Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series)

by Jay J. Falconer

  It all pointed to one thing—she was helpless and at the medical team’s mercy. If she continued to fight them, they’d stop listening and take even stronger measures to control her. She needed to diffuse the situation. “Okay, Nora, but stay by the door. Otherwise, I’m gonna totally freak out here.”

  “I will, I promise. I’ll be only two seconds away if you need me,” Nora said, removing her protective gloves, mask and goggles as she walked away. She put them in a collection bin near the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Nora stepped outside and was instantly surrounded by the guys. It felt like a swarm of locusts had just invaded Rancho de Nora.

  Derek spoke first. “How’s Emily?”

  “She’s a little nervous, but they’re giving her something to help her calm down.”

  “We can’t just leave her in there all alone. One of us should be in there,” Derek said, starting for the double doors.

  Nora stopped him. “No, we need to let the medical team do their job. If you go in there, you’ll just be in the way. Emily’s in good hands.”

  “But what if they have questions about what happened to her?”

  “If they do, Emily can tell them what they need to know. Otherwise, the doctor will come ask us directly. With that said, I don’t think that’s going to happen because I filled Dr. Montoroli in on the way here. She’s pretty well up to speed.”

  “It’s for the best,” Duane said to Derek, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

  “I know, but it’s hard to just stand here. I feel so useless.”

  “We all do,” Miller added.

  “But there’s one more thing,” Nora said, pausing to make eye contact with everyone. “Emily said they’re coming back. The Orange Men. In one of their ships.”

  Derek’s eyes flew wide. “Seriously? In a ship?”

  “How does she know?” Miller asked.

  Nora exhaled, taking time to let the words line up in her head. “Well, that’s the strange part. She told me that her baby told her.”

  “What?” Derek asked.

  Nora nodded. “Apparently, she can communicate with her son. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but Emily certainly believes it.”

  “But the question is, do you believe her?” Duane asked in a slow, steady voice.

  “Yes, I think on some level, I do. Or maybe I just want to believe. Either way, there’s no way to prove any of this, but we need to take precautions nonetheless. We all know that when it comes to Emily, normal rules don’t apply.”

  Duane nodded. “You got that right. Plus, if her son has special gifts like her, there’s no telling what he can do.”

  “Yep. Agreed,” Nora said, letting her shoulders slump as her mind turned to thoughts about her brief time in the Orange Men’s control room.

  Earlier, she’d tried to explain some of her experience to Duane, Jim and Derek on the ride to the clinic, but couldn’t find the proper words. It was all a little hard to believe, even for her. She’d seen it with her own eyes, but just because you see something firsthand doesn’t mean you really believe it. “I’m not sure what’s all going on here, but that poor girl is under a tremendous amount of stress. I don’t know how she keeps herself together.”

  “That’s why one of us should be in there,” Derek said, again taking steps toward the exam room doors.

  Duane reacted quickly, grabbing Derek’s arm and stopping his advance. “You gotta let them do their thing in there. Emily will be fine. She’s tougher than all of us put together.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Miller said, pulling his sidearm from the tuck inside his pants. He checked the magazine clip and readied the chamber, then looked at Nora. “I know you told us earlier that you didn’t spend much time investigating the Orange Men’s facility, but do you think they’re capable of following her here?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you. However, they have been showing up in random places where she is, so they must have a way to track her location.”

  “Okay then, Mr. Marine. Tell me how?” Nora asked with attitude.

  “In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter?” Duane said, acting like he was stepping in to stop a brewing scuffle.

  “No, not unless there’s some way to neutralize it,” she answered.

  “Since she travels naked, we know it’s not technology-based. Otherwise, we’d see it on her. They must be using something else. My guess is biological,” Miller said.

  “You mean like DNA tracking?” Derek asked.

  “Possibly,” Miller said. “All we know for sure is that they have plenty of advanced tech based on what Nora told us earlier. So we can’t rule out anything at this point.”

  “Like I said, what does it matter how they are doing it?” Duane said.

  Derek nodded. “Duane’s right. It doesn’t matter how. Just that they are. Somehow. It’s not like we can do anything about it anyway.”

  “Okay then, what do we do now?” Nora asked Miller, sounding a little miffed.

  “That’s easy. We stay frosty. If they’re coming back, we need to be ready. It’s really the only option at the moment.”

  “Copy that,” Duane said, raising the shotgun and holding it at an angle across his chest. “I’ll take first watch.”

  “Here? In a public clinic full of women and children?” Nora asked Miller, not waiting for him to answer. “You can’t be serious.”

  “We don’t have a choice, even with all the civilians onsite. We stay close to Emily and protect her.”

  “And her baby. My baby,” Derek added with confidence.

  “Yes, of course. That’s a given.”

  Derek stepped forward. “What about me? Don’t I need a gun, too?”

  Miller dropped his head, hesitating. Then his eyes returned to Derek. “All right, but you’ll have to wait until we can pick up the AR-15s I have stashed at my place. For now, we’ll rotate shifts and weapons as needed.”

