“Please, Em. We gotta go.”
“Can’t. Need to rest,” she said in a gasping whisper, forcing her lips to send the words out between breaths. “Maybe you . . . should just go on without me . . . I’m just . . . slowing you down.”
“No, Em. We all go together. I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”
Emily sucked in a handful of breaths, then answered when her vocal energy returned. “But I can’t run anymore. I’m so tired,” she said, leaning her backside against the wall. All she wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. “Please, just take Nora and the rest of our friends and just go. It’s me they want. Save yourself.”
She slid down the wall until her butt hit the floor. Derek dropped down beside her and put one hand on her shoulder. His other hand was resting on the blanket covering her thigh.
Nora caught up to them and knelt down in front of Emily. “We can’t stay here, Em.”
“I know. But I can’t run anymore. You all just need to go on without me.”
Before Nora could speak again, gunshots rang out and echoed down the hallway. Emily looked past Nora and saw both Miller and Duane diving around the corner and rolling across the floor.
The men scrambled to their feet and took defensive positions again on either side of the hall. Miller began firing, with his gun sights aimed down the previous hallway.
Emily covered her ears as Duane joined in the firefight with the shotgun.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
“Get her out of here, now!” Miller screamed at Derek from the end of hallway. He jammed a new magazine into the stock of his semi-auto handgun.
Emily’s heart skipped a few beats when Jim was hit with a pair of blasts from the Orange Men’s weapons. His body flew backward, smacking into the wall and sticking above the floor as a cocoon of blue energy encased his body.
“Mom! Run!” Julius said in her thoughts. His words came just as Derek got to his feet and yanked on her to get up.
She pushed to her feet, still trying to find air to fuel her lungs.
Nora had hold of Emily’s left arm, helping her along as the three of them took off for the exit door dead ahead. It was maybe twenty feet away on the other side of the waiting area that was filled with patients waiting to see Dr. Montoroli and staff.
Derek continued to yell at the gathering of patients across the waiting room, sending most of the bystanders into a panic.
The exit door flew open ahead as six patients and their stampeding feet went through before Emily and company arrived. Derek held the door open for Emily to go through first on her own, then Nora.
Emily passed under the sprawling red awning covering the entrance and found the sidewalk with her bare feet. The moment the early rising sun smacked her in the face, she noticed a few black shadows above her. She looked up and stopped running when she realized they were spaceships—three of them, each hovering silently like the world’s gravity had just disappeared.
She checked the busy street running from left to right as well as the play park across the road. There were scores of other people around and at least a dozen cars within a stone’s throw. But none of them were moving and the area was completely silent. There was a massive flock of pigeons frozen in mid-flight, as if they’d just taken off from the roof of the church a hundred yards down on her right.
Nora bumped into her from behind and then moved around and stood next to her, her eyes transfixed on the ships above. Her mouth was silent, but Derek’s wasn’t when he arrived last.
He grabbed Emily’s hand. “Come on, we can’t stay here!”
Before Emily could redirect Derek’s attention to the scene in front of them, two brilliant beams of blinding white light shot out from the center ship.
She brought her hands up in a defensive position, letting go of the blanket covering her body. She tried to catch the energy and send it back at the ship, but the beams didn’t hit her. They struck her friends instead, wrapping them with a static charge that crackled in the morning air.
Derek’s body fell to the ground and straightened like a pencil and so did Nora’s.
Emily went to reach out for her friends to help, but stopped when Julius shouted, “No! Mom! Don’t touch them!”
Emily pulled her hand back. “Why?”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
Before Emily heard an answer from her son about why she shouldn’t help Derek and Nora, the entrance leading into the Urgent Care Clinic filled with a brightness that stung her vision. She slammed her eyes shut and ducked her head out of instinct, expecting to be incapacitated by a beam of energy, like what had just happened to Nora and Derek. She waited a few seconds, but felt nothing.
“It’s okay, Mom. You can open your eyes now,” Julius said in a calm voice.
Emily feared an Orange Man would be looming over her when she opened her eyes, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, she found herself in the mountains somewhere, standing on a metal platform with a massive rock wall blocking her view ahead.
She looked down and found herself fully clothed in jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and a pair of Nike sneakers. Her ankles and feet were wrapped in a pair of pink socks. She hated pink, but at least she wasn’t naked.
Her focus traveled up the formation until its shape changed into a natural rock bridge—a massive one, at that. It seemed to span the heavens from one end to the other.
At that moment, her struggle to breathe vanished and her heart filled with a peaceful calm. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but her entire body was tingling with joy and she didn’t want the feeling to end.
“Hey, I know this place,” Emily said, bringing her attention down to a vision of Julius standing to her right.
He looked to be about seven-years-old, with thick black hair neatly combed from left to right. The part on the side was dead-on straight, like he’d spent all day getting it perfect. All that was missing was a boy’s business suit and he’d look like a proper young gentleman. She couldn’t help but beam an ear-to-ear smile at her son.
