Wilde Storm Read online

  He nodded. “I don’t know why they’re even using all this fancy equipment. If you send the body into hypothermia and provide the proper life support equipment, suspended animation is fully possible.”

  I frowned. “We don’t want to take any chances with her life. If this works and is considered safe, we will procure it. Maybe later we can do experiments of our own, but not on her, Dad.”

  A soft smile touched his face. “You’re right, of course. I enjoy it when you call me dad, Penelope. Please make it so all the time.”

  Aaron chuckled.

  I rolled my eyes. “Give me the details so we can get back here. The sooner, the better.”

  And so, my father briefed us on exactly where to find the equipment and how to use the case he’d provided to transport it back. He assured us there would be no one hostile and we should be able to easily convince them to loan us the equipment by using his name.

  Aaron and I set our DARs to March of 2045, clasped hands, and activated our bracelets.

  5

  For the first time in my accidental foray into time travel, I managed to land gracefully and on two feet. I suspected it was because Aaron was holding on to me. I lurched forward, had to convince myself it wasn’t a great time to throw up, and finally swayed a bit until Aaron let go of my hand. His concerned gaze fell upon me, but I waved a hand. “Fine. I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t exactly fine, but I would be okay in a second. I still hadn’t quite gotten used to the feeling of vertigo I felt every time I used the DAR. My father had tried to teach me how to go without it a couple times, but the lessons weren’t going so great. I wasn’t sure if he was worried about me after Aaron removed the serum, but it was a good theory. To be honest, I was worried about it too. I was a Holmes, but did I still possess the ability after the serum was removed? I didn’t know I would ever be ready to test the theory out.

  The silence came to me first. I think few people ever realize the true sounds of silence. We’re used to the hum of the air conditioning, the gentle buzz of the computer hard drive, the occasional flicks of noise from the appliances we keep plugged in all the time, but here…this was true silence. It was only our breath. Only our shoes squeaking on the floor.

  “Do you hear that?” I whispered.

  “I think that’s the problem,” he said.

  “I wonder if it’s normal.”

  “Humans are rarely quiet unless they’re up to no good.”

  It was good logic when I thought about it.

  He lifted a finger to his lips and motioned for me to fall in behind him. I tried my best not to let my shoes squeak against the floor, but it was damn near impossible. Dad had made us dress in ridiculous white jumpsuits with brand new white tennis shoes. We looked like we were in a band—a really bad one.

  The artificial light reflected off the chrome walls. The floor underneath us was bright white tile. It was unwelcoming and sterile, but I guessed it needed to be that way since we landed in a hospital…or it should be a hospital. Doors lined the hallway. All chrome. Zero windows. It looked like an extremely efficient prison. I could see no patients, no doctors or nurses, no gurneys…nothing.

  “Does this seem weird to you?”

  Aaron snorted. “We’re in the year twenty forty-five. If it didn’t seem weird, I’d be worried more.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “There’s just something…off about this place. Hospitals should be more bustling. Unless everyone is dead. Then I’m not sure why they’d be in business.”

  “Penelope,” Aaron said in a low voice, “please shut up.”

  We walked through the long hallway until we came to a T. I let Aaron lead me to the right. Dad had given Aaron specific instructions on how to find it, but this whole no people thing was really unnerving. There were no signs either. How would you know where to go if you couldn’t find anything? And why were there no visitors?

  I shook my head and tried to focus on the task. “Get the machine. Get out. Don’t ask questions,” I whispered to myself.

  “Exactly,” Aaron said. He reached behind and gripped my fingers in his hand.

  “You’re starting to get the heebie-jeebies, too!” I accused.

  He squeezed my fingers harder and hurried his steps. “It should be just a little while longer.”

  He made another left, then a right, and I thanked all the gods and goddesses I knew of that I was with a man who seemed to know directions because I would have been lost at the first turn. Everything looked exactly the same. No color. Chrome and white. All the rooms looked the same. I was the kind of girl who needed to know to turn right at the KFC next to that weird bum sitting on the corner. I was not the kind of girl who could navigate a space like this. My brain was too full of other useless shit to learn how to navigate properly.

  Aaron finally stopped at a door and pushed against it.

  “No door knobs,” I observed. “Door knobs are so retro.”

  Aaron blew out an annoyed breath.

  “Fine. I’ll shut up.” At least for a minute or so.

  Nothing happened. I looked around for a keypad or something to try to open the door, but there was nothing. “Do you think it’s fingerprint or DNA coded?” I asked.

  “If it is, we’re screwed.” He placed a hand flat against the area where a knob would usually go. Nothing.

  He tried to the left, right, bottom, and top of it—nothing.

  I tried kicking it because that always worked for me when something broke—nothing.

  Then we stopped and stood staring at each other dumbfounded. Had my father known about this? Was he at home laughing at us? Or was this place different from the last time he was here?

  Aaron banged his head against the door once. “I’m out of ideas. Normally there’s a lock or some other kind of mechanism. There’s nothing here.”

  Bending over, I stared closer at the door. On impulse, I inhaled deeply and exhaled toward the knob area, blowing out all my breath.

