Diana rolled her eyes. “Thanks for that. Like this wasn’t hard enough as it is.”
Oh boy. Was there tension between the two of them? I had never seen this before. “I…”
Paloma pointed her finger at Diana. “Like it’s not always you guys and your mother standing together. You’re not the only one with family.”
“Ladies.” Melissa stepped into the fray. “Everyone’s exhausted. You had to hide your babies from men who would have killed them. Trust me, I know the feeling well. I’ve hidden children on two sides of the universe. Including Jackson when he was a baby. And the role we played in this—it makes me sick. I’m used to trusting C.J., and believe it or not, he had the best intentions. He always does. You might know something about that, Paloma, having a husband who thinks he’s doing the right thing?”
She opened and closed her mouth. “I do, actually.”
“All right. So, Waverly it’s really the five of you we owe our apologies to. I need to go do that to Jackson. But I’d like to speak to you about a dream I had that featured you.”
Cooper came up on her side. “I’m sorry, Waverly. Good job freaking out C.J. though. You guys took off, and he took to the comms trying to get you back. I’ve never seen him so taken aback. And, Diana, telling your Uncle to take a time out. I never thought I’d see the day. Am I next?”
She smiled at him. “I’m always willing to tell you to take a breather, Uncle Cooper.”
“Let me go talk to Jackson. I’ll come find you later.”
Rohan grabbed my arm. “Come with me.”
“Okay.” With a glance over my shoulder, I saw Ari talking to Tommy, Canyon still on the computer, and Jackson surrounded. Maybe this was all going to be okay. I hurried to catch up to Ro’s speed.
We rounded the corner, and he stopped, pushing me against the wall. His mouth came down on mine. My body immediately woke up. I had so much adrenaline from everything that happened and maybe, it would appear, so did he.
“Come on.” He abruptly stopped kissing me and pulled me along the hallway and outside the compound. We practically ran together toward the Time compound. The guards weren’t there, which wasn’t surprising considering that the whole place had been in lockdown. Rohan charged inside, stopping to pick me up. I shrieked with surprise. Maybe I was just not moving fast enough?
I was down on his bed in a blur. He kissed me, hard. It was a claiming, for sure. But he needn’t have bothered; I was already his completely.
Rohan didn’t slow down, and I quit trying to keep up. Instead, I held on and let this man love me. Our clothes came off, and he continued to caress me, everywhere. His mouth, his hands. I raised my head to kiss his chest. He moaned when I did it, and the sound moved through me like lightning sending electricity through my body.
He needed me. “Roll over.”
“What?” He lifted his head, but did as I asked. I climbed over his body. This was a first time for me. I’d not been in any kind of control the other times I’d done this. I beamed down at him. He was so sexy, so lethal, so mine.
His cock was hard, and I stroked it once from his balls upward. He grew even bigger in my hand. He was long, hard, and veiny. Everything about Rohan screamed maleness, and I wanted him inside of me. I acted on instinct coupled with just a little know how. I scooted forward and pressed down on him, fitting Rohan inside me inch by ever so slow inch.
He sucked in his breath. “Wavey.”
I loved how he called me that. I fit him finally all the way inside of me and stayed still for a moment. There would never be another first for Rohan and myself. I wanted to make a memory, to hold onto every second of this. I moved slowly, up and down. I never let him entirely out of me and in no time at all I panted for more. Yes, I loved this. We were so close, so joined, so one right then. Couldn’t it last forever? Couldn’t it always be?
He moaned, his words sometimes nonsensical, and I bathed in the joy of it all. I lost track of time. Eventually, he held onto my thighs, holding me in place while he pushed against me, over and over, rubbing my clit until I came, hard.
Ro followed me shortly after, both of us breathing like we’d run a marathon.
I collapsed on top of him and his arms came around me. I closed my eyes. I’d rest for just a minute.
I woke up with Rohan rolling me over onto the bed and off of him. “Canyon has found something. I’m going to go check in with him. Sleep for a bit. See you later.”
