“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Have you seen any sign of Roberts yet?”
“Roberts… He didn’t last long.”
Sally looked surprised, but then became distracted. “David… When you were…in there…dying. You were speaking English.”
David shuffled nervously. “Did I say what I think I said?”
Sally smiled.
“I was delirious. Don’t-”
“David… I think…” Sally stepped closer to David and held his arms. “I know… I love you too.”
David nearly fainted. This woman, who just yesterday was threatening his job, was professing her love for him?
“But…how? It’s only been-”
“When you were dying. I thought I was too late. I thought you were going to die. I realized then that if you died, my life would be somehow emptier…meaningless. But even then, I still didn’t know…and then you said it, that you loved me and I knew that second that I loved you too.”
Stunned didn’t do justice to how David felt. He was simultaneously ecstatic and mortified. He looked into her deep brown eyes; she was telling the truth. “Sally… You don’t know how long I-”
Whack! Sally slapped her neck.
“What happened?” David asked.
“Something bit me,” Sally said, just slightly annoyed.
David suddenly remembered slapping the bug on his neck. It nearly took his life.
Sally’s forehead grew uncharacteristically wrinkled. “David?”
With a wave of concern, David took the hand Sally had used to slap her neck and looked at it. The remains of another robot bug rested in her open palm. “Damn!” David cursed. “How did you cure Tom and me?”
“I injected you with the antidote… David, my neck.”
“I know. Do you have any more?”
“I only brought enough for you and Tom.”
“What about in the future?”
“It’s in George’s office. A secret room…but it’s got to be guarded like Fort Knox by now.”
“Can you think of a time when it’s not guarded?”
Sally looked David in the eyes. “It’s going to be close.”
“I’m used to close.”
Sally smiled despite the tingling sensation stretching down her spine. David had become strong, resilient, brave. She adored the man more than ever.
“Come with me,” David said, “I have an idea.”
George’s office was empty and the secret side room was wide open. Jake left in such a hurry that he forgot to close up, which David found very convenient. David crinkled his nose at the dry, over circulated air. The pale colors of the room were dull to his eyes. The future seemed dead to him now, but the woman next to him was still breathing and he wasn’t going to let her go.
David laid Sally on the floor. He didn’t want to bring her with him. He thought it would be too dangerous. But her condition worsened so drastically that he couldn’t risk not giving the antidote to her the second it was in his possession.
Sally didn’t move. Her eyes were swollen shut and her arms and legs had become like Jell-O. Only her chest still moved, slowly rising and falling with each labored breath. David rifled through the small lab and quickly found the antidote. He removed the syringe from its foam protection in the silver briefcase and removed the plastic protective stopper from its tip.
He fell to his knees next to Sally, ignoring the stinging pain from his dried gashes. He took hold of her arm and held the needle above her skin. David had never given anyone an injection before. What was that they did on TV? Oh yes. David flicked the syringe twice with his finger and squirted some of the fluid out. To get the air bubbles out, he remembered. David placed the needle on Sally’s skin and “Who the hell are you?”
David looked up. It was Jake, and he was holding a gun!
Jake quickly raised the gun toward David. “David, of course, David. How nice of you to come back to us.”
David froze. Would Jake use the gun? If David didn’t inject the antidote soon, Sally would die. If he injected it now, Jake might shoot them both.
Jake walked toward David, taking in his clothing, the amount of dirt on his feet, the length of his beard. “You’ve been gone for quite a long time, haven’t you?”
“What do you want?” David asked, as he noticed a stain of sprayed blood on Jake’s clothing. “What have you done?”
Jake looked down at his clothing and smiled. “Security guards can have loud mouths.” Pointing at Sally, he added, “They saw her go back. They knew too much. Just like you… So I removed them from the equation.”
“We’ll get out of your way. We don’t want anything to do with you or this company.” David said with an honest desperation.
“It’s too late for that, David. With those watches, you could change everything. I can’t let you do that,” Jake said, as he thrust the gun at David’s head.
“Take the watches, just let us go.”
“I don’t think so,” Jake said, as he thumbed the gun’s hammer.
“Hold it, Jake.” David was relieved to hear Tom’s voice.
Jake whipped around and leveled the gun at Tom, who had Captain Roberts’s gun trained on Jake’s chest.
David saw his chance. He stabbed the syringe needle into Sally’s arm and pushed the liquid into her as hard and as quickly as he could. Now it was only a matter of time.
“Put down the gun, Jake.”
“I’ll use this,” said Jake, glancing at his gun. “Will you?”
“I’m sure you’ve seen my report. You know what happened in Zambia. You know I’ve killed before. What do you think happened to Roberts?” Tom said with a cocky grin.
Jake stood frozen for a moment, his eyes probing Tom’s. “No…no…that’s not how it happened. You couldn’t.”
Jake took a step toward Tom. He was a cornered wolverine, ready to attack.
“Slow down, Jake,” David urged. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Shut up, David,” Jake said.
David stood to his feet. If bullets started flying around the room, he didn’t want Sally being hit. Jake seemed to sense the pressure of David behind him, but didn’t dare take his gun off Tom.
Tom sensed that David was trying to move the action into the office and away from Sally, which was just fine with him. Tom backed up into George’s office, giving Jake space to move.
“Keep him coming this way,” Tom said to David in Aramaic.
“What are you going to do?” David replied in the same language.
Jake bit his lip and then shouted, “What are you saying? What the hell are you saying?”
“I brought a friend,” Tom finished in Aramaic.
Tom’s last statement was enough to push Jake right to the edge. His finger squeezed the trigger half way down. He was going to kill them all or die trying.
TWENTY ONE
Revelations
2005
Arizona
Tom backed up slowly. He could see that Jake was going to fire, but he didn’t want to have to shoot Jake-not if it could be avoided. Tom’s back hit the opposite wall of George’s office. There was no more room to move, but it might have already been enough. Just a few more feet, Jake, Tom thought.
Jake’s hand shook. His finger began squeezing the trigger. His eyes were locked on Tom as he pushed forward, aiming the gun for Tom’s head.
Tom could see he needed to give Jake time to enter the office. “How about we leave and never come back? We’ll call it even, Jake. No one needs to die here.”
“We already covered this. If I let you go now you would change things. For all I know, you might try and kill me in the past, keep all this from happening,” Jake said.
“Time can’t be changed,” Tom explained. “If we had gone back in time to kill you it would have already happened and you wouldn’t exist. You can let us go and nothing will change.”
“Nothing will change because no one is leaving,” Jake sneered. “And if time can’t be changed, what have you and David been doing all this time, sight-seeing?”