“You ain’t the only one, boss. It’s too bad we didn’t think about installing a permanent locater in Junior. Would’ve had a much stronger signal.”
“How could we have known? This is the first time she’s ever asked to take my wheels for a spin,” Rocket said, sifting through his options. He wanted to go search for his sister, but there was a camp full of people to protect, too. Which would it be? The needs of the many, or the needs of the one? His one. It was a tough call, but he made a decision.
“No, we stay here and mind the fort. Masago knows this is the rally point. She’ll show up when she’s good and ready. She can handle herself, trust me.”
Just then, a massive, blinding dome of light pierced the sky near the horizon. It was located in the same direction as the jets were flying, indicating that whatever had just happened was centered somewhere near Tucson. He blinked, and a second later, the dome’s intensity was gone.
“What the hell was that?” Rocket gasped, trying to organize his thoughts. A dozen scenarios flashed in his mind, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. The flash was amazingly bright, especially for the daytime. He’d never seen anything like it before. His worry level shot up tenfold.
“Did they just light up Tucson?” Zed asked.
“Nuke civilians? Are you serious?”
“It was too big to be an industrial explosion. Or a plane crash. So what else could it be?”
“If that’s true, where’s the mushroom cloud? The shockwave?”
“No, you’re right. Not a bright boy.”
“I don’t know what we’re dealing with, but that was no explosion, otherwise we’d see smoke and hear something by now,” Rocket said, turning all his thoughts to his sister.
He felt Zed put his hand on his back. Then his friend leaned in and spoke in a soft tone. “Now do we go find her?”
Rocket nodded, letting his heart take control. “Let’s stop at her place first. It’s on the way. When you gear up, be sure to grab the buzzer and make sure it’s charged. We may need it.”
* * *
“Watch out!” Lucas felt a twinge of pain in his knee as he yelled from the front passenger seat of Rocket’s truck, watching Masago narrowly miss a pair of teenage girls running across the street with shopping bags in their hands. His mind was still reeling after they’d all just witnessed the initial dome of energy take out the Student Union. His greatest fear was now reality—the Krellian invasion had started and done so ahead of schedule, at least according to the original timeline.
“Are you trying to hit these people?” he asked her.
“Everyone just needs to get the hell out of my way!” she yelled, swerving to miss more pedestrians, taking the truck onto the sidewalk. She jammed on the gas, squealing the tires in the process. The front bumper caught a stand of newspaper vending machines, sending the periodicals flying in the air before the tires found the street again.
“What was that thing?” young Lucas said from the backseat, still wearing his bright-yellow t-shirt. The wide-eyed scientist was sitting next to his brother, Drew with their friend Bruno hogging up the far end of the seat.
Drew jumped into the conversation. “Some kind of explosion? But why no sound?”
Lucas from the future turned in the front seat and leaned over the headrest, locking eyes with his younger self. “When you ran the experiment a little while ago—and did so without permission, I might add—did the E-121 module vanish without a trace?”
“That’s classified,” Drew answered.
“The hell it is!” future Lucas snapped, slamming his hand against the seat.
Masago flinched, making the truck swerve for a second before she corrected it. “Calm down, boys, I’m trying to drive here.”
“That’s what you call it?” young Lucas said.
“Who said that?” Masago asked, glancing over her shoulder. “Lucas one or Lucas two?”
“That depends. Who’s one?” Drew said.
“Front seat is one. Backseat is two,” Masago said.
“It was two,” Bruno told her, sitting next to Drew. “Though I’m sure they’re both thinking the same thing. As am I.”
“I’m starting to sense that,” Masago said, leaning to her right to make a corner at high speed.
“I’d prefer to be called Lucas Prime,” Lucas one said. “Like in Star Trek, plus it’s how you should label the first. And I am the first—the original.”
“But not one of a kind,” Lucas two said from the back.
“Fine. Whatever,” she answered, with her eyes focused on the road ahead.
