Time Rider (Rise of the Skipworths)

by Mallory Kane

  He got ready to leave, anticipating seeing Mari. It was their fifth anniversary. Recently he'd become more and more convinced Mari had married him because he was such a good cover for her skipworth underground activities. Who would be more innocuous than a history professor?

  Lately she'd been distracted. He bounded off the last shuttle into the lobby of their complex and carefully blanked his mind. He'd see if he could sneak up on her. Usually she knew every move he made.

  When he entered their apartment, she didn't even look up. She was hunched over the old radio. "What's happened?" he asked, although he was sure he knew without asking. There was only one reason she'd be dressed in the signature uniform of the underground.

  When he spoke she jumped, and turned off the radio. "How'd you get in without me hearing you?" "You were concentrating on the radio. What's happened?" Rider reached out for her, but she stepped backwards.

  "There's a raid tonight." She fooled with the dials, causing static to crackle. "We just don't know where."

  Rider sighed and nuzzled her hair. "Happy anniversary, Commander. When are you going to let someone else take over the field ops?"

  "Rider, stop. This is serious. Why don't you go to the club tonight?"

  "No. I've told you before, if you're in this, then I am too. I'd better get geared up." He planted a quick kiss on his wife's forehead. "Promise me something."

  "They're on their way. We've got to get out of here."

  She sprang up and grabbed the blaster that lay beside the radio. Rider's heart lurched. He sprang to action as quickly as she, throwing the manual lock on the door and turned just as Mari directed a short blast of energy at the radio to destroy it. In unison they headed for the kitchen and the escape hatch they'd cut through a cabinet.

  "No, wait!" Mari said. She turned back toward the living room.

  "Mari! What the hell?" He grabbed her arm but she jerked it away.

  "Catwallader!"

  "Damn it, Mari. Leave him."

  She glared at him. "No. Cat? Here kitty! Rider, let go of my arm!"

  "Mari! Leave the damned cat! We've got to go now!"

  "Cat? Come on, boy. Here, kitty—" she said, ignoring him.

  Then the gray cat appeared, stretching lazily. Just as Mari reached to pick him up, an explosion shook the apartment. Before Rider could react, three men in the deep red uniform of the government poured into the apartment and a ribbon of green light shot toward the cat, leaving a smoking piece of flesh where it had stood.

  "No! Bastards!" Mari screamed.

  "Come with us, Marielle." One of the men said.

  Mari leveled her blaster at him. "Why, so you can wipe me out? I found out what you're planning."

  "We can discuss it later."

  "Discuss it? Are you barking? It's been discussed. I'm part of the plan, and I've made my decision. We can't wipe out the original skipworth. If we do, I'll dissolve into the ether and that's not going to happen."

  Rider listened, horrified. The words coming out of his wife's mouth froze him into numbed disbelief. She was the leader of the skipworth underground, but she was talking like the enemy—the government. "Mari, what are you talking about?" he yelled.

  "Shut up, Rider. This doesn't concern you." Mari barely even glanced in his direction. "I can't let you destroy everything I've worked for, Barkley."

  The man shook his head in regret. "And I can't let you upset our plans, Mari. You seem to have the idea you're indispensable." He leveled his blaster calmly and shot her.

  "No!" Rider dove for her, but it was too late. The room was awash with green light and Mari gasped as the blast caught her, throwing her body backwards, away from him.

  He grabbed her, hugging her to him, trying to hold the life in her by force of will, but it didn't work. The heat from the blaster still burned in her body. He smelled the charred flesh and tissue as death sucked her away from him.

  The man named Barkley said something to his two henchmen, but Rider hardly registered his words. Something about the luck of having an intelligent, normal man instead of the criminals they'd been forced to use so far in their experiments with time travel.

  Rider didn't even resist when they trussed him with steel bands and threw him into a vehicle. His wife had betrayed her people. She had sold them out for power.

