Reversion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 3)

by Jay J. Falconer

  He took inventory of the rest of his body. His left wrist was sore and tender to the touch, but other than a wicked headache and a myriad of sore spots, he thought he was okay.

  Then he remembered the Google Glasses. He checked his hand. Shit! They weren’t there! He looked up, realizing he’d lost them somewhere on his way down the mountain. Without them, he wouldn’t be able to communicate with Fuji—or return home. He thought about climbing up to recover them, but decided against it when he heard more screams and gunfire coming from the plateau above. He needed to get moving before the gunships came looking for him.

  A stand of tall, dense brush was about fifteen feet ahead of him. There was plenty of shade and cover underneath the thick foliage. He figured he could wait there until the airships finished their assault and left the area. Then he planned to find the glasses and get the hell out of there.

  He stood up to walk to the shade, but his vision blurred as vertigo took over. His feet stumbled backward, sending him falling to the ground on his ass. Walking to the shade wasn’t going to be an option. That meant crawling on his knees—one-handed because of his sore wrist—toward the shadows. It wasn’t easy or quick, but he made it just before one of the Apache war machines swooped down from the ridge above his position.

  The roar of the twin-engine monster was soon replaced by the chop of the rotors when the craft drifted overhead, sending dirt and pebbles thrashing through the air. Lucas checked to make sure his arms and legs were tucked under cover and not visible from above.

  The attack helicopter hovered slowly to the right. Lucas worried that the general’s pilots might be using the warbird’s onboard thermal imaging system to look for heat signatures. If so, they’d be able to locate him, assuming they could distinguish his heat signature from the rest of the objects baking in the desert sun. He was safe from detection while hiding under the thick brush since it would obscure his heat signature from above, but his bloody face plant and subsequent crawl through the dirt and rocks might have left a trail of differential heat—something the trained soldiers might be able to trace.

  Lucas listened closely, keeping tabs on the location and speed of the warbird as it circled around behind him.

  So far, so good, he thought.

  But then his headache and dizziness intensified, making his eyes glaze over and his body weak. A few seconds later, his face hit the sand and everything went black.

  2

  Lucas opened his eyes and waited for the floating, speckled blobs in his vision to clear. They did, but the invasive headache was still pounding inside his skull. He was lying on his back, spread eagle, in a poorly lit room with only one source of light—a small desk lamp to his left. It was in the corner, with a weak, fluttering bulb installed. His body was covered is a soft, plush garment and not the tight, stretchy fabric of the Smart Skin Suit The dim light didn’t allow him to see much, but from what feel, her was covered in a white robe.

  His breath quickened, taking in a torrent of air through his nose. Must and mold were the dominating odors, but that wasn’t all. The air was humid and thick—almost too thick—as if it were being saturated artificially, probably by the motorized device buzzing somewhere above him.

  The surface pressing against his back was rigid and at least six feet long, a fact he knew was true since neither his head nor his feet were hanging off the end. He wanted to sit up but couldn’t move his arms or legs. Something had a hold of him. He rolled his head to the left and noticed a rope around his wrist. It extended out and down, disappearing below the edge of the wood-grained surface he was on. He tried to pull his arm free, but the lashing held firm.

  The surface beneath him jiggled each time he moved. He was on a platform, probably a table, and it seemed likely the rope securing his hands was tied to the table’s legs for reinforcement.

  He tried to free himself again. This time, he summoned all his might, yanking and tugging with his good wrist and both legs in rapid fashion, hoping he could wriggle at least one of them free. He couldn’t. The rope was too strong, threatening to tear at his skin.

  A second later, he heard the strike of a match near his feet and saw flickers of flame bouncing off the ceiling. He craned his neck to look down across his body. The shimmering face of a young Asian girl looked back at him, brought forth from the shadows by the burn of a ten-inch matchstick. Her smile was stunning.

  “You really need to keep still. Otherwise, you’ll injure yourself further,” she said before the match completed its initial high-intensity burn.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, feeling his chest tighten and blood pressure rise.

  She didn’t answer, giving him a slight grin with her dark eyes locked onto his.

  “Where am I? Why am I tied up?”

  “I’ll answer all your questions. But for now, I need you to relax and remain calm,” she said, walking to the right side of the table with the flaming match in hand. The slender woman was dressed in a black t-shirt and pants with a duty belt around her waist. Her camo-style headband was pushed up high on her forehead, puffing up the jet-black stands of hair along the front.

  She stood with the burning match next to his knee, which was swollen to the size of a football. There were at least two dozen needles sticking out of his kneecap—each with a brown-colored ball the size of a marble stuck on the end.

  “Holy shit!” he said, remembering the impact with the cactus during his tumble down the mountain.

  “I was able to remove the spines, but then I discovered something else—two fang marks.”

  “A snake?”

  “That would be my first guess.”

  “Then you need to get me to a hospital, now!”

