As the blade approached, she struggled and screamed. “Quiet, dear child,” Father said. “This may take some time. We’ll start with the fingers.”
She was in grave danger, but with all eyes focused on the vibrating blade, it was an opening he couldn’t afford to pass up. Daniel grabbed the helmet and slapped it over his head. He triggered the power switch on the belt.
Father swiveled. “Stop him!”
Instead of firing, the second guard lurched forward, slamming Daniel to the wall. He pushed his rifle into Daniel’s neck. Gasping for air, Daniel thrust a knee into the guard’s hip, but the brute pushed harder. Daniel had his fingers on the controller. He could feel the keypad, but with his head pinned, couldn’t see its display. He pressed what felt like the Enter key, but nothing happened.
“Stop or she dies!” Father held the electric blade over Jacquelyn’s neck, ready to plunge it into her chest.
He hadn’t been fast enough. Daniel held up both hands. “Okay, okay!”
Daniel could barely breathe with the guard’s gun pressing into his neck. Father came close, his stale breath invading Daniel’s space. He lifted the blade to Daniel’s cheek, its white arc crackling with the heat of high voltage.
“I will kill both of you right now if I must,” Father said, his voice angry, his words deliberate. “Not my first choice, but necessary if you leave me no alternative.”
Daniel had been close to success, very close. But the clunky interface of the cobbled-together belt along with his limited experience made emergency use impossible.
Daniel nodded. “I’ll do as you ask. I’ll jump back. But if you hurt her, I’ll force you to kill me.”
Father paused, a growling coming from deep within his throat. “You have one minute.” He lowered his blade. “If you’re not gone, we will come back, and she loses more than just a finger. Keep your hands in the air until the door closes.” He motioned to the guard by the door, who still gripped Jacquelyn. “If he goes for the belt again, shoot her.”
Daniel kept his hands high and his back against the wall as the guard loosened the pressure on Daniel’s neck and stepped away. They left, the door slammed, and the dead bolt clunked into place, leaving Daniel alone with Jacquelyn once more.
One guard peered through the window. He held up a single finger. One minute.
Daniel lowered his hands and Jacquelyn ran to him. “Oh, my God, I thought that was the end.” Her head fell against his chest, her body shaking with sobs.
Daniel hugged her, caressing her hair. “This will have to be a quick goodbye. When I’m gone, they’ll come for you, but you have leverage. Tell them that I—”
Both of his arms snapped to his waist like he’d been hit with a bolt of lightning. In the same instant, Jacquelyn vanished.
It happened so fast his brain hardly registered the sudden change. There was no outline of where she’d stood just a moment before, no puff of smoke, nothing. Jacquelyn was simply gone.
People disappear. It happens, especially in this wacked-out world of quantum space and time. His mind raced.
There were two possibilities. One, she’d moved into a fourth dimension of space, though that required a neutrino beam or a portal. Two, she’d transitioned into empros time. Far more likely, but he couldn’t fathom how she’d done it. He still wore the belt and helmet, the only means of getting there. The yellow light on the helmet hadn’t flashed.
His shoulders ached. The wound on his left arm seeped bright red through his shirtsleeve. But the reason for his pain was clear. Both arms had been pushed down in a millionth of a second. He’d done the same thing to Chloe.
Less clear was where Jacquelyn had gone. If her disappearance had involved empros time, she would still have no way to leave the locked cell. Hundreds of years would have passed in empros time by now, and she’d be nothing more than a withered skeleton leaning against the wall.
If she wasn’t in empros time, then something else was going on. Daniel had run out of guesses.
He looked to the door. The guard had seen Jacquelyn vanish too, and his keys jangled in the lock.
Daniel’s heart raced. One more chance. One more loophole. He glanced down to the controller, initializing its function. An LED lit up on the belt.
He heard the dead bolt slide open.
They’d made their fatal mistake, but only if he could finish before a gun was at his head. Daniel selected the command from the controller display.
tcs_flow_empros
The guard’s hand appeared around the opening door just as Daniel hit the Enter key.
36 Future
A brilliant yellow light flashed.
Daniel opened his eyes, removed the helmet and looked around the empros-darkened room, the only light coming from the LEDs on the belt. No sign of Jacquelyn, but he didn’t really expect to see her—or her body.
The door stood open six inches, the guard’s hand frozen on its edge. The brute’s dimwitted brain was now running even slower; one synapse tick per hour. He’d never know how big a mistake he’d just made.
Daniel pried the heavy metal door from his hand and swung it open. The guard stood immobile with a stupid expression on his face.
With all the strength he could muster, Daniel slammed the heavy door against its frame, crushing the man’s hand in between. Snaps and cracks verified the punishment of broken bones. “That’s for Aiden, you fucking bastard.”
He pulled the man’s forearm closer to the door frame and slammed the door once more. “And that’s for me.” The guard’s expression remained the same even though his forearm was now bent at an angle. Nerves would need a few milliseconds to react.
The guard’s other, unbroken hand carried a pistol. Daniel pried it from his fingers and held the gun to the man’s head. He hesitated, and then lowered the weapon. “Your lucky day. Unlike you, I’m not a murderer.” Daniel tucked the gun under his belt, wondering if the weapon could even be fired in empros time.
