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They weren’t going to make it.

…eight…

In the distance, Fyn, his team and Delilah vanished around the side of a building. If it worked, at least she’d be safe.

“Em.” He had to yell, not easy while running. “I’m sorry.”

…three…

They started to pass one of the small transport stations. Robert did a sharp right turn, whipping Em around and inside. The stone building might provide some protection.

“Get down!” He yelled it, then pushed her down and flung himself on top of her.

…two…

The ground shuddered, the blast wave thundering past a few seconds later.

“Twenty-four seconds. I was close.”

The shaking didn’t stop. It seemed to ramp up. Robert looked up, saw the ceiling start to crack.

“Move!” He half lifted, half pushed Em out of the way as it collapsed. Heard a sound, like freight train passing overhead…

* * * *

Carey couldn’t believe it when his engines kicked on, his avionics, too. But he knew what to do with both. No tracking still, though the storm seemed to be dissipating—or gone. He double-checked and had to ditto the gone pecan. He might have pondered the weirdness of it all, but he had better things to do than notice that this weird ass island was briefly normal. He brought his nose down, heading for the deck. His radio crackled.

“Colonel Carey, come in. Colonel Carey, please come in.”

“General? I’m okay and heading for the deck. ETA in sixty seconds.”

“Good to hear, Colonel.” A pause. “In case you are wondering, all outpost ground personnel—and your squadron are accounted for.”

“Good to know, sir. Foxtrot good to know.”

With a wide grin, he sent his bird down to buzz the tower—or what passed for it. He’d earned a victory lap. Earned two, but he had a girl to get to and kiss like it was his job. He’d save the second lap for another time.

* * * *

The chaos increased and the general started to close the door again.

“Wait.” Hel stopped the move, his gaze narrowing on the figures racing between two buildings. “That’s Delilah.”

“And Fyn.”

Hel started her direction, the general grabbed his arm. Their gazes met and he released him.

“Good luck.”

Hel plunged out into the maelstrom, heading not directly toward her, but what he hoped would be an intercept course. The noise was bad, but the way the wind felt against exposed skin, was much worse. His arm, with the
ma’rasile
mark felt on fire. Everything pulsed, though randomly, buildings going in and out of view. He saw the flare of an explosion, heard a rising shriek as he slammed into Delilah, taking her to the ground, they rolled several times, no surprise she ended up on top, her knife against his throat. For a split second her eyes widened, then the knife disappeared and her mouth slammed into his. Took him several, most pleasurable seconds to realize that they had survived and that the storm was just…gone.

Delilah rolled off him, onto the grass, though she held on to his hand.

“Is it over?” It looked over. His radio crackled and updates began again, as the storm had not happened, as if they’d merely paused for breath. “Systems are starting to come back online.”

The general jogged to their position, looked down until they scrambled upright. Fyn looked much as usual, except he didn’t seem as desirous of shooting Hel as normal.

“That was weird,” he said.

Hel nodded, examining his mate, his woman for damage. A few scratches that the peeps—he winced. No sign of their return inside his head and the tension in Delilah’s face told him hers weren’t back either. He yanked her close, kissed her hard.

“We’re alive.” She nodded. “Robert?”

“He was behind us.” She turned, looked back the way they’d come.

“Let’s go find him. I’m anxious to meet his woman.”

“Well, there’s a surprise.” She tried to look annoyed. Failed. Her pace picked up, as they passed between two buildings, both showing some damage from the explosion.

“We blew up the lab,” she said, as if sensing the question before he asked.

They emerged into a wide-open area. “And our lone elevation, it seems,” Hel said, his gaze sweeping the area around the blast zone. The hill had been leveled, as had several smaller structures around it—

“There.” Delilah darted forward, drawing Hel’s gaze to the remains of a small, transport station and the two, prone figures partially in the rubble.

