Chapter 6

I slowly stopped the regression of time a couple of minutes after Billy had reentered the house, this time walking into it backwards. I took a tentative step towards the house. I wanted with all my being to stop him.

I moved forward, but I didn't so much walk as float into the house. I was about a foot above the ground and I had a sickening feeling that I would be unable to affect the outcome of what had gone on in the house.

I floated through the front door and saw that Mom was already dead. He must have raped and killed her when he had first entered the house. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Mom had surprised him by waking up and tried to stop him. Regardless, I didn't want to go back and see those events.

A tremendous amount of liquid had been poured over her body and was soaking the carpet surrounding the sofa. More liquid was on the staircase. I floated upwards through the ceiling and watched as Billy got frustrated when he could not find Charlie and me in our beds. He couldn't figure out how, but he knew we had escaped. He was flinging fluid everywhere. He went back downstairs and set a primitive timing device with a lit cigarette and a book of matches. I had seen this device on a TV show once.

His technique was brilliant. Whoever he worked with must have known everything about our lives, down to the last fucking detail. Mom still smoked the occasional cigarette and any investigation would determine the cause of the blaze as smoking in bed. If there was going to be an investigation, that is.

Billy slipped out of the house and went back across the street. I hovered above the smoldering device and tried to stop the cigarette from burning, but I had no physical impact in this time shifted dimension. I followed Billy back out onto the sidewalk and wished myself back to the present — that's the closest I can come to describing what I did — and I 'reappeared' in the other dimension.

Charlie was doing a good job of holding it together but when I reappeared she lost it, crying hysterically. She was clinging to the Major so he got the full effect of her terror. I touched his hand so that we could communicate and told both of them what had happened and what I had seen.

"Are you sure it was Billy?" the Major asked. "I saw the psychological profile and his EEG after he cracked up. There was literally nothing there, nothing left of him."

"It was either Billy or his twin brother. I would have sworn it was him. Maybe the breakdown was only temporary," I speculated.

Charlie and I looked at each other. As unlikely as that would be, neither of us had any experience with the long-term effects of what I had done to Billy. If, indeed it was Billy, this was further evidence that mercy had no place on the battlefield. A live enemy was an enemy who could kill you. This was one lesson we had learned the hard way and it cost us our Mom. I saw in Charlie's eyes that this would never happen again. We would leave no survivors.

The Major got into his car and started to drive back to the farm. We got in with him.

"Tell me about this backwards time thing," he said.

"Well, it was even more different than being in this other dimension. Here, I'm sort of real. I can feel and touch other things in this dimension and I can sense and influence things in reality. Gravity even seems to work here pretty much as it does in reality, too. But when I went back in time, it was like I was a ghost. All I could do was observe what was going on. I wasn't even touching the ground and when I tried to walk, I floated. I didn't take the stairs, I just moved straight up through the ceiling, with no effect of gravity. I tried to put out the cigarette that started the fire, but I could even make the smoke move."

"Did you feel in danger going back in time, like you might not get back or that something might hurt you?" Bill asked me.

"No, not really. I wasn't really paying attention." I thought for a moment. "Mostly I felt frustrated that I couldn't affect anything. All I could do was observe."

"That's still a lot, Douglass," he said, "and it is probably a good thing we can't alter the past. There are many books written about what would happen if time travel was possible and someone changed the future by altering the events of the past. Just imagine what you can do with that ability as it is."

"I could 'do' nothing," I pouted.

"But you did, son. You now know who did this. It wasn't one of your Mom's boyfriends or someone who followed her home from the bar and attacked her. You won't make the mistake of going after an innocent person, right?" He paused for minute. "What would you feel about going back there and following Billy to where he is staying, right now? We could pay him a visit and wind this little episode up tonight."

Charlie and I looked at each other.

"I'm going with you," she said.

Again, I knew better than to argue. "We'll meet back up at the farm, OK?" I told him.

