Losing Time (Lost Time, Book 1): A Time Travel Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  "Reformed?" he asked, looking faintly aghast.

  "My twin sister is named Carolyn Abigail," I explained, enjoying his reaction.

  "Ah," he murmured. "I think I might understand 'Mouse' better now.”

  I attempted to smile, but I wasn't sure if it reached my eyes. I missed Carrie.

  "And the handcuffs...Mimi?" I did smile then. Of course, he was too uptight to use “Mouse."

  "Launch Pad 39A.”

  "Nothing in the data banks," Hoffman supplied. "Whatever transpired was either mended or was kept quiet.”

  "Orion was in its infancy," the boss said.

  I rolled my eyes at the mental moniker I'd assigned him and said, "Er, what's your name?”

  He blinked. Then nothing.

  "He's Hoffman." I nodded at the man in question. "She's Groves." Same head nod for the woman. "You're their boss." Another nod, this time to him.

  He smiled. "You picked that up rather quickly. What else have you learned?”

  "That you're dodging the question.”

  "Oh snap!" Hoffman muttered under his breath, but we all heard him. Groves chuckled, then looked mortified that she'd made a sound. And the bossman scowled.

  It looked good on him.

  I raised an eyebrow when his gaze returned to mine.

  "Jack Evans," he said. "Surgeon," he added and winced.

  Hoffman did snort at that.

  "For NASA?" I asked. "And they put you in command? I thought surgeons were specialists only. Can you fly too?”

  "Ah," Jack Evans, Surgeon, replied. "That's all rather irrelevant, right now. What we need to know is more about this..." He shot a look at Hoffman, who offered a wide grin in reply. "Bomb," Evans said with a sigh. "More about the bomb, Miss Wylde, if you please.”

  I looked at Hoffman and then at Evans and finally flicked a glance towards Groves. All three blinked owlishly back at me.

  "Where have you been?" I said slowly. Groves smiled sympathetically. Hoffman remained mute, but there was a softening around the eyes.

  Evans said, "Consider us new arrivals, Miss Wylde. We were...in transit and missed all the action.”

  "In transit from where?" I pressed. Something wasn't right.

  "That's classified," Evans offered. I flicked a glance at Hoffman, but he wasn't scoffing this time.

  "Classified, huh?" I murmured. "Just tell me one thing, did Special Agents Dawson or Carter put you up to this?”

  "NSA and FBI, respectively," Hoffman said quietly, reading off his tablet screen.

  "I guess not, huh?" I whispered.

  "Miss Wylde," Evans started.

  "Mimi," I offered, feeling so very tired all of a sudden. I guess there's a limit to how much confusion a body can take. I'd reached mine. "Or Mouse, if you've got the courage," I added, stifling a yawn.

  Evans smiled. It looked good on him.

  "It's been a rather long day, I would assume,” he murmured quietly. "You look exhausted." I was.

  I started to lean over to the side. Evans stood from his chair, rummaged around inside a cabinet, and then produced a fluffy white pillow and soft brown blanket. With infinite care, he made me comfortable.

  "Sweet dreams, little mouse," he whispered, and I started to drift.

  "What the bloody hell has happened, Jack?" I heard Hoffman ask softly, his words distant but still audible, in that space between sleep and wakefulness.

  "Origin Events tend to unpredictable," Evans replied, his voice a lot closer still.

  "I thought we established this rip was farther back in linear time," Groves argued.

  "And have you forgotten the existence of temporal paradoxes, Miss Groves?" Evans asked.

  "No, sir. But I still don't understand. The OE did not happen in 1969. Even if it did happen right here. I realise there is a connection, but why her?”

  The blanket shifted, getting tucked in tighter as though I was a child on a soft bed, not a hostage on the floor of what had looked suspiciously like a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

  "Because," Evans murmured, "I suspect she is the Origin Event.”

  “Bloody hell," Hoffman muttered.

  “Bloody hell, indeed," Evans agreed, his voice moving farther away.

  It was only as sleep finally took me that I realised he hadn't undone the cuffs. He didn't trust me. Even though he'd tucked me in as though he cared.

