Detective Anne Steele had been reliving the same horrible day over and over again. She was only just going through the motions. Eating, sleeping; none of it mattered. At the end of the day it would be the same day all over again. No matter what she did the alarm clock always went off at the unreasonable hour of five a.m. It had been the hour that she usually got ready for work. She had gone the first few days, but after that it seemed particularly hopeless. In escaping from custody, Alrice Van Die Welt had definitely succeeded in making her life a living hell just as he had promised. She had no idea what was happening in the present and wondered if anybody was working on getting her out of the impossible loop. She wondered if anybody remembered her at all. Just in case she unplugged the alarm clock every night.
One day she overslept.
The afternoon light was streaming through her windows and she woke with a start. This day was different. Detective Steele couldn't contain her excitement. She bounced out of bed and inspected the clock that still stood, screen blank, on her nightstand. She clapped her hands gleefully and scurried about the apartment getting ready for a new day. She hadn't had a new day in almost a year.
She bounced into work more exuberantly than she ever had before and walked up to the lobby desk. She glanced around, and couldn't help but wonder if they had remodeled. Things looked the same, but she couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that they were different. The receptionist in the lobby eyed her curiously. He was new, she noticed, but that didn't surprise her She had been gone for months.
She smiled brightly at the man. She was happy to be back at work. She was even contemplating being happy about seeing John Arker. He hadn't been the best partner at the time, but he was only a rookie. She should have known that Alrice Van Die Welt would be too much for him all by himself.
"Beautiful day," she murmured at the receptionist which did nothing to remove the perplexed expression from his face.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Yes," She grinned. "You're new here, right? I'm Detective Anne Steele, been stuck in a time loop for...Oh, eight months."
"I've worked here for ten years," the man replied. "Stuck in a time loop, you say?"
Anne stared at him in horror. Ten Years. She couldn't have been stuck in the loop for ten years. It wasn't possible.
"Oh, my god." She broke down then and sank to a heap on the floor in front of the desk.
The receptionist tried to see where she had disappeared to as he peered over the desk, but she wasn't visible from his vantage point. He sighed laboriously and stood up, pausing at a nearby water cooler to fill a small cup with water. He was well used to the crazies that wandered up to the precinct desk on a daily basis, but it didn't make it any less troublesome.
"Here you go." He sat down beside her and handed over the cup of water. She gulped it down and crushed the paper cone in her hand. Frustration and anger showed clearly on her face.
"I kept count," she muttered. "Eight months, give or take...a few days. Not years! Not Ten years! Do I look ten years...crap."
She knew as well as anybody that one didn't age in a time loop.
"I'm going to call somebody up to take you to the Captain," he said. He would have taken her himself, because he felt sorry for her. He was a step below a secretary in the grand scheme of things, but to work at the precinct one had to go through the core courses of Temporal Studies. Time Loops were rough for everybody involved even though the technology had been developed to easily break out of them. He couldn't help but wonder how the woman had gotten herself trapped in one. It could cause major problems in time if an important person was trapped in one for too long. Ten years was too long.
"Yes, you call the Captain," she said positively. "He'll remember me. He'll know what to do."
The Receptionist stared at her like she had gone insane.
"What?" She snapped at him.
"I'm sorry," he replied, beginning to believe her story. "But the Captain is a woman."
*****
The rustling of nearby branches is what alerted Jody and Catherine to another presence. They were frightened at first, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was only Jason and Ned messing with them.
"Come on out boys," Jody said with a roll of her eyes and a toss of her head. "You're not funny."
There was no answer, only the continued rustling of the underbrush.
"I don't think it's them," Catherine said nervously.
"I told you, you worry too much," Jody replied. She called out again. The rustling got closer.
"Over there," Catherine pointed.
The plants parted and a large cloven creature peered it's head out and regarded them curiously.
"Is that what I think it is?" Catherine said with incredulity.
"Yep," Jody replied with a sharp intake of breath.
"It's a fucking unicorn."
"Yep," Jody agreed.
The animal shook its mane at them and bent down to sip from the stream.
