“No. Why should I?” Shauna puzzled over the thought that presents were given to children for the holiday.
Mike sat in the chair at the desk and pulled Shauna on his lap. “It’s like this. When I was a small kid my parents bought Scott and me presents.” He ran his hands over her shoulders and arms, then up her neck. Shauna moaned and shivered. “They put a big Christmas tree inside the house, decorated it—you’ve seen the decorations from my time, right?” Mike’s voice had become husky. She nodded her head. “Good. Then they bought us gifts, wrapped them and put them under a tree for us to open on Christmas day. It was the most exciting time for us. That is until Mom died.”
The light of excitement faded from Mike’s voice. His hands stilled on her neck. Shauna didn’t know what happened to his mother but she could feel the pain it still caused him. “One day will you tell me about it?”
“What?” Mike shook his head to clear away the memories. “Oh, my mother. Yes but not now.”
The mood had been shattered by Mike’s memory of his mother. Shauna wondered what had happened. Wondered why he rarely spoke about his family. Why he’d only mentioned his father once in the whole time he’d been here. He mentioned his brother Scott but not his father. A deep curiosity filled Shauna but she knew he’d tell her when the time was right.
“Anyway. I’m learning to use a laser gun.” Pride replaced memories and Mike stood straight and tall. He pushed the lock of hair off his forehead and sighed. “Why is it that all of your modern-day machines and gadgets take so much training?”
“It’s all for public safety and you know it.” Shauna touched Mike’s lower lip. It’d been sticking out a little in a typical pout but she stroked it back and forth until Mike’s eyes darkened and his brows lowered. She watched him glance around the room. No one paid them any attention.
He lowered his head and kissed Shauna. The kiss intensified when he pulled her into his arms. One hand cradled the back of her head, the other wrapped around her shoulders. She molded her body to his, feeling his taut thighs next to hers. Lost to time and place, Shauna felt her blood sing, her heart meld to Mike’s and her body curve to fit his. She ran her hands through his midnight hair feeling the coarse yet soft strands. Her fingers curved into his skull, lightly massaging, yet holding on for dear life.
A cough startled them apart. “There’s a room for that and it’s not here,” Douglas Wentworth said.
Shauna had never known mortification like this before. She literally felt the blush start at her ankles and sweep up her body to end in a blaze on her face. Perspiration popped out along her hairline. Her knees weakened and she sank into the nearby chair. “Dad.”
The stern look on Douglas’ face was all Shauna needed to feel six years old again. “Uh…oh…well.”
“Very eloquent, daughter.” He moved forward and whispered in Shauna’s ear, “Do that tonight behind closed doors. I’ll keep your mother distracted.”
Shock replaced embarrassment. Shauna jumped up from the chair. “Dad!” She saw the barely suppressed laughter and reluctantly grinned. “That’s more information than I need to know.”
“And you making love with Mike here isn’t? Why the whole room was watching.”
Shauna glanced around the room. Nobody looked her way but too many people studied papers or computers. Another flush bombarded her. She grabbed Mike’s hand and pulled him from the room saying, “I need some air.”
* * * * *
Mike excelled at weapons training. He loved the tiny laser gun, handled the light-ray machine gun with ease and learned how to remotely pilot the automated tanks. They were very different from tanks in his day, their maneuverability was amazing. But essentially they had the same purpose. Only now no one was inside them, no one would get hurt. The unmanned tanks were a powerful weapon with laser gun and light-ray capability.
It seemed that grenades were abolished in the twenty-second century. Too much damage to buildings. The Global Guardians now used a small, plastic-like device that snapped when it landed near a human. Its ear-piercing sound caused a soldier to drop instantly unconscious but unharmed.
Mike flew a different skycar everyday to practice getting the feel of various sizes. Two-seaters, four, ten. The larger the skycar the more it felt like a flying bus. Douglas told him it didn’t matter if it was full of passengers or not, he never knew when he’d need to escape in one.
