A Twist in Time

by Susan Squires

  She crouched beside the silver lunch box. “Blue switch. Check. Two whites. Check, check.” Her voice trembled. She looked up at a shout and saw a man lose his head. She screamed. She’d seen it in movies a lot. But real was something else entirely. No comforting latex, no soothing CGI. Blood spurted. The body staggered forward even as the head thudded to the ground and rolled. The attacker whirled away, beset on all sides.

  The eyes are still blinking. It felt like someone else was thinking that. She was frozen, staring at the head as, behind it, the body toppled. Her breath started to come fast and shallow. Darkness threatened at the edge of her vision. Get hold of yourself, Lucy. Got to get out of here. With a wrench she pulled her gaze away from the head. The lunch box began to hum. Be quick. Please be quick. Quick. Quick. Now for the chrome button.

  A hand on her shoulder pulled her away from the machine. Hard eyes examined her from behind the battered helmet. The man had bad teeth and worse breath. She struggled, but this time the grip was iron on her arm. He said something guttural. German?

  “Let me go,” she screamed as though he could understand her.

  A shadow loomed out of the smoke behind her attacker. The shadow roared something, and her attacker turned and met the descending sword by thrusting up his small, round shield. As the two engaged, the one who had been gripping her thrust her away. She plunged back to the power box and pushed the chrome button. The feeling of energy in the air thumped in her chest. She pushed herself up and went to the lever. The two giant men were hacking at each other, parrying and thrusting not two feet away. The younger of the two, who had attacked the one with bad teeth, seemed to be getting the better of the struggle. The rest of the battle was closing in on the machine. Huge men everywhere, sharp edges of steel, leather and sweat and blood. She reached up and pulled the lever down. The gears began to spin. Several men staggered away from the machine, pointing. But any lapse of attention could be punished with a killing blow, so the fighting sputtered but didn’t stop. The two giants stumbled even closer.

  Machine! she thought. Get me out of here. The gears were really whirring now. In moments she would just disappear the way she came. November 9, 2009.

  Beside her the two men grappled with each other. The younger one thrust the one with bad teeth away. He fell right at Lucy’s feet. The younger one hurled himself on top, but the older man got his axe up and the blade cut the younger one’s thigh. Blood seeped through a long cut in the leather. They rolled and staggered up. But now the older man was like a fury, swinging the axe again and again. A white glow from the machine permeated the smoke. The older man picked up a mace lying over a dead body and swung it at the younger man’s helmet. It clanged. The helmet drooped. The older man reached across the body of his adversary for Lucy. His axe dripped blood. But the younger man pushed up with his sword and it found his adversary’s hip joint. The younger man struggled to his feet in front of Lucy and faced the one with bad teeth, now bared in rage. Was he protecting her?

  Things began to slow. Oh, dear. It was happening. She had to focus. November 9, 2009. She hadn’t brought anything back with her. Except the bruises she’d have from that guy’s grip. The colored beams of light crossed wildly through the smoke like a demented circus. The old guy thrust at the dazed man between them and sliced his shoulder. The younger man fell slowly against Lucy. Warm blood soaked her. In this time a wound like that was a death sentence. No S.F. General Trauma Center to stitch up those arteries. The older man raised his axe. It came down toward Lucy, oh, so slowly. She ducked, even more slowly. The axe head hit the huge diamond on the lever and crashed down onto the lunch box. The axe reverberated, sending the attacker back a pace.

  Then everything sped up.

  November 9, 2009. She looked down at the man leaning against her, gore welling from rents in his chain mail. He really needed a hospital. The sensation of being flung forward engulfed her. All was light and sound and whirling vortex. . . .

  “That story is . . . is balderdash.” Brad could see Jensen’s veins bulging on his forehead. Jensen ran the Super Collider Lab, but he was about to retire. Brad had thought by delivering an actual working time machine he’d become a shoo-in to get the job. That wasn’t exactly how it was working out. “There is no such thing as a time machine, and no mere girl could have stolen it.”