  The sound of metal rattled insistently throughout my dreamless sleep.

  That and the deathly quiet of space flight.

  But There’s Always A First

  Jack

  She looked beautiful while she slept. Even forced to do so at such an odd angle. Those cuffs needed to come off, but the commander in me prevented such a concession. If this woman was the cause of the original Origin Event, then she could be anyone. Anything. On any side.

  Not necessarily on ours.

  She didn’t sound Russian. But then neither did Sergei, really. And we all knew that Sergei had been particularly good at recruitment in the beginning. How else had he managed to steal Orion?

  “Is she snoring?” Rafe asked.

  “If it’s her first time travelling via MPCV then you’d expect her to be tired,” Groves offered.

  “Who’s to say it’s her first time,” I murmured, still unable to look away from our visitor.

  “You can’t be serious,” Groves demanded. That managed to garner my attention. From the moment Miss Groves had greeted me, she’d been more a mouse than Mimi.

  Mimi. What a ridiculous name. Mimi Blossom. I almost wanted to laugh.

  “And you are naïve, if you believe everything that you see, Miss Groves,” I advised the Novitiate.

  “You suspect she’s a plant?” Rafe queried.

  “I’m not sure what to think,” I admitted, returning my inspection to the sleeping woman. “Miss Groves,” I said suddenly. “Please turn out her pockets.”

  It was undoubtedly best if I didn’t touch her. I could still feel the softness of her skin from my dream.

  “Y..you want me to search her?” Groves asked, voice high with alarm.

  “Would you rather I did it?” I pressed.

  “But…”

  “Just do as he says, Sally,” Rafe offered quietly, his eyes on my face and neither woman. I arched an eyebrow at him. He raised me one in return.

  Groves moved forward and started going through the woman’s pockets, drawing the attention to the tightness of Mimi’s jeans. They might as well have been painted on. I looked away, and Rafe chuckled. Gladly, I turned my scowl on him.

  “There’s a wallet, sir,” Groves advised after a few seconds. I accepted the purse and started to open it.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” Groves muttered. I didn’t bother reprimanding her; I could see Rafe giving her a purposeful stare. The mousey Miss Groves retreated to her own seat and stayed quiet.

  “New Zealand Driver’s License,” I said, pulling out her identity card which placed the woman’s age at twenty-five. If it and she were to be believed. “The name matches.”

  “You mean she wasn’t lying about Mimi Blossom?” Rafe asked with obvious humour.

  “That’s if the license is real.”

  Rafe grunted in reply. I was guessing he wanted to believe her. But believing Miss Wylde meant she’d somehow been caught up in our flight path, and that was definitely something new.

  “Say she isn’t lying,” I said. “Then how do you explain her existence?”

  “I can’t,” Rafe admitted. “But you said it yourself; Origin Events are unpredictable.”

  “I haven’t read about this type of thing happening before,” Groves offered.

  I shook my head. “It hasn’t.”

  “Then let’s break it down,” Rafe said, turning his chair away from the main screens and looking at the woman. We all were now. And still, she slept the sleep of a newly minted Novitiate after their first trip through Time. “It’s the biggest OE we’ve ever faced. Which would lead you to think the rip is more exten
sive than any we’ve encountered before, too.”

  “Which would lead to the conclusion that the nebulous power required to travel to this plane point was extensive, as well,” I added.

  “Which could lead to this,” Rafe finished, waving a hand towards Mimi.

  “But how? Why her?”

  “What about the bomb?” Miss Groves asked reluctantly.

  “Now you want to talk about explosives?” Rafe teased. She offered a small smile.

  “She did act as though she’d been accused of setting a bomb off inside the VAB,” Groves offered. “Something must have happened prior to our arrival. She was already in handcuffs.”

  I lifted my gaze to the Novitiate. “Valid point, Miss Groves. Perhaps the tear we’re chasing?”

  “My thoughts exactly, sir,” Groves stated, becoming more animated as the conversation evolved. “What if this isn’t a natural Event. What if this has been manufactured by someone.”

