Chapter 16

I woke up on an exam table. Graham was standing over me, watching the table’s scanner readout. I could hear the accelerated beeping, indicating that my heart was going at a pretty good pace. Interesting how the body reacts to being run through with a large piece of sharp metal. The wound was healed, but body doesn’t just forget that it, only moments ago, sustained a life threatening, hell, a life-ending injury. You could have danced a fox trot to the beat.

“Ow”.

Graham smiled at me patiently. “How are you feeling?”

I took a couple more shallow breaths before I answered.

“Ow covered it”.

“She’s fine”. Graham snapped his gloves off and addressed the other medtechs in the room. “Give her a script of Premacet and”, turning to me, “no traveling for a few days. You took a good hit this time, didn’t you?”

“Broad sword. Been a couple of years. I forgot how much that hurts.”

Graham patted my hand paternally and turned to leave. One of the nurses handed him the chart to sign.

I tried to sigh. Damn it hurt. The mind is a strange thing. Premacet is a delightful narcotic that has no addictive properties. Helps the muscles forget the trauma. Things still hurt, but you tend not to pay much attention to it. Do not drive on this medication. It’s fun, but it’s really not a good idea.

I finally got my wits about me. “I gotta go back”.

Graham looked down at me, sighed, looked up at the nurse. “Call Parks.”

“Goldberg didn’t show up in any of the TALIS stations?” I was sitting on the edge of the exam table, still in my scrubs from the exam, still hooked up to the heart monitor, talking to Parks.

“Nope. Which, we’re assuming, means he didn’t go through any of them in the first place.”

“There’s an unauthorized TALIS station somewhere out there?”

“That’s our best guess.”

A cold chill went down my spine, and the heart monitor beeped louder and faster. I ripped the leads off my chest.

Parks snorted. “Yeah, I know.”

“Anyone can go anywhere, anytime, and we won’t know about it unless and until it shows up in The History.”

“Mm hmm.”

“I need to talk to H.R. about retirement.”

“Funny. That’s very funny. Conference in 30 minutes. You ok to be there?” She turned to leave.

“Yeah. Has Graham figured out how long before I can go back?”

Parks turned back and looked at me as though I’d just grown a second head. “Yes. Never. You go back never.”

One of the tenets we’d held by was that one person didn’t go back into a particular timeline. Why, you may ask. Because apparently it accelerates The Push. We haven’t figured out why, but the effect is pretty simple. You go back, you’ve got maybe half the time you would have otherwise had.

Oh well, just send someone else, right? No big deal. Except this time it was. This time I had a full plan in action, I had a team I could lead in to get the bad guy. And I wanted San Martin. I wanted to know where that little weasel Goldberg went. This was my case and I was the one who discovered there was an illegal TALIS out there and I damn well was going to find out where it was.

If Goldberg didn’t appear in a sanctioned TALIS, neither would San Martin, so we had to get the information before we sent him back. And I had proven methods of extracting information. And hey, if worst came to worst, I could just embed a chip in the guy before I sent him home. Embed it somewhere so that he’d have a really hard time getting it out all by himself.

I know I sound brutal here, and don’t get me wrong, I’ll admit to it, but there was a certain method to my madness and I wasn’t the only Chaser who used it. You could get what you needed out of your suspect by whatever means necessary, then send him, or her, back to his, or her, own time. He, or she, would be perfectly fine, just like that weasel Diggs I told you about earlier. The evidence of any, ummm, persuasion, would be healed by the trip back through the TALIS. Their word against yours. And gee, you haven’t been gallivanting around time breaking laws for personal gain. Wonder who they’ll believe. (Ok, yes, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that my supervisors suspected there may have been a grain of truth to the accusations…but alls well that ends well, right?)

Bottom line, I gave as good as I got. And I got a lot from Goldberg. And I was going to take it out on San Martin. He would know where Goldberg was. He would also know where he was going to land when I sent him back. If nothing else, I could plant a chip on him that would let us locate him immediately upon his return to our timeline. If I could get back there, that is.

So meanwhile, back in the moment, Parks is staring at me, waiting for me to throw a tantrum. She knows me well. But, ha! I, for once, realize in time that this is a battle I can’t win. At least not through formal channels. So now isn’t the time for hissy fits.

I slid off the table and started to change into the street clothes she’d brought me from my locker. “Ok. I’ll brief the next team as soon as you’re ready.”

I can’t win for losing. I could see she didn’t believe this meek and mild “yes sir” attitude. One more ploy. I leaned, all helpless and damsel in distressey against the exam table, simply exhausted from my ordeal. Parks rushed back to me, calling for Graham. I was obviously still weak, affected by the severe trauma I’d suffered. Maybe I better go home for a couple of days. Yes. Yes, that would be best.

Sometimes I feel guilty about how devious I can be. Mostly not, though.

Between the Premacet, a long hot bath and some light calming scents filtered through the HMS, I was able to sleep a few hours. I actually felt pretty good when I woke up. Physically, that is. I was still rather grumpy about being barred from going back. There had to be a way around this. There’s always a way.

The way walked in about an hour later. It’s for a good cause. Don’t look at me like that.

