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

by Nicola Claire

  "Maybe a delay was all Lunik was after," Groves offered.

  "Or maybe 1969 was a mistake," I countered. "Driven there by the anomaly of the Origin Event. The two Miss Wyldes."

  "Or maybe," Rafe said voice heavy, "his prime objective is not destruction but knowledge. Maybe Lunik is its own causal loop. Maybe Lunik can't exist without Orion. He needs to secure that knowledge in some way, before destroying Orion for good."

  Bloody hell. He had a point. And as the bathroom door opened and Mimi walked out in clothing circa 1960, I realised how Sergei was going to do it.

  "He's not here to kill him," I said, my eyes inexorably drawn to Miss Wylde. "That's why he missed in '69."

  "He meant to. To distract you," Rafe muttered.

  "And get his hands on Miss Wylde."

  "What?" she whispered, as Rafe said, "He couldn't have planned this. No one could have planned this. There's no way to predict an Origin Event, let alone a passenger being picked up on one."

  "I'm not sure how he did it," I said. "But his motives may not be as straightforward as we've been led to believe."

  "He was always a bloody tricky bastard," Rafe muttered.

  "What's going on?" Mimi asked.

  How to assuage her fears and somehow keep her knowledge from expanding?

  Did I even want her to have the chance to return home? Could I be so selfish as to sabotage her chances?

  Was that what I had subconsciously been doing?

  I cleared my throat. Rubbed my jaw distractedly. Then sighed.

  Nothing I did now would alter that dream. It had happened. I'd seen it. Her mere presence confirmed it was real.

  At some stage in the future, I would sleep with this woman as though I'd slept with her a hundred times before. As though I planned to sleep with her a hundred more. It would be extraordinary but familiar. It would be the best fucking sex of my life but only because I knew exactly how to turn her on, how to make her moan, how to tease a scream of ecstasy from between those luscious lips.

  I would know her intimately. And she would know me.

  It was a done deal. Only Time needed to catch on.

  That didn't mean telling her she would never go home again was easy. It didn't mean involving her more in our troubles was at all acceptable to me.

  Besides sleeping with her in my dream, one other thing had been more than obvious to me.

  I wanted to protect her. Like I have never wanted to protect a soul before in my life. Her mere safety and wellbeing had been paramount to me. The sense of how important, how essential, she was to my own happiness inescapable.

  Mimi Wylde was the air that I breathed.

  The caveat here should have been “in my dreams.”

  But I think I'd established that was already bollocks.

  "Silverstein will be at the Lewis Laboratory," I said. "You probably know it as the Lewis Research Center."

  "OK," she said slowly. Watching me intently. Seeing the lie behind the truth, it seemed.

  "We're not entirely sure what the Lunik Vehicle is here for," I added, feeling like the worst kind of future lover for pulling her deeper into this thing, "other than to draw us into some sort of confrontation."

  "You're dismissing Silverstein as a target?" she asked, so astutely.

  I rubbed a hand over my face. "It's not as straightforward as that. He's still the drawcard, but for what, we don't yet know."

  "So our plan?"

  Was Mimi something Sergei would need? Or was it just me? He'd used her as a messenger. He'd lured or followed us here to see his message received. He already had Carolyn Wylde. Gaining Mimi wouldn't leverage him more than he'd already achieved. But if Carolyn had divulged anything, he'd know that Mimi was an OE.

  Bloody fucking hell...Did I take her? Or Not?

  "Miss Groves and I will investigate this time," I announced, seeing the shock register on Mimi's features. Feeling it. "It's best if you remain out of sight, Miss Wylde," I added. Digging the knife in deeper. Feeling it.

  "Carrie doesn't know you," she argued. So simple. Not so easy.

  "But Sergei does know you."

  "It might be wise to hang back, Mouse," Rafe offered. I'd thank him later. "Let Jack and Sally check out the lay of the land, and then you and I can tag-team. Go in afterwards and seal the deal."

  I threw a threatening look toward my Intern. He just smiled winningly back.

  When I returned my gaze to Mimi, she was watching me.

