Nomad

by JL Bryan

  "What's happening, Mommy?" she asked.

  "Some bad people are here." In Rhea's room, her mother set her down, then pushed aside one of Rhea's chairs, which looked like a giant stuffed teddy bear with a big lap on which Rhea could sit. Behind it was the panel in her wall that led to the crawlspace. "You need to hide in the bear cave for a while."

  "Why the bear cave?" Rhea asked. It had been her word for the crawlspace in her room as long as she could remember.

  "Just crawl inside," her mother said, and Rhea did as she was told. "Wait here."

  Rhea heard a pounding on the front door, followed by an even louder thud. She heard a sizzling sound, one she would learn to associate with cutting lasers. She heard her father scream, and then his scream became a gurgle. She heard boots clomping across the hardwood and more of the rough, shouting voices.

  Rhea opened her mouth to scream for her father, but her mother clamped her hand over Rhea's lips and pushed her back inside the crawlspace.

  "Stay here!" her mother whispered. "Crawl in back behind the boxes, hide yourself, and stay quiet." She released Rhea's mouth and began to close the panel.

  "What happened to Dad? They hurt Dad!" Rhea was crying now, confused and scared.

  "Quiet! Don't leave this spot. Okay?"

  Rhea nodded. Her mother paused, watching her, and it looked like she would cry, too. "I want you to know we love you very much, your father and I. You're the most important part of our lives." She broke down and actually did cry as she slid the panel back into place. That was the last time Rhea ever saw her mother, crying and frightened.

  She heard the teddy bear chair thump back into place, then her mother's quick footsteps in the hall. She heard the sizzling laser sound again, and she heard her mother's final scream.

  The boots tromped through her house as the men overturned furniture and broke down doors. Rhea wondered if they were searching for her. She knew who they were, the men who dressed like black-uniformed police with the scary pyramid on their sleeve. They controlled everything now.

  Heavy footsteps thumped into her room. They pulled the drawers from her dresser, kicked open her toy box, and rummaged through her closet. Rhea shook with fear.

  "Just kid's stuff in here," a voice said. "But where's the kid?"

  "Forget it, we found what we need in the office," another voice answered. That voice became louder and belted orders to the other men. "Burn out every data system in the house. Bag and dump those bodies. Have the coroner record it as burglary-homicide, no suspects."

  "Yes, sir!" a third voice replied.

  Rhea lay on the floor of the crawlspace, too terrified to move, not daring to think. My parents are-- her brain began, and she made it shut down. She was amazed at how completely she could shut her brain down when she really needed to do it.

  The boots thumped around her house for a while longer, then the vehicles on her front lawn rumbled and drove away. Still, Rhea did what she was told, hiding and waiting. She had no idea what else to do, and she didn't want to go out looking for her parents, because she knew her parents were--

  No. She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to believe it, refusing to think it.

  Time passed. The hours felt like years. Much later, she heard more footsteps--a single set, and the sound of a man muttering softly to himself.

  The footsteps echoed in the upstairs hall. They entered her room, and she heard the heavy teddy-bear chair being dragged across her carpet. The panel opened, bringing light into the crawlspace from the deck lamps outside. The pale light outlined a bearded man she recognized.

  "Rhea," he said, smiling as though he'd just found lost treasure. "There you are."

  She looked back at him, shivering, and couldn't say a word.

  "You remember me, don't you? Colin Taggart? I've visited here for dinner parties, for Christmas..."

  Raven opened her mouth, but she couldn't make words come out. Her mind roiled in shock, trying not to think about the horrors that had only just happened.

  "I told your father I would get you out of here," he said. "Come on."

  She didn't move, so he picked her up and pulled her out of the crawlspace. She didn't resist him. He stood her on her feet.

  "You'll need warm clothes. Do you have a suitcase?" She didn't answer, but he found the little pink suitcase in her closet. She didn't help him as he grabbed clothes at random from her drawers.