An hour or so later, I was on my stomach, Dillon straddling me, giving me an absolutely phenomenal back massage. Oh look, there’s a nice mood. Allow me to blow it.

“Did they come up with any ideas about how to find the illegal TALIS machine?”

The massage stopped. Dillon dismounted and started pulling on his clothes.

“What?? Where are you going?”

“You’re on leave for three days. Leave. As in not working.”

“What, so I can’t ask about work?”

“No, you can’t. Because you talk about work, which makes you think about work, then suddenly I wake up at 3 a.m. and find you using my password to hack into The History and you’re working.”

“Geez, someone got laid on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Ash, I’m serious. Parks wants you out of this for a few days. She knows you. I know you. You want to go get your non-lin and you’re not the type that takes no for an answer easily.” He looked uncomfortable as he buttoned his shirt.

“What?”

“What, what?”

“Stop that. What aren’t you saying?”

Dillon knows better than to keep lying once I’ve caught on that something’s up. “Parks told me to sit on you for a few days. Actually she said ‘Do whatever it takes to keep her occupied.’ Guess she sort of figured it out.”

“Think so?” So Parks wanted me out of the picture for three days. Which, not coincidentally, was how much time would need to pass before my going back to 1265 would be impossible. Right now, I was still only 2.5 days into the trip, even though half a day had been spent in the present. If I had stayed back there, I would have about another 2.5 days where I could function pretty well. If I went back right now, I’d probably have a day and a half, maybe less, of functional time before The Push started to wreak havoc on me. But I knew where I was going, I knew what I was going to do, I had an army of men to help me. I could do it.

But if I sat here in my apartment for three days, the window of opportunity would pass. Theoretically, if I went back after three days, the trip would kill me. I’d reach my destination a bag of melted organs and bones. We learned about this timing the hard way. No one takes chances with it anymore. That’s why no one goes back to a time they’ve already visited. That’s why Parks was being so inflexible. That’s why Dillon was being so obstinate.

“I can do this. I can go back, get the job done and get back here in a day.”

“Or…you can tell the team they’re sending in what to do and they’ll get the job done, just like you would. Ash, the timeline was restored with Goldberg’s return. Whatever San Martin did, he was careful not to disturb The History.”

“They can’t leave him back there!”

“They’re not going to. They’re sending another Chaser in tomorrow morning. Estella, I think.”

“But Cayden trusted me. His men started to trust me. I go in, rally Cayden and his men and extract San Martin with minimal fuss. Another Chaser is going to have to go through the whole exercise of building that trust again.”

“No, she won’t. Cayden was captured and executed. Drawn and quartered in the town square. It’s in the public record now. He’s dead but the timeline is fine. He’s not part of the mission anymore.”

I felt sick. Really, physically sick. If you don’t know what drawing and quartering is, watch the vid Braveheart and use your imagination to fill in the blanks. Then imagine it happening to someone you know, someone you were intimate with hours before. You’ll know how I felt at that moment.

It makes no sense, I know. No matter what, Cayden would be dead. And maybe he always died at the hands of his enemies. I don’t know…there was no mention of him in The History before this. But right now, I knew I’d led Goldberg to the camp, whether through carelessness or because of my chip. I’d led him to Cayden, and Cayden had been publicly executed in a horrible, horrible way.

“Wow.” Dillon was staring at me in awe.

“What?”

“You’re showing emotion”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Dillon?”

I slid off the bed and stomped over to my closet to put some clothes on. This was so not the time to ‘talk’.

He crossed the room and turned me to face him. I couldn’t look at him right then.

“You know I know what happens when you’re away. You also know that I have other lovers as well. We’re not contracted, we do what we want. And that includes being here, together. And usually, when I’m with you here, I see that look in your eyes. The look that tells me you’re glad I’m here. But not tonight. Tonight, you’re a million miles…and a thousand years…away from me.”

I tried to pull my face out of his hand, but he held me. I managed to meet his gaze after a couple of seconds.

“This guy, Cayden, you really care about him, don’t you?”

I tried to talk but this huge stupid lump was stuck in my throat. I managed to nod.

The sincerity in his eyes was actually painful to me. “I will be here whenever you want me to be. And I know you will always be there whenever I need you. You’re my best friend. But don’t use me. Okay? You want my help, ask me for it.”

It took a couple of seconds before I could speak.

“I need your help. It doesn’t affect the timeline, but…”

“But, it affects you. You know what it’ll do to you but you still want to go back.”

I took a shaky breath, looked at ceiling for a minute. “I have to go back. I can’t leave it like this. I can’t leave him like that.”

I looked back at Dillon again.

His expression seemed to close up a little. I don’t know how else to describe it. But his voice was perfectly normal.

“I really think we need to reexamine the timeline. I’m pretty sure I saw an anomaly in the fifteenth century that seemed to have originated in 1268. Something to do with royal lineage out of .”

He kissed me, turned and walked out of the room.

“Where are you going?”

“My place. It’s easier to hack in to The History from there.”

“Dillon…” I followed him out to the living room.

Without turning around, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m the best”. As he opened the door, he flashed me a wink over his shoulder and he was gone.