Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2)

by Jay J. Falconer

  “Damn, girl. You’re good at that.”

  “You have no idea,” she said with garbled words. Then, she pulled his finger out of her mouth. “I’m skilled at a great many things.”

  “Maybe we should close the door? I’m thinking a little privacy would go a long way right now.”

  She giggled. “I don’t want to spoil you all at once,” she said with a mile-wide smile. “Time for us to get back to work.”

  “Wait! You can’t stop now!”

  “We need to finish before your friends come back.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do—finish.”

  “Not that, you perv. Your face,” she said, letting go of his hand.

  She powered the device on and got back to work, repairing each scar on his face. Ten minutes later, she was done.

  He stood up and walked to the hallway bathroom. She followed. He stared at the mirror, running his hands over his face. “Smooth as a prom queen’s thighs.”

  “Excuse me,” she said, standing next to him with her hands on her hips. “Prom queen?”

  “Sorry, just a figure of speech. You did a great job. I look like a new man.”

  She moved behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He could see her puffy, rose-colored face tucked under his arm from behind. She smiled at him in the mirror, then squeezed him tight. “I don’t want this moment to end.”

  “Sorry, babe, but I have a job to do.”

  “Can’t we stay here forever?”

  “I’d love to, but the guys are waiting for me in the basement. We have to find my brother.”

  He turned and wrapped his arms around her oversized waist. He bent down and gave her a deep, passionate kiss that lasted a full, heart-pounding minute. His body swelled with a new kind of warmth, something he’d never felt before. He never knew he could feel like this.

  She ended the kiss. “I’ll be here when you get back,” she said, squeezing his buns with her hands.

  He was hard as a rock, but didn’t respond. He didn’t want to wreck the moment.

  Her face tightened. She leaned away from him. “You are coming back, right?”

  He didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t tell her the truth, either, so he took the middle ground. “I don’t want this to end, either. I just found you.”

  She leaned in close to him, giving him a long, hard hug. “Me, too. I’m happy for the first time in my life.”

  He stood in her loving embrace, searching for the right words, but couldn’t find them. He had something to tell her, but he didn’t have the courage to speak the words. How could he? He knew it would break her heart. He was minutes away from the trans-dimensional incursion, and if successful, it was likely they’d never see each other again. Just once, he wished things would work out in his favor, but they never did. He figured the universe was sitting back in its easy chair, watching him squirm while he chose between a life of tenderness with her or a life of science with his foster brother. It was clear now that he couldn’t have both. It was tough call, but he knew what he must do.

  Bruno stuck his head in the door. “Doc, it’s time to gear up.”

  He looked down at Carrie Anne and melted into her twinkling eyes. He made a mental picture of the moment, wanting to save it forever in his soul.

  He looked back at Bruno. “Okay, on my way,” he said, letting go of his girl and walking out the door. He stopped in the hallway, then turned to look back at her. He had planned to throw her a kiss with his hand, but he didn’t get the chance.

  She was on her knees with her face buried in her hands, crying.

  So was he, on the inside.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Lucas hopped off the bottom of the basement ladder, trying to muster the courage to keep going. Every cell in his body wanted him to return to the main floor and run to Carrie Anne, but somehow his feet kept moving toward Kleezebee. Duty trumps love, he decided.

  “Everything all right?” the professor asked, holding the Smart Skin Suit in front of him like a tailor waiting for a tardy client.

  “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

  “Your face looks amazing. Excellent repair work.”

  “Thanks, but now I think my heart needs fixing.”

  “I know that it’s difficult to say goodbye. I wish we could have given you more time.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I hope this is all worth it.”

  “Trust me, it’s the only way.”

  Movement caught Lucas’ eye from the next room. Fuji was working just outside the circular chamber that had been constructed out of a dense tritanium wire mesh. The monk was standing on the tips of his toes, putting his child-sized hand on the bottom of a graphene vid-screen. It was the first of six display units that had been mounted on vertical stands. They were arranged into a perfect, six-sided circle with the center of each screen at a height that would allow Fuji to monitor the process while sitting behind the operations console. The new video array would provide three hundred-sixty degrees of time line coverage during the incursion process.

