Chapter 34

Later that morning...

Earth time: Tuesday, April 26, 2033 9:00 AM EDT

"God damn it you asshole! We haven't got time for that! Run and get me the bolt- cutters! Move!"

"Sure thing Carl! Just be a minute..."

I heard someone run off, leaving Carl fuming on the outside of the generator hut and pounding on the door in frustration. I was just a meter away from him on the inside. Fortunately there were no windows. Generators around here are priceless, and this one was extremely well guarded. I took a moment to smile at my brilliance. So far my plan for a diversion was working.

Jim is solo tracking Mark's team heading north to Davis, with A'moth occasionally jumping in to check if he needs help. Otherwise she's spending her time with Cindy and Isabelle tracking Kara's team heading south to Harman. From our knowledge of the highway patrol around here, they're biking into disaster, but we haven't found a way to stop them yet.

A'moth and I spent the last month throwing branches on the deserted roads, trying to discourage them from exploring. It didn't work.

Our mission today is clear. Do not let Aina know about us; do not let Earth know about Aina. If either of those things happens, we've lost, game over on a cosmic scale. But we're also compassionate. Saving the expeditions' lives is on all of our minds, at least as many as possible.

I spent the night thinking about Parsons. About 5 AM, I whispered something to A'moth. She nodded and jumped, returned a few minutes later with a small tube of glue and a medical needle. I filled up the needle and jumped twice, and then squirted some glue deep into the keyset of the padlock on the generator hut...

I've been tracking my team since daybreak. The two women Mayoni and her younger sister Amy are being led by an older guy named Leon. I've also been jumping every fifteen minutes for a few seconds back to our cave home in the canyon. A'moth and I have some signals worked out with small stones. If either of us is desperate, we place a stone in a certain way, and then the other will wait for us in the cave... if possible...

My team is biking right into the lion's den. I racked my brain during their trip, but I couldn't see how to stop them. They're biking down to the Last Castle Café right now. So I went with my plan for a diversion. A few minutes ago I jumped to a deserted warehouse which has a torn bag of fine sand. I grabbed a handful and jumped inside the generator hut and threw it on the generator, just at the junction with the rotor. The generator began to make noise and get hot almost immediately.

My next stop will be to take out their communications system. With the generator growling, I was about to jump out of the hut just as I heard someone run up with Carl's bolt cutters... There's a heavy steel chain outside. It'll take him a few minutes to cut it. The generator started to make a grinding, high-pitched whining sound. Carl was cursing furiously, almost crying in frustration. Have a nice day guys!

My next jump site was tricky. There was a woman chained to chair running a ham-radio station, name of Jennifer I think, and a guard about ten feet away. The guard was a pervert. He was under orders not to touch the woman, but he would stand behind her and talk about how he would like to touch her. It was sick...

I prepped my body and jumped inches behind the guard. Then I ran my finger along the back of his neck.

My first year on Earth after A'moth and I got separated, I realized something. In addition to her muscle power and acute senses, I also have her chemical abilities. Among other things, I can excrete a sweat that humans find horrible. It gives them stomach cramps within seconds and then moves down to the intestines. This guard was such a creep I would have killed him if it were necessary. Having him spend a nasty morning on the toilet didn't bother me at all.

I jumped to the next room as I completed my finger swipe, heard the guard swear as I'm sure he whipped around and found nothing there. Maybe he decided it was a spider or something, I don't know. In less than a minute he was running for the hopper.

Now, how to take out the radio? Just then a call started coming in. I recognized the call sign of the patrol car north of Harman. I was just starting to worry when the lights went off and I heard a big bang a split second later. Aha! Scratch one generator. I am good! I glanced at my watch, 9:09 AM. I was a few minutes overdue for the cave check. I took a deep breath to clear my mind and jumped.

A'moth had set up a stage-two alert with the rocks. It meant her team was in serious trouble, and to try to meet up with her. I left a signal that said I'd jump back to the cave in five minutes, and then took a quick jump north to check on Jim. He was circling high overhead, spotting Mark's team for me. I jumped again, and saw that Mark, Va'an, and Kiana had forded the creek bed and were just a few minutes south of Davis. A'moth and I knew what a trap Davis was, but I thought Mark would be smart enough not to walk into it.

I jumped back to the canyon home cave. It was empty, but A'moth left me a sign showing she saw my reply. I waited and wondered, my mind racing with the possibilities of how this day would end.

