conversation. He tilted his head to the left and saw Tom lying next to him. Tom looked dead already. What was left functioning in David’s brain became a turbine of confusion. This couldn’t be happening. David could die, but not Tom. Tom had to David heard the front door crash open.
“Who’s there?” he heard Lazarus yell.
David’s thoughts drifted. He no longer felt his body. He was floating in a black abyss and he saw the face of an angel floating above him, surrounded by a glowing white light… No, not an angel… It was Sally. He smiled and said, “I’ve missed you. Sorry I stayed away so long.” David laughed. He knew he was dying and that he was talking to a vision produced by his misfiring synapses. But he accepted it. He couldn’t imagine a nicer way to pass on than seeing her face again.
“I’m sorry I never told you,” David said.
“Told me what, David?”
David grinned ever wider. Now his hallucination was responding.
“That I love you,” he said.
“If you hang on and your friend doesn’t kill me you might get the chance.”
Now that was odd. What a strange thing for a hallucination to say. David suddenly realized that the voice he heard wasn’t inside his head; it was through the ringing in his ears, above it. An incredible sadness swept through what remaining senses David still processed. He realized that Sally wasn’t a vision. She was with him now, in the past, and he would never see her again. The ringing in David’s ears grew intolerable and waves of color danced in his vision. The last thing David felt before he slipped from the conscious world was a small prick on his limp arm.
With a flash, David felt his arms, legs and head. He could smell, taste and hear. His senses rushed back to him and reality slapped him in the face.
“Whoa, David,” said Lazarus.
David opened his eyes to find himself sitting up in bed with Lazarus holding his shoulders. “I’m alive.”
“Tom lives as well, though he still sleeps,” Lazarus explained.
“How?”
“A friend of yours, I think. From where it is you come from. We cannot understand her language.”
David felt a constriction in his throat, but not from the poison he had survived. “Where is she?” David asked.
“Outside.”
David made it from the bedroom to the front door in less than five seconds, but his feet became stuck to the ground at the sight of Sally, standing with her back to him, black hair blowing in the wind. She was wearing a tight, black outfit, from head to toe. Her gaze was toward Bethany at the bottom of the hill. It was an amazing view that David had often enjoyed, but it paled in comparison to the woman standing in front of him, who risked her own life to save his. He wanted to watch her, remember her every curve, drink in every hair on her head, but he couldn’t wait another second. He ran toward her as quick as he could. “Sally!”
With a burst of excitement and a bright smile, Sally turned around and saw David running toward her. She covered her smiling mouth and reached out for David. It was a response that was both unexpected and very welcome. David wrapped his arms around Sally and spun her in the air. For her it had been a day since they last saw each other. For David it had been three years, and he wouldn’t waste another second.
David returned Sally to her feet, gripped her by the waist, pulled her close and kissed her firmly on the lips.
Sally was shocked but surrendered her mouth to David and held him tight. She knew how long David had been gone. She knew how hard the past years must have been for him. His passion for her was tangible and with his kiss, she felt all the danger, mistrust and deception from the past day disappear.
David released Sally from his embrace and looked her in the eyes. They smiled at each other. “I’m sorry,” David said.
“Don’t be.”
“But… I don’t understand… How long have I been gone in your time?”
“Only a day.”
David squinted one eye and scratched his head. “A day? But yesterday you would have killed me for doing that.”
“A lot can change in a day.”
“And you came back to save us?”
Sally nodded. “I couldn’t let my two best scientists die, could I? It doesn’t make good business sense.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Have you seen any sign of Roberts yet?”
“Roberts… He didn’t last long.”
Sally looked surprised, but then became distracted. “David… When you were…in there…dying. You were speaking English.”
David shuffled nervously. “Did I say what I think I said?”
Sally smiled.
“I was delirious. Don’t-”
“David… I think…” Sally stepped closer to David and held his arms. “I know… I love you too.”
David nearly fainted. This woman, who just yesterday was threatening his job, was professing her love for him?
“But…how? It’s only been-”
“When you were dying. I thought I was too late. I thought you were going to die. I realized then that if you died, my life would be somehow emptier…meaningless. But even then, I still didn’t know…and then you said it, that you loved me and I knew that second that I loved you too.”
Stunned didn’t do justice to how David felt. He was simultaneously ecstatic and mortified. He looked into her deep brown eyes; she was telling the truth. “Sally… You don’t know how long I-”
Whack! Sally slapped her neck.
“What happened?” David asked.
“Something bit me,” Sally said, just slightly annoyed.
David suddenly remembered slapping the bug on his neck. It nearly took his life.
Sally’s forehead grew uncharacteristically wrinkled. “David?”
With a wave of concern, David took the hand Sally had used to slap her neck and looked at it. The remains of another robot bug rested in her open palm. “Damn!” David cursed. “How did you cure Tom and me?”
“I injected you with the antidote… David, my neck.”
“I know. Do you have any more?”
“I only brought enough for you and Tom.”
“What about in the future?”
“It’s in George’s office. A secret room…but it’s got to be guarded like Fort Knox by now.”
“Can you think of a time when it’s not guarded?”
Sally looked David in the eyes. “It’s going to be close.”
“I’m used to close.”
Sally smiled despite the tingling sensation stretching down her spine. David had become strong, resilient, brave. She adored the man more than ever.
“Come with me,” David said, “I have an idea.”
George’s office was empty and the secret side room was wide open. Jake left in such a hurry that he forgot to close up, which David found very convenient. David crinkled his nose at the dry, over circulated air. The pale colors of the room were dull to his eyes. The future seemed dead to him now, but the woman next to him was still breathing and he wasn’t going to let her go.
David laid Sally on the floor. He didn’t want to bring her with him. He thought it would be too dangerous. But her condition worsened so drastically that he couldn’t risk not giving the antidote to her the second it was in his
