Disrupted (7 page)

Oh, God, I’d killed an elderly.

I reached out, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. Don’t ask me what for, maybe to feel for a pulse or something, but his wrist was so frail, so lifeless in my grasp, I just held on, willing him to open his eyes.

“Hey! What happened there?”

“Kid knocked someone down.”

“Move aside. This man needs help.”

The voices floated above me. I was about to move, it made sense to let an adult take over. But just then his eyelids flickered. The wrist in my hand tugged weakly. When his eyes snapped open, I jerked guiltily.

The three busybodies closed in, bumping me aside with nasty retorts as they helped the man to his feet.

“Bloody young’uns.”

“Rush, rush, everywhere. One would swear the Razoks were at their tails.”

“No respect, that’s the problem.”

I decided on a hasty retreat, before the mob stopped muttering and started lynching.

Besides, the elderly man was standing on his own, and only swaying slightly. And there’s a good chance he’d been cross-eyed to start with, wasn’t there? Like one of those ageing things. You know, first the hipbones went, then eyeball control?

I used my severely dented reserves of oxygen to spin about and run, straight into Chris. Face first.

Chris grabbed me by the arms and un-plucked our faces, ejecting Gale from his armpit as he did so. “I thought they had you.”

“You came back for me,” was all I could wheeze.

My limbs were misbehaving again as well, although I suspect this had more to do with my brief encounter with second-degree murder than serious fitness issues.

“Don’t mind me,” whimpered Gale, using Chris’s leg to pull herself up from the ground where she’d landed.

“Well, come on then,” said Chris, sounding far too healthy and actually looking ready to take off again. His cheeks weren’t even slightly flushed. And his eyes were all wide and silvery, as if he were fuelled on plutonium or something and they were the source.

“No, no more,” I puffed, eyeing him warily. Maybe this whole save-our-hero thing was actually a save-our-super-hero thing?

Yeah, and maybe I really shouldn’t have starved my brain of that last oxygen molecule, I thought, as I watched him go up onto his tiptoes to anxiously peer over the sea of heads.

“I can’t run anymore,” I told him firmly. “I’m done. Shattered. Pooped.”

And that’s how we ended up in a lob bar.

Because, apparently, there was a 73.5% probability our men in black had returned to stake out Drustan’s apartment. There was also a 65% probability they were still chasing after us. And an 88% probability they’d split up to cover both of the aforementioned probabilities.

By Gale’s calculations, we were 226.5% doomed.

Chapter 8

T
urns out a lob bar is nothing more sinister than a shabby themed bar (I was not above imagining a clinical basement where frontal and rear lobotomies are carried out for fun.) This particular one had a Wild West thing going on, complete with swinging saloon doors and a sign hanging by its last hinge with the name ‘Ye Olde Cactus’ scrawled in curly writing.

Once we’d swung through the half-moon doors, I saw why Gale had chosen Ye Olde Cactus for our hidey-hole. The only lighting came from the yellowish glow of oil lanterns flickering uncertainly over sawdust floors and a timbered ceiling. There were enough dark and dingy corners to hide the entire gang of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’.

Of which all were present.

These people obviously took their theme bars seriously. I’m talking spurred cowboy boots, red and blue chequered neck cloths, brimmed hats slung low over red-shot eyes, dust caked leather jackets that hung to the floor. More than half the patrons were dressed up for a quick heist on the inter-state mail wagon. The one guy we edged past had about a year’s genuine sweat and grime plastered to his bearded face.

Gale herded us to the darkest available corner table. “Keep your head down and don’t draw attention. And whatever you do, don’t make eye contact,” she warned, watching me ogle a beefy outlaw type character slug back the entire contents of a whiskey bottle without drawing breath. “They’ll think you want to play.”

I lowered my gaze quickly and shifted my rickety chair closer to Chris. I could just tell their favourite game would be called Dead at Dawn or something.

“So, how do we contact Drustan?” asked Chris, slinking down in his seat, keeping an eye on the door.

“Not easily,” said Gale.

“This place doesn’t have a phone,” I guessed dryly.

“Drustan doesn’t have a mobile?” asked Chris at the same time.

“Of course Drustan has an iComm,” said Gale, “but I don’t know his number.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I mean, seriously. She’s a computer. It’s not like she’d have a problem consuming the entire telephone directory.

“I’ve never had to contact him before,” Gale said. “Wanda has a direct link-up to his iComm.”

Chris sat up a little straighter. “Can we access Wanda remotely?”

“Wanda has a permanent link into TIC, but the only way in and out of TIC is by transmuting.”

“And I don’t suppose you know how to do that,” muttered Chris.

