Chapter Four
The Battle in Autopsy
I reach into the pocket of my red dress and take out the old black ID folder, open it and pull out mom's old gold shield. It's a clip-on rather than a pin and I slip it over the red belt. The way my night is going, it can't make things worse by displaying it. Goddess forbid that I should get stopped and someone makes me hand over the case and see my holographic P.I. license rather than an NCIS ID. There is no way I can avoid direct action then; and I have the feeling Dana is not through having fun with me yet.
No sooner do I clip the shield on and put the case away when I feel it. The sensation goes through my body with a mild tingle and mental awareness too clear to be mistaken. A Mobius Transfer conduit is forming - about twenty feet above my head. Autopsy!
A really old Anglo-Saxon word echoes through the garage when I turn to the elevator - and the Iris scanner attached to the wall beside it.
Thank the Goddess I practically grew up in this building. I run across the garage to the Emergency stair, slam the door open and charge up the stairs, take them three at a time and strive hard for four!
I slam open the back door to Autopsy and find the complex dark save for the light in the elevator foyer beyond the sliding doors at the other end of the room. Thank Dana and Dagda mom and dad left right after I did! I slap the lights on from the secondary switches behind me.
x
As the lights come on throughout the white room the sensations that play along my skin and jangle my nerves reach a peak. In front of me, between the second and third silver tables, the front of a man appears, followed by the rest of him along a perfectly flat plane until he is completely in the room.
John Carson the younger staggers, falls doubled over on the silver table, hit by the same transition vertigo that had laid me out. I see in his hand a Quistar amulet, undoubtedly given to him by Starstruck. Just their style, ward off Transition Vertigo as a Service to their customers and run the risk of future neurological damage. 'Why do you idiots think I take the TV?'
From under my belt I pull out my TASER. It's barely half an inch thick, about as long as dad's antique phone but capable of firing a wireless charge of up to 1000 megavolts over 90 feet.
"John Carson," I call in my most commanding tones, "surrender in the name of the North American Union." When he picks his head up from the table - no amulet will protect against reorientation of your position on Earth over a quarter century of objective motion - and looks at me, his eyes show how badly he's suffering the vertigo - first timer and he goes for spatial and temporal displacement, I have no sympathy - and he's utterly surprised I got here first.
It's one of the few beauties of temporal transiting, and one of the many things I'm sure those money-grubbers at Starstruck never mentioned. "Turn around and put your hands behind your head."
"You - can't arrest me." He pushes up off the table. "I've done nothing."
"I'll let the courts decide that. Turn around."
Actually they already have. Knowing a person is going to commit a crime is one thing, arresting him for it goes to Conspiracy but I'll take that over so many friends dead. Maybe they'll throw in mucking with the Temporal Line if they can find a jury that'll understand it. Not my problem.
I'm ready when he yanks an Osale 39 from his pocket; I slap it from his grip from eight feet away and it slams into the far wall. He clutches his wrenched hand, surprise leaping up to astonishment. What was he thinking? Witches made it possible for him to be here, how is he surprised a witch came for him? In his momentary uncertainty I try for reason.
"Your wife sent me from three days after you left; she's scared to death for you. So far, you haven't done anything wrong," I'm willing to overlook the gun if he'll cooperate, "so let's just go back. You can return to your wife a free man." And if I can I'll close the door to future trips to the past through Starstruck and everyone else.
x
I watch anger and frustration run with a dozen other emotions across his face and almost sympathize; he's been stopped before he began. Fortunately, he doesn't seem stupid. Eventually the tide of emotions withdraws, and it is with a sigh of resignation that he turns around.
I approach, TASER ready in my hand while from a hidden pocket inside my belt I pull out a set of plastic restraints, by no means willing to trust him in the vortex. "Put your hands behind your head, fingers interlaced."
My attention on his hands, like a probie I'm not watching his feet. His right foot comes back up hard and slams into my crotch!
x
I grit my teeth to contain a shriek - don't let any man tell you being kicked there doesn't hurt! The TASER slips from my hand and I throw myself backward rather than writhe on the floor in agony. I barely avoid the knife that slices so close I can feel the air cut. I back away quickly and dodge another swipe, the deadly tool coming inches from my chest.
He slashes again; I barely manage to back out of the way! No time! I need a second to focus! It's not like raising an eldritch shield; a physical attack takes the second he's not giving me! I duck and weave, his slashes come too close as I try to maneuver to get at least one table between us!
The huge glass and metal doors across the room slide open as I jump back to avoid a murderous lunge across the table, but now I have a second but before I can use it-
x
"STOP!" a familiar voice slices through the room and Carson staggers, nearly drops the knife. I look past him, astonished to see mom standing at the door, right hand upraised toward him. Carson staggers again, drops the blade and staggers into the middle table.
My eyes can see nothing, but my inner vision 'sees' the whipping silver cord that extends from Carson's back to mom's upraised hand. As he grows weaker, less coordinated, she grows stronger.
x
The interruption has bought me the second I need. Though we're six feet apart, I draw my right hand back and thrust it forward, hard, and Carson's blasted off his feet, flies through the air and slams into the cooling lockers in the far wall. He's dazed, should be out cold but it allows me to reach across the room to the supply drawers at my right and pull one open.
Thank the Goddess for dad's consistency as Chief M.E.; he never changed uncle Ducky's system, so two elastic strips leap at my gesture out of the drawer and across the room andbstretch to their limits as they fly. One wraps tightly about Carson's ankles, knots itself, the other about his hands.
Mom's hands close steadily, one upon the other, compressing the force she'd stolen. She forces it smaller and smaller until it's compact enough and she hurtles it like an invisible fast ball directly at Carson's skull. The psi energy overloads his brain; he falls to the floor just as I had earlier, a marionette whose strings have been cut.
As the dénouement to this double team capture I pull, from by the second table, at the lever on one of the lower coolers. I get the door open, the tray out, roll Carson's insensate body upon it, slide the tray back in and close the door. He'll keep until I can get us both safely home.
x
Only then do I turn to my 'partner' in capturing this fugitive, and when I see the look in her eyes I know I'd rather be in the cooler myself than face this.
She crosses the room, her dark almond eyes locked on mine until we're both between the tables and she's looking deep and hard into my eyes. Funny, I'm about two inches taller than she is but she always manages to seem bigger than me.
She then inspects me minutely from toes to crown, pauses for an instant at the gold shield at my waist before her eyes lock with mine again. "I want the answer to one question," she says with firmness that is utterly familiar, "and I want the Truth."
I brace myself. "What?"
"Are you my daughter?"