FORTY-FOUR

Emily opened her eyes to skies clear of clouds, even the puffy white ones, but with a hint of green—alien green. Alien planet, evil overlord, little tiny Abram’s ball, explosion—

“Robert?” She jerked, half turned one direction, but hands held her in place.

“Robert will be fine.”

The cool voice matched the Morticia vibe. With some reluctance, Emily turned into the chill. Found it closing on Arctic. She’d be great to have around in August. She wasn’t close enough to be holding Emily down, though. Not sorry to look away from Ice Station Zebra eyes, Emily located the ER types working on her. The sight of the green scrubs was all it took to unleash her nerve endings, which began to send pain reports to her brain. Lots of them.

“Ouch.”

“You banged your brain box and have some cuts and contusions, but you will be all right,” one of her ER types said, with the cheer of someone not in pain. The other pumped the blood pressure cuff in manner not unlike the automaton trying to squeeze off her head. Only her lower arm was at risk.

“I’d like to get up,” Emily said, trying to see past the people to Robert, who seemed awfully still.

“You might have some internal injuries,” Robert’s sister said.

No hope in the voice, but Emily still felt she was conflicted about it. Seemed to be a tad protective of her little brother.

She is his little sister.

“Nod!” Emily felt a cautious wiggle in the center of her chest.

There was a virus. We had to go dormant.
No question they felt shaken
and
stirred. And a lot scared. She would have hugged them, if she could have figured out how.

“Wynken!”
I missed you. I missed you both!

“You have peeps—nanites.” Robert’s sister looked incredulous. She also looked older than Robert.

“They think my brain is interesting.” Emily felt apologetic, though she wasn’t sure why, or how Robert’s sister knew—

“What’s a wynken?” Fyn asked, without looking particularly curious.

“It’s a metaphor…” She felt the pain easing as the two unfurled some more, moving through her body like little pain erasers.
That is smoking cool.
She twisted free of the techs and crawled over to Robert, just as his lashes twitched, then lifted. There was dried blood on his temple, but the wound that expelled it was already gone.

We are in contact with Blynken! It is okay, too!

That’s great.
She smiled at Robert. “Hi.”

They’d been through so much, it felt odd to suddenly feel shy, but then again, maybe not with his sister boring a hole in her back with just a look. Tough to be much of anything positive with Morticia chilling the air for twenty paces in any direction

“Are you,” he swallowed, “well?”

Well? “Sure.” Though now that she considered it, she did have one very large problem that needed addressing. Bad time to turn shy. Who knew it was catching? She fought back an urge to duck her chin and curl a strand of hair around a finger. She was so not going there and besides, last time she messed with her hair, she shed dirt.

Don’t suppose you could spiff up my outside.

It is beyond the limits of our abilities.

He eased into sitting position, with a little help from his ER type—a girl who seemed to have noticed his fine qualities despite the many layers of dirt. Emily gave her a look, maybe borrowed a little something from the sister, and she backed off. She turned back to Robert.

“I need to ask you a question.”

His brows rose. “A question? You?”

“I think it’s time.”

“Okay.” He might have braced a bit.

What did he think she was going to ask? “Do you know where the bathroom is in this place?”

He started to grin, but Morticia cut in. “I do.” The steely gaze swept up, then down again. “I can arrange a change of clothing, too.”

“As long as there are plenty of pockets—” She turned her grin toward Robert and ran into…kind of felt like a wall. Her grin faded, trickling all the way down and out her toes into the alien grass. Didn’t even feel a twinkle of delight about it being alien grass. The one question she wanted to ask, felt stuck in her throat. She’d faced automatons, evil overlords and evil zombie-making bugs today. Odd to feel kind of lost now.

“We’ll talk later.” Robert tried to smile.

She turned with his sister, even though it felt wrong. This was the happy ending moment, where the music rose into a crescendo that finished with a long, passionate kiss and declarations of undying love murmured between smaller kisses. No question she really needed to go, but she’d have crossed her legs for one more kiss.

