by Mallory Kane
His gut spasmed and he swallowed hard. Then quelling his revulsion, he forced himself to grasp her hand in his, wincing at the anticipation of a blinding wave of nausea that never came. He stared at their clasped hands, his bruised and scraped, engulfing her smaller, smoother one.
Her touch rattled his brain. Instead of increasing his sickness, multiplying his hatred, her touch soothed his beat up emotions. Her fingers were cool and light. Her skin exuded peace and caring.
He slowly raised his gaze to hers, using all his strength to dredge up enough hatred and anger to make his voice quietly menacing as he squeezed her fingers. "How do you do, Kristen Skipworth. I've been sent from the future to kill you."
Through the hand of the man she'd rescued, Kristen was bombarded with more conflicting emotions than she had ever sensed from one person. She felt an intense burning hatred overlaid with deep sadness and wary yearning. She carefully extricated her fingers from his steel-hard grip, finding it more difficult to wrench her gaze away from his. The look in his eyes was murder, but her senses gave her an entirely different message. She sensed a conflict in him that was tearing him apart.
She tried to equate the confusion with his incredible words as she studied him. His blue eyes had looked perfectly rational until the crazy words had spilled out of his mouth.
It was really too bad. Too bad that such a lovely body had to house such a sick mind. Strange, though, at the same time— as irrational as his words were, what she sensed within him wasn't the chaos of a psychotic brain.
During her psychiatric fellowship, working with mentally and emotionally disturbed patients had always left her dazed and confused. She couldn't bear to touch them—the bedlam in their minds was so strong. It would take hours for her to recover from their anguished chaos. Rider's emotions were muddled and he was understandably confused, but he didn't evoke the chaos of psychosis in her. Oh, he was baffling, with his intense eyes and his anger and despair, but he was not psychotic. Disturbed, definitely. Possibly paranoid, maybe even mildly schizophrenic. But not psychotic.
She blinked deliberately and pulled her gaze from his as she berated herself. Get with it, Dr. Skipworth. He said he'd come from the future. That had to rank right up there with being kidnapped by aliens. How else could she explain that?
"That does it," She muttered, dropping her gaze. She couldn't avoid it, she had to admit that this time her empathic sense was wrong. He must be mentally unstable.
"What?" His voice held a note of barely controlled panic.
"We've got to get you to a hospital, now." She turned toward the door, and almost screamed when he jerked her back around to face him.
She had thought his grip was relentless before. Now the bones in her forearm rubbed together from the pressure of his fingers. She clenched her teeth. "You're hurting me. Let go!"
"No."
"Damn it, let—me—go!" She locked gazes with him again, setting her jaw against the combined pains of her arm and his ribs. Physically, she was no match for him, but she had help.
"Moira!" she called, her voice steadier than she would have expected, her gaze never wavering from his. "Moira, could you come in here a minute?"
A flicker of deadly amusement lit his face before he opened his hand. "You win, Doc," he said wryly just as Moira came through the open door. "This time."
"Yes, Dr. Skipworth?"
"Moira, would you please remove Mister Rider's catheter, and discontinue the IV. He would like to take a shower. And could you find him some clothes, please?" Kristen flashed Rider a triumphant smirk. "Unless you'd prefer to go to the hospital like that?"
If the tiny object imbedded behind his pupil were a weapon, Kristen thought as she left the exam room, she'd be dead now. She shivered, remembering his words and the reasonable, even tone. Hello, Kristen Skipworth. I've been sent from the future to kill you.
Sitting down at the front desk, she pulled up his chart on her computer and began typing. Rider. Just Rider. She wouldn't be surprised to find that he'd escaped from a psychiatric hospital.
Too bad he was crazy. Bill and Moira were right. She always managed to find them—the ones who were kidnapped by aliens, like that poor man last month or the woman who swore she was carrying Elvis' baby.
It was too bad. Kristen shook her head, wishing she could forget the feel of his silky rough skin under her fingers, the profound effect his naked body had evoked in her. He was a gorgeous psychotic.
