chapter 54
TEAM 1 & 2, YEAR: 1200
Time Remaining: 4 minutes
“Ian, what the hell is this?” asked Riley. Her voice shook with rage. She tried to fight Ian’s grip around her neck but with every move, he drove the barrel of the gun deeper into her neck.
“Give me the remote control, Riley, and everything will be just fine.” Ian looked up and saw Jake, Finn, Lexi and Tyler approaching cautiously. “We all just need to have a little talk.”
“Ian Turner?” asked Jake, as he stepped around a large boulder. He stopped walking when he saw Ian eye him and dig the gun further into Riley’s neck.
“Hello, Jake,” said Ian.
Owen leaned on a nearby boulder to keep the weight off his knee. With most of the pain subsided, he focused on the man that had rendered his teammates speechless. The man looked deranged; his hair was askew and his eyes darted excessively. His movements alternated between purposeful and unsteady. However, his clothing gave the opposite impression. Despite being a little rumpled and dirty, like he had been crawling around in the dirt, the man was well-dressed, like he took care in his appearance. He wore expensive-looking shoes and a sport jacket lay on a nearby boulder with a real, albeit wilted, purple rose hanging out of the pocket. The man also wore a bulky time travel watch. Looking at the man again, Owen felt everything click into place. Peeking out from under the sleeve of Ian’s shirt, Owen saw the tattoo that exonerated Clint from the cube. He recognized the tattoo; now, having seen the man’s face, he remembered exactly where he had seen it.
Owen cut into the conversation. “You were behind me the morning I was nearly hit by the bus.”
Everyone’s attention, including captor and captives, looked at Owen like the pain in his knee had addled his mind. But for Owen, nothing had ever been more clear. Snippets of stories he had been told over the last six months flashed through his mind and fell into place.
Ian looked to Owen. “Oh, yes. The astrogeologist. God, you’ve been a colossal pain in the ass.”
“I believe that,” said Owen. He stood up straight and took a step forward, determined not to flinch. “Let me guess. I’m the only person who’s ever tried to gain a complete knowledge of Elevanium that you haven’t been able to kill or scare off.”
Riley’s eyes darted to Jake, who looked equally dumbfounded. Owen seemed to have gone insane.
Owen continued. “You’ve been going back and forth through time killing off people who have tried to gain a complete understanding of Elevanium, including how to neutralize it. You pushed me in front of that bus.”
“You don’t know a damn thing. Don’t embarrass yourself. You’re so bloody ancient and irrelevant. You know nothing about anything that matters,” said Ian.
Owen was overwhelmed by clarity borne from his perspective of being an outsider. At the corner of his eye, he saw Jake look at his watch and his face became anxious. Owen knew time was running out. “When Riley approached me about this project, her explanation for why no one had found a way to destroy Elevanium in fifty years seemed flimsy and unbelievable: that people outright refused to go near it. When she told me that people of science believed that Elevanium was jinxed, that seemed even more unlikely. All of the Elevanium-related accidents that happened over the years, I assured myself, had to be a fluke. When my house blew up, I started to wonder if maybe the curse was legitimate. But I’d given Riley my word that I’d help so I stayed on.
“Now, knowing that it was you that pushed me in front of the bus, I’m willing to bet you’ve taken quite a few trips throughout time, trying to kill or scare anyone who wanted to find a way to neutralize Elevanium. Kill enough scientists and then as time rewrites itself, people’s memories are rewritten with a revised history where death and accidents are associated with Elevanium through the ages. The end result is that these deaths and events you altered, when viewed collectively from the perspective of a person in 2097, makes Elevanium look jinxed. Which is a pretty great urban legend and one that would discourage anyone from wanting to go near it.”
Ian looked to Jake with a smirk. “Wow. This guy’s a bit brighter than I’ve given him credit for. I thought if anyone figured it out it would be Miss Iron Fist here. But, I guess she is more brawny than brainy, as she came out on top after an attack by twelve men and didn’t take the hint to quit. But it doesn’t matter. It all ends now.” Ian straightened up, yanking harshly on Riley’s neck as he refocused his resolve.
