Time of Treason

by Susan M. MacDonald

  “Guess so,” Riley said with false cheer. What Anna would say when she discovered Kerry’s involvement didn’t bear thinking about, but one thing was clear. If she spent another minute teetering on this flimsy metal sidewalk about to fall to her death, she’d scream.

  There wasn’t much choice but to walk directly behind Kerry. If she kept her eyes on Peter’s arm, which was dangling down Kerry’s back, the vertigo wasn’t too bad and she could actually move her feet. The main problem was the wind, which buffeted her constantly, and the rapidly increasing downward slope. If only she had the same kind of harness chain attached to the rail system that Kerry did. She held on as tightly as possible to the parallel handrails and talked to herself constantly.

  They hadn’t travelled far when the first major problem arose in the shape of another man, this time several years older, wearing the identical jumpsuit to Kerry.

  “Here, what’s going on?” the man called out as they approached.

  “No worries, Bob,” Kerry called back. “Fainted.”

  Riley caught a glimpse of Bob’s frown and saw his hand reach up to the radio on his shoulder. Riley’s stomach clenched. There was nothing else for it. Pulling her orb from her pocket she aimed it right at Bob and turned her entire attention to him. “Forget we’re here,” she ordered, straining as hard as she could.

  The orb glowed for a moment, almost imperceptible in the bright sunshine. Bob’s face lost all expression and his eyes glazed over. He didn’t move.

  “Bob?” Kerry took the last few steps and stopped in front of Bob. The older man didn’t seem to notice him at all, his face slack and eyes half shut. “Er, Bob mate, you okay?”

  There was no reaction, not even a blink.

  “Crikey,” Kerry breathed. Unable to let go of Peter’s arm or leg, Kerry used his foot to tap Bob none too gently on the shin. Bob didn’t react.

  Riley gulped and tightened her grip on the rail as her knees began shaking. The effort it took was considerable and after fixing Peter she had little in reserve. “He’s obviously stoned or something,” Riley muttered guiltily, pushing past Kerry and his load to ease past Bob. She headed down the catwalk, ignoring the screaming in the back of her head as the sidewalk began to slope even steeper. She had to get some distance between them and Bob. Kerry was hardly going to let her run off on her own.

  “Hey, wait for me.”

  Riley ignored Kerry’s shout and kept marching, one foot in front of the other. She gazed ahead at the city skyline and the myriad buildings of the “Rocks” area ahead that she’d been interested in at the travel agent’s. This was hardly the way she’d planned to see the city, but then, as horrible as it was, there was no denying the spectacular view.

  They met up with another tour operator at the first ladder down to a lower level. Riley focused her orb and her power and he too was rendered incapable of thought or action. She swallowed the remorse. It would wear off. Eventually. It should.

  She heard Kerry exclaim, “Jim, Jim,” before passing him and very slowly and carefully climbing down to join her. He gave her a distinctly odd look before she turned her back and carried on. There were two more ladders to traverse. Each time Kerry shifted Peter so he could loop an arm around Peter’s knee and hold onto his wrist, freeing up a hand to hold onto the ladder. It looked remarkably dangerous, but Kerry didn’t seem fazed.

  It took several minutes to get down to ground level. Kerry immediately marched up the road, Peter still slung over his shoulders, towards the cluster of old narrow sandstone buildings ahead. Riley headed after them at a run.

  There were several minutes of twisting back and forth through the narrow cobbled lanes before he abruptly turned into an alley and stopped in front of an unassuming door in the side of a retail establishment. A faded “live long and prosper” sticker was peeling at the edges in the tiny window.

  “Key’s under the mat.” Kerry turned and gave Riley a slightly lopsided grin.

  “And that’s totally safe,” she chided as she lifted the edge of a worn welcome mat to find a smallish key. She picked it up gingerly and inserted it. The lock turned easily.

  “Normie never remembers his key. It’s better than having him bang on the door at three in the morning. Go on.”

  Riley shoved the door open and was pleasantly surprised at the clean foyer and steep stairs that ran up to the second story. There was a rubber mat for dirty footwear against the wall and several pegs had been screwed into the plaster to hold coats. Readjusting her expectations she mounted the first tread and headed up. Kerry gave a grunt, shifted Peter’s inert form and followed her.

