Reversion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 3) (2 page)

Lucas held his arms up, hoping to avoid a beating. “You think I’m responsible for this?”

The hairless copy pointed at the Google Glasses. “You’re the one wearing the tech. I’m guessing it’s some type of transportation device.”

“Not exactly,” Lucas said, using a soft tone in his voice.

The man knelt down and picked up a rock the size of a grapefruit. He stood, bouncing the stone in his right hand. Several other members of the clan did the same, though two of them were using their left hand, which was odd since Lucas was right-handed. Why would some of his copies be left-handed?

Baldy turned his body sideways, leveraging his arm back like a baseball pitcher. He brought his arm forward, sailing the rock at Lucas.

Lucas ducked instinctively, but realized he didn’t need to—the rock flew over his head, missing him by a good ten feet.

The bald Lucas picked up another rock. “I suggest you hand it over. And I mean now. Next time, I won’t miss.”

Just then, a trio of military-style helicopters rose up behind the group of Lucas copies from the depths of the cavernous valley below, their four-bladed rotors whirling through the cool mountain air. The sound of the blades were muffled and not chopping as expected, probably using whisper mode to conceal their approach.

The twin-engine airships carried an impressive array of weaponry mounted across the underside of their fuselage, making them easily identifiable: Boeing AH-64 Apaches. The Google Glasses’ heads-up display identified each ordnance: 30 mm chain gun, 1,200 rounds of ammo, and a suite of Hellfire missiles.

The three warbirds angled their hulls in different directions, spreading out into a three-sided attack formation.

The swarm of Lucas copies covered their heads as a hurricane of downdraft wash pummeled them from above.

The loudspeaker mounted to the underside of the middle chopper activated. “On your knees! Hands up! This is General Alvarez. We have you surrounded. This is your one and only warning.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Lucas said, remembering the man’s ruthless actions from the earlier timeline. He dropped to his knees, putting his hands over his head. He thought the two-hundred-plus copies would have done the same thing, but they didn’t. Instead, each one took off running in a different direction.

The heavy-caliber machine guns on all three Apaches opened fire, spraying the mountainside with a hail of exploding rounds, incendiary charges, and depleted uranium penetrators.

Lucas covered his ears, then plopped to the ground and curled into a ball. He watched seven Lucas copies on the left explode into chunks when a flood of rounds hit their mark; center mass. Arms and heads flew one way, torsos and legs went another.

Copy after copy was gunned down without mercy, sending body parts, flames, and streams of blood and guts across the desert terrain as the rapid-fire boom of the chain guns shook the Earth.

The rightmost helo leaned and circled around, aiming its deadly ordnance at Lucas. He knew he needed to act, but he only had one choice. He removed the Google Glasses from his face and folded them, holding them securely in his palm. He rolled his body backward with his arms laced across his chest, hoping and praying that he and the skin-tight Smart Skin Suit would survive what came next. He worried about the integrity of the time travel suit since it covered him from neck to toe and would surely take a beating when gravity took over. If he damaged a single strand of the gold nano-circuitry, it wouldn’t be able to form a stable communications link with Fuji and the professor back home.

A second later, he found the edge of the mountaintop, just as the gunship opened fire. A barraged a rounds tore through the dirt on both sides of him as he took a deep breath and swung his lower body around. His legs slid over the cliff, then gravity took over, sending him sliding down the mountain on his backside, feet first.

Bushes and rocks flew past as he fought to maintain his body’s upright position despite the uneven terrain battering his undercarriage. For a moment, he thought he might survive the ordeal, but then his right foot caught an edge of a protruding rock, flipping him end over end. He landed on his stomach with his face leading the charge downhill.

His heartbeat hammered at his chest when he noticed a flowering, green-colored cactus. It was dead ahead along his current trajectory. He flung his head and shoulders back and to the right, hoping to avoid the lattice of needles sticking out from the drought-stricken plant. The three dozen or so spines missed his eye and cheek by mere inches, but they caught one of his kneecaps when his hip hit something hard, pushing his lower body into the plant. The impact with the cactus tossed him again; this time, he landed on his back as the skin on his leg ignited with radiating pain. His slide down the mountain continued, picking up steam as he went.

