by Claire Davon
One car, rather a bus, Fiona thought with rising hysteria, caught in the middle of the gridlocked intersection, seemed to rise, its sides rippling in time with the large flash of light. Then, sickeningly, in slow motion, it exploded outward, sending shards of glass and metal hurtling in all directions.
A large chunk came towards them and Fiona ducked instinctively, even though the piece was moving slowly enough that a snail could dodge it. A cry escaped her lips when the others made no sign of moving. Then the piece went right through them, burying itself in the brick façade several feet down from the small group. The rest of the group stood grim-faced, not moving, spectators to the hellish carnage in front of them.
“What…?” Fiona asked, and Sonder simply gripped her arm as if willing her to be quiet. No human voice could be heard above the scream of the blast, so she didn’t know why he wanted her to be quiet. Unless he didn’t want to hear her questions for reasons of his own.
She was amazed she could hear after the thunderclap of the explosion, but a quick look at the others said they all could, too. More pieces of debris hurtled around them and through them in the same weird half speed that she’d seen at her own accident. Cars began imploding, glass shattered outward, forming a spray pattern that was almost beautiful in its destruction.
If the debris was easy for them to dodge, the people who were part of this city weren’t so fortunate. She watched in mute horror as several were caught by large pieces of wrecked metal, impaling the pedestrians and drivers with equal ferocity. A wheel from the bus had spun off and crashed into a small family, rolling over one of the children and pinning the father to a concrete wall. Pavement buckled underneath the ruined bus, throwing a person high in the air until he landed with a sound she never wanted to hear again several dozen feet away and lay unmoving, still.
When the smoke cleared, blood, wreckage and pieces of cars and people were everywhere, the tableau a sprawl of destruction. Fiona saw mist around them, but this time, it did not penetrate the scene. Instead, it just surrounded everything.
That was odd. But no odder than everything that happened since she made the mistake of getting up that morning.
“Now.” That was Gire again, and he nodded to the city and the hellish scene in front of them.
Now the grey mist moved in again, blanketing the scene, covering but not obscuring the people. As she watched, her mind a skittering mess of emotions, certain people seemed to separate from the others. Beyond them, the city was still exploding, but the people in mist seemed to shake themselves, their faces blank. The debris had stopped flying and, through the grey mist, Fiona could see people starting to react to the event. People who had been lucky enough not to be fatally hit were turning and looking. Cars had screeched to a halt, some so damaged they crashed into others, creating more damage, and yet others that had managed to stop in time were flashing their hazards, the drivers starting to emerge from their metal cocoons. Pedestrians who had also survived the initial blast were looking around, focusing on the blast site or the bleeding and broken bodies around them.
A person was coated in the grey mist, looking dazed and unfocused. Fiona realized that, beyond the mist, there was the same man on the ground, his legs bent at an unnatural angle, blood beginning to slow from a large gash in his head. Next to him was a half of a woman's corpse, and of course, it was not moving.
“What?” Fiona said again as the rest of the people started forward.
Sonder turned back. “You’ll understand far too soon.”
It was as if a switch had been thrown and, suddenly, the wreckage of the city disappeared. The city took on that jeweled quality Fiona remembered from her own crash scene, so vibrant and sparkling it was like it had been buffed with a heavy duty jeweler’s cloth. People, cars, planes, even clouds were gone leaving just the structures, the small band she was with, and a survivor of the blast.
Except he wasn’t a survivor, Fiona realized, the image swimming into focus with sharp clarity. He showed no wounds, but there was blood on his torn clothing, indicative of the impact of the bomb. That was the only thing it could have been–a bomb. As Fiona watched, the blood and tears also vanished, leaving the man in the mist unscathed.
Except for the fact that he was dead, Fiona thought, he looked fine.
Chapter 6
Illiria stepped forward, beckoning to the man. He was young, maybe twenty-two, still thin in the teenager way, with a shaggy mop of jet black hair. He looked behind him, then a Illiria, and then to the shiny city, his mouth dropping open, his jaw slack.
“What is your name?”
He looked blankly at her.
“Your name, young man,” she said with a touch of impatience.
Further off, perhaps five hundred feet, she saw another moving group. Sonder seemed to sense the movement and turned his head.
“Liberators. Rogald. That took longer than we thought.” This was to Illiria.
She only nodded.
“Um, my name is Bob. Am I dead?” He looked around, wide eyed.
To Fiona’s surprise, Illiria took the man’s arm.
“Not if you don’t want to be,” she said, leading him away from the others.
The mist suddenly slammed shut and then parted. The rift between the two cities vanished. The woman whose name Fiona had never even known lay motionless, still and lifeless, on the ground near yet not near them. A strange melancholy filled Fiona even through a roar in her ears. She felt herself fading, reaching for the black. She could just go somewhere, she thought. The black called to her and she went to it. For a moment she was in the black, seeing the shape of Brookline, the clearest memory she had, but no. She couldn’t just go back there. Something told her she could not. She didn’t know what or why but there was a pulse inside her that told her she needed to stay where she was. Brookline wheeled away, and she surfaced out of the black to find herself back with the others.
