“Maybe I didn’t arrive before you, then,” he said. “But maybe I awoke before you.”
“But there is no ‘before,’” Landon said, then shook his head. “Let’s not waste time on that. We’ll be here for hours. Even though, of course, yes, there are, theoretically, no hours. But you found the Tree?”
“I know where it is, yes.”
“And you can remember how to get there?”
“I can, yes.”
Landon looked back at the rest of the troupe, who were following behind, waiting for his next set of instructions. “Okay,” he said. “Of course, that only solves part of the puzzle, right?”
“We need the man,” Keegan said, nodding.
Landon looked up at him. What was wrong with him? The man? “Or, the woman, in this case,” he said. “I don’t suppose you ran into her anywhere?”
“No, but I know how to find her.”
“How do you-” Landon was interrupted by a grunting sound to his right. He turned to see what was making the noise and froze.
A pride of lions lined both sides of the brook.
The male looked up. He’d heard them, as well.
CHAPTER 53
Amy was the last one to freeze when they saw the lions, almost running into Davies, who’d stopped in front of her. She immediately counted 23 animals – the pride male, seven females and 15 cubs, all of which were now staring at them.
This could be the shortest time travel mission yet, she thought.
Both teams, humans and lions, stood entirely still, maintaining eye contact, seemingly not wanting to incite the other. The female lions began to gather around their king, though Amy didn’t read it as an attack stance. More one of curiosity. She looked at her colleagues, all frozen, poised to flee if the situation called for it. Unfortunately, she didn’t see any other scenario playing out.
She began to assess her surroundings. In many ways, it would be every man for himself, which meant finding a viable escape route. From what she knew about lions from watching nature programming on the holovid, they were faster than humans in full sprint, but were not climbers. She looked to the trees to ascertain where she might be able to find a foothold.
Her heart was pounding, as she imagined her colleagues’ were, as well. The lions had now grouped and would be able to swarm attack them at will. She counted – there was one human for every female in the pride. If they chose to attack that systematically. Either way, not everyone, if anyone, was going to get away.
“Everyone stay calm,” Robert said, the cool voice that usually could make everything right. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Amy didn’t believe it, though. Her muscles tensed. “What do we do?” she whispered.
“We’re going to slowly continue on,” Robert said.
“It’s not going to work,” Claire said, beside him. “If we’re not taking chances based on Landon’s theories about time, we’re not taking chances on this, either. Safe bet, right?”
“It will work,” he said. “They’re not interested in attacking us. They’re interested in why we’re here.”
“That’s not how lions think,” Claire said.
Amy glanced at her briefly, then lost every ounce of her nerve. In the blink of an eye, she turned and darted for the tree she’d picked out. She heard commotion behind her as the others presumably followed her lead, with the pride on their heels.
She reached the tree, which had been ten meters away from her, at full speed, and leapt, catching her foot on a low branch and propelling upward. She afforded herself a quick glance over her shoulder and confirmed her fears – a flurry of golden fur racing across the area she’d just vacated. She looked forward and climbed a dozen branches until she felt she was high enough off the ground for safety, then planted her feet into a crook to stabilize herself. She fought to catch her breath and fight back tears as she considered what had happened her teammates.
The stampede of lions was now past where they had been standing, but she feared she’d find scattered females picking over their corpses. Instead, she saw nothing. Just an empty opening in the trees.
She climbed down two branches to get a better look, peering through thick maple-like leaves to get a glimpse of anyone she could find. Were they all dead? Or had they all fled in different directions? Getting lost and separated in many ways was as bad as the lions giving them a quick death.
Suddenly, she saw someone stumbling backwards out of the trees into the clearing. It was Reilly. He tumbled onto his back in the brush.
She started to climb down to see if he needed help, but then Robert appeared from the same direction. She watched as he leaned down and grabbed Reilly by the collar, lifting his shoulders up off the ground.
“What the hell is that?” Robert screamed at him.
Amy quickly descended the tree.
CHAPTER 54
Robert had never felt such clarity in his mind as he had when the male lion was barreling toward him. Everything that had led him to that very moment in his life suddenly became clear.
It wasn’t the lion, though, that had provided the nuclear bomb of reality. In fact, Robert realized almost immediately as the male was advancing that Amy’s dash for higher ground had merely startled them, and that they, themselves, were running for cover. His quick logic, right or wrong, reasoned that the male would not have attacked – he would’ve left it to the females in the pride. He was impressed with himself for noticing that in the heat of the moment, but was distracted when next to him Reilly had pulled from his pocket the prototype gun he’d shown him at SATP, and had trained it on one of the lions.
Robert had reacted instinctively, grabbing Reilly by the sleeve before he could get a shot off. If there was one thing that would incite the lions, it was seeing one of their family murdered. He’d pulled the General into the trees, where they’d hid safely behind an enormous trunk until the stampede had passed.
Then, he’d punched his superior officer in the jaw, and now had him by the collar.