  “By the girl?” Rafe asked, staring down at the sleeping woman with new eyes.

  “No,” Groves whispered. “I was thinking more along the lines of…”

  “Our opposition,” I finished for her. Miss Groves was developing into a very nice addition to the RATS team, I was thinking. “The reason why we’re keeping her handcuffed.”

  “No, sir,” Groves insisted. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then what exactly do you mean, Miss Groves?” I asked pleasantly. She paled. Perhaps my pleasant wasn’t for everyone.

  “Well,” she licked her lips, eyes darting around the MPCV, then coming to rest reluctantly on me.

  There it was. The courage I thought she’d been lacking. Maybe there was hope for the mousey Miss Groves after all.

  “Well,” she repeated, lifting her chin. “I’ve been reading a lot about causal loops and how some scientists believe the loop is in fact not closed.”

  “The very definition of a loop is closure,” I pointed out. “Retrocausality cannot occur unless event one causes event two, which was the original cause of event one.”

  “And you wonder why we’re considered crazy,” Rafe muttered.

  “Yes, sir,” Groves agreed, whether to Rafe or myself, I couldn’t tell. “But there is an argument that some loops can become…warped. That if a bulge or warping of the loop occurs, not only does event one cause event two, but it can also cause event one-point-one, which may interfere with the creation of event two.”

  “What’s that now?” Rafe demanded. “She’s lost me.”

  “Hence the reason why you’ve still not progressed to Surgeon,” I offered with a softening smile. He just rolled his eyes at me.

  I returned my attention to the very surprising Miss Groves.

  “Valid point again, Miss Groves,” I conceded. “But if we are dealing with a warped, as you put it, causal loop, then how do you explain the original rip we’re responding to? If event two has in fact been altered by the creation of event one-point-one.” I indicated the sleeping form of the woman on our Vehicle floor. Or the sleeping form of event one-point-one.

  “Temporal paradox, sir,” she said with a crooked smile. “The Origin Event didn’t occur until Miss Wylde entered the equation.”

  Rafe groaned, but my mind began to spin with possibilities. That was the problem with time travel; it could unravel and create an absolute mess in your head. Temporal paradoxes were not linear. That’s why they were called loops. But a malfunctioning loop was an altogether different beast. A malfunctioning loop had an infinite number of possible outcomes.

  I glanced towards the sinusoid on the main screen. If it had altered since we’d picked up our unexpected cargo, I couldn’t see it. Or perhaps, as Groves insisted, the sine wave was already perfected despite the event not yet occurring, because event two could only exist in its current form if event one-point-one did.

  Chicken and egg analogies had nothing on temporal science.

  I let out a frustrated breath of air. “It still doesn’t explain how she just happened to appear in our Vehicle.”

  “It doesn’t have to, sir,” Groves pointed out. “She’s as much a part of the rip as we are now.” She paused, the hesitation making her head tilt to one side as she considered her next words. “Of course, there is one other theory.”

  Rafe’s groan was louder this time. We both ignored him.

  Groves looked down at the woman, a small crease marring her brow.

  “What if there was an event one-point-one-point-one?”

  Silence. It was quite stunning. MPCVs were not known for their peaceable atmospheres.

  “Why would you say that?” Rafe finally asked, in all honesty, sounding quite miffed at the possibility.

  “To explain why she is here.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t necessary,” I pointed out, just to encourage her thought processes. She might well have been on to something, and part of commanding a training mission was to aid the Novitiates to think.

  “Well,” she said again. “The rip was caused by something. Be it natural or not. And we’ve never experienced anything like this.” She indicated the woman still sleeping. “So, could it be possible that we’re caught up in a new type of causal loop? Or even two causal loops intersecting?”

  “Two loops would mean two Miss Wyldes,” I said, and then stilled. “Didn’t she mention a sister?”

  Rafe turned back to the computer and entered a command. A few taut seconds later Mimi’s voice came over the speakers.

  “And now she's gone. And none of you even care.”

  “The bomb,” Rafe muttered.

  “The hole in the VAB,” I added. I looked down at the handcuffs on Mimi’s wrists, noting for the first time the hint of abrasion beneath. I bit back a curse. “Get those off, would you, Dr Hoffman.”

