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Lisbeth turned her head slowly to peer over her shoulder. The thick strap of her pajama shirt was pushed aside, and Deb pulled her long dark hair away from her left shoulder. Lisbeth nearly fell to the floor. “Oh god!”
*****
Dave was reading a report as he strode down the hall. He nearly walked into the young woman standing in the hallway. When she looked up, he was stunned to see the change in her features. “Miss Mohr?”
“Captain.” Her voice broke, but she took a deep breath and calmed herself. “I need help. P-Please.” He stared at her in shock but didn’t make a move or say a word. She had lost weight, her face had lines of stress around her mouth. Dark circles were under her puffy eyes that were filled with unshed tears. She had always been so professional that this was out of character for her.
“Captain Amsted, I really need to talk to you, sir.” Dave studied the young woman’s pale face and red nose. “It’s really important, and my friend Deb said I should find you. I need to talk to you in private. Please.”
Dave nodded as he stepped away from her and toward his office. He’d flown with her on board his chopper for several years but hadn’t spoken two words to her away from the mission. She had been on the flight over the time anomaly, but the crew been given time off after the incident. He hadn’t seen her since. “Okay. I can take you to my office. Come on.” He walked down the hallway to his private office and let her walk in and sit before shutting the door.
“What seems to be the problem, Ms. Mohr?” She was a private contractor assigned to his chopper to record information for KenSpec Labs. While Ms. Mohr was unaware of the fact, the owner of KenSpec Labs, Dr. Marc Kensington, was his wife’s other husband. Something that had happened since they returned from the mission. She took a deep breath drawing his attention back to the present.
“Captain.” She cleared her throat and looked down. Her dark hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Even though she was civilian, she had to meet military dress codes while working on base. Her long hair would’ve normally hidden her face, but Dave could see her struggle with her emotions. She looked up, and Dave was shocked to see her blue eyes spilling fat tears and her chin quivering with emotion.
“I know that we were told to go to Dr. Lackney if we had anything abnormal happen to us since our flight over the anomaly.” Dave sat up straighter at her words. “I didn’t go to her because I don’t know what’s happening to me and I don’t want to be put in a – a hospital or have the military invade my life.” She covered her face with her hands, but he heard her sob before her shoulders began to shake.
“Ms. Mohr, Lisbeth, what’s going on?” He rounded the desk and sat beside her, waiting until she calmed and gathered her thoughts. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you, but you have to talk to me.”
“Captain,” she hiccoughed before taking a deep breath and calming down. “I have been with you for the last three years. I was housed at KenSpec for just a few months for training before they assigned me to you and your mission for the government. In all that time, I always did my work to the best of my ability, and I loved my job. But after this last mission, I’ve been having these strange dreams. They’re more like memories, but I’ve never lived them.”
Dave reached over to his desk with his right hand, grabbed the box of tissues and pushed them toward her. He knew she was going to tell him things no one else would believe. She grabbed a tissue, and he calmly waited as she wiped her eyes.
She took a few deep breaths, opening her eyes, she jumped up from her chair. “Oh my god. Debbie was right.”
He followed her line of sight to his wedding ring and the tattoo on the inside of his right wrist. He hadn’t seen her since they returned from the mission. He didn’t have those things before they flew over the time rip. “Lisbeth, what is going on?” He became seriously concerned as she slid to the floor her hand covering her mouth. He got up and knelt before her and took her hand. She looked to him with haunted eyes. Without a word she sat up straight and jerked her hand away from his. She began to tear at the front closure of her flight suit. He was just about to stop her when she turned and pulled the material off her left shoulder. A tattoo a little larger than a quarter was there. It looked to be a few years old, but still crisp and colorful — an outline of Germany with “SW ewig 2014” inside the shape.
She reached in her flight suit pants pocket and pulled out a folded picture of her in a bathing suit. The photo was printed off on regular paper, presumably from someone’s phone. She was looking over her shoulder at the person holding the camera. “This picture is from this weekend. I’ve never gotten a tattoo in my life, Captain. But I remember getting this in Germany.” She was pointing to her shoulder. Dave looked at the photo she held, but no tattoo was on her body.