  A second later, the first ninety-eight-inch display lit up with random speckles of static. Lucas watched his brilliant friend work his way around the equipment circle, activating each unit in order from left to right.

  “All right, let’s do this before I change my mind,” Lucas said to Kleezebee, praying that the massive electrical current that would soon energize the chamber and flow through his Smart Skin Suit wouldn’t fry him.

  Kleezebee gave the suit to Lucas. “Fuji has started the initiation sequence. The chamber will be ready in ten.”

  “That didn’t take long,” Lucas said, thinking of Carrie Anne. If the monk wasn’t so damned efficient at his job, he would have had more time with her.

  A deep rumble ripped through the basement, shaking the ground. Lucas lost his balance and bounced off Kleezebee’s chest, then stumbled backward and onto his backside.

  “What the hell was that?” Lucas asked, as the lights dimmed in the lab.

  “I don’t know, but take cover.”

  “Yeah, no shit!”

  Another blast hit, this time knocking over most of the loose items in the lab. Lucas ducked his head, fearing part of the stunner-carved ceiling might fall on top of him, but it didn’t.

  Bruno’s head appeared through the trap door in the ceiling—he was hanging upside down. “Mortar attack! Cyrus has us surrounded!”

  “So much for a few hours,” Lucas said.

  “Where’s Rico?” Kleezebee asked Bruno.

  “Outside, taking a defensive position with his men. I will assist,” he answered, before disappearing from sight.

  Boom! Another impact shook the basement. This time the lights flickered, then flamed out in a halo of sparks. The power supply feeding the chamber’s operations console ran dry as well. The room turned pitch black.

  Lucas crawled along the floor, trying to navigate his way to the ladder in the dark. “We need to Evac, now!” he said, thinking of Carrie Anne—alone and afraid upstairs.

  “Negative. The walls are infused with tritanium rock. This is the safest place for us to be right now.”

  The emergency light in the basement turned on, though its intensity was lower that Lucas expected. Two more blasts pummeled the bunker, making his teeth clack together. “We need to go now, Professor, before we’re buried alive.”

  “Hold your position. That’s an order!”

  “Bullshit. You can stay here, but I’m getting Carrie Anne,” Lucas answered, crawling to the base of the ladder.

  Another blast rocked the foundation, tossing him onto his back. He reached for the first rung of the ladder and grabbed it. He flipped his body onto his stomach, then pulled himself up like a wet rag. He waited for another round to hit, hoping to time his ascent between blasts, but it didn’t come. He scampered up the ladder and flopped himself onto the wooden floor of Kleezebee’s cabin.

  Lucas looked around, but didn’t see his girl. Kleezebee’s cabin was in tatters—its walls
were riddled with structural cracks. Patches of sunlight poured in through the ceiling. A heavy cloud of dust particles hung in the air. He coughed.

  He looked at the hallway entrance—it was still intact. He might be able to make it to his bedroom. Maybe she was hiding under the bed or in the closet. “Carrie Anne?” he shouted, but there was no answer. He called out for her, again; silence was his reply.

  “We have you surrounded,” an amplified voice said from outside. “There’s no escape.”

  “Fuck you, Cyrus!” Lucas yelled, standing up.

  “Is that you, Ramsay?” the voice called out.

  “The one and only,” he said, sidestepping the debris littering the floor. He made it to the hallway arch.

  “You and the professor need to come out with your hands up. You won’t be harmed.”

  “Never going to happen, asshole,” he said, thinking of the escape tunnel in the basement. He just needed to find Carrie Anne, and then slip away undetected with Fuji and the professor. He looked inside each room and checked under the beds and in the closets—no sign of her. He ran to the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain open, but she wasn’t there.