  A flash of bright green light flared against the door and we both jumped back.

  Penelope Wilde. Welcome to Hartock Industries. Please send our heartiest greetings to your father .

  “Ummm, okay?”

  The door shifted and clicked open with a loud whoosh. Steam, or something that was hopefully not poisonous gas, rushed out to greet us in a cool burst of air. Aaron pulled me back, but if it had meant us harm, it would have been too late.

  Enter .

  “You first,” I said to Aaron.

  “Ladies first.”

  “Age before beauty.” I waggled my eyebrows at him.

  He stepped inside and I waited a split second to see if he got blasted with a laser.

  Nothing.

  I stepped in after him and had to wait for all the steam to clear before I could see anything. A woman…well, I guess that was a strong word. Something resembling a woman stood in front of us. Her skin was pale silver, her eyes bright green, and her hair consisted of coils of metal and wire. She wore an artificial smile, holding a clipboard.

  “Please come closer and state your business. I am Petra of Hartock Industries.”

  “Hello, Petra,” I said politely.

  “Greetings, daughter of the Holmes’ line.”

  Oookay. I stepped as close to her as I felt comfortable and told her what we were looking for.

  “One four-five-three-two-four coming up,” she said, pressing something into the clipboard. The floor below us rumbled and up came a large metal container. Petra glided forward, punched a few keys in, and retrieved a small metal canister. “This is what you seek. It is compressed and will grow quite large once you open the canister. You must sign my roster showing you received these goods.”

  So we hadn’t needed the super spy bag after all.

  Petra shoved her clipboard at me and offered a sleek black pen.

  “This is the suspended animation machine?” I asked, the pen poised over the clipboard.

  “Four-five-three-two-four is what you seek. This
will assist you in your duties and endear us further to the Holmes’ genetic line. Please sign the roster.” Petra was a little bit weird. Even for a girl with metal coils for hair.

  Against my better judgment, I signed. I opened my case and allowed her…or whatever it was, to place the item inside.

  “Your business with Hartock Industries is concluded. Please remove yourself from the premises immediately.”

  “I—”

  “Please remove yourself from the premises immediately,” Petra said again—and did I detect a hint of hostility there?

  ‘Petra—” I tried to speak.

  “Your business with Hartock is concluded. Please remove yourself—”

  I held my hands up. “Got it. Happy hour is over. Get your shit and leave.”

  Freaky Petra cocked her head, looked at me with those weird robot eyes, and I was intelligent enough to get the hell out of dodge.

  I grabbed Aaron by the arm and pulled him out of the room. The door shut behind us with finality.

  “That shit was super weird,” I said.

  “Understatement.” He looked up. “Is it just me or do the walls look slightly more threatening than they did before?”

  He was right. There was a barely noticeable reddish hue to the lighting on the ceilings. “Is that some kind of alarm?”

  “No idea, but I think it’s safe to say we’ve outstayed our welcome.”

  “Or at least our five minutes.”

  Aaron pulled me down the corridors and back the way we came. We were careful to stand in the same area we’d arrived in. I guess it was superstition with the old school time travelers. I’d never cared about it.

  When the walls began to flicker a deeper red, Aaron and I set our DARs and flashed out, me clutching the case under my arm.

  My father greeted us with an amused smile when we fell back into his quarters.

  “How’d it go?” he asked in a falsely bright tone.

  “Petra,” I said flatly.

  He grinned, wide and with no remorse.

  “She’s a real doll, isn’t she?”

  Aaron snorted. “She has anger issues.”

  “Did you not leave when you were supposed to?”

  I handed the case over to Sherlock. “They stuck the machine in some weird compressor. Said it was bigger once we undid it. I’m assuming you can figure that out and get it set up considering the experience we just had.”

  “But did you die?” my father asked.

  Aaron shouted with laughter.

  “Someone needs to take your internet away,” I said and left them both standing there.

  I headed back to my room, ready to face plant in the bed and not see anyone until the next day. I didn’t bother to put my pajamas on or brush my teeth. This gig was weird and I didn’t always find the amusement in it like my father did. He’d had hundreds of years to get used to the unfamiliar, but everything was still unfamiliar to me.

  I lay on my stomach clutching the pillow around me when a soft tap sounded at the door.

  “Go away,” I mumbled.

  The door pushed open and I cursed at myself for forgetting to lock it. I knew better than that, especially after all the things that had happened to me. A hand holding a grease soaked bag poked through first.

  Tacos. I smelled tacos. I pushed myself up and waited for the savior to finish coming in the door.

  Watson stepped in and waved the bag around. “Sherlock told me about Petra.”

  “Gimme.” I snagged the bag from him and pushed myself up to get us some paper plates. He closed the door behind him and settled his long frame into one of my reclining chairs. He filled my room up and didn’t even realize it.

  “Petra is weird as hell,” I said once I handed over his plate and he started taking the tacos out of the bag.

  “Things get quite a bit different once the year hits twenty-twenty. It’s a tipping point for technology. For everything, really.”

  I tilted my head, curious. “How so?”

