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  OUT OF TIME - THE ROMAN RING

  Book 3 of the Temporal Protection Corps Series

  E.W. BARNES

  Out of Time - The Roman Ring © 2019 by E.W. Barnes All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover design by Tony Lazio

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: 2019

  Now & Later Publishing

  www.A1000Years.com

  ISBN 978-1-7331492-4-2

  Also by E.W. Barnes

  Biding Time – The Chestnut Covin - Book 1 of the Temporal Protection Corps Series

  Borrowed Time – The Force Majeure - Book 2 of the Temporal Protection Corps Series

  For CW, LW, KL and TL and always for CB and AB

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Year 2337

  “No!”

  Sharon struggled against nothing and her shout vanished in the blackness of the shift.

  One minute she was with fellow Temporal Protection Corps Agent Caelen Winters; the next she was being transported through time. She was in a hurricane of silence. Her skin tingled and itched; it felt worse than the 800-year shift to the year 1215. She was hot and cold, and struggled to remain conscious.

  She emerged in darkness on an empty street in what looked like a war zone. Sharon fell to the ground nauseated. She moaned, swayed, trying to get up from the rubble digging into her bare knees. The thin dress she’d chosen for her date with Caelen offered no protection in this environment. The man who kidnapped her moved to help her, but she pulled away.

  “Get away from me!” she yelled.

  He held his finger in front of his lips. “Shh!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “We don’t want to be discovered.”

  “Discovered by who?” Sharon asked, not whispering but no longer yelling.

  “Very, uh, unpleasant people,” he said with a hushed laugh. His words were an understatement, and his own humor amused him.

  “Look, you take me back right now or I’ll start screaming for all the unpleasant people to hear,” she threatened.

  He shook his head mournfully. “I can’t take you back. There’s no temporal amplifier here.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “The temporal nexus was destroyed. It’s gone, long ago gone.”

  He gazed into a distance Sharon could not see. A wind moved through the silhouettes of ruins towering over them, fluttering debris and finding holes through which to moan softly. Sharon’s skin crawled. She looked around, irrationally hoping to see Caelen or any friendly face. But there was no one, just dust and ruin.

  “Yorga,” Sharon muttered.

  “Who?” the man asked, coming back to the present.

  “Former Temporal Protection Corps Assistant Director Yorga Zintel,” Sharon paused. Yorga had threatened to kill her—what if this man was in league with Yorga? Sharon had to be careful with what she said. “She… talked about a future where there were no temporal amplifiers.”

  “Yes, this is that future,” the man nodded cheerily as if she’d just solved a difficult math problem. “I’m sorry. I had to bring you here. It was the only way to make things right.”

  “What things? What are you talking about?”

  “We must leave here,” he started. “We must find shelter from the… unpleasant people.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “You must!” His voice cracked with urgency and his eyes pleaded with her to understand. Sharon thought she knew him, that she knew his name. Then the recognition was gone. He was a stranger again.

  The man slowly worked his way through the rubble, stopping after a few feet to be sure she was following. When he saw she had not moved, he turned and faced her.

  “There’s no place to go except to follow me. You want to get back to your own time? You follow me.”

  There was a rattling sound to her right, like a dislodged stone bouncing and falling in the rubble. A shiver ran through her and the hairs on her neck stood on end. She felt she was being watched. Taking one step, then the next, she walked toward the man, navigating chunks of concrete, rusted iron, mud, and trash as carefully as she could in the high heels she’d selected to go with the now woefully inadequate dress.

  He led the way, confident this time she would follow. Sharon’s senses were on high alert as she stepped around debris while listening for sounds of danger. Grotesque shadows lunged at her as she passed only to become a pile of bricks or fluttering pieces of cloth when she looked more closely. She saw stars overhead through the skeletons of buildings, lovely diamonds in the sky ignorant of the horror of the destruction that framed them.

  “Where are we?” she asked the man.

  “Earth. The year is 2337.” He let out a rasping laugh that sounded like wind through dead trees. “No one keeps track anymore, though.”

  Earth? She thought. Of course, it was earth. Why would he feel the need to clarify that?

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Those who survived hide during the night—except for the raiders. They hunt during the night for everything and everyone they can plunder and rape and leave for dead. They are, uh, unpleasant,” he said, scanning the area as he spoke.

  “So you’ve said,” Sharon said with a shudder. She reluctantly took a step closer to the man she guessed could shift her back to TPC headquarters where she was supposed to be. “What happened here? What caused this?”

  “I’ll tell you everything once we get to a safe place.”

  “Safe from the raiders,” she said.

  “Safe from them. The unpleasant people.” He laughed to himself again.

  “Why didn’t we shift into someplace secure? Or during the daytime if that’s safer?”

  “Clumsy, clumsy this thing is,” he said as he pulled out the remote-control device he had used to kidnap her. “This was the best it could do without a temporal nexus here. It doesn’t have the precision of the original version. Time travel is like art, you know, an art that needs the right tools.”