  "I'm going with you," she said, "because Carrie is my sister. Because I'm the OE. Because whatever the effing hell is going on involves me. I don't know why we're here. I don't know why this has happened, but I am not abandoning my sister. I won't. Not now. Not after we've lost everything. I can't. Don't ask me."

  She took a deep, shattering breath in. My hand lifted, reaching for her. I forced it back down. My heart ached, but she was wrong. It wouldn't be safe.

  I couldn't let her. Then how would I breathe?

  "Carrie is the second half of me," she added, not losing steam. "Not just my sister. Not just my twin. Carrie's me, in reverse. Or mirrored. I don't know. She shares my genes." She laughed; a half sob, half chuckle. "Did you know we're identical? Monozygotic. So don't you dare..."

  "What did you just say?" I asked.

  "Huh?" Mimi managed, cut off mid-rant.

  "Bloody hell," Rafe muttered.

  "What?" Mimi asked.

  "Your sister shares the same genetic makeup as you. Genetically nearly identical. Not a mirror, Miss Wylde, but a replica. And a massive Origin Event just happens to suck not one but two contemporaries out of their time, into a space-time nebula. A never before seen event, but one we now know is linked to you specifically. As if, let's say, dialled into your DNA."

  I let a long breath escape me.

  If I couldn't breathe without her, then...

  "Do you understand what this means?" I asked softly.

  "No," she whispered, but I think she did.

  Too bloody clever by far, Miss Wylde.

  "Ah, bloody hell," Rafe muttered.

  "No," Mimi repeated. "No."

  "We're caught in two causal loops," I said. "Not bisecting. But parallel. One nearly identical to the other."

  "I don't understand," Miss Groves murmured. "Does that mean, whatever happens in this one will happen in the other?"

  My eyes didn't leave Mimi's. I saw the realisation there. I saw the fear.

  I smiled softly and gentled my tone. From this there was no protection, only treading with care.

  "Yes," I said, my heart aching.

  Hers, though, was clearly breaking.

  "In a manner of speaking. Yes."

  It Just Made It More Real

  Mimi

  I was losing her. I could feel it. As if part of me was being torn off, ripped away. And no amount of stitching would repair it. No RATS Surgeon could prevent this path in history. It was written on my very soul. Imprinted in my DNA.

  I'd lose Carrie like I lost our parents.

  "Tell me about him," I said into the heavy silence. The only sound that of waves.

  We'd left 1961, attempting to draw Sergei away from Abe Silverstein. We'd not gone far; in both Time and space. It was too great a risk; should we ever solve this and get both Carrie and me back to our time, we needed there to be as few bisections as possible. We needed to get us home unscathed.

  So we'd stayed close. 1962. Miami. South Beach during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Somewhere out there were boatloads of refugees. I felt a kinship with them.

  They were out of time, too. Just like me.

  Jack sifted the sand through his fingers, as he stared out into the Atlantic Sea.

  "His full name is Sergei Anton Ivanov. He's an ex-Russian cosmonaut. Very astute. Very enigmatic. He spent the better part of the start of the century promoting international relations through cooperative exchanges on the International Space Station."

  "Which century?"

  He smiled. Let the sand fall from h
is fingers. And said, "You're very clever, you know? Too clever."

  "You won't tell me?" I'd suspected as much.

  "I'm rather biased when it comes to you."

  I turned my head, resting it down on my bent knees, and watched him.

  "I want to protect you," he explained. "Desperately. Keeping things from you is a means to accomplish just that. You already know too much. Getting you back in one piece is quickly becoming an impossibility."

  "What if I don't want to return?"

  "Don't you? What about your sister?"

  I looked back out to sea.

  "I can't feel her," I admitted. "In here." I tapped the centre of my chest. "I've always been able to feel her. Know when she's happy or when she's sad. Know when she needs me. Or when I'm driving her crazy with how anal I am."

  Jack snorted. "I can't imagine that sort of connection to someone."

  "You don't have a brother? Sister? Cat?"

  He laughed, that brilliant laugh. The one that lifts you up along with it.

  "No cat. No sibling either."

  "Carrie's more than a sibling."

  "I know."

