Quinn ran raggedly forward, lowering her shoulder. She slammed into the figure, knocking it back out onto the ice. The figure shrieked as the biohazard suit was torn wide open. Quinn watched as the figure, and now she could see that it was a man, began freezing from the inside out.
The figure convulsed, the same black coloration spreading over his flesh, covering his face. Quinn removed the machete from the man’s chest as he twisted on the ground. She spotted forms darting down the street. Dropping low, she gripped the machete in one hand, the other retrieving the frozen man’s gun. Then she crouch-ran laterally, using a cluster of cars for cover. She dropped behind a small vehicle and checked the man’s fallen rifle which was padded, wrapped with what looked like several layers of some kind of insulation.
CRACK! CRACK!
Bullets ricocheted off the car, obliterating the windows as Quinn ducked. She crawled forward and dropped to the ground and spotted an attacker on the other side of the street. She squeezed off two shots.
One round flew wide, but the other was true.
The attacker’s head vanished in a red mist.
Two more figures appeared and opened fire on her with automatic weapons.
She fell back and waited, then rose and fired at them again.
Her shots scattered the figures and then she was on her feet, charging headlong across the street.
She dropped the rifle and twirled the machete like a baton.
One of the attackers sprung at her and Quinn slammed her blade into the man’s rifle, sinking the metal into the insulation cocooning the gun, wrenching it from his hands. The man, hidden behind a heavy parka and bicycle helmet, roared in anger. He threw a punch that Quinn slipped under. She swiped the machete across his chest, which didn’t mortally wound him, but sliced open his parka and undergarments, exposing a section of bare flesh.
The man crabbed back, screaming, as if on fire.
Quinn felt movement and turned as the other attacker fired at her. She dove into a snow drift as bullets quicksilvered off a nearby car, one bouncing off a side panel and thumping into the first attacker’s chest, doubling him over. Quinn reached out and grabbed the first attacker’s rifle off the ground, emptying it in one quick motion, riddling the other attacker who swayed as if drunk before collapsing onto the ice.
Dropping the weapon, Quinn’s eyes swept the streets.
Nothing stirred.
She sat there in the sub-zero temperatures, watching whirlwinds of snow dance across the street. She waited for several terrible minutes, terrified about Renner’s condition, but worried that there might still be a sniper or two waiting. Nothing moved and so Quinn emerged from the snow drift and rumbled back across the street, machete in hand. She called out to Renner, but there was no response.
Entering the building, she was shocked to see that he was gone. In his place was a figure with a slight frame that she assumed was a woman. The female figure was partially hidden inside a heavy coat, goggles, and what looked like a plastic face shield centered by a respirator. A shotgun was cradled in the woman’s hands.
“Drop the fucking blade, sunshine,” the woman said.
3
Take Down
Quinn threw up her hands in a gesture of goodwill, but did not immediately drop the machete.
“Where is he?” Quinn asked. “Where’s the man I left here?”
“You’ve got three seconds before I aerate you,” the female figure said, racking the shotgun. “Drop. The. Fucking. Blade.”
Quinn dropped the machete.
“How many did you take down out there?” the stranger asked, moving alongside Quinn.
“As many as they had.”
“Where’d you come from dressed like that?” the female figure asked, wagging the shotgun.
“It’s a really long story,” Quinn replied. “Where is Renner?”
“In a safe place.”
“You’re gonna take me there.”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“Little of both I guess,” Quinn said.
“I’m calling the shots,” the woman said.
“So call them.”
“Get your ass moving.”
The female figure angled the gun and gestured for Quinn to start moving down a hallway. Quinn did, noting the drag marks on the snowy ground. It looked like someone had pulled a body this way.
At the end of the hallway was a metal door. The female figure, keeping her distance from Quinn, slammed the butt of her shotgun against a nearby wall four times. The metal door opened to reveal a second female figure, a young Asian woman holding a rifle, her face partially concealed inside a parka with a hood. The two women caucused for several moments, the first one discussing the situation with the second, detailing how she’d seen Quinn confront and dispatch the attackers on the outside.
The second woman listened and nodded, gesturing to Quinn who strode forward, spotting a set of stairs that disappeared down into the ground. The air was warmer on the other side of the metal door and humid, like an indoor pool.
“You can take off your helmet if you want,” the second female figure said. “It’s safe. Besides, you’re not going anywhere.”
Quinn did so, as she began moving down the staircase, prodded by the second female, listening to the echo of machinery and gears pumping and grinding somewhere off in the distance. The air was heavy with the funk of ozone and machine oil.
“Your man friend’s safe now, but he’s messed up pretty bad,” the second female said, from behind Quinn.
“He lost an arm.”
“Did you take it off?”
“It was either that or let him freeze to death,” Quinn replied.
“Flasher.”
“What?” Quinn asked.
“That’s what we call people who get caught outside and exposed. Who get … flash frozen.”