Still shocked by his effect on her, Kristen wrenched her brain away from unprofessional thoughts about his body, back to practical matters, like entering progress notes for John Doe, now Rider, just Rider.
Patient is a well-nourished white male, approx. 35 y/o, in good health. Presented with minor contusions, possible hairline fracture of one or more ribs, some deterioration of muscle tone due to lack of nourishment and dehydration.
Alert, responsive to stimuli. Possibly delusional. Rule out paranoid schizophrenia, psychosis. No sign of substance abuse. Ingested approximately 500 ml of orange juice and 90 gm of pizza. IV and catheter removed. Recommend immediate transfer to Midtown General for psychiatric evaluation.
After suffering the indignity of having the catheter removed by Moira, Rider was at least grateful he could move around. When the nurse pointed the way to the shower, he wrapped the sheet around him and gingerly fled to the solitude of the tile-lined room.
He closed the door, noticing the faint creak as it moved on its hinges. His hands lingered on the painted wood surface. There was so little wood in his time. Trees were an endangered species.
The roughness and grainy texture of the wood felt familiar and seductive under his fingers. His office in the History Building.
He hated this part of their damned conditioning. He hated not being able to remember mundane things, like his job.
He'd been a teacher—no, a historian. No, definitely a teacher. He remembered lecturing in front of a room full of bored young faces.
Legs quivering with weakness, he stepped into the sterile whiteness of the shower stall. He unwrapped the bandage around his ribs, groaning at the increased pain as the stiff gauze came off. He grabbed at a chrome rail as more unwelcome memories raced through his brain like a vidlink.
Marielle frowning at him, her fingers manipulating the knobs of an ancient radio, the room awash with green light.
He gripped the chrome with both hands and pressed his forehead against the cold tile, trying to force the memories into cohesion, but every time he'd grab onto an image it would dissolve like a snowflake.
Grabbing her as she collapsed, hugging her to him, trying to hold the life in her by force of will—the heat from the blaster still in her body—death sucking her away —
Waves of sickness washed over him. He rolled his forehead against the tile, fighting the horrible images, but wanting them too, because as bad as they were, at least they were his.
Why didn’t they let him keep his memories? Why didn’t they use the memory of his wife's murder to motivate him?
Even as the thoughts formed, he understood the argument against them. A cold, unfeeling predator would be more effective than a hotheaded, grief-stricken man.
Stop it, he screamed silently. Tanks don't think. Tanks don't feel. They just kill.
He thrust the wisps of memory away. Instead, he dredged up the detachment conditioned into him, and surveyed the room.
The white, unrelenting chill of the tile reminded him of the TAINCC’s prep room. He shuddered as he inspected the apparatus on the walls. In the prep room, he and the other trainees had been forced to stand at attention with goggles protecting their eyes while spigots spewed icy chlorinated water at them from all directions, cleansing them for immersion in the conditioning chamber. For several moments he stood rigid, his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the lone spout above his head to turn the gush of chlorinated water on him.
When nothing happened, he squinted at the shiny fixtures on the wall. The red dotted handle had HOT written on it
. The blue dotted one said COLD. He looked at the spout. A drop of liquid gathered on its lower edge.
Rider touched his forefinger to the droplet and touched the droplet to his tongue. Water! Pure, clean water!
He tentatively turned the handle marked HOT. Water began to trickle from the spout, water that smelled like rain and quickly turned warm, then suddenly hot. He yanked the COLD handle, sending an icy spray into his face. After some cursing and manipulating, he finally had a wonderfully warm flow of water raining down on his head.
He raised his face to the purifying stream. How long had it been since he'd had a real shower with real water? Had he ever?
Yes. Once he'd taken showers, gone to work, owned a car. Once he'd had a real life. Once he'd been a person, not a tank.