  “It’s about time we kick some ass,” Derek said.

  “Easy, Sport. Until we know more about their numbers and plan of aggression, we need to slow it down,” Miller said, pointing at the doors behind Nora. “Our number one goal is to keep that girl in there safe and not get any of us killed in the process. And we can’t do that by starting a firefight with limited ammo and weapons. If they do return in a ship, then it seems logical to assume we’ll be facing an overwhelmingly superior force. A straight-up fight in a situation like that would be a suicide mission. No, we do this right and we do it smart. Like they taught us in the military, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Small unit tactics are our only hope.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Emily watched the doctor’s female assistant inject the anxiety medicine into the IV line, pushing it into her veins at a steady pace. The effects were almost immediate, lessening her pounding heart rate to a trickle of what it had been. Her vision blurred a couple of times before it stabilized.

  “Feeling better?” Dr. Montoroli asked, showing Emily two big, kind eyes.

  “Yeah. Much,” she answered, flaring her eyebrows and blinking rapidly. “But I’m a little woozy.”

  “That’s normal. It’s helping you relax and it should ease a bit over time. Nothing to be concerned about,” the doc said, nodding once before turning her focus to the red substance around Emily’s belly. “Alan, bring me a red top and a sterile swab. Maybe the lab can identify what this is.”

  “Right away, doctor,” he said, returning ten seconds later with a test tube in one hand and a white Q-tip in the other. He gave the swab to Montoroli, then removed the red cap on the end of the tube before holding the glass vial over Emily’s stomach.

  Montoroli slowly inserted the cotton tip into the red substance and moved it around in a tight circle. Emily assumed she was trying to grab a sample of it to put in the test tube.

  When the doc removed the white swab, there wasn’t any sign of red on it. “That’s
odd,” the doc said, trying the sample process two more times. “It won’t adhere. I’m not sure how we’re going to send a sample off.”

  Emily spoke through the fog in her head. “Just get it off me. Please. It doesn’t matter what it is. I just want it gone.”

  The doctor’s voice turned soft. “We know you do, Emily. So do we. But to solve this, we need to know what it is and what its intended purpose is. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “No, not really. Just that they put it on me when they came for my baby. Luckily, Nora showed up before they could take Julius out.”

  “Walk me through what they were doing right before Nora showed up.”

  “The main guy had some kind of instrument in his hand. It was sparking electricity between its two tips. He was just starting to cut into me when Nora rescued me. I could smell my skin burning.”

  “Sounds like some kind of laser scalpel,” the doc said, hesitating. “Where was the incision point? Do you remember?”

  Emily tried to crane her neck down and point, but couldn’t find enough strength to keep her head up. She let it fall back against the headrest, feeling dizzy. “Just beneath my belly button.”

  “Then I take it they were cutting directly through the red substance?”

  “No, it kind of spread apart when the device came close to it. I don’t think that stuff likes electricity.”

  “Doctor, I think I have an idea,” the female nurse said. “What about the paddles? If that substance doesn’t like electricity, couldn’t we use the defibrillator to force the substance off her?”

  Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing from the nurse. “What? You want to shock me? Won’t that hurt my baby?” She squinted through the blobs in her vision to see the woman’s nametag. It said Veronica.

  “Normally, it wouldn’t,” the doctor answered instead of the nurse. “Not when administered to the chest cavity. However, we’d need to use it on your abdomen.”

  “So it would hurt my baby.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it would. We’d have to position the paddles on either side of you before initiating the charge. That would send the current through your body.”

  “And through my baby.”

  Montoroli nodded. “That’s why it’s not an option. Plus, there’s the problem of it only being a momentary release of electricity. I’m guessing we’re going to need a sustained charge. Something we can control and direct to convince the material to release from your body.”

  “Why’s that, doctor?” Veronica asked.

  “If this material moves away when electricity is introduced, then it stands to reason it would close up again once that electricity is removed from its environment. Looking at the solid coverage around the patient right now, I believe that’s what happened. Am I correct, Emily?”

  “Yeah, I think so. But I didn’t actually see it. When Nora shot the man trying to take my baby, everything just got totally out of control. I’m sorry, Doctor. I really can’t say for sure.”

  Nurse Veronica cleared her throat. “What about the new HeartStart unit we got in last week? If we changed the setting from monitor to pacing, wouldn’t that let you do what you need to do?”

  “It might,” Montoroli said, tilting her head and pinching her brow. “If we start out with a charge of thirty milliamps and increase the level slowly, then we’ll be able to keep the energy low enough to avoid jeopardizing the health of the baby.”

  “Like slowly turning up the heat on a frog in pot of water,” the tallest of the two male nurses said.

  Emily couldn’t see all of his name tag from her position, but his name started with the letter J. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with a strong chin and soulful eyes, like Derek. Not a hint of wrinkles or gray hair anywhere.

  “That’s one way to describe it,” the doctor said. “But we’ll need to increase the rate of impulses to create a near continuous flow of energy. Otherwise, it’ll just close up again once the charge dissipates.”