  “Then how does a fourteen-foot machine just disappear without anyone noticing?” Brad was fighting for his professional life here. “No guards saw it being taken out, no reports in the neighborhood of trucks hauling huge cargo. But the guards did see Lucy.” Blaming it on Lucy was the only way to get clear, he told himself.

  “I want him off the project.” Casey’s voice was calm. “He brought her in.”

  “I can’t put him off the project until we’re sure there is no project.” Jensen ran his palms over his thinning hair. “On the off chance your story is some twisted version of the truth and the damned thing reappears, he’s the expert. You did say Leonardo da Vinci, didn’t you?”

  Brad breathed again. He shot a glance to Casey. “I did. Miss Rossano had a book that showed its design, written by da Vinci in 1508.”

  “You brought in a double agent,” Casey was sticking to their story that Lucy had taken the machine when their backs were turned as a matter of self–defense. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t spread a little blame around to Brad.

  “You didn’t even know what the machine was until our research turned up the book.”

  “Our research? Hers. She played you like a violin, Steadman.”

  “Innocent Lucy who always has her nose in a dusty book? She’s lost somewhere and can’t get back. You can sneer all you want, Casey. You just don’t want to admit I was right about this project all along. It’s the most important discovery since space travel.”

  “Was the most important discovery—” That was why Casey was angry. Brad knew how he felt. So close to the brass ring . . .

  “What am I going to tell the Italian government?” Jensen practically wailed. “Or the police? They’re looking for Lucy Rossano, who has apparently disappeared into thin air.”

  “We told you—”

  “I’ll take care of the police,” Casey grunted, interrupting Brad.

  “Find a way to get that machine back, Steadman,” Jensen threatened. “Or you’ll never work in any government-funded project again.” He spun on his heel and stomped out of the room.

  Like energy leaves a trail through time you can track. Brad sighed. But he had to get Lucy back somehow. She needed his protection. She’d been just on the verge of realizing she was in love with him. She’d said he mattered more to her than just a friend, hadn’t she? Everything was spoiled now, just when all his patience with her since her father died was about to pay off.

  “I’ll get her picture to Interpol. She must have taken it somewhere.”

  Brad grimaced. “Or some time.” They both knew that if da Vinci’s machine was a time machine, she could take it where they’d never find it.

  Casey’s eyes glittered. “In the meantime we’ll turn her life upside down. Let’s find out just who this Lucy Rossano really was.”

  Lucy squeezed her eyes shut as though that would stop the headache. Had she been drinking? She never drank to the point of having a hangover.

  She was lying on something cold and hard. She blinked her eyes open. Cement. A fluorescent light blared from somewhere close. She smelled oil. She raised her head gingerly. Lines were painted on the cement. Parking structure. She was lying in a parking structure. How had she gotten here? She’d had a wild dream. She’d been at Brad’s lab. The machine turned out to be real. One very scary battle in some other time. It all seemed so clear. One hell of a dream.

  The parking structure was empty except for one car down at the end that looked like it had been there awhile. A tire was flat. She pushed herself up, squinting against her headache.

  The machine glinted in the fluorescent light, quiet, heavy, utterly real. And about ten feet to the
right of it lay the young bearded guy from another time who’d been wounded in the battle.

  Lucy couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t a dream at all. She’d traveled in time and now she was back, though somehow she wasn’t in the lab, and she’d brought something with her after all, a guy who was Saxon or German or maybe from Camelot. She’d probably just changed the fabric of time or the course of history or something. He’d fallen against her just as she was disappearing. Inconvenient timing. Worse than inconvenient. This was awful.

  She eased her bag off her shoulder and crawled over to the man. Was he dead? He was lying in a pool of blood. His chain mail, made of small interlinking loops of metal, was rent over his shoulder and covered with gore. She dared not look closely at the flesh beneath if she wanted to avoid fainting or, worse, vomiting all over him. Even as she reached for his throat to feel for a pulse, he groaned and rolled his head. His helmet clanked against the cement. Okay. He wasn’t dead. Was that good or bad?

