Maelstrom Page 3

  “How do you plan to get us abducted?” I asked.

  “Two nights from now, on March 25th, they will get impatient and finally strike out at a fashion show in New York. They probably wanted to take more women, but settled for the hundred and nine they took. We went back in time with this knowledge and we plan to allow this to happen again, adding two to their bounty, of course.”

  “And this is a suicide mission,” Mercy said.

  “Well, let’s hope not. But yes, it’s extremely risky. After all, how do we fly an alien spacecraft after you kill the captors?” he said, “In the short time we have together, we’ll at least train you on flying our own spaceships as well as how to handle your slew of weapons. We want you to succeed.”

  “And if these aliens win? You don’t care if we end up being raped on some alien planet?” I asked.

  “If someone tries to rape you, look at either hand and think these three words: ‘Separate, Razor, Claw’.”

  I looked at my right hand and thought those words. This time, only the flesh of my hand and wrist hardened, then broke into hundreds of tiny geometric scales which quickly spun about and then reshaped my hand into a metal black claw that resembled a mix between some sharp scissors and sturdy cable cutters. I still found it frightening to witness such a thing happening to me.

  I looked over at Mercy who was clamping her bladed claw closed over and over again. She looked at her weapon in appreciation.

  “I’m confident you could do some significant damage with that,” Stormer said, “You can see that we aren’t going to leave you to die. More than anything, we want success.”

  I looked at my hand and thought ‘Disengage, Razor, Claw’ and I was pleased to witness it returning into the shape of a hand. I started to wonder why these were three-word commands, but then I realized I thought of many words throughout my day. I wouldn’t want to think of the word ‘weapon’ and randomly have my arm transform in the middle of a fashion show.

  How they tied our arm-commands to our thoughts, I didn’t know. But one might as well ask how they even built such realistic looking arms that transformed into weapons. None of this made any sense to me, but now I was beginning to understand their need for both me and Mercy.

  Seven

  Stormer released us to our original host who happened to go by the name of Three. This was the short man with the silver hair who had made fun of our names in the hallway earlier. Now, ‘Three’ was taking us into a miniature cafeteria so we could eat before flight training.

  “This station is not meant to serve as a training facility,” Three said as he gestured toward a refrigerator, “Typically we wake them here and then send them to the surface for training. But alas, you are just a small group of two, so you will stay with us until you’re ready.”

  “What kind of name is Three?” Mercy snickered, “I’m going to call you ‘Short Legs McLeggison’.”

  Three laughed and turned to the two of us, “You’re really going there, Hot Cocoa?”

  “I just can’t believe you had made fun of my being called Mercy and her being called Hunter when you had a name like Three!” she said before she started imitating his voice, “One of them better live up to their name and the other better not!”

  I had to laugh at that. Three grinned, then opened the refrigerator while we looked inside.

  “No restaurants up here in space. As a matter of fact, you’re very limited in your choices while you reside with us,” he gestured toward a shelf, “You’ve got five kinds of lunch meats right here, condiments over here on the door, milk, orange juice, tea, cheeses over here, and pickles or peppers down here. You’ll find bread and buns in the cupboard over there next to the cups and plates. There’s also peanut butter and grape jelly if that’s your thing.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And my name originally wasn’t Three, though that’s the name I have now,” he explained.

  I reached into the refrigerator and took out the bag marked ‘hard salami’ and then grabbed the jar of mustard off the door. I heard Mercy ask him for his original name while I located the plates and bread.

  “I don’t know what my name was before I died the first time,” he said, sidling up next to me with the pitcher of orange juice, “Don’t put the salami away after you make your sandwich, Legs.”

  “I told you that’s not my name,” I turned to him.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. If I call you Hunter, would you be so kind as to make me a sandwich as well?” he asked.

  “If you promise to only call me Hunter the rest of the time I’m stuck here,” I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Fine, Hunter. Would you please make a sandwich for me as well?” he asked.

  I took out four slices of bread, then proceeded to stack the salami in such a way as to cover every inch of the bread with at least three layers. He returned from the refrigerator with a jar of hot banana peppers and set that next to the plate. I took the hint and added peppers to my sandwich as well.

  “What did you mean in regards to you dying before?” Mercy asked, arriving at the counter with a bag of smoked turkey.

  He poured two glasses of orange juice, then returned the pitcher to the refrigerator, “I mean that we have methods to extend our lives beyond death, but there is oftentimes memory loss in the process. This is my third existence living inside a replica clone of my original self. You don’t need to hear the details because it won’t affect you.”

  “Probably don’t want to know anyway,” Mercy muttered.

  “You’re right – probably don’t,” he said.

  I placed the beautiful sandwich on another plate and then handed it to Three. He then handed me the other glass of orange juice.

  “Why, thank you. I can’t recall the last time someone made my dinner for me,” he said.

  “Well, don’t get used to it. From what I hear, I’m getting kidnapped in a couple days,” I said as I took my plate and cup over to the small table.

