Disclaimer: See chapter one.
Temporal Anomaly, Chapter Two
Cascade, Washington, early 21st century...
Blair climbed into the truck on the passenger side, setting the Tai food down on the seat next to him while he got buckled in. He never failed to perform that little maneuver since hooking up with Jim because one never knew when they would be drawn into a high-speed chase and be thrown all over the cab of the truck. Once settled, the detective picked the food back up and set it in his lap. Then he turned to Jim and said, "We headed to Harborman's?"
Jim nodded. "Yeah, Chief. It's the fourth robbery of his retail stores in as many weeks, so it's no wonder it got kicked back to Major Crimes. Old man Harborman is probably getting ready to behead whoever's behind this. He has enough problems with the divorce."
With that, the pair headed for Fifth and Georgia, the latest of Harborman's Retail Outlets to be hit by these very effective and efficient robbers. There was no doubt that they were all being committed by the same person or group of people. The MO was identical in all four robberies; the front door locks tampered with, the most expensive items stolen from the store, and the office safe open and empty, no finger prints, no foot prints, no fibers. The safes were never harmed by the break in. Whomever was committing these robberies had the combinations.
They arrived at the scene, fully taped off in yellow barrier tape. The store was already attracting reporters, so Simon had made sure to get the area blocked off fast. They showed their badges to the uniforms who were keeping the press back and walked into the store. Forensics was already there, dusting for prints and attempting to collect evidence. Jim spotted the captain and walked over to him. He noticed them and waved them over. Blair said, "Hi, Simon. Is this looking like it was the same guys?"
Banks nodded. "So far. These guys do a real slick job, never leaving anything for Forensics to pick up. I'm hoping you two can find something they might have missed." No one in the room would have taken that statement amiss except the owner, who was currently attempting to bully his way into the crime scene. Simon groaned, rubbing his forehead with his cigar-toting right hand and said, "Why don't you two get started while I deal with Harborman."
They nodded and Jim said, "Yes, sir."
The two detectives had made an art out of the way they worked a crime scene. Blair automatically placed a gentle hand on his Sentinel's back and began talking about what to look for as he used his senses. It wasn't that he thought Jim couldn't remember what to do from one instance to the next, but he knew that his voice and touch could provide a grounding effect that would keep him from zoning while he worked.
It didn't take long for Jim to find something in the air. Quickly noticing the change in his body language, Blair said, "What is it, Jim?"
"I'm smelling something weird here, Chief. I recognize it, but I can't quite place it."
"All right, just catalogue it for later. Any thing else?"
They went carefully over the entire store, but they found nothing else. It was time to go into the office. As Jim surveyed the room, he quickly spotted something behind the small vanity mirror that was kept on the desk. First, the glass was one way. Second, "Hey, there's a camera in here! It's pointed straight at the safe." He went over and picked up the mirror, surprised that the cheap setup hadn't been discovered by these thorough crooks. However, he thought that the store manager should be commended. Everything there was probably taken from the shelves of the store. The little mirror was part of a spy game that was sold there, the camcorder was of the brand sold there, and the book that was propping up the little camera was, too. This was all propped up on the office desk, and until Jim had picked up the mirror, a casual glance would not have revealed that there was anything wrong with the mirror being there.
The camera only took standard video cassettes, so there was only six hours of tape, but it would probably have the robbers on it. The night manager left at midnight and the opening manager normally came in at six, so the robbery would have had to take place in between those times. This was a major break.
When they got back to the station, they went to the lab to run the tape. As they were walking, Blair said, "Apparently the night manager has been doing that for the last two weeks, ever since the press got hold of the fact that the safes were always opened with the combination and not broken into. He figured if someone was targeting the chain they'd get to him eventually and he didn't plan on being blamed for the money disappearing. Last year they caught one of the cashiers stealing and he almost got blamed for the loss."
Jim raised an eyebrow. "Thank God for greedy men."
Blair snorted. "Yeah."
