A heavy thud next to them made the couple jump. Dust blew up from the road but it wasn't hard to see the huge shape in black leather.
"Run!" Cordelia shouted as she pushed David, but he wasn't able to go fast. Her mind went into frightmode for a moment as she realised that the bounty-hunter had literally fallen from the sky, almost on top of them. How had this woman done that? And why wasn't she fully disabled after the acid-treatment?
Instead of coming for them, the bounty-hunter staggered around a little as if she needed to get her bearings. "There you are!" she howled once she noticed Cordelia and David.
Cordelia was confused. The woman was so close to them and yet it was as if she had trouble getting her hands on them. She grabbed into her pocket and brought out the tiny gun, flicking off the safety. "One more move and you're going to get it," she warned the bounty-hunter as she pushed David towards a few trees at the side of the road.
"One more move and you will be dead meat," the hunter said, waving her hands. "You don't scare me, puny woman!"
Cordelia didn't understand the way the woman acted. They should have been smashed by now, she logically knew. The hunter was here. Where had she come from? It also seemed that she saw David and herself be it not too well. Had she been sloppy while throwing the acid?
As David walked to the trees, Cordelia circled the bounty-hunter as quickly as she could. She wondered if the woman was now half blind instead of fully. Her suspicion proved correct: the bounty-hunter kind of saw her but she had no clear estimate of where exactly Cordelia was. She grabbed for Cordelia but she was way off. That was impossible. Acid and eyes made for bad company. Hydrochloric acid damaged eyes fast and forever so how could this huge woman still see anything?
An idea hit Cordelia. She ran a circle around the bounty-hunter. The big woman followed her movement and jumped forward at some point, almost guessing where Cordelia would be, but Cordelia had anticipated that. Now she was certain. This woman didn't have normal eyes. She had visual implants, like cameras but much better. And the lenses of those cameras had been affected by the acid!
Suddenly David came running towards Cordelia, and at the last moment he changed course and rammed his shoulder into the bounty-hunter's lower back. His intent had been to hit the woman in the kidneys but her lower torso, as Cordelia had already discovered, had been fortified. The hunter did stumble forward because of the unexpected impact, but she didn't give a peep. David did, because his shoulder almost got dislocated. As the woman stumbled, Cordelia jumped forward and kicked her against a knee. To her surprise, the woman tripped and went down!
"David!" Cordelia hurried over to him and grabbed him by the arm. "Run!"
They rushed off as fast as they could. Cordelia glanced over her shoulder and saw how the bounty-hunter worked herself to her feet again. That woman was mostly cyborg, she decided. Almost as unstoppable as a machine. She hoped they would make it to the STAR in time.
They did. The bounty-hunter was still coming after them, but her speed had dramatically gone down, which was what probably saved them. By the time Cordelia had punched in the coordinates for home, she saw the huge, leather-clad shape approach the STAR but her finger was on "Go" faster than the hunter could get to them.
~
The STAR reached the cellar. The monitors showed the usual darkness. Cordelia quickly powered down the systems and turned to David. "David? How are you? Are you hurt?"
David looked at her. "Not badly. She beat me a few times but I don't think anything is broken. Cordelia... you are amazing." He smiled and then he fainted.
Cordelia's mind worked fast. She knew she had taken a risk coming here. The bounty-hunter knew where she lived. The thing she didn't know, however, was to when she'd come back.
"Norbert, are we safe here at the moment?"
"There are no people in the street that are overly interested in the house," Norbert reported after a short pause.
"I will get David to bed and something to eat," Cordelia said. It was more to hear herself say something than to inform Norbert. She noticed that unconscious people were very heavy when she tried to move her lover, the person she'd finally managed to get out of the hunter's claws. She shivered, thinking back to that hulky machine-woman.
By the time she'd managed to get David up the stairs to the ground floor, he woke up again.
"What are you doing?" he asked, confused as to where he was.
"Getting you to bed, and I'm glad you can help me do that now." Cordelia blew a strand of hair from her face that had been bothering her since halfway up the cellar stairs. With David more mobile, it was a lot easier to get him where she wanted him. "Now stay there while I get us something to eat."
"I'm not planning on running off," David said. He put his head down on the pillow. His eyes closed. Cordelia knew he was out again.
She hurried to her kitchen and cursed loudly when she found she didn't have much left in the food department. All the action of late had prevented her from getting supplies and groceries. Some bread that had seen better times and some cheese would have to do. That, combined with strong tea.
Cordelia hated to wake David up but he had to eat something. It was also the only way to ask him if he was in pain. She had to know what had happened to him and how much subjective time he had been in the hunter's clutches.
