.”

  His suit was gray with a subtle plaid pattern and matching vest and tie. Set off by a black dress shirt, the tie in particular caught Bledsoe’s attention. The fabric dimple below its double Windsor knot was perfect. No mere agent was so meticulous, and no agent wore a suit vest and black patent-leather shoes tinged to burnt red around the stitching and edges. Good Lord, those shoes had to cost at least a thousand dollars.

  “So are you,” said Bledsoe. “Management promised me forty-eight hours.”

  For all the daunting style of the man’s clothes, his face was surprisingly plain and forgettable. Chestnut brown hair, cut short but not to the point of a buzz. Slender cheeks without scars or blemishes. Dark eyes that conveyed neither warmth nor menace.

  He passed by the RV and glanced inside its open door. He gave a curt nod, apparently making eye contact with Nurse Hendrix. This motion made Bledsoe wonder if Hendrix had somehow discovered Management’s contact info and gone behind his back. Possible, but unlikely.

  The man approached Bledsoe and stopped on the other side of the hospital bed. Curiously, he didn’t study Claude’s body. He showed no interest in the fact that the dead man between them had his skull in his lap and one little finger missing, with only a small bloodstain and unmistakable gunpowder burn marks to show its passing.

  “That was forty-eight hours until your on-site authority was superseded,” said the man. “I am only a preliminary associate. I’m here to observe the Theta Factor and report.”

  Theta Factor? Did the guy mean theta waves, like what they observed from Claude’s brain scans? Theta could also pertain to temperature or a geometric plane angle.

  “What’s the Theta Factor?” Bledsoe asked.

  “The unknown variable,” said the man.

  “And what’s that?”

  The man gazed pensively beyond Bledsoe and into the night. “Many things. Primarily, though, it is you. You are the Theta Factor.”

  Bledsoe sensed that this nutcase was staring down a rabbit hole that he had no interest in following.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the man replied without elaboration.

  Bledsoe fingered the Alpha Machine piece nervously. This was it. Management had given him all the slack he was going to get. His window of opportunity in which to seize the complete Alpha Machine with all of Management’s resources and cooperation easing his way through groups like the FBI was now closed. Apparently, they had even given him his own new code name, which likely meant that he was a target. There was certainly enough evidence. He might be able to explain torturing an old man to death, but how would he explain Claude’s brain surgery and the recordings of Claude’s memories? He was supposed to be pursuing QV breakthroughs, not assembling a time machine.

  “So…what?” Bledsoe asked, stalling for time to think. “You’re just going to tag along with me until we have the Chase kid?”

  “For the moment,” said the man. “I would assume from the car fires and lack of agents here that you have sent them in pursuit of Majestic Three.”

  “I did. Well, technically after his friend, but now it’s two for the price of one.”

  This guy had to go. Perhaps Bledsoe could smooth-talk him into returning to Management. When they captured the sidekick, which could happen at any minute, it would show progress. Winston would return to save his friend, just as he’d done with his father.

  What if Winston appeared in a flash of white light, though, spinning Alpha Machine in hand? How would Bledsoe explain that? And if they captured Shade Tagaloa, would he know about the Alpha Machine? Of course he would. They were best friends off on some ridiculous adventure. Boys talked. Shade would open hi
s mouth in front of this so-called associate, and Management goons would descend on Bledsoe quicker than he could spit. He’d be locked away for years of interrogation, and all his planning and patience would be for nothing.

  He’d come so close. The Alpha Machine had been only feet away. Bledsoe had been so sure that the boy would surrender it for his father. Wouldn’t he have made the sacrifice for his own father at that age?

  Maybe, Bledsoe thought. But not now. Nothing else matters now.

  Once he had the Alpha Machine, it would be the ultimate flick of the power switch, a universal reboot. Everything done to Claude, every word exchanged with Amanda, every lie ever told to Management, the FBI, and everyone else — every sin committed since whatever time he returned to fix — erased. There was no need for remorse on this timeline, because every misdeed would soon vanish. By the time people caught up to him in this time, he would be long gone.

  “We wait,” said the man. “It will give us a chance to talk. We have a lot to discuss, Mr. Bledsoe.”

  “You might,” said Bledsoe as he quickly reached for his gun in its shoulder holster. In one fluid movement, he drew it out, pointed it at the man’s chest, and fired two quick rounds into his heart. “But I don’t.”

  ***

  Even dying, the Management representative seemed strangely placid. His eyes showed shock and pain, but there was no terror. Bledsoe stepped around to him, prepared to fire again, but the man lay utterly still. Only then did he notice Nurse Hendrix’s muted screams from the RV.

  Bledsoe shook his head, trying to clear it. He needed that woman to shut her mouth and let him think. His plan had always been to let her go. The not-so-subtle threat he held over her family had been amply sufficient to keep her cooperative. Now, though…

  Everything seemed to be shifting under Bledsoe’s feet like quicksand. That Tagaloa kid was out there wreaking havoc. Claude had died too early. Winston had pulled that cheap stunt, knocking Bledsoe on his back long enough to escape. Just like on the Willamette River, a situation that should have been easily within Bledsoe’s control had slipped away. Now, he was left with a mess of bodies, a shrieking nurse, agents who would come wandering back any time, and Management about to wonder what had happened to their “preliminary associate,” whatever that meant.