Uncontrollable (Beyond Human)

by Nina Croft

  Come on.

  The woman finally returned. “It will be out back, you can go through there.” She nodded to a room. “Hey, is your good-looking friend still here? You’re not running out on the bill, are you?”

  “He hasn’t left.” Well, that was sort of the truth. “He’ll cover the bill.”

  The door led into an alley that ran along the back of the building parallel to the main road. As she closed the door behind her, a taxi turned into the alley and parked up beside her. “Where to, lady?”

  Good question.

  “Just away from here for now.”

  He shrugged but pulled out and soon they turned onto the road and were driving fast away from the motel. She peered behind her, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. The transponder was still vibrating, but after a couple of minutes, the alarm switched itself off and she breathed easier. She had just over two hours to go. Where would she be out of trouble? “Is there a restaurant?” she asked. “Somewhere on the edge of town?” It occurred to her that there were a couple of things she was going to miss from this time and if she wasn’t planning on coming back…

  “What do you want to eat?”

  “Ice cream and beer.”

  “No problem.”

  He dropped her off at a place with neon signs and a large parking area. It was busy enough that if they did catch up with her, she could lose herself in the crowds. Though the alarm would let her know if they were getting close.

  Two hours later, she let herself out of the side door of the building. She was feeling a little nauseous, no doubt from the twelve varieties of ice cream she had tried. It had taken her mind off Quinn. She’d have a day to decide what to do when she got back. Providing something hadn’t gone wrong in the meantime, and she’d return just to be arrested.

  Right now, she had to find somewhere she could be alone for the shift. She was in a narrow alley running alongside the building, but she couldn’t presume no one would come out of the same door she had just exited. In fact, a few feet farther down, a couple were making out, pressed up against the wall of the building. She needed to get away from here. To her left were the lights of the forecourt, but to the right was darkness. She strode down there. Someone stepped out—two tall men, dressed in leather. Intimidating. She didn’t have time for this. She pulled the gun out of her pocket and aimed it at chest level. “Leave.”

  Their eyes widened but they both backed away, melting into the shadows, and she hurried on. The alley opened onto what looked like an abandoned construction site, a half-built office block at the center. She waited for any movement, but there was nothing, and she crossed the open space and moved into the shelter of a roofless room. Above, the sky was clear, but the stars were invisible in the haze of lights from the town. While she’d been sampling the ice cream, a thought had been nagging at her mind—an idea she wished would go away but which she couldn’t quite banish.

  She glanced at the transponder. The alarm was quiet. She’d lost her pursuers. But she was running out of time. If she was going to make a call, she needed to do it now. Problem was, she still wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. As she reached into her pocket for the cell phone, it beeped.

  She considered ignoring it, but in the end, she pulled it out and stared at the caller ID. Jake. Just the man she’d been planning to call.

  “Quinn?” he said.

  “No, it’s Melody.”

  Jake was silent for a few seconds. “Can I speak to him?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Is he okay? Has there been another attack?” There was no panic in his voice, but a definite sense of urgency.

  “No, but there was someone after us, so we…split up.” Why hadn’t she thought of this beforehand and come up with a story? Or more to the point, why had she answered at all? She knew why. That’s why she had been planning to call this man. Because she could tell Quinn that she had done everything she could feasibly do to help his friends. Then he might agree to stay with her. Be safe.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  She bit her lip. “He’s somewhere safe. For now.”

  “We’re coming out there.”

  Well, that would hardly help. “Really, there’s no need. You won’t find him. He’s gone.”

  “Who are you, Melody Lyons? Where do you come from?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?”

  “You’re from the future. Are you here to destroy us?”

  “If I was, you’d be destroyed.” That wasn’t entirely true. She hadn’t even managed to find them all yet. But it sounded more positive. “I was just here to investigate a time anomaly.”

  “Is that what you do? Investigate…time anomalies.”

  “And try to correct them.”

  “And are we part of your time anomaly?”

  She took a moment to peer around the corner of the building, but there was no one in sight. “Not really. You’re where you’re meant to be. But there’s something associated with you, and I’m guessing you know what it is.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  She heaved a huge sigh. “I have no intention of ‘going there.’ Look, I’ve got to keep on the move. There’s someone following me, and I need to keep ahead of them.”

  “And Quinn?”

  What would work here. Maybe the truth. “I’m trying to keep him safe.” Should she mention the end of the world? She’d leave that one until a little bit later. “I believe my mission has been compromised. Someone is after me. It wasn’t safe for Quinn, so I sent him…” She baulked at the last bit.

  “To the future. Shit. You’ve sent Quinn to the goddamn future. And he agreed?”

  “Not quite. But it was that or watch him die and I didn’t want to do that, Mr. Connelly.”

  He exhaled loudly. “You’re sure he’s safe?”

  “No.” She snapped the word. “But safer than he was here. And I’ll join him as soon as I can and sort everything out.”