"Really, I am not in pain, Cordelia," David assured her. "Not in a way that needs a doctor. She beat me a few times but I've been in fights before. Back in Lexington." The way he said that made her wonder if he would rather be there now than here, with her. He had never signed up for this. "I was taken by surprise when she showed up. These two men tried to stop her but she had too much firepower for them, which scared me to witness. She can't be a human being."
"And do you know how long she's been keeping you?"
David shook his head and estimated it to be about a week. "She kept me in a black room, tied to a chair. There were some people who fed me something. I don't know what it was but it kept me alive." He frowned. "A few times I was drugged. I felt drunk then. There were a few people who talked to me, who wanted to know things I couldn't tell them."
"Do you know who those people were? Did they mention any names? Or do you remember what they looked like?"
"No. I'm sorry. All I remember are a man and a woman, always dressed in black, with very strange masks over their faces. The woman did most of the talking."
"Do you perhaps remember what they wanted to know?"
David frowned and sighed as he rubbed his temples. "Not sure. It's all so blurry. They did mention you, I recall that. And at times it felt as if they knew you."
"They knew me? Freaking son of a bitch." Cordelia knew who the man and the woman had been. Leo and Merana. They had to be. She noticed how David looked at her in surprise. She had never really cursed like that with him present but then, she'd never had an epiphany like that before either. "I'm sorry, but this... I know who they are. We have to go home as... I mean we have to go to the future as... to your future as soon as possible." This was getting complicated.
"I hope you allow me some sleep first," David said, "but if it's necessary..."
Cordelia checked the clock. It was four in the afternoon. They could both do with some hours of sleep, she decided. As she undressed, she ordered Norbert to go on high scan surveillance and to wake them up as soon as anything out of the ordinary occurred. "Apart from visitors from this period who want stuff."
~
It was dark when Cordelia woke up. The clock told her it was nine-thirty in the evening already. She had slept far longer than she'd planned, but the bed had felt so nice and warm, and knowing that David was with her made a big difference as well. It had removed a lot of her stress.
At least Norbert hadn't woken them up, so they were still safe. Cordelia slipped out of bed and lit a light. She looked at David, who was still asleep. She was convinced he needed a lot more of that, but she wanted to get the both of them to 2251. In the light of the oil lamp she checked Marybeth Orwald's note on when the next meeting moment was. Only a week after she had dropped off Stanley and Selma. That should work.
"David?" she said as she sat down on the bed. "David. You have to wake up."
"What? Oh. Cordelia." He smiled a tired smile. "What time is it?"
Cordelia explained what she wanted to do, and for that he had to get up. "I am sure you can sleep some more once we're there, my love, but we need to get going now." She helped him up and into his clothes. From his groans she understood that his ribs had taken quite a beating while he was in the 'care' of the cyborg. She dressed too, in clothes that would be less conspicuous in the twenty-third century.
David managed to get down to the cellar on his own. Cordelia grabbed a few things that might come in handy and, with David settled in the STAR, she powered up the systems and they jumped.
~
They arrived in the white room. Cordelia quickly scanned all the cameras to find that no one was there. Even though she knew that Marybeth Orwald couldn't be certain she'd arrive now, it was disconcerting to find the room empty.
"Where are we?" David asked.
"In the house of the wife of my former employer. Marybeth Orwald." Cordelia decided they should get out of the STAR and wait. By the time they had actually left the craft, the man who had greeted her the first time came into the room.
"Miss Brown," he said with a slight nod. He looked at David. "Your friend looks in poor shape."
"He is in poor shape," Cordelia said. "He could do with some medical attention."
"Please follow me." The man turned and walked off, leading them to the office-space where Marybeth Orwald was busy with all kinds of things. The woman didn't even look up for a moment when the 'butler' brought Cordelia and David in.
"Sit down, I'll be right with you," was all Marybeth said and kept working the displays and tablet in front of her. Cordelia and David did as she had said and waited.
After about ten minutes Marybeth looked at the two. "This may sound strange but I am glad to see you like this." Those words made Cordelia frown. Did she know something they didn't? "I have found out this morning that Merana and Leo, Monroe's siblings, are behind the contract with the bounty-hunter. The one Hendrix and Parker tried to stop."
"We found that out too," Cordelia said and explained what David had told her. "I don't understand why they did that."
Marybeth nodded. "And the worrying part at the moment is that the two aren't to be found. Hendrix is trying to locate them through a special device, but so far it seems they have discovered and disabled it."
