Going commando underneath wasn’t her first choice, but it would have to do. At least she wasn’t stark naked. She brought the twelve-inch screwdriver in front of her eyes while gripping its red handle tight in her hand.
“Should do the job,” she said with clenched teeth, visualizing what would happen if someone tested her resolve to get home. Her medical training was about to come into play in a whole new manner.
Knowing exactly where and how to bleed someone’s neck would give her an advantage. That was assuming she could bring herself to jam the screwdriver into flesh.
Nora headed for the center of the white wall. As she approached, the wall began to change shape like she’d seen before. The orange door appeared a second later, but she didn’t see doorknob or handle to grab. There weren’t any hinges or a lock, either.
What the hell?
The more she thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Why reveal a sealed door with no way to open it? Maybe there was a secret code she’d need to enter to open it. But how? There wasn’t a keypad or any other sign of technology.
Then a new idea hit her. Perhaps the key to opening the door was a series of hand swipes, like what you needed to do across the screen of a smart phone to unlock the device.
She brought her fingers up to make contact but just before they touched the surface, the door dissolved in a slow-moving ripple effect. All that was standing in front of her now was a clear path to the corridor outside.
A smile washed over her lips and her heart fluttered with a tinge of excitement. Time to go home, she thought, bringing her hand up with the screwdriver to lead the way. Nothing and no one was going to stop her from getting back to her family. And Emily.
Nora stuck her head out and around the doorframe, but she didn’t see anyone. She stepped forward into the well-lit hallway, where she stood for a few moments, checking both ends of the corridor.
“Which way?” she mumbled, knowing the odds were 50/50 of picking the right direction. “Left,” she decided, wanting to avoid the area where all the shadows had been running to in a panic.
She didn’t know where she was or who she was dealing with, so stealth mode was going to be paramount until she figured out the answer to both questions.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Emily opened her eyes, allowing the light to enter her pupils for the first time since she’d blacked out after being hit by the Orange Men’s energy beams.
It took a full second for her mind to catch up to what she was seeing and feeling. She was on her back and looking up at a distinctive LED lighting fixture with unique add-on decorations—strings of Navajo Indian protection beads hanging from the supports in-between the track lights.
These facts told her where she was: in Duane and Nora’s kitchen, lying on the center island. She tried to sit up, but found her shoulders and arms were pinned down by two sets of strong hands—orange hands to be exact—hands belonging to a pair of enormous Orange Men.
“Let me go!” she screamed, wildly kicking her legs about. She rocked her hips and arched her back, but the musclemen holding her down were too strong.
She could feel the edges of the tile countertop tearing against the skin on her back—her naked back. Emily craned her neck to look down across her body and saw that someone had removed her clothes while she was unconscious.
“Someone help me!” she cried out as she continued her struggle against the powerful hands holding her at bay.
She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and screamed as loud as she could, “Derek! Jim! Help me! Please!”
When she opened her eyes again, her vision drew to a long focus beyond her growing belly and her feet. Something new caught her attention—three cocoons of blue energy hanging on the far wall.
Emily stopped her resistance and gasped when she realized what she was looking at—the bodies of Jim, Duane, and Derek. All three of them were stuck up against the wall, just beyond the far side of the breakfast table.
Each of her friends was trapped inside his own blue energy cocoon, with their stiff, motionless faces looking back at her. She didn’t know if they were alive or dead, but the sudden pain in the pit of her stomach told her what was already obvious, that everyone was in dire trouble.
Emily followed the beams of energy pulsating down from the cocoons. The trail led to a glowing box about the size of a cigarette case. It was sitting in the center of the table and sending out the streams of blue energy at her friends. She figured the device was designed to keep the men pinned to the wall in a body-length force field.
On the left side of the table were Duane’s shotgun and Jim’s handgun, both sitting only a few feet away from the men, but utterly useless.
A third Orange Man appeared just beyond her feet, sliding in from the right. He opened a metal briefcase and put it on the right edge of the table.
Emily had a sideways view of the naked man and his technology as he put his palm against the swirling surface. After a two-count, he stepped back and waited with an open palm. A moment later, a new item morphed into shape and rose out the case and landed in his hand. It was a long, cucumber-like device Emily hadn’t seen before.
Orange Man turned the case to face her, then his body. He gazed at her with a blank expression on his chiseled face for a few moments before turning his attention to the chrome-colored tube in his hands. He fiddled with it until a two-pronged tip materialized on the end closest to Emily. His hands made a twisting motion, then the end of the device crackled with bolts of electricity between its two extended points.
“What is that?” she yelled at him, resuming her thrashing on the center island. She tried to flash on him and get a read on his intent, but all she got back was a buzzing sound and a feeling of dread. He was either blank inside or her gift of second sight wasn’t working properly.
