Making Time, page 25
From Sergei’s and my history and what it meant for RATS.
Mimi, though, wouldn’t have wanted any of that.
“We’re coming in,” I announced loudly.
“I can see that,” Sergei replied casually.
I rounded the corner of Dispatch and took in the scene.
Amanda was sitting in the dispatcher’s chair. Sergei stood behind her; a gun pressed into the side of her head. Carolyn Wylde was at a computer console, the screen displayed Orion specifications and what I was certain were locked files pertaining to Clive Crawford and RATS.
Mimi made a sound as I lowered my rifle. I remained silent, but inside I was cursing at myself; I should have expected a hostage. My eyes met Amanda’s. She stared defiantly - and bravely - back at me.
“Carrie,” Mimi said.
Her sister glanced over her shoulder and stilled.
“Keep working,” Sergei told her in Russian.
“There’s nothing here,” she replied in flawless Russian back.
“It’s here. We saw him in 1967.”
“So close,” I said, keeping myself as far as I could in front of Mimi’s body. “You must have been annoyed when I interrupted your plans in Singapore.”
“I have long since stopped reacting to your interference, Jack,” Sergei said, smoothly switching to English.
“And yet, it must make it so hard to get anything done,” I offered.
He adjusted his gun on the side of Amanda’s head. The dispatcher grimaced but didn’t make a sound. I could see her knuckles whiten, though, when she tightened her grip on the desk.
“Are you all right, Amanda?” I asked. If he knew her name would it make a difference?
“Fine, sir,” she said. “I’m afraid, though, that RATS has been compromised.”
“Didn’t see that coming, did we?” I offered.
She said nothing. We both knew that Sergei would never have given up his search; this had been inevitable.
My eyes flicked back up to Sergei’s.
“You’ve aged,” I observed.
“So have you.”
“Six months in an alternate universe will do that to you.”
Amanda blinked, startled at the news, but again she kept herself so well composed. She was such an asset to RATS, and I suddenly had an awful feeling that we’d lose her. I couldn’t stand for that.
“I don’t have what you’re after, Sergei,” I said.
“I don’t believe you,” Sergei replied. He cocked his head and then turned his gaze on Mimi. “You do look alike,” he commented mildly.
“Carrie,” Mimi said again as if that was all she could say right now.
“Don’t bother,” Sergei offered. “She’s not your Carrie.”
There have been times when I’ve physically felt the world stop spinning. Most of those times have been onboard an Orion while taking flight. Or landing the bloody thing. But at that moment, I felt the same sensation. A mockery of suspended space flight. The world slowing until it stopped completely.
Carolyn Wylde looked at Mimi and shrugged.
Mimi hadn’t yet understood the implications. But I did.
I would kill him for this. I would kill him as surely as I now believed his Lunik had killed Mimi’s Carrie. Back in her time at Cape Canaveral.
The woman she looked at now with such longing and love was nothing more than what Bryan Fawkes was to Sally.
A facsimile. A replica from another universe.
“What the hell have you done, Sergei?” I said.
“Don’t you understand yet, Jack?” he replied. “It’s how it’s done. It’s how we surf Time’s waves. Has Clive kept everything from you? Are you still his mindless puppet?”
“What?” I whispered.
Sergei smiled; it was at once pitying and so very smug.
“That’s why I had to leave, you know,” he said, smiling. It was a chill smile that spoke volumes. “That’s why he made me leave,” he corrected. “It was leave or die.”
“You stole from us! You took Orion specifications and sold them to the Russians.”
“I did what I had to do to survive! You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same, old boy. Isn’t that what Clive calls us? ‘Old boy.’ As if we’re somehow part of his special little club. But we’re not, you see? He keeps us in the dark. But I figured it out and knowledge, as they say, is a powerful thing.”
What the hell was he talking about?
