Time Storm Shockwave (25 page)

“It’s the elevator
shaft”—he yelled—“it must have breached near the top. Now the water is pouring into it, creating a whirlpool.” He would have thought the world underneath the dome would have been filled by now, but that must not be the case after all. The wall of water had only been about ten feet high.

The area had been nearly two hundred square feet
, and he had no idea of how high the dome reached. It was clearly not full, and now the water must be draining in from above the elevator shaft as well. Kathleen had told him that the Navy shaft was only accessible by submarine, twenty-five feet down she had said, just twenty-five feet. It was clearly close enough to them to be creating a drain-like effect, just like when the plug is pulled in a bathtub.

“What?” Stewart
asked.

Kathleen looked up in confusion, but Ashlyn didn’t hear him, busily trying to get her helmet off. The anchor chain must have suddenly gone taut because there was a tremendous jolt against the ship. Ashlyn hadn’t been holding on to anything, and had just dropped her helmet on the landing when the jolt knocked her over the edge and back into the water.

“Ashlyn
—” Mark screamed her name “—help me get her.” However even as he spoke, he saw her being pulled quickly away from the anchored boat and knew that the current was too strong.

She was being ripped away, pulled into the churning, spinning water of the whirlpool. She was trying to swim, trying to pull against the current.

Mark was about to jump in the water when Stewart barred his way. “You won’t be able to save her that way, the current is too strong.”

Mark
was hysterical; she was no longer at the back of the boat. He ran up the stairs to the aft deck, flew up the stairs to the pilothouse, and nearly broke the door as he went through it out onto the flybridge.

He looked around for the life preservers
. He found one attached to a rope and threw it with all his might. It hit the spot he was aiming at, but the current had already pulled her further than he had anticipated, and she could not reach it. She almost seemed to be moving in slow motion, no doubt, she was exhausted.

“Ashlyn!”
he screamed again, but his voice was lost in the wind as the water took her under.

He stared at the sight with unbelieving eyes. He thought about diving in after her
, but he knew that it was too strong a current, even for him.

Stewart
arrived on the flybridge just as Mark was about to dive in anyway. Stewart looked over at the whirlpool, and the life preserver attached to the rope, but Ashlyn was nowhere in sight. Mark began to climb over the edge to get into a better diving position, but Stewart stopped him.

“You can’t save her! The current is too strong.”

Mark was breathing heavily, the hypothermia forgotten, maybe even gone from his vigorous flight up and down the stairs. His mouth was open as he stared at the water where he had seen her go under. A million ideas raced through his mind, one after the next, but none of them would save her.

When he finally accepted the fact that
she was gone and that he couldn’t do anything, he fell to his knees and sobbed openly.

Chapter 22

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen
at once. — Albert Einstein

~

All over the world, clocks were going haywire. Some were running backwards, some were spinning wildly. People were vanishing and reappearing in different places. Things were levitating, and metal was randomly melting. Strange non-combustible objects like concrete were
spontaneously bursting into flames. In some forests, trees were turning to metal. Across the entire globe, swirling clouds of strange mists, openings to the fourth dimension, were touching down in random places like tornadoes. The full intensity of the Time Storms predicted by the Atlanteans had arrived.

***

Stewart stood
next to Mark on the flybridge. He was sobbing uncontrollably now.

“I’m sorry, Mark.” Stewart touched him on the shoulder
, but didn’t know what else to say.

Mark leaned his head against his friend’s leg. Stewart knelt down and put his arms around Mark. Kathleen slowly followed up the stairs to where the men were, but when she saw the look on Stewart’s face and heard Mark’s wrenching sobs. She felt as if she were intruding.

She was about to leave when Stewart looked up at her and with his eyes, pled for her to stay. Stewart sat there with Mark until his tears were finally spent. Mark finally pulled himself up off his knees and sat mournfully on one of the captain’s chairs.

Mark stared
at the swirling water. It was not only losing her that was killing him, but the uncanny parallel to his past life. Memories of his boys, caught in the powerful current under the ice, drowning just as she did. There had been no way to save them and no way to save her
.

I should have gone in after her. Drowning with her would have been better than this agony.

“Mark”—Stewart said quietly—“we should get you warmed up.”

Mark neither stirred nor answered. He just stared at the place that he had seen her go under.