The Orange Men holding her down let go of her an instant before a beam of energy shot out from the device and hit her square in the chest. When the energy entered her body, she felt the skin around the impact site go numb as she lost all control over her limbs. Her legs and arms straightened out in a flash, and so did her back, pinning her helplessly to the counter surface.
She didn’t see a blue cocoon of energy around her body like with her friends on the wall, nor was the beam from Orange Man’s device still firing. Whatever they’d just done to her was something different, but still designed to keep her passive and under control. But for what?
* * *
Several minutes earlier . . .
Nora made her way down the hallway to the left and came upon a dead end after a series of ninety-degree corners.
“Better be a door around here somewhere,” she mumbled. When she walked up to the wall, it changed shape to reveal a doorway as expected. She put her hand out to activate the door’s dissolution and waited while it rippled and vanished. When she brought her eyes up to resume her trek forward, they locked onto someone coming into view from the right, just on the other side of the door. Someone with a big head covered in boils and sores.
Nora gasped at the grotesque sight and brought the screwdriver up like a knife in her left hand.
The face of the person across from her lit up in fright as he or she raised their hands high.
Nora didn’t hesitate, throwing a quick punch with her right hand, then jumping on the back of the person after they hit the deck. She pulled the freak’s neck up and tucked the makeshift knife against the skin on their neck.
“If you scream or resist, I’ll slice your throat. Do you understand?”
The person nodded. “I do.”
It was a man’s voice, though Nora didn’t feel the man’s jaw or throat muscles move.
“What do you want?” the man asked her.
“I need you to get me out of here.”
“I can do that. Just don’t hurt me, please.”
She tightened her grip on him. “I won’t, as long as you do exactly what I say. You feel me?”
The man nodd
ed.
“Which way to the nearest exit?” she asked.
“Straight ahead. Two more corridors. It’s on the other side of C and C.”
“C and C. What’s that?”
“Command and Control. It’s our operations center.”
“Is it guarded?”
“Guarded? Heavens, no. There’s no need. This is only an embarka—”
“Well, obviously that’s not true. Next time, you might want to post some guards,” Nora said, interrupting the man while sliding off him. She didn’t care what kind of facility she was in. The only thought on her mind was getting the hell out of there and back to her kids. “Now get up slowly and no sudden moves.”
The man did as she asked, keeping his hands out in front of him.
“Lead the way,” Nora said, keeping the tip of the curved blade pressed against the soft underside of his neck. They made two more corners and went through another automatic door. Inside was the Command and Control Center, just like her prisoner had said.
They entered together in the back right corner of a sprawling room and stopped their feet.
The area was filled with technology and more of the ugly, big-headed people—at least two dozen—all facing away and working their respective control stations. Each was wearing some kind of visor across their eyes and making rapid hand swipes and other movements while looking up at a transparent video screen hanging in front of them.
There was a lot of chatter in the room but Nora had a hard time keying in on any one voice. She heard something about ‘flanking vectors’ and ‘extraction protocols’, but there were too many people talking at the same time to make out much more.
She swung her head left and noticed a recess in the wall where the overhead lights couldn’t reach. She nudged her captive to get moving and whispered into his ear, “Move to the corner and keep quiet.”
He did as she asked, moving slowly and quietly until they were standing in the darkened alcove. The new location gave Nora a better view of the room and its activity thanks to an open seam down the middle of the operators and their equipment.
She could see a round platform out in front of the control stations, with a pair of men standing to the side of it. Lights flashed around the raised base and she could see ripples of blue energy bubbling in the ceiling above it.
Her eyes flared when she realized who the men in line were—Orange Men, both of them wearing nothing but a stiff, square jaw. Each man was carrying a metal briefcase.
She watched the first Orange Man step forward and put the case on a smaller, secondary platform. A robot-like arm swung down from the side wall and grabbed the case, holding it up and changing its angle a few degrees. A second robot arm came into view, but this one had a vial of orange liquid in its grasp. She figured it was the same stuff she found in the storage room containers.
The first arm opened a side compartment along the spine of the case and the second arm slipped the vial inside before closing the hatch. The case seemed to glow for a second before the first robot arm put the case back on the secondary platform and retracted to its starting position along the wall.
Nora figured the Orange Man would grab the briefcase, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped up on the main platform and spun around to face the bank of control stations and techs lined up between her and him.
She could now see every inch of his front. All of it was impressive. If she wasn’t under such duress at the moment, she might have blushed at the sight of his sculptured, muscular body and his dangling privates.
“What are they doing?” she asked the man in her grasp.
“Preparing for incursion.”
“You mean like an invasion?”
He nodded. “Looks like they’re sending in two units for this part of the mission. Or two more. We don’t know how long this incursion has been in process.”
