Uncontrollable (Beyond Human)

by Nina Croft

  What the fuck?

  She was gone.

  He walked into the room, stared down at the chair where she had sat. The cuffs were still attached to the wall, the band that had been around her wrist still locked.

  How had she gotten away?

  He glanced at the barred window, but no one—not even a child—could have gotten through there. And the door had been locked. He supposed someone could have found a key, unlocked it…then locked it again behind them. But that didn’t make sense.

  “Quinn, we have to leave now. They’re about to enter the house.”

  “Coming.”

  “Where is she?” Martin asked as Quinn came into the kitchen alone.

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?” Rose said. “How the hell can she be gone?”

  “I don’t fucking know, but she is. And we had better be, as well. We’ll think about it later. Right now, we have to get out of here.” He took a deep breath. “Rose, you go ahead. There’s an alley out the back that leads onto the street. There will be people watching the rear of the building, but not too many for you to take out.”

  She nodded.

  “Once you’re on the street, find us a car. We’ll be right behind you.”

  More glass shattered somewhere in the house. Time was running out. He turned to Martin. “Are you all right?”

  Martin gave a weak but genuine smile. “I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

  “Good. Let’s hope nothing happens to spoil that fun. Right, I think it’s time to go.”

  He gave Rose five minutes and was about to call her when she spoke in his head. “All clear.”

  Dave groaned as Quinn picked him up and placed him over his shoulder. Hopefully, he would stay out of it for a little while longer.

  They passed two unconscious bodies on the way through the backyard. Quinn hesitated by the second one. “Can you check for ID?” he asked Martin. It might help if they had some idea who was after them.

  Martin crouched down and rifled through the pockets. “Nothing,” he said, straightening.

  Well, he hadn’t really expected anything.

  “Have you got us a car yet?” he asked Rose.

  “No. You shouldn’t have picked such a nice neighborhood—their posh cars are all locked in their posh garages.” She was quiet for a moment. “There’s a cab coming toward me. I’ll get it.”

  It wasn’t the best option, but they could deal with the fallout later. When they exited the alley, he could see Rose speaking with the cab driver. He got out as Quinn approached.

  “I don’t want no trouble. But you can’t bring bleeding people in my cab.”

  Quinn reached out with his mind, curled tendrils of coercion around the other man’s thoughts. “Take us to the nearest Emergency Room.”

  The cabbie nodded and slid into the driver’s seat.

  Rose opened the back door and climbed in. Quinn slid Dave onto the seat with his head on her lap. Martin managed to squeeze in as well, and Quinn slammed the door before climbing in beside the cabbie. “Go.”

  He sat back as the streets whizzed by. Dawn was still a while away, but the city was starting to awaken. Was his FBI agent out there somewhere?

  Would he ever see her again?

  Who knew?

  Chapter Seven

  She was back.

  Mel felt the familiar pressure of the bands around her arms and forehead and had to fight down the inevitable sense of panic. She hated to be confined. It was a hang-up from a childhood she couldn’t remember—thanks to some very expensive therapy, courtesy of her adoptive father.

  Breathing deeply, she waited for the panic to pass.

  Nausea washed over her, finally settling like a weight in her belly. But that was familiar as well. This was her twenty-fifth time shift; she knew exactly what to expect.

  By the time the lights flashed on, the sensations were gone, banished until the next time. The machine behind her beeped to indicate it was safe to move, and she tugged free of the bands around her wrists. They parted easily—they weren’t there to restrain her but to keep her in place. Finally, she pulled the loop from her forehead and took stock.

  Everything seemed okay. As always, once the nausea passed, she felt good, really good. And hungry. She glanced at the timer on the wall in front of her. May 23rd 4012. Exactly when she was supposed to be.

  The door opened, and Sara stood there in the regulation black jumpsuit of a Federation employee, the purple badge on her chest revealing her technician status. “Welcome back.” She looked Mel over from head to toe. “Nice outfit.” Sara hadn’t been on duty when she left three days ago, so she hadn’t yet seen her twenty-first century costume.

  “Thank you.” Getting to her feet, she rolled her shoulders and stretched.

  “How do you feel?” Sara asked.

  “Great.”

  The answer was logged into Sara’s recorder. She ran a scanner down over Mel’s front. Mel turned without being asked so she could complete the scan.

  “No disorientation?”

  “None.”

  Sara grinned. “Hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Well, go detox, and I’ll get some food ready for you. The captain wants to see you straight away.”

  She grinned. “He’s here?”

  “In his office, waiting for you.”

  Mel turned to leave, but hesitated. “Sara, do you know if anyone else was down there with me?”

  The technician frowned. “Not that I know of.”

  “Thanks.”

  Well, she hadn’t expected an easy answer. But someone had been there—either that or her control unit was defective, which was unlikely. That meant that the others had been either illegals, or they hadn’t yet been sent.

  Time travel was enough to make her head explode. And she loved it.