Two weeks as a Subversive member and Mike felt as if he belonged. He knew the names of the men and women at the camp. Louise and Douglas didn’t call it that, they called it a city.
But a camp it was. Patrols flew day and night to protect the hidden valley. Alarms were set to alert the population to intruders. Computers talked, old keyboards clicked and a quiet tension ruled. Information was pulled from secret places and hidden in secret files. Reams of the new paper were used to back up documents. Computers and disks could be erased but this new paper was fireproof and couldn’t be destroyed.
He loved Shauna’s parents and their cause. There was a warmth, a kindness, an intensity between them. They lived and breathed their work and they loved each other deeply. Mike wanted that with Shauna. He watched them touch each other, smile or wink when they passed by in a room. He saw their faces light up when they saw each other after any amount of time away. It was the truest kind of love Mike had ever seen.
“Your parents are amazing.” They lay in bed cuddling. The day had been long and hard and after dinner Douglas and Louise had stated they needed time together. Mike knew it was their way of letting them have the evening alone. “I wish I’d grown up in a family like yours.”
Shauna’s laugh rumbled, shaking the bed. “Oh, sure. My parents were always flying off to a meeting, running after the next story. They were out on assignment more than they were home. Or at least it seemed that way to me.”
“You can see their love, feel it, breathe it.” Mike pulled Shauna closer. “I want our love to be that way.”
She turned in his arms. “It is.”
“I hope so. I never grew up with love.”
“Will you tell me about it?” Shauna laid her head on his chest, pulled the blanket up around them and made a warm nest for them.
“I don’t remember my mother very well. I have glimpses of love, warmth and laughter. But one Christmas season she was decorating the tree and ran out of lights. I wasn’t more than six. She wanted to get more but my Dad said no because it was snowing. They only lived a half mile from the store, so Mom overrode Dad and went to the store.” Mike pulled the blankets closer and nuzzled Shauna’s head.
“I remember blinking blue and red lights outside the house. Dad had been laughing but when he opened the door the laughter stopped. I never heard him laugh again.”
“Your mother was hurt?” Shauna wrapped her legs around Mike’s.
“Killed. A drunk driver celebrating the holiday ran a red light and killed Mom.” Mike sighed. “Dad shipped us off to his sister. Aunt Evelyn raised us. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get Dad to be part of our lives.”
“So on that day you not only lost your mother but you lost your father too,” Shauna said. “Oh, Mike. I’m so sorry.”
Mike heard the hitch in Shauna’s voice. He lifted her chin up and saw tears coursing down her face. “Yes. The tragedy of it was that Scott and I never connected with Dad again. Aunt Evelyn tried talking to him over and over again. He shut her out. Shut us out.”
“I’m sure he regrets it,” Shauna said.
“Who knows? Each year at Christmas we invite him over. Each year he turns us down. He has a sterile, cold apartment in a small town called Sisters, Oregon. It’s about twenty miles from Bend where you saw me. I’m surprised he even realized I’d been missing for three months now.”
Shauna sat up in bed, pulling the covers over her to keep warm. “You don’t think Scott told him you’d missed Christmas?”
“I know he didn’t. Why would he? Scott probably made the obligatory invitation to Christma
s dinner, Dad probably turned it down and no one’s spoken to each other since. But I bet Aunt Evelyn said something about me not being there this year. She would have noticed.”
A long silence reined. Shauna pulled Mike’s face to hers and kissed him sweetly. She gave him comfort without words.
Comfort he needed. Words he didn’t.
“I love you, Shauna. I love you with all my heart.”
“I love you too, Mike. I always will.”
Chapter Ten
The alarms rang throughout the four buildings. People rushed madly around trying to stop the blaring noise and find the source for the warnings. Three CEOs huddled in a conference room at Planet Energy Corp. “Where’s the alarm coming from?” Donald Carson asked. His lanky, emaciated body was bent over studying a hologram. “Anybody know?”
