Jericho Johnson: The Gauntlet of Time

by J. A. Stowell

  So if we ever meet up one day, you owe me a coffee, dude.

  On my way back to my uncomfortable gurney I ran into Beck on the catwalk. Well, I actually didn't run into her. She was standing in my way with her arms folded so I had to stop when I reached her.

  "Evening," I said to her. "Beautiful night, isn't it?"

  "It's 10:00 am in the morning." She told me, rolling her eyes.

  "Oh, well, I mean, we're underground. Forgive me for not keeping my sundial on hand."

  I tried to step past her but she put a hand firmly on my chest. "Look, I know you don't want to die, and all, but the best time to crash Klaus' party is in about nine hours from now. He only comes to his facility twice a week and if we don't act now you'll have to wait till after the weekend and I don't think I can stand to look at your depressed face that long."

  "Noted," I said, stepping back and folding my own arms, "So what, we just kick down the back door and start shooting folks?"

  "Infiltrating has it's pros and cons. The cons outweigh the pros by a long shot so I think I got a better idea," she said, turning. "Walk with me."

  "Geez, but you sure do love telling people what to do," I said, falling in step behind her. The production lines had ceased working below us so the only noise really was the sound of our resounding footsteps on the catwalk. I noticed that my Chucks didn't look near as intimidating as Beck's heeled leather boots, also.

  "Where's Chloe, by the way?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure. She left after our discussion and I haven't seen her since." We walked the rest of the way to the medbay in silence. Once I was seated in the only chair Beck explained her new plan.

  "I can arrange a diversion topside in front of his building when he's on his way out. He won't notice anyone important after having to deal with hundreds of rioters," she said.

  Riot.

  "Would a passing scientist maybe mistake your riot for a revolt?" I asked.

  Beck frowned. "I suppose he might due to what's been going on lately up there."

  "And is Klaus' building located in the southern precinct?"

  Beck narrowed her eyes at me and answered, "Yes. Why?"

  "Just curious," I told her as Atrium Sparks' recollection of my demise rang throughtout my brain.

  "Sounds good. I'll kill Klaus while you guys distract his guards and we'll be good to go." Standing, I held out a hand to her. "I appreciate all you're doing. Even if you're only doing it so you won't have to look at my depressing face for a whole weekend."

  Beck accepted my hand before pulling me toward her suddenly hard and covering my lips with hers roughly.

  Before you start thinking of how I was a backstabbing heart-breaker, let me stop you right there and say that I wasn't expecting crazy girl to kiss me again while holding the front of my shirt like a bully might a kid he was about to cream. It wasn't a long kiss thank God and after she released me she took a step back and put one hand on her hip and looked at me.

  "What the heck was that?" I asked in agitaion, touching my lip and seeing a little blood on my fingers.

  "Just checking if I still thought you were a bad kisser."

  "And?" I replied curtly, spitting blood on the concrete floor.

  "Nope," said Beck as she turned to the doorway. "You're still horrible at it."

  "So just bite my freakin' bottom lip off, then," I said loudly as she exited the room, "That'll sure help, genius."

  So after yet another fun encounter with Beck, I laid down on the gurney and picked my story up where I left off.

  So now you're pretty much up to speed, whoever-you-are. Now you know everything I know.

  I keep wanting to have this, like, amazing conclusion to all of this and actually wanted to wait until after I'd saved the world to do record it but didn't want to risk, you know, dying and no one getting to hear any of it.

  I figure ninety-eight percent of a story is better than none at all when time-travel is involved.

  So tomorrow I'm going to face Klaus in the freezing streets of Flagstaff so I guess I'll see what happens in about nine hours.

  I'm going to sleep now before I hyperventilate, I guess.

  With any luck, I might even get to talk to you after my dance with death.

  Peace out, whoever-you-are, and don't forget that, even if I die in a few hours, I'm still awesome.

  Epilogue

  Dr. Cross was leaning back in his desk chair with his fingers laced behind his head when the recording ended. He sat like that for a while afterward lost in thought.

  Klaus had indeed been killed not six hours ago by the very explosion that almost killed Jericho Johnson. Standing, the doctor crossed to thick window and once again peered out over Flagstaff.

  Klaus wasn't the only collateral damage from the bombing. Chloe Sparks had also been killed. Beck and the Viking girl hadn't been accounted for yet but it wouldn't surprise him if reports came soon of their bodies being found in the rubble of what was left of the southern precinct.

  "Ritu, report," He said suddenly and the nurse's face materialized on the window.

  "He's dying." Was all she said.