  He took her hand, and she walked along obediently as he rolled the suitcase down the hall. When they reached the open balcony landing, she looked down the wide white steps. The bottom three steps were streaked with blood. A smear of blood continued from there to the center of the foyer, where it stopped abruptly.

  That image would stay with her forever, the dark blood on the white steps, the last traces of the father she'd lost.

  She would never be sure just where in the house they'd killed her mother. Taggart hurried her down the back steps, out the back door to his waiting car.

  She didn't speak again until she'd arrived at the safehouse in Portland and met Kari, the freckled girl who would be the closest friend she would ever have.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The late-night interstate was wide open, and with Logan's high-speed driving, they reached the front gate to Henry Sheffield's estate in Great Falls, Virginia, at a few minutes past one in the morning. The tall, spiked iron gate was set over the driveway between two massive pillars of black rock.

  Logan touched the button on the call box. When no answer came, he pushed it twice more. Finally, Henry's angry voice burst out over the intercom.

  "Who the hell is it?" he growled.

  "It's me, Uncle Henry." Logan waved at the security camera mounted over the gate.

  "Logan? I wasn't expecting you until Friday."

  "I came early."

  "Who is that in the car with you?"

  "Oh, that's my girlfriend. You remember Riley from lunch?"

  Henry did not speak again. The gate silently opened for them, and Logan took them up the flagstone driveway, through a stand of woods so dense and high it was like a second, inner wall. The view widened to a grassy lawn overshadowed by a Tudor-style mansion. Henry's home looked like a collection of small houses shoved together, with high, steep, dark roofs and low, narrow windows that combined to give the mansion a hooded, suspicious look.

  As Logan parked by the front entrance, lights swooped out from the dense woods and either side of the house, racing silently toward them. They were the three-wheeled motorbikes used by Providence Security in the future, with small artillery mounted ahead of the handlebars. The drivers wore black armor and face shields, and they displayed the golden eye-in-triangle Providence logo on their armor and their vehicles.

  The bikes surrounded Logan's car, and the security agents dismounted.

  "What the hell is this?" Logan asked.

  "Providence Security agents." Raven opened her backpack. "They're searching for me. Now they've found me."

  "Oh, these are my guys?"

  "They're from the future. God knows what they want, but they won't hurt you. I may have to take you hostage."

  "Step out of the vehicle with your hands on your head," one of the agents instructed. His voice crackled from an amplifier in his armor.

  Raven pressed her pistol to Logan's head. "Open your door slowly and get out. I'll be right behind you."

  "Wait, but I'm just playing along, right? You're not really taking me hostage. Right?" Logan asked.

  "That depends on you, doesn't it?" Raven didn't trust him anymore. After losing both Kari and Audra, she was ready to kill him and his entire family if there was any chance of even slightly improving the future.

  He opened the door, and she slid out with him, the mouth of her pistol pressed against the base of his skull, ready to incinerate his brain if he turned against her. She pressed herself to his back.

  "Release the Secretary-General immediately!" a security agent commanded.

  "He's mine," Raven sa
id. "We're going to see Henry Sheffield. You're not stopping us."

  "You are not in control of this situation," the agent replied. "Drop your weapon and step away from the Secretary-General, and you will not be harmed."

  "Who says I'm not in control? I've got your dear leader by the balls right now. I have no problem blowing his head off if you get in my way."

  "Uh, Riley?" Logan whispered. "You're kidding, right?"

  "Shut up!" she snapped. "We're walking through the front door. Nobody moves. Understand? Everyone understand my simple orders?"

  Something long and sharp pierced Raven's neck. She touched the small metal barb that had buried itself in her skin. A shockdart. Her fingertip found the tiny round battery pack, but before she had time to yank it loose, the dart injected her with thousands of volts of electricity.

  Raven twisted and jerked on her feet as the voltage raced through her, then she crashed to the cold flagstones, her body writhing in agony. She felt one of her front teeth chip against stone, and then she blacked out.