  The stairway opened up to a huge loft with a wall of windows facing a large wooden deck on one side and several doors on the other. There were exposed brick walls, shiny dark wood floors, granite countertops, and a plethora of gleaming steel appliances. Real art adorned the walls, Riley noted with interest, and a vase of fresh-cut flowers sat on the coffee table.

  Kerry laid Peter out on the red leather sofa, removing his shoes without any appearance of self-consciousness, and tucked a yellow throw cushion under his head. Then he straightened up and gave Riley a polite smile. “How about a lemonade?” he asked pleasantly.

  Riley raised a shoulder and pretended an interest in the abstract oil hung over the sofa. “Sure.” Suddenly she was overcome with an odd sense of shyness mixed with a tinge of worry. Kerry might have Darius’s self-confidence and relaxed manner, but, unlike Darius, he hadn’t taken any oath to keep his hands off her.

  Kerry rooted in the fridge for a moment. There was the clinking of glass and the clunk of ice being dispensed into tumblers. He crossed over to where Riley hadn’t moved and handed her a glass.

  “Cheers,” he said, raising his glass for a moment before taking a long swallow.

  Riley raised her glass to her lips and took a grateful mouthful. She nearly choked as the liquid burned down her throat. “There’s booze in this,” she gasped.

  “Sure,” Kerry seemed nonplussed.

  “Isn’t it a bit early in the day?” She tried to recover and appear nonchalant. She was seventeen and heading to university. Or had been.

  “Nah, it’s afternoon somewhere.” Kerry drained his glass and set it down on a table. Then he dropped down into a leather director’s-style chair and leaned back. “Have a seat, Riley. I’m not going to eat you.”

  Riley chose a similar seat farthest from him and lowered herself carefully to the taut leather. It was pretty low and she almost spilled her drink as she maneuvered herself into it. Self-consciously she took a tiny sip.

  “What do you call that glass ball of yours?” Kerry asked. “It works like a radio but obviously isn’t. You used it on Bob and Jim to knock them for a loop. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “Riley Cohen, and you invited me.” Riley gave a ghost of a smile.

  “Very funny,” Kerry crossed his arms. “Answer the question.” “Where do you think I’m from?” she asked.

  “The future,” Kerry replied without an ounce of self-consciousness.

  Riley raised an eyebrow. “Oh-kaay,” she drawled, thinking as fast as she could. “If you like that explanation I can live with it.”

  “You use futuristic equipment and have some kind of weird power over people when you hold it. You seem entirely human, not alien. So, as Spock says, ‘Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Since the power you’re using is not available now, it can only mean you’re from the future.”

  In a weird way, he made sense. And she knew the Star Trek reference. Hadn’t she watched that episode a dozen times herself?

  “How about ‘not the future,’ but somewhere else?” she hinted. She took another sip of her drink. It was really hot inside the apartment and climbing down the bridge, coupled with her fear, had made her terribly thirsty. She took another sip, then a mouthful.

  “Like another planet?” Kerry shrugged and leaned forward, resting his elbo
ws on his knees. “Doubtful. There isn’t any evidence to suggest that human life would evolve so similarly on different planets. Humans are a product of their environment. Earth, as far as we know, is unique.” He paused for a moment then got out of his seat and grabbed another bottle of lemonade from the fridge. After a couple of swallows he put the glass down and grinned at her. Riley took another mouthful. She squirmed a bit and got more comfortable in the chair. She blinked several times then yawned. For some reason she was kind of sleepy.

  “You might be surprised, you know,” Riley replied sagely. “If you have to put that theory to the test, you might get the surprise of your life.”

  “Are you saying you are an alien?” One blond eyebrow disappeared into his curls.

  Riley took another couple of gulps. She wished the loft had air conditioning. “Course not. I’m Canadian.”

  “Yeah?” Kerry raised his glass in a salute. “Cheers, then. I’ve got cousins that are Canadian.”

  “Well, I don’t know them,” she said before he could continue. “It’s a big country.”

