18 January 2007, 1517 GMT / Washington D.C., USA
Immediately, there was another gunshot from a different direction, then two more in rapid succession. Emily lost count as something heavy fell across her chest and face. She scrambled to push the heavy thing away from her and she opened her eyes in time to see her reflection in the man’s goggles as he rolled away, limp and bleeding. She screamed again, and tried to scramble backwards away from the scene, but her side was hurt too badly to move. She felt at her abdomen for the gunshot wound, her hand came away from her side in blood, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and she dare not lift her head. To her other side, was another body, the man who had shot her was missing a piece of his skull. She looked away and vomited on the pavement next to her head, and on the side of her face. This attracted the attention of the last wetsuit. He turned toward her, and fired, blowing out the tire of the cab, right next to her head. Another shot, and he fell to the ground with a sick thunk.
Another figure with a gun ran around the side of the rear van. She screamed, but the figure only stepped slowly toward her. She recognized the face; it was Jonathan, the new assistant to one of the Rhode Island senators. She stared at him as he dropped his gun on the pavement, and knelt down next to her. Without looking at her face, he pulled a small bottle from a jacket pocket, tore open her blouse, and poured something clear and stinging over her stomach and sides. He smiled, and finally looked up at her.
“It’s okay,” he said between rapid breaths, “The shot just grazed you. You’re going to be alright.” He reached into another pocket, and brought out a white rectangle, about the size of a paper-back book. He tore the cover off with his teeth, and pressed the contents of the package against her side. It stuck there, and she felt a painful sucking sensation for a moment, then the pain of her side began to quickly diminish.
“That should stop the bleeding and numb the pain of the wound. Do you think you can get up yet?”
Emily tried to lift herself up onto her elbows, but her side was still in too much pain. She lay back down, and shook her head. The movement made her head swim again. She squeezed her eyes shut, and realized that she was crying. Jonathan looked calmly into her eyes, and touched her arm. “It’s okay,” he said softly, “I’ve got to clean up this mess before I go anyway.” He slipped off his jacket and rolled it up. Gently, he lifted her head, and slipped the rolled jacked between her neck and the pavement.
Emily tried to return his smile, tried to tell him, and herself, that she was going to be alright, but she couldn’t. As Jonathan stood up and out of her view, she saw the stars in the night sky above. Their twinkling calmed her slightly, and allowed her to realize that she was now very cold and full of questions.
The ludicrous nature of being saved from a group of men in wetsuits with guns by a Senator’s assistant from Rhode Island, who she barely even knew, was finally starting to dawn on her. She looked over at what Jonathan was doing. He had knelt down beside one of the attackers, and begun searching the man’s pockets. After a moment, he pulled a handful of something that sounded like coins from one of the man’s pockets. Standing up, he looked over at Emily. The combination of the darkness and the few meters distance between them, made it difficult to pick out the expression on his face. “Please don’t get all freaked out by this, okay?” he said in a flat tone. She nodded as best she could, not knowing what to expect.
Jonathan made a move with his hand as if preparing to snap his fingers, then without a sound, he tossed one of the coins onto the wetsuit and stepped back. In a moment the man’s body began to shimmer, and then it vanished, including the puddle of blood. Emily was too weary to scream again, although she felt that another scream would likely have been justified.
She stammered, “Wh… Wha…?”
“I sent him back where he belongs,” Jonathan said, as he moved to one of the other bodies, and threw another coin. This man disappeared also.
Emily watched in silence as he made the last two bodies disappear then asked, “Wh… Where do they… ?”
“Were not exactly sure,” Jonathan told her, as he started picking up bullet shells in one hand, “probably about two to three thousand years from now, maybe four.”
Emily took a moment to process that, and watched Jonathan place all of the spent shells in a small pile on top of the wrapper from her bandage, then pile all but one of the coins on the paper with them. He used that last coin to make the pile, including the wrapper, disappear.
“Can you get up, now?” he asked her.
She tried, but it was still too painful. Silently, Jonathan came around to her side. He put one arm behind her back at her waist, and used the other to steady himself. He started to lift her, and slowly, awkwardly, painfully, she stood. With one arm still around her waist, and the other pulling the arm on her good side around his shoulder, Jonathan walked her around the wrecked vehicles, and over to a small dark colored Saturn.
He let go of her arm to open the door to the back seat, then eased her into the car. It was still running, and the inside was warm. She hadn’t realized just how cold she had been laying on the pavement. He made sure that she was in all the way, and closed the door. She wiped the vomit off of her face with one sleve as she watched him walk back over to the wreck, and retrieve his gun and jacket from the ground. As he started to walk back to the car, Emily heard sirens in the distance. Jonathan picked up his pace, and was in the driver’s seat of the Saturn within seconds. They immediately pulled away down Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the police?” she pleaded.
“No,” he said into the mirror, “the police would not understand.”
“I guess not,” she admitted, “I don’t understand what’s going on either.”
“Those men were trying to kill you,” he started, “well they were trying to kill your daughter actually, and I stopped them.”
“My… daughter?…” Emily shook her head, there were just too many questions, and she couldn’t ask them all at once. She decided to start with the most basic. “Why?” she asked.
“It’s my job,” he said, simply.
“To protect me?”
“To protect the timeline.” He corrected her. “Your daughter must be born, must be allowed to live.”
“So, you and those other men… You’re time-travelers?”
Jonathan only nodded.
“Who were those other guys?”
“The name of their organization roughly translates to ‘Hindsight League’,” he told her, “they are out to change key points in history to improve the outcome for themselves.”
“Why do they want to kill my…” she could barely say it, “my daughter?”
“We can only guess.”
She thought everything over for a moment, and came to a realization, “I suppose that we’re not headed to the hospital…”
“Right,” he said, “we can’t go anywhere that would put your location on public record, unless we want another firefight.”
“Who are you?”
He smiled in the mirror at her in a way that reminded her sadly of Jakob, whom she just realized they left dead or dieing at the scene of the wreck, “I’m Jonathan,” he said, “I’m the lead operative of the Timeline Correction Office.”
“So, you do this sort of thing all the time?”
“This is my seventh mission.” He said, “Now, there will be plenty of time for more questions. We need to find a place to hide for awhile.”
“One more question.” She had hundreds more questions, but one was burning in her mind.
“Go ahead,” he prompted.
She felt silly for asking, but she had to know, “Those guys back there…” she hesitated for a moment.
“Yes?”
“They weren’t… robots or anything were they?”
Jonathan actually laughed a little, “No,” he said, “They weren’t Terminators…”
Emily sighed and closed her eyes, she was very tired, and her side was starting to ache again. “Good,” she said, “I hated that movie.”
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