by KC Klein
I sucked in a ragged breath. “I don’t want to be The One. I just want to stay here, love you, and have your babies. Be your wife.”
He groaned, then kissed me like we’d never kissed before. His mouth was hungry, devouring the very essence of me. I poured myself into his embrace, wanting to physically imprint myself on his body, become a fundamental part of his DNA so he’d never forget me. ConRad slammed my body against the dirt wall and hooked my legs over his hips.
I went wild.
My hands reached under his shirt and clawed his back. He groaned and retaliated by ripping my shirt down the front, pushing the sports bra up, and sucking on my nipples so hard that I screamed.
I wanted more.
His hand shot down my pants and his finger entered me with no warning, no foreplay. The invasion made me wet with two thrusts, my inner muscles clenched, drawing him deeper. Pleasure shot through my quivering thighs and out my toes. My feet briefly touched the ground as his hands came around my waist and ripped my pants off, throwing them to the side. He forced me back against the rough stone and lifted. My skin scraped against the rock, but I didn’t care. The pain didn’t touch the burning centered between my thighs.
I fumbled with his pants button. He helped by pushing the offending clothing away. My hand closed around him—rock hard and throbbing. I led him to my core and in one thrust he buried himself to the hilt. Fast and quick we rocked. I couldn’t hold back and exploded in his arms. I screamed as he whispered, “I love you.”
Aftershocks still rocked my body as he left me on shaky legs and then shoved my pants to me.
Dogs howled, men shouted.
He held my face once more, his gaze boring into mine. “I am so blessed to have loved you. I’m a better man because of you. You are my redemption. You are The One.”
Then he lifted himself out of the hole and was gone.
And then the ground opened and I fell into the black hole of space.
Chapter Thirty-four
Cold. Bone aching cold. Weird since the oven-baked earth was pressed hard against my face. Then the pain came, hard and fast like a bullet to the brain. Every ligament hurt, stretched, like I’d been sawn asunder, then hurriedly slapped back together. Sucking wind, I tried to rise above the pain. Tried to leave the body that lay on the ground, with clothes wadded tightly against its chest, ripped shirt, underwear lost in some vast darkness of time and space.
There was no oblivion. I knew exactly where I was. Back on the mountain preserve in Scottsdale, back in the past, back before I knew about The Prophesy. Before mI loved ConRad.
ConRad was dead—there was no way he could’ve survived. He would’ve taken his own life before letting Syon take him and be tortured.
And I couldn’t blame him, even as in the same breath I screamed for him to survive.
I saved my child, but killed my husband.
God, what’ve I done?
I screamed. Desperate loss weighed on my heart. I couldn’t live without ConRad . . . but I didn’t have to. I could fix this. I had to go back. Had to try again. I could reinitiate the cycle. I had the chance to change the past, to do it better this time.
I pushed myself up as the world spun. Wetness tickled my nose. I wiped, surprised at the amount of blood smeared across the back of my hand. I’d no idea at what cost time traveling extracted from my body, but didn’t care—last ride, for me anyway. My younger self was fresher, less damaged.
The burden of what I had to do enveloped me in its thick velvet coat of guilt. It was hard to alter a life in such a harsh way, even if that life was my own. A bitter laugh escaped. I never had a clue, never really had a choice. Time for a reality check; life is hard and about to get harder. I’d no idea how many times I could restart the loop, but I needed one more chance to get it right.
I fell twice putting on my pants. My heart raced with the need to hurry. Time, my ever elusive enemy, had me frantically glancing up at the sky. The first time I’d time traveled it was at sun break and I wanted to follow the exact pattern to increase the chances of sending myself back. The current sky showed no signs of the breaking dawn, but I’d no doubt I was in a race.
I increased my speed and stumbled down the mountain path. My house was about two miles from the preserve. Previously, I was driven here by my crazed future-self and had traveled through time, but this time I didn’t have the luxury.
On the deserted paved city streets I broke into a jog. I’d never have tempted a run, alone, in the middle of the night before, but I’d been through hell, and this world was not it. Nothing scared me anymore.
I reached my single-story patio home and braced my hands on my knees, catching my breath. The world seemed so much clearer now, newer. It was simple to take in all the small details I’d never bothered with before. The way my potted plant drooped on the step from lack of water, the dirater, tht caked on the ledge of my deco security screen door, and how a person could peer into my kitchen through a gap in the blinds from a certain angle.
Maybe I should water my plant first?
Stupid Kris, do what you’ve come to do.
I knew what I had to become—scary, tough, no mercy. I was ready to start myself on a new, painful future. I bent over and reached behind the terra-cotta pot, searching by feel, for the spare key.
With a deep breath, I steadied the key with both hands and slipped it into the slot. I hesitated. Instead of turning the key, I plucked the bright orange flyer that was wedged between the jam of the door. I unfolded it as my brain reared at my delay. My heart screamed at my need to go and save ConRad as another, detached part of me, read the advertisement like I’d just come from a morning walk.
On the top of the ad was a logo of a cute cartoon puppy going around and around in circles trying to catch his stubby tail.
Does housework have you chasing your tail?