The sister waited until they were out of earshot to say, “You and Robert seem to have covered a lot of ground in, what, five hours?”

Emily blinked. Felt more like square one.

FORTY-FIVE

“Other than the missing hill,” Hel flicked a glance at Delilah, “the outpost seems to be returning to normal operation. There are a few systems close to the containment area that we’ve kept down until we can assess the risk, but all key systems are back.”

“Do we know why the virus failed to spread?” the general asked, almost relaxing in his chair.

In the same room as Hel. Robert blinked. No bromance but progress.

Bromance? You got that from Em.

Robert couldn’t deny it, though he rather hoped the new neutrality would never get that far. A well-matched couple, the general and Hel were not.

“I was able to warn the nanites to not try to contain the virus. They went dormant, which kept it from spreading. When we blew up the source of the contagion, they came back online.”

It was also possible that the virus ended when Faustus died, the effect ripping forward through time and then back again. The bug Robert had taken from the fake Dr. Smith was nowhere to be found, though Robert might have dropped it in the tussle. The airships, the automatons and even the pins had vanished, too. There was no way to know which actions had ended or undone what elements of the attack. They’d been left with many questions—and some moral dilemmas to resolve. Such as should they continue the research into time travel? If they didn’t, what impact would that have on their time line? And could they stop the future time base from happening?

Time is persistent.

How much control did they really have? Had they saved the day or had time given Faustus the smack down? All these questions couldn’t keep Robert from worrying at his core concern, now that time appeared to be saved. Em. She’d said she loved him, but had she meant it? Could she mean it when she found out about who and what he was? About his past—or lack of one. Delilah hadn’t said anything, but he’d felt her concern and when he’d realized only five hours and fourteen minutes and twenty-three seconds had passed—according to his watch—from first meeting to now, he started to share it.

Against those doubts, all he had was a certainty that when he’d kissed her, she’d felt what he felt, but what did that mean? How could he know anything when she was the first girl he’d ever kissed? Delilah had her marriage with Hel and that had given him hope, that and the peeps, but then they’d gone.

You kept it together when I had to go dormant.

I had no choice.

Yes, you did, Robert. You chose to be strong.

Someone out there had targeted the nanites from the future. Who was to say they wouldn’t try again? That they wouldn’t succeed? He couldn’t function without them, so how did he ask Emily to share that?

If you don’t ask, you will lose her.

His head ached. Or it was the memory of it he felt. For sure his chest ached at the thought. Across it, across the pain, the briefing continued.

“What about the Keltinarians?” Delilah asked, an edge to her voice she always got when they came up.

Robert studied his sister, who seemed unchanged, though her peeps had gone dormant, too. But she’d been strong before them, no surprise she’d held it together.

As did you.

Halliwell rubbed his head, his giveaway move when the subject strayed into the mind bending. He didn’t remember Shan, since technically, he’d never been to the outpost.

“We have dispatched a research team to their galaxy to assess their space capability,” Hel said. “They are under orders not to make contact, just to observe and report. If Shan exists in our time, and they’re making any progress with Constilinium, well, we should know by next season.”

He shouldn’t remember Shan either, but he’d been in that alternate reality when he ceased to exist in this one. Perhaps that had protected those memories.

You have felt many things, Robert, expressed many worries, but we sense there is something more that troubles you.

He’d seen Em’s face, seen the flash of uncertainty, before she hid it. He did not know how to read a woman, how to meet her needs. He was barely a man in his experience level, which had stopped at sixteen.

You covered much ground today.

What if I hurt her because of what I don’t know?

So instead, you will hurt her with what you do know? If you love her and you leave, you don’t believe that will damage her?

How deep could she feel for him in five hours? She seemed to take things in her stride. What if she didn’t feel that much for him? How could she feel that much for him?

* * * *

It was an alien shower, spraying alien water, which was, you know, very cool, and should have been the cherry on the top of the major rad day.