“Why did you bring that here?”
“For protection,” he screamed back at Robert as the others started to appear out of the trees and approach them.
“Protection from who?” he demanded. “We were either going to land in the middle of the desert or in the Garden of Eden. What was going to happen?”
“You said it yourself after Egypt,” Reilly said, then twisted his body so Robert lost his grip. He scrambled along the ground until he was a few feet away, then stood, pointing at Robert. “You said it yourself. You needed protection. You were scared.”
“What’s he talking about, Robert?” Claire asked.
He kept his focus on Reilly, though. “You’re not going to make me the bad guy here,” he said.
“Bloody hold on,” Davies said, jumping in between them. Which was the right move, because Robert was about to go after Reilly again. “What’s he talking about? What did you bring?”
“He brought a weapon,” Robert said, calming down. “He brought a gun.”
“How could he-” Claire started, but stopped.
“It’s a prototype weapon that SATP has been developing – made from organic material so it can travel through the time portal,” he said. “We haven’t said anything because it wasn’t ready, and it was something we would only theoretically use. Apparently, SATP had other intentions.”
“Did something more happen in Egypt that we don’t know about?” Amy asked.
Robert sighed. This was not the time or place for this conversation. He knew exactly why Reilly had brought the gun, and he needed to get to him to prove it. But Davies was a big guy, and would probably be able to hold him back easily. So, instead, for the moment, he faced the team. “Nothing more than I reported in my briefing,” he said. “But I may have let my bravado overshadow how I really felt about what had happened.” He stopped there, and they all stood silently, watching him, likely not knowing what to say. So, to accentuate the concerns he’d brought back with him, he ra
ised the right side of his trousers to show the deep purple bruise on his thigh from the trip. Claire gasped when she saw it. He knew it was hideous.
“Probably hard to believe, but it looks better than yesterday,” he continued, breaking the silence. “I was not prepared for them. And I’m convinced that had I not had a way out, they would’ve killed me there in the desert.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Amy asked.
He shook his head slowly. “Well, in all fairness, I did tell you happened. I just may have glossed over the extent of it. Then we were flung immediately into this new situation. I never even had the opportunity to prepare my report.” He did detect that Davies had loosened his defensive posture as they talked.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Landon said, “but it seems we could all benefit from being a little more honest with each other. General, if you were going to bring a weapon with you, why did you not share that with us and offer training?”
“That’s classified informa-”
Robert took advantage of Landon’s diversion to bulrush Reilly, who didn’t see it coming. Which was fortunate, because he was still holding the gun. A moment later, though, they were rolling around in the brush. Reilly was defending himself from a physical attack – his face, his neck – but that’s not what Robert was targeting. Instead, he was trying to reach into the pocket of his tunic.
“What are you doing?” Reilly yelled as Robert felt Davies’ hands grabbing his shoulders, starting to pull him away.
Fortunately, he felt his hand slide into the pocket, where he found exactly what he was looking for.
Bullets.
He grabbed the lot of them and pulled, just as Davies was able to separate him from Reilly. He held onto a few and the others flew, scattered, into the brush
“Are you crazy?” Reilly screamed, scrambling once again to his feet.
The force of Davies’ pull sent Robert, himself, tripping onto the ground. He landed hard, but rolled into a sitting position. Claire and Landon came to his side to make sure he was alright, but he held out his hand, showing a sampling of wooden bullets. “Can you tell me why you needed a pocketful of bullets for your single-shot gun?” he asked. Reilly started to say something, but Robert stopped him. “There’s no need for you to answer. I know exactly why.”
“What’s going on?” Landon said suspiciously, rising to his feet next to Robert and facing Reilly.
“He was going to kill us,” Robert said, then turned and hurled the handful of bullets at Reilly. “He was going to leave us behind and finish the job of shutting down SATP. Where’s the gun?”
“I lost it when I fell,” Reilly said, painfully propping himself up in the grass.
“General?” Claire said. “Is that true?” Robert couldn’t tell if she was being demanding or was hurt by the betrayal. Either was appropriate.
The whole team looked at Reilly for an answer while Robert was considering what he could possibly come up with. He could simply deny what was taking place – and Robert, himself, wasn’t sure exactly what that was. He’d played a gambit by going after Reilly’s arsenal in his pocket, but he’d guessed correctly. His immediate assessment was that what Dipin had been alluding to had been correct: the President had no intention of permanently shutting down the program… Just this iteration of it, i.e. getting rid of the partner nations. Reilly was involved, clearly. Robert just didn’t know how.
“No, it’s not true,” he said. “It’s preposterous.”
“But your plan was ruined,” Robert said, staring Reilly down, “when Keegan didn’t make it to the time portal. But when he showed up here-” He suddenly realized that Keegan wasn’t around. He looked in all directions, as did the others. “Where’s Keegan?”
“Well, Dr. McIntyre’s not here,” Davies said, interrupting their limited search, “but we have company.”