  * * *

  When she awoke, she kept her eyes closed and tried to give no sign of stirring. She sat in a cold, hard chair with her wrists handcuffed to the arms. She heard and smelled a crackling fire and felt warm air drifting over her skin. She was not wearing any clothes at all. Even her bracelet with her time-travel device was gone.

  She didn't hear any voices in the room, so she opened her eyes. She found herself staring across a dark walnut desk at Dr. Henry Sheffield, whose unblinking eyes examined her through his glasses. He wore a charcoal suit with a black tie, though it was the middle of the night.

  Behind him stood two Providence Security agents from the future. They'd collapsed their helmets, but still wore black data goggles that gave them a bug-like appearance as they watched her. Both men held their plasma rifles trained on her, ready to kill her at a moment's notice.

  "She awakens," Henry said. They were in his home office, lit only by the enormous gas-log fireplace across from his desk, which was sealed behind a clear panel and gave no warmth. A glass cabinet stood against the wall behind him. Raven saw her reflection in a dark, narrow window, naked in front of these men and cuffed to a heavy ironwood chair.

  "Where's Logan?" she asked.

  "He's safe. We don't need him here for our purposes." Henry leaned back and tapped his frog-like lips, looking over her naked body. "The two gentlemen behind me, and their two other cohorts, arrived here Sunday night. They had the most incredible story to tell, but you know most of it already, don't you?" Henry winked at her.

  "Where are my clothes?" she asked.

  "A clever girl like you knows how to conceal weapons on herself. I thought it would be best to leave nothing concealed. For security purposes, of course." He gave her a lecherous grin. "Your body is hideous, nothing but scars and burns. I enjoy looking at it."

  "Let me go, Henry."

  "I would say it's obvious I don't intend to do that." Henry turned in his chair and illuminated the dark glass cabinet behind him. On the glass shelves inside, lovingly displayed on black pillows under jeweler's lamps, lay an assortment of odd, rusty implements that looked like the tools of an insane surgeon. "These are antiques I've collected over the years. They're authentic. Each one was actually used in a medieval prison at one time or another. This clamp is for ripping out tongues by the root. This handy iron screw was multipurpose. It could be twisted into the eye, the ear, or the rectum, on an as-needed basis, I suppose. Did you know the torturers would send an itemized bill to the prisoner's family? Four pence for ripping out his toenails with an red-hot claw, six pence for crushing his testicles with a hammer. Isn't that funny?"

  Raven looked at him stoically.

  "Would you care for a closer look at my collection?" he asked gently. He opened the glass door on the side.

  "No."

  He hesitated, then swiveled back toward her, leaving the glass door to the torture instruments open.

  "Good," he said, smiling again. "It would be a shame to dirty them with your blood."

  "What do you want, Henry?"

  "I sent myself a gift by way of these gentlemen," Henry said. "A gift from my future self. And it's not even my birthday."

  Henry set a steel-edged data cube like Raven's onto his desk. He activated it, and a blue sphere appeared in the air above, orbited by a cloud of icons.

  "Fascinating device," he said. "I've been studying it almost constantly since these men arrived. I've been so busy catching up on all the future news, I've hardly slept. It's filled with detailed information about events for the next fifty years. There's a long list of our future enemies and where to find them. There's even a special message from me to you, Riley. Would you like to see it?"

  "I'm sure you're going to show it to me," Raven said.

  Henry touched one of the icons, and it expanded and unfolded into an image of Henry Sheffield from the year 2064, withered and kept alive by cybernetics. Industrial tubes ran into his nose and mouth. His voice hissed from speakers at his neck, transmitted from the black processor plugs on his scalp.

  "A special greeting to our runaway time traveler," his voice said. It sounded like Henry Sheffield's actual voice, but even more flat and emotionless, like a thin recording. His shrunken lips smiled around his mouth tube, revealing black and toothless gums.

  "You're going to look like rotten death in the future," Raven said to the present-day Henry.

  "I'd say I look pretty good for a hundred and fourteen," Henry replied, lacing his hands behind his head as he watched his future self.

