by Daniel Price
Suddenly a pair of radiant orbs materialized in front of the woman’s eyes. She covered her face just as a piercing electronic squeal—an echo of the feedback that had blared from all speakers a minute ago—erupted inside her ears. She fell to the ground screaming.
By the time Mia dared to open her eyes, David faced her through the broken door. He pointed to a metal prod hanging on the wall.
“Can I have that, please?”
“What?”
“The baton, Mia. The zapper. I need it. Quickly.”
With shaking hands, Mia tossed the weapon to David. He studied every side of it until he found the power switch. Now he jabbed the electric end at the back of the Winter Blonde’s head. She shrieked again, then fell silent.
Mia stared at David, dumbfounded. “She was going to kill me.”
“I know. I saw. Listen to me—”
“She was going to kill me!”
David grabbed her shoulder. “Mia, I know you’re upset but you have to pull it together. Please. We’re not safe yet.”
Krista Bloom. Her name was Krista Bloom. Mia recalled the note now. Too little, too late. She remembered a few other things as well.
“Oh no! Zack!”
She spun around to the monitors, only to find that her view of the upstairs hallway had gone dark. The cameras had been shot and killed by a very dangerous man.
—
Theo slid down the blood-flecked wall. He couldn’t help but wonder if his latest move had been a first attempt at heroics or merely a second try at suicide.
In either case, he knew he’d failed. A last-second twitch had thrust a less vital piece of himself into the path of the bullet. It cut a nasty gash across his arm, slicing the skin before piercing the wall. As he examined the mess below his T-shirt sleeve, his legs gave out and he slumped to the floor.
While keeping Zack pinned to the elevator, Rebel turned to look at Theo. Something had gone wrong. He’d foreseen the bullet’s entire journey before pulling the trigger. In his thoughts, he watched it go right through Theo’s heart.
Perplexed, Rebel re-aimed his weapon at Theo. Once again he took a glimpse into the immediate future, checking to see if his shot would connect.
The vision he received, though accurate, was not good news at all.
“No!”
He had just enough time to face Zack, right as the cartoonist rediscovered his weirdness.
Suddenly Rebel’s gun flared with cool white light. A thousand needles of pain covered every corner of his hand. Bellowing, he dropped his gun and hostage.
Zack stumbled backward, startled by his results. He’d focused his thoughts on rusting Rebel’s weapon. Now the revolver lay on the ground, nine weeks older but still very functional. Rebel’s hand, however, had become a gruesome horror. The skin was white and bloodless, with scaly splotches of rot. His fingernails had turned a gangrenous black.
He lashed out with his good arm, striking Zack in the jaw and knocking him down to the carpet. Rebel stooped to reclaim his gun from the floor, testing its weight and feel in his left hand.
“Son of a bitch.” He groaned as a new wave of pain overtook him. “I swear to God, if this kills me—”
Rebel’s eyes suddenly rolled back in his head. He shuddered violently in place before crumpling to the floor.
Eight feet behind him, Amanda kept an anxious vigil from the stairway landing. Zack dazedly blinked at the peculiar little device she continued to aim at Rebel.
“What . . . what is that?”
She looked down at the electron chaser in her quivering hands.
“I don’t know.”
—
She’d gone downstairs in search of Hannah and found Czerny instead.
The physicist lay on the stairwell, holding his bunched shirt to his stomach. His skin was pale, his breathing labored. He was lucid enough to tell Amanda which medical supplies could be found in which cabinets.
“Be careful,” he wheezed. “There are still intruders.”
The only stranger Amanda encountered in her trip to the medical lab was the man in the Teddy Roosevelt mask. He lay unmoving at the foot of the reception desk, a terrifying sight with his eerie rubber grin. Worse, Amanda could sense a familiar energy coursing inside him. He had the same beast as her. The tempis. From Czerny’s grievous wound, it was clear how he enjoyed using it.
The moment she returned to Czerny’s side, Mia’s frightened voice filled every speaker in the building, warning Zack of an impending ambush.
Amanda covered her mouth. “Oh my God. Zack . . .”
“Where is he?” Czerny asked.
“I don’t know. I went back to my room to get dressed. By the time I came out, he was gone.”
They heard the sounds of struggle upstairs, followed by two loud gunshots.
Czerny thought of Beatrice, then fumbled for the chaser with a bloody hand. He thrust the weapon in Amanda’s grip.
“Go help them,” he implored her. “Please.”
She did.
Amanda had no idea how long she stood in the hallway, aiming the chaser at the twitching man on the floor. Once her gaze fell to Theo, her nurse’s mind took over.
He watched her anxiously as she examined his wound. “How bad is it?”
“You need stitches.” She turned around. “Zack . . .”
The cartoonist climbed back to his feet, fixing his shell-shocked gaze on Rebel’s rotted hand.
“Zack!”
He snapped out of his trance. Amanda motioned to the stairwell. “Dr. Czerny’s badly hurt. We need to get him to a hospital. Can you get Theo downstairs?”
He wiped the blood from his mouth. “Yeah. Go help Czerny.”
Amanda hurried back downstairs. Zack lifted Theo to his feet. They both kept a wary eye on Rebel.