"What kind of special device would that be?" Cordelia asked, looking at David. She worried that he would get too confused, but he seemed more in need of medical attention than mental support. "And can you have someone look at him? The bounty-hunter hurt him pretty badly, I think."
"But of course. Why didn't you say so sooner?" Marybeth clicked her tongue disapprovingly as she tapped a button and asked someone to come along for a medical case. "The device I referred to is a temporal locator. It is still experimental but we are using it on the STAR units of family members. That way we can track them in case some kind of emergency were to happen."
"That sounds nifty," Cordelia said, "and you can bring the STAR back that way?" That would have made things easy.
"Not yet. As I said, the locator is experimental."
At that moment the door to the office opened and the butler entered, followed by a man and a woman in what Cordelia recognised to be medical outfits. She got up and put a hand on David's shoulder. "David. These are doctors in this century. They will look after you and make you better. Please go with them."
David looked up at her and smiled. The pain in it hurt Cordelia to her core. "I will. Thank you, lovely woman, for looking after me. And thank you too, Mrs Orwald." He got up and groaned.
The nurse was with him immediately. "Please remain seated, sir. We'll arrange suitable transport for you." She looked at the male medic who nodded and hurried off. Cordelia knew what he was going to bring.
"David, this will look a bit strange," she said as she knelt down with him. "They will bring in a floating bed. I need you to lie down on it. You won't fall down, I promise."
"A floating bed?" David looked at her in disbelief. "You are joking, aren't you?"
"No, sir. She isn't," the nurse said. The medic had just brought the bed into the office and floated it to where David sat.
"I'll be jiggered..." David reached out and pushed down on the floater-unit. "This is amazing, Cordelia. You are a fascinating woman."
"Come on, David, we need to get you up there." Cordelia and the medic helped David up and onto the bed. The nurse had lowered the board to make it easier for him.
"We'll look after him, miss," the nurse assured her. Cordelia hated to see David be taken away like that. She knew she should be with him, but there were things to handle here, with Marybeth Orwald.
"He will be looked after, Cordelia." Marybeth returned to her desk and the displays. "Where were we?"
"Oh..." Cordelia sat down, her mind with David. "With the device to locate a STAR."
"Ah, yes. Unfortunately we cannot trace either of their STARs. I suspect they know about the locator and they have disabled it."
Cordelia huffed. "That would be easy enough. Experimental parts are open to the system intelligence. All they need to do is ask it to disable the locator and it will switch it off." It was obvious that Marybeth had no real knowledge of the inner workings of a STAR. Well, she didn't need to, obviously.
"That sounds plausible." Marybeth nodded. "At this moment they are both gone, which is a pity. I would like to talk with them about a few things."
"So would I, but then with their cyborg bounty-hunter disabled," Cordelia added. "The woman they put on my tail is almost indestructible."
"I am quite certain we have ways to take care of that bounty-hunter," Marybeth assured Cordelia. "We'll first have to find her, and something tells me that she is where Leo and Merana are. They hired her so they have a way to contact her. I wonder how they do that."
"Black market. I bet they know their way around there, probably through the bounty-hunter. Espionage and theft of company secrets is a booming business and on the Grey Web anything's for sale. You just have to pay the price, which for them shouldn't be too hard."
"You are quite knowledgeable about that, Cordelia," Marybeth noticed. "Do you have experience with that?"
"No, but I worked here, don't you remember? Once a week there was a briefing about how we had to keep our eyes open and scanners at the ready, just in case we suspected anything like that." Cordelia wanted to shake her about this woman's ignorance. How could she still be in the dark about all this? Probably also something to thank Leo and Merana for. Leo was sneaky enough for that and Merana would gladly let him lie to their sister-in-law. Cordelia asked if there was a way to access Merana's and Leo's accounts to the system.
"I am sure there is, but that would have to happen from the main system in the factory," Marybeth said. "All that is classified and only accessible with Monroe's clearance code and the confirmation of the factory supervisor. Monroe's code is in my hands, and the supervisor would never argue with me." That was good news. "Why would you want that?"
"I am sure there are traces of the transactions from their accounts to pay for the goods. If we can follow that trail, we can figure out what they bought and get our hands on the same things. If we can then reprogram a system intelligence to trace the signal from our device while it scans for the others, we can find where they are."
"That sounds like the locator functionality we're testing."
Cordelia nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised if that's the same technology they are using. Even when I worked here, there was word of that stuff going around so it was bound to be stolen."
"But wouldn't an actual locator be better then?" Marybeth asked.
"No. If this is really what they use, then they have adjusted certain things so they can use the devices for their own purposes without the company scanners picking up what they do." Cordelia thought that quite logical.
"Then we have to go to the factory."