“I’m sorry?” Command One asked. He poured more water for both of them from a tall glass carafe.
“The one thing,” Bledsoe repeated. “The one thing the Omega Mesh changed from the last iteration to this one.”
“Ah. I’m not currently at liberty to reveal that.”
Bledsoe’s frustration boiled over, and he swore loudly as he swept his water glass off the table. It sprayed water in a long arc before rebounding off the carpeted floor and shattering against the nearby wall.
“You’re not revealing much at all, friend!” Bledsoe yelled as he pounded a fist onto the table. “How am I supposed to save everyone from this future darkness if no one is going to tell me the rules, hm? Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”
Command One took a slow drink before gently setting his glass back on the table linen. “Mr. Bledsoe, the idea of fairness has little place in life, never mind time-space travel. But I assure you that most, if not all, information will be presented to you in time if and when circumstances merit the disclosure.”
“You won’t tell me about the iteration difference.” Bledsoe held up a hand and started counting off on his fingers. “Won’t tell me about the differences between electricity and this nuclear tunneling force. Won’t tell me about why no one seems to care when I kill Management agents. Won’t tell me where the Chase boy went. Won’t tell me what happens twenty years from now, or even tomorrow.”
“Because—”
Bledsoe waved Command One’s interruption away. “Because ‘the future is dynamic and ephemeral,’ so you don’t know — except you do.” He leaned forward over the table, baring his teeth at Command One. “You want me to be a team player, but no one is willing to throw me the ball. See?”
Command One sighed. “I see how it might appear that way. But I assure you, at the point when—”
He lapsed to silence in mid-sentence and cocked his head slightly, as if listening.
“What?” asked Bledsoe, slumping back into his seat. Command One had done this downloading routine twice already since Winston and Bernie had left. “Don’t mind me. I’ll hunt around for a magazine.”
Bledsoe gazed out the wall that somehow served as a window and watched the hustle of activity he could make out across Area X’s chasm. Command One had said that this place remained shielded from certain types of scanning technology due to its carefully tuned ambient radiation levels, and all entrances to the place had been sealed off long ago. Supplies and even air arrived via special transportation conduits, although Command One wouldn’t reveal what was on the other end or who was sending in supplies — or even who all the people were staffing this place, much less what they were doing.
Bledsoe made himself a promise that, if he ever had the slightest provocation someday, he would drop one of those Q-bombs down that central chasm and finish off the job that Claude had managed to leave incomplete.
Command One blinked and drew a deep breath. “It’s time for us to go,” he said.
Bledsoe clapped his hands and glanced toward the ceiling. “Thank God. Why the sudden change of heart?”
Command One pursed his lips, seeming to measure his words carefully. However, what he said only served to magnify Bledsoe’s sour mood.
“Because Winston Chase elected to proceed straight to the fifth Alpha Machine piece without you.”
At first, Bledsoe found himself speechless. All he could imagine was the boy with a complete Alpha Machine able to go anywhere in time he pleased. Not only had he lied and stolen Bledsoe’s accomplishment, he had made Bledsoe look like a fool — the most easily deceived dupe in the world.
“You said he’d made a deal!” Bledsoe fumed. “Go run some errand then come right back. You didn’t say the errand was to complete our mission without me. I thought that was forbidden! Where’s your all-powerful Omega Mesh in all this? Asleep? Watching reruns?”
Command One bore the accusations patiently, then stood smoothly. “If you’ll please follow me.”
“Oh, you bet I’ll follow you,” said Bledsoe. “You couldn’t keep me away.”
Then again, after everything he had seen, Bledsoe supposed Command One could keep him away rather easily. He fell into step behind the taller man, forcing himself to slow both his pace and his mouth.
“So, where are we going?”
Command One led him through what he had assumed was the kitchen door, the same dark portal through which Bernie and Winston had gone.
“To Winston…and others,” said Command One. “I will answer one of your previous questions now.”
As they walked from the dimly lit dining room into the complete darkness of what no longer seemed likely to be a kitchen, Bledsoe said in a much quieter tone, “Much obliged.”
In the trickle of light from the room behind them, Bledsoe was barely able to see Command One stop. He missed running into the man’s back by only a few inches.
Command One turned to face him and said, “The Omega Mesh secured Winston Chase’s cooperation by making a deal with him.”
“I know. He gets to run his errand in trade for his—” Bledsoe tripped slightly on the word that wanted to come from his mouth, but he finished with “—cooperation.”
“Yes.”
A dim glow started around them, and Bledsoe realized that they were standing near the middle of a black, blue-rimmed rectangle within an impenetrable sea of darkness. Bledsoe was curious as to what lay beyond the rectangle’s edge, but not curious enough to test it.