"I think it's time to get back," Jody offered. Catherine wholeheartedly agreed. They stood up and ran back the way they came leaving their champagne bottles behind.
*****
Jason, Ned and David stood in a grinning line awaiting Jerry's approval. He only shook his head at them. They stood, stripped of their shirts and smeared in mud.
"We've got to be stealthy," Ned had claimed when he came up with the idea. If they were going to be hunting then it was the only logical course of action in his mind.
"How do I look?" David spread his arms wide and looked towards Phillip.
"Ridiculous," the boy from the future replied with his own grin. "I'm not going to complain though..."
Jason groaned at them and rolled his eyes. Ned stooped down and took up a handful of the mud that had been created by the dumping of the champagne that very morning. He grinned impishly and slung it at David. It landed on his chest with a loud squelch and Ned laughed. Jason stood between them mouth agog, and David only looked down at himself in shock that he had just been assaulted with a mud ball.
"Look, Ned's a little slow, David, you're going to have to give him a break," Jason said in an attempt at diplomacy.
David shrugged, then swooped down to collect his own mud ball, which only nicked Ned's shoulder. Ned laughed and lunged towards the other boy. Catching Jason in between they all tumbled into the mud and commenced wrestling.
Phillip stood next to Jerry and sighed. "Look at that." he gestured towards the pile. "It only took me creating a fissure through all of space and time to realize my biggest fantasy."
Jerry eyed him sideways, then shrugged and laughed. No enemies, as David would say. He patted Phillip on the back. "Whatever floats your boat, Future Boy."
The Girls crashed into their midst then. Their fright was forgotten as soon as they caught sight of David, Jason, and Ned rolling around in the dirt, their empty champagne bottles lined up against the side of the building.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jody screeched at them. "We're out there in the dangerous wilderness looking for water, and you're rolling around in the mud? We are not washing your damn clothes you idiots."
They stopped then. She had managed to attract their full attention.
"What happened?" Jerry asked. He wondered briefly if the girl was only upset at their apparent goofing off. It wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for Esther to behave that way. She would shun him for the rest of the day and he would end up sleeping on the couch for nothing more than the crime of sitting down and watching the game on a Sunday afternoon.
"Hello," Catherine spoke up. "There are unicorns out there."
The boys only stared at her.
Even Phillip, who had seemed to have more of a grasp on their surroundings and time travel in general than even the so called Time Detectives, seemed genuinely shocked.
"That's crazy," he decided.
"We're not crazy," Jody huffed. "It was there, plain as day. Big fucking horse with a giant horn coming out of its head."
"Was it white?" Jason asked, stifling a giggle.
"Did it have wings?" Ned contributed without stifling any of his amusement. His laughter set David and Jason off. Even Phillip and Jerry were having a hard time containing themselves.
"This is serious, guys," Jody whined.
"It was brown," Catherine said. "And the horn was like an orangy yellow color."
"Do you know of a planet with Unicorns?" Jody addressed Phillip directly.
"No," he said. His expression turned serious. "That is a really unexpected side effect. We thought...y'know. Maybe the fruit would be bigger if Cath..." He trailed off and stared at his feet.
"If Cath what?" Catherine said. The rest of them were all intent on his answer, and he knew he wasn't going to be able to lie his way out of it.
"Catherine...you get a bill passed in your time. Genetic engineering is a highly regulated industry because of it. Without it..."
"Unicorns?" Catherine replied skeptically.
"Chimera." Phillip nodded. "I'm guessing. I mean...it's just a guess. Gerald could have flung us so far out of the known solar systems that...these things have evolved naturally and we just haven't discovered them yet but..."
"Looks too close to the myth?" David asked.
Phillip nodded miserably. "If it looks like it came from a human's imagination, it probably has. We do have a tendency to recreate the world as we see it."
"Good Job," Ned laughed.
"Tell me, Phillip," David asked, hands on hips and a scowl on his face. "Did you see Unicorns?"
"Come on," Jason spoke up. "Remember what you said, Dave? We're all trying to take it to heart. It's not going to help if you don't take your own advice and just keep getting mad at him over and over again."
