TIME & TIED: ESCALATION

ARC 2.4 - From the Future

PART 43b: DESPERATE TIMES 2

Their captor’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to answer to you.”

Luci’s smile vanished. “Perhaps not, but it occurs to me now that you were WAY too calm for someone who claimed to have lost an entire future war because of us.”

“Well, I’m not calm any more,” he snapped.

“No, you’re not,” Luci acknowledged. “So what is it about Carrie that has you so riled up? Tell us. ALL of it.”

“Go beat your head against a wall.”

Luci turned and marched over towards the nearest wall, drawing her head back - only to be grabbed from behind by Lee. She blinked, then snapped her gaze back over to the couch.

“That’s dirty pool,” Chartreuse said, horrified.

“You children, you have no idea, NO idea of what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in,” Shady said, a bitterness to his tone. “Enough of free will. Isn’t it time to leave this situation in the hands of your elders?”

“Okay, that’s it,” Luci decided. “I’ve had it.” She began to push a chair over to the side of the room. “Lee? Chartreuse? You can leave now, if you don’t want to see this.”

“Um, pretty sure I should stick around,” Lee pointed out.

“Why, what are you, like, going to do?” Chartreuse asked.

“Something I might regret later,” Luci admitted. She climbed onto the chair, and reached up to grasp the ornamental rapier hanging on the wall.

"Whoa, uh, hold on short stuff... what are you doing?"

Truth be told, Luci was asking herself that same question. She wasn't really sure any more. All she knew was that were were still gaps, huge gaps in her knowledge that had to be filled. It had become more than a need, it was a necessity. How else could she solve this puzzle?

“The problem,” she reasoned aloud, hopping back down onto the floor, “is that I’ve been basing all my decisions to this point on the scattered half picture we’ve had available.” She brandished the rapier and pointed it at their captive. "Time to get the rest of the data. By any means necessary.”

"Luci,” Chartreuse gasped, reaching out to take her by the shoulder.

"No,” Luci protested, shrugging off Chartreuse. “It’s not us, it’s HIM, it’s his secrets that have doomed Julie and Frank and the rest of them.” She took a step closer to the couch. “So, you want to talk war? Fine, here’s your war. You will tell us about Carrie’s fate in your timeline, or suffer the consequences.”

The man met Luci's gaze, sizing her up. “You have more willpower than I thought," he said at last. “But no. I’ve told you too much already."

"Don't test me,” Luci cautioned, waving the blade around - to try and disguise how much her hand was starting to shake.

He smirked. “Please. You talk big, but you won’t use that. Put it away before you hurt yourself."

Luci stared at him for another few seconds, realizing with growing frustration that he wasn’t going to stop treating this like a bluff on her part. 'Hurt him!' a part of her cried out. ‘He’s hurting you, so you can hurt him back!' Except... there was a big difference between cutting someone down with words, and doing it with a blade.

She grasped the hilt with both hands. Tears started stinging at her eyes. “Talk!”

Talk, Shady. Just talk. This was so easy in the movies. Why not now? Why, oh why couldn't things be going her way? As Shady smirked, Luci felt Chartreuse's arm encircle her shoulders. This time she didn't pull away. Instead she let out a choked sob, finally letting the blade fall from her grip. It bounced on the carpet.

“Okay buddy, now you've made a young girl cry," Lee observed. He cracked his knuckles. "We’ve reached my line in the sand."

Luci looked back up, barely in time to see Lee backhand the man across the face. "Now say you're sorry," he admonished. He looked angrier than Luci had ever seen him.

"What... what the hell are you doing?!" their captive spat back, apparently as surprised as any of them.

“At present? I'm trying to figure out how a supposed adult has the audacity to put the whammy on girls less than half his age,” Lee said. “You also seem to be trying to kill another one of my friends, without telling us the reason, and to cap it all off - you’re making me late for dinner.”

Lee backhanded him again. “I'm ESPECIALLY annoyed about that last one, because I don’t want my sisters to have new reasons to cry either. So let’s get to it, okay ‘Shady’? Apologize to Luci, and then TELL her WHAT SHE WANTS TO KNOW.”

