The Blade Phenomenon
Time of Death: Book #4
Written by Josh Anderson
Copyright © 2016 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.
Published by EPIC Press™
PO Box 398166
Minneapolis, MN 55439
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
International copyrights reserved in all countries.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press™ is trademark
and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.
Cover design by Dorothy Toth
Images for cover art obtained from iStockPhoto.com
Edited by Ramey Temple
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Anderson, Josh.
The blade phenomenon / Josh Anderson.
p. cm. — (Time of death ; #4)
Summary: Focusing on just Allaire as she fights for her life beneath the rubble of a fallen building. When she nears her final breath, she wonders if Kyle is the last chance to stop the world from ending.
ISBN 978-1-68076-067-5 (hardcover)
1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Traffic accidents—Fiction. 3. Life change events—
Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Conduct of life—Fiction. 6. Guilt—Fiction. 7. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 8. Young adult fiction. I. Title.
[Fic]—dc23
2015935826
This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.
To Dane,
Being your ‘Dada’ is an indescribable gift.
CHAPTER 1
April 12, 2005
* * *
During the earthquake
A hole tore through the side of the closet as if it had been opened by a scalpel, the piercing sunlight pouring through now. She could see through the hole, but barely. The staff of the Chinese restaurant below the apartment was now hustling away from the building. Allaire held her arms out, trying to balance. The flimsy wooden door of the closet she’d taken shelter in swung open and closed with each jarring movement of the Earth below.
Ayers had always seemed to be a step ahead of her, and never more so than now. He’d jumped into a silk blot only a few moments before this trembler, as if he’d known it was coming. Which, of course, he might have, she thought to herself. Kyle had gotten out of the building with the boy they’d found in the apartment—a younger version of Ayers. Allaire thought he was probably about twelve. In a different timestream altogether, she had known the boy well. The problems were already evident, and the solutions hard to come by. So hard that the entire task had given her a purpose—a career, almost.
This was definitely more of a side-to-side quake, and as the jolts got stronger, they sent Allaire ping-ponging from one side of the closet to the other. She felt her hand poke through the hole, and she pulled it back toward her.
Suddenly, she got that roller coaster feeling that she hated. Even though it signaled something dire—that the building was collapsing—she was transported back for an instant to the first time she’d felt it, when Dr. Browning had given in and taken her to Six Flags. The first drop on the Great American Scream Machine was such an unpleasant feeling that she decided they were leaving the park right after, never to return. Perhaps if she’d known how seldom opportunities for silly fun, like going to the amusement park, would present themselves, she might’ve been less quick to retreat.
As the floor collapsed beneath her and she started to plunge toward the dining room of the Chinese restaurant, Allaire brought her arms up above her head. She hit the ground with a thud, her right hip taking the brunt of the drop. She looked above her and saw the building’s entire skeleton laid bare. The roof was coming down in pieces. It wouldn’t be long before the entire thing was just a pile of rubble.
While she covered her head with her arms to protect against everything falling around her, she pushed with her legs toward a huge round table, the kind with a huge “lazy susan” on top. It was the centerpiece of the restaurant’s dining room, big enough for at least twelve people. The table was surrounded in the room by two- and four-person dining tables.
She managed to get underneath the huge table, her view of the destruction around her now obscured by the white tablecloth hanging down from above. She jerked the tablecloth away, and watched as porcelain teacups and appetizer plates fell in front of her. The shaking stopped for a moment, and Allaire eyed the nearest exit. She could see Ayers’s car, with Kyle standing near it scanning the destruction in front of him. Perhaps she could make a run for Kyle. Of all the ways Ayers could finally win their endless game of cat-and-mouse, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of her dying in an earthquake as he jettisoned off to some other place in history. The entire universe was his. She knew that. She’d only ever been able to slow him down, and undo some of the damage he’d done. But, she’d be damned if that asshole was going to kill her without even really trying.
Just as she started to use the table to pull herself up, the quake picked up again, this time stronger. A huge beam fell in front of the door that led to the parking lot. Then, another slammed on top of the last. The frame of the building was quickly collapsing on top of her. Through the thick dust, she could still glimpse Kyle standing by the car. He moved closer to the building, as if there was something he could do. Would he care about whether she lived or died if he knew everything? If he knew that, in a way, she was responsible for everything his life was now? Sure, he’d guessed that maybe their meeting hadn’t been completely by chance. But even after today, he knew so little about the Seres and about her . . .
There was nothing she could do until the quake stopped, so Allaire knelt under the table with her head between her legs and her arms creating a makeshift helmet over her. She opened her eyes and turned slightly. She could still see Kyle. She smiled to herself. She felt confident that no one had ever time weaved as many times as he had while still being mostly in the dark about what it all meant, how it all began. He had the heart of a lion—of something much greater, actually—but had no idea who he was or what he was truly capable of. She’d only pieced it together a little while earlier herself, so it wasn’t all a result of her being intentionally vague, or keeping information from him. How had she not seen it before?
