Red: What do you do when the rules cannot help you? (Rule Number 3)

by Teya Tapler

  “I’m Mort’s assistant,” Evan said. “I document all the notes from his experiments and help him in the follow up data analysis.”

  Emil tried hard to hide his smile. He had so easily found the right person. It would be only a matter of time to obtain the notebook with all the information on how to destroy the pearls.

  “Wow,” was the only thing he could say. He had joined the gang too early. Before he left they assumed that by that time the pearls would all be tired and perfected. Suddenly his mission became longer and harder than anticipated.

  “It’s not much really. They haven’t used the weapon successfully yet. There’s always something missing,” she continued.

  “What d’you see in your dream?” Emil asked.

  “What dream?” Evan asked.

  “The one you had about me.” Emil clarified.

  “That you’re coming from the future and know where the pearls were used. So if you tell the brothers the targets you’ve seen them destroy, the same people that’ve already died will die again. The Inquisitors will be happy and you’ll be safe,” she said almost in one breath looking down at her hands. She had told him she knew where he came from. It was his turn to recognize her.

  Her words have made him uneasy. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell all this to the brothers,” she said stretching her hand to reach his. “I only told them that you know where to aim.” She gently and very briefly touched his hand then retracted back and continued. “This was all they needed to know. They’ve been arguing about the potential targets for the last three weeks. Mort wanted to attack the Galactic hotel in Miami while Ranshen was suggesting starting with the Eastern Australian Coastline.”

  “Thank you,” Emil said. She was obviously at his side, for now, but she might become dangerous if she talked too much. Or will she? She provided the answer without him having to ask her anything.

  “I know this may sound crazy,” Evan said looking into Emil’s eyes, “but I don’t feel that you are a bad person.” Evan was going to tell him enough to make him consider her an ally. “I am not going to tell them anything else about you. They deserve their fate,” her eyes focused on his.

  Someone tried to open the door and when they discovered it was locked they knocked loudly three times on it.

  Evan gestured to Emil to hide in the bathroom behind the shower curtain and unlocked the door. Immediately Mort pushed his way inside the room.

  “You should be in the lab by now!” he said rudely. That was probably targeted to be more of a question than an order.

  “I wanted to freshen up a little,” Evan said pulling the curtain that was used as a bathroom door to better hide Emil.

  Mort approached her and Evan stepped back until she hit the wall. He towered over her and his hand moved closer to her waist. She hated it when he was doing that.

  “You are well aware of the consequences,” Evan said as calm as she could looking into his eyes. Her heart beating fast, she was afraid and he sensed it.

  “I can wait.” Mort said still keeping the same close distance as before enjoying the look of her fear coming up her eyes and overpowering her thoughts. Mort smelled her hair, touched her jaw line with the back of his hand and after a few tense seconds stepped away and opened the door.

  “See you in the lab in five minutes,” he ordered her in his normal rude tone and left.

  Evan slowly slipped her back down the wall and sat on the floor. She pressed her spine against the wall and hugged her knees. Her heart was still beating fast. She started taking deep breaths to calm herself down.

  “Is that normal?” Emil had knelt at the bathroom threshold, his eyes at the same level as hers. The tone of his voice indicating his disapproval.

  Evan didn’t reply. Two tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Is he like that in the lab too?” Emil asked.

  “No, only when he finds his way to my room,” Evan said. “It happens once every couple of weeks.”

  Ignoring all the rules he was supposed to follow during that undercover mission Emil moved closer and hugged her. She has been good to him; she didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

  Evan felt safe in his arms. Help would come soon, very soon. She cuddled and sobbed a few times then gently pushed him back, “I’ve to go to the lab,” she said softly.

  They got up and she headed to the door.“Wait ten minutes before exit,” she said and left.

  Emil sat on her bed and looked at his watch. He remembered what Lin had told him a few minutes ago - “they deserve their fate”. She must have seen really far in the future: seen him come and leave, but he felt that she would keep her word and not reveal more to the brothers. He had found an unexpected and true ally.

  Chapter 8

  Evan walked down the corridor of the New York apartment, eyes overflowing with tears, hands shaking, feet unsteady. She was dizzy and nauseous, and sad and guilty. Her thoughts were spiraling down and she had started to wonder how to kill herself.

  She had had a very bad day, the kind of day that was the culmination of all the bad things that were happening in her life in the last eight months since she found herself among the 906 Inquisitors. The kind of day that made one wanting to shut themselves down, forever, because there was no hope for returning the people and things lost, because there was no chance of becoming the good and caring person one was before being submerged in evil and their dreams were crushed and suffocated.

  At the beginning of the day Amanda knocked frantically on Evan’s door yelling that she was late for an important meeting. Evan dressed quickly and without even washing her face ran down the corridor combing her short hair with two hands along the way. As she approached the living room, the voices of Mort and Ranshen were overpowering each other in a heated conversation about selecting the first official target. In the several successful experiments in the lab Mort was able to charge the pearls and then produce the dreaded destructive ray of light. That was followed by his success in using the ray of light to break one of the chairs in the lab, kill a rat and evaporate a transportation crate. Now he was eager to go big and do some real damage to the outside world.