The staircase ended at a landing and Quinn stopped and looked back at the second woman who’d now removed her hood. The Asian woman couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, fresh-faced with a knot of coffee-colored hair that was coiled so tightly atop her head that it looked like a serpent waiting to strike. She quickly patted Quinn down, searching for weapons.
“Who are you?” Quinn asked.
“Who’s asking?”
“My go-by’s Quinn.”
“Ava.”
“Where am I, Ava?”
“Under the streets of Old Tampa.”
“Winter came early this year, huh?”
“It’s August.”
“That’s impossible,” Quinn replied.
“That’s what I thought,” Ava said, betraying no emotion. “I thought that back in April when we were supposed to have thirteen hours of daylight and then I thought it in late-May when we were supposed to have sixteen. But things went the other way. By July we only had four hours and as of last week, we were down to thirty.”
“Hours?”
Ava shook her head. “Minutes. Thirty minutes of fucking sunlight.”
A few seconds of silence stretched between them and then Ava waved her rifle at Quinn who swiveled and continued on, guided by Ava’s directions. She plodded forward through a subterranean maze of tunnels and corridors lit by bare bulbs dangling from a single strand of wire overhead.
They soon mounted a short staircase and strolled across a rickety catwalk that curled around the thick metal walls and a steel door that were shingled with warning signs, including a faded orange and yellow sign that read “Caution – High Radiation Area.”
Quinn pointed to the steel door which was warm to the touch and vibrating. “What’s behind door number one?” she asked.
“None of your business,” Ava replied.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Absolutely not,” Ava said.
“What year is it?”
“Are you new around here?” Ava asked, incredulous. “There are no more years.”
They exited the catwalk to a hallway that ended at a black
metal door. Ava slammed her shotgun against the door and it opened to reveal a large interior space, a bullpen demarcated by several dozen cubicles.
“Home sweet home,” Ava sighed, nudging Quinn forward with the barrel of her rifle.
Quinn entered the bullpen which was filled with sixty or seventy people engaged in all manner of activities. There were several people on one side of the space poring over gizmos and small machine parts on a table, three more constructing small electronic instruments, and a dozen or so organizing and preparing vegetables and other food near a wash basin. On the other side of the space more people were examining what looked like digital maps on a bank of computer monitors. The one striking thing about everyone? They were all women. There wasn’t a man in sight.
What were they? Bandits? Ordinary, average scavengers? Several of the women appeared to be armed, but Quinn was sore in body and mind. Truth was, she was tired of fighting. If they wanted to scrap with her, she wouldn’t have much energy to put up a fight.
A tall woman near the middle of her years with closely cropped gray hair, and dressed in a compression shirt, looked up from the bank of computer monitors. She squinted over and moved toward Quinn, who thought that, with her height and narrow, elongated features, she resembled a Doberman pinscher. The woman drew to within a few feet of Quinn, paying particular attention to the Syndicate armor she was wearing. Ava moved forward and whispered to the woman, mumbling about what the first woman had seen upstairs.
The tall woman pointed at Quinn’s armor. “Why are you wearing that?”
“I liked the color,” Quinn said, holding the gaze of those assembled, giving no ground. “Thought it went with the natural highlights in my hair.”
Quinn smirked. The tall woman did not.
“What’s your name?” the tall woman asked.
“Quinn.”
“I’m Ms. Bishop,” the tall woman said. “The man we found you with, the injured one—”
“His name’s Renner. He was in my unit.”
“A unit of what?”
“Marines.”
Murmurs rose up from the others assembled upon hearing this. The tall woman exchanged nervous glances with her compatriots as Ava moved around, flanking Quinn.
“The Marines are all dead,” Ava said.
“Not where I come from.”
“And where would that be?” Ms. Bishop asked.
“A galaxy far, far away.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Was that not obvious?” Quinn replied.
“Does this situation look like a laughing matter?”
“In my experience, ma’am, the worst of situations sometimes call for a little levity.”
Ms. Bishop’s eyes narrowed. “Are there more of you?” she asked.
“Sure are,” Quinn replied, stepping around Ms. Bishop as Ava grabbed her arm. Quinn looked down at Ava’s hand on her arm. “I’d advise you to remove that.”
“We’ve got more questions,” Ava said.
“And I’ve got plenty of answers. But first I need to see my friend.”
4
Cody’s Loop
Cody remembered being embraced in a wall of the purest white light he’d ever seen and then he was falling, plunging down into a swirling pool of nothingness, the abyss of deep space, he imagined.
The turbulence blurred his vision, which disturbed him as he’d been hoping he could at least glean something of use from the trip through time.
The best he was going to get, though, was a skewed sensory perspective and nothing more than a person having a near death experience could describe. Internal memories of what it was like, but no concrete and observable evidence that could help them gain control over time travel. The worst part, however, was that the trip felt like it was never going to end. Cody wanted to hurl, but couldn’t. When he tried to move his arms, it was as if he wasn’t connected to his body anymore.