  She pulled off the helmet. His hair was darkened with sweat and matted against his head. Two small braids hung from his temples. He was at least six feet—probably really tall for back whenever she’d been—and big through the shoulders.

  His eyes fluttered open. He muttered something. German? Scandinavian? She couldn’t understand. She shook her head. He tried again. This time he sounded vaguely like a reading of Beowulf she’d heard once at a coffee-house in college. He tried to raise his head. That made his shoulder ooze redly. Great. Whatever blood he had left would end up on the cement at this rate.

  She looked around, panicked. At least she was in the right century for medical help. This was apparently the underground part of a parking structure. A green exit sign glowed in the corner. Probably stairs. She’d never get this guy up stairs in his condition. She peered the other way at a sign fizzing weakly. Did it say: Elevator? She scrambled to her bag and fumbled for her iPhone. If she could get a signal down here, she could call the paramedics and use the map locator function to tell them where to pick up the injured guy. She hit the button at the bottom, but no screen came up. Great. She’d charged it earlier today . . . apparently time traveling took the charge out of her phone. No phoning the paramedics.

  “All right, buddy,” she said with false cheer. “You have to rally round here. If I go for help, you’ll probably be dead by the time I get back.” She knelt beside him and wormed her arm under his shoulders. He got the idea and with her help he managed to sit up with a grunt. He was woozy with loss of blood. Hope this parking structure is on a busy street. Maybe they could flag down a passing Samaritan.

  “On your feet, soldier,” she ordered, putting as much grit in her voice as she could and pulling on his good arm. He managed to get his feet under him and shoved himself up. His leather breeches were soaked with blood on one side under a long rip in the leather. She pulled his arm over her shoulder. Could she do this? If he fainted, it was all over. She staggered as he leaned against her and she put her arm around his waist, slender for the width of his shoulders. They took a few tottering steps. Abruptly he stopped.

  “What’s the deal?” She tried to tug him forward. Like that was happening. He just braced his feet, peering around. He spied his bloody sword and pulled her over to retrieve it. He almost toppled over on her as he straightened.

  “Okay, you’ve got your sword.” He gripped the gruesome weapon as though it was salvation. There was some kind of engraving on the blade. “No more stops.” They staggered to the elevator. When the doors opened, white showed around his pupils. No elevators in whenever he was from. “Trust me. We need the elevator.” Like he could understand her. But he let her drag him inside. When the doors closed, his lips went grim. She punched Lobby. The result of her disastrous foray into history braced his feet wide and brandished his sword as they rose through five floors. Yeah, elevators felt weird even if you realized what was happening.

  The first thing that greeted them when the doors opened was red and white cycling lights across an asphalt drive in front of a huge building blazing with light. The guy stiffened and held up the wavering sword. Two ambulances were backed up to wide glass automatic doors under a sign that shouted: Emergency Room into the cold night air. It was drizzling.

  “I . . . I know this place,” Lucy whispered. It was San Francisco General. They had come back through time to the parking lot in front of the only trauma unit in the city.

  How wild was that? Had she been thinking about that at the moment the machine slung them forward? Whatever. The General was just what her guy needed now.

  “Hey!” she yelled to two paramedics just pushing their empty gurney out the doors. “Help me. This guy is bleeding.”

  One thing about paramedics, they decide quickly and they don’t waste any time following through. One big blond ran across the asphalt, dashing in front of a car on its way to the parking structure, and the other one pushed his gurney over at a trot. Her time traveler started to put up a struggle. “It’s for your own good!” she yelled. The paramedics finally wrestled him onto the gurney as he weakened. She put a hand on his chain mail. “It’s all good,” she said, softer this time. He looked up at her. Even in this light she could see that his eyes were really blue. He was breathing hard, but under her hand she felt him stop his struggle. When one paramedic tried to take his sword, her Beowulf guy growled something and gripped the hilt.