  Lucas ran to the main room, where Kleezebee was standing with his feet surrounded by broken glass. He was leaning against the front wall, looking out the shattered window.

  Lucas bent over and sneaked his way to the professor, taking position on the other side of the window opening. He leaned around the window frame and looked outside. The area in front of the cabin was pockmarked with smoldering impact craters from the mortar rounds. The bloody corpses of Rico’s men were scattered about the landscape—obviously victims of a surgical strike since the cabin was still standing. Beyond them was a battalion of armed men about a hundred yards away, all dressed in the same black gear as the troops in Kristov’s underground base.

  Lucas heard the crackling sound of a dozen trees snapping, when a massive structure rolled into view from the east. It towered above the men, shadowing them with an array of gun turrets sprawled across its multi-platform surface.

  “Holy shit! That’s the Stunner Deck?”

  Kleezebee nodded, his eyes wide. “It must be ten stories tall.”

  “At least you can see and hear it coming.”

  “I wonder if it’s operational?”

  “I really don’t want to find out, do you?”

  “Wouldn’t be my first choice.”

  “We have your people,” Cyrus said. “Come out now, or they’re dead. You have two minutes.”

  “We need to get out there,” Lucas said.

  “Wait,” Kleezebee said, looking back at the center of the room.

  “What? Fuji?”

  “The master fuse,” the professor said, looking back out the window. “The tunnel should still be structurally intact.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Kleezebee nodded. “Just need time.”

  “Are you insane? You heard Bruno. Cyrus has this place surrounded. He won’t get within fifty feet of it.”

  Kleezebee didn’t respond.

  “He’s a monk, not a ninja warrior. You’d be signing his death warrant.”

  “It’s the proper course of action.”

  “No, it’s not. The smart move is to give ourselves up. Wait for a good opportunity to escape. We did it once, we can do it again.”

  Kleezebee shook his head. “Cyrus won’t repeat the same mistake. This time he’ll kill us.”

  “I don’t agree. He could have leveled this place, but didn’t. He wants us alive for whatever reason.”

  “One minute, thirty seconds,” Cyrus called out.

  “Come on, Professor. There’s nothing left to do. We’re fucked.”

  “It’s not time. Not yet,” the professor said, cupping his hands around his mouth. He leaned his shoulder close to the edge of the window. “Show your face, you coward!”

  Cyrus stepped in front of his men. “Well, hello, Professor. Looks like we dance again.”

  “We need to see proof of life.”

  “Look around you, Professor. We have you out-manned and out-gunned. Do you really think you’re in a position to dictate terms?”

  “Show me they’re unharmed, or we’re not moving.”

  Cyrus waved an arm signal. Moments later, two of his men escorted Rico and Carrie Anne into the open, shoving them to the ground on their knees. They aimed their weapons at the back of their heads.

  “As you requested. Proof of life,” Cyrus said. “But not for long, if you don’t give yourselves up.”

  “Do you see Bruno?” the professor asked Lucas.

  Lucas shook his head. “He must have escaped.”

  “No, he’s here somewhere. He would never abandon his post.”

  Moments later, more of Cyrus’ troops—maybe fifty—walked into view from both the right and left flanks; they weren’t wearing the same assault gear like the rest of the enemy. Instead, they were dressed in combat boots, camouflage pants, and no shirt. Each of muscle-bound men looked identical—chiseled face, yellow streak down the center of his hair, and a host of chest scars. Their eyes were solid white, as if their pupils had been removed or cauterized with a soldering gun.

  “What the hell?” Kleezebee asked.

  “They’re all Zack,” Lucas said. “All Zombie Zack. Look at their eyes. That ain’t right,” he added, allowing several moments for the mountain of facts to line up in his head. They did. “Oh, shit. That’s what Yakberry was doing.”

  “Explain.”

  “He was making BioTex from humans.”

  “What?”

