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"You know, you sounded like a Surgeon just then, Jess."
Harding smiled. "I expect to be one before the end of the month."
"Oo onna uck ick o get dat?" I asked sweetly.
Mikaela punched me in the kidneys.
"Don't know what you're saying, Slugger," she said. "But I don't much like your tone of voice."
"Unny," I said, around a wheeze.
Harding swung the hatch open and my heart plummeted. I knew where we were. I recognised the bright red gantry. The liquid oxygen tanks. The barbed wire fence that had a convenient hole dug under it. I could smell the lush undergrowth nearby. I could feel the wet heat. I heard the sound of insects and a busy metropolis in the distance. Lots of cars on a freeway.
Pratt threw me from the top step. It was farther down to ground level than I had thought. My shoulder hit hard. I could do nothing to soften the fall. The concrete came up and kissed me on the side of the head. Stars formed, and they weren't part of a nebula. I screamed in agony, but the sound of it was muted because of the gag. My arms jerked in response to my shoulder being viciously yanked out of its socket. My vision dimmed. My breaths rushed in and out, but I couldn't seem to get enough air around the blasted gag.
Tears streamed down my face; the final insult to injury. I heard Pratt dust off her hands and stomp back into the Orion.
"Close the door, would you, Jess." What. A. Cow. Actually, I thought of another C-word to use there, but I'm a lady, so I limited myself to calling her a bovine.
I blinked the tears away and watched as the Orion came back into better focus. It didn't look good. Scorch marks marred its outer surface. Smoke damage was evident at one of the thruster ports. The cone was dented. I wasn't sure how that would have happened. But it looked like it had been to war.
My eyes met Jessica Harding's. For a moment, I thought I saw compassion on her face. Or maybe it was guilt. I'm not sure. It was there and gone so quickly, I could have dreamt it.
"You're back where you belong, Wylde," she said levelly. "This is the right thing to have happened. You can't stay out of time forever."
Was she trying to convince me or herself?
I couldn't ask her, because she slammed the hatch closed and the wheel turned.
This was bad, but if I stayed where I was, it could get infinitely worse. That Orion was seriously damaged, and if they tried a Return now, and didn't even shift planes to do it — not that I was sure that would make much of a difference — I could get caught up in the backwash.
I started to clumsily roll my body away from the danger zone. Of course, that meant putting weight on my dislocated shoulder. I screamed past the gag as I slowly made the turn, placing more and more weight on that side of my body. Panting once I'd rolled far enough to lift the weight again, sobs started to make it difficult to breathe at all. By the time I'd managed one revolution, I was in excruciating agony and barely able to suck in any oxygen.
I managed four more complete rotations before I passed out. I had no idea if I'd made it far enough away from the Orion to avoid getting snotted by its rocket engines. I didn't even hear them take off, so maybe the Orion had done its dash and Harding and Pratt were as stranded in this time as I was. It didn't matter. My body had had enough. Time travel-induced exhaustion hit me, my injuries doing the rest.
I'd be lucky if I ever woke up again.
As has often been proven unequivocally by now, I don't have that kind of luck.
I woke up to not one, but two contemporary weapons being aimed directly at my face; none other than Special Agents Dawson and Carter of the NSA and FBI, respectively, gripping them and glaring down at me with fury in their eyes.
"Rap!" I croaked.
"You bet your ass you've got a rap sheet now, young lady," one of them replied.
Which made absolutely no sense at all. So, of course, I laughed.