“Jesus,” Theo uttered. “What did we ever do to that guy?”
Zack wasn’t sure he followed the man’s vague account of ominous holes and preventable futures. All he knew, from looking at that hand, was that Rebel sure as hell had a reason to hate him now.
—
By the time Zack and Theo rejoined Amanda on the landing, the orphans had entered the lobby from the east hall. With a high cry of relief, Mia ran up the steps and wrapped her arms around Zack.
“Oh my God! I thought you were dead!”
Zack returned the hug, reeling with guilt. When he’d first decided to leave the others, he didn’t think his absence would hurt them any more than the loss of a funny co-worker. In the wake of Mia’s hug, her warm correction, he never felt so cruel.
“It’s okay. I’m all right.”
Amanda passed Zack a roll of sterile gauze and some alcohol wipes.
“Take Theo down to the couches. Clean his wound and wrap it as best you can. Mia, keep his arm raised above heart level. That’ll slow down the bleeding.” She looked down the steps. “David, where did you go?”
“Right below you.”
Zack reached the ground floor and saw David kneeling at the side of the Roosevelt Man. The boy had two fingers pressed against the intruder’s neck.
“Are you insane? Get away from him!”
David stood up. “I was just checking his pulse. It’s weak but he’s alive.”
“Yeah, well, be careful. He still could get up.”
Theo had the same concern about the large man upstairs. He’d snatched away Rebel’s revolver, fiercely determined to keep it away from its owner.
Amanda peered over the railing. “David, go to the medical lab and find a stretcher. We need something to move Dr. Czerny.”
David nodded, then left the way he came. Mia stared at Czerny’s wound with nauseous dread.
“Will he be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Czerny weakly assured her. “Just have to get to a reviver.”
“Can’t Zack heal you now?”
“No,” said Amanda and Zack, in unison.
“No offense to him,” said Czerny, “but his healing experience is currently limited to a four-ounce mouse. Should he fail to capture all of me within his temporic field, the results would be far worse than my current predicament.”
Zack turned his white gaze to Czerny. “Wait. What do you mean?”
The physicist grimaced as Amanda placed a bandage on his wound.
“To manipulate the flow of time on a living creature is to manipulate the flow of blood. If you reverse just part of a person, it creates chaos in the vascular system, which can lead to all things from blood clots to a fatal embolism. That’s why revivers are full-body devices, and why shifters only work in enclosed spaces.”
Zack felt a high scream in his throat. For all he knew, he’d just sent dozens of air bubbles on a murderous path to Rebel’s heart. He may have just killed a man.
Throughout all the blood and chatter, Amanda kept glancing at the frozen corpse of Eric Salgado. She fought back tears.
“Can someone please go find my sister?”
“I’m here.”
Hannah hobbled through the west archway, covered in scrapes and grass stains. She looked ten years older now, and utterly miserable.
Amanda moaned in relief. “Oh thank God! What happened?”
“Some asshole with a sword tried to kill me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right. I got lucky.”
“Where’s the sword guy now?” Theo asked Hannah.
“Out on the front lawn. I hit him with a . . . Jesus, Theo! What happened to you?”
“Got stupid. Got shot.”
Mia glanced at the unconscious man on the floor. “I think that’s all of them. I only saw four people on the monitors.”
“I don’t care,” Zack said. “We’re getting out of here. All of us.”
“And going where?” Hannah asked.
Amanda finished placing her bandage on Czerny. “We have to get to the hospital as fast as we can.”
Czerny debated the notion of mentioning Beatrice, who was still hiding in his office. He figured her best chance for survival was to stay here, away from the targets.
“How exactly are we getting there?” Theo asked.
“Driving,” said David. He emerged from the north wing, an aerostretcher in one hand and a jingling key ring in the other. “I grabbed these from the security room. I assume one of them starts the Salgados’ van.”
Zack grabbed the keys from him. “Good thinking.”
“Are you okay driving? I’m not sure how differently the vehicles operate here.”
“I’ll figure it out. Let’s just go.”
Mia looked through the windows at their escape vehicle. She recalled the warning she’d received ten hours ago about Amanda. If she gets out of the van, they will shoot her. They will shoot her and she will die.
—
A large round portal bloomed on the wall near Rebel. A tall figure emerged from the whiteness. She was a young woman of Indian descent, as slender and pretty as Amanda. Her hair hung in a braid that extended all the way down the back of her black nylon bodysuit.
Her dark eyes popped at the sight of Rebel. “Oh no! Richard!”
Ilavarasi Sunder was the only one who called him by his real name. As his match, his mate, it was her prerogative. He simply called her Ivy. They all did.
A second figure stepped through the gateway. Gemma Sunder was a slip of a girl, barely five feet tall. She wore a sleeveless silk blouse over a black leather miniskirt, plus a garish amount of makeup. Her appearance was pure defensive strategy, a way to minimize the fact that she was technically ten years old.
Upon seeing Rebel’s unconscious frame, Gemma crossed her arms and scowled. “I warned him. I told him the breachers were fast learners.”