Charlie and I teleported back to the fire. Once there we went backwards in time. It was easier for me this time as I had already done it once, but I had to wait for Charlie to catch up with me a couple of times. We floated to a position above the spot where I had seen him appear the first time and we hovered there as time scrolled backwards. When I saw the shadowy figure backing towards us, we restarted time forward and floated along after him.

Billy made his way through the darkened yards of the quiet neighborhood, some lights just turning on as the sounds of the wailing sirens woke them up. Two streets over, Billy got onto a powerful motorbike and roared off, shattering the remains of the early morning quiet. We tailed him to an old building in the downtown area. He looked around for prying eyes and slipped inside a heavy metal door using a combination which both of us saw — we were floating just over his shoulder by then.

Once inside the building, he turned off the security alarm on the inside of the door. Again, we saw the combination. I was impressed with the amount of security for a building of this age and location. Billy went upstairs to the 10th floor and entered a small apartment. He dropped his clothes in a heap, took a shower and went to bed. We were just about ready to leave when Charlie motioned to me to look into the rooms on the each side of this apartment.

We drifted through the walls and went through several vacant rooms. We came back to Billy's room and went in the other direction. There was another person in the room next to his on that side, but her face was hidden behind a cosmetic mask. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I motioned to Charlie that we needed to get back to the farm and to the Major. She nodded her agreement and after we floated up to the roof of the building, we 'wished' ourselves back to real time. It was funny to watch the moon jump in the night sky. I figured we had gone back about 2 hours in time, maybe more. We would have to see what the limits of this new ability were, but at least this part was easy. I wondered what would happen if I processed a digital camera, if I could take that back and document some events. Wouldn't that make everyone wear brown pants for awhile, no?

We teleported back to the farm. The Major was there waiting, dressed in his combat gear. We hadn't talked about taking him with us, and it looked like the decision had been made for us. We reported what we had seen. The Major was concerned, as he was familiar with the particular building. It was supposed to be owned by the US government. Before his forced retirement, Uncle Sam was considering renovating the building for training and covert operations. In fact, the Major had designed most of the special features in it himself. That building was to have been the first of many regional facilities to house special interdiction forces to combat terrorists. The program was started right after the attacks on 9/11/01, but they lost the favor of the politicians as Bush's policies turned out to be effective at keeping the terrorists out of the US. Like him or hate him, the fact is, there were no more attacks on US soil during the remainder of his administration.

So, the Major reasoned, if this was still a US government building, then Billy could be working for the US. That could pose problems for us, and get us classified as hostile before we even got started.

This was getting too complicated for me. "Does that change what he did?" I asked. "I sure as Hell know it doesn't change what I intend to do."

"I'm with Dougie," Charlie said. "What if Uncle Sam did the renovations on those buildings then forgot about staffing them? That has happened before, where they build something but don't get the money to make it work, right?" she offered hopefully. "Could the people in there be kind of like squatters?"

"Government programs like that are half dropped more often than you know, Charlie," admitted the Major. "I know the funds for the construction had been approved, so it's likely there are more of these bunkers scattered around the country. This was supposed to be just the first one built.

"You're right about Billy, though. He's a dead man." He looked up at me. "Any chance the woman you saw was Ms. Brisard?"

"I don't think so," I said. "Lisette, I mean, Ms. Brisard is tall and slender. This woman had a shorter body and seemed kind of chunky in the hips and thighs."

"Leave it to a man to notice something like that," muttered Charlie.

"What did you think of the woman, Charlie?" asked the Major, grinning.

"I agree with Dougie," she said reluctantly. "She was too short to be Lizzy. But I wasn't the one who thought I recognized her from somewhere. In fact, I didn't recognize her, so it couldn't have been Lizzy," she ended with a smile, as if that proved Ms. Brisard's innocence.

Charlie and I had been equipping ourselves as we talked. By the time we had finished, both of us were dressed in all black and had the communicators in our ears with the throat mikes strapped around our necks. The Major was dressed in the same manner, for combat.

We decided we would take out Billy first, then go find out who the woman was. The Major held onto my shoulder and we teleported to the room where we had left Billy about two hours ago. He was still there, sleeping.

