Reversion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 3)

by Jay J. Falconer

  Then, the endless nose bleed would start as his mucous membranes dried out and cracked open. Finally, his brain would shrink and seize from a lack of water, sending him into a coma with intense convulsions as his metabolic processes broke down. When death arrived, it would be served with a major heart arrhythmia and the dark aftermath.

  The lights across the floor flickered for a moment, then blinked out, plunging the holding cells into darkness. He heard a two-second squeak of metal, telling him the door leading into the security area had just opened, probably a few inches by the sound of it. He tried to detect movement through the blackness but couldn’t see anything.

  “Hello?” he said, waiting for someone to answer him back. There was no response. “Starling, is that you?”

  The emergency lighting system kicked on in the hallway beyond the door, providing a halo of red-colored light. He squinted, checking to see if anyone appeared. No one did. The door moved again, opening wider with the slow screech of its complaining hinges. Lucas took a step back from the containment glass.

  A figure jumped through the opening and crouched inside, like a commando entering an unsecured room. The light from the hallway backlit the person, showing a silhouette.

  Lucas couldn’t see the person’s face, but the visitor was short and wiry. Possibly a teenager. The figure’s head turned from side to side, revealing shoulder-length hair, the distinct outline of a gas mask, and something jutting out from the area around the eyes. Lucas thought it was a woman wearing night vision goggles. Maybe five-foot-four inches tall, carrying something in one hand. Lucas swallowed and stayed silent.

  The shadow took a step forward, checked its wrist, removed the goggles and gas mask, then stopped again, remaining in a squat. A dim light appeared in the person’s hand. It was an LCD screen on a device. Lucas caught a glimpse of the stranger’s face. It wasn’t a woman or teenager. It was a man. Wrinkled and aged. Asian, with long, stringy black hair that desperately needed to spend an hour with a brush.

  The man ran to Lucas’ cell and spoke. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Huh?” Lucas said, rubbing his baldness out of habit. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Where are the others?”

  “What others? Look around, do you see anyone else?”

  “You’re a Ramsay, right? Part of the insurgents. Where are the others? There’s not much time.”

  “As I said, I’m here alone. They killed the others. Tortured them first, and made me watch them die. Who are you?”

  “You’ll have to do, then,” the man said, taking something from his pocket. It was a tall, slender container, maybe half an inch in diameter and three inches tall. He popped its lid off, showing a button trigger at the top. He brought the canister up and aimed it forward at the upper right edge of the door, pressing the trigger button to release the contents. After coating the first hinge, he moved to the other hinges.

  The man stepped back when the trio of hinges began to smolder red and then melt in long drips of smoking material. Seconds later, the door’s weight took over and broke itself free, sending it crashing to the ground. It toppled inward, landing at Lucas’ feet.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” the short man asked.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who the hell you are and what you want from me.”

  “I’m Riku. I’m here to rescue you.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “We don’t have time for this. We need to leave. Now!”

  Lucas didn’t move.

  “Look, I took a huge risk coming down here. It won’t be long before they realize someone cut the power and gassed the guards. Do you want to get out of here or not?”

  Lucas stepped on the severed door and walking across its surface. “Why are you helping me?”

  Riku grabbed Lucas by the arm and dragged him forward.

  Lucas didn’t like being manhandled and reacted, jerking his arm away.

  Riku turned, craning his neck to make eye contact. “The soldiers are going to recover soon and we need to be gone.”

  “Recover from what?”

  “A little something I cooked up in the lab when they weren’t hovering over me, watching my every move.”

  “Aerosol gas?”

  Riku smiled.

  “What is it with you people?” Lucas asked, not expecting an answer. He decided to deck the guy and get away on his own. He raised his fist and was about to strike, but Riku stepped back with both hands up and away from his body.

  Lucas stopped his punch. He didn’t know why, but he did. There was something in Riku’s expression—a calmness. No, that’s not right. It was something else. Sincerity.

  Riku’s voice was smooth and controlled. “I’m not one of them. I’m a prisoner and a scientist, like you. I’ve been held against my will for two years, forced to work on Starling’s tactical projects. The distraction of your capture gave me the opportunity to launch my escape plan. I was hoping there’d be more than one of you remaining, but it is what it is. I’ll answer all your questions, but first we need to get moving. Can we do that?”

  Lucas nodded, sensing Riku spoke the truth. He took a step forward as Riku turned and ran through the door. Lucas followed, struggling to keep pace with the old man. Riku was fast, damn fast, leading Lucas down the first hallway.

  Riku stopped at the first corner and leaned around the wall, the looked back. “All clear,” he whispered.

  “What about the gas?”

  “In an air-controlled environment like this, its effect dissipates in just under seven minutes. We’re safe. Try not to step on anyone. We don’t need them regaining consciousness before we make our escape. I’d like to make it home to my family in one piece,” Riku said, leading the way through the next corridor. This time, he moved slower, with his back against the wall, making it easier for Lucas to keep up. Riku stepped over two bodies lying close to the wall.

  “A prisoner for two years?” Lucas asked in a soft voice, running through the facts he’d just heard. “Any kids?”