"There is some good news," Phillip offered sincerely, hoping to get back on David's good side in as short amount of time as possible.
"Yeah?" Jody asked. "How are giant horned beasts good news? Horses by themselves are bad enough, but now we've given them pointy instruments of death..."
"A Chimera wouldn't be able to reproduce on its own," Phillip interrupted her. "It's a genetically modified thing...bits of this grafted into bits of that. At best they would only produce more horses if they weren't completely sterile."
"Bla, bla, bla!" Catherine rolled her eyes at him while gesturing a flapping mouth with her hand. "You talk way too much, Phil."
"Don't call me that." He scowled at her.
"Just get to the point," Jason stepped in.
"The point is," Phillip said. "Someone had to make the Chimera...if that's what this unicorn thing is. Therefore..."
"Civilization!" Jerry exclaimed.
"Exactly." Phillip grinned.
They all stood around proudly grinning at their hypothesis. Hope didn't seem like it was so far off after all.
"So, who's going to tell those detectives?" Jody asked.
"Can we just leave them here?" Ned giggled.
"As much as I think we would all love to do that," Phillip replied. "We're in this together. Isn't that right, David?"
David nodded solemnly.
*****
Lord Gerald Moxley sat in his room listening to the pleasant chirping of the griffin. He smiled to himself. It had been an unexpected change in the natural order of things, but he had gone out that day and seen the pet shops offering genetically modified creatures. He had purchased one. The upper half of the creature had the appearance of a jay bird and the lower half seemed to be a small tabby colored house cat.
He smiled to himself as he presented the creature to his parents who didn't bat an eyelash at it. It was as if such genetic anomalies had always existed. Gerald decided he was going to wait a few days and see what other changes were bound to crop up. He had his hypothesis, but he couldn't know for sure and he wanted to have enough data to present his findings.
He would be revered. Oh, yes. He would make sure of it.
*****
"I think you're presuming a bit much," John said.
"It's a logical conclusion," Phillip argued. He had taken the detective aside while the rest of the gang distracted Bertram.
"So the girls come back with stories of Unicorns." John scoffed. "So what? They're girls."
"I may not be an expert," Phillip said, "but I'm pretty sure that girls don't necessarily have anything to do with unicorns."
"Those two have over active imaginations," John replied. "Just because they see something in the woods and get scared doesn't mean there's unicorns, and if there is, it doesn't mean they're chimera. We're done here. Go run along to your little boyfriend over there."
Phillip tossed a glance back at David then turned his glare on Detective Arker.
"You have a computer," he stated, intent on ignore the dig the detective had made towards him in favor of changing the subject.
"Yes," John replied. "Bertram has a computer."
"So, do a scan for life forms."
"We can't," John admitted. "Bert's computer doesn't have the upgrade..."
"Doesn't need one." Phillip shook his head.
"You hear that, Bert?" John shouted over to his partner.
Bertram, who was happy to extricate himself from the rest of the group, trotted over.
"Hear what?" he asked.
"This kid thinks you don't need the upgrade to detect life signs."
Bertram laughed.
"Yeah, no," he said. "I'm sorry, but I don't have the hardware for that."
"Those are built to monitor and detect temporal signatures, and you have the atmosphere upgrade, correct?"
Bertram nodded.
"Give it to me." Phillip stood with his hand outstretched awaiting the only bit of technology they had left to be handed over. Bertram was not so keen to give in to his wishes.
"I can modify the code for the atmosphere module to detect trace elements of fossil fuels in the air...if they happen to use it here."
"And that's a big if," John laughed. "Not many planets still do. Not when there are better sources of energy."
"Which may not have been invented at all now," Phillip replied snidely and then pointed at David. "Get me?"
"Okay," John replied, a little bit of his cockiness leaking away.
"Then I can also modify the code that detects the temporal signal to identify high grade electrical fields instead. If there are people, there is electricity. They may not travel through time, but they still need power."
"And just how do you propose to do that?" Bertram replied. He crossed his arms defiantly. He had long been the most adept, technically minded person in the squadron. To be shown up by someone at least five years his junior would be humiliating.