  “Sorry, that’s not possible. The nearest hospital is more than a day’s walk—you’d never survive the trip. You’re too weak. Besides, a hospital won’t be necessary. I lanced the area and was able to extract most of the venom. It took some effort, but I managed to remove the dead and discolored tissue. I’m pretty sure I got it all,” she said, lighting one of the needle balls with the match.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked with eyes wide.

  “Apply treatment. First we heat, then we treat.”

  “Treatment?”

  She nodded, lighting the rest of the balls. “Ancient family remedy.”

  “Hey, I appreciate the help, but I need real a real doctor, not this mumbo-jumbo crap. You need to call nine-one-one!”

  “Like I said, that’s not possible.”

  “Well, make it possible. I’m dying here!”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “You have to do something!”

  “Look. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I found you in the desert, and you’re still here. Plus, there’s no telling how long you were lying there before I found you. Your fever has broken and your vitals are getting stronger. So, I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine. We just need to continue treatment.”

  “Twenty-four hours?”

  “Yes, and let me say, you’ve been a real handful. Vomiting, violent seizures, hysteria. I’m guessing, since we’re having a normal conversation, you’re feeling better?”

  “That all depends on what your definition of normal is.”

  “Normal is normal. What else is there?”

  Lucas didn’t want to spar with her. “I don’t know, but my head’s frickin’ killing me.”

  “You may have a grade-three concussion. The gashes on your face were pretty severe. I had to use almost thirty stitches to close them up. I did what I could with the sutures, but I’m afraid you’ll probably have some nasty cheek scars.”

  “Trust me, I’m used to that. I just wish my heart would stop racing.”

  “It’ll slow down once your anxiety lessens.”

  He hesitated, letting his heart rate slow a bit. “You could start by untying me.”

  “Not yet. I want to make sure you don’t freak out again. My kidney can’t take any more rights.”

&nb
sp; “I hit you?”

  “Couple times.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  She finished lighting the last needle ball. “No worries. It’s understandable, given the circumstances. But you can see why I don’t want to untie you quite yet.”

  “Yeah, I do. But trust me, it won’t happen again. I give you my word,” he told her in his most sincere voice, peering down at his right hand. He didn’t see any swelling along his knuckles as expected, making him wonder if she was telling the truth about the punches. He thought about brining it up, but decided against it. She seemed calm at the moment and he didn’t want to upset her. Until she untied him, he was at her mercy and needed to choose his words carefully.

  He turned his thoughts to the mission. “If I’ve been here a day, that means that today is—”

  “Friday, December twenty-first.”

  “Yeah, 2012,” he added, realizing that the first window of opportunity to change the past was fast approaching. His other self and Drew would soon be prepping to run the antigravity experiment in their lab tonight. “I really need to go. I can’t be here right now.”

  “You’re not going anywhere with that knee.”

  “Look, I appreciate the concern, but I have something important I need to do. Lives depend on it.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’ll have to wait.”

  He was trapped, with no leverage to debate the issue. A super-hot Asian chick had him strapped to a table and was performing Zen-level voodoo crap on his knee. He needed to know more about her. Was he at the mercy of some wacko, or was she really trying to help?

  “Am I a prisoner?”

  “No, but if you leave now, you run the risk of a serious infection, and I can’t allow that. I know you said lives are at stake, and even if that’s true, you need to rest and let yourself heal. You can’t help anyone right now, not until you’re better. Then we’ll talk about what comes next.”

  Lucas let his head drop back to the table, exhaling. “This is unbelievable.”

  “Patience,” she said. “Let the medicine work. It won’t take long.”

  “What type of treatment is this?”

  “One designed for a snakebite. Once the healing medicine has been ignited, it works its way down through the needles and into your immune system, releasing powerful antibodies and other healing magic.”

  “Sounds like antivenom. Or should I say, magic antivenom.”

  “Something like that. Now relax. You’ll be able to free climb in a few days, once the swelling dissipates.”

  Free climb? Where did she get that from? Lucas thought about it for a moment, then remembered what he was wearing when he fell off the cliff. The Smart Skin Suit might look like some type of uniform to her. Possibly even mountain climber’s garb. She must have undressed him while he was unconscious and slipped on the white robe he was wearing.

  “Where was I when you found me?”

  “Under a stand of scrub oak, in a dry wash near the edge of a cliff. Not far from the Catalina Mountains. You were pretty dehydrated.”

  “And my clothes?”

  She pointed to the left. “I’ve never seen a climbing suit like that before.”

  He could see the gold and black material hanging over a chair. “Can I see it?”

  She went to the chair and returned with the suit in her hands. She held it up, just beyond the blaze of the needle balls. There was a section missing from the right knee.

  “What happened to it?”

  “I had to cut a chunk of it off in order to treat you.”

  “It’s ruined,” Lucas said, realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to return home, not without the nano-wire circuitry intact. The suit wouldn’t be able to form a stable connection with Fuji’s Incursion Chamber. Not with a hole in it.

  “Where’s the piece you cut out? Maybe I can mend it,” Lucas said.

  “It was full of blood and puss. I burned it. It was a biohazard.”

  “Damn it!” he snapped, knowing he was stuck in the past.