Let us help. We’ll clean up your mess so you can get on with your life.
Call us for free quotes.
A gear so long out of place slid into its groove. A new neuron synapse found its way, cutting a painful pathway into my soft gray matter.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
No. No, this wasn’t the way it was going to go. This was NOT the answer. But the cold reality of the years spanned before me. Me walking the halls alone with a crying newborn, me going to teacher conferences as a single parent, me handing the car keys over for the first time to my daughter, to worry through the long night by myself.
In order to stop the cycle, I’d have to stop igniting the cycle. I couldn’t send myself forward. I couldn’t change a damn thing. Couldn’t save ConRad.
I folded in on myself, knees buckling under the weight of what I’d just realized. Gut-wrenching sobs shook my body. I quelled the sound by stuffing my fist into my mouth.
There are moments when words ceased to describe life. Where time flatlines into nothing. Where only the functions of the nervous system keep your heart beating and your lungs pumping, because, if it was up to you, you’d breathe your last breath just to stop the pain.
I’d no idea how long I sat curled into myself, but a person can cry for only so long—the tears finally run dry. My insides cauterized, scraped raw with only bite-marked knuckles as my permanent souvenirs.
Certain senses slipped under the dark abyss that was my life. The way the desert night spoke of peace with its sound of crickets and muffled roar of traffic. The way the stars dimmed as dawn approached and the comforting setting of only a single moon.
Closing my eyes I inhaled the smell of sage, mesquite, and heat. The scent of Earth. No rotting alien smell, no smell of blood and death. I sighed, as a stubborn tear leaked from behind my closed lids.
The sun rose. Darkening the horizon with shadows first, then painting the surrounding mountains with purples and reds. Warm colors spilled forth like liquid gold from a bucket God had labeled “SUNSHINE” in big block letters.
Then a ripple, like the whole world was superimposed on a still pond and som
eone tauntingly threw a pebble in just to watch the effect. The atmosphere shimmered, then solidified into reality. If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it. But I hadn’t, so I didn’t, and therefore I knew. Time had caught up. The continuous skipping of the record had stopped. I’d broken the loop.
It was over.
My mission was never to save ConRad, but to have his baby. And keeping with my choice, my future self caught up with my past self. I knew this like a person knew where their legs and arms were at all times. I knew before I stood. Before I turned the key, pressed the alarm code, and walked to my bedroom. I knew I was alone. There was no one here to send forward.
I flipped on my bedroom light, then the bathroom one and even the one in my closet. I was so sick of the dark. I didn’t think I’d ever be comfortable with shadows again. I stood in front of my full-length mirror and peeled my clothes from my body.
The image that reflected back was disturbing on so many levels. Two inches of dark roots from the regrowth of hair, face crusted with blood, and a still board-flat stomach. But it was my eyes that had me worried—cold, hard, calcd, hard,ulating. I’d seen eyes like them before, in ConRad’s face, and remembered wondering what suffering did a soul have to endure to get such haunting eyes? Now I knew.
Just lose everything that you’d ever cared about.
This time the tears didn’t stop for a long time.
Seven and half months later.
I lay in bed and watched my ceiling fan lazily cut through the cool night air. At least I’m not pregnant in the middle of July—yep, there’s always a silver lining. Some lining. Being a single mom was so not what I’d planned. I was going to have a daughter who’d never met her father. I shied away from the memory of the ultrasound tech telling me my baby was a little girl. I knew it, of course, but knowing the sex confirmed the vision Quinn had forced into my mind. I thanked the tech and then proceeded to lie on the table and sob until the doctor asked if I needed a sedative.
I stopped the memory from looping again and again in my brain.
No more. No more self-pity.
I relocked the thought tight in the steel box in my mind, then threw another lock on the latch for good measure.
But that was why, once again, I was revisited by my good friend insomnia. There was something else that needed to go into that box, but it kept slipping out.
The Prophesy.
The words ran around and around in my head. When Quinn first spoke them to me, they seemed vaguely familiar. At the time life-and-death situations were exploding all around us, but now, after seven months of relative peace, my mind couldn’t help but replay every moment.
Had I really heard the words before Quinn mentioned them to me? Or had they become so much a part of me that they always seemed familiar?
Who wrote the words? Who could possibly know the future to such an extent to be able to pen the details? Why was I chosen to have ConRad’s child? And for what purpose?
I still didn’t have any answers. When I’d first come back, I tried to derail any type of new advancement toward satellites. Stop the contact between us a betweennd any alien race. Stop Armageddon.
But I was no scientist and had zero connection with NASA. I didn’t even know if it was the United States that had made first contact with their super satellite. Most likely it was China and China sharing its top-secret information with me was hopeless.
Not that I didn’t try. The great World Wide Web was a beautiful thing. After a few weeks I was able to pinpoint some scientists at NASA who were working on satellites. Of course, I didn’t get anywhere. After numerous emails I realized I was coming across like a crazy fundamentalist with words like “technology was evil” and “stop all work on satellites because it could trigger the end of the world.”
Yeah, it was time I got smarter.
So I set up the premise that I was a student doing my thesis on space technology and the possibility of being able to expand a satellite’s reach. I hadn’t received a response yet, but my emails weren’t being blocked anymore. I took that as a good sign.