She saw Sonder looking at her, his gaze sharp but with an element of surprise.
Then a female voice cut in, strident and demanding.
“What the hell are you?”
Chapter 7
Fiona shook her head, slowly coming back to her surroundings, and focused on Illiria.
“What the hell are you?” the voice repeated. Illiria’s, of course. Even before seeing her, Fiona had no illusion about who was speaking.
She narrowed her gaze. Illiria was coming towards her quickly, hands on hips, her stride aggressive.
“I…what?”
“You.” Illiria reached her and stabbed a finger at her. “What are you? How could you do that?”
It had seemed so simple, so…logical when it happened, but as she sorted through the event in her mind, Fiona realized with a sickening thud in her stomach that she’d seen something that was impossible.
Now surrounding her, everyone began talking at once.
“Impossible.”
“Only Guardians can see that.”
“And Liberators.”
Sonder moved to stand behind her, facing the increasingly hostile crew of what she supposed were Guardians. The word Liberator seemed to be spoken with an air of crossing your body afterwards, and she imagined that was the group in the distance: Liberators. She felt the heat of Sonder’s body, and a very primitive part of her wanted to lean back into it, even in the face of this furious hostility and suspicion.
Great, she thought with amusement. You meet a guy you’re attracted to, and he’s part of some strange galactic force for good, or evil, and may want you dead. Way to go, Fiona.
She shot a covert glance at Illiria who, for once, was speechless. She was looking at the others, not speaking, seeming to weigh and measure all that was in front of her.
It was then the giddiness started. Dead, they were all dead, she thought wildly. It was the only thing that made sense. The people, the woman, all dead. The Liberators. She had witnessed a trolley accident and a bombing, and people had died. Dead. Dead. Dead.
They had to
be dead, too, then. She had to have died in the trolley accident. Dead, dead, dead; she was dead, just like all the rest. She was dead, and they were there to collect her body. Her soul. Her…what?
Only she hadn’t been collected. Not like the two she had just seen had been. Maybe she was dead and didn’t know it. Maybe that was it. Dead, dead, dead. All dead. Grey and dead.
A quick, hard slap shook her back to her new reality, and she realized she’d been keening the word “dead” over and over again. Sonder’s warmth could still be felt against her back, and she saw that it had been Illiria who had slapped her.
“Hey, Commander. Hey, Sonder,” Rogald’s voice, travelling over the distance could still be distinctly heard. “You’ve got something very interesting there. Care to share?”
“Hell, no, Liberator.” Sonder’s voice.
He looked at Rogald, and then he looked back at the small group.
“Time to go. The Liberators are too interested in you.”
She had no idea why they'd be interested in her, but she nodded in unison with the rest of them.
“We don’t have enough power to get back to base,” Gire said, as if reminding Sonder of something he should have known. “The two jumps were too close together.”
Sonder cursed, looking at his wrist and then to Illiria. It was the motion of a soldier waiting for instructions.
“Australia,” Illiria said after a moment’s pause. “The Outback. Five years ago. There are no time anomalies because it’s too isolated. That should slow them down for a few minutes.”
He nodded. “Gire, do the honors.”
Gire punched in some coordinates, and Fiona saw faintly a desolate, barren area, with only a house and a fence breaking the dusty landscape.
The Commander said nothing, merely joined them in the circle.
She saw the Liberators starting to come towards them, Rogald beckoning to her as he had to Bob when he’d made his decision. Then the shimmer began, and she watched Rogald as he smiled, bowed, and gave her a jaunty salute.
Gire pressed the flashing button. Then the void again, that awful blackness that nothing penetrated. She fought not to scream this time, but after a second, gave in to the urge.
The house was a simple affair, made of wood that was weathered by the constant harsh conditions of the Outback.
Gire was the last to haul his body up. He punched something in and frowned at his wrist device.
Sonder caught Gire’s double take and, after a brief glance at Illiria, who was standing by the window, and one at Fiona, jerked his chin at Gire.
“Time?”
Gire shrugged. “About a half hour, maybe less. It will take the Liberators a few minutes to triangulate our location. We need a little more time to power up to jump to Base.”
Illiria looked at the Commander. “That’s less than usual. Explanation?”
He said nothing, but Gire’s body language spoke of confusion tinged with a bit of fear. He pointed at his wrist device.
“We’ve got more power than we should. It’s as if we didn’t have a full crew when we jumped.” He punched some more buttons, his frown deepening.
“Everything is working right, it’s just off. I’m sorry, I don’t know why.”
Illiria nodded. “It may be something the Liberators did. Check your devices, make sure they are working properly.” She glanced at Fiona and then walked up to her. “You. How do you explain what happened?”
Fiona felt a hysterical bubble of laughter well up inside her. “Which part? The trolley? The accident? You guys? The bounce first to Hong Kong, then here? The dead people? Time travel? Which unexplainable thing do you want me to explain? And how?”
Sonder moved to her and stood with them, his arms folded, forming a triangle of the three of them. It was not a gesture of support for either person. He just looked at Fiona, also clearly waiting for her answer.
“She doesn’t seem like one of our Candidates,” Sonder said in the silence that followed her outburst.