Marielle, dressed in unrelieved black, the signature uniform of the underground—
How did his memories of his wife get mixed up with a vision of the perverted Deviants who killed her? A blinding nausea gripped him. Gut-wrenching, sickening fear stripped the vestiges of memory away, leaving him shaken and weak. He gripped the chrome rails and let the water massage the back of his neck while he forced his brain to focus on his mission. He'd been sent—no, he had volunteered for this suicide run for one reason and one reason only. To kill Kristen Skipworth, the Mother of all the Deviants, the progenitor of the bastards who'd killed his wife.
The sickness and fear began to dissipate as he concentrated on that fact. He hadn't killed her yet, but that was only because he'd been so battered and weak. He was already better. Amazing what a little food and rest could do.
The water beat rhythmically, comfortingly on his temples, on the tense muscles in his neck. After a few seconds he threw his head back, opening his mouth to let the warm stream sluice out the bitter taste of grief.
As the water began to cool, he quickly washed his hair and soaped his skin, carefully peeling away the bandage on his temple, rinsing the filth of the streets and the centuries down the drain. He slung wet hair out of his eyes and stepped from the steamy cubicle.
Fluffy white towels awaited him, another luxury he'd forgotten. After the TAINCC, they'd always been sprayed with more chlorine water then buffeted with dry, stale air, as if they were some kind of living utensils in a giant washing machine.
Dressed in worn jeans, a little loose but long enough, a white I, and some sort of cloth and plastic shoes with thick, soft soles, Rider rubbed the steam away from the mirror and looked at his reflection. The gash on his temple looked nasty, but the swelling had gone down and his head no longer hurt. He stared into the intense blue eyes that stared bleakly back. A gap-toothed comb lay on the lavatory, so he combed his hair back from his face.
Damn, he was skinny! When had he lost all that weight? He touched his cheek where a shadow outlined his cheekbone, then looked at his bicep. He'd lost too much muscle in the past—how many days? Three? Five? Without the stero-vitamins, he'd soon be scrawny. And it was for damn sure the food here wasn't ennutriated either!
He caught his own gaze again, and smirked. Not like he'd have time to get fat. One way or another, he probably wouldn’t be around long enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
A rap on the door startled Rider. He whirled and crouched into attack position.
"Mr. Rider?"
It was the nurse. He took a long, harsh breath, easing out of the crouch and gingerly relaxing his arms. When would those damned ribs heal?
"You okay, Mr. Rider?" The voice came muffled through the thick door.
"Fine," he said shortly. "Be right out."
"The ambulance will be here in a minute."
Rider tensed. Ambulance. So the pretty little doctor was determined to turn him over to the dogcatchers.
What sick twist of fate had put him right in her path? They had been so careful to explain to him how resourceful he’d have to be to find Kristen Skipworth. He had spent hours in the TAINCC while electrodes attached to his temples fed him information about this era of history. He'd even been told they were meat eaters. He remembered now. It was just that he'd been caught off guard when she'd put the pizza in front of him. His nose wrinkled at the memory of the smell of burned flesh.
It should have been done by now. He could have broken her neck with one flick of a wrist, there in the alley. He closed his eyes and tried to picture how it would happen. Her as yet-unborn children, dissolving one by one, down the centuries. Even the ones who had killed his wife. It was a satisfying picture, if a slightly grotesque one.
But he hadn't. When he'd touched her ankle, he’d been buffeted with a sensation so alien, he hadn't been able to put a name to it, but it was all tied up with clouds and heaven and feeling good. And it was part of the reason he'd allowed her to bring him to the clinic. He'd been so hurt, so tired, and touching her was the best thing he ever remembered.
A moment of weakness, that was all. The sensation was probably hunger. Now, because of his weakness, he'd given her enough time to call the dogcatchers. He looked up at the small, steamy window above the toilet, then back at the door.
"Sorry, Doc," he whispered. "I'm not going to a med care facility, to be locked up and dissected like a dog."
Guilt sliced through him. Where had guilt come from? His conditioning, no doubt. It was probably guilt from even thinking about escape instead of keeping his mind totally on destroying Kristen Skipworth. The TAINCC was quite effective in implanting things like total loyalty to the system and unreasoning concentration on the mission.
