We the People vol 2: Liberty or Death
Chapter 6

Montel stepped out from behind his meager cover and leveled the M-16 at Kass, but didn’t fire. Thane risked a glance at James’s last position, but he was nowhere to be found. She pointed her own gun, bracing it with both hands.

“It’s over, you alien freak,” she said “let go of Dr. Kass, and maybe I’ll let you go back to living in your little aquarium instead of pasting you all over the floor.”

“Let go of Kass?” ESX grinned with Kass’s mouth, dark eyes glistening. “My dear, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“I wasn’t asking,” Thane said, pulling back the trigger until it was nearly in firing position.

“If you insist,” said what used to be Kass. A look of intense pain crossed her features, and she cried out, hands clasping on either side of her head. For a moment, her eyes were clear, and she stared pleadingly at Thane.

“Help....me...”

Then the top of her head rolled back and her skull split with a loud crack. Thane dropped her gun, hands over her mouth, as she saw the hideous, oblong face mired in Kass’s brain.

“As you can see,” said Kass’s lips in synch with the alien’s “we have truly become...one.”

James screamed, suddenly appearing to their left and hurling a tomahawk. It had no sooner left his hand that he dropped into a crouch and covered his head. Thane saw why a moment later when Kass held up a hand and stopped the ax mid air. Then she sent it flying back at James. Luckily for him, the handle hit his wrist rather than the blade. The impact still knocked him flat, and he cradled his injured limb while he tried to scoot back behind cover.

“Look out, Thane!” Montel shouted.

She thew herself out of the way as Montel thumped another RPG at Kass. The projectile stopped dead, suspended in the air as if by magic. Kass’s power was so great, she even held the smoke from the barrel static in the air, an oddly beautiful sight.

The round should have exploded, but the energy was contained by the force of the alien’s mind. Thane watched as an orange nimbus billowed out to the size of a beach ball, then stopped as if straining against an unseen glass bubble.

“You can have this back, now,” Kass said, and the missile sailed back the way it had come. Montel stared in shock as death bloomed upon him. Suddenly, James appeared out of nowhere and tackled the big man to the ground. Both of them were caught at the edge of the blast, bodies twisting in the air amid wreckage of priceless antiquities before crashing back to earth. They sprawled on the floor in a moaning heap as splinters and ash rained down.

Thane pitched into a somersault and came up with her gun in hand. Screaming, she emptied her clip into Kass. A few bullets managed to get by Kass’s invisible shield, resulting in bloody wounds, but the alien didn’t react. Smiling placidly, Kass held out her hand and clenched her fist. The gun crumpled into a bent and twisted lump right in Thane’s grip.

“You don’t stand a chance,” Kass said, eyes narrowing to obsidian cracks. “Where are you hiding that little blonde retard? She’s the only one I have cause to fear.”

Esx raised Kass’s hand, and Thane dove behind a stack of wooden pallets.

“Faraday, we need you! Now!” she screamed over the radio.

Kass levitated into the air and hovered across the room, coming to a stop near the same crate the bikers had been so adamant to avoid. Thane figured it was a stroke of luck; Faraday could take out ESX and whatever it thought was so important at the same time.

Faraday came into view in the wide doorway, her hands holding a crackling ball of energy so bright Thane was nearly blinded. Chui stood to the side, his pistol drawn and aimed at Kass.

Kass floated behind the valued crate, which drew a confused grunt from Thane. If it was so important, why was she using it as cover from Faraday? Then she noticed the slight smile on Kass’s lips. It had told her that Faraday was their only hope...

“FARADAY!” Thane screamed. “DON’T! She wants you to-”

The hissing ball of plasma left her hands. As it rolled through the air, it set the wooden timbers beneath ablaze. The roiling nexus passed by Thane and caused the skin on her face to blacken and curl away from her skull amid the sweet smell of burning hair. Faraday’s missile hit the crate and incinerated it instantly in a rush of heat. As the wood was consumed in black smoke, something bright glinted through the miasma. Thane watched as the glow became brighter and brighter, until it challenged the Sun. The device looked like a glass spiral, laid on its side and over ten feet long. A high pitched, almost musical keening reached her ears as the device grew more brilliant.

“Thank you so much for powering up my transporter,” Kass said, enveloped in the glow from the strange device. “My defeat will soon be wiped away, replaced by glory!”