Phillip only gestured towards the computer in Bertram's pocket. Bertram sighed and started to hand the device over.
"How do we know this isn't sabotage?" John asked. He placed his hand over the computer before the transaction could be complete.
"I guess you don't," Phillip replied.
John and Bertram glanced at each other and sighed. It was their best shot.
Phillip received the device and punched up the holographic projector. The screen flashed up in front of him, attracting the attention of the entire group. They had only ever seen such things in the realm of science fiction on their televisions.
Phillip took in the display and then quickly swiped his hand through the air, changing screens at an ever quickening pace. It looked as if he were only poking at thin air, but somehow the data was transferred from the projection to the computer. Bertram studied what he was doing carefully. It was apparent that the boy had far more advanced knowledge of formulas and coding than he did. If he was going to learn something, he was going to learn by watching. He definitely wasn't going to straight out ask the kid. Bertram suddenly knew why only the best of the best were chosen to work in the future division. Dealing with people from the future was far more frustrating than he had realized. It took a moment to register that what he was feeling while watching Phillip recode his computer must have been something akin to what the people from the past felt when he had to deal with them.
"There." Phillip handed the device back to Bertram after only a few minutes of tinkering. "I think you'll find that civilization is that way."
He pointed to the East with a huge grin on his face.
Bertram frowned, took a look at the display, and sighed. Phillip was right. The Atmosphere module was registering high levels of carbon dioxide and the beacon for an unauthorized time signature was flashing brightly in the direction which the boy was pointing...apparently having come to indicate the high levels of electrical output required to run a mid-sized city.
The girls threw their hands up with giddy glee and hugged each other as they jumped up and down in excitement. They then turned their attention to Phillip and enveloped him in their hug. He looked uncomfortable to suddenly be the center of their attention and his discomfort only grew as the boys joined in the rather large group hug.
"Come on, kids," John broke up the revelry in a stern voice. "Here's the plan. We're going to get our bottles, visit the stream the girls found, and fill them up. Please, try to avoid any unicorns. Then we'll follow the signal towards the city and see if we can't find a way to get out of here from there. If they haven't any time travel technology...which seems likely since we haven't picked up a signal...at least we may be able to find the parts to coble together a TTD. If Phillip has the programming wits to encode the device..."
"I do." Phillip replied solemnly.
"Alright," John said. "Let's get to it then!"
After the champagne bottles had been distributed for the second time, David approached the detectives. Phillip still stood in between them, his shoulders slumped, and his eyes pointing towards the ground.
"What is it, David?" John asked him.
"Phillip's my partner," he said, determined not to back down despite John's attempts at being intimidating. "I'm not supposed to let him out of my sight."
"Look, we found Jerry," Bertram nodded towards the older man who was chatting brightly with the two girls as they walked along. "Time for a new partner."
"I don't want a new partner," David said resolutely.
"It's okay," Phillip addressed him.
David shook his head.
"He's in custody," Bertram spoke up quietly. "You know he's responsible for this. He may not have been the brains behind the whole thing, but after that show he just put on...I really don't think that kind of massive Time Storm could be orchestrated without his skill set."
"I don't care," David declared.
"You know what?" John addressed Bertram. "I don't really care either at this point. He's got nowhere to run. Why don't we just let the kiddies play?"
"You can stop calling me a kid any time now," Phillip said a bit crossly.
"It's not a good idea," Bertram replied hesitantly.
"When has that ever stopped us?" John shrugged. "Go on." He shoved Phillip towards David.
*****
They had each found a place by the stream to fill their bottles. Jody and Catherine huddled together, feeling slightly ill at ease at the thought of another unicorn happening by. After a moment Jody decided to fill the uneasy silence with awkward conversation.
"What if it's an alien civilization," Jody hypothesized. "And we're the only humans left in the whole galaxy!"
"Don't talk like that, Jody," Catherine replied.
"I mean, what I'm getting at..." She grinned impishly at her friend. "...is what if we have to repopulate the species."
"Oh, god!" Catherine gasped then started giggling.
