Winston Chase and the Theta Factor Read online

  “Nothing…yet.”

  Outwardly, he saw Little e on his hand, tubes surrounding the chronoviewer ring, torus still spinning within it. Inwardly, he pushed even harder, as if trying to walk into the force of a windstorm.

  1972. 1970. 1969.

  “I want to see how far…I can get,” Winston muttered through gritted teeth.

  “Get where? What are you seeing?”

  “I don’t think I can go much farther.”

  The continuous blur of light and dark started to separate into instances of day and night.

  Winston’s head throbbed as the dull ache tightened into pulsing pain.

  “Nineteen…sixty…seven,” he hissed. “Sixty…s—”

  “Hāi!” exclaimed a voice directly above the boys. “Nǐ shì shuí?”

  A silhouetted head and shoulders loomed over them. An arm reached over the boxes, and a hand groped toward them.

  Winston gasped with surprise and fear. Adrenaline spiked through him. He tightened his hold on Little e, then he saw a brilliant flash of white, as if lightning had suddenly exploded all around him. The pressure in his head burst in an instantaneous clap of agony, then released.

  Winston he realized he was falling through a rain of sparks. His body tilted forward as air rushed past his face. Looking down, Winston saw the Columbia River rushing up toward him.

  2

  A Vile Invitation

  Devlin Bledsoe studied himself in the bathroom mirror. He had showered and changed, but the bottom of his right eye still bore smears of blood where the vessels had burst hours before. The technology swimming through his veins might allow him to heal quickly, but not quickly enough. He ached everywhere, and his skin still gave off a faint azure cast in many areas, including his neck and jaws. His lower back roared in protest as he tried to lean in closer over the tile counter. Bledsoe winced and gulped, and that hurt even worse. His throat felt as if he’d swallowed lava. He had long assumed he would be impervious against alien energy, since that same energy already boiled inside of him, but the burst from that energy ball the Chase boy set off in his mouth had proven otherwise.

  He groaned. This would pass. As soon as he could get a few hours of sleep, he’d be good as new.

  Bledsoe ran his fingers through his disheveled black hair. Two-day stubble rasped when he scratched it. The bristles contrasted with his tan skin, giving him an air of hunger and menace, but there was nothing to be done. He wasn’t about to ask the site manager for a spare razor and hear yet again how “this is an FBI installation, not the Hilton.”

  So be it. He sighed and straightened. It wasn’t the clean, powerful look he’d always imagined projecting for this reunion, but details inevitably changed. That was fine so long as the core plan stayed intact.

  Was it intact, though? Bledsoe’s old friend and now prisoner Claude had started his son, Winston, off with one Alpha Machine piece, and Bledsoe was fairly sure the kid had escaped from Portland’s drainage tunnels with the second.

  Those tunnels. A clever bit of work, Bledsoe thought. You were a crafty old dog in your day, Claude, but now you’re done. No more hiding. No more delays.

  Bledsoe had over ten borrowed FBI agents scouring Winston’s trail along the Columbia with the agency’s customized alpha particle scanners. They would find the little sewer rat and his sidekick.

  He straightened his tie and found the pressure on his throat uncomfortable and irritating. Angrily, he threw it in the waste bin and put his suit jacket on as he fought down a nervous swallow. Bledsoe scowled at himself in the mirror, knowing he was stalling, then forced his expression into a smile. Loosely speaking, he’d been anticipating this get-together for sixty-five years. He couldn’t go in looking sour or scared. He needed her to respect him. Things would grow from there.

  Bledsoe left the men’s room and strode confidently along the dimly lit, granite-gray hall. He pressed his thumb on a sensor pad beside one windowless door. When the door clicked and the sensor flashed green, he turned the handle and entered.