Once again, Lucas Prime trained his eyes on Lucas two in the back. “You can’t keep the truth from yourself. I know. I’ve tried.”
“What?” Lucas two asked.
“I already know it vanished, remember?” Lucas Prime said. “Go ahead, Bruno, tell him.”
“Oh, no. I’ve already been through it once with him in front of the science lab. It’s your turn.”
“This whole from the future thing is a little hard to believe,” Lucas two said, pushing the face of Prime away with his hand.
“Okay Einstein, what else can explain my presence here?” Prime said, leaning back over the seat again.
“Cloning, for starters. Or plastic surgery. Or some random anomaly in the gene pool. Everyone has a twin, right? After all, there are billions of people on the planet. Statistically speaking, it is possible.”
“Unreal,” Prime said, rolling his eyes.
“Besides, your scars are different. If you were from the future—my future—they’d look precisely like mine. Scars fade but they don’t change location.”
“That’s true,” Bruno said. “Why are they different?”
“Long story. Let’s just say I had my mug fixed, then it got jacked again. Now the scars are different. Does that work for you?” Prime asked his younger self.
“No, they’re just words. Say what you want, but there’s no way to prove it.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Drew said. He looked at Bruno. “Do you have your Benchmade with you?”
“Benchmade?” Masago asked.
“It’s a brand,” Prime answered her.
“Brand of what?”
Bruno leaned to the side and put his hand into the front pocket of his pants. He pulled out a dark-gray, four-inch folded pocketknife. He gave the knife to Drew, who then passed it to Lucas two.
“Careful with that. I keep it razor sharp,” Bruno said.
Lucas two held the knife up. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“Use the blade on your arm. Let’s see what happens,” Drew told him.
Lucas two’s eyes lit up. “Are you serious? You want me to cut myself?”
“Do you want proof or not?” Prime said. “Or, are you a chicken shit?”
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
He opened the blade and held it in his right hand, then pressed the edge against the skin on his left forearm. He winced and let out a deep moan as he pulled the blade toward him, opening a bloody, inch-long gash in his arm. He gave the knife to Drew and covered the wound with his palm. Blood seeped through his fingers and ran down his arm. “Fuck, that hurt.”
Drew pointed at Prime’s arm. “Okay, let’s see it.”
Prime held out his left arm over the back of the seat. There was an inch-long scar exactly where Lucas two had just cut himself. He sneered at everyone in the backseat. “Anything else?”
Prime waited for an answer, but only quiet was heard from the young Ramsay brothers. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said before flying sideways against the window when Masago turned sharply again. He righted himself, then pointed at Drew and his brother. “You two assholes caused that flash.”
“Yeah, how do you figure that?” Drew asked.
“You’re the asshole, asshole,” Lucas two said.
“Guys!” Masago yelled.
Lucas Prime ignored her. “When you cranked up the power, the E-121 wa
s sent across time and space. It penetrated another dimension and caught the attention of a predatory race, who then sent a probe here to investigate. Its incursion into our space is what just took out the Student Union. A lot of people died today. That’s why I’m here. Trying to stop all of this.”
“Looks like you failed,” Lucas two told him.
“No, I didn’t fail. We did. Just like before. Only this time, things are different. Both in the past and in the future.”
“Now you’re talking in circles,” Lucas two said, looking at Bruno. “You believe any of this shit?”
“The professor did. That’s good enough for me.”
“Fine. So, now what?” young Lucas asked with a smirk on his face.
“A swarm of energy fields are going to attack Earth, destroying everything and everyone in their path. Probably soon, if I’m trending the changes in the timeline correctly. Millions of people are going to die unless we pull together and find a way to stop this.”
“You need to listen to him, boys,” Masago said, never turning around to speak. “He’s telling the truth.”
Prime spun forward and sat down in the front seat, hanging his head. He let out a long, slow groan.
Masago rubbed his leg. “What’s wrong?”