  Three sat down across from me, then shortly after that, Mercy took the seat to my left. We all ate in silence for a little while. I couldn’t help but to feel the silence uncomfortable, so I decided to break through it with something – anything.

  “I’m afraid of heights,” I stated.

  Mercy looked at me, then looked at the thick sandwich she was holding in front of her.

  “…and?” Three prodded.

  “And I find it odd that I would leap off the tallest bridge I know of in order to end my life. How stupid is that?” I said.

  Three chuckled, “I can’t imagine the simple act of trying to end one’s life. It makes no sense.”

  “Sometimes living hurts,” Mercy defended me, “Everything in the universe should come with an ‘off’ switch.”

  “Hmmm…” he clearly didn’t agree, but didn’t seem to be in the mood to argue.

  The rest of dinner passed in silence. After we finished eating, we cleaned up and then Three informed us that it was time for some training. He led us to a room that probably served as a miniature theater judging by the way that the eight chairs were angled toward a large viewing panel.

  “Take a seat anywhere. The vid-feed you are about to watch is an educational video on basic spacecraft controls and navigation. It’s definitely not going to show how to fly an alien craft, but maybe some of this technology will be the same and easy to transfer over,” he said.

  And just as quickly as we sat down, the lights dimmed and the mind-numbing movie began. Three left the room, obviously not wanting to watch such a tedious video.

  “Be honest – are you truly as excited about all this as you seem?” I whispered to Mercy who sat to my immediate right.

  On the screen in front of us, we were apparently learning about methods for reading digital star charts. A few minutes prior, we were being taught the basics of thrust inside a vacuum and what the controls should typically look like. I crouched down in my seat and leaned in toward my neighbor.

  “I honestly am. I should
be dead now and I was thoroughly done with life as I knew it back then anyway. If they had rescued me and returned me to my own bedroom, I’d have probably slit my wrists again the next day,” she whispered to me, “But here? With these superior powers and weapons? And with a purpose? I didn’t have a purpose back home.”

  “What did you do for a living?” I asked.

  “That’s just it – I didn’t do anything. My fiancé was rich and he kept me living in luxury. He was often away on business which was why we’d been engaged for so long. We never had time to put together the sort of wedding his family would expect... or so I was told,” she whispered while the video switched to the ways we could check and monitor our fuel reserves, “His wife of six years discovered my existence and put an end to our relationship. She believed that I had always been aware that he was cheating on his wife with me. I honestly never knew. I had been blindsided. I was suddenly in the process of losing everything I’d ever loved. I was losing it all the night I took my life.”

  “Oh, wow,” I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  “No big deal now. Besides, now I have a purpose and as far as I’m concerned, each of those aliens we’ll face will be just another Tyrell,” she said with a grin, “That was my lying fiancé’s name. So anyway, what did you do for a living?”

  She was looking over at me with sincere interest. I thought about her question for a moment, then found myself spewing forth with the resentment that had brought me to my demise.

  “Mindless, soulless, scripted call-center employee working to get donations for non-profit charities. The company, InfoCrimson, paid squat, offered unreachable bonuses, and they didn’t even provide paid vacation time or holiday pay to its employees. It truly was the worst job I’d ever had. They treated all their employees like elementary school children as well, so it was hard to even make it through the day.”

  “And it was on the way to work that day when you jumped?” she asked.

  I nodded with a sad sigh. She put her arm around me and drew me close to her.

  “Well, now you’ve got someone who cares whether you live or die. How about that?” Mercy said.

  “Thanks. I think you’re alright as well and I’m glad to have you here with me,” I said.

  Eight

  The video turned out to be a very uncomfortable two and a half hours long. I’d have to say that I retained nothing beyond the short demonstration where they adjusted various thrusters in order to slow down the ship or to turn it around. And even so, I only understood that concept on an M30 Mars Research Vessel from a few centuries back.

  It had become readily apparent that the entire space program had been abandoned by the people of Earth in the current generation. The most recent spacecraft we learned about was from over a hundred and fifty years ago. This made it all the more curious that they had an orbital time travel station around a planet that didn’t really invest much time or resources into spaceflight.

  Mercy and I were returned to the same bedroom that I had awoken in earlier in the day. We discovered shortly thereafter that we had a quaint little bathroom connected to our bedroom via a thin sliding door. The bathroom consisted of a narrow shower stall, a toilet, and a small sink with a little circle mirror stuck to the wall above it.

  We took our turns in the shower before retiring for the evening in our beds. I wasn’t tired at all, so I just sat in my bed and held my pillow as I looked down at my bare feet pondering the day’s events.

  “They’re teaching us to use our weapons tomorrow, but unfortunately we won’t be able to actually fire them,” Mercy said.

  I turned to her and then sat on the edge of my bed with the pillow in my lap.

  “I had a flashback today while we were watching the video. When I first woke up after my suicide, it wasn’t here in this bed, but rather on a large circular platform in front of some people in full riot gear,” I said, breathing out a long sigh, “They wanted to stuff me in some sort of silver coffin.”