A'moth jumped in a few minutes later. "Gary, what's your situation like?"

"The team north to Davis is okay. The team in Parsons walked right into being captured. There was nothing I could do about it. I did blow main power on the Parsons generator, which means the area comm system is down too."

A'moth nodded. "Good job. My team got picked up a few miles before Harman."

I shuddered. "Those Lords of Discipline assholes?"

"Yeah, you guessed it."

"Hell... Well, we saw this coming. Let me guess again. Mahi's dead and Lois and Kara are being raped."

"Just about. They have Mahi locked in their squad car for now. The rapes were about to happen when I jumped here. Gary, this is not the time for compassion! We can not help them if it means revealing ourselves! We lose everything if we do!"

I know, I know... Damn..." I stood still for a moment. "Take me to the site?"

A'moth nodded and held me tightly in her arms. We jumped.

We entered the scene about a hundred meters from the road, near the edge of some deep cover. We made our way a little closer, but there was a wide field with just some short weeds near the road. We couldn't get too close. We stared for a while at what was happening. High overhead, there were the faint shrieks of owls as Cindy and Isabelle voiced their frustration and anger. None of the people on the ground seemed to notice.

The minutes flowed by. "This is sick..." I whispered.

A'moth nodded with a hand signal. Otherwise she was motionless.

More minutes flowed by. I couldn't take it anymore. "We have to do something..." I hissed.

A'moth looked at me and mouthed the word cave. We were both back there a second later.

"Gary, we can NOT reveal ourselves!"

"I almost don't care anymore! The hell with the universe! I can't let this abomination stand!"

"Gary! Let Kara be a role model for you!"

"Huh?"

"She still has her pistol! Her Glock is in the back of her shirt! She's biding her time. Lois is acting as a decoy. These people are superb! Learn from them!"

That got me. I was silent for a moment. "Yeah, okay." A moment later we jumped back to bide our time.

Earth time: Tuesday, April 26, 2033 9:44 AM EDT

A'moth and I were waiting silently off the road near Harman. Occasionally, one of us would jump for a short while to check on the other teams. Up north, Mark is doing a fine job of not entering Davis. Leon's team in Parsons is still holed up in the hotel lobby of the Last Castle Café. The situation there is tense but stable. Leon still has his gun, and his team looks like they're trying to connect a laptop to the internet, what's left of the internet anyway... There's something going on there we don't understand...

Back at Harman, Bert looked just about finished with all his sick preparations for anal sex... "He's going to mount her soon..." A'moth whispered.

I nodded. "Kara will make her move then," I whispered back.

A'moth gave the hand signal for agreement, and then frowned. "She'll be killed..."

I grimaced. "Can you help her?"

"How?"

An inspiration hit me. "Remote teleport the bullets out of Steve's gun?"

A'moth considered my suggestion. Her face was a mask of intense thought in weighing her options. "I'm a little too far away for that. But there's no cover any closer... I guess I could try so sneak up a bit. It'll be risky..." The world seemed silent.

A'moth and I suddenly gasped. In a tree nearby, Cindy and Isabelle were flapping their wings and trying to regain their balance. The humans by the road didn't seem to notice anything. I looked at A'moth. "What the hell was that?"

A'moth's eyes went wide. "The time loop!" she hissed. "That's what I tried in the last loop! I tried to remote teleport a bullet, and I didn't make it! I think we've just broken temporal symmetry with the last loop! I just had another idea!" A'moth surprised me by starting to take off her clothes. She didn't stop until she was stripped naked.

"A'moth," I whispered. "What the heck are you doing?"

"I'm going to speed jump. Jump in and catch the bullet and jump out with the bullet still inside me. It'll jump the bullet with me!"

"What?!" I hissed. "Like hell!"

"Gary, it's the only way!"

"No! And besides, they'll see you!"

She hissed back, "No! That's why I'm doing this naked. I can jump faster. And if I time this right, I'll be in and out so fast; Kara will never be sure what she sees. It doesn't matter what Steve sees. He's about to die!"

"Oh A'moth... You sure?"

"Yes! Now shut up and let me concentrate!"

A dim memory echoed in my mind. A'moth giving me a playful kiss and saying those exact same words as we were on our way to Paris before the plague. Carlotta was still alive then. Breakfast in Paris, no worries about plagues... It seemed like so long ago... I nodded to A'moth that I understood.