  “Of course, sir,” he said and moved without delay to our tool cupboard. They’d have to be cut, but Rafe had a steady hand with the laser.

  “Two loops,” I said, pondering the significance of this discovery.

  “Have you ever come across that on one of your rodeos…sir?”

  I smiled at Groves. I was beginning to like the girl.

  “No, Miss Groves, I have not. But there’s always a first.”

  Doctor

  Mimi

  I was dreaming. And he was in it. But he wasn’t wearing a NASA jumpsuit. In fact, he was wearing very little at all. I struggled to get a fuller picture, but like with so many dreams, it was abstract in parts. Realistic in others. The part where he was wearing no shirt and flexing his muscles as he leant on his arms above me was all a little fragmented. But the part where he was sitting inside an Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle was not.

  Rotating images, one after the other, of the MPCV, and bulbous clouds of red and blue and yellow, and sine waves on surprisingly large screens, and a woman with her hair in a bun kept flickering before my closed eyelids.

  But I knew I was dreaming, which was saying something. Usually, you’re just part of the dreamscape and not existentially aware. I should know. I dream. A lot. But I knew the flickering images now were part of a greater dream which featured him in all his natural glory.

  Even as I knew I’d never actually seen him bare-chested in my life before.

  My mind proceeded to tell me otherwise. He felt real even though his presence was abstract in parts. The MPCV bright and vibrant and clear, much like my parents’ car submerged in water had been clear, felt less authentic at that moment than the hazy image of him smiling. Naked. Above me. As if…

  I pushed away from that thought abruptly, realising I had a semblance of control over this dreamscape thing. That was a first. I couldn’t make the images more focused, though, but I could decide if I wanted the abstract parts or the realistic ones to prevail.

  I seriously considered the abstract for a moment, which in a dream could be all of a split second, but felt like a few minutes of heated mental debate.

  But the MPCV won out.

  I’m a scientist. I anal
yse data. Naked chests did not feature in my thesis.

  Perhaps they should have. I might have returned to it already.

  I turned my dream mind to the conversation in the command module instead, homing in on one point of fact in particular.

  “She’s out of time,” Hoffman had said. For some reason, my dreamscape mind decided to fixate on that.

  She’s out of time.

  Again and again, the words repeated, the look on Jack Evans’ face flaring before my eyes. Shocked. That’s what it had been. Shocked, with a healthy dose of surprised.

  She’s out of time. What did it mean? My dream mind couldn’t decide, choosing to mix those words up with Carrie. Carrie on the tour bus. Carrie drinking Bud Lights from an aluminium bottle at the resort last night. Carrie at my parents’ wake. Carrie on the aeroplane sticking drinking straws up her nose to make me laugh. Carrie in a cloud of colours, starbursts twinkling in her eyes.

  Carrie out of time.

  I felt adrenaline surge. The dream began to shatter. And then the cool, hard feel of metal against my cheek registered, just as the smell of burning electrical wires met my nose. It smelled so much worse than before. I reached up and rubbed my face, taking a few precious seconds to orientate myself.

  And then it hit.

  My hands were free.

  I sat bolt upright, eyes blinking, lights flashing, the module spinning, and then proceeded to vomit all over my jeans.

  “We’ve got a geyser,” someone said enthusiastically.

  “Oh, no!” a woman cried. A bucket suddenly appearing under my chin.

  “That is truly disgusting. I’d forgotten about that side effect.” Hoffman. It was Hoffman and Groves speaking.

  I felt myself redden, embarrassment flushing up my cheeks even as I dry heaved again.

  A cool, wet cloth was placed in my hand.

  “Here,” Evans said softly. “You’re OK.”

  Was I? She’s out of time. Me? Carrie? It was all messed up inside my head. The dream had seemed clearer. Reality was the abstract.

  I pressed the cloth against my face, blocking out the world, my other hand resting on the metal floor of the module. The grooves were smooth, like little dimples in the alloy. My fingers rubbed back and forth across each ridge and hollow.