  “And you’re from the future,” Kerry added.

  Riley took another swallow. He wasn’t really wrong. She was from the future in a weird kind of way. She’d travelled back to this time, which if you wanted to be totally honest, was her past. So technically, he was right. Sort of.

  “You know,” she said, “it’s a bit surprising how fast you caught on. You know, to my orb.”

  “I watch a lot of sci-fi,” Kerry said. He nodded towards the bookshelves on the distant wall. “I’m studying anthropology and astronomy at uni. I know what to look for.”

  “Cool.” Riley leaned her head back on the seat. She didn’t want to fall asleep but it wouldn’t hurt to close her eyes for a moment. “Aren’t you going to get in trouble at work?”

  “Nah. I figure meeting someone from the future is way more interesting than the tour company. I mean, I like the bridge climb and everything but it’s only a part-time job. I can get another anytime. Meeting you and your mate, Peter, not so often.”

  “Hmm,” Riley nodded. She stopped instantly. Moving her head made her feel a bit odd, like riding a tilt-a-whirl at the fair. She drained her glass and pulled a small ice cube into her mouth. It felt incredibly cool and pleasant. She tried not to yawn. It wasn’t very polite.

  “So, what can that glass ball do?”

  “My orb?”

  “Is that what you call it? What powers does it have?”

  It wouldn’t hurt to tell him. Darius would just erase his memory anyway. “By itself, none. It’s me. The orb channels my power into a usable form. I just think something and…,” she tried to snap her fingers but they wouldn’t make a sound, “presto.”

  “Could I try?”

  Riley started to shake her head but quickly stopped. “Nope. Only works for me.” A giggle started somewhere inside her. “And Peter. And Anna, the ice queen.” The giggle grew. “And of course, Darius Finn.”

  “You spoke to them, right?” Kerry was on his feet. His voice was moving around the apartment but Riley didn’t open her eyes to watch him. She was incredibly comfortable and almost asleep. The thought that it was taking Darius and Anna a long time to get to her briefly crossed her mind and then drifted away in a cloud of fuzzy contentment. Her glass was plucked from her grip.

  “I heard them. Inside my head when you contacted them using the orb.” Kerry sounded closer. Riley cracked open an eyelid and saw his face swim into view. He was hunched down beside her chair and grinning. “See, I knew there was something going on the moment I saw you up on the bridge. No tour uniform, no group, terrified out of your mind. I’d just passed that area ten seconds before you arrived so I knew you’d had to beam down. I was watching when Peter beamed into place. That’s how I knew you were from the future. We don’t have transporters yet.”

  Riley giggled again. Someone was having trouble keeping television and real life straight, and it wasn’t her.

  “No transporter,” she murmured. “This.” Riley tried to undo the button on the pant pocket but the buttonhole seemed to have shrunk. Kerry undid it for her and pulled out her orb. Anna would not be amused to find Kerry with them and holding her orb, Riley realized with a sudden moment of clarity. It was probably a good idea if she and Peter were to hightail it out of there before she showed up. Or just her, since Peter was unconscious.

  “Better give it back to me,” she said.

  “Yeah, just a sec.” Kerry was holding her orb up to the sunlight in front of the wall of windows for a better look. “This is really cool, Riley. I mean, you can’t see any mechanism at all. How does it work? What’s it made of?”

  “Orbs are Telurian Crystal and are grown, not made.” The cold voice cut through Riley’s foggy brain and her stomach lurched. Uh oh. The Ice Queen. “And you had better have a good explanation why this civilian is holding it, Riley.”

  23

  Alec tried hard not to scream but a gurgled cry tore from his lips. Despite his painful wrist he scuttled backwards like a crab through the grass but the cloud of sparkles moved past Logan to hover between them. Alec stopped, his heart pounding painfully in his throat.

  Logan’s orb was held directly at the rip. He fairly growled his next words. “Explain, boy.”

  Alec held very still and his eyes never left the rip. Thoughts scrambled over themselves inside his head. How would he explain this without telling the truth?

  “Alec, are you ready to play again?” Rhozan’s voice rose and fell in a sibilant wave that forced goosebumps into life all over Alec’s skin.

