Stolen Time

by Keith Hughes

  “Relevont, why is Shirley Bruce still on the cover of today's paper?” John demanded. “She should be two years dead by now!”

  Ness read a portion of the article under the photo. The senator led a vocal group voting against suspension of one of the basic civil liberties. They nearly caused the bill's defeat.

  Ness glanced up at John but did not meet his eyes for long, acting the part of his fractured double. “I missed,” he mumbled.

  “You missed.” John looked doubtful and glanced over Ness's shoulder at Thing Two.

  “One shot fired.” Williams held the weapon and its ammo clip in his large hands.

  John looked at Ness again with a raised eyebrow.

  “Police sniper found me too soon. I almost got shot myself.”

  Glaring at Ness, John shook his head. He slid his hand into his suit coat and pulled out a small blue tube with a black tip. When he set it on the table, the CEO’s expression made Ness realize that its function was as some sort of incentive.

  “I don't know if you've even earned this.” John's voice dripped with disgust. “Maybe it's time to let her go. Angie's not who she once was. Not at all the charming woman we all enjoyed so much.” The CEO gave Ness a leering wink.

  Williams chuckled.

  What have they done to her? The image of the men abusing her, using her, caused Ness to tremble.

  John retrieved the tube as if to put it away, and Ness comprehended his part in the little play. The cylinder had something to do with Angie. She was the carrot to keep him in line. He had to act like his older counterpart would — desperate and not a little unhinged.

  “No!” Ness shouted, rising from the chair. Williams's hands on his shoulders slammed him back into the metal seat. “It wasn't my fault. She moved just as I fired, and the shot missed. I'll... I'll do better next time.”

  His voice shifted from whining to pleading as he tried to emulate the character of his deranged self. When he recalled almost killing the little girl in the street, he shivered, a reaction he hoped would help his performance. Apparently, he emoted enough desperation and despair to gratify John, who smiled. Ness's debasement pleased him.

  “Please, please,” Ness begged in a pathetic voice. He looked imploringly at Fletcher. “Let me have it. Please.”

  The groveling had its desired effect, and John shared a grin with his men. “Pathetic,” the CEO said as he set the tube on the table within reach.

  Ness grabbed it greedily just before Williams yanked him to his feet and shoved him toward the door on the far side of the room. Anxiety pierced Ness as Thing Two opened it and pushed him into the dark room beyond. The metal portal shut behind him with a solid click. Deep within the black obscurity, Ness paused, unsure of navigating the room without a light source. He heard rapid, heavy panting, like a hurt dog might make, and the wounded sound drove him to find a source of illumination, so he fumbled along the wall by the door until he found the light switch. A single fluorescent bulb flickered to life, exposing a scene beyond his worst nightmares.

  The source of the animalistic gasping, of the unwashed miasma his nostrils complained of, was laid bare before his eyes. He had found Angie, or at least, what was left of her.

  CHAPTER NINE: Despair

  Monday, February 16, 2015, 11:18 a.m.

  Even with the dire portent of Fletcher’s warning, Ness still froze in rigid disbelief upon witnessing Angie’s fate. The severe understatement of the CEO's spiteful comment conveyed little of the dismay, vulnerability, and wretchedness the visage provoked. He ground his teeth, barely resisting the simultaneous urges to wail and vomit.

  Angie lay on a rumpled bed, wearing only a tank top and panties. Far from looking sexy, the scant clothing revealed the horror of her physical condition. Sweat covered her skin, and her hair was stringy and unwashed. The flesh barely covering her bones had a faded appearance, lacking the normal hue of health. The rapid rise and fall of her chest as she panted gave Ness the only indication that she was clinging to life. Angie was oh so thin. She reminded him of pictures he had seen of survivors from Nazi concentration camps.

  His eyes roamed her thin arms and legs. Her rib cage was visible in the contours of her thin shirt. His vision clouded as he shed tears for her. Before, he had mourned her passing, but now Ness grieved for her life. Wiping his face, he stepped toward her.

