by SY Thompson
“Scientist type, now let’s find that armory so we can get the hell out of here.”
Ronan bypassed the electronic lock on the armory door and went in while Sidney stood watch outside. She’d left the door ajar in case Agent Rhodes or someone else came down the hall so that Sidney could duck inside if she needed cover. As soon as she was in, Ronan did a double take. Three narrow aisles covered the room from floor to ceiling, packed with every weapon and firearm conceivable. It looked organized but the sheer volume would prevent a quick search and she couldn’t leave Sidney hanging out in the hall. Ronan grunted in frustration and turned back to the door. She jerked it open and reached out to grab the front of Sidney’s shirt to haul her inside.
“What did you do that for?”
With the door closed, Ronan felt free to answer in a normal tone. “Look at this place.”
Sidney’s eyes popped as she looked around. “This is going to take forever.”
“Maybe not. Look here, the ends of the rows are labeled.”
Someone had the foresight to realize how confusing the weapons room would get and had thoughtfully separated the contents with labels such as “combat gear,” “body armor,” “projectile weapons,” “explosives,” etc. Ronan took off down the explosives aisle while Sidney wandered the other direction. She would trust that Sidney would quickly hide if someone opened the door or came in.
Ronan passed hand grenades, Claymore mines, and a multitude of other deadly explosives before she found what she needed. The grenades would have been nice and simple, but there would be no way to detonate them simultaneously. She found what she needed listed on the end of a sealed ammo box and looked around for something to pry it open with.
“Try this.” Sidney handed a huge hunting knife over her shoulder.
Startled, Ronan turned too quickly and fell into the packed shelves. Mines clattered to the floor with enough noise to wake the dead. Fortunately, no timers had been set so there weren’t any explosions but the cacophony was enough to send both women scurrying to the end of the aisle to hide. After a few minutes, it became apparent that no one was going to investigate and Ronan let out a relieved breath that the room was apparently sound proof.
“You scared me to death. What were you thinking sneaking up on me like that?”
“Sorry.” Sidney held out the huge knife she’d offered Ronan before.
From the repressed giggles, Ronan didn’t really think Sidney was sorry at all but she took the knife and walked back to the crate with as much dignity as she could muster. A few seconds later, the lid was off and both of them started to fill their pockets with bricks of C-4 and detonators. Then they picked up the mess Ronan had made but before she could walk back to the door, Sidney stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Come look at this.”
Curious, Ronan followed. Sidney led her to the aisle that contained body armor.
“Think those are for the female agents?”
Ronan followed where Sidney pointed and started to smile. “Apparently. I think that as long as we’re shopping, we should pick up a couple of those for ourselves.”
“I agree,” Sidney said. “Whole-heartedly, emphatically, undeniably...”
Getting back to the twenty-sixth floor with their booty proved just as easy, minus the run-in with errant FBI agents. Ronan and Sidney had their pockets loaded with just what they needed to ensure the invading insurgents would soon be a distant memory. The body armor fit under their shirts with barely a bulge.
“Looks like this place is just about empty,” Sidney remarked as they traveled without interruption toward Barnhart’s office.
Ronan merely nodded and tried her best to look calm. She was supposed to be the fearless detective and it wouldn’t look good if she showed how nervous she truly was. Sidney was right, she thought. The elevator hadn’t stopped for any more passengers and as the doors opened onto the twenty-sixth floor, no one else was in sight. She looked both ways down the hall just to be sure and then struck off in the direction she knew the chief justice’s office would be.
“I hope he’s still here,” she admitted in a low voice.
The door to the outer office was closed but not locked. Ronan froze for a moment as she realized she hadn’t accounted for his secretary. If Barnhart’s secretary was still here, she would be an unfortunate witness. She hesitated briefly before she decided that was unlikely. Even if public officials tended to work late, their secretaries and receptionists usually left by five o’clock. Their plan wouldn’t work if he’d gone home early.
The office entrance was indeed empty and they walked in unobserved.
“Wow, nice digs for a judge,” Sidney said.
Expensive artwork covered the two sides of the office and directly ahead, about twenty feet away, bookshelves lined the wall on each side of another doorway. Shelves of mahogany wood, polished to a blinding sheen, held so many books Ronan was surprised they didn’t collapse. The secretary’s desk, also constructed of heavy mahogany, sat directly in front of the bookshelf. A high light fixture covered with sculpted, frosted glass and encircled with bronze lent an Italian feel to the décor.
Ronan decided not to announce herself and opened the door to the judge’s inner office without knocking. The room was empty and it appeared that they had already missed Barnhart. Ronan shrugged and decided it was the perfect opportunity to search his office just in case he’d left the matrix here.
“Look around and see if you can spot anything like what Sloan described.”
Ronan pulled at the desk drawers, disappointed to find them secured. The electronic device she’d brought wouldn’t work on these locks since they were the old-fashioned type normally attributed to such an antique. She looked around the office for anything to jimmy the drawers when she noticed the framed diplomas on the walls.
