The Time Rip (17 page)

“Where is the office?” she asked in defeat.

He gave her a warm smile in response and said, “It’s in W1, a short walk from here.”

She sighed again and began to walk with him. “Did you mean it when you said you’d teach me how to beat him up?”

Greg chuckled, “Sure, no problem. It’s about time someone taught him some manners. Have to admit though, I’m curious to know what you used on the handcuffs.”

Freya stopped in her tracks. “He told you about the handcuffs?”

“I had it second hand from Matt.” He held up both hands as if in self-defence.

Freya scowled, “What else did he tell you?”

Greg stifled a laugh and Freya’s scowl deepened. She turned to him again, “Well, what else?”

“Please don’t hurt me.” He shot her a glance, eyes dancing with laughter.

“Tell me, now!”

“Just something about the amount of trouble you gave him over cleaning that up,” he inclined his head towards her wrist, “Apparently you didn’t want his help.”

Freya narrowed her eyes at him and huffed again. Great. They had all obviously been laughing at her misfortunes.

“Don’t worry, Freya. I’ll teach you some moves and you can beat him up next time you see him. If it’s any consolation, the guys have all given him a hard time over letting you escape in the first place. His job is to keep people secure for transfer. He has to get all the hardened felons to the courts, and by losing you he’s made himself look incompetent.”

Great, that was really going to make him less angry with her. How had she managed to get into this fix? All she had done was forget to pack a bottle of water.

Greg’s office was in a narrow three-story town house. It had a fancy looking reception area where they signed in before taking the elevator to the third floor. His office was a mess. Paperwork slung over every available surface including the floor.

“Hey, you don’t know anything about programming do you?” he asked, inclining his head towards a laptop on the desk.

Freya gave him a look.

“Oh well, worth a try.” He pulled out a chair for her and wandered around to the other side of the desk, not waiting to see if she took it or not.

Freya sat down, smiling a bit at his easy manner. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“I want you to start at the beginning and tell me everything that happened the day you first met Jeremy. Don’t miss anything out, even if you think it’s not important, I want to hear it.”

Freya put her head on one side, thinking over that day and debating how much to tell him. He looked easygoing enough, but Freya was not sure how far she could trust him. After Jeremy’s apparent duplicity, her trust in others had taken a bit of a knock.

It might be just as well to play her cards close until she figured out more of what she was dealing with here, and after everything that had happened there was no way she was giving up the location of her time doorway. If Jeremy tried to leave her stranded back in the past again, she wanted a sure way out.

She wondered about Joe, but quickly decided he was not any part of all this. His expression when she had mentioned things like the M4 had told its own story. He had been humouring her about the van whilst trying his best to help her. No. Joe had not been in on any of this, and would most likely make a good ally if she were stuck back there again. At least she would have one friend she could trust. She would keep quiet about Joe as much as possible.

In the end, she decided she would stick as closely to the truth as she could, and would only omit the bit about the time doorway and her time with Joe. She would make it sound like she still thought Jeremy was living in this century. Otherwise, why would she have left her accounts and diary with him, both of which had the date all over them?

When she was finished, Greg leaned back in his chair. “You had no idea he was living in 1908 until he told you.”

“I’m still not sure I believe that’s where he is. It sounds like lunacy and if it wasn’t for the fact that he teleported us from the market to his house, I don’t think I’d even be here talking to you.”

“I hear you. Well, I’m glad there isn’t another time device going around,” he paused and then looked her dead in the eye, “Who were you running from when Jeremy found you at the market?”

Freya squashed down a feeling of triumph. He was not nearly as sharp as Jeremy. “That idiot you pulled off me today.”

“And he is…”

“Martin Johnson. He’s been pestering me for weeks.”

“Okay.” Greg was certain she was not telling him anywhere near the truth, but he hadn’t really expected her to. He would play nice for now, win her trust and follow her around until he figured out for himself what had happened.

He suspected the rogue device was with Martin, but in case she had some kind of relationship going with the man, decided to throw her off the scent a bit. He cast about for something suitable and then remembered an old conspiracy theory about time fields that had done the rounds a few years back.

The rumour went that it was possible for a rip in time to open up near to the source of closely monitored time ports, thus making it possible to travel between two specific points without a time device. Nothing had ever been proven and no one really believed it was possible, but it would do for now and give him the space to do a little research on her friend Martin.

“Sounds like what we have here is a time rip. It’s like an elastic bit of time; a place where you can simply walk through from one era to another without noticing.” He wished he had paid more attention to the science bit, but looking at Freya’s serious face he could see she had bought it.

“Don’t worry, Freya. We’ll have a look for it and get it closed up.”

Freya thought about not being able to see Jeremy again and felt strangely cold. “Greg,” she paused, “What is Jeremy if he’s not a cop, what do you all do here, and is he really from 2100?”

