Lost Friday

by Michael Bronte

  Remington reached over and undid my belt, slashing it from my midsection with one pull. She quickly wrapped it around my calf, cinching it with a yank. “Make sure this stays tight,” she said rather calmly, given the circumstances. With that, she took the Glock from my hand.

  “Where the hell are you going?” I asked desperately as she took off her shoes.

  “Just sit tight. I’m going to get help.”

  Where? I thought, but Remington launched herself into the night before I could say another word, her legs whipping the air as quick steps turned into long, loping strides. She sliced through the shadows at a right angle to where the shots had come from, her feet barely touching the ground as she disappeared into the darkness. I mean, it was like she was running on air. Everything was suddenly quiet, and I didn’t dare move, fearing I’d be like a squirrel that changes its mind halfway across the road and then, splat! I felt my heart pounding, ca-thump, ca-thump, as it threatened to explode in my chest. Alone now, I visualized Synthetics in the darkness drawing a bead on me as if I was in front of a firing squad, and that’s not how I wanted to die. I ducked down beneath the truck and peered down the dark street toward where the barrage had come from. Nothing, quiet as a mouse. Whoever had fired at us had become part of the night. In front of me, however, in the distance, I spotted a platoon of Synthetics snaking between the trees, their backs to me, pushing forward in waves of three like a military operation toward the Robelles’ house. They’d been through this before, I concluded, otherwise they’d just barge in and grab the formulas. Not only that, there were way more of them than before, which meant they’d learned something. There wasn’t much time. Last time, Roy and I were caught inside the house when everything hit the fan. This time, I had no clue where Roy was, but I had Synthetics on both sides of me, and I needed to do something besides sit there and bleed my own ketchup.

  I cinched the belt tighter, wrapping it around a couple of times and tucking it into itself. My hand came away sticky, which was good. It meant the blood was clotting. Oddly, I thought: great, I save myself—or, more appropriately, Remington saves me—from bleeding to death so that I can take a howitzer shell to the chest as soon as those Synthetic bastards find out I’m not dead. I may have escaped their attention for the moment, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they were back onto me. I tried to think.

  Aryeh, Roy, and Remington were all out there, all armed and all dangerous—well, except for Remington, but she continued to surprise me regularly—and I tried to think of what would keep this small army of Synthetics from getting to those formulas.

  Everything was so still now that I could almost hear the blood oozing from my leg. The situation had turned into a waiting game, and I figured it was better to be on the proactive side of this equation than not. I tested my leg by getting into a squat position, suddenly feeling the pain zig-zag through my body like a lightning bolt. Funny, I hadn’t felt a thing when I’d been hit, and now my skin was on fire. Nothing felt broken, however, but where I was wasn’t the place to be if I was going to force the Synthetics to play their hand. With any luck, Aryeh and Roy were hunkered somewhere waiting for the bastards to reveal themselves.

  I really had no clue as to whether I was thinking straight, or not, but I had no choice but to try and get away from that truck. I peeked beneath it one more time, and, once again, I saw shadows snaking through the trees toward the house. I recalled that when Aryeh bit the big one the first time around, Jenna Robelle had just cleared the dinner dishes, while Roy and I were screwing around with Remington’s laptop trying to convince David that Lost Friday was about to happen, and that he was about to be kidnapped by the Red Diamond—which he already knew. By inference, that meant that if David was inside that house again, he knew what was about to happen, and if he knew what was about to happen, he wasn’t about to sit there and wait. I figured anyone with a 180 IQ would have something up his sleeve—but what? If it was a trap, the Synthetics were walking right into it, but unlike the first time around—or maybe it was the second time; I was so confused—there were a lot more Synthetics out there now than the four that were taken out by Aryeh. Maybe it was a reverse trap; maybe there was a whole fucking army of Synthetics; maybe I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about, but I didn’t get the chance to find out.