  “Yeah. A boy and girl. They must think I ran off or I’m dead by now,” Riku answered, working his way in and out of the light emanating from a series of emergency lights mounted along the walls. “The future rarely holds true. Not when actions are predicated on lies from the past.”

  Lucas let the tiny man’s words ferment in his thoughts, hoping they’d come together and make sense as seconds flew by, but they didn’t. Just more random insanity from an ever-growing list of nut jobs.

  He wondered how Riku knew about the other copies, then his mind shifted and replayed the string of odd comments Starling had made earlier. His statements about overestimating the number of holding cells needed and telling him about the rubber spray of red and his destiny in opposition.

  At the time, he thought it was pure gibberish, but now he was starting to wonder if it was some type of prognostication. Everything about Starling and his choice of words was more than a little off. His beard. The hat. The glasses. His mannerisms. The phrases he used. The inconsistent limp.

  The lies of the past? The future rarely holds true?

  Riku’s comments brought in new revelation. He was now starting to think Starling knew the Lucas copies were coming to breach the facility and he’d been waiting for the event to happen, trying to keep a low profile for some reason. It was also possible that Starling knew the copies were about to arrive on the mountaintop and had alerted Alvarez, which is why the gunships showed up almost immediately upon the group’s arrival.

  He stayed low behind Riku and took a couple deep breaths while he worked through the rest of it in his head. Hundreds of copies of the same person had been yanked to this universe, each with slightly different histories and physical characteristics, though he didn’t get a chance to verify many of their backgrounds, not before this timeline’s version of General Alvarez had opened fire and butchered most of them.

  Yet, despite all the copies of himself, he was the only cop
y who was bald. A genetic anomaly? Or was it something else? He didn’t know, but at least he had all his body parts and his youth. He couldn’t say the same thing about some of the others that shared his DNA across space-time, though history had changed each of them to fit its undisclosed purpose.

  The copy he’d seen standing alone in front of the group wearing the extra eye tech was most likely responsible for bringing them here, to this place and time. Made sense, he thought—the tech. That’s the piece he needed. If it brought them all here, then maybe it could send them all home, too. He just needed to find that version of himself, assuming he was still alive. He decided to call the man Lucas Prime. The one responsible for everything.

  Then Lucas remembered the copy of himself that had been yanked away moments before the helicopters started gunning them all down. That’s it, he told himself as an idea came unbidden into his thoughts. The copy pulled into the sky—he must have been yanked back in time. Suddenly, all the pieces lined up.

  “Starling’s one of us. A Lucas, I mean. The one that disappeared when we first arrived.”

  “So, that’s when it happened,” Riku said in a matter-of-fact way.

  “That’s how he knew. He was sent back in time. Right?”

  Riku nodded. “I knew you’d put it together, eventually. The universe is correcting itself, realigning events and redeploying matter to compensate.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “It’s called investigative research. You remember what that is, right?”

  “Yeah. But that still doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t let General Alvarez finish me off. Why torture and kill everyone but me?”

  “I wasn’t sure, either. However, now that we know when Starling was sent back, we can extrapolate from there and try to determine his end game.”

  Lucas agreed. “If we’re correct, then all Starling knows is we arrive as a group on the mountain, then he goes back. Anything after that moment in time would be undiscovered territory to him.”

  “It’s pretty clear. He wants you alive.”

  “Or, he had a change of heart.”

  “I doubt compassion or guilt is part of his DNA.”

  “No, I suppose it’s not. Not after everything he’s done.”

  “One thing I can guarantee you is that Starling has a plan. He wanted you locked up down here for a reason, so I’m breaking you out. Seems like the logical thing to do. Screw him and his plans.”

  Lucas nodded, letting the revelation of Starling’s identity soak in as they continued their escape, making their way down another hallway. “It does explain the mustache, sunglasses, and hat. He’s hiding his identity, knowing we were going to appear on the mountain, and didn’t want everyone to know who he really is. But why build eleven holding cells and then let the general take most of us out?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t expect Protocol 5 to work. Or, he figured you’d talk sooner, leaving more of your crew alive.”

  Another corner came and went, taking them into another corridor. “I can see why you’d think that, but if he went back in time immediately after our arrival, how could he have known to do any of this? No, it just doesn’t fit. Besides, he got off on the torture just as much as Alvarez. I could see it in his eyes. I know that look, trust me,” Lucas said, taking more time to think. And, why would he tell me about the red rubber of destiny and all that crap? Just random gibberish? Or is something supposed to happen in the future?

  “Maybe someone else traveled back and ran into Starling in the past, filling him in on the details he missed. We can’t assume the universe will make only one correction.”

  Lucas nodded. “Then, that person must be me. Yes, that’s it. It would explain why he stopped the general and wanted me alive.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “He needed me to survive in order to bring back the info he needed to set a course to his future. It’s what leads up to this point. Without it, the past he knows never happens and his empire never builds.”

  “Damn, I never thought of that. Well done.”

  “At least now I know I survive all this. Or at least I did the first time around.”

  “That was quite a gamble then with the Apaches.”