  Amanda sat in the interrogation room, wrists cuffed to the tabletop before her, ankles chained to the floor. She looked much as he remembered: auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, high cheekbones framing her large brown eyes, skin white with pink blooms in her cheeks and slender neck. Yes, at some point, she’d had that bookish angle to her nose, almost as if it had been built for reading glasses, filed down. Her chin seemed flatter and less defined. The beginnings of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were obviously natural, and those first strands of gray sweeping back from her forehead somehow made her stronger. Even if she didn’t exactly match the memories he’d studied all these years, her beauty still made him swallow, regardless of the ripping pain. The changes of surgery and time detracted from her being the same woman he’d fallen in love with so long ago, but he could always make her change back.

  Beneath a thin veneer of control, she looked frightened and vulnerable. That wasn’t the Amanda he remembered, either, but this change he liked better.

  Her eyes met his. For the briefest flash, Bledsoe thought he saw recognition and hope dawn in her face, as if she were glad to see him. Then her thin lips pulled into a slight sneer and her head lowered, anticipating some attack.

  She obviously hated him, but that could be changed, too.

  “Hello, Amanda,” he said in a low, hoarse rasp. It hurt to talk, but perhaps that would make him sound more gentle and appealing.

  “Devlin,” she replied. “What’s wrong? You look a little…blue.”

  She said the word without a trace of humor.

  Bledsoe seated himself in the stainless-steel chair across from her. The metal grated jarringly across the concrete when he moved it. He folded his hands on the table and studied her, wondering if she would blink and break. She refused and waited for him.

  “Amanda, I want you to know that both Claude and Winston are fine.”

  Surprise registered in her eyes. She had expected immediate confrontation and demands, not reassurance.

  “Show me,” she said.

  Bledsoe nodded toward the long mirror dominating the wall to his right. He knew there was no one in the observation chamber. The recorder linked to the desktop microphone sitting between them was turned off, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “I would like to. I know they’re both worried about you, but my hands are tied so far.” Amanda raised an eyebrow and pulled at her bonds. “Ironic, I know. Amanda, my bosses are calling the shots, and they want you three kept separate until they have what they want.”

  “The Alpha Machine,” she said. “So, you told them what it is? A time machine?”

  And that was why he had done this with no observers or recording. Go ahead and sing, he thought. Sing as loud as you like.

  “Of course,” he said. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Ha!” she laughed scornfully. “I really doubt that. Maybe they just don’t know you like I do.”

  Bledsoe swallowed again, using the pain to help him focus and not rise to her bait.

  “These people are not stupid,” he said. “They’re not the over-bloated, blinded, self-righteous generals we worked under after the war. They pressed me when I approached them, and I told them everything so that I would be allowed to have my lab and continue my research — the same research we started and never finished.”

  Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you could want from me. You have QVs, same as I do. I don’t know where any of the pieces are, which I’m sure you’ll confirm sooner or later. The only reason you could want me here is for leverage over my son. And if that’s your plan, then I’ll promise you this.” The chains on her handcuffs clinked and scraped over the table as she bent toward Bledsoe and lowered her voice. “I will die before I give you one ounce, one second, the slightest hint of help in manipulating him.”

  Bledsoe felt the slight stirring of her breath on his hands. It took all of his self-control to focus on her eyes rather than her lips or
neck. Still, he knew he would betray himself eventually, so he stared at her long, graceful fingers.

  “Actually…” he began, then paused, as if for shy consideration. “I wanted to ask if you would consider assisting in my research.”

  She leaned back, eyes wide with astonishment. “What? Are you insane?”

  “You have years of experience on this project.”

  “I’m a diner waitress, you moron. The last time I studied biology, we were practically using bean plants for genetic research.”

  Being insulted stung deeply. He had fought too hard for too long to be treated like that. She needed to respect him, just like everyone else. And she would, one way or another.

  Keep it together, he thought. Stay in control of things.

  “Amanda,” he said. “I pulled the strings to offer you this one and only Get Out of Jail Free card. You could show a little gratitude.”

  She rocked back in her chair and guffawed at the ceiling, not a quick chuckle for dramatic snark, but a true belly laugh of disbelief. “Is everyone getting this?” she asked the wall mirror. “Devlin Bledsoe, the biggest traitor of my life and a bona fide menace to the safety of this country, wants me to trust him and show gratitude.” Her laughter faded, and the grim, low determination came back to her face. “I will never trust you, and you will only have my gratitude when my husband, son, and I are somewhere far from here, together and safe forever.”