Greg hesitated a moment too long and Freya, suddenly annoyed with the entire situation, narrowed her eyes. “Am I not entitled to ask a few questions? After all, you’ve grilled me this last half hour, and you’ve all been chasing around after me and threatening me.”

Greg sighed, “Yes, we’re both from 2100.” He rummaged around the mess on his desk, finally locating the box of doughnuts under a heap of paper. He offered the box, grabbed the phone off the floor, dialled and spoke.

“Grace, can I get a coffee in here? Yeah, wait a sec.” He glanced at Freya, who was eyeing the box doubtfully, and raised his eyebrows.

Freya looked up, “Latte?” she said, with a hopeful look.

Greg grinned in response, “Yeah and a latte, cheers.”

“Doughnuts and coffee huh?” Freya said, watching him dump the phone back in the mess on the floor.

Greg shook his head. “You gonna eat that or just look at it?”

There was only one doughnut in the box. Freya smirked at the hopeful look on his face, grabbed the thing, took a huge bite and got covered in sticky gunk. She licked jam and sugar from her fingers.

“Did Jeremy threaten you, Freya?”

She glanced up at the unexpected question, “You know he did. He said he’d take me to court in 2112 if I lied to him.”

Greg was relieved. Freya caught the look and quickly glanced away.

“So what are you, time-travelling cops? I feel like I am in a hammy seventies sci-fi drama here. I can’t believe I’m even asking you.”

“We’re an independent agency set up by the Government in 2100. Most of us came from a police background. Jeremy was a bounty hunter though. He was never a cop. As you may have guessed, we have some trouble with time devices getting into the wrong hands. Our jobs are to hunt down and take back the people and devices.”

“That’s what Jeremy thought I was, some thug with a stolen time thingy?”

Greg suppressed a smile at her words, “No, Freya. It’s obvious that you are neither a thug nor from the 22
^nd
century. He believed that you had come across a time device by accident and might not have even realised that it allowed you to travel.”

His words made sense. If Jeremy had thought she was a criminal, he would not have wasted time patching her up or threatening her with the courts. He would have just taken her there. She felt a shiver run through her at the thought.

“Well I didn’t come across one, and I didn’t know I had gone back in time when I met Jeremy.”

“Don’t worry about it, Freya. We’ll sort it all out.”

“So. How come you have an office here and Jeremy works at home?”

“The office is for data gathering mainly. When we want to transport someone, we take them somewhere a little quieter.”

“Like the farmhouse.”

“Freya, he knows that you are from this era. Even if you had stolen a time device from someone else here, we could not transport and abandon you to a future justice system that you know nothing about. It’s prohibited, and every one of us knows it; you have nothing to fear from Jeremy, he won’t take you to 2112, Freya, and his job is based in 1900, so it’s not like you’ll bump into him in the supermarket.”

Grace interrupted with their coffee. Freya gratefully sipped hers. The hot milk radiated through her, giving comfort as it went down, and she felt some of the tension slide away. Things made a lot more sense now Greg had given her some information about what she was dealing with. He had been straight with her from the word go and she felt the tentative beginnings of trust.

She was unable to stop thinking of Jeremy though, and her feelings for him were chaotic. The need to see him again was insane given their last meeting. She now understood a little more of why she had such a feeling of danger around him. Subconsciously, her mind must have seen him as a possible threat.

She stared rather blankly at the window and spoke softly without thinking. “If you get the time rip closed I won’t see Jeremy again, will I?”

Greg gave her a wide grin, laughter starting to bubble up, and as he caught the frown on her face, it only made bad, worse.

“What’s so funny?”

“You like him, don’t you? After everything he did, you still like him. He is unbelievably lucky with women. Matt reckoned you’d never speak to him again after the strip search. What do you girls find so appealing anyway? The man’s a Neanderthal.”

Shock, quickly followed by temper, scorched through her. She banged her cup down on the table, stood up and began to stalk around the desk towards him. It was not easy given the mess on the floor, but she managed to do a good job of looking threatening even as her feet slid on heaps of paper.

“He told you and Matt about that. How many other people did he tell? He is a sneaking rotten pig and I don’t want to see him again, and if you keep laughing at me I’m going to hit you.”

Greg held up both hands in surrender and managed to swallow his laughter. “Hey, don’t kill me. You could do worse, you know. He earns a good wage, and he might be a bit of a caveman, but a lot of chicks go for that.”

“You said you would teach me how to beat him up. Well I think I want to learn now, so I can go and beat him up before you get this time thing closed.” Freya folded her arms and glared.

Greg glanced at the ratty bandage around her wrist. “We’ve got a medic here that can look at that first for you if you like.”

Freya began to fidget with the edges of the bandage, and Greg laughed. “I’m not Jeremy, you know, if you want to get that infected and have your fingers drop off, I’m not gonna stop ya.”

“Oh, all right,” she huffed, “if it makes you feel better.”

Greg got to his feet and held open the door, “Come on, we’ll do self defence class one afterwards.”