Time of Treason

by Susan M. MacDonald

  “As you say on this planet, suit yourself.” Anna grabbed the pendant with her free hand and raised it to shoulder height. There was no time to react. The blast hit Riley squarely between the eyes.

  40

  The Others spoke inside Alec’s head. Rhozan and maybe others, it was hard to tell. Every time Alec thought he was hearing them clearly enough to decipher what they were muttering about, something would change, like the tone, or the words, or the level of sound. It was puzzling and frustrating. Alec knew there was something he absolutely had to hear, but for the life of him he couldn’t quite make it out. He wished that everyone around him on the ship would shut up and let him concentrate. He was dimly aware of someone holding his hand and a tiny part of his mind was tugging at his consciousness trying to gain his attention, but the compulsion to block everything out and figure out what the Others were saying was far stronger.

  He hadn’t heard them in the Base or the tunnels below. But as the ship disengaged from the underground port and flung itself into the deep ocean in a mad scramble to escape the island’s collapse, the first tentative whispers had begun. At first, he’d been too absorbed with the residual panic of escaping the tunnels and the realization that rips were following their flight to freedom, but as the minutes passed, the whispering got louder. His attention had been momentarily averted twice. Once when Tyrell dropped the bomb that a Terran had contact with the Others and his sudden fear of discovery had blocked out the sound and taken precedence. The second time occurred when he’d had to grab onto Riley to prevent her from falling. For a heartbeat or so, with her warmth in his arms, the whispering ceased. It had rebounded double in strength a second later and he’d shoved her away in an attempt to hear the voices more clearly.

  Now the voices were just out of range, as if he was at the back of his old math classroom and Mr. Thompson was speaking to the board instead of the thirty students, most of whom couldn’t care less about the lesson. He was getting angry. This was ridiculous. He had to hear what the Others were saying.

  He slipped his hand into his pocket and gripped his orb in an unconscious gesture. The voices instantly stopped. The silence was deafening. He felt as if he’d woken up from a long sleep. He looked around.

  Anna was holding his arm in a grip that was almost painful. They weren’t in the main room of the ship anymore. He was leaning up against the wall in a narrow hallway of gleaming brown metal and the ambient lighting was a dull, frightening red. Riley was sprawled on the floor at his feet. Her fingers were still entwined with his but lifeless. He tugged at her but her eyes didn’t open and she didn’t seem to notice.

  “What’s the matter with—” he got no further.

  “She tried to injure you,” Anna interrupted. She reached over and pulled Riley’s limp fingers from Alec’s grip. Riley’s arm dropped to the floor. “We don’t have time. We must leave.”

  Alec frowned. He couldn’t remember what had been going on but he doubted that Riley would have tried to hurt him in any way. For one thing, she was so small. Even a well-placed kick wouldn’t do much more than bruise him.

  “Anna, she wouldn’t…,” he started. “You must be mistaken.”

  “I am not. She tried to inform Kholar of your abilities,”

  Anna spoke urgently. Alec’s stomach dropped. “She is jealous of your skill. You must know this. I managed to stop her speaking to him in time but she followed us to this corridor and threatened to tell everyone on this ship you can shift in time. I had to silence her.”

  Alec couldn’t believe his ears. He knew that Riley was pissed he was stronger and more capable. She hadn’t actually tried to hide it. But would she go as far as to jeopardize his life?

  “You do not believe me,” Anna said in response to his frown. “I understand. You have feelings for this female. However, I speak the truth.”

  “Wake her up and I’ll ask her.” Alec tried to tug his arm away from Anna but her grip was stronger than he expected and he wasn’t able to fully pull away. “I can’t believe for a second she’d try and get me killed.”

  Anna glanced upwards at the ceiling. A look of fear crossed her face for a second. “There is no time. We must leave.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “This ship is about to be destroyed. We must teleport to safety.”

  “Destroyed by what?” Alec gasped.

  “The Others. They are searching for you. Any moment they will contact this ship and the hull breach will cause massive instantaneous collapse.”

  Cripes. Alec reeled. He had no idea things had gotten so bad. Why didn’t he know what was going on? The last few minutes were completely blank. What had he been doing? Puzzled, he reached down towards Riley’s hand. It didn’t matter now. He’d sort things out later. Now, he and Riley had to get off this ship. Immediately.

  Anna grabbed his wrist before he could make contact with Riley’s fingers. “You must not. She cannot come with us.”

  “She has to. You just said the ship was going to be destroyed,” Alec cried. He tugged but he couldn’t break her grip on either his wrist or his other arm. He wrenched himself as hard as he could but her hold on him didn’t budge.

  “Anna,” he began, “this is crazy. I’m not leaving her.”

  “I will not transport someone who risks your life. She has turned against you, Alec. Her loyalties are with the Others. Only I can protect you.”

  “No, Anna, don’t,” Alec yelled.

  Too late. Before the last word was completely out of his mouth, Anna began the teleportation process. Alec’s stomach dropped to his knees with horror. He didn’t have time to shout a warning to Riley, kick her awake or anything. The ship around him slipped away and he was sucked into the uncomfortable sensations of in and out, through and around that accompanied moving in space. A horrible wrenching sensation erupted inside him, as if part of himself was being pulled out and left behind. It was a completely new and highly uncomfortable sensation. There was something completely wrong about it too. He reacted instinctively. Mentally he gathered his resources. He aimed at the source of the pull. He had to stop whatever it was that was tearing him apart and get back to Riley. He could overcome Anna, he just had to.