  He sat next to Angie and brushed back her hair with a trembling hand. Tears slid down his cheeks when he blinked. With an abrupt dawning of clarity, Ness understood the compulsion of his older self.

  “Angie.” The sound came out like a cry, drawing her attention to him. She turned to face him, and her eyes stopped him cold. Sunken into her face, they had lost all the sparkle of the wife he knew. The only emotion he saw in them was relief when she spied the blue tube in his hand.

  With the intensity of a junkie getting her next hit, Angie snatched the tube, expertly twisted off one end, and jammed the black tip into her thigh. Her back arched, and she let out a sigh, relaxing as the drug took effect. The pen fell from her hand, leaving behind a tiny dot of blood on her leg. Ness noticed a vast array of small scabs along her upper thigh, a road map of the brief respite the chemical provided against the poison's pain. Eyes open again, she looked at him with gratitude, not the expression of a woman to a man or a wife to a husband, but of an addict to a pusher.

  Is that what I've become to her? Ness fought the urge to be sick.

  “Angie, I'm from the past. Do you understand me?”

  Her eyes were free of the pain of seconds before, but wretchedness had taken up residence there. “Why? Where's my Ness?” Her voice was a ruin, as if she had spent the last five years screaming.

  “He came back to 2010 to kill you.”

  Angie closed her eyes. “I asked him to.”

  “I stopped him.”

  The eyes he had grown to love opened again, and he saw the depth of her despair.

  “Why?” Angie moaned, and tears etched trails of tribulation on her face. “I wanted to die.”

  “I can't live without you,” Ness told her, taking her hand in his. “You're too much a - part of me.”

  “Like this?” she said angrily, wiping her face with the heel of her free hand. “On the verge of death, wasting away day by day? I don't even want me to live like this!”

  Angie's passion drained out of her, and she lay back weakly on the rumpled sheets. “I'm better off dead.” She pulled her hand out of his and turned away.

  Ness closed his eyes, nearly drowning in despondency exceeding anything in his experience. Angie didn’t deserve such inhumane treatment, but John Fletcher had happily destroyed his wife to further his agenda. That realization caused his despair to transform into indomitable fury. He looked at Angie again, now curled on her side. With dreadful certainty, Ness could discern that even though her body still lived, the essence of who she had been, all the things he loved about her, had been obliterated. John Fletcher and his men had killed everything she had been, leaving only a husk of her behind.

  The door to the room opened suddenly, and Thing Two stood there in the doorway. Williams, Ness remembered.

  “All right, lover boy, playtime's up. We got another job for you. Maybe you can do it right this time.”

  Driven by his rage, Ness rose from the bed and strode toward the open door. Williams's eyes widened with the realization that it was not the habitual shuffle of the broken man who usually attended his wife. Like a graceful tempest, Ness flowed into a tai chi posture, which ended with his fingers jabbing Williams in the windpipe. His prey jerked back, so instead of the crushing blow Ness intended, the brute merely succumbed to a coughing fit. Ness followed Williams with fluid grace and slipped his foot behind his ankle. The brute's instinctive step backward caught on Ness's shoe, and he fell heavily to the hard floor.

  Thing Three saw his compatriot go down and came at Ness like a linebacker. Ness took a step to the side, deflected his grasping hands with a twist of the wrist, and captured his attac
ker's arm. Pivoting his body, Ness directed the momentum of his opponent into the wall. The result was a reverberating thud followed by the slithering sound of a body slumping unconscious to the ground.

  Williams rose, rubbing his throat. He glared at Ness and lunged. Ness held his arms before him in a rough circular shape and stepped into the larger man's attack. He used the natural elasticity of bone and muscle in his arms to repulse his target then took a step forward and brought his knee sharply into Williams's perineum, the tender spot between the legs. He sprawled to the floor, gasping, his eyes screwed shut. Ness looked for additional targets, but John had apparently left only the two of them in charge.

  “Ness?” the shattered Angie called from the abominable bedroom.

  Ness could not face her again. He lacked the stamina to experience the horror afresh, even as the memory throbbed in his cortex. He turned from the pleading voice and strode toward the stairs. Though he would save his wife, first he had to get out of the basement.