“We’re working on it, Don but the computers say hackers have penetrated our second highest level of security.” Robert Cranston, CEO of Circle Planet Com pounded his fist on the table causing a loud tone to screech at the harsh treatment. “Damn table. Who thought it’d be smart to make it ring?” He chain-smoked, leaving a gray cloud to hang over the conference table. “Damn fake tobacco. Who outlawed cigarettes?”
No one answered. They’d heard this tirade before.
“There’s no trace yet,” Layton Kendall, CEO of Planet Care Health Systems said. “Who has the technology, the money, the smarts to penetrate the best security system in the world?” He paced the large room, running his hand over his balding head.
“Obviously not you, Layton,” Cranston grumbled. “You’d have never gotten this far if we hadn’t covered your ass all these years.”
Kendall puffed up with anger. “Now see here, Cranston, I’m tired of your bullying. I orchestrated this whole operation.”
Donald Carson interrupted. “Now, boys. You know as well as I do that this scheme has been in the works for over a hundred years. It was passed down to us through The Society. We’ve inherited the responsibility never to let the secret out and we’ll die for it. Right?” He gave each man a stern look.
Kendall looked away from Carson’s direct stare. Cranston glowered and said, “Some inheritance. It seems the secret is unraveling right before our eyes. Why doesn’t someone do something about it!”
“Marion, will you come in here please?” Carson said. The hidden speakers in the room picked up his voice and carried it to the other office.
The fifty-ish secretary bustled in, her arms full of “paper”. She dumped the load on the table. “I’ve had research go back twenty years to see if anything crops up. There’s only one little blurb about some couple who started a digital newspaper called The Real Truth.”
“Never heard of it,” Cranston stated. “What’s it about?”
“It was a small publication that hunted for the truth about anything and everything that had to do with The Fearsome Foursome—” Marion’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh…er…I’m sorry.”
“No need,” Donald Carson said waving his hand in the air. “We know what we’re called. What has The Real Truth published?”
“Just stories about corruption in the world, how the Fours—the CEOs came to be, why the world voted out the politicians, things like that.”
“Nothing to compromise our secrets,” mumbled Layton Kendall. “So why’d they come to your attention? Were they illegal?”
“No, they had all the proper licenses,” Marion said. “But about four years ago, according to the last report I saw that mentioned them, the owners, Douglas and Louise Wentworth were arrested.”
All three CEO’s heads snapped up. “What for?” Carson asked.
“They were arrested for publishing false and inflammatory articles against The Fearsome Foursome.” The door to the conference room slid open. A medium height man with military-straight posture strolled in. “They were doing more than that,” General Glen Tillson, CEO of the Global Guardians stated. “They were distributing information on the worldnet that said we were hiding a secret.”
Three mouths gaped open. “How’d they find that out?” Kendall stammered.
“They didn’t, you moron.” Robert Cranston glared at Kendall. “How’d we get such a pussy as a CEO?”
Carson interrupted the feuding men. “They were fishing, right Glen? They didn’t really know anything.”
“Well, we silenced them before they could find out anything,” Tillson said.
“Are you sure?” Cranston spat.
“As sure as I can be,” Tillson replied.
* * * * *
“I’m in,” Shauna hollered to the room. People drifted over from their stations to peer at her computer. Her mother stood behind her.
“Let’s see what you’ve found,” Louise said patting her shoulder.
Beaming with pride and excitement, Shauna bounced in her chair. She was still working on an old computer with a real keyboard. “I figured that if I used this old machine the Global Guardians wouldn’t know to look for codes that were all but forgotten. We all know that every modern computer has a GPS tracker and signals to tell where the person is located but these guys don’t, thank goodness.” She patted the computer monitor fondly.
“I hacked my way into their system. But I didn’t find anything of real importance there. I did find an old link, you know, the kind that turned blue and was underlined and it led me to the security files for Planet Care Health Systems. Layton Kendall’s the CEO—the weasel.
