Girl Gone Nova

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Why did she seek to annoy them? Was it good she succeeded?

  “You sought our attention, now you have it.”

  Their body language was wrong. What did they have to hide?

  “Someone is messing with time again. Did Smith escape your leash?”

  “We have detected no instability.”

  She stared at them for what felt like a very long time, her head to one side.

  “You’re lying.”

  “You are understandably distraught—”

  “What I am is pissed.” Delilah cut them off, her voice flat and cold. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it last time. The look. The attitude. I grew up with it. You’re my parents all over again.”

  “What look?” One of them asked the question, before Hel could. He heard wary in the voice and knew Delilah was right, but about what?

  “The scientist look. I’ve used it myself a few times. You aren’t minding time. You’re messing with it, using us as your lab rats. You’re using us for some sick, twisted experiment.”

  Hel saw the truth of it in their eyes before they turned remote again.

  “It does not matter. We will reset Earth time so far back, you will be a child again.”

  Hel moved instinctively toward her. “Delilah?”

  If he lost her again—he couldn’t let that happen. They had to stop them—

  He saw her light up, realized he glowed, too. Felt the internal nova. The nanites that had protected them last time exploded in a rage that equaled his, and also Delilah’s. He had not realized the nanites could feel rage.

  He reached for her.

  She reached for him.

  Fingertips touched, slid together and gripped…

  They were yanked into a vortex of light. It spun and dipped around him, around her. Time whirled around them, broken pieces like flat mirrors bending and turning in the vortex with flashes of his life and hers, flashes of other lives, other times. They spun faster and faster. It tried to pull them apart. He wouldn’t let it. He knew his grip bruised her. He didn’t care.

  Light built.

  Exploded.

  Into darkness without bottom.

  * * * * *

  The blackness faded to gold, taking her to a place that streamed like a transport beam. Doc still had her peeps sending her data. She was in a sort of energy field, but whether it was a cell or a protection wasn’t clear. Hel was here, too. She couldn’t see him, but she felt him, felt the nanite connection, though direct communication was offline. To one side, the streams of gold were vertical, instead of horizontal. Could it be a control panel of some kind? Some peeps flowed toward it, unaffected by the energy field that immobilized her. As weird as it was, she felt as if she went with them. Incoming data spiked, knowledge exploding in her head.

  She was in time’s slip stream. She, Hel and the peeps had almost destroyed the fabric of time, had almost ripped it to shreds. Somehow the peeps had held it together until they’d been able to pull all of them free of time’s drag. Or maybe time had ejected them. Time is persistent. Equations and data streamed through her head at an incredible rate. She could feel time flowing, sensed its ebb and flow as if it were a part of her. She recognized it on some subterranean level, as if she and time had always been connected.

  A figure emerged from the flow, taking shape in front of the vertical data stream. He didn’t look at her, his attention on the data stream.

  Dr. Smith?

  That he was black ops something was clearer now that he wasn’t playing scientist. Could he be a merc? A mercenary? As if he sensed her scrutiny, he finally turned, a slight frown between his sandy brows, as if something about her puzzled him.

  “I need to know how you almost destroyed time.” There was an authority in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

  Doc shrugged.

  He looked at her then, a frown upping his stern factor by ten.

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t know who she was. The relief might have taken out her knees, but it was hard to know for sure with the energy field pinning her physical body in place. “So you can go mess with my past?”

  He frowned. “It’s not that simple. Time is—”

  “Persistent. And so are you.”

  Nothing slight about this frown, though he erased it.

  Did that mean he didn’t remember her? Had the time creeps reset his time line, too?

  He’d tried to trap the Chameleon, she reminded herself, so he had to remember her, didn’t he? The time creeps remembered her and Hel, though what they knew about them was still an unknown.

  The peeps quivered with unease as they flowed back into her body. Smart peeps.

  “You should not be here.”

  “And yet here I am.” Not that she planned to stay. Her peeps almost had control of the field. This was future tech, but it was Garradian future tech. Her peeps were connecting with the grandpeeps and both sides were happy about it.

  “I cannot release you until I identify the contamination and correct it.”

  “You don’t want to fix anything.”

  He gave her a black ops look. Funny how that never changed.

  “Sometimes it is necessary to—” he hesitated, as if trying to find the right word “—delete a feature so that time can be stabilized.”

  They were a “feature?” No, she realized, he was lying about stabilizing time. Doc felt time smoothing out around the slip stream. Perhaps it was relieved it still could.

  “You’re just mad we got the drop on you.” She felt the click as she and Hel connected again, felt her ability to breach the field increase as they combined their peep power.

  Smith stiffened, whipped back to the data stream control or whatever that was. “What are you doing?”

  Doc didn’t answer. People only explained themselves in the movies. Besides, it ought to be freaking obvious. They were getting out. He stared at her through a field starting to flicker like a bad circuit.

  “I will learn who you are.”