"Heh," Jody shook her head at her own audacity. If only the boys could hear her talk in such a manner. They would be beside themselves with shock.
"Come on," Jody egged her friend on. "We've been stuck with all these guys for almost two days by now...it must be. You can't say you haven't thought about it."
"I have," Catherine admitted guiltily. "But David's spoken for."
"I knew you liked him!" Jody grinned.
"He's really, really, super nice," Catherine replied. "Why do the nice ones always go for the bad boys?" She took pause to glance at the most unlikely bad boy she had ever seen. He was seated upstream beside David, their bare feet submerged in the water up to their ankles. "but I always go for the unavailable...actually, I don't go for anybody. I'm too shy."
Jody gave her a consoling hug then. "I know what you mean," she said. "I spend so much time taking care of my mom..." She paused at the thought of her old mother and wondered how the woman was getting alone without her. "Anyway," she continued after a moment. "Since you're kind of stuck with Jason and Ned...I'll have to recommend Jason. He's a dreamer, that one, but at least he's not a pot-head. Jason has potential."
"So you really like Ned?" Catherine teased her. "I mean, if you're handing Jason over to me and David and Phillip have their thing..."
"No!" Jody cried out, momentarily attracting the attention of Jason and Ned, who had busied themselves with a splashing fight in the middle of the stream. She waved at them and they continued on about their business much to the chagrin of the detectives who were trying to corral them into a less wet area of the wilderness.
Jody gazed at her hands then looked at Catherine with a bright red blush on her face.
"I kind of like that detective guy. The one with glasses that always looks confused...not the asshole one."
"Oh, my gosh!" Catherine gasped. "Detective Powers? Get out!"
"I'm serious," Jody replied. "Am I not allowed to have a thing for the future dude? He can't be that much older than me."
"No," Catherine agreed. "You know what?"
"What?"
"We should go for it," she decided.
Jody paused and considered this for a moment.
"I think you're right," she decided.
*****
Detective Anne Steele had been escorted from the building, kicking and screaming the entire way. The receptionist felt sorry for her. He had dismissed her words as merely the ranting of a lunatic, but something about it gave him pause. He'd let her pass security to speak with the chief. Seeing her cursing as she was tossed from the building left him knowing that he was going to be in trouble. At best his boss would dress him down and he'd receive a short suspension. At worst he would be fired. He sighed to himself and grabbed another cup of water as he headed outside himself to see if he could accost Anne before she disappeared.
She hadn't disappeared. She sat sullenly on the precinct steps with her head in her hands. He sat down beside her and offered the paper cup.
"What are you?" She muttered caustically even though she accepted the water and tossed it back quickly and thirstily. "The water boy?"
"I'm SC Anderson." He supplied.
"SC? What's that short for?" She seemed to be laughing at him.
"It means Senior Cadet...My name is Arwyn," he supplied. "I thought you were a detective?"
"I..." She paused then sighed. Things had certainly changed in the eight months she had been in the loop, for she refused to believe it had been any longer than that. The changes were far more suspicious than the mere passage of time. The building layout was all wrong, the staff was all wrong, and the receptionist was spouting rankings that had never existed in the past or in the future.
"I did once, a long time ago," she finally replied. "I'm going to tell you something and you might think I'm crazy, but I'm not."
"Okay," he said a bit skeptically.
"I think the time line has changed." She whispered almost inaudibly.
He laughed.
"You think I'm crazy," she asserted with a sad sigh. "It all makes sense though. None of this stuff is the same as when I got trapped. It's how the time loop was broken. If it never existed in the first place, how could I remain stuck in it?"
"It's been a long time," he replied. "Ten years, you said so yourself. People lose track of things when they're in a time loop..."
"Arwyn." She turned to glare at him. "You said it's been ten years. I said nothing of the sort. I just thought you were new because you didn't work here before the time loop. If I'm right and the time line has changed maybe you never existed before."
He suddenly looked shocked and dismayed at the thought so she quickly amended her words.
"I mean, that might be it, or you might just have had a different job. Seriously? Ten years as a Cadet?"