“And while searching I came across a long-forgotten file from somebody called Regis Standish. He was CFO to the then Unity Health Company. They were one of the biggest in the country at the time.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard clacking loudly. “Oh…this is all back in 2010 or so. He sent an email to his boss outlining how he was going to siphon money from the company—and get this, it’s a direct quote— ‘For the express purpose of undermining the solvency of Unity Health Company and to build the coffers of The Society. Once Unity fails, other health care companies will follow suit and the government will be forced to take over the health system of the United States. With the public’s approval.’” Shauna turned in her seat to see everyone in the room staring at her. The silence was unnerving.
“So,” Louise said, tapping her teeth lightly and gazing into the distance, “here’s the first acknowledgement that there is a secret club and they called it The Society. What a boring name.”
“Yes,” Shauna agreed. “And it shows the plan to ruin health care and cause the government to take over with the blessing of the unknowing public. They’ll think the companies are badly managed and in those days the government was the fail-safe outlet. Come save our health system and all that.”
“And we know,” Louise continued to the still silent room, “that that’s exactly what happened. The government swooped in, bailed out the health care companies and swindled the tax payers to pay for it. All under the guise of ‘that’s the only way we can save the system’. Then they set up a one-size-fits-all program.”
“People were so afraid of not being able to pay for their medical needs that they drank up the story like the old sickly-sweet Kool-Aid drink of the day,” Shauna agreed.
“So, where do we go from here?” A male voice asked from the back of the room.
“For now we keep searching,” Louise answered. “Back to work people. We’ve made a major find. This should begin to unravel the trail of lies and deception that have been kept hidden from the world for a hundred years.”
Noise filled the room as The Subversives went back to work. Rustling “paper”, ringing tables, low, modulated voices. But an excited tension overrode it all. Shauna sat for a minute soaking up the energy surge. Pride filled her that she’d found the link, the beginning of the truth. With renewed energy she hunched over the computer and went back to work.
* * * * *
Mike had just finished his skycar practice and headed over to the armory to practice with Douglas. He breathed in the clean, cold air and studied the stunning snow
-covered mountains that ringed the hidden valley. He stopped for a minute and closed his eyes. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was standing in Bend, Oregon in 2004. The mountains weren’t a straight line the way they were down Highway 20 but circled the hidden valley. Yet the scent of pine and the brisk cold air were the same. For a minute he had an overwhelming urge to be back home. See Scott. His time was simpler. The world was more ignorant, even with the aftereffects of 9/11.
Just thinking that there really was enough oil to not rely on the Middle East incensed Mike, renewing his resolve to help Shauna and her parents.
What an organization they’d created. Only the members knew about The Subversives and how to contact each other. Mike wondered who the spies were and how high up in the four corporations they really were. He wanted to see the house of cards come tumbling down before he went back to his time.
That brought to mind his other dilemma. The one that kept him up at night. What would he do about his love for Shauna? He’d never loved this deeply before. He felt as if every fiber of her was inside him. He craved her, needed her, wanted her. Even now he felt his body stir and stifled a groan.
Last night had been another magical night in her arms. After he’d told her about his upbringing, Shauna had sweetly, slowly and secretly made love to him. She wouldn’t let him do anything but feel. That’d been so hard. He laughed at himself. He’d been so hard. He’d wanted to touch her and kiss her and tickle her soft, sensuous body. When he’d finally had enough, he’d rolled her over and ravaged her. Never before had the sex been so rough, so tender. Shauna met him thrust for thrust and still it wasn’t enough.
Mike sighed. He wanted her with him for the rest of his life and had no idea how to accomplish it.
He entered the armory and grabbed a javelin. It was made of the clear plastic material of today with green and yellow colors swirling through the center and was light and sharp. He had never seen one outside of this building but Douglas said the Guardians kept them in their skycars for emergencies. So be it. If the Global Guardians had them, then Mike would learn how to use one against them.
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