  He took an enormous bite of a Baja taco and sauce dripped onto the plate. I added a bit more chipotle sauce to mine and waited for him to respond.

  “You see the world now. Everyone has something to say. Technology allows us to form relationships where once we had to be brave and approach someone personally. Much of the personal has been wiped from interpersonal communication. No one wants to simply go out for coffee anymore. We’re content to sit behind our computer screens and judge people from afar while never once having walked in their shoes. We want things to be easy. Accessible. Immediate.” He chuckled bitterly. “And so, that’s what happens. Everything becomes automated. Impersonal. Even hospitals. Libraries. Coffee shops. The Petra’s of the world are far outweighing the Penelope’s. It’s no good for anyone.”

  “Just here?” I asked.

  “Oh no, love. It didn’t start here, but it might finish here. It began overseas. In Asia. Technology is beloved far more over there than it is here.”

  From the way most of the students around here buried their heads in their cell phones, I wasn’t sure that was the case, but he probably knew better than I did.

  “Technology is now implanted. People have constant access to constant data twenty-four seven.”

  “Dude,” I said in awe. “Does anyone sleep anymore?”

  He wiped his face with a napkin. “That’s the beautiful part. Pharmaceutical sales are up over four-thousand percent. No one sleeps. Nature is a fairy tale.”

  “That sounds…terrible.”

  He grunted. “It is. Imagine today’s youth about three-hundred percent worse. You can barely have a conversation with them now. Imagine them with technology implanted into their brains. We’re raising new forms of zombies. Human, yet completely insensitive to emotion or beauty. The real stuff, anyway. Why go outside when you can stream a cute cat video or get your makeup done by a YouTuber?”

  “And Dad thinks this is okay?”

  Watson chuckled. “Of course not. But he sees the boom in technology and appreciates that. He has to. It’s what he lives for. But in his heart, and mine as well, we remember those times when all we did was work the fields and strain and grind our fingers to the bone.

  “So, is that how it is everywhere?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I polished off the rest of my taco and licked my fingers clean. No use wiping off that deliciousness on a napkin. “Stark. Lonely.”

  “In many places, yes. Hartock is a unique hospital. Your father knows the inner workings better than I and he has a better relationship with everyone there. I have merely accompanied him there a few times. I haven’t been in many years so I can’t profess to know exactly what you mean. But I have traveled to that time period. And things are quite different.”

  “Does it stay that way?” This conversation was beginning to depress me.

  “In some ways, yes. In others…no. Evolution is quite a curious thing, and not only when it comes to humans or animals. Technology evolves, spurred by people who think they know best or know what someone is looking for. The younger generation seems to be stepping away from the constant stream of information. They seem more human contact and less virtual reality. So I see it coming back around…eventually. Most things do.”

  “Dad seemed to think it was hilarious.”

  Watson dropped the rest of his taco and wiped his fingers. He was less of a messy eater than I was. “Shock value probably. He finds it amusing when someone gets a massive culture shock. Although, he probably should have visited the place before allowing you to drop in. I don’t think he’s been in quite some time.”

  “He was familiar with Petra.”

  A slight grimace touched Watson’s mouth.

  “So, you know her too?”

  “Petra has been around for many, many years. I don’t know who created her, but she handles most of the ins and outs of day to day business.”

  “Is she an android?” I didn’t know much about them, but if Petra could get annoyed with
me, then she probably wasn’t a regular robot.

  “I don’t know that anyone quite knows what Petra is. I came to check on you.”

  “Me?” I frowned.

  “You don’t seem terribly pleased Aaron is back.”

  I snorted. “Massive understatement. Is anyone pleased he’s back?”

  Watson’s face remained impassive. “I can’t imagine they would be. I spoke with your father afterward. Aaron has brought us valuable information and as much as it pains me to say this, we must work with him. Once again.”

  “And if he tries to kill me again?”

  His eyes hardened. “We’ll just have to kill him first, won’t we?” He stood and cleaned up our mess. I let him because I was exhausted. When he was finished, I stood to say my goodbyes, but a frantic knock on my door had us both looking at each other in surprise. Watson reached the door first and flung it open. Cass stood there, blonde hair a mess.

  “Turn the television on!”

  I stood there, bewildered.

  She shoved Watson out of the way, and in his surprise, he allowed her to move him, and flipped my television on.

  A pretty newscaster with solemn eyes was reporting on a local story. My surprise gave way to dismay when I realized why she’d burst in. Several bodies had been found close to Barton Lake. We could have covered that up if we’d known about it, but the bodies were in such strange shape, the police kept the story under wraps. Until the DNA came back on one of them. The victim was female, diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and she’d been reported missing two weeks ago. Normally that wouldn’t have been enough to cause concern, but the body was missing portions, sliced cleanly off and healed smoothly. As if there was never a limb there in the first place. What was even stranger was the age progression that had taken place. The woman was 47 when she went missing. When they found her, the body had aged 30 years.

  My brow crinkled. “Aaron hasn’t had the serum for that long. Not enough to master the breakthrough before someone stole it.”