The Time Stone (8 page)

“
How many levels are in
this building?” Tina asked rhetorically as she fought to catch her
breath.

“
Almost there”, James
answered her hypothesizing with a grinning grit of determination.
They turned the bend into the main landing of the ground floor and
approached a metal door with the number one on it.

“
Thank God,” cried Tina in
a joyous voice.

“
Wait!!!”James grabbed her
by the arm and pulled her down to a crevice underneath the stairs
and rolled on the ground besides her crouching down.

“
What the..?”

“
Quiet!” He held his
finger over her lip as the metal door swung open and a moment
later, two uniformed officers entered the stairwell.

“
We got a level 31 on
system wide. That means no one leaves the building, no exceptions
until command says otherwise.” The two officers headed up
stairs.

“
It’s gonna be one of
those days.” They continued their conversation changing the subject
as to who would beat the Chronix Bay Pirates in the next baseball
game until they were out of hearing range.

“
They’re gone.” Tina
whispered.

“
I can still hear them,”
said James.

“
Huh?” Uttered a confused
Tina, “who are you, Bionic Man?” She asked as customary as it can
be and jumped out of the crevice to her feet. “Come on, we don’t
have much time.”

James crawled out of the crevice
slowly following her thinking silently then spoke slowly. “You
heard what they said,” said James. “We won’t be able to leave the
building. No one can.”

“
So we improvise and find
another way out of here.” Tina smiled.

Then suddenly the metal door began to
open slightly. “Oh crap!!!” James uttered as he moved his arm up to
the door with a quick gesture and the door shut closed.

“
How do you …?” Tina asked
perplexed catching herself in midsentence with a wide open jaw as
she saw James was holding his hand in mid-air towards the direction
of the door and the door remained completely shut.

“
I wish I knew” James
answered even more confused than she was. James lowered his arm and
the metal door budged open slightly again and he quickly raised it
again and it shut again.

“
Hold it, man.” Tina
yelled at him.

“
I can’t hold it like this
forever.”

“
Right, we need a plan.
We’ll figure out this freak show later.” Tina yelled. “Uh, uh” Tina
looked up while wiping her brow then saw an air vent blocking a
shaft. “That’s it! Quick, give me a boost.”

“
I can’t” yelled
James.

“
Come on; just use your
free hand.”

“
Uh OK.” James used his
free hand to hoist Tina up as she stepped up onto his hand and she
tried to grab hold of the vent grate but fell back on the wall
behind her. “Come on”, James uttered.

“
Damn it” she said. “Try
once more, James.”

“
Come on you have one last
try, this is our last try.” He said in a panic feeling the weight
of the door on his arms starting to give way and it wouldn’t be
long before it opened despite his efforts. She stepped up onto his
hand, took a deep breath, and jumped up grabbing the vent and hung
from it with one hand like a chimpanzee then she disengaged the
hatch on the vent with her free hand and shimmied up the shaft.
“Yes. Nice work”, James added reaching up to Tina’s free hand
reaching down.

“
Come on boy” she reached
out to grab his hand held up high and helped pull him up as he
continued to hold the metal door shut by keeping his other hand to
the metal door until he was safely in the shaft and sealed the vent
shut. They crawled away rapidly.

Moments later the metal door swung
open and a platoon of five uniformed officers ran in and fell in
nearly on top of one another.

“
What the hell?” A petite
officer yelled.

“
No one is here.” A taller
officer commented.

“
Then who was holding the
damn door?!” Yelled a muscular built mustached officer with a gold
shield and dark sun glasses even indoors as he commanded the fear
and attention of the other officers. “Find them!!!” He took off his
glasses revealing his dark eyes as pitch black as coal and
determined as ever, “find them all.”

CHAPTER 21

“
Who were they and how did
they escape?” Shouted the mustached man to his subordinates in his
office, the glass panel on the door read “
Michael Bromely, Lieutenant
”.

