Time Rider (Rise of the Skipworths)

by Mallory Kane

  Relief washed through Rider. If he was going to lead with his blaster, maybe he wasn't that well-trained after all. Were they still scraping the bottom of the criminal barrel? Rider would have thought they'd have found a better source for their experiments by now.

  When the other hand pushed through and Rider was sure the man was relatively defenseless, he reached over and plucked the weapon from his grasp, then grabbed his wrist.

  "You should have chosen lethal implantation, bud," he muttered as he gave a sharp twist to the man's wrist, eliciting a choked cry as the bones snapped. Then he stood and kicked the wire fence, pushing the sharp edges into the flesh of the man's back. "That should keep you busy for a while. I'd hate to try to dig out of there with a broken wrist."

  "Here, Doc. Stick this in your jeans." He pushed the blaster at Kristen just as a man emerged from the house.

  "Hey! What's going on over there? Get out of my yard!" The voice came from the patio doors.

  Rider urged Kristen toward an open gate on the other side of the yard. He waved at the man, then pointed back to the fence that imprisoned their pursuer. "You should get your fence fixed," he called. "Somebody might sue you for injuries."

  They ran for blocks, drawing curious glances. Kristen's I was almost ripped through in the back and floated enticingly on the breeze as she ran. The blaster made a strange bulge in her tight jeans. Her face and arms and clothes were filthy, and she had grass and leaves stuck in her hair.

  Rider knew he looked worse. He didn't even have on a shirt, and his back was probably a plowed field of bloody scratches from the fence. He felt them burning, felt the blood trickling down his back. His sweatpants drooped low on his hips, weighted down by dirt and sweat.

  "Where to now, Doc?" he huffed.

  Kristen was breathing hard, running beside him, her small strides hardly able to keep up with his. "I—don't—know," she wheezed.

  Suddenly, she stopped, and Rider stumbled to a halt beside her.

  "The—hospital," she said between huge gulps of air.

  "Are we back to that again?"

  "No—I mean—it's probably the safest place—to be."

  Rider pulled her into a side street, away from curious glances. "What are you talking about?"

  Kristen wiped her face with dirty hands, succeeding in smearing dirt and grass stains over her cheeks. She looked more like an angel than ever, with her wide gold/green eyes shining out of her dirty face. She was beautiful.

  Kristen took a couple of huge breaths, holding her side, then spoke breathlessly. "It's Saturday, I think. The hospital will be practically deserted." She looked at him. "We're a mess, but I think I have an idea how we can get inside."

  Rider studied her. The hospital. His conditioning caused his brain to rebel at the thought of a hospital. Don't let them get you into a hospital. Don't let them examine you. They'll know you're not one of them. He shook his head.

  "Okay," he said, fighting the qualms his decision brought. "I can't think of anything better. Which way?"

  Kristen breathed a sigh of relief. He was going to trust her. She didn’t know what she’d have done if he didn't. She was out of ideas.

  "It's not far. Back toward downtown," she panted, holding her side where a pain had attached itself and wouldn't let go. She tried to concentrate on getting someplace safe. She needed time to assimilate all that had happened to them. She'd had buildings blown out from under her. She'd been shot at with a weapon that wouldn't be invented for who knew how many centuries. She'd crawled through a hole like a soldier in enemy territory, been chased and pursued like a fugitive, found out her brother had been murdered. And she had fallen in love with a man who hadn't been born yet.

  It didn't bear thinking on.

  She led Rider down side streets and through alleys until they came to the back of the big hospital, where garbage bins sat on either side of monstrous loading docks.

  Kristen pulled Rider behind a bin and collapsed. He sat down heavily beside her. When she could breathe without searing pains in her chest, she looked at him. He was shivering with cold and fatigue, and his back was a maze of cuts and scratches.

  "Oh, look at you." She touched a raw place on his shoulder, and almost cried when he winced. "You're bleeding." Rider’s back looked like someone had whipped him. It was streaked with blood. Welts and scratches puffed up like insect bites. "You need a tetanus shot. And there's no telling how much blood you've lost."