  I heard the hammer on the Glock ratchet back before I even turned around. When I did, I spotted a six-foot-four Ken Doll standing there with this shit-eating grin plastered to his face like he’d just found a c-note on an escalator. Fucking bastard had probably been sneaking up on me the whole time. His big, black Glock was pointed right at my head, but the joke was on him because, behind him, not ten feet away, Remington was standing there barefoot, legs apart, with both hands wrapped around Darlon’s Glock, which she had pointed at the Ken Doll’s head. The thought zipped through my head that my life depended on who was going to fire first, but it evaporated like mist on a hot pan because Remington couldn’t fire Darlon’s Glock, I remembered; it was DNA-specific. The Ken Doll must have seen my eyes darting because he turned—his head, that is, the Glock stayed on me—and Remington pressed the trigger, but nothing happened. She tried again, and the Ken Doll knew he’d gotten lucky, smiling one of those evil little sneers that make you want to say, “Fuck you, asshole.”

  I made a move and proceeded to collapse immediately as my leg gave way, which only served to heighten the Ken Doll’s amusement. I guess he figured I wasn’t going anywhere—and I wasn’t—and he turned fully toward Remington, his ugly Glock trained on the middle of her chest. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t just lie there and let Remington get blown apart, so I screamed and lunged, coming nowhere near the Ken Doll’s legs. It was enough to distract him for a split second, however, which was enough time for what I saw next.

  Pirouetting with arms tucked, Remington whirled and moved forward at the same time, covering the ten feet between her and the Ken Doll in a split second. Lashing out with a reverse Kung Fu thing, she planted her heel smack into the side of the Ken Doll’s temple, almost knocking his head off his shoulders. As it was, he was unconscious before he hit the pavement, and he piled on to himself in a tangle of limbs. Like, where the fuck did that come from?

  Remington calmly walked over to the Ken Doll’s big, ugly Glock which had clunked onto the asphalt, picked it up, and tossed it to me. “We can probably use whatever he’s got inside that thing,” she said, referring to the ammunition, and she handed me Darlon’s Glock.

  I looked at the Ken Doll. I mean, he was lights out. I wanted to tell Remington to search him for more ammunition, but I was speechless.

  Chapter 37… The Real Aryeh

  It was just past ten p.m., well before David’s formulas found their way into Officer DiNardo’s car, which meant they were still in the house. If we didn’t get hold of that notebook, the townspeople would go through Lost Friday, again, while several more of us would end up getting snatched by Roarke, again. I knew Roarke couldn’t communicate with his Synthetics through the continuum, however, which meant they probably had a limited time window in which to complete their mission, and that we had to get to those formulas ASAP. If we didn’t, I got the overwhelming impression we’d never see Sea Beach again—in either time period, which made me wonder if I had another DNA lock on me.

  Okay, it was time to concentrate. My leg was still oozing, and I knew I wouldn’t be my normal nimble self if I raced the Synthetics to the Robelles’ house. Remington, however, was standing right in front of me, chest heaving, and wired to the max. God, she was hot.

  “I didn’t know you knew karate,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I guess I could have said thanks.

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she snarled, her eyes dropping to the prostrate Synthetic. “What the fuck did you get me into, Pappas?”

  There was gratitude for you. “Just think Pulitzer,” I said. That managed to put
a glint in her eye, all right, but the Synthetics had to be near the house. “We have to find Roy.”

  “No kidding. And how do you propose we do that?” She glanced at my bleeding leg while a drop of sweat tracked down into her cleavage.

  How did I propose we do that? I mean, I had no clue where he was, or even if he was still alive.

  “Do you want to use the truck?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “The truck. It’s this big thing right here.”

  I figured it was worth a shot, the alternative being to sit there and eventually become targets again. Given the truck’s condition, my guess was that the Synthetics figured we were dead. I mean, the thing was like a block of Swiss cheese, and I could only speculate as to whether it still worked. I hobbled around to the driver side and opened the door.

  “Not us… him,” Remington croaked. “Help me get him inside.”

  I stuffed Darlon’s Glock into the small of my back. The big lunker of a Synthetic wasn’t even moving, and I thought: geez, how hard did Remington hit this lug? It was like hoisting a bag of rocks, but somehow we managed to get him behind the wheel. I watched as Remington wedged his foot against the accelerator.