They reached the lab and Jim opened the door, allowing Blair to enter first. He put the tape into the VCR and hit play, then forwarded it until they saw the thieves come into view. They watched as a man knelt in front of the safe, pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket, and then punched in the numbers he read on the safe's keypad. The device then opened obligingly and the man, who was dressed totally in black and was wearing a ski mask and gloves, emptied the cash and change from the safe into the bag. Then he closed the bag and left the safe open, never even turning his head toward the hidden camera.
After the initial run-through, they played it again, this time in slow motion, hoping to catch some small mistake. A sudden flash of pale flesh at the thief's wrist made Jim pause the tape. "It looks like this guy has a tattoo on his arm." Just then, one of the lab techs walked in. "Hey, can you get me an enhancement of this frame? Mostly on the guy's wrist?"
The surprised tech took a moment to look, then said, "Sure. That shouldn't be too hard."
Blair grinned and said, "Things are looking up!"
Jim just smiled.
As the light faded from their view, Sentinel and Guide took quick stock of each other before looking at their surroundings. The first thing they noticed was that their clothes had been changed. Emily had been dressed in a dark blue, form-fitting shirt and loose black slacks with black ship boots. Chris had been in his uniform since he was due to go on duty in an hour. Now Emily was dressed in a red cotton spagetti-strap shirt, black denim jeans, black sneakers, and a black leather bike jacket. Chris was in a navy cotton collared shirt with long sleeves tucked into black jeans, a black leather belt, and black sneakers. All very much indicative of early twenty-first century fashion, fairly trendy without being terribly expensive. Then there was the place that they found themselves in. Emily asked, "Why did he send us to the loft? And why make us dress the part?"
Chris got to looking around. There was something wrong here. Then he looked out the glass balcony door and blanched. Noticing his reaction, Emily moved to where she could see out as well. Chris quietly said, "Holy-!" For outside the loft was not the mostly-destroyed ruin of an ancient city, with trees and grass and weeds encroaching from the surrounding forest to reclaim what once belonged to it, but a sprawling and very active metropolis of the early twenty-first century.
This caused Chris to notice other things, like the smell of coffee, fresh enough to have been made that morning, the ticking of the clock on the wall that proclaimed it was half past five o' clock in the evening, the news coming off the radio in the down-stairs bedroom that mentioned the date being August 15th and the City of Cascade's upcoming Labor Day celebration. Finally, he noticed a newspaper on the coffee table. He checked the date. "August 15th, 2002. If I didn't know it wouldn't hurt him, I'd wring the little brat's neck!"
Emily realized they were in trouble when she looked at the clock and it read 5:32 PM. "Chris! We have to get out of here. They get off at five. They'll be home any minute!"
Chris tried to remember what he knew about twentieth century construction. "Where's the fire escape?"
"Blair's room!"
At the sound of an approaching internal combustion engine, Chris cursed under his breath. He looked toward the door of the loft apartment and saw a large black jaguar. The animal growled at him in challenge. "We have really got to get out of here! All we need is for two twenty-first century cops to catch us in their apartment!"
Emily blanched. "Especially when one of them is a Sentinel!" They scrambled for Blair's bedroom. Emily got the window unlocked and they went through it. They started down the rickety steel stairway, praying that they could reach the bottom before the cops got out of the elevator. The other Sentinel would know already that something was amiss, and dealing with Jim Ellison in what Blair had always called "Blessed Protector" mode was not on their things to do list!
As Jim's blue and white '69 Ford pickup pulled in, Jim already knew that there was something wrong. He couldn't yet place it, though. However, once they were in the elevator, Jim pulled his gun. Blair said, "What is it, Jim? What's wrong?"
"I can hear voices in the loft. You expecting company?"
Blair's eyes narrowed. "Not me."
By the time they had reached the top floor of their building, Jim could make out what they were saying. "They went out the fire escape. They're talking about us using first names, so they know who we are, but I don't recognize the voices." They got inside the apartment and Blair got on his cell phone to call in a break in. Jim went to Blair's room to follow the invaders out the fire escape.