  The image she created in his imagination was more than Bledsoe could bear. Like a glass rod flexed to the point when it suddenly snaps and shatters, he leaped from his chair and grabbed Amanda’s arm.

  “Amanda,” he breathed as he pulled her close.

  Her lips were only an inch or two from his own, and he ached to feel them. Not yet. If there couldn’t be respect at the beginning, then there would be fear, and there was an art to building fear.

  “Amanda, Amanda. You will help me. You will. In fact, you will give me everything I ask and more. I hope that’s perfectly clear. You and I have a lot of unfinished business, in the lab and out.”

  He brought her closer still and brushed his stubble against her cheek.

  “Where is Winston?” she asked.

  Bledsoe could smell the sweetness of her shampoo and the sharper bite of fear in her sweat. He didn’t have to tell her a thing, but he opted for the truth. It might hurt more.

  “He’s out there in the dark. My men are only minutes behind him. He’s running, but he’s tired. Very tired. You should have seen how his eyes bulged when my hands were around his throat.”

  Amanda shivered against him, but she said quietly, “Was that when he did that to your eye and got away?”

  Bledsoe shoved her hard. Her spine struck the back of her seat, but the ghost of a smile played over her face.

  “You don’t have him yet,” she said. “And next time, he’ll be more ready for you.”

  His hands trembled with rage, and recognizing it filled him with the urge to beat someone, anyone, bloody and unconscious.

  “I hope so,” he said through gritted teeth. “Because I want him to put up a good fight before I pin him down in front of you and—”

  Bledsoe's phone vibrated against his leg, and a moment later the shrill triple-noted chime that meant a call from Management filled the interrogation room. He took a deep breath and withdrew the phone from his pocket.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said through bared teeth meant to simulate a smile, “I need to take this.”

  “Little pitchers must have big ears,” said Amanda.

  “Darlin’,” said Bledsoe as he stood and opened the door. The phone chimed again in his hand. “Don’t flatter yourself. The only person around here who cares if you live or die is me. You might want to remember that.”

  Bledsoe was nearly a dozen steps down the hallway before the heavy door clanged shut behind him. He stopped and took another deep breath, but it didn’t help. Bledsoe struck the wall with the heel of his hand, felt the jarring through his bones and up into his shoulder. He struck the wall again even harder.

  The phone chimed once more.

  “Soon,” he breathed. “Just take it easy. Play the ball and watch for the opening. Soon.”

  3

  Sunrise and Supervision

  Like one of Shade’s infamous lineman tackles, the Columbia River hit Winston’s body with spectacular, bone-jarring force. He only had the last-instant thought to raise his arm so that, when the right side of his body hit, his elbow would break the water’s surface before it could strike his head and drive straight into his eardrum.

  The decision probably saved his hearing and possibly his eye. Unfortunately, the movement weakened his grip on Little e, which still held both Alpha Machine pieces. The river ripped the metal out of his stunned fingers. The smooth tubes ran over his fingertips as the pieces sank toward the black depths.

  Winston barely registered the icy cold digging beneath his skin and how his body felt it had been broadsided by a car. In fact, he’d heard of people being struck by cars and thrown for fifty feet who got up and walked for quite a distance before the shock of impact caught up to their brains. That must be it. Any second now, his brain would realize he’d been smacked by a tsunami wave, his body would lock up, and he would drown.

  Until that happened, though, all he could feel was blind panic, both from his lifelong terror of being submerged and at the Alpha Machine’s sudden loss. Even as his body flailed, Winston caught glimpses of the silvery pieces sinking below him, growing darker and more distant with every racing heartbeat. The torus drifted away from the chronoviewer ring, which slowly tumbled end over end, falling away from Little e now that its tubes had released it and straightened into their regular form.