“
I don’t know, Sir.” Spoke
a taller dark haired man, with blue stripes on his uniform, who had
a monotone and calm vernacular. “I had about seventeen men try to
open that door together but they could not even budge it. There was
a time when they thought that they had it but someone or something
on the other side shut it again and they couldn’t open it again
until they finally managed to open it. We think it was a
malfunction locking mechanism that eventually gave way due to age
what else could it be?”

“
What else indeed?”
Bromley spoke with an agitated and condescending tone.

“
It’s as if someone or
something released its hold on it,” said another man with a short
stature and whiney voice and long whiskers as he stood between the
other two men.

“
Good point Sergeant
Docson.” Bromley uttered.

“
Thank you.” Docson
replied.

“
Well, all I know is that
someone or something better be wearing cuffs real soon because no
one makes a mockery of my department and gets away with it. I want
whoever is responsible caught.” Bromley yelled.

“
Yes Sir,” replied the
monotone man, Sergeant Offson.

“
Any words on the two
escapees yet?” Bromley asked his subordinates.

“
Not yet. We cannot rule
out the possibility sir that they are somehow involved in the
disappearing act in the stairwell.” Docson replied.

“
That is giving those two
morons way too much credit, Sergeant. Keep me posted. Search every
possible nook and cranny in this place and leave no stone unturned
until you find them. We have to report to higher men soon.
Dismissed.” Bromley stood there thinking with his back to the door
and his hands on his hips, feet at attention as the Sergeants
saluted their commanding officer and walked out of the office
shutting the door behind them. “Who are they?” Bromley asked
himself thinking back to a similar encounter he experienced in his
youth as a rookie cop officer on the beat of the mid-1980s Chronix
Bay. “It couldn’t be.” He wondered.

It was twenty six-years
ago and a different time back then. He was a cocky officer straight
out of the police academy walking down the street twirling his
night stick and whistling a happy tune, “
The Saints Go Marching In
.” He still
had a mustache but less pronounced and no sun glasses during the
evening patrol. He stopped in his tracks at the sign of a hold up,
a robbery, in his area.

“
Hey, give me all your
money,” said a masked man raising a pocket knife to an elderly
woman.

“
Ooh no,” said the woman
shaking mercifully as she handed over her pocketbook.

“
Hold it right there,”
yelled the young Bromley as he ran to them waiving his nightstick
then the masked man turned and ducked as Bromley approached
swinging his nightstick at the masked man’s face. The masked man
then laughed at Bromley and struck his left arm with his
switchblade.

“
Ouch” Bromley saw his arm
bleeding through his blue uniform and he stepped back as the
perpetrator came at him to finish the job when all of a sudden a
flash of light blinded him for an instant, a yellowish blue haze,
shone above them and a large object fell out of the sky directly
above them landing on the masked man knocking him to the ground and
rendering him unconscious. Bromley and the elderly woman stood in a
grateful relief and awe as they realized that it was not an object
that fell from the sky and saved them but a man, a man who got up
as quickly as he landed and ran into the street as a Mack truck was
approaching. Bromley’s training in face identification and suspect
tracking helped him recognize the man as a tall above average build
Caucasian male with blue eyes and dark hair, a greyish shirt and
suit and a logo of some kind of gold etched onto it. The man
fiddled with his wrist as he ran and did not say a word but in a
matter of seconds as he was in the middle of the street looking at
them held his wrist squeezed something and vanished in a brilliant
flash of light of yellow and blue just like when he arrived and as
the Mack truck passed over the spot where he once stood. The pair
stood their ground in shock of this sight they both knew that they
would never forget.

Bromley’s eyes were widened with
disbelief at what he just saw and now decades later there are more
wrinkles of age on his face while the same awe and wonder of
disbelief as to what happened that day remain with him and he
ponders that it always will be. In the present age he was wiser and
more seasoned at his job, his physical wounds had healed, but the
memory of that night was etched in him unhealed forever. He never
saw the man in light again or learned of the origin of the
mysterious vanishing man.