A few seconds later, he realized the free fall was about to come to an abrupt halt. Twenty feet in front of him was a shallow gully filled with dirt and rock near the base of the mountain. He tried to protect his head with his arms before impact, but it didn’t work. His cheek crashed into a pile of rocks, tearing his flesh open as shockwaves of pain burrowed their way into his jaw and landed in his neck. He rolled over onto his aching back and waited for the pain to subside a bit so he could catch his breath. Somehow he’d survived the fall, but his body was screaming at him from several locations.

Lucas sat up, putting pressure on the gash in his cheek with his hand. He scoffed, realizing the haunting cheek scars were back. Poetic justice, some might say, but at least he was able to enjoy a day without them after Carrie Anne repaired his face with the dermal regenerator.

He took inventory of the rest of his body. His left wrist was sore and tender to the touch, but other than a wicked headache and a myriad of sore spots, he thought he was okay.

Then he remembered the Google Glasses. He checked his hand. Shit! They weren’t there! He looked up, realizing he’d lost them somewhere on his way down the mountain. Without them, he wouldn’t be able to communicate with Fuji—or return home. He thought about climbing up to recover them, but decided against it when he heard more screams and gunfire coming from the plateau above. He needed to get moving before the gunships came looking for him.

A stand of tall, dense brush was about fifteen feet ahead of him. There was plenty of shade and cover underneath the thick foliage. He figured he could wait there until the airships finished their assault and left the area. Then he planned to find the glasses and get the hell out of there.

He stood up to walk to the shade, but his vision blurred as vertigo took over. His feet stumbled backward, sending him falling to the ground on his ass. Walking to the shade wasn’t going to be an option. That meant crawling on his knees—one-handed because of his sore wrist—toward the shadows. It wasn’t easy or quick, but he made it just before one of the Apache war machines swooped down from the ridge above his position.

The roar of the twin-engine monster was soon replaced by the chop of the rotors when the craft drifted overhead, sending dirt and pebbles thrashing through the air. Lucas checked to make sure his arms and legs were tucked under cover and not visible from above.

The attack helicopter hovered slowly to the right. Lucas worried that the general’s pilots might be using the warbird’s onboard thermal imaging system to look for heat signatures. If so, they’d be able to locate him, assuming they could distinguish his heat signature from the rest of the objects baking in the desert sun. He was safe from detection while hiding under the thick brush since it would obscure his heat signature from above, but his bloody face plant and subsequent crawl through the dirt and rocks might have left a trail of differential heat—something the trained soldiers might be able to trace.

Lucas listened closely, keeping tabs on the location and speed of the warbird as it circled around behind him.

So far, so good,
he thought.

But then his headache and dizziness intensified, making his eyes glaze over and his body weak. A few seconds later, his face hit the sand and everything went black.

Lucas opened his eyes and waited for the floating, speckled blobs in his vision to clear. They did, but the invasive headache was still pounding inside his skull. He was lying on his back, spread eagle, in a poorly lit room with only one source of light—a small desk lamp to his left. It was in the corner, with a weak, fluttering bulb installed. His body was covered is a soft, plush garment and not the tight, stretchy fabric of the Smart Skin Suit The dim light didn’t allow him to see much, but from what feel, her was covered in a white robe.

His breath quickened, taking in a torrent of air through his nose. Must and mold were the dominating odors, but that wasn’t all. The air was humid and thick—almost too thick—as if it were being saturated artificially, probably by the motorized device buzzing somewhere above him.

The surface pressing against his back was rigid and at least six feet long, a fact he knew was true since neither his head nor his feet were hanging off the end. He wanted to sit up but couldn’t move his arms or legs. Something had a hold of him. He rolled his head to the left and noticed a rope around his wrist. It extended out and down, disappearing below the edge of the wood-grained surface he was on. He tried to pull his arm free, but the lashing held firm.