He kissed my cheek, and I smiled. I could still feel him deep inside of me. My Super Soldier who had been so overcome with wanting me he’d dragged me from a room. A girl could get used to this.
I woke when Jackson sat on the edge of the bed. “Hey, sleepyhead. You’ve been out for six hours.”
Wow. I rubbed my eyes. “I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”
“I know. You have to be hungry, and I want to talk to you about what we found.”
That sounded good. I swung my feet over the bed, dressed myself, and followed him from the room. I didn’t know what I had done with my shoes. I yawned. I walked right to my coffeemaker and turned it on. The smell of coffee was so…
I turned around slowly. Jackson hadn’t made a sound, but I knew there was something wrong. He stood in the corner, by the scanners with his arms in the air. “Waverly, go back in the other room.”
Took me a second to understand what I saw. Wade, my least favorite doctor, had a weapon pointed at Jackson. I blinked, letting my brain catch up to the moment. “What’s going on here?”
“What’s going on is that Canyon found out that Wade has been the one behind all of this for a while. We’d lost him. I guess he got in here during the attack?”
I stepped toward them. Wade didn’t look stressed. That was good. I didn’t want him losing it and shooting Jackson. “Yes. Okay. But why? I mean, why are you doing this? Are you part of Sandler Cartel?”
He snorted. “I would never lower myself to be part of Sandler Cartel.”
Well, that told me nothing. “Then why…”
“Evander Corporation has been my home since I was a child. I am here for them. To take revenge for all that you have done to them.”
That was really bad news. The worst, actually. “Are you a Super Soldier?”
“They are abominations that need to be put down. I tried to spare you from this, but first you made friends, and then you took them to your bed.”
My temper rose, and I throttled it. Now was not the time for me to get my back up about Canyon and Ro. Now was about getting him to put the gun down. A thought dawned on me. My guys were always tuned into their names.
“So you’re not like Canyon and Ro, Wade. I get it. But why are you holding a gun on Jackson?” Please, oh please, let either Canyon or Rohan hear that. Or Sterling. He’d do, too.
He pointed at the scanners. “What are those things?”
“They’re nothing.” Jackson shrugged. “A failed science experiment. We wanted to make ships faster. They failed. We’re getting ready to take them apart.”
He breathed in deeply. “You’re lying. I can smell it.”
“I thought you said you weren’t enhanced.” I wanted his attention back on me and not on Jackson.
Wade practically growled. “I am not the same as them. I help society. How did you survive my creation? No one survives who I don’t give the cure to.”
I had three seconds to realize this was Doctor Disease before he rounded on Jackson. “Enough. I’ll kill all of you, and the corporation will reward me.”
I leapt for him just as he fired. Jackson ducked, and the bullet hit the new scanner. Jackson cursed, grabbing the scanner, and Wade threw me off him, hitting the shelf behind him. The old scanner fell, and I caught it.
Both scanners lit up immediately. I gasped. What in the hell? Activity suddenly filled the room. The Super Soldiers.
None of it mattered.
Jackson reached for me, seconds before he vanished from my sight. I gasped. If the scanner was hurt, could he
…
“Waverly.” Canyon rushed forward, and then he was gone.
What was happening? I was… I was… traveling through time.
19
When The Nightmare Is Real
Jackson
I popped in and out of time. Whatever Wade did to the scanner when he shot it, I couldn’t stay in one place for very long. I landed in front of Diana from what had to be months ago. I could tell she knew something was wrong. I rambled about the scanner, then I vanished again. Might have been nice if she’d told me about this in the future, but whatever. We were all family at this point, and family was, by nature, fucked up.
I couldn’t keep track of where I’d been. Sandler space. Earth. The Dark Planets. A space station. In and out. In and out. People had stared. So much for this being secret. It had to have been eight hours since this happened. I needed this to stop. I needed to see Waverly. Why had the machine turned on for her? What had happened? Was she back? It wasn’t coded for her. I wrenched forward again.
