by Mallory Kane
Her supersensitive ears heard a familiar sound behind her. The faint, almost silent whir of a blaster recharging.
She whirled, just in time to see the tank raise his blaster and point it at the couple embracing on the Whale Song. From the angle of his aim, he'd burn a hole right through both of them—no, through all three of them, Darwin corrected herself.
She sighed. "They'll send me back to pre-history for this one," she muttered, drawing a minuscule sizzler from her pocket. She aimed and fired.
He disappeared in a puff of acrid brown smoke.
Darwin was just about to pop back home when she felt it—the unmistakable pull. She was being snatched.
"Oh, no, you wouldn't dare!" she hissed, knowing the camera imbedded in her right eye would pick up her whisper. "Don't!" She knew first hand how dangerous snatching was. She'd done it herself.
She had finally gone too far. Not even her father could get her out of this one—if he'd even want to. She was supposed to be a watcher. Their motto was “hands off.”
She had pulled major interferences twice now, and what did they say—three strikes and you're out?
Prehistory would be way too easy a sentence after she'd interfered this time. She was probably on her way to observe the primordial ooze oozing.
Damn. And she'd been looking forward to planning her honeymoon.
THE END
Coming in July for 2014
SKIP IN TIME
Rise of the Skipworths, Book 2
by
Mallory Kane
Excerpt
Darwin strode through the bright corridor, her heavy boots pounding on the sterile tile floor. As always, when she was on her way to his office, people and cyborgs got out of her way. She couldn't tell what the cyborgs were thinking, but the halls echoed with the unspoken speculations of the humans.
::Uh-oh, looks like the kid's in trouble again.::
::Wonder what she did this time?::
::Didn't you hear? She violated the code.::
::What! The Watcher Code? ::
::I heard she brought something back. ::
::You can't do that. It's impossible—isn't it? ::
::Not to mention worth a sentence of about five thousand years in prehistory. ::
::Sure, if it were you. But not for the daughter of the Undersecretary for Temporal Affairs. ::
::Yeah, well, she may be his daughter, but she's still just a jenny.::
Darwin stopped so suddenly her boots squeaked. She whirled, and glared up at the nondescript man, who was dressed in the same sexless black garb as she and everyone else in the R&E Lab. Mentally shoving the pain his words caused her back where it belonged, she made her voice cold as Pluto's moon. "Did you have something to say—" she paused, and glanced meaningfully at his name tag. "—Bob?"
A flush rose from his neck to his burr haircut. She saw him swallow, and his discomfort gave her a small measure of satisfaction.
"Perhaps you've forgotten that, unlike the Secretary, I can hear your thoughts."
He mumbled something, then glanced at his companion, who smothered a snicker. Darwin's head began to buzz again with the random thoughts of the people in the room. She tamped down her reception, a skill she was getting better at. "So Bob, how long have you worked here?"
The man's frightened gaze met hers, his eyes dark in his suddenly pale face. Darwin clenched her fist inside her pants pocket, and managed to keep her regret for scaring him off her face. Not as easy for her as for some. "Well?"
"S—seven years, Miss—that is, um, Watcher."
"You have a family?"
His gaze faltered. "Yes, Watcher."
She waited. "Well?"
"Wife and two little girls." He stood up straighter, which made him about a foot taller than she. "My youngest has the talent."
Two little girls. Two perfect, pretty little girls, one of whom would grow up to be everything a man could want in a daughter, the other, who would be even more. Darwin's heart squeezed so painfully in her breast that she was afraid she'd moan. She licked her lips. "If you want to live to see them grow up, perhaps you'd better learn to guard your thoughts."
"Yes, Watcher."
Darwin took a long breath. "And remember that I am better than you'll ever be at guarding mine. Continue." She turned on her heel and stalked away.
::Bitch!::
She hesitated for about a fifth of a second, as his thought waves lingered in the air, then set her foot down and continued down the hall. He had two little girls, and she'd just given him one chance for each one of them. She wouldn't forget Bob.
She lifted her head a fraction higher, and walked a fraction faster. Passing the open doors of the lift, she jerked open a heavy metal door and took the stairs two at a time to the top floor, ignoring the pain in her hips, to her father's offices.
She nodded at Jeffrey, the Secretary's office manager, and accepted the headset from him. She hesitated before the huge, electronically magnetized doors that housed what everyone referred to as the Inner Sanctum. She clenched her jaw and clamped down on her fear. She didn't like being afraid of her father. She wasn't, most of the time. Most of the time the healthy anger that simmered just below the boiling point steamed away any other feelings.