“I know how to transmute,” said Gale tartly. “But for that I need a Xylex and I don’t see any around here.”

“If you told us what a Xylex is,” I said just as tartly, “maybe we could help you look for one.”

Gale spun her eyes at me in a roll.

Chris propped his elbows on the table and sunk his head into his hands. “This is useless.”

“Well, we can’t stay here forever,” I pointed out, glancing about. “Maybe we should risk going back to the apartment.”

“No,” gasped Gale. “That is not a good idea. Tell her, Christian Wood, tell her that is not a good idea.”

Chris raised his head to look at Gale. “Who are those men and why are they after us?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes quivered nervously at the lie.

“Right,” I muttered, looking away in disgust.

My gaze landed on the legs of some guy sitting at the bar counter. His long coat had fallen open to reveal close-fitting leather breeches. Not exactly my kind of fashion statement, but if you were going to wear tanned leather trousers, those were definitely the legs to do it with. Not too slender, not too bulky.

“Was one of them Callum Jade?” I heard Chris say.

“Oh, no. Definitely not.”

“So it’s not just Callum Jade. Who else wants me dead?”

Gale didn’t respond.

I slowly worked my gaze upward (was that seriously a fake gun sticking out of a holster?), to see that the guy was leaning back on his stool in a lazy pose, one elbow stretched along the counter, his hand wrapped about a whiskey tumbler.

“Who are they?” demanded Chris again.

Good luck with that, I thought, at about the same time that I met posing guy’s intense blue stare.

I should have looked away at once. It’s what I’d normally do when caught staring. But I wasn’t thinking.

Well, I was thinking. My head was in fact crammed with thoughts.

Like where was Drustan and how ridiculous was it that we couldn’t get in touch with him?

How long would it take Chris to realise that Gale was a no-answer kind of gal?

And what the hell was our plan if those men walked through that door right now? Even if this place had a back entrance, with the way my day was going, it would probably be double bolted from the outside.

“If you won’t tell me, maybe I should find out for myself. I know where to find at least one of them.”

“N-no, Christian Wood.”

“Maybe I should just head on over to Drustan’s place and ask them what they’re on about. What have I got to lose? I’m already dead, right?”

The angry frustration in Chris’s voice broke my stare and brought my full attention back to the table.

Chris was holding Gale up, both hands wrapped around her body. He looked close to throttling her. While this wasn’t necessarily a problem, the timing wasn’t great. Once we’d been reunited with Drustan, then sure, he could throttle away.

I prodded Chris in the arm. “You’re scaring her.”

One by one, Gale’s eyes turned on me like three missiles locking onto a suspicious target. Talk about trust issues.

“No, I’m not,” heaved Chris.

“She’s gone all orange,” I told him. “That means she’s scared.” To Gale, I added sarcastically, “You can thank me later.”

Chris gave me a funny look.

But he set Gale down and spoke quietly. “I’m quite happy to not know anything, Gale. I do actually get Drustan’s point about messing up the future. But Drustan isn’t here and you don’t know how to get in touch with him. I’m being hunted across two centuries for whatever reason. Right now I just need to know what we’re up against.”

“I understand, Christian Wood. I want to help you.” Gale was standing on the floor beside Chris’s chair now, twisting her arms into knots, and looking up at him with three imploring eyes. “I will help you. But I don’t know what those men want. I don’t know them and no one tells me anything.”

Touching. “You knew to run the moment you saw them.”

Gale twitched a lone eyeball in my direction. “I got a fright. I’ve never seen- wasn’t even sure- but yes, yes, they do exist. I knew they were Razoks, and I knew that was bad, bad.”

“Razoks?” I’d heard that word before. One would swear the Razoks were at their tails. “What is that? Like some kind of modern bogeyman?”

“They have become something of a myth. No one’s ever seen a Razok—”

“Except you?” grunted Chris.

“-except you,” finished Gale in a whisper, turning her full gaze back on Chris. “Their eyes were exactly as you described them, Christian Wood. Long slits with no eyeballs at all.”

“As cold and lifeless as a machine,” said Chris darkly.

Gale did some version of a shudder. “Yes, Christian Wood, completely lifeless. It’s not normal.”

I punched Chris in the arm. “Yeah, like you would know.”

Chris’s eyes jerked to me, widened for a fraction, then narrowed. “I wouldn’t know.”

He didn’t sound entirely positive.

But before I could wonder about the possible question mark he’d left hanging, Chris flung his arms across his chest and glared at Gale. “And neither do you. It’s not like you’ve got x-ray vision.”

“I can’t see through walls,” said Gale, “but I do have infrared capability. I can see through tinted shades, and I know what I saw.”