And his mission was to destroy Kristen Skipworth, not to run away. How in the hell had he managed to latch onto her so fast? He'd been reaching out for an angel to help him get into heaven, and he'd caught his prey.
He looked in the mirror again. There should be no emotions inside him anymore. But somehow, there was that alien sensation tied up with the angel doctor that went so counter to everything he'd had imbedded in his brain in the TAINCC that it made him gag. He swallowed hard and took a long breath.
What was that smell?
His nostrils twitched and he took another breath, this one carefully shallow.
Benzofenfluramic diacetyltrialamine. BeeDee. The most dangerous chemical ever invented. The unique odor of rotten bananas and old urine triggered visions Dante would have been proud of.
Red, blinding explosions. Agonized screams. His conditioned light speed reflexes kicked in. Without stopping to consider why he would smell BeeDee five hundred years before it had been invented, Rider glanced once at the tiny sealed window above the toilet, dismissed it as a means of quick escape, threw open the door and ran out—right into the waiting arms of two burly men in white. One grabbed him while the other brandished a white coat of some sort with ties hanging from it like fringe.
"Look out! Let me go!" Rider shouted, struggling to free himself from the man's grip. "Get out of here!"
The white coat twisted Rider's arm up behind him. "Take it easy, bud," he said, pinning Rider's other arm to his side. "You're okay. We're just going to get you all dressed up."
They thought he was crazy, a barking mongrel. They were the dogcatchers.
When the second man approached, holding out the white garment, Rider braced his back against the man holding him and kicked up with both feet, sending the second man sprawling against the wall. Then Rider dropped his weight, ignoring the searing pain in his twisted shoulder and the pain in his side. When the man behind him overbalanced, he kicked his feet over his head and connected with the man's skull. The ache in his shoulder lessened as his attacker let go and fell to the floor.
The second man was straightening up and the one he'd just kicked was groaning, so Rider took off down the hall.
His angel-doctor was standing in a doorway staring at him as if he were a rabid dog.
"Doc! Get out! BeeDee!" He grabbed her with the passing thought that he'd be damned if he'd let her die before she knew why she was dying. He pushed her resisting body ahead of him.
"What are you—? Wait—Moira!"
Kristen screamed, but Rider ignored her. In the waiting room, the nurse was talking with a woman and a little boy and she looked up, shocked, as Rider and Kristen crashed through the door.
"Get out!" He screamed, pushing Kristen ahead of him, not waiting to see if the others obeyed him.
Outside, the ambulance waited, its engine running. He paused and gestured toward it. "Can you drive one of these, Doc?"
She stared at him, eyes wide as mini-disks. She shook her head slowly, as if she weren't quite sure what he'd said. He wasted a precious few seconds considering her. Surely she knew how to drive these big, internal combustion vehicles. If they worked like solar cars he'd be able to drive it, but if not—
"I think you're lying, but we don't have time to find out." He skirted the back of the vehicle and dragged her away from the clinic.
"Stop! Let go of me! What are you doing? I'll have you arrested!"
Rider heard Kristen's babble without sorting it into words as he ducked into a dark alley and turned, pulling her tight up against him and clamping a hand over her mouth. Relief flooded him. She was safe. He'd gotten her out in time. He ignored the fleeting thought that if he hadn't pulled her to safety his mission would be accomplished in a very few minutes.
"Come on, come on. Get out," he muttered, watching the door of the clinic, his heart pounding, every muscle cramped with tension as he waited for the explosion. It wouldn't be more than a few seconds, judging by the overpowering smell of the BeeDee. Moira and the woman and child came through the door.
"Get away from the clinic!" he whispered desperately, cringing in anticipation of the blast he knew was imminent.
Kristen was rigid as death in his arms, her limbs quivering with resistance. She struggled, grunting and moaning behind his hand. He could only imagine what she was saying. His eyes never left the doorway as he waited for the two men in white to come out, already knowing it was too late for them.
Suddenly, a horrific explosion rent the air, its searing blast knocking them backwards with its force and lighting the alley with a black-red light that tore through the air like violent thunder.