  She watched him slip the device back into a pocket. His right front pocket. There might be a way to get it from him, if she could distract him or if he fell asleep….

  After maneuvering around unstable piles as quietly as they could, he turned right into an alley between two destroyed buildings. He climbed up broken slabs of a concrete-like material and disappeared through a broken window. Sharon struggled to follow, her distrust of him warring with her fears of being alone in this place and hampered by her shoes and dress. As she stretched a leg through the window, the dress hooked on a jagged edge. She felt the seam tear, and she stumbled. The man caught her as she fell into the room. She pushed him away.

  “Don’t touch me!” she hissed. He stepped back, hands up to show he meant no harm.

  He led the way through a doorway into another room. Debris blocked the window giving the space an uncomfortable feeling of being underground.

  “This place is safe for the moment,” he said as he picked up a battered door leaning against a wall and rested it at an angle in front of the doorway opening. He placed a chunk of concrete at the foot of the door to help keep it in place. Then he sat with his back against the wall and looked at her.

  Sharon remained standing, watching him. She was sure that at any moment an attack would come: f
rom him, from the others hidden in the ruins, from the raiders he claimed were unpleasant. Minutes ticked by. She examined the room, getting her bearings. The doorway appeared to be the only way in or out and the man sat within easy reach. She could not get away from him that way. And even if she did, where would she go? She had no idea where she was on “Earth in 2337.” She would have to disable him, get the remote control, and shift back.

  He continued to watch her. She broke the silence first.

  “As you say, we’re safe. Who are you and what the hell is going on?”

  He grinned at her.

  “You remind me so much of Rose, so very much. My name is Richard Kern. I was a friend of your grandmother.”

  ✽✽✽

  “Richard,” Sharon breathed as recognition flooded through her.

  Richard had been one of her grandmother Rose Sprucewood Bower’s friends, a colleague and fellow agent at the TPC. Her grandmother had created a hologram of Richard, personalizing the default temporal amplifier holographic interface with his voice and image. That’s why he seemed familiar to Sharon.

  “My grandmother talked about you. They lost you. They couldn’t find you.”

  “Lost,” he nodded. “So lost for so long.”

  “You were also… sick.” Sharon said, remembering the story.

  There was an accident with a temporal amplifier, she recalled. It injured Richard, resulting in a condition called temporal aberration disorder. It was an affliction her mother had mysteriously developed, too, and Sharon remembered vividly the pain caused by her mother’s memory loss, visions, and hallucinations. She watched Richard warily.

  “Yes, I was sick. Am sick,” he grinned. “But only sometimes now.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Sharon said, crossing her arms. “And what does it have to do with bringing me here against my will?”

  Richard stared at the ceiling. There was another long silence and Sharon wondered if he would answer her questions.

  “A long time I was sick,” his rasping voice jolted her out of her thoughts. “The days were terrifying. I didn’t know where I was, or who I was. Sometimes I was talking with friends, with your grandmother, safe at home; and then I would be surrounded by strangers, and I was filthy, shunned, scrabbling for food and safe places to sleep.”

  “That sounds terrible,” Sharon said, uncrossing her arms.

  “No, the terrible was yet to come,” he said, looking at the door. “It was easy to be the happy madman. Terrible began when the effects of the temporal aberration disorder began to wane. It started with brief moments of lucidity. I was myself again. And then it would end, and I would sink back into the nightmares.”

  Sharon leaned against the wall next to the blocked window.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “It took years. The periods of clarity began to last longer and longer. Each time I emerged from the hallucinations I had to remember again what happened to me and what to do about it.”

  “What did happen to you?” Sharon asked. “The official explanation was you were lost because of an accident. My grandmother didn’t believe that, though.”

  Richard chuckled softly. “Always the smartest one in the room, Rose was. It took me years to piece it back together.” He shifted on the floor, resting an arm on his raised knee. “There was a plot, you see. There was a plot to murder your grandmother. I tried to stop it, but someone sabotaged the temporal amplifier I used.”

  “Who was trying to kill my grandmother?” Sharon asked. She suspected she already knew the answer.

  “I didn’t know then,” he shook his head. “They stopped me before I could find out.” He laughed his raspy laugh again. “But it turned out ok, didn’t it? She lived, she married Kevin, and you’re here now. That means I won. That makes it worth it.”

  “Yes, I’m here now,” Sharon said under her breath. She wanted to keep him talking. “But how is it you’re not…” she paused trying not to be indelicate.

  “Dead?” he filled in the word for her.

  “My grandmother was over 100 years old when she died. You must be close to the same age. How can you still be alive?”

  “A TPC agent asks that question,” he said shaking his head.

  “Right. Time travel. But you still haven’t explained why you brought me here?” Sharon said raising her voice in frustration.