  Rolling up his sleeve, Ness exposed the PDA and typed in a new destination. He would go to the day before Angie was attacked and save her. He typed in June 7, 2010, at 5:00 p.m., which should get him to the apartment shortly before dinner.

  He grabbed the parka from a hook and noticed the gun had been removed. It sufficed for his needs against the winter chill, and he put it on as he climbed the basement stairs. He opened the door to the garage and inspected the vehicles: a Porsche and two Hummers. He picked the closest SUV and slid into the driver's seat. As he had hoped, the keys were in the ignition. He pressed the button to open the garage door and backed out. After turning the SUV around, he drove along the long driveway at breakneck velocity. Partway to the gate, he saw another Hummer coming toward him. He increased his speed. “Let's see who's chicken,” Ness said darkly.

  As the other vehicle neared, he could see the driver, an older man with a goatee, but Ness did not recognize him. Thing Four sat in the passenger’s seat, scowling at Ness across the narrowing distance. The driver evinced surprise at being challenged in the assumed security of the driveway. Ness grinned and pressed harder on his accelerator. The other Hummer swerved into the grass in the instant before a horrible collision would have taken place, and Ness sped by without slowing. In his rearview mirror, the other SUV swerved back onto the driveway in pursuit.

  The gates opened automatically as Ness neared them, and he sped onto the quiet street, with the other vehicle seconds behind. They'd traveled less than half a mile before he heard the unmistakable crunch of crumpling metal as the pursuer’s SUV rear-ended his with a jolting lurch. Ness spun the wheel in a frantic struggle to regain control of the fishtailing vehicle. Another jarring impact sent the SUV into a spin that only stopped as it slid into a ditch with a heavy crunch of crumpling metal. Ness slammed the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator, but the wheels spun uselessly.

  The other Hummer stopped nearby, and the driver leaped from his vehicle and yanked open Ness’s door. For a heartbeat, the older man paused, surprised to see Ness at the controls. Even with the dark hair and goatee, he looked to be nearly sixty. Thing Four exited the SUV with a gun in his hand.

  Ness’s attention was brought back to the driver when his grasping hands tried to grab him. He experienced no guilt for lashing out with his fist and striking the jaw of the senior citizen. The driver staggered backward into the approaching attacker before falling. Ness got out of the car to face them. Thing Four brought his gun into firing position but stopped after a sharp command in German.

  “Nein!”

  Thing Four scowled but complied. The goateed assailant regained his footing and closed the distance before retaliating with a quick punch to Ness's sternum, which sent him sprawling. Ignoring the pain in his chest, Ness got back on his feet, sliding naturally into a fighting posture. As they twisted in a series of moves and countermoves, Ness recognized that his opponent was using bagwa, the mirror image of his tai chi. The unknown assailant sparred energetically with Ness, looking for an opening. They punched, evaded, and deflected attacks for nearly a minute. As they fought, they slid from side to side as Ness constantly adjusted his position to keep his opponent between him and the criminal’s gun. Their skills were nearly equal, but the older man was favoring his left foot. Maybe he hurt it during the accident.

  Seizing the advantage, Ness stepped forward, hammering his shoe on the adversary’s left insole, gripped his shoulders, and pulled him forward. The German tripped over Ness's leg and sprawled behind him.

  “Mein Gott.”

  With the German on the ground, Thing Four corrected his aim. Ness had mere seconds to act, and he pulled up his sleeve, exposing the PDA strapped to his arm. He'd had enough of the future — he needed to fix his past. Just before his finger tapped the launch button, a hand fell forcefully on his shoulder. Fingers clenched on his shoulder, bringing the sharp agony of a pinched nerve. Ness instinctively lashed back with his right elbow, but before his blow could strike flesh, the time transition engaged. As he dissolved away from the present, the heavy weight of his adversary’s presence draped over him like a calamitous portent.

  CHAPTER TEN: Hitching a Ride

  Monday, June 7, 2010, 5:00 p.m.

  Up to that point, the act of time travel had been a solitary act for Ness. He might be slipping through time to meet someone else, but the journey had always been a solitary one.

