Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 21:04:16 -0600 (MDT) From: "Katherine R. Freymuth" Subject: Vengeance - Chapter 1 Message-ID: Chapter 1 He collapsed on the ground, holding back the scream that threatened to come forth from his lips. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to face whatever were his surroundings. What would he see? Would he see deep blue walls? Was he dead? He thought he might be. He was in such extraordinary pain and he couldn't remember why. He finally forced his eyes open. The scene before him was enough to make him leap for joy. He had done it! He had succeeded in his escape and there was no way his enemies would be able to follow him. He stood and looked about himself. He was in an alley of what he supposed was the worst part of a city, hopefully either Albuquerque or Alamagordo. He looked down at himself. He was dressed in tattered green fatigues. They looked familiar to him. It was then that he realized that they were HIS fatigues. But what had happened to them? Why were they so tattered that not even a homeless person would think of wearing them? He looked at his hands and nearly screamed with shock and fear. The lightly-tanned skin color he was expecting to see was gone and was replaced by reddened, cracked, burnt skin. "What's happening to me?" he questioned the uninhabited alley. He looked frantically about the area, looking for something - anything - that would answer his question. He rummaged quickly through the garbage that littered the alley and found his answer in the form of a broken mirror. He picked up the largest piece of mirror and stared into it in horror. "No! It can't be!" he screamed. "It can't be!" The reflection in the mirror was his own, right down to his white hair and his piercing green eyes. However, he had lost a great amount of hair and his face was scarred almost to the point of being unrecognizable. He could see the damage done to his camouflage uniform and noticed that his skin was burnt underneath the rags on his back. He dropped the mirror. What had gone wrong? How could this have happened to him? Another thought came to him. *If this has happened to me, then something much more important might have gone wrong.* The thought nearly sent him into a panic. He hurried out of the alley and into a street. He looked about himself, searching for someone who would give him answers. He decided to make his selection randomly and grabbed the nearest person, a young black man dressed in casual clothes consisting of torn jeans and a red t-shirt. He forces the boy face-first against the wall of the building before wrapping the boy's neck between two arms. "Hey, man! Are you nuts?! Let me go!" the teenager demanded, finding himself unable to defend himself. He felt himself being dragged further into the alley where his demands to be released would be less noticed. "You're going to answer my questions," the young man was told. "And I'd better like your answers." "Listen," the young man said, trying to keep his voice calm. "If it's money you want, take everything I have. I don't got much, just twenty dollars. I swear I won't call the cops." "Shut up!" He tightened his grip on the young man. "All I want is answers." "Man, I don't know nothing." He smiled slightly. "You know enough, I'm sure. Where am I?" The young man frowned. "What?" he asked in confusion. He regretted his question when he was suddenly struggling to breathe. "Where am I?" he repeated the question calmly. The calmness in his assailant's voice frightened the young man more than the inability to breathe properly. It told the young man that life was cheap to the assailant. "Brooklyn," the young man rasped. "You're in Brooklyn." "Brooklyn?!" the assailant exclaimed. "New York?" "Yeah. New York," came the raspy response. "Please," the boy begged. "I can't breathe!" "What's the date?" the assailant demanded, ignoring the pleas. "April 12th. Please!" He voice was hardly a whisper. "The year?" The young man didn't answer immediately as his body focused on just trying to breathe. "The year?" the assailant repeated the question. "Nine-teen-aee-tee-two," the answer came slowly. The assailant released his hold slightly, shocked by the answer. "What?" The young man was just grateful for the opportunity to breathe. He breathed heavily, causing his head to hurt from the sudden intake of air. "April 12th, 1982," he told his assailant. "That's the date. Now, please, let me go." The assailant lowered his eyelids with contempt. "You want to be released." "Yes," the young man begged. "Please." The assailant smiled slightly. "Certainly. I'll release you." He tightened his arms around the young man's neck, relishing the fear he could feel pulsating through his victim's body and yearning for the snapping sound he knew would come soon. "No!" came a man's voice just before the assailant snapped the boy's neck and dropped the boy to the ground. He looked cynically at the man who had tried to stop his murderous act. As the man ran towards him, he gave an amused smiled before disappearing around a corner. The man attempted to follow but lost the assailant. He exhaled helplessly. "He's gone, Al," he said to a man kneeling by the fallen boy. "Dammit, he's gone." "The kid's still alive, Sam," Al replied back. "He's still got a chance. And the cavalry'll be here any minute. Just keep the kid still so he doesn't move his neck. Otherwise, he won't have a chance." Sam hurried to the teenager's side and gently held him still, making certain that the boy's head and neck didn't move. "What happens to him, Al?" Al looked concerned as he took a colorful object from his white trousers which matched with his white jacket and turquoise shirt. He looked at the calculator-like object, gaining information from it. "Well, Hamon is going to survive. He makes a pretty good recovery from this random act of violence but it does affect his life. He spends the rest of his life in a wheelchair." Sam closed his eyes in frustration. "If only I'd got here five minutes earlier." Al exhaled. "Sam, you got here in record time. There was nothing else you could have done. Besides, it's not all that bad." Sam looked at Al in confusion. "This experience convinces him not to join this gang he was thinking of joining," Al explained. "He goes to law school and becomes one hell of a prosecuting attorney." Sam nodded. "Did Ziggy ever figure out from where that time shift came?" Al shook his head. "She says it reads like another leaper but there are no other leapers. I really don't think she's quite up to par yet." Sam frowned at him. "We're working on it," Al assured him. Sam seemed to accept the answer, if reluctantly. The police came with an ambulance and successfully loaded Hamon into the ambulance without hurting him. They also took a statement from Sam. As they did so, Al gazed thoughtfully in the direction that the assailant had disappeared. "What's the matter?" Sam asked, noticing Al's gaze. Al frowned. "I'm not sure but I think I know that guy who attacked Hamon. He looks kind of familiar." He shook his head. "I've got a bad feeling about him." Sam looked at Al carefully, knowing to be wary when Al got any bad feelings about anything. He shifted his attention towards the alley into which Al was gazing. Al was right. The man was a little familiar and Sam too had a bad feeling about him. A very bad feeling. *April 12th, 1982?! The boy had to be lying. I couldn't be that far off my destination!* But everything that he saw told him that his victim had told him the truth. It was April 12th, 1982. He was almost fifteen years off his intended destination and he couldn't figure out why. He paced. *What happened those last few seconds before the program was completed? I hurried into the chamber to safety and I stood in the activation place and there was an explosion and....* He stopped his ponderous pacing with a leer in his eyes. The abandoned warehouse in which he found shelter couldn't seem to hold the anger that was seeping out of him. "Of course," he said to himself in a growl. "How else but him? Not only does he ruin my plans but he steals my wife's loyalty and traps me in the past and scars me for life!" He looked around angrily. Only yesterday, in his view, he had a nice office, an executive bedroom, and the power to rule the country. Now, his home and work-place was an abandoned warehouse infested with rats and he had not even the power to get new clothes to replace the rags on his back. "You will not get away with this, Admiral!" he screamed out, causing his voice to echo throughout the warehouse. "You can't hold me down! I will have my revenge, my dear Admiral, and you will regret that you ever crossed me! I swear it!"