  "I can make more," he breathed.

  "Not if you don't get some rest and food." Kristen put her head back against the wooden cradle and panted. The fetid stench of rotting food sat on the air like fog. It nauseated her. She peered at Rider who was breathing shallowly and clutching his ribs. Was the nausea her own, or did it come from him? She wiped her face with her forearm and took a deep breath, trying to ignore the smell.

  "Rider," she said, swallowing against the sickness, "how do they keep finding us? Are you sure they have no way of tracing you?"

  "There's no communication after transfer," he said in a singsong voice, as if he were reciting from rote. "No communication and no return." She recognized the uncertain tone. It was how he sounded when he was reciting information that had been fed to him in the conditioning chamber. So far, most of that information had been false. What else about his mission was false, fed to him like brainwashing, to make him into a zombie for their purposes?

  "You're not sure, are you?" she whispered.

  He looked at her, pain and doubt filling his eyes. He grimaced, baring his teeth, then took a deep breath. "I'm supposed to be sure. They intended for me to be sure—but no, I'm not." He clutched his middle. "But if they can be sending people back from further in the future than me, then anything's possible. Maybe it's even possible that the conditioning's wearing off."

  The note of wistful hope in his voice made Kristen want to cry. She laid her hand on his arm, and felt his agony. "I'm glad. I'm so glad. Just go with it. Don't try to fight it, try to conquer it from the inside."

  He nodded. "I've been thinking about how they keep finding us. It can't be luck, and that bastard back there at Skipper's house was no genius. There's got to be something."

  "Like a bug."

  "A what?"

  "A bug. You know, some sort of tracking device. Like in James Bond movies?"

  Rider just stared at her.

  She sighed in frustration. "Sorry. I guess you don't know about James Bond."

  "No wait!" He put his hand out. "Wait a minute. A tracking device—" His eyes glazed and shifted a little to the left of her head and the furrows between his brows grew deeper. "They couldn't have planted it on you, so it must be on me." He stood. "You've got to find it, Doc."

  Kristen tugged on his hand, her heart pounding. "Get down. Somebody might see you. What are you talking about?"

  "Get up. You've got to help me find it."

  She shook her head. "Find what? I don't understand."

  Rider glared at her. "It's just like you said, Doc. Something, some kind of device. Look for something tiny, something unusual."

  "Rider!" She tugged on his arm again. "Please, get down. Tell me what you're talking about."

  He sank down into a crouch. "They have to have planted something on me somewhere. Something foreign."

  "Something tiny—something foreign." Kristen thought of the tiny speck in the back of his eye. That had to be it. Whatever it was, a camera, a recorder, just a bug to track them, that was it! The tiny object in his eye.

  "Rider, your eye! It's your eye!"

  "What? My eye?" He stared blankly at her for a few seconds, then grabbed her shoulders and hugged her. "That's it! You're a genius! Of course. That's what they were afraid you'd find. Way to go, Doc!" He was still hugging her when she felt his conditioning kick in. He choked and coughed.

  "God, it's cold," he croaked, and doubled over, arms wrapped around his middle.

  Kristen put her arms around him, feeling ridiculously small against his bulk, doing h
er best to hold him, to shield him. Under her hands, his muscles jerked and she could feel the cold chills streaking through him. For the first time, she tried to picture the nameless, faceless beings that were chasing them. The people he said were from the future, like him. The people who wanted to kill her.

  Hatred and fury boiled within her, alien emotions. Kristen had never hated anybody before. But crouched here, behind the garbage bins with this man who said he had come to kill her and yet done nothing but protect her since they'd met, she burned with loathing for people who could strip a man of his life, of everything good, who would destroy everything that was important to a human being for their own ends.

  "Doc, you said—the hospital is—safe?" Every word was forced out between clenched teeth, with a pause between for him to gather a bit more energy. Kristen wanted to cry at the hopeless pain in his voice. If only there were something she could do to stop these debilitating reactions to his conditioning.

  "Safe as houses," she said, then snorted. "Safer. Come on." She tugged on his arm and prepared to rise.