  “If I remember correctly from the training seminar, there’s a setting for that,” Veronica said with excitement in her voice. “Let me get the Code Cart.”

  She disappeared from Emily’s view and came back pushing one of the rolling carts in the room. Sitting on top of it was a device about the size and shape of an iPad with a handle across the top. The left half of the unit featured a vertical computer display, while a turquoise-colored control knob and a set of raised buttons filled in the right side.

  The large control knob and the various colors of the buttons underneath it made it look like a fancy sprinkler clock. A string of numbers from 10 to 200 were positioned evenly around the knob, like power settings. There was also a pair of labels around the knob for ‘monitor’ and ‘pacing,’ like Veronica had mentioned.

  “Let’s get her on the monitor first,” Montoroli said, her eyes transfixed on the nurse’s hands.

  Veronica took one of the colored wires hanging from the unit and peeled the sticky tape off the white pad attached to the end of it. She stuck the pad near the top of Emily’s left shoulder and adjusted the position of the wire leading back to the device. The second pad went on the soft tissue of Emily’s right shoulder, only a few inches above her armpit.

  Veronica grabbed the third lead and went to put it on the side of Emily’s abdomen, but stopped just short of making contact with the red mercury.

  “Put it on her thigh, instead,” Montoroli instructed.

  Veronica nodded before peeling the tape off and sticking it to the upper section of Emily’s thigh.

  Dr. Montoroli fiddled with the buttons on the device that carried a manufacturer’s label that said Philips across the top. The light from the computer screen caught Emily’s eye, but from her angle, she couldn’t see much else on the display.

  Veronica brought up two more leads and removed the adhesive tape. The nurse held them over Emily’s navel. “Where would you like them, Doctor?”

  “That’s a good question,” the doc said, snatching the wires from the nurse. “I’m going to try placing them one on each side.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Emily snapped when she heard what they were going to do.

  The doctor shook her head. “It’ll be okay, Emily. I’ve got it calibrated to the lowest setting. My plan is to only use enough power to convince the substance to let go of you.”

  “But you said earlier that sending a charge through my body would hurt my baby.”

  “Yes, I did. But that was for defibrillation, which uses a much more powerful charge to restart a patient’s heart. For pacing, we only need to use a faction of that amount to help keep the heart in rhythm. The energy level I’m going to use is in milliamps and it’s nowhere near as strong as what we use for the paddles. You and your baby should be fine.”

  Emily tried to flash on the doctor while the woman was looking at her, but the link never connected. She studied the doctor’s eyes and the tone of her voice the old fashioned way. Her gut was telling her to trust the woman, so that’s what she decided to do. She nodded. “Okay. Go ahead. But please be careful.”

  “I will.” Montoroli put the first lead pad on the front of Emily, just above the top edge of the red mercury. The second lead went on Emily’s back somewhere. Emily couldn’t feel it, but based on how far the physician had tilted her body to the left, she figured it probably was in the corresponding spot on her backside.

  Montoroli slowly rolled Emily back into the supine position. “I’m going to begin the procedure now, so I’ll need you tell me if you feel any discomfort.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Emily answered with trepidation, wondering why the doc thought she might feel something when she was paralyzed from the neck down. Maybe the woman expected the pacing charge to yield immediate results and take her paralysis away.

  Montoroli turned the unit on. “Do you feel anything, Emily?”

  “No, not a thing.”

  Emily glanced down, but couldn’t see much of a change in the size of the red merc
ury blob. Some of it had moved away a half an inch from the front pad, but the rest was unchanged.

  “Let’s try direct insertion and see what happens,” the doc said, taking one of the lead pads and placing it directly into the red material. As soon as the energized pad came close to contact, the substance moved away to open a small area for the lead to make contact with Emily’s skin. But the rest of the material remained unchanged. “This isn’t going to work. We’re going to need a method to affect all of the material at one time. Spot application of electricity isn’t the answer here.”

  “Mom? What’s going on out there? I feel all tingly,” Julius said, finally speaking up telepathically. Emily didn’t understand why, but his mental voice sounded tired, like he’d just woken up from a long nap.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. The doctor’s trying to help get the Orange Men’s gooey stuff off Mommy’s tummy,” she sent back in her thoughts.

  “How?”

  “She’s using a tiny bit of electricity to see if the gooey material might let go of me. But I need you not to panic or react. Can you do that for Mommy?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s my brave little boy. Now, I need you to tell me if you feel any pain at all.”

  “Okay. But I’m getting really scared.”

  “Don’t worry, Julius. The doctor knows exactly what she’s doing.” Emily didn’t like lying to her son, but she didn’t want him to overreact or start a time jump. There was no telling what might go wrong with a jump while she was covered with the red mercury.

  “All right, let’s try easing it up a bit and see what happens. Increasing to fifty,” Montoroli said, playing with the controls on the device. After a two-count, she spoke again. “How are you doing, Emily?”

  “Ah, well, I’m fine, but my baby told me he’s all tingly from the electricity. So you need to be careful because he can feel what you’re doing.”