  “Better let him keep it,” Lucy advised. She lifted the blade to lay it on the gurney.

  “Hey, was this some kind of reenactment?” The blond pushed the gurney over the asphalt. The other pulled and steadied it. “This chain mail is really authentic looking.”

  “Reenactments hardly ever result in actual blood,” the other observed as they rushed the patient in through the emergency room doors.

  “Got a live one, ladies. Ready, camera, action.” The blond pushed the gurney past the women at the registration desk and through the big double doors to the emergency room. Lucy trailed after them in time to see the patient roll his head and try to sit up.

  “Bay three.” A big black nurse in green scrubs pointed. “Doctor! Trauma.”

  The paramedic at the big guy’s head pulled him back down. “Take it easy.”

  A doctor stuck his head out of a curtained bay. “Type him and get an IV going. Epinephrine. How’s our blood supply?”

  “Depends on his type.” The black nurse directed people who appeared from everywhere. “Page a gas passer,” she ordered a young girl.

  “I . . . I’m O positive, if you need blood,” Lucy said into the hubbub.

  “That’s good,” the big nurse said, but her attention was elsewhere. “Let’s get those wounds prepped. I want a tourniquet ready for his leg just in case.” She beckoned impatiently to a harried tech pushing a crash cart.

  Lucy watched with wide eyes as orderlies and nurses swarmed her guy and began pulling off the chain mail. They cut off a sleeveless leather jerkin sort of thing he was wearing and then his shirt. Another pulled off his boots and cut the leather strips that held his breeches on. One ripped open some sterile packaging and produced a needle. The big man started to struggle again at the sight of the needle. He was shouting in what sounded like a Scandinavian language again.

  “Hey!” an orderly yelled as he took a balled fist in the eye.

  “Get me some gas,” the doctor shouted as a nurse pulled on his gloves. “I want this guy out now!” Another man in green ran up and pulled down a plastic mask as he checked some dials. The mask was shoved over the patient’s face. He struggled harder, right until he went limp.

  A tech tightened some rubber tubing around her guy’s bare thigh just at the groin.

  “Don’t tie the tourniquet, for God’s sake,” the big nurse snapped. “He’ll lose the leg. Leave it loose, so it’s there if we hit an artery.”

  Lucy started forward as though she could help. The big nurse strode over, took her by the shoulders, and firmly turned her around. “You,” she said to the paramedics. “Take her out
side.”

  The blond paramedic took Lucy’s arm and guided her back out to the registration area. Lucy noticed for the first time that there were several gurneys in the hallway with patients on them. “They got him now. They know what to do. He couldn’t be in a better place.”

  “You just fill out the paperwork. Let them do the tough stuff,” the other one said. They sat her down in front of a tired-looking Asian girl behind a glass barrier with a round hole for speaking and a slot at the bottom. “We’re outta here.”

  “Good luck to you.” They disappeared. Lucy was left staring at the expectant Asian girl.

  Paperwork. On a time traveler.

  Not good.

  The girl’s nameplate said: Bernice. Not exactly Asian, but in San Francisco she could be a fourth-generation immigrant. Bernice pushed a clipboard through the slot. “Just fill these out.”

  “Well, uh, that’s going to be a problem.” The truth wasn’t going to do anybody any good here. It might get her locked up, with people feeding her happy pills.

  “Just the basics. You don’t have to know his Social Security number or anything. Did they give you his personal effects? An insurance card from his wallet would be great.”

  Lucy was tempted to say she’d just found him somewhere in an alley. He had no ID. He could be a homeless person. But with no connection to him, they’d never let her see him, and she had to keep him close until she could get him fixed up and back to his time. Okay. She’d make up a connection. And how to explain the chain mail and the very big sword? Best to go with the paramedic’s first impression. Reenactment.