  He had leaned his head back against the bin, and his chest heaved. His hair was plastered wetly to his head and his face was screwed up in a grimace against the foul odor that permeated the air. "No."

  His flat tone frightened her. It was the tone of someone who had made up his mind, someone who would brook no argument. "What do you mean, no?"

  "No."

  "Talk to me, Rider," she begged. "Don't revert to monosyllabic mulishness on me. They're going to be after us if that's really a camera in your eye."

  "Right. Now get out of here."

  Suddenly she realized what he was doing. He was trying to be heroic, for God's sake! Well, she wasn't having it. "No."

  Rider squinted at her. "What?"

  "No." Kristen pulled on his arm, trying in vain to force him to move. "I'm not budging without you."

  He wrapped his hands around her shoulders, pulling her face up close to his. "Listen to me, Doc. That damned speck has to be a camera of some sort. They're seeing everything I see. They may even be hearing every word we say. Look at my eye. You're looking right at them. And they're looking at you."

  She cringed at the idea that she was staring into some sort of camera lens, and that whomever was behind that lens had seen her naked through Rider's eye. She looked away.

  "Look at me! If I go with you, they'll find you." He winced and took a sharp breath.

  Kristen felt the pain, too, through his hands, although it wasn't nearly as sharp as the fear of being separated from him. "I'm not leaving you."

  "For God's sake, why not?" he growled, his fingers tightening, pulling her sweat-dampened hair.

  Absorbing his desperation and fear, Kristen realized that the reason she wouldn't leave was the very reason he was so determined for her to. This uneasy alliance they had formed, this balance of trust and distrust, was fast turning into something else. Not wanting to find out if she was wrong, but unable to tear her gaze from his, she answered him, carefully watching his face. "Because I think I would die if I lost you."

  Her eyes misted over with tears, but she still saw the shock and fear that clouded his, and she felt the hope that welled in him as if it were her own. Maybe it was.

  Now she knew what he had meant when he'd said how frightening hope could be.

  "Don't do this, Doc." He dropped his hands, leaving her empty and alone. She wasn't sure she could live without his touch, without those feelings, which were as much a part of her as her own. "If I can't save you, at least I can keep them from you for a while."

  "We're wasting time, Rider. It's your decision. We can stay here, in this lovely little cubbyhole, or we can go inside."

  He glared at her, and she glared right back. There was no way she was leaving without him. She lifted her chin and his mouth quirked in a smile. "Damn, you're stubborn," he said, moving gingerly to sit upright. "Tell you what, Doc. Let's do a little surgery."

  "Surgery?" For a moment, Kristen was disoriented, as if she'd walked into the middle of a movie. "You mean—? Oh no. No." She couldn't believe what he was suggesting.

  "No." She shook her head vehemently. "That's impossible. I've only done the most basic eye surgery as a resident. What if I blind you?”

  "Let me see." He held out both hands. "Lose an eye." He looked at his right hand. "Watch you die." He looked at his left hand. Then he raised his gaze to hers and shrugged. "No contest, Doc," he grunted as pain darkened his face.

  She stared at him, weighing the consequences and realizing he was right. Operate on his eye and take a chance, even if it was a slim one, of escaping with their lives, or refuse to do it and condemn them both to certain death. "No contest," she agreed, and drew a long breath. "Let's go then."

  "Fine with me," Rider said through clenched teeth. "I can't say I like the ambiance here."

  Kristen rose to a crouch and peered around.

  "Wait a minute, Doc."

  She half-twisted back toward him.

  "If we're right, and this is a camera, we're leading them right to us."

  She looked at his eye, imagining the tiny whirring camera imbedded on the back wall of the retina. "So close your eye," she said.

  He glared at her, disgusted. "Thank you, Einstein."

  She shrugged.

  "What next?" he asked.

  She wished she knew. He had saved them—how many times? She'd lost count. Now it looked like it was her turn. What could she do? She couldn't go waltzing into the front entrance of the hospital. Well, maybe she could if she was cleaned up, but she'd never get past the security guard looking like a prison escapee.

