A/N: The muse is back.
Chapter 14Tsunami
His bed had been remade and there were open watch cases strewn about in no specific order, something she knew he'd normally freak out about, but he just sat there with a knife prying the back off a watch in his hand and tossing the watch case onto the bed and setting the small circuit board and battery aside.
She'd watched him do this for the past two hours and finally said, "Sheldon, do you want me to tidy up the empty watches and throw them out? You've been at this for two hours and I think you need to take a break, sweetie."
She cringed mentally at 'sweetie' but figured it would be accepted as just her normal comments and she was right. He was ignoring her.
Sheldon finally opened the last watch and discarded its case and straightened up and twisted around. His back was obviously hurting from being in the same position – hunched over and straining to do detailed work.
He stood and stretched and then arched his back and Penny cringed at the 'cracking' sound of his spine.
"Sheldon, hold still." She reached over and started massaging his back and he stepped away from her and bent and began throwing the discarded cases into one of the empty bags from Penny's shopping expedition.
"I'm fine, Penny. Just a bit stiff. That was the easy part. The hard part is separating the batteries from the circuits. I could use someone with deft hands."
He looked at her and the implication was obvious: she had the 'deft' hands.
What would have taken him hours took her only 30 minutes. "There ya go, Moon Pie. Now what?"
He sorted the batteries by voltage and then took the Cooper Pulse Pistol and twisted off the cap of the battery storage and emptied them out into the palm of his hand.
"Now I replace these batteries that all have different voltages with ones of the same but greater output. Penny, Up Time we had to scrounge these from the rubble. I was fortunate to find several that still were carrying any charge at all."
He selected four from a stack and slid them into the pistol's base and screwed on the cap.
Outside in the motel parking lot, three men in coveralls stepped out of a van and stood staring at one another and then, without any signal or conscious movement, began walking to the motel room door that Penny and Sheldon were in. The last of the three held an electronic device in his hands and swept it back and forth across the front of the couple's motel room window.
Call it dumb luck, Divine Intervention or simple coincidence.
When the door of the motel room crashed open and the first Triple-8 skin job stepped in, Sheldon had been testing the weight and heft of the new pistol. He was aiming at the checkout card mounted on the back of the closed door and the Triple-8's head was already in his sights.
He fired what he intended to be a brief pulse at the Triple-8 but he hadn't considered the effects of the new and more powerful batteries. The usual pencil-thin blue plasma bolt was broader and more powerful and fried the terminator's circuits instantly.
The noise was ungodly loud and seemed to settle into Sheldon and Penny's very bones. Penny had thrown herself on the floor between the beds and was screaming in terror.
Outside, the other two Triple-8s were likewise affected. The one standing behind the first attacker was fried and beginning to topple over and the last Triple-8, shielded by the motel's brick walls, staggered and fell to its knees, unable to follow its programming, caught in an endless rebooting cycle.
Sheldon laid the 'Improved Cooper Pulse Pistol' on the bed and knelt beside Penny and pulled her into his lap and put his hand across her mouth to stifle her screams.
"Penelope!" he said loudly, "Stop this screaming before you attract people who won't understand what's happening. We have to get out of here, Penny, now!" The buzzing in his ears was fading but he still used his 'outside voice' to talk with her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched at his bony arms and began crying hysterically and Sheldon finally snapped.
He slapped her across the face – harder than he intended – but with unintended consequences. She stopped crying and reared back and head-butted him in the nose.
Luckily for him, the distance and her hysteria worked in his favor and it only bled and wasn't broken, but you wouldn't know that from her reaction.
"Oh God, Sheldon, you're bleeding!" she wailed, ignoring that she was the one who had injured him. She got to her feet and rushed into the bathroom and returned with a wet washcloth and wiped the blood off his face. "I'll go get some ice and you lie down and put an ice pack on your nose. I'm sorry I – "
"No time for that, Penny! Help me pull the bodies into the room before someone sees them and calls the cops. These Triple-8s look exactly like the 'cops' from the bungalow. Must be the same series and batch," he stated pedantically, unconsciously slipping into 'lecture mode'.
They dragged two of the 'bodies' into the bathroom but Penny refused to touch the one Triple-8 who was still 'alive' and in perpetual reboot mode.
"No! I can't do it. What if he wakes up and tries to kill us?" She stood in the ruined doorway and just shook her head.
Sheldon pulled out Cameron's combat knife and scalped the Triple-8 and then popped out its main core processing chip and crushed it with his foot. Penny ran to the bathroom, stepping over the 'bodies', and vomited up her Egg McMuffins and coffee. The sucking sound that the scalp made when separating from the metal skull casing hand proven to be her undoing.
Grunting with the effort and dripping blood on the sidewalk, he dragged the body inside the room and closed the door. It would no longer lock and the metal frame was severely warped and he could see daylight through the frame.
The cell phone rang and Sheldon listened as it went through the ring-disconnect series and finally he just scooped it up.
"Don't talk. Three Triple-8s paid us a surprise visit. They're down and out thanks to the Improved Cooper Pulse Pistol. My companion is freaked out but otherwise we sustained no injuries. What is your ETA at this location?"
He could hear voices and then, "One hour and forty-five minutes. How did they – "
"Call again at city limits. We'll remain here until you get here but no longer than 120 minutes from now," he said, engaging the stopwatch feature on his new watch and hanging up.
Sheldon went out to the truck and tried to start it but its electronics were fried just like the 3 mechs. There were no other vehicles in the back lot except for a white panel van with California plates and he deduced, correctly, that it had been the mechs' mode of transportation.
The keys were in it and it started easily. He parked it beside the Avalanche and transferred the remaining bags and cases from the truck to the van.