“I just realized I’m wasting my breath.”
“Why?”
“If Fuji sends me back earlier and I’m successful, then none of this will ever happen. Why am I wasting energy in this timeline trying to convince a stubborn me to listen to what I have to say, when everything is going to be replaced with a different reality anyway?”
“Don’t you still need their help?”
“Not really. I have the glasses and the suit. Just need to get someplace safe so I can make contact and get the hell out of here.”
“So . . . if you go back in time, what will happen to me? Will I remember you? Or us?”
31
Rocket Fuji stood in front of Masago’s mountain complex, staring at the rubble and debris pattern. The egress hatch and connecting tunnel were gone and buried, leaving only a pile of destruction and a set of ultra-wide tire tracks in the dirt. The tread pattern was distinctive: a knobby, waffle-board pattern—those of the Tumbler—that led away from the area.
“What do you think happened?” Zed asked.
The facts smacked Rocket in the face, even though they didn’t make sense. “This didn’t just happen, otherwise we’d see signs of my truck tires in the dirt. She must have detonated the place earlier and took off in the Tumbler to come see me. But why didn’t she tell me about this when she came to get Junior? She knows she can trust me with anything, so what the hell happened?”
“Maybe the blast was accidental and she was embarrassed to tell you?” Zed said, crouching down to inspect something in the dirt.
“No, that’s not it. She’s hiding something, but what?” Rocket answered, moving closer to Zed and looking over his shoulder.
Zed pointed at two sets of footprints—one set significantly larger than the other. “I think it’s a who, not a what. A boyfriend-what.”
“I find that hard to believe. My sister wouldn’t know what to do with a set of cock and balls.”
Zed laughed, hard. “I don’t know. If I was her and you were my brother, would I really want to tell you about a new man in my life?”
“Out here? In bum-fuck-Egypt?”
“Sure, why not? She obviously wasn’t under duress, otherwise she would’ve said something when she was alone with us. So, these prints must belong to a friendly. The question is, how friendly?”
“Yeah, fuck you, too,” Rocket said. He shook his head, thinking about his sister’s decision to bring a stranger into the family compound. His father never would’ve approved. “Well, if she met someone, it was in town. Definitely not out here.”
“Then she might be getting a taste for city life.”
“You may be right. If that’s true, it worries me more than her shacking up with some random dude.”
Rocket swung his eyes around to take in the sprawling outline of Tucson, sitting off in the hazy distance. “Looks like a road trip.”
“I was hoping we could avoid that.”
“Me, too. But where Masago goes, we go.”
“Ten-four,” Zed reported, starting the twenty-yard walk to where they’d parked the Tumbler.
Snap! Pop! Crack!
Rocket froze, turning his attention to a heavy stand of desert brush on his left.
The sounds came again, this time louder than before. He realized they were too loud to be made by a rodent or some other four-legged animal. A two-legged creature was approaching.
He pulled his sidearm from its holster, racked the slide to inject a .45 caliber hollow point round into the chamber, and pointed the weapon at the tall thicket.
Zed must have heard the noises, too. Almost instantly he was on Rocket’s flank with his weapon drawn and in the firing position.
“Identify yourself!” Rocket yelled, keeping his eyes sharp and his shoulders hunched. The beat in his chest was no longer measured and quiet, neither was his breathing. An adrenaline-charged tremor washed over his hands, making it difficult to keep the gun sights steady.
Zed moved two steps to the left, tracking his gun with precision as he searched from point to point, waiting for a target to appear.
“Don’t shoot. Please. I’m unarmed,” came a male voice from somewhere inside the foliage.
Rocket tightened the grip on his Glock Model 30, moving his finger from the slide to the trigger. “We have you surrounded. Come out slowly with your hands up. No sudden moves or we’ll kill you where you stand.”
“Okay! Okay! Hold your fire,” the man yelled in a desperate, somewhat feminine voice.