  Her eyes lit on a familiar color and shape. "See those yellow bins over there? That's contaminated waste. Some of it's pretty gross, but sometimes it's mostly disposable scrub suits they use when working with radiation patients or cancer patients who've been on chemotherapy."

  "Yeah?" Rider sounded skeptical. "I don't think I like the idea of radiation."

  "Don't worry. It's usually low dose. Besides, doctors and medical technicians work around it all the time. We can use their dirty clothes for a few minutes without any problems."

  Rider shrugged, his face pale and sweaty. "Let's just get going."

  "I'm going to find us some relatively clean scrubs, so we can get into the hospital without being noticed."

  "What about the dirt?"

  Kristen looked around. "There's a hose over there they use to wash down the trucks. We'll wash first. Look out!"

  She pulled him back behind the bin as a housekeeping aid rolled a stretcher out onto the loading dock, then turned around and went back inside.

  "I don't believe it! What luck!"

  "What?" Rider said, his teeth chattering against each other. "What luck?"

  "I'll show you. First we've got to get washed."

  Kristen turned on the water and washed carefully, trying to keep her jeans from getting soaked. She brushed at them, getting the worst of the dirt off. Then she helped Rider wash his face and hands. By the time they finished, he was shaking as if with fever.

  Kristen pushed him back behind the garbage bin. "Stay here. I'll get us some clothes."

  She pushed open the top to the contaminated waste bin and gingerly moved some yellow trash bags. There! A lab coat. She pulled it out. It was wrinkled and had an orange stain on the front. Probably chemotherapy. It wouldn't be a problem if she took it off as soon as they were inside.

  She searched some more until she found a blanket. She shook it out carefully, but couldn't see anything obviously wrong with it. She hurried back to Rider. "Come on. I'm the doctor and you're my patient. Get up on that stretcher."

  "I don't think I like the casting of this little drama, Doc. Why can't I be the doctor and you be my patient."

  Kristen caught a faint leer in his tired gaze. She shot him an incredulous look. "Let's see. I know the hospital. I know the staff. I know where we're going. I don't have a camera in my eye."

  "Okay, okay
," he said grumpily. "I am beginning to hate it when you're right, Doc."

  "Thank you. Now, let's go. That housekeeping person might be back any minute."

  Rider reluctantly climbed up onto the stretcher and Kristen spread the blanket over him.

  "Now, act dead."

  "Shit!" He pushed the blanket out of his face and glared at her.

  "I'm serious," she said, laughing. If the situation weren't so bizarre and frightening, it would be ludicrous.

  Rider fidgeted.

  "Rider, dead people don't fidget. Now stop it!" She started to pull the blanket back over his head, but stopped at the expression on his face. "What?"

  "You're a knockout when you laugh, Doc. You should do it more often." He grinned at her and winked, reminding her of the camera.

  She patted his cheek then pulled the blanket over his head. "Now close your eyes and be a good little corpse," she hissed.

  She rolled the stretcher in through the rear doors of the hospital, past the incinerator and down the hall toward the Building Management offices. She couldn't do anything about the odor of garbage that clung to them, but she checked to be sure her lab coat was buttoned up all the way, covering the filthy, torn I. Just in time, too, because two young men in the green uniforms of Building Management employees walked by, gesturing to each other and laughing quietly. They barely gave her or her corpse a glance.

  Kristen's body trembled in relief. If they hadn't been so busy talking, they might have noticed the decidedly unkempt appearance and wet hair of the doctor wheeling the stretcher. Or the fact that the two of them were coming in through the loading dock instead of the emergency room.

  Kristen turned Rider's stretcher toward the freight elevators, checking both ends of the hall. She lifted the blanket off his face and grinned down at him. "Coast is clear so far. How you doing?"

  "Dead is hard to play," he grumbled, keeping his right eye shut.

  "You're doing great. We're almost to the elevators."

  "Elevators to where?"

  "Shhh!" she hissed, dropping the edge of the blanket back into place as an orderly whisked past them pushing an empty wheelchair in front of him.

  "Hey, Doc," the orderly shouted as he scooted past. "Got a live one there?"