  Stay calm, he ordered himself. “I don’t want to play, Rhozan. Find someone else.”

  “Alec, are you ready to play again?” Rhozan repeated.

  “How do the Others know you?” Logan stepped closer, bringing himself perilously close to the rip. “I demand you tell me.”

  Alec clamped his mouth shut and concentrated with all his might as Tyon persuasion flowed over him, forcing its way into his mind with an almost overwhelming compulsion to spill his guts. A sweat broke out on his brow. He shivered with the strain. I’m not telling you, he repeated over and over in his mind. I won’t.

  Logan took another step. He was practically touching the rip. His eyes blazed and his fists curled into balls at the defiance. Alec shivered. When Logan got him he was going to be torn into little pieces. If Logan got him. One more step and Logan would be touching the rip and pulled right inside. He didn’t know the way out of the Other’s dimensional access port, whereas if he could get a hold of an orb, Alec did. He just had to make Logan so angry that he’d make a mistake, forget for a crucial second about the rip. If Logan took his orb with him into Rhozan’s domain, well so be it.

  Alec swore, loudly and vehemently. He forced a saucy grin in Logan’s direction. Take that, jerk.

  It might have worked if the rip hadn’t moved closer to Alec at the same time Logan took another step forward.

  “You will pay for your disrespect,” Logan hissed viciously.

  Suddenly two Operatives, both in identical grey coveralls, winked into existence on either side of him. They acted immediately. The man to Alec’s left reached forward and, without a word, grabbed Alec’s shoulder and pulled him away from the advancing rip with a painful tug. The second man pulled out his orb and focused it on the rip, sending a jet of blinding white light towards it.

  The rip reacted immediately. It enlarged with a sickening pulse and a sound Alec had never heard before, like the hissing of a thousand insects blasting in his ears.

  Alec tried to get to his feet but before he could find a purchase in the slippery grass, the teleportation process had begun. In and out, over and under, through and not through. Alec shook his head to clear the distorting sensation of travel the second his feet touched something solid. He looked around quickly hoping to bolt for safety but the grip on his arm never lessened.

  High above him, a rock ceiling of carved grey stone soared as far as a footba
ll field in all directions. The familiar smell of cold rock, metal, and alien superiority pervaded his nostrils. He didn’t even need to see the huge movie screens that dotted the rock chamber walls, all playing televised real-time events the world over. He knew exactly where he was. Crap, crap, and double crap. His heart sank down to his ankles.

  Quickly remembering that he wasn’t supposed to know anything about the secretive underground headquarters, Alec kept his head down and feigned a terror that wasn’t wholly manufactured. He stole several surreptitious looks around him as his captor marched him towards the main console at the center of the station.

  Not much had changed, although the last time he was here the world was deteriorating significantly, with rips opening all over the place and the malevolent influence Rhozan exerted at an all-time high. There’d been riots and general mayhem and the National Guard had been deployed in many countries. The Tyon Operatives had responded with an unemotional intentness. Now, Alec could feel relative calmness in the air. It didn’t make him feel much better, though.

  He didn’t see anyone he knew. While Anna had kept him sequestered during his previous stay, he had seen several of the same faces over and over when she talked to her compatriots while he was supposed to be sleeping. There had been someone named Ty who’d been a frequent visitor, as well as a few others whose names he didn’t know.

  The Operative led him through a multitude of small corridors at a steady clip. The brown metal walls were only shoulder high, like the dividers that made modern office spaces into a series of cubicles. Alec could see across the entire cavern but, other than heads bobbing up and down as people moved in and out of the cubicles, there was nothing of interest.

  Alec squirmed around for a moment to get a look at his captor’s face but the firm-jawed visage was unfamiliar. He looked behind him. No sign of Logan. If the Commander hadn’t travelled with them, it only meant a temporary reprieve.

  The towering center console rose up ahead of him and, sure enough, his captor led him straight to it. There was a small crowd gathered in front. Four blond, uniformed women with serious expressions surrounded a wide screen and stared intently at it. All held orbs in their hands, Alec noted, and all turned as one to stare at him.