“When I connected with your thoughts, I saw that Great-Grampa Julius used to take you here—Tonto Natural Bridge, right?” her son asked, pointing and craning his neck to look up.
“Yeah. Couple times. It’s one of my favorite places in the whole world. How did we get here, to Northern Arizona? Did we jump?”
“No, we didn’t jump.”
“Then what happened? How’d we get away? What happened to your father and the rest of our friends?”
“Well, technically, we never left. I stopped time to bring us here so we can talk. I chose this place from your memories of Great-Grandpa,” Julius said, blinking his stunning blue eyes at her. “Plus, I kinda wanted to see it for myself. I was hoping that by bringing you here, you’d stay calm.”
“Well, it’s working,” Emily said, taking in the stunning views in every direction. She knew she should’ve been in an all-out panic and fearing for the safety of her friends at the moment, but she wasn’t.
It was as if none of her tortuous life had ever happened and the Orange Men weren’t trying to hurt her and everyone she knew. Her body was still swimming with the Ativan pumped into her system by the IV, but this felt different from the wooziness she felt earlier. Right now, she was completely and utterly happy—almost euphoric.
She brought her hands up and put them on Julius’ plump cheeks, rubbing the soft of her thumbs across the pinkish-red glow of his skin. Her son was right. Being here did have a calming effect, but so did seeing his gorgeous little face. “I can’t believe how big you’re getting already.”
“Mom, this isn’t real. I’m not really this big.”
“I know, honey. Don’t remind me. I just want to enjoy the moment and remember what you look like. Or what you will look like. You know, before whatever is going to happen next.”
“That’s why I brought you here, Mom. To talk about what’s going on.”
“Okay, sweetheart. We can do that. We can talk. Let’s start with how you stopped
time?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Somehow I can just do it.”
“But wasn’t time already stopped? Everything around us looked like it was frozen. I’m guessing by the Orange Men and their ships.”
“It was, but I stopped time within time.”
“Huh? How is that even possible?”
Julius shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. It starts as a creepy feeling, like an evil shadow is about to jump on me from behind. When I turn around, it’s right there in front of me, just hanging in space. It looks like a black marble, but it’s really a small opening to some kind of energy tunnel, I think. When I crawl through it, time stops again. I’m not sure how it works, but I feel a hundred times stronger when I do. I guess you’d call it a power surge, but that’s not quite the right term. But anyway, when I go back through it, I’m in normal time again.”
“So it’s like slipping into sub-time.”
“Sure, I guess. What’s really cool is the super high power levels stay with me for a few minutes when I return to normal time. But then they go away.”
“Wow, that’s incredible.”
“I know, tell me about it. The whole process really wears me out.”
“I could do a little of that right before a jump, but nothing like this. You’re so much more powerful than me,” she said, wanting to know more. “What else can you do?”
“Mom, we don’t have time for a million questions. I can’t keep us in here forever. I’m getting sleepy again.”
“It might be the medicine the doctor gave me. It made me a little sleepy, too.”
“I know, I felt it earlier. But that’s not what’s making me tired. It’s the connection with the Orange Men. That’s why we need to talk before I lose control and we go back.”
“Okay, talk about what?”
“Their plans.”
“But we already know about them and their plans. They’ve been hunting me across time and space and now they’re here for both of us.”
“No Mom, only me. They don’t want you.”
“Sweetheart, I know you’re super smart and have all these amazing powers, but there are some things that Mommy knows and you don’t.”
“But I do know, Mom. Now that all of the Orange Men are really close, I can see it in their thoughts. Something bad is about to happen. You really need to listen.”
The tranquility that had been warming every fiber of Emily’s being disappeared as soon as the last few words left his mouth. Her chest tightened and her breathing became labored again.
All the neurons in her mind suddenly came together in unison and focused as the brightness around them dimmed a bit. The stunning array of colors in the high desert tapestry began a slow fade, blurring together like a scene change in a Hollywood movie.
Julius stumbled as his eyes rolled up and so did his neck, looking like he was about to spin around and pass out.
Emily caught him before he toppled over, keeping his back from falling into the metal catwalk beneath their feet. “Julius, honey? Are you okay? Talk to Mommy. I’m right here, baby.”
His eyes opened and a moment later, the beginnings of a smile appeared on his pink lips. The glow of the imaginary sun returned and so did the sweeping rainbow of colors filling the landscape around them.
She smiled, feeling the warmth of his essence in her arms. His eyes were locked onto hers, making her feel like a real mother for the first time since she’d gotten pregnant. Even though she could feel the thunder of her own heart beating wildly against her chest, she knew right then that everything was going to work out as it should.
Emily gave him a series of baby kisses on the forehead and cheek. “It’s okay, now. Mommy’s not going to let anything happen to you. Ever.”
Julius pried her arms loose and stood up, looking like his old self—his old, virtual self. “They need my help, Mom, and you need to let me.”