  #

  Rider's whole body convulsed and an agonized cry tore from his throat. Kristen jumped up, her head hazy with drowsiness. She grabbed his shoulders, trying to keep him from falling off the table. "Rider! Can you hear me? Relax. You've got to relax."

  He fought her, even as the wracking pains streaked through him. She knew she couldn't stand against his strength. The only thing she could do was try to reach him, inside himself, behind the pain and terror that was tearing him apart. "Rider, please. Wake up. It's okay."

  His eyes opened wide and he stared at her uncomprehendingly. Then his face contorted and he lashed out at her. She ducked just in time. "God damn you! Bastards!" He collapsed back on the table, brutal sobs shaking him.

  Kristen held onto him as tightly as she could. His fear and anguish were stunning as they wafted through her, mixed with impotent rage and a devastating bewilderment. She needed to separate herself from it, from him, so she could think, but she wasn't sure he could stand it all by himself, so she waited, holding onto him, until his ragged breaths began to slow. "It's okay, Rider. It's okay. Here. Swallow these."

  He stared at her. "You're the target, aren't you?" he whispered.

  Kristen nodded, a thread of fear erupting under her breastbone. What had happened to him while he was unconscious? Was that all he remembered? That she was the target? Would he remember wanting to save her? Or did he only remember his conditioning?

  "Come on. Take these," she coaxed. It really didn't matter much, she thought, amazed at her fatalistic turn of thought. If his incredible story was true, she had no doubt if he didn't kill her, someone would. If he wasn't a barking mongrel, as he called it, then they had no chance, because people who could travel through time could probably do just about anything. And if he was a barking mongrel, then so was she, and eventually they'd both be locked up.

  His unbandaged eye became clearer, more lucid, as he fought his way back from the nightmare hell he'd been in. "What are those?" he mumbled.

  "Anti-nausea pills."

  "They're different." He took the two capsules and stared at them, then gazed at her narrowly.

  "Give me a break, Rider. Trust me—don't trust me. I've about decided I don't care." She was so tired. So tired and so confused. He wanted her to trust him, but he still didn't trust her. She wanted him to trust her, but she was still unsure of him.

  He swallowed the capsules without water.

  "Now, come on. Let me get you into the office." Kristen led him in and pointed to the couch. "See," she said. "A fairly comfortable bed. At least it won't be ice cold. Now, take off those filthy pants and cover up. You're still shivering."

  She doubted he understood much of what she said, because he kept stopping to look at her warily, but he followed her direction and climbed naked in between the blankets. Her gaze followed him. Despite her exhaustion, despite everything that had happened, she was still stirred by the sight of his body.

  He let out a huge sigh and closed his eye. "I—I remembered."

  "Yes, I know," she said gently, as her heart pounded with apprehension and a nameless terror stole her breath. What? What had he remembered? Their lovemaking? His hatred for her? What her descendants had done to his wife? She tucked the blankets up under his chin as if he were a little boy. Sweat beaded on his forehead and she wiped it away with her hand.

  "I don't want to remember this," he said brokenly. "God, I hate being such a slipper! I'm scared."

  He allowed her hand on his forehead for a few moments before he pulled away, his gaze focused on something in the far distance—maybe five hundred years away.

  "I was a history teacher, in a—small college," he started, then stop
ped, swallowing hard.

  Kristen stared at him, fear warring with hope and compassion within her. He was remembering. He was piecing together the broken bits of memory the TAINCC had tried to destroy.

  "Rider, don't ever forget, this isn't you. They did this, with their conditioning. You're not a—a slipper. You're strong. Very, very strong." She touched his hand, feeling his doubt and fear, wanting to banish it for him, frustrated because she could feel it all, but couldn't stop it.

  "You're the strongest man I've ever known. Remember what you told me? They thought their conditioning was permanent. They thought you'd never remember or they wouldn't have sent you back here." Kristen ached inside with the realization of what she was doing. She was helping him to remember how much he hated her. She was helping him to remember every detail of why he wanted to kill her.

  "Got any more of those pills, Doc?" he said, trying to smile.