  “You’ll bring him back?” She was silent for too long. “Melody?”

  “If he insists.” And if we’re both not arrested. Or dead. “I’m hoping he won’t.”

  “He belongs here.”

  If she was going to do this, she had to do it now. “There’s something else. Something you don’t know but that changes everything.”

  “And that is?”

  “Two years from now, there is going to be some sort of catastrophic event that will destroy most of the Earth and 95 percent of mankind.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Because it’s my history.”

  “We need to stop it.”

  “You can’t stop it.” She took a deep breath. “Look, we don’t know the details, but the center of the blast was somewhere in the USA. The whole of the northern hemisphere was wiped out. Get your friends and move away. Australia is your best chance. I can’t do anything more for you. I’ve already broken just about every rule in the book.”

  “Why?”

  “For Quinn. I love him.” Then she ended the call and dropped the phone to the floor, stamping it under her heel. What else could she say?

  At that moment, she became aware of a throbbing sound coming closer and at the same time, the alarm on her transponder vibrated.

  She peered around but could see nothing out of place. Then something made her glance up. A helicopter was approaching, low in the sky, and heading directly for her. She could make out a man hanging out of the open side, some sort of weapon in his hand. They must have been crisscrossing town looking for her, trying to pick her up on their own transponders. And it looked like they had found her.

  She glanced at her wrist. Seconds to go.

  He was close enough now to see that it was Brent. The bastard had some sort of huge gun aimed directly at the building where she was sheltering. The last of her guilt over not saving him vanished. Bastard.

  She saw a flash of yellow light as the weapon fired. Her body tensed.

  This was it,
and her last thought was that she’d never see Quinn again.

  …

  “Quinn!”

  The sound woke her, and she realized it was her own voice calling out.

  Her whole body was shaking, her mind flooded with the promise of her imminent death. That flash of light. So close.

  But she was alive. She hoped the missile had been precise and hadn’t taken out the restaurant as well. She forced herself to relax, and the shudders that ran through her body finally stopped. She opened her eyes to the dim red glow of the time displacement chamber.

  She’d been pulled out just in time. In another second, she would have been blown to tiny little pieces.

  The lights flashed on and behind her, the machine beeped. She tugged off the arm restraints and then the band from around her head. As she stood up, the doors slid open. The technician was a man she didn’t recognize. And he was alone. There were no armed guards to arrest her, so things were obviously still okay in this time frame. For the moment. But something presumably triggered someone to send Brent and his partner after her. She had a couple of things she needed to do and then she would lie low, hide away for another twenty-four hours until Quinn arrived. After that…

  “You’re new,” she said.

  “I just finished training. Rogers, ma’am.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  He seemed genuine. But if Brent and his partner were going back illegally, they had to have help from someone on this side. All time displacements had to be authorized and logged. Who was giving them their orders? Who was sending them back and why? She doubted very much that her father would have given the order to have her eliminated, whatever he believed she had done.

  She went through the detox procedure, removing her clothes and peeling the towel that was still wrapped around her off. The wound was really nothing more than a graze and wouldn’t need attention. When she came out, dressed in the regulation black jumpsuit, the technician handed her a couple of protein bars. She ate one quickly to settle her stomach and shoved the other in her pocket.

  “Is the captain around?” she asked.

  “He’s off base at the moment. He should be back tomorrow morning.”

  That was lucky. She’d gotten her story sorted for when she had to debrief—she was going to go with the nothing to report scenario—but she preferred to put it off, if she could. And this meant she would be reporting to the second-in-command who was relatively new to the Bureau and didn’t know her so well. There was a good chance her father would recognize that she was lying.

  She headed out and toward the main office. She wanted to know who was around, and what had taken her father off base. Was it coincidence or had someone arranged it?

  The office was a large open plan room with twelve desks, one for each of the special agents plus two desks for the admin staff. The walls were curved, and a huge window filled one side of the room. Right now, it showed Earth, blue and green. There were four agents at their desks. They glanced up and nodded to her.

  “Good trip?” Pete asked.

  “Waste of time,” she replied. “Hey, is Brent around?”

  “On leave. You need something?”

  “It will wait.”

  She crossed the room and put her head around the door to the lieutenant’s office. He and her father were the only two who had their own office space. “Hi, Gabe.”

  He glanced up and smiled. “Melody. How did the job go?”

  “I’ll file my report, but there’s nothing new.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “Yeah. I have a couple of possible leads, though. I’d like to schedule another trip.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the captain when he gets back. He’s in charge of this one.”

  “No problem. Where is he anyway?”

  “The Bhaxian ambassador asked for a meeting. He went over there this morning. He’s expected back tomorrow.”