The two were already to the ground by the time he got out the window. He started tracking them as he tucked his gun back into its back waist-band holster and thundered his way down the steel, hoping to keep them within range of his senses. By the time he reached the bottom, however, they had either gotten out of his hearing range or they had stopped running, for he could no longer hear the pounding of two pairs of running sneakers on the sidewalk. Cursing the timing that had allowed them to escape, he went back around to the front of the building to the truck. Not surprisingly, Blair was there waiting for him. His partner often came so close to reading his mind it was scary.
Jim got into the driver's seat and started the truck while Blair got buckled in, then they headed off down the street, trying to spot the fugitives. Blair said, "What did they look like?"
"One white male, six foot plus, dark hair, blue shirt, black pants. One white female, five foot seven, dark hair, red shirt, leather jacket, black pants. Either they got out of range of my hearing, or they stopped running to blend in, and I'm betting on door number two."
As they rounded the corner, Jim spotted them on the sidewalk. They were walking briskly, but they weren't hurrying, blending into the crowd fairly easily. Not knowing if they were armed, he wanted to wait until he could get them away from people to apprehend them, but he wasn't sure if they would do that, especially knowing that there was someone after them. He paced them for a while, then saw an opportunity to make his move. He drove into an alley blocking their escape route in that direction. He got out and walked around the front of the truck. Blair got out, too, and they both started toward the fugitives. The male of the pair suddenly looked up toward them. He got a look of controlled fear on his face, then grabbed his companion and steered her toward the street.
They would have made it. Jim and Blair were much too far away to have caught up to them on foot at this point and still have to dodge traffic, and the man was obviously counting on that. But fate took a hand and forced matters. As they stepped into the street, the woman slightly ahead of the man, a red convertible with an idiot teenager at the wheel came speeding around the corner, probably in a race with the green one that was close behind it. She didn't see the car, and the driver swerved too late to miss her. Chrome collided with flesh with a sickening thud, throwing her ten feet before she hit the pavement.
The man shouted "Emily!" and ran to where she had landed, no longer caring about the police who were on their tail or the fact that he would be arrested now. For the moment, neither did the two detectives. All three men converged on the fallen woman, concerned for her well being.
The man reached her first. Her face was covered in blood from being dragged along the street, and it looked like she had broken a few bones. Jim listened and realized that she wasn't breathing. The fugitive shouted, "No! Don't you die on me, Emily!" He began mouth to mouth, trying to keep air moving in her lungs. Blair called it in and Jim watched in case her heart stopped as well and CPR was required before an ambulance could get there. It was nearly a full minute later, but she finally started breathing on her own again. Relief flooded the man's face, but she wasn't out of the woods yet, still unconcious and most likely with broken ribs. It didn't look like she had hit her head, just scraped her face along the road, making a bloody mess, but he made sure that she didn't start moving either in case she had a spinal injury.
"They're on the way, Jim," said Blair after shutting off his cell phone.
The partners silently agreed not to arrest the man until the ambulance arrived, sensing that the man wouldn't leave his female friend. However once it got there and the paramedics started taking care of her, Jim approached the man, handcuffs out and ready. He saw the maneuver, but he made no move to run. He just said, "Please. Let me wait until she's ready to go."
Jim regarded him thoughtfully, then nodded. It was a minor thing, and if it allowed him to have a cooperative prisoner, then he had no problem with it. "What's your name?"
He looked at him oddly, then seemed to wilt a bit. He said, "I can only tell you Christopher. I'm sorry."
"Why is that?"
He groaned, almost as if he were afraid of the answer to that question. He said, "That's classified. I really can't tell you anything else."
