The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (34 page)

The man she was supposed to talk to had listened to about three questions and answered none before he’d dumped her off on an intern. The kid knew a lot about the particle accelerator and was nervously rambling, which might have been good for her article in the monthly employee magazine except that she needed to quote someone with credentials.

It was too bad. This boy, Derrick, was going to be an asset someday. Earlier, he’d seen her blank look and had immediately started speaking in layman’s terms. That was worth its weight in gold.

Today’s experiment was supposed to rev the particles up to their highest rate of speed so far and she’d been sent to cover it. This was a Big Deal and the order had come from the top of the food chain, but Doctor I’m-Too-Important-To-Talk-To-You didn’t care who had issued the assignment.

To her surprise, she’d found what little she’d understood about particle physics interesting, and since the kid wouldn’t ridicule her, she decided to ask a question that had intrigued her since she’d researched the atom smasher.

“Derrick,” Lia interjected when he paused, “I read something about the particle accelerator maybe creating black holes. Is this any kind of real hazard?”

“No, ma’am.” He shrugged self-consciously. “The possibility is so minute, it’s nearly inconceivable. If any do happen to actualize, they’ll wink out in a fraction of a second. They’re too small and unstable to maintain their existence long.”

That was a relief. Although she’d guessed the odds of making a black hole that could swallow the Earth were small, it was still nice to hear it from someone who knew physics – even if he was still in college.

Derrick didn’t stop, though. “It’s also unlikely that we’ll create any wormholes either, and, if we did, they’d be so small that only subatomic particles would be transported.”

Lia hadn’t read anything on that. “Wormholes?”

“Wormholes are tubes that traverse space, time, or both and if we find one and could travel through—”

“I’ve seen
Star Trek,
I know what wormholes are, but I didn’t realize we could
make
them,” she told him ruefully. OK, so it was slightly embarrassing to use a television show as reference material, but the reading she’d done on particle physics had turned her brain to gelatin.

He pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. “We can’t. That’s what I was explaining. The idea that we might produce a wormhole is every bit as remote as the black hole theory, although it is mathematically possible.”

“That’s kind of disappointing,” she murmured.

Derrick smiled for the first time. “Tell me about it, but it was proven that the Einstein-Rosen Bridge would shut as soon as it formed, closing—”

He stopped short when the physicist who’d ditched her called his name. The experiment was about to begin and Derrick’s help was needed, leaving Lia to her own devices. She glanced over a few shoulders, but no one paid attention to her, and since they all looked so intent, she didn’t ask questions. Instead, she leaned against a wall at the back of the control room and hoped something interesting would happen that she could write about.

It didn’t. Had she made a note on how long this was supposed to last? Flipping through her steno pad, she checked, but before she found the information, the tension in the room shot high. She couldn’t understand what they were saying in their geek-speak, but anything that ended the boredom had to be a good thing.

“It broke containment,” one of the scientists called.

Or maybe it wasn’t a good thing.

A man she didn’t recognize approached her. “Out,” he ordered and pointed to the exit.

“But—”

“Out or I’ll escort you out.”

When she hesitated, he took her by the arm and put her in the hall. Lia eyed the closed door to the control room and rubbed her biceps where he’d gripped her. She briefly considered going back in, just on general principle, but Godzilla had bruised her and she wasn’t some hotshot investigative reporter. She wrote feel-good pieces for the company magazine and that was it. Not worth it.

Lia frowned at the treatment, but realized this had nothing to do with her, at least not specifically. Standing in the hall, though, reminded her of all the other times she’d been on the outside looking in. Her thoughts, her opinions, her way of viewing life didn’t seem to match anyone else’s and it made her feel alone. She didn’t understand the prejudices, the arguments that antagonized people, and she’d learned not to ask questions to try to make it clearer. Others took it as a challenge and tended to get defensive.

Things hadn’t been quite so bad while her parents were alive, but even they hadn’t understood her. Their lives had been dull and they hadn’t seen anything wrong with routine. Her daydreaming had puzzled them. How could she simply sit and stare into space? Why didn’t she clean her room or take out the trash? But there had to be more than working at a nine-to-five job every weekday, doing yard work on Saturdays and golfing on Sunday.

Life was supposed to be about pursuing dreams, wasn’t it? About having adventures? Lia grimaced. Yeah, she was one to talk. She’d taken the safe road of corporate communications rather than risk failure.

She didn’t want to think about this, not now. Closing her notebook, she slid it in the side of her purse and shoved her pen in the metal spiral. Maybe they had a vending machine around here and she could get some crackers or something. The physicists had apparently been too excited to eat, but she was hungry.

The halls were deserted and there was no one to ask where to find a break room. She kept walking, turning down random corridors. How lost could she get before she ran into someone who could point her in the right direction?

After about ten minutes, she had to concede that she wasn’t going to get a badge in orienteering or find help. Lia stopped and tried to mentally retrace her route, but she didn’t remember much beyond the last couple of turns.

Before she could decide whether to go back or continue forwards, she felt a change in the air behind her. At last, someone who could give her directions. With a smile, she pivoted, but sobered immediately.

There was a giant shimmery circle closing ground on her.
What the hell was that?
She backed up.

The vortex followed and she ran. She dropped her purse, but couldn’t take time to worry about it now, not when she could sense the thing gaining on her.

Lia didn’t get far before it engulfed her. She felt as if she were tumbling, careening madly in mid-air, but hitting nothing. Clutching her arms around her waist, she closed her eyes, trying to stave off the growing nausea.

Her stop was abrupt and pain exploded as her skull connected with a hard surface beneath her. She took a deep, shuddery breath and, rubbing the back of her head, tried to clear her vision. It took a few minutes before Lia realized she wasn’t staring at the ceiling, but at the sky. That shook her enough that she forced herself to sit up. She was outdoors and, judging from what she saw, it was early evening. This wasn’t right. Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet and swayed before she caught her balance.