Bromley stayed in touch with the old
woman who was the first crime victim he helped on the job and she
passed on a few years later taking her unanswered questions about
the mystery of the vanishing man to her grave. Bromley feared he
would be fated to do the same. He thought of it from time to time
but never told anyone because they might think he was crazy. The
bust did advance his career exponentially as he was given a heroes
medal by the police commissioner, had a spot in the hall of fame in
his precinct as well as a quick promotion to detective. He felt
honored but often ashamed taking credit for a collar that wouldn’t
have happened had it not been for some unbelievable intervention.
His catholic background made him think that it was a sign from God
and that the man maybe was an angelic heavenly messenger amongst us
come to help him but his scientific studies in college made him
think that maybe some more physical down to earth explanation
existed like some fluke science experiment gone awry, a form of
science unknown to him, or voodoo magic or something beyond his
comprehension entirely. He only knows for sure that he would have
been dead had he not received that help when he needed it whether
it was an accident or some kind of design by a higher grand person
or entity, so he was grateful and thanked God for the chance to
live on and continue to serve the public. Now he wondered if
somehow this past had returned to haunt him and whether the
mysterious vanishing man had somehow returned and the incident in
the stairwell was somehow connected. “Hmmm.”

CHAPTER 22

The long crawl through the narrow
shaft was arduous for the duo trapped like rats in single file
struggling to make their way to freedom and making it outside was
like being relieved of a heavy burden.

“
I can’t believe I got the
tail end of this deal”, said James.

“
Hey, I tried to hold it
in.” Tina sheepishly replied and both smirked. “Where are we now?”
asked Tina. They were exiting the shaft and exposed to a wide field
having followed the chute to an exterior yard surrounding the
facility and fence work they observed surrounding the compound as
far as the eye could see with barbed wire wound around each top
with another set on top of that. The sound of barking dogs
permeated the air around them and the odor of burnt ash protruded
about resulting in a burned stench that escalated like the fires of
hell searing with the brightness of the guard towers spread up with
guards armed and ready like leviathans awaiting their prey, those
eager to defy them. “We may have a problem here, James,” Tina
said.

James thought to himself that he would
not have been put by fate into this situation if it was completely
hopeless. “There is always a way,” he thought to himself and looked
about the yard his eyes scouring the vast expanse before him with
hawk like precision and something clicked inside and he could
accelerate that sight. His eyes began seeing things quicker and
then quicker searching frantically and then a red dot appeared
before him brightly and it began lighting his way quickly growing
and growing encompassing the whole field of his vision before him
and rushing forward, as if a self-facilitated visual Doppler
effect. His senses grew wider as they tunneled into a swirling
vortex of infrared light penetrating his eyes and suddenly it
stopped as he was face to face with a small doorway underneath one
of the towers with a padlock on it, a trap door leading directly
under the yard and outside via an underground passageway directly
to the open field behind the jail once used for shipping
receivables according to an old sign he envisioned in his mind’s
eye with all of the passage way. But it was apparently long since
abandoned as evidenced by the faded dirty roads and overgrown
grass. There the door was covered with dirt and rust decayed over
many years of neglect. The door was otherwise well hidden and
invisible to the naked eye but somehow James new enhanced senses
picked it up. The door was meters away from their location but
seemed to James like it was directly in front of him. He smiled as
he looked at his baffled companion and explained that there was a
way out. They agreed to embark on the long quest out. They
maneuvered their way slowly across the chain link fence then ducked
as they approached the visual light range of the object tower and
then quietly crawled near the fence what James described quietly to
Tina as a virtual blind spot to the guardsman in the tower. Then
they held their position until nightfall and James explained his
story to Tina and how he managed to figure out their final escape
but she couldn’t believe how his new abilities worked. Nonetheless,
she was grateful that it was a reality as a gift as she told him.
At night fall they made their way to the door but there was a
problem being that they would be out of the blind spot and exposed
to capture by the tower security guards light that was turned on
after dark, a beam so bright to make the most hardened criminal
freeze dead in her tracks.