  Anna stopped him. How she managed to connect inside his head, Alec didn’t know. Suddenly, her presence was everywhere. He fought as hard as he could but he didn’t know the trick to getting her out. She was too strong, too forceful. Reeling, Alec’s mental defenses crumbled underneath the onslaught.

  41

  The world around them winked into existence but Alec paid no attention. He fell to his knees, hands clasping his head, ill beyond description. His forehead hit the ground. Everything tilted wildly around him. Bile rose in his throat. He retched.

  Someone’s cool hands stroked his forehead and pulled him against a shoulder. Alec squeezed his eyes shut from the glare of bright lights and leaned into the soothing presence next to him. He felt awful.

  Slowly the illness passed. The dizziness subsided and the urge to throw up lessened. The pounding behind his eyes dropped to a dull roar. Gently, he pulled himself away from the person who was cradling him and blinked several times.

  A blond woman, pale and regal-looking withdrew her arms. Her smile was gentle and warm. “How do you feel, Alec?” she asked.

  “Kinda sick,” Alec said quietly. Even moving his mouth to speak made him feel queasy. “What happened?”

  “You were ill. The effects of the attack, I’m afraid.” The woman stood up and looked around. Alec remained on his knees at her feet. His fingers tugged at the long grass beneath him. It was too bright to look around properly. “Fortunately, she did not cause any permanent harm.”

  “Who didn’t?” Alec’s brain was muddled. He had no real recollection of what had just happened. The blond woman looked familiar but he couldn’t quite place her.

  “Riley.” The blond woman touched Alec’s hair in a stroking fashion. “You knew her briefly. Another Terran, taken over by the Others to
do their bidding. I was fortunate enough to stop her in time.”

  Alec struggled to remember. The name Riley was familiar. He couldn’t quite picture her. The Others were familiar too. A shudder of fear coursed down his back at the mention of that name. “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing up at the blond woman. “I can’t remember who you are.”

  “I am Anna, your Guardian,” the woman replied. In her right hand she was holding something on a chain. She held out her left. “Try to stand up, Alec. We have a ways to go.”

  A warm sense of companionship, and something more primitive and urgent, filled Alec’s heart the second he clasped her hand. Now he remembered her. Trusted her. Loved her. Of course she’d saved him. She always did. He got unsteadily to his feet.

  He cracked open his eyes. He was standing on a high rocky hill, overlooking the ocean. A heavy bank of grey clouds was off to his left but directly overhead the sun was high and bright. Seagulls swooped above, their plaintiff cries echoing over the age-worn cliffs. A brisk breeze, laden with sea smells tugged at his hair and overalls. There was nothing civilized in any direction: no buildings, no airplanes, no boats. Alec had no inkling of where he was, but it didn’t matter. Anna was with him.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Newfoundland,” she replied. “Shortly transport will arrive and we will leave this planet.”

  The idea of leaving Earth didn’t faze Alec for a moment. He felt numb and disoriented and couldn’t be sure that leaving was something out of the ordinary. Everything inside his mind was so jumbled, it was hard to sort through what was memory and what was imagination. He struggled for a moment against an unwillingness to try and think about her. “And this Riley person, what happened to her?”

  “She and her accomplice, Darius Finn, were captured,” Anna replied. She let go of the crystal pendant around her neck and the sun caught the prisms inside turning it to millions of microscopic rainbows. She raised a hand over her eyes and peered back down the hill towards the windstunted shrubs, rocks, and grass. Far below them, the valley was blanketed by the approaching clouds’ shadows.

  “They were working together and were a danger to you and the mission you serve. They joined forces to attack you and render you incapable of completing your mission. They managed to injure your mind, hence your memory difficulties. It was fortunate that I intervened. Now you do not have to worry any longer, Alec.”

  Alec frowned. The names were familiar and tugged at him somewhere deep inside his mind but the more he tried to remember them, the more uncomfortable he felt. He shuddered.

  “Why not? Won’t they try again?”

  “I have taken care of it as I always do,” Anna replied. She reached out a finger and traced a path across Alec’s forehead, erasing the worries in his mind with her touch. “They cannot hurt you any longer. Both of them are dead.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m a very fortunate person. My husband has always been very encouraging of my aspiration to be a writer and pushed me to stop dreaming about it and make it a reality. My parents fostered the belief I could do anything I wanted, and my children seem to believe it too. I’m surrounded by wonderful friends who cheer me on with every step in the journey towards getting published. Even my dogs don’t mind the hours I sit typing.

  I’ve also been lucky that my provincial writer’s association (WANL) granted me a mentor, who was tough (but correct) in reviewing the first draft of the first book of this series. My editors at Breakwater (Annamarie Beckel – who nursed the first book through a second complete revision – and James Langer, editor for this second book) were both nurturing and instructive and I owe them a debt of gratitude for taking a chance on me.

  Despite the fact there is a very limited number of books published every year and competition to be one of those books is fierce, I have yet to meet one author (even those in the stratosphere of success) who hasn’t been encouraging and welcoming. They are too numerous to mention here, but I remember every single one of you.

  SUSAN MACDONALD’s, Edge of Time, the first book

  in The Tyon Collective series, won The Moonbeam Award

  (US) for best young-adult science fiction. She is married,

  has two children, two dogs, a fluctuating number of

  goldfish, and lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

  www.susan-macdonald.com