Ivy glared at her niece. “I don’t have time for your attitude. Just give me the picture.”
“Working on it.”
Once the MacDougals stepped through the portal, Ivy closed it shut. The redheaded brothers were short and stocky, and utterly indistinguishable from each other except for the color of their tracksuits.
The twins helped Ivy roll Rebel onto his back. She screamed when she saw his withered hand.
“Oh God, he’s been rifted!”
“He’ll be okay,” Gemma said. “He won’t—”
The girl’s head suddenly jerked back as if she just woke up from a nap. She looked to the stairwell in hot alarm.
“They’re getting into a van. Right now. They’re leaving and they’re not coming back.”
“Damn it!” Ivy shot to her feet, then pushed the MacDougals to the stairs. “Go!”
The brother in green pointed to his concerned face, then the ceiling.
“Forget the cameras!” Ivy yelled. “Just go! Stop them! Kill as many as you can!”
—
The weather inside Mia’s head was wet and foggy. She could barely hold a thought as she watched her friends in action. While Zack hurried around to the driver’s side of the van, David helped Amanda load Czerny’s stretcher into the back. Hannah stayed to the side with Theo, propping up his wounded arm as he kept a nervous eye on the lobby. Everyone seemed to have a task. Mia could only clutch her journal and ponder Krista Bloom, a woman who didn’t seem particularly crazy or evil. Why did she want them dead? Why did she make it sound so crucial?
She noticed Erin’s boots on the other side of the van and mindlessly moved toward them.
“Mia! No!”
With a burst of speed, Hannah blocked her way. “You don’t want to see that. She’s . . . gone.”
“But that’s Erin.”
“I know. I know it is. But if you see her like that, that’s all you’re going to see whenever you think of her. Please trust me.”
Mia idly reached behind her head, to the fading braids that Erin had tied six hours ago. She bit her lip to keep from crying.
David poked his head out the back doors. “Ladies, we need to go.”
“I need someone up front with me,” Zack yelled.
Hannah moved to the passenger door and climbed inside. She saw Zack fumble the key ring with shaking hands. For him, there was no avoiding the sight of Erin Salgado. He had to step over her bisected corpse to enter the van.
The actress put a calming hand on his arm. He looked at her. “You saw her.”
She grimly nodded. Zack suppressed the mad screaming fit that had been eluding him since day one.
“Goddamn it. Goddamn it.”
David tapped on the metal mesh that separated the front seats from the back. “Dr. Czerny says the hospital’s not far. Make a left at the front gate, then keep going for two miles.”
“Okay.”
Hannah spotted rapid movement through the lobby windows. “Oh no . . .”
David pressed against the grate. “Two more are coming this way, Zack! We need to go!”
“I’m trying!”
The Salgado family had three vans, four cars, and two motorcycles between them. All keys were present, and none seemed to fit the ignition.
The front doors of the building swung open. A pair of stout, red-haired twins stepped outside. They fixed their stoic gazes on the Silvers.
Hannah cocked her head at them. “Why are they just standing there?”
The MacDougals each raised their outer arm, aiming an open palm at the van.
Theo went pale. “Shit. I don’t like this . . .”
Zack jabbed another key at the ignition. “What? What are they doing?”
A loud metallic squeal filled the van. Suddenly the passenger-side windows turned cloudy and cracked.
Hannah looked up at the creaking roof. “Are they crushing us?�
��
Amanda rooted through the first aid kit, struggling to stay focused on her task. Czerny’s skin had turned cool and clammy. He’d lost too much blood. He was slipping into shock.
Mia kept her tense gaze on her. “Amanda, you have to promise me you won’t leave this van.”
“What?”
“I got a note—”
“David, keep Theo’s arm raised!” Amanda lifted Czerny’s legs to push circulation. She glared at Zack through the grate. “Would you start the damn van already?”
“I’m looking for the right key!”
“Amanda, you have to promise me you won’t leave this van until I tell you it’s safe!”
“Okay, Mia! I won’t! I promise!”
Hannah screamed as a door hinge came loose. Patches of rust grew along the edge of the windows.
“They’re not crushing the van,” David said. “They’re aging it.”
Cursing, Zack isolated the failed keys, then held the ring out to Hannah. “Take over.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m undoing! Just go!”
Hannah grabbed the ring and bent uncomfortably toward the ignition. Her door let out another rusty groan. She tried not to think what would happen if the twins got an open line of attack on her.
Zack concentrated on the windshield, reversing away the clouds and cracks. He could see the blue-suited brother in front of the van, raising a palm at the hood.
“Shit. He’s going for the engine.”
David pressed against the metal mesh. “Open the gate!”
“What?”
“I can take him, but you need to open the gate!”
Zack slid the grating. David squeezed his upper body through the opening and aimed a hand at the attacking twin. Suddenly the man’s head became enveloped in seven-year-old construction noise, localized and amplified for maximum effect. The twin covered his ears, wincing in agony.
“Good, David. Good!”
“Just get us out of here!”
“I’m trying!” Hannah screamed.
Fortunately, her sixth key was the right one. The electric motor came to life with a loud whirr.
“I got it! I got it! Go!”