“So these bogus monsters are chasing us down like a bad nightmare,” scoffed Chris. “Next you’ll be telling me to pinch myself.”

“Oh, no,” insisted Gale, “everyone knows that the Razoks are real.”

“Everyone under the age of three,” I muttered.

Gale shuffled around Chris’s chair and came to stand in between us. Her back, of course, was turned on me. “There was a war, Christian Wood. In 2065, twelve star troopers crossed into our Galaxy. Terrifying ships, each as big as a city, advancing on earth like twelve black deaths.”

“Great,” snorted Chris. “Alien bogus monsters. And I suppose I’m the only one who saw these star troopers?”

On any other day, I would have gone into a fit of giggles.

“Everyone saw them, Christian Wood. Our space regions are crowded with private satellites that tracked those ships as soon as they entered the Galaxy. Images were fed to millions of on-line sites.

The government tried to cover it up, but after a while they had to give in and admit we were under threat. When the star troopers reached Mars, they finally communicated their intent. Everyone heard the broadcast. They identified themselves as the Razoks, and ordered unconditional surrender.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, not sure what to believe. Chris’s face was marble, closed off, and I got the impression that even if a Razok stood right in front of him, he’d refuse to see it.

“Howdy, little lady.”

I jumped right up out of my chair. And came eye to eye with my lazy poser from the bar counter. His grin was lopsided, his jaw shadowed with dark blonde stubble.

“Um, hello,” I mumbled, sinking down into my chair again.

Gale’s arm wound about my wrist, feeling and looking much like a lime green mamba. “Did you call him over here?”

“Of course not,” I said under my breath, sneaking an apologetic smile to the guy. He might have called me ‘little lady’ and tipped his hat in greeting, but he had a devastating grin and this was, after all, my first flirt potential from a guy with proper stubble.

And this was definitely a flirt potential. He was actually quite a hottie, for a thirty-something.

He perched his backside on the table, those long legs stretched out in front of him, and cocked his head my way. “Well, if you aren’t the prettiest thing.” He leaned in a little. “What’d you say we get ourselves a drink by that bar there and get to know each other?”

“Excuse me,” said Chris. “She doesn’t want a drink and she’s not going anywhere with you.”

The man glanced over his shoulder. “You have a problem with me?”

“Chris,” I hissed.

Meanwhile, Gale was tugging me closer and closer until I was almost out of my chair. “You must gave done something to get his attention,” she insisted in my face.

I rolled my eyes, to find Chris scowling at me.

“What?” he said. “You’re not seriously thinking about stopping off for a quick date?”

“No, Chris,” I bit out. And of course I wasn’t. “But do you have to be so rude?”

“Oh, you want me to get rid of him politely?” He looked up at the man. “Terribly sorry, old man, but it would seem that I do, unfortunately, have a problem with you. I know it’s a bother and all that, but if you don’t mind too terribly, could you please leave?”

The man un-perched himself. But he wasn’t leaving. He folded his arms, gave me a wink, and turned that grin on Chris.

“Uh, oh,” whispered Gale.

“Now see here,” drawled the man, “I didn’t come looking for a fight, but you’ve left me no choice.”

This was starting to resemble one of those bad Westerns my dad forced me to sit through once a year on his birthday.

Gale’s arm was still wrapped around my wrist, and it was tightening by the second. Chris was shaking his head at the man. And the man had raised an expectant brow at Chris, waiting.

“What is happening?” I asked Gale quietly, lifting my arm to bring her closer. “What does he have no choice about?”

“He wants to play,” she said.

“Play what?” said Chris.

I had no idea what she was talking about either, but it sounded like something best avoided.

“We didn’t mean to upset you. Sir,” I added for good measure, with a smile that I hoped was friendly.

He glanced at me. “Don’t be worrying your little head about nothing, pretty lady. You didn’t upset me in the least.”

“Oh, good,” I said, relieved.

Until he went on, “Now, your friend here, you see, he upset Joe mightily.”

Yelp. A moron who talks of himself in the third person. Had I really thought him a hottie? Ugh.

“And he’s very, very sorry.” I kicked out under the table and struck shin. “Aren’t you, Chris?”

“Um, yes?” said Chris.

“Cute,” Joe snickered at Chris, but he was still talking to me. “Does he sing and dance when you pull his strings as well?”

At that, Chris slammed his palms on the table and pushed himself up. His face had gone ashen and hard.

I knew that look. A part of me even understood. With everything and everyone seeming to conspire against him, here was something he could actually fight, someone he could hit back at. Still, did he have to be such a boy all the time? “Chris, don’t.”