A'moth positioned her body, her eyes intensely focused on Steve and Kara. She was pre- programming her two jumps so they would be automatic. My God, she's so beautiful, like a beautiful angel. I remained absolutely silent. The moments flowed by...

After all his sick preparation, Bert finally squatted into a mount position behind Lois, high up above her butt. He arched his pelvis back and tensed his massive thigh muscles, and guided the head of his penis to Lois's anus. I could see his obscenely huge erection hanging between his legs and it made me sick. Lois jerked her body down and shrieked just as Bert started to snap his hips forward. He missed his entry into Lois's rear and his fire-hose erection fuck-thrusted into the empty air. Bert howled in frustration.

That was the key Kara was waiting for. She whipped her pistol out from behind her back. My gosh she's fast! And hell, Steve's is even faster! A'moth jumped an instant before they both fired.

A'moth was back with me in the blink of an eye, before I even heard the sounds of the pistol shots. The time between her two jumps must have been less than forty milliseconds. She jumped back next to me rotated so the back of her hand was next to a tree, and I heard a "thwack!" sound as a bullet buried itself into the trunk. The explosions of the pistols shots reached us an instant later.

My eyes were locked on Steve. I'm sure he was trying to fire again, but Kara's shot had hit him low on the breastbone, and the shock of taking a supersonic slug into his chest cavity had spasmed his muscles. For an instant, he couldn't release the trigger. Kara rapidly fired again. Her second shot was dead center on Steve's throat, a direct hit through the soft tissue to shatter the top of his spinal column. Blood gushed from his severed neck arteries and his trigger finger relaxed, never to squeeze again.

Kara fired a third time, almost dead center on Steve's face. From my angle, I saw the shot exit the back of his head with a spray of blood and cranial matter. A wild thought flew through my mind, an assassin targeting me and yelling out that this Stevie guy is history. Kara completed an overhead arch and killed Bert a couple of seconds later with a similar shot to the head.

I tore my eyes away and looked at A'moth. A'moth's face was a mask of pain. I stared down at her hand and saw why. Her hand was exploded, torn to shreds. In horror I realized I could see a gaping hole right through her palm. A'moth looked dizzy. I grabbed her and jumped her back to the home cave.

"A'moth!"

She hissed through clenched teeth. "Gary, jump back and get my clothes!"

"What?!"

She hissed, "Do it!"

I did as she asked. She started to wrap her hand in her shirt. The blood was bad. Not as bad as I might have guessed.

She looked furious. "Gary, I'm going to get very sleepy very soon."

My heart was in maximum overdrive. "Shock?"

A'moth shook her head and grimaced through clenched teeth. "Hibernation. Damn! My hand burns like a motherfucker! I didn't think the wound would be this bad! Shit! That damn gold pistol! What the hell was it?!"

"I don't know... Hibernation?"

A'moth took a deep breath and held it for a moment. "My body will repair this. I need a place to rest." She started to pant.

"I'll stay with you."

"Like hell! Gary, we have three teams out there! Stay with the teams!"

We argued for a bit, even though I knew she was right. In a few minutes, I saw the bleeding was controlled, almost stopped, and A'moth kept insisting I get back to the teams. She looked very sleepy, kept saying she needed to rest. I jumped back to the road outside of Harman.

I spent the next hour jumping around, a few minutes with each team and then back to A'moth. Up north, Mark was doing a fine job keeping his team out of trouble and not taking the bait at Davis. I talked with hand signals with Jim. He's going to turn into an Omen Bird and flap his wings in front of them if they try. We both hope that won't be necessary.

The situation in Parsons is critical but stable. Leon still has his gun, so he's not exactly a prisoner. I'm spending most of my time there. I have a feeling though that this is Leon's battle to win or lose, not mine.

Kara's team is doing a fine job over covering their tracks at their battle scene. A little before 11 AM, I jumped back to check on A'moth. I think I startled her out of a daze.

"How are we doing?" she asked. I spent a minute giving her a summary. I looked at her bandaged hand. I hoped the bleeding was completely stopped. She concentrated on my report, had to shake her head a few times to clear it. "Not bad," she said at last.

"Yeah. I think the odds are good that Mark's and Kara's teams and the base team will make it back to Aina. Leon's team, who knows? But this is a lot better than the last loop."