I don’t care if I have hypothermia. It should have been
me not her.

It was clear that Mark was not
going to move. Out of respect, Stewart motioned to Kathleen, and they quietly left Mark alone with his thoughts.

He
sat there for an hour, then two. He never took his eyes off that spot. The water was still turning in its never-ending spiral into the abyss below.

A bird flew by him so closely that it almost hit him, no doubt as lost in the sto
rm as he was lost in his pain. It continued its flight into the sun and then slowed down to nothing, suspended in the air. Its wings were frozen in place.

He stared at the bird, not comprehending why it didn’t fall into the green tinged water below. A few moments passed. He struggled to understa
nd what he was seeing. The bird hung there, suspended in the air as if time, itself, had stopped.

S
uddenly, he sat bolt upright, and then stood and looked at the water swirling under the bird. Something had been bothering him, nagging at the inside of his mind like a demon. The sea was the wrong color. He had been so busy looking at the whirlpool that he hadn’t noticed. He looked around at the surrounding water—it was different. There was a soft, green glow, which had gone unnoticed in the late afternoon sun.

Mark looked up at the bird,
perfect in its stillness. It was suspended above the spinning water below. Now he could see that the perfect funnel shape was fixed in place. He wondered when it had stopped moving. He noticed for the first time how the life-preserver, which he had thrown into the water, was not bobbing on the waves as it should be or circling in a path down the spiraling drain. It also sat there, impossibly still below the stationary, outstretched wings of the bird.

***

Mark was like
a man possessed; he jumped up and ran down the stairs. Stewart and Kathleen were sitting in the salon. They stared at him in disbelief as he quickly put on his wetsuit.

“What are you doing
?—” Stewart stood up “—Mark, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to get Ashlyn.”

“What? Mark she’s gone. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

He
ignored Stewart and ran through the salon and down the stairs to the engine room where he picked up a full oxygen tank, he wasn’t using his rebreather system this time but a plain scuba tank and mask. Then he ran back up the stairs and back to the aft deck.

Alarmed, Stewart again tried to stop Mark
.

Stewart’s protests began to sound like gibberish and faded out into nothingness in Mark’s mind.

He picked up the long rope, which they had brought back up from the side of the underwater cliff. It was long, at least 150 feet. Mark examined it to make sure that it was in good condition.

Kathleen broke through the silence that had enveloped him. “Mark, what are you doing?”
she shrieked in horror.

“I’m getting Ashlyn,” he repeated vehemently.

He tied the rope to a hook on the lower landing of the boat. Once he made sure that it was secure, he tied it tightly to his waist. He was so determined that it didn’t even register when Stewart screamed at him not to do it.

Stewart
tried physically to block Mark, but he easily shoved him aside. Then, air tank and mask on, Mark plunged backwards into the water, and the current carried him away toward Ashlyn.

Stewart
stared, in horror, at the rear of the boat where Mark had been.

“He
must have gone mad with grief,” Stewart said.

Kathleen said nothing.

He
knelt on the lower landing and then fell down, more than sat. He opened his mouth. Grief pounded through him, and it was worse than the beating that Justin had given him. Even with the rope, it was unlikely that he would be able to get Mark back. The whirlpool draining into the abyss below was too strong. It had already pulled the ship hard against the anchor chain.

Even if he
could manage to reverse Mark‘s direction, the mouthpiece and facemask would be ripped from him by the strength of the current and Mark would drown; Stewart didn’t dare try.

Kathleen came down the steps and sat on the lower landing with
him. She put her arms around him and then leaned her face against his head.

“I’m so sorry,
” she whispered softly.

He didn’t look at her, but he felt her presence and it gave him some amount of comfort.

***

Mark allowed the current to carry him toward the place where Ashlyn had gone under. He stared in amazement. There she was, just under the surface, fighting to break free, yet frozen in time, just as the bird had been.

Glinting from the sunlight, he
saw particles of debris moving slower and slower until they were also fixed in time. He allowed himself to be dragged with them, past the barrier to where time had stopped.

Suddenly, she was moving,
thrashing, and fighting to break the surface, trying to get to air. He swam with the current as fast as he could go. It was pulling her down. He reached her just before he ran out of rope, and held onto her tightly.