Daniel lifted a foot and kicked the frozen man’s chest, slamming him against the corridor wall, the body tumbling to the floor like a poorly balanced mannequin.
Daniel peered into the darkened corridor, empty. In one direction was the vault-like door that they’d passed through on their way in, unfortunately now closed. Daniel walked to the door’s control panel and pressed the button marked Open. The heavy metal door remained motionless. To get electricity, he’d need to flow forward once more. It was something he could do, but returning to forward time would take away his advantage.
He noticed a small peephole in the center of the massive door. Difficult to see through given the darkness, but he could just make out the figures of Father and a second guard on the other side, their backs turned toward him. If he flowed forward, he’d only have a few seconds before the guard turned his automatic weapon on him. Not a great escape plan, but an option.
At least I have options.
He found his phone lying on a desk next to the vault door and returned it to his jacket pocket. A useful resource if he managed to get back to his time.
What I really need is an exit.
He headed down the corridor, past the cell and the guard slumped on the floor. The corridor ended at a second door. Turning the handle, he peered inside. On one wall, a bed. On the other wall, a standing closet with a few clothes on hangers. No windows and no door to the outside. It was probably a guard’s sleeping post, but it didn’t come with any weapons—or ideas.
Returning to the open cell door, Daniel squatted next to the guard. “Just you and me, it appears, and only one way out. What do you have that might be helpful?”
He frisked the guard, finding a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and an olinwun. No hand grenades or dynamite—either of those would have been handy.
Are explosions possible in empros time?
Daniel sat on the floor against the wall and examined the guard’s pistol. A single-shot handgun, maybe ten rounds in the magazine. Hardly a match against an automatic weapon, but it wa
s all he had.
Daniel sighed. “A one-sided gun battle is no exit plan. You’ve got to think your way out.”
Jacquelyn came to mind first. Her disappearance without a trace was disturbing, but at the same time, comforting. She would have been raped, possibly killed by these goons not long after he’d jumped. Where she’d gone was anybody’s guess, but he could at least rule out the corridor. How she’d disappeared in both time and space might remain a mystery forever.
Getting out was next on his mind. The options were limited, but they were a whole lot better now that he was free from the locked cell.
Option one. Flow forward, press the button to open the vault door, and a gunfight would ensue. He might get lucky, but he’d already witnessed how slowly the vault door opened. He wouldn’t have the advantage of surprise.
Then there was option two. Flow forward, partially open the vault door, then flow empros again to freeze the opponents. Better, but the guard would have plenty of time to shove his weapon through the opening door. Timing would have to be perfect.
Option three was still available: Father’s plan. Simply return to 2023. He had the equipment to do it. He even had an olinwun somewhere down in his stomach that would ultimately lead to a successful mission. The coroner would find it.
But was snapback reality? And to what degree? There’d been so many lies, it was getting hard to sort through every aspect of time jumping. He’d only need a single command: decompress. He’d be back in his own time in a flash—and flowing forward, now that they’d fused those commands into one.
Even if he ended up hemorrhaging from his eyes, ears, nose, and everywhere else inside, he might still have a chance. He had a phone. He could call for help, and they might get there in time with life-saving medical procedures.
Daniel took a deep breath. Not likely. Becton didn’t make it.
Still, even in death, his mission would be a success. He could stop the nuclear launch. Maybe it was the right choice. He already knew too much about his own future, and that couldn’t be a good thing.
Daniel sat in silence for several minutes, thinking.
It’s still Monday back home.
Whatever “back home” meant. The anchor point was still set. Monday morning, October 9, just three days after Griffith had walked into Daniel’s office and dragged him into this mess.
Four and a half days if you count time spent in the future.
In this jumble of time frames, he could sit in the corridor for days more of empros time, and not a single second would pass in either 2023 or 2053. Elapsed time was becoming meaningless.
He chuckled. “Maybe none of this is real. In some alternate timeline, I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail right now with Nala.”
Thoughts of Nala were the hardest to ignore. If he performed his duty but died, she’d be collateral damage. She’d never said she loved him, at least not in those words, but she’d shown it in countless other ways. Her joyful voice picking up the phone. Her buoyant smile when they met after time apart. Her playfulness that showed up only for him, no one else. Her soft embrace as they settled into sleep at night.
There’d been far too many nights apart, her home in Illinois, his in Virginia. Long-distance relations were handicapped from the start.
No more time apart, he resolved. I’m coming home.
He could start a gun battle and he might even manage to fight his way out of this building. But he’d still be in 2053 with no safe way to return. It would just delay the inevitable. Jumping backward to his anchor risked instant death, but as Aiden had confirmed, it was really all he had.
He tucked the gun back under his belt, grabbed the helmet and put it on. The belt was already powered up, a flashing prompt on the controller display awaiting his command. He scrolled to Decompress Forward.
Decompress. The opposite of compress.
The high-frequency compressed standing wave of time would relax, drawing him backward to his anchor point. His mind spun with thoughts of how time worked, or at least, how it had been described by Zin. As he thought, an idea deep in the recesses of his mind rose to consciousness.