He must have sensed something as we materialized in the room, as he woke up and had a gun in his hand before we had even moved. Before he could pull the trigger, I had lashed out with my combat knife and severed his hand from his wrist. There was a look of surprise on his face at the ease with which he had been cut and then his head was rolling on the floor without his body. Charlie had her vengeance for Mom.

We teleported to the room next door. It was empty. We looked around and I suddenly remembered where I had seen the woman. The white lab coat hanging behind the door reminded me. She was the female doctor hovering around Billy in the hospital. But what was she doing here?

An alarm started to go off somewhere else in the building. The Major had told us part of the security systems was that once every 10 seconds the infra-red sensors that covered ever square foot of the building counted the number of bodies in the building. Any time there was an change without the proper clearance or code being entered, the alarm would go off, one kind for an intrusion and another to indicate an escape. It wasn't safe here for the Major any longer. He couldn't hide in the other dimension like we could. We had to get him out to safety even if the mission was only half finished.

I think it was then that both Charlie and I realized we were going to have to let him go through the process. We needed him too much and would just have to trust him. His experience on the missions was just too invaluable. But trusting anyone else was something that was hard for all three of us to do at the moment.

We teleported Bill back to the farm. We knew where the woman worked and could follow up with her later. Once Bill was safe, I jumped out to the mental institute where Billy was supposed to be. The patient roster I saw at the nurse's station said he was still in residence, but when I got into his room, someone else was lying in his bed. It had been Billy who killed our Mom and he was now officially dead.

By the time I got back to the farm, Charlie had already brought out the laser from where we stored it at the Station. Bill was watching her with a skeptical look on his face. When I popped into view he turned to me.

"You don't really expect me to get into that sphere and let you blast me with that high powered laser, do you?" he asked me, as if he was expecting this to be an elaborate joke.

"Yes," I answered.

"If this doesn't work, you know I'll have to kill you," he said lamely. It was a bad joke, but we didn't point it out to him. He was just nervous.

Then he laughed. "Those bastards spying on us with the smoke detectors will never figure this out!" He continued, "When you rewired the detectors, you shorted them out. They would have to get a copy of the tape from Billy to see what he was doing and those two assholes that were supposed to be listening in were with me in the hospital that afternoon and not watching the video feed."

So that was why he didn't trust the other two men in his hospital room. I idly wondered just how many secret agencies had been in the room that first day. My current impression was that there were up to 5 or 6 separate agencies. The leader was FBI, of that I was fairly certain from Bill's memories. The other two were Treasury and Homeland Security, at least, that was Bill's best estimate. The professor had to have been from the NSA or some such agency. And then there was the Major. I have a feeling even those other four didn't know exactly which agency he really worked for, just that when he said 'jump, ' they went through the window. For that matter, I didn't recall seeing who we were working for, either. It was a very spiffy badge and all, but pretty generic. I suppose I should ask him one of these days.

We had Bill strip down to his skivvies. He reminded us that he had a couple of metal pins in his leg and some other hardware in his arm that he was concerned about, especially with the magnets. I was pretty sure he was OK, but why take the chance? The devices in his body were the older stainless steel kind and the magnetic field would affect them. They hadn't been part of his earlier injuries in the hospital so Charlie and I hadn't tried to do anything with them then. Charlie winked out and I saw a faint glow as she worked on his leg. Two long shafts and several screws clanked as they hit the floor next to him. The smaller screws from his arm and a long plate soon joined them.

Bill's eyes were like pie plates as he stared down at the hardware. He looked up at Charlie as she winked into sight.

"Thank you," he said, flexing his arm and his leg. "You have no idea how much better that feels. I must have gotten used to the constant low level ache from all that metal and put it out of my mind. It was always there, though, in the background."

Charlie leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "My pleasure," she said.