“Captain,” she began to cry again, and he could feel his heart breaking for her, “I’ve never been to Germany. I was supposed to go in 2014, but things fell through. But I got this tattoo in Hamburg with the love of my life when I met him in Germany in the summer of 2014. He got one too, on his left hipbone. But I remember being in Germany. It was the best time of my life, and I miss him so much, but I have never met him. How can that be?” She was crying in earnest now; her pain was palpable. “God, I feel like part of me has died. I keep having other memories of what we did, places we visited, but I’ve never met him, never visited those places.” She dropped her head and didn’t even try to stop her tears.
“Lisbeth, there are things that happened on our last mission that you need to know about. Come on, get up. I’ll take you to where you can get answers, but you need to keep it classified.”
He stood and pulled out his cell, dialing Marc’s number. When he answered, Dave kept it short. “Meet me in your lab in ten. Something’s happened. I’m on my way.” Hanging up, he helped her stand and buttoned her flight suit like a child. Dave slid his phone in his jacket pocket and then grabbed his keys from the desk.
“I need you to dry your tears and get ahold of yourself for just a few minutes. We need to walk out of here and get to my car. But right now, I don’t want anyone to see you’re upset and pass that information on to anyone else. Can you do that?” He waited as she struggled for a minute and then wiped the tears from her face. She took some deep breaths and looked up to him and nodded. “Good job. You can do this. Keep your head down to hide your swollen eyes. Hang on, Lisbeth. Everything’s going to be okay.” And for her sake, he hoped he was right.
Dave helped settle Lisbeth in the car and drove as fast as he could to get to KenSpec Labs. Part of him understood the haunted pain and confusion that his passenger suffered from. When he returned from the mission and first started having memories of Sadie, he’d had a seizure. He’d never met her, but he knew she was his wife. He went crazy trying to find her. How Lisbeth could have survived the pain and confusion for the last few weeks, he’d never know. He’d found Sadie within days. Even though it was hard at first to convince her and her husband that he was also her husband, things eventually worked out for them all. Now he was concerned about how someone else would deal with the truth of two timelines.
The lab building came into view, but Dave drove to the side of the building where he could enter with Lisbeth without anyone seeing them. When he shut off the car, he tou
ched her shoulder gently to get her attention. “Come on. Marc is waiting to talk to you.” At her nod, she opened her door and woodenly walked toward the building. Dave punched in a numbered code on the security panel then opened the thick door. He led her down the long hallway to a set of double metal doors. Again, he punched in numbers and at the beep, he pulled the door open to reveal a large windowless room with computers along one wall. Various equipment was scattered throughout, but Dave searched the area for Marc.
A tall man with sandy brown hair walked into the room, his back to them until Dave cleared his throat. When he turned, Lisbeth gasped, letting Dave know she recognized Marc, her actual boss. He doubted she’d ever met him, even though she worked for his lab. He wanted to help her relax a bit. “Ah, there’s the mad scientist.” Marc grinned until he saw Lisbeth with her head bowed, and then genuine concern replaced his amusement.
“Dave, what’s going on?” Marc walked toward them slowly, he stopped walking the minute Lisbeth looked up, and he saw her face.
“Marc, this is Lisbeth Mohr. She is one of your employees assigned to my flight crew to gather data on the time distortions. She was with me on the last mission.” Marc’s eyes widened, and he took a deep breath. “She has something she needs to show you.”
“There’s been another cross-over?” Marc’s question had Lisbeth looking up.
“Cross-over?” She sniffed and looked at Dave’s tattoo. Her eyes followed the movements as Dave handed the picture she’d given him at his office. Marc’s eyes shot to Dave when she started to unfasten her flight suit again. “I didn’t have this when I went to bed last night.” She turned and exposed her shoulder. “And I’ve been having these dreams about, well about a man that I’ve never met but I love him.” Her voice broke. Dave pulled her flight suit back in place and turned her to face both men. She pulled the edges of the top together, holding it so tightly, her knuckles were white.
Marc gently took one of her hands and pulled her deeper into the lab. “Come here, Miss Mohr. I want you to sit down. You look like you’re going to faint.” The three of them walked into a small room off the lab. Marc led her to a chair and walked to the water cooler in the corner of his office and returned with a cup of cool liquid.
No one said a word until she had sipped the water and some of her color returned. “Dave, I contacted Dr. Lackney when I got your call. I had an idea it was something like this.”
Lisbeth looked up, fear in her eyes. “No. I don’t want to be put away somewhere. I’m not crazy. I know this is strange but I—” Dave cut her off.