  "You just took two. They'll start working in a minute."

  He sighed and wiped his hand over his face, then leaned back against the cushions. His throat worked as he swallowed and took a long breath. "I taught history, if you can believe that. I made all my students learn the keyboard. Probably stupid, since everybody has vidlinks and comlinks nowadays, but I just thought we shouldn't lose the old values, the old talents. It started coming back to me when you were working on your brother's computer." Running his fingers through his hair, he glanced at her, his eyes shadowed with something so dark, so anguished it was hard for Kristen to look into them.

  "I had a—wife," he muttered, his hands over his face again. "They killed her. I could smell her burned flesh. God!"

  Kristen's heart shattered into tiny pieces at the horror in his voice as he remembered his wife's death. She reached out for him but he recoiled against the back of the couch. She didn't have to touch him to feel the bitter grief that consumed him. Grief he'd never been given the chance to endure.

  "Sorry, Doc," he said, his eyes burning hollowly in his ashen face. "It's all coming back in a flood. I only got disjointed pieces before."

  "Sorry for what? You've been tortured, brainwashed. You can't help it." She ached with his new, raw grief. For him, it was as if all the horror had just happened. She understood how he felt. So why did it create a gulf of loneliness inside her too big for tears? He'd had a wife, and he'd lost her today. Not five hundred years from now, not two years ago, but today. Today, when his brain finally allowed the memory to return, he'd seen his wife murdered. His grief was brand new. His love for her hadn't even had a chance to recede through time.

  She hadn't stopped to consider how much this man from the future meant to her until now. She hadn't been able to process the feelings that had grown in her. They had grown so fast she'd not had time to recognize them. When she formed the thought, she didn't even know how long it had been there. She loved him. But as new as her love was for him, his love for his wife was newer. As strong as Kristen's link to him was, he'd been married. Kristen couldn't compete with that.

  A searing blast of anger buffeted her from him. "God damn them all!" he growled through clenched teeth.

  Kristen suddenly couldn't stand it any more. She had to know, had to hear it from his lips. She lay her hand on his arm, needing to feel him, needing to know his reaction when she asked the question that suddenly burned within her. A question she'd give anything to never know the answer to. "It was the Deviants? My—descendants who killed your wife?"

  He stared at her for a long time, uncomprehendingly, his mouth a little open, his unbandaged eye wide and vacant.

  "Rider?"

  He blinked.

  "Rider?" The longer he stared at her, the more the certainty built inside her. He had remembered it all. She didn't think she could bear knowing she'd caused the death of his wife.

  "What? The Deviants?" He blinked again and focused on her face, his mouth twisting in pain. "Mari was—Mari was a skipworth."

  The words came at Kristen like a blow, while his shock and rage shot through her fingertips.

  Mari was a skipworth. The words echoed down the corridors of her brain like a gunshot ricocheting off metal. Mari was a skipworth.

  "How? What?" she stammered, as he grabbed her, his arms jerking as they closed around her.

  “She was a skipworth. They killed her. The government killed her. I didn’t get home in time. I took the late shuttle, and they killed her.” Rider couldn't control the tremors that shook his body as he relived the memories of Mari’s death.

  "Help me, Doc," he whispered, his lips moving against her neck. "God help me, I was married to a Deviant."

  Rider let Kristen hold him, her palm cradling his skull as if he were a baby. He felt ridiculously like a child as she whispered to him. It didn't even matter what she said. All that mattered was that she was holding him, keeping him safe, loving him.

  After a long time the steel coils of his tendons relaxed and he lay back on the couch and pulled her to lie next to him. He stroked her hair. Her calmness slowly seeped into his bones, although he couldn't control an occasional faint tremor. He didn't want to talk about it. He needed to assimilate all he'd learned. Needed to try to make some sense out of it. But Kristen was there, holding him, sending a warm comfort through him that made him want to tell her.