  Then an idea popped into his brain. Even if this incursion failed, he could have Fuji from the future tweak his calculations and send him back a few days earlier. That way he could avoid the general’s ambush on the mountain and probably not suck in the other Lucas copies. Of course, his plan assumed he’d arrive early enough to avoid the blowback ripples in time.

  But there was another choice. Fuji had preprogrammed a series of Anchor Points into the incursion system, each an important date from Lucas’ past. This trip was the first of those Anchor Points, and the most recent of them all. Those that remained were further back on the timeline and targeted pivotal events from his own history.

  Before he could do anything, he needed to find the Google Glasses before their battery ran out of juice. He ran a quick calculation in his head—about seven days of power remained. Plenty of time to let his leg recover and then make contact with Fuji on the distant Earth outpost, Eutopia-3. Once he did, the brilliant monk should be able to walk him through repairing the suit. If he was lucky, there might be some fabric pieces lying on top of the mountain that he could use as a patch.

  “I was wearing some special glasses when I fell. You didn’t happen to see them lying around somewhere, did you?”

  “No, sorry,” she said, putting the suit back in the corner. “You might want to think about wearing something white next time. Dark colors are dangerous in the Sonoran Desert.”

  “So we’re still in Southern Arizona.”

  “Yes, northeast of Tucson. This is my home.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “I carried you.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes, luckily for me, you’re skinny. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Still, that’s damn impressive,” he said needing to know more about her. Where was she from? Why was she helping him? The list of things he didn’t know about this Good Samaritan was long, but he didn’t want to press her. Not yet, anyway.

  She bent her arm at ninety degrees and curled her fist to show off her bicep. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  Lucas nodded, watching her egg-shaped muscle bulge at the seams of her tiny arm. It was laced with veins sticking out along the skin—a smaller, more sculptured version of Drew’s arm muscles after a couple hundred push-ups. She was strong and in fabulous shape, that much was clear. At five foot nothing, she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Then he noticed her dark tank top and how well it fit her petite figure. Her jet-black, shoulder-length hair was clean and shiny, and she wore very little makeup. Not that she needed any; she was a natural beauty. Her skin was flawless and porcelain white.

  He let his eyes drift down across her toned body, taking in every curve along her jaw-dropping physique.

  Get a grip, he scolded himself. This is no time to be thinking about sex.

  Now that all the needle balls were lit and flaming at full intensity, he could see more of the room than before. He saw at least thirty five-gallon containers stacked along the wall to the right. Each blue plastic receptacle had the same three letters written on it with black magic marker ink: H2O. Plus a date: 12/1/2012.

  A faded, three-foot-square U-Haul moving box was standing with its open end next to the water canisters. The feathered ends of at least a hundred arrows were sticking out the top of the container. He counted four flights that looked pristine, but the rest were tattered and dirty. A pair of full-size compound hunting bows were leaning against the wall next to the arrows, along with an impressive-looking, camouflage-colored crossbow. A bulletproof vest hung on a hook to the left of the bows, just above six stacks of Mountain House #10 food storage cans. There was even a smattering of feminine products such as tampons and pads.

  He studied the concrete walls. There was a hatch-style door behind the girl. He thought about the lack of natural light, the musty air, and the rectangular, metal device attached to the ceiling that was pumping in air through a series of
vents. He was in a bunker.

  “Are you a prepper?” he asked.

  “I’m a survivalist. I prefer to live off the grid. Can’t trust the government these days. They have eyes and ears everywhere.”

  “Everywhere, huh?” he said, holding back a roll of the eyes.

  “Yeah, everywhere. Plus, they send boots out here to sweep there area twice a month. Sometimes fighter jets, too. Almost caught me a couple of times.”

  He realized the paranoia was thick with this chick. Time to change the subject. “So, I take it we’re underground?”

  “Yes and no. We’re inside a mountain.”

  “How deep?”

  “Two hundred twelve feet.”

  Lucas was starting to hate that number. It seemed like every time he turned around in the past couple months, that number was staring him in the face. He coughed. “Is it safe?”

  “Yes, as long as the ventilation system is working properly. I’ve been living here for several years without a hitch.”

  “By yourself?”

  “I’m waiting for my dad to return from his hunting trip.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  She hesitated, looking up at the ceiling. “Two years, eleven days.”

  “Seriously?” Lucas said. Obviously, she was a little nuts. Gorgeous, but nuts. Not that he could blame her. After all, she was living alone in the middle of the desert, in some doomsday bunker buried deep inside a mountain. Anyone would go nuts in a place like that. Eventually, even the walls would start to talk.

  Still, being a recluse didn’t change the facts: she was just another big bag of crazy. What kind of person thinks their father is coming home from a hunting trip when he’s been gone for two years? A delusional person, that’s what kind.

  He cleared his throat, buying time to choose his next set of words carefully. He wanted to gain information, but didn’t want to upset her. Right now she wasn’t agitated and he wanted to keep it that way. He needed to probe but don’t pry, letting her feel like she was steering the conversation.

  “That’s a long time. It’s possible something might have happened to him.”