  “He must have instructed Alvarez to let me live,” Lucas said, rubbing his head. Then he smiled. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank God I’m bald. This dome is pretty easy to spot from the air.”

  27

  Several hours later, Lucas paced the floor in Griffith’s lab with Masago following, stopping occasionally to bend his knee and test the integrity of the Smart Skin Suit. Every time he did, he expected Griffith’s patch job to rip loose, but it held secure and conformed to his body just as it should. In fact, if he hadn’t already known about the repair, he wouldn’t have been able to tell. Griffith’s work was impeccable, using an impromptu micro-fusing technique to connect and blend the nano-pathways masterfully between the original material and the new piece.

  “Well?” Masago asked, holding Lucas’ street clothes over her arm. “How is it?”

  “I’m impressed,” Lucas said, then looked at Griffith. “Well done, Grif. Just like new.”

  Masago smiled. “You look like an Olympic bobsledder. A sexy bobsledder.”

  Griffith laughed.

  “Don’t encourage her,” Lucas said, squinting at him.

  “Is that what it feels like when you travel through time? A bobsled racing down a hill?” she asked in a playful voice.

  “No, not exactly. It’s hard to explain, but imagine every cell in your body being warmed and tickled from the inside. Then you feel nothing but an overwhelming sense of awe as your awareness grows to infinity and beyond. It’s a total mind-blowing rush. It’s nothing I could have ever imagined.”

  She tilted her head. “Like you’re floating up to heaven?”

  Lucas walked back to the group. “Not floating, and certainly not to heaven. More like your body and your soul are melting into cold energy. Then you’re liquefied and spread across space-time like butter on warm toast. It’s the strangest feeling.”

  “Like I said, heaven.”

  “I guess, maybe. Right before you arrive on the other end, your body feels like it’s nowhere and everywhere at the same time.”

  Masago nodded. “Sounds amazing.”

  Kleezebee cleared his throat. “What’s next?”

  Lucas looked at Griffith. “We need to get the glasses working and test the connection, then we’ll know.”

  Masago brushed one foot back and forth on the lab floor. “That’s when you’ll be able to talk to the future?”

  Lucas nodded. “I was able to before. No reason to think I can’t again, as long as the Grif continues to work his magic.”

  Griffith spoke without looking up from the glasses he was inspecting on the worktable. “Our instruments and knowledge are woefully inadequate for this type of technology. I’ve never seen such complex nanopower structures as these. There has to be thousands of individual chambers involved, each needing a fluid charge reset. I don’t know where to begin and even if I did, it’s going to take a while.”

  Lucas put his hand on Griffith’s shoulder, squeezing it twice. “You’re doing fine. You fixed the suit, didn’t you?”

  “You’re in my light.”

  “Sorry,” Lucas said, stepping away.

  “Who’d you say built this?” Griffith asked.

  “A man I know in the future. We call him Master Fuji.”

  “He’s my great-great-great-grandson,” Masago blurted out. “My family’s greatest achievement.”

  “I think you missed a few greats in there, babe.”

  She shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

  “His name is Master Fuji. He created the Smart Skin Suit and came up with the physics for the Incursion Chamber,” Lucas said, turning to face Kleezebee. “You built the device with him, and I became the guinea pig. All thanks to the knowledge gleaned by tapping into the Akashic Field.”

&n
bsp; Kleezebee seemed to ignore the reference. He leaned over Griffith’s shoulder. “Since it’s a free-flowing graphene core, I’d start by trying to identify the root cell. It’s possible that resetting its charge may start a downstream reaction, rectifying the electron flow across the entire power core. You may not need to reset each of them individually.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea,” Griffith said. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s so simple.”

  “Sometime the easiest solution is the hardest to find,” Lucas said, staring at Kleezebee. It was one of the professor’s favorite sayings from the future and he hoped it might surprise the man or provoke a reaction.

  Kleezebee didn’t flinch, never taking his eyes from Griffith. “I’m guessing this is a derivative technology, loosely based on lithium-sulfur technology, am I right?”

  Griffith nodded. “Loosely would be the operative word.”

  “What better substance to use than liquid graphene? The possibilities are endless, especially if the configuration was utilized like a supercapacitor and deployed with a high-efficiency ion transfer network. The electron mobility would be off the chart.”

  “What made you think of it, Professor?” Masago asked.

  “It just came to me. I knew there had to be an efficient mechanism in place to recharge the system. That’s how I would have designed it. Otherwise, it’d be a one-use device. Why go through all the trouble to invent an entirely new power system and not be able to use it repeatedly? The discharge of energy works the same way, regardless of the battery configuration or the power core. Just the nano-materials have changed.”

  “Bingo!” Griffith said, standing up from his work stool as the glasses lit up on the table.

  “Already?” Lucas snapped, picking the glasses up from the surface.

  Griffith grinned, showing his crooked teeth. “The professor was spot-on. Once I determined the liquid representation of the anodes for each cell, I was able to trace its nano-circuitry back to the root cell. All but one of them had, for the lack of a better term, leads running in and out of it. Only one was missing the incoming connection—the root cell. Granted, this is an oversimplified explanation, but since time is of the essence, let’s just leave it at that.”