“Where?”
“It depends on the mission specs.”
She watched the base of the platform light up in a sea of crackling blue energy. It started at his feet and then worked its way up his body until it covered him from head to toe.
A second later, a bright flash of white light hit her eyes and when it was gone, so was the Orange Man and the blue energy.
Next, the briefcase did the same, though it took longer for the energy wave to rise up and consume it before it vanished.
An instant later, she noticed a brightness change on the video screen hanging in front of the technician closest to her. His screen lit up with a brilliant flare of blue speckles. The view on the display changed from one of mostly text and numbers to a shot of the briefcase materializing on what appeared to be grass. Just then an orange-colored hand came into camera range and picked up the case.
“Is that the view from the Orange Man?” she asked.
“Yes. Each traveler’s feed streams back to its handler.”
Nora was about to ask another question but stopped when she saw something familiar on the screen. There was a car parked in a driveway. It looked like Duane’s Impala.
“Hey, that’s my house,” she whispered in anger.
“Must be the focus of the operation,” the man answered.
The Orange Man passed Duane’s car and entered the front door of her house, then went through the living room.
Nora couldn’t tear her eyes from the screen, worrying if someone close to her was still inside the home. “Are all of them are being sent to my house?”
“Yes, for tactical containment reasons and for efficiency. It takes a lot of power to open up and initiate an incursion and we’re on very short supply. Embarkations are serialized to keep the costs and utilization down. Though they may adjust the target coordinates a few meters either way for landing and security purposes.”
Nora heard his answers, but stopped listening when she saw the Orange Man enter her kitchen. He put the briefcase on the breakfast table, on the opposite side of the table from a shotgun and pistol. The center of the table was taken up by a small box glowing with energy.
Orange Man put his massive palm to its surface, then stepped back with an outstretched hand. A cylindrical tube appeared from inside the case and landed in his grip. Then he spun the case ninety degrees to the left and did the same with his eyes, bringing the camera view around with him.
Nora gasped when she saw Emily being held down on the center island by more of the Orange Men.
“What are they doing?”
“Unclear. I haven’t been read into the mission specs. Could be an interrogation.”
“How do I stop this?” she asked, bringing her eyes down from the screen. The second Orange Man standing in line began to move toward the embarkation platform.
“You can’t stop it.”
Nora couldn’t accept those words. Not now. Not with the safety of her friends and family on the line. She had to do something. “There has to be a way,” she said, pressing the knife a little harder to his neck. “Come on, think. Otherwise, why should I keep you alive right now?”
The tone of his whisper voice changed to a higher octave and his words carried more air in them. “Well, you could try deactivating the energy stream. Then they’d have to restart the entire process after a thorough recalibration. It might buy you a few minutes, but that’s all.”
“Okay, and how would I do that?”
“I’m not sure. It’s all automated once the incursion has been balanced for the mass being sent. Unless you have system access, I don’t—”
Right then she remembered how she’d gotten there—by interfering with the energy stream and changing the mass. It gave her an idea. She stepped back and gave her escort a hard karate chop across the side of his ugly neck. He hit the floor in a thud, freeing her to take action.
She ripped off the poncho covering her body and took off running. It only took a few seconds to sprint down the middle aisle of the control stations and arrive at the platform.
The second Orange Man was covered in blue up to his nose when she tossed
the knife away and launched herself at him headfirst, with her right forearm and shoulder leading the way.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Emily screamed as the newest Orange Man to arrive came closer to her with the chrome-colored tube in his hands. She wanted to get up and run but couldn’t, not after being paralyzed by the energy beam from the neck down.
He twisted the device again, this time changing the color of the energy arcing between the two prongs on the end. It was now a solid neon green color and much brighter than before. He held it up and watched the tip as a new metal piece grew out of the center. It looked like an ice pick and it kept growing. When its point passed through the beam, it seemed to catch hold of the green energy and pull it forward until the new implement was sticking out about eight inches long.
One of the Orange Men who had been holding her down came into view with another briefcase. He opened it, putting his hand against the surface, and waited until it gave him a red object about the size and shape of a baseball. He brought it over to Emily and held it an inch above her stomach. The ball immediately softened and dripped down from his hand like a batch of melting taffy, landing on her navel.
“What are you doing to me?” she shrieked, watching the red substance elongate and spread out, slowly covering her entire midsection before easing its way around to her back.
Emily screamed again, even though she couldn’t feel any of the shimmering material that looked like red mercury. She figured it had wrapped around her entire torso—front and back.
The newest Orange Man continued his advance, passing by Emily’s feet and moving to her right side. He brought the chrome device up and held it like a knife, then turned it around and aimed it at her belly.
“Stop it!” she yelled at him.
Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series) Page 54