Lee's victim glowered at him for a moment, before uttering a curt, "Sorry," in Luci's direction.

“Progress,” Lee said, glaring.

Shady grit his teeth. “If you weren’t somehow immune to me..."

“What’s the problem, not comfortable enough to answer questions?” Lee asked. "Well then, I'll fluff your pillow here and... oh, I'm sorry, is that your foot? Dear me, I’d get your feet up out of the way but it is hard when they're tied like this... oh, sorry, was that your stomach? You know, you'd make this a lot easier by talking. Though I guess it is a little difficult with me holding the pillow over your face. There, that better?"

"Are you INSANE?"

“Sounds like you need more time to think. How about this, I've heard it can help, having all your blood rush to your head. Over we go... oops, sorry. Oh, hey, mind that rapier down there..."

As Lee continued to contort the man’s body, Luci was reminded of the conversation she’d had with Clarke in the hospital. Sometimes, you had to pass the ball to your teammates. “Remind me never to cross Lee,” she whispered to Chartreuse.

Chartreuse didn’t respond, her eyes wide and her jaw slack.

"All right, I’ll talk,” Shady shrieked, once Lee had twisted his head away from the upholstery. "Bloody hell, I never expected you teenagers to be such a thorn in my side!"

“And our little dog too,” Lee remarked as he straightened back up and adjusted his jacket. He looked back over at the two girls, seeming a bit taken aback by their expressions. “Um, what can I say? I hate being late for dinner."

“You want the truth about your ‘friend’, Carrie Waterson?” The temporal refugee spat out, even as he struggled to sit back up. “Fine. She is NOT dead in my future. Rather, she is on THEIR side.” He fixed his gaze upon Luci. “She’s a temporal bomb, who can destroy the entire world, because THAT’S what they designed her to do. Which is, if you haven’t figured it out, why we couldn’t very well recruit her to fight on behalf of the humans, could we?”

It was Chartreuse who managed to speak first. “Um, Carrie’s a human. Not some time bomb.”

“Well, she’s sort of both,” Shady countered. “Call her a sleeper agent, if you like, planted in the past. Except now that I’ve changed things? Now that she’s exerting her influence on this town, consciously or unconsciously preserving the memory of Julie? She’s armed. She has to be.”

“So you did come back in time to destroy Carrie,” Luci concluded.

He shook his head. “No, I came back to recruit that-- thing, I swear. We had hoped to learn how to control the power, and to unleash it back upon her own people... but regrettably, if Carrie went psychotic, there would be no choice but to eliminate her. Because if she explodes? She will not only take this town, but this entire planet along with her. Make no mistake.”

He paused to let his words sink in. “So," he concluded, "will you finally release me, and let me destroy that shell of a girl before she does the same to all of humanity? Or shall we sit here chatting for what may well be the last hour of our lives?"

***

They had to be destroyed. If they got in her way, she would have to destroy them. It seemed harsh, but being a murderer three times over now, Julie had made up her mind.

Three times... Carrie, Frank, and then that homeless woman... it had been so horrible, to see her die. Julie grabbed at her chest, feeling her borrowed clothing.

She should have been the one. The one lying dead in the road. In fact, a strange part of her felt like it HAD BEEN HER. Or would have been her. Before she’d noticed Phil on the street, and switched clothing. Now it wasn’t her. But could it still become her?

Tenses were getting muddled in her brain. No, more than tenses, it was all a muddle. Perhaps a side effect of the time travel. Or, you know, the fact that she was flirting with paradox, trying to prevent her own birth. Maybe something out there didn’t want her to do that.

What had even led to this line of thought? Right, she had to kill Phil, Frank and Corry... if they got in her way. Frank, dead for a second time. That was weird.

Never mind. Julie knew she needed a plan. A plan that she could execute quickly, for if Phil had actually been able to follow her through time, recruiting assistance from Corry of all people, there were sure to be more traps in store. Julie supposed that she should not have destroyed the potential advantage of her own time machine.

Too late to worry about that now. She couldn’t wait another three days for her actual birth. Not any more. It was time for action.

Still clutching the gun, Julie marched off for the hospital. If the others tried to stop her now, well... well, then they would suffer the consequences. The very deadly consequences.