  "I want to give you my warmest thanks," the future Henry continued. "Our scientists resisted my wish for rapid development and deployment of the time-travel technology. They wanted to test and test again, prattling and hand-wringing about paradoxes and unforeseen side effects. You spurred things along for me. Because of you, we absolutely had to send agents into the past. For this particular team, I have provided a special protocol: they are to make contact with my counterpart in 2013, inform him of the situation, and place themselves at his disposal."

  "Thanks for that." Henry poured himself a glass of gin and sipped it. "I couldn't ask for a better future self."

  "Sadly, despite my gratitude, your usefulness has reached its end," the future Henry concluded. "We can't have someone like you running wild through time, can we? I have advised my counterpart how best to dispose of you from here. I simply wanted you to know, before you go, that your own actions have enabled me to reach back through time and crush your revolution long before it begins. You have changed history. You have removed all obstacles to the new order. So I thank you again, my dear little revolutionary." He gave another black gummy smile, and the hologram froze.

  "Well?" the present Henry asked. "Thoughts?"

  "They should dip you in formaldehyde and put you in the freak show."

  "I'm personally pleased to know I have so many decades ahead," Henry said. "It should aid in long-term planning, don't you think?"

  Raven stared at him, waiting.

  "My counterpart from the future recommended I kill you immediately after playing his message," Henry said. "It was a clever bit of misdirection on your part, by the way, tossing yourself into the middle of Donkey Hole, Kentucky, or wherever it was. The agents from the future searched the wrong region of the country altogether, and grew distracted by the need to recover their lost armor and equipment from the Kentucky authorities in 2013, after you left those two agents dead on the road." Henry chuckled. "Why are you here, Riley? Why travel back in time?"

  Raven didn't speak.

  "At first, I suspected you might have come to assassinate Logan, but this must not be the case, as you've been sleeping with him for weeks. So what is your plan, Riley?" Henry asked.

  "I'm in love with Logan. I don't have a plan besides that, not anymore."

  He laughed. "I understand. You're clever . Why kill him when you can use him? I'm right, aren't I?" He leaned forward, smiling with his sharp teeth. "I
've had time to think about it, Riley. They showed me your image from security footage at the time-travel lab. 'Of course,' I said, 'that's the dull girl Logan brought to lunch the other day.' I see it now. Perhaps your rebel friends thought you would kill him, but you had other ideas. Why not fuck him instead? Why not make yourself queen?"

  She shuddered. His words were much too similar to Kari's.

  "Where is Logan?" she asked again.

  "This made you interesting to me for the first time," Henry said. "As the stupid orphan girl sleeping with Logan, you were obviously useless. As the girl from the future, though? Then you might be a powerful ally, with all your knowledge. Possibly even an acceptable mate for Logan, if he absolutely insisted on carrying it so far. I was willing to give you a chance. I was willing to wait and see. After what you've done tonight, it's unfortunately clear you can never be trusted--"

  "You would have changed your mind, anyway," Raven said. "Logan and I get engaged, and you arrange for me to die in a plane crash. The future's already updated, Henry. The information in that data cube is already obsolete. It tells you about a direction that the future no longer takes."

  "I'm sure it will still be useful to me, thank you," Henry said. "Obviously, you can never be allowed near Logan, or anyone else of value, ever again." The gaze of his protruding eyes crawled down her bare body. "However, I believe I could find other uses for you. Your future experience would be terrible to waste. If I chose to keep you alive, you would have to remain here, isolated, in a secure room..."

  "You can't kidnap me and keep me in your basement." Raven's eyes flicked to the man's collection of medieval torture devices.

  "How can you kidnap a person who doesn't exist? Who has no family, no legal identity?"

  "Logan wouldn't allow it."

  "Logan is only a boy. He does not need to know all that happens. But you are not just a girl, are you?" He licked his lips. "You're a deceptive little snake, that's what you are. I should put you down now to be safe."