  “Where are the keys?” she asked.

  From the passenger side, I fished the keys from the cup holder and jammed the one with the Ford logo into the ignition, regretting it immediately as the ding-ding-ding Roy had been so careful to avoid earlier chimed into the night. The bells of Saint Patrick’s wouldn’t have sounded that loud, and it reminded me to check the cell phone still clipped to my belt to make sure it was set on vibrate. Remington reached across the Ken Doll’s body and turned the key. The F-150’s motor roared to life, and I figured we were done for. Certainly, if the Synthetics thought we were dead, we’d just announced that we weren’t, but luckily another barrage didn’t rock into the truck. I mean, we were right there on the street, our only cover being the truck itself. We should have gotten at least a howdy-do out of them.

  I watched as Remington scurried around and found some bungee cords in the cargo bed. I knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to wrap one of them around the gearshift lever and yank the thing into drive from outside the truck, launching it down the street toward the Robelles’ house with the Ken Doll behind the wheel. To what end I didn’t know, except to create a distraction, but a distraction wasn’t what we needed. I reached up and turned off the engine.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” she shot angrily. Funny, where most women would have been scared to death, Remington seemed to be aching for a fight.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said. The only sound was a hiss coming from the engine, the smell of unburned fuel thick in the perfectly still air.

  “What, you’d rather have them shooting at us?”

  “That would be normal,” I responded. “Where’d everybody go?”

  “Most of them are dead,” a voice said from behind me.

  I turned. It was Aryeh, with one forearm wrapped around David Robelle’s neck, holding what I recognized as David’s notebook in the same hand. His other hand was holding a big, black DNA Glock to David’s head. “Those that aren’t dead won’t fire as long I have him in this position.” Aryeh’s eyes indicated David’s head. “You see, they either need the notebook, or David alive, and I have both. They won’t risk losing either as long as the formulas are intact.”

  I understood immediately. Until those formulas were destroyed, the Red Diamond could always travel back to another time to obtain them. Barring that, they needed David alive because the formulas were in his head. I also understood that last time around, when Aryeh was shot, he wasn’t out hunting Synthetics, he was hunting David; he just never got there. “I suppose Vishal is waiting for you,” I said.

  “Vishal is a fool,” Aryeh responded. “He can’t comprehend the reality of the situation.”

  So, Aryeh was going to double-cross Vishal and the ICTO. “The reality being that you could take the ITD technology and use it for yourself.”

  As he pushed David toward the truck, Aryeh said, “It doesn’t take you long to figure things out, does it, Mister Pappas?”

  Yeah, I was a real fucking genius. My eyes darted, meeting David’s. His eyes were confident and, as with every event now, I figured he’d been through this before. Suddenly, his eyes shifted to the notebook in Aryeh’s hand. Was he trying to communicate with me? His eyes shifted again, and I knew that Aryeh couldn’t see them. What was David trying to tell me?

  “You’ll never get out of here….” I was going to say alive, but I stopped short and I don’t think Aryeh picked up on it. History was stubborn, I remembered, and last time Aryeh got an F in staying alive.

  “I’ll go anywhere I want as long as I have these,” Aryeh responded, indicating the formulas.

  Ding-dong. That was it. That’s what David was trying to tell me: destroy the formulas now!

  Synthetics started slinking out of the trees. There were four of them, just like last time, all Ken Dolls, all pointing futuristic Glocks at Aryeh.

  “Don’t come any closer,” he called out.

  He jammed his weapon into David’s skull and I saw David wince, but his eyes held steady. The Synthetics stopped, aware of the fact that the slightest flinch of Aryeh’s finger could cause David’s head to explode. The notebook contained the basis for David’s theories, but seeing as ITDs wouldn’t actually be invented until the next century, David would be developing those theories throughout his lifetime. No David meant no ITDs, but I surmised that the notebook was still extremely valuable in that others could try to develop the theories if David wasn’t around. That is, if there was anything of value in there at all. I took a gamble.