More branches and twigs snapped, sending Rocket’s blood pressure into overdrive.
“Anyone else in there with you?” he asked, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly to calm his nerves. It worked. The gun held firm on the center of the vegetation, precisely where he wanted it.
“No, just me. Nobody else. I’m coming out.”
A few seconds later, a pair of hands made their way out from the green, followed by legs and a tiny body wearing a face that seemed familiar.
Rocket scanned the trespasser’s appearance, studying the contour of every detail for facial recognition. His brain searched its memory files for a match: small stature, sculptured nose, weary, dark eyes, Asian descent, soft cheekbones, tiny hands, shaggy black hair—shoulder length—and a swatch of recessed age lines painting his forehead. Just then, a familiar name came to him. His heart wanted to call it out, but his logic vetoed the idea after it couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing, or feeling. How could this be?
Then, without warning, his lips spoke on their own. “Dad? Is that you?”
“Yes, Rocket. It’s me.”
“Riku Fuji?” Zed asked the stranger.
“Yes. Dr. Riku Fuji, to be exact. The one and only.”
All at once, Rocket felt the muscles in his chest and abdomen tighten. He wanted to run and hug his old man, but his feet wouldn’t move. Something was holding him back. “I thought you were dead.”
“No, son. I’ve been held in captivity since the night I left you and your sister. But I’m back now. Can you please secure your weapon? It’s me, son.”
Rocket lowered the Glock without thinking, focusing all his thoughts on the war raging within. Heartache and anger had just squared off in a battle for supremacy, and he wasn’t sure which one of them would win.
“Captivity? Who? Why?” Rocket asked his father with shortened breath and a dry mouth, trying to make sense of the situation.
Riku lowered his arms and held them out, waist high. “An evil, sadistic man named Starling. He forced me to create technology to further his empire. But I escaped.”
“Escaped? How?”
“I used my technology against the men holding me. And with the help of another prisoner, I was able to flee and make
my way here.”
“On foot?”
“I hitched part of the way, but I would’ve gladly walked barefoot across a thousand miles of toxic wasteland and broken glass to see my children again. Only one thought was driving me—get home.”
Rocket’s anger waned. “Where’s this other prisoner now?”
“We split up once we were clear. He needed to go in search of his people, and so did I,” Riku said, brushing strands of his stringy mop from his face. He pointed at the rubble. “What happened here? Where’s Masago?”
“I’m not sure. I just arrived from my place and found her bunker like this. But don’t worry, I’m pretty sure she’s not inside. She came to my place earlier and borrowed my truck. I think she’s in town.”
“Her bunker? Your place?” Riku asked in a concerned, fatherly tone.
Rocket dropped his eyes to the ground, not wanting to admit he broke his word to his father. He was supposed to watch over his sister and keep her safe, not run off and play survivalist with his half of the family’s money.
“Yes, Father. We split up. When it was clear you weren’t coming home, I moved out and sold my half of the gold eagles to fund my own operation.”
Riku’s eyes sharpened and his face turned a deep shade of red, but he said nothing. Rocket thought his old man’s head was going to explode in anger. He needed to soften the detonation.
“I know I let you down, but I thought you were dead! The stress of you not coming home took a toll on the two of us. I should’ve stayed like I promised, but I had to get out of here. Just too many memories, and I needed to get on with my life. When I looked for a property to buy, I made sure it was relatively close so we could stay in regular contact. If she needed my help, all she had to do was call, though she never did. You should be proud of her, Father. She’s a better person than me, and perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”
“That may be true, but family is family and Fujis stick together, no matter what. I am very disappointed in you. You gave me your word.”
Rocket sighed, letting his pride slip away. Despite all his training, weapons, and personal strength, they were no match for the stinging words of his father. They cut through his defenses like a red-hot laser slicing through steel. His dad always seemed to know exactly what to say and how to say it, breaking him down and commanding respect.
Reversion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 3) Page 26