  I will learn who you are. She thought he knew who they were, not precisely, but ballpark knowledge. His body language said he lied, but he sounded confident. This place wasn’t a time machine, it was a time tracking station, according to the peeps. It tracked instabilities, not people or planets or galaxies. She saw, or maybe she felt the threads of time moving past the slip stream that protected them. It wasn’t a movie. It was a river, a jumble of galaxies and planets and countries and lives. Finding them in that mess would be like trying to find a pebble in the Mississippi River when it was at high flood stage. That would be why the time freaks had used instabilities to play with time. But that didn’t explain Smith.

  She didn’t understand most of the data delivered via the peeps, but what she did get, gave her hope. He’d have a better chance finding a needle hidden in the Garradian galaxy. She mentally plucked some of the threads and saw him wince. She gave him her Morticia smile. “Good luck with that.”

  He tried to fight them. She felt him fail. He spun away into a mix of light and dark. Did he cry out? She wasn’t sure. The field holding her in place faded. She was falling again. Faster this time and not through darkness, but back into the stream of time. It was cold, then hot…

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Doc didn’t want to open her eyes. It took a few heartbeats to remember why.

  She sniffed. No cordite, so not a post bomb moment.

  She was upright. Holding onto something hard and cool. She took a peek. A marble sink. A Garradian marble sink.

  She was in a bathroom. A Garradian bathroom.

  There were worse places to be, worse places she’d been.

  She still had the peeps. She could feel them in her head, though they were as rattled as she was. Almost destroying the fabric of time twice had that affect.

  She lifted her lids. Saw her face, her body in a mirror over the sink.

  She was wearing a dress.

  That was new.

  Not that she’
d never worn a dress, but wearing one in this galaxy was new. It wasn’t just a dress. It was a modified Morticia dress: black and clinging with sleeves that had drifty points that stopped at her knuckles. It wasn’t long. She never wore long dresses. If she had to lift them to kick it filled her hands with something besides knives or guns. She touched the a-bit-lower-than-her-usual neckline. What was up with that? This dress was fitted—she felt her back and sure enough, no gun snugged into the curve of her lower back. She yanked at the skirt, feeling out of proportion relieved to find a knife strapped to one thigh, a small, but lethal hand gun strapped to the other. Minimal was better than nothing. The heels went with the dress, but holy foxtrot they were high enough to be a different kind of weapon.

  Her hair was shorter than last timeline, but longer than the hair cut before that. It brushed her shoulders, utterly straight and about the same length as Cleopatra’s was supposed to have been, but sans the bangs. She didn’t do bangs. Got in the way of a gun sight if she didn’t keep them trimmed.

  Her makeup was exotic and a bit creepy.

  What was going on? Where was she?

  She studied the bathroom, not able to fully appreciate the nice accoutrements. Situational awareness the size of a bathroom was not helpful, even if it was a nice bathroom. The stone walls looked familiar. This had to be the Kikk outpost. The peeps wanted to help, but they were fetal in a dark corner of her brain. Okay, outpost, dress—could be a party. But why was she packing creepy with her other armament? What was her mission objective? Did she have a mission objective? She hadn’t at the last party in this galaxy, two timelines ago.

  Her heart thumped again—hard—as she froze on another thought.

  She pulled up her sleeve and turned her wrist to the light.

  It was bare. It was gone. Her ma’rasile mark was gone.

  Her hand wrapped around the spot.

  It is what you said you wanted. The peeps sounded reproachful.

  I did. I do. It’s just—

  You like him.

  Her chest felt tight, like something wanted to explode out of the center. It wasn’t tears. She didn’t do tears. Okay, she’d had a rotten couple of timelines and maybe she’d earned a good cry, but that didn’t mean she’d do it. She’d escaped Smith, but not the law of unintended consequences. She needed to get a new law to live by, but until then, well, Hel was better off not bonded to her. She was dangerous and creepy. His sons needed him more than she did. People didn’t die from their heart shattering into millions of pieces—not that hers had. It felt like it had, but it hadn’t. It was a biological impossibility.

  She could stay in the bathroom and whine, or she could go find out where she was and why. Her brain made the case for leaving. Her heart voted for whining. The brain won. Whining made her head hurt.

  She resisted the impulse to pull a weapon as she eased the door open onto an empty bedroom. She did a quick search of the pleasant space, found her stuff neatly stowed. She had a window, so she looked out. It was still light enough to tell that she’d been quartered on the Kikk outpost. Be nice to know why. Be better to curl up and die.

  A tap at the door to the corridor almost put her on the ceiling. She had her weapon in hand without being aware she’d grabbed it. A little time shifting and she turns jumpy? Get a grip, girl, she ordered as she eased up to the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Doc?”

  Briggs. She sagged. “Give me a minute.” She stowed the weapon and shrugged on a persona that went with her clothes. Then she opened the door.

  Briggs was in his dress uniform. He looked good.

  His once over was thorough and appreciative enough to bring a half smile to her face, despite the hollow core in the center of her chest where she used to have what passed for a heart. He held out his arm, so she took it, pulling her door closed. It appeared they were going somewhere together, somewhere that required the dress and dress blues. She could do this. She could bluff it out. They walked in silence for the length of a semi-medieval corridor. It reminded her of an upscale castle—one without the damp and the gloom. No suits of armor either.

  “Can I ask you something, Doc?”