Yale... Stanford...it was obvious that the real Barnhart had been an extremely educated man. There was a photograph of him with former President Bush on a yacht. A huge swordfish easily as tall as the men hung neatly in the foreground and a woman stood close to Barnhart. All of them were smiling happily at their prize and Barnhart had an arm around the woman’s waist. Was it his wife?
Ronan wondered what had happened to her after the imposter took over her husband. Was she still alive, blissfully unaware of the creature that had replaced her spouse, or was she eliminated like so much garbage? Outrage rose inside her and she almost missed the sound of the doorknob rattling as someone started to enter the office. She used the anger inside her to fuel her adrenaline and bounded for the door just as it opened and an unsuspecting man entered the room. Ronan took pleasure at the startled look on the wrinkled visage before she slammed her right fist square into his face with all the force she could muster. Barnhart crumpled soundlessly to the ground and Ronan reached under his arms to drag him further into the room.
“Close the door and then help me tie him up.”
“With what?” Sidney asked, clearly dumbfounded by the fury that fairly radiated off her partner.
“We’ll use his belt and his shoelaces. Quick, before he wakes up.”
Ronan dragged the unconscious man toward the coat closet while Sidney shut the door. She removed his belt and then turned him onto his stomach to tie his hands behind him. She needed to tie his feet, but that would have to wait until she searched his pockets for a key to the desk. Inside his left jacket pocket she felt something hard, smooth, and with a curiously pointed tip. Unexpectedly, she found what they were looking for: the matrix.
Ronan pulled the object out, impressed by the ordinariness of it. Had she seen the matrix sitting on a desktop she wouldn’t have given it a second glance. The pyramid was clear and looked like a cheap crystal easily found in any bauble shop. The green tip, however, was another story. This was the central portion of the matrix that interacted with a mechanism housed inside the pyramid. It looked like a very large emerald.
Barnhart began to stir and Ronan quickly sat the matrix aside on t
he floor. She pulled the handkerchief out of her breast pocket and stuffed it in his mouth so he couldn’t shout for help. The old man began to struggle and she had difficulty holding his shoulders to the ground. He was surprisingly strong for someone as old as he was supposed to be. Of course, with the holographic technology utilized to change his appearance, the man could be any age and she wouldn’t know the difference.
“Get his shoelaces off.”
“I’m trying.”
Ronan flinched in sympathy as Barnhart clocked Sidney on the forehead with one of his flailing feet. She took hold of his right arm and forced it up to a painful angle.
“Keep kicking and I’ll break it for you,” she promised.
Barnhart stopped trying to kick Sidney and winced in pain until Ronan eased the pressure somewhat. She still kept his arm lifted where she could easily apply pressure if he started to struggle again.
Sidney quickly removed his shoelaces. “Now what?”
“Tie his ankles together and bend his feet up toward me.”
A few seconds later Ronan used the end of the belt and the shoelaces to tie his hands and feet together. He didn’t look very comfortable but she remembered the image of his smiling wife in the photograph and couldn’t find it in her to be sympathetic.
“Sidney, help me drag him into the closet. We don’t want anyone to find him before we finish what we started.”
Sidney nodded and bent down to pocket the matrix before she walked over to help Ronan. She wiped at a small trickle of blood from the cut on her forehead and stepped to the other side of the faux judge. Both women grasped an arm and dragged him toward the coat closet. Sidney opened the door and they stuffed him inside. Sidney, who hadn’t lived through the horrors the German people of the future had, apparently felt more sympathy for the man and turned him on his side so he wouldn’t asphyxiate before they shut the door.
That little gesture of compassion reminded Ronan why she had fallen in love with this woman and why they were doing this. Remorse flashed through her that she had become so hardened as to forget her own compassion for another living being, even if it was only for a moment.
“Are you ready?” Sidney handed Ronan the matrix.
“It’s a little late for second thoughts.” She smiled and accepted the device as Sidney linked her arm through Ronan’s elbow.
“Let’s get it over with. Energize the damn thing.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“OUCH.”
“ARE YOU all right?” Ronan asked from out of the darkness. Somehow, they’d transported into a remarkably dark and stuffy room.
“Yeah, great. I just hit my funny bone. Where are we? Where’d you get that from?” Sidney asked as Ronan clicked on a small flashlight.
“You know the old adage. Always be prepared.”
“Cute.”
Ronan looked around in the gloom in disbelief before she said. “That’s perfect. We transport onto a spacecraft hovering hundreds of miles above Earth and we land in a broom closet.”
“Could be worse,” Sidney offered.
“How?”
“We could have transported into the middle of a group of Black Guards armed with ray-guns.”
“Yes, well...there is that. Sloan did say that we would arrive in a small room. I just didn’t expect it to be a closet. Let’s get moving before someone else transports.” Ronan leaned against the door to try to determine if they were alone.
To her consummate shock, the door swished back at her proximity and slid into a pocket in the wall. With her weight already leaning forward in preparation to rest against the door she almost fell on the floor. Ronan staggered and managed to keep her balance. They’d come out into the hallway Sloan had mentioned. Fortunately, there weren’t any patrols in sight but Ronan felt that was just luck on their part. He said the patrols were heavy.
