Until Time Stands Still

by Scott, Lona

  “Yup”

  “Go check it out.” He said. “If we need to adjust the plan, let me know.” He tapped on the door in code and Chloe let him in. They were crowded around the computer watching everything while Will was doing some geek thing with the ‘puter.

  “How we doing in here?”

  “Better than I expected.” Will said honestly. “I’ve locked most of the power grid down to only essentials where our people are. The backup generator and alarms kicked on, but that’s on a separate system for a reason, and I can’t do much about it from here.”

  “Mykel, you guys need backup?” Graham asked.

  “It would be a big help if you can tell me where Isabelle is hiding out.” He said. “We’ve been searching room to room, trying not to get caught. Our luck won’t hold forever.”

  “We can’t track her with the nanites devices without using too much juice on the computers. If we can track her, so can anyone else.” Will explained to Mykel. “You’ll have to do it the old fashioned way.”

  “I’m beginning to think this was a bad plan.” Nadia piped up.

  Graham glared at her. “Shut it. We’re trying to save all our lives. Be thankful, woman.”

  “You’re just standing around.” She pointed out, sticking her tongue out at him.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Would you rather stay here and be a breeder for someone else who won’t treat you as well as I would? Cause your attitude stinks, and I’d rather leave you here than put up with your whining the rest of my life.”

  “Fine!” She snapped, glaring at him. “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” She hissed.

  “Baby, you never had a chance at that.” He said, laughing.

  “You’ll have that scar forever.” She said, pointing to the head wound she gave him.

  “So what else is new? A scar is just a scar…you didn’t even hit me hard enough to knock me out. My life was never in any danger from you.” He snorted.

  “I hate you.” She snarled.

  “Stay or go. The choice is yours.” He said, crossing his arms. “But you should know if you stay here, life will be very hard for you after we go. They will use whatever means necessary to extract information from you about today. It would be wise of you to check the attitude and just come with us. If you do come with me, you better start respecting me, Nadia, because I’ve never done anything to deserve your bitch fest.”

  She paled, and didn’t say a word. She just nodded.

  “Stay put. I’m going to help our boys.” He said, he left the room scowling.

  ********************

  Mykel and Johnny turned a corner and ran smack into Lt. Colonel Nathan Davis.

  They both saluted and stood at attention.

  “At ease boys.” The tall slender man said grimly. “Any clue who’s attacking the base?” He asked.

  “No, Sir.” Johnny said.

  “Someone’s killed the General and his wife. We suspect whoever did it killed the Major too. And there’s some woman on the loose.”

  “Do you suspect her, Sir?” Mykel asked, holding his breath.

  “No. Of course not.” Davis said. “She’s been in isolation. She couldn’t have possibly killed anyone on the other side of the base.”

  “Sir, what else do you know about the woman we are looking for?” Johnny asked. “Why was she put in isolation?”

  “I have no idea.” He confessed. “I assumed she was sick or something.”

  “Sir…can we trust you?” Mykel asked.

  “Have I ever given you a reason not to?” He responded smoothly.

  “ I can’t be sure who to trust anymore.” Mykel said. “No offense, but it’s been a hell of a year for me and things just keep getting weirder.”

  “What’s going on?” Davis demanded. “Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

  Johnny nudged Mykel and nodded. He sighed.

  “The woman’s name is Isabelle. She’s my…well not technically my wife yet, but she will be. She’s pregnant, and I suspect the General and several others are responsible for keeping her from me. I think they want to steal the baby from us. They tried to convince me she was dead. I found proof she’s not.” He said, he handed the man the disk they had seen. “There are dozens more like this.”

  “Come with me.” Davis narrowed his eyes and motioned for the men to follow him. They went into a small conference room and shut the door. He put the disk in a machine and watched a few minutes of Isabelle in the room.

  “So you boys decided to start some sort of half assed search and rescue mission right under my nose?”

  “Not half assed, Sir.” Mykel said. “We didn’t know who all was involved. And, quite frankly, you haven’t actually said anything to prove you aren’t involved yourself.”

  Nathan Davis sighed. “Look. A man’s word is all he’s really worth. I swear to you, I didn’t know. I suspected that something was fishy with the Doctor, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

  “What doctor?” Mykel’s eyes narrowed.

  “Dr. Fitzer. He runs the biogenetics team. Trying to find a cure and all that.” He sighed. “The man’s just a little…off. Nothing specific, but the guy creeps me out. There’s just something odd about him.”

  “Is he the one behind stealing Isabelle from me?” Mykel growled.

  “Most likely, it was his idea.” He said. “But there’s no proof.”

  “Let’s just find her, before he does.” Johnny said. “We can play guessing games later.”

