by Rock, R. A.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Author’s Note
Other Books by R. A. Rock
About the Author
Appendix
Copyright R. A. Rock 2018
for Ian Hornik, my first born
I couldn’t write these stories without you.
IT WAS A body.
And it was dead.
It lay on the ground like a crumpled piece of garbage and mocked us.
Mocked us because if we had been only a day sooner, maybe we could have prevented the death.
Could have prevented the devastation before us.
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath, immediately erupting in a coughing fit that wouldn’t stop. Black smoke filled the air from the massive fire that was burning the Sipwesk community to the ground before our very eyes.
It was lucky that it had been raining for weeks and the ground was absolutely soaked. Although, really, I hesitate to use the word lucky at all when referring to the scene before me. Still, without the rain, the entire forest would probably be gone, too. I considered for a moment how weird it was that this place wasn’t buried four feet deep in snow. The climate had certainly changed.
I turned in a slow circle, surveying the devastation.
All around me, buildings burned. The fire roaring out of the windows and doors, walls crumbling as I watched. Everywhere my eyes landed there was heat and flames and smoke that choked you with every inhale.
We didn’t know if anyone had got out or if they were still inside. There was no way to tell. And anyway, if they were still inside, they certainly weren’t getting out at this point.
And there was no one here to ask what had happened.
Not a single survivor to talk to, except this one person — who definitely wasn’t breathing anymore and wouldn’t be telling us anything. I wrinkled my nose.
I hated dead bodies.
“Chad?” I called to the man standing nearby. “You better come over here.”
CHAD WALKED OVER to me and I kicked myself for noticing how good he looked, despite the day we had been having. His blue eyes, that appear darker or lighter depending on his mood, met mine — troubled. The curly red hair that always drove me wild glinted copper in the light from the fire. And under that winter coat, I knew there was a body to die for.
Not that I was looking.
At least I wasn’t supposed to be looking.
I would die for him, though.
I almost had — more than once.
But Chad and I weren’t together, so it didn’t matter. We weren’t going to try and reconcile again until we had each got our shit together. And obviously that hadn’t happened yet, so I shouldn’t be looking. Besides, I thought gazing around at the raging inferno, you have more important matters to attend to.
I felt my thoughts scatter and then reconvene. The sunny skies from this morning had given way to dull, light grey clouds. At this time of year, we were used to it being way below zero and in our time there would already be a few feet of snow but it seemed that the climate had shifted. Didn’t I remember something about global warming in this era? Anyway, it was still above zero and raining, even though it was almost New Year’s. I could not believe that the year was about to change and we were still here in this time and this place.
Sipwesk — in the middle of northern Manitoba, Canada — is beautiful. But it’s not home.
Already the day was darkening, even though it was only late afternoon. In less than an hour, it would be night. But that’s life above the 54th parallel in the winter — very short days.
“What is it?” Chad said, his voice sounding rough from the smoke.
I pointed.
“Shit. Is that what I think it is?”
“Probably.”
“Did you check and see who it was?”
I shook my head.
After my experience at the dump, I was a little dead-body-shy. And the thought of it being one of the new friends that we had made here at the Sipwesk community turned my stomach. This way, at least I didn’t have to do it alone.
“Don’t blame you,” he said, looking grim. “Not after what happened with Grace. Let’s go see, then.”
I glanced around. Shiv and Gracie were over near the main house. I prayed they wouldn’t find any charred body parts. This scene was awful enough without finding out that everyone had perished in the fire.
I didn’t think they would find out what had happened by looking around, though. Because the whole fucking place was burning to ashes. If we were going to find out who started the fire, we weren’t going to find the answers here. Whoever had done this had made sure that no one would have any evidence left to figure it out.
Chad and I walked side by side over to the body and stopped a couple feet away. Neither of us said anything. Neither of us wanted to touch it.
I sighed and stepped forward, pulling gently on the fabric of the coat. I tugged until she rolled over to her back. It was a woman in her forties.
I stood up and backed away, rubbing my hands on my pants. My blood pounded in my ears at the sight of the dead woman, the sound almost drowning out the roaring of the blaze that was destroying Sipwesk.
She would have been beautiful if she wasn’t dead. And she looked vaguely familiar, though I was certain I had never seen her face before. Her long black hair — longer than mine and with almost a blue sheen to it in the firelight — was braided and she had the high cheekbones and look of a person of First Nations descent. Her skin was a flawless light caramel colour except where there was some dirt on it from lying on the ground.