“I wonder if all the doors are like that,” Sidney whispered.
“I hope not. This is really going to slow us down. We’re going to have to be extra careful.”
The engine room was supposed to be two doors down on the left. Ronan headed that way, but Sidney suddenly grabbed her and pulled her into the doorway of the next room. Even as the door swished open, they ducked inside and Ronan heard heavy footsteps headed their way. When they were just past the sensor range of the door it closed seamlessly and she listened as multiple booted feet walked past. She could have kicked herself for not hearing the patrol.
“What is this room?”
Ronan turned with a frown to see what Sidney meant. A horseshoe-shaped console stood before a giant monitor that took up the entire space of one wall. Sidney had wandered over and was looking down at the display. For some reason, the room was empty at present but Ronan didn’t think it would stay that way for long.
“It looks like some kind of observation room. We’d better get out of here before someone comes back.”
“Wait a second. Look at this.”
Frustrated but curious, Ronan looked over Sidney’s shoulder. Many of the controls were in a code she couldn’t understand, but the readout next to it was clear enough without words. Earth stood out clearly on the display. The image of the planet boasted a handful of red dots and the rest were green. Somehow, she understood that the dots indicated people replaced by the Neue Konservative Regime’s own personnel.
“We have to go, now.” Sidney warned.
Ronan turned as the door opened and a uniformed man entered. A look of surprise crossed his face and he hesitated for a brief second before running toward a panel on the wall.
“Don’t!” Ronan shouted.
She threw the flashlight hard and hit him on the back of the head. He staggered and dropped to the floor, stunned but conscious. Unfortunately, it was too late. An alarm sounded deafeningly overhead and she ran toward the sentry as he struggled to his feet. A quick right cross ended his threat temporarily, but Ronan was more concerned with how to get out of the room.
“It won’t open,” Sidney said as she pushed against the door.
“The lock probably engaged when the alarm went off.”
The panel that triggered the alarm might be the way to unlock the exit, Ronan guessed. She ran toward the controls but she didn’t know which buttons to push to shut the damn thing off.
“Come on, you’re from the future. Can’t you figure this out?”
“I’m not a human translator,” Ronan complained, “and I damn sure don’t speak whatever kind of code this is.”
She started to push switches at random and the alarm suddenly shut off.
“Wow, I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t do it.”
The door slid open and Ronan groaned expecting a patrol to burst in on them. A second later, she was gaping in surprise at Lieutenant Gustav Sloan.
“Come with me.”
He didn’t wait for a response and they rushed to keep up as he led them into another small chamber a few doors down. This room had the look and feel of living quarters and Ronan took her first deep breath since they’d transported aboard. How had Sloan gotten here?
“I turned off the alarm and made it look like an accident, but the Delegator will insist on a search of the ship anyway. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“How did you get here?” Sidney asked, beating Ronan to the question.
“After you transported I used the gate to follow you. Then I used my own matrix to transport on board. I told Dutrov to destroy the gate and that I was following you to kill you in order to eliminate the threat against the Regime’s certain victory.”
“Do you think he did it?” Ronan asked.
“Dutrov follows orders implicitly.” Although the words might have sounded like a compliment, there was no denying the look of disgust on Sloan’s face.
“But your appearance here, won’t it draw unwanted attention?”
“No, they believe I’m a loyal Konservative.”
“Okay, that works in our favor,” Sidney said dryly. �
�But if you’re so loyal, why are you helping us?”
“You know nothing,” Sloan spat contemptuously. “Once the world’s Neue Konservative government was proud. All people across the globe lived in peace until one man decided he wanted more. He wanted total control. Professor Horton’s gate gave him that. At first, I didn’t think it was so bad. One government with one purpose would unify all people. Everyone would be equal. Only it didn’t stop at that. The Delegator wanted to crush anyone who opposed him and Kinsky was just as power hungry. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to act.”
“I don’t understand,” Ronan said. “Why would they want to conquer Earth of the past? Why go to such lengths to implement their idea of the perfect government in the 21st century?”
Sloan shook his head sadly. “It’s not just the Delegator of Germany. Once the chancellors of the other regions learned of his plan, they decided they liked how it sounded. Six world leaders would have total control, answerable to no one. Democracy wouldn’t exist anymore.”
Ronan shook her head in disgust.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Sidney said softly.
“Exactly, but I can’t allow this to continue.”
“That’s what kept nagging at me before,” Sidney said, turning excitedly toward Ronan and then back to Sloan. “You want Dutrov to destroy the gate because then everything will go back to how it’s supposed to be. Without the device to activate the time stream and then keep it open, none of this will have happened.”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
Ronan remembered the conversation about time flowing like a river and caught on to what they were saying. “But how did you know I’d gone into the past to begin with?”
“I was there,” Sloan admitted, “that first day. I had great respect for Professor Horton and went to his house to pay my respects after his death. I saw you go inside and I was curious so I followed you. I saw you use the gate. At first, I didn’t know what happened but little by little after that, things began to change. The professor was suddenly alive again and I was the only person who remembered things differently.”