“You still don’t get it,” he said, then laughed. “How can you? OK, I’ll give you this; a morsel from my table, so to speak. We surf Time’s waves like a railway track. When the Orion responds to coordinates we set, it follows them by jumping tracks. It jumps tracks, Jack! Like a bloody train. And until now, Clive Crawford has been the only one who knew how to do that. He jumps tracks all the time when you’re not watching. When you think he’s with the Prime Minister at Parliament, he’s actually jumping tracks, Jack. He’s the original fucking freighthopper. A stowaway on Time’s train.”
“You’re lying,” I said, feeling numb.
“Am I? You’re more astute than that. You taught me to ask the difficult questions. To never trust what Time showed me. To determine for myself what was the truth. ‘A Time Surgeon must not succumb to the fantasy of science fiction’ you once said. ‘He must rise above the whimsical and root himself in reality.’ I’m rooted in reality, Jack. Are you?”
He was mad. I’d always suspected it, but the evidence was now staring me baldly in the face.
“I haven’t got what you came for, Sergei,” I said. “Stop this. Your search is tearing apart Time. Tearing apart universes.” I glanced at Carolyn Wylde and then at Mimi. And then faced my nemesis again. “Tell me you didn’t plan this.” Tell me I don’t have your scheming to thank for Mimi.
He looked at one Wylde twin and then at the other. He smiled and said, “Carolyn was a happy coincidence, but then I’d dreamed of her and knew where I needed to be. I dreamed it all, Jack.”
Bloody fucking bollocks!
“Carrie?” Mimi said, her voice much like a mouse’s squeak.
I reached out and gripped her hand, afraid she’d rush across the room to shake some sense into her sibling. I couldn’t have her any nearer to Sergei. I couldn’t allow him a chance to destroy her like he was destroying everything else.
“Mouse,” I murmured. God, how did I protect her from this?
I didn’t. I couldn’t. But I could get rid of Sergei.
“I don’t have what you’re looking for, Sergei,” I repeated.
“You were in 1967 Singapore.”
“Fixing a rip.”
“You stopped us.”
I shook my head. Why was this so important?
I had a fairly good idea of what it was he’d been after now: Information pertaining to the Luna Programme that somehow made up Orion’s ability to surf Time’s waves.
It had been on a Russian operated Orion that the Cosmonaut Sergei Anton Ivanov had returned from the ISS to Earth all those many years ago. Out of time but on an Orion under Russian control. What had they done back then that changed things?
That original Orion had been reverse engineered at some stage, prior to my stint here at RATS. But where it was now, I didn’t know.
And then I suddenly did.
If Sergei was right, then Clive was using it. Because he sure as hell hadn’t been using any of our ships.
I felt sick to my stomach. This was a disaster. A mess.
I glanced at Mimi. She looked at who she still thought was her sister with such confusion and lost hope.
I looked back at Sergei. He watched me as if at any moment I’d reveal the answers to the universe.
This was a mess.
“Without it, we’re doomed,” he suddenly said. “Not just Lunik and my fellow comrades. But RATS as well. Don’t you see? Time likes to fix things. And it’s trying to fix Orion right out of history.”
Could it be true? Or was Sergei manipulating everything to his advantage as he’d done for so many years now?
“Regardless,” I said. “I don’t have what you’re after.”
He studied me for a long time. So long, in fact, that alternate universe Carolyn finished her computer search and stood up from her seat.
“It’s not here,” she said again in Russian.
Mimi made a choked sound.
I turned toward her.
And out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sergei holster his weapon and pull out a grenade.
I wrapped my arms around Mouse and threw us both to the ground. Amanda, bless her attentiveness and assertive nature, threw herself sideways out of her chair as well.
But the grenade wasn’t a bomb as such. It was a gas canister.
And the gas it released clouded everything.
My vision of Sergei and his Carrie wearing breathing masks.
My ability to react in any way that would prevent their escape.
It all became cloudy.
And then I heard the gunshots out in the hallway. But even if I could have come to Sebastian’s and Bryan’s aid, I couldn’t move my body; the gas had seen to that.