  When Evan had entered the living room the conversation had died and she was asked a simple question of what their first target should be. She had tried deferring the choice to Emil because of her earlier prediction but Ranshen had cut her short saying it was her job not Emil’s to tell them the future. There was so much anger and mistrust targeted towards Emil in his voice that she had caved in saying that they had to attack the Galactic Hotel in Miami in the 25th century.

  A few hours later they had transcasted themselves to the top of a commercial building near the hotel where Mort had transported half of his lab and safety equipment. Everyone was asked to put on the protective goggles and then as Ranshen counted down from five, Mort ignited the pearls making them shine in scarlet red and aimed their crimson beam at the Galactic Hotel across the street.

  Evan might have cried. She didn’t remember. She didn’t remember the moment of the hit or the explosion. She didn’t remember the crimson beam hitting the building, or the red sparks or the scarlet dust flying around. Her mind had filled with the images of the people she saw in the hotel across the street before that. Some innocent people who were on vacation or on a business trip, who were simply relaxing in their rooms, looking through the windows or lying on the beach chairs on the terrace. Evan had seen many of the victims having their last breath of fresh air, their last ray of sunshine. She had lived through the explosion and come at the other side feeling very, very different. In that split second when the destructive ray hit the hotel something inside of her broke.

  Now after the attack, after the explosions, after the destruction, after the damage, after the killing of hundreds of innocent people just to do a real life test of the powerful destructive ray Evan was wondering if she could continue living there with the 906 Inquisitors and survive until her rescue. Yes, Emil was there too, but he had come from an earlier p
oint in time and she couldn’t ask him to take her with him. It wouldn’t be right in any time period.

  She felt alone and sad, she was blaming herself for the destruction, for the death of all those civilians who hadn’t done anyone any harm and were unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  After the successful test the gang had returned to the New York apartment in the 1970s and were celebrating in the kitchen. Evan stood there for the first toast but couldn’t stomach the success any further and excused herself saying she was tired from the stress and the anticipation around the event.

  Now she was walking down the corridor, headed to her room, wishing for a refreshing shower that would wash her guilt away and then for a long sleep that would help her forget the details. She was feeling guilty for the destruction and the meaningless deaths. Looking at her hands she was seeing them covered with blood. The fear crept in Evan’s mind and when it combined with the rest of her thoughts she suddenly freaked out. Evan frantically tried to clean her hands off her maroon lab-coat but the blood did not come off. Her heartbeat accelerated, her breathing became more frequent and shallow. She panicked and ran, passing her room, running all the way down the corridor until she ended in Mort’s lab and closed the door behind her.

  The room was dark with only the shy moonlight marking the contours of the objects inside. The darkness mixed with the cold room air made the atmosphere serene and refreshing. Evan pressed her back at the door and took a deep slow breath. The feeling of being chased by her restless thoughts and guilty conscious diminished showly. She felt safe at the one place she was not allowed to be alone.

  Evan had spent many hours there working with Zull Mort on the creation of the same objects that have caused her insanity. Maybe if she could destroy them everything would go back to its place. Her plan was to grab it with two hands and slam it on the floor. Forgetting that she wasn’t allowed to be there alone and that Mort could barge in at any moment, Evan approached the neatly lined up pearls, stretched her hand and touched the first one. To her surprise the pearl started to glow. It was a friendly glow like the one emitted by the fairies in the cartoons. It decreased her anxiety, her sense of guilt; it brought her sanity and common sense back.

  Evan caressed the pearl, “You did the same thing for me when I found you at the Mexican dig, didn’t you? I had problems then too. Well…much smaller problems… but you helped me clear my mind and see that there is hope and solution, that I don’t have to be torn between what my mind and my heart are telling me, that they could work together.”

  The pearl responded by changing the color of its glow. Another pearl lit too.

  “You may be right. I shouldn’t feel responsible for what happened,” she signed looking at the two pearls as they changed color. Another pearl lit as well.

  “What I did was… to tell them the first target that they would’ve hit anyway… I simply named it for them… I called the place Zander told me was the first target of the Inquisitors,” Evan lovingly caressed the three pearls and they changed colors lighting up the forth pearl.

  “Those people were going to die anyway. There was nothing I could’ve done. If I’ve suggested another target… that would’ve been considered changing the past and affecting the future and I don’t want to do that… Oh, I wish my life was simpler, much, much simpler… like the life I had when we first met.” Evan said and caressed the pearls once more which resulted in the fifth pearl lighting up as well. The color changing glow played with the shades on her face and it felt as if the pearls were talking to her, calming her down, telling her that she hasn’t done anything wrong, that everything would be okay, soon. Evan felt secure and safe as if her five new friends would look after her and help her survive.

  The increasing sound of heavy and hurried footsteps in the corridor interrupted her thoughts. Evan looked around: she needed a place to hide – fast. As her hands lifted off the pearls the glow stopped and the room filled with darkness. It was hard to distinguish any of the shadows around her. Her eyes were still seeing the changing glow as she tried to blink away the colorful spots. If she moved she could bump into the furniture and topple it down. She crossed her fingers and knelt under the table. If Mort didn’t stay longer in the lab and if he didn’t drop anything on the floor, he or whoever was coming that way would never see her. Evan lowered her breathing and awaited in the blackness.