  “I remember something similar,” Mercy added, rolling onto her side and facing me, “They had me strip down completely while facing away from them. Then before I knew what was happening, they grabbed me by my shoulders and tugged me backward, causing me to fall back into that coffin with a splash. It felt like I was surrounded by cool gelatin before I must have blacked out.”

  “Was that place here inside this orbital station?” I asked, “And what was that platform with the hazy blue lighting in the floor and ceiling?”

  “I have my theories based on the things those people in the riot gear had said. I believe their time travel device or machine is a separate spacecraft that moves about. Something they said about not being able to time travel while on the surface of a planet,” she said, “And one of the mean riot police muttered that they needed to hurry up or they all would freeze in the intense cold of the ChronoTide. I can remember the odd word because my mind had been searching for reasons that I would disappear from the bathtub and then suddenly show up on a vented floor. Time travel had come to mind, so the word Chrono and Tide sounded a lot like a reference to a ‘time wave’ to me.”

  “Time wave?” I looked at her.

  “Yeah, I don’t even know what a time wave is either, but it just sounded like something you would ride through time if you were a time traveler. Anyway, I think the platform we woke up on may have been where we were zapped to from our world. Maybe it’s a transporter of some sort. I say this because my eyes were opened when I disappeared, so they were also opened already when I ‘woke’ on that platform. I watched the bathroom blur out of focus, then suddenly I watched the world inside that circular platform slowly come into focus. There was no period of time in between as far as I could tell.”

  “Wow, so you really have thought all this out,” I said, “I wonder why it is that time travel has to be done inside a space ship. Goes against every time machine I remembered in the movies.”

  Mercy sat up and held up a finger, “I think I have an idea. What if you traveled back in time just one hour? On Earth, the planet will have rotated the amount it goes in a single hour, probably anywhere from 800 to a thousand miles depending on where you are on the surface. Also, the planet will have moved in its revolution around the sun. And don’t forget that the galaxy itself is spinning and the universe is expanding. Who knows where you’d end up if you went back in time a single hour, but you can pretty much bet it’d be somewhere in outer space.”

  “You just ruined every time travel movie I ever loved!” I chuckled.

  “Sorry,” she shrugged, “Keep in mind it’s all just my personal theories and opinions.

  “Yeah, but it all makes sense,” I said, squeezing my pillow while I rested my chin on it, “Do you think we’re safe in here tonight? Like… well, what if Three comes in here and tries something?”

  “We’ll be alright. We’ll listen for each other and look out for each other,” she said, rolling onto her back and looking up at the ceiling, “I’ve got your back. You got mine?”

  I looked over at her and nodded, “Yeah, I’ve got your back.”

  Nine

  I had slept like a log, never waking once in the middle of the night. After getting dressed, Mercy and I joined Eight for breakfast. She then escorted us back to the padded room so that Stormer could continue his training with us. According to Eight, today was supposed to have been the first time we got to meet Stormer.

  “Well, today’s training should be fairly simple since we took care of all the surprises yesterday,” Stormer said as Eight left the room and sealed the hatch behind her, “If you wouldn’t mind, please reveal the weapons of your left arms.”

  Both of us recalled the mental command, causing our left arms to transform into what appeared to be a three-barrel weapon. Stormer watched us with a smile of satisfaction.

  “Good, this is your main weapon which offers three different functions. You can either fire titanium-tipped ballistic rounds, meant for penetrating armor and other metals, or you can fire
twenty millimeter plasma rounds, which is great for killing people,” he chuckled at this.

  “You only mentioned two functions,” Mercy interjected, examining her weapon.

  “The third is more for riot control or if you don’t really want to kill the people in your path. It’s a sonic cannon which releases a circular ‘thud’ that hits your enemy like a very powerful punch. It’s been known to break ribs. The main purpose is to knock your opponent down without killing them. Not sure why you’d use such a thing in combat, but you have it anyway,” he said, “Let me show you how to use these and how to target your enemies.”

  Mercy and I were startled to discover that we had access to something like computer imaging that overlapped our field of view. Basically, once we initiated the weapon and turned on our targeting systems, we could literally see a digital range-finder and crosshairs moving about in front of us as we shifted our weapon. Stormer explained that this digital overlap had nothing at all to do with our eyes, but rather it was something implanted inside our brains. It only felt like it was our eyes seeing this mobile crosshairs gliding about, but it simply wasn’t.

  Nevertheless, the technology was far beyond our experience and expertise, so he needn’t keep explaining such things in detail. We then proceeded to our right arms which turned out to be more than just a weapon.

  “Your right arms will provide your secondary weapon which is actually more of a cannon which you must use sparingly because you only have six rounds stored in your upper arm. This launches highly explosive balls, each being about the size of a common golf ball. We can reload your cannon once you return home, but while you’re undercover and at their mercy, you only have the six rounds each,” he said, “Basically, keep this arm as an arm for as long as you can. Now, I’m sure you noticed the two silver arrows. I’d imagine you won’t need these until you find yourself required to escape from a situation.”

  “I think I’d prefer the titanium bullets to arrows,” Mercy chuckled.