The nimbus of light expanded until it was all that Thane could see. She flung her hands up in front of her burned face, screaming in denial as the world became a hot, white void. It was as if she was being stretched, her molecules thinned until they were but a long, tiny thread. Then the thread was sucked into a spiral, and she knew nothing at all....

Thane waved her hand at the annoying insect that alighted on her face. She was tired, so very tired, and didn’t want to return to the world of light. It was so much easier in the darkness...

The bug kept coming back, and she slowly returned to consciousness. She was lying on her back in a patch of soft grass. Trees, heavily laden with verdant green leaves, formed a canopy through which she could barely glimpse starlight.

Thane sat up with a start, causing the fat hornet to buzz a short distance away and land on a tree stump. It turned in a circle and then took to the air again, flying in spirals around her.

“You’re one of Rashemi’s, aren’t you?” she asked.

Of course the insect didn’t respond, but when Thane started walking it took off in a straight line. As she followed her winged guide, Thane took in her surroundings. It looked like a totally different wood, the mill nowhere in sight. When she tried her radio, all she got was dead silence. There was something wrong, terribly wrong.

Thane stopped moving, and had she been able to sweat it no doubt would have drenched her body. It was late November, and the trees should have been largely bare. Yet, not only were they in full bloom, the buzzing, chirping sounds of insects were all around her. A sweet smell of honeysuckle reached her nostrils, and then she noted how quiet it all seemed. Even deep in the woods, the sounds of an airplane overhead or the highway in the distance had still been present. Now...nothing.

“Where the hell am I?” she wondered aloud. It occurred to her that ESX had called the glass spiral a transporter...maybe she was now in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons were reversed?

Thane heard a snippet of conversation from the woods ahead of her. With profound relief, she recognized Chui’s voice.

“...Everyone accounted for except for Thane,” he said. “And Rashemi says one of her friends is leading our fearless leader to us.”

“Not so fearless, Chui,” she said, coming out of the woods into a small clearing. Creepy thudded into her side, grabbing her in a fierce hug. Montel and James smiled, though it seemed strained. Chui grinned, but there was a hard edge in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” She followed his gaze to Faraday, who was sitting on a fallen trunk, slowly rocking back and forth.

“She...her ability isn’t working,” Chui said, pain etched on his face. “She can’t replace any signals at all.”

“Great,” Thane said “then how are we supposed to figure out where we are?”

James turned from staring intently into the dark woods to face her.

“Uh...” he swallowed hard. “I think...I think it may not be a matter of where we are so much as...so much as when we are.”

“When we are?” Thane’s nose wrinkled. “Is that some kind of Indian saying?”

“I wish...” James looked rattled, something she was not used to seeing. “Look, you know how I can see flashes of the future? Well, I’m sort of...connected to the flow of time, and we are just not where...I mean, when, we’re supposed to be.”

“So what, you’re saying we’ve time traveled?” Thane scoffed. “Are you kidding me?”

“Hey,” Chui said, spreading his hands “I can speak any language I come across, you can’t die, Faraday be like Goku with a mad on—is time travel really that much of a stretch?”

“I always heard that you could go forward in time, but not back,” Montel said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “So, we’re in the future, maybe?”

“Actually, Stephen Hawking thinks we might just be able to travel into the past, too,” Chui said. “Time and space are just different points on an ever shifting continuum.”

“You know Physics, Chunk-Chui?” James asked.

“Physics is kind of its own language, so yeah,” Chui said, scratching the back of his curly head. “I mean, I’m no expert, but as far as I know time travel should be possible. Theoretically.”

“You know,” Thane said, looking at Faraday “I bet we’re in the past. There’s nothing wrong with Hannah’s power, there just aren’t any wifi or cell phone signals to pick up on.”

“There’s still signals.”

They all turned their heads toward Faraday.

“From the moon, the Earth...even the trees,” she continued, blue eyes wide. “I just...just never noticed before...”

“Uh, okay,” James said, rolling his eyes.

“Be that as it may, I’m not sure we’ve really traveled in time,” Montel said. “Until I see some evidence, I’m not going to assume anything.”

Thane nodded.

“Good advice, Montel,” she said. “Very good, in fact.”

“What’s our next move, Thane?” Chui asked.

She exchanged glances with all her friends. They were counting on her to lead them, and the thought filled her with terror.

A leader can’t afford the luxury of fear.

Steeling herself with Bast’s advice, she focused on doing something productive.