  Now that was interesting. The ambassador had been around when she came from the last shift. She was betting the Bhaxians would quite happily bribe a few corrupt Bureau officers to get what they wanted, whatever the hell that was. She still had no clue, but it had to be tied in to Quinn’s people somehow. And the time machine. Where the hell had it come from? Who had sent it back and why? “Okay, thanks. I’ll go do that report.”

  She sat at her desk and quickly filed a report, pretty much saying nothing of any interest had happened. That almost made her smile. It was hard to believe how much she’d actually fitted into four days and three nights. The plane crash seemed an age ago.

  She went into the system and reviewed the logged time displacements. There was nothing recorded for Brent’s trip. She knew the time from his partner’s transponder. That meant someone else inside the agency was working with them. Her money was on one of the technicians. Though another agent could have faked the permissions and changed the logs.

  She looked around her. No one was paying her any undue attention.

  A wave of exhaustion washed over her. She hadn’t slept much in the last few days. Maybe she should go get some rest. She considered going back to her apartment but decided that if anyone wanted to find her, that was where they would look. And if anyone did want to find her, then she didn’t want to be found. She slipped the transponder from her wrist, disabled it and put it into her pocket, so no one could track her.

  “I’m going to head home and catch up on my sleep,” she said to the room in general as she stood up.

  When she left the office, she walked in the opposite direction. Ten minutes later, she stood outside the door to her father’s apartment. She punched in the code, hoping her dad hadn’t changed it since she’d used it last. Luckily, the door slid open. A few hours’ sleep and then she would work out what she needed to do next. Neither she nor Quinn would be safe in any time unless she managed to root out the traitors in the Bureau and expose whoever was paying them. Something was teasing at the back of her mind. But she was tired and couldn’t get her brain to focus.

  She’d sleep, then plan.

  Her father kept a room made up for her, and she dimmed the lights, slipped under the sheet fully clothed, and was asleep in seconds. Her dreams were of Quinn, whirling through time and space.

  She woke hours later, starving and with an idea of what she had to do next and where she might find the answers.

  Would Quinn hate her? Although she’d done what she could for his friends, all the same she had an inkling that he wouldn’t be happy with her. Hard luck. He shouldn’t have told her he loved her. That meant he was hers to protect.

  She made herself some breakfast and then spent a couple of hours on the info-system in her father’s office, looking up some old data, trying to piece together what might have happened. Obviously, anyone who had witnessed the Cataclysm of 2020 had been killed in the blast, along with just about everyone on Earth. One theory was it had been a nuclear war initiated by the North Koreans that had triggered an automatic response, then a chain reaction, and bang the world had gone up.

  There were other theories, but none that tied in with Quinn’s friend’s mysterious mission in 2020. Was the mission responsible for the destruction of Earth? Or had they been sent back to try and prevent it and failed?

  And who had sent them back?

  Maybe the answers were with the Tel-group. Clearly, they were connected somehow. But no way would they reveal the secrets of any job they were employed to do. They had a code of conduct. No disclosure. Quinn could maybe read their minds, but then that was presumably a two-way thing. Besides, maybe they wouldn’t know the answers. But they would know who had employed them, and that might get them a little closer to the truth. If all else failed, approaching them was an option.

  Finally, when she’d got as much information as she could find, she went to the safe and pressed in the code—it was the date her father had found her down on Earth. She slipped the laser pistol inside into her pocket. She had an idea it might be useful if only to stun Quinn if he
was too vocal. After that, she left the apartment. Her father was due back and she didn’t want to see him. She made her way to one of the recreation centers and took a private booth on the viewing platform. She spent the next few hours staring into space and trying to get her ideas formulated into some sort of plan. When it was close to the time she expected Quinn, she stood up and stretched.

  Time to go see what had caused the end of the world.

  Chapter Thirty

  Someone was banging him on the head with a blunt instrument. Over and over again. That was the only explanation Quinn could come up with for the constant battering of pain.

  Shit.

  Keeping his head very still, he went to move his hand, and couldn’t. He was strapped down. For a second, panic threatened to overwhelm him, and he forced his breathing to slow. What had happened?

  Mel had told him she loved him.

  He’d come out of the bathroom and someone had attacked him from behind. He wanted that to be all he remembered, because something else flickered on the edge of his memory. He’d come around briefly, and she’d been kneeling beside him, looking guilty as hell. Which led him to the conclusion that…Mel had knocked him out.

  His brain scrambled for ideas and came up with nothing good. He couldn’t put this off any longer.

  He opened his eyes. And blew out his breath.

  He was nowhere he’d ever been before. He tried to turn his head but a band around his forehead held him in place, and his panic started rising again.

  “Mel!”

  His voice echoed around the chamber. He concentrated on the bits he could see. The light was dim, a dull glow emanating from a red light high up in the corner. The room appeared to be about ten feet by ten feet, with curved silver walls. He couldn’t make out a door, but it could be behind him. Other than that, it appeared to be empty except for the chair he was attached to, and another identical one next to him, also empty.