  Winston lunged for them. He kicked his legs, stretched his arms, and tried to dive deeper.

  Instinct told him to make a frantic dash for the surface and desperately needed air, but his rational mind kept control. Winston forced himself to stop moving and concentrate. As he had done at the Central Library when pushing that police cruiser into a busy intersection, Winston extended his awareness beyond himself and out to the Alpha Machine and Little e. In his mind, he could feel them falling into the deep, and he fought to pull them back.

  His lungs burned. Water pressed painfully against his ears and eyes. Yet Winston’s attention never wavered. He had to save the pieces. Otherwise two-fifths of the Alpha Machine would fall to the bottom of the Columbia and be forever lost — at least to Winston. Bledsoe would probably have better luck. Winston had read The Lord of the Rings twice and knew that rivers could give up their precious treasures to unsavory people.

  Even with the Alpha Machine out of reach, would that save his father from Bledsoe? Probably not. According to what Winston’s mom had told him, the maniac would still have his QVs and his plan to create some super-race of nuclear-proof soldiers so that the U.S. could bomb whoever it wanted and still win. Bledsoe was certifiably insane, and Winston hadn’t made him friendlier by almost blowing up his head. Most likely, Bledsoe wouldn’t rest until he’d gone through everyone Winston cared about.

  No, having the Alpha Machine remained a matter of life or death. He couldn’t lose it.

  Winston strained, stretched…and felt the pieces start to rise toward him.

  I’m a Jedi. The ridiculous thought flitted through his mind. These are the droids I’m looking for.

  With both hands held out, Winston willed himself and the metal closer together, imagining both sides as gigantic, powerful magnets.

  A fragment of something his mom had said flitted past Winston’s awareness, a comment about the crashed alien his parents had worked on in 1948.

  Skeleton reinforced with something like metal nanofibers.

  Could there be some sort of supermagnetic effect at work here?

  One of Little e’s tubes brushed over Winston’s fingers. He kicked again and hooked his fingers around the crossbar. The tubes writhed to life once more. With almost feathery
grace, the chronoviewer floated upward and nestled in the tubes’ embrace. Winston felt the bump as the torus locked into suspended position at the ring’s center and began to spin within it. Impulsively, he grasped the artifacts to his chest.

  With his whole body screaming for air, Winston faced the surface and pulled with his free hand. His legs scissored as fast as he could force them.

  At last, his head broke the surface, and Winston gulped in gigantic gasps of cool evening. The little bit of water he’d taken in felt like fire in his lungs, and he coughed almost uncontrollably while trying to make his way to the closest shore.

  The Columbia didn’t look that wide when driving between Oregon and Washington, but Winston was very glad that he’d dropped in the shipping lane, which was much closer to the southern shore. If he’d been in the middle, it would have been an impossible two-mile swim. As it was, he barely made it.

  When Winston finally reached the muddy shallows, thick with tall grass and rotting branches, he could barely move his limbs. His whole body shivered uncontrollably, and he couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering. He crawled through the muck just far enough to reach firm ground, then curled into a ball in an effort to preserve body heat.

  The overcast night sky, missing the usual gray glow of Portland light pollution, seemed incredibly dark. The river lapped gently against its banks, but otherwise silence reigned save for the faint stir of breeze through the grass and trees. Winston wanted to get inside, or at least find a fire, but he hadn’t seen any light at all along the shore during his swim. As he lay there wondering if he was going to die, he had to consider that he might have dropped clear back into prehistoric times, maybe even among the dinosaurs, when there would be no light. What a tasty frozen treat he would make for a sharp-toothed something-saurus in the morning.

  Winston realized he was semi-delirious and would have to make his own heat. With wildly shaking fingers, he managed to tighten his grip on Little e’s crosspiece. Slowly, not wanting to burn himself despite the overwhelming urge to do exactly that, Winston had Little e release the two smaller artifacts and push extra juice into its metal arms. Soon, he felt the warmth seeping through his sodden clothes and into his thighs and chest. Gradually, his shivering came under control.