  “Agreed.” Davis said. “Look, I can’t be seen helping you all, so here’s what we are going to do. I’m going to give you my access card.” He unclipped it from his front, and handed it to Mykel. “Now, hit me. Knock me out. I’ll tell them you snuck up behind me and that I didn’t see you.”

  “Are you sure, Sir?” Mykel frowned.

  “The General and the Major are dead. It’s up to me and Parker to keep things running around here.”

  “Is he in on this too?” Mykel asked.

  “Probably. He’s been real buddy buddy with the Major lately.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.” Johnny said. He cracked Lt. Colonel Davis over the back of the head. The man went down, utterly still. Johnny checked his pulse. “He’s alive.”

  “Sorry, Sir.” Mykel said. The two of them walked out of the room. “Come on Isy, where are you?” He muttered.

  People were running up and down the corridor, looking for her.

  “Where would she go? I mean, with all these people looking for her, someone should have found her by now, don’t you think?” Johnny said. “What if she got up to the next level before the elevators got shut down?”

  “You think?” Mykel asked. “Well, let’s go. We can always come back down here if we don’t find her.”

  “Want to split up?” Johnny asked.

  “No. That’s never a good plan. I don’t even like the team being separated as much as they are.” Mykel said, opening the doorway to the stairs.

  “Me either.

  “Top, we’re headed up to level two.” Mykel reported in.

  “I’m on level one, coming down.”

  “Meet you there.”

  ****************

  Isabelle barely touched the door handle of the bathroom when she heard someone come into the office. She froze instantly. Please, please don’t come in here. Someone sat down at the desk. She could hear clicking as if someone was on a computer. Crap. She walked back to the toilet and sat down. She was going to be there a while. There was no window in the room, being underground. There was a vent, but there was no way she could get her pregnant belly through the opening. She was trapped, well and good. Again. She was beginning to develop a bit of a claustrophobia problem after being confined so much.

  She waited, thinking about Mykel. Always about him, and their babies. She wanted him to be the one to name them, since he missed out on so much of the pregnancy. It was important to her that he is there. “Hopefully daddy isn’t on some m
ission somewhere else.” She whispered to her babies. They were fairly active today, rolling around and fighting for space. She didn’t think she could get much bigger. She felt huge, and she instinctively knew that she wasn’t going to make it to full term. She’d read in one of those books that twins often came several weeks early. She just hoped they decided to wait until she could get them all somewhere safe.

  There were voices in the hallway. She heard doors opening and closing. She froze, her heart in her throat. One of the babies kicked her hard, and she was forced to exhale. She heard a knock on the office door.

  “Oh, sorry to disturb you, Sir. We are looking for a pregnant woman, have you seen her?”

  “No, I haven’t.” A gruff man’s voice said, icily. “But please let me know if you find her. I’m her doctor.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dr. Roman Fitzer.”

  Mykel stepped into the room with Graham and Johnny on his heels and shut the door.

  “We need to have a little talk, Dr. Fitzer.” Mykel said. “A friend told me you were the one behind stealing my wife and child from me.”

  “So, your Mykel, eh?” The man stood.

  “Don’t you move.” Graham said, pointing his rifle at the man. The others did the same.

  “Why would you steal a baby from their parents?” Mykel asked.

  “Genetics. Your child will be unlike any the world has ever seen. In any time. It must be studied, researched.” The old man said.

  “You have no right to do that.” Mykel said, gritting his teeth. Rage boiled in him. “My baby is not an IT.” He said, “And I don’t care how different my kid is, no one is going to turn him into a lab rat.”

  “Come now, Mykel, be reasonable. Don’t you want to know what makes your baby different from other people?”

  “I’d like to know.” Isabelle said, finally stepping out of the bathroom, gun in her hand. She raised it to point at the man who had held her captive for months.

  “Oh my God! Isabelle!” Mykel breathed, he momentarily faltered, and dropped his gun aim. Dr. Fitzer grabbed for Isabelle. The man smashed her hand against the desk, and she dropped the gun.

  “Don’t shoot!” Mykel yelled, standing in the line of fire, protecting Isabelle. “You might hit her!” Graham and Johnny dropped their weapon aim, reluctantly.

  The old man chuckled. “You see, Mykel. No one wants to risk hurting these special babies. I could do anything I wanted right now, and you wouldn’t do a damn thing to stop me, because I have her.” He had a scalpel to her neck. She stilled under the knife, furious that once again, someone was trying to kill her.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off of Mykel. Tears welled up in her eyes and she let them spill over, not caring that she was crying in front of him, or his men. “I love you, Mykel. You know that right?”

  “Of course, sweetheart. I love you too.”

  “How sweet.” Dr. Fitzer rolled his eyes.

  “What’s your end game here, Doctor?” Graham said, his gun trained on the man, the red laser dot steady between the man’s eyebrows. “You may be a brilliant scientists, but you are too stupid to see you’re outnumbered.”