The man had guts, I'll give him that. Once we were ready, he wiggled his way into the sphere without hesitation. I had him crouch on the bottom beams where they crossed. I flipped on the HV generator and started the magnets when the output had stabilized. The force of the magnetic fields had Bill curled up in a fetal position, floating in the center of the sphere. All he could move was his eyes.

I aimed the laser with the HeNe beam and then fired it up. 10 minutes later and the Major was processed. He was already beginning to play around with his new invisibility and teleporting abilities like a kid with a new toy. I don't think I had ever seen him smile as much as he was then. He was enjoying this way too much.

While he was being processed, Charlie had made another shopping trip to the specialty boutique. We had long since re-paid the store and had become their best customer. I had had to get several new outfits throughout the school year due to my increased height and now Bill was going to become a customer of theirs, as well. Charlie had the sphere packed with new items and we processed these in short order.

Bill was like a kid in a candy store. Charlie and I just rolled our eyes and laughed. We took him to the Station, the hidden room we had found, and showed him what we had found there. We explained that it felt like this was our private space and we asked him to respect that. He looked around, thinking seriously. He told us there was supposed to be an old bomb shelter around on the property somewhere. He also told us there was too much history here; that some people might think we were being disrespectful of the sacrifices and lives of abolitionists and the slaves who had gone through this place. He knew we hadn't abused or moved anything and that we wouldn't think of doing anything to disrespect those people, but it might be better if we used the old shelter for our private place instead of the historical site.

Reluctantly we agreed. Of course, we would have to find the abandoned shelter first, but now that we were 'dead' in the fire, we had nothing but time on our hands and nowhere to live. We didn't want to live in the Station because of the poor ventilation. The old shelter would have ventilation and sounded like a better alternative

Graduation was a somber affair, what with the tragedy our 'deaths' and all. The top two students in the school had been killed the day before graduation and the school almost cancelled the ceremony. But Bill and Lisette convinced them to proceed and to call our name out as if we were there. He would accept my diploma and Lisette would accept Charlie's. I thought that was a pretty sneaky way of getting the diplomas for us as we couldn't be there.

Most of the students didn't give a shit about me, but most of them liked Charlie. OK, maybe I'm selling myself short, but I was 4 years younger than most of them and they looked at me like a little kid. They didn't know me and that was OK. I guess I had wanted to be accepted by them more than I realized. I would have to remember that.

Mike stood up and read my speech. He had heard me pretend to give it enough in the lab. We had gone through several versions of the speech, even though it was several months away. I had been terrified of public speaking. Mike, in his own way, helped me with that terror by having me pretend he was the crowd. He would be working on building something and I would stand on a chair and practice.

So Mike knew a lot of what I wanted to say. With his deep voice, it actually sounded better when he delivered it to the crowd. At the end he spoke a couple of words of his own, how he had come to see me as a person and as a friend. Charlie had to hold me up as I was sobbing.

I was sad that Mom wasn't there. It was just Charlie and me, now. And Bill, but, well, he wasn't family. Yeah, he was very special to us, but blood is blood. Maybe someday I'd find out about my Father, but until then it was just us.

With the coming of the Summer break, things didn't change that much. Ms. Brisard quit teaching at the high school and found a job with an international firm downtown helping with their European subsidiaries. She and Bill were spending more and more time together. Both Charlie and I had cautioned him about reading her mind. Whenever she and I had done it to each other, it was very clear to the person being read who was in their mind with them, not to mention that it was a real turn on sexually. The resulting emotion was almost like a bonding of the person to the mind reader.

Regardless, Bill was much more at ease with her and she was eventually spending more time at the farm than at her apartment. That made training a bit tougher for us, as we had to do our routines in the other dimension.

We had decided to research the female doctor, Emily Groves, MD, before we did anything else. Billy hadn't had her image in his mind identifying her as his superior, so it was doubtful she was the boss, but she could be another agent and could possibly lead us to the boss.

Charlie shadowed the good doctor during the day. The Major started extensive electronic surveillance and background checks on her as well as researching the ownership of ex-government building. I had the dubious responsibility of going backwards in time and stalking her as far back as I could.