I wondered who would grieve her.
“Do you recognize her?” Chad said, confused.
“No,” I said, swallowing hard and grimacing at the acrid taste of the smoke on my tongue. “But I remember all the faces, even the ones we weren’t introduced to personally and I’m pretty sure that she didn’t live here.”
“That’s strange,” he said, turning and calling Shiv over. He’s our resident genius and drop dead gorgeous team member. His parents came from India so he’s tall, dark, and h
andsome. Grace heard Chad calling and came over, as well. She was closer so she arrived a couple steps ahead of him.
Grace has long curly red hair, the exact same shade as her brother’s. And she’s like a sister to me because I lived with her and Chad’s family after their parents took me in.
“What did you find?” Grace said, and then backed up quickly when she saw what it was. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she glanced at me — her eyes appalled. Shiv wrapped a strong arm around her and she buried her face in his chest, her voice coming out muffled when she asked, “Is she…?”
“She is,” I said.
The lifelessness. The dead weight when I had rolled her over. The bruises and cuts and the strange swelling of her stomach. But most of all the fact that she wasn’t breathing.
Everything said she was dead.
“What the hell?” Shiv said, looking like he might throw up and as though he needed more comforting than Gracie. “Who’s that?”
“So you don’t remember her face either?” Chad said. Shiv has a near-photographic memory. Pretty much everything he experiences sticks in his mind. If he didn’t remember her then it was very likely that she hadn’t been to Sipwesk when we were there.
“No. I’ve never seen her before.”
Chad scratched his beard.
“Why would all the other people who lived here be either gone or…” He pressed his lips together not willing to say it. “Why would they all be gone but there’s the body of some stranger who didn’t even live here?”
“It’s bizarre,” Grace said.
We all thought in silence for a moment, the cracking and popping of the raging fire made my stomach clench as I searched my mind for answers, and found none. I drew in a smoke-filled breath through my nose and wished I hadn’t — the smell was nasty, a chemical reek from all the plastic and other materials that were burning.
“Maybe she has something on her person that could identify her or give us a clue as to why she was here.”
“She might have just been visiting someone.” I suggested. “Or she might have been one of the people that lived on the cabin road and was part of the community but that didn’t actually live on site. We didn’t meet all of those people.”
Grace shrugged.
It was a mystery.
“Who’s going to search her?” I said.
We all exchanged glances.
Nobody wanted to touch the body.
I looked around at the burning community and suddenly it was all too much. With everything that had happened — god, was it just this morning? — at New Winnipeg and then finding Sipwesk like this. I felt a sob rise up at how much had changed since we had left.
And now finally we were back.
With the time travel bracelets fixed.
Ready to go back home to our time.
And this had to happen?
I mean, once we went home everyone that we knew here would have been dead for four hundred years. But we liked to assume that they would die of old age, in seventy or eighty years. Not the day we left — murdered.
So, I didn’t think it was an accident.
I had been avoiding speculating but now the thought had arrived front and centre in my mind.
This had Brett all over it.
Something must have happened. Maybe he had escaped. Or maybe his minions had broken him out. Or… who knew?
But I would bet a million credits that he had a hand in what had gone down here. Not that they used credits in this time. Heck, we were in Nowheresville, Canada, the year was 2020, and we were smack dab in the middle of an apocalypse — Chad’s words, not mine. Needless to say they didn’t even have money right now.
Suddenly I had a thought.
“Where’s Audrey?”
Blank expressions all around.
“I’m going to look for her,” I said and the others nodded, their faces looking the way I felt.
Desolate. Sad. Confused.
I walked over to the northern end of the community.
No Audrey.
Where the hell was she?
The fifth member of our team wasn’t in a good place lately and I was trying to keep an eye on her — make sure she felt included. I was trying to keep her from slipping even more towards her old self and her old behaviour.
The thing about Audrey is that she used to be our worst enemy. And now she’s our friend. One of my best friends.
Yeah, and is that a fucking long story.
How we had gone from worst enemies to best friends aside, I had seen some disturbing trends in her behaviour that had me wondering if she had really changed after all, or if she had just made some surface adjustments.
I hated to say it. Even in my own mind.
But she seemed to be backsliding.
And that was seriously bad news.
A cold breeze blew off the lake and made me shiver. I walked down to the shore and stood, my arms crossed, staring out across the slate grey water. The reflections of the orange flames danced on the surface as questions flooded my mind.
