“Yes, you do… I can see it in your eyes,” the girl said with a smile.
“What do you want with me?” shouted Judas.
“I told you the truth,” the girl said, as she stood up straight. “You see. I’m not all bad.” The girl smiled wider. “I need your help.”
The swirling darkness closed in tighter, reducing the alley to a ten-foot black box, and shrinking. Voices could be heard from the darkness. “You will help us. Yes, help us. Buy the bracelet. It looks so good on you! Like a king! Like a fool! Like a traitor! Yes, yes, yes!”
“Will you help me, Judas?” the girl asked.
The darkness closed in tighter and tighter so that Judas wouldn’t have been able to stand. It threatened to crush them both. Judas felt his life being snuffed. His heart pounded. He wished for death but knew it wouldn’t come. He closed his eyes tight, terrified to see what would happen. “ Yes!” he cried. “I’ll help you! Just stop! Please stop!”
A searing heat burned Judas’s back, spreading through his shoulders and into his head. Then the pain dissipated. Judas waited several seconds. He heard nothing, felt nothing. He opened his eyes. The girl was gone. He was alone in the alley, as though nothing had happened. Resting his head on his arms, Judas whimpered and cried like a beaten child.
“ Get up, Judas!” came a loud voice.
Judas screamed and jumped to his feet. His head twisted from side to side, searching. But no one was there. No girl. No blackness. There was no source for the voice. It was all around him… No, it was inside him.
“You know where you need to go. Caiaphas is waiting for you. You know what must be done. Judas, I have faith in you,” the voice said.
Judas caught his breath for a moment, then ran to the edge of the alley, picked up his bread and ran toward the upper city.
EIGHTEEN
Betrayal
2005
The noise was immense as Sally crashed into the wardrobe department and spilled into a closet of medieval outfits, knocking chain mail, long swords and shields displaying every sort of national emblem, to the floor. She fell to her hands and knees and vomited into a leather boot. David had told Sally about the side effects of time travel, but the twisting feeling in her stomach was much worse than he had described. And she had yet to actually travel through time. She simply used the watch to transport from midair to the wardrobe department, which she supervised. She knew if she was going to save Tom and David then she better fit in as best as possible and her current, skin tight, black ninja outfit wasn’t going to cut it.
Sally moved to retch again, but her entire body became rigid and she held down her bile as the door creaked open. Someone must have heard the noise! Sally ducked behind a rack of British army uniforms and held her breath. She could hear footsteps wandering in the dark, searching for something…for a light switch!
The lights clicked on and set the room ablaze with fluorescent light. “Hello?” came a voice that Sally recognized.
“Director McField, is that you?”
How did Spencer know it was her?
Spencer stopped moving. She could feel his eyes searching for her. “I saw you take the watch, Sally. David told me that if something went wrong that I could trust you. He should have been back by now…and that means something went wrong…but you figured that out already, didn’t you? That’s why you’re going back too?”
“How the hell do you know all that?” Sally said, as she stood up.
Spencer flashed his teeth with a confident smile, “You hired me, Sally. You know how smart I am.”
Sally smirked. Spencer was right. He was smart, but he knew entirely too much. “What do you know about David?”
Spencer adjusted his glasses and only made a halfhearted attempt to hide his proud smile. “I saw him.”
“When?” Sally asked.
“Before Tom or David ever went back.”
“So did I. Everyone did.”
“Correction. The David I saw had come back from the past, dressed in clothing appropriate to the early A.D. period in ancient Israel,” Spencer explained. “A closer inspection of the receiving area’s inventory reveals that there was, in fact, one item missing, and the second time signature was no glitch in time space, no random effect created by time travel…”
“It was David…” Sally said.
“Precisely. David gave me instructions to follow-which I did perfectly, I might add-and that included locating you if he and Tom should not return to within an hour of their departure time. I deduced the logical choice of action would be to send someone else back in time, but upon seeing the beefy Captain Roberts slip into the time stream, I knew it was only a matter of time before you took action yourself.”
Sally was growing tired of Spencer’s lengthy explanations. “All wonderful, Spencer, but get to the point.”
Spencer remembered who he was talking to and straightened up. “I’m here to help you, Director McField.”
What good could a skinny little scientist do Sally now? This wasn’t a time for brain storming, hypothesizing or arguing the fate of the universe. She needed action. “Spencer, can you buy me some time?”
“Time is our specialty, Director McField,” Spencer said proudly. “Time is our new best friend.”
Sally went into detail quickly about Captain Roberts’s mission and how he planned to carry it out. She told him about the robot insects with the poison that could kill a man and make it look like an allergic reaction. She told him everything. If David trusted Spencer, she could too.
“What time to you plan to travel to?” Spencer asked.
“Same time as Roberts, but far enough away so that he doesn’t see me.”
Sally threw a robe over her ninja outfit and sneakers. She knew the sneakers might be seen, but she also knew she might have to do some running, and not wearing sandals would give her an advantage. She disguised her watch with some twine as best she could and threw a covering over her head and face. She was pale as a ghost and didn’t want stick out more then she already would. “Can you keep things busy here for a while? Create a temporal emergency or something? Give me some extra time?”
“Can do,” Spencer said with a thumbs-up. “You don’t have to worry about a thing here. We’ve got everything under control.”
Sally thought Spencer’s speech was strange. He had referred to himself in the plural three times now. But he was probably just nervous and there was no time to have a personal conversation.
“Thanks,” Sally said. “You’re a good man.”
After tapping a series of buttons on her watch, Sally said, “Better stand clear.”
Spencer walked to the edge of the room and watched as Sally disappeared into time with a bright flash and a boom. This had been easier than he thought it would be. When the idea to turn the recent events to his advantage had entered his mind, as though from divine inspiration, he wasn’t sure it would work. But Sally had played right into his hands and his recent alliances would make sure he moved up the ladder quickly.
Spencer pulled a cell phone from his back pocket, flipped it open and dialed two numbers. “Director Dwight? Yes, it’s Spencer. Director McField just went back… Yes, sir…same time as Captain Roberts… Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir!”