  She pressed her palm to the panel, and the door to the detox chamber slid open. As she entered the first room, she stripped off her clothes and shoved them in the hole in the wall where they’d be detoxed as well. Then she entered the second room, with its warm orange glow, stood in the center and closed her eyes. Heat saturated her skin, her bones…it felt so good. She stayed in position for ten minutes, while the radiation killed off anything that shouldn’t be on her body. A drink appeared at her right side, and she plucked the container from the electronic arm and drank the liquid down. The taste was slightly bitter but not unpleasant. That would take care of anything inside her body. Finally, a scanner ran over her and flashed a green light. She was cleared to go.

  In the outer chamber, she dressed in the black jumpsuit and boots waiting for her. Her badge was red, to denote an active officer. She still felt a glow of pride when she looked at it.

  As she exited, Sara handed her a couple of protein bars.

  “Thanks.”

  She nibbled on one as she headed off for her debriefing interview. It tasted bland, and she had a brief flashback to the taste of warm bread and butter. Some things hadn’t improved with time.

  A few feet farther along the corridor, she caught sight of a group of men talking together. As she approached, two of them gave her a quick look and walked away. She recognized them, from their black hair and blue eyes, as contractors from the Tel-group. And the resemblance to Quinn Sutherland kicked her in the stomach.

  As far as she was aware, telepathy hadn’t existed in the human race until about a thousand years ago, and was the result of the advanced evolution of a small isolated group. The Tel-group were mercenaries for hire, but very useful, with a strict code of conduct. The Federation always had at least two of them on the team.

  She watched them go, a frown pulling her brows together. She’d dismissed the similarity to Quinn, because the Tel-group hadn’t existed back in the twenty-first century. And there were lots of guys with black hair and blue eyes. Now she wasn’t so sure. She just couldn’t work out the connection.

  The two remaining men walked toward her. “Hey, princess.”
/>   “Don’t call me that.” The words were automatic. She’d said them many times in her life.

  “You like it really,” he said.

  “No, I don’t. What are you doing here, Brent?”

  They’d had a thing back in the academy. But in the end, it had fizzled out. Probably about the time Brent had realized that if she wasn’t going to use her connections to further her own career, then it was extremely unlikely she’d use them to further his.

  “I finally made the team.” She was silent. “Hey, you could look happier for me.”

  “I am happy. I know it’s what you wanted.”

  But something niggled at her mind. There had been rumors about Brent—about what he’d been willing to do to get what he wanted—since the academy. Not that she listened to gossip, but rumors were hard to ignore if they were repeated enough.

  “This is my partner, Tyler.”

  She nodded. He looked a little younger than the two of them, which may be the reason she didn’t recognize him.

  “You’re just back?” Brent asked.

  “Yes.” She looked longingly down the corridor. She’d never been one for small talk.

  “When did you go to?”

  “That’s classified.”

  “Come on, Mel, you can talk to your fellow officers.”

  “Maybe later.” Or not. “I have a debriefing.”

  “I’ll hold you to that. Perhaps we can go for a drink. Reminisce.”

  “That would be nice.” And a long time coming.

  She couldn’t shake her unease as she headed away from them, but she made a concerted effort to clear her mind as she stopped at the door to the captain’s office. She pressed her palm to the panel and a message came up. Please take a seat.

  A seat slid out of the wall and she sank down onto it, pulled the second protein bar out of her pocket, and ate it while she waited. She wanted to go back, and she needed to make a convincing argument as to why that was necessary.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t even come close to finding the source of the anomaly. But she’d hit on something when she’d stumbled on the oversight committee investigation and subsequent deaths. Her intuition had screamed that the two things were somehow connected. The timing was too much of a coincidence. But right now, she couldn’t see what the connection could be.

  Ten minutes later, the door buzzed and slid open. Mel jumped to her feet and then took a step back as a huge figure strode out of the office. A big blue figure. What were the Bhaxians doing here?

  He paused when he saw her, his eyes narrowing.

  She nodded. “Minister.”

  She’d heard that rich Bhaxians kept harems and they weren’t too particular which species they filled them with. Though apparently, the minister was particularly fond of humans. Ugh.

  His gaze slid over her. More ugh. He nodded. “Special Agent.”

  Go. Go.

  She muttered the words in her head. She didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t know how to say “fuck off” politely. He made her skin crawl. Though he was handsome enough, she guessed, in a blue sort of way.

  She waited until he had disappeared around a curve in the corridor and then entered the office. The space was huge as befitted the Captain of Operations—her ultimate boss. A huge window made up one wall. The view changed depending on which direction the station was facing on its languid trajectory around the moon. Right now, it looked out onto the moon’s surface from high up in orbit. Other times, it would stare down onto Earth or peer out into the vastness of space.

  The tall man who greeted her appeared vaguely human, until you looked into his eyes. They were yellow, almost reptilian, usually devoid of emotion. His hair was deep purple and fell to his shoulders. And he had black wings furled tight against his back. He wore a black jumpsuit identical to hers, and the badge on his chest was black, so it could hardly be seen.

  He smiled. “Melody.”

  “Father.” Adoptive father actually, but he had brought her up after she’d been orphaned at the age of five. She could hardly remember her own parents. Or the source of her nightmares.