“You mean aside from the fact that I’m not dead?”
His impassive face didn’t betray a hint of any emotion. It was as if he was carved of stone, rock hard and solid. A brief sense memory of the way he smelled after sex, primal and masculine, came to her as if the dream had been ten seconds ago.
Fiona shuddered against an unwelcome stab of desire.
He inclined his head. “That, and the fact that you have no travel devices of any kind. Unless you have one in your bag.”
To her shock, she realized she still had her handbag slung diagonally across her body, a tactic she used to ensure it didn’t get stolen while riding the “T” every day.
Fiona yanked it off and handed it to Illiria. “Here. Check. Frisk me if you have to.”
Illiria took the bag, handed it to Gire, and nodded to Sonder. “Go ahead. We need to be sure. We should have done it before the first jump.”
“That was a terrible breach of protocol,” the Commander agreed. “We will discuss it back at base.”
Fiona decided she didn’t like the slightly portly, grey haired man much. Okay, at all.
Sonder looked at her, his eyes hooded, and gestured for her to put her arms out. His hands glided over her arms and then her sensitive armpits. She resisted the urge to giggle when his fingers tickled her. He moved down, over her sides and waist, patting her back and chest with perfunctory caution, avoiding her breasts. She felt his breath on her neck, and it seemed as if it came shorter than normal.
“Do you have a scar on your forearm?”
His voice was soft, meant for her ears only.
She glanced up at him, confused by the question.
“Do I…what?”
“Do you?” Sonder looked meaningfully at her arm.
In reply, she turned her arm over, showing the white, long scar, faded with time but still present.
He continued the frisk, but his eyes flicked to her arm, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.
“I saw it. In my dreams.”
Her breath went out with a rush. His words left no doubt that his dreams had included her, just as hers had included him.
Sonder’s eyes darkened, the pupils widening. Then he looked down, and bent, continuing his frisk across her now very sensitive legs. Finishing with an emphatic “that’s it,” he straightened and stepped back from her. He caught her eyes once, and then looked at Illiria.
“She’s clean. No Liberator devices.”
Illiria and the Commander nodded, but looked unsatisfied.
Sonder looked at her, a long, piercing stare whose meaning she was unable to interpret. She looked down at her forearm. The scar was the product of a long ago sled accident when she had fallen off the sled and the sharp rail had cut into her forearm, laying the flesh open to the bone and requiring a lot of stitches. It had hurt like hell at the time, and was red for longer than an eight year old wanted, but she rarely thought about it now.
He had dreamed it. He had dreamed her just like she had him. This was beyond weird.
“It’s possible the Liberators won’t try to find us,” Sonder said. “We aren’t in a time shift, and we aren’t doing anything to alter their plans.”
The Commander looked at Fiona. The curl of his lip told her he didn’t like her any better than she liked him.
“Rogald was very interested in,” he pointed, “that one.”
Something inside her snapped. “In case all you guys are curious, or even care, my name is Fiona. I am not a thing, or an it. I am a real, really freaked out woman who has no idea what the hell is going on. An explanation or twelve would be nice. Preferably twelve. Or more.”
The Commander and Illiria shared a look that showed their mistrust and something deeper, a fear that she didn’t understand. She didn’t evoke fear in people, not even in the two people who nominally worked for her.
Simultaneously, all of their wrist devices sounded a long, slow droning beep. Sonder groaned.
“The Liberators are tracking
us,” Gire said after checking his wrist. From the looks on the other people’s faces, the words were solely for her benefit. “They’ll be here in five minutes, at most.”
“They seem to have a keen interest in something, or someone.” The Commander again looked at her before turning to his slightly more elaborate wrist device. “I’ll do the honors this time. Florida panhandle, 1970s Everglades. It won’t drain us much, and it will throw them off long enough to power up to jump to Base.”
“And her?” Illiria pointed to Fiona. “We could leave her behind. Let the Liberators have her.”
The Commander punched what could only be coordinates into his wrist device before addressing Illiria.
“Not yet. This situation bears investigation. Sonder, she’s your charge.”
What if she refused to go? Fiona wondered as Sonder took her hand again, but this time he slid his hand into hers instead of circling her wrist. She could let the Liberators chase her down and see what happened. The question of who was good and who wasn’t in this situation was far from clear.
His fingers were warm and callused, solid against hers, and far more appealing than the dream version of him. This version was the real thing, not warped, as dreams can be, that sense of unreality permeating even though you are in the moment.
Her dreams. His dreams. What had they meant? The desire to find out outweighed her uneasiness about being hauled through space and time. For now.
“Do we have enough power?” Illiria asked.
The Commander nodded. “Gire’s got enough to push me over, since he didn’t get fully drained on this jump. Keep yours on reserve, though, in case we need to move quickly.”
She didn’t want to go into that hideous blackness again. It was worse than her concept of “between” from when she’d read Anne McCaffrey long ago, and that had been bad enough just reading it in print. Her reality, the time jumps, were far worse than anything the late, great author could have envisioned.
“Do we have to?”
As she suspected, she was ignored. Sonder’s grip on her hand tightened in a grasp she supposed he meant to be reassuring. It didn’t work.