“Well, first we need to replace a source of fresh water,” she said.

“I thought you didn’t need to eat and drink,” James said.

“I don’t, but the rest of you do. Then we can see about figuring out where we are. There has to be civilization somewhere.”

“Unless we’re so far in the past there aren’t humans around yet,” James said in a somber voice.

No one spoke, though the silence gave voice to their fear.

“Well...” Thane was at a loss. What words, anywhere in the universe, would be sufficient? She doubted even Chui would be able to come up with anything. “Well....let’s burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“That’s the spirit!” James chuckled. “If it means anything, I don’t think we’re that far off from our own time.”

“Guess what?” Chui glared at him darkly. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

“C’mon,” Thane said, rising to her feet and disengaging from Creepy “let’s replace a source of water. Maybe we’ll run into someone on the way. James, you take point.”

“I can handle it,” Chui said.

“Can you see into the future?” Thane asked. She nodded as Chui wilted under her stern gaze. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Point is dangerous anyway, homes,” James said with a wink. “Besides, you’ll get your chance to shine, I’m sure of it.”

“Well, you’ve moved from condescending to insulting,” Thane said wryly. “It’s a start, Jimmy boy.”

James snickered and shrugged, then moved a short distance ahead. Thane followed next, then Creepy and Montel. Chui took Faraday gently by the hand and led her after the others.

It didn’t take long to come across a source of fresh water. The tiny trickle that burbled merrily from between two sagging boulders elicited more joy than it was worth, but Thane still chalked it up as a success. Bearclaw refused to let the team fill up their canteens until he’d had a chance to treat the water. He dropped small, speckled tablets into the neck of every bottle, and implored them to shake their canteens vigorously until they no longer heard the rattle.

Thane waved off James when he tried to offer her a sip of his own canteen.

“Can’t help but notice that you didn’t pack a mess kit,” he said, giving her gear a once over.

“Can’t help but notice that you’re nosy as hell,” Thane said.

“Fair enough.” He retreated with no further comment. The truth was Thane was more than a bit apprehensive about their food situation. The others could forage for sustenance, but her specialized diet would require acts she considered revolting...

She shook her head, trying to banish such thoughts. Hopefully, they could figure out a way to get back where—maybe when—they belonged quickly, and she would have no need to feed. The notion almost made her laugh.

When has anything ever been easy for me?

“That’s water taken care of,” Montel said “what’s our next step? Not exactly safe to be running around the woods after dark.”

Thane wanted to argue, but knew Montel had a valid point. Not everyone could see as well in the dark as she could.

“Good point,” she said, “this looks like a good enough spot to camp.”

James rose to his feet and partially unsheathed a knife. Everything, from the timing of the act to his half-lidded smile, was calculated to impress. Thane found herself feeling annoyed.

“I’ll take first watch,” he said.

“Sit the hell down,” Thane said with a sigh.

“You...you don’t want to set a watch?” he asked, blinking.

“I don’t sleep, so I’ll take care of watch.”

James shrugged and sheathed his knife. Thane settled atop a moss-encrusted boulder as the others spread out their sleeping bags on whatever reasonably flat surface they could replace. Faraday complained for a time about how lumpy the ground was, and everyone—even James—endured it stoically. Eventually her griping became more intermittent, and then she was snoring softly.

Looking up at the stars through the canopy, Thane had little trouble believing they were in the past. The twinkling lights were brighter than she was used to, and the woods felt so much more wild than in her own time. Then there was the clean, crisp air. Thane didn’t have much sensation in her skin, but even she could feel how pure the forest was.

The night grew long, and Thane grew bored. First she peeled bits of bark off the tree behind her and tossed them at a patch of reeds. After leaving a three foot bare patch on the trunk, she tired of the game and she did a quick recon of their camping sight. Most of her training was in urban ops, and she quickly realized that she was far out of her element in this strangely unspoiled forest.

She was about to turn back when she heard a tiny crack to her left. Casually, she bent over as if she were adjusting her bootlaces while staring hard from under black bangs. There was no movement, but again a tiny, almost imperceptible snap struggled to be heard above the din of insect life.

Thane ducked under a dense thicket. Just as she craned her head around a fat green spider squatting in its web she heard an ominous click from behind her.

“All right, you,” said a gruff voice “just get up reaaaal slow like, and keep your hands where I can see ’em, or the Devil just may take ye!”