  “How do you know that notebook is the real thing?”

  Aryeh actually smiled. “Don’t take me for a fool, Mister Pappas. Where this notebook goes, David goes—and so do I.”

  So much for that idea. David was Aryeh’s ticket, and, looking around at the Ken Dolls, they knew it too. They continued to inch toward us, spreading out as they approached.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Aryeh warned again, louder this time. I figured it was the last time we’d hear it.

  I glanced at Remington, who was slightly behind me. She glanced back, or, more specifically, she glanced at the small of my back where Darlon’s Glock was digging into my tailbone. Only a couple of steps away, she turned in place as if to get a look at the Synthetics surrounding us, but as she did she made up some real estate and ended up closer to me and to my right, a sly little move indeed. I wondered what was going through her head, but the thought was pushed aside as I speculated whether Aryeh knew that he died last time around. Maybe he didn’t. Could it be possible? If it was, he was the only one who didn’t know that he had nothing to lose.

  I wondered if I could check my watch and not give anything away. Last time, Aryeh got it before midnight. I remembered that because it was just after midnight that Anne Behari, Roy, and I all got teleported away to see Roarke. I figured it was still before midnight now, which meant that I had to string this out long enough for history to repeat. If it did, Aryeh would be out of the picture, but the Ken Dolls would be on David and that notebook like stink on poop, and Roarke would have what he wanted. I had to do something to affect the next couple of hours, but unlike last time, some of the events were different.

  Last time, Remington had been on her way to meet with Corvissi. This time she was here, and I wondered what had happened along the way to make that so. Also, David’s notebook was in my grubby little hands last time. He’d given it to me so I could figure out a way to go back to a point in time before he’d begun communicating with the NASA scientists, and destroy the formulas. That’s when I decided to visit Anne Behari and dig into her connection with the Red Diamond, and that’s how I ended up putting the notebook in DiNardo’s car. I didn’t think that situation was going to repeat itself, s
o what did it all mean?

  Chapter 38… Remington’s Ruse

  My eyes stayed focused on David as Aryeh took a step toward the truck. “Get into the vehicle,” he commanded.

  “Whatever you’re planning, you’ll never get away with it.”

  “I don’t have to,” he responded. “The natural course of events will take care of everything.”

  What did he know that I didn’t? Maybe the natural course of events didn’t include Aryeh buying the farm this time. Probably not, I figured, but maybe Aryeh was the cat with nine lives. That probably wasn’t true about David, however. I could see him grimacing as Aryeh kept grinding the weapon into his skull. I didn’t know much about things like this, but my guess was that even if someone took Aryeh out with a perfect head shot, the odds of David not getting his head blown off would be fifty-fifty. Just a twitch of Aryeh’s finger would be all it took. Meanwhile, I noticed the Synthetics had come a step closer—to me. Okay, were they after Aryeh, or David, or the formulas, or me? If it was me, why didn’t they just fire away as they’d done earlier? Had something changed in the time between the barrage on the truck, and now? Nothing made sense. I could see the Synthetics flashing signals to each other like some sort of freakin’ swat team. I’m sure Aryeh saw it too, but he didn’t seem at all bothered by it.

  “To the vehicle, Mister Pappas,” he said coolly.

  The Synthetics came a step closer, and David shouted, “Don’t do it Johnny, no matter what.”

  Behind me, I heard Remington’s foot scrape on the asphalt, and I suddenly felt her hand on my butt. More specifically, it was edging up my butt toward Darlon’s Glock, which was wedged into my waistband.

  “Into the vehicle, now!” Aryeh shouted.

  He was getting more desperate. “Or what?” I called out. “You’re going to kill David? I know better.” Aryeh needed David alive, just as the Synthetics did. As a matter of fact, David was probably the safest one here. As for me—and Remington now that she was standing right behind me—there had to be a reason why we were both still alive, but I had a feeling that our time was running out. The Synthetics were only yards away now. Remington’s hand inched up my butt as Aryeh kept dragging David toward the truck. What was it about that damned truck?