  "How long left?" Dr. Cross asked, walking quickly to his door and exiting. The image of Ritu followed him down the hallway on the plexiglass walls as he jogged to the elevator. "Minutes, sir. We've tried everything but his body is still rejecting all of our medications."

  "He can't die," he told her, pushing a button as the elevator descended at an alarming rate to the bottom level of his building. "He mustn't."

  When the doors opened he stepped out and jogged to the end of the hallway, entering the door on his right. Ritu was standing beside the bed with a few other white-coated men and they instantly moved out of Cross's way.

  Dr. Cross peered down at the man he now knew so much about.

  Or what was left of him.

  His right arm was gone from the elbow down, most of his hair had been burned off and he was missing an eye. Not to mention that every inch of him was covered in horribly grotesque burn. The only things keeping him alive were the needles riddled over his mutilated body pumping medications (that weren't working) inside of him and an oxygen tube that normally would've went down a patient's throat but was running through a gaping hole in the chest to his lungs.

  Then the corpse in front of him screamed and tried to sit up.

  "Hold him," Cross shouted, putting his hands on the shaking man's shoulders and feeling the heat from the burns instantly. One eye locked on Cross as the other two men helped him shoved the thrashing man down. "Sedation," Dr. Cross shouted again. "Now!"

  Ritu hit a few keys on the holodesk beside the bed and in seconds the screams turned to moans then his only eye closed.

  Cross cursed when the heart-rate monitor flatlined. Running to one side of the lab he tore into a cabinet and in seconds found what he needed. Rushing back to the now dead man, he stabbed the adrenal shot hard through his burned chest and into his heart.

  The next scream to escape the parched throat was positively primeval and ear-splitting. The screams only lasted a minute after that before he lost consciousness. His heart-rate wasn't the best Cross had seen on a holograph but at least it wasn't plained out.

  "Dr. Cross," Ritu said from behind him. "I've never questioned your reasons behind anything but this man is suffering the worst of pain. I don't know who he is but--"

  "His name is Jericho Johnson." Cross said while washing the charred flesh from his hands and forearms at a sink in the room, "His body, although a little worse for wear at the moment, is perfect host for Z-90."

  "Sir, Z-90 is impossi-"

  "Enough," He said, watching the brown water swirl down the drain before turning back to her. "And I'll say it again--he can't die."

  "Why?" Ritu asked, perplexed.

  Dr. Cross glanced back over Jericho's completely burned body.

  A left index finger moved slightly.

  "Because he's not done yet."

  Thanks for reading Jericho Johnson: The
Gauntlet of Time.

  Please check out the sneak peek of the next book of the series, Jericho Johnson: Fixed & Ticked, available on Amazon and soon to be on Smashwords!

  Chapter 1

  Okay, number one, it was severely bright when I tried to open my aching eyes. Number two, I smelled hospital, and number three, I remembered what I was doing before everything went black and figured that I was more than likely in a morgue instead of a hospital. I was on some sort of hospital bed type thing, though, unless future morgues put bodies on mattresses.

  I mean, I thought I was still in the future.

  “Why is it so freakin’ bright?” I tried to say but my throat somehow wouldn’t work.

  Odd.

  I tried to say the same thing for about a minute of two and, after a lot of effort on my part, was finally able to get out a sort of gurgling sound.

  It took me a little while longer and I was able to say two words consecutively.

  “Sushi… tacos…”

  “He’s awake,” I heard a female voice say from somewhere behind my head and I tried to turn and get a look at the owner but realized, in horror, might I add, that my head seemed to be held in place by a vice.

  Panicking, I tried to grab at the restraint and realized—yes, with more horror—that my wrists were bound as well.

  Have I ever mentioned that waking up strapped to a table/bed is not the greatest feeling in the world? Not sure if you’ve ever had the pleasure of the experience but let me tell you that if you haven’t, you’re not missing much.

  “Let me… go…” I managed, instantly out of breath from the sheer struggle of just three words and I silently swore that if I got out of this alive, I would definitely go to the gym.

  Then the owner of the voice appeared at my bedside.

  Or tableside, maybe.

  She was maybe close to thirty, I was guessing and had jet—black hair and was a tad different looking. Not hot, not hideous but somewhere in between.

  “Name?” I got out, trying to narrow my eyes at her.

  “Rest, Mr. Johnson,” she said, typing at something in her hands and in a few seconds my eyes closed and I was out.

  This happened more frequently over what I could only discern as weeks upon weeks. Me strapped to the bed, (yes, I’d finally decided that it wasn’t a table after a few days), the no—named, plain woman appearing after I’d talked to myself (which was really me trying to get anyone to talk to me) for a while and sedating me, and on and on.