The surface beneath him jiggled each time he moved. He was on a platform, probably a table, and it seemed likely the rope securing his hands was tied to the table’s legs for reinforcement.

He tried to free himself again. This time, he summoned all his might, yanking and tugging with his good wrist and both legs in rapid fashion, hoping he could wriggle at least one of them free. He couldn’t. The rope was too strong, threatening to tear at his skin.

A second later, he heard the strike of a match near his feet and saw flickers of flame bouncing off the ceiling. He craned his neck to look down across his body. The shimmering face of a young Asian girl looked back at him, brought forth from the shadows by the burn of a ten-inch matchstick. Her smile was stunning.

“You really need to keep still. Otherwise, you’ll injure yourself further,” she said before the match completed its initial high-intensity burn.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, feeling his chest tighten and blood pressure rise.

She didn’t answer, giving him a slight grin with her dark eyes locked onto his.

“Where am I? Why am I tied up?”

“I’ll answer all your questions. But for now, I need you to relax and remain calm,” she said, walking to the right side of the table with the flaming match in hand. The slender woman was dressed in a black t-shirt and pants with a duty belt around her waist. Her camo-style headband was pushed up high on her forehead, puffing up the jet-black stands of hair along the front.

She stood with the burning match next to his knee, which was swollen to the size of a football. There were at least two dozen needles sticking out of his kneecap—each with a brown-colored ball the size of a marble stuck on the end.

“Holy shit!” he said, remembering the impact with the cactus during his tumble down the mountain.

“I was able to remove the spines, but then I discovered something else—two fang marks.”

“A snake?”

“That would be my first guess.”

“Then you need to get me to a hospital, now!”

“Sorry, that’s not possible. The nearest hospital is more than a day’s walk—you’d never survive the trip. You’re too weak. Besides, a hospital won’t be necessary. I lanced the area and was able to extract most of the venom. It took some effort, but I managed to remove the dead and discolored tissue. I’m pretty sure I got it all,” she said, lighting one of the needle balls with the match.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked with eyes wide.

“Apply treatment. First we heat, then we treat.”

“Treatment?”

She nodded, lighting the rest of the balls. “Ancient family remedy.”

“Hey, I appreciate the help, but I need real a real doctor, not this mumbo-jumbo crap. You need to call nine-one-one!”

“Like I said, that’s not possible.”

“Well, make it possible. I’m dying here!”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“You have to do something!”

“Look. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I found you in the desert, and you’re still here. Plus, there’s no telling how long you were lying there before I found you. Your fever has broken and your vitals are getting stronger. So, I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine. We just need to continue treatment.”

“Twenty-four hours?”

“Yes, and let me say, you’ve been a real handful. Vomiting, violent seizures, hysteria. I’m guessing, since we’re having a normal conversation, you’re feeling better?”

“That all depends on what your definition of
normal
is.”

“Normal is normal. What else is there?”

Lucas didn’t want to spar with her. “I don’t know, but my head’s frickin’ killing me.”

“You may have a grade-three concussion. The gashes on your face were pretty severe. I had to use almost thirty stitches to close them up. I did what I could with the sutures, but I’m afraid you’ll probably have some nasty cheek scars.”

“Trust me, I’m used to that. I just wish my heart would stop racing.”

“It’ll slow down once your anxiety lessens.”

He hesitated, letting his heart rate slow a bit. “You could start by untying me.”

“Not yet. I want to make sure you don’t freak out again. My kidney can’t take any more rights.”

“I hit you?”

“Couple times.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

She finished lighting the last needle ball. “No worries. It’s understandable, given the circumstances. But you can see why I don’t want to untie you quite yet.”

“Yeah, I do. But trust me, it won’t happen again. I give you my word,” he told her in his most sincere voice, peering down at his right hand. He didn’t see any swelling along his knuckles as expected, making him wonder if she was telling the truth about the punches. He thought about brining it up, but decided against it. She seemed calm at the moment and he didn’t want to upset her. Until she untied him, he was at her mercy and needed to choose his words carefully.