  He again raised his finger to his lips. “We’re safe here for now, but let’s not invite others to join us.” Sharon was silent as he stopped to listen, cocking his ear toward the doorway. When he was satisfied, he returned his attention to Sharon.

  “I brought you here because I need your help. I brought you here because in this time frame, the Chestnut Covin can’t find you and stop you.”

  “You know about the Chestnut Covin?” she breathed.

  “I do now.”

  “They were the ones who wanted to murder my grandmother, who sabotaged the temporal amplifier weren’t they?” she nodded.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But my grandmother said they lost you in the past,” Sharon continued. “That you were delusional and violent and that they tried to stop you but couldn’t. You shifted away and they couldn’t track you. How were you able to get back?”

  “They think I did that, huh?” he said distractedly.

  “You didn’t?” she asked and then stopped, listening.

  She, too, heard the sound he was focused on. A noise in the hallway, small furtive movements that were getting closer. She held her breath and Richard remained motionless. The noise was just outside the door. She saw Richard smile grimly and suppressed a scream as an enormous rat nosed into the room.

  “Don’t move,” Richard murmured. “It’s just checking us out. It will leave soon.”

  Sharon eyed the rat with barely contained revulsion. It spent a long time sniffing her shoes, and she fought the urge to kick out and send it flying. After thoroughly nosing both Sharon and Richard along with every corner in the room, the rat edged back through the doorway. Sharon inhaled as the sound of its claws on the eroded floor receded.

  “How long are we going to stay here?” Sharon asked as she leaned against a chunk of debris.

  The debris shifted under her weight and slowly slid toward the floor. It was a massive slab. It caught on something, stopped, perched, rocking a little. Sharon exhaled in relief.

  Too soon. Whatever snagged it could not support the weight. The chunk of debris shifted again, sliding downward, unstoppable. It hit the floor with a crash, followed by thumps as Sharon jumped out of the way of the avalanche that followed it.

  For a moment, all was silent except for Sharon’s heart pounding against her ribs. Then they heard it. A male voice. Sharon’s blood ran cold.

  “I think there’s more here than just rats,” the voice called out, followed by heavy footsteps and laughter.

  “We’re not staying here long at all,” Richard murmured as he removed the door resting against the door frame covering the doorway.

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Sharon whispered as they crept out of the room and followed the rat down the hall.

  While Sharon and Richard moved as quietly as humanly possible, the men searching for them—raiders, Sharon assumed—had the luxury of not caring how much noise they made. Over her own attempts to breathe silently, Sharon heard glass breaking and the crack of metal against metal. Perhaps the raiders were bulldozing their way after them, or perhaps the sounds were meant to frighten them. If it’s the latter, it’s working, Sharon thought.

  They stayed in the hall until they reached what looked at first to be a dead end. As Richard dropped to his knees Sharon realized there was a small passageway under the debris piled against the wall. Less a passageway, more an animal burrow, but that didn’t stop Richard from crawling in headfirst. Sharon hesitated until she heard more glass breaking. The sound was definitely closer now. She plunged in after him.

  The passageway was low and dark. She was on her elbows
and knees to fit in the narrow space. She couldn’t see anything in front of her, and more than once she hit her head on a low hanging fragment. The floor was full of small rocks and rubble which bruised and cut her. Only the sound of Richard steadily moving ahead prevented her from descending into a full-blown panic.

  After what felt like an eternity, but which was only about 10 minutes, Sharon saw Richard’s outline against a dim light ahead. They had reached the end of the passage. He offered her his hand as she emerged behind him and this time, she accepted his help. The sounds from the men were fainter now, but more distinct. They were not happy their quarry was eluding them.

  Sharon followed Richard down a flight of stairs, several of which were missing, and she had to jump across the gaps. She landed hard in her heels, each impact reverberating like gun shots.

  “It can’t be helped,” Richard panted as she winced at the sounds. “We must keep moving.”

  They edged through what had once been the entrance to the building. It was now a gaping hole, jagged as if blown out by an explosion. Richard hugged the shadows, keeping out of the light as much as possible, until they turned a corner.

  “Now we run,” he said.

  Sharon ran as fast as she could, but the heels were slowing her down. She briefly considered taking them off and thought better of it. Broken glass and sharp rubble were everywhere. It would cut her and slow her down even more, not to mention leave an easily followed blood trail. At least the heels protected her feet.

  Richard ran straight for a wall of wreckage ahead of them. At first Sharon thought there might be another passageway to crawl through when she realized the wall was constructed. Large pieces of debris, wood, metal, and other materials had been carefully pieced together across a street between the ruins of buildings, forming a barrier some 15 feet high. As Richard neared it, three people stepped out of the shadows. He slid to a halt, Sharon close behind.

  “Stop. Go no further,” a woman called out She wore patchwork armor made of small sheets of different metals tied together with wire and leather and carried a metal rod which she held like a spear. Her companions were similarly dressed and holding rudimentary bows and arrows.