Why did this have to happen?
What were we going to do?
What the hell was going to happen next?
Without warning, Grace’s scream cut through the stillness.
I took off running — in motion before my brain had even processed the sound.
Oh shit.
What had happened now?
WHEN THE BODY moved, Grace let out a piercing scream that they must have heard at Pisew Falls. Of course, Shiv and I yelled too, but it likely only carried as far as the wall that Matt and his people had built around the Sipwesk community. The wall that was burning around us. I glanced over and noticed that most of it was already gone.
Whoever had started the fire maybe began with the wall?
But back to the body. It had twitched.
Twitched significantly.
That was why we had yelled.
I felt my stomach heave.
What the fuck?
Yumi came tearing up a few seconds later. Her dark hair was braided and hung over her shoulder on her chest and she had soot on her face, which somehow looked both afraid and determined at the same time. The three of us were still staring at the woman’s body. Dusk was deepening but the stark light from the burning cabin beside us lit the woman’s unnaturally pale face.
“What is it? Why did Grace scream?” Yumi said, looking frantically at each of our faces.
“It moved. The dead body moved,” Shiv said, drawing a shuddering breath. He was totally freaked. The rest of us had been on missions where people had died but he hadn’t and he was staring at the woman with eyes so wide I could see a lot of the white. He looked totally crazy. Yumi seemed to sense how terrified everyone was.
“Okay, calm down,” Yumi said, looking steadily at Grace and Shiv. “It maybe just means she’s not dead.”
As realization dawned on Gracie’s face, she dropped to the ground beside the woman. She put her hand to the woman’s neck and held still. Then she frowned.
“Jesus, you guys. You didn’t even take her pulse?”
She glared at Yumi and I.
We exchanged sheepish glances.
“They didn’t want to touch it. I don’t blame them,” Shiv said, shaking his head back and forth, his face the picture of distaste. “I wouldn’t have touched it, either.”
“Well, it’s not an it,” Grace said severely. “It’s a she. And she’s obviously badly injured. I’m going to check her out.”
Grace closed her eyes, resting her hands lightly on the woman’s arm. As I watched her use her ability, I wasn’t surprised that Grace had been called a witch in this time. Because now that I paid attention, she did look rather… unearthly.
See, we’re not only time travellers from the future, we also have mental powers. Telepathy. Telekinesis. Empathy. Manifestation. Precognition. Etc. In our time, many people have evolved a new brain structure called the ante-prefrontal cortex. It’s the part of the brain that mak
es our powers possible and it’s totally scientific. We’re all highly trained in using our abilities.
Grace is a Kinetic and Telepath. Chad and I are the most powerful telepathic Receiver and Sender, respectively, ever identified. Shiv can manifest things out of thin air, which is pretty damn cool. Audrey is a powerful Telepath, too.
Grace is trained as a Kinetic surgeon and healer, so she knows how to project her mind into someone’s body and look around. That’s how she diagnoses her patients. We waited patiently till she opened her eyes again. When she did, her face was solemn.
“She’s got a lot of serious injuries, the most dangerous is the internal bleeding. See the swelling?”
She pointed at the woman’s stomach. I had just thought she was chubby but I should have known better. No one was overweight in this time. Most people were on the verge of starving. Though as for that, this woman looked well-fed, which was unusual.
“That’s internal bleeding.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I already did but it’s been leaking slowly, probably for hours. There’s the danger that she’s lost so much blood that she doesn’t have enough red blood cells to deliver oxygen.”
I frowned.
“That sounds bad.”
“It is.
“Also, it looks like her organs will probably begin shutting down soon.”
“Shit.”
“I don’t think I can save her. If we had been here when it happened…”
“If we had been here, none of this would have happened,” Yumi’s harsh voice cut through the the conversation like a knife.
I pinned my gaze on Yumi. She was pissed. But I knew that it was at herself, that she hadn’t been able to save them all. I knew the feeling. I felt sick when I thought of all the people that lived here.
That had lived here, I reminded myself.
There was a heavy weight in my chest.
I felt responsible.
We had saved these people before. It had been difficult. People had been injured. But it had been worth it because we had saved them. And now to come back a few weeks later and find them all dead. Burned to death by some sick bastard, with no reverence for life. It was too much.
I felt some stomach acid come up in my throat and I swallowed hard to avoid puking, reminding myself that we didn’t know if they were dead or not. But if they were…