  “You’re already dead.” Mykel said.

  “Mykel…stop.” Isabelle said. “All of you, put your guns down.”

  “What?” Mykel was stunned.

  “Put. The. Guns. Down.” She said. “I won’t have you pointing guns anywhere near my babies. I trusted you to keep me safe, and I followed all your orders. Now follow mine. Trust me.”

  “All my orders? Woman…have you forgotten what happened in the city I told you not to go to?” He winked at her, laughing.

  “Damnit, Mykel. You’re pointing a gun at your babies. Think! If you miss, if he moves just right, you could kill me, or them. Do you really want that?”

  “Babies?” He stared at her stomach. “As in, more than one?”

  “Twin boys.” She said.

  “See, Mykel. She doesn’t want you to do this.” Dr. Fitzer sneered.

  “Graham.” Mykel was desperate.

  “You heard the lady, boys. Drop ‘em.” They all put their weapons on the floor.

  “Kick them over here.” Dr. Fitzer said. “Slowly.”

  They did so, reluctantly.

  The doctor visibly relaxed his hold on her, but not enough. “Doctor. Please. Let her go.” Mykel asked, not caring if he was begging or not.

  “I can’t do that.” The man hissed, jerking her closer to him. “I need to study her, and the babies. Two of them. Can you believe it? We can do so much with a pair of twins.”

  Mykel’s stomach rolled at the thought. He tried not to show any expression on his face, become the hardened man he had been for so many months. He became the stone faced ice man he had been known for around the base. He showed no emotion whatsoever.

  “Doctor, you can’t hold her hostage until she gives birth. Seriously. That’s just ridiculous.” Johnny said.

  “Besides, I have to pee again.” Isabelle said. She winked at Mykel. He blinked, barely. “Just let me go into the bathroom…please. I can’t escape from there.” She squirmed a little, hoping to convince him that she really had to go. “One baby pressing on your bladder constantly hurts like hell. Two of them is so much worse. Please.” She whined, making herself sound far more pathetic than she really felt.

  “Jesus, man. Just let her pee!” Graham said.

  “Fine.” He released her. She stumbled a bit. All the guys moved forward to catch her before she fell, but she regained her balance. She turned, and before anyone saw what she was up to, she sank the pair of scissors deep into the doctors stomach. At first he just froze, staring up at her. She growled, low in her throat and twisted the scissors as hard as she could. The man gurgled up blood. “I’m a good person. I’ve never done anything to hurt anyone in my life, up until a few months ago. I’ve had quite enough of people trying to kill me, kidnap me, and make me a slave. No more. No one is going to threaten me or my family ever again.” She hissed. “I swear I will kill anyone else who tries.” She pressed the scissors in as hard as she could and shoved the man to the floor. He lay gagging on his own blood.

  “Isabelle?” Mykel walked up behind her and touched her arm. “Honey, are you okay?”

  “Just hold me.” She whispered. He wrapped his arms around her, touching her pregnant belly for the first time. One of the babies kicked under his hand. She gasped and put her hand over his. He smiled and kissed her cheek. “You’re a fierce little momma, aren’t you?” He laughed.

  “All mothers are.” She said, staring down at the man who had tried to ruin their lives. “What a stupid, foolish, old man.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Mykel said. He kissed her fiercely, holding her as close to him as he could get. One of the babies kicked hard, and she doubled over.

  “I really do have to pee.” She squeaked. Pulling away.

  “Go. We’ll take care of…him.” Graham said. “We still have to get back to the others and get us all home.”

  Chapter 14

  “Isabelle, this is Will. He replaced Jacob, and he’s the one who made it possible for us to find you.” Mykel said.

  Isabelle smiled at the man, and surprising everyone, she gave him a huge hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She said, tears pooling in her eyes. “You saved my life, and my babies. You all did.” She burst into tears. She was still hugging Will, who looked at Mykel in panic. The others just chuckled.

  “Aww…come on baby, don’t cry like that.” Mykel said, coming up and dragging her away from Will. “Besides, I’m you’re hero remember? I rescued you first.”

  She giggled, through her tears, wiping them away. “I seem to cry at everything lately…and I seem to recall, you said you weren’t that nice of a guy. But you’re the best man I’ve ever known.” She said, kissing him. She hadn’t kissed him in months and never wanted to stop. He grinned and kissed her over and over again.

  “Okay, okay you two.
Knock it off.” Bryant said, rolling his eyes.

  “Let’s all go home.” Graham said. He turned to Nadia “Are you sure?”

  She looked over at Isabelle and Mykel, and nodded. “If you can kiss as good as those two can.”

  He roared with laughter. “Baby, I promise, I’ll rock your world.”

  Johnny passed out the wrist devices and blinding glasses to everyone. Chloe helped him.