  “Mari was a skipworth. She was one of the original organizers of the underground movement that formed to combat the government's single-minded efforts to wipe out the Dev— the skipworths.” He’d almost said Deviants. Those twisted quasi-humans who were using their disgusting mind-invading powers to take over the world. Rider shuddered and his gut cramped with nausea. The false memories conditioned into him were getting mixed up with his real memories.

  “I believed in them. I believed in Mari. Skipworths had as much right to live and be free as anyone.” He'd thought his wife believed it too. He turned his head and buried his face in Kristen’s hair.

  “Don’t, Rider. Don’t try to remember. It’s making you sick.”

  He breathed in her warm scent and a faint tremor rippled through him. He shook his head. “I can’t—It’s like two different memories at war inside my brain.”

  Now he had no idea what he believed. According to the people who’d trained him, his wife had been murdered by skipworths and he had volunteered to come back to the past to wipe out the Mother of All the Deviants.

  According to the memories that were firing like synapses in his brain, his wife had been a skipworth, and had betrayed her people for personal power. According to his newly surfaced memories, she was working with the very people who had forced him to travel back to the past to kill Kristen Skipworth. And they’d killed her when she threatened to expose their plan. He clenched his jaw against the nausea that threatened as his brain went over the memory of that last night and the horror he'd witnessed.

  "Rider, are you all right?"

  He swallowed hard and pulled her closer, drawing comfort from her warm, soft body, drawing strength from the place deep inside her that fed him courage and determination and peace through her touch.

  "It's just hard, Doc. Remembering."

  "Do you want to tell me? I’m here. I’ll listen.”

  Rider glanced down at her, unable to identify the note in her voice, almost as if she was trying to keep from crying, but her face was buried in the hollow of his shoulder and he couldn't see her expression.

  He shook his head. "No. I don't want to talk about it now. It's—too new."

  Kristen tensed in his arms and sat up, her face shuttered.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Kristen pulled away from him, needing to withdraw. He was in such pain. Too new. Oh, that hurt her. “That’s okay. Whatever you need to do.”

  His memories of his wife were too raw, too painful, to be shared. She studied his face. His unbandaged eye was closed, his lips compressed and white at the corners, his face ashen. Tears seeped out from under the lid of the eye she could see.

  At this moment, Kristen thought she would burst
with love for him. She wanted to pull him even closer, to take care of him, to never let him go. Her eyes stung with tears of shared grief and rage and her heart contracted with love. But he didn't want her help. His pain was too new. He had to live through the death of his wife as if it had just happened. And the thought of that almost destroyed her.

  With grim determination, she gathered her wits. She was a doctor. Whatever her emotions were, whatever had been between them, her responsibility was for his health and well being. He was exhausted, dehydrated, and shivering with cold in the air-conditioned room. And he was using all his strength in rage and grief and anguished memories. Kristen knew first hand how draining and debilitating grief could be. She had to keep his memories from sapping what little strength he had. He was her responsibility.

  She dredged her professionalism up from within her. Sitting up she touched the bandage on his head. "Let me look at your eye."

  Rider raised a hand, touching the gauze pad that covered his eye. "I'd forgotten about it."

  "Does it hurt?" She unwrapped the gauze and gently pushed his head back against the cushions. He resisted a bit, watching her warily, but she didn't waver, didn't allow herself to feel anything, and finally her detachment transferred itself to him and he relaxed.

  "I don't know if it hurts or not," he said thoughtfully. "I haven't noticed."

  "Don't open it," she said, lifting the pad. "Let me." She carefully lifted the lid. With relief she saw that there wasn't much redness, only a little bit of pinkish discharge and hardly any swelling. She pulled the little flashlight out of her pocket and peered through the pupil, holding his eye open as his muscles fought to close it against the bright light. The bleeding had lessened. She sighed.

  "It looks fine. Sit up. Now, look at me." She held her hand over his left eye. "Can you see me?"

  His right eye opened slowly, the lashes matted with the ointment she'd applied. He blinked several times, but finally his gaze focused on her face.