"Penny, when you feel able, I need you to help me move the bodies out into our new van. The General and his people will be here within two hours or we'll leave without them. It's no longer safe for us here."
"How did they find us, Sheldon? How did they know – " She was getting worked up again and he interrupted her.
"I think they put something on the truck before they approached the bungalow. It's the logical answer and the only one we can assume without further proof. Now, how about a little help here, Penny?"
Sarah pulled into the motel parking lot and drove around to the back and parked next to the Avalanche.
"Made it with 6 minutes to spare. I guess that's the Triple-8s' van. We'll have to do some magic with the plates and then figure out how to dispose of the bodies. Let's go meet our weapons maker and get a briefing."
Cameron started to leave the Cherokee but Sarah stopped her. "Cameron, try and contain your PDAs with the Doc. Don't upset his girlfriend anymore than she already is."
Derek just snorted and got out and checked out the Avalanche. He got in, turned the key and – nothing.
"This one's fried. We'll either take the van or steal something new. Let's go check out the mech corpses. This should be very interesting."
The couple from Pasadena had already packed the van and they were ready to go. Sheldon explained what happened, offering his suspicion that the Avalanche had been tagged with a transponder in Glendale but Cameron had another thought.
"It's her, Doc. They've planted a transponder somewhere on her – or in her. Omaha, we'll need to do a scan and – "
Penny turned pale and stood behind Sheldon. She'd blanched when the brunette terminator had said 'in her'.
"No one's going to hurt her, Doc, but we have to be sure. Tin Miss can do a cavity search and scan in the bathroom and then we can rule her out. Your pistol would have fried anything electronic on the Avalanche when you fried to three Triple-8s."
It was humiliating but necessary. Sarah patiently explained what might have been done to her and Penny was suddenly anxious to get it all over with. Cameron ran her hands over Penny's clothing but couldn't detect anything so Sarah explained the need to do it 'skin to skin'.
"Whatever it is, wherever it is, I want it out – now! I can't believe they put something inside of me to track Sheldon! What – what if it's inside me? What then?"
Cameron smiled and tried to reassure Penny but both women could see that Penny was nearing what Sheldon would term 'terminal vapors'. Sarah nodded at Cameron and then distracted Penny.
With her head turned, she was an easy target and Cameron pressed against a nerve bundle in Penny's neck and the blonde collapsed, unconscious.
Ten minutes later and it was out and flushed down the commode. Penny was naturally upset both at how they'd knocked her out and at what had been done to her, down there. Cameron explained that the transponder was now on a journey through the town's sewage system and anyone tracking them would have a nasty surprise waiting for them.
Sarah walked into the main bedroom and explained what they'd found and what they'd done with it.
"They probably stuffed it up in there when they first took her. She's clean now but really upset. She couldn't have known about it, Doc, so cut her some slack, okay? She'd not to blame."
"Of course she's not to blame. Is she okay? There was no permanent damage done, was there?" said Sheldon. He couldn't live with himself if she'd been irreparably harmed as a result of her association with him here in Down Time.
"She's fine. A little sore maybe but Cameron's an expert at removing such things and because she's your girlfriend, she was extra gentle."
Cameron noted that he didn't object to the 'girlfriend' comment and John once again wondered if she had feelings for the talented physicist but remembered about his Up Time self sending the Doc back without any support.
'That's not me! I'll never be like that Up Time,' ignoring the evidence that he was, indeed, like that.
John and Derek drove the van and Sheldon and Penny sat in the back seat of the Jeep. Penny's hand had crept into his and held it tightly until she finally dozed off only to be awakened when the Jeep pulled off the interstate.
"What's going on, Sheldon?" She still held his hand but was lying across the seat, her head in his lap.
"The General, Cameron and Derek are burying the mech bodies. It won't take long and soon we'll be at my grandmother's and then we're all taking a trip to 2008."
"What? That's impossible, Shel – oh, yeah, I forgot. You invented time travel. Why back then?"
"I didn't invent time travel, Penny. I simply developed a device that opened up rifts in time in a controlled fashion. I've done it 44 times, Penny, and I can assure you it doesn't hurt a bit."
"You'll hold my hand and not let me get lost or anything, won't you, Moon Pie?"
"If that's what you want, Penny, then of course. Although – "
He was interrupted when Sarah and Cameron returned. Cameron saw that Penny was awake and said, "There was no damage done, Penny. You might feel a little discomfort but it will pass quickly."
Penny started to sit up but Sheldon stopped her. "Penny, you've been through a terrible ordeal. Sleep while you can."
Cameron looked back at the Doc and Om – no, Penny, here and now – and smiled at him. Sheldon smiled back and then closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. He didn't want to have the discussion that Cameron was pushing for.
He would keep Penny at arms' length until things calmed down and he could return her to Pasadena and her old life.
Penny was instantly awake when she felt Sheldon's body suddenly tense and then begin to tremble violently. She sat up and saw that it was dark and that Cameron was driving while Sarah slept in the front seat.
"He's having a dream about Up-Time. He'll be all right though. Just hold on to him so he knows you're there. Maybe whisper that you're with him and he's not alone. It helps, Penny."
"How do you know about his dreams? Is it some Terminator skill you have?"
"No. I just know how he is when he dreams. You wouldn't comfort him so I did. He pushed and push Up Time and it took a toll on him."
Penny snorted but didn't say anything. She figured that Cameron was referring to Omaha and not her.
'I won't let him go through this alone. He's my best friend and I'll be there for him. It's what friends do, right?'
A few hours later and Penny woke him up gently. She'd maneuvered him around so that his head was in her lap and he could stretch out a bit.
"Hey, sweetie, Cameron says we're at your Meemaw's place. You need to wake up, Shel."