I only hoped that they were protecting Miss Groves because Novitiates shouldn’t have to sacrifice themselves in this way.
This was a Surgeon’s mess. And if Sergei was right, I thought perhaps it was Dr Clive Crawford’s mess. My old, secretive friend.
Clive, I thought as unconsciousness finally claimed me. What have you done, old boy? What have you done to land us in this mess?
48
And I Kissed Him Like He Was My Everything
Mimi
I woke up to loud voices and lots of swearing. Some of it was in British accents, and some of it was distinctly American. I opened my eyes, feeling like I was peeling my eyelids off my eyeballs. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I could smell rotten eggs, and we were nowhere near the cafeteria.
In fact, I was in a hospital bed.
The infirmary, then.
My vision swam, making me want to puke, but the conversation I could overhear was clearly not for my ears, so I pretended to be out still; closing my eyes again and regulating my breathing.
I’d done this as a child with Carrie.
That thought upset me so much, it felt like a knife to the heart; my chest ached.
“Find him, then,” Jack was saying.
I took a breath and then another; it didn’t hurt quite as much. Hearing his familiar voice soothed me like nothing else could have right then.
“He was meant to be at a meeting with the Prime Minister,” someone said. “But he’s not responding to my calls, and the Prime Minister’s office said they didn’t have a meeting scheduled with Dr Crawford today.”
Jack muttered something under his breath, then, that sounded decidedly like his usual bollocks refrain mixed in with an “I’ll kill him” addendum.
“Sir!” a distant voice said. I could hear hurried footsteps rushing toward us. Keeping my eyes shut was becoming harder and harder to manage. “Dr Rider didn’t make it.” Dean. Relief coursed through me. My friend was alive, and that lifted a little of the dreadful weight I could feel off my chest.
“What do mean he didn’t make it?” Jack demanded. “He was locked up. Did you miss a weapon on him?”
“If you count a cyanide capsule in his teeth as a weapon, then yeah, we missed it.”
“Mein Gott,” Dr Bauer murmured; she was easy to identify. “He would rather die a horrible death than face our accusations?”
“Or face Sergei’s wrath,” someone else said. That would be Dr Holt. Australian.
“That’ll be all, Jordan,” Jack said.
I heard a door shut.
“Jack,” an American said. Bryan. Alternate universe Bryan. A little of that weight settled back on my chest again. “We should continue this conversation elsewhere.”
“You have no jurisdiction here,” Winchester snapped; I’d recognise his sanctimonious voice anywhere.
“You all seem to have missed the obvious,” Bryan replied steadily. “We have a Novitiate in the room with us.”
“Mimi’s out cold,” Jack said.
“Is she?”
I could feel Jack’s hand on my arm and then his breath on my cheek.
“Are you awake, Miss Wylde?” he asked.
Ah, eff it!
“Wake up, beautiful,” he whispered only loud enough for me to hear.
I opened my eyes and looked into amber and whisky. The blurriness had vanished, and I had an uninterrupted view of Jack Evans’ smile and stubbled whiskers. I reached up and scratched his cheek.
“Told ya we had a witness,” Bryan said.
I felt my face freeze and then fall.
“Sally,” I whispered, my voice rough.
Jack handed me a glass of water and then helped me take a sip. When the glass was back on the bedside table, he said, “She’s outside tending to the rest of RATS. Most have recovered from Rider’s sedatives, but some are still a little groggy. Thankfully, Rider had them all in the infirmary.”
“I would love to know how he managed to get everyone into the medbay before they woke up,” Fawkes said. “Can you imagine it? Him draggin’ unconscious forms through RATS’ halls while Sergei rampaged through the dormitories? Have to play that security footage back with a side order of popcorn.”
No one said a thing, but every single person in the room stared at him.
He seemed to realise he’d triggered some emotional response, because he scrubbed at the back of his neck and looked away, not making eye contact.
It was going to take us some time to get used to this Bryan. It didn’t seem fair to stop thinking of our Bryan. To stop grieving the Bryan we knew and replace him with a Bryan we had only just met. But this Bryan was here now, and we’d have to.