"I like my job," he said, thankful to have any discussion of his possible non-existence cut short. "I'm sorry, but there's only one way something like that could happen..."
"A fissure. I know."
"But that's what we're here for," he continued to protest her assertions without calling her outright crazy. "We prevent these things."
"Not this one," she replied. "That's why we have to fix it."
"We who?" He eyed her suspiciously.
"You believe me right?" she asked.
"Maybe."
"That's good enough," she decided. "It looks like we're in this together."
*****
"So tell me about yourself," Jody sat down next to Bertram, who was hastily trying to puzzle out the changes that Phillip had made to his computer on the small built in display. It was far less expansive than the holographic projection and not at all the best way to scan through the thousands of lines of code. He would be damned if he was going to let Phillip catch him at it though.
Bertram looked up, startled, and quickly closed out the screen. He looked over at John first as if he were seeking his partner's approval before speaking to the girl. John only rolled his eyes emphatically and stood up.
"We've sat around enough," John said with a scowl. "Time to gather the troops."
"I can help," Bertram offered quickly, glancing nervously at Jody as he did so.
"Nah." John shook his head. "I'm totally good with handling this on my own."
He winked at them and trotted away.
"So, you're a time detective," Jody said. "How do you get into such a field?"
"I uh..." Bertram frowned at her. "There are rules about sharing stuff from the future."
"Who back home is going to believe any of this shit anyway? Holographs...Unicorns...they'll think I'm insane. My lips are sealed."
"Well, I applied to the academy like anybody else."
"I suppose it's called the Time Academy," Jody snorted laughter then quickly clapped her hands over her mouth.
Bertram eyed her curiously. "It is called that..."
"Right. This is totally weird," she said.
"I know what you mean," he admitted his own frustration. "I been workin' with this tech for years. You know, I was the best tech guy in the entire precinct. Rubbish at field work...how the hell I ended up on another planet..."
"You shouldn't let that John dude push you around." Jody smiled brightly at him. She scooted closer and bumped him lightly with her elbow.
"I know," Bertram sighed. "It's just...he's kind of an act before thinking guy and we end up in these kind of situations because I'm a think before I act kind of guy, and it takes too long for me to think. If that even makes any sense."
"It makes perfect sense," Jody replied. She bit her lip then and looked at Bertram who was facing straight ahead, lost in thought. She decided to take the opportunity to make a move and slipped her hand into his. He broke out of his reverie to turn and stare at Jody's hand entwined in his. He didn't break the embrace; he only looked up at her with a confused look on his face. It made her giggle as that seemed to be his default expression. She thought it was endearing.
"I'm scared," she said when she was finished with her giggle fit. She squeezed his hand.
He sat there for a moment, unsure of what he should do...then he pried her hand away and chuckled nervously.
"I'm sorry, Jody," he said. "There are rules."
"Oh?" She frowned at him. "What about them?" She pointed at David and Phillip who sat across the stream from them with their heads together. "He's even older than you are."
"He's not older," Bertram replied crossly. "He's from a further future. That's what we call it, and this isn't about that at the moment. This is about me being a figure of authority. It wouldn't be right, okay?"
Jody pouted at him, but he stood his ground.
It was then that the bushes were rustling again. Jody rolled her eyes at what she thought was simply another unicorn but it wasn't. A strange creature covered in colorful dread locked hair crept out of the bushes and chirped at them. It cocked its head curiously; two bulbous eyes the only visible feature beneath the hair. Two long spindly black legs stuck out from beneath it.
"What the fucking fuck is that?" Jody squeaked at Bertram. Hand holding protocol abandoned, she grabbed hold of him and dug her fingers into his shoulder.
David and Phillip noticed the creature from their vantage point as well. They stared curiously at it. It continued to chirp at them, demanding their attention and shaking its purple locks at them.
"Now that..." Phillip whispered. "Is not even a real thing."
It was then that the nets dropped from above. The two creatures that had been in the trees descended and the three chirped happily at each other. They had made the capture. Their masters would be proud.