“Who? The aliens? Or Nora and the others?”
“The aliens, Mom. But they’re not aliens.”
“Sure they are. I’ve seen them. On their ship a long time ago. They have big ugly heads with sores all over their skin.”
“But they’re not aliens. They’re humans.”
“Humans? How can that be?”
“Humans from the future. Didn’t you ever wonder why they spoke English?”
“Yeah, sure I did. But I figured it was from the telepathic link or something.”
“Well, that isn’t what’s happening. They speak English because they’re future humans. They’ve come back in time for me. For my genes and my DNA.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re all sick and they blame us.”
“But we didn’t do anything to them. Why would they think that?”
“Because in their minds, we’re the intruders. We invaded their time and space. We made them all sick in the future. That’s why they’re here. For me. To find the cure to stop the epidemic that our family accidentally brought to them. Seventy-seven years from now is when it happens.”
“What epidemic? We’re not sick.”
“No, we’re not. But your great-great grandson will be and he won’t even know it. With each new generation of our family, we get more and more powerful as our genes evolve. It all started with your mother and passed to you. Then to me.”
Emily nodded while listening carefully. It was a lot to take in.
Julius continued, “The instant that Trent Julius Heart is born seventy-seven years from now, he jumps immediately to the future, bringing with him a terrible plague. A plague they weren’t ready for and don’t know how to stop.”
There was a faint echo in her mind, like it was running in slow motion. She wanted to understand the words coming from his mouth, but each new revelation seemed to be even more incredible than the last. “I don’t understand. How can a newborn baby do any of that?”
“The way I understand it . . . it’s all about DNA and evolution. When genes evolve over time, they eventually mutate. Sometimes radically. That’s what happens when Trent is born. He carries a horrible new disease when he jumps into the future. That’s why they are here—for me. I hold the key to saving all of humanity from a terrible death.”
“Okay, if that’s true, then why did they kill my mother and then experiment on me? None of that makes any sense.”
“They were trying to tweak our family’s genetic makeup to improve Trent’s ability to produce the needed antibodies to fight the disease. Grandma’s death was an accident. They never meant for that to happen. So was your ability to time jump. Somehow, their experiments triggered some latent evolutionary genes by accident, which is why you can time jump. That ability was supposed to start with my daughter and then get more powerful with her son. Not start with you.”
“And I suppose their accidents are why I can read minds—well, sort of.”
“Yes, and catch and return their energy beams. They are very scared of you, Mom.”
“Well, they should be. I’m just trying to protect myself, and you. Any mother would. They have to know that.”
“Yes, they do. And they’re sorry for everything that’s happened, but they’re desperate. That’s why they took all those chances with your DNA and Grandma’s.”
“So I take it that’s why your abilities are even more powerful than mine. More of their accidents.”
“Yes and no. Some of it is triggered evolution and some of it is because of their science, but most of it is from you. I think it’s called placental transfer. But in the end, they are just trying to save themselves and billions of other sick people any way they can.”
“That still doesn’t give them the right to hurt people and run horrible experiments on them.”
“No it doesn’t, Mom. But time is running out for humanity and that’s why they’ve sent all three of their ships and all of their remaining Orange Men. They’ve been following you through time and watching. Just waiting for the proper moment, which I think is right now.”
“
When you say watching and waiting, do you mean they’ve been studying me?”
“Yes, you and a few others. But you’re the most viable candidate, whatever that means. When I try to probe deeper, all I get back are the words downstream adjustments.”
The word adjustment conjured up a vision in Emily’s mind. It was from the night when she was watching Nora and Duane’s house while they were out of town. The same night when Derek found her in a trance at the front door, and the same night when she became pregnant.
The vision changed to show an Orange Man standing behind her for almost half an hour, holding some kind of futuristic tool created by his briefcase.
Right then she knew what the phrase downstream adjustment meant. “Oh my God! They’ve been hiding in the dark and secretly adjusting my DNA all along. Like some kind of shadow game. That’s why my abilities keep changing.”
“Yes, I think so. I get these flashes from them . . . something about trying to speed up the process.”
“That explains why you’re growing so fast, honey. Their adjustments caused more accidents. Babies usually take nine months. Not a couple of days. They need to stop ‘cause this whole thing is getting totally out of control.”
“Yes, I think you’re right. But none of that matters now. They are out of options and can’t wait any longer. If we don’t help them, then all the future humans will die. They only have enough power to return home one last time. So this is it. They can’t come back.”
“What do they want from us?”
“They want me to go with them. Back to the future.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
“There’s no way I’m letting that happen. No way,” Emily said in a high voice, ignoring the increasing tightness in her chest and throat.
“You have to, Mom. They need me to help them save the future. For everyone.”
She took a few seconds to process what her son had just said. “Well, that’s not our future. It’s theirs. Our future is here and I’m not giving you up. To anyone. For any reason.”
Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series) Page 59