Compress. The opposite of decompress.
A chill ran up his body. It was the answer he’d been looking for. Better information, deeper expertise. Access to scientists and knowledge and higher technology. The distant future would be full of unknowns, but it lay wide open, accessible with just a touch of the keypad.
A smile crept across his face as he set a new node, dialing in a date selected almost at random. The next command was off the scale for risk, but it just might be the most brilliant choice he’d ever made.
tcs_compress_forward
Without hesitation, Daniel pressed the Enter key. The astonishingly bright yellow light flashed once more, carrying him not toward home but much further away.
********************
Centuries flew by in an instant. Or had they really passed at all? The standing wave of time had merely compressed further, maintaining the same anchor point but using a new destination node far into the future.
He hadn’t even been sure of the year he’d typed in. It didn’t matter. Twenty-four something. Four hundred years would probably be enough, but not too much.
Of course, there was no telling how far science and technology had come in the twenty-fifth century, or what the people of this future were like. For that matter, there was no guarantee there would be people at all.
But he could take his time to find out. Flowing empros was like stepping out of time, providing the freedom to study at leisure. He could jump forward as often as needed, and the anchor point of the past would still be waiting when he was ready to rejoin it.
Daniel removed the helmet and the flash faded from his eyes. He stood in the same corridor, but no longer dark, and better still, no longer closed at the end.
Only a few paces past the guard’s room, the corridor opened to a stone-lined walkway, with a stone wall along the right side and a trellis of grapevines overhead. A row of columns defined the left side of the walkway, thankfully open to the outside.
Daniel took a deep breath of fresh air and stared at the serene view beyond the columns. Rolling green hills, with clumps of trees, and in the distance, a city of tall spires. Even in the dim light of empros time, with its muted colors, still air and utter lack of the ordinary sounds of outdoors, the view was a simple pleasure that represented freedom.
The exit I needed, precisely aligned with a corridor from a now four-hundred-year-old structure. Almost like it was planned.
He walked a few steps along the stone breezeway and stepped through the columns and into a gravel courtyard decorated with potted plants. Behind him, the mansion still stood, looking not much different than it had in 2053.
To one side of the courtyard, a fountain sprayed streams of water that hung in midair. The sound of gravel crunching under his feet reassured him that this world was very real, just suspended in time.
A voice, not far away, called out. “This way.”
Daniel’s head reflexively jerked toward the breezeway. A woman’s voice, not threatening, but very unexpected. Hair prickled across his neck, serving as an anxious reminder that a twenty-first-century human had been thrown hundreds of years into an unfamiliar future.
“This way,” the pleasant monotone voice sounded again. Curiosity got the better of anxiety. Daniel stepped between columns to the stone walkway and peered down its length.
Thirty yards further, the columns ended at a small circular building with a dome on top. A rotunda, in architectural terms, like a miniature version of the Jefferson Memorial back in D.C.
“This way,” the woman’s voice called out once more. A pulsating pink-lavender light emanated from an arched entryway leading into the rotunda.
He’d made the jump to find answers. Nerves or not, contact would be required. Like a schoolboy called to the teacher, he walked toward the light.
Stopping at the archway, he peered inside to a darkened enc
losure. In the center of an oval-shaped room, a brightly glowing woman stood on a raised pedestal above the stone floor. One arm bent at the elbow as if in a greeting. A mix of bright colors—pink, lavender, rose and others—radiated from her skin, piercing the dark shadows of empros time. The colorful light throbbed in a rhythmic pulse.
It was almost as if he’d stumbled upon a futuristic museum. A dark alcove with a glowing statue on a pedestal. But she was more than a statue. The pulsating psychedelic colors disclosed life.
She moved, gently lowering her arm and clasping her hands together at the waist. Bright pink lips formed a placid smile.
Daniel stepped inside the alcove. “Hello?”
Long braids of hair spilled over her shoulders. She wore a floor-length veil with folds that gently waved in the wind, though there was no wind. Thousands of glowing speckles of pink, lavender, indigo and crimson dotted one side of her face as if someone had flicked a wet paintbrush just above her skin. Swirls of the same colors cascaded down her neck to complete a magical effect of phosphorescent body paint. The speckles and swirls glowed beneath her veil following a curving path that wrapped around her body and finished with a flourish down one leg.
She embodied the exquisite artwork of a glowing galaxy.
Her eyes sparkled bright blue, displaying a kindness beyond their bold color. “Welcome,” she said, though her mouth barely moved.
An apparition appeared above her head. An oval image. A view of the same scene through the columns outside. Rolling green hills, blue sky with puffs of white clouds. It wasn’t a window, more likely a projection of the countryside as seen in the daylight of forward time.
“Where am I?” Daniel asked.
Her body was fully three-dimensional, with an appearance of flesh and blood, even if the body art glowed.
“Georgia,” she said. “More specific?” Her head tilted to one side with the question.
“That’s close enough,” Daniel replied, his nerves calming. He’d jumped in time, but his location was still the same. Still named the same too. Perhaps not surprising; place names sometimes lasted thousands of years.
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 87