Finally, I returned back into the room where I started. Strong hands lifted me. I’d never been so weak before. Rohan. He had me.
“Jackson, thank the universe.” He sounded like Waverly. He didn’t say thank the universe.
Canyon had the scanner. He was fiddling with it. “This is busted. It won’t move us again.” Fine. Fuck it. I don’t want to do it anymore. The miraculous whatever good or bad luck that had the machine pick me… oh fuck that. I knew in my soul Canyon had messed with it to put me in there. The question was why.
We had a crowd in the room. Everyone who knew about this was there. “Thanks for the heads up, Diana, that was going to happen to me.”
She winced. “I didn’t know if I could tell you or if it would screw up the time space continuum.”
“We can’t screw that up.” Canyon still looked at the device before he set it down. I had maybe nine minutes before I lost myself into delusions. Waverly should be back any second. The room was quiet. Where had she been sent? The old scanner had never sent anyone anywhere before. My heart rate kicked up, and Ari walked over to me.
“Jacks, brother, I get that you’re worried. But you’ve got to calm it. Okay? I’m asking the impossible. I’m asking it for her.”
I nodded. I breathed. Rohan moved me until I was on the med table.
“They do this every time?” Paloma’s voice was low. “This much pain every time?”
“He’s particularly weak this time,” Cash told her. “The popping in and out took a lot out of him. But he will recover.”
That was good to know. Still, where was Waverly? “Canyon?”
He crossed his hands over his chest. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” I bellowed, and Ari winced. Fuck it. I didn’t care what my vitals were. Let them skyrocket. “You did this to all of us. You scanned us in. Why did you scan her?”
Canyon met my gaze, the metal in his eyes reminding me that much as he cared, we’d all just be light and heat to him. No, that wasn’t fair. I really was out of my mind. “Tell me,” I yelled again.
“You knew.”
Ari groaned. “We all knew.”
“I didn’t know,” Judge called from the side of the room. “You understood how it worked.”
“Machines talk to me. It told me what it could do. I let it do it. I picked… wisely. And I didn’t code Waverly. I wouldn’t do that. You have to believe me.”
I did. That was the problem. The minutes ticked on, and I could feel the haze, the delusional haze start to pull me under. There were two possibilities. One, the old sensor worked differently. We knew little about it except where it was found, on Orion when Lewis and Diana stumbled upon it.
Ari spoke my thoughts as his own. “Orion. It has to be there.”
“Maybe.” Keith sighed. “We can’t know that. Any number of factors could have brought it to Orion. We could be one hundred, one thousand steps from that. We never were able because of the distortion in time through the hole to run a carbon dating on the old scanner. We don’t know. And even if she and the scanner somehow went through the black hole in time and space, we don’t know when she landed there.”
“She can’t be dead.” I couldn’t shout anymore. My words were basically mumbled. “The scanner only brings back live people. But I won’t believe she’s dead.”
Rohan looked away from me fast. He thought she was dead. I sucked in my breath. The delusions came for me. My last thought was that Rohan had to be wrong. He just had to be.
* * *
Rohan
Cash offered to stay with Jackson, and we let him. Wade was very dead, or I’d kill him again. Canyon had that pleasure. With a kitchen knife. Right into his throat. He’d been startled for three seconds, and then he’d choked on his own blood. It had been beautiful. He wished they’d captured the moment.
“She’s not dead. I mean…” Melissa paced around. She didn’t usually talk in these meetings. Apparently, the former leader of Mars Station had moved on from leadership. Now, she had my total attention.
“Mom?” Diana didn’t understand it either.
Her mother bent over, holding onto her own knees. Her husbands surrounded her. C.J. was a real bastard, but his love for his family knew no bounds. If Jackson hadn’t forgiven him, he might have woken up dead. I might have had to do that. I cared about my family, too. Even if we hadn’t made that official.
