Slowly the nausea passed, and I chanced a look at the Vehicle. Hoffman sat in his seat, Groves beside him, now in the command chair. And Evans…Evans was crouched down at my side, watching me intently.
“Are you with us, Miss Wylde?” he asked. I nodded, causing a slight pounding to start up behind my eyes. “It will pass. Much like motion sickness, you get used to it.”
“Or you could take an anti-emetic,” Hoffman offered. “I find Gin works best. Mixed with a little tonic.”
“Your solution to travel sickness is unique,” Evans offered, “if not always effective. Gin as Dutch Courage is rather dependent on volume. And I have seen how much you put away, Rafe.”
“Ah, but have you ever seen me get travel sick?”
“Not since Waterloo.”
“Now that was an unfortunate trip, Jack. But a bloody good night out, too.”
I stared at them, my mind like mush; unable to parse a word.
“I’m fine,” I said. My throat was dry, my stomach felt off kilter, and I was sure I had started to smell slightly whiffy.
It had been an effing long day.
“What did I miss?” I decided to ask.
“I like your approach, Miss Wylde,” Evans announced, shifting to his feet. “And you have missed very little. We have secured our location and confirmed our destination on all planes. At present, the MPCV is running a self-diagnostic; our landing left a lot to be desired.”
None of that made a lick of sense.
He sighed. God knows what he’d seen on my face.
“For some reason, we have picked you up on our travels, and now you are somewhere else.”
“I’m no longer at Cape Canaveral?”
He shook his head and moved to a chair nearby. Not Groves’, but another. The Vehicle could carry four seated personnel, I noticed. The number seemed significant somehow. He sat down and leant forward, resting his elbows on his surprisingly thick thighs, hands together between his knees. I tried not to compare the bulging muscles in his arms with the flexing biceps I’d seen in my dream.
I failed. They looked too much alike.
“Not where. When,” Evans supplied.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
Evans started tapping his long fingers together as though considering his next words carefully. Hoffman and Groves watched him with equal measures of interest. The MPCV ticked away quietly, a soft hum in the background indicating the circuitry was active, or NASA computers were working or who knows what was transpiring behind the smooth, dimpled metal of the module.
I struggled to ignore where I actually was. With whom I actually was. And concentrated on why I wasn’t on the floor of the VAB in handcuffs staring up into Special Agent Dawson’s hard eyes.
I sucked in a breath and reached for my wrists. No handcuffs. I hadn’t imagined that then.
Evans raised his eyebrows at me, then turned back to the console behind him and picked up something. He spun around and held it out for me to accept.
“My wallet,” I said, mystified, taking the object from his outstretched hand. I made sure not to touch his fingers.
And then I forgot them altogether as anger hit. Hard.
“You went through my pockets?”
“Miss Groves did,” Evans said pleasantly. “We needed to confirm your identity.”
“And you believe my ID isn’t forged?” I queried with a huff of unamused air.
Evans smiled. “Not at first, no,” he admitted.
“And now?”
“Perhaps.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked, shoving the wallet in my back pocket, trying valiantly to ignore the way Evans watched my every move intently.
I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. My body had ideas my mind severely disagreed with. So I decided to just roll my eyes.
Hoffman chuckled. Evans looked away, chagrined.
“Miss Groves came to your rescue,” he said, not looking back at me.
My eyes found the young woman’s. She smiled shyly. But I caught the intrigue in her hooded lid stare. Secretly she was fascinated by me. Rather than make me feel secure in anyway, it left me feeling disorientated. Why was she fascinated in me?
“Hi,” I said in way of greeting.
“Hi,” she squeaked back.
“Lovely, we’ve all said hello…” Evans announced.
“Well, you haven’t,” Hoffman offered.
“…Can we please just get on with it.”
“Yes, sir,” Groves replied, straightening. “You,” she raised her voice as if I might be hard of hearing, “are part of a causal loop. A temporal paradox, if you will.”
“No need to yell, Miss Groves,” Evans said softly. “She’s out of time not deaf.”
There was that phrase again. She’s out of time. I had a sinking feeling it didn’t mean what I thought it did. Which should have relieved me. But it didn’t.
“Sorry, sir,” Groves immediately replied at a normal volume. Evans just nodded for her to continue. “Well, you see,” she said leaning forward with obvious excitement. “We believe you got caught up in a temporal paradox. Possibly a second loop on top of the first. Which, of course, considering it was also an Origin Event, anything was made quite possible. So, as far as we can tell, we’ve somehow picked you up as we’ve travelled through your plane to get to our destination. It’s really quite fascinating,” she chirped. “We’ve never picked up a passenger before.”
Silence. They were all staring at me.
“OK,” I said slowly.
Hoffman barked out a laugh. “She’s got no bloody idea what you’re saying, Sally.”
I shifted in my seat, my eyes staring at the metal floor, the dimples catching my attention.
“Retrocausality,” I murmured.
“I beg your pardon?” Evans asked.
“It doesn’t exist,” I added.
“You’ve heard of it, though?”