“Ian, are you insane?” asked Riley. She could feel the muzzle of the gun pushing hard against the tendons in her neck. “Why are you trying to stop this? Those damn AEI robots are taking over—they’re a goddamn plague! They have to be stopped before they take over and destroy…”
Ian cut her off, his rage spiking. “It’s just an adjustment phase. There’s nothing wrong with those robots! They’ll be the greatest legacy that any human being in history has ever left this planet, and I’m not going to let a bunch of bleeding hearts ruin the greatest achievement of my career.”
“Adjustment period?” roared Jake. His face exploded bright red and his fists clenched angrily at his sides, the rope-like muscles in his forearms flexed. Ian was startled by the unexpected and aggressive transformation in the mighty man’s demeanour. Even the others were taken by surprise by his outburst. “Ian, those robots killed my wife and kids. They have no regard for human life. That project went off the rails and there’s no one who can fix it except us.”
“Shut up! None of you are in charge here! See the gun?” Ian hit a button on the back of the gun with his thumb and they heard the electronic whistling sound of the gun increase its charge for a higher setting. One slip of Ian’s finger and Riley would be dead. “I’m in charge! This is what’s going to happen here. Riley, you’re going to give me the remote control and I’m going to destroy it before any of you can do anything heroic. All of you can go home and say that the device failed and that there is no way that Elevanium can be neutralized. If you’re lucky, I’ll let your entire team go back and tell the same story. If you cause me problems, well, some of you might not be so lucky.”
Jake looked at his watch. They had less than a minute to neutralize the Elevanium. His vision of how this moment was supposed to play out flashed through his mind—the team huddled around the screens in Mole Control with warm cups of coffee watching the guns over two large monitors. Instead, they were standing on a windy rock ledge, negotiating with a madman.
“Riley, give me the remote control. I know you have it. Give it to me now!”
With her free hand, she unzipped the pocket and pulled out the controller but held it in front of her, out of his reach.
“Drop it on the ground,” he demanded. “Gently.” When she did not comply, he walked her threateningly close to the edge of the rock face.
Owen looked around for anything to distract Ian with. He felt around his pocket and found his VersaTool. In one swift movement, he yanked the tool out of his pocket and aimed the beam at Riley to rip her free of Ian’s grasp. He missed and instead Ian jerked up into the air. Taken by complete surprise, Ian dropped the gun as Owen hoisted him upward, equally shocked by having captured Ian and not Riley. The gun, trapped with Ian in the beam and now forgotten, hung beside the airborne man as he flailed his arms, reaching for anything he could grab. As he spun, his foot kicked the gun and it discharged. An orange beam blasted the rocky ledge behind Clint and Riley. Boulders broke away, fell and smashed on the rocky floor far below. Ian continued to spin uncontrollably. His flailing foot collided with the side of Riley’s head and she toppled over the edge of the rocky cliff. Owen dropped Ian instantly, and the man fell to the ground in a heap. Clint, his limbs still restrained, sprung from the rock like he had been ejected and threw his bound body on top of Ian to stop him from pressing the white button on his time travel watch. Frantic and filled with terror for what he may see, Owen lunged for the edge of the cliff. Riley lay unconscious on a grassy ledge only eight feet below.
&n
bsp; “Owen!” yelled Jake, “The remote control! Where is it?”
Owen broke into a sweat from the pain as he scrambled down the rocky face to where Riley lay. With only a few steps left below him, he jumped the rest of the way to the ledge, falling painfully to his knees. He began frantically sweeping the grass, looking for the remote control Riley had been holding when she fell. As Jake climbed down behind him, he glanced at his watch and yelled to Owen. “Ten seconds!”
Owen scoured the long grass, at a complete loss for the control’s whereabouts. He fought the nausea in his stomach as he envisioned it in pieces among the rocks below, the only other logical place it could have gone. Just as he was about to lean over the edge to look, something in Riley’s hand caught his eye. Jake’s watch began to beep as he snatched the remote control from Riley’s unconscious hand, flipped up the clear plastic cover and jammed the button down with the heel of his fist.