Another beam fell and when she peeked, she’d lost sight of Kyle. Now she heard bang after bang after bang on the table right above her head. She hoped upon hope that the thick slab of wood would hold. Even if she never made it out of here, she preferred not to be crushed to death.
After guiding him through so much unfamiliar territory, her life might be in Kyle’s hands now. Once the shaking stopped, would he be able to get through this pile of rubble and find her? She hoped she could stay conscious. There was so much he didn’t know about her, and the time felt right now to let him in. She’d promised him she would come clean. They’d gone through enough together that she owed him that much. But, more than that . . . In light of what she realized now, she had to tell him everything.
A huge bookcase fell from the second floor right in front of Allaire as the ground continued to sway back and forth. Then, three huge planks of wood crashed down, a shard of wood hitting her in the face. All of a sudden, the space beneath the table felt tiny and she began to feel claustrophobic. There wasn’t anywhere for her to go. She had the few feet occupied by her body, and that was it. Her heart started to race. She heard a huge thud above her head as something crashed on top of the table covering her. She felt above her, running her fingers along a substantial crack in the underside of the tabletop. It wouldn’t hold if another heavy piece dropped on it. I am going to die any se
cond now, she thought.
It was as if it were getting darker outside by the second, as things piled up around her. But she knew the entire building had given out when she saw a flash of light. No more walls. No more roof. The bottom of the table crashed hard against the back of her head, and then Allaire felt fuzzy.
She was pinned, face down underneath the heavy table, half of which was laying right on top of her, crushing her ribs and making it hard to breathe. Worse, her head was no longer protected. She was able to turn her head a few degrees and look above her through the corner of her eye. She saw a huge beam wobbling right above her. It couldn’t hold for more than a few seconds. This is it.
Allaire had one more brief thought of regret. If she died in this rubble, here and now, of all the things Kyle didn’t yet know, he might not ever learn the most important one. Kyle might never learn the truth about himself.
CHAPTER 2
October 20, 1972
* * *
Thirty-three years earlier
Never question, Nora reminded herself.
But, it was hard to understand why everyone looked so grim. There was something she didn’t know, and maybe it really was better that way. She’d been given this tiny window, this tiny bit of insight, into something so special. Never question.
The tears that seemed to have been collecting for hours finally poured down Delores’s face, and Nora walked over with a tissue, wiping under each eye. Delores grimaced as another contraction came on, and Nora tentatively rubbed her upper back. Nora worked for a man named Yalé as his assistant, and although she spent nearly every day at this factory, the rest of his family was off-limits to her. Rickard and Delores, and the occasional mysterious visitors, were practically strangers.
She wondered if it would change today. When Yalé asked her to be present at the birth, it hadn’t been clear to Nora that he was asking her to act as the nurse at the birth of his nephew or niece. People trained for years for this, but here she was after only a small primer session with Yalé earlier in the week.
Rickard and Yalé looked from Yalé’s stopwatch to Delores, back and forth. The more they seemed to look at her as some kind of test specimen, the more Nora desired to do something, anything, to comfort Delores.
Yalé put a stethoscope to Delores’s belly and listened, again looking at his stopwatch as he did.
“Is it better?” Nora asked. “Is the heartbeat better, or worse?”
“The same,” Yalé said, using as few words as possible to deliver the directive, as usual.
Their three grim faces made Nora feel even more like an intruder. The baby’s heartbeat had been too fast for months, according to Yalé, who’d become self-taught in obstetrics over the past half-year in anticipation of today—as self-taught as someone could get in only a few months. While the Seres didn’t shun medical care altogether, Yalé had explained to Nora that they’d been delivering their own kin since the biblical era, and no amount of concern over the fetal heartbeat was going to change that.
Delores looked at Yalé. “Are you sure?”
“About the heartbeat?” he asked.
“No,” Delores answered.
Rickard held up his hand before his brother could answer. “We’ve been over this, Delores.”
“This is my baby, too,” Delores said through pained breathing.
“And this room is completely equipped to handle the birth,” Rickard said. “As is Yalé.”
Yalé bent down and smiled warmly at her as he checked her dilation again. “Want me to kick him out? Just say the word. I don’t care if he’s the baby’s father.”
“How close am I?” Delores asked without returning the smile. She clenched up again from a contraction, and let out a low moan.
“You’re nearly there,” Nora whispered to her, having no idea if she was telling a lie or not.
Yalé gave another listen to her lower belly. “One more listen before you push. We’re almost there.”
He frowned, and pulled the stethoscope off. “I don’t love the heartbeat I’m hearing,” he said. “I’d like to get the baby out. I’m sure everything will be fine, but better to get moving.”
“How do you know that everything’s going to be all right?” Delores screamed, tears coming down her cheeks again. She looked at Rickard, who, even now, couldn’t be bothered to show a shred of warmth toward his wife. “How does he know?” Delores shouted through gritted teeth.