Right now, though, she was tired, she was filthy, and she'd almost been killed. Anyone who knew her would know that any one of those was enough to make her unfit company. Sticking one hand in the Dnalyzer, she reached up with the other to adjust the magnetized headset that would block any thoughts from either being sent or received by her. The Dnalyzer brushed her palm.
Wonder who was in there with him? Hopefully not Alanna. She wanted to talk to Alanna, but privately. She wanted to tell her what had happened, share with her the excitement of what she'd done. But if Alanna was already in there, then her father had already coopted her to his side this time as he had before.
Darwin still couldn't believe he'd hired Alanna as his personal assistant. He hated skipworths. Hated everything about them, Darwin most of all. He wouldn't allow any mind communication in his presence, so it hadn't made sense that he'd hired one of the most sensitive skipworths that had ever been born.
The doors slid open silently, and Darwin took a huge breath. Three pairs of eyes assessed her as she stepped into the room and heard the doors hiss shut behind her.
"Hello Alanna. Hello Sir. Siad, how about those Cosmos?" She spoke rapidly, her voice higher than normal. Damn. They'd all know she was nervous.
"Darwin." Her father's voice—the first voice she had ever heard and in it, the only tone he'd ever used with her, a thinly disguised loathing.
"Sir."
"Would you like to tell me what you have done?"
Darwin's heart almost lifted. Her sense of pride, her amazement, at her accomplishment, almost overrode her good sense. She breathed in the sterilized air and with it, the odor of caution she had kept about her like a cloak all her life. "I believe I may have violated the Watcher's Code, sir."
Siad's grey eyes widened in his rough, mobile face. Alanna's fingers twitched. Darwin saw her faint movement from the corner of her eye and knew Alanna was dying to rip off the thought-dampening headset and pummel her with silent questions. Sliding her glance briefly toward Siad's, she allowed a snap of triumph to show for a split-second in her own, then brought her attention fully back to her father.
He stood before her, his back ramrod straight, his shoulders rigid, his face an impassive mask. The only thing that could be called alive were his eyes. The same eyes she looked at in the mirror each morning. Except where hers were bright as obsidian, his were dull, and deep as a black hole. She blinked, an instinctive protection against being sucked into its depths.
He had never sat in her presence, she realized, rather inanely. No wonder her every memory of him was larger than life. He was huge, six-five at least, more than a foot taller than she. And he had never bent toward her, never crouched down to talk to her, never sat in her presence. Her father.
>
"Darwin, answer me again, and think this time, before you answer."
Darwin frowned. What had she said? "Look, sir, I know it's not technically allowed," she went on quickly. "And I'm sure you're skeptical, but–"
"Shut up!" he thundered. "Alanna," he nodded curtly at her, then at Darwin.
Darwin shot a question at the older woman, although she knew it was pointless. Alanna took her arm and led her from the room. The doors hissed behind them.
"Jeffrey. Here." Alanna took off her headset, and lifted the one from Darwin's head. "Hold onto these, and keep the vids trained on us. We're going to the aerium."
Alanna, what? Darwin stopped. The magnetic resonance of the room was still too high. She walked down the hall with Alanna until they came to the aerium door. Alanna held her hand to the DNAnalyzer. The doors swished open, and the two women stepped into a tropical rainforest, the like of which had not been seen on Earth for almost four hundred years.
Darwin breathed the warm, perfumed air, and laughed as a colorful bird flashed by. She reached up and touched the turgid leaf of a rubber tree. "I love this place. Siad always brought me here while I was recuperating."
::Shhh!::
::What? Alanna? Did my father give you specific instructions?::
::Your father wants only one thing from me.::
::And that is—?::
::To find out if you're lying.::
Darwin stepped deeper into the rainforest. She swiped drops of water off the surface of the rubber tree leaf and brought them to her tongue. The liquid was sweet, and clean, and cool. Alanna stood just inside the closed doors, as if she'd like to turn and run.
::And if, for whatever strange, nefarious purpose of my own, I am lying, then what, Alanna?::
::Darwin, there's a lot you don't understand about your father. A lot you may never understand. His work is important to him. His position is important. You can't just run wild, doing six impossible things before breakfast, as if there's no order in the universe.::
::Six impossible—what are you talking about?::
::Never mind. I let my mind loose for a second. It's just a quote from an ancient text.::
Darwin smiled. "I like it. What text?"
::Please, Darwin. Hush. Not aloud. Now, please tell me what you brought back from the past.::
~~~
Table of Contents
Copyright 2013 Rickey R. MalloryDEDICATION
DEDICATION
Books and Short Stories by MalloryIt’s In His KissSeptember RainDeathsingerReunion
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
Coming in July for 2014SKIP IN TIME