“His errand,” Command One continued, “was to attempt to save his friends and mother from the grenade you used to destroy their plane.”
Bledsoe’s first impulse was to deny the accusation, but Command One said the words with such quiet assurance that he knew there was no point. And the man wasn’t angry — at all. Again, Management seemed more than ready to excuse him for anything he had done in the past. Bledsoe wondered how much that extended into the future.
Bledsoe played the events back in his memory, including his pursuit of Winston from the desert floor until the boy disappeared.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Bledsoe said. “There was no time. I would’ve seen him.”
“Apparently, there was just enough. You are going to join them now.”
“Them? You mean Bernie and the boy?”
In the low blue glow, Bledsoe thought he caught the slightest hint of Command One straightening his shoulders and tensing his jaw.
“And others. They successfully rescued everyone from the plane, although there were injuries.”
Even though he had killed her already, Bledsoe couldn’t help but feel his possessiveness and concern flare. “Amanda? Was — is she one of the injured?”
“No,” said Command One. “They are with the fifth piece at Hanford Nuclear Reserve. You need to be with Winston.”
But Bledsoe already knew how that story ended. He had seen it, extracted it himself from Claude’s pulsing, dying brain. Did Command One and the Omega Mesh not know that? Or did they…and that was why they were sending Bledsoe there now? Perhaps they knew Winston was destined to die fetching the piece for Bledsoe, and that was all part of their master plan. It had to be.
For once, Bledsoe decided to keep his mouth shut and let the cards keep falling.
“I understand,” he said. “I’m ready.”
***
Winston had reached Bernie’s foot, but the rest of him remained in mid-lunge as time flow returned to normal and vertigo overwhelmed him. He couldn’t tell where he was or which way was up until his face struck the metal grating forehead first. Even though the edges were blunted, the steel sliced into his forehead, nose, and right cheek. Perhaps getting it over in an instant was more merciful than in super-slow motion.
Regardless, the nausea and exhaustion struck him with tangible force. He lay on the catwalk, doubled up, not daring to breathe as his stomach and willpower struggled to decide the fate of his last meal. His head pounded mercilessly and swam as if trapped
in a whirlpool. He tried to open his eyes, but visual input made the vertigo so much worse. Besides, all he could see before his face was the metal grating and a steady red drip trailing away into a bluish-green blur below. His brain refused to supply any immediate information about the latter, but there was no question about the red. He was bleeding, draining into the emptiness below.
“Winston!”
A female voice, tight but seemingly distant. Young. Familiar.
“Dude! What just happened? Are you—? Dude!”
He knew that voice. Shade.
The grating under Winston jostled repeatedly, making the metal rattle into his face. The pain throbbing behind his forehead felt as if it might burst from between his eyes. Hands gripped his back and shoulders, trying gently to turn his body. He gasped as his stomach clenched and he felt bile rise into his throat.
“What? What?” asked the girl’s voice.
Alyssa.
He turned his head up toward her, only to find one eye working and the other obscured by blood.
Her face registered shock and horror.
Another set of hands appeared, then his mother’s face came into view, a white mask of fear. She cupped his cheek in her palm as she scanned his body.
“Winston,” she choked. “Oh, my God, you—!”
In that instant, he feared that he’d missed spotting an incoming shrapnel piece and that part of his head had been blown off. That would explain things.
“Hold on,” Shade said as he came into view beside her. “Let me look.”
He bent down close, brow deeply furrowed, brown eyes intense and worried. He put his hand on the side of Winston’s head, fingers sliding over his hairline and cheek.
“Nah, this isn’t bad,” he said. “Just cuts. They bleed a lot, but I see stuff like this all the time.”
The preceding seconds started to return to Winston. He remembered the plane. Bledsoe returning for his mom. The grenade. Watching the bomb fragments slowly rip into Colonel Bauman’s flesh.
But Shade, Alyssa, and his mom were here. They were real and alive. He had at least done that much right.
Winston tried to focus with his one clear eye, but the space above him was dark and filled with an elaborate mesh of crisscrossing lines. The air felt thick, warm, and damp with humidity from the pool.
“We need a first aid kit,” said Shade. “I’ve got some bandages and antiseptic in my pack.” He winced as he surveyed Winston’s wound.
“Colonel first,” Winston groaned.
“On it,” said Shade.
Winston groaned, feeling sweat coat his body. The clench of nausea around his guts was beginning to ease, but he still had no desire to open his eyes.
That was a lot of words. Winston had a hard time making them all fit together into a coherent thought, but he finally managed,
Winston realized that he couldn’t see Bernie, but the idea of sitting up was more than he could stomach.