  "I'm losing her, Jack."

  "You don't know that. Nothing's set in stone. After all, this is an Origin Event."

  Which scared me. Because I was sure, it scared him too.

  "So, he was a cosmonaut," I said, changing the subject most poorly. Jack let me.

  "Yes. Admired. Respected. Trusted. Do you want to know?"

  "Know what?"

  "What century."

  It meant more than the words. I knew. He was letting me choose my fate. Not dictating it. Say no, and trust I will get home safely.

  Say yes, and change my path. Completely.

  Carrie would say I was being adventurous.

  I would have called it reckless.

  What if I do this, choose this, am I choosing it also for Carrie? Getting home, getting her home, should have been all that mattered.

  But I know Carrie, as well as, if not better than myself.

  Pick adventure, Mouse, she'd say. Live life, don't mourn it.

  "No," I said eventually. "Not yet. Maybe one day." It wasn't necessary for understanding Sergei Ivanov. It wasn't necessary in order to save Carrie.

  It was one more tether to my twin I couldn't risk cutting.

  Even if part of me wanted to. Wanted to stay.

  "I understand," Jack said, softly. I thought my heart might break.

  I'm not sure why. But the softness of his tone felt sad as if he was letting something precious walk away. He started sifting the sand through his fingers again. The rhythmic action somehow settling my heartbeat.

  "Something happened," he said. "We don't know for sure what. But he returned from a routine flight to the ISS in an Orion. Nothing immediately set off any alarms. But the Orion vanished over the Pacific Ocean. And didn't reappear until sixty years later.

  "By then RATS had been established. Not in its present form, of course, but close enough."

  "And the Lunik he uses?"

  Jack patted the sand flat at his side.

  "Unsurprisingly, much like an Orion."

  "He stole the technology."

  "The technology didn't exist when he hitched a ride on that Orion. But by the time he landed, we'd been surfing sine waves for a decade."

  "Temporal paradox," I said.

  "A bloody big one, Miss Wylde."

  I started sifting the sand through my fingers.

  "Why is Cape Canaveral an Origin Event?" I eventually asked. The sand was hypnotic. The heat unbearably relaxing.

  The company...

  "The Orion was made there," Jack said. "You're making it hard to respect your wishes, Miss Wylde," he added.

  "What wishes?" I asked, pausing in my sand sifting.

  "To go back."

  Ah. I was asking dangerous questions. The more I knew, the harder it would be to return to my time.

  I could have argued that. He was making it too easy to stay.

  We both stared out at the ocean in silence.

  I didn't feel alone anymore. Carrie was missing, but somehow I was still OK.

  "Why hasn't he arrived here yet?" I asked. We'd been in 1962 on Miami Beach for hours. The sun was cresting the horizon, a faint orange and red glow seeping into the sky. We'd eaten, even slept a little. Dreamed.

  And still, no Ivanov or orange sine wave to indicate the rip was extending to here.

  "It appears he has some control," Jack murmured, watching the sun's light-show. "Possibly not enough to dictate where we choose to go but to choose whether to confront us there. 1962 Miami apparently doesn't suit."

  "So what? We wait?"

  Jack squashed a handful of sand in his palm, as though squeezing it tightly enough would elicit an answer. He was a tactile person, I realised. Very vocal when angered. Never still when undecided. Right now, he knew barely more than me; a novice at this time travelling thing.

  I wondered how his day had started. I wondered if he'd ever imagined I could have crashed into it so spectacularly.

  "If he won't come to us, then we will have to go to him," he finally said. The sand fell from his fingers, and he shifted to stand. Turning around he extended his hand out to me and waited patiently for me to accept.

  I looked up at him, the hint of sunlight behind his shadowed form made him appear wreathed in a golden glow. What was this man to me? An anchor in an otherwise storm-tossed sea?

  Or more?

  I took his hand and let him pull me up from the sand. When I was close, close enough to see him inhale deeply, I asked, "Will you tell me what the dreams mean?"

  He stilled, his hand still clasping mine, a look of bewilderment crossing his features briefly. And then he shook his head and smiled.