His vision clouded over and he wondered how long it would last. Next, his sight disappeared. Yet, he felt himself continuing to soar through darkness, still conscious and aware that he was in transit. How long was this going to go on? Possibly forever.
Panic seized him and then, when he could take no more, he spotted something, an immense form resolving in the swirling murk below. What looked like a pool of water, darkness upon darkness. He braced himself and fell feet first into the water which was as thick as pudding. The substance covered his legs, his torso, his mouth. He couldn’t breathe and just before he blacked out—
WHAM!
He rose up screaming to find himself back in a familiar place.
A laboratory.
The one he’d once worked on back on Earth.
His body still felt like it didn’t belong to him. Shock began to take over. Until, without warning, the sensory overload ceased, and Cody came to, with full feeling in his limbs once more and full sight of his lab back on Earth.
He sat there blinking, checking his body, his surroundings. Making sure he hadn’t imagined everything. It was real. He was back in time, deep underground and inside the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research where Cody’s specialty was using accelerating science to determine if extra dimensions not only existed, but if they could be harnessed to create quantum black holes.
Cody remembered that many had scoffed at his research, refusing to believe his theories concerning the quantum black holes. Money had always been tight, but they’d been able to get this far.
No one even believed they would succeed fully. But they were able to stay funded through all the ancillary and accidental discoveries that came to light through the process of hunting a physicist’s version of Moby Dick.
At worst, they could finally achieve a workable theory on quantum gravity, thus bridging the gap between quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Truth be told, even Cody didn’t think they could achieve their goal since a rip in time and space had been proven to decay and instantly disappear from existence. But if he were able to create a miniature black hole for even a microsecond, he could capture a glimpse at what he really wanted to know. That is, if quantum wormholes were even possible.
He stood and circled the lab, inspecting his alcove and desk, remembering the many objects and devices he thought he’d never lay eyes on again. Everything looked exactly the same as he remembered it, and he began wondering if he’d come to the very place he’d left when it all started.
That was, if quantum wormholes were even possible.
His true desire was to travel to another dimension or reality, or even achieve faster than speed of light travel. Possibly even a kind of viewer into alternate dimensions. He had vague ideas of what such a viewer might allow him to experience or witness, but if he could get to the smallest and most reachable of milestones in getting a peek at what was behind the curtain of the universe, he was sure he would see or discover something that would drive the larger research forward and therefore be worth the effort. Then the others would have no choice but to see just how important his research was.
Of course, these were the things that preoccupied him in the days before the invasion. But then he’d been made privy to a secret, images beamed back from some of the scientific community’s latest and greatest space telescopes. What appeared to reveal a vast armada of space vessels emerging out of what was presumed to be a wormhole.
He was simultaneously overjoyed and terrified, because the images confirmed that wormholes did indeed exist. He threw himself back into his work even as the others around him panicked, alerting the governments of the world, telling them to make ready for what was to come. But that was then, wasn’t it? He’d been sent back in time, but how far? Was he back before the aliens had arrived? If so, he had a chance, he had an opportunity to right wrongs and make sure that preparations were made so that the invasion could be stopped.
His mind reeled at the possibilities of his trip through time. Had the others come back w
ith him, or was he alone? Was Quinn out there somewhere, searching for him? Searching for Samantha? Or was he experiencing an alternate timeline, a new kind of reality, his own personal loop. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the one that suggested all possible alternative histories and futures are possible, was the only thing that made sense. If that was true, his being back would mean he did indeed have a chance to change everything. Which meant the first thing he had to do was leave the lab and find her … find a way to track down and confront Quinn.
“I have to find her!” he shouted.
He looked sideways to see something he hadn’t noted before. A small group of physicists who were busy doing their own work. They glanced over at him. One of them yawned and another circled a finger around his head as if to tell the others that Cody was crazy, and then they all went back to their work.
The fact that they were all still here proved that he’d come back to the days before the invasion. That meant he still had time. I’ll show them, Cody thought to himself, casting a final glance at the other scientists. I’m gonna go out there and prove that my theories were right. And then I’m gonna save the friggin’ world.
Cody pumped his fist and the other physicists glanced over again, but returned to their work as if they were disinterested. They didn’t care if he’d succeeded. It meant nothing for their work. Only he would get the acclaim. Cody began breathing heavy, overcome by the moment and the enormity of the situation. He returned to his alcove and slumped at his desk.
Either the transit had done a number on his body, or he was over stimulated. Even as he sat, insane vertigo struck him, and he fought off the sensation that he was about to faint. Doubt filled his mind. He wondered whether the whole thing was an illusion or some kind of false memory implanted by the aliens, but then he felt the cold metal of the desk and the stale air of the subterranean lab and he realized it was all real. It had to be!
Instinctively, he reached into a pocket and pulled out his cellphone, but there was no reception, he was too far underground. Remembering something else he’d used in the past, Cody moved across the lab until he was standing before a tablet-sized device that was synched to a global network called Hyperboria. The reach of the network was vast, and Cody typed in Quinn’s name and waited for the machine to search and provide results.
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