Winston squinted his eyes closed as he tried to turn himself to better face Shade and Alyssa and immediately regretted it.
<—you should be able mentally embrace the sensation and mute it. Just as with the cold and heat, link the sensation and energy to your breathing.>
Then Bernie did appear above and between Winston’s friends. He reached down between them and touched Winston’s arm. They didn’t link into a tactile network, but Winston could tell that Bernie was poking around at various points around his mind.
Winston shivered, not feeling fine at all.
Somehow, he did. It felt like his skull was about to rupture from internal pressure, so he visualized the pressure ebbing with each breath, like air escaping from a balloon.
Moment by moment, breath by breath, the pain and nausea receded.
Winston finally dared to glance at himself and found that his body glowed with a fierce blue as the QVs went about their work. Apparently, the time travel impact was systemic, not just in his head and guts.
At last, he thought he had the pain under control. He extended a hand toward his friends and groaned, “Careful.”
They each gingerly grasped him under an arm and helped him up to sitting. Slowly, Winston lifted the neck of his T-shirt and wiped at his eye. Thick blood smeared across the fabric, but he could tell that the area was uninjured. When he opened the eye, he sighed with relief at being able to see normally.
A man groaned, and Alyssa and Bernie quickly moved away to join Shade. They knelt over Colonel Bauman, who lay on his right side. Winston didn’t have much of a view, but he could see that the back of the colonel’s left shoulder was dark with blood and that the stain glistened as fresh blood continued to spill from the wound in his upper back.
“Grandpa!” Alyssa said as she knelt beside him. “Can you talk?”
“When there’s nothing better to do,” he wheezed.
“How bad is it?” Alyssa asked.
The Colonel tried to lift his left arm, but he convulsed in pain.
“Bad,” he said simply, then he launched into a tortuous fit of coughing interrupted only by his own gasps of agony. “Can’t breathe.”
Winston shifted to have a better view of the colonel. Blood trailed from one corner of his mouth. Winston was no doctor, but even he knew that an injury to the upper back that somehow led to blood in the mouth had to be very grim — likely damage to the lung.
Even Bernie knew not to finish the sentence.
“Winston, we need to get him to a hospital right now,” said Alyssa. The barely contained fear was obvious in her voice.
“I can hear the hissing,” said Shade, voice grave and eyes wide. “I’ve read about this. It’s a sucking chest wound. He’s got a punctured lung.”
Shade threw off his pack and tore into its contents. A few seconds later, he held up a Ziploc bag and his small roll of gray duct tape. After having Alyssa slice away her grandpa’s shirt and flight suit and wipe away as much blood as possible, Shade directed her to cover the hole with the baggie. He then sealed the bag into place with several short tape strips.
The ghastly spectacle brought Winston back to where he was and why they were here. They weren’t going to find an emergency room, Winston thought as he carefully turned his body, but he would find—
There. His father, wearing a white jumpsuit with a zippered front, once again a younger man.
Claude stood at the far end of the catwalk, having apparently just exited from a tiny control room mounted to a platform built on steel girders that jutted from concrete walls. As Winston’s gaze traveled up from the small chamber, painted from top to bottom the color of green pea soup, he began
to take in the massive scale of the space he was in. A series of wall-mounted cables and hoses ran up the wall from the control room and into a series of supports and beams that formed a scaffold of sorts along the walls and ceiling. Far out in the middle of the space, a lateral crane that slid along titanic rails mounted in the ceiling hung suspended over what at first seemed like an oversized swimming pool. Winston couldn’t see inside the pool very well from his position, but he did make out circular tubes aligned in long ranks, standing upright on their ends, occupying nearly the entire pool’s floor. At a guess, the tops of the tubes were about twenty feet below the surface. The pool was lit from end to end with underwater lighting that made most of the water appear green. However, the radiant blue glow given off by the tubes, or whatever rested inside them, was both beautiful and terrifying.
Winston recognized that glow…and the tubes. He had seen them on the display screen when Bledsoe had scraped the memory of Winston’s death from his father’s failing mind.
Claude jogged toward them along the catwalk, and Winston felt every pounding footfall deep within his body.
“Amanda!” he called.
Winston’s mom froze with momentary amazement. She put a hand on Winston’s chest, unwilling to leave his side. He understood and appreciated the gesture.
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Amanda rose to her feet and walked to greet her husband. They met in an embrace, arms instantly locking around each other. Claude buried his face in her hair, holding the back of her head close in his outstretched fingers. They spoke quietly in each other’s ears, and the sight of their joy drove away the last of Winston’s pain, save only for the sensation of his heart straining at them being reunited.
Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy Page 88