“Just focus on the task at hand,” Rickard answered with force in his voice. “It’s all you can do.”
“How is the pain?” Yalé asked.
Delores shook her head no.
“Just breathe,” Yalé said. “Like we practiced. I need you to breathe through this whole process now. Are you ready to start pushing?”
Delores looked at Rickard. “What if there’s something wrong?”
Rickard looked down the hall, toward the big room with all of the silk-making equipment Nora was warned never to touch. “If there’s something wrong with it—”
“Please don’t call our baby ‘it,’” Delores cut in. Nora didn’t imagine their relationship included a lot of Delores’s take on things. But, this was a special circumstance.
“If something’s wrong, then we’ll get you pregnant again. Whatever happens, this isn’t the end of the world,” Rickard answered.
Nora watched Delores’s face fall. All of this pain and worry, and her husband couldn’t even acknowledge the massive stakes.
Yalé picked up one of Delores’s legs and rested it on his shoulder. “Brother, I need you to stand right here.” Rickard pulled off his suit jacket, carefully laid it across the back of the one folding chair in the room, and took Yalé’s spot, his white tie swinging like a pendulum only inches above the birth canal.
Nora didn’t need to be told to grab the other leg, as Yalé took his position between them, pulling a surgical mask over his face. “Ready to give me a nephew, or a niece?” Yalé asked.
“Nephew,” Rickard said. “Let’s think positively.”
“Give me a push now, on three,” Yalé said. “One . . . two . . . three . . . ”
It took seven or eight pushes, and Nora watched as only minutes later Delores gave birth to a baby boy.
Before even cutting the umbilical cord, Yalé held the baby and stood next to Rickard. They examined it and both looked relieved. Yalé put his stethoscope to the delicate thing’s chest, eliciting the first scream from the infant. He looked at his stopwatch and smiled.
“I have good news,” he said, placing the baby onto Delores’s chest. “The heartbeat sounds completely normal.”
Yalé pulled his gloves off and shook hands with his brother.
Rickard picked his suit jacket up off the chair and began putting it back on. “You worry too much,” he said to Yalé.
“It’s the future of our bloodline, brother,” Yalé said. “Delores, how do you feel?”
“Is it still supposed to hurt?” Delores asked, and then moaned again, still guttural like before.
“You just had a baby,” Yalé asked. “You’ll be sore for quite a while.”
Delores shook her head and grimaced. “It feels like I’m still having contractions.”
“As you may or may not know,” Yalé said, “your uterus can spasm for up to twenty-four hours after childbirth. That would feel a lot like you were having more contractions. That’s likely what you’re feeling. I’ll be back shortly to check on you.”
Delores nodded, but Nora could tell she wasn’t convinced, and watched as she grabbed the side of the examination table with one hand, holding her new baby with the other. “I still feel like I want to push.”
Nora watched for a few minutes as Delores tried futilely to enjoy her new baby, rocked every few seconds by an intense pain. “Let me wrap him up nice and warm in a blanket,” Nora said, as she took the baby over to a makeshift incubator, complete with a heat lamp used by reptile keepers.
Nora diapered the newborn and started to sw
addle him. “What’s this little bundle’s name going to be?” she asked, immediately hoping she wasn’t acting too familiar.
When Delores didn’t answer, Nora looked across the room at her and saw her bucking with her hips in the air. As Nora rushed over, Delores grabbed her legs behind her knees and got into the same position she’d delivered in only moments ago.
“What’s wrong?” Nora asked. “Should I get—”
Delores tried to speak, but could barely get words out. “Get Yalé . . . Oh God, no. It can’t be. It’s coming!”
“What’s coming?” Nora asked. But her own question was answered as she saw the crown of another head making its way into the world. “There’s another . . . ” Nora leaned forward and used her hands to help support both of Delores’s legs.
“You need to get it out of me,” Delores said. “Get it out of me!”
Nora stood up for a second and surveyed the situation. She had no idea whether there was time to run and find Yalé. She thought that something horrible might happen if she left at this moment.
Nora reached down and patted the new baby’s head, a tuft of black hair matted to the scalp by a thick helping of amniotic fluid. “Keep pushing,” Nora said, instinct taking over. Delores grunted her way through four more pushes, and had nearly birthed the shoulders when Yalé and Rickard came rushing back into the room.
“What’s going on?” Yalé asked, rushing around and hip-checking Nora out of the way.
Nora now watched as Delores made her final half-hearted pushes. Between pushes, she saw the looks Delores was giving to Rickard, who just stood, stone-faced, watching the proceedings. All of the relief that had come through the room when the first baby was indeed born healthy had been sucked out by the presence of another infant. Nora had no idea why, though. Everyone else in the room had taken on the distinct posture of someone receiving bad news.
Moments later, the second baby boy was born. Rickard had already left the room. As he exited, he shot a disappointed shake of his head at Delores, as if she’d implanted the second child against his wishes.
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