Robert looked at Davies, and then followed his eyes to where he was looking.
Standing twenty meters away from them was a stunning, long-haired woman, with a model figure and soft, curious eyes gazing in their direction.
She was naked.
“What are you thinking about all of this now, Claire?” Robert asked.
CHAPTER 55
Keegan took another deep breath, trying not to seem anxious. He had no idea what the agents in the room with him knew or didn’t know, but also didn’t feel like he could probe them to find out. They had their orders, which were to make sure that he stayed put there in the control room, and while he considered attempting to tap into their humanity, despite how persuasive he could be, he had no foundation on which to build a case. In all likelihood, they didn’t care at all what was happening.
He took a glance at the clock, which he’d been trying not to do. There were still twenty-three minutes to wait before the machine would pull the rest of the team back through time and into the time portal. At which point, the agents and the Attorney General would be standing there waiting for them. They’d all be arrested, and that would be the end of the story. Once they were maligned and fell out of public favor, there would be no exposing anyone for whatever was taking place because it would simply be spun as retaliation to save their own skins. There was nothing they could do to stop it at this point.
His thoughts were scattered, so he took a moment to focus. He felt as though he should act in some way, but also that he needed to ascertain what the Attorney General’s plan was before taking a stand. He went over the brief conversation they’d had before they’d removed Dipin from the room. The AG had seemed confused by the fact that the team had engaged in the mission, leading Keegan to believe that if there was some conspiracy happening that went all the way to the President, the AG wasn’t in on it. Or, all of it, at least. At the same time, the AG had been surprised that not only was Keegan there, but Dipin, as well.
Dipin was another story. He’d disappeared months ago with no explanation, then had shown up in the middle of the night, commandeering the SATP press room to deliver a message he’d probably been sitting on for quite some time. He’d been subdued by SATP security and taken who knows where before suddenly and heroically showing up at the control room. That he seemed to have inside knowledge of what was going on suggested that he must have been talking to someone all that time – probably Robert – but it was clear from only their short interaction that he knew much more than he was letting on.
Keegan shook his head subtly, just for his own benefit. He knew Dipin from their time working together, but they were not as close as Dipin and Robert were, and he didn’t feel like he could read him all that well. He thought about the two pieces of “advice” that Dipin had given him when leaving the control room. The first had made no sense at all. Don’t let them come back if there’s someone in the portal. Well, he didn’t have any choice. If someone was in the portal against both SATP safety protocols and common sense, it was their own misfortune. It had never happened, but in theory, if a person was in the floor space in the time portal when the machine was trying to pull the team back, one of two things could occur... Either the machine would be torn as to whether it was receiving or sending and malfunction, leaving the time travelers potentially stranded, and the encroachers turned into billions of atoms which would quickly dissolve into open space; or, if that didn’t happen, they would run the risk of having one of the time travelers’ molecules reassemble around them, with potentially gruesome results. Either way, you didn’t want to be in the portal when a mission was returning.
But for the most part, that was common knowledge, and there were enough security measures keeping people out of the portal that it shouldn’t be an issue. So, he moved on to Dipin’s second bit of wisdom, about reprogramming the cloaks. Which also made no sense, unfortunately. Because the cloaks were already on the mission with them. Even if reprogramming the cloaks could help them, he couldn’t do it because they physically weren’t there.
Except for one, of course. His own cloak, which was still sitting in his open pod
, which had never been engaged.
The open pod.
Keegan looked up at the time portal with terror on his face, and his heart leapt. The pod couldn’t be open while they were returning, for the same reason that no one could be in the portal. As a safety measure, the time portal was designed as an open-and-closed loop. There were parameters that needed to be in place to both initiate and close a mission, and the machine would anticipate that those parameters were addressed. The open pod, with the un-engaged cloak sitting haphazardly on the seat, would interrupt the process and tell the machine that it had not finished initiating the mission, disallowing it from bringing them back.
“I have to go down there,” he said, thinking out loud more than telling the agents what was going on.
“No way,” Agent Bates said. “Your instructions are to stay here.”
“The pod is open,” he said, his voice frantic. “I was supposed to go on the mission, but I got held up back here to make sure they were safe. If that pod is open, they can’t get back.”
“Your instructions are-”
“C’mon, man,” Keegan said, cutting him off. “We’re talking about people’s lives.” Bates sat with his eyes facing front, unmoving. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand what those people mean to me, but I have to get down there and help them. If that pod is open in… eighteen minutes… their molecules won’t be able to reconstitute, and they’ll be lost forever somewhere in between the past and here. Whatever’s happening out there… This is not what it’s about. It’s not about these people. It’s about something much bigger, and I’m not trying to make judgment on that. But I have to do something to keep them safe.”
He noticed Bates look back at the other agent, who he surmised was a commanding officer, but the man silently shook his head. Bates returned his focus to the time portal through the window.
“Well, look,” Keegan said. “I feel strongly enough about this that you’re going to have to stop me.” He turned and headed for the door.
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