  “I think he’s fattening up the locals with free food, then using their excess fat stores as energy for the retrovirus that he delivers with the micro-bee technology. Basically, he’s developed a method to turn ordinary humans into his own version of BioTex by converting every cell in the body to zero-age stem cells, then re-purposing them with the retrovirus. He must have used Zack’s genome as a template to create a slew of highly-trained BioTex warriors. Imagine the army he’ll have if he uses this on all the colonists.”

  “He’d be unstoppable, with a virtually unlimited source of genetic material.”

  “And when his supply runs out here, who’s to say he won’t figure out a way to travel back in time and snatch women from history to use in birthing farms? There’s no end to what he might do.”

  “That might be stretching it a bit.”

  “I know, but you get the point.”

  “Yes. He can easily restock his troops.”

  “But it gets worse. If Yakberry was able to solve the telepathic fingerprint problem, then my guess is that Cyrus can control them with just his mind. He must be planning to use them as ground troops to invade Earth after the orbital assault. The perfect drone army.”

  “Or use them to collect more genetic inventory.”

  “There’s what? Over a million inhabitants remaining on Earth?”

  Kleezebee nodded. “I still don’t understand how he plans to deploy the retrovirus here on a planetary scale. He’d have to inject everyone at the same time. Otherwise, he’d have an uprising on his hands.”

  “Probably gonna use the water supply or tainted food.”

  “No, too slow and uncontrolled.”

  “Then there must be a lot more of this plan that we don’t know.”

  Kleezebee spun around and sat with his back to the wall. He put his head in his hands. “How did we miss this?”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Professor? We’re out of time and out of options.”

  “Lucas is correct,” Fuji said, holding onto the top of the basement ladder so that only his head and neck were visible.

  Kleezebee looked up. “How long have you been hanging there?”

  “Several minutes,” Fuji said. “It seems clear. Time has found a way.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “Yet, the facts state otherwise.”

  “We must have missed an inflection point somewh
ere along the way.”

  “Revised calculations are warranted.”

  “How much time will you need?”

  “Several hours,” Fuji answered.

  “What the hell are you guys talking about?” Lucas asked.

  “Thirty seconds,” Cyrus called out.

  “I will buy you the time you need to finish,” Kleezebee told Fuji, waving a hand. “Stay below. Cyrus doesn’t know you exist and I prefer to keep it that way.”

  The monk didn’t hesitate. He descended the ladder, closing the trap door.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Simple logic,” Kleezebee said, standing up and walking to the area rug that was pulled to one side of the room. He dragged it several feet to the middle, covering the access door to the basement. He turned to Lucas. “You ready? This could get ugly.”

  Lucas nodded. “Let’s do this,” he said, sucking in a deep breath to calm his nerves. It worked.

  “Hold your fire!” Kleezebee yelled out the window. “We’re coming out. Unarmed.”

  Kleezebee opened the front door and walked out with his hands up. Lucas followed.

  Seconds later, the squad of Zack clones surrounded them, pressing in close. A powerful set of fingers grabbed Lucas by the arm, yanking him forward toward Cyrus.

  He looked at the Zack clone that was escorting him, studying its washed-out pupil from the side. He wondered if the replica could actually see, or if it were using some type of collective sonar, or possibly receiving telepathic instructions from Cyrus. Before he could decide, the clone squeezed his bicep three times in rapid succession, then turned its head and looked at Lucas. It winked.

  “Bruno?” Lucas mumbled.

  Bruno’s head turned forward, continuing his march toward Cyrus.

  Lucas figured Bruno must have slipped out of the cabin during the attack and duplicated one of the Zack copies while no one was looking. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to blend in with all the duplicate Zacks scurrying about. Odds were, Cyrus’ attention was focused elsewhere and he probably wasn’t paying close attention to the count. Why would he? Unless Cyrus had visited the bakery and found the BioTex missing, he wouldn’t have a reason to suspect that a replica had infiltrated his team. Lucas wasn’t sure what Bruno had planned, but it was a relief to know that they had help. He wanted to smile, but held it back, fearing Cyrus might see it, wonder why, and the domino effect would begin.