She was confused for a second until she saw him, and then
relief washed over her face. He gave her the mouthpiece. She expelled the last of the air in her lungs into it, to clear the water. Then she took a deep breath, and then several more quick ones before handing it back to him.

He pointed
to the rope and motioned for her to hold onto him as tightly as possible. She did just that. He gave her the mouthpiece and pulled against the current with all his might. Hand over hand he pulled them, stopping only occasionally to take a few desperately needed breaths of air.

Their progress was slow. It
seemed an impossible force was pulling them back, but he didn’t stop until he finally reached the barrier of time. He could see exactly where it was because, like before, he watched the debris in the water. Only this time, instead of slowing to a stop, the particles on the other side of the boundary sped up so fast that they blurred together. He stopped there to take in some much needed air, and then he pulled them both through the edge of the Time Storm.

The pull against them was intense, but
suddenly they were in normal time, and there was no more particle blur. He knew they were through it, and he could see the hull of the yacht before them. He took in more air before pulling them closer to the boat.

***

When the rope had gone taut, the boat had turned toward the swirling whirlpool. It had only been seconds since it had finished turning its tail to the sun when Stewart saw Mark’s head break the surface of the water.

Kathleen hadn't realized that she had been holding her breath until she released it. Horror turned to relief, and then to shock as Ashlyn’s head also broke the surface of the water. Stewart stood up gaping in disbelief.

The current was still
pulling on Mark and Ashlyn, but he grasped the ladder tightly. When he was certain they were safe, he let go of the rope. Stewart grabbed Ashlyn by the hand, and with their combined strength, both Ashlyn and Mark made it onto the landing.

Ashlyn
climbed the staircase shakily, and Mark followed behind her. Up on the aft deck, they crashed down on the sofa. He landed carefully next to her, and then pulled her into his arms. He buried his face in her neck, and sobbed silently while they held each other tightly.

Stewart and Kathleen went into the galley so that
Mark and Ashlyn could have privacy.

“What’s going on—” she asked “—why is everyone acting so strange, and why are you …Why do you seem so …,” she didn’t finish her statement.

He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Why am I so emotional?” Is that what you’re trying to ask?”

“
Yes”—she answered softly—“I know that was a close call, but it’s all right. We all made it safely.”

He
stared, amazed.

She met his
eyes. They seemed far more bloodshot and swollen than they should have been—he was the one wearing the mask under the water. She knitted her brow.

“Mark,
are you alright?”

He smiled
, and then kissed her passionately for several moments.

“What’s going on with you?—”
she laughed softly “—you’re acting like you haven’t seen me in years.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He just stared at her and smiled. He shook his head and kissed her again.

“How did you get to me so quickly?”

“I did
n’t”—he groaned—“Ashlyn, I thought you were gone.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t
?—” she asked in confusion “—you were there almost as soon as I went under, how did you get there so fast?”

The expression in his eyes
took her breath away. It was as if he were looking through her eyes into eternity itself.

Then he stood up and reache
d for her hand. “Come with me.”

She followed him up the stairs through the pilothouse
, and up to the flybridge. He looked over, and the bird was still there. He pointed to it suspended in midair. She stared at it in awe.

She opened her mouth to ask how
, and then saw the faint green glow emanating from the water below. She looked up into the sky, and saw the swirled clouds—she understood. He was standing behind her with his arms around her. He kissed her wet hair, and then kissed the back of her neck.

“
I love you more than life itself.”

Her eyes filled with tears because she knew that he did. She turned around, and her lips found his again
.

“I thought what happened here was because
of the machine?”

He
shook his head, “I guess not.”

She looked back over the water. “It looks almost normal, if not for the bird. How did you know?”

She turned back to him and saw intense sorrow in his eyes. “I didn’t,” his voice broke.

She waited for him to regain control, then he pressed his lips against her forehead before pulling back to look at her again.

“I thought you were …,” he couldn’t even say the words.

“I was sitting up here
—” he pointed to the chair “—right here.”

She waited.

“That bird flew past me so closely that it almost hit me, and then it stopped, right where it is now.”

She
could see the painful memory and the wonder of it all in his eyes, rolled up into one.

“How long, Mark?
—” she asked him seriously “—how long was I under before you realized?”

He shook his head and
let out a sharp breath. He stared down at where he had collapsed onto his knees in pain. She followed the direction of his eyes, and then looked back at him.