Classified? That meant these two were likely military. Shit! He prayed this didn't mean his secret was out. He was deathly afraid that the military would one day decide to kidnap him and try to turn him into a weapon, a brainwashed assassin, or even kill him and dissect his brain trying to find the part that made him a Sentinel and try to replicate it. Either way, it would mean the end of his life because he would be shot trying to escape or he would permanently zone out without his Guide there to center him. Unless they brought Blair along, and that didn't even bear thinking about.
They finished loading the woman into the ambulance. Christopher watched the vehicle pull away, worry and hope warring on his face as they turned the corner out of sight. Then he sighed and turned to face the detectives. "Do what you have to."
Jim sighed. "Let's get out of the street." Once they were on the sidewalk, he handcuffed Christopher and read him his rights, the charges being breaking and entering and evading arrest. He walked him over to the black and white that had just pulled up and put him in the back.
Blair walked up behind his partner. "Do you want to deal with this today, or go home and question him in the morning?"
Jim said, "He told me that even his last name is classified. We won't be getting anything out of him, so I think we should go home. Deal with him tomorrow. We've got the Harborman case, too, but if the military has decided to come after us that isn't going to matter much. I prefer to be fully rested if and when they show up."
As they got back into the truck to head back home, Blair prayed that Jim was wrong about the meaning of the break in, but he knew he would worry about it, making sleep a problematic concept at best. He sighed. It was going to be a long night.
Chris sat in the holding cell, his icy glare enough to get the other four occupants to leave him alone, though there were some things that it didn't help with. None of them were very clean, and the stench of unwashed bodies in his sensitive nose nearly made him want to vomit. One of the men, who had a blue mermaid tattooed on his bald head, continually ground his teeth, making the Sentinel want to knock them out. Other miriad sounds and smells made him want to cringe in their intensity.
He knew that if he didn't control his senses soon, he'd end up doing something to get himself in even more trouble. He imagined Emily's voice telling him how to dial down his senses, returning their sensitivity to more acceptable levels. Finally it worked, the sounds not so grating and the stench slightly more bearable. He took one of the unoccupied bunks and lay down on it, hoping that he'd at least be able to get a little sleep.
His and Emily's ancestors. He'd never entertained the idea of ever actually meeting them, certainly not to get arrested by them. If he didn't know that it wouldn't do any good, he thought he'd likely punch that Q brat in the teeth for dropping them in the loft like that! Hopefully the rest of this weird trip would go better.
Emily. God! He couldn't loose her! She was his Guide and his friend. He didn't think he'd survive if she were to die from her injuries. He was right there! Why couldn't he have protected her? Some Sentinel he was turning out to be! His own Guide, and he let her get hit by a damned car! He was a joke!
Holding back the tears that he knew would be a sign of weakness in this hostile environment, he slipped into a light doze, well aware that it was a good thing he had nothing to steal.
Emily woke in pain, trying to figure out where she was. A nurse came in and informed her that she was in the hospital. "Where's Chris?"
"We weren't told anything. All we know is your first name. Can you tell us your full name, Emily? We need it for our records."
She looked at the nurse, and realized that she couldn't say what her name was. The name Sandburg was well known by the hospitals in Cascade, and it was too much to hope that it wouldn't get back to her ancestor. Chris had probably been arrested. Damn! He wouldn't tell them anything because of the Temporal Prime Directive, and though she was the last one to be quoting Starfleet regulations, she realized that anything she said could easily change the future enough to alter hers and Chris's existence. Things had to remain secret! "I can't tell you that. It's classified." Hopefully saying that wouldn't get her thrown into the psych ward. Ha! She couldn't get that lucky. Jim and Blair would be arresting her as well, and hiding things from those two was going to be a pain, to say the least.
The nurse looked puzzled. "Why would your name be classified?"
"That's classified, too. Sorry. I wish I could tell you, but I really can't."
The nurse walked away in wonder. Classified, huh? That was a new one on her. Probably didn't want the cops to know her name so they wouldn't arrest her like they did the man who was with her. Well, it wasn't her problem.
Well, here's the second chapter. If you were reading this story before, you've probably already seen this part.