“Melissa?” Ari prompted. “What?”
She lifted her head, pushing Nolan slightly to the left to do so. “I have trouble with my memory sometimes. I went in and out of mind wiping machines. I don’t talk about that time.”
“That tech was made illegal. People still use it,” Lewis supplied.
Doctor Disease had been smart. Lewis knew him. If he’d shown himself just once in front of the other doctor, we’d not be in our current situation. There was so much to understand. He’d taken Wade’s name. His identity. Stolen the man’s brother and sister, keeping them in abject terror. Why hadn’t we known any of it?
“Focus.” Canyon spoke so low only one other person in the room besides me would hear it. He was right.
“What do you remember?” Ari walked toward her slowly.
She stood straight. “Waverly. Two weeks before I would be found and taken away, mind wiped,” she said, making eye contact with Cooper. There was a story there I didn’t care about. “I was on Orion, the place where Diana was stranded with her guys. I forgot that until just now. Why didn’t anyone remind me of that?”
“To be fair,” Cooper soothed her as he rubbed her back, “I don’t know that it particularly mattered. We were all over the place.”
Geoff nodded. “The whole quadrant was our playground. Yes, we went to Orion many times.”
“There was a group of women there. They’d all escaped abusive husbands. I saw them. I wasn’t helping people back then. I did nothing for them. And this woman, this redheaded woman said that someday I would do better. Or something. It was Waverly. She was with them, and she couldn’t be much older than she was here. That’s where she is.”
Canyon charged forward. “You’re sure.”
“I’m positive.”
I shook my head. “We have no way to get there.”
“Not true.” Wes ran from the room. Where was he going? I tried to understand the ramifications of this. Waverly was alive on the side of the galaxy where I came from in a different time. I…
Wes, out of breath, came back. “This was my original scanner. It won’t travel through time, but I could hook it into Artemis which is what it was designed for, and I bet Canyon, with a little fussing, could get it to take you to Orion.”
I stared at Canyon. He held so many secrets. Could he… “I can do that. Within a few years. This isn’t a very sophisticated version. It won’t ever be more precise than that.”
“You’re going to have to make it better.” When Cooper spoke, everyone listened. “I think it’s ever so likely that Melissa got pregnant right
around that time. Within a week or so. That means you have roughly thirty-eight weeks until my sister will blow that planet up with nuclear bombs, set off a nuclear winter, kill most of the population, and somehow create zombies in the meantime.”
Canyon paled. It was very unusual to see him react at all, except in adoration for Waverly. He was scared shitless.
Ari stepped forward. “We’ll get there. This doesn’t end like this. Waverly isn’t going to die on that planet. Come on, hook it up, we’re going.”
I was glad for Ari’s optimism most of the time. Now, I was going to have to hold on to it with both hands. Otherwise, the very unusual sensation of fear was going to drag me under, and I might never come back.
* * *
Ari
I just really had one question for Melissa. “What did you say to her when she told you?”
“That I was going to be a better person?” She shook her head. “I told her that I was Melissa Fucking Alexander, and I was as good as it got.”
All five of her husbands groaned at the same time. Dane rubbed his chin. “It’s still not enough time for that to be something I want to hear again.”
I ran to the Med Bay, stepping over Wade’s body to do so. He’d been under our noses the whole time. He didn’t know about the time travel, and he’d been trying to figure out what was going on. That was why he’d targeted Jackson. To hurt the soldiers he so much despised, he’d gone after Waverly, not once but twice.
We hadn’t understood it at all.
And now Waverly was paying for it. Hold on, love. We’re coming. I knew that was stupid. She wasn’t anywhere she could hear my thoughts. I wasn’t even born yet in the timeframe where she was. The black hole had so messed with Jackson, Diana, Melissa, Nolan, Wes, CJ, Geoff, and Dane that they were years younger than they were supposed to be. If she lived the rest of her life on that timeline, she’d be dead by now.