  The door opened with a bang and Mort switched on the light. His eyes quickly inspected the room and zeroed on the pearls counting them from a distance. All five sat motionless in their specially designed cups: dark and quiet.

  It was not typical for him to interrupt his celebration to check on something. He was usually sending Telagh or Grakhun to do that and report back. For him to come there, almost running, at that time of the day was an indication of the pearls importance to him, of how proud he was with his accomplishment. Evan realized that Mort would do anything, literally anything to keep the pearls safe and secure.

  “Is everything satisfactory?” Evan heard Ranshen’s voice from a distance.

  “It looks like it is.” Mort roared. The wide table legs and two of the chairs in the room were hiding Evan from his sight.

  “I told you, there’s no reason to be anxious. Lin went to sleep a long time ago and you personally inspected that her door was locked. She wouldn’t have the guts to come here on her own and everybody else was still celebrating with us.” Ranshen said as Mort rushed to the table. His feet landed just inches away from Evan.

  She crept back to distance herself from him. If she was discovered now, she would have to be very lucky to be killed on the spot.

  “I felt the pearls switch on. In my mind, I saw them lit. I felt them change.” Mort spoke frantically as he inspected the pearls. “Besides, I don’t like the news that we were not able to change the past. We targeted the Galactic Hotel on purpose. We wanted the participants in the Peace Conference gone for good.” Mort sounded too angry. If he discovered her now, it was more likely that he would give Evan to Telagh who had been complaining about the lack of fresh meat and according to the rumors preferred to eat his victims alive. Mort would simply enjoy her suffering from a close distance. Cold sweat appeared on Evan’s forehead. Her heartbeat accelerated. She put two hands on her mouth and tried to stay as still as possible.

  “We succeeded in that, didn’t we?” Ranshen said.

  “Yes, but that didn’t stop the expansion to quadrant six. Somehow the orders had been delivered and the execution had started.” Mort said. “There is something wrong with the pearls. There is something that made them work differently than expected. I have to go over my notes, maybe scrap these pearls and create a new set-“

  “Come on brother. It’s late. The morning’s wiser.” Ranshen interrupted him.

  Mort stroke one pearl after another as if trying to feel how much they had changed and whether they had changed at all. The pearls responded to his touch by starting to glow and then switching off as his hands lifted. Zull looked around once more to disperse any suspicion still left in his mind and then left the room.

  “I told you, there’s no reason to be anxious.” Evan heard the two men closed the door.

  She slowly got out of her hiding place. The room was full with obscure shades once more and she had problem seeing. Inching her way to the door Evan put one foot before the other, hand stretched ahead. Several steps later she wobbled, spread arms to keep her balance and unintentionally touched one of the pearls.

  Her mind filled with images of collapsed furniture and Mort charging into the room when the calming glow wiped them away. Evan smiled. The pearls have calmed her heart and cleared her mind once more. She caressed them as if they were little kittens and blew them a goodnight kiss. The pearls replied with a synchronized color change to baby blue.

  Evan smiled once more at her new and unexpected friends and carefully left the room. Before she closed the door she glanced at the table once more. The pearls were asleep, they were dar
k again, and the calming glow had stopped.

  Chapter 9

  When Evan woke up, she felt refreshed. For the first time since she was tossed in that place it felt kind of all right and almost normal. She freshened up and looked at the mirror. The red-head at the other side looked relaxed. Evan decided not to spoil the nice day with thoughts or talks about the experiment in Miami. What happened was terrible but reliving it in a conversation wasn’t going to bring those people back, it was only going to make her more miserable. She forced to smile at her reflection in the mirror and headed to the kitchen.

  The apartment was still too cold for her taste. After so many months she hadn’t gotten used to that and today she had her arms wrapped with a dark maroon cardigan, the one with the big square buttons and the carefully knit cables on the left front side. Walking slowly towards her morning coffee, Evan had her arms around her, hands pushing the warm yarn closer to her body.

  When she entered the kitchen she gasped and her arms suddenly loosened their grip. There sitting behind the kitchen isle she saw…Alex. Alex Somos, Mister San Diego, that handsome and brilliant database architect she met at Analysis4All during her internship in the 21st century. Evan knew very well that she was physically located in the 1970s, that the 906 Inquisitors were terrorizing the people in the 25th century and that when she met Alex; she was in the 21st century. Her thoughts twisted and she wasn’t sure how to react: whether to indicate that she remembers him or to keep quiet. The bigger question was how he had found his way to that time period. After all he was not a time traveler - at least not as far as she knew. Evan gulped heavily and smiled.

  “Good morning,” she said looking at Alex. “I’m Lin.” Evan stretched her hand in front of Alex.

  “Hi…Lin” Alex held her hand for a while focused on her dark eyes. That little delay had helped him get into the women’s hearts faster than most men.