I nodded. My head reminding me that wasn’t such a good idea.
“Physics wasn’t my major, but it was fun to read up about it,” I explained. “Especially,” I added, “when incorporated into fiction.”
Evans let out a long breath of air.
“Let’s not get too technical, shall we?” Who was getting technical? Certainly not me. “Consider temporal paradoxes real. Add to that the fact that you are now onboard our Vehicle with us.” OK, I’d give him that one. Extrapolating a conclusion to that dilemma had so far been impossible. “And mix in our current time.”
“Current time?” I asked, but the words were whisper-quiet.
I wasn’t going to like this, I just knew.
“Miss Wylde,” Evans said softly. I started shaking my head; I did not want that soft tone used on me. Not now. Not here. I was thinking, perhaps, not ever. “Miss Wylde,” he repeated, more firmly, but still with a softness to his tone. “You are out of time.”
“What the eff does that mean?” I demanded. Hyde in full force in lightning-fast fashion.
“Easy,” Hoffman urged. He hadn’t gone for his gun, but he was considering it.
My head hurt. I kept shaking it. I wished that I’d stop. But I couldn’t. My fingers found the hair at the side of my temples, and I pulled on the strands. Rubbed the skin. Tried to stimulate blood flow. Eliminate the agony and confusion.
“Where am I?” I whispered.
“Cape Canaveral,” Evans immediately replied. “But that’s not the question you want to ask.”
“Am I still in the VAB?”
He looked momentarily disappointed. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Did I pass out? Is that how you got me from the concrete floor of the VAB into this command module?”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? I was there, and now I’m here, and you say it’s still in the VAB.”
“Think,” he instructed.
“I am effing thinking! You’re just not making any sense.”
“She’s got you t
here, sir,” Hoffman offered.
“You’re not helping,” Evans muttered. “Miss Wylde, what did you see before we appeared?”
“You didn’t appear.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Stop lying to yourself. What did you see?
A stretched pause.
“Clouds.”
“And?”
“Colours.”
“Anything else?”
I shook my head in defeat. This was madness.
“Stars.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Stars and a nebula. You saw Time manifesting.”
“In a cloud of gas and dust in outer space?” I asked, incredulously.
He smiled. Damn it for looking so good.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I repeated.
“I know, and I wish I could explain it to you fully, but we don’t have time, and there would be little point.” He sighed, looking remotely saddened, and then said, “You’re simply out of time, Miss Wylde. Believe me, when I say this, it’s a first for us. But it is possible.”
“What is possible?” I whispered.
He held my gaze, a compassionate look crossed his face. Oh, I was so not going to like this.
“You believe it is the 21st century, is that correct?”
I closed my eyes but nodded my head.
“We’re currently in 1969,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. Thumped a hand down on the metal floor. And then started to laugh.
“And I thought Special Agent Dawson was a card,” I muttered.
“The bomb,” Evans said. He wasn’t letting any of this sink in. Maybe because it was all utter bullshit, I don’t know. But he was on a mission, and it sure as hell was not a mission to Mars. “Can you describe exactly what happened, please?”
Manners. The guy could be charming when he tried. I opened my eyes and took in the steady looks on the faces of Hoffman and Groves. They were both in on the act. Not so much as a laugh line to be seen.
I shook my head. Again. Rubbed both hands over my face. And then lifted my hair off the back of my neck, fanning the skin there.
“The bomb, Miss Wylde,” Evans pressed.
“You’re a persistent bastard,” I muttered. Even Hoffman didn’t laugh.
“What happened to your sister?”
Of all the things he could have said, that was the one single question that would reach me.
“Carrie,” I gasped, my body shaking.
“It’s OK,” Evans rushed to say. “We’ll figure it out.”
I stared blindly around the module and then found myself anchored to his face. His eyes. Whisky. Amber. Soothing.
“Who the hell are you?” I murmured.
“Jack Evans,” he simply replied.
“You are not a NASA Surgeon.”
“No, Miss Wylde. Just as you are not a terrorist.”
“I didn’t plant that bomb,” I agreed.
“It wasn’t a bomb, and I think you know it.”
“You’re talking about something that doesn’t exist.”
“Not in your time, no.”
“You’re crazy,” I insisted.
“What happened?” he replied.
I sighed. Eff this. I was screwed whichever way I looked at it. I might as well see how it all panned out.
“Carrie disappeared.” The words were slow in coming. The scientist in me rebelling. “She saw something. I couldn’t see it. And then she started walking towards it. Like she couldn’t help herself. And then…and then…”
“And then?” Evans softly enquired.
I shook my head.
“Just say it,” he urged. “Better out than in.”
I looked down at my now disgustingly soiled jeans. No wonder it reeked in here.
“We’ll get you a change of clothes shortly,” Evans offered. “But I need to know what happened to your sister. Time is, quite literally, running out.”
This day was the day from hell. When would reality return?
Along with my sister.
“Carrie disappeared,” I said. Forcing the words out. “There one minute. Gone the next.”
“Is that all?”