  Hugs were out of the question; her father’s people did not do emotion, and physical touching wasn’t encouraged. The habit of keeping her distance was ingrained now. She felt again the flutter of Quinn’s lips against hers, and a shiver ran through her. “Dealing with the enemy?” she asked, waving a hand at the door where the Bhaxian minister had left.

  His lips curled in a slow smile. “The Federation is neutral.”

  Of course, they were. But nobody wanted to see the Bhaxians in charge of the universe. They were a cruel, violent people.

  “Are you ready to give your report?” he asked.

  “Of course.” She crossed the room and placed her palm down on the reader. She closed her eyes as the information downloaded from her internal processors. Her father had taken his seat behind the desk and was reading the output, a small frown forming between his brows.

  When all the information was downloaded, he sat back and studied her. “So not the easy mission we’d hoped.”

  “No. I failed. I’m sorry.”

  “Not a failure.” He stared at nothing for a few minutes, and Melody sat on her hands to keep from fidgeting—he hated fidgeting—and clamped her lips together to stop the words from coming out. She’d added subtle nuances to her report, and he knew her well enough to read into them what she wanted him to read. But whether he would act on them was another matter.

  He’d spent his life studying the effects of time travel, knew more than anyone that it could have cataclysmic effects if not controlled—he had seen whole systems self-implode. His job was to make sure that never happened again.

  These days, time travel was outlawed. It was a law which was overseen by the Federal Bureau of Time Management, who monitored the time lines for anomalies.

  “Are we still getting the signal?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  It appeared to be a simple countdown. They’d managed to pinpoint the source time as 2017. But the location was murky, the source was somehow damaged, which was hardly surprising. Soon afterward, in 2020, there had been a huge Cataclysm which had destroyed most of the Earth, including all the records. No one knew what had caused it—anyone nearby had died in the blast and most of the remaining population had died soon after, in the fallout. She knew her father was concerned that maybe someone had gone back to that time, specifically because of the Cataclysm, perhaps to prevent it. And while that might sound good in theory, in practice, changing something of that magnitude could have far worse repercussions than just the destruction of a single planet.

  When she’d been given the assignment, she’d headed first to North America 2017. From what they could piece together, that was the center of the Cataclysm. So, if her anomaly was connected, that’s where she would find the source. But she’d found nothing to account for the signal. Not even a hint. She’d spent her time going through records, cross referencing everything against what they knew of the Cataclysm. She’d stumbled across a report on the apparent deaths of a nine-member oversight committee set up to look into a covert operations group in the United Kingdom. But the deaths had never been investigated, and the original report had been buried deep. Someone had removed all references to the group they were investigating, which had tweaked her interest. And she’d dug deeper and wider—with her internal processor she could process vast amounts of information—and something had caught. A reference she’d nearly overlooked, a transcript of a meeting of the oversight committee where someone had mentioned the word “Tribe.” Maybe it was nothing, but it was all she had to go on. She did more research—spent time wandering a city that no longer existed, ate food that had been banned where she came from—though she couldn’t bring herself to eat anything that had once been alive—ugh!

  Eventually she found something that interested her. A magazine article from a long time ago…

  The Tribe

  In 1878, Malcolm Ray
leigh, philanthropist and explorer, made an expedition to the Mountains of the Moon in what was then the Congo Free State of Africa. There he located an isolated tribe. What interested Rayleigh was that the tribe appeared to be of Caucasian origin. Small in number, only twenty-two in total, they were the obvious product of inbreeding. All were taller than average, with black hair, pale skin, deep blue eyes, and four toes on each foot. They were also believed to be mute and of limited intelligence.

  Rayleigh took the tribe back to Scotland, where he gave them a home.

  And nothing was ever heard of them again…

  The description fascinated her. The similarities to the Tel-group of her time were interesting, as well. She’d dug deeper and found that Malcolm Rayleigh had a great-great…grandson, a Martin Rayleigh. Not only that, but Martin Rayleigh had actually requested a review of the same group her dead oversight committee had been investigating, some years earlier.

  Unfortunately, the lead went nowhere. Martin Rayleigh had disappeared without a trace four years previously. And there were huge gaps in the data pertaining to him. It was as though someone had gone in and cleared the records.

  Then on her last visit, she’d gone back to 2018, hoping something might have changed, and she’d finally had what she’d believed to be some good luck. She was linked into the official systems and received an alert that Martin Rayleigh was being transferred to the Massachusetts Correctional Institution. Close to Boston.

  Things were looking up. She had an actual physical lead. She got to pretend to be an FBI agent…

  Then everything had gone to pieces. Or maybe not. Quinn was tall with black hair and blue eyes. So was his lady friend.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on down there?” her father asked, interrupting her mental processing.

  “Less now than when we started. But something is going on, and it’s not your bog-standard time raid.” That was where people jumped back, got whatever they needed, and jumped forward again, hopefully without being noticed by the Bureau.

  “And there was someone else down there,” she continued. “I picked up an alert. And it wasn’t coming from my suspects. Someone was following us. But there’s no report of it on the rosters.”