A door off to the side—that hadn’t been visible—slid aside and a woman entered with a tray.It had two bottles of what might be water and a couple of sandwiches.
They could be drugged, he supposed, but Rita picked her bottle up without hesitation, studied it for a minute, then twisted the top and drank.
He followed suit, but he wondered what she’d studied.After a decent and much needed swallow, he studied the bottle again.In tiny print along the bottom was a date—a date that explained the future tech.
He looked at Rita, his eyes asking, but she gave the smallest shake of her head.
So they weren’t in her time.Had she ever said what her time was?Was this before or after?
The woman had left them alone to eat, so Con ate and so did Rita.He was learning that you ate when you could.Who knew when the next meal would be there?
He finished and waited to feel the effects of something.Is that how it worked in the novels?
He felt a little sleepy, but it was the normal, post-meal and nothing to do but sit, kind of sleepy.
It must be a lot harder on whoever was watching them.Not that this made him feel sorry for the poor sod.He must have signed up for it.
And had he signed up for this, Con wondered?
He considered the question.Technically, if he were honest with himself, the answer was yes, he had.Anyone who climbed into a time machine was basically signing up for whatever.
Was this better than dying in a fiery plane crash?Well, the jury was still out on that one.If they took them to, say, a torture chamber, then the answer was a clear no.But that left a lot of unknown territory in between.All the way from, “we’re going to let you go, don’t fly in here again” to “you’re going to tell us who you are and why you’re here because we have truth drugs and don’t need to torture you.”
And after?Could they erase their memories and turn them loose somewhere or some when?
That would suck.
The door was very quiet but it still made him jump and half turn to see who’d come in not using the food door.Was it a food door?
A man stood in the opening, the light from the hallway backlighting him so that Con couldn’t see his face clearly.
It was a move meant to intimidate, so Con decided not to be.He shifted his chair, making sure the legs scratched gratingly on the metal floor, and then leaned back, one elbow on the table, his body set in lines of “I’m not worried.”
Rita had turned, too, her back going ultra straight.“John?”
The man shifted and now Con could see his face.It was definitely the John Phillips in the photos taken by Ty back in 1954.
Stella saw the wave coming.
Shock rocked through her.
A Butterfly Wave?
What else could it be?But how could it be?They’d shut down the experiments on the Butterfly Device well before it reached this range.
So how could she know?Her mind wanted to deny what her brain saw, but she knew.
She braced for it and then half smiled at herself.How did one brace for a temporal wave of this magnitude?
Now she wished she’d stayed down in the vault, though its protection might have been illusionary.If time was changing, then it could very well turn back into the rock it had been carved from.
An unpleasant way to die.
And there was no time—her lips twisted wryly—to do anything different.
So she stayed at the window and watched it roll towards her.
Alastor lay without moving, his eyes closed.Rocks and brush dug into his back and heat beat down on him without mercy.