I glared at him. His turn to shake his head. “Everything, Miss Wylde. I must know everything to understand.”
“I didn’t see anything on the launch pad…” I started, then rushed to finish before he prompted me with that damn soft voice again. “But I thought I heard the sound of engines roaring.”
“Roaring?”
“Like a rocket.”
“Followed by silence?”
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“The silence of outer space?”
That’s what I’d thought the second time I’d heard it. When the nebula had formed, and I’d ended up in here. At the time that Carrie disappeared, though, I’d not been able to work through anything. It had happened so fast, and I’d seen nothing. But I had questioned what it was I had heard.
“I think so,” I finally said. “Look, when I saw that hole in the VAB, I thought maybe the sound had originated there. But Launch Pad 39A is a fair distance from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Whatever caused it would have had to have been expelled by a massive force to get whatever it was to cover that sort of distance and reach Carrie. And even then I didn’t see anything.”
Evans just smiled. It was more grimace than grin.
“Besides, when I mentioned a rocket to Special Agents Dawson and Carter, they clearly did not agree.” I looked toward Hoffman. “The bomb scenario,” I offered.
“Jerks,” he suggested cheekily.
I smiled. I liked him. And then the absurdity of the situation hit home again.
“Either I’m mad, or you’re mad,” I offered.
“None of us is mad,” Evans replied.
“Speak for yourself. I think Winchester has a screw or two loose, at least.” Evans just stared at Hoffman. Yeah, like that would shut him up. I had the feeling there was more to their relationship than boss and subordinate. Hoffman could hold his own.
“And this all happened before you woke up in here?” Groves asked, calling all our attention back to the discussion.
I huffed out a breath of laughter. Like this was an intelligent, sane conversation. I wish.
“Yep,” I said. “Maybe three, four hours before I was dragged to the VAB in handcuffs and then suddenly found myself inside here.”
Silence.
“And that’s when you heard a second engine roaring followed by complete silence?” Groves asked.
“Yes.”
She looked towards Evans.
“I know,” he said, his eyes meeting hers momentarily. “Two loops.”
“Unheard of,” Hoffman muttered.
“But why?” Groves added. They were losing me again.
“What’s happened?” I demanded. “Can you please just speak in plain English. What the hell has happened to my sister?”
Evans brought his focus back to me and sighed.
“The exact same thing that has happened to you I fear.”
He feared. Well, so did I. Because I still had no effing idea of what was transpiring.
“She will be out of time, too,” he added. There it was. But this time, it meant so many different things.
“If I’m with you,” I said slowly. “Then who is Carrie with?”
Hoffman looked away. Groves stared at the floor.
Evans was the only one to meet my eyes.
“I’m afraid I could not say, Miss Wylde.” I opened my mouth to argue; God alone knows how. When he added, “But my guess would be she is in 1969. As we are in 1969.”
Madness. This was all madness.
But a part of me was agreeing. Accepting.
That part of me was clearly not made up of actual science.
I shook my head.
He smiled. It was in no way reassuring.
“Sh
all I convince you?” he said.
“You haven’t so far,” I pointed out; even if that might have been becoming a lie.
Evans laughed. It suited him.
“What do you know about the sixties, Miss Wylde? In particular, the race to reach the moon and Cape Canaveral?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. And then smiled.
“What don’t I know, Mr Evans?” I replied.
“Doctor,” he corrected and then immediately grimaced.
This time it was me who laughed.
Without The Neuralyzer
Jack
This was a monumental mistake. I knew it, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to stop it from transpiring. It had been my suggestion to take Miss Wylde out of the MPCV and into contemporary time. But God alone knows what Clive Crawford would be saying if he could see what was happening now. I swallowed my disquiet, along with my sanity, and looked up as the water closet door opened.
“It’s way bigger in there than I expected,” Mimi said, brushing hands over her dress as though uncomfortable.
The late sixties and early seventies hadn’t been my favourite of times. I’m more a fifties man at heart. But one look at the extremely short hem of Miss Wylde’s dress and I conceded I might have been a little too quick in dismissing this era from my mind.
She had lovely legs. Long despite her modest height. Well defined, as though she ran a lot. Slender and tanned. My throat felt parched, the MPCV felt too small all of a sudden, and I was acutely aware of Rafe watching me from the corner of my eye.
I cleared my throat and stood from my seat. “Ready?” I asked. Too bloody bad if she wasn’t, I needed out of this closed in space.
“One last thing,” Groves rushed to say, coming forward and handing Miss Wylde a scarf.
“Um, what do I do with this?” Mimi asked.
“It’s for your head. A bit of a big thing leading into the seventies.”
“Oh,” Mimi said, and just stared at the slip of material in her hand.
“Here, let me,” Groves offered and took the offending article, shaking it out, then folding it in half diagonally, and moving behind Miss Wylde to place it over all her glorious golden hair.
I was staring again. I shook myself awake and turned towards the screens.
Losing Time (Lost Time, Book 1): A Time Travel Romantic Suspense Series Page 6