  It was pretty much the worst month of my freakin’ life. At least, I hoped it was only a month. It really could have been longer, I guess, because there wasn’t exactly a clock on the wall.

  Then, the day of reckoning finally, finally arrived.

  I said a complete sentence.

  Nay, so strong were my newly trained vocal cords that I shouted a sentence.

  “What the helheim, people? Why am I here and what are you planning to do with me?”

  Yeah, I was pretty proud of that one. Not that it did much good to get anyone’s attention but a guy had to keep trying.

  After that day I was able to talk, shout, scream or even, on one occasion, do a little rap number I’d been working on in my time of solitary confinement.

  About two weeks post sentence I was taken aback when the lights shut off in the room.

  “Finally,” I said. “I was wondering how long you idiots would make me sleep through miniature suns.”

  I wasn’t worried about ticking anybody off, if you hadn’t already deduced that on your own. I mean, sure, I was, in fact, strapped to a table and at their (whoever they were) complete mercy. But I figured that they wouldn’t have been going through all the trouble of keeping me there hooked up to a lot of machines with a nurse checking in on me every day just to get annoyed at my wit and slit my throat, or something.

  Then one lone light appeared above me and I closed my eyes. “And it’s back. Thanks for the tease, guys.”

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Johnson?” said the only other person I’d seen in months as she materialized beside my bed, her face shrouded due to the bright light above her head.

  “Am I really wearing nothing but a cloth around my nether regions like it feels like I am?” I asked her.

  Since it seemed a harmless question, she answered, “Yes.”

  “Then, please, call me Jericho,” I said sarcastically. “As much of a player as I might look like, doll, most of the time I do know a girl’s name before she gets this far. Just FYI.”

  “FYI?” she asked, and I could feel her frown of confusion.

  “It means ‘for your information’,” I explained, not knowing exactly why. Maybe because I felt like she should have known that one.

  “Oh,” she said quickly, referring back to the hologram—clipboard thingy in her hands.

  I felt like I was trying to sneak up on a deer and that the least little bit of commotion would scare away my mystery nurse’s seemingly talkative mood. Since I might only be allowed one more sentence, I decided to make it a good one that wouldn’t frighten her.

  “So, are you, like, a mad scientist, or something?”

  See? I’m a genius.

  “No,” she replied. “I work for a scientist.”

  “Is he the mad one?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? ‘Cause the last time I checked I was strapped to a bed.”

  “It is merely for your own protection, Mr. Johnson, as your new bio-muscles are not fully compatible with your new synthetic ones.”

  What. The. Helheim?

  “Back up, darling,” I said, rolling my eyes around, mainly because that was the only thing I could actually move. “I could have sworn that you said I had synthetic muscles inside of me.”

  “You do. Only about 45% of your muscles were salvageable after the explosion- and even those weren’t the easiest to save.”

  Who was this lady? She was talking about salvaging my body like she was discussing what to make for dinner with her husband, for God’s sake.

  “So you and, uh, whoever the mad scientist you work for, like, pulled me out of rubble, or something?”

  “Exactly, yes,” she said, still looking at the device in her hand.

  Sighing, I told her, “Look, I dated a chic that was always on her smart—phone and I got to say, it’s kind of annoying.”

  She flicked her eyes to me to see if I was serious. When she saw that I was, she hit a button somewhere on the clipboard-sized green tablet and it vanished.

  “How’d you—?” I started but stopped myself. I’m pretty sure I’d seen too much of the future to get all geeked out on the hologram tablet thingy. “I mean, uh, why did you and whoever save me?”

  “I don’t have clearance to tell you anything, Mr. Johnson,” said the silhouette.

  “Then why talk to me now? I’ve been here for two months, maybe.”

  She was silent.

  “Hello, strange-mad-scientist-lackey chic, why talk now?” I growled.

  “You’ve been here longer than two months, Mr. Johnson,” she said quietly.

  “Ok, two months was undershooting it a little—“

  “You’ve been here almost three years,” she cut in, and then gasped softly as if she wasn’t supposed to tell me that.

  My breathing became rapid.

  My vision blurred.

  “What?” I asked as calmly as I could, my voice quivering.

  “It’s December of 2344. You’ve been here since February of 2342. We’ve been—“

  I didn’t hear the rest because by then I was screaming.

  “Sedate him,” I heard a male voice crackle over a speaker in the room. “Now!”

  I felt severely hot and began thrashing. I can’t explain what was happening to me right then. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t pretty. The bulbs in the bright lights above me suddenly shattered, dropping pieces of glass and phosphorous all over my almost naked body.

  That’s when I felt it the first time.

&
nbsp; The small tingling in my palms.

  Then everything went black again.