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I remembered ConRad talking about atomic power being used to power the satellite and the use of UFCs, whatever the hell that was.
Way out of my league, but at least it gave me key words to look for.
Deciding that sleep was again my elusive partner tonight, I jumped—no, more like rolled—out of bed. On swollen, fat feet, I padded down the hall to my office and switched on the computer. It’d been weeks since I sent the email, but I couldn’t help checking daily. Regardless, my new issue of Science Times would be sent via electronic delivery. Gone were the days of In Style magazine and recorded episodes of the latest reality shows.
The Internet connected and began downloading email messages into my in-box. My heart raced as a message from Dr. Robert Edwich at NASA.gov popped up on my screen. My finger tapped restlessly on the mouse as the damn hourglass symbol mocked my impatience. Finally, the blessed white arrow, I clicked and scanned the note.
Dr. Edwich seemed interested in helping me and wanted me to call him. He gave me his office number and the best hours to contact him. I shot a glance at the clock and did the mental math. NASA headquarters were located in Washington, D.C., and East Coast time worked in my favor. It was early, but maybe I could get ahold of him before his day began.
I dialed the phone and waited an eternity for the interoffice connection to go through. I wasn’t sure what I was going I was gto say. It wasn’t like I could stop the research, but I had to know how far off the technology was and then maybe. . . .
“Hello, this is Dr. Edwich,” he said, picking up on the fourth ring.
“Yes, hi. This is Kristina Davenport. I just received your email and thought I would take a chance and call you right away.” My voice sounded steady, but my palm was wet underneath the black receiver.
“Ahh, Dr. Davenport. Yes, hi. I really enjoyed your email, flattered actually, that someone would want to quote me in their thesis. There are so many more experts in the field of space satellite development. Really, I’m just starting my research, haven’t done anything yet to put myself on the map.”
His nasally voice was annoying, but I decided I could deal.
“Please call me Kristina, and no, not at all, you’re exactly what I’m looking for. Someone who has new and fresh ideas.” I couldn’t tell him that everyone else had written me off as crazy.
“Ah well,” he chuckled. “What can I do for you?”
I told him about my interest in satellites and telescopes and asked about the possibilities of expanding their radio range.
“Well, we’re always interested in furthering our reach. As of now, the Hubble telescope will be out of commission in few years, possibly sooner. The second-generation telescope will be more powerful, but at this time, with budget cuts, I’m not sure the project will ever get off the ground. Of course, the length of transmission is always a limiting factor, and we don’t have the funds to pour money into researching alternative power sources.”
I knew all this, of course, but I needed to ask as a segue to my next question. “What about the possibility of using another power source, like nuclear fusion?”
“You’re very well informed. We’ve just started to look into that possibility, but things are in the very early trial stages. I, personally, don’t see how it would work. Atomic power is too unstable. For the last fifty years we’ve tried to use the hydrogen reaction for something other than bombs, but we can’t harness the result. Of course, if we ever could control the reaction, theoretically it would deliver ten times more power than what we are using. Mind-boggling, but too risky, especially during the takeoff. Can you imagine the consequence if . . . well, it doesn’t matter at this point.”
My heart sunk. heart sThey were already in the early trial stages. Yet, he made it sound like they were decades away from finding the technology. There was time. I could come up with a plan. Maybe sway public opinion away from
spending money on “unrealistic technologies.”
“Yes,” I said, needing to see where the research was heading. “Of course, takeoff would be dangerous, but tapping into the nuclear fusion of the stars once the satellite was up in space is a possibility.”
He laughed. “That is stuff of science fiction, Kristina. You’d be better off peddling your idea to Hollywood, rather than NASA.” His tone was decidedly dismissive, and I knew our conversation was limited.
I needed to ask one more question. I needed to see how many years I’d have before the war to end all wars began. “So no plans at this time to use the UFCs?”
It was a shot in the dark. I had no idea what UFCs were, but to ConRad they seemed a viable part of satellite research. If he wasn’t familiar with the term, then I could breathe easy, but if he was, then . . . they were closer than they even realized.
There was a long pause. I checked the minute count on my phone to make sure we were still connected. “Dr. Edwich, did I lose you?”
“Where did you say you were calling from, Dr. Davenport?” His suspicion crackled across the phone line.
It didn’t slip my notice that he was back to using formalities. “I didn’t say.”
“This is no joking manner, Doctor. The Ultra Fusion Capacitor is top secret information.”
My stomach tightened. He had a name for it. God help us. He had a name for it!
“If your research has come up with a way to tap into nuclear fusion in space . . .” His voice trailed off as I keenly listened to the silence from the receiver. “Oh God . . . but, of course, that’s it. There’s no reason to have atomic power during launch. The Ultra Fusion Capacitor could extract the power after takeoff.”
The excitement in his voice traveled thousands of miles to the dark comfort of my office. My hands protectively cradled my baby in my womb.
“What? No! No . . . that won’t work.” I sat up in the office chair and saw the horror of mankind’s fmankinduture begin to descend down the slippery slope to self-destruction.