There was a purple creature, a blue one, and a yellow one. They chirped at each other triumphantly while the captured squirmed around in the nets, trying desperately to break free. Any yelling and screaming that they did was futile. The rest of the group had been captured by similar creatures. Thin arms extended from underneath their thick hairs and they dragged the nets through a nearby path to a clearing. There stood two unicorns hitched up to an enclosed metal cart. They loaded in their quarry and closed the door behind with a loud clang.
The first thing John did was try to grab the handle and was only met with a stunning electric shock that knocked the wind out of him and left a stinging burn in the shape of a door handle emblazoned on the skin of his hand. He had been knocked onto his back and lay on the floor of the carriage clutching his hand and biting his lip so hard that it broke skin as he tried to keep from making a sound. David was the first to spring into action. He snatched John's hand away and poured out an entire bottle of water onto the burn. It hissed, and smoked, and filled the cab with the acrid scent of burned flesh. Then John screamed, and David poured another bottle of cold water on him.
The injury was excruciating at first. Then it felt numb. John reclaimed his hand from David and muttered a thanks then retired to sit in a corner and whimper to himself. The rest of the group sat in nervous silence.
Jody slipped her hand into Bertram's once again, and this time he didn't protest when she squeezed. He squeezed back and let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
In the corner, where John sat trying to keep from crying, he thought that if they ever did get back and he didn't get dismissed from the police force, he was definitely taking an early retirement
It seemed that they had been traveling a long time, bumping along as the cart traversed the wooden paths. There were no windows and even though the sun wasn't hot, the metal container in which they were trapped still managed to retain what little heat the sun managed to produce. They gave thanks that they had managed to fill up their bottles with water before they had been abducted. Eventually they came upon an encampment and the creatures removed them from their prison and shackled them together by the ankles. The boys stood in a row, their sense of defeat permeated the air. Jody worriedly kept an eye on Bertram, and Catherine stood at the end of the line quietly sobbing to herself. She would have given anything to go home and lock herself in her room intent on a night full of studying. It was so simple to be with herself and just ignore everything that happened around her life. She didn't think she could handle it now that things were directly endangering her.
"It's okay," Jason murmured from his place ahead. "We'll just explain."
"They don't even speak English," she cried as an increasing number of creatures hopped out of the woodwork and herded them towards a large tent at the center of the encampment.
Once they entered they were greeted, much to their surprise, by a very human looking woman. She had severe features, her black hair pulled back into a tight bun, and she was wearing some sort of obviously military dress. She scowled at the troop before her disapprovingly. The stench of time travel was upon them. It had been banned several hundred years ago and there hadn't been a traveler to their system since. At least there had never been one that made it back alive. That was the way her queen liked it.
"Who is in charge here?" she stood up and demanded. Her hand slammed down on the table to punctuate her question.
"I am," John stood up as straight as he could, still cradling his hand.
"I see you are stupid enough to have tried the electronic door lock!" she smirked at him. "That's going to scar."
"Okay, then." John scowled. He had long since lost all feeling in his hand. It was a disturbing development that he hoped would eventually resolve itself. As it were, he was going to do his best to speak for the people he had come to feel some sort of responsibility for.
"Who are you?" He eyed her.
"That is for me to know," she snapped. "Now, you are going to tell me why you have been trespassing on our lands and violating the Holochrome treaty."
"We were kidnapped," John replied more excitedly than he should have. He knew the Holochrome treaty. He knew where they were.
"Kidnapped?" The woman regarded him with an arched expression.
"Yes. Kidnapped and transported through a temporal storm..."
She laughed then. John suddenly felt that knowing where they were was almost as bad as not. He realized that he was dealing with Royal Chromians: a race of human that had removed themselves from all existence. They were the stuff of legend, on the edges of time itself. Time travel was the highest form of treason in their society and punishable by death. It was a blatant violation of their religion...an edict sent down to the prophet Williams, that no man was to disrupt the natural order of time. People throughout time had often wanted to travel there just to see what it was like. Those that did manage to puzzle out the galaxy's address in time usually disappeared never to be heard from again.
"There is no such thing," she decided, then barked orders for furry creatures that guarded them to take them away to the cells.