  She looked at him, wrapped in exterior calm. “Sure.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Okay, maybe her exterior wasn’t as calm as she thought. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?” At least her voice sounded the same, cool and too much like her mum.

  He stopped, turning to face her, forcing Doc to face him right when she could have used a hair screen while she figured out what he was talking about.

  “If you don’t want to do this, screw Giddioni and the alliance.”

  Doc’s jaw sagged about the same moment the hole in her chest started to close. Time is persistent. She felt a smile tipping up the edges of her mouth, despite a reminder to herself that this didn’t mean Hel remembered her. The peeps were still too rattled to do any research for her.

  Briggs sighed. “The General said you like him.” He shook his head, like he couldn’t believe it.

  Doc made a face and shrugged. “At least we know I’ll be bad at whatever it is an alliance mate does.” Doc still wasn’t a diplomat, probably never would be.

  He looked more cheerful. “That’s what the General said.”

  They resumed their walk toward the party—if it was a party. Had to be a party. She was wearing a freaking dress. With all the practice she’d had with working in the dark, she should be better at it by now. The crowd murmur built as they approached open double doors. Men in pretty uniforms stood on each side. Did that mean the party was hosted by the Gadi? Did that mean the Gadi were on the outpost? In possession of the outpost?

  The food smell reached her first. It smelled great. Had to be a Gadi party. Doc’s nose quivered. As far as she knew, she hadn’t eaten great food in this timeline. And she had no equation to help her do the math on how long it had been since food had hit her stomach.

  People smells came next, some of them not quite as good as others, though none of them rampantly unpleasant. No one had obvious BO, though the mix had an alien tinge to it. Her eye didn’t twitch. Maybe she was getting the hang of the time paradox crap. Or her eyelids were just tired of twitching. They reached the entrance and paused. Doc could feel Briggs longing to retreat as keenly as she felt her own. If she hadn’t spotted Hel, she might have given into it.

  He looked good.

  You like him.

  What’s not to like? She’d never have asked that question of the General. He’d have a long list. The peeps just agreed with her. As if her thoughts had summoned him, General Halliwell appeared on her two o’clock, wearing his dress blues and stone face. At least he’d left the thunder cloud in his quarters. Something in his eyes told her they were friends again, which further eased the chill of the reset. She felt those tendrils again, those roots connecting her to both men and hopefully to this time. She was as adaptable as anyone she knew, but she’d had it with adapting—at least adapting in the dark.

  Briggs came to attention. Doc did a variation more suited to the dress and killer heels.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  It was too late two timelines ago, but telling him that would make his eye twitch. She smiled, channeling her mum’s calm and cool.

  “I’m good, sir.” It was almost true. She’d almost destroyed time. Had no clue what day of the week, month or year it was, or why she was wearing a dress. Or if Hel remembered her. But he wanted her enough to do that alliance thing—unless she’d done it. Her chest hollowed out again.

  The general’s gaze sharpened, his voice dropped. “It’s happened again, hasn’t it?”

  She nodded. He’d seen through her before. That he still could wasn’t as big a shock as it should have been. She smiled, a cool and confident one. “I have no clue what this is all about, sir.”

  Before the General could respond, a Gadi man slithered up to them, undressing her with his close-set eyes. Glarmere. Perhaps he
was the reason she’d decided to pack creepy. She felt a sudden longing for a flash bang. She could hope time was that persistent.

  “My lady. I am Minister Glarmere.” His gaze ran over her again, leaving a slime trail.

  Were there laws about beating up on a Minister? A cool, male hand cupped her elbow and every nerve ending in her body perked up. They might have done the Macarena.

  Hel.

  Time slowed in a nice way as she turned her head to look at him. She felt the air rasp in her throat as she inhaled his scent, felt the electrical current passing between them where his skin met hers. There was an internal buzz as both their peeps tried to reconnect. Physical contact helped them, though both sets were rattled.

  “Delilah.”

  That’s all he said, but it told her all she needed to know right now: he wanted her.

  She didn’t know if he remembered her, didn’t know if he remembered everything that had happened, but right now it was enough to know he wanted her.

  She kept her façade, taking her cue from him. She didn’t want to look away. She did. She looked at Glarmere, met his close-set gaze, then let her gaze trail over him with the same thoroughness he’d used on her, though she didn’t do the slime trail and her scrutiny had a hearty measure of lethal. She gotten some practice with Conan and she used what she’d learned. He was almost Hel’s height and was pretty in an oily way, but he lacked Hel’s presence, his clarity of purpose, his hotness factor, and the eyes were just too close together.

  Did Dusan mercenaries lurk in his life somewhere?

  Time is persistent.

  Last timeline their ma’rasile had made Hel vulnerable to his cousin, but that wasn’t an issue this time. Her gaze made it back to Glarmere’s. She let out some lethal and saw him pale. She added a tiny, very tiny wrinkle of the nose, just in case his ego didn’t get the memo that messing with her was a bad idea. Now color surged into his face. He was easier to wind up than Conan. Before he could implode or explode, hard to say which way a guy like that would go, another Gadi man edged in close, riding in a bubble of self-importance.