  "You have a way of catching me off guard, Miss Wylde. I wonder if it is intentional or not."

  I smirked.

  "I had rather planned the timing of that one."

  "Ah, I see. I shall endeavour to remain focused in the future."

  "Will there be a future?" For us, I didn't say.

  "There is always a future, Mimi. Our part in it, though, is not yet written."

  "Unless we're part of a temporal paradox," I argued. "Then we wouldn't even know that our future has already happened."

  "Do you always argue every point made?"

  "Of course. I'm a scientist."

  I walked past him and up the ladder to the Orion, brushing my hand over the external casing lovingly. I'd seen a mock-up of the Orion MPCV at the Kennedy Space Center. A mushroomed cone in white, with a black tip and bronze base. Half again as big as the Apollo capsule. Standing beside it, it had dwarfed Carrie and me.

  I still couldn't believe I'd been inside one. But whether this Orion matched those being made in my time, I couldn't say. There had certainly not been a colourful nebula surrounding it, or a thousand twinkling stars direct from space.

  I swallowed thickly as I entered through the door, remembering that day with Carrie vividly. She'd seen the nebula. That's what had drawn her towards the Lunik. Just like I’d been drawn towards an Orion.

  I turned when Jack entered the Vehicle and asked, "Ivanov's Lunik. Why do you call it that when it's an Orion MPCV?"

  Jack raised an eyebrow at me, then took his seat in the command chair.

  "There are differences," he said. "They're subtle, but they exist. It is not the same Vehicle."

  “But they look alike.” Evans had said as much earlier.

  "You saw it?" Rafe asked from his own seat. He'd been snoozing when we'd entered but was wide awake now.

  I shook my head. "When Carrie..." I couldn't finish the sentence.

  I looked around the module we were in and tried to picture my sister in one similar. Had she awoken on the dimpled metal floor? Had the stars blinded her? Did the nebula make her ill, too? Or had she not embarrassed herself like me?

  And the one question I so desperately wanted to be answered, but was too scar
ed to ask.

  Had she been treated as well as I had?

  He was clearly mad. This Sergei Anton Ivanov. Power hungry and insane. How would a man like that treat my sister? I doubted he'd sit on a beach at sunrise and talk softly.

  I suddenly felt like crying. It was all too much to bear. Carrie was with a psychopath. Who had an endgame. Who would kill her if we didn't do what he demanded.

  "It's all right," Jack's gentle tone said from beside me. "We'll figure it out." I stifled a sob. "Shhh," he whispered.

  And then his arms were around me, and the MPCV vanished, and Hoffman and Groves ceased to exist. Just this man and his soft words and gentle tone, and his strong arms and steady heartbeat.

  Just the familiar scent of his cologne.

  I shouldn't have sought comfort in that. I shouldn't have recognised it. It shouldn't have meant what it did to me.

  Home.

  I pushed away and stumbled to my chair, frantically trying to secure my seatbelt.

  "Here," Groves said carefully. "Right. Left. Under. Over. There's a pattern." Her hands took over the action of belting me in, like a mother tending her child.

  "I gather we're flying?" Rafe asked quietly.

  "He's not here," Jack replied.

  "No orange," Rafe agreed. "But any idea where he is? Flying blindly isn't my style."

  I knew Jack was watching me; I could feel the intensity of those amber and whisky eyes. I didn't look up. Just watched Groves fasten the seatbelt, meeting her eyes once she'd done it. If Sally knew what I was doing, evading, she didn't call me out.

  "Ordinarily," Jack was saying, "I'd recommend we do this on our own. Risking one MPCV is enough."

  "You want to send a probe?"

  "Do we still have the link attached to Orion Two?"

  "It's there, but I haven't tested it," Rafe advised. "Last time we saw Harding, she was fit to spit nails."

  "It's not Harding I want at our side," Jack argued.

  "Well," Rafe said, inputting a command into the computer, "if there's ever a gunslinging, gator wrestling redneck you want at your back, it'd be Fawkes."

  "Anything?" Jack asked.

  "Huh," Rafe muttered. "They're still in 1969."

  "Shouldn't they have repaired that rip by now?" Groves asked.