“This is so effed up,” I muttered.
“I agree,” Dr Bauer said primly. She shook her head and turned back to Jack. “If you are feeling better, Doctor, perhaps we should reconvene in the meeting room?”
Jack looked at each of the Surgeons and then nodded his head. I got a distinct impression, though, that he had resigned himself to all of this, but it was the last thing he wanted to do.
“Shall we say in half an hour?” he suggested.
“Why the delay?” Winchester growled. “Are you avoiding something?”
“If it hasn’t escaped your notice, Winchester,” Jack said coolly, “I haven’t had a shower in six months.”
Everyone blinked at him.
“Yes,” Dr Bauer eventually said. “Everyone needs a moment to refresh.”
She looked at Bryan. Everyone else looked at Bryan too.
“I sponge bathed,” he said. “Some of us have standards.”
“And a functioning Orion,” Jack added.
“Yeah, that too. But findin’ water for the tanks was gettin’ harder. I could do with a shower.”
He nodded to me and then headed toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jack asked.
“My room. To shower.”
My heart felt too damn heavy.
“It’s not your room,” Jack said softly.
“It’s…” Bryan scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck again and nodded. “I’ll take a guest room down on the first floor.”
“Murray,” Jack said. “Would you see that…Bryan is comfortable.”
“And place a guard on his door,” Winchester added.
“Hey now!” Bryan said. “I’m still me.”
“Yes,” Jack said, not unkindly. “But we don’t know you. We only know our Bryan. And he’s dead.”
They stared at each other, but Fawkes wasn’t going to win this.
His entire body slowly deflated and part of me thought this was wrong. We were wrong. We should accept him because we’d already lost too much.
And so had he. He’d lost his entire universe.
Dr Holt followed Bryan out, and eventually, all the other Surgeons left as well, leaving me with Jack.
He sat down on the edge of my bed and sighed, then scratched at the scar on his jaw.
“How did you get that?” I asked.
He flicked sad eyes to me.
“I tried to stop him,” he said quietly. He had to be talking about Sergei; only Sergei could make him look like that. “I knew what he’d done, and I tried to cover it up. I thought if I could talk to him, reason with him, he wouldn’t throw it all away and ruin us. I managed to get some of what he stole back, but he blindsided me with an Orion hatch.”
He tapped the scar on his jaw.
“It’s a reminder that not everything is fixable. Not life. Not mistakes. Not misplaced trust.”
No wonder he worried at it when things got rough.
“And yet he didn’t kill us,” I observed.
“Don’t take his nonlethal methods as a sign of compassion, Mouse. Sergei Ivanov is only concerned with one person: Himself. Everyone else is simply a means to an end.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of Carrie. Who wasn’t my Carrie.
“She’s like Bryan,” I whispered.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
I shook my head and wiped at the tears on my face. I knew what this meant, but I wasn’t ready to think the words, let alone say them.
“You should take that shower,” I said.
“I will if you will,” he whispered.
He looked at me with such adoration that I almost acquiesced. But I shook my head and squeezed his hand, and he finally left me to my jumbled thoughts. He looked back twice before he exited the room, though. As if every step away from me was a step he hated taking.
This wasn’t over yet. Sergei would still hunt for whatever he thought was so bloody important he had to tear realities apart to get it. Dr Crawford was apparently missing in action. We were down to two Orions, and those were borrowed from another universe. Sally was grieving, and the object of her grief had reappeared, but it wasn’t the man she had loved. And my family may or may not be mine, but they existed in this universe.
I stifled a sob. I’d feared it. I’d thought it. I’d refused to believe it, though. But a part of me had known it. I’d lost my family. The moment Carrie and I broke into Launch Pad 39A, my family as I knew it was gone. That last glimpse of a laughing Carrie tapping on the side of the Fixed Service Structure after she’d skipped across the concrete pad as if it was a grand adventure was the end of my life as I knew it.