  As his matter transferred to the past, he had a growing suspicion that he was not going alone. When he fully arrived, his body continued the motion he had initiated in 2015, slamming his elbow into the stowaway’s nose with a sickening crunch. The hand fell away, and the unwitting passenger gave a startled grunt.

  Ness spun to face his adversary. The twin SUVs were gone, along with Thing Four. The cold temperatures were also a thing of the past.

  The German was suffering from his first trip through time, if his wheezing cough was any indication, along with the broken nose. Blood streamed from his nostrils, and the brutalized flesh was already swelling. He glared at Ness, shaking off the effects of time travel and his shattered nose to resume his attack. Fists flew and were parried, and kicks were thrown and avoided. Ness let him circle, constantly turning to face his foe.

  His opponent unexpectedly reversed direction and kicked the side of Ness’s knee. His leg buckled, and he fell, but before he hit the ground, his adversary's hand shot out and connected with Ness’s solar plexus. He lay stunned and gasping for air.

  The sleeve of his parka was still pushed up, exposing the time machine affixed to his limb. The German leaned over him and tugged on the device with a grunt. The tape pulled at Ness's flesh, but both held. For an instant Ness expected the contact to cause his foe to implode, but the machine had been the one to move him in time. The sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted his adversary’s efforts. Only then did Ness remember they were still in the middle of Piquand Street.

  “Stop!” someone shouted through the window of the car.

  The German cursed under his breath, ran off into the brush lining the road, and swiftly sprinted out of sight. Ness regained his feet, and the car pulled alongside him. He slid his sleeve back into place to conceal the device.

  “Are you all right? Did you get mugged?” The female driver regarded him with a concerned expression.

  “I'm fine,” Ness assured her. “He didn't get anything.”

  “Well, I'm calling the police. We don't need that sort here on Piquand.”

  She took out her cell phone and drove away to the safety of her gated home. Maybe the police would pick him up because of his injuries, but Ness doubted it. Still, he took comfort in being close to his home time, where citizens still relied on the police to solve most problems.

  Peering in the direction the henchman had run, Ness saw no sign of him through the trees. He frowned. How did Fletcher's lackey manage to come along for the ride? By touching me? What else can this device do that I don't know about?

  The parka was the wrong
garment for heat of the June day he had arrived in, so he took it off. He tried to peel the PDA off his arm, but the duct tape stuck to him with rugged determination. He winced as the adhesive took hair and a layer of skin with it, leaving tender red flesh behind. Once it was off his body, Ness removed the tape from the casing with marginally less difficulty, although a sticky residue remained.

  When he pressed the power button, he noticed the low battery indicator. He made a mental note to retrieve the charging adapter when he arrived at the apartment and opened the Borrowed Time application. The screen told him he had a little less than eighteen hours left before he had to return to his home time, which should be enough. He decided to delay warning his copy and Angie for a little bit, though. First, he needed to identify what the ramifications of bringing Fletcher's man back in time with him were.

  He needed to get to the apartment and get some clothes without running into Angie or his other self, so he entered the destination into the machine by changing the time to 12:30 p.m. but left the date the same. Tapping the launch button, he was away.

  When he arrived five hours earlier, the sun shone much brighter, although the trees still sheltered the road. He pocketed the device and trekked toward the end of the residential lane. At the busier road, which led toward the center of Bloomfield Hills, Ness kept his eyes open for public transportation. His luck held, and he flagged an unoccupied cab.

  “Take me to the nearest car rental place,” Ness instructed as he slid into the back seat. After a short stop at the apartment, he had a little road trip to make.

  * * *

  I spend way too much time in bathrooms.

  Ness had arrived in 1986. He needed expert advice, and he knew only one person who could provide it. He left the bathroom but hung back in the hallway. Leaning against a wall, he could see two men sitting in a booth. The older of the two was his friend, former college professor, and inventor of the time machine, Dr. Francis Bertrand. He could only see the back of the other’s head, but he remembered sitting in the same booth two years previous by his reckoning.