Unless she was mistaken – entirely possible – she was standing on top of an enormous step pyramid in the middle of a city that looked like nothing on Earth. At least nothing she’d ever seen on Earth . . . in her time.

Wormhole. Lia shivered before she scoffed at herself. Yeah, right, Derrick the intern had said the odds against it were astronomical and that even if a wormhole opened, it would be too small for anything larger than an atom to pass through. Besides she’d need, like, a spaceship or something, otherwise she’d be dead, right?

Something had happened, that was obvious. The most likely scenario was that she was unconscious and hallucinating – she had hit her head. Yeah, that was it. There was a slab of marble behind her that bore a resemblance to an altar, and Lia went over to it and sat down. She’d just wait right here until the doctors revived her.

Troll Maglaya stood at attention with his Special Operations team in the Colonel’s office and waited for the man to finish giving orders to his aide. This was Troll’s third tour of duty on Jarved Nine in the past seven years, but he couldn’t quell the spurt of anxiety that he felt whenever he had to face ‘The Big Chill’: Colonel Sullivan was a badass from the word go and no one wanted to be on his shit list.

The door closed with a snick that had Troll stiffening. “At ease,” the Colonel said as he took a seat behind his desk.

For a long moment the room was absolutely silent. “We’ve suspected for a few weeks that the coalition has an agent on J. Nine,” Sullivan said finally, voice low. “Last night the MPs found her atop the pyramid in the centre of the Old City.”

That surprised Troll, but he remained expressionless. The coalition had been trying for years to acquire lamordite to facilitate their space travel beyond Earth’s solar system, but he hadn’t realized they’d succeeded.

“Captain Montgomery, you and your team will search outside the city for the spaceship and for any other coalition agents who might be present.”

“Yes, sir,” Marsh Montgomery said.

“I’m pulling Sergeant Maglaya for another mission – that means you’ll be short-handed – but you have permission to tap any MPs you want to join your search.”

Troll went rigid, and since he stood shoulder to shoulder with Marsh and the team’s executive officer, Flare Cantore, he felt them both tense as well. Why was the Big Chill singling him out?

Sullivan kept talking. “Major Brody is waiting in the briefing room – he’ll fill you in. Dismissed. Sergeant Maglaya, you’ll stay here.”

The colonel waited until the other men had left the room and the door was shut behind them before he continued. “Sergeant, I have a special task for you. As I said, we found a woman who doesn’t belong here and she’s not telling us anything – at least nothing that makes sense.”

Sullivan frowned fiercely and Troll watched him take a few deep breaths before he said, “Your job is to guard her.”

“Sir, why not lock her up?”

“Because we don’t know what the coalition is after and we need that information. If she’s loose, chances are she’ll try to complete her mission. That’s where you come in. You’re going to be glued to her side. I don’t want her using the bathroom without you standing guard at the door. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Troll hesitated, then decided to risk it. “Permission to speak freely, Colonel?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why me, sir? Why not assign this job to one of the MPs and let me work with my team?”

Sullivan sighed. “Your reputation with women is well known, Sergeant, and it’s been decided that you should put that skill to use. If necessary, you’re to romance her to get the information we need about why she’s here and what the coalition wants.”

It was Troll’s turn to scowl and he didn’t give a rip what the Colonel thought about the display. He wasn’t the randy kid who’d used his appearance to bag and bed every willing woman he could find – not any more – and he resented like hell that Sullivan was asking him to whore himself.

Before he could find a way to verbally share his displeasure without pissing off the Big Chill, the man shook his head. “I know, Maglaya, I don’t like it either, but your orders came from above me and my opinion was overruled.”

The Colonel had fought against this? “Thank you, sir.”

Sullivan ran a hand over his chin. “She claims her name is Ophelia Stanton and that she either time travelled or has a head injury.”

“Time travel, Colonel? The head injury is more likely.”

That earned him a
no-shit
stare. “We transported her to the infirmary and the docs checked her thoroughly, but found nothing wrong. This is obviously some kind of ploy. She might try to pull a con on you, too.”

“It won’t happen, sir.” Troll might not be a player any longer, but he’d spent a lot of years in the arena before he’d watched his teammates find love. Marsh had gone first, falling for Kendall during the team’s initial tour on J. Nine, and one by one all his buddies had gotten married. As he’d observed them, Troll had realized he wanted what they had. He’d grown tired of the emptiness that seemed to deepen with each superficial relationship and he wasn’t going back there. Not even to protect the interests of the Western Alliance.

The Colonel’s briefing was short – he didn’t have a lot of information – then Troll was dismissed and sent to take over guard duty. Stanton remained at the infirmary and, as he neared, he could see the MPs through the windows. They stood, but between them was a woman who was seated. Had to be her.

Troll was nearly to the door when he stopped short and drew a sharp breath. No way. He stared. No way in hell.

She had medium-brown, shoulder-length hair, an oval face, high cheekbones and full lips. He couldn’t see the shade of her eyes, but he had a bad feeling they were hazel. Almost reluctantly, he reached for his wallet.

Fourteen years ago, right before he’d left for basic training, his grandmother had given him a drawing she’d done in coloured pencil. The page had already been yellowed and was more than three decades old back then, but she’d insisted he take it and made him promise to keep it with him at all times.

He pulled it out, put the wallet back in his pocket, and carefully unfolded the paper. It had been years since he’d glanced at it – he had to be remembering it wrong. Had to be. But as he looked between the prisoner and the picture, Troll discovered his memory was good. The woman Gram had drawn in 2002 was sitting in front of him, and she didn’t look much older than she did in the drawing – in a sketch forty-eight years ago.